I slice carrots for a minute, not sure what to tell her. That I heard Cassie’s thoughts and decided I needed a new place to eat lunch from now on? That I couldn’t handle Cassie’s anger, her scorn? I skip that part, but I can’t help starting to smile as I tell my mom about Mikaela, about how she went from being just some other freshman girl to this way-too-cool chick with springy little braids and an attitude. Then I catch myself babbling about Cody.
“ … And he dresses in black, which accentuates his eyes, and his teeth are really, uh, straight,” I conclude, trying to wrap it up. But it’s too late.
“He sounds adorable,” Mom says, winking at me.
Ugh. “Yeah, he’s a real hottie,” I say flatly.
“Why don’t you invite him over sometime so your dad and I can meet him?” She dices the potatoes into home-fries-sized bits. “He could come over for dinner. I won’t even cook with leftovers, I promise.”
“Mom! It’s not like we’re going out. I just met these people. We’re not best friends or anything.” The funny thing is, the minute I say that, I realize they pretty much are my best friends. At any rate, right now they’re all I have. Them and Spike, who isn’t very discriminating.
That gets me thinking. I can’t help comparing them in my mind to Cassie the Pod Queen and her loyal zombie subjects, and I wonder, not for the first time, what I was doing with them in the first place. We had good times over the years, but when I try to remember one real moment of deep conversation with Cassie, I can’t pinpoint anything. All my memories with her involve swim team, bad TV, and hair dye.
But somehow, I still can’t help missing those times. Just a little.
Thinking about hair dye reminds me that my highlights have grown out at least two inches, something Cassie would have gotten on my case about ages ago. But not one of my new friends has said a word about it. Cody even said I looked better without a hat on. I smile to myself.
“What are you so happy about, little girl?” Dad walks in the kitchen and drops his keys and wallet on the table, coming over to hug me and kiss Mom. “Debby, what’s cooking?”
“Just leftovers. And Sunshine’s happy because,” she pauses dramatically, “she has some new friends at school who sound like a fun and creative bunch.” And just like that, the entire house knows my personal life. I frown at the onion before cleaving it in half.
“That’s great, Sun.” Dad smiles at me and leans against the table. “What happened to those other guys? Cassie and everyone?”
“They must have had some kind of falling-out,” Mom answers for me. “Sunny, I’m not going to be nosy, but I hope you know you can talk to Dad or me any time. And I’d like to meet your new friends.”
“Mom! Okay.” I chop onions furiously, my ears hot. “I’ll bring them over sometime, I promise.” I don’t need their approval every time I make a new friend, but I’m trying desperately to end this line of conversation.
I continue chopping in silence, and Mom finally gets the hint. But later on, when I’m sitting next to my bed trying to meditate, my thoughts start whirling uncontrollably and I think about how much things have changed. I’m happier now, a lot happier. Sure, I miss the pool like crazy. But I couldn’t face going to practice, seeing my former friends every day. I’m truly done with that. I’ve been jogging in the morning instead.
All part of the new me. Trying to stay grounded. Literally.
I draw a shaky breath and clear my head of everything from my old life.
For a minute or two, I’m successful, and I focus on my uneven breathing, feeling my arms and legs getting heavy and relaxed like after a long swim. Then Shiri’s face shimmers into my mind’s eye and I get a creeping feeling of total aloneness, like everything that used to mean anything to me has floated out of reach, somewhere untouchable, sealed away forever.
I wonder if this is what it feels like when you’re dead: being able to see everyone, so clearly, who used to be a part of your life, but knowing you can never be with them again.
Then I think of Auntie Mina and my shoulders slump. If it’s this hard for me, I can’t imagine what it’s like for her.
I open my eyes and blow out the thick, black-cherry-scented candle, then crawl under the covers. For a while I lie there wide awake, listening to the water run in the pipes while my dad takes a shower, and then feeling the silence of the house press in on me. My muscles tense up again as I huddle. Pixie hops up, settling herself at my feet. Her purring makes the quiet a little more bearable. I try to let go of my thoughts enough to sleep, relaxing each muscle one at a time like my mom tells her yoga classes to do … taking her advice willingly for once. After an hour or so my mind finally stops running in its hamster wheel and I start to drift off.
Before I fall asleep, though—while I’m still in that strange almost-dreaming, free-associating state—I think of Cody. I think of his smile first, and a small part of me loosens.
But it’s not only his smile that’s so compelling. There’s something else about him … something deeper. Like he understands what it feels like to be lost, to be drifting like me, not sure where I’m going to end up or if I’m even going to be the same person at the end of it.
It’s just a feeling I get when I’m around him. Like that whole too-cool-for-you act he puts on. I see his anger, his scowl, but rather than pushing me away, it seems like proof that there’s something more underneath, that he struggles with his emotions, too, and he’s vulnerable like the rest of us.
Maybe I’ll have to ask him, one day soon: Do you know what it feels like to have your world come apart at the seams?
From Shiri Langford’s journal, March 28th
I love Brendan so much. I never thought I could feel this way. I can’t explain it without sounding maudlin, without channeling the Romantic poets or sounding like a sentimental movie. It’s the most amazing feeling.
I’ve told him all about my family, how screwed up my dad and my half-brother are, and how frustrated it makes me that my mom just can’t seem to see it. He doesn’t think I’m crazy or messed up, he just smiles and kisses me and then eventually we seem to end up in bed, and later we lie there and talk and he tells me about how he worries about his little brother, who’s mixed up with a bad crowd of kids at home.
Sometimes, after he talks about Neal I end up worrying about Sunny, but I know I shouldn’t. She always seems so secure, so sure of herself. Unlike me.
eight
The next day at lunch, Mikaela and I are sitting next to each other at the orange picnic table, on the bench nearest the building wall. It’s raining, drumming lightly on the awning. An occasional droplet blows in on a gust of wind and catches me on the face, or on my hands clenched tightly in my lap.
Cody, Becca, and the rest of the goth crew just took off for the lunchtime pep rally in the gym—to “ridicule the conformist masses,” or so they claimed. I asked Mikaela if she’d stick around so I could ask her about something. She agreed, saying she doesn’t like watching anorexic cheerleaders waving their stick-limbs around anyway.
Once everyone else is out of sight, we both scoot down so that our shoulders and heads are resting on the wall behind us and our legs are up on the table. Trying to work up the nerve to talk to her, I stare at my plain white canvas sneakers lying there next to her vintage knee-high purple Doc Martens. Typical Mikaela: outrageous. Typical me: blah. I might as well still be part of the Zombie Squad.