Paradoxically, I smell heat. I smell smoke, like a burning tire, and
—it’s not fair, nobody ever cares what I want,
what about me—
—me, I deserve better than this and they’ll realize
I’m smarter than them one day and they’ll be
begging me to come back—
—I won’t be the one begging, not like this—
—not fair—NOT FAIR
The burning feeling becomes so strong that I cough, jolting myself back to reality as I spaz into the steering wheel, bumping my collarbone.
I grip the wheel, steadying myself. And I understand everything with perfect clarity. Yes, Cody’s been using me. I was stupid not to realize it sooner. But I still feel sorry for him. Sorry because he’s just a selfish, immature little boy who thinks everything revolves around him. Sorry because there’s obviously something really wrong in his family, in his life, if the way he views relationships is in terms of what’s in it for him.
Sorry because I thought he cared about something, anything, besides himself.
Tears are streaming down my face, but at the same time a part of me feels lighter.
I turn the keys in the ignition and drive home.
From Shiri Langford’s journal, September 3rd
Pain is not my friend.
The pain pills they gave me are nothing more than glorified aspirin. My ankle is still swollen like a purple balloon and I’m benched for the next month at least, maybe two. Maybe more. The ligament is torn, they said. Don’t put weight on it, they said. Wear this air cast, they said. I’ll need crutches until I can put weight on it.
I was having such a good practice, too, until I landed wrong on the court and went down, my right ankle bending the wrong way with a tearing, burning twist.
I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I think the only reason I’ve kept my scholarship is because I’ve been playing so well and coach made an exception for me. My grades just aren’t high enough, and thanks to last semester I’m on probation. I have this semester to get my GPA back up. That’s all. My dad would kill me if he found out.
I’ve been giving Brendan some space. He still hasn’t called me.
twenty-five
By the time I get home, I’ve stopped crying, but my face is damp and sore and my throat is raw. I really thought I knew Cody. How stupid I was. I only saw one side of him. I only wanted to see one side of him. I wanted him to be the Cody who encouraged me to accept my underhearing, the Cody who helped me get control over it, who held me when I was scared and shaking. I didn’t want to see the rest of it.
I have no idea where I stand with Mikaela now, either. She’s got to be thinking I’m cold and heartless for not trying to help him. Then again, maybe she’s glad to have Cody all to herself. I dash away a few more angry tears. Either way, I don’t belong in the picture. I don’t even know if I want to be in the picture. For all I know, she was aware of the blog as soon as he wrote it and just didn’t bother to tell me about it. The thought makes me furious all over again.
When I walk inside, the house is quiet. My parents aren’t home yet. I go into the kitchen, splash my face in the sink, and pat it dry with a dish towel. There’s a small mess of breakfast dishes in the sink and the compost bowl smells like banana peel, but I think of Cody’s sterile house and I’m profoundly relieved to be home.
On my way upstairs, I almost crash into Auntie Mina.
She looks at me with a startled half-smile. Then she gets a good look at my face and the smile falls away.
Maybe I should have taken the time to put cucumber slices on my eyes, make it a little less obvious that I’ve been weepy. But Auntie Mina doesn’t ask questions. She just gathers me close into a warm, tight hug and holds me there for a minute.
At first I resist. I’m tired of my problems and I’m sick of everybody else’s issues, too. And I don’t want to cry anymore.
But for a second, I do.
“Sit with me for a minute, okay?” Auntie Mina says gently. “I’ll make you a cup of hot tea with honey, and then you can escape.”
I swallow, my throat dry and swollen. Tea and honey might not be a bad idea. Just for a minute.
I sit at the kitchen table, leaning my chin in my left hand as Auntie Mina fills the electric teakettle with water. I know she wants to talk, or she would have just put a cup of water in the microwave.
Correction: she wants me to talk.
But there’s too much to say.
We sit in silence for a while, me clenching my teeth, Auntie Mina grading a stack of quizzes from the computer science class she’s now teaching at the college extension. Every so often she looks up at me with a sympathetic smile, pushing one graying lock of dark hair back behind her ear.
Eventually, sitting and waiting for the kettle to whistle, I do say something. It sounds like a question. But it really isn’t, because I think I already know the answer.
“What do you do if you’re disappointed by somebody you really thought you cared about? Like maybe they’re not the person you thought they were. And the person they are … isn’t someone you want to be around.” It sounds stupid, childish, when I say it out loud. But it’s true.
Auntie Mina is quiet for a minute, thinking, but looking at me seriously. Then I’m horrified, because I wonder if she thinks I’m talking about her and Uncle Randall.
“I mean—” I start to try to backpedal.
“It’s okay,” she says with a small smile. “I know. It’s hard at your age, when everybody’s figuring out who they are and who they really want to be. Trying one thing out or another. Even new friends.” She looks at me intently. “It can happen at any age.”
“It’s not just them who’s different, though,” I say. I look down, stare at a faint stain on the surface of the table. “It’s me.”
She gets up, pours the hot water into two mugs, and brings them to the table with a basket of tea bags. For a moment she just sits there pensively, dunking a tea bag in and out of her mug.
“It’s always like that, I suppose,” she finally says, sighing. “Yes, sometimes the person you thought you knew turns out to be very different after all. But sometimes—sometimes you figure something out about your own needs, too, your own goals and dreams, and those might not be the same as everybody else’s. They shouldn’t be, because you’re your own person.”
She puts one hand over mine. I look down at her neatly trimmed fingernails, the wiry strength in her slender fingers that I never seemed to notice before.
My own person. I think about Cody, about how I’d always thought he was so individualistic and determined. I thought he really wanted more out of his life than he was getting, like maybe he’d graduate and go on to be some kind of artistic mastermind or form his own startup company or something else that misunderstood geniuses do.
Oh, he wants things to be different. He wants everything to revolve around him.
And then I think about Uncle Randall, and how Auntie Mina must have felt over the years, slowly finding out with every argument that he wasn’t the fairy-tale prince she thought he was. I feel like crying again, but instead I just let out a long, shaky breath.