by Jaime Reed
I sensed her close by, which made me finally look to my left. The light from my window outlined her wavy hair and silver-blue, moonlit face. My breath pushed past my lips in little hiccups, much slower than when I ripped away from the dream.
“It’s okay. Just breathe. In … and out,” Alyssa coached while inhaling and exhaling in time with me. She sat facing me, her hands squeezing both of mine. Her fingers felt so warm, or were mine just that cold? It was a chill I couldn’t shake. It had been that way since the funeral. Strange, because I remembered the church being hot inside and packed with people.
I saw singers in robes and the minister aiming his prayers to the shiny box on the altar. Too much black cloth flapped and twirled around me, but I remembered Daddy’s hand on my back, pushing me toward the casket. My movements had felt like skating, a smooth glide toward the sleeping giant.
Pop-Pop had always slept on his back. In the den in his favorite chair, on the porch bench after dinner, and snoring so loud he’d wake himself up and then look around for the culprit. But he was way too quiet to be asleep.
When I touched his cheek, I flinched. The texture felt closer to stone than skin. That hard, cold feeling ran up my arm and sank bone-deep, marrow-deep, all the way to the blood. That wasn’t a good way to be, so I asked Daddy if Pop-Pop was chilly in the coffin.
“Cold is the natural state of the universe, baby,” my dad said behind me, his big hands squeezing my shoulders. “The gaps between the stars are freezin’. Only livin’ things understand hot and cold and your granddaddy can no longer tell the difference.”
Alyssa’s voice came out in a firm whisper. “Stay with me, Janelle. Come on. Breathe, okay?”
I blinked a few times and found her staring at me in the dark. The moment was gone, but the paralysis stayed the same.
No one had to tell me that these panic attacks I kept having were side effects of grief. I’d watched enough talk shows to know that much. That didn’t stop my waking thoughts from going rogue. Sleep came in short bursts these days and I hadn’t left my room since the funeral.
Neither had Alyssa. I barely looked at her during the service, but I’d felt her soft hand and quiet spirit sitting next to me in the first pew. In fact, she hadn’t said much since I told her the news over the phone. A true mercy, because speaking hurt. Listening was worse. My thoughts would scatter from place to place, little stops and starts with no pattern.
In and out. Inhale … and exhale.
After three more rounds of breathing, Alyssa asked, “You feeling better?”
That question sounded like math, and I sucked at word problems. “A little. I just need to lie down.”
Sharing a pillow, we lay head to head, temple to temple, and studied the stuck-on stars on my ceiling. My indifferent universe. My parents could be heard through the walls, even at two in the morning. Muffled sobs, nose-blowing, and whispered phone calls to relatives in other time zones drowned out the cicadas outside.
They tried to keep quiet, but I could still hear them. Grown folks talking to other grown folks, but not really. Stay strong. Hold it together and act like you hadn’t been gutted like a fish. Pain was selfish and rude and interrupted every conversation. Yet we Southern folk were raised to be polite—say “please” and “thank you kindly” to everybody we met. Nothing got under my skin or boiled my blood faster than someone acting fake.
I’d rather hear a hair-raising scream than a whimper trapped behind a hand. At least I’d know I wasn’t alone. I’d sooner ram a fist through the wall before I’d dab a single tear from my eye. Why should I? They’d earned the right to be there.
If being a grown-up meant hugging strangers and eating Aunt So-and-So’s disgusting casserole while bleeding inside, then let me stay fourteen forever. Let me sit on Pop-Pop’s lap and hear about his travels. Let me play chess at his table and lose one more time.
In the darkness of the room, I felt Alyssa’s hand touching my face.
I brushed her hand away. “Stop.”
“I’m just trying to help.” She crumpled the wad of tissue between her fingers.
“I know, but don’t touch them. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do,” I said. “Pop-Pop said that tears are signs of pain, and you only feel pain when something’s wrong. Like when you step on a nail. It hurts because the nail’s not supposed to be in your foot. It’s wrong, and the liquid that leaks out is the proof.” I turned my head and looked to her, tears spilling over my cheek onto the pillow. “Something’s wrong, Lyssa.”
“I know. My mom says that tears are like blood but in your head. They come from cuts that others can’t see. That’s why they run clear.” She brushed the hair away from my face with her hand. “I don’t know how to help you, but I get it.”
That was all I really needed right now—for someone to accept the ugly and not cover it with makeup. Hearing another condolence or prayer would drive me to violence. It was all vapor, wind passing around the body and never seeping through.
“You don’t have to stay. You’ve been here all weekend,” I told Alyssa.
“What’s the point? If I was home, I’d be more here than there. Might as well keep everything in one place.” She tapped her temple. “That’s the twinsie connection right there. Just a thought and we’re in two places at once. So no matter what, even if I wanted to, I’m not going anywhere without you. Got it?”
“Got it.” Smiling, I closed my eyes and allowed sleep to take me again. This time around, I’d drifted to somewhere warm where things never moved away, grew sick, or died. It was a nice place to visit. Too bad I didn’t live there.
Curled in the back seat with my knees tucked under my chin, I gazed through the fogging windshield at the rear end of my school. The cars parked in the row ahead were formless colors behind a thick sheen of rain and glass. Hiding out in my car wasn’t the best way to spend my lunch period, but it was quiet and removed from all the crocodile tears and pretense that polluted the campus. A bad case of the Mondays? No. More like a case of the stay-out-of-my-face-if-you-don’t-want-to-end-up-on-the-news Mondays.
When jaws weren’t flapping about Alyssa, the other topic my classmates wanted to dish about was Mateo and our imaginary dating status. Seeing two attractive seniors carpool to school every day was bound to launch a few shipping wars. But wow, I didn’t know there was a fandom for broody, mysterious guys who liked to bake. Kids that didn’t even know me or Mateo wished us well in the hallways. Last week, a girl in my physics class asked to see my engagement ring. And the Borg? Well, I’d rather not go there.
The tapping on my window startled me back to the present. Ryon, with his giant backpack, stood by my door. The car keys in his hand suggested that he’d either arrived late to school or was leaving early.
“Want some company?” he asked.
“Sure.” I clicked the locks.
Ryon climbed in the back seat with me, shook the rain off his jacket, and removed his hood. I immediately noticed the bags under his eyes.
“Why are you hiding out?” he asked.
“I couldn’t stay in that building another minute. They’re more focused on themselves than her,” I said, eyeing the back doors of the school with disdain.
“I hear ya. If I see another phone or camera, I’m gonna break somebody’s face. They’re not gonna turn me into the next viral video.”
I shifted in my seat to look at him fully. “Well, the vlog was your girl’s idea in the first place, and it’s too popular to quit now. That’s a good thing, right?”
“It would be if she’d get some peace.” Ryon frowned at the murky view out the front window. “The vlog was supposed to help with the disaster relief, not become a trashy reality show. Now they want to—and I quote—‘capture the vulnerability of a future widower.’ That’s what everyone’s calling me now, like she’s already dead.” His head rolled along the backrest to look at me, his face hard and full of determination. “She’s not gonna die.”
Unsure if that was a que
stion or a statement, I nodded anyway. No sound entered the car except for the warm air blasting through the heating vents. The impulse to tell Ryon about my decision was strong, but I held back. Giving people false hope was cruel.
He angled his chin toward the parking lot. “We were all standing over there, helping out with the food drive. You and Sera had a booth set up right there, right? Wow. Feels like a decade ago.”
I looked to where he was staring and felt the eerie time-jump as well.
“Yeah, it does,” I said as the bell rang. The lunch period was over and so was my respite from the world. “We should get goin—”
I paused at the sound of soft snoring to my right.
Ryon’s head was back against the seat, his mouth open, totally knocked out. You’d think he and Sera would get along on account of how similar they were in features, voice, and the ability to fall asleep anywhere.
Waking Ryon would’ve been inhumane. This whole situation with Alyssa had proven that we were all at the mercy of our bodies, and Ryon’s demanded sleep—class or no class.
I shut off the car, grabbed my bag and umbrella, climbed out, and left him in peace.
I joined the herd of students corralled in the main corridor. Kids leaving lunch, kids doing a mad dash to the bathroom or their lockers before the tardy bell. It was both disorder and routine, busy bodies mingling until the last minute. I walked past Alyssa’s locker. Notes, cards, and flowers were heaped on the floor in front of it. Not that she’d seen any of them.
The usual frenzy over the homecoming dance was merely an afterthought. There’d been some talk of making Alyssa an honorary queen, extending her rule for a third year. Someone had the bright idea to have the dance at the hospital, but that went nowhere fast.
Joel Metcalf and other media students filmed Liz Aronson and Destiny Howell by the soda machine. The other members of the Borg manned the T-shirt stand by the cafeteria. Naturally, they’d pump the “Alyssa Illness” well until it was bone dry. Posters for the Active Beauty vlog hung every ten feet.
“We’re starting a new campaign in time for Halloween. We’re calling it the Hallow-Clean.” Destiny smiled at the camera. “If you want to participate, just hashtag #Alyssa4Life and #Halloclean and you can win a free T-shirt. Details in the description box below. Be sure to Like and comment. Every click counts, guys.” She blew a kiss at the camera, slinging spittle into the lens.
“Uh, yeah, we can edit that out.” Joel grimaced, then wiped the front of the camera with his shirtsleeve.
Destiny looked at me and smiled with fangs on full display, her amber eyes following my every move. “So, Janelle, what’s your take on the Alyssa Weaver tragedy?” she asked. Before I could answer that question, she went right into another. “Rumor has it that you two have known each other since the sixth grade. Is it true that you weren’t smart enough to enter kindergarten on time, so you got held back a year? Is that why you’re so old?”
“Actually, I was in Ethiopia, Chad, Yemen, and parts of East Asia,” I replied matter-of-factly. “I was homeschooled while my folks brought food and supplies to impoverished villages. Public school didn’t really come into play until middle school.” I gave her a curious look. “Alyssa didn’t tell you that part? What a convenient thing to not mention. I guess you’re not as tight with her as you thought, huh?”
Destiny appeared flustered, and then she remembered the camera aimed at her face. Assuming we were done here, I turned my back to leave, but Destiny was dead set on trying me today.
“I also heard you and Mateo Alvarez are shacking up together,” she said in that innocent baby voice she used to get out of trouble. “Would that be you sniffing around for my leftovers?”
Not only had the rest of the conversation in the hall stopped, but so had time and my ability to move. Nope. This chick did not just blurt that out in front of half the school. Nah, Joel Metcalf was not filming the whole thing on his HD camera.
Did I forget to mention that Destiny was Mateo’s ex-girlfriend?
Destiny was Mateo’s ex-girlfriend.
They dated sophomore year and it lasted two months before Mateo dumped her, but their relationship was still a sore spot for me. I’d be lying if I said that that wasn’t part of the reason why I kept my distance from Mateo. I couldn’t be bothered with past events—I was too busy denying this current situation.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was really going on within the Borg. Now that the baddest chick in the game was out of commission, the rest of her crew was vying for the top spot.
But I was not gonna become the Angry Black Woman by going after Destiny in the middle of the hallway. Curbing my need for retribution, I walked away on robotic legs and chanted the Pruitt Family Commandments in my head. Thou Shalt Not Be Ratchet. Thou Shalt Not Show Out in Public.
As I approached my locker, Sera sidled up next to me, phone in hand. “So according to this,” she said, “Mateo Alvarez is hiding from the mob and y’all had a secret wedding this summer so he could stay in the country. You two plan to adopt a bunch of kids from overseas like Brad and Angelina and have your first names legally changed to ‘Janteo.’ ” Sera flashed me her phone and revealed a lengthy entry on the Active Beauty message board. “Where do they come up with this stuff? You barely know the guy.”
“When has that ever mattered in the world of gossip?” I dumped my bag and keys into my locker.
“Anyway, have you seen my brother?” Sera asked.
I slapped my locker shut and kept walking. “He’s asleep in my car.”
“What? Why?” She fell into step beside me. “Never mind. I need to get my car keys back from him. My house key is on the link.”
“Third row, center aisle.” I pointed to the exit. “Hey, did he, um … mention anything to you about organ donation?”
“No. Why?” Her face lit with indignation when it dawned on her. “No! No way! There is no way he’s doing that for her! Dad would flip out!”
“Relax. He can’t do it anyway until he’s eighteen. But … my birthday was in September.” Not my smoothest segue, but I just wanted to see what her reaction would be.
I didn’t have long to wait, although it took a moment for Sera to collect her jaw from the floor.
“You can’t be serious!” she cried. “Why would you want to help that demon spawn? She wouldn’t do it for you, that’s for sure.”
That’s why the act is called giving, not earning. Or maybe I was just as blind and optimistic as my sister. “Don’t you care at all that she could die?” I ask, careful to whisper.
“Yeah, but not enough to lose sleep like Ryon does. Look, I feel bad for her family and all, but this chick has brought me nothing but torment. She’s not as perfect as everyone thought and that reality check is freaking people out. It’s not like she’s really gonna die or anything.”
On second thought, maybe Sera and Ryon weren’t so similar after all. I’d suffered far worse treatment from Alyssa, and I wasn’t about to send her to the guillotine.
Maybe Sera didn’t know the full extent of Alyssa’s condition. Maybe she was just sick of the hype. Maybe this was actually Sera’s stunt double talking to me and not the friend I did activist work with over the years. I’d believe any explanation other than what I just heard.
The bell rang, and she rushed off to class before I could respond. Confusion and annoyance followed me to physics class and kept me distracted. We had a substitute teacher today and I didn’t notice until the end, because Sera’s attitude threw off my whole routine.
People don’t volunteer or give money out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it out of guilt, for bragging rights, to follow a trend, to get into heaven—whatever. In the real world, everything is business and everybody has an end game.
Alyssa’s words came back to me, and though it pained me to admit it, she might have a point. Everyone I knew networked and settled debts on the I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine payment plan. I knew that wasn’t how tr
ue friendships worked, but that was how things ran at White Chapel High School. Finding a die-hard friend was rare. No wonder I had so few.
If I had to sit down with a shrink and explain my relationship with Alyssa Weaver, I’d probably get diagnosed with something incurable and hard to spell. We were those grouchy old neighbors who showed affection by trashing each other’s lawn displays at Christmas. I’d driven around town, pitting the reason why I should visit against reasons why I shouldn’t. It was a tie.
Alyssa took her time answering the door. Word on the street was she’d just gotten out of the hospital today, so she was probably stiff and groggy. She emerged through the opened door and—Yeesh! It was worse than I thought. No makeup, hair giving me Medusa teas, with sunken eyes glaring at me like this train wreck was my fault.
Giving up that warm, Southern welcome, she asked, “What do you want?”
“An apology for you coming to the door looking like Cynthia from Rugrats,” I replied. “Also, I wanted to … I don’t know, hang out and stuff.”
Squinting, Alyssa stretched her neck closer until her nose was an inch from mine. “You’ve been crying. What happened?”
Another reason for driving around town was the crying jag that occurred out of nowhere. All my fears, memories, and emotions were beyond suppression. Alyssa didn’t need to know all that, so I said, “People getting on my nerves.”
She rolled her eyes. “What else is new? You’ll have to use the chair or the floor.” She lumbered back into the house and down the hallway.
I closed the door behind me, still blown away by the transformation. The interior walls were white. The carpet was tan. Their furniture was … There was furniture! Two couches—one against the wall, the other under the front window with a glass coffee table between them. Two giant bookshelves flanked a TV stand and the fifty-inch flat-screen dominated the center.
When I reached Alyssa’s room, she’d crawled back into bed, her lilac covers tucked under her chin. A humidifier pumped steam into the room. It was seventy degrees outside. She had on flannel pajamas and she was still cold?