How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

  Thaddeus stops scrolling. “She doesn’t look so bad. It could be so much worse.”

  Cake stares at him. “Her mom is dead, and her dad, who she didn’t even know existed until practically an hour ago, is in prison. How could it be any worse?”

  Thaddeus sets his mouth in a grim line. “Believe me, I know worse. This isn’t it.”

  Broken backs and druggy parents. My dad’s a drunk in prison. My half sister romps around an island paradise in a bikini, swilling beer and getting skin cancer.

  Welcome to your new world, flits the girl-bug.

  Is this what a panic attack feels like? I can’t breathe. I feel jumpy, like I’m bouncing around inside my own skin.

  This girl at Eugene Field, Janey Simpson, used to have panic attacks all the time. She would start sweating in English Lit while we plodded through Catch-22 or some other old-white-guy book about stuff that had nothing to do with our adolescent lives, and she’d have to go to the nurse’s office and spend time on the cot. It seemed like a good idea, so I tried it once, too, because even though I love reading, I don’t like talking about books in class, because teachers always seem to kind of listen to your opinion, but then they just bust in with “Okay, but…” and then tell you what they thought, which is the thing that would appear on the test, and my God, who tests you on a novel? The whole idea of reading a novel, or a poem, is to come up with your own ideas about it. You can’t test somebody on that. You might think eight hundred pages of going after a white whale is a metaphor for the human condition, but I found that whole business tedious, and I bet if you were honest with yourself, you’d admit you did, too. A whale, for God’s sake. For eight hundred pages.

  But Mr. Hoffmeister, who I actually like, would have none of it. He shook his head and said, “I think not, Tolliver. Sit. Back. Down.”

  I have a sudden pang for Mr. Hoffmeister and his horn-rimmed glasses and polyester shirts and I think nots. Sometimes Cake and I see him in Cucaracha, one of our favorite restaurants, sitting at a table by the window, reading a thick book and drinking a blue Icee, with a bowl of green chile chicken stew in front of him, and Cake giggled, but I thought it was kind of sweet and interesting that a grown man wasn’t ashamed to drink a sugary blue kids’ drink in public.

  Cake strokes my hair. “Oh, Tiger, don’t cry. I mean, okay, cry, but really, this all might be okay, right? You have a sister. She’s going to take care of you! That’s gotta be better than a foster home.”

  She turns to Thaddeus. “No offense.”

  He shrugs. “Blood family can be just as bad, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

  “You’re a beacon of positivity.”

  Thaddeus shrugs. He looks back at the screen, mutters, “How did she end up in Hawaii, of all places?”

  I gulp and try to catch my breath. “I mean, what is happening, you guys? What did I do to deserve this? Who is this…this person here?” I point to that girl, my half sister, on the screen. “What the hell is going on? Does that look like a mother to you? A person who could take care of me?”

  Thaddeus turns around. “I don’t know,” he says slowly. “I mean, this is all horrible and everything—like, your life has really helled out this week. And I don’t know what to say about your dad, but at least you have her. You have something, right? I mean, would you peg LaLa for a mom if you just saw her at the grocery store? You’d just think she was some hippie freak, all into her teas and swishy skirts and shit, but she’s nice. That’s all that matters, to me. And the truth is…”

  He trails off, picking at one of his pink-painted nails. His shoulders slump.

  “The truth is, you don’t have a choice anyway. She’s blood. The state gives you to blood before anything else, no matter what. Even if you’ve never met them before and even if…”

  He meets my eyes.

  “Even if they kick the shit out you so hard they break your stupid back. Who knows? Babealicious here might turn out to be a really good thing.”

  Cake frowns. I wonder what she thinks about what Thaddeus just said, if it makes her stomach feel as sick and hot as it makes mine feel.

  She sighs. “He’s right, Tig. I mean, what choice do you have, really? At least we’ll still be together, and there won’t be a Sierra Vista, right?”

  Slowly, Thaddeus says, “Well, you don’t know if they’ll stay here. I mean, her sister could take her anywhere. She’s family.”

  My heart sinks.

  LaLa’s car chugs into the driveway.

  “Okay,” I say. “Whatever. I give up. I’m really tired. I’m going back to bed.”

  I leave them there and walk across the hall to my shared room. I feel like I weigh a million pounds, all of it soaking wet.

  I wish I could ask somebody to hold me, or hug me, or tell me everything was going to be okay, and that I could trust them when they said it, but the only person I know who could do all that is gone, gone, gone.

  So I pull the blanket over my head and call her, over and over, on her phone, wherever the hell it is, just to listen to her voice.

  HERE ARE THE THINGS you think about when your mother dies:

  Will she visit you? You know, like show up.

  You’ve seen movies like that, where dead people appear to the living, to comfort them. Maybe frighten them, too, if the living person was cruel.

  You don’t think you could handle something like that, like if you were brushing your teeth and spitting out toothpaste and suddenly you saw your mom’s face behind you in the bathroom mirror, tired and ghostly. Cracked lips, bleary eyes.

  Maybe if she came in a dream, or something, that might be better.

  You read a book once where a girl traveled the whole length of time and the universe looking for her dead mother, only to find her, and to have her mother say, “I don’t want to go back.”

  Like, what the hell was that about?

  You think there must be reasons for what happened, but what they are, you can’t figure out.

  How does a brain just…explode? She wasn’t sick. She had a headache. Just a headache.

  You’d fought over a dance in the car, you fought over a dress on the phone, you said terrible things, you ignored her texts, you kissed a boy instead of going home, and somewhere in those hours, those minutes, those seconds, your mom was, and then she wasn’t.

  It makes you breathe hard to think about all of that, that maybe she had a split second where she was so, so scared, alone and dying, and the last thing you said to her wasn’t I love you, but Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone? And that maybe those words were what she thought about, as it happened.

  It makes you feel like your chest is being crushed when you think of how scared she must have been.

  That the last words she heard on this earth were mean, and they were from you. Her daughter.

  You can never, never, never, never, never, never wash that away.

  The guilt that waves over you is hot and makes you feel very, very small. The wet cement comes again, pressing down on you. The girl-bug cries out.

  The last minutes of your mother’s life, she probably thought you hated her.

  The black hole hums, waiting. Hungry.

  7 days, 10 hours

  I PUSH YOGURT AROUND THE bowl, trying to make it look like I’ve eaten something, but I don’t think LaLa is buying it.

  “Do you want to talk about anything, Tiger? This is a big deal, a sister and a dad, all at once.”

  Last night I thought about messaging Shayna Lee Franklin on Facebook. Friending her. It seemed like something sisters would do. My hand hovered over the “Add Friend” button for a long time, too.

  But I didn’t message her or friend her. And I noticed she didn’t to me, either. I mean, what would I say? Hi. You get me, now that my mom’s dead. By the way, is Dad cool?

  It’s all so c
omplicated, and I wish I could ask Mom what to do, or how to feel.

  But I can’t.

  It’s been seven days. Ten thousand six hundred and eighty minutes.

  LaLa is still looking at me. I change the subject. “What about school? Am I going back to school? It’s Tuesday. What am I supposed to do all day?”

  And tomorrow, and the next day, all week. Forever.

  Thaddeus slumps into the kitchen and pours some coffee into a travel mug.

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” LaLa says hesitantly. “It might be a little overwhelming. Maybe you should wait. There are only a few weeks left anyway, right?”

  “Three,” I say.

  School ends in three weeks, like it always does, with the Eugene Field Memorial Days Dance, the one I was going to with Kai Henderson. The whole reason for the dress that I’m wearing at this very moment.

  It might be good to go back. I’ll have Cake. I’ll know the routine. The sounds, the old lockers, the ones they’ll be tearing out this summer, creaking open and then slamming shut. We’re all getting clear backpacks instead of lockers.

  Kids chattering, the clicking intercom, the smell of different shampoos and perfumes and colognes mixing with teenage hormones and angst to create a highly specific and unholy odor that I’m told is called “the Best Years of Your Life.”

  If I stay here, I’ll be in my bunk, staring at the ceiling. Or on the couch, staring at the television. Or looking at LaLa looking at me with her sad, sad smile. I don’t think I can take that.

  Thaddeus says, “I could take her on my way to work. Let her go. She’s not a prisoner.”

  LaLa frowns. “Let me text Karen.”

  I stare at Thaddeus. “Wait, why aren’t you in school, anyway? You’re not eighteen.”

  “Soon enough. Just a couple more months. I do correspondence.” He sips his coffee and grins. “School and me didn’t get along in person.”

  LaLa looks up from her phone. “She says it’s fine. No reason you can’t go back if you feel up to it.”

  Thaddeus jingles his car keys. “Let’s roll.”

  LaLa says, “Hold up, let me make you some lunch. And don’t you want to…change your clothes?”

  I look down at the dress. It’s getting dingy and some threads are starting to hang from the hem, but I can’t take it off. I just can’t.

  “No,” I say. “I’m good.”

  She starts fussing with sandwich bread and slices of cheese, but the thought of eating makes me feel sick again. “No, that’s okay,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to make me anything. Cake always has extra, anyway.”

  I leave the kitchen before she can argue, grabbing my backpack from the bedroom. Thaddeus is waiting outside in the car.

  * * *

  • • •

  As Thaddeus drives, I look out my window at cottonwoods and mesquite trees, the miles of cattle fencing, mountains like soft clay against the endless, endless blue sky. Fat, cottony clouds that never seem to move. A tiny part of me, just a smidge, is opening up, being out of the house, out of the bunk, in a car, moving. I can breathe. I might be in a musty old car, but I can breathe out here.

  We pass by Grunyon’s moms’ coffee shop and The Pit. No one’s there right now, because of school or work, but come three o’clock, it’ll start to fill up with skaters, bodies rising and falling in the air, and watchers.

  Thaddeus says, “You go there?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I don’t skate, though. Just hang out.”

  I look down at my hands, folded against my stomach. I stretch my fingers out, think of Lightning, the skateboard Andy bought me all those years ago, the feel of tape and grit against my palms as he showed me how to work the board. Do my feet twitch, all of a sudden, at the mention of skateboarding? Like they have a life of their own? Like they can remember those few times I felt weightless and free, beautiful and promising? Those few times I was just any other kid?

  Before I broke my arm and my mom took it away.

  I shake my head, hard. It doesn’t matter. I’m spare parts now. A series of phantom limbs pieced together with tears.

  I text Cake: I’m coming to school. Meet me by my locker.

  What? Wow, ok.

  Thaddeus looks down at my phone. “That your friend, from yesterday? The tall one?”

  “Yes. Why? You interested?” I turn my phone over.

  “No! I mean, not that I couldn’t be, she seems cool and all. It’s just…” He hesitates. “I don’t…really know how that stuff works. I’ve never had a girlfriend.” His face gets pink.

  I sigh. “I’m not really a pillar of wisdom. I’ve never had anyone, either, so I think if you’re just nice, and cool, that’s all that matters.”

  Thaddeus gives me an amused look. “You use weird words. ‘Pillar of wisdom.’ What’s that all about?”

  When I was little, if I was being noisy, my mom would say, Please keep it down to a dull roar. When I asked lots of questions and she got tired of answering, she’d say, What am I? A pillar of wisdom? She had sayings for everything.

  Had.

  I bite my lip. “Nothing. Just a phrase I heard once.”

  Thaddeus says, “Anyway, girls always say they want nice dudes, and then they go for jerks, like my mom does. Every time, when I was little, she’d go, ‘This one is different. This one is nice.’ They never were. Like, why couldn’t she just take care of me?”

  I look over at him.

  Thaddeus is kind of handsome, underneath all his hair and that ball cap guys insist on wearing all the time, even if they don’t play ball or watch sports. And it seems like he’s got some muscles, not that it matters, but who can tell under the baggy flannel and the loose T-shirts he’s always wearing?

  I rub the lace on my dress thoughtfully. I can’t fault Thaddeus for what he wears; I guess we all have our costumes, our armor.

  “I’m sorry about your mom. But I swear that not everybody goes for assholes.” I frown, though, because, I mean, Cake did. With Troy, the guy from Sierra Vista. And Kai didn’t turn out to be such a gem, either.

  Thaddeus slows down to let some quail skitter across the road.

  “It’s hard, like, getting close to people. Because of my life. I have a lot of problems…like, if I think people are mad at me, I start…I just do stuff. It’s hard to explain.” He keeps his eyes on the quail.

  Ahead of us, the parking lot of Eugene Field looms, kids milling around, lugging backpacks, huddling by the trees and the old, cracked fountain with the statue of Eugene Field clutching a book and pencil to his chest. He was some famous poet once, and wrote weird rhymes for kids.

  Thaddeus pulls into the lot. “Man,” he murmurs. “I do not miss high school.”

  We sit, watching kids make their way to the entrance.

  I hold the door handle. I could just tell Thaddeus to drive away, take me back to the house, to my bunk, to nothingness. Or I can get out and melt into the crowd of kids, emptier than I was eight days ago, the last time I was here.

  It’s now or never. I open the door.

  “See you later,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

  As I get out of the car, Thaddeus says, “Good luck.”

  I concentrate on the big double doors that lead into the school, trying to make a straight line right inside. If I can just get to Cake in the hallway, waiting by my locker, it will be okay.

  All around me, kids jostle and joke, look at their phones, laugh.

  Nervously, I look around the hallway, but I don’t see Kai. At first I feel relieved, but then I realize he’ll be in Bio.

  At the lab table we share, because we’re partners.

  Bio is second period. Zero p is first period, with Ms. Perez.

  The last time I talked to Kai was that phone call, when I was mean, and made him cry. I wonder
what he’ll say to me. How he’ll act.

  Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. My stomach starts to knot.

  Cake isn’t by my locker. I text her. Where are you?

  Running late. Overslept! Sorry! I’ll see you at lunch, okay?

  I spin the dial on my locker, then pretend to rummage around for something inside. Grab a notebook just to have something to hold.

  Behind me, it’s gotten really quiet in the hallway. My heart starts thudding.

  Whispers. Mom dropped dead. I think she got sent to one of those homes.

  Oh my God, what is she wearing?

  I’m not the kind of girl who has loads of friends who’ll run to her and hug her at school after a great tragedy. It’s not that things suck for me, though I guess they could be better. I just really only have Cake, is all, and now she’s not here. My life was already small, and it’s getting smaller by the minute.

  I scrabble around my locker for a pen, just so it looks like I’m busy. My fingers are shaking.

  I try not to look at the photo of me and mom on the inside of the locker door; I’d forgotten about that, and in my rush to avoid the photo, I accidentally slam the locker door shut a little too loud.

  When I turn around, a bunch of kids are staring at me. At the dress. At the #orphangirl.

  I’m just so sick of everything, I shout, “What?” Watch them scatter.

  It feels good, shouting that way. Scaring people. I start walking to zero p.

  With every step, I get heavier and heavier, though. I think of the table in zero, with Selfie Kelsey and I-don’t-care Rodrigo and timid Tina and horrible Lupe Hidalgo. All of them looking at me. Or, maybe even worse, not caring. I think of listening to Ms. Perez droning on at the board, and then sitting in Bio next to Kai, and how awful that’s going to be, and I already have so much awful inside me at this very moment.

  I can’t take any more awful. I’m stuffed to the gills with awful. This was a terrible mistake.

  Oh Jesus, now I really am Janey Simpson, and it’s not a good feeling. I’m panicking and sweating. I have to get out of here.