How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

  Taran and Alif nod. Taran says, “Your mom, she died real sudden, right?”

  I nod slowly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard. Our dad, too. Truck flipped on the interstate. One day we got up and went to school and everything was fine and then we came home and our mom was on the kitchen floor, crying, and there were policemen making coffee in our kitchen.”

  His voice gets scratchy. Alif reaches out and takes his brother’s hand.

  Which makes me kind of want to start bawling, two brothers who act like dicks most of the time, holding each other’s hands.

  “We take care of her now, it feels like. But it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Our grandma moved in. After, to help us. But now she’s sick, too. She’s got a bad back and a lot of pain. Takes a lot of pills.”

  Alif wipes his eyes. Taran covers his.

  Taran and Alif crying has freaked me out a little. They always walk the halls with a lot of swagger, flannel shirts untucked, those impossibly giant sneakers shuffling on the black-and-white floors, half sneers on their faces. That dumb comment about my boobs that Taran made in the seventh grade, the comment that made me start hunching my shoulders and carrying my books close to my chest.

  I’ve always kind of hated them both, but I can’t now.

  They’ve been carved out, too.

  Mae-Lynn touches my shoulder and I jump. “They’re totally right. Sometimes it feels like I’m taking care of my mom now, instead of the other way around. How’s it going for you?”

  I look around the room. It smells like chalk and dry-erase markers and rubber and sadness.

  “I don’t…It was just me and my mom. My dad, I didn’t know him. I mean, I still don’t. He’s in prison. I have a half sister and she came out to take care of me.”

  Taran says, “Dang, girl, that’s rough. Prison? Shit.”

  Mr. Jackson clears his throat gently. “Mae-Lynn brings up an excellent point. We can’t forget that the surviving parent is grieving, too, and that’s hard, isn’t it? Because you are the child, and someone is supposed to take care of you. Are there things we can do in this situation? How can we tell our mom or our dad or our grandma, ‘I’m feeling overwhelmed in my sadness and I need you to help me, listen to me’?”

  Alif snorts. “Shit, I tried that and Mom just started crying.”

  Taran says, “She’s a mess. And you can’t tell Grandma anything. She’s all zonked out on her pills.”

  Mae-Lynn says, “Maybe we should have business cards that say that, Mr. Jackson, and we can just hand one to our moms when stuff gets bad. How would that be?”

  Mr. Jackson grimaces at her and looks at me. “You have some very hard things to deal with, Tiger, especially since you’re grieving and adjusting to a new family member in a caregiver situation. You have to process your grief and get to know someone at the same time. And that can be stressful, and cause things, like acting out, or panic attacks. A lot of survivors have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “I thought that was just for veterans,” Alif says, picking at his nails.

  Mr. Jackson shakes his head. “No, it’s for any life-altering traumatic event. You want to forget, but your mind won’t let you. The smell of a person’s clothes. Maybe seeing a car the same color as they had. Things can set you off, make you panic, disoriented.”

  I think of my sister, that night she was late, how scared I got, like somebody else was going to disappear from my life, too.

  Mae-Lynn nods. “I can’t even watch TV anymore because even seeing a hospital in a show makes me freak out.”

  The door to 322 flies open, slamming against the wall.

  I suck my breath in.

  Lupe Hidalgo stands in the doorway, her girlfriend, Breisha Walters, by her side. Lupe’s wearing her glossy dark hair in two braids and is dressed in a sheepskin vest over a tie-dyed T-shirt even though it’s a billion degrees outside. My heart practically stops. She wasn’t in zero p this morning, so I thought I’d dodged a bullet on my first day back from suspension.

  I was wrong, but also…Lupe Hidalgo is here. Lupe Hidalgo is in the Big Suck with us, but why? How?

  We watch as she kisses Breisha goodbye. From the corner of my eye, I can see Taran and Alif nudging each other, because of course some guys have to be all weird if, like, girls are queer.

  “Grow up,” Mae-Lynn tells them.

  “Did ya miss me?” Lupe asks everyone, grinning wildly. Her eyes are wet and pink, but I don’t think it’s from what Mae-Lynn calls Grief Life. Maybe Pot Life.

  Mr. Jackson says, “Lupe, we do have rules, like being on time. I’d like you to respect and follow them.”

  She salutes him with two fingers. “Will do, Walrus. Now, where were we?” She gazes around the room. Her eyes land on me.

  Her face falls. “Oh, right. Oh, hey. Yeah. That’s right. You’re in the shit now.” She looks over at Mae-Lynn. “Sorry. ‘Grief Life,’ tm.”

  Mr. Jackson says, “I think this might be a good moment to do some reflection.”

  He stands up, passing out single sheets of blank paper and black pens. “I’d like you to take five minutes or so to write down something you remember about your loved one that you miss the most. We don’t have to share. But the point is, you have a space to remember something, a moment.”

  I look at the paper. I knew it. I just knew we were going to have to write something.

  I can barely get a handle on everything I’ve just heard, from kids I barely know, about terrible things they feel, and he wants me to write about my mom. How am I supposed to pick just one single thing out of the millions of memories I have?

  Next to me, Lupe hunches over her paper, covering it with her hand, like we’re working on tests and she doesn’t want anyone to cheat off her. I’m wracking my brain, trying to think of who her dead person might be, because I’ve seen her parents come to school on game days, but I can’t come up with anything.

  Maybe I did know about Mae-Lynn’s dad, like maybe she was out of school for a couple of weeks, and when she came back, she was even more quiet than usual, and started sitting by herself in the cafeteria, instead of with her math-y friends. She’s always been on the outer edges, too. Taran and Alif are popular and not in my orbit, and also kind of mean, so I stay away from them.

  Maybe I should have been better about seeing her. Seeing Mae-Lynn’s sadness.

  But you don’t realize what it feels like, this hole, this missing, until it happens to you.

  Everyone is writing away.

  I’m just drawing empty squares on my sheet of paper, one after the other.

  There are five of us, but how many more kids at Eugene Field are walking around every day carved out and hollow and I have no idea? How many of us are ghosts, going home to oatmeal soaps that will never be used again? Shirts that still hang in the closet after months and years?

  I think of Thaddeus. How many kids here go home to parents who are fucked up and do bad stuff, like hit them? And then they come to school like nothing’s happened.

  This whole place is swimming with pain.

  I look at my sheet of paper, packed with empty squares. My head spins.

  Write something you miss.

  I can’t. There are too many, because I still miss all of her. She hasn’t been separated into parts, yet, into tiny pieces of memory. She’s still whole to me.

  My tears make big wet spots on my blank paper. I put my pen down.

  “It’s all right, Tiger. We’re friends here. Everything stays here,” Mr. Jackson says softly.

  Mae-Lynn reaches out and pats my hand.

  “Everything in good time,” she says. “Because this shit is going to last forever.”

  I look over at her paper.

  She’s written: making my toast with a pat of butter in the shape of a heart; reading Little Women to me over
Christmas when I was nine even though it made him more tired; buying me my kitty; snoring during football games; being my goddamn dad.

  17 days, 19 hours, 40 minutes

  MAE-LYNN CARPENTER KEEPS A bottle of rum in her backpack.

  This is what she produces in the arroyo after Grief Group, after Mr. Jackson has driven away in his shiny red pickup truck, after I’ve texted my sister to tell her something I never even got to tell my mother.

  Be home later. Going to hang out with some kids for a little bit. I’ll get a ride.

  Shayna texted back, Should I give you a curfew? I’m new at this. JK. I have to go see some people myself 2nite. See you on the flip side.

  I feel a little let down that she didn’t, like, question me more.

  Moms would want to know when you would be home, who you were with, what were you doing. Like, they make you work for that little bit of freedom.

  I don’t have that anymore.

  In the arroyo, Taran and Alif are digging cans of beer from their backpacks. Lupe Hidalgo is practicing windups with an imaginary ball.

  Mae-Lynn holds out the rum. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Walrus did ask us what we were going to do to feel better, right? This is it. It’s Friday. Woo. Par-tee.”

  I hold the bottle in my hands.

  Alif is lighting something that is not a cigarette. He winks at me.

  Lupe sees me looking at him.

  She laughs. “You have always been such a nice girl, Tiger Tolliver. Are you scared of a little weed?”

  “She’s not nice anymore,” Taran says. “She’s here because she busted that Ellen chick’s teeth in.”

  “Yes and no,” I say quietly. “I busted one tooth, but I was provoked.”

  Mae-Lynn nods at the rum bottle in my hand. “If you want some, go ahead. If not, pass it on, okay? I have piano practice in an hour.”

  My mom always said not to. My dad’s in prison for drinking. That’s, like, a thing that can be hereditary, right? Drinking a lot.

  But my mom is dead. Shayna isn’t here. I don’t even know my dad.

  It’s what kids do.

  The girl-bug stirs. Tilts her head, waits.

  I twist the lid off and take the tiniest sip. It tastes disgusting, and I cough, and give it back to Mae-Lynn. Taran and Alif laugh.

  “It gets easier,” Taran says, inhaling. “That. And this.” He makes a gesture toward his beer, and then to all of us, arranged in our various slumps in the arroyo. A lizard darts across the sand and up the wall of the arroyo.

  He passes me the joint. Cake always told me she heard too many horror stories about her parents’ rock-and-roll friends dying from overdoses to try drugs, even something as minor as pot. “Gross,” she said once, mock-shivering. “Not for me.”

  If I texted her right now and said, I’m smoking pot in the arroyo with Taran and Alif and Lupe Hidalgo and Mae-Lynn, the first thing she would say is, No way! and then, Shit no, STOP. I’m coming to get you right now.

  She would. That’s the thing. She’s always been saving me. Maybe this time, I just want to float, and see what happens.

  I handed it back in Thaddeus’s yard, but this is different.

  I’m in a different world now.

  I inhale.

  The girl-bug hides her eyes behind her wings.

  It burns my throat, and I cough a little, but I inhale again before Taran leans over and slips it from my fingers.

  It doesn’t take long before I can feel it. It’s like a long, slow, warm wave of water that starts at my toes and threads up my body, relaxing all of me.

  “This is weird,” I say. “I feel marshmallowy.”

  Everyone laughs.

  Mae-Lynn leans close to me, like we’re good friends. “So, Grief Life,” she says. “It’s hard. It never stops. I cry in Claire’s when I go to Park Mall for earrings. I cry in debate prep. I cry during debate. I cry in the shower. I cry opening a can of tuna for my cat. I’m surprised I haven’t drowned in my own tears.”

  Alif leans back on his elbows. He’s that type of lanky boy who seems comfortable everywhere, even in an arroyo covered in graffiti and with used condoms littered all around. Maybe he’s even responsible for some of those. I’ve heard stories. He catches my eye and I look away quickly.

  Alif says, “I started bawling the minute I tried on my suit for Memorial Days, like, Dad would have told me what a handsome dude I was.” His eyes fill up. “I cry in fuckin’ Woodshop when the sawdust is flying and the saws are going. Everybody is so fucking freaked out thinking they’re gonna saw off a limb that nobody even notices me.”

  His brother says, “You never told me that.”

  Alif shrugs. “I know.”

  Lupe Hidalgo sighs loudly. “Listen, Tolliver, here’s the thing. It sucks. I mean, it sucks!”

  That last part, she screams as loud as she can, her whole body as stiff as a madwoman.

  “But the thing you need to realize is that no matter what the Walrus Jacksons tell us, no matter how touchy-feely, let’s tell each other our deepest feelings kind of stuff he throws at us, the fact of the matter is that you are gonna walk around for the rest of your life with a huge hole in your heart. Like, Grand Canyon big, girl.”

  It doesn’t escape me that none of us would be talking to each other this nicely if we weren’t all in the Big Suck.

  I start crying, but quietly. Mae-Lynn pats my shoulder.

  I take a sip of the rum again. Now I feel like a particularly chatty marshmallow, what with the rum and the weed.

  “Lupe,” I say, hiccupping a little. “You didn’t say in the meeting. Why you’re here. Who you…you know. Lost.”

  Taran and Mae-Lynn and Alif get very still.

  Lupe looks up from her phone. Her eyes have grown very dark.

  “Everybody knows who I am. Don’t you?”

  They are all looking at me. I shake my head. Slowly, I say, “To tell you the truth, you’ve always scared the hell out of me, so I try not to know too much about you.”

  She ignores that.

  “Don’t you remember?” she asks. “The three?”

  She looks down, kicks the sand with her sneaker. I can barely hear what she says next, her voice is so quiet.

  “The kids who died. By suicide. One was mine. My brother. Crash.”

  She slowly raises two fingers to her temple. “Bang, bang,” she whispers. Everyone is silent, until Alif suddenly stands up and walks to the edge of the arroyo.

  I swear that I can’t breathe. I swear that I will never breathe again. I can’t look away from Lupe’s face. She has an expression that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and I cannot even think of a word for it.

  Mae-Lynn swipes tears from her cheeks.

  “Don’t worry,” Lupe tells her. “It wasn’t me that found him. People always want to know that, even if they’re too scared to ask. But it means I’m different than you guys, too. Your people didn’t want to leave you, you know?”

  “Lupe, that’s not true,” Mae-Lynn whispers.

  She says, “You don’t know. You don’t know how it feels, when someone goes that way, and you never will.”

  Lupe shakes her head, hard, like she’s clearing something away.

  There’s a crunching sound in the parking lot behind us.

  “Oh, shit,” Taran blurts out.

  I turn around. A sheriff’s car has pulled into the lot. Mae-Lynn shoves the bottle of rum at me. “I can’t,” she whispers. “I have piano. My mother will kill me. Please.”

  Without thinking, I slide it into my backpack.

  The sheriff’s car does a perfect circle in the parking lot and then drives back out onto the road. Taran and Alif start laughing. “I almost pissed my pants,” Lupe Hidalgo says. “Holy moly.”

  The boys hoist up their backpacks. M
y whole body is shaking from fear. Lupe says, “We’re headed over to a party. You wanna come?”

  I hesitate. I mean, I could. Because no one’s waiting for me.

  But I’m also starting to feel a little woozy, so I shake my head.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I have to get home.”

  Mae-Lynn says, “I have piano practice.”

  She looks at me. “Me and my mom can give you a ride, if you want.”

  “Okay,” I say. I watch as Lupe and the two boys walk to a beat-up gray truck, Taran sliding into the driver’s seat. They peel out, Lupe giving us devil horns out the passenger-side window. She shout-laughs at me, “This doesn’t mean I like you, by the way! You’re still dirt on the bottom of my shoe!”

  Mae-Lynn and I start walking across the parking lot, toward the school steps. She says, “I didn’t really have any friends before this. It took my dad dying to get those guys to talk to me. Weird, huh?”

  I nod.

  “I mean, they only talk to me on group days, not during regular school or anything. That’s okay, though. I get it. High school hierarchy and all that.”

  We sit down on the steps of Eugene Field.

  After a while, Mae-Lynn says, “I don’t mean to be a pill or anything, but I just feel like you should know. Mr. Jackson means well and all? But I don’t think he’s ever actually had anyone die, or he wouldn’t even say half the stuff he says, honestly. I walk around like my skin’s been removed, cooked, and put back on me. That’s how I feel. Like a walking piece of hot, bloody meat. My hair is falling out. I make myself puke up my meals. It’s like my mom is on the other side of the swimming pool, and we’re both underwater, and I can see her mouth moving? But I can’t understand a damn thing she’s saying.”

  She shakes some Tic Tacs into her hand and tosses them to me.

  “Sorry for talking so much,” she says. “I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this stuff. There’s only so much I can say in GG. This is kind of a relief.”

  A white car pulls into the parking lot and honks. Mae-Lynn starts walking, so I follow her.

  “I mean,” she says earnestly, “half the time, I can’t even believe I’m walking upright.