Plunge

by Brittany McIntyre

  I called to them. Dalton turned his head to look at me, but quickly turned away when Nick smacked at his stomach.

  I ran to catch up with them, but even when I was within spitting distance, they wouldn’t look at me.

  “Guys?” I asked, voice quavering. Something was wrong. I must have done something, but I couldn’t remember anything happening when we’d played the day before. “Guys?” I asked again, my voice rising.

  “Ugh,” Nick answered, even though he pretended his words were directed at Dalton. “Sometimes people just don’t get the hint. Like we would want to play with some girl who thinks she’s a boy.”

  Then Nick got on his bike and started to ride away, Dalton following behind. I stood there, my feet frozen to the pavement. I knew I should just turn and go home, but I watched them until they disappeared from my view.

  Something shifted inside me as I was hit with the realization that this was worse than a fight; whatever had passed between us was permanent. They weren’t my friends anymore. They were just boys I had known when I was little.

  No matter how scared they’d made me, Nick and Dalton had done something good by showing up at the zoo. Before Nick and Dalton showed up, I had been under a spell. Hannah’s laugh as she belted out pop music and the whip of her long blonde hair that never seemed to stay out of her face had done something to me. It had lied to me, made me believe that I could be with her and have a normal life. Before they showed up, I had watched her point at gazelles and birds and wanted nothing more than to grab her, like in a movie, and kiss her.

  When I heard Nick whisper Lennox, my name like a hiss that slid from between his lips, the lie dissipated. There was no easy ending for me that included a love story with another girl. There was no keeping Hannah from my parents but living my truth everywhere else. My truth was prying hands trying to make sense of my body. Sweet little boys that grew into monsters. Parents that forced glitter on me when all I wanted was metal. My truth was something that would scare the girl away before she could ever be mine.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hannah

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, I texted Lennox before I even went downstairs. Before I even sat up. I wanted to wish her a Merry Christmas, even if it wasn't quite the right day. I couldn’t believe that in the span of ten days I had met someone who understood me better than anyone had, made them become my friend, and then scared them away. She will get over it. It’s not your fault those dicks showed up at the zoo.

  I scrolled through my phone to see who had reached out to me so far. The answer turned out to be no one. My dad hadn’t even called once for the standard, stiff ‘how’s your break?’ phone call.

  After over a decade of his flighty, in and out parenting method, I knew I should just let it go; he wasn’t ever going to change and suddenly morph into father of the year. Even as I knew that, though, there was some part of me stuck in the hope that optics would compel him: surely he wouldn’t skip a phone call to his own daughter on Christmas. Surely he’d know what an ass he’d look like if he did that. The thing is, though, you can’t really think about how it will look if you ignore someone when you can’t even bring yourself to remember that person exists. With an inhale that was more of a whistling gasp than the steady, meditative breath it was meant to be, I gripped the edge of my kitchen counter.

  Cookies.

  I would bake Christmas cookies for my friends, Lennox included, and would then have a built in excuse to stop by and see her without looking stalkerish. Well, realistically I would probably look a bit like a stalker, I told myself, but at least it would be an excuse other than just wanting to nose around and see why she wasn’t returning my texts.

  I just couldn’t figure out why she was so angry. It felt like she was blaming me more for her own feelings than anything, like it was my fault that she was gay and mad about it.

  I walked over to the fridge and pulled out the eggs, thinking I’d go with classic chocolate chip for my first batch and see where it went. I liked baking, liked the precision of the ingredients and the way everything always turned out as long as you followed every step the way you were supposed to. More things should be like that: they should go well if you do everything right. Instead, most things were more like my fight with Lennox; you could do what you thought was right for you, what you believed made the most sense, and still end up with a huge mess.

  With narrowed eyes, I inventoried all the ingredients I had lined up across the counter to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Everything accounted for, I began mixing dry ingredients and wet ones, combining, and stirring. The only part I hated was measuring the flour; ever since I was a little kid, I’d hated the way flour felt on my hands. Dry, but also somehow chalklike, it left this grit on my skin that made me forcibly cringe. Then it would settle into your nails and fly around in the air, causing your nose to itch. Hated it.

  Ten minutes after lining the trays, I pulled my first batch. They were perfect: fluffy and golden brown with little drops of melted chocolate dancing across their surfaces. I couldn’t wait to bite into one while I filled my Christmas tins with my homemade goodies.

  Despite the 32-degree weather and the wind that was whipping my skin, my hands were sweating as I grabbed the red glitter box filled with her Christmas cookies. Am I really doing this? Am I really just going to show up at her door the day before Christmas? I couldn’t believe that I had been able to talk myself into leaving the house when Lennox probably wasn’t even going to talk to me, but I couldn’t handle the silence I was still receiving from her. I sat by the phone all night the evening before and I kept having those weird phantom phone vibrations only to be disappointed that no one was calling. Yes, I answered myself, I was doing this.

  Sliding out of my car, I walked slowly up to her front door, negotiating the passage across the ice as carefully as possible. When I made it to her front door a full three minutes of slipping, duck walking later, I stood stark still as I tried to work up the nerve to accomplish my next task: knocking on the door. Eyes pinched shut, I breathed, trying to steady my nerves.

  You’ve got this, I said to myself, willing myself to move. Just knock on the door. Right there underneath the wreath, just knock.

  Before I could win the battle of wills, the door swung open and a Winter Wonderland was exposed: I had no clue how much effort Lennox’s parents put into this whole Christmas thing. Every surface was lined with tinsel, those tiny Christmas village figures were on every available surface, and the house smelled so strongly of cinnamon that it was like red hots had been boiled on the stive for the previous week.

  Lennox led me to her room and we barely got through the door before I started my desperate appeal to fix our argument.

  "Why are you so mad at me?" I asked. "I know things went really wrong, but I don't don't know those boys. It's not like I told them to be there."

  “Is that what you think? You think I’m mad at you because I blame you for those guys showing up? I don’t blame you,” she said. I could see the anger across her face in the way she didn’t blow the hair from her eyes even though it was hanging directly across her vision.

  “So, what then?” I asked and I shoved my hands into my pockets in frustration. “What did I do wrong?”

  What happened next made me jump. Not a figurative jump; my feet actually left the floor. Lennox whirled around and yelled at me.

  “Do you not understand that wasn’t a game? That was actual danger,” she choked out and a sob escaped her lips. She was crying, big, fat tears rolling down her ivory cheeks. “Those were the boys from my school. The ones who . . .”

  She choked again, a gurgling noise rising in the back of her throat. She literally couldn’t bring herself to form the words. The realization hit me like a gut punch. That first day when I’d come to this spot, when we’d sat on her bed and she’d told me about the boys back home who had grabbed her, who’d tried to pull her away with them. Those were the same boys that we’d seen at the zoo.

&
nbsp; I took a step towards her and placed my hand on her wrist. “Oh my God,” I said. “I didn’t know.” I shook my head, my thoughts coming in jumbles. I was having trouble making sense of my own racing brain and the words poured out before I could stop them: “Isn’t that a good thing, in a way? If it was those same old boys, at least it wasn’t like someone else harassing you. If it’s just two boys, who cares?”

  She shook her head and walked over to her bedroom door. As suddenly as the tears had started, they stopped leaving a drying trail glistening on her face. As quickly as she’d let me get a glimpse of who she was and what she’d felt, she’d slammed the door back shut, turned the lock, and thrown away the key. With a hand on the knob, she answered: “If you don't understand this, I don’t think I can explain it to you.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment and I wished once again that I could read the emotions in her stoic eyes. She gave so little away, but I wanted so much to understand her. I looked down at the bed where I had flung the box of Christmas cookies, and for just half a second, a spiteful part of me thought about snatching them back from her. Why should she benefit from my delicious labor?

  “Lennox,” I tried one more time, “Let me in. I’m your friend. We can get past this.” Don’t beg, I scolded myself, hating how much I was exposing to her as I stood there in my stupid coat, gripping myself like her house wasn’t an oven. If she wants to throw you away, just let her, I told myself. And then I did. With a final shake of my head, I stormed from her room and jerked the door out of her grip as I slammed it behind me. I didn’t even care about her parents hearing and thinking I was a jerk. All I could think about was getting away from her.

  But as soon as I was in my car, I regretted leaving the way I did. As I shut my eyes and let the hot air from the heater blow its gust across my face, I thought about how we would come back from this. School wasn’t even back in session and I’d lost her.

  When I got back to my house, everything was quiet. I knew Ari had to be home because until high school, Mom thinks it’s rude to go to other people’s homes on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. She says it’s a time for families. I paused as I entered the foyer and tried to figure out where everyone was, but I was greeted by total stillness. Soft white twinkles danced across the walls, the ceiling, the surfaces; everything in the house was bathed in a shimmering glow. It felt magical, even to me, and all my usual doom and gloom was washed away in a tinsel baptism that made me feel pieced together. The tree was tall and full in the center of the living room and its pine smell drew me into the living room. Mom was cozied up on the couch under her favorite waffle knit blanket, tv off with a book open across her lap. She was staring at the tree with a sad smile.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, perching on the available corner on the far end of the sofa.

  She startled when I spoke and I was surprised she hadn’t heard me come down the stairs; I hadn’t made any effort to be quiet. The smile spread wider becoming a little less dead and a little more genuinely happy. She sat up slowly, flailing her arms with a giggle. She pulled me close, and I snuggled back against her as she leaned against my shoulder. It was funny how often I found myself holding her to me these days instead of the other way around and as she rested her head on my shoulder, I reached up to stroke her thick hair.

  With an exaggerated stretch, she turned her face up towards mine. “Do you remember when you were little how your dad loved to put up the Christmas tree?”

  I stifled a sigh because I knew my mom wasn’t still hung up on my dad; that wasn’t what this wistfulness was. She missed being with someone, missed having someone whose joy motivated her own. Sure, she had me and Ari, but we were getting older. That magic of Christmas didn’t quite exist in us anymore. This would probably be the last year Ari believed in Santa Clause and even now it was more that believing because you want to, not because it feels real kind of thing. One last cookie for the reindeer hurrah.

  I could remember it; Dad was always crazy about Christmas. Christmas themed episodes of sitcoms always show these harried parents choosing a time and instructing their kids not to knock before their clocks reach that time; we should have set that kind of limit for Dad. It would be four or five a.m. and there he would creep, tiptoeing into my room just to wake me up because he needed all of us to come empty our stockings and open the presents right then. And of course, we could never just get started and then go back to sleep; we would have to wait for him to get a fire going in the fireplace. He’d turn on some Christmas cd. Once Ari was born, even she wasn’t exempt; that last year he brought her from her crib to her swing so that she could be present and accounted for—and asleep—during all the festivities.

  “She’s family!” He had declared vehemently when Mom protested waking a newborn. “We can’t celebrate without the baby.”

  Even though we all knew she was exhausted, even though even I could see she was slightly frazzled by being awakened when she actually had a chance to sleep, Mom had grinned at his enthusiasm and put her arm around his waist as she snuggled up to him.

  “Mom,” I started. I ducked my head, not able to make eye contact with her as I asked what I needed to know. “Did Dad leave because he didn’t want Ari?”

  The pause was humid and overwhelming, full of too much for any one moment to hold. As her arm went stiff around my shoulders, I regretted asking my mom something that I knew would hurt her, but I had spent too many years working on this puzzle alone. I just couldn’t reconcile how my Dad—my overeager family man dad, the one who had insisted that little baby Ari had to be in the room while we opened presents that she wasn’t even aware of--had become the kind of guy who didn’t even pick up the phone on Christmas morning. It was like the man who’d been there my whole early life was gone and I didn’t know where to find him.

  “I need you to understand something before I talk to you about this,” she began and each word stretched languidly like she was suddenly relaxed. There was something deceptive in this shift. “I told your Dad that I wouldn’t lie about what I’m going to tell you, but that I would never bring it up first. That I would wait until you asked.”

  I feltmy body stiffen and I was flooded with possibilities about what she was going to tell me. Was he a spy? Had he been in some sort of covert agency when they’d met and been called away from us after Ari came along? Did he have a secret family in another country that he’d gone home to when he realized he loved them more? I knew my mom was trying to lead into something carefully to lessen the blow, but I wished she’d just tell me. There was a reason “rip the band aid off” was a cliché: because there is nothing more painful than anticipation.

  With a trembling hand, she reached over and smoothed down a stray strand of my wild hair. “Your dad did leave because of Ari, but not like you think,” she started, and the tears filled her eyes. “Right after your sister was born, your dad started hearing voices. They told him to hurt Ari.” She choked out a sob. Her hand rested against my face and I was frozen, eyes lost in her wet ones.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She continued, a deep sigh vibrating her chest as she continued, “Your dad is a paranoid schizophrenic. He left to get help, not to leave me.” Tears fell like snowdrops as she shook her head and I hated every moment of the conversation I had started. “But he didn’t get better and he isn’t compliant on his meds because he is just too afraid. That’s why he doesn’t call consistently or visit. He’s just sick, kiddo.”

  Everything went frozen: my blood, the room, the world. The only thing left that moved were my thoughts and I couldn’t control them in the least. They wouldn’t slow. I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: I was angry at myself for bringing this up, for blaming my dad, for sending my letter. I was angry at Mom for letting me be mad at Dad for so long, but angry at Dad for leaving her behind and making her carry the burden of his secret. My heart broke for Mom, still wiping tears away as they just kept coming.

  I had always thought she was ov
er my dad; they’d been divorced for more of my life than they’d been married, so I just assumed that my down to earth, levelheaded mom would have let it all go and moved on. Until now she’d never dated, but I’d always attributed that to her focus on me and Ari and her busy job. Now, though, as I watched her cheeks get puffy from the crying, I could see her pain was from more than just the release of a long-kept secret: she was crying for the loss of the man she loved.

  The next morning, I sprawled across my cluttered bed, eyeing the new swag that was piled by my closet door. Albums, film, sweaters. All stuff that had made me so happy when the day began and I tore into their metallic packaging, but now seemed like bullshit. With my new information, all I wanted was a remote control so I could zap myself back to my dad waking me up in the middle of the night. I just wanted to zap him back to normal.

  I promised myself I would stay off the computer for the rest of the day, at least for Christmas, because my first impulse was to jump on Google and learn everything I could about schizophrenia. For all my modern social justice ideals, it hit me that I knew next to nothing about mental illness. Marley had OCD, but I very rarely saw many outward symptoms of that. Once when we were freshman, she made us late for a dance because three times in a row, she’d made it to the car just to have to turn around and go make sure the curling iron was off. I kept reminding her that she’d just checked because I didn’t really understand that intrusive thoughts trumped logic. I learned.

  This was different, though. Mom said Dad left because he’d been hearing voices that told him to hurt Ari and I couldn’t wrap my head around that. Before Dad left, before I got resentful, I had been obsessed with my little sister: I’d loved the smell of her head, the way she balled her hands into little fists and held them in the air like she was in command of the whole house, the way she’d startle in her sleep for no real reason. How could I love her like that at six years old when my father had to flee from our family to protect her from himself?