Lemon Lavender Is Not Fine

by Elle Pallmore

  With her newfound energy, my mother has scoured the kitchen to a sparkle, tackled the overflowing mail pile, and reorganized the pantry and cupboards so the contents fit together like Tetris blocks. I’m not surprised when I find her in her bedroom, grunting as she flips the mattress.

  Instead of hello, how was your day, she says, “I was thinking of hanging Christmas decorations tonight. I could use your help bringing up boxes from the basement.”

  I sit in her reading chair, resting my head on my knee as she floats a clean sheet over the bed.

  “Lemon? The boxes?” she repeats.

  I raise my head. “When?”

  She unfolds a pillowcase. “How about now?”

  My jaw tightens. It’s a big deal for her to be so motivated, and I don’t want to ruin it, but still. Her tone isn’t really a request, so I say, “Yeah, sure.”

  After she finishes the bed, we head to the basement and stand before the stacks of boxes, which are so old, they’re puckered at the corners. Mom had the flu last year, so Meg and I haphazardly packed up the decorations, leaving boxes on the ground and some on the shelves. Many of the lids barely close because we shoved stuff here and there, just to get it over with.

  Mom touches a water-dimpled box flap and rubs her fingers together against the grime. “Well, this is a disaster, isn’t it?” Instead of looking frustrated, she smiles. “Let’s bring them all upstairs.”

  We haul the boxes to the family room, then each lift an end of the fake Christmas tree from its storage bag. After we unpack the branches, Mom assembles it in front of the family room window by clicking the pieces into place.

  “There,” she says. “One thing done.”

  You would think the next logical step would be to decorate the tree, but that doesn’t happen.

  “I think we need to organize everything first,” Mom decides, whirling her hands above our new mess. She plunks down on an empty patch of carpet, and we scoop out the contents of each box, stacking ornaments in one pile, twinkle lights in another. We toss the cardboard into another heap for recycling.

  We don’t stop until after six, when Mom looks at the clock and jumps up, shouting, “Dinner!” She does a hop-leap-lunge combination to get out of the family room, since there isn’t a scrap of carpet left to walk on.

  “What should we do with all . . . this?” I ask, referring to the Christmas bomb that’s exploded.

  “Leave it,” she replies, unconcerned. “We can work on it tomorrow when you get home.”

  “Can’t wait,” I say to myself.

  I pick up a reindeer ornament I made from a Popsicle stick in kindergarten. The glued googly eyes whir in their plastic bubbles when I shake it. Even they won’t stop staring at me.

  AFTER DINNER, ISABEL calls. Her tone sounds ominous, and I know she’s about to burden me with bad news, since that’s the only reason for a phone call over a text message.

  “I don’t want to make things worse,” she begins, “but there’s a new post on Lady W.”

  “I don’t think I want to know,” I reply. I pick at a piece of toast with peanut butter. I didn’t eat much dinner, and I thought I was hungry, but I lose my appetite all over again. “Can you give me the condensed version?”

  She hesitates. “It isn’t true, so the details don’t really matter.”

  Normally, I’d press her, but I’m not sure I can handle more lies that will undoubtedly become reality by morning.

  “Iz, can I . . . ask you something, and you won’t judge me for it? You can even forget about it after.”

  “Of course you can,” she answers.

  I pull my knees to my chest, balancing my feet on the chair edge. “Has Graham come to my defense at all?” I lean the phone against my chin and pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my hair.

  “He hasn’t said anything to me—I barely know him—but it seems like he’s trying to ignore it. He’s caught up in this too, remember?”

  For the first time, I consider what it’s been like for him over the past week. I’ve been so focused on myself that I didn’t recognize how he’s embroiled in the gossip too. According to Madeline, he’s the victim to my crazy, but even so, I know he doesn’t like being talked about any more than I do. The fantasy I’ve been playing in my mind every night has him shouting my innocence, but like me, he’s likely just trying to get through it. I can’t blame him, but disappointment also kicks me in the ribs.

  “You were right, Iz. You told me I couldn’t stay anonymous and be with him. And he said us being a secret wasn’t a forever option. You were both right.”

  Gently, she says, “Do you even want to be broken up?”

  I brush bits of leftover ornament glitter off the knee of my jeans. “It’s the right thing.”

  “It’s not like he’s gone running into Chelsea’s arms, though. He probably hates her now. You could still work things out with him, if you wanted to. Then you’d be a united front, you know? You could both laugh it off, and then everyone would move on.”

  I don’t see how that’s possible. Even if all the rumors and innuendos went away tomorrow, I know our relationship has mutated into something else—something we can’t fix. This epiphany leads to a rush of fresh realizations, and not good ones either. This isn’t temporary—Graham and I are going to remain apart. Not even friends, just people who pass each other by, knowing we have a history but pretending we don’t. In a few months, when I inevitably hear he’s dating someone else, I’ll be a fleeting memory, just a girl he used to know.

  For the next few minutes, Isabel recaps her family’s plans for the Bahamas over Christmas vacation. I’m happy I don’t have to talk anymore, and eventually our voices trail off.

  After we hang up, I sit on my bed, looking for a distraction. Outside my window, wind rips the last of the gold and red leaves from the trees. They skitter against the house, the road. Even in my own room, where no one is watching, I can’t relax. Just knowing that Madeline’s video channel lives and breathes, giving birth to new lies all hours of the day, makes me uneasy, like she’s siphoning my soul a bit at a time.

  Isabel didn’t tell me what the latest video was about, so I watch it myself and read every comment, even the new ones appearing as I scroll. As if by knowing everything, by having a full view of who they say I am, I can gather the vitriol into a ball. Of course, I don’t know what to do with it after that. It’s not as if it’s tangible—I can’t hurl it at the wall or smash it under a book. I can’t erase it either, because now that it exists, it’s everywhere, a poison that’s changing my heart to a rigid cog.

  All those years ago, Aunt Vee told me I was a mystery waiting to unfold. After that, I imagined life would slough away the layers and reveal me, but at some point, I stopped trying to be anything except invisible. Maybe Madeline saw that weakness and exploited it, since it’s easy to turn nothing into something without much effort.

  Unable to sleep, hours later, I layer a coat over my T-shirt and sweatpants. It’s quiet and uninterrupted outside, a clear night with a dying wind. I walk around the block, hidden by darkness. I don’t see another soul. Not one car, not a light in a window.

  nineteen

  AS DECEMBER DASHES toward the holidays, I launch myself full throttle into my mother’s fanatical organizing.

  Once we finally clear the family room of the piles of decorations, she decides all the storage boxes need to be replaced. After that, she declares the shelving looks shabby compared to the fresh cardboard, so we replace that too. We haul the old metal framework upstairs, and I sit on a tarp in the garage twisting rusted screws out of their sockets since Mom insists we can’t dump it on the curb as one big piece.

  Every morning, waking up hours before my alarm, I blink away the anxiety of seeing Graham and contemplating the new, terrible things Madeline has said about me. Instead, I breathe in and out, meditating on my to-do list, which steadily grows as Mom starts projects but inevitably abandons them after a few days for something new. As her new sidekick, I pick
up the tasks she no longer finds interesting. We work and work, as if we might somehow make sense of our lives by taming the disorganization around us.

  By Christmas break, the basement is done and Mom is focused on tearing apart the garage. The kitchen is covered in tools, drill bits, boxes of screws, nuts, and bolts. I suspect Mom can’t handle another sham of a holiday without Meg, so she sabotages our ability to cook. We end up eating an awkward Christmas dinner at a dimly lit Chinese restaurant since there isn’t any uncovered surface to be found in the kitchen. For the rest of our meals, we lean against the sink or disperse to our own separate corners. For me, it’s my bedroom, the only place that doesn’t feel like it’s been closed for renovation.

  On New Year’s Eve, Isabel invites me to Shannon’s house. Since Shannon and Lisa arrived at our lunch table, Isabel is never without one or the other. I started eating in the library to avoid them, which Isabel quickly noticed. I told her I was behind in all my classes, a partial truth. My grades are the lowest they’ve ever been, but I don’t do any work in the library—it’s just the only place to hide besides the bathroom.

  The single reason I’m going is because Isabel guilt-tripped me about how we never hang out anymore. This, combined with the alternative—staying home with my parents, who will be asleep by ten—seals my decision. I thought they’d deny my plea to be let out of the house for a few hours, but when Dad says okay, I’m forced to admit it’s better than being left alone with dark, tortured thoughts of Graham with his friends, counting down the final seconds of the year, kissing some other girl at midnight.

  As I wait for Isabel to pick me up, my mother sits at the kitchen table with the contents of our garage spread out before her. She plucks various tools from the paint-splattered drop sheet and catalogs each on a notepad. I look over her shoulder as she writes power drill on the list. Every few minutes, she toys with one of her pearl earrings, the set she bought Meg for her graduation. I guess Meg didn’t take them with her to Princeton.

  “I think we need an inventory system for all this stuff,” she says. “For when the neighbors borrow something? I don’t think we ever got our rake back from the McGills, and then they moved.”

  “I don’t know,” I reply, which really means I don’t care. “Aren’t inventory systems for prisons and, like, mansions?”

  “What I really need is a label-maker. I can’t believe I don’t have one. I’d be able to stick numbers on all this stuff and make a spreadsheet. I could even print barcodes and scan them into a system.” She bends her head again and dots her pencil tip along the items on her growing list.

  My father appears with a coffee mug, barely concealing his annoyed expression at the Home Depot post-tornado appearance of the kitchen. He refills his cup from the hissing pot and leans against the counter. “When do you think we’ll get all this back into the garage?”

  “Lemon and I were debating the benefits of an inventory system. I think I’ll run out tomorrow and buy a label-maker. I wonder if anywhere is still open tonight.”

  “Right,” he says, sipping his coffee.

  Since the great wake-up, any room my mother inhabits suddenly turns to glass. We tiptoe, watching where we step, what we say, lest the weight of our words causes a shattering crack. Delving any further into the subject is dangerous, so Dad backpedals . . . directly over me.

  “Lemon, be home right after twelve.”

  I balk. Even though my mother’s recent transformation has helped Dad and me forge a better relationship, and he agreed to let me hang out with Isabel tonight, he obviously has limits.

  “It’s a holiday. I thought I could stay out later.”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “Not this year.”

  This year being the time I might run away, Meg-style. “But—”

  “I can make it so you don’t go out at all, if you’d prefer it.”

  I look to my mother for support, but she’s absorbed, or at least pretending to be absorbed, by her list. I consider what might happen if I sweep my arm across the kitchen table and crash everything to the floor while screaming I’m not Meg! But that could send Mom back to bed, and Dad would assuredly reduce my social life to counting squirrels out the window.

  We engage in a standoff, neither of us willing to concede until a flash of headlights pans across the kitchen window. Isabel’s car is in the driveway, idling. I know Dad will stop me from going if I argue. He’s so skewed by one daughter that he can’t see straight about the other.

  “Fine,” I spit out.

  In the foyer, I yank on my jacket and open the front door. Before I can slam it shut, he takes the knob from me and says, “Make sure your phone is on. Text me when you get there and when you leave.”

  I run to Isabel’s car, almost tripping on the grass, drunk on freedom. Dad watches from the porch, probably making sure it’s really Isabel in the car. I forget about him once we’re on the road, and as Isabel tells me about her vacation, I try to relax. I’m out of the house for the first time in months, but I’m nervous about being around Shannon for more than just a lunch period. I’m nervous about being out at all.

  I don’t have much time to consider it, because we quickly approach a gated community. Isabel stops to give our names to a security guard manning a tiny cubicle. Once he waves us through and we curve around a well-lit street, Isabel points out Shannon’s obscenely large house. It isn’t even a house—it’s more like a compound.

  “Wow,” I say. Now this is the kind of place that needs an inventory system.

  “Yeah,” Isabel replies, anxiously peeking at my reaction.

  She finds a place to park, and we start the long walk up the curved cobblestone driveway. The house is perched on a hill in front of us, beaming from light shining through the windows.

  “Sorry I have to make you leave early,” I say as we approach the massive front door lit by a lantern the size of my body.

  “I’m just glad you got out of your house,” she replies. “This will be fun.”

  I’m pretty sure Isabel and I have different definitions of fun nowadays, and I can’t ignore the nudge that says this is a bad idea, especially when I hear loud music and laughter coming from beyond the door. I tilt my head, listening, and then look back at the driveway, crowded with cars.

  “Iz, how many people are here? It’s just us, right?”

  She doesn’t respond, and I have no choice but to follow when she pushes open the oak door without knocking. Instantly, I’m hit with a wave of heat and noise from a disorienting amount of people. Mouth agape, I tip my head up to the two-story foyer and get momentarily blinded by the bright chandelier. The second floor is visible behind an ornate balustrade, which is littered with kids from school, talking and leaning against it. The stream of people continues down the grand curved staircase.

  This isn’t a few people hanging out. It’s just party, all party, screaming in my face.

  Isabel evades my disbelieving expression, knowing I never would’ve agreed to something like this. My heart slams against my ribs as a woman in black approaches; she practically drags my coat off and whisks it away with Isabel’s.

  Feeling naked now, I stutter, “Isabel—what—why—”

  She plunks a sequined tiara on my head from a table of decorations, cutting me off, and chooses a shiny plastic top hat for herself. The din of the party floods my ears and mixes with off-key singing from a karaoke machine somewhere else in the house. This is solar systems beyond the quiet night I imagined.

  “Isabel,” I repeat, ready to back out the door, coat be damned, but Shannon appears, squealing and hugging her like they haven’t seen each other in years. Isabel grasps my hand as Shannon grasps hers, pulling us through a labyrinth of rooms, pointing out her parents, her neighbors, and her parents’ friends along the way. On our tour, I also notice she invited our entire junior class.

  Eventually, we land in the crowded kitchen, where soda bottles and towers of cups sit on a massive marble slab. The uneasiness I’ve been tryi
ng to push away sinks its claws into my gut. I don’t look anyone in the eye, but I see expressions turn to shock, then disdain.

  All because I’m that girl.

  The psycho. The bitch. The one who didn’t deserve to be with Graham Stuart in the first place and hitched a ride to crazytown once he rejected me. But now that I’ve become smart enough to avoid him, drying up the story, every action I take is twisted and squeezed for new blood. Bumping into a random guy in an overcrowded hallway is enough to instantly morph him into my new stalking victim. The gossip train keeps on moving, so nobody ever stops to question the original lie—that Graham was with Chelsea when I tried to steal him away. They were never together, and they aren’t now, but that seems to be inconsequential as long as Madeline keeps churning out fresh videos, portraying me as unhinged, the girl who reeks of desperation, who doesn’t understand that no means no.

  Isabel hands me a red plastic cup; the rim cracks as I clench my hand around it. How am I standing with the very people who believe things about me that I’ve never done? They’re either afraid my outcast status will rub off on them or offended by my very presence. They don’t know what to say, so they talk around me, as if I’m not even here. Drowning in shame, I hover as close as I can to Isabel without physically holding the edge of her jacket like a wary four-year-old. She darts her eyes to me every minute, checking in, seeing if I’m completely freaking out yet. Part of me is angry that she’s thrown me into the lion’s den, but I don’t want to say so now, since she’s my only defense against getting eaten alive.

  The old Isabel never would’ve done this, adding to the evidence that she’s changing before my eyes. Tonight she laughs openly, showing her braces, and doesn't seem to mind being the center of attention. The group around us grows as she leads a conversation about gene editing to create superpowers in humans. She and Shannon clasp hands and laugh when they both shout “teleportation” as the power they’d want. Even when I’m right next to her, we’re separated by a gaping chasm.