All These Lives

by Wylie, Sarah

  “I need a smoke,” he mutters to himself. Then, hurriedly, he looks back at the two of us. “I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s okay, Dad. We all need a smoke,” I reassure him.

  Dad hasn’t smoked, as far as anyone knows, in about a year, and the way Mom sees it, that’s One Big Disease conquered this year.

  A couple of seconds later, Mom climbs into the car and he goes back to being on good behavior.

  The rest of the way home, Mom and Dad discuss, with entirely too much enthusiasm, what other changes we’re going to implement. They mention family outings and visiting extended family.

  Drawing on inspiration from the service, I pray vehemently that neither of these things comes to pass.

  * * *

  When I get to school on Monday, everybody is huddled in corners, whispering and snickering and passing secret-code glances. Which reminds me of my cast and the fact that it’s making its school debut. It’s not like I’m hiding a sorry case of leprosy under the cast, but I still feel a little self-conscious.

  By eavesdropping on Jen Mullins and Karen Li’s conversation while “retrieving stuff from my locker,” I learn that I am not entertaining enough to feed the rumor mill after all. They are gossiping about Lauren getting suspended. Lauren. Suspended. Apparently, without the influence of my good character, Rachel Talbot convinced her to break into the teacher’s lounge over the weekend, unscrew all the lightbulbs in there, and scribble a message on the wall, in permanent marker, that said, You steal our rights, we steal your lights.

  The whole story is so bizarre, I don’t even talk to Jack in math, except to agree to meet in the library at lunch to work on our project.

  “What happened to your arm?” he asks, glancing up from the book he is reading when I sit beside him at a table in the library.

  “I broke my wrist,” I inform him, sliding into the chair across from him and flipping over the National Geographic magazine left on the table. Educational magazines strategically placed right at the fingertips of students is a ploy devised by Mrs. Uri to lure kids into excellence. Unconcerned about giving her false hope, I open it and idly flip through the pages.

  “How?” Jack asks, staring at me. His piercing look makes me feel uncomfortable and I glance back down at the page.

  “I had an accident.” I snap the magazine shut and lean forward across the table. “Listen, thanks for your concern, sweet thang, but I think we should focus on the task ahead. This project is really important to me.”

  He glances down. “Don’t call me … that.”

  “What, hot stuff?” I bat my eyelashes and inch forward just a little more.

  “How did you break it?”

  I sigh. I don’t understand why we’re still taking about this. “I was in a motorcycle accident. So about the assignment…” I slide the papers in front of him toward myself.

  “Dani?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I leaf through the pages. “You know, I think I liked my information better.”

  Undeterred, Jack continues, “Because you don’t really … I mean you seemed upset that day outside. After the chips thing? And actually, since school started you’ve been … different.”

  “Listen, Jack,” I snap finally. “I really appreciate your … well, whatever … but from the start of this project, I think I’ve made it abundantly clear—despite your many advances—that we should have a strictly platonic relationship and just focus on getting our work done.”

  “Platonic? You call me … names”—he flushes—“all the time.” God, he’s still talking.

  “Out of friendship,” I say.

  “You’re flirting with me.”

  I laugh, and it comes out slightly more bitter than even I expect. “Seriously? You think that’s flirting? It’s called bullying, Jack. I’m being a bitch.” Because I am a bitch. Look what I did to Spencer and his bike. And to Mom, and to Dad, and Jena.

  Jack doesn’t say anything. And maybe it’s because we went to church or whatever, but suddenly I’m fighting this urge to apologize. It would be utterly lame. Since when do I care about Jack or anyone else’s feelings?

  “So, this sucks.” I push the paper toward him, but he completely ignores me, staring down at the book he’s reading.

  When zero words and fifteen minutes have passed, I decide Jack and I would probably benefit from a little distance. I think about going to find Lauren, before it hits me that she’s not at school. She’s suspended. I locate a corner at the back of the library, where I pull out a book on cats and start reading. It talks about litters and their diet and behaviors. It doesn’t mention any of the important things, though. Nothing about transferring lives from one cat to another.

  “Jena used to sit behind me in Spanish class,” Jack blurts out from above me, sounding more like he’s letting out his breath after holding it for a long time. “I mean, we never really talked or anything, but she sat behind me.”

  My voice is emotionless, flat. “She’s not dead.” Not flat enough. And I hate past tense.

  “I know,” Jack says, sitting down next to me. I start to point out that a) I didn’t invite him to, and b) his pants length is too short and if I see his socks, I will act out, but it’s too late. He’s right next to me. “I don’t think she’s going to die.”

  My stomach knots. Why are we talking about this? “You don’t know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Nobody knows,” I mutter, because I want to have the last word and because who the hell is Jack Penner?

  I don’t want to talk about Jena. Not with him, not with her, not with anyone. Not even with me.

  16

  I want to die eating peanut M&M’s.

  I’ve only just figured this out.

  “See, the thing for me is that I always want filling. Chocolate by itself is just, well, plain,” I explain.

  My child psychologist nods sympathetically, running her tongue over her teeth to gather bits of chocolate. It would be hard to maintain the whole I’m-going-to-figure-out-all-your-child’s-issues-and-give-you-a-new-model-with-extended-warranty image if her teeth looked like a chocolate slug had slithered all over them. Conveniently for me, though, it’s just an image. My parents managed to snag the only shrink within a fifty-thousand-mile radius willing to facilitate discussion on candy for a hundred bucks an hour.

  “Peanut butter,” Harriet call-me-Harry-with-an-i Livingstone says, “is glorified, liquefied peanut. So how can you like peanut M&M’s and not peanut butter M&M’s?”

  “Texture,” I say instantly, folding my legs beneath me and digging through the bowl of candy Harry-with-an-i handed me when I walked in. Apparently, she buys different types of M&M’s and mixes them together into the same bag to create her own rainbow-colored M&M concoction—an excellent quality in any mental health professional, if you ask me.

  Harry-with-an-i is a forty-something-year-old former beauty queen turned Serious Child Psychologist that my mother knew from college. She isn’t much taller than me, but wears three-inch pumps, a purple business suit (feminine but Serious) and has a dark spot in the cleft of her chin.

  I’m cautiously weeding out the M&M’s, being careful to leave the peanut butter and plain ones. I have this theory that the peanut ones look a little pregnant, a little rounder around the middle, some stretch marks on the candy coating. So far, it’s been foolproof.

  Harry-with-an-i stands and reaches for the clipboard on the table now. If I were paying better attention, I might make something of it.

  “When I was growing up,” she begins in a slow, formal voice, “my whole life changed in one night. My uncle’s truck rolled off a highway one winter evening and it took nearly all night to find him. They found him in the river just out of town. I was about your age.”

  Red. Green.

  “That sucks,” I say. “At least it wasn’t gory. He just drowned, didn’t he?”

  Harry-with-an-i clicks her Parker pen on, itchi
ng to start taking notes. “He didn’t die, Danielle. We found him alive. And drowning, or any kind of death, is gory.”

  Orange. Brown. Orange.

  It feels like she’s waiting.

  “Oh. Well, all’s well that ends well, then.”

  She shifts in her white leather couch. If my mom were here, she’d tell her how impractical white furniture is. “The whole thing was hugely significant for me. I ended up being terrified of driving. So much so that I didn’t learn to drive till I was twenty-five. I think my fear in many ways pushed me into this profession.” Her voice softens. “I empathize with people who are afraid. I’ve been there.”

  Green. Blue. Orange. Red.

  “I remember being worried that people wouldn’t get it if I explained why I was so afraid. I never saw the accident myself. I certainly wasn’t in it. But none of that mattered. It was still traumatizing.”

  Orange. Yellow. Brown. I wonder if this is her default story. The one she goes to right after she breaks out the bowl of M&M’s and sugar-sedates her patients so they confess all kinds of things to her and convince themselves they’re scared of driving, too.

  Green. Orange. Brown. Blue.

  “What are you afraid of, Danielle?”

  I struggle to think. The right answer: “Driving.”

  Harry-with-an-i laughs even though it’s not funny and neither of us is joking and I’m starting to be over this and I think she knows.

  “Okay, good answer. What else?”

  “Santa,” I say, “creeps me out. I mean, he just strikes me as a little, you know, weird. Breaking into chimneys, drinking your milk and cookies.”

  Harry-with-an-i is staring at me, sort of listlessly, like maybe she doesn’t know where to go now or she’s thinking this is the easiest hundred dollars she’s earned.

  I lean back and fold my arms across my chest, then quickly unfold them to save a lone yellow M&M before it slides into the side of the couch. It’s not so much that I care about protecting her furniture from the melted brown chocolate; it’s more that I want to eat it. Plus, it’s especially pregnant, which means there has to be a giant peanut baby in there.

  I can feel Harry-with-an-i watching me, so I offer her some M&Ms.

  “No thanks,” she shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have any more.”

  Then, evidently deciding to go another route—and not terribly optimistic about it, if her expression is anything to go by—Harry-with-an-i holds her pen to the page and says, “Dani, tell me about Jena. And how you’re dealing with the situation.”

  Green—peanut.

  “Well,” I say, chewing, “to be honest, I’m not doing so well.”

  “Really?” Her pen lightly scratches the page and I can tell this is what she considers success. A sentence or two that summarize me, a paragraph to decipher me.

  “Yeah. Like, for instance, the other day, I had this really massive headache.”

  She glances up.

  “Oh, and then a few weeks ago, I had a runny nose. I sneezed a couple of times today in gym class, too.”

  The pen doesn’t move, although it wants to.

  “Danielle. I mean how do you feel emotionally. Mentally. Spiritually. Not physically.”

  Orange—peanut.

  Blue—peanut.

  Red—two peanuts.

  “Listen,” she says. “I know the last thing you want is to have to sit in a room with some stranger and discuss something that is so hard to talk about. But I also want you to know that I’m here to help. Whatever you say will just be between the two of us.”

  “Good. I was worried you’d tell my dad what I said about Santa. We haven’t told him we know about his nonexistence yet. Or that, in general, Santa sucks.”

  Harry-with-an-i shakes her head and chuckles lightly. “You have quite a sense of humor, you know that?”

  “I was being serious.”

  She puts down her pad. “I’ll give you the entire bag of M&M’s in my drawer if you’ll give me one sentence. Just one sentence about how you honestly feel.”

  “How big is the bag?”

  She stands up, goes around the desk, and pulls it out. It’s reasonable, probably weighs about ten pounds, since it contains all the different kinds of M&M’s she’s mixed together.

  This is bribery, I want to say. Instead, I stick a brown M&M in my mouth. “Can I say it now?” Peanut butter. It floods my mouth and my saliva drowns in it and I just want to spit it out all over her sterile, hip-psychologist office.

  “The sentence? Of course! Go ahead.” I start to open my mouth, but she stops me again. “Remember. I want honest and I want it to relate to the Jena situation.”

  “I feel,” I say, feeling myself choke on the peanut butter M&M, “like that bag is the size of my sister.”

  She stares at me for a second, down at the bag on her desk, and then back up at me. She looks at me for so long, her eyes boring into me, like she has X-ray vision, and I want to go home but not home to them and her and me but somewhere else. Just when I think that was not the right sentence and she will surely want more—maybe an office-full of peanut-butter-flavored barf, since that’s the best I can do right now—she pushes the bag across her desk. “When your father picks you up, ask him to help you carry it out.”

  There are exactly three minutes left of our session and she sits behind her desk, writing on her clipboard, and lets me eat my M&M’s.

  Except I don’t eat them.

  I let them roll off my lap when Harry-with-an-i isn’t looking. Into the spaces between the couch, empty spaces of nothing and darkness, and I help the ones that miss. When all M&M’s are comfortably accommodated and hidden, I point out that it’s the end of our time together, pick up the bag from her desk, and haul it out into the waiting room, which would be a lot easier if I could use two hands instead of one.

  Dad shows up late, looking tired and tentative, but hopeful. Probably he’s wondering if I’m cured. I tell him Harry-with-an-i let me have the giant M&M bag. He helps me put it in the trunk of the car (since there are certain things tofu-obsessed mothers can live without knowing), but he doesn’t ask about it.

  17

  For the past few months, evenings have revolved around preparations for chemo or radiation or one of Jena’s appointments the next day, but tonight I am sitting on the edge of the bathtub in my parents’ bathroom, as Mom leans over me, giving me bangs to cover the stitches on my forehead for callbacks this weekend.

  I sit quietly and watch pieces of my hair twirl to the ground. Mom squints and frowns and trims. When she is done, I’m disappointed at how much I still look like myself. How much hair do you need to start with, to cut and cut and keep recognizing yourself? How much hair do you have to lose to become unrecognizable?

  I don’t even notice, until Jena points it out, that the bangs are slightly uneven.

  * * *

  On Wednesday when I walk into the cafeteria, the smell of B.O. and mystery meat thick in the air, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve just lost another friend. Since I crashed his motorcycle, Spencer hasn’t said one word to me. He didn’t even come to the hospital after. I would sit with Lauren again, but it’s her first day back post-suspension and she stayed in to catch up on Spanish. So I walk toward Spencer and Candy’s table.

  The sparkle in Candy’s eyes, her confidence and the fact that she actually brightens to see me approaching, only reinforces my feeling of unease. “Oh, hi, Danielle. We were just talking about you.”

  I drop my tray beside Spencer, whose head is straight down, seemingly extra-attentive to his food.

  “Funny, because everyone’s talking about that nose piercing you got.” And the accompanying infection.

  She perks ups. “Really?”

  “I haven’t seen you in forever,” I tell Spencer, who still hasn’t looked at me.

  Candy butts in. “Actually, that’s just what we were talking about.” Her voice is high-pitched and so ecstatic she seems to be tripping over her words. “Spencer a
nd I love you. We do.”

  “Not as much as I love you, Spencer. And you too, what is it, Hard Candy Core?”

  She narrows her eyes at me, all out of sweetness. “We no longer want you to sit with us. Poor Spencer has enough crap on his plate without you going and crashing his motorcycle.”

  “Does poor Spencer have so much crap on his plate that he can’t tell me himself?” I’m looking at him, not her. He’s still looking at his burger.

  “I’ve been in trouble before,” he mumbles. “The last thing I needed was to spend an hour getting questioned by the police. And I could have been fired.”

  “It was an accident,” I say, forgetting for a minute not to care.

  “Well.” Candy claps her hands. “We’re lucky the cops saw it that way and that we were able to avoid a potentially nasty situation. I’m glad we all agree that the best thing is to go our separate ways.” She draws the imaginary separating line with her and Spencer on one side, and me on the other. “Spencey and I knew you’d understand.”

  Even he reacts to that one. “Don’t effing call me that.”

  “Sorry,” she says quickly, and I realize that they, Spandy or Canspence, are going to self-destruct. She’s too eager to please, too desperate to prove herself, and Spencer is kind of an asshead.

  I go from the cafeteria to the bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and wait for lunchtime to pass. Sadly, time slows down, moving at sixty-one seconds a minute and sixty-one minutes an hour, so that being trapped in a five-inch-by-five-inch space quickly loses its novelty. I claw my way out and head down the hall again, stopping at the empty classroom where we usually have math. The wise thing would be for me to start in on the mountain of homework that was sent home—and which I managed to ignore—when I missed school last week.

  Instead, I shuffle to a desk at the back and rest my head on it.

  I’m starting to doze when I hear footsteps, and then in walks Halbrook, his face stuck between the covers of a book.

  He’s startled when he notices me. “Oh, hi, Danielle. I didn’t see you there.” His book is War and Peace and I half-wonder if he’ll decide to read aloud to us next class, instead of us working on our assignments.