I take a sip of seltzer, shake my head. Take another sip.
“I know our last conversation wasn’t … well, I didn’t handle myself as well as I might have. I got … frustrated … talking about your mother. And I realize maybe that wasn’t fair … to you. And I just wanted to say I’m sorry for losing my cool.”
I stare at him. It’s the second time this week my father has apologized to me.
“Huh,” I say.
“Can you accept my apology?”
He’s sorry for losing his cool. He’s not apologizing for much, so there’s not much to accept.
“Anna?”
I shrug.
“Is that a yes?” His face is pained, like this conversation is causing him actual, physical distress. Which makes me glad, in a way. Why should my mother be the only one who suffers?
“Anna,” he says again. “Can you accept my apology?”
“I guess. Whatever.”
“I’ll take it.” My father sighs, nods. He gives my shoulder an awkward pat. Pat, pat, pat. Pat, pat, pat. It’s like Jane, patting Goodnight Moon.
“Okay, Dad,” I say finally, taking a step back.
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Go watch your movie.”
“You sure you don’t want to watch with us?”
“I’m sure.”
“Good night, Anna.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Anna,” Marnie says, suddenly appearing in the doorway. I swear to God that woman has bionic hearing.
“Good night,” I say.
“I left something on your bed,” she says.
“Okay.”
Of course she left something on my bed. It is probably the new Pottery Barn teen catalog. Or paint samples. Because she still hasn’t taken the hint that I will not be decorating that room.
But when I get upstairs, I see that I am wrong. It is not a Pottery Barn teen catalog. It is not paint samples. It is a plain manila envelope addressed to Ms. Anna Collette. It has “Lenox Park, Atlanta, Georgia” scrawled in the upper-left corner and “DO NOT BEND” scrawled across the top.
I grab a pair of scissors, slice open the envelope, pull out what’s inside.
It’s a photo.
It’s a big, shiny, blown-up photo of Harper and Scarlett and Caro and Presley and Marnie and me. We are wearing our bedazzled tiger-paw tank tops. We have our arms around each other. Harper has half a hot dog hanging out of her mouth. Caro is crossing her eyes. Presley is grabbing Scarlett’s boob and Marnie is giving me rabbit ears. We are all laughing.
Without even thinking, I open my backpack and pull out a roll of tape. I stick the photo on the wall next to my bed, so when I wake up it will be the first thing I see.
CHAPTER
19
IF YOU’D TOLD ME a year ago that I would be hanging out with Sarabeth Mueller and Shawna Wendall, I would have laughed. I didn’t think we had anything in common. Maybe we still don’t. But here we are.
The three of us have been brainstorming about our talent show act every day after school. Sarabeth has transformed her basement into a music studio. She even has microphones hooked up, and a stage area with mirrors on the wall so we can watch ourselves while we’re singing.
It was Shawna who suggested we do a mash-up. Each of us picks a song and we find a way to mix them together, no matter how bizarre it sounds. We are, after all, Gobsmacked. We want to blow people’s minds.
That’s how we ended up with songs by Joan Jett, Sara Bareilles, and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole—a random combination if ever there was one.
“An a cappella mash-up challenge,” Sarabeth says, spreading out song lyrics on the floor. “Bring it.”
I don’t know why I ever thought Sarabeth was weird. I mean, she is weird, but not in a bad way. Here in her basement, her weirdness kind of makes her our leader.
“Where do we start?” Shawna says.
Sarabeth holds up a box of highlighters. “Common themes, common words, anything to connect these songs.”
Shawna, despite her disdain for all things spirited, has become pretty gung ho about this talent show. It’s strange. Every night this week, we’ve been talking on the phone—about our act, about Animal Planet, about music we like. Sometimes she’ll throw in something serious when I least expect it. Like last night, I was talking to her from bed, and she just bluntly asked, “Is your mom bipolar one or bipolar two?”
“How did you know there are two?” I said.
“I read a lot of psych books, remember?” And she told me about this book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, a diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.
“You read that for fun?”
“Hello, I pluck out my own eyebrows. I read whatever I can to make sense of that.”
I felt bad then, but Shawna didn’t seem upset. She just asked me again. “So what is she—bipolar one or bipolar two?”
“Bipolar two,” I said.
“Good. If you’re going to be bipolar, that’s the kind to be.”
“Really?”
“Yup. It’s much milder. Easier to treat. Better long-term prognosis.”
“Huh.”
She was quiet for a minute, and that’s when I asked her. “So, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You said you read those books to make sense of your … you know…”
“Trichotillomania?”
“Right.”
“It’s a mouthful, I know,” Shawna said. “Most people just call it trich.”
“Okay, trich. So how do you … make sense of it?”
“Well, I know I don’t do it on purpose. That’s the first thing. Trich is on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. There are a few different theories. Brain abnormalities. Gene mutations. Anxiety. Stress … I started pulling out my eyebrows when I was ten, right after my parents split up, so clearly that was a big stresser. But it’s not the whole story.”
“Can you … is there treatment?”
“Yeah,” Shawna said. “There’s behavioral therapy. And there’s medication. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I do both. There’s no cure exactly, but I can go into remission. That’s, like, a break from the urge to pull them out, and then they can grow back in. Which I’m hoping will happen soon … Okay? Do you feel fully educated now?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “Thank you, Dr. Wendall.”
“That’ll be two hundred bucks,” she said. “I’ll have my office bill you.”
Shawna is funny sometimes. Sarcastic, yes. Caustic, yes. But funny, too. Like now, in Sarabeth’s basement, she is sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by paper and highlighters, and she is drawing a bicycle. “Pedal, boys!” she keeps shouting. Which is one of the lyrics to her song. It’s called “Bad Reputation,” and it’s all about rebellion—going against the grain—which Shawna is so good at.
“I think I’ve got one,” Sarabeth says, holding up a piece of paper. “Listen to this. I’ve never been afraid … wanna see you be brave … that fits right in with Anna’s dare to dream. That’s good, right?”
“Hell yeah,” Shawna says.
“I like it,” I say.
“Great,” Sarabeth says. “Let the Gobsmacking begin!”
* * *
I didn’t plan on doing this, but I’m doing this. As I leave Sarabeth’s house, I call Marnie to let her know where I’m headed. She says fine, as long as I’m back before dark. It’s mid-October, so the days are getting shorter. But luckily Sarabeth’s house, Regina’s house, and my dad’s house are all along the same two-mile stretch, and there’s a bike path.
It’s cold and windy as I pedal up Regina’s driveway. My mother is on the front stoop, huddled under a blanket, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey,” I say.
She blows smoke off to one side. “Hey. This is unexpected.”
I lean Marnie’s bike against the house and walk up the steps. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“Cold day for a bike ride,” my mother says.
“It’s not so bad.”
I sit on the bench beside her. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since that day in Regina’s car. We’ve spoken on the phone a few times, but nothing face-to-face. She doesn’t look much better, to be honest. Which means she still looks bad. Maybe her hair is less greasy, but she’s pale, and she has on a ratty gray sweatshirt that must be Regina’s because I’ve never seen it before.
“You came to see me,” she says. “That’s nice.”
I nod but don’t say anything. What is there to say? Does she care what I did today? Does she want to hear about Shawna’s Joan Jett impersonation or Sarabeth’s foot stomp that keeps the beat perfectly? Does she give a crap that we now have an awesome mash-up for the talent show? I don’t know if she does. In a weird way, my mother feels like a stranger to me, even though I have known her my whole life. Even though we have laughed together and played Scrabble together and watched TV together and talked together about a million different subjects. Not just stupid stuff, either, like Dani and her mom, who always talked about diet tips and which celebrities were dating. My mom and I talked about important stuff. Like sex. And drugs. And peer pressure. And body image. And war in the Middle East. We have always been able to talk honestly about anything. Except for this. We do not talk about her depression. Not ever.
“Regina is making stuffed shells,” she tells me.
“Yeah?” I love Regina’s stuffed shells.
“Want to stay for dinner?”
“No,” I lie.
She smiles a little. “Yes you do.”
“We had stuffed shells the night before … everything happened … remember? You wouldn’t get out of bed, so Regina dropped off food.”
My mother takes a drag of her cigarette.
“You wouldn’t eat, either,” I say. “I had to eat by myself.”
She closes her eyes, blows out a stream of smoke. “God, I sound like a delinquent mother.”
I shake my head and shrug. I think about telling her she’s not, but I’d only be saying it to make her feel better. So I don’t.
“You know how depression hits?” She takes another drag and blows the smoke out slowly. “It’s like an avalanche. No warning. You’re just knocked off your feet. You reach for a ledge … no ledge. You reach for a branch … no branch. You just keep falling. When you hit the bottom, everything around you settles like concrete. You’re up to your neck and you can’t move. All you can do is wait.”
“For what? A rescue dog?” The words come out sarcastic, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
She shakes her head. “No one can rescue you. You’re on your own. You have to look for a foothold.”
“But you’re trapped in concrete,” I remind her.
“You have to wait for it to crack. Then you have to chip your way out. Then you look for a foothold.”
“Oh.”
My mother glances at me. “Do you think,” she says quietly, “that you’ll forgive me sometime?”
Forgive her for what? I wonder. For trying to kill herself? For trying to kill herself in a place where I would find her? For not staying on her medication, which might have kept her from trying to kill herself in the first place? There is so much to forgive.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Will there be another avalanche?”
My mother crushes her cigarette in one of Regina’s flowerpots. “I can’t promise you there won’t.”
“Then I can’t promise I’ll forgive you.” It comes out bitchy, which isn’t how I mean it. What I mean is, Please don’t try it again.
She takes a pack of Marlboro Lights out of her sweatshirt. “The doctors are hopeful. It’s a new diagnosis. New medication.”
“Are you taking it?”
She nods.
“Are you going to stay on it?”
She lets out a sigh. “I’m going to try, Anna. I’m really going to try this time.” She shakes the pack. “I’m out of the concrete. I’ve got my first foothold. That’s all I can tell you right now.”
I nod. There’s nothing else I can ask for, no contract I can make her sign. So we just sit there on the bench. She takes out another cigarette, lights it. We watch the orange and red and gold leaves swirl around Regina’s yard.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I finally say.
“Me too.”
“It’s getting dark.” I stand up. “I should go.”
She nods. I bend over and kiss her cheek. Then I head down the stairs and hop on Marnie’s bike.
* * *
When I get back, Marnie is in the kitchen. She has Jane in the BabyBjörn and there is flour everywhere. Flour on the counters, flour on the floor, flour on Marnie’s cheek, flour in Jane’s hair. “Hey, Anna.” Marnie smiles when she sees me. “Jane and I are baking!”
“I can see that.”
“Try this,” she says, handing me something.
“What is it?”
“It’s a muffin.”
“It’s green.”
“I know. I call it the Incredible Hulk.”
I lift the muffin to my nose, sniff. “There’s no kale in this thing, is there?”
“Don’t worry about what’s in it. Just try it.”
I take a bite. I don’t want to, but I do. I chew, chew. Swallow.
“Well?”
“It’s not bad, actually.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I’m not lying. I take another bite.
“Did you hear that, Janie? Your sister likes our muffins!” When Marnie claps, a puff of flour hits the air.
CHAPTER
20
MY FATHER AND JANE walk me to the bus stop in the morning, which is totally unnecessary and weird. It is doubly weird because my father is wearing sweatpants. Marnie is sick, apparently, and he is staying home to help out.
“She was fine yesterday,” I say. “She was making muffins.”
“She was vomiting all night.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah. Do you need money for lunch?”
“I’m good.”
“You sure? I’ll just give you a ten…” He tries to reach into his pocket, then realizes he’s wearing sweatpants.
“It’s okay. I already packed a lunch.”
“You did?” He sounds surprised.
“Dad. I’ve been packing my own lunches since I was, like, seven.”
“You have?”
“Are you seriously pretending you don’t know that?”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Well, I did. I cooked, too. And did laundry. And rolled Mom out of bed and stuck her in the shower.”
My father frowns. “I don’t remember that.”
“That’s because you were never home.”
“I must have been working.”
“Whatever,” I mutter.
“Don’t whatever me, Anna. I don’t appreciate it.”
“Well, I don’t appreciate your selective memory.”
My father shakes his head. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“You think I want to fight with you?”
“I don’t know.” He huffs out a sigh, shifts Jane from one arm to the other. There’s a string of drool hanging from her bottom lip, threatening to drop. “Marnie thinks—”
“Oh, Marnie thinks? What does Marnie think?”
“She thinks you and I need to work on communicating more effectively.”
“Really,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Well, that is an astute observation.”
“Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. Probably.”
“Rotten teenager.”
“Rotten father.”
It is the weirdest thing, the tiniest lifting of tension. So tiny. A smirk twitching at both our mouths, just as the bus pulls up.
* * *
“Hey, Anna,” Sarabeth says when
I plop down next to her.
“Hey.”
“Talent-show shopping today. Did you bring money?”
“Yup.” I pat my pocket.
After school, Mrs. Mueller is taking Sarabeth, Shawna, and me to Roz’s Place in North Providence, to find clothes for our act. I’ve never been there, but apparently it’s a thrift store with really cool, inexpensive clothes.
“There’s something for everyone,” Sarabeth says. “Preppy. Goth. Emo. Skater. Punk. Euro. Hippie. You name it.”
“I don’t know what I am,” I say.
Sarabeth grins. “That’s the fun part.”
* * *
The school day drags. It always does, but anticipation of a shopping spree makes it move even slower than usual.
The only person who has ever taken me to buy clothes is my mother, and she has such strong opinions that it’s not even fun. I don’t want you to be a slave to fashion, Anna, she would say. And, Your worth should not be defined by what you wear. Hence my no-name jeans and granny panties. I never got to decide who I was because my mother wouldn’t let me step foot in the stores where other girls shopped. Those mannequins look like child prostitutes. Do you want to look like a child prostitute, Anna? The one time I went to the mall with Dani and came home with a halter top, my mother made me return it. When I pointed out her hypocrisy—she had a closet full of halter tops—she didn’t even blink. I’m an adult. You’re a child. I want you to think about the message you’re sending.
Well, the message I’m sending today is Ha! The school counselor won’t be there to judge. It’ll just be me, and my pocketful of cash—the sum total of the money my father has given me since I moved in.
“Anna?”
I look up. “Yeah?”
Ms. Baer-Leighton smiles. She has something brown and crusty-looking in the corner of her mouth. Chocolate, maybe. Or refried beans. I can hear sniggering and I don’t even have to turn around to see who it is. Jessa Bell and Whitney Anderson spend half of every class mocking people.
“Do you have an answer to number seven?” Ms. Baer-Leighton says, and there it is, staring at me. The brown shmutz.
“Thirteen degrees,” I tell her.
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