“By the way,” I say, “you weren’t going to cancel Father’s party because of me, were you?”
She glances at me with narrowed eyes. “Hmmm,” she says, and I know the answer. Of course. How can you celebrate and act like everything is normal when your daughter is obviously anything but? It stings a little. The last thing I want to be is a drag.
“I think we should have it,” I say. I play the pity card. “Honestly, we could all use a little fun. I’m sick of tests and rehab and serious stuff. I need to get a life again.”
She chews her bottom lip. “I don’t know—”
“What’s the worst that could happen? If I get tired, I’ll go to my room and rest. Pinky swear.” I stick out my bottom lip in a silly pout, and she laughs.
“We’ll see,” she says. “I’ll talk to Dad about it.”
I do a little clap of faux excitement.
Then we are out of things to say. The sun is now shining above the fields that stretch out in every direction, and the only sound is the hum of the tires on the pavement. The seat belt is too tight at my shoulder, and my legs somehow don’t want to stay still. I fiddle with the box in my coat pocket, slip two more magic mints into my mouth and swallow without even tasting them.
I feel so awake, but the silence is unbearably heavy. Then it occurs to me: maybe I can use this opportunity to get to know my mother better. Maybe I haven’t been giving her a chance.
“So,” I say, my voice louder than I mean it to be, “how did you and Father meet? Was it love at first sight?”
Mother glances at me, then her eyes go back to the road. “Well, we met at a dance. I was still in high school, if you can believe that.”
“So were you hot for him on the spot?”
Even I am surprised at what has come out of my mouth.
“Excuse me?”
I swallow hard. “Sorry. Cute, I mean. Did you think he was cute?”
“Yes, I did. There was something about him, about the way he carried himself. He was confident, but not arrogant. I was thrilled when he asked me to dance.”
“Was he a good dancer?”
She lets out this light musical giggle that I’ve never heard. I remember the long-haired, big-eyed girl I saw in the old photos. “No, not really,” she says.
“When did you know you wanted to marry him?” I ask. “Was it right away? Did your parents like him?” I know I should stop and let her answer, but somehow my mouth won’t give it up. “Did you have any other, any other… suitors?” An image of Mother sitting out on a front porch, wearing a dress straight out of Gone With the Wind, pops into my head, and I let out an obnoxious snort. “I bet they were pounding down the door.”
The quiet that greets me tells me I’ve gone too far. Mother’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
I take deep breaths and try in vain to calm this crazy buggy feeling that has now taken over my whole body. She finally speaks, her voice soft but crisp. “There were a few, actually. But I only had eyes for your dad.”
“Of course,” I say. “I never met the others, but he’s a keeper.” Change the subject, change the subject, I tell myself, and before I have a chance to consider my choices, my mouth has chosen for me. “You hate the farm, don’t you? Are you dying to sneak out in the middle of night with the rifle and shoot all those bison, or what?”
The car veers toward the side of the road. Mother makes an odd sound, like clearing her throat and gasping at the same time. I chew on a hangnail. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “I mean, they are ugly, right? And kind of smelly?”
I don’t mean a word I’m saying, but I have to have to fill the air, can’t keep any random thought in my head where it should stay.
Mother’s face is bright red, and I’m sure she’s ready to toss me out on the side of the highway. But, unlike me, she can’t find her voice.
“Oh my god, I have to pee!” I screech. “Pronto!”
Now the car swerves suddenly to the right, and we lurch to a stop. She turns slowly, deliberately, and glares at me. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Brain damage, remember?” I shove a few tissues from a box in the back-seat into my pocket, open the door and bolt across the ditch. The long grass is wet and slippery, and I barely make it into the shelter of trees before I have to whip down my jeans and crouch among the pine needles. A feeling of relief washes over me as I go, hands shaking as I pull out the tissue. The air in the bush is fresh and cool. One, two, three deep breaths, my pants back up, and I start moving out of the trees.
Odd angles of light land on the car, and Mother gazes out toward the field on the other side of the road, where bales glisten with dew. I see only her shoulder and the back of her head, but I stand there for a minute and watch her. She’s a tough woman, and not exactly easygoing. But I want to rush to her, suddenly, and wrap my arms around her and never let her go.
I want to be her little girl again, have her take care of me and tell me everything is going to be all right. But the sad truth is, I am not her daughter at all. I’m a rude, crazy stranger who is posing as her darling Jessica. I move slowly back to the car, open the door and slump into the seat. Energy is still pulsing through my veins, but somehow the spark in me has flickered out.
“Sorry,” I say.
She turns to me, eyes red, and nods. We pull back onto the highway, Mother clicks on the radio, and we listen to country music for the rest of the drive.
By the time we make it to the mall, I am less wired. I can act normal—or what is normal for me anyway—and I make an effort to go along with all of Mother’s ideas. Yes, jeans, a few T-shirts, a nice top, maybe a skirt. Absolutely, some new shoes and socks and underwear. I follow her around as she plucks clothes from racks and asks me for approval; I nod and occasionally proclaim “cute” or “very nice” for good measure.
We pass through the dress section, and Mother runs her fingers through a rack of floral numbers. “How about one of these?”
I shrug, but she’s already checking labels for sizes. I end up trying four in the dressing room, and they all look a little too cheerful on me, with my lopsided hairdo and pale face. But Mother oohs and aahs over a turquoise-and-brown one with satiny straps. I tell her I like it so we can get out of there.
We end the morning with lunch at the food court, and I crash in the car on the way home. When we pull up in the driveway, I am so out of it that Mother has to lead me from the car to my room.
I crawl into bed, clothes and all, and for a few seconds before I drift off, I imagine that I really am her little girl again. Mother has carried me in, asleep, from the car and tucked me into bed. How warm and safe that must have felt, being held in adoring arms all the way to the coziness of my froggy room, knowing I belonged perfectly there with my family, in my home and in the world.
Poltergeist
I wake up in the middle of the night, my head groggy and my throat dry. It must be the Jolt mints, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t get back to sleep. I get up, turn on a light and chug a glass of water.
I was completely whacked with Mother in the car. I’ve got to get my crap together, at least try to act like a semi-sane human being. And, most of all, I’ve got to try harder to figure out what made the Girl tick. Down on my hands and knees, I pull the shoebox out from under the bed. I dig the flowered journal from the bottom, take a deep breath and open the cover. There is no date for the entry, only Dear Me in a messy scrawl.
Our new English teacher, Mr. Parent, gave us a weird homework assignment. Everyone complained about it, and so did I—but in the end it got me thinking.
We have to write our own eulogy. We can write things we want people to say about us after we are dead. It was harder than I thought. Deep down, I know what people would probably say: that I was a nice person, a girl who followed the rules and always tried her best. But is that all that I am? It depressed me a little to think that there’s nothing more memorable about me. Nothing interesting. Here’s the best I could come up with.
>
There’s a folded piece of paper taped onto the page. Finally, something I can sink my teeth into. I open the folded paper and pull my legs up to my chest. I imagine Jessica sitting at the desk, hair pulled up in a ponytail, scribbling away on a sheet of paper.
On Monday, February 11, Jessica Evelyn Grenier passed away unexpectedly. She was a happy girl, full of life, one who enjoyed nature and the simple things: a quiet walk in the bush, camping with her family, chatting with her friends, taking photographs, a good bowl of cotton-candy ice cream. She grew up on the farm and was a country girl at heart. She loved her dog, Ginger, and the bison she helped take care of on the farm. She left behind her loving parents, Deborah and Ray, and an adoring little brother, Stephen. Though her life was short and she hadn’t had time to achieve greatness of any kind, she was happy. And that’s what matters.
A chill goes through me. She couldn’t possibly have known that soon afterward she would have a brush with death, and that though she would survive, the girl she had been would cease to exist. Most of all, I’m hit with the unfairness of it all, how she lost that feeling of belonging she once had. Maybe she was boring, but at least she knew where she fit. I read the eulogy again, slowly, until a sound—a creaking floorboard maybe?—startles me, and I look toward the door.
I hold my breath and listen. Another creak, this one louder. Someone is out there. It’s probably Stephen or Mother or Father, making a night visit to the bathroom. Willing my feet onto the carpet, I pad softly toward the door. My hand moves toward the doorknob, and when I turn it I suck in my breath. The door is open only a crack, enough for me to peer into the dark hallway. There is no light on in the bathroom, no sign of anyone. The house is silent.
My hand shoots out, pushing the door shut. I toss the journal into the shoebox and shove it into my closet, up high behind a stack of magazines. I scurry back to the bed, bury myself under the covers and pull them over my head. I’m overtired, I know. But I can feel her presence, and it’s eerily real. Jessica is here in the house. She’s lost and restless, and she wants her life back.
“I won’t read the rest,” I say. “I promise.”
It’s probably the caffeine still in my system making me jumpy. But it feels like the Girl is haunting me.
Human Sacrifice
I avoid Mother the next day, telling her I have a headache and hiding in my room. I find a file called Home Videos on Mother’s laptop and watch them one after another. The clips show the Girl, cheerful and smiling, at dance recitals and riding horses and playing Frisbee with Stephen. Physically, she looks like the Girl in the Mirror, but obviously this brain-damage thing has stripped that girl—me—of any lust for life.
By late afternoon I’m done with all the videos and starting to feel like a caged animal. When I hear the rumble of the school bus pulling away, I leap up and practically pounce on Little Man as he saunters up the steps.
“Hey,” I say. “Wanna hang?”
He laughs. “Let me have something to eat. Then we can talk.”
I watch him wolf down some cookies. Then he claps his hands together.
“I’ve got it! We’re going to be anthropologists, and we’re doing research on”—he does a drum roll on the table—“African Pygmies! We’ve been living among them for weeks, learning their customs. And now one of them, a kid we bribed with candy, has confessed that the chief is planning to kill us in an ancient ritual to appease the gods of the jungle.”
He looks eagerly at me.
“Cool,” I say. I know I am way too old to get into these games, that any self-respecting teenager would have too much pride. But what else do I have going on in my life?
“And then, then”—his eyes widen—“they are going to cook us over a fire and eat us.”
The kid is totally twisted. Gotta love him. I raise my hand for a high five, and his face breaks out in a grin.
“All right then, Doctor,” he says. “Let’s get our gear and head into the jungle. We’ve got to escape before they tie us up.”
I hear footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement, so we race up the stairs and close the door to Stephen’s room. “Oh no, the Pygmies!” Stephen whispers, and we both giggle. We throw some essential equipment in a backpack—flashlight, rope, walkie-talkies, granola bars—then sneak back downstairs and out the door.
Stephen glances around the front yard, then peers into the trees. “Well, Dr. Smith,” he says in a deep voice, “it appears we have managed to outwit the Pygmies for now. I don’t need to tell you, however, that they are excellent at tracking their prey through the jungle. We must take every precaution, or we will surely end up the main course at their next smorgasbord.”
It takes all my willpower to keep a straight face. “Absolutely, Doctor…Doctor…Doctor Pickle.” He rolls his eyes but doesn’t correct me.
I follow Dr. Pickle as he steals toward the fire pit, glances around to be sure we are safe, then sprints toward the garage. We stand with our backs flat against the wall, our breathing heavy, and listen.
Stephen’s eyes are large when he turns to me and grabs me by the shoulder. “We must find our way to the abandoned schoolhouse, the one the missionaries built. The Pygmies are afraid to enter it.” He peeks around the corner of the garage, then quickly pulls himself back.
“Who’s there?” I whisper.
He leans in closer and mouths, “The chief.”
I pull myself flatter against the garage, and we look at each other, holding our breath. “Follow me,” he mouths. We move ever so slowly, our backs sliding against the siding, to the back of the garage where it meets the trees.
“On the count of three,” he whispers, “make a run for it.” He takes a deep breath and starts the count, and on three we sprint as fast as our legs can go, crashing into the woods and bounding over rotten logs, until we are so deep into the bush we can barely make out the walls of the garage.
“That was kind of loud,” I say, my heart pounding. “Do you think he heard us?”
“Perhaps.” We peer through the trees in every direction, and I almost expect to see a short person in a loincloth, carrying a spear, moving through the trees toward us.
Stephen—Dr. Pickle—lets his backpack slide down to the forest floor, opens the zipper and pulls out a notebook. The pages are empty, but he scrutinizes them as though he needs to understand every detail.
“I think we can make it there by tonight.” He runs his finger along what I guess is an invisible map. “Are you up for it?”
I nod. “Absolutely.” He stuffs the notebook back into the bag and leads our trek out of the woods.
“By the way,” I ask, “what happened to the missionaries?”
He shakes his head solemnly. “They got made into shish kebobs.”
We walk, squirrels scurrying in the branches above us, until we reach a green shed on the edge of the trees that I hadn’t noticed before. “The schoolhouse!” Dr. Pickle says. “Hallelujah.”
We bolt quickly to the shed, and Stephen tugs on the door until it pops open. “This should do for the night.”
We step inside and are hit with a musty smell like rotten vegetables. There isn’t much room between a couple of old lawn mowers and some clay pots, so I perch on top of a mower and Stephen flips over a pot to sit on. We stare at each other, listening for Pygmy chants outside.
The words slip out before I have a chance to think about the repercussions. “Tell me about myself.”
Stephen looks startled. “Uh, okay. What do you want to know?”
I want to know everything, every mundane detail of the Girl’s life: what kind of movies she liked, what her first word was as a baby, if she was disgusted by fart jokes. At the same time, I am also terrified to learn these details. If I know these things and still catch myself screwing up, it means Jessie is lost forever.
“You know. What made her laugh? Could she be funny, or was she too prissy to let loose? Did people like her? That kind of stuff.”
Stephen pushes his glas
ses up the bridge of his nose. “You mean you.”
I nod. “Sure, me. Whatever.”
I don’t think he’s going to let it go, but he leans back against the wall and chews on his lip. “Hmmm, where to begin? Do I tell you how much of a royal pain in the butt you were?”
“Ha-ha.” I know he’s only being Stephen, trying to lighten the mood, but I need this from him. He’s the one person I think will shoot straight with me, won’t try to soften things or make me out to be an angel.
“Okay, seriously. Let’s see. You were sort of funny. You could get hyper and be a total goof with me or your friends. But you were also serious sometimes, like you were thinking about stuff.”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”
He shrugs. “How would I know? You never told me.”
“My bad,” I say.
“You liked taking pictures.”
I guessed that from all the photo albums in the Girl’s room. But I need something, well, less obvious. “Yeah, but what cracked me up? Did I like jokes?”
He scratches his fingernail along the pot he’s perched on. “Well, there was a joke about a cowboy you used to tell. Something about falling off his horse into a cow pie. I can’t remember exactly. But mostly you laughed at, well, things that happened, not jokes so much. Like when Dad danced around the kitchen with Mom’s bra on his head.”
Picturing it makes me smile. “This is fun. Tell me everything.”
Stephen peers out the streaky window. “Everything?” he says.
“All the juicy details,” I say. “Like, was there blood on the ground where Ramses charged me? How mangled was I, exactly?”
He whips his head around to face me. His cheeks are flushed, and something—fear?—flashes in his eyes. “You said we didn’t need to talk about it. Remember, at the hospital? You said you were fine now.” His voice trembles. I can only imagine what the little guy has gone through, almost losing his big sister and probably getting minimal attention from his parents for so long. It’s got to be painful to think about, and now I’m asking him to relive the horror of the day it all began? It’s too much to ask.
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