by Phoebe North
“What’s up, Annie?” I say, loudly and firmly.
Annie cuts right to the chase. I should expect nothing less from her, I guess. “Why are you avoiding me? Did I do something wrong?”
I shrug, peeling the lid off my yogurt and skimming the top off with a plastic spoon. The truth is, she didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not her fault. It’s the whole damned situation. It’s James and her mom and her maybe-racist dad. It’s the hollow silence of their house at night. It’s James’s empty room, and his even emptier poetry, with all of those Empty but Important Capital Letters. It’s the whole situation. Harper was right, I know that now. It’s too, too weird.
“It’s fine. I’m just busy—”
“Damn it!” Annie exclaims, loud enough that everyone at the table turns, and the next table over, too. Her hands are shaking. The plates on her tray jitter and jangle. Of course, she’s not just eating fries and a slice of pizza like a normal teenager. She’s got a whole school lunch feast there, salad and a slice of quiche, and a glass of orange juice, and they’re doing the electric slide over the plastic tray. “You can’t just pretend like nothing happened. I know it did, Vidya. And you do, too.”
She looks at me, and I see that her eyes, so bright and so familiar, are full of tears. I cringe. I know how other kids can be, what fucking assholes they’ll be about her if she cries in front of the whole cafeteria. And I care, unlike Annie. I can’t let her humiliate herself.
I jump out of my seat and pull the tray from her hands, setting it on the table. Then I lead her toward the door.
“Where are you going, missy?” Mr. Macklin calls out.
I sigh and turn around. “Can we have a bathroom pass?”
Mr. Macklin is glaring, and I can tell he’s about to say no, so I add:
“She’s got her period. I need to get a tampon out of my bag.”
He rolls his eyes at that. “Just go.”
Annie’s still sniffling as we head down the hall, but I hear her let out a little snort of laughter. “Nice. Brave.”
For some reason this annoys me. “It’s not the first time I’ve cut class,” I tell her, even though it’s something I haven’t made a habit of doing since James. Mr. Macklin is still peering at us from the doorway, so I make a big show of heading toward the bathroom, but the minute his back is turned we rush into the northwest stairwell instead.
Annie’s still holding my hand, hers limp and warm in mine. But then she squeezes it tighter as I duck under the stairs, out of the view of pretty much anyone. The light from the windows is slanted and blue, and her tear-streaked face is wan. But still pretty. With her rumpled hair, and the way the light dances through the naked trees outside, she looks almost like a mermaid.
I squeeze her hand back.
“We need to talk,” I tell her.
She winces, and at last, pulls her hand away. She shields her eyes with it instead, like she can’t stand to look at me. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” I tell her, which is true. It’s not Annie. “I like you. A lot. But it’s your family and . . . this whole situation. James. It’s too much for me. Your mom grilled me about some internet comment about James on the car ride home.”
“Oh,” Annie says. She rolls her eyes. “Wheresjames[Redacted].com. She’s obsessed with that whole stupid site.”
“Yeah. That. And she acted like it was somehow my fault that some rando left some creepy comment, and you know what they did to me after James disappeared? Your mom and dad? Do you know how many times they insisted the police talk to me?”
Annie’s staring at me, hard. And then she looks down, her hair veiling her eyes. “I knew you had to go in a few times,” she says softly.
“Eight. Eight times. That’s how many times they questioned me. Twice, they made me leave school in the middle of the day. No one said sorry to me or anything, you know that? No one even acknowledged that I lost him, too.”
My voice cracks when I say it. I let it. My gaze is fierce, even as my eyes are filling up with tears.
Annie’s still looking down at her feet. Guilty, maybe. Or sad.
“I’m sorry you lost him, too, Vidya,” she says. “He loved you and it shouldn’t have happened and it sucks.”
She looks up at me, and her eyes are like a bright, clear morning, and I feel my heart break in two all over again. The tears are streaming down my face now, flowing hard.
“Thank you,” I say, and my words are practically whispered.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a clump of cafeteria napkins. God, she’s weird. But I take one, laughing a little despite myself, and wipe my face.
“Thank you,” I say again.
Annie swallows hard, nodding. “I’m sorry,” she says. “They shouldn’t have made you feel that way. You matter, too. But in my family, it’s like . . . if you’re not Jamie, then you might as well be—”
“Invisible?” I offer. My heart feels squeezed. I know in that moment that we’re in this together. Because no matter how bad it’s been for me, it’s been so, so much worse for her. “Your family is so fucked up,” I tell her.
She laughs a little, weakly, at that, even though her eyes are shiny with tears, too. “Isn’t everybody’s?”
I want to tell her that no, everybody’s isn’t. My mom would never do what her family did to me. She would never talk to Annie the way her mother did to me, too close and too weird and too raw. She’s always my mom. My dad isn’t some hazy figure I only see twice a week but a constant, steady presence, giving me mixtapes and guitar lessons and brand-new pairs of perfect purple shoes. I don’t have any brothers, gone or otherwise. My parents wanted to be able to travel, they always said. That’s why they had one kid. All their attention is focused on me, not split in a hundred different directions. If anything, there have been times when I felt like I was too visible, when all their love was laser focused on helping me with a problem or making sure I did the right thing and I’d wished, secretly, that I could have had more space.
But we’re not perfect. I think about Naniji and Nanaji, and the things that I don’t tell them, and the way that I dress when I go over to their house—like I’m a different person altogether. I think about the way that I feel when I’m there, under scrutiny, and how my mom has it even worse, how she always puts too much sugar in her own tea just because she’s so nervous, like a bird in a cage that can’t stop pulling out its own feathers.
My life isn’t like Annie’s life. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, either.
“Yeah, I guess,” I tell her.
She wipes away the last bit of tears with that weird wad of napkins. “I really, really like you,” she says, and she steps closer. I can feel the heat off her body, there in the echoing space under the stairs.
But still. I think of her brother. I think of everything I once shared with him—how he’ll always be the ghost standing between us. Or not even a ghost for her, because to Annie, he’s alive. I consider protesting, but then I look at her, the fawn-colored hair hanging in her face, the fine line of her eyelashes. She’s pretty. So so so so pretty. And in that moment, contemplating her freckles, I’m not thinking about James at all. I’m stepping forward to meet her, brushing back her hair, and crushing her in a long, deep kiss. In a moment, our mouths are open and our bellies are squished together and she’s pinning me up against the wall and I’m only thinking of her as I kiss her fiercely and my body is warm and wet and Slip ’N Slide slick.
She pulls away, suddenly stern and serious. “I want you to know that the way I feel about you has nothing to do with my brother,” she says. “Except that from the moment I first saw you, I thought you should be with me. Not with him.”
God, what a line. But I’m smiling, and my face is hot, and my heart is beating fast. “I thought you were the same person or something,” I tell her.
It’s at that, of all things, that she blushes. “There are doors I kept closed from him,” she says, then lowers her voice to a whisper. “Even in
Gumlea.”
I’m not sure what that means. I’m not sure that I want to know what it means, either. But there’s one thing I’m certain of: I want to kiss her again. So I hook my finger into her belt loop and pull her close.
I kiss her and kiss her. At some point, when I take a breath, she wrinkles her freckled nose at me.
“So this isn’t too weird for you, then?”
I want to laugh, but I’m too breathless. Because it is, and it isn’t. It is, but it doesn’t matter to me, not right now.
We kiss more. The light is slanted and green through the trees. Then there’s a sound, and a beam of harsh yellow light from the hall.
“What are you girls doing?” Mr. Macklin calls. I take Annie’s hand and lead her, red-cheeked and giddy, out of our hiding place.
“Nothing,” I say, in a voice so firm, even Mr. Macklin doesn’t question it.
We head back to the cafeteria, together.
Sixteen
WE’RE TOGETHER ALL THE TIME after that. No one questions it, not Harper or my mom or the emo boys or Mrs. Kepler. We sit next to one another on the risers between songs, her head on my shoulder. We walk down the hall together, our fingers intertwined. I bring my ukulele to school sometimes and during study hall, I serenade her, while she draws the action of my hands, the line of my lips. We always take the late bus home together after Madrigals, snuggled up on the plastic seat together, the whole world streaming by our window. At home, if she’s not with me, she’s tucked against my cheek on the other end of my phone. We talk about everything and nothing. Her family. My family. Madrigals, and the first competition that’s coming up. Harper and her boyfriends. Her best friend, Miranda, who is transferring to vo-tech next year. We talk about music, and the guys in the music store downtown who always ignore me even though I play better than most of the dudes who go in there. About art, and the fact that she’s always been good at it, without even thinking about it. About Gumlea.
Tangled together on my parents’ sofa together after school, she tells me how we’ll open the veil. The way she talks about it isn’t much different from the way a regular kid would plan a party. She rattles off all the things we’ll need: sage and dark red wine and the ashes of animal bone. When I ask her where we’ll get that, she only smirks at me, like it’s a stupid question.
Then she gets the knife out of her backpack.
“I wish you wouldn’t bring that thing to school,” I tell her. “You’re going to get caught. And then what?”
“I’m not,” Annie says firmly, like there can be no arguing. Then she turns the knife over. I see that she’s drawn something there in Sharpie.
“Let me see that,” I say, holding out my hand.
The knife has a decent weight. The hilt feels good tucked against my palm. There, on the white artificial bone, Annie’s drawn faces in ultrafine black pen. It’s a man, his beard long and scraggly, and a girl and a boy, facing him down together.
“That’s the pirate,” Annie says softly. “He’s the one holding Jamie on the other side.”
I look at the faces she’s drawn. They look just like the two of them, with their strong profiles, messy hair, and glaring eyes. Seeing James makes my stomach shift. It always does.
“How do you know that he’ll do his part in the ritual?” I ask her, holding my thumb over James’s face so I don’t have to look at him.
Annie lets out a long sigh. “I don’t. But every night, just before I drift off to sleep, I ask him. Jamie once said that Gumlea was a dream realm. We’re born from it, and we return to it each night, over and over again, until we die and stay there for good. So I figure if there’s any truth to what he said, the veil is thinnest right before I fall asleep. I should be able to speak to him through it even though I’m stuck here now.”
Like a brand, James’s face feels like it’s searing itself into my thumbprint. “I hope so,” I lie.
Sometimes, I like hearing Annie talk about Gumlea. It makes my life feel a little more starlit and strange, a little less ordinary. But I don’t like talking about our “ritual.” I might want magic to be real, sometimes, but I’m old enough to know better. And even if it was, I’m not entirely sure I want James to come back, either. Of course I want him to be okay, to come back to his family, where he belongs. But I can barely imagine what it would be like if he did, and in the meantime, the situation between me and Annie is complicated enough without her brother standing between us.
Before Annie can say anything else, my mom comes in. I tuck the knife underneath a throw pillow before she can see.
“Are you staying for dinner, Annie?” she asks, because Annie’s been staying for dinner a lot lately. My mom doesn’t know about the knife, warm and sticky in my throbbing hand. When Annie says she is, my innocent mother only smiles.
Seventeen
A FEW DAYS LATER, WE’RE in her bed together as the sun goes down. It feels like her mother is never home, and since her little brother is with her dad during the week, we’re alone in her house all the time. I love it.
It’s a gray day, but the leaves outside are red and gold and fiery and make the dusky sunset seem brighter. She’s playing a mix I made her from the laptop on her floor. The Modern Lovers and the Silvertones and of course the Beach Boys. The music is weaving its way through us, gently humming in our bones and our brains. Maybe that’s why everything feels so amazing. Or maybe it’s just the way I feel when she’s curled up next to me, her head on my shoulder, her hand clutching mine.
“You know what I like about you, Annie?” I’m asking her. I hold up her hand, kiss her knuckles, feel the smooth rich texture of her skin. Tell her it’s okay, Jonathan Richman is singing. Tell her it’s all right.
She doesn’t even open her eyes. “What?” she asks sleepily.
“You are really and truly yourself. You say what’s on your mind and don’t mince words with anyone. You’re so brave.”
She lets out a small, snorted breath at that, which surprises me.
“What?”
“I’m a fucking liar,” she says, which makes my back stiffen even in the cradle of her soft mattress. Keira was a liar. And look how that ended up. But Annie must feel the way my body’s changed beside her, because she adds, “Not to you. Never to you.”
“To who, then?”
“The rest of the freaking world. I get perfect grades and keep our house clean even though it makes me want to blow my brains out and I never say anything when Dad goes on and on about his new girlfriend from his church even though the whole thing makes me sick. I’m such a coward. I’m not like you.”
“I’m not brave,” I tell her, but she’s suddenly squeezing my hand so tightly that it starts to tingle.
“Lies.”
“What? I’m not. Look at the way I lie to my grandparents.” I’ve told her all about how Naniji and Nanaji disowned my mom for a few years after she married my dad. Because of that, I’m happy letting them believe that I’m the perfect granddaughter. They don’t know a thing about Annie. We just don’t talk about it. We pretend like that part of my life doesn’t exist. That I’m a good girl. Even though I’m not. “Plus, I let Harper boss me around all the time. The drinking and stuff.”
“That’s nothing. That’s normal.”
“You’re normal, too,” I tell her.
That’s when she sits up and looks at me and we both start laughing.
She tucks her head down against my neck, laughing a moment longer. And then she looks up at me, her eyes burning with a steady light. “I lie to my therapist,” she says. “She’s just there to help me and I lie to her. I’m terrified of what would happen if she knew the truth about Gumlea.”
I’m not laughing anymore. My throat feels a little dry. “What do you tell her?”
“She knows it’s something I thought about once. I let her believe that it’s a coping mechanism for losing Jamie. A paracosm, she calls it. She told me that Charlotte Brontë and her sisters had one, too.”
Annie rolls h
er eyes, as though the idea of sharing something with the long-dead writer is absurd, just absurd. It doesn’t sound absurd to me. None of it does.
“But you don’t really think that?” I ask her, because it sounds pretty good. The idea that Gumlea is a story that Annie tells herself to make life easier is comforting. Neat. Normal. Maybe someday she’ll grow up to be a writer, too, and it will all make sense.
But right now, she shrugs. “Gumlea was there before he disappeared. Before we even discovered it. He was always the Nameless Boy. And I was Emperata Annit, eyes like water, hair like fire. Fists of fury.”
She punches me lightly in the arm. I punch her back. Then we’re kissing for a while, her knees up between my legs and everything warm and right.
After, I tangle my hands through her brown hair. Her cheek is pressed against my collarbone. The playlist has ended, and now I can hear how our breathing matches.
“Hair like fire, huh?” I ask, looking at hers in the fading sunset. Even in this ruddy light, it’s brown. Just brown.
Annie shrugs. “I always wanted to be a redhead,” she says.
I look at her hair a moment longer. “Why not just do it?”
She sits up, staring at me for a long time, silhouetted against the window. Then she smiles.
Even though it’s almost dark out, we walk to the ShopRite together. There, under the fluorescent lights, we go through the meager selection of dyes. Spiced Auburn. Autumn Nutmeg. New Penny. Eternal Flame. That’s the one that Annie chooses, holding the box, with the ridiculous, blow-dried model, tight against her chest. I’m not really sure that it’s going to look good on her, with her fair skin and freckles. But she looks so hopeful as she counts out her change for the cashier that I don’t want to say anything. I only stand there, my hand in her back pocket.
The sky is inky on the way home. We haven’t had dinner and our stomachs are yowling and the trucks on the highway have lights that are too bright and too close. None of that matters except the way that it feels when we walk home together, our heads touching, our fingers both tangled around the thin white skin of the plastic bag.