by Amy Sparling
Cece’s going on about the facts that she’s invented in her head, this stupid amnesia story she’s talked about so much over the years that even I can pretend that it might be true. While she talks, I punch in the passcode on the screen by our front door. It arms the entire house, locking us inside. It’s the kind of security system they use in retirement homes. You can’t get outside unless you have a code or you press the emergency button, which unlocks the doors but it also calls the police. The windows don’t open either. My parents installed it after Cece’s first terrifying manic episode where she kept leaving the house to find Thomas herself. We don’t use this lock all the time. I don’t even think we’ve used it in years.
But I’m using it now.
Cece folds her arms across her chest. “That’s how it’s going to be?”
I straighten and do what I’ve been taught to do at our family therapy sessions. Stand my ground as one of Cece’s guardians. “I can’t risk you running off to look for Thomas again,” I say, pressing my lips together so they turn down and let her know how sorry I feel for doing this. “You scared us really bad all those times you tried to run away. You can’t do that again, not now.”
“I was a stupid kid,” she says, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Obviously, I wouldn’t run away now. I’m older and smart enough to do my research. We should alert the news, get another press release and tell him to come home. Maybe he just needs to know that we still want him. If he has amnesia, he might think—”
I cut her off with a loud sigh. “Cece, stop. I loved Thomas and I loved your parents. But they’re all gone now. All we can do is move forward and focus on our own lives.”
Cece drags her hands down her face. “Stop it with the therapy bullshit, Lilah. We used to be friends.” She shakes her head, her jaw clenching. “You used to be on my side.”
“I am on your side.” Even I can tell the words don’t sound right. The truth is, Cece and I are strangers now. We don’t even go to school together anymore. She rides the bus and I get a ride with Kit.
“You’re not,” she says, turning and walking toward the hallway. “Maybe you used to be, but then you became just like everyone else.” She stops in front of her bedroom and turns back, fixing me with a blank stare. “A judgmental bitch.”
“Cece—” I call out, but it’s futile because she’s already slammed the door in my face. I guess this is okay, though. She’s pissed but she’s not manic. Maybe this will all blow over and she’ll be back to normal in the morning. All I have to do is keep her calm until my parents get home. Then she’ll be their problem, and I can go on with my life.
The rest of the day is a tribute to Nirvana’s Nevermind album, played on repeat in Cece’s room. I’d like to bash in those Hello Kitty speakers, if only to get a little silence in my own bedroom. I text Kit and tell her all about my parents’ trip and how we’re not supposed to have people over. We were planning on shopping at the new mall in Conroe, but that’ll have to be postponed. I try looking for an emoji that perfectly describes my mother’s particular brand of crazy, but Kit replies before I can find one.
BRB, going to knock myself into a coma for 8 days. Life without my bff sucks.
Really, I couldn’t have described my thoughts any better than that. Kit gets me. She’s StuCo president and really smart in that way that smart people naturally are. She never has to study or think hard; it’s like all the knowledge she needed was there the day she was born. I’m the kind of person that has to work out problems a few times before I get it. I used to feel smart because I was in advanced classes, but Kit is an entirely different level of intelligent that occasionally gets her teased because she’s also Korean. Luckily, people as smart as Kit also know to let crap like that roll off their backs.
Kit is probably the best friend I’ve had since Cece and I quit hanging out. When we were kids, Cece was my only friend and I didn’t care to have anyone else. We were related by blood and had a lifetime of memories together, so it was all I needed. Of course, that all changed right about the time we started high school. I’ve spent my entire high school life trying to outrun the reputation I got in junior high—the girl with the crazy cousin and the dead relatives. That meant spending as much time away from Cece as humanly possible and making friends wherever I could find them.
Freshman year was my Year of Being Preppy, and ironically, the one I’m most ashamed of even though the preppy people are usually smart and nice enough. I spent that summer begging my mom to buy me trendy brand name clothes from the nice stores in the mall, not the discount department stores where we usually shopped. I had to work my ass off doing extra chores and going above and beyond to earn the money for those three forty dollar shirts she eventually bought me.
Turns out you can’t just buy your way into the popular crowd. Even though Karen Martin was nice to me in math class, I learned that random friendliness from one of the popular kids did not translate into being able to talk to them when they’re in their cluster of popularity during lunch. My store-bought preppy phase fizzled in the first week of school, and those expensive shirts now hang in the back of my closet.
I was kind of grunge/skater punk for sophomore year, wearing ripped up jeans and lazy surfer T-shirts that were somehow more expensive than the preppy ones even though they were manufactured to look fifty years old. Dressing like a skater chick, though I had no skating capabilities at all, is what got me my first boyfriend Micah. He was tall and thin and did skateboard tricks on every outdoor handrail and sidewalk around the school. He also had a car, which made him at least five times cuter than he really was.
Cece hated him because every time he came over he would look at her weird. Like the way ignorant people look at someone with disabilities in public even though everyone thinks those people are assholes. It’s not like people asked to be different. Cece certainly never set out to become bipolar; it just happened. It’s just who she is. We weren’t exactly friends anymore, but no one deserves to be stared at like that.
Cece and I didn’t even talk much during our sophomore year, but I broke up with Micah because of how he looked at her. Yeah, Cece was too weird, too annoying, and too hyper most of the time. She was also the reason Mom upped our family therapy sessions to once-a-freaking-week, which if you ask me, should be classified as child abuse, yet somehow the American justice system lets it slide under the radar. Still, no one can treat my family members like shit except for me, so Micah had to go.
I kept up the skater girl digs for the rest of the year though, because Mom wasn’t going to buy me any more clothes and they were pretty comfortable, so I guess I didn’t mind. Junior year was my year of renewal. I met Kit at schedule pick up the day before school started and we clicked instantly. Kit is magnetic. She always seems to be in a good mood. She’s a lot like Cece in that she doesn’t put much thought into what she wears, but unlike Cece, she can pull it off. Jeans and a T-shirt look effortlessly cool on Kit, and I tried to emulate her all of junior year.
The jury is still out on whether it worked.
As we go into senior year, I like who I am becoming. I’m sick of trying to blend in with some social group and besides, I have Kit and a few other friends at school. I’m doing okay and I’ve finally shrugged off the tragic stares and whispers that followed me around after Thomas died.
I still don’t know who I am in any enlightening sense. But maybe not everyone is meant to be special. I just want to be normal, fit in, and never have a TV news camera in my face again.
On Sunday, Mom calls after I’ve finished eating a PB&J, even though the menu called for beef broccoli, which I didn’t feel like heating up. Turns out the world doesn’t end if the food schedule isn’t followed to a T. I almost wonder what else I’ve been missing out by never veering off the logical path of responsibility.
“We made it to our hotel last night,” Mom says, sounding exhausted. “Your incredibly skilled father almost hit a squirrel in the parking lot.” I can hear him grumbling about it in the
background. “How are things at home?”
“Cece’s talking about Thomas again,” I say, not because I want to cause a rift in the normalcy, but because it feels good to get it out. “She’s in her room so I think she’s fine, but still.”
“Did you lock the doors?” Mom says, the lilt in her voice alluding to more than just our normal door locks.
“Yes, and that kind of pissed her off.”
Mom sighs. “You’re not supposed to let her see you do it. We haven’t used those locks in months because we’ve been building trust. Now you’ve shattered the trust.”
“I know, but you’re not here and I was scared.” I lower my voice even though Cece’s music is still so loud she couldn’t hear a freight train crashing through the living room. “I can’t have her run away while you’re gone.”
“She won’t,” Mom says in her calming voice. Strangely, it helps a little. “Just deflect the discussion. Don’t disagree with her, but change the conversation into something else, okay?”
“Deflect and distract,” I say, suppressing an eye roll. “I know the drill. It still sucks.”
“It’ll be fine, Lilah. She’s probably just overwhelmed with us being gone and it’s making her miss her brother.”
I’m not sure if it’s cute or pathetic that Mom thinks we’d be anything other than psyched that they’re gone for a week. “You’re probably right,” I lie.
A sharp knock on my door makes me jump, nearly dropping my cell phone. Cece opens the door and pokes her head in. I mouth the word Mom and point to my phone. She nods and waits for me to finish.
Mom tells me a few more “tricks of the trade” in dealing with a bipolar person—as if I don’t already know them by heart—and finally she lets me get off the phone with only a few more safety tips on her end. I know she only means to help, but these talks of how to deal with a “bipolar person” used to scare the hell out of me. Self-help websites and forums for parents of children with bipolar disorder make it seem like you’re dealing with an alien being. I know that isn’t the case, even though my mother doesn’t seem to have come to the same conclusion.
There’s more to Cece than her mental illness, which is why I nod for her to come into my room instead of slam the door closed and hide away from her like I did a few years ago when her illness was new. If you listen to everything the internet says, you’d be terrified of my cousin. In reality, I know she won’t hurt me, even if we aren’t friends anymore. Bipolar or not, that’s just not who she is.
The moment I set the phone on my bed, Cece lets herself fully into my room. She’s holding her laptop open against her chest, the screen glowing on her Rainbow Bright shirt that looks vintage because it actually is. We were still friends when she bought it for seventy cents at the DAV thrift store, and she was so thrilled over the epic find that she wore it to bed three nights in a row.
“Can I sit down?” she asks. I scoot over and nod. This is the second time she’s been in my room all year. Maybe even in two years.
She blinks and draws in a deep breath to compose herself. It’s such a rare moment of apprehension on her part that it reminds me of that time I wanted a dog and prepared a speech to convince my parents it was a good idea. I was so nervous I probably looked exactly like Cece looks now.
With the laptop still facing her stomach, she says, “I found evidence that Thomas is alive. I’d like you to review it and then agree with me that he’s still out there and that we need to find him.”
My eyebrows shoot up before I can stop them. “Evidence?”
She turns the computer around. Her screen is on a Google maps street view of her old house. I lean forward and touch the trackpad, zooming in and then back out, half expecting to see Thomas standing in the road. But it’s just a house. “What kind of evidence do you think this is?”
She points to the red Jeep Wrangler parked in their old driveway. “That’s Thomas.”
I squint my eyes. “Can you see him? Because I just see a random car.”
“No, but it’s him.”
I sit back, cocking my head. “You don’t even know when that picture was taken.”
“Yes I do.” She clicks something on the screen and information pops up, showing the photos of this street were updated one month ago.
Still, I’m not convinced. “Some random car was in your driveway a month ago? It’s definitely interesting but it doesn’t mean anything. That’s probably the squatters. Some homeless person who needed a place to stay for the night.”
Without taking her eyes off mine, Cece slowly shakes her head as if she’s the all-knowing oracle and I am dead wrong. I press my lips together. “There’s zero evidence that Thomas drove that Jeep. And the license plate is blurred out so it’s not like you can even track it down.”
Cece grins and two dimples appear in her cheeks. “You’re wrong. A red Jeep Wrangler was Thomas’ favorite car and he always said he would get it one day.”
“I don’t remember that.”
She shrugs. “You don’t have to. That’s his car.” She closes the laptop and stands, her lips twisting into a smug grin. “And I can prove it.”
Anytime I stop to think about Thomas, my memories default to the good old days, when his parents were still alive and we were just cousins. Since he was a boy and boys were icky, Cece and I stuck together most of the time. Thomas and his friends were the cootie-ridden annoying older kids that always picked on us or ate all of the Oreos before we could get any.
It’s weird that my brain shoves aside most memories of the six months Thomas lived with us and how he was a teenager whose friends were starting to get kind of cute, but were still annoying. He was obsessed with cars, I remember that much. He was already talking about college and he had brochures sent to the house for various mechanic schools. He wanted to own his own car repair shop. He loved all cars, mostly the older ones.
But I can’t remember if he wanted a Jeep. I guess I never really paid attention. He was in high school then and Cece and I were still in junior high, so besides bursting into his room to yell at him for eating all the good food, and occasionally informing him that he’s going to be late to school, I didn’t really pay attention to his life much. So if he wanted a Jeep, I can’t remember. As far as I know, he wanted every car.
Despite all of my mother’s best laid plans, I am once again in her car with Cece, going against her wishes, driving to a place that’s not on the very small approved list of places we can go this week. I hate that I let Cece finally convince me to leave the house, but what choice did I have? Sometimes preventing an episode requires a little bending of the rules. If Mom were here, she’d tell me to be direct and yet caring, and tell Cece no means no. But Mom isn’t here and she doesn’t understand how it’s impossible to be the boss of someone when they’re technically a little older than you.
This wasn’t just a low-level pushover situation. Cece was in serious danger of burning a hole through my carpet with all of her pacing back and forth, swearing she can prove that a mysterious Jeep belongs to her dead brother. She promised it’d only take a few minutes, and I just really wanted this whole thing to be over, so here we are.
“Explain to me again why we’re going to a state park?” I ask as we turn into the long brick driveway that leads to the center of the park. She’s been writing notes nonstop in a pink notebook she dug out of the bottom of her desk drawer, but she looks up to answer me.
“It’s where he works. I saw it on Facebook.”
“Where who works?” All she’d said was that she could prove her case if we went to the park. I didn’t realize we’d be involving other people in this insanity.
She rolls down the window and peers out at a crew of guys who are working on the lavish landscaping along the side of the road. “Him.”
I slow down and pull over onto the grass so the minivan that’s been tailgating me can get on with their park visit since it’s apparently very important. Cece leans out the window. “Ezra?” she calls out. All f
our of the men turn to look at us, and heat rushes to my cheeks. She’s going to embarrass us in front of these strangers. I should hit the gas and get the hell out of here.
“Yeah?” Someone calls back. “Who are you?”
“It’s me,” Cece says.
One guy goes back to shoveling mulch while the other two keep shearing away at some overgrown square bushes that line a wrought iron fence. The fourth guy jogs toward us. It’s not until he rests his arms on the roof of the car and leans in that I recognize him. Remember his name. Ezra.
Man, it’s been a while.
Ezra Flores was best friends with Thomas up until the day he died. He was always over at their house and then at ours after Thomas moved in. I didn’t like him. He was a skinny Filipino kid who loved video games too much and always poked fun at me for how terrible I was at every sport we played in the front yard. Actually, he made fun of me for everything. The only time I liked seeing Ezra Flores was when he showed up with a dish of his mother’s homemade cassava cake.
The last time I remember seeing Ezra was at Thomas’ funeral. He sat with an older woman who was probably his grandmother in a pew behind us. He cried just as much as I did, even after Cece tried comforting him by saying Thomas wasn’t really dead.
“Cece?” Ezra’s lips spread into a grin. “Damn, how are you? What’s been up?”
“There will be time to catch up later,” she says, flipping her notebook closed like she’s some kind of private investigator. “But we need to talk. Do you have a minute?”
He glances over his shoulder at the guys who are still working. I notice the sharp lines of his jaw and the stubble on his chin. He used to keep his hair short but now it’s kind of long and coated in sweat and hanging in his eyes like he’s some kind of underwear model. I’m having a really hard time remembering that he’s the guy who picked on me for being too scared to dive into the deep end of the pool.