by Laura Tims
I leave him before he starts pulling out and rush inside, where I locate Eliot draped on his couch as usual, eating a bowl of cereal.
What if I’m wrong and this wasn’t his plan?
I’m panting. “Eliot, did you know that—”
“Come on, Sam. Obviously I know.” He waves a spoon lazily at me. “Want some cereal? You did buy it, after all.”
I sink into the couch next to him. “How the hell—”
“One of the guys who had his phone out during the fight has a YouTube channel. I may have suggested posting something attention grabbing for views. BuzzFeed only caught it last night. I was going to send the video to the school no matter what, but now anyone who ever googles ‘Anthony Moore’ will see this as the first result.”
His look of self-satisfaction is truly spectacular.
“I knew he’d make people watch that fight,” he adds. “And who’d watch a fight without recording it? It’s always good to have blackmail material for a rainy day. Turns out it started pouring.”
I stare at him openmouthed.
His smirk softens to a smile. “Now you won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Now I have to worry about you!” I cry. “You hate people knowing about your condition.”
“Not as much as I hate Anthony.” He checks his phone. “Oh, you called. I had it on mute. Gabriel won’t stop trying to reach me, for some strange reason.”
A horrible new possibility dawns on me. “He’ll want to transfer you to a different school.”
“I have years of practice preventing him from getting what he wants. Don’t worry.”
“You’re sure?” His confidence seems unwarranted, but then there’s the sound of a vehicle outside, and I look out the window. It’s the van from our local paper, Forest Hills Weekly.
I whip the curtains closed. “We can’t leave the house.”
“And fail our education?”
He’s up and propelling me out of the living room, through the doorway, where a woman in a blazer aims a camera at us.
“Are you Eliot Rowe? Would you answer a few questions?”
“Unfortunately I’m late for my daily campaign of dismantling the public education system from within.” He sweeps past her, grandly opening my door for me.
“Is it true you can’t feel pain?” she calls.
Eliot pauses halfway into his seat, considering. Then, so fast I can’t stop him, he finds a penknife in his glove compartment and draws a red line on his arm, maintaining creepy eye contact with the reporter.
She shrieks. I lunge across his lap and slam the door. He drives off, chuckling.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I snarl, and inspect his arm. It’s a faint scratch, but I slap a Band-Aid on it. I’ve learned to carry Band-Aids around Eliot.
“But I never get the chance to show off!”
As we walk into school, I remain directly in front of him. It’s difficult since his legs work considerably better than mine, but I want to be well positioned to concuss the first person with something to say.
The first person turns out to be a tiny freshman with huge eyes, which get huger as he points at Eliot, but for some reason he’s scared into silence.
“You’re glaring,” Eliot informs me.
I elbow him.
“Did you feel that?” the freshman blurts.
Then friends of the freshman feel safe enough to crowd around, and friends of the freshman’s friends, all chattering at him excitedly as he stands there blinking.
I stress my way through my classes. Principal Chase calls his name over the speakers, and I guess he’s still in her office during lunch, because I’m sitting alone when Kendra taps my shoulder.
“Hey,” I say as friendly as I can on the off chance she can hear the apology in it. Although I should probably verbally apologize instead of trust people to psychically access the fact that I’m sorry.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to get so pissy before.” She twists the chain of her necklace like she does when she’s nervous. “I just wanted to say, I don’t care about BuzzFeed or whatever. What Anthony did was awful.”
“Thanks—and you weren’t pissy, Kendra, you were right.” Once I say it, it’s like there’s less weight in the atmosphere. “I mean, you were right that I messed up, not that I didn’t like you guys for who you were. I just figured you shouldn’t have to put up with a downer who couldn’t even play, so . . .”
“A downer?” she asks incredulously. “We have, like, a thousand-message-long thread about how to help you from a distance. If you’d wanted a shoulder to cry on, we would have high-fived and lined up.”
My first instinct is to slink back from an apparent lie, but is that even surprising? It’s so amazing when someone likes you, despite the parts of yourself you know are bad. It’s even more amazing we don’t default to conspiracy theories whenever a person wants to be friends.
Except I guess that’s what I’ve been doing.
“Anyway, you were going through a lot.” She bites her lip, then adds brightly, “But I meant it when I said I was happy for you. Even when I tried to be mad, every time I saw you guys together I’d go, ‘Well, duh.’ You two fit.”
I don’t want to blush, but that’s what I do.
Fit is a good word—a neat and comforting click.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something, only you were out.” The fact that she doesn’t ask why, though I’m sure she guesses it was the same reason as before, gives me legitimate hope for our friendship. “Today’s my birthday.”
Shit. “Right! Happy birthday!”
She beams, albeit nervously. “I understand if today is crazy for you, with everything happening with Eliot, but my party’s at seven. The whole team’s coming. The theme is prom rehearsal—we’re going to try out prom stuff and see what works, since it’s in May, but you don’t have to dress up if you don’t want.”
“This isn’t a great time for me to party . . . ,” I start, but she’s twisting her necklace so tight I’m afraid she’ll strangle herself. After months of hearing no, she’s still inviting me to things, like she knows I secretly pray she doesn’t stop every time I turn her down. She’s always finding new last chances for me. After I almost lost Eliot, I don’t want to risk running out. Some people only give you one.
It’s been more than half a year since Mom died. Everything that died in the winter is being reborn, soft and green. I might not be graduating with everyone else in June, or going to senior dinner, senior night, prom, the last sports games . . . but I can go to this party.
“Never mind,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
“Oh, shit.” She laughs and releases her necklace. “I thought you’d say no.”
“So did I.” I laugh, too, just as breathless.
“You don’t have to dress up,” she says kindly, even though the most lavish thing I’ve worn to any of her themed parties was a pair of jeans that was only one size too big. “You should bring Eliot. It’s mostly girls, but Amy’s brother is coming and a couple other dudes. And I want to get to know Mr. Mystery. He must be a supergood climber if he got past your walls.”
“You guys should hang out. Mr. Mystery’s biggest secret is that he’s a really good friend.”
She winks. “Okay, Ms. Mystery.”
Once he tries, it won’t be hard for Eliot to prove his good side. People are unexpectedly willing when you try.
“I’m glad you’re doing better.” She pats my arm.
“I’m glad . . .” My face heats up.
“Hm?”
“I’m glad . . . it’s your birthday,” I tell her. “I hope you have a really good one.”
When the bell rings, I meet Eliot in the parking lot and immediately scan him for bruises.
He swats me away. “You were obviously imagining some nightmare scenario where people took turns hitting me to find out if I couldn’t feel pain, now that they’ve heard about my condition.”
“Basically.”
&
nbsp; “That’s more or less what happened at my old school.”
I groan. I didn’t want to know that. “How were the people at this one?”
“Good,” he says, sounding confused but tentatively pleased. “A few told me Anthony was an asshole. A lot had no idea that he and I had a problem, so they must have moved here yesterday in a mass exchange program.”
It did seem like the whole school was against us, and all of humanity, but it really was just Anthony and his group.
I lean against his car and say with what I hope is nonchalance, “Now that you’re making friends, you can come to a party with me tonight.”
“I’ll bring the piñata.”
“I’m serious. Kendra Baker invited us to her birthday party, you specifically.”
“There’s a video of my ass getting kicked going around the internet. Now is the time I have least wanted to go to a party, and I spend a lot of time appreciating the fact that I’m not at a party. Parties are the natural antithesis to my ideal of a comfortable, productive environment.”
“ . . . Please?”
He looks at me for a moment, then sighs. “Fine.”
I try to act cool, not like I was terrified by the idea of going without him. “You can pick me up at seven.”
“If anyone puts a lampshade on my head, I’m holding you responsible.”
“You don’t know what real parties are like.”
“Neither do you.”
“I do, too! I’ve been to parties. And I watched Skins.”
Before he can make fun of me for that, I dive inside the car and lock the doors. Every time he hits Unlock on his keys, I lock them right back. It’s not until he collapses against the window, snorting with laughter, that I finally let him in.
Even if it feels like a boulder lifted off my back, that Anthony has been miraculously arrested and punished without the police having to rip off my family’s scabs, it’s only half the weight.
I still haven’t decided if I’m going to tell my family. Without question, they deserve to know. Telling them something they deserve to know has all the trappings of the right thing to do—and Dr. Brown loved the word closure.
But would it be good for them to know? Would Rex quit pills or end up in jail for attempted murder? Would they move on or move backward?
I can only find out by talking to them, but Rex is still the only one I’ve apologized to, and he was high. I want to turn my life back into a distant TV show so it doesn’t matter if I don’t sit down with Dad and Lena and acknowledge the horrible things I said. Or I could be despicable, play the accident card, and never bring up what happened, knowing they won’t hold me responsible when I’ve been having a Hard Time.
It’s fascinating, laying out all your defense mechanisms one by one, like scraping out the weird gunk that clots a sink.
I’ll talk to them tomorrow, after the party. One cliff to jump off at a time.
It’s three, so I have four hours to get ready. I dissect my closet and find, unsurprisingly, zero prom clothes. Mom never pushed girly stuff on me, but sometimes I’d secretly wish she was the type to drag me off for shopping and makeovers while I pretended to complain, because I was never going to ask her to do it.
Kendra’s used to me ignoring her themes, but I want to prove I’m trying. I shove aside sheets and clothes, again unearthing the box of photos and knickknacks that Rex and I had rescued from Lena.
This time, though, I sit down next to it. It takes forever to pick off the tape.
Someone raps primly on my door.
I fling my arms over the box. “Don’t come in!”
“I have decided we need to stop avoiding each other,” declares Lena, coming in.
Then she spots the open box and loses whatever mental speech she’d prepared. “Oh . . . that’s where these went.” She kneels next to me and picks up a framed photo of Tito as a puppy licking Mom’s face. “Were you hiding them?”
“No,” I lie, badly.
She’s stricken. “I wouldn’t have thrown these out.”
“You kind of went on a rampage,” I try to say nicely, but it’s hard to tell someone nicely that they went on a rampage. Especially when I should be begging forgiveness.
“Hey, Lena,” I blurt. “I’m sorry about . . . you know.”
“It’s okay, Samantha. You were due for a rampage of your own.”
Then she pretends to be distracted by the box.
“There’s a lot in here. . . . Oh, look, it’s that picture of your twelfth birthday party—that was the first vegan cake I ever baked. Mom showed me how. Did you know she worked in this hippie bakery in high school?” She smiles. “They called her the Flour Child. Like flower child, get it?”
The warm, heavy thing in my chest starts glowing. It’s been there since Mom died, even if it feels like I acquired it that night at Eliot’s, but the only difference now is that I hold my hands to the heat instead of suffocate in the smoke.
“She didn’t tell me stuff like that,” I say. “I never asked.”
“I did,” she says shyly. “I can tell you more, if you ever want. . . . I mean, it’s better not to dwell, but . . .”
I’ll never hear Mom’s stories from Mom, but I’ll hear them from Lena. The painful warmth inside me swells, cradling my heart. “You were smart to spend lots of time with her.”
She rests her chin on her knees. When she has bad posture, her spine curves exactly like Rex’s. “She was my friend.”
The pain glows brighter, but it’s a living sort of feeling. “I don’t think we were friends. I think she was just my mom.”
“You’re not supposed to be friends with your mom. I just didn’t have any other ones.”
“What? You were in a million clubs in high school—”
“A million clubs doesn’t mean a million friends. Frankly I was far more driven than most girls my age, and they found it intimidating.”
I nod faithfully, but after a moment, she sighs.
“That’s not true. I was just awkward. You were right about me not cutting it in Northton. My roommate hated me—apparently ten chore-reminder Post-it notes on her door per day is excessive.”
“Well, she sounds . . . unreasonable.”
“There’s a thousand trip wires for setting people off, and I never notice them until it’s too late.” She droops but then ruffles my hair. “But here, you people have to put up with me.”
“We do,” I concede.
She smiles. “I’ve always been glad you had plenty of friends, Samantha.”
BMD, I never thought of myself as someone with plenty of friends, even though I wasn’t technically alone. I felt left over, the least special of anyone, like I’d missed the brief but key section of the friendship tutorial on evolving relationships from fake to real.
“Only because I’m boring,” I try to explain. “People don’t mind having me around, but they don’t get excited about it.”
“You are not boring!” she says, affronted. “You’re nice.”
“Everyone’s nice.”
“They absolutely are not,” she sniffs. “Samantha, you’re nice, you’re brave, you’re . . . independent. . . .”
And suddenly she’s stammering, “I was only babying you because I wanted us to be close, like you and Rex are. You’ve always liked him more than me— No, don’t deny it.”
She starts pawing furiously through the box again, her cheeks pink.
She had no one but our family, and even then, Mom was the only one she connected with. Mom probably spent so much time with her not because she needed a distraction from Rex but because she knew Lena needed a distraction from her loneliness.
I have no choice.
“Lena, I’m going to a party tonight.” I summon all my strength. “Do you . . . have a dress I could borrow?”
She lights up like a firework.
“Of course I do! Come on!”
She moves to drag me upright, hesitating at my crutches but then tugging at me anyway, not enou
gh to unbalance me but enough where I don’t feel like she thinks I’m made of glass.
In her room, she flings open her closet. It’s just as packed as mine, only organized. She never threw away her things—she just stored them.
After a long, intense search, she shoves a green dress at me. “This one! Mom got it for me because it matched my eyes, but it’s your color. Your hair and eyes are nice earthy tones; you’ll look like a garden.”
“And in this garden metaphor, I am the dirt.”
“Nothing beautiful could grow without a strong bed of soil,” she says, which is a compliment only in her world. “Go try it on!”
The dress has a fringy hem. This reminds me of what I’d forgotten about dresses, which is that they show your legs.
“Actually I think I’ll just wear jeans to the party.”
The cry Lena unleashes is so devastated that our neighbor’s dog howls in unison.
“It’ll look pretty! All you need is some mascara to go with it—”
“It’ll look stupid. Like I’m trying when there’s no point.” Even if I could have miraculously rocked a dress before, I missed my chance. I nod at my crutches. “Even if I wore a wig and six-inch heels and a ball gown, I’d still be on these.”
She whips out her phone so fast she almost hits me in the face with it. She full screens a picture of a woman with shining black hair, a white dress, and crutches. “Solana Rodriguez, disabled model, flawless human being.”
I push it away impatiently. “I mean, yeah, it’d be nice if I suddenly felt hotter because of her, but she’s still gorgeous and I’m not.”
“But you were wrong about there being no point if you’re on crutches,” she declares. “No girl thinks she’s beautiful until she decides to be. I just want you at the same starting point as everyone else.”
She ushers me to the bathroom and shuts me in with the dress. Knowing I’m probably trapped until I put it on, I submit.
It actually doesn’t look too bad. There’s a ribbon around the waist that makes my boobs look bigger. It’s my favorite kind of green, that sweet minty shade.
“I can’t wear it,” I yell at the door. “I’m taking it off. Don’t come in.”
She comes in immediately and gasps like it’s my wedding dress.