Scattered Ashes

by Dona Sarkar

  “Yup. Starts tomorrow.” I teased a single cookie crumb around the tray, and though I usually could have eaten two or three, I had no appetite and could barely look at them.

  “What about Wellesley?” Lana wrapped a finger around her Bluetooth earpiece and frowned.

  I shrugged.

  “You’re already a shoo-in. I’ve been donating to them every year to make sure of that. They’re going to name one of the newer dorm halls ‘Alexander’ after us. And I thought you liked Boston.”

  I shrugged again.

  “An answer would be nice.”

  “I want options.”

  “Yes, we know, the U. Not that I wouldn’t love to have you around. I just think looking at other places isn’t a bad thing. What other schools would you consider?”

  “I want to make sure I’m here when Dad comes back.” I knew how this was going to end. The same way it had ended every time we’d had this conversation for the past month.

  That look on Lana’s face. I hated that look so much. That forlorn, my-daughter-is-crazy look.

  “This is why I don’t talk to you,” I muttered. I reached over and pulled her laptop to my side of the table.

  Lana didn’t hear, or didn’t want to show she had. She shook her head, as if shaking all unpleasant thoughts away. “Jason was here looking for you, by the way. He brought the cookies. You should eat at least one. Then call him.”

  Jason.

  I only nodded in response, still too angry with Lana to let her know how much that bit of information surprised me. Jason had broken up with me with the usual promise of “Let’s stay friends.” We hadn’t spoken since, he avoided eye contact with me in the hallways, and all of our old friends followed his lead.

  “I still think you let him get away too easily. So he made a mistake. Give him another chance.”

  Get away? Jason wanted out; I was not going to beg him to stay. I was, however, not going to waste the “in” he’d given me, either.

  “I’ll have to call Jason’s mom to say thank you,” I said instead, hoping the promise of a standard social grace would distract her.

  Lana crossed her arms and watched me. “Mars. Come on.” She sounded just like Erica.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “He wants another chance.”

  “He brought cookies. For you. A neighborly gesture. Maybe he was reaching out to you.” I was, of course, completely joking. As if Lana would let an ounce of sugar pass her lips.

  “You should invite him over for dinner.”

  “Oh really.” I looked over the top of the laptop, knowing I was smirking. “For what? Lean Cuisines and mineral water?”

  Lana glared at me, not missing the jab. Ever since Dad had left, our kitchen had been used exactly never. He had been the only chef in the house, the heart, everything. Without him around, we lived in a five-thousand-square-foot dollhouse, a professionally decorated shell that everyone admired. Yet no one could see how empty the house had become now that it was just me and Lana. She and I were like two kids who’d been left alone for a weekend.

  “You’re supposed to be on my side, by the way. Jason was wrong, not me,” I retorted.

  Lana didn’t respond right away. Of course, she didn’t think Jason had been in the wrong. What was he supposed to do when his girlfriend started to act crazy? Break up with her, of course.

  “He made me an outcast, remember? It’s his fault I—” I stopped talking. Lana wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear the truth about how I spent my days at school.

  “Looks like Jason’s finally matured. Besides, your dad really liked him, so you should have no objections.” The bitterness in Lana’s voice didn’t go unnoticed. She’d always been jealous that I’d always tried to seek out Dad’s approval, but never hers.

  “Likes. Dad really likes him,” I said sharply. “And I am well aware of that. I’m sure he likes Dad too.”

  “Mars—”

  “Lana.” I caught my breath as the internet browser came up to the previously opened page: Matchmaker.com. “Why were you looking at a dating site?”

  “Baby, absolutely do not overreact to this.”

  “To what? To you cheating on my father?”

  “Oh, come on! We talked about this last week, and I told you—”

  There had been no talking last week; Lana had simply informed me that it was time she moved on with her life. No discussion. And this was what she’d meant. I had refused to listen then, but now there was no denying it.

  “You can call it whatever you want, but you are dating while you are still married to someone. You’re having an affair! Dad is giving up—” The swelling in my throat cut me off. “He is giving up everything for us, our country, and this is what you do behind his back? We need him to come home to us. Don’t you want that?”

  I was out of the chair before the end of the sentence. I couldn’t hear this again, all her reasons for why it was “time to move on.” She couldn’t be alone forever, I needed a father-figure in my life, her list of “whys” went on and on.

  “Let’s talk about this, baby.”

  “I am not your baby. It’s your fault he’s gone in the first place. You can at least act like you want him to come back.”

  I shoved the chair against the dining table and watched it rattle Lana to her core. She turned away from me, a hand covering her mouth, and only then did I notice her bronzed skin and the fresh caramel highlights in her straightened hair. She was wearing a new outfit, a white silky dress with perfectly coordinated jewelry. Lana was a terrible shopper and couldn’t put together a decent ensemble without a team of helpers. There was no way she looked this good on her own. She looked absolutely beautiful and available.

  So it was over. She was done waiting.

  Why was she doing this? We had a life, a system, a plan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was all we had left. We were in waiting mode, clinging to each other, hoping for the best, waiting for some certain news.

  I ran up the flight of stairs and pressed my back against the wall, hiding. I told myself it was to see if Lana would call one of her friends to complain about her “impossible” teenager, but deep down, I knew that I was waiting to see if she would come after me. I wanted her to follow me upstairs like a real mother would. I wanted her to tell me that she was making a mistake and that she was going to be strong and wait for my father to come home and would hold my hand until he did.

  She didn’t.

  * * *

  I knew Lana wouldn’t come into my room. The number of gossip fests and impromptu fashion shows we’d had up here before was immeasurable, but all of that had stopped this past month. In theory, it was lame to be best friends with your mother, but she was different.

  My friends were jealous that I could talk to her about anything, and I relished that envy. My snarky barbs with other people, my not-so-good grades, which guys I secretly had crushes on—Lana loved discussing it all. And she always told me about what was going on with her friends, their husbands, and secret boyfriends. We always joked that I was seventeen going on forty and she was the other way around.

  Now, she was trying to do the parental thing and making big decisions for both of us, something she didn’t know anything about and a role she had no right to fill. Ironically, this was the main topic of all my parents’ fights, the ones I would stand on the stairs and eavesdrop on.

  Dad said Lana didn’t set any boundaries for me and was too busy being my friend. He didn’t trust her to take care of me while he was gone. Every few years, Dad shipped out as a part of the Army Reserves and returned six months later. Each time, Dad and Lana had become more and more distant from each other. By the time this last trip had rolled around, they had avoided being in the same room and didn’t even bother to hide their fights behind closed doors. Lana started to talk to me about whatever was bothering her, and our relationship had grown stronger and closer.

  I flung a stack of books off my desk and watched them
slam against the wall.

  Ugh.

  There was no need for me to abuse Dad’s books, his most prized possessions. The ancient copies of The Odyssey and Les Misérables were his favorites, ones he reread every year and would want me to take good care of.

  I had my college-level vocabulary thanks to him. We would take turns reading out loud every day after school when he wasn’t deployed, and we would look up what each new word meant, no matter how obscure. Thanks to him, I had an almost perfect score on the SAT verbal section.

  Lana had tried to give Dad’s book collection to the library last month. I’d only realized it when the truck arrived and the pick-up person had asked to be escorted into the study. I’d shoved him out of the house and hidden all the books in my room instead. Now every wall, with the exception of a floor-to-ceiling window facing the lake, was shelf after shelf lined with his favorite pastime: stacks of classics, mysteries, biographies, and his journals.

  My cell phone rang. When I saw Jason’s number on the screen, I took a deep breath and made my voice extra-husky. The awesome voice, he always called it. I wanted him to remember what he was missing and what he had let go of.

  “Hello, Jason.”

  “I came by earlier.”

  I took a seat on the edge of my bed, setting Les Misérables next to me. “I heard.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. What did he want, a trophy?

  “I heard about what happened at the U. I’m glad you’re okay.” A door closed at his end. I hadn’t realized the incident was such a big deal.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” I said. “You’ve pleased Lana to amazing heights with your cookie delivery. She’s insisting that you’re”—a deliberate pause here—“reaching out to me.”

  “And what does her daughter think about that?” Jason played along.

  “She’s a tad confused.” I wanted my tone to be coy or light, show him I didn’t care. Instead, it just came out sad. I propped myself up on the tuft of pillows fencing my king-size sleigh bed, my mind still on how easy it seemed for everyone to simply move on, forgetting about those they claimed to have loved.

  “Mars? Is everything okay?”

  I realized I hadn’t responded after a minute.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said in the least convincing tone ever. I did not want to talk about this with Jason. He had proven that he was not capable of handling my family issues.

  He was silent, except for light breathing. He knew me well enough to know when I was unconvincingly lying. This was pathetic.

  “Lana is dating.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I could practically see them, floating in the air in front of me. They seemed to shimmer and dance before dissolving, leaving me blinking back disbelief once again. The words were suddenly very real, and I couldn’t take them back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said instantly in a tone that suggested he more than understood what I was going through. I knew his parents had had some problems a few years ago—counseling, separate vacations, and everything. They were still together, living under one roof at least, happy or otherwise.

  “I don’t know why she’s doing it.” I knew full well. The excitement that came with a new relationship. Raising a teenager alone was a downgrade compared to her younger days as one of the most sought-after debutantes in the Pacific Northwest.

  Jason said nothing, and I realized I’d gone too far with my honesty. We were “friends,” not friends. He couldn’t handle this. He’d made that abundantly clear a month ago.

  “Do you want to get together tomorrow night?” he asked, sounding unsure. His uncertainty surprised me more than the words.

  Now I was the one who was silent. He did want me back. And at that moment, I realized how much I wanted to be back. How much I wanted things back the way they used to be.

  “I have a class tomorrow night,” I finally said. “Maybe later?”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking an essay writing SAT class at the U. My first session is tomorrow.”

  Jason was not used to hearing “no.”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding doubtful.

  “Sorry,” I said, wanting to suggest we try for another night, but deciding against it in the end. I was not going to chase after him.

  “I wish you’d been home when I came by. I miss you.”

  “Oh,” it was my turn to say. He missed me? He hadn’t spoken to me in a month, and yet he missed me? I felt a flush on the back of my neck. I still remembered the sting of his words when he’d broken up with me.

  “Good-night,” I said quietly.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mars.”

  I twirled my cell phone in my hand for a few minutes more, feeling the heat of the phone start to dissipate. What was happening here?

  I lay back on my bed, all kinds of overwhelming thoughts keeping me company, including cynicism and hope at the same time. Maybe Jason was studying me for his Psychology class, analyzing what happened to a fairly normal high school girl after an incident like the one that had taken place in the girl’s locker room a month ago.

  I used to be “her.” The girl who wasn’t the class president, or the valedictorian, or any good at sports, but everyone liked her anyway. I was quirky enough with my advanced vocabulary and ornate wardrobe without being weird. I did have my posse: fun, beautiful friends like Candace Littlefoot and Kendall Chang and the boyfriend every girl wanted. I was the girl who wasn’t beautiful, but no one realized it because I acted like I was.

  After I’d made a fool of myself in a very public and crazy way, people whispered about me in the hallways, like I used to do when I heard rumors about people with reputations like mine.

  I wanted the past month to just go away and to have “her” life back. Nothing had changed, and it was time for everyone to realize that, including me.

  I curled up on my right side in my favorite position. A book cover caught my eye, the gold lettering glinting in the moonlight. A leather-bound burgundy book, Sonnets by Theodore Robert Watkins. I knew I had recognized the book cover the boy in the window was holding. Watkins was one of Dad’s favorite poets, and he had every piece the poet had ever published.

  I flipped through the one-page poems till I found one that felt fitting for that moment:

  Forgetting you was not easier said than done,

  I said I would forget you, and you should forget me too,

  I never did manage to do my part.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Dream

  I dreamt I was on a roof. I gazed out over Seattle, coated in a rich darkness. Everyone I knew was there, surrounding me: my friends, Lana and Jason, and him, the boy from the coffee shop with the hurricane-colored eyes. He held out the book he’d been reading. I took it wordlessly from him and tried to read what was written on the front cover. Before I could, Dad appeared by my side. “Mars, what are you doing?”

  The alarm rang, interrupting. I was in that state where I couldn’t move a muscle. For a few minutes, I lay completely paralyzed, listening to the pulsating beep of the alarm. Usually I was one to shift around in my sleep the whole night, yet that morning I woke up in the same position I’d fallen asleep in, except now I had a dull ache in my heart and a cramp in my shoulder.

  I contemplated turning off the alarm and closing my eyes so I could see the end of my dream. It was a cool talent I had, the ability to continue dreams if I fell back asleep in a short amount of time. The flutter of nerves in my stomach regarding my last conversation with Jason won out. I pulled the curtains open and let a glorious fall day spill into my loft.

  Early October, the most beautiful time in Seattle. The leaves were in full splendor, drifting gently around and around in the light breeze, the skies a perfect bluish purple with no sign of clouds, a hint of chill in the air begging for the new fall coat to make its first appearance.

  The bits of the dream I could recall washed down the drain of the showe
r. I dried my hair quickly and created a deep side part in my asymmetrical angled bob, really starting to like the way the shorter hair was growing out. I’d hacked my hair off with eyebrow scissors during The Incident. Lana had freaked out and had rushed me to an upscale salon in Seattle for an avant-garde style. Neither one of us thought I would look normal for a very long time, but my fears were slowly being allayed by the rather cute hairdo. The scar on my cheek was also healing nicely. A few weeks more and it would hopefully disappear.

  I dressed in a pleated miniskirt, a plum-colored shrunken blazer, and a pair of strappy black sandals from Lana’s collection, the opposite of the uniform for girls at Lakeville High School. Unlike my mother, I was a good shopper and enjoyed being trendy at the typically casual public high school, and I was not going to give that up just because I was a pariah. My ex-posse could go back to the way they used to dress, typical Seattle athleisure or geek-gear of logo-tees and socks with sandals if they were so offended by the telltale bright-red soles of my Louboutins.

  I stuffed my car keys and wallet into an oversized burgundy handbag and crept down the stairs as quietly as four-inch heels would allow.

  No luck. Lana was on the elliptical machine, gleaming with sweat, looking well into her hour-long workout. “Baby, let’s talk after school today. I need to . . .”

  I slammed the door of the kitchen behind me and waited for a second in the garage to see if she would come after me. The whir of the elliptical machine continued without even a pause.

  There was nothing left to be said anyway. She had made up her mind and would do what she wanted. She would sneak around behind my back to go on dates as if she was a teenager, the way she’d always done to my father. If he didn’t approve of her spending money on something or going to a certain event, she would just do it anyway and hide it from him. It was just normal for her, and up until recently, I’d really liked that. It made me feel less guilty for doing the same thing.

  I parked the Corvette in my usual spot in the school’s parking lot, which was already sprinkled with high-end European SUVs, beloved old beaters, and their respective owners.