Bubbles

by Abby Cooper

  “There used to be Pratik, but I accidentally made him and Mom break up. Kinda like I made Mom lose her job.”

  Yeesh. Saying it all out loud like that made it seem a gazillion times worse than it already was. I was like the United States after they’d come up with Manifest Destiny (the idea that everybody else’s land should actually be theirs) and started snatching up all the places they could get. Only instead of stealing stuff, I just messed things up. I had to find a way to un-manifest destiny before it was too late.

  “How did you make your mom lose her relationship and her job, exactly?”

  Dr. Llama’s brown eyes met mine, but they weren’t judgy. I had never really talked about this with anybody before, maybe because I was scared of seeing mean eyes from other people like the ones I gave myself whenever I looked in the mirror.

  “I told Mom something Pratik told me not to tell her and they got in a fight and broke up. And the job thing … ugh.” I squeezed my eyes shut. I really, really didn’t want to see the memory in my brain, but there it was, as clear as the words in everybody’s bubbles.

  Everything happened in slow motion that day, like in one of those scary movies where you know exactly what’s coming but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

  I was in the bathroom, painting a blue streak in my hair. I’d wanted one forever, and Mom finally said it was okay. It didn’t get much more adventurous than blue hair. So I was doing that, only it turns out it’s a lot harder to dye your own hair than people online make it look. For one thing, it was sorta impossible to reach certain places on my own head. For another thing, it felt like my head was on fire.

  I grabbed the bowl of hair dye and sprinted (badly) out into the living room. I yelled for Mom to come help, but she didn’t answer. My head was so hot! This was so not working! I spun around to face the other direction, but I still didn’t find Mom.

  I did find her phone, though.

  Which I only knew because of the loud thudding sound it made when I knocked it off the table.

  It’s a pretty bad thing to break your mom’s phone. It’s an extra bad thing to break your mom’s phone and then find out later, once she’s gotten a new one and your head is back to a normal temperature, that she missed a Super Important Call from work, the kind of call she needed to answer right away because it was about covering a big news story that was happening right that minute.

  It was the kind of call Mom could get in Big Trouble for not answering.

  And then she did. She went in for a really, really long talk with her boss.

  And when Mom came home from that really, really long talk, she didn’t have a job anymore.

  Because of stupid feet, and stupid adventures, and me.

  I took a big breath after I was done telling the story to Dr. Llama. There was something so, so awful about saying it out loud. But there was also something kind of okay about saying it out loud, too.

  If I could pull off this triathlon business, maybe it would show Mom that I could control my feet, that she didn’t have to worry that I’d do something like that ever again. And I’d show her I could be adventurous without being dumb, too. Maybe there were actually lots of good things that could come out of the triathlon, if I could get myself to do it.

  Dr. Llama wrote some stuff down. Then he said, “Thank you for sharing that with me, Sophie. Now, would you like to tell me about the bubbles?”

  Finally!

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture one. “They’re kinda like a little white cloud with words inside. And three little circles that lead from the cloud to the person’s head. And the person has no idea that it’s there.”

  That was the weirdest part, how the bubble was literally right above someone’s head and the person didn’t have a clue. It’d be like not knowing that you were wearing sunglasses or that you were standing on the ground. What if there was a bubble over my head right now?

  “You’re thinking something.” Dr. Llama said this like a statement, but looked like he wanted an answer.

  “Just how it’s weird that people can’t see their own bubble. And their bubble doesn’t always make sense. And I’m the only one who can see them.”

  “That may or may not be the case,” he said, sitting back.

  “What do you mean? Other people can see them, too? Who? Can you?”

  “I mean, sometimes you don’t need to see something to be able to see it. I think I may know a thing or two about your bubbles.”

  “Like what?”

  He smiled. “You have to figure that out yourself.”

  “I have to figure out what you know about my bubbles?”

  “No, what you know.”

  “But I don’t know.”

  “You know. You just don’t know that you know.”

  I made a face. I knew I was confused as heck, but that was about it. And I didn’t know anything about the bubbles—that’s why I was here. Duh!

  Therapy was supposed to solve my problems, but it was making everything more jumbled up. Maybe Dr. Peterson was right that it would never work.

  “Is therapy always this confusing?” I asked.

  “Yeah, usually.” Dr. Llama laughed. “Think you’ll come back?”

  I really wanted to make an annoyed face—after all, it had almost been an hour and we’d accomplished nothing—but a giggle escaped instead. And then a tiny smile did, too. What was up with that? He hadn’t helped! He admitted this was confusing—and worse, that it was going to be work!

  So it was really, really weird that I nodded yes.

  I felt a little lighter, though. It was like I was in charge of holding a bunch of cool history books that were super heavy, and I was finally allowed to set one down.

  Therapy was weird. It was definitely weird.

  But maybe it was good, too.

  12

  SECRETS

  In 1776, a bunch of guys (fifty-six of them, to be exact) signed the Declaration of Independence, and they were super excited. They were going to be independent! Woo-hoo! The thing a lot of people don’t know is that after all this awesomeness, most of the guys actually went on to have kinda cruddy lives. Some of them lost their homes, and some of them were captured by the British (who were pretty mad at them, to say the least). Their problems were far from over.

  Maybe that was how things were doomed to be for me. I’d left therapy feeling kinda floaty and relieved and good, even though I didn’t really get why. Mom asked me how it went and didn’t say anything else after I told her it was okay, so I spent the rest of the bus ride home wondering if that was how Kaya felt when she left therapy, too. We had never really talked about it in detail before. All I really knew about Kaya’s therapist was the fact that she had one.

  So the bus ride was okay. But then there was night. And there were more weird whimper noises coming from Mom’s room. And I wondered if maybe I should get out of bed again and knock on Pratik’s door and tell him about the whimpers if he answered. But then I wondered if telling him would make things worse, and then I remembered how everything I did (or even thought of doing) made things worse.

  Eventually, I fell asleep. I have no idea how that happened.

  * * *

  On Monday when I got to school, I saw more bubbles than I’d ever seen before. It was terrible that so many people were thinking sad, stressed-out things: I can’t. I’ll never be able to. There’s no way.

  As I walked down the hall to social studies, my head was pounding, like it was filled with secrets and sadness and didn’t know what to do with them and couldn’t hold them all in. Was everyone secretly upset about something? Wasn’t anyone secretly happy? Were there really this many things that could—and did—go wrong in the world, even though everybody bopped around all the time like everything was fine? At least Mom was honest about how cruddy she felt. Everybody else was just faking it.

  I sat in my seat and buried my head so deep in my hands that I barely even noticed Kaya sliding into the seat next to me.

&nbs
p; “Hey, how are you?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  I forced myself to sit up. I had slept okay, I guess, but I felt totally wiped out. Was twelve too young to take up coffee drinking? The big Starbucks cup on Mr. Alvarado’s desk was calling my name.

  “You’ve been acting weird lately.” Kaya undid her topknot and her hair spilled out everywhere. She grabbed a big chunk and spun it around her fingers.

  “I know, you and Rafael told me,” I said.

  Rafael. I broke into a little smile just thinking his name. The cheese-ball chipmunk thing last week had been so funny. Had he always been that funny?

  “No, not that. Like you seem sleepy all the time.”

  I looked into her dark brown eyes and considered telling her. She twirled the hair around her fingers faster and faster. Obviously my acting weird was making Kaya nervous, and she was nervous enough as it was. I couldn’t do anything about all the other sad, stressed people, but I could help her.

  “Okay.” I leaned over so far that I was practically sitting in her seat with her. “Promise not to think I’m insane if I tell you something? It’s top secret.”

  “I won’t think you’re insane. And of course I won’t tell.” She let go of a few pieces of hair.

  “I’ve been seeing these weird thought-bubble things over people’s heads. They say what the people are really thinking. And people think weird things. And sad things. And it’s getting worse. And even my new…” I lowered my voice, “therapist didn’t know what it was or what I should do.”

  Kaya let go of her hair entirely, then picked a piece back up, then dropped it again. She grabbed on to her long sweater and wrapped it around her tighter. Then she bent down and pushed her leggings into her boots. This just meant Kaya was thinking. Hair meant nerves. Fiddling meant thinking. What was she thinking about? Was she deciding if she still wanted to be my best friend?

  I’m not so sure about this bubble stuff, her bubble answered me. But I’m too worried about swimming to think about it too much.

  She grabbed her hair again. Poor Kaya. My headache pounded a little harder as Mr. Alvarado strummed a few notes on his guitar, which meant it was time to be quiet and get started. I looked at Kaya, but she stared straight ahead.

  “Buenos días,” Mr. Alvarado said. “We’re going to dive into chapter thirteen today—the American Revolution continues! But before we do that, let’s touch base about our risk projects. What have you been thinking about? What are your ideas? Who wants to share?”

  Mohammed raised his hand. “I’m going to go on a roller coaster. I’ve never been on one before.”

  Mr. Alvarado nodded excitedly. Viv shot him a way-too-enthusiastic thumbs-up sign from across the room. I’ve been on lots of roller coasters. I’m so brave, her bubble said.

  “I’m going to try out for the baseball team,” said Cordell. “I’ve always wanted to be on a baseball team, but I’ve been scared to try.”

  People murmured “cool” and “nice” and other things like that. Soon everyone’s hands were up.

  “Rahama and I are going to join the protests at the animal shelter downtown,” said Nora. “They want to turn it into a parking lot!”

  “I’m going to give a presentation in a loud voice to the whole class,” LaMya whispered.

  “Mine’s going to be so extremely risky that I can’t even say it out loud,” said Viv. “It has to do with people,” she added, and then she looked right at Kaya and me.

  I raised my eyebrows. Did Kaya and I both have something stuck in our teeth? Or did her project … have to do with us?

  “Miguel and I are going to start a business,” said Harrison. “Buy our stuff!” Everybody laughed.

  Miguel asked, “It’s cool if they don’t, though, right, Mr. A.? This project is about taking a risk. It doesn’t matter if it works out or not.”

  “Actually, it matters a lot,” said Mr. Alvarado. “This is an assignment. Part of your grade is deciding on your risk and writing an essay about your process. The other part is taking the risk and accomplishing your goal.”

  The room was silent for a second. He couldn’t expect everyone to actually be successful at what they said they would try. It had to be a joke. No offense to Cordell, but I’d seen him throw a baseball in gym class. He wasn’t good. And LaMya only ever spoke in a whisper, when she even spoke at all. She’d never be able to speak loudly in front of the whole class. Plus, if Mr. Alvarado could be understanding of all the historical people who didn’t achieve their goals, why couldn’t he be understanding of his own students?

  I thought Kaya would be frantically messing with her hair after hearing this, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t messing with her clothes, either. She shot me a sideways smile and slowly raised her hand.

  “Sophie, Rafael, and I are all going to do a mini-triathlon,” she said. “It’s for kids. You bike one mile, run a half mile, and swim…”—she gulped—“fifty yards.”

  “Magnífico!” Mr. Alvarado said. “That sounds like an excellent risk. Are you sure you’re up for the challenge?”

  Kaya’s face turned green and she reached for her hair. Not at all, said her bubble. But I’m sure that I’m going to throw up if I talk about it anymore today.

  “I looked up some of the best training techniques for beginners,” I chimed in, trying to take everybody’s attention off Kaya. She was only doing this race because of me. It was pretty much my fault her face was this really scary-looking color. “I have a plan to get us ready.”

  “You do?” Kaya’s whole face relaxed. She liked plans. Even ones that didn’t totally exist. But she didn’t need to know that right now.

  “I do,” I answered. She smiled with all her teeth and all her braces, and her face went back to its normal dark brown color.

  “Well, good,” she said with a giggle. “We’re gonna need all the techniques we can get.”

  My head felt a little less poundy than it had when class started. There were a lot of sad and bad things in people’s brains near and far, but Kaya knew my secret and she was still here, wanting to do the triathlon with me. Plus, I’d used her bubble to actually help her out a little bit, even though it was my fault she had to have that bubble in the first place. But still. I helped, sorta. And that made me feel more awake than the biggest cup of coffee ever could.

  Well, I didn’t know that for sure.

  But I’d take the risk.

  13

  FOR THE GLOVES

  Even though I was feeling a little better, Viv’s words bugged me long after class ended. Mine’s going to be so extremely risky that I can’t even say it out loud. Well, how fancy for her. The words from her bubble bugged me, too. I’ve been on lots of roller coasters. I’m so brave. And the mysterious It has to do with people, and the way she was looking at Kaya and me like we were exactly the people it had to do with.

  Sometimes I wished I liked Viv more. The truth was that she’d never really done anything mean to me. Sure, she was a little braggy about how many activities she did and how many friends she had, and it was annoying how her accessories and hair and face changed like eighty-nine times a day and she knew more people in our school than I knew in the whole world.

  But she hadn’t done anything bad.

  Unless you counted fourth grade.

  We were better friends, then. Not best friends or anything, but actual friends who talked to each other and hung out at recess and did all the things that actual friends did. That year, it was a huge deal to cover your friends’ lockers with ribbons and bows on their birthdays. And I’d always see Viv at school really early in the morning doing it for everybody. She was like, Super Decorator Girl, leaving no locker un-beautified.

  The weird thing was that on Viv’s birthday, there wasn’t a single thing on her locker. I had assumed that there were a million people who were going to decorate it, so I stayed out of the way. But when I walked by on the way to class, it just looked like a reg
ular old locker.

  I didn’t really carry spare bows around or anything (and I couldn’t ask the one person who did), so I had to think fast. I ripped out a piece of notebook paper, wrote HAPPY BIRTHDAY in bubble letters, and drew the nicest stars and hearts and swirly designs I could in ten seconds.

  Later that day at lunch, when she finally saw it, she assumed it was from everybody in her after-school dance class.

  Worse, they didn’t deny it, even though you’d think they’d be embarrassed to admit that the most a whole group could do was make one boring little sign that wasn’t even colored in.

  When I told her that it was me, not, like, an entire team’s worth of people, she didn’t believe me. She acted like she didn’t even hear me. Like I wasn’t even there.

  So maybe she had done something mean to me after all.

  Maybe it would have been better if we totally stopped being friends after that, but we still hung out for a while, just not as much. But now everything felt too fakey-fake. Her smiles, her compliments, everything. If I ever saw another bubble over her head, I bet it would say what I already knew: I want all the attention.

  Well, after I figured out what her project was, she wasn’t getting any more from me.

  * * *

  After social studies class, Kaya and I walked toward our hallway meeting spot without talking. I didn’t know what to say. Thanks for sticking with me even though I have this weird bubble problem sounded dorky. Tell me about your therapist sounded pushy. I was about to say something about the weather when Viv popped up out of nowhere and rushed right toward us.

  “Hey, Kaya!” Viv said. “Your triathlon idea sounds awesome. I’m really into exercise, too. My mom is a group fitness instructor.” And one day, I could be, too, said her bubble. With how talented I am at everything, I can be anything I want.

  “Thanks! That’s cool,” Kaya said.

  I groaned to myself. It was like Viv wanted a medal for being into exercise, and a second one for having a mom who was into exercise. And a third one just for existing.

  “Hey, Viv,” I said, but what I meant was I’m standing here too, ya know. How about you tell me about your secret project that has something to do with me? Also, can you stop freaking my BFF out about the triathlon, please? We are already freaked out enough, thank you very much.