Faking Normal

by Courtney C. Stevens

  “We’re a family,” Mom says.

  Craig squeezes her shoulder, and Kayla starts again with a different tone. “What I mean is, if you think this is the right thing, then it probably is.”

  “I knew you would understand, Kayla. If something happened to the two of us, wouldn’t you be thankful if Liz’s mom offered to help you with Alexi?”

  Kayla looks taken aback. But she and Craig both nod.

  Mom and Dad are slick to have Bodee right here in the room. Brilliant plan. We can hardly vote “no” in front of him. The guy’s already been through hell. And we all know it.

  Not that he’s showing a reaction.

  “Lex, you’re awfully quiet,” Mom says. “We want to hear from you, too.”

  “I trust you guys. He needs a room. We have an extra one. It’s perfect.”

  The bobblehead comes to life. Our eyes meet, and Bodee’s lips twitch. Did he just mouth thanks at me?

  “I knew you’d understand.” Mom practically bursts with pride, and Dad nudges my feet off the chair. Evidently, my compliance means it’s now okay for him to correct me.

  “Bodee, I know we can’t replace your family, but we hope you’ll agree to stay with us. We’ll all do everything we can to make you comfortable. I think it’s what . . . your mother would want.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Littrell.” Bodee’s polite tone sounds automated, the way Mom’s second graders recite math facts. He nods at my dad.

  “Well”—Mom pats Bodee’s knee as if everything in the world has been settled—“I’ll go get some sheets for the couch. We’ll set up the bed tomorrow after we get your stuff from the house.”

  And then my family follows Mom from the room. Dad to his office. Craig and Kayla to the driveway. The Littrells add a new family member and that’s it?

  No one has anything more to say.

  Done.

  Meeting adjourned.

  Bodee doesn’t move off the couch, so I put my feet back over the side of the chair. Not out of anger. Because I can’t walk away from him.

  “So you live here now,” I say.

  “I guess.” He brushes the blue away from his eyes.

  There’ll be Kool-Aid stains in my shower.

  White tees in my laundry hamper.

  Presents for Bodee under my Christmas tree. . . .

  Will we have conversations around the Sunday dinner table where “hey” is not the primary word?

  Weird.

  But Mom’s right. Holy hell. If something happened to my parents, I could never live with Craig and Kayla. I’d take Liz and the Pullman family any day of the week and twice on Sunday over that option.

  “You okay with it?” he asks.

  “You could have told me at school today,” I say.

  “I promised your mom I wouldn’t.”

  Honest, promise-keeping Bodee. I’m a slug.

  “I’m okay with it.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  chapter 5

  LAST night I played the blame game for hours. This routine is pretty well established. There’s only one contestant: me. Then the flashbacks. Then the compulsive counting. And hovering in the background, the knowledge that morning will arrive way too soon.

  And I’m right. Four hours of sleep pass like a gunshot.

  Awake, but not alert, I stumble toward the hall bathroom.

  “Get a move on, Lex. You’re going to be late,” Mom yells from the kitchen.

  I lock the bathroom door, lift the hair off my neck, and twist to check the mirror. Dang, I went to town last night. The shower’s going to burn like crazy.

  “You’ve got to stop,” I tell the girl in the mirror.

  She gives me a blank look. Like I don’t know what I’m asking.

  Only when I see the used towel folded neatly over the shower curtain do I remember Bodee.

  We share a bathroom. Of course we do. He can’t use Mom and Dad’s, and Kayla’s is at the other end of the house. Ripping back the curtain, I check the shower for leftover colored powder. There’s nothing. Maybe he’s going back to blond. He’s been here, but he’s gone about the invasion of house and bathroom as silently as he goes about life.

  Out of necessity, I get ready in ten minutes. It’s a wet hair, curly-scrunch day, and that means I dress in jeans, ballet flats, and a T-shirt I’ve had since fifth grade. Snug, but not too tight.

  “Lex!”

  “I’m here,” I say as I enter the kitchen.

  Mom evaluates my outfit before she bends toward me for a forehead kiss. “You look cute, hon. I like it when you wear your hair that way.”

  Nearly all her evaluations are encouraging and Mom-like. I shrug. “No time for anything else.”

  “Bodee, help out, please. My daughter is the world’s worst self-critic.”

  Bodee’s hair is red with just a touch of blue left over at the roots. He looks like a Rocket Pop. And uncomfortable at my mom’s obvious attempt to include him in our conversation.

  “Yes, Mrs. Littrell.” He twists a coffee mug in his hand and stares at the black liquid. “Alexi, you look nice.”

  “Now, see? Very nice. Bodee and I agree.”

  “Mom.” The woman is oblivious to how awkward this is for both of us. Bodee’s shoulders cave, and he turns away to sip his coffee. Poor guy. Mom just shellacked the shell he lives in.

  Heather’s horn blows, and it occurs to me that this is a new frontier. We’re going to the same place. Do I ask him to ride with us? I would, but I haven’t given Heather and Liz a heads-up about the new family mission Mom and Dad have going.

  “Well, that’s my ride.” Please, woman, say something. My eyebrows become one with my hairline as I pray for God to open up a telepathic route between Mom and me.

  She’s clueless.

  But Bodee gets the message loud and clear. He stands up from the table and looks at my mom. “Mrs. Littrell, could you drop me at school today?”

  Split-second decisions suck. There’s no time to weigh how strange this trip will be against the feelings of the boy who had to ask my mom for a ride to school. “You can come with us,” I say, and hand him the second Pop-Tart from my package.

  Mom smiles. I see her proud-of-me look, which means “Thanks, Lex.”

  “Perfect,” she says in a chirpy voice. “We’ll figure out all these details by tomorrow.”

  As soon as we’re out the door, Bodee says, “I can walk.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You’ll be late.”

  There’s a glare on the windshield, but I can still see Heather’s and Liz’s expressions. Either they’ve just had a close encounter with aliens or Bodee Lennox is the last person in the universe they expect to see come out my back door.

  “You guys know Bodee,” I say after we’re in the backseat together. “He’s staying at our house for a while.”

  “Cool,” Liz says after half a heartbeat.

  “Yeah, cool,” Heather says. But her face in the rearview mirror tells me a different story. She thinks this is whacked. And it is.

  The car makes more sounds than we do for the next two miles. By the time we arrive, I feel terrible for Bodee. He’s a foreign exchange student among us, except we all went to kindergarten together. I want to remind Heather that he speaks English and understands all the hand signals she’s using.

  Bodee and I leave Heather and Liz in the hallway and turn left toward our lockers. “See ya later,” I say over my shoulder.

  “Okay,” Liz says. Heather is still staring at me like I’ve brought a pet crocodile to school with me.

  “Jeez, that sucked. Sorry,” I say. “I should have called them last night.”

  “Can’t blame them. I’ll walk to your house after school.”

  Your house. Man, a dull knitting needle is stabbing my heart. The guy doesn’t even have a home anymore, and he doesn’t sound bitter or angry with me that m
y friends are selfish jerks.

  “You can’t do that.” I swap a few books in my bag for the ones in my locker. “That’s dumb.”

  “I’m used to walking, Alexi.”

  And he walks away. Without me.

  I plug in some tunes on my iPhone, lean against my locker, and consider my options. I’m not so important in the social hierarchy at Rickman that my friend choices carry any punishment. Liz, who is on the student council, has friends in every circle. And Heather is Heather: loved by boys, despised by (most) girls. But other than our fourth-period class together and to-and-from school rides, most of her time is occupied by Collie. And Liz.

  There’s no personal risk to befriending Bodee. It’s more of a risk not to. He knows too much.

  Craig interrupts my thoughts. “You’re going to be late to homeroom.”

  “Oh, shut up, Craig.”

  “Hey. It’s Mr. Tanner at school.”

  “Okay. Shut up, Mr. Tanner.”

  Craig overlooks my sarcasm. “You okay with your parents’ decision about Bodee?” He lightly punches my shoulder. A school-approved quasi-hug from my almost brother-in-law. “I told Kayla last night we ought to check on you, but she said you’d be fine.”

  I have to laugh. As long as I have all my limbs, Kayla will think I’m fine. “I am fine, Mr. Tanner.”

  The bell rings. Craig pushes his hands into his khakis and sounds sheepish. “Go on before it’s too late. Tell your homeroom teacher it’s my fault.”

  “Will do,” I say, and zip toward homeroom.

  The teacher raises her eyebrows as I slide into my desk, but she doesn’t say anything. I’m not normally late, and she’s pretty cool.

  Bodee’s tucked into his usual ignore-the-world posture. I tap him on the shoulder and lean toward him. The coffee on his breath is from a cup in my kitchen; the shampoo in his hair is from the bottle in my shower.

  Weird. Just as weird as what I say.

  “I’m walking with you this afternoon.”

  He sighs, but maybe he sounds okay with it. “Your friends’ll think you’ve flipped.”

  “So what? They probably think I flipped, like, two months ago. What’s a walk gonna do?”

  “I’ll be at my locker,” he says, and his head disappears back into the crook of his arm.

  “I’ll be there.”

  I can tell long before I see the desk in fourth period; it’s going to be a rock-and-roll day. The beat’s pounding in my head until I can hardly sit still. Not one song, but hundreds marching along my veins. Sad. Angry. Happy ones, even.

  So when fourth period finally comes, why can’t I decide on a single song or choose even a few lyrics to express my mood?

  But he can.

  YOUR HAND COVERS MY HEART

  WE STEP OUT INTO THIS YEAR

  How does he do that? Every day he picks something that haunts me, words that echo the sorrows and joys in my life. I print the next two lines on the desk before Mrs. Tindell passes out our group work.

  Surviving, we stand for once

  Drive away these fears

  “Your turn to leave him hanging, right?” Heather asks.

  “Yeah.” I spin the pencil in my hand.

  “There’s a million zillion songs. Just write something.”

  “I can’t just write something.”

  “Huh. Just as you obviously can’t tell your two best friends the biggest thing going on in your life?”

  I cringe. She doesn’t know the half of it. “I didn’t find out until late last night.”

  “I have a phone,” she snaps.

  “You have Collie,” I say back.

  “Ladies. Worksheet,” Mrs. Tindell says.

  Under the guise of checking an answer, I lean in close and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

  “Lex, I had to corner Craig, Mr. Tanner, in third period to get the story. You should have told us.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Oh, really.” She doodles on my desk. Which I promptly erase. “I’d say Kool-Aid boy moving in with you is a freakin’ big deal.”

  “He hasn’t moved in with me. He’s moved in with my family. Actually, he’s slept on the couch for one night. We haven’t adopted him or anything. And anyway, I knew y’all would make a huge issue of it. Like you did about me talking to him at his mom’s funeral.”

  Heather looks totally justified. “Well, yeah. And I was right, too. I knew something was up.”

  “Nothing’s up. Our moms were close friends. They were in a prayer group together for years. No way Bodee’s mother didn’t share crap about her marriage. My mom feels responsible now that her friend’s gone. Guilty, even. That’s all.” I meant to divert Heather’s attention from me, but I realize that what I’ve said is probably the truth.

  Heather takes out a pen and writes upside-down on my desk before I can stop her. You’re gonna end up FRIENDS with him.

  I spit-wash the words, but they are still visible. Like an accusation. Like prophecy. “Go write on your own desk,” I say. “And who cares if I end up friends with Bodee Lennox? He needs a friend. I need more friends.”

  “You have friends. You could have Dane Winters, too.”

  “I have two friends. And I don’t want Dane Winters.” Or Bodee, I remind myself. “So I’m thinking that since I have to share a house with Bodee, what’s wrong with being friends with him too?”

  “But he’s the Kool-Aid Kid.”

  “So?” I say. “You’re all about Captain Lyric, but we don’t have a clue who he is either. He could be anybody. That boy who farts and snorts in gym. Or the guy who always wears his shop helmet even when he’s not in shop.”

  This is not a thing I want to say out loud. Or even think about. Because the unknown Captain Lyric has to be sweet and sensitive. And sexy. And love me. He’s a special, one-of-a-kind guy who will wait forever and a day for me.

  And not pressure me for sex.

  “I guess you’re right,” Heather says. “Still, you have to admit. The idea of Captain Lyric is just so totally much better than Bodee Lennox.”

  “They aren’t in a competition,” I snap. “Bodee lives at my house. He might be my friend someday, but he’s not Captain Lyric. I don’t even think he listens to music.”

  Mrs. Tindell drifts down the aisle toward us. “One of these days, I’m going to separate you two.”

  I slide my folder over the desk lyrics from this week and show her my completed paper. “We’re finished, Mrs. Tindell.”

  “Dull roar,” she reminds us, and drifts back to her desk.

  Heather looks wowed. “How do you do that? I haven’t answered a single question.”

  “I can think and talk at the same time.”

  She draws a frowny face on my desk and says, “Stop bitch-staring at me.”

  We both snicker. That phrase is going to stick.

  “Okay, be friends with Bodee if you want. Just don’t go drinkin’ the Kool-Aid. If you know what I mean.”

  “I won’t.” Things are square, so I tell her, “I’m going to walk home with him after school today. You talk to Liz, and maybe tomorrow, we can all be nicer to him.”

  “Oh, all right.” Heather sighs. “If he gets you, he gets us, too.”

  “Thanks.” I slip my worksheet onto her desk. “You wanna copy my answers?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  Now it’s just me and the desk. Time to rock the lyrics for the Captain himself.

  Dance to forget yourself. Dance to forgive

  Let your body and your mind agree

  I imagine tomorrow’s response in his strong, heavy strokes.

  IF ONLY FOR THIS BREATH RIGHT NOW

  DANCE LIKE YOU’RE FREE

  And then I make the mistake of thinking about Bodee. And for the rest of the day until I meet him at our lockers after school, I wonder how long he’ll be a member of my family.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “You know any other words?”

  Bodee
runs his fingers through his Rocket Pop hair. His eyes are sad. Or happy. I can’t tell.

  “Yeah. You know. Not a lot of practice,” he says.

  “Well, since we’re gonna share a bathroom, I think we could move on to sentences.”

  We walk down the hall, and for a while, he doesn’t say anything.

  “Alexi . . . I know . . . I don’t know you well enough to ask, but . . . could you, I mean, would you maybe . . . help me with something on the way to your house?”

  The starts and stops, the painstaking precision of words, and the sheer length of time it takes him to ask make it clear that this boy never asks anyone for help.

  Bring out the dull knitting needles, stabbing my heart, again.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I need to stop at my house.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you . . . go inside?”

  “Sure,” I say without thinking.

  He’s silent again. We’re outside on the school sidewalk before I really understand what he wants me to do. Oh.

  “You haven’t been in, have you? Since . . .” I don’t finish the sentence.

  “No.” He long-steps to avoid a crack in the sidewalk, and I’m sure we’re both thinking about what broke his mother’s back. “Most of my stuff’s in the tent, but there’s something in the house I need.”

  The tent. Had he been living outside? I don’t ask, but I shiver thinking about it. I’ll know soon enough.

  The walk to his house takes twenty-five minutes. We don’t talk, but now I’m more comfortable with our silence. It’s like autumn is speaking for us. We watch the wind swirl the dust and pollen and urge the turning leaves to let go. A cool breeze makes me shiver, and I wish I’d thrown a hoodie in my backpack.

  And then I shiver for a different reason.

  A wad of crime scene tape, meant for the trash. Left behind.

  My mind wraps the same yellow tape around the pool in our backyard.

  What if I had called the police? What if everyone knew a crime had been committed? Everything would be different. Everything is different; even without the yellow tape.

  I throw up in the grass.

  “Alexi.”

  Bodee holds my hair back when round two seizes me. If it had been anyone else, I’d have jerked away. But he already knows about the scabs on my neck. I sit back and wipe my mouth, and Bodee’s hand drops to his side.