by Amy Huntley
thighs.
"I don't see—" I start to say, but Gabe is gently turning
--:
I have only experienced it one other time on my journeys
back to haunt my own life. It was during that slumber party
where a ghostly Tammy was hanging out.
My ghost and Gabriel's made some kind of spiritual
contact, just as Tammy and I did at the slumber party. And
the tragedy is that I didn't realize it at the time, while the
ghostly me was reliving those moments in the car.
And I can't go back.
Neither can he.
We both found our keys.
A profound sense of loss is oddly accented by the presence
of Gabe's companionship.
But I don't want his company now. Not like this. Not in
death. Not as a ghost.
I want him to be alive.
I shouldn't be surprised to discover that Gabe is dead,
too. I've sensed all along that he belonged here with me in
Is. But somehow I've always imagined he was back on Earth,
still living the life I knew him in.
I can't help grieving that I'll never return to that moment
in the car . . . that moment when he First kissed me . . . that
moment where I slid so gently from insecurity at being with
him to the greatest sense of togetherness I'd ever had.
But I'm glad I can't, too. Those other moments that I've
been re-returning to seem to fade a bit every time I go to
them. It's kind of like watching the same movie over and
me over so I am lying across his lap. He's brushing my hair
away from my face, bending over me, kissing me again. I
turn my face into his hand and kiss his palm, feeling against
my lips the lines tracking across his hand. I wonder if my
name is etched somewhere on his lifeline.
I turn my head back to make eye contact with Gabe.
He's smiling. He helps me sit back up. "No keys?" he asks.
"Not under there," I say. "At least, not the ones we're
looking for right now."
We look some more for his keys, and he finally locates
them on the ground just outside his open door. He holds
both sets of keys up to show me that we've succeeded in our
quest to find them.
"Ready to see the river?" Gabe asks, dropping my keys
into my—
•
Back in Is I feel startled—and stalked.
By death.
Gabriel is dead.
Like me.
That moment when Gabriel lost his keys . . . at the time,
I thought the affinity we felt came from finding we'd had
the same experience losing our keys.
But that wasn't the only experience we were sharing.
The tugging, binding, magnetizing pull of that moment...
9J
over. You keep trying to capture what you felt when you
first saw it, but the feelings just aren't ever as . . . magical.
I can't bear to have that happen to this experience with
Gabe.
Not being able to reexperience my first kiss is, in a way,
heartbreaking, but to have never experienced that kiss at
all . . . that would be self-breaking. I wouldn't even be me
without that exact moment.
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the underwear
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Even though it's dark out, I feel completely exposed as I
drop my underpants onto the ground. The water will be
cold, but I don't care. At least when I'm in that pool I'll feel
more covered up than I do standing here naked. Why was
I stupid enough to play Truth or Dare in the first place?
1 was sure that if I chose "truth," Tammy was going to—
horror of horrors—ask me if I had a crush on Gabe . . . and
he was sitting right across from me. He and Roger had been
biking down the road in front of Tammy's. They normally
don't spend any time with us, but tonight they stopped. And
1H3
First, Roger Myers appears over the top of the fence,
then Gabe follows. More giggling on the other side. I'm
about to scream in outrage, but Sandra smacks me on the
head. Sob! C'mon.'' She pushes off farther into the deep
end to hide beneath the shadows of the diving board. I don't
waste any time in following her.
Roger says, "We're just checking to make sure you're
really skinny-dipping."
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod," is the only
thing coming out of my mouth.
"There's no way we're letting you check that out." Sandra
obviously has more presence of mind than I do.
Roger laughs. "No choice. We'll just grab these"—he
bends over and scoops up the pile of our clothing—"and
check to make sure it's all there."
Carrying our clothes, he runs toward the fence. He throws
them over (or tries to; Sandra's bra gets stuck on the top of the
fence), then scrambles up after them. He rescues Sandra's bra
and tosses it on the other side of the fence, then jumps down
after it. Gabe shoots over the fence right after him.
"Oh. My. God." At least I've managed to change the
tempo of mv speech even if I haven't managed to find any
new words.
"It's all here," Tammy announces, barely loud enough
for us to hear. She doesn't want to get caught, either.
Roger's face reappears at the top of the fence. The
in,'
pretty soon they were just hanging with us. Maybe they
were bored, nothing else to do on a warm Saturday evening
two weeks before the end of the school year.
But choosing "dare" was a mistake—definitely a mistake,
I realize now, as I slip into the water as quickly and
quietly as I can. It's freezing, totally freezing.
"I hey better not be watching," Sandra says.
Just exactly what I'm thinking.
"And you owe me for this," she adds.
No doubt about that. Not many friends would be willing
to put themselves through this agony just so their BF
wouldn't have to do it alone. I still can't quite fathom that
Tammy has done this to me. "I dare you to go skinnydipping
in the neighbor's pool," she said at 10:15, just ten
minutes ago. Hard to believe my whole life has changed in
that time: I have become a girl who trespasses—naked—
into someone else's pool.
Can I get arrested for this?
I think I'd rather not know.
We hear muffled laughter on the other side of the fence.
Everyone is checking to make sure we're actually in the
pool.
Humiliating. 1 hank God the pool lights are off. Thank
God no one seems to be home.
The fence rattles.
"Ohmygod," Sandra breathes. "Someone's coming over."
101
muffled giggling from below him is making me feel crazy.
He tosses down our clothes. They rain into a scattered mess
in the dirt; then Roger disappears again, and within seconds
we can hear pounding feet receding into the distance
as a giggling herd stampedes its way back to Tammy's.
Quiet hangs heavy in the air again. The only sounds we
hear are the whorls our limbs ma
ke in the water.
"Time to get out," Sandra announces. We stumble over
to our clothes. No towels, of course. Not one of the amenities
offered to trespassers. The clothes stick to us as we try
to put them back on.
"I can't find my underwear," I tell Sandra.
"Forget 'em," she says. "Let's just get out of here." Her
long curly hair has already soaked the top half of her shirt. I
can't help being satisfied with the messy look of it. Sandra's
always dressed a bit too neatly. All her clothes—picked out
by Mrs. Simpson, of course—are too well coordinated. Her
socks, her hair clips, her shoes, everything all goes together.
She sometimes looks like a present that's been professionally
wrapped by someone who doesn't care at all about the
gift inside the box. But as she stands here now, in a wrinkled
and wet shirt, she seems more like the person I really know
she is. "Hurry up," she prods me.
"I can't just forget about my underwear," I protest.
"Sure you can," she insists. She grabs my arm and pulls
me to the fence.
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o^e 16
The note comes back to me folded a few extra times.
Thank God. That must mean Sandra had an aspirin.
My head is pounding.
Throbbing. In time to Ms. Winters's voice. Chemistry
class. Just where a girl with a headache and major problems
doesn't want to be.
I unfold the note carefully, and a yellow and red Tylenol
Geltab rests on top of Sandra's writing. Right underneath
my plea tor an aspirin, she's written:
At least Winters is off on one of her tangents. You
won't have to know any of this stuff for c test. That must
help with your headache.
I write back:
It would if she hadn't decided to get distracted by
something so scientific and complicated. Every once in a
while I actually try to get all this stuff to make sense. I
liked it better the time we all managed to get her talking
about her crazy brother for the entire hour. Whose
idea was it to get her going on this quantum mechanics
thing?
I pass the note back one seat to Sandra. We don't dare
talk. We don't want to interrupt her in any way, or she'll
remember that she's supposed to be teaching us about covalent
bonds . . . that she's somehow gotten away from what
she wrote in her lesson plans for today. Quantum mechanics
isn't nearly as thrilling as some of the personal stories
she tells us when her mind starts wandering, but it still
means that in twenty minutes she'll redize we don't have
any of the information we need to do our homework and—
awesome—she won't give us any.
While I'm waiting for the note to come back, I contemplate
trying to dry-swallow this Tylenol. I was hoping for
an aspirin. I hey're smaller. This rubbery thing is likely to
get stuck in my throat.
My day totally sucks.
The note comes back:
10S
Ub . . . that would be your boyfriend who started
asking her bow the rules of particle physics influenced the
bonding of molecules. He was trying to get her off track,
wasn't he?
I take my time writing a response. .Ms. Winters looks
like she'll be going on and on for quite a while.
Probably. Are yon following this whole thing she's
trying to tell us about how subatomic particles can be both
waves and particles at the same time? Those splatter pictures
she's drawing make my head feel like it's going to
explode. I want to throw a whole bottle of Tylenol through
one of those slits and see if we get a particle or wave pattern,
you know? And okay, so maybe it's amazing that
something can be two things at once, and that observing
tbem influences which of the two they are, but I'd rather
set up a study to see how observation of that Web page
influences Dana.
I pass the note back to Sandra. Ms. Winters has moved
on to talking about how everything in the universe is connected
in ways that can't always be seen or understood.
This has something to do with photons behaving like both
particles and waves. She calls this the particle-wave duality
and wants to impress on us its importance: that at the
subatomic level no time has to pass for one particle to know
about and be affected by what's happening to another. At
the smallest levels of the universe, rules of cause and effect
ID!.
become blurred because particles can communicate with
one another simultaneously.
This is enough to make mv brain explode, so instead
of trying to make sense of it, I begin wondering what kind
of interaction two subatomic particles would want to have,
anyway. Might make an interesting short story for English
class. Maybe I can give it a bit of an Edgar Allan Poe
flair. One particle nukes another and then tries to hide
its energy under a floorboard—or maybe in a wormhole.
Thus, the second particle can never be observed again and
have imposed upon it human expectations about whether it
is a wave or particle . . . and therefore it can be neither particle
nor wave . . . or maybe it would still then be both . ..
but the universe's communication about the nuking event is
simultaneous, so does that mean that the universe (and the
humans trying to watch this event) have already taken into
account—at the very moment it's happening—the event
itself? Now, that would seem to take all the suspense out of
the story. I mean, that's sort of like everything is predetermined,
right?
Ohmygod. I can't escape subatomic thoughts. I'm definitely
losing it. If I don't stop, my head isn't just going to
explode, it's going to create nuclear fallout.
Thankfully, the note comes back.
You dont need to set up a study to find that out.
She had a screaming and crying fit in the bathroom and
10:
everyone's talking about it.
Yeah. Everyone.
Except—apparently—me, since I've missed out on all
the good gossip. That's what I get for hanging with Gabriel
between classes.
Someone anonymously published on the Web a list of
spiteful awards for Overton High School girls. Things like
Most Emo, Aberzombie of the Year, and Biggest Babble
Moron. Dana won in the Best-Looking Bitch category. I
can't help feeling satisfaction that someone else has finally
discovered the perfect adjective for Dana—even thouqh I
know that makes me a terrible person. Whoever published
those awards really shouldn't have done it. That was way out
of line. The author is entitled to his or her opinions (especially
when they're so close to the truth), but putting that
out there on the internet? Way unethical.
Still...
Missed all that. Details please.
A few minutes later, the note returns.
She was all crying in
the bathroom because who would
do something that terrible to her? She's never meant to
hurt anyone, etc. Guess she was some bizarre combination
of totally hurt and so angry she wanted to kill someone.
Lacey was in the bathroom at the time, and it was enough
to even make her feel sorry for Dana. Maybe this will be
a turning point for her, and she'll start being nicer. Did
you hear that Mr. Patterson already got the website taken
downs'
Is Gabe really worth this? First he earns me Dana's
eternal enmity . . . then he keeps me from hearing all the
good gossip when she's finally managing to get what she
deserves.
I pass the note back:
How'd he manage to do that? I thought be didn't even
know who did it.
It returns:
He called the people v.'ho host the Web page, and they
agreed to take it off. Ob, and he's found out who did it.
Lucky it wasn't you.
What the . . . ? What do you mean?
Dana was telling everyone that you were the one who
must have made the page.
Me?! Oh, crap. The bells rings. I've got to take that Tylenol.
Where is it?!
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"Rrrglighgh.'" Cozy's claw slices across my wrist.
"Ouch!" I yell.
Perhaps the hat isn't such a good idea. Even as I think it,
I continue trying to tie the ribbon beneath Cozy's chin.
"If you'd just hold still," I say through gritted teeth, "I'd
have you all dressed."
Felicity, my American Girl doll, lies on the bed next to
me, naked except for her tights. It seems impossible to get
the tights on Cozy, so I haven't even tried, but Felicity's
blue and white summer outfit looks very cute on the cat. An
mi
American Girl pet: perfect. Just what I've always wanted—
well, at least ever since the idea occurred to me ten minutes
ago. I don't understand why the cat won't cooperate with me.
She struggles against me and uses her paw to try to push the
beautiful straw hat off her head. The shoe I've worked so
hard to put on her back paw goes flying through the air as
she keeps struggling.
"Stop it," I tell her.
She caterwauls in response—loud enough for Kristen
to hear. Now she's pounding on my door. "Maddy, what are
you doing to that cat?" she demands. "Let me in."
Mom should know better than to leave Kristen as my
babysitter. We fight all the time when she's babysitting for