by Jen Malone
Sibby’s room is always artfully messy, which complements its boho-chic vibe, with the tapestry-covered walls and beaded chandelier and ceramic elephant collection. But while this mess is art-related, it’s nothing close to art-ful.
“What is going on here, Molly Jacques?” I tease.
Sibby examines her wounded finger more closely. “I just told you. Bloody marker pinched me.” Then she looks up. “Who did you call me?”
“Molly Jacques. She’s this illustrator I’m obsessed with—you’d love her stuff.”
Even in its current state of chaos, this space is cozy and familiar and safe, and I step over a pile of neon-orange poster boards to join her in the center of her overdyed rug, our matching crisscrossed knees bumping as I settle in across from her. “But really, whatcha doin’? I know it’s not school-related, because no one’s assigning homework over April vacation. Unless—Dormer wouldn’t dare, would he?”
She reaches around me to a different pile and turns over the poster on top.
GIVE, SO SOMEONE CAN LIVE! it reads.
“Prom with a Purpose,” she adds needlessly.
I school my expression to neutral as the prickly-but-also-somehow-empty feeling I’ve been experiencing lately resurfaces. So much for Sibby’s room being safe, at least not from BA reminders. Although really, practically nowhere is, except maybe when I’m hanging out with Will.
I stifle a sigh and pull the stack of completed posters—maybe ten or so—into my lap, flipping through them slowly. Despite the dip in my mood, I can’t help but laugh a little at what I see. “Sib, I love you, but these are terrible. Is this supposed to be an I or a Z? And you misspelled transplantation.”
I continue giggling softly, until it sinks in that I’m at a party for one; Sibby is most definitely not amused. She snatches them back. “Yeah, well, some of us haven’t spent the last five years perfecting hand lettering.”
I shrug off her snippy tone. “You should have called me to help.”
Sibby waits for me to meet her eyes, which have a spark of challenge in them that makes my stomach twist. “I think we both know why I didn’t.”
“I don’t, actually,” I insist, feigning ignorance. I’ll admit I haven’t exactly sprung backflips any of the times she’s floated the concept of Prom with a Purpose by me, but I’ve also never been able to bring myself to flat-out say, “I hate the idea,” so from her perspective I’m still on board with things.
Her exhale contains a scoff. “I’m not dense, you know. It’s hard to miss you clamming up any time I bring up the subject.”
I shrug as I stare at her carpet. “You could have asked. We should hang out as much as we can while we have the chance.”
Glancing up in time to notice the color drain from her cheeks, I replay my words in my head before gasping. “I wasn’t suggesting— I just meant before we both go off to different colleges!”
I don’t add that I’m aware the fact we haven’t been spending more time together lately has been more my fault than hers. Just like I also don’t tell her that my enrollment might be on shaky ground. There’s so much I’m keeping to myself these days, but confessing the doctor’s recommendation to Sibby would mean acknowledging it as a real possibility, and I’m not prepared to go there either.
Ignoring my words, she reaches around me again for a blank poster board and begins outlining letters with a marker. I have to fight the urge to yank it from her when I see how haphazard she’s being about it. No snap lines to keep the wording straight, no pencil sketching first to ensure even spacing between letters or that everything will fit. Instead, I sit on my hands and absorb the irritation coming off her.
Irritation at me. Maybe more than irritation. Maybe full-on anger.
Sibby and I are both “feisty,” as my dad terms it. Neither of us is afraid to be loud and proud. Sure, we might take down an obnoxious derby competitor, and I’m not saying we haven’t discussed a few evil plans to exact a fitting revenge on Mr. Dormer before graduation, but . . . those are different.
When we confront something, we do it together and we have fun with it. We rant about the most recent Doctor Who casting or reviews that don’t put spoiler warnings in the first paragraph. We rage about spammy Instagram ads; those who are old enough to vote and don’t; people who refer to themselves as “pet parents” to their dog or cat; tourists who walk around here saying, “Hey, I really did just pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd!” like they’re the first to ever make that joke (although it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if that honor went to my dad).
I could go on, but I won’t.
Fight together? Always. Fight with each other? Never.
We’re both painfully silent as she pretends to be consumed with her poster making and I pretend equally hard to be absorbed with watching her progress.
Finally, with her head still bent over her work, she says, “I should be packing.”
As much as I want to avoid any kind of escalation of whatever awkwardness this is, I chafe at her words. “Okay, but it’s not like I’m keeping you from doing that.”
She huffs a piece of hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I asked you to prance down the hallway in an art smock to protest the dress code. I didn’t have to ask. You womaned up because that’s what we do for the other person; we fight their battles with them, no questions asked! So why wouldn’t you expect me to do the same for you when it comes to your need for a liver?”
Her words are sharp, but they immediately soften my own defensiveness.
I swallow away the lump that forms in my throat and say, “My BA isn’t a battle, Sib, it’s a waiting game. It’s something that’s just . . . happening . . . and that will continue to happen, up to the day they find me a liver, no matter what we do or don’t do. Until that call comes, it really isn’t something you can fight with me. It isn’t even something I can fight. Trust me, I hate feeling helpless about it, but it is what it is.”
“That’s a load of crap!” Her voice is as loud as mine was quiet, and I cringe at the thought of her mom overhearing us. Sibby obviously doesn’t care about that, though, because she continues at top volume. “I’m stopping strangers on the sidewalk to ask them if they’re organ donors. I signed up my mum’s dry cleaner, our UPS guy, the girl who fixed my laptop at the Genius Bar. That boy we love at Mr. Bartley’s—the one who adds extra ice cream to the frappés!”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay, I can’t keep this in anymore. I’m going there.”
Her warning sounds up and down my spine and I taste acid in my mouth as I wait for her to continue.
“I’m trying so hard to be a good friend to you and to push my feelings aside to give yours top priority,” she says. “You think it was easy for me to stand next to you and listen to you tell everyone in our class how you needed a transplant to live? Or hold in my news about Tufts? I’m busting my arse trying to get this Prom with a Purpose thing off the ground on my own. For you. Meanwhile, you’re just . . . what? Hanging from a ropes course with some fuckskillet who suddenly reappeared in your life? Ignoring anything that has to do with your condition? Fuck me dead, Lia! Where are you in all this?”
Her accusations, delivered in shouts, make my fight-or-flight reflex kick in big-time. My skin is too tight and my chest collapses and I don’t know how to act normally or breathe normally and ohmygodIjustwantoutofthisroom.
I brace my hands on the floor and wait for the sensation to pass, taking several deep inhales. Avoiding eye contact and keeping my voice low, I somehow manage, “I’m right here, same me as ever. That’s the whole point. I’m fighting to stay the same Amelia as ever while I wait for this to resolve itself.”
Sibby collapses backward on the rug. Her sigh is epic and I can see her anger draining away; I allow my stomach to unclench ever so slightly.
“Okay, help me understand,” she finally says, in a much calmer voice. “How would you not be the same Amelia as ever if you took action with me on this? Taking action is what we do.�
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“Because. Offering myself up as a sob story to tug at people’s heartstrings makes me out to be some sad sack, woe-is-me pity case. And I can’t let myself own that role. That’s not me! I’m just like you. We’re bold. And brave. We’re not afraid to get rough on the derby track, we’re always up for adventure. We’re feral swamp goddesses and descendants of witches that couldn’t burn, right?”
My own voice shakes now too, but not with anger. With . . . I don’t know what with. Righteousness? “I’m not giving any of that—of me—up just because I have a crappy liver that’s busy deteriorating inside of me, which I can barely feel happening!”
I hate that my eyes water as I choke out the words.
Sibby stares at me for the longest time. Long enough that my heartbeat slows to normal again and the air in the room expands.
She struggles to a sitting position with her legs still crisscrossed. When she’s upright, she wiggles her knees right in against mine again and studies me for a second, before reaching over with both hands to gently slide the clasp of my necklace around to the back. Keeping her eyes fixed on my neck, she settles the Rolldemort letters into their proper position, centered beneath my chin, and says, “I’m really sorry I spat the dummy at you.”
“I’m really sorry you spat the dummy at me too,” I reply, and her lips twitch.
“You’re super bad at apologizing.”
My lips tick up now too. “Well, partly because I don’t really know what that means, so . . .”
“Dummy. Pacifier. Spat the dummy’s like . . . ‘threw a tantrum,’ in Aussie-speak.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I’m still really sorry you spat the dummy at me.” I smile, then add, “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I felt about Prom with a Purpose before now and I will help. Except . . . maybe can we make my role more of a behind-the-scenes one?”
Why didn’t I just say all of this to her long before now? It wasn’t that terrible and it would have been even less so if I hadn’t let it reach this point.
Sibby examines the poster she’s been working on. I think it’s supposed to read YOU’RE SOMEBODY’S TYPE but the y and the second s in somebody’s are stacked on top of the d where she ran out of room. She draws a lewd graphic over the letters and says, “You don’t have a choice about helping. Turns out my poster-making skills are sweet fuck all.”
My laugh dissipates the last of the tension from the air. “Reporting for duty.”
Sibby salutes me, then picks up the pile of posters next to her. “Okay, I’m gonna trash the ones I messed up on and start over. Help me spell ‘transplantation’? And then maybe help me redo every one of these using your perfect lettering sorcery?”
I stretch my arms wide and begin pulling markers toward me. “Lettering is my jam.”
We wiggle out of each other’s way so the poster making can resume in earnest.
“I’ll outline the words and you’re in charge of coloring them in, okay?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I grab my phone and pull up my Pinterest board of hand-drawn fonts. While I begin on the first slogan, Sibby crawls around her room, collecting all the writing utensils and organizing them by color and type. We’re quiet as we set to our respective tasks, but this time it’s a comfortable silence, not a tension-laden one. Sibby even starts humming something under her breath.
I’m just about to pass the first completed slogan over for coloring when she giggles.
“What?” I ask.
“I was just thinking what a good ‘get’ on my part the UPS guy was. He always has a giant bag of cheese puffs on the seat next to him in his truck. Talk about a heart attack waiting to happen.”
I laugh, but then catch myself. “I don’t think it’s good karma to actively cheer on anyone’s demise. Especially not a death-by-cheese-puffs.”
“Did I mention he also listens to Robin Thicke on repeat?”
“Oh, screw it, then; he’s beyond our compassion.”
Sibby laughs and plops down next to me. “Sorry I called Will a fuckskillet.”
“You did! I forgot that!” It was lost on me in the moment because I was so overwhelmed by the fact that Sibby was yelling at me.
“I don’t actually think he is one, if that helps. At least, based on what you’ve told me, since I have yet to meet this mystery boy. Hint, hint.”
“He’s definitely not a fuckskillet,” I say, hiding a smile.
“You have the worst poker face ever. Do you like him like him?”
I glance up from my poster and catch her conspiratorial wink. “It’s not like that,” I insist.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she singsongs.
“No, really. Hanging out with Will is just easy—we’re flirty, but I honestly don’t think either one of us is flirting. You know?”
“So, do you think this is still about a favor to Alex on his part? The reason he keeps hanging around?”
“He doesn’t keep hanging around. I’m the one who texted him and invited him to Jordan’s. This past Sunday was the only other time he initiated anything, and it was super casual. He said he was looking for an excuse to be outside.”
“What about you? What are you getting out of it?”
Escape.
For some reason, I can’t say this, though. I don’t want her to think I need to escape her. I look for another way to phrase it. “I dunno, it’s just fun to banter with him. Low-key.”
She studies me for a few seconds and I sense the mood change. I’m already on guard when she says, “Since we’re being brutally honest with each other tonight, can I ask you something you’re probably not gonna want to answer?”
My gut clenches in warning, but I merely shrug. “Sure. I guess.”
“Is it low-key because you know he won’t call you on your shit?”
“What? No.” I retrace a letter I’ve already outlined and avoid looking at her.
But I hear her inhale, and brace for her next words. “The thing is,” she says. “That stuff we say about being fearless swamp goddesses and daughters of witches to pump ourselves up is—”
I cut her off. “You don’t think we’re fierce?”
She holds her palms up. “I do! But I think that’s only one aspect of who we are. I think we have quieter parts too. I think all of us have parts that are a little bit chickenshit.” She holds her fingers up to indicate a small amount, then drops her eyes and whispers, “Especially you.”
“What?!” These are the last words I ever thought Sibby—of all people, Sibby who’s my person, who claims she has my back always in all ways—would say to me, and indignation rushes in to take the place of any other emotions. “Excuse you, but you’re right next to me on the roller derby track! And who just took on the school administration on the dress code, thanks very much. The way I own my zany outfits? You’re saying I’m not brave? Fear is not the boss of me; courage is. What about that? Those words aren’t just some empty chant we do before games. They’re kind of my mantra these days!”
Sibby shakes her head. “I’m not trying to take away from any of those things, Lia, because they’re amazing. You’re amazing. But . . .”
“But what, Sib?” I demand.
She settles her eyes on mine. “What you’re describing isn’t bravery; those are examples of bravado. Two different things.”
“Explain,” I order. I’m somewhere between defensiveness and shock. How long has she been holding this in?
“Bravado is boldness, it’s cheeky swagger, it’s having front. Bravery is . . . it’s more . . . putting yourself on the line.”
“I put myself on the line!” What is she even talking about? “What do you think I do every time I elbow through a row of blockers?”
“I don’t mean physically!” She composes herself and sighs. “I mean emotionally.”
“I have zero idea what you’re saying.” I love Sibby and I trust her and maybe she thinks she’s telling me these things to help me, but she’s just flat-out wrong about this.
She points at the poster by my knees. “Exhibit A.”
I’m lost and my look conveys it.
Pointedly, she unlocks my phone and hands it to me with Pinterest displayed on the screen. “Your art is beautiful, but it’s not you. It’s someone else’s.”
“I wasn’t going for art, Sib! They’re freaking slogans for a rally!”
Her smug expression makes me suspicious that I’ve walked right into a trap she’s set. Confirmation comes when she asks, “And your mural?”
“What about my mural? I designed that!”
“Babe, I say this with love, but . . . did you? Or did you take elements of other people’s designs and mash them together?”
“You are literally describing ninety-nine point nine percent of all artistic expression. Everyone pulls inspiration from what’s already been done.”
“And then they add their own unique vision to it, to make it say something personal about them. I’m not saying you didn’t do that, except that maybe I am a little. I mean, Maya Angelou is the queen, but those are her words, not yours, yeah?” There’s a flash of challenge in her eyes and it sends a new jolt of anger through me. Who the hell does she think she is?
“What do I have to say that could match Maya Angelou’s wisdom?” I argue. “I’m a kid—I haven’t done anything yet. What sort of inspirational wisdom do you expect me to impart, exactly?”
“It doesn’t have to be profound, Li. You can tell me to bugger off but it’s gonna be your signature on that wall; it should be your voice there too. That’s all. I’m not trying to piss you off. Trust me, I’m sure I have loads of my own issues to work on, and I’m counting on my best friend to call me out on all of them. You can even start now if you want. Ready? Go!”
“I don’t want to throw all your flaws in your face—I want to support you, the way we always do for each other. I don’t understand why we’re back to arguing. Have you just been trying to pick fights with me tonight?”