by Amy Giles
Prom is ten days away. All the stragglers who waited until the last minute are scrambling to line up their dates.
“Jess!”
Aisha rushes down the hallway calling my name. Aisha is always rushing from place to place. She’s one of those overachievers who’s involved in every club.
She skids to a stop in front of me.
“Please tell me you didn’t come up with this one.” I point across the hall to Andrew’s sign.
Aisha presses a hand against her chest, her silver rings sparkling against her brown skin, trying to catch her breath. Then she looks at the promposal sign and lifts her lip in distaste. “No way, Andrew is a douche. I refused to even accept his money. Are you and Lucas going?”
I laugh just picturing us going to prom. Our big date was going to Key Food for double-coupon Wednesday so I could cash in the coupons his mom gave me. “Uh, no. We’re not really prom people.”
I think of all the prom pictures posted on the school website. The orange spray tans. The fake nails. Girls squeezed into dresses too tight, guys hoping they can figure out how to get girls out of those tight dresses. Blowing all that money on hair, makeup, limos, tuxes. All that pomp and circumstance, and for what? One night? I’d rather spend prom night at the beach alone with Lucas.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out quickly. “Okay, two things. One!” She holds up her finger. “No one’s running for class treasurer next year. Like, zilch, nada.” She makes a zero with her fingers. “Would you do it?”
My head snaps back in shock. “Why me?”
“Why not?” she pushes back.
“No, seriously. What makes you think I’d want to do it?”
She lifts a shoulder. “’Cause you’re good at math?” When I roll my eyes at that, she adds, “Jess, don’t read too much into it. I’m asking everyone. No one wants to do it. It’s not a tough job and it’ll look good on your college applications. No one’s running against you, so it’s not like you have to campaign or anything. Just think about it.”
I shrug. Fine. I’ll pretend to think about, even if I doubt I’ll be filling out any college applications next year.
Aisha pushes her dark curls over her shoulder and scratches at her chin while poring over an open notebook in her hand.
“Okay, next . . . I’m working on the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the yearbook,” she begins. Her eyes are glued to her notebook; otherwise she’d see how her words flatten me. “We want to do one for everyone we lost that night who would’ve graduated this year.” Her voice is careful, delicate. Well intentioned. It doesn’t stop the hallway from shrinking or my fingers from tingling.
“If you have a baby picture of Ethan to bring in that would be great, and a list of his favorite things so we can personalize it.”
Her voice drowns out in the vortex of noise around me. Laughter that’s too shrill. Lockers that clang like they’re mic’d. Someone runs by and yells, right in my ear. I flinch.
Aisha’s arm wraps around me in a hug, suddenly, out of nowhere. Or maybe she’s been talking longer than I realized.
“You okay?” she asks, and I lie and nod.
Aisha leans back, and her eyes well up. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” she asks, as if she has personal experience, as if she knows what it’s like to lose your brother.
When she walks away, I have the vague recollection of her giving me a homework assignment to bring in pieces of Ethan’s life so years from now people can point to his page in the yearbook and feel sorry for him, for us.
The bell rings, striking through me like a thunderbolt. The hallway empties, sucking all of my space, all my air, everything I need to survive.
I race down the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.
Once I’m safely locked in a stall, I pull my phone out of my back pocket to flip through old pictures of Ethan and Marissa. It helps, but only a little. My heart is still racing like a helicopter propeller about to take flight out of my mouth.
The bathroom door flies open and Charmaine’s and Domie’s booming voices bounce off the cinder block walls.
“You need to get your ass to church more, Domie! You got the devil in you! You need Jesus in your heart!”
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Domie replies.
It’s the cavalry coming to the rescue. My legs feel like jelly, so I wait on the toilet, listening. The window opens with a groan. I hear the spark of a lighter and the skunky smell of weed wafting around the small bathroom.
“Hey, Red! You want?” Charmaine holds the joint between her fingers under the stall. I accept it and take a hit, letting it sit in my lungs. Then I take another one before coming out.
“How’d you know it was me?” I pass the joint back to her.
She laughs and takes a hit, then passes it to Domie. “You’re the only person I know whose baby feet don’t touch the floor when they’re sitting on the toilet,” she squeezes out tightly, trying to hold the smoke in her lungs.
Domie cracks up. So do I. The joint passes around a few more times. The ghosts that sit on top of my chest every minute of the day blur and fade into the backdrop.
Lucas
The dismissal bell just rang. Jess walks by my side, her feet sluggish, as we worm through the throngs of sun-starved students all trying to squeeze out of the building at the same time, like carbonation exploding out of a shaken soda bottle.
“I’m soooo tired.” She yawns hugely. Her eyes are bloodshot.
“Did you get any sleep last night? You practically look wasted,” I say, and laugh. Until she shrugs and nods. “You’re wasted?”
“Maybe?” she says, which I’ve learned is Jess’s reluctant yes. “I may have run into Domie in the bathroom earlier. She may have had some weed.”
“During school?” I ask, scratching the back of my head.
“Yeah. I was in a funk. She was there. It seemed like the right thing at the moment. Except I forgot about my APUSH test. I either aced it or tanked. I’m not sure yet.” She laughs it off. I mean, getting stoned is okay, I guess. It’s not for me. It tightens my lid instead of loosening it, makes me uptight, angry, paranoid . . . all those things I’m trying to quiet down, not jack up.
“So . . . what were you in a funk about?”
“I dunno,” she says, staring off into space.
I blow a stream of air in frustration. Pumping her for information is getting exhausting. But a new wave of optimism washes over me as soon as we’re out the door. It’s a beautiful spring day. Warm air rushes up against our skin. School will be over next month, graduation, and then we’ll have summer before my classes start at Queensborough Community. Weekends at the beach, bonfires, barbecues. I can pretty much handle anything when the weather is nice. Maybe Jess and I will go camping, get out of here for a few days.
We walk to my car, parked on the street. She hops in the passenger seat and lowers the seat back as I get in and turn the ignition.
Closing her eyes, she mumbles, “Sleepy.”
“Should I take you home?” I ask.
She opens one bloodshot eye and glares at me. “What? No! Drive!” She gestures in front of her toward the windshield, egging me to get a move on.
“Where to?” I ask, pulling away from the curb.
“Surprise me,” she says with her eyes closed.
“I thought you don’t do surprises.”
“I’ll make an exception today.” She lets out another huge yawn. “I’m just going to take a quick power nap. Ten minutes, tops,” she says, and almost immediately starts snoring.
She’s in such a deep sleep, I decide to get out of Queens and do something different. I drive an hour east, then north until I hit the state park my parents used to take us to when we were kids. Jess wakes up as I pull into the parking lot.
Stretching, she turns her head to look out every window. Green foliage greets her at every turn. She faces me with a questioning look.
“Do you know you snore?”
She wi
pes the back of her hand along her mouth. I don’t want to point out she drooled also. “Now you know all my dark secrets,” she says. “Where are we?”
“A state park on the North Shore. We’re mixing things up today.”
We get out of the car and walk until we reach the water. I find us a secluded spot on top of the sea cliff, where we have a view of the Long Island Sound. Jess parks herself in my lap, arms looped around my neck, in our little private oasis overlooking the beach.
Pushing her hair behind her ear, she then presses her lips against mine, soft at first, then more urgent.
But I have questions. So many. I pull my lips away from hers.
“So when we were walking to the car you were telling me how—” She kisses the corner of my mouth. “You and Domie—” She plants another kiss on my lips. “Why’d you—” Kiss. “Are you trying to shut me up?”
“Is it working?” she asks, kissing me again.
“Kinda.” She smiles against my lips but I pull away just far enough so I can get the words out. “But seriously. Why’d you get stoned at school?”
She leans farther away, eyes narrowing to scrutinize me. “Why are you judging?”
“I’m not. I mean, I’m not trying to. It’s just . . . you don’t drink, but you smoke weed? I’m just trying to figure it out.”
With her arms still draped around my neck, she takes a deep breath through her nose and scans the tree awning overhead. “I don’t drink because alcoholism is a thing in my family. But weed helps cut the edge.”
“But, you’re still self-medicating,” I tell her, because I learned all about this in therapy.
Her arms undrape from around my neck. “What’s the difference? You pop a pill from the pharmacist. I smoke weed. I don’t do it every day and it’s not like I can’t get through life without it. I mean . . . are you seriously bugging out about this?”
“No . . . I’m not bugging out,” I argue. “Just . . . look, if it’s a casual thing, fine. But if you’re using it to deal with day-to-day life, then yeah, it’s a problem.”
She huffs and slips off my lap. She’s mad at me for caring?
I shoulder-bump her.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she repeats, plucking rocks off the ground to avoid looking at me.
I bump her again. “I just give a shit, Jess. Is that so awful?”
She shakes her head and bounces the rocks in her hand. She sighs. “No. It’s not. I think you’re the only one who does lately.”
I reach my arm around her and she gives in and leans against me. “It’s not you anyway. Aisha came up to me today. She’s working on the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the yearbook.”
“Shit,” I groan.
“Yeah. The bell rang. All of a sudden, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Everything felt too tight. And when that happens, I hope to God I find Domie in the bathroom to make it go away.”
I nod. “I had a full-blown panic attack with Pete at Five Guys. Loud noises can do it to me. I just about passed out. Poor Pete had to mop up my mess.”
I tear a dandelion out of the ground that’s gone to seed and blow. The seeds float away, except for one. It lands in Jess’s hair. I pluck it out, rolling it back and forth between my fingers, trying to work up the nerve to say what’s been on my mind.
“I don’t know how else to say this but to just say it,” I hedge. “But I’m worried about you.”
Her head jerks back in surprise. “Me? Why?”
It hurts not to eye-roll at that. “Why? Because there are obviously things going on in your life you’re not talking about. And I’m pretty sure what you’re describing is because you’re bottling it all up.”
She glances away, following the lethargic trek of the fluffy seeds.
“Okay,” she says, and then pauses. She squeezes her eyes shut and her entire face clenches. “Okay,” she says again, like she’s about to jump off a high diving board and is trying to muster up the courage. “So, my mom.” She stops and swallows, followed by a sniff. Then she swipes at her eyes. “This is why I don’t talk about it.” She tries to laugh but it’s choked off by a sob.
“Jess. You have to start somewhere.”
She nods and sniffs some more.
“It’s like she died that night too. With Ethan.” The words come out strangled. She buries her face in her hands and cries. Muffled between her fingers, she says, “You asked for it!”
“Hey, give me a little more credit.” I nuzzle in closer to her ear. “This doesn’t faze me. I want to know.”
She nods and cries some more. “I know,” she admits. “I don’t know why this is so hard.”
I hug her tighter. “I can’t tell you how many times I bawled through my therapy sessions.”
It takes her a while to be able to talk again. Finally she sits up straighter. Fisting her sleeves, she wipes her eyes. “It started when my dad left us. She stayed in bed for days. And we needed her, you know? He didn’t just leave her. Our dad left us too.”
She takes a ragged breath and blows it out. “She went back to work a few days later, but she wasn’t the same. It did something to her. She just pawned off her wedding band and engagement ring a few weeks ago . . . the night I blew off going bowling. She was a mess; I couldn’t leave her. Even though we really needed that money, I don’t think she wanted to sell them. I think she’s still waiting for my father to come back.”
She swipes under her eyes. “When Ethan died, she used up all her bereavement days, her personal days, sick days, vacation days. . . . Then she took a leave of absence. When twelve weeks were up, she told her job she wasn’t coming back. She was getting unemployment for a while until Social Security set up appointments for her to come in and she didn’t go. So we stopped getting those checks. Then she stopped taking her antidepressants because she said they weren’t helping. And in the past couple of months since she went off them, she’s only gotten worse. She doesn’t even want to get out of bed most days.
“So basically, everyone’s gone.” She ticks off on her fingers. “My father. Ethan. Marissa. My mom. Even the people who didn’t die aren’t here for me anymore where I need them. Everyone’s either a ghost or ghosted on me.”
“Hey. I’m not going anywhere.”
She nods, raking the ground with her fingers. “I know.” But I get it. I’m not enough. She wants and needs her mother.
“They’re not all bad days,” she adds. “Some days she tries. I’ve been trying to get her to go back to the doctor, or get a new one. She won’t go though.”
“What about you?” I ask.
She turns to me. “What about me?”
“Don’t you think you should talk to someone?”
She opens her mouth to huff with irritation, jutting out a hand. “I told you. We can’t afford it.”
“Mrs. Walker is free,” I say. When she doesn’t say anything, I add, “Look, if you were sick, you’d go to the nurse, right? Same thing.”
She nods, and stares at the ground. “Yeah, okay.”
“I just want to help. You know that, right?”
She looks up at me. “You help me every day. You give me something to look forward to.”
Jess wipes her face with her sleeves, then takes my hand and pries my pinch apart. The seed of the dandelion is still there, slightly smushed. She closes her eyes and blows. When she looks up at me again, she smiles. “See? Wish granted. You’re still here.”
She lies back and tugs on my shirt until I join her. Jess digs an elbow into the ground and props her head up on her hand, then reaches over me and plucks another dandelion out of the ground, this one still a tight yellow bud, and runs it down my nose.
I don’t for a second take for granted that Jess opening up to me today wasn’t a huge deal. We’re moving forward. Communicating. Getting through this, together. It’s time to think ahead, make plans where ghosts aren’t invited or welcomed.
“So, here’s something that’ll make you laugh,” I say, wrapping my fing
ers around her wrist as she drags the yellow bud down my nose. She bops me on the nose with it. “Prom’s coming up soon.”
She tilts her head as if she didn’t hear me correctly. “Prom?”
“Next Sunday.”
“Yeah? So?”
“We should go.”
She stares at me for too long. My heart skips a beat waiting for a reaction from her.
Her eyes, still swollen from crying, narrow in a look I now am very familiar with.
“Prom?” she repeats, the hint of a laugh in her voice.
“Why not?” I ask. “It’ll be fun.”
She flops back into the crook of my arm. “Your idea of fun is drastically different from mine. Maybe boxing should have been my first clue.”
I roll onto my side to face her. “I didn’t think I wanted to go either, but the idea grew on me.”
“Like mold.” She lets out a groan of surrender. “Fine. We’ll go. Only because you’re graduating and I don’t want you to regret not going to your prom. But I have conditions. One: No limo. They’re stupid. Two: No corsage. They’re cheesy as hell. Cheesy in a bad way. And three: Absolutely under no circumstance are you to prompose to me. I mean it. That is a deal-fucking-breaker.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Jessica Nolan. But you’re also a cheap date, so no arguments here.”
Jess
When we’re parked outside my house, Lucas plucks a piece of grass from my hair, then leans in for another kiss that turns into a long breathless one. I push him away, gently.
“Leo’s gonna be mad.”
“He’s always mad.” Lucas finds my lips again.
“What time were you supposed to be there?” I ask against his lips, looking over at the clock on the dashboard.
“Seven,” he says, his lips traveling down my chin.
I’m in no rush to go inside, but I don’t want him to get in trouble. I push him away. “It’s seven twenty. He’ll blame me for holding you up.”
I turn around to lean over my seat, grabbing my backpack from the floor behind us. His hand travels up the back of my leg.
I swat at his hand. “Don’t start something now.”