by Ali Benjamin
I know that everything exists because tiny specks, too small to see, move through an invisible field the way a pair of boots moves through mud, getting heavier as they go.
And since my parents split up, I have begun to wonder if this is happening to me, too: if I am getting more weighed down, harder to lift, as I move through this world.
Anyway, you don’t seem to care about the things I know. Not anymore. You once wanted me to tell you everything, and now you care only about Chuck Taylors and the hem of your dress and whatever it is you see when you look in the mirror.
Which makes me wonder this: If you care about things I don’t understand, and you don’t care about the things I do understand, what will we have to talk about anymore?
I don’t buy any “product” for my hair.
After a while, you buy it for me—some sort of clear, sticky gel that smells like bad perfume. You rub it in with your fingers, then blow-dry my hair. But that only makes my hair extra-frizzy, as if I stuck a finger in an electric socket.
“Hmm.” You frown. “You really do have impossible hair.”
And that’s when I want to say this: Maybe. Maybe I do have impossible hair, and maybe that’s a bad thing, but I never thought about it until right this very minute.
That’s when I remember the thing you said once.
You said, “Shoot me if I ever become like that.”
You said, “Send me a signal . . . a secret message.”
You said, “Make it big.”
But I don’t know what the right signal is, the message that would say: I want you to care again about the things I care about.
I don’t know how to say: I used to like myself when I was around you, but now I’m not so sure.
I don’t know how to say: Please, please don’t be another thing that changes.
So I don’t say anything. I just let you add a different product to my electrifrizzy hair until it looks like I rubbed my head in a tub of Vaseline. Then after you go home, I wash it all out.
Around that same time, Aaron comes home for dinner. He brings his new friend, Rocco, and Mom makes everyone twice-baked potatoes and smiles too much. For some reason, she is acting as if Aaron has brought home, like, Elvis Presley himself. Like there is something that makes this friend very different from any of Aaron’s other friends who have come for dinner.
While we eat, I tell them about you, about the way you’re always looking in the mirror and I don’t know what to talk to you about.
“Oh, that’s just a phase girls go through,” says Mom, waving her hand. She laughs a little too loudly; then she stands up to clear our plates.
But Aaron watches me closely.
“Maybe,” he says. “I hope it’s a phase, anyway. But, kiddo, I gotta warn you: You’re entering some hard years.”
He glances at Rocco, who shakes his head. “Middle school,” Rocco says in response. “You couldn’t pay me to go back to middle school.”
I planned to reach out to Jamie by e-mail. But the first time I tried, I just sat there looking at the blinking cursor until my butt hurt from all the sitting.
Better, I thought, to write my ideas down on paper first. But even then, I couldn’t find the words and kept scratching out what I’d written.
I tried being formal:
Dear Mr. Seymour:
Dear Dr. Seymour:
But that didn’t feel right. So I tried the opposite approach:
Hi, Jamie:
Greetings! You don’t know me, but . . .
I tried by opening politely:
I am writing on a matter that I need your help with requires your knowledge expertise.
I tried being direct:
Jamie, I need your help.
I tried a bunch of different ways, but I couldn’t make the words come. Not the way I wanted. I put the pen down and clicked, again, to that video of him getting stung by the Irukandji.
I tried explaining the background:
I have a friend classmate who recently died passed perished due to drowning. The thing is, she was a very good an outstanding swimmer. She died in Maryland in August. It doesn’t really make sense that she could just drown. She really, really was a good swimmer from the very first moment I saw her. Plus, I discovered researched read that the beaches in Maryland don’t have very big waves.
And I even tried to show him how much I’d learned on my own:
I have read recently that jellyfish blooms are expanding all over the world. And that the Irukandji, in particular, which is the type that stung you (I’m sorry if this is painful difficult for you to think about), is likely moving all over the globe. At one time, people experts thought that the Irukandji was found only in Australia, near you. But did you know that Irukandji syndrome was reported in Florida almost ten years a decade ago? Doctors wrote about it in a magazine medical journal. I found the article online and will be happy to send forward it to you your attention if you would like to see it.
I tried asking questions:
So what I am thinking is this: What if my friend classmate had been was stung by a jellyfish? Would we even know? Would anyone even be looking for that?
I mean, is there any way to prove that the reason she drowned wasn’t because of the Irukandji? How can anyone ever be sure?
And if we don’t know it happened to her, how can we prevent it from happening to someone else?
After I’d watched the video so many times I knew it by heart, I decided to try another approach.
I waited until after my mother went to bed.
It was late. Almost midnight.
But Cairns, Australia, is fifteen hours ahead of South Grove, Massachusetts. It would be early afternoon there. In Cairns, they were already living in tomorrow.
I dialed the number I found on the university website. I listened to the phone ring, then heard a crisp woman’s voice say, “James Cook Center for Biodiversity, can I help you?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Just ask for Jamie, I told myself. I squeezed my eyes shut. Just ask.
But I already anticipated what her next question would be. Something like “What is this regarding?” Or “May I ask what this is about?”
And I wasn’t quite sure how I could answer that.
“Hello?” she asked. “Is anyone there?”
I pressed the phone against my ear. I want Jamie’s help, I thought. I want him to help me do something. For my friend. My friend, my not-friend, who is dead. I want him to help me make sense of that, to explain it, to help me prove that when things like this happen, they happen for a reason.
I want him to restore some order to this world.
“Hello? Hello?”
In the movies, there’s always a dial tone almost immediately after someone hangs up on you. But in real life, there’s just a click, then silence. If you’re on a cell phone, you might hear a short beep, have a message appear that the call has ended. But if you’re in your mother’s living room, and it’s almost midnight, all you hear is a single click.
Then maybe you hear some creaking from the baseboard heaters before they turn on. And after that, there is silence. Nothing but silence.
Finding the right words has never been a strength of mine.
By the time we are in sixth grade, at the Eugene Field Memorial Middle School, everything is different.
It’s bigger than our old school, first of all. Three different elementary schools feed into the Eugene Field Memorial Middle School, so there are many strangers. The building is bigger, too, and there are lots of different wings—the sixth-grade wing, the seventh-grade wing, the eighth-grade wing, the arts wing, the phys ed wing. I get lost too often and end up walking the halls with kids who are much older than I am.
And then there are the lockers. Last year, everyone had wooden cubbies, and everything was out in the open. Now we have cold metal lockers that can only be opened with combinations, all our things hidden from light. The lockers fill entire hallways, e
ntire wings, one after another. At night, I dream I’m walking down those hallways. In my dreams they go on forever.
In middle school, kids cast sideways glances at one another, like they’re suspicious of one another. I can see clumps of kids forming—pretty Aubrey with dark hair has started sitting with a pretty girl named Molly who has blonde hair, and they surround themselves with other pretty girls, Anna and Jenna and some others, some of whom I know from elementary school and some of whom I don’t. I don’t like walking past them when they cluster around lockers together. Their hair is so flat, like they know exactly what product to use, and that makes me conscious of my own wild tangles of hair. It makes me feel like a separate species altogether.
For the first part of the year, lunchtime, at least, is the same as last year, with you and me sitting together and sharing snacks and everything being easy.
But after a while, things change. I don’t notice the changes at first.
Each day, I sit down at our regular table and eat my cheese sandwich and wait while you buy your milk. I begin to wait longer than usual. That’s because instead of coming straight to the table, you linger. You talk to people, people I don’t even know, and you take your time. You aren’t just talking, either. You are also standing with a hip stuck out, which makes me wonder if you are waiting for Dylan to walk past. Each day, it seems like you linger a little longer.
Then one day you leave the lunch line, and I think you are walking toward our table. But you don’t. Instead, you sit down at a table with other girls. And not just any girls: You sit with Aubrey and Molly and Jenna and Anna. They smile at you like it is totally normal that you would sit there. I can see your mouths moving as you talk.
I meet your eyes from across the room. I frown at you, lift my hands to say, What are you doing?
At first you look away. I don’t stop staring at you. After a while, you look back at me. You smile and wave me over.
As if I might want to sit with that group.
I scowl. I look down at my sandwich. A lunch monitor walks past and says to me, “Careful, or your face will freeze in that position.”
That night, I tell my mom I want to start buying milk and a snack in the cafeteria. That way, I can stand right next to you as you buy your milk.
The next day, as soon as we have both paid the lunch lady, I say, “Come on,” and I pull you toward our regular table.
You come with me, you sit with me, and it is just the two of us like it should be. But you’re very quiet for the rest of lunch, and after you eat, you crumple your wrappers and stand without even looking at me.
A few days later, you say, “I’m going to eat with those guys today,” and you gesture with your head to Aubrey’s table as if it is nothing at all. Your voice is the kind of voice my mother sometimes calls “snippy.” After a few seconds, you add, “You should come, too. They’re nice.” And your voice is a little kinder then, like maybe you feel a little bit sorry.
I follow you to the table. You sit down next to Jenna. There is not much space, but I squeeze another chair between you anyway. Everyone says hi, but then barely anyone says anything to me for the rest of lunch.
Before lunch ends, the girls bring out little round mirrors. They share blush and eye shadow in various shades of green and blue and gray. They talk about face shape and skin tone, and they point out a bunch of kids who are wearing the wrong colors for their complexions. Somehow you know what they are talking about, know enough to agree that Dorrie Perkins is “olive-y and oval,” but that Emma Strank has cool skin tones and a heart-shaped face.
You turn to me and say softly, “Your face is kind of heart-shaped, too, Suzy.” And I cannot help it. I make a face at you. You turn away quickly.
The next day, you sit with them again. I follow, because best friends always eat together. Molly is saying that during her hip-hop dance class, she wraps her legs and stomach in plastic wrap. This way, she sweats more.
I think about the advice my mother has always given me: that it’s important to ask other people lots of questions. So I ask, “Why would you want to sweat more, anyway?”
Molly doesn’t answer, but Aubrey leans over to me and says, very slowly, as if it is obvious, “It makes her pants fit better.”
I try again.
“Actually, humans have the most sweat glands on the bottom of their feet.” I say this because it’s true, and also because it’s joining the conversation.
Molly looks at me and raises a single eyebrow. That’s how I know I said the wrong thing.
I try again. “Did you know that sweat is sterile when it comes out of your body?”
Molly presses her lips together, and her nostrils flare ever so slightly.
“It’s kind of like pee,” I say. “Everybody thinks pee is so gross, but it’s actually totally clean.”
The table gets very, very still.
“Some people even drink their own pee, you know.”
I notice that Jenna’s hand, which had been about to put a piece of popcorn in her mouth, is frozen in midair.
Jenna looks at Molly. Aubrey looks at you, then at Anna.
Nobody looks at me.
I say, “Most of the time, when people drink their pee, it’s because they have to. Like because they’re trapped under rubble or something. But some people do it because they think it’s good for them.”
Jenna shakes her head, puts the piece of popcorn down. Molly closes her eyes and presses her lips together. It looks like she is trying not to laugh.
Actually, it looks like everyone is trying not to laugh.
Even you.
“Oh, and you know who else drinks their pee?” I cannot seem to stop the words from coming, even though I realize, even as they’re coming out, that they’re the wrong ones.
“Butterflies. They get salts and minerals that way. And a lot of animals use pee to communicate with each other. I mean, I know that sounds pretty gross . . . but . . .” When my voice trails off, I bite my lip. I take a few deep breaths, try to ignore the silence.
I reach into my bag and pull out my Fruit Roll-Up. It’s strawberry-flavored.
I offer it to you. “Want this?”
You shake your head. You do not look at me.
I say, “You sure? It’s strawberry-flavored. . . .”
You gaze past me, your eyes focused on something just above my right shoulder.
I say, “Get it?”
The other girls meet one another’s eyes again.
“Strawberry for Strawberry Girl,” I offer again, waving the Fruit Roll-Up slightly.
Your eyes snap right back at me then. They narrow.
“Huh?” asks Aubrey.
“Nothing,” you snap. “It’s nothing. Just something stupid we did when we were really, really little.” You shoot me a fierce look.
“Some people don’t know when it’s time to grow up, that’s all,” you add.
You stand. And just like that, the other girls stand, too.
Just before you stride away, you lean down to me, so close I can feel your heat. Your face is flushed red. Your eyes are blazing. “Why do you have to be so weird, Suzy?” you hiss.
I have never seen you this angry. And I am confused, because all I did was offer you my Fruit Roll-Up, which is something friends do.
“You’re just. So. Weird,” you say. You turn away from me and storm out of the cafeteria. The other girls follow.
And I’m so amazed—as amazed as I was that first day I met you, when I saw you unexpectedly swim underwater, back when I thought you were like me and you couldn’t swim.
Those girls are following you. You are the girl who was once afraid to read aloud in class, afraid to spend the night away from your mother, and now these girls are following you.
No one even turns around to glance back at me.
At the beginning of each session, Dr. Legs asked me just one question: “Would you prefer silence or speaking today?” Each week, I responded the same way: I pressed my lips together
and stared at my feet.
Dr. Legs leaned back in her chair, clasped her hands in her lap, and met my silence with her own. As my parents waited on the other side of the door, we sat wordless, week after week.
Which made me think about a musician Aaron once told me about: a composer who wrote a piece with no notes whatsoever. When the piece is performed, a musician comes onstage, opens the piano, sets a timer, and plays nothing. Aaron said the first time the piece was performed, the audience got nervous—they whispered to one another and shifted in their seats, and some even walked out. Now when it’s performed, people expect the silence. Instead of getting mad or nervous, they hear other things: the rustling of programs, fabric sliding against seats, polite coughing. They hear themselves, which they wouldn’t hear otherwise, even though those noises are always there.
That piece is called 4’33”, because the performer sits quietly for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
If people were silent, they could hear the noise of their own lives better. If people were silent, it would make what they did say, whenever they chose to say it, more important. If people were silent, they could read one another’s signals, the way underwater creatures flash lights at one another, or turn their skin different colors.
Humans are so bad at reading one another’s signals. I knew this by now.
Sometimes I tried to imagine what signals Dr. Legs was sending me, but I couldn’t tell. I’d lived in the world of words for so long, I guess, that silence still wasn’t a language I understood.
Each week, after forty-five minutes, Dr. Legs ended the silence by saying, “Okay, time’s up.”
I sure hoped my parents weren’t spending a whole lot of money for these sessions.
During my fourth session with Dr. Legs, something changed. About halfway through the appointment, Dr. Legs spoke.