by Ali Benjamin
I realized he was talking about jellyfish. The bell is the round part of the jellyfish that pulses like a heart—it’s the only part you can touch without getting stung.
“I’ve never been a fan of Medusa,” he said. “All those creepy snakes in her hair.” He fake-shuddered. “But Belle is an okay name, don’t you think?”
Justin isn’t going to call me Medusa, I thought. He’s telling me this. For a kid who had recently gotten detention for throwing paperback dictionaries out our English classroom window, he was maybe not so bad.
We walked the rest of the way to math class in silence, but it was the best kind of silence. It was the not-talking kind of silence, the kind that so few people seemed to understand.
After the failed message I tried to send you, the one that got your stuff drenched in pee, I wait for the phone to ring. It’s going to ring, and it’s not going to be good.
I don’t know who will be calling. Maybe it will be the principal, maybe it will be Mrs. Hall who did not hold your bags. Maybe it will be your mom.
Your mom. Who would have washed those wet clothes and held you as you cried.
Maybe it won’t be a phone call at all. Maybe it will be like on television, where they send police to the house and lead me out of there in handcuffs.
There is nothing to do but wait.
When my mom walks in and asks, “Do you want to go out to dinner? Celebrate the end of the school year?” I think, Mom, you are going to be so mad at me.
I will try to explain. I will try to help her understand, but I already know she won’t. If you didn’t understand, and you’re the one who asked for a secret message in the first place, then why would anyone else?
Even I don’t understand anymore.
A day of silence is too long. But two days of silence is unbearable.
They are probably gathering evidence, I tell myself.
I mean, you must know it was me. You might not have understood what I meant, but somehow I’m sure you know I did it.
So where is everyone?
The phone doesn’t ring, the doorbell doesn’t ring, and my mother keeps smiling at me as if all is okay and everything is normal.
It would be so much better if we could just get it over with.
It is only after four days pass that I begin to imagine other possibilities.
Maybe you are waiting to talk to me.
Maybe you are planning your own message.
Or maybe you know, above all, that your silence is the worst, hardest thing of all.
That’s when I begin to understand that the phone isn’t going to ring. Nobody will come to our doorstep. Not today or tomorrow, not the day after that.
I don’t know what I will say the next time I see you.
The thing I did hangs suspended between us. It hovers there, silently, like an unfinished sentence.
I don’t want to talk about what happened at St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church, South Grove, Massachusetts, sixty-seven days after the end of sixth grade, just four days before the start of seventh grade.
I don’t want to talk about how sticky hot it was, and how crowded, and how my mom and I got there early but there were already so many people we couldn’t get a seat. I don’t want to remember how it felt to stand in the entryway of the church, trying hard to breathe even though the air felt like soup and everyone was standing too close.
I hissed at my mom, “Who are all these people?” and she whispered back, “Funerals are different when it’s a child.” I would have pointed out that she hadn’t exactly answered my question, but then I noticed how grim her mouth was, the way all those tight lines radiated out from the edges of her lips.
So I don’t want to talk about that, just like I don’t want to talk about that droning organ that played so slowly and sadly that it took me almost the whole song to realize it was playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Or how I looked down at the program in my hands (Where did it come from? Who had handed it to me, and when?) and looked at that photograph of you. You were standing at the beach, squinting out at the water with your bathing suit strap digging into your freckled shoulder.
(You had a new pageboy haircut, and I thought, Cute. But then I realized that cute had been your word, and my stomach turned a little.)
The caption beneath your picture said: LAST PHOTO. TAKEN AUGUST 19. Which by then we all knew was the day you died.
It seemed unbelievably cruel to put that photo on the cover of your program for everyone to see.
I recognized some people, like the guidance counselors from school, and Mrs. Turton, who hadn’t even had you in a class yet and now never would. I saw your next-door neighbor, the lady whose husband died before we were born and who sometimes let us swim in her pool. I was surprised to see my own father, almost unrecognizable in a dark suit, standing near Aaron and Rocco. I saw the school principal, and your great-aunt Lynda, who we called Shelf Butt, because her butt was so big a person could set a glass of milk on it.
And closer to me, I saw two girls sitting in one of the last pews, their backs rounded, their hair pulled back into perfect ponytails. Aubrey and Molly. Their shoulders were shaking, and I could tell they were crying.
Here is something you might not know: that sometimes, at a funeral, what a person feels is hatred. I’m telling you, I hated those girls then—hated that they had a pew, that they didn’t have to feel frizzy hair tickling the backs of their necks. I hated that they were there at all. But most of all, I hated that they were crying, hated that they felt close enough to you that they would cry, when all I could do was stand there, stiff and sick to my stomach. It was like their tears, or my lack of them, were proof: proof that you’d been right when you left me, that I’d never deserved you after all.
No, I don’t want to talk about any of that stuff. Not now, not ever.
But I will tell you three things.
First: That church fluttered. Everyone there was trying so hard to be still, to sit straight. But the thing is, they couldn’t. They waved their programs like fans. They dabbed their eyes. Their backs rose and fell and rose and fell and sometimes shook. The whole place filled with rustling and sniffles and sighs and cries, so much movement it was almost dizzying. Except, I realized, one box at the front of the church, which was so utterly motionless.
And you were inside that box: perfect and still and twelve years old, forever and ever.
Second: Two birds danced near the rafters. I swear, I was the only person in that church who saw them. Everyone else looked forward, they looked down, they leaned against one another. But if they’d only looked up, they would have seen the sweeping dips and flutters of the dark birds.
Last: After it was over—after the men wheeled your box away and your mom stumbled after it with wild eyes, and after I stood outside and watched all those strangers/not-strangers file out of the building, the only thing I wanted to do was scream. And what I wanted to scream was this: I hate you. I hate all of you. I didn’t just hate the other kids for being sad, for believing that the sorrow belonged to them, somehow, when you were never theirs to begin with. I also hated the adults, for not trying to fix this situation, for not making it better somehow. I hated them all for just giving up.
That was the thing. Everyone else had just given up.
But I hadn’t. Not when I hugged my father hello and goodbye, and not when Rocco and Aaron came up to me and Aaron hugged me for a long, long time, and not when my mom and I walked silently to her car. Not when I saw the dashboard with the dust on it and the mirror with the warning about how objects are closer than they appear.
Everything was supposedly over and we were supposed to start getting on with life.
But I was sure: I wasn’t going to accept this thing that had happened, the way all those others were doing.
“Zu.” i heard Mom’s voice as if it came from another land entirely. Then her hand was on my shoulder, and for just a moment, she was inexplicably next to me as I moved through the water.
> Then I opened my eyes and looked around.
My room.
Dreaming. I’d been dreaming. Jamie had been there.
“Zu, what are you still doing in bed? I woke you up forty minutes ago!”
I blinked. Mom was in her work clothes, but her hair was disheveled.
Mom threw back the covers; I curled into a ball. I didn’t want to do anything but fall backward into the dream I’d been having.
“Come on, Zu,” Mom insisted. “You knew I didn’t have time to drive you to school today. I thought you were getting ready all this time.”
I groaned and sat up.
“Hair. Teeth. Hurry” she said.
As I got ready, I tried to remember everything I could about the dream.
I had been in the water when Mom woke me. I was looking at Jamie’s laboratory. His lab was stark white, and it sat on the water—not a building at the edge of the water, like the aquarium. Instead, it floated right on top of the water, surrounded on all sides by clear blue sea.
I had to swim to get to Jamie. He smiled at me as if he knew me and understood why I was there. It was like he was saying, Are you coming or not?
The water around Jamie’s lab, I knew, was filled with Irukandji. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.
But I’d lowered myself into the water and started swimming toward him anyway.
As I got close, Jamie held out his hand. That’s when I saw an Irukandji, just millimeters from my skin.
I was about to reach out for Jamie, and I was about to get stung. Both, at the same time. I didn’t know which would happen first.
I was on the verge of understanding something in that moment. Something important.
I heard a drawer thrown open in the kitchen and the clink of silverware. “Come on, Zu!” Mom called from the kitchen.
It was hard to think with her making all that noise. What was so important about that dream?
When I got to the kitchen, Mom was smearing butter on toast. “You’re going to have to eat this on the bus,” she said. I noticed she was wearing two entirely different shoes.
I pointed to her feet. It took her a moment to register what I was telling her, and then she grumbled, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She thrust the toast at me. “Here,” she said as she glanced at the clock and ran back to her bedroom. I could hear her rummaging in her closet until she emerged, holding a different pair of shoes. “You’ve got your books?”
I nodded.
Mom rushed me out the door, following right behind me. She ran to the car in bare feet, still holding her shoes. As she backed out of the driveway, she rolled down the window. “Have a good day,” she called. The school bus lumbered toward me.
I hated that I had to go to school. I hated being stuck here—in seventh grade, in South Grove, in this place of never being able to undo anything.
And that’s when I understood:
Whatever was about to happen next in that dream—whether I reached Jamie or got stung—it was better than staying still. The staying still was the worst part. The waiting and not-knowing and being afraid: That was worse than anything else that might happen.
Worse, even, than getting stung.
Maybe it’s not so crazy, I realized. Maybe I should go see Jamie.
I mean, why not, really?
One summer, A couple of years ago, three children stepped on a plane in Jacksonville, Florida. They flew all the way to Nashville, Tennessee. They were not with any adults.
It was all over the news when it happened. I saw it on Good Morning America. Bridget Brown, a fifteen-year-old, had saved $700 from babysitting. She asked her brother, Cody, who was eleven, and their thirteen-year-old neighbor, Bobby, where they wanted to go. Bobby suggested Nashville. He wanted to go to see Dollywood, which is a big theme park with roller coasters and a steam engine.
Bridget Brown and Cody and Bobby took a cab to the airport. They bought tickets at the counter and got all the way to Nashville, which is 501 miles from Jacksonville, which is 2,645,280 feet and 32 million inches. Nobody asked them for identification. Nobody stopped them.
In fact, the man who handed them their tickets told them they’d better rush so that they didn’t miss their flight.
If the kids had done their research—if they’d done any planning whatsoever—they would have known to fly to Knoxville instead of Nashville. That’s because Dollywood is only 38 miles from Knoxville, but it is a full 200 miles from Nashville.
Once their plane landed, they didn’t have enough money to get to the park.
I imagine them standing in the airport, counting their money and trying not to draw any attention to themselves. I wonder how long they stayed in the airport trying to figure out what to do.
Eventually, they called their parents and flew home.
Here was the problem with fifteen-year-old Bridget Brown: She didn’t know how to plan. If she’d looked at a map, counted her money, researched average cab fares and highways and traffic conditions, those kids would have made it.
They would have gotten all the way to Dollywood.
There are other documented cases of kids flying by themselves—plenty of cases like this one. But here is the thing I remembered about Bridget Brown’s story: She didn’t break any rules. What she did was perfectly legal.
Kids over twelve are allowed to fly alone.
I looked it up to be sure, and it’s true. Read any article about Bridget Brown. There’s always a sentence that says something like this: Airline policy clearly states passengers age twelve and over may travel with no adult supervision as long as they have a valid boarding pass.
Which means you can go anywhere. You just need a good plan, a destination, money to get you there, and enough deep breaths that you don’t lose your nerve.
You can just step onto the plane and disappear.
That day in school, signs began appearing in the hallway.
Winter Dance
FEBRUARY 10
VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE THEME
THEMES INCLUDE:
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS • TROPICAL
PARADISE • HEROES AND VILLAINS •
AN EVENING IN HOLLYWOOD
YOU MAY VOTE IN THE MAIN OFFICE.
ONE VOTE PER STUDENT
Ugh, I thought. A school dance.
I could just imagine what my mom would say if she knew about the dance.
Go, she’d say. You should go, it might be fun.
I looked at the sign again and saw the date: February 10. It wasn’t that far away.
And that’s when I made up my mind about three things:
1. I wasn’t going to vote on a theme.
2. I wasn’t going to attend the dance.
3. I would be out of the country by February 10.
That’s when I knew for sure. I was really going to do it. I was going to get myself to Australia.
And I had a deadline.
It was funny how much better I felt as soon as I made the decision to go to Australia. It was like an instant calm, a sudden relief, came over me. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had.
I had a plan. I was leaving.
It felt like someone had opened a crack in the door, allowing a single beam of light to stream through. Just knowing there was light on the other side made it easier to be around all those kids who called me Medusa and talked about school dances.
All I had to do was get my things in order—get the money I needed, buy a ticket, get to Jamie. Then everything would be different. I would be understood.
I continued to have lunch in Mrs. Turton’s room every day. Justin often joined me. “Better here than in the lunchroom,” he said once, the only explanation he ever gave for being there.
Mrs. Turton never seemed to mind that Justin spilled cookie crumbs all over the floor, or that I rarely responded to anyone with more than a shrug. If Justin called me Belle, she never stopped to ask why; she let us be.
It was like she trusted us. Trusted that if she gave us this space,
we’d be okay.
She often had something interesting to show us. For example, she might bring out a book she thought we might enjoy looking at—a collection of photographs from the deep sea, or one filled with images from a microscope so powerful that a single human hair looked like a sequoia rising from the earth. One day, she showed us a video in which a scientist described what he called “the most astounding fact,” which was that all living things are composed of the atoms of collapsed stars. The stars themselves were inside us.
We were made of stardust.
And that reminded me of what Mrs. Turton had told us about how we were all walking around with bits of Shakespeare inside us.
Sarah Johnston knocked on the door. “Mrs. Hall asked me to bring this to you,” she said, handing Mrs. Turton a piece of paper. Then she noticed me and Justin.
“Sorry,” she whispered to us.
Mrs. Turton took the paper. “Thanks, Sarah.” She smiled.
Sarah turned to leave, then paused in the doorway. Yes, the astronomer was saying. Yes, we are a part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.
Sarah lingered in the doorway, watching the computer over our shoulders. Mrs. Turton said to her, “Take a seat, Sarah. Join us.”
Sarah glanced at me and Justin, and I had the feeling that she wanted to stay.
I frowned. Sarah must have noticed.
“Um, I don’t think so,” she said. She ducked out.
Good, I thought. The last thing I need is another person cluttering up my life right now. Especially when I was about to leave it.
When you are traveling to Cairns, Australia, at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, to answer a question that no one else has asked, you need quite a bit of money.