“I don’t believe that it was nothing.” I swiped a few strands of hair from my eyes. “When I think back to Dutton’s party, the part where Joey came outside and first saw that you were there, something seemed off. Like, really off. I want to know what was going on.”
Adam stared off to the batch of trees that separated the back area of the church from a line of houses that had been converted into a dentist’s office, an insurance agency, and a picture-framing store.
“It’s complicated.” Adam clasped his hands together.
“Was he mad at me?” I asked. “Did he say anything about me that night, when you called him after the party?”
“Maggie,” Adam said, turning to look at me. “What reason could Joey possibly have had to be angry with you?”
I shrugged. Felt tears welling up in my eyes. “I don’t know. But everything’s so mixed up. I just need to—”
Adam grabbed my hands and slipped closer to my side, looking right into my eyes. Relief flooded me. This was the Adam I knew. The crease of his eyebrows, the tremble of his lips, the way he looked at me like he knew all of me—these things showed that he actually cared, that he hadn’t forgotten what we meant to each other.
“Don’t for one second doubt yourself, Maggie,” he said, his words shaky. “Joey was not mad at you. This … thing, it was between us. And I have to figure it out before I can say anything, okay? You and Shan are the only ones who know about the argument, and I need to trust that you’ll keep this quiet.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re really scaring me, Adam.”
I readjusted myself on the rock, pressed my feet into the prickly grass, and looked down at my toes. The paint was chipped, almost gone, but the color was the same. Totally Teal.
And that’s all it took.
Whirl. Swirl. Twirl.
Back to the woods.
Adam’s sea-glass eyes, his crinkled lips, his damp hair. Clinging. I was clinging. His hand, tight as a vine. The scramble down the trail. Tanna’s wet braids. Trembling. And Shannon. Her eyes darting everywhere, crazy with pain.
“Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“I remember. You. Finding me. My bare toes in the leaves. The climb down. Seeing Tanna. And Shannon.”
Adam’s hands squeezed mine. “It’s not your first memory, is it?”
I shook my head. “I’ve had a few others.”
“I knew it. That night at the Walthers’ you were so off balance when you mentioned being at the top of the cliff, when you talked about me telling you not to look down for too long. I thought maybe it was because Joey’s mom was asking so many questions. But I wondered if the memory was new.” Adam let go of my hands and looked down to the rippling water. “And you haven’t told anyone yet?”
“The memories, they’re just pieces,” I said, rubbing my palm across my forehead. “I need more time, to see how many I can get back. To put all the slices together again before I can talk about it.”
“That’s exactly how I feel, Mags.” Adam sighed. “I need more time before I can talk about the stuff that was going down between me and Joey.”
I breathed in the damp, muddy scent of the fishpond, wishing I could make sense of everything that had happened. “I was glad the memories were gone. At first. But now … I want to remember everything.”
Adam stood up then. “Don’t pressure yourself, Maggie. The memories’ll come back when they’re ready.” He held a hand out between us.
“I hope so,” I said, grabbing his hand and letting him pull me from the rock. I shoved my feet back into my shoes. “Can we make a deal?”
Adam held a hand over his eyes, blocking the sun. “What kind of deal?”
“We’re gonna tell each other everything. Everything. When we’re ready.”
Adam closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
“Please, Adam.”
“Just give me a little time, okay? For now, we gotta go in there,” Adam said, turning toward the back of the church. “You ready?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I could ever be ready for this.”
“The viewing’s over soon. I don’t want to walk in late for the service.”
I clutched Adam’s hand and followed him across slick blades of grass, lit so brightly by the sunlight they almost glowed, and into the dark chamber of the hushed church.
My legs went numb as Adam led me down the center aisle, and I was glad he was there to lean on. I tried to block out the sea of heads, the sets of shoulders cloaked in black (frilly, sheer, lacy, cotton). Some people from school turned to stare as Adam and I made our way to the reserved seats in the front row, to our places with Shannon, Pete, and Tanna. Others did their best to give us the privacy we needed. I tried not to notice. Tried to ignore everything. Especially Joey.
As I dropped onto my cold, hard seat, I focused instead on Shannon. I stared intently at her jittery feet, her black ballet flats tap-tap-tapping each other in the quiet hush that had fallen over the room. I watched her long fingers, wrestling with two tattered tissues. And I listened to the stuttered sound of her breath as she struggled to keep her composure.
When the pastor stepped to the podium in a swooshing flutter and spoke with a reverent tone saved for especially devastating occasions, I closed my eyes and blocked out everything. Everything except my curiosity about Joey and Adam’s argument, because that was the one thing that I knew I could figure out. And maybe, if I started with the things that I knew for certain, the rest would fall into place without me having to try so damn hard.
8
A Whole New Normal
“They’re making me see a shrink,” I said, stuffing a cracker into my mouth and crunching down. “Tomorrow.”
“Really?” Shannon pulled the top off her strawberry yogurt and dropped it into her lunch bag. “That sucks.”
“It’s because of the memory loss.” I sighed. “Among other things.”
Tanna looked at me, her silver barrette blinking in the bright light of the early-June day. A June that Joey would never see. “Talking to someone could be really good for you, Maggie.”
“I guess,” I said. “It might help me remember.”
“Mags, it just happened,” Tanna said. “You need to give yourself a little time.”
I leaned my head back against the trunk of the tulip tree that we had claimed as our lunch spot the first day of sophomore year. This was my favorite place on the campus of Blue Springs High School, and had been since I’d spent freshman year staring out the window of my geometry classroom watching the tree change through the seasons. Bright yellow and red leaves during the fall gave way to a slender, snow-covered frame through the winter. Then, in the spring, waxy tulip-shaped leaves filled out the branches just before these crazy bright yellow and orange flowers popped open to decorate my view, celebrating the end of geometry and the fast-approaching summer.
“Hey, Maggie,” a voice called from behind us.
I turned to see Jimmy Dutton standing there, his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his droopy cargo shorts, a backpack slung over one shoulder. His hair was all messy, sticking up in places. He looked so much like the last time I’d seen him, when Joey had been alive and standing right by my side, that my chest started to ache.
“I didn’t get the chance to talk to you last week at the, um, funeral,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Joey.”
I tried not to react to his name, but my breathing hitched a beat and caught in my throat. I forced myself to stare at the lingering petals that had fallen from the tulip tree, fluttering on the ground near my feet.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” Shannon said.
“No problem,” Jimmy said. “I keep thinking about the party. Seeing him for the last time, racing down that driveway. I can’t believe he’s—oh, God, I’m sorry. I sound like an asshole.” Jimmy slapped a hand to his forehead and yanked his fingers through his hair. “Really, though, Maggie, you were out for a week, and exa
ms are in a few days, so I just wanted to let you know that if you need my notes from English or wanna talk about the test, I’ve got everything you need.”
I looked up, squinting at the bright blue backdrop behind him. “Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll let you know.”
He stood there for a minute, awkward, like there was something else he wanted to say. And then he turned and walked away.
“I feel like I’m under a microscope,” I said. “You guys getting this, too?”
Tanna shrugged. “Not like you, with it being your first day back,” she said. “I see the way everyone’s watching you. Like you’re going to shatter, or scream, or something else that’d be text-worthy.”
Shannon grunted. “He was closest to you,” she said. “I mean, everyone knew it. And you were the one with him when … well, when it happened.”
I detected something strange in her voice. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. For one horrible moment, I wondered if she blamed me. I wanted to ask, but I was afraid of her answer.
“People are just clueless,” Tanna said. “They have no idea what to do.”
Shannon tossed her empty yogurt container and plastic spoon into her lunch bag and pulled her knees to her chest.
Across the quad, Adam and Pete pushed their way through the back doors of the cafeteria. Adam looked at the ground, his body slumping, like he was caving in on himself. It was the first time I’d seen him since the funeral, since he’d chosen to ignore all of us when we’d hung out Saturday night. Pete had been worried when Adam didn’t show—I could tell by the way he chewed on his lip—but he kept it to himself, trying to cheer us up by playing songs on his guitar and making us guess which memory the music had come from. Every single one he’d chosen had been a perfect Joey moment, and Pete had actually gotten us laughing.
Missing Adam that night, I had thought seeing him would make me feel better. But he’d walked the other way when I’d called out to him in the parking lot earlier in the morning, and in the classes we shared, he seemed to be avoiding me, his eyes focused downward at all times. Surprisingly, seeing him had only made me feel worse.
“How do you guys think Adam is doing?” I asked.
Shannon looked out over the quad, her eyes stopping on Adam and Pete. “Not good,” she said.
I looked at her, at the slope of her freckled nose, how wild strands of her hair waved in the breeze, wondering exactly how much she knew about the fight between Joey and Adam. I felt floaty. In a very bad way. Like nothing around me actually existed. I pressed my hands into the ground, digging my fingers into the dirt.
“All of this avoidance, it’s because of whatever happened the night of Dutton’s party, right? There was obvious tension between Joey and Adam.” I said. “What do you think was going on?”
Shannon tossed her hair from one side to the other, like she was trying to shake off the conversation. “Dunno,” she said. “And I think we should leave it alone until Adam’s ready to talk.”
“But he’s totally blowing us off,” Tanna said. “Even Pete hasn’t talked to Adam since the funeral. He told me this morning.”
Shannon pointed. “They’re talking now.”
I looked up and saw Adam and Pete passing over the brick path that crisscrossed the quad. They stopped about a hundred feet from the tulip tree, fist bumped, and then Adam turned and started to walk toward the parking lot.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“You haven’t been here,” Shannon said. “He hasn’t exactly been eating with us.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Tanna said.
“Then, where’s he been eating?”
“Adam’s been ditching,” Tanna said. “Like, every day.”
“Well, I’m sure his parents—”
“They have no idea,” Shannon said. “I talked to his mom yesterday when she called my mom about some fundraiser they’re doing for the library, and she said something about how school seems to be helping Adam keep his mind off things. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”
I watched Adam’s backpack disappear around the corner of the gym, wondering where he was going and what he would do when he got there.
“Did you say anything?” I asked.
“To his mom?” Shannon asked. “Um. No. We took that oath, like, a thousand years ago. We don’t rat each other out.”
“Unless,” I said, “one of us is in trouble. And Adam is starting to show some signs of serious trouble, Shan.”
“Why?” she asked. “Because he’s skipping a few classes and not eating lunch with us? Because he needs a little space? Think about it, Maggie, he just watched his best friend die. You can’t expect him to act normal. These days, we’re dealing with a whole new normal.”
“I don’t know,” I said, imagining Adam walking straight to the creek in our neighborhood and following the twisting trail of the stream until it swirled out into our Jumping Hole. All alone.
“You haven’t exactly been normal yourself, there, Miss Memory Loss,” Shannon said, scrunching up her nose. “Should we go talk to your parents?”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I’m trying here. But Adam … it seems like he’s just gone, somehow.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Tanna said. “But I think we need to give him some space. Let’s just get through the end of the week and see how he seems after summer break starts.”
“You think?” I asked.
“I do,” Tanna said. “We’re all dealing with this differently. He deserves a mourning period, and we should offer him a little peace.”
“She’s totally right,” Shannon said.
“Fine,” I said. “If you guys think he’s okay. But it won’t be long before I insist on a full-scale intervention.”
And I was serious. If Joey could die and Adam could slip away, what would stop the rest of my world from disintegrating into nothing?
I stared down at the lined notebook paper in front of me. At the thick black ink staining the page, the scientific terms and definitions I was trying to memorize all blurring together. I wished with everything in me that I could slide full speed down the neck of the J I’d drawn in the bottom corner of the page, fling myself off the hooked end, and flip into another existence.
But there was no other existence. My life consisted of quick glances, open arms, hushed whispers, pointing fingers, tear-soaked cheeks—all of which were about two seconds away from causing me to lose it.
I wanted out.
A free pass out of my body and mind.
During the last nine days, I’d been continuously hoping for some escape.
A way to release everything.
If only I’d known that the wish might backfire, bring me more pain, I might have taken it back. But I didn’t know. Not as I sat there pressing the tip of my pen into the groove of the J. Not as the door behind me opened and another person stepped into the small conference room of the guidance office. Not as Nolan Holiday plopped his backpack next to me and sat on the rolly-wheeled chair to my left.
“Glad you’re back,” he said, running a hand through his longish brown hair. “This whole office aide gig has been lame without you.” He ducked his head, meeting my eyes for a split second before deciding it would be better to stare at the floor.
“Can’t say I’ve missed it,” I said, looking through the large windowed wall as a skinny freshman boy juggling a load of books walked in from the hall and up to the secretary’s desk.
“You missed a lot of drama,” Nolan said, his eyes sparkling with deviousness before turning dark. “Oh. I didn’t mean … God, that was stupid.”
“I coulda guessed that about the drama part.”
“I was talking about our favorite budding romance. The one that was cut short.” He grinned, slicing a finger across his throat. Then his eyes dimmed again. “Shit, man. Should I just shut my mouth?”
“Awkward is my new normal,” I said, knowing how to put on a well-rehearsed, I’m-just-fine face. It was
worth it just to avoid everyone’s strings of questions (How are you holding up? Are you taking care of yourself? Can I do anything?) and the general awkwardness that Joey’s death had left behind.
“That blows,” he said. “The whole thing just bl—”
“It’s okay,” I said, leaning back in my swivel chair and facing Nolan Holiday head-on. “I know you’re talking about Mr. and Mrs. Sophomore Suck Face, and I’d love a distraction, so please fill me in.”
“Sweet. I’ve been dying to tell you.” Nolan clapped his hands and rubbed them together, leaning forward. “Mrs. Suck Face’s father came in, demanding to know how a picture of his daughter being, and I quote, felt up in the school hallway managed to be taken and posted on Facebook.”
“No way,” I said. “Did you see the picture?”
“Hell, no,” Nolan rolled his eyes. “As if I have any interest in a flat-chested sophomore? But Mrs. Suck Face’s father was quite entertaining as he met with the guidance counselors and Principal Edwards, demanding to know how such behavior could possibly occur in an educational environment.”
“What’d they say to that?” I asked, grabbing my purse and riffling through the contents.
“The wall interfered.” Nolan tipped his head toward the wall separating the small conference room, where we were, from the larger one. “All I heard after that first part was mumbling. Until the end, when Mrs. Suck Face’s father stormed out, saying that the administration had better make it more of a priority to monitor the students in the building.”
“Oh, God,” I said, plucking a pack of gum from under my iPod. “That’s pathetic. He’d rather blame someone else than face the problem that’s right in front of him.”
“Thought you’d enjoy a detailed description.” Nolan smiled, his eyes catching mine as I unwrapped my piece of gum and popped it into my mouth.
“Thanks. Nice three-minute distraction.” I smiled and held the pack of gum between us. “Want one?”
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