He laughs, but I can tell he thought we’d made enough progress in this heart-to-heart to be true confidants. What can I say? My best-kept secrets are still the ones I keep with myself.
CHAPTER THIRTY
When people you love die, you’re supposed to become a better version of yourself. Sure, you’re supposed to cry a little, but after that it’s assumed you’ll have nothing less than an epiphany. You’ll start flossing, tell the people you love how much you love them, develop a creative hobby like basket weaving, and shortly after, you’ll free yourself from your own brain prison. I think it’s called exaltation. Well, predictably I’ve done none of those things and less, which is why I’m going. New place, new me. I hope you’ll come with me. If you can’t, I understand, but, like, please?
That’s how I’ve ended Bugg’s letter. It’s folded up and safe in the envelope with the plane ticket I bought her. Check-in time: twelve hours from now. I lick the envelope and take my bike from the garage, hoping I don’t pedal all the way to her house and all the way back for her to say no. I’m a little pissed she hasn’t responded to my super endearing voicemail, but it’s hard to love someone and be mad at them at the same time. You’d think one feeling would be strong enough to override the other, but I guess that’s the brilliant thing about being human: nothing you feel has to make any sense.
The only hiccup in my original plan of leaving the letter for Bugg in her mailbox is that when I get there, Bugg is already outside, standing by her mailbox.
“Danny,” she says, and she sounds happy to see me. “I’ve been so worried. You haven’t been answering my texts.”
“What texts?” I say, stopping my bike next to her and nearly overdosing on the smell of cinnamon and cigarettes. “I called and left you a voicemail.”
“Oh, damn, I never got it. I dropped my phone in the toilet a couple of days ago and it’s been weird ever since.”
“Yeah, iPhones aren’t exactly suited for those conditions.”
She smiles and I try not to let my heart erode. It’s not fair for her to wear a yellow silk kimono and peacock feather earrings if we’re just friends.
“You going someplace?” I ask. “That’s not exactly lounge-around-the-house attire.” It’s only been a week since I’ve seen her, but it feels like my whole life.
“Dinner with Cynthia.” The wind blows her peacock earrings back and forth. She looks totally fine and totally like she doesn’t need to go back to St. John’s, just saying.
“Cool.” I feel like a barbarian on my stupid bike so I get off.
She takes out a cigarette and lights it. “So what did your voicemail say?” I watch the smoke escape her lips, jealous of their departure point.
“I’m, uh, leaving town tomorrow.”
“What?”
I try not to take too much pleasure in the hurt look on her face. “Yeah, my parents staged an intervention.” I give her a few of the gritty details. “They really want to put the octopus to bed.”
She gives me a confused look and I explain what I yelled at my parents seemingly forever ago, about all the tentacles and how when you think you’ve taken your life back, another one wakes up.
“Oh, Danny, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes brighten. “But it could be kind of cool to go back to St. John’s at the same time? We couldn’t date or anything but… oh, shit, what if it’s awkward or—”
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of going back, and I don’t think you should go either.” I hold the letter up to her. “Everything’s explained in here, along with a terrible poem I wrote when you weren’t in class the other day, but I can’t say it out loud or I’m going to chicken out. So do me a favor and read it tonight and don’t text me or call me or anything, but, well, there’s instructions in there if you’re interested.”
Before she says anything I lean in and kiss her on the lips so hard it sort of hurts my mouth. Then I hop back on my bike and try to pedal off quickly, but given the tingling in my lips, my overall nonathleticism, and the less-than-ideal leg-to-pedal ratio, I don’t get very far.
“Hey, Danny,” she calls. I stop my bike and look back at her standing in the middle of the road, a bright mess framed by perfectly groomed shrubs and flower bushes.
“The octopus is my favorite creature,” she shouts. “Want to know why?”
“It always figures out a way to escape the zoo?”
She steps on her cigarette then runs up to me. “Because it can love harder than anything else.”
I raise my eyebrow at her and rack my brain for the last romantic comedy I saw starring an eight-tentacled monster.
“Haven’t you heard?” she asks. “The octopus has three hearts.”
Then she kisses me back and the bike sprouts wings, delivering me home in a dream.
I’m too nervous to sleep that night so I read Janet’s card because it’s that or the back of the ibuprofen container. I sit in bed and break open the envelope, but I recognize the handwriting as Sara’s. The paper becomes as heavy as a heart in my hand, and I start shaking so badly I drop it. It’d probably be more effective to use my feet, but I force my fingers to cooperate and open it along the fold.
Dear Danny,
I hope you’re not reading this. If you ARE reading this, then shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If you’re reading this, then you already know the news I got today about my dad and his stupid broken heart and that I might have one too. Not broken, malfunctioning? You’re the pre-med one, you’ll figure it out.
Maybe if you had your phone on I would have called you when I found out, but honestly I probably wouldn’t have, so it makes no difference that you’re unreachable due to finals. Not telling you is all on me. But if I tell you, then it’s real. If I go to the doctor, then it’s real—the possibility of never playing again is real, and that sucks too much.
Besides never playing again, I can’t afford to stop playing now because (and I should have told you this before too) my spot on the team is on the line (I thought you’d like that pun). My tennis game sucks, but I lied to you because I had to. I’m not good enough, Danny. It turns out we were wrong about me and my dreams. I’m probably going to be a high school tennis coach instead of a famous Wimbledon player, but who fucking cares. No one can take away my game. At least, not unless I get the official diagnosis, which will make me another person with a disease, not Sara, but diseased Sara. Do you see the problem?
I do, I want to shout. I do. Of course I see the problem, of course, the world wants to put you in a box so small you couldn’t possibly be in its way. That’s why people have labels and diagnoses and even rigid plans, to stuff you into a box meant to hold, like, Tic Tacs or something. And I’m not blaming the world; I’ve done it too. I’m just saying anything rigid ends up swallowing you whole in the worst way, until you’re reduced to something about as interesting as a breath mint.
I know there are risks involved, mainly that there’s one BIG risk involved, but I saw this Tumblr post that said if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. I know you’ll think that’s stupid. I kind of think it’s stupid too. I want to take up TONS of space. I want my life to be big and extraordinary, but whatever. You get what I’m saying, and I don’t think you’ll think I’m crazy. My parents are nearly out of their tree, but they know how much my game means to me. Like, if someone asked me to hand them a diorama of the world, I wouldn’t give them anything green and blue that spins in your living room. I’d give them a tennis ball.
The paper is splotched with my tears and I draw my knees into my chest. I wish I loved anything this much. I wish that instead of spending my whole life trying to be Valedictorian of the World I’d learned how to really do something. Passion is such an overused word, but that’s the command I keep hearing in my head. Find yours, find yours. I don’t bother telling the hippie-dippie voices to shut up because it’s not a hippie-dippie voice. It’s the rubber bracelet still on my wrist. It’s what Sara would do.
I’m going t
o find this letter one day and read it to you, and we will laugh at it together. But in case that’s not true, I had to have something in writing for you, my Dandelion. I’m terrible with good-byes, but just so you know I’m waving stupidly at you.
xoxo,
Sara
Then a little way down the page:
PS—I’m sorry I wasn’t more excited for you about Harvard. You’re Einstein but fuckable. Don’t change.
I turn the page over, hoping for more. I flip it over and over, then read it again and again. It doesn’t say everything, but it says something and ironically that makes her feel more gone than she felt before.
I turn the lamp off and the hot itchiness starts creeping in, bringing with it all the usual thoughts—about eating something and throwing it up, about how I’m not good enough in any capacity, about how I probably peaked at seventeen and should resign myself to a life of too many cats. But I have another thought too, which is that maybe none of those things are true. Maybe this feeling is just a bad place, like when you walk through a fun house and everything gets distorted, but when you come out you’re completely fine, because you realize the real world isn’t actually this way.
“The Undiagnosable Place,” I whisper into the dark, feeling much less crazy to have a name for the madness. It gets hotter and itchier, and instead of scratching I fluff up my pillow and fall asleep in it.
At four a.m. my alarm goes off. Sara’s letter is resting on my face, and it’s all I can do not to read it again. It seems like if I keep reading it I’ll be able to conjure her from thin air. Actually, that’s a creepy thought, so I put the letter back in my backpack, splash some water on my face, and get dressed for the first day of the rest of my life.
“Oh, dammit. Stephen,” I say, looking down at my phone and finding a text from him. Why is it that I consistently forget Stephen? I have a few extra minutes, so I leave a note for my parents on the counter. It’s one part explanation, one part apology, and one part I love you so please love me back even though I’ve vehemently disobeyed you, told you I hated you, and called you a slew of curse words I did not mean. Then I tiptoe out of the house, and sit on the curb with my backpack a little way down the street. I call Stephen with the phone pressed against my face.
“Hello?” he says groggily.
“Morning!”
“Jesus Christ, what time is it? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s totally fine.” I pull my smock down so the gravel of the curb stops making an imprint on my butt. “Erm, it’s four seventeen a.m., which I know is a tad early, but I have to tell you, because I’m probably not going to have cell phone service, that I’m not going to be around this fall.”
“You’re not?” He sounds more surprised than disappointed. “What changed?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I say, looking up in the sky and trying to find the moon.
It’s too complicated to explain or maybe too simple. “I’m taking care of my shit, curating an adventure to cure myself or whatever. Like in Eat Pray Love.”
“I think my sister made me watch the movie.”
“Well, I’m going to do it too. Except not pray. Just eat, eat, and love—well, if Bugg decides to pick me up, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to pick me up.” I locate the moon, and for some reason, knowing it’s there makes me feel like things are going to be all right. At least the world hasn’t blown up if the big cheese is still orbiting it. “I wrote Bugg a very nice love letter and it’s going to be great. Besides being a slightly less catchy title, I’m going to embrace my love of nonvegan food and learn how to eat like French people do: with gusto and an accompanying cigarette.”
“When?” he asks, and he doesn’t sound nearly as excited as I want him to. I picture him in the ugly pink elephant boxers he wore the night I slept over, being like, What idiotic thing is she getting herself into now?
“Approximately four and a half hours from now. My flight for Paris leaves at nine a.m.” I can almost see his eyes bulge through the phone.
“I’m only half awake, so definitely don’t hate me, but doesn’t this seem a little erratic? I know you’re upset about everything with Sara, but why are you doing this?”
I sigh. Stephen will be a great dad to someone else’s kids someday. “You know, I don’t really know, because I don’t really know why I do any of the things I do.”
“But, how are you even going to afford it?”
“Well, I sold Sara’s car, which her parents gave to me, and I know it sounds weird, but I have a feeling that this is what I have to do. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It just sounds fun, and I think that’s what I need more than anything right now.” I stand up, because despite the layer my smock provides, the gravel is definitely leaving an imprint on my precious ass cheeks.
There’s radio silence, then he finally says, “Well, you can always e-mail me if you need anything. I’ll only be a whole ocean away.”
I see Bugg’s headlights turn onto my street, and my heart does the entire routine for Swan Lake. “Thanks, Stephen. Look, I gotta go, but I’ll probably keep a travel blog or something, so I’ll send you the link, okay?”
“Bye, Danny,” he says, and he sounds relieved to go back to sleep or maybe to not have to deal with me for a little while.
“It’s going to be great.” But when I look at my phone I realize that he’s already hung up. I get into Bugg’s car and hope I’m right.
“I gotta say I’m impressed,” Bugg says as she gets on the highway. “I thought I was the queen of planning how to run away, but you totally usurped me.”
“Nice SAT vocab word.”
She pulls out my letter, while she’s driving, and reads off the things I told her to bring. “My favorite was ‘two sporks.’ You know they have silverware in France, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s important that we bring something of our own to this culinary experience.” I put my feet up on the dashboard, and the early morning air raises the hairs on the back of my neck. It feels like more than one new day is beginning.
“Also, I don’t own a beret, and you realize people in France don’t wear berets, right?”
“Duh, but I wanted to give you a hint about where we’re going.”
She laughs. The clock on the dash reads 4:31, but regardless of the numbers there seems to be so much time. “Do you think I’m so dense that I couldn’t read the plane tickets? Also, that was a sly move, including your ticket in my letter too. Then I had to come.”
I give her my most conniving smile. “I know, but aren’t you happy I did?”
“You know, I am. As long as we both keep our heads on straight, I don’t see why we can’t be Venus Fly Trappers together right now, like your letter said.” I put my hand on her hand, which is holding the clutch, and pretend we’re driving the car together.
“I promise. I won’t need to drink or throw up or anything if you’re around. You make me feel okay.”
“I bet your friend Stephen will miss you,” she says.
Now would be a fine time to tell her about the small incident involving his penis—pun intended—but the lightening sky is too pretty to dig up old news. “I’m so glad it’s just you and me,” I say.
“We’ve constructed the perfect plan,” Bugg agrees. “Will you tell it to me again?”
“The plan goes like this.” I lean my head against her shoulder, feeling a little drowsy. The city skyline is ahead of us, and the way the highway turns it looks like we’re going to drive head-on into all those buildings. “Two girls meet in kindergarten,” I start, but suddenly something black hits the window. Bugg screams and I yell, “Jesus Christ!”
Then I clamp my eyes shut and pray sincerely for the first time in nineteen years as she swerves, in torturous slow motion, off the road.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Sara, is that you?” I ask, feeling around and making contact with something warm and squishy.
“Shit, Danny, stop being morbid and open your eyes
. It’s me.”
I peek my eyes open. Sure enough it’s Bugg, and I’m groping her face. “So just to clarify, we’re not dead,” I say, looking at my hands and at the highway, where the occasional car zips past.
“No, we’re very much alive. That bird on the other hand…” Bugg cranes her neck around to look at it, and I do my best to breathe. Even though we’re nestled safely in the breakdown lane with no scratches and no blood, my heart is racing and not in the fun way it usually does when Bugg is around.
“I want to see it,” I say with my voice shaking.
“The bird?”
“Yeah.”
We get out of the car and I find it a few feet behind us. Its wings are bent back and even though there’s no visible blood, it’s clearly a goner.
“Not you too,” I say, and start sobbing, which is a confusing response considering how little I like birds.
“Hey, it’s okay, Danny,” Bugg says. “I know this is jarring and upsetting and admittedly not a very good omen—”
“I don’t believe in omens.”
“Still.”
I wish there was something nice I could say to the bird, but having blown one eulogy already, I figure silence is the best thing I have to give. I look at it for a minute and decide we should move it off the highway, not to give it a funeral, but so that it’s not a spectacle for oncoming traffic. I don’t have any gloves, and since I don’t have a hankering to die of something as ignoble as the bird flu, I end up leaving it right where it is until Bugg comes back with a stick from the other side of the guardrail.
“We should go, or we’re gonna miss our flight,” Bugg says quietly, holding out the stick to me and trying to help me mop my face of tears and snot.
Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Page 22