Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  During lunch, he’s excessively affectionate, as if we’re already a couple instead of two strangers weighing the possibility of a second date. He makes weird kissing faces at me, like he’s suffering from affectionate Tourette’s.

  “How’s your burger?” I ask.

  “I’ve had better,” he says, then proceeds to explain everything the cook did wrong. I don’t own the restaurant, I just chose it, but still, I take the critique personally.

  “You cook?”

  “Well, yeah, I owned a restaurant.”

  “You did? I thought you were a cinematographer.”

  “I am. But my ex, Meredith, decided she wanted to own a restaurant, so that’s what we did. When 9/11 happened, and Frankie was born, Meredith didn’t want to stay in Jersey City anymore, so we moved to Maine, and opened the restaurant there.”

  I tried making small talk about the restaurant, and received instead a full rundown of Javier’s codependent relationship with Meredith, who had apparently—after insisting on an open marriage—run off to Florida with Earl, one of their customers, leaving Javier alone with two-year-old Frankie.

  “Whoa. That’s brutal.”

  “Yeah, Frankie cried all the time, wailing that she missed her mama. I just let her cry and cry and told her it was good to feel her feelings and yeah, it was brutal.” My feelings for him advance with this image, and for Frankie, a child I’ve never even met. There is an empty maternal space that my body wants to urgently fill. “Then Meredith came back, wanting Frankie, and I was like, no fucking way.”

  “So what now, do you even speak to Meredith? Does Frankie ever ask about her?” Even as I say it, I recognize the answer I am fishing for: that all he and Frankie want is a mama person.

  “Oh yeah, we’re on great terms. She’s an amazing mother.” I blink at him in disbelief. But he’s not joking. “She wasn’t then, but she is now. When Earl got a job in L.A., he and Meredith moved there, so Frankie and I followed.” Does this man have no will of his own? “After a couple of years, Earl lost his job, so we all moved to this small island off the coast of Maine, where she spent a lot of time as a kid, and where my family has a house. But then Meredith left Earl for our friend Leo, and Earl moved out and now Leo is moving in. Great role model, huh?”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of information.”

  “Too much?” He looks worried but keeps going. “Now she’s a clothing designer. You should check out her blog.”

  I hold my eyes before they roll of their own accord. “Maybe I will.”

  Since he has traveled all the way down from Maine to meet me, I feel obligated not to ditch him immediately, so when we leave the restaurant we walk around the Village for a while. Besides, he’s not all bad. I like his energy. We can be friends, I think. Not what I’m looking for, but still. We go to Art Bar, where I haven’t been since my early twenties.

  With a drink in me, I am better equipped to handle his overly tactile nature, and by that I mean I ignore it. He tells me about a documentary he wants to make in Peru and invites me to come with him. I laugh it away. “I can’t wait for you to meet Frankie,” he says at one point. “You guys will love each other,” he says at another.

  It’s too much, too fast, and as much as I’m not interested in him, Javi comes with something I want: a family. So instead of leaving, we order another round. We giggle and poke fun at the other awkward people on their first dates.

  “Do you have time for a relationship?” he asks me, suddenly serious.

  “Yeah,” I say, because although I’m not certain he’s for me, my insecurity doesn’t want him to rule me out. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Maybe. I think so. I don’t know.”

  What kind of answer is that? Does he need to phone a friend? Now it’s dark and I’m ready to go home, but because I’m drunk and don’t want to hurt his feelings, I find myself making out with him.

  As we say good-bye on the street, he gestures to the building behind us. A church. “Let’s get married,” he says.

  “Ha-ha,” I say. “Funny.”

  “I’m serious. Let’s do it. It’d be fun.”

  Alert, alert, red flag, code red, alarm, alarm, abort mission. “I’m Jewish. My rabbi would be very mad.”

  This fast-forwarding reminds me of Peter, and I know it’s a danger sign, though my drunk brain can’t remember why. Isn’t having someone who wants to commit a good thing? That’s the problem with red flags, I think to myself. People tell you how to spot them, but they never tell you what they mean. We part with a promise to see each other again, one that I promise myself I won’t keep.

  At home, I hop onto Petfinder to cheer myself up. Dogs don’t lie about their height and talk only about their exes. Dogs aren’t uncertain about their ability to make time for you. Dogs don’t say all the right things on the first date, though I suppose dogs will try to marry you within hours of meeting. I pull out my notebook to keep track of the dogs I like and I come across a message.

  “You are so super cute and I feel blessed to have met you.” He must have written it while I was in the bar bathroom. Oh, man. This guy is not boyfriend material. But it sure is nice to feel wanted. And Frankie—isn’t Frankie a sign?

  June 1981

  Dr. Rivka Golod

  Summary of Test Results

  Her written story was excellent in terms of organization and content. She was asked to write a story that started with “If I lived on an island…” Amanda named the island “Isolation Island.” She enumerated all the activities she would do on this island, and wrote that if she got lonely, she would peel birch bark off a tree, build a raft, and float home. I wonder if Amanda feels separate from other kids for some reason.

  Jinx

  When fourth grade started, Etan had been missing for four months, and Baba and Melissa had been dead for two. Although, to me, Melissa had been dead only two weeks. Everyone kept giving me copies of Bridge to Terabithia, even my mom. It’s a good book, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it, since the girl who dies is a tomboy like me and nothing like Melissa.

  I keep finding out information that no one told me about my best friend. My mom says she missed most of third grade because she was sick. She had a brain tumor, which was what Holly, Daniel, and David’s mom had. Why hadn’t anyone told me this? Melissa died while I was at sleepaway camp, just like their mom did. How was I supposed to protect her if I didn’t know what was going on? I would have forced myself to sleep at her house and save her from dying in her sleep.

  If I don’t learn how to make myself brave, I’ll never be able to save Etan or any of the other people who need me. I decided my first brave thing was going to be telling my friends and teacher that Melissa died, but then the night before school started, my mom called and told everyone, and then told my friends not to mention it because it would upset me. Now everyone knows, but no one will even talk about it with me. When I’m at school, Melissa didn’t die, but when I’m not at school, she did.

  I didn’t want to start fourth grade knowing I’d be leaving Melissa behind, but I didn’t know how to stop any of it. I stuck by Imogen as often as our schedules allowed. Even though I was away at camp all summer, Imogen and I still had the same taste in boys, and we still wore the same tomboy clothes and liked to climb trees and eat french fries and tell each other funny stories; but even now, a few weeks in, there is a part of me that is still sitting on the curb, staring at my knees.

  I count how many times I see Eddie during the day and turn it into good luck. Kara is in seventh grade now, which is in a separate building a few blocks away. I miss her. I go to Marie between every class because I don’t feel well. She lets me lick envelopes and put stamps on them. Melissa’s death isn’t softening into old news; I feel it over and over again, hitting me fresh a hundred times a day. Even when I’m telling Imogen about my camp boyfriend, and the night I glowed in the dark, I am realizing that all that time Melissa was already dead. How do I apologize for not knowing? Or g
et rid of the flashes of shame that splash when I think of how carefree I was while Melissa was in bed dying? Imogen wishes she could have gone to camp with me, but I can’t say she should come next year, because I know I am never going to camp again.

  Our classroom looks right into a playground, which was a gift from the parents of a sixth grader who died. I watch the fifth graders play in it, tense when they jump and roughhouse, concerned at their unconcern for the dead boy. There is a plaque and a bench with his name, Joshua, and the dates of his birth and death. We don’t get to play in the garden until fifth grade, next year. I don’t know why it’s a privilege to play in a dead boy’s garden. No one should play in it. They should leave the dead boy alone, but no one ever does. No one but me seems to even remember it’s his.

  People say life continues, that you move on, but I don’t want life to continue, and I don’t want people to move on without me. If I’m not here, I want them gone, too, but here I am living, continuing on, right under Melissa’s and Baba’s noses. I should not be alive because I have killed people. I left and people died and now I am a jinx and also a murderer. I never want to leave again. Seasons pass through the garden every year, and we get older, but the dead boy stays the same age. Time swats the days, one faster than the next, and Etan turns seven and then I’m ten. Two years older than Melissa, who is still eight. My stepmother has a second baby, Rebecca, and now I’m no longer the youngest girl uptown. Even though I’m afraid of weekends with my dad, I still want him to love me. I don’t want to be replaced, but I can already feel it happening. I feel jealous of the new baby, of the way my dad looks when he talks about her. Does he make those same eye faces when he talks about me? I want to tell Melissa all of this. I want her to know that I’m sorry. I waited for her, but time rolled me up with the days and dragged me along; I couldn’t stop the clocks from running, or my birthday from coming, and I feel guilty. I still don’t know what she looked like when she died. Everything is moving, and life goes on. Is that true for Etan, too, even if we don’t know where he is? Does he know where he is?

  Now I am in fifth grade, and our new classroom looks down onto the dead boy’s garden. They arrest a man named Calvin DeVyer, who had kidnapped two boys, but it turns out he didn’t take Etan. I wonder what happened to Joshua. At recess, we clank down the stairs to play. I try to run softly in case Joshua’s buried under my feet. When we play tag I worry I’ll accidentally breathe his death into my lungs. No one ever talks about Joshua, not the teachers, not the older students who knew him. All I know about him is the playground. I don’t know what he looked like or whether we’d have been friends, but still it makes me sad that all that’s left of him is a bench and trampled dirt.

  My desk is next to the window and sometimes during Expression and Health I daydream down onto the dead boy’s flowers. His death takes up the whole garden. Soon I will be older than him, too. Time is counted for all the years you’ve lived, and it’s counted for how long you’ve been dead, but I don’t know how much time exists between missing and dying. Etan has been missing for so long, it’s become who he is, and people seem to accept it, like it’s a broken arm that will mend and not a mystery no one has solved. If I had made the world, I would stop everything from continuing until he’s been found. I would stop school and learning. I would stop playdates and recesses until the world is returned to the way it was before Melissa died and Etan disappeared, but nothing stops. Am I accidentally erasing people by continuing on?

  I try to pay attention to what the teacher is saying. Something about geography, something about continents and borders. The world is not the same as it was, so why do we act the same as we did before? Something about founders and government. Even my mom moved on. She still shops and laughs and lives her life like it’s okay that her father died. If I died, would she forget and carry on like always? Something about flags and history. When I left people died, but I was here when Etan disappeared and I still couldn’t save him. What if I’m not a saver at all? What if I’m only a killer? Suddenly, a new worry takes hold: What if Etan is dead? Horror drops a cloth over my head and for a minute the world goes black. Maybe other people are moving on because they think he’s dead, too. Or worse, maybe in the same way my mom knew all along that Melissa’s sickness could kill her, people know Etan is dead and just aren’t telling the kids.

  * * *

  The kids in my class are changing and growing, forming cliques that Imogen and I aren’t a part of, and my body is staying still, the same as it was last year and the year before. Maybe my body is staying behind like Melissa, Etan, and the dead boy even though I’m alive. Maybe my body stopped growing as punishment for not saving anyone. My mom and Jimmy start going out a lot, now that we’re older and my siblings can watch me, which is why I start leaving her notes on her pillow. She answers them and leaves them outside my door.

  “I’m always the smallest one in the class and I don’t like it!” I write.

  “I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Fine,” she writes back.

  Dr. Fine, my pediatrician, weighs and measures me, then pulls out the growth chart to mark where I am. The last two times I’ve been in the same place. Four foot two and sixty-four pounds. The chart, Dr. Fine explained when she pulled it out years ago, is where all the children of the world are measured. It says who’s average, below average, or above average. Right in the middle is where the lucky kids land, but I’m not even on the chart for kids my age. I’m all the way down in the seven- and eight-year-old sections. What I wouldn’t give to be average. There are other sheets for other things that tell her how a person should be, but right now, I care just about the sheet that means average. “Am I close?”

  “You are exactly the same.” This is what she always says. I don’t know how to ask her if not growing could be a curse for being a jinx. When I ask if I’ll ever grow, she just says, “That’s the hope,” but that’s not an answer. Time moves everyone forward, but it’s always forgetting to bring me.

  “Is there anything we can be doing?” my mom asks. “Is there something she can take?”

  “Is she eating her vegetables?” Dr. Fine asks my mom. My mom’s face carries the question as she turns to me, as though she doesn’t know the answer.

  “Yes, I eat my vegetables.” I am annoyed my mom doesn’t know that. It means she’s not paying attention.

  Dr. Fine sends me to get a lollipop near the waiting room, but instead I wait outside and cup my ear to the door while she and my mom talk in private. It’s all a low mumble. I can hear my mom asking questions about glands and thyroids, endocrines and hormones, but I can’t hear the answers. Am I ever going to be average?

  That week our teacher, Zola, gathers us together to explain about a test that fifth graders across the country all have to take simultaneously. Now I am paying attention. I do not like tests and don’t want to take one, especially in a room with every other fifth grader in America. My eye starts pulsing like a little heartbeat, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I am not getting enough air. The room spins, and Imogen slices her hand across her neck, which means she can see I’m dying.

  The test is called the ERB and is three days long. I don’t want to sleep at school! We shouldn’t forget our number 2 pencils, Zola is saying. If we can bring more than one, that would be good. Everyone nods their heads, like they know what a number 2 pencil is. Is this information everyone but me was born with? Even Imogen seems to understand. What if I accidentally bring in a number 4 pencil, or a number 7? What if my mother doesn’t know where to buy them? I am so worried about the pencil that I miss everything else.

  “You want to score very high on this test. If you score below a certain number, you could get left back a grade, and you don’t want that, do you?” Zola asks with an eye grin.

  I didn’t know being left back was a real thing. I thought it was just one of my own fears, the ones everyone tells me will never come true. The bad things they say can’t happen keep happening.

  I can’t take this
test. If staying back is something that can happen, I know it will happen to me. My body is being held back, so the rest of me will be also. What if I open the test and the words are in another language? What if they aren’t words at all, but shapes or symbols we’re supposed to turn into words, and I don’t have the right number 2 pencils? What if I’m the only one who doesn’t understand?

  When you’re left back a grade everyone moves on without you, and you stay in place like a dead person. Your old classmates will see you sitting through the exact same lessons, still with Zola as your teacher. You’ll be the oldest in your class, and at birthday parties you’ll say, “I remember when I was your age.” You’ll have nothing in common with anyone anymore. No one will be your friend. I press my fingers into the side of my head. What if this test tells the truth about me, that I’m a part not of this world, but of another?

  My mom says not to worry—no one is holding me back a grade, and Zola was exaggerating and doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Even so, there is a halo of dread staticking off me the morning of the ERB as I walk to school. My pencil case is filled with number 2 pencils—ten more than I need, just in case. I try not to think of all the things that came true when my mom said they wouldn’t.

  While Zola leads us single file down to the cold auditorium, and the other kids rush to find their names, I am still upstairs in our classroom hanging my jacket in my cubby. Zola was too fast. I still don’t know what this test is about, why we’re taking it, or what it means. How will I know what to do? Zola introduces us to a man named Proctor, and now it’s just us and Proctor, who is not a friendly-looking man. I browse the room for Imogen, to catch her eye for comfort, but she’s up front. A thick flutter pushes up beneath my skin, wedging my ribs, making it hard to breathe. Before I can pass out or have an aneurysm, someone calls for a taxi. It’s Proctor, who removes his whistle fingers from his mouth.