Tragedy Girl

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  A breeze buffets my cheek as he walks away. I squeeze my arms together, suddenly chilled.

  What the hell was that all about?

  “So you had fun yesterday?”

  I nod as Aunt Meg drives me to my second appointment with Dr. Sennett. “Yeah. His family’s great.”

  I twist my fingers together in my lap. I’m still tossing around in my mind what happened at lunch. Everything seemed so strange: Blake’s sudden sullenness, that guy’s random insinuations … Why can’t I seem to go more than an hour without utter confusion clouding my brain?

  “Honey?”

  I look at Aunt Meg. “Mmmm-hmmmm?”

  “Honey, this is probably nothing, but … ”

  My eyebrows knit together. “Yes?”

  Aunt Meg pauses, seemingly bouncing words around in her head.

  “What is it?” I prod.

  She touches her bottom lip with her index finger. “Probably nothing, like I said. But … remember when Blake told us that he brings flowers every week to the mother of the girl who died?”

  My stomach muscles clench ever so slightly. “Yeah?”

  She glances at me, then refocuses on the road. “You know I told you that I work with the girl’s aunt? Cathleen Wexler?”

  “Yeah … ?”

  Aunt Meg takes a deep breath, then continues: “Honey, Cathleen told me that Blake has never brought Cara’s mother flowers. She said the family hasn’t seen or heard from him since Cara’s memorial service. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, but—”

  “Why would you talk to your co-worker about our private conversations at the dinner table?” I say, my voice tighter than I intended.

  Aunt Meg looks a little flummoxed, but then she casts me a sharp look. “Why wouldn’t I? I was just making conversation. Here’s a guy that we mutually know, and he’s been to my house for dinner, so … ”

  “Still.”

  Aunt Meg stops at a red light, then takes a right, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, looking intently ahead.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally say, touching my fingers against my mouth. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just … ”

  I just have a brand-spanking-new reason to feel a new knot in my stomach. Quit blaming Aunt Meg for your own insecurities, idiot.

  “I’m not even sure why I’m bringing it up,” Aunt Meg says, her voice gentle again.

  “Isn’t it a good possibility that your coworker just doesn’t know about the flowers?” I ask, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

  Aunt Meg shakes her head reluctantly. “Cathleen and her sister are really close. Cara’s mother is actually the one who brought up Blake in a recent conversation. She was wondering how he’s doing, since she hasn’t seen him or heard from him since … well, you know.”

  My mind bounces around a couple of alternate possible explanations: Maybe Cara’s dad meets Blake at the door, then declines to give the flowers to his wife for fear of upsetting her? Maybe Blake leaves the flowers at Cara’s gravesite, assuming her mother will collect them? But I stay silent. I don’t know what to think. I’m just so tired of feeling defensive any time Blake’s name comes up.

  “It’s not a big deal that he doesn’t bring her flowers,” Aunt Meg clarifies, which serves only to tighten the knot in my stomach, “but it’s just so strange he’d volunteer information that isn’t true. It’s not like anybody asked him about it.”

  “You did ask him about Cara,” I say, and god, now I not only sound defensive, I sound like a petulant kid. “You’re the one who brought her up at dinner.”

  “I certainly didn’t ask him about bringing flowers to her mother,” Aunt Meg says.

  “Well, maybe he felt like he was on the spot.”

  “Exactly,” she says, nodding too eagerly. “I really think that explains it. I just … thought I should tell you.”

  A heavy silence hangs in the air.

  “Anne?”

  “Yep,” I murmur, staring straight out the passenger window.

  “Maybe you should talk to Dr. Sennett about Blake.”

  “I saw my mom in my dream.”

  Dr. Sennett’s eyebrows arch.

  “Just for a second,” I qualify. “We were communicating, though. She was trying to get me to fly a plane. Actually, she was insisting that I fly it. I kept telling her I didn’t know how—I was so scared, so I was flying really low, knocking into trees and buildings—but she told me I did know how, I just didn’t know I knew.”

  I scan Dr. Sennett’s face for her reaction. “Is it torture to have to listen to people’s dreams for an hour?” I ask tentatively.

  She laughs. “Nothing’s torturous about spending time with you, Anne,” she says. “You’re a delightful, insightful young woman.”

  “Mmmmmm. Actually, I’m a mess.”

  Dr. Sennett leans closer. “How so?”

  I peer out her window. “The guy I told you about last week? The guy I’m dating? I keep getting these weird vibes.”

  “Go on … ”

  I shrug. “I can hardly even think of any examples,” I say, averting my eyes as a dozen or so examples pop effortlessly into my brain. I just can’t stand the thought of articulating them. My head hurts from thinking so much.

  “What does your gut tell you?” Dr. Sennett says.

  I smile ruefully. “My gut is seriously confused. I’m all over the map. One minute, I’m jumping for joy that I’ve found the greatest guy in the world. The next minute, I feel like I don’t know him at all.”

  I pause, then say, “He kinda snapped at my girlfriend the other night—no biggie, just this quick flash of temper that really caught me off guard—and I thought, ‘Whoa, I didn’t see that coming.’ But even saying this out loud makes me feel silly, like, ‘Flash of temper: alert the media!’ Am I just looking for flaws?”

  Dr. Sennett taps her pencil against the arm of her chair. “You didn’t go looking for that.”

  “Yeah, but how ridiculous are my standards if I can’t even tolerate a little snippiness?”

  “Initially, you called it a flash of temper.”

  I roll my eyes dismissively. “Does it matter what I call it?”

  She ponders the question, then says, “I think it does.”

  My eyes fall. “I want this to be right.”

  Dr. Sennett adjusts her glasses. “Wanting it to be right doesn’t mean it is.”

  I squeeze my hands together. “I really think I’m overreacting.” And that whole lying-about-the-flowers thing? I’ll just keep that pesky example to myself. Not even worthy of a mention.

  Dr. Sennett leans onto her forearms. “Let’s get hypothetical for a minute: You’ve decided it’s not right. For whatever reason, you decide this guy is not for you. Poof, just like that, one day he’s in your life, the next day, he’s gone. Where does that leave you?”

  I bite my lip to steady my suddenly trembling chin. “Alone,” I say, in barely a whisper.

  “Alone, huh,” Dr. Sennett muses. “Let’s see: You have your aunt and uncle. You have whatever girlfriend Mr. Wonderful snapped at. You have me. You have teachers who care about you, friends back home, other relatives … And most importantly, you have a future. A huge, unlimited future that will bring a whole new slew of people into your life, people you can’t even imagine right now. But can you try anyway? Can you use your imagination and try to picture your future?”

  My eyes grow moist, blurring the trees outside Dr. Sennett’s window. “I can’t see Mom and Dad in my future. That’s all I can picture: the things that are missing.”

  A long moment passes.

  “Yet you’ll march into your future anyway,” Dr. Sennett finally says. “Even if you do nothing. Even if you tell yourself that whatever you’re holding in your hands right now is all you can count on so you ca
n’t possibly let it go. You can’t hold on tight enough to make time stand still, Anne. Your future is coming, whether you like it or not.”

  I sniffle and wipe a tear from my cheek.

  “But you know what?” Dr. Sennett says in barely a whisper. “I think you’re gonna like it just fine.”

  “You take it.”

  “No, you take it.”

  “No, you!”

  Uncle Mark and I laugh at each other as we each reach for the last apple in the bowl, both of us passing through the kitchen from separate areas of the house before bedtime.

  “I don’t even like apples,” Uncle Mark says. “Blechhhht.”

  I raise an eyebrow and point an index finger into the air. I retrieve a knife, cut the apple in half, and hand him his piece. His eyes sparkle as we dig into our halves.

  He chews, then says with a full mouth, “You are brilliant.”

  I giggle. “That’s what Blake’s mom called me at dinner yesterday. She was like, ‘Aren’t you brilliant or something?’ And I was like, ‘Duh.’”

  “Brilliance is hereditary, you know,” Uncle Mark says, swallowing his bite. “Hey, speaking of brilliant, this indie movie that got awesome reviews at Sundance is playing at the university theater. Wanna go?”

  I scrunch my eyebrows. “It’s almost midnight.”

  “Yeah, I meant tonight,” he deadpans, and I laugh at myself, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “It’ll be there all week, silly,” he says. “Maybe over the weekend?”

  “Hmmmmmm. Will you supply the apples?”

  “Maybe half of one.”

  I nod sharply. “It’s a date.”

  Uncle Mark tousles my hair. “You look just like your dad, you know.”

  I feel my face brighten. “People have always told me I look like Mom.”

  “No, you definitely inherited both your looks and your brilliance from my side of the family.”

  I laugh some more, loving Uncle Mark for being irreverent about my parents. Maybe we’re finally moving past the proscribed discussions guided by the invisible hand of an expert.

  We stand there a minute on the cool tile, then he says, “So, that psychiatrist lady … that’s going okay?”

  “She’s actually a psychologist,” I say. “Yeah, it’s going fine. She’s really cool.”

  “Because you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, you know,” Uncle Mark says.

  “Aunt Meg actually forced me at gunpoint.”

  “Well, that’s where I draw the line.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him playfully. “It really was thoughtful of Aunt Meg to set it up. Okay, initially I thought, ‘That Aunt Meg is quite the control freak’”—I say this in an exaggerated, sing-song voice—“but it does help to have someone to talk things over with.”

  Uncle Mark puts an arm around my shoulder and squeezes me tightly. “You know you can always talk things over with me, sweetie … right?”

  I’m so touched that I’m momentarily speechless.

  “I’ll always be here for you, Annie.”

  I swallow a lump in my throat as he folds me into a big hug.

  Seventeen

  “Hand it over!”

  I gasp and run over to Melanie’s locker. I’ve just gotten to school, and I have to pass her locker to get to mine.

  But it’s not Melanie standing at her locker. It’s Blake. Blake and Natalie. She’s standing there seemingly frozen in space, her eyes as wide as saucers.

  “You heard me,” he tells her in a menacing growl, leaning so close to her face that their noses are almost touching.

  Melanie, who’s just arrived at school herself, rushes to my side. “What is going on?” she asks in a frantic whisper.

  “Now!” Blake bellows to Natalie as an ever-growing curious crowd collects.

  “You … you don’t understand,” she says plaintively.

  Lauren rushes up to Melanie and me, muttering, “What the hell?”

  Blake is still hulking over Natalie, who looks like she might actually implode with fear. I rush to the locker and step between the two of them, locking eyes with Blake. His are bulging with rage.

  “What’s going on?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster.

  “I caught our little note-writer red-handed,” he says, his eyes once again boring into Natalie’s.

  “No!” she protests weakly.

  “Hand. Me. The note,” he says chillingly.

  Enough of a crowd has gathered that an adult is finally in the mix. Mr. Loring, my calculus teacher, rushes up to us. He looks almost comically harmless in his short-sleeve dress shirt and bow-tie, but I’m ridiculously glad to see him.

  “What’s going on?” he asks Blake.

  Blake’s eyes scan the crowd: Natalie, me, Melanie, Lauren … He seems conflicted for a nanosecond but quickly recovers and puffs out his chest.

  “Natalie just put a note in my friend’s locker,” he tells Mr. Loring.

  “And why is that your concern?”

  Again, a wave of ambivalence washes over Blake’s face, but only for a moment. “Someone’s been passing anonymous notes to her. Notes about my friend. So I’ve scoped out her locker for the past couple of days to see if I could catch the person in the act.”

  Blake presents his hand, as if he’s serving up Natalie on a platter. She turns almost literally green.

  “And whose locker is it?” Mr. Loring says.

  “Mine,” Melanie says, stepping forward. “Blake is right, Mr. Loring. Someone’s been sending me anonymous notes. They’re no big deal—just immature kid stuff—but I told Blake about them over the weekend, so I guess he was watching out for me. We don’t know for sure, but we think Natalie might be the one writing the notes.”

  She glares at Natalie, who wilts before our eyes.

  Mr. Loring turns toward her. “You’ve been putting notes in her locker?”

  Natalie trembles. “Just two. But they’re not from me.”

  “And who might they be from?” he persists.

  Natalie’s chin trembles. “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

  Mr. Loring purses his lips. “Let’s take this to the office.”

  “Mr. Loring,” Blake says, his voice now measured and reasonable, “I think we can settle this among ourselves, if you don’t mind. Now that we know who’s been planting the notes, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about this anymore.”

  “What a stand-up guy,” Lauren mutters under her breath.

  Blake is giving Natalie a studied stare, his expression a mixture of condescension and contempt.

  “Are there any threats in the notes?” Mr. Loring asks.

  Natalie’s face crinkles like a leaf. “I don’t even know! I haven’t even read the stupid things!”

  “No threats,” Blake interjects quickly. “She’s got a crush on me and is trying to stir things up with my buddy and his girlfriend.”

  Natalie squeezes her eyes shut.

  Mr. Loring looks at Melanie. “No threats?”

  “No, sir,” she assures him earnestly. “No threats.”

  Then Melanie tosses a haughty look at Natalie and adds, “I’m not afraid of her.”

  Mr. Loring hesitates a moment, then tells Melanie, “Open your locker and show me the note, please.”

  Melanie, Lauren, and I exchange glances. Jamie’s nowhere in sight, but we know he’d be mortified to have half the school watch the saga unfold.

  “I really think we can handle this ourselves … ” Melanie says.

  “The note, please,” Mr. Loring says curtly.

  Melanie sighs and opens her locker, plucking a sealed blank envelope from the top. She swallows hard, then hands it to Mr. Loring.

  He glances hastily around the hallway. “Everyone else, please resume what you were doing,�
� he says.

  The crowd starts reluctantly dispersing, everyone except Blake, Natalie, Melanie, Lauren, and me.

  “Girls?” Mr. Loring says to Lauren and me. The two of us drop our chins and start slinking down the hall, trying to walk slowly enough to overhear what’s going on.

  But we have to keep moving, and soon we’re out of earshot. Mr. Loring murmurs a few words we can’t make out, then walks to his classroom. Lauren and I rush back to Mel’s locker.

  “I swear, I didn’t write it!” Natalie is telling Blake and Melanie, now heaving full-fledged sobs.

  “Where’s the note?” I ask Blake.

  He nods toward Mr. Loring’s classroom. “He took it.”

  “What did it say?” Lauren asks breathlessly.

  Natalie blurts out the answer. “It said, ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ That’s all it said; that’s it! And I didn’t know what it said until Mr. Loring opened it!”

  “Then why did you plant it in my locker?” Melanie asks.

  “I didn’t plant it,” Natalie says through jagged sobs. “I put it in there. As a favor to a friend. I didn’t know what the notes said; I didn’t know they were freaking you out.”

  “Bullshit!” Blake says.

  “It’s true! I swear it’s true!” she cries.

  “Then who wrote the notes?” Melanie demands. “Who are you covering for?”

  Natalie drops her head and shakes it. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell. But I’ll ask her today if it’s okay. I’ll tell her this has all blown up and become a huge mess. I promise, I’ll ask her if I can tell, and if it’s okay with her, I’ll—”

  “Why in the world,” Lauren asks, “would you try to protect the privacy of a sniveling coward who goes around writing anonymous notes?”

  “She’s only trying to help,” Natalie says, her eyebrows an inverted V over tear-stained eyes. “If you knew who it was, you’d understand. She isn’t trying to freak anybody out. She’s only trying to help.”

  We cast anxious glances at each other, which makes Natalie dissolve into a fresh round of tears. “I promise, I’ll ask her today if I can tell you. I promise!”