What to Say Next

by Julie Buxbaum

  Usually people are too bright, too loud, too overpowering. Jessica’s blond hair hurts my eyes. Willow’s elbows and knees look sharp; when she passes me in the hall, I imagine them cutting me like tiny knives. And Abby, the third girl in their triumvirate and the one who called me a freak the other day, wears so much sickly sweet perfume, I can smell her even before she enters a classroom. But Kit is entirely quiet. She never offends my senses.

  “I always thought it was strange that your dad gave out lollipops to his patients,” I say, and once the words are out I realize I would prefer not to have to talk about Dentist in the past tense. And yet that’s what happens with the dead. They get to take no part in the present or the future.

  “He only gave them to kids,” she says.

  “I’ve never left his office without one,” I say, which sounds like a cool line, I think. I don’t add that his hygienist, Barbara, always slipped me an extra. That would be bragging. She liked me. Adults generally do. It’s fellow teenagers I have a problem with.

  “They were sugar-free.” Of course, I think. I’m embarrassed that this—a dentist giving out lollipops—has confused me for years. What a silly thing to fixate on. And yet I do that. Find a tiny nugget—an inaccuracy or a contradiction—and it niggles at the back of my brain. I don’t like open loops. “So you drive yourself to school every day? I saw you in the parking lot this morning.”

  I don’t tell her that we’ve been in the parking lot at the same time almost every morning since the beginning of the school year. I always arrive at 7:57, which is exactly the amount of time one needs to stop at one’s locker, pick up a book or two, and be on time to a first-period class in the north wing. I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s never noticed me out there before. I seem to fall into one of two extremes for people. To the Justin Chos of the world, I stick out. I’m the equivalent of one of Willow’s elbows. Unpleasant and somehow disruptive, even when I don’t say a word. For everyone else, I’m mostly invisible. When Kit first sat down at my lunch table, I assumed she didn’t notice me there. I’m terrified of the inevitable day when someone accidentally sits on my lap.

  “Yeah. Why?” I ask.

  “Well, I drove you home yesterday.” My cheeks warm, and my palms sweat. Damn. It didn’t even occur to me that she’d find out I didn’t need a ride.

  “Right.” I scramble for a reasonable explanation. In other words, my nemesis: a good lie. I come up empty. I opt for uncomfortable silence. I look at her clavicle freckle cluster. It is suitably distracting. I think about the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, which of course leads me to pi. Who doesn’t love the endless, rhythmic beauty of pi?

  “So you left your car here last night? You know they tow, right?” she asks.

  I nod. I know this.

  “My mom brought me back just after you dropped me off.” I hear the words I have just said out loud and realize I am a ridiculous person. I will always be a ridiculous person. How could I have been worried yesterday that Kit would think I was a dork? Of course she already does. I am fooling no one.

  What are we going to do with you?

  I decide to stick with what I do best. The truth.

  “I just like talking to you. So though I didn’t technically need a ride, I wanted one.”

  “Okay,” she says, and looks up, and for a quick second our eyes meet. I break contact first. “I kinda like talking to you too.”

  —

  Later, at the end of the school day, I see Kit as she walks to her car. Even though we have five classes together, with the wonderful lunch exception it seems we have tacitly agreed not to talk to each other during the day while in school. This is fine by me, since I like my routine. I have a playlist and my headphones for all classroom transitions. But now that we are outside, I wave with my keys in my hands. I think of this as the equivalent of laughing at myself, which my family often reminds me I need to do more often. She smiles.

  “Yeah, so I’m not going to offer you a ride home again,” she says. “It wouldn’t be fair to your mom.”

  “That’s too bad. You’re a very good driver.” Kit’s face closes. I am not sure exactly what I mean—she has not moved a single muscle, but she’s suddenly like a computer that’s been powered down. I prefer her face when it’s open.

  “See you later,” she says, and slips into her red Toyota Corolla, a car that suits her in a way her name does not. I wave once more, a silly gesture that I instantly regret when I notice what must have made Kit close her face. Gabriel and Justin are watching us.

  —

  “Wait, she said those words: I kinda like talking to you too. Seriously?” Miney asks when I get home from school. She’s lying on the couch in a way that makes it seem like she has been there all day. Her hair is tangled and she’s wearing her favorite pajamas: the ones I bought for her for Christmas two years ago that say ODD next to a picture of a duck wearing a tiara. She forgot them when she left for college, and though I offered to FedEx them, she told me it was too much of a hassle. When I said I didn’t mind, she said she liked knowing they were home safe, where they couldn’t get lost or stolen. That’s how I know they are her favorite.

  “Yes. Those exact words. And then we chatted about how much we both liked old eighties movies. She’s a John Hughes fan too. I told her that he died at the age of fifty-nine. Just dropped dead of a heart attack. Here one day, gone the next. Just like her dad. I mean, Kit’s dad died in a car accident, but same concept. Blink here. Blink gone.”

  “Little D.” Miney sits up and shakes her head. “You can’t. I mean, you got to be careful about the dead dad stuff.”

  “Kit says she likes that I tell the truth. She called it ‘brutal honesty,’ but I think it’s the same thing.”

  Miney stays still for a minute. She’s wearing her thinking face.

  “I think you need to ask Kit out.”

  “What?”

  “Not like on a date or anything. Not yet. Something super-casual. Maybe to study. Or to work on a school project together. You need to up your time together in a way that feels like a natural extension of lunch.” Miney pulls her hair back from her face and ties it in a ponytail. The purple gets mostly hidden, and I feel the tightness in my chest lighten. Her eyes are still bloodshot, and there are triangles of blue below them. I will pick up some zinc lozenges from the drugstore later in case she’s getting sick. “I wish I remembered Kit from when I went to Mapleview. I looked up her Twitter and Instagram and stuff, but it didn’t tell me much. She seems surprisingly normal.”

  “Why is that surprising? I told you she was perfect. Also, she’s the prettiest girl in school.”

  “Eh, she’s cute enough.” I have no idea what she’s cute enough for, but I don’t ask. Whatever Kit is, I like it.

  “Why would we study together? I’m way ahead in all my subjects. It would be inefficient.” I stare at the right side of Miney’s face. That way I can’t see the new piercing. Like the purple stripe, it screams at me. No, there’s a slight octave shift. It feels like it’s demanding something, but I don’t know what.

  “Missing the point. But before we get to any of that, if you want any shot here, we need to clean you up. The time has come, Little D.”

  Miney smiles in that way she does when she’s about to force me to do something scary. She’s like Trey that way. Always pushing me out of what she calls “my comfort zone,” which I’ll never understand. Why would you purposely make yourself uncomfortable?

  Since Miney is number one on the Trust List, I try hard to do whatever she asks. That’s not always possible.

  “The time has come for what?” I think of Kit’s clavicle. The perfect little circle of freckles. Pi. It relaxes me, like counting backward.

  “Shopping, Little D. Time to get over your fear of the big bad mall.” Yup, I was right. Horrifying.

  David Drucker is officially everywhere. In the parking lot before and after school. In almost all my classes. And, of course, at lunch, since I continue t
o choose his table as a refuge. Presumably he has always been in all these places, but until now I’ve never noticed him. You would think someone who is that bizarre wouldn’t be able to camouflage, but he is so entirely self-contained on his strange headphone island that he moves silently through school. He causes almost no ripple.

  Still, after what is shaping up to be the Week of David, it’s just plain weird when I run into him at the drugstore. And I mean that literally. We are both looking down when our shoulders crash. Ouch.

  “Are you following me?” I ask in a jokey tone. I’m borderline flirting with him in front of the maxi pads with wings. I drop my jumbo pack of super-absorbent Tampax and kick it behind me so he doesn’t see.

  “No, of course not,” David says, and he sounds offended, like I’ve accused him of something.

  “I didn’t mean…Never mind. It’s just funny to see you here.”

  “Just picking up some stuff for Miney,” he says, and it occurs to me that actually I’ve been the one seeking him out lately, with the notable exception of the football snack shack. I chose his lunch table after all. I offered him a ride home yesterday. Maybe I’m annoying him?

  “Miney?”

  “My sister.”

  “You have two sisters?” I wonder if Miney is as effortlessly cool as Lauren. I decide not. Not only does she have a weird name—who would name their kid Miney?—but no one is as effortlessly cool as Lauren Drucker. I glance at his basket: a bunch of different cold medicines.

  “Just the one. Miney’s a nickname. Lauren graduated last year.”

  “I know.”

  “You know Miney?” he asks.

  “I mean, I know who she is. Everyone at school does.” I wish I could somehow move us out of the feminine hygiene aisle, but condoms and lubricants are next.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. President of her class. Homecoming queen. She’s, like, Mapleview royalty.” If I were talking to Justin, I probably wouldn’t have admitted knowing all this info about his family. I don’t bother playing it cool with David. Not sure he’d notice.

  “You don’t have any siblings, right?” he asks, and for the first time I see that he looks a lot like his sister. Different demeanor and mannerisms and voice, but the same face. Dark eyes and long eyelashes and full lips. If it weren’t for his jaw, which is square and strong and always has a dusting of five-o’clock shadow, he’d be almost pretty.

  “Just me. All by my lonesome.” He nods, as if confirming that which he already knew.

  “You seem like an only child.”

  “I can’t decide if that’s an insult or a compliment.”

  “Neither. It’s an observation. I’ve always thought it would be even lonelier not having a sister.”

  “Are you saying I seem lonely?” This is what it is like to talk to David Drucker. Dive straight into the center. No matter that we are in a drugstore, surrounded by tampons and Monistat. We make good conversational partners, I think: I’ve forgotten the art of small, inconsequential talk, and he’s never learned it.

  “No, not really. But there’s a stillness to you. Like if you were a radio wave, you’d have your very own frequency. Which is isolating because I don’t think everyone can hear you.” He delivers his speech to my feet but then suddenly looks up and stares into my eyes. The eye contact feels raw and intimate, and I shiver. I blink first. “I mean, you have lots of other waves too, all those commonly shared frequencies, the ones I most certainly lack, but the most important waves, the core you ones, those are harder for other people to decipher. That’s my theory, anyway.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. David Drucker has a theory about my metaphorical radio waves.

  —

  Once we are outside in the bitter cold, standing with our hands stuffed into our winter jacket pockets, I suggest we get something to eat. I don’t want to get back into the car. I don’t want to go home. Both of these involve feeling feelings, which I prefer to avoid. Distraction is what I need. Distraction keeps time from being in slo-mo.

  “Pizza Palace?” David asks. It’s just a few doors down. I picture my friends all huddled in a booth in the back. No need to combine David with my real life.

  “Nah.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t want to go there. Pizza Pizza Pizza is so much better and has that great two-for-one deal. I just didn’t want to suggest it,” David says.

  “Why?”

  “The name. It’s not like they have three times more pizza than other places. Ridiculous.”

  “How about we not get pizza at all?”

  “I thought you might say that too, since you had such a hearty, well-balanced lunch.” He pauses. Clears his throat. Stares at the single car making its way down Main Street. “That’s going to be one of those things I said out loud and then will regret later, isn’t it?”

  I laugh and it feels good. He looks sweet when he realizes he’s said the wrong thing. His eyes go big and wide. To rescue him, I link my arm with his and start us walking down the street.

  “Just so you know, if asked, I would have no idea how to describe your frequency,” I say.

  “Honestly, sometimes I think only dogs can hear me,” he says.

  “For what it’s worth, I can hear you just fine.”

  “It’s worth a lot,” David says, and I blush, and I’m pretty sure he does too.

  —

  We end up at the counter at Straw and we order double cones of vanilla and chocolate brownie ice cream, despite the fact that it’s cold out. It’s easier this way, sitting at the counter facing forward, so we don’t have to look at each other while we talk. It’s crazy but I don’t feel self-conscious around David like I do with pretty much everyone else, but still, staring at the old-fashioned mini jukebox instead of his face helps me to forget myself.

  “Do you believe in the butterfly effect?” David asks out of nowhere.

  “English, please.”

  “In chaos theory there’s this concept that one small change can have increasingly bigger effects. So, like, a butterfly flaps its wings here in New Jersey and it disturbs the atmosphere, and somehow that eventually leads to, like, a hurricane in the Galápagos Islands.” I nod and think about how exactly thirty-four days ago, a man called George Wilson, a name for a portly next-door neighbor in a sitcom, not a real person, decided to meet a friend for a drink. I think about how exactly thirty-five days ago, a work order to fix a traffic light was sent up the chain for approval, and how it got stuck in bureaucratic traffic along the way. I think about a foot not fast enough on the brake.

  Seemingly small, inconsequential things.

  I think about a butterfly flapping its wings and now my father is dead.

  “I do. But I wish I didn’t, because it makes me realize just how much of our lives are out of our control,” I say.

  “Like your dad dying.” He says it like the words have no power at all. I feel winded, like David punched me right in the gut. And also a little high because he read my mind and said it out loud. Straight out. With the exception of last night, my mom barely even says my father’s name, not to mention the whole him-being-dead part.

  So many available words: Expired. Killed. Departed. Liquidated. Gone.

  All have been banned from my house.

  “Sort of,” I say. “That was a car accident, though. A bunch of things added up, but there were two drivers. Human mistakes were made. That’s different from an atmospheric disturbance, right?”

  “Maybe. But take each one of those human mistakes in isolation and you’d have a totally different outcome. Your dad could have walked away without a scratch.”

  I lick my ice cream, which is suddenly sickly sweet. I should have gotten it like David did: asked for the chocolate brownie on the bottom. Worked down to the decadence.

  “I was thinking about the butterfly effect and about how a series of events brought you to sit at my lunch table, and you sitting there has led us to sit here. A week ago we wouldn’t have had ic
e cream together.”

  “Probably not.”

  “And then I may say the wrong thing, and that will lead us to never eating ice cream together again.” I look at the side of David’s face. He’s not as impervious to the world around him as he seems.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” I say. “I’m like a rash.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say, embarrassed. Did I just compare myself to a skin condition? Yes, yes I did. “Nothing at all.”

  —

  A little while later, we’re still sitting here in the empty ice cream store, legs dangling from stools. David has a bit of chocolate on his chin, but I don’t tell him. It’s kind of adorable.

  “If you could be anyone else, who would you want to be?” I ask, because I’ve decided that I admire how David doesn’t self-censor. I should try it too.

  I think about this all the time. Waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror, and seeing someone wholly different staring back. These days I’d give anything to be the old me, the pre-accident me, who could sit at my old lunch table and chat about nothing. The pre-accident me who aspired to be more like Lauren Drucker, former benevolent ruler and social chair of Mapleview. I really wouldn’t mind being entirely full of shit, so long as I didn’t notice.

  “There’s this guy Trey who teaches me guitar,” David says. “He kind of pisses me off, actually, but he’s just the type of guy everyone likes. He always knows exactly what to say. Like has annoyingly pitch-perfect radio waves. So I guess him?”

  “I used to want my metaphorical radio waves to play music that was, like, quirky but also perfectly curated, you know? Something cool. But now I feel like I’ve become traffic on the hour.”

  “You are so not traffic on the hour,” he says, and to my dismay dabs at his chin with a napkin. “Though I wouldn’t mind even being that. Reliable, informative, albeit repetitive. At least people actually listen to it.”