“It’s not really fancy or any—”
“It’s great!” I cut him off. “It looks—yum! Thank you! Can I have my brownie first?”
“Would your mother approve?”
“Probably not.”
“Then, by all means.” He hands me one of the brownies.
His mention of my mother reminds me. “Excuse me for a sec,” I say and shoot her a quick text.
At Mill Mountain in Roanoke. He packed a picnic!!! Am fine.
As we eat, a few families tramp past on the way to the parking lot. A white-haired couple ambles by; the wife, in a long fitted coat, holds her husband’s elbow like they’ve just stepped out of a black-and-white movie.
“It was weird meeting your mom,” Charlie says. “I hope I wasn’t too… um…”
“Yeah,” I say. “You don’t really do parents, do you?”
“That bad?” he asks.
“You were… cute,” I say.
“Cute?” He rubs his chin. “Hmmm. Maybe I should get all awkward in front of adults more often.”
“Maybe,” I say, like I don’t mean it, and lean in to kiss him.
We feed each other strawberries.
If it wasn’t me and Charlie, if it was some other couple I just happened to walk by, I’d probably find them ridiculous. But since it is me and Charlie, it’s really, really sweet.
“I almost forgot!” He scooches two folded slips of paper out of his back pocket and puts one in each fist. “Choose,” he says.
I consider his hands.
“It’s surprise you don’t like, right? Not chance,” he says.
“No, chance is fine,” I say, tapping his right hand.
“Let’s see.” He unfolds the paper and shows me a picture of what looks like a straggly mushroom. Or maybe a beret with a few strands of hair coming out.
“This you’ll have to explain,” I say.
“I will,” he assures me, helping me up. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
Immortal
Mark Lee’s cousin Ned works at the science museum and agreed to let us in after hours. Unlocking the door, he takes a nervous glance around, then waves us in. The front room is dark, all the displays switched off. “So no one will see lights from the outside,” Ned says.
From a back office, a radio is blasting rock ballads.
Charlie takes my hand and leads me through the dimness. We pass a clear glass globe, a robot on a bike, and a huge plastic mouth.
“Power’s still on in the back,” Ned says, then leaves us, heading down a dark hallway toward the glowing rectangle of an open office door.
“Is he okay with this?” I whisper. “He’s not going to lose his job or anything?”
“It’s fine. He’s working late anyway,” Charlie says. “Mark and I hang out here all the time. Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”
In the next room, bright with lights, I hear the shh-shh-shh of a stream, and squint. A little pond is in front of us, with a fake waterfall and real fish, turtles, rocks, and logs. Off to one side, a smaller room radiates with neon blue.
“In here,” Charlie says, leading me toward the glow, which I find is caused by an atmospherically lit jellyfish tank that rises up one wall, arches over our heads, and then stretches down the opposite wall.
“I love it here,” he says, letting go of my hand and lying down flat on the floor beneath the tank’s arch. He pats the floor beside him, and I lie down, too.
“It’s… quiet,” he says, though in the distance the radio howls about beer and betrayal.
Three dozen jellyfish float above us, opening and closing the cloudy palms of their bodies in slow, mindless movements. It’s almost hypnotic—lying on the floor beneath the tank, watching the white, spineless dance.
“There’s a type of jellyfish that can live forever,” I say.
“Wait. What?” Charlie says.
“It’s true. My dad told me about it. They mature and reproduce, but instead of dying, they just turn back into a child. Then they do it all over again. They keep turning back over and over. If nothing kills them, they’ll live forever.”
“That’s wild.”
“I bet there’s some scientist somewhere poking that jellyfish with needles right now, cutting it up, trying to create a pill that will make us immortal.”
“I wouldn’t want it,” Charlie says.
I wouldn’t either. I can’t imagine going through high school in an endless loop. Having to learn it all again, having to feel it all. But I ask him, “Why not?”
“Who wants a life that can only end in killing?” he says. “It shouldn’t be like that.”
He must be thinking of Jamie. Her kind smile. Her broken body. Kyle’s fists.
I watch one jellyfish bump into another, slowly bounce away, and knock into the side of the tank. The randomness of it fills me with a sadness I can’t explain.
“I was with Mrs. Gardner when she was dying,” Charlie says. “She’s this old lady who lived down the street from us and I used to cut her grass. She always gave me five dollars and a slice of pound cake. When she moved to the nursing home, my mom made me visit her, you know, read the paper or talk about NASCAR. That lady could talk NASCAR all afternoon.”
He grows quiet, like he’s forgotten he was speaking, so I ask him, “You like racing?”
“No.” Charlie laughs, surprised. “I don’t hate it. But it wasn’t really about that.” He shifts, so he’s lying on his side, propped on one elbow, looking at me. “She lost so much weight, week after week, till she wasn’t much more than a skeleton. The last time I saw her, she didn’t talk at all. I’m not sure she could. I knew she was dying, I knew it. It wasn’t like—it wasn’t like with Jamie. I could have said something this time. I could have said… I don’t know… goodbye.”
He flops on his back, stares up at the jellyfish. “But I didn’t. I mean, I said bye when I left, but it was”—he makes a flippant gesture in the air above us—“just normal, like I’d see her again the next week. Even though I knew I wouldn’t.”
We watch the jellyfish dodge and sway. The back of Charlie’s hand connects with mine and I shift my arm slightly so my palm rests in his. His fingers stroke the back of my hand, and it’s like that touch is all that exists. Like his hand is talking to mine in its own language. I feel safe, and I close my eyes.
Mine
“It’s like this.” Lindsey spits her gum into a small square napkin. “You’ve been nowhere. Like you disappeared.”
She sets her cup down on a table by the window. We’re at the coffee shop in the old-fashioned part of town. Across Main Street, at the farmers’ market, an old guy is packing up his leftover pumpkins into the back of his truck. It’s past three on Saturday, and it’s started to drizzle, so the other stalls have already cleared out.
I sit, keeping my eyes on the rain.
“You ignore me all week, then I get one text from you—ONE!—asking, of all things, about flowers. But when I ask WTH? All I get is ‘I’ll explain later.’ So, it’s later! Explain.”
I’m not quite ready to talk about the other stuff, so I answer her question with another. “Where did you disappear to when you started hanging out with Robert?”
“That’s different.” Lindsey uses her coffee stirrer to carry a glob of whipped cream to her mouth.
“Different how?”
“I was justifiably pissed. You were being a butt.”
“Hmm. You have a point.” I take a big swallow of my warm chai tea and exhale. It’s hard to argue when you’re drinking chai.
“So to make up for it, you’re going with me to Taylor’s today,” she says.
“Uh, what?”
“You are going. With me. To Taylor’s. Today.” She gives me her All-Powerful look. “Text Charlie and tell him you’re mine for the rest of the day. He can have you back tomorrow.”
“We’re meeting up after dinner for a run,” I say. “It’s kind of a thing.”
“Yeah, well, yo
u’ll always have Paris,” Lindsey says.
“What does that even mean?” I ask, laughing. “Sometimes you’re so freaking random.”
“He’s had you all week. Plus, it’s raining. Plus, Taylor needs us. For support, you know. And this is so cool!” Lindsey’s voice goes up in this excited way that lets me know that she knows I’m not going to like what she has to say next, so she’s going to pretend it’s thrilling and hope I play along. “She’s going to do our hair!”
“Noooooo—”
“Yes! Just hear me out. She has to do these before-and-after photos for her beauty school project, so she’s going to do it all. Cut and style. Makeup. Everything. It’s going to be fun!”
“But—”
“Fun, dammit!”
“Arrrrr—”
“Fun, I say! FUN!”
There are times when Lindsey cannot be argued with. Times like now.
“And after, you’re coming over to spend the night for real. And we’re going to watch Austenland and talk girl stuff.”
I’ve seen Austenland twice with Lindsey already. “How many times have you watched that movie?” I ask.
“Twelve. I stopped counting after twelve.”
“You’re possessed,” I say.
“Yes, I am,” she says. “So don’t get in my way. Text the boy. Text him. Tell him you’re miiiiiine!”
“Okay,” I say. “Girl stuff. Hair. Nails. Got it.”
“Text!” She points to my phone like she expects me to do it this second.
So, sighing, I do. As I type, I remember Taylor’s purple hair at the memorial for Jamie. I stop mid-word. “No dye, right?”
“Yep, no dye. You done?” she asks, pointing to the phone in my hand.
“Just a sec,” I say, and resume typing.
“Send! Send!” she squeals, giddy.
“Geez, you’re so hyped up,” I say. “What is in that coffee?”
“Wondrous caffeine! Glorious caffeine!” Lindsey’s arms are making outrageous gestures as she speaks, as if from the waist up she’s waltzing. She almost accidentally fondles a large guy plugging into the outlet behind her chair.
When he leaves, I snicker, caught up in her irrepressible zeal. “You need to watch out,” I say.
“Darling,” she chirps, “the world needs to watch out for me.”
“You’re not wrong,” I say.
“Oh—that text! I almost forgot. What was that all about? Flowers?”
So I tell her about the flowers on the porch and the note, how I was sure they were from Charlie but they weren’t, how it must just be some random weirdness, right, but I’m not even done talking when the look on Lindsey’s face gets frozen somewhere between just-saw-a-ghost and just-stepped-in-poo.
“Oh. My. God.”
“What?”
“It’s not your fault.…”
She stands up, almost knocking over her coffee cup in the process, then sits back down, actually knocking it over this time. It’s all but empty, so I just turn it right side up, and ask, more forcefully, “What?”
“I got—not flowers—a blue bear, a little teddy bear—same note—just a brown envelope, right? When was it? When did you get it?”
“Monday morning,” I say, feeling my face go numb.
“Holy crap,” she says.
“So you got the same note,” I say, because I need to get this straight, no misunderstanding, “the same note, but with a bear?”
She nods. “No signature. Nothing. Monday morning. It was outside my door when I went to school. But it was from Robert. He said so when I told him about it. He was like, A sugar bear for my sugar. And I was like, What’s not my fault?—you know, from the note? And he was like, It’s not your fault you’re so sexy. And I was like, Awwww! But—but he sent you flowers? Like, what?”
“Is it possible,” I ask, “that Robert was just taking credit? You know… lying?”
“Oh,” Lindsey says, and I can almost see her mind putting it together. “Oh, yeah. Definitely. Robert would totally do that.”
“So the flowers… the bear… they’ve got to be from the same person. But not Robert.” Because really, there’s a zero percent chance Robert Leuger got me flowers.
“Not Robert,” Lindsey agrees. “But why? Why would someone do that?”
In a second, my list of suspects is whittled down to a single, horrifying name.
“Lindsey, what do we have in common, you and me—like, not just being friends, but you know.”
“What happened to Jamie,” she says, her eyes going wide as it hits her: “Kyle.”
In the Stars
On the ride over to Taylor’s house, Lindsey schemes. “We can’t just come out with it. We need to scope out the situation. You know, go subtle.”
Lindsey Barrow, the picture of subtlety. Right.
“I don’t want to freak her out,” she goes on. “It could trigger a relapse. And she was—God, she was a mess. So here’s the plan: First, we chill. Then, while we’re getting the makeovers, all casual-like, we slip in something about a delivery or a card or ‘your fault’ or something, and we see how she reacts.”
“But if that doesn’t work, we should just ask her.”
“Maybe,” Lindsey says.
“Yes,” I say. I need to know what’s going on. “That’s Plan B.”
“We’ll see.”
Forty-five minutes later, Taylor lumps half my hair in front of my face, shines a table lamp in my face, and snaps a picture with her phone.
“I look like a Muppet,” I say. “A deranged Muppet.”
“The ‘before’ is supposed to look ugly.” She holds the phone in front of my face. “Ugly, right?”
“Aw, thanks,” I say sweetly.
Lindsey, who has already undergone Taylor’s “transformation,” is on the basement couch next to Taylor’s boyfriend, Kai, the guy from the memorial service with the real-fish T-shirt. Only now he’s wearing a plain black tee under a quilted plaid overshirt. His lumberjack style makes him look surprisingly rugged, given the fringes of his hair are now frosted pink. A cherry Twizzlers dangles from his lips like the hero’s cigarette in an old movie.
He and Lindsey are bent over his cell phone, watching YouTube clips of guys wrecking bikes. Taylor has given her a loose, layer-y cut with a bit of curl at the tips. The hair looks pretty good, though I can’t say much for the makeover. Lindsey’s cheeks are too red, her lips are too puffy, and her eye shadow has more glitter than a toddler at a princess party.
A loud metallic screech comes from Kai’s phone. He laughs and offers Lindsey a strand of cherry licorice.
Taylor gestures for me to sit in the adjustable chair that’s part of her “beauty station” in the corner. In front of me sits a three-mirrored gold-trimmed vanity strewn with dozens of bottles of mysterious gels, creams, and aerosol sprays.
Taylor shakes a bottle of something and mists it on my hair. “Ready?” she asks.
She bends down and peers at my face, scooching her lips up like she’s considering the fate of a nation.
The basement is cold and smells vaguely of a hippie den. Or at least what I imagine a hippie den smells like. Chemical musk, patchouli, and the stale ash of past highs.
Spritzing my head with one hand, Taylor drags a comb through my hair with the other. I’m thinking how I can “subtly” find out if Taylor had anything show up on her doorstep last Monday. My best tactic is probably just to ask her, despite what Lindsey says, but when I open my mouth to find the words, Taylor starts in on a monologue that would rival Hamlet.
“So I told you guys I got that job at the Scissors Kick, right?” She’s speaking loudly enough that Lindsey can hear from the couch. “I’m just answering phones and doing cleanup for now, but once I get my license, that’ll change. I really think I’m in a good place. Which is weird, but if what happened, you know, if that hadn’t happened… it’s like it all led me here.” She puts down the comb and spray bottle and starts clipping at my hair.
&nbs
p; “Everything happens for a reason,” Taylor continues. “It was written in the stars. I mean, if I hadn’t gone through what I went through, I might never have met Kai. I might not have gotten that job.”
I look hard in the mirror at Lindsey’s reflection, willing her to look back at me. My eyes ask the mirror, Are you hearing this? Because, what?
Lindsey looks up from Kai’s cell phone. She smiles at Taylor and nods. Like she’s okay with all that?
“It all makes sense, you know,” Taylor continues. “How everything happens.”
“But—but—” I blurt, jerking my head out from Taylor’s scissors. “Just because something happens doesn’t mean it happens for a reason. Bad stuff happens, then good stuff happens, then more bad stuff happens with a little good tossed on top.” I am talking too fast, too loud. I crane my neck up to look at her where she stands, scissors still open like a bird’s beak. “But come on, it’s not like putting a cherry on a big pile of crap magically turns it into an ice cream sundae. It’s still a pile of crap topped with a cherry.”
Taylor’s face is unreadable, but I go on anyway.
“I just mean, we don’t have to call the bad stuff ‘good’ just because something good happened after it. Like if…”
If Jamie had to die just so you could go to beauty school, what kind of ass-backward star chart is that?
“What?” Taylor asks.
If Jamie died so I could be with Charlie… No, I refuse to think it. I never asked for that trade.
“It’s not like there’s some big plan,” I say out loud—too loud. “And if there is, it’s pretty messed up, right?”
“Hmmm,” says Taylor.
Hmmm? Is that all?
In the mirror, my hair makes a limp frame around my face. Taylor picks up a wet strand and starts chopping again.
I shut my mouth and let Taylor spritz and clip my hair, crinkling the ends and flipping it this way and that. Then, without pausing, she sets in on my makeup, grabbing a tube of liquid foundation from a metal tray on the vanity.
“Close your eyes,” she commands. I am smoothed and dabbed and patted. “Look up,” she orders as she draws a line on my lower lid. “Now straight ahead… now down. Mouth open… mouth closed.”
How She Died, How I Lived Page 14