by Ami Polonsky
And because maybe Mom had wanted time apart from me, too.
29 DAYS LEFT
Mom was waiting for me and Dad in the passenger pickup line at the airport. When we got to the car, she jumped out and hugged me as Dad arranged our suitcases in the trunk. “Thank goodness you don’t look any different,” she said, smoothing my hair. “I had a vision that you’d come back home totally grown up!”
“You did?” I asked, getting into the backseat. It wasn’t a very my mom-like thing to say.
I paid specific attention to the fact that she and Dad barely acknowledged each other, which, honestly, wasn’t so different from the way things had always been.
“What ended up happening with the plumbers?” Dad asked as Mom pulled onto the street. “Watch that car,” he directed as she changed lanes.
“I got it, Walt,” she snapped. Then she launched into an explanation about the leaking pipe in the kitchen. “I got two quotes. The third guy never showed.”
I listened to them talk. Their conversation was like their conversations had been my entire life: polite most of the time, snippy some of the time. Had they ever felt the zaps when they were together the way I did when I was with Ollie? I couldn’t imagine it.
When we got home, I rolled my suitcase toward the stairs, down the red rug that I’d walked across who knows how many times but that somehow I’d forgotten since being away. Walking into my room felt even stranger. The light-blue carpet, the quilt on my bed—everything made me think of who I’d been before I’d gone to North Carolina. Even though only three months had passed, I felt like a different person. Downstairs, Mom and Dad were poking around under the kitchen sink, talking about the pipe. I took out my phone and texted Emily.
Family time. I wandered downstairs to the kitchen. Dad was standing up, closing the cabinet door under the sink, and wiping his damp hands on his jeans. Mom was taking a head of lettuce out of the fridge. Family time in this house meant three people coexisting.
28 DAYS LEFT
On Saturday morning, I woke up early. My room didn’t feel like my room. I missed my mural. And I missed knowing that Ollie was just four blocks away. I texted Emily.
I crept downstairs quietly but startled when I got to the bottom of the stairs. Dad was asleep, mouth open, snoring, on the couch. The sight of him there made tears spring to my eyes. It felt like a symbol of the fact that everything was about to change. I tiptoed around him into the kitchen to make the coffee. As I took out a mug, my phone dinged.
Mom dropped me off at Emily’s after we took Dad to the airport.
“Oh my God, you’re taller,” I told Emily when she opened the front door and threw her arms around me.
“Essie!” her mom called out, coming down the stairs. “We’ve missed you!” She hugged me, too.
Then Emily’s little brother and dad hugged me, and all of that hugging made me … sad. Sad that my family sucked in comparison.
“Come to my room,” Emily said, dragging me upstairs. “Tell me everything.”
“I think they’re getting divorced,” I told her, flopping onto her bed. Strangely, I felt numb about it, like someone else was telling her about their family.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you shocked?”
“I shouldn’t be, but for some reason I am.”
“I totally get that,” she’d said. “I mean, do you know for sure?”
“Not really. My dad said they ‘needed time apart.’”
“Ask your mom?”
“My mom … Why is my mom so aloof?”
“Ask her?”
“For real?”
“Remember you were saying you’d been wanting to put yourself out there more?”
“I remember.”
27 DAYS LEFT
Rain pounded on my window on Sunday morning. The house felt so empty as I walked downstairs that I wondered if Mom had gone out to do errands without telling me. All the lights were off and rain gusted against the roof. I finally found her in her studio, where she sat, back to me, hunched over a model of what was most likely her next project. It was definitely small enough to have been easily moved to North Carolina. “Hey,” I said.
She turned around. “Hey, hon! How’d you sleep?” she asked, putting down her paintbrush.
“Fine.”
She nodded. “What’s your plan today? Isn’t it gross out? Are you hanging out with friends later? Can I give you a ride anywhere?”
I thought of the spinny-spin, because listening to her questions made me remember my cocoon. I’d wrapped myself inside it because I’d felt insecure, and I felt insecure because of her. Because of this.
“Do you even want to spend time with me?” I definitely hadn’t meant to yell it or to start crying, but once I did, the cocoon started to crack and everything I’d been feeling for so long began leaking out.
She looked stunned. “Of course I do.”
“Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”
“When I was your age, I would have done anything to have just had the freedom to—”
“I’m not you!” I yelled at her.
“Of course you’re not,” she said quickly, taken aback.
“So maybe I want the type of mother who actually wants to be with her daughter. And what’s going on with you and Dad, anyway? I’m sick of all these vague answers like ‘we need time apart’ and ‘I have lots of work to do in North Carolina.’ Are you getting divorced? If I’m supposed to be so ‘independent,’ why haven’t you told me what’s happening?”
Mom nodded slowly. It looked like she was going to cry, too, but I didn’t feel bad for her.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s talk.”
25 DAYS LEFT
I lay on my bed, staring at my mural-less wall. The sun was barely up, but I’d been awake forever.
“You know none of this is your fault,” Mom had started when I’d planted myself on her studio floor.
I’d rolled my eyes. “Come on, Mom,” I’d told her. “Don’t be such a cliché.”
She’d smiled a little, joined me on the rug, and looked up at the ceiling. “You seem so much older,” she finally said, wiping her eyes.
Seeing her cry had made my eyes well up even more.
“Okay,” she had said, as if to steady herself. “So your dad and I have probably never been a good fit. There’s never really been—”
“Electricity? Zaps?”
She’d looked at me like she was wondering who I was. “Yeah,” she’d said. “So we were basically just moving forward together, but not together, until your dad suggested that maybe we weren’t being fair.” She grabbed a tissue from her desk and blew her nose. “To ourselves.”
I was so shocked that, for a second, I felt dizzy. “Dad? Dad was the one who wanted this?”
She wadded up her used tissue. “Yeah,” she finally said. “But everything’s going to be friendly,” she went on, after a pause. “Low drama.”
“Where … Who’s going to live where? What’s going to happen? I mean, am I—”
“Dad’s planning to extend his stay at the university. They want him to teach again next term.”
I nodded.
“You and I will be here. My travel schedule is light next semester. After that, we’ll figure it out. Maybe Dad will rent a place nearby … We’ll have to see. It’s going to be okay,” Mom said, like she was trying to convince both herself and me. “Everything is going to work out.” She took a deliberate breath. “Is there anything you want to ask me? Anything I’ve left out?”
I shook my head.
“Okay. So it’s going to be disgusting all day. Let’s do something together. What do you say? Museum?”
She had a streak of black paint in her messy hair and her eyes were red and puffy.
“Yeah,” I told her. “Good idea.”
24 DAYS LEFT
The day before Thanksgiving, the rain finally stopped. Emily, Ava, Beth, and I
had met at Starbucks in the morning. Now we sat on my bedroom floor.
“Just like old times!” Ava said, tossing my sequined, poop-shaped pillow into the air.
Emily caught it. “Why do you still have this sparkly poop pillow?” she asked me, laughing.
“Um, because you gave it to me two years ago for my birthday?”
“It’s so immature,” Emily said. “What was I thinking?”
I laughed, too, remembering how cool it had seemed at the time. “I have no idea.”
“Okay,” Beth announced. “Time for Essie to spill everything about Ollie. I didn’t want to bring it up in Starbucks.”
Why not? I wondered. But I told her, Ava, and Emily everything anyway, from a recap of the bad kiss to the way that things seemed to be getting better.
“Okay, wait,” Beth said as soon as I’d finished.
Emily gave me a look and Ava watched Beth nervously, as if she was worried about where this was going.
“I seriously don’t understand. This whole nonbinary thing just seems very vague. Like, I’m a girl, because that’s how I was born, right? I’m not ‘girly.’ I don’t wear skirts or dresses. But that doesn’t make me identify as nonbinary. It doesn’t make sense.”
Everything about Beth’s comment felt wrong, but I didn’t know how to respond. How was I supposed to explain Ollie’s gender to someone who didn’t want to understand it? “Ollie doesn’t ‘identify as nonbinary,’” I finally said. “Ollie is nonbinary.” It was a fraction of what I wanted to say, but it was all that I could get out.
“So does this make you gay? Not that I’d care if you were.”
I rolled my eyes and shot Emily an I told you so look. “It seems like you’d care,” I told her.
“I wouldn’t,” Beth answered quickly. “I’m just curious.”
Ava jumped in. “Beth, isn’t your dad getting us now? It’s noon.”
Beth glanced at the time on her phone. “Yeah, I guess he is.”
“Walk us out?” Ava asked me and Emily, getting up. I’ll text you, she mouthed to me as we walked downstairs, and I nodded, frozen, not knowing what to think.
23 DAYS LEFT
“Hey, Es,” Mom said as I wandered into the kitchen.
“This feels like the most depressing Thanksgiving ever,” I told her, sitting down at the table. It was only four o’clock and already the sun was setting. Dad had texted earlier to check in. Apparently, at the last minute, he had been invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with the pretty teaching assistant and her family. I had no idea what to think of that. Mom and I would be leaving soon. Every Thanksgiving, we went to her old college friend’s house, along with about forty other people—none of whom were remotely fun to talk to.
Mom sighed. “I know. It’s the worst.”
“I don’t even like turkey,” I told her.
“I could take it or leave it.” The clock ticked on the wall. “We could do something else,” she finally said, smiling a little.
“Like what?” I asked. “Everything’s closed. And besides, Holly’s expecting us.”
She grabbed her phone to look something up. “Okay,” she finally said, grinning mischievously. “Here’s our plan: You have an awful cold. Unfortunately, you’re just not up for dinner at Holly’s. And I certainly wouldn’t want you to infect anyone with your cooties.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Target,” she went on. “Slushies for dinner. Then a movie.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
She looked serious. And kind of sad. This time, I felt sorry for her. “I am,” she said.
* * *
Target was packed with Black Friday shoppers, but thankfully the café at the front of the store was empty. We mixed together all the slushy flavors and sat on the tall stools at the closed Starbucks.
“I’m sorry, Es,” Mom said. “About all of this. It’s just that I’d never have imagined you wanting to do this kind of thing with me. When I was your age…”
I shot her a look.
“When I was your age, I was really different from how you are now,” she finished.
I pulled out my phone and googled optical illusions. “Mom?” I asked, taking a slurp of my slushy and showing her the phone. “Does this look like a duck or a rabbit to you?”
We scrolled through the illusions. I told her about Ollie—how I felt when I was with them—and she told me she was proud of me for being me. Outside, thunder rumbled. Raindrops fell through passing headlights. But was it rain? Or stars? Fireworks, or fairy dust? Maybe everything was also something else.
21 DAYS LEFT
20 DAYS LEFT
Mom parked the car in short-term parking and walked me inside the airport, where we got everything situated for me to fly as an “unaccompanied minor.”
“Isn’t this exciting?” she asked, handing me the paperwork. I looked at her skeptically and she scrunched her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Can I try again? How do you feel about flying alone?”
“I hate flying,” I told her. “And I’m sure I’ll hate flying alone even more.”
She nodded and hugged me. “Sorry, Es,” she said. Then she put her arm around me and walked me to the plane. “Text me as soon as you land?” she asked when it was time to board.
“’Kay.”
“You know, you’re growing up.”
“It happens,” I told her.
“What I meant to say is that I’m proud of the way you’re growing up. I never was able to tell anyone what I needed when I was your age.”
I thought about what Mom said, and, when I got on the plane, I texted Ollie.
19 DAYS LEFT
Even though I couldn’t wait to see Ollie, part of me was stuck in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking of Dad, sleeping on the couch that first night; my bedroom in Saint Louis with its mural-less wall; Beth’s face as she’d asked me about Ollie and about myself; multicolored slushies; all the texts I’d gotten since I’d landed. From Mom.
Knowing that Mom and Dad were getting divorced kind of made me feel like throwing up, but at least it was good to know what was happening. I felt better. Calmer. About everything and everyone.
Except for Dad.
I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around him. I’d studied him from the passenger seat as we’d driven home from the airport. His glasses had been crooked, like always. He probably hadn’t trimmed his ear hair in a million years. How could he have been the one to instigate the divorce?
Maybe it wasn’t all that different from the way I had an inner Essie, and Ollie had an inner Ollie. Maybe it was about the way that everyone has so many layers. And an idea came to me. One that made me feel like my inner Essie was stepping out completely from a dark enclosure.
17 DAYS LEFT
One really good thing about going home for Thanksgiving had been forgetting about the fact that I’d submitted a picture of my mural to the poster contest. Now that I was back, Ollie reminded me constantly.
“Two days until the event!” they announced to all the members when GLOW met in the gym after school. “I’m so excited to see who won the poster contest!”
If I won the poster contest, Ollie would know exactly how I felt about them. It would be like reaching my hand for Ollie’s and hoping that they would take it.
And what if they didn’t?
Ollie made a big show of opening a plastic bag filled with T-shirts. They were gray with rainbow hearts and GLOW written on the front. The backs read, WE ARE HATE ERASERS.
Maria’s mom had towed their flatbed trailer to the gym’s side door so we could decorate it. We split into pairs and got to work. Ollie and I lined the backs of signs and posters with loops of duct tape, and Luciana and Savannah ran them outside one by one and pressed them to the sides of the flatbed.
Halfway through, we took a break. Ollie reached their hand toward my face. The force field around them was fully charged. “Hey, you have duct tape in your hair,” they told me, touching it. Their forc
e field broke. But only for a second. To let me in.
I smiled at them, their hand still in my hair. “Rabbit tape?” I asked.
16 DAYS LEFT
15 DAYS LEFT
I was jittery on the day of the Thankful for Pride march. But not good jittery. At lunchtime, I poked at my food as Ollie talked excitedly about the news crew, the publicity, the exposure. “Hey, you okay?” they finally asked.
I shrugged, not knowing what to say. I’m kind of regretting my poster contest entry didn’t seem like an option. Especially given the fact that, if I’d actually won, the posters would have been created days ago. There was definitely no going back.
After school, Ollie and I each headed home to change before meeting the rest of GLOW on campus. In my bedroom, I stood in front of my mural, in front of my heart. What if Ollie doesn’t like me the way I like them? I thought.
It was three twenty. I put on my GLOW shirt. Brushed my hair. Sat on my bed. Looked at my tally marks. Imagined Ollie potentially seeing my mural plastered across who knows how many posters.
I thought of Mom. How she had been so confident that I had been fine without her.
It was three forty. Time to leave. I stood up. Sat back down. My drawing of Ollie was so clearly Ollie. The drawing of me, so clearly me.
It was four o’clock. My phone buzzed. I put it on silent and shoved it in my desk drawer.
Five o’clock. I turned on the TV. Pulled out my homework.
Six o’clock. GLOW would be starting their march around campus.
Eight o’clock. Dad came home. Poked his head into my bedroom, oblivious to the march. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Yup,” I lied.
Ten o’clock. I stared up at my ceiling in the dark.
14 DAYS LEFT
Early the next morning, the doorbell rang. I sat up in bed. My bedroom was gray in the misty light. I put on my sweatshirt and went to the door.