Sweet Dandelion

by Micalea Smeltzer

  “Start by talking.” Mr. Taylor interrupts my thoughts.

  “About what?”

  “Anything. Whatever you want. It can be as simple as what you ate for breakfast.”

  My eyes drift to the view out the window once more. The American flag billows in the wind. Other than that it’s empty, the lawn eerily still.

  “I didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “Lunch?”

  “A turkey sandwich. The bread was stale and the lettuce rubbery.”

  His lips quirk like he’s trying not to laugh or smile.

  “Don’t get the turkey here, it sucks. Try the chicken salad.” I open my mouth to protest because a school chicken salad sounds like the most disgusting thing I could possibly ever eat, but he cuts me off. “Mrs. Norris the head cafeteria lady makes it herself. It’s good, I promise.”

  I think I surprise him when I scoot forward, holding out the pinky on my right finger. “Pinky promise?”

  He stares at my outstretched finger contemplatively before wrapping his much larger finger around mine. “Pinky promise.”

  Our fingers drop and I sit back. “I’ll try it tomorrow then.”

  He smiles, a genuine pleased smile.

  I’m trying. I have to try. If it takes one day at a time to get better, I have to start somewhere. A simple conversation, a potential ally, I can do this.

  The bell rings and I stand up, shouldering my bag.

  “See you tomorrow, Dani.”

  I don’t reply, instead I slip out the door and to my next class, thankful the day is almost over.

  Chapter Five

  The lights in the Walgreens are obnoxiously bright.

  Do they keep them like that so people will buy faster and get the hell out of here?

  I peruse the shelves of nail polish. Every shade of blue and purple imaginable, but suddenly I’m not feeling those, instead gravitating toward the oranges. Maybe it’s the fall lover in me.

  I pick up a few shades, reading the names—a polish has to have a funny name or I won’t buy it. Finally, I settle on a retro rust orange from O.P.I. called Chop Sticking To My Story.

  I wonder who gets hired to make up these names and how I could get their job.

  My Heart Is In Smither-Greens.

  Yellow, Mate.

  I should start keeping a list of my ideas.

  My phone starts ringing in my back pocket and I slip it out. Sage’s name stares back at me and I wince, starting down the candy aisle—I can’t go to the drugstore and not buy candy, that’s insane.

  “Hello?”

  He exhales in relief. “You’re okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just got home from work, where are you? There’s no note, and you didn’t text. I was worried when you weren’t in the condo.”

  “I’m sorry.” I truly am, because I should’ve been more considerate. I forget that while Sage’s trauma is different, he’s been through a lot in these last months. “I ran down to Walgreens. I wanted to get a new nail polish.”

  “Dani, you have like a million.”

  “I wanted another. None of those were right.”

  “Well, do you want me to pick you up?”

  “I’m a block away. I’ll get some candy, check out and be home in a few.”

  “I brought Chinese home for dinner.”

  “Sounds yummy. I … I love you, Sage.”

  “Love you, too, D. Just … let me know next time where you’re going, please?”

  “I will. Promise.”

  I hang up the phone, tucking it carefully into my pocket.

  I grab a bag of Hershey’s Kisses for myself and a box of Milk Duds for Sage.

  It doesn’t take me long to check out and I make the short trek back to the building. That’s the plus side of my brother living in a condo, I’m in walking distance to everything.

  I enter the sleek building and head up in the elevator to his floor.

  I use my key attached to a keychain that says I HEART NY from a trip when we went there when I was very young, before my dad died. I don’t even remember the trip, but the keychain was his and now it’s mine. It’s one of the only things of his I have.

  The door closes behind me with a loud bang like a heavy hotel room door. The smell of Chinese food wafts from the plastic bags on the counter. A yellow smiley face decorates the front of them.

  “Sage?” I call out. “I’m back.”

  Walking down the hall to the bedroom area, I hear the shower running in his master bathroom.

  I put the nail polish in my bathroom—aka the hall bathroom—and the Hershey’s in my room. The Milk Duds I decide to put in front of the bags of Chinese food. I didn’t get it as a peace offering but I guess it kind of is.

  The shower squeaks as it’s turned off. I pull some plates from the cabinet, fixing our favorite foods on each, then pour us each a glass of water.

  A few minutes later Sage strolls in, his golden-brown hair damp from the shower.

  “I’m starving,” he remarks, opening the fridge and grabbing a beer.

  Sage rarely drinks, so when he does I know he’s either had a hard day at work or it’s because of me.

  My gut tells me tonight it’s the latter.

  We sit down on the leather barstools at the sleek black granite countertop.

  “How was work?” I ask at the same time he questions, “How was school?”

  “You go first,” I tell him. It gives me time to form a response.

  He swallows some beer, staring down at his plate of pork lo mein. “It was good. Same old, same old.”

  “Come on,” I force a smile, bumping him playfully with my elbow. “You gotta give me more than that. I barely know what you do.”

  All I know is my brother is a tech nerd and very good with computers.

  “It’s not all that exciting.” Another swig of beer, maybe I’m not the culprit for his alcohol consumption tonight, after all. “I mostly keep the computers and system up and running.”

  “Sounds interesting to me,” I muse, spearing a piece of breaded shrimp.

  “Now tell me about school. Did it go okay with the counselor there? He emailed me about meeting later this week.”

  I nearly choke on my food, coughing until the piece of shrimp is dislodged. Taking a sip of water, I blurt, “Why would you meet him?”

  “Are you okay?” Sage looks at me with narrowed brows and eyes filled with concern.

  “I’m fine.”

  “He thought since he’d be counseling you for the school year that we should meet so I know who you’ll be seeing.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you don’t want me to, I don’t have to.”

  I shake my head. “No, that’s fine, I … he promised anything I shared with him would be confidential. I don’t … I don’t want to trust someone and have that trust broken.”

  Sage flinches and my chest pangs. I’m sure he wishes I would talk to him, open up. He has to see I’m a different girl, a different sister, than the one he grew up looking out for.

  “He won’t tell me any of your secrets, Dani.” His tone is a smidge harsh.

  “Sage—”

  He shakes his head, picking up his beer and draining what’s left. He gets up and tosses the empty bottle into the trash before grabbing another and popping the cap.

  I might’ve not been the reason he was drinking before, but I sure as hell am now.

  Chapter Six

  Sitting in my second period class of the day, Government, I decide school is a big joke. The teacher, Ms. Spencer spends the first ten minutes looking at her phone, the next five minutes naming off the rules of her classroom—one of which, ironically, being no cellphone use—and then the rest of the ninety minutes she leaves us to our own devices. In her words, “It’s only the second day, no point in working.”

  Yeah, what could possibly be the point in that?

  “This is going to suck,” the girl in front of me drawls. She turns around, looking at me. Her long
blonde hair is curly, well past her shoulders. “Hi.”

  My nose crinkles. “Hi.”

  “I’m Sasha.”

  “Dani.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She smiles and it seems genuine. She looks like the cheerleader type, preppy and cheerful, but at least she doesn’t seem snooty.

  “Same.”

  I’m great with words.

  Her smile widens. “I think we have another class together.”

  “I don’t know.” I’m not trying to be particularly shady. I genuinely don’t know since I haven’t paid attention to anyone in my classes.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you were in my Statistics class.”

  “Probably. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

  She cracks another smile. “That’s okay. What other classes do you have today?”

  I rattle them off and we discover we also have Sociology together at the end of the day.

  Looking over at the teacher I find her filing her nails, not paying any attention to us.

  “Well,” I say to Sasha, picking up my backpack from the floor and slipping it over my shoulders, “I’m out.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks in confusion.

  When I walk out of the room and the teacher doesn’t even notice, I think she gets it.

  There’s a chance I could get in trouble for this, but it’s better than the alternative of being stuck in class for another hour doing absolutely nothing. I doubt Ms. Spencer will even notice my departure.

  Strolling down the corridor I stop to look out the massive row of windows. It floods the hallway with light and I pause, soaking it up. The sun has always warmed and soothed my soul.

  “Dani?” I startle at Mr. Taylor’s voice.

  I turn from the window and find him walking toward me, only a few feet separating us now. He’s dressed similarly to yesterday, except today his pants are gray and his shirt white. My eyes zero in on his hand, noticing the carefully wrapped sandwich.

  “Chicken salad?” He looks confused. “The sandwich.” I point to the one in his hand. “Is it chicken salad?”

  “Uh, yeah, it is.” He shakes his head as if throwing off the fog of my question. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Shouldn’t my teacher be teaching?” I jest.

  He presses his lips together with no clear response.

  I look back out the window, resting my hand against the warmed glass.

  “My mom always said I lived up to my name. I needed the sun to thrive and the freedom to move.” I look over at Mr. Taylor and he’s studying me carefully. He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s thinking. “I can’t move like I used to, not anymore.”

  I walk away from him, the slight limp I still have slowing me down.

  He doesn’t tell me to go back to class.

  I think maybe he knows that was me trying.

  Trying to be honest. Trying to give a truth. Trying to get better.

  You have to start somewhere, one small aching step at a time.

  “Meadows, the library is for books, not food.”

  I look up from my chicken salad sandwich and find Ansel grinning down at me.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  I motion to the empty table. I can’t keep him from sitting where he wants even if there are plenty of other places to sit in the library. He pulls out the chair across from me, slapping his messenger bag on top. He pulls out a paper bag for his lunch, a sketchpad, and pencils.

  He digs into his sandwich, peanut butter and jelly I note, and says to me around a mouthful, “You know, if we’re going to be friends you’re going to have to start to talk more.”

  “Pourquoi devrions-nous être amis?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be friends?” he counters easily. He stuffs another bite of sandwich in his mouth and flips the sketchpad open. “I’m awesome. Everyone wants to be my friend.”

  “That so?” I nibble at my sandwich. Mr. Taylor was right. It’s way better than the turkey and homemade. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an appetite at school.

  “I’m fucking great,” Ansel decrees, adding shading to whatever he’s working on. I can’t tell exactly what it is upside down but I think it’s a close up of an animal’s eye.

  “If you’re so great why are you in the library with me?”

  He flicks a piece of hair from his eyes and I’m reminded of a young Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.

  “Because, you didn’t come to lunch yesterday, and I saw you head in here today. I didn’t want you to eat alone.”

  “I’m fine if you want to go back to your friends.”

  “I’m good here, thanks.” His tongue sticks out slightly as he bends over the sketchpad, working on his creation. His half-eaten sandwich sits lonely and forgotten beside him.

  “Suit yourself. I’m kind of a bore.” I pop the last bite of sandwich in my mouth.

  I open the bag of chips I swiped from home, tossing a salt ‘n vinegar chip in my mouth. Sage makes fun of me for loving them so much, but they’re the best chip in my book.

  “What are you working on?” I figure it’s best to try to make polite conversation with him.

  He flips it around so I can see.

  There’s an eye like I thought, but I still don’t know what it is.

  “It’s a bear,” he explains. “A personal project. I was watching a wildlife documentary one day and thought the bears were cool.” He turns the sketchbook back around.

  “I wish I could draw.”

  He looks at me with his strange pale blue eyes. “If you can’t draw why the fuck are you in an art class? That makes no sense.”

  “I didn’t get signed up for classes until late. So, I didn’t pick any of my electives.”

  “Shit, that sucks. What else did you get stuck with?”

  “Sociology and Food and Nutrition.”

  “Sociology,” he shudders, “no thanks. But Food and Nutrition is awesome. I took it last year. We made pancakes.”

  “I’ll probably burn the school down. I’m not the most skilled when it comes to the kitchen.”

  He laughs, rubbing his finger on the edge of his drawing to smudge some of the pencil into the page. “I would pay to see that.”

  “Don’t worry it’ll be a free show.” I offer my bag of chips to Ansel and he looks up, shaking his head.

  “I’m more of a sour cream and onion guy.”

  I pretend to gasp. “That’s tragic. This friendship will never work.”

  He arches a brow. “So, are we friends now?”

  The bell rings.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Mr. Taylor waits outside his door for me.

  I tilt my head, giving him a quizzical look.

  “I thought we’d go to the meeting room again, until I can work something else out.”

  “Work something else out?” I repeat his words, puzzling them over. “If it’s a problem I’ll…” I close my eyes, taking a grounding breath. “I’ll be fine.”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t a big deal at all.”

  I feel like he’s lying. Or maybe that’s the guilt nibbling at the back of my mind that I should be fine in a room with no alternate escape route.

  We head down the hall in silence, through the office, and to the same room as yesterday, taking the same exact seats.

  He still doesn’t have a notebook.

  It’s not that I doubted him yesterday, but … I guess I did.

  I’m so used to these people trying to fix me as if I’m a broken toy that only needs some new batteries to work again—pop them in and I’ll start right up—that I’m not accustomed to someone wanting to listen.

  “How was your lunch?”

  Conversation. I can do conversation.

  “It was good. I tried the chicken salad sandwich. You were right. It was yummy.”

  He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. His eyes are the most unique color of blue-green ringed in gold. I
’ve never seen eyes similar to them. Like a Caribbean sea dotted with islands.

  “How’s your second day going?”

  I laugh softly. “I think you know how well it’s going.”

  His lips downturn as he recalls finding me in the hallway. “Regardless, you need to stay in class.”

  “I need to do a lot of things,” I mumble.

  “Like what?”

  “Decorate my room. Talk to my brother more about real things, my real thoughts and fears. Make friends.” I lean over the table, gesturing with my hand to drive home my point of what I have to say. “I have to carve out a sketch of the new version of me that fits in this world now that the old me is gone.” Mr. Taylor doesn’t give me a sad, pitying look like most people would. “You know what sucks about a sketch?”

  “Tell me.”

  “They’re easily erased.”

  Chapter Seven

  I stare at those blank white walls.

  Those God-forsaken blank white walls in my bedroom.

  Sage said I could paint them when I moved in. Decorate the space however I wanted. But I haven’t bothered to, because I don’t know how.

  The girl I was and the girl I am now are two totally different people.

  I still like yellow, but the cold oppressive white seems somehow a better option.

  Yellow means joy.

  Vibrancy.

  Happiness.

  I’m not happy. I don’t want my room to make it seem like I am.

  The door to the condo opens, slamming closed a second later. I hate that door. It’s so absurdly loud.

  “D?”

  “In here,” I call out.

  His dress shoes clack against the floor. It’s so dumb to me that he works on computers all day, but has to dress up. My door cracks open a moment later and he finds me lying on my stomach, browsing the internet.

  “You hungry?” he asks me, tugging at his tie and taking it off in one swift movement. He loops it around his hand, waiting for my reply.

  “One of us is going to have to learn how to cook.”

  His lips tug into a grin. “You know I can’t cook.”