by Abby Sher
And that’s not your fault.
That’s just who I am.
CHAPTER 16
purple hearts
The rain was gone, but the sky looked beaten up and bruised. There was a blanket of wet leaves on the ground and gusts of red, orange, and yellow stragglers still swirling. The streets and tree trunks were drying in splotchy patchworks. Everything sodden but somehow brighter.
I had set my phone to wake me at sunrise and managed to slip out before Travis and Zoe were up. My right shoulder felt limp from being twisted under me and I wasn’t sure if I’d actually slept more than thirty minutes, but at least I could say it was a new day. Maybe it was my imagination, but even in this half-hour drive home, I saw the low-slung hammock of clouds lift just a sliver and some fresh lavender sky peek through.
I passed the VFW hall that had a pot of fake daisies on its step year-round and a flag that was always at half-mast. The Dunkin’ Donuts where Mom used to take us to get our birthday breakfasts, until it was shut down because of health-code violations, which made me rethink every Munchkin I’d ever munched. There was still caution tape strung up near the entrance, flapping and billowing wildly from the remnants of the storm. And, of course, there was Seasons Change, a patio furniture and lawn ornamentation shop that somehow stayed in business even though I’d never seen a single person go in or a single chaise longue chair go out.
I wondered if anyone would miss me if I just kept driving. I could swing by the Jewish Community Center and find new reasons to be Jewish in a community. Or sneak into the zoo and try to be fascinated with the new panda exhibit. I had zero navigational skills, but I did know Mom had a cousin up in Vermont and if I found her address somehow and pointed myself north, maybe I’d get there in time for the first snowfall.
I needed more cash to make it on the road though. Plus my bladder was already creaking since I’d skipped my morning pee. I crept in through the side door of my house, ready to tiptoe past the pullout couch where Uncle Ricky usually slept when he stayed over, but nobody was there. Not a single throw pillow was out of place either.
“Hello?” I asked.
No answer.
“Hello?” I said again. There were no other cars in the driveway except for HOT RIC.
WHERE ARE YOU? I texted Gus and Uncle Ricky.
In bed, Uncle Ricky answered.
Whose? I asked.
Ha-ha! My own.
Did you tell me you and Gus were staying at your place?
I don’t know. Did I? How was your pussycat crusade?
I didn’t have the energy to come up with a response, so I tossed my phone onto the couch and stormed upstairs. I started turning on all the light switches. (Somehow, someway, maybe that would scare away all the demons of anger clogging my brain?)
“It’s not my pussycat crusade!” I screamed at the empty hallway. “I am not a part of that. I cannot be part of that anymore!”
I marched into my parents’ room. My parents’. Not Elan’s. Which was why it was totally inappropriate for him to have his gray-and-green-plaid flannel shirt slung over the back of my mom’s ancient rocking chair. It was also highly disrespectful for him to have his little pot of lip balm, his waterproof watch, and a puddle of loose change spread out on my dad’s side of the dresser. I was about to knock Elan’s change onto the floor in the most ineffective act of protest in history when I saw the lopsided green bowl I made for Mom in third grade. It was still on her night table, holding the shells we’d collected as a family at least a decade ago. When we were whole.
I collapsed onto Mom’s side of the bed. Trying to shriek out all my miserable, helpless confusion into her lavender-patterned quilt. I missed my mom more than ever right about now. I certainly wasn’t going to interrupt her wilderness adventure to tell her though. She was probably doing sun salutations with Elan or gathering chestnuts for their breakfast. I hoped they hadn’t been washed out to sea or buried in a mudslide.
I lay there for a while, but my eyelids refused to lower. It was too sloggy and still in there. I had never really been alone in my house before. Every leaf touching a window and every sip of air under a sill seemed magnified and threatening to me. I wanted to punch the world in its throat and scream until I shattered glass. Only I couldn’t find the strength to do either.
So I settled for playing the piano instead. I just needed to make some noise. Mrs. Toobey always said music could express the inexpressible. And that a piano could weep for you, if given the chance. Pulling out my Debussy book, I gazed at those dreamy boaters on the cover. Desperate to climb onto their old-fashioned rowboat and drift into their pastel world. I started with scales. Slowly. Methodically. Then I transitioned into Arabesque No. 1. Tiptoeing over the keys at first. Then leaning in as I’d seen Mrs. Toobey do so many times. Searching, searching for a way in.
I couldn’t find it though. Stumbling onto a D-flat, I fell off in the middle of a crescendo and couldn’t figure out how to go back and get it right. I kept trying to rewind a few stanzas and start again. Each time tripping myself up in a new way. It was sounding less and less ethereal now and more and more like Oompa Loompas farting. I got rough. Almost violent. Purposely hitting a sharp instead of a flat. Running the slower phrases together and mashing all the pauses into a cacophonous pileup. Until I was smacking the keys with my palms and stamping on the pedals. Slamming the piano lid up and down so hard, the rusty hinges were crying.
“Well hello to you too!” shouted Uncle Ricky, laughing as he and Gus barged through the front door.
I stood up so quickly that I knocked the piano bench backward. It ricocheted against the wall, then scraped the back of my calves and crumpled me forward. I didn’t let out a squeak of protest though. I already felt too vulnerable just knowing he’d heard me. Plus, he seemed to be more concerned with another conversation he was having on the phone.
“That was your daughter, tickling the ivories,” he reported. “Here, you want to talk to her?”
Uncle Ricky handed me his phone and mouthed, She’s fine. Which, of course, only made me fear the worst.
“Mom?”
“Hank!” Mom exclaimed. “Oh, Hanky, did you have fun last night at the party?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s going on?”
“Well, the good news is, we’re on our way home,” she said. Her voice sounded distracted now. “No, this is fine, hon. I’m talking to Hank.”
“Hey, Hank!” I heard Elan yell in the background.
“So, yeah, we should be home in a few hours or so. I don’t even know what time it is though.”
“Nine-ish!” chimed in Elan. I could have told her that. But Mom was already midsentence describing how the campsite they’d reserved was a brown lake of mud and she wasn’t wearing the right shoes for this kind of travel. The trail had really taken a beating in the storm—lots of branches and debris and honestly, she’d always been a klutz, but it was only a hairline fracture, which meant the recovery time would be much less. At least that was the hope.
“Wait, Mom, what?”
“I know, so ridiculous, right?” she replied. “But listen, I’m only hearing half your words because we’re driving through some pretty steep mountains. Is this Route 25, hon? Route 282?”
She got into another muffled conversation with Elan that only made the story more convoluted. They were on Route 25, but only for a few miles and it was a detour because Route 282 was flooded. Or maybe that was 828. These darn country roads.
“Mom!” I tried shouting my way into the narrative. “Mom?!”
“Well, either way…,” she continued. “Soon … rest … bagels…”
I hung up the phone, feeling all kinds of mad.
“Can someone please explain what happened and what’s broken?” I demanded.
“Sure! In here!” called Uncle Ricky from the kitchen. He and Gus were setting out a delicious-looking spread of egg-and-cheese sandwiches, onion bagels, and two plastic tubs of cream cheese. “I love my man Yoshi,” said U
ncle Ricky. “But he really needs to broaden his cream cheese selection. Even just chives.”
Gus was grabbing some knives from the silverware drawer while Uncle Ricky unwrapped a loaf of sourdough bread that was still steaming.
“I know. Not needed,” Uncle Ricky admitted. “But literally straight out of the oven.” He took a big sniff from the end of the bread and then stuck it under my nose so I could get a whiff.
“No!” I said, a little more harshly than I’d intended. Gus spun around from the counter with wide eyes. “Please,” I said in a lower tone. “I would like to know what happened to my mom.”
“Right,” said Uncle Ricky. “Sorry, Gus and I were kinda famished when we came in here. So it sounds like your mom tripped on a root or something. Thought she twisted her ankle, wanted to keep going. But Elan insisted on getting her to an ER for X-rays. The nearest one was another forty miles north. Good thing he did though, because a hairline fracture is nothing to ignore. Plus I guess the campsite was entirely washed out.”
“But where did they sleep?”
“I think they were in the ER all night,” Gus said, pouring a cup of coffee. “Mom said she fell asleep for a few hours once they gave her some painkillers, but Elan didn’t even have a chair.”
“I know you don’t like him, Hank. But you have to admit, he’s a good guy,” Uncle Ricky said with his mouth full of cream cheese.
“I don’t not like him,” I sneered. “I just don’t want him acting like…”
Gus stuck a warm egg-and-cheese sandwich in my hand so I wouldn’t have to come up with an end to that sentence. I thought briefly of refusing, but I was drooling from all the salty smells. The air was so warm and doughy, and the coffee pot gurgled and clicked.
And yet part of me couldn’t give up this fight. I still felt like I was the only one left to defend my father’s honor.
“Actually, Uncle Ricky, I bet you can set the record straight,” I said.
“Sure,” he said with a big grin.
“What record?” asked Gus as he dropped a blob of scrambled egg on the table.
I certainly didn’t need to push it further. The past twelve hours had shown me just how shattered a family could get when one side was pitted against the other. But there were just so many frayed wires inside me, looking to ignite. “So Gus and I were having a debate because Elan says that my dad took the 8:03 train to Penn Station and I think he took the 7:29. Actually, I know he took the 7:29. But maybe you can verify?”
Uncle Ricky looked from me to Gus and back to me again. Waiting for us to tell him it was a joke, I suppose. “Ummm…”
“Hello! Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Not … really,” answered Uncle Ricky. His face was wide and unconcerned. Which only fueled my indignation.
“Didn’t you work with Dad one summer?” I pounced. “And you slept over here on Sunday nights a bunch of times and took the train in with him. Why doesn’t anybody remember these details except for me?!”
Uncle Ricky kept shaking his head slowly. His lips were pressed together in a thin line now; I’d definitely scared him with my temper. “Hank, I am truly sorry I can’t give you the information you want,” he said in the most somber tone I’d heard from him.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled. “It’s … whatever.” I got myself a mug of coffee and rewrapped my breakfast sandwich so I could take it upstairs and hide in my room until I came up with another plan. I thought maybe I’d draw Mom a get-well card with those smelly markers I’d hung on to since first grade. I knew those cards did absolutely nothing in terms of healing, but at least it would give me an activity and maybe the fumes would knock me out.
“Actually, Hank, can I talk to you for a second upstairs?” Gus asked.
“Sure.” I shrugged. He was probably going to feed me a quote from Diana Gaia about letting go and accepting the infinite. Which was great in theory but currently impossible to practice. “I know, I’m acting like a bitch,” I told him as we got to the top of the stairs. “I just have a lot going on and I’m not in the mood to give Elan a Purple Heart for saving Mom in the woods.”
Gus gently pushed me into my room. “Yeah, the Elan stuff we can talk about another time,” he told me. “I’m just worried … um, so do you know what’s going on with your video?”
“My video?”
He shut the door behind us. “Yeah,” Gus said gravely.
“What are you talking about?”
He held out his phone so I could watch him type in the words:
PUSSYCAT WARRIORS HOT KISS
Just so I knew that life could get worse. Much worse.
A brief list of unrealistic promises these masochistic monsters disguised as health professionals have now made to me:
1. If I eat peanut butter and whole-milk yogurt at every meal, I will feel energetic, exuberant, and optimistic about life!
2. Every pound I gain will make me more fun and determined. I have so much to say and do and be and the world can’t wait to see what a go-getter I am!
3. Eating slowly and mindfully will help me understand my body’s wants and desires and I will know how it feels to be truly satiated!
4. Instead of cutting myself, I must apologize to my body and thank it for its beauty, resilience, and strength. If I do this three times a day (and stay away from razors), I won’t ever feel the urge to cut again.
5. My relationships with my parents and loved ones will be richer and stronger, based on mutual respect and honesty!
6. I will get to go home when I’m ready to go home.
7. They will determine what “ready” means.
CHAPTER 17
every creature
I guess 5,828 people had already watched the video and decided I was a righteous lesbian. Also that I was awkward, brave, and a little like Hagrid and Einstein had a love child, right?
The comments were mostly misinformed and/or presumptuous. A few of them were heart-wrenching—talking about how they wanted to express same-sex love like this but were too afraid. Then there were a few that really disturbed me. Describing how they wanted to watch us in slow motion and do things to make us both yowl. The comment that made me drop my phone just said: BONER.
Gus sat next to me the whole time while I scrolled through. We were on my floor, with our backs up against the door so nobody could come in. I wanted to tell him to shield his eyes or that he didn’t have to stay, but I felt like the warmth of his shoulder next to mine was the only secure thing.
“I’m sorry you’re seeing this,” I kept telling him. “It’s not what I thought … It’s not what I meant…”
“Stop apologizing,” Gus said.
“I need to delete it. Is there any way I can do that?”
Gus shook his head sadly. “The settings are locked. Looks like ZGH2002 is the only one who can change that.”
“Yup,” I said, feeling more defeated. ZGH2002 was obviously Zoe Grace Hammer. I tried calling, texting, and pinging her on every app I had. No response.
At some point, Gus said, “I think your best bet is actually going to her house.” Though I didn’t want him to be, I knew he was right. Gus promised to field all of Uncle Ricky’s nosy questions and to let me know if anything else happened online.
* * *
There was definitely someone home at Zoe’s house. I could hear the thud of feet rushing down the stairs and sporadic yipping noises. It took me a few minutes to summon up the courage to knock on the door though. As pitiful as it sounds, I couldn’t remember a single time I’d come here to ask for something. I’d certainly gotten plenty—hand-me-downs and stickers, fresh-baked cookies and pinkie-swear secrets. But I’d never stood outside their dome-shaped wooden door trying to put my words together plaintively. I couldn’t hand them Girl Scout cookies or a pamphlet about Jehovah or solar panel estimates. I just had to ring the doorbell and state my case.
“Who is it?! Just a second!” yelled Alli. She flung open the door and barely registered I was there
before she peered over my shoulder to see if I’d brought anyone better with me. Specifically, her daughter.
“Wait. You don’t have Zoe?”
“No, sorry. I came over because she wasn’t answering any of my messages.”
“Of course she’s not,” Alli snapped. She let me in and closed the door before unleashing tears and yelling, “Why is my life such a fucken mess?!”
I was pretty sure she did not want me to take a stab at answering that.
“You know why she’s not answering our messages? Because she’s too busy listening to Travis’s bullshit excuses. Or maybe she’s getting her nails done with Roxanne or taking more meetings with my agent. And meanwhile—”
Alli dropped to her knees and started hammering on the floor with her fists. “Come on, Meowsers. This isn’t funny!” She grabbed a remote control from the coffee table and skidded it under the couch, possibly to scare the cat out of hiding. But still nothing happened.
I crouched down to see what was going on. “Is the cat…?”
“Okay?!” Alli screeched. “No! He’s not. And your friend Zoe was supposed to be in charge of him, but instead she left this out, open, next to a half-eaten yogurt and now he’s totally batshit crazy!”
I couldn’t tell whether she was angry or terrified. She showed me an empty prescription bottle for Ritalin. Holding it up to the light so her face turned a wavy amber color as I looked through it.
“How much was in it?” I asked.
“No idea.” Alli moaned. “He was tearing up the place when I came in. I think he ate one of my scarves. But then when I went to hold him, he dove under the couch and now he’s just hissing every time I come near. Can cats OD on this stuff? They probably can, right?”
I nodded and shook my head and shrugged all at the same time.
I peered under the couch. I could hear Meowsers grunting. Then the scurry of feet and the creak of couch coils as he darted back and forth. When I caught a glimpse of his face, it was even scarier. His eyes were wide, pale buttons in the dark.