“I think from now on, I can handle my own problems.”
“What does that mean?” His thunderous voice splits the quiet. “You’re dismissing me? Like I’ve fulfilled some duty, and now I can go?”
Even as I push myself to the bitter end, knowing this is the only way, I still want him. I want us. You can’t have him, I tell myself.
“I’m asking you not to worry about it. I’ll handle it.” I stop short of saying we’re over. I can’t do it, even now, when I’ve realized how important it is to let him go. I’m a coward, unwilling to make a complete, final break.
He tears his hand against the scruff on his jaw. “So, to be clear, you don’t want any help from me at all? You want me to leave you alone? To deal with this alone?”
“Yes.” The word is serrated coming out of my mouth, and I wonder if my tongue will bleed from the lie.
Snowflakes stick to his eyelashes; when he blinks, they melt away. “Don’t you care about me enough to try to work this out?”
Sadness claws my throat, constricting it. I can’t answer, not honestly, or I’ll be back to where I started—in the middle, wavering over whether to let him go or not and never making a decision. I care too much, but giving in now means I’ll only make it worse—for us both.
“I should go in,” I say, leaving his question hanging. I force myself to walk by him, since I can’t look his anguish in the face any longer. I cross the shadow made by the two houses, leaving him in the dark.
Behind me, he says, “I can’t believe that’s all you have to say to me. After everything I told you. After everything you told me.”
There are so many more things I could confess, but they die on my lips.
I keep on walking.
sixteen
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M up at dawn.
Sleep, which I barely got, was plagued by dreams of Graham and last night’s conversation. My mind tore snippets away, jumbled them, rearranged them, until I couldn’t understand what I’d done or why I’d done it. Head aching, I can’t make sense of anything.
So I stop.
Instead of going to school, I toss my hair into a sloppy bun, brush my teeth, and throw myself into preparing for tomorrow’s big dinner. For hours, I chop, mince, dice, and sauté. I peel potatoes and yams with frantic swipes. I blot and brine the turkey, nestle it into a roasting pan, and clean out the refrigerator so it’ll fit inside. I roll out pie dough and core apples and sift flour and learn how to use our standing mixer. Slow and methodical, I follow along with the instructions in my mother’s recipe book.
After that, I clean the kitchen and the bathrooms, then set to work on my own room. Moving fast, my thoughts stay away from school and Graham and my new, notorious status. My goal is narrow: to see this meal through, to give us a Thanksgiving that’s just like my mother would have made. Nothing has to change. Everything can still be normal.
As afternoon creeps into place, I fall onto my bed, exhausted. My feet hurt, my hands smell like garlic, and my back is one solid ache, but there’s a final thing I have to do before I can rest. I find my phone, turn it on and press the screen against my stomach as it chirps over and over, alerting me to all the messages I’ve missed. Once it’s done, I whisk through the icons to delete every text and voicemail. Next, I dial Isabel, who picks up after half a ring.
“Oh my god, Lemon. Where are you? I left you a ton of messages!”
“Sorry. I turned my phone off yesterday.”
“I was worried, like crazy worried. Especially when you didn’t show up today. I was about to leave for your house.”
My bones sink into the mattress. She sounds frantic to my dead calm. “I’m fine. I just needed to get stuff done for dinner tomorrow.”
“I thought you’d be really upset.”
“Yeah. I guess I was at first, but I’m good now.”
“I don’t believe you. I saw Graham today, and when I talked to him—”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah, like I said, I was worried about you. I figured he’d know something, so I asked him where you were. He said you guys broke up.”
The phone falls out of my hand, sliding next to my head. I only hear the muffled sounds of Isabel’s voice.
“—you there?”
I pick up the phone. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Is it true? What he said?”
When I left him last night, I wasn’t sure what it meant, except that I wasn’t ready for the finality of an official goodbye. His question lingered with me all night. Don’t you care about me enough to try to work this out? My lack of response was a response, even if I didn’t say it outright. I knew it, but I refused to believe it because I didn’t want us to be over.
“We were never really going out,” I reply.
“Oh,” she says. “He looked pretty bad, Lem. I kind of felt for him. I don’t think he meant for this to happen.”
“I know he didn’t. I told him that.”
“Then why end it?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t think I can explain it all.”
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but—”
“I don’t,” I say, before she can finish.
A few beats pass before she tries again. “I’m going to the movies with Lisa tonight—Lisa from chem lab—and I told her I was going to invite you. I really want you to come. Say you will.”
All I can think of is slipping into a deep, down-for-the-count sleep. In some part of my brain, it registers that Isabel made plans without me. Fearless Isabel is apparently in full swing.
“No, but thanks. I still have a lot to do around here. Aunt Vee is coming tomorrow, and my mother probably doesn't even know what day it is. I need to get up early too, so I can put the turkey in the oven.”
“You sound—I’m just worried about you. Come to the movies and have some fun. Tell your dad something he’ll believe, like you need special organic cranberries. I’ll pick you up.”
I can’t muster the strength to conjure a story about anything. All the lies, they tangle so tight I can barely breathe.
“I’m pretty tired, but really, thanks anyway, Iz.”
“Do you want me to cancel with Lisa, and we can talk longer?”
The phone is a tether, reminding me of everything when all I want is to escape. Turn out the lights and pretend I live on Mars—alone.
“Please don’t break your plans for me. You should go.”
She sighs. “Okay, but if you change your mind, just text me.”
We say our goodbyes, and I hang up, turn off my phone, then chuck it under the bed.
As I lie there, I can’t get that one sentence off my mind: He said you guys broke up.
I think back to the first time I saw Graham at the Gas & Sip, how bubbles of excitement and uneasiness coursed through me at the same time. I had no idea what was to come, and now, it’s over. The problem with the past is that I can’t erase it or un-know what it felt like to have his lips on mine. I won’t be able to forget the conversations we shared, him telling me about his mother and me telling him about Meg. Every second with him is a memory built upon another memory, intertwined. And then there’s yesterday, with him going to Chelsea and revealing our secret, causing the dominoes to fall, like what we had was worth so little. He’s two people now, one from before and one from after, and I don’t know which one is real.
I flip over and stuff my face into my pillow. I hold it in place and scream hot breath, but sound won’t come out. Instead, a sob catches, a deep howl from my gut that’s been building since I watched the video. I tear the pillow away and curl my head to my knees, circling the pain in my heart.
He said you guys broke up.
I cry for myself, for the hatred heaped on me because I fell for the wrong boy. I cry for losing Graham and for the unfairness of it. I cry for what seems like hours, until my bedroom door opens and a blurry woman appears.
“Lemon? What is it?” she asks. “What happened?”
; I shake my head back and forth, unable to apply words to all of it.
The woman sits. She rests her head on my shoulder before wrapping her arms around me. Fresh tear tracks stain her face.
“It’s going to be okay. I’m here, Lemon. I’m here.” I cry harder, and she hugs me tight. “I miss her too,” she says.
I let my mother console me through the sobs because I need someone to close the gap torn through me, even if it means letting her believe this pain is all for Meg.
seventeen
BY THE MONDAY AFTER Thanksgiving break, Madeline’s story has spread through Westmoore like a flesh-eating virus.
Since the first video dropped on Lady Westmoore, the comments have blown up. I read enough of them to know I haven’t won the sympathy vote, which firmly belongs to Chelsea. None of it changes my plan to remain apathetic, but my father’s words echo in my mind as I pull my hood up and enter the building. There are two types of people, Lemon. The type that talk behind your back and the type that talk to your face. Either way, they all talk.
The hallways appear to elongate and narrow, as if everywhere I go takes twice as long and allows the haters to get too close. I expected to be uncomfortable, but I didn’t know the gossip would feel like an otherworldly beast clinging to my back, exhaling hot breath against my neck while its talons pierce my skin. Even worse is that I feel stripped bare, all my shame and flaws on display, plinking along the ground as I walk. I can’t find any safe place to keep my sight but down, since every direction holds an accusing face. The only eyes I do meet are Graham’s, just once during English Lit, but he instantly slides them away.
The day is a series of hurdles, and I do anything but fly over them gracefully. Seeing Graham was just the first. The next is gym, where I have no idea what Chelsea is planning for me. The weather hasn’t turned cold despite it being late November, and Coach Keets will most likely push us outside for some game that no one has played since the nineties.
The one highlight is Isabel. When I enter the locker room, scanning for Chelsea, she grabs my arm and leads me to our corner spot. “I’m so glad to see you,” she whispers. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show up today.”
I don’t tell her how much I wanted to ditch, but then I’d be forced to deal with Mom, who popped up out of bed this morning like she’d been raised from the dead by a necromancy spell. Dressed and bright-eyed, she made pancakes for breakfast and fussed over my hair while talking about the benefits of a juice cleanse. As glad as I was to see her up and around, it was also annoying. I couldn’t take her pecking at me, feeling my head for fever every two minutes, asking if I should stay home.
To my surprise, I get out of the locker room unscathed and survive a game of kickball without injury. No one sends the ball in my direction—in the way, way outfield—and when it’s my turn to kick, and I end up toeing dirt instead of the ball, it’s only the usual catcalls that come my way. Chelsea’s wrath never happens, leaving me exhausted, and the day isn’t even half over yet.
After gym, Isabel and I walk to our usual lunch table, but it isn’t empty. Two girls I don’t recognize have taken over. One is seated with her head bent to her phone. She flips her auburn hair every thirty seconds, upsetting the colored wire bracelets on her wrist. I know then she’s a science nerd, since all those kids wear them except Isabel.
The other girl stands, looking at the crowd streaming in the cafeteria doors. She wears a burgundy corduroy dress and the same bracelets as the other girl, though not as many. I turn to Isabel, who waves as Corduroy Girl waves back. I hesitate, but there’s no way I can stop moving. Like a shark, I have to swim or risk sinking.
Isabel reaches our table first, and when I catch up, she says, “This is Lisa and Shannon. I told you about them, remember? I asked them to sit here today since I wasn’t sure when you were coming back.”
“Right,” I say. “Hi.”
The two of them smile, sympathy bleeding from their faces. My fist curls a little, but I let it go. The awkward hello session behind us, I sit and unwrap the sandwich my mother put in my bag this morning. The turkey is gray under the fluorescent cafeteria lights, reminding me how she practically shoved me out of the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning after I found her poking the turkey carcass I’d put in the refrigerator the previous day. Aunt Vee swung through the door not much later, so I skulked to my room. It was as if we’d switched bodies—I became the comatose one while Mom sped around, transforming my chaos into order. My father was elated; he considered it a Thanksgiving miracle that she was awake and Aunt Vee was still safely in the dark.
“Isabel told us what happened,” Shannon, the hair-flipping phone girl, says, snapping me out of my thoughts. “We’re totally on your side.” She swishes her fringy bangs out of her eyes, but they fall again, twining with her eyelashes and poking her eyeballs.
I smell the cold turkey; my stomach heaves a little.
Lisa, Corduroy Girl, nods. Up close, she has a spray of freckles across her nose that match the color of her dress. “I can’t even believe some of the stuff people wrote. It was so mean. I’d just die . . . literally.”
I look up from my sandwich. “That’s what I expected to happen, but . . . here I am.”
Isabel jumps in, her eyes blinking a warning to the others. “No one really believes it. Everyone knows those people are cowards who don’t have the balls to say anything to your face.”
“Totally,” Lisa agrees. “My sister is an actress in New York, kind of like off- Broadway, and she says that all publicity is good publicity. She should know because”— her freckled nose scrunches—“she fell off the stage one night during a performance and had to get up and finish. Like, after she’d just fallen. But she said the crowds poured in the next few nights because everyone wanted to see the girl who tripped off the stage!”
I stare. And stare. I want to shake her, but I only reply, “Wow. That’s such great advice.”
Isabel pulls at the end of her ponytail. Her ESP communication tells me to cool it. I look away.
“It’s just because of your name,” Lisa continues. “It’s, like, so familiar. I told my sister about it, and she said so many actresses would kill for a name like yours. That’s why celebrities have stage names, because their real ones are super forgettable.”
“And anyway,” Shannon adds, “this is going to blow over as soon as there’s something else to talk about. Something bigger.”
This strikes me as ridiculous. “So some other girl can take my place as most hated? I just have to wait for that?”
I wish they’d both suddenly lose their voices and stop talking to me. In fact, I’d be happy to never be spoken to again. Maybe I could do something where I’d never have to talk, like become a mime. Or a gravedigger. Those people never seem to have much need for conversation.
Isabel rolls an apple between her hands. “Lemon, that’s not what Shan meant.”
She’s Shan now. I roll my eyes.
The three of them drop silent. Lisa picks up her phone. She pecks at the screen with her thumbs, which are dusty orange from Doritos residue. I know I’m paranoid, given the circumstances, but I can’t shake the feeling she’s texting about me. When Shannon’s phone chirps an instant later, I take my cue to leave even though we’re only five minutes into lunch.
Isabel watches as I gather my uneaten sandwich. “Where are you going?”
“To the library. I’m not really hungry.”
“Don’t go,” she says, lowering her voice for my ears only. “They didn’t mean anything by what they said. They’re trying to help.”
Part of me wilts. This is Isabel, my best friend, and it isn’t her fault. “It’s me. I’m not good company right now. And I’m sorry . . . for being bitchy.”
“I think it’s important to have other people on your side, you know? They could be your friends too. Allies in the fight.”
“Sure, yeah.” I’m not brave enough to say I only want her friendship, because she already knows me. I do
n’t have to prove myself.
She frowns as I push away from the table, but I just don’t want to be there.
Instead of the library, I hide in the bathroom for the rest of lunch. Enclosed in a stall, I know I’ll have the most privacy I can get. Besides that, the library reminds me of Graham, kissing him, and his face when he told me what he’d done. In here, there’s only brown gunk wedged into the grout on the tile floor, graffiti on the pond-scum green walls enclosing me on all sides. Part of me floats above my body, watching this sad little scene with pity. My father’s credo, never one for sympathy, flows like a lava stream through my consciousness. Deal with it, Lemon.
From his perspective, my problems aren’t relevant. I’m not dying. No natural disaster has scattered my house across three towns. I have enough to eat. As I sit in this icky bathroom stall, huffing latent antiseptic fumes, I know I have to keep going. Dad’s voice permeates: Don’t fail, Lemon. Don’t be a fuck-up, Lemon. Run like hell to catch the bus of perfection before it leaves without you. If I have to cling to something, I’ll cling to that.
When the bell rings, I emerge from the stall and bump shoulders with a girl entering the bathroom. She’s young, probably a freshman. I grunt an apology before going to the sink to wash my hands.
She studies me in the mirror. “Hey, you’re that girl, the one with the weird name. Lemon Lavender, right?”
I ignore her and wrench a paper towel from the dispenser. She stares at me, a sneer wrinkling her baby face, which is covered in too much makeup. She twists a lipstick from its tube and cocks her head. “Is it true you threw yourself in front of Graham Stuart’s car so he’d go out with you?”
eighteen
WHEN I WALK IN THE door that day, I’m greeted by Christmas music blaring throughout the house.
Which is clean. Really clean.
Lemon Lavender Is Not Fine Page 12
