To the weirdos
1
Friday
Dear Diary,
It’s been a while. And because you’re back, because I brought you back (after spiraling your backbone back into place)—backity back back back—Aurelia, for some reason, feels like she needs to be introduced to you all over again. Like she don’t know you. Like she don’t remember you. But I do. So we don’t have to shake hands and do the whole “my name is” thing. But Aurelia might need to do that. Today she asked me if I still call you Diary, or if I call you Journal now. Or maybe Notebook. I told her Diary. I’ve always called you that. Because I like Diary. Notebook, no. And Dear Journal doesn’t really work the same. Doesn’t do it for me. Dear Diary is better, not just because of the double D alliteration action, but also because Diary reminds me of the name Darryl, so at least I feel like I’m talking to an actual someone. And Darryl reminds me of the word “dairy,” and “dairy” and “diary” are the same except for where i is. And I like dairy. At least milk. I can’t drink a lot of it, which you know, because it makes my stomach feel like it’s full of glue, which you also know. But I like it anyway. Because I’m weird. Which you definitely know. You know I like weird stuff. And everything about milk is weird. Even the word “milk,” which I think probably sounds like what milk sounds like when you guzzle it. Milkmilkmilkmilkmilk. I should start over.
Dear Diary,
This is my start over.
Aurelia asked me how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to you. I told her, a while. When I was a little kid and was all yelly-yelly and Darryl wanted me to be more hushy-hushy, he gave me you and told me to put the noise on your pages whenever I felt like I needed to, which was all the time except for when I was running or sleeping. Told me to fold it up in you, so he could get some peace. So he could have quiet for concentration when we picked at our puzzles after work. Yes, Diary, we still do puzzles together. It’s still our way of, I guess, bonding. Anyway, after a while, my brain stopped pushing so much loud out of my mouth. Stopped noisey-ing up the puzzling. Thanks to you.
You know how a health bar makes you less hungry, but don’t really make you full? Diary, that’s what you are. A health bar. You take the hunger-growl out of my mind. And once I got to a place where the growl was pretty much a purr, I stopped writing in you. But now the volume on the growl is turning up again. And even though it’s being turned up, I can feel it working its way down, pushing behind my eyes, and marching over my tongue, ready to come out. And my father, well, he still doesn’t want to be disturbed. And I don’t want to disturb him and his work, and his newspaper, and definitely not the puzzles, because the puzzles are our time. So, Diary, thanks for still being a friend. Something for me to bite down on. Something for me to whisper-scream to. Because sometimes I have too many screams up there. And they boing boing in my brain
boing boing in my brain
like a jumping bean,
boing boing in my brain
like a jumping bean
my brain a moon bounce at a party nobody’s invited to.
And now I can put them in you, again.
And now Aurelia’s asking me about it. About you. Asking me about journaling. No. Diary-ing. Which sounds like diarrhea-ing. Which is sorta the same thing. Aurelia told me she thinks it’s a good thing I’ve been writing again. Even wanted to make sure I understood that whatever I write down don’t have to make sense as long as it’s really me. Really my brain and heart stuff. And that’s a good thing, even though I already knew that, because making sense makes no sense to me. Sense should kinda already be made, right? It should already exist like love, or maybe sky. You don’t have to create it or choreograph it or nothing like that. At least I don’t think you do. So none of this has to make sense, it just has to make . . . me, me. I’m already me, but it has to make me . . . something. Make me quiet and calm, and maybe also make me brave enough to do what I’m going to have to do tomorrow at the track meet, which is probably not going to be quiet or calm. That’s the real reason Aurelia’s interested in you, Diary. She thinks I don’t know that, but I know. I know because I know she knows I’m scared. That’s why I brought you back. I’m so scared. And scared don’t sound like eek. Or gasp. Scared sounds like glass. Shattering.
Scared sounds like glass shattering.
Diary, after all these years, you ever not want to be written in? On? Am I writing on you or in you? Or both? And how does that make you feel? I’ve never really asked you that. You ever just want to stay blank? Just be paper or whatever you think you are? Because I know what that’s like. And tomorrow, my father will too.
Also, Aurelia called you a journal, but you’re a diary, so I will call you by your name.
2
Saturday
Dear Diary,
I know—at least I think I know—everything has a sound connected to it. Has a tick or a boom. Or something. Like a tickboom. Or a tick-tickboom. Or a tick-bada-bada-boom-bap-bap-ooh. Or a . . . I’m weird. I’m not really weird. I’m just . . . tickboom. Yeah.
It’s been three weeks, and something like 1,814,400 ticks since I was watching Patina
watching Patina,
watching Patina,
tee-nuh, tee-nuh,
tick-tick boom and come from behind and crush the last leg of her first 4x800 relay. Sounded like shum-swip!-shum-swip!-shum-swip!-shum-swip! all the way to the feta-feta-finish line. She was cheesin’, and the crowd . . . went . . . wild. Cushhhhh! Deja and Krystal and Brit-Brat went wild. Cushhhhh! Coach and Whit went wild. Curron and Aaron and Mikey went wild. Cushhhhhh! Cushhhhh! Ghost and Lu went wild. Threw their arms around me while Patty did some kind of power strut over to us, a winner. Wih-wih-winner. Wih-winner. Patty’s a winner. A big winner. Number tenner, and a grinner, a bleep bloop blinner, that’s not a word but I’m a beginner, not like Patty, Patty’s a winner, wih-winner.
Okay, I’m weird.
Diary, you know I’m also a winner. Wih-winner. Which, for me, is boring. Buh-boring. And sounds like snore. Snuh-snoring. My race always, always, always sounds like other people talking. Like no one really caring that I’m running a mile—1600 meters—faster than they can probably run a block. Like, chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! Chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! But no one does, until the last lap. Which is the part where I win. Week after week. Wih-wih winner . . . whatever.
I give the ribbons to Darryl. Whatever.
He says something about my mother. Whatever.
Your mother would want you to work harder.
What’s wrong with you?
She’d want you to tighten that form.
Widen your stride. Beat your time.
Like I always say, ROI. Return on Investment.
What’s wrong with you?
The more you put in, the more you get out.
That last lap, open up your lungs. Breathe.
Your mother would want you to breathe.
What’s wrong with you?
And then I immediately start thinking about what breathing sounds like. I can never really find it. Always just on the tip of my tongue. And then I start thinking about what not breathing sounds like. And then, while Darryl goes on and on about my mother, I start thinking about crying. Me, crying. Not me crying right then, but me crying when I was being born. And how I didn’t. Not at first. That’s what Darryl always tells me, has no problem telling me. That I didn’t cry. Because I wasn’t breathing. And my mother was crying. Then I started breathing. Then she stopped. And I started crying.
Ships passing in the night.
She’s not here because I am. Because of me. Because something is wrong with me, Diary, which made something wrong with her. Her. She has a name. She had a name. Has. You remember? It�
��s Regina. Regina Lancaster. Born on Rosa Parks’s birthday, delivered me on the day of a hurricane. And died.
Dear Diary,
“Amniotic embolism.”
Those words are like confetti for the tongue. Like speaking a foreign language. Hypnotic symbolism, amniotic embolism. So much fun to say, but it means “death of my mother” when you translate it into birth-giving talk. Means her blood was poisoned. Means it caused her heart to stop. Means me, as a kid, yelling all the time looking for her, searching for a beat.
Diary, I know you already know this. It’s been written in me for a long time, so I know I’ve written it in you a long time ago. Along with questions. Questions like, do you know what it feels like to feel like a murderer? I do. At least I did back then. And I still do. Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, Darryl has never called me that or said anything like that. If anything, he says it was the amniotic embolism that did it. But he’s always telling me over and over again that I owe it to my mother to accomplish her dreams of being a marathon winner. For her. Not just a runner, a winner. And he’s been pushing me from the beginning. I don’t really know if I mean that, like for real, but . . . I might, because it might be true. When I was learning to walk, soon as I took my first pitter-patter, Darryl probably pushed me. Like, really pushed me. That’s just how he is. Not hard or nothing. Just a little bump to make those steps quicker. Laps around the house by four. On the track by five. Marathon talk by six. As if not having a mother can be wiped away by a medal. Figured I’d start by mastering the mile.
But the thing is, the mile don’t have enough sound for me. Never did. There’s only the chick chick chick my feet make on the track for 1600 meters, which after a while sounds almost like nothing. Chick chick chick becomes chih chih chih becomes ch ch ch underneath everybody’s chatter about what they’re gonna do as soon as these last few long laps are over, scrolling on their phones, check check checking, refreshing, then scrolling some more.
I needed something else, something other than the stupid mile. Than the stupid win. So earlier today—three boring weeks, three victorious meets after Patty’s crazy comeback—I finally put some sound in my mile. Some pooshhh, or skweeb.
Diary, what does it sound like to stop? Like, skurrt!
I was three laps in, coming up on the fourth. Chick chick-ing around the track, zoning out. I’m on the first turn of the last lap, no one even close to me. I’m cruising, ch ch ch heading in for the win. And then.
I changed my mind.
Just pulled up, stopped running, started walking.
Sound.
The crowd goes wild! Whaaaa? Deja and Krystal and Brit-Brat go wild. Whaaaa? Ghost and Lu and Patty go wild. Whaaaa? Curron and Aaron and Mikey go wild. Whaaa? Coach and Whit go really wild. WHAAAA?
Then the crowd goes whooooop! as the other runners gallop past me, burning whatever gas they had left, barreling toward the finish line.
From the sideline, Coach scream-asked what I was doing, and I just smiled and clapped for the other runners. Then Coach yelled something else mad. His words sounded like crumpled paper. Up in the bleachers Darryl popped straight up in the middle of the crowd. Some people were laughing, some mad, some totally confused. Those were the best ones. The confused ones. The faces that looked like they were made of wax, and had been melted and remolded. Like, skwilurp bleep blurp squish. My father’s face didn’t look like that. It didn’t look melted or squishy at all. My father’s face had the look. A look I was used to, but hated. Like a stone becoming more of a stone. And what sound does that make? I think, for my dad, the same sound that breathing makes. A sound I can’t seem to find, even though it’s on the tip of my tongue.
Dear Diary,
One more thing about today. I almost bit my tongue off. Just nibbled too hard on it the whole ride home. And if I did bite it off, it would’ve been so gross, because then I would’ve had blood on my teeth. And what if my father, for some reason, cracked a joke or said something funny that made me smile and then he would’ve had to see my cherry chompers? My bloody reds? But he didn’t. And why would he? There was nothing funny, at least not to him. He just bit down on his own tongue, and judging by the dimple in his cheek going in and out, he was biting down pretty hard too.
It was a quiet ride with nothing but the whirr whirr of the air conditioner‚ a ssssss that sounded more like air leaking out of something than seeping into it.
The cat had my father’s tongue.
Diary, do you know where that saying came from? Cat got your tongue? Me neither. I mean, think about it. It’s like, you’re saying a cat jumped up and shoved its face in my mouth and bit down on my tongue? And is it a cat that looks like a tiger, with the stripes? Or maybe a black cat? Definitely a black cat. Or one of those gray cats that people call blue, even though gray and blue are different colors. But they sound the same. They both sound like a shaky violin, which sounds like a cat crying. Just before it jumps up and bites your tongue off.
Anyway, my dad was the cat, with his own face in his own mouth biting his own tongue. Making him more quiet than usual. A quiet that was thick and itchy like carpet on skin. Because I knew he had a lot to say. How could he not? I’d just lost. Not even lost, gave up. Not really gave up. Gave in. That’s what I did, forfeited my race, and I knew for a fact he wanted to know why. Didn’t he have some story he was dying to blab about? Something about how my mom would be disappointed?
Regina wasn’t a quitter.
Or, Before you, I had never seen anything, anyone, beat her.
Or his favorite, What’s wrong with you? Something to remind me of what I can’t remember. He had to have something to say, and this was the perfect opportunity for Darryl to talk my head off, put it back on, talk it off again, then kick it down the street, then look at headless me and talk my . . . neck off.
That was way worse than the cat-got-your-tongue thing.
What I’m trying to say is, Darryl wouldn’t say a word. And I knew better than to ask him if he wanted to know why I did it. Why I stopped. And why today, a week before my thirteenth birthday, her deathday. Not that he’d flip out and do something crazy, like bite his own tongue off and show me bloody teeth—even though, honestly, I would’ve rather seen that, than . . . that look again. But I would’ve taken that look if it meant we could’ve talked about it.
I guess I’ll just talk to you about it until I can talk to Aurelia about it first thing Monday morning. Which means I have to get through the rest of this weekend, like a tongue trapped in a shut mouth. Like a feather somehow trapped in stone. Like a thwip attached to a thump.
3
Sunday
Dear Diary,
Diary-ing’s not for Sundays.
And it’s not that I don’t have nothing to say, or that I don’t want to say it. I just think maybe you deserve a day off to be as blank and closed as you want.
I know I feel that way sometimes.
4
Monday
Dear Diary,
Just so you know, Sundays at my house are still basically just Darryl in his boxers sitting in his chair—their chair—reading his boring business magazines about, I guess, ROI, and crinkling up the newspaper, no telling if he really reads the thing, but he definitely crinkles it a lot. And coffee. And cold. Because the house is too big for warm.
This giant castle. So big. Too big for just the two of us. A dining room, a kitchen, a living room, a family room—which, by the way, is where the puzzles are put together. So big there could be other people living here and we wouldn’t even know it. How funny would that be? Another family living on the other side of the house. Maybe a dad who would go to work in a suit. But not a regular suit. A sweat suit. Hmmm. What would he be doing? Maybe he’d be a gym teacher. No. Not that. A dance instructor. And maybe he wouldn’t have a son. Maybe he’d have a daughter, and his daughter’s name would be . . . Moony. And maybe Moony wouldn’t have to write in diaries—not that there’s anything wrong with you. And maybe Moony has a mother. And mayb
e that mother reads the newspaper all day, and sometimes she looks over at Moony and winks, in between taking sips of coffee, and maybe her coffee doesn’t make the whole house smell like it’s been sprinkled with sugar and set on fire like my father’s does.
All Darryl does all day is takes a sip, then crinkles the paper. Flips the page. Takes a sip. Crinkles the paper. Flips the page. And after a whole Sunday of that—you didn’t miss much—the simple ding-dong of the doorbell this morning basically sounded like disco to me.
Dear Diary,
The only thing weirder than me is my teacher creature. Aurelia. I know I said she might feel like she has to introduce herself to you again, even though she’s been around as long as you have, but I just realized that it’s been years, so maybe you don’t remember her. Maybe it’s you who needs the again-introduction.
Aurelia has blue hair. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s purple. Sometimes orange.
Aurelia has fingernails that always look like they’ve been painted by tiny artists with tiny brushes.
Aurelia’s clothes always look dirty, even though they always smell clean. “Clirty” is a word I’ve made up to describe the look.
Aurelia has tattoos all over her. Weird ones. Loopy and lopsided stars that look like I did them. With my eyes closed. She even has tattoos on her hands. On her fingers. Her knuckles. Big letters that on one hand say S-T-A-Y, and on the other, B-U-S-Y.
Remember?
If not, just know Aurelia is part of the plan. I know you don’t know this part, Diary, because I didn’t know this part until last year. (Know that no know is a no-no.) She was part of my parents’ original plan. I don’t (know!) the whole plan, or if it was actually written down in outlines and graphs and charts and diagrams and codes, or how far they even got. But from what I know, my mom and Darryl, who, by the way, were boyfriend-girlfriend since they were my age, which by the way, means they’d basically been lovey-dovey for infinity times infinity, which by the way means great grossness and gross greatness, were planning to graduate from middle school, go to high school, be king and queen of all the things (most likely to succeed at being boyfriend-girlfriend), get scholarships to college, where my mother would study psychology and my father would study business (even though he loved taking pictures), then graduate and go to more school to study the same things over again, which seems . . . I don’t know, the opposite of smart.
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