Kendall and I hadn’t hung out in weeks. We’d both been so busy, of course. She had the special year-end edition of the school newspaper and already started work at Scoop-N-Putt. I had Dani and a job at Richard’s art supply store and a really packed schedule of hanging out alone in my room, lurking on Silver Arrow fansites.
It stung, to watch the little girls now.
I located and approached Madison’s mother: huge sunglasses, stylish beach hat, paperback in hand.
“Hi,” she said, grinning. “How are you?”
“Good. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. I actually meant, how are you? You look like you’re doing really well.”
I smiled and said, “Thank you.”
I said it because I lived in a small town, and people don’t want good stories to end, and everyone thinks they know a little bit about depression, and because these were just a few of the terms I unknowingly agreed to that night over a year earlier.
“I have to go to the restroom. Do you mind keeping an eye on Dani for a few minutes?”
“Of course not, sweetie. She’s lucky to have you.”
Yes, she is, I thought as I walked toward the restroom building, my head swimming. I miss Kendall. There was still gossip about me.
Inside, the cool and the dark and the silence and the quick bliss of being unseen.
I went into an empty stall and jiggled the lock shut. You look like you’re doing really well. What exactly does that look like? What would not-doing-well look like? Because I had once been not-doing-well for a long time and nobody noticed at all.
Turns out, I wasn’t completely alone in the bathroom. I could hear someone in the next stall going, too. It was one of those awkward situations where you find yourself in sync with a stranger.
After I was finished (first!), I stepped out of the stall to wash my hands. I heard the other stall door open and glanced up into the mirror.
“Am I in the wrong bathroom?” asked Camden Armstrong. Like it was simply an intellectual question.
This is where I wondered if I was having a hallucination.
Then in the mirror, I could see a urinal on the wall behind me.
And this is where I panicked.
“Um, no,” I managed to say. “Apparently, I am. Sorry!”
I ducked my head and walked quickly past him out the door. I’m not sure what ducking my head was going to accomplish, but as I mentioned: the panic.
No. No, no. Pleasetellmethatdidnotjusthappen. I stumbled across the beach, my feet not going where I wanted them to go, trying and failing to get away from my own mortifying self.
Once I got back to my blanket, I waved at Madison’s mom and she waved back. The two girls were swimming nearby. I grabbed my phone and texted Kendall with quivering thumbs.
Just saw Camden Armstrong at the lake. Went into the men’s restroom by accident. Call me.
Those days, I was always looking for things to connect over with Kendall. Our friendship was like the drawstring in a pair of sweatpants, always slipping out of sight and out of reach. We always knew it was there. One of us merely had to retrieve it with that safety-pin trick until next time.
I waited for a reply, looking out at the lake so I wouldn’t have to watch Camden come out of the restroom, so maybe he wouldn’t see me back. He was here. I had spoken to him. I wasn’t sure what I felt other than an overwhelming urge to dive into the lake, swim past the far boundary rope, then keep going and never come back.
My phone chirped with a message from Kendall.
Bad reception here, can only text. But now very intrigued.
I was in the middle of typing out more details when Dani bolted up the beach from the water, full-body shivering, lips nearly blue.
“Make me a burrito,” she demanded, as if she knew I needed something else in my brain that moment. I put my phone down, grabbed her towel and wrapped it tight around her body and arms, tucking in the end corner at her neck so only her head and feet stuck out. Then I pulled her into my lap as she giggled.
“Mmmm. I’m so hungry. And look at this delicious lunch!” I pretended to take a bite of her belly.
My mother never pretended Danielle was a burrito. If she had, it would have had to be a whole-wheat one, with no sour cream because that adds too much fat and dairy. I loved giving Danielle these moments she never got from Mom. That I never got from Mom. It was like I was giving them to both of us.
I heard a noise on the diving board, a loud whoop, and looked up to see Camden backflipping into the water.
As if the last year had never happened. As if someone had rewound the tape, and here we were, in the exact places we’d been exactly twelve months before.
But I’d become a different person since last May, and a switch inside me flicked on. There was a blinking YES in neon lights.
Oh God those green eyes and those shoulders and the shaggy straight hair, and oh God.
And that thing that took place in the restroom, that ridiculous and horrifying thing we shall not talk about ever again, did that count as a conversation?
They say, there are no do-overs in life.
I say, anything is Possible.
3
“What are you thinking about, ducky?” asked Richard the next day.
I was kneeling in Aisle 2 of Millie’s Art Supply, staring off into space.
“I’m thinking there are way, way too many colors of craft sand in the world,” I said.
My stepdad didn’t bat an eye. “Yes, I agree. War, poverty, climate change, and craft sand. Times are bleak.”
I really loved him a lot.
“Look,” I said, pointing to the bottom shelf and the bags I’d already arranged in official rainbow order. “I went all ROY G. BIV, and then I opened the last box and found this. Turquoise!”
Richard sighed. “I’ll help you make a space between the green and the blue,” he simply said, and sat down beside me on the linoleum floor.
Working together like that, stacking bags of craft sand in swift, efficient movements, it was easy to feel that what we were doing was important. Like an aesthetically perfect shelf display could change someone’s life. (And who says it couldn’t? It totally could.) It was these microscopic here-and-now moments that had helped me the most. I had a lot of them in my job at Millie’s, which Richard owned. Three afternoons a week and all day on Sundays.
Which of course was going to make it that much harder to quit.
Finally, we got down to the last two bags of turquoise. “If there’s a box we don’t know about,” said Richard as he balanced them on the pile, “and it’s filled with, say, eggplant-colored sand, I may have to kill someone.”
It was almost six o’clock and closing time. He patted my back and stood up slowly, stretched, then walked over to lock the front door. He took a moment to carefully smooth down the lost-dog notice someone had posted inside the vestibule. FIND VERA! it shouted at us all day.
“Come on,” said Richard. “Mom and Dani are waiting.” We were supposed to meet them at the restaurant next door for our regular Sunday session of “all of us sitting down in the same place at the same time,” occasionally known as dinner.
“Will you do me a favor in there?” I asked as we headed out the back. “When the moment’s right, can you ask me if I’m excited about summer?”
We all had our things at Moose McIntyre’s.
My mother liked to line up the scalloped edge of the paper place mat with the edge of the table, as if she could get this one thing to be perfect, everything else in life would follow.
Richard always studied the menu intently, right thumb stroking his right eyebrow, even though he ordered the same exact thing every time.
Danielle did the maze on the kids’ menu, then the word search, then colored the turtle who was named Shelly and wore a sailor suit for reasons nobody ever understood.
I sat next to the window, counting every familiar face that walked by outside. My record for a single meal was forty-eight.
After we got our food, but before everyone was done, Richard gave me a look and I nodded.
“So, Ari,” he said. “You’ve got what, two more weeks of school? Excited about summer?”
He was good. Convincing. We’d done this little show before. It was Mom Management Vaudeville.
“I am. In fact, I have an idea I want to run by you, if you’ll promise to keep an open mind.”
Mom put down her grilled chicken wrap and rested both hands on her place mat. “We always keep an open mind,” she said, in a way that would never convince anyone she had an open mind.
I glanced at Dani, who was snugly in her own little world, focused on her turtle. I took a deep breath, then looked squarely at Mom. The only way out was through.
“There’s a morning-shift housekeeper job available at the River’s Edge B&B, and I’d like to apply.”
Mom and Richard didn’t react, like they were waiting for the punch line.
“River’s Edge B&B?” I added pointlessly. “Up on 9W?”
Mom frowned. Certain lines on her face appeared only when she frowned this much. “But you already have a job.” Mom looked to Richard, but I kept my eyes on her. Seeing Richard’s face right now would destroy whatever resolve I had.
“I’d like to do something different this summer,” I said.
“But Richard depends on you.” Mom touched Richard’s arm and I looked at it, her limp hand on his wristwatch.
“I’m replaceable.” I’d anticipated exactly this objection from Mom. I’d done some prep. “There must have been four college students who stopped in today, asking about work for the summer. He’ll have no trouble finding someone else.”
“But why, Ari?” asked Mom. She turned to Richard. “We need to know why. Right, honey?”
I dared look at Richard now. He tilted his head, staring at me. I knew I owed him an explanation.
I thought of Richard’s face in the doorway of my room after they found out what I’d done. My mom had gone into nurse mode, checking my cuts to make sure they’d stopped bleeding, getting them properly cleaned. She didn’t have the time or luxury to be shocked or hurt or regretful. At least not right away. (Or ever. I still couldn’t tell.)
But Richard did. His face. So sad. It was the kind of sadness that shifts a tectonic plate somewhere inside that person.
In some ways, watching Richard realize my truth was harder than watching Mom and Dani do it. Because he was the first person I would have gone to for help, and because I didn’t, and also because I had no idea why.
“I’ve worked hard this year,” I finally said, then realized I had to clarify. “Worked hard at feeling better.”
“We know you have,” Mom said, dipping into a whisper.
“Better feels different. I feel different. I am different. So I want to be somewhere different this summer, doing something different.”
That word, suddenly stuck on a loop in my head.
“The B&B is all strangers just passing through,” I continued. “Nobody knows me, and they don’t know about . . . my history. It’s kind of a way for me to start fresh.”
I forced myself to shut up at that point. I’d already given away all the raw honesty I could spare.
Mom’s face softened. Her frown lines seemed uprooted for a moment, not sure where to go.
“Oh, Ari,” she said, my name catching on its way out of her mouth.
The change in her tone was enough to make Dani stop coloring and look up, to examine Mom for signs of Mom-ness.
“You don’t notice it,” I said, “but I do. The way people still look at me, or at these.” I offered my forearm.
“I get it.” She held up a hand for me to halt. It was almost comical, how squeamish this particular RN was about these particular scars.
“I can make do without her,” volunteered Richard. “But it’s your call.” He always backed away from the tough stuff. He knew where Mom had jurisdiction.
Mom took a deep breath in, then out, as we waited. Finally she said, “I hate the idea of you driving all the way to the River’s Edge. That’s a busy road, lots of traffic in the summer. What if you can’t make it in time to pick up Dani from camp? At least at the store, you know you’ll never get stuck there.” She paused. “And really, Ari, you can’t run away from your problems. There must be other ways to ‘start fresh,’ as you say.”
“There aren’t. I’ve looked.”
“Keep looking. You can find them. I know you can.”
I felt my throat close up. She did this, my mom. She made assumptions about what I was capable of, what I could handle. I knew she was trying to lift me up, but it only felt like more pressure at a time when I didn’t need more pressure.
Suddenly I was climbing over Dani—her black crayon scraped my leg—and rushing out the door to the street. I may have said, “Excuse me,” at some point, but I wasn’t sure to whom, or why.
I sat down on a bench outside the restaurant, grabbed my head with my hands, looked at the purple of my boots against the pavement. What would Satina do right here? Would she go back in and fight for her cause with a perfectly articulated speech?
The front door swung open, and I saw my mother’s sandals appear on the sidewalk. Then Dani’s sequined Mary Janes next to them. A cheap shot that Mom would bring Dani, or more likely, let her follow. Like she’d lawyered up. It was always harder for me to lose it around Dani, which was, you know, both good and bad.
“My problems,” I said.
“What?” asked Mom.
“You said my problems. Call it depression, Mom. It’s not like pneumonia or Lyme disease, the stuff you help people with. You don’t have a case of it, then get cured.”
It haunts you, I wanted to add. Like a ghost that refuses to move out of the only house it’s ever known.
Silence. Mom sank down onto the bench and said, “I know about depression, Ari.” Her voice was heavy and even, laced thick with extra meaning. I knew she knew. I’d been there when she went through it, but we never talked about that.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. Or to myself. Or to the wood on the bench beneath me, where someone had pen-carved I love u JP u so HOT.
“I just need things to go smoothly this summer,” said Mom. “My job, you know. I love it. But it’s tough, Ari. Really tough. What makes it easier is knowing I can count on you.”
“You can,” I said, and meant it. I couldn’t not mean it.
“Also, I like the idea of you working with Richard. So he can . . .”
“Keep an eye on me?”
“I was going to say support you. If you need it.”
I didn’t plan on needing it, but I was glad she was thinking about what I might need.
“So we’re okay?” Mom pressed. “The store, like we all planned?”
It wasn’t worth it. The fight, the resentment, the lingering anger all summer. I’d been stupid to think there was a flicker of a shadow of hope.
“Yes,” I said.
“Here,” said Dani, holding up the kids’ menu. “I gave Shelly a blue mohawk this time. I want you to have it.”
I took the drawing from her and rumpled her hair. “Thanks, baby. He looks badass. I love it.”
I stood up and put one boot in front of the other. Mom reached for the door to go back inside and held it open for us.
“Don’t say ‘badass’ around Dani,” she whispered to me as I walked by.
On the second floor of Seamus Fitzpatrick Memorial High School, there was an alcove. Unremarkable, to be honest, with its regulation water fountain and bulletin board. Most people walked by it two, three, maybe four times a day. But Kendall and I used it for rushed, heated mini-conferences between classes. We’d trade gossip or the guilty pleasure of a joke at some kid’s expense, but only because one of us really, really needed the laugh. Like when Kendall had to regroup after finding out she’d gotten a low grade or didn’t understand a class lecture.
It was our place. Even though we hadn’t been there
for a while, this hadn’t changed.
Kendall texted me on the Tuesday after the long weekend.
Meet me at the alcove before English.
I went gladly and arrived first.
“So,” she said, walking up to me, hugging her copy of The Scarlet Letter. “It’s taken you a full year to exchange more sentences with Camden Armstrong in a humiliating restroom mix-up. What’s next?”
I bit my lip hard, trying to figure out which of eight different ways to begin. “This sounds crazy, but I think I could actually talk to him now.”
“That’s how to spin it! See it as an icebreaker, not a tragedy.”
“For all I know, he’s with someone. Maybe Eliza, still.”
Kendall smiled her old smile for me. “Even if he is, that doesn’t mean you can’t get to know him.” Now she grew serious. “Life is short. Summers are even shorter. We’re going to be seniors in a couple of weeks. Don’t you think it’s time to start doing whatever the hell we want to?”
Kendall had earned the right to say that, I knew. My friend was smart and insightful and creative—her newspaper essays and personality pieces were legendary—but distracted and disorganized when it came to actual schoolwork. She was fun and drop-dead witty, a girl who held her own against three older brothers, but for some reason got quiet and awkward around guys. This meant she hadn’t yet secured the boyfriend she so desperately wanted. I could tell she was fed up with wanting.
I glanced sideways to the river of students rushing past, glimpsed the top of a dark, shaggy head moving toward us. Something stirred on the back of my neck even though of course, of course, Camden would not be in my school. It was just some kid with a vaguely similar non-haircut, a sophomore who suddenly seemed much more attractive than he used to be.
“It’s not that easy for me,” I finally said to Kendall, hoping she would get it. I was not going to be making ice-cream cones for everyone in town or collecting multicolored golf balls out of a fake pond. I would have very little time where I wasn’t being relied upon by a family member. She could do whatever the hell she wanted to, but I could not.
What Happens Now Page 3
