by Jaime Reed
“Mom, Stacey’s here! We’ll be upstairs,” I yelled. Then I led her to my room by the arm before Mom could reply, make small talk, or ask me about my headache again.
Upstairs, I locked the door and rested my back against the wood. Dinner with the folks shouldn’t make people exhausted, but I needed a breather. Stacey was nothing if not a breath of fresh air.
“Well, since my powers of persuasion don’t work anymore, I might as well get comfy. This fabric’s itchy anyway.” She tossed off her nurse’s cap, and an ombré of brunette and blond waves fell to the middle of her back.
“I can’t believe you drove to my house dressed like that.”
“What? This?” She scoffed. “Girl, please. I’ve gone to school in worse. But that’s another story for another day.” She dropped her ginormous shoulder bag on the bed and headed toward my dresser.
While she paraded around my room as if she lived here, my gaze floated around the papered walls and the strange fashion paraphernalia. My attention fell on a magazine ad for gold platform stilettos. Cute style, but nowhere close to functional. Kinda like me in that respect. “Was I trying to be a model or what?” I asked her.
“Nope, you’re not tall enough,” she said as she pulled out a baggy T-shirt and shorts from my drawer. “You prefer to make the dresses, not wear them.”
“When did this happen? Last time I checked, I wanted to be an engineer like Dad.”
“No, Dad wanted you to be an engineer like Dad,” she rephrased and tied the drawstring of the shorts. “It’s all in the proper nouns, snookums.”
I flinched in sudden horror. “Does he know that?”
“Look at your room, El.” She swept a hand across the open space. “It’s not exactly a cold case for the FBI. Maybe he thinks it’s a phase and that part of your memory might stay lost. I, for one, hope it doesn’t. I want free shoes.” She winked at me.
I shook my head, but smiled at the normalness of it all. After I’d woken up in the hospital, people I’d known for years suddenly appeared thinner, older, fatter, taller, with subtle nuances in their faces that displayed the progression of time. Even I had changed, with curves I didn’t recall, though I was still too skinny to be in a music video. These modifications brought on countless hours of staring. I’d traveled two years into the future with no way to get back.
Everything else around me might have changed, but Stacey stayed exactly the same—no kid gloves or avoiding the obvious. Even before the accident, I relied on that consistency. It was a solid central point that I could focus on while the world spun around me.
“God, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.
Stacey pulled a T-shirt over her head then paused. “Uh-oh. What happened now?”
“Can’t I be happy to see my best friend?”
“I don’t know. Could you actually smile when you say that?” she replied. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Just the same old crap, different day. And now my parents want me to go to cognitive therapy,” I said in my mother’s yawning drawl.
“Is that like meditation or something?”
“I wish. It’s sitting in a cold, sterile office with fake plants, clipboards, and paperwork, and people asking me a bunch of stupid questions I don’t know the answers to.” I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Why can’t they let me figure it out on my own?”
“That would mean thinking for yourself, and we simply can’t have that in the Dawson household.” She spoke in a deep voice in a bad parody of Dad.
I tried to crack a smile, but a molten-hot blade of pain had embedded itself into the left side of my skull. My body locked instantly and I took quick, shallow sips of air as I waited for this episode to end. In reality, my migraines ran in ten-minute bursts, but this kind of eye-watering agony held no concept of time. My brain had a heartbeat, each pulse shooting fire to every nerve ending in my body, until finally, mercifully, I would pass out.
“Here. Open up.” I heard Stacey’s voice as if it were from a parallel dimension, then came the rattle of a pill bottle, followed by the snap, twist, and hiss of a carbonated drink she’d brought with her.
I opened my eyes a sliver and found her standing in front of me, holding two orange tablets in one hand and a bottle of root beer in the other. I had three prescription pill bottles sitting on my bedside table, but Stacey managed to find the right one. She also had the foresight to close the curtains so the room was in semidarkness. Noise, light, movement, and human interaction were sworn enemies of the dreaded migraine. Pain had a huge ego and it wouldn’t settle for less than your full attention. No distractions. No escape.
I opened my mouth and allowed her to feed me my meds and the soda like I was a helpless infant. Keeping my eyes closed, I let her lead me to the bed. I hated for her to see me so weak, but it was hard to act proud when pain robbed you of speech.
I lay on my back across the bed with a pillow over my face until the worst was over. And Stacey, bless her heart, remained at my side the whole time. After twenty minutes of welcome silence, the pain had become less acute and had begun to distribute evenly around my entire skull. She waited another five minutes before asking if I was feeling better.
“Getting there,” I grumbled through the pillow.
“Okay, this sucks. We need to take your mind off the pain.” I heard her rummaging inside her purse.
I poked my head from my hiding place as she pulled out a white paper bag covered with greasy stains. Upon seeing the restaurant logo on the front, my eyes lit up. “I love you.”
“I know.” She passed me the bag. “You want me to feed you again?”
“I’m good.” I unraveled the top of the bag and the mouth-watering scent of onion rings filled my nostrils. During the past month of practically living off nuts and berries, I would’ve killed for anything like this—deep-fried and swimming in hot sauce. This was what heaven smelled like.
Stacey grabbed her own bag and lay on her back next to me as I shoved a donut-sized ring in my mouth in one bite. No further medical weirdness was discussed.
As we ate, Stacey played soft music from her phone while I tried to figure out how to operate mine. It was frustrating, not to mention annoying, since the thing would chime every time someone posted on my Facebook wall and I couldn’t remember how to turn off the notification.
“Here, give me that.” Stacey snatched my phone and then, with a few taps, the phone was silent.
She frowned at the post that I’d written that morning: I’m still alive, y’all. Chill.
“Really? That’s all you wrote?” Stacey asked. “No one in school has heard from you in weeks, and that’s your only response?”
“I don’t know what else to say. And what they’re all dying to know is none of their business.”
“Hmm. The price of fame, I guess,” she muttered, then popped an onion ring in her mouth.
I had over three hundred friends on Facebook and could only point out twelve of them. There was Stacey, of course, and eight other girls I’d met in elementary school. A girl I couldn’t stand in junior high was now a friend and had posted encouraging messages on my wall. Get well soon and Hope you’re okay were splashed all over my timeline from people who believed I was dying or on life support. I must’ve been pretty popular to merit this much attention, but then tragedy could make people a celebrity overnight.
“Anyway, back to this eighties thing.” Stacey pulled up Facebook pictures on her own phone. “We have the Decades Celebration in school every year in the spring—fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties—all week long. Everybody dresses up and there’s a bunch of parties around town based on the theme. Here’s last year’s Seventies Day.” Stacey pointed to a picture of me wearing bell-bottoms and an afro so big it covered my eyes. The best part was my hair, unstraightened, with the curls picked out.
In the photo, Liam stood behind me with his arms around my waist. He was also rocking bell-bottoms and a disco shirt that busied the eye wit
h psychedelic colors.
Who were these happy people? How exactly did their paths cross? And what was Lessthanthree? Liam had posted those three words—mashed into one—in a comment under the picture.
I consulted my own photo albums and found shots of me posing for school activities and games, none of which I could remember. Then I came upon one of me, Stacey, and Liam in another set of weird outfits, standing in front of a row of lockers at school and making faces at the camera. I wore a sideways ponytail with bangs that were teased to the heavens and … Were those stonewashed jeans?
“Hold up. What am I wearing and why, and how come you let me go out of the house looking like that? I need answers.” I showed the image to Stacey.
“The nineties, El. What’d you expect? We dressed up like the cast from Saved by the Bell. You were Lisa, I was Kelly, of course, ’cause I’m awesome, and Liam was Zack. You had to pin him down and load a gallon of gel into his hair to get it to look like that. He was not a happy camper.”
“He looks happy,” I said, more to myself than to Stacey. Liam had a nice smile, bright and playful. And, wow, he wasn’t kidding about us being close. He and I were in nearly every picture together.
As I swiped through the slide show of hugs, smiles, and kisses, I began to feel like I was reading a stranger’s diary. It felt personal, intimate, and I had no business spying on someone else’s life.
Stacey’s next comment interrupted my thoughts. “Yeah, Liam’s always happy when you’re around. Any other time, he’s all like, ‘Dude, life is like an empty can of suck. It makes a bunch of noise, but there’s nothing in it. No one else feels and thinks and bleeds like I do and I use big words so I can be even more misunderstood. Wah, wah, wah,’ ” she mocked, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“You plan on talking to him sometime this century?” Stacey went on. “Your phone works now, so you can’t use that excuse anymore.”
“Why do I have to do the calling?” I stuffed more onion rings in my mouth and tried to ignore the shocked look on Stacey’s face.
“Yeah, because touching base with your boyfriend is so weird,” she muttered.
“Boyfriend? That title doesn’t really suit a total stranger, now does it?” My thumb busily swiped the screen until her heated glare became too intense to ignore. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m not ready to go there with him, okay? And he’s not exactly beating down my door to talk to me either.”
Shaking her head, she gathered our trash and stuffed it into her purse. Normally, she would’ve tossed it into the wastebasket, but I couldn’t risk Mom finding greasy fast-food bags in my room. One benefit to carrying superlarge purses: They were great for smuggling contraband.
When Stacey got to her feet and headed toward the door, I asked, “Wait, are you going to help me sort through these pictures or not?”
“Can’t stay long. My parents are making me go to Kevin’s school play tonight. Family support or whatever.”
The boy version of Stacey with big gray eyes and rosy cheeks popped in my head, an image that I realized was outdated. “He’s like eleven now, right?”
“Twelve and about to go missing,” she grumbled.
“Don’t be like that. Kevin’s so cute. I wish I had a little brother.” I smiled at the idea of a house full of siblings.
“Really? ’Cause I’ll be more than happy to pack his stuff and drop him off later. A lot has changed while you’ve been out, Sleeping Beauty. You’ve got some catching up to do. Liam could help you with that if you’d let him.” She grabbed her nurse dress and red pumps and cradled the load in her arms. “Oh, and go watch that Ferris Bueller movie. It’s on Netflix. I’ll call you later.”
“Wait—”
“Good luck.” She blew me a kiss and waved.
“Stacey!”
“Buh-bye now.” Still wearing my T-shirt and shorts, she closed the door behind her and left.
Too lazy and drugged to chase her down, I called out again, to which she replied in song, “Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen … ”
I recognized the song from somewhere, maybe a commercial. But the melody faded then disappeared upon the closing of the front door.
I was once again alone with my thoughts, which was the last place I wanted to be. According to the calendar, I was sixteen now, so that meant Stacey and I had been joined at the hip for almost a decade. That is, if you included missing two years that were unaccounted for. Just like that—learning how to drive, my sweet-sixteen party, all of my ninth- and tenth-grade class credits—poof! Gone. These were supposed to be the best years of my life, and I couldn’t recall most of them. What other experiences had been stolen from me? What other friendships, bonds, and trusts had been stripped away?
One person came to mind. His sad blue eyes watched me every morning, neither advancing nor retreating, but waiting for the return of Ellia Dawson. It seemed that everyone was waiting for her grand comeback, including me. My life wasn’t the only one that was at a standstill, and it was hard to tell what was worse: forgetting or being forgotten.
The double doors swung open and more students filed into the library. Lifting my eyes from my notebook, I inspected each face that cut between the bookshelves. None of them matched the person I was waiting for. Sighing, I leaned back in the chair and reread the only words I’d written on the page.
“Either you’re running from something or running to something. Whatever the case is, it better be worth all the huffing and puffing.”
Ellia always had something snarky to say about my fitness routine and then ended up running with me anyway. But this particular sentiment had haunted me for weeks. It could be because it was one of the last things she said to me before the accident. Or it could be because it was absolutely true, at least in my case.
I’d been active all my life. As a kid, I would race around the grocery store or the waiting room of the doctor’s office. You know that toddler who was led around the mall by a leash and harness, or that hyper five-year-old who kept kicking the back of your airplane seat for the whole flight? That was me. Eventually, I found a way to channel all that pent-up energy through sports: Little League, football, soccer, tennis, and track and field.
The overall theme here was motion, in that it always had to be happening. It’s the only truth I could understand. Living things moved. A pulse. A breath. A purpose. Movement was a life condition.
The only thing that ran more than my body was my mind, which was why I was rarely seen without a notebook in my hand. My notebook was my best friend, my first love, and the mother of my children. Our offspring: the award-winning screenplay that sounded better in my head, the next great American novel that wasn’t finished, a bunch of emo poems, that messed-up dream I had last night, or some superdeep quote I’d thought up on the drive to school that morning. They were just minor fixations, a practice run to what would be my grand achievement.
I was going to write the story of me and Ellia, how we met, how we fell in love—the whole nine. It would be an epic tale of love found and lost—the real, raw accounts that were always glossed over in romantic comedies. And what better muse for my creation than the most fascinating girl I’d ever met?
I smiled at the picture of her I drew in my head—small features with an elfin impression, a halo of thick black curls, and warm brown eyes that held your gaze even when you had nothing interesting to say. Delicate as she might appear, she pulled no punches. If she didn’t like you, she would not only tell you to your face, she’d also list examples to help you understand why you sucked as a human being. An encyclopedia’s worth of text couldn’t capture the world that was Ellia Renée Dawson, but I would try my best in 30,000 words.
This was what kept me busy while waiting for Stacey Levine to show up for our revision session after school. I promised Stacey that I’d help with her book report, but the girl was the queen of tardy. Patience was not one of my greater virtues, and I would’ve bounced fifteen minutes ago if I wasn’t being extorted.
/> I’d been hounding Stacey for updates on Ellia’s recovery for weeks, and Stacey felt that her new role as an informant deserved compensation.
“What’s up, Hemingway,” came the high-pitched voice from over my head, followed by the slam of a duffle bag posing as a purse on the table. You’d think she was running away from home with all the junk she had in that thing.
My gaze lifted from her bag to a curvy brunette who had given up the pretense of being a natural blond. She pulled out a chair across from me, plopped down, then proceeded to scrutinize my attire. “Dude, you ever heard of beauty rest? You look like roadkill in the microwave set on high.”
“And you look like something made by Mattel,” I replied, immediately jumping into our usual pleasantries. “You do know we had a study group at three o’clock, right?”
“Yeah,” she answered and pulled pens and highlighters out of her bag.
“And you do know that three o’clock happened like forty minutes ago, right?” I pointed to the clock over the checkout desk. “I can’t even give you the second-grade, little-hand-on-the-three, big-hand-on-the-twelve bit, because all the clocks in this school are digital. You could not have missed the number three and two zeros.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I had to do something real quick and I ran late and then my phone died and I had to find somewhere to charge it, so I couldn’t call you,” she explained in one breath.
I shook my head. “What’s with you girls and your phone issues? I saw Ellia the other day, and she needed help with hers.”
“Really? You actually worked up the nerve to finally visit her? About time!” she cheered, much to the annoyance of everyone reading in the library. “Does this mean I’m no longer your mole?” she asked.
“Aw, but you make such an adorable rodent.” I sighed. “And no, you’re still on retainer. I didn’t go to see her—well, not formally. I was out for my jog and she came out to meet me.”
Stacey threw her head back and let out a loud groan. “Liam, Liam, Liam. Why don’t you just go over to her house and talk to her?”
