by Karen Rivers
“You are breathing,” she reminded herself. “It just doesn’t feel like you are.” She tried holding her breath. That was definitely worse, so she let it out and pretended she didn’t mind that it felt like she was drowning.
She got out of bed slowly and walked over to the bathroom. She had stuck the two photographs of Beau on her mirror with sticky tape. She didn’t know exactly why. Who wants their dead teenage grandfather looking at them while they pee?
“Avert your eyes,” she told him. “I’m sorry you’re dead. I sure wish you hadn’t drunk that Kool-Aid.”
Even though her head hurt like crazy, she felt good.
She felt good because she knew what she was going to do and it was going to fix things between her and kit, once and for all. It was her apology. It was bigger than a cookie. And better, she thought, but then she felt mean for thinking it. The cookie had been great. Anyway, kit had nothing to apologize for.
Kit was the unicorn.
Hanging on the shower rack was the dress that she and Jorge had made out of old jeans that she bought in a big bin at the Goodwill and washed in super hot water because Jorge said that if she didn’t, she’d get scabies, which was a terrible thing to say and probably not true, but she didn’t want to take the chance. She was itchy just thinking about it.
She’d cut all the jeans up and pinned them and Jorge had sewed them into the dress. He was really, really good at sewing, good enough that he could be on TV on a reality fashion show, and he’d probably win. She’d almost suggested it, but then she remembered about how terrible reality TV was when you were on it.
She watched the fabric race through the foot of the sewing machine while his fingers pulled it this way and that, like they knew exactly what to do. “How do you know how to do that?” she asked, and he just shrugged, like it was nothing. “It’s not nothing,” she added. “It’s something.”
“Shhh,” he said. “I’m concentrating.”
Her mom saw them working on the dress and said, “What are you making?”
Jorge told her, “Grandma’s wedding dress” and Mom had laughed.
Her mom had so many different kinds of laughs. The laugh about the wedding dress meant, “I don’t know why you’re doing that but I think it’s a lovely idea!”
Clem had laughed, too, and Jorge had looked up and said, “Why are you both laughing?” which had made them laugh harder. Then Clem had held up Forky and taken a picture for her Pictasnap. #fashionfork, she tagged it.
That was the fun part, Clem thought. And now it was time to get ready, to finally wear the dress, which was terrifying because it wasn’t just wearing the dress. It was also singing the song. What had she gotten herself into? “Bananas,” she said out loud. “This whole thing is bananas.”
Then she made a face. “You dummy,” she said. She stuck out her tongue at herself in the mirror.
“Sorry,” she said to the photo of Beau, in case he thought that was directed at him. Then she laughed. “You’re not even alive! Why am I apologizing to you?”
Clem flushed the toilet and then washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth. Her hair was extra curly, so she dunked her head under the tap, too, and the cold water made rivulets down her face when she stood up. She combed it as well as she could and patted it down. “Be good,” she told it. Then she did two braids at the front like Grandma had in the picture. It felt important to do that. This wasn’t just for kit, it was also for Beau even though he would never know about it. Obviously. He didn’t even know she existed. Can dead people know things?
“Why’d you go and die? You missed all the good stuff, like watching your granddaughter—” she paused. “That’s me, your granddaughter—watching me sing in the talent show.”
Clem sat down on the counter. She had to decide how to do her makeup, either like Grandma in the photo or like herself. “Be yourself!” she said, sternly. “Everyone else is taken!” Then she fake laughed. They sold magnets in One Buck Chuck that said things like that. Dumb things that were meant to be inspirational. People loved them.
She could wear no makeup and be Old Clem. She could wear show makeup and be Acrobat Clem, like people would be expecting. Or she could put on her now-everyday eyeliner and be New Clem. Or she could do something different.
She leaned back against the wall.
Without makeup on, she looked pale and flimsy, like she wasn’t all the way there, like the old photos of Beau that were faded by light and time. “We are both ghosts,” she told him.
Clem took the dress down from the shower bar and put it on. Jorge had done a really good job. The dress fit her perfectly. She even looked a little like Grandma. Not Grandma now, in her white stretchy cruise dresses and wide-legged pants but Grandma then.
Grandma: The Denim Years.
Clem leaned closer to the mirror, and she started to put on her makeup. Her head was still aching, but it wasn’t as bad. When she was done, she thought she looked good. She didn’t look like Old Clem, who looked like Jorge, or New Clem, who wore too much eyeliner.
“Clem 2.0,” she said.
She took out the vial of Good Luck potion that they still had leftover from TMTFIA. It hadn’t worked that time, or maybe it had. She was lucky that she hadn’t died. She was lucky she didn’t break her neck. So maybe it had worked, after all.
She dabbed some on her wrist. It smelled really nice. It smelled like roses and ice cream and pancakes. It smelled exactly like what luck should smell like.
kit
Kit was on the fire escape.
She had gone up and down three times and she was getting winded. The last time, she peeled off the note about the TV. There were millions of TVs in Brooklyn for the Batman guy to steal. Why would he steal theirs?
Maybe that’s why her mom always pictured bad things happening, she realized. By imagining them happening, she also stopped them from happening. But kit wasn’t her mom. She didn’t want to be her mom.
“I’m a naked mole rat!” she said. “I’m a superhero!” Which didn’t feel quite true. It felt like she was trying to convince herself of it.
The rain had smudged the ink on the note and the paper was soggy. She crumpled it up in her hand and squeezed, then she climbed back into the apartment through the window and jumped down to the kitchen floor. The plants cast gray shadows on the floor that looked like dirt.
Kit was wearing her lucky hoodie and favorite jeans. She knew she should probably wear something fancy or different—maybe high heels like her mom was wearing on her album cover—but it seemed more important that she was wearing something comfortable.
Today was a big day.
It was the biggest day of her life so far.
Her heart beat faster, just thinking about it.
Kit put on her skates and then clunked down the stairs and swooped into the office. She checked Clem’s Pictasnap and “liked” her picture of the #fashionfork.
Then she remembered what she’d been meaning to check. She Googled, “Does tiger pee smell like popcorn?”
Her mom came in. “What are you doing?”
The answer popped up on the screen. “Did you know that tiger pee smells like popcorn?”
“That is a very weird thing to Google,” her mom said. “Listen, after the talent show, let’s go to Dal’s. We didn’t do our celebration dinner the other night. Let’s do it tonight.”
“Really? Go there? Like . . . out?”
“Like out.”
“Mom,” said kit.
“What?”
“Nothing! Can we invite the Garcias?”
“Sure, why not?”
On her way out, Kit handed Samara the printout with the information for the talent show. “You’ll walk over with Mom, right?”
Samara took the paper. She looked sad and thoughtful. “Oh, kit.”
“It’s fine if she can�
��t or whatever! But she promised she would!”
Samara handed back the paper. She stepped closer and she cupped kit’s face in her hands. “Kit,” she said. “I love you like you are my own daughter. I will come to your show. But I can’t promise for your mom. Remember what we talked about?”
Kit pushed Samara’s hands away. “Mom said she’d come, so she’ll come, okay? She told me she would.”
She turned the computer off with her foot.
She didn’t say goodbye.
She had just stomped up the stairs, Clem-style.
Maybe she was in the phase now, the mad phase, and she was going to be as loud as she needed to be.
If anyone got her mom, it was kit.
She knew her mom was going to try to come to the talent show, that something had changed to do with the song being on the radio and the money arriving in the mail.
Her mom was lighter again.
Happier again.
Everything was going to get normal.
Kit could tell.
What did Samara know?
It was just happening slowly, that’s how change worked.
Kit was going to sing for her mom tonight, just like she knew her mom wanted her to.
She was going to show her mom that if she, kit, could be on stage, then being on stage wasn’t scary and if being on stage wasn’t scary, then being outside certainly wasn’t anything to worry about either.
Kit liked how it made a full circle, how her mom’s fears had started with her own stage fright and they would end with kit being on stage.
It was all going to work out perfectly, kit just knew. But she went into the bathroom and rubbed a few drops of Courage on her wrists, just in case.
Clem
Clem blinked under the bright lights.
It felt like she had been standing there forever, even though it had only been a few seconds.
She could see kit waiting in the wings.
Clem was singing this song for kit.
The song was “Girls With Wings.”
She took a deep breath.
The spotlights went off and then turned on again, illuminating only Clem. She tried to keep breathing.
She let the notes of the music start playing.
What if she forgot the words?
She smiled, even though it was the last thing that she felt like doing. She told herself if it really went wrong, maybe she could just move to Australia and start a cult of people who never ever had to sing on stage.
Then she heard her cue, and without thinking, she started to sing.
kit
Kit’s mom did not come.
Kit watched Samara come into the auditorium, look around, and sit down.
This is not what is supposed to happen, kit thought.
She was distracted by her mom not being there, so it took her a second to realize that Clem was singing her mom’s song.
How could Clem sing kit’s mom’s song without asking kit first?
What a jerk! kit thought. What a selfish jerk!
She might have said it out loud. She hoped she hadn’t shouted it.
Clem sang the song so beautifully. She was singing it a thousand times better than kit could sing it.
The audience was totally silent, held still by Clem’s powerful, magical voice.
Kit couldn’t think what to do. She knew she was going to panic and she couldn’t stop it from happening.
She listened to Clem’s voice rising and falling and the words to her mom’s song and she tried not to cry.
“K.i.t.,” she reminded herself. “Keep It Together.”
She pictured her mom’s tattoo in her mind, the vines that wound around her mom’s wrist. “It was a map that led me to you,” she imagined her mom saying. “You saved me.” But her mom was wrong. Kit hadn’t saved her, she wasn’t even here.
Her mom was good at saying stuff prettily like that, making it sound like a poem when really, it didn’t mean anything.
Kit got off her seat where she was waiting for her turn to go on the stage and she walked around behind the curtain. Clem’s voice rose and fell in all the right places. She didn’t know what to do. She wished she hadn’t come. She thought about leaving. Who would care? Who would notice?
Kit heard Clem stop singing and then the audience clapped loudly for a really long time. Someone shouted, “Bravo!” There was whistling.
Then Clem appeared, practically tumbling into kit’s lap. “Did you hear it? It’s the song of your mom’s that we always used to sing!” She looked so flushed and happy that kit didn’t know what to do with her anger.
She felt like Clem had stolen something that belonged to her.
“I heard,” said kit. “It’s my mom’s song.”
Clem hesitated. The smile fell off her face. “Are you mad? I mean, I did it for you. I thought you’d think . . . Sorry.”
“I was going to sing it! Now I don’t have an act!”
“What?”
“I don’t feel good,” kit said. “I have to go. Tell them I’m sick.”
“Are you going to pass out?”
Kit squinted at Clem. She wanted to say something, she just didn’t know what. She shook her head.
“You did a really good job,” kit said. She could feel that she was starting to shake. Clem had sung the song so beautifully. Kit loved it and hated it in exactly equal amounts.
“It was supposed to be for you,” said Clem. “If this was a movie, you’d cry and hug me.”
Kit pulled her hood tight over her head. “I’m sick.”
“You look like a turtle,” said Clem, sitting next to her. “Don’t be a turtle!”
“Funny,” kit said, because actually laughing seemed impossible.
Mr. Hamish’s voice crackled out of the speakers. “Up next, we have Kit Hardison.”
“I thought you were going to do riddles,” Clem said.
“I wanted it to be a surprise for my mom.”
“Is she here?”
Kit shook her head. She was dizzy. Oh no, she thought. She tried to take deep, calming breaths but it wasn’t working.
“It’s supposed to happen slowly,” she said.
“What is?” said Clem, from very far away.
Kit knew she was going to faint.
Or, more accurately, kit knew she wasn’t going to faint.
Kit knew what was happening and it was much worse (and better) than fainting.
“Oh no,” she said out loud.
She was smaller.
And then smaller.
She started to run.
“KIT!” Clem shouted.
But kit was already running.
Clem wouldn’t understand, she couldn’t.
Kit had to get home.
Her mom was at home.
Her mom would know what to do.
Her mom would understand.
Her mom would be able to save her.
That’s how it was supposed to be anyway: Moms save their kids, not the other way around.
Clem
Kit looked super pale and somehow smaller than usual.
Clem couldn’t figure out what her friend’s face was doing.
“Are you mad?” she said. She’d meant for the song to be a thing. Something that was their thing. Like a non-turtle-y turtle. Like all of their things. “Did I mess up?”
It was like picking out a great gift for someone and spending all your money on it and having them ask you if you had the receipt so they could return it.
Mr. Banks poked his head around the corner. “You’re up next, son.” He was talking to kit, who didn’t even seem to see him.
“She’s a girl,” said Clem.
“Huh?” said Mr. Banks.
“Never
mind,” said Clem. She rolled her eyes. “Are you going to pass out?” she asked kit.
Kit didn’t answer. She was holding her hands over her ears and her face was all scrunched up. She said something that Clem didn’t understand.
Clem had taken first aid—her parents made her and Jorge both do it for their twelfth birthday—and she tried to wrack her brain for what this might be. All she could think of was a stroke. “Hold out your hands!” she said.
Instead, kit weirdly dropped to all fours. “KIT!” Clem shouted. Dropping to all fours was not in her stroke training. “What are you doing?”
And then before Clem could figure out what was happening or what to do next, kit disappeared through the door that led outside. Clem turned around, looking for Jorge, but he wasn’t there. “Jorge!” she yelled. She always thought better when he was with her to help her think. “JORGE!” She pushed open the door kit had gone through, nearly smacking right into Jackson.
“Where is kit?”
“She ran,” Clem said. She felt out of breath. “Didn’t she run right by you? I bet she went home.”
“Is she sick?”
“I don’t know! I don’t think so, but maybe?”
“Hang on, I’m grabbing Max and then we can go check and see if she’s ok.”
He disappeared, then reappeared, dragging a gigantic black dog whose tongue was lolling crookedly out of his mouth, like it had been removed and put back in slightly the wrong place. He was beautiful.
Clem sneezed, three times in a row.
“This is Max.”
“You have to keep him away from me,” Clem said. “I’m allergic.” Then she murmured “Good boy” to Max, just to see if kit was right about dogs smiling.
Max smiled.
“Come on!” said Jackson, who was already moving.
Clem realized that she was still standing there. Why wasn’t she running? She took a big breath and started to run, faster and harder than she’d ever run before.
kit
The world streaked by kit like lightning. Cars, buses, bikes, people, dogs, leaves, garbage, rats. She ran faster than ever and it seemed like it only took seconds and she was at the salon, running up the stairs over a giant empty Doritos bag, tumbling toward the entrance.
