Micah: The Good Girl

by Ashley Woodfolk

  “And hand over your phone, too, while you’re at it, because I doubt you can pay this bill with what you make at that camp.”

  That hurt. Micah started to plead with her father, but one look at him told her she was fighting a losing battle. She pulled it out of her pocket, and her father had to almost pry it out of her hand.

  “Speaking of camp—you’ll still be going to work every day, but I’ll be asking Sister Patrice to reassign you to the older campers. You clearly have too much time on your hands working with the four- and five-year-olds if you can sneak off with that boy. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  Micah had begged to be assigned to the younger kids because they were easier—sweet-faced and kind, covered in finger paint and innocence. She wasn’t looking forward to the ten- to twelve-year-olds, who were noisier and meaner and too close to her own age for her to effectively boss them around.

  “And I think you’ll be doing a few extra chores around here, too.” This came from her mother. “While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little kissing—” Her father shot her mom a look, and Michelle Dupree shrugged and said, “What? I don’t.”

  “United front, Shellie,” her dad said a little under his breath, but Micah still heard. “We’re supposed to be presenting a united front.”

  Her mother patted her dad on the arm before turning back to Micah. “But what I do have a problem with is you ducking your responsibilities at work. So maybe a little extra responsibility is what the doctor ordered. Make sure you’re home by six. You’ll be grocery shopping and helping me with dinner every night next week.”

  Micah swallowed hard then. “Even next Saturday?” she asked.

  Her father finally looked directly at her; he’d been avoiding it since they’d gotten home. Something in his face softened and he turned to look at her mother, who put a hand on her dad’s shoulder.

  Saturday was the anniversary.

  “No, honey,” her mother said. Michelle Dupree’s normally silky-smooth voice now sounded more like a cracked vase or splintered glass. “We’ll be doing something different on Saturday.”

  Micah nodded but didn’t ask any other questions. “Okay. I’m really, really sorry. For everything.”

  * * *

  In her bedroom, Micah spun in a circle with her eyes closed. Her flouncy skirt twirled around her like a spinning top and her short hair floated around her ears like wings. She was crying, but something about spinning always made her feel better.

  After getting into trouble, she DM’d her friends from her computer to let them know she was basically under house arrest until further notice. Tobyn had said NOOOOOO and Noelle had sent a row of laughing emojis. Lux had just sent SMH, and then, Are your parents for real? If I was their kid, they’d realize how lucky they are to have you. I should have my dad call them. They’d all laughed at that, and it had even made Micah smile through her tears. They canceled their plans to come to the roof tomorrow afternoon, and she told them she’d see them the following week, when I get my life back.

  She DM’d Ty, too, telling him about what happened when she’d gotten home. I probably won’t see you as much at camp. My dad’s gonna get Sister Patrice to assign me to another classroom.

  Boooooo, he sent. Does this make you wanna put the brakes on what we talked about the other night? If this is what your parents do when you get caught kissing, I don’t even want to think about what could happen if they caught us . . .

  No, Micah sent. I think I still want to.

  Okay, Ty replied. Then we’ll figure something out. I’ll miss you at camp.

  Micah put her headphones on and blasted her music, like Dr. Patel had told her to do when she felt like she might panic. While she felt a little sad to have let her parents down, she was mostly upset that she’d gotten caught. She didn’t know how she’d make it a whole week, especially this week, without a cell phone. Micah already wished she could talk to someone, but she worried that her parents would take away her computer if they saw her on that, too.

  She wiped her tears and peeked out into the hallway. Her parents were in the living room and the news blared loudly on the television. She tiptoed out of her room and down the hall. She pushed open Milo’s door.

  “They’re mad at me,” Micah said to her brother’s empty bedroom. She’d brought the sketchbook with her, so she turned on the lamp beside his bed, opened the book, and peered down at it where it sat on her lap.

  “I can’t believe they took my phone,” she complained. “Did they ever take your phone from you? No,” Micah said, answering her own question. “No. Because you were perfect and never did anything wrong.”

  Micah had always liked church and following the rules for the same reasons: Both gave her life order. They made things make sense. They quieted her anxiety because they made her feel like she had a little bit of control in an otherwise random universe. If she was good, if she followed the rules and made smart decisions and did as she was told, things would turn out good.

  But when Milo died, Micah’s whole world seemed out of control. Because he had always done everything right. He drew graffiti in his sketchbook instead of spray-painting the sides of buildings or subway tunnel walls. He attended Bible study and made straight As and applied to all the right schools. He’d never had a girlfriend despite being incredibly popular, despite everyone in the school wanting him. He’d focused on God and his grades and his art, just the way their parents wanted her to act.

  “Was it worth it?” she asked him now. “Doing everything they wanted? Didn’t you ever want to break the rules? Maybe you should have. Maybe you missed out, Mr. Perfect.” He’d hated when she called him that.

  She walked over, opened the fifth-story window, and leaned through. There were dozens of fireflies blinking on and off in the empty lot beside her building. It made the construction site look like it got dressed up for Christmas in July.

  Soon a new building would block this view, and Micah longed to stop time so she’d always be able to see the world through this window as her brother had. “The neighborhood’s changing,” she said. “Everywhere I look, everything keeps changing.” It wasn’t fair that his life stopped but nothing else did. Micah felt her eyes fill with tears, and it made something deep in her chest ache for the sound of Ty’s voice. In that moment, she knew she wouldn’t be like her brother. She’d changed, too. And she was determined not to miss out on anything.

  Micah was still grounded. But her parents allowed her to meet up with Lux for help with her senior project. Since Micah still felt pretty much at a loss about what to make, they’d decided to do something else to get their creative juices flowing.

  “Like this?” Micah asked Lux.

  “Yeah, but try to speed up,” Lux told her. “The slower the ropes turn, the more likely you are to mess up. When you’re jumping faster, it’s easier to fall into a good rhythm. Watch.”

  Double Dutch. Lux told Micah it always helped her clear her head, so Micah hoped it would do the same for her.

  She’d helped Lux make it through an intense photography class this past school year, and at the end of it all, Lux had offered to teach Micah how to jump rope over the summer. This was her first lesson. Selfishly, Micah wanted to hang out with Lux because she didn’t know much about Milo, and since she hates emotional stuff, Micah figured Lux wouldn’t try to make her talk about how she and her parents planned to spend the anniversary (unlike Tobyn and Noelle, who had already DM’d her about it).

  They’d tied one end of two thin cords to the fence at the park near Lux’s dad’s apartment and were taking turns turning the ropes and jumping. They switched spots again, and Lux jumped so fast, her legs seemed to blur. Micah wondered if she’d ever be as good as her friend.

  Just then, an ambulance sped by on the street next to the park. Micah suddenly stopped turning the ropes and they slapped Lux in the shins, hard. “Hey!”
Lux said. She leaned over and rubbed her legs. Micah had been hit with the ropes enough to know it stung. “Why’d you stop? I was on a roll!”

  Micah tried to slow her breathing. Luckily, she could blame it on the heat, the fact that she’d been turning the cords so quickly, and that they’d been jumping rope all afternoon. Lux still didn’t know about her panic attacks. “Can we take a break?” Micah asked.

  “Sure,” Lux said. She was out of breath, too, and she flopped down on the sheet in the grass they’d laid out next to where they were practicing.

  Micah reached for her bag and pulled out a water bottle.

  “Do you mind?” Lux asked. She was pointing to Milo’s sketchbook.

  “As long as you don’t ask me about the anniversary,” Micah said, sliding it toward Lux.

  Since Micah had taken the sketchbook, she’d been keeping it close. She flipped through it on the subway and looked at it on her walks to church for camp. It was the first thing she grabbed in the morning, and she tucked it under her pillow at night. But she hadn’t shown it to a single soul besides the time the girls grabbed it from her bag. She hadn’t even mentioned it to Dr. Patel yet. Lux turned the pages slowly. Lux had a photography portfolio that she cherished almost as much as Micah loved Milo’s sketches, so she knew how to handle art with care. It showed, the respect she had for the work in her hands. It made Micah feel good about sharing it with her.

  “He was so good,” Lux said, looking up.

  Micah swallowed hard. “Yeah” was all she could say.

  A comfortable silence settled over them as Lux kept flipping, and it continued even once she’d closed the book and handed it back to Micah. “Can I ask one thing?” Lux said.

  Micah knew what she wanted to know, that Lux would ask what happened a year ago. But before Micah could say she didn’t want to talk about it, Lux said, “Did he tell you what all the messages meant?”

  Now Micah looked confused. “Messages?” Micah asked.

  “Yeah. In his drawings.”

  Micah opened the book again. “What are you talking about?”

  “Like that,” Lux said, pointing to a page that she’d only seen for the first time that day but that Micah had looked at a few times before. Micah had never noticed, but at the bottom of the page was a line written in Milo’s tiny, messy handwriting. It fit into the narrow space of the curb where line-drawn versions of her parents were standing in the portrait. It was easy to miss if you didn’t know to look for it.

  Would you still love me if I believed in art more than God?

  “Whoa,” Micah said. She flipped to the next page: a sketch of a dog playing in an open fire hydrant. The thick lines that made up the spray of water hid another message.

  I wish finding joy was as easy as waiting for summer.

  She flipped forward to the beginning of the book and saw that there were more messages hidden on almost every page.

  I can’t talk to my friends the way I used to had been written along the edge of a page showing a bunch of little kids in a sandbox.

  People always talk about losing time, but sometimes I think that time is losing me was hiding inside the drawn bricks of their apartment building.

  “It’s like he was using it as a journal,” Lux said. “So he was, like, really emo, huh?”

  Micah slapped her friend’s arm. “Shut up. But yeah, it does look like it. I can’t believe I didn’t see these until now.”

  She and Lux looked at more of Milo’s sketchbook and found hidden messages in almost every single one.

  “I wonder what they all mean,” Micah said.

  “Why don’t we find out?” Lux asked.

  She pointed to a drawing of a boy with long dreadlocks leaning against a chain-link fence of a basketball court, the one closest to their apartment, laughing. Micah recognized him as Zero, Milo’s best friend. The message on that page read, You’re a work of art.

  “Maybe we can ask him.”

  Micah nodded, because it was a great idea. But what she was really thinking was, I wonder if I knew Milo at all.

  TUESDAY, JULY 7, 4:00 P.M.

  Dr. Patel: How’ve you been feeling?

  Micah: Good. No panic attacks in the last couple of days, so that’s been nice.

  Dr. Patel: Have you felt anxious at all?

  Micah: Obviously.

  Dr. Patel: That’s to be expected, Micah. This isn’t a one-stop shop to cure your anxiety. It’s all about management.

  Micah: I know, I know. I get it.

  Dr. Patel: Your mother mentioned you’d need to use the office phone at the end of your session to let her know when you left. What happened to your cell phone?

  Micah: Ugh.

  Dr. Patel: Does that mean we shouldn’t talk about it?

  Micah: I may have gotten into a bit of trouble over the weekend?

  Dr. Patel: I see.

  Micah: They just expect me to be this perfect human. The second I do one tiny thing they don’t expect . . . it’s like the end of the world.

  Dr. Patel: What was the one tiny thing?

  Micah: I kissed a boy.

  Dr. Patel: That doesn’t seem like a punishable offense.

  Micah: I know, right?! I may have kissed him when I should have been working.

  Dr. Patel: Ah. At the church?

  Micah: Yeah.

  Dr. Patel: In front of small children?

  Micah: Not like making out while they’re watching . . . They were asleep.

  Dr. Patel: . . .

  Micah: What?

  Dr. Patel: [laughs] Nothing.

  Micah: You know, Milo would have never kissed a girl at work. Lately I’ve been wondering if he’d ever kissed a girl at all. And, like, what else he might have missed out on, just doing everything people told him to do.

  Dr. Patel: Say more.

  Micah: Well, I used to want to be just like him. When we were little, I would follow him around and literally do exactly what he did. I tried to dress like him. I wanted to go wherever he went. And then, when he started making art, so did I.

  Dr. Patel: But you love painting, no?

  Micah: I do. But I started because of him. I went to Savage because of him. Sometimes I wonder if I got in because of him. My art’s not as good as his.

  Dr. Patel: From what you’ve shared with me, you’re a beautiful artist.

  Micah: But it’s hard for me. It came easy to him. Like this project I need to do before the end of summer. I don’t even have the beginnings of an idea. And I don’t want to think about it. I want to think about Ty. I want to hang out with my friends.

  Dr. Patel: Maybe it’s okay to not want to work on your art constantly.

  Micah: Milo loved his work so much; it’s all he wanted to do. He was always drawing and always going to church without complaining and always . . . being perfect.

  Dr. Patel: You and Milo are very different people. And no one’s perfect.

  Micah: Yeah, I think I’m realizing that now. For instance, I’m already in trouble, so this will only make my life worse, but I’m not sure I want to go to Bible study tomorrow.

  Dr. Patel: Milo never skipped Bible study?

  Micah: Never. And it’s not like I don’t want to go ever again, I just have questions. I just need a break.

  Dr. Patel: Have you talked to your parents about that?

  Micah: Hell no. They wouldn’t understand.

  Dr. Patel: Okay. But why do you think you’re holding yourself to this standard of perfection?

  Micah: Because I’m still here. And Milo . . . isn’t.

  “There he is,” Micah said.

  Lux shaded her eyes and went up on tiptoes to see. “Damn,” she said. “He looks just like he does in the sketch.”

  Zero was playing ball at the courts like
Micah knew he would be. He had his long dreads twisted back into a bun, and he’d taken off his shirt. His dark brown skin shined with sweat as he trash-talked another guy on the court like his life depended on it.

  “Nah, I told you, you can’t handle this!” Zero said as he dribbled around the kid he was playing. He took a shot and made it, nothing but net.

  “A’ight, bet,” the kid said. He grabbed the ball and jogged back over to where Zero was grinning, his shooting hand still hanging in the air. “Let’s go again.”

  “Yo, Z,” Micah shouted. When she used to come to the courts with Milo, no one would talk to her. But if she came alone, all the guys tried to get her number and she got tired of saying “I have a boyfriend” every five minutes. It felt weird being here without her brother beside her.

  “Mike-Mike!” Zero said, using the nickname Milo always called her. He grinned big and walked toward her and Lux. “Where you been at, girl?”

  “You know,” she said. “Just around.” They hugged and Micah introduced Lux to him.

  “I’ll be back, Jay,” he said to the guy he’d been playing basketball with, and then turned back to Micah. “How you been, li’l mama?” His dark brows furrowed and he looked serious. “How’s your heart?”

  She smiled. She’d forgotten Zero always used to ask her that. They walked toward the fence and he kept an arm around Micah’s shoulders.

  “Been okay, I guess,” she said. “Just keepin’ busy.”

  “Yeah, me too. Courts ain’t the same without him, though,” Zero said. “Nothin’ is.” A second later, he asked, “Yo, is that his?” Micah remembered Lux was holding Milo’s sketchbook. She nodded and he reached for it. “I haven’t seen this thing in forever!”

  Micah looked at Lux, who raised her brows. Ask him, Lux mouthed. But Micah wasn’t ready.

  “You know, sometimes when he met me over here, he did more drawing than playing,” Zero said. He started flipping through the book and paused on a self-portrait of Milo. “I miss that skinny dude like crazy.”