by Sadie Allen
Sterling, who had evidently been listening to our conversation, leaned forward and clapped Blake on his shoulder as he stated, “Who better to give her one than you, Blake.”
“Darn skippy.”
Laughter bubbled in my chest, and I heard a matching one over to the right and caught Elodie’s eyes. We tried to hold it in, but the sight of each other fighting it sent us both into gales of laughter. It probably wasn’t as funny as we thought it was, but I needed the release. The drama onstage and the tension that had smothered the room had me feeling jittery. Laughing at Blake’s antics seemed like a better solution than crying.
I pulled into the driveway after school with Blake and Elodie following in Blake’s black Ford Fiesta. The coil of dread that had been sitting in my stomach unfurled upon not seeing a black BMW anywhere. The last person I wanted to see was Derek Everly. I could hear his voice, full of recrimination, echoing in my head about my choice in new friends.
He was always adamant that the only people worth knowing were those who were white, straight, and financially well-off. He believed people with darker skin tones were too culturally different to have anything in common with, gays were perverts, and poor people were untrustworthy and grasping.
I could hear him now. “If you want to be successful in life, Ally, you have to surround yourself with the right people.” No matter how many times he said those words, they never took root. They were more like an abscess festering inside my brain.
His kernels of “wisdom” always caused revulsion to boil up inside me and feelings of loathing to crawl along my skin. I didn’t believe any of that. I didn’t ascribe to his philosophy. I didn’t place value on skin color, sexual orientation, or money. Those things were surface. Those were just aspects of a person, not the whole. Value should be found in things that couldn’t be seen. I knew this. We even learned it in church. It just seemed that Derek Everly had turned a deaf ear to anyone else’s words but his own.
Living his way of life had me in the bleachers with a bottle of painkillers. Between the toxicity of the people surrounding me, my stagnant and oppressive environment, and the developing sepsis of that abscess, it had all turned into a lethal combination.
Now I was semi-free. Derek Everly hadn’t been around lately, and I had been given opportunities to change my life, as well as my future. I was changing into the person I had always wanted to be. It was like feeling the warm, healing rays of the summer sun after living in a bitter cold winter. His specter still loomed like a gray cloud in my blue sky, but his shadow hadn’t yet darkened over me.
I was interrupted from my thoughts by a knock on my window. I swung around and jumped back at the sight of Blake’s nose pressed against the glass. He pulled back and wiped the imprint he had left with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Charming,” I muttered as I closed the door behind me after getting out, then hauled my crutches through the driver’s side door from the passenger seat.
I would be so glad when I could throw these in the lake. I fantasied about it all the time, especially when my armpits felt bruised and the skin raw.
“Love your digs,” he said.
“Yeah, my house could probably fit in it three times,” Elodie added as she slapped Blake’s arm with the back of her hand.
I examined my house from their perspective. It was a large, Mediterranean-style house, one-story because my dad’s knee couldn’t handle stairs every day, with white stucco, trusses, a dark brown tiled roof, lots of windows, and an arched doorway. I had always seen it as a prison, a place where I simply existed.
“Yeah, I guess it’s nice.”
“Nice?” Blake sputtered.
I ignored him as we walked toward the door and let ourselves inside.
“Mom?” I called as I hung my backpack on the back of a bar stool and propped my crutches against the edge of the counter.
“O. M. G,” I heard Blake whisper reverently.
I looked over at him and Elodie to see both were gawping as they took in the interior.
“Is your mom an interior designer?” Elodie asked.
I snorted. “No, she hired a lady to come in and decorate it. Rosalind did the overall design, but she comes every season to switch out linens, pillows, and seasonal decor.”
Elodie’s eyes widened, and she choked out, “There are people who actually do that? Around here?”
I nodded.
“I thought only celebrities and public figures did stuff like that.”
An uncomfortable feeling slithered inside me, and the back of my neck itched. I scrutinized the luxury surrounding me, and the hot feeling of shame lodged itself inside my chest. We didn’t need all this, not really. My dad hired Rosalind to make our house look magazine perfect, and then had Mom supervise her. We had a housekeeper who worked three to five days a week to keep everything looking pristine.
As if sensing my discomfort, Elodie put her hand on my shoulder and quietly said, “I think it’s cool, Ally. I think I’d like a job like that someday.”
“You could so do that, Ellie,” Blake commented.
“Ally?” my mom called as she rounded the corner on the other side of the kitchen and came to an abrupt halt when she saw I wasn’t alone. “Oh.”
“O. M. G,” Blake repeated, scurrying toward my mom and clasping her hands. “You are de-vine!”
Startled but flattered, my mom replied, “Why, thank you …”
“Blake. I’m Blake, and that’s my friend Elodie standing by Ally. We’re her new friends.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth flapped open and closed.
I giggled, and Elodie hissed, “Blake, your mouth.”
“Whaa? It’s true.”
My mom’s eyes softened when they came to me, and I gave her a small smile.
“I hadn’t heard that sound come out of you in so long,” she said so quietly I barely heard her.
“She laughs like that all the time around us and Sterling.”
“Sterling?” she asked with a little too much interest that I had to cut off whatever Blake was going to say.
“Blake and Elodie are going to help me pick out some new clothes.”
“You probably shouldn’t be out shopping with your leg, honey.”
“Oh, we’re going to do it online, if that’s okay? I can use the credit card, right?”
“Oh, sure, that’s fine. I paid down the balance this morning, so it should be good to go.”
“So, we’ll just … ah, go to my room and hit up stores online.” I grabbed my backpack to take with me because my wallet was in there, and then turned toward the hallway that led to my room. “My room’s back here, guys.”
They looked at each other before they both faced my mom.
“Nice meeting you, Mrs. Everly!” Elodie called out.
“Yeah, totes awesome,” Blake added.
I opened the door to my room and escorted them inside.
“Your room is so Pottery Barn,” Blake declared.
“Is that a good thing?” I asked, thinking it probably wasn’t. I mean, they probably thought I was a rich, spoiled brat.
“It’s sweet,” Elodie replied.
“But it just doesn’t seem like you,” Blake finished.
I had already thought that, but hearing them confirm it had vindication soaring through my veins. This space wasn’t mine. It was our interior designer’s.
I looked over to the wall with the clothesline of pictures and thought about the life I had led just a week ago. This was the room that had belonged to that girl.
I shrugged the crutches from under my arms and threw them haphazardly in the direction of my bed. My backpack followed, crashing onto the mattress. I got close to the wall where the pictures hung and stared at the faces of me and Miles, of Laura, Ariel, Sarah, and me, and at a combo of the four. There were others of me with my parents or me just by myself.
It was like looking at a stranger, like the picture that came with a new frame. The photographs were a story of a gir
l who seemed to have it all—handsome boyfriend, beautiful friends, and doting parents. Problem was … the story was fiction.
I reached up and caressed my track picture from last year. It was the one of me and my dad. I was in my uniform, hair blown straight, makeup perfect, and my smile had been stretched so wide that I looked … unnatural. I stood behind a hurdle, hands on the plastic top, the track beneath my feet, the bleachers in the background, and Oleander High was written in big, black block letters across the top of the plastic. My dad was down on one knee in front, wearing khaki shorts and an Oleander High School polo that all the coaches wore. His smile was one you saw on billboards advertising used cars, class action lawsuits against trucking companies, or maybe for dental implants—perfect, insincere. There was nothing in those eyes that were an exact replica of my own. While mine were blank, his were … nothing. Just two pools of emotional voids.
The bleachers in the background caught my attention, and I stared at that top corner of metal. That was the place I had worn the uniform I was wearing in the picture and tried to down a bottle of pills. I guessed the subconscious is a powerful thing.
I shivered.
“Ally?” Elodie’s voice came from behind me.
I shook myself of the memories and ripped the picture from the clip. I stared at it a beat then tore it in two. My dad on one side, me on the other, and a gulf in the middle.
That didn’t feel as satisfying as I thought it would, so I tore it again, and again, and again. Soon, paper was raining to the floor like confetti.
“What is she doing?” Blake whispered to Elodie.
“I’m cleaning,” I answered.
“That doesn’t look like cleaning,” he replied.
When there were no more pieces to shred, I reached for another. Again, I studied the picture. It was a black and white close-up of Miles and me. His arms were wrapped around me from behind, and his smile was brilliant, while mine was … not. It was small, close-lipped, almost looking annoyed because, well, I had been. He had disappeared with Laura at a birthday party, and then came back to me smelling like her perfume.
Without any more thought, I mangled the picture, its pieces joining the ones on the floor.
I felt a presence next to me and looked over to see Blake reaching for the picture of just Miles. Then, without a word, he started ripping it apart. After he was done, he threw them in the air like confetti.
He twisted his neck toward me and announced, “I get it now.”
Tears burned my eyes, and my throat felt thick. I hadn’t let the emotions I had been holding back surface. I had them locked tight in a box inside my brain, but at his words, his understanding, the locks started rattling. I stared into his brown eyes that were soft on mine in empathy, and let everything broken inside me surface.
“I get it,” he whispered.
I nodded, and my chest bucked with a sob.
I felt an arm circle my shoulders from my other side, and my head fell to the female shoulder next to me. I knew my tears and snot had to be leaking onto her shirt, but she didn’t pull away. She let me break on her.
Without thought, I let everything inside spill out of my mouth. I told them about my life, my dad, and how I felt suffocated by everything and everyone around me. How I had tried to end my life because I had felt like I had no other choice. And when I was done, we all just stood there and stared at the wall in front of us.
I didn’t know why I had told two people I barely knew something so personal. In my experience, showing weakness would only get you hurt, but something inside of me whispered that I was safe with them. That they would understand. Maybe I was wrong, but sharing the darkest moments of my life had felt … natural.
Freeing.
Blake broke the silence when he shared, “I thought about ending my life once. I was like you—trying to be something I wasn’t and desperate for an escape. Sometimes, the bravest thing we choose is to be ourselves and live on our own terms.”
I didn’t feel very brave.
“I didn’t choose to live, though. Sterling made that choice for me.”
I couldn’t look at either of them. I wrapped my arms around my middle as shame churned in my stomach at the admission. My eyes stayed glued to the picture of me with my former friends. We were in our bikinis, lying out on the loungers by my pool, all fake smiles, tans, and fashionable sunglasses.
“You’re standing here, aren’t you?”
Yeah, I was still standing here.
“You could have taken those pills if you wanted to. You wouldn’t have cared if they were dirty if you really were set on killing yourself.”
I thought about that and conceded he had a point.
“But Sterling—”
“Divine intervention,” he stated.
I couldn’t argue that.
I looked to Elodie, who had stayed quiet, and my heart broke a little at the sight of the tear tracks on her cheeks.
She moved forward and took down the picture I had been staring at, studying it for a minute. Then she unexpectedly crumpled it in her fist, dropped it to the floor, and proceeded to stomp on it.
A surprised laugh exploded from my chest, and I could hear Blake’s, as well.
We watched as Elodie stomped, smashed, and jumped on the photograph, grunting as she did so. By the time she was through, Blake and I were leaning against each other, bent at the waist, laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. It felt good. Amazing.
Elodie turned to us and smiled, a huge dimpled grin that transformed her face from pretty to mesmerizing. Then she erupted into giggles.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, I wondered: is this what having true friends felt like?
For the first time in my life, I felt safe and like I belonged.
Hilarity over, every picture now destroyed but one—the one of my mom and me at a church banquet. Now we were sprawled on my bed, laptop open, browsing clothing sites.
“That skull top is cute,” Elodie pointed out while she flicked her finger at the computer screen.
I looked to Blake, who wrinkled his nose at the picture of a Goth-looking girl wearing a dark gray shirt that was long enough to be a tunic. It was a cold shoulder style, meaning part of the sleeve that covered the bicep was missing, but it had a piece of fabric above the elbow. It also had silver studs designed into the shape of a skull on the front. I wasn’t sure it was my style.
We were on Hot Topic’s website, a store that had been forbidden to me before. We had already searched through most of the tops listed. I had looked at rock band tees, mesh tops, and skull designed everything. None of it fit my personality. I felt like, if I wore them, it would be like playing dress up. I would be pretending to be something I wasn’t.
“I don’t know why you want to change your style. Other than your yoga pants and T-shirt day, your clothes are on point,” Blake said.
Elodie had her fingertips on the touchpad and was scrolling through the top selections as she said, “She wants to be different, Blakey. She can match Sterling in some of these tees.”
“So, you want to turn her into Raven?” he replied sarcastically.
I shuddered. Yeah, I didn’t want to be anything like Raven.
Changing the subject, I explained, “I didn’t pick those clothes out. They are of my past. I want to figure out my style without someone telling me what to buy and what to wear.”
“Then, girly, this site is not for you.” Blake chuckled, reaching over and snatching the computer from in front of me.
“Hey!” Elodie cried.
He started typing, and then another site popped up. He moved the laptop back in front of us and started scrolling through what the site offered.
“Here, try this.”
The site was one I had never heard of—Modcloth. My eyes trailed over the offerings, and several things caught my eye. Before I knew it, my cart was full of tops, tunics, leggings, skinny jeans, a couple of black pants, and even some skirts. Shoes … Oh, the shoes. Booties, flats, vint
age-inspired heels, and knee-high boots. I went a little crazy. When it was time to check out, I felt a twinge of guilt and a whole lot of self-consciousness. I looked to the people beside me to see if they judged me.
“Well, aren’t you going to buy it?” Blake demanded.
I peeked at Elodie from the corner of my eye. When she felt my scrutiny, she just nodded.
“Well, let me grab the card.”
Shopping done, we were lying side by side on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“You know,” I started, “Sterling’s pops had an idea on how to get you over your shyness.”
Elodie turned over on her side, elbow to the bed, head propped on her hand, as she eyed me carefully.
Blake snorted, and Elodie made a gesture for me to continue.
“Pops thinks we should take you to sing karaoke.”
“It’s a brilliant idea,” Blake agreed.
Elodie gulped, like I could hear it, and she turned a little gray.
“We haven’t found a place yet, but he said he’s looking into it.”
Her eyes stayed glued to my duvet cover, but she nodded.
“It’ll be okay,” I told her quietly.
My phone sounded with an alert just as Blake gasped, “Ooo, I almost forgot!”
I reached above my head for my phone and pulled it down to face level. The yellow box on my screen told me I had a snap from Sterling.
It was a picture of him making a sad face, lip pout and all, with his arm around a stick figure he had drawn that had long brown hair and a smiley face. The text band read, “Someone is missing.”
I giggled, and when I did, the phone disappeared. I looked at the thief as she stared at Sterling’s pathetic picture.
“I think he really likes you,” she commented, eyes trained on my phone.
“You think?” I couldn’t keep the note of insecurity out of my voice.
“Yeah.” She hesitated for a moment but went on, “He was never this way with Raven.”
“What’s the story there?”
“I honestly don’t know why they broke up, but when they were together, they fought a lot. They were just intense.”
