Liars and Losers Like Us

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Liars and Losers Like Us Page 12

by Ami Allen-Vath


  Justin’s hand creeps up behind me. “I’m reaching out,” he whispers.

  Kallie giggles as I elbow his hand back and glare. “Could you be any more awful?”

  Mr. Norderick unbuttons his navy blue Friday blazer and sits on his desk. “In life, death is one of the hardest things to deal with. Did anyone have any questions or anything to add?”

  Everyone glances around and shrugs or just stares at the tops of their desks. I chew the inside of my cheek, wishing I could think about anything but Maisey. And how I barely noticed her in class, but she was here. Now she’s not here and I can see her. Her eyes are still just as sad and her posture is even more defeated. And I can feel it in my bones.

  “Are we reading one or all of our poems today?” Shandy asks.

  “Good call, Miss Silvers. Since no one has anything to add, let’s get to work.”

  Shandy recites a poem about a cold winter snow without even glancing at her paper. Ready to submit her work to the Pulitzer judges, she ends her poem with a proud display of her teeth, braces banded in maroon and white.

  Nord calls on me next.

  Without the energy to even attempt to improvise something less personal, I read the first one I wrote.

  Flames blaze over tears

  Ashes search, clawing black skies

  New wings make her dance

  “Very nice,” says Mr. N.

  Kallie reads hers about a cherry blossom in a snowstorm. She leans across the aisle and whispers, “I found mine online.”

  Justin pokes me in the back with a pencil. “Oh you just came up with that today? Doubt it. You didn’t have to bail on us at lunch. It’s cool, though, I’m over you. Do you really think I have a chance with Jane?”

  Mr. Norderick interrupts. “Mr. Conner, I guess you’re volunteering yourself to go next. Please do us a favor by delighting us with all three of your haikus.” Justin stands and reads about video games, bacon, and something about a breakfast burrito, all three sounding like he’s inviting us to a mattress sale.

  Maisey’s seat, screaming its emptiness, keeps dancing in my peripheral vision. A lump forms in my throat, and I zone in and out until Nord calls on Sean.

  “Mr. Mills, do you have something for us today?”

  Sean straightens his back against the seat.

  Gray diamonds sparkle

  Breezy smile alluring laugh

  Drives me past crazy

  … He clears his throat. “I hope she says yes when I ask her to Prom.”

  Mr. Norderick adjusts his eyeglasses, looking down his nose at Sean, “Impressive, had it not been for the last line. A haiku is only three lines.”

  “I know,” says Sean. “I just threw that last line in there on impulse. For fun.”

  “Okay, gotchya Mr. Mills. Good luck, we all hope she says yes too.”

  The class laughs. I blush a rushing wave of hot crimson as I run through the lines he’d read over again in my head. Is he talking about my eyes? Breezy? He’s talking about me?

  Kallie pumps her fist and mouths “Yes!” as I run through Sean’s lines once more. I shrug. Another classmate reads his haiku and she kicks me sideways from her desk across the aisle.

  Of course he’s talking about me. He kissed me last night. On the forehead. And for real kissed me this past weekend. And he’s amazing. And he likes me. And he’s going to ask me to Prom. I smile back at Kallie.

  The bell rings and everyone jumps up, pre-armed with books and folders to rush the door, as if the school’s on fire. It’s the sound and adrenaline pumped vibe of “it’s finally Friday.”

  Justin Conner sings from behind me, “You’re sooooo vain, you probably think that haiku’s about you, don’t chew don’t chew.”

  Sean looks back with a smile. “You’re a real riot, Conner. Stop flirting with my girl, ’kay?”

  Sean clasps my free hand with his, “See ya later Kallie. Todd.” He nods to Todd, leaning against the door frame, waiting for Kallie.

  I raise my eyebrows and give Kallie a “See you later. Call me!” look. I hasten with Sean’s pull, trying to keep up, focusing on the back of his neck, slightly flushed, as he leads me through the maze of students ready to start the weekend.

  I weave through the cars in our school parking lot and pull up next to Sean’s, as he’d instructed before we parted ways to go to our lockers. He’s leaning on the passenger side door, a guitar slung over his shoulder with a black and white strap. He bends toward my window, signaling me to roll it down. As I do, the smell of cedar and spearmint kiss my nose. A dimple appears beneath his right cheekbone as he smiles.

  “Hey there. Thanks for making it all the way here to parking spot 128. I’ll be here, every Monday through Friday until the end of May. However, I’m only singing this song once. One time and one time only. Feel free to step out of the car, Miss.” His blue eyes twinkle in a way that makes me all at once: nervous, giddy, and a little embarrassed. I am so not the only one left in the school parking lot.

  I hop out of the car, closing the door with the back of my heel.

  Sean fans himself with the tip of his T-shirt collar, beneath his sweatshirt. Then as if that’s not enough, unzips his gray hoodie, exposing a blue faded T-shirt that lightly hugs the muscle definition in his chest. Not that I notice that type of thing, or really care, but if I did, I’d be impressed. Who am I kidding? He looks totally hot. Guitar in hand, he strums slow, then fast, and looks directly at me until he starts to sing. He alternates eye contact between my eyes and the hood of my car.

  Gray diamonds sparkle

  Breezy smile alluring laugh

  Drives me past crazy

  Oh don’t you think

  Don’t you think

  Don’t you think maybe

  You could

  You would

  Well I think you should

  His fingers tap the guitar a few times before he speaks in a monotone:

  “Ever since I started hearing your laugh in Language Arts. Ever since your crazy ex-boyfriend requested I sing you a song. Ever since I told my mom how cute you are when you blush. And ever since I started imagining you wearing vampire teeth to the Prom. Just kidding about the vampire teeth. Unless you wanna.”

  Covering my face in my hands, I laugh as he strums the guitar faster.

  Ever since I started hanging out with a cool pretty funny smart girl like you I just wanted to ask you, ask you, ask you … to the Prom. Please don’t say no because I didn’t work as hard or maybe work as long, on the rest of this song, or as I did on the haiku, as I did on the haiku, the haiku. Because I worked really hard on that haiku, that haiku, that haiku. I’m really only improvising the last lines of this song.

  I stare at him, trying to focus on keeping my laugh to a loud giggle, but soon I can’t stop and I’m wiping tears from my face.

  And I’m just gonna keep making up more words until you tell me you’ll go to Prom with me. I hope you say yes. It’s gonna be a freakin’ awesome Prom. Hey, please don’t forget, I can’t stop singing until you say yes … Please say yes—

  “Oh my God, Sean. Please stop.” I say holding my side, which has literally started cramping. “Yes, I’ll go to Prom with you.”

  “Are you sure?” Sean asks, his fingers hovering over his guitar strings. “I could keep playing.”

  A few girls in a red pick-up truck parked behind me are clapping, saying things like “Ooooh, how sweet” and “Omigod that is the cutest.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Throwing out my insecurities, the heaviness of the morning, the afternoon, and without a care as to who may or may not be looking, I take a giant step forward and plant a kiss on Sean’s soft crooked smile. He pushes his body against the guitar between us, slightly opening his mouth, and kisses me back. A shiver travels up my spine, and a sigh escapes my mouth into his. The cars disappear into the sky, and the parking lot falls into the earth. All I can think about is the warmth of Sean’s arms and the taste of spearmint on his tongue, kissing away the aches o
f the last two days.

  ****

  Mom sits on my bed Saturday morning with her phone and an unsteady gaze. “Hey hon. Good morning. I have a couple things to run by you.”

  Something’s up.

  “What is it? Are you and Dad getting a divorce?” I smirk.

  “You can be such a smart ass, ya know?” She smacks my leg with the phone. “Well, two things. Your friend from school, Maisey, her obituary is online. It says the wake is tomorrow evening and the funeral is Monday. I think we should at least go to the wake; it looks like the funeral is closed to family.” She looks to me for a response.

  I can’t even face the letter Maisey left me. But to actually go to her wake? Shame jolts through my body in such a rush that I shudder.

  “Okay, I guess you’re right. I should be there. What’s the other thing?”

  She purses her lips together, inhales and speaks quickly. “I was wondering if you wanted to talk to someone about what happened the other day?”

  “Someone?”

  “I made you an appointment for a therapist. It’s in a couple weeks on Saturday morning. I know you have a lot going on right now so I thought—”

  “You thought what? It’s the end of my senior year, Mom. I have a lot of crap going on and the last thing I need is someone who thinks they know who I am because they read a bunch of books in college. No. I’m not going. You can cancel it, or better yet, maybe you should go. You’re the one who seems to have issues with me.”

  My mom does the thing where she lowers her voice to act calm, but I can tell she’s mad. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and why you’re getting so worked up. It’s a counselor. Someone like Ms. Selinski. Listen, you had a panic attack on Thursday. You might also have some issues with me and your dad. I thought it might be easier to talk to someone else about it, rather than us.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Easier for you, you mean?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that.” The look on her face tells me she knows exactly what I mean.

  We sit in silence for a few moments, and I wait for her to say something else. I’ve said my part. Mom sighs and attempts a half hug. My body is stiff as I sit on the edge of my bed, rubbing my toes into the soft shags of my carpet.

  “I love you, Bree Ella. I’m trying here. I’ve made some mistakes and I’m not sure how to say it all without rehashing a whole lot of junk and talking about stuff you don’t need to hear about. I know I’m not perfect. I seem to have skipped over this chapter in the mom manual.”

  “Really Mom?” I roll my eyes and try not to smile. “The mom manual? That’s so corny.”

  She cracks a smile and we both giggle. But then I tell her I’m still not going to any counselor.

  That night I stay home. No call from Kallie, Sean’s playing guitar at Azumi, and when he texted to see if I wanted to meet up, I wrote that I was tired but maybe tomorrow.

  I decide to do some of the studying I’ve been neglecting the last couple weeks. As I’m jotting down some definitions for sociology class, my phone rings and it’s Dad, checking in to see how I’m doing.

  “Making sure I’m not having another said panic attack or making plans to jump out of a window?” I ask.

  “Your sarcasm is charming and a pain in the ass at the same time.”

  I don’t disagree. We make small talk about his current beat partner at work (rookie cop), how Uncle Mike’s doing (same ole same ole), and my grades at school (mostly Bs).

  “I hear you’re giving your mom a hard time,” my dad says.

  “Dad, come on. You too? I’m not going to a therapist. I’ve had to talk to the one at school, like a million times this year.”

  “Escuchame, Bree Ella,” he says. He says my name the way he always did when I was little, putting Bree and Ella together but with a Spanish accent. Bree-a-ya. “We didn’t really get into it the other night because of the circumstances, but I think that with everything that’s happened this past year, your mom might have a good point.”

  “Really? How come you guys never went to counseling?”

  “We did.”

  “Oh.” Anxiety bubbles zip through my core. “Well,” I say, “I didn’t know that and now that I do, it’s not a very good sell. I’m really okay and I don’t feel like talking about any of this with some stranger.”

  “Well, what about talking about it—or talking about anything with your dad? Regularly. How come you haven’t called lately? I moved out in July and I’ve only talked to you a handful of times.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Do you think you’re upset about the divorce?”

  “Nooo, Dad. It’s not that. Or maybe it is. It’s … I don’t know. I’m just pissed sometimes when I think about it, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was kind of shitty how everything went down.” I take a deep breath and continue, “A few years of listening to you and Mom fighting all the time, you leaving whenever you felt like it, which was like all the time, and then it’s over, just like that. Then you leave for good. No one even asked me what I thought or said anything about it until it was all over with.”

  A moment of silence.

  “Si.” He sighs. “Entiendo.” Another pause. “I’m sorry it happened that way. Maybe it was a lousy way to go about it.” His voice is pained.

  “So maybe I shouldn’t even care because you guys didn’t.”

  “It’s not that we didn’t care. We thought we were doing what was best by keeping you out of it. Bree, I’ll do what I can to get your mom off your back about the counseling, but we need to talk about this more, is that a deal?”

  “Yes, deal. But I’m kind of over it right now so how ’bout another time?”

  “Sure, no problem,” Although he doesn’t let on, I’m positive he’s sighing with relief. “I’d rather talk about the guy waiting on my daughter’s doorstep the other day like a lost puppy. I forgot to run his license plates.”

  I laugh, grateful he’s broken a bit of the tension.

  “He’s not a puppy, Dad. He’s an ex–drug dealer. He just got out of jail a couple weeks ago. Nothing serious though, he was only trying to make enough money to rent a tux so he can take me to Prom.”

  “Not even funny, Bree. Not even funny.”

  SIXTEEN

  The Lord opens his arms,

  The heavenly choir sings,

  For today, a soul rises up

  To soar on angel wings …

  I read this over and over in my seat, flexing my calves as the backs of my heels dig into the stiff, bristly carpet. Mom sits next to me, in silence, on a scratchy cushioned chair in a funeral parlor that feels like the basement of some old lady’s house.

  Apparently, Maisey’s here too, at the front of the room in a fancy blue marbled box atop a table. A picture sits on each side of the box. One’s of Maisey as a baby, eyes laughing, wearing a bright yellow tutu and a smile that lights up her whole face. The other is a lousy generic senior picture from this year. I can tell by the corny way she’s cupping her face with both hands, our school flag, the maroon and white shield, and a picture of our signature Bengal snarling behind her. Mom has the same picture of me on the fireplace mantle. Maisey’s eyes are nowhere near laughing and her smile is just lips forced and stretched open over her bucked-white teeth. It’s like she knew the pose was corny too, knew that a smile wouldn’t make her look happy, just pushed through, long enough for them to get a couple shots.

  The box she’s in looks like a jewelry box, which is kind of surprising. I thought when people were cremated they went into some sort of vase-like urn or a jar. I wonder if ashes in a box were her parents’ wishes or hers. Or maybe whatever happened gave them no choice. The way she died is still just a montage of rumors and graphic “what-if” images flashing in my brain.

  Not that I want to know the truth. Either way I still can see her face, the pissed off glare permeating her eyes, glossy and swollen. When Mom and I walked up to Ma
isey’s box, her parents stood there like statues, taking almost a full minute before they remembered us from Thursday’s visit. Her dad gave me a “hello” head nod, and shook my hand. Mrs. Morgan gave me a starchy hug as I felt her body resist a convulsion into tears.

  “Thank you for coming. It means a lot,” she said.

  I could barely eke out an “I’m sorry.” I walked away, choking back a sob before my mom even finished her hug.

  We’re next to an aisle, making it easier to leave. Mom said we wouldn’t have to stay long, just about a half hour or so. I open my purse and click my phone. 6:12. It doesn’t seem right that we just sit in these chairs, doing and saying nothing while people come and go. My body is swarming with anxiety bees. The buzzing is like it was the day I found out about Maisey. Just keep breathing. That’s all I have to do. Try not to cry, don’t let my thoughts run all over the place and just slow down. Not that I want to slow down any of this. Being here is awful. Is this what Maisey imagined when she thought about killing herself? Did she weigh her pain with the pain she’d be leaving behind for her family? Her family is unraveling and she is somewhere else. Did she even think this far ahead and if she did, was she thinking about how her mom would look? Standing in a shitty room, lost, tortured, crying her eyes out, with her daughter gone. Forever.

  This does not feel the way it looks in movies. In the movies, it’s sad, tragic, and almost beautiful. Violins and soft piano, pretty people gliding around in black, dark sunglasses hiding their eyes. But this shit? Right here, right now is nothing close to an easy state of melancholy. The music comes from overhead in a static whisper, the same kind they play at Bev’s Grocery. The room is dingy and drab, even with the scattered floral arrangements that barely give off any scent. It smells like wet concrete and bar soap. The yellowed walls have seen so much that they just don’t care anymore. Feet shuffling, hands looking for things to do, no one, not one person wants to be here. Staring back at Maisey’s box, I know, just know that if she saw this, she wouldn’t have wanted any of it. She wouldn’t have left them behind.

 

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