by Avery Sawyer
“You don’t have to, Robin,” Em said quickly. Her brown eyes were worried. She sounded like a big sister, even though she was only forty-two days older than me. “It’s not a big deal.”
“No, I know.” I reached out to Josie, hoping that taking her side would make her hate me less. I was sick of feeling like Emily’s pet when we hung out with other people from school. Maybe if I could do this thing, Josie would stop acting like my existence was a personal insult to her. She handed me her small pipe, and reached over with a lighter. I put it to my lips and breathed in just as she touched the flame to the end. I felt the heat fill my mouth and stop at the back of my throat. When I breathed out, a tiny puff appeared in front of my face. It didn’t taste horrible. But it didn’t taste good, either. I felt stupid and so much younger than everyone else around me.
“You have to inhale, kiddo. Into your lungs.” Josie took it back and showed me, even though I already knew that. When she breathed out, a huge plume of sweet-smelling smoke filled the air in front of her face. She grinned and took a sip of her Red Bull and vodka. She drank it out of an enormous Taco Bell cup. Classy. I tried again and coughed.
Everyone laughed, even Emily. I felt my cheeks heat up and I bit my lip. I remembered being six or seven, with a bad fever. Mom had stayed up the whole night with me, giving me baby aspirin and putting a cool washcloth on my forehead. If she could see me now, she’d have an aneurysm. I shook away the memory, ashamed that the thing I thought about when I was trying to be cool was my mom. Thank God no one could read my mind.
“I want to try again,” I said, pushing my bangs out of my eyes. “Please.” The second time I didn’t cough, but something worse happened. I felt light-headed and like I was going to vom. I put my hand over my mouth and scuttled to the bathroom. Josie and her friends giggled; Emily followed me.
When I got to the bathroom, which was fairly nice compared to the rest of the place (someone had lit a lavender candle in there, which struck me as absurd in the middle of such a sketchy party), I felt a little better. I sat on the cool floor and breathed in the cleaner air with my head bowed. Emily wet a towel and gave it to me. I put it on the back of my neck and didn’t say anything. A week earlier, Dominic Franklin had asked me in study hall: If I could choose between being able to fly and the power to make myself invisible, which one would I choose? Invisible, I’d said without hesitation. Invisible.
“Are you okay? Do you need to blow chunks?” Em sat in front of me, pretzel style, trying to look me in the eye as I hid behind my bangs. I noticed her socks were two different patterns, but coordinated, like they were meant to be that way. Was that a thing now?
“I’m fine. No.” I mumbled. I looked up. “It’s just…I don’t feel comfortable around all those people and I thought if I did that thing with them, maybe I would.”
It always seemed like when I was with a ton of people, everyone else felt great and had the time of their lives. They all made each other laugh while I was sat there with a stomachache and absolutely nothing to say. I couldn’t figure out how to joke around the right way, and my body always betrayed me by having a runny nose or cramps or whatever. I was seriously defective.
“How about we find some people who don’t, like, feel the need to smoke up seven times a day?” Emily said.
“Who?” Before Em and I became friends, I hung out with Reno only and she hung out with Josie and those guys. It was going to be tough to get adopted by a whole other pack of people in our first year of high school. When I started at O Grove, it seemed like my four years there were infinite, like I’d be stuck there forever. I longed to be free of the place, of the people there, of the expectations and the track I was in. If I tried to get good grades and stayed away from the drunks and stoners, they’d just give me more and more and more work to do. If I got bad grades and kept going to parties like this, they’d write me off. I’d have no choices at all and I’d end up like my mom, trying to figure out which credit card in my wallet still had some juice on it. Every time I heard someone on TV or in a movie say, “Life’s too short, man,” I was confused. Life felt very, very long to me.
“I dunno. The theater geeks?” She gestured wildly like they were always doing, and brought me out of my depressed haze and back into the moment. I could go from zero to despair in three seconds. Emily reminded me that not everything was a crisis. “We could go buy fake glasses at Claire’s so we look, ya know, arty. And scarves. Definitely scarves.”
In spite of myself, I smiled a little.
“The Mathletes? I bet they smoke way harder stuff, though.”
I giggled. The important thing wasn’t what Josie and her friends thought of me. The important thing was what Emily thought of me. Why was she so cool? Why?
“I’ll feel like a dumbass going back out there.” I wished the bathroom had a window so I could sneak out of it.
“Whatever, you just got a little freaked out. It happens to everyone…it’s not like all those guys were born smoking pot. Look, I’m sorry I dragged us here; this party has a bad vibe. I think Josie’s pissed at me because I don’t go to Lou’s much anymore.” Lou’s was this pizza place Emily used to love.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll try to be normal.” I stood up, looked at my blotchy face in the mirror, splashed some water on it, dried off, and opened the bathroom door.
“Don’t try too hard. Normal is boring.” She stuck her tongue out at me and widened her eyes, mini-lizard face style, and I grinned.
As we walked back to our table, Emily tripped on a seam in the carpet and spilled everyone’s drinks in their laps before landing on the couch. They totally forgot about my embarrassment as they all jumped up and swore at her, laughing.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but I bet she did that on purpose.
CHAPTER 36
NIGHTS AND MORNINGS
This isn’t a safe thing to do, so don’t do it just because I did. I couldn’t sleep, so I crawled out of my window and started walking. It was a warm night. All I wore with my jeans were my chucks and a green hoodie. I used to walk around outside in the middle of the night all the time, B.T.F. (Before The Fall). You’d think a traumatic brain injury might fix one’s little insomnia problem, but apparently it doesn’t. I could sleep just fine during the day, but not so much when everyone else did.
I think insomnia is a sign a person is interesting.
The world looks different at night. My favorite part is noticing street lights shining on tree leaves. For some reason, leaves lit up gold against a dark night remind me of a theme park ride. Sometimes Reno would come with me on my nighttime walks and we’d point out things to each other that we’d never noticed during the day. If you walked around in those developments where the houses were all close to the sidewalk, you could see right into people’s living rooms. You could see what color they painted the walls or what TV show they left on while they slept. We especially liked to walk around in Celebration, the fake Disney town a little west of Kissimmee. All the houses were so perfect, like they were planted there by a movie set designer. I imagined that the people who lived there never got sick or felt lonely.
Without thinking about it, I started walking to Reno’s house. He hadn’t stopped by in two days because he had basketball tryouts, and I missed him. I wondered if he was really serious about becoming a popular jock and asking Theresa Lindsey out on a date. I’d Facebook stalked her and saw that she was very pretty in that typical, perfect, high school way. Her reddish blonde hair was long, straight, and smooth, and her braces actually made her look cute instead of weird. We looked like opposites now that my hair was mostly gone and what was left of it stuck out of my head alternately flat and wild, like a ten-year-old boy’s. Our little jaunt to the beach seemed to exist outside of time; neither one of us had made a peep about it in text or over IM. That was fine with me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about all that, so I wanted to sew it up and pretend it never happened.
It bothered me that things in the world
kept moving, happening, changing. I wanted everything to stop until my brain was fixed and Emily woke up. It wasn’t fair that everyone else got to keep doing things and accomplishing things, and getting better or stronger or happier while I waited. I felt kind of like a ghost, with no connection to anything. Of course, sometimes I felt like that B.T.F., too.
Reno’s house was nice. It was in an older neighborhood and it had a big front porch. Reno’s mom always put flowers in hanging baskets out there, and there was a little lemon tree in front. I knew my mom wanted a place like this. Whenever she dropped me off or picked me up here when I was younger, her eyes were like a barcode scanner, mentally ringing up what everything cost, from the porch swing to the curtains, and calculating how many years it would take for her to save enough to buy it all.
Once I was actually standing there, I felt dumb. Reno was probably sleeping and his parents would be seriously worried if they noticed me lurking around. I looked in the backyard at the Weismans’ huge magnolia tree and saw that a platform was still up there, Reen’s childhood hangout. I snuck into the backyard and climbed up to it. I was mostly hidden by the Spanish moss draped on branches all around me. It had to be one of the most peaceful spots on earth. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and felt sleepy. I watched a single lightning bug fly lazily around my hidden cove, like a hypnotist’s pendant.
The next thing I knew, it was morning. I couldn’t remember what day it was or how I got there, but slowly, the pieces of my night fell into place as I remembered why I was outside. The platform was damp with dew; it was still very early. Apparently, my presence hadn’t disturbed the birds very much. They only flew out of the tree when I sat up to stretch.
I texted my mom to say I was grabbing a coffee with Reno, even though I doubted she was awake yet. I didn’t want her to worry if she checked my closet and saw I wasn’t there. Then I texted Reno himself to see if he’d come out and keep me company. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was weird that I’d spent the night not fifty feet from his bedroom window. It’s not like that had been the plan or anything.
R u awake? I asked.
No, he answered. I smiled. His response was immediate.
I’m in your tree, I texted.
What?
Yeah. On the platform thing. I couldn’t sleep last night so I walked over and accidentally fell asleep up here, I wrote.
U OK? I’ll be right out.
I’m fine, I typed.
I didn’t want to climb down. I wanted to stay up there all day and have Mrs. Weisman make us peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off. I wanted to sleep outside again, with the lightning bugs to keep me company, as if I were a fairy princess.
“Hey,” Reno climbed up the magnolia and plopped down next to me. “Are you sure you’re okay? I didn’t know you even remembered this was here.” He wore sweatpants and ancient Adidas sandals. His hair was messy. I could tell he’d sprayed on some sort of cologne or body spray. It smelled nice.
“I’m fine. I just couldn’t sleep, so I started walking around like we used to do, you know? And I ended up here. I was just going to have a look and go home, but I guess I fell asleep. I texted my mom and said we went for coffee.” I hugged my knees, a little embarrassed, even though it was only Reno. I could have just walked home and he never would have known I was here.
“You want to? Get coffee?” he asked. He pushed up his glasses and still looked worried, like he wasn’t sure if I was sane.
“No, I want to stay up here longer. It’s really nice.” I let go of my knees and let my legs dangle over the side of the platform. “I did forget about it, your platform, until I saw it again. There was a lightning bug…”
“Yeah, I still come up here a lot, actually. Well, not a lot, a lot. Some.” He reached up to a higher branch and grabbed a can of Mountain Dew from some nook against the trunk, and then opened it and gave it to me. I took a few sips of the soda and handed it back. He finished it in two long swallows.
“Did you make the basketball team?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about anything to do with school, but I couldn’t think of another thing to say.
“Dunno. Find out on Monday. I think I did okay. It’s not like I’ll ever get to play, but I made most of the shots I took while the coach was looking, I think.”
“Nice. Maybe when Emily’s better, I’ll join something too. Or try out for something.” Maybe school wouldn’t be so bad if I did something there I actually enjoyed. That was what everyone was always saying was the point, right? Find something you love to do and then do it. As if that was such as easy thing.
“You? Really?”
I swatted him. “I could join things. Maybe I’ll, like, become a drill team star. Or maybe I’ll get a part in the musical. You never know.” My mom was always trying to get me to do extracurricular activities, to participate, as she called it. I’d never wanted to. But it was beginning to occur to me that feeling like a ghost on a Tilt-a-Whirl might have more to do with my standoffish personality than with my brain injury. Maybe Reno wasn’t the only one who could change.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he laughed. I swatted him again. A breeze rustled through the tree and some of the moss swayed. As it settled back, it seemed even thicker, like it was expanding and closing us in, hugging us inside the heart of the tree.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, once I stopped giving him a mock-beating.
“Sure.” He crunched up the Dew can and tossed it to the ground. “Don’t worry, I’m not littering, I’ll pick it up when we climb down.”
“Are you happy?” I considered telling him about my recent bouts with major nostalgia, but I didn’t know how to explain it, exactly, without sounding like a nut job.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m happy. That’s kind of a weird thing to ask, but I guess it’s worth thinking about. For a long time, I felt kind of invisible. Like it didn’t matter if I was happy, because no one would notice.” He paused for a minute, thinking. My eyes teared. I knew I was one of the people who didn’t notice, who didn’t take the time to check. People say that friendships come and go, that people change and grow apart, blah, blah, blah. But the real story, probably every time, was that one of the friends was an asshole who got too busy or stopped caring, or desperately wanted to be thought of as cool and just bailed out on the other friend. Everyone just brushes it off, moves on, accepts. And yet it was a tiny tragedy. It mattered, and I was the asshole. Still, Reno wasn’t even angry with me. “But I wanna have fun. Get invited to places. And I will.”
He sounded so earnest and sweet, he was killing me.
“I’d settle for invisible,” I sighed. “People still look at me like my brains might ooze out of my head.”
“That sucks.” Reno put his arm around me. He used to be so timid, always reacting to what I was doing instead of doing something just because he wanted to. Now he felt stronger, older, and I leaned into him. I got a strong whiff of his cologne. I wondered if it was dancing out there in the air with the scent of my vanilla body wash, hovering together in the air, intertwined. My stomach flipped, and I knew that I wanted him to kiss me. This was the second time in less than a week that I’d felt this way—I had to do something about it.
He was already pulling away, so I stopped him. I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled him toward me. I tilted my chin like I’d seen other people do, so their noses didn’t hit. Our lips touched, so lightly I wasn’t even sure it really happened. I risked opening my eyes the tiniest bit. I felt his fingers on the back of my neck, lightly guiding my lips back toward his. We kissed again, a little longer this time, exploring each other. The birds were chirping all around us and his lips tasted like sugary citrus soda. It was perfect.
“Um,” Reno said. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting that.” He put his legs over the side of the platform, like mine, and one of his sandals fell off. His face reddened, which made him look even more adorable. I leaned back slightly and my eyes landed on the tender spot on his neck, right below h
is ear. I wanted to kiss it, to give him goose bumps. There was something about that spot—I wanted to make it mine.
“Me either,” I breathed. “It was…nice.”
“Yeah.” He paused, an uncertain look on his face. “But I didn’t think you ever…I didn’t think you ever felt that way before.”
“I guess I…didn’t. Before. But now I do.” It was so simple. I’d always loved Reno, I just didn’t know it. But now I’d figured it out and we had all the time in the world to be together.
“Um, well, yeah, but now you have a brain injury.” He pulled away from me and pushed his hair back from his face like he was stressed. I stared at him, shocked.
“What? You think that happened because I’m messed up?” My eyes teared again. Wasn’t I allowed to be a person anymore? Was every choice I made no longer mine?
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just saying…I didn’t expect that. I thought we were just friends. You’ve always wanted to be just friends.” He folded his arms over his chest like I was trying to trick him. Maybe I was wrong about him not being angry with me.
“We could be both,” I said, so quietly I doubted he even heard me. I knew it was useless. Reno looked upset, not like someone who was thrilled that the girl he liked had feelings for him, too. “This isn’t…I don’t feel this way now because something’s wrong with me, Reen. I feel like I’m finally figuring some things out.” I couldn’t believe that the one good thing that had happened to me since I fell was slipping away, literally one minute after it happened.
“But what if when you’re done healing, it goes away?” I noticed he was now sitting as far away from me on the platform as humanly possible.
“What if what goes away?” He was acting so suspicious all of the sudden. I didn’t want to be in the tree anymore. I wanted my closet. I never thought Reno would make me want my closet.
“This.” He made a motion with his hands back and forth between us. “Your, um, new feelings.”
