Sean Griswold's Head

by Lindsey Leavitt

  They do that thing with their fingers that Trent always does when he’s head banging. I think it means love or maybe it’s the devil. Either way they are grinning.

  “Prank or die.”

  The guys pull it off without a hitch during fifth period. Well, there was the hitch where they got caught, but that wasn’t on me. I told them the perfect setup, but after Dexter rang the bell his friend called him a glory hog and they started to brawl. The hall monitor found them right as the fire truck arrived, and both guys kept fighting over who pulled the alarm.

  My plan: during my time on the school safety committee, I’d designed a seamless exit route for the entire school. I’d also figured out how to have Jac and me close together no matter what period it happened. We had a safety spot on every side of the school.

  When the alarm goes off, I rush to my locker, grab Jac’s surprise, and hurry to our spot. I stand under the large dogwood tree adjacent to the portables, which is on a hill so I can overlook the chaos and devastation should a true disaster occur.

  The only glitch is Jac and the question—will she show? I watch as the entire school pours out of the doors, laughing and gossiping, unaware of the petrified girl under the tree. I search in vain for Jac’s golden hair, and when the principal blows the horn signaling it’s time to get back to class, I almost kneel down and cry.

  “It was an inferno in there,” someone says behind me.

  “That’s the coward that left us to die.” I answer automatically and turn around to see Jac. It’s our safety phrase, derived from the Seinfeld when George pushes the women, children, and clown out of the way at a birthday party to escape the threat of fire. He’s yelling at an EMT and the whole crowd comes up to confront him. Maybe you had to be there. But regardless, it is the phrase I made Jac memorize when devising our safety route. She’d argued we could just look at each other to see if we were okay, but the quote tests the mental capabilities and—

  “Have I ever told you how stupid that safety phrase is?” Jac plops down onto the ground and twists off a piece of grass.

  “I told you. Physical confirmation of our well-being isn’t enough. We need …” I trail off, realizing we are now talking, an event that has not happened in over a month. I ease down next to her on the grass and watch as the last of the students disappear into the school.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t let Sean in on the code,” she says with a flip of her hair. “Isn’t Seinfeld part of your love language or something?”

  “Please don’t talk about Sean,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “We aren’t talking.”

  Her eyes widen. “You aren’t talking? I thought you were sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I—”

  “No. And I can’t talk to you about it right now.”

  “Would you get over that stupid valentine already? It got you the boy, right? Move on.”

  The anger is bubbling up again and I keep it down by focusing on the tree trunk, dissecting the nicks in the bark, searching for a Virgin Mary or Sean’s head, but all I see are expressionless lines. Someone carved X.T. AND H.B. forever in the bark, then crossed it out and wrote “Xavier is a tool.” H.B. has moved on, and I want to do the same. “I’m not talking about the valentine. You clued him in on the PFEs. Why’d you do that, Jac? Sure, we’re in a fight and it’s THE fight, the one that busts up friendships. We said awful things and you totally hate me now. Fine. But couldn’t you have just hated me in silence? Did you have to ruin our friendship and my relationship with Sean?”

  The focus on the tree has given me the strength to lay it on the line, and the last shot of adrenaline gives me the courage to look at Jac. I flinch. Her eyes are bright with fire.

  “I can’t believe you,” she says softly.

  “Me? You can’t believe ME?”

  The fire in her eyes is suddenly extinguished by her tears. “I can’t believe that you for one second would believe I would ever tell Sean about your journal! All I’ve done is try to help you with him. I mean, except for during that cell quiz thing, but even then he was all about you.”

  “Jac, I saw how you looked at me when we ran into each other in front of biology class. Like you seriously wanted to destroy me. You hate me now, admit it.”

  “I don’t hate you!”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “No. First off, you haven’t exactly been sending warm fuzzies my way either.”

  “Well, sorry if I haven’t been feeling warm and fuzzy—”

  “Stop. My turn. You know, you can be so self-centered. Maybe it’s not all about you. Maybe I’m dealing with this too. All of it. Maybe I’m mad at myself for not seeing what you needed. I’m not like you. I don’t make spreadsheets on my friend’s steps for self-improvement.”

  “It wasn’t a spreadsheet,” I argue. But she’s right. We aren’t alike, at least not in that sense. But it’s always worked for us before.

  She yanks some more grass. “Well, I’m a horrible friend. Sorry I don’t know my computer programs.”

  “I didn’t come here to fight,” I say. “Let’s not waste my carefully orchestrated fire alarm.”

  “Oh, like Ms. Safety Committee had anything to do with the fire alarm.”

  A smile spreads across my face. “Wanna bet?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Well, Skater Dexter was in on the plan. I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to you and … this was it. I had to get you to talk to me.”

  Jac jumps up and does a dance right there under the tree, the beads in her braids clinking together. She’s laughing so hard that the gyrations are spastic, a thrust here, then a giggle. And she’s crying. I watch in awe.

  “You wild child! A fire alarm. I love it! That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done! A whole school outside in my honor. I can’t believe you’d risk that for me. No one I … no one in my life has ever … Thank you.” She stops dancing for an instant. “You’re my best friend. And I didn’t tell, Payton. Swear it.”

  I switch from seething mad to pure elation in five seconds flat. I hadn’t thought of the fire alarm as a gift, but I’m not about to take it away. She doesn’t get many presents that aren’t picked out by her dad’s girlfriend.

  Jac’s enthusiasm is pure electricity. My body jolts up in response and I dance. Even if we’re in full view of nearby traffic. Even if I’m supposed to be in class. Because she didn’t tell! And I’m dancing with my best friend.

  I remember the therapy right in the middle of the moonwalk. “Wait! We have to end the fight. I brought something for you. To show I’m sorry for being such a massive jerk.”

  I retrieve the plastic bag I hid on the other side of the dogwood and dump the contents onto the grass. “Hoppy Easter!”

  Candy-filled Easter eggs spill onto the grass. Jac picks one up and shakes it.

  “I kind of bombed Valentine’s,” I say. “And you’ve tried to help me, really. I’m not going to lie—your uh … level of involvement did freak me out, but that’s how you are and I love it about you. Usually.”

  “And usually it’s okay, but I probably did go too far. I do that sometimes.”

  “Wait, let me tell you about the present. So since I bombed Valentine’s and Easter is coming up, I thought we could have an egg hunt. Just, you know, for fun.”

  She cracks open an egg and chews a jellybean. “It’s perfect.”

  “It’s nothing,” I say.

  She seizes me in a giant squeeze. “I really am sorry I pushed you into Sean. I’m sorry about all my pushing,” she whispers, suddenly serious.

  “I probably never would have talked to him if you hadn’t.”

  “But I know how you are and should have gone at Payton pace, not Jac speed.”

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  “He’s a great guy.”

  “Yeah, well, I let him go.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “I … I don’t know. I had to do it, and now it’s like … it�
��s like I’m broken. I miss him so much.”

  “It’ll work out. You deserve each other. You deserve the best.”

  I close my eyes and squeeze her harder. “We deserve each other.”

  She squeezes me until I can’t breathe. “How much longer are we going to hug like this?”

  We let go and laugh, then squeal and hug each other again.

  PFE

  March 19 9:32 PM

  I’m not going to spend a bunch of time dwelling on this because the damage is done, the water is under the bridge, the road has been crossed, the song has been sung, BUT—Jac did not tell Sean. And unless Ms. Callahan is the world’s worst counselor ever, she didn’t either. There is one other person who knew about the PFE. I would kill him for disclosing my secret, but he is already kind of sort of dead.

  For Grady’s sake, I hope Ms. Callahan does a session on Anger Management issues real soon.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  PFE

  March 20 10:54 AM

  Have you ever lost a pair of jeans and thought they were gone forever and you bought other jeans that look good in their own way and made you happy but nothing fit you like THOSE jeans, but then you find those jeans and you realize your butt looks even better in them than you remembered, as if your butt was made for the jeans and the jeans were made for your butt?

  Jac and I are back. I don’t know who is the butt and who is the jeans.

  Metaphors definitely aren’t my thing.

  Jac and I go right back to our old life the next day. The life where we meet in between classes, walk home, e-mail, and talk on the phone. Our life before Sean.

  Although, we can never totally go back to how things were because I am still keenly aware of his existence. Every time I see his big old head bobbing across the quad, I feel like a phoenix—bursting into flames only to cool off before rising up and doing it all over again. But I did it to myself. It’s a choice I have to deal with. It’s this choice that a small part of me deep, deep inside thinks might have been wrong. Because either way, I’m not happy without him. He was my daily fix. Now there’s just another hole I have to figure out how to fill.

  So, with the aid of Jac, I go into full 007 mode with the Great Plant Idea. We find Miss Marietta’s home address online, which is only a quarter of a mile away from me. Jac insists on writing the card, which works for me since my dreams lately have been haunted by its endless blankness. My job is to pick up the plant, which I do with the help of a begrudging Trent. Jac meets me at the front of our teacher’s housing community at 1500 hours.

  “Do you have the card?” I peek out from behind one of the plant’s massive spikes.

  “You didn’t ask that right. Code, remember?”

  I roll my eyes. “Has the white dove landed?”

  “Roger. Are you ready to deliver the green goblin?” Green goblin = well, duh, right? Our code talk is more obvious than Pig Latin.

  After a secret handshake and three strolls around the block to “stake out the place”—in case, you know, Russian spies try to thwart the delivery—we ease the plant onto the doorstep. Jac places a gloved finger over her lips while she rings the doorbell. Then we sprint to the hedge lining the right side of her yard. We should just run away altogether to avoid getting caught. It works better if Miss Marietta doesn’t know who the plant is from. The anonymity, the awareness that it could be anyone in the universe—or at least our high school—thinking of her is what she needs. When she comes back to school, she’ll look at each student and wonder, and the mystery will shift the focus. It will ease the pain. At least, that’s how it would work for me if I were in her shoes.

  I hope I’m never in her shoes.

  She opens the door. She’s in a fuzzy orange robe, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Even from across the yard between tree branches, the grief is etched on her face. She plucks the card out of the plant, which is complete dessert for us. I thought she’d just take the plant in. This way we get to see her read the card.

  When she first starts reading, she keeps looking at the plant, like she’s trying to connect what the card says with this massive creature invading her doorstep. But halfway through her face relaxes. Her eyes dart across her yard, but never settle on one thing long enough for her to see us behind the hedge. Then she picks up the plant, gingerly touching the spikes, and the last thing we see before she closes the door is the faintest suggestion of a smile.

  “That was amazing.” I breathe out. “What did you write?”

  I glance over at Jac and see her face is streaked in tears. “That stuff you said about plant cells,” she says.

  “No one reacts like that to plant cells. Not even Miss Marietta.”

  Jac lies down on the grass, her arms crossed over her body like a corpse. The tears are still falling, down the corner of her eye and into her hair. “I added a little bit more.”

  “Like …”

  “I just said I know what it’s like to lose your dad.”

  You know in those old cartoons how there’s always an Acme anvil hitting the characters when they finally realize something? I felt like a whole factory full of those things were knocking me out. Of course she knew what it was like. Jac hadn’t always been Jac, the girl with the divorced parents who gets to do whatever she wants. She used to have a dad and a mom who, okay, fought a lot, but there was some sort of unit there. Having a dad gone because he can’t help it is one thing. Having a dad leave by choice is another.

  “You do know how it feels, don’t you?”

  She hiccups. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You helped me out when he left,” she says. “It feels good to be able to help her.”

  We both don’t say anything, thinking the same thing. I say it first. “My dad isn’t gone.”

  “Nope.”

  “I should stop acting like he is.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Yes you do.”

  And suddenly I’m overwhelmed by another feeling, but this one lifts me up instead of weighing me down.

  PFE

  March 24 8:17 PM

  This gazillion-kilowatt lightbulb is just glowing over my head. I now have a new force to focus all my energy on, now that that other focus thing we don’t need to mention is un-focusable.

  I’m doing it. The MS 150, a bike ride to help fund MS research. Have I mentioned my dad has multiple sclerosis, a crippling disease that affects hundreds of thousands of Americans every year? There isn’t a cure—yet. (I got that blurb from the brochure. I find the yet part to be particularly motivating. See? I’m totally serious. Signed up and read an official brochure.)

  So, it’s all come full circle. Ms. Callahan had me think about other things so I might eventually get to my dad’s MS, and I’d say a bike ride in his honor is pretty dang close.

  Jac’s helping me look for sponsors. That girl should really look into something like event planning or car sales. Maybe Sean’s mom can get her into realty.

  Uh, I hate when he pops up like that. Like the cork on the champagne. Right in my eye.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The weather warms enough for me to bike outside again, and I’m at Valley Forge every afternoon. Although I feel him in every loop and curve I ride, I don’t physically see Sean once. He’s probably found a new route. Which makes me glad, obviously, because it sucks seeing him. But also … well, it sucks not seeing him.

  I go to my dad’s office, my mom’s book club, the Y, my school office, a practice for my old basketball team, anyplace where the name Payton Gritas might be familiar so I can raise more money. Each cent donated gives me more accountability to finish the ride and makes me less likely to quit when I’m alone on that bike with nothing but the thought of why I’m there to begin with to keep me going.

  My mom and dad leave for San Francisco the Friday before spring break so they can see the Specialist, the mighty man who will hopefully wave his I-have-a-bazillion-dollar-d
egree wand and make some magic happen. Dad finally got to take the patch off, though the vision in his right eye isn’t fully restored. He still has the cane—he doesn’t use it all the time, but it’s gut wrenching to watch him when he does. Yet, even as I watch him hobble into his car, there’s a tiny feeling nibbling inside me. Despite everything I’ve seen him go through, I still need to believe that he can get better. I still hope.

  The last day of school is filled with word searches and videos and other teacher time wasters. I get called down to the office during final period. Ms. Callahan is standing behind her desk when I get there. A blue striped bag, decorated with a not-so-cute cartoonish duck, sits expectantly in front of her. She claps when she sees me and motions toward the gift.

  “I just wanted to give you a little present before your big race,” she says with a benevolent smile.

  “Uh, thanks!” Please don’t let it be a muumuu. I pull each sheet of green tissue paper out of the bag and fold it neatly next to the gift. When there’s nothing between me and Ms. C’s token of thoughtfulness, I close my eyes and reach inside. My hand closes around something furry and I open my eyes to see what looks like a dead rodent. I drop it on the desk fast.

  “What is it?!”

  Ms. Callahan scoops up the fur ball and holds it up to the sunlight leaking through her blinds. “This is Fuzzy.”

  “I can see that it’s fuzzy. Does it have rabies too?”

  She laughs and tosses it to me. “It’s not alive, Payton.”

  It’s not. It’s a toy mouse, the kind filled with catnip that has a little bell jingling inside. The fur is matted, and one of the button eyes is missing. She’s given me a used cat toy. I’m taking counseling sessions from a woman who thinks this … this thing is an appropriate gift idea.

  “A mouse. I’m lost.”

  “It belongs to Mr. Nippers. Well, belonged. Now it’s yours. I bought him a new Focus Object.”

  “This? So … your CAT has a Focus Object?”