How sad life is sometimes! There are days now when I do forget them, when I forget I knew something else, when I think, this is it, this was always it, this way, no way else. Then I remember. Little things. Sun on the water. Eating a piece of fruit. A song. Holding a bird’s egg. And I see how it is here, harsher, hurried, frantic. So much sadness. And yet I guess our lives are ordinary, just like the lives of most families, maybe in some ways even better.
March 18
Makes everyone uncomfortable when I sit around, and they ask me what I’m doing, and I say, “Thinking.” Thinking! What’s that mean? They want me to do something. So I make brownies. Call Lillian. Take Buddy for a walk. Visit Cici and Kim in their new apartment.
March 25
Did a comp for English. Topic: “An Imaginary Journey.” I had to write about them. I gave myself an “imaginary trip back in time.” It was as if, for a little while, I was there again. I told about the People, how they lived in caves, what they ate, what they wore, about the Wai Wai and the Sussuru, the honey hunt and the raft and—oh, everything I could think of. Miss Schecter handed it back with “good’s!” written all over it. In my last paragraph, I wrote, “The journey changed her. She had seen another life, another way of being. She had undergone great pain and great fear and even greater sorrow. She had seen people whose eyes were unveiled, people who lived with almost nothing, lived with the wind, sun, dust and rain, open to each other, ignorant yet wise in so many ways. They had not known words for hate, evil, kill, or war. They had not known how to strike one another in anger, how to cause pain and harm. They lived quietly, joyously, with demons and gods, with animals who spoke to them, with acceptance of themselves as part of the circle of life and death, and life again.”
Miss Schecter made great big red brackets around this and wrote, “Zan! Splendid! I never knew you had this talent! Please come see me!”
She wants me to write more. But I have no more to write. This is the only thing I could have written. I tried to tell her. I had a foolish little flicker of hope that she would realize why I could write that way. No. She couldn’t hear me, either. She kept saying, “But, Zan, I know if you try—you showed so much in this composition.”
Keith Manning, who was there to talk to her about his marks, winked at me.
April 30
It’s so hard to be the way they were. I’m trying. With the family. With Lillian. With Keith. We went to the movies Saturday. He’s got this big shambling way of moving, almost clumsy, and a huge laugh. I make him laugh when I don’t mean to. “I’m weird, aren’t I?” I said, half teasing him, half testing him. “But that’s why I like you,” he said. That gave me such hope that I wanted to tell him about the People, but I didn’t. I didn’t dare. I’ve learned my lesson about that. But, still—can’t I be open? Touch and comfort, laugh and ciy and speak my mind and be there, not hidden, not secret, not withholding? I try. That’s all I can do, isn’t it? Try.
May 30
My belly hurts today. Not bellyache. Just a hurting belly. Feeling things in my belly, like the People did.
Must be the weather. I miss them. I dreamed about B. again, and S., too. Today I saw a woman standing in the gutter, talking to herself. People laughed, hurried past her. I saw her eyes. Mad eyes. Open, blazing. I shivered. I hurried on, just like everyone else. Am I going to be like everyone else? Afraid. Forgetting everything. Oh, please don’t let me forget! Please!
Other Titles You Will Enjoy From Lizzie Skurnick Books
TO ALL MY FANS, WITH LOVE, FROM SYLVIE by Ellen Conford. Ellen Conford’s classic 1982 road novel takes place over the course of five days as we follow the comic misadventures of fifteen-year-old Sylvie.
DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS by Norma Klein. An indelible portrait of a girl on the cusp of adulthood, learning to balance the challenges of life in the spotlight with love, family, and friendship.
HAPPY ENDINGS ARE ALL ALIKE by Sandra Scoppettone. At a time when girls were only allowed to date boys, Jaret and Peggy know they had to keep their love a secret.
I’LL LOVE YOU WHEN YOU’RE MORE LIKE ME by M.E. Kerr. M.E. Kerr’s beloved 1977 young adult classic tells the story of two very different teenagers, both struggling to stand up to their parents.
WRITTEN IN THE STARS: Early Stories by Lois Duncan. From the master of thrillers and the supernatural comes a collection of her earliest stories that have never been published before in book form.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October Page 21
