Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  “Nothing,” he says. “I want you here. You’re being oversensitive,” he says.

  I am not.

  I’m quiet as we drive. I can see the emotional cliff we’re about to plunge over.

  “That was really hard,” he says, after half an hour of silence. “This past month.”

  “Seriously?” I ask, turning to him. How could we have had the exact opposite experience?

  “Yeah, seriously. It just seemed like there was always something. Things aren’t just smooth all the time with you. We couldn’t just like exist and coast along. I don’t know if I can take all this negativity,” he says.

  “What negativity?”

  “Yours. Every time you were disappointed, your face dropped. Whenever I let you down, I could see it in your expression, and it’s like I can’t do anything right.”

  “Javier, when you think out loud and say things like ‘I’m not sure I want to get married again,’ or ‘I’m not sure I want a home base,’ or ‘Maybe I don’t want another child,’ you’re saying the exact opposite things you’ve told me you do want. You say one thing and I take it at face value, but you don’t mean it, and that’s misleading. So yeah, I am fucking disappointed when you take back the safe thing you said earlier to say the unsafe thing you say now.”

  “See? Unsafe. Safe! That’s so negative!” he says. “I can’t take it!”

  “That’s not negative. That’s anxiety.”

  “Well, then it’s anxiety I can’t take,” he says.

  “Yeah, that’s coming through, loud and clear.”

  “This is too much for me. You’re too much for me. I can’t do this. And I don’t want another baby,” he says.

  “Oh my God, what is wrong with you?” I yell. “Why did you invite me to spend the month with you?”

  “I wanted you to come,” he says.

  “But the reason I was coming was to see if we could be a family, and also because you said you were open to having another kid.”

  “I never said that. You asked me if I was morally opposed to having another child. And no, I’m not morally opposed to it. I just don’t want one.”

  “Javier, you knew what I was asking you. Why didn’t you just tell me that then?”

  “Because that’s not what you asked me!”

  “Holy shit! Are you fucking out of your mind? You knew exactly what I was asking, and you led me to believe something that isn’t true. I came to Maine and fell totally in love with your kid and had a completely revelatory experience, and all the while you knew we didn’t want the same things. Why would you do that to someone?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.”

  I don’t speak. I have nothing left to say to him. Everything I’ve ever wanted I just had, and now it’s gone. I’m falling through a bottomless pipe down to the end of the world. I will not survive this.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying,” he says a few hours later. “I spoke too soon. I don’t want this to end. It’s just too hard. I need it to be easier. I should have waited to say something. I’m sorry. Let’s just forget I said anything. Can we sit on this for a bit?”

  I don’t answer. I just stare out of the window. I’m breathing in and out, counting to five on the inhale, counting to ten on the exhale. I am mute. I am spinning. I am dead.

  Hunky Dory

  How does a person stop themselves from being swapped out? How do you get back something you never asked to lose? Can you force a person to feel what they used to feel? Make them go back to when things were good, undo whatever changed somehow? There must be a way, I just don’t know it. As more and more of our friends and classmates report seeing Madison and Tatum together without Amelia and me, I am taken over by a heavy jealous rage.

  Why am I not good enough for Madison anymore? Is it because I’m always in section C and D classes? Is she embarrassed that I’ve been lumped in with the dumb kids? It doesn’t matter that she’s not my type of person, that under other circumstances I’d never choose her as a friend. I can’t shake the sense that I’m the problem, that they are able to see my interior self and that’s why they’re rejecting me. I wish I were simply furious, the way Amelia is, but instead I’m something else, something worse. I just keep thinking: Is there a way to turn this around, change their minds, and prove to them that I’m too special or important to replace?

  The air I sit in, sleep in, eat in, and walk through is filled with jealousy and anxiety that do not lift. Every empty expanse of time is filled with images of my friends without me, laughing, bonding, merging into one another to become one person. I feel myself sliding out of their fast-forwarding lives, and I can’t catch up. I’m consumed by attempts to find out what I’m missing, but in conversations I’m unsubtle and I come off sounding both bizarre and possessed. I can’t stop thinking that if I were as cool as my brother, or as rich as Madison, no one would ever want to separate from me, and I’d never be alone. It is all-encompassing. I feel it even in my sleep. I’m caught inside a Shallow Countdown that will not subside. People are slipping away from me, and I need to get them back before they die or disappear forever.

  On Thursday, the first day of Hanukkah, school is optional for anyone observing the holiday. Amelia and I are the only two Jews in the class, but we both go in anyway, as if we could stop the worst from happening by keeping an eye on Madison and Tatum. But then we discover they’re both absent.

  “Maybe they’re both sick,” I offer.

  “Maybe,” Amelia says. “Or maybe one is sick and the other had to go to the doctor or something.” We nod, but I think we both know better.

  It infuriates me that they’ve taken the day off on our Jewish holiday. They’re capitalizing on our religion! Without us! Madison’s family doesn’t even like Jews!

  “I brought you a Hanukkah present,” Amelia tells me, pulling out a badly wrapped cassette tape.

  “I left yours at home,” I lie. “I’m sorry. I’ll bring it tomorrow.” I burn a note in my skull to buy her something after school.

  She waves it off. “Come on, open, open!”

  Inside is Hunky Dory, my absolutely favorite David Bowie album.

  “Oh my God! I love it!” I say. “Thank you so much. Eddie is going to be so jealous!” I give her a big hug. We don’t talk about Tatum or Madison for the rest of the day, and I realize how much better school is without them. I know Amelia feels it, too. The pressure of keeping tabs on them has lifted, and with it Shallow Countdown has lifted. My body feels like itself. We’re making memories without them, strengthening our friendship. Plus, she had a present for me and not for them. That means she likes me more than she likes them, and that feels amazing.

  But they return, and the next day in homeroom, someone slips me a note from Amelia: “They played hooky and went to the movies together. This. Is. WAR.”

  My chest seizes instantly. No. I don’t want to go to war. But if there is only fighting or losing, I can’t be a loser. So, despite my strong desire to not fight or to engage even in minor confrontation, I decide I will stand behind Amelia no matter what. I tell myself that I’ll nod, stamp my foot, and pout, and I’ll call it fighting. But I recognize that whatever fight we have will change everything forever. What I really want is just to let it go and pretend nothing happened, even as I worry about what they’re doing now, and now, and now. I have faith that Amelia can conjure the magic to fix this.

  But that doesn’t happen. Days pass and the war heats up. Madison and Tatum start saying mean things when they pass us, like “Get a life,” and “Get a new face.” During gym, Magda comes up to Amelia and me to pass along some urgent information.

  “Just so you know, Tatum is trying to turn the entire class against you two,” Magda says helpfully.

  “It’s not going to work,” Amelia says. “Plus, just because we’re in a fight with them doesn’t mean we’re not still popular.”

  “You’re not still popular!” Tatum, with her bionic hearing, shouts over to us.

  �
��Oh, yes we are!” I yell and storm over.

  “You’re a couple of losers!” Tatum yells so everyone can hear.

  I am taken over by a rage I’ve never experienced. Tatum has already taken Madison away from me, and I need to protect what I have left.

  “Everyone knows why you won’t let Clement even feel you up!”

  “Why’s that, if you know so much?” she yells.

  “Because you’re a cocksucking dyke!” I yell, not entirely clear what any of that means. The crowd gasps. Victorious as a slanderer, I swell from my awed classmates; but then something hard smacks me across the face. Everyone gasps again as Tatum shakes out her hand.

  Horrified by the sudden reversal, I run out of the gym and to the fourth floor to find Kara. I cry and tell her what happened, and she calms me down and helps me breathe. I am shaken and shaking. I’m still out-of-body in my next class, and when I sit down next to Lizzie she immediately gets up and moves away. No one will sit next to me. When I ask Claudine what’s going on, she doesn’t answer. I force myself not to cry in class. I never should have left the gym to find Kara. When I left, that’s when Tatum told everyone to cut me out of their lives. They’ve made me disappear, and I feel gone. How did they know this was the worst way to hurt me? When the bell rings, I’m the first one out the door, looking for Amelia, whom I feel badly for leaving behind in the gym.

  “Is anyone talking to you?” I ask.

  Amelia looks like she’s been crying, and she shakes her head.

  “Me neither,” I say.

  “You still have me; don’t worry,” Amelia says.

  “Thanks, Am. You have me, too.”

  “No matter what, we’re in this together,” she says as we hug.

  * * *

  In the mornings on the way uptown, even the new girl Libby who started in the middle of the year won’t talk to me, and we’re the only two people on the school bus. At home I throw myself on my bed and sob. When I’m cried out, I find my mom coming in from the garden, a scarf around her head—which always reminds me of Melissa—and I tell her what happened.

  “They’re just jealous,” she says. She begins tidying the already neat living room. Straightening the already straight paintings, and positioning the pitchers and vases in the open armoire.

  I tag along behind her. “They’re not jealous. There’s nothing here to be jealous about!” I am annoyed that she’s still using this dumb argument. “I just want them to start talking to me again. I want Tatum to forgive me, and I don’t know how to make her.”

  “Why don’t you call and tell her that your uncle died and you’re very upset and it’s not the right time for her to be mad at you,” my mom says. She pulls dead petals off some flowers.

  “Is that a good idea?” I ask.

  “Of course it’s a good idea. She’ll feel sorry for you because your uncle died, which means she’ll stop being mad at you; it’s the right thing to do,” she says.

  “Is that true?” I ask.

  “Would I tell you something that wasn’t true?” she says, punching the pillows and cushions until they’re fluffy.

  My uncle died over a month ago, and while I’m still upset by it, I’m finally feeling better. Tatum doesn’t know that, though. I fly upstairs to my bedroom to make the call. My fingers have a hard time finding the right numbers to dial, they’re so nervous. Her brother picks up.

  “Hi, Tanner; it’s Amanda. Is Tatum there?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” I hear the phone drop on the floor, and then…nothing. No one comes. I wait, and I wait some more. Still, no one comes. I am freaking out. Trying to swallow, but my saliva seems like it’s hardened and I need to push it down my aching esophagus. Then, a smothering sound.

  “What?” Tatum says.

  “Hi, Tatum. It’s Amanda.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I just wanted to say that I’m very upset because I just found out my uncle died and I was hoping you could stop being mad at me right now.”

  “Nope,” she says and hangs up the phone.

  I stare at the receiver, stunned that it didn’t work, and furious at my mom that Tatum said no. I burst into tears and rage down the stairs to yell at my mom.

  “It didn’t work!” I scream at her.

  She’s in the living room, fixing the coffee table books so they all line up perfectly. “What didn’t work?”

  “Tatum doesn’t care that Stanley died and she’s still not talking to me!” I yell.

  “Well, it’s not my fault!”

  “Yes it is. It IS your fault! You said that’s what I should do to fix it, but it didn’t fix it!”

  My mom fixes everything, and the one time it really matters, she fails. I can barely handle when Eddie and Kara leave me out from a two-second whisper at the dinner table; how am I going to tolerate getting through the rest of this year, six whole months, as a pariah?

  “I’m sorry. I thought it would help,” she says, standing back to look at the coffee table. Satisfied, she once again straightens the painting above the couch.

  “Well, you were wrong!” I yell, and throw myself onto the couch.

  “No, not the couch!” my mom shouts.

  I jump off the couch. It terrifies me when my mom snaps or yells at me. There’s no greater threat. All the terrible minutes that I’m separated from her when she’s mad at me feel like death. Now I have no mother and no friends; I have nothing and no one. I am alone in the world and I will die. I don’t know how to get her back. Fear glances across the surface of my belly, rippling it with impending doom. The dying is starting.

  “People will be here in two hours, Amanda. I just fluffed that pillow,” she says, aggrieved.

  “Sorry,” I say. The anger slides out of her eyes. “What people?”

  “It’s the Christmas party,” she says. “I laid your outfit on your bed.”

  I’d forgotten. Shit. Amelia is coming to the party with her mom, stepdad, and sister, Sara. My mom has this party every year, and normally I love it because we’re allowed to invite our friends. Tatum and Madison were invited, like last year, and I hold out hope that they’ll show up, that their parents will make them because it’s the right thing to do. In my room I see the stupid dress with the dumb Peter Pan collar I have to wear, and I lie down on top of it and cry again until I fall asleep, only to be woken by sounds of the doorbell ringing every five minutes. I quickly change and hurry downstairs, excited to see my mom’s friends, who think I’m adorable. I’m glad they haven’t figured out how ugly I really am. I can’t help but stare at Kara, who looks so pretty with her frizzy red hair in two side barrettes and her braces—they look so much better on her than on me—and Eddie is always handsome, even when he’s angry about having to wear his uptown clothes. Waiters walk around with hors d’oeuvres and trays of alcohol. Eddie skulks behind them, trying to filch a glass of wine.

  Eventually, Amelia arrives and we all convene in the TV room, which, for the party’s purposes, is the kids’ room. Classical music is playing and adult conversation is growing louder, and the doorbell keeps ringing, and I feel, for the first time in a long time, like everything might be all right. I look over at Amelia, who smiles her dimples at me. Eddie’s bad-influence friend, The Worm, is here. He’s two years older than me, fifteen like Eddie, but acts much older, like sixteen and a half or something. The whole night he’s been drinking backwash from everyone’s discarded wineglasses. He’s drunk, but he spies a nearly full glass and stumbles off after it. Amelia slides into his seat. She’ll do anything to be near Eddie. Even after he fractured his chin on his friend’s head playing football and had to wear a mouth guard, she liked him. Now he’s wearing a bandage because his Swiss army knife closed on his finger while he was carving his name into a tree.

  Jimmy comes in to fix the blinds that aren’t broken until Mom comes and pulls him out. I wander off to fill a plate with appetizers for Amelia and me, and I say hi to some of my mom’s friends, and the garden people. On my way back, I spy Jimmy
in a corner, his back turned to the party, shoveling pigs-in-a-blanket into his mouth. He sees me and winks—our secret. When I get back to the kids’ room, it seems I’ve missed all the fun because the only person left is Amelia.

  “Where’d everyone go?” I ask her.

  “Kara’s room.”

  “Oh,” I say, knowing that means Amelia wasn’t invited. I sit next to her. “So, what do you want to do now?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  Something’s off.

  “I didn’t know it was just Eddie’s birthday.” Two cold hands land on my stomach and flip it, like tongs on a raw steak. I know what she’s about to say. “I asked him what you got him for his birthday,” she continues. I nod casually, playing dumb. “Seems like a weird coincidence that you gave him Hunky Dory just a day after I gave Hunky Dory to you,” she says.

  “I know, right?” I say, my heart hammering. “So weird. I bought it before you gave me mine. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

  “Why would I feel bad?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “You gave him my present,” she says.

  “No, I didn’t. I bought that for him,” I say, hoping I don’t sound as desperate as I feel.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I didn’t. Really! It’s a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re lying to me.”

  “I’m not lying to you.” Of course I’m lying. I should just come clean. I didn’t have a present for him, I knew he’d love it, think I was cool; and plus, I never in a million years thought Amelia would find out. But the horror of admitting that weakness is blinding me to any reason.

  “Okay, then let’s go to your room and you can show me the copy of Hunky Dory I gave you,” she says.

  I’m panicking. “I’ll bring it to you tomorrow,” I say.

  “That won’t prove anything. If you can’t take me with you and show it to me right now, then I’ll know you’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You know, if you can admit that you’re lying I can forgive you, but if you keep saying that you’re not lying, I don’t know…” She trails off.