Zoe Letting Go

by Nora Price

  Zoe Letting Go

  Zoe Letting Go

  Nora Price

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Zoe Letting Go

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

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  Copyright © 2012 Nora Price

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57250-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  Printed in the United States of America

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  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  For A.

  Table of Contents

  Day One

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Day Four

  Day Five

  Day Seven

  Day Eight

  Day Nine

  Day Twelve

  Day Thirteen

  Day Sixteen

  Day Eighteen

  Day Nineteen

  Day Twenty

  Day Twenty-One

  Day Twenty-Two

  Day Twenty-Three

  Day Twenty-Six

  Day Thirty-One

  Day Thirty-Three

  Day Thirty-Four

  Day Thirty-Six

  Dear Elise,

  The woods went on for miles. Hemlock, basswood, cherry, and ash; elms and pines and beeches. Trees crowded against the highway like gawkers at a police barrier, pushing forward for a glimpse of what was to pass. Their arms waved unsteadily in a hot wind as our car moved west on the narrowing highway. I kept my window shut as we drove through this channel of trees, but the sight of them passing—the endless green abstraction—made me ill. When it got so bad that I thought I might throw up, I hunched down in my seat and shut my eyes tight. The trees went on and on until suddenly they stopped, and because my head was bowed and my eyes closed, I couldn’t pinpoint when it happened. All I knew when I lifted my eyes was that the car had slowed, and the terrain had changed, and I no longer had a clue where I was.

  It was a stupid mistake. I shouldn’t have shut my eyes for one second.

  Scooped from the woods, as if by a God-sized shovel, stood a wide swath of lawn. The lawn was overlaid by a gravel path wide enough, barely, for one car. I whipped around to see where the gravel path had begun—there must have been a connecting road, after all, for no gravel path merges directly with a highway—but I could see nothing except acres and acres of lawn. I turned to my mother, who steered our car confidently over the path’s rough trail, and opened my mouth to ask where we were. But I stopped myself in time.

  I knew she wouldn’t answer.

  School is over. Instead of busted fire hydrants and Creamsicle wrappers—the sights and sounds of a Brooklyn summer—I currently find myself at the foot of a brick mansion in rural Massachusetts, still wearing pajamas, with a suitcase at my side.

  A lot has changed since last winter. My hair is three inches longer, and the second piercing in my right ear has closed up for lack of use. I wear little makeup. I record these changes partly to update you and partly as reminders to myself. Though it occurs to me now that you might be more interested in hearing about the ways in which I haven’t changed. Those are often more revealing.

  I’ll give it a try.

  My posture is still poor and my penmanship messy. My memory remains pathetic—if you asked me what I did three days ago, for example, I’d have absolutely no idea. None. It’s as though my brain is a prehistoric computer with just enough memory to last twenty-four hours, after which point the whole database gets swiped clean. My skin is the same pale shade it was during winter, which is unfortunate given this year’s streak of sunny weather. I should have been outside, laying out. I should have put some color into my face. But I guess I’ve spent a lot of time indoors lately.

  The sun’s warmth is startling today—when was the last time I stood, unshaded, in full afternoon light? The warmth seeps into my shoes through the flagstone steps. The suitcase at my feet is heavy but poorly packed, and it leans to one side on the gravel surface. Crammed inside are six weeks’ worth of socks and shirts and underwear; six weeks’ worth of leggings and bras; one toothbrush, one tube of toothpaste, face wash, a bottle of hypoallergenic moisturizer, and no hairbrush. In my rush, I forgot the damn hairbrush.

  Is this letter perplexing? I’m sorry. I am doing the best I can under difficult circumstances, and I’m afraid I’ve gotten far ahead of myself. You must be confused—only after filling a page have I realized that you have no clue where I am or what I’m doing here. To be fair, neither do I. Perhaps I should start at the beginning, at six o’clock this morning, and try to sketch out what I remember.

  The sky was dark when I awoke. No morning doves, no thrushes chirping away outside—just the sound of my mother commanding me to get up. “Pack a suitcase,” she said. “Pack enough for six weeks.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?” I could barely see my mother in the dark. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll wait for you in the car,” she said, turning away.

  “Mom!”

  But that was all I got.

  Driven by a strange, panic-induced adrenaline, I obeyed her instructions. It felt like some kind of emergency procedure—was Cape Cod being evacuated? Had a disaster occurred in my sleep? When I got into the car, Mom was gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles white. The atmosphere was tense.

  “Mom?” I asked again. “Is everything okay?”

  She sighed, almost inaudibly. “Put your seatbelt on.”

  I did, suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion. I just wanted to fall back asleep for a few hours. Sleep was on my mind. It had been all I could think of for weeks. I wanted to scrunch down in the seat, lean my head against the door, and forget that the world existed.

  It wasn’t until the doors locked and the engine revved that I realized sleep would not be a possibility. Because finally, Mom told me where we were going.

  Where, but not why.

  After ten minutes of questions from me—none of which she answered—my mother turned the car radio to the news station and put on her sunglasses. I sat, stewing, as she listened to traffic reports and weather reports and local headlines. Nothing penetrated my consciousness except for the qu
estions: Why was I being sent here? What could my mother possibly hope to accomplish by stealing me away to a residence like this one? No—not a residence. “Institution” is a better term.

  I know what you are asking yourself. And the answer, Elise, is yes.

  Yes, you are the reason I am here.

  But the answer is a qualified yes. You’re not the only reason.

  Do you remember the birthday cake I made you last November? You weren’t eating cake then; you found the consistency too dry. You were only eating “wet desserts,” as you called them. Another one of your funny eating habits. Still, I had to do something for your birthday, so I decided to build you a cake out of ice cream sandwiches.

  All I had to do was stack a bunch of ice cream sandwiches into the shape of a sheet cake. No baking necessary. Just collect a few dozen premade treats, arrange them attractively in a rectangle, stick a bunch of candles on top, et voilà.

  Well, not quite.

  First, there was a quest to find the correct variety of sandwich. Vanilla, of course, bookended by chocolate wafers. None of that mint-chip nonsense, and absolutely no Neopolitan. Next, I had to get my quarry home on the subway before it melted all over my lap. Back in the cramped apartment kitchen, the cake’s assembly presented a true test of my Tetris skills, though I managed to compose a mosaic of the sandwiches before they dissolved into soup. In the end, I spent about ten million dollars on subway fare and an entire weekend sprinting around Brooklyn fetching supplies for the cake. But there was no choice. Your present had to be perfect.

  At seven o’clock on November 16, I arrived, tray in hand, at your family’s townhouse. The sun was still in bed as I knelt on your stoop, plastic lighter in hand, to ignite each of sixteen candles. Despite their skinniness, the candles emitted a glow that pushed its way bravely into the air’s chill. All around me the wind blew, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lone Eskimo and his sled trudging past your house on Clinton Street, despite the fact that our coordinates were three thousand miles east of Alaska. It was a bitter morning.

  Cake in hand, I struggled up the steps and took hold of the heavy brass knocker. Tap-tap-tap. When you appeared at the door, I held out my present, and sixteen candles illuminated your startled expression. Surprise turned to delight, and I knew when you smiled that I’d done a good job. You closed your eyes, held back your hair, and blew out the candles. When you looked up, your eyes sparkled, and suddenly, I understood. You weren’t going to eat this cake, either. “Wet desserts” had become “no desserts.” If that was what you wanted, I wasn’t going to stand in your way. Nobody ever stood in your way.

  With a last look at the birthday cake, we exchanged a quick nod to ensure that our thoughts were in the same place. The steps to your house were even icier on the descent, if that’s possible, and we barely made it to the sidewalk without slipping. You held the cake delicately, shielding it from the meaner gusts of wind.

  “It’s beautiful, Zoe,” you said.

  With a ceremonial flourish, I lifted the lid from the garbage can.

  Thump.

  You dropped the cake into the garbage, where it broke and splattered against the can’s dull plastic walls. Beneath the ice cream were bits of orange peel and plastic wrap and wine corks—all the things your family had used and disposed of over the past few days. You replaced the garbage lid, brushed off your hands, and smiled at me through the terrible wind.

  “Happy birthday,” I said.

  Seven months have passed since I marched through the November sleet with that birthday cake in my hands. The date bears no direct relationship to my present, yet my mind keeps returning to that day. To the sixteen candles and ninety M&Ms—brown ones removed—that spelled out your name atop the cake. ELISE. Though I watched those candles sputter out with your breath, they still glitter, in my memory, like a roll of lit firecrackers.

  I have learned not to trust my memory on certain matters.

  Yours,

  Zoe

  [Day One]

  My name is Zoe Propp. I’m sixteen years old and a rising junior. “Rising junior,” on second thought, is not a good description for what I am. “Plummeting sophomore” would be more accurate. I dislike green tea, math of all kinds, and brushing my teeth. I like dahlias, navy striped socks, and club soda with a lime.

  I love my best friend. Her name is Elise Grady Pope, and she is five-foot-nine with hair so blond it glows in the dark. People think she’s Russian or Swedish because average girls from Brooklyn don’t look the way she does. But the truth is that she’s just like me: a mutt mixed together from too many breeds to count. A little of this, a little of that. Sometimes we’ll be waiting at the bus stop and some Toyota with a custom paint job will appear at the curb, bass vibrating so loud you can feel it crawling up your spine.

  “Hey girl,” the passenger will say. He doesn’t need to specify which girl he’s talking to because we all know who the target girl is. When Elise doesn’t respond—which she never does, at first—he’ll try again. “Hey beautiful, what are you? You Polish, or what?” Elise will roll her eyes at me and laugh. Then the guy will say, “You speak English or what?”—as though the only conceivable reason a girl might ignore him is that she doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Eventually the guy will move on, sometimes yelling, “Stuck-up bitch!” or a similar sentiment in his wake. That’s when we really crack up. “Drive-by shootings” is what we call these incidents, and the name would be morbid if it weren’t completely accurate.

  It’s not that we live in a sleazy neighborhood. Our slice of town is more coconut-water Brooklyn than scary Brooklyn, but still, hazards exist. One point two million men occupy our borough alone, and if you’re a pretty girl of a certain age, they’ll make certain you’re aware of it. Part of me inevitably grumbles as I watch yet another car slow down to scope out my friend at the bus stop, not wasting a single glance on the person standing next to her. But then I tell myself, Zoe! Count your blessings. I mean, think about it. Would I want every testosterone-addled male on the street imagining me naked? Or worse?

  Exactly.

  Only the most beautiful girls can afford to forget about their beauty. Both the beauty and the forgetting come naturally to Elise.

  I tell you this because I need to remember it myself. By “you” I mean my diary. Or better yet, journal. I loathe the word diary—it reminds me of stale cheese and digestive troubles. Journal is much better. More dignified. Diary is one of my banned words, in fact. Here are some other words I loathe: menstrual, ointment, spatula, squeegee, breast, pilaf, squat, lozenge, buttocks, lover, and stubble. Oh, and loin. I hate loin.

  But I am digressing. I have told you who I am, thus answering the who question, but I have not filled in the what, where, when, and why. The reason for this is simple. I don’t know.

  The atmosphere in the car this morning was strained. That might be an understatement—I was a shaken-up soda can of resentments. Jittery and just about ready to pop. Mom calmly manned the vehicle, scanning Route 28 and sipping coffee as though it were any other day—as though we were going out on a bagel run. For twenty minutes I jiggled my left foot and thought of ways to describe how unhappy I was.

  “You realize that you’re sending me to a labor camp,” I said, yanking on the knob that controlled my seat position.

  “Zoe.”

  “Yes. You are. You are taking me against my will to a place where they will make me do things that I don’t want to do.”

  “We’re getting you help.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Are we having this discussion again?”

  In reply I released the knob on my seat and rammed it all the way back. Mom winced at the noise.

  “This is crazy,” I muttered, squinting. The sun had risen incrementally as the day progressed, and morning beams were now aimed directly, and painfully, at my eyes. In my stupor I’d forgotten to throw a pair of sunglasses into my bag. Wriggling with irritation, I turned my gaze out the wind
ow, where the on-ramp to the Bourne Bridge approached. A sign at the side of the bridge entrance read, DESPERATE? DEPRESSED? SUICIDAL? CALL 1-800-784-2433. Jeez. What a cheerful sight. How many people had jumped off before the sign was erected?

  “Have some coffee,” Mom suggested, interrupting my thoughts. She held out her Starbucks cup.

  “There’s cream in it,” I said.

  “You might as well start now.”

  “Start what? What am I starting?”

  Mom sighed and took a sip. Her eyes were maddeningly unsquinty behind dark shades.

  “What am I starting?” I repeated. She looked at me wearily, as though I were supposed to know the answer. But I didn’t. I had no idea how far we’d traveled from our summer cottage in Cape Cod or how much further we had to travel. I did not know what awaited me at the end of the journey. As for the idea of starting—well, there was nothing for me to start but my summer vacation. Except it was already June, and somehow I was captive to a plan that no one would explain to me. I alternated between feeling like a guinea pig and the victim of a kidnapping scheme. My mother turned the radio up.

  The drive was long and monotonous. I scooted back and forth in the car seat, got bored, tried to sleep, and tallied the number of Burger Kings and Dunkin’ Donuts by the side of the road. I spotted a Wendy’s and wondered why the logo persisted in being so creepy. By mid-morning the car smelled like a road trip—like old mayonnaise and sweat and a banana that somebody left beneath the seat. We drove for six hours, or maybe five. At noon my mother stopped to get a sandwich, which she ate in the car. I wasn’t hungry. My eyelids drooped.

  I’ve never understood why car travel is so exhausting. You’re sitting there understimulated in every possible way—physically, visually, intellectually—and yet, at the end of the trip, all you want to do is collapse on a comforter and sleep until your eyes are crusted shut.

  When I opened my eyes, we’d arrived. Now I’ve brought you up to the present.

  Mom whipped off her sunglasses, got out of the car, and swiveled her head around to take in the view. “Looks like England,” she said. “It’s gorgeous.”