“Seven!” Harlow says now triumphantly.
Dad makes a Hmph sound. “Girl, you lie.”
“Are we supposed to go to school tomorrow?” I ask.
“Of course,” says Dad. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe because I’m infested with bugs and my hair smells like Pine-Sol?”
As if I weren’t a social pariah already. Oh no. What if the lice got Seb? We were lying together in his bed, our foreheads touching, our scalps dangerously close to each other.
“If Analee gets to miss school, I get to miss school too!” Avery declares.
“No one is missing school,” Harlow says. “You heard what your dad said.”
And just like that, any leftover tension between them thaws. Dad has never really called the shots in our dysfunctional household. He makes the rules for me, and Harlow makes the rules for Avery. We are together and completely separate all at once.
“Whoa, look at this big guy!” Harlow says suddenly. I shudder.
Dad whistles. “That’s a fat one! Girls, you have to see this.”
“I’ll pass,” I mutter.
“I can’t believe that in one week I get to marry the second-best lice killer on the East Coast,” Dad says as he drags the comb across my scalp. I can’t believe he’s trying to make this a romantic experience.
“Can you both please keep in mind that these things have been living on our heads?” I ask.
Harlow chuckles. “Speaking of, Raf. . . . I’ve been thinking a lot about the wedding . . .”
My thoughts fly. Is Harlow bailing on the wedding? She wouldn’t dump my dad in front of me and Avery, right? She’s supposed to be this sensitive, empathetic yogi.
And, okay, if you put a gun to my head and asked me what I really thought of Harlow, I would say that maybe she’s not as bad as I once assumed. I still think her meditation room is a dumb waste of space. And her continuous obsession with the latest nutrition fad makes me want to pull my lice-ravaged hair out. But, despite the long list of things that annoy me about Harlow, she’s a decent person, I think. With the exception of buying me condoms, she seems to make Dad happy. I’ve learned from experience that Happy Dad is a much better alternative to Depressed Dad, who doesn’t come out of his room and is so busy wallowing in his own sadness that he can’t notice yours.
Harlow continues, “If you really want Father Medina to perform the ceremony, I’m okay with it.”
Dad stops combing. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. But only if it’s what you want.”
“I’ve thought about the wedding too,” Dad says with a sigh. I look at Avery in my peripheral vision. Did they suddenly forget we’re still in the room, or . . . ?
“I want bald Carrie to officiate,” he decides.
“Raf . . .”
“No, really. I’m not just trying to do what you want. I’m not trying to go against my parents. I like Carrie fine. She’s a nice person. She knows the two of us. And, to be honest, I think Father Medina is going a little senile.”
“But your parents . . .”
“They have to learn that you and I make the decisions. It’s about what we want, not what they want.”
“Raf,” Harlow says again, but this time her voice is gooey and soft. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
They both stop combing as Avery and I sit here. I hear their lice combs clink together when they embrace. It’s really pretty gross. Meanwhile, I keep imagining the multitude of bugs running rampant across my scalp.
“So we still have to go to school tomorrow?” Avery asks.
“Yes,” Dad and Harlow say in unison.
They get back to work on our hair. I can practically feel the smiles radiating off them.
“Citizen Kane tonight?” Harlow murmurs to Dad.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
AS DAD AND HARLOW’S WEDDING date approaches, I’ve been having more and more dreams about Mom. The worst kinds of dreams, because they’re vividly realistic yet just the slightest bit off. Sometimes you know you’re dreaming, and other times you’re positive that this is your life, even when nothing about it makes sense.
I wake up at two in the morning with a tear-soaked pillow and a runny nose. Mom was here, in this house. All of our traditional old furniture replaced the boho-style decor, all of Harlow’s Buddhas were gone, the meditation room was back to being a guest bedroom accented by Mom’s woven floral throw pillows.
She was helping me get dressed for the wedding. In my dream I didn’t question the absurdity of Dad and Harlow getting married while Mom was still in the picture. I accepted this strange dream reality as Mom zipped me up in a hideous orange ball gown.
“I still don’t have my toast written,” I told her. There was a vague sense of panic about this, but I was still able to function, whereas in real life I would go into cardiac arrest.
“Make it up as you go, mija,” Mom said. It was really her voice. Lower than Harlow’s, slightly husky but warm. It was the voice that lived on through her outgoing voice mail greeting that I called every day for a year after she died.
In this dream Dad and Harlow weren’t getting married at the beach or the church. The wedding was being held in the back room of East Bay’s most elegant McDonald’s. I don’t know how I got there, but I did, and the place was packed with wedding guests, all of them strangers. I looked for a place to write my toast, but I couldn’t find a pen and paper. One of the guests told me to check in front, but as I was going to, the ceremony began.
None of this was normal, but I didn’t realize anything was wrong until Dad walked down the aisle.
That doesn’t make sense, the voice from real life interrupted. Why is he getting married? Where is Mom? I just talked to her. She zipped me into my dress.
The rules of dreamland started to crumble.
“Mom?” I whispered. All around me guests laughed and talked in the middle of the ceremony. I scanned the crowd for Mom’s curly dark hair. I thought I spotted it in the first rows, but no. The hair was too coiffed to be hers.
“Mom!” I called, but nobody heard me. The din of the wedding grew louder, and I had to shout to compensate. I called for her, over and over. I didn’t know where she’d disappeared to.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to get the attention of a woman in front of me. She was engaged in conversation with a man beside her. He looked a little like Seb—tan and chiseled. Both of them ignored me.
“Excuse me!” I said again. “Have you seen my mom?”
“Who?” the woman asked lazily.
Fragments of real life cracked through the facade. I got the feeling that I wasn’t going to find my mom again. Something was seriously wrong. I pushed my way through the guests, up front to Dad, so that I could survey the room. I screamed for her as the wedding music kicked in. Nobody cared that she wasn’t there. Only me.
And then I woke up. I remembered all over again that she was dead.
I’m too unmoored to fall back asleep. I can’t handle another dream about Mom. People don’t die only once. They leave a wake of smaller deaths behind them. Every dream, every memory bomb, every moment of happiness. It seems as though, ever since she died, I have to lose her every night.
In the darkness I stumble over to my desk and open my laptop. The light emitted by the screen is harsh, but I need it to be. I want to be jolted back into real life. It’s better than the alternative, which is lying alone in bed, crying in the dark.
I know, without a doubt, that I’ll find Harris online. If there’s one thing I can count on, it’s the fact that Harris is always online.
Sure enough, as soon as I log on, he messages me.
Harris: you’re here!
Me: I’m here!
Harris: what happened? you disappeared again
What happened is that I’m socially inept. I love Harris, but I don’t know in what way. Am I in love with him? Can I be in love with someone I’ve never actually seen or felt? Can I be in love
with someone when another guy gives me goose bumps and a bunch of other inappropriate bodily responses?
I still don’t know.
What I do know is that I don’t want to vanish from Harris’s life without a trace. I don’t want to make anyone feel the way I did in my dream. And, at the very least, I want a friend.
Me: Well, let’s see. I found out I had lice, I still have a shitty incomplete toast for Dad and Harlow, and I just had a dream about my mom
Harris: wow
Harris: now i feel selfish
Harris: i just thought you had changed your mind about me and didn’t know how to tell me
It’s actually way worse than that, Harris. How do I tell him that my mind hasn’t been made up ever since Seb entered the picture?
Me: I think we need to meet
Me: Just to talk about all this in person
Harris: yes
Harris: let’s meet
Harris: when?
Me: I’m not sure yet
Me: But I think before we make any decisions about us, we have to talk it over
Harris: sure
Harris: whatever you want
Me: Until then . . .
Me: Can we quest? You be Xolkar, I’ll be Kiri?
Harris: you know you never need to ask
And in mere minutes I’m way too busy fighting off fire-breathing demons to worry about the personal ones showing up in my dreams.
CHAPTER FORTY
WHEN MOM WENT THROUGH CHEMO, I was at every appointment. We’d sit in a curtained-off section of a large beige room. I brought my backpack, which was stuffed with my iPad, my homework, and treats for Mom.
“How’s Lilypad?” Mom asked one day when I was particularly annoyed at Lily. It was the second time I’d invited her to come with me to chemo, and the second time she’d made up a totally transparent excuse as to why she couldn’t.
“She’s busy,” I said. “She has an art project due.”
Lily had lied to me, and in a twisted domino effect, I lied to Mom to protect her feelings. Still, I couldn’t keep the frown off my face.
“Go easy on her,” Mom said. I couldn’t believe it. The woman with cancer was telling me to go easy on Lily.
“Why should I?” I slumped down in the straight-backed chair next to Mom’s recliner.
“Because I think this is hard for her.”
“Hard for her,” I repeated with a snort. “Meanwhile our lives are fantastic.”
“Nena . . . I know it sucks for you, too. But you’re stronger than she is.”
“I’m not, actually. This whole thing sucks.”
It wasn’t true, either. I wasn’t stronger than Lily. Throughout our entire friendship, she was always better at talking to people and acting like a functional human being.
“It does suck,” Mom said. “But you’re here, right? You’re dealing with it.”
“I guess,” I replied. I had to deal with it, whether I wanted to or not.
“Not ‘I guess,’ ” Mom said. “You are. And all this stuff, it might be too much for Lily. Some people are scared to give in to sadness. Not you.”
I knew the type of people she meant. There had been friends of hers, even some family members, who hadn’t called her back after her cancer diagnosis. It was like they fell off the face of the earth. And still, Mom wouldn’t let it get to her. I didn’t think I was that big a person. If it were me in her chair attached to an IV, I would keep a tally of every single soul who’d abandoned me during my time of need. That was the difference between me and Mom. She saw the good in people, and I saw all the ways they would fail you.
“So, que tienes in that giant book bag?” Mom asked, tipping her head back. Her eyes fluttered open and closed, like the mere act of talking now exhausted her.
I pulled out the flan and tapped the plastic spoon against her arm.
She managed a smile. Not of the giant, face-transforming variety. A weak imposter. “Ay, que rico.”
I noticed she barely took a bite before setting it aside.
The week before the wedding is a blur of last-minute dress fittings and seating charts. Harlow and Dad are now working in perfect harmony. Together they sit on the living room floor in front of dozens of gift bags. Dad plops mini water bottles with personalized labels into each bag while Harlow evenly distributes Florida oranges. Seb, Avery, and I have been assigned to dispense the maps, locally made condiments, and sunblock.
“You can’t tell me you had nothing better to do with your night,” I say to Seb.
“Would you stay home with the stepmonster if you were me?”
“Hell no. I’m still recovering from our last interaction.”
Dad and Harlow giggle together as Dad feeds her an orange slice.
“Those are for the guests!” Avery scolds. She goes over to try to smack it out of his hand, but Dad picks her up and throws her over his shoulder.
“You’re lucky,” Seb says as we watch them. Funny. I’m busy fighting my gag reflex.
“Oh yeah. Truly blessed,” I reply. I toss a map into the bag in front of me.
“I mean it. Harlow’s really great. Avery adores you.”
“She doesn’t adore me.”
“She adores you.”
“She gave me lice.”
“Love lice.”
I watch as Avery squeals and Harlow plants a kiss on her belly button.
“But I miss my mom,” I say quietly, into the bag.
Seb doesn’t say anything. He massages my knee, and I let my head fall onto his shoulder. I appreciate that he doesn’t pretend to understand what it’s like for me. After Mom died, a lot of people would say things to try to make me feel better, like, “I know how sad you are,” when in reality they had no fucking clue. An overused three-letter word like “sad” doesn’t begin to describe what you go through when you lose your mom.
Losing your mom feels like falling down a deep, dark hole and having no idea how to claw your way out of it. After some time you get the strength to get up and start climbing. You start to feel okay. You laugh at things that are funny, you brush your teeth, you do your homework. Then grief comes back, with no warning, to beat the crap out of you. You make it through the beating. You’re scarred and battered and broken, but you limp through your life, knowing that the grief will come back to visit you again. Sometimes in the middle of a nightmare, sometimes in the smallest, most innocent of moments.
So yeah. You could say I feel sad, but that doesn’t really do it justice.
In Spanish, Dad asks us how the gift bags are coming, and Seb answers him without missing a beat. Hearing Spanish from Mom and Dad growing up, it was always just whatever. Suddenly, coming out of Seb’s mouth, it’s undoubtedly the sexiest language ever to have been spoken.
“You okay?” Dad asks me.
I nod, lifting my head from Seb’s shoulder. Dad looks at me, then at Seb as if wanting reassurance.
“She’s just a little under the weather,” Seb lies.
“Why don’t you go lie down, sweetie?” Harlow asks me. “Seb can go keep you company.”
I look to Dad, thinking of the condoms, then thinking of my father thinking of the condoms, and I expect his face to reflect that. But, surprisingly, he nods in agreement and says, “Get to bed, anda. Avery can help with the rest of the bags.”
“Really?” I ask him. What kind of voodoo magic is Harlow working?
“Yes,” he says, and Harlow gives him an approving nod. “I trust you.”
“Do you want me to take your temperature?” Avery asks me, jumping up from the floor. “I have a thermometer!”
“It’s okay—” I start to say, but she bolts past me up the stairs.
“Come on,” Seb says, taking me by the hand and following her up. “I’ll tuck you in.”
I trail behind him, rolling my eyes. “All right, everyone. Let’s stop acting like I’m an invalid.”
I’m walking past my dad and future stepmom, holding my fake boyfriend’s hand, and i
t feels like the most natural thing in the world. It’s scary how close to happy I feel right now, because I’ve learned, over and over again, that happiness can easily be snatched away. This thing with Seb is temporary. My new, jigsaw-puzzle family might not last either.
“You should drink some lemon water!” Harlow calls after us.
“Will do!” I call back. I shake my head at Seb.
“Y echate some Vivaporu!” Dad yells, which is Cubanspeak for Vick’s VapoRub. Cubans consider it a magic elixir that will cure any ailment from a head cold to a fever. Whenever I used to get the sniffles, Mom would make me slather it all over my chest, nose, and throat. The eucalyptus smell haunts me to this day.
Seb throws back the covers when we get to my room.
“You realize I’m not actually sick, right?” I ask, but I get into bed anyway.
“I got you out of wedding duty,” he says. “You have to maintain the ruse.”
Avery storms into the room with a thermometer and a wet washcloth.
“Here,” she says, slapping it over my forehead. It’s ice-cold. She attempts to stick the thermometer into my mouth, but I smack it away.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I reply.
“But you might have a fever! Once, when I was little, I was one hundred and four degrees. Mom was crying—”
“Hey, Aves,” Seb says. “Why don’t you go help your mom and dad with the bags? I’ll make sure to take Analee’s temperature.”
Avery squints at him. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Call me if it’s a fever,” Avery says. “I’m a really good nurse.”
“You’re the best.” Seb smoothly plucks the thermometer out of Avery’s fingers.
The thought of giving this up—this guy who can handle my annoying stepsister, who can fill my house with Spanish, who can somehow make me feel like I’m not completely repulsive—it hurts. Why did I ever agree to this arrangement of dating with an expiration date? Why did Mr. Hubbard throw Seb and me together as lab partners and doom me to this hellish dating purgatory?
Analee, in Real Life Page 25
