Where I Want to Be

by Adele Griffin

  “Let’s dress up and go out tonight,” she’d say. “Liz Joyce is having people over. And you can wear my new jacket that you like, the one with the inside stripe.”

  “But I don’t want to go out,” Jane would argue. “Liz Joyce is painful. She’s always trying too hard to make people laugh with those horrendous comedy routines. I’d rather stay home.”

  “Well, you’re coming out anyway.” Lily would shake her head and smile determinedly. Then beg. “Aw, Jane. Please? You can’t sit in your room with your sketchbook all night. I promise it’ll be fun.”

  It was never fun.

  But sometimes Lily did manage to coax Jane out to parties and concerts that she’d rather not be at. And sometimes she relented and let Lily sign her up for school committees that she didn’t particularly want to join.

  Other times, though, Jane wondered if she were the only person in Peace Dale who didn’t understand what it was all about. Who didn’t want to go to the homecoming game, or to talk about college. Who wasn’t interested in other people’s spring breaks or summer plans. Those days, it felt as if the whole student body were waving from a big ship that was floating them off to their happy futures while she, Jane, bobbed alone in the ocean, forgotten.

  Then she’d ask for Lily’s help.

  “Help you with what?” Lily was always ready to help.

  Help me with everything, Jane wanted to say. Help me to be like you. “Help me find a good pair of jeans. Like the kind you wear.”

  And so Lily would ride along with Jane down to the flea market in Kingston to find the best pair of jeans—frayed across the front, with the ends let out—and then over to Wilner & Webb, for tatted-lace camisoles or low-rider belts or whatever Lily was convinced was the hot item of the moment. It took nothing to get Lily overexcited, hopping in and out of their dressing rooms with armfuls of clothing. “Check this! Half off! Try it on! You look great in off-the-shoulder!” Although Jane never wanted to try it on, because from the minute she got to Wilner & Webb, she was tired of useless, boring shopping and wished she were back home.

  With the Senior Dance looming nearer, Lily was ready to help again. Jane was relieved. Even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to go to the dance, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be left out of it, either. Dr. Fox had been coaxing her to go. Her parents would worry if she didn’t. Senior Dance was a big deal at North Peace Dale High.

  “Caleb has this friend Greg Benson,” Lily announced at the dinner table, “who wants to go to the dance with Jane, but he’s too shy to ask.”

  “Benson of Benson’s Hardware and Appliances?” asked their mother.

  Lily nodded. “Yeah, Greg’s Mr. Benson’s son.”

  “So does that make him Greg Bensonson?” joked their father.

  Everyone laughed too hard. Jane’s stomach cramped. It was a setup, of course. She could practically hear Lily asking—“Will you go the dance with my sister? You can hang out with Caleb the whole night.” Probably even Dr. Fox had been in on the plan. Jane was always the last to find out. Always.

  Three pairs of eyes were turned on her.

  “He can ask me if he wants. I don’t care.”

  Lily clapped her hands. “Ooh, Jane. We’ll go shopping for dresses and we’ll do each other’s pedicures, and nobody will be able to take their eyes off us, we’ll be so gorgeous!” She said it like she believed it. Jane frowned.

  Caleb’s friend Greg Benson had turned out to be that extra-tall-with-sideburns guy from Jane’s AP Spanish class.

  “He’s all overgrown and weedy looking,” Jane pronounced.

  “No, he’s really sweet,” Lily assured her. “He’s shy. You’ll like him. You’ll see.”

  “Just because you like him doesn’t mean I will,” Jane reminded her. “You like everybody.”

  Lily’s smile was tight on her face. “Okay, I have an idea. Let’s invite Greg and Caleb over to the house for a spaghetti dinner next week. To make sure you get along. And then you can decide if you want him to ask you or not.”

  “Whatever. If it’s so important to you.”

  “Jane, it’s not about me. It’s about you.”

  “If it’s about me, then cancel it. I don’t want to go to the dance.”

  “You say that now, but you’ll change your mind.” Lily was used to different Janes. She went ahead with plans. On the night of the spaghetti dinner, Jane watched as her sister made a pitcher of lemonade. Then set the table with Augusta’s bamboo place mats and put a vase of fresh flowers in the middle as a centerpiece.

  “It looks like…” Jane couldn’t say it.

  “Granpa and Augusta’s table, right?” Lily grinned. “I thought you’d like that. Now, you go ahead and get ready while I make the salad. Then I’ll fix your hair. I’ve got an idea that I saw in a magazine. I think I can make it work.”

  And she did, in the form of a sleek ponytail that hung low on Jane’s neck.

  “You look beautiful,” Lily pronounced, brushing some of her sparkle powder like fairy dust on Jane’s throat and neck.

  Staring at herself in their bathroom mirror, a bit of hope twitched inside her.

  But once Caleb and Greg arrived, Jane knew that nothing had changed. She felt just like herself. Ponytail, fairy dust, and all. Lily had lied. Throughout the evening, Jane could feel herself shrinking. Turning small and mute and distant. Memories of her date with Billy Leonard rattled in her head, mocking her.

  Finally, she stood up from the table and excused herself to the bathroom.

  “You’re pathetic,” she whispered, scowling into the bathroom mirror. She pulled out the ponytail holder. Down the hall, she heard the sounds of Lily and Caleb and Greg laughing. Were they laughing at her? Or were they just glad that she had left the table? Why couldn’t she just “be herself” the way Dr. Fox always encouraged? Why was “herself” so hard?

  As it turned out, the answer was behind the mirror. Because when she opened the medicine cabinet to roll on a new coat of antiperspirant, her eyes lighted on her bottle of pills.

  Of course. Her answer. She would stop taking her meds. Just for a little while, a few weeks, just to get through the end of school, the dance, and graduation.

  Yes, yes, yes. How else would she find out the truth of who she really was?

  The next morning was her new beginning. She reached for her bottle, uncapped it, dropped one blue pill into the toilet, and flushed. She needed to remove the evidence since her mother had been known to count pills.

  “Sorry, honey,” her mother would always say, only halfway apologetic if Jane caught her. “I can’t stop being a mom, and your medication is very important.”

  For years, Jane had heard about the absolute necessity of the pills. The good they could do. It had never crossed her mind to stop taking them. Watching the pill swirl, then get gulped down by bathroom pipes, new doubts came alive in her. Would she be able to recognize herself off the meds? Would she be better or worse? Would she know the difference?

  Days passed. Nothing happened. And then one afternoon, walking into the school library, Jane saw the blue sky and the budding branches of the dogwood trees through the library window. The sunlight shone onto the student trophy case. Each trophy was shiny gold like pirate’s treasure. So overbright and forcefully, gorgeously sparkling that she could have burst into tears.

  Instead, she glided past the library desk in mini-pirouettes, like Klara from The Nutcracker.

  “Well. I suppose spring is in the air,” Ms. Myers, the head librarian, commented when she looked up from the checkout desk. “Are you excited for graduation, Jane?”

  Oh, yes. She was. Over the next few days it seemed that she became more and more excited for everything. For breakfast and for her calculus exam and especially for the Senior Dance. Even for her biweekly phone calls from sweet, solemn Greg Benson, who, as she joked to Lily, had given her a new name: “Um-um-Jane” because he was so nervous whenever he spoke to her.

  Later that week, trying on dresses at the W
akefield Mall, she and Lily had twisted and twirled, unzipped and rebuttoned and decided. Silver, backless for Jane. Lilac, strapless for Lily. Kitten-heel sandals for both. They smiled at their mirror selves. Impulsively, Jane picked up Lily’s hands and swung them like in the old days when they played London Bridge.

  “It’s going to be the best dance ever!”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Lily enthused.

  Jane’s mind hummed, imagining it all. Dancing like Klara, all the music around her and the silver swish of her dress on the floor.

  But on the very next morning, driving to school, Ganesha spoke. It had been so long since Jane had heard a secret language that at first she had not understood what Ganesha was saying.

  Let’s get away to somewhere quiet, he suggested. There’s too much noise in my head.

  She looked down. Ganesha looked up sternly at her.

  I can’t now, Jane had answered in her head so that Lily, doing some last-minute homework in the passenger seat, wouldn’t hear. What about the Senior Dance?

  No, Jane. You shouldn’t go to that dance, said Ganesha. You should stay home. With your mother and your father. You already won the race against your sister, remember? You don’t have anything to prove.

  You won the race, Jane reminded him. You won the race against your brother. I haven’t won anything. In the back of her mind, she worried. A talking key chain. No. It wasn’t for real. It wasn’t right.

  That night, she was unable to sleep. She felt dizzy. She busied herself taking old practice tests for Spanish, although she was already accepted into college and her Spanish exams were over. She took one test, then another, and another, until she had finished all eighteen tests in the book. Then, spying it hanging in her closet, she tried on her Senior Dance dress.

  A nightmare stared back at her in the closet mirror. The dress didn’t fit. The fabric pulled. She knew she’d gained a little weight, but the dress squeaked so tight across her hips that she doubted she’d be able to sit down in it. Worse, the silvery color made her face look gray. Sickly. What had happened? Was it a sign?

  Restless, anxious, she tiptoed to the kitchen. There wasn’t much to do, so she distracted herself by alphabetizing the spice rack, and then reading some of her father’s old chemistry books even though they didn’t make much sense. She found a pen and underlined each sentence she didn’t understand, so that she could go back to it later. Then she stood with her forehead pressed against the living room window and watched, scratchy eyed, as the sun came up.

  Back in her room, she fell asleep across her bed. When the alarm woke her, she saw that the ink from the pen had stained like dark blue tears down the front of the dress. She took off the dress and chucked it in the corner.

  Later that morning as Jane prepared to drop her pill into the toilet, it stuck to her damp palm. She shook it. It wouldn’t budge. She had to flick it off. When she licked her palm, a trace of taste remained. Bitter. The bitterness stayed in her mouth all day and seemed to taint everything that came out of it.

  She started in on Lily right after school, while they were watching tennis on television. “My dress is ugly and you know it,” Jane accused during the commercial. “It doesn’t even have any color.”

  “Sure it has a color, Jane. It’s silver,” Lily replied. “I thought you loved it.”

  “Trade with me.”

  “I’ve already had my alterations. And so have you.”

  She’s trying to make you look like a clown, Ganesha reproved from inside Jane’s book bag. Your little sister thinks you’re out to steal Caleb. She wants to win everything.

  No, no. Not Ganesha. That was her own voice in her mind. A not-real voice in her own head, like a radio that wouldn’t turn off. Jane pressed her fingers to her temples to lower the volume. “When Mom comes home from work,” she said, “I’m going to get her to make you trade.”

  Now Lily looked worried. She primmed up her lips and didn’t speak. When the commercial ended, she turned up the volume and stared straight ahead.

  Jane jumped up and ran to her room. She snatched her ugly, too-small, no-color dress up from its puddle on the floor, twisting it up in her hands as she marched out to face Lily again.

  “What are you doing?” Lily sucked in her breath through her teeth. “Oh my God, you ruined it!”

  “You want me to be in this dress on purpose, don’t you?” Jane hissed, shaking it in Lily’s face. Tears stung her eyes. Nausea rolled up in waves from her stomach. “You secretly want to make everything bad for me! You tricked me! Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?”

  “Oh, sure, Jane. That’s really my mission in life. To make you unhappy.” Lily had tried to sound nonchalant. But she squeezed herself into a tiny ball on the couch. As if she were the one who needed protection. Jane sat on the opposite end, the dress on her lap, picking the threads out of the hem. Lily shielded her face with one hand and said nothing.

  Then Caleb arrived. His two-colored eyes seemed to take in everything all at once. He sat between them on the couch, his arm around Lily’s shoulder on purpose, to spite Jane. To show her that it was two against one. As usual. Jane picked up the remote control and changed the channel to the Spanish station.

  “Is it okay to watch tennis instead, Jane?” Caleb’s voice was fake respectful. Jane was sure she heard the sneering undertones.

  “No, Person Who Doesn’t Live Here. It’s not okay.”

  “How about we watch your show on the commercials?” Lily suggested.

  “No. I’m practicing my Spanish.”

  Caleb murmured something.

  “What did you say?” Jane asked sharply.

  “Nothing.”

  “I have ears. I know you said something,” Jane retorted. She turned up the volume. “Now you two can talk your private, top-secret language that I don’t understand, and I can listen to my Spanish that you two don’t understand. Fair’s fair.” She sounded like a baby and she knew it.

  Time to leave, Ganesha whispered from inside Jane’s bag. Let’s go be alone somewhere. You’re not wanted here. You never were.

  Jane stood.

  Lily looked up. “Where are you going?”

  “Into town, to get a new dress. A good dress. Not this trash.” She glared them both down, scornful, daring them to answer back.

  Lily opened her mouth, but Caleb interrupted with a quick lift of his hand.

  “Okay. Sounds good,” he said. “See ya later.”

  “Later, maybe,” she answered. Her tone had been threatening, but she was uncertain about what she was threatening them with. She was dizzy with anger, but all the words she needed to express herself seemed to be packed off into unreachable parts of her brain.

  She slammed out the door.

  Alone, in the car, she let the tears spring to her eyes. Lily-and-Caleb. Now they were talking about her. Whisper, whisper. She’d never despised them so much as in that moment.

  With her silver dress crunched in a heap beside her, she drove to the Wakefield Mall. You and I are exactly the same, the dress told her in a small, slithering voice, because we are both wrong and ugly.

  “Shut up!” Jane yelled. “Shuttup, shuttup!” The dress went silent. At the next traffic light, Jane used it to wipe her sweating hands.

  But even as she parked in the Wakefield Mall lot, she could feel the rage washing over her, replaced by a hot, bright dizziness. As if she’d been through an electrical storm that had her thoughts snapping like live wires. Maybe Lily hadn’t been trying to trick her. And of course the dress couldn’t talk! That was ridiculous. Like a story from someone in Group.

  She rested her forehead on the steering wheel for a long time. She imagined going back to Orchard Way, her grandparents welcoming her inside. Augusta would take the stained dress and fold it away from sight. Granpa would tell her a funny story that would unkink the knot between her shoulder blades and make her forget about the dance. And Augusta would have ice cream, and they would all sit together, listening to the crickets.
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br />   They hadn’t meant to leave her. They hadn’t wanted to. It was beyond their control.

  When Jane finally got out of the car, it was twilight. The smell of spring hung in the air. She slipped Ganesha deep into her bag, but she could hear him anyway. He told her to keep walking. Down Castlemark Street to the corner of Bay.

  She didn’t have any particular plan. There was no place that she wanted to go. She felt shapeless and fuzzy. She couldn’t feel herself through her body at all. The traffic light changed from red to green. Real to not real.

  She stepped off the curb. She hadn’t seen the car until the last second.

  The water in the pool was cold. By the third step, she was in waist deep. She kept her eyes on her sister. She realized now that she had been wrong. All of the best times that she and Lily had shared together, her best memories of Jane-and-Lily, floated back to her. It wasn’t Lily’s fault that she’d always had more. It wasn’t Lily’s fault that she hadn’t been able to come to Jane’s rescue, that she hadn’t heard the help me that lived inside her head. They had lost each other equally. They’d had to grow up.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “It never was.”

  The voice in her head was the only voice she had left, but she saw Lily’s eyes open, and then she heard her sister say her name. Jane could feel her grip softening, releasing her hold on them both. She was not angry anymore. She was not scared of what came next. She was not unhappy to leave behind the faint and fading dreams of the for reals that might have been. She was free, and she was ready.

  Gambler watched from the side of the pool. He whined faintly.

  Jane closed her eyes and plunged.

  20 — THE GOD OF EXISTING THINGS