What to Say Next

by Julie Buxbaum

  Actually I’m starting to realize there is no way.

  Certainly I’m not going to cry, which seems too easy, too dismissive. I’ve cried over bad grades and being grounded and once, embarrassingly, over a bad haircut. (In my defense, those bangs ended up taking three very long awkward years to grow out.) This? This is too big for woe-is-me silly girl tears. This is too big for everything.

  Tears would be a privilege.

  I figure sitting next to David Drucker is my best bet, since he’s so quiet you forget he’s even there. He’s weird—he sits with his sketchbook and draws elaborate pictures of fish—and when he does talk, he stares at your mouth, like you might have something in your teeth. Don’t get me wrong: I feel awkward and uncomfortable most of the time, but I’ve learned how to fake it. David, on the other hand, seems to have completely opted out of even trying to act like everyone else.

  I’ve never seen him at a party or at a football game or even at one of the nerdy after-school activities he might enjoy, like Math Club or coding. For the record, I’m a huge fan of nerdy after-school activities since they’ll be good for my college applications, though I tend toward the more literary and therefore ever-so-slightly cooler variety. The truth is I’m kind of a big nerd myself.

  Who knows? Maybe he’s on to something by tuning the rest of us out. Not a bad high school survival strategy. Showing up every day and doing his homework and rocking those giant noise-canceling headphones—and basically just waiting for high school to be over with.

  I may be a little awkward, sometimes a bit too desperate to be liked—but until everything with my dad, I’ve never been quiet. It feels strange to sit at a table with just one other person, for the noise of the caf to be something that I want to block out. This is the opposite of my own previous survival strategy, which was to jump headfirst into the fray.

  Oddly enough, David has an older sister, Lauren, who, until she graduated last year, was the most popular girl in school. His opposite in every way. President of her class and homecoming queen. (Somehow she managed to make something that clichéd seem cool again in her hipster ironic way.) Dated Peter Malvern, who every girl, including me, used to worship from afar because he played bass guitar and had the kind of facial hair that most guys our age are incapable of growing. Lauren Drucker is a living legend—smart and cool and beautiful—and if I could reincarnate as anyone else, just start this whole show over again and get to be someone different, I would choose to be her even though we’ve never actually met. No doubt she’d look awesome with bangs.

  I’m pretty sure that if it hadn’t been for Lauren, and the implicit threat that she would personally destroy anyone who made fun of her younger brother, David would have been eaten alive at Mapleview. Instead he’s been left alone. And I mean that literally. He is always alone.

  I hope I’m not rude when I tell him I don’t feel like talking; fortunately he doesn’t seem offended. He might be strange, but the world is shitty enough without people being shitty to each other, and he has a point about the whole heaven thing. Not that I have any desire to talk to David Drucker about what happened to my father—I can think of nothing I’d rather discuss less, except for maybe the size of Violet’s thighs, because who cares about her freaking jeans—but I happen to agree. Heaven is like Santa Claus, a story to trick naive little kids. At the funeral, four different people had the nerve to tell me my father was in a better place, as if being buried six feet under is like taking a Caribbean vacation. Even worse were my dad’s colleagues, who dared to say that he was too good for this world. Which, if you take even a second to think about it, doesn’t even make sense. Are only bad people allowed to live, then? Is that why I’m still here?

  My dad was the best person I knew, but no, he wasn’t too good for this world. He isn’t in a better place. And I sure as hell don’t believe everything happens for a reason, that this is God’s plan, that it was just his time to go, like he had an appointment that couldn’t be missed.

  Nope. I’m not buying any of it. We all know the truth. My dad got screwed.

  Eventually David slips his headphones on and takes out a large hardcover book that has the words Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV on the spine. We have almost all our classes together—we’re both doing the junior-year AP overload thing—so I know this isn’t school reading. If he wants to spend his free time studying “mental disorders,” good for him, but I consider suggesting he get an iPad or something so no one else can see. Clearly his survival strategy should include Mapleview’s number-one rule: Don’t fly your freak flag too high here. Better to keep the freak buried, inconspicuous, maybe under a metaphorical astronaut’s helmet if necessary. That may be the only way to get out alive.

  I spend the rest of lunch mindlessly chewing my sad sandwich. My phone beeps every once in a while with text messages from my friends, but I try not to look over to their table.

  Violet: Did we do something to hurt your feelings? Why are you sitting over there?

  Annie: WTF!!?!?!?

  Violet: At least write back. Tell us what’s going on.

  Annie: K! Earth to K!

  Violet: Just tell me the truth: yay or nay on these jeans?

  —

  When you have two best friends, someone is always mad at someone else. Today, by not texting back, I’m basically volunteering to be the one on the outs. I just don’t know how to explain that I can’t sit with them today. That sitting at their table, right there in the front of the caf, and chatting about nonsense feels like a betrayal. I consider giving my verdict on Violet’s pants, but my dad’s dying has had the unfortunate side effect of taking away my filter. No need to tell her that though her thighs look fine, the high waist makes her look a little constipated.

  My mom said no when I begged her to let me stay home from school today. I didn’t want to have to walk back into this cafeteria, didn’t want to go from class to class steeling myself for yet another succession of uncomfortable conversations. The truth is, people have been genuinely nice. Even borderline sincere, which almost never happens in this place. It’s not their fault that everything—high school—suddenly feels incredibly stupid and pointless.

  When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have the blissful thirty-second amnesia that has carried me through lately, that beautiful half minute when my mind is blank, empty, and untortured. Instead I awoke feeling pure, full-throttled rage. It’s been one whole month since the accident. Thirty impossible days. To be fair, I’m aware my friends can’t win: If they had mentioned this to me, if they had said something sympathetic like “Kit, I know it’s been a month since your dad died, and so today must be especially hard for you,” I still would have been annoyed, because I probably would have fallen apart, and school is not where I want to be when that inevitably happens. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Annie and Violet didn’t mention it because they forgot altogether. They were all chatty, sipping their matching Starbucks lattes, talking about what guy they were hoping was going to ask them to junior prom, assuming I just had a bad case of the Mondays. I was expected to chime in.

  I am somehow supposed to have bounced back.

  I am not supposed to be moping around in my dad’s old shirt.

  One month ago today.

  So strange that David Drucker of all people was the only one who said the exact right thing: Your dad shouldn’t have died. That’s really unfair.

  “You’ve been back two weeks already,” my mom said over breakfast, after I made one last plea to ditch. “The Band-Aid has already been ripped off.” But I don’t have a single Band-Aid. I’d rather have two black eyes, broken bones, internal bleeding, visible scarring. Maybe to not be here at all. Instead: Not a scratch on me. The worst kind of miracle.

  “You’re going to work?” I asked, because it seemed that if I was having trouble facing school, it should be hard for her to put back on her work clothes and heels and drive to the train. Of course my mom was aware of the significance of the date.
In the beginning, once we got home from the hospital, she was in constant tears, while I was the one who was dry-eyed and numb. For the first few days, while she wept, I sat quietly with my knees drawn to my chest, my body racked with chills despite being bundled up in about a million layers. Still, a month later, I haven’t managed to quite get warm.

  My mom, however, seems to be pulling herself back together into someone I recognize. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her on the weekends, when she wears yoga pants and sneakers and a ponytail, or from the way she looked right after the accident, shattered and gray and folded up, but in her working life my mom is a hard-core boss lady. She’s CEO of an online-advertising agency called Disruptive Communications. Sometimes I overhear her yelling at her employees and using the kinds of words that would get me grounded. Occasionally her picture is on the cover of trade magazines with headlines like “The Diverse Future of Viral Media.” She’s the one who orchestrated that video with the singing dogs and cats that at last count had sixteen million hits, and that great breakfast cereal pop-up ad with the biracial gay dads. Before entering the throes of widowhood, she was pretty badass.

  “Of course I’m going to work. Why wouldn’t I?” my mom asked. And with that she picked up my cereal bowl, even though I wasn’t yet finished, and dropped it into the sink so hard that it shattered.

  She left, wearing her “work uniform”—a black cashmere sweater, a pencil skirt, and stilettos. I considered cleaning up the shards of glass in the sink. Maybe even accidentally-on-purpose letting one cut me. Just a little. I was curious whether I’d even feel it. But then I realized that despite my new post-Dad-dying-imbuing-every-single-tiny-thing-with-bigger-meaning stage, like wearing this men’s work shirt to school, that was just way too metaphorical. Even for me. So I left the mess for my mom to clean up later.

  After lunch with Kit Lowell, I take off my headphones. Usually I keep them on between classes so that when I walk through the halls the ambient noise is indistinct and muffled. That chatter and movement make me feel amped up and distracted and much more likely to trip. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and yet the boys in school dart from side to side full of random aggression. They jab their fists into each other’s backs, tackle necks with smiles on their faces, high-five hard. Why do they want to constantly touch each other? Though the girls don’t weave as much as the guys, they also stop and start, often out of nowhere, hugging every so often even though they just saw each other before last period.

  I free-ear it because I am curious to hear if anyone is talking about Kit’s dad. I Googled his name and pulled up this obituary, which was in the Daily Courier, section A16, three weeks and four days ago. Only three short sentences, which, though I appreciate its succinctness, left out some relevant details, like the lollipops and the whole “nice man” part.

  Robert Lowell DDS passed away on Friday, January 15, in a car accident. He was born on September 21, 1971, in Princeton, New Jersey, and practiced dentistry in Mapleview for the past twelve years. He is survived by his wife, Mandip, and their daughter, Katherine.

  Facts thus far learned from my quick search: (1) Kit’s dad’s name was Robert, which makes sense somehow, a familiar word and an even number of letters. I’ve always just thought of him as Dentist, which now that I think about it is way too limiting. (2) Kit’s dad died in a car accident, which is a misnomer, because in the vast majority of car accidents where people end up dying, they don’t actually die in the car but afterward, in the ambulance or at the hospital. I’ll have to find out the specifics.

  As I walk down the hall, I see Gabriel.

  GABRIEL FORSYTH: Curly hair. Marble eyes. Clown mouth.

  Notable Encounters

  1. Seventh grade: Took my Oreos without asking. Snatched them from my insulated lunch bag and walked away.

  2. Tenth grade: Held hands with Kit L. (That’s not an encounter with me, but it’s still notable.)

  3. Eleventh grade: Sits next to me in physics, because our seats were assigned by the teacher on day one. When he saw how far he was from Justin Cho, he said, “Awww shit, really, Mr. Schmidt?” for which he got a first warning. I did not point out that the seat was a relatively good one in terms of acoustics and board perspective. Miney said it was good that I kept that to myself.

  Friends

  The lacrosse team, the tennis team (which, of course has considerable overlap due to the seasonal schedules). Best friends with Justin Cho since second grade.

  Additional Notes: Miney puts him on the Do Not Trust List.

  I do not look at him. Instead I keep my head down, concentrate on keeping up with the stops and starts in front of me.

  “Yo, man, after practice. Pizza Palace,” Gabriel says. Based on the sneakers and the context, I’m ninety-nine percent sure he is talking to Justin. I will not put Justin’s notebook entry here, because I am tired of reading and rereading my notes about Justin and wondering why he hates me so much. An unsolvable equation. Our Notable Encounters list is five pages long. He is the president of the Do Not Trust Club.

  The Pizza Palace is the second-best Italian restaurant in Mapleview, according to Yelp. Most people prefer Rocco’s. If Gabriel were inviting me, which he is not, I would suggest we go to Pizza Pizza Pizza, which has two slices for the price of one from two to five p.m., and I believe the slight decrease in quality is more than made up for by the value. That said, I do get why they’d choose the Pizza Palace anyway, which is in no way a palace—just a small storefront on Main Street—because no matter how cheap the food is at Pizza Pizza Pizza, it feels funny to say the redundant name out loud.

  That’s what I’m doing, imagining that Gabriel said, “Yo, man, after practice, Pizza Pizza Pizza,” and thinking how that would have been ridiculous, when I bump into a group of girls congregating around a locker. Jessica, Willow (who is notably the only Willow enrolled in our 397-student class and in our 1,579-student school), and Abby. Miney has labeled them in my notebook, in block letters and underlined with a Sharpie: THE POPULAR BITCHES.

  When she first used this designation, Miney had to give me a long lecture about how this wasn’t an oxymoron, how someone could be both popular, which I presumed meant that lots of people liked you, and at the same time also be a bitch, which I presumed would have the opposite outcome. Apparently popularity in the context of high school has a negative correlation with people actually liking you but a high correlation with people wanting to be your friend. After careful consideration, this makes sense, though in my case, I am both an outlier and a great example of the fact that correlation does not imply causation. I am nice to everyone but without any upside: People neither like me nor want to be my friend.

  “Watch it,” Jessica says, and rolls her eyes. Like I bumped into her on purpose. Haven’t my classmates figured out that the feeling has become mutual? They want nothing to do with me? Fine. I want nothing to do with them either. Miney promises college will be better, though I highly doubt it. “And what’s with all the talking to yourself?”

  Have I been talking to myself? It’s entirely possible and somewhat ironic that my entire thought process about Pizza Pizza Pizza and what a ridiculous name it is to say out loud actually occurred…out loud. Occasionally, I forget about the barrier between the inside of my head and the rest of the world.

  “Sorry,” I mutter to the floor, and pick up the book she dropped and hand it to her. She doesn’t say thank you.

  “Freak,” Abby says, and laughs, like that’s funny or original. I force myself to meet her eyes, to look straight at her, because Miney claims eye contact humanizes me. Again, I have no idea why I need to be humanized in the first place, why everyone assumes I am some exception to the universally acknowledged rule that we are all human beings with feelings. Still, I do it anyway. Such is the power of Miney. “What are you staring at?”

  For a second I consider asking Abby, straight out, just saying it out loud, “What have I ever done to you?” I bumped into Jessica. Not
her. We have had no Notable Encounters, positive or negative. But then the bell rings, and it’s loud and uncomfortable, and everyone is rushing off to class, and I have physics. Which means I now have to spend the next forty-five minutes sitting next to Gabriel and trying to block out the fact that he smells like Axe Anarchy for Him body spray, and taps his pencil against his desk to an erratic beat, and clears his throat approximately every thirty-five seconds. No doubt, despite the acoustics and board perspective, I’d have been much better off sitting alone in the back.

  —

  Kit slips into class ten minutes into Mr. Schmidt’s lecture on Newton’s third law, which I’ve written down in Latin to keep it interesting.

  “Lost track of time,” Kit says, and takes her seat, which is two behind me and one to the right. Not the greatest excuse, considering the school uses a loud bell to remind us to get to class. Mr. Schmidt nods and doesn’t yell at her or give her a first warning like he normally would. Once, when we had to make a shiva call to our next-door neighbor’s, Miney told me that different rules apply to those who’ve just lost someone. I wonder how long that lasts, not the dead part, of course, but the special treatment part. Would Mr. Schmidt make allowances for me if my dad died?

  Probably not. My dad is a medical researcher at Abbot Laboratories. I doubt he’s on many people’s Nice List, mostly because he’s not the type of person to make it onto any lists other than science ones. If my mother died, on the other hand, people would notice. She and Miney are similar that way: Everyone loves them. My mom is always stopping to talk to other women in the checkout line at the supermarket or at the drugstore. She knows the names of all the kids in my class and their parents, and sometimes she’ll even add information to my notebook. She’s the one who told me that Justin and Jessica were dating—she saw them making out at the mall—and then later that they broke up. This was gleaned, somehow, while getting her nails done, because she shares a chatty manicurist with Jessica’s mom.