What to Say Next

by Julie Buxbaum

  “Hey, guys,” I say, and move my lips in the way I think approximates a smile. It requires complicated muscle coordination. More exhausting than that time Violet made me try Pilates.

  I look over and Violet jumps out of the booth, runs over to me. Annie gives me a Brownie salute, which is one of our inside jokes, and I see I’ve won her over just by showing up. That makes me smile for real, and then the smiling makes me tear up, so I stop doing it.

  “You came!” Violet says.

  “I can’t stay long.” As soon as the words slip out, I realize they are true. After dropping David off, being alone in the car felt unbearable, and the Pizza Palace was closer than home. Since the accident, my mom has been making me drive at every opportunity. She claims she doesn’t want me to develop a lifelong phobia, and I guess her plan is mostly working. Still, when I’m alone in the car, I flinch at passing SUVs, and I’m way too aware of how fast all the other traffic is going, how thin the line is between us, how easily one mistake can kill us all.

  Cars are terrible, powerful, destructive machines. Maybe sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to drive them. Maybe no one should.

  Now, here with everyone, I feel no better than I did on the ride over. I’m sweaty around my friends lately, like socializing is a form of cardio but without the postexercise endorphins or smugness. I need to beg my body to push through this.

  “Can’t believe you ditched newspaper yesterday,” Annie says. “After all that work, you’re just going to throw away the chance at editor in chief?”

  I shrug, and Gabriel uses that as an opportunity to start massaging my shoulders.

  “You look tight,” he says. For about five minutes last year, Gabriel and I were together. One of those stupid things that happen because you find yourselves in the corner of a room at a party where everyone is drunk. He kissed me suddenly, like a bird swooping to pick garbage from a can, and after I recovered from the surprise attack, I kissed him back. That Monday, he held my hand in the hallway at school, and then we made out again later in the 7-Eleven parking lot in between taking sips of our Slurpees. Two weeks later, he broke it off, said something about us being better off as friends, which was fine by me. I wasn’t particularly into Gabriel, but it was fun having someone to kiss and hold hands with. Having, for just a little while, a pleasant distraction.

  Now, though, I’d really like him to stop touching my shoulders. In fact, I wish there were a way to transfer his hands to Annie, who for the past few months has had a secret unexplainable crush on him. She’s never said it out loud, but Violet and I know she’s hoping he’ll ask her to prom. There’s nothing wrong with Gabriel on paper, but there isn’t really much there there. Annie’s not the type of girl who should have to settle for pleasant distractions. She’s too cool for that.

  Jessica, Willow, and Abby burst through the door in a loud explosion of giggles and then stop at the counter to get their Diet Cokes before heading to the back to join us. I don’t really like these girls—I have never liked these girls—and yet somehow they are on the periphery of our friend group. Okay, fine, we are actually on the periphery of their friend group, since as a trio, Jessica, Willow, and Abby are by far the most popular girls in the junior class. I have no idea how they’ve managed to swing it—popularity is an undefinable thing at Mapleview, which as best I can tell involves a whole lot of unearned, effortless confidence and the ability to get other people to look at you for no reason at all.

  Jessica is a blonde, Willow is a brunette, and Abby is a redhead, just like every teen friend group on television (except, in this case, sans a sassy black sidekick). Boom! Best friends for life. I assume there’s more to their friendship than hair-color optics and an affinity for thong underwear. That taken individually there is the distant possibility they might actually be interesting people. I doubt I will ever know, though, since they travel as a pack.

  The reason I don’t like them is not because they’re walking clichés and therefore like to dabble in being quintessential mean girls, but because their conversations are boring. We live in a small and privileged bubble in Mapleview, and I’ve never understood their desire to make it seem even smaller.

  “Boys,” Abby says by way of hello, and the way it rolls off her tongue makes it sound like she is both belittling them and flirting with them at the same time. I practice her intonation in my head, boys, file it away for use far, far in the future. Like college. No, that’s just a year and a half away. Maybe it will come in handy if I go to graduate school. “And ladies.”

  The guys act differently when the three of them are around. More nervous, even louder. Gabriel mercifully stops his massage. Justin smiles goofily. He and Jessica used to hook up, but last I heard, she broke it off with him because she’s been hanging out with a freshman from NYU. In the world of social climbing, college boy beats high school boy every time. Rumor has it that Justin is still devastated.

  “So what’s the deal with you and David Drucker?” Willow asks me, and for no good reason I feel my hands curl into fists. Guess I am moving through the five stages of grief after all. Making my designated pit stop at number two: anger.

  “Nothing’s up. We’re friends,” I say.

  “Come on, you’re not really friends with David Drucker,” Abby says, and sighs dramatically. Like everything I have to say is frustrating. “Sitting at someone’s lunch table doesn’t make you besties.”

  “What do you care?” I ask. I’m a little too eager to engage and take them down. Which is stupid. They are my friends, sort of. This is not what I do.

  “Of course we don’t care,” Jessica says, and laughs. And it’s true. I’m sure she doesn’t care.

  “He got in your car today, though,” Willow says. “I saw him.” I decide suddenly that I hate Willow the most. She was born with more than her fair share of the same magic Lauren Drucker has, but without the warmth.

  “Like I said: We’re friends. He’s pretty interesting, actually.”

  “Interesting?” Gabriel asks, though it’s in no way a question. Leave it to Gabriel to always go for the easiest response: reflexive, empty sarcasm.

  My anger deflates. It’s not real anyway. It’s just a stupid stage in a stupid article. That’s how desperate my mom and I are. We look for guidance from Oprah.com. Too bad there’s another step they forgot to list: the sudden onset of not-giving-a-crap-about-anything-ness. What I now think of as astronaut helmet syndrome.

  Suddenly I look around and see everyone talking and laughing, no less than two feet in front of me, and they feel miles away. We are all strangers to each other in the end.

  Turns out grief not only morphs time, but space too. Somehow increases the distance between you and other people. I should ask David if there’s any science behind that idea.

  “Whatever. Let’s talk about much more important things,” Jessica says.

  “Right. One word,” Willow says.

  “Prom,” Abby finishes.

  Annie quickly glances at Gabriel, but if he notices her looking at him, he doesn’t show it.

  —

  “Gross,” my mom says as she shovels the Weight Watchers version of fettuccine Alfredo into her mouth. Lately, during dinner, we talk in single-word sentences, a shorthand we’ve adopted because we’re too tired for anything more. When I close my eyes at night, the projector in my brain flips on and there it is, right on the ceiling: a repeat loop of a bird’s-eye view of the crash. Like it’s fun for me watching this imaginary horror film. To stand by and watch the other car—a navy-blue Ford Explorer—plow into my father, on repeat, again and then again. I smell rubber and smoke. Metallic blood, so sharp and recognizable it can’t be anything other than what it is. A taste and a smell in one.

  Life and its opposite.

  I attempt to figure out at what point a foot would have needed to touch the brake for there never to have been a crash at all. As if high-school-level math could, just this once, come in handy.

  When I finally do fall asleep, I h
ave a dream about Newton’s third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposing reaction. Force against force. The car crushed and disposed of like an empty potato chip bag. Snap, crackle, pop.

  Here now, though, it’s just my mom and me and the sad sounds of us chewing. And then, inexplicably, there’s a key in the lock.

  Could the doctor have been right and my dad was just lost? Momentarily misplaced? He will waltz in the door and ruffle my hair and call me Kitty Cat.

  Of course that doesn’t happen. My dad has not risen from the dead. Even David’s ridiculous theory of consciousness doesn’t allow for that.

  It’s just Uncle Jack, the only other living person who has a key to our home. Right. Much more logical.

  “What are you doing here?” my mom asks. Her tone is sharp and betrays her disappointment.

  It’s okay, I want to say. I thought it was going to be Dad too.

  Normally my mom would be happy to see Jack. When he first got divorced, it was my mother’s idea to invite him to stay over at our house on the weekends his boys were with Aunt Katie. He was sad then too, and my mom cooked him hearty, comforting breakfasts. Pancakes and eggs and bacon and the good coffee.

  “The cure for a broken heart,” she’d say. She would serve the food on our good platters, and then the three of them, my mom, Dad, and Jack, would sit at the dining table passing around sections of The New York Times while I played with my phone.

  “This right here is my definition of heaven,” my dad used to say. “My best friend and my two girls and the paper of record.”

  “You’re not answering your cell and I was…worried,” Jack says, and looks at my mother, but she stares at her gelatinous noodles. Jack’s tall and bald and lanky. He wears glasses, big plastic ones that are both dorky and cool at the same time, and swanky suits that look imported from England. He’s not good-looking—his nose is too big for his face, his eyes are a little squinty behind his frames, he’s a little pasty—but there’s something familiar and comforting about him.

  “Want some dinner?” I ask, and jump up to check the freezer. “We have a Lean Cuisine.”

  “You do realize that’s not real food, right?” He keeps his tone light, so much lighter than the feeling in the room.

  “How about a glass of wine?” my mom asks, suddenly unfreezing, as if her play button has been pushed, and she busies herself getting a bottle out, opening it up, and pouring herself a large glass. She gulps it down. Only then does she pour out two more: another for her and one for Jack.

  “Ice cream too,” I say, tossing him the pint of mint chocolate chip I find in the freezer. He grabs a spoon from the drawer and digs right in to the container. Uncle Jack hasn’t bothered to shave, and his almost-beard is dotted with gray hairs. He looks about as depressed as my mother and I feel.

  “How’s Evan?” I ask, just to make some conversation. Evan is one of Jack’s sons; he’s fourteen and also goes to Mapleview. We used to hang out when we were younger, when our families would vacation together before his parents got divorced. Evan and I and his younger brother, Alex, would make sand castles and tackle each other in the ocean, and I used to complain to Auntie Katie that they should have made at least one girl for me to play with. Those trips don’t feel real anymore. Like a memory of something I once saw on television.

  “Going to junior prom, apparently,” Jack says, and smiles.

  “That’s a big deal for a freshman,” I say.

  “How about you?”

  “Nah, not going.” I avoid looking at my mother. I have a feeling my skipping prom falls under the same category as my not sitting with my friends at lunch. It will inspire, at the very least, a discussion.

  “Your dad would have wanted you to go. He’d want you to have fun,” Jack says. “Not mope around with us old folks.”

  “Let’s not talk about what Robert would have wanted,” my mom cuts in, her voice icy and sharp.

  “I didn’t mean to step on any toes,” Jack says softly.

  “Then don’t.”

  “Mandi, you can’t avoid me forever.”

  “I can try.”

  “I’m just doing my job as executor. There’s estate stuff we need to take care of. I don’t have the authority to—”

  “Wow, it’s getting late and I actually have a lot of work to do.” My mom jumps out of her chair, and just like that she walks out of the room, taking her glass of wine with her.

  “I’ll help,” I say to Jack, after what feels like a long time in which we’ve both sat here staring at the empty space my mother left behind. “Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”

  My voice sounds empty. I’m as useless as I feel. Uncle Jack hands me the pint of ice cream, and the two of us pass it back and forth until it’s finished.

  “Little D!” Miney says, and there she is, at the dinner table, sitting in her seat, which we leave open in her absence out of protocol. Her hair is a little longer, but at least at first glance, she looks pretty much the same. Like my sister. “I’m home!”

  Yes, this is obvious, though I refrain from telling her that. From past experience I’ve learned this is rude. What is not immediately obvious is why she is here. She’s not supposed to be home for another forty-nine days, her spring break, which does not in any way overlap with mine. We have already scheduled around this inconvenience. I will skip school on that Tuesday with my parents’ permission—they have already agreed to write a note in which they will claim I have an important doctor’s appointment—and Miney and I will re-create what we have mutually agreed was the Perfect Day of All the Days Ever. It will involve lunch from Sayonara Sushi, ice cream from Straw, forty-seven minutes at our favorite bookstore, and then a trip down the shore to the aquarium.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  “Some things never change. Always straight to the point,” Miney says, and makes a sound that is similar to Kit’s snort. A laugh that is not really a laugh but is something wholly unidentifiable by me. Someone should make a YouTube video that identifies the range of female noises, not unlike the ones they have for avid birders. “I just needed a break from school. And I missed you guys.”

  Though I think it highly unlikely that Miney missed me—I’ve estimated that I irritate her about eighty percent of the time we spend together—I’m thrilled that she’s here. Kit at my lunch table and Miney home on the same day feel like something more than coincidence. A cosmic alignment.

  “When are you leaving?” I ask. Departures are easier for me if I have some lead time to prepare and plan, to imagine the befores and afters of the scenario.

  “You’ll be the first to know when I figure it out. Now, get over here,” she says, and stands up and opens her arms for a hug. I’m generally not a fan of displays of affection, but I make an exception for my parents and Miney. Well, really just for my mom and Miney. My dad is more of a thumbs-up kind of guy.

  Her arms wrap around me, and I immediately start to look for sneaky changes. Miney’s perfume is no longer citrus. Instead it’s something sandalwood-based, borderline musty, and her clothes don’t smell recently laundered. A chunk of her hair is now purple, and she’s added a piercing to the top part of her ear. Her eyes are bloodshot.

  She better not have gotten a tattoo. I couldn’t handle that.

  Miney was perfect the way she was when she left in September. I don’t like that each time she comes home, I need to readjust to a new iteration. I find I have trouble with the purple stripe. It looks like noise.

  “Mom says Kit drove you home from school today,” she says, which isn’t a question, but she somehow makes it sound like one.

  “Yup,” I say. “We talked all about quantum mechanics.”

  “Oh my God, D. Have I taught you nothing?” she says.

  “You’ve taught me lots of things. I didn’t mention her weight, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “What are we going to do with you?” she asks, and my stomach clenches. Freshman year, when I would fin
d myself in trouble at school on a biweekly basis, Principal Hoch would pose this question, which is both idiomatic and rhetorical. What are we going to do with you? Like I was a group project.

  Just once I’d like the answer to be: nothing.

  Just once I’d like the answer to be: You are just fine as is.

  Just once I’d like the question not to be asked in the first place.

  “Get your notebook,” Miney demands, and I pull it out of my bag. I smooth the familiar blue cover, a tic left over from when I needed to look through it hourly. Lately, though, the notebook stays in my bag for longer periods. I can almost imagine a time I won’t need it at all. “An opportunity like Kit comes around once in a lifetime, if that.”

  “Kit is a girl. Though statistically speaking, it is unlikely that she is actually the best girl in the world, it feels that way. No doubt she’s the best girl in Mapleview. What Kit is not is an opportunity,” I say.

  “I’m just saying we have some serious work to do. I’m not letting you blow this.”

  “That’s what she said,” I joke. I’ve been waiting weeks for the chance to use a variation of the “that’s what he/she said” thing since I’ve learned how it’s done, and so I can’t help but grin when Miney cracks up. Her face looks lighter and softer when she laughs. Her purple hair feels quieter too. The sum of her parts now equals the familiar.

  I just wish Miney’s eyes weren’t bloodshot.

  “I was wrong. Maybe some things do change,” she says, and ruffles my hair, like I’m a small boy. And though I don’t quite understand the reason behind her gesture, I find myself leaning into her hands.

  —

  Today, the fourth time Kit sits at my lunch table, she eats a sandwich and an apple. On close inspection, it appears to be hummus and turkey on whole wheat. Her black nail polish is chipped, and her shirt hangs off of her right shoulder, just like one of Miney’s, which makes me think this must be a sartorial choice and not a mistake of sizing. She has a bunch of freckles near the center of her clavicle that form a small circle. It’s a soft detail, like how her bottom lip pushes out just a millimeter from her top lip, or how when she pushes her hands through her hair, the commas fall forward, as if taking a bow.