First, I will stay up all night and finish the Accident Project. Show Kit the real-life applications of my skill set and the myriad and unexpected ways it can benefit her.
Second, I will invite Kit to the Academic League meet. It’s a bit obvious to use the event as a courtship display, but as Miney likes to say, if you got it, flaunt it.
—
Instead of sleeping, I draw diagrams, calculate axes and velocity, research car models and their various braking systems. My scientific calculator goes warm from overuse. On the Internet, I find experts on car collisions and delve deep into forensic message boards. Learn about head injuries, broken chest cavities, punctured hearts. I pull up the pictures I took of the accident site and blow up on my thirty-inch monitor the one Kit sent me of her dad’s car. A Volvo smooshed up like an accordion on the right side. I zoom in with my new camera software. Examine the blood on the passenger-side dashboard. Stencil the splatter pattern. I read the newspaper accounts of the crash, which has a photo of the other car, a navy-blue Ford Explorer with a shattered windshield, half-folded in on itself. A car reimagined as a paper airplane. In the background, there’s a Mini pulled over to the side that has minimal damage: just two broken headlamps, a big dent in its hood. The article doesn’t mention its involvement, but based on my own analysis, I assume it was behind the Volvo. Another car changes things. Adds a layer of complexity. I wish Kit had mentioned it before.
I line my three pictures up next to each other, as if they form a comic strip, though this is not at all funny.
No matter how many times I check my work—and I do, over and over again, maybe as many times as I have relived kissing Kit—the math does not make sense. By my calculations, the only calculations, Kit’s dad shouldn’t be dead.
—
“What’s wrong?” Miney asks when she comes into my room on Saturday morning and finds me at my desk in the same clothes as last night. I’m flapping. “Didn’t go well last night? I so thought that leather jacket would seal the deal.”
“What deal?” I ask. My head feels heavy. It is nine a.m. and I haven’t slept at all. I rub my face, attempt to wipe away the fatigue, which is a wasteful expenditure of energy at just the time I should be conserving. Fatigue is not something that can be wiped away like a smudge. I am not thinking clearly. “The party was great. Perfect, actually. Well, not the party part—parties are horrible, I don’t know why people go to them—but the rest of it, the Kit of it was great. Amazing.”
“Really? Then why do you look like someone ran over your dog?”
“We don’t have a dog.”
“Focus, Little D.”
“What?”
“Tell me what’s wrong.” Miney’s wearing pajamas, though it’s a clean pair I don’t recognize. Her eyes are less bloodshot. Whatever mysterious illness she was afflicted with seems to have resolved itself. “You do not look like someone who has had an ‘amazing’ night. Did you kiss her?”
“Yup. Well, actually she kissed me.”
“She kissed you?”
“Yup.”
“And?”
“And I’m in love.”
“That’s great. Though maybe you should slow down a bit. It’s a little early to be throwing the L-word around.” She plops down backward on my rotating chair, like she is a football coach in a movie about to deliver one of those huddle up speeches.
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters,” I say, and shiver because I already feel the loss before it’s even happened. I will never kiss Kit again. The whole thing is over no more than twelve hours after it began. Weirdly, this realization doesn’t just reset me back to my pre-Kit life, Me 1.0, when kissing her had seemed as impossible as crossing the space-time continuum. When I was resigned to a lifetime of solitude. Now it is so much worse. I can’t imagine going back to that empty lunch table on Monday morning. Being again that guy everyone used to call shithead. The longing for Kit feels physical. Like my heart is blinking.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was an idiot. He was wrong. It is not better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. If I had never loved at all, I wouldn’t be here flapping. I’d be downstairs, after a restful night’s sleep, reading the DSM and eating Saturday morning pancakes. I wouldn’t know what it’s like for everyone else. What it means to not be alone. Just how far and how long I’ve lived away from planet Normal.
“The Accident Project. I can’t figure it out,” I say.
“Please speak English,” Miney says.
“Kit asked me to do one thing, to help her figure out how her dad died—well, not how, exactly, but the when, the moment of braking, so the larger ‘how,’ I guess, and the math doesn’t work. The math always works. It’s the only thing I know how to do, and I can’t do it.”
“Little D, calm down.” She reaches to pat my back, but I jerk away from her hand. I don’t want to be touched. My body is flaring. “You have so much more to offer than math. That’s not why Kit kissed you. You realize that, right?”
“He’s not supposed to be dead. Dentist is not supposed to be dead.”
“Who’s Dentist? Kit’s dad? Of course he shouldn’t be dead. It’s a tragedy—”
“No, you don’t understand. The math doesn’t work.”
“So?”
“It’s not a tragedy. It’s a lie.”
My first thought when I wake up on Saturday morning is I want to die. Because if I die, then the nausea will stop, the room will still, and I won’t have to face the shitshow that has become my life. In bed I stare at the white ceiling and think about my mother’s confession. She got drunk and made a mistake. Alcohol clouds your judgment, she said. Makes you listen to the wrong voice in your head.
Just because you are forty-five doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes feel and act sixteen, she claimed, which is probably the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard in my life, because you want to know my big secret plan right now? The only freaking thing I have in my back pocket? The idea that eventually I’ll age out of this horrible life stage and never, ever look back.
I wonder what David is thinking about this morning. Based on his amazing kissing skills, it’s entirely possible he has a secret life. After last night, I realize I know nothing about the real him. I realize how silly—how naive—it is to assume you know anyone at all. Look at my mother and me. We are made of smoke and mirrors.
I check my phone and find a bunch of texts.
Mom: You okay? Left a glass of water and two Advil by your bed. You looked rough last night.
Under other, more normal circumstances, I would expect a lecture, though somehow I doubt my mom has the nerve to criticize today. I am sixteen acting sixteen. She’s in no position to judge.
But I don’t remember seeing my mom last night, and that part, the not remembering—which was one of the reasons for drinking in the first place—makes me feel worst of all.
Me: Hanging in there.
Mom: I’ll check on you in a little bit, okay?
I pause for a second before texting back. I am sick and tired and weak. As pathetic as it sounds, I want my mommy. I’m too hungover, too broken for anger. This feels like it must be the bottom.
Me: Okay.
—
I open a group message with Annie and Violet.
Annie: OMG. OMG. OMG. KL +DD! Wld b LMAO if I wasn’t so hungs.
Violet: Annie, how much coffee have you already had this morning?
Annie: 4 cups. Y?
Violet: SO MANY ACRONYMS. WHO ARE YOU!?!
Annie: Stop shouting. My head hurts.
Violet: K, you okay? That was A LOT of vodka. SO WE NEED DETAILS. Go David!
Annie: Go David? No, go Kit! V, u see that leather jacket? Swoon.
Violet: I like his slightly stubbly jaw.
Me: Ugh, so sick. Vodka shots were a mistake. Kissing David…was not.
There. That sounds almost like the old Kit. Funny and light. The old Kit was happy or at least happy enough. The old Kit didn’t understan
d depression.
Violet: It’s like overnight he went from nothing to being superhot.
Me: D was always cute. It’s just no one ever thought to look at him.
Annie: Except you. Who knew K had such good hot-guy-dar?
Me: I don’t like him because he’s hot.
Annie: Come on.
Me: Fine, I don’t like him JUST because he’s hot. He’s also all kinds of awesome.
Annie: Whatever you say.
Violet: Call me shallow, but for me that stubble would be reason enough.
Annie: I wonder if when he talks dirty, he gets all science-y. Oooh, your matter makes my particles throb.
Me: Shut up.
Violet: When we get together it’s like a chemical reaction.
Annie: I want to insert my proton into your neutron.
—
I read David’s texts last. Maybe I should let myself enjoy this unexpected development. An amazing night of kissing. The delicious possibility that I might get to kiss David again. Even enjoy my friends’ gentle teasing, because it reminds me of how we used to be. Maybe for right now, that should be enough to get me out of bed. Let David be the tide that moves my time forward.
David: Thank you for an amazing night! Damn cops.
David: Can’t stop thinking about you.
David: Will you come to my Academic League event next week?
—
Then, about two hours, later:
David: Kit, are you there? WE NEED TO TALK.
David: Kit, call me immediately.
David: Seriously, call me the second you wake up. I need to talk to you.
David: Kit?
David: Kit, it’s about the Accident Project.
—
The texts span the night. The first two are from sometime shortly after he dropped me off. But the last five came in early this morning in exactly fifteen-minute intervals. When I read the words Accident Project, they hit hard. A sucker punch. No, more like a pulverization of all my internal organs. The reminder I don’t need.
The Accident Project.
Again I sprint for the bathroom.
This time I don’t make it.
—
“Are you okay, Kit?” my mom asks again when she finds me slumped over in the hallway. Her tone isn’t angry. It’s scared. I have never been the sort of kid who breaks rules. Any rebelling I’ve done so far has been careful and deliberate and far away from adult eyes. But I am marinating in my own vomit, obviously hungover from a night out; my chin is red and raw from David’s stubble. I want to tell her that I’m fine. Absolutely, perfectly, one hundred percent fine. That it’s not really the drinking that made me throw up. At least not this last time, anyway. It’s all bigger than one night out. I want to tell her I am broken, that I’m starting to suspect that not even time can fix me.
I want to tell her that I have, that we have, made a big mistake.
I want to tell her to leave me the hell alone. That I’m better off without her.
I want to tell her to stay and hold me and make it all better.
I want her to tell me that there are worse things than telling the truth.
When she sits next to me cross-legged on the floor, though, I say nothing at all. Instead I lie down on my side and put my head into her lap. Just hand over the burden that is my brain.
Instead of talking, I cry.
“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. I promise. It’s all going to be okay,” she says, and strokes my hair.
“How?” I ask. I can’t get out more than that. And that’s all I want to know: How, how, how. How can it be okay?
“I have no idea. All right, so maybe it won’t be okay. Not really. Not the same, but we’ll survive this. That’s a start, right? Survival? We’ve still got each other.”
“Right,” I mumble into her thigh. I don’t want to die. Not really. I just suck at living. Is it true? That I still have my mother? It doesn’t always feel that way.
“For starters, we can shoot for not sitting in puke.” I start to get up—my mom is, after all, wearing a silk T-shirt that she sometimes lets me borrow—but she holds me in place. “Wait one more second. I need to tell you something while I have you captive. I know I screwed up, but I love you and your dad. When your father’s parents died—your grandparents—your father, well, it broke him, and for a long time he was like someone without batteries. Kind of like how you are now. Pathetic and dangly. Empty and sad.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean how we are now. I’m just as pathetic and dangly, though let’s be honest, I smell better.” I give my mother a small smile. Despite everything, I can do that. “But over time, Dad started becoming himself again. Not the same person he was before. Not even close. He became a better, stronger, Humpty Dumpty–glued-back-together version, and that’s when I really fell in love with him. Head over heels. I decided that, no matter what my parents had to say about it, he was going to be my person. The thing is, sometimes people grow from breaking. That’s what I think was happening with your father and me before he died—I truly believe we were going to work things out—and it’s what I think we both should aim for now. Not just survival. We need to become even better versions of ourselves. In honor of Dad. We owe him. That’s the least we can do for the people we love.”
I let her words roll over me. Soak in her blatant optimism. I can be better. We can be better. The new Kit could one day be somebody I’m proud of. Somebody my dad would be proud of. It’s okay I’m not the same person I used to be. I’m not supposed to be.
Maybe we can make meaning out of something that feels so completely devoid of sense, even if only to make ourselves feel better.
Or maybe this: I can be the old Kit and the new Kit. I can be both. I’m an and.
“You’re such an overachiever, Mom,” I say.
“Good thing so are you.” I nod. Decided. Galvanized. Brave. “One of the few perks of the shit so monumentally hitting the fan is you discover who your real tribe is. It’s the only way through. So make sure you find yours, Kit.”
“Okay,” I say, and start assembling my team in my head. I think back to middle school, when we’d have to pick players for dodgeball in gym. David was always chosen last. I imagine him standing there, looking two feet above everyone else’s heads, his hands flapping at his sides—something he still does occasionally, though I’m not sure he realizes it—and I want to go back in time and hug him, whisper in his ear that he can come stand by me. Tell him if he gets tired of flapping, he can hold my hand instead.
“I very much hope you’ll consider including me,” my mom says in her quietest voice, and I realize this is the closest someone like my mother gets to begging. When I don’t immediately respond, she says, “At the very least, hashtag squad goals.”
I laugh. My mom loves to try to talk like a teenager. A few weeks ago, I overheard her on the phone complaining about how she was tired of adulting and the last time we watched a romantic comedy together, she wanted to ship all the secondary characters.
“Yeah, we can work on that,” I say, and realize just how much I’ve missed my mom recently. How I can’t make it through without her. That there will always be room in my tribe.
I unwind the soiled scarf from my neck. Hold it out for my mom to take. A bizarre, vomit-soaked, cashmere peace offering.
“Do you think this is dry-cleanable?” I ask.
—
Me: Hey. Just woke up. We can talk. I’m just crazy hungover, so can you give me a few hours?
David: You were drunk last night?
Me: Um, yeah.
David: Like drunk enough to be hungover?
Did David not notice me drinking? At one point I think Annie and I started swigging straight from the bottle. He was standing right next to me.
Me: Apparently.
David: So. Does that mean—
There’s a long pause, that terrible pulsating ellipsis, and I wonder what he’s doing. Is he writing? Thinking of what
to say next? What does he have to report about the Accident Project? What was I thinking, getting him involved with that? It seems so pointless now. An act of desperation. Or self-sabotage. There’s no unwinding what happened. My father’s death isn’t some sort of logic problem. It’s a tragedy.
David: Does that mean you didn’t mean it? That you only kissed me because you were drunk?
Me: What? No. Yes. No.
David: Please explain.
Me: I mean, I wanted to kiss you and the drinking made me more comfortable.
David: You were uncomfortable kissing me?
Me: No! That’s not what I meant. I was…shy. Are you serious right now with these questions?
David: Of course. I’m always serious.
Me: It’s not a big deal.
David: What isn’t? The kiss? You being drunk? Or the Accident Project? You are opening new loops, and it’s confusing.
Me: I was talking about last night. LAST NIGHT was not a big deal.
David: It was a big deal for me.
Me: Oh. I didn’t mean. I just. Never mind. Let’s talk in person. Texting isn’t working.
David: What service provider do you have?
Me: Why?
David: If your texting plan isn’t working, could be your provider. I’ll look up on Yelp who has the best coverage in Mapleview.
Miney wants to help but I don’t let her. I need to figure out how to do this on my own; I’m ready. It’s the least I can do for Kit. I’m pretty sure after today she will no longer want to kiss me, much less sit at our lunch table. I hold out hope for the slim possibility that this will be received as good news, that I will be hailed as a conquering hero for uncovering the truth. That’s what she wanted, right? For me to figure this all out?
What to Say Next Page 20
