by Shiloh White
“I was looking forward to this trip, Lucy. Some time with my best friend, you know?"
“I'm sorry we didn't get to hang out or talk. “ I said. “It's just...”
Anna folded her arms impatiently. “Just what?”
I opened my mouth to talk, then froze.
Was I really about to tell her what happened? Where the heck did I start? “I wasn't exactly sick” didn't seem like the best choice. My mouth twitched every time I started to say something, keeping any more words from coming out. Anna nodded, a cold look coming from her eyes.
“That's what I thought. You know,” she said, “if you really wanted, you could still take off. No one would be the wiser if you went back into the hotel and snuck out the back.”
She turned and started to get on the bus again.
“Anna!” I shouted and grabbed her hand again. “You're not listening—"
“STUDENTS MUST KEEP THEIR HANDS TO THEMSELVES! THIS AIN'T KINDERGARTEN!"
The shock of Mrs. Nary's sudden yell from the megaphone made me let go and Anna walked away, climbing onto the bus. I ran after her, but Mrs. Nary stepped in front of the bus entrance, blocking my path.
“Actually, Ms. Hale,” she frowned, “you and I need to talk. Are you feeling okay?"
A silent scream left my lungs when I exhaled. Of course we had to do this right now.
Once the bus started moving, students had to stay seated. By now, Anna was sitting next to her boyfriend. If I couldn't convince her to move, I'd never get the chance to talk to her. But there was no getting around Mrs. Nary, so I looked her in the eyes expectantly, hoping to move the conversation along quickly.
“Surprisingly, I feel much better today.” I lied in as perky a voice I could. The voice that left my lips was a stranger to me.
“That's excellent to hear.” Mrs. Nary answered, but her frown stayed on her face like a sore answer that she wasn't convinced. “Still,” she said, “it's unusual for a student to be sick for a duration of the whole trip and not make any efforts to contact the staff or request to be sent home."
“I enjoyed how comfy the hotel bed was,” I answered quickly, “and I could hardly move anyway. My whole body ached. I figured it would be easier on everyone if I just stayed up there for the week."
Mrs. Nary's frown got active—she pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed. “I'd like you to cut the act, Ms. Hale. You and I know you weren't just lying in bed all week."
“I...what?”
Real intelligent argument, I know. Mrs. Nary, however, was not impressed. She shook her head and me and pulled out her cell phone, tapping away at it for a moment.
“I'm surprised none of your peer group brought it to your attention. This video was on the news the morning after we arrived."
She showed me the phone and I noticed it was of the hotel. My heart started beating three times faster. I knew what this was before I watched it. Someone caught footage of me falling out of the window.
I was, as my “peer group” might say, totally screwed.
Mrs. Nary hit 'play' on the clip and I watched the window flew open. The wind whisked the drapes out into the air, flowing in the breeze. Someone yelled “look up,” and the video zoomed in on a large cloud of smoke. It fell out the window and shot down, evaporating with a deep boom as it hit the ground. Then the clip ended.
“I got bored, so I...looked up a couple science experiments.” I tried to look past her, up at the bus.
Mrs. Nary laughed, which made me look up at her. “That's all that was?” she asked. I nodded slowly, unsure of exactly what she was asking.
“Oh, that's great,” she said, putting her phone away, “I was afraid I'd have another substance-abuse-intervention on my hands."
The gears turned in my head, and I connected the dots with the giant cloud of smoke leaving my room.
“You thought I was...under the influence?”
Mrs. Nary nodded, wiping a tear from her eye.
“Don't worry about it now, child. Gather your things and get on the bus. Although,” she said, her eyes narrowing once again, “you would do well to remember the difference between History and Science class. And the next time you're sick, tell us yourself. Don't send another student to do it.”
Another student?
Anna did cover for me. It left a pit in my stomach now. If I knew it would turn into all this, I would've tried to think up a better plan. For now, I took the chance to walk past Mrs. Nary and board the bus.
✽✽✽
I scanned seats for Anna.
By the front, Zeke's boisterous comments with the other jocks gave them away. I searched for Anna among them, but didn't see her.
“Where's Anna?” I asked Zeke. He stopped joking with the others, and squinted at me like I was crazy.
“Anna who?” he asked. I scoffed and started looking at the other seats. One of Zeke's jock buddies poked me in the leg and then gestured to the back of the bus. Anna was sitting in the row on the left, just in front of the back seat. I told the jock thanks, and he said I could repay him with a date. I told him to stuff it, and walked back to Anna.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked.
“Yes.” Anna said.
I rolled my eyes. “Scoot over.”
Without waiting for her to move, I took the seat next to her and sat for a moment. I tried to find something else to say, and the moment turned into a few minutes. Mrs. Nary got on board and took roll, then the bus engine roared to life and started taking us away from the Capitol.
Once we were on the freeway, Anna said, “The worst part was the first night."
“Huh?” I said, rising out of the depths of my thoughts.
“I came up to go to sleep,” Anna explained, “but the room was still locked. When I knocked, you didn't answer."
“I—"
“Don't tell me you were asleep, either. I had to ask the hotel staff to come unlock the door."
I bit my lower lip. You've been called out, Luce, my thoughts mocked.
“You didn't show up that night or the next morning.” Anna continued. “Or, at least not until after I left for the day."
I knit my eyebrows, unable to hide my confusion. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“You locked the door again. I couldn't get into the room that night."
My mind raced a billion miles an hour. I was in the Dust by then. I only locked the door the first time. So how did it get locked again? And if it was locked by the time Anna got there, the person would have to still be inside, right?
“I just didn't want you to catch what I had.” I lied, and immediately regretted it. My chest felt tight and my palms started to sweat.
“Yeah, whatever.” Anna said. “I just wanted to go to sleep."
“Did you call a staff to get in again?” I practically jumped out of my seat when I asked. Anna gave me a weird look, then turned back to the window.
“I didn't want to call them every night,” she murmured, “so I just asked them to help take my stuff to another room. Mrs. Nary was fine with it."
At first I thought she wouldn't look at me out of anger, but the softness in her words told me otherwise. She sounded embarrassed. Anna didn't want to switch rooms. And she shouldn't have needed to. I couldn't bring myself to tell her the whole truth about the Dust. But, she deserved something. More than just another lie.
I put my hand on her shoulder and she looked at me.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I mean it. And, I really was sick...Just not physically.” Anna nodded, like she'd figured that bit out on her own.
“I haven't been myself since I came home, and I know that. And I did run away when Chloe was in a coma. It wasn't just because of her. I wanted answers. Answers to questions I had long before the whole incident. Then when I came back, so did my mom."
I shook my head in disbelief, remembering when my mother strolled into the hospital like nothing was wrong. Like her daughter wasn't in a coma.
“It was like one of my questions t
ore open,” I continued, “and this giant pile of little questions started to pile up. They made me angry. So since my mom decided to come back, I decided to blame it all on her. But it just made me more pissed. I couldn't even paint for a while. I was lying to myself.
“It's been my own fault. I haven't been able to truly come back. You were right, Anna. I ran away and some other girl came back. But this trip helped me realize that. So that other girl? She's gone. I swear this time I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere again."
My gut did a somersault, reminding me of the double meaning in my words.
Anna was quiet for a minute. Then she slowly pulled me into a hug.
“So you weren't even sick?” she asked, her cheek pressed against the back of my neck.
“The first day, my stomach felt horrible,” I said—which wasn't a lie at all, “but from then on, I was just ill with Needabestfrienditis."
Anna chuckled and released me from her hug. I laughed too, but it was quickly drowned out by the obnoxious guffaws of the jocks up front.
Upon hearing them, Anna's head fell to her distant gaze outside the bus window. I sat up and looked over where they were sitting. Anna's boyfriend was looking in our direction. When he met my eyes, he shot back to his friends as if he'd never made the gesture.
I nudged Anna in the arm. “Why aren't you sitting with—"
“Don't, Lucy.” Anna said, turning to face me. Her eyes looked a little red, but I noticed something inside them. Something that sucked the air from my lungs and felt like the tip of a knife slowly piercing my chest: I knew that look.
I'd seen it a lot recently. In Scott, when he mentioned my brother. And just a few minutes ago, in the Lieutenant.
It was a look of regret. An expression of pain. Anna's eyes showed me how vulnerable she looked, and probably felt. She was sad, and I knew why.
Anna and that stupid jock Zeke were no longer a thing.
Guilt slid its way around my body like a straitjacket. I had just enough space to breathe, but I couldn't—or didn't want to—move or say anything. If I was paying attention, I probably would have seen it earlier. But that was more than likely a huge part of Anna being angry in the first place. I wondered if it was recent. If it happened here, or if Anna had been holding up a front for a little while.
Either way, I was pissed at myself for not being there for my friend. When I went through a nasty breakup a few years back, Anna was there every step of the way. Now here I was jumping out of hotel windows while I literally locked her out.
At first, I thought I should apologize. But Anna didn't actually say they broke up. I knew it happened, but it just didn't feel right to jump to a conclusion and heap more pity on her. Instead, I looked her in the eye and just asked, “Are you okay?"
Anna laid her head against the headrest and shook her head. Her eyes were set on the back of the seat in front of her.
“No,” she said, “I don't think I am."
61. I Pass The Baton
The rest of the bus trip, Anna didn't say another word. This made the next day pretty tough, since she tried to continue the silence where she left off. I was determined to get her to feel better, if not like her normal self again.
It did help—believe it or not—that Mrs. Nary still required that I write a report on our trip even though I was absent for all but the bus ride. I did a lot of research online to get some material for my paper, but Anna agreed to share her notes with me. I was so thankful we'd decided to write our reports on the same topic.
But I was more thankful that this allowed me to spend pretty much every afternoon that week at her parents' bakery, getting one-on-one time with my best friend. Well, maybe not one-on-one. Most of the time, Chloe tagged along and her laughter echoed from the upstairs apartment as she played with Anna's dogs.
After a couple days of incessant bad jokes, efforts to cheer her up, and yes, mild attempts at actually studying, Anna started to act like her normal self again. She began to smile, and even started cracking a few jokes on her own.
I learned quickly to play it safe with my words, though. When Wednesday afternoon rolled around, I asked a question about her boyfriend and mid-walk to her house, Anna decided to call our study off that day.
As I walked home in silence with Chloe beside me, I felt bad for having to leave Anna alone because of my selfish comment. But I still hadn't figured out just what happened between them.
Now, I wasn't stupid. It was pretty certain they had broken up. I didn't see that guy come up to Anna during school at all after we came back from our trip. She didn't mention him at all, either. But that's just what I wanted: for my friend to talk to me about what was going on.
I decided then that I'd probably be swallowing the pill of my own medicine for a while, considering the two months it took me just to talk to her. But all that changed when we walked home from school that Friday.
Anna and I both finished the reports during homeroom and Chloe was invited to a friend's house for a sleepover—which I was reluctant not to fight my parents on, but Chloe really wanted to go, so I bit the bullet and kept my mouth shut. Anyway, when the bell rang, we left school and started on the path to her house.
It was about halfway there before either of us realized what we were doing. Anna stopped first and looked at me.
“Do you still want to come over?” she asked. “I mean, I'm not sure what we'll do since we don't have to study."
I shrugged. “Maybe we can just hang out?” Anna knit her eyebrows like she couldn't decipher the meaning behind my words.
“And do what?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but drew a blank.
When we were still younger and Mom was around to drive us everywhere, Anna and I would play together all the time. At her parents' bakery or at my home, we found a way to have some fun. But when Mom left and Dad had the genius idea to put me in therapy, I kind of stopped socializing with people after school altogether.
Anna and I were still BFFs on campus, but we hadn't hung out much after school anymore. I continued to deal with my mental problems and paint the occasional painting. Then, from what I knew, Anna dove deeper into acing her classes and entertaining the student masses with the school paper. I never looked at it from this angle before, but I realized that Anna and I didn't exactly have the same interests. Thanks to school, we kind of just...meshed together. But there was a gap now.
We ended up walking the rest of the way to her house, and when we opened the front door to her parents' bakery, the smell captivated my nose—and gave me our answer.
“Anna,” I said, grabbing her shoulders with the utmost serious look on my face, “you own a bakery. Let's bake something."
She laughed and set her backpack down on a glass table near the door. “I dunno. Dad's been pretty picky about letting you help since you burnt that entire batch of pan dulce."
“That was like, a decade ago!” I scoffed. “I just wanted to eat it. How was I supposed to know turning up the heat would do more than cook it faster?"
Anna shook her head at me. “Let me see if they're home yet.”
She disappeared upstairs for a moment, and I heard the barking of her two dogs. I walked over to the glass table and set my backpack down next to Anna's before noticing a couple papers had spilled out of the top of her bag. I glanced down at the one on top and recognized it as the math quiz we had yesterday morning. Anna scored a “B-plus” on it. 88 percent. Anna never scored that low in math.
A moment later, she ran back down the stairs and I pulled my eyes from her homework.
“Dad's upstairs napping,” she said. “He said it's fine if we cook a batch. As long as you"—Anna pointed a humorous finger my way—"don't touch anything that heats up."
I stuck my tongue out at her, but let her take care of the oven and other heating parts. Meanwhile, I followed her instructions on how to prep the bread.
Before long we'd gotten the batch of pan dulce into the oven, and started to clean up while Anna reminded me o
f each part of the disaster I caused last time I was here.
“I'm not even sure how you even managed to reach the oven, you know?” Anna said. “I mean, you were pretty short back then."
“I got a stool, okay?” I laughed, washing flour off my fingers in the sink across the kitchen. “And besides, it's not like—"
A jingle came from behind me, telling me someone was walking in. “I thought you guys were closed?” No answer came from Anna.
I shut off the water and grabbed a hand towel. When I turned around, I saw Anna's mom, Mrs. Thoth. She was dressed in a white lab coat with a blue name tag stitched into the front on the right side. She looked intensely down at the table where our backpacks were laid—where Anna's homework was strewn across the table.
“What is this?” she asked.
“H-hi, Mom.” Anna stammered behind me. “I meant to pick all that up, but..."
“Where we not supposed to put those there?” I asked. “I'll move mine right now—"
Mrs. Thoth held up a finger to quiet me, then turned back to her daughter. She picked up the math quiz off the top of the stack, and Anna stumbled forward a step, as if she was going to stop her mom from seeing the results.
“These grades are unacceptable, Anna,” she said curtly, making Anna flinch. She ‘tsk’-ed, then tossed the paper down on the table as if it were trash she shouldn't filthy her doctor hands with any longer.
“This tells me you're neglecting your studies,” she continued. “That darn boy, and the newspaper club are getting in the way. Nothing but distractions."
Anna said nothing, looking down at the sweet bread baking in the heat of the oven. Mrs. Thoth shook her head impatiently and walked across the kitchen, towards the stairs. As she left, she said, “Either the grades get better or something's out. I won't have a failure on my hands."
Her words were angry, but her tone sounded selfish. It was as if Mrs. Thoth was blaming her daughter for all the frustration in the room. I wished I didn't have to see it. More so, I could tell this wasn't the first time she'd talked to Anna like this. Anna wasn't the type to stand idly by while she was getting an earful. At school, she'd find a way to put a positive spin on it, both during and afterward. But her silence told me her mom's words hurt more, and they must have been hurting for quite some time.
