We were so late that we had to sit at the front of the bus, away from the tribe. I craned my neck to look to where Sookie, Jade, and Diego had squeezed in, three to a seat. I could hear them fighting from here.
JADE
Why don’t you shut your legs and there’ll be space?
DIEGO
Girl, how ’bout you sit somewhere else?
JADE
I want to sit with Sookie. You sit somewhere else.
DIEGO
How about you go—
SOOKIE
(squeezing past both of them)
I’ll go. Just shut up already.
Sookie rolled her eyes as she headed up the aisle. When she settled into her empty seat, she smiled like she could finally enjoy some peace.
“Well?” said Sally, still beside me, still waiting.
I shrugged, acting tougher than I felt. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her fingers went into my pockets, lightning fast. First the pocket on the left and then the one on the right, rooting around for the torn piece of paper.
Let me pause and say that again: Her fingers went into my pockets.
Even if she didn’t touch anything, that was about as close to a touch as I had ever gotten, and afterward, I had to slide my backpack onto my lap. Breathe deeply. Take a second.
She waited a few beats before she unfolded the sliver of paper in her palm.
She read the words silently to herself. And then she tucked her chin to her chest and smiled, her rosy cheeks glowing like a candle suddenly lit. And when her pinkie slid across the seat to link with mine, I said in a voice so low only Sally could hear, “Gotcha.”
WORMHOLES III
THE TRUTH IS WE TRAVEL down wormholes all the time.
Not the kind you’ll find in outer space. That hasn’t been proven yet, but I have faith that one day we will be able to move between time periods, jumping forward and backward into other points of our lives.
But until then we can only travel through the wormholes in our mind.
Check it. You’re walking down the street one day, with your boy, and you smell something familiar. It’s coming from the house of the woman at the end of the block, the little old lady you call abuelita, not because she’s your actual grandma but because she asked you to call her that. The title makes her feel good.
Anyway, that little old lady is cooking arroz con bistec, and you get a whiff of those sizzling onions and the juicy steak, and maybe you can’t smell the rice, but you know it’s fluffy and that the recipe is just right, the way your real abuelita used to make that dish before she died. And suddenly you’re not on NW 27th Avenue no more; you’re three blocks over, where your real abuelita used to live, and you’re sitting in her kitchen, on those seats that are vinyl, and it’s a hot day, and you’re sweating through your basketball shorts, but you’re happy because you’re eating her arroz con bistec. And she’s telling you those stories she used to have on the repeat, the one about the doll she only got to play with every Christmas. The one about the doctor she almost married, before she settled down with your working-class abuelito. And you’re staring at her, because it’s the part where she talks about that doll with such longing, her brown eyes sad and far away. She’s in her dark place. And you reach out and touch her wrinkly skin, skin that’s so soft and thin, it would tear wide open from just a paper cut.
And you’re just there with her. In that kitchen. You’re there.
But then your friend says something, bringing you back through that portal. And if you had timed the whole journey, maybe thirty seconds would’ve passed. The person next to you, the one you were talking to before you got a whiff of that magic, wouldn’t even know that you had disappeared for that fraction of a minute. He’d look at you and say, “Bro, so what’d ya think ’bout that?”
And you’d remember enough of the conversation to reply, “Nah, he didn’t hafta do you like that.”
And your time-traveling self would be there in the real world.
But at the same time, you just spent a whole afternoon with your abuelita in her kitchen.
Try and tell me otherwise.
Try.
Senior Year
9. PHYSICS IS WISDOM
“IF THE BUDDHA GOT STUCK,” I report back to Sookie ten minutes later. I’ve returned from my “respite” with Old Mrs. B to find Sookie and only Sookie sitting there, in the janitor’s closet, writing in her AP notebook. Beside her is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the primary source for our AP English small group paper. But she doesn’t try to push us into work mode. Instead she says, “Diego and Jade went suit shopping. They made me promise to tell you to not move in with Erika. Not, not, not.”
In return I tell her about Sally’s suspicious book.
“Why are you whispering?” Sookie asks at one point.
“Because,” I say, swinging my eyes to the door. Beyond that is the hall. And beyond that, somewhere in those stacks, is Sally. And Sookie gets that I’m saying, She could be anywhere!
But Sookie points out, “The chances of her stumbling into this janitor’s closet on day one is nearly zero. I didn’t know this room was here until my second year on the job.”
But I insist on whispering, so Sookie follows my lead.
“When the Buddha Got Stuck, huh?” Sookie asks again.
“If. If, not when.”
“Hmm . . .”
“And there were Post-it notes and folded pages. The book looked well worn.”
“Hmm . . . ,” Sookie repeats. “That is interesting.”
“Right? Do you know what the book is about?”
“Let’s see.” Sookie clicks her MacBook awake. A few minutes later she reads from the library’s online catalog: “ ‘Notice Where You’re Stuck; Show Up; Pay Attention; Live in Reality; Connect with Others, Connect with Life; Move from Thought to Action; and Let Go.’ That sounds . . . intense.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It does. And she could barely make eye contact. Again.”
“You noticed that too.”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“Maybe she feels guilty.” Sookie slides the laptop toward me. “Maybe she should. Maybe it’s only right.”
“Yeah . . . maybe.”
“It was a total ghosting,” Sookie says. “Diego’s right about that. And, you know, we don’t have to engage. Jade’s right about that, too.”
Sookie’s repeating fragments of the conversation we had after we saw Sally in the cafeteria. After we took our lunches outside to the picnic tables. After the first five minutes when we ate in dumbfounded silence. Well, they ate. I stared at my burger and fries like they weren’t edible, until Diego snapped, “Bro, this is the one meal the cafeteria knows how to make.”
“I’m not hungry,” I mumbled.
“Why? Because you saw a ghost? Well, ghosts don’t exist. So eat.”
And I did, slowly, bite by bite. The food tasted like paper.
“I don’t know if I can ignore her like that,” Sookie was saying now. “I know that’s what Diego thinks we should do, but it feels weird. What did you say when she came up to you and Mrs. B?”
“Nothing. I was . . . I don’t know . . . surprised, mostly.”
And confused. I’ve been low-key confused since Sally reappeared. There were questions. Of course there were questions: Why did she stop talking to us? To me? How did she keep it up for so long? And what brought her back after all this time?
“Yeah, that’s how I felt when she came in for her interview. I was nice enough, professional, but I didn’t really engage, and it wasn’t because of Diego’s speech, but more like, I just didn’t know how to engage. It was hard . . . different from all the times I imagined I would confront her if I ever saw her again. . . . Does that make sense?”
I nod. “Is it like, you want to be angry—and you are—but the anger just isn’t as big as you thought it would be?”
“Yeah,” Sookie says, chin bobbing.
“Maybe I’m too exhausted from final papers to care, and life is just too short to be mad at anyone like that. But I think there’s more to the story. . . .”
I stare at the screen. “Live in reality, connect with others, connect with life,” I say. “That sounds so heavy.” But then again, the Sally who had returned to us was that type of heavy—quiet and sad in a way that couldn’t be covered up with a wry smile.
“And you know”—Sookie sighs—“I’ve been thinking about what she said to me that day at the beach, about time not being infinite. That changed my life.”
“How?”
“It got me to go see South Korea, and that got me asking questions, and my parents really wanted me to have answers. I found my birth dad. . . . I learned about my birth mom, you know, about her dying a little bit after I was born. I learned the story of how I came to be separated. And I got to meet my half sisters when they were still so young that meeting me wouldn’t freak them out. None of that would have happened if Sally hadn’t pushed me.” Sookie’s eyes go misty. “I mean, if it weren’t for Sally, who knows if I would even listen to K-pop?”
I laugh, because Sookie has whole Spotify playlists dedicated to K-pop. She’s a hard-core fan.
Sookie smiles. “Seriously, how can I hate someone who pushed me into figuring out more of who I am?”
We stare at the wall of quotes, and then my eyes fall back to Old Mrs. B’s Post-it note, the one she gave me during our respite. “ ‘There are years that ask questions and years that answer,’ Zora Neale Hurston,” I read aloud.
Sookie’s gaze is on the empty hallway. “I wish this were one of those years that answered. Like what if we had a magical wish list that the universe sent us answers to?”
“What would you ask it?”
“What wouldn’t I? How about you?”
“Nothing.” I laugh. “Everything.”
“So . . . what would you ask?” This time her smile is a challenge.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Okay . . . Um . . .”
She hands me a sheet of paper. “Just write down the first three questions that come to mind.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep,” Sookie says, “seriously.” And her pen starts to scribble across the page.
I wait a minute or two, not even sure if I’m going to write anything, but then the pen starts moving, almost independent of me:
Why does Erika have a wedding Pinterest board?
Will time travel through a wormhole ever be possible?
Why did Sally leave?
“Done,” I exclaim. Sookie grabs for my paper. “Whoa! You first!” I slide the page out of reach. Sookie sighs and then begins to read:
Will I get a date to prom? (Will the guy from science ask me? Should I ask him?)
Will I be happy at Northwestern?
Why did Sally come back?
Sookie looks at me. “ ’Cause, like, she didn’t have to. The school year is practically out. That’s another reason I think there’s more to the story. Why come back here? Why not finish the last quarter in North Carolina? Why face us at all? Seems like a choice.”
“Hmm . . .” I hadn’t thought of it that way.
I hold up my list and point to my number three.
“Wait.” Her eyes grow wide. “Erika has a wedding Pinterest board?”
“You like a boy in your science class?” I counter.
Sookie plays along. “I don’t know. He’s cute. You think wormholes will ever really be a thing?”
I shake my head.
“So.” Sookie sighs again. Then she reaches for a blank index card and draws a Venn diagram. In the intersection, she writes one word: Sally. “That’s the question we both want answers to.”
“Think Old Mrs. B was being clever when she gave us this quote?”
“Of course.” Sookie laughs. “Of course.”
• • •
On Thursday Erika skips English to eat with me. “It’s not exactly skipping, Marco,” she explained. “It’s more like choosing how to spend my time. We’re done with all the assignments. All we’re doing is watching movies. So I checked in, and when the teacher dimmed the lights and started grading papers, I said I’m sick, got a pass, and came to lunch. Easy, right?”
“Easy” is a word Erika loves. She likes taking easy classes, likes making easy friends, and for college she wants to major in something easy as well. “I’m thinking physical therapy.”
“That’s got a lot of science.”
“But I’m good in science, so that will make it easy.”
What’s not easy is the way Erika’s been reacting to Sally today. As soon as we sit down at the lunch table, she swivels her eyes around the room until she locates Sally sitting about three tables away.
“So, Sally has lunch with you?” she asks. “You didn’t tell me that.”
The edge to Erika’s voice puts me on the defensive.
ME
Not with me. She’s over there, and we’re over here.
(I point to my table and tribe, who are ambling over from the lunch line.)
DIEGO
(plops down at table. To Erika)
You lost?
ME
She’s trying out skipping.
ERIKA
It’s not skipping when you have a pass.
ME
The pass is to the nurse’s office.
DIEGO
So you’re lost?
JADE
Tsk-tsk. And right before graduation.
ERIKA
They’re not gonna fail me because I skipped before graduation.
DIEGO
(eyes her up and down)
Maybe not you.
ERIKA
What does that mean?
SOOKIE
(sighs)
Just that statistically your whiteness makes you less likely to be suspended, while Diego’s blackness makes him almost three to four times more likely to be suspended for that same offense.
ERIKA
Seriously?
SOOKIE
Yeah, seriously.
(returns to nibbling on a pretzel)
DIEGO
Which is why I’m not playin’ with that paper. Damn near perfect attendance this year.
JADE
D, I think you did get perfect attendance this year.
DIEGO
Man, really?
JADE
Really.
ERIKA
(nods at Sally)
It’s just sad, right? Sally sitting by herself over there.
ME
. . .
SOOKIE
She’s gotta eat.
ERIKA
(softly)
Yeah, but she has no friends. Right?
SOOKIE
Maybe we should invite her over here.
ERIKA
(coughs up soda)
No. No. I mean, that would be awkward, right?
SOOKIE
I don’t know. What do you guys think?
DIEGO
I don’t see ghosts and I don’t talk about ghosts because ghosts don’t exist.
SOOKIE
(innocently)
But Erika thinks we should, right?
ME
Sookie.
ERIKA
Um, no . . .
SOOKIE
I thought you felt sorry for her.
ERIKA
Um, it would be weird. At least for Marco? Right?
ME
(invested in my sub)
I don’t have an opinion on it, honestly.
ERIKA
Really?
(scoffs)
You had lots of feelings about it in ninth grade.
ME
I don’t remember talking about it to you in ninth grade.
DIEGO
Damn. Savage, bro.
ME
What? I don’t remember.
ARI
(passing by with goofy grin)
/> Hey, Sookie. Thanks for the chem notes.
ME
Wait. That’s science-slash-possible prom guy?
SOOKIE
Um, maybe?
ERIKA
(recovering)
Didn’t you go with Ari to the dance? In middle school?
SOOKIE
Yeah.
ERIKA
So, what happened?
SOOKIE
I went away that summer and so nothing. When I came back he had a girlfriend.
JADE
I remember that. She went to another school, right?
SOOKIE
Yep. And then after that he had another girlfriend.
JADE
Lisa, right?
SOOKIE
Yep, and so on and so on and so on.
DIEGO
(snapping his fingers)
Big-eared Ari is getting the ladies? That Ari is taking hearts and breaking hearts?
JADE
Uh-uh, D. Stop.
DIEGO
Total eclipse-ing of the heart.
SOOKIE
Diego!
(pauses)
Anyway, he’s all broken up with the latest what—
DIEGO
Making love out of nothing at all.
JADE
Seriously, shut up!
ME
(laughing)
Bro.
DIEGO
(smiles wickedly, returns to burger)
ERIKA
So, you want to go to prom with him or something?
SOOKIE
I didn’t say that.
JADE
Uh-huh.
ME
(glances at Sally, who’s reading a book, strains to see title, accidentally bumps Erika in shoulder)
Oh, sorry.
ERIKA
(follows my stare)
Well, I don’t think the back-and-forth thing is good. Right, Marco?
ME
(shrugs)
ERIKA
I mean, we should just all keep our eyes forward.
(nudges me)
Right?
ME
(whispers to Erika)
You okay? You’re acting weird.
ERIKA
(whispers back)
You’re acting weirder.
SOOKIE
It’s not like it didn’t work out. It’s like it didn’t have a chance to work out. I think that’s different.
DIEGO
Sooks, if you want to get your Ari on, get your Ari on.
SOOKIE
The Universal Laws of Marco Page 8
