After I study, it’s dinnertime. Mom and Dad cook together, and you’d think I’d get a break then, but nope. I “help” by stirring stuff. There was a weird moment the other day when I was eating baby carrots and hoping my arm wasn’t going to fall off from stirring some rice dish and Mom said, “You know, I could never get you to touch a carrot when you were younger.”
I said, “Well, I guess things changed when my teeth came in or something,” and she looked shocked for a second, and then she looked sort of pissed off. Like it’s my fault she never noticed what I ate before? She was grating cheese, and she slammed the block of it down on the counter, saying, “I was simply trying to talk to you. There isn’t any need to—”
“What? Point out the obvious? You didn’t even know I was a vegetarian.”
Her face fell, and she picked up the cheese again, staring at it and blinking hard. Dad touched Mom’s arm and said, “Grace,” gently, sharing a look with her before he turned to me and said, “So, how’s that rice looking?”
“Kind of gloopy,” I said.
He smiled, and then she did, but I could tell I’d rattled Mom, that she’d realized that not only did she not know that her kid was around or that she was drinking, but that she didn’t even know I ate carrots. And that I knew she knew nothing about me.
I liked that.
I liked that she had to see that, J. And I like that every day brings a whole lot of time with my parents. I know how it sounds, okay? But I like that it’s not them and then me anymore.
I like that they finally have to face the fact that I’m here.
EIGHT
IN ENGLISH CLASS TODAY (109 days without Julia—I can only measure time by that, by how long she’s been gone), I got stuck in yet another group thing with Mel and Caro and Patrick. We were still discussing The Scarlet Letter, and I watched Corn Syrup twirl a piece of her hair around one finger as she argued with Mel. So far, they’d argued about what the A really meant (I hadn’t realized that was up for debate) and then the symbolism of the color red. I’d drawn squares in my notebook. Patrick had fiddled with his book, then picked his fingernails, and then fiddled with his book some more.
Then—and this is where things started to get strange—Mel looked at Patrick and cleared his throat. Patrick stopped picking his fingernails and glared at him. Watching them do that reminded me of how Julia and I used to talk without words. I started thinking about her and then Mel sighed, turned to me, and said, “What are you doing Friday night?”
“What?” I said, completely thrown and positive I hadn’t heard him right.
I had, though, because Caro stopped the hair twirling so fast her finger got caught and she had to yank it free. And Patrick was—well, he was fiddling with his book again.
“Maybe we could go to a movie,” Mel continued. “I was thinking that you and me and maybe…” He cleared his throat again and then, I swear, flinched like someone had kicked him or something.
He glared at Patrick and then looked back at me. “You wanna go?”
“Um,” I said, and realized that:
1. At sixteen, I was finally getting asked out on an honest-to-God date.
2. I was asked on said date by someone who, as far as I could tell, wasn’t even interested in me. Mel never checked out my (admittedly small) chest, tried to grope me, or even seemed interested in my answers to the questions he was always asking.
3. I was clearly taking too long to reply because Caro was staring at me and Mel like we both had two heads.
Mel was blinking a lot and had turned bright red, and Patrick had actually stopped flipping through his book and was watching all of us.
I knew I had to say something, but I had no idea what. I tried to think of the right thing, but nothing came to mind and I panicked.
I panicked, and said the worst possible thing.
I panicked and said, “When?”
“Friday,” Caro snapped. “He said Friday.”
“Caro,” Mel said, glancing at her. He looked upset.
“What?” Caro said, her voice full of challenge and hurt, and she looked about ten times more upset then Mel did.
Mel opened his mouth, then closed it. His face was still bright red. I didn’t get what was going on, but it was clear I needed to say something else.
“Okay,” I said. I meant it as, “Okay, I understand you mean Friday, now will you please explain what the hell is going on?” but Mel must have taken my “okay” as a “yes” because he nodded at me.
“Great, I’ll see you then,” he said, and then looked at Caro and told her he didn’t agree with what she’d said about Reverend What’s-His-Bucket.
After a moment of extremely awkward silence Caro said, “Of course you’d say that, because you didn’t read the book right,” and then they started arguing again.
I spent the rest of class trying to figure out why the hell I was going on a date with Mel, who was hot but short and clearly more than a little strange. Patrick flipped through his book and picked his fingernails. No surprise there. Caro and Mel kept arguing. No surprise there either.
When the bell rang, I’d decided that I’d probably hallucinated the whole thing out of sheer boredom, but then Mel said, “I’ll pick you up around seven, okay?” and then, “Ow,” as Patrick accidentally elbowed him in the head in his rush to get out of his desk.
I nodded in Mel’s direction just so I could get out of there and then spent all of my next class totally pissed at myself for being so…well, me. But then I realized Mel doesn’t know where I live, so maybe this dating thing will work out after all.
NINE
TODAY ME AND LAURIE were supposed to talk about Julia. She said that last time. I know she did. I heard her. And Laurie—
I really fucking hate her.
Things started out okay.
“How do I start?” I said after we’d done the introductory bullshit. I didn’t know how to put Julia into words. She was bigger than that.
“However you want,” Laurie said. So helpful, as always.
I started at the beginning. “I met Julia when I was eleven. I had just started sixth grade. Mom and Dad had spent the summer in Germany. Mom was working on her second book and doing research for it, and Dad was trying to get meetings with a bunch of companies his company wanted to work with. I was sent to drama camp, art camp, and outdoor adventure camp.”
“You spent the summer away from your parents?”
“Obviously.” 111 days, and this was where I was. I deserved it, I know, but still. Laurie was a big fucking weight to bear.
“Did you miss them?”
I shrugged. It was easier than saying it was more complicated than that, that missing someone means they have to actually be there, really there, for you to miss them.
“They sent postcards and stuff, and when they came to pick me up two days before school started, they said I’d grown a lot and showed me photos. The archive where Mom worked. The office building where Dad worked. The house they’d rented. The view from their kitchen window. They said they loved Germany so much they weren’t sure they ever wanted to come home and laughed. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
She knew damn well why I didn’t—anyone with the slightest bit of a clue could know why—and so I ignored her and kept talking.
“I showed them the pictures I’d painted and gave them the video of the play I’d been in and—well, I didn’t have anything to show from the outdoor adventure camp other than the certainty that I really didn’t enjoy whitewater rafting, climbing ropes, or forced marches that were called ‘hiking.’ They said the pictures were nice and watched the video while Mom worked on syllabi and Dad read through contracts. They both promised I wouldn’t have to go to adventure camp again.”
They never said they missed me, but I wasn’t about to tell Laurie that.
When I looked at her, though, I could tell she already knew.
“And Julia?” was all she said, though.
“I starte
d school, and it was the same as always. I just—I never said the right things fast enough or wore the right clothes soon enough. I never did things quite right.”
Laurie nodded like she understood. “So you felt like you didn’t belong?”
“No,” I said, even though that was pretty much how I felt. I just hate it when Laurie talks like she knows me. “I had friends, Caro and Beth and Anne Alice, but we—well, we fought, like friends do, and I was always the first one to be talked about or laughed at or ignored. It was like no matter how hard I tried—that’s probably it. I tried too hard. Nothing is worse than someone who wants something too much, you know?”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” I said, and she clicked her goddamned pen. I wished Julia was there, because she’d have just gotten up, taken Laurie’s pen, and thrown it out a window or something.
“So how did you meet Julia?” she said.
“She moved to Lawrenceville in October, and her first day at school was right before Halloween. She had to stand up in front of the whole class and talk about herself, and you could tell she wasn’t nervous, that she wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. That was the first thing I noticed about her.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t remember.” But I did. She said she was twelve and that she’d been held back a year. She said it like it wasn’t a big deal, like being held back was something we’d missed out on. And then, during recess, as I sat alone, banished from playing with Beth, Caro, and Anne Alice because Beth said I’d worn my hair wrong, she came up to me. She said, “I’m Julia. Want to go trick-or-treating with me on Halloween?”
And I did. How could I not? She was so cool, so fearless, and she wanted to hang out with me? It was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“But you became friends?”
I nodded. “Everyone wanted to be her friend, but I was her best friend.” I still remember the first time she said that. Beth had just said, “Julia, you’re totally my best friend,” and Julia shrugged and said, “Amy’s mine.” The look on Beth’s face was about the best thing ever. I still remember it.
“So you met, and you became friends.” Truly, Laurie’s ability to restate what I’d just said was a rare gift. And a fucking annoying one.
“Right,” I said. “Like I just told you.”
“What did you two do?”
“I spent a lot of time at her house. Her room was…it was great.” The truth was, it was everything I wanted mine to be. She had a canopy bed and posters all over her walls. I could never get my posters to look right—they always got crooked, or curled up at the corners, so I always took them down.
Julia never even noticed stuff like that. If she wanted something on her wall she just stuck it up there, and the first time I went to her house she put in a CD and turned it up loud, sang and danced along with the music. She didn’t tell me I was doing anything wrong when I joined in. She just said, “Isn’t this fun?”
That’s when I knew we would be friends forever.
“And her mother?” And there was Laurie circling in, hoping for whatever it is she hoped for during our sessions. She knew Julia’s mother hated me. It was one of the first things I told her. She’d asked me if anything made me happy, and I’d said, “Julia’s mother hates me for what happened. That makes me happy, because she should.”
“Actually, her mom used to like me,” I told Laurie now. “Hard to believe, right? But she did. For the first year Julia and I were friends, I think she hoped I’d somehow turn J into the kind of quiet loser I was before we met. I think Julia had gotten in trouble at her old school or something. I never really knew. Her mom never said, and Julia never talked about anything that happened before she moved to town. It was like before Lawrenceville she didn’t exist.”
“You never asked her about it?”
“No,” I said. Why should I have? Whatever had brought Julia into my life was a good thing. An amazing thing.
“Did you like Julia’s mother?”
What an odd question. But then, it was coming from Laurie. “Sure.”
“But Julia fought with her.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t add “And?” but Laurie must have sensed it because she just said, “You didn’t fight with your own parents, right?”
Oh, please. “I didn’t want Julia’s mother to be my mother. We just got along for a little while.”
“Then what happened?”
“Julia didn’t start acting perfect.”
Laurie nodded. “What did you do when you were at her house?”
“Regular stuff. Like, right after Thanksgiving that year, she had a slumber party, and everyone who was invited came. That’s the way Julia was. People just wanted to be around her. We all stayed up talking for hours, but then, when everyone else had fallen asleep, Julia woke Caro up. We went out into the hall, and Julia told her off for all the things she and Beth and Anne Alice had done to me. She made Caro cry and I sort of felt bad for Caro, but not really because finally I wasn’t the one crying.”
“This is the same Caro you’ve mentioned before?”
I nodded, and Laurie scribbled something as I thought about what happened after that. Caro had run off to the bathroom and we’d snuck downstairs and laughed about it. I felt so great. So free. We watched television for a while, and then Julia opened the cabinet where her mom kept her liquor and said, “What do you think?”
I can still remember the bottles. Brown, green, clear. We dared each other to try something. Julia had rum. I had vodka. It tasted awful, made my mouth and throat feel like they were on fire. But after a while my stomach felt warm, and then I felt warmer all over and everything seemed brighter. Better.
We ended up reading the best bits from her mom’s stash of romance novels out loud to each other, laughing. It was so much fun. Right before we finally fell asleep Julia made me swear that since we’d be best friends forever and ever, we’d always tell each other everything. It was an easy promise to make. I couldn’t imagine not telling her everything.
“When did you start drinking together?” Laurie said, and I looked her right in the eye and said, “I don’t remember.”
I knew what she’d do with that memory, how she’d twist it all around.
“Okay,” Laurie said, and I could tell she knew I was lying. “Did you drink together a lot?”
“On the weekends, a little sometimes, when I’d stay over at her house and her mom was off trying to find Mr. Right. I’d stopped hanging out with Caro and Anne Alice and Beth, and it felt great, but for a while I worried that maybe Julia would decide she wouldn’t want to be my friend.”
I knew as soon as I’d said that I’d screwed up, because Laurie’s interested expression was real. But she didn’t say anything except, “Why did you drink?” which was such familiar territory that I wondered why she was going over it again.
“When I drank I had fun. I felt fun. When I drank, I didn’t think about my parents signing off on my straight As report card with a quick ‘great job’ before heading off to yet another romantic dinner out. I didn’t worry about being the only person who laughed at a joke some total loser made in class. I didn’t worry about anything, and me and J would watch television and goof off.”
What I didn’t tell Laurie was when drinking changed for me.
The second semester of eighth grade, Julia got asked out by a ninth grader. He asked her to a party, and she said she’d go if I could come. She always did stuff like that for me. She always made sure I fit in.
I was really nervous about going, and when we got there I didn’t know what to do. I felt totally out of place. I was the tallest person there, and even with my hair in a ponytail I still felt like it stuck out. Plus there were so many people and the music was so loud—it was totally overwhelming.
I followed Julia around until the guy she was with told me to get lost. I started to run off, feeling as small and stupid as Beth used to make me feel, but then Julia said, “Amy, wait,??
? and told the guy to go to hell.
I couldn’t believe it. He was a ninth grader! But she did. We went into the bathroom after that, and she pulled a bottle of peach schnapps out of her purse. She had some, I had some, and after a while we went back out to the party. And it was fun! I even sort of talked to a few people. J got her first hickey.
And then, amazingly enough, we—not just Julia, but both of us—got invited to another party. That time, I drank before we went and wasn’t nervous at all.
“So drinking was fun?” Laurie said.
“I thought we were talking about Julia,” I said, and I knew I sounded pissed off, but we were supposed to be talking about her. “And you know what? Julia was fun. She hated being bored. Before she got her license, we took the bus everywhere. And I mean everywhere. By the time she got her car, we already knew where everything remotely interesting in Lawrenceville and Millertown was. And when Julia started seriously hooking up with guys she never once dumped me to spend all her time with them. So many girls do that, you know? They hook up with someone a few times and drop everything because they think they’re in love. Julia was like that, actually, always thinking she was in love, but no matter what, she never blew me off for someone else.”
“Even for Kevin?”
Fucking Laurie. “Even with him.”
“Do you think—?”
I cut her off before she could finish whatever stupid thing she was going to say. “When I ended up in the hospital six weeks before she…before she died, Julia was the first person I saw when I opened my eyes. She’d stayed with me the whole time, told everyone there she was my sister.”
And when I’d woken up, and she’d told me that, she’d rested her head on my shoulder and said, “And really, you know, you are.”