“Nothin’,” I muttered. “You’re gonna be late.”
She took off her watch and placed it behind her back. Then she gave me a smile. “No worries. Let’s talk before I go. I know you’ve been going through a lot of stuff after what happened to Maggie.”
“No. That’s not it. I just couldn’t get my drawer to shut.” My face was heating up and my hands were gripped into tight fists. “It’s the stupid ties’ fault,” I whispered through my gritted teeth.
“The ties?”
“Yeah! I took all the stupid ties out of that drawer, and now I can’t get them to fit back in, so I kicked it and hurt my foot.”
“Why were your ties out to begin with?”
“Because…” I hesitated and raised an eyebrow at Mom. “You’re gonna be super late.”
“Don’t worry.” She smiled and ran her fingers through my hair. “I’ll be okay. Tell me what’s really bothering you.”
“Well…I was supposed to meet Maggie out in the woods for our rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal?”
“For our wedding.”
“You two were getting married?”
My face heated up even more, and I looked down at the ground. How had I not told my mom I was getting married? Maggie had told everyone, and me? Nobody. “Yeah, well, I don’t know. It was Maggie’s stupid idea. I was just going along with it because Jamie made me. Anyway, Maggie told me to pick out a tie and meet her in the woods, which was supposed to be easy, but I spent too much time picking out a tie. So, she was in the woods by herself, and whatever happened to her out there was because of me. I was the reason she got freaked out, because I was late to the twisted trees.”
“Oh, honey.” Mom sighed and started rubbing my back. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, it was. It was my fault for not being there to protect her, and now she ain’t talking or leaving her house because something scared her, and I should’ve been there to stop it, to save her.”
“Brooks…” Mom lowered her voice and clasped her hands together. “Whatever happened to Maggie is tragic, but it wasn’t your fault. If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that it doesn’t help to sit and play a situation over and over again in your head. You can’t change the past, but you can shape the future with the right now. You know how you can help Maggie now?”
“How?” I asked eagerly, sitting up straight. I’d do anything to fix her.
“Be her friend. She’s probably pretty scared right now and confused. Lonely, even. She doesn’t need you to feel sorry for her, honey. She just needs a friend. Someone who stops by and checks in on her every now and again. Someone to ask if she’s okay. Someone to let her know she’s not alone.”
Yeah. A friend. “I can do that. I can be a good friend, I think.”
She snickered slightly and bent forward, kissing my forehead. “I know you can. One second, let me get something for you.” She hurried out of the bedroom and when she returned, her left hand was in a fist. She sat beside me and opened her hand to reveal an anchor charm on a string. “Your father gave it to me when we were young, after my father died, and he made a promise to always be there for me whenever I needed him. He said he’d be my anchor when I felt like I was drifting away. He was always an amazing friend to me, and he still is. Maybe you can give it to Maggie, to make her smile.”
I took the necklace from my mom and thanked her. She helped me more than she knew, and if this anchor would make Maggie smile, then it was hers. I’d do anything to bring her beautiful ugly smiles back to the world.
“You okay today, Maggie May?” I asked with my hands holding my MP3 player as I stood outside of her bedroom door. She was standing by her window, staring down at the street when I arrived. She turned slowly my way and wrapped her arms tightly around her body. Her eyes looked sad, which made me sad, but I didn’t show it. I just gave her a small smile. “You okay today?” I repeated.
She nodded slowly, and I knew it was a lie, but that was okay. She could take all the time she needed to be okay, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Can I come in?”
She nodded again.
When I stepped in, I straightened my tie—the green one she loved. My palms were sweating against my MP3 player, and my nose sniffled as we both sat on her bed. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, most of the time when people had a friendship, both sides talked. The more silence there was, the more nervous I became. My feet started tapping on the floor, and I watched as Maggie’s hands stayed clasped together in her lap. Her skin was extra pale, her eyes were extra heavy, and in that moment, I missed it. I missed the one thing that had annoyed me for so long.
I missed her voice.
“Can I hold your hand again?” I asked.
She slid her left hand into my right, and I sighed. Her fingers felt like ice.
“Squeeze my hand once if the answer is no, and twice if it’s yes, okay?”
She agreed and closed her eyes.
“Are you scared?”
Two squeezes.
“Are you sad?”
Two squeezes.
“Do you want to be alone?”
One squeeze.
“Do you think maybe…do you think I could be your friend?” I whispered.
Her eyes opened and locked with mine. I wondered if her heartbeats matched mine—wild, dizzy, panicked.
She looked down at our hands and squeezed once. Then she squeezed again, and my heart exploded.
I released the breath I had been holding.
With my free hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mom’s necklace. “This is for you. It’s a friendship necklace. An anchor. I promise to be your friend, and be a good one, too. I mean, I’ll try my best. I’ll be your anchor. I’ll help you stay grounded when you feel like you’re drifting away. I just…” I sighed, staring down at the charm in my hand. “I want you to smile again. I want you to have the things you always wanted, and I’m gonna work hard to make sure you get them, too, even if it’s a dog named Skippy and a cat named Jam. I want you to know…” I sighed again, because whenever her eyes watered over, my chest hurt so much. “I need you to know that even if you decide to never speak again, you’ll always have someone around to hear you, Maggie. All right? I’ll always be there to listen to your silence. So do you want it? Do you want the necklace?”
She squeezed my hand twice, and a tiny, almost nonexistent smile found her.
“And if you want, we can listen to my music together. I know I said I’d never let you listen, but I mean, you can, if you want. Jamie made me a new playlist on his computer last night, and I put it on my MP3 player. I don’t know what he put on it, but we can listen together.”
She squeezed my hand twice again. I gave her one of the earbuds, and I took the other. We lay backward on her bed with our feet dangling off the edge. I hit play on the MP3 player and the song that started playing was “Low” by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain. Geez, Jamie. Not the perfect song for the moment. I went to change it, but Maggie squeezed my hand once, stopping me. Her eyes were closed and a few tears fell down her cheeks, but I swore I saw it: a tiny smile. It was so tiny some people would probably think it was a frown, but I knew it wasn’t.
My chest hurt, seeing the almost smile on her lips. I closed my eyes, and a few tears fell from my eyes, too, as we listened to Flo Rida. I didn’t know why, but whenever she cried, I did, too.
In that moment, I knew she had been right about everything all along.
She was right about me, and her, and us.
She’d be the one girl I’d love until forever.
No matter how life tried to change us.
May 15th, 2016 — Eighteen Years Old
Mama and Daddy never danced anymore.
Over the past ten years, I’d noticed a lot of changes between the two, but that was the saddest one. They still hugged each other each morning, and Daddy always kissed her forehead before he went to work at the university each day. As he walked out the
front door, he always said, “I love,” and Mama would finish his sentence, “You.”
They still loved each other, but they never danced.
Normally at night, Mama spent time on the telephone, talking to her college best friends about me, different therapists, reading articles online, or paying bills. Daddy sat in the living room grading a stack of his papers from his graduate students or watching The Big Bang Theory.
In the past, Daddy used to try to turn on their wedding song, but Mama was too tired to sway with him.
“Dance with me?” he’d asked.
“Not tonight. I have a headache, Eric,” she’d reply.
She never knew it, but I always saw how Daddy frowned when she walked away.
“I love,” he’d say, staring at her back.
“You,” she’d murmur out of routine.
When she’d glance up the staircase, she’d see me and frown. She always frowned at me, as if I were the crack in the family portrait. “Bed, Maggie May. Then up early for school.”
Sometimes she’d stand there looking at me, waiting for some kind of reply. Then, when one wasn’t given, she’d sigh and walk off, more tired than she had been a moment before.
It was hard knowing how much I exhausted her.
It was harder knowing how much I exhausted myself.
“You okay, sport?” Daddy asked, peeking his head into my bedroom.
I smiled.
“Good, good.” He rubbed his hand against his beard, which was now peppered with gray. “Joke time?” he asked. My father was a nerd in the best way. He was an English professor at Harper Lane University and knew more about literature than most, but his real talent was knowing the worst jokes in the whole wide world. Each night he delivered me something awful.
“What would you find in Charles Dickens’ kitchen?” He patted his legs as a drum roll and then shouted, “The best of thymes, the worst of thymes!”
I rolled my eyes, even though it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.
Walking over to me, he kissed my forehead. “Goodnight, Maggie. The world keeps spinning because your heartbeats exist.”
As I lay in my bed each night, I listened to Calvin playing music down the hallway. He always stayed up late, listening to music while doing homework or hanging out with his girlfriend, Stacey. I could always tell when she was over because she giggled like a girl who was madly in love with a boy. They’d been together for so long that they each wore promise rings that pledged them to one another forever.
Around eleven at night, I’d wake up to hear Cheryl tiptoeing out of the house to go visit her boyfriend, Jordan. Jordan was the classic bad boy type I’d read about in so many books, and Cheryl was much better off without him, but I couldn’t tell her that. Even if I could, she wouldn’t listen.
Each of my family members had found a certain way of dealing with me and my silence over the past ten years. Calvin became one of my best friends. He spent a lot of time with me, along with Brooks, playing video games, watching movies we weren’t supposed to watch, and discovering the best music before the rest of the world.
Mama kind of shut me out after she realized I wasn’t going to speak again. She left her job to homeschool me, but she hardly spoke to me about anything that wasn’t school-based. Truth was, I could tell she kind of blamed herself for what had happened to me. Seeing me each day seemed a bit hard for her, so she built up a wall. She didn’t know exactly what to say to me, so after some time, the blank stares were a bit too much for her. Sometimes, when I walked into a room, she’d go the other way. I didn’t blame her, though. Seeing me was a reminder of how she hadn’t noticed that I’d left the house to meet Brooks all those years ago. Seeing me hurt her.
Daddy was always the same, though, if not even goofier and more loving than before. I was thankful for that. He was my one constant. He never looked at me as if I were broken, either. In his eyes, I was completely whole.
Cheryl, on the other hand, she hated me. Hate might’ve seemed like a strong word, but it was the only one that came to mind. She had plenty of good reasons to dislike me, though. Growing up, she was sort of put on the backburner because of my issues. There were family trips that couldn’t be taken, talent shows that had to be missed due to my in-home therapy appointments, money that wasn’t available because of the cash my parents spent on me. Plus, since Mama couldn’t look at me, she was always looking at Cheryl, yelling at her for little things, blaming her for everything. It wasn’t a surprise that when Cheryl became a teenager, she began to rebel against the world. Jordan was her biggest rebellion, her perfect mistake.
I’d fall back to sleep to Calvin’s music, then wake back up around three in the morning when Cheryl snuck back in.
Sometimes I’d hear her crying, but I couldn’t check on her, because she liked me more when I acted invisible.
“Will you hurry up already?!” Calvin said, standing in the hallway and banging on the bathroom door the next morning. His hair stood up on top of his head, and his pajama pants were wrinkled, one leg scrunched up while the other dragged across the floor. He had a towel tossed over his shoulder as he banged on the door again. “Cheryl! Come on! Brooks is gonna be here any minute, and I’m gonna be late. Get out already. No amount of mascara is going to fix your face.”
She swung the door open and rolled her eyes. “And no amount of water is going to fix your odor.”
“Oh, good one. I wonder what Mom would think about it, along with the fact that you snuck out last night.”
Cheryl narrowed her eyes and shoved past him. “You’re the most annoying person in the fucking world.”
“Love you too, sis.”
She flipped him off. “I used all the hot water.” As she stomped to her room, she looked at me since my door was wide open. “What are you looking at, freak?”
Then into her room she went, where she slammed the door.
Calvin looked at me and snickered. “What a ray of sunshine she is. Morning, Maggie.”
I waved.
My routine for getting ready for school was pretty simple. I woke up, read some of my favorite book, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and then walked down to the dining room to get to my classes.
My favorite part of each day was when Brooks stopped by to visit. He drove Calvin to school every day, and seeing as how Cheryl always hogged the bathroom, Calvin was always late getting ready in the morning.
Brooks was one of those people everyone instantly loved. Even with his hipster edge, he was still one of the most popular kids at his school. It wasn’t shocking; he was such a people person. People were addicted to his charm, which was why he always had a girlfriend. Lacey Palmer was the lucky girl of the moment, but there was a list of girls eagerly awaiting their turn. No surprise there, since he was not only charming, but gorgeous, too. He had the perfect tan color to his skin, muscular arms, and wavy hair that had the perfect amount of shag.
His smile was perfect, too. He always smiled out of the left side of his mouth and laughed out of the right. His outfits consisted of indie rock band t-shirts he collected from shows he traveled to with Calvin and their two friends, Oliver and Owen. His jeans were always torn and held up with a leather belt that displayed small pins with lyrics from his favorite musicians. In his front pocket, there were always a few guitar picks he’d randomly flicker through his fingers throughout the day, and his white Chuck Taylors were always unlaced and colored in with highlighters.
Also, he had a thing for mismatched socks. If he was ever wearing a pair of socks that matched, it meant he had gotten dressed in the dark.
“You okay today, Magnet?” he asked me. I nodded. He asked me that question each day whenever he came by to visit. After the incident years ago, Brooks had promised to look after me, and he held onto that promise. Lately he had started calling me Magnet, because he said he was drawn to our friendship. “There’s this magnetic pull of friendship between us, Maggie May. You’re my magnet.” Of course, the nickname had come after a
night of going to some party and getting wasted with my brother then throwing up on my floor, but still, the name stuck.
“Can I come in?” he asked. He always asked permission, which was weird. The answer was always yes.
He hopped into my room—even at seven in the morning he was an energized bunny. “I got something I want you to hear,” he said, walking over to me and reaching into his back pocket to pull out his iPod. We both lay down on my bed, our legs hanging over the edge, our feet touching the floor. He placed one earbud in his ear, and I took the other, then he hit play.
The music was airy and light, but there was a solid bass sound that slicked throughout the song. It felt romantic and free—wild. “‘All Around And Away We Go’ by Mr. Twin Sister,” he said, tapping his finger on the mattress beside me.
Brooks was my human jukebox. He told me to never turn on the radio to find tunes, because it was a bunch of Hollywood brainwashing bullshit. So, each day, morning and night, he delivered to me what he considered to be music gold.
We’d lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to music, until Calvin came dashing into my room with wet hair and a muffin stuffed in his mouth.
“Ready!” he shouted, getting crumbs on my carpet.
Brooks and I sat up, and he took his earbuds back, winding them up around his iPod. “All right, I’ll come back with some more stuff for ya after school, Magnet,” he said, smiling my way. “Remember, say no to drugs unless they’re the good ones, and stay in school, unless you don’t want to.”
Off they’d go.
My eyes darted to the ticking clock on my wall.
Sigh.
Only eleven or so more hours until the music came back to me.
Each day at five in the afternoon, I took an hour-long bath. I’d sit in the tub with a novel in my grip and read for forty-five minutes. Then, for ten minutes, I’d put the book aside and wash up. My fingers wrinkled like raisins as I closed my eyes, and ran a bar of lavender soap up and down my arms. I loved the smell of lavender, almost as much as I loved gardenias. Gardenias were my utmost favorites. Each Wednesday, Daddy went to the farmer’s market and bought me a fresh new bouquet of flowers to sit against my bedroom windowsill.