She has to know I’m here. She has to see my book bag on the table. She has to know I’m in my room. Where else would I be?
I know she knows. I know it.
But she doesn’t come looking. Just mutters and closes curtains and blinds.
How long would I be dead before she found me?
She’s not coming in my room.
I know she’s not going to look in here.
What’s so different about today?
Light in the house?
Still, I wait for her. And when she doesn’t come to tell me hello after twenty minutes, I turn away from the door and pretend to sleep for no one.
Here’s what I remember best about Mom. My old mom.
My Before mom.
Afternoon snacks when we came home from school.
Dancing in the living room with my girlfriends and me.
Teaching me the hard parts of speech, all that grammar I didn’t think was important.
She would do anything for anyone. She turned the car around to give homeless people money. She combed lice out of little kids’ hair. She helped mothers hang mosquito netting. She made people dinner when someone they loved died.
But when Zach died,
Mom didn’t accept one meal,
not one visitor,
not even me.
She hasn’t come in my room, not once, since my brother passed. Not even to peek in to see if I’m still breathing.
I check on her, though.
I only go to school because they make me. Mom is so done with homeschooling.
When Daddy comes home, late, late, Mom is already in bed.
I’ve gotten up. Done my homework. Made a sandwich.
Watched a little TV. Talked to myself in the shower.
Picked out what I’m wearing to school. Whispered words to Zach.
“You see how you left me? You see how you left me, big brother?”
My eyes burn, but I don’t cry.
Some late-night show is on and I should have been in bed long ago, but I want to hear someone’s real voice.
The voice of someone who loves me (is there anyone?).
Not just Jay Leno or Jimmy Fallon.
“Want some hot chocolate, Daddy?” I ask him as soon as he comes in the house.
I can see the tired all around his eyes.
I can see him looking for Mom but acting like he’s not.
I can see that he’s sadder than he was yesterday. There’s pain in his voice.
Is he missing my brother a little more tonight?
Or my mother?
“Do you, Daddy?” I ask.
The room is dark around us, just a soft light that falls from the family room, where I sat watching TV.
Daddy hesitates, then nods and says, “Yes, London. I love it when you make me hot chocolate.”
“We used to do that a lot together, remember?” I say this as I head for the kitchen. I pull out milk and cream and a Hershey’s chocolate bar and vanilla and sugar.
Mom taught me this recipe, I think, warming the cream and milk and breaking the chocolate bar into bits. I remember me standing close by her side. Her letting me use the whisk to stir the drink. Her laughing at my brother as he tried to steal chocolate. All of us sitting together. How old were we? How long ago was that? It seems ages and ages.
I pile marshmallows into two cups.
I can hear my father speaking to Mom. His voice is low and hers is soft, chocolaty. I almost stop moving. Will she drink with us? I open the cabinet, just in case. Reach for another cup. My fingers tremble.
“We about ready?” Daddy says. He stands in the doorway, alone.
“Yes,” I say, and pour the thick hot chocolate into two matching cups.
I don’t even dream.
Maybe I should drink hot chocolate more often.
Some days, like this morning, I walk to Zach’s car (I have the keys now. Daddy gave them to me. But I’m afraid to drive. I’ll do it soon. I’m sure I will.), where it’s parked at the curb. With the morning sun just right, I can sort of see him in there. If I squint.
If I squint, I can see him, head tilted, laughing. Taylor’s in the backseat, Rachel, in the front. I should be next to Taylor, but I have to close my eyes awful tight to see that.
When I get up close, there’s dew that has settled all over the car. Someone has written MISS YOU in big block letters on the window. I can see a handprint on the hood, where the someone leaned, and streaks where the water ran.
For a moment I wonder if I did that. Did I sleepwalk out here and write those words? I’m pretty sure I didn’t.
So who did?
Does it matter?
I close my eyes tight.
I feel this bit of calm, knowing that someone crept here in the night and that that person misses my brother too.
It’s cold out here, and my robe and pj’s aren’t enough to keep me warm. The sun is just waking, just breaking the horizon, slipping through the orange grove. I should have worn my slippers.
I clutch the keys. Imagine getting in Zach’s car, even in my nightclothes, and maybe following my mother wherever it is she goes. I know I won’t, but I like the thought of bravery. Maybe today will be a good day. Maybe someone new will talk to me. Maybe the person who wrote on Zach’s car.
When I open my eyes, a bit of fog is moving in and the smell of trees gets caught in the back of my throat. Right near those words written for my brother.
When the van arrives, I run outside before Daddy can ask me where Taylor is. A bit of me feels sick that maybe he’ll come here to pick me up. Will knock on the door for me. I think this as I run through the grass. The morning is cold, the sky still a bit gray.
Lili rolls down her window and says, “We have like eight minutes before Queen Suck Face gets in the car.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” I heave open the back door, squeeze in without opening it all the way.
Lili’s been in the front, but she plops on the bench seat next to where I sit down. My books are between us.
She’s pulled her hair back with a hair band I bet her mom wore. It’s leather with tiny painted flowers.
“There,” Lili says. “On to Queen Suck Face, driver.” She gives her brother a nod, and Jesse puts the van in gear.
“Lauren’s not that bad,” I say, but I’m not so sure who she is now. I’m not sure who I am.
“See,” Jesse says. “London says she’s not so bad.” He glances at me in the rearview mirror.
I have to look away. He seems so different than . . . than what? “I haven’t really talked to her in a while though.
Your sister might be right.”
“No, you’ll see,” Lili says, settling the seat belt around herself. Over her shoulder, out the window, is the orange grove we were going to do something with. The leaves are so green this morning.
“She can’t keep her lips or hands to herself. I expect her to pull his clothes off in study hall.”
“Okaaay,” Jesse says. From where I sit I see the side of his face go pink. For some reason, right at that moment, I think I fall in love with him. He’s so beautiful and that shy thing is way appealing.
What? I am crazy. Have I gone crazy with all life and God have handed me? You can’t fall in love, just like that, because some boy is gorgy and shy. My pulse quickens.
“She’s . . .” I clear my throat and start again. “Lauren has always been like that. She’s”—I pause—“physical.”
Lili mumbles something not so nice under her breath, and I wonder if Zach would have spent more time with Lauren if Rachel hadn’t found him.
Lili and Jesse go back and forth with each other, and I only hear the sound of their voices, not their words.
Then this thought strikes me. If . . .
If Lauren had been his girlfriend, Zach might still be alive.
Zach? I mouth, staring out the window looking at nothing. Zach?
Can you hear me?
Do you see me in this van?
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Do you know I miss you?
Do you miss me?
By the time we get to school, I understand what Lili means.
Lauren is Queen Suck Face.
(Did she do that tongue thing with Zach? Why doesn’t she care that we’re in the van with her? Why does he kiss her back, stopping only when Lili hollers for them to?)
Lili gets out of the van in the school parking lot. When I climb out behind her, I can see she is madder than a hill of disturbed fire ants. Her face has two red splotches on the cheekbones and she grinds her teeth. Her hands are parked on her hips.
“Uh-oh,” Lauren says, stepping to the ground in a pretty way. She adjusts her short skirt. “Little sister is mad.” I know her well enough to see she’s nervous. And Jesse must know Lili pretty well, because he’s hurried to our side of the van.
“Keep your hands off my brother when I can and can’t see you, Lauren.” All around us cars are pulling into the parking lot. There’s a smell of gas and cold and the sound of people getting ready to face a new day in school. Lili seems to hear none of it. “I mean it, Lauren.
He’s not going to have sex with you, and he’s not going
to marry you either. He has a girlfriend back home, and we won’t be here in Florida forever. Jesse, you know that.” She pokes him hard in the chest, and her backpack slides down to her elbow.
“I broke up with Shelly before we left,” Jesse says.
He looks at his sister, wearing a bit of a smile—an I care
smile—and his eyes are dark brown. So dark I almost can’t see the pupil. All the sudden he leans forward and puts his arms tight around his sister. “I won’t do anything stupid,” he says in this voice that melts me. Or is that the morning sun? Or a memory of Zach hugging me this same way? “We’re just having fun.”
Zach.
Oh, Zach.
I turn and hurry away.
They say time heals.
When?
It’s been months now and I see my brother in everything.
Instead of going to class, I hide in the library back in a corner where the school librarian caught Jason Easton smoking weed. I stay there, heart burning, wishing my brother would come back and hold me. Just one more time. That’s all I’d need. Just one more.
Or—
I can almost not think it—
my mom.
I’d love a hug from my mother.
After a few bells ring, I make my way out of the library.
Taylor will hug me. And I think I know what class he has, too.
The hall’s empty.
The floor reflects the overhead lights, and as I pass classroom doors, I can hear the buzz of students’ voices or teachers speaking.
It smells weird in here. Like dirty shoes or Fritos.
“Zach,” I say. “It could be easier.”
But is that true? I’m not so sure.
If my mother loved me still, would this horrible time in my life be better?
I would still ache, right?
I would still miss him.
It would still feel as though part of me left when we buried him, right?
And then I know: It would be easier. Because of Daddy.
He doesn’t do it often, but if he just touches my shoulder, I feel like I’m not alone.
Without meaning to, I’m running.
Just a touch.
I tap on the window. Faces turn toward me. But not Taylor. He’s writing something from the board into his notebook.
The chair next to his is empty. Zach’s chair. My brother’s chair.
They retired his football jersey.
Did they retire his chair, too?
He’s everywhere but here.
Wait, that doesn’t make sense.
I tap on the glass again, and Mr. Crowe strides over and swings the door open. “Yes, London?” How does he know my name?
I’m mute.
Taylor glances up. His face changes when he sees me, and he’s on his feet and walking to the door. No one says anything. Do they all know? They all must know.
Everyone knows how it happened but me.
Wait, I know the how, not the why.
Wait again, I do know the why. . . .
I’m shaking.
Taylor brushes past Mr. Crowe.
“Hey,” he says. His hair looks so blond.
“I miss him,” I say before the door even closes behind Mr. Crowe, who has left us here. “And there’s no one to tell.”
“You can tell me.”
He folds me close, pulls me right up to his chest. We stand there and I want to cry. I want to cry but I can’t.
Before,
when Zach was alive
and then gone
gone
I cried so long so hard so much that I couldn’t breathe through my nose and my eyes were almost swollen shut.
Now there is nothing for Zach but my broken self and not a thing to repair it.
In the car Taylor says, “Talk.”
And so I do, while he drives.
I start when we were little:
how Zach would babysit me and squeeze my guts out when he held me on his lap,
how he found me when I went to sleep in a closet and everyone thought I was lost,
how once, when I was sick, he gave me his very favorite Matchbox car (a big deal, seeing we were in Africa at the time and hadn’t brought that much from the States).
I tell everything I can think of.
My mouth dries out. My eyes sting. Taylor drives and drives.
“Remember what a bad surfer he was?”
“Remember how he couldn’t sing at all?”
“Remember how he loved Rachel?”
The remembers go on until my head aches.
We drive along the beach. There aren’t that many birds, and the water looks like oil on the sand as it rolls up in waves. Oil with bits of lace.
There are some things I don’t say.
It’s not all good.
No one is all good.
His unhappiness, I mean.
Taylor knows, Taylor knows, must remember, though he never says anything about it.
After the beach, Taylor and I drive to his house. No one’s home.
I know where his room is and go there. Through the front room, down the hall on the left, past two doors (the bathroom, a closet).
I stand in the doorway. It’s dark in here. The shade’s pulled. A crayon width of light shows around the window covering.
(Has his mother caught something from my mom?)
Taylor snaps on the light.
His room is so neat.