Notes on a Near-Life Experience (6 page)

H
ALEY OBSERVES THE SOCIAL SYSTEM AT OUR HIGH SCHOOL
like she's doing a study for
National Geographic.
“Even the bathrooms are divided up, Meems. Do you know that we've always naturally used the bathrooms for popular kids, even though no one ever told us to?”

“What are you talking about?” I've never really considered myself a popular person. I wear normal clothes, go to normal parties, have normal friends. I guess I've just assumed that my life is normal, that I'm normal. Maybe things are really better, or worse, than I thought. Maybe I'm popular, or maybe I'm an outcast who hasn't been using the right bathroom.

“Have you ever used the bathrooms in the math building or the ones near the industrial technology building?”

“Math building, no. And I have no idea what industrial technology is.”

“Exactly. We're naturally stratified. We're practically living in a caste system, you know, like in India, where there's a whole class of people whose existence no one will acknowledge. There are some really freaky kids in those bathrooms, too.”

Haley has a flair for the dramatic. But I wonder about the bathrooms. And the people and things I've never bothered to notice.

K
IKI
N
ORDGREN IS PERFECT
. H
ER FAMILY IS RICH, SHE HAS A
perfect body, and she has the third-highest GPA in the senior class. The only imperfect thing about Kiki is the fact that she is perpetually pissed off. Of course, I could be biased because she has never really liked me. And things only got worse when I was chosen to be a dance team choreographer and she wasn't; she's a senior and I'm just a junior. So I should have known something was up last July during dance clinics, when Kiki kept wanting to come over and practice with me, when she was nice to me for no reason, and when she kept offering to pick me up in the mornings.

“Well, you
are
one of the only girls on the team who doesn't drive, so I thought I'd ask.” Big smile.

I noticed that she kept finding reasons to wander around
the house in her skimpy dance clothes, but I was too dumb to figure out why until the day I found Kiki in the driveway talking to Allen and Julian while they were rebuilding the engine of Allen's 1973 VW bus. She'd gone upstairs to get some water and had been gone for twenty minutes.

“Is your name really
Kiki
?” Allen was asking.

“Kiki's short for Kirsten,” she said.

“It sounds kind of like… ummm …,” Julian started to say.

“Norwegian?” Kiki said.

“No, not that,” Julian said, “like a trained seal or something, you know?”

I laughed out loud. Kiki looked at me like she was going to eat me alive.

Allen piped up, “No, dude, I think it sounds Norwegian. I really do.”

And that's where it all began. I think Kiki would have been happy to date either Allen or Julian, but since Allen was the guy who stepped up and defended her heritage, Kiki chose him. When Allen dumped Kiki the day before the dance team fund-raising car wash six weeks later—“She's just too intense…. Man, she's intense,” he told me—she called Julian a few times, but he ignored her, thank goodness. The only thing that could possibly be worse than Kiki's dating your brother would be Kiki's dating the boy you're in love with. She went back to despising me, only with much greater intensity: she hasn't come to pick me up for practice since then, but she
has
made a point of suggesting major changes to most of the
pieces I choreograph and talking about her endless stream of dates very loudly in front of me whenever she gets a chance. She told everyone on the dance team that she was sure I had something to do with Allen's dumping her. If I had, I would have most definitely taken credit for it. Unfortunately, my brother has never been one to take the advice of others, however wise or sensible it may be.

T
ONIGHT WHEN
I
GET INTO BED AND TRY TO FALL ASLEEP
, something seems off. It takes me a while to figure out what it is: no Mom. She hasn't come in to talk to me about my day and say good night. I lie there and wait for her to come in. And I wait. And I wait. But there's nothing. She doesn't come.

I get out of bed and walk down the hall to the bathroom near the living room, under the pretense of getting a glass of water, to see if she's awake and watching TV or something. Maybe she got really tired and fell asleep while she was watching it. But I don't hear any noise, so I go out into the living room and investigate. The clock on the DVD player says 11:23. Mom is nowhere to be found. The house is quiet.

I start back toward my room and run into Keatie in the hall.

“What are you doing up so late?” I ask.

“Looking for Mom. She never came.”

“She's not out there,” I tell her. “Go back to bed.”

“No,” she says. “I'm getting Allen. He'll do it.”

She knocks on his door, and I go back to my room. So Mom misses a night; do I really need someone to tuck me in every night? I know I shouldn't, but I feel like I do. I go over all the things I would have told Mom in my head, but it isn't the same.

B
ECAUSE
I
SKIPPED KINDERGARTEN
, I'
M PRACTICALLY THE
only person in the entire junior class who can't drive; I won't be sixteen until May. As far as I know, the only other person who can't, besides the kids in those remedial classes, is Barrett Waterson, this guy who got so many speeding tickets that his license was revoked about a month after he got it. I'm supposed to take my driving test the day after my birthday, because my birthday is on Sunday this year.

Until I get my license, I'm only supposed to drive with my parents, and no one else is allowed to be in the car with us when I drive. It's California law. Apparently, Allen is above this law.

“Nobody obeys that rule. You need an enema,” Al tells me. “Listen, if you fail your driving test, I'm not going to drive
you anywhere anymore. And I am sick of being the only one

who can drive Keatie around.”

“But if I get caught, they won't let me get my license.”

“It's like two point eight miles from the school to our house. You won't get caught. And even if you do, just act like you didn't know the rule and they'll give you a warning. C'mon, get in.”

He hands me the keys and walks over to the passenger side of the VW bus. I fumble with the keys and open the door on the second try. I get in and reach across the car to open Allen's door. He hops in and immediately puts on his seat belt.

He's been doing stuff like this a lot lately, acting like now that my dad is gone, he needs to do the things Dad would do: teach me to drive, tell me to go to bed, make sure I'm not hanging out with anyone sketchy.

“Let's just take it easy, okay, Meems? No fancy stuff.”

“If you're so nervous, why are you making me drive?”

“I'm doing this for your own good, little sis. I'm older than you. And wiser. And I know that even if it means I have to put my life on the line, you have to learn to drive and begin your journey into womanhood.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to take some deep breaths and count to ten. I can't let you drive angry. It isn't safe.”

“This coming from the king of road rage? The boy who followed an eighty-year-old woman for twelve miles because she cut him off? Give me a break.”

He ignores my comment. “Now that you've relaxed a little, you may start the car and back out slowly, checking your mirrors and looking over your shoulder to make sure that no one is behind you,” he says in a slow, nasal voice.

“I know all that already. I swear if you don't stop acting like a driving instructor, I am going to drive this thing into the nearest light post. Stop talking and let me concentrate.”

“Okay, okay.”

I begin to back out and immediately a horn sounds. I look over my shoulder. Kiki Nordgren and her best friend, Gabi Huang, are right behind us in Gabi's car, waving their hands in the air and giving us dirty looks.

“Well, at least you almost hit someone worth hitting. Good form,” Allen says. “Now use your mirrors and check over your shoulder this time, and pull out slowly.”

I turn the car off, take the keys out of the ignition, look at them, turn to Al, and say, “Keys can be dangerous weapons, you know.”

“No more driving instructor, I promise.”

I start the car again, check the mirrors, look over my shoulder, and pull out slowly.

I'
VE STARTED TO FEEL LIKE A GHOST
. L
IKE
I'
M ALIVE AND DEAD
at the same time. Like I can see things but people can't see me as much. Like things happen but I don't feel them the same way I used to.

I'm not as excited these days when good things happen— we were invited to a regional dance competition that only twelve teams in the state get to attend, but it doesn't feel like a big deal.

I'm not as disappointed when bad things happen—I forgot that I had a midterm in my science class, I didn't study for it, and I got the second-lowest grade in the class.

Once, on
Oprah,
she had this panel of guests who had all died and then come back to life, like they were resuscitated after they hadn't breathed for a couple of minutes, stuff
like that. They called what had happened to them “near-death experiences.” And they talked about how amazing it was to know what death was like and still be able to live. I feel like I'm having a near-life experience, like I used to be alive and I know what that's like but now I'm doing something else. I don't want to die or anything. I just feel like I'm not as alive as I used to be.