“It’s like I already told you,” I said, trying to recall the exact words I had used when we first talked about it in the hospital. “I forgot I had an English paper due in the morning, and I had to get to the library before it closed.”
Clasping her hands, she placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “That’s not what Derek said.”
“What do you mean?” Panic coursed through me. “You talked to him?”
“The police did, naturally. It was his car. You were coming from his house.”
Even though they were only the facts, they sounded like accusations. “What did he say?”
“That you had a disagreement.” She stared at me like she was waiting for me to slip up, to do or say something that would prove she was right to keep probing.
“It wasn’t…we didn’t…” I blinked hard, trying to force back flashes from that night that threatened to pierce through. “What does that even have to do with anything?”
“He said you were upset and left abruptly in his car,” she pressed on.
“It was an accident,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out.
“That’s enough, Marian,” my father said, placing his napkin on his plate.
“Where are you going?” she asked as he scraped his chair back and stood.
“I forgot a file at the office.” He paused on his way out to kiss the top of my head. “It’s good to have you back.”
His voice cracked. A well of tears rose up inside me. I could still feel the warmth of his lips even after I heard the front door shut and his engine come to life.
Bam.
The invasion in my head intensified, an audio assault of deafening noises. I felt like I was going to vomit and fall asleep
all at once if I didn’t get out of there. My mother didn’t say anything else as I got up to leave the table. Hopefully that was the end of it and the discussion was over. But with the ethereal tune snaking its way through my brain, growing louder and more melancholy with every note, I feared this was only the beginning.
I SPENT THE
next two hours parked in front of the television in the den. A DVR packed with two weeks’ worth of shows would normally have been heaven for a TV addict like me. But not even back-to-back episodes of
Hailey’s Clinic
, my all-time favorite medical show, could draw me in. I used to love getting lost in the drama of the main characters’ lives. Only now their words dissolved into static noise. On the screen, all I could focus on were the nameless patients in the background. Lying in their blue hospital gowns, hooked up to all sorts of machines, I realized they were the ones who were most like me. Not the glamorous actresses playing the parts of the doctors.
“Need anything?” my mother asked, poking her head in for about the tenth time. I had been waiting for her to go to bed so I could finally use the computer in peace, without the risk of her monitoring my every click of the mouse. But she kept clanging away in the kitchen, like she was deliberately trying to outwait me so I couldn’t get online. I didn’t understand what she was afraid of. I guess that on top of everything else, she was from
the generation that was suspicious of the Internet, convinced it was dangerous.
I quickly closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep. She came in anyway, pried the remote from my hand, and turned off the system. “Let’s get you into bed,” she said, gently nudging my shoulder.
“What time is it?” I asked, throwing out a fake yawn.
“Almost ten.”
I figured she wasn’t going to rest until I did what she wanted. I reluctantly stood up and followed her down the hall. “I’ll drive you in the morning,” she said when we got to my room. “But you have to be ready by seven fifteen because it’s my day for Noah’s carpool.”
Clearly my old routine of driving myself to school in my dad’s old Honda was no longer an option. The truth was that I wasn’t ready to drive yet anyway. I wasn’t so sure I ever would be. But I didn’t need my mother making that decision for me.
Too tired to fight with her, I nodded and said good night, closing the door behind me. I let out a deep sigh as I heard my mother retreat down the hall. Leaning back against the door, I took in the sight of my bedroom. It was obvious she had already done a sweep. My folder of old homework assignments had been moved to the other side of the desk, and a few knickknacks had been rearranged on the shelf. I’m not sure what she was expecting to find.
She had also unpacked my bag from the hospital. Even though I hadn’t worn anything besides a hospital gown for the last two weeks, she washed all the clothes she had brought me.
They sat in a neat pile on top of my dresser, right next to the Ziploc bag containing the gold chain with the heart pendant Derek gave me for my birthday last year.
So that you will always have my heart,
he had written in the card. It was the closest he had come to saying, “I love you.”
The paramedics removed the necklace in the ambulance when they were trying to revive me. It had been sitting in this tiny plastic bag ever since. With all the bandages and IV tubes and sponge baths in the hospital, they wouldn’t let me put it back on until I got home. I slowly unsealed the baggie. The chain slid out onto my hand. It was so thin and delicate. My fingers trembled as I unlatched the back and slipped it around my neck. It felt cold against my skin, just like it had the first time Derek put it on me. I hoped the fact that this necklace survived, intact, was a sign that we would too.
My knees suddenly felt weak. There were signs of him everywhere. The pictures of us tacked all over my bulletin board. The bouquet of pink roses he had given me on our first Valentine’s Day, now dried and preserved in a clear box on the bookshelf. His blue debate team sweatshirt hanging over the desk chair. He had forgotten it the last time he was here. My stomach twisted into knots thinking the very thing I’d been trying so hard to avoid. What if it really was the last time he’d be in my room? I ran over and pressed the sweatshirt to my nose. If I inhaled deeply, I could still make out the scent of his Old Spice deodorant.
Just then my cell began to ring. I scrambled to find it in my purse, where I was sure I had left it. It wasn’t there, no doubt thanks to my mom. I frantically tore through the room, chasing
the muffled sound, until I finally found the phone buried under the pile of laundry. I picked up without checking the caller ID. There was no point, since Derek’s number was blocked, anyway. He took his privacy to an extreme, like he was already an elected official. A real one that is, outside the walls of Vista Valley High.
“Hello?” I was out of breath.
“You sound strange. Did I wake you?”
I let out a disappointed sigh and collapsed on the bed. It wasn’t Derek. It was my best friend Annie. “I couldn’t find my phone. My mom unpacked for me. Of course.”
“Of course,” Annie agreed. She knew what my mom was like. “You thought it was him again,” she added. She also knew what I was like.
“I’m just a little out of it,” I said, even though we both knew I was lying.
I reached over and absentmindedly ran my fingers over the old, hand-painted wooden box on my nightstand. Annie got it for me on her trip to India for her sweet sixteen. In a nutshell, that was the difference between Annie and the rest of the girls in Vista Valley. While most of them were trying to outdo each other on the elaborate party front, Annie was roaming the streets of Delhi, handing out pens and chocolates to homeless kids.
“I told you to give me a special ringtone so you can avoid this problem. Something peppy to match my awesome personality. I swear I’m just going to do it tomorrow so that you don’t have a coronary every time I call.” She paused for a beat. “Another one that is.”
“Very funny,” I snorted. I didn’t mind Annie’s making jokes like that because I knew how much she cared. She was also the only one besides my parents who had called and visited me in the hospital.
“So, what’s it like being home so far?”
“It’s great. The entire neighborhood came out and gawked at my return, like I’m some kind of circus freak. My dad’s practically gone mute and my mom’s on overdrive, running around like a headless chicken on speed. At least Noah’s acting normal.”
“So what you’re basically saying is nothing’s really changed.”
Annie had a way of cutting through the crap. It was probably because both her parents were shrinks, like she was born with a special gene that helped her see things the way they really were. And she wasn’t afraid to say it.
“Anyway, I’m calling because I’m gonna come get you in the morning,” she said.
The lump in my chest dislodged. A barrage of tears bubbled up. I thought about all the times that Derek had taken me to school, of his trademark honk when he pulled up outside: three quick beeps in a row. “Everyone always does two,” he used to say. “Three is how you’ll know it’s me.”
I sat up and opened the wooden box on the bedside table. Inside were all the fortunes I’d secretly been saving from our Friday Chinese take-out dates. I only kept the ones about love. Both his and mine. Derek didn’t know. He already thought I was enough of a hopeless romantic. Wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder, I reached in and pulled out a fortune. My
other hand grabbed hold of the pendant as I read the black words printed out on the small piece of white rectangular paper:
Everything will now come your way.
Now more than ever, I needed it to be true.
“Hello?” Annie tapped her fingers against the phone. “You still there?”
“Of course,” I said, releasing the gold heart. I slipped the fortune back in the box and closed it, trying to snap myself out of it. “You sure you don’t mind picking me up?”
“Please, you’re my best friend.”
We had been best friends since we were twelve, when fate paired us together for an assignment in social sciences. Sometimes I wondered if we’d be friends now if we hadn’t met when we were so young. All it took was one glance to see how different we were. Annie was what I liked to call a gamine. She was petite, but what she lacked in size she more than made up for in confidence. In her vintage scarves and dresses, she looked like she lived in New York City, not the San Fernando Valley, land of the strip mall. Her short pixie cut perfectly framed her delicate face. She was the only one I knew who could pull off such a different look without becoming a total outcast.
My hair was long and landed halfway down my back, just like all the girls at school. And I was much taller and bigger than Annie too. No matter how many times she told me my curves were sexy, all I felt when I looked in the mirror was round and chubby. It was the reason I wore loose shirts and avoided form-fitting dresses. It was also the reason I never let Derek see me naked.
“It’s a good excuse for me to try to be on time for a change,” she said. “Now get some sleep. I’ll be there at eight.”
I slipped under the covers and tried to get comfortable. I hoped that now that I was here, in my own bed, I would finally be able to sleep, but my mind raced with thoughts of Derek. How was he going to react when he first saw me tomorrow? When would it be? By our lockers where we usually met up? On the stairwell between classes? In the cafeteria at lunch? I didn’t know if I could wait that long.
I flung off the covers and jumped out of bed. Pausing by the door, I strained to listen for signs of my mother scurrying around like a domesticated mouse, but even mice had to sleep. Thankfully, the house was completely silent. I quietly opened the door and crept toward the sunroom.
Even though this had been our home for the last eight years, there was something unfamiliar about the moonlit shadows in the darkened halls. It almost felt like I was walking down them for the first time. Family pictures covered the walls. My mom had spent hours picking the perfect shots and placing them in chronological order, starting all the way back with my parents’ wedding photo. The most recent picture was this year’s annual Christmas family portrait, taken in the garden by Vista Valley’s preeminent photographer. My mother made us wear matching red and green tops for extra holiday spirit. With our fake smiles and perfectly brushed hair, we looked so stiff and unnatural, like wax figures. I wondered what next year’s portrait would look like, and if I could still manage a smile.
It took a few minutes for the computer to come to life. I
stared out the window and into the garden, but it was so dark that nothing was visible. It was already late enough that nobody was awake except for me. I waited until the beach ball on the screen stopped spinning, then went straight to Facebook. I checked Derek’s page first, even before my own. As expected, nothing had changed. He barely used social networking except to post stuff to the debate team page. His relationship status still said single, just like it had for the last two years. He said it had nothing to do with me; he just hated having his personal life exposed and didn’t want the things he posted online to haunt him forever. I understood, but the idea that I could ever be something that haunted him kind of stung.
But I tried to stay positive. Derek always said that if you wanted to achieve your goals, you had to act
as if
. Meaning,
as if
you’d already gotten what you wanted. It wasn’t enough to hope you could win a debate. You had to tell yourself you were already a winner before it even began. You had to believe it the way you believed an indisputable fact. That’s why I told myself I
was
going to Georgetown next year, along with Derek.
I clicked over to my own page. It hadn’t changed much either since I last logged on. A few kids from my class had posted things like “Hope ur ok” and “we miss u.” But that was about it. It wasn’t like the onslaught of messages you get on your birthday. Maybe it was better that no one seemed to notice. It made it easier to go back tomorrow, to pretend that nothing happened. To act
as if
.
I heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, followed by the front door slowly creaking open. It was my father
and he was headed this way. “Come on, come on,” I said under my breath, trying to make the computer go back to sleep.
As soon as the screen went dark, I darted into the kitchen. It was too late to make a run for my room. I peered out into the hall. He wasn’t carrying his briefcase or the alleged file he had gone to the office to get. He must have decided to finish his work there; otherwise why was he coming home at two in the morning? He unfastened his tie as he got closer. With no other escape, I ran out the back door into the garden.