A Blue So Dark (25 page)

Having a support system is essential for the survival of a fruitloop.

he thing about elliptical trainers and birds and shoes and big red jasper necklaces is that they go out as easily as they come in. We pack up all Nell's stuff the day before we're supposed to go pick Mom up from Resolutions. Seems stupid now to have brought so much for what feels like such a short stay. I figure she's the kind of woman who packs fourteen trunks of junk just to go out of town for the weekend. We cart it all back to Nell's house-everything but the trainer and Cockamamie, who Nell stares at sadly that last night as she drinks a rather large vodka tonic.

I think I could maybe make some crack about not wanting to have to start taking care of her, too, or about how I sure hope she didn't catch alcoholism from staying next door to the Pilkingtons. But Nell doesn't look like she'd find much humor in anything tonight-and besides, that's really not so funny, anyway.

I ought to join her at the table, but I wind up lingering in the doorway, fidgeting like some cafeteria nerd who can't get up enough guts to ask a table of kids if it's okay to sit down.

"Her meds are working," I blubber. "There's no reason for her to be at Resolutions anymore."

Nell nods and runs her fingers through her stark white hair. She looks really old, like she's suddenly feeling as though her life is an anchor.

"Did you sign up for that art class yet?" Nell asks.

I shrug.

Nell ages another forty years in that moment. She sighs over her ice cubes as she slurps down the rest of her drink.

When we finally do pick Mom up, she lets Nell carry her suitcase. I carry the mermaid, the fishing line hanger twisted around my index finger. We put it all in the trunk of Nell's Toyota and pile in like we're getting on a bus. Like we've never seen each other before; we're all a bunch of kids headed out to our very first summer camp and we're terrified and want to seem tough but also don't want to accidentally bump anyone, because we just might get killed.

We don't say anything on the drive home. I stare at the dead brown grass along the edge of the street.

Mom wants to unpack on her own, so I help Nell with her crazy elliptical trainer. I buckle Cockamamie's cage into the passenger's seat of the Toyota, and turn to find Nell giving me this funny stare. "You want me to come with you?" I ask. "Help you unload it at your house?"

She shakes her head. "Call me tomorrow and let me know how everything's going," she says. But it sounds funny. Desperate, you know? Like a tiny voice in a well begging for help.

"Okay," I say.

"No-not just okay. This isn't over for me. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to turn my back on you and Grace, all right?"

"Okay," I say again, but my voice is huskier because I mean it, this time. "Really, though-that nurse you paid for's coming over to check on us every day, and I'll see you at the studio on Saturday, so-"

"No," Nell says, shaking her white hair forcefully. "You call me tomorrow. And every day after that. And if you don't, I'm going to be the one calling you. I'm not going anywhere. And don't you ever be afraid to tell me anything, you hear?"

I have to stifle a laugh, because my mind turns into an old clip of the Jackson 5, little Michael belting out, "I'll Be There."

"Deal," I say, and watch Nell pull away.

I'm still standing in the driveway when Mom comes bursting out of the house and grabs me around my neck, hugging me so hard she practically lifts me right off the ground.

"I saw the mural," she says. "It's really beautiful."

But my heart's still limping away inside me, because I already know what's coming next.

"You didn't have to put Nell in it," she says, looking at me sideways, kind of all-knowing, like a mother in an old-fashioned sitcom who's getting after her daughter for sneaking out the night before to go to the sock hop with the coolest cat on campus.

"I kinda did, though," I tell her.

"So I guess you're going to tell me you like her."

"She's not half bad."

Mom snorts and shakes her head.

"She is trying, you know," I say. "You could try, too."

"Yuck," Mom says. We stand there a minute before she says, "Quit looking at me like that. It's not like it's going to happen in the next ten minutes, all right?" But the way she wraps her arm around my shoulders as she leads me into the house makes me feel like it actually will.

If a set of genes really does exist to predispose a person to becoming a schizo, it is possible that those same genes also rev a person's creativity, actually helping them to survive in the long run.

he next day, I fill out a request for a change of schedule. I slip it into Fritz's box in the faculty office. Next semester, I will not be taking Keyboarding like I said I would last spring. God, Keyboarding, the world's biggest snoozer of a class, with the world's most ancient teacher, Mr. Brown, who is so old, I swear he doesn't breathe out air, but dust.

I am taking Art I. Goodbye, Mr. Brown, Dust Breath. Accelerated arts and letters program, here I come.

Part of me wants to skip all the way to the stairs. Another part wants to drag my feet. I don't know that this dread will ever completely heal.

I pause outside the art room and peek in. Today, it smells like a cave-like shelter, protection. Grandpa Smurf has taped a sign to his door: One Week Till All School Exhibition At Art Museum! In the back of the room, a girl with a mop of green curls and a boy with no hair at all are acting like some giggly two-headed creature, tangling their fingers in a bowl of papier-mache paste-criminy, it's almost like some old scene from Ghost or something.

But I just keep staring at them.

I remember the skateboard I'd propped in my closet before Nell, in her cleaning frenzy, could shrug and toss it out. My fingers start to itch.

,A maintenance dosage is the lowest dosage at which the schizo is stable and can actually almost pass for a sane person.

om's sweating when we roll to a stop outside of the art museum. But not in a sick way, not this time. She takes a deep breath and shakes her hands like she's trying to flick water off of them. "How bad was it?" she asks, her voice quivering a little with nerves.

I shrug. "It wasn't that-"

"Oh, no," Mom groans, putting her head in her hands. Because she's back to being able to read me. I can't lie to her. She knows just by looking at me how horribly she acted at the art museum the day she swore her student's drawing was actually on fire. And even though I feel rotten about not being able to conceal this, I love the fact that she's back. Love it so much, I grab her hand and squeeze.

"Just tell the curator about the meds," I say. "And therapy, and the genogram-"

"Sure. And simple as that," she says, snapping her fingers, "I've got my job back." She climbs out, and so do I, pulling a painted skateboard out with me. I'm glad she's too nervous about the interview to ask what I'm doing with it.

"Good luck," I tell her.

"Luck. Hah," she says, shaking her head.

Mom disappears inside the museum, and I sit beneath the maple closest to the sidewalk. The longer I wait, the more my heart starts feeling like it's been saturated with liquid tenderizer. I don't even know if he'll come today.

But he does. He flies down the sidewalk on another board, followed by his friend with the toucan nose. And when Jeremy sees me, he sends the friend away. Says something all ultra-cool, Catch up with you later, like it's no big deal.

And maybe, I catch myself thinking, it's not. Maybe Jeremy's already broken up his Aura collection, all those tidbits he told me he'd saved when we were in Mom's drawing class together. Maybe he's trashed it, because come on, in a way, rose petals pressed between the pages of a book are romantic, but then again, it's just pieces of a dead plant, right? Isn't that what being sentimental boils down to? Hanging onto worthless crap?

Just like on the day he'd given me the board in the first place, I feel as sturdy as a tower made of ice cream scoops. I'm melting, going clammy in my sneakers and under my arms. My palms are as sticky as Post-its.

But I knew this would probably happen. So I pull my butterfly from the pocket of my coat. Okay, not a real butterfly, but a piece of orange construction paper folded into one-an origami copy. Open me is scrawled down the butterfly's body in thick block letters (a la Alice in Wonderland), not that Jeremy really needs the instruction, because my handwriting spills back and forth across the wings. Just looking at the butterfly, it's obvious that I'd written Jeremy a note before folding it. God, just like some awful girly-girl who spends every single one of her class periods writing messages to slip in her BFF's locker.

I've poured everything out in this note-about Mom becoming the shell of herself, and that fire at the museum and why I shouted those awful things at him, and even, oh, God, Nell and my dad and Brandi and Carolyn and even-Jeez, is this too much? how Jeremy's kiss had made me feel so free in the midst of a life that was starting to shred to pieces. And maybe, I've written, if he still wants to, if I am not the biggest jerk on the planet, just a minor one, then maybe we could be like those geezers who find their high school crushes on the Internet after being apart for the better part of a century. Only we wouldn't have to wait years-we'd be lucky that way.

Maybe, I've written, we could really be beautiful.

I put the butterfly-shaped note, which has one of my deepest wishes tattooed across its wings, onto his skateboard. I've painted the board all funky and modern. Instead of a scene, though, I've created wild shapes and splashes of black and orange-the up-close pattern of a monarch wing-hoping that he won't hate it, spray paint over it the instant he takes it home. I pull out a dispenser of Scotch tape from my coat pocket and stick the butterfly down, so it won't go flying off. Before I can chicken out, I give the skateboard a gentle push.

When Jeremy bends to pick up the butterfly, I disappear into the museum. I can't stand to be around when he reads it.