Aspen (22 page)

In the shower, I stand under the water until my body warms to an acceptable level and my fingers turn into little shriveled raisins. My skin is red and raw with overexposure, but I don’t care. It feels good to just stand and listen to the sound of water hitting the cracked tile around the bathtub.

When I’m done, I twist my hair into a bun, crawl into my bed and just lie there, eyes open.

At one point, I hover in that state between sleep and wakefulness when you sometimes dream about a ball coming at your face and jump, waking up. Except I don’t dream about a ball coming at me. I dream about a car coming at me. Two bright headlights.

I shoot up in bed, my lungs about to burst.

Light pours through my window, haloing Katelyn as she stands at the end of my bed.

“Please, no more blood,” I whisper, my voice wobbly. “It’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

Her face is like stone. She points at me.

I squeeze my eyes closed. “Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.”

When I finally make it downstairs for the day, my skin feels tight around my eyes and my stomach is a ball of knots. Ninny lies on the couch, watching TV. She looks me up and down. “How was the concert? You didn’t eat any apples, did you?”

And all I can bring myself to say is “I want a bike for Christmas.”

“You want a bike for Christmas?”

“Global warming is a real bitch.” I say, picking up a banana and then setting it back in the fruit bowl. My stomach is too sour. “It’s time I did something proactive about it.”

I gnaw on my lip as I sit in Dr. Brenda’s office Monday morning. The coffee I chugged down on an empty stomach feels like acid burning its way through my system. And the caffeine isn’t even working.

Dr. Brenda sits in front of me, her trusty notepad and pen poised to jot down anything I say. I’m so tired that I have to hold my head up with my palm. And my entire skull hurts. I barely strung together a few hours of sleep last night. I was afraid to close my eyes for too long. But then, I was afraid to keep them open, too.

I rub my temples and wish my headache would go away.

“You’re studying physics, right?” Dr. Brenda asks.

“How’d you know?”

“You talked about a test once. How’d that go, by the way?”

“I got a C.”

“Average. Not bad. So you know Isaac Newton and his laws of motion?”

“Some would say biblically.”

“Pardon?”

“I know him,” I say.

Dr. Brenda moves forward in her seat, pulling down on her black pencil skirt. Her hair is darker today. Almost a cherry red, where it used to look more fiery. I like the new color better. It’s more natural. “So you know an object in motion stays in motion until it runs into something.”

“Newton’s first law of motion: An object in motion remains in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”

“And you only got a C?”

“Definitions are my specialty.” I shrug.

Dr. Brenda brings her hands to prayer position over her chest and says, “I have a theory of motion myself. I’m not sure if Newton would agree, but in my experience it holds true. Would you like to hear it?” I nod lazily and pull my eyes wide so they’ll stay open. “When that object in motion runs into another object, all the energy moving forward at the time of impact gets caught.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve been in a traumatic car accident, Aspen, and somewhere inside of you is all the energy from that night. We need to figure out how to get it out of you so you can heal.”

“I am healed,” I say, and yawn.

“Physically, maybe. But there are some scars people can’t see.” Dr. Brenda puts her notebook down on the table. “I need you to tell me everything that happened that night.”

“I told you: I don’t remember anything.” I look at the clock.

“I think you don’t
want
to remember anything.”

I sit up straighter. “What?”

“The memory of that night is somewhere inside of you, and it will come out. If you shake a bottle of soda long enough, eventually the top will pop, Aspen.”

“Do shrinks take a class in analogies?”

“I can help you get the bubbles down, but we have to start at the beginning.”

I look at Dr. Brenda’s awful snow globe collection. “Can I leave early?”

I don’t wait for an answer. I leave Dr. Brenda’s office and vow never to set foot in there again. After all, what kind of person puts a deer head in their office?

Kim hounds me at lunch, waiting by my locker, arms crossed over her chest. The scowl on her face contorts her lips until they’re crooked and makes her eyes sharp like razors. She looks like Uma, all scrunched up and evil. This usually happens when she’s about to start swearing at me in Korean and flailing her arms.

“No goodbye.” Kim starts ticking things off on her hands. “No text. No anything. You just up and leave the concert without telling me?”

“I lost my phone.” I kick the ground with my sneaker. “And I had food poisoning.”

“Food poisoning?” Her hip pops out.

“I ate a bad brownie.”

“Cass said you were high.”

“I ate a bad brownie with hash inside.”

“Are you crazy?” Kim throws her hands out to the side. Arm flailing has commenced. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.” I push past her to my locker.

“No. Something very weird is going on. Drugs? Ninny does drugs. You don’t do drugs.”

“It was one brownie. And you’re the one who said we needed to try new things our senior year.”

“It’s more than that.” Kim leans her hip against Tom’s locker. “You’re irritable. You don’t talk to me about stuff. You’re having trouble sleeping.” She points to the bags under my eyes.

“Sounds like I’m a teenager.”

“Just tell me. I want to help.”

I yank open my locker. Resting my forehead against the cool metal door, I close my eyes. “I’m just so tired,” I whisper.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she asks.

“I have bad dreams,” I admit.

“About the accident?”

I can’t bring myself to look at Kim when I say, “About everything coming to an end.”

“What do you mean?”

I exhale the tightness in my lungs. “You and Cass are leaving next year. You’ll be making out with some dude who reads poetry to you on a college green. You’ll be fancy. You’ll start drinking coffee without sugar or cream in it. You’ll cut off all your hair. You’ll wear jackets that look like sweaters that look like jackets. And I’ll be working at Shakedown Street.”

Kim rubs my back. “I hate poetry. And drinking black coffee is for communists.”

“You
are
Korean.”

“That’s North Korea, you racist, not South Korea.”

“There’s a North and a South Korea?” I ask and smile. My shoulders relax. “Maybe playing ExtermiNATION isn’t such a good idea,” I say.

“I told Cass those video games are a fucking nightmare.”

“But the sex is cool.”

We laugh. I grab Kim and wrap my arms around her small frame, squeezing my best friend into me as hard as I can. And I don’t let go. Kim slumps down into my arms, and we just stand there in the hallway, breathing into each other’s ears.

“Was it fun being stoned?” She asks as we walk down the hallway.

“I can honestly say I’ll never do it again.”

And I’m telling the truth. Finally.

I get to physics early, sitting myself in my seat, my eyes trained on my sketchbook. My foot shakes underneath the desk, and I try to control the bile coming up my throat. I could barely eat at Moe’s. I sipped on a soda, thinking it might cure my stomachache, but all it did is remind me of Dr. Brenda’s terrible analogy and how much I hope I never see her and her red hair again.

When Ben sits down next to me, he says, “You didn’t say goodbye.”

“I was afraid of your dad’s trucker hook hand.”

“He doesn’t have a hook hand.”

“My bad.” I stare down at the sketchbook.

“He has a wooden leg.”

“Well, I love a man with a wooden leg. I’ll stay next time.”

“Next time?”

“I didn’t mean that. I hate drugs.”

Ben laughs and grabs a notebook out of his bag. “That’s a bummer.”

“That I hate drugs?”

“That or the other thing.”

My heart stammers inside my chest, swelling seven sizes larger. I settle back in my chair, exhaling.

Mr. Salmon slams a book down on his desk. The noise makes me jump, and I knock my sketchpad to the ground.

“Let’s see who did their homework this weekend,” he says.

I bend down to grab my sketchpad as Mr. Salmon continues.

“Let’s say I’m driving in a car and there’s a red light ahead. I slam on the brakes, but I’m not wearing a seatbelt.”

I sit up. Did Mr. Salmon just say car? A few people glance at me. Or at least I think they glance at me. My stomach gets tight.

When I look to the front of the room, it’s like we’re alone in the classroom and Mr. Salmon is narrowing his eyes on me. “What causes me to go flying through the windshield?”

My stomach drops to the floor. I can’t take my eyes off Mr. Salmon. He’s staring at me.

“Aspen,” he says my name.

My heartbeat pounds in my head. The longer people stare, the faster it gets. I feel the blood drain from my cheeks.

“Aspen,” Mr. Salmon says again.

“I need to go to the bathroom.” I grab my backpack and rush out the door. As I run down the hallway, past the bathroom, my legs don’t feel attached to my body. I’m just glad they don’t give out completely.

When I burst out of school into the cold winter day, sun beams into my eyes, making me go blind for a moment. I’m having a heart attack at school. I bend over, heaving. That’ll be great for all the rumors.

“You’ve come . . . to see me . . . die on the front lawn of school . . . haven’t you?” I say in between gasps to the girl standing next to me.

Katelyn doesn’t move. Her eyes stay locked on the spirit rock. It’s painted for the holiday choir concert. I pull on my shirt like maybe it’s the thing suffocating me and shake out my numb hands. The stars in my vision start to fade. But Katelyn doesn’t.

“At least you left the theatrics at home.” I manage to squeak out in one breath. “The concert was a little much, don’t you think?”

But Katelyn just ignores me and walks up to the rock. She places her hand on the new paint. I stand back and watch her as my heart rate slows to a normal pace. I feel like all my energy has been drained.

“You’re covered up now,” I say to Katelyn. But she still doesn’t move. She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even cry.

And then we just stand there as snow starts to fall.

When I walk in the back door, Ninny’s sitting on the couch, watching TV. Her shoes have left tracks across the floor to her seat. I leave my shoes by the door and wipe up her mess with a kitchen towel.