Goodbye Stranger (8 page)

“I’m just saying it seems like a big deal, but it isn’t.” Celeste threw her shoulders back and took a deep breath, which pushed her chest out and made Bridge think that Celeste actually did think it was kind of a big deal.

“Again,” Tab said, “not worried.”

“Do you guys ever watch
The Twilight Zone
?” Bridge asked.

“The vampire books?” Celeste asked vaguely. She had taken control of the laptop and was scrolling through Julie Hopper’s photos.

“No,
The Twilight Zone.
It was this old show on TV. These different stories.”

“Sounds cute.”

“They’re kind of creepy, actually. There’s this one about a woman in a hospital bed and her whole head is wrapped up in gauze. Just her head. And the nurses—but you can only see their hands, not their faces—are starting to unwrap her. And the doctor, but you can’t see him either, you can only hear his voice, is telling her she shouldn’t get her hopes up, because the surgery might not have been successful.”

“Notice how the nurses are women and the doctor is a man?” Tab said, nodding.

“I didn’t say the nurses were women,” Bridge said.

“Oh. Were they?”

“Yes,” Bridge admitted.

“Ha!” Tab said.

“Shush. So finally the bandages fall away and she’s
perfect.
She’s, like, ridiculously beautiful. The room goes silent, someone passes her a mirror, and then she starts screaming her head off. She’s
horrified
by what she sees in the mirror.”

“I don’t get it,” Tab said.

“You’re not supposed to yet.
Then
the camera pulls back and for the first time you see the faces of the doctors and nurses in the room, and they all look like
pigs
! They have these
snouts
!”

“What?” Celeste looked up, suddenly interested.

“Snouts! Like
pigs
! It’s this other reality, where she looks like a supermodel but
she’s
the ugly one. Get it?”

“I wouldn’t want to live on a planet where everyone looks like a pig.” Celeste fake-shuddered.

“You’re missing the point,” Bridge said.

“Maybe you had to be there.” Celeste closed her laptop and looked at Bridge. “Your hair is getting so long. Have you ever tried a messy bun?”

“Messy bun?” Tab said. “Is that to eat? Mmm, messy bun. Sounds delicious.”

“Don’t be mental.”

“Mental,” Tab told Bridge, as if Celeste weren’t sitting right there. “She gets that from these hair videos she watches on YouTube. A lot of the girls are British. Now she runs around saying everything is either ‘brilliant’ or ‘mental.’ ”

“I do not. But, Bridge, did you know there are like a hundred thousand videos on the Internet about how to put your hair up or do your makeup? It’s this whole
world
of information.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s why they invented the Internet,” Tab said.

“You know what, Tab? You don’t have to make a statement every five seconds.” Celeste looked at Bridge thoughtfully. “Or maybe a sock bun.”

“What’s a sock bun?” Bridge asked.

“Mmm, sock bun,” Tab said. “Sounds delicious.”

“It’s a bun rolled up around a sock,” Celeste told Bridge. “Looks prettier than it sounds. And your hair is so dark and heavy…it’ll be beautiful. Even with the cat ears.” She paused, leaned back. “You know, I think I like the ears. They give you some nice height.”

Tab burst out laughing. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

“Ignore her,” Celeste instructed Bridge. “Want to try it? The sock bun?”

“Uh. Maybe,” Bridge said.

“I’ll go get the stuff!” Celeste jumped up, glanced at herself in the mirror hanging over the couch, and did a double take.

“No. No! It’s still there. It’s—
bigger
!”

“What is?” Bridge asked.

“She can’t pass a mirror without looking at herself,” Tab said.

“This zit!” Celeste turned, her finger aimed at a place to the left of her chin. “I paid, like, twenty-eight dollars for this stupid cream that was supposed to boost my radiance. What did I get for it? A four-dimensional zit!”

“It’s tiny,” Bridge said. “I didn’t even see it until you pointed.”

Tab rolled her eyes. “Four dimensions? Does it smell or something?”

“Ew, no. The fourth dimension is
time.
This thing has been here for two weeks!”

Tab said, “Stop laughing, Bridge. You’re encouraging her.”

Celeste glared at the spot in the mirror. “Leave, thing!
Leave!
”

“I can’t help it,” Bridge said. “She’s funny!”

“You realize our fifteen-minute break was over half an hour ago, right?” Tab pointed to their books on the coffee table.

Celeste spun away from the mirror and squinted at the computer. “Is it four-thirty? I’m so sorry, Bridge, I have to pick up Evan from computer club. I’ll show you the sock bun later, okay? Promise.”

“Anyway, we’re supposed to be doing French,” Tab told Bridge. “Remember? Did you look at the flash cards I made you?”

“Sort of.” Bridge rooted around in her backpack for her flash cards. “There’s this new girl at the Bean Bar. She says French is the language of love. And that’s why she refuses to speak it.”

Tab made a face. “That’s stupid. How can there be a language of love? And Bridge, is she really a ‘girl’? Or is she a woman?”

AWKWARD SILENCE

Bridge looked at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door. Really
looked.

Then she put on her cat ears, felt them settle like a hand on her head.

“Il pleut,”
she told herself.
It’s raining.

French even made her mouth look stupid.

She had dressed carefully, in dark jeans and the black Charlie Chaplin T-shirt her mom had given her for her birthday.

In the kitchen she found Jamie on his knees, trying to reach a box of cereal on the counter. “Can you push it toward me a little?” he asked.

Bridge moved the box to the edge of the counter. Jamie grabbed it, tucked it under one arm, and crawled to the refrigerator, where he took out the milk.

“You can’t be out of steps already,” Bridge said. “It’s seven-twenty-five in the morning.”

“Track practice today. I have to save up. Can you grab me a bowl?”

—

Bridge was early to school, where kids were lined up against the fence in a chilly wind, waiting for the main doors to open. Most of them were looking at their phones for those last few minutes before they had to be powered down until three o’clock.

Bridge walked to the end of the line, realizing as she got closer that Sherm was standing there with his phone, scrolling with a thumb. A quick electric shower broke over her.

“Hey,” she said.

Sherm looked up and smiled. “Oh, hey.”

She dropped her book bag between her feet.
Please, no awkward silence.

“Hey,” Sherm said again, this time to someone behind her. Bridge turned to look.

“Dude,” a tall kid said to Sherm. They bumped elbows.

“This is Patrick,” Sherm said. “He’s in eighth.”

“Yeah, but this genius is in my math class,” Patrick said.

Emily’s
Patrick, Bridge realized. He had longish brown hair and big brown eyes and wore a navy-blue hoodie. He looked cold. I’ve seen your belly button! she thought. Her eyes drifted down his hoodie, but she caught herself and brought them up again.

A whistle blew, the school doors opened, and the line started to shuffle forward. Bridge wanted Patrick to say something else—something she could bring back for Emily.

“I’m Bridge,” she said. Because Sherm hadn’t said her name.

“I know. Em’s friend. The cat girl.” He nodded at her ears.

“Yeah.” She smiled.

“Houdini, right?” He pointed at her T-shirt.

Bridge glanced down. “Actually, it’s Charlie Chaplin.”

“Right! That’s what I meant.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She couldn’t seem to think of anything but his belly button.

SHERM

Sherm’s grandfather was the one who’d hooked Sherm on math.

“Hey. How long until my birthday?” he asked five-year-old Sherm one afternoon in the park. They’d been collecting leaves from the cobblestones: red, orange, yellow, green. Each of them had a fistful.

“Your birthday?” asked Sherm, who had only given any serious thought to his own birthday.

“Yes, my birthday.” His grandfather poked himself in the chest with two fingers. “Old people have birthdays too, you know. And I like to have something to look forward to. So—how long do I have to wait?”

Sherm had no idea.

“Tell you what,” his grandfather said. “I’m going to write down my birthday on a piece of paper, and I’m going to give that paper to you. And from now on, you’re my man. Whenever I want to know how long until my birthday, I’m coming to you. Do we have a deal?”

And then his grandfather had explained how to count forward by months and days. There was some tricky stuff: he’d told Sherm about short months and long months, and showed him how to count on his knuckles to figure out which months were which.

“How long?” he’d ask Sherm as they were putting on their boots or loading the dishwasher or waiting to check out books at the library. And Sherm would do the calculation in his head. He’d liked math ever since.

VALENTINE’S DAY

“Can I help you?” The guy behind the counter at the copy shop is cute, with spiky hair.
Too cool for school,
Gina would say.

“Yeah,” you tell him. “I need, like, one minute online.”

“Four ninety-five,” he says. He glances over your head at the computer stations. “You can have terminal one.”

“Five dollars? For one minute?”

Five dollars is all you have. You planned to get a bagel or something.

He looks at you. “Yeah. It’s four ninety-five for the first five minutes.”

“I only need
one
minute.”

He smiles and gets even cuter. “Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. If my boss weren’t here, I’d let you hop on, but—” His hand knocks the counter, twice. “You know how it is.”

“Yeah, I totally get it.” You hand over your five-dollar bill.

He punches the register open. “Drop/add?”

“What?”

“Drop/add. The deadline is noon, right?” He tilts his head at the campus gate across the street. “It’s always busy here on drop/add day.”

He thinks you’re in college. “Oh yeah. Thanks.”

“Well, good luck.” He hands you a nickel. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Yeah, you too.”

—

You sit at the computer, open the browser, and log in. There are three emails waiting from your mom, all written in the subject lines.

Where are you?

Call me immediately—I’m worried.

Honey, call my cell. On my way home.

Your mom is great. She’s the best. But there’s no way you’re going to call her. She’ll want you to come home right now for a heart-to-heart. She’ll want to tell you that none of this is very important.

You write back:

Hi, Mom—I’m ok, just need ONE mental-health day, see you later and pls don’t worry at ALL.

And then you hit send, log out, and quit the browser. Just to be thorough.

You glance at the time in the upper right corner of the screen and calculate what you’d be doing at school. It’s almost homeroom. Homeroom is when they’ll hand out the flowers.

You leave the copy store quickly, as if the police might have traced your email, as if they’re throwing themselves into their squad cars and converging on your location.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” the spiky-hair guy calls as you leave.

“Yeah, you said that already,” you mumble.

Outside, you walk a couple of quick blocks and then stop to look around: people with their coffee cups, people with their phones, people with their friends. It dawns on you again that you’re hungry. You feel for your purse, your wallet, your phone. And you remember. You don’t have your purse. You don’t have your wallet. You don’t have your phone. You can’t go home right now. And aside from that nickel, you have no money at all.

“Mental-health day.” Those are Vinny’s words, stuck in your head along with so much else of her, and you wish you hadn’t used them.

THREES ARE HARD

“
Halloween,
remember?” Tab said, hands on her hips. “This is a Halloween-
only
meeting!” They were at the minimart after school, in the back.

“Fine.” Em jammed her phone into her jeans pocket. She’d been showing them a picture of Patrick’s doorknob. The doorknob to his bedroom, he said.

“Bridge! Pay attention!” Tab clapped twice, like a teacher.

“I
am
paying attention,” Bridge said, scanning the cookie aisle.

Tab said, “Halloween! Come on, guys. Ideas?”

“Something that comes in threes,” Bridge said.

“Like poison ivy?” Tab said. “Leaves of three?”

“No, not like poison ivy,” Bridge said.

“I am not being a leaf for Halloween!” Em said.

“Shhh. Think. Things in threes.”

“The three bears,” Tab said.

“Three billy goats gruff,” Bridge said.

“I’m not being a bear or a goat,” Em said. “Those sound ugly.”

“Well, it’s not a sex parade,” Tab snapped.

“Shut up, Tab! Who said anything about a sex parade?”

“You know what I mean,” Tab said. “I’m not doing one of those stupid girl costumes that society is always trying to force on us, like a nurse in a miniskirt or a maid in fishnet stockings.”

“The Berperson is brainwashing you. You realize that, right?” Em put her hands on her hips. “What does she think you should be for Halloween? A Teletubby?”

“Oooh,” Tab said. “Look who’s coming.”

It was Patrick, with a bunch of other eighth graders, including Julie Hopper, who patted Em on the head as she passed. They swarmed into the back of the minimart, opening and slamming fridge doors, grabbing Gatorades and bags of chips.