Hold Still (6 page)

“Human potential. Or identity,” she mutters.

“Great,” Mr. Robinson says. He nods. “Wonderful.” He looks at one corner of the ceiling and hums a little bit of the song. He seems to forget where he is for a minute.

Then he returns to us.

He says, “For homework, please choose a song that matters to you. I want you to write a paper that first explains why the song is important to your life, and then analyzes the song’s lyrics as you would a poem. I’ll give you until Friday.”

I’m getting my math book from my locker when Dylan comes up next to me and asks, “Is there anywhere good to eat around here?”

By now, the secret is out—almost all the lockers in the science hall have been claimed. Before school and after school, the hall echoes with locker doors groaning open and slamming shut, with forty people’s voices and ringing cell phones and stomping feet. When I glance at Dylan, she’s staring like she did the first day. Her eyes are this clear blue green, surrounded by black smudged makeup. She’s standing close to me, and it feels strange. Apart from being accosted by Alicia, I haven’t been letting people get near me.

“If you go down Webster,” I say, “toward downtown, there are a few places.”

She looks at Ingrid’s hill stuck to the door of my locker, cocks her head, and squints at it. Then she nods her approval.

“So,” she says, “hungry?”

Without thinking, without even considering going, I say, “I have homework.”

“Okay,” she says. “Whatever.”

I head home, ready to pull Ingrid’s journal out of my backpack as soon as I get there and read for hours, until I’ve finished every entry. But as I pass the hills and the condos and all the places we used to walk past together, I decide that isn’t something I should do.

Here’s how I feel: People take one another for granted. Like, I’d hang out with Ingrid in all of these random places—in her room or at school or just on some sidewalk somewhere. And the whole time we’d tell each other things, just say all of our thoughts out loud. Maybe that would’ve been boring to some people, but it was never boring to us. I never realized what a big deal that was. How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head. You just think that things will stay the way they are. You never look up, in a moment that feels like every other moment of your life, and think,
Soon this will be over
. But I understand more now. About the way life works. I know that when I finish reading Ingrid’s journal, there won’t be anything new between us ever again.

So when I get back to my house, I lock my room door even though I’m the only one home, take Ingrid’s journal out, and just hold it for a little while. I look at the drawing on the first page again. And then I put the journal back. I’m going to try to make her last.

15

After dinner, I climb into the backseat of my car with my laptop. I push in Davey’s mix tape, but I keep the volume low so I can concentrate. I’m thinking of ways to start my English paper.

I type,
Music is a powerful way for people to express themselves.
Then I delete it. I try again:
Songs can be important ways of remembering certain moments in people’s lives.
That’s closer to what I’m trying to say, but it isn’t exactly right yet. I shut my computer. A girl plays her guitar, sings earnestly, and I crank open the moon roof, sink lower on the seat, look up at the sky, and listen.

When the song is over, I turn the tape off, and try again.
There is an indescribable feeling that comes from being desperately in love with a song.

I read the sentence over. I keep writing, trying to feel the best night of my life over again.

Ingrid and I had stood in front of her bathroom mirror, concentrating. The counter was cluttered with little makeup containers and bobby pins and hair goop.

We are so hot,
Ingrid said.

I nodded, slowly, watching my face as it moved up and down. My hair was shiny and straight and long, parted down the middle. Ingrid had put this deep green, glittery eye shadow on me and it made my eyes look amber instead of just brown. She had pinned her blond curls back messily, and was wearing red lipstick that made her look older and kind of sophisticated.

Yeah,
I said.
We look really good
.

We look amazing
.

What it was, was that we complemented each other. We just fit in this way that made strangers ask us if we were sisters, even though her hair was blond and curly and mine was straight and dark. Even though her eyes were blue and mine were brown. Maybe it was the way we acted, or spoke, or just
moved
. The way we would look at something and both have the same thought at the same moment, and turn to each other at the same time and start to say the same thing.

Okay,
Ingrid said.
Hold still.
She put pink lip gloss on my mouth with this little wand thing, and I licked my finger and wiped off a speck of mascara that had gotten on her cheek.

We climbed into the back of Ingrid’s parents’ SUV, and Ingrid’s mom, Susan, looked at our reflection in the rearview mirror.

You two look great,
she said. In the mirror, I could see that she was smiling. Mitch, Ingrid’s dad, turned in his seat to see us.

Look at you two. What a sight.
Which I think was his way of saying he thought we looked good, too.

Ingrid’s brother, Davey, and his girlfriend, Amanda, had just gotten engaged, and they were throwing a huge party at a restaurant near their apartment to celebrate. Ingrid’s parents had Davey ten years before they had her. She always liked to say that she was a mistake, but Susan and Mitch never admitted it. All the people at the party would be older, but that didn’t matter. We still got to dress up and look forward to something. We still got to get out of Los Cerros for a night.

Mitch and Susan dropped us off in front so that we wouldn’t have to drive around with them, searching for parking for an hour. We found Davey and Amanda inside the restaurant, smiling and looking so happy like they always did.

After we had talked with them for a while, we found a table and ate all these small dishes of fancy food. The lights dimmed and the music got louder, and everyone got up and started to dance. All of Amanda and Davey’s friends were beautiful, but for once I felt beautiful, too. I got up and walked out into the middle of them, wearing my black V-neck sweater and the tight maroon pants I got from the mall. Ingrid followed me in her yellow dress and brown boots. It felt good to be in the middle of strangers. I didn’t feel like a kid in high school. I was anyone I wanted to be.

We started dancing, real jumpy and twirly, to these British rock bands we hadn’t heard before. At one point we danced our way back over to the edge of all the people, and a waiter came by with a tray of champagne. Ingrid grabbed two glasses before he could take a good look at her, and we drank them down fast. It didn’t make me drunk, exactly, I mean it was only
one
glass, but it did make me feel a little bit dizzy, and that made the dancing even more fun. And then, after we had danced through about five songs straight, a new song started, and as soon as the man started singing, with this voice that was urgent and calm and passionate all at once, I froze. I stood in the middle of all the dancing strangers and I just listened.

It was the moment I realized what music can do to people, how it can make you hurt and feel so good all at once. I just stood there with my eyes closed, feeling the movement of all the people around me, the vibration of the bass rise through the floor to my throat, while something inside me broke and came back together.

When the song was over I grabbed Ingrid’s hand and pulled her out of the crowd, over to Amanda, who was standing with the DJ, handing him CDs and telling him which tracks to play. These huge speakers were next to them and I could feel the bass pounding through me.

What band was that?
I shouted.

The Cure,
Amanda shouted back.
Like them?

I nodded. I wanted to say,
I
love
them,
but the word felt too simple.

Amanda put the CD back in its case and handed it to me.
Take it,
she said.
It’s yours.

A couple hours later my paper is finished. Through my car window, I can see the lights are all off in the house. My parents must be sleeping already. I guess they’re used to me being out here now. I cross the path toward the house, stop at the pile of wood. I run my hands along a plank at the top.

16

I wake up before my alarm this morning, roll over, and shut it off. It took forever to fall asleep. I kept thinking about that night. After that were months that Ingrid was alive but not really awake. She would still draw in her journal and hang out with me and laugh sometimes and everything, but now, looking back, I know that she did it all automatically. The way you brush your teeth and eat breakfast. You don’t really think about it; your mind is other places. It’s just something you do to get ready for something else.

I pull out Ingrid’s journal, and I’m pretty sure that I deserve to, seeing as it’s only six forty-five and already a bad day. But when I open it everything just gets worse.

17

Obviously, I skip photo this morning.

I sit on the path behind the apartments, pathetically alone, and wait for 8:50 to come. I turn my back to the buildings and look at the hill and the trees. I start to count the trees. Then, without really realizing it, I start to think of one thing I did wrong for each tree I look at. Wide oak—I didn’t tell anyone when Ingrid cut herself. Baby oak—the time I told her I was getting sick of hearing about Jayson’s arms and his blue shirt. Tall tree with bare branches—the way I would leave when she got depressed and stopped talking. I should have stayed. I should have just sat quietly, so that she knew I was with her. Pine tree—the afternoon I lied and said that I didn’t feel like hanging out with her every single day, when really I just didn’t want to steal nail polish from Long’s because I felt so shitty the one time we did it. I could tell she was about to cry, even though she turned around and left. That was the day she got caught with eyeliner and hair dye stuffed into her backpack. I pick out a smaller pine for not being there to get caught with her. Then I look out to where there’s this huge group of trees in the distance, and I count those for all the times I called her some name, or told her she was being stupid—because even though I was always joking, it might have hurt.

The morning fog spreads from tree to tree like a blanket of regret. I take my camera out of my backpack. I want so badly to take a picture. But I don’t.

18

I walk into my precalc class and surprise myself by sliding into the seat behind Taylor.

“She slit her wrists,” I say.

Taylor turns around to face me. He looks uncertain, the way he does when he can’t find the value of
x
. I make sure to lock eyes with him. Anger is tying knots in my stomach.

“What?” he asks.

“Slit her wrists, bled to death. That’s how she did it. Usually it doesn’t work, I guess, but she meant it.”

He looks uncomfortable, pale. His eyes dart away from mine.

“Now you know,” I say.

I lean back in the chair, away from him. Mr. James reviews the homework on his ancient overhead projector, but I can’t concentrate. I just see her. I blink hard, then stare at the desk, hoping the blankness will push the image away. Someone has written YOU SUCK in ugly black marker on the top right corner. I rub the letters so hard that my thumb cramps. The words don’t get any lighter. I’m breathing hard and I think Taylor turns to face me again, but I choose not to look.

“I have to change desks,” I mutter to no one, and grab my backpack and walk down the aisle until I find a desk with a clear surface, no marks.

But I still see her as if I were there in her house that morning. Like it was me instead of her mom who pushed Ingrid’s bathroom door open and saw her naked in the bathtub, eyes shut, head heavy, arms floating in that red water. I look up at Mr. James’s projector, but what I see are the gashes in her arms, along the veins. I can’t hear what he is saying. First the sounds go away and then everything loses shape.

Slowly, slowly, I lower my head until my face is flat against the cold desktop. I concentrate on breathing, feel my heart working hard. I can hear the clock faintly ticking. I look to the wall, to the spot where I know it is, and through the buzz of Mr. James’s voice, I wait for it to come back in focus.

19

Ingrid’s skin was the smoothest texture, so pale that it was transparent. I could see the blue veins that ran down her arms, and they made her seem fragile somehow. The way Eric Daniels, my first boyfriend, seemed fragile when I laid my head on his chest and heard his heart beating and thought,
Oh
. People don’t always remember about the blood and the heartbeat. The lungs. But whenever I looked at Ingrid, I was reminded of the things that kept her alive.