How to Be Brave (2 page)

“Well, it's a cute dress, anyway.” Avery broadens her fake smile. “It just would look better on
me,
that's all.”

I stop in my path. What a bitch. I feel the tears start to well. I can't cry. I just can't. Not now. Not in front of them. Not today.

I hear a voice call out from ahead: “Hey, Avery, nice camel toe.”

Liss. My savior. She's walking toward us, away from the school. For me.

Avery looks down at her crotch, horrified.

“Hey, Chloe,” Liss continues. “Did you finally get that nose job this summer?”

Chloe's eyes widen in terror. “Well, no! What makes you think—”

“Oh, too bad. Maybe next summer,” Liss says. “It'll look nice on you. Once you get it smaller, it'll finally fit your beady little eyes.”

Chloe grabs her face.

Liss locks elbows with me and pulls me toward the front door, leaving Avery and Chloe to examine themselves with their camera phones.

“I love the dress,” she says, whisking me forward.

“Not too fast,” I whisper. “The shoes. They're more excruciating than Avery Trenholm's hideous voice.”

The last bell rings. We've made it.

*   *   *

I've been assigned Locker #13. Well, that can't be good.

Sorry, I forgot: positive thoughts.

I look around. We're in a new section, the senior floor up top, but it's all the same faces, just a little bit older, a little less pimply. Everyone's scrambling to jam their shit into their lockers. Liss is way down the hall, Locker #47.

Okay. Think, Georgia, think. Be brave.

And then I see it. Positive Thought #3: Daniel Antell. There he is. Cute Daniel. Tall Daniel. Totally sexy Daniel with those übersharp scapulae (oh, what a back) and that thick, slightly mussed-up hair. Daniel, who I've been staring at for three years, who trips me up every time we talk (we've had all of three conversations); his smiling eyes fixate on me, and the words in my brain become a jumbled mess. All otherwise intelligent, organized thoughts crumble in his presence.

He's at Locker #10.

Three doors down.

So close to me.

He sees that I'm staring at him, so he smiles and waves. And what's the first thing I do? I look down, at my schedule. (Smile back, damn it!)

I force myself to look back up at him, and I muster out a “Hey.”

That's it. Just “Hey.”

“What's your schedule?”

I look behind me. He must be talking to someone else. Only quiet Steve Westerman is there, and he's busy overthinking the organization of his one-foot-by-five-foot locker space.

I look back at Daniel. “Oh, um … Let's see.” I fumble with my schedule. “Um, AP history, with Springfield—that should be fun; chem, with that nut-job Zittel…”

“Oh yeah, they call him Zitzoid. Good luck with that.”

Daniel's just so nice. He's not part of any subgroup, but instead he navigates them all fluidly. Always has. I mean, he's not especially interested in being part of any one group. And Liss doesn't get why I like him so much. He's too lanky, she says, and too sensitive. She's had a bunch of AP science classes with him and even got to be his lab partner in bio last year. She said he had a hard time during dissection, that he didn't want to be the one to cut open the frog. I don't know why that's so bad (I couldn't have done it, either), but she says she just can't think of him as anything more than a brother. If only that were my problem, I could talk to him like a normal person.

“Thanks,” I force out. “I'll need it.”

He walks to my locker and looks over my shoulder to read my schedule. “What else you got?” I can smell him. Like pine or rosemary or some dark scent.

“What's the rest of your schedule?” he asks me again. But I'm solid stone. No, really, I've turned to actual granite. I'm a boulder in a giant orange dress. My legs are heavy, my shoulders heavy, my blood heavy, and everything is still. Except that I can feel the pounding of my heart inside my brain. I hope he doesn't hear it, too.

He takes the paper from my shaking hand and reads it aloud: “Let's see there. Oh, cool, AP English with Langer, math with Keynes, and art with Marquez. I'm taking art too.” (
Swooon.
) “And I had Keynes last year.”

I force out actual human words spoken in English (though they come out sounding more like mouse squeaks). “Is she hard?”

“Yeah. A total hard-ass. And nuts, too. She stands outside the classroom during quizzes with one of those little dental mirrors and pokes it around the corner to see if we're cheating.”

He laughs. Those eyes. Those smiley, half-moon, beautifully creased, kindest-eyes-I've-ever-seen. Oh God. Stomach. In. Knots. Mouth. Frozen. Cannot. Speak.

I move my lips into a smile. At least it feels like a smile. I wish I weren't frozen. Then I could laugh, too. A nice, hearty human laugh.

He breaks what has now become the Most Awkward Silence Ever. “But that's cool, you know. It looks like we have one class together. I heard Marquez is cool.”

I nod.

“So I'll see you fifth period, then.” He shrugs and hands me the schedule. His fingers graze mine.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So many yeses.

“Uh-huh. For sure,” I muster out. “See you then.”

And then he's gone.

Shit. Now what.

Okay, Georgia: Courage, like Mom said.

Here goes. Positive Thought #4: I didn't crumble into a million grains of sand when his skin touched mine. I'm still alive. I'm breathing. And he talked to me.

And in six hours, I'll be in the same room with him again. Every day this year. Oh my, I think that just might be Positive Thought #5.

I slam my empty locker closed and run down the hall toward Liss. Pumps be damned.

*   *   *

The rest of the day is fairly anticlimactic in contrast with the First Official Locker Date, which is what Liss and I will call it forever.

History, decent; chemistry, confounding; English, fun; and math, I don't remember too well since Keynes spent the whole time speaking in tongues—sorry, I mean equations. Art, I also don't remember too well since I spent the whole time staring at Daniel, who somewhat unfortunately was seated on the other side of the room, though the position gave me a perfect view of his sharply chiseled profile. (Siiigh.)

Liss and I meet up outside the gate. They should really pass us through metal detectors as we leave, too. I wonder how many scalpels are stolen from Zitzoid's class each year.

We head over to Ellie's Belly Busters, the sub shop down on Lincoln Avenue that serves the world's best French fries. My mom used to take me here as a kid. It was a secret we kept from my dad since we were technically cheating on our own restaurant. It might have been the only secret she kept from him.

Liss and I score the only front booth. My feet are killing me. I sit down and throw off the pumps. “First day, man.” I lather a fry in ketchup.

“What a clusterfuck.” Liss digs into the fries. “Only one hundred and sixty-nine more days to go.”

“Seriously? I don't think I can hack it. That's just too much torture.”

“Well, except for Daniel, right? I mean, that's all kinds of awesome.”

“Yeah, sure.” I laugh. “If I could actually form some kind of intelligent thought beyond ‘uh-huh.' How is it that I'm the daughter of a college instructor?” It's the first time I've mentioned my mom in a while. I know it. Liss knows it. She's always here and never here.

She puts her palm on my hand. “Are you okay?”

“I'm trying to change.”

“Change what?”

I wipe my fingers on a napkin and pull my mom's letter from my bag. Even though she wrote plenty of art critiques when she was in grad school, my mom never liked to write anything personal. She saved that for her art.

I hand Liss the worn paper that's covered in my mom's shaky handwriting. “Here. I made her do it those last few weeks. I made her write to me.”

Dear Georgia,

You put the pen and paper in my shaking hand and insisted that I write you even though you know how much I hate this kind of thing. You said you want to remember my voice after I'm gone. You left me here in the hospital room, alone with the blaring TV and the nauseating lilies and useless piles of magazines. You're supposed to stay, to be here in case I crash again, in case I go under.

So what can I say to you, my beautiful girl, so that you'll remember me?

Well, first, that I'm sorry. I wish I could have fought harder, for you. I think I'll be able to watch you after I'm gone. I hope so. I've watched you for these sixteen years, and you've filled me with a lifetime of joy.

But as it turns out, a lifetime is way too short.

Just remember that you are my best friend, my most favorite person in the whole wide world. Know that I'm proud of you, just so incredibly proud—of who you are, of who you've become. And don't grieve too long for me. You are young and vibrant and you sparkle with life.

Live it. Do what I never did. I lived life too fearfully, I think. I gave up a long time ago. Don't live that way. Go do anything you like—in fact, do everything. Try it all once.

And when you're out there doing everything, be brave, and think of me.

Mom

Liss sits back. Tears are running down her cheeks.

She looks at me. “You have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Do everything. Be brave. Just like your mom said. You have to do this. I'll do it with you.”

“I don't understand. Do what, exactly?”

“Like a bucket list. A Do Everything Before You Die list.”

“Except that I'm not planning on dying.”

“No! That's not what I meant.” Liss turns red.

“No, I know…”

“Shit. I'm sorry. Not at all what I meant.” She reaches across the table and places her hand on mine. “I meant like a Do Awesome Stuff list.”

I shrug. “There's not much I can do, though. I'm not eighteen. I can't drive. I'm stuck in this forsaken city.”
Way to think positive, Georgia.

“Come on. There's lots you can do.” She pulls out her phone and googles bucket lists. Most of them are pretty stupid.

Like:

Kiss in the rain. (Blech.)

Stay up and watch the sunrise. (Seriously?)

Pull an all-nighter. (Lame.)

“Who writes this shit?” Liss laughs. “We can do so much better than any of these.”

“Exactly.”

We decide that we want more of a Fuck This Dork Shit list.

More of an I Want to Live Life list.

Fearless.

Real.

So I pull out a sheet of paper and start writing.

This is what we draft:

The Do Everything Be Brave List

In no particular order

Dedicated to Diana Askeridis

……(with duly noted feedback from Liss Ehler)

I look up from my list. “What about ‘Lose weight'?”

“Eh.” Liss grabs a handful of fries and stuffs them in her mouth. “You don't really need to be brave to do that.”

That's what best friends are for.

I put down the pen.

“I love the dress, by the way,” Liss says.

“Thanks. It's the only cute thing I own. I feel like I've set a precedent, though. And now, with this list, I have to live up to a certain standard, you know?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Liss replies, munching on fries.

“So what the hell am I going to wear tomorrow?”

“Hm, well, nothing involving drapes.” Liss smiles.

“Yeah, well, there's not much else, then.” I think about the remaining two outfits hanging on my closet door: black and boring. “And I have, like, fifty dollars left over from working for my dad this summer.”