The Rest of Us Just Live Here (5 page)

And Mel got better. She gained some weight, not a lot, but an amount that made her healthy again. It took a while, over a year, which is why we’re both seniors now instead of her already graduating, but she braved it out and nobody gave her much shit when she went back to school. That’s when she and Henna got so close, now that we were all in the same year. Meanwhile, my mom went back to the State Senate. Someone else won the Primary for Lieutenant Governor and was subsequently slaughtered in the general election by the incumbent, so my mom started calling it a “blessing in disguise” with a hard, faraway look in her eye. I finished my own counselling with Dr Luther. I stopped the anxiety medication. Things got kind of back to normal again.

And that, I think, was the problem. They could absolutely deal with Mel getting so sick. But I don’t think they could quite deal with her getting better. I did about eight hundred hours of anxious research on the internet and tried to tell them that almost ninety per cent of anorexics do recover, but as time passed, they seemed to start resenting the healthy daughter just sitting there, the one that they’d sacrificed so much for, no longer needing the sacrifice, if she’d ever
really
needed it in the first place. (She did. We could have lost her.
I
could have lost her. And then what?)

My mom started making vague references to “missed opportunities” and stopped coming to FBT sessions because she was doing important work down in Olympia, the capital. She handed control of Mel’s diet over to Mel four full months before the schedule suggested. Mel asked if I would help her, and I have, every day since.

We went back to barely seeing my dad. He’s either in his office at work or his office at home, usually smelling of alcohol, often asleep. To be fair, as alcoholics go, he’s pretty low-maintenance. He gets to work most of the time, he’s never violent or scary, and he lets my mom do most of the driving. I think she keeps him out of trouble, mostly by being clear about what she would do if he were ever
in
trouble.

So here we are now. I make sure my sister eats, she helps me out of my tics and loops, and we both watch over Meredith and try to stay out of our parents’ way.

But this, all this, isn’t the story I’m trying to tell. This is all past. This is the part of your life where it gets taken over by other people’s stories and there’s nothing you can do about it except hold on tight and hope you’re still alive at the end to take up your own story again. So that’s what we did. Me, Mel and Meredith all moved on, and we’re the stories we’re living now.

Aren’t we?

“It’s on the twenty-fourth,” Meredith says, staring at us like she’s trying to light us on fire with her mind. Which maybe she is. “So three weeks from today. Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“Eight hundredth time you’ve said it,” Mel yawns, leaning back into our couch. “It’s in my phone, on the calendar in my room, on TV every five seconds, and I have a feeling you’ll probably remind us as the day approaches.”

“It’s the week before your prom so it won’t get in the way and there’s enough time for you to get off work–”

I grab Meredith’s fingers where she’s counting off her points. “It doesn’t matter if we’re free, the concert’s gonna sell out in like two seconds.”

Meredith opens up her computer pad and reads. “‘As a thank you to their local fans for this special show, Bolts of Fire have made tickets available for purchase to
any
fan’” – she looks up at us – “‘between the ages of eight and twelve living in the 98— zip code.’” She closes the pad. “You just have to be one of the first to register.”

“Let me guess,” I say.

“Done and dusted,” Meredith says, copying a phrase from our dad. “They let fan-club members in there first.”

“Now all you have to do is talk her into letting you go,” Mel says.

“I
will
,” Meredith says, “with your help. But you
know
she won’t take me, so you guys have to be ready.”

Our mom started avoiding large public gatherings she couldn’t leave several years ago because they just turned into abuse-fests by people who hated politicians in general and politicians who supported a non-lethal speed limit in particular. Thirty minutes anywhere, even church, is her maximum, and on this one, I have to say I can kind of see her point.

“I’m in,” Mel says. “Even though I hate country music. I’m the best sister in the world.”

“I’m in, too,” I say, “though as your brother, I’m probably only the second-best sister.”

“But,” Mel says and raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t need to explain further.

Mom’s aversion to public events aside, Bolts of Fire have toured near us twice before, both times in the even bigger city that’s an hour away from the city that’s an hour away from us. Meredith tried to beg, bribe, tantrum, reason, sweet-talk, extort, demand, and panic my mother into letting her go. But after Mel’s rough time and my thing with the loops, Mom isn’t taking any chances on her last remaining possibly non-messed-up child. Meredith was too young for the “atmosphere” of a rock concert (which is stretching it, as far as Bolts of Fire are concerned; they’re so meticulously clean and goody-goody, the bars at the venues only serve orange Kool-Aid) and she was too young to stay up that late anyway. So no, no, end of discussion, no, don’t make me take away your internet privileges.

“But I’m ten now,” Meredith says. “Double digits. And it’s like five minutes away. And I’ll be home before my bedtime because they’re having the concert early so the cancer girl can have her treatment the next morning.”

Mel shrugs. “Not up to us.”

“I’ll die if I can’t go. I’ll just die. For real.”

“You could tell them you have cancer, too?” Mel suggests. “That’d get you in with or without Mom.”

Meredith’s eyes go wide, first in shock, then with a glorious, glorious plan–

“No way, Merde Breath,” I say. “For so many reasons.”

A door on the upstairs landing opens. Our father comes out in his underwear. Meredith looks away. He stares down at us like he’s not sure we’re there. He scratches the hairy potbelly sticking out over the elastic of his briefs and smacks his lips like he just woke up. It’s six o’clock in the evening, so that’s a possibility.

“You guys seen that shirt of mine?” he asks, his tongue lazy with drink. “The one with the eels?”

I turn to Mel. “The eels?” I mouth.

“I think Mom’s washing it,” Mel lies to him. “Why don’t you wear that red one with the double cuffs?”

He waits for a minute, like he didn’t hear her, then farts loudly and turns without a word back into his office.

When he’s sober, our dad is a funny, smart, warm guy, criminal greed aside. Mel in particular loves him, always has since I can remember. And she’s so disappointed in him, it almost literally chokes her.

Look, some more stuff happens that evening – Meredith argues with our mom over Bolts of Fire, Mel sneaks out to Henna’s house – but nothing so important that I have to go on about it. Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn’t the story I want to tell. At all.

You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I’m choosing my own story.

Because if you can’t do that, you might as well just give up.

On Friday, Henna and I somehow get a whole half-hour in her car alone together while she drives us back from the shop where she’s getting her prom dress (custard and burgundy, apparently) and I’m renting my tux (black).

We’re not going together. Well, we are, but not like that. Henna broke up with Tony after he’d already asked her to prom so anyone else she might have wanted to go with had already got other dates. Mel is a year older than everyone in our senior class and the guys who tend to ask her out are the creepy ones who think they can smell damage, in whom she has zero interest, thank God. Pretty much everyone would be totally fine if Jared brought a guy as his date, but he just gave his usual close-lipped refusal to even talk about it. As for me? I waited so long to ask Vanessa Wright, my ex-girlfriend, that she picked up the pieces of Tony Kim instead.

So guess what? Me, my sister, my best friend, and Henna are going to prom as a foursome, that ridiculous idea that only happens in the stupidest teen movies or drippiest teen books. Trust me, it only ever sounds cool if you never have to do it.

Oh, well. At least I like the people I’m going with and we’ll all be in it together.

“Mike?” Henna asks as we drive.

“Yeah?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. In fact, the silence goes on so long I look up from the text I’m writing to Mel to ask if she confirmed the limo we’re all taking to prom. (What do you want from us? We’re suburban. We
live
for shit like limos.)

“Henna?”

She sighs out through her nose. “Would you guys be really pissed off at me if I didn’t go in our foursome to prom?”

Oh. Hell, no. No, no, no.

“Of course we’d be pissed off,” I say. “That’s why you’re asking me and not Mel or Jared. I’m the one least likely to yell at you.”

“Please don’t yell at me,” she says, turning off the main road to the wooded ones that lead to our houses. The sun has abandoned us for the past couple days, and Henna flicks on the wipers as rain starts to fall.

“Who do you want to–” I start, but there’s no need to ask, is there?

“He’s new,” Henna says. “He doesn’t know anybody and how hard must it be to come to a new school right before graduation–?”

“Henna–”

“I haven’t asked him yet. But I want to.” She glances over at me. “Would that be awful of me? Would you hate me for it?”

“We’ve arranged everything, though. It was going to be lame but at least it was going to be lame for the four of us–”

“Well, how about this? How about if it’s the
five
of us?”

“But he’d be your date.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Henna–”

“Please don’t shout,” she winces. “It makes my stomach hurt.”

“I didn’t even raise my voice.”

“It sounded like you might.”

This actually makes me angry. “When, in my entire life, have I ever shouted at you?”

“Never, I know.” She breathes heavy for a minute. “My stomach hurts.”

“You were worried about asking us.”

“Yes.”

“You’re worried he might say no anyway.”

“Yes.”

“You’re worried about your mom and dad not letting you go to prom with someone they’ve never met so you’re going to pitch it that he’d come with all of us when really you just want him to come with you.”

I see her swallow. “There’s a war in the Central African Republic.”

“…What?”

“They’re still going to go, Mikey. They’re going to give aid to refugees. But it’s a war. An actual war. And they say we’ll be in safe places but…”

I turn a little in my seat to look at her better. “That’s crazy.”

“And it’s the stupid
prom
that’s making my stomach hurt.” She laughs, but it’s thick in her throat. “I didn’t want to let you guys down. And I have no idea where this comes from with Nathan–”

“You don’t even know him–”

“I know! I’ve spoken to him like three times! But it’s like I was telling Mel. It wells up in my stomach when I see him and it’s so strong, I can barely put two words together and I’m a
smart person
, Mike!” She shakes her head. “Smart enough to know that it’s probably not Nathan. It’s going away, isn’t it? It’s school ending. It’s going to the middle of a war. With my
parents
. My stomach hurts all the time and he’s a distraction from that.”

“…But a good one.”

She nods. “I’m sorry to be saying this to you. Of all people.”

I blink. “Of all people,” I echo.

She looks at me again. And then once more. She clearly wants to say something, but doesn’t know how. Or doesn’t want to hurt me.