What Happens Next (7 page)

It took losing something wonderful and amazing to see them.

It took losing something that, once it’s gone, you can never get it back.

Peace.

The irony of this stings me with a sorrow so painful that I have to bite into my fist to keep my heart from ripping in two.

6

Four days of suspension
are over. I’m back to school and, apparently, in hot demand. I guess staying out all night on a school trip makes one popular in certain circles. My once-empty inboxes are full again, teeming with tweets, pokes, invites, and adoring chitchat. I finally charged and checked my phone last night, and it practically blew up in my hand from all the activity. People think I’m cool now—even some of my fellow cheerleaders. Not Starsha, but still, a couple of them, anyway. And those boys who never gave me the time of day? Coming out of the woodwork.

I walk through the halls like a goddess—high fives and fist bumps at every turn. I am the poster girl for teenage rebellion, everyone’s bad-girl superhero. It’s like I’m living in a parallel universe of Lakewood High. It looks the same, smells the same—only in this universe, I am mildly popular.

But Kirsten and Paige? Not a peep from either of them in over a day.

During first period, I get a printout of my new schedule. A new grading period has begun and some of my classes have changed. I look over the list and my eyes land on fourth period. Music appreciation has been swapped out for web page development. Kirsten and I signed up for the class together; couldn’t wait to be able to instant message, free and unfettered, for an entire fifty minutes at the end of the day.

I eye the clock all morning while the last period looms.

I have to get it over with. I can’t avoid Kirsten and Paige at school, because we’re joined at the hips here. And besides, now that avoiding them is no longer an option, part of me is almost glad. I want this to be over. I want things to go back to the way they were.

My heart pounds as the bell rings for last period. I head toward the computer lab. I pass by the art wing and the earthy smell of wet clay fills my nose. Pretty girls with long hair and no makeup, smelling of essential oils, are filing inside one of the rooms for pottery class. “Throwing pots,” I think they call it. I wish now that I had channeled my energy into something worthwhile and lasting instead of spending hours in front of the mirror channeling the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I go down the steps and stand around the corner from the computer lab, pasted against the wall like a cat burglar. I take a breath, peel myself off the wall, and go to get it over with. The teacher, Mr. Roudabush, points me in the direction of the last empty cubicle and begins yammering on about templates versus blank slates. I sit down in front of the monitor, fire up the engine, and punch in my school network user name:
ItGirlz2.

Lame, I know. Kirsten, Paige, and I chose our user names so they would match. Kirsten came up with this theory in ninth grade that if we formed an alliance and called it something cool then it would catch on with the masses and slingshot us over Ordinary and smack dab into Popular. It’s been two years and no one knows who the
ItGirlz
are but us.

I send a message to
ItGirlz1
, Kirsten, across the room.

K, can we talk?

She writes back.

4 days go by & now u wanna talk? Gr8. Fn. Go. Tlk.

Her words are like a kick to the chest. My best friend is on the other side of this room, sitting and staring at her screen, waiting for my explanation, waiting for me to tell her what happened and why we’re all in so much trouble. My fingers twitch and hover over the keys. Then I press three letters. I sit and stare at his name on my screen. The cursor blinking next to it.

Dax

Blink. Blink. Blink.

That’s as far as I get. I can’t make my fingers type the other two words. If I type those two words, then it becomes real. It becomes a thing that actually happened instead of a thing I don’t remember. Once I type it, the pretending is over. I backspace and erase his name and write:

I’m so sorry. I made a mistake.

She writes back.

Ya think? I’m glad ur sorry Sid but do u know how scard Pg & I were? It was awful. And wots w/the disappearing act? WTF? U could have @ least called or e-mailed.

And then I mess up big time. I tell her my mom took my phone and computer so I couldn’t message or call. She writes,

Bshit! Bethany Morris told Pg u e-mailed her for calc assignments so I know u saw mine & Pgs messages! Did u even read them? I called ur landline at least 50 times! When someone would finally pick up it was ur mom saying u were sleeping or doing h-work or in the shower or whatever. U might be grounded but ur moms no prison guard. She would have let u talk if u wanted. U were hiding out. So don’t even try it.

We got a wk of detention incl. Sat! And 2 top it all off? Pg. & I got kicked out of ski club! U may not care about skiing Sid but Pg & I do! We LIVE 4 ski club and U RUINED IT!

It’s like she’s thrown a knife at me from across the room. I sit working up the nerve to tell her. I need to tell her the truth, or some kind of version of it, something to make this better. I can’t lose my two best friends over this. After a long moment of radio silence, as I’m trying to think of something to say, she scrolls out a couple lines of angry question marks:

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Followed by:

Gr8. Later, Sid. Don’t call me or e-mail. I don’t need ur bshit.

I spend a few more moments trying to figure out what to do. I need to talk to Kirsten and Paige in person. In private. I’m too exposed here. If I tell Kirsten now she might freak out. And then everyone will know.

Can u come over after sch? I need 2 talk 2 u in person.

I hit the send button.

A notice pops up.

User has blocked this sender.

The classic freeze-out.

Roudabush is making his rounds. I look back over our exchange. We’re supposed to be working on a template and following along with the lesson. I try to close out of the message box but the screen won’t budge.
Blink, blink, blink
… nothing. My computer has frozen up and won’t drop the message box.

I quickly shut off the computer to get rid of the messages just as he gets to me, not bothering to power down first. Roudabush sees me do this and nearly faints. It takes most of the period for the aide to get my computer working properly again, and I get an F for the day.

When Roudabush tells me my computer is fixed, I sit down and immediately get a ding in my inbox, and for a second I’m hopeful that it’s Kirsten. It’s not. It’s Tate Andrews. Starsha’s on-again-off-again-friends-with-benefits-love-you-hate-you-forever is e-mailing me from across the way.

Prty @ Hunter B’s beach house this w-end. Catawba Isl. Wanna go?

Soooooo Tate Andrews, the LHS Football Romeo, wants to take Ski Slut Murphy to a party at a beach house Friday night. Uh-huh, I’ll just bet he does.

7

My mother is
about five minutes late picking me up, and I wait in front of the school, the icy wind whipping me from all sides. I open the car door and slide into the automatically warmed seat. I smell spices and see a takeout bag at my feet. My brother waves from the back and screams, “Hi, Sid! I missed youuuu!”

He has headphones on and is watching a superhero movie on the portable DVD player that hooks onto the back of my seat. I wave back and settle inside. I am relieved and glad to see them.

Mom leans over and kisses my cheek—no grudges, no worries, just love.

“How was it? Bad?” she asks, looking at my weary face.

“Uh, bad would be a step
up
from the day I had. More like awful, I’d say.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, reaching over and patting my leg. “Don’t worry. Hang in there. It’ll blow over. Wait and see, a month from now it’ll be like the ski trip never happened. People will forget about it altogether.”

“Yeah,” I say, hoping she’s right but knowing she’s not.

And besides, even if she is right? Even if, given time, other people forget about the ski trip, I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. That trip has set up permanent base camp in my brain; it’s going to be playing on auto-repeat for quite a while.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks.

“Not particularly,” I say with a sigh.

“Well, I have something to cheer you up. I ordered Indian. I thought we could play Tinker. It’s a Tudor on Lighthouse Road. There’s a glass conservatory that overlooks the lake.”

“Cool.”

Ever since my mother became a real estate agent, we’ll sometimes go to empty houses together and play a game she named Tinker, the Irish term for a gypsy. When there is an especially swank or interesting unoccupied house that she needs to ready for showing, she will take us with her and we will spread a picnic out in the nicest room and pretend we just moved in. We have to eat on the floor, because our truckloads of expensive furniture haven’t arrived yet. Liam thinks Tinker is the greatest game ever—running around fancy new McMansions or spooky old Tudors, hiding in bare cupboards or under stairs. It’s fun for me, too, knocking around someone else’s house, admiring rooftop views or commenting on god-awful wallpaper choices. We haven’t done it together in a long time, and I am up for anything that doesn’t involve a computer, a TV, or being stuck somewhere with my own thoughts for too long.

“Oooh,” my mom says. “Man candy, two o’clock.”

I look ahead and see a runner—male, extremely fit, longish hair hidden under a navy ski cap. As we pass him, my mom toots the horn and scares the hell out of him.

I roll my eyes and grin.

“Perv.”

She smiles like she’s won something.

While we drive, I lean my head against the seat and look over at my mother, who is driving and smiling at nothing in particular. She is so pretty, her chestnut hair pulled back in a pony. Dapples of sun hit her smooth skin and I think about how young she looks and about how young she was when she had me. I think about when I was really little, before her second marriage, when it was just the two of us in a shitty little apartment, and our heat was turned off because she couldn’t pay the bill. She carried me around all day, me clinging to her like a fat little monkey, her wrapping her thick robe around the both of us and tying it up tight.
Climb inside my robe where it’s warm, we’ll pretend we live in the zoo…

And now I need to roll down the window and catch a good gust of winter air on my face; the past is giving me a flush. I like thinking about my mom, Liam, and me, the way we are now. The Three Musketeers. Playing Tinker. Plus, the smell of the Indian food is doing strange things to my stomach. I haven’t eaten much all day, so I should be starving, but the smell is making me sick.

And here we are, the Tudor on Lighthouse Road.

We take our shoes off and leave them on the front porch by the door. They just had the floors polished and my mom doesn’t want to get the place scuffed up or dirty. I lift Liam up and let him do the keyless lock code that is hidden under an ornate metal plate with the house number on it. The code is easy; it’s always easy on the nicer houses. 4321 enter. God, how do these people make their millions?

This house is seriously one of my mother’s finer listings. The kind you get maybe once a year if you’re lucky. Three floors, a winding staircase, and an amazing view of the lake from a glass conservatory. She’d make a killing in commission if she could sell it. Thirty grand at least. I think about all the things the Murphys could buy with that kind of cabbage: a European vacation for Katherine, a pool for Liam, and a breast reduction for Sid.

We go into the conservatory and spread our blanket out on the marble tile. She opens the takeout containers and dishes out our food while I plug in the CD player and put on The Beatles. Even though I’m still not hungry, I eat a little bit.

“That’s all?” my mom says, looking at my nearly full plate.

“I didn’t know we’d be eating so early,” I say. “I had two burritos for lunch.”

Lie. I just don’t want it right now. Food and I are not seeing eye-to-eye these days, and I don’t want her asking me questions about it. I’ve actually lost a few pounds and, frankly, I don’t want to find them again.

“You can heat it up later,” she says. “Indian is always better the second time around.”

Then we talk and laugh and I feel calmer and happier than I have in a long time. Something about being in someone else’s house and living an imaginary life for a while. We clean up the containers, then look out the conservatory windows. We look across the lake, vast like an ocean, my mom, Liam, and me. We fantasize about our new home and life. My mom scoots closer to me, Liam nestled into the front of her. She leans her head on my shoulder. I can smell Liam’s strawberry-scented kid shampoo mixed with my mom’s soap-and-water perfume, and there is nothing better in the world than that.

When we are talked out and our butts hurt from sitting on the floor, my mom says, “Well, back to reality. Gotta get to work now,” and pulls out her clipboard and camera.

She walks around taking pictures and writing notes to herself. I play hide-and-seek with Liam. I tell him to go hide as I stroll in and out of the empty rooms pretending to look for him, while knowing the whole time exactly where he is. He is hiding in a pantry in the kitchen, which, for some reason, is always the first place he heads in every house. I walk around saying, “Hmmmmm? Where could he be? My, my, he’s disappeared altogether…”

While I am walking around pretending to look, I come upon a turret room. A turret is a room that looks like a castle tower from the outside. This one is different, though, because on the inside, it’s painted top-to-bottom with a mural. I’ve seen other houses with murals, but they’re usually in kids’ rooms. New moms love to crank out a mural of an underwater kingdom or traveling circus train. Not this mural, though. This mural is the real deal—a serious artist painted this room. It’s a scene of a quiet forest reaching up toward a warm, pastel sky.