Wintergirls (10 page)

He wipes a dab of whipped cream from his mouth.

“I didn’t do enough preliminary research before I wrote the proposal. I assumed that I’d find plenty of primary sources and made too many promises. Now I’m stuck.”

“Tell your editor,” I say. “Tell her you made a mistake and offer to write a different book.”

“It’s not that simple.” He shovels in another enormous hunk of pie.

Watching the food go into his mouth, his jaws working like a grinding machine and the gulping swallows, boils up a panic inside me. I run my fingertips along the edges of the cover of my book, pushing on the corners until it hurts.

“You used to say things always look better in the morning,” I say. “Maybe you should just go back to bed.”

“This is grown-up stuff, Lia, a little more complicated than that. But it’s nothing you have to worry about.”

Because I am still a little girl who believes in Santa and the tooth fairy and you.

He fumbles in the pocket of his robe for his reading glasses. “Is my laptop over there?”

I point to the bookshelf above the television.

“Ah.” He stands up and crosses the room. “Why don’t you finish this for me?” he says as he shoves the pie (545) in my face.

“I don’t want to.” I push it back. “It’s disgusting.”

He frowns. “It won’t hurt you. It’s just pie.”

He keeps the pie plate inches away from my face. If I smacked his hand, the pie would splatter against the en-tertainment unit and slide down the television screen.

“We don’t want your mother to be right about this, do we?” he asks.

“Right about what?” I ask.

“About you slipping back into your old habits. The bad ones.”

I stand up, forcing him to step backwards and give me some room. “I’m tired,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”

My feet on the carpeted stairs do not make a sound. I open the door slowly.

Cassie is gone. The room smells a little like a bakery at Christmas, but she’s not here. I set the computer to play country music because she hates it, and crawl into bed.

Just as I start to doze, the music stops.

Cassie sits at the foot of my bed, looking stronger, healthier than before, like she’s getting the hang of being a ghost. She pats the shape of my leg under the blankets and says, “Go to sleep. It’ll be okay.”

There are no spiders in sight, no friendly critters to make her go away. I want to tell her to leave me alone, but my mouth won’t open.

Thursday.

I wake up breathing dirt. I cough and spit out the pebbles in my mouth, but when I inhale again, wet clots of clay fill my lungs—

No. It’s the sheet trapped over my face. I rip it off and get out of the bed as fast as I can. The house is dark, 5:45.

This is the first time in weeks I’m awake before Emma.

Down the hall, my father’s shower turns on. He probably has another committee meeting.

I turn on all the lights and catch a glimpse of me in the mirror. My metabolism is slowing down again. Yellow bubbles of fat are bloating under my skin. I am starting to look disgusting again, weak.

::Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat/

stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost::

They gave me rules for moments like this: 1. Identify the feeling.

2. Recite magic incantations affirmations, reread Life Goals, meditate on positive thoughts.

3. Call therapist if negative self-talk continues.

4. Maintain required caloric intake and hydration.

5. Avoid excessive exercise, and alcohol or drug abuse.

“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” A tornado will be along momentarily to whisk you away to safety.

Or a house might drop on your head.

Nothing works nothing ever works it just keeps killing me from the inside I lay on the floor for a couple hundred crunches, until sweat pools in my belly button.

New rules:

1. 800 calories a day, max. 500 preferred.

2. A day starts at dinner. If they make me eat with them, stuff in enough to keep them off my back.

Restrict during the next day to make up for it.

3. If no breakfast, take the bus to school.

3a. Better—walk.

3b. Best—don’t go.

4. Restart exercise program.

5. Sleep with the lights on until they bury her.

I smile and play pretend through the Morning Show in the kitchen. Jennifer is grilling Emma with division flash cards because she has a math test. They barely notice I’m in the room. They are ten minutes late getting out the door.

The Physics teacher demonstrates momentum and collision with a bowling ball and a squash ball. The bowling ball wins. Instead of History we march down to the gym for a college fair. Representatives from a couple hundred schools and the military stand behind card tables loaded with glossy brochures that all promise us a bright and shiny future.

Five thousand acres of trees were slaughtered to make those brochures. They’ll all be in the trash by the end of the day. Do I need to pick one up? No. We know where I’m going to college. Do I want to go? No.

What do I want?

The answer to that question does not exist.

I should have kept Cassie’s see-glass, or at least looked through it before I gave it back. It would have been better than a dumb brochure.

The stage crew invites me to sit at their lunch table.

I just want to nap in the nurse’s office, but they’re being sweet so I say “Sure” and follow them into the lunch line.

I buy a small, bruised apple (70), and a low-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt (60). The girl in front of me, Sasha, buys breaded cheese fingers deep-fried in lard served with tomato sauce. And a brownie. And a bottle of water. The guy in front of her (he runs the light board and the sound) buys spaghetti and pays extra for a second serving of garlic bread. Another guy buys pizza. The girl behind me gets a bowl of lettuce and celery and a small bowl of ketchup. The rest of the girls buy taco salads.

We sit in the middle of the cafeteria, a fish bowl crowded with minnows, guppies, tetras, mollies, and angelfish.

Sharks circle their prey. Lesser spiny eels bump their noses against the glass, looking for the exit. Bits of fish flakes and strings of poop dangle in the air. Lime-green algae slicks the floor.

The crew talks about who cried at the wake and who didn’t cry and who was crying because they got dumped, not because Cassie’s body was laid out in the padded box. When they ask me questions I recite the lines written for me in advance. Yes, it was so tragic. No, I had no idea. Yes, I think the undertaker did a crappy job. No, I don’t think she would have liked that dress. Yeah, it was weird. . . .

Their mouths open, close, open-close, gills flaring out and flapping behind their ears. Cheesefinger grease floats to the surface of the water. The janitors will clean it up with sawdust. The pizzafish guy drops sauce on his shirt.

A tacosalad girl has an infected nose piercing. She was in my ballet class in seventh grade. Lettuce&ketchup keeps giving me dirty looks, because no matter what she does, she can’t lose those last ten pounds.

I cut the mushy bruise out of my apple, slice what’s left into eight pieces, dip one into the yogurt and lay it on my tongue, swimmy yummy and soft. It bumps its way down my throat and splashes.

“I’ve never been to a funeral before,” says the blonde tacosalad.

“I’ve been to tons,” says the spaghetti. “My dad’s side of the family keeps dying. The funerals are all the same.”

“Do we have to shovel the dirt in?” asks the tacosalad with the nose piercing.

“The cemetery does that.” Spaghetti crunches into his garlic bread. “They use a small pay loader, like at a construction site.”

“We should all go together.” Sasha cheesefingers sips her water. “Just like at the wake. It’ll mean a lot to her parents.”

Cassie swims through the double doors, shoeless, the blue dress rippling against her body. Her hair streams behind her, tangled and braided with seaweed ribbons.

Tiny snails are suckered onto her neck and fingers.

She drifts over the first table, scanning the room. I stare deep into my yogurt.

“Do you want to meet us at my house, Lia?” asks the blonde tacosalad. She has salsa on her shirt but she doesn’t see it. “I can get my mom’s van, we’ll all fit.”

Cassie swims faster, circling around the bowl, looking for me. I wonder if the see-glass is still in her belly.

She’ll have to puke it up if she wants to see her future.

But maybe that works different when you’re dead.

“Lia?”

“I don’t think I’m going,” I say as Cassie disappears into the kitchen.

“What?”

“My parents don’t want me to.”

“You have to go,” whines lettuce&ketchup. “We all have to go, to show our support.”

“What support?” I ask.

“Support for Cassie,” she snaps back. “Not that you would know what that is.”

“Hey”— I point the plastic knife at her—“I was her friend a lot longer than you were.”

“Oh, really?” She pulls her face into the mask of out-rage: eyes wide, head jutted forward, mouth hanging open in pretend shock. “Is that why she never talked to you? I know how you messed her up. A real friend would never do that. I’d never do that.”

The tables around us listen in. Stage crew is supposed to be mellow and depressed. They never fight in public.

I should just swim away, but my gills flap and angry bubbles come out of my mouth. “If you were her friend, where were you when she was scared and alone?” I ask.

“Did you pick up the phone? No. You didn’t. You suck.”

“What are you talking about? She didn’t call me.”

Sasha puts her hand on my arm. “Calm down, Lia.”

“Calm? How can I be calm? She’s dead!”

I am standing. I am screaming. I think I threw my yogurt at lettuce&ketchup.

A fat security guard fish swims over to protect the peace.

As I walk in (stayed late for detention, thank you, no sir, it won’t happen again, yes, this is hard on all of us), Jennifer heads out.

“Your father promised to do the grocery shopping today,” she says as I hang up my jacket in the front hall closet.

“Let me guess: he’s still at the library and he’s not answering his phone.”

“He left it on the dresser. This damn book is killing him.” She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t.

“I’m on my way to the store.”

“You need me to do anything?”

“Would you mind vacuuming? The cleaning lady didn’t show up again and the rugs are filthy.”

The police officer arrives while I’m chasing Emma around the living room with the vacuum cleaner, pretending it’s a dragon. I hand over the deadly creature to her and answer the door.

The cop introduces herself, “Detective Margaret Greenfield,” and asks if she can come in.

I didn’t kill Cassie.

Somehow we wind up in the kitchen, the cop in Dad’s chair, me in mine, and Emma on my lap, crushing me.

Ididn’tkillherIdidn’tkillher.

“Just a few questions,” the detective says. “Nothing to worry about, we’re just tying up the loose ends.” She flips open a notebook with a huge yawn. “Sorry about that.

Shift change always messes up my sleep. The phone records indicate that she called your phone the night she died.”

I answer in a trance. “No, I had no idea that Cassie had called me Saturday night. My phone is in my room I haven’t seen my phone since Friday afternoon. Third one I’ve lost in two years. My dad will be furious.”

“He really yelled the last time,” Emma adds. She shifts her weight on my lap, driving my hip bones into the wooden seat. “Lia’s really going to be in trouble now. He’s going to ground her for a hundred years.”

“If we can get back to Miss Parrish,” the detective says.

I put my finger on Emma’s lips. “Shh.”

“No, I don’t know why Cassie would call me. I hadn’t talked to her for months. We weren’t friends anymore. No particular reason, just one of those things that happens when you’re a senior.”

The cop nods as she closes her notebook. “I remember those days,” she says. “Thank God they’re over.”

“Can you tell me what happened to her?” I ask.

“No, I’m sorry. If you think of anything, here’s my number.” She hands me a card. “Tell your parents to call me if they want. Like I said, this is nothing to worry about. We just want to close the book on this one.”

After Emma makes a big stinking deal to Dad and Jennifer about the police visit . . . after I spend a hour calming them down, answering the same questions over and over and over again . . . after Dad calls the detective because he doesn’t believe me . . . after Jennifer burns the steak, sets off the smoke alarm, and orders Chinese food . . . after I read Emma a chapter of
Harry Potter
. . .

after Jennifer claims the tub for a bubble bath . . . after Dad falls asleep grading papers comparing the election of 1789 to the election of 1792 . . . the house sleeps.

The cell phone crawls out of its hiding place under my laundry and sneaks into my hand. As I play her messages over and over, I turn on my computer and visit a country I haven’t been to in months, a whispersecretblog for girls like me. . . .

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of strange little girls screaming through their fingers. My patient sisters, always waiting for me. I scroll through our confessions and rants and prayers, desperation eating us one slow bloody bite at a time.

Two flies crash into my lampshade,
buzzbuzz
, random leftovers from summer with a few hours left to live. I turn off the lights and they swarm to the computer screen, dancing across uploads of sknnygrrl ribs and hips and collarbones, bones pulled out of their skin and laid on top so they can dry in the sun. Beautiful when seen through the paper wings of out-of-season flies.

I turn off everything and crawl into bed.

The flies throw themselves against the window with wet, angry noises, then hover above me, waiting to crawl into my mouth. Maybe they’re Cassie’s familiars, escorts from the grave heralding her arrival.

I can’t face her alone.