Words and Their Meanings (3 page)

6

T
he doorbell rings for the second time. Mom hesitates and then rushes into the front hall. Gramps follows. Sameera's early. Of course she's early. I can hear the laughing/crying happening in the next room. I don't want to see her. Not yet. But suddenly she's in front of me, throwing her arms around my shoulders before I can run or turn on my Bea radar and hide.

“Ohmygodthishairofyourshasgottogo,” she blubbers into my neck, her tears mixed with fresh laughter.

It's one thing to talk to Sameera on the phone. It's another thing entirely to have her standing in our kitchen. There are certain people who trigger all the pain that comes with losing someone you love.

She must feel it too, because she weeps openly for a minute, apologizing while wiping the flood from her wide, dark eyes.

“It's just … I haven't been here since Christmas … I always think it will be easier … ”

Mom hugs her tight, pale white arms stark against Sameera's eternally bronzed skin. Her body racks up and down. I open the box of rice crackers and dump them into a bowl.

If this is their idea of “celebrating,” we're in big trouble.

Bea slinks over and crawls into Sameera's arms like it's the most natural thing in the world. Her legs dangle past Sameera's knees now.

“Buzz! You've grown since Christmas. You'll be taller than me soon,” Sameera says, rocking her back and forth.

“That's not saying much, Sammy,” Bea replies with a giggle.

Laura, Sameera's best friend, is standing in the doorway, watching the whole scene unfold. I don't remember seeing her walk in, and no one else has noticed yet. She's almost invisible. Laura goes to school with Sameera at the University of Michigan. Her family lives down the street.

“Hi, Laura,” I say.

Everyone turns and stares at her for a second too long. Mom rushes over and gives her a you-were-one-of-Joe's-favorite-friends squeeze.

“I didn't realize you were coming,” Mom exclaims.

Laura's blonde hair is cropped into a pageboy bob. The last time I saw her, it was down to her waist. She keeps tucking it behind her ears.

“Well, Sameera said she was coming home, and I figured I'd come too and visit my folks … and all of you.”

We're standing here like actors waiting for direction. Gramps clears his throat again. Mom snaps out of it and pulls Sameera and Laura into the living room. I stay behind. Open the freezer and stick my head in for a second. Gulp down cold air. I grab my phone and sneak into the bathroom to text Nat.

Me:
I love Sameera. So why do I hate her so much right now?

Nat:
Duh.

Me:
This is such a stupid idea. Like sitting around holding hands is worthy of Joe. It's so …

Nat:
cliche.

Me:
exactly.

Nat:
Go out there and punch her in the face.

Me:
wt
f
? punch who? My mom? Sameera?

Nat:
nevermind. bad idea. just sit there. 1 or 2 hours of suck is better than Hell.

Nat:
ps- u ok?

Me:
…

I stand with my forehead against the door for what seems like one or two hours, trying to decide if I'm ever coming back out. When Joe died, Sameera spent the week at our house. She curled up with Mom and wept and wept and wept. At the funeral, she wore a little black hat with a tiny black veil but stayed in the back until I took her hand and led her to our row. She sent me emails every week when she first went back to college.
Just checking in … thinking of you … are you writing
?

But here's the awful truth: Sameera—the girl who throws her head back every single time she laughs, the one who once made my junk-food-loving dad go on a thirty-day vegan cleanse with her, who showed me how to use a freaking tampon the day I got my period—has become just another person I attach to the phrase “When Joe died.”

“Anna?”

Sameera is leaning against the other side of the door. I can tell by how close her voice is to my ear. I bite my lip and think about pretending I'm not an inch away.

“So I wanted to, um, talk to you alone at some point. Can we go up to your room? Please?”

“Can we skip the circle jerk?” I ask as I crack open the door.

“Your mom is downstairs looking for some more videos, Bea is showing Laura a card trick, and your Gramps has the old DVD player half torn apart because it keeps spitting the discs out before they are done playing.”

“What have you watched so far?”

“Joe learning to ride a bike. His fifth birthday—you had like, a million baby fat rolls when you were two”—she reaches in and pinches my skeleton arm—“and about three minutes of a talent show you guys put on when Joe was probably seven or eight.”

I can picture him, floppy mop of black hair that Mom refused to cut short until he turned ten. It framed his face and neck and shoulders, like a Muppet. His round, pale-green eyes that lit up with mischief and flecks of gold, especially when whoopee cushions or those little handshake zappers were involved. I can picture every one of our videos without needing a screen. Images flicker, an old movie stuck on repeat in my brain.

“Yeah. Video is worse than pictures,” Sameera says. “All it does is remind me he's frozen in time. Like all these moments still exist, but he'll never make more.”

She isn't facing me, but I know her eyes are filling. She rubs the back of her neck.

“Come on,” I say. “My door doesn't have a lock these days, but Mom probably won't come try to rescue you right away.”

When we get to my room, Sameera walks around. She runs her hands along my bookcase. It used to be so full, standing within a foot radius would cause a paperback to slip to the floor. Now only three books sit on one shelf:
Slaughterhouse Five
,
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
, and
Great Expectations
. I gave the rest to our local library. The noise of so many stories distracted me during coffin yoga. The words had to go away.

Sameera picks up a porcelain unicorn, one Dad gave me for a birthday when I asked for a real one, I think. She holds it and smiles before exchanging it with the tiny fabric lizard on my nightstand. She turns it over and over in her hand, remembering. During my entire eighth grade year, I sewed pockets onto my shirts and dresses and skirts so I could carry that stupid lizard with me everywhere. I don't know why.

“So how's Tess handling the whole Jack sitch?”

Great. We skip the dead-kid sob-fest, but go right into the your-dad-is-about-to-have-a-baby-with-someone-who-is-not-your-mom conversation?

“Mom's doing as well as anyone would, I guess, given the shocker of being told about a double pink line on a stick she didn't pee on, which amounted to a now-impending divorce. I mean all things considered, she's holding her own. After all, we went from a loving family of five to a family of three fractured fuckups in, uh, 365 days.”

Sameera winces at my language, but nods in fervent ag
reement.

“It's so rough. It's like, I mean, it's like Jack's totally lost it. Your dad was the first person to teach Joe and me about ‘attitudes of gratitude.' He gave us copies of David Foster Wallace's “This Is Water” graduation speech. He went on and on about the importance of ‘getting it'—awareness and really living and existing and fighting our own selfish nature … and then he knocked up some temp law clerk in his new office six months after … It's a load of … shit. That's what it is.
”

I can't help a little smile, because Sameera is totally not a swearer. It's reason 578 Joe loved her.

“And not even a young, hot clerk either,” I agree.

Sameera exhales with amusement. Then we both look at the floor, ceiling, anywhere but each other. Neither of us knows how to kickstart the conversation again.

Instead of more questions or rants, Sameera leans against the wall and just looks at me. That's another thing Joe loved about her, by the way. When she looks at you, with her honest, soft brown eyes crinkling in the corners, it's a real connection. I used to make up a lot of first lines about this sort of thing, like, “Truth is, most people spend their days in empty conversations. So when someone holds your eyes with theirs, when they say ‘I see you' without words, it's like waking up and remembering you're alive.”

It's not the kind of thing I feel like dealing with today.

When I break her gaze, Sameera plops down at my desk and leans so the chair balances on its two back legs. I watch her take in my collage of Patti Smith, waiting for some snarky comment about my choice of identity mimicry. But she sucks in and says something else altogether.

“I have a new boyfriend.”

The chair falls back into place. She opens and shuts my laptop. Drums her fingers against it.

“Anna?”

“I—I heard you.”

“He's … we started hanging out in January, just like studying together or going to the Union to get a late lunch, or whatever. He—Amar—he's a biology student too. You know what he wants to do with his life? He wants to be a microbiologist—a germ guy. Weird, huh? Anyway, he lived on my dorm floor last year but I was always a
t—”

“At Joe's?” I can't help the bitterness.

“Yes,” she says, wavering a little. “Yes. At Joe's dorm. Bec
ause I loved him. I love him. But I don't know. Sometimes, Anna, sometimes I feel like we were slipping away from each other before it happened. Like we'd become so comfortable after seven years together—he was my best friend.”

“Actually, he was my best friend.”

“He was your bruncle,” she says, referencing the joke term Joe made up for our weird familial situation. “And I know you miss him so—”

“He loved you, Sameera. Right to the very end.”

My eyes burn. Energy pulses through me, and even though Sameera's face is streaked with tears, I can't stop.

“I mean, really? Is that why you came here? Do you need absolution?”

My comforter is clenched in my fists. Sameera slumps against the chair. She turns to face me.

“How could you say that?” she asks. Her eyes are bullets of sad shock.

“How could you use today to tell me this, Sameera? That's the real question,” I hiss, acutely aware anything louder may carry down the stairs.

“I wanted it to be in person.”

I roll my eyes.

“What is it you'd rather me do? I'm twenty years old. I have no clue if Joe and I would have gotten married or if we'd be apart right now. The only thing I know for certain is the first boy I ever loved is dead. He's dead and he's never coming back and I have two choices. I can die a little more every single second of the day, or I can try and live. Because I am still here. You are still here. We can still love him, Anna, and be happy. You don't have to do this to yourself. I mean, for God's sake, he was your uncle. You think he'd want you to act like your world ended when his did?”

I don't know I'm throwing the porcelain unicorn until it breaks against the wall behind Sameera's head. We freeze. My fingers buzz. I want to say I'm sorry, but if I open my mouth a sob will escape. So I swallow. And swallow. And stay silent as she gets up and walks out the door without looking back. Downstairs, I hear Mom ask if everything is okay.

“I think it's probably best if we leave her alone. Really, I don't mind,” Sameera says, voice shaking. “Did you find those videos?”

I crawl into bed and stare at the crack in the ceiling. My breath is coming too fast to even try for coffin yoga, but I freeze up my muscles anyway. Try to imagine myself in a too-small pine box. Try to understand what it would be like to stop thinking and feeling and maybe, probably, existing at all.

When I open my eyes, the crack above me sways. I picture it like a sky earthquake, tectonic clouds breaking apart, sending me floating up into black nothingness, into the space between here and gone.

I know I sound manic.

I know it isn't just Joe who is dead.

I am too.

I'm a ghost. Just a ghost that's still breathing.

7

C
an I come in?” Laura asks a few minutes later, walking through my still-open door.

“Was that a rhetorical question?”

Laura flops down on the bed.

“You don't do tough guy very well, Anna. I've known you your whole life, and I gotta say, you lack the necessary ingredients for being a smartass or a badass. You can dress Tinkerbell up in goth clothes, but she's still a wee little pixie with wings.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and hope she goes away. Laura was the only girl in the neighborhood who still built forts down by the creek or came to the door for snowball fights when she was in high school. She wears combat boots and used to weave Mom's backyard daisies in her long braid. Our dads have been friends for eternity, and she and Joe were tight from, like, the crib all the way through high school. He introduced Sameera to Laura in eighth grade. And he made Laura and me hang out, because we were both “cool weirdos.”

“Hey, listen,” Laura says. I still won't look at her, so she pinches my arm. “Next time you talk, try to go easy on Sameera. She's had a hard time, you know. And she wanted to
be honest with you because she still loves Joe, and your family, and wants to stay connected.”

My eyelids hurt from how hard I'm squeezing them. Little bursts of stars float through the dark.

“Anyway,” Laura continues, “I'm sorry you are sad and mad. I wish it was easier on you, like it was for Joe when his parents died. I always thought it was beautiful, the way he explained it. How he only had to do grief through the lens of memory, since he was so young when it happened.”

I open my eyes.

Joe used to tell me the same exact thing. He said he'd never admitted it to anyone else—his guilt for the huge sense of loss my dad carried. Joe was his parents' “happy accident” and turned two not long before their car flipped off the road. My dad, on the other hand, had just turned twenty-one. Within six months of the accident, Dad graduated from college, started law school, married my mom. All Joe's memories were of my parents, me, Bea. He asked me once how he was supposed to grieve what he never knew.

“What did you just say?” I ask Laura.

“Nothing important.” She stands up, her back to me. “I need to get downstairs. Just think about all this stuff with Sameera, okay? Oh, and Anna? The haircut sucks.”

She leaves in a hurry. I pull the covers over my head.

_____

At some point, Gramps shakes me awake, telling me Sameera and Laura are gone. Outside, the lawn mower sputters to a start. I know it's ours, because we're the only people on the block who don't have the tractor kind for our half-ac
re yard. Mom was “morally opposed” to such a thing, because she loved pushing the ancient beast up and down in neat rows. Gramps used to have to fix it for her at least three times a summer.

Last year, though, it never got hauled out of the garage after mid-June. When grass grew up past our shins, neighbors stepped in, taking turns driving their riding mowers across our lawn.

“Is that Mom?” I rub sleep from my tear ducts.

Gramps glances toward the window and taps a finger against his mouth thoughtfully.

“It is,” he says. “Maybe change is in the air.”

“If change smells like fresh-cut grass and gasoline, Gramps, you might be onto something.”

“We all have to start somewhere.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why do we have to start at all? We are born and there's some middle stuff and then we cease to exist. It's not like it matters.”

Yanking the covers back up, I shut my eyes again. The next time I open them, Bea's nose is touching mine. Her breath smells like stale chocolate cake.

“Sarah Handy called. She said she was thinking of you today and had some stuff to tell you. That's what she said. Stuff. So I said, ‘What stuff,' and she said, ‘Just tell her I called. And I'm thinking of you all.'”

I throw my arm over my head and groan. Sarah Handy trailed Joe like a police dog on the drug trail for years. I can't believe she thinks she can call me today. She belongs to the Facebook crowd, the people who will grasp at a tiny m
oment with Joe, typing on and on about their loss, acting like they can stake a claim in his memory.

“But Nat called your phone too,” Bea adds, sounding like Mom as she pulls me up with both hands. “She's gonna be here in like, twenty minutes. You need to get ready.”

My work outfit, a hideous white button-down shirt with black button covers and a black to-the-knees polyester skirt, is already out of the closet and draped across the foot of my bed.

“You're the most capable seven-year-old I've ever met, Bea. You could go live in New York City or something right now and be totally fine.”

Instead of laughing, her bottom lip quivers.

“But I want to live with you.”

“Hey, hey. It's all right,” I say, squeezing her hand. “I'm not going anywhere and neither are you. Everything's cool.”

She closes her eyes and balls up her fists, letting each finger pop free in a silent ten count. Bea's had the same therapist for almost a year, so I know this trick. It's a coping mechanism for when she wants to hide, but can't.

I wait for her to open her eyes, and then I shake my head really fast, tossing my hair around like I'm shampooing.

“What am I going to do with this mess?”

Bea can't help grinning.

“You've got lightning strike hair. It's gonna take a miracle,” she says, and rushes to the bathroom, emerging a minute later with a comb, two barrettes, a ponytail holder, and a box of bobby pins.

We're still jamming slivers of metal all over my head when Nat's car stalls out and roars back to life just before reaching our driveway. My best friend is a lot of things, but a good stick shift driver isn't one of them. She's burned through two clutches already, and didn't even turn sixteen until December of our junior year. Dolores (her car) heaves in exasperation, and a moment later, I hear Nat burst through the door.

“Annnnnnaaaa Baaannnnnnaaaa—”

She's trying too hard. I know her acting voice. She's pretending my front door is actually part of a set. That she's only playing the role of sanity saver/grief sponge/friend of a complete fun sucker.

“Let's go! We're going to be—oh. Hi Mrs. O.”

I can't hear what my mom's saying, but Nat's voice gets louder with each response.

“No, I don't plan to bring it up on the way to work …
Well, of course I know it's today. I'm sure it is hard on all of you … I don't think I can do that … Aaaannnnna! We really need to hurry!”

She's caught between trying to be polite and a strong urge to run back to Dolores.

“Tell me you look like a half-habited nun,” I holler as Bea adjusts my makeshift ponytail and I tuck my twine necklace, with its single gold key, under my collar. There's a rule against wearing jewelry on the job, but I'll get fired before I cut this dirty string from my neck. I rush out of my room, taking the stairs two at a time.

Despite matching right down to the button covers, my bestie since age three looks entirely different in our work ensemble. Probably because Natalie Alkandros was born to wear an Oxford—or anything else—well.

“You look mah-vel-ous, darling,” she says with false enthusiasm, tugging out my folded-up collar and yanking my skirt down over my knees. “No time to waste. This isn't the kind of job you want to be late for, especially since it's your first day.”

She hustles to her car, waving for me to follow even though Mom's calling both of us back inside. I glance up at Bea peering out my bedroom window, and I blow her a quick kiss before slipping into the passenger seat.

“Hey,” Nat says as soon as we turn the corner out of my neighborhood. She pats my arm a little but doesn't say anything else.

Some relationships might crumble under the weight of tragedy, but Nat and I, we keep going through the motions. She cried for me when it all first happened. And then we buried—no pun intended—most of it. Nat is my keeper of secrets, and she just gets it. We pass the minutes, days, months without ever stopping to ask why.

“I think I threw a unicorn at Sameera's head this morning,” I say.

Nat jerks toward me. Spits out a laugh.

“Seriously! It isn't funny,” I say. I'm trying to cough away my own sudden fit of laughter, which makes me snort, which launches Nat into full-fledged hysterics.

We are still trying to regain composure when we pull up to the Fala house, where we're waitressing tonight. It's one of the biggest houses in town, shaped like three cement block steps. Everything inside and out is either glass or white. I've heard there used to be colorful art all over the place. Not anymore. Sterile white walls without so much as the ghost of a nail hole now.

We're ushered into the kitchen in time to catch the end of the servers' meeting. It goes something like this: blah, blah, don't touch anything, blah, blah, make sure you wait until they give you back the shrimp tails, blah, blah. I stop paying attention after the third round of
blahs
because I notice every girl in our little penguin colony is looking toward my left. So I turn to see if there's a ghost in the pantry but instead discover a real-time movie otherwise known as “beautiful boy in kitchen making magic with his hands.”

Crab cake-covered fingers aren't the typical image I'd find myself swooning over, but still. This guy is moving to music that's not playing. His hands cradle scoops of goop like it is gold, making perfect, squished circles. He adds each to the pan without so much as a flinch when oil spits back in protest. Confidence radiates from him. It's like I can actually taste it. The other, much older chefs keep catching each other's eyes and smiling in his direction. As if they are all keepers and he is the secret.

And that's as hot as it gets.

Full-fledged zombie staring ensues. I've never paid attention to guys without a full head of hair. His is shaved. But it makes his face, I don't know … vulnerable? I tick off a grocery list of features: one dimple; two worry lines; almond eyes framed by long, black lashes; a scar on the left side of his jaw big enough to make me wince. It's light against his skin.

“Earth to Anna,” Nat says, pulling my mess of a half-ponytail. Bea's right. Too many angled scissor cuts equals impossible-to-contain hair. “What are you staring—oh, yes. I know. Per-fec-tion.”

Bless that girl and her inability to be quiet. It makes the boy glance from his pan orchestration long enough to give the gaggle of now-giggling waitresses an amused grin. He looks back down, and then sna
ps his eyes up. To meet mine.

He half-smiles and there's this pull, like we're opposite poles inside a magnetic field. Like we're sharing a story in a two-second glance. I almost walk toward him.

“Everybody wants him, but he's like, not interes—” Nat stops, mouth open, eyebrows up. Yanking me outside by my elbow, she grins wide. “Did you see that?”

“What?” I look around, pretending to be confused. It takes everything in my power not to look back, to see if our eyes would lock again.

“He was totally checking you out.”

“Pfft. Right.”

“Anna, come on. He was staring. And he flashed that adorable dimple. There was a spark.”

Her voice catches for a quarter of a second. I know she's thinking about how today is supposed to be a mix of sad and hopeful. Nat's empathy goes beyond measure, which is why she's plugging her tear ducts with her pinkie fingers.

“A spark?” I fan my face. “Oh my stars, I'm burning so bright.”

“Your Southern accent sucks,” she says, rolling her eyes and walking across short green grass toward the long line of white linen-covered tables. “We're on buffet duty. I promise I'll find a reason for you to head back into the kitchen soon, though.”

I mutter, “Whatever,” and walk toward the chafing dishes, trying to forget the eyes that just clicked with mine.

“Don't ‘whatever' me. It's time to start, like, experiencing the good things in life again, Anna.”

Gone is the phony pretend-everything-is-fine routine. Nat's invading a place reserved for my parents and shrinks. She does not get to do this. Not today.

“Why,” I ask between clenched teeth, “are you pushing this?”

A man comes up to the buffet table, lifts one of the pan lids, sniffs, makes a face, and walks away.

Nat stirs some saucy junk around and tugs out a mascara-heavy eyelash. She wipes her hands on a napkin before answering.

“We're about to be seniors.” She says “seniors” like it is the greatest novelty on earth. “Today is supposed to mark the end of this. I don't care if you want to keep channeling Patti Smith. I don't even care if you continue to turn your bed into a coffin at least once a day. We still need to move forward.”

She blinks at me, adjusting her acting mask until it's once again snug against her olive skin.

“Anyway, I'm just saying, that boy in there is, like, the hottest ticket of the summer and he was completely checking you out.”

“Getting sick of dealing with me, are you? You picked a perfect day to let me know it. Sorry, I don't think dating is on the five stages of grief pamphlet. I'm not like you. I can't fall for a boy just because he played Danny in
Grease the Musical
freshman year. So I apologize, for being screwed up and for not believing I'll find my ‘life's co-star' in high school.”

I stick my finger in the back of my throat.

“Alex has nothing to do with this,” Nat says of her on-again, off-again boyfriend. She moves down the buffet table. “And I'm not sick of you. I just—”