Perdita, p.7
Perdita, page 7
“Casey’s tuition is expensive and your Dad’s still only working part-time,” Mom says.
I had no idea we were struggling financially.
“I’ll start packing my room today,” I say quietly. “I just … I didn’t know it was an apartment we were moving into.”
They don’t say anything. I go upstairs and close the door. I stare at my white walls, stunned, imagining leaving this house I’ve been in my whole life. For an apartment. No back yard. No Christmas lights. For the first time it becomes real—we’re actually leaving. Soon. I hate the reality of it.
After trying on some eyeliner and doing my hair three different ways for no reason, I finally assemble a box and start packing. I start with my closet, sweaters I haven’t worn in forever and shoes I forgot even existed. I try to cheer myself up by watching some Phantom Animals: True Confessions while I put things into boxes, but without Chloe here, it just seems cheesy and stupid. After I’ve assembled the second box, I get a knock on my door. I know it’s Mom because Dad’s knock always goes knock-knock and Mom’s is just one loud KNOCK.
“Yeah?” I say.
She opens the door. She has her cell in her hand and she’s holding it out to me.
“Casey wants to say hi,” she says.
“Oh, okay, thanks.”
She closes the door. I stare at the phone for a second before putting it up to my ear. I can’t believe Casey’s been gone for two weeks already and this is the first time I’ve talked to her.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey, Arielle,” she says. “How’s it going?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Actually, it sucks. I’m packing my room.”
“Getting ready for the move.”
“Yeah.” I sit on my bed. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well, actually,” she says, almost like she’s surprised to say it.
“Have you started classes yet?”
“Yeah, I have. So far so good.”
“Are they super hard?”
“Well, I haven’t turned in my first papers or taken any tests yet, so we’ll see,” she says. “But they’re fascinating. It’s not like I’m taking English, Math, and Spanish. The classes are really specialized and there are so many interesting ones to choose from—I’m taking a seminar on Buddhism and ethics and an African music history class.”
She sounds so happy and light compared to the flatline she was when she left. I almost can’t believe it’s been such a short time.
“Sounds cool,” I say. “What are the dorms like?”
“Nice,” she says. “The people I’ve met so far are friendly. My roommate is this girl from New York named Savannah. She’s a violinist and she’s pretty amazing. We’re a perfect match for living together.”
“Why, it she a total neat freak?”
“Yes,” she says. “And she’s an early riser. And she’s just really sweet. I feel like we were instantly friends.”
“Does Emily live in the dorms with you?”
“Um, no. I actually haven’t seen much of Emily since I got here,” she says. “She lives in a different building and we don’t have classes together. This place is huge. I mean, it’s like a small city.” She’s quiet for a second. “But I’m blabbing all about me. What about you?”
I wrack my brain for something interesting to tell her, but compared to dorming with violinists and taking classes on Buddhism, Velero High seems like a pretty dull place.
“I’m okay,” I say. “It’s been a boring weekend. And I already hate school and it’s only September.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
It’s so weird, how nice Casey is being. Is this what happens when your sister, the biggest pain in your butt, moves a coast away? Suddenly she becomes kind and actually listens to you again?
“Also, Mom and Dad are being assholes,” I say. “They’re so stressed about the move I don’t even want to go downstairs.”
“Well … you do know what today is, right?”
“Sunday?”
“Arielle, today is Justin’s birthday,” she says. “You know how they get on his birthday.”
I close my eyes. “I totally forgot.”
“Yeah. That’s part of the reason I called today. Not that I brought it up, of course, but … I know today is hard for them.”
I stare at my unmade bed, the sadness suddenly here, entering and filling my room like an uninvited guest.
“He would have been twenty-two,” Casey says.
“Hard to believe,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “So cut them some slack.”
“I will,” I say. “I feel like such an ass for not remembering.”
“It’s okay.”
There’s a pause big enough to swallow me on the line. I think of so many things at once—pictures of Justin’s birthday parties (I remember pictures more than the real thing, since I was so young when he died); the candles my parents always light for him on the night of his birthday; the impossible him that would have been twenty-two. What would he have grown up to become? What would he have looked like? He would be old enough to drink now, old enough to graduate college. It seems like trying to imagine a fictional character, a myth.
“So light a candle with them tonight,” she says.
“I will,” I say. “Hey … did Mom tell you about the news article about Perdita?”
The silence is so long I wonder if the phone dropped the call.
“Hello?”
“No, she didn’t,” Casey says. “Why, what did it say?”
“She wasn’t on drugs or drinking when she died, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I knew that. I’ve talked to the police a couple times since I’ve been here,” she says.
“Really?”
“Well, yeah. They’re still investigating what happened to her.” Her voice gets smaller and she sounds more like the Casey who left Velero—tired, monotone—not the Casey who has been electrified by Harvard. “Now they’re making it sound like maybe it’s suicide. I think they’re just grasping at straws at this point.”
“Why would it have been suicide?” I ask, surprised. “Did she leave a note?”
“No.” She exhales loudly. “They think because she deleted her Facebook account and quit school suddenly that, I don’t know, it could have been on purpose.”
“What do you think?”
“I honestly don’t know and I don’t even know why it matters at this point,” Casey says. “She’s dead. I’m heartbroken about it. But speculating as to whether it was an accident or suicide, it just seems pointless. I wish the police would stop calling me. They already interviewed me before I left town and I told them everything I know.”
“I didn’t know they interviewed you.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I should get going,” Casey says. “I have to finish this paper for my Shakespeare class.”
“Hey, I have to memorize a Shakespeare scene for Theater.”
“Really? I didn’t know you were taking Theater. I can’t believe I’ve never thought of that before, it’s perfect for you—a natural drama queen.”
She says it like she’s delivering a compliment, but I frown, annoyed. And I remember why I found her so obnoxious before she left for Cambridge.
“We’ll talk soon,” she says.
“Talk soon,” I echo.
“Wait—one more thing. Will you help Mom and Dad pack my room for me? I would have done it myself before I left but I ran out of time with all the craziness that happened.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Don’t touch anything; just put it in boxes exactly the way it is,” she says.
After we say goodbye and hang up, I decide that, yes, my sister is officially The Most Annoying Human in the World again.
That night, after we order pizza and clean our plates, my parents and I each light votive candles at the table and wish my dead brother a happy birthday. My mom wipes away tears and my Dad sobs a few times, but otherwise we sit pretty much in silence. I’ll be honest with you: the whole thing is depressing, and we do it every year. It makes me uncomfortable, the quiet, the sadness that’s too big to even talk about, the candles flickering and the prickly-neck, goosebump-skin feelings making me wonder if Justin is here and if he cares whether or not we remember his birthday. But I do it for my parents. This year, it’s worse because Casey isn’t even here. It feels lonelier and smaller and sadder than ever. I don’t know what the “right” way is to celebrate someone’s birthday who’s dead. Cake? Presents? Obviously the normal stuff won’t do. But this ritual of ours always feels so the opposite of celebratory sometimes I wish we’d give it up. Even thinking it, though, makes me feel like the worst sister ever.
“We love you, buddy,” Dad says as he blows out the candles.
That night, it takes me a while to fall asleep. I’m bothered. I don’t know if it’s the move coming up that bugs me most, or if it’s Chloe and her boyfriend with the stupid name and her new gym-going ways, or if it’s bigger than that—thinking of Perdita committing suicide by throwing herself into the lake, thinking of the man my brother will never be—but I feel anxious and afraid in my own room, so much so that I get up and turn on the light in my closet because I’m not in the mood to see ghosts tonight.
But I see them anyway.
I have this dream. In the dream I’m at school, in the quad where Chloe and I usually eat lunch, only it’s empty. It’s so empty it’s almost apocalyptic—there’s trash on the ground, the buildings are decrepit and weather-worn, and the grass has grown tall in the planters and engulfed the flowers that once were there.
I’m really scared, for some reason, like I know something bad has happened here, or is going to happen, and I’m not sure where to go. That’s when I feel someone’s arms slip beneath mine from behind me. Someone wet and cold is trying to pick me up. I turn around and scream “NO!” And I see it’s Perdita. She’s dripping; her hair is hanging in strings; she’s pale blue and wearing the cheetah-print dress she wore the day I saw her body being pulled from Lake Los Caballos.
“Come on,” she says. “Justin’s party’s starting.”
She tries to pull my arm.
“I don’t want to go!” I tell her.
“It’s just right there,” she says, nodding toward the cafeteria. The double doors to the cafeteria are open but the place looks desolate and dark and people-less.
“Don’t you want to see him?” she asks, pulling my sleeve.
I start running away, toward the theater building, down the cement stairs, and that’s when I wake up kicking and whimpering in my bed. I sit up, shaking, and I’ve never been so glad to see the morning.
7
Between Sleep and Wakefulness
The next day, at lunch at the usual spot in the quad, I don’t tell Chloe about my crappy weekend, the sad memorial for my brother, or the ghosts that visited me in dreams last night. Not because I don’t want to tell her—I just can’t get a word in because she’s gushing the whole time about Brody. I’ve only seen the guy through a window. I know I don’t really know him. But already I don’t love how every conversation these past few days is all about him. Plus he sounds like a weirdo. He loves spinning classes. He gave her a juicer and convinced her to give up solid foods. And today, instead of reading a battered fat paperback (which is so Chloe’s style), she’s flipping through a glossy magazine with a blond, tan chick on the front called Bod. It’s opened to an article called “Fab Abs in 10 Minutes a Day.”
I feel miles away from her.
Truth be told, I feel miles away from everyone today. Look at the crews on the bleachers. The Colgate-smile cheerleaders giggling and pointing as they drink their smoothies. Autumn and Layla, loud-voiced and neon-haired on a bench next to us, blabbing about whether Beemers are better than Benzes. Couples making out like they’re not surrounded by a hundred other people. So many worlds. None of these people look like the types to have nightmares about dead people, or worry about moving into an apartment, or wonder, late at night, alone under their sheets, if they see ghosts.
Nope, that’s just me. And I can’t even talk to Chloe about it. I sit here picking at a piece of pizza while Chloe drinks slime in a jar and pores over her magazine. I don’t even know what to say right now. I’ve been chewing this bite of pepperoni for minutes.
“It’s really good,” she says, swirling the sludge around in her jar. “Try it! There’s half a head of kale in here.”
She has a green juice-mustache over her lip.
“No thanks,” I say.
“I had hot lemon water for breakfast with cayenne,” she says. “Cleans out the colon. Veggie juice for lunch, fruit juice for an afternoon snack.”
“That doesn’t seem healthy,” I say.
“That doesn’t seem healthy,” Chloe says, pointing at my pizza. “So much grease and carbs.”
The silence is long and uncomfortable, which is unheard of. Chloe and I don’t have awkward silences. It’s part of the benefit of best friendship. So I aim to fill it.
“Has Brody brainwashed you?” I ask.
I say it jokingly but she sees through me and gets offended, rolls her eyes.
“No, of course not. I’m just on a health kick.”
“What about chocolate?” I ask.
Chloe is a chocoholic. We can’t go to the mall without her making a beeline for See’s. She has a T-shirt she wears to bed that says Will run for chocolate. You can always trust her to have an candy bar in her bag.
“I’m cutting out sugar,” she says. “Just to retrain my palette.”
She might as well have just told me she was going to run off and join the Marines. I have to will my jaw to not drop.
“Are you doing this to lose weight?” I ask. “Because you’re not fat.”
“No!”
“Are you doing this for Brody?”
“No! I’m just trying to be healthy. Can’t I try to improve my lifestyle for my own reasons?”
“Of course,” I say.
Although it’s kind of a coincidence, isn’t it, that you suddenly want to change your lifestyle the same week you start dating a health freak, I don’t say.
“It’s just … weird,” I say carefully. “Exercising, juicing, cutting out sugar … it’s not like you.”
“People are allowed to change, Arielle,” she says, offended.
She says it at the exact moment the bell rings. Everyone around us starts cleaning up their trash and picking up their backpacks and going to class. Chloe stuffs her Bod magazine back into her bookbag and gulps the rest of her slime.
I want to say something more, something like, but do they have to change? Do you, of all people, have to throw me a curveball when I’ve had enough already in the last couple of months to last until adulthood and beyond? But I just stand up and throw my pizza crust in the trash. We grab our bags and head toward Theater and I bite my tongue until it hurts.
In Theater, there’s a post-lunch excitement that buzzes in the room. Pierre has to do a lot of clapping and shhhing people. Also there are a ton of freshmen in this class and let’s face it: freshmen are the most loud, obnoxious humans on earth. We have to pair up with our partners and go find somewhere to practice our scenes. And I guess I have a little ounce of luck today, because Tex shows up (tardy of course), and that means I don’t have to rehearse with Pierre again, whose breath smells like rotten coffee and who says the lines so loud that my ears hurt.
“It’s a nice day,” Tex says, coming over with his script rolled up. His shirt, a blue-green T with a wolf on it, perfectly matches his eyes. “How about we go outside?”
“Sure,” I say.
It is a nice day. Such a nice day my grumpy self almost resents it. Like, day, do you have to be so nice? Excuse me, sun, do you have to shine so very much when I feel like a little storm cloud inside? Tex and I step out the door and walk to a nearby tree, where we plop in the shade and open our scripts.
He studies it hard, his dark brow furrowing, and takes a deep breath. But before he dives into the lines, I interrupt him.
“Where were you the last couple days?” I ask, pulling a yellow-headed dandelion out of the grass.
“Oh,” he says, and looks up at me. “I don’t know.”
It seems like the weirdest response to a very simple question. I laugh. “You don’t know where you were?”
He rests his chin on his fist, his elbow on his knee. “I just didn’t feel like coming.”
“Well, I hope you keep showing up,” I say.
He watches me. Actually, I can tell he’s watching my lips. Why on earth would he want to stare at my lips? I didn’t even wear gloss today.
“Why?” he asks. “’Cause you care about me?”
He says it sarcastically, delivers it like a little verbal slap.
“Actually, no, for selfish reasons,” I tell him. “I have to rehearse with Pierre when you don’t show up. He has major halitosis.”
He smiles into his hand. “Gross.”
“Yeah, do you know how awkward it is having to say ‘I love you’ to your teacher?”
“Like it’s that much better saying it to me,” he says, tearing a small clump of grass.
“Actually, it’s about a thousand times better,” I say.
He rains the grass down in the air. “Should I be flattered?”
“Sure, be anything you want,” I say. “Just … don’t ditch class anymore.”
“You don’t like weed; you don’t ditching class.” He brushes off his hands and looks at me. “You’re no fun.”
“The school year just started,” I say. “Seriously. You don’t want to end up getting suspended by midterms.”
If you ditch a certain amount of classes, and it’s not even that many, school suspends you. I’ve had warnings myself, and I haven’t even skipped that many.
“I don’t really care,” he says. “It’s not the first time I’ve been suspended.”
He looks me in the eyes. His eyes are painfully bright, and I notice, for the first time, his stupid-amazing lashes. Why do guys always get the to-die-for lashes? Such injustice.
