Rabbit and juliet, p.1
Rabbit & Juliet, page 1
Dedication
For the angry ones
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
girl meets girl
courage
coffee and cherry pie
in the dark house
swimming with the kellys
richard loses face
so much fun
galaxy house
the abridged history of sad girls
animals
the panda and the princess
sarah shares a secret
are there more?
sleepover
the obligatory makeover
the obligatory heist
the obligatory house party
the golden boy
it’s fine, silly
the boat
swim
procuring supplies
cabin in the woods
a charming domestic scene
montage theory
the good times
establishing shots
the not-so-good times
dad tries to dad
talismans
not like that
hangover
family dinner
the window scene
driving blind
the field
storytime
the plan
the most boring thing
discovered
under lockdown
a surprise gift
a flood
wonderwall
how to survive until the end
money isn’t money
money is money
degrees of awful
snuff out the stars
everyone deserves what they deserve
a conversation about respect
gone
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ad
Advance Praise for Rabbit & Juliet
Copyright
About the Publisher
girl meets girl
Group was held every Friday evening in the basement of the Cross of Christ Fellowship. I wasn’t Baptist and Group wasn’t religious. But when you have the misfortune of growing up in a small town in north Georgia, there aren’t a lot of community spaces or mental health professionals. Nobody even talked much about mental health except to call anyone who stepped out of line “crazy.” That enlightened attitude is how you get a town where somebody like Sheila Bowers was running a group for “people coping with bereavement.”
I was coping with bereavement, by the way.
Sheila was a florist who moonlighted as an expert in “empowering people to empower themselves” and “helping the grieving reach personal understanding.” Those were the phrases that struck me as particularly ridiculous on the Group’s xeroxed pamphlet. The Group was called Caring Hands, and sure enough, there was a drawing of a pair of hands holding a heart on the cover. Whoever drew the hands did not have a firm understanding of anatomy or metaphor.
Sending me to Group was one of the last parenting decisions my father made before he devoted himself entirely to testing the endurance of the human liver.
Group was dumb, Sheila was dumb, and I didn’t think much of my fellow grievers because my capacity for empathy wasn’t the highest. After sitting for an hour listening to sad stories, I usually found myself wishing I could be folded up inside a metal chair at the end of the meeting. But I went every Friday night. Sometimes it was enough to see just how truly bad Sheila was at her job. Excuse me. Her passion.
There was a kind of comfort in Group. Not that it really helped me feel better about my mom. It didn’t help me process. But having somewhere to go that wasn’t school, which I wouldn’t have minded burning down, or my house, which I also wouldn’t have minded burning down, was close to nice. There was a smell of wood and candles in the sanctuary that I would always catch just before I went down the basement stairs. Like I said, I wasn’t religious, but when I glimpsed the sanctuary, and the stained-glass windows just barely illuminated by the streetlamps outside, I wished I was.
That night I’d arrived at Group ten minutes late. This was one of the things I liked to do to keep Sheila faintly irritated at a near-constant level. In my experience, when Sheila was unhappy, I felt a tiny bit better. Maybe that’s why I went to Group, actually.
She looked up when I entered and gave me a curt nod and a strained smile. I took an empty seat in the circle of chairs and let her babble wash over me.
“So, ultimately, we can heal the holes these deaths have left in us by reaching out to others. By making that precious human connection once more. By realizing that the cost of love is the possibility of loss. And it’s okay to take that risk,” Sheila said. She made these kinds of speeches a lot, probably practiced them in the mirror the night before. There was something a little community theater about her delivery that suggested she’d once tried and failed for the lead in Oklahoma! Probably got cast as Cow #3.
There were only a few of us that night, but that’s how it always was. Sometimes five, rarely six. It’s not like we were a bustling metropolis with people dropping dead every day. But even in a small town, there are car accidents and lingering illnesses and farming disasters involving baling wire. I recognized everyone there, though I would struggle to name them if put to the test. I usually thought of them by their distinguishing features—if I thought of them at all.
But sitting between Wispy Voice (sister, blood disorder) and Topknot Karen (husband, cirrhosis of the liver) was someone new. She was my age, or maybe a little older. When she saw me, she smiled like we went way back, but I’d never seen her in my life. She had a delicately featured face lightly sprayed with freckles, and a generous, sullen mouth. She wore black cat-eye liner with perfect flicks, and her dark curls haloed her face like a personal storm cloud. I blinked in surprise. There were plenty of pretty girls where I lived, but they all came from the same starter pack: blond, tanned, and ready to pop out a family after high school. No one looked like this girl. She had the kind of beauty that didn’t translate well in our town. If you couldn’t put it in a sequined gown to win a sash and crown, it wasn’t anything.
They’d already done introductions without me, so Sheila had me say hello and give a brief synopsis (mother, cancer, very sad) and just kept going. I could tell she’d been doing some reading over the weekend because she kept talking about “shadow work” and getting to know our darker selves. If that was nearly as witchy as it seemed, I would have been all in. But it was just more of her “know your wound” platitudes. Whenever Sheila talked about her own wound, it was all I could do not to snort. It was genuinely sad she lost her husband—even if he was the most boring man on earth—but “know your wound” just sounded so sexual.
“I totally agree,” the new girl said. Her name was Juliet, according to her name tag. Sheila paused, thrown. She didn’t really expect a response when she spoke, but smiled appreciatively and started up again, giving me a meaningful look as she did so. She was convinced I hated myself, and she loved to aim this stuff at me.
“By embracing your shadow self, your darker self, you’re actually embracing all the parts of yourself that you don’t like, you don’t love, so—”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but where are the donuts?” said Juliet. She blinked innocently. This room was used as the church’s preschool, so while there were plenty of badly colored pictures of Jesus and fat-legged plastic tables shoved up against the walls, there were no donuts. There was nary a hint of donuts. There wasn’t even coffee.
“Excuse me?” Sheila looked puzzled, with a sprinkling of annoyance.
“Yeah,” said Juliet, “like, usually there are donuts. There are always donuts at these things.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to do without here,” said Sheila. “We’ve talked about taking up a collection for donuts, but it’s never really stuck.”
This was the first I’d ever heard about a collection for donuts, and I looked at the other group members for verification. I wouldn’t put it past Sheila to fabricate a donut history. None of them looked back at me. I wasn’t well liked.
“Really? I mean, how can you have an AA meeting without donuts? Isn’t it required in the Big Book?”
I full-on stared at Juliet, trying to determine if she was a beautiful idiot.
Sheila had clearly landed on beautiful idiot. “My dear, this is a grief support group. I mentioned this at the beginning. You told us about your dad?”
“Ohhhhh, right. Yeah, I thought that was a really weird way to start the meeting. Usually, we talk about giving ourselves over to a higher power or the last time we drank.”
Sheila just sat there, stunned. The rest of the group looked confused, and I didn’t blame them. Juliet delivered these last statements with utter sincerity. One corner of her mouth twitched the tiniest bit, her only tell.
She was not a beautiful idiot. She was an asshole who just happened to be beautiful.
She looked back at Sheila. “So, no donuts?”
Sheila shook her head. There was a moment of silence. I felt a laugh deep within me struggling to find its way out. I couldn’t think of the last time I laughed. It was a bubbly, foreign sensation.
Juliet’s face was a study in sorrow. It was ludicrously effective. Even though at this point I knew she was completely full of it, I was almost moved by those gray eyes welling up with tears.
“God, I just . . . I just really wanted some donuts. She sniffled, and her shoulders started to shake. “I mean, I also wanted to find my way to sobriety and the Lord, but mostly I was here for the donuts!”
She put her head in her hands and began to sob. Sheila’s face was frozen somewhere between concern and disbelief, while the rest of the group watched silently. Juliet hiccupped as she composed herself and wiped her cheeks with her sleeve, then dabbed at her eyes carefully. Her eyeliner remained intact and dry. Amazing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve all been fabulous and supportive, but I don’t think I’m ready for this yet. I’m so sorry.”
She stood up very suddenly and her metal chair fell backward behind her with an incredible racket. Sheila flinched.
Juliet picked up a saggy hobo purse from the ground and swept out of the room. But not before giving me a tiny flick of the head to indicate I should follow.
“That was really intense,” said Wispy Voice wispily.
“Someone should go check on her,” I said.
No one moved to do so.
So, I left.
courage
Juliet was in the church parking lot, leaning against a black Camaro that had seen better days. Standing, she was not as delicate as she had seemed sitting in the church basement. She was tall and her shoulders were broad. As girlish as her face looked, her body was surprisingly boyish. Maybe it was just the way she was hooking her thumb in her belt buckle, like she was auditioning for Bad Boy Love Interest.
There was this one beat before she saw me where I seriously considered just walking away. I didn’t know her. I might have imagined that gesture to follow her, and if the performance she gave in Group was any indication, she might be mildly unhinged. If I had only slipped away and biked home, a lot of things wouldn’t have happened.
She saw me, though. She saw me, and her grin tugged my feet across the parking lot like she was pulling on a cord.
Now that I think about it, I don’t know if walking away was ever even an option. There are some people who you’re just supposed to meet. They come into your life and do all manner of damage or delight, but they were never not going to do those things. And you were always going to take part. It was inevitable.
Of course, that’s how you justify any number of sins.
“Are the meetings always that fun?” she asked.
“I can honestly say they are never that fun.”
“I can’t imagine why. Courage?” she asked, offering me a stainless-steel flask she’d been palming in her free hand.
I took it reflexively, then stopped and smelled the metal tang of the flask, the wood smoke and vegetal matter. Whiskey. My dad drank gin and gin alone. I’d always thought it smelled beautiful, especially when he was still buying the good stuff. After a while, he moved down to cheap and watery with a blast of chemical juniper. What she had in that flask smelled leagues better than what was at my house.
I wanted to drain it to the dregs, to emulate her effortless cool. But more than that, the burn of the alcohol down my throat would feel daring. It would let me pretend I’d actually done something, or could, if I wanted to. I’d resemble a person who made real decisions, who took risks, someone a little dangerous and worthy of the breath in my lungs. And there would be a brief moment where I felt my mother’s death lift off me. I’d be as light as air.
“I’m good,” I said, and handed it back. “I don’t drink.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Either she was going to be sensitive and ask me why not, or she was going to dismiss me as a goody-two-shoes, a baby.
She was not sensitive. “Perfect,” she said. “You can drive!” She took a jaunty swig.
“So, not so much the Alcoholics Anonymous.”
“Not so much. But I really could go for a donut,” she said. “And coffee.”
I glanced at my watch. 8:30 p.m. I wasn’t expected home for another thirty minutes, but my dad wouldn’t notice I was late, or even if I was dead, for that matter. And it was a balmy night in early June, the first week of summer break.
“I can’t promise donuts, but I can definitely find you something almost entirely unlike coffee,” I said.
She shrugged. “My standards are flexible. Hot brown water, please.” She handed me her keys. There was a car key, a house key, and a brass letter-G key fob. They were warm from her hands.
Decision made. I quick-released the front wheel off my bike and tossed it in the trunk, then I got into a car with a girl I’d never seen before and drove her to Hart’s Run’s only diner for bad coffee.
Would a depressed person do that?
coffee and cherry pie
The Double R Diner was small and narrow, unsurprising since it was two old-fashioned railway cars welded together, side to side. There was just enough room inside for a string of half booths lining the windows, and a counter running the diner’s length, partitioning off the grill and prep stations. Most people preferred the counter, where they could talk to Jimmy working the grill while Dwayne took orders. They were the proprietors and hashslingers of the establishment, and it was well known that if you were on Jimmy’s good side, he’d give you an extra slice of bacon. On the other hand, Dwayne resented every time Jimmy cut into their profit margins, and he was likely to give you a scant serving of grits or the smallest biscuit of the batch if he thought you’d taken advantage of his partner’s generosity. Eating there was a delicate balancing act.
I chose a booth for us because I didn’t want either man to notice me if I could help it. They meant well, but since my mother died they’d mostly given me sad looks, and I didn’t think my arteries could handle the amount of bacon Jimmy tried to send my way. The booth was near the jukebox, an old one that still took coins although Dwayne eventually slapped a card reader on it. The catalog inside hadn’t been updated since the 2000s, and the most current song was probably still “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. My dad had liked to put in five dollars’ worth to play it repeatedly while lip-synching it to my mother, just to annoy her. Of course, she secretly liked it, especially when Dwayne threatened to ban my father from the establishment. One time she’d consented to slow dance with my dad to it, and I was incredibly embarrassed because no one else’s parents did that kind of thing.
They’d been cute like that.
“I’ll have a cookies-and-cream donut, a slice of the cherry pie, and coffee,” Juliet said, handing the laminated menu back to Pam, our waitress, with a smile. “Oh, and do you have real cream, or just those little plastic things?”
Pam, who had worked at the diner my entire life, let her eyes travel heavenward, then gave me a look as if to ask why I had brought this into her life. Pam did not suffer fools, but she did suffer. She looked at Juliet with weariness. “We have little plastic things with cream inside,” she said. “Is that real enough for you?”
“Perfect,” said Juliet. “I’ll need six.”
“And you, Rabbit Baby?” she said.
I winced. “Coffee and pie. The cherry, too.”
As soon as Pam left, Juliet leaned forward to ask me the question I’d been dreading.
“‘Rabbit Baby’?”
“Just Rabbit.”
“Your parents named you after a small woodland creature?”
“It’s just a nickname,” I said. “What my mom called me. And she was kind of popular in town. Everybody knew her. She’d bring me around and call me ‘little rabbit.’ So, I ended up Rabbit.”
My mom was the kind of mom who showed up everywhere for everything. There was no town happening too small to escape my mom’s notice. She’d drag me to craft fairs and small business openings and yard sale after yard sale. She showed up for school board meetings to advocate for the books they wanted to ban because she loved books and hated bigots, but also just to irritate them.
Juliet leaned back. “I love it,” she said. “I don’t even want to know your real name.”
“It’s Sadie,” I said, realizing now that I’d sat in a girl’s car without even telling her who I was. Rectifying the situation didn’t make it any less weird.
Pam came back with our sweets and coffee and the requested six creamers. I watched, fascinated and repulsed, as Juliet poured five of them into her coffee. The last one she opened and drank straight from the container.
I decided to let that pass without comment. People are complicated.
