After about another half hour of talking about my list, Derek’s phone buzzes.
“It’s Melody,” he says, meaning his girlfriend, whom neither Evelyn nor I have met. “I’m telling her we’re wrapping this up so I can call her when I get home.”
“All right,” I say, even though I would gladly hang out until we shut down this Applebee’s. “Let’s roll. I wouldn’t want to keep Melody waiting.”
I try not to let sarcasm seep into my voice, but there it is anyway. It’s not that I don’t like Melody—I mean, I don’t even know her—but it’s just annoying that we have to cut our hangout short so she and Derek can, like, make kissy noises at each other on the phone. Or whatever it is that people in relationships do.
Derek doesn’t seem to notice my annoyance, though. He’s busily, if begrudgingly, tapping out a message.
In the parking lot, we say our goodbyes as Derek gets into his rusted-out truck. After we watch him drive away, Evelyn turns to me and asks, “Do you think Melody is real?”
I choke out a laugh. “What?”
She puts her hands out. “I don’t know, think about it! We’ve never met her. She lives in North Dakota, a place Derek has never been. And he brings her up when he wants to get out of things or go home. It all just seems too convenient.”
I fix her with a skeptical stare. “He met her at an Academic Challenge meet last year. You know that. And he’s a terrible liar. Also, what motivation would he have for making up a girlfriend?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. So he could spend more time alone without people bothering him about it?”
“That does sound like Derek,” I say. “I’m still pretty sure Melody’s real. But he didn’t seem to be in a very good mood when he left, did he?”
“Uh, no shit, Jolie,” Evelyn says. “No offense, but you don’t exactly have to be Benedict Cumberbatch to figure out why our conversation bothered him.”
“That’s an actor playing a detective, but sure,” I say. “What are you talking about?”
She widens her eyes and gives me a pitying look. “His dad, Jolie. It’s been four years today, and you just spent an entire evening talking about your possible upcoming death.”
“Oh, shit,” I say.
* * *
Derek’s dad died four years ago, when we were twelve and the twins were only three. He was a surgeon, just like Derek’s mom, and he had a heart attack when he was at work—sudden, unexpected. They said he was dead before he hit the floor, which I think was supposed to be comforting but really wasn’t. It would’ve been more comforting if he were still alive.
No one was one hundred percent sure what had caused Dr. Jones to have a heart attack in his forties. It could’ve been his high-stress job. It could’ve been genetics. It could’ve been his love for eating huge steaks every Sunday, which he said he deserved because “a life without red meat isn’t worth living.”
Or it could’ve just been plain old shitty luck.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter what caused his heart attack, because figuring it out wasn’t going to bring him back.
The funeral remains the one and only time I’ve ever seen Derek cry. Evelyn and I went with my parents, both of us dressed in whatever black clothing we could scrounge together from our twelve-year-olds’ wardrobes. Seeing Derek there felt like a punch in the gut, like there was no air left in my lungs. His arms hung limp at his sides as he stared off into space. I still remember the awful music, a tinny version of “Amazing Grace” that Derek’s dad would for sure have hated. Why couldn’t they have played music he liked, like one of the records that was always spinning at Derek’s house whenever I went over?
I couldn’t help myself when we walked in and saw Derek standing there by the coffin—he just looked so small, staring off into space as his mom hugged some adults I didn’t recognize. I ran to him and threw my arms around him and he sobbed into my neck. We didn’t say anything. We just cried.
And the next day, when he came over, I guess I expected more of the same. Crying, hugging, maybe some talking about feelings this time.
But instead, when I opened the door, I found him there with Boggle. “Do you think Abbi wants to play with us?” he asked, because everyone knows basically all games kind of suck with just two people.
And then we played Boggle all afternoon, him finding words like “fart” and “poop” and ignoring the fact that when he went home, his dad wouldn’t be there.
That’s how it’s been for the past four years. There are times when it comes up, but we always move right past it, dancing around the topic with a joke or talking about something—anything—else. Mom says everyone deals with trauma differently, but I can’t help but think that totally ignoring it is maybe not the best tactic.
But I guess I can’t really make him handle his dad’s death in a certain way. All I can do is be his friend.
I realize that bringing up my potential death considering Derek’s relationship to the subject makes me sound like a monster. But in my defense, we literally never talk about it. Like, ever. If I didn’t have such visceral memories of him letting me hug him at the funeral, I might forget it even happened.
But I know it did, and it was stupid of me to forget about it, especially on today of all days—the four-year anniversary of his death.
Dad made me promise not to text or talk on the phone while I’m driving, not even if I’m using the Bluetooth, because he’s worried about me being distracted. So instead I call Derek the second I pull into the driveway and park my car behind Mom’s Subaru.
“I’m sorry,” I say as soon as he picks up.
“For what?” he asks. I can picture his bedroom perfectly: the crate of his dad’s records in the corner, the ones that haven’t been played in four years. His laptop set up on his desk so he can edit his latest episode. The airplane quilt that’s been on his bed since we were kids, which should probably seem childish but actually just seems kind of sweet.
“For…” I trail off. I need to bring this up delicately, but I don’t really know how to be delicate. Derek and I have a long history of not talking about this subject.
“For bringing up death,” I say finally.
“It’s okay,” he says with studied ease.
“Because I wasn’t even thinking about your dad when I—”
“Hey, have you ever heard about the world’s loneliest whale?”
I pause for a second. “What?”
“There’s this blue whale who’s been making whale sounds for, like, twenty years, but his whale voice sounds so weird that no one else can understand him. So he’s just wandering around the ocean, making sad whale sounds, looking for someone to love him.”
“Huh,” I say thoughtfully. “Not to turn this back to me, but I can relate.”
“Jolie,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You aren’t a lonely, sexless whale.”
“Not in so many words.”
“I’m gonna talk about this on an upcoming Deep Dive. Bonus: I’m learning so much about whales, I’m gonna kill it if there are any whale questions in the next Academic Challenge meet.”
I can’t help laughing. Only Derek would think knowing a bunch of random stuff about whales was in any way a bonus.
“Okay, but can you at least accept my apology before you go down a lonely whale rabbit hole and emerge knowing way too much about ambergris?”
“How do you know about ambergris?”
“You’re not the only super-nerd who read Moby-Dick for extra credit last year, bro.”
“Well, I accept your apology, even as I maintain that it was wholly unnecessary,” he says. “And Jolie?”
“Yeah?” I ask, turning off the car.
“It’s okay. Really. It was four years ago.”
I run my tongue over my braces. “Yeah, I know, but…”
“I’ve gotta get back to editing, okay? Talk later.”
“Yeah,” I say, suppressing a sigh. “Talk later.”
I hang up and lean back against the headrest. I know Derek’s free to handle his own problems any way he wants to, but I can’t help but feel like he’s holding back. I know he says it’s totally fine, but I’m still worried he’s hurting, and it’s among my official job duties as his best friend to help him deal with it.
So, okay, sure, I’m still afraid I’m going to die and I still have my list of things I need to do before surgery. But maybe from now on I won’t refer to it as my death plan in front of Derek. From now on it’s “Jolie Peterson’s List of Things She Has to Do Before She Gets Surgery and Can’t Tell If She Has Corn on Her Face Anymore.”
* * *
When I go inside, Mom and Abbi have gone to bed. No doubt visions of serial killers and stalkers are dancing in their heads as they slumber.
I know I should feel lucky that I actually get along with my parents. My dad’s worst crime is that he’s kind of goofy, and I can’t really complain about that. Likewise, my mom’s always been more weird than irritating, even though all the television shows about high school tell me that I’m supposed to hate her and yell things like “I’m not like you, Mom! And I never will be!” before speeding off to make reckless and dramatic decisions.
But I don’t hate her. Sometimes I’m like, “Seriously, why are you whistling Christmas carols even though it’s nowhere near Christmas and everyone knows whistling is so annoying that it should be punishable by jail time?” but it’s no big deal. Mostly I think of my parents as comforting, like an old but soft blanket or a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. As weird as it sounds, and as much as I love hanging out with Derek and Evelyn, some of my favorite nights are the ones I spend with my family. They’re the ones who’ve known me forever, the ones who don’t even register my jaw, the ones who just see me.
Derek gets along just fine with his mom, but it’s in that typical boy way where he barely talks to her unless she asks him a question, and even then it’s a one-word answer. He’s obsessed with the twins, Jayson and Justin, though. He spends most of his evenings (the ones he hasn’t crammed with Academic Challenge meets and track practices and volunteer work at an animal shelter or one of the other million extracurriculars he’s picked up) playing basketball with them in the driveway or helping them with their homework.
And at Evelyn’s house, it’s just her and her mom. There’s nothing wrong with her mom—I mean, I know she loves Evelyn, in her own way—but she one hundred percent does not understand anything Evelyn’s doing with her life. As Evelyn puts it, “She’s always like, ‘Evelyn, why aren’t you getting better grades? Why aren’t you studying more?’ and I’m like, ‘Do you think Christian Siriano spent time studying for biology tests? I need to make a new A-line skirt! Stop breaking my balls, Patricia!’”
I’ve tried to get Evelyn to stop using the phrase “breaking my balls” on account of it being extremely inaccurate and also just gross, but she persists. Either way, I can tell it bothers Evelyn that her mom doesn’t get her, but I keep telling her she can use this feeling of alienation in her art. Evelyn ends up spending a lot of time at our house, which is more than fine by me—sometimes I come home and find Evelyn already there, sitting at the kitchen island with my mom as the two of them enjoy a cup of tea, Evelyn saying, “Oh, Rebecca, you’re a card.”
In my room, I turn on my bedside lamp and reach under my bed, where my fingers close around a notebook. I slide it out, sit on the floor, and lean back against the bed.
Most people who keep scrapbooks probably fill them with photos of loved ones and cherished mementos. Mine’s more of a vision board, I guess you could say. But it’s not about traveling or my love life or fancy possessions I want to “manifest” or whatever. It’s about one thing: beauty.
On these pages are picture after picture of girls’ faces. Girls of all skin tones, hair colors, ages. The one thing they have in common is that they’re beautiful. They’re smiling in a way that says, Yes, I know I look good. No, I never worry that no one will love me. Yes, I do feel happy when I look in a mirror. No, I’ve never had a problem chewing my food.
Because the one thing these girls have in common, besides being beautiful, is that none of them have an underbite. None of them have a facial deformity that’s immediately visible to everyone who meets them.
When Abbi’s done reading all the cheesy fashion magazines she subscribes to each month, I take them and cut out the pictures of the most beautiful women. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in advertisements, fashion spreads, or celebrity profiles. I know it sounds weird, but there’s nothing in my life that I find as soothing or as hopeful. This will be me someday, I think. Someday I won’t have braces, or frequent trips to an orthodontist’s office, or a jaw that’s going rogue.
I approach my scrapbooking as carefully and methodically as Evelyn approaches a hair-dyeing job. But tonight, I’m not pasting in any more pictures. I’m just looking, completing my nightly ritual, running my fingers over the faces of all these perfect smiles and symmetrical faces and normal jaws and thinking, Someday.
In two months.