I PUSH YOGURT AROUND THE bowl, trying to make it look like I’ve eaten something, but I don’t think LaLa is buying it.
“Do you want to talk about anything, Tiger? This is a big deal, a sister and a dad, all at once.”
Last night I thought about messaging Shayna Lee Franklin on Facebook. Friending her. It seemed like something sisters would do. My hand hovered over the “Add Friend” button for a long time, too.
But I didn’t message her or friend her. And I noticed she didn’t to me, either. I mean, what would I say? Hi. You get me, now that my mom’s dead. By the way, is Dad cool?
It’s all so complicated, and I wish I could ask Mom what to do, or how to feel.
But I can’t.
It’s been seven days. Ten thousand six hundred and eighty minutes.
LaLa is still looking at me. I change the subject. “What about school? Am I going back to school? It’s Tuesday. What am I supposed to do all day?”
And tomorrow, and the next day, all week. Forever.
Thaddeus slumps into the kitchen and pours some coffee into a travel mug.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” LaLa says hesitantly. “It might be a little overwhelming. Maybe you should wait. There are only a few weeks left anyway, right?”
“Three,” I say.
School ends in three weeks, like it always does, with the Eugene Field Memorial Days Dance, the one I was going to with Kai Henderson. The whole reason for the dress that I’m wearing at this very moment.
It might be good to go back. I’ll have Cake. I’ll know the routine. The sounds, the old lockers, the ones they’ll be tearing out this summer, creaking open and then slamming shut. We’re all getting clear backpacks instead of lockers.
Kids chattering, the clicking intercom, the smell of different shampoos and perfumes and colognes mixing with teenage hormones and angst to create a highly specific and unholy odor that I’m told is called “the Best Years of Your Life.”
If I stay here, I’ll be in my bunk, staring at the ceiling. Or on the couch, staring at the television. Or looking at LaLa looking at me with her sad, sad smile. I don’t think I can take that.
Thaddeus says, “I could take her on my way to work. Let her go. She’s not a prisoner.”
LaLa frowns. “Let me text Karen.”
I stare at Thaddeus. “Wait, why aren’t you in school, anyway? You’re not eighteen.”
“Soon enough. Just a couple more months. I do correspondence.” He sips his coffee and grins. “School and me didn’t get along in person.”
LaLa looks up from her phone. “She says it’s fine. No reason you can’t go back if you feel up to it.”
Thaddeus jingles his car keys. “Let’s roll.”
LaLa says, “Hold up, let me make you some lunch. And don’t you want to…change your clothes?”
I look down at the dress. It’s getting dingy and some threads are starting to hang from the hem, but I can’t take it off. I just can’t.
“No,” I say. “I’m good.”
She starts fussing with sandwich bread and slices of cheese, but the thought of eating makes me feel sick again. “No, that’s okay,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to make me anything. Cake always has extra, anyway.”
I leave the kitchen before she can argue, grabbing my backpack from the bedroom. Thaddeus is waiting outside in the car.
As Thaddeus drives, I look out my window at cottonwoods and mesquite trees, the miles of cattle fencing, mountains like soft clay against the endless, endless blue sky. Fat, cottony clouds that never seem to move. A tiny part of me, just a smidge, is opening up, being out of the house, out of the bunk, in a car, moving. I can breathe. I might be in a musty old car, but I can breathe out here.
We pass by Grunyon’s moms’ coffee shop and The Pit. No one’s there right now, because of school or work, but come three o’clock, it’ll start to fill up with skaters, bodies rising and falling in the air, and watchers.
Thaddeus says, “You go there?”
I nod. “Yeah. I don’t skate, though. Just hang out.”
I look down at my hands, folded against my stomach. I stretch my fingers out, think of Lightning, the skateboard Andy bought me all those years ago, the feel of tape and grit against my palms as he showed me how to work the board. Do my feet twitch, all of a sudden, at the mention of skateboarding? Like they have a life of their own? Like they can remember those few times I felt weightless and free, beautiful and promising? Those few times I was just any other kid?
Before I broke my arm and my mom took it away.
I shake my head, hard. It doesn’t matter. I’m spare parts now. A series of phantom limbs pieced together with tears.
I text Cake: I’m coming to school. Meet me by my locker.
What? Wow, ok.
Thaddeus looks down at my phone. “That your friend, from yesterday? The tall one?”
“Yes. Why? You interested?” I turn my phone over.
“No! I mean, not that I couldn’t be, she seems cool and all. It’s just…” He hesitates. “I don’t…really know how that stuff works. I’ve never had a girlfriend.” His face gets pink.
I sigh. “I’m not really a pillar of wisdom. I’ve never had anyone, either, so I think if you’re just nice, and cool, that’s all that matters.”
Thaddeus gives me an amused look. “You use weird words. ‘Pillar of wisdom.’ What’s that all about?”
When I was little, if I was being noisy, my mom would say, Please keep it down to a dull roar. When I asked lots of questions and she got tired of answering, she’d say, What am I? A pillar of wisdom? She had sayings for everything.
Had.
I bite my lip. “Nothing. Just a phrase I heard once.”
Thaddeus says, “Anyway, girls always say they want nice dudes, and then they go for jerks, like my mom does. Every time, when I was little, she’d go, ‘This one is different. This one is nice.’ They never were. Like, why couldn’t she just take care of me?”
I look over at him.
Thaddeus is kind of handsome, underneath all his hair and that ball cap guys insist on wearing all the time, even if they don’t play ball or watch sports. And it seems like he’s got some muscles, not that it matters, but who can tell under the baggy flannel and the loose T-shirts he’s always wearing?
I rub the lace on my dress thoughtfully. I can’t fault Thaddeus for what he wears; I guess we all have our costumes, our armor.
“I’m sorry about your mom. But I swear that not everybody goes for assholes.” I frown, though, because, I mean, Cake did. With Troy, the guy from Sierra Vista. And Kai didn’t turn out to be such a gem, either.
Thaddeus slows down to let some quail skitter across the road.
“It’s hard, like, getting close to people. Because of my life. I have a lot of problems…like, if I think people are mad at me, I start…I just do stuff. It’s hard to explain.” He keeps his eyes on the quail.
Ahead of us, the parking lot of Eugene Field looms, kids milling around, lugging backpacks, huddling by the trees and the old, cracked fountain with the statue of Eugene Field clutching a book and pencil to his chest. He was some famous poet once, and wrote weird rhymes for kids.
Thaddeus pulls into the lot. “Man,” he murmurs. “I do not miss high school.”
We sit, watching kids make their way to the entrance.
I hold the door handle. I could just tell Thaddeus to drive away, take me back to the house, to my bunk, to nothingness. Or I can get out and melt into the crowd of kids, emptier than I was eight days ago, the last time I was here.
It’s now or never. I open the door.
“See you later,” I tell him. “Thanks.”
As I get out of the car, Thaddeus says, “Good luck.”
I concentrate on the big double doors that lead into the school, trying to make a straight line right inside. If I can just get to Cake in the hallway, waiting by my locker, it will be okay.
All around me, kids jostle and joke, look at their phones, laugh.
Nervously, I look around the hallway, but I don’t see Kai. At first I feel relieved, but then I realize he’ll be in Bio.
At the lab table we share, because we’re partners.
Bio is second period. Zero p is first period, with Ms. Perez.
The last time I talked to Kai was that phone call, when I was mean, and made him cry. I wonder what he’ll say to me. How he’ll act.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. My stomach starts to knot.
Cake isn’t by my locker. I text her. Where are you?
Running late. Overslept! Sorry! I’ll see you at lunch, okay?
I spin the dial on my locker, then pretend to rummage around for something inside. Grab a notebook just to have something to hold.
Behind me, it’s gotten really quiet in the hallway. My heart starts thudding.
Whispers. Mom dropped dead. I think she got sent to one of those homes.
Oh my God, what is she wearing?
I’m not the kind of girl who has loads of friends who’ll run to her and hug her at school after a great tragedy. It’s not that things suck for me, though I guess they could be better. I just really only have Cake, is all, and now she’s not here. My life was already small, and it’s getting smaller by the minute.
I scrabble around my locker for a pen, just so it looks like I’m busy. My fingers are shaking.
I try not to look at the photo of me and mom on the inside of the locker door; I’d forgotten about that, and in my rush to avoid the photo, I accidentally slam the locker door shut a little too loud.
When I turn around, a bunch of kids are staring at me. At the dress. At the #orphangirl.
I’m just so sick of everything, I shout, “What?” Watch them scatter.
It feels good, shouting that way. Scaring people. I start walking to zero p.
With every step, I get heavier and heavier, though. I think of the table in zero, with Selfie Kelsey and I-don’t-care Rodrigo and timid Tina and horrible Lupe Hidalgo. All of them looking at me. Or, maybe even worse, not caring. I think of listening to Ms. Perez droning on at the board, and then sitting in Bio next to Kai, and how awful that’s going to be, and I already have so much awful inside me at this very moment.
I can’t take any more awful. I’m stuffed to the gills with awful. This was a terrible mistake.
Oh Jesus, now I really am Janey Simpson, and it’s not a good feeling. I’m panicking and sweating. I have to get out of here.
I jam my notebook and pen in a trash can. I start hustling, keeping my eyes on the exit doors at the far end of the hall. If I can just make it, if I just make it home, my actual home, everything will be all right, I can curl up in my bed, put my headphones on, wait for my mom to come back from driving the Bookmobi—
In an instant, my face is wet.
There won’t be anyone there. Of course.
I should tattoo this on my freaking hand so I can remember it forever: it’s only me now.
“Tiger! Tiger Tolliver!”
Walrus Jackson catches up to me, holding his blue tie against his chest, breathing heavily.
“Tiger, you run fast. You ever think about trying out for track? I think I’ll mention it to Coach Archer. Good Lord, I’m winded.”
“Look at my boobs, Mr. Jackson. Do you honestly think running track is going to work for me? Listen, I’ve gotta go.”
I think I see the smallest smile flicker at Mr. Jackson’s mouth. “Tiger, I’m not allowed to stare. At you. Or any girl. Moving on.”
“Can I please just go? I really need to leave.”
Mr. Jackson says firmly, “In a moment. Your care worker called me this morning to say you’d be back. I gather it’s not going well today? We should work out a plan for your return, I think. Take things slow. One step at a time. Do half days instead of full. Like that. How would that be? Here. This might be a good start.”
He holds out a card to me. It says “Tuesday/Friday, 4 p.m., Room 322, Eugene Field, GG.”
“GG? What is this?” I ask.
“Grief Group. For teens. We’re trying to think of a better name.” He smiles. “I gather it was started before I got here, when there was some trouble. I run it now, though.”
When there was some trouble. Walrus Jackson and I look at each other. He means when the three kids died by suicide. That.
“How are you doing, Grace?” And because he uses my real name, I think he means Are you going to kill yourself, Grace? Are you going to wrist, hang, gun?
We stare at each other for a long, long moment.
Adults always say they want you to tell them how you feel, but when you do, they mostly just tell you to try to feel another way, one that requires less work from them. I bet in this Grief Group everyone says how they feel and Walrus Jackson tells them things like “Well, what if we try this?” “Or this?” They probably draw their feelings with crayons.
It would be nice if once, someone would just say, “Girl, you are in the shit and you will not be getting out soon. So here’s how to make friends with the dark.”
Kind of like how at my mom’s viewing, Mae-Lynn Carpenter said everything from now on was going to be a giant suck-fest for me. The Big Suck. At least she was honest.
My voice cracks. “My mother dropped dead. That’s how I’m doing.”
Walrus Jackson’s eyes get soft.
I swear to God, there should be a manual for dying, or for death, and if I ever write it, Chapter One will be: Do NOT cry when someone else’s person has died, because then they will feel guilty, or mad. You lost nothing.
My hands ball into fists behind my back, crushing the Grief Group card where Walrus Jackson can’t see.
He takes a deep breath. “You’re welcome to join our group, Grace. I think it might help, but no pressure.”
I spit, “Who are the other kids in the group? Because I’d like to know who else in this school is flailing around in a lava of grief, because I sure didn’t see any of them this morning, when everyone was whispering and giggling about this…this dress and my mom.”
And, just like that, from the corner of my eye, I start to notice kids peering out the round windows of classroom doors at me, curious. I have to get out of here.
I start walking before Mr. Jackson can say anything else, folding my arms tight against my chest, counting the big black and white tiles as I go to keep myself from crying again. If Mr. Jackson calls after me, I can’t hear it. There are too many waves crashing in my brain.
I push open the double doors as hard as I can, the sunlight nearly blinding me. When I shade my eyes, hoping to see a magic path, or a beam of light telling me where to go from here, there’s Thaddeus Roach, leaning against the emptied Eugene Field fountain. He lifts his hand in kind of a sad greeting.
“I thought maybe it might not work out, so here I am, just in case.”
As he holds the car door open for me, he grins. “Looks like you’re coming to work with me.”
For the first time in more than seven days, I feel a spark of happiness and relief. I jog down the front steps, dropping the crumpled GG card in the trash can on my way.