Dark Blue: Color Me Lonely with Bonus Content (3 page)

I head straight to our apartment complex just a few blocks from school. It’s not exactly a lovely abode, with its boring off-white
stucco exterior and “modern” architectural touches, but at least it’s a retreat of sorts. I walk upstairs and enter our sterile-looking living room—my mom’s into “contemporary” furnishings, which basically means cold and uncomfortable. The couch is an asymmetrical design of pewter-colored leather and looks about as inviting as a rock. This is flanked by a couple of metal-and-leather chairs in a garish shade of red, which I assume is meant to complement the piece of modern art that dominates this rather small room. Now I must say this artwork is one of the few items in our home that doesn’t set my teeth on edge. It’s loud and colorful, but at least there’s a warmth to it, or so I like to imagine. And it was created by my dad. I suppose that might have something to do with why I like it. I go over and turn on the little chrome spotlight, which really makes the colors pop. My mom doesn’t like to leave any lights on in the apartment since she’s an electricity conservation freak. But sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and come in here and turn on that little light and just look at the painting. It’s an abstract that I don’t really understand, but somehow it usually comforts me.

But not today. I flick off the spotlight and, like a whipped puppy, I slink off to my room. I close the door and wish it had a deadbolt. Not that Bree or my mom will want to come in here. But I just do not want to be disturbed—not by anyone.
Like anyone wants to disturb me.

I flop onto my bed and cry all over again. I wonder how long I can keep this up. It’s not as if someone has died, for pity’s sake. Why am I crying like a big baby over losing a stupid friend? I know I should be more mature than this. I yell at myself and say, “Just grow up!” and, “Get over it, you moron!” But my verbal abuse doesn’t work. Even though I know it’s totally stupid to care this much, to be hurt this badly, I simply don’t know how to stop the pain.

I sit up and take a deep breath, telling myself that I can’t go on like this. And for a moment, I honestly consider praying to God for help. Not that God and I really have much going on these days. Come to think of it, praying was what got me into this mess. And the truth is, I’ve only been to church a few dozen times in my entire life, and that’s always been with Jordan’s family.
Jordan’s family!
Oh, the mere thought of Jordan’s family—my second family—pushes me right over the edge again. And I begin to cry even harder than before.

It’s like I can picture them all standing right there at the foot of my bed, and each one is waving to me. First I see Jordan’s cool and laid-back parents. I think they actually used to be hippies back in the seventies, although they swear they never did drugs. They’ve always let me call them Tom and Cindy, and they’ve always welcomed me into their big, old, rambling home as if it were my own. Tom is usually dressed in shabby sweaters and wrinkled slacks, and he manages the oldies radio station in town. When Cindy isn’t working part-time as a counselor, she’s wearing overalls and painting cool pictures or digging in her huge garden. I can even see Jordan’s older sister, Abbie, looking stylish as ever in the latest fad, and I remember the way she used to help us do our hair and nails and stuff when we were still in middle school. And then there’s Leah, just a little younger than Bree, and then little Tommy, Jordan’s sweet but pesky little brother. All of them are smiling and waving and saying, “Goodbye.”

“I cannot take this!” I sob into my already soaking-wet pillow. “It’s not fair.”

Somehow, I mercifully fall asleep and don’t wake up until I hear Mom calling me to come answer the phone. Shocked that anyone would call me, I wander out to the kitchen, blinking like a mole at the light as I pick up the phone receiver. (No, we do not have a cordless phone like everyone else in the civilized world. Our old-fashioned
device is securely attached by a stretched-out cord to the wall right over the breakfast bar where everyone can listen in.)

“Hello?” I say in a voice that cracks slightly.

“Kara?”

“Jordan?” I feel an atom-sized spark of hope in my heart.

“I just thought I should call you and explain.”

“Explain?”

“You know, about the locker thing. It’s nothing personal, you know. It’s just more convenient to share with Shawna now. It’s by the gym, you know. And we have so many practices.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I lie.

“I thought you’d understand.”

Yeah, I understand, all right.

“I still want us to be friends, Kara. I don’t want you to think I’m dumping you. You don’t, do you?”

“Well . . . ”

“I mean, I know I’ve got some new friends now. It’s just the way it goes with cheerleading and stuff. But I still consider you my best friend.”

“Really?” A strange sensation washes over me. I think it is hope.

“Yeah. I mean we’ve been friends for, like, forever, Kara. Something like that can’t change overnight.”

I sigh in relief.

“But you’ve got to accept that I have new friends too. And you’ve got to try harder to be friendly to them, Kara.”

“Be friendly?” I feel a tightness in my chest again. It’s like someone has wrapped a leather strap around me and is steadily cinching it in.

“Yeah. I know they can be a little, well, you know. So I’m thinking you’ll just have to make a bigger effort. Okay?”

Okay,
I’m thinking.
Yeah, sure, okay. I’ll just make a bigger effort. You bet!
“Uh, I’m not sure if I really know how to do that,” I say uneasily. But at least that’s honest.

“Oh, come on, Kara. You just need to smile more and laugh at their jokes and stuff. Just loosen up and don’t take life so seriously all the time.”

I consider this. “Yeah, maybe.”

“And I haven’t seen you around anywhere at lunchtime. Where have you been hiding, anyway?”

“Just around.” I don’t tell her about the secluded porch steps I recently discovered behind the art department.

“Well, why don’t you make sure that you’re
around
where I am tomorrow? It’s going to be pretty hard to keep being your friend if I can never even find you.”

“Okay,” I agree meekly, experiencing a kindergarten flashback. “I’ll meet you in the cafeteria tomorrow.”

“Good.” I can hear the smile in her voice now and I think,
Okay, maybe I have been overreacting about this whole thing. What—am I having PMS or something?
This is Jordan, after all. Why would she want to hurt me?

So I hang up the phone and then actually help my mom fix dinner. No big deal, really, since she’s already got a frozen pizza sitting on the counter. But I do peel some carrots and cucumbers and de-string some celery to make a fairly nice-looking plate of veggies to go with it.

“You okay, honey?” she asks as I stir some ranch-dip mix into some mayonnaise for the veggies.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Then she calls for Bree to come and we sit down at the Formica-covered breakfast bar. As usual, we eat without saying much. The
three of us sit facing our tiny kitchen with its stark white cabinets as we share our “deluxe” pizza, which tastes a bit like cardboard. It’s a good thing I thought to add some veggies.

I try not to think about what’s going on at the Ferguson’s home right now, but I’m guessing they’re all sitting around their big oak table and eating something really wonderful like homemade spaghetti or maybe even lasagna, and laughing a lot. Still, I’m imagining that I’ll be back there with them before too long. Maybe by the weekend even.

After dinner, I return to my room and finish my homework. I even take some time to straighten my things and hang up some clothes. Lately, every time I get home from school, being depressed and upset, I’ve just thrown clothes and stuff down and left them to pile up wherever they landed. Fortunately, my mom, a neat freak when it comes to the rest of our apartment, isn’t one of those types who does regular room inspections. Her philosophy is that it’s my room and if I want to live like a slob, it’s my problem. I can handle that. But actually, it was getting pretty awful in here, and it was even beginning to bug me.

Then, feeling more hopeful than I’ve felt all week, I take special care selecting what I think is my coolest outfit. Jordan actually picked all the pieces out when we were doing back-to-school shopping just a few weeks ago. I can’t believe it’s been only a few weeks! This outfit includes a pair of great jeans that fit perfectly and actually look pretty good on my overly long legs, as well as a T-shirt that cost way more than any earthly T-shirt should cost, but Jordan assured me it was worth it. Even so, I had to rip off the price tag before my mom figured it out. The T-shirt will be topped with this short cream-colored sweater we found on sale at the Gap. The bulkiness of the sweater helps to disguise my less-than-well-endowed chest, which used to be my greatest
burden—but that was before this whole upset with Jordan.

Now that my wardrobe is pretty much settled (although I keep second-guessing myself) I stare into my dresser mirror and prepare to do a critical evaluation. Any new zits trying to develop? Anything I should attempt to fix? I’m still wondering how Jordan got her teeth so white. But, no, I look pretty much the same as usual. Ordinary and boring. Then I remind myself that Jordan would tell me to “think positively.”

Okay, my long, dark brown hair is all right, I guess, probably my best asset, at least when I care for it properly. I give my head a sexy shake like I’m starring in a Pantene commercial and feel satisfied that it’s fairly thick and perfectly straight with a natural shine to it. Jordan has always said she’d kill for my hair. Hers is blonde and cut just above her shoulders. It’s slightly thin with a little bit of natural curl on the ends, but it looks good on her and seems to fit with her pixie-like face, which is something I envy. My face, on the other hand, feels too big for my body, and my facial features are not outstanding, although Abbie always said I had good lips—whatever that means. I pucker them up now and attempt to smile, but to me they just look like plain old lips.

I study my eyes next. Unfortunately, they’re pretty puffy from all the crying I’ve done lately. But at least I have good lashes. They’re fairly thick and dark, and I don’t even need to use mascara, although Abbie always said I should anyway. I’m sorry to say my eye color is rather boring. My mom says it’s hazel like my dad’s, but it looks like a muddy mix of green and brown to me. I sometimes toy with the idea of getting those tinted contacts, maybe in teal, but my mom is not in favor of this idea. And right now, after my crying jag, my eyes look red and bloodshot. I sure hope they’ll look better by lunchtime tomorrow.

Suddenly, I remember a trick that Abbie taught us—how to use cucumber slices on your eyes to reduce puffiness. I’ve seen her do it before but haven’t tried it myself. So I depart from this pitiful inventory of my less-than-wonderful appearance to retrieve some cucumber slices from the refrigerator. Our apartment is dark and silent now. It appears that Bree and Mom have already gone to bed.

Finally, I get ready for bed myself. I place the cool cucumber slices over my puffy eyelids and tell myself to breathe deeply and think happy thoughts. I also tell myself that everything will return to normal soon, probably tomorrow. I even remind myself of one of Jordan’s old seventies posters. It says: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Yes, I feel certain that things will be better.

But then, I’ve been tricked before.

A
LL MORNING
I
FEEL NERVOUS, ANTICIPATING WHAT WILL HAPPEN AT
lunch. I tell myself not to be so neurotic, but it does no good. It seems the only time I actually relax and forget about everything these days is during art class. It’s like I can almost be myself in there.

Despite Jordan’s opinion on art class—she thinks kids who take it are either freaks or geeks or just plain losers—I’ve decided I actually like it. A lot. This kind of surprises me since I’ve never considered myself to be particularly artistic, although I do keep a sketch pad at home that I like to draw in occasionally. I suppose this has something to do with my dad, but it’s something I’ve never thought about too much.

“Why do you want to take art with all those weirdos?” Jordan asked me during class registration a few weeks ago.

“I don’t know,” I said, which was basically true. “I guess it’s mostly because I’m not into the other elective options.”

“Why don’t you take speech?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure. Like I want to stand up in front of everyone and
talk.”

“It’d be good for you.” She poked me in the ribs with her elbow. “You know what they say: You need to face your fears head on.”

She might’ve been right about that, but I am not and never have
been a head-on kind of girl. Besides that, I am just not into public humiliation. As a result, I signed up for art.

So now, having reached the conclusion that I really do enjoy art, I’ve decided I’d better keep this news to myself, at least for the time being. I doubt that Jordan would get it. And once again I am surprised when I hear the end-of-class buzzer and realize that I’m still not done with the pencil sketch.

“You can stay during lunchtime to finish it,” says Amy Weatherspoon as she bends over to examine my work. I glance up at her. Now Amy’s really into goth, which I thought went out of style ages ago. But Amy’s hair is dyed jet-black, and she wears nothing but black, paints her nails black, and has thick lines of black around her eyes, which makes her look slightly like an anemic raccoon. The only thing that isn’t black is the silver safety pin that goes through the right side of her lower lip. I wonder if she did that herself.

I am already putting my pencils and stuff away and thinking about joining Jordan and her friends for lunch. “That’s okay,” I tell Amy, “I’ll finish my sketch later.”

She nods. “It’s pretty good, you know.”

I am totally surprised by this unexpected compliment. For some reason I didn’t think Amy was the kind of girl to say anything nice.