Playing Nice (16 page)

"Pretend it's just you," I say.

"That's impossible. You're standing, like, two feet away."

"I'll close my eyes and I promise not to open them until you're done." I make a cross over my heart.

"I can't believe you're making me do this. If you open your eyes, I'll hold you down and shave your head, Pollyanna. I'm not kidding." Lil sounds tough, but then her shoulders pull back and I know she's going to sing.

"I won't," I say, hoping she can hear the steadiness in my voice.

At this moment, in this dingy old trailer, Lil's pale skin seems to light up and her eyes flare like a deep sapphire blue ocean full of so many possibilities. When we close our eyes, Lil and I are transported. There are no walls around us, no roads leading from one place to another. It's just in an open field with nothing but the sky to close us in.

A beat later, Lil's song grows like a sunrise, blanketing everything between us, inside and out. I can barely concentrate on the lyrics because Lil's voice is so beautiful and tender, and her words don't sound like words but like life.

And then all that's left in the space is the sound of silence. The beautiful birth of nothing and everything at once. No words—and yet all the words that were ever spoken between me and Lil erupt over me like a consuming waterfall. I can't speak because I'm so filled with Lil and her pain. And I know it's a pain I can't heal, that only Lil can do that. Even that first day, I knew I couldn't save her, but I never considered that maybe it isn't about saving someone, but helping them to save themselves. Like Lil's done for me.

Lil grabs my hand and in this moment, right here, she knows I know her. She knows I'm not playing nice.

"What's the name of the song?" I ask.

"'Human'." Lil says. She looks down at our intertwined hands and then yanks me toward the door. "Come on. The Killers sound better with wind in your hair."

***

We drive around for what feels like eternity, listening to the song and letting the freezing cold winter wind swish through the car. I hear the song so many times I memorize the lyrics. Beside me, Lil sings it at the top of her lungs.

The words circle around us in the darkness and make everything light. As we travel down the straight roads, I imagine a path for Lil, one with flowers in her hair and sunshine on her back. Somewhere warm and bright, so she can forget the darkness and the people who were supposed to love her, like her dad and grandpa, who walked away. She's happy in that place, with eyes that don't get lost.

I'm not the one that deserves better. Lil is.

We end up back on the roof of her grandpa's barn. Lil puffs smoke rings into the sky. They grow bigger the higher they climb. I count the stars and wonder how many different places exist. How, for some reason, Lil and I were placed on the same planet in the same city at the same time.

"Do you think your grandpa minds that we're up here?" I ask.

"No, he's probably passed out after making love to a whiskey bottle."

"Is your grandma dead?"

Lil pulls her black leather coat up around her ears and hugs her chest. "Yeah, she died when my mom was in high school. I never knew her."

"That's so sad," I say, and think about my grandma, her salt and pepper hair and all her crazy words and how my life would be less without her.

"My mom said Grandma never missed seeing her cheer a game even though she hated football."

"Maggie was a cheerleader?"

"Captain of the squad." Lil throws her arms up in a perfect V, then sinks back onto her palms.

"What happened with your mom?" I ask. Sarah's words have stuck in my mind and a part of me hates that she knows something about the people I care for that I don't.

Lil gnaws on her bottom lip and fishes around in her purse for her cigarettes.

"You can tell me. I'm not going to say anything," I say.

She digs deeper in the purse, not making eye contact with me. "Where the hell is my pack?" Her hand searches the bottom of the black bag before pulling out her Camel Lights, but her grip is sloppy and she drops them. They roll off the roof of the barn into the dirt flowerbed below. "Shit!"

"Come on, I'm your friend."

Lil looks at me, her eyes intense and clear. "What if you tell everyone? What if you can never look at my mom the same way? What if you don't want to be my friend after I tell you?"

"I promised you, didn't I?"

Lil's lungs fall flat, the air she's held in so tightly finally emerging in a rush. "Did you know my mom won't kill a cockroach? We used to have them all over the place in Florida. The flying ones. They're the worst. But Mom never killed one. She used to talk to them, like she was trying to convince them that life outside of our apartment was better. 'Don't you want to fly out this door?' she'd say, and shoo her hands in the air." Lil laughs a little. "I'd wait until she went to bed and then I'd kill 'em all. She'd wake up in the morning and say her pep talk worked."

"I can see your mom doing that," I smile.

"Good. Then maybe you'll believe this next part." Lil looks up into the sky. Her eyes glaze over, and I know she's gone to her dark place. I want to grab her hand and remind her that not every footprint hurts. It's only when people stomp on you that it bleeds. "When she was in high school, she got pregnant. To this day, she's never said who the father was, but I know she knows. I know that she's seen him walking around town with his perfect family, living the perfect Minster life, and not caring that hers turned to shit." Lil sits up straight, her body becoming the statue I've seen before. "She never told anyone. I mean, this town barely accepts Democrats, let alone pregnant teens."

"What happened?" I ask.

"When she was six months along, she went into labor and miscarried. The baby came out dead. She didn't know what to do, so she buried it in the field and never told a soul."

Oh my God
. It rings a million times in my head.

"This field?" I look out at the barren land below us. The dried soil, plowed lines dragged through the cold dark ground.

Lil nods. "Her dad found the baby a few weeks later when he was working. And just like that, the woman who was Minster's Homecoming Queen, who got straight A's, who won't kill a cockroach—she was branded a murderer. The whole town turned against her, even her dad. My mom couldn't go anywhere without people yelling at her. The only person who stuck up for her was my grandma. When she died, Maggie couldn't take it anymore, so she bolted and never looked back. She would've choked to death on their hate if she didn't."

"Why did she come back?" I ask.

Lil looks at me, a desperate hard look that makes my heart want to break in two, one piece for Maggie's pain and one piece for Lil's.

"Because when my grandpa said we could live in his trailer as long as we stayed away from the house, as shitty as that sounded? It was better than living in our car."

"Your mom must have been so scared," I say. I can't handle a kiss and Lil's mom survived hell.

"You believe me?"

"Of course I believe you."

Lil eyes brighten and a beautiful big-as-the-moon smile spreads across her face.

"If you tell anyone I sang to you tonight, I'll tattoo the word 'virgin' on your forehead."

"I won't," I say and make an X over my heart. "I promise."

***

I get back to my house, my mind buzzing with lyrics and stars and the truth. It's like Lil was testing me that first day to see if I could handle all her spikes and prickers. And I think most people don't pass her test. She probably likes it that way, so she doesn't have to open her heart. But fighting is exhausting, and I can see her getting tired.

When I walk in the back door, my mom is sitting at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of chamomile tea. A rock drops in my gut.

"I'm not late, am I?" I look at the clock on the microwave. It's 11:30.

"No," my mom says, taking a sip of tea. "Sit down with me."

The whole scene is weird. My mom never goes to bed later than 10:30. Ever. The only time she's stayed up late was the night my grandma died. Our kitchen was in the middle of being redone and my dad and she sat on folding chairs in a barren room, with no appliances or counters or walls, passing a wine bottle back and forth until one in the morning. I walked down and saw them because I could hear my dad crying so hard I woke up.

"Who's dead?" I ask, trying to keep the terror out of my voice.

"No one's dead."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Martina, we raised you to be a good person. I thought that if you saw me volunteering and your father running a successful dental practice, you would know the life you could have and strive for that." Mom takes another sip of tea, slurping the end. "I don't want you spending any more time with Lily Hatfield."

"What?" I bite out.

"Please don't take that tone with me." She sets her cup down on the granite counter and I stare at the stream swirling from the top and dissipating into nothing. My mom is ruining the night and clouding my brain with candy-coated words filled with nothing but weightless air.

In that moment, I want to change everything. I want to tear down the walls and put the kitchen back the way my grandma had it, with cast iron skillets hanging from the ceiling and fresh flowers on the beaten-up wooden counters. I want to scream,
You tore down my grandma's kitchen and replaced it with your calm tone! Where's the life in that!

But I don't. I breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

"You left the dance with her tonight."

"How do you know that?" I ask.

"Sarah called asking if you were home, and I could tell from her voice that she was upset. She told me you left her alone at the dance."

"Sarah could have called my cell phone if she was that concerned."

My mom shrugs. "That's between you and her." She gets up and dumps her tea down the sink. "People always say the past is in the past, but it never is, Marty. People are defined by their actions and you can
never
escape them."

"You've always told me to help people. That's what I'm doing," I say. I want to say so much more. That Lil has helped me. That it isn't fair to only show your child one road when there are so many others she could take. That my mom's a hypocrite covered in good-smelling lotion and nice clothes and fake goodness. That I don't care what she says, I'm not giving up Lil.

"Yes, honey, I want you to help people. But there's a difference between giving a homeless man money and becoming homeless yourself."

"That doesn't make any sense," I say.

"All I'm saying is if you associate with trash, all of a sudden people start to see you as something to be set out with the morning garbage." My mom walks over to me and grabs my hand. How can she say things without caring what they mean? I stand, frozen in the cold kitchen, and see my mom for maybe the first time ever. Past the brushed hair and polished nails. Past the smooth skin and even voice. Without her exterior, there's nothing.

"I'll see you in the morning, dear." My mom kisses me on the head and walks out of the room.

There are so many words that I want to say, pounding in my head and echoing in my ears, but my mouth won't cooperate. They're locked inside me and I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to let them out. Instead, I take a breath and whisper, "Clear your heart." Cut the cord.

Walking up to my room with my mom's words banging in my head, I want to punch the wall or run out the door or scream at the top of my lungs. I get out my yearbook and look through the pages. Minster High's Nicest Person. Me, all dressed up in costume and stage makeup as Sarah Brown. The smile I plastered on my face day in and day out just in case someone might take a picture. I thought that was me. But I was wrong. Those moments were as deep as the pages they were printed on. Thin, flimsy, and breakable.

I ignore the seven phone calls from Sarah the next day. My room turns into a bomb shelter where I'm protected from the people living downstairs and across the street. Papers are scattered across my bed and on the ground—all the words I've ever written.

I stare at my grandma's picture and wish she could talk to me. I miss her at least once a week. I'll hear her rough voice in my head and remember the thick calluses on her fingers and wonder if she would be proud of me.

This is you, Marty,
she would say, grabbing my arm and pointing to the smallest freckle she could find.
There are lots of freckle people out there, but only one is shaped like you. Just make sure you stay away from moles. They cause cancer and eat you alive.

My parents blamed dementia for Grandma's crazy words, but to me, they made sense. The whole time I thought I was living amongst freckle people, I was really being eaten by moles.

It takes a few days of me avoiding Sarah and asking my dad for a ride to school instead of taking the bus. A few days of me walking down the hall with Lil and laughing and not caring what everyone thinks.

Just a few days, and the crowd sets its eyes on me and rushes, full speed.

***

Without my normal routine of meeting Sarah in the bathroom to fix our makeup, I walk straight to my locker. It feels weird not doing what I'm programmed to do, kind of like I forgot to put on underwear or deodorant and I'm worried I might start smelling during the day. But then I remember that robots are programmed and I don't want to be that. I don't want to be my mom and Sarah. If I stood next to Sarah today and watched her paint globs of lip gloss on her lips, I might burst into a million angry bubbles.