After I Wake (21 page)

“Carter, I'm one of the cool kids.” She spins me around, and I cannot stop laughing.

“It's embarrassing.”

“Ah, don't be a party pooper, there's nobody here.” She breaks away to bring her plate to the sink, and I follow suit, stacking my silverware on the plate and picking it up carefully. I go back to the table and grab the bowl of pasta.

“You want the leftovers?” she asks.

“Do you even have to ask?” I open the cabinet above my head and pull out a small container, maneuvering pasta from the big bowl to the little bowl. When all the pasta is in place I put the top on and lean my forearm on it and press with my other hand until it snaps closed. I have to grin, because I feel like I'm making Darwin proud, adapting. I'm probably among the fittest in the survival-of-the-fittest class. That's one hell of an accomplishment.

As soon as I deposit the pasta in the fridge, I run upstairs to my room, evilly leaving the dishes for my mom. As I close the door, the dog wakes up with a small grumble. She rearranges herself from her sleeping form that resembles a furry cheerio and lies on her back with her paws in the air, looking at me expectantly.

I rub her stomach for a few minutes, enjoying the peace. It's been a while since I felt this at peace. I can't remember a time when I've felt like this. It's very relaxing. I've been so busy with making up schoolwork and doing everything else that I haven't felt this good since, well, I think since before I tried to kill myself.

It's strange, to think there was a point in my life that I couldn't see a way to live and thought that there was only death. I don't like thinking about it because there's more to life than I thought.

I'm really glad to be alive.

I spend the rest of my night dumping every single line floating into my head onto a notepad and looking at the poem babies that cover the paper. I'm back. It's cool. There's a poem that's forming itself about Darwin, about moving on, about surviving, once I find I am the fittest. There is a poem about breaking gravity because she tries to bring me down, but she cannot. There is a poem about the snoring dog that gets scared when she farts. There is me, on the page.

I feel so whole.

 

 

I
FOUND
one of my only existential crisis teenage angst poems when I was going through all my notebooks while writing the note.

It was fairly simple, I think, as far as poems go. I called it “The Essentials.”

To live without questioning your surroundings is to die.

Who am I?

To live and acknowledge it is a light.

What am I?

To live trapped in an eternal dark is to not know the questions.

How am I?

But to die is to cut yourself from the answers.

Why am I?

I was also wondering what “The Hokey Pokey” was all about, that's probably where more of the poem came from. Until depression and not feeling set in, it never occurred to me to wonder about things like life after death. I'd always anticipated… something. I liked to think that I would sleep forever, just rest and be at peace. That always seemed like the best idea.

I'll have to wait until I'm good and ready and really freaking old to find out.

 

 

I
HAVEN
'
T
cut since Friday, which makes today, Monday, three days. The urge hasn't gone away entirely, but it is diminished. I'm more focused on my task right now, which is taking forever.

We, my mom and I, are sitting on the floor of the living room and looking at colleges. They're all fairly general; there are no colleges with specific fields yet. The future seems so far away, but it's really closer than I thought. That's so cliché, I have to roll my eyes at myself. But in all seriousness, at this time next year, I'll be living in some dorm, hopefully making new friends and having new experiences and all that super fun college stuff. Insert sarcastic comment here.

I want Emmett to come with me. I'm beginning to wonder if I can't live without him, because it's been too long since I saw him last and not seeing him is killing me. I miss him, and I want him to be all right. If all was well, which it is not, and I told him what I've been thinking, he'd just raise an eyebrow and ask, “Is this love?” in a quotation of that British actor he's so fond of, and I'd playfully punch him in the shoulder and mutter something about not being good at loving people.

I snap back to what I'm doing and ask my mom about whether or not I should go to an all-girls school or one that's coed. She shrugs, well aware that it doesn't make a difference, dating-wise. It's all good.

“I don't think it makes much of a difference. It's all up to you. I assumed you would want to go wherever Emmett went. Are you sure you don't have any idea of what you want to do?” Sometimes it scares me how well my mother knows me. But I suppose it makes sense. I'm her only daughter. It's her business to know.

“None. I always thought poetry would be a career,” I answer truthfully and pull out my phone to text Emmett.

Me:
Emmett? How are you today?

Emmett:
Oh Carter, so strange.

Me:
Want to elaborate?

Emmett:
Not particularly.

Me:
Apply to any colleges?

Emmett:
Oh

Emmett:
Shit.

Emmett:
I should look at those….

Me:
Okay. Text me later, please?

Emmett:
Probably.

At least he's texting me back, I think, is the most important thing here. He's alive, in the barest sense of the word, but it's enough. I look at my mom.

“What do I do? Emmett's not functioning.” My mom purses her lips.

“Invite him over to watch the movies with that British guy in them. The villain one with the hair.” I do so and wait for the inevitable no. I'm shocked to see that his reply says “whatever” instead, and that he'll show up later.

“We should clean up,” my mom mutters.

“The only mess in this house is the stack of homework on my desk. This place is spotless. What are you going to do, vacuum the ceiling?” My mom looks up and seems to think about it for a moment.

“Well, maybe I'll just spray something that smells nice on the curtains or light a candle or something.” My mom closes my laptop that she's been using and puts it on the table, getting up to locate the candles.

“Do we have popcorn?” I follow her, and she says something affirmative so I find it in the cabinet. I hate opening popcorn because it's a bitch to open in that it's in an annoying plastic sheath, and I have to open it with scissors, though I do finally get it open and in the microwave. Little things, little challenges, they're so pesky and annoying. But popcorn is always worth it.

Soon enough, the popcorn begins popping, and it makes the delightful little explosion noises and the smell of butter-not-actually-butter wafts out. I leave it in the microwave when it finishes, and look through the cabinet next to the television that contains all our DVDs for the particular one Emmett loves.

The title screen is already playing when Emmett walks in. Well, I let him in, but the movie is ready to go and the house has a delicious albeit weird combination of popcorn smell and “happy cottage day” candle smell mingling in our nostrils.

Emmett gives me a small smile when he sees the movie and sits lightly on the couch, like he's suddenly uncomfortable to be in my home.

“So,” I begin as I press the play button, “how you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“That's good.”

“Carter, stop. You clearly have no idea what to say, so let's just watch the movie.”

“I'm getting popcorn. I hope you don't mind.” I spent so much time last night looking up things and researching what to do and say if I'm around someone who's not eating or depressed or in a bad way, and I feel like a big jerk for reacting the way I did, but I still feel so lost. It's like this big, huge problem, and I shouldn't take it lightly, but I don't know how to take it. I sent Emmett some links too, in the off chance that he looked at them before coming over.

“Can I have a little?” I try to hide the relief flooding through me.

“Of course, Emmett. Why would I say no?”

“I've been weird, but something occurred to me last night while I was looking at all of those links you sent me: Not eating isn't going to bring my mother back. I have no clue what her deal is. And not eating for attention is such a douche-y thing to do, especially when people struggle with it, and I was just looking for attention, and I feel bad for doing what I did. I mean I didn't realize it was an attention thing at the time, but you know, I was hurting and it felt logical.

“You see it glorified and stuff, and it looks so helpful, but it wasn't. I was… I don't know what I was doing, but I shouldn't have, and I ate all of those cookies. That may have been overdoing it. I threw up after.”

“Emmett, you don't need to describe your adventures in upchuck. And there were at least twenty on that plate. That's massive overkill.” I'm trying to make the mood lighter, but I don't think it's working, and I shouldn't try to lighten the situation.

“Did you bring the plate back?”

“Yeah, it's in the car. I washed it, but you won't be getting the plastic wrap back. I kept it because it looked like modern art.”

“Damn, I was going to do that.” My sarcastic comment is so dry, the Sahara desert just applauded me.

“Carter, sometimes you are so sarcastic that… I don't know. You're just really sarcastic.”

“I take pride in my work, Emmett.”

“Carter, I'm sorry about being a douche. I wasn't handling things well.”

“You shouldn't have to handle things well. Your mom packed up and left and gave no information as to where she was going. It's okay to break down every once in a while. I think that you have to remember to pick yourself up after. You remember the line? That one line?” He laughs out loud, and it's a nice noise. Laughter is actually the coolest thing.

“How could I forget? You always want to put it into something:
time is a second, one that stretches into a little bit of forever.
Honestly, Carter, it doesn't work if you put it in something, you really should make it into a motivational poster or something.”

“Yeah well, it's been forever, and it's been a bunch of forevers, but you're letting the forever part consume you, because forever is forever but moments are temporary, because you have infinite moments ahead, and this one is big now, but there are bigger ones in the future because… you have more forevers. And forever is a big contradiction because it isn't totally permanent. Your forever can change and stuff. Like, go make your forever what you want it to be, and, uh, just make sure when you find a forever you like, keep it. I'm still kind of searching for mine. Poetry makes me so happy, and I thought that could be a forever, but it's really just a piece of forever, and I'll figure out what the rest is when it comes to me, and am I making any sense whatsoever, Emmett?”

“You are, Carter. You know, you should be a motivational speaker. You'd be a really good one.”

“Oh fucking hell no, Emmett, are you serious?” I am aghast. “You saw me before the Accolades. I couldn't function, and I was freaked out of my mind.”

“You can only go forward, and it's a moment and everything you just dumped on me.” He grins at me, and I resist the urge to punch him. I have a bad habit of playfully punching people. I really should fix that. With my luck, I'd break something in my hand, and I don't exactly have a backup one on reserve.

“I don't think it'd suit me. But I like the motivational poster idea. But I never was an artist, and now my handwriting sucks. You want to handle that one?”

“Alright.” He sighs dramatically. “If you insist that I simply must.”

“Emmett I've never forced you to do anything.” My thoughts flicker to the other day when I made him eat a cookie. “Well, almost.” I can tell we're thinking the same thing. “Sorry about that, and for all the times I ever was a bad person.”

He shrugs. “You were—”

“And I'm sorry for all the times that will happen again, inevitably in the future. Oh shit, you were talking. Sorry, go on.” It's a few minutes before he can continue, because he's laughing, and I'm also laughing because that's what happens when I mess up. I'm still a big fan of laughter.

“As I was trying to say before I was so rudely interrupted….” I'm tempted to interrupt again and tell him that he sounds like my mom, but it occurs to me that that would be bad for a whole bunch of reasons, so I stay silent and let him continue.

“You were never a bad person, Carter. I mean, you were rude and uppity and narcissistic as hell, but you were really genuinely passionate about poetry, and then you were lost because you had to change really fast and stuff, and that'll mess anyone up for a while. You're coming back, but better and stuff, which is pretty cool.”

“Emmett, one of us has to stop talking because this tiny room cannot handle all of our profound teenage angst wisdom bullshit.”

“You're all cool and stuff, so you can have the floor.” He grins easily, and I think back to what he was saying a moment before.

“I'm a better person?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You mean like, in the past months and shit?”

“That is what I'm saying.”