Consider (9 page)

“Alex, I’d give up every guy in the universe if Benji would give me a chance. Do you realize how hot your brother is?”

“Um, no. Gross!” I throw a pillow at her.

She throws it back, then fluffs up her hair again. “I don’t know how he’s still single.”

“He hasn’t had time for a girlfriend. He just got back.”

She touches up her makeup in my mirror. “Well, wish me luck. Do you need anything from the kitchen?”

“No. And I’m not going to help you seduce my older brother. That’s just wrong.”

Rita takes a deep breath and tiptoes out of my room like we’re in some ridiculous comedy. We would’ve made awesome college roommates.

By the time she returns, I’m waving around all twenty of my fingers and toes to get my nails to dry faster. She has a weird look on her face that’s hard to read. I’d call it disappointment, but that’s not quite right.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

She takes a minute, like she’s considering something, then blinks a few times. “He pretty much put a nail in that coffin.”

“Ouch. Was he a jerk to you? If he was, I’ll give him hell for it.”

“No. He’s dating someone.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” I feel like I set her up for failure. “He keeps his relationships top secret. You know he doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that.”

“It’s fine,” Rita adds. “Like you said, I have a new potential date from the movies. Let’s text the number.”

And just like that, she moves on.
Why can’t it be that easy for me to move on? I get stuck on things. Let them dwell. Feel guilty.
There must be so much freedom in acceptance. I blow on my fingernails. There is so much Rita can teach me about female confidence—something my own mother fails at miserably.

We spend the next hour texting Nathan and laughing. It makes me miss Dominick, but I told him that I wouldn’t call or text so I could have girl time with Rita. That was partly true, but mostly it was so I could train myself to start thinking without him. It’s not working.

While Rita’s busy flirting, I click on the TV. More names of the departed—not dead, just gone; there’s a difference now, and the difference matters—tick across the screen with select footage from sites across the globe. A local reporter takes center screen at the Quincy vertex, reiterating the same hypothesis about the poor and the mentally ill seeing the vertexes as an escape from their problems and hoping for a clean slate on another planet. I’ve always pictured college as a clean slate where I could rewrite myself and start on a fresh path without the burden of my family to follow me. Until now.

On screen, I spot a familiar silhouette move into the background of the shot. The crazy lady from the hospital is back at the Quincy vertex. I’m surprised she hasn’t gone through the vertex, disappeared into the woods, or been locked up in a mental ward.

“Turn it up,” I ask Rita since she’s closer to the remote.

The reporter doesn’t realize that crazy lady is approaching from behind until it’s too late. But hey, it’s newsworthy material—the reporter adapts quickly and uses every second to her advantage. She shoves the microphone in crazy lady’s face and asks, “What do you think of the holographic message?”

The camera zooms in and catches crazy lady at a terrible angle, accenting all the wrong features to fill both eye sockets with gothic shadows and outline every wrinkle in her forehead. She might as well be Jack Nicholson in
The Shining.

“Ma’am?” The reporter prompts again, “What do you think of the holographic message?”

“The hope only of empty men,” she mutters.

The camera pans out to normal view. “Interesting,” the reporter comments. “So, are you saying we should wait and have hope? Are you planning to stay here?”

The crazy lady dismisses her second question and peers directly into the camera so that her face fills the entire screen. Rita stops texting to watch.

“Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.”

The reporter in the background tries to weasel her body back into the frame. “Um, okay. I’m not sure if you answered my question.”

“That lady’s tripping,” Rita says.

“It’s the same lady we saw get arrested at the vertex with the megaphone.”
Same one from the hospital.
“I feel bad for her. She’s not right.” For some reason, crazy lady’s words seem familiar to me. Maybe I’m reaching a new level of crazy.

For the grand finale, crazy lady lets it all hang out, pointing her finger at the camera and crying, “This is the way the world ends.” She glances around as if expecting someone to react to her declaration of imminent calamity.

The camera pans back to the reporter, but before she can respond, crazy lady grabs her and says, “Heroes are born. Heroes are born.”

Crazy lady pushes her into the camera and runs from the screen. The reporter clears her throat and wraps up the story as if crazy lady is a phenomenon in her own right. I’m sure they’ll repeat clips of the interview for ratings.

Suddenly, my brain clicks. I understand why her weird speech patterns seem familiar.

“Rita, the way she talks . . . I think she’s reciting a poem I’ve read before.”

“Weird.” I look over, and Rita’s already texting again.

I search one of the phrases on my phone, and sure enough, everything I’ve ever heard crazy lady spew from her mouth is from T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” Everything except her last line about heroes. That part doesn’t make sense. I copy the whole thing into my journal so I can reread it later. I vaguely remember reading the poem during English class sophomore year. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time other than having a really depressing tone. I read it over and realize that I understand more of it now since it’s appropriate for the current doomsday circumstances. Maybe that’s how literature works; you understand more of it as you go through different experiences.

Maybe crazy lady is not as crazy as she seems.

Dominick and I
spend the last day of summer together. We spend most of the day at Fort Phoenix beach lounging in the sand and swimming when our bodies get too hot.

Floating on my back while the waves cradle my body is one of the best things in life. Until Dominick pulls me from underneath, filling my nostrils with saltwater.

“Hey,” I yell and splash him in revenge. “I was relaxing.”

He returns the favor, dousing me with a faceful of water. I automatically giggle like an airhead, but I secretly imagine tying him to an anchor to see how he likes it.
I like breathing, thank you very much.
When
he pulls me by my wrist through the water and kisses me with his soft, lingering lips, I forget all about the dunking torture.

Back on shore, we towel off and he puts on his glasses. He really has that superhero alias look down. As the sun catches the light in his eyes and he smiles, I realize that in spite of myself and all I’ve tried to do to prepare myself for possible college separation, I love him.

I didn’t want to become that girl. That girl so attached to a guy that she changes her life plans for him.
So how could I ever let him change his life plans for me?
I can’t live with that pressure.

“You hungry?” he asks.

Don’t drag it out. Tell him you are not ready. You’ll never be ready.

His smile lures me in.

“Sure,” I say. We pack up our stuff and go to a local stand for hot dogs and fries. Despite my adamant protesting, he shoves a twenty at the girl behind the counter. I really didn’t want him to pay for me when I know what’s coming. He decides to feed me a french fry.
No, no, no.
I am a terrible person.
I escape for a time-out in the bathroom only to return to see him holding two ice cream cones. Mine, coffee with chocolate sprinkles. My favorite flavor.
Each cold lick burns my throat.

At the end of the day, Dominick walks me to my porch. It feels like a walk of death for our relationship. Maybe now isn’t the right time. Maybe there’s never a right time.

“You’ve been quiet,” he says. “You thinking about tomorrow? Senior year? Shouldn’t you be excited?”

Anxiety collects in my chest and throat, like bats leaving a cave. “There’s a lot to consider.” He doesn’t know, can’t know, the weight of that statement.

“You mean college? We’ll be fine. We’re both smart. Probably get our first choices. Live in Boston together. It’ll be great.” He puts his arm around my lower back and leads me up the porch steps.

“I think I want to go to UMass Dartmouth. Live at home. Save money.”

He stops short and pulls his hand away. “I thought we decided on Boston schools.”

I can’t look at him. “I changed my mind.”

He paces in a quick circle on the porch, his mind and emotions churning before me. “Okay, UMass it is. I can major in math there. My mom will be happy that I’ll be around to watch Austin.”

“Dominick, no. I knew this would happen. Go to Boston. You’ve always wanted to go to school there. I don’t want to hold you back.”

His face drops. “You don’t hold me back.”

“I will. Maybe you don’t see it, but I will. And I can’t let that happen.”

He rubs his hands through his hair, then sticks them in both pockets.

“This is about your anxiety, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t, but of course that’s what you’d think.” I chip at a piece of deep purple nail polish on my thumb. “I just want to save money and commute from home.”

“Alex, you can do this. Live in Boston with me. I can help you adjust.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t want to hold you back.”

“Damn it, Alex. What does that even mean?”

I shrug. My stomach gnaws at me. I fight the urge to run inside and hide in the bathroom again.

Dominick holds me by the shoulders. “Stop worrying about me.”

I knock his hands off me. “You’re the one who worries about me too much. That’s the problem. You see me as an anxiety case. You’re always making sure I’m okay, checking on me, acting like I’m fragile. It’s like you assume I’m weak.”

He paces the full length of the porch then walks right up to my face. His eyes look wild and sad.

“Alexandra, this is absurd. I don’t worry about you because you have anxiety. I worry about you because I love you.”

He said it. He had to say it.

He continues. “I love you. Do you get that?” He grabs me by my wrists. “Look at me. I know you don’t want to hear it. I know the weight of it makes you feel afraid. I know you. You have to stop trying to push me away. I love you. You don’t hold me back. You could never hold me back. You are what drives me forward. I don’t want to plan my future without you in it. You are my future. You just have to let me in.”

“I don’t love you.”

The words slip out like a bitter wind across a frozen pond. His eyes lose all brightness. Like Mom’s eyes when Benji is away or Dad’s during a Zombie Night.

I turn away, hold on to the wooden porch railing, and stare off into the neighbor’s yard. I want to rescue him, take it all back, go to a Boston school, stay together, be that girl for him. But I can’t. I just can’t. To rescue him, I need to set him free. That’s the paradox.

“I’m done,” he mutters. “You think I don’t get it. But I get it.”

Without looking back, he runs down the steps, gets in his car, and speeds away. I collapse on the porch and let the tears reign free. Dominick deserves someone who doesn’t have my problems. And I need to stay at home to make sure everything’s okay.

We have to fall apart so we can both end up whole.

Chapter 8

Day 29: August—3,738 hours to decide

Question: Do you have jobs? Schooling?

Answer: Not jobs, employment, or schooling in the way that you understand them. Without the need for money, our people contribute by pursuing their passion and sharing it with others. We have an open education system to anyone who seeks knowledge. Specialized knowledge is acquired by learning from experts in a particular field.

After a sleepless
night, I stare at the crack in my ceiling knowing it’s time to start my senior year. My mouth feels dry from crying. I check my phone. No messages from Dominick. It’s official. By giving Dominick a clean slate, I’ve cleared myself an empty one.

Ignoring the cute floral skirt, blush T-shirt, and slouchy boots I picked out for the first day, I grab jeans and flip flops and just wear the same gray
Star Trek
T-shirt that I slept in. My hair revolted during the night into a mane of frizz. Bun it is.

In the kitchen, I pack a quick lunch since, by senior year, I’ve learned never to eat the cafeteria food unless it’s a Friday. I grab a bowl and make oatmeal in the microwave, cutting up a banana and some walnuts while it cooks. Benji comes into the kitchen and searches the cabinets. I was hoping he wouldn’t be around in the morning, but I forgot he has first shift today.

When my oatmeal’s ready, I move to the living room window to eat while waiting for Rita. The warm cereal settles my acid stomach. I check my phone again. Nothing from Dominick. Not a single word.
Is it really over?
I blink back tears and pop a pill.

Benji walks into the living room and looks out the windows near me.
Please be nice.
I don’t have the energy to fight him today.

“I need to talk to you about something.” His voice has a sharp tinge to it. Either he’s about to deliver bad news about the vertexes or bad news about Dad. Either way I’m hooked.

“Shoot. What’s up?” I try to sound aloof while I search his eyes for hidden truths.

He rubs his face before staring out the window and resting his palms on the window sill. I’ve never seen him so distressed. Whatever it is, it’s big.

“You know what,” Benji mutters, almost to himself, then says, “I’ll catch you later.” He pats me on the back. “Have fun. Senior year goes by fast.”

What’s going on with him?
Is someone sick? Is he dying?

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah. Fine.” His eyes shift to the left. He’s debating with himself. “It’s just not every day your little sister finishes high school while the world is full of holograms.”

“Stay safe at the vertex.” I try to smile, but my lips are trembling, my emotions bubbling to the surface. “Are you sure everything’s fine? What’s going on? Did the government learn something about the vertexes?”

They’ve discovered an alien army. Scientists are lying and it’s all a conspiracy. I’ve contracted a vertex disease that has altered my genetic code and will cause me to mutate into a monkey or something.

“No, nothing like that. Everything’s fine. Another time.” He smirks and then adds, “Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it.
His small comment pierces through my thin skin, and he knows it. Makes me want to push him through the window.

I grab my backpack and escape Benji’s emotional teasing. As soon as I step onto the porch, I remember standing there last night. Saying “I don’t love you”
to Dominick’s beautiful face.

Mom steps onto the porch behind me.

“I almost missed it. Benji jumped in the shower before me and threw me off schedule.” She gives me a huge hug. “Aw, senior year. Let me get a picture.”

Rita’s car pulls up in front of the house.

“Mom, no,” I whine. “Look, Rita’s waiting.”

“Come on. It’s a tradition.” She holds up her phone, and I fake a smile before running down the steps.

“Love you. Have a good day.”

“Yep.” As I walk to Rita’s car, I try to set my mind on senior year. My dreams of becoming a lawyer.

Think positive
,
my brain commands.

Focus on the future
,
my mind encourages.

Without Dominick,
my heart reminds.

“So,” Rita says, as I climb into her car. “Are you going to explain to me why I’m picking you up and not Dominick?”

“We got into a fight.” I buckle my seat belt, and she pulls into traffic.

“About what?”

I shrug.

“Did you break up?”

“I don’t know. He was mad, though. Really mad.” I flip through the radio stations.

“I don’t get it. What aren’t you telling me?”

I flip through more stations but eventually slap it off. “I told him that I didn’t love him.”

She slams on the brakes in the middle of the street. “Well, what’d ya do that for?”

Her words release an avalanche of tears. I bury my face in the bottom half of my T-shirt.

She fumbles to hand me tissues from the glove compartment while a truck behind us blares its horn. She puts on her hazard lights and continues feeding me tissues. Another driver swerves around us and spouts, “Get the stick out your ass and move!”

“Yeah, yeah, a little patience in your life won’t kill you,” Rita says out the driver’s side window.

“Rita, you can’t park in the middle of the street.” I grab another tissue.

“The hell I can’t. My best friend is imploding.”

She watches me sniffle and wipe then announces, “Okay, woman up. It’s our senior year. Save the tears for later years.”

I laugh through snot and try to pull myself together. Glad I didn’t bother putting on makeup today.

“And as soon as you see Dominick, apologize and tell that boy you love him already.”

I expected senior
year to feel special and a little strange with everything happening in the world, but the hallways buzz with a different kind of energy. Vertexes and holograms. On T-shirts. Not sure how a possible invasion became a pop fashion trend.

“Oh my God, I want one,” Rita says, looking around.

“Your parents would have a stroke.”

“Oh yeah. Well, what they don’t know . . .”

Is it bad that I kind of want one, too?

“Hey, Rita,” Nathan Gomes, the guy Rita’s been texting ever since our girls’ night, stops and throws his arm around her. Rita’s body melts like caramel around an apple.

“Hi,” she says. “Long time no talk.”

“Sorry, we’ve been having tons of practices to get ready for the season.” He nods to me. “I’m Nathan.”

“Alex.” I don’t remind him that we’ve met before. What’s the point? He won’t remember. “Rita, I gotta run. See you later.”

“Okay,” she says and mouths
thank you
for giving her a few minutes alone with a potential suitor.

I turn into the next corridor wing and see Dominick at the end talking to one of his friends. I really need to talk to him, but I don’t want to start the morning of my senior year crying in the middle of hallway. Before he heads in my direction, I dart into my homeroom.

Mr. Blu, my homeroom and pre-calculus teacher, passes out our schedules. Students mutter under their breaths and compare.

“I know, I know,” Mr. Blu jokes, “you’re all excited because you have math first period.”

When Mr. Blu speaks, two girls in the front cross their bare legs into the aisle and lean slightly forward on their desks, exposing major cleavage. If Mr. Blu notices, he doesn’t show it.

The bell rings, and Mr. Blu distributes our math textbooks. Everyone groans. Dominick told me once that Mr. Blu was his favorite teacher, his reason for wanting to major in math in college. Every time I look at Mr. Blu, I think of Dominick. If we don’t get back together, math class will be torture.

Throughout most of
the day I manage to keep my head down and my mind focused on listening to teachers’ annoying intro-to-class speeches, which somehow all ended up about the holograms. They must’ve gotten together and decided to incorporate recent events into classes to keep school relevant despite the ticking countdown to destruction. My schedule should really read: Parabolic Pre-Calculus, AP English Apocalyptic & Dystopian Literature, Chemistry of the Cosmos, World Doomsday History, and, well, Phys Ed. I’m exhausted and depressed already.

At lunch I spot Dominick eating at a table with his friends.
Already moving on without me
.
Probably where he wanted to be all along.
My stomach sours at the thought of tough conversations and the smell of gross cafeteria food. Rita’s advice from the morning, however, overrides the need to crawl under a table and die.

“Hey,” I say casually, as if I didn’t just kick him in his balls yesterday.

“Hey,” he says. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” I lie. “I have Mr. Blu for math.”

A female at the table pipes in. “Oh, he’s incredible. Not to mention hot.”

I try to smile, but it feels unnatural.

“Can I talk to you?” I ask Dominick.

“Aren’t we talking now?” he says and eats a french fry.

“I mean, alone.”

“I think you said all you needed to say yesterday.”

Everyone at the table looks from me to Dominick and back, intrigued, trying to read between the lines. I can’t be someone else’s drama fix for the day.

“Dominick, really. Please?”

He gets up but leaves his tray of food on the table. A sign that I only have a short window of his time. We walk out to the courtyard on the side of the cafeteria. The sun is still blazing hot. Only yesterday we were in paradise at the beach, and today it’s textbook formalities.

“I’m sorry if I confused you yesterday. I didn’t want to spring it on you like that—not going away to school together.”

Dominick doesn’t respond, so I continue to reason with him. “We can still see each other. It’s only an hour away. I can jump on the train, visit you in Boston. You can come home sometimes, see me and your mom and Austin.”

He moves close to me, so close that at first I think he might kiss me. But instead he whispers into my face.

“I would be happy to go to college here or in Boston, wherever, if I knew you were happy. But I know you’re just staying out of fear.”

“No, I want to stay.” I pick at my nail polish.

“Alex, you need to get away from your family. They make you worse.”

“No they don’t. They need me. My mother is freaking clueless. She doesn’t see my dad’s symptoms starting back up.”

“Are you listening to yourself? You’re their daughter. They’re the grown-ups. Don’t do their job for them. Don’t let them control you.”

“I’m not. This is what I want.”

“Whatever. It’s your life.”

He takes off before I can respond. I spend the rest of lunch period in the bathroom and the afternoon trying to convince the nurse that I need to go home early. She gives me the last pill in my school prescription, but Ativan can’t solve everything.

I count nine
cans of beer in the recycling bin that night. Some could be Benji’s, some could be from yesterday. Dad sits on the couch nursing one more, and I periodically walk from the kitchen to the living room to make sure he’s still conscious and breathing. Benji’s not home and Mom’s already in bed. Someone needs to be around to call 9-1-1.

Loud guitar music
from my cell phone forces my body out of its morning coma.

“Ugh,” I moan from my bed. I slam my hand across my desk, sending my phone crashing to the floor. Squinting my eyes from the sunlight, I fish around on the floor for my phone and hit “Snooze” on the alarm’s screen. There are no texts from Dominick. I lie back down, and my body begs to sleep for only a moment or two longer under my plush blanket. My limbs go heavy. I imagine myself sinking comfortably into my mattress.

I wake with a start for the second time. Glancing at my phone, I freak to see that thirty minutes slipped by. I must’ve hit the wrong button.

“Shit.” I jump out of bed and scurry around my room, searching for any clothing that matches. My stomach gurgles. No time for breakfast. No time to pack lunch. My mom opens my door.

“Rita’s outside beeping. I told her you’d be right out.”

“Thanks,” I say, tying my hair back while squishing one foot into a sneaker.

My backpack is still open as I fly out the door. My sneakers sink into the muddy grass as I run to Rita’s car. My bare arms shiver in the damp wind. Thank God I pulled my hair back since my curls will rebel in the dampness.

“Let’s go, girl,” Rita shouts out the car window. “I don’t wanna be late on the second day.”

“Sorry, I overslept.”

She gives me that best friend up-and-down glance. The one that means, “You are a mess, but I still love you
.”

We make the first bell with seconds to spare. My backpack bounces heavily on my back as I rush up the inner stairs. Down the corridor, zipping past other students and faculty, I skid to a stop in front of room B236. After taking a few deep breaths, I realize that I didn’t take a pill this morning.
I turn to rush to the nurse’s office but remember I forgot to tell my mom to refill my school prescription.

How could I forget it?
I take several more deep breaths.
I can do this. I can do this. It’s just one day.
Mr. Blu announces that all seniors have an assembly in the auditorium instead of first period class after homeroom. Some students hoot “Yeayyah.” The girls in the front row pout.

When the next bell rings, seniors flood the first floor. My body short-circuits as soon as I enter the auditorium. A fire churns my stomach like I’ve swallowed a bucket of chili peppers.

Rita waves me down. I pretend nothing is wrong and focus on breathing. I creep over several students into the seat she saved for me. It’s not an aisle seat.
I need an aisle seat.

“Awesome. We get outta class already,” Rita says.

“Yeah, awesome.”
I visualize diarrhea pouring down my jeans in front of everyone.
I search the crowd for Dominick, but there are so many heads I can’t find him.

“Have you seen Dominick?” I ask.

“No. Did you talk to him any more after lunch yesterday?”