Notes to Self (15 page)

Not that I was into that, but I did try it once, with completely embarrassing results.

I feel much younger than I am, and much older. Usually at the same time.

“No, thanks.”
Of course
Emily wouldn’t touch Josie’s one-hitter. And
of course
no one would give her shit about it. If they did, she would just laugh and tell them to eff off. Emily was immune to everyone’s hammering because she really didn’t care what they thought. We were all packed into Jaden’s small block house at the end of freshman year; his parents were obviously gone. I didn’t even know why I’d agreed to go. As parties went, it was pretty much the worst. Bad music, warm beer, sweaty guys trying to grind with whichever girl made the mistake of standing up in the general vicinity of Jaden’s speakers. Josie didn’t blink when Emily waved away the offer. She just continued on with what she was saying, about how hideous she found some movie she’d just seen. It impressed me when people hated movies. I liked most everything I saw, so it seemed remarkable to be able to A) hate something that probably had at least a few funny lines, and B) be able to give actual reasons why. It made Josie sound like she knew things the rest of us didn’t, which, I suppose, was why she was going on and on about it.

I wanted Josie to like me and I was bored and uncomfortable. People had smoked weed for fewer reasons than that, so I said: “I’ll try it.”

“
You?”
She looked at me for the first time since I’d arrived. Her sneer made me wish I hadn’t said anything so I could stay tucked in the couch cushions, mostly invisible. My t-shirt was even the same color as the ratty carpet and I wore no jewelry, unlike Josie, who had shiny bracelets on both of her wrists and a brand-new eyebrow ring. You could see the skin all around it was tender, pink. I wondered if it hurt.

“Um, sure. It smells kind of good.” I cleared my throat and took a tiny sip of my beer, which tasted bad and made me feel odd and relaxed. My eyes met Adam Jordan’s, who nodded at me as he took a deep drag from his cigarette. I thought about my dad, who always smoked and probably still did, wherever he was. He said he enjoyed being able to walk outside in the middle of conversations, to take a break from life. I understood that, even though I always thought he smelled stale and gross. I wondered why humans couldn’t come up with something
like
smoking, that would allow us to go outside lots of times during the day and chat with strangers as if it was natural, but wouldn’t kill us. Was that so hard?

“You don’t have to, Robin,” Em said quickly. Her brown eyes were worried. She sounded like a big sister, even though she was only forty-two days older than me. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, I know.” I reached out to Josie, hoping that taking her side would make her hate me less. I was sick of feeling like Emily’s pet when we hung out with other people from school. Maybe if I could do this thing, Josie would stop acting like my existence was a personal insult to her. She handed me her small pipe, and reached over with a lighter. I put it to my lips and breathed in just as she touched the flame to the end. I felt the heat fill my mouth and stop at the back of my throat. When I breathed out, a tiny puff appeared in front of my face. It didn’t taste horrible. But it didn’t taste good, either. I felt stupid and so much younger than everyone else around me.

“You have to inhale, kiddo. Into your lungs.” Josie took it back and showed me, even though I already knew that. When she breathed out, a huge plume of sweet-smelling smoke filled the air in front of her face. She grinned and took a sip of her Red Bull and vodka. She drank it out of an enormous Taco Bell cup. Classy. I tried again and coughed.

Everyone laughed, even Emily. I felt my cheeks heat up and I bit my lip. I remembered being six or seven, with a bad fever. Mom had stayed up the whole night with me, giving me baby aspirin and putting a cool washcloth on my forehead. If she could see me now, she’d have an aneurysm. I shook away the memory, ashamed that the thing I thought about when I was trying to be cool was my mom. Thank God no one could read my mind.

“I want to try again,” I said, pushing my bangs out of my eyes. “Please.” The second time I didn’t cough, but something worse happened. I felt light-headed and like I was going to vom. I put my hand over my mouth and scuttled to the bathroom. Josie and her friends giggled; Emily followed me.

When I got to the bathroom, which was fairly nice compared to the rest of the place (someone had lit a lavender candle in there, which struck me as absurd in the middle of such a sketchy party), I felt a little better. I sat on the cool floor and breathed in the cleaner air with my head bowed. Emily wet a towel and gave it to me. I put it on the back of my neck and didn’t say anything. A week earlier, Dominic Franklin had asked me in study hall: If I could choose between being able to fly and the power to make myself invisible, which one would I choose? Invisible, I’d said without hesitation. Invisible.

“Are you okay? Do you need to blow chunks?” Em sat in front of me, pretzel style, trying to look me in the eye as I hid behind my bangs. I noticed her socks were two different patterns, but coordinated, like they were meant to be that way. Was that a thing now?

“I’m fine. No.” I mumbled. I looked up. “It’s just…I don’t feel comfortable around all those people and I thought if I did that thing with them, maybe I would.”

It always seemed like when I was with a ton of people, everyone else felt great and had the time of their lives. They all made each other laugh while I was sat there with a stomachache and absolutely nothing to say. I couldn’t figure out how to joke around the right way, and my body always betrayed me by having a runny nose or cramps or whatever. I was seriously defective.

“How about we find some people who don’t, like, feel the need to smoke up seven times a day?” Emily said.

“Who?” Before Em and I became friends, I hung out with Reno only and she hung out with Josie and those guys. It was going to be tough to get adopted by a whole other pack of people in our first year of high school. When I started at O Grove, it seemed like my four years there were infinite, like I’d be stuck there forever. I longed to be free of the place, of the people there, of the expectations and the track I was in. If I tried to get good grades and stayed away from the drunks and stoners, they’d just give me more and more and more work to do. If I got bad grades and kept going to parties like this, they’d write me off. I’d have no choices at all and I’d end up like my mom, trying to figure out which credit card in my wallet still had some juice on it. Every time I heard someone on TV or in a movie say, “Life’s too short, man,” I was confused. Life felt very, very long to me.

“I dunno. The theater geeks?” She gestured wildly like they were always doing, and brought me out of my depressed haze and back into the moment. I could go from zero to despair in three seconds. Emily reminded me that not everything was a crisis. “We could go buy fake glasses at Claire’s so we look, ya know,
arty
. And scarves. Definitely scarves.”

In spite of myself, I smiled a little.

“The Mathletes? I bet they smoke way harder stuff, though.”

I giggled. The important thing wasn’t what Josie and her friends thought of me. The important thing was what Emily thought of me. Why was she so cool? Why?

“I’ll feel like a dumbass going back out there.” I wished the bathroom had a window so I could sneak out of it.

“Whatever, you just got a little freaked out. It happens to everyone…it’s not like all those guys were
born
smoking pot. Look, I’m sorry I dragged us here; this party has a bad vibe. I think Josie’s pissed at me because I don’t go to Lou’s much anymore.” Lou’s was this pizza place Emily used to love.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll try to be normal.” I stood up, looked at my blotchy face in the mirror, splashed some water on it, dried off, and opened the bathroom door.

“Don’t try too hard. Normal is boring.” She stuck her tongue out at me and widened her eyes, mini-lizard face style, and I grinned.

As we walked back to our table, Emily tripped on a seam in the carpet and spilled everyone’s drinks in their laps before landing on the couch. They totally forgot about my embarrassment as they all jumped up and swore at her, laughing.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but I bet she did that on purpose.

CHAPTER 36

NIGHTS AND MORNINGS

This isn’t a safe thing to do, so don’t do it just because I did. I couldn’t sleep, so I crawled out of my window and started walking. It was a warm night. All I wore with my jeans were my chucks and a green hoodie. I used to walk around outside in the middle of the night all the time, B.T.F. (Before The Fall). You’d think a traumatic brain injury might fix one’s little insomnia problem, but apparently it doesn’t. I could sleep just fine during the day, but not so much when everyone else did.

I think insomnia is a sign a person is interesting.

The world looks different at night. My favorite part is noticing street lights shining on tree leaves. For some reason, leaves lit up gold against a dark night remind me of a theme park ride. Sometimes Reno would come with me on my nighttime walks and we’d point out things to each other that we’d never noticed during the day. If you walked around in those developments where the houses were all close to the sidewalk, you could see right into people’s living rooms. You could see what color they painted the walls or what TV show they left on while they slept. We especially liked to walk around in Celebration, the fake Disney town a little west of Kissimmee. All the houses were so perfect, like they were planted there by a movie set designer. I imagined that the people who lived there never got sick or felt lonely.

Without thinking about it, I started walking to Reno’s house. He hadn’t stopped by in two days because he had basketball tryouts, and I missed him. I wondered if he was really serious about becoming a popular jock and asking Theresa Lindsey out on a date. I’d Facebook stalked her and saw that she was very pretty in that typical, perfect, high school way. Her reddish blonde hair was long, straight, and smooth, and her braces actually made her look cute instead of weird. We looked like opposites now that my hair was mostly gone and what was left of it stuck out of my head alternately flat and wild, like a ten-year-old boy’s. Our little jaunt to the beach seemed to exist outside of time; neither one of us had made a peep about it in text or over IM. That was fine with me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about all that, so I wanted to sew it up and pretend it never happened.

It bothered me that things in the world kept moving, happening, changing. I wanted everything to stop until my brain was fixed and Emily woke up. It wasn’t fair that everyone else got to keep doing things and accomplishing things, and getting better or stronger or happier while I waited. I felt kind of like a ghost, with no connection to anything. Of course, sometimes I felt like that B.T.F., too.

Reno’s house was nice. It was in an older neighborhood and it had a big front porch. Reno’s mom always put flowers in hanging baskets out there, and there was a little lemon tree in front. I knew my mom wanted a place like this. Whenever she dropped me off or picked me up here when I was younger, her eyes were like a barcode scanner, mentally ringing up what everything cost, from the porch swing to the curtains, and calculating how many years it would take for her to save enough to buy it all.

Once I was actually standing there, I felt dumb. Reno was probably sleeping and his parents would be seriously worried if they noticed me lurking around. I looked in the backyard at the Weismans’ huge magnolia tree and saw that a platform was still up there, Reen’s childhood hangout. I snuck into the backyard and climbed up to it. I was mostly hidden by the Spanish moss draped on branches all around me. It had to be one of the most peaceful spots on earth. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and felt sleepy. I watched a single lightning bug fly lazily around my hidden cove, like a hypnotist’s pendant.

The next thing I knew, it was morning. I couldn’t remember what day it was or how I got there, but slowly, the pieces of my night fell into place as I remembered why I was outside. The platform was damp with dew; it was still very early. Apparently, my presence hadn’t disturbed the birds very much. They only flew out of the tree when I sat up to stretch.

I texted my mom to say I was grabbing a coffee with Reno, even though I doubted she was awake yet. I didn’t want her to worry if she checked my closet and saw I wasn’t there. Then I texted Reno himself to see if he’d come out and keep me company. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was weird that I’d spent the night not fifty feet from his bedroom window. It’s not like that had been the plan or anything.

R u awake?
I asked.

No,
he answered. I smiled. His response was immediate.

I’m in your tree,
I texted.

What?

Yeah. On the platform thing. I couldn’t sleep last night so I walked over and accidentally fell asleep up here,
I wrote.

U OK? I’ll be right out.

I’m fine
, I typed.

I didn’t want to climb down. I wanted to stay up there all day and have Mrs. Weisman make us peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off. I wanted to sleep outside again, with the lightning bugs to keep me company, as if I were a fairy princess.

“Hey,” Reno climbed up the magnolia and plopped down next to me. “Are you sure you’re okay? I didn’t know you even remembered this was here.” He wore sweatpants and ancient Adidas sandals. His hair was messy. I could tell he’d sprayed on some sort of cologne or body spray. It smelled nice.

“I’m fine. I just couldn’t sleep, so I started walking around like we used to do, you know? And I ended up here. I was just going to have a look and go home, but I guess I fell asleep. I texted my mom and said we went for coffee.” I hugged my knees, a little embarrassed, even though it was only Reno. I could have just walked home and he never would have known I was here.