Reasons to Be Happy (3 page)

It amazed me how many list items I could recite from memory. Like a whole section of cool Ohio things we don’t have in L.A.:

13. The way frosted grass crunches under your feet

14. Big wool sweaters

15. Exploring attics and basements

16. Fang-like icicles that make whole houses look like monster mouths

17. The way a knitted scarf gets crusty with ice when you breathe through it while you’re sledding

18. Making snow angels

19. That Styrofoam squeak your shoes make on really cold snow

My brain grabbed for that list like a life raft as I sat in Dr. Jabari’s office one night.

My parents and I sat there clutching hands as Dr. Jabari told us the undeniable, irreversible news: my mother was dying.

As Dr. Jabari talked to us, my brain went on overload. I couldn’t tell you anything she said about how long we had or what to expect, but I could tell you that she wore emerald earrings, that the polish on two of her nails was chipped, and that her phone hummed seven times while she talked to us, but she didn’t show one single sign of hearing it.

Dr. Jabari talked about my mother, but my brain was only capable of grasping the details that wouldn’t leave me crumpled on the floor howling at the ceiling. My brain tuned out the doctor’s voice and instead registered the orange L.A. sunset through her window, the syrupy lilac scent of her perfume, the photos on her desk.

One photo right in front of me was of Bebe with a boy who must’ve been her brother.

Her brother clearly had Down Syndrome.

Bebe looked at this boy with what is obviously love. Love you can’t fake.

I never said anything to my parents or to Dr. Jabari about knowing her daughter.

I never said anything to Bebe about knowing of her brother.

And I certainly didn’t say a word to anyone about the fact that my mother was dying.

Saying it out loud might make it real.

Instead, I focused on my SR.

It made me feel so much better. Like a friend I could always count on.

A friend. That’s how pathetic I was. I had an imaginary friend, a friend who tried to convince me that if I were thin enough and pretty enough, Mom couldn’t die.

By early October, I used my SR at school for the first time.

By November I used my SR
at
least
two times a day. Every day. On Mom’s really bad days, it helped me cope.

My poor sick mom, whittled thin by cancer and chemo. My mom, who even then, never complained, but kept living up to her motto, “Pretty is as pretty does,” facing each day with her skeletal smile.

I wanted her to see
me
pretty at long last. I wanted her to be able to see me pretty and thin while there was still time.

On Mom’s really bad days, I’d just go outside and run and run and run until I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. Twice I ran so far that when I stopped, I was completely lost. That felt good, being lost.

Running like that made me feel crippled the next day. That felt right too, like I deserved the punishment.

The first time I got lost running, I’d come back to myself right next to a little grocery market I didn’t recognize. I stood there, clutching my side, panting, and an unbearable, horrific
craving
came over me.
Eat
.
Eat
. Even as I felt that craving, I felt the deeper craving underneath it taking over me:
use
your
SR.

I walked inside that frigid market and bought a pound of jellybeans, two boxes of cherry Pop-Tarts, and two orange Gatorades.

I also put four Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies into the pockets of my running shorts—two in my right pocket, two in my left.

I sat on a bench in a park I didn’t know and systematically ate everything I’d just bought and stolen.
Stolen
. I’d never stolen
anything
before. What was happening to me? I was not the kind of person who stole things! But I’d done it without a thought, as naturally as if I did it every day.

When I was finished, I threw it all up into a trash can.

If you think that’s bad, just wait. It gets worse.

• • •

In December I was caught stealing at school.

A teacher caught me stealing oatmeal cookies from the cafeteria. I thought I was truly busted then, but they didn’t get it—not my parents, not my teachers, not the principal. They thought I was on some kind of dare; they didn’t really understand why I was taking the food. Why would they? It’s not like I was poor and hungry. Almost everyone who goes to my school has parents who make a ton of money, so it had to be a joke, right?

I’d stolen the cookies (and
had
been stealing them for weeks before I was caught) for the same reason I’d stolen food from two other stores since that first market: it took more and
more
food for my SR to work.

I
needed
it to work.

I needed it more than I needed to be a good, honest person who’d never dream of stealing. I’d left that girl behind a long time ago.

I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin without the SR.

My parents were
furious
at my stealing and they agreed to the school’s punishment for me: I had to spend my lunch hours working in the cafeteria, first helping serve, then cleaning tables. I had to wear a
hair
net.
I thought Brooke would disown me then (and I almost wished she
would
), but she, Brittany, and Bebe thought it was cool, like I was some kind of rebel.

You know what was so great about it…well, other than the fact that it became even
easier
to steal food? I didn’t have to eat lunch with those girls anymore. Not having to sit with them felt like taking off a heavy backpack after a whole day of hiking. Back in the kitchen, I didn’t have to be the Hannah they wanted.

It also meant I couldn’t eat with Kevin, though.

The school kitchen was a whole different world. A world I loved. During the actual lunch period while my classmates were out there eating, I was hidden, wearing my plastic apron, hair net, and gloves. There was something so immediate about it, keeping the bins filled as I chopped tomatoes or onions, making sure no one had to stand there and wait too long for what they’d ordered. It gave me that same sense of satisfaction that making my cities used to: I got to see a finished product. I got to see a world functioning with everything in order and control.

That first day I reported to duty, it was the piano-playing scholarship boy who showed me what to do. By then, I knew his name was Jasper.

Jasper Jones. Is that a cool name or what?

I usually only saw him sitting down—at the piano or in class. I knew he was tall because he always looked uncomfortable folded into school furniture, but it startled me to realize I needed to look up at him. He was one of the few people who was taller than me.

From class, I already knew he was smart.
Really
smart. Like a brainiac. But slow. Not slow like mentally slow, but slow in processing. Slow in responding. It took him a while to answer. Brooke would always mutter, “Like maybe this year, moron.”

I had noted two things about him: One, he always did his funny head toss to clear the hair out of his eyes before he spoke. And two, he never spoke until he was certain what he was going to say. Like, Brooke, Brittany, and Bebe always did that annoying thing where they shot up their hands first in class, but when the teacher called on them, they’d do that ridiculous, “Well, you know, I, like, I know what the answer is, I just, you know, don’t know how to explain it. It’s just, like, well, you know (giggle)…um, never mind.”

How did the teachers not smack them?

Jasper’s hand never shot up. But teachers called on him anyway, especially after two or three other students had flailed around and gotten it wrong. The teacher would turn to Jasper like he was a lifeline. “Jasper? What do you think?”

He was usually right. He always had something interesting to say…it just took him a while to form his thoughts and speak them. The teachers didn’t mind waiting for him.

That quality led other kids—well, the mean kids I’d aligned myself with—to mock him as stupid, an idiot. I watched Bebe’s face once when Brooke said of Jasper, “What a retard.”

I saw the flinch. I flinched too. We made eye contact, but Bebe didn’t know I’d seen that picture of her brother. I held that picture in my heart, though, to remember there were complicated sides to everyone. Maybe even Brooke.

• • •

I wanted to shrivel up and blow away when I realized Jasper was the person assigned to train me in the kitchen.

“I’m Hannah,” I said. I remembered all those horrible times my group had left a revolting mess on the tables. I wanted to add, “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me a moment, then smiled. He had a slow smile, like my mom’s, only his started in just one corner of his mouth. “I know,” he said, with this crooked grin, as if it amused him. “I’m Jasper.”

“I know,” I said in the same tone he’d used, my old Hannah creeping back for a second.

That made him nod and say, “Well, then, let’s see what else you know.”

Not much, but I was a quick learner. I surprised myself. It was almost as if when I wasn’t around Brooke, Brittany, and Bebe, my brain returned to me. I was always in a white hazy panic when I was around them: what was I going to do wrong, what was I going to say wrong, how was I going to be humiliated, how was Brooke going to punish me for Kevin’s attention today? Away from them, I was competent again.

“Hannah kicked butt today,” Jasper said later to the kitchen staff. “She’s not what we expected.”

Had they been talking about me? I felt my face burn.

When the adult staff had all gone back to their work and weren’t paying any attention anymore, I whispered, “I’m sorry. I know what you think. But-but I’m not like that.”

He’d taken off the bandana he wore in the kitchen, so his hair hung in his eyes again. He tossed his head, then tilted it. His eyes were the color of iced tea. Up close I saw that one iris had a triangle of gold in it, like a slice of pie had been taken, revealing the yellow dish beneath. “You know what I think,” he repeated. I couldn’t read his meaning.

“What did you expect?” I asked.

He blinked. “When people have to work back here as punishment, it usually turns out to be punishment for us. But you were good.”

“Oh.” How stupid was I, thinking that anyone paid attention to me or my mean friends?

He kept gazing down at me, his face open. “You’re not like what?”

I tried to will the red to stay out of my face. “You know, like”—I tilted my head out toward the tables—“those girls I sit with at lunch. I’m-I’m not like them.”

He gazed at me a minute. “The B-Squad?” he asked.

“B-Squad?” I thought he meant
bee
squad, which really made perfect sense. All that venom.

“Yup,” he said, and turned away from me, back to work. He was unloading a cart of stuff that had just been delivered at the back door onto the pantry shelves, even though the head woman, Pam, had told us we could go.

“Why do you call them that?” I asked.

“One guess.” He picked up the biggest can of green beans I’d ever seen and hefted it onto the shelf.

“Because we’re…bitches?”

He stopped, tossed his hair out of his eyes, and gazed at me again. Then his lopsided smile emerged and he
laughed
. “Ha! Sure, that works too!” He returned to the cans.

“Why, then?”

“Because their names all start with B and I can’t tell them apart. They look the same, they dress the same, they talk the same, they think the same.”

I caught myself grinning, even though technically, this criticism applied to me as well. “They don’t look the same,” I chided him, but teasing. “Bebe is…”

He stopped again, the top shelf of his cart empty. “Bebe is what?”

“You know.”

He tilted his head. “She’s what?” I caught a little edge in his voice. He was so hard to read!

“She’s black!” I said. “So you can tell
her
apart. I mean they don’t
look
the same.”

He waved his hand, as if brushing away a pesky fly. “I didn’t mean anything that
surface
. I can’t see past the stuff on the inside. There’s not one individual thought between them.”

Wow
. “I-I thought everyone—You don’t think they’re pretty? Bebe’s the prettiest.”

He snorted. “Pretty is as pretty does.”

I gasped. “My mom says that all the time.”

He studied me. “Your mom is Annabeth Anderson?”

I nodded, then braced for it.

“Your mom is one smart woman.”

Not “beautiful” not “gorgeous” not “hot.” Not the crude things I’d overhead Max say.

Smart
.

I stood there, wondering how to end this conversation and get Jasper out of the cafeteria. I couldn’t leave first because I still had a mission there in the kitchen.

He’d almost finished unloading the cart. “So why’d you say ‘we,’” he asked, “even though you said you weren’t like them?”