The Stranger Inside (2 page)

That was good, I guess. Being invisible to Mom and all that. It had its perks … occasionally.

I stood torn, staring at the closed study door, willing it to open, for my mom to come out. I needed a hug. Or at least human contact. I felt like I was going to fall apart. But I didn’t knock on the door or go in. Mom and Craig didn’t like to be disturbed while they were on a call. Besides, I wasn’t sure I could face them yet.

I turned away, trying to breathe, just breathe, but my throat was all crackly and raspy, like sandpaper. I needed a drink. So bad. I was shaking from it. Either shaking from that, or ‘cause, you know, I came-to in a stranger’s arms.

“Either way,” I muttered to myself—like a crazy person. One who blanks out for long periods of time then comes-to macking with some random hot stranger snagged from the nearest mall.

I shuddered at the thought and got a huge glass of tap water, chugged it down, then went for seconds. This time I was able to sip. With shaky hands I pressed “Play” on the answering machine. One message. A lady named Mrs. Daniels introducing herself as the school receptionist and reminding Mom to get me on campus to register for my classes. Then silence.

No call from Grey—my only friend left of my “normal” life, back in New York.

I wrapped my arms around my waist and eyed the den door again, willing Mom to come out. I just wanted to be around someone. Anyone. Loneliness clawed at my insides. I missed Dad so much. He wouldn’t let this be happening—me alone, with no one who cared. That’s how I know. He couldn’t have done what the police said. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave me on purpose. He wouldn’t.

I slid down to the floor against the outside of the study wall where I could hear Mom and Craig’s voices. People. Talking. But their voices weren’t soothing. They were loud and harsh and kept making me wince. I brought my knees up to my chest and laid my head against my jeans.

I miss Dad. I miss Dad. I miss Dad.

I shoved my tears away and ran upstairs. In my room I paced, going back and forth across the length of my bedroom floor as that’s what I do when I’m upset. I pace.
Dad’s dead. Dead! I’ll never see him again. Never hear his laugh or see his smile. Never get another hug. Ever. That’s why today I came-to making out with a total stranger—a guy I’d never seen before in my life.

I’m freaking out.

Shaking, I crashed against my closed door. I banged my head against it, not hard, but firm, and on purpose. I was tempted to do it again—and again—keep doing it until the pain in my heart went away.

Instead, I wrapped my arms around my waist and started bawling, first silently, making no sound at all, then loud—like hysterical. I did it a long time. It felt like hours, but maybe it was only minutes—maybe five. Maybe longer. Then I heard Mom screaming downstairs on the phone. “No Michael,” she yelled. “Not on your life, Michael.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back more tears and tried to get a grip. I sat down and flipped open my laptop, planning to look up blackouts, but then I noticed the screen was still on the conversation I’d had on The Grief Forum last night. It made me tremble.

I’d been messaging with this lady whose sister had died. It was sad. I hunched over, re-reading our conversation, trying to gain new insight, but really hoping for comfort, somehow. But what I read sent a chill through me. I’d typed:

“I have time lapses lately.”

 The lady had written back:
“Time lapses?”

“Yeah … Just little ones … every once in a while.”

Those time-lapses—they hadn’t been like today’s, not at all. They were small, fleeting moments. Just tiny little skips in time.

Clutching my stomach, I went on reading what I wrote to the lady—last night, back when my lapses were … well, not so huge and scary:
“Sometimes I wake up places I don’t remember going.”

The lady had answered with a bunch of question marks:
“????”

Even last night, that had made me wince, made me worry it wasn’t normal, but I’d quickly gone on to explain, anxious for her to make me feel okay about it:
“Like I’ll be thirsty and plan to go get a drink of water in the bathroom, but then somehow find myself downstairs in the kitchen drinking a Coke instead. That kind of stuff.”

“Oh, honey, that’s normal,”
the lady had written, easing my worries. The message continued:
“After my sister died, I was on auto-pilot for months. I went through the actions of life—but wasn’t really “there” mentally. You know what I mean? I was a MESS. Totally spacey. But things will get better. You’ll see.”

Mom’s voice broke my concentration away from the computer. She called me from downstairs, saying she and Craig had to go back to the office—for a “crisis.”

There was always a crisis at the office—even when I’d lived here before. Maybe even more back then—it’s just that back then, I didn’t care as much—back then I had Jeremy. But now I didn’t. Now I was alone. Completely alone. And tonight I’d come to making out with a stranger.

So I was kind of pissed there was a crisis. Super pissed. Only shaken, too. Because yeah, a stranger! I’d made out with a stranger … and didn’t remember how that came to be. I cringed all over again, feeling a new wave of shivers. It was too creepy. Too much. And Mom was leaving … again.

When I could breathe normal—well, semi-normal—I scrambled out of my chair and ran downstairs, desperate to talk to Mom before she left—even thinking maybe I’d go with her and Craig to the office, though bleck.

The thing was though, I didn’t want to be alone. I definitely needed a mom. My mom. Only when I found her, she was in the kitchen with her back to me. She looked stiff and mad. She was organizing her briefcase, angry-like, waiting for Craig to find his “important” fax in the den so they could go. She kept looking at her watch. She hates waiting, hates being late, which made me think about turning around and going back upstairs. She was already in a bad mood—and I never seemed to put her in a good one.

Still.

I made a noise, just a small sound in my throat. But I wanted her to turn around. I wanted her to look at me—really look at me, and see I’d been crying and that something was wrong. I wanted her to hug me. Like when I was little, and I was hurt. I wanted her to help me feel better.

But she didn’t turn around. Maybe she didn’t hear me or maybe she was too mad. But it made it so I had to start the conversation and I didn’t want to. I didn’t know how or what to say. I mean, I couldn’t just blurt it out: “Hey, Mom you know how we were talking about grief the other day? Well I found this interesting new way to deal with it.” Then tell her I’d come-to in the arms of a total stranger and that I’d blocked out the entire day. I mean, how do you tell your already strung-too-tight mom something like that? That you woke up someplace you didn’t remember going, with a boy that you didn’t remember meeting? That you were at the mall and then suddenly you were on his bed, making out with him? How do you ease into something like that? Especially when your mom already thinks you’re trouble?

I cleared my throat, not knowing where to start, knowing any place would be awkward and wrong. Still, I stumbled into a sentence, my voice catching.

“So, when your sister died …”

I saw Mom tense up, get all rigid, like a board. She doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s stressed. It makes her edgy and grit her teeth. She probably thought I wanted to talk about Dad again—about what he did. She always got squirmy whenever I brought it up, so she probably thought I was just trying a different tactic. But really, I’d given up on that—Mom talking about Dad’s death. It wasn’t going to happen. I got that. Now I just wanted to hear about the grief process—her take on it. Again. What was “normal.”

I mean, I knew it was normal to be spacey. Like that lady on The Grief Forum said. Mom had said the same thing—that she lived on autopilot after her sister died. She kept saying, “It’s normal,” even when I tried to explain about my time lapses. She had told me not to worry. She kept saying that—don’t worry. “It’s all normal, sweetie. You’re just grieving.”

So … I wanted to hear that now. I
needed
to hear it. That somehow, this was normal, too, what happened today—part of grieving. I needed to talk about it or I was going to start ripping out my hair.

But just then, Craig burst out of the den, wiggling his precious, important fax at Mom. She sighed with relief and started stuffing her papers back into her briefcase, talking to me as she got her essentials situated.

“Sweetie, we’ll talk when I get home, okay? We won’t be gone long—I promise. I want to hear all about the job hunt.”

Then she was gone, out the door with Craig. She didn’t even look at me. Not once.

I had an overwhelming urge to scream. She wanted to hear about my job hunt? So did I.

***

After Mom and Craig left, I stayed where I was, frozen in the kitchen. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, tight, tight, then counted to ten, breathing slowly, like they show you for women in labor—breathe in, breathe out, breathe in and out. I focused on that—just breathing, ‘cause otherwise I was going to start crying again. Or do that screaming thing. The thing I wanted to do sort of bad. But it would make me feel even more crazy.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, all the while thinking sad, bitter thoughts. I wasn’t going to do it anymore—try to talk to Mom. Seriously. It hurt. Like, killed. And I had enough pain to deal with right now. Too much. I could barely deal as it was. Face it, I wasn’t even dealing (hello—stranger’s arms). Screw Mom and her crap about her wanting us to make a “new start.” Screw everything she said when I first came back.

She didn’t want a new start. She wanted to be left alone. Except when she had a random moment to spare, then she’d pry into my life—
dig
into it—like she was trying to make up for all of her neglect. She’d dig and dig and dig. And be a spaz. But she was looking for the wrong things. Untrue things. They weren’t even close to true, but she’d already convicted me of them and there was no changing her mind.

Fine. I was going to stop trying. Seriously, screw her.

Actually … working up anger made me feel a little better. Stronger. I ran up to my room, figuring I needed to find out about grief symptoms on my own. That’s what the Internet was for, right? Who needed a mom when you had Wikipedia?

Only, it turned out my brain was too plagued with scattered thoughts: Mom, Dad’s death … coming-to on a stranger’s bed. I couldn’t concentrate. I needed my iPod. Bad. No way could I do research without my music. I needed something to quiet my worries. Keep me sane—so to speak.

But my iPod was nowhere to be found. I searched everywhere. It wasn’t in my sweater pocket, though I knew that’s where I put it this morning when I left for the mall today. Still, I looked everywhere; tore my room apart. Just ‘cause. But I knew it should be in my sweater. I bit my lip, thinking. It must have fallen out at Sawyer’s while we were macking on his bed.

My stomach turned. Sawyer.

Ugh! I didn’t want to think about him.… Not that he hadn’t been nice. He had, I guess. Under the circumstances. My face burned as I remembered his hands on me, all over me. My heart did a weird acrobat thing.

Whoa, no. No way. I pushed my thoughts of him away and opened my laptop again. I didn’t want to think about Sawyer, about his lips on me. Although, they had felt nice. Really nice. But he had gone further than I’d ever allowed anyone, ever. It’s just … I hadn’t thought it was real.

I lay my head against my desk, haunted, remembering his kisses had made me think of Jeremy. Not at the beginning—in the beginning I had thought it was Grey. Because Grey was recent. Logical. But later, I started to let myself think … hope …

I clutched my stomach.

... Jeremy.

I never allowed myself to think of him. Ever. I traced my lips now, for a moment filled with warmth, remembering how giddy and happy I’d felt starting to think it was him kissing me.

“Stupid!” I scolded myself aloud, trying to get a grip. “Wake up Jodi!” It was crazy to think of Jeremy. Pathetic.

 I didn’t want to think about him. I’d rather think about Sawyer than Jeremy. Sawyer who I woke up kissing. Sawyer who I’d vowed I never wanted to see again. Even thoughts of him were preferable and made more sense than dwelling on Jeremy. I shot up from my desk chair so fast I almost knocked it over.

I couldn’t do research without my iPod. So, suddenly, that was my new plan. I was going to go get my iPod. Now, tonight. Which meant I would have to face Sawyer—again. Which was scary and humiliating. But the thing was, I needed to. I had to. I mean, it was going to happen anyway, sometime. No doubt he went to Roosevelt High. As soon as summer break was over, I’d have to face him anyway. Better to get it over with now, when there wasn’t a big school crowd around us. Maybe I could smooth things over—somehow—so word of my freak out wouldn’t get back to Jeremy. I’d die if Jeremy found out I’d acted like a kook.

I grabbed my house key from off my desk and headed out the front door.

As I walked to Sawyer’s house, I formed a plan—I’d talk to Sawyer and apologize for being a spaz and maybe we could end up being friends. Now that I was back in town, I needed a friend. Desperately. When I lived here before I went to an all-girl school for the first year, forty-five minutes away from the house, then the following year I’d talked Mom into letting me go to school with Jeremy. It was only for a few months. During that time I didn’t make any friends, not really. I didn’t want to; didn’t even try. I’d had Jeremy and that was all I wanted. But now I didn’t have Jeremy; now I was alone. Completely alone.

I took a deep breath.

Sawyer seemed nice, though. And anyway, if nothing else, I needed my iPod back. There was definitely that. So, I didn’t let myself chicken out. I kept walking.

But when I got to Sawyer’s I started to rethink my plan. It was getting late and he already thought I was crazy. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to knock on his door in the middle of the night—even if I had a good excuse, like my iPod. Maybe I should have waited until morning like a normal person.