Thirteen Plus One (28 page)

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Do you think she ... died immediately?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them, because how would Amanda know? And if she hadn’t died immediately, was that really something to dwell on?

“I’m pretty sure,” Amanda said.

“Me too,” I said. “I think, um ... yeah.”

“I thought we could bury her in the backyard,” she said. She gazed at me from under her choppy bangs, which, come to think of it, were a paler blond than her hair used to be. They were practically white, or maybe the right word was “platinum.” She squinched one eye, perhaps to put a little distance between us. “I mean ... if you ... ?”

“Of course,” I said.

She nodded again, and sniffled again, and swiped her hand beneath her nose. Then she lifted the box with Sweet Pea’s body in it and went around the side of her house.

I followed, feeling as if I were stepping back in time. I knew these magnolia trees; Amanda and I used to make boats out of the broad, green leaves. We’d float them in the gutter after a rainstorm. And I knew this wrought iron gate that separated the front yard from the back. I knew how to jingle-jangle the latch to make it squeak open, and so I stepped forward and did it, since Amanda had her hands full. She gave me a small smile.

In the backyard, I was hit by so many memories that I felt as if I were in the company of ghosts. The gnarled dogwood with one branch sticking straight out—Amanda and I dangled from that branch for
hours
, trying to get up enough nerve to “fall” and break our arms. The concrete stepping-stone inlaid with fragments of brightly colored glass, which Amanda had made from a kit one year. “I love you, Mom and Dad!” it said in little kid finger painting. The clump of honeysuckle growing at the far edge of the yard, where a wasp had flown up inside Amanda’s shirt and stung her three times before I figured out what was going on and wrestled her shirt over her head.

Afterward, we’d quarreled about it.

“It was a bumblebee,” Amanda insisted. “They sting the worst, and I could feel its fuzziness.”

“No, it was a wasp,” I argued. “Bumblebees die after one sting, and this one stung you
three separate times
. The proof is in the pudding.”

I wondered, now, if Amanda had been mad at me for ripping her shirt off right there in the open. We were only ten and had nothing to be embarrassed about. But Amanda began caring about that stuff earlier than I did—not that I knew it then. Maybe she felt embarrassed, in addition to being angry and in pain. Maybe she poured all of those emotions into our stupid bumblebee/wasp squabble.

Standing here four years later, I almost asked her. I almost said, “Hey ... remember the time that wasp stung you?”

But I decided it wasn’t appropriate. Plus, what if she just blinked at me?

The old Amanda, if asked about that wasp, would have shoved me and said, “
Bumblebee,
you mean. And of course I remember. I almost died.”

She didn’t, though. Almost die. Two years later, I’d get stung thirty-two times by a swarm of yellow jackets, and I wouldn’t die, either.

It made me feel ancient.

“You think ... oh, I don’t know.” Amanda kicked a patch of ground with the toe of her sneaker. “Here?”

“Sure,” I said. She’s chosen a spot beneath the dogwood tree. “Sweet Pea would like it. All the birds and everything.”

Amanda started crying anew, because Sweet Pea loved chasing birds. Used to love chasing birds.

“God, Amanda, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like an idiot for saying the wrong thing once again. “I’m making everything worse, aren’t I?”

“What? No!” she said, and her reply was so vehement that I believed her. “You came. You’re here.” She gestured around. “Do you see anyone else lined up to help me bury her?”

I blinked. Had she asked any of her other friends to come over? If so, surely no one would have actually said no. Would they have?

Amanda sucked in a shuddery breath. She carefully set Sweet Pea down and said, “I’ll get a shovel. Be right back.”

She left, and I scratched my head. My eyes went to Sweet Pea, then just as quickly away.

I had to do something, so I got down on my knees and picked clovers from the grass. I wove them into a tiny garland, which I placed on Sweet Pea’s head like a fairy crown.

“Be well, wherever you are,” I said. “Watch the birds, listen to their songs, and know that you will be missed.”

Amanda knelt beside me. I hadn’t realized she’d returned, and my face flamed. But Amanda put down the shovel and took my hand. With her other hand, she stroked Sweet Pea’s lifeless body.

“Go on,” she said.

“Um ... you were a good cat,” I said, faltering.

Amanda made a chokey sound, which made me make a chokey sound. My eyes filled with tears.

“Better than good,” she whispered. “The best.”

 

I stayed for a while, afterward, and we drank Clementine Izzes and talked. I told her I liked her haircut, which I did, after I’d had time to get used to it.

“Gail thinks it’s retarded,” Amanda said.

“What? Not at all, and I hate it when people say that.” I thought about Brooklyn’s baby brother in his walker. “People don’t choose to be retarded. It just ... happens. It shouldn’t be used as an insult, just like ‘gay’ shouldn’t be used as an insult.”

Amanda neither agreed nor disagreed, and I worried she thought I was slamming her when my intent was to slam Gail.

“She says it makes my eyes look too big,” she said, looking at me with blue eyes that
were
almost impossibly huge.

I
pfff-
ed
.
“She’s jealous. Since when did big eyes become a bad thing?” I cocked my head, considering her quirky blond tufts. “Anyway, you look like a forest sprite, or an elf.”

She laughed. “Only you, Winnie.”

“Only me what?”

“Would say someone looked like a forest sprite and mean it as a compliment.”

I smiled as if I understood, but how could comparing someone to a forest sprite not be a compliment? I would love to look like a forest sprite. Or an elf.

She said nice things about how tan I was, and I said, “You should see Cinnamon. Omigod, she is so dark.” Then I worried I’d hurt her feelings by bringing up Cinnamon, or made things weird somehow. Then I told myself,
Winnie, stop being a spaz. Things already are weird, and plus, the two of you do have different friends. It’s not a secret, and it’s not something you need to hide. And plus, if things are ever to get un-weird, you’ve got to just relax.

So I asked how Gail was, and Malena, and Amanda said the two of them spent all summer in synchronized swimming camp.

“Reeeaally,” I said, drawing out the
e
sound.

“They wore flowered swim caps and matching teal swimsuits,” Amanda said.

“Like the Aqua Girls!” I giggled, flashing on our short-lived club from sixth grade. “We had to wear teal for that, remember?”

“Oh, God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But for synchronized swimming, it’s even worse. They had to wear
nose plugs.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

I took a swig of my Izze, loving the image of Gail and Malena wearing nose plugs. But I didn’t want to be a brat, so I said, “That’s hilarious ... but kinda cool, I guess.” I envisioned rows of girls doing fancy things with their arms while egg-beater-ing their legs beneath the water. “Very old-school glamorous.”

“I guess,” Amanda said.

“How about Aubrey?” I asked, referring to her goth friend. Maybe Amanda was tighter with her these days than Gail and Malena.

“Aubrey?” Amanda repeated.

“Yeah, Aubrey. How’s she doing?”

Amanda drew her eyebrows together as if trying to establish whether or not I was kidding. “Winnie ... Aubrey moved to Alaska.”

“Alaska?
For real? When did that happen?”

“At the beginning of June. She e-mailed once, then”—she did a magician’s
snap
—“nothing. Nada. Guess she’s communing with the moose.”

“Or with Karen,” I said. Karen went to elementary school with us, and then, like Aubrey, disappeared into thin air when her dad got a new job—also in Alaska, of all things. “Remember Karen?”

Amanda blinked. “Omigod. I haven’t thought about Karen in ...” She drew her thumb to her mouth. “She
did
move to Alaska, didn’t she?”

“We brought up the moose with her, too, before she left. She cried and said she didn’t want to make friends with any moose—or maybe she said
mooses.
She said she just wanted Louise.”

Amanda whistled. “I’m kind of ...” She shook her head. “You’re kind of blowing my mind here, Winnie. Don’t you think it’s bizarre that Karen and Aubrey would
both
move to Alaska?”

“Well, sure,” I said. “But no more bizarre than life in general, you know?”

“Maybe,” she said. She eyed me. “No, I think it’s pretty bizarre.”

“You could e-mail Aubrey and give her Karen’s name,” I suggested.

“I could,” she said dubiously.

I watched her face. “You’re not going to.”

First she looked guilty. Then she laughed. “Y-y-yeah, I’d say there’s about ... hmmm ... a point-five percent chance I’ll be e-mailing Aubrey about Karen. I don’t even remember Karen’s last name, do you?”

I did. It was Hughes. But I saw no need to say so. “Alaska’s a pretty big state,” I agreed. “Lots of people, not to mention all those moose.”

Amanda put down her Izze bottle. “You’re funny, Winnie,” she said, as if it were a revelation. But it wasn’t. I’d always been funny. She’d simply forgotten, just as she’d forgotten Karen’s last name.

“I’m charming and delightful, too,” I said lightly.

“You are,” she granted. She furrowed her brow. “Why did we...? ”She broke off.

“Why did we what?” I said. We were entering dangerous territory—except, didn’t the real danger lie in tiptoeing carefully away? We were blood sisters, after all. Amanda’s blood flowed in mine, and mine in hers.

“Why did we stop being friends?” I said.

She didn’t answer, so I gave it a stab.

“I guess we just ... grew in different directions,” I said. I was trying to be honest, but it came out sounding awfully
how-to-raise-your-teenager-y.
“I didn’t want us to, though.”

“Me, neither,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows, and spots of color rose in her cheeks.

“Well, maybe a little, I did,” she admitted.

I blushed, too, because she
had
wanted to grow in a different direction than me. She’d gone from being my best friend to being embarrassed for me, because I wasn’t into makeup and bras and stuff. And then, not long after, to being embarrassed of me.

Wood sprite
, I thought, and this time it stung.

“But I think you picked better,” she said. “Your friends ... they’re
realer,
I think. Than mine.”

It must have cost her something to say that. How could it not have? And I agreed, not point-five percent, but one hundred percent. Dinah and Cinnamon
were
realer than Malena and Gail and Aubrey.

“Well, you might be right,” I said at last.

“You
know
I am,” she said.

“Okay, fine. You are.”
But I’m proud of you for stepping out of the land of stupid tiptoeing
, I added in my head.

She smiled ruefully.

“Amanda, you can be friends with us, too,” I said, leaning forward. Though as I heard the words come out of my mouth, I wondered,
Really? Can she? What if Dinah and Cinnamon have something to say about this?

A fierce voice spoke up inside me, startling me and making me realize that my younger self was still very much alive.

Now you
listen, the voice said.
If she wants to be your friend, you will make it happen.

“That’s nice,” Amanda said, as if I were throwing her a bone and both of us knew it.

“No,” I said in a tone that left zero room for doubt. “Really.”

My younger self loved Amanda, despite it all. And as it turned out, my nearly fourteen-and-a-half-year-old self did, too.

 

So ... and then ... yeah. I left Amanda’s, and night fell, and the moon rose. The crazy, beautiful moon. I opened my blinds before climbing into bed, and then I curled up under the covers and gave myself over to it. My thoughts loosened as I grew drowsy, and for once, I didn’t rein them in. I just said ...
go
, and they did: to the beach, to heaven, to all the people scattered all over this crazy, beautiful world. And not just people, but cats, too. And dogs, and howling coyotes, and cows with mad jumping skills. Porpoises. Sea turtles. Brooklyn and Lucas. Alphonse with his broad shoulders. Pingy.

And in my dream (I think it was a dream), there was an old lady with long gray braids. She was roller-skating around me, and I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She just laughed. At first I was put out, but then I laughed, too.

“You did it, you know,” she said.

“Did what?” I said, taking awkward, rotating steps to keep her in sight.

She smiled in a knowing way.

“Oh!” I said. “My list!” I did a mental review, putting check marks by all the things I’d accomplished on my To-Do-Before-High-School list. And what do you know? I’d done them all, every single one of them. “You’re right, I did!”

That’s not what I mean,” the old lady said. She skated past me, spreading her arms and lifting one leg in a show-off pose.

“Stop that,” I said. “Could you just be still? Just for one second?”

She sprang into the air, did a half-twist, and landed on her other leg so that she was now gliding backward. “You didn’t need that list,” she said. “You never needed that list.”

“Oh, like you’re the great expert,” I said. I should have been embarrassed at talking to an old lady like that, but I felt like I knew her. Like she could take it.