A Tragic Kind of Wonderful(34)
I nod and pour the whole batch of cheesy noodles over the eggs. I grab a fork and sit with my plate at the table. The toaster pops. Aunt Joan sits across from me and sets down a ginormous glass of milk, followed by a bottle of ibuprofen, and slides them over. Mom brings two slices of toast, each glistening with enough butter to qualify as frosting.
“God, that’s revolting.” HJ reaches forward. “Especially this—”
I hunch and growl, fork out like a weapon.
“Easy!” She pulls back. “I wasn’t … Okay, I was. I guess you need it more than me.”
I take some tablets with a big slug of milk, and then I dig in.
HJ glances at Mom and says, “Pats here tells me you went on a date! How’d it go?”
“Fine,” I say. With a full mouth, it comes out like fawn.
“Fine? What’d you do?”
“Dinner. Thai Fu Son.”
“That’s not how this works, Mel. What happened? Paint a picture!”
I swallow, resigning myself to speaking complete sentences, or at least more words. “Walking. Eating. No sweaty car sex. No groping, no tongues, no holding hands. No moon over the beach. No getting caught in the rain. Not even a good-night kiss.”
“You sure it was a date?”
“Joanie …” Mom warns.
“I’m being serious. You go out with friends sometimes. If you didn’t do anything friends wouldn’t do, what made it a date?”
“We said it was.” I’m not going to explain how we decided it was a pre-date.
“All right.” HJ nods. “The shy ones don’t always kiss you the first time.”
I guess by this answer, and HJ’s eyes, and the pause in the noisy cleanup behind me, that Mom’s probably glaring at her. The clatter resumes.
“So you like him? He going to ask you out again?”
I close my eyes. “I’m not a mind reader.” I open them again. “We said we’d do it again.”
“You set up something specific? Sometimes they say that but—”
“Joanie …” Mom warns again.
“We didn’t but we’re going to. If he doesn’t bring it up soon, I will.”
“Well, don’t need to go that far—”
“Joan,” Mom says. “Stop.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Stop. Talking.”
She does. I keep my face down and concentrate on shoveling in food.
HJ comes around the table. She wraps her long bony arms around me and pushes her cheek against mine, both of us facing my messy plate.
“I love you, Mel.”
She lets go and kisses my head. “I’ve got to put in a few hours. The good part about working on Saturday is wearing jeans to the office. Jeans are my best feature.”
By the time HJ is out the door, I don’t hear Mom in the kitchen. I finish eating and can think of nothing except how I want to cocoon up and wait for the world to spin around a few more times before I come out again.
Mom appears and takes my dishes. “I made up your bed. I also got your laundry out so I won’t have to go in there again this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” I stand.
“Did you have a nice time last night?”
I nod.
“Good.” She puts my dishes in the sink and turns on the faucet. “You know she just worries about you.”
I head down the hall.
“I worry about her, too.”
*
My moods are beyond frustrating, especially when they directly contradict reason. Period hormones can trigger mood swings and push my symptoms especially hard, but so does regular old stress. Not just the bad kind, either. Dr. Jordan told me bipolar disorder doesn’t distinguish between anxiety and excitement. The cruel irony is how this can add up to feeling nothing but dark clouds because things went well yesterday.
No holding hands, no good-night kiss, and he said fondness. He said other things, but maybe he was just being nice. Do we have a connection or don’t we? Am I just seeing what I want to see? The only reason you recognize yourself in a horoscope is that you can see what you want anywhere if you look hard enough.
We exchanged numbers but I haven’t heard from him. God, it was only last night; why would he call this soon? It would be nice if he did, though. I wish he would. I could always text him—except HJ would kill me if she found out I texted a guy first.
And where’s the girl who wanted to push back last night, to keep him far enough away to protect both of us? Or here’s a better question: Which girl is the real me?
And with Zumi, I got excited as I pedaled away from her house, but all I had was asking if I could come back and she closed the door on me— No! The good things yesterday, I didn’t imagine them. This paranoia, this isn’t real. My imagination is spinning its wheels, questioning everything that’s no longer right in front of me proving itself real.
I can think clearly enough to know that second-guessing everything now is just chickenshit bipolar shenanigans. Yet knowing this still doesn’t stop me from feeling like a freshman again, carrying my lunch tray past Annie, Zumi, and Connor, afraid they’ve forgotten me, or that our first conversation hadn’t meant what I thought— Damn it, stop! These tears running down my nose, puddling on my pillow, with this feeling that the world outside is running smoothly without me, doesn’t need me, doesn’t want me, doesn’t even know I’m here … none of that’s real. It’s just chemicals— A soft knock at the door makes me jump. “Mel?”