A Tragic Kind of Wonderful(35)
Tears have turned into audible crying. This happens sometimes on first days for no other reason, so I hope she doesn’t suspect there’s more to it this time.
“I’m fine,” I say. I don’t sound fine.
“Let me know if you need anything.”
I need to stop thinking. It’ll just get worse. I grab the Ativan and shake out a couple tabs. Mom refilled my water bottle and I slug them down, but it’ll take time for them to work. If they work. Sometimes they aren’t enough to pull me down when I’m ramping up.
Zumi didn’t just close the door. It was how she glanced at me, her eyes slack, not squinted. Everything about her said yes, I could come back tomorrow— Wait … not tomorrow. Today.
I’m in no state to do it now. But I can’t flake on her. She’s broken over her best friend—also her crush—completely abandoning her after years of being together every day, and I got my period—it doesn’t rate. Only there’s no denying I wouldn’t be any good to her now. I might even make things worse. I have to put this off in some way that doesn’t seem like I’m bailing on her.
I get my phone. After typing countless trivial variations, I send her a text.
Feel shitty.
Come tomorrow instead?
I’m not sure what I’ll do if she doesn’t answer. Luckily I don’t have to think about it long.
No. Everyone back by 5
and here all day tomorrow.
I get another text almost right away:
Don’t come if you’re sick.
I don’t want to catch it.
This means she did want me to come. And she still does, even though she’s not asking. Or she’d tell me not to. Definitely. Maybe.
Not contagious.
See you in an hour.
HAMSTER IS STUMBLING
HUMMINGBIRD IS PERCHED
HAMMERHEAD IS THRASHING*
HANNIGANIMAL IS DOWN
Zumi’s house is only a ten-minute ride away but I don’t feel like sitting on my bike. I also want to give the Ativan more time to kick in.
After walking a few blocks, it occurs to me that among countless trips to Zumi’s, this is only the second time I’ve gone on foot. It’s fitting because that other time was when we argued and then stopped talking.
It was also a Saturday like today. I walked because Mom had taken away my bike the night before and put it in her bedroom. That’s actually what gave me the idea of parking it routinely in the house. It never occurred to me before that it didn’t have to stay in the garage.
Mom had been secretly checking my odometer—for the same reason she’d made Nolan put it on the bike, I later learned—to make sure I was only riding to and from school and around the neighborhood. This particular Friday night she demanded to know how I’d managed to put on over forty miles that day. I was taken so much by surprise, by her knowing and by the angry fear in her voice, I told the truth. After school I had biked twenty miles up the Great Highway to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mom completely lost it: yelling, crying. It scared me so much that I didn’t tell her the rest. How I hadn’t turned off my light the night before and was going on thirty-six hours without getting sleepy for the first time in my life. About the big fight I had with Annie right after school that day, and how afterward my heart rate shot up over a thousand and I thought my head was going to explode from panic. I had to let the energy out somehow, so I pedaled as fast as I could to the one place within reach where I have calm, happy memories of Nolan with nothing bad mixed in. When I reached the bridge my heart was pounding hard but slower. I sat against the south tower in our special spot till I calmed down some more. Then I rode back home.
I stayed up again all that Friday night, approaching fifty hours awake, and snuck out of the house the next morning to walk to Zumi’s. I’d spent that entire second sleepless night plotting how we could stay friends and I had to get to her before Annie did.
I knocked on the Shimuras’ door, oblivious to the fact that seven thirty on a Saturday morning was way too early to be here. Luckily I’d become a common presence and Zumi’s dad was already headed out; he often worked weekends on rental properties he owned. He frowned while he shuttled me to Zumi’s room, telling me to be quiet since Zumi’s mom was still asleep.
*
I sit on the edge of Zumi’s bed. She doesn’t wake up. I bounce. I whisper her name. Louder. I put a hand on her shoulder and rock her.
Her eyes open, bleary.
“Mel? What’s going on?”
Where are all my plans from last night? I guess I was just thinking around and around what I wanted: to stay friends with Zumi. That means she has to break away from Annie, too, but a voice in my head keeps saying that’s never going to happen.
“Annie and I aren’t friends anymore.”
“I know, she told me last night.” Zumi sits up and rubs her eyes. She’s wearing the ‘love pirate’ pajamas I gave her on her last birthday: cutlasses, arrow-pierced hearts, and Jolly Rogers. “Where were you all afternoon?”
“I … I rode up to the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“No you didn’t.”
“It took hours. And I had to walk here since my mom took away my bike. What’d Annie tell you?”
“Why’ve you been so weird? Ever since I got back from Thanksgiving. And hard to find. Annie, too. What’s going on?”