A Tragic Kind of Wonderful(36)

“You were away at your grandma’s. I got tired of Annie being such a bitch—”

“Annie’s not—”

“She is! She always has to have everything her way. She treats Connor like dirt.”

“He doesn’t care.”

“That doesn’t make it okay! She’s mean and treats you like dirt, too.”

“No she doesn’t. What’s gotten into you—”

“I just don’t want us doing what she says all the time!”

“I don’t do whatever she—”

“You do! Tell me one time you didn’t.”

“I …”

“See, you can’t! You always do what she says.”

“I just like the same things. She doesn’t order me around like Connor.”

“See, you just said it! She says what she wants and if we don’t do it, she … she picks at us, saying little bitchy things till we do.”

Zumi shakes her head. She won’t look at me.

I feel her slipping away. “Did Annie tell you not to talk to me?”

Zumi rolls her eyes and groans. She pulls her knees up and drops her head down on them and disappears behind her hair.

“She did, didn’t she?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Look at me, Zumi! Look at me!”

She doesn’t.

“You’re … you’re my best friend! How can you believe her instead of me?”

“She’s my best friend.”

My heart stops.

“Zumi, I … I … I …” I can’t talk straight anymore. And it’s not just my tongue—it’s like my brain is stuttering.

“She said you’ve been going behind my back. That you were glad I was finally the one gone for a week this time.” She lifts her head and looks at me. “Were you?”

I want to shout NO! but I can’t. It feels like a hand is squeezing my throat. I shake my head.

“Say it, Mel,” she whispers. I’ve never heard her sound like this before, like she’s pleading. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t say those things.”

I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe. I’m getting dizzy. All I can do is shake my head harder and it makes me dizzier.

Her face pinches and she drops her nose to her knees again.

“I don’t get it. Everything was so great.”

I reach out for her arm—

The door swings open. Standing there is Zumi’s mom in a dark red robe.

“Zumi? What’s Mel doing here? Why is she crying?”

I leap off the bed. Zumi’s mom tries to stop me—I dodge and run down the hall.

“Mel!” she calls. “Honey, wait!”

I yank open the door and run outside, over the porch, across the lawn, down the street …

*

Four hours later I was in a hospital. The kind where everyone’s in chairs instead of beds.

I’d been ramping up since Thanksgiving. Dr. Jordan later said he’d seen me acting strange and was keeping an eye on me, and when I didn’t show up at the Silver Sands that Friday afternoon, he told Grandma Cece, and she told Mom, that I probably had bipolar disorder. Like HJ. Like Nolan.

That’s what Mom had just heard when she found out I’d ridden my bike alone twenty miles up the Great Highway to the Suicide Capital of the World.

Then that Saturday morning, when I burst into the house after running home from Zumi’s, Mom was on the phone in a panic. Zumi’s mom had called and now Mom was calling everyone else we knew, looking for me, and was about to call the police. That solo run was the last time I got to be alone for more than a year.

In those awful weeks, and then months—getting my diagnosis, seeing doctors, trying all kinds of meds, missing school, making up illnesses, hiding from Zumi, trying to catch up on schoolwork—that morning at Zumi’s house just got further and further away. Then it was too late. Holly still thinks Zumi abandoned me when I got sick, but really it was the other way around.

Walking back to Zumi’s now, it feels like I’m about to finish the conversation I ran away from sixteen months ago, only this time with the help of so much medical science running through my veins and brain.

Yet when I reach Zumi’s house, the Ativan is helping but I’m still not ready to knock. I sit down on the bench and put my hand on the mark left by Eddie’s jack-o’-lantern again.

The door opens.

I’m afraid to look up. I’m here to help Zumi. To try and patch things up. But I’m feeling fragile and unbalanced.

“Why are you here?” It’s not an accusation. She sounds confused.

“I want to help.”

“Why?”

I think a moment. Then I say, “Because I’m your friend.”

“Huh. Is that why you disappeared on me? And wouldn’t answer my texts. Or my calls. Or the door?”

“I was really sick.”

She blows air through her nose. “You couldn’t have been that sick.”

I don’t say anything.

“All those things Annie said, about how you were tired of me, because you thought I was … obnoxious … I didn’t believe her at first.”