Anything but Ordinary(23)
Bryce made her way to the basement and tossed her shopping bags onto her bed. Aside from a few dressier diversions Gabby had convinced her to pursue, Bryce had stocked up on her usual V-necks, tank tops, and shorts with pockets.
She opened a drawer of the oval-shaped dresser, only to see it was full: her diving trophies. She felt a pang in her chest. One by one, she lined them up in height order, hanging medals around the gold cups and cylinders that topped each one.
When she leaned to shut the drawer, the edge of something silvery caught her eye. As she opened the drawer farther, she gasped. The tiara. Bryce brought out the worn silver crown, delicately woven with light-pink crystals, and let out a laugh of surprise.
When they were in first grade, the year after Gabby’s father died, Gabby’s mom, Elena, had taken them to a flea market. In one of the bargain bins, Gabby found a tiara. Not just a plastic, painted tiara like you would find in a toy store. A real tiara. The flea market clerk noticed its worth, too, and priced it high. Gabby’s mother refused; money was tight, and Gabby’s birthday had already passed. But Bryce’s own birthday was coming up, and Elena had told Bryce she could pick something out for her present. When she encountered the small, circular package in the brightly wrapped pile of gifts, Bryce didn’t even unwrap it. She immediately handed it to her friend. They spent most of that year playing Princess and Prince, Gabby wearing the crown and Bryce fighting imaginary dragons.
Bryce hung it on one of the tallest trophies, happiness swelling inside her. She’d invite Gabby over one of these days and casually motion to the dresser. She couldn’t wait to see the look of surprise on her friend’s face.
There. She stood back. The monochrome room felt more like hers again, the sparkling tiara and gilded plastic of each prize adding a gold glow to the gray corner.
Just little things, Bryce thought. She could move things little by little to get them back where they were supposed to be. Right? The coma was big. Not diving was big. The wedding would be big. But she could inch back in small ways, running errands with Gabby, talking to Sydney, taking back her room.
Like that window. Her mother must have cracked it to air the room out, and the cicadas’ sounds floated in, their buzzing now hard and wild as the night grew darker. Bryce walked over to it and pressed on the frame, bringing the glass pane down.
And there it was. Her face reflected against the darkness, surprisingly clear. It had changed along with her body, in many of the same ways Gabby’s face had changed. More defined features, vague lines that appeared when she moved her formerly round cheeks.
As she was about to turn away, Bryce noticed a light come on at the back of the property. Someone was in the barn.
She made her way outside. The night dripped with insect noise, and she could feel the tall grasses break beneath her boots. The buzzing was so loud now—she couldn’t remember a time when the cicadas made so much noise. When she approached the barn, she saw a bike leaned against the red-painted doors. A familiar-looking bike. Bryce went inside.
He sat facing away from her on a wooden sawhorse, a camping lantern sitting on the floor beside him.
“Greg,” she said.
He turned, his mouth opening in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to see her there.
“What are you doing here?” Bryce found her fists tightening, but not in anger. It was to get a grasp on what was happening. Her head began to spin.
Greg turned all the way around. His eyes bored deeply into hers. “Same thing I’ve been doing here forever.”
The memories flooded her at the sight of him, biting his nails, his long legs on either side of the sawhorse.
They crashed into her like rapid-fire waves: he and Bryce, on the same seat, legs intertwining. Bryce sneaking up on him as he faced away from her, kissing where his shoulder met his neck. The taste of his mouthwash. Climbing aboard her dad’s propjet, seated beside one another, pretending to fly. Planning where they would go. Curling up in sleeping bags and falling asleep together, waking up just in time to sneak back into the house, the sky turning pink.
But now the wooden beams had a layer of dust an inch thick. The plane her father had been building was covered with an old blue tarp, his tools all put away. He used to work on it every day during his lunch hour. He was going to finish before Bryce went off to college. He had promised. It stood hulking, unfinished, beside Greg like the skeleton of some big animal. It was déjà vu, but all wrong.
“I came here when I was missing you,” Greg explained quietly.
“Oh,” Bryce muttered, imagining him wandering around the dark barn by himself. Her head sparked in pain. She had seen that in her vision, hadn’t she?
Greg stood up. “I missed you every goddamn day. I felt like…” He swallowed. “I didn’t really get the chance to tell you at the restaurant.”
Bryce breathed through her nose, thinly and calmly, as her eyes darted from his thick-lashed eyes to his broad chest to his veined forearms, twitching as he settled against a beam.
She tried to keep her voice steady. “Then why did you…give up on me?”
Greg stopped. His eyes turned to the ceiling for the answer, but when they returned to meet hers, they had the same pain she had seen when he was here alone. “If I had known for a second that there was a chance you were going to wake up, I would have waited. You know I would have.”
“They said I wasn’t going to,” she filled in quietly.