Reckless Girls(23)
“Send that one to me,” she says to Amma, and as soon as the text comes through, she sets it as her phone background.
Four weeks ago, before they left for Europe, the background was a picture of her family. All four of them, her mom and dad, and her younger brother, Brian. Smiling with the setting sun behind them, their faces a little sunburned because they had been on their annual beach trip to Florida.
The last vacation they’d taken.
Brittany used to look at that picture on her phone and wonder if it would’ve been better if she’d known it would be the last time. She had fought with Brian, who’d brought his PlayStation with him and spent hours screaming into his headset, those piercing whoops and battle cries that drove her insane. There had been too many slamming doors on that trip, and on the last night, Brittany sat on her bed, playing on her phone, and told her mom just to bring something back from dinner, because she didn’t feel like going out.
Her mom had been disappointed, but had agreed.
That was the thing that still killed Brittany to remember, the way the corners of her mother’s mouth had turned down, the soft sigh as she’d closed Brittany’s door, her dark hair swinging just above her shoulders as she’d turned away.
After the accident, Brittany replayed that sigh over and over in her mind, just like she catalogued every missed and never returned phone call, every time she hadn’t replied to a like or a comment on a Facebook post.
Sometimes she hates that past version of herself so much she wants to crawl out of her own skin.
But doing this, replacing the background on her phone, helps a little. It makes her feel like she’s starting to build that new, future self that Dr. Amin keeps telling her about.
She looks at those smiling girls, and she almost believes she’s one of them.
* * *
BUT THE CRYING STARTS AGAIN on their fifth night in Rome.
It shocks her at first, the sobs that seem to well up in her chest out of nowhere, the sudden ache in her throat. That panicky feeling, her face too hot, her eyes stinging, her whole body shaking as she tries so hard to push the tears away.
I thought I was getting better, and the words are pitiful even in the silence of her own mind. I thought this was over.
But she’s beginning to realize there isn’t an over, not really. The waves can just keep on coming like this, and there’s nothing she can do to stop them.
Amma doesn’t cross the space between their beds this time, doesn’t make those soothing noises that Brittany simultaneously hates and appreciates, so Brittany stays curled up into herself like a wounded animal, waiting for the sun to rise.
Once it does, they go back out, walk the streets, duck into shops, eat more overpriced pasta, and it’s only as the sky turns to dusk, as they sit at another outdoor café, that Brittany utters the words that have been on the tip of her tongue all day.
“Maybe we should go home.”
She knows Amma is thinking it, too: that they’ve had their moments of fun, but this isn’t the escape they were after. Except, maybe it is, for Amma? Brittany can never really tell. She loves the other girl, loves her more dearly than she’s ever loved any friend, but over and over again, she’s reminded that they only have this one awful thing in common, and nothing else. She doesn’t really know what Amma is like, regular Amma, in-the-before Amma. She could be suffering, too—just better at hiding it.
Now, she looks across the table at Brittany and gives a little shrug. “Maybe we should. My money is getting tight, and at least we got to see Paris and we’ve had nearly a week here in Rome. That’s not nothing.”
It’s true. Brittany had always dreamed of visiting both cities, had hung a poster of the Eiffel Tower in her dorm room, for fuck’s sake, and now she’s also tasted gelato in the shadow of the Colosseum. Maybe it’s enough.
She stirs her cappuccino, glances over at the table of people next to her, raggedy backpacks by their feet. They’re a little sunburned, their clothes wrinkled and dull in the way things get when they’re repeatedly cleaned in hostel sinks and never dry completely. One of the girls leans down to unbuckle her sandal, laughing when the straps fall away to reveal stripes of pale skin amongst a layer of dust. Brittany’s accumulated that dust, too, walking through Rome, and she wishes she had that girl’s easy laugh, wishes all of this wasn’t so fucking hard for her for some reason.
And then she realizes the girl is staring directly at her, her sheaf of strawberry-blond hair pushed behind one ear as she grins and waves at Brittany.
Brittany nods back, but to her surprise, the girl actually gets up from her seat, crossing the crowded little café to come over to their table.
“Hiya!” she says brightly, and then she’s offering her hand, a faded, fraying string bracelet around one slender wrist. “I’m Chloe.”
A small moment. But that’s how it starts.
Dear Mama/Pop/Sis:
Greetings from Paradise! Me and the boys landed a real sweet assignment and find ourselves on [CENSORED]. It’s so pretty, I wish you all could see it. Like that book I made Pop read every night when I was twelve, Robinson Crusoe. There are palm trees everywhere, coconuts, too. One of the fellas, [CENSORED], even made a pet out of a monkey! We call him Barnum, and [CENSORED] trained him to take peanuts right out of our hands. It really passes the time, but it makes me miss home and Shep even more. He still doing good? I know he’s getting old, but tell him he’s gotta hang on til we’re done whooping these guys!