Sunny(3)

Dear Diary,

One more thing about today. I almost bit my tongue off. Just nibbled too hard on it the whole ride home. And if I did bite it off, it would’ve been so gross, because then I would’ve had blood on my teeth. And what if my father, for some reason, cracked a joke or said something funny that made me smile and then he would’ve had to see my cherry chompers? My bloody reds? But he didn’t. And why would he? There was nothing funny, at least not to him. He just bit down on his own tongue, and judging by the dimple in his cheek going in and out, he was biting down pretty hard too.

It was a quiet ride with nothing but the whirr whirr of the air conditioner? a ssssss that sounded more like air leaking out of something than seeping into it.

The cat had my father’s tongue.

Diary, do you know where that saying came from? Cat got your tongue? Me neither. I mean, think about it. It’s like, you’re saying a cat jumped up and shoved its face in my mouth and bit down on my tongue? And is it a cat that looks like a tiger, with the stripes? Or maybe a black cat? Definitely a black cat. Or one of those gray cats that people call blue, even though gray and blue are different colors. But they sound the same. They both sound like a shaky violin, which sounds like a cat crying. Just before it jumps up and bites your tongue off.

Anyway, my dad was the cat, with his own face in his own mouth biting his own tongue. Making him more quiet than usual. A quiet that was thick and itchy like carpet on skin. Because I knew he had a lot to say. How could he not? I’d just lost. Not even lost, gave up. Not really gave up. Gave in. That’s what I did, forfeited my race, and I knew for a fact he wanted to know why. Didn’t he have some story he was dying to blab about? Something about how my mom would be disappointed?

Regina wasn’t a quitter.

Or, Before you, I had never seen anything, anyone, beat her.

Or his favorite, What’s wrong with you? Something to remind me of what I can’t remember. He had to have something to say, and this was the perfect opportunity for Darryl to talk my head off, put it back on, talk it off again, then kick it down the street, then look at headless me and talk my . . . neck off.

That was way worse than the cat-got-your-tongue thing.

What I’m trying to say is, Darryl wouldn’t say a word. And I knew better than to ask him if he wanted to know why I did it. Why I stopped. And why today, a week before my thirteenth birthday, her deathday. Not that he’d flip out and do something crazy, like bite his own tongue off and show me bloody teeth—even though, honestly, I would’ve rather seen that, than . . . that look again. But I would’ve taken that look if it meant we could’ve talked about it.

I guess I’ll just talk to you about it until I can talk to Aurelia about it first thing Monday morning. Which means I have to get through the rest of this weekend, like a tongue trapped in a shut mouth. Like a feather somehow trapped in stone. Like a thwip attached to a thump.





3


Sunday


Dear Diary, Diary-ing’s not for Sundays.

And it’s not that I don’t have nothing to say, or that I don’t want to say it. I just think maybe you deserve a day off to be as blank and closed as you want.

I know I feel that way sometimes.





4


Monday


Dear Diary, Just so you know, Sundays at my house are still basically just Darryl in his boxers sitting in his chair—their chair—reading his boring business magazines about, I guess, ROI, and crinkling up the newspaper, no telling if he really reads the thing, but he definitely crinkles it a lot. And coffee. And cold. Because the house is too big for warm.

This giant castle. So big. Too big for just the two of us. A dining room, a kitchen, a living room, a family room—which, by the way, is where the puzzles are put together. So big there could be other people living here and we wouldn’t even know it. How funny would that be? Another family living on the other side of the house. Maybe a dad who would go to work in a suit. But not a regular suit. A sweat suit. Hmmm. What would he be doing? Maybe he’d be a gym teacher. No. Not that. A dance instructor. And maybe he wouldn’t have a son. Maybe he’d have a daughter, and his daughter’s name would be . . . Moony. And maybe Moony wouldn’t have to write in diaries—not that there’s anything wrong with you. And maybe Moony has a mother. And maybe that mother reads the newspaper all day, and sometimes she looks over at Moony and winks, in between taking sips of coffee, and maybe her coffee doesn’t make the whole house smell like it’s been sprinkled with sugar and set on fire like my father’s does.

All Darryl does all day is takes a sip, then crinkles the paper. Flips the page. Takes a sip. Crinkles the paper. Flips the page. And after a whole Sunday of that—you didn’t miss much—the simple ding-dong of the doorbell this morning basically sounded like disco to me.





Dear Diary,

The only thing weirder than me is my teacher creature. Aurelia. I know I said she might feel like she has to introduce herself to you again, even though she’s been around as long as you have, but I just realized that it’s been years, so maybe you don’t remember her. Maybe it’s you who needs the again-introduction.

Aurelia has blue hair. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s purple. Sometimes orange.

Aurelia has fingernails that always look like they’ve been painted by tiny artists with tiny brushes.