Where It Began(31)

Huey, who is watching me make my way across my bedroom to the bathroom, for once puts down the camera.

He says, “How could you let this happen to you?”

I say, “I don’t know.”

Also, “Shut up.”

There are days of Clue and Monopoly marathons that I am pretty sure Lisa and Anita are conspiring to let me win. Days that last so long my mother makes Juanita stay late and cook us actual dinner instead of getting the bad Chinese takeout Vivian slaps on the table night after night. Days when I figure that I might actually die if Billy doesn’t call me.

Not to mention, Lisa and Anita want to talk about everything too.

“About what you told Lisa,” Anita says. “We should talk about it.”

“About you crashing Billy’s car . . . ,” Lisa says.

“Could we please, pretty please, pretty pretty please not talk about it?” I say. The thought of Anita trying to devise a scientifically perfect way to kick my brain into gear while Lisa prays for me is more than I can take.

“Not that we want to be pushy or intrude on your privacy,” Anita says. As if it didn’t take until tenth grade for her to blurt out that if her mother made her spend another Christmas vacation at a theme park, national park, or slogging through the Getty Museum showing off her Hindi language skills to an entourage from New Delhi one more time, she was going to run away by Greyhound bus and hide out in her brother Sanjiv’s co-op at UC Berkeley.

“We know that you’re a private person,” Lisa says, even though she, herself, has never uttered one single word about what she and Huey have been up to since seventh grade. Despite the fact that Anita and I are more than slightly curious.

“We want to support you,” Anita says. “But some things don’t make sense—”

“Can’t you just accept that I don’t remember anything and I’m not planning to remember anything any time soon and just leave it there?” It is the embarrassing and horrifying truth.

Lisa and Anita exchange looks and gape at me.

“Gabby, please just think about it—”

“We want to help, but—”

“I mean it,” I say. “So there’s nothing to talk about. And there isn’t going to be anything to talk about either.”

So Lisa and Anita just keep letting me be the tiny Monopoly top hat, and we just keep playing.





XXIII


AND THEN, JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, A FEW MINUTES after Anita gets into Lisa’s mother’s Saab and they tool back up Estrada with their board games rattling around on the backseat, Billy’s screen name shows up on my laptop.

I am drunk on the possibility of bliss.





pologuy: hey baby. how r u?





And I go, Stay cool stay cool stay cool. Just try to be somewhat amusing.





gabs123: life sucks. lying around getting turned into a geisha with a makeup mask.



pologuy: geisha? verrrrrrry interesting. what r u wearing geisha?





And I go, Stop whining. Stop it. Do you want him back or not?





gabs123: makeup. lots of makeup. don’t even have to get out of bed for it. vivian delivers.



pologuy: wish i could c



gabs123: so come see.





Why not? I know he won’t.

And then I think, OMG what are you doing, Gabriella? Do. Not. Cling. Do not ask him where he’s been or what he’s been doing or why he didn’t call sooner.

I am just so far back there in that awful place of not quite knowing, it’s as if I just met him. It is as if I am back where I don’t even know him again.



pologuy: did u have ur fun talk with the cops yet?



gabs123: FUN?!?!?!?!?!?!



pologuy: i’ve had several fun talks. i have my own personal policeman



gabs123: what did u say to ur probation guy? r u ok?



pologuy: u first



gabs123: what can i say to them anyway? i don’t remember.



pologuy: r u serious? r u still gonna say u don’t remember?



gabs123: seems like a plan.



pologuy: yowza! they’re gonna go apeshit



gabs123: y?



pologuy: r u kidding me?



gabs123: what am i supposed to do about it? all i can do is say sorry 500 times and cry. what can they even do about it? if someone could make me remember, they already would have.



pologuy: hold up. u actually said u don’t remember to the cops? they really hate that. does ur lawyer know about this?



gabs123: i don’t have a lawyer remember?



pologuy: and they bought it?



gabs123: nash, i don’t even remember when i told them that i don’t remember. but that’s what i’m going to say. y wouldn’t they buy it?



pologuy: u r freaking amazing



gabs123: duh



pologuy: and this is the plan?



gabs123: it’s my plan and i’m sticking to it. do u have some alternate plan?