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  It’s no one’s fault, they say.

  Relationships are complicated, they say.

  This will be better for everyone, they say. You’ll see.

  Really? Is it “better for everyone” when your father moves into one of those horrible apartments over by the mall, with the cheap appliances and the scratchy brown carpet? An apartment that, even though there’s a pullout couch, you point-blank refuse to sleep in, partly because you’re mad, and partly because there’s a lingering smell of cat pee from the last tenant?

  Is it “better for everyone” when your father goes to a pharmaceutical sales conference in Atlanta and comes home looking happier than you’ve ever seen him? And now he’s flying to Atlanta every two weeks? Because, guess what, even though the divorce isn’t “official” yet, he’s met someone! And suddenly, at one of your lame Wednesday-night Denny’s dinners, here she is. And she’s so pretty you want to puke.

  Is it “better for everyone” when, surprise! Even though the divorce isn’t “official” yet, they’re engaged? And surprise again, you’re going to be a big sister?

  This all happened in a year. The divorce was final in September; they were married in November; Marnie had Jane in April; they bought the house in June. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Now here we are, September again. My mother is stuck in the hospital and I am stuck in my father’s guest room, staring at the ceiling, while Jane wakes up and starts wailing. Clearly, this is better for everyone.

  * * *

  If I have to spend a whole weekend inside this house, I will go crazy, I realize, so I take Marnie’s bike. She said I could borrow it. I ride around their neighborhood for a while, chugging up hills, flying down. As far as athletic talent goes, this is it for me. I can ride a bike. All those P.E. games—dodgeball, kick ball, volleyball—oh, I am the worst. More than once, I have literally hurt myself in gym class. Slammed my own knee into my nose, poked my own finger in my eye. Dani, though—she’s always been coordinated. She will get that one spot on the cheerleading squad. I know it. When we were friends, we used to do Just Dance on the Wii in her basement. Dani got all the “Gold Moves.” The most I got was “OK.”

  Without really thinking about it, I find myself riding to Dani’s house. How many times have I showed up at the Loomises’ doorstep unannounced on a Saturday morning? Hundreds. Something about the air in Dani’s kitchen—her mom’s potpourri and Lemon Pledge and whatever is baking in the oven—has always smelled like home to me. I think I just need a whiff of it.

  Of course, the minute the door opens, I know I have made a mistake.

  “Anna!” Mrs. Loomis says, all wide-eyed and fake-sounding. She is wearing her aerobics outfit, complete with sweatband. “What a nice surprise!… Girls, look who’s here. It’s Anna!”

  I can see from where I am standing that it’s not just Dani at the table. It’s Jessa Bell and Whitney Anderson. And they didn’t just show up, either. They are wearing pajamas and eating post-sleepover pancakes.

  Like an idiot, I wave.

  Three limp hands wave back.

  “How are you doing, honey?” Mrs. Loomis asks, lowering her voice and squeezing my arm with her sweaty fingers.

  I know what she is asking. It’s not about me and Dani; it’s about my mother.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Her voice drops even lower. “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Good.” Mrs. Loomis smiles and nods. “That’s good … We sent flowers to the hospital,” she adds. “Tulips.”

  Again with the tulips.

  “ARE YOU HUNGRY?” Her voice is suddenly loud, like she’s trying to blast me with good cheer. “DO YOU WANT A PANCAKE?”

  I force a smile and nod. “Okay.”

  “WELL, GRAB A CHAIR! THERE’S PLENTY!”

  Mrs. Loomis gives my arm another squeeze, then hightails it down to the basement, where her workout room is. This is what Dani’s mother does. Power 90, TurboFire, Biggest Loser. Exercise is her life.

  I wish I could follow her down there. Or run out the door, hop on Marnie’s bike, and ride away. But I can’t. Whitney Anderson is waving me over, and you don’t ignore Whitney Anderson. Unlike Jessa Bell, whose power comes from ignoring people she thinks are losers, Whitney is straight-up mean. Oh, she looks sweet and shiny in her cupcake pajamas, and the corners of her mouth are turned upward, but that doesn’t tell you anything. I’ve seen Whitney in action. In sixth grade, just because my hair is dark and curly, she said it looked like pubic hair. For the rest of the year, the boys called me Pubes.

  “How are you, Anna?” Whitney says, as though she talks to me every day.

  “Fine,” I say. I take the empty chair next to Dani, who doesn’t say a word. Jessa, cool as can be, pops a bite of pancake into her mouth.

  “What’d you do last night?” Whitney says.

  It is not an unfriendly question. She is still smiling. But Whitney knows, and I know, and Dani and Jessa know, exactly what she’s saying. Last night, while you were home alone, the three of us were having a blast.

  I tell her I didn’t do much, just hung out.

  “Who’d you hang out with? Sarabeth Mueller?”

  Jessa snorts into her napkin.

  I force a laugh. “No.”

  Dani says nothing.

  “Sarabeth Mueller is a mutant,” Whitney says, smirking. “I swear to God, I’ve never seen anyone so pale in my life. Do you guys remember that time in sixth grade when she got that nasty sunburn? And it peeled all over the place?”

  Jessa shakes her silky blond head. “Oh my God, gross.”

  “Remember Tyler Banks called her a leper?” Whitney says. “And you had to walk her to the nurse, Dee, to get aloe vera?”

  Dani is “Dee” now, apparently. A new name to go with her new friends and her new personality. “Oh my God,” she says. “Yeah. Aloe vera.”

  Suddenly she is standing. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Anna?”

  I look at her face, trying to gauge what she is thinking. “Sure,” I say.

  “Have a good chat!” I hear Whitney call, as I follow Dani out the front door and onto the porch.

  When we’re alone, she turns to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. Which is a bold-faced lie. I am here because I need my best friend. And I thought if we hung out again, just the two of us, she might reconsider. Oh yeah! she would say. I forgot how much fun we have together!

  Dani holds up both hands.

  “What?” I say. “I just felt like coming over.” Then I throw in some sarcasm. “I didn’t realize you had houseguests.”

  It’s funny, but Dani doesn’t laugh. “You’ve put me in an awkward position,” she says.

  “How?”

  “I thought I was clear before.”

  “About what?”

  She hesitates. “About our friendship.”

  “What about it?” I’m looking straight at her. There’s a splotch of maple syrup on one cheek, dry skin on her lips where she always gets it.

  She looks away.

  “What?” I say again. I’m playing dumb and it’s killing me, but I’m not about to back down now.

  “We’re not friends anymore, Anna!” Dani suddenly explodes. “Okay? I’m sorry about your mom, but you can’t just show up at my house uninvited! It’s embarrassing!”

  It’s embarrassing. Well, what is a person supposed to say? There is nothing left to say. My eyes can’t even look at her. I grab the bike, which is propped against the same tree Dani and I once carved our initials into. DL + AC = BFF. Fourth grade, that’s when we did it. We used Mr. Loomis’s jackknife. We got in trouble, but we didn’t care.

  “Anna,” Dani says as I grab Marnie’s helmet, snap it on.

  Don’t look, I tell myself.

  “Anna,” she says again, louder. “Wait. I know that sounded harsh—”

  No, I will not wait. I will hop on and pedal.

  “You’ll make new friends!”

&nb
sp; Pedal, pedal, pedal away.

  * * *

  I find myself at Starbucks, not because I’m hungry but because I don’t want to go back to my dad’s. There’s a boy ahead of me in line, my age, maybe older, wearing a fleece vest. His hair is sticking out around his baseball cap, blond and soft-looking. I pretend to study the pastries while he orders. Grande mocha Frappuccino, extra whipped cream.

  The barista repeats it back. “Grande mocha Frapp, extra whip.” Then, “Would you like to try one of our apple cider doughnuts today?”

  “Uh, no thanks.”

  I open my mouth without thinking. “They’re really good.”

  The boy turns around. Eyes the color of sea glass. Freckly nose. Cute. So cute! “What?” he says.

  “The cider doughnuts,” I say. “They’re actually good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re saying I should get one?”

  “I’m saying you should get one.”

  He smiles at me. I cannot believe it, but he does. I know there are girls this happens to all the time, but I am not one of them.

  “You won’t regret it,” I say.

  He orders the doughnut. I am scanning my brain for what to say next when a girl exits the ladies’ room, all tight jeans and leather boots.

  The boy’s eyes light up. “Hey,” he says. “I got you a doughnut.”

  The girl’s lip-glossy mouth twists into a pout. “I hate doughnuts. You know that.” She reaches out to smack his butt.

  I turn away, embarrassed. If I ever have a boyfriend, I won’t smack his butt in public, I promise you that. And I will appreciate every doughnut he buys me.

  * * *

  When I get back, my dad is talking on his phone in the driveway, but Marnie and Jane are in the kitchen, waiting for me.

  “What’s this?” I say when Marnie hands me a bag.

  She smiles. “Open it and see.”

  I have to give her credit for surprising me. She bought me a phone. Or, technically, my father’s AmEx bought me a phone, but it was Marnie’s idea. It’s black with an orange case, Clemson colors, which I would not have chosen for myself, but I am not complaining. Another thing I am not doing is telling Marnie that my mother won’t let me have my own phone until I’m sixteen. Cell phone use in teenagers has been linked to sleep disorders, high-risk behavior, sexting, cyberbullying … The speech goes on and on, but as far as I am concerned, it is no longer relevant. The school counselor has lost her right to vote.

  “Do you like it?” Marnie says.

  “Yes.”

  “She likes it, Janie!”

  Marnie lifts one of Jane’s tiny fists in the air. Today she is strapped into the BabyBjörn, facing out. She is wearing a miniature pink tracksuit with pink-and-gray-striped booties. Her cheeks are rosy and she has Marnie’s emerald-colored eyes. It is sad to say that I am jealous of a baby’s eyes, but I am. Mine are plain brown, same as my hair, same as my freckles. I have always thought this was part of my problem. Brown, brown, brown, just like Ms. Baer-Leighton.

  “You can change the color if you want,” Marnie says, but she is not talking about my looks, she is talking about the phone.

  Oh, no, I tell her. I like the orange, really.

  Marnie looks so happy you would think I gave her a present. “It’s charged and ready to go,” she says. “Do you want me to show you how to set up the address book? We can put all your friends’ numbers in there.”

  All my friends. Right.

  “Maybe later,” I say. I thank Marnie and head upstairs to the guest room. The phone is light in my hand, smaller than a deck of cards. It is the newest version, better than Dani’s. But I’ll bet Dani has a hundred friends in her phone already. She is one of Them now, a hoarder of likes and posts and hits and forwards. She texts with Ethan Zane in English, so of course she has boys’ numbers in there, too. Her phone might not have cost as much as mine, but it is worth more.

  I sit on the edge of the guest bed, staring at Marnie’s present. What if I called Dani right now? Hey! I’d say. Guess what? I got a phone! But I realize that even if I wanted to call her, I don’t have her number. Dani never gave it to me.

  I sit on the bed, feeling like a loser. The girl with the cool new phone and no one to call. Pathetic. I get up, walk over to the dresser to shove the phone in a drawer. But as soon as I open it there is my mother’s letter.

  It’s like a kick in the gut, the feeling. I just want her here so I can yell at her and then she can apologize. I’m sorry, Anna, she will say. I’m all better now. Let’s go home.

  But how can I yell at someone I’m not even allowed to talk to? The closest I can come is writing back.

  I open the guest room door and walk softly through the hall. I know I should not be stealing five pieces of orange tiger-paw stationery off Marnie’s bedside table, but that is what I’m doing.

  I grab the paper, go back to the guest room, sit on the floor, and write.

  Dear Mom,

  I will not be sending you this letter. That’s the first thing you should know. I may be writing it, but I will not be sending it. So I guess there’s really no point in telling you that this paper is Marnie’s and I took it without asking. Or that she just bought me a phone. Do you even care? You don’t, Mom, is the answer to that. You don’t care. You’re alone in some hospital room right now, probably staring at nothing. Even though it’s the weekend and you’re supposed to be home being a mother, you’re not. You don’t even know what being a mother means or why a daughter might need you to be one.

  It’s starting to rain, if you must know. The kind of day that makes most people want to curl up on the couch with a good book. Most people. Do you remember, Mom, that time it was raining and you dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night?

  YOU: Wake up, Anna.

  ME: It’s two in the morning.

  YOU: It’s afternoon in China.

  ME: Mom.

  YOU: It’s raining, honey! It’s glorious! We need to get out there!

  So we went outside at two in the morning. Do you remember? We didn’t even put on bathing suits, we just stayed in our pajamas and got soaking wet. We stomped in puddles and sang every song from the Evita sound track and you got a pail and we filled it with night crawlers we found squiggling under the street lamp. And it was fun, okay? I admit it. But come on. What kind of mother does that? What kind of mother wakes her ten-year-old up in the middle of the night and drags her out in the rain in her pajamas?

  And while we’re on the subject, what kind of mother sells her car and brings home a motorcycle? Dad said, Where’s the Subaru, Frances? And you said, Why drive a Subaru when you can drive a Harley? He was so mad he stormed out of the house, but you just laughed and called after him, Lighten up, David! Lighten up!

  What kind of mother gets a tattoo of Judy Garland on her shoulder? What kind of mother steps into traffic without looking, just to see what will happen?

  I have to stop writing. I’m getting a pit in my stomach, thinking about my mom. I used to think she did crazy things because she was cool and brave and wild and rare. But I don’t know anymore. I’m starting to think I had it backward. I’m starting to think maybe she did those things because she’s actually crazy.

  CHAPTER

  5

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON I am doing my homework. Well, technically, I am sitting cross-legged on the guest room floor with To Kill a Mockingbird in my lap, chomping on a pencil and waiting for inspiration to strike. It is hard to be inspired in this room. No desk. No posters. Nothing at all, really. Just a bed and a dresser and a straight-backed chair over by the window where I put my backpack. Walls: white. Sheets: white. Carpet: beige. I might as well be living at the Holiday Inn.

  I know this is my choice. I know I could decorate it any way I want. That was literally the first thing my dad said when he showed me the room. “This is your space, Anna. Decorate it any way you want.” It could be just like my old room, he said. I could have a bea
nbag couch. I could have a shag rug. I could paint constellations on the ceiling and peace signs on the walls.

  This isn’t my space! I wanted to scream at him, scream until the ceiling cracked and the walls came crashing down.

  I didn’t scream, of course. I just calmly told him that this was not my house, any more than his lame bachelor apartment had been my house, and that I would not be sleeping over. Ever.

  And he calmly responded, “I won’t force you to sleep here, Anna. But decorating your room would mean a lot to Marnie, so just think about it.”

  I hated the way he said that, like Marnie’s feelings mattered more. Like the things she left for me on the bed—a Pottery Barn teen catalog, paint samples from Benjamin Moore—could possibly make up for anything. Thanks, Marnie, a Totally Trellis comforter and Aztec Lily walls will totally erase the fact that you and my dad got together a month after he left his family.

  I wouldn’t do that to my mom. I couldn’t. Decorating this room, moving into my father’s pretty new life with his pretty new wife, would send my mom right over the edge.

  Over the edge, where she went anyway. Because I couldn’t stop her. Because I ignored all the signs—

  No, I am not going to think about that. I am going to think about To Kill a Mockingbird. I open my book, pull out Mr. Pfaff’s essay question. What is Atticus Finch’s relationship to Maycomb? What is his role in the community?

  I can do this. I can answer this.

  But before I can write a word, there’s a knock on the door.

  “I’m working,” I say.

  Marnie pops her head in anyway. “Hi,” she says, smiling. “Sorry to interrupt, but you have a phone call.” She walks over, holding out the cordless. Her nails are shiny peach ovals. “It’s Regina.”

  Crap.

  I wait for Marnie to leave. She hovers in the doorway for a moment. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  As soon as she closes the door, I pick up the phone. “Hello,” I say, all ice queen.

  “Anna Banana?”

  Hearing her voice, warm and deep like a man’s, a picture pops into my head. Regina Rose wearing one of her favorite tent-like shirts—the yellow one with the cowboy motif—and her bangs are sky-high. Regina is a big woman. Big voice, big hair, big boobs, big, strong arms. When she pulls you in for a hug, there is no escape. I used to love getting hugged by Regina. She is warm and wobbly like a water bed, and she always smells like tomato sauce. Gravy, she calls it. I love Regina’s gravy, but I will not be eating it again.