Page 15 of Into the Deep Blue
When my phone buzzes from the coffee table at dinner, I’m hoping it will be Jaden texting me about work. It’s Wednesday, and I’m sitting on the sofa with a sad looking sandwich, and the volume on the TV turned up as loud as it’ll go to make the room feel a little less empty.
May’s name is on my screen when I pick it up. I hesitate before clicking on her text.
He said yes!!
She didn’t waste any time. It reads like an answer to a marriage proposal. Before I can reply, a flurry of other texts follows.
May: What should I wear?
You like know him, know him
What does he like?
Call me so I can fill you in
What details could there be already? I want all of them. Then again, I don’t.
Me: In bed
Have a fever
Text you later
It’s like a landslide of toxic waste is about to wipe out my two best friends. They’re goners. I can’t believe she went through with it.
So there it is. Nick and May are about to be—a thing?
***
Lies can snowball so quickly when people give you a few prompts. When I tell Jaden I’m too sick to come in on Friday, the snowball grows like this:
May: Fi, are you okay?
Jaden said you’re on your deathbed
Me: No deathbed
Sick though
Sleeping
May: Do you have mono or something?
Me: Ha! No
Sore throat
May: Strep?
Bingo.
Me: Yeah, you know how I always get that
May: Sounds like someone needs a sick package!
We’ve been doing this for years. When one of us is sick, the other drops off a bag of junk. It seems like the only upside to our friendship materializes when I’m contagious.
Me: No, seriously
Don’t want you to catch anything
So there it is. I’m home with strep throat.
Dad brings up a CVS bag a few hours later and drops it on my bed. He knows what it is. I pull my headphones down, expecting him to say something, but he doesn’t. He seems to recognize this as a whole other level of friend drama that he wants no part of.
I chirp a super happy “Thanks!”
and wait for the door to close before dumping the contents. Gummy bears, chips, gossip magazines, cough drops, and ginger ale—a warm hug in the form of junk food. Sweet. I tear open the gummy bears and toss the cough drops in my nightstand drawer. I’ll get sick eventually, anyway.
***
It’s already Saturday, and May hasn’t texted. She always needs to be in a constant conversation, so if it’s not happening with me, it must be happening with someone else.
Nick.
The only thing that goes my way is getting an email from Grace. She canceled tonight’s meeting because something came up, and I am beyond relieved.
My phone buzzes on the bed.
Nick: Hey
Can we talk?
What does he want to talk about? May?
I don’t reply. I don’t have it in me to pretend to be happy, or normal, or anything. I’m just empty.
I wish I could erase them. People. Why hasn’t anyone invented a pill for this?
Imaginary Nick says.
“They have. It’s called drugs.”
Or maybe I can.
I can start right here. My room. It’s a ten-year-old’s room, stuck in the past. There’s an actual rainbow on my duvet cover, and dusty gymnastics trophies still line my shelves. Ticket stubs are thumbtacked to the wall from all the concerts May and I have gone to, and there’s a photo of Mom with her arm around me at the gym. It was the day I told her I didn’t want to compete anymore, and she brushed me off, saying.
“You don’t know what you want. This is good for you, and at least you’ll always have good posture.”
So I quit on the spot. She wouldn’t listen; she didn’t hear me, and it was like that a lot over the last few years. We reached a point where our lives ran parallel.
I sigh. May has great posture.
My history is suffocating me. Every piece of my past morphs into cats—tabby cats, fluffy white Persians, alley cats, and a giant Cheshire lording over them all, wearing an enormous grin.
The cats have to go.
I grab a trash bag and purge the memories from my room. Everything from one shelf to the next gets swept into the bag. My grad cap is on the floor in a corner, and I reach for it. I picture Dad sitting alone among a sea of pride-filled parents. I could feel his pain from the stage. Mom’s absence hovered over the day like a shadow. Not a day I want to remember, so I toss the cap in the bag.
Mom’s narwhal album. Why am I hanging on to this? I toss it too, like it’s nothing. And my desk? I’ve had it since I was a kid. It knows too much. I push it into the hall for Dad to move later.
My room becomes a hollow shell. Like me. There’s not a cat in sight.
The bag weighs a million pounds, but I drag it outside and heave it into the bin. The lid thunks closed, and I lean against it. I feel weightless. I float that way for all of five seconds before regret crashes down. All I can think about is that smiling narwhal trapped and alone in the darkness. I can’t do it. I can’t let it go.
I fling open the lid and plunge my hand into the garbage bag. Something gross and gooey sticks to my arm because I’m fully leaning into this bin, but I don’t care. I need to find her album. Finally, my fingers touch a rectangular outline, and ripple across some pages. This is it. With a tug, it comes free, but the force sends me backwards, and I fall onto the driveway. The album skids across the pavement. I scramble to my feet, brushing my scraped palms against my sweatpants and scoop it up. The narwhal grins mischievously, two sequins now missing from its horn.
Above me, an inky sky is scattered with stars. I swear I see one streak across the darkness.
I clutch the album tight. Some things are meant to last forever.