whatever mysteries
Ariana harbors,
she carries with her
in her heart.
Somewhere away.
But I nod. “Um. Okay.”
Because even if she comes back
today, tonight, or tomorrow,
maybe I can find something
that will remind us both
of the sisters
we are meant
to be.
Ariana
“Who? Was? That?” my seatmate, Edward, asks.
“An old friend,” I say.
Edward turns around in his seat. “She looks like a rock star.”
Even without the guitar, he must be reacting to the way
her face looks perpetually badass. The way her hoodie
hangs from her shoulders, like even her clothes don’t give a shit.
“She’s in a band,” I say.
“You’re her friend?” Edward peeks his head around
to catch another glimpse of Alex.
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?” He turns back to me.
I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”
“Because she got too famous,” Edward says definitively.
“It’s not that.”
“Did you get in a fight?” Edward says.
I wish I could pinpoint something big and dramatic
that happened, something that people would be able
to react to and say, Yeah, I get it.
But it wasn’t like that.
How could I tell people that I
didn’t want to be her friend,
that I didn’t see myself in our friendship?
“All right, kid, why don’t you read some more about
immortal animals,” I say,
and pull my knit hat down over my eyes,
blocking out the morning light, blocking out Edward,
blocking out the feeling of something like loss.
Row
I am lying on Ariana’s bed
staring at a ceiling
holding the remnants
of a glow-in-the-dark galaxy.
Kennedy’s head is lost in the closet.
“I think I found something.”
She wrangles out
a wooden cigar box.
“What is this?”
Kennedy says,
and hands me the box.
It’s a box Ariana bought at a thrift store
because she said
it smelled like a lifetime
of memories.
Sweet and acrid.
Pungent and complex.
But I couldn’t place the smell
with any single memory.
It wasn’t the smell
of the cigar Dad once smoked
that time our uncle returned
from vacation in Cuba.
It wasn’t the smell
of our dead mother’s perfume,
which she would dab on her wrist
before leaving us alone
with a faceless babysitter.
But maybe it was the smell
of doing something exciting,
of feeling special and wanted.
Maybe it was the smell
of being lived in.
The smell of an object
that harbored secrets
and memories
and weightless things,
like the sound of two girls snuggling.
Ariana
I wake to the sound of a truck shifting gears, barreling down
the highway in front of us. Edward isn’t next to me. But Alex is,
reading a thick British novel. Smelling like dark-roast coffee.
Reminding me of all the times last summer when
the water around us rose up as fog. When sounds of dishes
clattering drifted across the lake from summer cottages
where children lay tucked into bunk beds and life
was absorbed into the shadows of tall trees.
Alex thrums her fingers against the cover of the book,
reminding me of the way she used to thrum her fingers
against a plexiglass hull and the hollow beat
thumped against my core.
Reminding me of the times she’d say one tiny thing,
like, I’m really glad I came back here this summer,
and I’d feel our friendship hover momentarily
over our shared sense of loss, like my mother,
like her brother were right there with us.
Last summer, I thought that’s what I wanted.
To have a friend who understood. Who experienced
the same feelings as me.
But I feel that sense of hovering again, on this bus,
and I try to push it away. It’s not what I want now.
Alex turns the page in her book.
She glances over. “Oh, good. You’re up.”
Row
I open the lid,
but it’s empty.
“I don’t get it,”
Kennedy says.
“Why does your sister
keep an empty cigar box
in the depths of her closet?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
But part of me wonders
if it’s because
we all keep
boxes of emptiness
in the depths
of our closets.
I thought that maybe
opening the box
that Ariana keeps
tucked away in the back of her closet
would release all the emotions
we’ve tucked away
in the back of our minds
since Mom died.
But I open and shut the lid
and I still feel
nothing
because when Mom died,
we cremated our emotions
and scattered them in the ocean
along with the ashes
of her tiny frame.
“It’s just a box,”
I say, and hand it back.
Ariana
“Listen, I hope you don’t mind. I asked the kid
to swap seats for a minute, and he got real excited about telling
my roommate about how the Egyptians built the pyramids
pre-invention of the wheel. Apparently they used a lot of boats.
“She’s a classics major with a minor in archaeology.
Egyptology is kinda her jam,” Alex continues.
What’s college like? I want to ask her.
What’s your major? How did you decide?
Do you think there is a major for people like me,
girls with dead mothers?
But I don’t ask Alex any of these questions.
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “I feel like
I haven’t spoken to you in forever.”
“You haven’t,” Alex says.
I give her a little laugh. But she doesn’t think it’s funny.
This wasn’t supposed to happen in my idea of escaping.