I should have lied. I should have told her I meditate. I will sit in the quiet with her for thirty minutes if she wants me to.
“I’m supposed to go to these meetings where you meditate and talk about your suffering.”
“That kind of sounds like the meetings my dad goes to.”
“Is he an addict?”
“No. Just a human.”
“Same thing really. Everybody’s addicted to something. It’s the human condition.” She smiles. For a moment, I’m pretty sure this is one of those dreams where I think I wake up but really it’s just the start of a new dream.
“I lost your number,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
“But I remembered you said you were my neighbor. So I wandered around and here you were.”
Here I am. She found me.
“Tell me your number,” she says. “I’ll text you mine.” I do. She does.
“I may have a party this weekend,” she says. “I don’t know. I’ll text you if I do. I may not even go.”
“You may not go to your own party?”
“It’s my mom’s idea. She’s always the one who wants to throw the parties. If she wants a party so bad, why doesn’t she throw one for people her own age? Why does it always have to be my party? She says it’s a good way for me to make friends, but I know she doesn’t give a shit if I make friends. She just wants to show off.”
“And you don’t?” I say. Where did that come from?
But Ivy smiles, and the music of her laugh makes everything shine. “Maybe I do,” she says. “Want to show off a little. But not like that. Not like her.” She looks at me with approval, and everything around us brightens. “I like you, Fern. You’re real. You’re not full of shit like everyone else.”
“Thank you.” What I want to say is, “You make me real.” What I want to say is, “I don’t even know who I was before this moment.”
“Can you make me a promise? Don’t lose that, okay? Don’t treat me like I’m special. Always tell me exactly what you think. Don’t let me get away with anything.”
“I don’t think I have that power.”
She puts her hands on my cheeks, cups my face, makes me a tulip.
“Oh, Fern. You have more power than you know.”
I want her to hold my face like this forever. I want the warmth of her hands around my jaw, her fingertips on my cheekbones, her thumbs so close to my lips I could put them in my mouth.
“I have to go,” she says, just as I realize my eyes are closed, just as I decide to open them.
“I’ll text you,” she says.
“Promise,” I call after her.
“I promise,” she says, looking at me over her shoulder, and the trees whisper their commentary, but I don’t know what they’re saying.
5
When I told Lily I was going to the city tonight with Tami Butler, she almost hung up on me.
* * *
• • •
This is what Tami said when she invited me: “Let’s get off this pathetic hunk of rock.”
“Is your boyfriend coming?” I said.
“Why do you keep asking about my boyfriend?”
* * *
• • •
“Why are you going?” Lily said. “You don’t even like her. Does this relationship nurture you in any way?”
Who talks like that?
She makes it sound so easy. As if it’s just a matter of liking or not liking someone. What matters is I’ve been waiting my whole life for girls like Tami Butler to acknowledge my existence. Even though I tried to convince myself I wasn’t. Even though I told myself I didn’t care. But I do care. Everyone cares. Anyone who says they don’t is a liar.
And maybe I do like Tami, just a little. Maybe I got to glimpse a part of her people don’t usually see. Maybe I want to see more of it, more of what else she’s hiding. As cruel as she is, there’s something about Tami that I admire. How does it feel to not care about being nice or liked, to be so sure of your place in the world, you feel no threat of losing it?
* * *
• • •
Lily looked at me through the screen of my phone, from the other side of the earth. She said, “You know they’re all narcissists, right? Tami, Ash. I could diagnose them right now. You’re not still hung up on him, are you?”
“No,” I lie.
“As you can probably guess, I’m not a big fan of this decision.”
I didn’t say, “But you are not here.”
I didn’t say, “What choice do I have?”
I didn’t say, “I’m bored and I’m lonely and I want to feel worth something.”
I want to feel something.
* * *
• • •
I check my phone.
* * *
• • •
I look in the mirror and I don’t know when I started looking like this. Like someone who might be friends with Tami Butler.
* * *
• • •
I check my phone again.
* * *
• • •
No one remembers nice girls.
* * *
• • •
Tami sends a prepaid car for me. I get a text that says, Your car is here. Driver’s name: Norman. Norman probably has at least two other jobs. Norman probably moved here from someplace that’s underwater now or that’s been poisoned by busted oil pipelines.
Papa says, “Be safe.”
Daddy sniffles, “Where did my little girl go?”
Gotami says, “Meow.”
No one says anything about a curfew. I have never needed one.
“Quite a place you got here,” says Norman.
* * *
• • •
Ivy Avila hasn’t texted. I’m beginning to think I dreamed our whole conversation.
* * *
• • •
Daddy talks about “the middle path.” But the middle path is boring. Buddhism is boring.