Mostly, though, I just missed him.
“Oh, I should show you the design for the Hill Lane project,” my mom barreled on. She looked from me to Sara, but I couldn’t figure out who she was talking to. “You’d love the master bedroom. All florals. Simple. I usually resist florals because it feels grandma-ish, but what Betsy Baker wants, Betsy Baker gets. That woman is a force.”
The table was quiet and for a second I thought I heard it again, that same chanting from the other morning. It was hard to be sure because the stereo in the kitchen was still on. The radio station played a Dave Matthews song I hadn’t heard before. Something about not drinking the water.
“Forages…” I stared down at my plate, to the last grisly bits of meat. “That just means to look for food, right? It’s not like there’s some other obscure definition?”
My mom tilted her head and studied me. “Where’d that come from?”
“I just…” I started. “I heard it the other morning. It sounded like it was coming from outside, like someone yelling. Forages, power. Forages, power. Over and over like that. But then I couldn’t hear it anymore.”
“That’s what you were asking about yesterday?” Sara said.
“And for a minute or two today, right when I got up.”
Sara turned to Lydia. Her dark brows knitted together the way they did when she was pissed. Lydia stared straight ahead. It was like she was purposely ignoring her.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Very strange…” My mom said it in this chipper, high-pitched voice. “Does anyone want more steak? There’s two more pieces.”
“I’m good,” I said.
It wasn’t the type of conversation my mom was interested in. She would’ve been happier if I’d engaged with her on her Oakcrest kitchen design, or if I’d told some funny, meaningful story about school. The thing about having a mom who obsessed over the tiniest aesthetic details of our house was that her obsession extended to all the people in it. She was always suggesting new hairstyles (you should grow out your bangs, shorter cuts are harder to pull off), and one time she’d bought me a whole pile of new clothes without asking. She’d paired different skirts and sweaters together and had all the blouses tailored to my frame. Everything I said and did and wore had to be just right.
I stacked Sara’s and Lydia’s plates and started into the kitchen. Sara was glancing sideways at Lydia again, like she might say something else, but she didn’t. I wondered if she’d heard the words too, or if she was just responding to my mom’s obsessive need to control the conversation. I’d have to ask her when we were alone.
Sometimes just being in a ten-foot radius of my mother was enough to make me feel anxious. When I was thirteen I begged her to let me take guitar lessons, though she went on and on about how I was such a beautiful piano player—why did I want to change instruments? Sam, she said to my dad. Tell her what a waste that would be. It had taken months to wear her down, but she finally agreed that if I kept playing the piano I could also take guitar. I’d do both.
But six lessons in my guitar teacher, Harry, had what my parents described as a “psychotic break.” He’d been showing me how to play “Landslide” when he paused, staring at the mirror that hung across from our sofa. He asked if I’d ever wondered about the nature of reality. Did I ever feel, in my gut, that there was more to this world? That things were oppressively surface level? Did I ever feel trapped in someone else’s delusion?
I wasn’t used to people asking my opinion, so I had to really think about it. Sometimes things feel weird…like I don’t have control, I said. Like I’m trapped. Is that what you mean? I started to tell him about my mom, and how she needed to know where I was every second of every day, but then my dad walked in. He’d heard the whole conversation from the kitchen.
Harry never came back to our house. When we went to Mel’s Music a week later, they said he’d moved in with his mother in New Jersey. He’d been hearing things, an egg-shaped man behind the counter said. His gray beard was so long it made him look like Rip Van Winkle. He wasn’t well…in the head, you know?
I rinsed the dishes and went downstairs. I looked at my reflection in the mirror above our sofa, trying to see what Harry saw in it. Maybe I was smart enough not to say it out loud, but I still did question “the nature of reality.” I did feel like everything was surface level. And now I was hearing things, too.
He wasn’t well…in the head, you know?
I was starting to feel like I did.
4
Kristen pulled on her jeans, never taking her eyes off me. She was always the slowest to change after gym class, lingering in her bra, her flannel shirt balled in her hand, or using those seven minutes before the bell to launch into some in-depth conversation that would inevitably spill into the hall. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because her boobs were three times the size of mine and Amber’s.
“You’re being so annoying,” I said. “Come on. Out with it.”
Kristen peered around the corner of the gym lockers, checking the shower to make sure no one was there. The tiled room was only used for storage, but sometimes girls sat on the stacked gymnastics mats and smoked out the window.
“Fine…Patrick Kramer is going to ask you to Spring Formal.” Kristen drew out the sentence, pausing after each word.
“She heard it from Patrick’s best friend,” Amber said, clipping her overalls in front. “It’s like he wanted it to get back to you.”
“Patrick Kramer,” I repeated. It wasn’t enough that he was six foot three and started on the varsity soccer team. Last February he’d been at the Empire State Building when a guy opened fire on the observation deck, and he’d jumped in front of a group of third graders, bringing them all to the ground. No one was hurt. He’d given interviews to STV News. He’d been in every paper, with headlines like “Young Hero Saves Third Grade Class” and “Bravery at the Empire State Building.” I might’ve liked him based on that alone, but it was more than a year later and he was still trying to work it into every conversation, as if everyone hadn’t already discussed it ad nauseam.
“Patrick and I are complete opposites. And we’ve only ever talked like, a handful of times. Mostly about Physics homework.”
“You don’t need to talk to enjoy his abs.” Kristen turned and folded her arms around her body, making sucking noises as she ran her hands up and down her sides. We laughed, but that wasn’t enough for her, and she kept going, grabbing her own butt until I nudged her to stop.
“It just feels out of nowhere.”