This was not promising.
Downstairs, my parents arranged themselves on the couch across from me. They looked nervous and full of resolve.
“We’ve been doing some reading,” Mom started.
“A lot of reading,” Dad added.
Mom nodded. “Yes, a lot of reading.”
“Good for you,” I said. “I always thought you should both read more.”
They turned to each other for a moment, as if to regroup.
“Sorry,” Mom said. “Let me start again. The counselor at your school, Mrs. Hayes, reached out to us, and she recommended a lot of books about loss. We’ve been reading through them, and a number of them have really stressed the importance of structure.”
She paused and took a breath. When she breathed out again, the air came slow, like a sigh.
Dad took over. “Yes, they really emphasized structure. So, while we know you aren’t a big fan of group activities, we’ve decided it would be really beneficial for you to be part of a structured activity.”
“I’m in the chess club,” I reminded them. “That’s a structured activity.”
“When’s the last time you actually went?” Mom asked.
I shrugged. While I’d signed up at the beginning of freshman year and had continued to receive their emails and newsletter, I had yet to attend a meeting. Which was probably for the best, since I didn’t, technically speaking, know how to play.
“You could do some community service,” Dad suggested, moving his eyes up from his hands with some effort. “Or debate, maybe? I’m sure you’d be good at that. You’re very—” He paused. I could see words spinning through his head like pictures of fruit in a slot machine. Argumentative? Combative? Unyielding? He settled on “Rational. You’re very rational.”
“Yes,” Mom said, her voice filled with false cheer. “Debate could be good. Community service…The important thing is just that you pick something and really give it a chance. It could take a while, but in time you might find that you enjoy being part of a group.”
“ ‘Enjoy being part of a group’?” She couldn’t possibly believe that. No one who knew me at all, let alone someone who’d lived with me for the past fifteen years, could believe that.
Her face reddened, but she nodded. “Yes. In time, I think you might.”
It’s hard to respond when people resort to blatant lying.
Then it occurred to me that this might in fact be an opportunity—a chance to do something that would usually seem suspiciously out of character.
So I looked at my parents, both so intent on turning me into a well-adjusted person by forcing me to engage with my peers.
“Okay,” I said. “Fine.”
Mom’s shoulders dropped, as if she’d been relieved of some great burden. “Wonderful. You can take a while to think about what to join. Just let us know sometime in the next week or two—”
“Actually, I’ve already decided,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said. She sounded both pleased and surprised. “Great. What would you like to do?”
“Track,” I said.
When we tried again, at another bar farther outside town, we expected the same thing to happen as before. Expected them to take one look at us and tell us to head right back out.
I don’t know which of us was more surprised when they let us stay and order a drink.
ON THE BUS THE NEXT day, I stared at the seat in front of me, focusing on the spot where someone had carved their initials deep into the plastic. The lines were clean and sharp, and I wondered what they’d used to make them. Maybe an X-Acto knife? A switchblade? While I admired the neatness of their work, it was unnerving to consider how many people on the bus might have something on them that, in a pinch, could be used to kill someone.
There had again been no empty seats, so Sarah sat beside me, nodding in time to her music. Boom, boom, boom. Nod, nod, nod. As the nodding increased in intensity, I had a flashback to seeing her doing this before, at one of the cross-country meets my parents had dragged me to in the fall. She’d sat at the top of the bleachers, headphones on, her eyes trained on the field, her head mapping out a beat audible only to her. A thought occurred to me.
“Hey, do you do track?” I asked her.
“Sorry?” she said, lowering her headphones. “Did you say something?”
“Do you do track? Once it starts, I mean? I know you did cross-country.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Cross-country kind of blows, honestly—it’s so boring—but track I actually like.” She began to raise her headphones again and then stopped. “Wait—are you doing track? I don’t remember you being on the list.”
“I’m thinking of signing up late.” I paused. “What’s Mr. Matthews like?”
She shrugged. “He’s fine.”
I kept looking at her, hoping she’d elaborate.
She seemed to interpret my stare as disbelief. “No, honestly, he’s okay. He and my dad are both big basketball fans, so they go out for beers occasionally and watch games, so he’s maybe a bit nicer to me because of that, but he’s really okay. I know some people get all bent out of shape because they think track is going to be an easy way to get out of gym and it’s not, but that’s on them.” She said the last part with surprising forcefulness, as if their laziness were a personal affront.
“No, that’s not it. I heard…”
That he’s a pervert who had a thing for my sister. And I’m wondering if she was in love with him.
“…that he’s kind of a flirt.”
She frowned. “Mr. Matthews? I don’t know, I wouldn’t say that. He’s definitely not like Mr. Richards or anything.”
Mr. Richards, the shop class teacher, was fifty if he was a day and had a huge potbelly and a receding hairline. “Who on earth would be flirting with Mr. Richards?”
“Oh, no one’s flirting back, but trust me, you do not want to wear a low-cut shirt in his class.
