Nothing is the worst answer ever.
I don’t write back.
You can’t just keep pretending that nothing is going on with you.
Why? It’s so much easier that way.
* * *
The next day, Sammi texts me when I don’t show up for lunch. I’m in Blythe’s car. Donnie and Blythe are sitting in the front seat. I’m in the back. In the Blythe bubble, eating hummus and pita chips while they howl along to a song by a crooner with a deep voice filled with pain. It’s a song about how if they got hit by a bus or a train, it would be fine, an honor even, if they could just die together.
Sammi texts me through their bellowing.
Where are you?
“Who’s texting you, your mother?” Donnie says.
Blythe smacks Donnie.
“What?” Donnie says, clutching her arm. “What did I say?”
“Her mother lives in New Mexico.”
“Oh, well, how was I supposed to know that?” Donnie looks over at me, puzzled. “Sorry, Ali.”
“It’s fine.”
“Aren’t you going to pick up the damn phone, though? Seriously. You have a stalker. At least change your ring tone.”
Sammi’s text screams out:
ALISTAIR
Why aren’t you answering my texts?
“It’s Sammi.”
“Shit, you need to straighten things out with her, Ali,” Blythe says, her mouth full of chips.
“Isn’t she your best friend?” Donnie says.
“Yeah.” And I text Sammi back.
Sorry. Just seeing this now.
Bullshit
“You can’t blow off your best friend, Ali,” Blythe says.
But they’re back to scream-singing, their faces so close to each other, their hands grabbing each other’s shirts. The way Sammi and I used to be, that close.
“I’m not blowing her off,” I say, but they don’t even hear me. I just don’t want to talk. I don’t want to answer questions. I don’t want her to ask me how I am. What’s the answer: I’m fading away, Sammi. I’m disappearing.
“How many times has she texted you?” Blythe asks.
I look at my phone. Too many times.
“I swear if you ever blew me off like that, B,” Donnie says, and shakes her head. “Snap of the neck.”
“That’s exactly what I said the first time it happened,” Blythe says, giving me a playful smack. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“Yeah. It’s what you said.” But I’m far away now. Somewhere else.
Blythe keeps going on about how Donnie would show up to her house with a flamethrower or something. More chips in her mouth. Crunching like she has all the answers. Doesn’t she?
“Really, Ali. Why don’t you just answer her?”
Because then I’d have to talk. I’d have to explain. And that’s the last thing I want to do. Talk about how I feel. Once I say it out loud, it’ll be real.
* * *
Raj and I are at my locker.
“Why are you giving Sammi the cold shoulder?”
“I’m dumping her for Blythe.”
But he squints his eyes in a concerned look.
“I was just making a joke, Raj.” I sigh. One of those big sighs like the weight of the world is on your head and you can’t walk straight. He notices it and laughs.
“So cryptic, Greenleaf.”
“A person isn’t allowed to sigh?”
He sighs loudly, making fun of me, slowly shrinking to the floor.
“That’s me?”
“That’s you when I try to talk to you. This is an awkward thing between the two of you. Usually Sammi’s the Ali expert. But she doesn’t know what to say to you anymore.”
I know Sammi didn’t tell Raj what really happened. Sammi wouldn’t tell a soul. I know that.
“She said you were still really messed up about the Nessel thing.”
“That’s all she said?”
“That you were isolating yourself.”
“I’m not isolated.”
“Oh, right. You’re hanging out with Blythe Jensen. That’s not isolating at all.”
This is Raj. He’s legitimately concerned. I can’t just shut him down. “I’ve been doing this with everyone. It’s not just you. It’s not just her.”
“I’m aware.”
“Wouldn’t that make you feel better?”
“No. It’ll make me feel worse.”
“Why? Why would that make you feel worse?”
He looks away, more annoyed than worried, actually. “Because you’ve just been somewhere else lately. It’s not like you. None of this—it feels like I’m talking to someone else.”
I want so badly to talk to him about all of it. How Blythe scooped me up and how it just feels good to be wanted by her. To hear her spill secrets she hasn’t told anyone else. To know details about this school, hidden things.
I wish I could explain this to him, but I can’t get the right words out of my mouth because then I’d have to tell him everything and I don’t even know where I’d begin.
“Do you know sometimes how you just feel lost?” I say.
“When my parents got divorced,” he says. “And I first started going back and forth to my mom’s for three days and then my dad’s for three days. That was hell. I hated that. I felt lost. Like I was nowhere. So I made this little fortress around my superheroes. And I told my parents that I was the superhero. And that the fortress was my house. I was just safe inside that little space.”
I would like a fortress.
“I get it, Ali. I get how it feels to want to disappear,” he says. “I’ll talk to Sammi.”
I reach out and hug him, which I know surprises him. But I hold him tight because I’m going to cry so hard if I let go. And then I feel his hands across my back hugging me too. My chest up against his. His breath in my ear. I don’t want to let go. I want to rest my head in the crook of his neck and be closer to him. There’s a buzz all inside me warming my body, and it surprises me. So I pull back to stare at him. That fuzz around his mouth. That hair drooping in his face. Wonder if he’s feeling that buzz too.
18
BLYTHE
It’s not like people notice when we’re standing there together, me and Sean. They don’t think, “Oh, those two are in love.” There’s no conversation when we’re huddled together because the three of us—me, Sean, and Dev—are
