EMILY DICKINSON
I don’t like this.” Mom wrings her hands as we wait for the light to turn green. The beach road is deserted at nine o’clock Saturday morning. By ten, it will be jammed.
“You’ll leave me home alone, but you don’t want me to go to a friend’s house?” The rhetorical devices we’re studying in Ms. Ringgold’s class are improving the quality of my counter arguments.
“You have Hitch at home.” She waits for a heavyset woman in a floral maxi dress to cross before entering the intersection. “Have you even told this girl about your epilepsy?”
“Her name’s Ayla, and no, I haven’t.” Ayla’s the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in years. There are several reasons why I should tell her—not just because Mom expects me to, but also because it’s the safest thing to do if we’re going to be friends and hang out regularly. But I can’t. How do you just drop that into a conversation about homework or lit mag? Oh, by the way, I have epilepsy. If I start thrashing around, just roll me on my side and call my mom.
“You need to tell her, Emilie.”
“I know.” I glance out the window. She may be right. But I’ve made up my mind. I’m not telling Ayla anything.
“I still think I should come in and talk to her mother.” She tightens her grip on the steering wheel.
“Please, Mom. You’re only going to be at the library for a few hours. Dr. Wellesley said you have to let me have some control. I’ll text you every thirty minutes.” I rip the hangnail on my thumb with my teeth. “This is part of my social development. Right?” Oh, good one. I mentally pat myself on the back when my mom is forced to nod her agreement.
We turn down a narrow side street between the beach road and the bypass. Bungalows on pilings, barely larger than our house, huddle together without an ocean view in sight. We find Ayla’s and pull in. Her weathered gray home is not what I expected. I know it’s stupid, now that I’m spending more time out in the real world, but I pictured everyone at the Ridge living in houses nicer than my own. Clearly, I’ve spent too much time living in my head with unrealistic images reinforced by my TV and movie obsession.
Vowing to be more open-minded, I step out of the Honda. As I climb the steep stairs to the front deck, I gesture for Mom to leave. She doesn’t budge until Ayla comes out and acknowledges her with a wave.
Mom rolls down her window. “The library closes at one.”
“Okay.” I grit my teeth. The library has closed at one since before Dad died, when the economy first took a downturn.
“I’ll be back right after that. Text me in a little bit.” She waves, but the Honda’s still in park.
I will her to leave. “See you later.”
Ayla opens one of the sliding-glass doors leading directly into the main living area of her house. I follow her into a high-ceilinged room that includes what appears to be their living, dining, and kitchen areas all in one.
“Your mom seems nice.” She smiles over her shoulder as she opens a squat refrigerator that looks like something out of a Leave It to Beaver rerun and grabs two Cokes.
I lean on the bar, taking in her house. With the exception of a few functional chairs, two wrought iron barstools, and a table in the kitchen, the house is bare. But what Ayla’s home lacks in furniture it makes up for in color. Murals cover every square inch of wall space. The ceiling is fuchsia. “Your house is awesome.”
“Thanks. I painted it myself.”
I gape at an ocean scene painted on the back wall of the living room. It’s done entirely in shades of orange and red. The sun’s maroon, the water salmon, the sand apricot. “Amazing. My mom won’t even let me hang posters on the walls.”
“It’s one of the few perks of having a single dad.” She shrugs.
So much for the picture-perfect family with the stay-at-home mom I envisioned.
She leads me down a sky blue hallway to her room. “Thanks for agreeing to help me with my writing. Chatham says you’re an amazing tutor.”
“He said that?” I perch on the edge of her white bedspread. Her bedroom is the complete opposite of the living room. With the exception of the weathered pine boards on the floor and pops of red pillows and a massive red throw at the foot of her bed, everything in the room is either bright white or black.
“Yeah, he sits beside me in science. He said it’s the first time he’s ever understood anything he’s read for English.” She pulls back filmy white curtains to open the window.
I smile at the memory of Chatham’s creased brow as he puzzled through one of the Dickinson poems we chose to annotate.
“So I can’t wait for you to give me some feedback on my poem before I enter this contest. I feel better about the visual part than the written part.” She grabs a composition book off a white wicker desk in the corner, clutching it to her chest. “Do you want to see the painting first?”
“Sure.” I’ve never given someone feedback on creative writing before. What if her writing is horrible? I shake my head. It won’t be. Even if it’s only half as good as her artwork, it will be amazing.
She opens the closet, dragging out a large canvas draped with a sheet. Two dirty feet, painted in oil, peek out from under the white material. “Ta-da.” She whips the cloth off the painting.
Wow. I lean forward to study it more carefully. A little girl seated on weather-beaten steps, leading down to the beach, watches what appears to be a mother and daughter playing in the surf. The sun shines on the pair frolicking in the water in their bright bathing suits. The little girl on the steps sits in the shadows of the handrail. Her frayed denim shorts and dingy T-shirt blend in with the shadows and the worn wood of the boardwalk.
My heart aches, but I’m not sure why. “She’s sad.”
Ayla nods. “It’s called Forsaken.” She hands me the composition book, opening it to the first page. The title “Forsaken” is centered at the top in Ayla’s calligraphy-like script. “Read it.”
My eyes float across the page. The free verse poem tells the story of a little girl whose mother drowned. She’s grief stricken and wants to walk out into the choppy waves until the water covers her head and she joins her mommy. My chest tightens. I swallow, looking up into Ayla’s eyes, wondering if I can finish without crying. She nods encouragingly.
After I read the last line, I look up at her, speechless. One side of her mouth turns up in an uncertain smile.
“Ayla, this is amazing.” My voice cracks. “How did you write this?”
“It’s kind of personal.” She studies her hands, avoiding my eyes. “My mom didn’t die. She left us when I was little.”
I don’t know what to say. For the second time in less than half an hour, I’m reminded not to assume things about people.
“We were at the beach. Dad and I were digging a moat around this elaborate sand castle. The sun was shining. Kids played in the surf near us. Mom said she was headed to the corner market for chips and drinks.” She pauses to meet my eyes.
I hold my breath.
“She never came back.”
I sink to the edge of her bed. “What happened?”
She shrugs, but pain tugs at the corners of her mouth. “She just left. We called the cops. It was terrifying. We thought she’d been abducted. But when we got home, she’d left a note saying she needed to follow a dream—a dream that didn’t involve us. It involved New York and performing—like on a stage, not like the acting she’d done pretending to be a dutiful wife and mom.”
My arms ache to hug her, but my heart wimps out. I’ve forgotten how to reach out to others.
“Sometimes people with these really raw emotions pop into my head,” she continues, saving me from my indecision. “I have to paint or write them in order to get rid of them, or they’ll take over my life.” She straightens a charcoal sketch on the wall beside her bed of an old man walking in the rain.
The way she explains her feelings reminds me of how I start worrying about seizing in public or how Dad would feel about Mom moving on with her life. Of how my thoughts snowball into obsessions and how the next thing I know, I’m clenching my teeth or gnawing at my fingernails—my two worst habits.
“It’s kind of therapeutic.” She pulls the sheet back over the painting. “So, any suggestions?”
“Nothing major.” I skim the words on the page in front of me for a second time. “I love that it’s written in first person. You could add more description to the first stanza to set the tone. I think you’ll win anyway.”
She shrugs. “If I don’t win, it’s not meant to be.”
Ayla’s amazing, and I’m a jerk for stereotyping the entire North Ridge student body as a bunch of spoiled rich kids born with silver spoons wedged in their whitened teeth. My chest tightens. I need to tell Ayla about my epilepsy—not because of Mom or because of safety concerns but because Ayla trusts me. She shared this really personal poem with me and the thing about her mom. I should open up to her. That’s what friends do.
My lips part. Do it.
I can’t. I’m trapped inside my shell like the hermit crabs Dad and I used to collect on the beach behind our house. We’d put them in a sand-filled aquarium on the counter, feeding them fruit and leftover fish. I always wanted to keep them as pets, but Dad would make me take them back down to the beach after a few days. They need lots of humidity—more than an air-conditioned house—or they’ll suffocate, and Dad couldn’t stand the idea of keeping anything caged. But hermit crabs are never free, and neither am I. We’re both timid little creatures happier in tight, dark little spaces than out in the big world where we’re likely to be stepped on and crushed.
I shut my mouth, squeezing back into the safety of my shell before Ayla or anyone else can crush me.