Friday happens, despite my spending all of Thursday wishing for a Sleeping Beauty–style reprieve, for the world to fall into unconsciousness and wake up on Monday with zero memory of Luke’s party or why it didn’t happen.
That would be magical.
Alas, magic is for stories and shampoo that doesn’t sting when it gets in your eyes. Mom calls just before breakfast, and for the first time since records began, I let the machine pick it up. My voice doesn’t feel very steady, and there’s a numbness lingering on my lips that I’m almost certain will warp my words. I don’t want to slow down her recovery any more than I already have with unnecessary stress.
I remember once, when the panic attacks started happening more often, I asked her how she felt about the whole thing. She whispered, ‘Helpless.’ Told me it was like watching her kid drown inside a transparent box that she couldn’t break into. I cried that day, hated myself.
Besides, she’s said all she can say and my brain obviously isn’t willing to believe it. I have no choice but to handle this one on my own.
The machine chimes three times before the sound of her voice fills the house. It makes me smile. ‘Hey, baby. Just calling to check in. See how you’re holding up. Hoping you’re still in bed. I hate it when you don’t pick up the phone. Call me back, okay?’
Three more chimes and the machine goes dead.
And then . . .
One second passes . . .
In a thoroughly predictable fashion . . .
Two seconds . . .
The message tone of my cell squawks from inside my pocket. It’s Mom, saying the exact same thing, only this time by text. I knew she would. Texting works. I litter my reply with half-truths and smiling emojis so she can carry on recuperating.
Meanwhile, in real life, calm is trying its best to stay above the surface while I mope around the house, eyeing the trash can in the kitchen like it’s a giant spider commandeering that corner of the room. The invite is still in there, so naturally the trash can has become enemy number one.
It stalks me incessantly. See, anxiety doesn’t just stop. You can have nice moments, minutes where it shrinks, but it doesn’t leave. It lurks in the background like a shadow, like that important assignment you have to do but keep putting off or the dull ache that follows a three-day migraine. The best you can hope for is to contain it, make it as small as possible so it stops being intrusive. Am I coping? Yes, but it’s taking a monumental amount of effort to keep the dynamite inside my stomach from exploding.
The party isn’t until tonight, 7.30, the invite said, but I decide to take action early.
It takes me less than ten minutes to turn my room into a bunker.
I close my curtains, use stuffed toys and two towers of six books, all of them 332 pages thick, to conceal any cracks. I grab a glass of water, then another – you’ve got to have a backup – and set them both on my nightstand.
I don’t need snacks; eating is out of the question since my stomach is already too tight to fit food in. I put a new paper bag on my dresser, just in case, and break out my spare pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Standing back, I admire the space I’ve somehow managed to make smaller.
I. Am. Crazy. I have to laugh at myself.
It’s times like this when I’m glad no one knows the things I do to make myself feel safe.
I promise myself that I’m not going to hide in my room until it gets dark. Instead, I slip into the study, hit play on the stereo, and listen to Marie Miraz talk irregular French verbs.
‘Do you understand?’ Marie asks in the same condescending tone she’s been using since lesson one.
‘J’ai compris,’ I tell her. She rambles on, instructs me to follow, but movement next door has caught my attention. Luke’s parents.
His mom is on the doorstep in her nightgown. His dad, standing just outside, leans in and kisses her hard on the mouth. It looks as if he’s leaving.
He is leaving, grinning from ear-to-ear as he trots off down the driveway. But she, Luke’s mom, in complete contrast, is swiping what look like tears of anguish off her cheeks.
I shouldn’t be staring.
I wish I could offer her a tissue.
I need to stop staring.
Right. I dash to the stereo, put Marie on pause, and flee the study.
For the following hours I ferment on the couch and try to submerge myself in talk shows. I’m cringing at the sight of jilted spouses beating up their toothless exes when I hear an engine growl outside.
Ignore it.
The car pulls up next door, and I find myself second-guessing the party’s start time. It’s just before four. They wouldn’t start now . . . would they?
Ignore it.
But what if something is happening that I need to know about?
Ignore it.
Of course I can’t ignore it, because there is a certain amount of safety in knowing everything there is to know about a situation. I mean, you wouldn’t throw yourself out of a plane before making sure your pack contained a parachute, would you? I only need to hide from the party itself; the planning of it is fair game.
On bended knees, I make my way over to the window. A truck covered in dust with the words Clean me and a cartoon penis sketched on the side is parked in the road. Luke skips out of his house, greets the guy driving with a high five. It’s not enough. The driver, a casual blond mop of muscle and chiselled cheeks, pulls him in for a hug. They slap each other on the back, hard, and for a second I wonder if I might have missed one or both of them choking.
I kneel on the floor, peep up from beneath the porch windowsill, and watch as the two carry pieces of antique furniture out of Luke’s house and over to the garage.
‘What are they doing?’ I ask the air.
It clicks when Luke’s mom appears at the door lugging a big glass vase decorated with gold flowers. Blond Guy hurries over, grabs it from her, and pretends to drop it. Poor Luke’s mom clutches her chest; a look of horror flashes across her face before she realizes he’s teasing.
They’re trying to avoid collateral damage from the party; locking all the valuables away in the garage so they don’t get damaged. I don’t imagine regurgitated beer is easy to get out of vintage upholstery, and I don’t imagine they’ll be able to replace that vase at the Shop ’n’ Save either. That’s pretty smart. This bodes well for me; at the very least, Luke is a forward thinker.
The two guys laugh and talk a lot. And they keep finding opportunities to punch each other. I see bear cubs play-fighting.
At 5.37 they crash in the front yard, lie on the ground, and soak up the late-afternoon rays. Luke pulls on a pair of aviators, and my heart sighs.
The animated conversation they’re having dies when Luke’s mom walks out of the house dragging a small suitcase behind her. The weeping woman from this morning is nowhere in sight. This woman smiles as if she were walking the stage at a Miss America pageant. She’s wearing a crisp black flight attendant’s uniform and a coat of shimmering pink lipstick. She makes me think of Hollywood in the fifties. Blond Guy whistles, and Luke promptly socks him in the arm. She ruffles Luke’s hair and gives him a kiss on the cheek. I think I see her mouth the word Behave before climbing into a silver SUV. His mom is not only going to be gone for this party, she’s going to be thirty thousand feet in the air. Noted.
A little after six, a beat-up Nissan chugs into view. The guy driving is a toothpick with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a pair of too-big horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. I know him. At least, I recognize his face from my Hub feed. I want to say his name is Simon, and a few weeks back he was photographed at a football game wearing a Cardinal Cocks jersey and kissing a redhead. It’s possible we said hi while passing each other in the school hall. But that was all so long ago, I can’t be certain.
He pulls his car all the way up Luke’s driveway, and I lose sight of him. Shame doesn’t register as I crawl across the floor and over to the study. The window there gives me a panoramic view of Luke’s driveway, so I can get a better look.
Dr Reeves says that I take note of situations like this because it tricks my brain into thinking I’m being proactive about a problem. I can’t stop or control Luke’s party, but watching things unfold, tracking activity, taking mental notes, makes me feel less like I’m falling into an abyss. And that helps.
More backslapping and shoulder-butting happens, then the three of them unload giant speakers from the trunk of the little car. It’s like Mary Poppins’s carpet bag. Stuff keeps spilling out of the tiny space.
Mrs Mortimer, the leather-faced grizzly from across the road, comes out of her house as the three of them wrangle with wires and some expensive techtronic-type equipment. She folds her arms across her chest and throws disapproving glances at the boys. For a mortifying few seconds, I see myself, only with more hair and fewer face whiskers. Mom says the girls at the hair salon call her Moaning Mortimer. A shudder rips through me. I’m not old and bitter, though. I don’t hate the youth, or having fun.
‘You’re not angry, you’re afraid,’ I remind myself just as Agnes Lop, Mrs Mortimer’s fence buddy, joins her on the driveway.
I don’t suppose our street has ever seen a party. I mean, Rhodes Center, in the middle of town, has this free-for-all cookout to celebrate our founding father, and both schools throw a dance, but as far as private parties go, they don’t happen on Triangle Crescent.
Triangle Crescent is mostly where people come to die. My mom calls it God’s waiting room, with the residents having a collective age that predates religion. Luke and I are the youngest by about twenty years. I’m not bitching. Most of the folk around here are nice. At least they were the last time I left the house. On Saturdays I used to walk around the street listening to stories about absent grand-kids and collecting free candy for a chorus of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle.’
It’s almost seven. The light is dying. Dirty blue and purple clouds bruise the sky. I’ve ignored everything in favour of watching the guys toss around a dusty old piece of pigskin. The faint whistle of my plummeting school grades can be heard in the distance.
I eyeball the open door of the study.
This will all be over tomorrow, I reason. I can quit worrying about it and catch up then.
Guilt might be about to shake me into submission when I hear Luke laugh. I like the way he laughs. He puts his whole self into it, throwing his head back and holding his stomach while his entire body shakes.
They seem to be having a good time until a phone rings, Tubular Bells, and Luke pulls his cell from his pocket. He stares at the screen and his two friends exchange a rolling-eyed glance.
Amy.
I don’t hear him say it, but I can read it in the way his lips curl around the pronunciation of her name. The guy who I am now, like, ninety-nine per cent certain is called Simon dismisses the call with a wave of his hand. But Luke is already walking away, lifting the phone to his ear. Blond Guy shrugs – it’s a what-are-you-gonna-do type of gesture.
Amy.
My interest evaporates. I slump back against the wall, bring my knees up to my chest and hug them tight. My teeth grate against the skin on the inside of my mouth, but I don’t bite down.
Why does this name bother me? My straightforward-thinking brain wants to know.
My heart keeps tripping, but I’m not panicking. I know what panic feels like and this isn’t it.
I wonder what Amy looks like and if she kisses with reckless abandon. I wonder if she can walk down a crowded strip mall holding someone’s hand. I bet she can go out for dinner and not spend an hour trying to taste salmonella in her chicken. I bet she can go here, there, and everywhere without worrying about what might happen.
Right. I guess that’s why it bothers me. It’s like watching my Hub feed play out in my front yard. And probably, maybe, definitely, the new boy next door has me intrigued. But suddenly I’m not sure if that’s even allowed.
I kneel up, take one last look out of the window. Luke has rejoined his friends; they have their arms slung over his shoulders, laughing. But not with him. Luke looks unimpressed, kind of like a guy who’s just been ordered to run laps around a freezing-cold track. Maybe they’re mocking him.
Are you okay? I think it a thousand times, even write it out once on the wall with my finger.
He shrugs when Blond Guy starts making whooping sounds. Then he looks up, glances over at my house. There’s no way he can see me. He’s looking in the wrong spot, for starters. But I turn to stone and try to wish myself invisible anyway. Then he looks away and they all head back inside his house.