It had been exactly two days, thirteen hours, and thirty-four minutes since we left Ashley at Indiana State, and I was itching to get out of the house and away from my mom’s sole attention. We’d already prepared healthy prep meals that we could freeze and eat for the next month, and if I had to dice one more carrot or make one more pot of rice, I would most definitely scream.
Thankfully, I’d already made plans with my best friend, Grace, to go to her family’s summer cookout slash family field day in the park. Each year, the Morenos from around the Midwest came and joined for this day of fun (and sibling rivalry). I was mostly there for a chance to see her cousin Mateo … and hang out with Grace, of course.
Fiyero the poodle monster rested his chin on the side of my bed, rumbling a low, guttural growl, alerting me it was time to get up and play with him. I groaned as I rolled over and grabbed his fluffy face between my hands.
“Now that Ashley isn’t here you have to resort to me, huh?” I asked.
Fiyero cocked his head like he was trying to understand me. His tongue, which was always a little too big for his mouth, flopped to the side and I barked out an early-morning laugh.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” I said.
As I stood up, Fiyero started bouncing around the room excitedly and then raced down the hallway and down the stairs. Much to my surprise, I heard Mom yelp “Fiyero!” from the bottom of the stairs. Usually Mom sleeps in until noon on the weekends, but today she was already up and stretching in the living room. Her hands contorted in weird angles behind her back and she listened to the soft hum of Lady Gaga, her workout music of choice.
“Want to join me and Fiyero on a run this morning?” she asked without turning around. My tiptoeing obviously failed me.
“As fun as that sounds…” I trailed off.
“The first step to a healthier life is making a commitment,” she rattled off. I kept a mental tally of the thinspiration mantras she preached to me throughout the day. This one was at about two times a day.
“I inherited my commitment issues from Dad, obviously,” I said.
I regretted saying it as soon as it came out. We tried not to talk about the Dad Debacle of Sophomore Year when he cheated on Mom with one of her friends. Should friends be in quotation marks in that context? Yes. Her “friend” slept with my dad for about a year before he slipped up, leaving his phone charging on the kitchen counter and leaving message previews open for a naive sophomore me to find. Adult sexting is disgusting.
“Oh, Savannah,” she said, shaking her head with both of her hands firmly on her hips. It was a pose reserved for her times of greatest disappointment.
“Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I have to head over to Grace’s. She’s having the Moreno family reunion thing this afternoon. Um, did you want to come, too?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks, sweetie. I’m heading over to the gym this afternoon. You have fun, though. Be sure to tell Maria thank you.”
Her statement felt a little like a judgment. Like, You have fun while I improve my mind, body, and spirit at the gym without you. Most things out of her mouth sounded like a personal attack on me lately.
“I will. See you tonight,” I said, heading into the kitchen.
“Do you want to heat up one of our frozen meals before you go? You don’t need all the extra carbs that come with the grill-out food, especially the buns,” she said.
My whole body flushed red like it did every time she tried to restrict my food. I remembered Ashley’s plea to keep the peace while she was gone, and swallowed the anger that bubbled up inside of me.
“I’ll be sure to heat one up before I leave, Mom,” I lied. “Have fun at the gym.”
Normally on Sunday mornings, Ashley would be up and making breakfast. She’d make secret pancakes and bacon before Mom could wake up and tell us how many calories we were wasting on breakfast. We’d lounge on the couch and watch episodes of whatever show we were bingeing and practically become one with the couch before Mom woke up at noon. Maybe Mom woke up early so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. Even though it made me feel a little better, the giant hole in our home dynamic expanded two sizes.
I listened to the soft rhythm of Mom’s feet hitting the floor as she did her warm-up routine. I’d become accustomed to this sound over the past year. After Mom and Dad’s divorce, Mom tailspinned into a shame spiral. She started making changes to every aspect of her life—anything to get her out of the “rut” she’d been in all those years with Dad. One night, she saw a call for audition tapes for the weight-loss reality TV show Shake the Weight and conned Ashley into helping her film a tape. Thinking nothing would come of it and being willing to do anything to make Mom happy in those months, Ashley helped her out.
About a month later, on Mother’s Day, Mom got a call that she’d need to fly out to LA for a screen test with other potential contestants. Two weeks later, she was packing a bag to move out to LA and we were packing our bags to stay with Dad and Sheri for the next two months.
Each Wednesday night we would sit in front of the TV and watch this woman who was once our mother fight with other contestants, puke on camera, and shed a definitely unhealthy amount of weight in a few short months. She started praising the woman who barked orders at her, pushed her until she passed out, and caused her emotional damage she couldn’t see happening to her. There is a reason people on these shows aren’t allowed to call their family members while they’re filming. Everyone would convince them to run from that place as fast as they could.
Now Mom inhabited a new, smaller body, after rigorous exercise and plastic surgery to remove some excess skin. I knew she was the same woman, could recognize her voice and her eyes, but everything else about her had changed. She had a one-track mind to count calories, follow to-do lists, and repeat the mantras that had been ingrained in her on Shake the Weight. She fixated not only on every little thing that crossed her lips but mine as well.
I snuck back up the stairs as Mom did arm circles to “Applause.” The weather was sweltering. The Morenos always managed to host their family day on the stickiest day of the year. Thankfully, Mr. Moreno usually brought a sprinkler so that we could all cool down when it became unbearable.
The yellow-and-blue polka-dotted swimsuit sat snugly on my hips, and I instantly regretted opting out of swimsuit shopping this year. I figured I’d managed to squeeze into the same one for three years, what could possibly change in one more? Oh, right, everything. I flung on a T-shirt from Adventure World and slipped into my favorite flip-flops, on the verge of ripping in two. You can’t beat a really nice pair of broken-in flip-flops.
When I came back downstairs, Mom and Fiyero had left for their run. I grabbed the keys to my new, inherited car. Ashley always had the touch with Norma (a very normal car name for a Nissan), but I absolutely despised driving. Thankfully Sandcastle Park was only a few-minutes drive away. If I could make it there with only a few bumps along the way, I would consider it a successful trip.
Sandcastle Park came into my view after a particularly violent curb check. I parked a block away and could still hear Mrs. Moreno greeting everyone as they showed up. She had the biggest heart, and the loudest voice to match. I once said that if I had to take one person with me on a deserted island, I’d take Mrs. Moreno because she could calm me down, cook some bomb food, and use her loud voice to track down civilization from miles away.
“Savannah! Savannah, over here, Savannah!” she called to me from across the street. I waved sheepishly as all of Grace’s extended family turned to look at me.
“Hey, Mrs. M,” I yelled back.
From the corner of my eye, I saw my best friend running my way. She wrapped me up in a hug, knocking the wind from me, in typical Grace fashion. When she pulled away, she held me by the shoulders and looked me up and down.
“How are you doing? Don’t lie,” she added, holding up an accusatory finger.
I sighed. “I’ve been better. But we’re not here to have a pity party. We’re here to have a fun day!”
“I signed us up for a three-legged race,” she said, cringing as she waited for my response.
“You what?” I asked, knowing full well what I heard. Knowing full well that Grace knew that I refused to participate in this event every year since third grade, when I watched Andrew Adams break his leg while he was in a three-legged race with Cody Grant.
“You can’t let the ghost of Andrew’s broken-leg past haunt you forever. It’s the only event I’ve never won. Come on, this is our year. I’ll even get Mateo in on a conversation with you if that sweetens the deal,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“I feel really uncomfortable with you bribing me romantically with your family members,” I said.
“Ugh, you wouldn’t have cared if I didn’t mention the three-legged race! What else do you want? I’ll do anything,” she said. When competitive Grace came out, you didn’t want to get in her way. She wasn’t above bribery if it meant she had the opportunity to win something.
“Do my laundry for the next month?” I offered.
“You know how much I despise laundry,” she said.
“Take it or leave it, Moreno,” I said.
She held out her hand for a binding handshake. “Deal.”
After we shook, Grace took me on the grand tour of the attractions at this year’s Moreno Family Field Day. First was a game of corn hole; next to it was a Slip ‘N Slide and a rope for tug-of-war. One of the newer additions was a life-size chess board for a round of wizard’s chess, spearheaded by Grace’s little brother, Leo. For once in my life, I was grateful for Dad forcing Ashley and me to learn to play and go to chess club all those years ago. I was going to rock this wizard chess like it was nobody’s business.
As I gazed over at the Slip ‘N Slide, I saw a boy—no, a man—with luscious, wavy black hair and a smile that could melt the hearts of the iciest queens. Mateo had made the song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” play in my head whenever I saw him since we were first introduced at the tender age of ten. We’d bonded over our matching Silly Bandz and it was pretty much love at first sight. For me, anyway. I was fully aware that sex gods like Mateo Moreno didn’t look twice at girls like me.
“You can’t just ogle my cousin while he’s hanging out by a Slip ‘N Slide.” Grace laughed, elbowing me in the side.
“I’m actually ogling the Slip ‘N Slide. Is that an extra ten feet at the end? Mrs. M went all out,” I said.
“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Mrs. M called everyone to gather around her picnic table to recite the rules for the day. No cheating would be tolerated, and Grandma Rosalina was the official ref. When I looked back to her she made “I’m watching you” fingers at me. Grandma Rosalina apparently didn’t forget the year I ran into my competitors bumper-car style during the sack race. The second rule was to find your partner for the day. Under no circumstances were you to sabotage your partner during one-on-one activities to earn more points, or you would be disqualified. You’d think we were being filmed by ESPN with how strict they were about the rules.
“Now, pick your partners!” she yelled. Everyone frantically ran up to their desired partner, practically tackling other people out of the way to get to where they wanted to be. Grace and I instantly linked arms in a technique we’d perfected while having to find partners in school. Nothing could describe the sense of pure panic you felt when a teacher announced that you’d need a partner. Having the instant person you’d make eye contact with from across the room, sealing your partner bond, was the best feeling in the world.
“We’re doing something a little bit more fun this year,” Mrs. M announced. That sinking feeling that I just talked about? Yeah, let’s multiply that by a thousand.
“You have to find a new partner! Everyone has been choosing the same ones for years and it’s starting to get a little unfair. I’m looking at you, Roberto and Luis. Ready, set, find a new partner!” she said.
“Did you know about this?” I hissed to Grace.
“I had no idea!” she said.
We both frantically looked around for a new option, and I felt like we were competing in the Hunger Games. Or, I felt like I was going to get picked last like in gym class. I think both scenarios are equally terrifying. Everyone was pairing off, hurtling their bodies at each other in what seemed like slow motion in my mind. I whipped my head around, and my eyes locked on Mateo from across the park. He started to lift his hand up to wave at me, the most iconic symbol of “Let me be your partner” in the universe, before Leo snatched his hand and claimed him as his partner. Damn it, Leo, now I’m really going to have to own you in wizard’s chess.
“Who’s left?” Mrs. M yelled from her picnic table. Everyone looked around and stared at each other. Really? Just me then?
“I’m super alone, Mrs. M,” I said, which garnered a few pity laughs from the crowd. It got quiet for a moment before one more person spoke up from the back.
“Also super alone,” said a male voice that I didn’t recognize. He stepped out from behind a cluster of people and into my vision. He didn’t look like the majority of the Morenos—he was unbelievably tall, with strawberry blond hair. He was at least the height of two Grandma Rosalinas combined. He inhabited that awkward in-between boy stage where they lacked muscle definition but their forms had outgrown their younger bodies.
“Great! Savannah, you will be with George. Now, everyone, it’s time to start with the egg toss! We’ll go in waves of five. Everyone come on over to the other side of the park so we can start,” Mrs. M said.
While everyone started walking toward the other side of the park, I walked in the opposite direction to meet George. My palms started to sweat and my heart fluttered in my chest the way it tends to when I meet new people for the first time. It didn’t help that he had some exceptionally dreamy brown eyes that crinkled in the corners when he smiled. I wonder what it said about me that I found my best friend’s extended family attractive.
“Hey,” I said, waving a little. “I’m Savannah.”
“George,” he said, holding out his hand. It made me feel a little better that his hands were shaking, too.
“Are you … Grace’s cousin? Friend of the family?” I asked.
I meant it innocently, since I obviously fell under the “family friend” category, but his face turned down. “I know I don’t look traditionally Colombian, but I’m a Moreno.”
“Oh! Oh shit, no, that’s not what I meant. Seriously, I just, I’d never seen you before and I honestly didn’t know,” I said, wanting to kick myself for being so inconsiderate.
“I mean, I’m not technically a Moreno, like, my last name is Smith, which now seems like it’s defeating the point. My mom’s Colombian. My dad’s very Irish. Hence the hair,” he said.
“Okay, cool. Well, I’m Savannah Alverson, with a painfully uninteresting cultural background. I think my dad has some strong Norwegian ties in his family, but I can’t be sure,” I said.
We stared at each other for a few solid seconds, taking in each other’s cultural history, before Mrs. M’s voice sounded again.
“We’re about to start! Savannah! George! Get a move on!” she said.
That was our cue to speed-walk over to the rest of the group. The egg toss was my peak event each year. I’d perfected my soft-palmed catch down to a science and knew how to arc the egg perfectly so that my partner could catch it without a problem. I tried my best to divulge all my techniques to George as we joined the rest of the family on the other side of the park.
“You see, I have a bit of a reputation to uphold,” I said. “I’ve been dubbed egg master for the past three years. And I’m not prepared to revoke my title today.”
“Teach me your ways,” George said, with a lopsided smile.
“The key is to imagine where the egg is going to land before it even leaves your hand. I think positive affirmation works wonders. If you think the egg will land softly in your partner’s hand, it will,” I said.
“Okay, Mr. Miyagi.”
I grabbed an egg from Mrs. M’s hand and George and I met in the middle with all the other teams. Mrs. M instructed each of us to take four steps back from our partners to start the game. I caught the wave of Mateo’s luscious hair out of the corner of my eye, and turned to take one last peek before I entered competition mode.
“Good luck, Savvy.” Mateo smiled.
Normally I would say something like “You know I don’t need luck” or “I’m the one who should be wishing you luck,” but the sparkle of Mateo’s eyes in the sun made my mind completely incapable of forming a coherent comeback.
“Uh, yeah, you too,” I said.
“Savannah!” George yelled at me from across the park. My head snapped back to him and he mouthed “Focus!” while attempting a tree yoga pose. Which did not make me focus more, for the record. It made me snort out an entirely unattractive laugh that Mateo definitely heard.
“On your marks, get set, toss!” Mrs. M yelled.
The egg left my hands with the perfect arc and velocity to land peacefully in George’s hand without too much difficulty on his end. I held my breath as it made contact, and he held it up, intact, with a surprised look on his face. I sent him an encouraging thumbs-up before he sent the egg back my way.
We took another four steps back away from each other. This was usually the round where people started cracking their eggs or dropping them. You could hear a mix of shrieks and “Are you kidding me?”s as we kept progressing through the rounds. And then, there were three groups left. It was getting harder and harder to see the egg flying through the air, and I thought for sure he would not catch it as I tossed it across the park. But, by some stroke of egg-god luck, we were the last ones standing as the other two groups dropped theirs.
“Our egg toss champion wins again!” Mrs. M yelled.
George gave me a giddy high five that made me giggle. I’d never seen anyone as excited as me about an egg toss. He carried that same enthusiasm as we competed in the ring toss, only coming in third place for that activity. It was harder for me to aim the rings to get on the tiny post than it was to pass an egg to my partner, for some reason.
Next, we separated for our first individual event of balloon archery. And even though I didn’t make it into the top five finalists, I felt accomplished that none of my arrows went astray and threatened anyone’s life this year. It took a lot of trust and reassurance on my part to earn my bow and arrow back in the past few years. Mrs. M would hardly forget the time that a stray arrow of mine knocked over the cake that she’d been working on the whole day before.
I was about to tell George the story about my faulty arrow when Mrs. M’s voice boomed over the crowd.
“All right, now it’s time for the three-legged race. We’re going to go in waves of five and do it bracket-style. Come to me to grab your team’s rope and get prepared,” Mrs. M said.
George volunteered to go get our rope for the three-legged race, and I watched him run away in his basketball shorts. Grace sat on the ground, joining her leg with one of her younger cousins. I suddenly felt self-conscious about the short shorts I chose to wear over my swimsuit. Imagining my jiggling thigh having to be tied up to a stranger’s was my version of a nightmare. Would he notice the stretch marks that striped down my inner thighs? Would he be disgusted by me when he saw them?
“What’s the best way to tie two legs together?” George asked. “I figured you must be a pro at this, too.”
I could barely understand what he said as my brain started to shut down at the thought of tying my leg to George’s.
“Um, yeah, this is the first time I’ll be doing this event,” I said.
He shook his head, completely oblivious to my internal freak-out. “Cool. So it will be a learning experience for both of us. Do you want to take this end and wrap it around your thigh and I’ll pull this end through mine? Then we can try a loop knot. I think that will be the most comfortable. What do you think? Savannah?”
It suddenly felt like all the air had been pushed out of my lungs. I swayed on my feet as the ringing in my ears began. No matter how many panic attacks I had, my body always believed that it was dying. My body told me that I couldn’t catch my breath, that I was going to actually die in Sandcastle Park in my polka-dotted swimsuit before I even got to eat lunch.
I plopped onto the ground and put my head between my legs, trying to catch my breath again. George’s voice played over the pounding of my heart and the ringing in my ears, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I squinted my eyes closed in an effort to make everything stop. My body didn’t listen. I felt someone move my ponytail from off my neck and offer me a bottle of water. When I could finally look up, Grace’s eyes met mine. Grace. Thank God for her.
“Hey, bud,” she said. “I never should have pushed you to do the three-legged race. I know how much it freaks you out, and I should have respected your limits.”
“S’okay,” I whispered, my bottom lip shaking involuntarily.
“Are you breathing? Do you want my phone so you can use my meditation app?” she asked.
“I’m okay; I’ll be fine,” I said. My body was starting to believe me now, too. Calming down from a panic attack felt like you had run a marathon. When your body freaks itself out so thoroughly that adrenaline pumps through you and all your muscles become tight at the same time, it can seriously kick your ass.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” she asked.
“I can do it,” George interjected. “I know Lizzie really wants to race. I’ll make sure she gets home.”
Grace cocked her head at me, gauging my comfort level. My eyes slid to little Lizzie tapping her feet on the ground, the rope still tied around her thigh. I couldn’t ruin an adorable seven-year-old’s afternoon with my seventeen-year-old meltdown.
“That would be nice,” I managed to get out. Grace rubbed her hand up and down my arm while whispering a quick thank-you to George. Lizzie clapped as Grace returned and tied their legs together effortlessly. The rope had more than enough give between them and Grace’s perfect, toned legs would never get chafed by the rope.
George held out his hand to help me up. I put all my focus into getting my legs to move again without wobbling. They only felt a little bit like Jell-O by the time I was fully standing, and I could walk around without feeling like I could faint any second.
“I’m going to pull my car up to the curb here. Are you okay to wait for a second while I go grab the keys from my mom?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” I said. Everything was a bit of a blur when he ran back to grab the keys and bring the car around. I tried to focus on the moving leaves of the tree directly in front of me. Anything to distract me from the way my lungs seized up every few seconds, threatening to send me spiraling again. The leaves followed a pattern as the wind gusted underneath them. Slow left, slow right, quick up. Slow left, slow right, quick up.
“Savannah!” George yelled from the car as he idled by the curb.
My eyes readjusted to take in the black Suburban in front of me. I shuffled my way there, opening the passenger door as quickly as I could manage so that I could flop into the seat. I slid the seat belt across my body and felt his eyes on me. I knew he was concerned, but it wasn’t helping with how self-conscious I was already feeling.
“Where do you live?” he asked, pulling out his phone to put it in his GPS.
“Nine Ninety-Two Mulberry Court,” I managed. A British voice erupted from the car’s speakers instructing George how to get back to my place. We sat in silence only broken by the occasional “Turn left in seventy feet. Recalculating. Turn right in thirty feet.”
This was the single most embarrassing moment of my life. I was letting a stranger drive me back home after I had a panic attack with just the thought of participating in a children’s picnic game. He had to think I was the biggest loser in the world.
“How are you feeling?” We were a few seconds from pulling into my driveway, and I just wanted to melt with humiliation into my seat.
“I’m doing better,” I said. “I’m sorry that you had to leave because of me.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I think I used up all my luck on that egg toss. Every other competition would have been disappointing in comparison.”
My smile quivered, and I felt like I might break out into full-blown panic again if I didn’t get out of the car. Now. I could not do this in front of him again.
“Thanks again,” I said, reaching for my door handle, very aware of how heavily my hands were shaking.
“Do you need me to stay with you for a second?” he asked.
“Oh, gosh no, you’ve already done enough,” I said. I opened the door with a shaking hand and managed to wiggle myself out of the tall car.
“It’s really no big deal, I can stay—” he started.
“I don’t need you to stay with me, okay? I’m perfectly fine without your help,” I snapped.
He shook his head the smallest bit as I slammed the door shut. I marched to the front door of my house and into the front room. I collapsed onto the couch and let my body properly process the anxiety and sadness I’d bottled up in the last few days. Jagged breaths came in between my tears that I’d worked so hard to keep at bay. My loneliness was truly starting to sink in. I couldn’t run up the stairs and get a hug from my sister. I couldn’t tell her about my panic attack—she wouldn’t be able to analyze it for what it really was.
This year was a new, huge, exciting adventure for Ashley. I’d never felt more abandoned.