“Little D!” Miney says, and there she is, at the dinner table, sitting in her seat, which we leave open in her absence out of protocol. Her hair is a little longer, but at least at first glance, she looks pretty much the same. Like my sister. “I’m home!”
Yes, this is obvious, though I refrain from telling her that. From past experience I’ve learned this is rude. What is not immediately obvious is why she is here. She’s not supposed to be home for another forty-nine days, her spring break, which does not in any way overlap with mine. We have already scheduled around this inconvenience. I will skip school on that Tuesday with my parents’ permission—they have already agreed to write a note in which they will claim I have an important doctor’s appointment—and Miney and I will re-create what we have mutually agreed was the Perfect Day of All the Days Ever. It will involve lunch from Sayonara Sushi, ice cream from Straw, forty-seven minutes at our favorite bookstore, and then a trip down the shore to the aquarium.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Some things never change. Always straight to the point,” Miney says, and makes a sound that is similar to Kit’s snort. A laugh that is not really a laugh but is something wholly unidentifiable by me. Someone should make a YouTube video that identifies the range of female noises, not unlike the ones they have for avid birders. “I just needed a break from school. And I missed you guys.”
Though I think it highly unlikely that Miney missed me—I’ve estimated that I irritate her about eighty percent of the time we spend together—I’m thrilled that she’s here. Kit at my lunch table and Miney home on the same day feel like something more than coincidence. A cosmic alignment.
“When are you leaving?” I ask. Departures are easier for me if I have some lead time to prepare and plan, to imagine the befores and afters of the scenario.
“You’ll be the first to know when I figure it out. Now, get over here,” she says, and stands up and opens her arms for a hug. I’m generally not a fan of displays of affection, but I make an exception for my parents and Miney. Well, really just for my mom and Miney. My dad is more of a thumbs-up kind of guy.
Her arms wrap around me, and I immediately start to look for sneaky changes. Miney’s perfume is no longer citrus. Instead it’s something sandalwood-based, borderline musty, and her clothes don’t smell recently laundered. A chunk of her hair is now purple, and she’s added a piercing to the top part of her ear. Her eyes are bloodshot.
She better not have gotten a tattoo. I couldn’t handle that.
Miney was perfect the way she was when she left in September. I don’t like that each time she comes home, I need to readjust to a new iteration. I find I have trouble with the purple stripe. It looks like noise.
“Mom says Kit drove you home from school today,” she says, which isn’t a question, but she somehow makes it sound like one.
“Yup,” I say. “We talked all about quantum mechanics.”
“Oh my God, D. Have I taught you nothing?” she says.
“You’ve taught me lots of things. I didn’t mention her weight, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“What are we going to do with you?” she asks, and my stomach clenches. Freshman year, when I would find myself in trouble at school on a biweekly basis, Principal Hoch would pose this question, which is both idiomatic and rhetorical. What are we going to do with you? Like I was a group project.
Just once I’d like the answer to be: nothing.
Just once I’d like the answer to be: You are just fine as is.
Just once I’d like the question not to be asked in the first place.
“Get your notebook,” Miney demands, and I pull it out of my bag. I smooth the familiar blue cover, a tic left over from when I needed to look through it hourly. Lately, though, the notebook stays in my bag for longer periods. I can almost imagine a time I won’t need it at all. “An opportunity like Kit comes around once in a lifetime, if that.”
“Kit is a girl. Though statistically speaking, it is unlikely that she is actually the best girl in the world, it feels that way. No doubt she’s the best girl in Mapleview. What Kit is not is an opportunity,” I say.
“I’m just saying we have some serious work to do. I’m not letting you blow this.”
“That’s what she said,” I joke. I’ve been waiting weeks for the chance to use a variation of the “that’s what he/she said” thing since I’ve learned how it’s done, and so I can’t help but grin when Miney cracks up. Her face looks lighter and softer when she laughs. Her purple hair feels quieter too. The sum of her parts now equals the familiar.
I just wish Miney’s eyes weren’t bloodshot.
“I was wrong. Maybe some things do change,” she says, and ruffles my hair, like I’m a small boy. And though I don’t quite understand the reason behind her gesture, I find myself leaning into her hands.
Today, the fourth time Kit sits at my lunch table, she eats a sandwich and an apple. On close inspection, it appears to be hummus and turkey on whole wheat. Her black nail polish is chipped, and her shirt hangs off of her right shoulder, just like one of Miney’s, which makes me think this must be a sartorial choice and not a mistake of sizing. She has a bunch of freckles near the center of her clavicle that form a small circle. It’s a soft detail, like how her bottom lip pushes out just a millimeter from her top lip, or how when she pushes her hands through her hair, the commas fall forward, as if taking a bow.
Usually people are too bright, too loud, too overpowering. Jessica’s blond hair hurts my eyes. Willow’s elbows and knees look sharp; when she passes me in the hall, I imagine them cutting me like tiny knives. And Abby, the third girl in their triumvirate and the one who called me a freak the other day, wears so much sickly sweet perfume, I can smell her even before she enters a classroom. But Kit is entirely quiet. She never offends my senses.
“I always thought it was strange that your dad gave out lollipops to his patients,” I say, and once the words are out I realize I would prefer not to have to talk about Dentist in the past tense. And yet that’s what happens with the dead. They get to take no part in the present or the future.
“He only gave them to kids,” she says.
“I’ve never left his office without one,” I say, which sounds like a cool line, I think. I don’t add that his hygienist, Barbara, always slipped me an extra. That would be bragging. She liked me. Adults generally do. It’s fellow teenagers I have a problem with.
“They were sugar-free.” Of course, I think. I’m embarrassed that this—a dentist giving out lollipops—has confused me for years. What a silly thing to fixate on. And yet I do that. Find a tiny nugget—an inaccuracy or a contradiction—and it niggles at the back of my brain. I don’t like open loops. “So you drive yourself to school every day? I saw you in the parking lot this morning.”
I don’t tell her that we’ve been in the parking lot at the same time almost every morning since the beginning of the school year. I always arrive at 7:57, which is exactly the amount of time one needs to stop at one’s locker, pick up a book or two, and be on time to a first-period class in the north wing. I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s never noticed me out there before. I seem to fall into one of two extremes for people. To the Justin Chos of the world, I stick out. I’m the equivalent of one of Willow’s elbows. Unpleasant and somehow disruptive, even when I don’t say a word. For everyone else, I’m mostly invisible. When Kit first sat down at my lunch table, I assumed she didn’t notice me there. I’m terrified of the inevitable day when someone accidentally sits on my lap.
“Yeah. Why?” I ask.
“Well, I drove you home yesterday.” My cheeks warm, and my palms sweat. Damn. It didn’t even occur to me that she’d find out I didn’t need a ride.
“Right.” I scramble for a reasonable explanation. In other words, my nemesis: a good lie. I come up empty. I opt for uncomfortable silence. I look at her clavicle freckle cluster. It is suitably distracting. I think about the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, which of course leads me to pi. Who doesn’t love the endless, rhythmic beauty of pi?
“So you left your car here last night? You know they tow, right?” she asks.
I nod. I know this.
“My mom brought me back just after you dropped me off.” I hear the words I have just said out loud and realize I am a ridiculous person. I will always be a ridiculous person. How could I have been worried yesterday that Kit would think I was a dork? Of course she already does. I am fooling no one.
What are we going to do with you?
I decide to stick with what I do best. The truth.
“I just like talking to you. So though I didn’t technically need a ride, I wanted one.”
“Okay,” she says, and looks up, and for a quick second our eyes meet. I break contact first. “I kinda like talking to you too.”
Later, at the end of the school day, I see Kit as she walks to her car. Even though we have five classes together, with the wonderful lunch exception it seems we have tacitly agreed not to talk to each other during the day while in school. This is fine by me, since I like my routine. I have a playlist and my headphones for all classroom transitions. But now that we are outside, I wave with my keys in my hands. I think of this as the equivalent of laughing at myself, which my family often reminds me I need to do more often. She smiles.
“Yeah, so I’m not going to offer you a ride home again,” she says. “It wouldn’t be fair to your mom.”
“That’s too bad. You’re a very good driver.” Kit’s face closes. I am not sure exactly what I mean—she has not moved a single muscle, but she’s suddenly like a computer that’s been powered down. I prefer her face when it’s open.
“See you later,” she says, and slips into her red Toyota Corolla, a car that suits her in a way her name does not. I wave once more, a silly gesture that I instantly regret when I notice what must have made Kit close her face. Gabriel and Justin are watching us.
“Wait, she said those words: I kinda like talking to you too. Seriously?” Miney asks when I get home from school. She’s lying on the couch in a way that makes it seem like she has been there all day. Her hair is tangled and she’s wearing her favorite pajamas: the ones I bought for her for Christmas two years ago that say ODD next to a picture of a duck wearing a tiara. She forgot them when she left for college, and though I offered to FedEx them, she told me it was too much of a hassle. When I said I didn’t mind, she said she liked knowing they were home safe, where they couldn’t get lost or stolen. That’s how I know they are her favorite.
“Yes. Those exact words. And then we chatted about how much we both liked old eighties movies. She’s a John Hughes fan too. I told her that he died at the age of fifty-nine. Just dropped dead of a heart attack. Here one day, gone the next. Just like her dad. I mean, Kit’s dad died in a car accident, but same concept. Blink here. Blink gone.”
“Little D.” Miney sits up and shakes her head. “You can’t. I mean, you got to be careful about the dead dad stuff.”
“Kit says she likes that I tell the truth. She called it ‘brutal honesty,’ but I think it’s the same thing.”
Miney stays still for a minute. She’s wearing her thinking face.
“I think you need to ask Kit out.”
“What?”
“Not like on a date or anything. Not yet. Something super-casual. Maybe to study. Or to work on a school project together. You need to up your time together in a way that feels like a natural extension of lunch.” Miney pulls her hair back from her face and ties it in a ponytail. The purple gets mostly hidden, and I feel the tightness in my chest lighten. Her eyes are still bloodshot, and there are triangles of blue below them. I will pick up some zinc lozenges from the drugstore later in case she’s getting sick. “I wish I remembered Kit from when I went to Mapleview. I looked up her Twitter and Instagram and stuff, but it didn’t tell me much. She seems surprisingly normal.”
“Why is that surprising? I told you she was perfect. Also, she’s the prettiest girl in school.”
“Eh, she’s cute enough.” I have no idea what she’s cute enough for, but I don’t ask. Whatever Kit is, I like it.
“Why would we study together? I’m way ahead in all my subjects. It would be inefficient.” I stare at the right side of Miney’s face. That way I can’t see the new piercing. Like the purple stripe, it screams at me. No, there’s a slight octave shift. It feels like it’s demanding something, but I don’t know what.
“Missing the point. But before we get to any of that, if you want any shot here, we need to clean you up. The time has come, Little D.”
Miney smiles in that way she does when she’s about to force me to do something scary. She’s like Trey that way. Always pushing me out of what she calls “my comfort zone,” which I’ll never understand. Why would you purposely make yourself uncomfortable?
Since Miney is number one on the Trust List, I try hard to do whatever she asks. That’s not always possible.
“The time has come for what?” I think of Kit’s clavicle. The perfect little circle of freckles. Pi. It relaxes me, like counting backward.
“Shopping, Little D. Time to get over your fear of the big bad mall.” Yup, I was right. Horrifying.