So now everyone knows: David Drucker is hot. Once you look at him, like really look at him, which I did that first time in the bleachers, it’s so obvious, you are amazed you haven’t noticed it before. Like one of those weird optical illusions that my mom likes to show me on Facebook.
“Is that why you’ve been sitting with him? You knew there was, like, this freakin’ hot guy underneath all that hair?” Annie asks. She and Violet are so excited by the revelation that is David, they are practically vibrating. We are between periods, standing in our usual spot by my locker. Throngs of kids squeeze past us in the halls. I shake my head. “I guess we shouldn’t be so surprised, because Lauren Drucker is so stunning it’s unfair. But still. David?”
To be honest, I’m not sure what I think about David’s transformation. He now feels somehow less mine. As if he has exposed what was once small and private, a secret we shared, to the rest of school. A haircut and now Gabriel and Justin are bothering us at lunch.
All I want is for everyone to leave us alone.
“I just think he’s interesting,” I say. I chose David’s table for his silence and for his refuge. I keep going back because it turns out I like being around him, even though I’m not sure exactly why.
I guess I’m not being fair about his new look. Good for him that other girls will notice him now. That his world will grow bigger. It’s not his fault that I’m desperate to keep mine so small.
“Interesting like the Hemsworth brothers are interesting,” Violet says.
“Whatever, he’s still weird, though,” Annie says.
“Good-weird,” I say, and they both look at me like I’ve lost my mind. And maybe I have, though not about David Drucker. I consider explaining everything to my friends. Finally coming clean. Telling the whole story of this nightmare from beginning to end. But I can’t. There are some words we are not allowed to say out loud. I don’t know how to explain that I spent the weekend in my bedroom because my mother and I are no longer on speaking terms. That my mother betrayed my father, had an affair—a word I hate because it sounds so harmless, like she threw a cocktail party, not like she screwed my dad’s best friend. I don’t know how any of the past five weeks actually happened.
It still doesn’t feel real. I keep repeating it in my mind, as if it will eventually make sense. My mother had sex, probably repeatedly, with Jack. When my father found out, he was devastated and was planning to leave her, or us. I don’t know. Now he is dead. The first two facts are in no way related to the third, and yet they are commingled forever in my brain and playing continually on repeat.
A triple whammy.
Maybe I should just say these words out loud: I no longer have two parents.
That’s the shorthand version.
Until recently I thought I was the exception: I had a happy family. I don’t understand what I have left now.
I get that I’m being melodramatic. After all, I’m pretty sure Annie’s father cheated on her mom, and Annie didn’t have a mental breakdown. Her dad moved in with his assistant the same week he left their house, and though Annie’s still pissed off about the whole thing, she lets him buy her guilt presents and stays at his new place on alternating weekends. She says the whole arrangement isn’t so bad.
Is it different when it’s the mom who does the cheating? It shouldn’t be. And yet I don’t know. I’m so angry at my mother that I found myself punching the wall last night. My knuckles are bruised and red. They don’t hurt as much as I wish they would. That seems to be the paradox of grief: There is so much pain and yet sometimes, when I need to feel it, not nearly enough.
“Has he asked you to prom yet?” Annie asks, but I’m too lost in thought to answer. I’m imagining my dad finding out about my mom and Jack. How had that terrible scene played out? And were their tears at the funeral real? Was it grief or guilt?
My mother knocked on my door a bunch of times over the weekend, and again this morning, when I didn’t get up on time for school. I ignored her. She texted too. Variations of: Let me explain. Can we talk? I’m sorry. I wonder if she sent these same texts to my dad before he died.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’d check his phone, but it’s gone along with everything else.
Pulverized.
Or maybe I have the story all wrong. Maybe my mother was psyched to divorce my dad and start a whole new life. No doubt I’ve learned in the past five weeks that my mom has a complicated relationship with the truth. No lie is too big. She’ll lie about anything.
“What? Who?”
“Hello? David Drucker? Prom?” Annie repeats.
“Oh. No, course not. I’m not going.” Violet shoots me a concerned look. I ignore her. She is waiting for me to get with our regularly scheduled program. To return to the Land of Normal. I don’t know how to tell her I’m never coming back.
“First you’re just, like, bailing on editor in chief, and now you’re not even going to the prom?” Violet asks.
I don’t answer, because it doesn’t feel like a question.
“I know it’s been hard and whatever, but you’ve got to at least try to start having some fun again,” Violet says.
I shrug, because prom doesn’t sound like fun to me. It sounds like torture.
“I want Gabe to ask me,” Annie says in a confiding tone, and Violet and I pretend like we didn’t know this already. That it hasn’t been obvious for months. This is what good friends do.
Or maybe not. Maybe I should take a page out of David’s book and just say it like it is: Gabriel is a jerk. Annie, you can do better. So much better. Gabriel is the human equivalent of insert generic, almost-but-not-quite-popular high school boy here. There is nothing particularly interesting or appealing about him. Even when he’s rude, like he was to David today, he’s boring and unoriginal. He gets all his dimension by standing next to Justin, who, albeit also a jerk, is at least a clever one.
“Why don’t you ask him?” I decide this sounds like a good alternative. A way to put control back into her hands. If he says no, screw him. Life is short and cruel and we shouldn’t waste a single second of it worrying about stupid things like school dances. Of course, yes, Annie should ask Gabriel to the prom. And I should…I should what? Move out? Never speak to my mother again? Kiss David Drucker? Kill myself?
I am not brave enough for any of it. I am only brave enough to sit at a quiet lunch table, to hide in my bedroom, to pretend to my friends for only ten minutes at a time that everything is—that I am—okay.
“I don’t just want to go with him, I want him to ask me. Duh,” Annie says, and peers into my locker. As if its dark, woefully underdecorated depths will tell her something. “It doesn’t matter. I bet he’s going to ask Willow.”
“I’m getting a little tired of those girls,” Violet says.
“I’m so over them,” Annie says. “Kit, they show up at Pizza Palace every day now, and they act like we’re not even there. Like Justin and Gabriel are only their friends.” As she speaks, she somehow conjures them up, and Willow, Jessica, and Abby walk by. They don’t say hello, just pick up their hands in a silent simultaneous wave. Like they choreographed it. Annie, Violet, and I used to be in sync like that, I think. But not anymore. Another thing that’s my fault.
“I overheard them talking about David Drucker,” Violet says, interrupting my thoughts.
“Everyone is talking about D.D. That’s what they’re calling him now. D.D.,” Annie says. I don’t ask who they are. Again she works her magic, because suddenly David appears. He walks by, his headphones covering his ears, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and he doesn’t see us. He’s obviously off in his own world, so I can get a good look at him without getting caught. His hoodie pulls across his broad shoulders and he’s muscly under there. He smells good too. David’s lemony. Fresh. Sweet.
“Is that an outline of a six-pack?” I ask.
“Never noticed that before,” Violet says.
“Yum,” Annie adds after he passes, her eyes now fixed on his butt, which is showcased in perfect jeans. “I mean. Just. Yum.”
My phone buzzes in physics and I sneak it out of my bag and glance at it under the desk.
David: Busy after school?
I glance back at him. For a moment I forgot how different he looks, and I’m startled all over again. My stomach clenches. Annie’s not wrong. He’s delicious.
Me: Nope. What’d you have in mind?
David: First we need to feed you.
Me: K.
David: Then we start the Accident Project like we talked about.
Right, the Accident Project. David’s idea to help me figure things out. Is there such a thing as Masochists Anonymous? Because clearly I need to go there pronto.
I look at Mr. Schmidt. I don’t want to listen to him drone on about Newton’s third law and stare in suspense as I wait for that little flake of tuna fish stuck to his mustache to fall. I’d much rather be out of class, eating with David and even, yes, undertaking the Accident Project, as sick as that may be.
Me: Let’s go now.
David: Now? But…physics.
My hand raises in the air, an impulsive move, and I talk without waiting for Mr. Schmidt to call on me.
“I’m going to the nurse,” I say assertively, like I’m not asking for permission. I pack up my books and my computer and walk out the door, my brain still a few steps behind my legs. Better make good use of my one short life.
I leave it up to David whether he wants to follow me.