Mom squeezed tighter. Silence hung awkwardly in the room, like leftover smoke from my imaginary embers. “The car didn’t burn Salem. Is that what you’re thinking? That the car went up in flames?”
My body stiffened and I sat back in bed pushing away from her. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it. “No, Mom, really, I wasn’t thinking about the accident.”
Lately she linked everything that happened to the fatal collision and it was starting to get on my nerves.
“It had nothing to do with the crash,” I said again, this time louder and with more force. My words only made the grooves in her forehead deepen.
Even in the dark it was easy to see she didn’t buy it.
****
As soon as I heard the radio turn on, I knew my life was about to enter major suckdom.
I pulled the covers over my head and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. This was only the third morning waking to my very own pillow top comfort supreme. Only I couldn’t relax because the music only meant one thing.
School.
I murmured a few expletives that my Grandy Beatrice, Dad’s mom, had once crossly told my cousin were unbecoming from a lady. I could think of no reason to be ladylike. I punched the pillow then covered my head with it to try to block out what I had to face.
A new school, in a new city, where I would be the new girl – a big, fat nobody.
It had taken forever to get exactly where I wanted to be in my old hometown. Not the most popular kid on the planet, but someone who had friends. Good friends. Friends who’d always been a part of my life. I’d never even imagined life without them.
And now less than a month after I’d left, they were forgetting me. At first, they texted and emailed every day. After a few weeks I noticed time elapsed before texts would be answered and the lack of IM’s made me wonder if I’d actually been taken off of certain buddy lists.
And here I was, abandoned in Sucksville. There’d be no one to talk to in study hall. Assuming this school even had a study hall. Worse, there’d be no one to have lunch with. Yup, that’d be the hardest part of the day, looking like a total loser, isolated and at the mercy of total strangers.
The classes I could get through. I always paid attention in class anyway. Well, except for the really boring stuff. Then I’d just look it up on the Internet and get the abridged version.
But lunch … all alone…. Strange, as much as I didn’t like crowds these days, I didn’t like being by myself either. I was alone enough inside my head. Before Dad died, that hadn’t meant lonely. Sadly, now it did.
I groaned, flung the covers off, pulled myself upright, and trudged out of bed. At least I could make sure that I didn’t smell and looked reasonably fashionista.
A new pair of jeans was casually draped across the top of my desk chair. An obvious plant of my mother’s. Nothing too flashy, yet stylish and well fitting. They’d do.
I stood a little longer in front of the too-small closet, which was stuffed to over-capacity. The clothes were jammed so tight that every item boasted at least a wrinkle or two. Randomly, I selected a top.
Ugh. Wrong choice. I shoved it back and tried again, this time yielding better results.
Not that what I wore mattered. Who cared anyway? I didn’t know anyone and didn’t really want to. What was the point?
I’d learned the hard way relationships didn’t last.
Surprisingly, Mom was still home when I went down to breakfast. Kent County Hospital, where she now worked, had pretty flexible hours. Or, at least the nurses could exchange shifts with others when they needed to.
Mom had actually grinned when she snagged the job. Definitely her first smile since you-know-when. She didn’t think it’d be that easy to get employment, since she’d been out of the field for so long. But no one cared about that. Nurses were in demand and she had a current certificate. Welcome to the working world, Mom.
Since she started the job, she’d been out of the house before I woke up each morning. Not too surprising, but then again I didn’t exactly wake up early if I didn’t have to. From now on, I’d have to.
Mom looked pretty in her crisply ironed pink hospital scrubs. She wore just the smallest hint of make-up. Anyone else might not have noticed there was a problem. I did.
Mom tugged on her shirt to the point where if she yanked any harder she would’ve ripped it. Then she smoothed over her chin length perfectly coiffed hairdresser-blonde hair. Once perfected, never mess with the ‘do. She ran her hand over it again using her fingers as a comb.
Yeah, let me translate. So not a good sign.
She stole a glance at me, and then blue eyes that mirrored my own quickly became riveted to the coffee pot. She stood there and watched it brew, as if mesmerized by the thin drips of liquid.
Okay, like I’m not exactly stupid. Eye-contact-avoidance lady might as well have been blinking neon.
Her body language screamed nervous and I knew that expression well. The old ‘I’m going to give you bad news’ look.
My body tensed and I started to gear up for flight, in case my first instinct, fight didn’t work. I crossed my arms over my chest. My answer to everything, attack and escape. Then, on guard, I said, “Spit it out.”
“Spit what out?” She tried to look innocent, but let’s face it, she wasn’t.
Did she really think I’d let her off the hook that easy? No way. She had to know me better than that. After all, I was her daughter. “Whatever it is you have to tell me that I’m not going to like. Let’s just get it over with.”
I didn’t move a muscle, tense, waiting.
Mom sighed. “I don’t know how you do that, but yes, I do have news you’re not going to like.” She paused for a second, gathering her courage. “I made an appointment for you with a doctor.”
Holy crap. This was going to be ugly.
Either this would be that dreaded first visit to a gyno, or, she was going to try again to get my head shrunk. Yuck. What a choice. Kind of like being asked by your executioner if you’d rather be boiled in oil or thrown to the lions.
Now I was majorly pissed. “Why do I need a doctor? I’m not sick.” I leaned against the wall for support.
“The dreams, Salem. I think it would be a good idea for you to talk to someone about your dreams and the accident. You need to get a handle on this.” She sat down and took a sip of her coffee like we were talking about making a nail appointment. A new coat of polish and a psych eval.
Not if I could help it. “We’ve been down this road before, Mom. I saw a shrink back home. It so didn’t help.”
She took another sip and looked directly into my eyes. “You didn’t give her a chance. You only went for two sessions.”
She held my gaze in a showdown, neither one of us wanting to look away first. I expected someone to yell ‘draw’ at any second.
No one did.
The silence seemed to echo. We didn’t need to speak the words. They’d all been said before.
Finally I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed for the door. “I’ll be late for school. I’d better get going,” I said.
Mom stood up quickly, crossed to the sink, and emptied the contents of her cup. “I’ll drive you.”
I looked longingly at the splattered remains of java dotting the sink as I strode by. What a waste of perfectly good coffee. I shook my head. “That’s okay, I need to get used to the walk.” I made a grand exit and slammed the door behind me.
A split second after the reverberations the door squeaked open. “You didn’t have breakfast,” Mom yelled after me.
I just shrugged and kept walking.
Chapter Three
Mom’s last line came back to haunt me a few hours later in science class.
There’s nothing more miserable than a new school, no friends, a wrecked life, and an empty stomach.
As my belly grumbled its disdain, the girl seated next to me at the lab table held out a granola bar. “Sounds like you need this more
than I do.”
“Thanks,” I said, as embarrassment shrank my ego to about the size of a pushpin. Just what I wanted, to be known as the stomach growler.
I expected her to turn in disgust and ignore me, but she smiled instead. A nice smile. Sincere. And pretty, too. Straight white teeth, too perfect to have been created without braces. Been there, done that, felt her pain.
“You must be new. I know just about everyone.”
I cringed. New kid might be the only thing worse than stomach growler. “Yeah, just moved here from North Carolina,” I said instantly wishing I hadn’t brought up my home state or the memories that went with it.
“Cool. What’s it like there?” She pulled a pen from her purse, lined it up against her notebook then looked at me expectantly.
How do you clarify an alternate reality? If I had months, I couldn’t explain it. So I went for the obvious. “Warm. Warmer than here anyway. I’m Salem,” I said, for a lack of anything better to say.
“Salem. Interesting name. Any relatives from Massachusetts?” She said it with interest like she expected me to be the long lost ancestor of someone significant.
Why would she ask that? Then it dawned on me. “Oh, the witch thing. No, actually my dad worked for a tobacco company.” I laughed as I remembered the tale. “Lucky I was born female. If I’d been a boy, I would have been named Winston.”
Her dark almond-shaped eyes sparkled with amusement. “We have something in common then.”
What could she have in common with that? “What, you were named after cigarettes too?”
For a nanosecond she looked at me like I was a little slow. “No, but we both have strange names and stories to go with them.”
Curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask. It wasn’t a matter of just being polite. “So what’s yours?”
“Berkley.”
There was something about the way she said her name. Not snobby or uppity, but sophisticated. I came from money and knew my way around a country club, but she wasn’t just worldly, she was cultured. Intellectual. “I like it. And the story?”
“Not as good as yours. My parents went to school there. They spelled my name differently, but that’s the reason for it. I believe I was conceived on a reunion visit.”
Definitely TMI about her parents. “Do people bug you about it?”
“Not really. Although some people say my name a million times whenever they talk to me.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. That happens to me a lot too.” And I really could relate. It’s weird. When you have a common name, your friends just talk to you regular. But when you have a different name, I don’t know, for some reason your name constantly gets put into the conversation.
“So a tobacco company? Why come here to Rhode Island? What’d he do, switch careers?”
I didn’t want to talk about my dad, so I made it short and sweet. “Sort of, he… Um, he died a few months ago and my mom thought it would be a good idea to move and get a fresh start.”
Her jaw fell open and I could tell she wished she’d never asked. It took her a second to respond, but when she did, it was honest and to the point. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.” I hoped that would be the end of the discussion, but she continued.
“Your mom didn’t get that it would just upset you more to move out of state?”
For some odd reason, I felt the need to defend my mom. “She really thought it was for the best. It’s been hard on her too.”
Saying it out loud made the fact real, which I’d so never admitted, even to myself. I liked to think I held the world record on suffering. It made it easier to stay mad at Mom.
Berkley took the stack of papers that were being passed to her, gave me one, and then handed them to the next lab table. “Well consider me the welcoming committee. I’ll show you around. Anything you need to know, I’m the one to ask. Are you taking all Advanced Placement classes or just this one?”
“All AP.” I hated saying it. Most college-bound kids had only some AP classes. To be in all of them meant you got labeled brainiac or nerd.
Which was ironic. I mean, I wasn’t all that into school. I wanted to get good grades and I studied, but it wasn’t like I had to put in a lot of extra effort. Unfortunately, being smart was the antithesis of being cool. You could be cool and be smart in an area or two, but highest honors in all AP classes without breaking a sweat could be hell on your social life.
I’d never thought about it back home because most of my friends had been my friends since we were little kids. Long before the school pigeonholed us in terms of intellectual potential.
“Good, then we’ll have other classes together too. Probably most. There aren’t many of us.”
She didn’t need to say more, I understood completely. We were brethren. Which meant time to show the sarcasm. “So the only thing weird about us is our names?”
Berkley grinned, “Looks like it.”
We completed our introductory lab, chatting through it like we’d known each other forever. For the first time, I wondered if it would be possible to like it here. There was something instant with Berkley, a type of kinship I’d never felt before.
When class ended, the masses hurled through the door and Berkley and I meandered to our next class. I started to relax and feel comfortable, as if I’d fit in fine.
Then I saw him.
Or he saw me. I mean, somehow you just know when someone is staring at you. Not just looking, but staring. I glanced away from Berkley and my eyes honed in on his. My breath caught, my stomach flipped, and my heart beat double time.
Can we say seriously cute? I mean, way more than just cute. Try Adonis. A Greek god. No, a movie star. Maybe my destiny. Yeah, right, get a grip. But he was staring at me.
Unfortunately he wasn’t ogling me in a ‘wow, she’s hot’ kind of way. Instead, he gawked at me like I had two heads or something.
So much for feeling comfortable.
“Um, Berkley, who is that guy and why is he looking at me like that?” I looked down at my clothes to make sure I wasn’t covered in a bizarre substance or missing an article of clothing.
“Answer to question one – senior hottie Robbie – and answer to question two – absolutely no idea.” Berkley gave me the once-over to check for some catastrophe, just the way I had a moment earlier. Nothing.
We looked back to see if his face would give us a clue, but he had evaporated like a ghost. I looked in both directions, but couldn’t see any sign of him.
“Is he … strange, or … ” I shrugged wondering how the mere sight of me could have sent him running. I mean, really, it’s not my normal affect on boys.
“No, he’s cool. Used to be big man on the hockey team.”
Okay, I know I’m an English geek but I instantly picked up on the past tense. “Used to be? What happened?” I turned to face her, wanting to know every detail about the hot guy whom I’d repulsed at first sight.
“Not sure. He won the championship game last season, but hasn’t been on the ice since. Insists he’s not going to play this year. It’s kind of crazy considering he might end up with a scholarship if he stays on the team.” She paused and thought a second. “It could have something to do with his mom though. She died last year. I’m pretty sure from cancer. Anyway, that’s about the time he changed.”
At her words, I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t help my visceral raw reaction.
When it’s happening to you, it’s easy to forget that it takes place everyday and affects many people. Not as unique as I thought I was. Robby, the hottie, suffered too. Death, the equal opportunity employer, treated everyone the same.
It’s so easy to look at people who appear perfect and imagine they have perfect lives. My stomach clenched and Berkley’s granola bar, which sat like lead, threatened to reappear. I felt guilty for carrying around so much self-pity. I was old enough to realize the world wasn’t revolving around me.
“Come on,” Berkley sa
id. “We’re going to be late for class. And being new might work for you, but it certainly won’t for me.”
****
Okay, so it felt a little strange the first time I had a friend over to my new house. In North Carolina we had a show place and I guess I never realized how proud of it I was. Everyone I knew had these big expensive homes and I never thought much about it.
So totally different now. For the first time I felt self-conscious about where I lived. Which is stupid. It’s not like it’s the slums or anything. Grandma’s house is nice. It’s just small compared to what I was used to. And not completely redecorated. Somehow, at this point in my life, it made me feel… less. Not that I needed help in that department. Since the accident, self-esteem has been one of my issues. It all related back to guilt, but then again, what didn’t?
Anyway, my point is, I was a little edgy when Berkley came over for the first time, especially since I hadn’t seen her house yet. I kept watching her reactions, which, to my relief, seemed totally normal. That made me think maybe her place wasn’t much bigger.
She seemed at ease and strolled into my room behind me. Still nervous, I thought I’d explain why it looked such a mess.
“It’s still a work in progress,” I said.
She rolled her eyes like I must have thought her dim witted. “Yeah, I know, you just moved in a few weeks ago.” Then she plopped down on the blue bean bag chair. The one that should have remained in North Carolina. The one that belonged to another era and another life.
“I need a new bean bag, this one’s falling apart,” I said almost to myself.
She nodded in understanding. “That’s the problem with redecorating. Once you start, everything that isn’t new looks old and out of place.” She twisted her long brown hair like she was wringing it out, and then tucked it inside the back of her shirt causing a lump.
I couldn’t imagine why she’d cover it up. Her hair was shampoo-commercial gorgeous. Silky, shiny, and almost to her butt.
While mine was… average, nondescript, nothing-special kind of hair. Well, that’s not exactly true. It was a little past my shoulders and mostly straight. That was the average part.
The color is what most people like, although I don’t like it myself. It’s sort of light auburn – not light brown, not dark blonde, not red, but some strange combination that’s hard to describe.