Chapter Twelve
Twelve
I squint awake to a brand-new morning.
Immediately, I try to fall asleep again. I feel greedy. I want more memories, and I want them now, but it doesn’t work. I’m that little kid closing fluttering eyelids at bedtime and hoping it counts as sleep.
I try chamomile tea, a meditation app, even reading the most boring book on Mr. Tan’s syllabus, but nothing makes a difference.
“Seriously?” I whisper after one deeply unsuccessful hour. It’s frustrating because I have nothing but time today. Nothing but time and college apps and homework. And then it hits me. “Oh God,” I groan as soon as I remember.
Today is our very first fundraiser for senior prom. As the vice to his president, I’m co-organizing with Tyler. Could I fake sick?
For the first time in possibly my whole life, I consider not going. Just pulling a total no-show. But not only would that be completely irresponsible, it would also make me feel even more guilty than I already do for all the things I’m lying about.
“Shit,” I mutter as I make peace with the fact that not only do I have to go but that I am going. Because I’m so late, I won’t even have a chance to see Jason this morning. And I didn’t see him yesterday either.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
I glance at the time and run around my room, trying to pull together an outfit for the day and do my makeup. I should have chosen my clothes yesterday. I hate that I’ve been so disorganized lately.
Mom sticks her head into my room while I’m hustling and frowns.
“Where’s the fire?”
“Senior fundraiser is today,” I say as I put on eyeliner, which for some reason I have only learned to do open-mouthed.
“Oh…yes,” she says after a moment.
“Will you be there?” I ask.
She’s distracted by her phone, murmurs something about if she can fit it into her schedule.
This kind of community event would normally warrant the mayor at least showing up.
There’s no official policy or anything, but Mom likes to stay involved in local events.
And in this case, it’s her daughter’s class fundraiser.
“It’s kind of a big deal.”
“Mmm,” she says.
I try to push back the dam of resentment building inside me at how low on her list of priorities I seem to fall.
As she’s been getting busier these past few weeks, she’s spared me less and less of a thought.
Sometimes I get the sense that I’m an imposition, being here constantly.
I bet half the reason she can’t wait for me to leave for college is to get some space.
The thought makes my chest hurt.
Mom has never really dated since the divorce, and I don’t know what kind of things she’ll do when I’m gone. I don’t know if she will remember to eat meals and make her own coffee and get enough sleep. It’s hard to imagine our lives not being intertwined, but at least she’s still here, alive.
Mom doesn’t notice me fighting tears. She leaves to have a conference call, despite it being the weekend, and I finish getting ready and rush out.
I feel a little embarrassed when I turn up at Stanley Lake Park fifteen minutes past our scheduled meeting time and with store-bought ginger molasses cookies.
We’re doing a joint car wash and bake sale, but thankfully, it’s mostly still us seniors here at this point.
By some miracle, Tyler is actually doing his job and setting up for the car wash.
In my stead, Amber already has people laying out tables of food for the bake sale, checking off the list of baked goods that each person was supposed to bring.
“Thank you so much,” I whisper in her ear, tugging at my headband to hide both my rough edges and my mortification. It’s black, so at least it fits with my retro Mary Janes and black socks, today’s open secret. “I slept in.”
Amber grins. “I got you,” she whispers.
“Where’s Mo?” I ask.
“Late, as per. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was hiding more than that stupid app,” Amber says, blowing on her hands to warm them.
The thought has occurred to me, but I quickly dismiss it.
Mo is honest to a fault. “She’s just out of it,” I say, my words forming clouds in the morning chill.
Every day the ground accumulates more yellow, pink, brown, and gold leaves.
It’s like the universe is bargaining with us—more beauty if we tolerate more cold.
If Tyler had any instinct for planning, we would have gotten this fundraiser off the ground first week of school instead of having a car wash when we’re halfway to Halloween.
But my role is to support him, I remind myself.
I take over from Amber, divvying our classmates between the bake sale and the car wash, which Tyler and I agreed beforehand would be one of my duties.
“Nah, I’ll take Zeke,” Tyler says, after I’ve claimed his best friend for the bake sale. “Josh too.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to stay upbeat. After all, I’m the one who’s dropped the ball this morning. But then Tyler steals Vance and Austin to work with him when I’ve already assigned them to bake sale duties.
Hands on hips, I turn to Tyler. “You can’t just claim all the guys for the car wash.”
“Why not?” Tyler says, popping a Rice Krispies bar in his mouth. “It’s not like you’re bench-pressing oatmeal raisin cookies over here.”
A couple of people snicker, and my cheeks burn.
I pull my jacket tighter over my chest and jut my chin forward.
Our classmates are meandering around, presumably waiting for instructions for where to go, but really, they’re probably enjoying the drama.
Despite having many reasons to be annoyed by Tyler so far this year, I’ve tried to respect that he is president and keep the antagonism to a minimum. But this is ridiculous.
He wouldn’t treat me this way if I had Jason by my side, staring him down. Most likely, Tyler would be asking what he could do for me.
“Last I checked, you weren’t bench-pressing cars over there either,” I spit back, taking a step toward him to show that I’m not intimidated. There’s a flurry of excitement behind Tyler’s head, and I notice that at the back of the crowd, Marcus Riddick is arriving.
Great.
Another antagonist to deal with.
Marcus settles next to Holden in the group of kids waiting for direction from me and Tyler. Marcus looks so profoundly sleepy that I bet if someone asked, he wouldn’t be able to say where he is.
I return to the situation at hand, straighten my posture. “We’re not splitting by gender,” I say. “Are we in 1955? The boys run the car wash, and the girls run the bake sale?”
“Well, is it fair if people don’t get to decide where they want to work for the day either? That’s also discrimination.”
I take a deep breath and pray for strength. “Tyler, I’m not about to teach you the definition of discrimination.”
“Good,” he says.
“As student body president,” he begins in his familiar mocking tone. Because it’s all a stupid joke to him. “I believe in letting people make their own decisions. I’m not running an automerit system.”
I lose the battle and roll my eyes. “You mean an autocracy.”
Tyler smirks. “I believe in it so little I don’t even know what it is,” he says. “People can work wherever they want to, and all my boys happen to want to be with me.”
With that, he turns around and leaves, walking across the grass to the parking lot, where cars are starting to pull in for the car wash. About ten of the guys, including most of the soccer team, follow him like imprinting baby ducklings.
“Asshats,” I mutter as I watch them go, but the truth is I feel humiliated. Stung and small and powerless.
“You owned him,” Amber assures me, even as a few of the girls wander away too, leaving us way outnumbered compared to the car wash. A few stragglers hang out between the parking lot and our canopy of trees, seemingly unwilling to commit just yet. Penny and her group of friends stick with me.
To my surprise, Holden and Marcus shuffle forward.
“Hoo waow ioonn, cooowa,” Marcus says, yawning so hard he looks like he’s spasming.
Holden looks longingly over at the car wash, sighs, then translates. “He said, put us in, Coach.”
Marcus rolls his eyes. “She knows what I said.”
“Dude, no one knows what you said. Except for me. Because I have ESP.”
“You two are making coffee,” I say, instead of what I mean to say, which is thank you. Thank you for not being like the rest of the other assholian boys who ran behind Tyler. I refer to the sheet on my clipboard. “Do you think you can manage that?”
When both Holden and Marcus look immediately overwhelmed, I turn to Amber. “Ambs, can you help me not regret this?”
“On it,” she says. She looks at her phone. “I’m going to text Mo again. Come on, you two.”
As she’s leading Marcus and Holden away, I can’t help but say to Marcus, “I’m surprised you didn’t follow Tyler.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I like sheep,” Marcus says, turning to go with Amber. His eyes are dancing, lighter somehow this morning than they were in the gym in our last dream. “But they’re also kind of stupid.”
My lips twitch as I hold back my smile.
Seeing Marcus takes me back to last night’s dream, to that exhilarating Jason kiss, to the floaty feeling of reliving a moment that had already happened. And I find myself wanting to talk to Marcus about it, to make him answer me this time: Why did you leave?
We can’t exactly talk about it here, so I focus on making sure everybody has their task, and by the time the first of our customers show up, our bake sale is running like a well-oiled machine.
Across the park, the car washers are playing Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.” It’s clear there’s absolutely no structure over there, and that they are bound to offend some parents, and that Principal Collins might even punish me and Tyler after all this.
“I’d really like to punch them. I think it would be very cathartic,” Mo says, voicing my thoughts when she arrives a whole hour later than our official start time and I tell her what happened.
Amber is annoyed with her, but I can’t really give Mo a hard time for being late when I was too, so I just put her in front of the cash box.
It feels like the entirety of Sterlingwood comes out to support us, but there’s no sign of my mom. I remind myself that she’s busy, that she’s trying her best.
Across the park, there are more shouts from the car wash crew. I refuse to look over to see whether they are screams of delight or chaos.
I hate everyone, I think as I adjust my headband and focus on doing a good job with my part of this.
To not get worked up and to keep my hands busy, I start to set out a tray of mini tarts and allow myself to revisit last night’s dream, savoring every part of it.
How in the world do I get back there? I have every intention of becoming a dream expert if that’s what it takes to keep seeing these memories.
And I do intend to keep seeing these memories.
I’m not just enjoying the dreams; they are showing me things.
Things I didn’t notice when the moment was originally happening.
First, Jason’s hesitation at our first kiss.
Second, that Marcus really was there on Kiss Cam Day.
I can zoom out on the moment and see more than I saw when I lived it the first time.
Somehow, these dreams might be able to show me more about me and Jason than I ever knew. They could show me the good things, the bad things, the moment things went wrong, and they can help me figure out exactly how to fix it.
All I need is the right memory.