Chapter Eight
Eight
THERE’S A COMMOTION OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL the next day.
The seniors are clumped in front of the building and everyone is buzzing with this frantic energy, shoving each other and talking faster and more high-pitched than usual.
For a second, I get excited thinking someone might’ve called in a bomb threat.
Maybe I can just turn around and go home.
But unfortunately, it’s so much worse than someone trying to mass-murder the senior class. It’s ice cream social day.
This little party is last year’s seniors’ gift to us.
They could’ve just put another bench next to the five already in the quad, but no.
We get Costco ice cream and an industrial-sized tub of sprinkles.
Which means I have to sit in the cafeteria and watch Emma lick whipped cream off her finger while Ethan stares with a boner tucked up his waistband.
After last night’s nightmares, I really don’t have the bandwidth to fake my way through this type of bullshit forced camaraderie.
Mom. Bubbe. Charles … Their faces are still burning into my retinas.
Like when you blink after a camera flash—the light is gone, but its ghost stays behind, haunting you when you close your eyes.
“Hey, Hoffman,” Noah says, coming up behind me in line. He throws his arm around my shoulder. “You psyched for this or what?”
“Extremely psyched. I mean, sure, I could just buy a pint of H?agen-Dazs for four dollars and eat it alone in my room, but this way I get to make A Senior Memory.” I point to the Styrofoam bowls of off-brand Neapolitan.
“And like, fuck the sea turtles, am I right?” No one ever cares about the goddamn sea turtles.
Noah squints at me. “You okay, Hoffman?”
“Yeah, I was just joking. I love sea turtles.”
“No, I mean …” Noah says, his eyes lingering on my forehead.
“Oh, that,” I say, my fingers involuntarily reaching up to touch my bandage.
I changed to a Transformers Band-Aid just to find out what stupid thing Peter would say when he saw it.
My eyes sweep the cafeteria, but I don’t actually think he’s here at all.
Somehow he’s avoided this forced show of youthful jubilation. Lucky bastard.
“What’d you do?” Noah asks.
“Huh? Oh, I tripped.”
“Well, if you really feel like tripping …” he says, a smile curling the corners of his mouth, “you should stop by grief group tonight. Oh, and we have room at our table.” Noah nods to the one near the window.
“If you wanna hang now.” Emma, Sophia, Ethan, and a few other people are sitting on top of the table, dipping their spoons into each other’s bowls as if mono doesn’t even exist.
“An enticing offer. Truly. But I have some homework I need to finish.” The thought of listening to them talk about honoring Liam in the same breath as gravity bongs and Xanax-laced blunts turns my stomach.
Emma lets out a shrill laugh and grabs Ethan by the arm he’s flexing.
Something about that laugh, and her all-black outfit, makes me want to pour kerosene all over this cafeteria.
Noah keeps talking about lacrosse or Legend of Zelda (I have no idea if a dodongo is a sports move or a bad guy), but the words muddle together in an incoherent jumble. The yelling and happy shrieking is starting to feel oppressively claustrophobic.
“I’ll let you know,” I say to whatever invitation he was extending, and extricate myself from Noah’s arm.
I grab a turtle-killing bowl of half-melted ice cream so I don’t seem as unhinged as I feel and find an empty spot in the back corner near the bathrooms. I pull out my bloodred Doom Doodle notebook and start filling up the margins with drawings that make me feel slightly less insane.
The notebook is this morbid holdover from the six months of head-shrinking I was subjected to after Mom died and Dad decided that Jules and I needed to “deal with our emotions.” Hilarious coming from the guy who hasn’t felt an emotion in close to a decade.
Therapy was 99 percent bullshit. Like really, they get a master’s degree and charge you $200 an hour to tell you the same shit that you can find on any Medium self-help listicle. But whatever.
Dr. Lawson was the one who recommended I “channel my anger” into drawing.
It was one of her less shitty suggestions.
All the clocks that I’ve seen go into this notebook.
Each person gets their own page, even if I didn’t really know them.
It’s like my own fucked-up spiral-bound graveyard.
Bonus: I’ve gotten really good at drawing.
The key is to do the tribute and then never look at it again. Just turn the page and wait for the next person to take a dirt nap. Although sometimes I do wonder how far back I’d have to flip to see Mom’s. Or Bubbe’s. Or …
I push my pen down harder onto the page. Stay in the present, goddamn it.
Except, the present is this: Ms. Jegstrup walking into the cafeteria with a giant smile, rainbow Crocs (that she not-so-subtly uses to indicate her class is an “LGBTQIA+ safe space”), and a bright pink clock over her head.
I can see her tan-colored bra under her white button-down and it kind of guts me.
There is no sadder bra color than tan, and she’s probably gonna fucking die in it.
And, oh look, there’s a tiny coffee stain on her collar too.
It’s like she’s trying to make me feel like shit.
Drawing isn’t helping.
I shove the notebook back in my backpack and scan the crowd one more time. It takes me a second to realize I’m looking for Peter. Which is weird as fuck? There is literally no reason I should care where he is. In fact, I’ve spent the last three weeks actively avoiding him at all costs.
I pull out my worn paperback copy of Heidegger’s Being and Time and skim my favorite passages, trying to forget Peter, the nightmares, the clocks, and the unfortunate fact that Heidegger was kind of a Nazi.
But the pink glow of Ms. Jegstrup’s countdown keeps distracting me.
I’m like a moth to a flame. Except that’s not quite right, because the moth dies in that metaphor, and Ms. Jegstrup is the one who’s dying, not me.
I’m just the person sitting outside watching the wilted moth carcasses pile up next to the flashlight.
Okay, gross. I seriously need to stop letting this shit invade my brain spac—
Shit.
She’s making eye contact with me.
Hi, yes, hi, I see you. Keep smiling but look somewhere else. Okay, nowhere else to look. Great. Yeah, hi. Smile. Smile. Too much smiling. She’s coming over. Fucking fantastic.
“Happy Ice Cream Social Day, Sydney!” Ms. Jegstrup says. God, her voice is happy. She is happy.
“You too, Ms. Jegstrup.”
She’s so close, the clock is so bright. Christ, she’s got more sprinkles on her ice cream than a three-year-old.
“Where’s that poetry partner of yours?” Her head swivels, the clock flickering.
“Peter? I don’t know, actually.” My eyes involuntarily sweep the cafeteria again.
“I’m glad you two are paired up for this project.” She smiles at me as a drop of melted brown ice cream drips off her spoon and onto her left tit.
“That makes one of us,” I mumble.
“I know you prefer to do your projects alone,” she says. “But—”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I scramble. I’m not usually the kind of person who talks back to a teacher, or talks to them at all really, but Ms. Jegstrup’s imminent demise must’ve killed my adult filter.
“It’ll be good for you,” she says. “And when the two of you ace this project, it’ll give me something extra to put on your college recommendation letter.
Because I’d love to be able to say that not only are you brilliant, you also work well with others.
” She gives me a pointed look. But that look is all she’ll be able to give me, because by the time this project is due, she’ll be six feet closer to earth’s molten core.
“Thank you, Ms. Jegstrup,” I say, hoping that will end the conversation.
It doesn’t.
“Are you still planning on applying early decision to the University of Alaska Fairbanks?”
I nod.
“I saw your SAT scores from junior year. You could apply anywhere. You could probably get into an Ivy. I don’t understand why you’d—”
“It’s my top choice,” I cut in. Even with my teacher filter, I am not in the mood for this conversation. Especially not with her.
She pinches her lipsticked mouth together. “It’s so cold … .”
“I like the cold,” I say. I fucking hate the cold.
But the thing UAF has going for it is that it’s remote.
Like, moose and elk (unless they’re the same thing?) remote.
There’s a chance I could go four years without ever seeing the neon pink that is currently hovering over me.
But I can’t tell her that. I can’t tell anyone that.
“Plus, they have a great philosophy department.” The department is great—if you count the fact that it exists at all as an overwhelming positive.
She looks at the Heidegger book I’m white-knuckling. “If it’s philosophy that you’re into, the N—”
“UAF has an eleven-to-one student-to-faculty ratio,” I interject.
I’m already fully aware that NYU has the best philosophy department in the US.
It also happens to be located in a city with a population of nearly eight million.
Which amounts to a lot of fucking dead people.
“So that’s another plus for UAF,” I say. “Small class sizes.”
“Very small, I imagine,” she says.
She looks like she has a mouthful of other things she wants to say, wisdom she’s just itching to spew all over me, and hell, maybe I should let her. This could be her last chance to think she’s Making A Difference.
“I just know you’d thrive at NYU. You’re so creative. Those poems you write! And you’re so industrious.” Industrious. A compliment every teenage girl loves to hear.
Fuck it. “You think so?” I say, making my voice sound all vulnerable and open.
“I really do,” she says. She looks like she wants to reach out and touch my shoulder in some “O Captain! My Captain!” kind of moment.
“You’re a special girl, Sydney Hoffman. You have a depth that not many your age have.
” Shit, the compliments are kind of working on me.
“You’re a city girl at heart,” she says. “I know it.”
The city is an actual pulsing nightmare. But I pause, look down at my book and then back at Ms. Jegstrup with my eyes just a little rounder. “Actually …” I say, slowly, thoughtfully, really selling the whole thing. “I think you’re right. I’ll apply to NYU.”
Her entire face lights up like a Vegas slot machine. “Really? Sydney, really?”
“Yeah,” I say, gearing up for the finale. “It’s just … nice to have someone believe in me, you know?”
She lets out a tiny gasp and I swear to god, she gets actual tears in her eyes. “I’ll have Ms. Hendrix get you some pamphlets.”
“I look forward to it,” I say. I look forward to throwing them away later.
The bell rings and she skitters away in her rainbow Crocs. I know it was all bullshit, and maybe it’s the residual concussion symptoms talking, but for the first time since Liam died, I actually feel, like, a tiny shred of happiness.
It almost lasts five minutes.
I SPEND THE REST OF THE SCHOOL DAY with this ache in the pit of my stomach. Everyone else is high on sugar and the novelty of missing first period, but their collective joy only makes me feel even more insane. Like an alien observing the human race rather than a member of it.
Here is the teenage boy jumping on the back of another teenage boy. This is how they telegraph happiness.
Ah, and here is the teenage girl. She squeals when she sees another teenage girl of the same pack. This is how they communicate friendship and camaraderie.
Everything seems so fake and forced. It’s like I’m the only one in the audience of some deranged play that everyone else is putting on.
They’re running around on stage, saying their lines, doing their bits, but I’m the only one who sees the curtains are on fire.
The planks on the stage are rotten. And the lights above our heads are flickering, flickering, flickering.
I’ve tried before. To get someone else to see what I see.
Like a fucking idiot, I pulled Oakley Rogers’s sleeping bag closer to mine and whispered everything—all the fucked-up shit—to her at sleepover in fourth grade.
She giggled and looked at me like I was a superhero.
And it was great, having someone know. Until I actually predicted someone’s death.
Then all she did was look at me like I was crazy. Evil even.
To her credit, she never told anyone. And I learned not to tell anyone either.
When I finally get released from the daytime prison the American government calls our education system, I do the only thing that gives my brain five seconds of dopamine. I go for a run.
I run until my legs ache. Until I stop seeing Charles’s red-rimmed eyes. Stop hearing his voice screaming in my ears. Stop feeling Bubbe’s slowing breaths under my cheek. Stop seeing Mom’s ghostly face.
I make it back to my house, breathless and dripping with sweat.
And find Peter Beckett casually reading a paperback on my front stoop.