Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
I DRIVE AROUND FOR A WHILE, and when I get home the house is silent. The kind of silent where you can hear those little hair cells in your inner ear tingling, amplifying the echoing nothingness around you.
Dad is still at work or sleeping at his desk pretending to work so he doesn’t have to come home and remind himself that he’s supposed to be raising two girls.
And who knows when Jules will be back. A ride home with Noah is never just a ride home.
I’m sure he’s convinced her to “cruise through Tee Beezy” and record him attempting to scarf ten Crunchwrap Supremes in under four minutes (his record).
Which means, finally, I’m alone. Not even a fair-weather cat or a rapid-blinking gerbil to greet me.
A few years ago, Jules asked for a dog. She fell in love with some half-poodle-half-Siberian-husky on one of those rescue websites where they put the dog in a bandana and write a little intro from the animal’s point of view.
She begged Dad to let her adopt this scruffy bulging-eyed thing called Macaroni.
Look, Dad. Look what it says. “I love watching baseball—the Mets are my team!” See?
He’s perfect! And look, Syd: “I love going on long runs and feeling the wind in my fur.” You could run with him!
Wouldn’t that be so great? And it says he also loves to snuggle.
Look at his eyes. What do you think? Can we get him?
Dad was pretty close to caving, but then I reminded the two of them of my very severe pet dander allergies.
I don’t actually have allergies, but the thought of having another living thing in this house?
I couldn’t do it. Dogs’ lifespans are short as fuck.
And that whole “it’s better to have loved and lost” thing?
Obviously, Tennyson never had to see his mother’s dead face with three bloodred gashes slanting down her ashen cheek.
If he had, he might’ve reconsidered his position on the whole situation.
Really, I was saving Jules from herself—there was no way she could’ve handled another loss of something she loved.
I drop my backpack at the door, kick my shoes across the entryway, and head for the kitchen.
But when I go to grab a bag of pretzels and a bowl of chocolate chips, I realize I’m still holding the packet from Ms. Jegstrup.
I pull open the trash drawer under the kitchen island.
Because, really, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this thing?
Start a keepsake box of shit my dead teachers gave me? I think the fuck not.
But still, my hand hovers there, over an old banana peel and forty-five million paper towels. The packet and I are both sort of suspended in time and space. Like, clearly I should just uncurl my fingers and let it drop into the garbage abyss below. But I can’t seem to let go. Schrodinger’s trash.
Fuck it. I push the drawer shut with my foot, tuck the stupid packet under my arm, grab the food, and go upstairs.
I’ll just … throw it away later, like restaurant leftovers.
I sit down, push the packet to the edge of my desk, and pull out my red notebook. Just because I can’t throw it away right now doesn’t mean I have to sit here actively thinking about it. I’ll distract myself.
With other people’s deaths.
How normal.
I pick up my pencil and put it on the paper. I’ll start with the baguette woman. She’s going to be—
You know, I don’t actually give a shit about NYU. It’s not like seeing the sprawling urban campus or the carefully curated glossy images of diverse kids reading in Washington Square Park is making me consider applying.
But Ms. Jegstrup thought it might. All that bullshit from the ice cream party meant something to her.
And Peter.
I set my pencil down.
There’s something in this that’s connected to him. Peter and his goddamn hot dog. It’s like the packet and Peter are—
No, fuck this. Fuck the packet. Fuck Peter. Fuck all of it.
I grab the packet and toss it into the small rattan wastebasket under my desk.
Nothing has changed. She told Ms. Shywill that our little chat at the ice cream social made her feel good.
So what? That was the point of the whole “maybe I’ll apply” lie anyway.
I should be glad it worked and that she felt a tiny scrap of fulfillment before she ascended to the next astral plane.
And I mean, I am glad. It’s just … now there’s this … thing.
I look at the red of the Doom Doodle notebook and the shiny purple of the NYU packet under my desk, two shades of a bruise at different stages.
Maybe I’ve been looking at this whole thing the wrong way. Maybe it’s not about saving people—god knows that’s impossible. Maybe it’s like Peter said. It’s just about changing something.
I sit there, at my desk, doing nothing, for who knows how long, watching the sky outside turn from light blue to a dark indigo, the night blooming like the thin inky skin of a black eye.
And I don’t know if it’s the darkness leaking into my room, or the smell of sweet street nuts and human piss still clinging to my clothes, or the thick brochure under my desk, but something shifts.
Something small. And so I do something I’ve never done before.
I flick on my task lamp and open my red notebook to page one.