Chapter 9
Monochrome Life
“Are you sure everything’s all right there?”
“Yeah, Grandpa, relax. Everything’s…just the same as always.”
I don’t tell him that this isn’t necessarily a good thing—he already knows that anyway. The situation at home is so tense that the least shift could make everything come tumbling down. I feel like we’re walking on tiptoe, but how long can we keep it up before our heels hit the ground?
“Remember to go by my house and make sure everything’s in order. You can stay there whenever you want. You’ve got the key. But no parties.”
“Jeez, and I already bought a foam cannon.”
“Greta, you’re impossible.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up and go down to the kitchen for something to munch on. There’s not much in the fridge or the pantry. My mom’s on the sofa, staring at the TV, at a contest where these naked couples compete for the chance to stay on a desert island.
“Looks interesting,” I say. She shrugs. “Can we go to the grocery store? There’s no butter or milk or cereal. Or anything else, actually.”
“Sorry.” She seems drugged. “Do you need money? Did you lose your job again? My wallet’s in the bedroom, babe.”
“I have money. You need anything?”
She shakes her head and tries to smile. “If you see Olivia, tell her hello for me.”
“Sure.”
Ten minutes later, I’m pedaling down the street hard.
I can’t stop thinking about the message Will sent me yesterday.
Next step in the game: Think of all the things you like and write them down.
Weirdly, I dropped everything and obeyed, sitting at my desk, taking out a piece of paper, and…
Now it’s done. I needed more than an hour looking out the window with the paper blank just to get around to writing I like hot cinnamon candies.
I tore that one up into tiny pieces and threw them in the trash before going to bed.
The word anhedonia has always fascinated me; it’s delicate, but it expresses something tragic: the inability to feel pleasure.
Is that what I have? Or am I just determined to find symptoms of it?
I can’t remember the last time I was happy, and I often ignore the emotional reasons behind the things I do.
Maybe that explains what happened with Olivia. I should have insisted on talking to her after our misunderstanding. I should have found a less harsh way to make her see the truth.
Without thinking too hard about it, I turn onto a longer road that passes in front of her place.
It’s a midsize home with a manicured lawn.
I know she’s not there; she’s many miles away in Colorado.
I never got around to telling my mother that they gave her a scholarship last year to do a design degree there.
That was something she’d had her heart set on forever.
And she left, the way everyone does.
I turn away when I notice movement behind the kitchen window. I know the layout of the house well because I used to go there in the afternoons when my grandfather was working and my parents were with Lucy at the hospital.
I pedal harder.
I always liked the term best friend. It’s charming in a childish way, tender, even if it sounds ridiculous after a certain age.
When I was little and Olivia used to tell her parents or the other girls in class that I was her best friend, I could feel my chest swell with pride.
I wasn’t just her friend—I was her best friend, the most special one, the one she always picked when we had to work with a partner.
She managed to make me not feel invisible.
I guess that’s why I didn’t care that we weren’t much alike.
My grandfather told me the same thing happened with him and his friends from when he was a kid: They took different roads, they didn’t even live in the same town, but he knew that if he needed something, all he’d have to do is pick up the phone.
That closeness encouraged me; it was like family—caring sometimes goes far beyond the things you have in common with someone.
But even the tightest bonds can eventually break.
Before I get to the grocery store, I pass by Will’s work. It isn’t open yet. Did I do this hoping to catch sight of him? I think I know the answer, but I’m not ready to admit it to myself, so I push the question aside and continue on.
I buy the basics, the things I can fit in my backpack, then I go home on the same streets, passing the same parks, stopping at the same stoplights, crossing the same people.
My life is monochrome.
At ten that night, I’ve squeezed myself into a tiny, tight dress that I don’t even like, plus a pair of sneakers, because I’ve never gotten the hang of high heels and always have to take them off after fifteen minutes.
I’m sitting on Taylor’s lap. He’s smoking a joint and says something about the sweet pair of tires he’s put on his bike as he hugs me around the waist.
We’ve gone to a friend’s house party. I don’t know the guy’s name, but the girl sitting to his right is called Mia and she works at my favorite burger place on the edge of town.
On the left, Nelson and Rick are laughing at something, but I don’t know what.
Everyone’s friends with Taylor, even the people in the other rooms. There’s not a trace of Sebastian, which is a relief, because he always makes me uncomfortable.
We’re the charter members of the losers’ club, the ones who never stretched their wings or looked for new horizons.
Everyone had their reasons, I guess. Mia got pregnant at sixteen, Rick is happy working on his parents’ farm, Nelson got hurt and lost his athletic scholarship, and Taylor…
He’d rather be a big shot in the middle of nowhere than a nobody somewhere else.
So what is my excuse?
Well, let’s see: When I was fifteen, I didn’t just give up skating. I also stopped caring about school. I never understood the point of grades. And I wasn’t good at paying attention in subjects that didn’t interest me. I never managed to form part of the system.
I’m someone who goes from one obsession to the next.
A few years ago, I got into Russian writers, and for two months that was all I read, from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky to Gogol.
Then I had a Georgia O’Keeffe phase. That made me want to be an artist, but when I got all the stuff—the paint, an easel one of Dad’s friends gave me, some canvases, turpentine, and so on—I was already bored with the idea.
I could have been a great student, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d never have left Nebraska as long as my sister was here.
“Is there any rum left?” Taylor asks.
“Take a look in the kitchen,” someone says apathetically.
“You want to join me?” She looks at me.
I nod, and we leave the living room. The kitchen’s small, and there’s a couple making out next to the fridge. Taylor mixes two rum and cokes and the lovebirds march off, probably to a bedroom, where they can have some privacy.
I look at Taylor’s muscular arms, his stubbly beard, the gold hoop hanging from his right ear, and his permanent grin.
He’s handsome but not in an obvious way like Will.
He was three years ahead of me, like Lucy, but I know the girls in school idolized him like a rock star; he was popular and dangerous.
Now, though, that phase is seven years in the past, and he comes across more like a one-hit wonder.
The thing is, behind that facade, he doesn’t have anything to offer. And when you’re fifteen, you don’t care. But when you’re twenty-two, it’s a letdown.
“Hey, Taylor.”
“What’s up?”
“If someone asked you to write down what you like about life, what would pop into your head?”
I’m sitting on the counter, and he comes over with one of those grins of his, takes a drink, and puts a hand down on either side of me.
“You, obviously.”
“Yeah, of course.” I sigh in resignation, then another question occurs to me. “So what is it you like so much about me?”
“I mean…your ass. And your face.”
“How nice. The front and the back. I feel blessed.”
“You deserve it.” He kisses me.
He missed the irony in my words completely, and he’s confused when I put my hands on his shoulders and push him back, trying to create distance.
“I’m serious, Taylor. Try.”
“Try what?” He grabs his glass.
“What I said. Tell me the things you like about life.”
He groans, the conversation’s ridiculous to him. Maybe it is ridiculous, but I need to find out if everyone else in the world feels as numb as I do.
“I don’t know…” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I like motorcycles. And cars. And weed. Same as everyone, I guess. And that show that comes on in the afternoon with the naked couples on the island. And spicy food.”
I stop paying attention to him when he tells me all about the TV show. I just watch him and drink my rum. You can look at a person and not even see them, trust me. Most of us are doing it all the time.
An hour later, maybe two, I tell Taylor I can’t go home with him and I leave the sorry party on my own.
I zip my purple puffer coat all the way up, but the cold is bitter on my legs, which are covered only by a pair of thin leggings.
I don’t have my bike, since Taylor picked me up, so I stumble along the dark, deserted streets of Ink Lake. Drunk. I think.
That’s probably why I turn off. And the light behind the door is like a beacon telling me to keep coming. I’m a moth on a summer night, whirling around a streetlamp. Then, finally, I decide to enter Will’s work.