Signs of You (3 page)

Chapter 3

You, Too?

I crawl straight into bed when I get home, pulling the covers over my head like I did when I was a kid, hoping the outside world will disappear if I can't see it. I huddle over my cell like it's a tiny, warm campf ire. But instead of popping and crackling wood, I hear the pings and jingles of incoming texts. Jay asks if I'm okay, if I got home. I stare at the blazing blue messages, unable to write back.

But f inally, slowly, my f ingers start to move over the keys. I manage to convince him that I'm all right, that I'm just missing my mom, that I'm stressed about the tests tomorrow. He doesn't ask again why I texted
LOVE SUCKS
to him earlier. I kind of wish he would, because right now, in this blanket-tent, after this day . . . I just might tell him.

For the next few hours, I stare at the glowing plastic stars on my ceiling and count sheep, telling myself this is all a bad dream. I can't get much higher than 300 bleating, f luffy, maniac sheep jumping over a fence before I have to start counting over again. Somewhere around sheep number f ifty, they all take on an evil, sinister look.

You're nuts
, they say as they propel themselves over a section of white picket fence.
Resident
. Jump.
Of.
Jump.
CRAZY TOWN.

At about three in
the morning I decide to head to the kitchen and get some milk. I don't really think milk is going to be strong enough to deal with whatever psychotic break it is I'm having, but it's worth a try. I grab my cell and turn on the f lashlight app to light my way down the hall. But then I see that Dad's light is on in his room.

I quietly make my way to his door and peer in. He's in bed reading with the covers tucked neatly around him, the bedside lamp casting a soft, sad glow on his aloneness. He sees me and f lashes one of his I-swear-I'm-happy smiles that I can see right through. Then I see Mom's favorite Sleepytime Tea mug on her bedside table. She always had a cup before bed. I wonder how long it's been there, if I've seen it there before and not noticed.

“Mom's cup,” I blurt out, pointing.

“Oh,” Dad says, glancing down at the mug with the picture of an impossibly comfortable-looking bear in a nightcap on it. “Huh. I guess I put it there and forgot? Sometimes I put things of hers on her side. Makes the room feel a little less empty.”

What's that noise? Oh, right. That's my heart. Breaking.

Seeing the sadness in Dad's eyes, seeing Mom's mug on her bedside table as if she set it there to steep and will be back any minute to take a sip, I nearly lose it. I can feel it rising in my throat, this
need
to shout,
I SAW MOM, I SAW HER.

But I shake it off. I can't tell Dad about this; I never tell him anything but the good stuff, the I'm-f ine stuff. I always try to f ly just under his radar. And I know that's sort of sad or lonely or whatever, but when you're the kid who wrecked everything, the kid who ruined her mom's life and then caused her death, your personal philosophy goes something like this:
Sit down, shut up, and try not to take up too much air. You've caused enough trouble already.

“I was on my way to get some milk. Want some?”

Dad nods and gets out of bed. But when we get to the kitchen, he doesn't go for the milk. He goes for the skillet.

“Eggs?” he asks.

“At 3
a.m
.?” Dad looks disappointed that I'm about to turn him down. So I backtrack. “I mean, yes. Eggs. Sounds awesome.” I attempt an I-heart-eggs smile that I hope looks real.

He smiles, too, and his blue eyes shine like freshly lit gas burners. He picks up his spatula and f ires up the stove. I don't know why I was shocked that he wanted to make 3
a.m.
breakfast. My dad communicates through his food. It's not that he's terrible at talking to me; he actually does a pretty good job. He bites the bullet every once in a while and asks me about embarrassing things—boys, school dances, my plans, my hopes. But it's hard for him. What comes easy is the cooking.

“Why can't you sleep?” he asks, as he cracks an egg against a bowl.

I'm crazy. Paranoid. Freaking out about a cross necklace. I must be dying. Brain tumor. Something.

“Nothing,” I say.

My father doesn't respond but gives me “the look.” He started giving me “the look” after Mom died. It always makes me feel like the stuff we smash between little glass slides in biology and then shove under a microscope. Or like one of the houses he inspects for damage. That's part of what my dad does for a living: he works for a real estate company and appraises and inspects houses before people buy them. He checks out the roof, the plaster, the foundation, looking for defects only the trained eye can see. The more damaged the house, the less it's worth.

Now, he peers at me like that, like he's studying the insides of my brain, looking for hidden areas of damage or disease. I try to act normal, like everything's okay, but I wonder if he can see the cracks in my foundation.

“I'm
f ine
, Dad,” I lie again. “Just tired.”

He gives up on the inquisition for the moment and goes back to cooking. I can tell he's whipping up what he calls a Special Plate Breakfast. He f inishes the eggs, cuts wheat toast down the middle and covers it with butter and blackberry jam. He softly whistles as he puts fruit on the side, a grapefruit already cut into little wedges. I smile and know that each egg is a word, each wedge of fruit, punctuation
.
They don't actually spell anything, but their meaning is crystal clear:
if I could f ix your heart I would.
My father and I share the same blood, the same loss, the same wish to f ix each other, and the same sadness that we can't. And sometimes, we both just drift around the house like two rainclouds trying desperately not to storm. But as he proudly sets my Special Plate Breakfast down on the table in front of me, I see it—through his deep, dark sadness, I see his hope for my life, I see his love for me glimmer in his eyes like sunshine glinting off a windswept lake.
If only you and Mom had never had me. She'd be here, alive, healthy, happy. I wasn't worth it. This breakfast should be for her.

“Great eggs, Dad,” I say. “They're perfect. Really perfect.”

He smiles then puts some eggs and toast on a plate for himself. I wonder what he'd say if I told him that I saw Mom. The f irst time I can remember running to him with really big news was when I was f ive years old. As I was bathing, I noticed something I'd never noticed before. I jumped out of the bathtub and ran down the hallway trailing bathwater behind me.

“Dad!” I screamed.

He was in his room buttoning up a favorite red f lannel shirt.

“Look!” I said, pointing down. “I'm growing a penis!”

My mother had not explained to me that my anatomy was as it should be and would not be getting any bigger. My father looked at me, his soaking wet daughter, who thought she was growing something only her dad would understand, and searched for a response. I was expecting him to be stoked, celebratory. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and smiled at me nervously.

“Well, blow me down,” he announced.

And then he walked away.

That night, he made my favorite homemade pizza—pepperoni and ham with the ideal 3:1 pepperoni-to-ham ratio. I ate the pizza, but I was mad. How could his only response to my news be
pizza
?

Now as I sit in the kitchen, eating my perfectly cooked eggs, bursting at the seams to tell him what happened, it occurs to me that I am still that little girl—the one who ran to him with all her big news that she needed him to explain. What dish would he prepare in response to hearing that his daughter thinks she saw her dead mother? A souff lé? A pork loin, perhaps? Maybe three-cheese vegetarian lasagna—complicated with
a lot
of layers.

“Are you sure nothing is wrong?” Dad asks as he takes a bite of eggs.

Don't tell him. Don't do this to him. He needs you to be okay.

“What's wrong is that you're a shift-eater,” I say, trying to steer him off topic, knock him off the scent of my sadness. “It's annoying. Live a little.”

“A what?”

“A shift-eater. You eat in shifts. One thing at a time. Currently, you're on the egg shift. Next, you'll move on to the toast.” He tries not to, but he smiles again.
Mission accomplished
.

In the morning, I
drive myself to school as usual in my red station wagon—which is not sporty, racy, or really that awesome in any way, shape, or form. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's the off icial car of the forty-something, risk-averse crowd. Dad bought it for me because he thinks it's the safest car on the planet, and I guess as cars for high school kids go, it's not all that bad. My friends have decided its pet name is the Dragon Wagon.

I wheel into the school parking lot and scan the front lawn, looking for my friends among the mass of students. I don't see them right away. Woodhull High is ridiculously huge. This is what happens when you cram the 'burbs of both Brecksville and Broadview Heights into one school. All the buildings on the sprawling campus are painted in blue and gold; plus there are multiple baseball f ields, tennis courts, soccer f ields, and a football stadium, all adorned with the W.H. Bee, f ists up, wings back, stinger nowhere in sight.

Finally I spot Jay and Noah near a small elm tree, so I make a beeline for them (no pun intended), coaching myself as I go.
You will not see your mother. You will not see anything out of the ordinary. This is the Midwest. Only boring things happen here. Just breathe. And try to be normal.

Noah is talking, and he looks upset. His blond hair is disheveled, and he's waving his arms around. Plus, he's wearing what appears to be a soaking wet T-shirt. It's a classic Noah shirt. It's NASA blue, which matches his eyes, and has a fake periodic table on the front with only three elements: Ba, Co, and N.

“Hey,” he grumbles at me. He turns away from Jay and wipes his shirt with a McDonald's napkin. “You wouldn't happen to have any spare nerdy science shirts, would you?”

“Um,” I say. “Maybe in the car?”

Noah goes back to looking super upset, yet I still laugh. I can't help it. Because Noah always makes me laugh or smile. It's like his job in our group; we all get bummed about something, and he'll read the situation perfectly and f igure out a way to make us feel better. Plus, he's an awesome friend. On the f irst anniversary of Mom's death, he blew up my phone all night with texts; he could tell I wasn't okay even though I said I was. None of us had a license yet, so he got his mom to drive him to my house even though it was almost midnight. I opened the front door and there was Noah, holding a bunch of f lowers in his outstretched hand. They were wildf lowers—long and ratty-looking wildf lowers with clumps of dirt still hanging from their roots.

I found out later that he tried to buy roses at Heinen's, but they were closed. So he made his mom pull off on the way to my house so he could pick wildf lowers from the side of the road.

Crazy, I know.

“So how did you manage to get the whole fake periodic table wet?” I ask.

“Unbelievable. So I'm standing by this tree,” Noah says, pointing at the trunk. “Waiting for you guys. Enjoying my amazing biggie Coke. The perfect healthy start to a school day.” The faintest grin appears on his face. “And all of a sudden Carl comes down out of the tree.”

“What?” I ask.

“Yeah, I know; right?” He runs a hand through the honey blond mess on top of his head. “The bastard climbed up there just to mess with me, and then swang down and knocked my Coke out of my hands. It went all over my shirt.” He points at the ginormous wet spot as if it's not amazingly obvious to begin with. “But the worst part is that all I managed to call him was a shithead. Very unsatisfying.”

I consider correcting Noah's conjugation of the verb “to swing,” but decide against it. His incorrect usage does not alter the fact that anyone who purposefully swings down from a tree to knock a drink out of your hands def initely deserves to be called much more than a shithead.

“Sorry, Noah,” I say. “That sucks.”

There's a group of kids at W.H. who apparently live to torment us and anyone else who is decidedly uncool. And Carl is one of them. They do stuff like that to us all the time—they steal books out of our lockers, post Facebook crap like
Riley and Kate made out in the locker room, picture unavailable
. They even put bologna and eggs on the Dragon Wagon to mess with the paint. And yes, Kate and I
did
spend an entire gym period hiding in a shower stall together to avoid the dodge ball tournament; however, no making out ever occurred. Kate got hit in the boob the last time we played and has suffered the nickname Boober
ever since. So instead of choosing to suffer, we dragged a couple of stools into the shower stall and sat reading Twitter on our phones. It was lame, but way better than dodging a large inf lated rubber ball for an hour to cries of “Boober in the rear! Boober in the front!”

Noah peers into his biggie
Coke cup to see if any is left. “I swear I'm going to beat the crap out of that guy one day.”

Jay and I opt to nod sympathetically rather than say what I know we're both thinking:
yeah, right.
Noah has his share of muscles, but they're the long and lean soccer-guy type—not the beefcake, trunk-of-a-tree kind like Carl has. My money would have to be on Carl in a f ight. But of course there never will be a f ight, because Noah in fact has a brain, unlike Carl.

I grab a few of the McDonald's napkins out of Noah's hands and try to help. I'm smiling again and Noah is smiling now, too, at least. We both know idiots like Carl will torment us until graduation day; it's guaranteed, like having to take the SATs. Best just to laugh it off. But out of the corner of my eye, I catch Jay watching me, sizing me up, gauging if I'm really okay after I drove off like a maniac last night.