The Art of Losing Yourself (25 page)

G
RACIE

When Mom hugged me, I noticed two things—she wasn’t as skeletal as she’d been in August, and she smelled like cigarettes. Less blatantly than Deborah, but it was there in the folds of her hair. I guess exchanging one slow death for another was the thing to do in rehab. When she pulled away, tears swam in her eyes. “I am so, so happy you came.”

Last night, Carmen and I arrived in Tallahassee mud covered and soaking wet, but relatively intact. We stayed in a cute mom-and-pop motel off Interstate 10, where we showered, ate pizza, and slept, and now here we were at the Fresh Start Rehabilitation Center. The two of us were still basically strangers, but I felt this softening toward her that I’d never felt before. I went to bed with the feeling last night and woke up with it still there this morning. I had no idea why—whether it was the result of getting the car unstuck together or if her confession aroused my sympathy or if the apology had made a difference after all. I only knew that years’ worth of accumulated resentment had lost some of its edge.

It was a weird feeling.

Mom ushered us into the dining area and introduced us to all of her new friends, the most interesting of which was a conspiracy theorist named Jimmy. He looked like Jesus—at least the Americanized version on paintings inside churches—except Jimmy wore his beard in a ponytail and his hands trembled when he talked.

While Carmen and Mom chatted, Jimmy told me about the end of the world. He didn’t know how it was going to happen, but he was adamant on when. Apparently yesterday, while taking a walk outside, he told God that if He would reveal when the world would end, Jimmy would know that God was real. And apparently, when Jimmy looked up at the sky, he found a cloud in the perfect shape of a three, which according to him, meant that as of today we all had two years, three hundred sixty-four days left until the apocalypse. I considered asking him why the three meant years instead of months or weeks or days,
but he seemed so relaxed about all the time he had on his hands that I couldn’t bring myself to rain on his delusional parade.

And besides, Mom wanted to show us her room. She kept up a constant stream of chatter the entire way there and the entire way back and didn’t stop until the Thanksgiving meal was served. I filled my plate with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce and smothered it all in gravy. The three of us sat at Jimmy’s table, and he said a prayer that was, hands down, the most entertaining prayer I had ever heard in my life. When it was done, I stuffed my mouth with food, bracing myself for step nine. Mom could talk only so long and so fast before she ran out of things to say and finally got to where she was going.

“I feel better than I ever have. I really mean that.” She cut off a bite of her turkey.

Carmen peeked at me while buttering a roll. “That’s great, Mom.”

I waited for Mom to keep going, but it seemed we had finally reached the lull.

She put the bite of turkey in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and dabbed her lips with an orange-and-gold napkin that said Gobble Gobble. “Carmen, I’m sorry.”

And here it was. Step nine: make direct amends with the people you have wronged. She may have been to official rehab only three times in her life, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made multiple attempts to give up the bottle on her own. Hence, her baptisms. Not only did I have to watch her dunk herself into the creek every other Sunday, I also had the pleasure of experiencing step nine. Over. And over. And over.

Carmen must have been expecting it too, because she put down her fork and gave our mother the courtesy of full eye contact. Me? I looked down at my food. Step nine had lost its sincerity years ago.

“I’m sorry for not being the mother I should have been to you.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

“Gracie?” Her voice quivered over my name.

I mixed cranberry sauce with mashed potato, enjoying the creamy white swirled with deep burgundy. Who knew a Thanksgiving feast could lend itself to creative art?

“I’ve failed you worst of all. I should be the mother in our relationship, and
yet you’ve always had to take care of me. I know that isn’t right. And I promise things will be different from now on.” She reached across the table to squeeze my knuckles. “I’ll be finished here in a week and we can have a fresh start.”

“I don’t want a fresh start.”

“Gracie,” Carmen mumbled.

I looked up from my plate—first at Carmen, then at Mom. I could tell my words had taken the wind out of Mom’s sails. But I couldn’t help it. The thought of returning to Chris Nanning and Sadie Hall and Principal Best and the deadbeats I used to eat lunch with was enough to make me shudder. Never mind the nights at home, waiting for Mom’s dance with the devil to resume. The past three months had me forgetting a little what that had been like—the instability of each moment, the walking on eggshells. Sure, Ben and Carmen had their issues, but at least I never had to wonder if it was safe to ride with them in the car. At least I never came home to either of them passed out drunk on the couch. “I want to stay with Carmen.”

I’m not sure who was more shocked by my announcement, Carmen or me.

“I guess that is something we can talk about.” Mom folded her napkin in half, then in half again, and smoothed the creases out over her knee with hands that trembled like Jimmy’s. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get some seconds.”

Never mind the fact that she wasn’t through with her firsts.

I watched her walk to the big table where the feast was spread.

“Gracie, she is trying,” Carmen said.

“I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

“What were you trying to be then?”

“Honest.”

Carmen looked skeptical. “You
want
to stay with me?”

“I get it, if you don’t want me to.” I kept my voice neutral, unattached. But inside, my heart tapped a quick SOS against my chest. I wanted to stay for a lot of reasons; The Treasure Chest and Elias were two very large ones.

“If that’s true. If you’re serious about staying…” She scraped her fork against remnants of green bean casserole. “I have a condition.”

“What is it?”

“You have to take Mr. Vogel’s deal.”

“You mean join an extracurricular activity?”

“Yes.”

My attention wandered to my mom. Jimmy was up getting seconds too, and it appeared by the enthusiastic way he gestured toward the ceiling with his hands that he was telling her the story about God’s apocalyptic cloud message. As my mother smiled and nodded, I recalled something Elias had said a while ago, at the top of the staircase of Ben and Carmen’s home.

“If she’s been to rehab three times, that means she’s trying.”

Her past might be riddled with failure, and she would never win the award for world’s best mom, but I did have to give her credit for getting back up again. For putting herself out there, even though she would most likely fail.

“So?” Carmen prompted.

I expelled a breath. “So I guess I’ll need to see Mr. Vogel’s list again.”

Carmen smiled.

I returned to my potato-cranberry sauce mixing, slightly perplexed. Not only was Carmen letting me stay, she looked happy about it. Knowing how I’d been treating her these past few months, it didn’t make much sense.

G
RACIE

I sat at my lonely table in the back of the cafeteria with my boots propped on an empty chair, the hood of my hoodie pulled up over my hair, my ears plugged with earbuds, my mood bordering on morose. According to Mr. Vogel, I had until Monday to choose an extracurricular activity, and the only one I had any interest in joining was no longer an option. The debate team was preparing for districts, and Kimmy had found a partner months ago. My options were on the printed list in front of me.

I’d already crossed out all activities associated with sports, drama, and music. I would not be wearing any uniforms or performing on any stages. Or singing on any of them either. I may have enjoyed listening to music, but listening and doing were two very different things. And unless spray-painting Chris Nanning’s car counted, I wasn’t really into art either. That left me with newspaper, speech, and a smattering of clubs that all made my nose wrinkle. At some point in the middle of Delain’s “Are You Done with Me,” my sixth sense kicked in. I looked up from the sheet of paper and noticed that one of the empty seats at my table was no longer empty. Elias Banks seemed to have joined me for lunch, something he hadn’t done since my first day of school.

I hid the list beneath the table and unplugged my ears, raising my eyebrows at the concoction of turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy piled high on a slice of Wonder Bread on his tray. “Don’t the lunch ladies know we’re all sick of turkey by now?”

“I think it’s leftovers.” He gave me his dimpled smile. “So what’s up, Fisher? You’re extra mopey today.”

“Mopey’s the name of a dwarf.”

“Dopey’s the name of a dwarf. There are no Mopeys, to my knowledge. You should really get your Disney trivia straight.” He stuck a forkful of turkey and gravy into his mouth, chased it down with a carton of two-percent milk, then nodded at the spot of the table beneath which I’d hidden my list. “What were you looking at just now?”

“Nothing.” My answer came too quick.

“You do know that suspicious behavior only makes people more curious, don’t you?”

I exhaled loudly. If I was going to join one of these things, people were going to find out. Might as well get it over with and tell him now. I handed him the list. “My options.”

“For what?”

“An extracurricular activity.”

He almost spit out his milk. “You
want
to join an extracurricular activity?”

“No, I don’t
want
to. I’m being forced to against my will.”

“By who?”

“Mr. Vogel and Carmen. The two are in cahoots.”

“How exactly are they forcing you?”

“Remember the goat in Miss Henson’s car?”

Elias’s cheek pulled in with a smile. He set his fork on his tray and placed his elbows on the table, giving me his full, undivided attention. “I don’t think anybody’s forgetting that anytime soon.”

“I may have had something to do with it.”

His smile grew, but he placed his hand over his mouth so I couldn’t see and shook his head. The twinkle in his eye, however, was impossible to hide. I don’t think he completely disapproved.

“I guess Bay Breeze has security cameras, which I should have taken into consideration before I kidnapped the goat. Anyway, it was either suspension for two weeks or join an extracurricular.”

“I would think you’d choose suspension.”

“I did, hence my absence on Tuesday and Wednesday last week. But then there was this whole thing over Thanksgiving”—I twirled my hand in the air, not really wanting to go into the
thing
with Elias—“and I was coerced into changing my mind. Thus, the list.”

He scanned it. “Hey, the academic bowl team’s on here.”

“You know what that is?”

“Yeah. They’re really good. Even went to nationals last year. A good buddy from youth group is on the team.”

“Youth group.”

“You should come Wednesday night and meet him.”

The invitation had Parker’s niggling question from the party creeping to mind once again
—“How does it feel being Banks’s new project?”
I batted it away. I was not going to let someone like Parker Zkotsky tarnish this thing between Elias and me, whatever it was. An invitation to youth group did not necessarily make me Elias’s project. “I already told you. I don’t like phonies.”

“Meaning all kids who go to youth group are phonies?”

“A lot of them are.”

“Please don’t base your opinion on Christians off of some jerk like Chris Nanning.”

“I’m not.”

He quirked his eyebrow, because, yeah, right, I totally was. “You need to start seeing the person behind the stereotype.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you wrote me off because of football, and now you’re doing the same thing, only with youth group.” He handed the list back. “I’m sure you don’t like when people look at you and make assumptions.”

“What assumptions would they make?”

His attention wandered from my boots on the empty seat all the way up to the hoodie pulled over my head. “That you’re an angry emo chick.”

I scoffed. “I am
not
emo.”

“You wear black army boots. I have, on occasion, seen your fingernails painted black. You have black hair, listen to weird music, and wear a scowl half the time.”

I slugged him in the arm.

He held up his hands and laughed. “Hey, I’m keeping it real.”

“I’ll have you know that the music I listen to is called techno fusion. It’s not weird and it’s definitely not emo.”

“Sorry, techno fusion. My point is, I see the person behind the black hair and combat boots.” He spread his hand over his chest. “Just like you’re starting to see this person behind the football. Can’t you do the same thing with youth group this Wednesday? Who knows, you might even make some friends.”

“Friends, huh?” I’d never really done the whole friend thing before. Life was less complicated that way. But a lot lonelier too. I looked up at the ceiling and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, fine. I’ll come.” I held up my finger. “But if I don’t like it, you can’t ask me again.”