Anything but Ordinary (8 page)

hat night, Bryce got out of Gabby’s car, and a deep, melodic buzzing filled her ears. The air belonged to the cicadas now, there was no doubt about that. They were creatures of the summer, sometimes called July flies. Bryce had always liked that name.

Inside, she found her father snoring on a reclining chair in front of the last inning of a Texas Rangers game. Next to him, on the floor, her mother breathed heavily, doing bicycle sit-ups, an old portable CD player blaring Electric Light Orchestra in her headphoned ears. At least they were in the same room. Her father barely left the den these days, and her mother was always in her office. Sydney was upstairs, music blaring from underneath her closed door.

Bryce made her way to the basement and tossed her shopping bags onto her bed. Aside from a few dressier diversions Gabby had convinced her to pursue, Bryce had stocked up on her usual V-necks, tank tops, and shorts with pockets.

She opened a drawer of the oval-shaped dresser, only to see it was full: her diving trophies. She felt a pang in her chest. One by one, she lined them up in height order, hanging medals around the gold cups and cylinders that topped each one.

When she leaned to shut the drawer, the edge of something silvery caught her eye. As she opened the drawer farther, she gasped.
The tiara.
Bryce brought out the worn silver crown, delicately woven with light-pink crystals, and let out a laugh of surprise.

When they were in first grade, the year after Gabby’s father died, Gabby’s mom, Elena, had taken them to a flea market. In one of the bargain bins, Gabby found a tiara. Not just a plastic, painted tiara like you would find in a toy store. A
real
tiara. The flea market clerk noticed its worth, too, and priced it high. Gabby’s mother refused; money was tight, and Gabby’s birthday had already passed. But Bryce’s
own
birthday was coming up, and Elena had told Bryce she could pick something out for her present. When she encountered the small, circular package in the brightly wrapped pile of gifts, Bryce didn’t even unwrap it. She immediately handed it to her friend. They spent most of that year playing Princess and Prince, Gabby wearing the crown and Bryce fighting imaginary dragons.

Bryce hung it on one of the tallest trophies, happiness swelling inside her. She’d invite Gabby over one of these days and casually motion to the dresser. She couldn’t wait to see the look of surprise on her friend’s face.

There. She stood back. The monochrome room felt more like hers again, the sparkling tiara and gilded plastic of each prize adding a gold glow to the gray corner.

Just little things, Bryce thought. She could move things little by little to get them back where they were supposed to be. Right? The coma was big. Not diving was big. The wedding would be big. But she could inch back in small ways, running errands with Gabby, talking to Sydney, taking back her room.

Like that window. Her mother must have cracked it to air the room out, and the cicadas’ sounds floated in, their buzzing now hard and wild as the night grew darker. Bryce walked over to it and pressed on the frame, bringing the glass pane down.

And there it was. Her face reflected against the darkness, surprisingly clear. It had changed along with her body, in many of the same ways Gabby’s face had changed. More defined features, vague lines that appeared when she moved her formerly round cheeks.

As she was about to turn away, Bryce noticed a light come on at the back of the property. Someone was in the barn.

She made her way outside. The night dripped with insect noise, and she could feel the tall grasses break beneath her boots. The buzzing was so loud now—she couldn’t remember a time when the cicadas made so much noise. When she approached the barn, she saw a bike leaned against the red-painted doors. A familiar-looking bike. Bryce went inside.

He sat facing away from her on a wooden sawhorse, a camping lantern sitting on the floor beside him.

“Greg,” she said.

He turned, his mouth opening in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to see her there.

“What are you doing here?” Bryce found her fists tightening, but not in anger. It was to get a grasp on what was happening. Her head began to spin.

Greg turned all the way around. His eyes bored deeply into hers. “Same thing I’ve been doing here forever.”

The memories flooded her at the sight of him, biting his nails, his long legs on either side of the sawhorse.

They crashed into her like rapid-fire waves: he and Bryce, on the same seat, legs intertwining. Bryce sneaking up on him as he faced away from her, kissing where his shoulder met his neck. The taste of his mouthwash. Climbing aboard her dad’s propjet, seated beside one another, pretending to fly. Planning where they would go. Curling up in sleeping bags and falling asleep together, waking up just in time to sneak back into the house, the sky turning pink.

But now the wooden beams had a layer of dust an inch thick. The plane her father had been building was covered with an old blue tarp, his tools all put away. He used to work on it every day during his lunch hour. He was going to finish before Bryce went off to college. He had promised. It stood hulking, unfinished, beside Greg like the skeleton of some big animal. It was déjà vu, but all wrong.

“I came here when I was missing you,” Greg explained quietly.

“Oh,” Bryce muttered, imagining him wandering around the dark barn by himself. Her head sparked in pain. She had seen that in her vision, hadn’t she?

Greg stood up. “I missed you every goddamn day. I felt like…” He swallowed. “I didn’t really get the chance to tell you at the restaurant.”

Bryce breathed through her nose, thinly and calmly, as her eyes darted from his thick-lashed eyes to his broad chest to his veined forearms, twitching as he settled against a beam.

She tried to keep her voice steady. “Then why did you…give up on me?”

Greg stopped. His eyes turned to the ceiling for the answer, but when they returned to meet hers, they had the same pain she had seen when he was here alone. “If I had known for a second that there was a chance you were going to wake up, I would have waited. You know I would have.”

“They said I wasn’t going to,” she filled in quietly.

“They said you would never wake up,” Greg echoed. “So I just sort of clung to the memories.”

Bryce nodded, thinking of one unseasonably warm Saturday night when she and Greg had lain next to one another with their hands behind their heads, Bryce in a sports bra and basketball shorts, Greg in his usual Carhartts cut off at the knee. “How do blind people dream?” he had asked her.

“I don’t know,” Bryce said slowly, pondering. She was staring at the slant of the barn ceiling, fading into darkness at the top. Occasionally the dark would rustle with the flight of bats or barn swallows. The light of their lantern only reached so far.

“Do they have dreams in sound?” Greg asked, his voice getting sleepy.

That night Bryce had dreamed of a world upside down, dripping in surreal colors. Greg was leading her through it with her hand in his. They had floated through the air like it was made of water. Bryce felt right at home.

Now she felt tears burn in the corner of her eyes. “Memories weren’t good enough, though.” It was both a question and an answer.

“No,” he said hollowly. “I moved on to these little dream scenarios. I wanted them to be real. I wanted it so bad.…” His voice choked. He looked away, shaking his head. “I thought about you opening your eyes. I stared at your face,
willing
you to open your eyes. Then you’d get up and we would leave the hospital together, we would go back to school, we’d graduate. Go to Vandy. And after that…” His voice trailed off, but his eyes said the rest. They contained an eternity. Where they would go, who they could be.

He was close enough that she could smell the wet wood scent that lingered on his clothes. He was inches away, and yet she couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t even hold his hand.

“Well, that’s not how it is,” Bryce said, ripping the words from her chest. She saw hurt flicker in Greg’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter how it could have been. You’re with Gabby now. You’re getting married.”

Bryce felt something crack inside of her. The last time she had said that word,
married
, had been in this barn. Their cheeks were red. Their hair was messed. The cicadas buzzed as they were buzzing now, and they had said silly, stupid things to each other. Love was being able to say anything you wanted, to say all the stupid things you couldn’t tell anyone else. But she had meant that one.

“I know,” Greg said sadly. Angrily, almost.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said. “Stay.”

But he didn’t protest when Bryce walked back into the summer night, trying to catch her breath. When she turned back, the light still shone from the barn’s old diamond-shaped windows. But she only looked ahead as she stepped through the wet grass, looking forward, for the first time since she awoke, to the soft darkness of a dreamless sleep.

ryce hung half out of the passenger-side window of the speeding white Honda. The rush of wind bit at her, flicking hair across her face, her mouth. This was a new kind of wind. It had a presence, a weight; it seemed to move like the bleeding colors only Bryce could see. She could feel it slip through her fingers and hair like liquid.

“Okay, here comes a big hill!” Bryce called to Carter, her knee braced on the busted leather seat.

He rolled his eyes, but a smile played on his lips.

“Go fast! It’s like a roller coaster!”

“You look like my dog,” he answered, but as soon as the words were out, the engine gunned and Bryce let out a whoop as they broke the crest of the hill, the skin of her cheeks pulled back by the air whipping across the empty country road.

The pavement flattened out, and Bryce flopped back onto her seat. “I can’t believe you let me do that.”

Carter scoffed. “Me neither. We’re lucky another car didn’t come by.”

“No cars ever do.” Bryce pulled her wild locks back into a ponytail and hung her hand out the window, catching the warm wind with her palm.

Carter shook his head, looking forward, but unable to hide his smile. “You’re crazy,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” Bryce said, but she wasn’t.

“You know where we’re going, right?” He readjusted the mirror.

“I couldn’t get lost if I wanted to.”

It had been a week since the night in the barn with Greg. He’d been calling, but she never picked up. It would be better to forget the past, she’d decided. It was better for both of them.

Carter had been coming around more often, and that was nice. But she found herself bringing him to all the places she used to go with Greg and Gabby, staring at the seats of the diner where they used to eat before practice, or searching for their faces at the mall, longing for them. Longing for a life that didn’t exist anymore.

The asphalt gave way to the crackle of unpaved road. “Pull up under this tree,” she said. It’d be strange to be at the lake without Greg and Gabby, but she had put off going for too long. Never had this much time passed in the summer before Bryce took a trip out to Percy. She couldn’t wait to see it, to feel the smooth, warm water. It was more pure than chlorine water. The lake’s algae was dark and slimy, but to Bryce it felt right. The lake was
alive
.

A single path led to a small, dirty beach scattered with a couple of coal-streaked grills and empty beer cans. Bryce hadn’t been to that beach since she was a kid. She grabbed Carter’s hand and pulled him off the beaten path, through the grass and ferns and tiny saplings, to a hedge of bushes and trees that hid the rest of the lake from view.

“Wow,” Carter said, making his fingers into a picture frame. “What a view.”

“Shut up,” she said, but they were both smiling. “I have a spot. It’s the perfect spot.”

She crept along the thick row of trees, peeking between them only to see more trees, more leaves. Over the past week, her legs had gotten stronger and stronger. She could almost walk normally now. Every step burned, but she relished the sore-muscle feeling. “Now I just have to remember where the opening is.”

Every so often she would stop, staring into the bushes, but she could tell that wasn’t the right way. She didn’t know how, because everything looked the same, but she could tell.

“It’s okay if you can’t remember, you know,” Carter called up at one point. “It
has
been five years of brain inactivity.”

“Doesn’t feel that way,” Bryce breathed to herself. Sweat began to drip from her forehead as they rustled along. She didn’t mind; it was good to be moving.

Suddenly, as if the trees were breathing a sigh of relief, they broke into a clearing. Bushes still dotted the grass, but beyond them lay nothing but a single, mangled crab apple tree, and the lake and sky in two shades of endless blue.

“Look.” Bryce rushed to the edge of the clearing and motioned for Carter. “The bank juts straight down so it’s really deep. With a cliff to dive off and everything.”

Bryce watched Carter take it all in. Even in his white Oxford and khaki pants, he seemed to belong here more than anyone she had seen. Gabby usually took this opportunity to apply suntan lotion, and Greg always scrambled down the bluff to jump in without a second look. But Carter was completely still, his blue-gray eyes drinking in the view without a word.

After a while he looked at Bryce, his eyes moving up and down her face. She felt herself blushing. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” he said absently.

“Oh.” Bryce cleared her throat. “Me neither.” A pang of loss hit her. “I don’t even know if I can swim anymore.”

They collapsed under the crab apple tree, Bryce letting out a grateful moan to get out of the beating sun. She stared through the maze of branches to the blue sky above.

“You ever seen one of these trees in the spring?” she asked, gesturing up to the berrylike crab apples.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “They blossom in these really pretty pink flowers.”

Bryce laughed at his enthusiasm.

Carter cleared his throat. “I mean, right? That’s what they do?” But then he let out a small laugh with her. “No, I know them well. My little brother used to climb up the ones on our street when the apples came in, throw ’em down, try to peg me.” He threw the grass he had pulled up in his hand, scattering the blades in the breeze.

“I used to do the same thing to my little sister,” Bryce remembered.

“Chucking apples at someone younger than you? That’s hardly fair.” Carter took this opportunity to grab a handful of crab apples and toss them at Bryce, one by one.

Bryce retaliated with a few apples of her own, trying to land them in the collar of his shirt. “I wish I could throw something at her now. She could use some sense knocked into her.”

Carter surrendered, blocking her aim with his shoulder. “Why? What’s she doing?”

“You’ve seen her.” Bryce chucked a crab apple toward the bluff.

Carter contemplated. “She’s probably just going through a stage.”

“Whatever,” Bryce grunted, launching apples further with each throw. “That’s not the point.”

“What is—” Carter started to ask.

Bryce stopped throwing. “The point is my parents totally dropped the ball.” She was getting frustrated now. Carter had seen her family plenty. He had to know what she was talking about. “She goes out every night looking like a baby prostitute. She comes home at three in the morning.”

“But she does come home.”

“So? She doesn’t get good grades. She doesn’t play any sports or do any activities. And my parents just sit around, moping about it, not doing anything.”

Carter shrugged. “Maybe it’s beyond their control.”

“You think?” Bryce asked sarcastically.

She stood up, wiping dirt and grass off of her butt. Carter looked up at her thoughtfully.

“You know, just because she’s not a star…” He trailed off, gesturing to her. “It doesn’t mean she’s a failure.”

Bryce smirked, kicking at the dirt. “Oh, sure, she’s a real winner.”

The sun was officially fading now, setting the few long, streaky clouds on fire.

“I want to go home,” Bryce muttered.

“If you say so. I say we’re missing the best part.” He nodded toward the sunset. Bryce wandered to the edge of the bluff, away from him, arms folded. What did he know about the best part? This was her lake.

They watched the deep blue of evening take over the sky. Then, without waiting, she took the lead, and soon they were back on the empty country road, gliding home through the cool air.

She could tell Carter was sneaking glances at her, still silent. When she happened to glance at him, his gaze was steeled ahead, one arm on the wheel. Thirty minutes later, they pulled up to Bryce’s house.

“Bye,” Bryce said, unbuckling her seat belt. “Thanks for the field trip.”

“Yeah. See you soon.” His eyebrows knit together as he clutched the steering wheel. “Hey, Bryce?”

“What?” She ducked back inside the car.

“Go easy on them, okay?” He nodded toward her house. Bryce felt herself tense. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone you love that way.”

“And
you
don’t know what it’s like to lose five years of your life.” She closed the door and he drove off.

As she made her way up the lawn, fuming, the automatic light from the driveway illuminated to reveal the open garage door and Sydney with a can of gold spray paint in her hand.

“Moved on to vandalism now?” Bryce called. Sydney looked up.

A pair of vintage high tops sat on a paint-splattered sheet on the cement. Bryce couldn’t tell what their original color was, but now they were a deep, shiny gold.

“Don’t touch those,” Sydney said in greeting, taking off one of their dad’s oversized Vanderbilt T-shirts and tossing it onto the cement floor.

“Why were you messing up Dad’s shirt?” Bryce asked, grabbing it from the ground.

“Chill, Bryce. I was using it to protect my clothes.”

Sydney wore a completely sheer lace dress, her black bra and spandex boy shorts visible underneath. Her feet were tucked into impossibly high chunky heels, and she had put a thick black ring through her lip piercing. Bryce snorted. “Ha. Clothes. Good one.”

A rusty blue car without a muffler pulled up in front of the Graham residence. The side was emblazoned with the graphic B60 and it was being driven by an emaciated-looking guy with bleached hair and a tattoo sleeve. He revved his engine, echoing off the soft-lit houses, and shouted at Sydney to hurry her ass up.

Sydney grabbed her purse from the ground.

“Who is that guy?” Bryce squinted to get a closer look.

Sydney adjusted her painted face briefly in a compact mirror and said casually, “Like you care?” She snapped the compact shut.

Bryce’s fists clenched. As Sydney made her way down the driveway, Bryce had the urge to topple her tall, skinny form over like a mannequin. The B60 zoomed off, engine roaring. After a minute, the street was quiet again.

In a fury, Bryce picked up one of Sydney’s spray-painted shoes and hurled it as hard as she could toward the grass.

“I do care,” she said aloud. But there was no one there to hear her.