Better Than Perfect (17 page)

It was clear that she expected I'd be relieved too. At the end of her message, she said, “Call me,” and the words were almost a song.

I stood, leaning against a random locker, not calling her. Instead of making me feel great, Aunt Kathy's message had filled me with a sense of doom. I told myself I was being crazy, but I couldn't shake the feeling.

I didn't want to be at home alone with my mother.

It was an awful thing to think, and as soon as the idea formed itself in my head, I hedged. I was just worried about
her. What if the doctors thought she was ready to come home but she really wasn't? What if being back in the house where our whole family had lived, where she'd been so happy once, sent her into a downward spiral? I wanted to believe that everything that had happened to my mom had been a terrible mistake, that she'd overmedicated herself and then accidentally overdosed. But what if she'd really tried to kill herself? And what if, as soon as she got home, she took advantage of her freedom and tried to kill herself again?

I felt antsy, almost physically itchy. I couldn't stand there thinking about what it would be like to live at home with my potentially suicidal mother. I dialed Sofia.

“Where are you?” she asked. “I'm opening the door to the pool.”

“Let's bail on practice,” I said. “I want to do something radical.”

“I'm closing the door to the pool. What do you want to do?”

“Well, at first I was thinking ice cream.”

“Not so radical.”

“Not so radical,” I acknowledged. “But then I had another idea. Meet me at my car.”

“I'll be there in five.”

Six minutes later, we were pulling out of the parking lot, the mild sunshine making patterns on our faces as we headed south.

“Now what?” asked Sofia.

I had my iPhone with Declan's mix playing. The Clash's “London Calling” came on, and instead of answering her, I blasted it.

Sofia tolerated the song, but as soon as it ended, she lowered the volume. “Are we just going to drive around all day listening to the music of our parents' generation?”

“It's the music of
our
generation,” I corrected her. “It is the music of eternal youth.”

Sofia groaned. “I want to do something,” she said. “I want to do something to mark the fact that I am never. Going. To have. To take. The SATs. Again!” She screamed as soon as she said it.

I could tell Sofia was feeling what I'd been feeling when I first saw my scores, but despite the cool music and the sun, between my fight with Jason and the news about my mom I couldn't seem to get back that sense of perfect happiness. As I turned the car into the parking lot of the Milltown Mall, I could only hope that what I had planned would be enough for me to find it again.

“What are we doing here?” asked Sofia. “I thought we'd agreed that ice cream wasn't radical enough.”

I pulled into a spot at the other end of the mall from Bookers. “We're here,” I said.

Sofia looked at the store we'd parked in front of and hesitantly read the elaborate script on the window of the tacky
hair salon. “Dyed and Gone to Heaven.” She turned to me. “What is going on in that diabolical mind of yours?”

I popped open the locks and stepped out into the chilly afternoon. “You'll see.”

Two hours later, we were walking out of Dyed and Gone to Heaven, and all I could think was,
Mission accomplished.

“I still can't believe you did it,” said Sofia.

“You did it too,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but not the
color
. It's all about the color.”

I turned toward the plate glass window. Looking at our reflection, I couldn't deny the truth of what she'd said.

Sofia had gotten her hair cut shorter. When we'd walked into Dyed and Gone to Heaven, her hair had fallen practically to the middle of her back, and now it fell just below her shoulders. She looked much older, like a college student or even a twentysomething, and the woman had blown it straight, so there was a touch of British princess glam going on there also.

But she was right—her transformation wasn't nearly as dramatic as mine. I'd told the woman to cut my hair to just below my ears in an angular bob. And she'd given me bangs. But what came next was the shocking part. Because once she'd cut my hair and shaped it, I'd told her the real reason I'd come into the salon.

“I want you to dye it,” I said. “I want you to dye it black.”

The woman was startled. “But you have such beautiful
hair,” she said, lifting a strand of it as if to show me. “I mean, it's such a beautiful color.”

In the winter, my hair got to be kind of dingy, but now it still had the brightness of late summer. The piece she was holding up was particularly blond, and if I'd had even the slightest doubt about what I was planning, seeing it would have convinced me to change my mind.

But I didn't.

“You know how sometimes you just have to make a change?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I have to make a change.”

The woman—her name was Cynthia—looked unsure, but then she sort of squared her shoulders and met my eyes in the mirror. “Well then. Let's pick a black for you.”

Now, looking at myself in the window of Dyed and Gone to Heaven, it seemed to me that for the first time since my father had moved out, my outsides matched my insides. I turned my head and felt the ends swish lightly against the back of my neck.

I dropped Sofia off at her house, then headed to the Coffeehouse. It was too late to shower and change, but I was wearing a scoop-necked, long-sleeved green shirt with a black skirt and a pair of black tights that, with my amazing new hair, had a touch of Blondie badass about it. Just before the turnoff
to the Coffeehouse, I remembered that half a mile down the road was a shoe store that always carried Doc Martens, and I gunned it, raced into the store, and asked the guy behind the desk if they had any black ones in my size.

“Um, yeah,” he said, nodding along to the music playing on the earbud that was in his ear. “You want to try them on?”

I took out my credit card. “That's okay,” I said. “I'll just take a pair.”

I parked right in front of the Coffeehouse, pushed my seat all the way back, pulled off my clogs, and slipped on the Doc Martens. They were heavier than I'd expected, and as I stepped out of the car, I felt strong and powerful.

If anyone messes with me,
I thought,
I will kick their fucking ass.

It was warm inside the Coffeehouse and dark except for a few lights up by the stage. I saw Declan sitting in a chair, restringing his guitar. He was the only one there.

“Hey!” I called.

He shaded his eyes with his hand and peered into the darkness. “Who's there?” he called. “Sinead?” He stood up and walked over to the wall.

I stepped forward just as he hit the lights. The sudden glare made me squint.

Declan almost dropped his guitar. “Holy shit.”

“What?” I asked, looking around to see what he was staring at.

He took a step toward me. “Your hair.”

“Oh.” I put my hand to the top of my head, suddenly self-conscious. “Sean's going to crucify me.”

“Fuck Sean,” said Declan. “It's great.” He came closer and circled me. “You look really hot but also kind of like my sister. It's freaking me out a little.” He laughed and I laughed also, even though I was suddenly very conscious of being alone with him.

He smiled at me. “We're opening up with ‘I Got You, Babe,' so get ready.”

“I'm opening?” My heart started pounding, but now it wasn't because I was alone with Declan. It was one thing to know in the abstract that I would be performing later. It was another to know I'd be opening.

“You'll be great,” he promised, and he put his hand on my forearm.

I'd promised myself I wasn't joining the Clovers to spend time with Declan, and during the weeks we'd been rehearsing, I'd gotten used to being around him. I still sensed his presence, but I'd worked to pretend that my feelings for him were no different from my feelings for Sean or Sinead or Danny.
He's just a guy in the band,
I told myself whenever I
noticed him
noticed him.
He's just a guy in the band.

But now I felt his touch run all the way up my arm and then spread through my body like an electric current. He must not have felt it, though, because he took his hand away
almost as soon as he'd touched me, and checked the time on his phone. My throat felt tight, but his voice was completely normal. “Sean's getting Danny on the way, so big surprise that they're late. No idea where”—suddenly, his phone burst into “Don't You Want Me,” which I recognized from the mix he'd made me—“Sinead is,” he finished. “Excuse me a sec.”

“Hello there, gorgeous,” he said, and he walked slowly to the other side of the room. Declan sometimes called his sister gorgeous, but something about the quiet tone in which he was talking gave me the feeling he was on the phone with Willow. My hunch was confirmed when he said, “Willow? Willow? Hang on a sec, I have another call. Yeah, sure. Okay. Right after. Bye.” I noticed he didn't say
I love you
, but then I reminded myself that just because Jason and I said it didn't mean every couple in the world had to say it. Jason and I had been going out for years. Willow and Declan had gotten together less than two months ago.

And what did I care about him and Willow, anyway? The person I needed to think about was Jason. Why was I fighting with my boyfriend and getting all excited by Declan's touch? Everything about the way I was acting was completely fucked up, and it stopped
now
. I took out my phone to send Jason a text and tell him that I loved him.

“Hey, Mom,” Declan said, clicking onto his other call. “What's up?”

And in an instant, I stopped composing my text to Jason.

“What?”
Declan's voice was hoarse with shock. I'd been trying to give him privacy (or at least the illusion of privacy) during his conversation with Willow, but now I dropped my hand and stared at him. His fist was pressed against his forehead, and his face was white. “When? . . . Where are you now? . . . Where is that? Yeah. Yeah. . . . I'm on my way.” He hung up.

“What happened?” I asked, walking over to him.

“Sean and Danny got into an accident. They hit another car. Danny was sitting in the passenger seat. . . .” Declan took a breath, and I stepped closer to him. “He was knocked unconscious and he has internal bleeding. He's being operated on at Long Island Hospital right now.”

Danny. Little Danny. “Is he going to be okay?”

Declan had been staring at me the whole time he told me what had happened to Danny, but now he looked away. “They don't know.”

The miracle was that we didn't have our own accident on the way to LIH. We were in my car, which Declan had insisted on driving. He was following my directions but not listening carefully, so twice he crossed three lanes of traffic at once in order to make a turn. The blare of angry car horns was the soundtrack of our drive.

Please let Danny be okay. Please let Danny be okay.
I repeated the sentence over and over in my head, realizing only after we
pulled into the emergency parking lot at the hospital that the prayer was almost identical to the one I'd been whispering three months ago, when I'd pulled into the same parking lot in an ambulance with my mother unconscious next to me.

The waiting room was unchanged. Even the people looked the same, their eyes glassy with fatigue and worry and boredom. The same stale air I'd smelled the night we brought my mother in seemed to be circulating.

Declan immediately spotted his family gathered at the far end of the waiting room, his mom and dad sitting next to each other staring straight ahead, her hand on his on the armrest between them. Their faces were so expressionless it made me think of my mom sitting in the day room at Roaring Brook. But unlike my mom, the Brennans were innocent victims. Their youngest son might die, but it wasn't their fault.

Not that my mom's overdose or suicide attempt or
whatever
it was had been her fault. She was an innocent victim also.

Was she, though
?

I couldn't stop the thought from popping into my head, and once it was there, it stuck. I stood off to the side and watched Declan's mom hugging Declan, squeezing him, and rocking him, their hair the same color except for where hers was streaked with gray, and I thought about my mom. She'd had a choice. Her husband had left her, but he hadn't put a bullet through her brain. He hadn't driven into oncoming
traffic with her in the passenger seat. It might have
felt
like he had, but he hadn't.

Danny might die.

As bad as what had happened to my mom was, it wasn't this. It wasn't death. But she'd tried to make it this. Or she'd carelessly almost made it this. How could she have done that?

Declan introduced me to his parents, but I wasn't sure they registered who I was. I thought maybe I should leave, but I felt weird asking Declan if he wanted me to go and even weirder just going, so I sat beside him. Then Sinead showed up and sat with us. After about an hour, I asked if anyone wanted some coffee, and Sinead and both of Declan's parents did. Declan didn't respond to my question, and rather than ask a second time, I just brought them each a cup. Declan's sat on the empty seat between us growing cold.

The hours passed unbelievably slowly. More and more people came—Declan's grandparents first, his grandmother tiny, his grandfather well over six feet tall. His grandmother took my hand and squeezed it. “You're so good to come,” she said. “We've heard so much about you.” I was pretty sure she had me confused with somebody else, but it seemed impolite to ask who she thought I was, so I just thanked her.