“Ah, you have uncovered my master plan. Rats.” Mom leaned over and ruffled Wills’s
mop of hair. “You guys are still little. I won’t ruin your lives for years. No need
to worry.”
“We know that, Mommy,” Wills said earnestly.
“Marah’s face is all red,” Lucas observed, then went back to building a Cheerios tower.
“The Ryan family school bus leaves in ten minutes,” Mom said. She placed her palms
on the table and pushed slowly to her feet.
I don’t feel good enough to fight with you today.
That had been state’s evidence #1. Not that Marah had collected it or even cared.
She’d gone on doing what she did—working it at school, being popular, making sure
that everyone who was anyone wanted to be her friend. Until that first family meeting.
“
I had a doctor’s appointment today,” Mom said. “There’s nothing for you to worry about,
but I’m sick.”
Marah could hear the boys talking, asking stupid questions, not getting it. Lucas—the
mama’s boy—ran up and hugged Mom.
Dad herded the boys out of the room. As he passed Marah, he looked down at her and
there were tears in his eyes and she felt her knees give out. There was only one reason
he would cry.
She looked at her mother and saw her in detail—the pale, pale skin, the dark circles
under her eyes, the chapped, colorless lips. It was as if her mom had been dunked
in bleach and come out as this colorless version of herself.
Sick
. “It’s cancer, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Marah was shaking so hard she clasped her hands together to try to still them. How
was it she hadn’t known this was possible, that your whole life could tilt sideways
in a split second? “You’ll be fine. Right?”
“The doctors say I’m young and healthy, so I should be fine.”
Should be.
“I’m going to the very best doctors,” Mom said. “I’ll beat this thing.”
Marah released her breath. “Okay, then,” she said at last, feeling that terrible tightness
in her chest ease up. Her mom never lied.
But she had. She’d lied and she’d died, and without her, Marah’s life had lost its
shape. In the years afterward, she’d tried to get to know a woman who’d disappeared,
but all she could remember was cancerville Mom—the pale, frail, birdlike woman with
no hair and no eyebrows and thin white arms.
The horrible “celebration of Mom’s life” had been unbearable. Marah had known what
was expected of her that night. Everyone had told her. Dad had said tiredly,
It blows, I know, but this is what she wanted
; Grandma had said you can help me in the kitchen—
it will be easier that way
. Only Tully had been honest and real. All she’d said was,
Good God, I’d rather poke my eye out than do this. Marah, can you hand me a serving
fork?
October of 2006. Marah closed her eyes and remembered. It was when everything had
started to go so wrong. The night of the funeral. She’d been sitting at the top of
the stairs at home, staring down at a room full of people …
dressed in black. Every few minutes the doorbell rang and another woman carrying a
foil-covered casserole dish came inside (because, really, nothing made you hungrier
than burying someone you loved). The music was a version of death, too—jazzy stuff
that made sixteen-year-old Marah think of old men with skinny ties and women with
beehive hairdos.
She knew she should go down there, mingle, offer drinks and take plates, but she couldn’t
stand all those pictures of her mom. Besides, when she did accidentally glance at
someone—a soccer mom, a dance mom, Mrs. Baakie from the grocery store—all she got
was that poor-Marah look that ripped out a piece of her heart and reminded her that
this loss was Forever. It had been two days—two days—and already the vibrant, laughing
woman in the photos was fading from memory. All Marah could picture in her mind was
the colorless, dying version of her mother.
The doorbell rang again.
Her friends came through the front door like warriors ready to save the princess,
shoulder to shoulder, their makeup smeared by tears, their eyes wide with sorrow.
Marah had never needed them more. She stood up, feeling unsteady on her feet. Ashley
and Coral and Lindsey rushed up the stairs and hugged her, all of them at once. They
held her so tightly her feet practically came up off the floor, and the tears she’d
been holding back burst out.
“We don’t know what to say,” Coral said when Marah finally stepped back.
“Your mom was way cool,” Ashley said earnestly, and Lindsey nodded.
Marah wiped her eyes. “I wish I’d told her that.”
“She totally, like,
knows,
” Ash said. “My mom says to tell you that.”
“Remember when she brought cupcakes to Ms. Robbins’s classroom? She’d decorated them
just like that book we were reading. What was it?” Lindsey frowned, trying to remember.
“
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
She put whiskers on the cupcakes,” Coral said. “It was, like, so amazing.”
They nodded together; tears filled their eyes.
Marah remembered, too:
You came into my class! OH, MY GOD. And what are you wearing?
“The Pavilion is showing a midnighter of
Nightmare Before Christmas
. I think we should go,” Lindsey said. “We could chill at Jason’s until it starts.”
Marah almost said,
My mom would never let me.
At the thought, her eyes glazed with tears. She could feel her emotions spinning
out of control. She felt as unsteady as a collapsing building. Thank God her friends
were here. “Let’s go,” she said, leading them down the stairs and through the living
room. As she reached for the front door, she would have sworn she heard her mother’s
voice.
Come back here, young lady. You four are not going to a midnight show. Nothing good
happens on this island after eleven
.
Marah stopped. Her friends gathered around her.
“Don’t you have to, like, tell your dad we’re going?” Lindsey asked.
Marah turned, looked back at the crowd of black-clad mourners in the living room.
It looked a little like one of her parents’ Halloween parties.
“No,” she said softly. Her dad hadn’t come looking for her once tonight, and Tully
cried every time she looked at her. “No one will even notice I’m gone.”
That was a mom’s job, keeping track of her children. And Mom was gone.
* * *
The next morning, her dad decided they needed a vacation. Why her father thought sand
and surf would help, Marah had no idea. She tried to talk him out of it, but she had
no vote in the things that mattered. So she went on stupid vacation #1 AM (After Mom—the
way life was calculated now, before and after) and didn’t even try to make the best
of it.
She wanted her dad to know how pissed off she was. All she had was her friends, and
they were three thousand miles away when she needed them most.
She hated paradise. The sunshine pissed her off, and so did the smell of burgers on
the grill, and seeing her dad’s sad face made her want to cry. They didn’t talk about
anything that mattered that week. He tried—now and then—to make contact, but the pain
in his eyes just sucked her in and made it worse, so she stopped looking at him.
She called her friends at least ten times a day until the vacation from hell was finally
over.
When they landed back in Seattle, Marah felt herself relaxing for the first time,
breathing easily. She’d thought the worst was over.
How wrong she’d been.
They’d come home to find music blaring through the house, empty food containers on
the kitchen counter, and Tully in the closet, with Mom’s clothes all boxed up. Dad
had blown a gasket and said terrible things to Tully and made her cry, but nothing
he said was as bad as: “We’re moving.”
Nine
In November of 2006, less than a month after Mom’s funeral, they moved to California.
The two weeks before their departure were terrible. Horrible. Marah spent every waking
hour either pissed at her dad or inconsolable. She stopped eating, stopped sleeping.
All she cared about was talking to her friends, and when the four best friends got
together it was just one endless goodbye, broken down into parts. Every sentence began
with,
Remember when.
Marah’s anger could hardly be contained. It was a
thing
inside of her, pushing against her ribs, making her blood boil. Even her grief had
been consumed by it. She stomped around the house and slammed doors and burst into
tears at every memento that had to be packed. She couldn’t stomach the idea of just
locking up the house—their home—and driving away. The only slightly good news was
that they weren’t selling it. Someday, Dad promised, they’d return. The big things—furniture,
art, rugs—they left behind. They were renting a furnished house. As if different furniture
would make them all forget losing Mom.
When the day finally came to move, she’d clung to her friends and sobbed in their
arms and told her dad she hated him.
None of it mattered.
She
didn’t matter. That was the dark truth. Mom had been a reed; she would have bent
to Marah’s will. Dad was a wall of steel, cold and implacable. She knew because she’d
hurled herself against him and fallen in a heap at his feet.
On the two-day drive to Los Angeles, Marah said nothing. Not one word. She put her
earbuds in and listened to music, texting one message after another to her friends.
They left green and blue Washington and drove south. By Central California, everything
was brown. Stubby brown hills huddled beneath a bright autumnal sun. There wasn’t
a decent tree for miles. Los Angeles was even worse: flat and endless. One freeway
after another, every lane jam-packed with cars. By the time they pulled up to the
house Dad had rented in Beverly Hills, Marah had a splitting headache.
“Wow,” Lucas said, drawing at least three syllables out of the word.
“What do you think, Marah?” Dad said, turning in his seat to look at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “You care about what I think.” She opened the car door and got out.
Ignoring everything, she texted Ashley,
Home Sweet Home,
as she walked from the driveway to the house’s front door.
It was a house that had obviously been remodeled sometime recently—an old seventies
rambler had been punched up to look modern and boxy. The yard out front was flawlessly
clipped and carefully manicured. Flowers grew where they were supposed to; their blossoms
were supersized because of the sun and the sprinklers.
This wasn’t a home. Not for the Ryans, anyway. Inside, everything was sleek and cold,
with floor-to-ceiling windows and a stainless steel kitchen and gray stone floors.
The furniture was defiantly modern, with sharp edges and chrome accents.
She looked at her dad. “Mom would have hated this.” She saw how her words hurt him,
and she thought,
Good,
and went upstairs to claim her room.
* * *
On her first day at Beverly Hills High School, Marah knew that she would never fit
in here. The kids were like beings from another planet. The student parking lot was
filled with Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches and BMWs. The carpool lane actually had a
few limousines in between the luxury cars and Range Rovers. Not every kid was dropped
off by a driver, of course, but the point was that
some
were. Marah couldn’t believe it. The girls were gorgeous, with expertly colored hair
and purses that cost more than some cars. They clung together in well-dressed pods.
No one even said hi to Marah.
On her first day, she moved through her classes on autopilot. None of her teachers
called on her or asked her questions. She sat alone at lunch, barely listening to
the commotion going on around her, not caring about anything.
In fifth period, she took a seat in the back and put her head down while the other
students took a test. The loneliness she felt was epic, overwhelming. She kept thinking
how much she needed her friends—and her mom—to talk to. It hurt so much she felt herself
start to shake.
“Marah?”
She looked up through the curtain of her hair.
The teacher—Ms. Appleby—had stopped at her desk. “Come see me if you need help getting
up to speed. I’m always available.” She set a syllabus on the desk. “We all know how
hard it is, with your mom…”
“Dead,” Marah said flatly. If adults were going to talk to her, they might as well
say the word. She hated all those pauses and sighs.
Ms. Appleby couldn’t move away fast enough.
Marah smiled grimly. It wasn’t much of a defense, having to say the word, but it was
effective.
The bell rang.
The other kids jumped up and immediately started talking. Marah didn’t make eye contact
with any of them, and no one made eye contact with her. She was dressed all wrong;
she’d known that when she stepped onto the bus. This wasn’t a school where Macy’s
jeans and a fitted blouse were going to cut it.
She loaded up her backpack, making sure that her books were in order and facing the
right way. It was a new obsession, one she couldn’t shake. She needed her things to
be orderly.
Alone, she walked out into the hallway. A few kids were still out here, roughhousing
and laughing. Overhead, a big yellow banner hung limply, pulled loose from one of
its moorings. It read:
GO NORMANS
. Someone had scratched out
NORMANS
, written
TROJANS
, and drawn a penis beneath the words.
It was the sort of thing she would have told her mom about. They would have laughed
together, and when they were done, Mom would have launched into one of her serious
talks about sex and teenage girls and appropriateness.
“You do realize you’re standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at a penis,
and crying, right?”