The Inside of Out (27 page)

My mom's voice chirped, the stairwell echoing with a name that jolted me awake like a fire alarm.

“Hannah!”

Hannah. Here.

“So nice to see you again—it's been too long. How's the school year going?”

I tried to scramble from bed, but Mom must have come in and tucked me in extra tight while I was unconscious, so I got tangled in the covers and nearly sent the bowl of miso soup she'd put on my nightstand sloshing to the ground. By the time I made it to the stairs, I heard Mom saying, “I'll tell her you stopped by. I know she'd want to see you, but she's resting.”

“Oh.” Hannah sounded confused.

“Besides, she's probably contagious.”

“Nope!” I yelled, taking the stairs two at a time. “I feel one hundred percent better! Thanks Mom, I'll take it from here.”

Hannah and Mom both looked fairly stunned to see me careening to the front door in banana-print pajama pants and an oversized Minnie Mouse T-shirt, but at my chipper expression, Mom retreated and Hannah's face did something encouraging. It lifted, not quite a smile, but close.

“I came to give you these,” she said, handing me a dauntingly thick packet of printouts from my teachers.

“Thanks?”

“And to see if you might be up for a sleepover this weekend?” Hannah stared at her shoes, as if frightened to see my reaction. Then her eyes darted slyly to mine. “Unless you're too sick?”

“No.” I backed up a step and raised my voice. “I think all that
food poisoning
is finally out of my system!”

In the kitchen, I heard Mom mutter, “I knew it! That goddamn school cafeteria . . .”

“She doesn't know?” Hannah mouthed.

I raised my eyebrows. Like she even needed to ask.

Hannah laughed, but the effort seemed to drain her, her happy expression slumping into nothing.

“It hasn't been a week.”

“I know.” Her eyes were back on her shoes. She shrugged. “Close enough.”

This doesn't feel right,
I thought—then:
What is the matter with you? She's invited you over! Say yes, say yes!

“Okay,” I said.

“My place tomorrow night, then.” She turned away. “It'll be fun.”

Her voice was hushed. She was saying it to herself.

Mama Tan greeted me with a Euro-style double-cheek kiss when she answered the door. Then she leaned in to whisper.

“So glad things are getting back to normal.”

“Me too,” I said, dodging her dangling headscarf and wondering why she felt the need to keep her voice low.

Hannah stuck her head around the corner of the stairwell to wave me upstairs. As I shouldered my overnight bag, Tan
winked and pointed, like we were Navy SEALs and this was our go signal.

Then I stepped into Hannah's room, and everything got even weirder. It was all laid out. Popcorn in a large bowl. TV paused on the first seconds of what looked like the season premiere of
Triplecross
. UNO cards stacked beside a Scrabble box. Hannah already dressed in neatly pressed polka dot pajamas.

She jumped cross-legged onto the end of her bed. “I've got the whole season—I don't know if you've kept up, but I am
way
behind—or we could rent a movie. Or both, like interspersed. Three episodes, movie, something like that? And I thought we'd order pizza, but I can probably coerce Mom into hitting up a kitchen for us, if you'd rather have something gourmet.”

“Pizza's awesome.” I pulled a container of peanut M&M'S from my overnight bag. “I brought some candy to mix—”

“With the popcorn?” Hannah grabbed the popcorn bowl and shoved it under my face. “Already did it! Totally prepared.”

“Um. Great!” I turned to put away the candy, trying to pinpoint the source of my uneasiness. These things—the movies, the candy, the meal, even the pajamas, were supposed to unfold naturally. You talk about food when you get hungry. Talk about a TV marathon when you get bored of talking about other things. You don't line it up in advance.

But that wasn't the only thing bothering me. So far tonight, I could detect only the faintest impression of Hannah-weirdness amidst all the weird-weird vibes she was throwing my way. She wasn't even making eye contact.

Maybe because we'd fought. We hadn't actually made up
yet, either. We'd just stopped communicating and abruptly started again, skirting the far edges of things. I wasn't lolling on her rug like I should have been, burying my face in a pillow, saying,
Oh lordy Han, there's this boy who wants nothing to do with me now and I really miss him and I feel like a total idiot about it.
And she hadn't mentioned her ex at all. Not one word.

“Hey,” I said, kicking my shoes off and crawling onto the bed. “I think we should probably talk about things.”

Hannah's face went pale, but I pressed on, starting with the easiest apology.

“Look, I'm sorry about QB kissing me. I know that probably came as a shock, but I swear, we weren't dating and we still aren't. Never will be. I mean, he's a surprisingly nice guy, and ridiculously hot in a textbook-standard kind of way, but—pretty much a different species. It would be ludicrous for us to mate.”

Hannah pivoted on one knee, her forehead scrunched. “It wasn't about QB. I mean, that was a capper, but it's not what I'm upset about.”

I tucked my knees up and held them. “The speech.”

She stared past me. “I never thought you would take it that far.”

“It did get out of hand,” I admitted, and hoped she could read the further apology in my eyes. That I'd lied. That I'd implied she was my girlfriend. That her real girlfriend broke up with her right afterward. But she was still looking away, so I added, tentatively, “Natalie seemed pretty upset too. Was it because of—”

Hannah's eyes flash-flooded. “Let's not talk about Natalie.”

“Oh.”

“Let's not talk about any of this, okay?” She forced a smile. “Let's just watch TV.”

“Okay.” I smiled. “Distraction it is.”

A half hour into the season premiere of
Triplecross
, I started to twitch, ready to crawl out of my skin, or at least this room. Bad enough that I was watching this asinine show, stewing at the missed opportunity to meet the cast at homecoming, but Hannah was way too into this episode, narrating the whole thing like a ten-year-old on a sugar rush.

“What do you think of the new guy?” Hannah asked, leaning over my knee to pick an M&M out of the popcorn bowl. “I think he's a solid runner-up for hottest.”

I stared at her. She ignored me.

“He's got kind of a dirty Prince Eric thing going on,” she said. “Like, yeah, definitely a prince, but maybe the kind of prince who's legit and lived on a boat and knows all the sailor jargon and smells kind of briny but not too briny. I'd go for that.”

“You'd
go
for that?”

Her smile drew in. She shrugged.

“Are you bi, Hannah?” I shook my head. “I didn't—”

“No.” She turned to fluff a pillow. “I'm not . . .” She sighed. “I'm not bi. I'm just playing Hottest Guy on
Triplecross
.”

“We can change it to hottest girl. Hottest person.”

“Not as fun.” Her face kept falling, a melting mask, until she grabbed the remote to pause the show. “I'm gonna check on the pizza order. Shouldn't it be here?”

She tried to scoot past me on her way to the door. I grabbed her hand.

“Hey. Stop.”

She stared at me, eyes pleading.

“Take a breath,” I ordered. “Pizza can wait. Hannah. We
have
to talk about what's going on with you.”

“With me?” She let out a breathy laugh.

“You are not being yourself right now.”

“Which ‘myself,' Daisy?” She kept smiling. “Real me? Lesbian me?”

“Whoa, I . . .” I kept my grip on her hand. “Either one. What's the matter?”

Her arm went limp. She squinted at me, incredulous.

“The
matter
. Okay, let's see. Well . . . huh. Everything is fucked! Basically. My life is a freak show. Nationally televised. My mom asked me last night if Columbia was a ‘
lesbian
school.' Everybody at Palmetto looks at me like I'm a dog show contestant when I walk down the hall, and the one person who ever really knew me just completely crushed—”

She bit back the end of her sentence. A hard lump in my throat told me that she wasn't talking about me.

Hannah swatted at her streaming eyes. “I don't want to think about her, I don't want to talk about her, I just want everything to go back to normal. It wasn't supposed to get so messy. I just wanted it to stay the same.
Why
is that so . . .”

She huffed, shook her head, slumping against the edge of the wall. My breath caught. Hannah looked like Sean, like everything at once—swept away, jittery, poetic, and so, so very sad. She was in love. It was killing her.

“She's not that person,” I said.

Hannah shook her head. “What?”

“The one who really knows you. I mean . . .” I leaned in. “Okay, yeah, maybe she is lately. But
we
used to be that close. Didn't we?”

Sudden sympathy shone in Hannah's eyes. “Daisy, you don't understand. It's different.”

She brightened faintly, put her hand on my shoulder, and started saying, “You will understand one day, it just hasn't happened for you,” but an idea had sprung into my mind. More a hope than an urge, but enough to make me bridge the distance, take her face in my palms . . .

And kiss her. Not an air-peck, like friends—something real. Our lips pressed together, noses grazing, as close as we could be.

I didn't feel
anything.
No spark. No answer. Just Hannah stiffening, then shoving my shoulders hard with her fists.

She staggered to the doorway, her face bloodred. I held on to my cheeks, waiting. When she finally spoke, it was with a whisper.

“Why would you do that?”

“I thought . . .” My own voice was hardly coming out. “It might be worth a try.”

“And then what? We'd skip off into the sunset, because if
you
were gay, my life would be perfect.”

Her voice was sharp enough to cut.

“Maybe.” I attempted a smile, assembled from the scraps of all the other smiles I'd faked. “Would that be so bad?”

Watching me, her fury seemed to evaporate—leaving
something much more unsettling. Blankness. Politeness. A wall with no doors.

“Everything will always be all about you. You can't see past yourself. I do think you try, but . . . you just can't.”

“Because of my privilege?” I asked quietly.

Hannah huffed, turning away. “I don't know what that means. We don't even speak the same language anymore.”

Just as I was opening my mouth to tell her that I wasn't fully clear on the concept of privilege either, she picked up my overnight bag and handed it to me.

“You should go.” She shouted over my shoulder, “Mom? Hannah's not feeling well, do you mind driving her home?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Okay, I'm sorry!”

But I was already talking to the other side of Hannah's literal door. As Tan jingled her car keys, I touched my hand to the doorknob, then, hearing the sound of soft sobs beyond the wood, cradled my bag and plodded downstairs.

I took one last look at Hannah's house as we drove away, her lit bedroom window, the lanterns lining the front walk—committing it to memory, just in case.

Mama Tan was in a chatty mood.

“I'm sorry you weren't feeling well. I think Hannah really needed this, now that
Natalie
is out of the picture.” Tan smirked, shaking her head, her long earrings jangling with the movement. “Glad she got that out of her system.”

I turned to her slowly, chilled by her phrasing. “Got Natalie out of her system? Or being gay?”

Tan raised her eyebrows, indicating the latter.

“Because I don't think that last part is going anywhere.”

She smiled sagely. “We'll see.”

Was this why Hannah was playing straight? Why our evening plans looked like a wax museum version of the fun we used to have?

“You want her to be straight,” I said.

Tan let out a song of a sigh and switched lanes. “I just want her to be happy.”

“Then let me ask you something.” I shifted to face her. “Do you really think she's happy right now? Without Natalie?”

Hannah's mother's face fell. For a split second, she looked her age.

“Because she seems
shattered
to me,” I went on. “And you
know what? I've never seen her happier than when she was with Natalie. Being gay. Being okay with it.”

As the words shot out of my mouth, the truth of them ricocheted against the windshield and struck me in the gut. She
was
happy with Natalie. Sleepless, nervous, neurotic, conflicted, and more herself than I'd ever seen her.

Tan pulled into my driveway, parked the car, and stared ahead.

“I'm trying to understand my daughter,” she finally said, her voice plain, scrubbed of charm. “And I'm having a hard time lately.”

She leaned against the steering wheel, a perfect zigzag of black hair falling over her face. Underneath, her smile was flickering, fluttering, dead. This might have been the first real conversation I'd ever had with Tan. Which meant that, at this moment, she was the closest thing I had to a friend.

“You're not the only one having a hard time,” I admitted as I opened the car door and stepped out. “Maybe you don't have to understand her, you know? You just have to love her.”

I shrugged. She nodded faintly, pulled the passenger door closed, and drove away.

Mom let out a startled shout when I ran into her in the kitchen. “What are you doing here? Where's—?”

“I'm still sick.” I shut the fridge, realizing I didn't have much of an appetite. “It must be stomach flu after all.”

Mom's eyes narrowed. Softened. “Did you two have a fight?”

“No,” I groaned.

“Was it about Adam?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“
No,
Mom. What is the matter with you?”

She laughed, waving her hand in the air as she opened the pantry.

“Seriously, though,” I huffed. “
Why
is my personal life so important to you?”

“Because I'm your mother!”

Her tone froze me. She clutched a can of soup with both hands and slumped against the pantry shelf.

“Because I am a member of this family, and I do
not
deserve to be teased. I do
not
deserve to be shut out. I am . . .
sick
of it!”

She shoved the can back. It slid and stopped.

From the ceiling came the sound of swords clashing, an ogre dying, a fake life lived behind a door that was always closed.

Her shoulders shook. I took three quiet steps and touched her ponytail, but she flinched away.

“Okay,” I said, dropping my hand. “Okay. I'm straight, all right? I agreed to lie and say I was gay to help the homecoming cause, but it backfired. I'm not dating QB. I had a big crush on Don't Know Him From Adam, but he was just a friend, and he's not even that anymore.”

She wiped her face and slowly turned.

“Hannah was dating Natalie Beck, but that's done too, and I feel like it's probably my fault. We
are
fighting. No, worse, we're done fighting. We're done in general, I think.”

Mom took my hand.

“And I'm sorry I'm so self-absorbed. Everyone's been telling me I am, not just you, so it must be true.”

“Oh, honey, that is not what I meant at all—”

“And I got kicked out of the Alliance and I've been suspended for a week for assaulting Seth Ross.”

Mom's face went blank. She let go and wiped her hands on her jeans.

“Upstairs,” she ordered. “I'll bring you some soup.”

Before the organic gluten-free noodles were simmering on the stove, I was past needing them. I'd already sunk into a dense, dark sleep, dreaming of me, me, everywhere me, a homecoming where I was the queen and the king and the football team. A nightmarish world full of Daisy and no one else.

“You're so close, Daisy. Left, left, left! Get him with the lightning!”

The gamer chair ricocheted with the full-body effort it took me to push a couple of buttons in the right sequence, until at long last, the acid-drooling sub-dragon was dead at my sandaled feet.

Dad beamed. “You're getting good at this.”

I nearly managed a smile at the compliment. I was now a level-seventeen
Everwander
elfin rogue with storm-calling mastery, well on my way to helping Player One restore order to the Kingdom of Xanthe. In my father's world, this was something to be very proud of.

“I want to hear what you think when we're done,” Dad muttered, typing a note on his tablet. “Something's not working with the game arc.”

“Seems fine so far,” I said, buying healing potion from a
gnome in a pumpkin cart.
More than fine.
This game was cathartic. When I'd given it a half-hearted try on Sunday afternoon, I didn't expect how good it would feel to upgrade weapons and accessorize armor, to climb and slice and demolish all in my path. I'd played games before, of course, here and there, when Dad wasn't hogging every console in the house. I'd never gotten addicted. But now, for the first time, I began to understand why Dad was so loath to leave this room, this portal into a world in which anything was possible if you just obsessed over runes enough.

“You can level up,” Dad pointed out, slurping from the coffee Mom had brought him on her way to yet another farm group meeting.

“Should I boost my strength or my defenses?” I asked.

“Go for strength. If you're strong, you don't need as many defenses.”

“Got it.”

“Choose carefully, though. This might be your last level up.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “Are we close to the end?”

“Yep, the
big battle
is right around the corner.” He did a butt-dance in his gamer chair, morphing into a little brother in his excitement.

Meanwhile, I felt myself hollowing.

What would I do when this game was done? Return to my minute-by-minute cataloguing of everything happening at Palmetto in my absence? Continue this weekend's meditation on how life marches on, indifferent and fickle, and how I should become a Buddhist and practice detachment, and how making my house into a weeklong hermitage was really a very
good starting point on my path to enlightenment? Except I wasn't detached. Not remotely enlightened. I was tormented.

At school right now they were celebrating Spirit Week. Today, they were probably announcing the official danceless-homecoming court. I wondered if QB would be king this year, or whether his odds were lessened without the school's princess by his side. Madison would probably be queen, just as a big old screw-you to everything we were doing across the street.

Speaking of which, the volunteers must have started to gather. The vacant field was probably a lot less vacant already—early arrivals from the East and West football teams starting to practice, helpers hoisting bleachers, tents, stands. That was the plan we had, anyway. Hopefully it was still going forward. The press might even be there already to document it. Maybe Adam too, his curling black hair waving in the breeze, his glasses slipping so maddeningly often that I just wanted to shimmy them off his face and . . .
Stop that thought right there. He hates you, remember? Along with most of the country.

Had the protests died down or picked up? Were the counter-protesters still out in force, even after what happened at the rally? I could google it, but that would mean turning on my computer, and I'd already established that only bad things could come of that. I hadn't even turned my phone on since Saturday night. I was doing the hermit thing. It was going to be awesome.

At some point the awesome was bound to click in. Any minute now.

Besides, I had a war to win for the citizens of Xanthe.

But five more minutes into game play, just as we were grimly mounting the curving steps to the Dark Castle, moments from challenging the Primordial Beast-King, my controller rattled—and the action changed to a cut scene. I blinked in confusion.

On the screen, Dad's character, a level-eighteen warrior goblin, turned to me, laid a knobby arm on my lithe green shoulder, and started to speechify.

“We've come so far together, friend. Without you, I surely would have perished long ago. Not to mention . . .” The view widened to include the other characters he was naming, including a buxom priestess healer and a talking toadstool who made fart noises for comic effect. Then Dad's character filled the entire screen, blocking the rest of us out. “But from here to the castle, I travel alone. It is . . . my destiny.”

“
Excuse
me?” I gawked at the screen, my controller dangling dead in my lap.

Dad couldn't decide whether to look at me or the game, where my character had suddenly been reduced to one member of a crowd waving from the dusty distance at Player One as he scaled the battlement and began to fight alone.

“This is bullshit!”

Dad paused the game and whirled around. “How so?” He cleared his throat. “Also,
language,
young lady.”

“‘Bullshit' is the right word for what this is,” I protested. “This game sucks and I cannot believe I wasted all this time playing it.”

Dad pointed to the TV with his controller. “This is what
I mean about the arc collapsing, but I can't pinpoint why.”

“I can,” I said, standing from the chair to better glare at the screen. “Why is this a multiplayer game? What is the point of spending all that time playing as part of a team, leveling up, throwing in with the other characters if you're just gonna get ditched? Tell me. Seriously. I want to know.”

“Well . . .” Dad's brow crinkled like a paper bag puppet. “I mean, the opening scene establishes the story. Player One is destined to topple—”

“Who cares what he's destined to do? Maybe he's destined to do it with a bunch of other people. Maybe, now that he's reached the castle, he should think twice about ditching everyone who's come with him. They care just as much about the kingdom as he does! If it's gonna be him against the world, and that's the game, that's fine, but then why bring along all these other characters? It's stupid! I hate this game.”

Dad's voice grew hushed. “Are you crying?”

I swiped at my face. “No.”

But I was. And I wasn't sure why. I probably just needed to leave this room and see sunshine.

“You're right, you know.” Dad shook his head as if dumbfounded, a smile beginning to bloom. “You're right! I've been coming back to this game for weeks and couldn't pick out the problem, but that's it. Someone else needs to be the hero.”

My hand hesitated by the doorknob, his words reverberating up my spine.

“What if he's not the chosen one after all? He thinks he's important, but in the end it's another character.
Wait
.” Dad stood up from his chair on shaky legs and began to pace,
pointing at me repeatedly. “This might be a big idea. Too big for this game. This might be . . .”

He crouched, holding my shoulders. I held my breath, waiting for the life-changing epiphany to come.