Beginning
.
O
ur friendship was immediate, that’s how I remember it.
We moved to town when I was eight, moved away from the log cabin near a stream in the Slocan Valley, where my only friend had been our dog, Mangy. My parents were into sustainable living before it became fashionable. After a while my dad didn’t feel like an alternative lifestyle was for him. When he left to find work in Vancouver, my mother couldn’t sustain much of anything anymore.
She packed up our chipped dishes and we followed the trail of RVs on the winding mountain roads into town. We stayed in a motel at first and I used a remote control for the first time in my life. Over the noise of cartoons and
National Geographic
specials I listened to my mom talk to her parents on the phone. She told them what had happened since she last saw them ten years earlier: she could find water with a divining stick, she’d learned to play the fiddle, and she had a daughter: me, Jillian.
“I’m ready to reenter the world,” she told them. I don’t think they expected that she meant the world of dating. She rushed her hellos and hugs when they reunited in our motel room, and left us behind to get to know each other while she met a guy for drinks. My granddad told me stories about his old war friends and my grandmother Nona combed and braided my hair. They said I was the most precious thing
they’d seen, more beautiful than an emerald lake or a sunrise on the prairies. They let me drink hot chocolate with my dinner and eat ice cream for dessert. My mom and her new friend opened the motel room door as the sun was coming up the next morning, and Nona begged for me to stay with her and Granddad a little longer. The new boyfriend took me for a walk while my mom argued that she wouldn’t let them take me away from her. My grandparents left after breakfast.
The guy stayed with us in the motel long enough that my mom said I should call him Dad. “He can be Dad Two,” I told her, sure that she’d get mad and walk away. Instead she called the guy in and told him the story of me saying the cutest thing. Dad 2 looked at me sideways when he hugged my mother.
“She’s a real charmer,” he said. “She could tame a grizzly bear, couldn’t she?”
We moved into our house on Columbia when it was 85 degrees outside and Mom complained she was hot and sick. She walked in the front door, opened the freezer, and stuck her head inside. I carried my one box (containing colored pencils, sketchbooks, my collection of
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
books, and an empty piggy bank) to the top of the creaky stairs and set it in the corner. I had my special things—I was moved in. I opened the window and leaned out to see what the world would look like. That’s when I saw Chantal in her backyard, crouched in the shade, staring at a glass bottle glinting in the sun. A sprinkler waved over the flowerbeds on the steep incline.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!” She didn’t hear me. I got louder. “Hey you, in the backyard.” She still didn’t look up. I pounded down the stairs, stopped to watch my mother run past clutching her stomach, vomit in the toilet. “Jesus, I’m pregnant,” I heard her tell Dad 2. “I just know these things,” she said.
When she had her head back in the freezer, I approached her.
“Mom. I’m going to meet my best friend next door.” I
just knew
Chantal and I had a shared destiny.
“Hey.” My shadow stretched over the glass bottle in Chantal’s dandelion-free grass. I could see the bottle had strips of duct tape markings all up the side. “What are you doing?”
“Watching evaporation.”
“Cool. Can I watch, too?”
“It takes a long time, evaporation. You have to be real patient.”
“Oh, I’m patient,” I said. “Dad Two says I’m charming, too. He says I could tame a grizzly bear.”
“Whoa,” she said. “I’d like to see that.”
We were made for each other: two geeky girls with shared time, loneliness, and dreams of being important one day. I’ve always believed that I moved next door to my soul sister, but maybe things have changed.
Now, I’m standing on the hill, looking fabulous in my bikini, beside the guy I want most to notice me, and I’m shouting for Chantal to come back. I have waited too long. Shocked that she bolted like she was being chased, but worried that Parker would lose interest, I did nothing. Now, though, I run after her. I don’t know how to convince her, what I can say to prove that some things can stay the same.
Swoon
.
T
he wind generated by my bike’s velocity down a mountain road is substantial enough to carry off the choked gasps of my panic attack. By the time I get home my stomachache has traveled from my gut to all my extremities. I struggle to shove my bike into the garage, lift my legs high enough to climb the concrete steps to our house. My fingers fumble the key in the lock.
I collapse on the couch and click on the remote. I rarely watch TV, influenced by a mother who says it rots my brain. We only have a TV because my dad loves the Golf Channel, aka the snore channel. I stare at the screen, looking for a reason to get up. If my mother discovers me here, she’ll start asking questions. Should she discover that I have no summer plans, my fate could be worse than a summer without a project. She likes the summer to have a structure—her structure.
The summer I was eight, my dad took my mother and me to visit his family out east. At the beginning of each driving day, my mother detailed the gifts she’d bought for my cousins, smocked sundresses from our town’s seamstress who was famous for sewing a smocked sundress once worn by Princess Beatrice of York. The seamstress even had a picture as proof.
“It’s an heirloom piece that can be handed down generation after generation,” my mother said.
After the third time she said it, my psychologist father responded so softly I almost didn’t hear, “The gifts are secondary. They want to see us.”
At Lettuce Loaf (as in let us loaf—get it?), the cottage floors were transformed into bedrooms for the cousins and my parents slept in the attic in two twin beds—the penthouse, Dad called it.
I trailed after the cousins to the lake, the mini-golf course, the water park, and a daily visit to the soft-serve ice cream stand where the cousins thought the coolest things were the hottest guys.
“I’m allergic to smoke,” my mother protested when my uncles invited her out to the campfire. She went to bed early and was gone when I woke in the morning, off to find a decent cup of coffee in the nearby village. She wore a sundress and espadrilles every day, with a wide hat to keep the sun off her face. It limited her, my father said, to certain activities. My mother had no interest in Frisbee, golf, or catching frogs—she thought a cottage was for lounging in solitude even if she wasn’t actually doing that.
Our ten-day stay concluded with a family photo session to document our visit. My cousins held rabbit-ear fingers behind my head as we stood in the front lawn, pine branches poking our backs. I didn’t ask why my mother stayed in the car. It was one of those things I knew not to do, like knowing that I shouldn’t ask for hot chocolate when she was slamming cupboard doors in our own kitchen.
We were on the highway before my mother spoke the only words she’d say for hours. “There is no such thing as a loaf of lettuce.”
“And those smocked sundresses, the ones like Princess Beatrice wore? I heard your sister say that the girls thought they were hideous. Old-fashioned.”
My dad should have said something like, I’m sorry or you’re right or they have very poor taste if they don’t like something that the queen of England’s granddaughter wore. I almost said something myself.
Their conversation ended, finally, when my mother announced
that was our first and last trip to the cottage. I was carsick for the rest of the trip.
I knew then that family vacations were doomed to fail. Luckily, I found something else that day. I went outside with my canning jar and my duct tape, ready to try a different experiment. That’s when I met my best friend … until today.
I breathe deep and hold it for as long as I can. I think my lips might even be turning a bruised blue. Like all only children, I know how to throw a tantrum to get what I want. I feel one coming on.
The Surprise Ending
.
I
didn’t get very far in chasing Chantal, once I realized how little support my bikini top offered. I climbed the hill to grab my stuff; my towel first, wrapped around me. Parker took a few steps back to give me some space, but Will stood close and watched me, wolflike.
“Well, that was weird.” Will slouched as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his board shorts. I stopped what I was doing and stared at him. He looked like every guy my mother brought home, dark stubble on his face, indifferent eyes; his fingernails were probably dirty. Why did I think Chantal would even sit next to him? Will took off his ball cap, smoothed his hair back, checked to see who was checking him out. Maybe a few tenth-graders.
“Jillian.” Parker’s voice was soft.
I looked up. His eyes. Eyes like those have never looked at me that way. Even if you saw him from across a playground, Parker could melt your resolve with his good looks and the way he stands with just enough tension in his shoulders, square on as if you were about to slow dance. Standing there, the rest of the world disappeared, including Will. Until he spoke.
“So … summer. You and Chantal got any plans?”
“Not really. Not yet.” Parker was never this cute when he was dating Annelise. “Maybe some physics.”
“Right. About that,” Will said. “Straight up. We don’t need any physics tutoring.”
“What?” I sort of knew it wasn’t about physics and, still, I felt a little betrayed. More proof, I guess, of what I didn’t know about the guy-girl world. They could have at least asked a few vector questions. If I walked into a debate that unprepared, my team would dump me.
“Hey.” Parker took a step toward me and lowered his head, then his eyes grew smoking hot. “There’s a party at Mia’s on Saturday night. You both need to come.”
“Um …” I shouldered my beach bag. “I don’t know.”
Will kicked at the grass, shook his head.
“Chantal doesn’t really go to parties.” I didn’t tell them that I didn’t, either.
I don’t think he meant for me to see, but I witnessed Will jab Parker in the ribs with his elbow.
“But Jillian, we’ll play Cranium,” Parker said. “Chantal kicked ass at it in career and life management class last year. Remember?”
“Cranium.” Will nodded his satisfaction. “It’ll be fun. I love that game.”
“Well, maybe if there’s Cranium. I’ll have to see.” I searched the ground to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind.
“You have to come,” Will said. “Both of you.”
“I gotta go.” I turned for a final potentially meaningful look with Parker, waved good-bye, and headed for my bike with a plan to go to Chantal’s house.
For a second, or maybe less, I wondered why Will was suddenly so interested in Chantal. Maybe his torture tactics were his way of saying “I liked you all along.”
Tantrum
.
T
he television numbs my pain. Maybe TV viewing could be my solo summer project. I flip through the channels: soap opera, soap opera, game show, news about a war, old movie, gardening, cop show, cop show, building, redecorating. I think I’m hungry. One smushed cupcake remains in the plastic cello case, the silver balls askew. The chocolate crumbs that litter my chest provide more evidence that I am not allergic to cupcakes. I need to develop some sort of aversion, though, or I’ll be shopping for a one-piece bathing suit with a skirt attached to it by the end of the summer.
A few hours of TV might successfully blur the image of Parker and Jillian. How she sucked in her stomach, swept the hair from her face, blushed when he said, “Hey.” Will looked my direction a few times as if he thought I would suddenly welcome attention from someone who has always taunted me.
Blood pulses in my head, acute, dangerous. I’m like my mother; I want to keep things inside until I can’t bear it. I can’t. I want to do something, like smash a hole in a wall, kick in a door—hurt myself. Or maybe, swear.
“Shit,” I yell.
“Damn.”
“Shit.”
“Shit.”
“Shit.”
It feels phony, like words filtered through a swimming pool of Jell-O. The words become squiggly, laughable. Me. This would be hilarious for anyone but me.
Damn.
My life plan is a series of photos: next year, my valedictorian picture will be on the front page of the newspaper, in color, with the red of my lip gloss an exact match of the red graduation robe (this is important, according to Jillian). Four years after that, it will be a Harvard hat and tassel in crimson. By the time I’m thirty, it will be a picture of Jillian and me in front of the United Nations in New York. We’ll be doing important work in the most exciting city on the planet. (She picked the city and I picked the job—neurosurgeons committed to world health.) I can’t live in New York without Jillian. She is my GPS.
Damn.
“Get your life together,” I yell out loud, to myself, I guess.
I am able to move my right pointer finger.
“Screw Will.”
My wrist flickers.
“Screw Parker.”
I create a fist, open it.
“Jillian is
my
friend.”
My arm moves. I have achieved flexibility.
The TV kitchen is painted a light gray and pastel blue, visual pain relief. Ceramic bowls sparkle with precisely measured ingredients. I reach for the final cupcake, free it from its paper liner. Let the taste of chocolate soothe me. The woman on TV with dark flowing hair and a British accent is in love with her blue bowls. Or cooking. Her hands float over the bowls, grip them delicately as she pours the contents into her mixing bowl. Caresses butter, sugar, and vanilla with her white spatula.
“Baking is one of the sheer delights of being alive,” she says. “A chocolate cake is a sensual delight of chocolate that melts in one’s mouth and infuses the soul with happiness.”
The woman, I’m sure now, is obsessed with food, maybe even more than I am with grades. With my future.
The woman giggles, a deep throaty sound, as she pours the mixture into three cake pans, tells me the oven temperature, the way to test for doneness. How can anyone love to cook that much? My mother complains that it’s a chore designed to keep women tied to the home, but I know that it’s because she hates any mess and she’s terrified of ingesting more than twelve hundred calories per day. I suspect her figure is one of the reasons I’m an only child.
“One taste of this fudgy delectable and your guests will swoon. It’s that perfect.”
I wonder if I’ll find any organic dark chocolate bars in my mother’s secret stash. I start at the cupboard above the refrigerator.
The memory of Jillian’s face, her sharp blue eyes observing me, judging me, appears on the cupboard doors. I open the cupboard and her voice pipes up, “Come on, Chantal, it’s not a big deal. They only want to sit here.”
I dig for chocolate behind spices and boxes of salt and cornstarch. Maybe my mother hides her treats in a different place each time hoping she’ll forget where she hid them.
I imagine what I looked like, my towel and sunscreen clutched to my chest, covering my one-piece as if I was afraid I was going to be attacked. Scared. Pathetic.
Damn.
Behind the bag of wild rice, I find the chocolate bar. It’s mocha flavored and I don’t drink coffee, but I’m still happy for the treasure. I unwrap the chocolate, admire the perfectly lined-up squares.
I remember, now, how I heard Jillian’s voice call my name, more than once.
Breathe.
I break off two squares of cocoa, fat, and sugar, and slip them onto my tongue, trying to imitate the dark-haired woman on TV, letting my taste buds do their job on the brown molecules that dissipate, dissolve. This. Is. Relief. At least for the next six ounces.