Split Ends
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W
hen I come out of the bathroom, Jillian is sitting on the twin bed that is identical to mine, a pair of scissors in her hand. Her eyes cross as she stares at a single strand of hair and cuts the end. I straighten the books, pencil holder, and calendar on my desk. She’s still cross-eyed and scissoring.
I open the bottom drawer, lift up the file folders, and extract another cello pack of cupcakes. Only two, I tell myself, to replace the awful taste of Will’s cupcakes. And Will. I open the package and offer them to Jillian. She shakes her head, while she continues to scissor. “What are you doing?”
“Cutting off my split ends.” She holds up a magazine article titled “Keep Your Locks in Perfect Shape!” I appreciate perfection, but maybe this is going too far. I eat the first two cupcakes and reach for the third, my last. This one I eat slowly, letting the sugar sink into my tongue. I stash the remaining three back in the drawer.
I pull back the covers on my bed, straightening them into perfect folds, and slide between soft sheets, careful not to damage my construction. It’s a tight squeeze in such a narrow bed. My mother has tried to convince me to trade in my two beds for a double, but I can’t. Jillian and I redecorated the all-girly pink walls to gray with pink and lime green accents right before high school.
This is our room—the perfect place for a serious talk about Jillian’s grooming and … everything else that is strange about her now: the bikini, the tight clothing, the hoarding of fashion magazines. Parker.
“We have some things to talk to about,” I say. I reach for my notebook and pen.
“I know. Parker is having a party on Monday. A barbecue actually.”
“I’m not going.” I want to remind her that we always get under the covers at the same time, that we like to stare up at the stars while we talk, that I insisted that my mother buy Egyptian cotton, six hundred thread count sheets for her bed, too.
“You haven’t heard the details.”
I wish all of this was over already. I shouldn’t have to remind her that I’m grumpy when I’m tired. I take a deep breath, stare at her squarely. “I vote no. No more humiliation.”
She says she doesn’t even know if Will’s going to the barbeque and adds, “We’re inviting the study group. They’re people you and I both know.”
“If Will is going to be there it won’t be better. Except maybe he can laugh at everyone instead of just you and me.” I stare. Now they’re throwing a barbeque? They’ve only been on two dates. Two. “Now it’s
we
? As in the Parkillian? He’s going to grill the burgers and hot dogs and you’re going to pick the music?”
“Chantal.” She drops the scissors on the floor. Finally something more important than looking good for Parker has her attention. She looks me straight on, but it’s impatience. “I know you’re hurt.”
“Humiliated. Degraded.” I detail again Will’s disgusting tongue in my mouth. I remind her, again, about grade seven and the fetal pig heart.
“It’s over, Chantal. Over.” She looks at me like I’m one of her little brothers and I’ve stubbed my toe. She thinks she can fix anything.
“Parker is Will’s best friend.” Is she ever going to get this? “As long as you’re dating Parker, I can’t escape him.”
She tells me that Parker and Will are not the same person, that
Will wants attention, any attention. And that I shouldn’t take it personally.
“I’m standing up for myself.” I didn’t do anything wrong. Surely she sees that.
She goes back to her own bed. I resist the urge to tell her to pick up the scissors and put them on my desk. She lies down and stares at the stars on my ceiling, the ones we put up at the end of fifth grade. Her bed is messy and out of order and I wonder how she sleeps like that. She thinks she needs to pull me into her new life and I know that the path she’s on is going to lead to misery, a repeat of her mother’s past. Somehow I need to convince her to listen to reason.
“You’re vulnerable,” I say. “And you cannot let a guy get in the way of our future.”
I lay back and stare at the stars, too. Sometimes a friend has to tell the hard truth.
Neurosurgery
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I
identify the ceiling constellations while I consider whether to tell Chantal what I’m thinking. “I can’t be your social therapist.”
“My therapist?”
“You needed me by your side the whole time at the party. You need to get better at being with other people. Socially, you’re … developmentally delayed.”
“You’re calling me retarded?”
“Socially retarded.”
The pause is long enough that I wonder if she’s still awake. “So I’m a social retard,” she says quietly. “I can accept that.” She tells me that when we’re at Harvard we’ll be surrounded by social retards. We’ll be the leaders. And then we’ll go on to being hot neurosurgeons and we’ll be in New York and working for the United Nations as consultants for medical practices to developing countries. I’ve heard it a million times before.
Chantal, queen of the plan. I hate that we’ve come to this, against each other. “I’m not going to be a neurosurgeon,” I say.
“Yes, you are. You picked the city, remember?”
I don’t know how to respond. I can’t tell her that Harvard and neurosurgery are in the same unlikely but pleasant-to-imagine category
as winning the gold medal in the Olympic marathon. If I tell her I don’t have the money for Harvard she’ll tell me I can get a job. If I tell her I can’t leave all my little brothers, she’ll say it’s my mom’s responsibility to raise them. If I say I don’t think I want to spend the next eleven years studying, she’ll say it’ll all be worth it. And she’s right. To a point. I can’t change what she thinks, but I have to be honest. With Dad 3 moving out and my mother where she is … I wish things were different, but they are what they are.
“I’m a realist,” I say. “I want to see my brothers grow up, and they’re going to need me.” My voice cracks. I guess because this is the closest I’ve come to speaking the misery out loud. I hope that she knows how hard it is for me to say it, how much I wish I had a different choice.
“You’re giving up.” I hear the sadness and the anger in her voice. She’s so afraid of being alone. I hear her arrange her comforter, straighten her sheets, and I know we are both staring up at the same stars glowing on her ceiling. “You’re a quitter.”
My breath catches. I want to be hurt at what she says, but I know she’s right. I made a promise, like all the times my mother has made deals with me, and now I’m backing out. It’s not fair. Not for me. And not for her. And, because we have all night and neither of us are sleeping anyway, I compose what I think are words of comfort in my head. I think about how kindness might help here and how it might have helped me dozens of times. I practice my words over and over. And, then, I make sure she’s still awake. I tell her I have something to say. It’s easier with the lights out.
I tell her she’s got the intelligence and the support to be a neurosurgeon or anything else. I tell her I don’t know any other person who is as brainy and focused and capable. I say that when I visit her in New York we’ll go shopping for hot neurosurgeon fashion: tall black stiletto boots and long gloves and designer dresses. “I will
be at all the celebrations of your success,” I say. “I’ll be cheering the loudest.”
I wait forever for her to be the best friend who understands, the best friend who says she will be there for me for whatever I decide to become. Instead, she tells me, “Parker is the easy way out, Jillian.”
W
hen I wake in the morning, the scissors remain open-mouthed on the floor. The sheets and blankets twist into a rope that points toward the door. Jillian’s gone. The air is dried out and filled with dust.
My cell battery is so low I can’t make a call. I’m forced to go searching for a cordless phone.
The phone waits for me on the breakfast table, mere inches from my mother’s hand. I mumble good morning and reach for it, but it disappears into my mother’s lap.
“Chantal. I was hoping you’d be up soon. I’ve got some great news.”
“Can it wait?” I squint at the brightness of her smile. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Sweetheart. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to get up.”
“I understand. Seriously, though, can it wait a few minutes?”
My mother frowns. My dad sets down his cup of coffee hard enough for me to know that my phone call will wait. I slide into the chair opposite my dad to form their preferred triangle, the equilateral.
While my mother begins her monologue on the current status of her job as lab supervisor at the hospital, I nod to indicate interest, but I can only think about how miracles happen. More specifically, how I can make a miracle happen with Jillian. “So,” my mother reaches to
hold my hand. “You and Dad are going to have a wonderful summer at Lettuce Loaf.”
“Lettuce Loaf? You always go by yourself.” I stare at my dad. Crud. I missed something serious here. I hope this isn’t about to turn into the we-need-our-space talk.
“Chantal, you weren’t listening, were you?” he asks.
“I have to make a phone call.”
“You know …” My mother leans in and my father follows her lead, creating a triangle nearing acute proportions. “Most of the time we are fine with the world revolving around you, but, honestly.”
“Your mother has been promoted to hospital administration.” Dad repeats that my mother’s job as lab supervisor has been changed. Now she’ll be dealing with budgets, hiring, and firing (oh … those poor slackers won’t last long). She’ll have an office with a big desk, a view, and an administrative assistant. I act like it matters to me and my dad continues talking. They’re sending my mom on a week-long training course in Oregon. She leaves tomorrow. So that means I’m leaving town tomorrow, with Dad, for the next four weeks. He’s staying longer than usual, he explains, because it’s his year to pitch in on the cottage landscaping and maintenance.
“Well.” I push away from the table, forcing an obtuse shape. “I’m really glad you both gave me some advance notice on this one.”
“I only found out, for sure, Friday.” My mother’s bob is perfect. She’s probably been up since 5:30 A.M., already gone for her run and read the newspaper.
“Chantal. What is going on?” That’s my dad. Intersecting the angle.
“I can’t go away. Not right now.” I hate that my voice is wobbly. So revealing.
“You have no choice.” My mom leans back in her chair, crosses her arms.
“Why do you feel you can’t get away for a month? It’s the summer. And your cousins would love to see you.”
“I know it’s going to disappoint you guys, but I have a life. One that’s independent from you two.”
“Well,” Dad says. “There’s a lot of power behind that statement.”
“I told you we’ve spoiled her.” My mom specializes in discussions about me, right in front of me.
“I’m not spoiled.”
“The facts would indicate otherwise.” My mom ignores my dad’s attempts to interrupt while she lists the ways in which I am spoiled: I don’t do any chores, I don’t have a job, I don’t even have the courtesy to listen to her when she tells me something important about her life.
I push even further away.
Top student isn’t enough.
Not for my mother and not for Jillian. But it should be worth something, right? Any molecules of self-confidence that might have been clinging to me have been stripped away. “I am going to die of suffocation.”
“Drama.” My mother lifts an eyebrow as she looks at Dad. He rubs his chin. This is his I’m-not-sure-how-to-tell-you-I-disagree-with-you gesture. I pick up on it though. All I need to know is that one of them is on my side.
“I’ll stay home to do the chores. It’ll be a test. You’ll only be gone a week. If I pass, you can let me stay home while you’re working this summer. And if I fail, I can take the bus out to Lettuce Loaf.”
My mother’s response is swift but expected: all the reasons I can’t stay home after she returns from her training. She’ll be working long hours at her new job, she won’t have time to cook for me, and she can’t be responsible for what happens during my days.
“Seriously? I need you to watch me at all times?” I remind her that next year I’ll be off to college where she won’t be able to protect me. “You only think you know where I am anyway.” She needs to know I’m serious. “I could be anywhere when I answer my phone.” My dad’s eyebrows indicate I’ve gone too far so I shut up and let
him talk. Our triangle refigures, becomes more of a right angle, with my mother at 90 degrees.
The negotiations consume four hours of my life. They involve grilling me about what to do in an emergency (no matter that tornadoes are unlikely in the mountains), and the essential vitamins and nutrients (not found in cakes or cookies, even if they’re homemade, my mother stresses). By the time my parents have gone out for coffee so my mother can decompress, it’s late afternoon. The phone at Jillian’s house rings but doesn’t get picked up.
Three lonely cupcakes call out to me from my bottom dresser drawer. I cradle their package in my arms to the living room, remove a paper wrapper from the chocolate cake with the pink fluffy frosting and tiny pale green sprinkles.
I stare at the television screen wondering if this will be my summer occupation. Without my parents or Jillian, my active brain will disintegrate from lack of motivation. I wonder if a summer of under-stimulation could jeopardize my chances for top student next year. I wonder if it’s going to matter. If Jillian and I can’t get past this, I’ll probably home-school my final year. I couldn’t face going to school alone. Not my senior year. Not after it, either. I try Jillian’s phone again. And her cell. Four more times each. She’s avoiding me.
The second cupcake seems a bit off, the frosting grainy and, actually, unlikable. And the cake is dry. I shut the lid on the half-eaten second cake and the untouched third one. Really. Unless I’m totally desperate, I’m not going to eat any more of those things. It’s probably the preservatives that make them taste strange.
Nigella comes to the rescue. I calm as she cooks. She’s setting out to make her late-night dessert, Caramel Croissant Pudding. The gas stove clicks as she sets a wide pan on the burner. She adds a small pour of water and a third of a cup of sugar while she talks. “I don’t like to do this in a kind of sensible, quiet way.”
Me, neither. I replay what I said to Jillian last night. I know I can’t
take it back now. Like the only precalculus test I didn’t ace, I’ve got to live with the consequences.
Nigella adds double cream, whole milk, bourbon, and eggs to the boiling sugar. “What I want, what anyone wants, is a luscious, smooth, flowing caramel.” She pours her caramel over croissant chunks in an iron skillet and slides the dessert onto the middle oven rack. The camera stays at the oven door until Nigella’s hands reach out to open it again, and now she’s wearing black silk pajamas. She plunges her fork into the center of the pan, feeds her open mouth, and moans. Fade to black.
I click the TV off. I wonder if it’s strange to read messages into Nigella’s TV shows, as if she talks to me. Nigella said what anyone wants is smooth, flowing caramel and I agree. Caramel is divine. Isn’t caramel exactly what you need when you’re wondering what you’ve said?
I will prove to Jillian that I am not a social retard. I’ll bake the most luscious cake anyone has tasted. And deliver it. On Monday night. To the barbecue.
A cake between friends can only be a good thing.