When you have two best friends, someone is always mad at someone else. Today, by not texting back, I’m basically volunteering to be the one on the outs. I just don’t know how to explain that I can’t sit with them today. That sitting at their table, right there in the front of the caf, and chatting about nonsense feels like a betrayal. I consider giving my verdict on Violet’s pants, but my dad’s dying has had the unfortunate side effect of taking away my filter. No need to tell her that though her thighs look fine, the high waist makes her look a little constipated.
My mom said no when I begged her to let me stay home from school today. I didn’t want to have to walk back into this cafeteria, didn’t want to go from class to class steeling myself for yet another succession of uncomfortable conversations. The truth is, people have been genuinely nice. Even borderline sincere, which almost never happens in this place. It’s not their fault that everything—high school—suddenly feels incredibly stupid and pointless.
When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have the blissful thirty-second amnesia that has carried me through lately, that beautiful half minute when my mind is blank, empty, and untortured. Instead I awoke feeling pure, full-throttled rage. It’s been one whole month since the accident. Thirty impossible days. To be fair, I’m aware my friends can’t win: If they had mentioned this to me, if they had said something sympathetic like “Kit, I know it’s been a month since your dad died, and so today must be especially hard for you,” I still would have been annoyed, because I probably would have fallen apart, and school is not where I want to be when that inevitably happens. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Annie and Violet didn’t mention it because they forgot altogether. They were all chatty, sipping their matching Starbucks lattes, talking about what guy they were hoping was going to ask them to junior prom, assuming I just had a bad case of the Mondays. I was expected to chime in.
I am somehow supposed to have bounced back.
I am not supposed to be moping around in my dad’s old shirt.
One month ago today.
So strange that David Drucker of all people was the only one who said the exact right thing: Your dad shouldn’t have died. That’s really unfair.
“You’ve been back two weeks already,” my mom said over breakfast, after I made one last plea to ditch. “The Band-Aid has already been ripped off.” But I don’t have a single Band-Aid. I’d rather have two black eyes, broken bones, internal bleeding, visible scarring. Maybe to not be here at all. Instead: Not a scratch on me. The worst kind of miracle.
“You’re going to work?” I asked, because it seemed that if I was having trouble facing school, it should be hard for her to put back on her work clothes and heels and drive to the train. Of course my mom was aware of the significance of the date. In the beginning, once we got home from the hospital, she was in constant tears, while I was the one who was dry-eyed and numb. For the first few days, while she wept, I sat quietly with my knees drawn to my chest, my body racked with chills despite being bundled up in about a million layers. Still, a month later, I haven’t managed to quite get warm.
My mom, however, seems to be pulling herself back together into someone I recognize. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her on the weekends, when she wears yoga pants and sneakers and a ponytail, or from the way she looked right after the accident, shattered and gray and folded up, but in her working life my mom is a hard-core boss lady. She’s CEO of an online-advertising agency called Disruptive Communications. Sometimes I overhear her yelling at her employees and using the kinds of words that would get me grounded. Occasionally her picture is on the cover of trade magazines with headlines like “The Diverse Future of Viral Media.” She’s the one who orchestrated that video with the singing dogs and cats that at last count had sixteen million hits, and that great breakfast cereal pop-up ad with the biracial gay dads. Before entering the throes of widowhood, she was pretty badass.
“Of course I’m going to work. Why wouldn’t I?” my mom asked. And with that she picked up my cereal bowl, even though I wasn’t yet finished, and dropped it into the sink so hard that it shattered.
She left, wearing her “work uniform”—a black cashmere sweater, a pencil skirt, and stilettos. I considered cleaning up the shards of glass in the sink. Maybe even accidentally-on-purpose letting one cut me. Just a little. I was curious whether I’d even feel it. But then I realized that despite my new post-Dad-dying-imbuing-every-single-tiny-thing-with-bigger-meaning stage, like wearing this men’s work shirt to school, that was just way too metaphorical. Even for me. So I left the mess for my mom to clean up later.
After lunch with Kit Lowell, I take off my headphones. Usually I keep them on between classes so that when I walk through the halls the ambient noise is indistinct and muffled. That chatter and movement make me feel amped up and distracted and much more likely to trip. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and yet the boys in school dart from side to side full of random aggression. They jab their fists into each other’s backs, tackle necks with smiles on their faces, high-five hard. Why do they want to constantly touch each other? Though the girls don’t weave as much as the guys, they also stop and start, often out of nowhere, hugging every so often even though they just saw each other before last period.
I free-ear it because I am curious to hear if anyone is talking about Kit’s dad. I Googled his name and pulled up this obituary, which was in the Daily Courier, section A16, three weeks and four days ago. Only three short sentences, which, though I appreciate its succinctness, left out some relevant details, like the lollipops and the whole “nice man” part.
Robert Lowell DDS passed away on Friday, January 15, in a car accident. He was born on September 21, 1971, in Princeton, New Jersey, and practiced dentistry in Mapleview for the past twelve years. He is survived by his wife, Mandip, and their daughter, Katherine.
Facts thus far learned from my quick search: (1) Kit’s dad’s name was Robert, which makes sense somehow, a familiar word and an even number of letters. I’ve always just thought of him as Dentist, which now that I think about it is way too limiting. (2) Kit’s dad died in a car accident, which is a misnomer, because in the vast majority of car accidents where people end up dying, they don’t actually die in the car but afterward, in the ambulance or at the hospital. I’ll have to find out the specifics.
As I walk down the hall, I see Gabriel.
GABRIEL FORSYTH: Curly hair. Marble eyes. Clown mouth.
Notable Encounters
1. Seventh grade: Took my Oreos without asking. Snatched them from my insulated lunch bag and walked away.
2. Tenth grade: Held hands with Kit L. (That’s not an encounter with me, but it’s still notable.)
3. Eleventh grade: Sits next to me in physics, because our seats were assigned by the teacher on day one. When he saw how far he was from Justin Cho, he said, “Awww shit, really, Mr. Schmidt?” for which he got a first warning. I did not point out that the seat was a relatively good one in terms of acoustics and board perspective. Miney said it was good that I kept that to myself.
Friends