But life isn’t like that. You can’t be sure how it’s going to come out, even if you do everything right. They turn around on you, lives do. Dad used to come home and look strong from the day of building. Now he looks tired, like a bulldozer ran him over. When May and I were kids, he used to be good to climb on. But now it’s like I’m afraid if I get too close to him, I’ll trip and spill out all the sadness he’s keeping hidden.
He used to love to play jokes on all of us, like switching salt with sugar (he did this so much that we got used to shaking it out on our hands and licking it to determine which was which). Mom got annoyed by it, but May and I thought it was funny. He’d hide his alarm clock on the weekends, under a couch cushion or something, and we’d have to go running through the house to find it when the alarm went off. Or sometimes he’d poke holes in the apples in the fridge and stick gummy worms in. This was our favorite, because it meant candy. He doesn’t do that sort of stuff anymore, but he still kisses my forehead when he walks in the door. Then he asks about my day, like he knows he should, and I do my best to make it sound good.
Tonight I made microwave mac and cheese with little mini hot dogs for us for dinner, which is our favorite. We still have food in the freezer from May’s memorial nearly six months ago, but I don’t think either of us wants to eat it.
“So you’re making friends?” he asked over our mac and cheese.
“Yep.” I smiled.
“That’s great,” Dad said.
“Actually, I was going to ask you, can I spend the night at my friend Natalie’s tomorrow?”
Dad hesitated a moment, and I crossed my fingers under the table. Finally he said, “Sure, Laurel.” He paused and added, “I don’t want you cooped up with me.”
Then he turned on the baseball game—he’s a Cubs fan, because he grew up in Iowa near their farm team—and I watched with him while I did my homework. Dad used to give me “baseball is like life” lectures, but he doesn’t do that anymore. Now we just watch in silence. I guess some things turned out too sad even to be explained with a bases-loaded strikeout.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
Last night, I got drunk for the first time. When I got to Natalie’s for the sleepover, we walked to the grocery store, which felt too cold in that air conditioner way. We walked half shivering down the liquor aisle, and Natalie pulled a bottle of cinnamon After Shock off the shelf and into her halfway-on hoodie. Then we took it to the bathroom and peeled off the label so it wouldn’t beep. I ignored my quick-beating heart and tried to act normal, like I’d done this sort of thing before. I didn’t say anything about the woman’s feet with mom sneakers and a little girl in the next stall. Then we just walked right out.
We went back to Natalie’s house, where we were alone, because her mom was on a date that night. Natalie said that means she doesn’t get back till morning. We climbed up onto her flat roof with the bottle. The After Shock had cinnamon-flavor crystals in the bottom, and when I first took a sip it burned like someone lit a sweet fire in my mouth. I swallowed fast and didn’t make a face, and I didn’t tell them that it was my first time ever drinking. I thought if May did it, I could, too. How bad could it be? So I let the liquor burn down my throat and into my stomach. It made me laugh and got my body loose, until I forgot to be afraid. We lay down on our backs to watch the planes pass overhead and made up a song about them. I don’t remember the words, though I keep trying. I do remember that Hannah’s voice sounded like the cinnamon crystals, sweet and full of fire. I think she really could be a singer.
I am not sure what happened next, but then we were down from the roof and Natalie and Hannah had gone into the backyard to jump on her old trampoline. I was in the front yard on a hammock swinging, and the stars were buzzing toward me.
I remembered how May would sneak out at night and I’d wait up in bed until I heard her come back in. Usually I’d just listen to her tiptoe down the hall and close her door, and then I’d know that I could sleep because she was safe. But once in a while, and this is what I loved the best, she’d come to my room instead and whisper, “Are you up?” My eyes would pop open, and I’d whisper that I was, and she’d come to lie on my bed. I remembered how her breath would smell sweet and hot, like alcohol, I guess. How a smile would spread slowly across her face and she’d laugh in a whisper and slur her words a little, like every sound led into another. As she’d tell me about her adventures—the boys and the kissing and the fast cars—I pictured it sort of like I did when we were little kids, when I believed that May had fairy wings and I’d imagine her on her flights through the night, swooping under the stars.
When I looked up from where I was on the hammock, all of a sudden the stars started buzzing too loudly, and I didn’t feel right. I wondered if this was what it was really like for May on those nights, if the stars spun around her until she was dizzy and she didn’t know where she was anymore.
I was scared suddenly and I couldn’t keep my head straight. I worried that bad things were coming into my mind, so I went to find Hannah and Natalie. When I walked through the wooden gate into the backyard, I saw them there on the trampoline. They were kissing. Real kissing. And jumping all at the same time. They looked up for an instant and saw me watching, and then they kind of fell. Natalie started screaming. She had chipped her tooth on Hannah’s tooth. She started looking everywhere for the lost piece of her tooth. I tried to help find it, but it was nowhere on the smooth black surface of the trampoline, and it was nowhere in the dirt. She got worried that she swallowed it. And Hannah got worried that I would tell everyone at school what Natalie had been doing when she chipped her tooth, even though I swore I wouldn’t. Hannah started telling me I had to kiss Natalie, too, or else I would tell. I couldn’t be the only one who wasn’t kissing, she said. But I didn’t want to. They weren’t listening. Natalie grabbed me and said she was going to kiss me to seal the secret. Suddenly it was hard for me to breathe. I gasped for air. I ran.
I ended up in the park near school. I sat down on the swing and started swinging as high as I could, higher and higher, until it felt like the night was rushing into me, until it felt like I would go all the way over the bar. And then I jumped, and flew, and landed in the sand. I climbed onto a jungle gym like the one that used to be our ship when I would go to the park with Mom and May. We had to sail through a sea full of sea monsters to rescue the mermaids. And I started to cry.