Her body is fierce, tight, strong. She looks like an Olympic athlete, a warrior, not a grammy.
“Betty?” I whisper her name, afraid to startle her.
She motions for me to come all the way down. I stand next to her, peering into the darkness.
“What are you looking for?” I whisper.
“Things in the night.”
“Do you see anything?”
She laughs. “No.”
She pulls me against her and kisses the top of my head. “You go on up to bed. I’ve got everything under control.”
I walk away a step and stop. “Gram? Are you really looking for things in the night?”
“People are always looking into the dark, Zara. We’re afraid of what we might see. It might be the dark outside, it might be the dark of our own souls, but I figure it’s better to get caught looking than to never know. You get me?”
“Not really.”
She steps away from the window, pushes me toward the stairs. “Go to bed. School tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Couplogagophobia
fear of being the third wheel
That night I dream about my dad, all night long. He’s standing at the end of Betty’s driveway. It’s snowing. There are giant paw prints on the snow. His mouth is open and moving, but no sound comes out.
I make myself wake up. The room is cold. The wind blows tree branches against the house, making scraping noises. I turn on the lamp next to the bed, trying not to freak out.
“It’s just a dream,” I whisper, but the truth is that when my dad died, his mouth moved and no sound ever came out.
When my dad died, we had just come in from our daily morning run. We always ran before breakfast, before the Charleston heat overwhelmed us and made running too much effort. We were talking about gay marriage. He was the one who got me started on writing letters for Amnesty International. I was maybe in first grade, complaining about writing being boring and stupid and a waste of my six-year-old time, and he sat me down at the dining room table and told me stories about people who were suffering. He told me writing was never a waste of time, and that’s when I wrote my first letter.
But when he died, we weren’t talking about Amnesty, we were talking about his friends Dave and Don. Don, the artist, needed health care and Dave’s company wouldn’t cover him. My dad opened the door and let us into the house.
“It’s ridiculous. Get me some water, honey,” he had said, smiling, bending over to catch his breath and leaning on his knees for balance. He’d already taken off his Red Sox hat and his silver hair beneath it was wet from sweat.
I grabbed two Poland Spring waters out of the fridge and pivoted around, and it was like my dad wasn’t there anymore. That’s the only way I can describe it. He cringed. White and gray erased the normal ruddy color of his skin.
“Daddy?”
He didn’t answer, just sort of lifted up a hand to wave me off. Then he pointed toward the sink. “The window. He’s . . . I saw him. Run.”
“What?” I said.
“Don’t let him take . . .”
“Daddy?”
I started to turn and look at the window but then he fell over on his side, his mouth wide open, trying to grab air. His blood didn’t know what to do because his heart had failed him.
I dropped the water bottles on the floor. One rolled into his shoe, the other went back toward the fridge, hiding, I guess. I wanted to hide too. My own heart started beating crazy rhythms, out of control, against my ribs. I reached out for his hand and grabbed it. He squeezed back but not hard, not tight and strong like normal. He was weak.
“Mom!” I screamed. “Mom!”
She thundered down the stairs and stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. She sucked in her breath and grabbed the big palm plant next to the sink. Her words came out like a whisper, “He’s having a heart attack.”
My own heart stopped then, and my dad’s eyes widened and he looked at me, pleading. He had never looked at me that way before. His mouth moved. No sound came out.
At school Issie and I sit together at lunch and in all the classes we share. Devyn sits with us in the cafeteria too, and he and Issie laugh so much about the stupidest things it’s hard not to laugh with them, even as I check to make sure I haven’t gone transparent.
It’s actually hard to get annoyed by them because they are so cute together.
“So,” I say. “I think I might believe you about the pixie guy.”
“Why?” Issie asks.
I chew on my bagel. “I got stuck in the ice yesterday. I went off the road.”
“Nick told us,” Devyn says.
“Did he tell you about the dust, too?” I ask, watching Devyn rip into a roast beef grinder.
“Yep,” he says with his mouth full.
“It’s weird,” I say. “Especially with the boy that went missing last week. I think they might be connected.”
“You know about the Beardsley boy?” Issie asks.
“Betty told me that it happened before,” I say. “I’m thinking about going to the computer lab and looking for info.”
“I’ll come with you,” Devyn says, mushing the rest of his grinder in.
“Me too,” Issie says, collecting his garbage and her own.
“You should be a couple,” I tell Issie as we throw away our trash. “You aren’t already a couple, are you?”
“Me and Devyn?” she squeaks.
“Yeah, you and Devyn,” I say, elbowing her in the side. “I think he likes you.”
She drops her soda can into the recycle bin and turns to stare back at Devyn.
He waves.
Her smile is huge.
“Really?” she asks.
I toss my apple core into the garbage bin. “Really.”
She links her arm through mine. “I’m so glad you’re here, Zara. I’m glad you aren’t hanging out with Megan and her people.”
She glances over at Megan, who is holding court over a throng of admirers.
Megan lifts up her eyes and meets mine. I swear if she could shoot fire at me she would, or at the very least, laser beams.
“She hates me,” I say. “No big loss. I’d rather be your friend any day.”
This is so corny, but Issie eats it up.
“Really? You have to come over again, you know. There’s so much stuff I want to tell you.” She pulls me back to the lunch table, almost hopping the entire way. “Devyn, guess what Zara just said.”