A Flicker in the Clarity Read online

  Alice.

  That girl’s a cabbage. Pale, bland, only palatable after something extreme like shredding, boiling, or a good chunk of butter. That sounds mean, I know, but Alice is always hovering around, not really saying anything.

  I try to let out the breath I’m holding, but when I do I make this weird choking sound and have to cough instead.

  She looks over at me blinking fast, doe-eyed, like some innocent.

  I used to kind of like her, the way she doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks, but suddenly Alice freaking Weir is everywhere, first with Jack, and now leaning in toward Em while she talks crap about me at the top of her lungs.

  Her kneepads. A forensics team would have trouble identifying and repatriating everything we have of each other’s. Emma took my toothbrush once because she liked the shape of it better than hers. The toothbrush I’d been using. I have her stupid kneepads because she skipped volleyball last week and I forgot mine.

  Heading home sick is what she had me tell Coach Jackson, but sick actually meant rushing to Union Square to hang out with Ryan. Something’s brewing with Em again, and how, I’d like to know, will the cabbage handle that? Alice has no idea what she’s getting into. Emma’s a storm, the wild kind that drops a cloud of dark so fast, streetlights blink awake even though it’s the middle of the day.

  Her life was perfect. A mom and a dad, her older brother, Patrick, the dogs, their good-smelling house that glows at you from the windows like it loves you as much as you love it, like no one inside is worried, lonely, or poor. Then Patrick drove drunk and died. He was not supposed to go down like that. Emma flew out of her orbit and into a wonky ellipsis.

  To most people, Emma’s magnetic, a magic projector, a milky-skinned girl with dark hair and rosy lips. Patrick’s girlfriend, Mamie, called her Snow White. After Patrick died, nobody really knew the extent of the damage because she dabbled in perfect, got the best grades of her life, was a point guard superstar. People see what they want in her. They think she’s all songbirds, sweet tears, and magic apples.

  Not me. I never did. Em looks like she’s in charge because she sets the course, but I’m the tiller, or rudder, or the whatever-ma-thingie you need to keep something windblown balanced and off the rocks.

  I know she has insomnia and is scared of the dark. I know that until she was ten she wanted to be a saint and looked everywhere for a miracle. I know she’s bored most of the time and worries it’s a sign of a deeper flaw. And I know some of what Emma lost when Patrick died, because I lost it too.

  I fumble my locker open. She can have her kneepads. But then Alice murmurs something, and when I look at them Emma’s plastic smile stretches wider. Her laugh is high and loud.

  Forget the kneepads. I slam my locker shut and look at my feet a second, as if spotting a body part is going to help me reassemble after Em’s verbal and visual shrapnel. I have to get out of here. I shoulder past them, jacked up on adrenaline, and head up the stairs to the fourth floor. Fighting with Em is blowing me apart. I hold my bag to my chest and make for the art room like a fugitive to a safe house.

  Between Storm and Monster

  I SKIP MY NEXT TWO CLASSES and stay in the empty art studio painting a map of my fight with Em, almost all water, purple, black, and my deepest blue.

  I glance at the call for submissions Ms. Vax thrust at me on her way out to take the morning classes to the Whitney. The flyer has my name scrawled across the top, underlined and circled, like the minute it crossed her desk she thought of me. It’s for something called TeenART. Simple to apply, just scan and send! she said, stopping in the doorway to breathlessly pitch this unbelievable opportunity. It includes grant money for supplies, space in a studio, and an internship with a working artist. Kind of cool, for sure, but Ms. Vax doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get me. I sigh and nudge the flyer to the far edge of the table until it drifts, like a leaf, down into the recycle bin. My maps aren’t for anyone else. I make them for myself.

  She’s the one who started it. In seventh grade she showed us the three-hundred-year-old Carte de Tendre. Made by a French woman—a map of love. History, Ms. Vax explained, is a story people tell, and maps are one of the tools for telling it. We act like they’re fact, but they are more like documents of interpretation.

  That shook me to the core. It was the first time I realized no one’s actually in charge. We’re all just making it up. I thought maps were supposed to be true. The idea that they could be subjective tripped me up. I started eyeing everything with suspicion, as if the previously sturdy edges of the larger world, spaces made by adults, the places I was expected to grow into, were suspect, blurring.

  Then I started making my own.

  I shift on my stool and mash the bristles hard against the paper—black rocks of judgment. Upthrust, defensive, all spiky peaks and narrow troughs. This map is super dramatic, how I feel. Storms swirl the middle, froth the blue. It’s as true as anything else. Besides, where Em’s concerned, the real dangers lie past the edge, where the world falls away.

  That might be where she is now, out there, or on her way.

  I stare at the paper and chew the end of my brush; the sun through the windows and the white lights overhead are harsh critics. Behind me, radiators clank and hiss.

  I glare at what I’ve made. I’m used to being lost, letting inky lines lead me, but I don’t like feeling desperate, and right now I don’t know how to make anything happen—on my map, in my life. Maybe this is a family condition. I’m the daughter of Died Young and Left Wrecked.

  These are mean thoughts. My dad didn’t want to die, and who am I to judge my mom for how she deals with losing him? I tear a hangnail with my teeth, then lean in and fill the unknown space with monsters, put my anger on the page. I twist the brush for muscled necks and sharp claws. Mix the blackest green for scales. It does nothing to fix this hopeless feeling. Everyone knows the monsters you imagine waiting for you have little to do with what lies ahead.

  I roll my neck, fold a leg under, and add myself to the page, a speck in the oval, stalled out in a flat, windless bit between storm and monster.

  How’d I get here? Standing next to Em is like holding a jar full of fireflies, your face temporarily bright with all that caught and flickering light. People are drawn to her. I am drawn to her.

  A few hot tears prick the corners of my eyes. I blink them back and look at the mess I’ve made. I’m in the wet gray center, my head a pale splodge. The knobs of my shoulders and knees are lighter yet, and the rest of me hidden, sunk through the middle of a tiny white and red lifesaver. Why’d I make that thing so small?

  I close my eyes against the lonely dot, suspended—no Emma, no wind, and too much time to think. Then I toss the map.

  Didn’t help to make it.

  Scared me instead.

  Lonely Dot, Suspended

  I WALK HOME THE LONG WAY so I don’t run into her and Alice.

  Or Alice and Jack.

  As soon as I’m in my building I text, Please can we talk?

  For a second a reply bubble flashes three dots like she’s typing back. I freeze in front of our elevators, hopeful, scared, staring at my phone.

  Then . . . nothing.

  I try again.

  Em?

  My phone vibrates a few seconds later with an angry red exclamation point.

  Undelivered!

  She locked me out.

  A Dim Bulb in a Marquee Made of Sparklers

  OF COURSE, OF THE TWO ELEVATORS, the one that comes is the one with the broken light. Jack refuses to ride it. Em too. Our building’s so neglected they both think it’s going to fall or chop someone in half like that elevator did in Midtown. But it’s here, so I take it, a dark ride lit only by the floor buttons, anemic moons illuminating and extinguishing themselves until it stops at our floor.

  Our apartment’s cold when I walk in, the radiators silent. My mom says the owners do it on purpose to shake out rent-control tenants so they can renovate and rent to richer people
. When I asked if they can do that, if it’s even allowed, she went to bed.

  Money sucks. When I broke my wrist a few years ago, we bought nothing we didn’t absolutely need for months, because our insurance didn’t cover it all. Like my cast was some luxury. My mom tries to hide it, but things are tight. Taking to bed has its appeal. I picture us together, covered in spider webs, blinking quietly at the ceiling. Blinking’s free.

  “Enough!” I say as forcefully as possible. When you’re home alone as much as I am, sometimes you talk to yourself. My voice startles Marcel the wonder mutt. He rolls his girth off the couch and shuffles over to lick my ankles. My mom’s terrified of dogs, so Marcel’s a miracle. He looks like a mistake, the result of a star-crossed love between a German shepherd and a barrel-shaped terrier. He has one torn ear, sad eyes, and he’s perfect, and I love him.

  Em’s the only reason he’s mine. She and Patrick rescued him from the side of the road upstate with their parents one weekend. She says the minute she saw Marcel she knew he was for me. If I’d been planning the whole Evie-gets-a-dog-despite-her-mom’s-phobia coup I might have chosen one a little less intimidating than a motley wolflike creature, but even Patrick said Marcel was waiting for me to come into his life, and he was right. Love at first sight.

  My mom made me give him back. I begged her, wrapped my arms tight around his fluffy neck, but she called over to the Sullivans’ house and asked in a shaking voice if Patrick and Em could please come and take him back.

  When Patrick walked in he looked so sorry for me. It’s the only major fight I’ve ever had with my mom, and I cried myself to sleep. But Emma didn’t give up. She kept Marcel and brought him over every day after school until she wore my mom down.

  Marcel follows me into the kitchen while I turn on the oven for heat. We lie on the floor together a minute while I resist the urge to hide out in my room, the only place in the apartment that doesn’t feel dark and overlooked. After he licks my face a million times I stand and call the management company about the light in the elevator. I am one hundred percent sure no one listens to my messages, but I have to try. I can’t be like my mom. I love her, but along with various bills, she’s been letting official-looking letters from the building owners pile up, unopened. One of us has to do something.

  By the time she walks in I’m at the table with my laptop as if I’m a regular girl on a regular day and not a secret murk person barely blinking at my screen.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” she says, dropping her purse on the table next to me with a quiet sigh.

  If I’m a mouse, my mom’s something smaller and less visible. She hugs me from behind. I close my eyes and inhale lemon drops. She works in accounts payable at the Brucker Candy Company, and the citrus sugar gets into everything.

  The February rain has frizzed her hair into a fuzzy mist around her face. She runs her fingers through it.

  “Em back in school today?” she asks.

  “We’re fighting.” My voice is tight. If I look at my mom I’ll cry, so I shrug instead and click open random documents on my computer like I’m super busy and it’s all cool. “She’s not talking to me. It was a bad day.”

  “Oh dear! Oh honey, I’m sorry.”

  She sits next to me, the corners of her mouth down. I should have kept my mouth shut. Now she’ll feel bad too, and where does that leave us?

  “Even the best of friends have to fight sometimes. It will blow over, I’m sure. Can you spend more time with Jack?”

  I don’t answer. My eyes bulge trying to focus on the page I opened and not the scene at lunch with Jack—Alice rushing up behind us at the coffee cart all breathy and flushed, tippy-toe kissing him.

  Before I could process what was happening she said, Order me a latte? I’m texting with Em. Whipped off Alice’s tongue, Em’s name came at me like a knife, handle over blade, flashing in the too bright midday light. Bull’s-eye.

  When I looked at Jack it was clear that I don’t matter anymore. His whole face was hers, all eager-puppy, done with me.

  Major internal bleeding.

  I left without my coffee. It was either that or collapse on the corner like Keats on the Spanish Steps, only Keats coughed up actual blood and left behind all those crazy-good poems about love.

  I’m dying of something different. Self-inflicted. I didn’t stop when Jack called after me. Couldn’t.

  If Em didn’t hate me, she’d say Jack doesn’t matter, that if he’s into the cabbage, he was never the guy for me. She’d say it’s better, because now he and I can go back to being friends. And if none of that worked, she’d tell me to stop overthinking everything and hook up with someone already. Em’s way ahead of me with the whole sex thing. She thinks I’m missing out, I need to be more relaxed. Like her. But I’m not like her. I tried her kiss-him-first-fall-in-love-later method once and I didn’t like it. Maybe it sounds stupid, but if I kiss someone, I want it to mean something.

  My mom tries another tack.

  “Did you eat?”

  She reaches past me for the mail. I have the parent letter about the junior class trip already safely hidden under my laptop. The trip’s the last two weeks in May, right after juniors finish exams. Since it’s not mandatory, they don’t cover it for scholarship kids.

  I tilt my head toward my laptop. “I was going to make us pasta, but I lost track of time.”

  “What’s that?” She squints at my screen. “Decompression sickness, you’re studying the bends?”

  “For my Investigation.”

  Junior Investigation is a yearlong project they make us do at Bly. It’s supposed to prepare us for college by pulling together curriculum across several subjects, which is another way of saying it’s a boatload of student-directed work. I wish the assignment were to draw a comparative diagram of pain caused by the bends versus being iced out by your best friend. Contortions all around.

  She sets down the mail and picks up one of the books I’m using for my paper like it’s interesting. I can feel it in her silence, she wants to be here for me, but she doesn’t know what to say. I slide a hair tie from my wrist and whip my hair into a braid. I’m trying not to feel so overwhelmed. But I am. So overwhelmed. Because she’s starting to vibrate at a higher frequency, this hum she makes whenever she asks about Bly. Like, The Future’s Bright! I’m no academic superstar, but I think she’s still hoping I’ll magically become a doctor and have a perfect life. Better than now. The thing is, I’m not good at The Future and Bly is marching us toward it like little well-educated soldiers. We’re supposed to be confident in our intellectual ability, and if that’s not the case, at least backed by the larger army of family support. Scholarship kids have two choices. Sink or swim. I’m not a strong swimmer.

  My dad died of lung cancer when I was six. I don’t really know how to feel about it, which sounds weird, because sad seems obvious, but it’s hard to miss someone you don’t remember. When I was younger I used to look at this little dirt-colored leather album my mom made of pictures from his funeral and burial, but a glossy flower-covered coffin doesn’t offer much. My dad’s more like an empty room than someone I lost. Anyhow, for a little while after he died I told people I wanted to be a doctor, and I think my mom’s still riding on the idea.

  “How do the bends fit in with Empire Building and American Optimism?” she asks, reading over my shoulder from the rubric for my Investigation.

  On a map of my mother’s moods, this one would be hiding between the softest blankets in our linen closet, building up static, ready to give an unexpected shock.

  “The workers on the Brooklyn Bridge,” I sigh. “They got the bends digging under the river.”

  What my mom doesn’t understand is that at Bly I’m a dim bulb in a marquee made of sparklers. My grades in science are mediocre at best, never mind that the thought of becoming more intimate with the human body and its unpredictable fragility makes me want to run as fast and far in the opposite direction as my legs will carry me. If your dad can start to cough a
t thirty-nine, then die two days after his fortieth birthday in the most agonizing way possible, the task of ending that nightmare should be left to people who actually like science.

  My class is crazy competitive, in a school that’s crazy competitive, in a city that’s the same. No college is going to pick me out of the bunch, offer me the money I need to go.

  “Jack hasn’t been over in a while. Everything okay between you two?”

  Another knife. There are so many in me now, the blades clink when I walk.

  “Jack’s been invaded.” I try to make it funny, because if you have a black sense of humor, maybe it is. Evie makes a mess of everything. Loses all her friends. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

  “How so?

  “Total love drone. Hormonal pod-person.” I’m on a roll. “Colonized by Alice Weir.”

  “Alice Weir?” my mom says. “Isn’t she the one with the lunatic mother? The one always in fur?”

  I nod.

  “Poor Alice,” my mom laughs.

  I try to laugh with her, but it’s a choke at best.

  “I always thought Jack liked you,” she says with a yawn. “Is he doing the Brooklyn Bridge for Investigation as well?”

  Frustration washes over me. I know she’s trying to connect, but all these little questions are hitting me like grit on a windy day.

  “We all are! It’s part of the Investigation.”

  I hang so much scorn on the word it practically scrapes the floor.

  My mom’s eyes cloud a minute, and a little muscle near the side of her mouth twitches. She looks so tired.

  “The upside is no school on Friday.” I force a smile. I want to erase the last few seconds between us. I made her feel bad. I hate it when I do that.

  “No school? Why’s that?” she asks.