“Well, you better go catch up with your partner in crime,” I say.
“Nah, I’m here with you. He’ll wait. Let’s talk through this.”
I love her. “Thanks, Ash, but I think I’m tapped. I’ve got to get used to this ‘being vulnerable’ thing in small chunks.”
She cocks her head. “You sure?”
I nod.
“All right. To be continued,” she says, giving me a quick hug, then opening the fire door.
“But Asha?”
“Hmm?”
“Want to sleep over? If you can get away, of course, from all the mustache kissing.” I am sort of curious to know what it feels like to kiss a mustache. Another thing we can talk about when she comes over.
Now the smile on her face is open and easy, and I can tell we’re back in sync. “Yeah, sounds good.”
Phew.
I get home to an empty house. Good. I need some time to think, not talk. I drop my stuff by the front door and head straight into the pantry for a sugar fix. Mom has recently stocked it with healthy crap like chips made out of chickpeas and quinoa and little bags of snack mix that look deceptively full of fun surprises but are really mostly dried cranberries. I can’t find a single cookie. I give up on the dessert shelf and rummage in theback of the baking box. Score. I bring a whole king-sized bag of M&M’s upstairs with me.
The late afternoon sky is so gloomy that it’s already pretty dark in my room, so I turn on the twinkle lights I’ve strung along the top of the wall. I feel like over the last few days I’ve been gathering experiences the way you would fill up a laundry basket. My brain is a big wadded-up jumble. I need to shake everything out and fold it into piles.
So I’m definitely in trouble, but unlike how I usually feel when I’ve done something wrong, spikes of shame aren’t stabbing me in my rib cage. I should have said hard pass to a beer on a school-organized field trip, to be sure, but it feels more like a mistake than a crime, like maybe I don’t need to keep beating myself up about it. Especially since my parents aren’t laying on the disapproval particularly thick. And the fact that I don’t have to hide it from Asha is the best part. I’m going to check “behavior code violation” off my list of things to keep sweating.
My convo with Asha makes me feel like I’ve entered an antigravity chamber. I am lighter, floatier. What the hell did I think would be better about keeping her at arm’s length, about hiding things from her? It seems my hands are mimicking the organizing happening in my mind, because without really thinking about it, I’ve poured out a pile of M&M’s and sorted them by color. Now I eat all the brown ones, just to get my least favorite color out of the way, and line the others up like a rainbow.
They’ve probably done scientific studies somewhere about chocolate and dopamine and concentration, because chocolatehelps me think, no doubt. It all started with Richard; I knew that Asha didn’t really approve of Richard. And neither did Mason. I need to start seeing things the way they do. Shit—understandingthings the way they do. I hate that I use metaphorical vision words all the time.
And it wasn’t just the pheromones that clouded my judgment, either, because I also misjudged Amanda. Like, by a lot. So someone I thought was amazing was actually a douche and someone I thought was a supervillain was actually just trying to be my friend. Who else am I getting wrong? Am I gettingmyselfwrong? Am I worse than I think, or better? Why are human beings so freaking confusing?
I’ve even been getting a ghost wrong. I thought Mason was being mean when he materialized in front of the car, but he was trying to keep me safe. I can’t be too mad at myself for misunderstanding that one, though. His method was pretty rough. Rough, but effective.
He was so calm when I told him about the RP. It didn’t seem to change his view of me at all. Same with Asha. I guess people aren’t as into perfection as I think. Maybe that’smyproblem.
The red M&M’s are all gone now, too. Coming up here without a big glass of milk was a tactical error. I’m in chocolate overdose mode, so I scoop up the rest of my rainbow and dump it back in the bag. Except for the greens. The greens I put in a little pile next to my alarm clock on my nightstand, for later.
As I pad downstairs to hide the depleted bag back in the baking box, I think again about my last conversation with Mason,about why he’s here. He thinks I’m wrong, but if he’s not here to help me, then what’s my part in all this? Why keep haunting me or whatever? I think about Richard and Amanda and Asha. Not everything’s about you, Hattie.
Wait. Maybe that’s it. It seems glaringly obvious in retrospect, but what ifI’msupposed to helphim? He said that the “almost living” part was the punishment, that it felt excruciating. Yep. Makes total sense to me. I know how painful being powerless is on a wide variety of levels. But maybe I could give him some power by acting on his behalf, by doing something that he would do himself if he had a moment to be fully alive again. I’m not sure what exactly he would do, but I have an idea where to start.
For the second time in a day I’m standing outside a door with my stomach twisting about what’s on the other side. Below all that, though, there’s a little nugget of calm. This is the right thing. I ring the bell.
The porch light comes on and Mrs. Leary appears. Her makeup is perfect, her expression blank and inscrutable. “Hattie. Come on in, quick, it’s freezing out here.”
Well, she didn’t slam the door in my face, so we’re already winning. She takes my coat and hangs it on a row of hooks screwed into the wall. Mason’s favorite baseball cap is hanging on the far hook. I half expect it to burst into flames from my sheer awareness of it.
“Thanks, Mrs. Leary,” I say.
“Hattie, I think I’ve told you. Please call me Cat,” she says, wiping her hands on her pants. Does she think my coat has germs?
“Is Mr. Leary here?” I ask, glancing in the living room. At least he likes me.
“No, he has choir tonight.” She puts her hands in her pockets and cocks her head, waiting, lips pressed together.
I should have brought food or flowers or something; that would have justified my awkward appearance. Instead, I fib. “Sorry, Cat. I was just walking in the neighborhood, and I realized I hadn’t come by and, well, I probably should havealready, which is my bad.” On my way here, I thought I could help her find some peace, somehow, for Mason’s sake. Let her know that Mason is okay. But how can I possibly do that when she’s looking at me like I’m here to sell her something? Why should she believe anything I say? I thought the words would come to me and I would know what to say, but her stiffness is so unsettling.
