Broken (12 page)

This wasn't my first sleepless night that week, though. I'd had insomnia since the Connecticut debacle. I felt the Sandman coming on soon.

Trying to distract myself, I thought about my day. During Biology class earlier, Cece asked me if I wanted to volunteer at a butterfly conservation center in the Park. I was actually looking forward to it. Her mom was on the board so she could add my name
to the volunteer list. After speaking with my counselor, I realized I needed some extracurricular activities. Or I was going to have to try to wish my way into college.

Wishing was such a lost cause. I lost Mama to a wish. I lost Noel to a wish. Yet secretly, I wished I were falling asleep next to him.

It was then I remembered the first year I started school with Noel. All I had now were memories. I was starting ninth. Noel walked me to the dean's office that morning. I had to meet my translator. Mama insisted I get help. She said, “High school can be overwhelming.”

“I'll watch out for Milan. Make sure she finds her classes and everything,” Noel said.

“I know, you're such a good one. I just need her to get the work down. She had a translator at all her other schools and she will have one here,” Mama said.

“If I sit in the front row, I will be able to get by just fine,” I said.

“Well, let us see about that, baby,” Mama said. She rode with us to school that day. That was the first and last time we all went to school together: Noel, Dimitri, and me. I can't say I miss it.

I left that school long ago. Inside of two weeks, the kids were making jokes about me in the hallway by my locker and at lunch. Dimitri punched one boy in the face because he said people like me should be exterminated just so that the population didn't have to deal with us. Whew … It's been a while since I thought about that one. The more I was an ordinary girl, the further away the pain. Noel, he stayed with me all the time. It was sort of sweet. He was my 24/7. No matter what anyone said, he was like my armor.
Always saying how beautiful I looked and how smart I was. When the dean told Mama what Dimitri had done, I remember her swearing I would change schools right after the semester started.

Her wish didn't come true until I was in eleventh grade. I spent the second half of the tenth grade without my armor. Mama was gone, and Daddy sent Noel away. It was time I made my own luck. I started modeling and told Lisa and Daddy that my new school would be best with flexing my schedule. I had finally escaped the asylum and moved into the lion's den. There was no pressure to be cool junior year. Yet the more work I did, the more popular people seemed to think I was. Modeling was my ticket to normalcy—though it was high maintenance every step of the way.

I rested my eyes while I let go of the memories. Soon I fell asleep.

I noticed my nails were in dire need of a new French manicure when we stepped out of the car. We walked over to the zoo. “I haven't been here since my mother passed away.” I took a deep breath. I felt like I hadn't mentioned that in while. Saying it always caught me off guard. But it was true.

“I'm sorry, Milan. I heard about your mom.” Hadn't everybody?

“No worries. This town is full of places that remind me of her,” I said.

Cece stared at me. I tried to brush it off. It was the kind of stare you want to avoid—empathy laced with discomfort. It was like the stare I had seen so many times before when people found out I was deaf. They felt sorry, yet uncomfortable, as they imagined their life as mine. I guess if I still had my mom, I would feel uncomfortable imagining life without her. Honestly, I felt uncomfortable many mornings when I woke up and realized she was really gone.

“Look!” I said. Cece turned her head left, then right. “There,” I continued. Her eyes followed my finger. “Monarchs are my favorite. Do you know that they migrate south every year? Millions of them flock to Mexico and come back when it gets warmer. I saw it on a documentary.”

“You watch docs?” she asked.

I laughed. “I'm a little bit of a nerd. I think the images I see when I watch wildlife documentaries and nature shows are just breathtaking. Sometimes I feel like I'm away on vacation when I watch them. And I haven't even left my room.”

“You know what?” Cece paused.

The meeting room was a little more than a hike from the main entrance, I thought.

“You're right. Every nature show I've ever watched has been beautiful. Even if they're showing something gross, like sharks stalking prey. I still feel like it's beautiful because it's something I wouldn't ordinarily be privy to,” Cece continued.

“‘Privy'? I like that.” There was something cool about Cece. Maybe it was because we didn't have to gossip all the time. Maybe it was like … her confidence.

“You know, it's funny. I saw a monarch the other day. My mom and I were having breakfast on the terrace and I noticed one.”

“OMG! You have a terrace! What is your view of?”

“The Park.”

My mouth dropped. “Okay. This may sound silly, but I have a crush on the Park. I mean, my mom used to say, ‘Let's go to the backyard,' then she'd take me to the Park. I just love it. Any time I can, I ask Daddy's driver to drive past the Park on the way home.”

“I never thought of it like my backyard,” Cece said.

We finally arrived at the meeting room. It was kind of empty and surprisingly small. There were no windows, not that I'm claustrophobic. Just a couple of tables, a coffee machine, and a dry erase board. The desks were like the ones in Bio lab class. They were very high, with stools to sit on. It was odd. My legs didn't even fit under the desk.

Cece and I grabbed seats in the front. I neatly arranged my skirt on the seat. Cece plopped down on the seat next to me. One side of her skirt was rising high on her leg. Her knee highs weren't on evenly. “Pull down your skirt,” I told her. She looked a little mortified. “Don't worry. Sometimes that happens to me too.” I smiled.

“Good afternoon, girls,” an older woman said to us. She was taller than me. She stood up very tall, with her shoulders back. Her neck was long and beautiful. I always noticed photographers talking about long necks—the longer, the better. One photographer joked with a girl on set: He said an ostrich must have given birth to her. Her neck was very long and elegant. Later, when we wrapped, that girl and I took a car home together. She told me she thought he was crazy. If crazy takes pics for
Elle
, I can deal for a day, I said. She agreed.

The lady running the meeting was dressed in a soft summer peach shirt, a white pencil skirt, and pretty hot deep-pink kitten-heel slingbacks. Her pearl earrings reminded me of my mother. Come to think of it, she reminded me of my mother's mother very much. I hadn't seen her since shortly after the accident. It was her salt-and-pepper ponytail, and the fine freckles around her eyes that looked like my grandmother. “We're getting started soon,” she said.

“Great!” I said. She smelled like Chanel No. 5. Chanel and I had another run-in, apparently. I couldn't help but think back to the last Chanel No. 5 bottle my mother ever touched. The last night I saw her, she was getting dressed to go Daddy's firm's holiday fundraiser. Before she put on her dress, she sprayed one spritz on each side of her neck, then one spritz on her wrist, and rubbed them together.

“Come here,” she'd signed to me. I was playing in her closet all the way in the back. I was dressed in her black flapper hat and black blazer. “Smell this,” she signed. I held her wrist tightly and took a sniff. I hadn't smelled anything like it before.

“I want to wear this perfume when I grow up,” I signed.

“Take this. Put it inside your dresser. But don't let Daddy see. He won't like you wearing this. He may say you are too young. Save it until you get older.” She gave me the bottle and kissed my forehead. I carried that bottle with me the morning of the funeral in this old Prada bag she used to wear. I remember her wearing it when she picked me up from figure skating. The first winter when I really missed her in the beginning, I would sleep with the perfume and my pearls under my pillow at night. I'd somehow been able to stop doing that. I didn't believe it would bring her back to me anymore, I guess. But I certainly hadn't stopped missing her.

Cece took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. I had never seen her without them before. She was very pretty. Not that I hadn't thought so before. She just looked so different when you saw her eyes clearly. Models were pretty in pictures. On shoots, most arrived looking pretty bummy, myself included. Hoodies, ragged jeans, scuffed boots, hobo bags, dark circles hidden by oversize sunglasses. I never had dark circles. I mean it was really all lights, lashes, and lipstick. Most of my friends were prettier than the girls that I worked with. It could've been because they were nicer. Some of the girls acted like they really didn't want to talk to me at the shoots. One girl said to me, “I don't need to be friends with the competition.” For all I knew, she could have been shouting at me when she said that. She seemed to be pretty angry. The look in her eyes was contemptuous. I thought of her every time I went to an Undercover Starlet shoot. That bad attitude wouldn't get you very far. One thing the brand director said to me was that they chose me because of my positive attitude and beauty. She said I was effortlessly optimistic. I wasn't sure I knew what that meant, but I always felt like positive energy won. Another tidbit from my therapist. I was beginning to think I should've gone back. Spending the afternoon talking about my mother's death was really uplifting.

“Cece, why did you get glasses?” I said.

“I have contacts. I had wanted to wear contacts only. I didn't like glasses. My doctor suggested I get a pair of glasses to rest my eyes at home sometimes. Then when I went to pick out the frames, my mom said I should get a pair to wear to school. She said it would give me some character,” Cece said.

“What's character?” I asked.

“I don't know. I think she means I shouldn't try to be like everyone else.”

“Even without glasses, you don't look like everyone else,” I said.

“You think so?” she asked.

“Yeah!”

“Thanks.”

“Sometimes I try to think of my mom's style. Like … I don't know. I wonder what she would think of my style. I wear these pearls she brought me on my 11th birthday when I want to think of her. I kind of hope she's with me when I'm wearing them.”

“I think your mom would be proud of you. Heck, my mom was impressed when I told her about you. She said it was good to see a nice girl with a good head on her shoulders.”

“Geez! That's so nice. Thanks,” I said.

There was a little part of me that always wondered what people said about me.

I pulled my hair into a side ponytail. Cece did the same. We were like ponytail twins.

“Check out my new skateboard. Xoxo,” Merek texted me with a picture of a Tony the Tiger-looking skateboard. Orange and black weren't my favorite colors—they reminded me of Halloween. It was kind of cool, though. I tried to position my phone on my lap under the table. No luck, so I crossed my legs so that I could rest it on my leg and hide it with my knee. I was becoming a pro at texting during class. I didn't want anyone to think I was being rude, so I was very careful.

“I like it,” I texted Merek.

“Cool. That's how I hang. The orange is all me. Heading to skyline with my bro,” he texted.

“@Volunteer meeting. Have fun.”

“Save me your kiss princess.”

“So, Cece, are you dating anybody?” I texted.

“Welcome to the UBCC of New York. That stands for the Urban Butterfly Conservation Coalition. I am Mrs. Ella Perry. Please call me Ella. First, I would like to thank each and every one of you for volunteering your time to save ecosystems around North America through butterfly conservation.”

“No,” Cece texted.

“As you may know, butterflies are key contributors to the ecosystem through pollination and assisting in composting,” Ella said. I raised my hand. “Yes,” Ella said.

“I read that global warming is causing changes in the food chain and forestation, which is then causing declines in animals and insect populations. How are we going to change that?” I said.

“Breeding butterflies and supporting their natural habitats will support food chains. Butterflies assist with breaking down rotten fruit and keeping aphid populations in check. This contributes to growth in forests. These are a few of the items we are going to become aware of as we start our work this year,” Ella said.

“I had this dream about this boy I used to date. I was over him until two nights ago. Now I think I miss him,” Cece texted.

OMG! It was like the story of my life. I hesitated before I said anything. I mean Sierra was on this big thing about Merek and I being the perfect couple. “Did you love him?” I texted.

“I thought I did, but we didn't make it.”

I felt my shoulder drop an inch. “The whole biopic thing Merek is into is driving me nuts. He sends me a picture text of everything he buys. New shoes, new skateboard, new coffee order. It's just nuts. Then he's always taking these pictures of us together with our heads together, cheek to cheek,” I texted.

“Oh, no. I mean it's cute, in a way. My junior high school boyfriend, he always wanted to cuddle cheek to cheek. It made me break out!”

“Yuck!”

“That and his kissing,” I said. We both laughed quietly.

“I was in love once.” I started to type: “not anymore.” But at the sight of the words, I knew I was lying.

“Who?” she texted.

“Anonymous.”

“What? Is he anonymous? Do you know his name?” she texted.

“I don't know him anymore.”

“I was in love before,” she texted.

“Who?”