Fans of the Impossible Life (7 page)

She played with his hair, sticking it up in a Mohawk and then pushing it down onto his face.

“The Shyest Boy in School,” she said. “You better stop flirting if you don't mean it.”

“Who says I don't mean it?”

Mira gave a fake shocked gasp. “Are you saying you like a boy?”

“He's cute.”

“Yes. He's very cute. Like a little Chihuahua that shakes whenever someone gets too close to it.”

“Maybe he needs some friends,” Sebby said. “We can help him get accustomed to human interaction.”

“Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?” She
made air quotes with her fingers. “Human interaction.”

“If the boy finds me irresistible then there's nothing I can do about it.”

“You really want us to make friends?” Mira asked.

“It's for your own good. You have zero friends.”

“Hello? You?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but I'm going to be busy making out with Jeremy, so . . .”

She grabbed a pillow and pretended to smother him with it.

“Do it,” he said, his voice muffled from under the pillow. “Put me out of my misery.”

She threw the pillow across the bed.

“No way,” she said, “you're not leaving me here alone. Who will listen to me complain about my stupid life?”

“Your life is not stupid.”

There was a crash in the living room, followed by a scream and Stephanie shouting, “Not me! Not me!” over and over.

Sebby sighed. “My life, however, is idiotic.”

Mira stood up.

“Let's tell Tilly we're doing homework at my house and we'll go eat pizza in the park.”

“Fine,” he said. “God, I don't know why I ever come here.”

“I am sorry to say that you live here.”

“Thank you for your sympathy.”

“My pleasure.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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The St. F homecoming dance was the second Friday in October. It was the first big event of the school year, matched only in importance by the spring semiformal. I told myself that I was going for the same reason I always went to these things, to keep my dad from accusing me of not trying hard enough to make friends. Basketball games, school plays, pep rallies. I had spent most of any middle school and freshman-year events standing in a corner for an hour trying to look as inconspicuous as possible before calling him to come pick me up.

“Was it really that bad?” he would ask when I got in the car.

“Yes,” I would say. “It was.”

But even as I stood in my bedroom staring at my dresser and wondering if I should try to make an effort and not just show up in my school uniform, I knew that for the first time in my life, I wanted to go. Because I was hoping that they would be there.

This felt a little dangerous, this interest in other people. It meant that there was something that I needed, or at least wanted. It seemed to demand some kind of action on my part, and I had no idea what was supposed to come next.

We had met for Art Club three times now, and Mira and Sebby had been there each time, making jokes with Rose at the back table. But there was a distance I wasn't able to cross between them and me, and I was finding myself desperate to know what might happen if I could.

So I would go to the dance, and hope that they would be there, and hope that I wouldn't make a complete ass of myself. I was also a little worried that a nighttime event might bring out any simmering bad behavior that might be lying in wait among my peers. The dance would be chaperoned, but the formal structure of our daily lives would not be there to protect me. If someone wanted to give me a hard time, this night would provide them with a great opportunity.

My bedroom door was open and I could hear my dad and Dave in the kitchen, Dad's version of talking quietly still audible a floor away.

“I'm just glad he wants to go,” he was saying. “I really wasn't expecting this.”

A mumble of a response from Dave, whose voice rarely went above a whisper even when he spoke normally.

“But even before everything he was so resistant to these things,” Dad said.

Another mumble. I shut my door.

I didn't really have any clothes besides my uniform, a nice suit for funerals that I had nearly grown out of, and my summer cutoffs and T-shirts, now relegated to the bottom drawer of my dresser.

Dolly Parton the Cat was watching me from the bed.

“This is a bad idea, isn't it?” I said.

She put her head down on her paw.

“Dolly Parton, if you think I should stay home, do nothing.”

She looked at me and let out a small mew.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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Mira was in her room, standing in front of her closet, trying to make some decisions. She had never gone to a school dance before, even at MouVi, and Sebby had only convinced her to go to this one because he thought it would be funny.

“I think you and I have different definitions of what
funny
means,” she said to him.

Her closet was overflowing with her once victorious thrift-store finds that now went neglected five days out of the week.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered to them.

She called Sebby and put him on speakerphone.

“I'm stuck on the outfit,” she said.

“What have we got?”

“I mean, anything's an option. They're all crying out to be worn.”

“Well, it's homecoming. Is there a theme?”

“Yes, the theme is stupidity. I can't believe you're making
me go to this.”

“Something about school spirit? Cheerleaders?”

She rooted through her closet, dresses falling off their hangers as she went.

“How about the rayon magenta stripe? Sort of fifties cheerleader deconstructed by the eighties?”

“That and a pom pom in your hair.”

“I don't know if I'm looking for that much attention.”

“Live boldly, woman!”

“Yeah, yeah.” She hung up on him.

Yes, the magenta stripe would do. The pattern of small vertical stripes was interrupted along the chest with a diagonal pattern of thicker stripes. A high rounded neckline and long sleeves with elastic around the wrists, elastic waist, and an A-line skirt. It had been a great find. Seven dollars at Arc's Family Thrift last spring. Black Converses, gray tights, and a black headband to finish off the look.

She sat at her vanity in front of the mirror that was mostly covered with scarves and necklaces. A hand mirror that she used to see the back of her head was propped up on the table. She was pinning her hair up around the headband when her phone rang. The caller ID said “Sister Woman.”

She picked up the phone. “Hey, Julie. What's up?”

“Sister Woman” was a joke from when her older sister had gone through a phase of being obsessed with Mormonism when she was ten years old after watching a PBS special about polygamy (Julie had been the kind of ten-year-old who enjoyed
spending her time watching PBS specials). She had misunderstood the central concept, thinking that it was a society based on a bond between biological sisters, and had sentimentally started calling six-year-old Mira “Sister Woman.”

Now Mira could hear the crackling of wind on the other end of the phone. It was possible that it was generated just by the fact of her sister being unable to stop moving. Julie couldn't tolerate even the air around her staying still.

“Do you know where Dad is?” Julie said without introduction. “He's not answering his phone.”

“Probably at the office,” Mira said. “He's not usually home before nine.”

“Are you serious? You have to talk to him about that, Mira. He can't be neglecting family time.”

Before she went to college Julie had always been the organizer of “family time,” essential to the health of any successful family, according to her. Like many things with Julie, “family time” did not happen because it was something that you wanted to do. It happened because it was dictated by some outward force of propriety.

Now that Julie was at college (not just college, of course,
Harvard
) there was no one left to tell them how to behave. For the past year Mira and her parents had each been occupying their own separate worlds inside the same house, only beginning to realize just how dependent they had been on instructions. There were still family dinners that included her father when he got home in time, but those moments felt like echoes of a
shared history. Their life now mostly consisted of Mira in her room, her mother in her computer nook or doing the crossword puzzle at the kitchen table, and her father trying to relax in front of the TV when he finally did get home, roommates in a slowly deflating house.

“I think work's just been really busy for him,” Mira said.

Julie let out a long sigh of disappointment.

“I'm sure if you email him a nightly family itinerary he'll follow it,” Mira said.

“I know you're joking, but you seriously need to be monitoring this situation.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“You guys have to be spending time together as a family, Mira.”

“Well, we're not a family without you, Julie,” Mira said sarcastically, only realizing after the words came out that it hit a little too close to home.

“All it takes is a little effort.” Julie's voice had the unmistakable touch of condescension in it that her extra four years always afforded her.

“I'm just trying to keep Mom and Dad happy by going to school,” Mira said, “so that's about all I have the energy for at the moment.”

“I thought you were at St. Francis now.”

“Yeah. I am.”

“So, isn't it easier?”

“What do you mean?”

There was either a particularly strong gust of wind or another sigh on Julie's end.

“Are you walking through a wind tunnel?” Mira asked.

“Just headed to the library. I thought you left Mountain View because you were having trouble.”

Mira put down the bobby pins and let her hair fall.

“St. F isn't easier, it's just different.”

“Well, Mom says you're doing really well with this new diet and everything. That's so great that you're trying to lose some weight.”

“It's not about losing weight,” Mira said. “It's a food-allergy diet.”

“Oh, she just said diet.”

“Food-allergy diet.”

“Well, that might help you lose weight, right?”

“That's not the point of it.”

“It couldn't hurt, though.”

Mira didn't say anything. She rested her forehead in the hand that wasn't holding the phone.

“Hello?” Julie said.

“Yeah, I'm still here,” Mira said.

“What, are you mad that I said that? It's true, Mira. I'm sorry to be blunt, but you've gained a lot of weight in the past few years and that's probably why you haven't been feeling well.”

“That's not the problem,” Mira said.

“Well, what does your doctor say?”

“It's none of your business, Julie.”

“If it's none of my business, then why are you telling me about it?”

“I'm not. I'm not telling you anything, because you don't listen.”

Now it was Julie's turn to be silent. Another gust of wind blew through her end of the phone.

“Look,” Julie said finally, “I'm about to walk into the library and I'm just trying to get ahold of Dad for a quick question about my constitutional law lecture.”

“Why don't you ask Mom? She's home.”

“Right,” Julie said. “I mean, Mom didn't specialize in constitutional . . .”

“I'm sure she studied the same things that you are.”

“No, of course, yeah. So I'll just call Mom on the house phone then.”

“Great.”

“Okay, take care, kiddo!” The forced cheer in Julie's voice was unmistakable.

Mira hung up the phone and let it fall onto the table, accidentally knocking the propped hand mirror over, so that it lay there like the surface of a small and unflattering pool of water. The reflection of a double chin stared up at her.

Mira's body had not been her friend for a while now. In the hospital they had tried to teach her that she could help her body by helping her mind. But almost a year later she still harbored a belief that it was against her. It wasn't just about being bigger, it was the exhaustion that seemed to come out of nowhere.
The way she felt literally weighted down to her bed in those moments. So she had decided that because she couldn't love her body, she would try to love what she put on it. The clothes, the makeup, the scarves, everything in this room was an attempt to keep self-loathing at bay, to not give up when something that fit yesterday no longer fit today.

She looked down at the mirror again. That was her sister all right, a reflection set at an unfair angle, shoving all of her flaws right in her face. Julie the Perfect. Julie the Achiever. The Thin. The Athletic. Mira had always been bigger than Julie, even when they were little. And obviously to her sister this was just another sign of weakness.

She propped the mirror up again so it sat vertically on the table, now reflecting all of her face back to her. She picked up a bobby pin and half-heartedly stuck it in her hair. “Ugly,” she thought, looking at her reflection, as if something inside her was naming itself against her will. She took a deep breath. It was just a conversation with Julie. It was nothing. She was meeting Sebby in half an hour at the dance. Everything would be okay.

She picked up a purple-tinted lipstick that matched one of the stripes in her dress. She could feel the familiar heaviness in her shoulders, the sensation that something was pushing down on her. She wanted to lie down in bed and cry until the feeling stopped. She wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

No. She would put on lipstick. She would leave the house. Sebby would be waiting for her.

“Everything is fine,” she told herself.

Her mom dropped her off at school at eight. Sebby showed up on his bike ten minutes later, looking impeccably messy as usual in a worn gray hoodie he had found during another trip to Arc's. He examined her outfit.

“I stand by my recommendation for a hair pompom,” he said.

They headed up the hill to the entrance near the gym. Around them people were moving in packs that had congregated beforehand to secure their group status in the face of such an important social ritual. Through the crowd streaming into the building, Molly Stern bounded up to them wearing a skin-tight beige dress. She looked basically naked.

“Mira, we missed you at the diner,” she said, grabbing Mira's arm just a little too hard. Her main concern seemed to be steadying herself. She had invited Mira to go to the diner with the girls after school, “And then, you know . . .” “You know” seeming to be code for drinking wine coolers in the parking lot, and Mira respectfully declined. She couldn't imagine a less enjoyable way to spend an evening than downing pink liquids with the same group of girls she was barely able to tolerate at lunch every day.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Mira said. “Sebby and I had some things to do.”

Sebby raised his eyebrows at her lie.

“Sebby, this is Molly Stern,” Mira said.

“Oh, Molly Stern.” He took her hand, relieving Mira from supporting Molly's entire body weight. “I have heard so much about you.”

“Really?”

Mira followed behind as she heard Sebby tell her, “You know Mira just talks about you all the time.”

Queen of the Table Sarah and Number Two Anna were hanging back from Molly.

“She is such a lightweight,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.

Music blasted out from the open doors of the gym. In front of them Molly was making a noble effort at crossing the threshold without losing her balance.

“Omigod,” Sebby said in his best Valley girl voice as Molly teetered away from them. “We're going to have so much fun with your best friend Molly at this dance.”

Mira pushed him inside the gym. The echoing temple to forced games of volleyball had been transformed into what looked like someone's slightly skewed idea of a high school dance. St. F was so small that traditional rites of passage often ended up seeming like a miniaturized version of the real thing. A machine next to the DJ booth was shooting out rays of colored lights onto the small group getting the dancing started early, while the others clung to the edges of the room, testing the air. It felt like a setting for instant nostalgia, a place where big moments of lost innocence should take place.

“Wow,” Mira said, looking around, “super fun.”

“When do they bring out the pig's blood and dump it on the
head of the awkward girl with telekinetic powers?” Sebby asked.

“Not until ten, I think.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do until then? This was not well planned.”

The kids dancing in front of the DJ booth looked strange out of dress code. Carefully put together T-shirt and jeans ensembles had been crafted to prove that they were just like other people. No ties tonight. No stifling wool kilts. This was the students of St. Francis desperately wanting to prove to each other that they were normal.

Talia came in the door behind Sebby and Mira, her long braid hanging down the back of a shapeless floral patterned dress.

“Hi, Talia,” Sebby said, delighted for an opportunity to engage with the most infamous member of Art Club. “Done any good sketches lately?”

“Excuse me?” Talia was distracted, glancing past him to the rest of the room.

“Oh, are you looking for someone?” Sebby asked.

Mira tugged on his arm, begging him to end this interaction.

“Yes,” Talia said. “What are you saying about sketches?”

“Just, because of Art Club,” Sebby said. “Do you sketch in charcoal? I prefer pastels myself.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Talia said.

“No, I'm serious, I would love to know more about your process.”

She looked at him, sizing him up.

“Did it ever occur to you that's it's inappropriate to spend all of your time at a school that you don't actually attend?” she said.

Sebby feigned a look of shock.

“Why, Talia,” he said, “I thought you would be happy to see me!”

Talia turned to Mira.

“Have you seen Peter?” she asked.

“No,” Mira said. “Why would Peter be here?”