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California Diaries #12: Sunny, Diary Three

Ann M. Martin

For Jean Feiwel, who was there at the beginning and who is always there.

ISBN 0-590-02390-X

Copyright © 1999 by Ann M. Martin.

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

CALIFORNIA DIARIES is a trademark of Scholastic Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

First Scholastic printing, August 1999

This eBook is for educational and reference purposes only. It is not intended to infringe on or circumvent copyright. No monetary gain is made from the distribution of this eBook.

Tuesday 3/16

5:32 A.M.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to sleep late again. My inner clock is all messed up. I could fall asleep in the middle of the day, and I could be wide-awake at 4:00 A.M. I never need to set an alarm clock anymore. No matter what time I set it for I always wake up before it goes off.

I can’t stop thinking about Mom. All day, all night. Is this what’s called an obsession?

6:03 A.M.

After I wrote that, I tried to go back to sleep. Put the diary away, turned off my light, crawled under the covers.

No good.

Nada.

First all these thoughts just kept blowing through my brain. Then I could hear Mom downstairs calling to Dad. It was like some messed-up, blurry, not-quite-right scene from my childhood. I thought back to nights when I was little and sick with the flue or a cold or something. I couldn’t sleep and I’d call out and in a flash Mom would be there for me. Now I lie in my bed and listen to Mom call out. Everything is wrong with this scene. Mom is in bed downstairs, not upstairs in her own room, the room she should be sharing with Dad. And she, the adult, is the one calling out, while Dad is the one rushing to comfort her.

God, I can’t stand it.

Maybe I’ll go to school today.

6:24 A.M.

I can’t decide. Should I go to school today? I don’t want to be there, of all places, if Mom should

Let me start over. I mean, if Mom

This is too hard.

6:45 A.M.

Okay, I’m going to go to school. I’m driving myself crazy here.

We’re keeping a vigil.

A vigil. Who keeps watch these days? That sounds archaic? But that’s what I overheard Dad say on the phone last night. He was talking (whispering, really) to someone from the bookstore.

He said that yes, Mom had come home from the hospital a few days ago and we’re keeping a vigil. Sometimes, especially lately, Dad seems overly dramatic to me, so I take the vigil reference with a grain of salt.

God.

I’m being driven crazy.

Even this journal is driving me crazy. Sometimes it feels like my only true friend. At the same time I feel as though I’m chained to it (emotionally).

All right. That’s it. I’m going to go to school today. Dad will call me if anything changes.

9:40 A.M.

What a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t concentrate. I haven’t even been to close yet. I feel like everyone’s staring at me. The ones who know me well are thinking, “There she is. Poor Sunny.” The ones who don’t know me well are thinking, “Is that her? Is she the one whose mother is dying?”

Mom is dying kind of dramatically. Maybe that’s why Dad seems so dramatic these days. This is like nothing you ever hear about in real life. I thought people only died this way in the movies. Like Beth in Little Women. Just made-up people. I thought when real people died you sat around in the hospital waiting room until finally the doctor came out and said, “Well, it’s over.” And then everyone cried and started to make funeral arrangements.

My head is swimming.

Tired. No sleep.

Very mad.

10:32 A.M.

Still haven’t been to class. Not even sure what period this is.

First I sat in the library. Then it started to fill up. Moved to an empty classroom. A class came in. Moved to a spot outside the front doorway.

Warm today.

A million teachers have seen me and not one has said anything. I mean, said anything to me about not being in class. Mr. Hackett said, “How’s it going, Sunny?” like he was asking about a social studies project, and I said, “Fine.”

10:50 A.M.

Still sitting out here. No one is bothering me.

I think I can smell the ocean.

Once, when I was five, I was invited to a birthday party. Some kid in my kindergarten class was turning six. I didn’t want to go. I knew we were going to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and I hated that game. I hated being blindfolded and spun around. It was embarrassing and

humiliating, everyone watching you dumbly look for the donkey, the stupid cardboard tail clutched in your hand. And for what? So you could win a set of markers or a plastic charm bracelet? I told Mom I didn’t want to go to the party and she made me go anyway.

I told her I hated her.

11:11 A.M.

You know, this is kind of nice. I’m still sitting by the door. Just me and my notebook. That’s it.

No books. No Walkman. Don’t even have my purse. I stuck some change in my pants pocket this morning, grabbed the journal, and left.

11:13 A.M.

I didn’t say good-bye to Mom.

11:25 A.M.

I feel like I’m Alice, down the rabbit hole. Everyone here is living in a different world. I think I’m a visitor from some other place. The people here — they walk around so easily. They don’t know how awful life can be. And me — I can’t escape from it.

1:12 P.M.

Dawn found me and snagged me at lunchtime. She looked kind of wary of me, but at the same time she insisted I go to the cafeteria with her. I was expected that she would drag me to a table with Maggie and Amalia. But she led me to an empty table and we sat alone. I wasn’t going to eat anything, but Dawn handed me something. A week or so ago this would have driven me

crazy. Today I didn’t mind. I feel numb. I ate whatever she gave me. I’m not even sure what it was. A sandwich?

Saw Ducky in the hall after lunch. He actually shied away from me. Everyone else has been keeping their distance, but nobody else is doing what Ducky does. Then again, I haven’t done to anyone else what I did to Ducky. I know I was unfair — really unfair — when I called him a wimp, and said he never stands up for himself, and basically that most kids think he’s a total dweeb. But I don’t have the energy to work up an apology. Not even to Ducky.

1:22 P.M.

Back in my spot. Now that it’s later in the day and even warmer, a few kids were sitting here when I returned. I sat a little distance away from them. And they scattered. I’m like insect repellent. Very effective insect repellent. These kids could talk about almost anything — drugs, drinking. And they act so cool, swaggering around with their cigarettes in their pockets. But bring up the idea of their parents dying and they can’t handle it. And I’m the reminder of what they don’t want to talk about.

So they scattered.

And I’m alone again.

I remember this one time when Dawn, Maggie, and I — oh, and Jill. Jill was there too. Hard to believe. When was the last time I saw her outside of school? I wonder if she knows how bad it’s become with Mom. Of course she does. Everybody knows. I live under a microscope and

everyone is lining up waiting for a turn to squint into it and look at the poor odd creature exposed on the glass slide.

Anyway, Dawn, Maggie, Mill, and I were having a sleepover at my house and it was almost 4:00

in the morning and we still couldn’t go to sleep. We couldn’t even settle down. We were giggling hysterically in my room and finally Mom came in. We thought she was going to

separate us or something, but instead she told us about this sleepover she had when she was our age. Told us about her friends and the boys they talked about.

Dawn always remembers that. She mentions it a lot.

1:45 P.M.

Mr. Krueger found me. She sat with me for a few minutes. Ms. Krueger is cool, I guess. She said to me, “How are you doing, Sunny?” which isn’t so different from “How’s it going, Sunny?”

But it felt entirely different. She said it with such warmth and sincerity.

I said, “It’s really had.”

And she nodded. She didn’t say, “Well, obviously,” or anything. Then she took my hand.

“Come to me anytime. You know where my office is. And here. Let me give you my home

phone number.” Which she did.

After she left, I decided to go home. I felt all watery, like I was going to spill over.

But guess what. I didn’t. Go home, I mean. Not yet. There I was, about ready to spill over, and suddenly I felt like lead. I just kept remembering all these things.

I remembered when Mom first got the diagnosis. It was so unexpected. We really didn’t know anything was wrong with her. Mom had gone to the doctor for a regular checkup and the doctor had run all these tests, but just routine tests. No one was even thinking about the doctor or the checkup when the phone rang that day. We weren’t sitting around waiting for it to ring, waiting to hear news of some sort.

And so it was a phone call that changed everything; changed our lives. The doctor said he had noticed something abnormal in her lungs and he wanted to run more tests. I remember that Mom said, “But I feel fine.” Even so, she had to go back to the doctor, then to the hospital, and ever since, my life has been a parade of hospitals and treatments and waiting rooms. I mean, Mom’s life has been.

God, it’s hot. When did it get so hot?

You know what? I have to get out of here.

2:13 P.M.

I couldn’t stay in school. I had to leave. It was so hot in the sun and the sun made me think of sunny and sunny made me think of sunshine and sunshine made me think of how my name came from my father and my mother. All thoughts seem to lead back to my mother.

My brain is no longer my own. It’s been hijacked by Mom.

I hate you, Mom.

I love you, Mom.

I’m sitting on this rock under this tree that is halfway between our house and Vista. In third grade Dawn and I actually counted the steps from the end of my driveway to the front steps of the school. And the rock and tree are exactly halfway between.

Third grade. That was a lifetime ago. Or maybe it was someone else’s life. Did I ever go to third grade? Was I ever so young? I don’t think so. I’m old, old, old.

My friends. Dawn, Maggie, Amalia, Ducky. There for me. Especially Dawn. Ever since I moved next door to her. A long time ago.

I don’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be at school, but now I don’t want to be at home.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. The vigil.

I cut the end of school and nobody said a word. I walked out of school right under everyone’s nose. It was the easiest cut of my life.

I am so tired. Will I ever not be tired?

* * *

I wonder what cancer feels like. I asked Mom once, but she didn’t have an answer.

Just now, I looked at my watch. School’s out. Any minute, kids are going to start streaming past me. I wonder where else I can go. Where else I can be private.

All right. I give up. I know I should go home. I’m just killing time here, putting off having to see Mom again.

God, did I really write that? I did. I just wrote that I’m putting off having to see Mom again.

I am a horrible person.

3:09 P.M.

I knew it. I knew that if I came home my life would no longer be my own. And I was right.

Aunt Morgan has only been here since yesterday and already it feels like she lives here. She says she’s just trying to keep the house in order. Okay. Fine. Keep the house in order, Aunt Morgan.

But keep it in our order, not yours.

Aunt Morgan is a control freak. How can she be Mom’s sister? The first thing she said when I walked through the door this afternoon was, “Sunny, you’re not sorting the laundry properly.”

You know what I say to that? I say, “Screw the laundry.” Why is she even thinking about laundry at a time like this? It’s not as if we don’t have other clothes to wear. Considering what’s going on at our house, we could probably run around naked and no one would notice.

A horrible thought: Aunt Morgan is not married, which shouldn’t come as any surprise. But what if after Mom dies, in the turmoil, she and Dad decide they’re attracted to each other, and Dad asks Aunt Morgan to marry him and she leaves Atlanta and becomes my stepmother?

Oh my god. I can’t believe I just wrote “after Mom dies.”

3:35 P.M.

Grandma called. She and Grandad want to come by. They used to just drop by. Since when do they call first? Dad said to her, “Now isn’t a good time.” He really said that. To his own mother. When is it going to be a good time?

Also, couldn’t Dad have consulted with me? I love my grandparents. Maybe partly because they’re the only two I have left? Anyway, I wish they would come over. Grandma is all soft and powdery and understanding. When I was little I used to call her up after school almost every day to tell her what had gone on. I’d tell her everything — what I ate for lunch, who hit whom, what Dawn and I talked about on the way to school, answers I got wrong, answers I got right. I’d chatter and chatter away and she would make little murmuring noises. Every other Saturday I would spend the night at their house. I felt like a princess. A very grown-up princess.

When I was six Grandma and Grandad took me to a fancy restaurant for dinner. They let me order shrimp cocktail and didn’t mind at all when I decided I didn’t like it. Grandad ate it instead. (I think he knew I wasn’t going to like it.)

Grandma and Grandad love me enough to let me make mistakes.

So does Mom.

I guess I should go downstairs and see Mom. She was asleep when I came home, but I know she’s awake now. I can hear Dad and Aunt Morgan going in and out of her room.

More later.

4:04 P.M.

Saw Mom. We talked a little. Aunt Morgan gave us space. Dad tried to give us space but kept interrupting. Mom not really awake.