Pieces of Us (4 page)

Katie

T
he morning after, I wake up on the floor, naked, musty blanket over me. Beagle licking my toes again. The room still spins, and I grab the blanket and run to the bathroom to throw up. So many colors in the porcelain. I let go of the blanket and hold the sides of the toilet. More keeps coming. I pull the blanket over me again and slump down on the floor and wait for the next wave.

Footsteps enter and feet stand beside me. “You mind?” asks Chris, pulling down his pants and peeing into the bowl.

Funny that he asks me now. He didn’t ask last night. Peeing must be more intimate than sex to him.

My head pounds. I feel it splitting. I shiver and push him out of the way so I can throw up again.

“Jeez, now you made me get some on the floor.” He grabs toilet paper and wipes up his pee as I continue to throw up. “I’ll get you some water.”

When he comes back, I’m empty. I take the glass and he hangs around, staring at the blanket. I pull it tighter around me. “You can go.”

He smiles. “You know … ” He walks closer, bends down, puts his hand under the blanket, touches me. “I’d say we should have another go, if you didn’t look so wrecked.”

“Go to hell.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” He winks at me.

I couldn’t have said I wanted to, could I? The night is a blur. I remember the dog. Ethan on top of me, then not Ethan. Eyes closing and opening. “Where’s Ethan?”

Chris laughs. “Yeah, he had to jet. You don’t think you’re still together, do you? Another guy might have been able to hack it, but not Ethan. You can’t sleep with a guy’s best friend and expect him to still want to be with you. There’s a code, girl.”

“I didn’t—”

Chris nods. “No, I get it. You were trashed. I told him that. Told him to give you another chance.” He shrugs. “What can you do?”

My mouth is dry. I stare at him and wonder if he’s real. Maybe I died from alcohol poisoning and I’m in hell. Maybe that’s where I was last night. Maybe none of it happened.

He comes close, wipes at the tear down my cheek. “Hey now. It’s okay. Who cares about Ethan? You can have me anytime you want me. I’m not as stuck up as Ethan. Shit, you’re almost a virgin.”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. This
has
to be hell.

“Wait,” he says, running into the bedroom. “I know what will cheer you up.”

He comes back with my crown. How is it intact? Still shiny. Still fake.

“Look, I don’t mean to be a dick, but my parents will be home in an hour. Drink some more water, get dressed, and then I have to get you home. Okay?”

I nod and dry heave into the toilet.

“And, don’t worry about me saying anything. I know girls are weird like that. I doubt Ethan will say anything either.”

I stare at the stupid crown.

“Chin up, babe. Don’t forget who you are. You’re Pyramid Girl!”

Julie

F
or more than a month now, Katie has been moping around the house playing reverse dress-up. Each morning, it’s a different combination of sweatpants and T-shirt. The only days I see her make any kind of effort is when she has cheer practice. Then it’s cheerleading skirt, ribbons, and cheer shirt like the rest of the sheep.

Mama speaks softly to her, like she will break any minute. She plots ways to get Ethan back. Ignores Katie when she says he likes someone else now, they just grew apart. It’s just high school, Mama.

Chloe says to expect more days like this. When her older sister, who’s in college, got dumped by her boyfriend, it was waterworks every day. Katie doesn’t cry, though, just walks around like a zombie. She put a big calendar on her wall and crosses out the days until the lake house in red ink.

One step closer to Sasha. One step closer to Katya.

Today, Derek is coming over to help me study again. Maybe that will cheer her up. She always got along with him. Normally, I hate when boys come here because they forget I ever existed. But Derek already knows Katie, and he chose
me
. Three weeks ago, he was quizzing me on sample problems in my room. He played it cool, pretending to trip and pulling me down on the bed with him. His lips weren’t clumsy at all, so that’s how I know he planned it.

But then I made one mistake. His kiss must have injected me with a dose of crazy, because that’s the only way I can explain telling Mama about it. She was making dinner, cracking eggs into a pan. I gave her all the details, like she was Chloe or something. “He must think I’m pretty,” I said, smiling.

She took a break from her pan and tapped her fingernails on the table. For a second, I thought she would hug me. She had
that
look, but instead she patted my hand. “If you think so,” she said. “Help me with dinner?”

But she’ll see when he comes today. She’ll see I’m not crazy and imagining things. She’ll see boys like me, just like they do Katie.

Katie

E
than has been giving me funny looks all day. So has Marissa. Did he tell her about the party? I pretend I don’t notice the two of them staring at me. Trina and Leah stop me at my locker after school and tell me I need an intervention.

“You need to stop moping about Ethan,” says Leah, like this is an ordinary breakup.

“Besides,” says Trina, her voice low like she’s letting me in on some juicy gossip, “I hear someone else likes you.” This last part she sings, like I should be jumping up and down, excited that some other boy in this hole wants to date me.

“I’ll give you a hint,” says Leah. “He’s on the team, too, and just as hot, and it will make Ethan crazy jealous.”

I get chills. I don’t care who it is. I don’t want anyone. I want to go to the lake house and start over and see Alex and be Katya.

But they’re looking at me, waiting for me to jump. “Who?” I ask, plastic cheerleader smile on.

“Chris,” they say in unison. “Can you just die?”

I thought I already did.

Julie

I
t’s two weeks before summer vacation, and Chloe is planning a pool party for after the eighth grade graduation ceremony.

When I tell Mom, her eyes bug out.

“But why? You can’t tell me she actually
wants
to wear a bathing suit.” She’s nibbling on a carrot stick, which means she’s on another diet. If she keeps eating it that slowly she’ll make it last through tomorrow, which is probably her intent.

I shrug. “Why
not
?” I don’t look at her when I say this because I know exactly why not. I know how my mom’s world works, how the real world—as she sees—it works. Girls named Chloe are supposed to be blond-haired and twiggy.
My
Chloe has brown hair that fills up with split ends too quickly. She wears mismatched pants and shirts and carries a pocketbook that’s three sizes bigger than what’s in style. She’s pudgy, and when she swims, she wears huge goggles over her glasses. Mom once said that her parents should never have named her Chloe, like someone should have looked past the baby covered in placenta drippings and figured out that the name wouldn’t suit her as a teen.

“Oh please, Julie.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t act all dumb and innocent. It’s not becoming on you.”

Here we go.

“Honestly, I feel sorry for Chloe.” Mom takes another nibble of carrot. “What kind of mother lets her daughter prance around looking like … like …
that
? You, for instance, will
not
be wearing any skimpy bathing suits. We’ll get you one of those fancy kinds that pull everything in and a little skirt to mask everything else.” Large bite of carrot and it’s gone. She frowns and opens a new bag.

Here’s the thing. My plan is to go to the party and sit on a recliner and eat chips and pizza. The thought of putting on
any
kind of bathing suit, thinning or not, is not on my agenda. And
honestly,
I think it’s cool that Chloe never cares about what anyone else thinks. People come to her parties. Sure, not the most popular crowd, but a good bunch and it’s always fun.

I open my mouth to tell my mother all of this and more. To tell her I don’t care about what people think, either. To tell her I don’t care what
she
thinks. But something else comes out instead.

“Sure,” I say, grabbing one of her carrots. “That would be perfect. Maybe a black one.” I nibble on the carrot and my mom smiles.

I smile back because I know the real truth. I’m not Chloe. I care too much.

Katie

T
hree days until the lake house and it’s all I care about. My suitcase is packed and I keep closing my eyes, hoping to fall asleep and wake up when it’s time to leave.

“Katie,” says my mother, stopping at the doorway of my room. “What are you doing? Julie is at a pool party. Why aren’t you out painting the town?”

I close my eyes again and rub my temples, hoping she’ll disappear. I don’t want parties where my mouth hurts from fake smiles and laughs. Where I can run into reminders of the past. “Home Depot ran out of colors I like.”

Mom frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Then she smiles in her inviting way. I can almost see the signals from her brain to her mouth, telling it to be kind. She sits on my bed and strokes my hair. “Something happen you want to talk about? Were the other girls jealous? It’s a way of life, I’m afraid.”

Away away away
.
Her, me, I don’t care. Just so long as I don’t have to listen.

I turn away from her, but she keeps talking. “I understand,” she whispers. “Looking like we do has its price. But it’s who we are.”

It’s all we are.
That’s what she’d like to say.
Capitalize on your looks.
I wonder sometimes if that
is
all that people will ever see when they look at me. On those days, I hold on tightest to that spot on the pyramid, the spot that people still think belongs to me. Like I’m same girl I was. On those days, cheerleading practice is all me. I cheer extra loud, smile extra wide, jump extra high. When the glitter falls, I pocket the stray pieces that cascade off my hair instead of letting them fall to the ground.

Those days, I want to text Alex and ask him to talk to me like a normal person. Like someone who knows a different Katie than everyone here knows. Not even a Katie.
Katya.

But we don’t talk during the year. There’s something appealing about having our separate worlds and lives, me knowing nothing of his Philadelphia world, he not knowing the Katie who now lives in darkness while pretending to be in the light.

My mother grows silent and leaves, I think for good, but she’s back minutes later, frame in hand.

I know what it is without her telling me, but she does anyway. “This is the tree you drew for me,” she says. “This,” she says again, holding the painting tightly, like it could fly away and take with it any remnants of her dreams, “shows me we’re the same. We think alike. You need beauty, too.”

I look at the picture in her hand and carefully trace the lines. The tree was supposed to echo Vincent van Gogh’s painting of a cherry tree. My seventh grade art teacher spoke about the strokes van Gogh used, the quality of brush, the way the tree cascades to the grass. She wanted us to draw our own version of that painting. I took away the starkness I saw in van Gogh’s painting, covered the naked, lonely branches. I painted leaves that appeared to rise out of the tree. They spread out, like they wanted nothing to do with the bark and instead clung to the branches. The pink mixed with the brown and green so it wasn’t obvious where one color ended and another began. I added cherries, too. They clung to the branches, to the leaves; some found one another and huddled on the ground. My teacher didn’t care that it didn’t resemble van Gogh’s style. She used it in an exhibition, talked about its beauty. But my mother loved it more.

She’d looked at it, speechless. “This,” she’d said, “is where we were supposed to live.” She may have said these words aloud, but they weren’t meant for me. She hugged me tight. “Stay beautiful like this picture,” she said. Then she ran out to have the painting matted.

Now I touch the frame again. Maybe she’s right. Why else would I stray so much from the assignment? I feel her eyes on my face, see her head nod.

“I know you,” she says.

No. You don’t.

Today I used my art skills to cover permanent marker in a bathroom stall. I hadn’t seen it before. I wonder if Ethan told someone, or maybe someone thought I needed a distraction from thinking about him, from moping about being dumped when I had everything they wanted.
For help with splits, call Katie Taylor. She knows how to spread ’em
.

I stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out if it was really there. Like I’d stared at Chris the morning after. Then I took out my pen and crayons from my art class and began to draw.

Branch after branch of ink and crayon to block out the words. I made the branches dark and thick and high, high, high. The words fell under their weight but did not go away.

I give the painting back to Mama. I don’t tell her about the kinds of trees I draw now.

Instead, I smile. “A pool party is just what I need.” Anything to get away.

I grab a red bikini out of my suitcase and go to the bathroom to get dressed. I leave Mom on my bed holding the painting close to her chest, imagining the perfect life for both of us within those trees.