Rewrite Redemption (17 page)

Lex had the outfit she’d picked out for me the day before, laying at the foot of my bed. I eyed it warily. She stood there, hands on her hips, waiting for my protest. I didn’t want to break the streak of “good” so I put it on.

“This is awful clingy,” I said, hesitantly.

She handed me a lightweight, waist-cropped hoodie, knowing I couldn’t do it cold turkey.

“Where are my glasses?” I asked, searching.

“I hid them,” she said smugly, pulling on her own clothes.

“I need them.”

“For what? You have 20/20 vision.”

“I‘m exposed.”

“Get over it. Seriously. Look what it did to Sam to see you out of your shell last night.”

Right, play the guilt card. Surely my fugitive clothing wasn’t what kept him sick. Jeez, if it would fix Sam, I’d walk to school naked. Okay, maybe not naked…but what if that fixed him? That was stupid. No one was making me choose between Sam being okay and having to walk to school naked. What a dork! Still, images of me walking around school with nothing but glasses made me shudder. I’d have nightmares for weeks.

“Earth to A.J.…”

“Oh, sorry…my brain got off on a really stupid tangent. Glasses,” I said, deleting the horrific images from my mind.  

“Got it covered.” She handed me a pair of trendy sunglasses.

“I don’t know…” I tried them on and looked in the mirror. They covered the eyes of the girl in the mirror, but they didn’t hide her face. My regular glasses were a mask. They hid my identity. “I don’t know if the teachers will let me wear these in class. Mine are…well they’re supposed to be regular glasses, just tinted, because of my ‘eye problem.”’      

“They’re perfect,” Lex said, putting them on me. “Transition lenses. You can do this. Besides, this is just a test run. We’re just going to the mall.”

“Guys, food!” Ipod yelled out the kitchen slider.

Lex made me twirl so she could see the whole package. “You’re going to like this new guy, and I want you to look good when you meet him. I have plans.”

“I just want to know if he’s like me,” I said. “The last thing I need is a guy. I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with one.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see….” She grinned at me suggestively.

“You, Ipod, Sam, and saving this house,” I said adamantly, “are all I care about.”

She just smiled as if she knew a secret.
Whatever
. I was already on overload. I didn’t need more complications.

We climbed down the ladder and crossed the yard to the scent of hot maple syrup. Ipod was right. Sam had a huge stack of pancakes on the counter, sausage on the stove, and the table was even set. The yellow kitchen seemed sunnier somehow. Sam was freshly shaven, wearing a blue shirt I didn’t recognize. He was even drinking actual coffee from his mug.

Had hell frozen over? Were pigs flying around the room? I raised my eyebrows at Lex and Ipod. Lex shrugged her shoulders, and Ipod grinned and snagged a sausage. They smelled heavenly.

“Morning, Sam,” Lex stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “This smells yummy.”

“Morning, Sweetie,” Sam said, beaming at her. “Good morning, Autumn.” He held out a plate and kissed the top of my head.

I took the plate, trying to move past speechlessness.

“Killer sausage, Sam,” Ipod said, building a bridge across my awkward silence.

“Yum, pancakes,” I said, finally, sitting down at the table. It was all a little unsettling…nice, but still…

Sam brought plates for Lex and Ipod, and then one for himself. I doused my pancakes with actual hot maple syrup. I couldn’t remember Sam eating a real breakfast in years—not since
before
. I picked at my food nervously, but Lex and Ipod attacked theirs. Even Sam seemed ravenous.

Me, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You look exceptionally lovely today, Autumn,” said Sam, with his mouth full.

Lex winked at me. “See,” she mouthed.

I knew she was trying to snag me into the collective delusion that things were fine, that this was just another Judy Blume moment in our sweet, little Hallmark life. I smiled warily at Sam and took a breath. Who was I to argue with Hallmark?

Delusional or not, we needed moments like this. I couldn’t believe that the simple change, okay, massive change in my appearance had so much power. I debated bringing up the house, but no way did I want to wreck the moment. Whatever it was, I wanted to hold on to the good while I had the chance.

Suddenly I was hungry, not just for the good but for the food itself. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had pancakes. I shut the paranoia closet and dove into them. Ummm, spongy, buttery maple infused my mouth with flavor. I closed my eyes, melting into the sweetness. I inhaled the savory smell of sausage and the sound of my family talking and…

“Most excellent breakfast, Sam,” I said. I smiled at him.

He smiled back and reached over and touched my cheek like my mom used to. Lex hooked her ankle around mine under the table and swung it back and forth. Ipod ate enough to feed an army. And we all sat around the table, stuffing our faces and beaming at each other.

Like a real family.

Too bad no one was filming it, because we could have been a freakin Hallmark commercial. At least for that moment in time.

I sent this text to my friend, Daniel, who was the drummer in my band.

Am still hating life. The weekend sucked—you don’t want to know how much. If there was a suck-meter, it would have exploded.

This came back:
Bummer to be you, man. Every time I bang my drums, I send up a shout for you to the guy upstairs, because you be having some God-awful luck. He needs to give you a break. That’s what I think.

I could just see him sitting there, size twelve’s on the cluttered coffee table. He’d be thumbing away on his phone and bobbing his head to some reggae tune in the background. His wiry, black braids would be poking out every which way, and his drumsticks would be within easy reach. The only flaw in this picture was that he was in Seattle and not here. I really missed having him around.

I sent this back:
You have no idea.

Daniel
: You need to meditate, man. You need to get in touch with your inner self. Play some music. I miss that sweet, mellow bass of yours. The band’s not the same without you. Come on home, man. You can bunk with me…finish high school. You gotta do that, man. The music. Come home for the music.

Me:
No can do, Daniel. I can’t leave them alone. It’s mad crazy here. I’m the only sane person in the house.

Daniel:
And you’re questionable at that.

Me:
Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Daniel:
Hey, I live to serve.

I tossed my phone on my desk and cracked the door a couple inches to assess the situation. Devon’s game blared full blast which meant Mom was probably hiding in her bedroom. Dad had gone to the office early, even though it was the weekend. Predictable. He couldn’t handle warzone. Devon really knew how to clear a room.

I shut the door. At that point, I was holding on by a thread. It wasn’t pretty. I needed to find a way to deal with the fact that I was now treeless. Normally, I was good at storing energy. A hit like I got at the Shadow’s house would hold me for a week…a month. But lately, I didn’t seem to be able to hold on to anything. I’d jogged home from her house, feeling all warm, and buzzed and rejuvenated.

But the minute I opened the front door, the desperation hit me
.
Now, my skin crawled and I was amped up. Not even music could mellow me out. As the hours went by, it only got worse and worse. The good me and the screw-up me warred all weekend long. The good me wanted to not be frickin spying on her. But the screw-up me just wanted to feel better. The critic lectured nonstop about being a stalker. Intuition told me I was out of control.

But I didn’t cross the line into the back again. Even I have my limits. Well, except for the
one
time, but since then I’d stayed behind that frickin line. I compromised by basking in the energy that escaped into her front yard, telling myself I was just relaxing from a run, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was bad enough I kept ending up at her house like some heat-seeking missile. As soon as I soaked up enough calm to think straight, I left.

The rest of the night I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. Then I’d limp home exhausted, fall into bed, and sleep the day away. I knew it was cheating, tapping her energy to get me through withdrawal from my redwood.

But I was desperate.

The weekend lasted a month. I don’t think I took a shower until Sunday night. I don’t remember eating the whole weekend. Of course, no one noticed that I didn’t shower or eat. No one bothered to find out if I was still alive. No one noticed that I slept all day.

Dreaming.

Playing the video of her in my head…over and over and over and over.

The weekend was the best I could remember. However temporary, things were good. Warning signals about things being
too
good surfaced periodically, but I shoved them back in the anxiety closet. For the first time, I actually wanted to try out being a normal girl…just to see what it felt like. I didn’t know much about that, but I had Lex to show me the way. That meant we had to go to the mall.

I sucked at shopping—I’d never really done much—but Lex had a shopping Ph.D. She bought me several outfits with her credit card’s substantial clothing allowance. The Chihuahua didn’t hurt for cash, and she liked Lex to look good in case they ran in to each other in public. Plus, her dad sent “guilt” money once a month since he only actually saw Lex once a year. She was psyched that I’d finally relented and let her make me over. She enjoyed dressing me up, but after a while, even I began to get a glimpse of a girl underneath all the layers of disguise.

Imagine that.

Ipod and I watched another movie with Sam on Saturday night—Lex went to a party. On Sunday, we pitched in and cleaned the downstairs. It was one of those incredible, Colorado, spring days, and we had all the windows open. The fresh air energized us, and we sucked up the dust and tossed out the piled-up trash. There were fewer bottles in the recycle than I could ever remember.

Lex made chocolate chip cookies, and the smell permeated the house. Sam got high on the aroma, put on some music and slid across the wood floor in socks, playing air guitar, doing an impression of Tom Cruise from some ancient movie. The three of us were ROFL. None of us had ever seen Sam get silly before.

We were high on it the whole day.