The Girl in the Park

In my dream, everyone talks except me. It’s a party, and I’m surrounded by voices. I listen. I smile. I nod. No one is actually speaking to me. But still—I want to pretend I’m a part of it.

Faces spin by in a blur. More people now, and still more. They laugh, tease, point fingers. Their talk becomes a meteor shower of sound, the words coming too fast and hard to understand.

And maybe because I am silent, I’m the one who sees her. Wendy. She’s standing in a wide-open window. The city stretches vast and dark behind her. Her toes are poised on the sill, her fingertips just reach the edges. There is nothing to hold her as she stares into the crowded room.

All of a sudden, she wobbles. Her fingers lose their hold. Now it’s all balance. Her arms flail, a foot rises. I am too far away, I can’t reach her in time.

Stop!
I yell. But it comes out an ugly blurted
Op!
People glance over, embarrassed, go back to their talk.

She’s falling!
This is
She alling!
Someone giggles. Another girl tries to hide her smile.

Desperate, I scream,
Someone help her! Thomeone elper!

Now the laughter starts. As everyone swings toward me,
pointing and snickering, Wendy falls, but no one sees. I howl,
No, no!
as I feel my heart fall with her.

And someone’s knocking at the door.

I open my eyes, see my mom standing by my bed. Still dazed from the dream, I take in my purple quilt covered in stars, Sullivan the blue whale perched at the foot of my bed, the postcard mosaic on the opposite wall. Faces, because I like faces. Greta Garbo. Edith Piaf. Lucy from
Peanuts
.

I struggle up, croak, “Hey, Mom.”

“Rain, honey, I’m sorry to wake you.”

I look at the clock. 7:16. We’re visiting my grandmother today, but even so, this is way, way early for Sunday morning. Particularly when I’ve been to a party the night before. Which my mother knows. So what gives?

Blinking, I say, “It’s fine. What’s up?”

“Ms. Geller’s on the phone. She’s looking for Wendy.”

My mom looks at me.
What is this?

I look back.
I have no idea
.

As we walk down the hall, my mom asks, “Was Wendy at the party last night?”

Wendy doesn’t miss parties. “Yeah, she was there.”

“I didn’t know she was still a close friend.”

I make a face like,
I didn’t either
.

Now we’re at the kitchen. I pick up the phone. “Hi, Ms. Geller.”

“Rain? I’m so sorry to call this early.” She’s talking fast, a little too loud.
Scared
, I think,
but trying not to be
.

“No problem at all. What can I do?”

“Well …” Big sigh, ends on a shaky laugh.
Everything’s okay!
“Wendy did not come home last night.”

Faces start flashing in my head. Snatches of conversation. Wendy surrounded by people, laughing—she’s always laughing.

I hear Ms. Geller say, “And, uh, I’m just hoping there’s a very rational explanation.” Again, the weird shaky laugh.

“Oh, absolutely,” I say.

“You were at Karina Burroughs’s party last night, right?”

“Yes. Wendy was there. I definitely saw her.”

“Was she … How do I ask this? Was she okay?”

Wendy using two hands to lift a gallon of vodka, sloshing it over a line of plastic cups.
Party time!

“Um, it was a party. But when I saw her, she was fine.”

“When did you last see her? Can you remember?”

“I left early,” I apologize. “Before midnight. So probably I saw her at …”

Hey, Nico …

“Eleven? Eleven-thirty?” I say.

“And she was okay?”

I make agony eyes at my mom, and she squeezes my hand.

“She had had some alcohol,” I say carefully. “But she wasn’t over the edge or anything.”

“Anyone she was with? A boy?”

Come be with me, Nico
.

I hate this. I don’t want to tell this woman things she doesn’t want to know. “She has lots of friends, Ms. Geller. Everybody likes Wendy.”

Even as I say this, I wonder why I’m saying it. Because it’s not true.

I finish lamely, “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But there’s no one you can remember she might have stayed with?”

“Did you try Karina? Or Jenny Zalgat?”

“Oh, yes.” Ms. Geller’s voice turns chilly. “They couldn’t be bothered to come to the phone.”

Hung over, I think. Or protecting Wendy. No—protecting themselves.

I hesitate. There is one other name I could give Ms. Geller.

I blurt out, “Nico Phelps. You could call him.”

“Nico Phelps.” A pause. She’s writing it down. “You don’t have his number?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” Deep breath. “Okay. Thank you. This is—”

“You truly don’t need to thank me, Ms. Geller. I bet Wendy calls the second you hang up.”

“Probably.” She almost laughs this time, then says, “Actually, that’s another thing.”

“What?”

“I’ve tried calling her cell phone. There’s no answer.”

Wendy checking her cell, chucking it back in her bag.
Somebody’s playing mommy again. As if she gives a crap
.

“Sounds like she’s feeling a little defiant,” I joke.

“I hope,” says Ms. Geller. “I mean, that that’s …”

She stops herself. “Anyway, sweetie, thank you. When this is over, I want you to come to dinner. We’d love to see you. It’s been so long.”

“Yeah, same. And—”

“Yes?”

“Let me know. When it all works out.”

“I will.” And she hangs up.

*   *   *

“Wendy Geller,” says my mom, pouring us both coffee. “You haven’t been friends with her in years.”

“Not since ninth grade.” I pour milk in, watch it bleed through the dark, clear coffee and turn it muddy. “Total besties until we realized, Hm, we actually have nothing in common.”

My mom nods in her pretend wise woman way. “You were very different girls.”

“Yeah. She was cool, though.”

Cleft palate. Big deal. Okay, maybe you sound a little funny. Some. Times. But you need to forget about that and speak up, girl!

Wendy is dropping frozen cookie dough on a baking sheet. Turning, she says, “Because can I say something? Most people? Myself included? Talk way too much. You. On the other hand. Listen.
And
you think. So when you do speak? You’re brilliant. So, give up the silence, okay?”

We are sitting in my kitchen at an old wooden table. My mom likes blue and white; you can see it in the white curtains, the blue tiles on the wall. A vase of sunflowers sits on the windowsill, big and ridiculously beautiful.

I tug on one of the petals. I am thrilled by Wendy’s compliment and do not know what to say. My whole life, people have been telling me to speak, and it’s just one more thing that’s wrong with me.
Rain does not participate in class. Speak up, I can’t understand you
. Years of speech therapy have helped my
s
’s, sharpened my
t
’s. But I still hate how I sound: mushmouthed and nasal. Even if people can understand me, why would they want to listen?

Wendy is the first person to tell me I might have something
to say. And she gives me this amazing present as if it’s nothing. As if it’s no big deal to tell someone, You’re cool, you’re normal. You don’t have to hide.

A blob of dough in her hand, Wendy says, “And now I have a question—why are we baking these?”

Me laughing. “Not sure.”

“The dough rocks raw, am I right?”

“You are so right.”

“She was sweet,” I tell my mom. “She had a good heart.” Then I wonder: Why am I talking about this girl in the past?
Because you don’t know her anymore
, comes the answer.

I say, “I don’t know why her mom called me.”

“Maybe because you’re the last sane friend she had.” My mom holds out the bagel basket.

Taking a poppyseed bagel, I say, “There are a few other sane people at my school, Mom.”

My mom sings opera. Like for a living. She’s not Renée Fleming, but if you’re into opera, you probably know her. Maybe it’s all that time she spends with Verdi and Mozart, but she has very high standards. One of the things she says: “If you eat junk and you watch junk, you turn into …” “Junk?” I guess. “Exactly.” Luckily she also has a sense of humor and has been known to pig out on Chinese food and
Project Runway
marathons.

Even though Wendy and I haven’t been friends for almost two years, sometimes I’ll tell my mom things I’ve heard about her. Why, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s hard to get my head around the fact that someone I was once friends with would be doing those things.

All of which is to say: my mom doesn’t have the highest opinion of Wendy.

Now I say, “It’s important to Wendy for people to like her.”

“So she becomes the kind of person people ‘like’ instead of the person she really is.”

“Ma …”

My mom reaches out and squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry. Just her poor mother was so scared and … thank you,” she says suddenly. “For not doing that to me. If you’re ever that mad at me, hit me with a frying pan.”

“Really?” I grin at the thought.

“Well, maybe a pillow. But don’t let it get to this point.” My mom shudders, picks up her coffee. “Who’s Nico Phelps? I haven’t heard that name before.”

“There’s a reason for that.” I look at the clock. “We should get ready for Grandma’s.”

“Ooh, gosh!” My mom leaps off the chair, her kimono flying.

Later, as we’re heading toward the car, my mom says, “So, what’s really going on here?” and I know she means Wendy.

I hold up my hands like,
Who knows?

My grandma lives in Connecticut. Unless she has a performance, my mom visits her every Sunday. Every other Sunday, I come. And my mom, being my mom, insists on no iPods, and cell phones turned off. Because “when you’re with a person, you should be with that person. Not distracted by five million other things.”