You’re doing okay, I thought to myself, and it was like there was a future Annabeth saying those words inside my head.
It was nice to think there was a future Annabeth who liked me and thought I was okay. It was almost like making a friend.
You’re okay, too, I said back, and I put my head on Ava’s pillow and fell asleep.
62
WHEN I WOKE UP FROM MY nap, it was almost time to walk to Pauline’s house for dinner. I lay on Ava’s bed for a while longer, not wanting to get out from under her fuzzy blanket. I was still a little crampy and very tired, and all I wanted was to sleep some more. For a second, I thought about calling Pauline and telling her I couldn’t come. But then Pauline would tell Mom I was sick, and Mom would be both curious as to the nature of the illness and disappointed I hadn’t seen Pauline.
I got out of bed and took a few of the pills the nurse had given me. Just go to Pauline’s and get it over with, I thought. At least tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to do anything except ride a bus and sleep.
Ava must have come into the room and left again. There was a piece of leftover birthday cake on her desk, with a note that said, Call me if you need anything!
I wrapped up the cake and put it in my backpack for the bus ride tomorrow. Who knew? Maybe I would meet someone who needed a magic spirit friend, and I would give it to them.
Pauline lived only a mile from campus, but somehow the walk drained the life out of me. It felt like the day had already lasted a hundred years. I wanted to talk to myself some more; to attend to those quiet inner stirrings that didn’t happen every day. I wasn’t ready to turn outward, to engage.
It’s just dinner, I told myself. Do it for Mom.
I rustled up a smile and rang the doorbell.
63
“ANNABETH!” EXCLAIMED PAULINE, SWINGING open her front door that was festooned with a wreath and a clutch of jingling bells. “Come on in.”
Pauline was shorter than me by a few inches. She was fond of long skirts and linen shirts with wooden beads for buttons. Mom had told me that Pauline had been in Earth First! in college and chained herself to a tree. Now she was a lawyer for an environmental nonprofit and fought for the trees in a courtroom instead. When I was little, I thought Pauline was weird because she brought her own food when she came to visit us, sacks of bulgur wheat and lentils and seaweed, as if she was going on a camping trip and not visiting someone’s house. What was wrong with frozen pizza from No Frills?
Pauline and Mom went to high school together, but Pauline hadn’t lived in our town since before I was born. When she came to visit, it always used to surprise me that she knew where everything was; that it was her town, too, from a previous lifetime. It bothered me that people could have repertoires of towns; I found it slightly offensive. In my childish way, I told myself Mom and I were superior. Sometimes after Pauline’s visits, Mom would talk about finishing her paramedic training and “traveling around a little” after I went away to college. This always freaked me out. Not the going-away-to-college part, which was still a distant abstraction, but that Mom might pack up our little house and go away too. I need you here, I would say, and stamp my foot. As if Mom going anywhere would unhinge east from west, and I wouldn’t be able to find myself anymore.
Pauline’s house was small and warm and wood-paneled. I recognized a few of Mom’s paintings on the walls. There was a Christmas tree in the corner and a big, drooling dog dozing on the couch. Pauline’s husband, Lev, was in the kitchen chopping parsley.
“Leslie told me you’re vegetarian,” Pauline said. “I hope falafel’s okay. Can I get you something to drink? Water, tea, juice?”
“Just water, please.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and I sat on the couch with the dog. There was a box of records on the floor. I fingered their narrow spines. Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Ani DiFranco. Pauline’s couch was big and comfortable, with a thick blanket folded up on one end. I wondered whether Mom would have a house like this if she hadn’t had me. If Mom would have a life like this.
“So, tell me about your visit to Northern,” said Pauline, coming back with two glasses of water and a little bowl of snack mix on a tray. “Did Ava take you to Half Moon Mountain?”
I sipped my water and did my best to chat with her. Pauline still had a long braid that went down to her waist, a braid I loved to play with when I was little. When she used to visit us, we would play Climbing Trees and Building Forts and, if it was winter, Dragging the Injured Hiker on a Sled. Things were more fun when Pauline was around. When it was Pauline’s turn to be the Injured Hiker, Mom would get a wild look in her eye and we would pull the sled as fast as we could, giggling like crazy until somebody fell down or the sled tipped over.
“Do you know what you want to study?” Pauline was saying.
“Maybe forestry,” I said.
It felt like only 1 percent of me was actually talking to Pauline, and the other 99 percent was doing anything it could to acquire sleep. The pattern on the blanket was swimming before my eyes. “Take it easy for a day or two,” the nurse had said. “No sledding.” I wanted to be back in Ava’s room, curled up in her bed. It was stupid to come here, stupid stupid stupid.
Pauline was waiting for me to say something.
“Can I use your bathroom?” I said.
“Sure.”
Pauline showed me the way. I locked myself in and washed my face, trying to wake myself up with the cold water. I remembered the time in tenth grade when I’d found Noe and this girl Dulcie Simmonds from choir in the downstairs girls’ bathroom, the tiled room echoing with Dulcie’s sobs. I joined them at the sink.
“What’s wrong?” I’d said.
Noe had her arm around Dulcie’s back.
“Dulcie’s pregnant,” Noe informed me.
“What?!”
Dulcie’s face in the mirror was splotchy and pink. The paper towel dispenser was all the way dispensed. After school that day, I went with them to the drugstore and then to Dulcie’s house and sat on her enormous frilly bed while Noe herded her into the bathroom, listening to their voices through the half-open bathroom door. Laughter, too. As if this were a game, another girlish adventure. And maybe it was.
“Pee on it,” Noe was saying. “Aim, girl.” They’d exploded into giggles.
“I can’t aim when you’re—”
Giggles, giggles. I’d looked around Dulcie’s room. She had very few books, just a closet and a wardrobe and a desk covered with framed family photographs and ballerina figurines, all sorts of shoes lined up against her bedroom walclass="underline" red satin high heels, knee-high boots in black leather, blue plastic sandals, black pumps with feathery stuff on the toes. They looked like the props in a magician’s bag, the hoops and wands and handkerchiefs necessary to a life based on illusion. Mom and I had one pair of shoes each, three if you counted hiking boots and sandals for summer.
Jubilant shrieks. “Oh, thank God!”
And Noe, drily, “Congratulations. Your oven has been certified bunless.”
I smiled, imagining Noe saying that to me: Congratulations. Your oven has been certified bunless. And smiled again, remembering how Noe had informed me, later, that Dulcie Simmonds had never even had all-the-way sex, could not possibly have been pregnant, and was making the whole thing up for drama: Unless there is something really weird going on with Mark DiNadio’s tongue, in which case all bets are off.
I sat on the edge of the tub for a few minutes to rest. The smell of the dinner Lev was cooking crept in under the door. I could hear them talking in the kitchen. Just act normal, I thought. You can sleep soon.