I look down at my plate, which has discarded raw onions, wilted lettuce, and a quarter of a pickle left on it.
“Uh… yeah,” I say in my best disinterested-teenager voice.
“I sure am,” Cassie says, patting her flat stomach. “I’m stuffed to the gills.”
“Great,” Mason says. “Then let’s clear out.”
We walk up to the front counter. As we wait for Mason to pay, Cassie fixes a stray piece of my long hair in that absentmindedly automatic mom-ish way. She looks at me with love; I roll my eyes and brush her hand away.
After Mason leaves a five on the table for Bess, he opens the OUT door, causing the bells on top to jingle, and holds it for his wife and daughter. In the parking lot, when we’re still visible to the other diners, I stare at the ground and walk three steps behind my parents while they hold hands and Cassie laughs at nothing.
Then we get in the SUV and drive away.
three
Maybe it’s growing up as part of an elaborate science experiment, but I can’t leave a place without conducting a postmortem. So I spend the next few hours of the drive rehashing the past three years in Frozen Hills: a mental autopsy on Daisy Appleby by newly anointed Daisy West.
We moved to Frozen Hills the summer before seventh grade, after I died from asphyxia in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Well, outside of Ridgeland, if we’re getting technicaclass="underline" I was swimming near some houseboats at the reservoir and got carbon-monoxide poisoning from an idling boat.
If I was going to die again, I consider myself lucky that it happened in the summer before school started. Even luckier: Junior high in Frozen Hills was grades seven through nine, so I started with all the other brace-faced, zit-covered seventh graders. Days after I finished decorating my Juno-inspired bedroom, the school year began.
“Thinking about the past few years?” Mason interrupts my thoughts, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. He’s familiar with my system.
“Yes,” I admit. “I’m thinking about a birthday party.”
“Ah,” he says, nodding. “For Nora…”
“Fitzgerald,” Cassie and I say in unison.
“Yep,” I say before retreating into my brain.
Nora Fitzgerald.
She lived down the street from us, in a sunny yellow house with dark green shutters and a WELCOME sign on the front door. Her mom was one of those overly cheerful types who showed up with freshly baked cookies the second your moving truck appeared. Mrs. Fitzgerald’s desire to worm into our world always unnerved Cassie. Paranoid, Cassie wondered aloud on several occasions if Mrs. Fitzgerald was actually a spy for a foreign government trying to steal the formula for Revive. She said that “suburban housewife” would be the perfect cover.
Two weeks after we arrived, Nora showed up on our front porch, undoubtedly shoved out the door by her mother, birthday party invitation in hand.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Nora.”
“I remember from when you guys brought the cookies,” I said. “I’m Daisy.”
“Yeah.”
We stared at each other in silence, me thinking that she looked like a Skipper doll and wondering if she owned any outfits that didn’t match from her hair clips to her sandals, and her looking at me in my cutoff jean shorts and red-and-white-striped T-shirt like I was from an alien planet.
“Here,” she said finally, offering me the tiny purple envelope. “It’s an invitation to my birthday party next weekend.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Nora said. “See ya.”
The next weekend, I faked being sick and watched the partygoers arrive at Nora’s from the comfort of the window seat in my poster-filled bedroom. Looking back, that was probably the moment that defined Daisy Appleby. Those first weeks of school, Nora’s birthday was all anyone talked about: It was a boy/girl party, and if you weren’t there, you weren’t anybody. For the rest of the year, Nora was polite to me at block parties and in the halls at school. But by eighth grade, she was braces-less, in a B-cup, and on track to be queen of the school, and I was nothing but the weird neighbor who kept to herself. Unknowingly, I had dissed the most popular girl in school.
It made me invisible.
Not that I minded.
The Revive program is built on secrecy, and being invisible at school is never a bad thing. Even if I make friends, it’s not like I can get close to them. My family life is a facade, and we could move at any time.
Anyway, it’s not like I was lonely in Frozen Hills. I had an after-school study group and I hung out solo with one of the other members every once in a while. And I’m not one of those people who get all self-conscious about going to the movies or to see bands alone. I’m not sure when normal kids learn to be embarrassed about things like that, but thankfully, it never happened to me.
I carefully catalog three years of memories and by nine o’clock, when we pull into our new hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, I have concluded that my time in Frozen Hills was a success. I navigated junior high without any major issues. I maintained cover and managed not to raise suspicions or get too close to anyone or anything that I had to leave.
Ready to focus on the future, I tune in to the city outside the car windows.
“It’s bigger than I thought it would be,” I say.
“It’s the most populated city in Nebraska,” Mason answers.
“How many people live here?” I ask, because I know he’ll know. Mason’s a walking Wiki.
“Almost half a million,” he says. “There are actually several large corporations here….” he begins. That’s the danger of pressing Mason’s Search button: If he’s in the right mood, he’ll barf information.
I can’t help but tune out, but I’m surprised when I find my thoughts floating back to Frozen Hills. Usually, I assess and move on. This time, something is bugging me.
Was there a missed opportunity there?
“Everything okay?” Mason asks, sensing my distraction.
“Everything’s fine,” I say. “I just think that maybe—if I get any party invitations in Omaha—I might actually accept.”
four
I take a break from decorating my new room when a text alert chimes on my phone. It’s Megan, one of the kids who died with me in Iowa eleven years ago; another of fourteen living “bus kids” that make up the Revive program test group. Megan lives in Seattle, but we keep in touch. Initially, we bonded over the program. Then we grew closer, like sisters who realize they’re actually friends, too.
I tap my finger on the screen to read her message.
Megan: You didn’t post…. Everything okay?
Under the pseudonyms Flower Girl and Fabulous, Megan and I coauthor a blog called Anything Autopsy, where we dissect music, books, fashion, food, and whatever else we feel like. The format is she said/she said style—or she said/he-she said, since Megan is transgender—and if one of us doesn’t post, it’s not as cool.
I type back:
Daisy: Sorry, we had to move.
There’s a pause, and I imagine Megan’s black-lined eyes bugging out of her head. The thought makes me laugh out loud.
Megan: Again???!!!???
“Unfortunately,” I say aloud, even though she can’t hear me. Then I type:
Daisy: Again. Bees.
Megan: I’m going to start calling you Honey.
Daisy: Please don’t.
Megan: I guess daisies attract bees, too, don’t they?
Daisy: I promise to post twice this week. Setting up my new room. Chat later?
Megan: Love you madly
Daisy: Love you more
I set aside the phone and pick up the paint roller.