Finding Mr. Brightside Page 3

  I take my garbage bags to his bedroom, the place in the house he most avoids. I will myself into my parents’ walk-in closet, which hasn’t been touched since that night. I think about asking my father if it’s okay that I do this, but I know his answer will be hidden underneath a mask that makes it impossible to tell if he really does care. I know that mask well, wear it every day, so I must be equally annoying to deal with.

  My mother might have been selfish with her time, but she was very generous with her things. Shoes, lipsticks, perfumes—if it wasn’t already on her person, I had carte blanche. Oh, that smells so good on you, Juliette. Don’t be a stinge—spray a little more. And definitely wear my Gucci belt with those jeans, yes? My mother climbed the corporate ladder, made her own money, so there was really nothing wrong with her always having more of everything … except that everything was never enough.

  Sharon Flynn lived in a world of scarcity, probably because her parents themselves died before she graduated high school; in response, she accumulated things, promotions, lovers. And who better to keep around as a backup than a man like my father with a large trust fund and zero desire to spend it? In other news, I need to quit googling “grief coping mechanisms.”

  I pick up a slinky black dress. The Chanel label I was once so enamored of seems so silly and pointless now. Just a word on a thing. Why are we keeping this? In case she needs a sexy cocktail frock in the afterlife? For me? I can’t even bring myself to wear my favorite pair of her least-overpriced jeans. My dad certainly isn’t going to jump up from the couch, grab an empty box and start organizing away, so I’m the default family member who has to place each item, once so essential to my mom’s persona, into a stolen garbage bag. And rather than completely lose my mind to the sadness of what I’m doing, it’s much easier to blame her for putting me in this position.

  6

  ABRAM

  JUST HEARD MY MOM SCREAMING “Oh my God!” from another room. I throw off a blanket I can’t accurately remember putting over myself and run to her bedroom. She’s inside the closet, surrounded by a gang of stuffed garbage bags.

  “Mom? You okay?”

  She doesn’t seem to be in any pain, although she’s wearing a tight red mummy dress that looks like a challenge to move around in. Dad always liked her in red.

  Mom turns to me, confusion in her eyes. “Did you do this, Abram?”

  I look down again at the bags, then up at the empty hangers that once held my father’s clothes. “Maybe?”

  “Maybe, what?”

  “Tonight’s been kind of a blur.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Strictly Sunkist.”

  My mind flashes back to Juliette. Here. In my house. Sipping from my can of soda. Staying awake through my boring stories. Watching me succumb to sleep. Bagging up my father’s old clothes?

  “Well, you’ve been meaning to go through this stuff anyway,” I say.

  Mom usually appreciates when I look on the bright side for her, but she’s determined to crack the Case of the Walk-In Closet Organizer first.

  “You didn’t invite anyone over tonight, Abram?”

  I hate lying to my mom, especially after what she experienced with Dad. Still, I’m not quite ready to tell the truth about this one.

  “I may have had a visitor, yes … but it was nothing.”

  “Was it a girl?”

  “It was a … Juliette Flynn,” I answer, finally.

  She gasps.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I saw her at CVS, and the hanging out just sort of happened on its own. Did you see I replaced your Big Red?”

  She points to the gum in her open mouth, then says, “Of all the people you could have over past midnight, Abram, when I’m not home … you choose Juliette Flynn? Are you trying to traumatize the poor girl?”

  “I thought you wanted me to check on her every once in a while.”

  “At school. Not in my bedroom closet!”

  Technically, I wasn’t awake when she was in here, but I don’t think knowing that detail will help my mom come to terms. Eventually, I convince her this discussion would be better had in the kitchen while having ourselves a snack. She can’t eat in the red mummy dress, though, and I step out so she can change.

  I’m staring into the freezer when she walks in wearing her pajamas and fuzzy white slippers. She immediately locates the bag of pizza rolls I’ve been looking for and takes over the preparations.

  “How is she doing?” Mom says quietly, staring at the microwave.

  “She’s … okay.”

  “Did she eat anything while she was here?” Mom nods back toward her bedroom. “She must’ve worked up quite an appetite.”

  “We had Taco Bell,” I say, although I don’t remember Juliette having any.

  “Well, that’s something, I guess.” Mom places the plate of pizza rolls down at the bar and starts talking about stressful topics like eating better, cooking more often, and maybe doing some sort of cleanse together. Dad was always detoxifying something from his system, testing out the latest superfood, concocting the perfect tennis-recovery smoothie, making extra trips to the bathroom. Which meant Mom and I were joining him as guinea pigs in those efforts. Neither of us really minded.

  “Hey, did you end up hitting any more jackpots?” I ask, changing the subject. I hold out my hand for an early inheritance.

  Mom covers my palm with a napkin. “Aunt Jane convinced me to play the five-dollar slots and … it didn’t end well. But we had fun.”

  “The most important thing,” I say, because she needs to hear it’s okay to have fun again, and because maybe I do, too.

  “Exactly,” she says. “And I did get you a sweatshirt from the gift shop with my comp points.”

  I smile and act like the hoodie is a thousand-dollar bill when she brings it over and asks me to try it on. The sleeves are a little short for my overgrown arms, but otherwise it’ll serve my purposelessness nicely.

  “We’re not done chatting about this Juliette situation, Abram.”

  I nod like a serious individual who faces tough topics head-on, hiding my nervous energy over the thought of Juliette and me evolving into a situation.

  After Mom goes to bed, I wait about twenty minutes for her to give up sleeping and turn on her TV, then I ease my way through the basement door into the night. I cut across the neighbor’s yard and follow the jogging path behind our row of houses straight up the hill to Juliette’s. I’m trying not to make noise, but I’ve made a loud choice in footwear and my flip-flops are smacking. I take them off when I reach the edge of the Flynns’ overgrown yard, the damp grass prickling against my feet. The blinds are all drawn except for one window on the lower level: the master bedroom, I gather, per the identical plans of our houses.

  There’s something sitting on the top of the dresser that supplants my feeling of being creepy with one of hope. Her Doritos Locos Supreme. Just the wrapper remains, she’s obliterated the rest, including the goopy innards that have a tendency to slide out of the unreliable tortilla shell. Knew she’d like it.

  Then I see her—Juliette in the window, practically flying out of her parents’ closet with a garbage bag over her shoulder. She flings it down onto the hardwood floor, swipes at the tears in her eyes, and turns back for more.

  I want to help.

  As if reading my mind, Juliette freezes, balls up her fists, and whirls around toward the window. She spots me right away, again doesn’t allow herself the luxury of being surprised. I hold up my hand like I’ve come in peace, not to stalk her. She calmly lifts two of the bags, her twiggy arms refusing to give in to their weight, and then tilts her head down and to the right, where the hill the house sits on slopes toward the doors of the walk-out basement.

  I meet her there. Neither of us speaks as I take the bags from her hands and haul them back to my house, my car, so I can deliver them to the Salvation Army whenever I wake up tomorrow afternoon. I lose official count of how many trips we make between houses. I’m to
o busy trying to grow on her, get to know her while not asking any questions, convince her there are no consequences to seeing me outside of school on a regular basis.

  No idea if it’s working.

  7

  Juliette

  JOGGING.

  A six-hour period of insomnia has passed since the premiere of my fake movie, Prescription for Love, starring me, in a role I was born to play, as “the crazy girl at CVS,” and that other guy, whom I’m no longer allowed to think about starting now. One last thought: it was sweet how Anonymous took those heavy trash bags from my hands and didn’t act like he was my knight-in-drooping-sweatpants for doing it.

  Sprinting.

  I’m home and stretching in record time. Brewing my father’s morning coffee in what he refers to as “that fancy-schmancy machine your mom bought.” (Doesn’t help if I tell him, in an edgy tone, that it’s just a Keurig.) I grab his mug and walk into his office. He’s still asleep on the couch.

  Looking down at his handsome face, the three distinct stress lines on his forehead, I make a wish to the fickle Writing Gods that he wrote a few paragraphs last night, even if they were horrid. I’ll help him smooth over the clichés; I’m great with the delete key. He stirs, opens his eyes, and almost catches wind of my affectionate expression. Embarrassed, I quickly show him a picture of his mostly empty closet on my iPhone. Then another, as he sits up to process what I’ve accomplished on his behalf. He looks relieved. And also suspicious.

  “You really hauled all those clothes out of here last night without any help?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

  “I had pharmaceutical assistance,” I say, handing him his coffee.

  “I wish you wouldn’t take that crap, Juliette. It makes you jittery, you can’t sleep, and if anyone has ADHD around here, it’s me.”

  “What? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” I walk over and try to open the window, but it won’t budge. “Why don’t you join me today, Dad? There’s this new thing everyone’s breathing called ‘fresh air.’”

  I can’t even see his mouth anymore, he’s so against the idea. I’d have more luck reasoning with the three-hole punch on his desk. Then I see the wheels turning, his mind working like mine does when it’s trying to escape the topic at hand.

  “I’m serious about your Adderall,” he says.

  “I’m serious about your air quality,” I say, from halfway down the hall.

  I go back into the kitchen and make my coffee, staring at the picture of Mom’s empty hangers. I’m not getting the hollow sense of closure that I guess I was going for. In fact, I feel more anxious than anything else, like I’ve made a mistake. No, that can’t be it—maybe I just need a pill.

  I unscrew the decoy Centrum bottle on the window ledge, taking out the CVS bottle I hid inside it last night. I pluck out an Adderall, break it in half, then decide to place both halves into my mouth, oops. I wash them down with a swig of my extra-bold, extra-black coffee. Once you go black, it’s harder to go back to getting cracked-out on anything else.

  I learned that from my mother, no stranger to CVS herself.

  ABRAM

  MOM INSISTED ON accompanying me to the Salvation Army this morning to drop off the clothes. She used the Just want to spend time with my son guilt trip on me, and it was hard to be, like, No thanks, Mom—I’m all set.

  The problem with her being in my car as I pull into the parking lot is that I have about a million extra bags in the trunk from Juliette’s house, and only a bad joke about those bags having babies overnight by way of explanation. I find a spot near the entrance and quickly get out of the car, Mom following suit. Reluctantly, I pop the trunk, and then box her out from trying to grab a bag and hoist her way to the chiropractor’s office for the next six months.

  “Abram?”

  “You’re not lifting any of these, Mom.”

  “Thanks, honey, but why are twenty more bags here than what we had last night?”

  I start poking through some of them as if searching for the answer. “They’re all the same type of bag,” I throw out there. Mom nods like that’s really saying something, but I can tell she’s still skeptical. She agrees to go inside and let them know we’re here with a sizable donation.

  I’m a few bags from getting away with not explaining myself when one of them starts to rip right in the entryway of the building, women’s clothing items leaking out the bottom.

  “Wait, are those mine?” Mom asks, rationally. She walks over and sorts through a few garments, picks up a black lingerie number with red cups, and holds it out in front of her. Not hers. She’s frowning. This is tremendously awkward.

  “I walked over to Juliette’s house after you went to bed. Saw her hauling this stuff around, so … I helped. And I’m pretty sure that’s not hers.”

  Mom drops the nightie (teddy?) when she realizes whose it was.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Not good enough, of course, but had to be said.

  She shakes her head like it’s not my fault, even though this reminder of it is.

  “It’s for a great cause, right?” she says.

  I carry the rest of our donation to the counter as Mom speaks to the clerk. I overhear her saying that the women’s clothing belongs to a “free-spirited cousin” of hers who moved to Oregon recently, the clerk nodding like, What does that have to do with the 50¢ sticker I’m going to put on all of it, regardless? Anyway, I love my mom and her free-spirited-cousin alibi.

  Meanwhile, Juliette is probably leaving for her mysterious Saturday ritual right … about … now.

  “I actually feel a little better about … everything,” Mom says on the drive home.

  “Me too, Mom.”

  She decided to keep four of Dad’s bags.

  8

  Juliette

  THIS CAB SMELLS to the point where I need to distract myself. Where did I leave off?

  That’s right, my mother and her Adderall habit. Well, she liked to refer to it as her “vitamin B12,” more so back when I was a little girl who knew something was off about Mommy but couldn’t put my finger on it. Back when we were as close as we were ever going to be. She’d get home twenty minutes before my bedtime every night and read me e-mails from her laptop in lieu of Dr. Seuss. She’d make a comment afterward, like, Can you believe what Bob from legal is saying about this contract? And I’d be all, No, is he kidding us with that, Mommy? Anyway, I was wondering … could you sleep in my bed with me tonight? Sometimes she would, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of her outraged typing. It was nice.

  As I blossomed into a grouchy teenager, we drifted apart like all non-television mothers and daughters do. Then, a year or so before the accident, Mom developed a staring problem. I wish I’d reacted more calmly to being her target. Instead, I was more like, What? Not my best phase, but I was angry. Maybe even jealous because she’d begun allowing herself the luxury of giving up on the impossible: my father, his reclusiveness. When she started asking questions like Do you talk to Abram Morgan much at school? I knew. She’d found herself a replacement, a married man right down the road who’d appreciate her for who she truly wasn’t. (It’s easy to be an irresistably, sexy version of yourself for two-hour stretches, especially around someone who doesn’t have to live with you.) From then on, the most I ever saw of her was at “breakfast,” a meal neither of us ate. We’d sip our coffee, and every now and again she’d glance at me from over her mug, probably wondering if I was going to offload my suspicions to Dad. Turned out I didn’t have to.

  ABRAM

  JULIETTE’S CAB SPEEDS down the road as I’m raking up the grass I should’ve mowed a week ago (that’s what I get for ignoring the future like there’s no tomorrow). Funny, she got a van this time. She never gets a van. I wave. She waves back but looks away while doing it. She’s been crying. Have to stop myself from going over there and making everything worse. Hey, why is the van-cab pulling into her garage?

  Juliette

  MY DAD PAID two-hundred-plus dollars to get my mom’s
clothes back from the Salvation Army, not including the bribe I just gave the cab driver for helping me unload the bags into the garage. I don’t anticipate him becoming aware of this, considering I went online and set all his bills to auto-pay a few months ago, after our electric got turned off.

  9

  Juliette

  LATER THAT EVENING, my friend Heidi keeps calling me and getting side-buttoned. I don’t even have the courtesy to silence the ringer and fake my unavailability—just send her straight off to voice mail. She deserves a best friend who doesn’t hate Saturday nights and other people.

  I decide to walk to CVS, maybe buy her a just-because-I-suck gift. She really likes those sporty headbands that keep the hair wisps from her eyes; the more vibrant the color, the better she plays tennis. I’m about to ask my father if he wants anything when I hear his fingers tapping the keyboard. I close my eyes and enjoy the sound of progress for a moment, then leave him be, quietly triple-locking the door behind me.

  I slip out into the night in my all-black track jacket and yoga pants combo, your unfriendly neighborhood rape target. I walk down to my favorite jogging path, which happens to run toward the Morgan residence, a coincidence beyond my control. It’s muggy out, the kind of late-September night that sweats on you, summer’s last hurrah.

  I take a slight right and weave along a narrower side path, drawing closer and closer to Abram’s house. Someone’s left on every single light in the place, blinds open, probably him. Didn’t he say he lives in the basement? By choice? I creep down the slope of the lawn toward the sliding glass doors of the walk-out basement. I can see the right side of his face in the room adjacent to the living area. He’s lying on what I guess is his bed, eating what looks to be pizza … on a bagel. Jesus. He’s watching a nature show—hey, are those blue whales?—and looks oddly content to be doing what he’s doing, which is nothing. He’s also shirtless, for all my ladies out there who enjoy bare skin with tiny blond hairs on it.