Liz is sitting on the kitchen counter, a Band-Aid on her knee. Monica is trying to hug her, and Liz is pushing her away.
A little while before, she had been jumping rope by herself in the driveway, humming the theme song from Arthur. The world had started coming into focus by then, the sky had grown flat and distant, and I was starting to fade.
She had jumped three hundred and sixty-eight times when a bug flew into her mouth. She screeched and tripped, her legs tangling in the rope. She fell and tore her knee open, and when I tried to help her, she didn’t notice.
She had gone inside, trying very hard not to cry. Monica sat her on the kitchen counter and patched her up, all the while telling her how brave she was. It went to Liz’s head a bit, so when Monica tried to hug her, Liz pushed her away and said, “I’m fine, Mom! It’s nothing. Just leave me alone.”
Monica’s heart broke a little bit, and she never tried to hug Liz again.
Later, I would try to push them back together, but neither would budge.
There were little gestures after that—a pat on the back on Christmas, a squeeze across the shoulders on the first day of school. But Monica was too afraid of being overbearing, and Liz tried too hard to be strong.
So there were no more hugs in the Emerson household.
CHAPTER NINE
Voicemail
Monica doesn’t go back to the waiting room. She finds a chair and drags it to the hallway outside the ICU, and her arms are shaking so badly that she drops it twice. She positions it beside the doors, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her phone.
She makes three calls. The first, to her boss, to let him know that her daughter is in the hospital and she will not be going to work, or to Bangkok that weekend. The second, to the airline, to cancel her reservation.
And the third, to her daughter, so she can hear her voice on the recorded message.
“Hey. It’s Liz. I obviously can’t answer at the moment, so leave a message.”
Monica calls again and again, and she doesn’t know why, but each time she expects a different ending.
CHAPTER TEN
Popularity: An Analysis
Kennie half trips off the bus, stretching her sleeping leg as she wobbles across the parking lot. Out of habit, Kennie looks around for Liz’s Mercedes, or Julia’s Ford Falcon (which, despite Liz’s endless teasing and the fact that Julia has access to both of her father’s Porsches, she refuses to get rid of). They always went to each other’s meets games and competitions—she had even sat through their soccer tournaments, every single one, though she never knew when to cheer. But then she remembers that Julia is buried alive in homework and Liz apparently had something else to do today, so no one is here to watch her dance.
That’s the thing about Kennie—she has always liked being watched. Whereas Julia dislikes attention and Liz hardly seems to notice it, Kennie needs it like certain other people need cocaine. She’s the kind of person who says things that make jaws drop. She likes it when people stare and talk and judge, because it means that someone is always thinking about her. It’s what popularity means to her, and Kennie, frankly, has always been popular.
Meridian is a Small Town, the kind that’s as faithful to football as religion, the kind with a number of strange habits that define us and them, the kind with an unspoken and unyielding caste system. Popularity in Meridian extends beyond high school—it encompasses the entire community, the churches and stores and workplaces. There’s a clique of ten or so families that has been around for as long as Meridian, and they have spawned nearly all of the jocks, preps, and prom court members. A much greater percentage of the town falls into the social middle: those who live in the small gated community by the country club (because the elite does not, in fact, represent the economic pinnacle of Meridian, and is just the slightest bit resentful of those who do), and almost everyone else. And then there are the shamefully poor, the newcomers, the other anomalies; it is generally agreed that this group is not to be associated with.
Liz knew which group she would be in when she moved to Meridian. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but she was—she was certain that she knew how to be happy.
The dance team takes their places on stage, and Kennie looks around the crowd again for Liz’s face, or Julia’s, and she gives a small huff when she doesn’t see either. I’m more important than homework.