I stayed up again all that Friday night, approaching fifty hours awake, and snuck out of the house the next morning to walk to Zumi’s. I’d spent that entire second sleepless night plotting how we could stay friends and I had to get to her before Annie did.
I knocked on the Shimuras’ door, oblivious to the fact that seven thirty on a Saturday morning was way too early to be here. Luckily I’d become a common presence and Zumi’s dad was already headed out; he often worked weekends on rental properties he owned. He frowned while he shuttled me to Zumi’s room, telling me to be quiet since Zumi’s mom was still asleep.
*
I sit on the edge of Zumi’s bed. She doesn’t wake up. I bounce. I whisper her name. Louder. I put a hand on her shoulder and rock her.
Her eyes open, bleary.
“Mel? What’s going on?”
Where are all my plans from last night? I guess I was just thinking around and around what I wanted: to stay friends with Zumi. That means she has to break away from Annie, too, but a voice in my head keeps saying that’s never going to happen.
“Annie and I aren’t friends anymore.”
“I know, she told me last night.” Zumi sits up and rubs her eyes. She’s wearing the ‘love pirate’ pajamas I gave her on her last birthday: cutlasses, arrow-pierced hearts, and Jolly Rogers. “Where were you all afternoon?”
“I … I rode up to the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“No you didn’t.”
“It took hours. And I had to walk here since my mom took away my bike. What’d Annie tell you?”
“Why’ve you been so weird? Ever since I got back from Thanksgiving. And hard to find. Annie, too. What’s going on?”
“You were away at your grandma’s. I got tired of Annie being such a bitch—”
“Annie’s not—”
“She is! She always has to have everything her way. She treats Connor like dirt.”
“He doesn’t care.”
“That doesn’t make it okay! She’s mean and treats you like dirt, too.”
“No she doesn’t. What’s gotten into you—”
“I just don’t want us doing what she says all the time!”
“I don’t do whatever she—”
“You do! Tell me one time you didn’t.”
“I …”
“See, you can’t! You always do what she says.”
“I just like the same things. She doesn’t order me around like Connor.”
“See, you just said it! She says what she wants and if we don’t do it, she … she picks at us, saying little bitchy things till we do.”
Zumi shakes her head. She won’t look at me.
I feel her slipping away. “Did Annie tell you not to talk to me?”
Zumi rolls her eyes and groans. She pulls her knees up and drops her head down on them and disappears behind her hair.
“She did, didn’t she?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Look at me, Zumi! Look at me!”
She doesn’t.
“You’re … you’re my best friend! How can you believe her instead of me?”
“She’s my best friend.”
My heart stops.
“Zumi, I … I … I …” I can’t talk straight anymore. And it’s not just my tongue—it’s like my brain is stuttering.
“She said you’ve been going behind my back. That you were glad I was finally the one gone for a week this time.” She lifts her head and looks at me. “Were you?”
I want to shout NO! but I can’t. It feels like a hand is squeezing my throat. I shake my head.
“Say it, Mel,” she whispers. I’ve never heard her sound like this before, like she’s pleading. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t say those things.”
I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe. I’m getting dizzy. All I can do is shake my head harder and it makes me dizzier.
Her face pinches and she drops her nose to her knees again.
“I don’t get it. Everything was so great.”
I reach out for her arm—
The door swings open. Standing there is Zumi’s mom in a dark red robe.
“Zumi? What’s Mel doing here? Why is she crying?”
I leap off the bed. Zumi’s mom tries to stop me—I dodge and run down the hall.
“Mel!” she calls. “Honey, wait!”
I yank open the door and run outside, over the porch, across the lawn, down the street …
*
Four hours later I was in a hospital. The kind where everyone’s in chairs instead of beds.
I’d been ramping up since Thanksgiving. Dr. Jordan later said he’d seen me acting strange and was keeping an eye on me, and when I didn’t show up at the Silver Sands that Friday afternoon, he told Grandma Cece, and she told Mom, that I probably had bipolar disorder. Like HJ. Like Nolan.
That’s what Mom had just heard when she found out I’d ridden my bike alone twenty miles up the Great Highway to the Suicide Capital of the World.
Then that Saturday morning, when I burst into the house after running home from Zumi’s, Mom was on the phone in a panic. Zumi’s mom had called and now Mom was calling everyone else we knew, looking for me, and was about to call the police. That solo run was the last time I got to be alone for more than a year.