I look up at her, confused. “Take me out where?”
“On an adventure,” she says, a self-assured smile on her face. Although, I’m not sure that she has any other kind of smile. I think Madison H. came crawling out of her mother’s womb annoyingly confident. “That’s what I came to tell you. I’m going to be your official guide to all of the things you’ve missed the past nine years.”
I stare at her openly now, my mouth an oval of disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not,” she says, shifting the baby again to her other hip. “It’ll be fun.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Oh, c’mon,” she says, pushing out her bottom lip in a pretend pout. “You do. You want to. At least give me one night. If you have a terrible time, we’ll never do it again. Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Girl Scout?” I ask, itching my stomach again. I must have gotten a bug bite or something.
“No,” she says. “Is that what that means?”
I snort and shake my head. Then I change the subject. “Hey, has the library board met this month?”
She squawks: “Ha!” The baby jumps in her arms, startled. “No,” she says, calmer. “We meet like once a year. Why?”
“There’s a problem with funding. The city wants to cut it.”
“What else is new?”
“Oh. Well is there something that you guys can do about it?”
“Not really,” she says. “The board’s kind of a joke. We mostly get together to gossip and eat Enid’s rum cake. We don’t really have any power. Not like the city council.”
“Huh,” I say, while my heart revs underneath my blouse. Somebody must be able to do something. I can’t lose this job. I won’t. I need the money.
She jostles the baby back to the original hip. “So you’ll go?”
I give her one last hard stare and then throw my hands up in a gesture of defeat. “Why not?” I say, pushing down the real question burning deep inside my gut: why? Why does Madison H., the most popular girl from school, suddenly want to be my friend? Doesn’t she have better things to do with her time? Why does she care so much?
But later, as I’m arranging a display on books about Native Americans to correlate with Thanksgiving, I chide myself for such childish thoughts. I’m not in high school anymore. We’re adults. She’s being kind. I should stop questioning her so much and just accept it for what it is. Besides, I have to admit, it’s kind of nice to have a friend.
I stand up the final book, Black Elk Speaks, on the end of the row, and absentmindedly scratch my belly again. It’s burning a little now, and I wonder if all my scratching over my phantom rash has somehow irritated the skin. I yank up my blouse to examine it, an audible gasp escaping my lips when I see my bare skin—angry boils and red bumps are burning a path from my belly button down toward my hip. But I don’t understand—why would a rash spring up on my stomach? No one has touched me there. I take a deep breath. It’s probably just a . . . just a . . . rash. From something else. Laundry detergent—isn’t that what people always say? But I haven’t changed my laundry detergent. And I’ve seen this reaction enough in my life to know exactly what it is.
What terrifies me is I have no idea how it got there.
thirteen
ERIC
SEVEN VOICE MAILS. One hundred forty-two emails. Twenty-three text messages. (None from Ellie.) This is the shitstorm I’m trying to weed through as I sit at my kitchen table at 5:30 Wednesday evening, while a boxful of spiral pasta boils on the stove.
Little-known fact—if your child is thought to have possibly attempted suicide, they won’t let him return to school until he’s been deemed by a professional to no longer be a risk to himself or others. And that professional may not have an opening until Thursday. And since he must be supervised at all times, and I had no way of finding a babysitter on such short notice, here we are.
But it’s not Aja’s fault I have so much to catch up on. Instead of working from home all week, as I told my boss I would do, I’ve spent all three days with my nose stuck in a book. All of Monday morning and most of the afternoon was dedicated to rereading The Virgin Suicides. It was like some light had clicked on, and I know it was Jubilee that threw the switch. Sentences started to jump out at me, as if they were written just for me.
Like: At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn’t know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with.
And I wondered if this Jeffrey Eugenides really is a genius. Or maybe just a dad. After Stephanie’s news, I tried to call Ellie a few times to talk about her suspension, but she never picked up. I contemplated sending her a text about it but was afraid I would push her further away. Instead, I texted her another one of my favorite lines from the book. The response of Cecilia, who, when asked by her doctor why she attempted suicide when she’s too young to know how bad life gets, said: “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”
Ha! I wrote after the quote. Zinger! Love, Dad.
Now I’m in the middle of The Bell Jar. Ellie wrote in her journal that she wanted to be a magazine editor in New York, which surprised me. I didn’t even know she liked to write. Or read magazines. But the thing that’s concerned me the most is how she said she “totally relates” to Esther, the main character, who’s clearly going through some kind of manic depression.
I click off my email and find myself thinking about Jubilee. What she would say about the book. About Esther. About Ellie.
“Pot’s boiling over.” I look up and see Aja standing at the door. Then I glance back at the stove.
“Damn it!” I jump up and grab the pot handle to move it off the burner without thinking. The shock of the heat in my palm mixed with my dumb clumsiness somehow ends up with the entire pot crashing to the floor, a cascade of boiling water and pasta dispersing all over the linoleum. Miraculously, I’ve stayed out of the spray, but my shoes are already soaking up the hot starchy liquid and my feet start burning.
“You all right?” I ask over my shoulder.
Aja just stands there, arms crossed. “Pasta’s ruined.”
I sigh. “Yep.” I slosh toward where he stands so I can get out of my waterlogged socks and shoes. “Want pizza?”
“Chili dogs.” No one delivers chili dogs and I open my mouth to say this, but we’ve been shut in this house all day, and I think it might be nice to get out for a little bit.
“Great,” I say. “Let me get this mess cleaned up and we’ll go.”
AS WE’RE PULLING out of the drive-through twenty minutes later, I should turn left to go home, but I turn right instead.
I want to see her. Jubilee.
It’s the courteous thing to do. Check in on her. Make sure she’s doing OK.
I wolf down a hot dog on the way and when we pull into the parking lot, I glance in the rearview mirror to see if I have any lingering bread stuck in my teeth.
“What are we doing here?” Aja asks between bites.