“Lucinda is dead,” she says, “and you don’t even care.”
Amy hitches up her purse and her leopard-print coat spreads open in the front. Amy wears a 32AA bra, and no matter how she is feeling, Amy is always quite cute. It’s the product of a fortunate combination: Amy’s red hair and the millions of freckles that dot her cheeks like grains of sand.
“It’s pretty fucked up, Jade,” she says. She pauses before the word “fucked” to consider. “We’ve known her our whole lives, and now she’s dead, and you’re not even pretending to be sad.”
I pump the tip of my tongue through the silver loop in my lip. I do this when I want someone to stop talking. It always works.
Amy stomps ahead, hugging herself close, shoulders bobbing as she stifles more sobs. Always the drama queen. She’s never been close with Lucinda, only Lucinda’s little sister, Lex. When we were young, Ma subjected us to weekly playdates—Lex and Amy would spend hours playing princesses in the Hayeses’ basement, while Lucinda and I were forced to sit there awkwardly until Ma came to pick us up. Lucinda would braid friendship bracelets, and I would read comic books, and we’d pointedly ignore each other while our sisters played make-believe. Lex and Amy used to be inseparable, but now they only hang out when Ma arranges it.
I wonder how Amy would feel if I died. Maybe she’d sleep in my bed some nights. Maybe she’d make a blanket out of my old T-shirts, which she’d keep in a box to show her children once they turned sixteen. Maybe she’d feel relieved. I’m suddenly aware of the ten feet of space between us, the four sections of sidewalk that separate Amy and me. I almost run to catch up with her. But just as unexpectedly as it comes, the desire passes again, leaving a faint, pulsing hatred somewhere I can’t touch.
WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK
A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns
EXT. PINE RIDGE DRIVE—BROOMSVILLE, COLORADO—EARLY MORNING
CELLY (17, slouched, dyed black hair), and SISTER (13, her opposite), walk to school. Celly hums a bouncy, upbeat song.
SISTER
Are you even human?
CELLY
Alien, surprise.
SISTER
You’re not even sad.
CELLY
No, I’m not.
SISTER
That’s fucked up.
CELLY
How can you claim to be sad? You barely even knew her.
SISTER
Who cares how well I knew her? It’s not a popularity contest.
CELLY
Everything is a popularity contest. This sadness you’re referring to. I know how it looks. You’ll go to school today and you’ll accept knowing hugs from all your pretty little friends. You’ll tell them how Lucinda let you borrow her nail polish once, five years ago.
Sister walks faster, away from Celly.
CELLY (CONT’D)
No one will call bullshit on you. All your pretty little friends will cluster around, trying to get closer to the wound.
Sister turns a sharp corner, nearly running now. Celly calls out after her.
CELLY (CONT’D)
(louder)
You’ll smile in spite of yourself. The teachers will let you skip your assignments. Tell me it’s not a popularity contest. Tell me, Sister. Go ahead.
Sister practically sprints up the school’s front steps. Celly stops walking and watches her sister disappear into the building.
CELLY (CONT’D)
(sotto)
Tell me about my sadness.
Zap used to have a constellation map taped to his ceiling. I would lie on his bed and stare at all the black space between pinpoint stars, thinking how half an inch on the poster was a million miles in reality. I would imagine floating through space on a continual supply of fake oxygen. That way, you could forget that back on earth there’s this stunted, superficial way of existence. I think about this as I try to tune out the girls by the mirror—about how living would feel without air, and how that non-air would feel without people. Quiet.
“I heard Zap went home. Didn’t say anything, just walked right out after first period.”
“He must be so devastated.”
I flush the toilet to let the girls know I’m there. It doesn’t make a difference. They carry on, their voices like roosters crowing, waking me from a zombie sleep. I focus on the frayed laces of my fat black shoes until the door swings open—a sliver of chatter slips into the bathroom from the crowded hall outside. The door shuts. Cavernous silence.
Zap loved that poster. His favorite constellation was Libra, because it looked like a kite, which reminded him of when he was little and he lived in Paris. He remembered the Seine, he said—he had this red-and-blue-checkered kite he flew down by the riverbank on summer days. He gave me a seashell years ago, from a beach on the French Riviera where he’d gone on vacation. One day, we’ll get out of here, he told me. It’s a big world out there; you’ll see. The shell is a rippled beige, shaped like an ear. I used to keep it under my pillow.
His name isn’t really Zap, of course. It’s Edouard, pronounced with the emphasis on the second half. His parents are French—they both moved to America at eighteen. They met in the French Undergraduate Society at Yale and they’ve been in love ever since—real love. Mr. Arnaud buys Mrs. Arnaud flowers on his way home from work, and sometimes they hold hands in public. His mom is like a woodland creature, slight and green-eyed.
No one can pronounce “Edouard”—he’s gone by “Zap” since the fourth grade, because one day he came to school dressed in a gigantic lightning-bolt costume he’d made from a cardboard refrigerator box. It was the week after the flash flood of ’98, which killed three people in Longmont, the next town over. He painted the lightning bolt yellow and harnessed it on with a pair of suspenders. All day he went around saying zap, zap, zap, passing out fun-sized candy bars. He was a force of nature, he said, but the kind that brought joy instead of harm. I thought this was so great. Everyone did. After school, he and I went to the field behind my house and watched the clouds roll toward the mountains in surrender.
That summer, Mrs. Arnaud brought hot chocolate in thermoses and Mr. Arnaud carried the camping gear—we set up sleeping bags in the middle of the field to watch meteor showers. Scratchy grass poked through nylon. It was too cloudy to see any meteors, but we didn’t care. The sleeping bags smelled like the Arnauds’ house: Laundry detergent. Christmas candles. We laid on our backs, and Zap recited all these useless facts about outer space, like did you know you can see only fifty-nine percent of the moon’s surface from our shit spot down on earth?
Thinking about Zap makes me sick. I bend over the toilet and make a series of violent gagging noises. They sound forced. Someone opens the bathroom door, hears me, and leaves again. Nothing comes up.