“Maybe he could get you a phone instead,” Meredith said. “You know? Maybe you should ask for that, since he’s feeling generous.”
“Maybe . . . ” Lisa said absently, totally missing the joke, the point. Did Lisa even want a phone? Meredith wondered. Did she even want to call for help? Or would she rather just watch television?
Lisa shifted again and kicked her in the shin. Meredith stood up.
“Don’t get up,” Lisa said, no longer absent.
“I have to pee.”
It was weird how it was no big deal, peeing in front of Lisa. It wasn’t like being in the locker room at all, or even at a sleepover. She never thought in her whole life that she’d be able to pee in front of someone else, but now she did it without even thinking, sat on the toilet without shame, as if she were by herself. She pulled up her leggings and washed her hands in the small sink. She looked at herself in the mirror and her reflection reminded her of a game she used to play at home, before . . . before this. Well not a game, really—something like a game. Something she would say to herself.
This is—
“Why’d you just lie there?” Lisa asked from behind her.
Meredith blinked at the face in the mirror. This is?
“Meredith. Why’d you just lie there?”
She turned. “What?”
Lisa was staring at her. They looked at each other in silence for what seemed like forever. Meredith was afraid. Of what? She couldn’t figure it out. Only that it seemed like if she spoke, everything might change.
Finally Lisa spoke.
“Bring me a cup of water?” she asked. “I’m dying of thirst. I think I’m getting a cold.”
“You don’t look very good,” Meredith said. Too late she realized this comment would surely get her a mark on the wall, but the pen was limp in Lisa’s hand.
“I don’t feel very good,” Lisa said.
Meredith filled a Dixie cup with water and stepped back into the tub.
?
Upstairs, in the Lucketts’ dining room, Amanda and Abby were sitting at the head of the table selling Lisa Bellow Chain of Support bracelets for five dollars. There was a line of about twenty zombies waiting to claim theirs.
“You guys!” Abby said, when Meredith and Becca squeezed in behind them. “We’ve been working like dogs. Are you gonna help or what?”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “Let me take a shift.”
“No, it’s fine,” Abby said. “I’ll keep doing it.” She smiled as she turned to her next customer.
“This is sort of gross,” Becca said as they walked toward the living room. “I think they’re enjoying themselves.”
“They’re your friends,” Meredith said.
“Eh,” Becca said, shrugging.
In the living room a movie was playing on the flat-screen on the wall. Bodies were splayed out on the living-room floor, some piled like puppies. How many people were even at this party? Meredith wondered. She didn’t recognize half of them. She and Becca sat down in the corner. On the TV screen a man dressed as a clown was applying bright red lipstick to his eyebrows.
“It’s good, though,” Meredith said. “It’s good to support Lisa’s mom, right?”
“Lisa hated her mother,” Becca said.
“She did?”
“God, yes, she was always tearing her down. She complained about her constantly, made fun of her, sometimes right to her face. Seriously, she said terrible things about her all the time.”
“Don’t you say terrible things about your mother?”
“My mother has enough on her plate,” Becca said. “She’s about to have a baby, because my sister’s about to have a baby. My mother already works all day and takes care of my father. I don’t think she needs me saying terrible things about her on top of all that.”
Meredith looked at the TV screen. A girl was running through an empty hospital, her hair swinging behind her. She didn’t have any shoes on. She was running down a dark corridor, and then she turned a corner and there was the clown, and everyone in the living room screamed as the clown thrust a barbecue skewer through the girl’s throat.
“This movie sucks,” Becca said.
?
Meredith did not look behind her. She did not like to look behind her, not anymore, not even when someone was calling her name, or when there were footsteps, or like now, this November afternoon, when she could hear clearly the sound of a car following slowly, the crunch of tires, slow moving tires, on the brittle leaves that covered the street. She gripped the straps of her backpack and increased her pace, not running, but walking as fast as she could without breaking into a trot. To look behind was to acknowledge that there was something there. The police? Her parents? A face from the books of men who might take her? They were all the same in this moment, something to be ignored, or outrun.
“Meredith?” a voice called.
Still, she did not stop, not recognizing the voice, and then the car pulled even with her and then a little bit ahead of her so there was no way to not see the face leaning out the driver’s side window, the smiling, hopeful face of Mrs. Bellow.
“Hi, Meredith.”
She stopped walking. She was breathless but tried to pretend otherwise.
“Hey,” she said.
“Do you need a ride?”
“No,” she said. “My house—” she gestured in the general direction—“just a few blocks.”
“It’s cold,” Mrs. Bellow said. “I’m just coming from work. Let me take you?”
Meredith looked down the road. She could nearly see her street, but not quite. She looked back at Mrs. Bellow, smiling her hopeful smile. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
She walked around the front of the car and got into the passenger seat, cradling her backpack on her lap.
“I’m working mornings now,” Mrs. Bellow said, turning in her seat to face Meredith, not driving nor, seemingly, preparing to drive. “So if you girls want to come over after school, I’ll be there.”
“Great,” Meredith said. “I’ll . . . I’ll tell them.”
“How was school today?”
“Fine,” Meredith said. “You know. All right.”
The car was idling. It was an old car, and the noise of the engine rose and fell as it idled, as if it didn’t understand what it was supposed to do. A car passed them, then another.
“Who’d you have lunch with?” Mrs. Bellow asked.
“Becca. And Abby and Amanda.”
“Good. They’re nice girls. I’m glad you all are friends.”
“Yeah,” Meredith said.
“Did you have any tests or anything?”
“We had a test in social studies,” Meredith said.
“That was Lisa’s favorite,” Mrs. Bellow said. “From way back. She loved learning about other places. I always felt bad that we didn’t have enough money to travel in the summer. Or I was always working. Or something.”
“You will,” Meredith said. “I mean, someday you can travel. You and Lisa.”
“I think so, too. I’m thinking Spain. Right? Get a couple cute little bikinis to wear on the beach. Find some cute guys.”
“Sure.” Meredith could picture this easily, Lisa and her mother and some hot guys on a sunny beach in Spain. But then she remembered what Becca had said about Lisa ripping on her mother, and so she imagined that, in Spain, Lisa and the hot guys might ditch Mrs. Bellow at the hotel and go to the beach without her.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Mrs. Bellow asked.