The Resurrection of Ash (the Truth is Revealed): 3
So, is this fictional memoir Sam’s confession and apology to the world? No: that was a purposeful design on my part. That’s how I’ve so often been viewed. This is my assertion to dignity, respect, and love from the world. I have always been, openly, a loving, sweet person who seeks to make people joyful and free with no desire for thanks, because their happiness is enough. I am obviously not perfect, but who is? I’ve never pretended to be innocent or a saint. I tend to see myself as worse than I truly am, though. It didn’t help I revolved through severe mania and depression beginning when I was a teen. But, well, the moment I put on a dress, in makeup I had no idea how to apply that looked super gross, and becoming really overweight on top of that, I endured the worst cruelty of my life-from acts of almost daily verbal abuse to threats of assault and actual assault. I am a strong person: but I truly died inside. This book is my celebration and love for myself I have now truly found for the first time. Thank you all for your warm kindness since I joined.
The morning fog touched my skin like damp feathers as I ran through the street, letting my lungs empty into the air. My screams fluttered, frightened birds clawing at my throat. The air was still, so still I thought it was ice. Running past old houses, crumbling brick, choking vines — my feet stomped a story into the pavement. My bare feet bled red ink into the stone. The electricity in my head was on fire, the panic was making my limbs into lead. I was a toy soldier marching down the street, letting the clockwork inside me whir its way down till I was gasping for air, cramped up. I rested my hands on my knees, bent my head. The morning was making itself comfortable. The birds were singing. My head was spinning, the ground seemed to buck as if in an earthquake. It couldn’t be tamed. I sat down on the grass, letting myself go ragged, limp.
I breathed in the fog and let the feathers coat my lungs.
Philadelphia was awakening. I could hear the sound of discordant alarms going off behind blinded windows, a ragged orchestra. The traces of last week’s snow looked pure white. The snow soaked my nightgown and turned my skin blue. My long hair had gotten tangled in a weed. I was a nymph, and the breathing of the morning was making my cheeks flush, as if I lay there waiting for a god to take me.
A door opened behind me. The footsteps carried themselves closer, magnifying the sound until it felt like a heartbeat in my ears. I cradled the heartbeat in my head, feeling its sweetness pulsate and tremble, a mouse huddled for warmth in my ear.
“Excuse me, are you all right?”
I uncoiled myself from the weeds and looked at the young man standing behind me. He had a delicate face, all angles and glass, a thin mouth. I looked down at my nightgown, worried if he could see my pubic hair through the thin white cotton.
“I’m fine,” I said, letting my hands dig into my hair and curl it round my shoulder, as if it were a snake I was taming. The young man’s eyes flicked towards my chest, lingered there a moment to watch it unfold as I breathed. I felt myself bloom in his stare, my petals blushing red, ready for him to pluck.
“It’s freezing out, you should get inside.” He shook his head, walked toward the sedan in his driveway. The slam of a car door, the rumble of the ignition, and he was sliding out the driveway and into the street. I watched him disappear, marooned on a desert island to wither and grow old alone. I got up to my feet, felt the ground pierce my soles with cold. My fingernails were painted blue with the cold. I walked slowly toward my house, letting the freezing air touch me with the shy caress of a lover. My nipples had grown hard, fossilized. There was no heat between my legs and yet the air’s caress made me tremble.
I walked through the open front door into my house. A comfy living room focused around a television set. Kitchen with all the appliances a mother would need. I tiptoed across the white rug, inching my way up the stairs into my bedroom. I closed the door, allowed the light from the window to pierce my eyes. I fell onto the bed, the down of the pillow like the down of the fog, but warm. Lifting my nightgown from my hips, I let my fingers brush my bare pubic hair, felt the hard hairs curl round my fingertips, so many creeping vines. The young man’s image, his delicate face, swam before my mind as I reached my hand and touched the soft flesh between my legs —
A knock at the door broke through. I swished my nightgown down and sighed, “What?”
“It’s seven thirty, get up or you’ll be late for school!”
I leaned my head back onto the warm pillow, allowed the image of the young man to leave me alone. Getting up, I walked to my closet, feeling the cuts in my feet rebel. I opened the closet and flicked hanger after hanger aside, swishing from one self to another. I picked out a scarlet dress, ripped off my nightgown, and maneuvered my way into the dress, feeling the fabric kiss my skin and make it blush. I walked toward the full length mirror hanging on the back of my door. I twisted, turned, trying to see myself from every angle. Breasts too small. Mouth too thick. Curvy hips. I grabbed the brush from my night table and let the bristles smooth the curls in my hair as much as they could, letting my long hair fall down my back. I put on a deep shade of red lipstick, making my lips venomous, and brushed on some mascara. I glared at the mirror, daring it to insult me. My face gazed back, too round, but there was something in it, a violence that made me tremble and smile.
Slipping on my flats, I opened the door and walked down the stairs. With each step I imagined the young man was watching me, taking in the curve of my neck, the delicacy of my size, the thin wrists. I reached the bottom, saw my mother standing by the door in her work suit and loafers, looking weary in her gray hair and wrinkles.
“They let you dress like that at school?”
“It’s below the knee, it’s fine,” I said, hoisting my beg onto my shoulder.
“All right…” she sighed, thrusting open the door as I grabbed my coat. The morning fog had lifted, and the snow gleamed in the sun like teeth. We walked toward the car and got into the front, my mom behind the wheel. Key in the ignition, she glided the car out the driveway and into the street. I turned on the radio, let the music dance around me like fire, when Mother sighed and switched it off.
“Malory, you do know how boys are, right?” she said, glancing at me over her glasses. “When you dress that way, they get ideas in their heads…”
“Mom, I know how boys are,” I said. “I’m eighteen, okay? I’m an adult.”
“Not while you’re in high school and living with me you’re not.”
“Fine,” I sighed, peeking out the window as the crumbling houses waltzed by like beautiful old women at a ball. “Can we stop talking about this?”
The school loomed against the window, a ship’s hull through a fog. Mom stopped the car, watched me as I opened the door and alighted onto the shore of the school, smoothing my dress against my bare legs. “Be good,” she murmured. I closed the door on her peaked face, walked up the steps into the school. I didn’t once look back.
In the empty women’s room I let the water course over my hands like wax, dribbling into the sink as it coated my skin with cold. The mirror reflected my face back to me, as if it held a question in its stare, a look. Eyebrows too teased. Face too made up. Switching off the tap, I walked toward the air dryer and thrust my hands under its exhaust. I was holding out my hands to be handcuffed, bound. The door creaked open, and I didn’t need to turn my head to know who it was. Monster boots crushing the linoleum. Stride as wide as the Grand Canyon. I didn’t turn my head, but I felt her hand on my shoulder, her warmth clashing with my cold. A hurricane was brewing.
“Hey, Mal,” she said, her voice a gust of wind teasing the cliffs of my ears. “Looks like we’re alone.”
She turned me around so that I faced her, taking in her mess of red waves and deep green eyes. She was on fire, she was taking my face in her hand and clasping her mouth to mine. Her lips were soft, like two ripened raspberries in my mouth, and as I cradled her lips against mine I felt her tongue slip between my lips and dance across my mouth. Her hair was feathery against my throat, holding in my cold like a border between her and me.
“Ow, don’t bite!” she said, glaring at me. “Christ, Mal, you look high today, what’s with you?”
“I’m just…enjoying things,” I said, a laugh escaping my teeth. “You taste good.”
“What, are you a cannibal now?” she sighed, coiling her hair back round her shoulders. “Where are you supposed to be, anyway?”
“P. E. I said I was having my period and they let me go.”
“I can’t wait till I can use that excuse,” she said, walking toward the sink and running her hands under the tap. “What are you doing later?”
“Piano,” I said, taking my hand and running it along her plaid back, feeling the bumps in her spine pierce into my fingers like pins. “I want your hair, do you need it?”
“Stop petting me,” she said, turning off the tap with her strong fingers. “I’m not a cat, I’m not going to purr for you.”
“You’d look so cute as a cat,” I said, my hands moving along to the curve of her neck, the skin blemished with one solitary freckle, as if she had been branded for me. “Listen, for Halloween we can both be cats — it’d be adorable.”
“My costumes have to involve blood,” she said, a smile gracing her lips as she shook the water off her hands. “I got to get back to class.”
“You could be a zombie kitten,” I said, watching her move across the tile floor toward the door. “There could be blood.”
“I’m not going to be a zombie kitten!” she said, thrusting open the door. “Hanging around in the bathroom makes me nervous, I’ll see you later.”
The door swung closed, falling into place as smoothly as a key in a lock. Walking toward the door, I smelt the fragrance of her skin on my hand, felt my skin tremble and blossom into red. “Lizzy,” I whispered into my hand, taking in her scent on my fingers. “You smell so good.”
Walking through the barren hallway of the school, past the gleaming lockers holding their secrets, I wandered to the office of the guidance counselor. The door was half open, revealing the sound of typing and the smell of a vanilla candle. Letting my hand rest on the door for a second, I gave a knock and said, “Miss Greene? Can I come in?”
“Hello, Malory,” she said, kicking open her door with a sensible foot. “Come in.”
The office was cramped, stuffed with posters of mandalas and lotus-sitting Buddha’s crammed on every surface that wasn’t coated in paper. A small chair took up one corner, which I sat in as Miss Greene finished what she was typing, looking like a learned gargoyle with her sharp nose and prominent eyes. “What can I help you with, Malory?” she said, turning off her computer monitor and giving me a Buddha smile.
“Is it possible…is it possible to feel too good?” I said, my fingers lacing through each other nervously, as if I were knitting something with my flesh.
“Well, yes,” Miss Greene said, “everything should be in moderation — ”
“But I feel so good I can’t stop…I can’t stop myself from doing certain things,” I said, biting my lip as I continued to thread my fingers. “All the time…all the time I’m…I’m thinking about — sex. Is that normal?”
“There’s an ebb and flow to sexual desire,” Miss Greene said, “but what do you mean by ‘all the time’?”
“I mean all the time,” I said, clasping my hands together till they shook. “I mean all the time all the time!”
“Okay, okay,” Miss Greene said. “There’s any number of reasons that could explain that, but I think it’s just natural adolescence kicking in. I wouldn’t worry about it. Try to enjoy it while you can.”
“Oh, I do enjoy it,” I said, and a laugh thrust itself between my teeth, clawed its way into the air with a banshee’s shrillness. “I really do!”
Lizzie was sitting on a graffitied concrete bench. A tree that looked in the process of falling shrouded her in green shadow. A book rested closed on her lap, the folds of her jeans rippling round it like waves. Walking toward her, I watched her idly rest her arm on the bench and stare into the sea of students sprawling the green square where everyone ate lunch. Her eyes were steady, and in their green I imagined a garden was sprouting. “Lizzie!” I said, sitting down beside her. She jumped, ruffled her feathery hair and scowled.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she said, resting her arm back on the book in her lap. Glancing at the title, I saw it was Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. “You still look high, and you never told me what you’re on.”
“I’m on life,” I said, letting my slippered foot nudge her monster boot. “You need to try heels.”
“I’d fall and break my face,” she said, flipping the book between her fingers as if it were a fan hiding her modesty. “Anyway, you’re femme enough for the both of us.”
“But you’d look pretty.”
“I’d look like a six foot five ostrich.”
“You need to let me make you over one day, I promise you won’t regret it.”
Lizzie, sticking her tongue at me, dove her hands into her plaid shirt and folded them across her lap. An image of Confucius I’d seen in history class rose in my head as I watched her sit, the stern line to her mouth reflecting the lines of her shirt. “You look too serious,” I murmured, “stop it.”
“I’m in a serious mood,” Lizzie said, scowling at her monster boots. They were firmly planted into the concrete like the Great Wall of China, but only Lizzie knew who the enemy hoard were. Their thick laces crisscrossed each other in such a way that made me think of surgical stitches. “Listen, my parents said you can’t come round anymore.”
“What? Why?” I said, the helium bolstering me up quickly turning solid in my skin. “What did I do?”
“Nothing, they just…they don’t like it that you call me Lizzie,” she said, flipping her hair over her face. “They keep calling me Adam. That’s how they want me to be. Their son.”
The sounds of laughter and talking filled in the silence that widened between us, making everything colder in the shade of the tree, as if winter had come back at our call. Lizzie gazed at the book in her lap, her lip firm, her fingers crushed together like a fault line. Watching her, I felt the buzz of flies inside my skull, a whispering fluttering of millions of wings. I took her hand in mine, squeezed it. She looked at me, and it was as if the fault line were cracking, and I could see the despair in her eyes, the garden was shriveled up and coated in ice.
“Come over to my place then,” I said. Lizzie shrugged, an elegant flow of her shoulders that made my spine shiver.
“Yeah,” she said, giving me a thin smile. “After piano?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling the helium in my skin expand again. “After piano.”
The yellowed light of the sunset turned the white walls of my room into parchment as I lay beside Lizzie on my bed, feeling the warmth of her skin against my skin. We were under the covers, our clothes in a pile by the door, looking like a heap of raked up leaves. Lizzie was snoring faintly, her chest rising and falling with each breath, as if there were a sea inside her, a storm brewing. A faint rain was pattering against my window, the sound so delicate I thought it might break at any moment. I was warm, and in my warmth I felt as if a fire were burning inside my chest instead of a beating heart.
Lizzie’s warmth mingled with mine, intoxicating, breathless. Holding her hand in mine, I felt her callouses against my fingertips, felt the rough mountainous ridges dig into my skin. Her hands were thin, pale as ice, but kind in their bluntness. Lying awake beside her, her face slack with sleep, I felt my pulse quicken like a startled horse. She was so still, and yet so alive. I wanted to kiss her soft mouth, to let my lips linger over hers. Leaving her hand to lie down alone, I cradled myself on top of her, gazing down onto her soft mouth. Pulling my hair out of my eyes, I let my mouth grace hers with the gentleness of bird’s wings. She stirred, her eyes fluttered, gazed up at me. Her lips responded to mine, her hands teased through my hair, hands that knew my body more than anyone else, hands that sent shivers through my skin, as if they tingled with electricity. The fire in my chest was raging, it was burning down forests, consuming me. My hands danced along her bare stomach, felt her skin quicken and respond to my fingers.
“You’re so beautiful,” I said, “you’re so beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said, “I don’t know about me.”
“Don’t say that, shh…” My lips graced her mouth again, silencing her as she sighed into me, our bodies mingling like molecules. Her breath was sweet, warm, it buoyed my desire. I could feel the wetness between my legs deepening, flooding my skin. “I want you,” I whispered into her skin, my hands clawing through her hair. “I want you!”
She let out a moan, a wild cry that gave me a shock, making the fire inside me tear down the borders of skin between us so that we blended into one thing, one skin. Her pelvis thrust into mine, and I felt the rod of her erection buck into me, glide into my space and penetrate me, sending spasms of blissful fire cascading from my head to the tips of my toes, my voice clawing into the air and raging through the room, pin wheeling against the walls like a bird caught inside. Lizzie was gripping me, so hard I thought I might turn into rock as I bucked against her, digging into her pelvis, as if I were uncovering something precious from the ground. My cry ripped through my throat, followed by Lizzie’s gasp of pleasurable pain as we collapsed against each other, panting into the darkness of the room, our sighs like shadows obscuring the light.
The night breathed around us as we cradled each other, our mingled sweat sticking our limbs together. Lizzie’s face was buried in my chest, my breasts rising and falling as I regained my breath. The fire was embers now, burning into the shadows of the room, sending its smoke into my lungs. Lizzie raised her head, gazing up at me in the darkness, and I wished I could see her face.
“I’m…sorry,” she said, her voice small, “I-I shouldn’t have done that.”
“I wanted you to,” I said, the shadows fluttering in the dying light. Lizzie sighed, burying her face in the covers of the bed, hiding her face from me.
“But I’m a girl,” she said, “I shouldn’t want to do that to you…”
“But I liked it,” I said, switching on the bedside light so that Lizzie’s red hair shone like fire spreading through the sheets. “It doesn’t make me think of you any different.”
“It makes me think of myself differently,” she sighed, pulling the blankets down. “I should go, my parents are going to freak out if I’m gone any longer.”
“Don’t go now,” I said, pulling the bed sheets back over our bare bodies. “I’ll think you’re mad at me.”
“I’m mad at myself, not you,” Lizzie said, taking my hand in hers. “Come on, I really do need to go.”
“Okay,” I said, unpeeling the blankets from our skin. Lizzie got up and started shoving her body into her clothes, looking like a caterpillar making itself a cocoon. Stuffing her feet into her boots, she picked up her backpack and kissed me on the forehead, her lips still warm.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and she opened the door, her boots echoing through the outside hall toward the front door.
Lying beneath the covers, I felt the feeling of fullness dim as the clock inched its way toward seven o’clock. My bare skin clung to the softness of the sheets as if it were wet. An emptiness was rippling through me, a longing to be filled once again freezing my body into stillness. It was as still as a sepulture, and my skin was just as cold.
My mother had planted herself in the kitchen, growing roots with each sip of her tea. I had my chemistry homework spread out before, as undecipherable to me as hieroglyphs. She glanced at me over her tea, her tired eyes taking in my scowl. “You still haven’t told me who that boy was I saw coming out of the house tonight,” she said, sipping her tea. I tapped a pencil against the table, letting the sound put rivets in my head, closing me off to her.
“That was Lizzie,” I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes.
“Oh,” she said, taking in her lips. “I guess I need new glasses. She’s very…tall.”
“She knows,” I said, scratching a diagram of a molecule into my workbook. “Mom, I think there’s something wrong with me.”
“What is it today?” she sighed.
“I feel…I feel like my brain is on overdrive,” I said, tapping my pencil again. “Everything is so good it hurts.”
“Sounds nice,” she said, setting down her tea onto the table.
“It’s not, it’s scary,” I said, feeling the words cower in my throat. “Nobody takes me seriously when I talk about this.”
“You know how you are,” she said. “You think you have everything wrong with you besides being a teenager.”
“God,” I said, roughly closing my notebook. “I’m going to my room. Oh, and by the way, I’m bisexual.”
“What?”
The room caved in around me as I got to my feet and marched out the kitchen into the living room. The mirror above the mantelpiece reflected my face back at me as if from a great distance away. I looked so small it was hard to see what expression I had. I put my fingers to my face, felt the lips turned in a smile, sending panic flooding through me. Why was I smiling? I could hear my mother’s footsteps come into the room and stop, as sudden as a gunshot. “What do you mean you’re bisexual, Malory?” she said, her voice sharp and shrill, like an alarm. I continued to look in the mirror, trying to find my face, running my hands along my lips in an effort to calm them down.
“It’s as it sounds,” I said, the words whispering up my throat with the softness of smoke. “I’m bisexual. I like more than one gender.”
“Malory…” my mother’s voice tilted, wobbled on some inner foundation, “how can you know that at your age? Don’t-don’t tell me you’re seeing this girl!”
“So what?” I said, feeling the smile broaden and warp my face beneath my fingertips. “I love Lizzie. I’ve never loved anyone like I love her.”
“Just…just think about this, Malory,” she said, breathless, as if she were climbing a mountain, “People say they’re bisexual but you can’t really be attracted to both — it’s not possible. It’s just…it’s just one step away from saying you’re a lesbiain!”
The smile froze beneath my fingers. “But boys are beautiful too,” I murmured, seeing my face lengthen in the mirror like a waxing moon. “I love boys…boys smell so different from me.”
“You’re confused, Malory,” my mother said, her voice whispering through the air like strands of hair blowing in the wind. “You’re confused.”
“I’m very confused,” I whispered, watching my face bend and ripple with the movement of my hands. “Just not in the way you think.”
“Malory, turn around and look at me,” she said, grabbing my shoulders and spinning me around to face her. Her face was rigid, the bone taking precedent over her skin, and there was a silence in her eyes that engulfed her entire face. “Listen, I once too thought I was bisexual when I was your age — but then I met your father, and I put that behind me. You just haven’t met the right boy yet, but you will — you’re still so young!”
The smile dribbled down my face as a deep frown was painted on, digging into the lines of my face like an earthquake shattering my skin. A lump blossomed in my throat, catching hold of my voice and making it shrill. “But…but I don’t want to deny who I am !” The sobs started to climb between my teeth, fluttering into the air with wet wings. My mother wrapped her arms tightly around me. I cried on her shoulder, as if I had just been wrenched from her grasp and only just been returned to her again. The sobs flew about the room, looking for a place to settle into silence in the corner of the ceiling. My mother hugged me, and I could feel her tears drip onto my head, making me think of rain after a storm.
“I’m so sorry, Malory,” she said, “you know I’ll always love you, this doesn’t change that.”
“Thank you,” I said, the sobs still clinging to my lips. “I was so scared you were going to hate me!”
“I don’t hate you!” my mother said, clinging to me tighter. “I’m just not as brave as my daughter clearly is.”
The wind swirled through the grass, making the flowers dizzy. I lay amongst the flowers, letting their stems dip and buck against my bare skin. I was wearing a green dress, its flowing fabric cascading down my thighs, meeting at my calves. The clouds in the sky bent and rippled across the blue, forming antelope and hyacinths and fingers, so delicate, so fleeting. The smell of the flowers bloomed in my nostrils, sending tendrils of pleasure swirling down to my toes. The sun baked my skin until it was tender to the touch. My mind was floating with the clouds, ephemeral, unspoken. Wisps of thoughts flurried through my skull, as pure and as varied as snowflakes. A blizzard was forming behind my brow just as the warmth of the sky was kissing my forehead. Was this bliss, this disconnect between my soul and the sky? I ran my fingers through my hair and felt a sigh blossom and drop between my lips, fallen petals strewing the air with their mystery, their blush.
I was in a pool, my hair flowing around my face, obscuring my vision. The sun was fading, sending blackness into the pool. I was tangled in direction, unsure which way led to air. My limbs flailed, passing through the water as swiftly as a knife through skin, cold, pressured, opaque. A thickness was making my skin drag me down, or was it up, into the threshold of the water. My hair was making me blind, filling my eyes, coating my face like a mask. I felt myself scream, a rippling of bubbles exploding from my face, and I was tumbling sideways into the air, into the breeze filling my lungs, they stung as if they’d never touched air before, as if they were virgin to its caress. I threw my hair from my face, gasping, breathless, staring into the whirl of the Milky Way above me. I was in a lake, the trees ringing the water sighing in the wind, penning in the stillness of the water with their leaves like hands. I breathed in their sigh, feeling the stillness make me sigh as I flowed toward the edge, feeling the bottom of the lake rise up and catch my feet. I walked toward the trees, their hands inviting me with open palms. The wind was causing them to bend, to laugh like girls. I walked through the trees —
Fire, engulfing the trees, blinding me, catching my limbs as I stood out amongst the flames, a burning doll swept up and crumpled into ash. The wind sighed through the trees and blew me into the air, sending me to scatter over the stumps of burnt trees. the blackened limbs stretched across the sky like spiders’ webs. The ground took me into its arms, and I became earth. A seed fell into me. A flower bloomed. The sun bathed it in light. The flower swelled and grasped the rays of light in its hands. The flower bloomed. The ground grew wet with rain. The flower withered, turned brown. The petals fell into the earth. Another seed fell. A flower —
My eyes were wide, I was gasping for breath. The sheets of my bed clung to me, as if something were trying to sweep them away. I let the folds of my room blossom and overwhelm my eyes, the light coming in faintly through the blinds illuminating the desk, the dresser, the bookshelf. The spine of Anne Frank’s diary gazed at me sightlessly, a girl who never got to be a woman. Throwing off my sheets, I got to my feet and walked toward the mirror. A penned animal stared back at me, the eyes wide, the mouth taught. A faint wrinkle deepened between my eyes, making me look old. Who was this person? I touched my right shoulder, dipped the strap of my nightgown. The animal followed suit, the move as graceful as a shriek. A smile played upon my lips, savage and hungry. The animal smiled back, baring its fangs to me in terror. The whites of its eyes were as bright as starlight, were as pure as snow. A laugh escaped me. A wild spasm escaped the animal.
Picking up my cell phone from my bedside table, I touched the screen and conjured up Lizzie’s number. Tapping her name, I pressed the phone to my ear, felt my skin vibrate with each ring of the phone. I felt taught, a coiled spring wound too tight, and as the phone continued to ring it was as if the spring were being wound tighter with each ring.
A sleepy sigh fell into my ear, and Lizzie said, “Mal, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I had the most wonderful dream,” I said, feeling the spring begin to unwind to the sound of Lizzie’s breath. “I made flowers grow.”
“You could have waited to tell me this,” Lizzie said, sighing. “It’s five thirty in the morning, Mal.”
“But I had to tell you! I had to tell you because I think the dream was about you.”
“Dead things make flowers grow, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling the spring halt in its unwinding. “Why are you acting so mean?”
“I’m not, you’re just acting…weird! Calling me up to tell me a weird dream you had after what happened yesterday, are you trying to make me feel bad?”
“No! No no no!” A lump trembled on a branch in my throat, threatened to fall between my lips into a sob. “I just love you so much!”
“Malory, what is with you? You’ve been acting weird for the past week!”
“I don’t know,” I said, the tears trickling down my cheeks. “I feel like I’m on fire, and I can’t put it out! I try, but everything inside me is so bright that I can’t see anything else!”
“I have no idea what that even means.”
“I don’t either,” I said, the sobs flying faster between my teeth, like planes at an airshow showing off for a crowd. “I’m so confused, I have no idea what’s going on!”
“…I believe you,” Lizzie said, a twinge of anxiety in her voice. “I mean, have you told anyone else about this?”
“I try, but no one believes me, they just think…they just think I’m being a teenager.”
“Jesus,” Lizzie muttered. “Look, what you need to do is convince them.”
“How?”
“By doing something crazy.”
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