Every Last Word

The next day, I see them in the places they must have been all along.

When I walk into U.S. History, Sydney spots me right away and the two of us exchange knowing glances. Later that day, as I’m heading to lunch, I pass Pixie Cut and overhear her friend call her Abigail. I recognize a girl in the student parking lot and another in the library. Each time I make eye contact with any of them, I get a hint of a smile, like we’re still separated by an invisible barrier, but now we have something in common: a secret. By the end of the day, I’ve seen all but one.

I’m heading to my car when I look up and finally see AJ heading straight for me, and I feel the corners of my mouth twitching into a nervous grin. I’m expecting the same reaction I got from the others. A sly wave. A chin tilt. But instead he passes right by me, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. When I’m a safe distance away, I stop and turn around, watching until he disappears from sight.

I’m trying to decide what to do when Alexis appears out of nowhere, her high heels tapping on the cement and her thumbs tapping on her cell phone.

“There you are!” She stuffs her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “I was hoping to catch you. I just got the best news!” She pulls me close. “There was a cancellation at the spa. My mom was able to book another appointment.”

I look at her sideways.

“Don’t you get it?” The words squeak out and she does a little dance in place, shaking my arm around as she bounces and beams and watches me, like she’s expecting me to join in. “You can come.”

“What about Hailey?”

She purses her lips and looks around, checking to be sure we’re alone. “No…” she draws the single word out, like it’s a musical note. “Not Hailey. You.” She pokes my collarbone. And now I know precisely where I reside on her social ladder: second rung from the bottom. Hailey occupies the last one, and as soon as she learns I’m invited to Alexis’s birthday and she’s not, she’ll know it too.

“You have no idea how sad I’ve been, Samantha. I felt horrible not asking you. Even though our moms weren’t friends in preschool, you and I were best friends in kindergarten!” I take note of her word choice. I’m not her best friend now, but I was in kindergarten. “I’m glad you’re coming. Oh, and plan to spend the night, too.”

“Is Hailey spending the night?” I ask. The spa might not be able to accommodate all five of us, but Alexis’s enormous bedroom doesn’t have any space constraints.

“That would be awkward, don’t you think?” I think it would be better than nothing, but I don’t say so. “In fact, keep it to yourself, okay? I wouldn’t want to hurt Hailey’s feelings.”

No. Of course you wouldn’t.

I unwind my arm from her grasp. “I’ve got to get to swim practice,” I say.

Her face falls, but she quickly recovers, twisting her mouth into a fake grin, raising her voice a full octave. “Yeah, of course. Nine o’clock tomorrow. We’ll pick you up.”

She takes off in the opposite direction. Part of me still feels guilty about Hailey, but another part of me is excited to spend the day with my friends, getting pampered at a luxurious spa. It will be fun. And it’s nice to not be the fifth wheel for once.

I’m on the diving block, staring into lane three, running my thumb across the scratchy surface three times, waiting for the whistle to blow.

When it does, my body responds just like it’s supposed to. My knees bend and my arms stretch, and my fingers cut through the water’s surface in the seconds before I feel it drench my cheeks. Then the silence.

I kick hard underwater and try to lock in my song, but nothing comes. As I pop up and start the fly, my strokes feel sloppy, uneven, and by the time I turn and kick off the wall, I’m at least four strokes behind everyone else. I climb out of the pool and get in the back of the line.

Jackson Roth looks over his shoulder at me. “Coach is in a mood today, isn’t he?”

“I guess.”

We’re down to a small group of swimmers now that school’s started. The numbers will keep dwindling as fall’s extracurricular activities begin, homework picks up, and it becomes harder to squeeze in team workouts at the club. I’m looking forward to that. I prefer to come here at night, swimming under the stars with the adults. They keep to themselves.

I press my fingertips hard into my temples, ignoring everyone around me, while I breathe and try to focus my energy. When it’s my turn, I step onto the blocks again, slide my thumb along the surface three times, and dive in, waiting for a song—any song—to come.

And one finally does, but it’s not one I expect. Those notes AJ played the other day start running through my head, and as soon as I surface, I know what song will be taking me back and forth across the pool. I speed up the tempo, and my body follows suit until I’m flying through the lane, pushing hard off the wall, throwing my arms over my head, feeling that adrenaline surge every time I lift my chest out of the water.

The tune is clear in my head, but now I want to remember the lyrics and I can’t. Lazy ray…I think he was singing about the sun going down. There was a line about sunlight dancing on your skin and another about a crack in a fence or something.

What was that line?

I’m still trying to piece it together as I step into the shower to rinse off the chlorine. I’m alone in the locker room, so I start humming as I pull on my sweats and pile my hair into a messy bun. On the drive home, I leave the stereo off because I prefer his song over anything I have on a playlist. And I have to remember all the lyrics. It’s driving me nuts.

It’s easy to stay lost in my thoughts during dinner. Paige got sent to the principal’s office today for talking back to a teacher, so she has my parents’ undivided attention. My family is arguing over the distinction between “clarifying questions” and “back talk,” while I drift off to a better place.

I’m picturing that room and its walls, covered in torn notebook pages and ripped-up napkins, pieces of brown paper lunch sacks and fast-food wrappers, and how all that chaos and disorder gave me such a strange sort of peace. I can visualize the exact spot AJ slapped up those words. But that’s all I have. I can’t download the song and listen to it on repeat, looking up the lyrics online and deciphering them like I typically would.

I have to get back down to that room.

I’m starting to recognize this for the obsession that it is, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s innocent, like solving a puzzle. My mind has certainly come up with more dangerous fixations.

“Are you okay, Sam?” Mom asks.

Her voice snaps me back to reality, and when I look up from my plate, Mom, Dad, and Paige are all staring at me. Dad has a huge grin on his face.

“What?”

“You were singing,” he says.

“And humming,” Mom adds.

I was?

“Earworm,” I say. “This song has been stuck in my head all day.”

“It was really pretty,” Paige says.

Under the table where no one can see me, I scratch my jeans three times. “Yes, it was.”

I’m about to pop a sleeping pill when completely different words start forming in my mind. I feel an overwhelming urge to write them down.

I haven’t thought about the notebooks in years, but they’re still on the top shelf of my bookcase, and I remember exactly what Shrink-Sue said when she gave them to me. I was to write every day, in the notebook that best matched how I was feeling: the yellow notebook was for happy thoughts. The red notebook was for when I was angry and needed to vent. The blue one was for when I was feeling good. Peaceful. Not happy, not angry. Neutral. Somewhere in the middle.

I open the blue notebook first and see handwriting that belonged to a much younger me. I’d clearly followed Sue’s advice for a while, but about a quarter of the way into the book, the entries end.

The red book is filled with thoughts written with a heavier hand. My penmanship is different, but I don’t know if that’s because I was older or angrier. I read a few lines but stop quickly. It’s depressing.

But not as depressing as seeing that the yellow notebook is completely empty.

Tossing the red and yellow ones on the floor, I crawl under the covers with the blue one. Pen in hand, I flip to the first blank page, but nothing’s happening.

I don’t know what to write about.

I could write about my OCD. Or the number three. Or uncontrollable thought spirals that come out of nowhere, demand my undivided attention, and scare me when they won’t stop. Or how I’m terrified about Alexis’s birthday tomorrow and it doesn’t seem right to be afraid to spend the day with your best friends.

Poets need words. Even when I have the right ones, I can never seem to spit them out. Words only seem to serve me when I’m in the pool.

The pool.

I put pen to paper, and off I go, writing about the one thing that makes me feel healthy and happy and…normal. Cutting through the surface. Hearing the whoosh and the silence. Pushing off that cement wall with both feet, feeling powerful and invincible. Loving how the water feels as it slips over my cheeks.

Two hours later, I’m still going, still writing fast, still turning pages. When I get to the end of the next page I check the clock and realize two things: it’s after midnight and I forgot to take my sleep meds.

Normally, that would worry me, but it doesn’t tonight. I’m too elated to sleep.

I return to writing, filling my blue notebook, until I finally drift off on my own, somewhere around three a.m.