CHLOE
“How Much It Sucks to Be a Cult Leader”
The cult thing
freaked me out.
I mean, it seemed so stupid.
Freshman girls
following me around.
The hockey goalie
who brought me flowers
every day for a week.
Little pieces of candy
stuffed into my locker.
Even Josh began to bug me,
being so nice all the time.
It seemed fake.
I mean, it made no sense.
None of it had anything to do with what
really happened
that night.
It got so I didn’t want
to go to school,
but Mom made me.
She said it would
die down eventually.
Which it did,
finally.
During the worst of it
I started going
to the hospital
every day after school.
I liked being there.
I liked the smell of it,
which I know sounds weird.
This one orderly,
a guy with dreads
and a friendly, jokey manner,
asked me why I was there
all the time
so I told him.
He suggested I might want
to volunteer.
There are kids
from the high school,
he said
who volunteer here.
Nothing too glamorous,
but since you like it here,
might as well put you
to work.
He sent me to a lady
who said she could fix me up
with about seven hours a week.
I think that orderly
with the dreads
put in a good word for me,
plus, let’s face it,
everyone at the hospital
knew I was one of
“those kids.”
ANIL
1. I didn’t set out to
build a shrine.
It just sort of
happened.
It started the morning after
that night
when I placed the pop-top from
the can of MoonBuzz
on my dresser.
I had pried it off while I was talking
to Maxie and Felix,
a nervous habit I have.
Must’ve slipped it in my pocket
when I went into the party.
That afternoon
I added a small splinter of glass,
a shattered bit of windshield,
which I found lodged under a flap
of my cargo shorts.
2. The third thing I added
was also glass,
a piece of sea glass.
I found it in a jar in our basement,
where we put all the shells
we’ve collected on family trips to Florida.
I don’t remember which trip,
or which of us found it,
but it was a pale, frosty green
and it made me think of Maxie.
3. Then I added a candle
to represent the
vigil I didn’t attend.
4. And then a rose.
Because of the roses
in the pots that Chloe broke.
I read about them in the newspaper.
In an article about
the grandmother of the shooter
and about the roses she loved so much.
5. My mother noticed my shrine.
And she understood right away.
It’s your ghar mandir, she said.
She told me that in India
people build ghar mandirs
in their homes,
and each morning
they sit before them,
to still their minds.
To pray.
It will help you heal, she said.
6. My dad says nothing about the shrine,
though he must notice it
every time he comes into my room.
I am at my desk,
doing chemistry homework
when he knocks
and opens the door a crack.
Anil, he says. A word?
I nod and set down my pen.
I just wanted to tell you, he says, and his words are halting, not smooth the way he usually speaks, just how . . . proud I am of you.
I say nothing, surprised.
I spoke to a colleague the other day who knows one of the EMT responders who was on the scene that night, and he said that what you did, the way you reacted, in very extreme circumstances, your quick thinking, probably saved Felix Jones’s life.
I shake my head.
It wasn’t anything. I just . . . , I say.
My father raises his hand
to stop me.
Not everyone could have done what you did, son, he said. I know you have had your doubts, but I must say this to you now. You have the heart of a doctor. That is all.
And he turns to leave.
I watch him go out the door,
shutting it carefully
behind him,
and part of me is angry,
with the feeling that he is using
this thing that happened,
this nightmarish,
tragic thing
that will haunt me
for the rest of my life,
to point me in the direction
he has always wanted me to go.
But part of me, I confess,
thinks that just maybe he’s right.
And I discover,
with a sense of wonder,
that it makes me
happy.
Monday, October 4
MAXIE
One day at the drugstore
I hear two ladies talking.
. . . drunk, trespassing, one says. Well, I’m sorry but I think those kids got what they deserved.
And I immediately know what kids
she’s talking about.
Us kids.
And I wonder,
is she right?
Did
Felix,
Emma,
Faith,
all of us—
even the boy Walter Smith—
did we get
what we
deserved?
CHLOE
“The Blame Game”
Everyone had an opinion
whose fault it was.
Everyone.
Mom’s Aunt Marceline.
My dentist.
The checkout girl at Dominick’s.
The substitute gym teacher with the freakishly large
earlobes.
people aren’t shy about giving
their opinion.
Here’s my tally on how it fell out:
Brendan, for shooting off that stupid gun
Emma, for suggesting we go to the “ghost house”
Me, for bringing up ghosting in the first place and for being a klutz and breaking the flowerpots.
Anil, Maxie, and Felix, for not speaking up about the gun in the glove compartment
All of us, for drinking MoonBuzz
So, yeah, I think about it a lot.
And yeah, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
That we’d gone to a 3-D movie instead.
But the truth is, blaming isn’t going to
change one single thing.
And that’s exactly what I said to
that substitute gym teacher
with her stupid big earlobes.
MAXIE
School is torture.
Some days I
can’t even get out
of bed.
I go to a therapist
and it helps.
A little.
She says it’ll
take time.
Emma,
when she came back,
in between
all her surgeries,
wearing a perpetual cast,
tried pulling me into
her wagon train
of friends.
I was grateful at first,
felt a little less lonely,
but then I started feeling
even lonelier than before.
Because it was obvious to me
that Emma’s friends
wished I wasn’t there.
So I started avoiding Emma.
Went back to avoiding everyone,
including Anil.
Especially Anil.
Which is ironic since one of
the few things that
keeps me from crying
is remembering
his story about
the two telescopes.
ANIL
1. I think about Maxie a lot,
worry about her.
In the first few weeks after
that night
it seemed like I never saw her
around school,
to the point that
I even wondered if her parents
had decided to switch her to
another school.
Then I’d catch a glimpse of her.
But she always stayed far away.
Like she couldn’t bear
the sight of me.
MAXIE
There was a story
printed in the Chicago paper
saying that,
back when he was in middle school,
Walter Smith
had
stabbed
a teacher
in the neck
with a pencil.
That’s when his grandmother
pulled him out of school
and started
homeschooling him.
But it turned out to be
another kid entirely,
a kid whose name wasn’t even
Walter,
and who went to a
middle school.
I found myself
feeling disappointed,
wishing it were true.
Because then I could see
Walter Smith
as a
neck-stabbing monster,
not the pathetic boy
in too-big glasses
who couldn’t stop
crying.
Like me.
Thursday, October 7
ANIL
1. I visit Felix sometimes
at the hospital,
just sit by his bed,
listen to the machines
that keep him alive.
I even talk to him,
though at first it felt awkward.
But research shows that people in a coma
really do hear what you’re saying.
Once I talked to him about Maxie.
How even though I hadn’t met her
until that night,
I miss her in this bottomless way,
as if I had known her
my whole life.
And then one afternoon
when I get to Felix’s room
Maxie is sitting by his bed,
reading him a book.
I watch her face,
her lips moving.
And suddenly,
it’s like I’ve turned into
a slab of granite,
completely unable to move
or speak.
I’m reminded of what my mother
once told me about snake charmers in India,
with those cobras in a basket,
who seem to be hypnotized
by the music of the flute.
But it turns out that cobras,
all snakes in fact,
are mostly deaf.
The only way they can hear is through vibrations
in their jawbones
and flute playing doesn’t send out
a ton of vibrations.
So scientists figured out that it wasn’t the music
that hypnotizes them,
but the movement of the charmer’s body.
Just like it’s the movement of Maxie’s lips
that has me transfixed.
My mother also told me that,
for obvious reasons,
snake charmers will often either
defang their snakes
or sew their mouths shut,
leaving only enough room for the tongue
to slide in and out.
Hi, Maxie, I say softly, finally able to move my own tongue.
Her head jerks around
and she almost drops the book.
But like at school,
she won’t even
look at me.
I have to go, she says to Felix, knowing I’m the only one who can hear her.
2. Maxie hurries out of the room,
eyes down.
I watch her go,
helpless as a snake with its
mouth sewn shut.
Saturday, October 9
MAXIE
One Saturday night
Emma ambushes me.
She shows up at my door
on crutches,
carrying a stack
of DVDs