“Hey, Sadie.”
The voice comes from across the street, and I turn to find Kayla sitting on her front porch steps in a pretty print blouse and cutoffs. She waves. “Happy birthday,” she adds. “It is your birthday, right?”
“Yup, thanks!” I call back, but neither of us crosses the road. After a childhood of sleepovers and playdates, our friendship kind of faded out after we started high school. We still get along fine, but it’s clear we’re different kinds of people. After I met Garrett, I got involved with the lit magazine, while Kayla turned out to be one of those perky, cheer-filled girls, wearing bright bands in her blond ponytail and gossiping over celebrity breakups. She’s been dating a varsity basketball player named Blake for a year now, and sometimes, when Garrett drops me off at home late at night, we pass his blue pickup truck, parked two blocks over, the windows steamed up inside.
I’m just deciding whether to go over and say hi when that very truck pulls around the corner, some rock song playing loudly through the open windows. Kayla bounces up. “Have fun!” she calls, smiling, and then hurries toward the truck. Blake leans over to open the passenger door; Kayla hops in, kissing him for a long moment before he slings one arm around her shoulder and they drive away.
I watch them go, feeling a curious pang of envy. Not because I harbor a secret love for monosyllabic jocks — I would die of boredom spending even an hour with Blake. I’ve met him in passing a couple of times, and sure he’s cute (in a hair-product-and-tan kind of way), but the guy has nothing to say. Not even a little; not even a teeny, tiny bit. Nothing. Garrett and I talk for hours, about everything under the sun: politics, philosophy, religion. He challenges me to think about the world in a whole new way. That’s real love: when you’re intellectual equals. The Ted Hughes to my Sylvia Plath.
Except, of course, without that whole sticking-my-head-in-the-oven thing.
I’ve barely closed the front door behind me when my mom bounces out of the kitchen, resplendent in matching aqua velour yoga separates. I swear she’s the only woman in the known universe who irons her loungewear.
“Honey!” She beams. “I’ve been waiting! Are you ready for your surprise?”
“Sure,” I say. “Let me just go change and —”
“No need! Your gift is upstairs.”
I follow her up. Everyone says that we look alike, with our Jewish coloring and dark, wants-to-be-curly hair, but she’s the petite, polished version, while I got my dad’s awkward height and bony figure — forever doomed to the Extra Tall section at department stores, and the continual assumption of gym teachers that I should be good at organized sports.
“Close your eyes,” I’m ordered for the second time today. I wait patiently while Mom opens my bedroom door. “Ta-da!”
I open my eyes — and promptly let out a wail of distress.
“What did you do?”
Gone are my haphazard photo collages; all my pictures are now neatly pinned on a bulletin board in the corner. My messy but totally personalized desk system has been reduced to color-coded storage boxes and a gleaming in-box. My collection of battered old books is nowhere to be seen, and the clothes I had carefully — well, lovingly — strewn across the night table, floor, and dresser . . .
“What do you think?” Mom spins around, proud as a catalog model. “I reorganized the closet. See? Everything is color coded, with sections and boxes. And your desk is set up for maximum functionality, with a proper filing system and —”
“Mom!” I interrupt, staring in horror at the organization she’s wrought on my perfect mess. “I thought we agreed: you keep your life coaching out of my life!”
She’s unswayed. “But honey, you’ll love it. You can be so much more productive now. You know what I always say: an ordered environment means an ordered internal life!”
“And you know what Nietzsche says?” I counter. “‘You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star’!”
Mom blanches. “Birth?”
“It’s a metaphor!” I catch my breath. “And where did all my books go?”
“They’re here.” Mom shows me the shelf full of neatly ordered volumes. Shiny, brand-new volumes. “They were all so battered and old. I replaced them with brand-new editions.”
“But . . .” I gasp, lost for words. Are we even related? “That’s the point! That they’re old; they’ve been passed along from somebody else. They had notes in them! History, and meaning, and —”
“OK, all right!” Clearly, Mom realizes that tampering with my library collection is an intrusion too far. She puts a soothing hand on my shoulder and back-tracks. “They’re still boxed in the garage. We can go get them back.”
“Thank you.” I sigh with relief. “And, um, thanks,” I add, not wanting to seem like a completely ungrateful brat. “For all of this. It’s a . . . nice thought.”
She smiles. “I promise, just a few days of the new system, and you’ll be convinced. It’s the first thing I do with my clients. And look, I even made you a wall chart with space for your personal goals and achievement schedule!”
I sigh. “Thanks, Mom.”
It was inevitable, I guess. For years now, she’s been just itching to get her hands on me: to turn me into one of her little clones, following their checklists and seven-step plans that she hands out like a grade-school teacher passing around paint-by-numbers sheets. She used to be cool, once upon a time — scatterbrained and artistic. She was into pottery, these weird abstract sculptures, and would sometimes be so deep in a project that she’d lose all track of time. We’d wind up eating PB&J sandwiches for dinner and wearing pajamas around the house on laundry days.
It was awesome.
But then Dad left us to go play saxophone on tour with his jam band, and overnight it seemed she turned into this stranger — guzzling self-help books and going on motivational weekends designed to strip her of all spontaneity and turn her into a goddess of achievement and positive thinking. It worked out for her, I guess. She qualified as a life coach, and now she has a ton of clients, paying her ridiculous amounts of money to brainwash, I mean, teach, them, too.
But not me.
As far as Garrett and I are concerned, organization and structure are the mortal enemies of creativity. I mean, did Emily Dickinson plan her goals in a color-coded workbook? Did Shakespeare use an inspirational daily quote calendar?