Tricia gestures to the computer. “What’s so interesting in there anyway? Is there some other world?”
“It’s not another world. It’s just ones and zeros—that’s all programming is.” But that’s not true. All_BS is somewhere in there. Meg, too.
Tricia doesn’t say anything. She stares at my room, my walls, the pictures tacked up with Scotch tape of me and Meg at shows, me and the Garcias on a camping trip to Mount Saint Helens, Meg and me on graduation day last year, her beaming, me smirking. There are pictures of me and Tricia, too, but they’re outnumbered by the Garcias.
“You two always were like day and night,” Tricia says, looking at the graduation picture.
“We don’t look that different. Or didn’t.” Meg had dark brown eyes and mine are hazel gray, but that was the biggest distinction. We both had brown hair, and though Meg had Joe’s coffee complexion, in summer my olive skin gets so dark that we used to say that I could pass for Joe’s daughter. Except I wasn’t Joe’s daughter, and now this insistence on our resemblance embarrasses me. Was this just another way of trying to lasso myself to Meg?
“I’m not talking about looks,” Tricia replies. “Personality. You’re nothing like her.”
I don’t answer.
“Thank God,” Tricia adds.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Tricia continues to stare at the graduation photo. “She had everything. Those big brains. Fancy college scholarship. She even had that expensive computer you can’t seem to get off of.” Then she looks back at me. “You just had me. And you’re smart, don’t get me wrong, but you aren’t Meg-smart. You got stuck at the shitty junior college and now, from what I can tell, you don’t even have that.”
I twist a loose thread from my quilt around my finger until my finger throbs. Thank you, Tricia, for such a precise overview of my inferiority.
“But even with the deck stacked against you, you stuck to your guns,” Tricia continues on her tear. “You didn’t quit that damn dance class that Tawny Phillips let you join for free, even when you sprained your ankle.”
“I couldn’t quit. I had the big solo in the dance show, All That Jazz,” I remind her. I’d forgotten about that. Mindy Thomas had been so pissed when I’d gotten the coveted role. I’m not sure Tricia remembers it either. She couldn’t come to the show. She had to work. The Garcias came.
“Right,” Tricia continues. “And at school, you hated math, but you kept with it all the way through goddamn trignastics.”
“Trigonometry,” I correct.
She waves away the distinction. “You took math all the way through that because you wanted to go to college. My point is, you never quit on dance, on math, on anything, and maybe you had more reason to. You had a pile of rocks, and you cleaned them up pretty and made a necklace. Meg got jewels, and she hung herself with them.”
I know I should defend Meg. This is my best friend. And Tricia has it wrong. She doesn’t know the whole story. And she’s probably jealous of the Garcias for being the family she never was.
But I don’t defend Meg. I may not be Joe’s daughter. But right at this moment, I actually feel like Tricia’s.
24
The next day there is a message from All_BS. It simply says: Who did you lose?
It takes me a minute to realize he—by this point I’m almost certain he’s a man—is referring to an older post. Which means he’s been watching me. I spend an hour thinking about what to write, which story will be most effective, and then I circle back. The true one will.
Repeat: The better half of me.
Within twenty minutes he has responded again.
All_BS: “Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.”—James Baldwin
Repeat: What do you mean by this?
The library closes before he has time to respond, leaving me to think about the quote all night. I bring my computer with me to the Chandlers’ the next morning, and discover they don’t lock their Wi-Fi network. I sneak into the bathroom and check to see if there’s a response from All_BS. And there is.
All_BS: Perhaps your better half, as you call it, was nothing more than a crutch. It can be terrifying, after so long using one, to go without. Maybe that adjustment is what you are going through now.
And that’s it. Nothing about offing myself, or life being the affliction. Only the suggestion that Meg was my crutch.
The scary thing is, he’s right. Meg held me up. And without her, I’m falling down.
Repeat: So you’re saying this is temporary, that I shouldn’t be thinking about catching the bus because I’m just upset over my loss?
I hear Mrs. Chandler in the next room. I quickly hit post and stash my computer in a corner. The rest of the morning, I worry that I somehow put him off. I practically run to the library that afternoon, relieved to find a response waiting.
All_BS: I’m saying no such thing.
Repeat: Then what are you saying?
He must still be online. Because the reply is instant.
All_BS: What are YOU saying?
I think hard before I answer.
Repeat: I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s why I’m asking you.
All_BS: Yes. That is why you’re asking me.
25
In the middle of June, I get a call from Alice. I haven’t spoken to her since the last time I stayed with her, but when I answer the phone, she starts burbling away like we chat every day.
“So I checked on the map, and you’re in Eastern Washington, right?” she asks after she’s caught me up on things I don’t really care about. “Between Spokane and Yakima?”
There are hundreds of miles between Spokane and Yakima. I love how people consider it flyover. But I don’t correct her. “More or less.”
“Cool! I’m working as a counselor at Mountain Bound. I’ll be outside of Missoula, and I’m pretty sure I-90 goes through your neck of the woods.”
“It’s not far from here.”
“Perfect! It’s, like, seven hours from Eugene to Spokane, or wherever you are. A good one-day drive. And then I can make it to Missoula the next day.”
It takes me a second to understand what she’s talking about. “You want to stay with me?”
“If that’s all right,” she says.
We almost never have guests. Even Meg only slept here a handful of times. I’m already trying to figure out how to explain Alice to Tricia. Where to put her. Tricia and Raymond still seem to be together, judging by the number of nights she hasn’t been home. Maybe she’ll stay at his place that night, though if I request that, it’s a surefire way to make sure it doesn’t happen.