When You Were Everything Page 15

  There’s a small line, so I explain how it works to Sydney while we wait. “You sit over there,” I say, pointing to a red stool with two hand-shaped panels on either side of it. “They take your photo, and then when it develops, you’ll be able to see what color your aura is. They tell you what it all means.”

  Sydney unlinks her arm from mine and walks around the small shop, smoothing her hands over all the huge chunks of rose quartz. She bends down to look through glass cases at dozens of tiny rough pieces of amethyst, smooth stones of jade and jasper, and even asks to try on a turquoise necklace.

  “This is the best place you’ve taken me, Cleo. For real. It’s amazing.”

  I nod. “I know,” I say, feeling myself slip into remembering the last time I was in Chinatown with Layla. We didn’t even come here, but the sadness can leak into every little crevice of my mind if I let it.

  “I was just at Dolly’s,” I tell Sydney, eager to think of something happy. She spins to face me with a shiny piece of obsidian in one hand, pale opalite in the other.

  “Was Dom there?” she asks, and I nod.

  “You guys have some cray-cray sexual energy. Tell me everything.”

  I blush, but then I tell her about Dom and his small plates. I tell her how he showed me around and that I helped them close up. I don’t tell her about volunteering to work there, though, because it feels almost embarrassing—that I’m so desperate to hang out with Dom that I’ll work at his grandparents’ restaurant for practically nothing.

  “Sounds like he’s as into you as you are into him,” Sydney pronounces after I’ve told her most of my story.

  “I never said I was into him.”

  “Uh-huh.” She doesn’t even turn around to look at me. “Okay, Cleo.” But under her breath she mutters, “Someone’s in denial.”

  “Are you buying any of those?” I ask her. She’s amassed a small pile of stones that range in color from deep blue to pure, nearly translucent white.

  “Depends on what my aura says, I guess.”

  When it’s finally our turn, she abandons her stones on the counter and steps up to the chair to have her photo taken. “You put your hands on the panels,” the woman behind the camera tells her, and Sydney settles both her small hands in the right spots on either side of the chair. I go next.

  It’s not a regular camera. It’s a big rectangular box with a string that the woman pulls to open the shutter. And the photos aren’t regular photos. They’re Polaroid-esque, and the lady who’s helping us places it facedown, before inviting us to sit in front of one of the glass cases full of crystals.

  When she peels the photos open to reveal our auras, they look very different. Sydney’s is mostly red, bursting along the sides with pink and green, while mine is a blindingly bright shade of yellow, with green around the edges, and a tiny bit of light brown and blue over my chest.

  “Whoa,” I say. Mine and Gigi’s never looked exactly alike, but ours were never as different as Sydney’s and mine are right now.

  Sydney gets her reading first. “Red is a good color,” the woman says. “It means you’re strong and adventurous—ready for anything.” Sydney nods, and I agree, thinking of some of her ideas for my New Memories Project.

  “This green means you’re very creative, especially when it comes to practical things…maybe like hair? Like clothes?”

  Sydney stretches her eyes wide. “I’m the president of the fashion club!” she squeals. “And I mean, look at my hair.”

  The lady smiles.

  “This pink, though. This pink means that there is a new person you love. A new friend or a new boyfriend?” she says, and Sydney scrunches up her nose. “Girlfriend?”

  Sydney blushes, but not in a way that seems like she’s embarrassed. She grabs my hand. “Cleo’s a new friend,” she says to the woman, but she doesn’t look at me as she says it, which makes me think she’s probably thinking about Willa.

  Then it’s my turn.

  “This yellow is interesting. Means you’re very smart, very heady. But maybe sometimes you use your head a little too much?”

  “Does she ever,” mumbles Sydney, and I slap her shoulder.

  “Your green, because it’s here, just along the edges at the top, means perfectionism. It means you always want to be perfect, and you expect perfection from the people around you too. And this brown, right around your heart, means you’re confused about something. Because it’s so close to this pink, maybe you’re confused about a friendship. About a person you love or have loved.”

  I swallow hard, and take the photo when she gives it to me. Sydney’s still holding my hand, but I pull away.

  * * *

  —

  Back out on the street, everything about us seems a little bit…off. I can’t stop thinking about my reading. Sydney is quiet (and Sydney is never quiet), so she must still be thinking about hers too.

  “You okay?” I ask her, and she nods but still doesn’t say much. Right before we enter the subway station, she grabs my hand again. She pulls me over to a bench and once we’re sitting, she stares at her aura photo instead of looking at me.

  “So, there’s something I haven’t told you,” she says.

  I feel instantly tense, like I may have to run. I’m terrified of what she’s about to say, because our new friendship is still so fresh, so…tenuous. I get a horrible feeling that I may lose her before I even feel like she’s mine. I busy myself sticking my photo into my bag so I don’t have to watch her say whatever’s coming.

  “That day you tutored Layla? I called Willa. I thought that you and Layla would work things out and then that me and Willa would, and that all four of us could be friends. But when I met you in Washington Square Park and you were so upset about the way things had gone, I didn’t have it in me to tell you that me and Willa were okay. That we’d forgiven each other and met for ice cream and that we’d figured most of our shit out in a single afternoon.”

  Her words wash over me like a wave, and I’m suddenly drowning…in fear, jealousy, and something else.

  “So you guys are friends again?” I ask, because I need her to say the words. I think of a line from Hamlet about things not being good or bad until you think of them that way, but this feels bad. I can’t help but fall into the spiral of memories—the way I was slowly replaced in Layla’s life by Sloane when we’d been friends for years; how it would be so easy for Sydney to forget all about me if she has Willa again, since we’ve only been hanging out for a few weeks.

  “Yeah,” Sydney says, and she actually sounds excited. “Yeah, but it’s good, right? Now we can all hang out together.”

  Sydney’s phone buzzes in her hand, and the screen lights up with Willa’s face. And that’s a sign I can’t ignore; a sign if there ever was one.

  You say that now, I think. But I know how these things go.

  I stand up. “Thanks for coming with me tonight,” I say, swallowing hard around the lump in my throat; around the pain of impending loneliness. “And…all the other nights. But don’t feel like you have to hang out with me out of pity, or anything.”

  “Cleo,” Sydney says, frowning. “What are you even talking about?” I shrug and start to walk away from her. “Where are you even going?” she calls.

  “I got curfew,” I lie.

  “Now?” she asks. Her phone is still ringing.

  “You can get that. Meet up with Willa. I’ll see you guys at school.”

  Sydney looks at me and then back down at her phone. “You sure?” she asks. And I nod.

  “Text me later?” she says to me as she lifts her phone to her ear. “Hey! Where are you?”

  I’ve seen the way you can lose someone in slow motion, and I know the kinds of things it can make me do, so I keep my head down, listening as her voice fades away. I slip on my headphones, erasing the sound of her, just like I�
��ve been erasing everything else that hurts.

  then: December, week 1

  FEELINGS CHANGE

  When I got home from school that chilly day in December and Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of wine in her hand, I immediately knew something was up. I looked at my phone to check the time, but it was as early as I thought it was, just a little after six. I hadn’t spoken to Layla since the day in the library, and I wished I could text her to tell her that my mom was home before eight. She would have gotten it. She was the only person other than my dad who would.

  My mom didn’t turn at the sound of the door opening. Or at the sound of me dropping my keys into the tray beside a growing stack of unopened mail.

  “Mom?” I asked, because my stomach instantly felt low and tight.

  She turned when I said that. She smiled slow and soft in my direction and I didn’t see her work phone or laptop in her immediate vicinity. Which was even weirder than her being home this early.

  “What are you doing home?” I asked her.

  She moved the base of her wineglass in small, slow circles across the surface of the table, swirling her drink. I could see the liquid leaving little trails along the sides of the glass—“legs,” my dad would say.

  “Just waiting for you and your father to get back,” she said, like this was normal. “We need to talk to you.”

  I sat down at the table but my insides ignited with worry. So I got up, put a kettle on, and then headed back to my room to change out of my uniform. I texted my dad.

  Get home asap. Mom is here and she’s being super weird.

  For the first time probably ever, he didn’t text me back right away.

  The kettle screamed just as Daddy walked in—a harbinger of what felt like disaster. He was home too early too.

  I nearly spilled the hot water as I poured myself a cup of tea, and I asked, “Did someone die?” as I joined them at the kitchen table. Daddy shook his head and untied his bow tie.

  My voice cracked. “Is one of you dying?”

  “No, honey. No one’s dying,” Mom said.

  Daddy slipped his glasses from his face, but a second later he put them back on, and I braced myself to hear some new and awful truth.

  “We’re…separating,” Daddy said, and Mom nodded, looking up. She continued where he left off.

  “Nothing beyond that has been decided yet. We’ll see what happens after we spend some time apart.”

  She released the death grip she had on the stem of her wineglass and reach her hand toward mine. But I moved quickly away.

  “Why?” I said, turning to one parent and then the other. Daddy’s chin trembled and he looked at Mom like he was apologizing to her with just his eyes. People who didn’t want to be married anymore weren’t supposed to still communicate like people who were in love. But that was when I realized I hadn’t seen them in the same room together for nearly a month.

  “I found an apartment—” Daddy started without answering my question.

  “Already?” I cried.

  Daddy reached out a hand to me, but I shrank away from him too. “It’ll be available early next month, so that’s when I’ll be moving out. But until then, Baby Girl, nothing much will change.”

  “That’s not exactly true, Cliff,” Mom said. She was so calm. It made me feel worse.

  “Right,” Daddy said. “Your mother’s right. I’m also going to be leaving Chisholm. I won’t be returning to work there after the holiday break.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. And then I said it again. “I…I just don’t understand.”

  Mom cleared her throat in a way that sounded like she was trying to swallow. When I looked at her, I nearly shattered.

  “Sometimes feelings just change, Cleo. Sometimes people…outgrow each other.”

  Defiantly, I shook my head. “No, that’s not a thing. If you love someone you’re supposed to love them forever.”

  Mom said, “Sadly, honey, love isn’t always enough.”

  In his Librarian Voice, Daddy said, “One day you’ll understand, honey. You’re still so young.”

  I almost knocked my chair over, I stood up so fast. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to dismiss my feelings based on my age. I’m not a two-year-old who’s bumped her head. I’m sixteen and”—my voice cracked as tears spilled over onto my cheeks—“my family is falling apart.” A second later I added, “Everything is.”

  My dad encircled his big hand around my wrist like he wanted to hold me in place. But I wrenched out of it easily, because he’s always touched me like he’s afraid I’ll break.

  I moved away from the table and back down the hall to my room. I slammed my door. I put on Billie Holiday and I blasted it, letting her sultry, soulful voice fill me up. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering where Daddy would go, how far away it would be, and how often I’d get to see him now that everything was changing. For the millionth time since I’d lost her, I desperately wished Gigi were still alive.

  I took out my phone, and despite my earlier hesitations, I texted Layla.

  Can you talk?

  I waited and waited. I texted her again.

  Layla, text me back.

  An hour went by without an answer. And then, when I heard a knock on my door, I told whoever it was to go away. I curled into myself and I sobbed like someone had just punched me in the stomach, because that’s what it felt like. I was losing everything and everyone all at once. I texted Layla one more time.

  Lay. I need you.

  I hated how desperate the text sounded, but nothing else had worked. When she finally texted back, it was after midnight. I was half-asleep in the dark, and the glow from my phone only roused me because it was inches away from my swollen eyes. I sat up, read it, and then threw my phone across the room. It hit one of my snow globes and I heard something shatter.

  I told you. I need some space.

  WE’RE GOOD

  I woke up early the morning after my parents told me about the separation, and I left before anyone else did. The screen of my phone was cracked from when I threw it the night before, and my floor was wet and covered in broken glass. I’d hit my Peter Pan snow globe when I’d pitched my phone across my room, the one Gigi had gotten me for my eighth birthday. Neverland was in pieces below my shelves.

  I caught the train into the city, needing the quiet buzz of early-morning Manhattan, and got off at the stop closest to school. I liked watching the city wake itself up. Delivery trucks unloaded everything from kegs to dozens of cases of Snapple, and no one was honking their horn yet. Trash trucks beeped and clicked and crashed as they lifted and emptied the contents of dumpsters into their stained compactors. And the only pedestrians were construction workers, baristas, bakery owners, and people with giant suitcases on their way to the airport or just arriving in the city.

  Etta James crooned in my ears as I sat on a cold bench to people-watch. I looked up and noticed that wreaths had been hung on lampposts and that the trees that lined the sidewalk were strung with tiny white lights. I changed my music to Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” and instantly my mood brightened the tiniest bit. For the first time ever, I wanted to skip school. It was unfathomable, the idea of going into that building and not speaking to my dad or Layla. Being alone with my thoughts and Nat’s voice in this decked-out version of the city was a much better alternative.

  Just as I was about to take out my wallet to see if I had enough money to buy myself a cup of tea, Jase surfaced from the subway station right beside me.

  “Cleo? What are you doing here so early?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” I said.

  He grinned. “Touché. My dad’s going to do some relief work in Cambodia today, so we all got up to have breakfast with him before he had to head to the airport. My mom was afraid if I went back to bed
I wouldn’t get up in time for school, so she made me leave.”

  I laughed. It felt strange to laugh, but it was nice.

  “She’s probably right.” I looked in my wallet. I had ten bucks. “Can I buy you a coffee?” I asked him.

  “Oh God, yes,” he said, reaching out to pull me up.

  Inside one of the only open coffee shops, Jase and I found a small table with two chairs. We slipped out of our coats and sat close together as steam from our drinks spun into the air between us. I couldn’t decide if I felt older because I was up early, because I was sitting in a coffee shop with a boy, or because something about me was fundamentally changed by my parents’ announcement the night before, and I was having to deal with it all on my own. But whatever it was, I felt like a more grown-up version of myself: tougher, more serious, and a little more alive.

  “So, you haven’t told me why you’re here so early,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Just couldn’t sleep.” I looked over my shoulder at the slowly filling streets, still trying to decide what the rest of my day would look like.

  “Cleo,” Jase said, kind of seriously. I turned back to look at him. “We’re okay, right? Like, we’re cool?”

  I smiled a little. “I just bought you coffee, Jase. We’re fine,” I said. I took a sip of my tea.

  “Okay, good.” He sipped his own drink, but as I watched the way his dimples appeared and disappeared when he lifted and lowered his cup, I wanted to ask him something.

  “Why did we break up?” I asked. I saw him tense, but with everything my parents were saying last night, I genuinely wanted to know if his perspective of our downfall was the same as mine.