CHAPTER 21: PERPETUAL PANIC


When Cricket was 15, some girl made a crack about what she was wearing to school. Cricket grabbed a handful of the girl’s hair and wedged her elbow into her back so she couldn’t squirm free. She walked the girl into the school with her head snapped back, muttering something in ear the whole way. No one ever said anything to her face again.

I was afraid of her back then. Now that I think about it, I was afraid of everyone and everything back then… but I was PHYSICALLY afraid of Cricket. A decade can change so much. Near the end of my hospital stay, I had felt so much worry for her well being that it bordered on panic. I should have known better. Cricket survived without me. That should have come as no surprise. But I still can’t believe how hard it must have been.

Money was a big problem. The new management of our old store came in and fired the entire staff. Just like that, she was out of a job. Plus, with me not working that meant she had to pay all the bills instead of just her half of them. Her income disappeared and her liabilities doubled. Somehow, she went on without missing a beat. She even let her sister move in, and supported her even though she couldn’t help with the bills. Somehow, she did all this. But not without a price.

She now works for The Evil Empire.

What is The Evil Empire? The Evil Empire is our own personal nickname for the nationwide chain of stores who always has low, low prices thanks to employing illegal aliens, underpaying and under-insuring its employees, and driving out the heart of America’s family own businesses. That doesn’t narrow it enough, does it? Well then, just pick one. They’re all evil, anyway. Why don’t I just say their name? Are you serious? You don’t trifle with The Evil Empire. Their power to sue looms above us like the Sword of Damocles.

Cricket- this friend of mine that I respect and love… the heavily pierced rebel girl who exudes an aura of chaos… this girl who can survive anything… gets up every morning and becomes…

Checkout Girl.

It’s like a reverse superhero. She puts on her super heroine costume- she ties up her hair, puts on a smock, and pins on a nametag… and immediately loses her superpowers. If it sounds like I’m putting her down, I’m not trying to. In fact, I’m trying to do the opposite. She doesn’t fall in my eyes when she goes to work. In fact, I think more of her because she has the testes to work for such an employer to pay the bills.

She makes it through. She wakes in the morning before the rest of us and performs some Wiccan ritual with candles and incense and herbs that I really don’t understand. She says she does it to focus her mind, otherwise she’d go crazy. It’s all she has in the morning. That and coffee.

She changed her part of her look, too. She still dresses the same, but she died her hair jet black. She said that was the mood she was in at the time. She also wears a third eye crystal on her forehead now. I don’t know if she has a lot of these things and she is gluing one on everyday or if she just one and has used some sort of permanent adhesive, but she always has a small diamond on her forehead. It’s a rich blue, somewhere between a violet and a blue. I would call it midnight blue, but what do I know?

There have been a few more changes that I have to get used to.

One change is Crystal. Lately she’s been wearing an old orange, white, and black Orioles baseball cap that has that cute little cartoon bird on it. She brings her hair down behind her ears in French braided pigtails. Then it’s a plain shirt, a raggedy cotton vest, baggy jeans and sneakers. It seems like she is always wearing this, or some version of it. This is really not her style. It used to be much less… well, whatever it is.

She also seems a lot more beautiful to me. No… more than beautiful… It’s hard to explain. It has nothing to do with the way she is dressing. The way she is dressing is pretty casual. It’s her attitude. It’s the way she’s carrying herself. It’s a twinkling light in her eyes. It’s sexy. Maybe it’s just the makeup.

She’s not a walking love festival, though. I don’t want to give that impression. She used to be one big mood swing- ecstatic with life and crushed by the world at the same time. She loved herself but also expected everyone to hate her. Her low times could be brutal but she seemed to have self-mechanisms that carried her through. There’s something different about her now. Her brooding and angry side seems to be dominating the fun-loving side. Those mechanisms look like they’re deactivated.

She’s sad and beautiful.

What am I going to do for her? I’ve got to wonder if it’s my fault. I used to help her carry through her rough times, and now… well… to be honest… I really don’t know what she thinks of me now.

Next is my new roomie, Eve. It’s not very evident that she is Cricket’s sister. I want to say that they have opposite personalities, which can sometimes happen with sisters, but I haven’t really found her personality yet. She is so quiet that I can’t really tell what’s going on in her head. Although, an intuition tells me that she is sad. I’ve never known silence and happiness to hold hands.

There’s another girl who has been around, too. They had to sit me down for this one. Who is the last person that we should be hanging out with?

“Ivy,” Cricket started, and I already knew there was trouble. She never calls me by my proper name unless there’s trouble. “Someone has been hanging out with us, and you really have to trust me on this one.”

“What- who?” I asked.

“She came to us after Luke passed away and she apologized. And it was more than just that. She has shown me she has really changed.”

“You are making it worse but not telling me who it is and trying to sell me first.”

She took a breath. “It’s Julie Miller.”

The girl who said Luke raped her.

I didn’t know how to react to that, so I sort of didn’t for a while. I found other things to do when everyone was going somewhere that she was going to be. But that wasn’t something I could do all the time, unless I never wanted to hang out with my friends. I was very… unsure of the whole situation. It was focusing this pressure in my brain that was causing all my discomfort to squirm. But then she actually started showing up to the apartment, so I had to stop bailing out on everyone and face the cold hard reality of the situation.

It really shouldn’t be a big deal. I understand that the world went on without me and there could be some big changes that I missed. Besides, I trust Cricket when it comes to judgments of character. But then again, this is a doozie. It just comes down to the fact that I can’t trust my brain to make proper judgments for me so I’m just going to have to trust Cricket. Cricket says everything is okay, so things are okay. That just has to be good enough.

Julie is neurotic, and I find her very annoying. But it’s that nervous energy that I think the other girls find charming about her. She seems obsessed with things that have little or no importance. She checks her makeup every five minutes. And she says things that are innocently naïve… and yet a little insensitive… but her intentions are positive and she is just oblivious to what she actually said. For example:

Cricket says: “I’m worried about Eve. She looks anorexic.”

Julie responds: “I know, doesn’t she look great?”

She cracks her gum. She fidgets. She will nervously straighten items (like magazines and jewel cases) that have been leisurely placed on our desks and coffee tables. And she’s my ex’s ex.

HISS.

But I better get over it. These four have been hanging out while I’ve been away. What a crew that is. They’re so different, and yet, when I see them interact, it seems like they need each other. Crystal perks to life when they are all together. She will intentionally annoy Cricket to no end. She’s the only person in the world who can make Cricket act that way. Julie brings a sense of foolish nonsense, and Eve is this dark looming cloud who strikes lightening from time to time with a dry quip or impressive observation. Cricket is much more entertaining when she is directing this circus. At this point, I guess all I add to the mix is tension.

They seem like a pack of she-wolves when they are together. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I really feel pressured to not rock that boat. I feel pressured to fit into this clique.

That’s right… my instinctual desire to conform is burning like a rash.

It isn’t so bad. It isn’t like I’m doing things just so they will like me… or not doing things just so they will like me. I’m just… careful. I’m tolerant of the new girl and I’m weary of the quiet girl. I’m worried about the moody girl and I’m following the alpha girl. I’m nervous. I never thought that I would be in this position again. There is a fear of loneliness buried so deep in my mind that my actions are almost involuntary. If my pupils dilate one more millimeter, I will be in a full blown panic. I think I’m more afraid of being alone than anything else in this world.

Just thinking about it makes me rub the scars on my wrists.

I feel like an outsider. I desperately want in. I want to love. I want to be loved. I have no idea how to do it. Even when the girls smile and are kind to me, my mind freezes. I feel like it shrivels in my skull. And it isn’t just my brain that has atrophied. My body has weakened as well.

In our apartment, the bathroom and the kitchen share the same linoleum floor. I’m in the bathroom, standing at its sink. Cricket is in the kitchen, washing dishes at its sink. I look in the mirror, and I have to check it to make sure it hasn’t bent. They let me get so skinny in the hospital. I look so fragile…so vulnerable. Everything is smaller, and I spend so much time staring at everything. My lips are thinner. My ribs are showing. My jaw is more defined. My knees are knobby. My hips are pointy. My spine is jagged. My breasts are smaller. My eyes are sunken. My eyebrows have grown back in.

Looking in the mirror… I look like Mia Farrow as Rosemary. I feel like a trainwreck.

Cricket leans into the mirror. I never heard her turn off the water in the kitchen and walk over. “Bettie Page,” she says.

“What?”

“We need to give you Bettie Page bangs.”

I stare into the mirror and try to envision what she is seeing… but I just go blank.

“Trust me. You could curl your hair and lashes and go cute and retro or leave everything straight and come across as jagged and tough. It’ll work for you.”

I keep staring.

“And you need it.”

She sat me on the side of the tub and handed me a hand mirror so I could see what she was doing. The mirror warped, and my face changed. Cricket was in the kitchen singing to herself, and I was at the sink, leaning into the mirror again. I don’t remember getting up. Goosebumps creep up my forearms. I get a strange feeling- like I’m being watched, but it isn’t a paranoid feeling- it’s almost comfortable. I’ve had this feeling before, but since I’ve come back home I feel it more and more often. Sometimes it feels like a single person. Sometimes it feels like a thousand people.

Cricket walks back into the bathroom. “You look a lot better now that we’ve given your hair some character,” and she waves her hand across my forehead and eyes to make her point. I look into the mirror and realize that I had been standing in front of the mirror forever without actually looking at myself.

She’s right, I am different.

I don’t know if I like it, but I don’t even care at this point. All I want is to sleep, so this horrible energy will subside.