Sarah Stevenson - Underneath (Sarah Jamila Stevenson)

“So how about Blackwell Cliffs? What was the application like?” I asked. Her eyes strayed off into the distance and her smile disappeared.

“Blackwell’s okay, I guess.” She bit one fingernail unconsciously, though it was already down past the quick.

“What, do you not like it there?”

“I don’t … No, it’s great. I just think you’d prefer someplace else,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. It sounded like she didn’t want me there at the same college with her, and I felt confused and hurt. Then the moment passed and she pulled a smile back onto her face. “I know you’ll find the right school. You’re popular and friendly. You’ll fit in wherever you go,” she reassured me.

Yeah. Popular. Friendly. Those were words I would have used to describe Shiri. So, why?

Why?

Why?

That one word pounds into my brain like a jackhammer. My lips, my jaw tense into an unfamiliar-feeling rictus, almost a snarl.

Suddenly I’m furious. I pound my fist into my pillow, over and over. I want to scream. I want to yell at Shiri. I had so much I still wanted to ask her about, to talk to her about. I thought she cared about me. Enough to stick around.

I should have known after she left us the first time.

I grab the pillow and throw it as hard as I can. It hits the glass of water on my nightstand. The glass falls. Water stains the beige carpet. I pick the pillow up and throw it again. The bedside lamp tips, crashes to the floor. Pixie streaks out of the room and runs downstairs. My face is hot and I’m breathing hard.

“Sunny, is everything okay?” My dad comes stomping up the stairs, rushing into the room with a look of panic.

“I’m fine, Dad,” I say. Strangely, I do feel calmer. Dad picks up the lamp, puts it back on my nightstand, and replaces the shade. Then he turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders.

“What happened here?” He squeezes a little, gently.

“Nothing.” I look down, avoiding his concerned gaze. Water’s still seeping into the carpet. What can I tell him? I lost my temper? I’m mad at Shiri? No. I can’t. I can’t bear to have that conversation yet. “I scared Pixie. She knocked everything off the nightstand and ran out.”

“Okay,” he says, doubtfully, brushing his disheveled black hair out of his eyes. “If you’re sure. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.” He looks like he wants to say something more, but he just squeezes my shoulders again. I close my eyes. He must see something in my expression, because I feel his hands lift, hear him walking softly out of the room. Thank God. I just want quiet. I go over to my computer and turn off the music.

Usually I like the sound of voices and music around me. Sometimes when I’m home alone I switch on cheesy comedies about high school, the kind my parents hate. Cassie and I watch them while we’re doing homework, cracking up at the idiotic one-liners and making fun of how the actors are obviously way too old to be in high school. We haven’t done that in a while. Not since the beginning of the school year.

I pick up the now-empty water glass, wondering what Cassie is doing right now. Then I remember I’m currently missing swim practice. Ever since that disastrous meet and everything else that’s happened, I haven’t felt like swimming. After the funeral, I emailed Coach Rydell to tell her I needed some time off the team. I felt a little guilty, but it seems like too much energy to get my arms and legs to function in tandem.

My body is tensing up again, so I lie back down. Mom is always trying to teach me deep-breathing meditation techniques and I try some of those, inhaling slowly through my nose and visualizing my breath filling my body all the way from my toes to the top of my head. I hold it for a moment and then gradually exhale, trying to imagine the tension in my body leaving along with the used-up oxygen.

After a while, my mind drifts and I lie there in a stupor. Images swirl through my head, but I keep going back to one memory: Shiri and me as little kids, hiding in a backyard fort made of chairs and bedsheets, dressed like superheroes in pillowcase capes and safety goggles from the garage. She was Wonder Nerd and I was Super Dork, fighting to rid the world of “dum-dums.” Alone and silent in my room, tears flow down my cheeks.

I can’t handle this.

I suck in air, desperately at first, gasping, then more slowly and evenly. After a few minutes, my thoughts are quiet again. I focus on the catch in my breathing until it finally goes away, too.

That’s when I hear the voice in my head.

Not her, no, no, why? I don’t understand why she—

It bursts in like static and then fades away like a radio station, leaving me with only the surge of emotion that accompanied the voice, all grief and pain and loss. My eyes sting, and I feel a pain in my chest like my heart is breaking.

And then my mind is silent again, and I can hear the usual noises of the house and smell some kind of spicy re-heated chicken dish my Dadi sent over, and it’s like I’m waking up from a bad dream. I almost felt disembodied for a minute—the voice in my head seemed so not me. But it sounded familiar. I must have been dreaming.

I open my eyes and flex my muscles stiffly. Arranging my sun and moon pillows, golden yellow and creamy white plush, I get up and change out of my school clothes, now damp from spilled water. Clean gray sweats are all I can manage before going downstairs. Gray fits the overall mood, though; dinner is somber, and mostly silent. I pick at my chicken biryani, pushing the grains of Basmati rice around my plate with a fork.

“At least eat some naan,” my dad says, putting a piece on my plate. Normally, naan is comfort food, pure doughy goodness only available on special occasions or in restaurants, but I can barely choke it down. Dad, on the other hand, is wolfing down his food, tearing chunks of chicken away from the bone with little pieces of naan and scooping them into his mouth. His shirt is wrinkled and disheveled-looking, and he’s got a five o’clock shadow of dark stubble on his chin and upper lip.

Like me, Mom isn’t eating much. Her hair is sloppily pulled back in an elastic, one long, stray light-brown lock dangling unnoticed into her plate. There are dark circles under her eyes and she looks even paler than normal.

“Have some green beans, honey,” she says quietly, passing me the dish. “And put some on your father’s plate, too, please. He needs the fiber.”

Dad looks up momentarily. “I ate some already.” Usually he’d make some kind of dumb, inappropriate-for-the-table joke about having so much fiber in his diet he ought to be crapping bran muffins. But tonight he’s just quiet.

I sit there, too, and eat green beans one at a time. I’m pretty sure this is the longest meal ever. I can hear the clock ticking in the living room and the sprinkler going outside. A rumbling feeling of frustration starts welling up inside me like an earthquake about to let loose, but I just clench my jaw and put my fork down. I take deep breaths and try to envision a calm ocean.

Calm. Ocean. Calm.

My mom coughs, takes a sip of water, and then says, force-

fully, “I just wish she would have told us, that’s all. We could have done something.”

“I know , Mom,” I say. “I know exactly what you mean.” And I do. All of a sudden, I’m frustrated again, almost uncontrollably so; and sad.

Mom looks at me strangely, her fork halfway to her mouth.

“What was that?”

“What you just said. I was agreeing with you.” I eat another green bean since she’s looking at me.

“I didn’t say anything, honey. You must have been thinking out loud.”