Where It Began

Lisa seems to find this all extremely amusing. She says she hopes I’m ready for a whole lot of salvation because unless she brings me some on a regular basis, she is probably never going to get to drive a car somewhere other than church again until she graduates from college, gets a job, and buys herself one, a fact that she seems weirdly fine with. Then she starts beating herself up about how she’s a twit to talk about herself when I’m bedridden and mangled, and at the point when I am pretty sure she’s on the verge of hauling out our Lord and Savior, I tell her it’s okay but I’m too tired to talk.

Meanwhile, Anita keeps sending me text messages about how worried about me she is and am I having cognitive problems and do I want her to show me how to meditate or go back over the SAT flash cards we’ve already done. She doesn’t sound amused at all.

I’m not all that amused either. In fact, Anita’s text messages are making me crazy, not because there is anything inherently a

Meanwhile, Lisa and Anita show up at the front door with one of those Save the Children blankies they make for godless, impoverished children with no electricity or blankies, with my name embroidered on the yellow silk border.

“You don’t have to let them see you,” Vivian whispers, sticking her head into my room when they are pounding on the front door. “It’s not too late. Nobody has to see you like this. Do you want to put on more concealer?”

She is in the Vivian version of maternal frenzy, seriously concerned that my so-called friends will ditch me if they notice I’m not pageant-ready, trying to save me from this sorry fate—completely ignoring the actual looming disaster in which somebody shows up and arrests me for DUI and grand theft auto.

But I am only thinking Billy Billy Billy Billy Billy, so much so that all other thoughts, scary thoughts, no-lawyer-and-the-LAPD-is-on-its-way-with-sirens-blaring-and-handcuffs-at-the-ready thoughts, oh-no-I-look-like-crap-and-my-friends-won’t-like-me-anymore-and-I’ll-be-a-Bashed-in-Face-Pariah thoughts—except, whoops, that last one is Vivian’s thought, not my thought—have no space to hang out.

Vivian is prepared to barricade the door on my behalf, but eventually, still unconvinced, she gives way for the gift-wrapped goodies, the fuzzy knitted scarf, handmade dangle earrings, and a bunch of pastel aromatherapy candles with names like “Sea of Tranquility” and “Mellow Morning.” And all right, as miserable a cynical bitch as I feel like, boyfriend-less and very likely re-invisible, it still feels kind of good to be with people who actually don’t care how I look or what I did and still like me. Even if Vivian thinks they’re a couple of losers, not unlike the reappearing Old Me with the purple and green bruises that clash with the currently nonexistent New Me’s autumn season earth tones.

And did I mention board games?

“When I’m sick, I love to play board games,” Lisa says. “And you’re really good at board games.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Grumpy, aren’t we?” says Anita, making a face that is supposed to cheer me up and cajole me out of grumpiness but doesn’t. “Sanjiv says closed head injuries can affect your mood.”

“You talked to your brother about me?”

Anita shrugs and looks somewhat sheepish.

“Come on, Gabby,” Lisa says. “You got hit on the head. This is your excuse to kick back and be a kid again! Don’t you want to play Boggle?” Well, no. Battleship? No. Co

“We should play Husker Du?” Anita says. “After a closed head injury, we should work on your memory.”

And it’s no better when Huey tags along, either.

Because Huey, as it turns out, is such a wreck in the presence of a banged up, debilitated person such as me, he can barely hold it together for long enough to figure out who done it in a game of Clue. Or maybe it’s just the shock of being in a girl’s bedroom.

“I’d leave him out,” Lisa says, “but he really wants to see you. And I might not get to be semi-alone with a boy in a car again for years.”

“You do know that your mother is insane, right?” I say. “No offense.”

Lisa sighs but doesn’t seem all that worked up about it.

“You call that insane,” Anita says. “Hello. Have you met my mother? She’s trying to establish a perfect simulation of small-town life in Punjab circa 1958. Only in Beverly Hills. And we all know how sane that it.”

We have all been so severely indoctrinated to respect insane cultural differences that Lisa and I don’t know what to say.

“Well, at least you don’t have to cover all your hair like Asha,” Lisa says weakly.

“Admit it’s insane,” Anita says.

We do.

Ironically, Asha, albeit covered head to toe, gets to jump into Huey’s car every time they have to go do yearbook business because Huey drove down to Culver City and had a meaningful dialogue with her dad.

Whereas the mere sight of me has reduced Huey to cringing in my desk chair, barely able to push Colonel Mustard around the board.

“Boys are such babies,” Lisa says.

“You look like you’re in so much pain,” Huey says, as if this or some variant of this is the only conversation starter he can think of. “How do you feel about . . .”—he scrapes Colonel Mustard into the library where he’s been before and doesn’t need to go again—“. . . everything?”

How do you feel about everything? You have to figure that if Huey had been born into my family, Vivian would have drowned him back when he was still a pup.

“And what’s up with your left arm?” he says.

“Huey!” Lisa says. “She’s going to make a full recovery. She’s lucky it’s not worse.”

“Lucky!” Huey basically howls. “Sorry, Lisa. I admire your outlook. No—I’d say I love your outlook. But lucky is not on the list of words that describe what happened to her.”

“Hello, I’m right here. Hello. Bed to Huey . . .”

“She’s a potter and look at her left arm!” he bellows.

Just to show him that there’s nothing to discuss, I do the wrecked person’s version of slithering out of bed. All right, so I have to will myself to smile when my feet graze the floor. All right, so I am somewhat limping. But if I suck it up and make myself put weight on my left foot, my walk isn’t noticeably all that weird. And it isn’t as if this is keeping me out of jazz dance ensemble. To keep being who I am, I just need both my hands to work.

I try to button up my robe, but this does not turn out as well as you would hope.

And I go, Gabriella, you don’t need to run around buttoning things up to show off. You can always tie the brace on your left wrist. Just not in front of anyone.

Huey, who is watching me make my way across my bedroom to the bathroom, for once puts down the camera.

He says, “How could you let this happen to you?”

I say, “I don’t know.”

Also, “Shut up.”

There are days of Clue and Monopoly marathons that I am pretty sure Lisa and Anita are conspiring to let me win. Days that last so long my mother makes Juanita stay late and cook us actual di

Not to mention, Lisa and Anita want to talk about everything too.

“About what you told Lisa,” Anita says. “We should talk about it.”

“About you crashing Billy’s car . . . ,” Lisa says.

“Could we please, pretty please, pretty pretty please not talk about it?” I say. The thought of Anita trying to devise a scientifically perfect way to kick my brain into gear while Lisa prays for me is more than I can take.