Finding Mr. Brightside

“Oh, and your hair looks good,” I add.

“Really?” Mom touches her highlights, her face going through about fifteen different hair emotions. “I’m thinking of going a little darker next time.”

She’s always thinking of going a little darker, or getting bangs, but she doesn’t really want to do either.

“Do you think your secret guest downstairs would like it?”

I give her what I hope is my most charming smile, but she’s not having any of it.

“Would you do me the favor of at least sending me a text when you’re pla

I nod, even though I have no way of pla

“And I want to meet her. Soon. Before it gets serious.”

“Mom,” I say, like she ca

“I could just pop my head in and introduce myself right now, if that’s easier for everyone.” She walks toward the hallway, like she’s heading for the basement. She can’t fully commit to it. We both laugh, and then I’m saved by the car horn—Aunt Jane just pulled into our driveway.

“Gotta go,” Mom says, kissing me on the cheek. “But I was being Strict Mom just then, you know that, right?”

“Yes. Obedient Son will get something on the books, ASAP.”

When I walk back downstairs, I fully expect Juliette to tell me to get that off the books. But she’s not there. Ran away, forgetting to take me with her. She took my dog, though.

Juliette

AS WE WALK ALONG the jogging path, I apologize to the dog for spacing out and thinking back, once again, to a few months before my mom died. I was in the kitchen stressing over my taking the ACT later that morning. Standing at her usual spot by the Keurig, a wry smile on her lips, Mom said casually, “Why don’t you try one of my ‘B12s’ today?” She seemed genuine, like she wanted to help, not weaken my suspicions of her adultery with a bribe. I was putting just enough u

The dog’s tail starts to wag, responding to the familiar sound of flip-flops.

“I can’t meet your mom,” I say, when Abram catches up to us.

“Why not?”

Because he knows me too well already, for starters, having skipped over being surprised that I was eavesdropping.

“Because I don’t feel comfortable introducing her to a crackhead,” I say instead. “It’s bad enough she had to share a husband with one.”

I explain how Adderall and I came to be such an inseparable pair, introduced by my mother. Abram listens, waits a little longer than when it’s his turn to talk, just in case I’m not finished, then says encouraging things that discourage me from letting my habit define my entire identity. He’s so frustrating sometimes.

“Do I really look like mother-meeting material to you?”

“More so than anyone I’ve ever met, yeah.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving,” I say. “I lie to you about food all the time.”

“That’s okay, I know how you really feel about the Doritos Locos Supreme.”

I ask him to please not talk that way in front of the dog.

“By the way,” he says, as we approach the basement, “if you’re not mother-meeting material, then what kind of material are you?”

“The black kind. That doesn’t go with anything else but black.”

He laughs, asks, “And me?”

I’m about to say something off-putting like Polyester! but then I glance over at him trying so hard to keep up with me, still managing to be interested in this metaphor that I blame myself for starting.

I sigh. “You’re linen.”

Warm, unpretentious, counter-intuitively better with each wash.

“Linen,” he repeats to himself. “Nice. Linen comes in black, too.”

ABRAM

JULIETTE AND THE DOG continue walking slightly ahead of me until the dog sits down in the middle of the path, her way of saying she’s over it. Juliette loves the dog’s honesty, and their bond deepens, which I’m happy about. We turn back around toward my place, which I’m ignorantly starting to consider ours already. Ignorance is bliss trying to pretend nothing will ever change. That saying doesn’t sound like me—probably borrowed it from someone. Juliette would tell me to give it back.

“We can do breakfast with Mom, less pressure,” I say, as we reach the patio area. “You don’t have to answer yet. Just think about it.”

“Count me in as a firm maybe.”

She frowns, slides the door open, and walks inside.

A short while later, she looks over at me and says, “Don’t let her go darker.”

“Huh?”

“Your mom’s hair,” she says patiently. “Darker is a mistake.”

“I agree.”

“Good,” she says. “If we ever do meet, I don’t want to feel sorry for her hair the whole time. I’ll feel bad enough because of my mom.”

I assure her everyone’s hair will be in proper order except mine.

12

Juliette

HELP. FOR THE PAST few weeks I’ve been having trouble getting rid of something at school. It’s standing next to my locker right now, actually, not falling for my disinterested-face tactic.

“I feel like skipping eighth period today,” Abram says, even though he did that last Friday. It’s the Paxil talking—still two more weeks of tapering to go before his last pill. He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his flip-flops, nodding in the opposite direction from class like I’m more than welcome to join in on the lazy.

“You could probably use the attendance points,” I point out. Then we both start laughing for different reasons: me, because I just sounded like some sort of girlfriend he should break up with immediately; Abram, no idea—because he thinks laughing with others is fun?

I slam my locker harder than I typically slam it, once again trying to snap myself out of this companionship phase I’m going through. Abram doesn’t flinch or say anything stupid, like, Easy there, slugger. He knows by now that, whenever possible, I prefer to slam doors. All the more disappointing that the one to his basement slides.

“I’ll go to class if you hold my hand there,” he bargains, once again forgetting to include what’s in it for me. He just places his fingers between mine in his easygoing ma

As we walk down the senior hallway together, awkwardly entwined, another weird thing happens: A few of our peers smile at me like I’m not a loose ca

“Do you think that Asian girl over there is pretty?” I ask Abram, testing him, wondering if I’m really his type, or if I’m just his type until that rare breed of slutty Asian drops into his lap.

“Only when she lets me cheat off of her,” he answers, and I feel my grip tighten around his hand. I like the way he says the wrong thing sometimes. Also, the way he carries himself: his broad shoulders back, his stride long, easy, confident. Confident about what, I’m still not sure. Couldn’t be his Honey Badger Don’t Care T-shirt, practically a bare midriff because his long arms are causing it to ride up on his chest. Nor that overgrown organism of blond waves around his head. Or the perversely cute little paunch where his six-pack used to be that I’ll miss when it’s gone, because it’s already shrinking. Or the butt I previously over-described a few weeks ago, barely hidden underneath the perma-droop of his sweatpants.…