The Words We Keep

The rumors roll on. The Ridgeline Underground is full of speculation about the true identity of the guerrilla poets, and it’s not pretty. Someone posts a list of the top five students most likely to commit suicide. Micah makes the cut. Someone else makes a mock GoFundMe to collect donations for therapy for the poets once they’re revealed. It’s a mental-health witch hunt.

On my bed, I scroll through all the accusations while Margot recites multiplication facts from the math flash cards she’s spread on the floor, and Alice plays YouTube videos as research for her new channel. I’m glad she’s returning to the land of the living and all, but with her videos and shuffling the furniture around for her redecoration extravaganza, she’s been nonstop since she joined us as an honorary guerrilla poet.

I end up on the UC Berkeley summer English program site. Maybe I don’t even need this sponsorship. I could just not turn anything in, and no one would know I’m one half of the infamous guerrilla poets. I’d apply on my own, and I’m sure Dad would pay for it if it means I could be a Golden Bear. And I’d still make the connections, get that leg up on admission.

But you’d fail the project.

And so would Micah.

I slam my computer shut. Between the noise of Alice and the noise in my head, I need to get out.

I need to run. But that’s a big, fat no—I’m trying to calm my body, not induce a panic attack. I turn to the almighty Google yet again, hoping to find something that can actually stop the chaos in my brain. What I find is—drumroll, please—yoga.

Depression? Try yoga!

Panic attacks? Yoga, baby!

Hangnail? Yoga with a goat!

So, instead of running, I find myself standing outside Staci’s bedroom door in hot pursuit of peace. When I walk in, she’s lunging in a particularly commanding position, one hand pointing toward the back wall, the other pointing at me, her eyes focusing down the length of her arm.

“Warrior pose,” she answers without me asking. “The ancient warrior Virabhadra stood like this as he drew his sword to cut off his enemy’s head.”

“I thought yoga was about inner peace,” I say, inching into the room. I haven’t spent much time in here since Dad and Staci became newlyweds last year. Which means sex. And lots of it. So I’ve avoided the place where all the magic happens because, well, eww.

Bachelor Dad’s only décor was books, dog-eared and coffee-ring-stained. Now there’s fresh flowers in a tall vase on the nightstand. The room smells like orange blossoms, and the bed is not only made but has six bedazzled throw pillows on it.

Staci has turned the corner of the room into her own mini yoga studio, with an essential oil diffuser on the dresser and a mat in front of a mirror. She shifts her arms, stretching them toward the ceiling.

“Sometimes,” she says between long, loud breaths, “you have to fight for peace.”

Her steady in-and-out breathing fills the room as she stands up straight, brings her hands together in front of her chest like she’s praying, and does a small bow to the mirror, before turning to me.

“What’s up?”

“Oh. Well. I—” I stumble over my words because I’ve never actually asked Staci for anything before, a fact I’ve prided myself on since she moved in and took over the nightstand and the pantry and Dad. “Could you maybe, uh…teach me?”

“What? Yoga?” She does a double take.

“Yeah.”

She wastes no time getting me onto the mat, showing me how to dip my head down and butt up in something called a Downward Dog, while plinky-plunky rain sounds play on her phone.

“Now, breathe in through your nose, pulling the air deep into your lungs,” she says. My chest cracks open when the air fills it. “Let go of all the bad; inhale only good. Clear your mind. Focus on your breath. Your body. Listen to what the silence is telling you.”

But the silence only leaves gaps for my brain to go wild (like full-on parents-out-of-town kegger). It replays all the Underground rumors about the guerrilla poets.

Dark.

Messed up.

Mental.

Thankfully, my hands are holding me up, so I can’t claw at my side, even though all I want to do is rip into myself. Quiet the monsters by picking myself clean.

After a thirty-minute session where I fall over at least five times, we namaste and bow, and she crouches down to roll up her mat.

“You okay? You’ve seemed a little, I don’t know, in your head lately.”

“Got a lot going on at school.”

“I’m here, you know.” She turns off the diffuser and the rain sounds. “If you ever need to talk. Whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to go through it alone.”

Then she hugs me, which is kind of gross because she’s in a tank top and sweaty, but I let her and I nod like I understand, but here’s the thing: I am alone. I’m the only one who can hear the monsters, feel the panic. I’m the only one who can feel the urge to pick at myself drumming through me like an unstoppable rhythm. When the problem’s in your head, no one can carry it but you.

—

Around midnight, Dad notices me pacing around the house.

“What’s up, Lily pad?” he says from his office.

“Can’t sleep.”

“Must be something in the water. I can’t seem to turn off the old noggin, either.” He opens his drawer and holds up a small white medicine bottle. “Don’t know how I’d function without these babies.”

He pours a blue pill into his hand, pops it in his mouth, and chases it with water.

“Now, this Berkeley summer program? Did you say it was paid for?”

“Yeah. Why?”

He thumps his pen on the lip of his desk, looking at his computer screen.

“Just doing some budgeting.” He says this with a smile, the kind meant for my benefit, but Dad’s not that good an actor. His pen taps the desk and his leg vibrates the floor—whap-whap-whap. Dad pinches the top of his nose, right between his eyes. It’s a gesture he’s done a thousand times—when he’s grading a particularly terrible paper or worrying about Alice.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing your old man can’t handle.” He plops a stack of papers into his top drawer, closes it, and then adds, smiling, “But I wouldn’t say no to a scholarship.”

He turns off the computer, stretches out his arms wide with a yawn, tilting back in his office chair. “And luckily, I happen to be the proud dad of the most talented kid at that school.” His voice is back to its normal, steady assurance as he stands up and puts his arm across my shoulders, pulling me into my spot. He flicks off the office light as we walk out. “Alice seems better, doesn’t she?”

“Much.”

“And you?”

“Good as ever.”

As we leave the office, he squeezes my hand—once, twice, three times.

“Don’t know what I’d do without you, kiddo.”

—

Once I’m sure Dad’s in his bed, I tiptoe back downstairs into his office and open his drawer. I flip through the papers, which are mostly printouts of online pages with titles like Tips for Parenting a Bipolar Child and Learning to Live After a Suicide Attempt. Underneath, I find bills from Fairview with enormous dollar figures on the total due now line at the bottom.

No wonder Dad asked about scholarship money. Is this why Staci’s working at the yoga studio again? Why Dad’s teaching extra classes?

I don’t know how he’s affording it, but I do know this: my apply-to-Berkeley-on-my-own plan is out. I can’t ask Dad to shell out more money right now, mostly because I know he’d find a way. Take on more classes. Work himself sick. Add more bills to his already overfilled drawer of worry.

I stuff everything back into the desk and creep upstairs. Alice is struggling to move her dresser out from the wall.

“Oh good,” she says. “Help me?”

I step over the cans of seafoam green paint stacked in the middle of the room and pick up a corner of the dresser.

“Your multitasking is going to kill me,” I say.

She just laughs, inching the dresser to where she wants it. “You’ll thank me when our room is featured on HGTV.”

Her plans for the room spill out. New shelving and two-tone paint and something called shiplap that apparently is all the rage. Suddenly I’m having flashbacks to all the other times she’s redecorated our room. Spoiler: it never ends well. Two years ago, we had a half mural of a tree on our ceiling that she abandoned after a few weeks. Then there was the time she plastered the wall with inspirational quotes from magazines. They fell off one by one when she moved on to her next big idea.

“How are you paying for all this?” I ask, mentally tabulating all the improvements she has planned.

“Dad. He said as long as it’s making me happy and keeping me busy, open tab.” She holds up a thin, silver MacBook. “Even bought me supplies for the YouTube channel.”

She lowers the computer, and I feel the anger rising, just like it did when she stayed out past curfew. She says she doesn’t want everything to be about her, but it is. It always is. This whole last year. And now she’s spending Dad’s money like it’s going out of style, totally clueless that her Fairview visit (which didn’t seem to do anything, by the way) has already drained us dry.

“Oh, unclench, Lil. I swear you and Dad are going to get your faces stuck like that one day.”

“Stuck like what?”

“You know, your worry face.” She tightens up her jaw and purses her lips in a ridiculously overdramatized way, and then busts out laughing.

“I do not do that.” I relax my face muscles, which I didn’t realized were tensed so tight.

“Seriously, though, you okay?” she asks.

“Fine.”

But I’m not. Nothing’s fine. Dad needs me to win this summer scholarship to make up for what Alice has cost us. But winning will cost something, too. Everyone will know, once and for all, the Lily I’ve worked so hard to hide.

1:30 a.m.

How did you not see this coming?

What exactly was your exit strategy here?

2:00 a.m.

You should have just done the project on your own

rather than finding your muse with Micah

or playing guerrilla poet.

2:20 a.m.

100-acre-wood: You up?

I don’t message him back.

Instead, I lie in the dark, trying to figure out a way to keep my secrets while also winning this contest. After an hour of trying not to tear into my own skin while also ignoring the sound of Alice’s YouTube research, I sneak back downstairs, take a blue pill from Dad’s drawer, and swallow it.

Something—anything—to turn off the noise.