“Soon.” She lies down next to me, putting her head in the crook of my shoulder.
“Are you warm enough?”
“I’m okay.”
It’s actually not so cold once we’re huddled next to each other, and I unzip my jacket a little at the neck. Izzy rolls over on one elbow and reaches out, tugging on my gold bird necklace.
“How come Grandma didn’t give me anything?” she says. This is an old routine.
“You weren’t alive yet, birdbrain.”
Izzy keeps on tugging. “It’s pretty.”
“It’s mine.”
“Was Grandma nice?” This is also part of the routine.
“Yeah, she was nice.” I don’t remember much about her either, actually—she died when I was seven—except the motion of her hands through my hair when she brushed it, and the way she always sang show tunes, no matter what she was doing. She used to bake enormous orange-chocolate muffins, too, and she always made mine the biggest. “You would have liked her.”
Izzy blows air out between her lips. “I wish nobody ever died,” she says.
I feel an ache in my throat, but I manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razorblade: I want to see you grow up and Don’t ever change. I put my hand on the top of her head. “It would get pretty crowded, Fizz,” I say.
“I’d move into the ocean,” Izzy says matter-of-factly.
“I used to lie here like this all summer long,” I tell her. “I’d come up here and just stare at the sky.”
She rolls over on her back so she’s staring up as well. “Bet this view hasn’t changed much, has it?”
What she says is so simple I almost laugh. She’s right, of course. “No. This looks exactly the same.”
I suppose that’s the secret, if you’re ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.
THROUGH THE DARK
I check my phone when I get home: three new text messages. Lindsay, Elody, and Ally have each texted me the exact same thing: Cupid Day <3 U. They were probably together when they sent it. That’s a thing we sometimes do, type up and send the exact same messages at exactly the same time. It’s stupid, but it makes me smile. I don’t reply, though. In the morning I sent Lindsay a text letting her know she should go to school without me, but even though we’re not fighting today, I felt weird tacking our usual “xxo” at the end. Somewhere—in some alternate time or place or life or something—I’m still mad at her and she’s mad at me.
It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It’s never occurred to me before; I’ve never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.
Maybe Lindsay and I are best friends and we hate each other, both. Maybe I’m only one math class away from being a slut like Anna Cartullo. Maybe I am like her, deep down. Maybe we all are: just one lunch period away from eating alone in the bathroom. I wonder if it’s ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, like rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.
The fourth text is from Rob and it just says, R u sick? I delete it and then shut off my phone.
Izzy and I spend the rest of the afternoon watching old DVDs, mostly old Disney and Pixar movies we both love, like The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo. We make popcorn with extra butter and Tabasco sauce, the way my dad always makes it, and hunker down in the den with all the lights off while the sky outside grows darker and the trees start to whip around in the wind. When my mom comes home we petition her for a Formaggio Friday—we used to go to the same Italian restaurant every Friday night and that’s what we called it, because the restaurant (which had checked red-and-white plastic tablecloths and an accordion player and fake plastic roses on the tables) was so cheesy—and she says she’ll think about it, which means we’re going.
It’s been forever since I’ve been at home on a weekend night, and when my dad comes home and sees Izzy and me piled on the couch, he staggers through the door, clutching at his heart like he’s having a heart attack.
“Is it a hallucination?” he says, setting down his briefcase. “Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback.”
“I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party.” He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. “And I’m not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks.”
“What’s an acid flashback?” Izzy crows.
“Nothing,” my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me.
We do end up going to Formaggio’s (official name: Luigi’s Italian Home Kitchen), which actually isn’t Formaggio’s (or Luigi’s) anymore and hasn’t been for years. Five years ago a sushi restaurant moved in and replaced all of the fake art-deco tiles and glass lanterns with sleek metal tables and a long oak bar. It doesn’t matter, though. It will always be Formaggio’s to me.