Goodbye Stranger Read online

  The phone scares the heck out of you. You don’t answer it. After five rings, the machine picks up. It’s the school. A recording.

  “This is a reminder that when your child is going to be absent from high school, a call is required by nine a.m…. ”

  Oh no. Will school call your mom or dad at work? If so, they’ll both come running. Correction: they’ll try your cell, they’ll freak completely out, they’ll imagine that you’re dead in a ditch, and then they’ll come running.

  You don’t want them to come running. You want a day alone. One day.

  But you don’t want them to think you’re dead in a ditch.

  Do they even have ditches in New York City?

  Suddenly you want something to eat. Toast, you think.

  —

  Your cell phone rings before you can get the bread out of the bag. You look without touching while it vibrates on the kitchen counter: your mom’s work number. You drop two slices into the toaster and let it go to voice mail.

  As soon as your cell goes quiet, the house phone rings. You listen to your mom’s voice on the machine. She says your name and sounds worried. Listening, you reflect that you are probably the worst person on the planet. But this is not exactly news.

  Your mom’s office is all the way downtown, forty minutes away at least, and your dad’s is even farther. You figure you have a little time. Then you’ll have to go somewhere. You’ll text one of them, though. To say you aren’t in a ditch.

  Sixty seconds later, someone is knocking at the door. Your brain slows down as your heart rocks out through your ears. Then a voice is calling your name. You recognize it: your neighbor. The one who feeds the cat when your family’s away. Your mom must have called her.

  The doorknob rattles. Good thing you locked the door. You stand perfectly still on the old floorboards. One good squeak could give you away.

  Your toast pops, and your head snaps toward it as if there might be a sniper in the pantry. Stay calm, you tell yourself: she’ll go back to her apartment in a second. You’ll butter your toast and make a plan.

  Then you hear it—the sound of a key in the lock.

  She has keys!

  You sprint toward your room, think again, and pivot on one foot.

  You know where to hide.

  HUMAN ON THE MOON

  Bridge’s first English assignment of the year had been a one-page essay about “something of interest.” And now, weeks later, they all had to “exchange papers with a neighbor” for “peer editing,” which was embarrassing.

  She traded with Sherm Russo, who sat to her left, and watched his eyes go straight to the Martian with the red circle around it and the teacher’s threat about taking off points.

  Sherm’s paper was about the supermoon. A supermoon, it said, was a full moon that comes closer than usual to Earth. Bridge had assumed that the moon was always the same distance from Earth. Didn’t it go just around in a circle, like a ball on a string?

  She put that question in the margin.

  “Actually,” Sherm said, reading over her shoulder, “it’s an elliptical orbit. So sometimes it’s closer and sometimes it’s farther away.”

  “Oh, right,” Bridge said. “I forgot.” She erased her question, tilting her head so that her hair fell like a dark curtain between them.

  “I like your Martian,” Sherm said.

  “Thanks.” She pushed his paper across the desk. “Here you go. I can’t really find any mistakes or anything.”

  “Oh.” His neck turned pink. She looked at her paper and saw that he’d been busy marking it up. He had made some sort of correction on almost every line.

  “Just some punctuation and stuff,” he said, sliding it over to her.

  —

  “Can you believe this?” Bridge said at lunch. “He wrote all over it!”

  “He did you a favor,” Tab said, scanning the paper. “Your grammar needs work.”

  Em squinted through the cafeteria windows. “Crap. It’s raining.”

  “I haven’t even told you the dumbest part,” Bridge said. “The dumbest part is that then he tells me that he doesn’t believe anyone ever actually landed on the moon!”

  “Oh, neither does my dad,” Em said.

  “Are you serious?”

  Em nodded. “He says the government made it all up. But he might be joking. Sometimes I can’t tell with my dad.”

  “What about Neil Armstrong?” Bridge said. “What about ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’?”

  Tab slapped the table. “Notice the ‘man’? Mankind? Why didn’t he say humankind?”

  “There she goes again,” Em said.

  “I’m just saying,” Tab said.

  “Anyway,” Em said, “my dad says that it was all bogus, probably filmed in a movie studio or something. I can’t believe it’s raining again. Smelly auditorium and The Magic School Bus. I hate The Magic School Bus.”

  “I love The Magic School Bus,” Tab said happily. “I hope it’s the space one.”

  “Tab, it’s for six-year-olds,” Em said.

  “Well, excuuuse me,” Tab said.

  Em rolled her eyes.

  —

  Bad weather meant no recess in the yard. Instead, the whole seventh grade sat in the auditorium and watched the same Magic School Bus cartoons over and over, except for the lucky homeroom that won the rock-paper-scissors tournament and escaped to the gym.

  Bridge had been picked for the tournament once, at the end of sixth grade. Her legs shook the whole time she was up there, and she’d been relieved when she lost in the first round and could get off the stage.

  This time her homeroom picked Emily, chanting “Em! Em! Em!”

  Now that Bridge thought of it, it had been Em the last time, too.

  Em ran down the aisle to the stage. Her legs were definitely not shaking. When she won her first game, she thrust both arms over her head as if she’d just been declared heavyweight champion of the world. When she made it to the final match, even kids in other classes were shouting “Go, Emily!” and everyone went berserk when she won. Em waved, did a goofy kind of jazz-hands thing, and then bounced off the stage and back to Bridge, who adjusted her ears and couldn’t help feeling a little bit proud to be Em’s friend. On their way out of the auditorium, they passed Tab on the end of a row.

  “Woman power!” Tab shouted, pumping a fist in the air.

  But when their class got to the gym, the maintenance guys were setting up tables around the edges of the room.

  “For the clubs fair—sixth period,” one explained. “You guys can sit in the middle if you’re quiet.”

  “Sit in the middle?” Bridge said.

  “Duck, duck, goose!” someone yelled.

  —

  “Lucky!” Tab said later, shoving her binder into her locker. “I love duck, duck, goose!”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have loved this duck, duck, goose.” Bridge made a face. “It was idiotic. All the girls tapped boys and then just squealed like morons and barely even ran.”

  “Bridge, it was duck, duck, goose,” Em said. “It’s kind of dumb to begin with. And I’m wearing the wrong shoes. It’s hard to run in these.”

  “Why do you wear high heels to school anyway?” Bridge said.

  “These are not high heels! There’s barely any heel. But the bottoms are slippery.” Em lifted one foot to show them.

  Bridge slammed her locker. “We should go, I guess. It’s starting.”

  —

  The clubs fair was mandatory for the whole seventh grade. When they walked into the gym, someone yelled “Emily!” and Em scanned the room, broke into a grin, and went straight to the soccer table, where she disappeared into a sea of matching yellow sweatshirts.

  “I think I hate this,” Bridge said, looking around.

  “There are at least thirty different clubs here,” Tab said. “Just pick something.”

  “I guess,” Bridge said.

  They waded into the crowd.
“Everyone’s walking clockwise,” Tab said. “Let’s go counterclockwise.”

  “What?” The noise was like a wave that kept getting bigger: two hundred seventh graders, all looking for someplace they belonged.

  “This way!” Tab pointed left. She stopped almost immediately and gestured at the first table. “Chess?”

  Bridge used to love chess. But she didn’t want to join the Chess Club. She didn’t want to join any club.

  “This is dumb,” she said.

  “Come on!” Tab said. “You’re being such a grouch!”

  Bridge shrugged and adjusted her cat ears. Tab glanced at them and then looked at Bridge. “Let’s keep going.”

  As they made their way around the room, Tab signed up for Hindi Club and French Club, where Madame Lawrence pointed at Bridge and said, “Le chat!”

  Bridge pretended not to hear.

  “Look!” Tab pointed at a table where a group of girls was gathered around a young woman with wavy hair and perfect makeup. “The Berperson!”

  “That’s the Berperson?” Bridge shouted over the roar. “I pictured someone old and short, with hair down to her knees.”

  Tab gave her a look. “Because only short, hairy people care about social justice?”

  “No,” Bridge said. “I think it’s just the word ‘Berperson.’ ”

  “Come on, I want to introduce you,” Tab said, dragging her by the arm. “Look—she runs the Human Rights Club! I didn’t even know there was one!”

  Tab hugged the Berperson. Bridge tried to imagine herself hugging her English teacher. Nope.

  “This is my friend Bridge!” Tab yelled, pointing.

  “Nice ears,” the Berperson shouted. “As long as you’re wearing them for yourself!”

  Bridge didn’t say anything. Who else would she be wearing them for?

  Tab turned to her. “Let’s join! This is so perfect!”

  “I think I’ll go all the way around first,” Bridge said. “See what there is.”

  “You sure?” Now that she’d found the Berperson, Tab was clearly going no farther.

  “Yeah,” Bridge said, stepping away. “I’ll come back.”

  —

  Model UN. Spanish Club. Yearbook. No. No. No.

  Current Events: no.

  Bridge passed the sports clubs, where she saw Em sitting on the floor, looking at her phone, surrounded by girls in yellow sweatshirts looking at their phones. An eighth grader, Julie Hopper, had her legs across Em’s lap. She was using a hole punch and a piece of loose-leaf paper to make confetti, which she occasionally threw at Em’s ponytail. Some of it stuck there. Bridge kept moving.

  Drama Club: no.

  And then she came to the last few tables, which were quieter.

  Robotics: no.

  Photography: maybe.

  She was almost back to the beginning of the circle. The last table was surrounded by a handful of seventh graders and a few older kids in black T-shirts.

  “Hey there!” said the tallest black-T-shirt kid. “You interested in Tech Crew?”

  Bridge took a step back. Hanging from the front of the table was a long banner that said MAKE MAGIC HAPPEN WITH TECH.

  “Um,” Bridge said. “I don’t really know what it is.”

  “It’s stagecraft—we do all the school shows. We make the sets, do the sound, the lighting. It’s really cool. This is my second year. You should join. We need seventh graders.”

  That was when Bridge noticed Sherm Russo, not saying anything, behind the tall kid.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He waved and stepped forward.

  “You’re doing this?” Bridge asked.

  “Yeah. Seems cool. They build stuff and work at all the school shows and stuff.” Sherm pointed at the tall kid. “He says they order pizza on show nights.” He grinned.

  “We do,” the tall kid said, nodding. “The school pays for it. We have a budget, which is really rare. And Mr. Partridge is great. You shouldn’t believe what people say about him.”

  “Uh, what do people say about him?” Bridge said.

  The kid gave a funny wave. “Nothing. Just that he’s mean. He’s more, like, intense. Tech is kind of like a job, but a really cool job. We do the school play, the winter concert, the Valentine’s Day show, everything.”

  Sherm looked at her. “You have to join something, right?”

  That was true. She had to join something. It was a rule. “So what’s it called again?” she asked the older kid. “Tech Club?”

  “No, it’s crew. Tech Crew.” And he turned so that Bridge could see the word CREW in big block letters across the back of his black T-shirt.

  Not a club.

  Bridge smiled. “Where do I sign up?”

  SHERM

  October 7

  Dear Nonno Gio,

  I talked to Bridget Barsamian today. Remember her? It wasn’t a big deal. We had to trade papers in English and ended up having a whole conversation. And then during clubs fair she walked right up to the Tech Crew table and joined. I definitely didn’t think she was the Tech Crew type.

  She wears these cat ears now, on a black headband. Kind of weird, kind of cute.

  I’m getting your texts, but I just erase them. If you don’t have an unlimited plan, you should save yourself the money.

  From,

  Sherm

  P.S. There are four months and seven days until your birthday.

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  Your parents’ closet makes you feel better right away. There’s a dry smell and a feeling of protection. You find the small empty space you remember, behind your mom’s long dresses hanging in their filmy dry-cleaner plastic. Your sister used to drag pillows back here and read by the light of her blue Star Wars light saber.

  The neighbor lady won’t check the closets, you tell yourself, but your body is a statue just in case. Even a hard exhale could move the dry-cleaner plastic and give you away.

  You can’t hear anything at all, which is interesting. At least, at first it’s interesting. Then it’s kind of great. And then it begins to weird you out.

  Just be, you tell yourself. She’ll leave soon.

  Mom will be coming. Dad will be coming. If you want a day alone, you will obviously have to get out of the apartment. But first, you have to stay very still.

  You stare into the dark and think about the stars at summer camp. Behind the actual stars, there’s that light dusting the sky. Whenever you looked at that dust, you felt huge, as if you were part of everything.

  Vinny sent letters and packages every summer. There was a camp rule against junk food, so she’d wrap a bag of M&M’s in brown paper, cover it with a thousand pieces of tape, and label it thumbtacks or something. Your counselors saw right through it but usually let you eat the candy.

  Her letters always ended the same way: Miss U, luv U, wouldn’t want 2 B U! Vinny’s dad wouldn’t let her go anywhere in the summer. She went to morning day camp and stayed in the apartment with her grandmother, mostly.

  You spent hours writing back to Vinny all those summers, trying to make it sound as if the girls at camp were lame, as if you were hardly having fun at all. You left out your first-ever date, with a boy named Daniel who told you that you were beautiful and tie-dyed a T-shirt for you in the art barn. You left out Susannah, who lives in California and talked you into doing the play. You left out the lake, still your favorite place in the world. You left out late swim, at dusk, and the feeling you got every time you entered the glass-flat water that broke soft across your chin. You left out the way the trees bundled close and dark against the sky, and the wooden dock with the metal swimmer tags hanging on the pegboard that showed who was in the water and who was on dry land. Because you knew that, every single year, Vinny’s heart broke a little when you left. And when Vinny got hurt, she got mean.

  —

  The narrow strip of light at the edge of the closet door widens, and your breath stops. But it’s the cat, not the neighbor. Her eyes shine at you
in the dark, and when you put one arm out, she lets you rub her between the eyes. Then a noise reaches you: somewhere, your cell phone is ringing. You realize you left it on the kitchen counter, next to the toaster. You hear the neighbor answer it.

  “Hello?” She says it loudly. But after that, her voice drops.

  You are very, very still. The cat is exploring your mother’s shoes. You close your eyes and try to count the stars.

  RAG ON A POLE

  On Wednesdays and Fridays, Bridge woke to the sound of the cello. Her mom taught on those days and had to get in her practice hours early. Her music reminded Bridge of picking wildflowers—she started with something thin and simple and then kept adding new sounds, all different shapes and colors, until she had something explosive. But in the mornings her mom tried to explode very quietly, so that the people downstairs didn’t get annoyed.

  Most of the time, Bridge loved the music. Today, it made her feel heavy. It pinned her to her bed, and she had to wait for her mom to take a break before she could get herself up.

  —

  “Do you really think the moon landing was faked?” Bridge asked Sherm Russo in English class. “Or were you just messing with me?”

  Sherm got pink—his neck again, Bridge noticed.

  “I think it’s a possibility,” he said. “Anyway, I didn’t say it was definitely faked. I said it looked fake, those pictures.”

  “Fake how?”

  “You know the one with the astronauts standing next to the American flag?”

  “Yeah. I think.”

  “The flag is waving in the wind, right? It’s all rippled, kind of?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, guess what? There’s no wind on the moon.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “So the flag should be hanging straight down, like a rag on a pole.”

  “Huh,” Bridge said.

  “Exactly. Huh.”