We Didn't Make It After All

Chapter Two

There was an unsettling homogeneity to the names of the girls enlisted to Holden's cheerleading team: Ashley Bennett, Hannah Ricco, Liza Smith...and eventually me, Narnie Larson. My name was on the very bottom of the list, written in dark cursive and plastered on a bulletin in front of the school. The incandescence of the sun blanketed the several acres of our school property, shining with even more intensity on the paper, which, I soon observed, had a series of clumsily erased question marks after my name.

I stared at the paper, wondering why those marks were there, until the bell rang, signaling the beginning of class. When I came back several hours later, I was still Narnie Larson with large, daunting question marks after my name.

I learned from Lolita Akbar one day in the girls' locker room that the question marks were there because Sol herself had reservations about me. "And it probably has to do with the fact that Ezra Parker can't get his eyes off of you," she said, drying her wet hair with her towel.

I closed my locker, Lolita's words ringing in my ears. I could not process that I was somebody worth looking at by anybody, much less Ezra Parker. 

It took terse conversations with the girls in between classes to discover that suburbia was stranger than Lolita had let on. Its peacefulness distracted from its chaos, its golden exterior of prosperity disguising the deceptiveness of the people within—and Sol was the most deceptive of them all. She stood out like a black swan for her forced expressions when she approached me after practice that day. "Narnie, right?" she asked nonchalantly.

I thought about Lolita's words as I upheld my own deceptive front. "Sol."

"That's me." 

I smiled weakly, not knowing what else to do.

"Welcome to the team," she said. "I've been hearing a lot about you these days. From Coach Choi, you know? She has been going on and on about your flexibility."

I looked at Coach Choi, who was speaking to two of our girls, before meeting Sol's gaze once again. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah. You were super impressive at tryouts." 

"I did a lot of dancing back in San City. It's just a part of the transition, I guess."

Sol seemed unfazed by my response, as if she had been anticipating it all along. "Yeah, quite the transition. You are now officially condemned to the middle of nowhere like the rest of us."

I met her eye, laughing a little.

Sol bit her lip, motioning her head toward the other side of the field. "See him, Narnie? The one with the blonde hair? That's Anderson Flemming. He's holding a little gathering at his place tonight to celebrate the new season. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you were my plus one."

Lolita flickered through my mind and I suddenly itched to question Sol's friendliness, but I mustered a smile, embracing my confidence despite my feeling of displacement. "I'll be there."

☼

Anderson Flemming lived in a two acre estate on the border of Holden and Port Orion, where the only sound you could hear for the next twenty miles was the hum of your own breathing. Confined to the silence of suburbia, my mind wandered to the days when it was not just Mama and I, fending off the wilderness on our own. In some memories, we are sitting on our veranda, biting back tears as we exchange a spoonful of Papa's rhubarb pie. I'll be home soon, baby, he had said. More than a year later, we were still waiting for him to come home.

I dropped the thought as 4 Mulberry Drive manifested before me. People streamed in and out of the front door, jostling for space atop the front lawn. I exited my car, searching the crowd for a familiar face or two.