Zoe Letting Go (2 page)

I love my best friend. Her name is Elise Grady Pope, and she is five-foot-nine with hair so blond it glows in the dark. People think she’s Russian or Swedish because average girls from Brooklyn don’t look the way she does. But the truth is that she’s just like me: a mutt mixed together from too many breeds to count. A little of this, a little of that. Sometimes we’ll be waiting at the bus stop and some Toyota with a custom paint job will appear at the curb, bass vibrating so loud you can feel it crawling up your spine.

“Hey girl,” the passenger will say. He doesn’t need to specify which girl he’s talking to because we all know who the target girl
is. When Elise doesn’t respond—which she never does, at first—he’ll try again. “Hey beautiful, what are you? You Polish, or what?” Elise will roll her eyes at me and laugh. Then the guy will say, “You speak English or what?”—as though the only conceivable reason a girl might ignore him is that she doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Eventually the guy will move on, sometimes yelling, “Stuck-up bitch!” or a similar sentiment in his wake. That’s when we really crack up. “Drive-by shootings” is what we call these incidents, and the name would be morbid if it weren’t completely accurate.

It’s not that we live in a sleazy neighborhood. Our slice of town is more coconut-water Brooklyn than scary Brooklyn, but still, hazards exist. One point two million men occupy our borough alone, and if you’re a pretty girl of a certain age, they’ll make certain you’re aware of it. Part of me inevitably grumbles as I watch yet another car slow down to scope out my friend at the bus stop, not wasting a single glance on the person standing next to her. But then I tell myself,
Zoe! Count your blessings
. I mean, think about it. Would I want every testosterone-addled male on the street imagining me naked? Or worse?

Exactly.

Only the most beautiful girls can afford to forget about their beauty. Both the beauty and the forgetting come naturally to Elise.

I tell you this because I need to remember it myself. By “you” I mean my diary. Or better yet, journal. I loathe the word
diary
—it reminds me of stale cheese and digestive troubles.
Journal
is much better. More dignified.
Diary
is one of my banned words, in fact. Here are some other words I loathe:
menstrual
,
ointment
,
spatula
,
squeegee
,
breast
,
pilaf
,
squat
,
lozenge
,
buttocks
,
lover
, and
stubble
. Oh, and
loin
. I hate
loin
.

But I am digressing. I have told you who I am, thus answering the
who
question, but I have not filled in the
what
,
where
,
when
, and
why
. The reason for this is simple. I don’t know.

The atmosphere in the car this morning was strained. That might be an understatement—I was a shaken-up soda can of resentments. Jittery and just about ready to pop. Mom calmly manned the vehicle, scanning Route 28 and sipping coffee as though it were any other day—as though we were going out on a bagel run. For twenty minutes I jiggled my left foot and thought of ways to describe how unhappy I was.

“You realize that you’re sending me to a labor camp,” I said, yanking on the knob that controlled my seat position.

“Zoe.”

“Yes. You are. You are taking me against my will to a place where they will make me do things that I don’t want to do.”

“We’re getting you help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Are we having this discussion again?”

In reply I released the knob on my seat and rammed it all the way back. Mom winced at the noise.

“This is crazy,” I muttered, squinting. The sun had risen incrementally as the day progressed, and morning beams were now aimed directly, and painfully, at my eyes. In my stupor I’d forgotten to throw a pair of sunglasses into my bag. Wriggling with irritation, I turned my gaze out the window, where the on-ramp to the Bourne Bridge approached. A sign at the side of the bridge
entrance read,
DESPERATE? DEPRESSED? SUICIDAL? CALL 1-800-784-2433.
Jeez. What a cheerful sight. How many people had jumped off before the sign was erected?

“Have some coffee,” Mom suggested, interrupting my thoughts. She held out her Starbucks cup.

“There’s cream in it,” I said.

“You might as well start now.”

“Start what? What am I starting?”

Mom sighed and took a sip. Her eyes were maddeningly unsquinty behind dark shades.

“What am I starting?” I repeated. She looked at me wearily, as though I were supposed to know the answer. But I didn’t. I had no idea how far we’d traveled from our summer cottage in Cape Cod or how much further we had to travel. I did not know what awaited me at the end of the journey. As for the idea of starting—well, there was nothing for me to start but my summer vacation. Except it was already June, and somehow I was captive to a plan that no one would explain to me. I alternated between feeling like a guinea pig and the victim of a kidnapping scheme. My mother turned the radio up.

The drive was long and monotonous. I scooted back and forth in the car seat, got bored, tried to sleep, and tallied the number of Burger Kings and Dunkin’ Donuts by the side of the road. I spotted a Wendy’s and wondered why the logo persisted in being so creepy. By mid-morning the car smelled like a road trip—like old mayonnaise and sweat and a banana that somebody left beneath the seat. We drove for six hours, or maybe five. At
noon my mother stopped to get a sandwich, which she ate in the car. I wasn’t hungry. My eyelids drooped.

I’ve never understood why car travel is so exhausting. You’re sitting there understimulated in every possible way—physically, visually, intellectually—and yet, at the end of the trip, all you want to do is collapse on a comforter and sleep until your eyes are crusted shut.

When I opened my eyes, we’d arrived. Now I’ve brought you up to the present.

Mom whipped off her sunglasses, got out of the car, and swiveled her head around to take in the view. “Looks like England,” she said. “It’s gorgeous.”

I stared at the building before us. It was a brick mansion, as big as a city library and spreading stealthily across the grounds like a prowling animal. Ten or twelve versions of our cramped Brooklyn apartment could have fit inside the one building easily, though the house’s haphazard angles and additions made it impossible to calculate square footage. When Mom popped open her car door, the rush of garden-scented breeze reminded me again of how stale the air inside the car had grown. I wished to deflate like a balloon into my seat, but Mom was having none of it.

“Grab your suitcase, pup.”

Aside from its queasy asymmetry, the building’s most noticeable feature was its windows, which gaped from floor to ceiling like open mouths at the dentist. Sunlight reflected from the panes, destroying any opportunity to glimpse the interiors. It was a blinding effect, and perhaps intentionally so. To the left of the
building stood a vegetable garden, and to the right a broad tangle of roses that was either a flower garden or the unkempt remains of one. The grounds behind me were a map of greenish planes, interrupted, now and then, by miniature groves of oak and beech trees. My legs felt weak and car-fatigued as I pulled my suitcase from the back seat and dragged it toward Mom, who already stood in conversation with a thin, rod-shaped woman who had appeared at the mansion’s entrance. The woman was tall, dark-haired, and dressed in red.

“Welcome, Zoe,” she called.

How does she know my name?
I wondered before chastising myself for the unwarranted paranoia.
Get it together, Zoe,
I told myself. It may have been a surprise to me, but this woman, whoever she was, had clearly prepared for my arrival.

“My name is Angela Birch,” the woman said as we approached. “I’m the program director at Twin Birch, and I’d like to introduce you to your new home.”

“Temporary home,” I corrected. Mom gave me a look.

“How was the drive?” Angela asked. “Not too much traffic, I hope?”

“None,” my mother said.

“I’m glad. Shall we begin with a tour?”

My mother followed Angela inside, and I grimly lugged my wheelie suitcase up the twelve stone steps and into the building’s main entrance. Inside, it smelled old. Not rotten, but musty—like dust and antique furniture. I paused in the foyer before advancing, looking around to get my bearings. A chandelier supplemented the sunshine ushered inside by those tall windows I’d
noticed earlier, though the hallway itself was nearly empty of furnishings. Angela and my mother were heading into another room, so I rolled my suitcase after them into a closet-sized office. Although a morsel of sunshine found its way into the room by way of a porthole window, the light did little to brighten what seemed an astonishingly cramped room. Instead of being square or rectangle-shaped, the office walls zigged and zagged crookedly, creating acute corners and odd shadows. An aerial view of the space would have been dizzying. As Angela bustled about behind a Japanese-style antique desk, I wondered how she could stand to sit for five minutes in a room that felt as though it were keen on swallowing its occupants alive. Even the ceiling had a menacing stoop. I sat down, pulling my sleeves over my hands.

“The other girls are all in cooking class right now,” Angela said, addressing me. “You’ll join them as soon as we’re done here. Following class, you will have plenty of time to relax, unpack, and explore the facilities.”

“Awesome,” I said, with a smirk. “I love to explore facilities.”

“Cut it out,” my mom warned, using the singsong voice she employs when disciplining me in public. As she turned to Angela, her voice was steely and forced again. “It’s quite a beautiful location you’ve got here,” she said. Angela smiled gracefully, as though my mother had complimented her on the bacon-wrapped olives at a cocktail party.

“We find it helps for the girls to feel safe and comfortable as they recover.”

Recover from what?
I wondered, pulse quickening. I am healthy and normal. My wrists are not encircled by hospital bracelets, or
scars, or any other telltale signs of damage. There is no reason for this.
No reason.

While Mom and Angela spoke, I glanced at a stack of papers resting on the empty chair opposite Angela’s. The pages were printed on thick cardstock and looked like brochures waiting to be folded. When neither woman was looking, I slipped one into my pocket. By focusing on a short-term mission—learning as much about this place as possible—I could calm myself down, I hoped. And remain rational.

Angela retrieved a manila folder from one of her desk drawers and opened it flat on the table, handing Mom a pen. I watched my mother sign the papers necessary to seal my doom, noting that she did so in the same casual way she might use for accepting mail deliveries and signing utility checks. There was a view of the vegetable garden outside Angela’s tiny, circular window, and I craned to see what sort of plant matter was being cultivated within it. Peas, tomatoes, and lettuce, all arranged in obsessively geometrical rows. Other green stuff, too.

“Let’s see,” Angela said, bending over the desk to rifle through the stack of pages. “I think that’s it. We’re all set for take-off.”

My mother looked at me for a long moment, her face as blank as the moon. Then she reached out, still unsmiling, and squeezed my arm. The gesture, though it was meant to be kind, made me bristle. It was the same squeeze she gave me when I was about to have vaccine shots or a tooth pulled—a squeeze meant to prepare me for physical harm. The kernel of anger I’d been toting around was beginning, despite my best efforts, to morph into fear. I felt like a kindergartener on the first day of school, marching into
the unknown with nothing more than a backpack for protection. Except this time, I didn’t have a backpack. I had a wheelie suitcase.

“I love you,” my mother said stiffly, and then—ever the disciplinarian—“Be good.”

I kept my lips tightly sealed as we walked toward the door, and it wasn’t until I heard tires crunching over gravel that I looked up and around at the hallway in which I stood, once again aware of my predicament. Somehow, it was even worse being here without my mother, despite her responsibility for that very fact. With Mom gone, I knew nothing and nobody at Twin Birch.

Let me emphasize that: Nothing.

Nobody.

My organs turned to jelly. The voice came from behind me.

“Phone,” Angela said.

“What?”

“Your phone,” she repeated, summoning me back into her office. “And you may take a seat.”

I lowered myself into the desk chair opposite hers. It groaned with my weight—was I really that heavy? The thought made me sick.

“There are no phones allowed at Twin Birch,” Angela elaborated. “No phones, no texting, no Internet.”

She stared expectantly as I dug out my phone and held it, hesitantly, in my palm. How could I surrender my only link to the outside world? I glanced at the screen, but there were no messages. There was no service, either.

“We get poor reception out here, anyway,” Angela said, as if reading my mind. “That’s the price one pays for privacy.”

I gave her the phone.

“You’ll get used to the phone rule. It’ll help you focus one hundred percent on your recovery.”

My recovery.
It was the second time she’d mentioned it. But what did it mean? From what did I have to recover?

“Okay,” I said, my tone neutral and unwavering. Fear was vulnerability—whatever I did, I could not show that I was afraid.

Angela evaluated me coolly from behind her desk before continuing.

“You are the last of six girls to arrive for the summer session. Arrivals are staggered, and no two girls arrive at the same time. For the six-week duration of the session, you’ll be expected to comply with the rules of comportment.” She paused so that I could signal my acceptance of her statement. When I failed to smile or nod, she simply assumed my response and continued.