Death is Black and White

Miranda is sprawled out on the couch when I get home, staring intently at the television set. I clear my throat, hoping she’ll notice my arrival but her gaze is still blank as she absorbs the nonsense that is reality T.V.

I sigh and drag my book bag into my bedroom, shutting my door on the way out. My room’s a mess, mostly just clothes and the like thrown askew, and Mom’ll have a coronary if she sees it. We’ve already had this argument though. She said to clean it, and I told her I didn’t have time (and by “I didn’t have time” I mean “I’m too lazy, so get off my ass”). Her response was that she’s sick of looking at it, and I just told her I’d shut my door from now on. I don’t understand any of this because my room is in the back hallway. So, I now keep my door shut at all times, but sometimes Mom will “just be putting some laundry away” and wander into my room. She’s full of crap though because I do my laundry. I think she just has boring days sometimes and decides to spice it up by yelling at me for not cleaning enough.

I wander into the kitchen for a snack, yelling, “Miranda! Do we have any food?” on the way down the hall.

“I just bought some gorceries this morning,” she responds. Obviously she’s feeling better. “I picked up some yogurt and chips. I think there’re some Pringles in the cupboard.”

I shake my head. She just went shopping a few hours ago, and she doesn’t remember what she bought. I guess that’s the price you have to pay when dedicating your life to Jersey Shore. I dig through the fridge and grab a container of yogurt, then I grab a tube of pringles. God, how I love that shit.

“Hey, so I’m going to Sam’s. I’ll probably be home for dinner, her mom kinda blows at cooking,” I say as I cross through the living room. Miranda doesn’t respond, so I throw the nearest pillow at her. “Yo! Me, Sam’s house! Kay?”

She nods and goes back to her show. I shake my head and send Mom a text, just in case. Somehow I always get in trouble for “leaving without telling anybody where I’m going it really worries us all we want to know is where you are and how long you’ll be staying there and will you be home for dinner I don’t ever get to see you anymore, Lyd, it seems like you’re never home but I want you to have a good time with your friends I really do just please tell me where you’re going and it wouldn’t hurt to wear a jacket”. And usually it’s Miranda’s fault for being unattentive. So.

Sam only lives about two blocks away, so I’m there all the time. I get to her house and walk right in because Sam’s mom doesn’t bother getting up to get the door for me anymore. I guess I’d consider her a pretty cool mom; she’s the kind that lets you talk about sex and stuff without thinking it’s inappropriate. It’s refreshing.

“Hi, Lydia,” her mom says from the couch. She’s watching the same show as Miranda was when I left, but then again it could be a totally different program. All the people look the say to me—plastic and orange. With big hair. But I don’t say that out loud around anyone that I don’t know very well because religious reality T.V. watchers apparently find that offensive. Kind of like how if you tell someone who’s really into rock that AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses sound the same. Seriously, don’t do it.

“Sam’s in the basement. You know where it is,” she tells me.

I shrug and bound down the stairs. Sam’s on the couch, watching a movie. Adam’s here, too, an arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Oh, how sweet,” I say with mock enthusiasm, and I plop down on the couch with them.

Sam and Adam are actually pretty cute as a couple. It’s mostly because they’re not perfect. In fact, they’re kind of opposites. Sam’s pretty, but not really conventionally pretty. She’s baby-faced with big brown eyes and tiny lips. Her face is round and she has chestnut-colored hair that’s grown out a few inches past her shoulders. She dyes the bottom layer a different color every few weeks. Right now it’s blue, which is new as of today. At first we thought it would be a stupid idea, but Sam somehow makes it look acceptable. She’s the shortest one out of all of us and isn’t thin. She’s not fat, but she’s not skinny either.

Adam, though, has very dark hair like mine. He’s tall and thin, and most of him is just pretty much average. The only extraordinary part of him is his ice blue eyes, which are really pretty because he has thick, dark eyelashes. A lot of girls think he has beautiful eyes, including me, which would probably label him as girly. But Adam is a pretty badass, I have to say. And when he’s with Sam, they both just seem so happy. If you take one look at those two, you’d swear they were meant for each other. Sounds cheesey? Yeah, I’ll stop before you throw up. But the truth’s a bitch, I have to say.

I toss the yogurt at Sam and she catches it. “You don’t look sick to me,” I say.

“Yeah,” she replies, “I think missing school to go to the mall was the best medicine.” She winks.

I shake my head in fake diappointment. “And you didn’t invite me because…?”

“Because then you’d see my surprise!” she hops up from the couch and turns off the television. Then, she goes and turns off the lights.

It’s pitch dark and I look around for a second, but something catches my eye. Sam laughs. Something’s glowing by the doorway, bouncing up and down in the air.

“Glow in the dark hair dye? Are you kidding me?” I gape.

“ISN’T IT NIFTY?” she screams. I can tell she’s dancing. She turns the lights back on and sits down next to me.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Sam’s obsessed with glow in the dark anything. She collects golw in the dark nail polish, shoe laces, socks, eyeliner, paint, shoes, teddy bears, lipstick, and even contact lenses.

“So did I miss anything at school today?”

I shrug. “Well, I wrote you a note but it got wrecked,” I pout.

“Well what did you do to it? Drop it in the toilet?” she laughs. I don’t.

“No. Someone took it. I don’t even know how they did it because I was sitting right there and it disappeared from my desk. Then I found it in my math book. I don’t even get it.”

“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Did you throw it out?” she asks.

I pull it out of my pocket. “It’s right here. Like I said, ruined.”

Sam puffs out her cheeks and unfolds it. “I can’t read it. It looks like someone used it as a shoe and ran through the woods. And took a swim in the creek. That’s trippy.”

I nod my head. “Except that couldn’t have happened because it was taken in history and who knows when it was put in the book. I don’t know who could have taken it, threw it around in the woods, then brought it back to school and somehow gotten into my locker.”

“Well maybe someone took it and had to leave early to go to the dentist or something. And while they were walking out they were reading it and a wind picked it up out of their hands and it tumbled into the woods behind the school. Then maybe a student was outside having a smoke and found it, recognized the actually legible words were in your handwriting and couldn’t find you so they just broke into your locker and stuck it in your math book…” she pauses. “Yeah, I guess that doesn’t make much sense at all…” she finishes, realizing how stupid that all sounded.

I rub my temples and say, “I don’t know, Sam. I don’t think it’s really worth all this contemplating. There’s probably a logical explaination for this that I’m just not smart enough or even care enough to figure out.”

Then Adam laughs. And I giggle. And Sam completely loses it because that’s just how she rolls. And then the subject changes and we all forget about the stupid note. I stuff it in my pocket and Adam starts telling us about his English teacher’s big head or something. But in the back of my mind this whole thing is still bothering me. Burned in the back of my brain is the hateful image of that little girl outside the window.

And she won’t get out of my head.