Avoid All Entanglements

“I’m Mr. Thomas Vanderbilt and I’ll be your sub for this week.” He examined the class, as though he expected some reaction. “What would you change if you could change one thing about the world?”

The class exchanged glances and I swopped a confused one with Natalie.

“You’re probably not familiar with this topic but this is your assignment for the next couple of days. I want you to write an essay, telling me what you want to change about the world and why. I’ll expect 1, 000 words minimum and since this is AP English, I expect to come off extremely convinced by your argument and impressed with your insight. This essay would also be 20% of your overall grade. Seeing as how you’re seniors, you should know that colleges aren’t just looking for SATs, they’re going to be looking at your overall academic record as well. In short, I’ll definitely be anticipating quality work.”

He smiled grimly. “You can start now.”

What would I change about the world?

No matter what Mr. Vanderbilt thought, I was completely familiar with this topic. I woke up and fell to sleep thinking about things I wanted to change. The problem was coming up with just one.

“Mr. Vanderbilt?” Natalie was speaking, her face was flushed.

Our sub turned to Natalie, wearing a smile of bemusement. He seemed to think that the essay we were given was so easy that we shouldn’t need any clarification. “Yes?”

“The thing we want to change, does it have to be something that we can actually do? Like, say we wanted to bring about world peace or stop global warming or…bring someone you love back from the dead. Can we write about any of that?”

I recognised what she was actually asking and I looked down, allowing my hair to hide my face. I thought we were over this.

“It should be something you can do. There are a few reasons why I chose this topic. One of them is because I want you to feel empowered by the end of this essay, knowing that there are some things you can do to make the world a better place for yourself and for others. Thank you for clarifying that, Miss…?”

“Natalie, Natalie Haig.”

“Thank you, Miss Haig.” Mr. Vanderbilt, didn’t even look thirty, but he was acting like the world owned him something. What was his problem?

I could feel the hairs on my neck rising as Natalie turned her gaze to me.

Her voice was low as she said, “Hey, listen, I just want to know—”

“I really don’t want to talk about Sara, okay?”

“—what are you going to write your essay about?”

My gaze whipped up from the table and I looked at Natalie properly for the first time in weeks.

Her heart-shaped face was surrounded by short, red hair. Her almond-shaped eyes were wide, innocent, like she had absolutely nothing in the world to hide. I wondered what was inside of this girl that made her so strong, that allowed her to ask questions I wouldn’t have.

We were staring at each other awkwardly now. Neither of us had said what the other had expected.

“You can keep pretending that she didn’t exist and that you don’t like running anymore, but you can’t hide from yourself. It’s beyond time you stopped pretending and started living because what you’re doing now, Spencer, doesn’t even scratch the surface of living.”

“I’m living. I’m alive.”

“It’s not the same thing.” Natalie was speaking slowly now, like she was expecting me to not get it.

And I honestly didn’t.

“Everyone’s alive. But not everyone’s living. Some people are too scared to let themselves go.”

I shuttered my eyes; having that strange feeling that she could see right through my pretenses to me. She was becoming even more dangerous than Cora, my best friend, had been. Rubbing my face and trying to conceal the shakiness I felt, I went, “So what are you going to write about?”

Natalie averted her gaze from me and I tried to pretend I didn’t see the disappointment that flitted through her features. It wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been, especially with the truth of what she’d said ringing in my ears.

“The one thing I would change in this world…I guess it would be to change the way we think about Special Ed kids. I have a younger cousin who was in speech therapy for while and the other kids were assholes to him. Makes me wonder how they treat the Special Ed kids.”

My gaze flitted towards her again. She was looking at her paper, doodling something. She would’ve been a really, really awesome friend.

“What about you? What would you write about?”

Just then, the bell for the end of the class rang. I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding.

Mr. Vanderbilt didn’t bother to look up from the papers he was grading and said, “Just because I didn’t say anything doesn’t mean I’m deaf. I’ll expect a little less conversation between Miss Haig and her friend next lesson. See you tomorrow and good luck for your project.”

He smiled wolfishly at Natalie and me. “You’ll need it.”



Riley seemed to be throwing some kind of party at his place because there were a lot whole of cars packed outside our houses. As hard as I tried to block it out, I couldn’t ignore the noise they were making. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if it weren’t for how Mr. Vanderbilt’s assignment was driving me crazy.

That essay plus the noise coming from Riley’s was enough to make me want to punch something.

Busying my hands by tying my hair into a braid, my eyes went back to the blank document. Inspiration seemed to be very, very far away today. Maybe it was just because every time I looked at the question we were assigned, I kept thinking about what Natalie had said about me being afraid to live.

It was true.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it was like Before, before any of this had happened to my family. Truthfully, I couldn’t recall much. It seemed like an awfully long time ago.

Or maybe it was just because Riley’s was too goddamn noisy for me to even think.
I walked over to his place, not really thinking about what I was actually going to say when I got there. Instead, I was allowing myself to remember.

Even before the funeral, people had already started looking at me differently because they’d all heard what happened to Sara. Her friends didn’t say much to me; but I knew they were gossiping. That was what her crowd thrived on; they needed something, someone to talk about. And for weeks, they talked about Sara. Don’t speak ill of the dead? That was a complete and utter joke to them.

Those who weren’t gossiping were feeling sorry for me. They wanted to let me how awful they felt that this had happened to me; but their sympathy wasn’t worth anything. Their pity made me feel small. I hated it.

And even those who I thought knew me the best, my friends; they didn’t know how to act around me either. They treated me like I was breakable, like I was emotionally as fragile as Mom. I don’t know if I was overreacting or if I was just so mad that I was just looking for someone to vilify but I started not wanting anyone around me, not even Cora.

I jolted to the present while Riley’s door swung open and Tyler steeped out. Maybe it was a trick of the light but his expression was almost dark before he saw me. Then a grin developed. “Oh, hey, I didn’t know you were coming.”

“That’s cause I’m not actually. Can you get Riley to turn down the music or something? It’s giving me a headache. I have work to do and it’s really noisy.”

“You’re doing work on a Friday night?” He closed the door after him; his eyebrow cocked. “You’re really dedicated, huh?”

I rolled my eyes at him and he chuckled lightly. “It’s just an assignment for English, about how we would change one thing about the world if we could. And it has to be something you can actually do. Mr. Vanderbilt scares all of us so much that we’re all starting work early so that he can take a look at our drafts first.”

“Vanderbilt? As in Tom Vanderbilt?”

“Um, yeah, I think he said so.”

His lips were pursed and his look in his eyes calculating. When he noticed me watching him, he seemed to smoothen his expression out somehow (I’m aware of how weird it sounds, but that’s how it really looked like) and say, casually, “He was a family friend of ours; seemed to be close to Delia for a while actually. But he was a couple of years older so he went off for college and stuff first.”

Mr. Vanderbilt being friends with Delia? Free, easygoing Delia?

“Yeah, he actually lived in your house. But then he went off for college and his family moved away.”

His eyes seemed to focus on me now as he said, “I realised I’ve never seen your hair tied up before. You look nice.”

I flushed; although I knew how stupid it was to be pleased by this insignificant comment. “Yeah, well, um, just tell Riley to keep the music low for a while, okay?”

I turned to leave but his words stopped me.

“So what are you going to write your essay about?”

Sara and I used to play this game. For example, if she said ‘monkeys’, I would say the first word that popped into my head, like ‘bananas’ or something. Then she would have to say the word she thought of when she heard ‘bananas’. It entertained us; especially later on when we started learning all the swear words.

Mom had been convinced that this game kept us out of trouble during those long rides to our grandma’s for Thanksgiving. But then grandma died and we got older; started spending less time with each other.

When Tyler asked me about the essay, it was like I was playing the game again. A word had popped up in my head, unbidden. Sara.

When we were first here, I was really, really glad that they wouldn’t know anything about me, anything about my beautiful sister. I decided that anyone who knew that about me, like Natalie, I would avoid them until they got the message and left me alone about Sara.

It’d been effective. But sometimes it also got lonely, because there was something Natalie had forgotten to tell me about living and being alive.

Being alive meant that you were always safe. You never had to take risks. But you would always be on the outside looking in. If I wanted to change that, if I wanted to live, I needed to be honest with myself and other people. And to do that, you needed to take a plunge and trust somebody for once.

I didn’t know if Tyler was that someone. What I did know was that he’d been welcoming, friendly and we had known each other for almost two months. I knew that he loved Blue’s Clues as a kid, ate spaghetti every Friday and didn’t learn what a zucchini was until he was twelve.

But he didn’t really know me. I’d kept the most important parts of me hidden away. The parts that were so fucking upset with what had happened to Sara that it messed me up inside. The parts that convinced me that pretending to have no sister at all was easier than letting people know what had happened to her and my family.

There was something I could do to change the world for me. I could trust him enough to tell him what had happened to me.

“You okay, Spencer? You’re acting kind of weird.” Tyler had moved right in front of me; his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “You look a little sick.”

I took a deep breath.

“There’s something I need to tell you, something about my sister, Sara.”