CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Waverly mall could hardly be called a mall. It was mostly two department stores, with a couple food stands placed here and there, and almost no people. My grandmother led me around the clothing racks, asking questions about sizes and taste, herding me into fitting rooms with armloads of shirts and shorts and bras. I tried them all on dutifully, but within moments of leaving the fitting room I couldn’t even be sure if I’d been in there at all. I didn’t remember what anything looked like on me, and I didn’t care.

I stuffed my feet into shoes and picked up shiny, glinting earrings and carried around shopping bags, while my grandmother ran a never-ending monologue about clothes and the changing nature of fashion. She asked me questions, so many questions it made my ears throb. Do you like to wear shorts, Jersey? Oh, Jersey, what do you think of this shirt, aren’t the hearts cute? Jersey, try this one on. I think that’ll look great on you, Jersey. What kinds of things did you wear at home, Jersey? I wanted to plug my ears, to slap my palms over them and start chanting la-la-la to drown her out.

At my other grandparents’ house, I’d been able to shut myself down, bit by solitary bit. But here it was impossible. I felt under a microscope, heated by a spotlight, poked and prodded and analyzed. Day after mind-numbingly normal day, my grandparents dragged me places, talked to me, showed me things, introduced me to people, made me participate, even though doing so meant I felt like an open sore, too roughed over to ever develop a protective scab. I began to feel like an exposed nerve.

“You hungry for lunch, Jersey? ” she asked.

“Okay, ” I said, that same mechanical response I’d been giving her all day long.

“You like nachos? ”

“Okay.”

I sat at a food court table, surrounded by shopping bags full of things I couldn’t remember choosing, much less caring about, while my grandmother ordered a plate of nachos to share. She came back and we ate mostly in silence.

Finally, as I picked up the last nacho, she said, “How would you like to go to church with me on Sunday, Jersey? ”

I paused, the nacho dripping most of its ingredients back onto the tray. “No.”

She tipped her head sideways. “But there are so many kids there your age. I thought you might like to get to know some of them before school starts in the fall.”

I felt a headache begin to pang on the side of my head. I didn’t even want to think about school—about starting senior year as a new kid.

“No, ” I said, dropping the nacho and wiping my hands on a napkin.

“Why not? ”

“Because…” Because I’m tired of everything being new. Because I just want something familiar. Because making new friends might mean getting rid of old ones. Because I can’t think when you keep saying my name like that. “Because I’ve never been to church.”

She frowned. “You mean Christine didn’t ever take you? ”

I shook my head, trying to look self-righteous about it, as if my mom had a great reason not to take me to church and how dare she, my grandmother, the woman who hadn’t even known my mom for over a decade, question it.

She pressed her lips into a tight line. “Well, that surprises me. She loved church. She came to church every Sunday before she got mixed up with that Clay Cameron. I’d have thought once he left her, she’d go back to her church home.”

“Her home was with me, ” I said. “She didn’t need church.”

We ate in silence for a few moments, me trying to picture Mom in a church. It was getting so hard to remember her with all these new versions coming at me every time I turned around. Clay’s version, my grandparents’ version, my version—they were getting muddy, competing, blurring her memory. It felt like trying to recall someone I’d never met.

“Would you be willing to try it once? ” my grandmother asked. “If you hate it, you’ll never have to go back. But it was very important to your mother at one time. You can see where she grew up.”

I rolled my eyes, but my resolve was weakening. I imagined walking into a stuffy church and hating it, feeling looked down upon by everyone inside. I imagined myself tipping my head back and railing at God— How could you? How could you do this to me?

But I could also see me walking in there and feeling enveloped by Mom, by Mom’s past, a past I didn’t know about. I could see me learning about her there.

“Will I be going to the same high school she did? ” I asked, trying to buy myself time to think.

“Yes.” My grandmother wiped her mouth, letting me change the subject. “Waverly Senior. You guys are the Tigers.”

“We used to be the Bulldogs, ” I said, as if that mattered. Barking Bulldogs, I heard Marin’s voice sing out in my head. Barking Bulldogs, Barking Bulldogs.

“Yes, I heard you had quite the football team. Did you know any of the kids on the team? ”

Of course I did. I knew them all. We’d grown up together. I wondered how many of them would be playing next season. How many of them wouldn’t be playing at all? “I was in theater, ” I said.

“Oh! Fun! What plays were you in, Jersey? ”

I couldn’t blame her for asking. I actually got asked that a lot. People never assumed someone who loved the theater would love being behind the lights the most. But still, her asking irritated me. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t know, it was the fact that… she was my grandmother and she didn’t know. I gritted my teeth against the irritation, but it was useless. This was all too much. Too fast, and too much. I pushed my chair away from the table, and it made a loud squeak that echoed through the food court and made people turn and look.

“I need a new cell phone, ” I said, abruptly changing the subject. “Mine got cut off.”

“Oh.” She thought it over. “Okay. But we can just pay the bill on your old one, get it transferred over to our names. That way your number won’t change.”

“That’s fine. Then I’m ready to go home, ” I said, suddenly too pissed at all the changes in my life to feel the relief I wanted to feel over not having to get rid of my old phone and the precious photos on it.

My grandmother didn’t say anything. She followed as I huffed it to the parking lot, my legs fueled by the weird anger that had begun following me around like a ghost.