February

A few days later, I went to my first executive board meeting. Ruby and I were the only two non-crew chiefs present and they seemed surprised their sanctuary had been infiltrated. It was my idea to come, but of course Ruby wanted to tag along. They started the meeting with updates from what they had done that week. “Restocked the car bags and got us new oxygen tanks,” John said. Carl jumped in with “Spoke to the police sergeant yesterday. He wants us to start using Code 1, 2, or 3 instead of Priority 1, 2, or 3.”

Then, Sandy stood up to give her report. “The probationary members seem to be moving to responder fairly quickly. Anker is halfway through scenarios if anyone wants to help out.” She sat down. “He’d be farther along if he stopped having mental breakdowns every time he did something wrong.”

The thought hit me from above. I could run for Sandy’s position at the end of the year. This way, I would be able to actually help the probationary members move through the ranks without being as condescending as Sandy. She spent the rest of the meeting on her phone, occasionally giggling at something funny she saw on the Internet. I spent the meeting trying to remember where the job description for Training Officer was. We had so many types of rules, bylaws, SOPs, SOGs that sometimes, things got lost in different binders.

I found it under a stack of refusal forms on the supply closet desk. “Position requirements: Responder level” was the first thing that caught my attention. It seemed like Training Officer ran scenarios, made sure medical lectures were done and tried to make sure that people ranked up quickly. My first thought was “oh, by threatening me she was going against her job.” My second thought was “I can do this better.” Now I knew that Responder had to happen before the Executive Board elections.

Of course that was the time period in which I stopped getting calls. I became what is known as a white cloud. Someone who, when they are on duty, prevents all calls from happening with their mere presence. Black clouds, of course, are storm clouds and when it rains it pours. But I knew I could prove myself in other ways. I started participating in lots of drills and trying to prove to everyone that I was ready to be a responder. Sitting in the office waiting for calls that never seemed to happen was excruciating and I would have given anything except my newly higher grades to change it.

Flint had been able to help me study into higher grades. I don’t know what I would have done without him. His explanations of concepts were always so much clearer than that of my professors, who seemed to take pride in how confusing they could be. The more questions the students had to ask, the better, was probably their motto. I’m all for questions, but it would have taken me weeks to figure out what they had said in a fifteen-minute time frame.

I don’t think he believed me about John but he kept quiet, accepting it for now. Occasionally, when my phone buzzed, he would look concerned but I always made sure to tilt it towards him so he could see that it was Ruby or Lily. If he stopped tutoring me, I was completely screwed. I didn’t want him to stop tutoring me because of something stupid that had happened in the past. He wouldn’t see it as past. He would see it as a long-awaited trial on my many mistakes. I changed John’s name in my phone to Lily and used past conversation to figure out whom I was actually talking to. I fell deeper and deeper into the hole that lies create. Every time I tried to dig myself out my hands caught on the barbed wire of my untruths and I slid backwards, deeper, darker. As I slid, I considered telling him the truth, but it was far too late for that.

* * *

Meanwhile, Ruby and Lily had started fighting. Ruby was fed up with Lily’s whining about Carl and not doing anything about it. She was fed up with me too, for always being the voice of the glass half full. But Lily was the more visible target. Lily Pulitzer is much more attractive to an angry bull than light gray pullovers. They started snarking about each other’s actions during the times when we were together. Lily was furious that she was no longer receiving the unconditional support she wanted from Ruby. Ruby was furious that she had to continue to provide unconditional support for her friend to remain in an unhealthy, if not abusive, relationship. I thought they were both right, and wrong, so I stayed out of it. A bull can certainly go after something gray if provoked properly.

“Whatever you think looks good,” Ruby would say to Lily when she came in to ask our opinion on a dress.

Lily looked to me. I pretended I was sleeping. Or dead.

They reminded me of my parents in their early days, which is weird. It’s weird when your friends remind you of your parents. They fought like them though. Each one attempting to get the upper hand at any cost, in the moment, not thinking about the damage they were ripping into each other’s psyches. Sometimes, I even watched them from above, the safety of my aerial distance keeping me from getting caught in the shrapnel ricocheting around my miniscule dorm room. They even started their accusations the way my parents used to, before my mother went silent. “You never, I always” and its sister “I never, you always.” They were the songs of broken promises and expectations unfulfilled. And I was stuck in the concert from hell.

When my dad relapsed on his anger management training the second time, I tried to convince my mom to leave him.

“He’s dangerous,” I had said. “Think of Sam.” I had been afraid to even put my name in the sentence because I had already lost hope that I would escape unscathed.

“He needs our support, now more than ever,” my mother said.

Loyalty, my mother’s shining virtue and Achilles heel. That’s the way it always goes though. Anything to an extreme is bad. I long ago accepted that I took everything too far. But after my mother put her foot down the first time, I thought she would have been able to stay steady ahead, to put down her fighting colors only when the war had truly been won. She had surrendered prematurely and I tried not to be angry with her. I knew it was hard fighting a war while living with the enemy.

I messaged Sam. “How’s school?”

I found myself cleaning the room, tidying up my bed, the dirty dishes, and the carpet that had almost never been vacuumed. I was going to make sure I didn’t need my parents. They weren’t reliable or helpful. I would make sure to get internships and school trips during my breaks. I would find some way to see my brother without them. In three years, he would be in college too. Then we would be able to meet and talk without the fear of our parents.

Sometimes I wondered whether Sam saw the situation the same way I did. Our mother and I had suffered the brunt of the attack when my father had revealed his true colors. He was too young at the time to be a target and things had cleared up enough by the time he was old enough that he never went through the same things I did. He was raised by the same ridiculously high expectations that I was raised by, but they were different. I was expected to wear nail polish at all times. If he didn’t do well at little league soccer, he spent the rest of the night in his room. He also had a habit of disappearing. No one was ever able to find him when he decided to hide. I always knew that he had a secret cubby hole that he went to every time, but I never asked, afraid the walls would overhear us and the secret would be broken.

I always believed he was the best example of the second child. He had learned from every mistake I made, sidestepping it like a ballerina and performing for the crowd. He had learned from when I tried to hide myself under the bed sheets that the best place to be at that time was somewhere they could not actually find him. He had learned that grades were paramount and trumped spending time with friends. He had learned that Dad in a mood was something to be avoided, while I always missed the signs and ran right into it. He was my slightly magical, better younger brother. I was glad he could be spared my experiences.