Emily's Shopping List

“I’ve been invited to a Quince,” I say.  “Julio’s sister's.”

“I thought Delucca said they weren’t going to be doing it.”  Ally says.  “When do you want to shop for a dress?”

“I have a dress.”

“I’ve seen your dress, Emily.  Make a list.  I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

The tiniest flutter starts in my belly and then goes higher.

These butterflies turn into manic shopaholics.  Shoes.  Shorts, and shirts (among other things) crowd inside a closet in my head, a closet that belongs to a spoiled child.

I want a basketball.  I want a bike and Converse and one of those slap-on watches in every color.  (I don’t care if they’re cool.)  I haven’t gotten around to thinking about a dress for a party, a giant birthday party.  Right now, I want to wear my dirty sneakers to the Quince and really would anyone besides my Aunt Ally care?

I am not nine.  And there’s other stuff you can’t buy in a store like a whole chunk of childhood gone along with a dad, and a mom.  It is as if I have this whale of a whiteboard in my brain and the power to make my real and made-up childhoods go away.

I am motherless and fatherless, and pretend I do not ache.  What’s left are all of the things that do not matter.  I write them all down on paper: basketball, bike, shoes, watches, everything from before, including my best friend’s Labrador that I never met.  She ate a frog and that was that.

I don’t give my aunt any list when she asks.  Although, I’d like to see her reaction to the words, “dead dog” on paper. 

“There must be something you need for the party,” she says.

I think about the lunches I watch Gift Roberts eat, the flavored vitamin water and the fancy vegetable wraps and I think about the would be prom king that sits next to her and laughs at everything she says.  And I remember the jacked up Jell-O from Gitt’s Twister party.  And it is as if I am high all over again.  I remember the way I sat at the party with Julio and how I did not feel anything but numbness, and how I laughed the same way Mickey did.  I hear us now, great peals ripple through the silence in my room.  And I tell my aunt, “I don’t need a dress for the stupid party, what I need is more lunch money.”  SoBe water and skinny spinach wraps are expensive.