Centers

“A whole pie for me?”  Mr. Morris asked.  He said, “Lucky Friday” four times that morning (the last time Gitt skipped - the week before Christmas).  She went to a pancake place for breakfast instead of English class.  And then she breezed into Morris’ office at 10:30 am.

“This looked better than some dinky reindeer coffee mug.  Merry Christmas,” Gitt said.

But Gitt doesn’t feel like eating pancakes and sunny side up eggs and sausage biscuits this morning or hearing “Lucky Friday” either.  She lounges on her canopy bed in a sea of fluffy pillows, one of her legs tangled in a goose down comforter.  She listens to the whir of the bathroom fan and considers shutting it off, but her mind wanders and she doesn’t get up, she stays stuck in her sheets.  When the phone rings, she almost lets it ring through to voice mail, but then she remembers something her dad said yesterday or was it the day before about eating dinner together.  Her finger presses the speaker button.  “Hi pumpkin… don’t wait dinner on me,” echoes.

She stares up at a white ceiling - the only uncluttered space in her room and makes no move to do anything, she’s just floating - she’s nothing and everything all at the same time, in a state of stillness like being awake but caught up in a dream.  She plays her father’s phone call again in her head.  But this time, the words are different. 

Her mouth moves but the words she mouths no one can hear.  She’s like a girl underwater making bubbles and sucking in the ocean and drowning but no one sees and if they do see, maybe they don’t care.  And the thought stays with her, how much better the phone call in her head was than the phone call in real life, how much better make believe is.

If Gitt does anything tonight it will be with a small group of friends, Bev and Adrianna and maybe Julio.  But she’ll tell him to leave his sick sometimes girlfriend at home.  Besides, Gitt wants to eat comfort food like meatloaf and smashed sweet potatoes and watch old movies and Kimmie wouldn’t have the appetite and wouldn’t that be cruel?

At 7:00 am when Gitt’s alarm goes off, she hits the snooze button.  She dreams it is the weekend and her mom has made Jell-O for breakfast.  And it is just the two of them.  They are having a good time of it.  Gitt has something big she wants to ask her mom.  She can feel her mouth start moving and she knows if she can just ask the question her mom will tell her.  The question is right there, she can see the letters creeping out one by one into the speech bubble balloon like she and her mom are in some kind of weird comic strip.  And just when Gitt thinks, “This is it, I’m finally going to know what happened to you,” the nameless freshman from her last party crashes through the French doors that open into their kitchen.  His whole body is covered in blue Jell-O and he has a broken nose.