I was so focused on making up our secret languages that I never even wondered what I’d tell you if it worked—let alone what you had to tell me. I don’t—I won’t—get homesick. But if I did, it would be for all the secret languages we always had already (do you remember when you took this picture, how mad I got when I heard?)
**
Amy doesn’t know exactly how to be in class
Her memories of before her sister got sick, when they still went to school, are unreachable, tiny dots on the horizon of her mind. She is not exactly daunted; she has reason to believe she will be good at these things. All she has to do is sit like the other kids sit and write things in her notebook so she doesn’t get called on. It’s just it is the opposite of teaching Zoe all those years.
Some of the other kids sit up straight and smile when smiled at, while others slump back in their seats and look serious or neglected or sleepy, or something—Amy’s not sure what. Amy cycles through the different postures, trying them on. She is so unused to being exposed to people’s eyes around the table that there’s no way she can listen to her teachers. It takes up all her energy just to sit.
Russian, which was the reason Amy came here in the first place, now sounds like screaming into a hole gaping into the ground.
People go in packs to the cafeteria, where you can pick whatever you want to eat and eat as much as you want. All of this is included in Amy’s scholarship. For a while she eats only desserts and drinks only fruit punch mixed with Mountain Dew, but then Katie says she needs to eat something resembling real food or she’ll give herself diabetes.
There are five of them from the Honors House that do everything together: Amy, Katie, Tommy, Vijay, and Hoffman, which is a last name, but for some reason everybody uses it instead, like they do sometimes on TV. Vijay is majoring in pre-med, and Hoffman in petroleum engineering. Like Amy, Katie is undeclared.
The boys call Amy Wonderkid, and it is the first time she has ever had a nickname. Having a nickname makes her feel like she is part of something too big for her to be able to see, and the resulting sense of smallness reassures her. And besides, the way they say Wonderkid makes it sound like they are proud of her, like she’s their little sister. It’s fun to be a little sister because you don’t even have to make decisions, you just get taken wherever everybody else is going or watch whatever everyone else is watching. They get to watch TV until as late as they want. Amy watches them watch TV, and when it’s something scary, Tommy covers her eyes at the worst parts, or Vijay does, if he’s sitting closer.
She talks to Zoe on the phone every day before they go to dinner and tells her what her homework is for tomorrow and if she saw anything funny and age-appropriate for Zoe on TV the night before. Zoe tells Amy about the stupid stuff their parents say and says she wants to go to college, too. She keeps on saying she might be coming down with something because her body hurts like when you’re getting the flu, but then she never actually does get sick, so Amy doesn’t know. She’s worried their parents can’t know how to care for her, and she wishes Zoe could just come and live on campus, too, although she knows she is too young. And she does have faith in Zoe’s doctors, who have encountered nothing new in any of her test results.
The pack goes to parties whenever there are parties, which is Thursday and Friday and Saturday for sure and sometimes other days. Protected by the pack, Amy is immune to her fame, and the initial flood of questions about the article in The Tulsa World dwindles down to a trickle, then dries up. They dance and talk and mostly drink till late. If the next day is a weekday Amy likes to look around the classroom and see who all she saw the night before, and when she sees someone she tries to exchange a glance with them like they are in a fellowship of red plastic cups, and it pleases Amy, too, that now the tables have turned, and it’s the adults who aren’t in on it: for all their teachers know they stay in studying, when in fact they are all only pretending because actually everyone is hung over, secretly miserable, just like her.
One of Amy’s classes is Photography I
One of Amy’s classes is Photography I. In this way she starts discovering the world.
She takes walks and takes pictures. The University of Tulsa campus is mostly sandstone with a little limestone and slate. Amy photographs it at night, using walls and benches as tripods. During the day she goes up 11th Street and photographs the gas station and the Taco Bell and the Taco Bueno, the pizza places, the Coney I-Lander—her grandpa’s favorite hot dog place—and the Arby’s, with its gigantic cowboy hat sign that says Arby’s ROAST BEEF Sandwich IS DELICIOUS. She does the Metro Diner, which is so easy to photograph Amy later almost wishes she hadn’t: the neon sign that says ELVIS EATS HERE, the turquoise padding on the booths, the cherry-red vinyl on the chairs at the tables. The checker-print wallpaper, the jukebox, the silver Art Deco M on the door. When she shows these in class she knows it seems like she is making some kind of statement, something in between attack and affection, and she feels uncomfortable.
She keeps going down 11th Street. She photographs the dumpsters in between the drive-thrus and the restaurants’ wood fences, the American flags in all the parking lots, and the cars, and the semis. She tries to catch the contrails of the planes that pass overhead, but often they elude her. She wonders what it might be like to take pictures in a place like Moscow, or Paris. She can’t imagine it, though, and she keeps going, down the cracked streets, Florence Place, Florence Avenue, photographing the compact one-story houses, many white or robin’s-egg blue, with lengthy driveways and ample, screened-in porches, the maple trees and the dogwoods and the Roses of Sharon, but since it’s winter, there isn’t anything in bloom.
Right around campus there isn’t a whole lot more than this, so she gets Tommy to drive her around to other neighborhoods. They drive down Cherry Street and visit Swan Lake, Philbrook, even Gilcrease. They go downtown; they go to Weber’s Root Beer Stand; he buys her a root beer float. Amy feels uncomfortable, because she doesn’t have enough money to buy him anything later on.
Tommy is clumsy, and sometimes when they walk he hits her hand with his hand. Sometimes he stares at her, but she doesn’t say anything because she wouldn’t know what to say, and anyway, she needs him now.
Amy’s best friend at school stays Katie
Amy’s best friend at school stays Katie. Amy and Katie co-navigate between drunk and passed out and hung over. Amy becomes aware in the most general way possible that Katie does drugs.
Often when Amy goes home from a party, she leaves Katie behind. Often Amy throws up at the end of the night. Often she cries at the toilet; sometimes she passes out on the bathroom floor. When one of the other girls from the House hears her crying or finds her passed out, Amy is unable to explain about Sasha. She knows the only person who can understand is Zoe. And even Zoe can’t know everything. Even Amy can’t know everything. So she always just says that it’s the alcohol. Nobody ever brings it up again later.
She knows the only person who can understand is Sasha.
Amy’s memories of Sasha are clearer than pictures
Amy’s memories of Sasha are clearer than pictures. More vivid. In Amy’s memories he speaks and gestures, lurches towards her, gets up and goes away. In nightmares these memories keep going, Sasha placing bullet after bullet in a gun. Amy wishes she had photographs, something for safekeeping, so she could forget.