part six: so normal isn't normal anymore

Poke.

I didn't know how long I'd been asleep on those stupid stiff plastic waiting room chairs, but now I was awake. You know how you don't sleep very well when you're uncomfortable and have a lot on your mind? Yeah! That!

I wiped the drool off my chin like Dad hadn't already noticed and waited for my brain processes to kick in: long term to short term, in rapid progression. My identity, my childhood, my time in the housenook, my reunion with Dad, how we got here, and why I was sleeping in the waiting room.
"Dad! Are you feeling better?" I got up too fast. My head was swimming a little bit, and my back was sore from those stupid plastic chairs. But he seemed fine. Even before he nodded, I could tell he looked better. He had more color in his face. Oh, and less blood on his chin. I kept waiting for him to cough, but he didn't.

Instead, he said something: "Let's go home." Ah, what a wonderful phrase. And so it was. We left the clinic and headed home. The weather wasn't really that miserable, thankfully, and the sun was just coming up. I don't think of Dad as being an early riser, but I don't think of him as the type to develop random, probably fatal instadiseases, either. So I let it go. We walked up the stairs, and I pushed open the door. Immediately Persephone and Fuzzballe were at my ankles. I haven't yet had much bonding time with Fuzzballe, actually. But cats are like that-- as soon as they get hungry, the world is their friend. Or their snack, I suppose. Depending on how small you are.

Would cats eat other cats if the other cats were rat-sized? Just wondering.

I'm getting distracted. So I fed the cats, at which point both of them suddenly lost their enthusiasm for my company, Fuzzballe more than Persephone.

When I emerged from the kitchen, Dad was sprawled out across our couch. It then hit me that I had no idea what we were going to do. I mean, to some extent, things had to go back to normal, and so I probably was going back to school (the thought suddenly seemed terrifying for some reason), but what was Dad going to do? I thought a minute, and then stood definitively in front of Dad. "So," I announced.

"So," he said, which, in my experience, always means, "I don't have anything to say. Do you?"
I did, though. "What do we do now?" Dad pondered that for a minute. I guess I was under the mistaken impression that he'd thought farther ahead than I had -- wait. Further? Farther? What's the freaking difference? Whatever. Anyway, I thought he'd... thought of things more in advance, you know, because he's my father. (Ha, which looks like "farther." I am so distracted. Focus, Xiu Li.) Oh, no. Nothing about my criminal record yet to be dealt with. His clever response? "Well, I hate to say it, but..."
"I'm going back to school." I stole his punch line. "I expected that. But what are you going to do?"
He looked like I'd just reminded him of a science project on a Sunday night. It made me smirk a bit. But his response was coherent.
"Going to work. I have some money to give to my boss."
I liked that. It made me feel powerful. Dad sat up.
He grimaced and tried to cover it up. "Well, you go... take a shower and get ready for school."
"I can take a hint, Dad." But he hadn't mentioned the whole police business. So I took a deep breath and brought it up.
"You don't think the police will be worried?"

Suddenly I needed a faster shower. I hadn't even noticed how bad I smelled until I got a nice little reminder about what coconut shampoo smelled like. Even with all the dirt, though, showering faster wasn't hard, because now I was nervous. What if I'd somehow committed an obscure felony? How could I prove that DuBolaire had been just as nasty to me? Suddenly I realized I had nothing left to wash, and turned the water off.

Here we go, I thought, and after putting on clothes (duh), Dad and I were out the door. The walk to the police station could not have taken any longer. By the time we finally got there, I was just about ready to explode. Like, literally. But not really literally, because that would be stupid. But really. I was so tightly wound that I almost ran into the glass door. Dad started talking to the guy at the desk, asking for Officer Richard. I felt a twinge of guilt at my dad being on first-name basis with police officers. A guy came out of the back room and looked at me. Usually when people meet me, they're surprised that I'm not Chinese, but he just grinned. "We found your daughter!" he announced. "She's standing next to you."
I tuned out a bit as Dad explained the whole fiasco to Officer Richard. Had he or the awkward man at the front desk been there when Annalisa was dragged away? Did they know where she was? Suddenly I realized that Officer Richard had said something to me.
Oops. What did he say?
I racked my brains. Something about me. And the post office.
"Uh, yeah, I guess that was me," I said.
I'd guessed correctly, thankfully.
"You got out of the police car."
Yeah, I had... I was such a badass!
"Um, yes."
"And you think that coming in and giving us an apology is going to fix everything?"
Crap! I didn't know what to say. I examined my feet. But I'd misread him.
"Don't worry. We have better things to do than look out for teenage girls causing ruckuses in the post office. I'm just sorry we didn't put two and two together and get you back to your dad. I know the postmaster, and my best guess is he provoked you anyway."
Ha, I'll say.
He patted my shoulder and told me to go to school.

As Dad and I walked away, I suddenly felt awful. "I didn't ask about Annalisa," I said aloud. Dad turned sharply. "You barely got off clean as is! Do you really want to be on that report, too?"
Right. She was just as much in trouble as I... would have thought I'd be.
"Officer Richard had a point," he said. "Go to school. And come home straight afterwards, or call me. We aren't doing this runaway business anymore."

I didn't know what else to do. So I turned and walked off down the street towards the school. On the way, I took out my phone and called Shoes & Etc.. (Is that correctly punctuated?) I resigned, and my boss seemed to understand. I didn't really want to go back to school, though. It felt... so unnatural. Now I knew why dropouts hardly ever went back. It just wasn't part of my world anymore. And I hadn't even been gone that long...

I wished Annalisa were there. It'd have been more fun if my first day back was her first day, period. But she was off somewhere else. Maybe Officer Richard was talking to her right now. In a cold jail cell. My fault.

I shook my head. I was at the school now. The bell rang as I walked up, which would have made me feel lucky if I'd been in a better mood. I walked into the school building in a huge crowd of people my age. They all seemed so... sheltered now, talking about who liked who and what was for lunch. How many of them even knew an orphan? Or people who live under cities? I was starting to feel too self-righteous, so I told my mind to shut up.

I walked into first period math. God, it had been a long time. I don't particularly like or hate math, so it wasn't inherently a positive or negative memory. The teacher almost skipped my name on the roll, she was so used to my absence.

I was sitting next to Hana McMurray, just like I always had. But she looked so fake. Had she always looked that fake? Did I look fake? I was feeling kinda J. D. Salinger now. "Hey, Hana," I said quietly.
She startled a little. "Ohmygod! Xiu Li!" She smiled fakely. "You're back! Where have you been?"

I hadn't even thought of that. I could have answered anything. I could've answered truthfully and been bombarded with questions about tunnels and secrets. But I wimped out at the last second. "Sick."

Her smile fell just a little. "Oh, okay." She paused. "By the way, I'm soooo sorry. I can't imagine if it were me."
I had no clue what she was talking about.
"For what?"
"You don't... know?"
She refused to tell me and only spoke to me with math-related questions for the rest of the period. She even ignored my note.

Finally, the bell rang, and I was off to chemistry.

I had forgotten so many things about high school. One of these things was Arjun. Arjun always flirted at me like crazy in chemistry. He used to call me his--
"Blonde Asian babe!"
Yeah. That.
And so began a dreadfully long class period in which Arjun used all of the new pickup lines that he'd come up with in my absence. I kind of may have possibly blown up at him. Just a little. But I didn't get the chance to see if it worked, because the bell finally rang.

I was really relieved for that, too, because most of my swim friends were in my third period Lit class. For a minute, I almost felt like everything was back to normal. I swung my bag over the back of the chair and sat down in between Shannon G. and Ruby. All of them were there. Marianna. Adelaide. Carrie. Shannon T. Hana. Everyone.

They all exclaimed for a minute over how I was back! And wasn't that awesome! And then... they started talking. "So, guys," said Shannon T., "I've been thinking about this weekend. I think if Ruby's mom would be okay with it, we could all sleep over!"
Ruby giggled. "Thanks for telling me, Shan," she said, and laughed obnoxiously.
"Thanks for selling my popcorn!" yelled Adelaide.
What?
Apparently, though, a ton of inside jokes had been born whilst I was under the city. I swear, the next fifteen minutes were just straight giggling about "Mariah's thunder," "ironing the towels," and "lampshades." I could only guess at what these stupid things meant or why they were funny.

Lunch was after third period, and I sat with the swim girls, just because I had nothing better to do. I kept thinking-- I only missed a little while. Yet that was enough, somehow. I was almost tempted to start talking about Annalisa. My time with her. My "date" with her at the theatre. But inside jokes are only funny if you have someone to share them with. I stopped listening, and just started watching them all laughing at stupid things. But suddenly, for a brief second, I did exist. Carrie, out of the blue, goes, "Wait! Has no one... told Xiu Li yet?"
Hello. I was right there.
"Told me what?"
Hana shushed her.
"No," I said, "this is the second time today. What?"
It was Shannon G. who finally spoke up. "You're off the swim team."
Suddenly, all the stupid fake laughter seemed really desirable.
"Well," said Adelaide, to no one in particular, "Coach did say to tell her so she didn't have to come to practice."
I swallowed a lump.
"What? Why?"
Shannon G. gave me what she probably thought was a sympathetic face. "Well, you missed too many practices."
"I was sick!"
Nobody said anything. They all just looked at me with piteous faces. I was finished.
I got up and left the table. Probably for the last time, though I didn't think of that until later.
Dammit.
As I walked off, I could've sworn I heard Marianna say, "Well, she wasn't that good anyway."

Annalisa, where are you? She would've known what to do. She was prettier than Marianna, anyway. But I felt ashamed. Maybe I was a bit obsessive. She probably wasn't thinking about me.


I sat down at an empty table as far from the swim team as I could, and put my head down on the table. I'd been there a few minutes before someone interrupted my thoughts.
"Hey, Babs."
"Babs?" I sat up. It was Arjun.
"Blonde Asian babe. You okay?"
I started to cry. I wasn't so much sad as angry. It would be Arjun to be the one to comfort me when I'd been exiled from my social circle. The only sad part was that I needed it.
"No," I said, and whimpered pathetically.
"You can tell me what's going on," he said, and put his arm around me.
Then I was angry again.
"Arjun, are you seriously hitting on me right now? Not the time."
He looked a little surprised. "You mean, like, do I like you?"
Oh, god. Maybe I shouldn't have.
He turned pink. "No."
"Like, for real, dude," I said. "This is ridiculous."
"No, Xiu Li. I swear." It took a minute for me to realize he used my actual name.
"Then why are you all over me all the freaking time?" I was probably a little too harsh.
"Xiu Li. I don't like you," he said. "I mean, I do, but not like that. You're..." He stopped.
"I'm what?" I said, more confused than anything.
"I mean," he said, "you seem cool. And you usually tolerate it. Until today, I mean."
I was so out of it. "What?"
"You're... kind of my cover-up," he said.
"What?" He didn't say anything. Oh.
"Oh, my god, Arjun... I'm so sorry. I had no idea." Now it was my turn to be embarrassed.
"Please don't tell anyone!" He was pleading with me. "They'd kill me if they knew."
"I swear, Arjun. I'd never tell. It's cool with me, anyway. I'm honestly just glad to have a friend."
We sat there for a minute, and then the bell rang. He got up really fast and went to leave. I yelled after him.
"Arjun!"
He looked back. "Yeah?"
"You can... hit on me all you want. If it helps."
He grinned. "Thanks!" he yelled back, and was swept away by the crowd of students going to class. The swim girls walked not far behind them. Had I really been friends with them so recently? They looked so... popular. Ugh, I hated the sound of the word. Too movie-like.

At least now I had another safe friend. But Arjun was no Annalisa. And he wasn't in any of my classes, either. It was like I didn't exist at all.

Finally, I went home.

I got angrier with each flight of stairs, and slammed the door behind me. I sat down in a chair and yelled, for no reason. Dad looked up, surprised. "Uh, hi there, honey. How was your day?"
I yelled again. "I've been kicked off the swim team."
He asked a couple more questions, but I got out of the conversation as soon as I possibly could and ran to my room. Dad told me through the door that he was going back to the office.

I was too busy thinking to respond. I was going to find Annalisa. That was the only way things would ever get better. So I started brainstorming.

Dad was at the office. First thing I needed to check was the police station, I agreed with no one in particular, and I took the spare key and jogged over there.

I swung open the door like a natural and talked straight to the guy at the front desk. Now I was on a mission. I felt so different from being the awkward, scared chick from this morning.

"Hey, is there an Annalisa on file?"
"Annalisa what?"
That struck cold. I had no idea what her last name was.
"No idea," I said nonchalantly. "She's seventeen."
He checked anyway, but there wasn't any record.
What a failure, dammit.

I opted for Plan B, and walked over to the orphanage. As soon as I could sneak through, I snuck down the tunnel with a battery lamp. I ran down the tunnels with a little lump in my throat. There was no way she'd be there. But it was so much more familiar than the lockerlined halls of the high school. I knew there'd be nothing, though, and I was right. The housenook was gone. Completely dismantled. Not even a trace of Annalisa. Where was she?


Dad was going to be home soon by that time, though. I went back to the apartment and lay down on the couch. No leads. Barely any friends. It felt so weird to relax when Annalisa was out there somewhere. God knew where. I punched one of the couch cushions.

I flipped on the TV and tried to tune out my brain with the help of some dumbass soap opera. I kept crying at it, for no good reason.

I felt like shit. Why did I feel like shit?