Definitions of Indefinable Things
Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Acknowledgments
Sample Chapter from THINGS I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN
Buy the Book
Singular Reads
About the Author
Connect with HMH on Social Media
Copyright © 2017 by Whitney Taylor
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
Cover illustration © 2017 by Jim Tierney
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Taylor, Whitney, author.
Title: Definitions of indefinable things / Whitney Taylor.
Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. | Summary: “Follows three teens in a small town whose lives intersect in ways they never expected, teaching them that there are no one-size-fits-all definitions of depression, friendship, and love.” —Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001796 | ISBN 9780544805040
Subjects: | CYAC: Depression, Mental—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Youths’ writings.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.T395 De 2017 | DDC [Fic] — dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016001796
eISBN 978-1-328-69569-7
v1.0317
For Jamie, Haley, and Kasey—
Thanks for walking this tightrope with me.
Chapter One
NOTHING MADE ME WANT TO GET hit by a bus more than Tuesday night happy pill (see: Zoloft) runs. After a lengthy car ride with my mother, who spent all ten minutes singing a God-awful Christian melody and praying for the state of my wayward soul, I’d have to physically restrain my hands to keep myself from shoving the door open and rolling out onto the highway. Sometimes I prayed, too. That a piano would fall from the sky and crush my miserable, suburban existence. Or that God would set CVS on fire to spare me from having to choose between Mickey Mouse and Flintstones gummy vitamins. Since I was, quite unfortunately, still alive, I took it that God couldn’t hear me over my mother’s off-key rendition of “Amazing Grace.” Or maybe he just didn’t bother noticing the pitiful lives of Flashburn inhabitants at all.
Once we made it inside CVS, my mother always played this super annoying game of Find the Most Lame Thing and Force It on Reggie. She used to do this to my brother, Frankie, when she took him clothes shopping. Which probably explains why he turned out to be a sweater-vest-wearing, pleated-pants-enthusiast youth pastor five hundred miles away.
“Regina, look at this little notebook,” she exclaimed right on cue, lifting up a composition journal with a cartoon duck on the front. “This would be perfect for you to journal in.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great idea, Karen. I’ll write about how much I hate baby ducks inside a baby duck. It’ll be one giant eff you to ducks everywhere.”
“Don’t call me Karen,” she scolded. “You know I don’t like that. And don’t insinuate curse words.”
“Fine. I’ll just say it outright next time.”
She adjusted her cat-eye glasses and sighed. “I just thought it would be nice for you to have a journal so you can start writing your feelings down like Dr. Rachelle advised.”
“What would be nice is if you and Dr. Rachelle stopped forcing activities on me like there’s actually a chance in—” She raised both brows in a warning. “Hades, that I’ll enjoy it.”
“We just want you to be happy, sweetheart.”
There was a difference between being happy and being distracted, but I knew Karen wouldn’t understand. And picking one of our signature back-and-forths (see: screaming matches) in the middle of the school supplies aisle seemed a bit melodramatic.
Somehow, I was able to break away from Karen with minimal objection. I was halfway through the store before she could call my name from the creams and ointment aisle, but when she did, it was something like, “Reggie, do you still have that pesky rash on your backside?”
I didn’t respond. Needless to say, her fascination regarding the condition of my ass went unsatisfied. Set on autopilot, I ended up at the back of the store where the pharmacist was rearranging cases on a shelf. When she saw me, she smiled politely and moved to the counter.
“I’m here for a refill,” I recited. “Reggie Mason. Zoloft.”
She glanced at a sheet of paper. “Birthdate?”
“January ninth.”
“Okay, that will be ready in about eight to ten minutes if you would like to wait around. Sorry for the delay. We’ve had an influx of orders with it being allergy season.”
“That’s all right. Thanks.”
I’d started scanning for a place to sit when some guy practically shoved me to the side. “Excuse me, prescription refill for Prozac. Last name Eliot,” he said to the pharmacist.
She nodded, marking the paper. “Birthdate?”
“December twelfth.”
“That will be ten minutes if you would like to wait.”
He turned and caught a glimpse of my vengeful stare. Brown hair hung loosely in front of his eyes, toppling over his ears. He had this stupid, diamond-shaped tattoo on the left side of his neck that looked like it was done by one of those wannabe tattoo artists who work from their garage and use bum needles that give people bacterial infections. His grungy THE RENEGADE DYSTOPIA band T-shirt crept out from behind his acid-washed jacket.
“That band sucks,” I mumbled just as he was about to walk away.
He stopped directly in front of me. “Interesting observation,” he responded; his raspy voice sounded like he was recovering from a nasty cold. “I find that their irreverence toward the norms of modern age grunge culture is kind of their appeal.”
“Maybe to people who are so desperate to be original that they’re actually more banal than everyone else.”
He glanced down at the shirt with the stupid band. “You’re right,” he said, sliding his arms out of the jacket.
“What are you doing?”
He lifted the shirt over his head, exposing a white T-shirt underneath it. “The band is shit. I mean, they sing the same lyric eight times in a row and call it a song. It’s pathetic.”
“Then why were you wearing the shirt?”
“I guess to send a message.”
“The message being?”
“I like shit music and need a pretentiously opinionated emo girl leaning against a rack of laxatives to help me with my taste.”
Dulcolax (see: terrible first impression) caught my eye the second I dared take a look behind my head. “Your taste in music should be the least of your worries,” I said
, crossing my arms across my black sweater as if to declare the laxative display my territory. At least it wasn’t feminine products. That could have gotten awkward. “Prozac is the worst antidepressant on the market. I couldn’t fall asleep for days when I was on it.”
“Don’t forget the dizziness,” he added. “I tripped in the shower and about busted my head on the toilet. They don’t show you that on the commercials.”
“Nope. Not unless the sun was beaming through your window or you were on a bike.”
“Man,” he said, snapping his fingers. “The one time I don’t ride a bike in the shower.”
He was staring at me with a weirdly attractive grin on his face, and I felt like telling him to screw off. But there was a slight anger in his snarled mouth, like he disdained convention and flirty conversations and was only still talking to me because I looked ridiculous with MiraLAX poking up from behind my head.
“So, what are you on?” he asked.
“Zoloft.”
“Clinical? Obsessive? Panic?”
“Clinical.”
“Me too. Another thing we have in common.”
“We suck at life?”
“No. We aren’t ignorant.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Not really.” He reached into his pocket and whipped out a strand of red licorice. “Twizzler?” I shook my head. “You see, stupid people are happy with knowing nothing. The less they know, the better things seem. But smart people, geniuses, we see everything exactly for what it is. And then we take pills to make us stupid, because stupid is happy. Whatever the hell that is.”
“And which do you prefer, stranger?” I asked.
“My name’s Snake.”
“Snake?”
That was the most obscenely ambitious nickname I’d ever heard.
“Like the reptile. Yours?”
“Reggie.”
“That’s a dude’s name.”
“That’s a misogynistic assertion.”
“Fine.” He grinned, narrowing his eyes. “It’s unisex. And what do you mean, which do I prefer?”
“Being smart or being happy?”
A muffled voice echoed across the store. “Pickup for Regina Mason.”
“Regina?” Snake mocked. “What a prissy little name.”
“At least I’m not named after a slimy predator that sucks the life out of everyone it comes in contact with.” I pushed past him and snatched the folded bag from the pickup basket. I zipped the medication into my messenger bag and tossed exact change onto the counter.
“Leaving so soon?” Snake asked. Now that he was standing directly under the light, I could see the way his eyes were burrowed deep into his skull. How his full lips had a perfect model pout, like his whole mouth had gotten stuck on the kissy-face setting. His pretty face was too posh for his image.
“As fascinating as this conversation’s been, I’ve got to get home and eat dinner.”
“You should invite me over.”
“A dude named Snake with a pierced ear, a crap tattoo, and a fixation on violent screamo music? Yeah, not gonna happen.”
He shook his head as he ate another Twizzler. “Are you this mean to everyone you meet?”
“Only the special people,” I muttered.
As I was preparing to leave, he grabbed my arm. I was one security camera away from clocking him.
“I’ll see you around?” he asked, his tone strangely earnest.
I yanked my arm out of his grasp. Even though he was determined and forceful and weird, at least he wasn’t annoyingly exuberant. I had to give him brownie points for that.
“I’m not really around,” I said as I walked away.
My mother was waiting for me at the front doors with a bag in her hand. “I bought you anti-itch ointment just in case your fanny chafes again.” She smiled, proudly holding up a thin white tube. “And I picked you up a journal just in case you change your mind.”
“It better not have ducks.”
“Duck-free. Promise.”
She proceeded to babble on about birthday cards and half-price two-liters and a bunch of other irrelevant things I didn’t care about. We got in the minivan and rode away, listening to some girl group singing a ballad about the joy of the Lord.
Chapter Two
AT LUNCHTIME, I ATE OUTSIDE. Hawkesbury High had a closet-size cafeteria with round tables interspersed between microwave stations. Each table had been claimed from the first day. The table closest to the door was for the boys soccer team (see: assholes), who drank insane amounts of Gatorade and occasionally threw cheese at the table by the condiments rack. That table was reserved for the girls volleyball team (see: skanks in Spanx), who ducked flying cheese while whispering about the table near the exit door. That turf belonged to the cheerleaders (see: blonde brigade), and the one beside it to the drama club (see: future fast food employees of the world), and so on and so forth until every table was accounted for. If you didn’t care to sit with the teachers and be subjected to a million jokes you had to be stoned or drunk to find amusing, you sat outside at the picnic tables.
Polka, a Taiwanese exchange kid from my creative writing class, sat across from me. He ate sushi out of a Ziploc container and read a Japanese comic. I didn’t mind eating with him because he wasn’t in a clique, didn’t like to talk, and always brought a dessert he was willing to share.
On days when getting up in the morning felt like a feat, when the air was sticky and humid and the courtyard reeked of moldy cheese, I would let myself remember what it was like freshman year, devouring hamburgers in the cafeteria. What it was like to have a clique, even if it was only with one other person and nobody else knew we were there. But there was no purpose in dwelling on things like that.
Polka looked up from the book he was reading, a shiny one with a picture of a shark on the front, and slid a slice of birthday cake across the table. “You can have whole thing,” he said in his broken accent.
“You sure?”
“My guardian make it, but I don’t like coconut.”
I grabbed the fork and took a bite; the cake melted against my tongue. “This is great, Polka. You should eat it.”
He mechanically turned his head from side to side. It was funny whenever he shook his head like that, his eyes expressionless, mouth straight as a ruler. Polka never seemed to get up or down with his emotions. He might not have had any, and that was all the more reason to sit with him rather than inside, where everyone had an opinion on everything and most of them were totally stupid.
“My birthday yesterday,” he said as he resumed his reading. “I turn twenty-one.”
“You did not turn twenty-one, dude. You’re in the eleventh grade.”
He flipped the page. “Friend said I turned twenty-one. That’s how I take shots.”
“You drank shots?” I couldn’t see Polka, with his incurious eyes and khaki pants, downing shots with a group of friends. Really, I couldn’t see Polka having friends, but he did. He hung out with a few other guys from the exchange program. I couldn’t see them taking shots, either. “How’d they taste?”
“Taste like shit,” he said.
The way he cursed stuff was awesome. It was just small talk: “How are you?” “The weather’s great.” “Liquor shots taste like shit.” He would say it, I would go on eating his dessert, and that was the extent of our conversations. It always got left at shit, and that’s exactly where I wanted it.
He didn’t need to be friends beyond the picnic table, and neither did I.
Sometimes I was pathetic. Fine, all the time. But I liked to think I was pathetic in a way that was sort of inspiring, if there was any such brand of patheticism. Especially on the rare occasions I would go the park after school and sit on the swing set by myself.
It wasn’t like I went there to be meta about it. Like, Look at that sad goth chick all alone on the swings. She’s probably listening to indie rock through those Skullcandy headphones. Even though I was a sad goth chick and, fu
ck the stereotype, listening to indie rock through those Skullcandy headphones. Basking in my own blatant misery, as cliché as it may have been, hurt and felt good at the same time. I didn’t like much, but I liked that I felt the pull of gravity even when I was floating. I liked that, even in the air, there was weight.
It was cold that Wednesday. The wind blew my hair into my eyes as I pumped my legs, reaching higher and higher, tilting my head back to peer at the pinkish gray of the sky. My mom hadn’t called me yet to ask when I’d be home, and I didn’t have to go in to work at Oinky’s Ice Cream. I could shut off my phone and not worry about anyone calling me, not worry about anyone looking. I could go anywhere, nowhere, or everywhere, and it wouldn’t make a difference.
And that was the good and the hurt. It felt good to be alone, and still hurt that there was an empty swing.
This number is no longer in service.
The recording sank into my eardrums, beating in slow, lulling motions. Sweat trickled down my jaw from where the phone was pressed between my cheek and the pillow. I was probably crying, but barely recognized the sensation anymore. All I recognized was the phrase no longer.
No longer in service.
No longer friends.
No longer here.
Every night I fell asleep to darkness. And the only thing that kept me going was that I didn’t always wake up to it.
Chapter Three
THURSDAY WAS MY LEAST FAVORITE DAY. Not because it followed the hype of hump day or because it was too close to Friday to not be Friday, but because it was a workday. Plus, that particular Thursday was the day my dad mounted the creepy wolf he’d stitched up at work that week. For a beast caught midsnarl, it was a surprisingly tame-looking creature. One that practically begged for a stare-off. Unfortunately, my wandering, curious, and tired eyes were no match for his marble opposition. He won in ten seconds flat. The deer from February was my favorite opponent. He was missing an eye.
“You like that one?” my dad asked. He was reading the newspaper from his corduroy La-Z-Boy recliner, his hanky clawing its way out of the pocket of his bowling shirt. “Got him hoisted up there this morning.”