Hope Wins, page 9
Despite the seven-year (okay, Aviva, six-and-a-half-year) age difference, my sister and I really were best friends.
And I was happy. My sister was happy.
Apparently, my parents were not that happy.
And then there was a plot twist.
The day after my twelfth birthday, my parents told me and Aviva to come sit at the kitchen table because they had something to tell us. My dad took a deep breath and my mother bit her nails. They hesitated.
I suddenly knew what was coming. Divorce. It was what I had been worrying about! My worries had come true! I started crying before they said the word.
Aviva, who was only five, got scared. “Sarah is crying for no reason!”
Which made me cry even harder. My sister had no idea what was coming, and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and shield her from finding out. I wanted to protect her.
My mother turned to her. “Daddy’s not going to live here anymore.”
Even when my parents explained, Aviva still didn’t really understand what was going on, but then she started crying, too. I couldn’t stop. I’d been right to worry. Bad things happened, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
I hugged my sister and didn’t want to let go. I couldn’t keep my parents from getting divorced, and I couldn’t protect her.
Custody arrangements were made. My dad moved out. We lived with my mom, but every second weekend my dad would pick us up and drive us to his new apartment. We shared a room there, and when I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d listen to her soft breathing and let it lull me to sleep.
That next year was hard. My dad took Aviva and me all the way from Montreal to Disney World, trying to cheer us up. While everyone else at the park seemed to be having the time of their lives, I was drowning. I was strapped into the ride of Spaceship Earth, feeling like the world was too big, I was too small, and what was the point of anything?
As the days passed, and shuttling back and forth between my parents became the new normal, I started to find my balance again. I started middle school. I loved my classes. I found a crew of friends: Mel! Shobie! Judy! I had a boyfriend. I was happy again. A scary thing had happened, but I was okay.
And there was another plot twist.
When I started ninth grade, my mom met a new guy at work. He was a consultant from Connecticut. Before their first date, my mom joked, “Maybe we’ll get married and we’ll all move to Connecticut.”
“Fun,” Aviva said. “What’s Connecticut?”
“I’m not moving to Connecticut,” I told them. “I’ll finish high school with Daddy and then come for college.”
“Won’t you miss us?” my mom said.
“Yes,” I said. “But I’m not moving.”
They had a great date.
“I’m still not moving,” I reminded her.
They fell in love.
“Not. Moving.”
They got engaged.
“But moving would be so exciting!” my mom said. “A new city! A new house! New friends!”
I liked my old friends just fine, thank you very much.
Their plan was to live in Connecticut for a few years but then move to Arizona.
“It’s always sunny in Arizona,” my mom said. “And warm! Don’t you want to live somewhere warm?”
That day it was about minus fifty in Montreal. My eyelashes froze to my skin. When I exhaled, the cold air made it look like I was smoking.
But I did not want to leave my school. I did not want to leave Mel, Shobie, and Judy. I did not want to leave my boyfriend. I did not want to leave my dad. The very idea of starting over in a new school, a new city, a new country, filled me with worry and dread. It was the drowning feeling all over again. I could not handle any more change. It was too much. “I’m not moving,” I insisted. “You can’t make me move. I’m not starting over in Connecticut and then starting over in Arizona two years later. No way.” Were they kidding me?
I knew I would miss my mother and my sister, but missing them seemed less terrifying than leaving everything else behind. Aviva would be fine! She was brave! She would make lots of new friends. “I’ll visit all the time,” I told her. “And I’ll go to college in Arizona. So we’ll be back together eventually. Everything will be fine! Totally fine!”
“Okay,” she said, hugging me. She trusted me.
Maybe my parents agreed to the new plan because they thought staying would make me happier. Maybe they agreed to it because it made the custody arrangements easier. Maybe because it was easier to lose one of us than both of us. I think it was a little of all three. But it was decided: I would move in with my dad and stepmother. My sister would move to Connecticut with my mom and her new husband. We were living a real-life version of The Parent Trap.
As the moving day got closer, I started picking fights with my mother and arguing with my sister. I spent as little time with them as possible.
I wanted to make it hurt less.
While my mom packed up and sold the house we had grown up in, Aviva and I went to sleepaway camp.
All summer I told myself—it’s going to be fine!
Totally fine!
On our last night together, my sister and I broke down. Tears streamed down our faces. What had I done? Aviva was only nine! She was going to grow up without me! She would get too big for Roller Coaster! Who would teach her all the things a big sister should? Like how to deal with friend drama and scary teachers? Who would protect her? How could I let her down like this? I felt guilty and terrified and gutted all at once. But I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t.
“I love you all the time. Just because you’re mine,” we told each other, through sobs.
The next morning, my dad picked me up from the camp bus and drove me to his house. My mom picked up my sister and they drove to the airport.
Over the next few years, I’d visit Connecticut every few months. Aviva would visit Montreal. We would talk on the phone every few days. We’d meet up every summer at sleepaway camp.
But then my mom and stepdad decided to really move to Arizona—which was even farther from Montreal and in a different time zone. We missed each other’s calls. Finding time to spend together became harder. I wanted to travel instead of going to camp. I decided to stay in Montreal for college. My dad and stepmom moved to Toronto, so when Aviva visited them, I wasn’t always around. When I visited my mom, Aviva had made her own friends, and she had her own life going on. Getting time together was harder.
Eventually, I became a novelist in New York. Aviva ended up a reality TV producer in Los Angeles. I got married and had two kids. Twenty-five years later, we were no longer in separate countries, but we were now on opposite coasts, still in different time zones, and we only saw each other a few times a year.
Our lives had gone in different directions. When I told people we were split up as kids, everyone always asked if we were close.
“So close,” I’d say, because we still were. We talked and texted all the time. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. When she had meningitis and was in the hospital, I was on the first plane over. She was there for my daughters’ birthdays. She brought them cool clothes. Much cooler clothes than I could have. She was still my best friend.
I still wrote about her, too. My first YA series was called Magic in Manhattan and was about a girl who finds out that her younger sister has magical powers. The big sister is a little bit jealous—but mostly proud. So basically, it was an updated version of Supersquirt.
The dedication says: “For Aviva, my baby sister. And yes, she’ll always be my baby sister, even when she’s seventy-two and I’m seventy-nine. (Fine, Aviva, seventy-eight and a half.)”
Aviva tells tells everyone that she’s the star of all my books. And she is.
She’s Miri from Bras & Broomsticks. Jonah from Whatever After. Devi in Gimme a Call. She’s my star, my muse, my Squirt.
Love doesn’t disappear just because you live in another city.
People move. Sometimes by choice, and sometimes not.
That doesn’t change who they are. That doesn’t change who they are to you.
Aviva was still mine.
Want to hear another plot twist?
Last September, my family decided that we needed a change. We packed up our stuff and moved to Los Angeles.
Yeah, change is hard. Change is scary. But turns out, it’s also exciting. New house! New city! New friends!
When I got here, Aviva was waiting for us at our new house. She jumped on top of me as we got out of the car. We both cried. “I can’t believe you live here!” she cheered. “I can’t believe this is my life!”
So now, Aviva and I live in LA. My dad and stepmom just moved to Vancouver. My mom and stepdad live in Vegas. We might not all live in the same house, or even the same country, but for the first time in twenty years, we all live in the same time zone.
(Also, my house is about fifteen minutes from Malibu. So although I never got my Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse, I came pretty close.)
But the best part? My girls get to grow up with their amazing aunt Vivi only a short drive away. And she’s great at French braids and making up dances.
Plus her Roller Coaster is out of this world.
* * *
• • •
SARAH MLYNOWSKI is the New York Times bestselling author of over forty novels, including the Whatever After series, the Magic in Manhattan series, and the Upside-Down Magic series, which she co-writes and which was adapted into a movie for the Disney Channel. Originally from Montreal, Sarah now lives in Los Angeles with her family. Visit Sarah online at SarahM.com and find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @SarahMlynowski.
PANIC! AT THE MOVIES
by Julie Buxbaum
When I was in elementary school, everyone I knew was afraid of something. (Actually, come to think of it, that’s still true. Shh, don’t tell, because adults definitely don’t want kids to know this, but grown-ups are afraid of lots of things.) My friends’ fears, unlike mine, though, all seemed pretty “normal.” My best friend hated lightning. On stormy nights, she’d be wide-eyed and terrified, and in the middle of the night, would crawl into her parents’ bed. (I’ve always loved lightning and its ominous crackle. It’s always felt like the opening of the best kind of story.) Another friend hated bugs and spiders, while I’ve never met a daddy longlegs I didn’t like. (I once had an encounter with a black widow, and I didn’t even break a sweat.) My brother hated small, tight spaces. (I’m not a fan, either, to tell you the truth.)
All of these phobias have names: astraphobia, arachnophobia/entomophobia, claustrophobia.
As a kid, though, what I was most afraid of in the world did not have a name, at least not one I’d ever heard. Even worse, what scared me the most seemed to be what everyone else most loved. When I was twelve years old, the two things that filled me with an almost unbearable dread were slumber parties and going to the movies. Often, life would serve me the double whammy of both at once.
“Oh my god, for my birthday party we are all going to see Weekend at Bernie’s, and then my mom said we can sleep in the basement!” my best friend, Halee (still my best friend now, actually, thirty-one years later), reported gleefully over our peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in the cafeteria at lunchtime.
“Great!” I said, while my stomach pretzeled into knots. I put my sandwich down, no longer hungry.
“Maybe we can play a trick on the first person to fall asleep? Like put their hand in water to see if they pee their pants?” another friend asked, laughing. I nodded, forcing my face to smile. No way would I be the first one to fall asleep, so worrying about wetting my sleeping bag was the least of my problems. I already knew I’d be awake all night.
A slumber party. And a movie.
Kill. Me. Now.
“I’ll just have to make sure I can come. I need to ask my mom,” I said, trying to find a way out of the situation. Maybe miraculously we’d already have plans to visit my grandparents. Maybe the earth would open up and swallow me whole. That seemed preferable to a movie and slumber party.
“It’s my birthday! You’re my best friend. Of course you have to come!” Halee said. She was right. I considered myself a good best friend—we even had matching half-heart BEST FRIENDS FOREVER necklaces slung around our necks to prove it—and good best friends don’t miss their best friend’s birthday because they have completely irrational and secret fears. They just get over themselves. Right?
I don’t remember the first time I found myself panicking during a movie. I suspect it was during The NeverEnding Story, because I remember that film as, well, never ending. Instead, most of the movie experiences of my childhood blur together. Like slumber parties, they were treated with the expectation that I would be excited, that they were a big treat. And I understood why. Tickets weren’t cheap. I loved the buckets of buttery popcorn. I could even see the appeal of the dimming lights and the booming intro music.
But what I hated more than anything was what happened to me after. Because invariably, about thirty minutes into the film, my mind would begin to wander. My thoughts would stray from the story playing out on-screen to some other story playing out in my own mind. At the time, I didn’t understand that this would one day turn into a sort of gift—my imagination’s ability to run wild and out of control would be the foundation of my later life as a novelist.
But at the age of twelve, that distraction soon turned terrifying. It felt like the opposite of a gift. It felt like a sucker punch. Or falling down an endless hole of spiraling thoughts.
I was stuck in my seat in the theater. With at least an hour to go before the lights came up again. There was no escape from my own brain. Nothing could be scarier to me.
Here’s how it would go down. On-screen, Johnny would be yelling, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” (If you don’t get the reference, ask a parent. It’s an iconic line from Dirty Dancing, a classic I’ve come to appreciate in more recent years.) In my head, a totally different scene would be playing out. I’d be overcome with dread and fear, a feeling so overwhelming I worried I might pass out.
I’d sit in my seat, hands grabbing the armrests. I’d curl my toes in my shoes to keep myself steady. I’d begin to sweat. My chest would hurt, like someone was hollowing out a space in the center of my lungs. My breaths would come quickly, and I’d try to steady the shaking. The feeling had happened enough times that I came to understand that I wasn’t sick. It wasn’t that I had eaten too much popcorn, or had skipped lunch, or was about to get the flu. The feeling was pure fear, similar to the feeling I’d get when jumping off a high diving board, but 1,000 percent worse, because there was no thrill attached—and worse yet, no bragging rights.
Everyone else had no problem watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or, most embarrassing of all, The Little Mermaid. I never told my parents. Or Halee. Never once said, “Hey, let’s not go to the movies.” Never once let them know about the way my stomach would fall, my brain would whirr, how sometimes I thought I might die if the movie didn’t end soon.
Even now, I am not sure why I suffered in silence. Maybe because it was just too weird. Just too embarrassing. Just too . . . irrational.
I was afraid of what, exactly? Of movies? No, that wasn’t it. I was afraid of getting distracted from the movie, and the torture my brain would offer when that happened—my own spinning out while everyone else sat engrossed and happy. How do you explain such complicated feelings when you haven’t yet developed the vocabulary? No one had given twelve-year-old me the words.
I have the words now. Two of them, actually. And it wasn’t until adulthood that I was able to identify what used to happen to me in the darkness of those theaters. I would have what a psychologist would call a “panic attack.”
If you haven’t had a panic attack, the Mayo Clinic’s website describes it as a sudden bout of intense fear that can trigger a response in your body. Twelve-year-old me would describe it as an unexplainable downward spiral of dread and loneliness that would leave me drenched in sweat and panting. It came on without warning and without a real reason. Like a monster waiting for the end of act one on-screen to pounce on me in my seat.
Of course, the same thing would happen to me at slumber parties. At Halee’s birthday party, slowly, one by one, the girls around me would slip into sleep, and Halee’s basement would turn into a chorus of snoring. I’d lie awake, looking around in wonder at everyone else. It felt like their ability to fall asleep somewhere new was a superpower I didn’t possess.
Instead, I was like the princess in “The Princess and the Pea.” The floor was hard. The sleeping bag did not smell like my comforter at home, did not drape across my shoulder with the same amount of weight. The house was too hot or too cold and definitely too loud. Clearly some of these girls should possibly see a doctor about their sinus problems. That amount of snoring couldn’t be healthy.
I’d try to remain brave. So what that I couldn’t sleep? There were worse things than sitting up through the night. It’s not like there were actual monsters here. And it’s not like anything bad would happen if I watched my friends snore. Tomorrow I’d be tired and probably a little cranky. Sleep wasn’t important, I told myself, though of course, I knew that sleep was important. My parents had drilled into me how necessary it was that I get a good night’s rest, that my brain development depended on it.
While I lay there in the dark, I thought about how I was damaging my already clearly damaged brain. I felt the now familiar tornado of panic rear up. What was wrong with me?
Again, I didn’t have the words.
I don’t know what would have happened had someone explained to twelve-year-old me that I was suffering from “panic attacks.” That my frequent bouts of nervousness, not just during movies and sleepovers but also at the lunch table with friends, even at night in the comfort of my own perfect, pea-free bed, also had a name: anxiety. That what I was feeling was not something embarrassing or weird or any different from anyone else’s fears—though mine, of course, were turned up a notch.
