His hands have the same faint yet constant tremble that I noticed a few weeks ago at the meeting. Despite this, they’ve been working the Rubik’s Cube the whole time he’s been talking to me, and now the yellow side is fully reassembled, which he somehow managed to pull off despite barely glancing at it over the past few minutes. Everything he’s just said is true, of course, to varying degrees. But what’s the point in talking about it? Nothing is going to change. Sitting here with him in this tiny, cramped room all afternoon, the two of us complaining about our shitty luck, feels like a level of wallowing that I’m not interested in exploring.
“Maybe it’s just that you aren’t a very good writer.”
“I don’t think so. I got an A on the assignment.” His eyes have this tendency, whether he smiles or frowns or whatever, to slip into what seems to be their default expression, the look of a person who’s just thought of something very clever. From all the pictures I’ve seen of Bethany Taylor over the years—and I’ve seen plenty—I recognize the expression as a trait shared by the siblings. They look alike in other ways, of course, as brothers and sisters do, but this gaze gives its wearer the look of a person who is both bright and wise. I know it’s hard to imagine a twelve-year-old looking wise, but it’s true: if Bethany were alive today, I’m betting she’d be a smart cookie. For just a second, the thought pops into my head that maybe Chester Stark chose Bethany because he was drawn to her gaze; there’s something undeniably riveting about it. But before the idea is fully formed enough for me to properly consider it, I push it down inside me as far as it will go and do my best to ignore it.
“We paired off in class and exchanged essays. This girl, Laura, was my partner. She was so affected by what I’d written that it was as if she zeroed in on me and wouldn’t let go. We started spending all this time together during the week. She was so interested in my fucked-up, tragic life; it was as though she wanted to save me. Some girls are like that, you know? She wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. She was what you’d call a nurturer, the kind of girl who’d make a really great mom. And even though she thought she knew me, she didn’t know anything, not really. She didn’t know who I was outside of this narrative I’ve built up over the years about Bethany and what it was like to grow up without her, not knowing where she was or what had happened to her. Laura thought she was getting, like, an exclusive peek into my soul or something. She believed it because I let her believe it, even though I knew it was all bullshit and that she didn’t have the first fucking clue who I really was.
“So then one night after we’d gone to a party and were both a little drunk, we went back to my dorm room and had sex.”
The word—sex—hits me like a smack across the face. The whole room ripples, and I find a well of hate inside me for this girl I’ve never even met.
If Noah notices, he doesn’t show it. “I didn’t usually go to parties,” he continues. “You know that. I went home every weekend. But I didn’t have a whole lot of money for gas, so I stayed that time, and Laura wanted me to take her to a party. She didn’t go to them very much, either, and she definitely didn’t drink; at least, I never saw her drink, or heard her talk about drinking, until that night. She was innocent like that. It wasn’t that she looked down on people for partying; it was just that it had never been a part of her life, and when she got to college she had too much sense and self-respect to go crazy. She was probably the only freshman I knew who was genuinely excited to actually learn something in college, unlike the rest of us, who were all just psyched to get wasted and screw around for four years and hopefully graduate with a decent GPA and no STDs. Her ears weren’t even pierced. Anyway, we went to this party, and I think she had maybe three beers. I wasn’t exactly keeping track, because I was drinking a lot more than she was, and the whole night was kind of a blurry mess. But I know for sure that she was definitely tipsy.”
“And you had sex with her anyway,” I say flatly.
His eyes widen. “It was her idea, Sam, I promise. I asked her, like, fifty times if she was sure she wanted to do it, and she kept insisting she was ready. She was a virgin, she said, and she wanted to lose her virginity to me. Don’t look at me that way, Sam. She wanted to do it, and she wasn’t so drunk that she wasn’t making sense—I mean, I think she was of sound enough mind to consent, okay? So we did it, and I could tell it was way more emotional for her than it was for me. I know that’s shitty, okay? I know I shouldn’t have done it. But I wasn’t really thinking with my brain, if you know what I mean. Don’t look at me like that.
“After it was over, we were lying in my bed together and she said something about Bethany. I don’t even remember exactly what it was—something about how it made her so happy to make me happy, because it broke her heart that I’d been sad for so long. She told me that she loved me, and that nothing made her happier than knowing she’d given a part of herself to me, because she thought maybe I could use that part of her to help fill the part of me that was empty. It was so sincere and kind that it was almost too much. There was something repulsive about it, because I didn’t love her back. The feeling just wasn’t there, not for me. So without really thinking about what I was doing—I told you, I was way more drunk than she was—I told her that she had it all wrong.”
Noah leans against the table and grasps my forearm with a damp, cold hand. This time, I don’t pull away. He tightens his grip enough to still his tremble. I know I shouldn’t let him touch me, but it feels so good that I don’t want him to stop. He looks like he’s going to start crying. “It felt so good, Sam. Once I started talking, I can’t even tell you how it felt. Better than anything. Better than sex with the most beautiful girl in the world. I didn’t look at her, though, because it was like I knew if I saw her reaction, I wouldn’t have the balls to keep explaining myself, and I needed to explain. Maybe I just needed to say it out loud. My roommate had hung up this huge poster of Jack Nicholson that covered nearly an entire wall—you know that scene from The Shining when he chops down the bathroom door with the axe and yells ‘Heeeere’s Johnny!’? It’s a photo of that scene. Instead of looking at Laura, who was lying naked right next to me in bed, I looked at Jack. It felt easier. I explained that I didn’t remember Bethany at all, because it’s true: I don’t have a single memory of her. I don’t remember going to see The Empire Strikes Back at the drive-in the night she was abducted. I don’t remember her voice, or her laugh, or any of the things I’ve gone my whole life pretending to miss so much. I mean, I’ve seen her on our old home movies and in a million photos, but I don’t feel any emotional attachment to her. She’s just a girl. She’s nobody to me, really, but I went for so long acting as though she were everything. The truth is that I don’t care that she’s dead. I don’t love her, and if I ever did, I don’t remember. You know how I do feel about her, though?”
He stares at me, waiting for me to respond, and every second that goes by without an answer makes it clearer to both of us that I know exactly how he feels about Bethany, because it’s the same way I feel about Turtle sometimes, an honest and 100-percent-true feeling that is too terrible to acknowledge for more than a moment. Like any other thought too awful to hold on to for long enough to really examine its nuances, I push it down. I do it all the time. Every day.
“You hate her.”
He nods. “Yes. I hate her for destroying my family, and for ruining my parents’ lives. For being so fucking stupid that she followed a stranger to his car, at night, alone. I wish it had never happened, but not because I want my sister back. It’s because I want my life back. Maybe my dad would still be alive. Maybe my mom wouldn’t be such a pathetic mess. If Bethany hadn’t disappeared, we would have had normal lives. And I hate her for that. I hate her so much, Sam.”
“I know.” Our heads are together above the desk, foreheads touching, arms slid around each other’s shoulders. His hand is against the back of my neck, his fingers caught in a tangle of my sweaty hair. We can tell each other the truth, right here and now, but
I feel like the opportunity would vanish if I pulled back or moved at all. “I hate her, too.”
“You aren’t talking about Bethany.” His other hand cups my jaw.
“No.”
“You can say it, Samantha. It’s okay.”
“I hate my sister. I hate Turtle.”
“She ruined everything.”
“She ruined everything.” It feels like being in church. I’m a sinner at the altar, and he’s the priest, guiding me to echo his words. But there is no rush of freedom that accompanies my statements; my voice is flat and unemotional compared to the fervor of Noah’s tone. He means all of it; I don’t. Unlike Noah, who was too young for his brain to hold on to memories of the love and affection that he and Bethany must have shared, I remember loving Turtle all too well. I hate what happened to her, but she is not the one to blame. I hate her because her absence is a constant reminder of that night. I hate her because it’s easier that way; by keeping the hate contained, by keeping it focused on an innocent four-year-old whom I will never see again, I can hope that it won’t seep into the rest of my life.
The doorknob rattles. A narrowed pair of eyes tries to peek through the gaps in the closed venetian blinds covering the room’s only window to the nonfiction section.
“Don’t move. Stay here.” He grasps a fistful of my hair, winding it around his damp fingers. Beads of sweat feel sticky between my breasts. His gaze is cast downward, watching as the sweat rolls down my cleavage and settles in the small rolls of flesh on my tummy. It’s the kind of sweat that comes more from feeling than from an outside heat source; the room isn’t all that warm. Depending on how well she can see through the blinds, the librarian probably thinks we’re in here making out. She knocks insistently, five rapid taps of her knuckles against the wooden door. When Noah stands up without warning, the release of his hold on my neck and shoulders leaves me shivering.
He cracks the door a few inches. “We’re using this room to study.”
“Sir, this is a public facility. You can canoodle with your girlfriend somewhere else.” She looks past him at me, just as I snort at her use of the word “canoodle.”
“Is something funny, Miss?”
“You said ‘canoodle,’ ” Noah tells her. “Nobody says that.”
The moment he starts speaking to the librarian, Noah changes somehow: it’s as though he’s flipped a switch to reveal the charming, decent young man hidden beneath his scruffy face and rumpled clothes.
The woman is very old, so old that her spine has started to curve from the stress of so many years of working to keep her upright. Her glasses have one of those metal chains attached so that the wearer can let the glasses hang around their neck when they aren’t using them to see. In contrast to her body, her voice is steady and firm but quiet—the voice of someone who’s spent so much time in a library that she automatically keeps her speech within an acceptably low decibel range. “Unless you’ve reserved the room in advance, you can use it for only thirty minutes. You two have been in here for thirty-four minutes. Also, if you’d read the sign posted right outside the door, you would know that we do not allow patrons to lock themselves inside these rooms.”
“You’d like us to canoodle somewhere else, then.” He gives her an All-American grin, which she can’t help but return. He’s charmed her into submission.
“All I ask is that you don’t lock the door. It’s a violation of the fire code.”
“Thank you. I’m really sorry, ma’am. We just wanted some privacy.”
“I understand. I’m only doing my job.” Now she’s the one apologizing.
“Of course. We really are sorry.” As he’s closing the door, she pokes her head through the crack long enough to chirp in a new, much warmer voice, “Let me know if you need any reference materials!”
We listen, silent, as her footsteps grow distant; once she’s gone, Noah locks the door again before resuming his seat beside me, sliding his hands back into place around my shoulders. The spell is broken, though. The fluorescent lights seem to buzz more loudly than before. The Rubik’s Cube with its finished yellow side seems less impressive than it did a few minutes ago; anybody can finish one side. The smell of his sweat has lost its allure. Before, it smelled like what I’d guessed must be pure pheromones, hormonal magic. Now it just smells like sweat. I lean away to disentangle myself from his grasp, which feels cloying and needy as he tries to hold on.
“You didn’t finish telling me about Laura.”
He nods. “The end is the worst part.”
“Just tell me, Noah.”
“She got very upset. For a while, she tried to argue with me. She wanted me to say that I didn’t mean any of it. But once it was out there, it was as if the words were hanging in the air, floating all around us. There was no taking them back, see, because it was obvious how happy I was to finally have said everything out loud. I’m not kidding—it felt better than the first time I ever got laid. Sorry. All I mean is that—”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah, I know you do. But Laura didn’t know, and she didn’t understand at all. She got way more upset than I could have anticipated. She was crying, calling me a fucking liar and a monster, saying that I’d intentionally deceived her by using my dead sister to get pity and to make myself more interesting. She said I’d stolen her virginity; I think she called it ‘emotional rape.’ And even if I had wanted to explain myself, it wouldn’t have worked. She didn’t get it, and I knew she never would. Other girls—hell, other people—they aren’t like you, Sam. They don’t know how it feels. She kept telling me ‘Everything about you is a lie,’ and she was right.”
“Did you tell her that?”
He seems surprised by the question. “No. Of course not.”
“But she was right. According to you, that’s exactly what your life has been. So then, what did you say to her? Did you tell her you were sorry?”
“No.”
“Because you weren’t.”
“That’s right.”
“So what happened? She broke up with you? And you’re telling me that’s the worst thing you’ve ever done—lied to a girl so you could get laid? Honestly, Noah, that’s not very impressive. If that’s the worst thing you can come up with, I think it makes you a typical guy.”
“She walked back to her dorm that night. Alone.” He picks up the Rubik’s Cube and holds it yellow side down in his palm, staring at the disorganized squares of red, blue, orange, green, and white. “She had asked me to walk with her. It was around two in the morning. It’s a huge campus. During orientation, they spent, like, an hour of every day stressing the importance of using the buddy system when walking anywhere at night. She even said that to me: ‘We’re supposed to use the buddy system!’ And I don’t know; the way she said it, so goddamn wholesome and upstanding, it was as if something shifted inside me, and I just wanted her to get the hell out of my room. I’d just had this major emotional breakthrough, and I thought I could lie there and sort of bask in it for the rest of the night, but she kept hounding me to walk her home. The more she bugged me, the more determined I was to make her go alone. She was crying when she finally left. It was bad. I didn’t even walk her to the door of my room. I didn’t even get out of bed, or give her a hug, or the fucking flashlight that was in my nightstand drawer, like, six inches from my hand.”
“What happened to her?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What happened to her, Noah?”
“She got hurt. I don’t know exactly what happened; I only know what I heard from other people and what I read in the school paper. She was walking home across the quad when she got the feeling someone was following her. She tried to run into the liberal arts building to get away, but the doors were locked because it was so late. So she ran around to the back of the building, where there’s a set of outside stairs going down to the basement. It was dark, and she was scared … She tripped at the top. The stairs are the old, metal kind, all rusted
and sharp.” He winces at the memory. “The fall hurt her pretty bad. It knocked her out.” He pauses. “It was a long weekend. It was two and a half days before somebody noticed her lying down there. She couldn’t even scream for help because her ribs were broken. She almost died.”
After hearing so many terrible stories at all the support group meetings I’ve attended over the years, after all the quiet afternoons and late nights spent alone with my imagination, in which those stories came to life and played out over and over again, no matter how hard I tried to block them out—it’s hard to feel much of anything for this faceless stranger. It’s the absence of emotion that frightens me more than anything. A girl at the bottom of some stairs—there are much worse things. A girl who lives! Other girls should be so lucky.
And this girl in particular—this girl who slept with Noah deserves all the pain in the world.
I can’t mean that, can I?
“But she survived, Noah. Right? She recovered. At least she still has the rest of her life to live.”
“She was in the hospital for, like, three weeks. I couldn’t go visit her. That isn’t true, actually; I could have gone, but I didn’t want to. When she was finally released, she didn’t come back to school. Her parents came and got all her stuff. She wouldn’t go back to campus, not even for that.”
“So what happened to her? Where did she go?”
“I have no idea.” He turns the Rubik’s Cube in his hand, staring at each side for a few seconds. “I can never solve more than one color. I know there has to be a way, but it seems impossible. So you know what I do sometimes, when I want to impress someone? I work on it for a little bit, until I’ve got one side all done. I act as if it’s so easy, and then I pretend to lose interest in solving the rest. Like it’s so simple for me that I can’t be bothered to finish.”
The Last Good Day of the Year Page 17