Accidental

by Alex Richards

  “Which, I guess, I kind of wondered if you could relate to? Did people treat you weird, after what happened to Mom?

  “I mean, how did you deal with missing her and knowing what happened to her? I know she died a really long time ago. Sorry if this sounds random. But I feel like it’s happening to me, like, right now.

  “I know you’re not used to being a dad, but if you have any words of wisdom, I’m all ears. Right now, I barely know how to live with myself. I just feel so guilty. And, I mean, maybe it’s ridiculous to think a school mural is going to solve all my problems. But I don’t know.

  “Did you do anything like that? Community service, or—sorry, that’s probably a really rude question for someone who went to actual prison. But like … is that how you got over it? Knowing that you did time and paid your dues, or whatever?

  “Anyway, I miss you. I wanted to hear your voice.

  “I’ve been thinking about Houston a lot lately too. What’s it like out there? Is your apartment big? Texas always makes me think of cowboy hats and barbeque sauce and mechanical bulls. Not that you’re into any of that stuff. But you’re there, so my brain keeps wandering east. Do you think you’d ever have room for me, at your house? Things are so bad at home. I hate my grandparents. We basically haven’t talked in weeks. They want me to get over it, but, like, how?

  “I thought maybe I could come out to Texas for a while? Or—hah—forever?

  “God, this message is getting really long. And pathetic. I should probably go.

  “I love you. Oh fuck, I mean—shit.”

  I jam my finger against the pound key, heart racing.

  A robotic voice chirps into my ear. “To listen to your message, press one. To continue recording, press two. To erase and rerecord your message, press three.”

  Without thinking too hard, I press three.

  “Hey, Robert. It’s Johanna, calling to say hi. Give me a shout when you can.”

  My chest stings as I hang up. I hide my phone and my shame underneath my pillow and curl up against it. Maybe I’m a chicken shit, but it feels like too much. Like, all those questions are too painful to ask someone, even my dad.

  I don’t know—maybe it isn’t the questions I’m afraid of.

  27

  It occurs to me that I haven’t uttered a single word to Gabby in fifteen days. Which is probably why I gasp when I see her sitting on my front porch after school on Tuesday. It makes me fresh-bruise tender to see her there, knees tucked up into her chest, head lowered. She looks up when I kill the engine, but her body stays small.

  “Did you know she was coming?” I ask, glaring at Leah in the passenger seat.

  Leah’s puppy-dog eyes get all tentative and hopeful, but she shakes her head.

  Still, I don’t get out of the car. Leah and I were supposed to be celebrating how we’re badass, mural-making activists now. I’m not prepared for a catfight or an apology or whatever this is supposed to be.

  “Are you going to get out?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Unless you plan on living in your car, yeah.”

  I groan a little and slam the door behind me, folding my arms as I meet Gabby’s eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mrs. Vargas dropped off some cookies,” she hollers—has to holler, because I won’t come any closer than the driveway. She holds up a heart-shaped tin and gives it a gentle rattle. “Oatmeal chocolate chip. She said Steve told her about what happened to you. She wanted to say how sorry she is, and see if there’s anything she can do to help. Your neighbor is really nice.”

  Mrs. Vargas is sorry, I think, rolling my eyes.

  Gabby’s chest heaves. “I didn’t tell her it was my fault that everyone found out in the first place. Or that we aren’t friends anymore. I was afraid she might not leave the cookies, and Mrs. Vargas makes seriously good cookies.”

  I bite back a grin. Nothing’s holding Leah back, though. She giggles, and I feel a twinge of jealousy. “Well, unless Mrs. Vargas had anything else to say, you can leave the cookies on the porch and go.”

  “Jo,” Leah says.

  But Gabby shakes her head. “It’s okay.”

  She makes this big show of placing the tin on my porch swing and backing away from it. “I’ll leave,” she says softly. “But let me say one thing. I know I didn’t make you cookies, but I am sorry. Painfully, profoundly, extraordinarily sorry for what I did.” Her face hangs in this pained, first-day-of-sleepaway-camp expression. “If it weren’t for me, Mrs. Vargas wouldn’t need to be making cookies. Nobody would have found out about your mom, and we’d still be best friends. I screwed up.”

  “You did.”

  “The thing is, I can get loud,” she says, painstakingly quiet. “I am loud and passionate and protective. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and you love me for it. Well, most of the time. But I was wrong. I was making it about me, and I got defensive. I had no right to judge how you handle things. Or to yell.”

  It’s a decent apology, but it only makes the trees spin circles around me. A moldy reminder of that day in the student lounge. Eyes, teeth, judgment. My skin burns around the edges.

  “Thanks.”

  I brush past her, glancing back only to make sure Leah is behind me—except, that’s when I see them. Across the street, my neighbor Steve and a few of his soccer buddies have abandoned their scrimmage and are standing on his lawn, red-faced and breathless and incapable of shutting their dumbfounded mouths as they stare at me. Brakes slam in my guts. Steve has always been a decent guy, but the others look like jocks. Maybe even bullies.

  Gabby must notice my skin go pale. She turns around, squaring her shoulders, widening her stance. “What the hell are you looking at?” she yells across the street.

  “Gab, it’s okay,” I say.

  But I can feel her heart breaking for me, desperate to make amends. She juts her chin toward Steve’s burliest, toughest-looking friend. “Is there a problem?”

  The guy shakes his head in fast-forward. All of them balk.

  Whether or not they mean it, Gabby’s obviously feeling extra right now, because she bends down and scoops a rock off the ground, squeezing it in her palm. “You sure about that?”

  The burly guy pales, his jaw dropping down to the Earth’s core.

  That’s when Gabby freezes. Her eyes flick over to me, mouth widening into a total grimace-face emoji as she remembers to reel in her temper. The rock makes a little tink sound as she drops it into the bushes. I flash a tiny smile back at her because, this, right here? This moment feels like everything. Like I’m an idiot for ever doubting her loyalty. We glance back, and the boys are running toward Steve’s house, slamming themselves inside. Steve peeks through his living room curtain, and I flash him an apologetic smile. He does the same. Maybe I owe him a batch of cookies now.

  “Dude!” Leah swats Gabby’s arm.

  “What—too much?” she says sheepishly, then frowns. “I’ll leave, though. I get that you still hate me.”

  “Wait,” I call after her. “Were you really going to stone a freshman for me?”

  “I mean, I could have. Remember little league?” She cracks a grin. “But no, of course not. What do you think they’re doing right now?”

  Leah snorts. “Changing their underwear.”

  I shriek with laughter and start walking toward the house. “You coming?”

  Gabby hesitates. “Yeah?”

  “I think you’re safer indoors, with no rocks.”

  The girls follow me into the house, empty except for Magic. We kick off our shoes and grab some milk to go with Mrs. Vargas’s cookies, and it feels right, the three of us settling down on my bedroom floor, stuffing our faces while I fill Gabby in on the mural. How it’s going to be all colorful and epic; how Milo’s already offered to paint something for it.

  “I didn’t know you were into activism,” Gabby says after a while.

  Which is a weird response? Kind of?

  “Well, I am.”

  So
mething like doubt flickers across her face, quickly masked by a smile. “It sounds awesome.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes!” She laughs. “Now, tell me what I can do to help.”

  “We need to come up with design ideas.”

  “Why don’t I be your campaign manager?” she says with a stink face. “You know I can’t draw for shit.”

  Years’ worth of terrible stick figures come to mind, and I snicker. “It doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa. Draw something simple. Like a flower. Flowers are easy.”

  She raises one eyebrow; challenge accepted. Leah tosses her a Bic from my desk drawer, and Gabby flips over one of my gun statistic printouts, guiding ink along the page, slow and unsteady. When she’s done, Leah and I lean closer, eyes bulging.

  “What the frig is that?” Leah asks.

  I squint. “It looks like a penis. With wings.”

  “What?” Gabby angles it back toward herself, milk coming out of her nose as she laughs. “It’s supposed to be a tulip!”

  “That is so not a tulip.”

  I snatch the pen from her and add some hairy balls to the stem. Leah puts a cigarette in its mouth and gives it an eye patch. We literally roll on the floor laughing like complete idiots. Completely perfect idiots, back to being us again. As if something invisible has clicked in the universe.

  “Okay.” I wipe my eyes. “I take it back. Definitely do not paint flying dick flowers on my school mural to end gun violence.”

  “Pretty much, never draw again,” adds Leah. “Your mom’s a professional artist, Gabriella. For shame.”

  Gabby chucks dirty socks from my hamper at the both of us, and we keep on laughing. Long and hard till my stomach burns. The kind of messing around, girly-ass bullshit that used to be our definition of normal. Laughing used to be normal, and it feels as though I haven’t done it properly in a lifetime.

  “You guys suck,” Gabby huffs, hiding a grin.

  “Por vida.” I grin back.

  For life.

  28

  Robert’s entire existence has basically morphed into a voice mail, which is completely freaking me out. What does it mean if it takes him more than eight seconds to reply to a text? Why are we incapable of contacting each other at decent, recipient-ready times? I’m such a nervous wreck about it, that when my phone buzzes in the middle of fifth period on Wednesday, I practically scream when I can’t answer it on the spot. At least it’s art class (of all my teachers, Mrs. Keton will kill me the least), but still. It isn’t until lunch that I get around to checking my voice mail.

  “Hey! Johanna! It’s your dad—man, that never gets old. I’m at work. Been pretty busy. Tons of meetings. Got a business trip to New York City coming up. I’ve never been there. Have you? I know CBGB shut down a long time ago, but I bet they still sell T-shirts on Canal Street. If I have time, I’ll buy you a souvenir. Hey, maybe we could go together one day. What do you think? I could take you to the top of the Empire State Building. Bet all our problems would look a lot smaller from up there. Shoot, I need to go. Oh, hey, so, once this trip’s over, I’ll look at my schedule and see when I can make it back to Santa Fe. I miss it out there. Well, study hard, and talk to you soon. I love you, kiddo. Bye.”

  The message ends, but I hit Play again, skipping all the way to the end.

  “I love you, kiddo. Bye.”

  “I love you, kiddo.”

  “I love you.”

  29

  My GIF rears its ugly head again, and this time it stings a little more. I still look like this demented Frankenstein’s monster and Ursula the sea witch hybrid, but now people are adding captions—about me, about the mural idea. About what a spoiled brat I am; that I’m trying to atone for my sin, throw tantrums, fish for attention. Someone thinks I made the whole thing up, and my mom is living in Romania somewhere with her new family.

  I mean, Romania. Seriously? I wish I could delete the whole world sometimes. Flatten anyone who’s had a single thought beyond the truth.

  I’m still sitting in my car in the driveway after school, mesmerized by the way they’ve added lightning bolts over me, how they’ve made me into a cranky marionette, when Steve Vargas appears at the hood of my car, waving tentatively to get my attention.

  I stick my phone in my bag, my exhale turning into a whimper. I hate that there’s dread in me. That I’m this close to having a real-life GIF meltdown at the thought of my puny freshman neighbor giving me grief right now.

  “Hey,” he says, when I finally get out of the car.

  My voice pinches. “Hey.”

  Steve gulps, and I don’t know why he looks so nervous. Which only makes me more nervous.

  “Is this about Gabby?” I ask quickly. “Sorry she freaked you and your friends out the other day. Her heart was in the right place.”

  “Thanks,” he says, scratching his buzzed head. “But that isn’t why I’m here. I heard you’re putting together an anti-gun violence thing? Rachel Fromowitz said it’s going to be a mural?”

  “Oh.” I pull my bag over my shoulders. “It’s not totally a thing yet. I’m working on it with Mr. Donnelly, and maybe Mrs. Keton.”

  Steve nods and bites his lip, following me up onto the porch. He veers over toward the swing, the whole thing creaking as he sits. Steve Vargas’s butt has not touched this porch swing in—what—a million years? Two million? This lanky, pimple-faced boy I haven’t been friends with in nearly a decade. He cracks his knuckles, glancing over at me. It’s unclear what exactly is happening right now, but I cross my arms and sit gingerly beside him. I’m only 10 percent afraid we’ll fall.

  “My family is really anti-guns,” he says, his adorable freshman voice cracking. “My cousin Henry’s friend’s brother? Well, he got shot by the police.”

  Who that is, in relation to Steve, takes me a second to figure out. But I cover my confusion with a frown. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “They live in Albuquerque,” he explains. “I only met him once. But it was really, really sad. I think about it sometimes. I’ve never met anybody else who was, like, a victim of gun violence before. I just wanted to tell you, I guess.”

  My heart prickles on the word victim. Because I’m not one, am I?

  We’re quiet for a minute. Me and Steve, gently kicking our feet against the floorboards. It isn’t as awkward as I would have thought. Kind of calming, almost.

  “I’ve never even seen a gun,” I say quietly. “I mean, not that I can remember. It’s weird to be associated with something that feels so foreign to me. Sometimes I still can’t believe I really did it.”

  “That’s …” He gulps. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah?” It surprises me how nice it is to hear those words. “Thanks.”

  His face goes pink, the zits on his cheeks flaring up red. “I should go,” he says, voice cracking.

  “Me too. I’m trying to get some ideas together for this mural.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing it.”

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  He gulps again. “Do you think I could help?”

  “Oh, um—”

  “Not right now. But, like, when you actually start painting?”

  I smile. “Yeah, that’d be really cool.”

  “Okay, awesome. See you around school, I guess.”

  Before he makes it down a single step, something comes over me and I reach out to him for a hug. In an instant, I’m holding back tears, overwhelmed by this sharp and grateful appreciation for Steve frigging Vargas. This tactile reminder that not everyone is against me. It’s not till Steve sort of awkwardly puts one gangly arm around my waist—rapidly raising it up to my shoulder, then removing it entirely to pat my arm—that I realize how possibly awkward this moment is. I pull back, blushing. Not blushing as fantastically as pimple-faced Steve, but we’re both feeling the glow.

  I step back. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. His voice cracks for the tenth time, and it makes m
e want to hug him all over again, but I resist.

  “Thanks for offering to help,” I add. “It’s nice to know people are in my corner.”

  He keeps his lips zipped, maybe afraid his voice will betray him again.

  I wave goodbye, grinning as I run into the house. Gran’s at the kitchen counter, her glasses pushed down along her nose, surrounded by cookbooks and Post-its and highlighters. She looks up at me, and her eyes twinkle in surprise.

  “Is that a smile on your face?”

  The smile fades, but I manage a lopsided replacement. “Yeah. I was outside talking to Steve. He’s a cool guy, actually.”

  “Little Steven Vargas?” Gran says. She frowns, but in a thoughtful—huh, who knew?—kind of way. “Well, I’ve always liked Tina and Hector. Doesn’t surprise me they raised that boy right.”

  I wonder if she thinks she raised me right. How big a disappointment I am to her and Grandpa. Beyond the obvious, I mean. I will never be able to undo what I did to their daughter, but they’ve been raising me for thirteen years, knowing that I killed her. I bet Gran thinks it’s my behavior in the past month that’s been the true abomination. Though, I suppose, the same could be said for her.

  Before leaving the kitchen, I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and peer at her open cookbook—a recipe for some kind of pizza casserole. She’s stuck a Post-it note along the edge and written: REPLACE GROUND BEEF WITH TOFU???

  Now there’s an appetizing thought.

  On my way out of the room, I turn back. “Gran?”

  She looks up, bracing herself for whatever I’m about to unleash.

  “What about lentils?” I say. “Instead of tofu.”

  Her face softens again, lips forming a grim smile. “Lentils. Well, now, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I mean, lentils or tofu—take your pick. It’s never going to taste like ground beef, but I let out a soft exhale as I head down the hall to my bedroom.

  30

  Our school library is a drink-free zone, but that doesn’t stop Leah from bringing in to-go cups for all of us from Bluebell. She drags a chair from Annette’s table over to where Milo and Gabby and I are sitting, then peers down at my sketchbook.