by Megan Walker
“It would have happened for all of us, eventually,” Kevin continues. “You met Allison, and it changed things. And that would have happened to JT, too. He would have grown up. But now he never will.”
I nod. I still haven’t seen a sign of JT since I got here, and I wonder if he’s left me, since he knows I have those pills. Since I betrayed him by telling people about him.
“The guy I see,” I say. “It’s not really JT. It’s like this twisted version in my head, but it’s not really him.”
“It’s probably good that you know that,” Kevin says. “And I know that it’s a sickness, and I shouldn’t be jealous, but damn, some days, I’d take it just to see him again, you know?”
“I know,” I tell him. “That’s why it’s taken me so long to talk about it. Because I knew once I did, it was the beginning of the end.” I sigh. “I’m sorry I haven’t been a better friend through this. How are you and Maya doing?”
“Good, actually,” Kevin says. “I mean, my arm is still messed up, and she’s still got some anxiety stuff about how she could have lost me, and I’m still messed up about losing JT, obviously. But—” he half-smiles, “—I may have bought a ring.”
I smile. “You going to finally ask her? You know she’s been wanting to marry you for a while.”
“I know,” Kevin says. “And yeah, I’m going to ask. Just waiting for the right moment.”
Knowing Kevin, that could be a while, but I’ll razz him about that some other time. “That’s awesome,” I say.
“Yeah?” he asks. “You think so?”
I know what he’s really asking, and I nod. “Yeah. It’s not like I want you to be alone and miserable, just because I am.”
“Were,” Kevin says. “Because you were. And if you’re done obsessing about me coming back to the band, I’d like to see more of you. I just couldn’t take that anymore. I couldn’t live in this fantasy world where our lives hadn’t fallen apart. Man, it just hurt too bad.”
“I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t admit that at the time.”
“Did you really get into a screaming match with Anna-Marie?”
Oh, god. I’d forgotten that was in the article too. “Yeah. She happened to be at the benefit last night. That’s what started the whole thing between me and Allison.” I pause. “Do you feel bad about what we did to her?”
“To Anna-Marie? Yeah. I’ve always felt bad about it. I felt bad at the time, and I think I told you that.”
“I remember you asking if I really wanted to do it,” I say. “But I’d already posted the video on the internet and talked to TMZ.”
“And I didn’t push it. I just went along with it, even though she was my friend too, and I should have said something.” He shakes his head. “Everyone back in Everett always thought I was the ringleader, you know? The one black boy in town getting the white boys into trouble. When really, I was always the ultimate follower.”
That’s true. And it reminds me of something I’ve been aware of for a while. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this,” I say, “but with all the news lately about police shootings and stuff—it got me thinking about how much more danger you were in than the rest of us when we used to do stupid shit.”
“Ah, yeah,” Kevin says. “My mom was always telling me, ‘Kevin, you can’t do the things those white boys can do.’ Never stopped me, though.”
“I should have looked out for you better,” I tell him. “Not that I think I wouldn’t have still done all that crap and dragged you along, but I should have been more aware that you were in danger.”
“Not that we ever did anything that crazy,” Kevin says.
“I don’t know. I think if we threw one more set of piss balloons at the school windows, the vice principal was going to burn the place down just to get rid of the smell.”
Kevin laughs. “And the eggs.”
I laugh along with him. The one grocery store in town locked up all the eggs in the refrigerator section, just to keep us from going in and buying them up—or stealing them, when we were refused service—just to throw at every car in town.
“The locks didn’t do them any good,” I say. “We just started raiding chicken coops and bothering the chickens.”
“We were a bunch of punks, that’s for sure.”
Our burgers come, and we eat for a minute, probably because neither of us knows what to say. Finally, Kevin breaks the silence. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep the band going for you,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “Are you really moving to Denver?”
“Probably. We haven’t completely decided, but there’s nothing keeping me here now. Not work-wise, anyway. And Maya would like to be closer to her family.” He eyes me as he says this, like he’s judging if I’m going to freak out about it. I hate that this is the reality of it, but I don’t blame him.
Not at this moment, anyway.
“What are you going to do?” Kevin asks. I know he’s asking because he’s worried about me, and I wish I had some kind of reassuring answer, but I don’t.
“I have some ideas,” I say. “I talked to Allison about them, and she thinks I should go for it, but I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “The only real career I’ve had was being in the band with you guys. The idea of going it alone isn’t appealing.” When it comes down to it, despite my behavior these last few months, I’m not a loner. I need people around to survive.
“What’s the idea?” Kevin asks.
I close my eyes. “I can’t tell you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Because I’d just want to talk you into staying and working with me, and you’d say no, and I really can’t take that right now.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” Kevin says. “Say no, I mean.”
I stare at him. “You’re moving away.”
“To Denver,” he says. “Not Russia. And like I said, nothing’s set in stone.”
If I tell him, I know I’m going to try to talk him into staying. The truth is, I want to do this music festival thing, but I don’t want to do it alone, and the idea of working with Kevin again, even if it’s not making music—
I’m desperate to hold on to any part of my former life, and my friendship with him tops that list.
“It’s up to you,” Kevin says, swirling a french fry around in some ketchup. “But I think you should try me.”
I’m going to tell him eventually. If I’m going to be awful and needy about it, we might as well get it out of the way. “Do you remember when we used to talk about hosting a music festival?”
Kevin’s been trying to pretend he’s okay with me keeping this from him, but now I have his total attention. “Yeah,” he says.
“We were talking just a one-time thing, but I was thinking it might be fun to run a series of festivals, like in different parts of the country. And we—I—could still be involved in music. Use my contacts, you know? Get our friends to play, and reach out to bigger bands who might headline, and find new bands and get them exposure, pay it forward a little. And have everyone perform something at the festival you can’t see anywhere else, so there’s that novelty. Maybe get the recording rights for it all, and put out albums of stuff that’s one-of-a-kind, if we could get the contracts worked out.”
Kevin is nodding along through all of this, and when I finish, I hold my breath, waiting for him to tell me that I’d be good at that, I should do it, but he’s done with music. He’s out.
“That sounds awesome,” Kevin says. “I’d need to talk to Maya about it, obviously, but I’d really like to be a part of it.”
It terrifies me how badly I need to hear this. “But you’re leaving.”
“Most likely. But it might not hurt you to have someone out in Denver working with you. Covering that scene. We’ve still got a lot of contacts out there.
And I could fly back a lot.”
“But it won’t be the same,” I say.
I hate myself for saying that, even though it’s what I’m thinking. Even though it’s true.
“No,” Kevin says. “It won’t be the same.”
“I absolutely think you could work from Denver,” I say, hating myself even more for what I have to follow this with. “But I’m not sure if I can handle working with you after you’ve moved away.” I want to say that I could, but I know myself. If I feel like he’s left me, I’m going to be a brat about it. I’m going to whine and sulk and pitch fits. Kevin deserves better than that. I don’t want to drive him even further away.
“If I stay, though,” Kevin says, “are you for real about this?”
“If you were in, I’d definitely want to do it. So talk to Maya, and let me know, okay?”
“Yeah,” Kevin says. “Yeah, okay.”
I know I’m being a dick about this, but Kevin doesn’t say anything about it. He’s known me longer than anyone—he and I were friends way before me and JT, all the way back in kindergarten. No one gets what a jerk I can be quite the way Kevin does.
But he still wants to work with me. And even if it’s not possible, even if I can’t handle it, it’s not nothing.
Twenty
Shane
I’m back home, lying on my bed, which is now covered in cotton sheets, though I can’t do anything about the satin bedspread until I buy another one. I’m staring at the ceiling when my front door opens. I don’t get up. I know who it is, and I left the door open for her on purpose.
Allison stands in the doorway, and the minute I look up at her, I know that she’s pissed. I knew even before that, I realize. There was anger in her footsteps, coming up the hall. Anger in the unanswered texts. Anger in every interaction we’ve had today.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says. “What the hell is wrong with you, not showing up to work? You can’t just do that. Where have you been?”
It’s the kind of thing Anna-Marie would have said to me, back when we were dating. She would have demanded to know where I was, accusing me of cheating on her with angry hysterics.
This is different. Calmer, more controlled.
Which scares me even more.
I don’t know how to tell Allison where I’ve been, so I pick up the bottle of pills on my nightstand and toss it to her. Allison catches it and then looks at the label. Her face softens.
“You saw a doctor?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I told her about the hallucinations. Apparently it’s post-traumatic psychosis. Which is a thing, I guess.”
The anger melts out of Allison, which is undeserved. She comes over and sits down on the bed next to me.
“You should still be pissed at me,” I tell her.
“Oh, I am,” she says. “You could have called me or texted. You could have answered any of my messages and not left me to make excuses for you. Carlyle was furious.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She deflates a little, letting out the rage she was working back up to. “I’m sorry, too. About this morning.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. “I’m sorry for what I said about the press. Of course you’re allowed to be upset about it. I’m upset about it. I just wanted to pretend like I wasn’t so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it.”
Allison nods. “How’d that work out for you?”
“Not great.”
She lies down next to me and puts a hand on my arm. Part of the comforter slips back, and she smiles. “You changed the sheets.” She snickers. “They’re still black, though.”
“Of course. To match the room.”
Allison makes a show of looking around skeptically at my dark wood headboard, the black nightstand, the black leather couch and black dresser. “Are they trying to match, or blend in?”
“You don’t like black?”
“Black is fine, but other colors do exist.”
“Eh,” I say. “I have white accent pillows.”
“Yes, very creative.”
“Look,” I say. “I kept it this way on purpose. It was a signal to the girls I brought home that I wasn’t emotionally available.” I’m not sure that I consciously realized that’s what I was doing when I bought these sheets and set up my room this way, but it definitely was. I never wanted any woman to feel invited to stay. That’s a hell of a lot deeper of a reason than I would have admitted to at the time. “Shit. That’s a layer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Shane. This is definitely a lair.”
I pinch her side, and she squeals. “A lay-er,” I say. “I do not have a lair.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” Allison says, gesturing around.
Shit. She’s probably right. My room does have a lair-type quality to it. Dead Shane might have had more social skills, but he was also an asshole.
“So did your doctor’s appointment really take so long you couldn’t possibly show up to practice?” she asks.
I knew I hadn’t heard the end of that, but she doesn’t sound like she’s about to break up with me. I’m not entirely sure how I dodged that bullet. “I talked to Kevin.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He texted me because he read the article, and we went to lunch.”
“So you could text him—”
I wrap an arm around her waist. “I know. I’m sorry. But I thought if I talked to you, maybe it would be over.”
Allison looks stunned, but I keep going, because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve. “And I realized some stuff about Anna-Marie. I do feel bad about how I hurt her, not because I’m still in love with her, but because she was my friend, and I know I shouldn’t have done that to her. But I don’t want to feel bad about it, because that means I have to feel bad about everything, you know? I have to think about how much that whole relationship sucked, and how I still care about her as a person, and how bad I feel about how everything fell apart. It’s easier to be angry.”
“That makes sense,” she says. I wait for her to go on, and when she doesn’t, my whole body tenses up. I try to find the words for what I’m waiting for, to put thoughts to the answers I need from her.
“Is that good enough?” I ask finally.
Allison looks confused. “Good enough for what?”
I’m not sure how to answer that. “For you.”
Allison’s mouth falls open. “Shane,” she says. “You’re more than good enough.”
My eyes are burning again, and I swipe them with the back of my hand. “That’s not true.”
Allison’s hand slides up under the hem of my shirt, wrapping around the bare skin of my back. “That’s not what this is about,” she says. “I don’t think it’s okay, what you did to Anna-Marie. And I feel like you need to recognize that it was wrong, or I worry that you’re still that same person. That you’ll do it again. But it’s not about you not being good enough.”
“Isn’t it? You’re trying to figure out if I’m a good enough person for you to be with.”
“I’m trying to figure out if I’m setting myself up to get hurt,” Allison says. “Because I’m dating a guy who has done some really douchey things, and I don’t want to be the idiot who thinks her love would change him.”
“I was changing anyway, before I met you. Being with you, it’s more like shelter from the storm.”
Allison leans closer against me. “Really, though, I don’t want to change you. But I also don’t want to overlook it when you’re out of line, you know? And I’m not exactly sure how to make that distinction.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “And I appreciate that you’ll tell me when I’m being a dick. I need that.”
“Okay, maybe. But so do I. You don’t need that because you’re somehow unworthy.”
I look up at the
ceiling. “That’s hard for me to believe.”
Allison hesitates for a moment. “Why?”
Answering that requires a deeper admission of my own issues than I like. “Probably because of my dad,” I say. “He’s been telling me my whole life how worthless I am. How I’ll never amount to anything or do anything right.”
“He must be proud of you. After all the success you’ve had.”
“Ha,” I say. “Tell that to him. He sure doesn’t think so.”
Allison runs her nails along the small of my back, and I pull her closer. “I don’t think your dad and I are going to get along.”
“Bet on it. He’s a bitter old alcoholic who doesn’t get along with anyone. But having a shitty relationship with my dad isn’t an excuse for the stupid shit I’ve done. It doesn’t justify what I did to Anna-Marie.”
Allison nods. “I was thinking about that today—when I wasn’t busy being pissed at you—that it was a weird situation, yeah? It’s not like you’re going to have a high school girlfriend again. And I sure as hell hope that you wouldn’t do something like that to me.”
“God, no,” I say. “This is different. We actually talk about stuff, you know? Instead of just screaming at each other.” Anna-Marie and I talked about issues too, though even she didn’t know about the things my dad did to me when I was younger. Only Kevin knows that stuff, because he was there.
Anna-Marie and I were really good at talking about our issues with other people. Just not so much our issues with each other.
“Do you really think she was the one who talked to the press?”
“No,” I say. “I want to blame her, because it’s easier. But no, she wouldn’t have done that.” I don’t think even I would have done that. It’s one thing to spread lies and another to reveal someone’s personal crises to the world.
“That’s what I thought,” Allison says. “But you know her better.”
“I did once,” I say. But if she changed that much, I’d be surprised. “But I’m not going to do the same things to you that I did to her. I might still make shitty decisions, but not the same ones. I’m different now, and I have you, and you’d tell me if I’m doing something awful. We might get in a fight about it, but ultimately I’d listen to you, and I’d stop.”