Damaged

by Amy Reed

I pull over at a gas station just in time. My vision is cloudy as I put the car in park, turn off the engine, and stumble out the door. Only after I slam the door shut can I breathe again. The world comes back into focus. I watch Hunter through the window as he stretches himself awake.

  How can he be so calm? How could he sleep while I’m driving? How could he even let me drive? Not after what I did. Not after what I did to Camille.

  I must move so I will stop feeling. I must busy myself with a task so I will not think.

  I buy him a Gatorade and a muffin and throw it at him. “Eat something,” I command. I look at him slouched and haggard in his seat, his greasy hair matted to his face in a dried pool of drool. Anger wipes away the fear and I can drive again.

  “I don’t eat in the morning.”

  “It would settle your stomach.”

  “What do you know about my stomach?”

  “It helps my mom when she’s hungover.”

  “Fuck your mom.”

  I stop the car in the middle of the road. Hunter rubs his forehead where it bumped against the side window. I hope it hurt. I hope it bruises. The anger calms me. The anger makes me strong.

  “What the fuck?” he says, as if he’s the one with a right to be offended.

  “I don’t care if you’re hungover, Hunter. That is no excuse to be a fucking asshole. You cannot talk to me like that. Ever.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  “And you can’t do this every night.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get wasted like this. I don’t want to have to babysit a drunk or hungover asshole for the whole trip.”

  “Well, you should have said that before we left. Because that’s what I am. A drunk asshole. Take it or leave it.”

  He closes his eyes and leans his face against the window, as if pretending to sleep will make me go away.

  “No you’re not,” I say. “You’re different when you don’t drink. Better.”

  “But that would require me to not drink.”

  “So don’t drink. It’s not that complicated.”

  “How would you know? Little miss never-been-drunk-in-her-life? Jesus, I can’t believe Camille ever thought you were her best friend.”

  He could have cut me open instead of saying that. He could have stabbed a knife in my chest and carved out my heart.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” My voice is only a whisper. There is no air behind my words. They hang limp between us, barely there.

  “Camille was fun. You are so not fun.”

  I want to be strong. I want to find words so cruel they cut him. But I can’t. I have no reserves of meanness. I search, but all I find is loss, a sad emptiness where Camille used to be, and all that place stores is yearning, and despite my holding my breath and clenching my jaw so tight it feels like my teeth are grinding themselves flat, the tears come, cascading down my face in a straight, silent line. I’ve spent my life not crying, but now it seems like I do it every day. I don’t want him to see me. I don’t want him to know he has the power to hurt me. But after so many moments of silence, he opens his eyes.

  “Oh fuck,” Hunter says.

  I wipe the tears away, blink my eyes and look out the window. But the tears keep coming, a tiny waterfall dripping off my chin and onto my seat belt.

  “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”

  I look at him and his face has softened, has lost some of the raggedness of his hangover. Concern warms his eyes just a little.

  I sniffle and wipe my eyes again, and this time, no more tears come.

  “She wouldn’t have loved you,” I say.

  “What?” he snaps, as if stung. His face hardens again.

  “If that’s all you were,” I say. “If you were just a drunk asshole. Camille never would have loved you for that. She wasn’t the kind of girl who goes for guys who treat them like shit. She liked herself too much. So you must be more. You must be someone really amazing.”

  He’s quiet and still, his mouth slightly open, like he’s been startled, shocked. Something like pain crosses his face, a ripple of feeling, and just as I notice his eyes getting wet, he looks away. His hands clench and unclench in his lap. Up until now, I’ve always wondered what Camille saw in Hunter, what it was that made her love him. But now a new thought hits me—did he love her back? Did she take his heart with her when she died?

  “Will you keep driving?” he says.

  As if driving will save us. As if moving will keep the pain away.

  “Camille was a good judge of character,” I say. “And she said she loved you.”

  “Shut up,” he says softly. There’s no cruelty in his words. Just sadness. Sadness, and maybe a tiny sliver of gratitude.

  I keep driving. My anger is replaced by something else, something softer, with a different kind of resistance to fear. I decide to let him sleep for a while.

  * * *

  After an hour or so longer on back roads, I feel confident enough to get on what passes as a highway in the UP, which is still pretty much just a two-lane road through the forest. Around one o’clock, Hunter speaks for the first time in what seems like forever: “I’m hungry.” Like a child. With no words to communicate anything but the most simple of needs.

  We stop at a diner in a little town close to the Wisconsin border. The sign in front advertises the best Cornish pasties in the UP. Hunter pulls the road atlas from the backseat to bring with us. Everything inside the diner is greasy and dusty and at least twenty years old. Faded photos of smiling men holding big fish line the walls. The frumpy waitress doesn’t even smile as she leads us to a booth by the window. There are only two tables with customers at prime lunch hour—a booth full of oversize fishermen and a tiny table in the back seating an ancient man slumped over a cup of coffee. The waitress hands us our menus, the cloudy lamination peeling at the corners.

  “What the hell is a Cornish pasty?” Hunter says, pronouncing it paystee, like the circles strippers wear on their nipples, when it actually rhymes with “nasty.” The menu has things like burgers, sandwiches, and fried perch. But the specialty is obviously pasties. They have the traditional chicken and beef options, but also venison, buffalo, pork, and today’s special, quail.

  “You’ve lived as close as you have to the UP for the last year, and you’ve never heard of a pasty?”

  He just shrugs.

  “It’s like a potpie but you can hold it in your hand. The UP was settled by people from Cornwall in England in the mid-1800s. Hence, the proliferation of Cornish pasties in the region.”

  A little smirk lightens his eyes, which I assume means his hangover is loosening its grip.

  “What?” I say.

  “You sound like a Wikipedia article,” he says. “How do you even know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just do. I remember things. I like to know stuff.”

  He laughs, not unkindly, and I feel the morning’s anger dissipate. Why is it so easy to keep forgiving him?

  The waitress appears to take our order.

  “I’ll have a chicken pasty,” I say. “And a Coke.”

  She nods and turns to Hunter.

  “Cheeseburger and fries,” he says. “And coffee. Lots of coffee.”

  “And water,” I add. “For him. He’s dehydrated.”

  The waitress looks at us blankly for a moment, then turns and walks away.

  As we wait for our food and Hunter guzzles down two refills of coffee, we look at the map and try to plan our next move.

  “What’s fun in Wisconsin?” Hunter says, mixing creamer and insane amounts of sugar into his third cup of coffee.

  “Cheese?” I offer.

  After a big gulp of coffee, Hunter smiles and says, “Boy, you really know how to party.” His smiles are coming easier now, as if passing the noon hour somehow turned his Mr. H
yde back into Dr. Jekyll.

  “We could go to Madison?” I offer.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a big city. There’s probably cool stuff happening.”

  “Madison isn’t a big city.”

  “It’s bigger than Wellspring.”

  “Everywhere is bigger than Wellspring.”

  “Yeah, so it’s big to me.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hunter says, setting his coffee down. “Have you ever been to a city?”

  “I’ve been to Traverse City a few times. I’ve been to Petoskey.”

  “Traverse City and Petoskey are not cities. They’re largish towns. Really? That’s seriously it?”

  “I lived in San Francisco when I was a baby, but that doesn’t really count since I can’t even remember it. I think I went to Grand Rapids when I was four.”

  “Wow,” Hunter says, shaking his head.

  “It’s kind of hard to travel when your mom doesn’t have a car or money.”

  “This is seriously tragic.”

  “Which is why I want to go to Madison.”

  “No way. Madison can’t be your first city. Chicago. We’re going to a real city. Chicago is a real city.”

  “Okay,” I say, and my stomach jumps a little. Chicago is definitely a real city. A really real city.

  “You’re being mighty agreeable all of a sudden.”

  “I’m an expert on a lot of things, but not cities. I trust you on that one.”

  “Well, I’m honored.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  When the food comes, Hunter asks for another coffee refill. He scarfs down his burger like a maniac.

  “How is it?” he says. “Your paystee?”

  “It’s like a really salty, meaty, dry potpie.” I poke around in it with my fork. “There’s isn’t a single vegetable in it.”

  “Potato’s a vegetable.”

  “Not really.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s totally a vegetable.”

  “But it metabolizes like a starch.”

  “Okay, Wikipedia.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really need some vegetables.”

  “What kind of a teenager are you? Here, have my lettuce.” He flings the discarded iceberg from his burger onto my plate.

  “This is barely a vegetable. It’s just slightly green water.”

  “You’re insane. You are seriously not normal.”

  “Drink your water.”

  We study the map as we wait for the check. “I say we head in the general direction of Chicago,” Hunter says.

  “You mean south?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” he says. “Yes, we head south. And when we get tired, we’ll head toward one of these green spots on the map with the little tent symbol. Then wake up early tomorrow and go to Chicago. I should call my buddy to see if we can crash with him.”

  “Will I like this buddy?”

  “You’ll love him.”

  “Is he going to try to have an orgy with us in the back of a bus?”

  “Only if you feed him enough Ecstasy.”

  “Oh, Lord,” I say, but I am smiling.

  I stop in the restroom before going out to the car. The tiny room is rank with the smell of cheap potpourri and bad plumbing. It looks like someone vomited up pink everywhere; even the toilet seat is pink.

  As I wash my hands, I feel the strange sensation of a smile on my lips. How is it possible that I’m happy enough to smile right now when just this morning I wanted to kill Hunter?

  But when I look up, what I see in the mirror makes me stop smiling.

  My heart stops. All the pink drains out of the room.

  “It took me a while to find you,” Camille says.

  It is her face in the mirror, not mine.

  It is her long brown hair exactly the way she used to wear it.

  It is a shirt I recognize.

  But everything is backward.

  Something is off.

  Something in her eyes.

  Something flat and dark and dead.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” she says. It is her voice. It is unmistakably her voice.

  “What am I supposed to say?” I whisper, afraid of someone hearing me talking to myself in the bathroom. “You’re not real.”

  “That hurts my feelings, Kins. I’m not real? Then why are you talking to me?”

  I close my eyes and shake my head, as if that will reset some kind of misfiring connection in my brain. But when I open my eyes, Camille is still there.

  “You like him, don’t you?” she teases.

  “What? No. Are you crazy?”

  Did I really just ask her if she’s crazy? I’m the one talking to a ghost in a bathroom mirror.

  “‘Oh, Hunter, you are so amazing,’” she says in a singsong voice. “‘Why don’t you know how amazing you are? Let me show you how amazing you are.’”

  “Shut up, Camille. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t do what?”

  “Wouldn’t hook up with your boyfriend.”

  “Oh, honey,” Camille says, her voice patronizing and cruel, so unlike her. “That’s so sad. Pathetic, really.” She wrinkles her forehead and looks down on me in mock sympathy. “Dead girls can’t have boyfriends.”

  “Dead girls can’t talk, either,” I say. “Dead girls don’t hang around diner bathrooms in the UP.”

  “That’s very closed-minded of you, Kinsey. Very small-town thinking. I thought you were better than that.”

  My lack of sleep must have caused some kind of brain damage. Maybe those crazy hippies put something in my drink. Maybe I did eat a pot brownie and don’t remember it. Maybe I’m turning crazy just like my mom. Worse than my mom. Hallucinations are much worse than mood swings.

  “Hello?” Camille taunts from the mirror. “Anyone there?”

  I try the doorknob but it doesn’t turn. I try the lock but nothing happens. I am trapped. She has trapped me.

  “But I just got here,” Camille says. “You can’t leave already. Don’t you miss me?”

  “Of course I miss you.”

  Why am I still talking to her?

  “You know, it’s kind of fun being a ghost. I can do all kinds of fun stuff. Watch this.”

  All of a sudden, the room goes black. All light is gone; even the tiny window that looked out onto the street seems to have disappeared.

  I can’t see my hands in front of me. I can’t see Camille. I can’t see anything.

  “Stop it, Camille!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Turn the lights back on.”

  “Or what?”

  “Just do it.”

  I feel something whoosh around me.

  “Are you scared, Kinsey? Are you scared of the dark? I thought you weren’t scared of anything.”

  Wind blows at me from every direction. Camille’s voice comes from above, below, behind me, everywhere.

  “You always had everything figured out,” she says. “A perfect plan for everything so there’d be no surprises. So there’d be nothing to be scared of.”

  “Turn on the lights!” I scream. I don’t care anymore about anyone hearing me.

  “But you’re scared now, aren’t you?”

  “Do it!”

  “What’s your plan now, Kinsey? What happens if you can’t see where you’re going?”

  “Camille, stop it!”

  The room is spinning. I am spinning. Everything is spinning.

  “Just admit you’re scared.”

  “Turn on the lights.”

  “Say it. Say you’re scared.”

  “I’m scared!”

  Then, as fast as it started, eve
rything is still. Warm light shines through the window. Birds chirp brightly outside, mocking my fear. Camille is nowhere. I am looking at myself in the mirror, shaking and pale.

  That wasn’t Camille. She would never say things like that. There’s no such thing as ghosts. All those nights of not sleeping must have flipped some switch inside me, some latent insanity just waiting for me to crack. And now I’ve cracked. I’m crazy.

  No. I can fix this. I can handle it. That’s what I do. I handle things. I keep going. No matter what. If I work hard enough, the pain goes away.

  I am fine. I am normal. I just went to the bathroom. My hands are not shaking. Those fat men in that booth in the corner are not looking at me weird. The sun is shining and I’m smiling. Hunter’s leaning on the car waiting for me and we’re going to San Francisco and we’re having fun and everything’s going to be okay.

  “I thought you fell in,” Hunter says.

  “Let’s go,” I say. I get in the car and put my sunglasses on. Maybe then Hunter won’t be able to see the crazy in my eyes.

  He gets in the driver’s seat. “So I called my buddy in ­Chicago. He said he’d love for us to stay with him.”

  “That’s great.”

  “He has an apartment with his girlfriend downtown.”

  “Great.”

  I can tell Hunter’s staring at me but I don’t look at him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You seem weird all of a sudden.”

  “My stomach is kind of upset,” I say. “I think the pasty didn’t agree with me.”

  “Oh.” Nothing like alluding to digestive disturbances to shut a boy up.

  * * *

  Over the next few hours, rural northern Michigan gives way to suburban Wisconsin. We drive past strip mall after identical strip mall, which the map claims are separate towns.

  “Would you call this a city?” Hunter asks me when we pass an area with a handful of buildings over two stories tall.

  “Probably,” I say.

  “That is so sad.”

  I take control of the stereo and flip through news stations and talk shows, anything with people talking. “Why can’t we just listen to music?” Hunter whines. I don’t tell him it’s because music allows my mind to wander; it makes space for me to think about things I don’t want to think about.