by Barry Lyga
"Look, it's nothing exciting," I tell him, hoping that this message will work its way back to Michelle. Michelle has always harbored a secret hope that Rachel and I will get together and be as hot and heavy a couple as she and Zik are. That way she can be with her boy toy and hang around with her best friend, too. In Michelle's perfect world, every night is a double date involving her, Zik, and Rachel. I'm the missing piece that makes the theorem come together, the sole variable that balances the equation in Michelle's social life algebra.
We head inside. "How did it happen?" he asks.
"Man, you make it sound like I cured cancer."
"J, you talked to Rachel. This is huge. You've been avoiding her for five years."
"Yeah, well ... I went to the Narc last night."
Zik's eyes pop. Now he's excited. "You went to her? Why?"
"No, no. You've got it all wrong. It was an accident. I wasn't thinking."
I recount for Zik the brief, awkward conversation, and we both agree that it didn't make much sense, which is good because I thought it was just me.
"I'll call Michelle."
I grab Zik's hand before he can snatch up the telephone. "What? Are you nuts?"
"Dude, it's gonna clear the whole thing up in less than five minutes. You'll see. Even if Rache didn't call Michelle, Michelle'll still have a better idea of what was going on than either of us."
"Forget it." I tighten my hold on his wrist and pull it back a bit farther from the phone. "She might call Rachel."
"Yeah, I know!" Zik says cheerily, not getting it at all. "That's even better; then we'll know exactly what—Ow!" He yelps and pulls away from me. "Shit!"
"Sorry. But I don't want you to call Michelle. Not about this."
"J, I realize you're, like, a social retard and all, but trust me—this is how it works, man. A girl looks your way, you look her way, then you find out through each other's friends what it all means. You'd know this shit if you weren't practically a—" He stops, gulps, and trails off weakly. "You know..."
"Practically a what?"
"A virgin." To his credit, he looks me straight in the eye when he says it.
I laugh because, let's face it, I'm no virgin. Zik laughs along with me after a moment. It's the closest we've come to talking about Eve and what happened five years ago.
"Look, J, this is how it works. Seriously. You've been like a, a monk or a priest or something. I mean, there've been plenty of girls interested in you. Like Lisa Carter—"
"Yeah, and I remember how that worked out."
"That wasn't her fault."
"No, it was mine. And I get that. This isn't 'how it works,' OK? Seeing Rachel, that was a fluke. I got out with my skin and that's cool."
"But—"
"But nothing. This isn't a case of a girl being interested in me. This is Rachel, OK? And Michelle's little fantasy world where Rachel and I get together is really getting old, man, OK?"
He bristles, real anger gathered in his eyes and the set of his jaw. I've seen him like this before, when he talks about his father or his brother. I stepped over the line—I shouldn't have dragged Michelle into it.
"It's not ... It's not some fantasy of Michelle's. It's not ... You make it sound like she's—"
"I'm sorry, Zik."
"No, listen to me. There's fantasies, OK, I get that. And then there are just things that people want really bad. And this is one of those things. And Michelle's not the only one, get it?"
"What—Rachel?" I can't believe that Rachel would want to date me.
"Me, you asshole!" he yells, his face flushing red. "Me! Jesus Christ, why do you have to be such a dense asshole sometimes?"
My fists ball up on their own; it's just a reaction to being yelled at, to Zik's flushed face. I would never take a swing at him. I tell myself that. Never. Even though I can see the perfect opening.
So, Zik shares Michelle's fantasy. I should have realized.
"I mean ... God!" He turns away from me, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration. "I hang out with Rachel all. The. Time. Do you even realize that? She's Michelle's best friend. I see her all the time!
"It's like I'm ... It's like I'm schizophrenic or something. I mean, I can't talk about Rachel when I'm around you, and I won't talk about you around Rachel. And I have to think about who I'm going to see on which days and for what events and can I wave to Michelle at a game if Rachel's standing next to her ... I mean, thank God Rachel's softball games are usually at the same time as ours so I don't have to worry about that, but..."
I had no idea. I never gave it a single thought. But for five years, Zik's been living two lives, like a kid with divorced parents. No wonder he never asked me about Eve; it would open the whole thing up—Rachel's closet and everything else that happened.
The phone rings just then. Caller ID says "Out of area," but that could be Mom or Dad's cell phone, so I answer it.
"Hi, Josh?" says the voice at the other end.
"Uh, yeah." And I realize, as I say it, that it's Rachel. I flicker back to the closet for half a second. Zik arches an eyebrow, and I wonder if I looked like I was going to pass out.
"So," she goes on, "I'm at work, but I get off at midnight. Do you have to get up in the morning, or are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?"
"What are you talking about?" I mouth "Rachel" to Zik and his eyebrows jut skyward.
"It's just a figure of speech," she says. "Look, I have to go. Meet me at SAMMPark? Like, twelve-fifteen. I'll see you. Bye."
I hang up. Zik's swaying back and forth like a potty-training toddler. I almost ask him if needs to pee-pee like a big boy.
"Well? What was that about?" You can tell that if he could ask the question louder or somehow bigger, he would.
I'm honest with him: "I have no clue."
Zik, of course, wants to call Michelle right away and get the 411 from the closest thing we have to the source itself. He's certain that Michelle has a series of text messages that, once decoded through the Michelle-inator, will spell out exactly what's going on.
"Nothing's going on," I tell him as Dad pulls into the driveway. "This is over, Zik. Rachel's just ... She's just messing with me. Which is fine. She's entitled."
But over takeout pizza, while Dad and Zik chatter about the Orioles' chances this year, I sit in silence, wondering, Why now? Why would Rachel wait until now, until the ass-end of senior year, to start fucking with my head? I mean, yeah, she's entitled, as far as I'm concerned. But five years is a long time to wait, even if you think revenge is a dish best served cold.
Some part of me always dreaded this. Rachel never talked about that night in the closet (other than to her parents that exact night, of course, and to the police later, and, I assume, to Michelle); there's always been plenty of school gossip and the hick-town equivalent of urban legends surrounding that night and much of what happened with Eve, but as far as I can tell, none of it is close enough to the mark to have come from Rachel herself. She's been pretty circumspect about the whole thing, as is her right as the victim. But even though I've walked five years with the guilt of that night like a squat bar on my shoulders, I never really thought Rachel would retaliate.
I always figured I deserved some sort of retribution, but now that it's here (or at least peeking around the corner and grinning diabolically), I'm a bit peeved. Couldn't she just have left well enough alone?
Or maybe I'm just scared. Scared of what could happen now. Or maybe...
Maybe this is what guilt really feels like. Maybe the past five years have just been proto-guilt, guilt-in-training. Maybe this sense of dread is the real thing. Maybe I'm only disappointed in Rachel because I'm scared shitless and she's the only one who can decide to make it all go away.
"Dude, you want the last piece?"
Zik's pointing at the last piece of pizza. I realize, in a spasm that twists my guts, that if I even touch food, I'm going to vomit my intestines and my stomach right out of my body.
"Take i
t." I push the box to him like it's laden with anthrax.
"Your plate's clean," Dad says, suddenly noticing. "Didn't you eat anything?"
The thought of food makes my stomach lurch again. "No. No, I'm..."
"Are you feeling OK?" Dad's concern is mitigated by his plan to take the last piece before Zik can get to it.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I—" And the phone rings. I almost jump out of my skin. Zik's eyes widen. Dad shovels the pizza into his mouth.
"Get that, Josh," he manages around a mouthful.
Zik follows me to the phone. "What if it's her?"
"It's not," I tell him, forcing a confidence I don't have into my voice. But Caller ID says "Out of area" again, and my stomach groans in protest and I flicker
—like this—
long enough that the phone gets to the fourth ring and the answering machine cuts in, while I'm standing there like an idiot, coming back to the present to see Zik staring at me like I just dropped my pants or something. I shake it off and grab the phone before the message gets to the second sentence.
It's not Rachel, just Mom, calling to tell me that she and a bunch of her friends have already had too much to drink so they're planning to stay at a hotel for the night.
Michelle pulls up at the house a little while later. It's Friday, so she and Zik have their standing date. Zik doesn't have much in the way of dough, but Michelle insists that they at least rent a movie and watch it at her house on Fridays. Couplehood. Togetherness. How cute.
I watch Zik scamper off to Michelle's electric blue Cobalt. I shouldn't be so mean about Zik and Michelle, about her whipping him, about the stupid movie dates. It's jealousy in part, I admit. Zik's got a regular warm body at his disposal, and what a hell of a body it is. Michelle's been blessed with the Jurgens Asset, a rack that makes grown men weep and teenagers faint dead away from the sudden rush of blood away from the brain. I'd never tell Zik that I love sneaking looks at Michelle's tits (especially in the summer, when she wears these thin little halter tops that are completely and gloriously inappropriate for someone so well endowed), because you just don't talk about a guy's girlfriend like that.
I try to imagine the conversation Zik and Michelle are having as he gets into the car. Michelle waves to me from the dri-ver's-side window and I wave back. What's he telling her? What's she telling him? No way to know.
Meet me at SAMMPark?
Well, what else do I have to do?
Chapter 10
Rachel's Pitch
SAMMPark was built a few years back. Some old shoddy buildings were torn down and the whole area was resodded and landscaped. It all started around the same time as Eve's trial; for a while there, it was like dueling headlines in the Times, with one crowding out the other on occasion but nothing else interfering with the front page.
They originally would shut the whole thing down at eleven, but some local religious group wanted to hold a midnight prayer vigil there and then the ACLU got involved and eventually it was just easier to leave the park open, with a Rent-A-Cop stationed at the main gate. Hell, Zik and I had been hopping the fence on the east side of the park to play midnight baseball anyway, and judging by the scattering of Coke cans, beer bottles, used condoms, and burger wrappers, we weren't the only ones in violation.
I wait in my car by the gate. It's cool out, so I roll down the window to catch the breeze and lean out the window. I look up at the sky.
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are both really bright tonight. I pick out Venus, twinkling away like a star ... to the uninitiated eye. Venus, 67.2 million miles away from the sun, is technically the closest planet to Earth, but it's usually on the other side of the sun, so for all intents and purposes it's much farther away than you'd think. You couldn't send a manned mission there—the pressure from the superhumid atmosphere would kill any astronauts, assuming that the 900-degree heat didn't do it first. Still, spacecraft have been sent there, and I like to imagine that someday we'll figure out a way to put a person there, in a protected environment. I like to think I'll help work that one out.
I love the stars. Love them for how they are almost as much as for what they are. Stars are just mathematical equations, when you get right down to it. Precise ratios of helium and hydrogen, heated and lit just the right way, all of it balanced and perfect for billions of years as they slowly churn their way toward iron, toward entropy. Space is one big mathematical construct. It's just figuring out gravity and electromagnetism and thrust and lift and BOOM you're off the earth, you're walking the moon like Neil Armstrong in those old, old videos.
Just when I figure Rachel has either stood me up, died in a car accident, or never planned to come here after all, I hear tires crunch the parking lot gravel and catch headlights in my rearview.
I get out as she pulls up next to me. She's wearing a gray South Brook Bobcats cap, a yellow shirt, and a pair of green shorts. The shirt is cut loose, the shorts tight.
"Sorry I'm late," she says, waving to me as she goes around back to her trunk. "I had to change from work."
"That's OK."
She digs into her trunk. "Get your bat."
"My bat?"
She slams down the trunk; she has a glove in one hand and a softball in the other. It looks like a pumpkin compared to the balls I'm used to hitting.
"Yeah, your bat. Time to measure up, big guy."
You're kidding me. She wants to pitch to me?
"Rachel, I don't—"
"I know you keep a bat in your trunk. Come on." She doesn't even wait for me to finish—she just heads off toward the gate.
I pop the trunk and grab my bat and glove, then hustle to catch up to her. No need to run, though—turns out she's waiting just inside the park entrance, near the nurse statue and the big bronze plaque that reads "Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park." Spotlights shine up from the ground, shrouding the statue's upper half in shadows.
"Hey, Rache, can we talk?"
"You ever think about her?"
Shit. She's not even looking at me but at the statue of the nurse. On the way here, I sort of decided that I was coming for one reason and one reason only—to apologize. To look her in the eye and say, in no uncertain terms, that I'm sorry for what I did all those years ago. But now she's got me toting baseball gear and looking at statues.
But I figure it's her game and her rules. For now, at least.
"Not really, Rache." I take a good long look at the statue. It's just a chunk of stone. Marble, maybe. I don't know. I've walked past it a million times.
"You ever read the plaque?"
"Just her name."
She sighs and offers me an exasperated frown. "God, Josh. How many times have you walked through this park or played in this park, and you never wondered about the woman they named it after?"
"I just said I read her name!"
"Read the rest of it."
So I read it: Dedicated and built in her name by the man who gave her life and the man who gave her death.
"Whoa!"
Rachel smiles smugly. "See?"
"What does that mean?"
"What do you think it means?"
"I don't know." I think about it for a second. "I mean, the 'man who gave her life' would have to be her father, right?"
She nods. "Yeah, that's what I always figured."
"But the 'man who gave her death'...Does that mean the same guy? Or is it another guy?"
Rachel shrugs. "I don't know. There was a whole big story about it when they first built it, but there was, y'know, another story that sort of overshadowed it at the time."
My face burns. It's now or never.
"Rachel, look, this isn't easy for me..."
She cocks her head to one side like a curious dog.
"Rachel, I'm just gonna say it." My heart, interestingly, has decided to switch into calm mode, reliably thudding along and doing little else. My pulse can't be more than seventy-five bpm. I resist the urge to check.
"I'm sorry, Rache." As soon as the words are out,
my heart starts up, kicking up a storm, blasting out a panic serenade. I can barely hear myself speak for the rushing thrum of blood in my ears. "I'm so sorry. I'm just so, so sorry." I can't stop saying it, and I can't even summon up any sort of variation on the theme. I just keep blabbing "I'm sorry" over and over again, like some kind of deranged parrot.
She regards me, impassive, saying nothing, not even moving until I somehow ramble to a stop in the middle of the word "sorry," like a car drifting onto sand.
"You done?" she asks.
I'm out of breath. My heart has settled down, but my lungs are protesting. She just stares at me.
"Yeah." I gasp it, as though I'm rounding third and heading for home and the ball is sailing right overhead and the catcher looks really confident.
She slams the ball into her glove. "Good. Let's go."
The SAMMPark baseball diamond isn't lit at night unless there's an official game and someone's paying for the juice, but it's a clear night and the moon and the stars and the big billboard that faces the highway offer plenty of light.
"Let's warm up." Rachel jogs out to the mound, spins around, and tosses the ball to me at the plate, overhand. I snag it with my glove—not. What really happens is that I snap at it with the glove and knock it out of the air, missing my chance to catch it because I misjudged its size.
"Good catch," she calls out.
If Zik made a comment like that, I would know he was just kidding and I would probably call him a douchebag, but I don't know if she's just busting on me or being mean, so I say nothing as I retrieve the ball and toss it back to her, adding a little more heat than is strictly necessary. She catches it effortlessly, barely looking at it, her glove darting out to one side.
She fires it back, overhand again, and
I don't know why I'm so surprised by that—they only pitch underhanded in softball. For fielding and everything else, it's just like in baseball, except the ball's the size of a goddamn grapefruit.