The Moment Before

by Suzy Vitello

  It was ugly. They went at it like fighting dogs, rolling around on the floor of the spine of Greenmeadow’s “E.” Fists and flesh and then some blood. Girl screams, and teachers trying to break them apart. A big assembly afterwards where grief counselors were called in. What a mess. And now Connor has dropped out, and Nick’s dating Martha.

  Martha. More texts bleeping into my phone.

  We’re not the bad guys.

  Brady? Is this thing on?

  So I cave. Text back.

  I’m in NW. Dragonfly Coffee House? 4:30?

  B thr soon as I can, she messages.

  Connor will have to wait. I text him that I’m running late. NP is what I get back. Stoner boy shorthand for whatever.

  I order a double chai with almond milk and a lemon poppy seed scone, and take a seat on a puffy velvet pillow under one of the café’s jeweled chandeliers. After Cupworth’s porch, the Victorian feel of the Dragonfly is perfect. I conjure some grace and poise, channeling Lilith and her manners and elegance. I cross my legs at the knee and sip the foam off my drink without slurping. I will be gracious to Martha. I will rise above my anger and hurt. I will.

  By the time she finally plows through the door, it’s well after 5:00 and I’m finished with my drink, picking the last poppy seeds from the napkin, licking them off my index finger in very un-Cupworth style. Martha comes over and wraps her arms around the side of me, as though my decision to meet and talk means all is forgiven. She says, “Sorry to keep you. The buses, they’re so slow.”

  “What about your car?” I ask.

  She looks sheepishly down at the floor. “Nick’s borrowing it. You know, he doesn’t have a car, and, well, he has so much going on.”

  “Oh.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m meeting you. Just, FYI.”

  I raise a brow.

  “I mean, not that he has anything to say about it? It’s just, you know, complicated with us.”

  Martha goes up to the counter for her coffee, and I’m still not sure what I will or won’t tell her. Part of me wants to let her know about Connor, that I’ve asked him to unlock Sabine’s phone, but then I know it’ll get back to Nick, and she’s right, everything now is so complicated. By the time she returns, I’ve decided to keep mum about Connor, but let her know about Cupworth.

  Martha reaches into her purse and pulls out a little pill box, then washes her medication down with a swig of coffee. Martha’s always taking a “little something” for nerves.

  “It must be strange for you to see the two of us together,” she starts in, with a clearly practiced speech. “So soon after the accident.”

  I put a hand up to stop her. “Martha, it’s your life. His life. None of my business.”

  “Then, what’s the deal? Is this about the Art Fair? Because if it is…”

  “It’s not. I mean, it was. A little. But that’s working itself out.”

  Martha, her healthy mahogany hair and her steaming black coffee sit across from me. A round metal table in between us. “How so?”

  “Mrs. Cupworth, apparently she likes my drawing. I was just over there. She’s, well, she and Bowerman are planning on going public with the politics behind the prize.”

  Martha looks as though she’s just watched someone get stabbed in the street. Her eyes all Anime she says, “What do you mean, politics?”

  “Why they gave the award to you and not me. Don’t worry. They assured me that they’re not taking your prize back.”

  “Well, Brady, student-in-good-standing was a requirement. And, you haven’t really been pulling the grades lately.”

  The way she’s arguing with me, her finger practically wagging in my face, like a teacher or a parent, it’s just plain weird. I want to say more about it, but instead, I scan my napkin for more poppy seeds, and stick my seed-speckled finger in my mouth.

  “So, what are they planning on doing? On saying?”

  I shrug. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. You’re right. I’m a loser, I didn’t deserve to win, end of story.”

  Martha reaches her olive branch hand out close to my gooey finger, but I don’t grasp it. “Oh Brady, I’m sorry. Clearly, I’m being insensitive. Here’s the thing. I’m up for Rose Festival, you know? And, being a junior and all, it’s unlikely they’ll choose me, but it would look so good on my transcripts. I was able to add the thing about winning the Cupworth, and it’s quite a coup. It would just be sort of embarrassing if something came out that I won it by default.”

  When Martha says default, she emphasizes the de instead of the fault, and the word is as wrong to my ear as it is to my heart. She really thinks her Mt. Hood was best-in-show? “I’m sure it won’t factor in. Princess Martha.”

  “Queen Martha,” she counters, putting an invisible tiara on her glossy Covergirl head. She’d be perfect as Rose Festival Queen. I can see her waving to the masses from the seat of the big fat float, a white-gloved Rosarian at the wheel, shepherding her through the streets of her Fair City.

  My phone makes the text-message noise and ever-attentive Martha chimes, “Your parents wondering when you’re coming home? Want to ride the bus back with me?”

  It’s Connor with a, wassup?

  “Uh, yeah, well, I have a couple more errands to run. Library and whatnot. Maybe we can get together over the weekend or something.”

  “That would be fantastic. But Brady, you’re sure we’re good? Solid?”

  I nod my affirmation. We’re as solid as we ever were I guess. Which has always seemed a little more on Martha’s terms than mine.

  Connor’s waiting for me at the Witch’s House—the unofficial party spot a mile or so up the trail coming out of Lower Macleay Park. It’s where Nick and Sabine first “did it,” Sabine told me. Nick had a backpack full of supplies: a blanket, some pills to “relax” her. “I was super nervous,” she’d told me the next day. “The pills—they helped loosen me up.”

  I’d wanted to hear everything. What it felt like, what Nick said to her during their love-making, but Sabine just waved me off with a, “I’m glad I got that out of the way.”

  When I finally get to the stone ruin Connor’s behind a jagged pillar, leaned up against a tree, a bear scratching its hide. His usual hoodie hugs his broad shoulders; his legs are bare from the knees, muscled legs half-covered with cargo shorts. A Portland Timbers cap sits backwards on his head, and Sabine’s earring dangles and sparkles, dancing in the waning afternoon rays.

  “Let’s bounce,” he says, his chin pointing up-trail to a uniformed somebody in a Day-Glo pinnie who seems to be eyeing us.

  We walk up toward the upper parking lot, and I’m already regretting my choice of footwear—a sort of rubber soled bedroom slipper with no arch support. Hill-walking seems to be the theme today. I can tell Connor’s a little annoyed that I’m not keeping pace.

  “So, what was the hold up?” he asks after we’re out of earshot of the pinnie police.

  I’m not sure how to answer that, exactly, so I just say. “School stuff.”

  Connor’s not buying it. “Anyone know about, um, that you’re here? With me?”

  “You sound really creepy now. Like, are you planning on slashing my throat and throwing me in the ivy with all the dead prostitutes?” I’m kidding, of course, but Connor gives me a really? look.

  We keep walking, and the suspense is beginning to kill me. But, I figure, let him spill it in his own time, whatever he found out jailbreaking Sabine’s phone, it’s got to be big, the way he keeps walking without talking. We’re winding up the hairpins, and Connor won’t stop checking over his shoulder. We’re close to the Audubon crossing, it’s not getting any earlier, and my feet are beginning to sting. Finally, I can’t hold it in anymore. “C’mon, Connor, what the hell?”

  He stops and points to a small clearing where the oaks haven’t leafed out yet, and I follow him off the trail. The hair on Connor’s calves is dark blond, and there’s a lot of it. His green eyes
and their flecks of amber. Those lips. He says, “I figured out her password.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Wasn’t that hard, Brady.”

  “Well, I tried her birthday and Nick’s birthday …”

  “Yeah, well you forgot one.”

  “Huh?”

  Connor dots the middle of my forehead with his index finger.

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “How do you know my birthday?”

  “Um, Facebook? You’re pretty dumb for a smart chick.”

  “Did you save the messages? Were there a lot of them?” I’m shocked at how happy I am, just anticipating hearing the sound of my sister’s voice again.

  “You’ll have to delete a few of them. She’s at the capacity.”

  I hold out my palm, expecting Connor to fork it over, but he just crams his hands into the pockets of his shorts.

  “What.”

  “Brady. I’m not so sure you want to hear what’s on her phone.”

  “Oh, come on. Some bullshit sexy talk from that bonehead formerly known as her boyfriend. I can take it.”

  “It’s not that. Look. Sit down.” Connor points to a rotted log.

  I keep standing. “What’s the big mystery?”

  He sighs and looks off in the middle distance, like people do when they’re searching for the right words. “Sabine told me some stuff, you know, in the weeks before that day.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like … oh, man. This is hard.”

  “Stop it Connor. C’mon it’s getting late.”

  “She, well, she was in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I’m thinking, maybe she got caught cheating on a test? Or maybe there’s some MIP thing we never knew about. “I mean, it’s no secret she liked to party.”

  “Your sister was, um, she was pregnant.”

  The words sister and pregnant, so weird side-by-side that way. Sabine was on the pill. I thought. “Really? But …”

  “Well, here’s the thing. I knew she suspected she was knocked up, but she didn’t know, or she told me she didn’t know for sure. But the thing is, Nick? Well he was on her case about gaining weight. She went off the pill because she thought it was making her fat.”

  I sit down on the mossy log now, my head and my feet are both pounding. Connor reaches into his pocket and pulls out Sabine’s purple-covered phone. “On the voicemail, apparently she had an appointment to, you know, abort it. They were calling to confirm. But that’s not really the worst.”

  I’m still in shock over hearing Sabine was pregnant. “What do you mean, ‘the worst’?”

  Connor gazes down at the Forest. He’s not looking at me when he says, “Nick, he threatened her. A lot.”

  “Threatened her?”

  Connor shakes his head. “He’s such an asshole.”

  I stand up and grab the phone from him, punch in my birthdate, and listen to Nick call my sister the worst names imaginable. He tells her she’s cheap. That she is trying to trap him. That she’s ruining his life. That he’s not even sure it’s his. One horrible, horrible message where he says, You’re a skanky little whore. If you’re pregnant, there’s no knowing who the father is. And, All you are is a trashy little social climber. You come from nothing, and you’ll end up with nothing.

  All of this, days before he shows up at our house in tears, pledging undying love, falling apart on our front stoop, overtaken by grief.

  My face must be turning colors, because Connor says, “Wow, Brady, you OK?”

  I close my eyes, anger charging through me like steam in a teakettle. I hold the phone in the air, the offending instrument. “Connor, what the hell? I mean, if I let Mom and Dad know about Sabine, it’ll really crush them. But I want them to hear this. I want them to know what kind of a shit Nick is. I want everyone to know.”

  Connor nods. Looks down. “Yeah.”

  And then it hits me. The pieces come together. “You didn’t drop her. She passed out. From the pregnancy. She fainted. Oh, Connor, we have to let people know.”

  “She was a little woozy, but that’s not what happened. Your sister? She was so competitive. It wasn’t enough to do one flip, she had to do two. I told her not to, I told her, especially with the way she was feeling, but she had to prove something. Especially to that Dickwad.”

  I close my eyes and see her up on top of the world, before she fell. It was a preview of their routine for State. It all comes clear. Sabine wanted to win it for them, the second year in a row. But I didn’t know. Nobody knew that she was planning to do an extra flip. Right before she fell, everyone’s phones up in the air to capture it, a zillion iPhones poised, and Sabine, imagining herself going viral, flying and spinning and tucking. Her athletic, amazing body, hurling itself through the air on the way to Connor’s arms. Instead, she became the cheerleader who broke her neck.

  And me, in La La Land, gazing off at something else entirely. Why wasn’t I watching her when it happened? Why didn’t I try and stop her?

  Connor sighs. “I still fucked up, Brady. I should have moved three more inches. I would have caught her then.”

  It’s so easy to find the right words to comfort Connor. Much easier than to forgive myself. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t. That extra flip, the way she always had something to prove. To her. To Nick. To the world.”

  Connor shrugs. The earring glints in the dying light. Another evening in the woods with this boy. I don’t think about it, just reach out and touch the little jewel coming off Connor’s lobe, like a little kid in a gift shop grabbing stuff they’re not supposed to. My fingers brush his chin and there’s just the tiniest sandpaperiness there. A jolt of something hits me in the gut. It makes me nervous, and I’m not sure why. “I’ve got to go,” I tell him, and we start walking back down the trail.

  twelve

  We walk back down the trail, past the Witch’s House where there are no park ranger types, no people of any sort. Balch Creek is flowing hard just below us, but we can’t see it, as dusk has settled, and any daylight left is just what reflects off of some white granite boulders. The water rush sound accompanies us back to civilization. My feet hurt a lot now, but I have to stride big to keep up with Connor; we need to get out of the forest before it’s pitch black.

  He still has a little deodorant smell, but now it’s mixed with a spring soil scent. Our shoulders are nearly touching. I’m aware of how close my hip is to his hip. The jelly feeling in my gut is both lower and higher now—traveling like water on tissue. We haven’t spoken a word to each other since leaving the clearing. Finally, house lights glow ahead of us. He says, “My parents are pretty close to sending me away.”

  My ears lock down on those words, my throat closes around them. I’m aware of sweat, suddenly, little dots of it at my temples, on my palms. A heartbeat tries pumping blood around, as though I’m a deer in a fight-or-flight stance. “Why?”

  Stupid question, I know, but it’s all that manages to come out of my closed-up throat.

  “It’s the classic stepfather scene. All he needed was one more reason to hate my guts. My dad lives over in Bend, they want to send me there.”

  “But I thought,” I stammer, “you were going to BALC?”

  “Yeah, well, guess not.”

  In the rising moonlight, the shadows on Connor’s face make a jigsaw line from his forehead to chin. I want to capture it so bad that I can almost feel the shape of a charcoal stick in my hand, a blurred edge of gray on canvas. Again, Sabine’s earring, the silver of it, catches white light. I swallow, and have to hold myself back from running my fingers up and down the length of his face. It’s that beautiful.

  “When?” I manage, my question a whisper.

  “Soon, maybe. I’m looking for a construction job or something. Digging ditches, whatever. I’ll be eighteen in a few months, if I had money saved up, I could live on my own. Or travel, you know?”

&nbs
p; That Connor Christopher really believes this makes me want to hug him. “Connor, I think we need to set the record straight. About the accident. Your parents, the school, they’d reconsider.”

  Connor shakes his head. “Here’s the thing. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. I can live it any way I want. Sabine doesn’t have those options.”

  I think of the Classics in Context class, Mrs. McConnell and her duplicity versus integrity lecture. “That’s very Faulknerian of you,” I tell Connor.

  He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “You’re such a nerd, Brady. You’re like the opposite of your sister.”

  That should hurt my feelings, what he just said, but it doesn’t. Being around Connor makes me feel realer, somehow. There’s some sort of truth serum thing happening to me, and I’m not afraid. Of anything. I say, “Sabine and me, we’re Irish twins, you know.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I do know that Sabine thought you were wicked smart. Like, over the top.”

  “She said that?”

  “All the time,” Connor says, grinning. And I notice for the first time, there’s a dimple on the earring side of his face.

  “She talks to me,” he says.

  This is uncanny; I want more. “Like, what do you mean? Has conversations with you—from the great beyond?”

  “Not lately. But until about a week ago, it was like she would guide me. I’d hear her voice talking me in or out of things.”

  We’re almost at the bus stop now, and I start to feel panicky. I want to keep talking to Connor Christopher. “Connor…” I say, standing stock still right there on the sidewalk.

  The way he looks at me when I say his name, it’s like Sabine’s inside him. For a tiny second, I really believe that she is. “Same,” is all I can manage to say.

  I see the 15 bus chugging toward us. “You gonna get on?” I ask.

  “Nah. I’m gonna keep walking. I’m in no hurry to get back to it. My folks are like so shitty right now, it’s best I get home after they’ve gone to bed.”