by Jen Doll
48
Grant
I climb gingerly up the tree outside my bedroom window, still half drunk. I can barely hang on, and I think about just giving up and dropping, but the idea of my mom finding me on the ground below and having to deal with whatever remains sobers me up a little, and I persist. I reach the top and open the window to my room and there, sitting on my bed, is Mom.
“Grant!” she says, and of course she’s been crying—I’ve been gone all night, and now here I am, bruised and beaten and smelling like hell—but there’s also something new in her tone, something steely and resolved. She helps me in through the window, and then she stares at me for a long time, like she’s finally really seeing me, not just the football Grant or the son-you-want Grant but the real Grant, the messed-up, scuffed-up, drinking-problem Grant who needs to be faced head-on and dealt with because he’s not going to just get better on his own, no matter how he tries. The Grant who needs help.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she tells me. “I want you to take a shower, put on clean clothes”—she points to the folded-up T-shirt and jeans on my bed—“and then you’re coming with me. Dr. Laura will be at her office in fifteen minutes. I’ve also packed you a bag.”
There’s a suitcase next to my bed, and it strikes me that I’ve been unpacking mystery bags like these all summer and now here’s one that’s been put together just for me, its contents also a mystery. I’m going on a trip. I can only hope that my baggage and I both make it to our destination and back again.
“OK?” asks my mom.
“OK,” I say.
Dr. Laura’s office is dark when we arrive. It’s still pretty early, which means, luckily, there aren’t many nosy drivers on the road to catch us traveling at top speed to my therapist’s office first thing in the morning. Then she pulls up next to us, and she and my mom help me out of the car and into her office. I sit down in my usual chair, and I don’t swivel it one bit this time as I tell them both everything. How my head always hurts. How I am always so, so thirsty. About the balloon festival and how I blacked out there. How the nail polish trick worked, and then it didn’t. What happened at La Casita, and then afterward. How this is something more than just Grant Collins not feeling like himself.
“I had another blackout,” I say.
Dr. Laura scribbles something in the notebook that’s always just within her reach but far enough away that I can never see what she’s writing. “Can you tell me the specifics?” she asks.
I nod. I’ll tell her everything, except for the part about Doris. I don’t want to pull her into this mess. “There’s dull pain. That stops, and it’s dark for a while. I feel and see nothing. Every once in a while, I wake up. Then I see things from my own perspective again, but blurry, wobbly. Like I’ve been drugged or I’m really, really drunk. Wandering around at a party. Getting in a fight. Chassie screaming at me. A bed. The grass of the football field. Feeling cold. Feeling alone. Feeling so much shame. There are these blips of reality, and then it’s black again, and I’m awake, but all I want to do is go back to sleep because everyone finally sees me for what I am.”
“What are you, Grant?”
“Well. I think, or I’m pretty sure, I’m some kind of alcoholic. Like, if I had a beer in front of me, I would probably drink it, and I would want another. It would be very hard for me to stop. You know how I told you it was peer pressure and I’m not drinking and things are great?”
She nods and frowns. “You’re not great?”
“I’m not great. I haven’t been great.”
“So these blackouts aren’t isolated events.”
I lean forward, and it’s almost with a kind of relish, the thrill of telling the truth and there being no question indeed about who Grant Collins really is, that I say this: “Dr. Laura, if we look at the past few years, the ‘isolated events’ might actually be the times I’ve been sober.”
She doesn’t even blink, scribbling again in her notebook. “How many times would you say that these came after football games, after being hit in the head or falling to the ground?”
I provide the greatest hits reel of Grant Collins’s messed-up behaviors, bookended by a greatest hits reel of my football plays (and injuries), and she keeps writing, occasionally looking up solemnly and posing another question, prompting but never condemning me. I tell her about all the nights at Brod’s. I tell her about the games. I tell her about Chassie’s arm. I even tell her about tacos.
Dr. Laura does a really weird, unexpected thing. She gets up out of her chair, and she comes toward me, and she hugs me. I sit there, stunned. My mom hugs me, too.
“You are so strong,” Dr. Laura says. “And there are so many people rooting for you. We’re going to help you. You’ve done a very brave thing by telling us this.”
My mom nods. “You are going to get better.”
I don’t feel particularly brave or even very confident I’m going to get better, but I nod and offer them a small smile. In the car, Mom is uncharacteristically quiet, fumbling for her keys in her handbag as we sit in the parking lot. I’m wondering if she’s about to start lecturing me. The silence is making me nervous, so when she starts the car I reach to turn on the radio to fill the void. She puts her hand over mine and turns the car off again.
“Grant,” she says, and I wait.
“I love you,” she says, her voice cracking.
I know I’m supposed to say it back, but my voice doesn’t seem to be working, so I just look at her and hope that I really can figure out a way to be the Grant Collins she, and everybody else, deserves. She starts the car again, and we drive.
49
Nell
The drive to the airport with Ashton is a lot different from the semi road trip Grant and Doris and I made to pick him up. There’s no playlist. It’s just the two of us, and he’s got his arm in a sling and a cast on that arm, which, kind of ironically, used to be Chassie’s look. The closer we get to the airport, the more of a sinking feeling I have in my stomach. I don’t want him to go. But he’s been given the all-clear to travel, and I’m sure he’s ready to get back home, and out of the South.
I miss the support of my friends, but it’s good we’re alone, because we haven’t had much time to just be together and talk about everything that’s happened.
The thing we’re not talking about is whether he’ll be able to play baseball again. We’re just going to have to wait and see, say the doctors. But he’s young and in good shape, and there’s a physical therapist in Chicago who works with Major League Baseball players who he’s already got an appointment with. If I had a Magic 8 Ball, I hope it would say Outlook good.
“This sure wasn’t how I thought this trip would go,” I say.
“Me either,” he says. “It sucks.”
“It does.”
He’s not done, though. “It really sucks that this is the world we live in. It sucks to be seen as a color, or a race, or a fucking cookie, before you’re seen as a person, if you’re even seen as a person at all. It sucks that this guy might have ruined my chances to play baseball in college. And it sucks that that’s something you’ll never truly understand, even if you want to.”
“I do want to,” I say, at the same time that I know he’s right. I think about what my mom said, how she was scared for me, but also about how I’m protected because of what I look like. I think about how people are still dressing up like they fought in the Civil War, more than 150 years after the Civil War has ended, and how that feels to me, but how it feels even worse to Ashton. I think about what happened to Doris on the waterslide, and how she was treated afterward. It’s not fair, that’s what I feel like screaming. None of this is fair.
“I’ve been so worried that once the painkillers wore off and you had time to think about everything you’d hate me. That you’d regret coming,” I admit. “That you’d never want to come here, or see me, again. And that you’d probably be right to think that.”
“No,” he says. “Pony, here’s
the thing: It’s not about you. This is my body, my arm, my life. You’re going to have to let me process this, and not make it your thing, you know?”
I stare at the road, feeling tears well up in my eyes. “I’m sorr—”
“Don’t say it!” he turns to look at me. “And no crying, OK? I don’t think I can handle that right now. Plus, you’re driving.”
“OK,” I tell him, wiping my eyes. “Ash. I’m here for you, whatever you need me to do.”
He reaches over and takes my hand. “Listening is good. Not apologizing, not asking me how you should be or what you should do, but just really listening.”
“OK,” I say. “I can do that.”
“And there’s another thing.” He smiles. “I think it’s your turn to come see me next.”
“Really?” I ask. “You want me to?”
“I hate what happened here, but I’m not sorry I came to visit you. There was no way I was spending the whole summer without you. If I hadn’t been able to afford a plane ticket, I would have taken the freakin’ bus down here. And I feel like I know you even better now, even though it’s only been three days together here, and we had three months back in Illinois.”
“I guess there’s something about going to a hospital together that will do that to you,” I say.
“More like sleeping in your room,” he says. “I mean, I always knew you were kind of a nerd—” He’s grinning now.
“You did!?” I hit him—gently—on his good arm. “Well, you knew about the detective fiction at least. I can’t wait to start The Thin Man.”
“Hey, be careful!” he says, play-yelping. “Anyway, now that I’ve seen all your crime novels—”
“Detective fiction,” I correct him.
“Now that I’ve seen all of those lined up next to your books about coding and How to Become an Internet Entrepreneur—”
“Cat gave me that!” I say.
“Well, let’s just say I’m even more impressed. Dating a really hot girl who’s good at field hockey is one thing. Dating a future internet billionaire who loves books is even better.”
“Shhh.” I poke him in the stomach, and he starts giggling.
“Ow, don’t make me laugh! It hurts too bad.” He gets serious. “Hey, what’s going to happen with Grant? I still want to thank him for reporting that guy to the cops.”
We found that out yesterday, when a policeman stopped by the house to tell us Grant had been by on the night of the incident at La Casita, all bruised up. He’d told them Deagan Dunkirk had perpetrated a hate crime in the restaurant, attempting to hide his identity by wearing a bandana on his face.
“How did you recognize him?” they’d asked Grant.
“He told me to stay away from his sister,” Grant had apparently said. “Which points to a certain older brother in town who has a pretty good reason for beating the crap out of me. But his only reason for going after Ashton was because he’s not white. I think that makes it a hate crime, doesn’t it?”
“We’ll look into it,” the policemen had told him, and then tried to persuade Grant to go to the hospital to get checked out, but he’d refused. Later, they’d picked up Deagan. Once they found the bandana in his pickup truck, he’d admitted everything.
“Grant’s not returning any of our calls,” I tell Ashton. “And his mom won’t respond, either. We’re pretty worried.”
“You’ll hear from him,” Ashton says. “A guy like Grant isn’t going to ghost. You girls are too important to him.”
“Doris denies it, but I’m pretty sure Grant’s in love with her. Even after all this. Especially after all this.”
“He is,” says Ashton. “I’d recognize that look anywhere.”
50
Doris
Chassie’s house is picture-perfect from the outside. It’s trim and bright and shiny, with a pretty blue door. Unlike the neighbor’s parched brown August grass, Chassie’s is a lush green. I know for a fact that it’s maintained by Grant’s stepdad’s lawn service. I’ve waited until Sunday to make the trip, figuring they’ll all be at church and I can just sneak in and leave the manatee, doing this one good deed for someone just because. I knock and knock, and no one answers. I grab the doorknob and turn. I’m not surprised to find it unlocked. What startles me is that the inside of the house is as different from its outside as you can imagine. It’s a wreck, with piles of clothes and magazines and video games and random stuff everywhere.
The last time I was at Chassie’s house was for a birthday party when I was seven years old. It wasn’t a mess inside then; it was neat and clean and full of flowers. It was before the invitations got exclusive, before alcohol was flowing. It was before her mother died, before anyone really knew she was sick. I can remember how pretty she was, Mrs. Dunkirk—like Chassie but different. She had this long dark hair that she’d let all of the girls and some of the boys (those who expressed an interest, and she didn’t judge) take turns braiding.
“My mom is part Cherokee,” Chassie had bragged back then, before she knew that some people in our town didn’t think that was something to be proud of. I remember eating cake, and playing with everyone, and watching Chassie open her presents and feeling embarrassed when she saw my gift and made a face and said, “Oh, it’s just books!” I remember her mom telling her that wasn’t a kind thing to say, and holding me on her lap and rocking me when I cried because I was ashamed. She told me our hair looked alike. She smelled fresh, like lemons and lilacs. I close my eyes for a second, remembering.
“What do you want?” I hear, and my eyes snap back open.
Chassie is standing in front of me, her mouth turned down in a frown. “This is breaking and entering! That’s not going to look great on your college applications.” Then her eyes drop to the stuffed animal in my hands. “Oh my God!” she says. “How did you find him?” She reaches out for the manatee, and I put him in her arms. She buries her face in the top of his fuzzy head. The eyes that look out at me are eight-year-old Chassie once again. “Bernard! I never thought I’d see him again!”
I feel a lot of things, but what comes out of my mouth is “Bernard? You named your favorite stuffed animal Bernard?”
I see a legitimate smile. “I was kind of a dork, I guess. Plus, that was the name of…” Her eyes narrow then. “Where did you get him? I lost him when I was a tiny kid. Around the time my mom…”
I pull out the note and show it to her. “I found him at Unclaimed. He was shipped to us in a Hello Kitty wheelie bag, with nothing else in it but a flashlight.”
“That was my suitcase!” says Chassie. “But how did you find it now? It went missing years ago. The airline could never recover it. They ‘compensated us for our loss,’ whatever that means, and washed their hands of it.”
“I don’t really know,” I say. “I guess it got lost at the Huntsville airport somehow. The box it was in came to us this summer. It was full of bags that had left their original destinations eight years ago.”
“I thought he was gone forever,” she says.
And then Chassie Dunkirk asks me to come inside.
“Have a seat,” she says, gesturing to a cozy-looking floral couch and moving a pile of laundry from it to the table to give me space. She takes the chair across from me and gives me kind of a sheepish look. “I haven’t been really on top of keeping the house clean, with my arm situation.”
“It’s OK,” I say.
“This was a really nice thing to do.” She has the manatee—er, Bernard—in her lap, her hand on the top of his head. “Why would you do that when I’ve only been shitty, or worse, to you?”
“I’m trying to be a connector,” I say. “Like my aunt—like Stella was.”
“Did Grant put you up to it?”
I shake my head.
“Hmm,” says Chassie, and we just stare at each other for a long time. “I was so jealous of you,” she finally says.
“You were?” I ask. “Why in the world would you be jealous of me?”
“We
ll, Grant always liked you, back when we were kids. And then, because of my mom. After you came to that birthday party, I remember her talking about you. She kept saying how sweet and smart and pretty you were. It made me so mad! And then she got sick.”
“That must have been really hard,” I say.
“We were flying back and forth from here to Dallas all the time. She had this rare blood disease, and there are, like, three doctors in the country who’ve studied it, and one of them was there. On one of those trips I saw the manatee in the gift shop. I wanted him so badly. I love manatees. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. They get maimed by speedboats because they swim so slowly. They’re even vegetarians! I started going into the gift shop every day to see the manatee, and finally, when things were looking pretty bad with my mom, my dad bought him for me. I named him Bernard, after her favorite nurse, and I’d fly back and forth with him in my suitcase. Deagan told me it was dark in there and he was probably scared, so I started packing a flashlight with him, too. I wrote the note, just in case. And then one day the suitcase just wasn’t there. My dad called and called. We filed all the claims. No one could find it. When Mom died, we kind of gave up. She was gone, and so was he. There was no bringing anything back at that point.”
“You lost Bernard.”
“I lost everything.” She looks at me, and her eyes are wet. “Can I keep him?”
“He’s yours,” I say. “He always has been. I don’t take things that belong to other people.”
She wipes her eyes and keeps watching me. “Are you with Grant?” she asks. “I thought you were dating.”