by Jeff Zentner
After a couple more minutes, I’m able to walk unassisted. The fresh, damp air smells like the beginning of all life after so long in the restroom. We walk to the car without a word. Pierce won’t look at me. Not that I particularly want him to. Melissa seems to have some sense of what happened if not of the specifics.
The drive home is almost completely silent.
But Pierce and Melissa do tell us they’ve separated and intend to file for divorce. Not much you can say to that, even after Melissa offers the unsolicited reassurance that it had nothing to do with Eli’s death—they’d been discussing it for a while. I find that hard to believe. I heard somewhere that some huge percentage of marriages fall apart after the death of a child.
Not that I stood any chance of redeeming myself in Adair’s eyes, but now I’m finished. First her brother. Then her parents’ marriage. I’m a destroying angel to her. A plague on her life. I’m the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings, but my wings are covered in anthrax.
I’m actually glad my panic attack has left me mostly too numb and exhausted to dwell on the continuing ripples extending out from the stone I’ve thrown in this pool.
Mostly too numb. Every once a while, I look over at Jesmyn, who—and maybe I’m imagining this—sits closer to me than she did on the first leg of the journey. I consider the day’s epiphany and how it complicates things.
These chemicals. If only there were a way to drain them from my head.
I text Jesmyn almost immediately after I arrive home from dropping her off. I thank her for helping me through yet another panic attack. I thank her for letting me give her my parka to wear, because I didn’t want to see her cold and wet. I tell her how much I miss Eli. I tell her the first part of what Pierce said to me in the bathroom. I tell her I’m glad I got to see Fall Creek Falls before maybe being imprisoned.
I tell her everything but what I most want to tell her.
My blood howls in my ears the minute the principal walks into my AP biology class, interrupting a lecture about photosynthesis. She pulls my teacher aside and they confer in secretive, urgent whispers, casting furtive glances in my direction. The principal returns to the hall.
“Uh, Carver?” my teacher says.
It doesn’t come as the slightest surprise. I walk to the front, adrenaline singeing my ribs.
“Grab your things, if you would.”
Everyone turns in their chairs, their stares snagging on my skin like burrs. I hear their murmurs. My face smolders. I return to my desk, grab my stuff, and walk out of the classroom, head down.
The principal awaits me in the hall. “Carver, sorry to pull you out of class. There are a couple of detectives here who need to speak to you. If you’ll come with me.”
My heart shrinks to an icy steel ball. My head swims, delirious. They’re here to finally arrest me. They’ve found some piece of evidence. I’m done.
I nod and follow the principal to the office. Lieutenant Farmer and Sergeant Metcalf are there. I don’t say anything. Not even hello. Lieutenant Farmer holds two large envelopes. He hands one to me.
I accept it like it’s full of spiders.
“Carver, that’s a warrant to seize and search electronic files on your cell phone and laptop. We’ve faxed a copy over to your attorney. He’s looked at it. You’re welcome to call him or look it over.”
I say nothing but open the envelope and pull out the document inside, as if I’ll be able to tell whether it’s legitimate. It looks genuine.
“So?” I ask.
Sergeant Metcalf holds out a bag. “Cell phone in here. This is called a Faraday bag, and it blocks transmissions to and from your phone, so don’t bother trying to wipe any information from it remotely.”
I pull the murder weapon from my pocket and drop it in the bag. “What am I supposed to do without my phone?” I won’t even have my phone for the Dearly show.
Lieutenant Farmer chuckles sardonically. “For the week or two the state police are pulling stuff off it, you’ll have to make do. Generations of kids before you survived without cell phones.”
“Laptop too, please,” Sergeant Metcalf says. He holds out a bigger version of the bag I put my cell phone in.
I pull my laptop from my bag and hand it over. “What about homework assignments I have on there? Also, I have a bunch of stories and stuff I’ve written.”
The principal interjects. “Carver, you won’t be responsible for any homework assignments that are on your computer.”
“If you’re concerned about anything getting wiped from your computer, don’t be,” Sergeant Metcalf says. “The TBI’s job is to make sure nothing gets deleted from your laptop.”
“Okay. That’s everything. Can I—” I start to say.
Lieutenant Farmer hands me the other envelope. “This is a search warrant for your bedroom. We’re heading directly from here to your house. We just spoke with your mom, and she’s meeting us there. We’ve also discussed this with your lawyer, but you’re welcome to call him.”
“Can’t really do that with my phone in the thingy bag.” I’m aware I’m being a smartass, but their whole demeanor—this business of coming to my school—seems calculated to intimidate me. It’s working and I resent them for it.
“You can use our phones,” the principal says.
I call Mr. Krantz. He’s headed to court. He tells me to go home, watch the officers search, and videotape it.
The principal excuses me for the rest of the day. I drive home. When I arrive, my mom is already there and some uniformed officers have just pulled up. I tell her to film on her phone and she does.
They turn over every inch of my room. They lift each book and leaf through. Look under my mattress. Rummage through all my drawers. Go through my clothes hamper with rubber gloves on. Pull each picture and poster off the wall and look behind it. They unscrew the light fixture and peer inside. They open my vents and grope around in the ducts. I guess in case I wrote I killed my three best friends on purpose on a piece of paper and shoved it in there. They ask me if I keep a journal. I don’t, but I only stare at them anyway, confident it’s what Mr. Krantz would want me to do. They find a thumb drive and my iPod and put them in bags. They take some of the notebooks I write story ideas in.
Watching them, I feel like they’re picking through my innards, tugging meat from bone. Vultures on a carcass. Their hunger: to ruin my life even more than it’s already ruined.
I’m a coiled spring sitting across from Dr. Mendez. I’ve been dreading this visit because I know the first thing he’s going to say.
“Tell me a story,” he says.
“No.”
His expression doesn’t change. He’d be a hell of a poker player. He cocks his head and lets the silence breathe, waiting for me to explain. But I don’t.
“Why not?” he asks finally.
“People tell stories to create one where none existed. There is already a story here. We know what happened.”
“Do we?” Dr. Mendez is so still. Not just a passive lack of motion. Deeper than that. Actively still.
I can’t sit anymore. I get up and pace. “Yes. I texted Mars and I knew he would answer and he tried to do exactly what I knew he would do and my friends died because of it.”
“What about Billy? Hiro?”
My voice is rising. It’s satisfying, feeding anger to his quietude, setting this calm pasture ablaze. “They don’t exist. They’re figments of my imagination. They’re a lie I’m telling both of us. I know it, and so do the police. They have my phone and laptop right now, by the way, so I hope you didn’t try to call me. They searched my room. I’m going to jail.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“I mean, pretty much.”
“I’m sorry this is happening.”
“Me too.”
“If I could wave a wand and make it all go away for you, I would.”
“See about getting one of those wands maybe.”
Dr. Mendez gazes evenly at me through his re
ctangular, transparent-frame glasses. “You mentioned you were going to do a goodbye day for Eli.”
I stand in front of my chair and flounce down, causing it to skid backward a few inches. “Yeah.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“How did it go?”
“Oh. Fantastic.” I punctuate “fantastic” with two acerbic thumbs-ups.
Dr. Mendez’s placid smile makes me instantly regret my sarcasm and anger. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Don’t be.”
“It was a disaster.”
Pause. Waiting.
So I continue. “Eli’s parents…have issues. They haven’t gotten along for a while. Now they’re getting a divorce. They said it wasn’t because of this, but it is. And it was super awkward being with them. Plus Eli’s dad basically told me he holds me responsible. Oh, but he doesn’t want me to go to prison and he doesn’t hate me as much as Eli’s sister, who definitely wants to see me skip prison entirely and go straight to the electric chair. And of course Eli’s sister didn’t go on the goodbye day but she really wanted her parents to go for some reason. It was a really weird situation.”
“Drastically different, I gather, from the experience with Blake’s grandmother.”
“Yeah. Plus I had another panic attack. In the filthy-ass restroom. My second in front of Jesmyn.”
“I’m sorry.”
My legs start bouncing. “I’m sick of the panic attacks. I’ve been taking my Zoloft just like you prescribed.”
Dr. Mendez nods and stands. He walks back to his desk, opens a locked drawer, grabs a pad, and comes back, sits, and begins scribbling. “I’m going to up your Zoloft dosage.” He tears the prescription from the pad and holds it out to me.
I sit still, eying the paper. But I don’t reach for it. “Will that stop the attacks?”
“If not, it’ll be a step in the right direction. We’ll get this figured out.”
“In the meantime I sit here and tell you stories.” I finally take the prescription from him.
Dr. Mendez places his prescription pad on his side table, sits back, and crosses his legs, clasping his hands in front of him and resting his elbow on his knee. “I promise you that there is method to this apparent madness. Do you trust me when I say that?”
“I guess.” I can hardly hear my own voice.
“Do you believe me if I tell you that the point of our work here—these stories—is not to ask you to lie to yourself or anyone else?”
“It feels like it, but yeah.”
“And it’s not to suggest that we have no accountability for our actions.”
“Okay.”
“If I told you that I have good reason to believe this could help you, are you with me?”
“Yeah.”
“I promise you: if this does not work, we will try something else.”
This is one of the only things in your life not trying to destroy you. My eyes fill with tears and I look down. “Okay,” I whisper to the floor.
“Tell me about Eli’s goodbye day. It sounds like a confrontational experience. People. Emotions.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you able to confront anything you hadn’t been able to previously?”
Funny how I’m fine confessing murder to him but not love. “Um. Yeah.” I stare at the rug. I look up and he’s watching, waiting. “I…realized that I might have feelings for Jesmyn.”
“I imagine that raises some complicated issues.”
“You think?” Dr. Mendez’s calm gives my sarcasm no oxygen. “Eli’s dad at one point is all, ‘Oh, by the way, I see how you look at her and I don’t ever want you to hook up with my dead son’s girlfriend.’ ”
“How about emotional issues within you?”
“Obviously. That too.”
He rubs his chin and taps his lips with his index finger. “I wonder if some important component of the guilt you’ve been harboring is related to your growing fondness for Jesmyn.”
“Could be.” It’s a little more than “could be,” but no need to let on exactly how far this dude is up in my head.
“Not all experiences need to teach us the same thing. It’s all right if Eli’s goodbye day allowed you to confront a different side of your emotional being than Blake’s goodbye day.”
“I guess.”
“So. Tell me a story?”
“I want you to tell me exactly how to handle the Jesmyn situation.”
“I wish I had a simple answer. I’m not just being coy here.”
“I’d even settle for a complex answer,” I murmur. “Any answer.”
“I’m confident one will present itself in time. Sometimes answers arise through the process of elimination.”
I give a rueful laugh. “I’m working hard on eliminating all the answers that allow me to feel like a normal, happy human being. Wanna hear something funny, though?”
He raises his eyebrows and nods for me to continue.
“When Eli’s dad was saying how he considers me responsible, I didn’t want to accept responsibility the way I did when I talked about it with Blake’s grandma.”
“What were you feeling?”
“I wanted to tell him about Billy and Hiro. Even though that’s stupid and they don’t exist.” Tears cloud my throat.
Dr. Mendez gives me a moment to compose myself. Then he leans back and makes himself comfortable. “How about telling me a story?”
I sigh and stand in front of the open fridge of my imagination for a few seconds. “So there’s this guy named…Jiminy Turdsworth.”
Now on top of everything else, Jesmyn won’t leave my thoughts. Eli’s goodbye day opened some door I can’t shut again.
Not that I’ve tried very hard.
“No, I’m sorry. You are not going to a sold-out Dearly show, with a hot girl, dressed like a sad-ass Ernest Hemingway,” Georgia says.
I shrug. “Well.”
“Well nothing. You’re lucky Maddie and Lana and I drove in from Knoxville in time to fix this. The show starts in eight hours. We’re taking you to Opry Mills Mall.”
I lower my voice to a hoarse whisper; I can hear them talking and laughing in Georgia’s room. “Maddie and Lana always sexually harass me.”
“Oh, puhlease. You love the attention from college girls.”
“No I don’t. They always seem to be mocking me.”
“They are.”
“See?”
“You still love it.”
I try on clothes while Maddie and Lana hoot and whistle, trying to make me blush. When we’re done, I’m wearing a pair of dark-gray jeans that hurt my nuts, some brown Chelsea boots, and a black jacket. I look good, though. I have to grudgingly admit that much. And I’m excited for the show and seeing Jesmyn. Seeing her every day doesn’t diminish that in any way.
Not even Maddie and Lana taking turns trying to slap me on the ass in the parking lot on the way to the car dampens my mood.
I forget about the Accident.
I forget about the DA and Mr. Krantz.
I forget about my phone and laptop sitting at the TBI, waiting for something incriminating to be pulled off them.
I forget about Blake’s and Eli’s goodbye days.
I forget about Nana Betsy living on a hillside somewhere in East Tennessee.
I forget about Pierce and Melissa living in separate houses.
I forget about Adair and Judge Edwards looking at me like my name was carved into their skin with a rusty nail.
I forget about the people at school whispering about Jesmyn and me.
I forget about Billy and Hiro.
I forget about the panic attacks.
I try to remember the last time I felt so good and I can’t.
Jesmyn appears at the top of the stairs. I made sure to arrive fifteen minutes late. She’s wearing a pair of high-waisted, skintight black jeans with rips in the knees, a black T-shirt that shows the tiniest strip of her midriff, black ankle boots, and the gray jacket she
wore for Eli’s goodbye day. Her bangs are cut in a straight fringe and hang a bit in her eyes. She has ornate, smoky eye makeup.
Seeing her feels like taking a rise in the road too fast, when all your organs are weightless. “You changed your hair.”
“You noticed!”
“Of course. You didn’t have bangs before.”
“They turn out all right?”
Play it cool. “Yeah, totally,” I say uncoolly.
She looks me up and down. “And hello, Mr. Rock Star Makeover.”
“Georgia made me buy new clothes for the show.”
“She has awesome taste. We make a great pair.”
I feel a momentary fluorescence and become light-headed.
“Oh! Forgot something.” She runs back to her room and returns holding her iPod.
She makes it halfway down the stairs when it hits—it’s the same feeling as that of going to school dressed for a warm morning, and when class lets out, the air smells like wet stone and the wind blows hard and cold from the north. Eli. You’re heading to Eli’s show with Eli’s girlfriend while Eli’s spirit makes its way down a river, or floats in a cloud, waiting to fall as rain. While Eli sits in an urn.
When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she hugs me in a whiff of citrus and honey.
She pulls out her phone and holds it at arm’s length. “Squinch up.”
I move in close to her and try to smile normally. She takes a picture, types something, and puts her phone in her pocket. Then she jumps, claps, and gives a little squeal. “Yay! I’m so excited for this show!”
I hope she stays in this mood. If she does, she can carry us. I’ll need it, I’m sure.
We get in my car and she sits cross-legged. She grabs the aux cable on my stereo and turns to me. She has a nervous giddiness in her voice I’ve never heard before.
“Okay. I have a surprise.” She takes a deep breath and plugs in her iPod as we pull away. She giggles and covers her face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she murmurs.
The music starts—a sensuous, verdant electronic soundscape with driving drum machine beats. Then the vocals enter, lush and warm. The opening days of summer. It’s her; I can tell immediately. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her sing.