by Jeff Zentner
Jesmyn looks at me as if I’ve slapped her. “Listen to yourself.” She raises her index finger. “One week ago we were having a goodbye day for him. One week.” Her voice is unsteady and swollen with tears.
We stare ahead and say nothing. Jesmyn shakes her head. She wipes at her eyes.
“Eli would have wanted us to be together if he wasn’t around anymore.” I say it to myself, hoping she won’t hear and make me repeat it.
She spins to face me, eyes ablaze. She points in my face with a shaking finger. “I am not a stamp collection that someone leaves in a will, got it? I am not a piece of property to be passed down.”
Watch it burn. Watch it burn. “I didn’t mean to—”
But she’s already got the door open. She whirls to face me. “Do I need to tell you not to text me, call me, or talk to me?” She gets out and slams the door so hard, I’m surprised the window doesn’t shatter.
She makes it a few steps toward her house before she spins around and returns. She opens the door. A surge of illogical, unfounded hope passes through me. Look, she’ll say, we’re both really emotional right now. Let’s forget all of this ever happened and keep being friends.
She leans in the open door. “Another thing. You might’ve had a chance. Had. Maybe. But now?” With another window-rattling door slam, she’s gone.
I sit catatonic for several moments. It’s the same stupor as when I found out what had happened to Sauce Crew. In which I wonder if I’m imagining what happened, because it’s too horrendous to be real.
As Jesmyn’s front door stays closed and dark, the pain begins to flood in like in movies where a submarine is sinking. A little jet of water. Then another; bigger. And another. They’re becoming thicker. Unfixable. Until finally, the sea rushes in, hungry and black, to claim everyone left alive.
I hate my dead friend Eli.
Even more than that, I hate myself.
I make it home eleven minutes after my midnight curfew, but I don’t particularly care. What are my parents going to do? Ground me from hanging out with friends?
I go into their bedroom and give them the I-haven’t-been-drinking-or-smoking-pot hugs and then I head for my room. But then I hear raucous laughter from behind Georgia’s door and reconsider. No way am I going to sleep.
I go out and sit on the front steps, resting my elbows on my knees. I have no idea how long I’m out there because I don’t own a watch or—at the present—a phone.
The sound of the front door opening startles me. I look over my shoulder.
“Hey,” Georgia says. “There you are. When did you get home?”
“Little while ago. Where are Maddie and Lana?”
“Inside. Drunk-texting exes. We smuggled a bottle of vodka home from school.”
“Good, because I really, really can’t deal with them right now.”
“Hang on,” Georgia says. She goes inside and comes out a few moments later with a blanket. She sits and wraps it around both of us, snuggling up next to me, shivering. “Okay. Spill.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Jesmyn?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re way into her.”
“Yeah.”
“Obviously.”
“Great.”
“But she’s not into you at the moment because too weird.”
“Yeah.”
“That all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Yes. But is that all?”
I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut. “I totally screwed myself. Told her how I felt. Said a bunch of stupid stuff. She’s really pissed.”
Georgia hugs my arm and rests her head on my shoulder. “Aw, Carver.”
I rub the side of my head like I’m trying to get out a stain. “She was all I had. She was my only friend here.”
“I know.”
“I’m really lonely.”
“I bet.”
“I want to be happy again before I die. That’s all I want.”
We sit for a long time without speaking in the lovelorn and desperate circle of porch light, shivering and listening to the crickets’ dying song in the brisk darkness. The air is heavy with dew when we finally end our empty vigil.
I once thought heartbreak was akin to contracting a cold or becoming pregnant. It only comes one at a time. Once you get it, you can’t get it again until you’re done with the first round.
It turns out it’s actually more like how you eat dinner until you’re full. But the minute someone says, “There’s pie!” you suddenly have room again in your dessert stomach, separate from your dinner stomach. You have a love heart, separate from your grieving heart, or your guilt heart, or your fear heart. All can be individually broken in their own way.
So I have all kinds of room for a new type of heartbreak.
That’s what I discover the Sunday after the Dearly show, when I have all day to sit and stew and be lonely and lock myself in my room for safety until Maddie and Lana are gone. Which sucks, because I really need a day to hang out with Georgia.
I relearn it on Monday morning, when I show up to school alone. Jesmyn and I didn’t always ride to school together. But we always met up to hang out for a few minutes before class. Not now.
It really sinks in at lunch. We always ate lunch together. I sit in the buzzing, pulsing cafeteria, hoping she sees me; hoping my forlornness can win her over. But she’s nowhere to be found. I guess she’s eating lunch in the music rooms. She said her friend Kerry and the other music nerds did that.
So I sit alone and indulge in wishful thinking, imagining her sitting there as lost as I am. At best, I can envision her giving off the faintest whiff of melancholy; so that someone asks what’s wrong, and she says, “Nothing.”
But at least someone cares about her enough to ask. Everyone steers clear of me. There must be some threshold for looking lonely that I’ve crossed. Where people sympathize with you but fear they completely lack what it takes to fill the echoing chasm inside you, so why try?
The only person who looks in my direction is Adair. She walks past with four of her friends and gives me a viperous serves-you-right glare. My solitude is nectar to her. Don’t worry, Adair, Eli’s ghost is having his revenge on me for trying to get with his girlfriend.
And so it goes. I’m starting to wonder if jail might not be so bad. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. The only difference with Saturday and Sunday is nobody can see me being alone. And then repeat: Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. I rarely see Jesmyn, and when I do, she manages to not even accidentally look at me.
My parents can sense my isolation. I must be radioactive with it. My dad takes me to Parnassus Books and tells me to pick out anything I want. I’m not in the mood for much, though.
The police return my phone and laptop on Thursday. They drop them off at Mr. Krantz’s office. I can’t turn my phone on quickly enough. Maybe she texted me, unaware I still didn’t have it.
Nothing.
I contemplate texting her. Calling her. Leaving her a note. Something. But then I remember her face when she told me not to.
I count the hours until my appointment with Dr. Mendez that Friday. He’s pretty much all I have left. And if we didn’t pay him, I wouldn’t have him either.
This is the time I’d normally be listening to Jesmyn practice. In brighter days. It’s funny (and by “funny,” I mean “horrendously sad”)—to refer to the period when you were only dealing with the deaths of your three best friends, the hatred of their loved ones, and the prospect of incarceration as “brighter days.”
I hear my mom answer her phone from my bedroom, where I sit, trying to read Slaughterhouse-Five for AP English lit.
Something in the formality of her tone pricks my ears and I strain to listen.
“Okay…so at five? What channel? Okay. And—okay. Should we call you afterward? Okay. I’ll tell him. Thank you so much.”
My mom hurries down the hallway to my dad’s study, and he stops playing his
acoustic guitar.
Please don’t both of you come this way. Please.
I hear them both coming my way. Surely at some point, my recently overworked adrenal glands will simply explode with a little popping sound.
“Carver?” my dad says, knocking on my doorframe, my mom beside him. They’re not smiling.
I turn but say nothing.
“We just got a call from Mr. Krantz. He said that in an hour, the district attorney’s office is holding a press conference to talk about your case. He expects them to announce some decision.”
“Okay,” I say finally, my blood howling, turning every muscle to mush.
“Meet in the living room in an hour to watch?” my mom asks.
“Okay.” My intestines feel like a steamroller is slowly ironing them flat.
My parents leave. I settle in for what will surely be one of the longest hours of my life. I want to text Jesmyn so badly. And I don’t even know what I’d say. First I’d have to apologize. Once I cleared that barrier, if she even wanted to hear more, all I’d have to say would be: Somewhere, someone has the answer to this question: Will Carver Briggs’s life be ruined? (Correction: more ruined). And I have to wait an hour to learn the answer.
The hour passes. I sit in the living room, one parent on each side of me.
“All right, Kimberly,” the newscaster says. “I understand we’re going live now to the Davidson County Courthouse, where the Davidson County district attorney, Karen Walker, will be making an announcement?”
“That’s right, Peter. They’re going to announce what course of action they’re planning to take with regard to the car accident that claimed the lives of three teenage boys on August first. Some of our viewers will recall that this accident was linked to texting.”
My mom is shaking next to me. I take a ragged breath; it feels like my lungs are full of wet cement. My pulse hammers in my temples, a headache brewing at the base of my skull.
The camera cuts to an empty podium with several microphones. The district attorney steps up to it.
“Thank you all for coming today. The accident that claimed the lives of Thurgood Edwards, Blake Lloyd, and Elias Bauer on August first, was a tragedy by any definition. The remaining question, though, was whether it was a crime as well. Over the past nearly three months, our office, in conjunction with the Nashville Metro Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, has diligently investigated this question. We have concluded that…”
My vision narrows to a laser pinpoint.
“…this tragic accident was…”
I wonder what I’ll do when they say it. When they tell me I’m finished. I wonder if I’ll cry. If I’ll scream. If I’ll have a panic attack. If I’ll just pass out.
“…not the result of criminal conduct, and our office will not be seeking an indictment against the fourth surviving juvenile involved….”
My mom explodes in sobs. My dad exhales and buries his face in his palms, weeping. I sit completely still and mute. I’m not sure I’ve heard what I think I’ve heard, like when you watch TV half-asleep and you have to chew on each sentence to make sure you didn’t imagine it.
“…We extend our condolences once more to the Edwards, Bauer, and Lloyd families. We take this opportunity to warn young people against the dangers of texting and driving. Even when it does not rise to the level of criminal conduct, it has terrible consequences, as we’ve seen. Our office will continue to—”
My mom grabs me in a hug from one side. “Oh, praise Jesus,” she murmurs over and over. Her Mississippi shows most at times of great emotional duress. My dad hugs me from the other side. I stare dazed at the television.
My mom’s phone rings. “Hello? Oh, my goodness, yes, you have no idea. Yes. Yes, he is, I’ll give you to him. And thank you so, so much. All right. All right, bye.”
My mom hands the phone to me. “Mr. Krantz,” she whispers.
“Hello?”
“Carver! Well? Looks like you’re off the hook, son.”
“Um, yeah, that’s great.” I try to mirror his enthusiasm.
“I knew it’d be a stretch to try to charge you. They made the right choice.”
“Yeah.”
“Now, you may not be completely out of the woods yet. The DA could still reconsider, so don’t go talking about the accident. Also, Edwards could still file a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages. And it would be easier for him to win that without a criminal acquittal. Anyway, I gotta run; I have a client. Congratulations and take care, all right?”
“Okay.”
I hang up and draw a deep breath. I’m exhausted. I want to be alone.
“I need to go lie down,” I say.
“That’s fine, sweetie,” my mom says, hugging me again. “I’m going to go pick up some hot chicken from Hattie B’s to celebrate.”
In another life, that news alone would have made my night.
I go to my room and collapse on my bed and stare at the ceiling. I cry until warm tears enter my earholes, muting sound as if I’m underwater.
I have no idea why I’m crying. I think I’m happy but I’m not sure. Happiness would be not dealing with any of this. I guess I’m relieved, but an odd disappointment tempers any relief. It’s like I’ve been tied to a stake for days, the ropes rubbing my wrists and ankles raw; my tongue bloated and cracked from thirst. And the guy in the black hood coming with a torch to light the kindling under me turns and walks away, leaving the torch burning on the ground. And I’m still tied to the stake.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Jesmyn! She saw the news. She’s calling to congratulate me, to tell me that if the DA doesn’t consider it worthwhile to punish me, neither does she.
It’s a number I don’t recognize. A reporter? Did the police give out my number while they had my phone?
“Hello?”
“Carver Briggs?” asks the crisp, starchy female voice on the other end.
I really hate hearing people say my first and last names on the phone these days. I stand and pace. “Yes. This is me—he.”
“Please hold for Judge Frederick Edwards.”
And she’s gone before I can say, No, please, no. Anybody but him.
I sit; my legs have turned into octopus tentacles.
I hear the other end pick up and a long breath. “Do you know the means by which I obtained this number?” Judge Edwards’s voice sounds carved from granite.
“Um. No, sir. Your Honor. I don’t.” My voice is high and tight, like an overwound guitar string. I know I sound guilty.
“Venture a guess.” Not an invitation. A command.
It feels like a bone is stuck in my throat. “From the police?”
“After Thurgood was killed, the police turned over his personal effects to me. His phone was among them. Getting your number was a matter of looking at the last number to contact my son before his death.”
He lets the silence breathe, the way Dr. Mendez does. But it breathes differently: someone gathering his strength to run me through with a sword.
“Oh.” What do you say to that? Nice, good work.
“I suppose you’ve heard the news.”
“Yes. Your Honor. I did.”
“I suppose you feel pretty lucky.”
“I—I—”
And then he cuts me off, which is great, because I didn’t have a good answer to that statement. “Well, you were not lucky. If you repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone else, I will be very displeased. Are we clear?”
My mouth is parched. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“I personally asked the district attorney not to pursue charges.”
I’m dumbfounded. “Thank you, sir,” I say finally. “I promise—”
He laughs bitterly. “Thank you? This was not a personal favor to you. Nevertheless, you are greatly in my debt, and I intend to collect.”
“Okay.” Here comes the hammer. I brace myself.
“I’m told that you’ve embarked on a series
of ‘goodbye days,’ during which, if I understand correctly, you spend a day with the victim’s family and have a final day of remembrance?”
“Right.” Victim’s.
“Right what?”
“Right, Your Honor.”
“And you’ve done them so far with the Lloyd family and the Bauer family.”
“Yes, Your Honor. How did Your Honor—”
“Find out? Adair Bauer contacted my office, the police, and the district attorney’s office about them. She thought we should investigate whether you’d said anything self-incriminatory. She wanted us to talk to her parents. Not a bad idea.”
That’s why she was so adamant that her parents do it. “Oh.” And then I hastily add, “Your Honor.”
“Now I want my goodbye day for Thurgood.”
“Your Honor, I—”
“This Sunday you will be at my home at five-thirty a.m. You will dress for vigorous physical activity. You will also bring clothes appropriate for church. This is not a throw-on-your-T-shirt, Starbucks church. You dress the way you did for my son’s funeral. Understood?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
The line goes dead.
I feel ungrateful to the gods of fate that I’m not happier about the blade of prosecution not dangling over my neck anymore. I fantasized about this. But that was taking for granted Jesmyn’s presence in my life. It was also taking for granted that, in a few days, I wouldn’t be spending the day with the person who hates me the second most.
At school, a few people nod as we pass in the halls. Their expressions convey a sort of: I’m not sure how to congratulate you for not being prosecuted, but I’m more comfortable acknowledging you now that you’re not legally a murderer.
My AP English lit teacher pulls me aside after class and tells me how glad she is for my news. My school’s been fairly hands-off throughout this whole thing—pretty much just telling me when the cops were there to seize my phone and laptop. I guess they were afraid to tell me to go talk to the school counselor lest I involve him in a murder investigation.