The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash

by Candace Ganger

  I’m sorry there’s no will. No point. We ain’t got shit to give away. In fact, take that trailer, everything in it, and burn that mother down. But tell the neighbors first. We’re not quitters, but we’re also not inconsiderate arsonists. Start over. Somewhere big and beautiful, somewhere deserving of you. But more than this, my little Picasso, be everything I know you can be. Believe in yourself. I always have.

  Love, Ma

  My tears drip onto the paper as I crumble it to a ball inside my fist. Pain surges through me. My veins are electrical lines, lit with the kind of power that could either come alive or burst into flames. I fall to my knees and sob into my hands, right here on the cold, hard sidewalk where I watched Birdie do the same for me. I want the pavement to crack apart, open a hole I can fall straight through. I miss you so much, Ma, it physically hurts. Like someone pulled all of my bones apart, one by one, and tossed them into a fire. I don’t care if anyone hears me, sees me. I just want to sink into the earth and disappear, forever.

  Without her, there’s nothing.

  The wind picks up, nearly blows the envelope out of my hand. I slap my hand down on the flap and notice another piece of paper tucked inside, the tip barely visible. My shaking fingers grab it.

  It’s a check. Written to me.

  The memo: Via Sebastian’s Trust Fund.

  The amount: $100,000.

  And signed: Jeffrey Taylor.

  birdie

  Dr. Stein says, “Pigs do fly.”

  I get the reference but don’t laugh. He’s waiting, standing here for the rumpus to erupt, but there is none. We are not that kind of family anymore. You could say we’ve become a bit jaded, or maybe he’s just not funny. Benny’s eyes have been open a few days now, his fingers twitching more, and that flicker of light Dr. Stein swore he saw, well, we see it now, too. Everyone does, which means Mom spends a lot of time prancing around with a smug look on her face as if to say told you so. Doctors Morrow and Schwartz have been in more frequently, examining Benny, commenting how “astounding” his progress has been. They’ve even asked if they could document his case in one of their studies that would be shown to hospitals around the world.

  As far as money goes, thanks to an angel donor’s check and donations from people around the community, Benny’s bill has a huge dent in it, and Mom and Dad can finally breathe, I can breathe, while we figure out the rest. Ms. Schilling even found another scholarship for me. It’s a little less than the last, but it’s something. And right now, though I’ve yet to tell my parents about the lack of college money, it’s enough. It’s like the stars have started to align or something—not that I completely believe in all that. But something definitely shifted in our favor. Part of me wonders if Nan had a hand in this, while the other part knows there has to be a logical explanation instead.

  I’ve been working less hours at the rink, not that I ever worked much in the first place, but it feels strange. It has nothing to do with needing the money, or Benny’s condition, or because I dislike scraping gum off the bottoms of tables, but because there’s no Bash. I’ve asked Vinny to reconsider, but he says Bash is a lost cause. Hearing his name or seeing the chair he used to sit in makes my heart break all over again, so I decided not to be there for now. Plus, Evie’s been hugging me more, telling me things like “he’s not worth it, honey,” and “even innocent, he’s still guilty.” Everyone has an opinion on who (they think) Bash is and what (they think) should happen to him. But none of them really know.

  Not even me.

  While Mom and Dad are at the hospital, I rustle through my closet to find something dark, something bleak. Something that screams I’m-sorry-your-Mom-died-and-I-wasn’t-there-but-you-got-arrested-for-being-involved-in-the-hit-and-run-of-my-brother-and-you-lied-to-me-and-I’ve-tried-to-hate-you-but-I-don’t. A dress is hanging from each hand when Sarge interrupts. He doesn’t say anything, but instead, holds a square of bubble wrap into the air like a siren.

  Pop pop pop.

  I look up, and he smiles. “Got a minute?

  “Sure.” I toss the dresses to my bed for further consideration (neither is really an option because they don’t convey the right message of being sorry but not too sorry). “What’s up?” I ask sitting down on the bare spot they leave on my bed.

  He moves slowly and sits along the edge of my bed next to me. I feel the warmth of him even though there’s ample space between us. “How are you?” he asks.

  I hesitate. “Fine.”

  “How are you really?”

  My hands fold together between my legs, and I shrug. When we discovered Bash’s actual part in the accident, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding between Mom and me. That the heart wants what it wants, despite not always knowing if it’s for the best. We’ve yet to decide if my heart is right or wrong, but I’m banking on the former.

  “I realized no one has asked how you’re doing lately. Since your friend was arrested. I know how Mom and Brooks and Brynn are. I’m pretty sure I know how Chomperz feels. So I want to know. How are you, Birdie?” He points a thick finger at my heart.

  “Fine.” I feel the tears mounting, so I look away.

  “I know you feel a great sense of responsibility for a lot of things beyond your control, things you can’t calculate or reason. But you don’t have to always be strong or pretend you aren’t hurting. If you feel guilty—about Benny, about that boy, about any of it—it’s all right. But know this: if you need to fall apart, to release all the pain you’ve been holding on to all these weeks, I’ll be right there to put you back together.” He clears his throat, then hesitates. “For a while there, before Benny woke up, you were … different.”

  “What do you mean, different?” My voice is small and quiet.

  He chuckles. “In a good way. Through all the darkness, you found some sort of light. And now that everything’s out in the open, I know why.”

  My heart flutters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  As he pats my leg, his smile grows. “Birds, it’s okay. Tragedy rips people apart. It devours every last bit of the soul, and in some, erases all hope or faith or belief anything could ever be good again. But you found a reason to smile, to forget, to live. And God damn it, I’m so glad you did. Nan would be, too.”

  His eyes let me right inside without limit, and in this very moment, I miss Nan so much, I could die. I know, realistically, “broken heart syndrome” is actually a temporary muscle weakness that’s been caused by a surge of intense stress, but I wonder if the damage in my own “broken” heart is irreversible and I will, in fact, eventually die from it.

  “I know you. You’re overthinking, listing all the reasons you shouldn’t laugh, or all the ways things could’ve been different, and are probably weighing your parents’ opinions more than your own here. But I’m telling you, as someone with a helluva lot more objective insight, and I think Nan would agree with me if she were here—you’re wrong.”

  My lips tremble as I blink the tears free from my lashes. “Wrong? About what?”

  “Love.”

  I gasp, putter through a string of unintelligible words.

  His smile widens, revealing the lines of a life well lived around his eyes. “If Nan had given up on me for making mistakes, for being human, we wouldn’t have had fifty years together. You want my advice? Forgive him. Don’t let his mistake keep you from the things you deserve to feel. This doesn’t mean you’ll forget, no. It just means to decide if it’s worth holding on to the anger, or if in doing that, you’ll always wonder what could’ve been.”

  My body shifts, suddenly uncomfortable inside its own skin.

  “Birdie … I know it’s confusing to care about someone who’s hurt you, your family, but … he lit you up inside a very dark world. Don’t ever be ashamed for feeling that light.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but all words become one jumbled image. Of Bash. With a long, dramatic sigh, Sarge stands and leaves me in this spot. As he rounds the corner, he finishes
our heart-to-heart with the only thing that makes sense in this world so full of uncertainty.

  Pop pop pop.

  * * *

  A while later, I’m sitting with my legs kicked up in the hospital chair next to the dream catcher Violet brought by to siphon off Benny’s night tremors, while Mom reads a magazine next to his bed. With Benny’s progress all over the news, everyone is treating me differently, but this time, in a good way. They’re not walking around with their heads hung low, saying “I’m so sorry” or hugging me too much (except for Vi, still). They’re smiling at me, saying “good for you,” like I’m the one who made it happen, which I don’t mind them thinking. And because I never told most people—including Vi—about my complex relationship with Bash, I also never had to explain all the bad things that followed.

  I’ve had Camilla’s obituary next to the crinkled mess of Bash’s arrest and release articles, stuffed in the corner of my camera case for days where they’re safe, even though at first, once the shock wore off, I wanted to pretend I’d never met him, pretend he wasn’t part of the biggest earthquake to have ever happened in the Paxton realm. But I can’t. He’s, like, in my bones, where it’s built up, hardened, disrupting the normal process, the usual flow.

  Sebastian Alvarez is calcification defined.

  I glance at the clock to keep track of time, 8:37 A.M., and tap my pencil on my shiny black leggings. As I’m finishing up the extra-credit work I don’t need in an educational kind of way, but more like a keep-my-mind-off-things kind of way, I try, with everything in me, not to think of the calcium buildup that didn’t just disrupt organ function, but broke the valves of my heart altogether.

  Dad drove me over to trailer seventeen a few days ago to get my car and be my shield against any confrontation. With the 7 dangling against the rusted siding, there was no sign of Bash, like he’s been gone all along. And thinking back, I guess that’s kind of true. Dad must’ve seen the hurt on my face—the longing to see the mysterious, heartbreaking Sebastian Alvarez just one more time—because he looked up at me with these watered eyes and tight lips, and said, “Sometimes, love and loss are kind of the same,” and I remember choking a little, not because he was so wrong, but because he was so right.

  The day Kyle Taylor was officially arrested for the hit-and-run, a huge anvil was plucked from my shoulders. Though everyone tried to tell me otherwise, I knew all along, somewhere deep inside my soul, Bash was (mostly) innocent. I didn’t use assumptions or guesses, but facts. It is a fact he is not capable of such a thing. I will attest to that one under oath.

  And these same thoughts, these truths and facts, haunt me every second of every day.

  Suddenly, his face enters my mind.

  It’s all I see, feel.

  I lift my phone. No messages or calls.

  I hold my stare long, hope wishing for it will make it so, but every passing second leaves my inbox, and me, emptier than ever. Back to work, I sink into the chair a little farther.

  For the following reaction, predict whether the rate is likely to be fast or slow, based on the physical state of the reactants:

  H2(g) + Cl2(g) → 2 HCl(g)

  Scribbling the answer—crazy fast—I feel Mom’s eyes shift in my direction.

  “And pretty soon, Benny Boo,” she says to him, “you’ll be out of this place, and we’ll be a whole family again.”

  I look up from my work to see her eyes. “You’re not wearing your glasses,” she comments.

  “Haven’t in days.”

  She walks toward me, moves to sit in the chair my feet are propped up on. I swing them down to give her room. “Your eyes … they’re so … pretty,” she says, brushing my hair off my cheek.

  With a long sigh, she holds my stare. “I know about the scholarship.”

  My stomach knots. This exact conversation is the very thing that set this horrible trail of things in motion, why I’m even sitting in a hospital at all. My instinct now is to run from it. So as not to cause more pain. I try to stand, but she plants me back down into the chair.

  “Birdie, I’m not mad. If anything, I feel sad for you. I know how hard you worked for that scholarship, how hard you work, period. And by the way, even though Brynn takes great pride in burning you at the stake, I’d never punish you for sneaking out to a party! You’re such a good girl, you deserve to do fun things. Just ask us next time. I trust your judgment. You’re almost eighteen. You’ll be out of the house soon, and I’ve got to start learning to let you go.”

  I bite my tongue, afraid of what she’ll say next, afraid I might start crying and never stop.

  She tucks a few strands behind my ear; her hand is cold from the hospital air, but I don’t mind. “I don’t want you to worry about the money part. Dad and I will do whatever we have to so yours, Brynn’s, and Benny’s needs are met. No matter what. Okay?”

  “But how did you know?” I ask.

  “Ms. Schilling called. She was worried about you after Benny’s accident, and because I know how hard you take news like that, I was afraid to say anything. I didn’t really know how to tell you everything would be okay when, at the time, I wasn’t sure myself. Now I know it will be. But … I’ve been wondering.”

  “What?”

  “Why lie? It’s not like you to keep things from me.”

  My chest tightens, the air too thick to inhale. “I was afraid you’d be disappointed. I started to tell you in the garage. That’s when, well, Benny … and it was all my fault—”

  “Oh, Birdie,” she says, hugging me tight. Her voice expands to a full-on cry. “What a horrible guilt you must’ve been carrying around.” She pulls back from me and cups my face in her palms. “That was an accident. It’s not your fault. I. Love. You. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel otherwise.”

  She’s sobbing now. I press my forehead against hers and close my eyes like we used to do when I was little. A smile breaks across my face, a kind I haven’t had since before the accident. She inhales the side of my head and breathes out like it’s the best scent she’s ever smelled, and I look up at her, and still see, feel, Bash. There is no amount of Wite-Out or erasing that can undo the drawing he’s etched on my heart.

  She pulls back again to wipe her tears, as she looks deep into the quiet sorrow I’m still clinging to. Her eyes possess more pressing questions but she smiles slightly and pats my arm. “I’ve never seen you so upset over a boy before. You love him.”

  I fall back to the layers of her, avoiding the statement. If I avoid it, we don’t have to talk about it again. If we don’t talk about it, maybe it isn’t true.

  The soft cords of her sweater smother me, but I like it. With a glimmer of compassion in her eyes, she kisses my forehead. “I’m so sorry, Birdie.”

  She holds me closer, tighter. I don’t ever want to let go.

  Letting go means it really is love.

  But worse than that, it really is over.

  LESSON OF THE DAY: If you want to speed up the overall reaction, you should focus on that rate-limiting step, which is THE slowest part. This, for me, is, has been, and probably always will be, saying good-bye.

  BASH

  The goddamned tiger lilies are in her final wishes.

  I can’t help but think it’s like her last laugh, that as she sits on a white, fluffy cloud next to Elvis and Lucille Ball and Prince, she’s pointing her finger at me like she’s won. I bring a single calla lily to rest beside her in the wooden coffin, to silently point my finger at her, though. Who’s winning now, Ma?

  The funeral director, Ed Riley, says Nurse Kim and the nursing home staff took care of everything I was supposed to. I should be proper and call him Mr. Riley, but my brain keeps telling me it’s Mr. Ed and then I think of the horse from that old television show Ma loved and we just stare at one another oddly while I picture him with a horse’s head.

  I come dressed in the finest clothes I now own. One old, navy-blue suit with a plaid tie, purchased from Goodwill. It’s 9:45 A.M., and no one’s here.
It makes me worry no one will show up, that no one cares about her like I did. A riptide of pain slices through me. If the pews are empty, I will hurt for her. It’s their loss, I think.

  I’m sitting in the front row, across from Ma. She’s surrounded by endless flowers and is wearing the finest dress she owned, a long, maroon sheath of pure silk—something, she said, that made her feel like royalty. Her head is draped in a head scarf that matches perfectly. My face is still buried in my hands as the first person walks up to me, resting a gloved hand on my shoulder.

  “Hey,” Nurse Kim says. “How ya holding up?”

  I shrug. A slew of all the nurses and doctors who cared for Ma crowd in around me. Nurse Kim pulls me up, and I bury my face in her wool coat between the layers of fuzz. Five other hands pat my back, rub the coat of my new suit. It’s warm in here, safe. She pulls back, tears in her eyes, and I want to tell her thank you, for everything, but I can’t find a single word that’s good enough. She smiles, nods, like she already knows what I’m trying to say, and hugs me again.

  When I lift my head, a long line of people have formed behind her, stringing around the back corner. Pews are filling. Faces I recognize, and those I don’t, have saturated the room with love and tears alike. I move up in front of the golden oak casket, to the place where Mr. Ed directs me, and though it’s awkward, I hug every person who passes, feeling more alone with each one, not less. It’s a strange feeling, comforting other people when I don’t feel comforted. Nurse Kim stands beside me, the other biggest part of Ma’s life for the last few months. She pats my back when I must look too sad to carry on another moment.