Admission

by Travis Thrasher

  “Did I do something?”

  “Did you?”

  “Look, we need to talk,” he said.

  “Now we need to talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you forcing me to?”

  Jake thought of the president’s question about Laila. “Alyssa, please. I just—just this one time. That’s all I ask. Just one more time. Then I’ll leave you alone. Okay?”

  “You could start now.”

  “Why are you so angry at me?” Jake asked.

  “I think you know.”

  Alyssa seemed bothered by the students passing by, watching them talk.

  “I think we need to talk somewhere away from here.”

  “Jake, look, I don’t want—”

  “Please, Alyssa. I need you to hear me out.”

  They sat in a booth at McDonald’s. Even though he’d tried to pay, Alyssa had bought her own chicken sandwich and Diet Coke.

  “What’d you hear?”

  “I’ve heard a lot,” Alyssa said.

  “About?”

  “You. And Laila.”

  Jake shook his head. “The president believes I tried to rape her. I haven’t had anything to do with her. Not this year.”

  “Really?”

  Jake nodded. “Yeah, really. Well, I mean, there was one night.”

  “One night?”

  “Yeah, something stupid. I was drunk and—”

  “That’s surprising.”

  “Alec set me up on a double date. He just wanted to get with her friend. It was a mistake.”

  “But you haven’t had anything to do with her.”

  “I hadn’t. Not until then.”

  “People saw you in a bar making out.”

  Jake nodded, closing his eyes for a minute. “I was drunk.”

  “Maybe you did more,” Alyssa said.

  “I know for a fact I didn’t. She wanted me to go home with her, and I didn’t. Period.”

  “And the night of the party?”

  Jake shook his head. “Look—I can’t make you believe me. But I thought you might.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you know I’m not interested in Laila.”

  “How do I know that?”

  Jake shook his head. “Because for the past few years all I’ve ever tried to do is get you to go out with me. You know how I feel about you.”

  “That hasn’t prevented you from dating other girls.”

  “I know.”

  “Or making out with other girls.”

  Jake scratched his head.

  “You’ll never get it, will you?” she asked.

  They kept eating in silence.

  Jake breathed in. “Would you have given me a chance if we had met in a different way? Would you have been interested in me if I was someone different?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It used to be fun,” Jake said, looking out the window at the playground full of young kids running around.

  “What?”

  “All of it. The parties. The guys. Now I’m just really—tired, I guess. I just want to graduate and move on.”

  “Move on to what?”

  “Something different. A change of pace.”

  “Some of your habits will be hard to break,” Alyssa said.

  He returned her straightforward glance. “I know.”

  “You have a long night last night?”

  Jake nodded. “It’s hard work partying. You torture your body. It’s not for the weak of heart.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “Yeah. No good, huh?”

  She shook her head and finished her sandwich while Jake watched her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

  “Stop.”

  “The only reason I’ve ever thought about changing—about quitting all of the craziness—the only reason has been because of you.”

  “That’s not a good reason.”

  Jake nodded. “Maybe not.”

  “You shouldn’t change for someone else, Jake. You should change for yourself.”

  “And how should I change? Stop the drinking? Stop the cursing? Go to church?”

  “Stop the lying,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Who am I lying to?”

  “To yourself. To your parents. To everyone else.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Laila. The only thing I did to her at that party was push her away.”

  Alyssa didn’t say anything.

  “Alyssa, look at me. Please. Look at me. Look in my eyes. I swear to you and to God and to anyone else I can that I didn’t try to rape Laila. I don’t know how and why that rumor got started—I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve made mistakes in the past with Laila, but I didn’t hurt her or do anything like that. I’ve never done anything that she didn’t want to do. Got that?”

  “Okay.”

  “No, I want to know that you at least believe that.”

  “Okay.”

  Jake didn’t finish his hamburger. “I’m sorry,” he said to Alyssa.

  “For what?”

  “For ever thinking—for ever trying …”

  “Jake —” Alyssa began, her eyes tearing up.

  “No. Look. I’ve tried harder with you than I’ve tried for anything in my life. It’s like chasing after a rainbow or something. I’ve always thought that somewhere deep inside there was a part of you that liked me—a part of you that might be open to me. Mistakes and all. But I think that’s how I’ve been lying to myself. I’ve convinced myself there was a chance and really, there never was. Was there? Tell me I’m wrong?”

  Alyssa wiped her eyes and said nothing.

  “It’s one thing to get the life punched and kicked out of me. Or to be told by the president that I’m going to hell. But you gotta know, Alyssa. I’d gladly take that over having you sitting there, giving me that look. Saying nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, I am too.”

  He drove her back to Providence, a quick five-minute ride, and pulled up to the dorm. They hadn’t spoken during the drive.

  She looked over at him and, for a brief second, Jake believed she was going to say something else.

  Then she turned and got out and closed the door behind her.

  Whatever tiny thing they had ever had between them was over and gone.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  June 2005

  “THAT FAT NURSE IS getting on my nerves.” Mike glanced at me with bloodshot eyes as he dropped down into the chair across from me.

  “Did you tell the cops—”

  “No,” he answered.

  This was the first time we’d been able to talk, to really talk, as Alyssa had excused herself to go to the restroom.

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “I said the guy wanted Bruce’s money and he had none. No lie there.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Forties maybe. Nondescript. Seriously nondescript. Little hair. Pudgy. I don’t know. He could be twenty-four and blond as far as I remember.”

  It was closing in on 1 a.m. and I was on a second cup of coffee. Mike had been pacing back and forth since we had gotten there.

  “This is about more than just finding Alec, right? What’s really going on?”

  I looked at Mike and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s Bruce doing here anyway?”

  “He wanted to tag along. He has nothing back there in California.”

  “No job?”

  “No nothing. I think he’d been looking for an excuse to leave.”

  “And he ends up getting shot in Chicago. Nice.” Mike swore.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know? Nurse Betty over there won’t give out any information except that he’s in intensive care and to wait and sit down.”

  I stared at Mike’s shiny black s
hoes. “You call your wife?”

  He nodded. “You think Alec has something to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. All of this—this didn’t just happen. Someone doesn’t want me finding Alec. Who else would it be besides Alec himself?”

  “He wouldn’t get someone to shoot Bruce.”

  “People change. Franklin wasn’t too happy to see me either.”

  Mike shook his head, looking a bit too pale in the harsh glow of the hospital light.

  “This is karma, man. Our karma. We’ve had this coming for a long time.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “That’s the truth,” Mike answered.

  Alyssa walked up holding a can of soda. “Everything okay?”

  I looked at Mike, and he stood up and said he was going to get an answer.

  “We were just talking about karma. You believe people reap what they sow?”

  She nodded. “I used to.”

  “Maybe Bruce—maybe all of us—maybe we had this coming.”

  “What? Getting shot?”

  I looked at her. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you, Alyssa.”

  “About Carnie?”

  “Yeah. About all of them. There are a lot of things about our last spring break that I tried to just put out of my mind.”

  She sat down beside me, and for the moment ignored her soda.

  “There’s stuff I should’ve gotten to the bottom of,” I continued. “That I should have told someone about.”

  “What stuff?”

  “That’s the thing—I don’t know. Mike doesn’t know. Bruce doesn’t know. Here are all these grown men who have no idea what happened ten, eleven years ago.” I inhaled and shook my head. “This is—intense. I feel like it’s my fault. I should never have let Bruce come with me.”

  “He can make his own decisions, you know.”

  “No, I don’t think he can,” I said. “He has the same maturity level he had back in college.”

  Mike came back, his wrinkled black shirt hanging out and his face dotted with stubble. “Well—it doesn’t look like he’s going to die.”

  “Way to put it delicately,” I said.

  “What do you want me to say? That’s all I could get out of them.”

  I stood up and threw away the Styrofoam cup I’d been cutting with my fingernails.

  “Mike,” I said, for the moment ignoring Alyssa’s presence. “Did the guy say anything else? Anything to do with me. With Alec?”

  “I told you his exact words, give or take.”

  I nodded. “I think maybe I’m going to follow them.”

  “Sounds smart to me,” Mike said.

  “Jake—” Alyssa had come alongside me, curiosity in her eyes.

  “Mike—I want to take her home.”

  “I’m fine,” she protested.

  “No—it’s okay,” Mike said. “It’s cool. I can stay here for a while. They said he’s stable. Stable. How can someone be stable if he just got a thumb-sized hole in his gut?”

  “Can you keep me posted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  I couldn’t help but give Mike a hug. He received it awkwardly.

  “Be careful, okay?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, always. You taking off then? Leaving?”

  Alyssa’s eyes widened momentarily. It was too late for being discreet.

  “I don’t know,” was all I could say.

  On the drive back to the suburbs, the interstate’s lanes open and inviting speeding, I looked over at her. She was still wide-awake.

  “Sorry about everything,” I said again.

  “What are you apologizing about?”

  “Coming into your life out of the blue and putting this in your lap.”

  “I called you,” she said.

  “I asked you out.”

  “I accepted.”

  “I kissed you.”

  “And again, I—”

  “Okay, I got it,” I said, the banter helping ease my mood. “This just—I don’t think I should be here.”

  “Who doesn’t want you here?”

  “Alec?”

  “Why? Why wouldn’t Alec want you around?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I kept the car at a steady seventy-five miles per hour. We were maybe fifteen minutes from Alyssa’s house.

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened on spring break?”

  “It was just going to be a prank. That was all. And even then, it wasn’t my idea. It was out of my control.”

  She didn’t answer, and after a moment I continued. “You know—I used to think it was fun waking up not remembering the night before. That was college. I thought—I just assumed it was normal behavior.”

  “For some, it is.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But I can’t get those times back. Whatever happened, those memories are black and done. When Carnie died, he took those memories with him.”

  “And Alec?”

  “Alec kept tons of things from me. I don’t know if I ever fully trusted the guy.”

  “Alec? Your best friend?”

  “Best friend. Yeah. Even after—after everything happened—it just all started out of—-just all of us being stupid.”

  And I tried to tell her what I recalled but it seemed to come out wrong. I hadn’t talked about any of this in years.

  I had just started my jumbled story when we arrived in her driveway.

  “Jake?” Alyssa put a hand on mine. “Can you—look, I don’t want to be alone tonight. I’m not asking for—I’m just a little freaked out.”

  “Yeah, sure. Don’t say anything more—I understand.”

  I turned off the lights and locked the car, then followed her into the house.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  April 1994

  THE DOOR TO HIS APARTMENT swung open without a knock.

  “I wanna hear it,” Alec said as he approached the kitchen counter where the answering machine stood.

  Then he took a look at Jake.

  “You’re looking nice today.”

  Jake hadn’t shaved in a week and hadn’t showered for a couple of days. Red eyes, a nice little beer gut, disheveled hair. He didn’t care. All he cared about was the message he’d gotten this afternoon.

  He played it for Alec. The others were at school, doing what college students did: Sitting in class. Learning. Studying. Talking. Socializing. Eating. Laughing. Living. But not Jake. He was getting threats while he slept off a long night.

  He pressed the machine. The voice started by greeting Jake with a juicy four-lettered curse.

  “You think this is over, don’t you? You think it’s done, but it’s not. And you better watch out because we’re gonna finish what we started. I told you once, and I’ll tell you again. Nobody screws with me. Nobody.”

  It clicked off.

  Alec stood there, eyes wide open, unblinking.

  “What should we do?” Jake asked, tired and without energy.

  “Nothing.”

  “What? We shouldn’t let the cops know about this?”

  “Oh, no,” Alec said, going to the fridge to get a beer. “No, this is between you and him. Between Brian and all of us. Spring break is almost here.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, too drained to care.

  “That guy has a lot of nerve. But we’ll see just how much nerve he’s really got. Just you wait.”

  Jake nodded. Alec handed him a beer. It was two-thirty in the afternoon, and Jake could still feel the aftertaste of a case of beer the night before. He hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  “I don’t know, man,” he said to Alec, looking at the beer in his hand.

  Alec opened it for him.

  “Drink up. Spring break starts now.”

  Blink.

  The setting sun is gone and you’re listening to loud music and you’re laughing.

  Blink.

  You’re on the road in the pass
enger seat watching the yellow lines roll by.

  Blink.

  You’re on a sidewalk smoking a cigarette following the footsteps in front of you.

  Blink.

  You’re entering a dark hallway with suffocating beats and soulless stares.

  “Hey, wake up,” someone says on the couch next to you.

  Everything races, glittering and pecking and blinding. You swear Kurt Cobain is screaming in your ear and he’s really angry.

  “Huh?” you say.

  “Don’t fade on me now,” the voice of Alec says from somewhere above or below.

  “I won’t.”

  “Need something to keep you up?”

  “Sure.”

  And it’s that easy.

  Before Alec, you’d managed to stay drug-free, not counting pot, twenty years of your life, but that’s just a phrase, a notion by a government, a slogan for a television network.

  This is not some crossroad you’re at. It’s simple and easy and your best friend laughs and makes it seem as easy as passing a bottle of salt and in a way it is.

  Blink.

  The day and night mesh and overlap.

  Blink again.

  You’re on the road, sitting in the backseat next to a stranger with long dark hair, laughing uncontrollably.

  Control is for the weak.

  Reality is for the foolish.

  All you do tonight right now is feel and you’re invincible and the stars are out and you never want this feeling to end ever never and for a fleeting moment you believe it never will.

  “Trent Reznor is a god,” Mike said, turning up the volume on the Nine Inch Nails album he had purchased a few weeks before.

  “Or maybe he’s the devil,” Jake replied, throwing a dart into the board on the wall.

  “Sounds more like it,” Carnie said.

  “Come on, you love it.”

  “Sounds like he’s on heroin and got locked in the room with a synthesizer and a monkey.”

  They all laughed at Carnie’s joke, always a rarity but always worth it when the time came.

  “Monkey?” Mike asked.

  “Listen to that. It’s sounds like he’s torturing the poor thing.”

  “We need to go out,” Alec said, coming back from the bathroom.

  “I managed to go through a hundred bucks last night,” Jake said. “The bad thing is I don’t even remember most of it.”

  “You brought home someone named Jen or Jade,” Carnie said.