“Or as a reanimated prostitute,” Leo added.
“Maybe we should have buried them in pet cemeteries,” I suggested.
“That never ends well,” Leo admitted. I had never joked about my dad’s death with someone, not someone who had a death of their own to joke about.
“Do you believe things happen for a reason?” Leo brought the conversation back to serious.
“No,” I answered emphatically.
“Me neither,” he concurred. “I can’t buy the idea that we’re supposed to live and learn from horrible things. That somehow these things happen so we can grow as people.”
“I hope nothing else happens to you,” I told him, “because you have done enough growing.” I held my hand over my head acknowledging his exceptional height.
“Maybe that’s why shit does keep happening to you. Because you need to grow. Shorty.”
“That was quite possibly the lamest insult anyone has ever bestowed upon me.”
“Forgive me. I’m out of practice. Being away from everyone except your depressed parents will do that to you.”
“That sucks,” I said. “You should come back to school. Better of two evils? I’m there.” I prodded.
“So that would make school the bigger of two evils.” Leo smiled, and one of his fingers stroked one of mine. My toes wiggled.
“Alex! A little help here!” I hadn’t noticed that the snowy eaters had arrived, and a line was backing up.
“I guess I have to go work.” I rolled my eyes.
“That is what they pay you for.” Leo stood as I did.
“I thought it was for my bubbly personality and smaller-than-average butt.”
“Imagine the tips if you had an even average-sized butt.”
“You’re lucky I still feel guilty, or I might have to hit you.” I started walking behind the counter.
Leo grabbed my arm. “No more guilt, okay?”
I nodded weakly. Guilt was the one thing I’d held on to for everyone. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t blame myself for you smoking again?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s say you were a coconspirator, but I was the mastermind.”
“I can live with that.”
“Good.”
“Alex!” Doug yelled again. “I need more meat!”
“Should I be jealous?” Leo asked.
“I wouldn’t mind if you were.” I almost felt coquettish, if such a thing were possible. We both smiled.
“Alex! Meat! Now!” Doug harassed me.
“Better go give Doug his meat. See you in school?” I suggested. “There’s a book closet that misses you terribly.”
Leo pulled a chain out from his shirt that hung around his neck and held it up for me to see. I recognized a familiar-looking key and the distinctive shape of dog tags. He tucked the chain back in, gave a small wave and a smile, and walked up the stairs.
I felt really good. And it scared me.
CHAPTER
37
NO LEO THE REST of the week at school, nor the entire next week. We started texting, benign conversations about movies on Svengoolie. I subtly tried to coax him back to school, but I was afraid to push it.
They’re threatening to start construction on the book closet wing if you don’t show up.
Nice try. That’s not scheduled until next year.
I might knock it down myself then.
That I’d come to see.
But the days passed, and that was as much contact as we had. I started to believe I imagined our Cellar visit, residual brain fog from Becca’s pot smoke. She was having a particularly nauseous time from the radiation combined with the sore throat. I did my best to cheer her up with visits and pints of ice cream, but it didn’t feel like enough. It never did.
Becca’s mom was in a particularly dark, religious state. Every moment she could get away from the house, she did. Sometimes it was shopping, sometimes spa days, but she spent most of her time at the synagogue. On the rare occasion I did see her, I wished I hadn’t. One afternoon, when Becca seemed to ache in the most random places, her mom walked in with a grossly pained expression. I think Becca’s cancer installed at least six new worry wrinkles on her mom’s face. She tutted, clicked her tongue, made all sorts of exaggeratedly worrisome sounds as she watched Becca on her bed. Under her breath, I heard her say, “God will see you through.” Then she left again. Unsettling.
“What is up with your mom?” I asked, taking over game duty from Becca. She liked to think of herself as my sensei to the world of RPGs, and I complied as long as she agreed to watch Waxwork I and II with me. I bought the set with some birthday money from Aunt Judy.
“She’s like the prophet of doom.” Becca’s voice was quiet and scratchy, but her head was together. I liked that. “She thinks it’s a bad sign that I’m so sick, even though I’m done with chemo.”
“She told you that?”
“I speak crazy mom clicks.”
“You don’t think it means anything, do you?”
“Who knows? I never thought about having cancer in the first place, and here I am. We still have to wait a month to find out if destroying my body also just happened to destroy the cancer.”
“It fucking better have.”
“You tell that cancer, Alex. Maybe you’ll scare it out of me.”
If only.
Friday afternoon I came home to an empty house and plopped myself in front of the TV. No Leo, Becca in limbo, and I was in a bad head space. As I flipped through the channels, it all seemed so pointless. Why were brainless people followed around all day with cameras, and why did people watch them? Why did singers spend millions of dollars on one stupid video for one shitty song when there was still no cure for cancer? Why were so many assholes all over the news and reality television and on sports teams and so many good people were dead?
And where did I fall in all of it?
My dream, to make horror movies, was so pointless. What good did it do for anyone? Who did it help? Nothing I did ever helped anyone. I couldn’t stop my dad or Leo’s brother from dying. I couldn’t stop Becca from getting cancer. She could still die. My mom could die. My brothers. What if there were a zombie attack, and I was the last person left on Earth? Everyone dying around me, everyone becoming the undead, and I was the only one left living?
When my mom and brothers came home, I sat comatose on the couch, staring forward at nothing after the TV finally sickened me to the point of turning it off.
CJ, always the turd, saw me and asked, “Who died?” AJ smacked him in the back of the head, but CJ just asked him an incredulous, “What?” I guess we were related.
“Your fucking dad died, remember?” I asked coldly.
“Alex!” my mom scolded.
“Did you hear what he said, Mom?”
“It’s just an expression. Tone it down,” CJ said.
In a second I was on him, smacking CJ in the face and slamming my fist into his shoulder. I don’t remember the last time I hit one of my little brothers, since they had passed the point of being little and outgrew me by at least five inches. CJ was an athlete, and while I may be scrappy, he outweighed me by thirty pounds of muscle. Somehow he had me pinned to the ground in seconds.
“What? Are you on the wrestling team? All you need now is a lobotomy and some tights.” I quoted The Breakfast Club into the carpet.
My mom came to my rescue, although I wouldn’t have minded before my brother’s knee wedged into my back. “CJ, get off your sister. Boys, up to your room. Your sister and I need to talk.”
“Why are we the ones in trouble? She started it.” CJ pouted as he huffed up the stairs.
“You’re not in trouble. You have a computer in your room, and that’s where you would have gone anyway to play Blood and Bones 12 or whatever horrific game it is you boys are into now.”
My mom helped me off the ground. We sat on the couch and waited for the twins’ bedroom door to slam before Mom started talking. “I know you’re having a hard
time, honey—”
“That’s the thing. I’m not having a hard time. I’m still alive. I’m still healthy. It’s everyone around me that horrible things are happening to. And I feel guilty every second of every day because I can’t do a thing about it.”
“Hold on. You think because you’re alive, because you’re not sick, that nothing is happening to you? Oh, honey. That’s just not true. You’re allowed to have feelings, you know. Your dad is gone. I cry about that every single day because he was my husband, the father of my wonderful children.” She stroked my cheek. “And I loved him so much. Do you think I shouldn’t be upset because I’m not the dead one?”
I shook my head.
“And Becca, of course you feel bad. It’s almost harder for those who love the person who is sick because, you’re right, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Except what you are doing: being there for her. You have to stop thinking you’re supposed to be so tough all the time.”
“I don’t think I’m tough!” I was appalled by how dorky that sounded.
“You know what I mean. You have such an emotional wall up. Like, if you let it down that means you’re weak.”
I hated to admit she was right because it sounded ridiculous, but I did hate the idea of being weak. The stupid girl in the horror movie who hid from the killer instead of fighting back. The screaming idiot who went up the stairs instead of to their car and away from the scene. In a way, I knew it was one of the reasons I watched horror movies; it gave me a feeling of moral superiority. But in real life, there was no obvious bad guy for me to slay, no ending where the dead person came back to life.
“I feel useless,” I admitted to my mom. “Nothing I do is important.”
“Now that’s bullshit.” My mom surprised me with her swear, usually reserved for driving. “You want me to make you a list?” Mom didn’t wait for an answer and started ticking things off with her fingers. “You help keep this family together. You have a job and make money instead of sitting on the couch. You make people laugh. You’re mostly nice to your brothers who need a big sister more than ever now. Your grades are good. And you are a wonderful friend through thick and thin. And someday”—Mom cleared her throat, as if this were hard for her to admit—“you will be an incredible filmmaker.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to make movies. That it wasn’t practical. And you were totally right.”
“No, I wasn’t. If it will make you happy and fulfilled, then it is practical.”
“But it’s so pointless. Horror movies don’t help anyone.”
But right when I said it, I knew I was wrong. Horror movies could help people, just as they helped me. I don’t know how I could have made it through the last summer without their mindless gore to keep my thoughts off my life. The conventions and all of the people who shared their love of horror. And Leo. Without horror movies, I didn’t know what would have brought us together.
“You are a wonderful person, Alex. A little dark, maybe,” Mom laughed. “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ve got two brothers who can do that now.”
“Yeah. When did that happen?”
Mom kissed my forehead. “I love you very much.”
“Love you, too,” I mumbled, and Mom went to the kitchen to make dinner. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and sent two texts. The first was to Becca.
Want me to come over tonight? Buffy marathon on Logo.
The second was to Leo.
I’ve been waiting in the book closet for 2 weeks. Starting to get hungry. Where are u?
Maybe it wasn’t overly emotional, but whatever it was, it was time to stop kicking myself for it.
CHAPTER
38
I DIDN’T EXPECT to hear back from Leo. I thought, and hoped, that Monday would come and there he’d appear in the hallway asking me to smoke a cigarette as if he had never left.
Later Friday night, while Becca slept in her bed next to me as I watched the Master break Buffy’s neck in a parallel world, my phone buzzed.
If you can get out of the closet, want to come over?
It was only eight, but Becca had crashed early from her pain meds. I liked to be around in case she woke up and wanted a glass of water or a note thrown at Caleb’s window. But Leo wanted to see me. And I wanted to see Leo. Leaving Sleeping Baldy didn’t make me a bad friend. Plus, visiting Leo when he wanted me to made me a good friend. Or at least an okay one.
I texted him back.
Yes. Rabid Grannies?
Definitely.
*
Rabid Grannies was an oddly dubbed Dutch movie, odd because sometimes it actually looked like the actors were mouthing what they were saying in English. I always said I’d learn Dutch just to figure out what the hell was going on. Maybe I could put that on my bucket list, if I ever made one. It wasn’t any less noble than prank calls and masturbation.
I gingerly slipped out of the bed and put on my shoes. “Becca,” I whispered. “Becca.” She stirred enough to roll over but only responded by way of a snore. I found a Post-it on her desk and scrawled, “Went to Leo’s. Will let you know what happens when you stop snoring.” I stuck it to her pillow.
The crud of February had set in. All along the side of the road sat piles of mucky snow, hardened and blackened from the toxic sludge of cars. At least it wasn’t scary to drive in.
I pulled my winter hat as far over my ears as it could go and I tucked my gloved hands into my down jacket. The temperature had to be in the zeroes, which meant frozen boogers and cracking hair if I didn’t have time to dry it. I let my car warm up for two minutes, as was the advice of my dad when he taught me to drive. The worst part was having to sit in a frigid car until the little temperature gauge showed signs of life. Until then, turning on the heat only pulled freezing air away from the freezing motor.
When I saw the hint of temperature gauge movement, I turned the heat on full blast and put the car in gear. Before I went to Leo’s, I stopped at home to get the DVD. Mom sat on the couch with a tissue, blowing her nose and wiping tears from her eyes.
I had the most selfish thought of disappointment, that if my mom was crying I’d have to put my visit with Leo on hold to console her. But when she saw me, she pointed to a black-and-white movie on the TV. “Bogey and Bacall,” she sniffed. “One of my favorites.” I kicked myself with relief that she was only crying over a movie and ran upstairs to my room for the DVD.
“Forgot this.” I held up the movie, and she acknowledged with a wave of her hankie. I didn’t feel the need to explain where I was bringing the movie, and I’d still be home by eleven thirty as expected.
When I pulled up to Leo’s, I took a minute in the car to think about what might happen. The last time I was there, his brother had just died. We had sex. He said he loved me. This time I was packing an imported DVD called Rabid Grannies.
I rang the doorbell, and to my surprise his mom answered. I had only been at Leo’s one time before when his parents were also there, and they left soon after I arrived. I fumbled with my words, not knowing whether to bring up Jason or acknowledge how long it had been since I’d seen her. “Hi,” was all that came out of my mouth, and I spent an inordinate amount of time wiping the wet off my shoes. I heard the pound of Leo’s feet down the stairs, and he said, “Thanks, Mom. I didn’t hear the doorbell.” His mom said nothing and somberly shuffled away in her slippers.
“Sorry,” he said as he took my coat and hung it on the end of the banister. “My mom’s moods alternate between comatose and falsely perky these days.”
“That was the perky one, right?” I asked. He smiled a small smile, the kind he made that first day we hung out at the elementary school.
“I hope it’s okay if we watch in my room. Mom and Dad commandeered the big screen. I have a shitty setup, but it works.”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “The DVD looks like crap anyway, so it will be extra crispy.”
“Crispy?” he asked as we walked up the stairs.
“And Dutch.”
His bedroom window had been replaced, and his room was relatively neat compared to the last time I was up there. As I popped the DVD into his player, Leo lay down on his bed. There was a desk chair, and I considered sitting in it but thought that would be uncool. He was already on the bed, and it offered the best view of the TV. I lay down next to him, careful not to touch. He didn’t make any move to get closer. We started the movie, and my back, rigid with tension, eventually softened as the grotesque cast of characters began their journey to their great aunt’s house to find out which greedy soul inherited the fortune. Leo and I laughed at the dub and tried to figure out what the Dutch words for “eat” and “bludgeon” were. At some point, maybe halfway through, Leo’s arm connected with mine. A laugh moved it there, but he didn’t move it away after the laugh stopped. I inhaled involuntarily and hoped he didn’t notice. I had on a short-sleeved shirt, he had on long sleeves. Maybe he couldn’t even tell we were touching.
As the movie ended, we weakly applauded. “How did you ever manage to live without experiencing the pleasure of Rabid Grannies?” I asked.
He answered with a kiss. It was a firm kiss, and he held my cheek with one large hand. I needed that kiss. Every part of me needed it. Not just my body, which screamed at me to touch him ever since I landed on his bed again, but my mind, my heart, my soul. I needed him to show me he forgave me wholly for leaving him, so that I could show Leo how I truly felt for him.
For minutes, it was kissing, hands everywhere, clothes still on. It was me who wriggled my hand underneath Leo’s shirt.
“Wait.” He stopped me. “I don’t want to have sex.”
I had said it to him before, more than once, but hearing it said to me made me feel unwanted.
“Why not?” I asked, peeved. I didn’t know if I was mentally ready to go at it again with Leo, but I was afraid to hear why he didn’t want to do it with me.
I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest as though my body was somehow exposed through my black t-shirt.
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