What You Left Me

by Bridget Morrissey

  “Oh, Mike, hey,” Mr. Kuspits answers, releasing a held breath. As he walks over to us, he doubles back and checks under chairs and beside garbage cans, looking for something. “I lost my wallet. I’ve been everywhere in this damn building trying to find it.”

  Cameron holds my arm. “Shoot,” she whispers, sheepish. “I have it, Mr. Kuspits. I’ve been trying to find you and return it.”

  Mr. Kuspits cries out in relief. “Thank you! Losing it was the last thing I needed. Where the hell did I leave it?”

  “In the ICU waiting room.”

  He nods. “Ah. Yep. That’s what I thought.” His shoes click faster against the floor. Cameron hands over his wallet. She takes a deep breath, ready to explain herself further, but he just tucks it into his back pocket without a second glance. “Did you guys hear the news about Marty?”

  Anticipation flips over all the new food in my stomach. Brooke grabs my hand.

  “We just got back,” Turrey tells him.

  “You were smart to head home for a while. A doctor didn’t come talk to us until ten minutes ago. Got about twenty people camped out here, and you take that long to give us information? Not how I’d run things.” He throws his hands up in the air. “They said Marty flatlined during surgery yesterday. They got him back, but they wouldn’t get more specific about how long he was out. Now I think that’s strange, but hey, I’m not the guy in charge.” His hands go up again. “They’re saying something about brain bleeds and brain damage. They’re looking into how bad it is. Marty’s still unconscious.” His face falls, as if the meaning of what he’s said finally registers. He rests his hand on the table, trying to continue but the words seem caught in his throat.

  His reaction reminds me of my dad. The need to be informed and keep everyone else informed too. The criticism of incompetence matched with the implication that he could do it better, while also knowing he’d never try. The emotions held way beneath the surface, only drug up by the most extreme circumstances, and even then, never fully breaking through. To know one guy like my dad and Mr. Kuspits is to know all of them, as much as you possibly can know a guy like that.

  My phone lights up in my hands. It doesn’t make a sound, just as Aminah promised, but it’s ringing. And of course, it’s my dad. For the first time all weekend, I answer his call. I don’t know why. Impulse distracts me from reality. Only after I put the receiver to my ear does it occur to me how odd a choice it is.

  “Petra! Where the hell are you? You haven’t been home since yesterday morning,” he barks into my ear.

  “Sorry, Dad,” I say, mostly so everyone knows who I’m talking to, “I’ve been at the hospital.”

  He makes a gargled noise as his concern and anger fight over who gets to talk first.

  “One of my friends got into a really bad accident,” I tell him before he can choose a victor. The same thing that happened to Mr. Kuspits happens to me. Speaking it aloud makes it hurt.

  “We saw that on the news. You need to get home. Right now.”

  23

  “Is anyone home right now?” Michael questions.

  “Shouldn’t be. My parents are out,” Daniel answers. Excitement fogs up his thoughts. It’s happened before, and it’s finally happening again, sober and clearheaded.

  It’s decided. That’s where they go. Where they were before can’t be said, for it’s too vague to be anywhere. Daniel opens his front door, and Michael follows, the silence between them so loaded it is certain to combust.

  Daniel’s front room is spacious and airy. All furniture available, asking to be occupied. All the buildup, and now they’re here. Daniel falls into Michael, kissing him like nothing has ever mattered more. He pirouettes him down the wall, not even bothering with the couch. Tender and passionate all at once, it’s everything Daniel’s ever hoped for in a romantic encounter. A boy from his own school. It’s a first, and it matters more than all the other hookups he’s had, because beyond knowing, there is friendship. Beyond friendship, there is tension. Beyond tension, there is possibility.

  Daniel slows down, taking a moment to look at Michael. Something new and unfamiliar reaches out of Michael’s eyes and into Daniel. Trust. Daniel uses it as a signal to lift up Michael’s shirt. He places it on the ground with care. He kisses Michael, soft and slow, shutting his eyes to take it in. When he pulls back, ready for another step, the front door creaks open.

  The two boys part. Daniel expects to find his parents gawking. Instead, his hodgepodge new friend group awaits them: Aminah, Cameron, Petra, Brooke. And Martin?

  Is this really the famed Martin McGee?

  Daniel can’t be certain. He has only a hazy idea of what this boy looks like. But there’s a certainty he feels. There’s no way this is anyone else.

  The group takes in shirtless Michael Turrey and flustered Daniel Stetson. It’s certainly a rare sight.

  “What?” Daniel asks, trying to regain his signature blasé composure. “We’re a little busy here.”

  His confidence eases a laugh out of everyone. Even Martin, who’s standing there looking mystified. “Do I know you?” Martin asks.

  “Excellent question,” Daniel quips. “Do you?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m here.”

  “I think that solves it then. Now would you mind leaving? I love you all, but really, I’d like a moment.”

  24

  This is gonna sound so strange, but I keep thinking of what it’s like to hug my mom. How she smells like cigarette smoke in a bakery. Her loud-ass voice hollering for the home team at every sports game. The number one fan of being a fan.

  My dad. The man who eats Cheerios religiously because my mom told him it would help with his cholesterol. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even have cholesterol issues. He’s just like that. He looks like a guy who listens to NPR while reading the business section of the newspaper and drinking a latte, but he loves classic rock and drinks two shots of whiskey every night before bed. He does read the newspaper though. He refuses to get information from the internet. I love him for that.

  God. I really do.

  Spitty and I have a hundred-dollar bet that Katie will name her firstborn Wrigley, boy or girl. I mean, I get it. Dad raised us to live and die by Chicago sports. If you wanted in with him, you had to love every team, but the Cubs most of all.

  Katie’s more than that though. She’s a great listener. I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve complained to her about the silliest things, and she’s always interested. She’ll be like, “So is your Spanish teacher still giving you weekly detentions even though you weren’t the one to draw penises on your homework?” and I will have to think for a good twenty seconds because she’ll be following up on a story I told her months ago.

  What a good sister.

  The best sister.

  Then there’s Spits. The curly bowl cut he hasn’t changed in ten years. The braces I swear he’s had for even longer. If he ever gets them off, his teeth will probably have little white squares stained onto them for the rest of his life, and he’ll have no place to store the extra pieces of his sandwiches. Speaking of, I still want my graduation sandwich. He owes me a Potbelly’s Wreck with extra salami now. And a cookie.

  No. Two cookies.

  Dammit, Spitty.

  Then you’ve got Turrey. That kid—a lifelong White Sox fan—got me a custom Cubs jersey for my sixteenth birthday. That’s the nicest gift I’ve ever gotten in my life. It’s so Turrey of him. Low-key thoughtful as hell without being showy about it. He works his ass off to be good at everything he does; sports, gift giving, being a friend. And he makes it all seem easy.

  And of course Brooke, the girl who sat behind me in freshman biology and used my arm to draw pictures of protons and neutrons and electrons. Who gave me Mina Lonigan’s number sophomore year and told me exactly how to ask her out, then gave me a heads-up the day before Mina was
going to break up with me. Who stood up for me that time Hornsby thought I was cheating on my test, when really, I was just trying to find my lucky pencil. Who wanted to know me even after kissing me.

  Rounding it out is Chris, the guy that’s in the group because he’s never been anywhere else. I love him for that. It’s comfortable. It’s what we know. It’s how life has always been.

  But now the gallery of all the people I love shuffles through my memories on repeat. My feelings for all of them are so strong it’s like I touched a hot stove and I can’t take my hand off. It’s a constant ache that I can’t place because it’s pain that is physical without any physicality, because I don’t have a body, because I made some extremely terrible choices. I hate all of this so much. I don’t want some untouchable idea of pain. I want the real thing.

  I’d love a paper cut right now, and that’s really saying something.

  Dreams are like movies. When you’re in them, your focus is pulled to the star. And there I was inside a dream starring a dude I didn’t recognize, and he was with Turrey. Like, with Turrey.

  So now someone I’ve never met is dreaming of me. Some of my friends are his friends. One is more than just a friend actually.

  Up until Friday, my life always felt like enough. Like my heart was at capacity, and I didn’t need to find any new people to know and love. Now my list seems way too short. I can see all the spaces between—the experiences I hid from, the people I never really let in.

  I see how their lives are getting fuller just by knowing one another, and I’m just here, stuck, watching it all happen without me.

  • • •

  Ever since the first day of high school, when Daniel sat in the open seat at our table in Honors Biology, it’s been the four of us. Now Cameron and Aminah sit in the front of his car, Daniel and me in the back, and I notice the spaces between us—the experiences we hid from, the people we never really let in. I see how it doesn’t matter as much as it seemed to in school. We’ve been gone from them for ten minutes and I already miss the way Turrey and Brooke filled in the gaps. We blended into their group without protest. Or they came into ours. There isn’t even a difference. We’re all trying to survive the same thing: the waiting.

  “Thank you for everything,” I say to my friends in the car. Against their better judgment, they have been here for me this weekend.

  “You know we love you, Petty,” Cameron says. She rubs her palms on Daniel’s steering wheel, having driven for him so he could get some quote unquote “beauty rest.”

  “Tell them,” she mouths to me through the rearview mirror.

  Aminah laughs. “What were we gonna do? It was come with or not see you. I swear, you’re twenty times stubborner than I am.” She turns to touch my hand. “And I mean that in the most loving way.”

  “Please don’t let it get sentimental in here,” Daniel coughs out.

  I didn’t even realize he’d woken back up.

  After a beat, he lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, fine, I’ll be serious for a second. I need to thank you guys too. For being patient with me. I know you’ve known about me forever. There was a time sophomore year when I was convinced Petra had found my secret Tumblr account with all the queer fan fiction I’d written.”

  I did find that, but I don’t say anything.

  “Thank you for not pushing it,” he continues. “And not being weird about the Michael thing.”

  “Of course.” I can barely pause before my curiosity barrels over my politeness. “Can we know what’s happening?”

  Daniel tosses a forlorn look over his shoulder. “Well, when you all left for your little mission to find Spencer the first time, you woke me up. I go to follow you guys and see Michael looking—no, staring—at me, and I think, ‘This is so ridiculous. I need to know what’s going on.’ So I ask him. He doesn’t lie. He says he cares about me. He’s just trying to figure out how to be brave like I am.” He stops for a second, amazed. “Isn’t that funny? He doesn’t know that I came out to you guys literally yesterday. He said he was scared of what people would do to him—it’s not easy being black and gay—but he was also saying that with all that’s happening with Martin, he doesn’t want to run out of time, because what if it’s all gone tomorrow?”

  “So you’re together?” Aminah asks.

  “Kind of. I’ll be at college soon...” Daniel drifts off, much closer to hitting a nerve than he prefers to be. “Part of me knows it’s going to have to end when I leave, but I also can’t stop myself. I like him.” He rolls down his window. “Sorry!” he yells over the wind, waving one hand back and forth like a broom. “Have to air the car out. Can’t have sappiness polluting my Prius.”

  “Keep the window down because I have one last thing to say,” Cameron starts. “You are brave. All of you. And I love you all.”

  “Jesus, Cam!” Daniel screams. “They don’t make a Febreze for this!”

  Nervous spit gathers in my mouth when Cameron pulls into my driveway. “I’m dreading this,” I admit. “I wish I could just fast-forward through it. Or somehow go back in time and stop everything from happening in the first place. That would be nice too.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Cameron says. She’s doing her best to be assuring, but hitting only false notes. She knows, like I know, that a storm is brewing.

  “Hey, what if one of you comes with me?” I ask. “That way my parents can’t kill me for going MIA.”

  Aminah shrugs. “Sure.”

  “Really? I didn’t think that would work.”

  Cameron starts to protest, but Aminah’s already out of the car and walking up to my front door. I lean over and give Cameron a hug. Then I wrap my arms around Daniel. “Thanks again. I’ll text you guys soon.”

  Daniel pretends to claw at my arms. “Can’t. Breathe.”

  I open my door and linger near the passenger side of the car. “Do you think Martin’s going to be okay?” I ask Daniel in the interim.

  He just looks ahead—neutral, unreadable. “I think whatever you think.”

  “Yeah,” I say with a nod.

  Cameron climbs into the passenger seat, and Daniel moves to his rightful place behind the wheel.

  “Did you at least have a good little rest? Catch any sight of Martin?” I joke as he readjusts the driver’s seat.

  “Ha,” he says, like it’s just a word, not a reaction people experience. It’s so weird I start backing away from the car. I think he did dream of Martin, which is as cool as it is surprising.

  I wonder what Martin thinks.

  “Good luck,” Cameron says as I continue my puzzled tiptoe toward my house.

  My dad opens the front door before I even have a chance to search for my keys.

  “Hi, Mr. McGowan!” Aminah says cheerfully.

  “Aminah,” he responds with an awkward head bob. He closes the door behind us. “Petra’s mom and I need to have a talk with her in private.” So much for my plan to have a friend diffuse the situation.

  “I’ll be in your room,” Aminah tells me. She disappears up the stairs.

  I follow my dad into our kitchen and find my mom sitting at the head of the table. She doesn’t even get up. I’ve been gone for a whole day, my friend is dying, and she doesn’t even hug me. Dad sits down on the other end. They flank the table like Turrey and I did at Martin’s just hours before. Now I’m relegated to the role of obedient child along the side.

  “So,” my dad starts.

  “There’s not much to say right now, honey,” my mom finishes, even though I know there’s quite a lot she’d like to say. Her voice quivers. “If you’re acting out because you’re scared—”

  “Please stop,” I say. Unexpected anger pipes into my voice. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible. “I know what this is. You think I’ve been off rebelling. Showing you I’m not like Caroline and Jessica, who by the wa
y, was the one to give me a ride yesterday and conveniently didn’t tell you where she’d taken me. I’m not acting out. Everything is so different than it was on Friday. You don’t even know.”

  Mom rings her hands. She’s wearing her speech-giving face. She’s been known to talk for so long that you forget what you wanted to say in the first place, so I keep going before she makes me lose my train of thought. “Mom, Dad, thank you for wanting the best for me. For trying to keep things on track when everything got weird at the end of last year, and for working with the school to figure out a way to fix it. I am truly sorry I continue to screw things up and make you guys look bad.”

  We McGowans don’t like to stare truth in the face, especially when it’s ugly. We pretend to care about what we deem important, but we don’t actually look. We accept the surface, acknowledge the flaws, then put all of our energy into never going an inch deeper. It used to be an easy way to live. But the axis of my universe has tilted, and the things I tucked away long ago fall out of hiding without warning.

  “There’s so much that matters more than the studying I know you’re about to tell me I should be doing,” I say. “But for your sake, I’m very sorry.” It feels neither good nor bad to speak the truth. It exists in the gray area I’ve been thrust into by Martin’s accident.

  My parents look at my face as if it’s uncharted territory they aren’t sure they want to discover.

  “You never even asked me what happened last year,” I start, the words falling out. I’m on fast-forward all right. My feelings fly out without a chance to filter. “You saw a problem and went and made a solution without ever checking to see if I was okay.” I sound the way I feel. Sharp and unsteady. “Well, I wasn’t. And I’m not. Now you’re the ones who want to talk. And I don’t. It is what it is. I’ll take the test tomorrow, and we’ll forget all of this ever happened.”

  “Petra,” my dad says with the stern edge I know means I’ve gone too far. “If you’re going to act like this, I don’t want you in my house.”