What You Left Me

by Bridget Morrissey

“Honey, you can’t be serious,” my mom says to him.

  “She doesn’t get it. I know there’s a lot going on, but I can’t listen to her act like a scholarship isn’t a big deal. We pulled a lot of strings to get them to accommodate you.”

  My chair makes a loud dragging sound against the wood floors.

  I stand up and walk out.

  25

  Spencer cannot believe how pathetic Fly can be. He’s already got a Brooke Delgado problem bigger than the White Whale, and here he is going for another hometown girl. When will Fly stop being such a sucker? Spencer grinds his foot into the gas pedal. The Caravan wheezes before it takes off. Spencer looks over to see if the speed is making Fly freak out.

  Much to his surprise, Fly looks as serious as he’s ever seen him. “Spencer,” he says. He never uses Spencer’s real name. “Stop it.”

  Time jumps backward.

  The two boys are now walking through the quiet parking lot, headed toward the White Whale.

  “See!” Fly exclaims. “I knew you could do it.” He turns around. “Don’t get in the van. We already know what happens when we do that. Let’s walk a while.”

  “What do you mean?” Spencer asks. What could be better than cruising down empty streets, feeling the wind blow in through open windows, knowing high school is over? He fishes his keys from his pockets and unlocks the door. Inside the car, it smells like White Castle and weed. Like bad decisions and good memories. There is nowhere else he would rather be.

  Fly stands outside the vehicle, arms crossed over his chest, his ridiculous yellow graduation robe bunching up into his armpits.

  “Dude, stop being like this,” Spencer says. “C’mon. I’ve got two more bottles for us.” He opens his glove compartment to fish them out, wiggling them at Fly to entice him.

  Fly doesn’t budge.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re starting to piss me off.” Spencer turns the ignition over. The White Whale roars to life.

  “This is a dream,” Fly tells him.

  “You’re right about that,” Spencer answers. “We graduated, we have alcohol, and Chris didn’t rat us out for leaving early. It’s damn close to being the most perfect moment of our lives.”

  “Spencer, think. Just a second ago, we were past this moment, already driving, then we jumped back to walking. Explain that.” Fly presses his forehead into the passenger window. “We got in an accident. And I haven’t woken up.” Something stuns Fly. “Wait, shit. Did you die?” He shakes his head. “No. Petra would’ve told me that,” he says.

  Spencer laughs so hard he almost chokes on his saliva. “Were you smoking before the ceremony or something?”

  Time hiccups.

  Crash. Smack. I killed my best friend.

  Time returns to the scene outside the car.

  “Spencer!” Fly pleads. “You can’t tell me you didn’t just live that.”

  Spencer leans his back into the headrest. For a moment, the world was noise and blood and regret. Squeaking tires and grinding metal. Forward and sideways forces slamming and crunching and crushing. Fly is right. This is a dream.

  But it’s also a memory.

  Spencer remembers now. He turns his head as if submerged in jelly—slow and cautious—afraid to spook the current reality away. He sees him standing there—Martin Frederick McGee, his best friend since that kickball game in second grade. The first person he called when he found out he got into ISU. The guy who’s supposed to stand beside him when he gets married.

  Fly’s still got his forehead pressed into the passenger window. A red dot is forming above his eyebrows. A condensation circle grows on the dirty glass. His eyes are swollen with fear, but still, somehow, hopeful.

  “Why did you tell Petra about the pact?” Spencer asks. It’s all he can think to say. How can Martin McGee look so hopeful while acting on the very thing they designed around lost hope?

  “I had to prove it was really me. It was all I could think of.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her how you got the scar above your lip or something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I have a lot of time here. Dreams are weird, man.”

  They almost laugh. In another circumstance, they would. But they can’t now.

  “They say you flatlined on the table,” Spencer says. “Now they’re saying something else is wrong. Brain bleeds and stuff.”

  Fly opens the passenger door and climbs in. “Whoa.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” they both say in unison.

  “Petra’s trying to help you,” Spencer says. “She came to see me. Get this—she was with Turrey and Brooke.”

  “That’s why,” Fly says, realizing something.

  “What?”

  “In Turrey’s dream, she was there. And in Brooke’s dream, Brooke knew about her. I didn’t even realize then how strange that was. And then I was in some kid’s dream I’d never met at all. I think he’s Turrey’s boyfriend.”

  “Yeah,” Spencer says. “His name is Daniel. They’re all friends now or something. Turrey’s dating his neighbor.”

  The two boys sit in the stillness. Words seem trivial.

  “Petra’s more help than I can be,” Spencer admits after a while. “I can’t think about this stuff when I wake up. It makes me too sad. But I’m gonna try to be helpful. I’m gonna tell them you’re still in there.”

  “What are you gonna say? Excuse me, Doctor, Martin McGee’s brain is fine. He told me so in my dream.”

  “I don’t know. Petra pulled off the whole dream thing pretty well.”

  “She also pulled off that graduation robe,” Fly jokes.

  Spencer nods as Fly tries to find a smile. It’s the best they can do.

  “I’ll find a way back to myself,” Fly assures him. “I know I will.”

  “But how?” Spencer asks. He notices a black dot behind Fly, growing closer.

  They’re driving.

  When had that begun?

  The black dot looks like a fly. A fly flying at Fly!

  No.

  It’s a crow.

  No.

  It’s a car.

  Spencer can’t get his mouth to catch up to his mind. The words, “Fly! Look out! Look out!” come out eventually, but it’s far too little and way too late. He presses on the brakes as hard as he can.

  Forward and sideways forces combine to slam Spencer into the airbag and door. As his head collides with the heavy pillow of the bag and the glass of the window, breaking his nose and jumbling his brain, he can find only one thought.

  I killed my best friend.

  Time cannot be stopped.

  26

  “But how?” Spitty asked. How will I find my way back to myself?

  If my brain is bleeding and my bones are broken, how is it even possible?

  There’s something to the fact that I’ve always been Marty in the Middle, comfortably lost inside the center of things. Rise to the top of the class or fall too far below, and people take more time to look at you. The only time I’ve ever really pulled apart from the pack is the time I got in a car crash and started to die.

  Oof. That’s some truth right there.

  So how do people rise to the occasion? They grit their teeth, and they keep moving, in whatever way they can move. A forward step isn’t always physical, but it’s momentum, no matter how far the destination. There’s trust in that process. That if you keep going, you’ll get there. I mean, I’m apparently uniting friend groups. That’s not something I’d ever think myself capable of accomplishing. So I am doing something. I think I’m doing all I can.

  How do I know if I’m doing all I can if I’ve never done it before? If I’ve always settled for the middle?

  • • •

  While we wait for Daniel and Camero
n to pick us back up, Aminah sits beside me on the curb just beyond my house. She’s painting her nails the same color I’ve chipped off my fingertips all weekend, resting her hand on the stony concrete while balancing the bottle between her thighs.

  “That didn’t go well,” I tell her. My body belies the calmness in my voice. I’m shaking.

  She lets out a casual laugh, shrugging a piece of hair out of her face as she does it, trying to stay focused on her hand. “I figured as much when we went storming out of your house like we were being chased.”

  “I couldn’t stop myself. I called my parents out for caring more about my grades than me.”

  She blows on her left hand then shakes the polish bottle, preparing to paint the right. “Welcome to the club.”

  I bite my tongue until she elaborates.

  “My parents told me I had to be out of the house by graduation. Yes, like out, as in I don’t live there anymore,” she answers, always a pro at anticipating what question comes next. “I left last week. They aren’t the biggest fan of Aminah Prabhu, girl without plans for the future. Right before I left, they sat me down and reminded me my first name means trustworthy and my last name means God, basically. But no pressure, right? I think this is all part of a bigger lesson they think they’re teaching me about the”—she puts up air quotes—“real world.”

  “But you and Cameron are going to U of I together.”

  “I’m just living with her. She paid extra for a single room. It might not work, but we’re going to try.” She closes up the bottle and tosses it into the backpack she haphazardly threw together before I came barging upstairs.

  “Wait, you didn’t get into U of I?” I can feel the axis tilting farther, spilling out debris from wreckage I’d failed to notice.

  “I didn’t even apply.”

  I’m so stunned I have to remind myself to take a breath.

  “You look like Cameron when she found out. Her face was purple. She calmed down eventually. She came up with the plan.”

  “It’s not a very good plan. Or very legal, if we’re being picky,” I note. “Why didn’t you apply?”

  “Oh, I know it’s an awful plan, but I love her for trying, and I don’t have anything better currently.” She stops to look at me. “I don’t know, Petra. I’m just not ready to go to college yet. Or ever. And I think that’s my choice to make. Not my parents’ choice. But they won’t let me live at home if I don’t go, and I don’t have any money to support myself right now, so I’m hitching a ride on the Cameron Catherine Elizabeth Hannafin-Bower express. It’s as good as I’ve got right now.”

  “How did I not know any of this?”

  “We’ve all been off in our own little worlds.” She examines her unpainted hand. “Isn’t it funny? We all know each other so well, but every one of us has been keeping a secret or two.”

  She’s right. Daniel with Turrey. Aminah and Cameron with U of I.

  Me with graduation. Me with Ryan.

  “I think it’s because sometimes you’ve known someone for so long you assume they know how to read your mind,” she continues.

  She’s right. It’s always felt like they know everything there is to know, through my moods or the words that I don’t say. But sometimes, no matter how long you’ve known someone, you have to spell things out.

  “Kind of funny considering there’s a comatose boy wandering through everybody’s dreams,” I try to joke.

  • • •

  When it comes down to it, I’m just a comatose boy wandering through everybody’s dreams. Spencer set the script of his dream in concrete, and it dried long before I showed up. No matter what I tell him or ask of him, he keeps going back to the moment everything changed.

  There has to be a better way. Not shock. Not denial. Not anger or bargaining. Not trying to send messages that might not matter when the person wakes up. The harder I fight this invisible war, the harder it becomes. How backward is that? I might be letting a car slam into me over and over, and gaining nothing but a memory so powerful it becomes all I remember about myself. My ideas about who I am and the life I’ve lived for eighteen years—they’re all I have here. If I lose them, I lose me.

  What is it that they say about quicksand? If you don’t resist, it’s easier to get out. Maybe I move by not moving.

  So I’ll become the gray I live in.

  Become nothing at all.

  • • •

  “Would ya look at us? Quite the band of misfits and rejects!” Daniel says.

  “Excuse me,” Cameron huffs. She’s about to elaborate but decides better of it, instead reaching for her water bottle and taking a pronounced sip.

  “You are not exempt, Mrs. Garfunkel.”

  Cameron puts down her drink. She brings her finger to the window and starts drawing on the glass. It’s too bright for her—or me—to see what she’s doing, but she continues. “Remember the thing you said about the way back?” she asks me.

  “I knew you wouldn’t let that go.”

  “Of course not. I was thinking about it while you were gone, and I think I figured out what you were saying. It’s like, you climb a mountain, and the whole trip up, you have a goal. See the view. Then you get there, and it’s beautiful, but there’s nothing to work toward anymore. You have to go back to where you’ve already been.” She turns to me. “High school was our mountain, obviously.”

  “Isn’t Mrs. Garfunkel particular poetic today?” Daniel sings out.

  “You’re just jealous you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  He throws his arms up. “Guilty.”

  “Hands on ten and two,” she scolds. “Anyway, the journey changes you. Even though you end up at the beginning again, you’re a different person than you were when you started. We were too focused on the view on the way up. Our climb back down’s been really weird so far, but look at the plus side. We have new friends for the first time in, like, ever.”

  Aminah shrieks. “Enough of the mountain thing. Plus, that’s not even true. I’ve had many exes that you guys banished from our trail.” She slaps her own wrist. “Dammit, now I’m doing the mountain thing.”

  “Don’t even start on your tragic exes. That is a detour we don’t want to take.” Daniel pulls into his driveway and shuts off the car’s engine. “Mountain joke intentional. But also the end of the trail.” He pulls his fist from the sky to his chest. “And scene.”

  “Well, what about Petra and Ryan Hales?” Aminah spits out before she can stop herself. She clamps her lips so tight that Ryan’s last name comes out as a gurgle.

  Daniel fakes gagging. “I thought we agreed to never speak of the dark ages again.”

  I simmer in the moment, preparing to let it pass, but find my mouth opening instead. “You all know what really happened, don’t you?”

  • • •

  • • •

  It’s been quiet for an entire minute. I counted. Sixty whole seconds of stonewall silence outside of Daniel’s house. I say, “There’s no good answer. I know.”

  Another thirty seconds tick by. I say, “I don’t know why I said anything.”

  Fifteen seconds. I say, “It doesn’t matter.”

  Five seconds. “It definitely matters,” Aminah says back.

  • • •

  • • •

  My axis isn’t tilted anymore. It’s upside down, and every hidden truth I have knocks into the next, into the next, into the next. I can barely stay far enough away from the domino effect to keep breathing. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I promised myself I’d never bring it up.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Daniel says.

  For me, the most hurtful memories always feel like a fifty-fifty mix of pathetic and powerful. “Who told you?”

  “Sometimes Ryan would be in the locker room when I
got out of track practice,” Daniel whispers.

  Bile, tasting like venom, mingles with my spit. “I hope you know he never got me. He didn’t win.”

  “Oh, I do,” Daniel tells me. “He told his friends that you bit his hand. That’s the only reason I didn’t go ballistic on him straight out. I knew you’d already gotten the better of him. But just so you know, I stole his gym shoes on his last day of school. And I tripped him. It was the least I could do for you.”

  One single laugh shoots out from my gut, followed by spurts of little chuckles, the pathetic side of the hurt appreciating the powerful side. It helps. It’s a battle for control that’s festered inside me for an entire year.

  “That’s my girl,” Aminah says to me. “Biting his hand.”

  Cameron hands me a napkin to use as a tissue. She contorts her face into a sympathetic scrunch. “I’m sorry. We’d try to bring it up, and you’d shoot us down. I never knew what to say. I still don’t, if I’m being honest.”

  “You and me both.” I close my eyes, fighting against the memory as it tries to resurface. “Don’t feel bad. You’re right. I never let you guys bring it up.”

  “We still should’ve tried. I’m bad at this stuff,” Aminah admits. “I hate him.”

  “Let’s kill him,” Daniel says. “I know. Too soon. I’m obviously terrible at this too.”

  We shift and squirm underneath the wiped tears and deep exhales, searching for a way to make it all better.

  “So yeah,” I say to break the mood, letting out a small laugh even though it isn’t funny. “There’s also this other little thing. I didn’t graduate.”

  Daniel and Aminah laugh like it’s a joke they don’t get but know that they should.

  “She’s serious,” Cameron affirms. “She’s supposed to retake her Honors Algebra II final tomorrow.”

  “Hornsby? What do you mean? I took that class with you. You were sick, but you went back and—ohhhhhh.” Daniel spins his finger around an imaginary globe. “It’s all connected.”

  Aminah stretches out the word what like taffy.

  Our verbal conversation has at least ten different body language conversations beneath it. The entire car is an opus of movement: confusion covering fear, squeezing nervous, tracing circles into the jeans of baffled.