“Come back here, young lady,” Dad yelled. “You owe—”
And that’s when I heard the screeching tires and the scream of steel smashing into titanium. Mom saw it all from the driveway, and I saw Mom. She scrambled to her feet, her hands flailing overhead. It was like those cartoons when the characters’ legs are spinning before the body finally moves. She didn’t scream. She moaned. But louder than any sound of any kind I’ve ever heard. Louder than a siren, than a plane taking off. Dad must’ve been right in front of Maya, his back to her when it happened. There were splatters of blood all over the back of his shirt and neck. He says he felt bits of metal and glass sting the backs of his legs. I wish I could’ve held her in my arms then, the way I would’ve held her under the stars during our campout. I wouldn’t have cared about the blood. But Mrs. Watson rushed me inside our house to watch Saturday television as if I hadn’t heard what I’d heard. As if it weren’t my baby sister out there.
The same way that time changes when someone you love is born, it changes again when someone you love dies. The first week you remember the accident hourly, the first month weekly, and so on. But remembering a death never becomes a once-a-year thing, and memories of it pop up when you least expect them, memories that can make you sick, that twist you out of reality and into another dimension. And unlike birthdays, you don’t share what you remember with others. You keep the emptiness, the loneliness, to yourself and quietly spin out of control, just like I did in Mr. Ditman’s class.
* * *
Dad stomps into the kitchen before I have a chance to deny my dislike of sugar cookies to Mom. He double-fists two in each hand and huffs toward the garage.
“I’ve got to get that damn generator ready before the storm really hits,” he says.
“You’ve been on that weather website again,” Mom says. “The one that sends you into Code Red mode.”
I jump up to help Dad. That’s how much I don’t want to talk about the cookies. And as I whip by them cooling on the stovetop, the power goes. The lights are out, but because it’s morning, that is not what stops us cold. It’s the harmonious buzz of the coffeemaker and oven fan that has suddenly gone silent.
“Let’s hope this old hunk of junk will start,” Dad garbles, crumbs dropping from his mouth as he stomps down the hall.
Apart from Dad’s incessant mumbling, all I hear is the wind as we walk outside to the garage. Despite Dad’s droning and the whistling wind, there are pockets of silence during which I hear crackling in the wetlands just ten yards away. When I look away from Dad and the freshly-confirmed hunk of junk that Dad has pulled into the driveway, I spot the doe with the white diamond on her chest. I sweep the area for her babies, but there is nothing but white.
“Where do you think you’re going, Peg?” Dad calls to me, and I stop. I’ve drifted into the yard toward the wetlands without even realizing it. I need to see if the second fawn has shown up.
“That doe has a second fawn out there somewhere,” I say. “I just want to see it.”
“Leave them alone,” he hollers over the wind. “Dirty creatures.”
I shake my head and keep on walking through the yard.
“Never interfere with natural selection!”
But between my worry and the wind, Dad’s voice is lost on me.
4. ALEX
Tuesday
“Due to inclement weather, school is dismissed immediately.” The principal’s voice is apologetic, as if we, the students and faculty, are devastated. By the looks of the classroom, however, we’re not. Mrs. Walsh has packed away her trig textbook, her big canvas bag already hanging heavy from her shoulder.
“Let’s get out of here while the getting’s good!” She is smiling, which is as odd as having school canceled ten minutes after it starts.
“Cool,” I say to Beth Colbert, who sits across the aisle. And it is cool. That’s why the burning sensation in my stomach is puzzling.
“Are you walking home?” Beth asks.
“No,” I say, and before I can utter another word, it hits me. Dismissal has been sprung on me, and I need more time to mentally prepare for the ride home with Hot Rod Todd.
“You getting a ride with that senior guy?”
I am getting sweaty and flushed. And not because Beth knows a little more about me than I’d like. My armpits are damp, and I think there might be a drop of sweat running down my hairline. Todd already caused a potential accident this morning, and the road conditions have only gotten worse since then. Ten minutes matters in a blizzard.
“Yeah, I’m getting a ride.” I fake a smile as my insides continue to self-destruct. I can’t think of a single person, not even Zefi, who would understand why going home early is not a good thing. What they don’t understand, though, is that right now, as I gather my books and head down the hallway toward the parking lot, I am still raw, still shaken up from the ride here. A few more classes, just a few more hours, and I’d have time to replenish my fortitude. I push into the hallway, and when I turn down Hall C toward the steel doors leading outside, it’s like I’ve entered a wind tunnel. I block out all the commotion of excited jabber and high-five slaps. I zip up my jacket along with a panic that is mounting fast. I can feel my muscles tighten under my wool coat. My teeth grit as I cross the threshold and enter the freezing white outdoors.
It’s early-February cold. The kind that gives you a toothache if you try to smile. Skateboard-incident cold. And right as my heart is about to get pummeled with one of those horrific flashes of Ina, bloody and sprawled on the Greenbriar steps, I catch a glimpse of Todd through a veil of snowflakes. While everyone else has switched to high-speed mode in the cold, Todd is leaning against the front of his car, watching me calmly, like he’s not affected by the cold and chaos around him. I pull my shoulders back and amble over coolly, like I don’t notice his scowl or the wind that’s just snaked its way under my collar and down my back. I hold back a shiver and make sure not to pick up my pace beyond a saunter.
An icy gust blasts through the lot, and people squeal and simultaneously pull their collars tighter, as if we were all following some choreography hardwired into our human nature. Abby Claireview’s scarf untwists from around her shoulders and flies into the branches of the apple tree. She clenches the edge of her collarless coat around her bare chin and keeps on walking, her scarf already a distant memory. Jake from English class’s baseball cap just shot as high as the gymnasium roof, and he, too, slips through the slush like nothing happened, his gaze never even breaking away from the icy gray pavement beneath his feet. Todd, however, remains perfectly still, his eyes black as night. Not a hair on his head—not one—has been displaced in the latest gust. His shoulders are relaxed, not squeezed up to his ears like everyone else’s. It’s like the northern wind has fizzled at his feet, like human nature stops with him.
A part of me wants to be the bigger man and say, “Look, Todd. Let’s call a truce and try to make this driving situation work.” Dad always pushed for that kind of frank talking-to. But Dad is also 6’3” and knows how to fight if push came to shove. He became a local heavyweight boxing champ out of high school. Me, I’m not as rough around the edges as Dad. Too much time at Greenbriar, I guess.
“I’m a product of public school,” Dad told me not so long ago. “And I didn’t turn out so bad.”
“I guess,” I answered, which in passive-aggressive speak meant I wasn’t so sure.
His bushy brows had dropped into a frown as he drove. “So it bothers you that I’m a mechanic?”
“No,” I whined, which, again, meant that it kind of did bother me.
F’ing Greenbriar. I’d always thought I was better than those preppy douchebags with my skateboarding and long hair. But in the car with Dad that day, I realized I was just like them, with my empty judgments and snobbery. It’s dangerous being surrounded by kids who talk about boats and horse stables and their father’s
jobs because it rubs off, even if you know none of that really matters. In the end, I think it was Dad who built up my resistance to the superficial bullshit. But after a while, your resistance breaks down.
I remember Dad and I could have cut the silence with a knife on the way to the hospital that day. I didn’t zip out of the car and around the revolving glass door to Ina’s room, but slinked away toward the entrance, heavyhearted and guilty. I could’ve explained to Dad that I hated Lincoln, that it was tough being the new kid, and that I was looking for someone to blame for my shitty new life. But as easy as it would have been to say these things, I stayed quiet. Because they would’ve been lies; because what I was insinuating to Dad, with his greasy hands and GED degree, was on some level the honest-to-god truth. In other words, when I say I’m a shitty human being, I mean it. Dad picked me up at the hospital a couple of hours later, and we acted as if our earlier discussion had never happened.
But I’ll bet he hasn’t forgotten it. As for me, that moment has been neatly hidden under a thick scab of anger until now. I stop in front of Todd, who is scowling, his muscles practically busting out from under his coat, and realize that if I hadn’t become so Greenbriar’d, I could have learned a thing or two from Dad before he up and left.
“You’re late,” Todd says as he bends into the Mustang and closes the door. Instead of unlocking mine, however, he lets me watch from outside as he lays his black bomber jacket on the back seat and carefully nestles his backpack between the empty beer bottles on the floor. He starts the engine, plays with the radio, and pulls out his cell. I drop my shoulders and try to convince myself that the wind isn’t that cold, that snow isn’t dropping under my collar. I try to imagine that I’m in rippling heat, but I can’t concentrate with the stream of cars honking as they swerve toward the exit. From the corner of my eye, I watch Todd lean over at a snail’s pace to pull up the lock on the passenger-side door, but once it’s unlocked, I don’t rush to open it. That would be admitting that I’m cold, which would be admitting that his efforts to make me suffer have worked. Feigned nonchalance is my pathetic weapon of choice against Todd.
“Get in the car, asshole!” Todd yells through the closed windows. He revs the engine, but I take my time opening the door, pretending to be mesmerized by the iced-over lot and the sliding cars, pretending I can still feel my feet. Pretending to be the idiot savant that I might just actually be.
“Cold?” Todd cackles once I’m inside.
The car is toasty and feels pretty damn good, but I don’t let on. I breathe in the hot air wheezing from the dashboard and loosen my shoulders as slowly and imperceptibly as is humanly possible. ETA fifteen minutes, I tell myself, my right hand already gripped around the passenger-seat door handle. Maybe it’s the snow in April or the thoughts of Dad and me that have suddenly unearthed themselves, but I’m feeling superstitious, and when I feel superstitious, I start to worry. Maybe those twenty seconds locked out of the car were my signal to walk away. And maybe now that we’re stalled in a sloppy mass exodus, fate is giving me a second chance to come to my senses and jump out while I still can. But despite fate’s efforts, I opt to buckle my seat belt for fear of rocking the boat.
The click of the buckle is metallic and cold and final, and I can’t help but wonder if this is it for me. I accept that I may be one of those unlucky bastards with a shitty fate who dies before his time. I look out into the snowflakes and ask myself the question you should never ever ask yourself the first hour you’re awake in the morning: Am I going to die today? Superstition is a good exercise for those in need of a serious, mind-f’ing mortality check. But with Todd in my life, I’m no longer one of those people, which gets me thinking that maybe this isn’t the mind-screw variety of superstition, but instead a straight-up premonition of what’s to come. With this thought, I feel this morning’s cornflakes slip upward into my throat.
Todd jerks forward into the stream of traffic as I silently beg the universe for my life. Because I want to see Ina again whether or not she wants to see me. Because I can’t die hating my father. Because Mom would be devastated. Because—
“Fart bomb coming at you,” Todd says matter-of-factly.
But there’s nothing matter-of-fact about this smell, so thick and putrid that I can practically feel its cloud-like presence hovering over me, warm and repulsive, summoning my half-digested cornflakes into my mouth. No, I can’t die today. Not with him. Not smelling like cooked broccoli. It would be morally wrong to be forever linked in death with Todd. So wrong that I find myself unbuckling the seat belt. Todd looks over, and right as he’s about to insult me, there’s a thud on the passenger-side window.
“What gives, X?” Zef’s fist is pushed up against my window. “We’ve got work to do!”
“Lay off the car, douchebag!” Todd leans over me to insult Zefi, crushing my fingers under his elbow.
“Shakespeare project,” Zef says. ‘Dude, have you forgotten?”
I nod and swallow down my second cornflake breakfast of the morning. I can feel Todd’s stare as I pull my backpack onto my knees and open the door.
“You’re serious?” Todd frowns like he’s offended. Like he wants to find out who this Shakespeare guy is and beat him to a pulp. “Remember, Freshman, I can’t drive you home tomorrow. It’s Wednesday.” Todd inches forward into the crooked stream of cars before I’ve pulled my second leg out the door.
“No one here’s a freshman, asshole!” Zefi yells into the car, and Todd shifts into park. As he fumbles to unbuckle his seat belt, me and my atrophied balls wriggle out of the car and begin a brisk walk-run through traffic to the sidewalk.
“I’m an f’ing dead man,” I say to Zefi when I hear the Mustang’s driver-side door squeak open.
The sidewalk is jammed with students, which creates a buffer between us and Todd, but I can feel his coffee breath on my neck, I’m sure of it. I cringe with every step, waiting for his bulky hands to drop like a vice on my shoulder. I pull my gaze up from the slush with the sound of a whistle. There, not ten feet in front of us, is a man in a black poncho, a silver whistle dangling from his neck. Traffic police. He’s pointing to Todd and yelling something about getting back in his car. Zef and I keep walking, and when I stop to look behind me, Todd is buckled back up in his Mustang.
“I think I’m going crazy, Zef,” I say.
“I think your rides with Todd are officially over,” Zefi says, not listening.
“Shakespeare?” I say. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
“It’s not like I planned ahead,” he says. “I saw you in the car looking miserable and I had to do something.”
“I was thinking about my own death,” I say.
“Uplifting.”
“Dying in a car accident is bad enough,” I explain. “But dying in a car accident with Todd would be—”
“Shameful.” Zefi turns onto Rose Avenue. “The inextricable link.”
We slosh down Rose Avenue, past the florist, Miller’s, and the dry cleaner toward Gus’s at the corner. The pointy roof of Zefi’s house is usually visible right beyond the sign that reads “Gus’s Gas,” but with the blizzard, we can’t see ten feet ahead of ourselves. The people we pass on the sidewalk look like ghosts, all faded and white. Zefi looks pretty normal because we’re only a couple of feet apart, but when he picks up speed as we near the station, he starts blending into white like the others.
Zefi calls back to me to hurry up, his voice all muffled like he’s talking into a pillow. Through the fog, a light gray clump of people darkens and takes shape. Beyond the clump, red and blue police lights are flashing. When I find Zefi through the mist, he’s already pulled out his spiral and a pencil.
“There’s been a holdup,” he whispers, as if it’s privileged information.
“Is Gus hurt?” I try to catch a glimpse of the little brick square of a storefront behind the pumps where Gus usually sits, but
as I walk toward it squinting, I run into yellow police tape. I stop, but Zefi squats below the tape and heads toward the brick without a second’s hesitation. I lose his body in the snowy air for about two seconds before I see it reemerge.
“Assholes,” he says, all offended. “They won’t let me ask questions.”
“It’s a crime scene, Zef. What do you expect?” I say. But I know exactly what he expects.
“I’m with The Top Hat, Alex,” he says all condescending. “That should mean something.”
But it doesn’t. The Lincoln High School paper really isn’t equivalent to The New York Times. I respect Zefi and his journalism, I do. But once he’s got that notebook and pencil in hand, he thinks he’s a superstar.
“The window next to the cash register is broken,” Zefi says. “The police have it all taped up.”
“Did you see Gus?”
“He’s inside popping corn nuts and talking with a detective.”
“How do you know they’re corn nuts?”
“Who the hell cares?”
“You said corn nuts, not me,” I say.
“Piss off.”
“And how do you know he’s talking to a detective and not some dressed-down cop?”
“I just do.”
“Oh, he must have a khaki raincoat and oversize pipe.”
“I should’ve left you with Todd,” he grumbles.
“Just admit you don’t know shit, Zef,” I try to say this as gently as a best friend can.
“Speak for yourself,” he jabs. “It’s called having a journalistic eye, asshole.”
Through the white mist, I see him shake his head, but I know that deep down he agrees with me. And right as a twinge of guilt starts to work its way into my consciousness, I smell lemons, flowers, and baby powder. This scent has broken through my frozen senses, which means it’s pretty damn potent. Even the wind spiraling around us can’t whisk it away. Right then, I feel something brush my cheek, the way a spiderweb tickles your face when you walk through it. I spin around to find an old lady whose black, wiry hair is exploding out from under a neon beret and into my face.
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