It doesn’t matter that my mom insists I go to work. I stay with Grandma till she passes out. It’s not until I get to the car that I realize my hands are shaking.
Chapter Two
Kennedy
I might have just signed my own death warrant. Like any second, a rather robust man with a suit of chain mail that was made for a much, much, much smaller man will appear, bend my ass over a rotting piece of wood, and attempt to cut my head off with an ax duller than C-SPAN. And he’ll keep hacking and hacking away, even when he knows he has a perfectly sharpened blade back in the castle…’cause, you know, he’s pissed about the super-small balls-pinching garb.
What was I thinking honking my horn at Annabel Lee Sumter?
There were a lot of things I could have done this morning. Read the newspaper. Stopped for breakfast. Hooked up with Olivia…again. Worked on one of the countless writings my editor keeps bugging me for. But the one thing I shouldn’t have done was honk my horn at Annabel Lee.
Annabel Lee is a lot of things, but she is certainly not the type of girl who enjoys a good horn-honking, or probably any kind of metaphorical honking if the rumors were true. I don’t know why I did it. I just saw her out there running, and something inside me screamed, Hey, there’s Annabel. And it’s like my hand got a mind of its own and pushed that damn horn.
Of course I’ve thought about talking to her. She’s sat twenty feet away from me in photography class every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for the past couple of months. Of course I thought about it. But I was too afraid. ’Cause after ten years of mostly silence, how does one just say hello?
Apparently, one just honks his horn like a real asshole.
With a sigh, I park my car outside the Bookie Joint. I run a hand through my ruffled hair, hoping it’s not as wild as it looks in my smudged rearview window. The last thing I need is Mrs. Peterson giving me that look. The hey you could have been doing something productive with your time and not just doing someone look that she likes to give me.
There’s no way the old broad is still asleep. Even though her store doesn’t open until ten, she still keeps teacher hours. Up, showered, and coffeed before the rest of us can find our boxers. As I climb out of the car, I look down to make sure I have correctly buttoned my shirt, quickly tucking it in.
Nothing like doing the walk of shame into a bookstore owned and run by your third-grade English teacher, who lets you live in the room above her business. If she could, I bet she would put me in detention.
“Good morning, Mr. Harrison,” she calls out from behind the counter, eyes peeking up from her copy of A Tale of Two Cities, the minute I walk into the store. I’ve lived above her shop since the day I turned eighteen, and she still calls me Mr. Harrison like I was back in her class.
Back with Annabel. Before things got so messed up.
Before I messed them up.
“Morning, Mrs. Peterson,” I mumble, tucking my chin down as I head to the stairs.
“Late night, Mr. Harrison?”
Right. Of course she wasn’t going to make this easy. She does let me live here pretty cheap, so I guess I owe it to her. “Darn it. You caught me, Mrs. Peterson. I don’t know how to tell you this. I guess there really isn’t any good way to do it. So, here it is. I was up all night visiting that other bookstore. You know the one in Charleston? The one that devotes a whole section to not books but toys? And has that massive coffee shop right in the middle? I know. I know. I’ll start packing my things now,” I say, shaking my head.
Always be ready with a joke and a whole lot of charm. That’s my motto. It’s the easiest way to respond to the looks, the questions, the not-so-gentle reminders that despite living in this town for the majority of my life, I’m still considered an outsider. All those people wondering why I didn’t leave the minute I turned eighteen. Simpler to joke and tease than tell them this town, the place that doesn’t even consider me one of its own, is the only bit of stability I’ve ever known.
“Using humor to avoid the question at hand. Typical response, Mr. Harrison,” Mrs. Peterson tsks.
Of course Mrs. Peterson sees right through it. She reads me like one of the books in her store. The only one who’s ever been able to call me out on my bullshit.
Well, almost the only one.
It just goes to show you—never rent a room from your third-grade teacher. Even when your mom kicks you out at eighteen, so she can move to Vegas with a trucker she met at the grocery store. Even when you can’t ask your dad for money or a place to stay because you don’t know where he is on account that he walked out on you and your mom before you gained object permanence. Even when you barely make enough money at your construction job to pay the cheap-as-hell rent she charges you.
I clear my throat and flash a grin. “Is there anything I can help you with this morning, Mrs. Peterson?”
“And now you are trying to avoid my questions by offering me your services,” she chides.
“And now you are going to use this to your advantage and hand me a list of chores. Isn’t it beautiful how well we know each other?” I ask, holding out my hand. This has been our routine for years. I come home way too late—or way too early, in this case—and she starts to poke and prod until I offer to help around the shop. It saves me from reminding her of all the ways I’ve let her down and keeps her from having to hire someone to help around the shop. I don’t know what she would do without our little routine. When her husband died, Mrs. Peterson couldn’t handle both teaching and running the business. She had to choose, and so she chose what meant the world to her husband. But she knew darn little about running a store, so I helped her when I could. I know a lot of people in town think she’s treating me like a charity case, but I’m paying her hand over fist in chores, money, and patience.
In less than five minutes, I’m knee-deep in chores that involve everything from watering plants to shelving books. The shelving I like. I dig looking at the titles, the blurbs, and even the author pictures. I can’t help but wonder: How did you get those ideas, all those crazy-fucking-roller-coaster-Tourette’s-having-things to come together and make something? I scribble, sure, but I’ll never come close to creating something like one of these.
I’m nearly done when I hold the book in my hand. Double Trouble Double Dog Bubble Dare. My hands start to tremble a little, and I nearly drop the book to the floor. First the honking and now this? It was turning out to be a super fucking weird day.
This book, Double Trouble Double Dog Bubble Dare, was how Annabel Lee and I became best friends. After Dad left, Mom, for some reason, moved us to the smallest country town in western Virginia without actually being in West Virginia, and I was placed in Mrs. Peterson’s English class. Back then, I didn’t actually have the same swagger. If anything, I was shy as fuck. And considering this town’s fear of all things foreign, including the ever-so-scary eight-year-old from up north, no one talked to me. Like, no one.
Until Double Trouble Double Dog Bubble Dare. Mrs. Peterson, deciding I was smarter than all of my previous teachers combined did, moved me from the lowest reading group to the highest. Right into the one with Annabel Lee. She was a know-it-all. She was sassy. She was a real pain in the ass. But she was the ballsiest girl this side of Pippi Longstocking. After we read our book, a strange, trippy tale of a bunch of witches who dared little kids to break their parents’ rules until one little girl stood up to them and told them it was wrong, Annabel Lee cornered me on the playground.
“You,” she commanded, pointing her finger straight into my chest. “You will help me.”
“Help you?” I gulped. “With…with what?”
“A reign of dares like this town has never seen. Epic ballads will be written about our adventures. Men will demand their wives name their children after us. Our dares will be wilder than this town has ever seen. More dangerous. More badder than even those witches,” she whispered, her eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“I will?” I asked, feeling a bit light-hea
ded. Shit, I didn’t even know what an epic ballad was. In fact, I didn’t understand half the words that came out of her mouth. Later, I would find out that she came from a family with lawyers for parents, and an honor scholar for a brother, and a grandma on every town committee possible. She was handed a thesaurus when she was still in the crib. Different from me in every way that mattered to everyone that mattered. And even though I was scared shitless to say no, the last thing I wanted to do was get in trouble. Mom had enough stress at home, and I didn’t want to add to it.
We couldn’t go into the grocery store without the looks or whispers. I never knew if they were afraid we would steal something or contaminate them with our liberal views. Mom had a hard time keeping a job back then. Of course, she was sixteen when she had me, so she was still growing up herself. Hell, I don’t think she ever finished. Most people assumed I shared her flakiness. Except Mrs. Peterson and Annabel Lee. Even all those years ago, that spunky kid saw something in me others didn’t.
“Of course you will. You have no friends,” she replied bluntly to my question, like she was telling me I had a piece of food stuck in my teeth and not just commenting on my pathetic loneliness.
My throat went dry. It was almost like the disastrous horn honking. Some force, like fate or Kanye, took over me, and I found myself nodding. But unlike the honking, which was sure to end with a good swift kick to the nads, saying yes to Annabel Lee that day was probably the best decision I ever made.
Once I’m done shelving, I trudge up to the counter, afraid that I’m going to get a thousand questions from Mrs. Peterson. I clear my throat and set the copy of Double Trouble Double Dog Bubble Dare on the counter. “I’d like to buy this,” I mumble.
Mrs. Peterson raises an eyebrow as she rings up the book. “You sure you have enough to pay for this?” she asks, nodding toward the price of ten dollars that pops up.
“Come on, Mrs. Peterson, you know I’m a secret millionaire. I showed you my audition tape for The Bachelor,” I tease, feeling my cheeks go red at the gentle reminder of my financial state.
Mrs. Peterson bites on the inside of her cheek and hits void on the cash register. She pushes the book toward me. “Consider it a bonus for all your good help around here lately. And don’t even think about coming up with some malarkey about how you like helping.”
I know better than to poke the beast. I take the book in my hands, turning to go upstairs. I’m feeling pretty damn lucky that Mrs. Peterson didn’t ask me any questions about why I wanted to purchase a children’s book. I’m halfway up the stairs when Mrs. Peterson calls out, “Tell Annabel Lee I said hello.”
Tell Annabel Lee I said hello.
How in all of the hells did she remember assigning us to read the book? Of course, we did become infamous after that. Teachers would beg the principal not to allow us to be grouped together in classes, but since our school was so small, unless they moved one of us to another grade level, it was nearly impossible. If people in town already thought I was the bad seed before I became friends with Annabel, after provided them with all the ammunition they needed to keep thinking it even long after my friendship with her was over. Our reign of dares was everything Annabel Lee said it would be. With every dare I completed, my confidence grew. The less I cared what all those people whispered about my mother and me. The grin that has worked in my favor all these years, the grin Annabel conjured like she was one of those witches from our favorite book, became larger and more frequent the closer we became.
And then the accident occurred. One drunk driver and everything changed.
Once I am safely in my room, I manage to make some space on my bed, throwing all my music magazines and empty chip bags on the floor, and plop down and begin to look through the book.
Tell Annabel Lee I said hello.
The time she dared me to glue a bunch of quarters to the floor in the cafeteria.
The time she dared me to replace Mrs. Peterson’s peanut butter sandwich with kitty litter.
The time she dared me to wear my underwear on the outside of my clothes on school picture day.
My mom nearly forgot to tell me about Annabel’s accident. After her grandmother, my mother was the first person Annabel’s parents called to inform us about what had happened. Annabel’s brother dead. Annabel stuck in the hospital for an undetermined amount of time. Second- and third-degree burns covering 20 percent of her body. They had called my mother in the middle of the night, and she told me halfway though breakfast like she was discussing the probability of rain.
I felt sick and dizzy and as if the whole world had been knocked off its axis. When my mother noticed that I had stopped eating, she yelled something about how only ungrateful children waste food that their mother had to work overtime to purchase. I nodded and ate every last bit of waffle on my plate. It tasted stale, and I threw it all up the minute I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I still can’t eat waffles to this day.
Mom said she would try to take me to see Annabel when she could, but she was just too busy that morning. I snuck out of school during lunch and walked the three miles to the hospital. I made it halfway to her room before I felt the nausea return. Images of Annabel disfigured and deformed haunted me. I had no way of knowing the burns were mostly on her back. Not that it would have mattered. Television was my babysitter most of the time, and I loved my horror films.
I was a kid, and I was alone. When I finally made it to her room, nearly sweating through my clothes, she was asleep. And while she wasn’t the monster I had imagined, it was worse. The Annabel I knew was the hero, the conqueror. This Annabel was frail, weak, and so helpless.
I had never seen anything like that. I didn’t know all those tubes and beeps meant hope and not loss. I ran, and I didn’t look back. Not once. I guess my father taught me something after all.
I had left that girl when she needed me the most. Abandoned her just like my mother and father had me.
Maybe it’s sitting next to her in class all these weeks, or finding the book…but I can’t get Annabel’s voice out of my mind.
I dare you.
She whispers it to me over and over again. As I turn each page of the book, thinking back on all the dares and all those times she pushed me, I realize what I need to do: I’m going to dare myself to talk to Annabel Lee. Because when she dared me to stay by her side all those years ago, I didn’t. And it’s the single biggest regret of my life.
Chapter Three
Annabel
“Look, I think we need to talk.” Jason sighs.
I pull my gaze from the plethora of hormones and hopes that mingle around the parking lot outside the mall where I work. I decided it would be best to defer going to college for a year to help with Grandma and the twins. Despite my parents’ many protests, I knew they needed me. So between helping with the spawns and Grandma, I spend the rest of my time working at a chain coffee shop in the mall. Jason tended to meet me in the parking lot during my lunch breaks. And contrary to what Grandma thought, there was very little kissing. Mostly listening to punk music while Jason complained that interning for his mother’s law firm was the worst.
It wasn’t always like this. We used to be unable to keep our hands off each other. When I spent all those weeks in the burn unit, Jason was also there visiting his father, a firefighter who battled fate one too many times and lost. One of the nurses, probably sick of hearing me cry and ask my parents where Kennedy was, sent Jason into my room with a few board games. Despite my chucking a few dice at his head, Jason kept coming back.
The friendship was one of convenience at best. He was super quiet, and I was super angry at pretty much anyone who wasn’t laid up in a bed with second-degree burns covering their back…unless they were offering me some of those happy pills that made all the pain go away. But Jason was as loyal as they came. He showed up every day, and eventually, I was kicking his butt in Chutes and Ladders. We didn’t talk much, which was all right at the time, since I didn’t feel like talking. That
would mean discussing losing my brother, the permanent scars I’d carry all over my back, and the fact that my best friend dropped me.
Even though I thought Jason would disappear the moment I got out, his mom and my mom must have planned a playdate after my mom got tired of hearing my crying, because one day he was up in my room, an Operation game board under his arm.
Jason lived in a neighboring town, but we spent at least one day every weekend together growing up. One weekend, right in the middle of a game of Scrabble, he leaned over and kissed me. I freaked. I wasn’t ready to be kissed by any boy. I was sixteen, and there were quite a few girls doing a lot more than kissing at that age, but I wasn’t ready for a lot more. That would mean removing my shirt and showing the world those scars. Fate at least had taken some pity on me. If someone saw me walking down the street, they would never even know I was marked and ruined. The evidence of my brush with death could always be covered up. Except for when it came to this. Every moment of intimacy would be another reminder of the darkest day of my life.
Maybe fate hadn’t pitied me at all.
Jason found me hiding from him and crying in my closet. He sat down next to me, leaned his head on my shoulder, and told me I didn’t have to say anything. He would wait. That I was beautiful, and that he wasn’t afraid. He was so earnest, I kissed him right then and there.
I sigh now, leaning my head back against the headrest. “You do realize that’s the worst possible way ever to start a conversation, right? I mean it. The. Worst.”
“It’s the only way I know how to have this conversation,” Jason replies quietly.
My stomach tightens, and I sit up. Straight up. I narrow my eyes at the boy I’ve been dating for almost four years. “What do you mean ‘this conversation’?” I ask. My voice comes out way too high.
Jason opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it. This process continues over and over again. He looks like a fish out of water, gasping for breath that he’s never going to find. At least not until someone helps put him back in the water. It reminds me of Finn’s fit this morning, and I make a mental note to delete any episodes of Planet Earth that involve aquatic life off my DVR. Too many fish metaphors swimming around my life.
Seven Ways to Lose Your Heart Page 2