Frannie and Tru

by Karen Hattrup

  “Anyway, Skip’s dad, who’s at least as big a dick as mine, is this rich-ass defense attorney. Eventually he gets us out of there with just a bunch of warnings. The next day, Richard has me up at the crack of dawn, running laps at the track and doing push-ups in the rain until I puke.”

  Tru stretched his legs out in front of him, looking at his Nikes, now scuffed a bit from their first weeks of wear.

  “The other day, I said I was good at running until I puke, and you asked me why. That’s why. I’m pretty sure some people think he hits me. He gives off that vibe, to be honest. But he never does. He just does stuff like that. But that morning, for the first time, I really didn’t care, because I felt like I knew what his specific brand of bullshit was, and that I was never going to be like that.”

  The grass was sharp and itchy against my skin, but I didn’t dare move. I felt a million things all at once. I felt like a useless know-nothing, a little girl with an easy life who had zero to offer or say. At the same time, I felt drawn close to Tru in a way I hadn’t all summer, knitted up with him.

  “Can I ask a stupid question?”

  “My favorite kind,” he said.

  “I know it’s not the point of the story. But I really want to know who threw the rock.”

  He laughed, one of his real laughs. “Of course you do. That’s the best part of the story, that I don’t tell you. Look, let me be totally honest, that’s not the first time I’ve told that story or anything. I don’t know if you do this yet, but when you get older, you’ll have your own set of favorite stories that you’ve perfected. You’ll take them out after a night of drinking, or when you’ve been dating somebody and you’re starting to get serious, because they help explain who you are. So that’s one of my stories. And most stories are, you know, at least half bullshit. But that one’s the truth,” he said, and looked right in my eyes.

  “Of course,” I said. “I believe you.”

  He bit his lip a little, glanced away, and shook his head. “You’re not just honest, Frannie. You’re trusting, too.”

  I looked back down at the water, searching for my family and finding them slowly. First Dad in the water, then Mom at the picnic table. Finally, the twins, standing at the edge of the sand.

  “I’m trying to think,” I said, “if I have a story like that I could tell. Maybe something from this summer.”

  Tru cocked his head and thought.

  “Well, it’s got to be something with danger. All good stories have a little danger.”

  First I thought of last night, the battle of the bands and our run from the fake cops. But that didn’t seem like enough. I thought of that first night in Siren, but the danger there was the man, and that wasn’t something I wanted to think about, let alone talk about.

  Except sitting there with Tru, after everything he’d said, I thought that maybe I should. I angled myself toward him, but kept my eyes on my shoes.

  “Um, that night at Siren. The man you yelled at?”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at me and waited for me to go on.

  “I don’t know if this is really anything? I don’t want to, ah, be dramatic. But he kind of really freaked me out. Not just because he touched my hair. He said something about how I looked really young, but he wouldn’t tell on me. And then he asked where I lived and said he thought he’d seen me. Walking in the park.”

  I’d actually been hoping he might laugh, but his brow was furrowed and he looked mad. Really mad.

  “The dog park? He said he’s seen you there?”

  I wanted to downplay everything right away. I wanted to take back everything I’d said, because seeing Tru worried was making the whole thing seem creepier, which was bringing back everything I’d felt that night. Revulsion. Fear. Guilt.

  “He didn’t say what park. There are tons of parks. I think he was full of shit.”

  Tru’s jaw was clenched, and he ran his hands through his hair, then pointed at me when he spoke.

  “If you see that asshole anywhere, you tell me, okay? At the park, on the street, in a fucking church—I don’t care where he is, you tell me. He’s a creep.”

  He found my eyes with his, to make sure I understood.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay. I got it.”

  “He’s worthless, you have to know that, and you can’t let him get to you. He’s a piece of shit, and you’re golden. He doesn’t deserve to speak another word to you.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was too busy turning my head the other way, pretending to look at something off in the trees.

  For the second time in two days, Tru had made me cry.

  SIXTEEN

  And the summer blazed on.

  I began a campaign to have Duncan spend a little time outside every day. At first, I had to coax and convince, but soon he accepted it as part of our routine. I would take him around the block or down to the park, pointing out the different kinds of flowers and trees, describing to him how they worked, the quiet ways they grew and thrived. He smiled sweetly and sometimes held my hand. I was never sure how much he liked these little excursions, and sometimes his arms flared with bug bites or his face flushed pink from the heat. Still, I didn’t stop.

  Our house, meanwhile, seemed to be shrinking, or maybe we were all growing within it. Always there was something to grumble or yell about. Jimmy obsessively shaved his head and left the aftermath in the bathroom sink, a defiant pile of short, sharp hairs. Kieran went crazy from being cooped up with Jimmy and took up residence on the couch most nights, smashing the cushions out of shape and sweating all over the fake leather. Dad got a temporary gig at a car repair shop down the street and he never could seem to get the grease and oil off his hands, leaving fingerprints everywhere. The hot water heater began an ominous dripping, a sure signal of coming death, and twice I caught my mother down in the basement just staring at it.

  The days got hotter and hotter, and still we didn’t turn on the air-conditioning. Tru, meanwhile, was still running in the mornings, going for longer and longer stretches as the weeks passed. Nothing stopped him. Not rising heat. Not humidity. Not rain.

  After the thunderstorms and all the delays, fireworks finally came that year, the third week in July. Mom still insisted that we watch them as a family, so we went to visit her friend Maria from work, the one who had a house with a roof deck looking over the water. It was the kind of place that made me think if only I could be a grown-up with a roof deck, then everything else in my life would be fine. Maria lived alone, so it was just the six of us and her. We sat there together on high, in a collection of sagging beach chairs. Mine was in front, and I had a clear view of the night sky exploding in neon wonder. I felt the reverberations in my chest, and imagined that each glowing asterisk sent out a shock wave that traveled in a direct line toward me, fizzling and finishing somewhere near my heart. But of course that wasn’t really how it was. Everyone else must feel them just the same.

  I turned briefly around right as the finale was reaching its peak, fireworks on top of fireworks, color raging, the air acrid with smoke. Jimmy and Kieran were staring up, but Dad had his arm around my mom. He was whispering in her ear, and she was laughing. I noticed that Tru was watching them, too. The darkness hid his face.

  There were nights when Tru went out with Jimmy and Kieran and there were nights when he went out with me, Sparrow, and the band. We would listen to them practice or go to the movies or eat pancakes at the diner in Towson, Tru always finding some way to pay for the two of us without actually asking me and without anyone noticing. Every time we hung out with them, I got nervous about P.J. At home, when I was alone, I’d been picturing what it would be like to be his girlfriend, to finally kiss someone. I thought maybe I wanted that, because he was pretty nice, and even more so, just because I wanted to finally have the experience of it all. But then when then he was actually there, I’d change my mind. I’d hide or slip away, avoiding him. Avoiding whatever might come if we got too close.

  Of
course there were nights when the boys were busy with their own jobs and music lessons and other friends. And then, Devon and P.J. disappeared at the beginning of August to spend ten days at a music camp in the woods of Virginia. So a few times, it was just Sparrow, Tru, and me, which was both disappointing and a relief. Once, Sparrow took us to a party with some friends she’d made at MICA. There were four of them living in an enormous open loft on the top floor of a crappy building in a crappy neighborhood. They’d painted a beautiful mural on the wall, a bunch of famous paintings all mingled together. I kind of recognized them, but Sparrow could name them for me. DaVinci’s Mona Lisa in Van Gogh’s café. Michelangelo’s god reaching toward Adam on a background of Jackson Pollock paint splatters. Sparrow’s friends drank wine and played music that sounded like nothing but noise, and the whole time Tru shot me looks. He mocked things with nothing but a single glance in my direction, and I was proud to realize that we shared that much understanding between us.

  When you know someone, you can say so much without saying a word.

  Marissa actually invited me to her birthday party the second week of August, or maybe her mom made her—just as my mom made me say yes. We slept over at her house in the basement, eight of us, all St. Sebastian’s girls except for me. We were a bit too old for that, and I think we all knew it. I could see more clearly than ever before just how far my group had been lagging behind. Those girls still weren’t friends with boys. They didn’t do cool things. I asked them about SSR and they talked madly for minutes and minutes on end, seeming to have loved it even though I was pretty sure they hadn’t done anything bad in the woods. I was a little surprised to find that I wasn’t even jealous of the retreat anymore. Maybe just the softest twinge. When they asked about me, I was vague, said a little about meeting someone from my new school, about the battle of the bands, but mostly I kept quiet. In the morning, I neatly rolled up my sleeping bag and went home.

  The heat hit a fever pitch. On a particularly miserable night, when the whole house turned into an oven, Mom and I escaped to the library. While she stocked up on new mysteries and romances, I wandered by a table of “suggested summer reading,” saw some of the books we’d done in English last year—Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies. There were also books we hadn’t read, but that I wanted to. All the Jane Austen ones, because everybody said they were romantic. Atonement, because one of the AP classes at St. Sebastian’s had been assigned it, and some parents got mad about the sex. Ever since, I’d been meaning to pick it up.

  And then there was Gatsby.

  The cover had the same shadowy blue face as Tru’s copy. I took it tentatively, skipping over the strange poem and reading the first couple of paragraphs again, then on through the first couple of pages, embarrassed by how long it took me. Every line seemed cloaked in so much meaning, and I had to go slowly, consider each word. Then I hit a part that stopped me dead.

  If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him . . .

  I pictured Tru cocking an eyebrow, lighting a cigarette, driving our van with just the lightest of touches to the wheel. I remembered clever jokes and cutting insults, told with equal charm. I thought of every time he’d said the right thing, just when I’d needed him to.

  My insides prickled, though I couldn’t say exactly why. What was wrong with being gorgeous? I read a little further, feeling almost guilty. Like I’d found Tru’s diary or something. I knew I could take the book with me, but I hesitated. I imagined some cold winter day a few months from now. Snow would be falling. Tru would be long gone. But I could sit in my room or in a coffee shop or in the library at my new school and make my way through these pages. Look for secrets. Maybe feel like he wasn’t really gone.

  I put the book back and went to go find my mother.

  The next day Tru was home from Loyola earlier than usual, and we took a blanket over to the park. I’d finished with chemistry and moved on to some algebra prep work that arrived last week, and he of course was reading Gatsby.

  “Do you understand it any better now?” I asked him. “Better than you did at the beginning of the summer?”

  He put the book down, rubbed his face with his hands.

  “Yes, Frannie. I think so. And let me tell you, I’m really starting to think that Daisy and Gatsby are just a couple of assholes.”

  Still, he picked the book back up and kept reading, murmuring to himself every once in a while. His Latin books sat next to him, unopened.

  I looked toward the bridge and knew that beyond it was the safe, the vodka inside. I still liked thinking of it, hiding there, waiting for me to surprise Tru. Like a secret weapon of sorts, tucked away like a promise. As long as I didn’t use it yet, didn’t drink it yet, then I felt like good things were still waiting, like some epic night lay ahead.

  A packet arrived that day in the mail, full of information about my new school. I kept opening it up to look at the same photo—a fancy science classroom, kids in goggles doing serious-looking experiments. I was instantly over my old fantasy of my basketball boyfriend and his sister. A new one emerged of me in a white coat with a girl like Tara as my lab partner, someone smart and outgoing and funny. Someone who would want me as a sidekick. I’d sit with her and Winston at lunch. They’d introduce me to all my new friends. My mind kept inserting Devon into the picture, although I knew he wouldn’t be there. After a while I didn’t fight it. I just let him hover there. I thought about how soon I’d be in school.

  Summer was suddenly nine weeks gone.

  Tru came into my room that Sunday to tell me he had set a date for the jump-off: his very last Saturday. I couldn’t believe how quickly the summer was going—how quickly it was almost gone.

  “Before the big jump, we need to get away, Frannie. This weekend. Me, you, Sparrow, and the boys. We need to go camping. I heard there’s some island that has wild horses. Do you know what I’m talking about?

  “Assateague? You want to go to Assateague? We camped there when I was little.”

  He looked at me incredulously.

  “Assateague? ASS-ateague? What genius came up with that?”

  He picked a dirty T-shirt off the floor, balled it up, and tossed it, hitting me square in the face. I threw the shirt back at him, but he leaned easily out of its path. I rolled my eyes at him, then answered in my best imitation of the way he talked. Slow delivery. Bored tone. Punctuated by sighs. “I’m pretty sure it was the Native Americans. You know, the ones who lived there before we killed them all or kicked them out.”

  It was a pretty half-assed impression, but it still got him. He laughed for real.

  “How do you even hear about these things?” I asked him. “How do you know about everything around here?”

  He gave me the eyebrow. “I talk to people, Frannie. I’m a very sociable person.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, Mom and Dad will never let us go. The two of us with the car, and a bunch of people they don’t know? Dream on.”

  “What if your brother comes? Jimmy’s picking up a couple of extra shifts this weekend, but Kieran is free, and I’ve planted the idea. Your mother is easy to persuade when she thinks we’re all happy and having fun together.”

  I’d never thought of that before, but as soon as he said it, I knew it was true.

  “Kieran won’t be into it,” I said. “He’ll feel like he’s babysitting me.”

  Tru shrugged, almost gracefully. His nonchalance was an art form.

  “Maybe something will change his mind,” he said.

  He turned around and left abruptly. Just as I was digging my algebra work and calculator out of my nightstand, he called to me from the top of the stairs.

  “Did I mention that Sparrow is coming for dinner? Tonight?”

  SEVENTEEN

  Because the weather that day was blistering and mysterious company was coming, we finally, finally, finally turned on the air-conditioning. It rumbled to life very slowly.

  I was setting
the dining room table while Mom, Jimmy, and Kieran fumbled around one another in the still-sweltering kitchen. Mom was in her heels and apron, rustling through the pantry. Jimmy was inhaling pretzels, on his usual rant of “Who eats this in the dead of summer,” this time about a massive pot of chili. Kieran was filling the water glasses while the two of them traded insults in one of their fevered and furious wars that none of us could penetrate. In the middle of it all, we had missed the light knock and Dad opening the door.

  Sparrow had just stepped inside.

  “Oh!” he said, with an uptick of surprise. “Well, hello.”

  I swear the boys heard something in his voice and composed themselves. Jimmy walked into the dining room first, rubbing his head, and Kieran followed him, gripping four glasses, water sloshing out the sides, his fingers rudely touching the rims. I trailed after them, and all three of us could now see Sparrow, standing just inside the front door in a patch of waning evening light. She had the black-and-white dress on again, the one she wore the first time I met her. She told my dad that she heard we were having chili, so she made jalapeño corn bread. She held up a pretty little basket, covered with a bright yellow dish towel. He took the basket from her and whistled appreciatively.

  “Jalapeño corn bread? I didn’t know Martha Stewart was coming.”

  Sparrow laughed, genuine and sweet, while I stood there gripping the silverware, absolutely certain that I would not survive even an hour of this. I would die first, painfully, of complete and absolute humiliation.

  The twins, meanwhile, were frozen beside me. Jimmy’s mouth was hanging open, literally hanging open, while Kieran had this distant, awed look on his face like he’d just stumbled, completely unprepared, upon the pyramids.