All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  “What are you doing with the brochures?”

  “The college fair is next week, and it’s a really big deal. Sure, everyone just stays around here, but they try. Hence…” He gestures to the brochures stacked behind him.

  “Sounds good.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?” he asks. “The college fair is huge. College is this totally assumed rite of passage. We all get by on some kind of cinematic idea of our futures, where our lives are full of frat parties and internships in the city and a wacky cast of roommates. But I guess everything’s not the movies.”

  “No, that’s true,” I say.

  “Well, anyway,” he says, and I kind of wonder why he’s still talking to me, since I know I’m being rude. I don’t want to be rude, but I have little say in my choices. “Since you have time, and the brochures are endless…” He puts one of the bins labeled VANDERBILT on a metal shelf and stands up. “Want the grand tour of Westbrook High?”

  As he goes to grab his stuff in the main room of the guidance office, I adjust the Vanderbilt brochures because they’re not aligned properly. There’s an edge in the back that’s higher than the others, and if I don’t fix it, it’s all I’ll think about all day.

  I hear him say to someone as he returns, “Tell Gauthier I’m showing the new girl around.” The faceless female voice tells him to lock up before he leaves. College brochures are kept under intense security, apparently.

  “Ready?” he asks, as I turn and pretend I wasn’t fixing the brochures.

  “Ready.”

  It’s only when we’re in the hall that it starts up in my head. We take the corner toward the gym, and I can hear the sounds of shoes squeaking on the floor, that sad earnestness of gym class and forced team spirit.

  I don’t know these people. I’ll never belong here. It’s another year where I’ll hope and I’ll try, but 162 days is too long, and it’s not going to last. They’ll find out.

  They always find out.

  “Where do you go?” Ryan asks.

  “What?” His face is only a few inches away from mine, but it’s not some kind of romantic moment. Instead he’s staring at me like … well, like I’m me.

  “You disappear a lot. You didn’t hear me again, I’m guessing?”

  “Sorry. I … sorry.” I should just wear a sticker that says HELLO, MY NAME IS SORRY.

  He shakes his head. “Well, anyway, this is the gym. Down there is the cafeteria,” he says, pointing. “We can go through the different halls so you can see all the classrooms that look exactly the same … or…”

  “Or?”

  Ryan takes my hand, which makes me uneasy. I’m uncomfortable being treated like I’m human. I look down at his hand over mine, worrying that my rot can be transferred through my palm. That I’ll infect this guy with what I am, all because he was nice enough to show me around.

  “This is top secret,” he says as he pushes through a set of double doors. “You’re being invited into something only a select group of people know about—and I’m trusting you not to say a word.”

  “I don’t have anyone to tell except you,” I reply, and he laughs, but I’m not kidding.

  He takes out a Swiss Army knife (Is that even legal in school?) and fiddles with another set of double doors about ten feet farther down the hall.

  “Welcome to the Shadows,” Ryan announces as he pulls the doors open with a dramatic flourish. I guess his voice is supposed to sound like that guy in the horror-movie trailers, but it’s a bit … not.

  We step into darkness, and he takes out his phone to guide us deeper into it.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “The auditorium.” He leads me into the black until we both tumble onto something soft. As he illuminates the area by my knees with his phone, I can see tattered and stained flowers.

  “Drama club,” he explains. “This is one of our many couches. No one seems to know or care that the doors are easily pried open, so we sneak in here when we just can’t deal with school or life or basically any of it.”

  “You sit in the darkness?”

  “Life is nothing but darkness,” he says, and I feel a moment of gratitude. After so many years, maybe someone gets it, I think, until he laughs again. “I’m just fucking around. But we can’t leave the stage lights on, because I’m pretty sure we’d be caught, like, instantly.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” I say, and force a laugh in return. Lexi Lawlor laughs. Lexi Lawlor thinks it’s fun and exciting to break into the school auditorium and sneak onto a couch. She trusts people and knows tragedy only as something from Shakespeare.

  I hear the bell ring, but Ryan doesn’t move.

  “I have an idea.” He turns his phone so I can see his face. He’s a glowing skull against the darkness, distorted by the games the light plays. “You don’t really have to start today, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s be honest. The first day is pointless,” he says, echoing my earlier thoughts. “No one cares about it, and if you don’t show up, it doesn’t count against your attendance, since you didn’t start the year yet anyway. And I’d like to get to know you. That would be a far better way to spend the first day of school than learning which teachers count homework as 30 percent of my grade.”

  Maybe only 5 percent is regret and 5 percent is brand-new bad life choices.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to start the year pissing off my teachers.”

  It’s also that … the routine and the sameness protect me. They keep me safe. No one pays much attention to a girl who does what she’s supposed to. No one cares when you follow the rules. I don’t have to think about everything when someone else does the thinking for me.

  “Yeah. Fine. That’s okay. Hold on and I’ll walk you to your next class.”

  There’s doubt in Ryan’s voice. It’s the sound of wondering why you bother. It’s the sound I hear every time I call home and I’m not better. When I beg my mom to send me my green pants or my yellow socks because I don’t have anything else. I hate the sound of it. I hate always being such a disappointment.

  “Wait.” I put my hand out, brushing his leg accidentally. “You’re right. It’s a pointless day.”

  I don’t want to make my teachers mad, but then again, my teachers don’t know I exist yet. I missed my first two classes because I was getting acclimated, and I can probably get away with that through lunch. It’s amazing how much time people think you need to find a locker, but it’s the same at every school.

  Ryan gets up and uses his phone to throw a path of light across the backstage area. “Come here.”

  I follow the path. In the phone light, I see only pieces of things; the whole is still obscured by the darkness. I kind of like the symbolism of it.

  We walk maybe four feet before he tells me to sit, and I do while he rummages through something.

  Lights come on around me. We’re inside the facade of a house, a full exterior wall with a door and windows and even a porch swing on the other side of it, but where we sit, it’s only plywood and wires.

  “It’s the set from the spring show,” Ryan says. “We’ll probably end up scrapping it for parts, but for now it’s like our own secret world.” He settles against the wall of the house and leans over, taking out a tin of Pringles from somewhere. I consider asking if he’ll get in trouble for skipping the first day of school, but I get the impression he’s done this before. Especially when he leans over again and takes out a can of Coke.

  “You into theater?” he asks, holding out the Pringles.

  “No, thanks,” I say to his offer of a chip. “Theater’s all right, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I saw a play on Broadway once,” I reply.

  My mom teaches drama. I’ve spent a lot of time seeing plays. Studying them. When I was younger, we had season tickets to the local theater, and I remember my parents teaching us about the elements of tragedy before we saw West Side Story. I used to love the way stories played
out onstage in front of me, but that was a different time.

  I don’t want to talk about all that.

  “Yeah? What show?”

  “Wicked. It was a long time ago.”

  My dress was green, and Scott teased me during the entire train ride that I was a wicked witch. I was eleven then, and he was fourteen. We were excited to go into New York for a show—our first outside the university where my mom taught or the local theater. The entire day was incredible, and we were all so happy. Until we got back on the train to head home. I barely remember the performance, but I can still see the way my brother pressed his hand against the glass of the train window and watched the city disappear, until the skyscrapers gave way to nothingness. When we pulled into the station back home, Scott looked at me and whispered, “I hate it all so much.”

  “Can you believe I’ve never been to Broadway?” Ryan asks like we’re old friends, bringing me back from that moment so long ago. “I’ve never been much past Westbrook, sadly.”

  “I’m sorry.” I can hear the longing in his voice. That longing I know too well.

  “You’re so lucky. Getting to go somewhere new. Even if it’s here.”

  “It gets old,” I tell him.

  “Were you in drama at your old school?”

  Once—sophomore year—I decided to try to be a part of things. That was the best year. I joined cross-country in the fall, and our team went to the Western Massachusetts finals. I remember running and thinking I liked the foliage and I was glad to be back in New England. The year before, I’d been sent to boarding school in Virginia. There were seasons there, too, but they weren’t the same. That fall I fell in love with the cold autumn crispness again.

  The way fall surprises you in New England is something that can only be captured here; other states have their seasons and their changes, but Massachusetts wakes you up with autumn, and it holds you until the leaves blow away with the first snow. It’s funny, because I kind of hate the fall, but then … it’s painful to live without it.

  After cross-country season ended, my teammates all hugged me. I had friends, and I was invited out with them. They even asked me to run track in the spring. And I would have, too, but winter is boring in Massachusetts, and everyone spends a lot of time indoors and online. By April I was in my grandparents’ attic, finishing classes through a distance-learning app.

  “No, I’ve never acted,” I answer Ryan. It isn’t what he asked, but we’re not talking about the same things anyway.

  He’s leaning against the house, against where walls would be if it was real. Where we’d hang wallpaper and paintings and light fixtures and all the things we spend so much time thinking about and choosing.

  My bedroom at home was dusty rose. Before my parents moved into the condo and I left. I wonder what happened to that room.

  “Well, there’s a bunch of other stuff you could do,” he says, “like sets and stuff, but if you want to act, you should totally try out. Auditions are next week. And, really, there are only a few of us, and we’re always looking for new people.”

  “Busy. College fair. Auditions. Lots of things going on here,” I say.

  I notice I’m holding my arms around my knees. Standoffish. I remember me as a kid. I used to like things. I used to laugh and smile, and everything didn’t scare me. I used to love stories about tragic heroines and complicated families because they were nothing like my life.

  I guess it’s true when people say you should be careful what you wish for. I never should have thought any of that was beautiful.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Ryan asks. “I probably should’ve asked if you have questions or whatever. I’m sorry. I don’t really know what it’s like to start over. Everything has always been the same for me.”

  “I’m jealous,” I admit.

  He smiles and takes out a bag of Skittles from the vortex of endless snacks. “We’ve got that in common. Really, though. Have some Skittles and tell me the story of L.”

  “Once upon a time there was a girl,” I say. “And they lived happily ever after.”

  I take a handful of Skittles from him and shove them into my mouth. Fruity excuses not to talk.

  “You seem to be missing the middle. The best part. All the conflict and drama.”

  We sit in quiet, chewing, but not in that annoying way a lot of people chew. Just in our heads and in our thoughts. After I swallow, I stand up.

  “I’m going to class,” I tell him.

  “But what about the rest of your story?”

  I shrug and leave him sitting by the hollow house. I wonder what my parents would say about the symbolism of all the facades that surround me.

  Chapter Three

  I don’t sit with anyone at lunch. I end up going back to guidance, flipping through the same college brochures and imagining a different life.

  The rest of the day is just a day. Ryan sits with me on the bus, but Eric sits behind us and they talk for the entire ride. By the end of the route, it’s just me and Marcus. We don’t talk until we get off the bus and are standing together on the pavement.

  “So,” he says.

  “So.”

  “Westbrook High. How was it?”

  “It was a school.”

  “Yeah, it’s that.”

  He takes out a cigarette, but neither of us moves toward our apartments. We don’t have anything to say, though, so we just stand.

  “That looks worse,” he says after a few minutes, and nods toward the Castle Estates sign. The knight now has a dick outline; the scrubbing just cleared the color from the sign behind the spray paint.

  “You know what they say. You can’t stop the dick.”

  “No.” Marcus shakes his head. “That you can’t.”

  The jingle of an ice-cream truck comes over the sign, and a dark-blue van pulls alongside the entrance. There’s a picture of a Spider-Man novelty ice-cream bar and a snow cone on the side I can see.

  “They’re early,” I say.

  “Nah. The elementary school kids don’t have as long a ride. They’ll be here any minute.”

  As if the universe is simply waiting to prove itself to me, the bus comes around the corner and then drops the kids off on the sidewalk about twenty feet from us. The elementary school kids don’t live in our complex; they live in some of the surrounding buildings, but we got lucky enough to have the best sidewalks, I guess.

  The kids all run to the van to get ice cream, and I don’t know what’s more depressing: that we get home at the same time as the elementary school kids or that the shady van serves as our ice-cream truck.

  “Want an ice cream?” Marcus asks. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a few singles, looking toward the van and the line of kids before turning back to me. “My treat.”

  “Yeah, sure.” But I don’t move. He waits while I try to make it okay. I sigh. “No. I mean, I do, but no. I should probably get all this first-day homework done. And my aunt will be home soon and dinner and stuff.”

  I don’t have that much homework. I have time to sit with Marcus and eat ice cream. It’s not like it’s a date or a major commitment to have a snow cone for a few minutes, but I’m already starting to feel my head filling up with thoughts I need to drown out.

  You shouldn’t be talking to people. Don’t pretend this year will be different. You know what happens. Can’t you last 162 days without messing this up?

  “Yeah, okay,” Marcus says. He starts to head toward the van, but I see the look before he turns around fully. He’s upset or feeling rejected. Or disappointed. People are always disappointed.

  I want to tell him it’s not him. I want to tell him everything. I hate how he looks at me, as if he thinks it’s something about him that’s not good enough. I want to tell him that in a different situation I’d be happy to get to know him, but I can’t and I won’t.

  There’s no way to win for me. Someone always gets hurt. My history finds a way to suffocate everyone in its path.

  “Hey,” I yell aft
er Marcus before I can stop myself. “Friday? Ice-cream date? I won’t have to do all my homework right away.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and I catch a flicker of a smile. “Friday. It’s a date.”

  He moves on and I go to my apartment. It’s nothing, I tell myself. But when I reach my door, I look back. He’s kind of cute waiting by the van with a bunch of kids, excited to pay three dollars for ice cream.

  You ruin everything, I remind myself. There’s nothing you can keep safe.

  I wish I could avoid hearing my thoughts, but it’s too quiet here. Once I get past the entrance and the ice cream and the knight and the fountain, it’s just me, some raggedy old lawn chairs, and the silence of sadness. Along with the cacophony of voices in my head.

  I drop my bag by the door, grab a bottle of water and some Goldfish, and go to my room. My aunt’s apartment is actually a one-bedroom, so my “room” is what’s supposed to be a dining room. Before I moved in, she hung tie-dyed sheets across the doorframe to make it feel “young.” But it’s a room with a cot and some boxes of old dishes my aunt couldn’t find another place to store. I haven’t decorated yet; I don’t know who Lexi Lawlor is, and in the highly unlikely and not recommended scenario where I make friends, I don’t know what I want them to think if they come over. I don’t know who I can allow Lexi Lawlor to be, beyond an alliterative annoyance.

  I lie down and take my cell phone out of my dresser. No one has my number except my aunt and my parents, and I don’t take the phone out of the apartment. I stopped giving people my number a few years ago, when I realized that it’s better not to give them a way to invade even the quiet spaces. You can’t really trust people not to use that access to hurt you.

  Of course, being the weird girl at school without a phone is what Heath, the therapist my parents hired for me, calls a “red flag of ostracism.” He always says pretentious shit like that. Given that I also avoid social media and wear clothes that scream “Something is wrong with me,” I think it’s more than one red flag; it’s like the goddamn UN around me.