All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  I sort of wish I remembered one important day. One time, maybe, when Mrs. Cabot came outside from next door and said something. That maybe she upset Scott somehow, but I don’t remember that. I only remember sitting outside with him, both of us reading comics, and him sneaking sips from my lemonade because he’d already finished his own and he was too lazy to go inside and get more.

  I remember the two of us sitting in the backseat of our parents’ car one summer evening, looking at the signs and trying to guess where we were going. We always did that—whenever we went anywhere, we created a world outside the car and made it into a mystery that even Agatha Christie couldn’t have worked out. And my parents played along because it was fun to make the world nothing but potential.

  We drove for an hour, and my parents refused to answer any of our questions about where they were taking us. When we pulled onto a dirt road full of cars, we still didn’t have a guess. Across the street was a giant barn and an even more giant crowd, but I couldn’t see what any of them were doing.

  “What’s this?” Scott asked.

  My mom giggled, and it was odd. It was the happiest I’d ever seen her—this woman who was so serious about everything.

  “Summer’s almost over,” she said, although that wasn’t an explanation.

  We crossed the street and made our way through the crowd toward the barn. On chalkboard signs bigger than me were lists of flavors.

  “An ice-cream stand?” I asked.

  “Not just any ice-cream stand,” my dad said. “This is Lendell’s.”

  This meant nothing to me or Scott, but my parents were giddy. They were absurdly excited about ice cream, which made me get absurdly excited about ice cream, and twenty minutes later the four of us were sitting on a bench under a massive oak tree that dipped right over us, eating sundaes the size of my head for dinner. It was childish and pointless, but it was the kind of thing my parents used to do.

  It was the kind of thing that should have been my future.

  All this is who my brother was. He rode his bike with me to Ray’s for comics and he stole my lemonade and he protected me from thunderstorms and he gave me his cherry from his sundae because mine had fallen off. He cleared away the spiders above the fridge—where our mom always left us money for our so-called “adventures” in the summers—because I was scared of them. My brother was my hero and my best friend and the person I trusted with my life.

  And then …

  Two months after we had surprise ice-cream sundaes at a barn on a dusty road, I sat at school one afternoon, wondering why Scott was so late to come get me. I kept calling, but he wouldn’t pick up, and eventually I had to walk home by myself.

  It was a few days before Halloween.

  While I was waiting in front of the middle school, my fifteen-year-old brother came home, and he dropped his school bag on the kitchen table. Then, instead of coming to get me like he did every other day, he grabbed the biggest knife we had, and he walked into our neighbors’ house, turning on music for reasons I’ll never understand.

  After stabbing Mrs. Cabot twenty-seven times and both Miles and Lucy fifteen times each … After brutally murdering the woman next door along with her children, he came back to our house, changed his clothes, and put the other ones—the ones still drenched in blood—on the kitchen table next to his bag. Then he called the police, told them everything he’d done, and went outside on our porch and had a glass of lemonade.

  I came home to police sirens, Mr. Cabot on the front steps next door crying, and the overhead light in our kitchen flickering off the handcuffs as they led my brother away from us.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Lexi,” he said, but I barely heard him. I was too busy staring at the blood he hadn’t been able to clean out from beneath his fingernails.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nineteen

  Juvenile offenders get a lot of breaks. The system doesn’t seem to want to lock someone up for life if it can be avoided. So now, at twenty-one, Scott’s up for evaluation. Of course, he’ll still be in some kind of correctional program, but my parents said what comes now is about rehabilitation.

  They want to rehabilitate him. To make him whole again.

  They can’t make little Lucy and Miles whole again. They can’t rehabilitate Mrs. Cabot.

  I don’t want to go there … to where they keep him. I don’t want to answer questions about Scott’s potential. I don’t know his potential. I haven’t seen him since they took him away, apologizing to me while I stared at his bloody clothes on our table and tried to make it not true.

  I wasn’t even thirteen yet when it happened. After, someone left a dead squirrel in our mailbox with a note saying I was next. Kids at school called me psycho and joked that everyone should stay out of my way because I’d stab them. Even the ladies in the cafeteria looked nervous when I’d take a plastic knife for lunch, despite the fact that the pizza was like stone and I couldn’t kill anyone with the flimsy utensil anyway. I was excused against my will from history class when the teacher covered anything violent. The school told my parents I needed to be removed from triggers, but what they really meant was that they were afraid I’d start stabbing people, too.

  I haven’t gone to see him. I haven’t said his name to anyone besides Heath and my family since it happened. Yet now I have to talk about him to a panel of strangers who will decide his fate. No panel was assembled to discuss my future. No one called in character witnesses to decide what options existed for me.

  I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can see him. The reason I haven’t is that I know as soon as I look at him, I’ll remember. I’ll remember Scott from before. I’ll remember him teaching me how to play chess. The way he showed me how to store my comics. His laughter when we’d all gather in the den for a movie. I’ll remember how he always looked behind himself to make sure I was okay when we were on our bikes.

  They want me to tell them he can be fixed, that he’s not evil, but I don’t know if that’s true. Still, even if I’m not sure, how do you condemn your own brother? How do you deny your best friend for two-thirds of your life a chance?

  “I’m going for a walk,” I tell my aunt. I slept until nearly two in the afternoon, but I need to get out of the apartment. Out of my head. I stayed in the dirt by the playground last night until it was almost morning, trying to decide what I could say about my brother. Wondering if my life would ever exist beyond any of this.

  “Does a walk involve a certain boy you’re not supposed to be spending time with?” Aunt Susie asks. She’s making jam, even though we already have way too much for two people. But when she doesn’t know what to do with herself, she makes jam. Everyone in my family finds a way to pretend they don’t feel anything.

  “It might.”

  She turns to look at me, the wooden spoon in her hand spilling blueberry back into the pan. “Okay, well, let’s just say I’ve told you what you need to know, and I’m done worrying about your decisions.”

  “I have to go home and help them,” I remind her. “I have to help with Scott. And I only have three weeks before I have to do that. I want … I don’t know what I want. But I need this. I just need to remember what it feels like.”

  She nods. “I know. And you’re right anyway. He’s a nice kid. Dianne and Louise and the rest of them can kiss off.”

  I laugh despite myself. “I don’t think anyone says that anymore.”

  “Well, they can kiss off, too. Here,” she says, pouring some of the still-hot blueberry mess into a jar. “Take some jam.”

  I don’t think Marcus or his mom needs blueberry jam, but since we certainly don’t need a fourth jar, I take it from her.

  Marcus’s mom answers the door, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I haven’t talked to him since I abandoned him. He didn’t come to the play, although I didn’t personally invite him and I don’t know if he finds out about school events in the back of the building.

  Standing in front of his
apartment and holding out blueberry jam to his mother, I realize I don’t really know anything.

  “I … well…”

  I hand her the jam.

  She takes it and looks it over. “Tell your aunt I said thank you. Marcus is in his room.”

  “Oh.” I stand there in the doorway, uncomfortable about surprising him in his room, and his mom nods, coughing. She walks down the little hallway and knocks on his door.

  “Marcus, Susie Lawlor’s niece is here.”

  The door opens and Marcus peers through the crack, those damn eyes meeting mine across the entirety of the tiny apartment.

  This is no way to start a relationship, I remind myself. Once he knows, he won’t want to be in a relationship with me. People have a hard time empathizing with the family members of child murderers. I consider leaving, but he looks at me and shakes his head.

  “Don’t go running away again,” he says. “What’s up?”

  “Do you want to go for a walk? I came to see if you wanted to walk.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll be right out. Gotta grab my walking shoes.”

  He closes the door and leaves me in the hall with his mom, who looks exhausted from walking the few feet to his room. Breathing heavily, she leans on the table by the front door and places the jam down beside a dead plant.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asks.

  “No, I’m good. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll put the jam in the fridge for you.”

  “I’ll be okay. Just wasn’t expecting company. I’m sorry for the mess.” She heads to the kitchen, and I watch her put the jam away, functioning in slow motion.

  “Hey,” Marcus says as he comes out of his room in a black T-shirt and jeans, carrying his hoodie. He’s wearing combat boots, which aren’t exactly walking shoes, but they’re pretty sexy, so I’ll take it.

  “Hey.”

  “She brought jam,” his mom says, sitting at the kitchen table and putting her head down.

  “Yeah?”

  “Blueberry. My aunt made too much.”

  He grabs his keys from the front table with the plant and leads me outside. I already regret being here. I can’t stop staring at him, and meanwhile my head keeps yelling at me that this is all a lie.

  “So, where to?” he asks. “Where did you have in mind?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I just wanted to see you.”

  He takes my hand, running his fingers along my palm. It’s not supposed to be hot, but somehow it’s ridiculous. “I’m glad you came over.”

  “I didn’t interrupt anything?” I ask.

  “Nothing important. So … there’s somewhere we can go. If you want to?”

  “Sure. Like I said, I just wanted to see you.”

  He leads me farther into the complex and then out of it, away from the knight, whose penis is now just another thing about Castle Estates that’s faded and old. We head toward the woods at the other end of the buildings. They’re not exactly woods as much as they’re a lump of trees that stops us from being bombarded with the sounds and lights from the gas station and McDonald’s on the other side.

  Marcus lets go of my hand, takes out a pack of cigarettes, and offers me one. I decline. He lights one for himself.

  “I know,” he says. “It’s bad for me.”

  “Life is bad for you. For all of us.”

  He laughs. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  “How’s your mom?” I ask. “She seemed tired.”

  “Yeah, she’s tired. She’s always tired. I mean, she’s better, I guess. The cancer has been in remission for a while now. Not that you can really tell.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me toward him as we walk, him smoking with one hand and holding me with the other. I like how he smells like a mix of cigarettes, bad cologne, and lemons. It doesn’t make sense, but I think that’s what I like most about it.

  “Yeah, I mean, what else, right?” he asks. “Seriously. Fuck cancer. But it’s gone. Or whatever remission is. But cancer is only part of it, I guess.”

  “There’s something else?”

  He sighs, his warm breath brushing against my neck as we walk. “She hasn’t been the same since my dad left. So the cancer was kind of the first thing, and then she just…” He pauses, smoking, looking back toward where his apartment is, although we can’t actually see it anymore. “I think she kind of wishes she still had it. Or, really, that it killed her.”

  Right after everything happened with Scott—when I went back to school and the kids ridiculed me and I saw the way they assumed things of me—right after all that and the dead squirrel and the constant news coverage, I started playing with knives myself. I never understood the way Scott had hurt someone else. Instead I found the knives and anything else that would cut deep enough, and I started keeping a record on my skin of the things people called me. That was when my parents sent me to Heath.

  I remember one of the first things Heath asked me was if I wanted to die. I just looked at him and asked him why he thought that. I thought it was irrational. Because I never wanted to die. I just wanted to be someone else.

  “Maybe she just wishes things were different,” I tell Marcus.

  “Don’t we all.”

  After he finishes his cigarette, he pulls out a pack of gum, takes a piece, and then offers me one. I accept this time. Spearmint sparkles inside my mouth, filling the small bursts of cold in the air with minty reminders.

  We walk for a while, into the woods and then out of them, along the road by the gas station and the McDonald’s and past all the warehouses and old stores that aren’t stores anymore because no one goes to an appliance shop when they can get everything at a chain store. Finally we come to an old bowling alley, the ball and pins still visible in faded colors on the front of the building.

  Marcus walks over to a truck in the back corner of the parking lot, the tires and rims missing on the left side of the vehicle. He opens the door and rummages through the glove compartment. When he comes back, he goes to the door of the building and opens it with, apparently, the key.

  “Should I ask?” I of course ask.

  “This kid in my class, Tyler. His dad owns the place. I don’t know the whole story, but he refuses to sell it, even though they can’t afford to reopen it. Not that anyone cares about bowling anyway.”

  “The school I went to last year—in Maine—people were all into roller-skating. It was fucking weird.”

  “People are weird. But I don’t know. I guess people aren’t excited about this, and Tyler’s dad is, like, attached to it, so he just lets Tyler and anyone he tells about the key chill here.”

  We head in, but Tyler’s dad hasn’t bothered paying the electric bill for an empty building, so we have to navigate with Marcus’s phone. It’s still light outside, but the late-afternoon sun only reaches so far into the dark bowling alley, especially given the grime and age on the doors.

  “I realize how this looks,” he says, “but I swear, I’m not some kind of serial killer.”

  Flashes of bloody clothes on a table. Bodies being taken from the house next door. My mom crying. Jenny Adams telling me I should be dead, too, because Mrs. Cabot was her Girl Scout troop leader, and now they couldn’t go to camp this spring.

  I sink to the floor by the shoe-rental desk, crying, shaking, my legs unable to do anything but melt underneath me. I hear Marcus saying my name, asking if I’m okay. I feel the glare from his phone on my face, see his own shadowed face behind it. I sense him holding me and keeping me steady, but it’s all happening somewhere else. To someone else. Although I try to find my way back to now, there’s no now anymore. There’s never a now. There’s always only what was and what will be, because now is just waiting for this to happen. Every minute of the present is a lie. A breath between memories.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, or at least I think it’s me, because the words are in my voice. I can’t even
tell him why. What I’m sorry about. All I can muster are two words that tell him nothing.

  “You don’t need to be sorry. Just breathe,” he says, sitting beside me.

  And so I do. I breathe, and Marcus holds me, and I swim through the past to find an anchor here in this dark place. I try to remember how I felt only yesterday and only a little while ago.

  I hate this. I hate my mind and I hate being crazy. I hate that I went to Marcus’s apartment determined to find a reprieve from everything, but it didn’t matter, because now here I am in sawdust, little pieces of it clinging to my corduroys. I hate him seeing this part of me. I hate revealing to Marcus how easy it is for me to drown.

  I don’t know how long we sit on the floor in silence. The whole time he doesn’t move. He’s steady. Solid. And I keep fighting for the surface. Every time, when I think I’ve almost reached it—almost reached him—there’s something on the other side. It’s Scott or Mrs. Cabot or Mr. Cabot on the news or the reporters or all the kids at school or the principal strongly suggesting to my parents they find a new place for me to go because I’m a distraction to the other students.

  But every time I sink back down, I can see Marcus there behind the other faces. And once I fight through each and every one of the flashes from the past, he’s still there, lifting me out of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, when I finally force myself back into now. I don’t know how long it will last, but eventually I’m here. On the floor. With a boy from across the street, in a bowling alley everyone forgot about.

  “Why?” he asks.

  I shake my head, staring into the darkness ahead of us. I push my back against the hard desk behind me, trying to remind myself of what’s real.

  He continues to hold me, and I continue to breathe.

  “Can I tell you a story?” he asks after a while, once my breathing is back to normal and I’ve stopped shaking a little.

  I nod because I don’t trust words anymore.