All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

“My dad was really into old movies. You know that—I know—but that’s not the story. The thing is, I didn’t really like them. When I was a kid, I thought they sucked. We’d watch them together all the time. They were boring then. Who wants to watch a bunch of old people in a black-and-white movie talking about things that don’t even exist anymore?”

  I just nod again.

  “And then he left. I was fourteen. And I was so fucking angry. He was supposed to be there. My mom was sick, and she started disappearing, and suddenly I’m fourteen and I have no one.” He pauses. “The worst, though? He left them. He left these movies that I didn’t even like. That’s it. That’s what I had. I’m fourteen, my dad’s gone, my mom’s dying, and all there is is a box of shitty movies I don’t even like. He left me nothing except this giant fucking box of DVDs I didn’t even want.”

  He lights another cigarette and continues. “And a note. He left a note. Do you know what it said?”

  “No,” I say, reaching out and taking his cigarette from him. I must have swallowed my gum at some point, but I taste the memory of mint on the cigarette as I inhale. I hand it back, and Marcus keeps going with his story.

  “It said, ‘I’m sorry. But someday, maybe these will help.’” We sit in silence for a minute while he remembers. “Help what? What were they supposed to help? How the fuck are old DVDs gonna help a kid whose dad disappears in the middle of the fucking night while the woman he supposedly loved until death did them part was puking in the bathroom? I didn’t even like those stupid fucking movies.”

  “He left while she was sick?” I ask.

  “He left because she was sick. He couldn’t take it. Seriously, what kind of person does that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know why people do a lot of things.”

  “No kidding, right? But that was it. My mom kept fighting this fucking disease. And I had no idea if she would survive, but I had to hope she would. I had to think about it all day. Every day. I needed her to stay alive because I couldn’t live with nothing but a box of goddamn DVDs if she didn’t. So she fought it and she beat cancer, which is a huge fucking deal. I thought that would be the end of it, but then she realized she was alive and she had nothing worth living for anymore. She had me, but it wasn’t the same, and between the two of us, we had nothing but memories and a box of DVDs. Because it was hard on him.”

  I slip down the wood of the desk until I’m lying on the floor. Marcus joins me, and we wait in the darkness, each of us caught up in the past and our anger. Our disappointment.

  “Now,” he says, his voice coming through the blackness. It’s the only sign he’s real, besides the little ember of his cigarette. “Now my mom doesn’t leave the house. She’s depressed, they said. The doctors all said depression is sometimes a symptom of cancer. But they’re wrong. It’s not a symptom of cancer. Depression is a symptom of people being assholes.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

  “You didn’t do it.”

  I think of going home in three weeks. Of what happens next. Even if Scott is moved somewhere where he’ll be forgotten, there’s still a chance everyone here will find out at some point. And if they do? If it all ends up the same way it always does? What if I come back after Thanksgiving and somehow they know, and suddenly Westbrook High is the same as everywhere else?

  Eventually I’m going to have to go back to the real version of me. Leaving Marcus with his DVDs. Leaving him alone again with nothing but old movies to explain it all, and I can’t even tell him why.

  He leans over and looks at me, dropping his phone by his side. A beam of light shoots up to the ceiling while we’re both wrapped in shadow. I try not to look at him, but I can’t help it, and my brain can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop wanting to tell him, but also wanting to pretend it’s not true. I want to be the girl he’s looking at this way, not the girl I am.

  “Am I an asshole if I kiss you?” he asks, his hand brushing my hair away from my face.

  I should say yes. I should give him a reason not to, but I don’t. Instead I shake my head and lift myself up onto my elbows, closing the space between us. I ignore the screaming in my head. I ignore images of Marcus alone with his movies, reading in the news or online about me and Scott and all the lies I told.

  When Ben kissed me last year, it was just a kiss. It felt like another item on a checklist of growing up. Things people do but that no one really knows why they do. There were none of those sparkles people talk about in movies. I wasn’t swept away in it. I didn’t even want to kiss him a second time.

  When Marcus kisses me, though, it hurts. Not in a bad way. It’s painful because as we come together, I want so much more than I’ve ever let myself want. I want to tell him everything. I want to throw away all the lies and hiding and memories that broke me into so many pieces. I want to be here with him, and I want to stop thinking that this can’t last. I want to turn my mind off but I can’t, so it hurts because I’m caught between wanting to keep kissing him and wanting to stop because I can’t miss this. Three weeks or two months from now or this spring, when I’ve gone back home and finished high school in my parents’ living room because I couldn’t stop myself from running away, I can’t remember this.

  I totally understand that monologue now.

  Nothing hurts more beautifully than this.

  Chapter Twenty

  Marcus and I don’t end up exploring much of the bowling alley. We spend most of the day by the shoe-rental desk, lying in the sawdust, kissing. A part of me wonders if I should feel guilty. About Ryan. About Scott. About everything I am.

  I should tell him. I know I should. Every time he kisses me, I remind myself that I have to tell him. Before someone else does. I hear these things in my brain, and then I kiss him again because I’m somehow incapable of listening to my own mind.

  “We should head back,” he says eventually, although he doesn’t move.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know … but…”

  “But?”

  He laughs. “I don’t know. I can’t think of even one legitimate reason to ever leave.”

  I kiss him yet again, and more time passes. More reminders are ignored. More memories are pushed aside while day turns to evening and evening slips into night. We continue lying on the floor until the darkness outside makes it impossible for us to see anything at all. Hours later we’re surrounded by nothing but night. Marcus’s phone turned off hours ago.

  “You want to come over?” he asks. “We should probably go, but I don’t really want to be alone. We can watch a movie or something.”

  “Something?”

  “Hey, I’m serious. We can just watch a movie. There doesn’t have to be something. I mean, unless you want there to be something.”

  I don’t have a lot of experience with something. I know if we stay here, though, I’m going to forget about Scott and rules and time, and Marcus will be lying on top of me, and something is far more likely to happen. We should go back to his apartment and watch a movie. Or I should go home and ask my aunt if there’s a good convent she recommends.

  “Yeah, we can go,” I say, sitting up and fixing my shirt, which has somehow been turned backward. “We can watch a movie.”

  Of course, we don’t go. We sit up and he fumbles for his phone, but neither of us moves from the same shoe-rental desk.

  “I had to leave,” I tell him. “My parents didn’t make me come here. They’ve never made me go anywhere. I told you I run away, and I do. Because I had to. I couldn’t handle it anymore.”

  I don’t look at him. Even though I can’t see him in the darkness, I feel like he can see me. My shame burns bright enough to fill the space.

  “Do you want to tell me why?” he asks.

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, then. Just tell me when you’re ready. It won’t change anything. I promise.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?” He hands me one and I light it, but I don’t smo
ke. I don’t like the taste of it, but I want something to hold me here. Something to focus on while I dive down into these things I don’t want anyone to know.

  “I’m not…” How do you tell someone that you’re a liar? That the person they’ve spent an entire day with is just a story?

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he repeats.

  I watch the cigarette burn. I watch the red glow travel closer to my fingers until eventually I have to stub it out on the ground to protect myself from being burned.

  I’ve only said the words to Heath. After all this time, I’ve never said the words aloud except in therapy. I can’t even say Scott’s name, but I need to tell Marcus. I need him to know. I can’t keep sitting here, or in his apartment, kissing him and pretending I’m someone I’m not. It’s not fair to him, even though I know it will ruin this.

  “I told you I had a brother,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says, the wariness in his voice digging its way into my skull.

  “Well, I still have a brother. I just don’t see him because … I can’t be near my family. I keep running away because my brother…”

  “It’s okay, Lexi.”

  I shake my head. “No. It’s really not. My brother … he killed someone. He killed three people, actually.”

  “Jesus.”

  I’m surprised I can say it. I’m surprised the words feel so easy. I try not to think too much about it, and I continue. “It’s … It wasn’t an accident. He’s a murderer.”

  “Wow. But, I mean, you didn’t have anything to do with it, right?”

  “No. I mean, not really. He was supposed to come get me. I was at school. I had to walk home and he wasn’t there. I didn’t do it, but maybe … but no. He did it by himself.”

  I see it all again, and I try to find Marcus’s eyes in the darkness. Try not to end up back in that fall afternoon. Try not to hear the sirens. See the blood everywhere.

  “He murdered our neighbor and her kids,” I say, the words scratching my throat as they leave. As they fill the universe with their awfulness. “Stabbed them. When he was fifteen. The kids … they were little. Just little kids. We didn’t even know them. They were just the people next door.”

  I pull my knees up to my body and tuck my head into my legs. “It was years ago. I was only twelve and it’s been a while, but I just keep running away. Because I can’t … Nobody here knows yet. I shouldn’t have told you. I just didn’t want you to find out from someone else.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry.” But instead of leaving me here, like he should, he moves closer and holds me, wrapping himself around the ball I’ve turned myself into. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to be touched.

  “Everyone said it was something in him. They said that I had it, too. I couldn’t go anywhere. The way they all looked at me.” I pull myself tighter into a ball. “I’m diseased. I’m rotten, Marcus. I’m wrong, just like he was, and I’ve always been wrong. I should never have let you kiss me. I should never have let you believe me.”

  “That’s bullshit,” he says, clutching my hand. “It’s messed up. It’s horrible, but horrible things happen. These things might be a part of you, but they don’t define you. You aren’t accountable for someone else’s actions. You’re still you, Lexi. You’re not your brother.”

  I shake my head. “They were right, though. Because I couldn’t see it, you know. They said all these things. They called him a psycho. They said I was just like him, but you don’t get it. I wanted to be just like him.” I pause. “Well, not just like him, because I didn’t want to hurt someone. But he was … he was everything I thought was good. I loved him. I still love him. Or part of him. The part I knew.”

  Marcus is quiet, and I imagine what he’s thinking. I bet he’s wondering how he chose so poorly. Why he spent the afternoon making out with a girl who has this poison inside her.

  “Scott. His name’s Scott,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry this is who I am.”

  “No,” he says, pulling me tighter against him. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, Lexi.”

  “But I am.”

  “No. I mean it. That’s not who you are.” He kisses me, and he tastes like my tears. “You’re a separate person from Scott, no matter how much he’s hurt you.”

  “No one has ever believed that before,” I say.

  “Well, I do.”

  “But it doesn’t matter, does it? If I still love him? If I still see him as the big brother I admired? Something must be wrong with me, Marcus. Something has to be, if I can’t see him for everything he is. If I can somehow find a way to care for him still.”

  “I told you about my dad,” he says. “How he left because it was hard. Because he couldn’t stand it. My father left my dying mom and me because he was annoyed that she kept him up all night. He was sick of her being sick. He thought cancer was annoying. He left me with nothing but a box of DVDs. That was all he could give me of himself, because he was too inconvenienced by my mom dying. But, shit, Lexi. He’s my dad. I don’t hear from him at all anymore, but if he came back … I still dream every night that he’ll come back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I love my father. No matter what kind of person he is. He’s shit, but I love him.” He picks up his phone and tries to get the flashlight working, but the battery is dead. “I don’t think you’re rotten. I don’t think you’re screwed up because you love your brother. Honestly? I’d find it harder to understand if you didn’t.”

  “But after what he did…”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what sucks about letting people into your life, doesn’t it?” Marcus says. “Once they’re there, they’re there, and you’re fucked. You’re fucked because you’re dying inside every single day while they just go on being shitty people and you can’t stop loving them anyway.”

  I can’t believe he’s not running away. I’ve carried five years of secrets. Five years of hurt. And I shouldn’t have told him, but I did, and he’s still here. He’s here with all his own hurt, and the past is the past. But for the first time, I wonder if maybe that’s not all there is. If maybe there’s still the possibility of a now. Not Lexi Lawlor and her fake world where the past isn’t real, but a true and honest now where the past just is and maybe it’s okay that it is.

  “I haven’t seen him since,” I say. “No one expected me to visit him. No one thought I needed to talk to him. But sometimes I wish they had. I wish they’d pushed me harder. Made me see him. I wish they hadn’t made it so easy to pretend it wasn’t real.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Out by Boston. He’ll be twenty-one soon. I have to go and talk to someone. Well, I don’t have to, but I said I would. I have to go there and tell them about Scott. What I know about him. The thing is, I don’t know what they want. I mean, I guess they want me to tell them if I think there’s hope for him.”

  “They’re not seriously letting him out?”

  “No. Of course not. Nothing like that. But they’re trying to decide if he’s … well, I guess there are people they invest in. Like, try to fix. Try to hope that maybe they can do something. Someday. That maybe they don’t need to die in there, never becoming something else. I guess they want to know if there’s something left inside him. And they want my opinion on that.”

  “That’s a lot. What are you planning to say?”

  “I don’t know. It is a lot. You’re right. It’s everything, right? I mean, I’m not solely responsible or anything, but they want to talk to people who know him. The thing is … I don’t. How am I supposed to tell them what he has left? I don’t know my brother anymore. I sometimes wonder if I ever did.”

  I try to sob quietly, but in the silence of the empty space, every breath echoes.

  “Hey, let’s head back,” Marcus says, and he helps me to my feet.

  We leave the bowling alley behind, tucking the key back into the abandoned truck before we go. It’s not m
uch for security, but I guess this isn’t a place that needs it. They can’t convince anyone to come here.

  Outside it’s almost winter. It just gets colder and colder with the minutes ticking down a day.

  It’s always amazing to me. I sometimes wish my parents had sent me outside the Northeast to run away. There was Virginia, but they had fall and winter, too. I’d love to experience the world in a place where the seasons don’t change much. Where they don’t remind you repeatedly of how little in your life is permanent. It was cold last week, but it was still fall. Now there’s frost forming on the grass, and the wind cuts deep into us as we walk.

  Nothing lasts.

  I try not to think about it as I walk with Marcus, holding his hand. I try to hope some things survive. I try to believe that maybe some people are stronger than winter.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It’s quiet in Marcus’s room. We lie on his bed, wrapped in a blanket he dug out of his closet. I’m warm against him, and it seems like winter and the cold night and the stories we shared in the bowling alley might stay outside forever. Until he speaks.

  “I heard a rumor about you,” he says.

  I hate those words. They’re the sound of my life unfolding again.

  “Did you?”

  “Nothing bad. I just heard you were with some guy from the drama club.”

  I think of Ryan. Of his kindness and his secrets. I can’t tell Marcus about him, but I don’t know if I should feel guilty. If I’m lying to either of them or both of them. While it’s not real with Ryan, if Marcus has heard about him, what’s to stop this from getting back to Ryan? And what does that mean for his normal?

  “It’s … it’s not really my place to say what that’s about,” I say. “But it’s complicated. Not in a way that interferes with us. We’re … It’s not at all … It’s not this.”

  Marcus nods, his face tickling mine. “But you’re not? I mean, I don’t need to worry?”

  “No. You don’t have to worry. I am, but I’m not, and it’s complicated. I can … I’m not…”