by TE Carter
“Do you think this is always going to be weird?” he asks as we make our way to my apartment.
“Well, given my vast lifetime of experience, I’d say … maybe?”
“Excellent.”
Once we get to my place, I show him around the kitchen. “Make yourself a sandwich, since you’re such a fan. I have to call home real quick.”
My room is still a blank box, but there’s some comfort in hearing Marcus rustling about in my kitchen through the tie-dyed fabric that separates us. Like it’s a real place for real people.
I grab my phone and call home.
“I scheduled your visit on Friday—right after Thanksgiving,” my mom says in lieu of hello.
“Okay. Heath, too?”
“First thing in the morning with Heath and then…” She pauses. “Are you sure you can do this, Alexia? I think it would look worse if—”
“I can do it,” I say, even though I already feel sick picturing it.
“They said you can spend time with Scott before or after. Whichever you want,” she continues.
I try to imagine my brother. I try to picture myself there, in that place, with him. I try to see him as someone he isn’t, try to erase all the things I remember and imagine a real person—an adult now—in his place. But all I can see is a twelve-year-old boy rummaging for loose change above our fridge or a seven-year-old trying to convince me to eat dirt because it was good for me. I can only remember summer and a brother who didn’t hate the world this much.
“What do you think is better?” I ask my mom.
“It’s really up to you.”
I wish she wouldn’t ask me to decide. I wish she’d listen and hear how hard it is for me. Would consider that it hurts me to try to remember and it hurts me to process these thoughts. I know if I go, if I see Scott before I have to talk about him, if I visit with him and realize how much he’s not my brother anymore, I’ll never be able to say whatever it is they want me to say. But then I think about trying to talk about him when he’s nothing but a memory.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“How about after?” she suggests. “You’ll have more time that way.”
“That sounds good. And—”
“Hey, Lexi, do you have mustard?” Marcus asks from my doorway.
I cover the phone. “On the top shelf of the fridge—behind the fruit punch.”
“Thanks. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were already on the phone.”
I uncover the phone and go back to my mom, who’s buzzing to my dad about something, but I can’t hear her because she’s muffled.
“What time am I seeing Heath again?” I ask, to let her know I’m back.
“Who was that?”
“Who was what?”
“There was a voice,” she says. “A boy. Please tell me you don’t have a boy over, Alexia.”
I want to laugh. To point out the absurdity of it all. But I hate that the way she says it reminds me of all the conversations we should have had. The ones we’ll never have, because those are conversations normal girls get. Girls like me just have to figure it all out and hope they survive.
“We’re not doing this.”
“Alexia, given the troubles you’ve had over the years, I really don’t think it’s appropriate that you—”
“I told him,” I say. “About Scott, I mean.”
“And about you? Does he knows what happens … Does he know how hard it can get?”
“Some. Enough. He knows who I am. He sees me, Mom. Like, really sees me.”
“You’re only seventeen,” she reminds me. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you having a boy over when your aunt’s not home. Maybe I should talk to Susie about this.”
I clutch my phone. “No,” I say. “I’m sorry, but no. You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to pretend we’re normal or that you have any say in what I do. You don’t get to pretend you’re responsible for me.”
“That’s not fair. I just don’t know if you can handle that, given everything else.”
“It’s also not fair to pretend you know anything about what I can and can’t handle.” I regret it as soon as I’ve said it. “I’ve had to make my own choices for five years now, Mom.”
“And how well have those choices gone for you?”
She’s going to call Aunt Susie anyway. I’ll have to deal with that. I’ll have to try to pretend to be a typical high school senior sneaking boys into her room, as if sex is the worst thing that could happen in my life. I’ll have to go home in a few weeks and listen to my parents lecture me about how I’m still just a kid, when I haven’t been a kid since my brother destroyed any semblance of a childhood I had left.
I could sit here and fight with my mom in the meantime, or I could go to the kitchen and eat whatever Marcus was trying to put mustard on and worry about it later.
So I hang up and go to the kitchen.
“What’re you making?” I ask. He’s sitting at the table with all the condiments we own spread out in front of him.
“Sandwiches.”
“What kind?”
I stand in the doorway, trying to figure out how to get from here to there. It’s not just about the few yards to the table. It’s about the distance between my real life and this world I’ve built that I want to disappear in—and about how Marcus seems to teeter right in between the two.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked. So … all of them?” He holds up a plate with a stack of sandwiches.
“I’m not actually hungry,” I tell him. “I ate before drama.”
He looks at the sandwiches in his hand. “Huh. Well … um…”
I grab the box of tinfoil from the cabinet closest to the doorway and help him wrap up his efforts. We put them in the fridge before heading to my room, sans food.
Once we sit down, neither of us moves. My cot is small. It’s a cot; it’s not meant to hold two people, and it’s certainly seen better days. We both hang on to opposite sides of it, trying to decide what the expectation is now.
It’s weird how you do something and you think it’s supposed to be a big deal and it isn’t, but then later you realize you don’t know what comes after that. Not to mention all the other things swirling through my brain.
I’m surprised my cot has room for the two of us and a lifetime of my thoughts.
“So, I don’t…,” Marcus starts, but his voice drifts off. He looks over at me, then looks back at the floor on his side of the cot. “There was one girl. A long time ago. I was a freshman. It was at a party and…”
“It’s okay.”
“I mean, I just want you to know it’s not like I do this all the time. And I don’t really expect it. I don’t know how yesterday happened.”
“Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much…”
He laughs. “Shut up. I was trying to be sensitive.”
“It’s really okay,” I tell him. “You don’t have to explain. It’s not like it’s something I do every day, either. You’re only the third guy I’ve kissed. Or fourth, I guess, if you count my fake boyfriend.”
“Scandalous,” Marcus says.
“Yeah, I’m a regular Jezebel.”
He looks over at me again. “So how were your parents?”
I get up and open my shades. Not because I need light, but because I need something to do. Anything but talk about my family. Anything but lose the little bit of fiction I’ve created here.
“Lexi?” he asks.
“Eh. They’re my parents.”
“Point taken.” He waits for me to say more about them or to change the subject, but neither of us knows what to say.
“Can I ask you something?” I lean against my window, the way he did the first time we were at his apartment. The glass is cold on my back.
“No. Absolutely not,” he says. “I am one hundred percent opposed to being asked things.”
“Seriously.”
“Of course.” He turns himself on my cot so
he’s on my side of it now, his legs draped over the edge.
“Do you think it will always be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like, we’ll both be sitting here not sure what to say. I’ll be wondering if there’s something I still need to tell you or if it’ll change things. You’ll be trying to make it normal, and I’ll be messing it all up—”
“You’re not messing anything up,” he says. “I’m the farthest thing from normal anyway, remember? They even have me in special classes to make sure everyone knows it.”
I sigh and press my shoulder blades against the chill of the window. I don’t have the right to Marcus. And he deserves better than my life mixed up with his.
“There’s all this. Like, this big stuff, right?” I say. “And I’m thinking about it, yeah, but I’m also … I mean, I wonder if I’ll always be wondering if it’s wrong that I don’t really feel like talking. That I really want to kiss you a whole lot, but that seems kind of shallow. Since we should be dealing with everything else.”
“I don’t know. Everything else is kind of a nightmare. Kissing you isn’t a nightmare. I’m definitely okay with kissing you and letting the rest figure itself out,” he says, starting to get up.
I put out a hand to stop him. “It’s just … I feel so … I don’t know. Both normal and not? Like, I guess it’s normal to be thinking about that when you have a hot guy sitting on your bed, but I have so many other things that should matter more.”
“You think I’m hot?” he asks.
“You’re seriously impossible.”
“I don’t know how it goes, Lexi. I don’t know what the rules are. But I’m honestly happy to figure them out with you. Whatever they are.”
“How was it with the girl before? Was it weird?”
“We didn’t really see each other after the one night,” he admits. “And I didn’t miss her when she wasn’t around. It happened, and I didn’t really think about it much after it did.”
“Do you miss me when I’m not around?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
He moves over on the bed again, adjusting so he’s on his side but also making room for me. I join him.
I wonder if you get to a point when you can be around someone without this between you. Half of me feels like we should be talking, but the other half just wants a repeat of last night. I love the way I forgot everything except him kissing me. And then I hate myself for being so pathetic that I love that.
“Please don’t think less of me for this,” I say as I pull him down on top of me.
“I could never think less of you. But so you know … I am totally fine with just eating sandwiches or whatever. I made a huge stack of them.”
“Really? You’re talking sandwiches?”
“I’m just saying. We don’t have to, I mean.”
“Yeah, sandwiches can definitely wait,” I tell him.
* * *
I don’t want to make Marcus leave, but as it gets late, I’m worried about my aunt finding him in my bedroom. In my bed. With all the lights in the apartment off and our clothes in a pile by the door.
“Maybe we should move to the living room,” I suggest. “My mom’s already planning to call my aunt. To discuss my having a boy over.”
“You really are a scandal, aren’t you?”
We get dressed and turn on some lights. I grab the plate of sandwiches he made from the fridge and stick it on the coffee table. We sit in the living room with the TV on, even if we aren’t paying attention to it.
“I saw your aunt a few weeks ago, actually,” he says. “I said hi, but she looked away.”
“She’s worried about me. She doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to get involved with guys. And now … ugh. My mom is going to make a big deal about it.”
“Is it you she’s worried about? Or me?”
I shrug. “It’s not you. Not really. Although I don’t know. I guess that makes things more complicated.”
“Always complicated.”
“No kidding.”
“Is it … has your aunt told you why?” he asks.
“Why what?”
“Why she’s nervous about you being around me?”
“It’s not you—” I start to say.
“It is. I know. I just wonder how much she’s said.”
“I…” I pause and look at him. “She’s just heard a bunch of nonsense. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be eighteen in the spring, and she can deal.”
“What kind of nonsense do people say?”
“Nothing really. Just some gossipy women saying you’re, like, a drug dealer or something.”
I take a drink of water, partly because my throat is dry but mostly because I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to tell Marcus what they’ve said. I hate the feeling of having to defend yourself against people, of having to hear how the world sees you, when you just want to be allowed to live in it without being told where you fit.
“I did,” he says. “I don’t anymore, but they’re not wrong. I used to.”
“Used to what?”
“After my dad left, things were tough for a while. My mom’s getting help now, but we didn’t have any money, and I was still too young for a job, and we needed stuff. And it wasn’t hard to find people who could get me into it. So … those women—they’re not wrong. About the dealing. I don’t do it anymore, but … I hope you don’t hate me. I hope it doesn’t make you think I’m a liar.”
“I think we all do what we’ve gotta do,” I say, which is the only way I know how to respond. I don’t necessarily approve of it, but what other solutions were there? And it doesn’t matter anyway what he did years ago. That’s not who he is now.
“It wasn’t a good time. Things were really bad. Things are still shitty, but not as much anymore.” Marcus pauses. “Or maybe they are, but I just don’t dwell on it. I don’t know.”
“I’m glad you survived. I’m glad you were here, and I don’t really care what it took to get you here.”
“You get the irony in that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
He runs his fingers over my knuckles, tracing patterns along the bones. “You so easily forgive me, but you won’t forgive yourself. It doesn’t make sense. How can I be okay, but you still think you’re somehow not?”
“What happened to you happened to you. I chose to end up here,” I argue.
“Not really. Maybe physically, sure. But what’s the difference? I didn’t choose to have a shitty dad, and you didn’t choose what your brother did. I didn’t choose my mom’s cancer or being poor and needing to sell drugs so I could afford her bills, but you didn’t choose the way people treated you, either. All you’ve chosen was to say ‘enough.’ You tried to start over. You tried to give people the opportunity to see you, beyond the things people around you did or were. I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of.”
My aunt interrupts us, coming in with bags of groceries, and I’m grateful. I love the way Marcus gets me and sees me, but I also hate how he makes me feel hope. I don’t like the idea of hope, and I don’t like how it sneaks into my brain. I don’t like the thoughts that try crowding it out, either. All the memories of the other times I thought that it would be different. That things would be okay. I don’t want to think about what could still happen.
After the groceries are put away, I walk home with Marcus. We get to his apartment, and he kisses me under the porch light. A random moth that seems to have misunderstood that it’s November flies under the light. The moth won’t live through tomorrow, but it’s trying to find warmth in what little life it has left.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In the days that pass between my fake breakup and the beginning of my new relationship, a shadow grows larger. As I think more and more about going home, about seeing Scott, reality settles in. Along with all the fear of what could happen because of it.
I spend hours thinking about it. Imagining it. And then I
think about coming back afterward. About how long it’ll be until someone finds out. I think about all the ways they could. Of what they’ll say. I think about how it’s happened in the past, of the precautions I’ve taken, but also of how secrets never stay secret for long.
I stopped counting the days left before graduation, and I wonder if that was my first mistake. I grew complacent, and now I’m just over two weeks from Thanksgiving, and that countdown is even worse. I know for sure something awful waits at the end of it.
Maybe it’s the feeling of the inevitable looming over me that leads to the decision I make. Or to the possibility of the decision that I consider making.
“I need your advice,” I tell Marcus while we’re lying on his bed.
“Investments are a bad idea. Too risky,” he says.
“Thanks, but I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“So, I have an idea. I think. Maybe. I mean, I have an idea, but maybe it’s a bad idea, or I’m not sleeping well enough or something.”
“You’re selling me hard on it,” he says, rolling over onto his side.
“I know. Okay … So after Thanksgiving…” I pause. “You know there’s a chance everyone finds out. I mean, they could not, but there’s a chance they do, right?”
“I guess there’s probably always a chance.”
“Right. So I’ve known for a while that there’s this possibility. There’s this whole thing waiting to happen. And with having to visit and everything … It’s just … the rest of the year … I don’t know. I mean, winter is long.”
“What are you saying?” he asks.
“I hate thinking about it constantly. Worrying about it. Wondering what might happen.” I run the idea through my brain again to make sure I really want to say it. I know it’s just between us, but I feel like once it’s out there, it’s a serious option, and I don’t know if I really want it to be.
“Lexi?”
“I’m thinking of telling people. Like not making a formal schoolwide announcement or anything, but drama people.”