All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  “Pretty much want to talk about nothing less.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’m really not good at the parent thing.”

  I put my homework away and tuck my legs under myself. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve been plenty good at keeping my shit together.”

  “I should probably tell you to watch your language. Thing is … I don’t give a fuck.”

  I think we’re both relieved in a way that it’s out there. Aunt Susie’s always been my favorite aunt, but she’s not great at making sure I follow my parents’ rules or trying to worry about me like they want her to worry. I don’t know if she doesn’t agree with their rules or if she just doesn’t know how to be a parent, but this is the first time since I got here that I remember the aunt I was excited to live with for a year. She was last on the list because my parents didn’t think she was reliable, but I’m really glad right now she’s the one who’s here.

  “Let’s order takeout,” she says after a while. “And do nothing.”

  “You’re a bad influence. What if I had hours of homework?” I ask, putting my bag by my nightstand.

  “Do you?”

  I shrug. “Nothing that can’t wait. I’ll meet you out there. I just need to—”

  “Invite him if you want. He’s not a bad guy. I was worried about you getting caught up in the rumors, and I didn’t want you to deal with that. But I guess you’ve managed to do that yourself. So there’s nothing to protect you from anymore.”

  “That’s okay. We can see each other tomorrow. I just want to let him know.”

  She goes out to the kitchen to riffle through menus, and I call Marcus. It’s the first time we’ve talked on the phone, and I know it seems silly and small, but it’s a big deal. He has my number now. He has my name and he knows everything about me, and he still answers the phone.

  “Today sucked,” I tell him when he picks up.

  “I’m sure. Do you want me to come over?”

  “I do, but … no, my aunt and I are going to hang out. It’s really hard not seeing you, but I should … I haven’t really spent much time with her.”

  “Of course. I can see you when you’re free.”

  “You know what I can’t do, though?”

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “I can’t do this bus thing anymore.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, well, there’s a reason I gave up on that.”

  “Can I get a ride with you? Can you ask whoever takes you?”

  “I will. I’m sure we can figure it out.”

  There’s quiet on the line for a few minutes. I want to see him. I want to run to him and hide in his room and kiss him and eat pretzels and not think about Rory or Scott or school or anything. But that wasn’t the plan, and Heath would say I didn’t decide to tell people only to hide again. He would tell me I can’t create a cocoon in Marcus’s life, because it’s no better than shaping new realities of myself every year and then giving up on them.

  I love how I’ve spent so much time in therapy that I don’t even need to go to know exactly what Heath would tell me. In his bullshit lingo and all.

  “I wish I could see you,” Marcus says, breaking the silence. “But it’s probably good. My mom could use some company anyway. She’s not feeling well lately.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s just a part of who I am. I’m not sorry I’m me.”

  “That sounds like some kind of lesson,” I say.

  “It might be. But I’ll let you figure it out.”

  “It’s been, like, a day … and this is absolutely vapid … but I kind of miss you. I know I just said I couldn’t see you, and I know I just saw you last night, but I do.”

  “I miss you, too, if it makes you feel better. But don’t you worry. This jug of pretzels is infinite. It can wait a day.”

  “All right. Well, I’m going to head out because my aunt is yelling about Thai food and mispronouncing everything. I think I should help.”

  “I’ll text you later and I’ll figure out your ride for tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay. And … uh, hey … I know I haven’t said it yet but, um.…”

  I’ve never told anyone besides my family. And I don’t know how it works in real life, like in relationships. I’m not sure what happens when you say it, but we’ve had sex. We’re clearly together. He’s carrying all the weight I needed to let go of, and I’m carrying his, and yet I still haven’t told him. I feel like I’m supposed to tell him. That he should hear the words, even if he probably knows they’re there.

  “I know,” he says. “And I’ll hold you to that conversation tomorrow or next week or whenever it makes sense, but it can wait. Like pretzels, some things take ages to expire, okay?”

  I hang up, smiling to myself.

  I know I’m not better because of Marcus. I’m not better at all. The thoughts are still there. The pain is still there. There’s still a whole mess of confrontation waiting, too. I haven’t even allowed myself to think about what it’s going to be like talking about Scott. What it will be like to see him. About Thanksgiving and what Heath will say and how easy it will seem to just stay there with my parents and to let Rory do her worst while I’m in another state and I don’t have to hear it.

  I have another half a year or more of high school to survive. I’ve lost Ryan and drama club and the only other friends I had here. I’ve lost a lot, and I’m still hurting from so much more. But in the small moments with Marcus, there’s still something to look forward to. And there’s got to be something in that.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I knew Rory wasn’t done with me, but I’d hoped she would wait. That it would happen after Thanksgiving, so I’d have at least a moment to breathe. Time to process it. To work through everything else first, but of course things don’t work out that way.

  Instead it happens on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving, just in time to make sure I go home knowing exactly what will be waiting for me after the break.

  I wish she could’ve waited until Wednesday. Or at least until the afternoon. Because 7:10 a.m. is way too early for this.

  She’s standing at my locker with a stack of flyers in her arms. I don’t need to look at them to know they’re somehow about me. About some cause she’s championing that’s essentially about letting everyone know how horrible I am. Because that’s how she cares. She cares by hurting people she deems unworthy of caring. The hypocrisy is amazing.

  “I’m doing some work with victims’ families,” she says as a means of introduction.

  I put my stuff in my locker and pretend she’s not there.

  “Like, to help people understand why people like your brother should never be allowed out.”

  “Well, you’ve got about thirty years before that happens,” I say, wishing as soon as I do that I’d kept pretending she wasn’t there.

  “Is this a joke to you?”

  I lean forward, pressing my forehead into my locker, feeling the metal on each side of my face carving marks into my skin. I wish I could make myself small enough to hide in here. I wish I could physically become as small as Rory makes me feel.

  “You’re incredible,” she says. “You come here and you pretend to be this girl who lives in public housing. You act like you’ve got all these issues, with your clothes and your drama and your phony freak-outs during rehearsals.”

  I remember feeling like I was dying during that rehearsal. I think of how I still can’t sleep if I don’t do laundry beforehand, because I can’t worry about not having the clothes I need. I think of how I want to dress up to see Marcus sometimes, but I can’t on certain days because I don’t have anything pretty in those colors. I think of all the hurt and the fear and the anxiety and how I sometimes wish I could disappear. But I don’t say anything to Rory, because there’s no point. She won’t get it.

  Telling them about Scott was just one thing. It doesn’t change anything else. It doesn’t make the scars on my skin fade. It doesn�
��t make me get up in the morning and not panic when I realize the only yellow T-shirt I own has a hole in it now and I don’t want to wear a dress. How I stand in my room crying because I can either skip school or wear something uncomfortable, because I can’t simply wear something else.

  “You are the epitome of privilege,” Rory says. “Hiding and dumping your problems on everyone else because you can’t handle them. Rather than facing what you are.”

  I feel like I’ll die here in this locker, but eventually, when I don’t respond, she leaves. After shoving one of her flyers over my head into my locker.

  I pull away from the locker and look at the flyer. It’s got pictures of Miles and Lucy on it, along with a note that reads For the Ones People Seem So Quick to Forget.

  I crumple the paper and toss it into the trash can at the end of the block of lockers.

  All day I think about what she said. Am I privileged?

  Maybe she’s right. I already know I’m hiding in a life Marcus never had a choice about. He grew up at Castle Estates, but I just hid there like I had a right to it.

  I think of Ryan and his secret. How he’s scared of sharing something that makes him who he is, and of how unfair it is that he should be afraid of that. I think of the night on the bleachers when I promised to be his normal and of how I let him down. Not that he’d want to fake-date the sister of a killer now, but I think of how I abandoned Ryan, even though he welcomed me on the first day of school. I slept with Marcus not even a week after I promised Ryan I’d be there for him. Then I told everyone about me and Scott without considering what that might mean for Ryan as well. That’s privilege, right? Thinking I’m entitled to what I want rather than thinking of anyone else.

  But then I think of my physics teacher and how she won’t look at me anymore. How she makes sure to pass out papers so she never has to come near my desk—and I sit in the front row. I think of cross-country two years ago. How much I loved running in the fall. How the woods felt like opportunity and how I sometimes slowed my pace just to live in that moment a little longer. How after the season ended I was part of something, and then, right before track season, some stranger sent them a message because they’d seen my picture on Instagram with the team and they felt like they owed the team a warning. How quickly I was left behind.

  It’s not easy to know what’s right. I lied to everyone for years. I was able to run away and hide, and maybe that’s wrong. Maybe that makes what happens now my penance.

  At the same time, I’ve had to disappear because they never listened. They never took a moment to see me beyond Scott. To know that he hurt me, too. I didn’t show them the pain on my body that was a testament to what had happened, but they could see it elsewhere. They could see how I color-coded my wardrobe. How I stayed quiet whenever there was conflict. They saw all this, but no one ever asked if I was okay.

  Because they didn’t care. Because it’s easier to hate someone than to understand them.

  It’s my aunt’s day off, so even though she was supposed to pick me up at the end of the day, I skip lunch and head to the nurse. I fake sick, and since the nurse doesn’t want to be here any more than I do, she calls my aunt and tells her to come get me.

  “I talked to your mom this morning,” Aunt Susie says once we leave the school.

  “Yeah?”

  “I talked to her about what’s been happening. She’s worried about you, but not like you thought. She doesn’t want you to feel like you failed. She does want you home, though.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told her.”

  “I know, but they’re worried. And I wanted them to know what happened in case you changed your mind about Friday. I wanted them to remember what you deal with every day, too.”

  “I feel like in three months you’ve noticed more than they have since I was twelve.”

  “Don’t say that. They’re trying, Lexi. I promise.”

  “Do you want me to go back there?” I ask. “To move back in with them?”

  She shakes her head. “Of course not. But your parents want you to know you’re welcome. That you’re wanted. You can go home if that’s what you decide is best.”

  “What about school? I can’t just stop school.”

  “Your mom said she talked to someone at the university, and I guess they know someone who does private tutoring. They can work with you for the rest of the year.”

  “It kind of sounds like you think I should. You’ve worked out all the details already.”

  “That’s not it,” my aunt says. “But I don’t know. Maybe it would be better for you. I just want you to be somewhere you feel okay.”

  I know Rory won’t stop. There will be more flyers and more causes. I think of drama and the auditions scheduled for the week before Christmas. I think of Ryan and how much easier it would be for him if I never came back. How he can fade again, and everyone will get distracted by the next play and forget he dated the girl I was.

  And there’s Scott. With his birthday coming up, it’s important that I’m home and that I’m there for my parents and for my brother right now. There’s no reason to stay here to be miserable, when other people somewhere else need me.

  “It would be easier,” I admit to Aunt Susie.

  “I’d miss you, but we could probably make it happen this week. Or if not, you can stay here and we can coordinate something online for the next few weeks until Christmas. It doesn’t have to be chaotic.”

  I consider it, but then I remember Marcus and how he asked me not to leave.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It really would be easier. I can picture it, and it sounds great. I could take classes in the living room, and I wouldn’t have to deal with any of it anymore. But I don’t know. I guess I kind of want to finish this year. Here. I want to know I tried to make something work, even when it seemed impossible. Does that make sense?”

  “It does, but I can’t come get you every time something happens. With work and—”

  “I know. And I really don’t think it’s smart to stay. I probably shouldn’t stay. There are a million reasons to go home. It’s ridiculous not to.”

  “Is this about Marcus?” Aunt Susie asks.

  I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, sure, I like having him around, but that wouldn’t be enough. It’s only a few hours, and we don’t see each other at school anyway. We could make it work if it’s meant to work. I can’t stay here just for him.”

  “But you want to stay?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I feel like I need to. I need to stop running away every time.”

  “It’s going to be hard, isn’t it?”

  “Probably impossible. But I can’t go home. Maybe it’s because I’ll always feel like I gave up. I’ll always know I never survived anything if I run away again.”

  “You’ve survived plenty, Lexi,” my aunt says. “I’m happy having you here. But if it’s too much … you don’t need to fight for this. Sometimes there’s nothing to win by fighting.”

  “No,” I agree, “but there’s still so much more to lose.”

  Chapter Thirty

  When I head home for Thanksgiving, I remember how confusing it always is to come back. Part of it’s because it’s not home anymore. Just a place where my parents live with a vague room I stay in a few months a year.

  There’s also the fact that I ended up on my own earlier than I should have. I suppose this is how I would’ve felt coming home from college someday, but it’s different. Everyone else still lives a normal life with parents and siblings and friends and rules and curfews. And a home. Meanwhile, I float among family members who never know what to make of me.

  Being home feels strange because that word lost all meaning some time ago.

  Since it’s Thanksgiving, my mom is making way too much food for three of us. I asked Aunt Susie to come, but she has to work on Black Friday, and besides, she’s smart enough to stay out of it as much as she can. Her entire parenting experience has been warning me about Marcus because of the women at
work, giving up on that when I fell for him anyway, and then reminding me to use condoms after the night she came home to find him in the apartment.

  As soon as we get back from Connecticut, my dad puts my stuff in the room where I sleep. He didn’t talk to me during the entire drive from my aunt’s place—all two and a half hours of it.

  I remember when my dad and I were close. When he would sit with me and talk to me about a story he was teaching. When I asked him about tragedy and feminism and he brought home a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles for me, even though I was nine and I couldn’t get interested in Tess. I remember all the things we were—and now none of us are any of those things. We’re just memories of other people trying to figure out how to continue in this state of unbeing.

  While I watch my dad carry my bags upstairs and listen to my mom run down the list of foods she’s prepared, I realize how the time has passed for them, too. I’ve spent so much of the last few years worrying about myself, never thinking about how it must have been for my parents.

  I wonder how my mother must feel every day at the university—seeing students barely older than me and wondering what my day was like but not being able to come home and ask me herself. I wonder if she sits down at dinner sometimes and wishes she could argue with me about clothes or boys or my grades. Did she have a visceral reaction to hearing Marcus on the other end of the phone? The recognition of the fact that she was supposed to worry, but worrying didn’t make sense because we don’t make sense?

  What about my dad? Does he miss what we were, too?

  I head to the bathroom because it’s too much to think about. But the bathroom isn’t an escape. My mom makes a big deal out of holidays. I know she’s trying to compensate for something that isn’t really anyone’s fault. But it’s exhausting.

  The hand towels are embroidered with pilgrim hats, the soap dish is shaped like a cornucopia, and turkeys sit on the top of the toilet. I imagine my mom buying these decorations in some big-box store, hoping I’d come home and forget what we are. Not knowing they’d only serve to remind me that normal people have holidays. They remind me that normal people don’t make dinner and wonder what kinds of questions people at the prison will ask them tomorrow about their brother and why he murdered a woman and two children.