by Kaela Coble
Ally goes next. She talks about our time together, and how—as much as she loves Aaron—she misses the way I used to let her be the worst version of herself, the weakest and the meanest, because with everyone else she felt like she had to be perfect. She’s learning to let go of the mean, but share the weak. When she’s done talking, she tosses her slip of paper into the fire, and everyone cheers. The sick thing? I preferred her at her worst because I knew she needed me. In the end, I was made of some of the same stuff as Roger. Ruby knows that.
Murphy relays my phone call telling him that Ruby was going to have an abortion. He says how much he regrets letting her go through it alone. He tells them he’s been trying to change, to grow up, to get ready for a family. Emmett doesn’t notice the look he shoots at Ruby when he says it, but Ally does. When Murphy’s done talking, he tosses his slip of paper into the fire, and everyone cheers.
Ruby apologizes for hiding her pregnancy from Murphy, careful not to use the word “abortion.” A lot of questions came after their secrets were revealed, and piece by piece the truth about what happened between them, the year leading up to the pregnancy, came out. Depending on who you ask, it is either a love story that has yet to find its true end (Ally), or a simple tale of a horny teenage boy who got in over his head, as he would do anything to lose his virginity (Emmett). Only I know the truth.
Ruby talks about how my death has made her deal with things she hadn’t gotten over, flicking her eyes to Murphy. She says at last she’s truly moving on, and perhaps she finally is. Jamie, her old boyfriend, is coming to New York this summer to spend time with her, even scope out some “flats,” if all goes as well as it has been going on the phone. They’ve even talked about weekend getaways to some snowy, rustic cabin in Vermont—somewhere outside of Chatwick, but close enough to visit “the family.” A change of pace from the city, where they can pour prose into their notebooks by a roaring fire. When Ruby’s done talking, she tosses the slip of paper into the fire, and everyone cheers. Murphy, perhaps, a little less enthusiastically than the others. He knows they can’t be together, and yet he can’t imagine her belonging to anyone else.
Ruby pulls out another slip of paper—mine—which she saved because it was one of the last things I ever wrote. During this visit home, she will visit my mother and collect the notebooks I filled up with poems and heroin-induced rants. She doesn’t know it yet, but she will use them in her second novel, which will be about me. About all of us.
She hands the slip of paper to Murphy, her partner in my crime, and Murphy reads it to the crew. He and Ruby remember aloud the night Roger died, and all the nights leading up to it. The stones against Ruby’s window. The first of their late-night phone calls. The bruises and cuts. Everybody cries, but when Isabelle joins them, they laugh. Then Murphy tosses my secret into the fire, and everyone cheers.
They have forgiven me my sins, and now I can move on, but I stay to watch for a while longer. I watch them as they hold hands—a little too “Kum bay ya” for my taste, but okay. I watch the fire take their slips of paper, five pages of grief and love and shame igniting, pieces of them breaking away, little orange embers escaping into the black, cloudless sky.
They sniffle and watch, hypnotized, until the sound of a police siren jars them. They scramble to collect their chairs, the remainders of their bottles of beer. They run away, laughing, huddled together like a pack of wolves. They separate only when it comes time to jump into their cars and peel away from trouble, only to end up back together at Margie’s Pub.
Look at them.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I have to thank my agent Stephanie Kip Rostan and my editors Shana Dreys and Sara O’Keeffe, for championing this little piece of my heart. Your knowledge, guidance, and cheerleading have been much appreciated by this newbie.
Next, to my friends and family, thank you for the years and years and YEARS you listened to me bitch about how hard it is to get published, without once outright saying that I should give up on the dream.
So many thanks to the wonderful people who read this book in its early phases: Randy Coble, Shayla Ruland, Cathy Wille, Meredith Tate Servello, Kathryn Saris, Loren Bowley Dow and my mom, Deborah Plant, (who, reverting to her schoolteacher days, put a checkmark at the top of every page that didn’t contain a spelling or grammatical error), and to Louise Walters, my mentor through the WoMentoring Project. Without question, your honest feedback and relentless encouragement is what made this manuscript worth publishing in the first place.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the beta readers for my first novel: Rebecca Nichol, Brian Holmes, Jaci Mills, and Veronica Grenier. Even though that book was not published, you gave your time and patience as you slogged through my early drafts and offered constructive criticism and ideas. Perhaps almost as important, you helped me get used to receiving feedback without inhaling a Costco-sized chocolate cake in the process.
To Meredith Tate Servello and Kristin Fields, thank you for all the advice and support you’ve offered me in the process of trying to get published. Thank goodness for Twitter, or I would never have met you! And to Amy Burrell Cormier, my writer friend, for understanding the trials and tribulations of being a writer. May we one day (tomorrow?) be sitting with a pitcher of margaritas, laughing about our naiveté.
The most meaningful compliment I received, and will ever receive, about this novel came from my sister, Stina Booth, who said she teared up at the end, sad that the story was over. If you knew her, you would know this is the highest praise conceivable.
And finally, I must acknowledge the most patient man in the world: my husband, Randy Coble, for dutifully playing video games or watching ESPN (anything I’m not interested in), so I can zone in on my writing, for cooking dinner on the nights I need more time to write, for making me take a break when he knows I’m burned out, and for holding my hand when I doubted the ability to make this dream come true. Abubus.