Try Not to Breathe

by Jennifer R. Hubbard

“How do you know?”

  “He writes me about it all the time. Hasn’t he told you? How the kids make fun of him, steal his gym shorts, dunk his head in the toilet—you know. The standard crapfest. And now he’s worried it’ll be worse, since they know about Patterson.” She ran a fingertip along the edge of her bottom lip. I wished I could put my own fingertip there, or my mouth.

  “Is it like that for you, too?” she asked, and I forced my mind back to school troubles, to Jake.

  “Nah, mostly people leave me alone. Kind of like I’m carrying smallpox.” But if I had to be totally honest, I avoided people as much as they avoided me. “Jake didn’t tell me all that. He kind of hinted at it, but—”

  “I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you the worst. He looks up to you.”

  I choked on my last mouthful of lemonade. “Jake looks up to me? Why?”

  “Oh, you know. Because you got out of the hospital before he did. But more than that—you changed at Patterson.” She stared over my shoulder, as if seeing a film of my earlier self projected on the wall behind me. “When you first got there, you were always talking about how you wanted to die. And you had this—kind of a shield around you. But you broke out of that. Not all the time, but you had your moments.”

  I pressed the cold glass between my hands.

  Her eyes refocused on me. “And you still—you look good, Ryan. You had this way of checking out—I’d be sitting with you or you’d be talking in Group, and all of a sudden it was like you turned into a statue. Your body was there, but you weren’t. Now you’re really here.”

  She’d told me that at Patterson, too. Before Val, I hadn’t realized that other people could tell when I went numb. I found it hard to believe that people noticed anything about me at all. But Val always noticed, and so did Jake.

  “I want to show you some messages Jake sent me.” Val put our empty glasses in the sink and reached out a hand to me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to take it or if she just meant it as a follow me gesture. So I kept my hands at my sides and followed her.

  • • • • •

  Val’s room. I’d tried to imagine it, and her in it, a million times. It fit her perfectly. Pale green walls—not the hospital green of Patterson, but the color of new ferns. A wooden floor, and a wooden desk in front of the window. Posters of abstract art on the walls, bold shapes with sharp edges, snarls and tangles of black lines. One corner of the room held a music stand and her instrument cases.

  So this was where Val sent messages to me. And practiced her music. And slept. And undressed.

  She sat down at her computer. I stood over her, trying not to breathe on her neck, while she brought up an old message from Jake:

  “Val, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t. At this school I was a loser & that’s all I’ll ever be. They all know why I left before finals last year, and now I have to repeat some classes & the whole thing’s a mess. September’s going to suck so bad. You’re doing OK because of your music, Ryan seems to be doing OK, but I’m not. I don’t know why I always have to be the loser, the one who can’t get his shit together, & I’m sick of it.”

  I was sorry then I hadn’t told Jake more about what May and June had been like for me, the way I’d moved in a people-free zone at school. Maybe he would’ve felt less alone if I’d told him more of the truth.

  “My folks keep nagging me,” Jake’s message went on. “Nagging me to ‘go to parties’ and ‘join teams.’ Like, HELLO, nobody’s inviting me! Do they not get that?”

  “Shit,” I muttered. Val clicked to scroll down, so I could read more.

  “Some days I don’t even get out of bed. I hate this place. I hate my life. It’s worse than at Patterson cuz at least then I had you guys.”

  “Did you write him back?” I asked Val.

  “Of course. I was worried to death. But he backtracked, said he was sorry for ‘whining,’ that he was just in a bad mood.”

  “Maybe he was.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. Me, either.”

  We stared at the computer, at Jake’s misery seared into the screen. I swallowed and the sound of it seemed to bounce off the walls, echo like a crack of thunder.

  She sighed. She clicked on something, and dark piano music poured from her computer. It reminded me of the music she’d played for us when she came back to Patterson—reminded me of that night, and her hand circling my wrist.

  I looked at her wrist, pictured myself reaching down and circling it that way. It was the gesture I always thought of when I thought of Val, the one time I’d felt that she might want me the way I wanted her. I didn’t move, though, and she pushed back from her computer and stood up. She turned to face me. I should’ve stepped back to let her move away from the desk chair, but I didn’t. I stared at her, itching because I wanted to touch her so badly, words piling up in my throat.

  I did it. I circled her wrist with my hand.

  She froze when I touched her. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  I hadn’t been this close to anyone since . . . I couldn’t even remember. Hadn’t touched anyone, especially not a girl. It was almost like I’d forgotten that other people’s skin could be warm, that a pulse beat inside them. Nicki had touched me the day I’d told her about the garage, had rested her hand on my back, but that didn’t count. This was Val.

  I waited and waited for her to respond. She didn’t move away from me. She didn’t lean into me.

  I let my thumb move against her wrist, stroking the thin skin with the blue vessels showing through. She was so still that I wondered if she was holding her breath; by that point, I was holding mine.

  I managed to look up. The fringe of lashes above her eyes barely flickered. Her irises were brown, cool, and deep. Her lip quivered and I thought she was going to say something, but instead she went still again. I wanted to move closer—and yet, I waited for a sign from her. At least she wasn’t pulling away. Her arm stayed steady under my touch.

  I tilted my head forward. My lips almost brushed hers.

  Almost.

  She pulled her face away, only an inch, but that was far enough. I dropped her wrist and stepped back.

  “Ryan—”

  “Forget it. I’m sorry.” I realized then what a mess I was, my shirt half untucked, my hair wild. Nicki had made me comb it before we’d rung the Ishiharas’ bell, but I’d ruffled it at lunch, and now I could feel it pointing six different ways.

  “Ryan.” Val reached out. “Don’t be—I want to explain.”

  “You don’t have to.” I kept backing away; I knocked over her metal wastebasket with a clang. The last thing I wanted was to hear her explain, to have her reject me in plain, clear, rational, slow-motion agony. Let me get the hell out of this room. At least she wasn’t laughing, or sneering at me with her friends, but in some ways this was worse than the scene with Amy Trillis.

  “I do like you,” she said. I willed my ears to fill with concrete, to block her voice before she could get out the hideous suffix as a friend, but she never said it.

  Instead she went on, “I wish we didn’t live so far apart.”

  “What?” I’d backed into the bed. I had nowhere else to go.

  “It might be different if we lived near each other,” she said. “One of the things I know about myself now is that I need someone close to me. You can understand that, right?”

  She had a point. I wanted to be around her all the time, too. Except I would put up with the long-distance thing if that was all I could get. “We could try,” I croaked, my mouth dry.

  “I’m not going to do that.” Her lips compressed for a moment. “I need someone here. I can’t be with someone in—short bursts, you know? Remember what Dr. Coleman said about not shortchanging yourself on your real needs?”

  I sat on the bed and groaned. “Don’t give me TherapySpeak, okay?”

  She chuckled and sat beside me. “Okay.”

  I turned my head away from
her and said under my breath, “I know what you mean, but I want to try it anyway.”

  A full minute passed before she said, “I—can’t. Maybe I don’t like you enough for that. Or maybe we are just too far apart. I don’t know; I—”

  Maybe I don’t like you enough for that. That was what we called Patterson Honesty: the truth, stripped down of all formalities, all politeness. At Patterson we all talked to one another that way, but out in the world people weren’t that honest with each other. Usually.

  She ducked her head and began to pick at the skin around her fingernails. “I used to think about you all the time when we were at Patterson. Remember lying together in the grass there?”

  It was more mud than grass, but I remembered. The smell of dirt, the grit under my fingernails, the thin blades of green, all reminding us the world outside Patterson still existed. The lilac bush in the corner with a scent as thick as honey. The sky overhead, the way the sun coated us with yellow heat, a heat so heavy we closed our eyes against it. Most of all I remembered her lying just inches from me, and how I tried to narrow that space each day, whittle it down to nothing.

  “A couple of times, I thought about kissing you,” she said. “I knew it was against the rules, but I didn’t care about that. I would’ve done it anyway, except—”

  “You should’ve,” I said. God, I wished she had. I wished I had.

  She shook her head. “You weren’t ready. I’m not sure I was ready. Even then, I wasn’t sure if we were so close just because of Patterson, if that’s what made us need each other. I missed you like crazy when I got out, though. You were the main reason I went back to give that recital.” The scrape of her nails got louder. “But we’re not at Patterson anymore.”

  “Fine. Forget I even brought it up.” I almost stood, ready to leave that house, and then I remembered I had to wait for Nicki. Shit. Why had I touched Val? Why the hell had I said anything?

  “Ryan.” She rested her hand on my arm, and it was totally different from that night when she’d grabbed my wrist. No spark, no urgency this time. “I want to keep what we have now. I can’t get into all that intense relationship stuff with you, and then maybe have it blow up in our faces. I really care about you.”

  Oh, God—the I care about you line. The one that was supposed to be a consolation prize for But I don’t love you. “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say anything.”

  She nodded. We always did know when to shut up. We’d done it for each other plenty of times; we’d done it for Jake.

  Sitting there with her, I wanted to melt into the bedspread. Even after everything we’d just said, and the fact that she’d torn me open and made me doubt whether I really wanted to live through the drive home, I loved her enough to want to stay with her as long as I could. Her fingers on my arm were rough-skinned and strong from playing her music, and I never wanted her to move them. And I hated myself for being that pathetic.

  THIRTEEN

  Nicki came half an hour later, half an hour that I spent in the living room, straining to make small talk with Val and her mother. Noticing the long stretches of silence between us, Dr. Ishihara suggested that Val play something. I almost jumped on the idea so I wouldn’t have to talk anymore, but I knew that hearing any music from Val right now would cut the last thin nerve holding me together. I might break apart in their living room, head rolling this way, legs shooting off into the corner, elbow jutting up at a bizarre angle. Rather than make them see that, I said, “Val was practicing when we got here. She’s probably tired.” And Val said, “Yes, my arms ache, and besides, Ryan doesn’t need to hear the same songs all over again.” After another minute of silence, I made a brilliant comment about how cloudy it was outside. They agreed with me.

  When Nicki showed up, I leaped off the couch to meet her. In answer to Val’s mother’s questions, she said that her imaginary cousin was fine. I thanked the Ishiharas for lunch and steered Nicki back out the door, avoiding Val’s eyes the whole time.

  We climbed into the truck and I made it to the end of the street, out of sight of Val’s house in case anyone was watching from the window, before I bent all the way forward and banged my forehead on the dash.

  Nicki braked. “Ryan.”

  I groaned.

  “I can see you had a bad time.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “You did try, didn’t you? I mean—”

  “Oh, yeah, I tried. I even tried to kiss her. I got the pullback.”

  Nicki winced, then gulped from a cup of iced tea she’d picked up somewhere in her hours alone. “Well, then, she’s stupid.”

  I sat up and put on the seat belt. “Just drive.”

  • • • • •

  Rain hit the windshield, spatters at first, and then the air around us dissolved into sheets of water. The tires hissed on the pavement. Nicki concentrated on the road. I thought absently that the conditions looked dangerous, but I didn’t much care if we skidded into the oncoming lane or hydroplaned into a ditch—at least for myself I didn’t care. I wanted Nicki to be safe, though, and I loved the way she leaned forward, both hands on the wheel, staring out through the rain-slicked glass, utterly focused on what was in front of her. “You’re a good driver,” I said.

  “I told you, all of us are. We started driving early, and none of us has ever even had a speeding ticket.” She bit her lip. “I’m starting to worry about Kent, though. I mean, he’s getting high a lot now. I can’t believe he won’t try to drive that way sooner or later.” She glanced at me. “Do you think he gets high too much?”

  I remembered Kent smoking in the school bathroom and at the waterfall. Sitting with glazed eyes in study hall. “He’s been high practically every time I’ve seen him.”

  She sighed.

  The rain eased, and now that I had broken the ice by speaking, Nicki talked. She talked about everything and nothing, her voice a soothing, never-ending flow. She told me a few stories about Kent, including how he’d tried to catch a raccoon for a pet, and I think she said he was afraid of heights. I didn’t pay much attention to the words—only to the sound, the rise and fall of her voice, and I realized that was the whole point. She was babbling for background noise, babbling so I wouldn’t be stuck alone in my head with Val’s voice saying, Maybe I don’t like you enough for that. Patterson Honesty. The naked truth, whether I was ready for it or not.

  • • • • •

  Mom texted me again, and I almost threw the phone out the window. Instead I typed, “Soon,” in reply to her “Getting late & weather bad. When are you coming home?” I realized I would have to stand outside for a few minutes when we got back to our neighborhood, or else my mother would think it was strange that I’d been able to hike in the rain without getting wet.

  Nicki and I pulled into the lot of a rest stop. It wasn’t full dark yet, but the rain had turned the world deep gray, and all the lights had come on. The half-empty lot smelled of gasoline, asphalt, rain, and French-fry grease. Nicki parked near a picnic shelter, where nobody was picnicking. One guy was walking his dog there and smoking a cigarette—a dark shape with an orange star at his mouth.

  We went into the rest station and used the bathrooms and bought sodas from the vending machines. I stared at the state map on the wall, my eyes sore and gritty in the fluorescent light. The glare showed every imperfection on Nicki’s face: a couple of purple dots that were zits, the pale sprinkling of freckles, the gray shadows and purple lines around her eyes. But she looked beautiful at that moment, even the rabbity way her front teeth showed. My mother was right about the overbite, though she exaggerated it, and somehow on Nicki it looked good.

  Nicki scratched her cheek and stood beside me, her eyes tracing routes on the map. I thought about suggesting that we drive past our exit, drive way the hell out of here, keep driving until we hit ocean.

  But then what?

  I had talked like this to Dr. Briggs a dozen times: fantasized about moving away from the school where everyone knew what I
had done in the garage. Away from the pink bundle in my closet. Away from the dreams of Val that were like a blister rising under my skin, swelling, wanting to burst. Dr. Briggs always said that if I left one place I would have to arrive at another, and the pain would follow me wherever I went. “Is it better to stay and face it, then, after all?” she’d asked me, in that way she had of turning statements into questions.

  Nicki drank from her soda can. “Ready?” she said.

  We walked out to the truck, but I didn’t want to get in. “Let’s sit here for a while,” I said, settling on top of one of the picnic tables. I could’ve used the waterfall, but right now all we had was the rest stop in the rain.

  She sat on the damp wood, next to me. Our sodas fizzed and crackled in the cans. Cars rumbled in and out of the lot. The dog walker had gone. It was so quiet I could hear Nicki swallow.

  “Are you okay?” she asked finally.

  It was what people used to ask one another at Patterson, except when we asked there, we meant it. It wasn’t that surface question, expecting an automatic yes, that it is everywhere else. I took a chance that she really wanted to know and told her the truth. “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  She rested her hand on mine. Her skin was moist and cool from the soda can, but after a minute it warmed up. Then she took back her hand to raise her can again, to take another drink.

  I put my hand on her knee. She had a hole in her jeans, and the heat and smoothness of her skin shocked me. I’d expected to feel fabric, to keep that layer between us, but my hand touched her naked knee through the frayed hole.

  Her eyes flickered over my face, and her mouth opened a little. She didn’t freeze up the way Val had, but I had no idea what she was thinking. If I had to describe her expression, I would’ve chosen “surprised.” Then she reached up and rested her fingertips on the side of my face.

  I realized I’d expected her to pull away or turn away, like Val had, like Amy Trillis had. But her hand stayed where it was. We were connected through her fingers on my cheek, my hand on her knee. She’d closed the circuit.