Try Not to Breathe

by Jennifer R. Hubbard

  “What’s that?”

  “A sweater.”

  She blinked. It amazed me that she didn’t grab it right away—I wasn’t sure she recognized it. To me it had loomed so huge, had seemed to glow with neon brightness on my shelf, even through the brown covering. I’d pictured her searching for it every day, missing it, wondering where it had gone. Only now did I see how stupid that was.

  “I took it from the library at West Seaton High last year.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember! It just disappeared.” She reached into the bag and pulled it out. I cringed, wishing she wouldn’t hold it up in broad daylight where everyone around us could see it, forgetting that to them it would be an ordinary piece of clothing. “Yes, this is it. Wow.” Her eyes flicked back to me. “You said you took it? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said automatically, but I had vowed to tell the truth today, so I tried again. “It was a dumb thing to do. I guess—I had a crush on you back then.” Whatever I’d felt for her had dried up so long ago that I heard the flatness in my own voice. Ever since December, when I’d taken it, that sweater had been nothing but an embarrassment to me.

  “Oh.” She took a step back and rolled up the sweater. “I—didn’t know.” I could’ve told her she had known, she’d once guessed how much I had liked her, but she’d obviously forgotten. It didn’t matter. “Why are you bringing it back now?”

  “I always felt bad about taking it, and I’m sorry.”

  “Well.” She nodded, but without meeting my eyes. Glancing off to the side, as if checking for escape routes. “Is that all?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stuffed the sweater back in the bag, frowning. “You know what? Would you mind if—could you put this in a Goodwill box or something?”

  I almost groaned. Having finally gotten the damn thing off my hands, the last thing I wanted was to take it back. But I had to see this through. I could understand why she wouldn’t want it back. So I said, “All right. If that’s what you want.”

  “Good.” She dropped the bag on the bench next to me. “Thanks,” she said and walked away.

  • • • • •

  I biked over to a place on Nichols Avenue where I always used to see a clothes-drop box. It was still there. I pulled down the metal door and heaved the sweater in, bag and all. And I turned for home, with my hands empty at last.

  TWENTY

  I'd expected that giving up the sweater would practically make me float home. And I had minutes like that, minutes where a grin stretched my face and the pedals whipped around with no effort at all, but then dread crept over me. Amy Trillis knew my secret now. Amy Trillis, of all people. I could picture her telling everyone in West Seaton. “You’ll never believe the weird thing that just happened,” she could say, and the whole world would know me as Pathetic Stalker Guy.

  Or—I thought, as the elation returned—she might not bother to say anything. It obviously hadn’t mattered that much to her. She hadn’t even wanted to take back the sweater. She seemed to want to forget the whole thing.

  I realized I no longer cared if Amy Trillis thought I was weird. I’d looked her in the eye and, though I’d told her the truth, she hadn’t laughed at me. I didn’t especially want the world to know I’d taken her sweater, but if they did find out, I would deal with it.

  I stopped in Seaton for a drink, chugging down one of those blue energy drinks in the parking lot of a minimart, with my bike leaning against me. In front of the store, five kids from my neighborhood had gathered. I knew some of their names, but I hadn’t talked much to them. They were a little younger than me.

  “Is that the psycho kid?” one of them said, and I knew they were talking about me, but I kept guzzling blue fluid and staring out at the horizon. I was listening now, though.

  “Yeah, I think so. Isn’t he the one Nicki’s always with lately?”

  “Uh-huh. Man, what’s wrong with her?”

  They laughed. Then a girl with skinny legs and long shining hair said, “Don’t worry, she promised me she’s not going out with him or anything. She’s just being nice to the local loser.”

  More laughter. “Maybe so, but what for?”

  I swung my leg over the bike and pedaled off, dropping my empty bottle in a green bin on my way out of the lot. The asphalt shimmered in the heat, and their laughter dissolved behind me. But the words “local loser” were branded into my brain.

  • • • • •

  Even though I’d biked all the way home and wanted to collapse on my bed, I decided to run up to the waterfall. I had a few words for Nicki.

  But Nicki wasn’t there. Kent was, smoking as usual.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” I bent over for a minute, panting, wishing I were in better shape. “Where’s your sister?”

  “I don’t know.” He blew smoke into the mist and waved at a new sign on one of the trees: NO SWIMMING OR DIVING. I hated the man-made look of the sign, its starkness and sharp corners in the middle of all this lush green, but I could understand why they’d put it up.

  “Look at that,” Kent said. “They keep trying, but it’ll get torn down in a couple of days.”

  “I guess they do that because of the kid who died here. Liability or something.”

  Kent stared at me. “Kid? What kid?”

  “Bruce what’s-his-name. Nicki told me. She said she was here the day it happened.”

  Kent barked; you couldn’t call it a laugh. “It wasn’t any kid. It was our dad.”

  “What?”

  I stepped closer. With the roar of the waterfall, I couldn’t hear him too well. I thought he’d said, It was our dad.

  “Our dad died here.” Kent pointed his cigarette at the top of the cascade. “Walked out there—jumped—” The cigarette traced a path in the air. “Landed down there, headfirst. Nicki wasn’t even here. Just me and Matt.”

  I stared, a chill and then a burn running through my whole body. “Your father?”

  “I thought for sure she woulda told you. You’re hanging with her all the time lately.”

  I wiped mist from the waterfall off my face.

  “They woulda thought it was an accident, but me and Matt saw him jump. Hell, he did a fuckin’ dive. Besides, he left a note.”

  “He left a note?” After all Nicki’s wailing about Why didn’t he leave a note? Then what—why—

  “Well, not much of a note. ‘I can’t take it anymore, I’m sorry.’ Like that was supposed to tell us something we couldn’t figure out ourselves.” Kent took a drag on his cigarette. “I didn’t watch him land, but Matt did. I shut my eyes. I heard him land, though, like thunk!” Kent shuddered. “Fucked me up pretty good for a while. Matt, too. Nicki was mad because Dad didn’t let her come with us that day. She shoulda been glad.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t figure her out sometimes.”

  • • • • •

  I went home, to my computer. I couldn’t be sure that Nicki had lied; how did I know Kent was telling the truth? And so I started searching.

  The articles weren’t hard to find. LOCAL MAN DIES IN SWIMMING-HOLE ACCIDENT, said the very first article. But the second article called it suicide and reported the existence, though not the contents, of the note.

  Philip Thornton had jumped from the top of a waterfall while his two sons watched. His wife and daughter were at home. He broke his neck and died at the scene. The township had put sawhorse barriers and signs around the waterfall. I wondered how long it had taken the barriers to disappear.

  I clicked around the computer in a haze. I checked my messages. Val wanted to know if I could meet her at Patterson next weekend to visit Jake. I told her I would. The thought of Val hurt, but it was a muffled, old-feeling ache, as if she were a broken bone that had healed and now just bothered me in the rain. I could handle seeing her if Jake needed us.

  I had a message from Jake’s mother, thanking me for the
card and telling me he wanted to see me. I wrote her back, saying Val and I would go next weekend.

  I had nothing else but spam. I got off the computer and walked over to my closet. My gut lurched when I saw that the place where the bag had always been was empty. Then I remembered: it was empty for good. The meeting with Amy seemed to have happened years ago.

  I lay down and pressed my face into my pillow. I tried to forget Nicki, to erase the words “just being nice to the local loser” from my brain, along with the snickers of her friends. I wanted to forget everything she’d ever told me, but I couldn’t stop it anymore, her words rushing over me—what she’d said about a boy named Bruce dying at the waterfall, and about her father having a gun, and how she needed to know why he’d done it because he hadn’t even written a note—God, had she ever told me the truth about anything?

  If I hadn’t cut myself off from everyone at school, maybe I would’ve known the truth sooner. Somebody would’ve told me about Kent and Nicki’s father before now. But I’d kept myself so insulated that only the rumor of a dead guy at the waterfall had leaked through, and I didn’t trust rumors. China could envy the Great Wall I’d built around myself.

  Until Nicki had come over the wall—

  And I’d told her everything. My stomach folded in on itself when I thought of how much I’d spilled the night before. She already knew how I felt about Val. She knew about the garage. And now I’d told her about Amy and the sweater.

  I flopped over and glared at the ceiling. I remembered the picnic table at the rest stop. The way she’d kissed me after that terrible day at Val’s, and again when I spewed out all my worst secrets in the graveyard. I could feel the warmth of her mouth, and the way she’d pressed against me.

  And I could feel her whispering her secret in my ear, last night under the tree. Had the day at Funworld with her father been real? Or had she made that up, too? What the hell had she been doing—playing with me? And why hadn’t she ever told me the truth about the waterfall?

  • • • • •

  I’d met pathological liars at Patterson. Of course we all lied a little, about things we couldn’t stand to admit. But there were only a few who told big lies, like the ones Nicki had told me.

  • • • • •

  I rolled over again, every word she had said to me echoing in my ears.

  • • • • •

  Something built inside me, a roar like static. I began to scratch at my skin. Whenever I felt this way at Patterson, they told me to talk it out. (“Don’t act it out; talk it out,” they said to the kids who liked to throw chairs; and to the kids like me they said, “Don’t hold it in; talk it out.”) But who did I have now? Dr. Briggs was away; I’d talked to Dr. Solomon only once.

  Jake was in the hospital.

  I couldn’t face Val with this. I couldn’t tell her that less than a week after she’d pulled away from me, another girl had made a fool out of me. I couldn’t lose the last scrap of pride I had with Val, the pride of not having imploded in front of her when she rejected me.

  My dad was away. I couldn’t talk to my mother, not after what she’d said at the diner the other day. Not unless I wanted her to die of anxiety.

  I tried to take deep breaths. I jiggled my feet, scratched at my arms, pulled threads out of my bedspread. I counted into the thousands, lost my place, and started again.

  Val didn’t want me. Jake was in trouble. My mother would never get over that night in the garage and my stay at Patterson. The only person I’d been able to trust recently was Nicki, and now she—

  • • • • •

  I wandered into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet.

  After I’d been caught stockpiling painkillers, my parents had cleaned out their cabinets and closets. All our cleaners were now nontoxic, and my parents bought medicines in the tiniest bottles available. They kept my antidepressants locked up and doled them out to me one pill at a time. When I came out of Patterson, my parents and I had signed a “contract” saying that I agreed not to stockpile drugs if they would agree not to search my room. We were supposed to renew the agreement every month. But we got rid of it back in July, when I told Dr. Briggs that the only time I ever wanted to hoard drugs anymore was the one moment a month when I had to sign that stupid paper.

  Now I leaned over the sink, studying those miniature bottles and boxes. Then I closed the cabinet, avoiding looking at its mirrored front.

  I drifted back into my bedroom. I thought about running up to the quarry, but I had a feeling I shouldn’t do that. I had a strong pull to lean over the edge today.

  I would’ve liked to smash my bedroom windows. I ran my fingertips down the glass. They left smears; my mother would have a fit if she saw. Then I pushed against the glass, testing it. I knocked against it with my knuckles, then again, harder. The glass flexed and didn’t break.

  I should run, I told myself. In spite of the running and biking I’d already done that day, prickly nervous energy built in my arms and legs. Dr. Briggs would probably tell me to run, except not to the quarry. Well, what she really would do was make me talk about Nicki. About the psychics and Nicki’s father and the lies. The fact that Nicki had been fucking lying to me all month and I didn’t know why, that she’d curled up with me the night before and told me a story that probably wasn’t even true . . . the fact that she was “just being nice” to the neighborhood psycho . . . I took a breath. A deep, slow one, like they taught us at Patterson. Like Val taught me; she said it was good for warding off panic attacks. Not that I was going to have a panic attack. Not over Nicki; no way.

  Nicki.

  The thought of her made something surge up inside me, and I pictured my fist punching through the window, although I kept standing there with my knuckles against the glass. My teeth were clamped together. I tried to relax my jaw, and my arm, which had gone rigid.

  I had to get the hell out of here. I would go running, I decided.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I ran out the front door. At the edge of our yard, where the trail plunged into forest shade, I smacked into Nicki.

  She’d been charging up the path to my house, hair flying. We bounced off each other.

  “Kent said he—told you some things,” she gasped.

  “Yeah, he sure did.”

  She bent over, hands flat against her thighs. “I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  She rolled her eyes, her body heaving for breath. “You know what about.”

  “Why don’t you tell me.” I crossed my arms. “Or, I know, I can get a psychic to read your mind.”

  “Stop.” She gulped air. Finally she straightened up. “Can I come inside?”

  I rocked back and forth for a minute. Then I walked back to the house and let her in.

  She sank onto the couch. I stood in front of the windowed wall and crossed my arms again. My heartbeat drummed in my head.

  “What did Kent tell you?” she asked.

  “Why? You need to get your story straight?”

  She sighed and leaned forward, pulling at the wisps of hair that hung over her forehead. “I just want to know how much I need to explain.”

  “How about all of it?”

  She closed her eyes. “You probably think I’m a big liar. But I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

  “That’s a good one,” I said. “What did you mean to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just—I wanted things to fit.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I mean, I know what really happened, but it seems wrong to me.” Her eyes opened. “It doesn’t make sense. Like . . .”

  “Like what?” I snapped when she didn’t go on.

  “Well, like—why didn’t my dad write a note that meant something?”

  “Oh, yeah. The note,” I said. The thought of that note scratched up another spark inside me. “The note you said didn’t exist.”

  “All right, there was a note, but not a real note.”
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  “What do you mean, ‘real’?”

  “All it said was ‘sorry’ and ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ It didn’t tell me what I needed to know. It didn’t say anything.” She swallowed. “So I had a note, but it felt like I didn’t have a note.”

  She waited, but when I didn’t say anything, she went on. “And—the waterfall. Why would he pick such a beautiful place?”

  “Why the hell not?” I had picked a garage because it was the only enclosed space I knew of where the car would fit. I would rather have picked someplace like the waterfall. If I had to pick a place.

  “Why would he take Matt and Kent with him, but not me? And why did he take me to Funworld and not them?” Her face, which had started to pale to its normal color, flushed again. “Was he playing favorites?”

  Her question hung in the air. In my mind I added the next question, which she didn’t ask: And if so, who were the favorites—Nicki or the boys? The kid he took to Funworld or the kids he took with him on his last trip to the waterfall?

  She said, “None of it makes sense. The pieces don’t fit. And that’s why it didn’t feel like lying when I told you—”

  “It felt like lying to me.”

  She looked up at me then, her eyes huge. “I’m sorry, Ryan.”

  I didn’t answer for a minute. So much had knotted up inside me that I couldn’t pull out any single thread and identify it.

  Then I said, “I trusted you. I don’t trust anyone, but I trusted you.”

  “I—”

  “I must’ve been out of my mind. It’s my own fucking fault—there’s a reason I never believe in anyone or—”