Instead Max seems to remember that he doesn’t look at me anymore, and I remember that I don’t touch him, and we quickly disentangle and look away. I find Julian, sit beside him on the couch, listen to him tell the stories about college, poised and filtered because of the fact his coach is listening, and so is the coach’s wife.
And then he says, “I need to get Jessa home,” and I roll my eyes. He says a thousand goodbyes, all perfect smiles and perfect handshakes. Even his hair, which is the same color and texture as my own, obeys him, while mine inevitably succumbs to chaos by the end of the day, with either static or humidity, depending on the time of year.
On the walk back to his car, he says, “Thanks for the excuse. That was totally painful, right?”
“Totally,” I say.
We go to a movie. We get ice cream after. It’s midnight when we arrive back home, and our parents are asleep, and I sit in the car beside Julian in the driveway as he drums his fingers softly on the steering wheel, like he’s working himself up to something.
“I’m sorry, Jessa,” he says.
I want to tell him to stop, but it’s too late. He’s already said it, and everything comes back in a rush, like a flood. I feel my eyes burn, the hot tears on my face, as I look away.
He sits beside me with the engine off, until the cold from the outside seeps through the steel door, my jacket, the layers of clothing, my skin.
I wipe the side of my face before opening the car door, and he hands me a tissue without saying a word. I take it, ball it up, say, “Of course you have a tissue. Of course.”
“I should’ve come home,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. Mom was right. You needed to stay, get used to college. Acclimate.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Did she really say ‘acclimate’?”
“She really did. I overheard her talking to Dad about it.” I look straight at my brother then. Give him the absolution I so desperately want myself. “There was nothing you could’ve done. Really.” And then I push the door open, step out into the November night.
“No,” he says as he exits the car. “I should’ve been here. She was wrong.”
I turn around, grinning. “Oh my God, don’t tell her that. Never tell her that.”
He smiles as we walk to the front door.
It’s my key that lets us back in, where my parents have left the entryway lights on. I head up the steps, and he lingers near the kitchen. We don’t say goodbye, even though I know I won’t see him tomorrow.
Everyone says I’m so lucky to have Julian as my brother, and I roll my eyes. But I know this. I know I am.
It’s easier to leave before everyone else is up. Before the questions begin. Before the chaos of Julian leaving and the inevitable silence that follows—where we’re all trying to figure out how to be with each other, without ball games to schedule and booster clubs to run, and the fact that it’s always my turn to clear the table.
There are two possible routes between Caleb’s house, in Old Stone Pointe, and my own, in East Arbor. The first is a loop outside the town centers, hooking back in through the other side, closer to the shore. It avoids the traffic lights, but also takes a little longer—closer to twenty minutes instead of fifteen. The other cuts clear across the county, a direct path through the town centers, separated by residential streets, strip malls, and the river.
I decide on coffee. I decide on the river. I haven’t been this way since. But there’s something about being in his room that shakes everything loose.
First come the strip of stores, the gas station, the ice cream place, and the dress shop. The sky is light, but there’s a sense of fog, a blurriness as I approach the sign.
Coats Memorial Bridge. The road narrowing and the trees thickening, and my hands gripping the wheel, my lungs burning with the breath I’m holding.
It never occurred to us to question what this bridge was a memorial for.
The sunlight catches on a new stretch of guardrail in the corner of my vision. And then I’m past it, and my breath releases. The trees thin out again, the stores begin picking up, and I pull into the lot of the coffee shop I used to meet Hailey at on Saturday mornings, setting up in the corner booth with our schoolwork and a chocolate scone and coffee (for me) and hot chocolate (for her).
The clerk doesn’t look up after handing me the cup, steaming hot against my cold hands. It’s not until I have it in my grip that I realize there’s a tremor in my fingers. The guy looks up and smiles. “Sure you haven’t had enough already?”
I take a sip, and it burns the roof of my mouth. “I’m sure.”
On the way back to my car, I see her: Hailey, in the car with her parents, eating something with a paper wrapper. She’s in a dress, like usual, but more modest than her typical flared style, this one with a higher collar and in a shade of navy. Even through the window, I can tell her makeup is toned down. They’re on the way to or from church, I decide.
I don’t knock or wave or anything, but I can tell the moment she sees me. She stops chewing, the food still positioned between her teeth. I raise my hand to her, and she slowly raises hers back, her eyes wide, like she hasn’t seen me in ages. And maybe she hasn’t. I’ve built a nice, dark cocoon for myself these last few months, the sheen of everything around me dulled and filtered. I’ve been to school. I’ve been home. I’ve kept moving.
But I’ve quit the team. And I’ve quit my friends. Or my friends have quit me. I can’t really remember which way it went—my lack of response, or their lack of attempt. All I know is that it felt like relief. Nothing is expected or required of me; there’s nothing to mess up, no actions to undo or words to unsay. My presence or absence affects no one. I am blameless.
I think the last time I spoke to Hailey might’ve been at Caleb’s service, but I can’t remember what she said, or what I said. I do remember her shoes: silver, with straps. I remember wondering if she had anything more appropriate, then thought: probably not. I don’t remember if I voiced that out loud. I probably did. That’s probably part of the problem.
I couldn’t tell you what happened there, because it still struck me as such a ridiculous concept: the service. Up front, there was a montage of pictures of him—some including me. And more: Caleb in his lacrosse uniform, with his teammates. Caleb giving his sister a piggyback ride. Younger versions of Caleb and Max smiling up at the camera, a pile of wood between them, a hammer in Caleb’s hand.
The pictures would have to do, because there was nothing else remaining. A crooked license plate, stuck between river rocks the next town over; a section of the bumper, trapped in an eddy near the inlet; a single tire, washed up on a nearby beach.
The engine exhaust lingers in the parking spot as Hailey’s car pulls away. I can’t catch my breath. I picture Caleb running down the front steps, his head ducked low because of the rain, his wipers squealing as they cut through the torrent while he drives.
I wonder if he could see through the rain.
It’s just rain, our coach said. Just rain.
My mom used to say the car was the safest place to be in a storm, with rubber wheels that ground you in the event of a lightning strike. It’s a piece of metal, two tons, designed for our protection. There are airbags. Safety protocols. Antilock brakes. All to keep us safe.
The surge came later. A flash-flood warning on the radio, lighting up all our phones after the race, but we get those all the time. Turn around, don’t drown, says the alert, but nobody takes it too seriously.
The Old Stone River snakes through town, under Coats Memorial Bridge, and then continues on. That day, the river kept rising, with nowhere else to go; it breached the guardrail of the bridge. In six inches of water, you lose control. In twelve inches, the car will float. The current will take you.
The river curves through another town on its way to the coast, where it empties out into the Atlantic. A whole ocean, where he might be.
There was nothing to bury. Nothing to reduce to ash. N
othing to feel in the second-row pew of the church other than the fact that nothing was there.
I shiver, holding tighter to the coffee cup. I scroll through my phone until I reach Hailey’s name, see her photo: an up-close shot of the two of us with our eyes squeezed shut and our faces pressed together.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to start.
Hi, I write.
I’m halfway to Caleb’s when I hear the ding in response.
The last few miles of the drive pass in a blur—the larger suburban homes giving way to narrow brick homes wedged closer together in a grid of streets. But you couldn’t beat the location. Caleb’s home was effortlessly close to the shore, and we could walk to the shops on the outskirts of town, with no highway or major roads cutting through the path.
I parallel park in the spot in front of his house that once belonged to him instead. I see the curtain shift in the front window, the profile of a little girl with dark hair. I wave, and the curtain falls shut. The little girl disappears.
I check my phone and see Hailey’s response. Hi, she says.
The front door opens, and Eve is waiting for me. Her mouth is set in a grim line, like she disapproves of the fact that the phone is in my hand.
“Who was that?” she says as I walk up the porch steps. Her gaze shifts to the phone still in my grip.
“Hailey Martinez,” I say. And then I show her the display, as if she has forced it from me. As if I have to prove that I have not taken up with some other boy who is not her son, to be granted access to this house. That I am loyal, even now, to his memory.
Eve is still looking at the phone, at the meaningless text, when she asks, “Do you have my number, Jessa?”
“No,” I say.
“Next time, call when you’re on the way, so I make sure I’m here in case anything comes up.” She holds out her hand for my phone, and I place it in her palm. If anything comes up. It’s an empty room. What could possibly come up?
She adds her number as a new contact, and I’m startled by the sound of footsteps behind me.
I turn just in time to see Mia disappear up the steps. Upstairs, I hear her door slam closed. Eve says nothing when she hands back my phone, so I make my way up the steps. I decide to make a visual dent this time. So it seems less and less like Caleb’s room, as if that might make it easier.
The door is closed, like yesterday, but I know Eve has been in here, because she has moved the boxes I finished. Most of what I packed was inside drawers, so the room doesn’t look much different, other than the walls.
Except it’s darker in here. The window curtain has been pulled shut, shadows dancing along the wall. The switch on the surge protector under his desk glows an eerie red, which you only notice when the lights are off and the shades pulled closed.
It’s not really a window shade but a shower curtain that hangs in front of his window. It’s white, with black birds. But, like, Alfred Hitchcock–level birds. Horror-movie-level birds. You don’t realize they’re birds at first: at first, it just looks like a bunch of thick black lines intersecting on a white background. A pattern you can’t quite figure out. You have to step back, see it from the entrance, look closer. Find one bird, the rest come alive.
Caleb put it up for Halloween last year to get into the spirit, he said—but he never took it down. When the light hits in the morning, they cast shadows across his bed, the walls, the floor. Us.
—
“And my soul from out that shadow…,” he said, my head resting on his chest. The words vibrated through his ribs, into my skull. We were lying across his bed. He ran his fingers through my hair, absently.
“Wow, so romantic,” I said.
The clock ticked above us. Just minutes after nine a.m.; I had woken him up. Or, I was still waking him. I’d walked right in the front door, up the steps, and let myself in his room. It was the first day of summer break, after we’d spent the whole school year together, and he was supposed to be babysitting Mia, who was watching television downstairs by herself when I arrived.
“You’re coming to the party this weekend, right?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“Julian’s graduation party? It’s this Saturday.”
Caleb’s arm tensed under my head. “I don’t think he’d want me there. I don’t think I’m his favorite person.”
It was true. Julian had never quite fully warmed up to him, maybe because Caleb was my first serious boyfriend, maybe because our circles were overlapping in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. Either way, I knew Caleb could sense the discomfort, just as I could. “I want you there.”
“Maybe call me after, Jessa. I’m supposed to help my mom with something.”
“Right,” I said, pushing myself onto my elbows. Lately it felt like our days revolved around his schedule, his plans, his family.
“Wait, don’t get up,” he said, his fingers circling my arm.
“Your sister needs breakfast,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, and suddenly he was up, out of bed, searching his floor for a pair of pants to slip over his boxers. He looked over his shoulder, catching me watching. “But that’s not your job.”
He shut the door behind him, but said, before it latched, “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a guy who cares for his much younger sibling somehow has an unprecedented appeal. Listen, it’s just biology. Many other things are forgiven in its place. Like: the way I’d sometimes catch him staring out the window when I was talking; these vague excuses he’d started giving me more and more often; how college was a topic that had recently become off-limits, as if I was a distraction from the decision.
I pushed myself to sitting when I heard his steps on the stairs again, saw the envelope on top of his desk. The top slit open, rough and ragged. He opened the door just as I reached for it.
“Don’t,” he said.
But I did. Of course I did.
He reached for it too, grabbing it out of my hands before the handwritten words could slip into focus. I felt the sting of a paper cut on my index finger. “What the hell?” I said.
“Just leave it, Jessa,” he said, dropping it into the bottom desk drawer, leaning back against it. Creating secrets, instead of giving them away—the opposite end of the bell curve.
Just say it, just say it, just say it—
The sound of Mia’s scream cut through the moment, cut through the tension. Caleb’s eyes went wide, and he launched himself down the stairs, with me scrambling to keep up. Mia stood beside the kitchen table, staring at the overturned cereal bowl, the shattered glass beside it, the juice seeping across the floor. Her toe was bleeding from where she’d stepped in glass.
“Oh,” he said, scooping her up. “It’s okay, Mia.”
Her green eyes were wide and overflowing with tears. “I just wanted more juice,” she said, and she let out another wail.
I cleaned the floor, carefully picking up the pieces of glass, while Caleb tended to Mia’s foot. Everything that had just happened upstairs, forgotten. Until my paper cut made contact with the orange juice, and I sucked in a quick gulp of air, from the sting.
My hands shook as I finished cleaning, and all the while I heard Caleb’s low, soothing voice across the room, in words that were too far away to hear clearly.
Caleb took the plastic trash bag with the pieces of glass out to the garbage around back, and Mia looked up from the chair across the room. “He’s supposed to be watching me,” she said, the corners of her mouth tipping down, a shadow of Eve. An echo of a grown-up, those same words probably spoken in this very room.
It wasn’t my fault. The excuse on the tip of my tongue. He was sleeping when I arrived.
“I have to go,” I told Caleb when he came back inside. “Feel better, Mia.”
I hear her words again, standing in the entrance of his room now, watching the shadows of the birds lighten and darken on the walls, the bedspread, the desk, from a clo
ud moving across the sun.
He was supposed to be watching me.
The course of events would be different had he done what his mother asked of him. I wonder if Mia still feels those words, understands that there is an alternate outcome, if only he had done what he was supposed to do. Caleb in this house, instead of driving through the rain. It’s not my fault, I want to tell her. Pointless words now. I barely believe them myself. I stride across the room, my steps angry.
The curtain comes down first. I have to stand on the desk chair, which swivels, to reach the curtain rod. The metal bar tilts when I lift it off its bracket, and the birds slide off in a heap to the floor. The light is too bright, and my eyelids slam shut on instinct. The room is bathed in light, and I think: There will never again be the shadow of a bird on the wall. On the bed. On us.
The curtain feels much lighter and ethereal in my arms, as I fold it over, fabric billowing up again as I push it down, deeper into the box.
The surface of his desk is now bare, other than the computer screen. I haven’t touched the desk drawers yet.
I picture him leaning against it, hiding the envelope, the words that wouldn’t slip into focus.
Next, I drag the box over to the desk. I drop to my knees. I need his secrets to be mine again, hear him whisper them into my ear as he sits beside me on the beach. As if I could save us, even now.
I am captured by this version of Caleb, the one who cannot exist. Wondering where he would’ve gone to school, what he would’ve done. What schools were scouting for him, sending him letters, asking him to come visit?
By the start of Julian’s senior year, things were already firmly in motion. The letters arrived during junior year, and I remember my parents spreading them out on the kitchen table, Julian sitting between them, making a plan.
I go for the bottom drawer first. It’s deeper, and used less. Inside are the things he doesn’t reach for often: computer wires, an old speaker, a tangle of cords, a spare mouse. I dump them all into a box, label them Electronics.
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