However, between yesterday with Emily, and today—after trying to explain things in a way their young minds could comprehend—the inside of my throat felt like it had been sheared with a butter knife. Seeing the panacea to my problem glowing on the street corner, I made a U-turn and pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot.
I blinked against the gust of air and the ding announcing my arrival, and headed straight for the Slurpee machine in the back of the store. A little boy in a red cap and blue jeans, no more than two or three years older than one of my kids, was doing his absolute best to pack as much blue frost into his colossal forty-eight-ounce cup. He pounded the bottom of it again, and resumed filling, the tip of his tongue peeping out from between taut lips. I stifled a laugh at the look of intense concentration on his face, jumping back when someone suddenly appeared out of nowhere, an admonishment on her lips.
“Oh, my gosh . . . Joey!” she exclaimed, grabbing the sides of her head. “Are you crazy?”
“What?”
She dropped her hands to her hips. “What do you mean ‘what?’ I told you a twelve ounce, you little booger.”
Shock abounded as I took a closer look and saw that it was Bevenny Townsell. But only when she addressed her brother, did the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. I had never spoken to Bevenny, let alone been informed of a brother.
I noticed that the same sandy brown hair pulled into a high ponytail on Bevenny’s head, poked out from beneath Joey’s cap.
“Too late,” Joey responded calmly, expertly wielding the nozzle. He peeked up at his sister with unabashed grin. “Can’t waste it now.”
“You want to bet?” Bevenny gave her brother a wry, withering look.
“But the twelve ounce is a baby size, and I’m not a baby,” he said reasonably.
Bevenny cupped the side of her face, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth as she deliberated. “You know Mom is going to kill me, right?”
“Right,” Joey replied cheerfully and smiled, revealing a set of small teeth stained dark blue.
A shudder passed through me. Without looking at the flavors, my guess was blue-raspberry.
Joey grabbed a bubble lid and straw, then bumped his body against Bevenny’s in a sort of little boy hug. “Thanks, Bevy.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, don’t mention it,” she said, then, “No—really. Don’t mention it. What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Joey came up from his Slurpee long enough to say, “Sounds good to me.”
During their exchange, I should have been searching for something to say; something friendly and casual. But at the moment, staring dumbfounded was the extent of my capabilities. So when Bevenny turned, saw me, and registered a look of recognition, a smile was about all I could conjure spontaneously.
“Oh, hey,” she said, still trying to place me. “You go to Shorecliffs, right?”
“Yes.” There was more. Only my lips couldn’t pick up the signal my brain was giving them.
If Bevenny thought I was acting strange, she didn’t show it. “Sorry if you’ve had to wait very long,” she said, and glanced down at her brother, narrowing her eyes. Even so, the look of tenderness was evident. “I left him for thirty seconds, went to grab this”—she held up a packet of gummy bears—“and when I returned, of course he had found a cup longer than his arms. And now he gets to drink it in under five minutes,” she said in chirping tones.
“I can’t,” Joey argued, and made a disconcerted face. “I’ll get the brain freeze.”
“Yeah, well, it’s nothing compare to what I’m going to get if we walk into the hospital and Mom sees that in your hands.”
My head started to spin. “The hospital?” It was only a whisper, and I never should have said it, but I did.
Still, Bevenny smiled and wrapped her arm around Joey’s shoulder. “We have an appointment,” she said, and elaborated no further. It didn’t matter; I knew what wing he would be visiting. “And actually we should probably get going. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” she said politely. “Say bye.” Joey bravely let go of his cup with one hand and waved.
I forced my lips into something like a smile. “Bye, Joey,” I said. “Enjoy your Slurpee.”
Bevenny rolled her eyes again. “Oh, he will,” she said and laughed, guiding Joey toward the cash register.
I continued to stare after them, my heart hammering in my ears. A great sadness welled up in my chest, and I hurried to turn around so Bevenny wouldn’t notice the tears in my eyes. Why? Why did I have to be right about this?
I stood there for a long time afterward—or what felt like a long time to me, knowing that to do it was madness, insanity; she would think I was a lunatic. But I had to. I had to tell her. If I regretted it later, so be it. At least I wouldn’t have to live with the what if leering at me for the rest of time.
I raced to the glass doors, blasted again by the gale force fan. I located her car easily; other than mine and perhaps the store clerk’s, it was the only one in the parking lot.
“Wait, Bevenny!” I hollered, waving my hands at the front end of the car. The engine was on and Bevenny’s body was twisted around in preparation for reverse. She might not have stopped had Joey not raised his hand and pointed.
Clearly surprised, Bevenny stared through the windshield for half a second before rolling down her window and poking her head out. “Um . . . hi,” she said with a tentative smile.
I stepped off the curb and walked into the street, hurrying to the driver side window. “I’m sorry,” I said breathless. Not from chasing after them, but from pure anxiety. “I know you two need to go, but—” I swallowed, unable to believe I was actually about to do this, to make the same mistake—again!
Bevenny continued to watch me curiously as I worked to formulate words. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m Foster.” I stuck my hand out awkwardly. “Foster Kelly.”
She smiled, rolling the window down far enough to stick her arm through easily. “I don’t think we’ve ever officially met, have we?”
“Well, no . . . not officially.” Technically, I supposed, we had not, and didn’t feel this constituted a half-truth. Watching Bevenny’s expression shift from curiosity to politely tolerant, I knew my time for introductions was waning. I needed to say this and quickly. Better to do it like a Band-Aid, I suggested to myself. “I think you made the right decision.”
It was obvious to me that she hadn’t the faintest idea what I was referring to. And for a moment this comforted me, until I realized it only meant I would need to be more specific.
She shook her head. “Decision about what?”
I glanced toward the backseat to where Joey continued to slurp his Slurpee, and smiled at him for strength. Then I lowered myself to a squat, so that I had to look up to meet Bevenny’s eyes. I was confident that the purring engine of Bevenny’s VW would drown out my next words, but still I kept my voice soft as I spoke. “The decision to tell Joey the truth,” I said. “When he asked you what was going to happen to him.”
The effects of my words were instant. I no longer doubted her confusion. As Bevenny blanched and recoiled from me, I felt a cold shiver rush up my back. Had I made the right choice in telling her? Just now I couldn’t decide. Bevenny remained that way, staring at me for a long, horrified moment, in precisely the same manner she had that day at the beach.
I wanted to run. I wanted to take it back. I wanted to take both Bevenny and Joey and make everything better.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked me, her voice too even to be calm.
I nodded and stood up, making enough space for her to exit the car.
Bevenny turned in her seat. She spoke to her brother as someone does when they’re trying to project an image contrary to how they are feeling on the inside. Lightly and happily, she said, “You okay, Joe?” He bobbed his head up and down, small lips snug around the red straw. “I’m going to talk to Foster for just a few minutes, okay?�
�
Vaguely interested, he looked from me to his sister, swiped his nose, and asked, “Big kid stuff?”
“Yeah. Big kid stuff.”
Before getting out of the car, Bevenny turned on the air conditioning and rolled up the windows, ensuring Joey wouldn’t hear anything she was about to say. Outside, she stood a foot away from me, fists clenched at her sides, chest heaving.
That was the moment I knew Bevenny was about to punch me.
When she raised her arm, I tried not to squint like I knew it was coming; it was difficult, though, and I think I made a sound when that arm and the other took me into an embrace so fierce I gasped, as all the air left my lungs. When I realized it was not violence she sought but consoling, in amazement I put my arms around her, and held her back tightly. I felt her body shake against mine as she worked to stifle the sobs. I continued to hold her, Joey’s eyes fixed on mine, trying not to cry. Powerful as it was, the hug was brief. Bevenny pulled back, sniffling. When she looked at me her nose was bright pink and her eyes were shimmering, but the tears were unshed. This was because she forced them into her throat. Ever since Ecuador I started carrying tissues around with me, never knowing when and what might make me cry. I reached into my back pocket and handed her a full packet.
She removed one, blew her nose, and tried to return it to me, which I wouldn’t accept.
“I have thirteen more in my glove compartment,” I told her quietly.
She nodded, staring at the sodden, crumpled tissue in her hands. “I—I don’t understand,” Bevenny whispered. Her voice was thick and her bottom lip trembled. When she raised her head and turned eyes so full of gratitude on me, I had to as she did, and force the rising emotion deep into my throat. “How? How could you know that I needed to hear that?”
I spared Bevenny most of the details, confiding only what I thought pertinent to her situation. Simply that I had a dream, where the two of us sat on the sand, eating yogurt, talking about an astonishingly brave little boy named Joey. Surprisingly, she asked very few questions after that. Had the divination arrived by way of fortune cookie, I don’t think Bevenny would have minded. She needed only to hear that she’d done right by her brother, telling him the truth even when it hurt.
We exchanged numbers before she left, and I asked if I could visit her and Joey at the hospital. She said she would need to check with her parents for permission, but that, yes, she could use a friend to talk to, that her other friends didn’t seem to understand, or want to. She promised to find me at lunch the next day, and I smiled thinking about Emily and Bevenny, two of the most incredible girls I had ever known.
For the second time in my life, I made a friend all by myself.
~
“What?” Emily ogled and marveled her brother, saying dryly, “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
“I can’t help it,” Jake said, and gave a sigh of longing. “I keep getting a picture of one of those Foster’s Freeze milkshakes from El Pollo Loco in my head whenever I think it.”
Another loud laugh went around the table as the four of us—myself, Maddie, Emily, and Bevenny—listened to the bemoaning Jake, and the suffering he endured by trying to acclimate to the literal climate change—my name now conjuring to him ice cream. Collectively we had agreed to sit outside today since the weather had warmed up.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” I said between laughs. “I promise my intention was not to distress you.”
“Nah, I’m not distressed. Just hungry. Kinda the same, I guess.” He regarded me intently, leaning back off the bench and squinting from the sun. “But I agree with Em,” he said musingly, and nodded, his bright white hair resplendent in the sunlight. “The new name’s pretty dope.”
Blushing, I peered into my fruit bowl and smiled. “Thanks, Jake.”
He saluted me, then rose from the table in a flourish. “I’ll be back.”
Maddie looked after him wonderingly, her coppery eyebrows drawing together. “Where are you going? We need to go over your quiz.”
Jake crossed the cafeteria threshold and smirked over his shoulder, nearly running into another boy carrying a full tray of food. Then he vanished around the corner.
Emily turned her head and looked straight at Maddie. “Five bucks says he comes back with two milkshakes.”
Maddie snorted. “Probably.”
“Raise you another five it’s four,” Bevenny said, setting down her bottle of Sprite.
Emily lifted one eyebrow. “You’re on.”
I made my own wager, but kept it private.
“Hey.” Emily’s brow furrowed as she waved her fork in the air above my lunch. “Aren’t you going to get arrested for eating that? When did you start eating meat?”
“Oh, um . . .” It was another conversation that, in the moment, I had second and third thoughts about. My mother, however, knowing me quite a bit better than Bevenny, knew I had something I needed to tell her the instant I stepped into the kitchen. Neither my mother nor my father was thrilled about my decision, but in the end it was as someone very smart and intuitive had once told me: more than anything else, they appreciated my honesty, and were proud that I had come to them rather than try to hide it. “Only recently,” I said, minding the squeeze of my heart.
“Mm-hm.” Emily’s eyes rolled up and down, full of intrigue and suspicion. “I’ve heard of strange things happening to people following traumatic events,” she said. “You’re not going to like, I don’t know”—her eyes flashed—“start speaking in tongues, are you?”
Maddie looked up from her Calculus book. “I speak French and Latin—so I’ve got those two covered.”
“And I took three years of Spanish,” Bevenny chimed in. Then she turned to me and recited in a very clean Spanish accent, “Foster, por favor deme una de sus uvas?”
Having also fulfilled the three years mandated foreign language, it was actually in Ecuador where I had learned to speak fluently, in a dialect that was antiquated except for specific regions of South America.
I laughed, and after tugging free the plumpest grape I could find, I put it in Bevenny’s palm.
“Muchas gracias.” She tipped back her head and tossed in it.
Emily set down her fork and said brightly, “Well I speak English and only English, so I lose. But . . . I met this guy in Greece last year, and we keep in touch on Facebook. I could probably get him to—” Suddenly her gaze rose past the top of my head, and her face filled with extreme disappointment. “Crap.”
At Emily’s abrupt change in mood, the rest of us either looked up or turned around to find Jake exiting the glass doors, a red tray in his hand, being carried as to mimic a waiter.
Maddie laughed, her eyes on Jake in avid affection. “Looks like neither of you were right.”
Emily continued to glower at her brother, hollering when he was in earshot, “Since when is generosity among your small list of redeeming traits?”
Jake approached the table, his flip-flops slapping against his feet. “Oh, I’ve always been the generous one, Emmers. Think you’re confusing twins again.”
“Just give me my milkshake.” Emily made a reach for one, but Jake was quicker, sliding the tray toward Bevenny and me.
“Ah-ah-ah—it is not just any milkshake,” Jake drawled, waving an admonishing finger, “It’s a Foster’s Freeze milkshake.”
“Um, no—it’s not,” Emily said flatly. “It says right there—”
“Must you suck the fun out of everything?” Jake stared down at her with look of amazement, shaking his head reprovingly.
Emily, her face devoid of emotion, replied, “I am the fun.”
“You’re a fun-sucker.”
Laughing, Bevenny’s eyes went wide. “Wow, you two are intense!” she exclaimed. “Is it always like this?”
All four us answered her at once, “Yes.”
Then Jake looked at me and smiled. “Foster,” he said importantly, and executed a sort of bow. “In honor of your new wicked-dope name, and that
you almost died and all,” he added, lowering his voice solemnly for a moment. “I would like you to choose first. Any one you like.” He wafted an arm through the air.
Somehow I was able to find cause to laugh, finding the speech endearing and humorous. Thanking him, I reached for the milkshake closest to me and a spoon wrapped in plastic. The rest of the milkshakes—four, five including mine—were devoured under the warm afternoon sunlight.
I scooped into the frosted ice cream, a secret smile on my lips.
~
All things considered, I thought I was holding up pretty well. There were moments throughout my first day back to school—sitting alone beneath the Jacaranda tree, intermittent stops at my locker, even leaving the house this morning—when I had to stop and remind myself to breathe; that I would be okay. I would get through this, one brand new step at a time. Old inclinations were difficult to dispel, and per the doctor’s recommendation, I did consider for a very short moment, staying home for another week to recuperate. But that was no good; while lying in bed, or lounging in my chair, I would know that Shorecliffs, and everything it held, would be waiting for my return. Putting off the inevitable would only prolong my healing. And so I avoided nothing. I went to our places. I sat on our bench. I even rummaged through boxes in the garage, divvied out the ancient cassette, and listened to the Star Spangled Banner on the way to school.
I was preparing myself.
Tears were unavoidable, and I did not chide myself for succumbing to them. They were part of it. I needed to grieve and be allowed to do so without any expectations of myself. Too long I had held a bar so far above my head, I could do nothing more than strain and struggle for it, never reaching it, and nearly hating myself for it. I would be sad for as long as it took. And then, piece by piece, my heart would fuse back together. The gashes wide and deep would eventually shrink to something more bearable, and in time I might even be able to think of him without the accompanied shortness of breath, the faltering of resolve. Only when I allowed myself to remember him, did I question whether or not I would ever heal . . . completely.
Awakening Foster Kelly Page 97