Here Lies Bridget

by Paige Harbison

  I laughed, still feeling shocked at the way the afternoon was playing out. “Hey, um. When was the last time you watched The Sound of Music? ”

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  “Oh, man,” she said, looking like she was thinking back a long way, “I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was a kid. My mother and I used to watch it.”

  Huh.

  “Do you want to watch it this afternoon?” I asked, feeling like I was asking someone on a date.

  “Sure. I have a few things to do when we get home, but after that, definitely.”

  “Yeah, I have some stuff to do, too.” I thought of Brett and Mr. Ezhno, and of course, my impending death.

  When we got home I helped put away the groceries, despite Meredith’s insistence that I didn’t have to, and then ran up the stairs to the desk in my room.

  Bypassing my laptop, I grabbed a pen and ripped some note-book paper out of my school binder, and sat down to write.

  After several failed attempts, which resulted in a cartoonish mountain of balled-up pieces of paper, I had my first letter.

  Mr. Ezhno,

  There isn’t much more I can say than I’m sorry. I’ve been a terrible student/person, and you’ve been a great teacher.

  I’m sorry for the snarky comments, I’m sorry for never getting to your class on time, I’m sorry for distracting other students who are trying to pay attention. And I’m really sorry that you got fired. For the record, I didn’t intend for that to happen, and the whole thing was a misunderstanding set in motion by something stupid that I said. I told all of this to the headmaster, and he assured me that you’d get your job back.

  Sincerely,

  Bridget Duke

  P.S. I’m sorry.

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  I read it to myself several times. It still didn’t sound good enough, but ultimately I decided that it just couldn’t sound good enough. There was no “good enough” for this kind of thing and even if there was, there wasn’t time.

  I folded it up and put it in an envelope, and started on my second letter. After even more failed attempts, I ended up with something I thought said it all.

  Dear, dear Brett,

  I’m so sorry.

  Sincerely,

  Bridget Duke

  President of the Bitch Club

  I took both letters, and put them in the middle of my bed.

  It wasn’t like I’d be sleeping in it again, and I was sure that Meredith would get the letters where they needed to go.

  Meredith and I spent the rest of the afternoon doing what, I realized, we could have been doing for years.

  We

  watched

  The Sound of Music, agreed that Liesl was too good for Rolf, who always seemed like a weasel and were glad we’d gotten two baguettes and boxes of fondue. The whole thing carried on as if we’d been doing it forever, and the entire time all I could think was how lucky I was that she would not only accept my apology, but that she would do anything with me at all. The second thought that f loated through my mind was an echoing voice of warning, reminding me not to get too comfortable.

  After Meredith and I parted ways for the evening, I took a phone outside and prepared for my last apology.

  Or was it really my last goodbye?

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  I dialed Liam’s cell phone number, which was still branded into my brain, and waited.

  Ring.

  Would he act like Michelle or like Meredith?

  Ring.

  Or would he just act like himself and politely say that he accepted, but feel like nothing had really changed?

  Ring.

  How could I show him that I really was different?

  Ring.

  What

  if—

  “Hello?”

  “Liam!” I shouted with relief.

  “Hey, B, what’s goin’ on? Y’okay?”

  He must be asking because I haven’t actually called him in months.

  “Yeah, no, everything’s fine. But I do need to talk to you.”

  “I’m kinda on the way out the door right now. Can we talk in school tomorrow?”

  Crap. He was putting the conversation on neutral territory.

  And impossible time.

  “I’m not going to be there tomorrow. Listen, it’s urgent, and I must talk to you face to face. Is there some way we can talk? Please, Liam.”

  “It’s the homecoming game tonight, Bridge, I’m starting.”

  He paused. “All right, are you going to the game?”

  Well, now I am. “Yes.”

  “Talk to me after. But I’m warning you, Bridge—” his words made my heart jump “—I’m either gonna be real happy or real pissed.”

  I relaxed at the tone of his voice. He was kidding. He knew something was wrong, and he wasn’t being an asshole.

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  “I can handle it. Just meet me at the sideline benches as soon as the game is over.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you then.”

  “Oh, Liam? What time’s the game start again?”

  “Eight. You weren’t planning on going, were you?”

  “See you later, Liam.” My voice had a playful edge to it that I hadn’t heard in a long time.

  I looked at the clock again. Seven-thirty. Just—I counted on my fingers—four and a half hours and then I’d be gone.

  How would it happen? Would a car hit me? Brain aneu-rysm? Heart attack at such a young age? Would I just…disappear, and find myself in the boardroom, sentenced to spend the rest of the eternity in hell or heaven?

  It was the last few seconds of the game, and I’d spent the entire time up until then right on the sidelines shouting at the players.

  As a child, my father had taught me the rules of every game known to man. He, like so many fathers, had wanted and expected me to be a boy. When I wasn’t, he’d tried desperately to get me interested in sports. But the closest I got was the hissy fit I threw for Tennis Barbie.

  And the cheerleading debacle.

  But the knowledge had gotten me far with boys, and I’d been able to impress them with my sporty prowess. I’d walk through a room at a party, ask who was playing, and they’d give me some babyish answer about how the team from Wash-ington was playing the team from Dallas. And I’d shoot back,

  “No, dumbass, I mean who’s starting?”

  But on this particular night, I had started off on my own. I had no friends to meet anymore, so I walked straight down the metal stadium stairs, my low heels banging like snare drums with every step I took.

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  P A I G E H A R B I S O N

  I waved and smiled to the people who called my name, but did little more than that. For the first half of the game I’d been by myself, wrapped in my goose-down jacket with the fur-rimmed hood that made me look like an Eskimo. It was freezing outside, after it had been unseasonably warm recently, and the pumpkin hot chocolate I’d stopped to buy felt soothing in my hands.

  But by the time the second half started, I was standing right in the middle of the group of guys who stood on the sidelines wearing no shirts, something I could scarcely imagine doing with the temperature what it was, each with a letter painted on his chest. I didn’t really know any of them, though I knew I’d seen them around. We were cheering together and getting riled up at all the bad calls, our strange camaraderie strength-ening with every touchdown.

  As the seconds ticked down to the end, our team was a field goal ahead, but the opposing team had the ball. There was every chance that they would win. And if nothing else, I wanted Liam happy. Not only because it would help our talk to go better, but also because I genuinely wanted him happy.

  The other team was on the five-yard line, six seconds away from the buzzer.

  Six. They hiked the ball.

  Five. Their quarterback took a few steps back.

  Four. He pulled his arm back to throw it into the end zone.
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  Three. He threw it.

  Two. It was in the air, heading straight to where it was meant to go.

  One. I saw a body leap into the air, and my heart skipped to see that it was Liam. Interception.

  He grabbed the ball and ran victoriously out of the end zone. The stadium was suddenly a deafening roar. But our 2 0 9

  section was the loudest. All of the half-naked guys I’d just spent the last two and a half hours with were high fiving, cheering, some giving manly hugs to one another, and then I was being lifted into the air by “G.” Then “L,” then “A.”

  I didn’t even care that the jacket I was wearing was now covered in green and yellow paint. My throat felt raw from shouting, and I was smiling so hard it hurt my cheeks. But I caught a glimpse of the clock on the scoreboard, and my smile faded. It was eleven-thirty-three. Twenty-seven minutes, and all of this would be gone.

  Our players came running back toward the stands, amidst the still-deafening roar of the crowd and the victorious, cheer-ful sound of the band playing. It sounded just like a last night on earth should sound. Exciting, the air filled with music.

  Going out with a bang. Even if it wasn’t my bang, I didn’t care. It was a wonderful atmosphere to be in.

  I plastered a smile on my face, hoping that the wetness in my eyes looked like overly supportive tears, and clapped as the team ran by.

  My eyes were fixed on Liam, who was tailing the group.

  I held out my hand for a high five as he walked by. Instead, he took my hand and pulled me toward him. The next thing I knew, I was up in the air again. Liam was spinning me around, his arms holding me close to him. Our cheeks pressed together, mine cold and windburned, his warm and soothing.

  My smile was real now, and I felt happy that at very least, I got to experience this feeling one last time.

  He set me down, kissed me on one cold cheek and looked me in the eyes.

  “Thanks for being here, Bridget.”

  He f lashed a winning grin and followed his teammates back to the locker room.

  My head still whirling, I said goodbye to the half-naked 2 1 0

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  supporters, declined their invitation to go to a “totally awesome party,” and told “N” that I’d have to see him do a keg stand another time.

  I sat down on the bench I’d been standing on for most of the game. I waited there for twenty minutes, my foot shaking with anticipation and anxiety.

  The stadium emptied, the concessions-stand workers pulled down the noisy metal screens for the windows and then I was alone.

  Alone to worry. Worry about whether I’d said I’m sorry well enough to the people from the boardroom. Worry about the other people I still needed to apologize to. Worry about how my last few moments would feel if I didn’t get to say my goodbye to Liam.

  Worse than that, I was alone to think and to remember.

  Maybe this was stupid. Maybe Liam didn’t want to hear what I had to say. He had broken up with me, after all, and paid very little attention to me ever since. And I’d spent every single day thinking about how he’d done it.

  We’d been watching my favorite old movie, His Girl Friday, on the couch in my basement. I remember feeling happy. Feeling terribly content, and satisfied with where I was, and the fact that he was there with me. I remember feeling that even if everything else fell apart, I’d have this. I always had, and I hoped that I would for a long time.

  And then he’d paused the movie and scooted forward on the couch. He’d wrung his hands and looked at the f loor.

  “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Bridget,” he’d said.

  The air had escaped from my lungs. I felt like I’d lost my footing on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said quickly. “You’ve changed, it’s just not…you anymore, I guess.”

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  “W-what are you talking about? You’ve never said anything like this before, what do you mean you can’t do it? All of a sudden you have a problem, and it’s just…over?” My voice cracked as I said the word.

  Over.

  Over.

  Over.

  It was over with Liam.

  “It’s not out of nowhere for me.” He looked at me, but the warmth that was usually in his eyes was gone.

  When had it disappeared? How had I missed that?

  “Look,” he went on, “I’ve really thought about this, and I just don’t want to lose you completely. I think I will if we keep doing this.”

  I shook my head frantically. “No, Liam, what do you mean it’s not out of nowhere? For me, it’s totally out of nowhere!

  How long have you been thinking about this? How will breaking up with me keep us from losing each other? This is so stupid! ” I was growing more hysterical by the second, as he—anyone—could tell.

  “Look, of course this isn’t what I want either but…I just think it’s what has to happen. Maybe sometime in the future things will be different but…right now…”

  I gaped at him, unable to speak.

  He got up, muttering that he should probably just go.

  It’s the only time in my life that I can remember begging.

  “No, Liam, please!” The words choked out of my chest like bullets. “I’ll do whatever, just tell me! You didn’t even talk to me about this, just…try, please!”

  He apologized again, tossed a weary glance my way and walked up the stairs.

  I continued to shout at him, my voice wavering desperately as I did so, and he didn’t look back. I guess I’m lucky he 2 1 2

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  didn’t just turn to me and say, “Frankly, Bridget, I don’t give a damn.”

  As soon as he was out of sight, I burst into tears and cried for hours into the afghan my grandmother had made. The room was lit only by the TV screen, which was paused on a still of Cary Grant for so long I sometimes think I can still see it there, like a ghost.

  I cried like that for days. In class, on the way home, in my sleep. I had never thought I’d cry like that over a boy. I’d never thought I was capable of it.

  Or, more to the point, thought that a boy would be capable of making me behave that way.

  But for the month after he ended it, I went through the five stages of grief in a haze of tears, with a side of seriously over-thinking everything Liam’s ending monologue meant or might have implied.

  I started with denial and isolation. I shouted over and over to my friends, who were just trying to help, that he would change his mind and call back. Then I told my friends to leave me alone, I had other things to do. What I had to do was to sit in my room, clicking through pictures on my computer and waiting for the phone to ring. Though I think I knew the whole time that it wouldn’t. So I don’t know if that’s really denial, or if it’s just hope.

  After a few days of him not calling, I got mad at him. Mad that he hadn’t called. Mad at how he’d done it. Mad at the choice he’d made by himself, with no indication of what was coming. I got mad every time anyone who wasn’t Liam called, and mad any time anyone else brought him up or wasn’t interested in talking about him.

  Then I moved on to what psychologists call “bargaining.”

  Except my begging and bargaining weren’t limited to praying or asking God to undo what Liam had done to me. I went so 2 1 3

  far as to call Liam and promise to be better. Gentleman that he was, he told me calmly that it didn’t work that way, and then never mentioned the conversation again.

  After having that final assurance that there was no turning back, I’d launched into full-on pajama-sporting, ice cream-eating, puffy-eyed depression. I cried so much in those two weeks that I must have emptied my body of water. In between bouts of crying, I felt nothing else, total indifference to everything, and a numbness that eventually pushed me out of the crying stage.

  The fifth step is acceptance. If acceptance means that I continued to live my life and
not turn into a shrine-building psychopath, then, sure, I accepted it.

  But I didn’t necessarily move on. I missed him every day, and my days wove in and out of relapsing into the previous four stages and living a normal life. But still, even as recently as seeing him on the football field, the relationship and the consequential breakup seemed just as present as it ever had.

  But maybe it was just me who felt that way. Maybe an apology would mean very little to him. Yes, I finally understood it all. He’d been there to watch me change from myself into another person entirely. I finally got it. But maybe it was just way too late, and it was all moot. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a profound admission, because maybe it just wasn’t relevant to him anymore.

  Suddenly it seemed obvious that the best thing I could do was just disappear. It was stupid to have come here. I was rapidly feeling more and more embarrassed for having come at all, and like I couldn’t get out fast enough. I stood up to leave. And then, of course, out he came.

  “Hey!” he said, oblivious to my thoughts.

  “Hey. Great game, you were really on fire. I couldn’t believe 2 1 4

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  you got that fumble earlier. And that interception! Man, you were like freaking Larry Fitzgerald out there.”

  He grinned. “Thanks.”

  I tried to smile, but instead my eyes and throat began to burn with stupid, poorly timed tears. I tried to hold them back, but I could feel my smile turning into something else.

  “Whoa whoa whoa! Bridget, what’s goin’ on?” His smile died away quickly as he saw my face. He dropped his duffel bag on the ground and put a hand on each of my cheeks. Then, in the way that being with someone comforting always seems to, it became impossible to hold back my tears.

  I was crying about everything. The bliss of him and me, the despair of breaking up, the fool I’d made of myself f lirting with his friends when we were together, the embarrassment of how I’d been prancing around for the last year and a half, the pain I felt for everyone I’d hurt or insulted and even the fact that I was crying. I was selfish to be here, and especially to be crying here. He just won a huge game, and I was here only to bring him down.