“Yvonne …”
“Where is she, Joe? Where is my girl?”
“I don’t … I wish I knew.”
“Why don’t you know? You have to know. Somebody has to know!”
“We’re going to find her, Yvonne.”
She wiped her eyes with a quick stroke of her hand and gave him a look so intense he almost recoiled. But he couldn’t read what was in it, couldn’t tell if it was hatred or fear or anger or all of those things. Or none of them. She drew a long shuddering breath and he watched as she composed herself, erasing the anguish from her face.
“You’d better tell me everything,” she said.
chapter 17
Kevin wanted to die.
He lay on his bed with a pillow over his head to block out the light and Kanye blasting through his headphones to block out everything else. He was listening to “Stronger,” a song about overcoming obstacles. But Kevin wasn’t buying that message.
Better to die than try to overcome. Really die—like blackness, never-wake-up die. Finished and over. He didn’t think he was scared. He tried to imagine what it would be like and couldn’t. He knew it wasn’t going to be a tunnel and a white light and angels greeting him on the other side. He knew that because he’d come this close. Maybe he even had died for a minute or two. That’s what his father had said, but Kevin knew he was trying to be as dramatic as possible to get Kevin to understand the fucking gravity of his actions. Either way, he’d been right there at the doorway to eternity, just hadn’t gone through it. And he didn’t remember anything about getting to that doorway except feeling so fucked up that it seemed like the walls were dissolving. Then there was just nothing until he woke up. The worst wake-up ever. He hadn’t really tried to kill himself—that wasn’t the point—but his very first thought when he came out of that nowhere state was disappointment that he hadn’t succeeded in doing it. What kind of loser couldn’t even get an overdose right? Exactly. Which made him think that if he actually tried to do it he might fuck it up even worse. If only just wishing you were dead was enough to kill you. But then, Kevin guessed, the world would probably be full of dead people. Because as far as he could tell, nobody on Earth was having a particularly good time.
Barring death, Kevin wanted desperately to get high. That he couldn’t—that he was being watched and monitored like he was under house arrest or something compounded his misery to the point that it almost hurt. No, it did hurt. He could feel the pain spreading through his rib cage and all the way to his heart. Unless that was still the bruising caused by his father’s aggressive attempt at CPR. The asshole probably tried to break his ribs.
“You owe me your life twice,” he had told Kevin when they’d gotten home from the hospital. “I gave you life and then I saved your life. I don’t think you understand that.”
Kevin didn’t think it was possible to despise his father more than he had that night at the Montanas’ when the man had ordered him home like he was a little boy on the playground, disrespecting him down to his bones. But when he’d said that about Kevin owing him double for the very breath he took, Kevin felt his hate grow, gaining the force and gravity of a black hole, sucking in all the other feelings he might ever have had for his father and destroying them completely.
He wished the man weren’t his biological father so that he’d have a valid excuse for loathing him this much. If only his mother had had an affair and he was the secret result. He didn’t look much like his dad, so it was possible. On the other hand, he didn’t look much like his mother either, except that their eyes were the same color blue and they both sunburned easily. But that could apply to anyone, really. And his mother wasn’t the type to have an affair—she lived in fear of his father as it was. She’d never have the kind of guts it took to pull off something like an affair and pass off someone else’s baby as his. Still, it was a fantasy Kevin spun regularly, the kind of thing that he’d actually consider a gift from his mother if only she would offer it. But no. He was stuck with the fucking son of a bitch.
His mother had really screwed up on that one.
But Kevin didn’t hate his mother for that. He didn’t hate her, period. And if he really thought about it, he wasn’t even truly angry at her. What he couldn’t believe was how she refused to stand up for him with his father. He didn’t know what to call the feeling this gave him, but it was worse than anger or hate, and he couldn’t do anything to get rid of it. He wished his mother would realize what an asshole his father really was and just leave him. He treated her so badly—why couldn’t she see that? She just rolled over every time his father barked at her to do something or made fun of her in some little way that she didn’t seem to get or care about. The worst thing, though, and what had been happening ever since Kevin could remember, was that she never, never had his back even when she knew he was in the right. A long time ago, he had been able to talk to his mother about what was going on in his life and she seemed to listen to him. She even seemed to understand how he felt about things and more often than not she took his side. But then when it came time to defend him to his dad, she always just folded up and disappeared. He could never figure out why because when she disagreed with his father about other things—and yes, they were little things like when to do yard work and what to have for dinner—she didn’t have a problem saying so. But when his father and he were involved, she just seemed to go blank, turn off inside, and not come back until everything was all smoothed over. It was such a betrayal.
He’d never been able to tell anyone about this because he thought it made him sound like such a baby—until Diana. She had her own theories. “You know your mom’s totally wasted, right?” she said one day after talking to his mother in the kitchen.
“What are you talking about?” he said, half-laughing because Diana was always throwing crazy shit out there like that.
“I’m serious,” Diana said. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s on something. Don’t you know? More importantly, where can we get some?”
“No way,” he said. Diana smiled and shrugged like whatever he wanted to believe was fine with her. But now he was thinking maybe she was on to something because maybe that disconnected blankness of his mother’s had some kind of chemical explanation. And if there was one thing Diana knew about, it was being wasted. She knew about every prescription drug there was and she had plenty of stories about getting trashed on almost all of them. She was an expert—made his own experiences look like kindergarten shit. Diana really, really loved to get high and she talked about it all the time. But she was pretty good about resisting before Zoë came. She was trying … and she wasn’t doing any of the really strong shit while she was pregnant, just a little weed and not really anything else. At least never with him. He wouldn’t have let her anyway. That’s what nobody seemed to understand—he’d done his best to protect Diana. She’d been through so much shit in her life, she really needed somebody. How did that make him a bad influence on her? He was a good influence before Zoë came. But after Zoë … He didn’t know.
Diana had been getting so weird. She told him she loved him. But he never had the courage to ask her how she loved him—as a boyfriend, a brother, or just a friend. Okay, not a brother. Diana acted a lot of different ways, but not like a sister. Sisters and brothers didn’t do what they’d done. Or what she’d let him do. But friends did. Friends with benefits. That was always what he was afraid they were. But it felt so good to have her close, to have her there. To talk to her. He never wanted to ruin it. He would have given her anything, would have done anything to keep it just like that forever.
Kevin rolled over and instinctively reached for his cell phone to call her. And then he remembered. His father had cut off his cell phone. And Diana was gone. The pain in his chest got sharper. He wanted to talk to her so badly. He needed to talk to her. He remembered what she said and it hurt all over again. Don’t call me for a while. It’s better if we don’t hang out right now.
He pressed his knuckles i
nto his closed eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the pictures in his brain. He was kissing her for the first time again, over and over. He couldn’t stop remembering and it was killing him. She never asked him if he’d been with another girl before her. She knew and she didn’t care.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s all fine. Better like this.”
He didn’t know what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. She was so beautiful. He was never going to be with a girl as beautiful as Diana ever again. He knew this with a kind of dead certainty, and it made him want to punch a hole in the wall. If only he had the energy or the will.
It was his idea that he and Diana should get married. He knew it sounded stupid and ridiculous—why would she want to raise her baby with a loser like him?—but she didn’t say no, at least not at first. Diana didn’t really have a plan for what to do when Zoë was born. All she knew was that she didn’t want to “give her away like a puppy I don’t have room for in my house.” But at the same time, she never really prepared herself to be a mother. Not that Kevin knew what getting prepared meant, but it involved more than just waiting around until you gave birth. Because that’s what it seemed like she was doing. Maybe it was because she was trying to convince the Montanas that she was planning to give the baby up for adoption. Diana said Joe and Allison were insisting on adoption, and they would probably kick her out of the house if she told them that she wanted to keep the baby, so she had to keep pretending. But then Diana changed the story and said it was really Allison who was pressuring her to give the baby up for adoption. She said Allison was the world’s biggest bitch and would probably kill her and the baby if she thought she could get away with it. “No, seriously,” Diana told Kevin when he laughed at this (sometimes it was hard to know when Diana was kidding or when she wanted to amuse you with what she was saying), “she’s evil. You should see the way she looks at me when she thinks nobody’s looking.”
Diana could be very convincing when she wanted to be. Kevin had known Allison since elementary school (he still thought of her as Mrs. Montana most of the time) and couldn’t imagine her as the evil stepmother that Diana made her out to be, but who knew what went on in people’s houses when there was nobody else around to watch what they were doing? And you only had to look inside his own house—at his own fucked-up family—to know that was true. So he believed Diana when she said Allison was out to get her and Joe didn’t really care what happened to her. And he believed her when she said she could never go home because her own mother was worse than Joe, Allison, Kevin’s father, and any other shitty parent you wanted to throw in all wrapped into one. Her mother was so cold she kicked her pregnant daughter out of her house. What kind of mother did a thing like that? Kevin didn’t know if his own father could even be that cold—he couldn’t imagine it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. He did know a thing or two about what it felt like to have a parent who didn’t like you or want you around. Nobody could force Diana to give up her baby, he was pretty sure of that, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t make her life totally miserable. And that was where he came in. It wasn’t so crazy to think that they could be together, was it? He could get a job somewhere, couldn’t he?
But then Zoë was born and everything changed with Diana. It didn’t happen all at the same time, but from the minute she got the first labor pains he could see something turn in her. They were here—right here on his bed—when it happened. It was a Sunday afternoon and they were alone in the house. She was leaning into him, heavy on his chest, his arms around her, his hands on her belly, feeling the baby roll around and kick his fingers. Then he felt her take in a quick breath like you did when you felt a sharp pain. Her belly was hard as a rock.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said after a minute. “Nothing.” She relaxed a little, asked him for a hit of weed. He was going to ask her if she thought that was the best thing to be doing, but he thought better of it and just gave her some. There was a damp spot on his T-shirt where she’d been leaning against him and he could see that her face was shiny with sweat.
“It’s so fucking hot,” she said. “Don’t you have AC?”
“My dad doesn’t let my mom turn it on ever,” he said. “He says it’s too expensive. He says it never gets so hot that you need AC, you can just open a window.”
“Well open the fucking window then.”
“It’s open.”
She laughed a little and then leaned over, taking another one of those breaths, this time with a little groan.
“Is it the baby?” he said.
She waited until it passed and then she looked up at him through the long curls that fell across her face. That’s when he saw it—she was different. Scared and trying not to show it—retreating inside herself. “I think I have to go,” she said.
“I’m going to come with you.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“You can’t, Kevin, you just can’t, okay?”
“Let me come with you. Let me help you.”
“Trust me on this, okay? You don’t want to come with me.” She put her hands on her belly and looked down. “I’m going to go … go get my … I’m going to get Joe,” she said. And then she just left him there. He didn’t follow her. He should have. He felt bad about that. He sat looking out his bedroom window after she left. He could see a good way up the street and he sat there and waited. Pretty soon, though not as soon as he would have thought, he saw the two of them—Joe and Diana—heading out to the hospital. Right after that he saw Sun come out and start tossing baskets. So he went outside like he was going somewhere and pretended that he’d just happened to notice Sun out there and had decided to go say hey. Sun saw him, gave him the questioning look, and Kevin nodded. Sun passed him the ball. Kevin took a shot and missed.
“Nobody’s home,” Kevin said. “So you can come over.”
“Okay,” Sun said. “You need anything extra?”
“The usual,” Kevin said, trying to look as if he didn’t care and wasn’t desperate.
“Is Diana over?” Sun asked and tipped his head toward Kevin’s house.
“Nah, she’s …” But Kevin stopped himself. He didn’t want to tell Sun where Diana had gone or what she was doing. “… not there,” he finished.
It was hours later—the middle of the night—he was fucked up, passed out for who knows how long, when he heard his phone go off. Diana had sent him a text message.
its a girl. zoe. we’re good. c u soon.
He didn’t see Diana again for days. Maybe it was a week, he wasn’t sure. He went to school and came home. He sent her text messages. Sometimes she answered, sometimes she didn’t. And then one day she sent him a text telling him to come over. He snuck around the back and then went in through her bedroom window—good thing it was on the ground floor—to avoid being seen by anyone. It was a mess. And it was so weird to see her all skinny without her big belly. She looked tired, like she’d been awake for days, and she was all jittery. He knew what she wanted—she didn’t even have to ask—and he gave it to her.
It was funny, he thought now, that they had never talked about Zoë’s daddy. It was the one thing that Diana never volunteered and he never felt comfortable asking her about it even though they talked about everything else. Kevin didn’t know if the dude was a boyfriend, just some guy she met, or somebody else’s boyfriend. Or husband. Shit like that happened all the time. He knew that girl Lori in last year’s English class who slept with one of her father’s friends (disgusting) and then got pregnant. Everyone was talking about it. The gossip got so bad Lori had to transfer out of school at the end of the year. He didn’t want to believe that Diana had done something like that, but he didn’t know. And maybe he didn’t want to ask because he was afraid she would say she was in love with the guy and going back to be with him. All he knew was that if Zoë was his baby, he’d step up and be a man about it. Sometimes, he fantasized that Zoë was his—it wasn’t tha
t hard to do. You couldn’t really tell what she was going to look like yet, she was too small, but Kevin had checked her little mouth and chin and he thought they looked a little like his. Enough like his. He wondered if Zoë’s father even knew she existed. Maybe Diana hadn’t even told him.
He should have asked her. Why hadn’t he?
But after Zoë was born it got harder to talk to Diana about anything. She was sometimes frazzled and sometimes just stared off into space like she was in a trance. Having Zoë seemed to have really freaked her out. That’s when he offered to marry her.
He felt really stupid about that now. Because even though she seemed to go along with it for a minute, he didn’t think she was ever really into it or ever meant to try to be with him. She was just treading water. And he was pretty sure she’d gone back to taking pills or whatever so that she could even herself out. He didn’t blame her, really. Diana’s life was fucked up even if she did love Zoë. No wonder she’d run away. Well, if she’d run away. But he couldn’t believe that anything had happened to her. Diana could take care of herself pretty well, he was sure of that. He reached for his phone again without thinking only to find it gone once more.
“FUCK!” The music was up so loud he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own voice. He turned it up even louder, so loud it wasn’t music anymore, just screaming vibrations in his head. But it didn’t help. Nothing fucking helped anymore.
Kevin didn’t know where Diana had gone, but he wasn’t that surprised that she hadn’t taken Zoë with her. Not really. Kevin thought Diana always knew that it was going to be hard for her to take care of Zoë properly. He thought that was what bothered her more than anything. And now he couldn’t help her at all, even if he wanted to. He couldn’t call her, even if he was going to ignore her plea for him to leave her alone. And she couldn’t call him because his fucking father had cut off his fucking phone.
The Neighbors Are Watching Page 21