What Happens Now

by Jennifer Castle

  When I found this box, my first thought was to confront you. (I wasn’t snooping, I swear. I was looking for outgrown stuff to donate to the domestic violence shelter.)

  But then I knew you had to be ready to hear what I have to say. If you’re reading this it’s probably because you’re feeling the urge to harm yourself again. Which means you’re ready now. Does that make sense? God, I hope so.

  Ari, I need to say this: I have been there. I never got as far as you did. But I can say with certainty that I have felt what you’ve felt. I know you know this in a general way, and I’m sorry we never talked about the details. Maybe they would have helped you. Your therapist wanted me to, but I just couldn’t. I realize now that I was struggling more than I thought I was, and in denial about that.

  It has been so painful to know that you inherited this burden from me.

  But I have to say, seeing you dressed as Satina Galt did something to me. It reminded me that I gave you good things, too, like this role model. The way you (and Satina, and yes, sometimes me, too) want so badly to do your best, to make everything okay for everyone, that you’re not sure how to fit your own needs in there, too. The way you value strength and self-confidence—that was my wish for you. But I also know it’s hard to actually achieve.

  I think you’re amazing. Maybe someday I’ll be able to show you.

  If you are in pain, let me see it. If you found this letter because you were thinking of using the things in the box, call me. Wherever you are or wherever I am, I will come.

  Love,

  Mom

  I read the letter twice. Then I wept. Then I read it again.

  My mother.

  Dabbing alcohol on the cuts on my arms, then wrapping them gently with bandages and gauze. Not saying a word. Sitting with her knees at perfect right angles beneath the Disney Princesses poster in the waiting room of my pediatrician’s office. Putting her arm around me as I stepped out, taking the prescription note from my hand. Filling it and leaving it on my bed.

  It was the only version of her I wanted to think about. It was the only one that existed, right then.

  I knew I should do what she requested, but I couldn’t call her. Not yet. In the meantime, I took the box and walked it outside and stuffed the whole thing in the trash.

  “Sorry I’ve had them so long,” I said to Kendall the next day, handing over a pair of black jeans with patches on the knees. I’d borrowed them months ago and forgotten until she asked for them back so she could take them on her trip. We were standing in my driveway while Kendall’s mom waited in the car. They had a day’s worth of errands and I was first on the list.

  “No worries. I have stuff of yours, too.” She produced a plastic grocery bag tied at the handles.

  I took it, and burst into tears. I’d been on a bit of a hair trigger since I’d found the letter.

  “It’s not like I’m going away forever!” said Kendall. “I didn’t want you to want any of this while I was gone and then be mad at me!”

  I moved toward our front porch so Kendall’s mom couldn’t hear me.

  “It’s not that.” I paused, wiped my nose. “Camden broke up with me.”

  Kendall came closer. “What? When?”

  “A few days ago. He ran away to his mom’s in Vermont.”

  “And you’re just telling me this now?”

  “I feel ashamed. I didn’t want to talk about it because that made it real.”

  Kendall made a frustrated noise. “Ari. You have to talk about these things. And you have to talk to me about them. If we’re going to stay friends and you’re going to stay healthy, that has to happen. Understand?”

  I nodded, almost crying again simply from the relief of being told what to do.

  Kendall glanced back at her mom, who was drumming her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

  “We’ll continue this,” said Kendall.

  I hugged the plastic bag of whatever-I’d-left-at-Kendall’s and nodded again.

  Max came into the store the next day, when Richard was out.

  “Hey,” he said as the door swung shut, then came over to hug me across the counter. When we drew apart, he asked, “How are you?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Let’s come back to that. How’s Kendall?”

  “She’s busy getting ready for her trip,” I said, knowing that didn’t really answer what he was asking.

  He shook his head and sighed. “That whole thing was my fault. I was so mad and not in control of . . . you know, whatever those things are that keep you from doing stupid shit.”

  “She wouldn’t tell me the details. So it was you who kissed her first?”

  Max blinked. “Yeah. What happened with you and Eliza . . . that’s on me.”

  “It’s totally not.” I shook my head hard. “If it hadn’t been you and Kendall, there would have been some face-to-face drama between us eventually.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said sadly.

  “My question about Kendall is, was that something you’d thought about doing before?”

  “No. I’ve asked myself the same thing, and no.” A memory seemed to overtake him. “But there was something about that time we spent in the van. What we talked about. The place we were both in, mentally. I can’t explain it. Believe me, I wish I could. It would make my life so much easier right now—”

  “You mean, with Eliza.”

  “As we work things out.” He went over to the paint aisle, plucked the infamous paint set off the shelf. I couldn’t be sure if it was the exact same one or not. “I came in to buy this. For her. Maybe it’s a way to make things right for you, too. To show your parents we’re not all bad news.”

  I took the box from him and started ringing it up. Then I found myself having to sniffle back tears.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Max.

  “I didn’t expect you guys to be the ones who stayed together.”

  He laughed sadly. “You and me both.”

  “But all those things you said to her that night were true.”

  Max sat on the counter. I didn’t tell him not to. “Sometimes you feel like you can change someone,” he said half-dreamily. “You want to be the one who does it. You figure it’s worth trying.”

  Yes. Now that I knew Eliza better, I could see why it would be worth trying.

  “And sometimes,” I said, “you want a person to be the one to change you.”

  Max sighed. I didn’t have to elaborate. I put the paint set in a gift bag and chose a silver ribbon to tie into a bow on the handles. Eliza would get the silver reference; it was the closest thing to communication that I could manage with her now, and possibly forever.

  “The truth is,” said Max as he watched me tie, “we all change each other. Maybe not in huge ways. Maybe not always for the better and how we expected or wanted. But it happens.”

  I nodded, my eyes tearing up again, and handed him the bag. We stared at each other, a comfortable stare like the kind I had with Kendall at our best moments. Regardless of everything, I was glad to have gotten to know this boy.

  “Camden will come back,” said Max.

  “The issue is that he left in the first place. Just when I needed him most.”

  Max shrugged. “So he’s not perfect. He’s still learning.”

  “Where is the line between that and the deal-breaking stuff? The stuff that’s not going to get learned. The stuff that makes someone wrong for you.”

  Max considered this, staring at the bag in his hands. “Ari, my dear,” he said. “That is an excellent fucking question.” He raised his head to meet my eyes, looking teary. “Let me know if you figure it out.”

  22

  Another day. Another half-waking from half sleep, another push up from horizontal. Another putting down of your feet on the floor. Another set of motions to go through.

  I was stepping out of the shower, wrapping a towel around myself, when the call came. The ringing startled me because I didn’t even know my ph
one was there, hidden in the pocket of my shorts.

  Then I saw the name on the screen, and I startled again.

  “Hello?” I said in that voice you instinctively use when you want to pretend you don’t know who’s calling.

  “Hey,” said Camden.

  The sound of it made my throat cinch tight. I swallowed hard and sat down on the closed toilet seat. “What do you want?”

  I’d thought it was possible I’d never hear from him again. So I should have been overjoyed. I was not overjoyed.

  “Can you talk?” he asked.

  Richard had taken Danielle to camp, and I was supposed to meet him at the store.

  “For a few minutes, yes.”

  I heard Camden take a deep breath, but he didn’t say anything. Was I supposed to do the talking?

  “Camden? I’m here, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Uh . . . how’s Vermont?”

  A pause. “It sucks,” he said. “Without you, it sucks.”

  It’s weird, when something flatters you at the same time that it makes you want to scream.

  I tried to keep myself calm. “I’m sorry to hear that, but as you recall, nobody forced you to go.”

  “I did. I forced me. Too bad I gave in.”

  I swallowed again, as quietly as I could so he couldn’t hear. “Then come back.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Okay, then.” I let my voice sound sharp, annoyed. “So you’re calling me because . . .”

  “I want you to come here.”

  “Here,” I said stupidly.

  “To Vermont.”

  I had no response for that.

  “You’d love it, Ari,” added Camden. “There are hiking trails and lakes and a big hammock outside my mom’s cabin. We could just be together, without the others. And without the bullshit.”

  I was so angry, still, but he spliced these images together like a trailer for an amazing-looking movie.

  “Are you talking about a weekend?”

  “You could stay longer than a weekend. You could stay . . . Hell, you could stay until school starts.”

  I shook the movie trailer out of my head. Why was he doing this to me? And why was I letting him? There was no way I’d be allowed to see that movie, much less live it.

  “Camden, I’m grounded. And even if I weren’t, my parents would never let me make a trip like that with you.”

  “Maybe they would if they knew how important it was to both of us.”

  “Right. Um, I don’t think so.”

  “Then come anyway. You know that saying: ‘Act now, beg forgiveness later.’”

  “I’d like to know how often things worked out for whoever made that up,” I said, trying to keep it together. “Besides, I have responsibilities here.”

  “Let them hire a babysitter. Let them hire someone else to sell craft supplies.”

  “Camden . . .”

  “You don’t have to keep giving them free labor. They’ll be okay without you.” Camden paused and his tone got low. “But I may not be.”

  Ugh. I could even picture his expression when he said this, and how it would make me want to throw my arms around him and kiss hard and long until I’d given him everything I thought he needed. No fair.

  “Camden,” I whispered again, then asked the next question that came to mind: “Are you coming back?”

  I listened to him slowly breathe in, then out. “I don’t know. My mom’s been invited to stay on through the fall.”

  “So . . . you’d stay with her?”

  His voice broke apart now.

  “Ari, ‘with her’ is one place I know I belong.”

  “You could belong to me, too,” I said.

  “Hence me inviting you up here.”

  I was back to being angry.

  “Do you understand that you’re asking me to choose between my family and you? The same way you felt like you were being forced to choose between your family and me?”

  He was quiet a moment. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You say you want to belong to something, but that means you have to follow some rules you may not like. It means you have to do some work.”

  “I’m not good with those two things.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “See, last summer you thought I was perfect. I’m not perfect.”

  No, he wasn’t perfect. But through my anger right then, I realized this: I loved him still. I loved him more, even. Because I loved what his imperfections were teaching me.

  “Ari,” said Camden into my silence. “You’ve saved me a little. Can you keep doing that, please?”

  Maybe that was it. The thing. What he and I were all about.

  I lowered my voice to match his and asked, “What do you need saving from, Camden?”

  “Myself.”

  “Don’t we all need that kind of saving?”

  “Let’s save each other, then.”

  “In Vermont.”

  “What better place?”

  “You should start writing their travel brochures.”

  He laughed, then said, as casually as breath, “I love you.”

  I froze. I’d been hoping to hear that for so long. I thought it would bring all the answers, but it only created more questions.

  There was suddenly another thing I knew for sure.

  “I can’t save you, Camden. Just like you can’t save me. It’s kind of something we have to do ourselves.”

  I heard him exhale. “We can help each other though, right? That’s allowed?”

  Arrrgh. He wasn’t getting it. If we had this connection, why couldn’t he see what I so clearly did? “And how are you going to help me, Camden? What are you going to give me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at our situations. Who has the freedom to go and be wherever they choose at the moment?”

  He was quiet.

  “If you can’t give that . . .” I felt my resolve weakening. “I can’t be with someone who’s only going to take. Who’s not going to step up.”

  Camden was still quiet.

  My thoughts were a tangled knot of sadness and frustration and anger and desire, but in the middle of that knot I could see a clean space. A little loop of understanding of what I needed to do next. I focused on that.

  “Good-bye, Camden,” I said into that loop, and hung up.

  I put down the phone and crawled into the empty bathtub and cried for about a year, or maybe ten minutes.

  Sometimes, there was no victory in figuring out something important about yourself. There was only reality and clarity, which were not much fun at all.

  Then I got out of the bathtub and called someone.

  “Hello, Mom?” I said when she picked up.

  The menu at Moose McIntyre’s was eighteen pages long. I’d never had the time to read the whole thing and appreciate how you could find falafel platters and chicken-and-waffle combos at the same restaurant.

  Today, I had that time.

  “Go there now and wait for me,” Mom had said on the phone. “I don’t want you home by yourself.”

  “Okay,” I’d sobbed, so grateful for instructions. “Okay.” I’d said it at least eight times.

  Now I was sitting in a corner booth by the window, nursing a coffee and waiting. Every time the door opened, I looked up nervously like I was on a first date.

  With my mother.

  On the twelfth time the door opened, it was her. I watched her scan the restaurant for me. I could see the worry and urgency on her face, and that made me feel good. Was that bad that it made me feel good?

  Then she found me and moved quickly to the table. I stood up, stepped out of the booth. When she reached me, I fell against her. The first thing I noticed when she put her arms around me was that she felt smaller than I remembered. Maybe I’d just gotten bigger. Maybe it had been that long since I’d truly hugged her.

  “I got your note,” I said into her shoulder. “You told
me to call.”

  I felt her stiffen for a moment, then she tightened her embrace. “You went looking for the box.”

  I nodded, pinching my eyes shut.

  “Come,” she said. “Sit.”

  She shooed me back into the booth, then slid in beside me.

  “What did you tell them at work?” I asked.

  “Family emergency.”

  “I’m sorry you went all the way down there and all the way back. You didn’t have to do that. It could have waited.”

  Mom looked at me full-on. Her hands flat and firm on the table had moved the place mat so it was crooked. I wondered if she’d notice.

  “Ari,” she said evenly. “I had to do that.”

  I felt the tears come again but I bit down hard on my lip, willing them to stop.

  “Do we have to call your doctor?”

  “I don’t know. Please don’t be a nurse right now.”

  She looked taken aback for a moment, then softened. “This was about Camden, right?”

  “It’s kind of about everything.”

  “But you got hurt.”

  Before I could figure out a way to answer, a waitress came by with two glasses of water. Mom ordered a bowl of granola.

  After the waitress left, Mom turned back to me and said, “Look, I know I can’t always protect you. I can only hope you have the skills to do it yourself.”

  “Then why were you so against Camden’s friends when you hadn’t even met them?”

  “I didn’t understand at first, either. The thing about driving ninety minutes to work and back each day is that you have a lot of alone time to think about stuff.” She paused. “Sometimes I think I took that job because of the alone time on the road.”

  Mom seemed to drift off for a few moments, then finally checked back in. “What did I tell you about how your father and I met?”

  “That you went to high school together.”

  “That’s right. Well, I’ll tell you the rest of the story now. It’s relevant.” She wrapped one hand tight around her water glass, but didn’t drink. “We’d never really known each other growing up. Until the summer after high school was done, when we worked as counselors at the same day camp. We had, you know. A summer fling.”

  The word fling felt creepy and wrong coming from my mother. I took a sip of my coffee and spent a long time gingerly placing the cup back in its saucer.