What You Left Behind

by Jessica Verdi

“I found out the recruiter from UCLA is coming to watch me play in a few weeks, and he’s bringing a contract with him.”

  “Really? That’s awesome!”

  “Yeah. I’ve been working pretty much my whole life for this.”

  Joni starts talking about what she thinks she might want to do after high school. I catch the gist of it—she’s still trying to decide between college, traveling the world, or going to work at her family’s doggie day care business. But what I’m thinking about is everything I’m not telling her. I still like the idea of keeping her separate from all the shit. She’s kind of my salvation that way. But I’m also starting to feel bad about lying to her, or omitting the truth, or whatever.

  Somehow, this weirdo girl has become my best friend.

  But then I look at her, really look at her, her face lit up and glowing in the pink-orange-purple light from the sunset, her nose ring shimmering, her hair falling in her eyes, and I don’t want to ruin it. She doesn’t even like kids. Why should I take her down with my sad story?

  Besides, Meg and I were actually together together, and she clearly had all sorts of stuff she didn’t tell me. And we were happy. Mostly.

  I think back to Meg’s journal from this morning.

  But I’m not lying. I’m just not giving him the whole truth. Once he knows, it’s going to change everything. Is it really that bad if I’m selfish for a little while longer?

  If Meg can keep a secret from me, I can keep a secret from Joni. It’s not hurting anyone. If anything, it’s making our friendship better.

  • • •

  I pull into the driveway and walk up to my house. It’s a quiet, warm night, and Mom has the windows and screen door open. She’s talking to someone. At first I think she’s on the phone, but as I get closer to the front door, I know she’s talking to Hope because she’s got that you’re such a cutie face sweet munchkin baby voice going on.

  “Who’s the most ticklish baby in the world?” Mom says. “Hope is!” She makes tickly noises and, I think it’s safe to assume, tickles Hope’s belly or feet. “Hope is the most ticklish baby in the world!” More tickle noises, and then—

  A laugh. A gurgling little baby giggle. Hope’s happy.

  I sink to the stoop’s top step and listen. The two of them are having so much fun in there, laughing and playing and bonding, like they’re the mom and daughter in a Cheerios commercial.

  I look at the sky. I really hope Meg is witnessing this, wherever she is now. We made that laugh together. Even with all the other shit, everything I did, all the mistakes I made, that laugh is one twinkling star in a blanket of darkness.

  “Your daddy’s going to be home from work any minute, little girl,” Mom says. “Isn’t that great news? We get to see Daddy soon!”

  The joy in my gut twists into trepidation. If I go in, I’ll ruin it. Hope will get all anxious again, and clueless, fumbling me will take over for Mom, and the magical moment will be over.

  Mom must tickle Hope or do something funny, because there’s that laugh again. “That’s right! Can you say Daddy?”

  Guess that’s my cue.

  “Guess what?” I say to Mom as I open the door and take the stairs two at a time.

  She smiles. Hope smiles too, from her perch on Mom’s hip. Her eyes look different today. A brighter blue. “What?”

  “The recruiter from UCLA is coming to see me play in a couple of weeks.”

  The smile vanishes from Mom’s face. “He is?”

  “Yeah, game three. What’s the matter? This is it, Mom. He’s flying here from California to see me. They don’t do that for everyone. He’s going to offer me a full ride.”

  Mom shakes her head a little. “That’s wonderful, Ryden. A real testament to your talent.”

  “So…?”

  “So…” She pointedly looks down at Hope, who’s still smiling, unaware the mood in the house has shifted. “What about her?”

  “She’ll come with me. They have the day care place there, remember?”

  Mom raises an eyebrow. “Yes, but—”

  “Mom.” Why does she have to ruin this for me? “There’s no way in hell I’m turning down this opportunity. UCLA was always the plan. And I need one thing to stick to the plan, okay? So it has to work out, because there’s no other option.” She opens her mouth to say something, but I keep talking. “This is for Hope too, you know. If I go to UCLA, I’m securing a future for her. For us. You too. We’ll have money. Opportunities we wouldn’t have otherwise. You know it’s true.”

  Part of my brain pipes up and reminds me that I need to find the journals before I leave for California. Once I find out whatever Meg had to say to me, the new-better-good stuff will have room to flood in.

  “Okay. Fine,” Mom says. But the way she says it, it’s not really fine at all.

  Chapter 16

  Three days later, Mabel and I still haven’t found either of the other two journals. We spend Thursday morning going through the remaining two boxes. Zilch.

  “Maybe they don’t exist,” Mabel says, wiping an arm over her sweaty forehead and sitting back on her heels.

  I shake my head. “They exist,” I insist. “They have to. She wouldn’t write that list and put that book in your room without there being two others out there that she wanted us to find. She wouldn’t fuck with us like that.”

  Mabel just watches me through sad eyes.

  “No,” I say. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pity me, Mabel.”

  “I’m not pitying you. She was my sister. I miss her as much as you do.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t the one who killed—”

  Mabel leaps to her feet. “Seriously, Ryden, enough with that. Just stop.”

  I stare back at her indignantly. I don’t care what she thinks. She thinks she knows everything because Meg’s journal entry said she didn’t blame me, or there was nothing to blame me for, or whatever. But Mabel wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of any of it. She has no idea what she’s talking about. But I’ll stop saying it around her if that’s what she wants.

  “Well, either way,” I say, “Meg knew what she was doing with the journal. She wanted us to find it because she wanted us to know the truth. Without that first one, we wouldn’t know that she knew she was going to die all along. I think there was something else she wanted us to know, and I think we owe it to her to find out what.”

  Mabel stares at me. “We owe it to her? Since when is that the reason we’re searching for these journals? I thought it was because we wanted the answers for ourselves. So we could move on.”

  “There are lots of reasons.” I stand up too. Now I’m the one looking down on her. I lift Hope out of her car seat, balance her on my hip, and give her a pacifier. She’d be on my side about this if she were old enough to understand. I’m beginning to think she’s the only one. “We can’t give up.”

  “But what if they don’t exist? We’ll be chasing a ghost for the rest of our lives.”

  “They do.”

  She crosses her arms and speaks more softly. “They don’t, Ryden. They’re not here. Maybe she never got the chance to mark the other two and put them where we would find them. Or maybe she forgot about it. Or maybe she died before she could finish them. She was really weak and totally out of it toward the end, you know.”

  What, she thinks I don’t remember exactly what Meg was like in those final days? Her body thin and brittle, her stomach round and looking more like a tumor than any of the actual tumors inside of her. Her lips dry, her eyes unclear. Asleep most of the time, and the rest of the time too exhausted to do much more than walk the short distance to the bathroom. But still looking at me with more love than I’ve ever known in my life.

  And then, one day, gone.

  “She finished the journals,” I say. “I know it. And I’m going to find them.”

 
Mabel pushes the boxes against the storage room walls, picks up Hope’s car seat, and walks to the car. I follow, closing and locking the garage door.

  The drive back to her house is silent. Before she gets out of the car, she turns to me and says, “I’m done, Ryden. You’re on your own. I have to move on.”

  I nod. I guess I kinda knew that was coming. “Call me whenever you want to see Hope.”

  “Thanks. See you at school on Monday.”

  She walks up the path toward her giant, cold house.

  The thing is, now I’m even more determined to track down the journals. There was something Meg wanted us to know, me to know, and now I’m the only one left who wants to hear what she said just as desperately as she wanted to say it.

  • • •

  “Brooks!” Coach shouts as I run onto the field. “That little conversation we had on Monday wasn’t for my health. That’s it. You’re sitting out next Friday.”

  “But, Coach! That’s the first game of the season!”

  “I’m aware of that. Two miles. Go.”

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! My teammates have stopped what they were doing and stare at me as I switch from cleats to sneakers and start my eight laps around the track. Most of them are looking at me like Coach is looking at me—pissed off for my being late again and for forcing Coach to take me out of the game, which means we’ll probably lose. Well, guess what? I’m pissed too. But some of the guys, like Dave, are looking at me like they feel sorry for me, the same way Mabel looked at me earlier this morning. Poor Ryden Brooks. His life is so fucked that he can’t even keep his head straight.

  And the saddest part is, they don’t know the half of it.

  The track is like a belt around the soccer field—on my left, inside the belt, the team is practicing. On my right are the stands. I pass by the home stands, then the visitors’ stands, again and again. As I approach the home team side for the third time, my eyes land where Meg and Mabel sat during the championship game last December. Meg was six months pregnant and looked like a shell of her former self. But she pushed herself out of the house and cheered so much during that game that if you didn’t look at her, just listened, you would never know how sick she really was.

  She was my good luck charm. Downey won its fourth state championship in a row last year, and Meg was there for all of it.

  You know, that may have been the last moment things were truly great.

  • • •

  There is one place I haven’t checked yet.

  A few days later, I get up early and drive to Meg’s and my secret spot at the beach. I haven’t been here since she got too sick to come with me. It looks exactly the same, right down to the half-empty Sprite bottle stuck in the sand that we must have forgotten to take home with us last time.

  I scan the area for a journal peeking out of the sand or sitting in the grass. I even look up at the trees to see if there’s anything nestled in the branches. There’s nothing here. I don’t know what I was expecting. Even if there had been a journal here, the weather would have gotten to it by now.

  Hope sits in her harness on my chest. Her wails feel all wrong here; they don’t mix with the serenity of this place. But then, this moment is strange for lots of reasons. This is the spot where she went from being a whole lot of nothing to the smallest beginnings of a something.

  I bounce her up and down to try to keep her calm. It sort of works.

  I sit in the sand and close my eyes, letting the sounds and smells and memories of the place fill every empty part of me. It all happened right here. It’s still happening right here, like one of those weird sci-fi movies where time is stuck in a loop, and the people in it are trapped, destined to repeat a moment over and over without ever moving forward.

  May 24…

  “Turn left up here,” Meg said. It was the night of the dance—the one we were skipping. I’d just picked her up from her giant house and met her pod people parents for the first time. They hadn’t been very welcoming.

  “Uh, why?”

  She gave me a sly smile. “Just do it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We drove on for a while, Meg dictating the turns, me having no clue where she could be taking us.

  “Okay, now slow down,” she said when we got to an isolated one-lane road surrounded by woods. It was still light out, but everything got really dim as we continued driving under the leafy branches. “There’s a turn soon, but I can never remember exactly where it is.”

  “A turnoff here?” I asked. “That leads to what? There’s nothing here but trees.”

  “Ah, ye of little faith. Oh, there it is! Right past that weird branch that’s sticking out. Turn right.”

  Sure enough, there was a tiny dirt road just wide enough for my car. I maneuvered us onto the path and inched the car forward at about three miles per hour. The road, if you could call it that, was really curvy and rocky. I had to lean forward over the steering wheel as we crept along, being extra careful not to drive over any tire-puncturing rocks or cute, furry forest creatures. The Sable wasn’t exactly made for off-roading. Low hanging tree limbs and rogue, leaf-covered branches snapped against the windows—I felt like I was going through some sort of prehistoric car wash.

  And then Meg was telling me to park and we were out of the car and walking through the woods.

  “Are you taking me somewhere to murder me?” I asked. “Whatever I did to piss you off, I’m sorry.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Ryden Brooks?”

  The thick of trees opened onto a tiny, secluded beach, complete with sand and a shore. It was amazing. No one would ever find us here.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked.

  “I came here with Alan’s family a long time ago. His dad knew about it somehow. I was, like, eight or nine at the time, but I loved it so much that I remembered where it was, and I started coming back when I was old enough to drive.”

  Meg pulled a sheet from her bag, spread it on the sand, and grabbed my hand, pulling me down with her.

  “Have you decided what author you’re going to do?” I asked after a minute of our joined hands being the only thing my brain seemed capable of focusing on. Mr. Wheeler had given us this assignment to pick an American author to give a presentation on before the end of the year, and it seemed like as good a thing to talk about as any.

  “I think I’m doing Harper Lee,” she said. “You?”

  “Toni Morrison.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, why? She’s great.”

  “I know she is. I just…” She shook her head. “You’re full of surprises, Ryden Brooks.”

  “Why do you always call me that?”

  “Why do I always call you what?” she asked.

  “Ryden Brooks. My whole name. You do that a lot.”

  “I do? Oh. Um…if I tell you, do you promise not to laugh at me?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Okay, well…you know how when you talk about movie stars, you always say their first and last names? Like, it’s always ‘Matt Damon’ and never just ‘Matt’?”

  “I guess…”

  “Well, you’re kind of like that, a celebrity in our school. You’re the guy who’s so perfect and untouchable that it feels weird to only call you by your first name.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not a celebrity. Jesus. I’m just Ryden. And you’re Meg. And I like you.”

  She nodded, her cheeks coloring. Her hair fell in her face, and I reached forward and brushed it back.

  “And…you like me too?” I asked.

  She laughed. “You could say that.”

  And then I pulled our still-clasped hands toward me so that she fell against me, and I crushed my mouth to hers.

  June 13…

  We’d been together only a few week
s, but already it seemed like we’d known each other forever. We’d hung out with Alan a bunch of times, both in and out of school, and my mom had had Meg and Mabel over for dinner twice so far. But mostly we spent time at the beach. School was almost out—we just had to get through finals—and it felt like the days were endless. Sometimes Meg would write in her journals while I read a book or went swimming, or we’d study for exams together, or we would lie on our backs and talk. Our family shit, what it was like growing up with money (her) versus without (me), what was better: sweet (me) or salty (her).

  And we made out a lot.

  She acted a lot older than sixteen, and you could almost see her mind thinking, but she was also fun and laidback and nonjudgy. Meg was the only person I could just be with. I never felt antsy on those quiet afternoons together, like we had to be doing something to fill the space. She made me feel real.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said as soon as we spread the blanket on the sand that afternoon.

  “What’s up?” I asked, cracking open a Sprite and handing it to her so she could have the first sip.

  She shook her head at the Sprite. “Actually, I have to tell you a few somethings.”

  I grinned at her, the idiot that I am, still not picking up that anything was wrong. “I have to tell you something too. Can I go first?”

  She lowered her eyes and nodded. “Sure, go ahead.”

  I grabbed her beautiful, pale hand and brought it to my lips. “I love you.”

  Meg looked at me, her eyes sorta shimmery. But she didn’t say anything.

  “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but I’ve never felt like this in my life. And before you go thinking I say this to all my girlfriends, I don’t. I’ve never said it to anyone before. Except my mom. And that’s, you know, different. But I wanted to say it to you because it’s true and it’s not fully real until you say it out loud.”

  Her lips parted, and here’s what she said: “I love you too, Ryden Brooks.”

  Those words, coming from Meg’s mouth, felt so fucking good, I can’t even tell you. I felt indestructible. We toppled over on the blanket and made out for, like, ever.