The Beauty That Remains

by Ashley Woodfolk

  I shrug.

  “Sorry,” she says again, cringing. She tosses a few of her thick braids over her shoulder. “That was dumb. Everything sucks. Of course you’re not okay.”

  “It wasn’t dumb,” I say slowly. “It was nice.”

  She smiles weakly.

  “I’ll try talking to Alexa,” she says. “I’ll text you tonight, okay?”

  I nod, and she hugs me again, and her boots click as she walks away.

  In the car, Dante’s eyes are watery, and his nose has started dripping blood.

  “Jesus,” I sigh. I reach over him and open the opposite door, so he can stretch out his legs. Then I pull his head into my lap.

  I have tissues and a water bottle in my bag, so I start cleaning him up with that. I wet the tissue, letting the water dribble through my fingers, and Dante stares at the ceiling of the car, at the broken light that should click on whenever someone opens a door. Tears start sliding down the sides of his face and into his ears.

  He is so endlessly complicated—gentle one second and brutal the next. But I can see how he aches, that he rages because he’s heartbroken like me. He is so alive, his heart pounding hard and fast even now while he’s lying down. He feels everything. But I’m numb, as if some part of me died along with you, and I rarely feel anything at all.

  I push his hair back with my shaky hands and dab at a cut on his eyebrow. I wipe away the blood that’s still trickling out of his nose.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m such an idiot. I shouldn’t have made you come back so soon. You should only come back when you’re ready.”

  He lifts one of his hands and catches a strand of my hair between two of his bloodied fingers. He shifts his eyes, letting them follow the length of the hair from his hand up to my face.

  “You’re sorry?” he asks in a voice so soft, it doesn’t sound like him. He drops my hair and cracks his knuckles, which are already starting to bruise into a deep shade of red. They’ll be purple by morning.

  “I’m a fucking mess. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t take it—Perry standing there, saying her name, like it cost him nothing. Thinking about him doing that to you every day…”

  “Well, he probably won’t be talking to me again anytime soon,” I say. “So mission accomplished?”

  I don’t mean it like a joke (I’m still pretty mad), but that’s how it sounds. Dante bites his lip, and I think he’s smiling.

  “This is not funny, Dante!” I say. I hit his chest, and he grabs my hand. We stare at each other, and he licks his swollen lips, but neither of us says anything else.

  I glance through the window. The crowd has cleared, and I hear the bell ring and I don’t care. When Dante lets go of my hand, I look back down at him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I tell him. And he doesn’t hide his smile this time. He unfolds his long body and climbs into the front. I stay in the back and stretch out as much as I can.

  He drives. I don’t ask where we’re going, and I don’t really care, but I hand him my phone and tell him to play Unraveling Lovely’s album. I think he’s going to object, since that’s what they found in your car that night. I watched him snap his copy of his old band’s EP in half when your parents told us that it was recovered from the car stereo.

  Dante stares at my phone for a few seconds, but then he plugs it in. The music fills the car, and I think of the first time I ever heard Dante play the drums. The first ever Unraveling Lovely show was the first time I realized I liked him, and the tour was where the three of us—you, him, and me—all fell a little deeper in love with one another.

  I take off my Gryffindor scarf and bunch it up beneath my head. I watch Dante’s profile as he drives, and it must be the adrenaline from the fight leaving me all at once because I feel my eyelids getting heavy. After a while, Dante stops the car, and I open my eyes. I’m not sure how long it’s been or where we are because I’d fallen asleep.

  He turns around and looks at me. Unraveling Lovely is still playing. As I listen to the snare snapping like some kind of complicated magic in the background of the track, I wonder if Dante will ever play the drums again. I know what it’s like to need something, or in my case, someone. He needs his music like I need you.

  He says, “You okay?”

  And for once, I’m honest. I shake my head and look at the bruises blooming across his cheekbones, darker already than they were when we were still in the school parking lot.

  “I’m a fucking mess too,” I tell him.

  I want to ask him about the drums again right now, but he looks over me, out the window. So I sit up and look too. We’re at Winnie’s, your favorite diner. The one where you’d order banana-walnut pancakes and chili cheese fries, and Dante would always get something off the secret menu. I can’t get enough of the pie.

  “So you’re a mess,” he says, and then grins. “But are you hungry?”

  We order chili cheese fries and banana-walnut pancakes, and I make a joke about him needing to hit the drums instead of Perry. He laughs and I smile, and my chest hurts a little less than usual.

  But it’s weird being there, without you.

  BRAM IS BORED so he makes a survival plan for the zombie apocalypse.

  8,250 views | 4 months ago

  I’m punching Bram in the face.

  I punch him again, and his nose breaks. Blood spills from both his nostrils and flows over his lips, but I don’t stop hitting him.

  We’re in the locker room, and he’s not wearing a shirt, just a thin pair of Under Armour leggings and football socks. It’s fucking freezing. It shouldn’t be this cold inside, and I shouldn’t be hitting him, but it is and I can’t stop.

  I shove him, and one of his broad shoulders hits the row of lockers closest to the showers. He screams and grabs his arm. It looks dislocated, and some wicked part of me is glad.

  “Logan,” he says. He’s sobbing, and it’s so cold that his voice makes steam puff from his mouth, like there’s a fire inside him. “Let me fix this!”

  But I don’t listen. He trips over a towel someone’s left on the floor and falls onto the hard tile of the shower stall. I kick him in his rib cage, even though he’s already down and not fighting back. I’m crying too.

  He’s wheezing. Like something important is broken, or like something is wrong with his lungs, and I’m so mad I can’t see straight. I can’t remember if he has asthma. I can’t remember what I’m mad about either.

  I throw a bottle of pills at him. I scream, “Eat them! Eat them all!” And when he doesn’t listen, I pick up the bottle, rip it open, and start shoving the pills down his throat. His teeth scratch my knuckles, but I don’t stop until the bottle is empty.

  Then everything gets quiet. It looks like he’s falling asleep. He stops crying. I stop crying. He sinks to the floor and closes his eyes.

  “I hope you die alone,” I say. The words echo around us a thousand times, even though I whispered them.

  When I turn away from him, his heartbeat echoes too. It’s suddenly the only thing I can hear. It is so loud. The heartbeat is slowing down, so I start to run through the locker room toward the door. But before I get there, I hear his heart stop.

  I push my way out of the gym, and the sun is so bright, it blinds me.

  I jerk awake.

  When I look around I realize I’m in English class, and everyone is laughing because I completely spazzed out and knocked my backpack (which I was using as a pillow) off my desk and onto the floor. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed that I’m the one who killed Bram. I’m sure it won’t be the last.

  “Logan, do you need a minute?” Mr. Hershey says.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks, Mr. H.”

  I stand up and try to ignore the whispers of “freak” that the jocks sitting in the back row toss in my direction. I never understood why Bram was friends wit
h them, and they didn’t say jack to me while we were together. I wonder if he kept them in check or told them not to pick on me. He’d seen me angry, so maybe he was more concerned for their safety than he was for mine.

  I step into the hallway and speed walk toward the boys’ bathroom while reaching into my pocket for my phone. But before I’ve unlocked it, before I’ve even had a second to catch my breath from that dream, I bump right into the last person on earth I want to see: Yara.

  Her short black hair is wavy and wet. She’s tan and tall, with tender-looking eyes. I mumble a quick “sorry,” and she flashes a tight-lipped smile.

  She opens her mouth, like she has something to say to me, but then closes it again almost right away. I wonder for a minute if Bram ever talked about me with her. I wonder what she thinks of the asshole who told Bram he hoped he’d die barely six months before he did.

  I nod at her, feeling my insides ignite, and I’m burning up as I think about the stupid poem she posted in the comments of his video; as I think about Bram kissing her instead of me. I keep walking because even these hallways remind me that he’s gone, and I’d love to have five minutes when he’s not the only thing on my mind. I shove my phone back into my pocket, and I’m about to push open the door of the bathroom when I hear Yara’s voice ring out like a bell.

  “Hey, wait up,” she says. “Logan?”

  I turn around, my body stiff, my eyelids heavy with the burden of much-needed sleep and a little bit of hate. I look at her long legs, poking out like matchsticks from her short skirt. I stare at her stupid pink Uggs.

  “What?” I say, trying not to sound like I’m talking to the bitch who stole my boyfriend, even though I am.

  She walks down the hall toward me, and the way the sun is shining through the window behind her almost gives the girl a goddamn halo.

  When she reaches me, she says, “I’ve been meaning to see how you’re doing. You know, since…it happened.”

  I bite my lip and look behind her, directly into the light of the sun, because today is not the day. I let it burn my eyes for a second so that when I look back at her, she’s covered in enough black spots that I can barely make her out.

  “Right.” I nod again and rock back on my heels, trying to keep the attitude out of my posture. Trying not to think about my recurring nightmare, Gertrude, or Bram. “I’m good.”

  She looks behind her, down the hall, like she’s hoping no one sees her talking to me. She crosses her arms, and I swear to God when the girl looks back up at me, her dark eyes are shiny, like she’s working up a cry.

  “Good,” she says, looking right at me now. “That’s good. I’m glad. I, uh, I know he was important to you too.”

  “You could say that,” I mutter.

  I hook my thumbs into my pockets and wait. I can tell she has more she wants to say, and I don’t know if it’s the way her face is getting a little pink or what, but all of a sudden I want to hear whatever Yara Cruz wants to tell me.

  “So, I’m not sure if you know this, but Ms. Lassiter’s birthday is coming up.”

  “Okaaaay,” I say, because this is random as hell.

  Bram always made a huge deal for his mom’s birthday. He’d take her out to a big fancy dinner or buy her jewelry he couldn’t afford or bake her a fancy dessert. Once, when we were dating, he had me come over really early in the morning to shovel out a messy “HAPPY BDAY MOM” in the snow outside their building so that when she woke up and looked out the window, it would be the first thing she saw.

  “It’s next week,” Yara continues, “and me and a few of the girls…we were going to make cupcakes and go hang out with her for a while after school.”

  She looks really uncomfortable, and I’m kind of enjoying it, so I don’t say anything, even though it’s clear where this is going.

  “I know she likes you, so I wanted to, you know, tell you that we were going, in case you wanted to come.”

  “Hm,” I say.

  She ducks her head a little and reaches down to yank at the hem of her skirt. It’s short and so tight it doesn’t move much, but I can tell that the pulling is a habit. When she presses her shiny lips together and meets my eyes again, her eyelashes are wet, and I feel a little shitty about the way I’m handling this whole encounter.

  Then she says, “Well, can I give you my number?” I hesitate until she smiles. “Just in case you change your mind.” She looks earnest and innocent as all hell. I hand over my phone, and she types her number in without a second thought.

  “Just think about it,” she says. She gives me a tiny wave and turns to head back down the hall. I watch her walk away, trying to decide if the whiskey I stole from Aden, which is sitting in the bottom of my backpack, would feed or snuff out the burning I feel in my chest.

  Just as she disappears around the corner, I push my way into the bathroom and reach for the whiskey. But before I left Gertrude’s office after my last session, she gave me homework.

  “Let’s start with this: only drink once a week,” she said, and then handed me a card with her cell phone number on it, like she was my AA sponsor or something.

  “Text me if something triggers you to drink.”

  I can’t explain it, besides saying that talking to her makes my insides feel less like sharp, hot things that no one should touch. But my phone is still in my hand, so I send Gertrude a text before I can overthink why I want to do it. Maybe I’m just that lonely. That damn pathetic. The message just says, It’s Logan. I want to drink.

  She texts back almost immediately.

  You don’t have to tell me why. But think about why. That why is a trigger. Make note of it. Acknowledge it but don’t dwell on it. Find something positive to focus on.

  I push my way into a stall with the bottle in my hand, and I do the opposite of what she suggests. I dwell on the fucking trigger: Yara Cruz. I kind of hate her. But that’s when I realize that I’d just blown off Bram’s girlfriend, the person who was probably closer to him than anyone else. Yara spent hours with him every day. If anyone knows what he was like near the end, it would be her. I don’t open the bottle.

  Logan? Gertrude texts.

  I had a bad dream, I tell her, which is partially true. I found something else to focus on.

  Did you drink? she asks.

  Nope, I send.

  Great.

  I put the whiskey back into my backpack, at the very bottom. I go to the vending machine and get a Cherry Coke instead.

  When I get back to class, I’m still thinking about Yara, her invitation to Ms. Lassiter’s, and the things she might know. I message her.

  Hey, it’s Logan. Sorry I was such a dick in the hall just now.

  You’re right—everything’s been shit since the day I found out.

  If your offer still stands, I do want to come.

  But if not, I get it. I can be an ass sometimes.

  Anyway, sorry.

  She writes back before the end of class.

  It’s okay. I get it. I hope you’ll still come.

  My heart pounds like a goddamn jackhammer as I read her words. Yara has to know what was up with Bram.

  * * *

  —

  Rohan’s show is tonight. So I go to Aden’s after school and tell my parents I have to do research for a project at the “university library.” It’s the only reason they’re allowing me to leave the house.

  But when I knock on Aden’s dorm room door, he’s not home. His roommate, Connor, swings the door wide and grins.

  “Hey. Aden has a study group he forgot about. He’ll be back later, though.”

  “Mind if I hang out?” I ask.

  “Come on in,” he says.

  I kick off my shoes and press my back against the wall beside Aden’s bed. I close my eyes because Aden’s room has become a safe haven—it’s the only place where I fee
l any kind of distance from all of the Bram stuff.

  “Wanna smoke?” Connor asks me a few seconds later.

  When I open my eyes, he’s standing on his bed wrapping the smoke detector with a red-and-white plastic bag and a rubber band. I grin.

  He points to the joint he’s already rolled, which is lying neatly beside a bright pink lighter on his pillow.

  “Yep,” I say, hoping it will spark my creativity, or at least get me out of my own head.

  I tell him I’ll be right back. I step out of the room to use the bathroom down the hall. After I wash my hands, I dial my mom’s cell and press the phone hard against my ear as it rings, and harder still after I say hello and she starts grilling me for details. I walk down the hall with her voice in my ear.

  “I’ll be back late, but I won’t miss curfew….Yes, I promise….No. I’m meeting the other kids in my group right now….Aden’s letting me use his ID if I need to check out a few books….Yeah, I know I can’t hang out with him.”

  When she seems satisfied, I hang up and push open Aden’s door at the same time.

  * * *

  —

  “See,” I say to Connor, “when you want to make shit and you can’t, you start to accept that you’ll just fade away. And since I want to make music, but I can’t write a single lyric, I need to disappear.”

  This statement made perfect sense in my head, but less sense when I said it out loud. But Connor gets it. He nods, exhales a smoke doughnut, and says, “Damn, brah. That’s deep.”

  I’m taking my fourth or fifth hit off the joint when Aden walks in. I start coughing as soon as the door opens. He looks from me to Connor and back again.

  “Hey,” he says slowly.

  “Hey,” I say. “Wanna jam?”

  I hand the roach to Connor, who must think what I just said is hilarious. He’s cracking up for some reason, and I’m trying hard not to laugh too.

  Aden’s almost never angry, but I can tell that he’s right on the edge.