All That I Can Fix

by Crystal Chan

  “Have you . . . ?” She fidgeted as she searched for things to say. “Um . . . heard that the tiger killed three cats last night?” she asked me. “Not big cats. Little cats. Pets.”

  “Really?” I asked, even though I had already heard this.

  “They’re saying that the tiger shouldn’t be killing these cats with everything it’s already killed and eaten. They’re saying that the tiger isn’t killing for food anymore—it’s killing just to kill.” She paused. “You better be careful.”

  “You too.”

  George watched the kids in the hallway for a while, and when she finally looked at me, her eyes were sparkling. “Ronney, I just got accepted into an elite architecture competition for high school students. We’ll compete at Stanford University, on-site, and if we’re in the top of our group, we’re guaranteed massive scholarships, maybe even a full ride. Imagine that—guaranteed!”

  “That’s nice,” I said flatly. I felt like an ass, but I just couldn’t pull off trying to be happy for her. She was standing right in front of me, but I wasn’t seeing her; I was seeing her finger looped so casually around Jello’s, and I wondered again how often she and Jello had been texting about the safari before she showed up at my door. Lying through her teeth.

  George’s excitement deflated at my response, but she kept going. “Dad and I will fly out there only for two days—there and back—because I don’t want to miss school.” She bit her bottom lip.

  “Of course not. Good luck,” I said, and I started walking toward class.

  “Ronney,” she said, and she reached out and touched my arm.

  I stopped. “Yeah?” I tried to say it nicely, but it still had an edge.

  “Ronney, I—” She looked up at the ceiling suddenly, then glanced back at me, her eyes all wet. “I . . . Ronney . . . I miss you.” Her voice was thick.

  I wouldn’t have noticed if an ice cream truck bulldozed me over just then. “What?” I repeated, even though I’d heard her perfectly fine.

  “I miss you,” she said more strongly. “Jello’s been talking about you helping him with these photos, and the more he talks about you, the more . . .” George looked away.

  Students were passing us by, parting around us like water around rocks in a river. I stuck my hand in my Thursday-jeans pocket and jingled my coins, including my Thursday coin.

  The stupid-ass thing was, I didn’t know what to say. Doesn’t that suck? When a really great, awesome, smart, hot girl comes up to you and says she misses you, and you lose all ability to spit out a couple of words in response—I repeat: Doesn’t that suck? Because you can’t say just any words when those amazing-girl-words have been spoken. No. You need words. You need words that will be as cool and awesome sounding as the words she just said, and the truth is, your ass can’t think of any. Hell, I was so uncomfortable right then I would have even grunted if I could have gotten away with it, but I had to say something. Anything. Well, not anything, but something good. Something great. Something amazing. So, I said, “I know.”

  George frowned. “You know?”

  At that point I should have turned to grunting and shut the hell up, because the truth was that I didn’t know what I had just told her I knew, that I was only saying something because something obviously needed to be said and I couldn’t grunt like how I wanted, but maybe grunting really was the way out of this mess, because I continued opening my big-ass mouth and said, “Yeah. I know you’ve missed me.”

  The look of shock and disgust on her face was not a pretty one.

  “You what?” George asked, though I’m sure she’d heard me perfectly fine.

  I really wanted to teleport out of that place, right at that moment. And I suppose, if I were some sort of linguistic genius, I would have taken her question as a last-ditch escape hatch and said something like But not anything like how I’ve missed you or some shit that would have saved my ass. Unfortunately, I’d skipped too many English classes to learn how to smooth over fuckups like that, and so, in the vacuum that was my brain, the only answer that sprang to mind for her What? was to, quite literally, repeat what I’d just said.

  “I know you’ve missed me,” I said.

  George turned her face away from me, her cheeks flushed and her mouth slightly open, and she exhaled for a good number of breaths. I could almost hear her counting in her head, trying to calm down. It was all that I could do to hope to God that she understood that I wasn’t trying to be a dick; I was just being stupid and didn’t know how to get myself out of the hole that I had just dug and fallen into.

  “Ronney,” she said slowly, “I don’t think you’re trying to be a dick, but you can be really stupid sometimes, you know?”

  “You have no idea,” I said, digging my hands into my pockets.

  “Maybe I do,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  I resorted to grunting at that point.

  After a moment George shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and I could tell she was struggling to find words for whatever she was going to tell me next. My heart thumped wildly.

  “Do you remember that day of the windstorm, when the animals got loose?” she asked me. Some of her honor-student friends passed us by in the hallway and called out to her, but she didn’t notice, she was so focused on me.

  I nodded. “I was at your house,” I said. “You were crying about that test. Pretty hard.”

  George bit her lip. “I wasn’t crying about a test, Ronney,” she said.

  My eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

  “I was crying about you.” She paused. “About us. About . . . how trapped I felt.”

  I remembered what Jello had said: George would start crying, kept saying that we had to tell you, and soon. Maybe Jello wasn’t a lying asshole, I thought.

  George wrapped a tendril of hair around her finger, then unwrapped it. “I knew how devastated you would be if you ever found out. When you found out. I mean, I know . . .”

  “You felt trapped?” I prompted, not wanting her to finish the sentence she had just been trying to finish: I know how you feel about me.

  George met my gaze. “I felt like I was trapped between how much I care about you and how I feel about Jello,” she said. “Someone was going to lose—you or him—and I was going to lose too, either way. Maybe we all were.”

  I had no idea what to say.

  “So that day of the windstorm, I was so upset about all of this, and I didn’t want to keep lying to you, but I didn’t know what to do, and I felt like I was going to explode. Jello and I had talked a lot about what we should say to you, and when. But I just . . . I don’t want to lose you. And I was afraid that once you found out . . .”

  I remembered that day like it was yesterday. I could practically feel George in my arms again, the solidness of her back and her arms and her heart beating in her chest. She kept telling me about those four questions on her AP Chemistry test, kept moaning about how she was afraid to get that A-. I had held her for a long time that day, maybe twenty minutes, maybe thirty, until she calmed down, and I kept telling her over and over that it’s okay not to be perfect; it’s okay to make a mistake. I’m here for you, I kept saying. I could smell the shampoo on her hair, and her hair was so soft. . . .

  “So there was no test?” I asked slowly.

  The warning bell sounded for class. We had a couple minutes left.

  George shook her head. “I had to give you a reason,” she said. “At that point, I was losing sleep with keeping it a secret from you. So was Jello.”

  “So you lied to me,” I said, my voice strengthening. “In many ways.”

  George bowed her head.

  I swallowed hard. “But why Jello?”

  The question hung there between us for what seemed like two weeks. Just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “At first, when we were lab partners in AP Chemistry, we worked so well together. Like we could read each other’s minds. Then I found out he understood me in a lot of other ways.”


  “Why not me?” I had to ask, and my voice cracked.

  The saddest expression fell across her face. “I can’t help it. I just don’t see you like that, Ronney.”

  “Not even once?” I asked, even though I knew I was begging.

  George went quiet for a long time. “So it’s not true anymore then, is it?” she asked slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not going to be here for me?” Her eyes teared up.

  It was my turn to look away. What could I say? How could I say that it was perfectly fine for my two best friends to deceive me? Of all the people in the world, they knew how thick my armor was, but the one chink it had, the one fucking chink, there they were, knifing me exactly in that tiny space, right where they could make a fatal blow.

  When I looked back at George, she was still watching me, waiting for my answer. Her eyes pleaded with mine.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  George winced, and she turned her head to look down the hallway, where her next class was. We were nearly alone at that point, and the bell was going to ring. “Go to class—you’re going to be late,” I said.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know; I need to think about stuff,” I said. My brain felt like scrambled eggs at that point, and I just needed to get outside, get some fresh air.

  George swiped her cheeks, gave me a sad smile, and said, “I get it. Take your time, Ronney.”

  Then she walked away.

  • • •

  It was as if Dad had cameras around the house, because he knew exactly when I got home that day. “Ronney?” Dad called from his bedroom.

  I sighed inside. After talking with George, Dad was the last person I wanted to talk to. Or semi-talk to. “Yeah?”

  Silence.

  I unclenched my teeth and went to the refrigerator. Astonishingly, Dad came out of his room in jeans and a T-shirt. I mean, he wasn’t decked out for the Taj Mahal or anything, but he was wearing actual clothing. Like, clothing. And he had combed his hair. I stared at him.

  “You want to go bowling?” Dad asked.

  This was the first time he’d asked me to do something in a long-ass time, since way before his suicide attempt. He’d stopped doing things like bowling and fishing years ago. I didn’t even know his mouth remembered how to say the word “bowling.”

  “Nice shirt,” I said. “Good color.”

  “You want to go bowling?” Dad asked again.

  Something inside me froze. Truly froze. I didn’t know how to handle this, just like I didn’t know how to handle George saying nice shit to me. I don’t know, maybe I’m not wired for nice shit anymore; maybe I had gotten sick of having nice shit get my hopes up—whether it was building chocolate chip cookie houses or working on the car—and then something happens that brings it all down. Maybe that’s what it was; I’m really not sure. All I know is that somewhere a numbness took over, like there was a rock in my gut. I said to Dad, “No. Bowling’s lame.”

  Dad’s face fell.

  He retreated to the living room, didn’t even turn on the TV, and I felt like a bucket of piss right then. I mean, listening to Dad was one thing, but hanging with him was another; Dad was asking me if I wanted to spend some quality time together, and I just shoved it in his face. But the worst thing, I know, would be to say yes. Because then you’re taking those chains off the house you just locked up nice and tight, and hell, if you have a good time bowling, maybe that front door even opens a little. Before you know it, your dad comes into that house and starts sledgehammering all your shit—your shit on the walls, your furniture shit, all the shit you know and love—and you’re one sorry ass, because your dad is in your now-unlocked house, ripping everything to hell. Just like you knew he would.

  The house was silent. It was the kind of silence where things were breaking, and it was because of you that it was so broken. Truth be told, I did want to hurt Dad—so he’d finally know how it felt to be me, to be trampled on so long and so hard that you think there’s no rebounding, ever. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I knew that I was now part of the problem. I was turning into Dad. And I would rot in hell before I turned into him.

  I paused in the kitchen as I was making my sandwich. “Dad?” I asked. I knew he could hear me in the living room.

  Silence.

  “Dad?” Pause. “Do you want a sandwich? I can make you one,” I said, even though I didn’t really want to. But I would.

  From the kitchen, I heard him get up off the couch. When I peeked into the living room, I saw him in front of the window, looking out.

  “Dad?”

  Silence.

  I went back into the kitchen, leaned on the edge of the kitchen counter with both palms, took a deep breath, and exhaled. When you’re a dick, sometimes life lets you do things over again. But sometimes it doesn’t.

  19

  WHILE DAD WAS STILL IN the living room, Sam dropped by. Sam didn’t need to say anything; he had a huge bruise on his face. I sighed inside: This was one long Thursday.

  “So, what is it this time?” I asked, handing him my sandwich. I was hoping to God he wouldn’t say it was his dad.

  “Nothing,” Sam said.

  “Right,” I said, tossing him a granola bar.

  “Really,” Sam said, catching the granola bar with his free hand.

  Even with the windows closed, you could hear gunshots in the distance. These days you never knew if people were shooting at a wandering python, the air, or each other.

  “So you punch yourself in the face often, then?” I asked. We went to the dining room.

  Sam smiled faintly. “I got in a fight at school today.”

  I sighed a little in relief. “Nice,” I said.

  Sam was shaking his head. “With this kid named Caleb. He’s an ass.”

  I snickered. Sam sounded like me just then.

  Dad was seated on the living room couch and he turned his head toward us. He stared at Sam, then at me.

  “What happened?” I asked, ignoring Dad’s look.

  “Caleb was making fun of Brian, and I didn’t like that, so I told him to stop, and when he didn’t, I hit him.”

  “Why didn’t you let this Brian take care of himself?” I asked, rummaging in the pantry for something better. I found a bag of cookies, grabbed a handful, and passed it to Sam.

  Sam didn’t take any. “Brian can’t take care of himself.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Sam gave me a look. “He’s dead.”

  My thoughts had a total train wreck. “What?” I asked.

  “Brian was the kid who died from the cheetah,” Sam said. His eyes strayed to the window, and he watched a neighbor walking her dog. “He was my friend.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “And Caleb was being an ass, making some joke that Brian couldn’t handle a little cat—that pissed me off.”

  Again, Dad stared. A part of me was seriously annoyed that he was eavesdropping on our conversation, but hey, Sam was turning into a younger version of me. How cool is that?

  “I told him to stop, and he kept laughing, so I hit him.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Sam nodded. “I got him hard on the third and fourth punch. Anyway, we started fighting on the playground and the teachers came over and Caleb was crying like a baby, said I started everything. I was going to get a suspension until I said that he had been making fun of Brian.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Yeah. When I said that, the teachers made Caleb and me talk about it until we could both say ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said.

  “Yup. Bullshit.” Sam paused, looked at the bag of cookies, and took a handful. “Then they called home, talked with Mom,” he said.

  I tensed up. “Oh?”

  “She said she was going to talk with Dad about it.”

  My stomach lurched.

  “He gets home around seven o
’clock.” Sam paused again. “I didn’t want to stay home. So I told Mom I’m hanging out with you.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  Sam grabbed some more cookies. “My dad’s an asshole.”

  “Dads can be,” I said loudly.

  “Nick’s an asshole too,” Sam said.

  I paused. “I don’t know about that one,” I said.

  Sam stood up. “How can you say that?” he said, his voice rising. “He’s an asshole, I swear to God.” Sam’s hands clenched into fists.

  I raised my hand. “Hey, calm down. I mean, you two were pretty close. He might not be a total asshole. Just a partway asshole.”

  “He’s not coming home,” Sam said. “It’s been six months already. That’s total asshole to me.”

  I winced and led Sam outside, away from Dad’s prying ears. Sam was young to lose hope in his brother. He was what, ten years old going on eighty? I mean, it’s not like Sam had a whole lot going for him in the first place. And that was with Nick. We threw around a football for a while as I wished beyond wishing that I could give him something to hope for. A small something.

  “Hey,” I said. “Want us to kick this football over the house?”

  Sam’s eyes lit up and he nodded. But dammit, the moment I launched that football over our roof, that heaviness settled back into his eyes. There wasn’t another football, and I wasn’t in the mood to go looking around in the grass. For the record, there was a python slinking around. And a tiger.

  Then I got an idea. “Sam, we got a couple hours before your dad gets home, right?”

  Sam nodded.

  “You want to go bowling?”

  Sam cocked his head and looked at me kind of funny. “Bowling’s lame,” he said.

  I grinned. “So you know how to bowl, then?”

  “Not really . . .” Then he grinned back. “Let’s go.”

  The guy behind the counter at the bowling alley was a douchebag and made me prepay for our two games, probably because I’m young and he was thinking we were going to bowl and ditch. Total jackwad. I do have to say I’m glad I didn’t know anyone there, because I truly suck at bowling. Sam too; he slipped and fell on the bowling lane. We threw gutter after gutter and gave each other shit about who was worse. Every once in a while my thoughts would turn to Dad and how maybe this was how he wanted to spend an afternoon with me. But I didn’t know what to do with that thought. What do you do when somebody is asking you to give them a second chance? And how much will you risk for your hope that maybe this time it’ll be different? Honestly, there was such a huge chasm between Dad and me, I had no idea where to begin if I even did want to cross it.