Okay

by Danielle Pearl

  I still wake up screaming or crying nightly, never managing more than a few hours of sleep. I'm constantly exhausted. I'm still having trouble focusing in school, except of course for calculus, which is the only subject that is ever granted my full attention.

  But having Sam so distant was fucking painful. And the new path my dreams have taken since Miami makes them even more unbearable than before. And now… it's better to be exhausted than to try and go back to sleep. So yeah, I'm freaking miserable.

  But I feel like if I at least have him as a friend—a real friend—then maybe I can learn to live with it.

  In some ways, having the old Sam back, even through something as simple as friendly touches, has helped me regain some of the headway I lost in Miami.

  I took Sam's advice and created a new Facebook page. It's pretty bare-boned. It doesn't even use my real name, and the photo I chose was a group picture from our first night out in Miami, so no one who didn't know me would be able to tell which of the six girls in the photo is me. But I didn't delete my social media accounts for fear of strangers. No, I'd been hiding from those who knew me. But I'm hoping that setting my profile to private will keep it hidden from anyone from my former life who might be searching for a way to contact me.

  I joined the incoming freshman groups, not that I’ve made any effort in actually socializing, but at least I don't have to find a roommate.

  I head straight home after school, do my homework and spend some time looking through the NYU course catalog. I don't realize I've dozed off until I startle myself awake. God, I'm tired.

  I drive to Dr. Schall's office half in a daze, blasting the cold air and slapping my own cheeks to try and retain some semblance of wakefulness.

  It's a fairly uneventful session, as was this past Saturday's. After the debacle with my mom I think Dr. Schall is hesitant to push me. But I do suspect he's noticed the small change the return of friendly physical contact with Sam has brought with it. It's in my demeanor, my mood. I'm far from confident, but I'm not huddled in a nervous ball practically trembling with anxiety either, so there's that.

  Dr. Schall is pleased with me today. My report of attending Andrew's party and Sam's family brunch wins me points for effort, and I soak in the approval. Daddy issues, indeed.

  We talk a bit about Sam's cousin's stupid comment, and I regret even mentioning it, or my reaction, when Dr. Schall repeats his lecture about my "understandable responses" and goes into his speech about PTSD, and how my father and Robin essentially brainwashed me into accepting blame for something I was innocent in. That I could have walked around stark naked and it still wouldn't have given Robin the right to presume that I'd wanted anything, or that he had the right to take it.

  And I understand what he's saying—I get the legal argument of consent. But that doesn't mean that I hadn't been sending the wrong signals, and that if I'd just handled things differently, it would have led to a different outcome. Perhaps to one in which Cam was still alive.

  Dr. Schall changes the subject to a less loaded topic when he notices I'm more or less tuning him out and we end the hour with me promising again to try and remember anything different about my dreams, and anything out of the ordinary that could have precipitated them.

  But my dreams haven't changed. So there's no point.

  I smell the Chinese takeout as soon as I walk in my front door and I salivate at it. I haven't eaten a thing since lunch, and I was too tired then to have much of an appetite. I'm not much more awake now, but I'm hungry enough that it doesn't much matter.

  I take pause when I hear my mother's voice, obviously her end of a phone call.

  Immediately I know it's her. Michelle. Cam's mom.

  My mom doesn't see me yet, or she'd be making some excuse to get off the line and pretend it was no one important on the other end.

  But it is someone important. Michelle is family, and I realize that I miss her terribly. It's a sentiment that, admittedly, has been overshadowed by the many other overwhelming emotions I've been processing over the past year. Or not processing, as it is. And it's unfathomable why it's taken until this moment to realize it.

  Because Michelle Foster wasn't just Cam's mom, she was like a second mother to me, and I realize that avoiding every reminder of my past has cut out someone who just didn't deserve it. In fact, she deserved a hell of a lot better after losing her only son.

  God, I just cut her out of my life like the rest of the people from back home—people who hurt me or let me down. But she didn't do any of those things. She was already dealing with the worst pain of her life—and that after she'd already lost her husband some years before.

  A fresh wave of guilt washes through me.

  In my cloud of depression and anxiety, it never occurred to me that someone might need me. That the world was still full of other people, also dealing with life crushing loss, and who I could have helped in some way. And in my emergence from my fog, I was so focused on just making it through school, and then so caught up in Sam, that I told myself that my mom's keeping in touch with Michelle was enough. But I realize now that that was a selfish lie.

  Still, the thought of getting on the phone, of hearing her voice, utterly terrifies me. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and up until very recently, any real reminder at all of my past life could have been a precarious trigger to a panic attack. And, even now, I can't be sure how I'll react to hearing Michelle's voice.

  But, I decide, with no small amount of uncertainty, I'm about to find out.

  My mother's back is to me so she doesn't see me approach. She startles, and I can see the cogs in her head turning—she's about to make up some reason to get off the phone. But I stop her.

  "Can I say hi?" I ask, my voice timid and tremulous in a way that would have been unrecognizable a year ago. Now it's one I'm fairly familiar with.

  My mother's hesitance tells me she herself isn't so sure about this, and I wonder how confident she was about bringing up Cam a week ago. I consider that perhaps she was nervous about it, and maybe even regretted it. After all, she hasn't brought him up since.

  My mom recovers quickly, though. After all, she has the poker face of a practiced litigator. "Sure," she replies, and then says into the receiver "Rory wants to say hello."

  Also practiced? Her smile, and she keeps it carefully played on her face while she listens to whatever Michelle's presumably surprised response is.

  My mother hands me the receiver and makes to head into the kitchen to give me a false sense of privacy. She can, of course, hear every word I say.

  I rally my courage. I tell myself that I really am the strong girl Sam used to believe in. That I am safe and in control. That my fears, rational and imagined, can't touch me now—not here.

  "H-hi," I stammer, then hold my breath.

  I hear a rush of breath before Michelle replies. "Hi, Rory, honey."

  I inhale deeply, trying to settle my nerves. I've known this woman since before conscious memory. "How are you doing?" I ask. I hold my breath again. I don't mean to test her, but that's exactly what my question is. I don't know if she'll bullshit me with platitudes or tell me the truth. Or something in between.

  Michelle sighs. "It's been hard, honey, you know."

  Strangely enough, a whisper of relief flows through my veins at her honesty. Because yes, I do know. "I do," I tell her.

  "It's so good to hear from you though, Rory girl. I won't pretend I don't ask your mom about you all the time," she admits.

  Old memories surface. Ones never forgotten, but never at the forefront of my mind either. Rory girl was Cam's nickname for me, and I'll associate it mainly with him for the rest of my life. But it didn't originate with him.

  I may have been a tomboy, but with Cam and me both being only children, I was the closest thing to a daughter Michelle Foster had. She was the one who started calling me Rory girl when I was three. She was the one who braided my overlong waves into pig tails so they wouldn't catch on one of our fishing hooks, who ta
ught me how to pull my ponytail through the back of my baseball cap.

  "I'm sorry I haven't called." My voice cracks with guilt, and I squeeze my eyes shut to try and get ahold of my emotions.

  "Shh, honey," Michelle coos. "You just take care of yourself, okay? That's what he would want."

  My breath catches at the mention of Cam, the emptiness in my stomach rolling and swirling until it encircles my heart, amplifying the perpetual ache there. I know that Cam would want me to take care of myself. There's a lot of things Cam would want, like being here, for one. But I also know he would have wanted me to check in on his mother, to make sure she was doing okay, and I hadn't done that. I can't help but feel as if I've let him down in some profound way.

  I hear a faint gasp on the other end of the line, as if Michelle has just realized what she'd said. As if she hadn't meant to bring him up. But why shouldn't she? Am I really so fragile that she's meant to pretend he never existed? That there isn't a giant Cam-shaped hole in each of our lives, one that can never be filled. How is that honoring him?

  "I miss him so much," I whisper shakily. My eyes fill with tears and my breath comes too fast. But this isn't my anxiety. I'm not panicking—I'm just grieving.

  "Me too, honey," Michelle replies. "He loved you so much."

  She has no idea exactly how much Cam loved me. She can't possibly know that he'd been harboring romantic feelings for me all that time, that he'd confessed he was in love with me the night before he died.

  "I love him, too," I reply, my voice hoarse and weak. I don't use the past tense. Cam might be gone, but my love for my childhood best friend is still very present. I expect it always will be.

  Michelle sighs. "I know that, Rory girl. And so did he," she assures me.

  I know that, too. I'd told him I loved him plenty over the years, if not that I was in love with him. My feelings for Cam were very real, but also very complicated, and I'll never know how I really felt about him romantically, what those feelings would have evolved into. Not that it matters now.

  "I know," I murmur.

  "Look, no rush, but when you're ready, I gave your mom some things I thought you might want. I know you're still dealing with a lot, so take your time," she says in a rush.

  She gave my mom some things? Like, there are things of Cam's here? In this house?

  I want to ask a million questions, but all I can say is "okay".

  We end the call, each promising to speak again soon, though we both know the onus will be on me to make good on that promise.

  I take a deep, settling breath, and turn to find my mother right behind me, watching me warily. I blink back lingering tears as she wraps me in her embrace. We hold each other for long minutes, just remembering, grieving.

  I'm conflicted when I step back. I know she wants to ask me about our conversation, short as it was, though she must have heard enough to have gotten the gist. I'm sure we'd both intended on making some small talk and hanging up—not to talk about how much we love and miss Cam, though I'm glad she didn't walk on eggshells because of my issues.

  "You okay, honey?" my mom asks. I don't answer, there's no point.

  "You have something of Cam's?" My voice comes out accusatory, and maybe unconsciously I'd meant for it to. How could she never have mentioned this?

  She nods slowly, still watching me carefully.

  "And you were planning on telling me this when, exactly?"

  "When you decided it was time you were able to talk about him," she retorts.

  I deflate, my shoulders sagging with the loss of my confidence, and my mother sighs.

  "Of course I wanted to tell you, Rory," she says, her arm sliding around my shoulders. "But I wasn't about to risk triggering a panic attack, and then after Miami… it didn't exactly seem like a good time."

  "Yeah," I breathe. Fair enough.

  My mother takes pause, as if considering her options. "There's a box in the closet in the guest bedroom," she says. "It's on the top shelf. When you're ready, it's there. I haven't gone through it. Michelle thought you were the one who should have it, not me."

  "Okay."

  I take my dinner upstairs and spend some time reading. I go through my evening routine, and get ready for bed. Part of me wants to race to the closet in the guest bedroom, to dive into whatever are the last bits of Cam I didn't even know I had left until a couple hours ago. But I have to be cautious.

  I'm not me anymore. I have to consider the consequences, and I'm not sure what I can and can't handle anymore. I half think I should ask my mother to go through it before me after all. Maybe even ask Dr. Schall to look at the contents and give his approval first.

  It's ridiculous of course. Only I will know if and when I can handle going through Cam's things, and a month ago I might have felt close, but now… I just don't know.

  I'm so exhausted I find my eyes closing before ten, and I fall asleep with my reading lamp on.

  ****

  I wake up screaming, still half trapped in that horrible dream. Robin had come after me. Sam was there. He wouldn't believe me that there was danger. Robin attacked me, and then went after Sam, driving head-on into his Escalade.

  I gasp for air, still stuck living the emotions of suffering events that haven't actually occurred.

  And yet they have. Perhaps not exactly as my dream portrayed, but close enough, with a slightly different cast.

  Cam.

  My mind races, the guestroom closet beckoning me. Holy shit, I have a piece of Cam left. Just sitting there, waiting. I find myself suddenly unable to follow my own reasoning from earlier, and every second I don't open that box, it's like I'm just willingly giving him up.

  I throw off my comforter and scurry across the hall. My mother's room is at the end of the hall, and though she used to sleep like the dead, she's learned to sleep lighter. She's always half listening for one of my nightmares, and though I always try to be quiet once I awaken, she still gets woken up a few times a week.

  The shelf is higher than I can reach with the box pushed all the way back like it is. I have to drag an ottoman over to get a good handle on it.

  It isn't big, or especially heavy—maybe just big enough for a microwave or small appliance—and I set it on the full size guest bed that's never been used. I can't even imagine who it would be for.

  I stare at the lid a long time. I'm not sure if I'm hesitating out of uncertainty, or if I'm trying to make the moment last, to savor getting some small piece of Cam back.

  My name is written on the top, but it isn't taped shut. The tabs are folded in like a four sided accordion so the box stays closed, though, and I sincerely believe it hasn't been opened since Michelle packed it.

  I brush my thumb under the seam between two tabs, and pull out the first one. The rest follow quickly, and my eyes land on the item neatly folded on top. Cam's varsity tee shirt. Linton Tornadoes number twenty two. I run my fingers over the fabric, and pull the shirt out of the box, lifting the material to my nose.

  I breathe deeply, and I don't know if the faint scent of Cam is really there or just imagined, but I smell it all the same.

  I sigh. It's not likely the scent is actually him since I was the last person to wear it. The day he died. He slipped it on me after cleaning the wound from Robin's house key the night before, and I was still wearing it at the hospital the next morning.

  I let the material absorb my tears. I let them flow freely. I miss my best friend. I loved him. Love him. And it's not fair that he's not here—that because of my decisions with Robin, Cam had to die.

  "I miss you," I breathe into the fabric. I hug the material to my chest, and let the sleeve dangle over my shoulder as I reach for the next item in the box.

  It's a small photo album from about three years ago. Our parents took countless photos of us when we were kids, but as we got older, most of our photo sharing was done online. But when we were in ninth grade, we took a photography elective and at the end we made this album.

  I recall the photo
s with utter clarity before I even open it. Photographs of the sky, of the school grounds. But mostly we took pictures of each other, and ourselves—making ridiculous faces, or with wide smiles, or rolling our eyes at one another. It's a bittersweet feeling, these memories. Because although it hurts that Cam's not here to look at it with me, I love remembering that time.

  We had so much fun in that class. Often we were directed to pair off, which was obviously always with each other, and go photograph certain assignments. I'd always loved our time just the two of us.

  It'd been like that when we were kids, but during middle school we became more social. Well Cam did, and so I followed. There were always times when we'd hang out with Chip, Nick, and Perry, but by then the boys and girls had been hanging out together on Friday nights. And then that became progressively more frequent. I still saw Cam plenty, but there were definitely a lot more people around a lot of the time. So that photography class was something of a reprieve for me—a set time where I was certain to get my best friend all to myself.

  I smile at the memories. That class came and went with our freshman year, but Cam always made sure to carve out time for the two of us, and he never let me feel left out, or as if his popularity was more important than our friendship. The opposite, in fact. Cam always put me first, with everything, and I wallow in regret that I allowed my hopes for my relationship with Robin to ever come between us.

  I remember the morning after I'd overheard Robin tell his friends that he was hooking up behind my back. After Cam retrieved me from my hiding place in the woods, after he took me home and cared for me. I picture his face after I told him I wanted to hear Robin out. The hurt and betrayal in his honey-brown eyes. But also the love and support—the loyalty.

  Cam always had my back, even if he didn't agree with my choices. I picture him standing on his front porch as I climbed into the passenger seat of Robin's car. Him calling out for me to call him if I needed him—that he'd come get me. He'd always come get me, I knew. I never doubted that for a moment. Until he was gone.

  I lay down in the guest bed hugging Cam's varsity shirt desperately, letting myself feel the loss. I think about how lucky I am to have had him in my life at all. That despite the unbearable loss, that I wouldn't give up a moment of knowing him, of loving him.