“No, Danny, just shut up. You have this perfect life with perfect parents who love you. You don’t live with one parent and a sick sister. You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid to lose her. You don’t know what it’s like…” And then he stopped and turned to me. “Oh Danny, I’m so sorry. That’s not what I meant to say.”
And he remembered. He knew that I did know what it was like to be afraid and to lose someone. But I had never acted like this, pissed off and angry. I was jealous of his anger and his ability to feel something real.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I know you’re just scared.”
When we pulled up in front of the hospital, I asked Rusty if he wanted me to come inside with him but he just shook his head and got out of the car. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say he loved me. He didn’t give me a kiss.
He just walked inside and didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of crashing thunder and the trees scraping against my window. Boo was whining in his crate, no doubt desperate to release his bladder and being tormented by the sounds of the storm. I tried to push him outside but he was terrified, his poor little body pelted by the angry drops of water. He decided he would rather pee on the kitchen floor. I had no choice but to clean it up before I carried him back to our safe space, my bedroom.
It was only 5:47 and I had some time before I had to get ready for school. I laid my head back down on my pillow, Sam’s pillow, and tried to find his scent but instead only found the smell of my own shampoo. I looked out the window and noticed that the sky was black, not just dark, but black, like the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz.
I thought back to Rusty’s prediction of a halo moon and I smiled. Maybe he had been right. I checked my phone, but I hadn’t received any texts or calls. I quickly texted him asking if Mya was OK and if he wanted a ride to school before putting the phone back on my nightstand. Within seconds, I had fallen back asleep.
When I woke up, Mom was knocking on the door. “Hey, you’re going to be late,” she said.
I got up hurriedly and threw on my clothes from the day before. I grabbed my backpack and ran out to my car in the drizzling rain. I hadn’t heard from Rusty so I drove to his house to see if he needed a ride, but when I got there, no lights were on and his mom’s van wasn’t in the driveway. Assuming that they were either still at the hospital or that his mom had driven him to school, I left quickly to make sure I wouldn’t be any later than I already was.
Pat was still suspended, which meant I didn’t have to contend with any of his harassment, but during the classes we shared, his friends made comments under their breath at me.
At lunch, Cher and I shared Cheetos and orange juice. “I’m not sure what it is about bright colors, but I’m all of a sudden really hungry for brightly colored food,” she said.
“Really?” I asked, checking out her newest costume which consisted of all different kinds of mismatched neon. I pulled out my phone, but I still hadn’t received any texts or calls from Rusty.
“Yeah, I think it might be part of my pregnancy cravings,” she said. “So tell me about your anniversary weekend.”
I relived the entire weekend, telling her about every last detail.
“A pirate huh? That’s sexy.” We both laughed as we walked to our next classes.
By the time school ended, the rain had stopped, but it was still black outside. I dropped Cher off at her house and then I drove by Rusty’s house again. I hadn’t received any texts or calls from him all day, but I thought maybe he had just lost his phone again. I hadn’t seen him in school, but when I got to his house, his mom’s van was there, so I thought he was probably home. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I waited a few minutes and knocked again, but still didn’t get an answer.
I walked back to my car and got inside, just sitting there for a few minutes. I looked up at Rusty’s window and could have sworn I saw someone staring out for a second. I waited to see if I noticed it again, but decided instead that no one was home and that I was just imagining things. I knew there was no way that Rusty would ignore me and that there had to be some excuse like the time before.
I texted Rusty, telling him I hoped Mya was OK and to call me as soon as he got the chance. I drove home and found Mom and Alex in the garage setting up a makeshift stage.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
“We’re setting up our rehearsal space,” Mom said. “We’re getting the old band back together.”
“Is Dad going to be in it too?”
Mom turned and looked at me. “I don’t think so, honey.”
“Where’s Rusty?” Alex asked.
“Good question.” I explained that I had taken him to the hospital the night before and that I hadn’t heard from him since.
“I hope she’s OK,” Mom said. “Maybe I should call his mom and ask her if she needs help with anything.”
Nodding, I walked back inside and up to my room. Boo was scratching at the door of his crate and he ran out as soon as I opened the door. Rusty still hadn’t texted or called. I didn’t want to bother him in case something was seriously wrong with his sister so I tried to distract myself, but the memory of taking Rusty to the hospital the night before and the fear that something might have happened to Mya brought back similar memories of Sam and the day he had died.
I pulled out the journal that Rusty had given me for our anniversary. I let my fingers dance back and forth over the indented letters on the cover, feeling their golden grooves. I opened it to the first page and looked at Rusty’s handwriting. I smiled. I liked looking at his handwriting which was only meant for me.
I got a pen and started to write in the journal. Ferris wheels. Hidden menu Frappuccinos. Hard kisses. Pirate hats and perfect journals. Plain cheese pizza. Movie quotes. Mixed tape concertos. Sleeping in a wave. Where the Wild Things Are. Greek spaghetti dinners. Secret picnics. Nightswimming. Salsa Dancing. Arepas. Sneaking In and Sneaking Out. Late night whispers. Fighting my enemy. Halo moons.
We had only been together one week and we had already shared so many moments. Maybe Rusty was right. Maybe time wasn’t important. If someone asked me what the time was that I missed Sam the most, I couldn’t say Thanksgiving, or winter or Tuesday at 6:15. I couldn’t say the exact minute I fell in love with Rusty or the exact second that I knew I had wanted him in my life forever. And if time wasn’t important, then maybe life truly was about the details. Love was in the moments, not the minutes.
I thought about this until the journal and pen dropped from my hands and I fell asleep.
I woke up as someone, or something, was wrestling the prized journal from my hands. Confused, I opened my eyes to find Boo playing tug of war with the corner. The little monster had already chewed an entire corner away and the pages were gooey with his saliva.
“Boo! No!” I yelled, pulling the journal from his tightly clenched mouth. We struggled for a second, but he finally let go and ran into his crate, aware of my rage. He had done a pretty good job and one whole corner was ruined. I tried to dry out the pages, but as I did, a few of them fell out of the book. Even though they were blank, I felt like I was losing something valuable. Looking down at Boo, hiding sheepishly in his crate, I cussed viciously at him, which was pointless because he was just doing what dogs do.
I threw the journal on my desk and picked up my phone. No texts and no calls. It was 10:45 pm.
Chapter Thirty
The next morning when I woke up, I still hadn’t heard from Rusty. I drove by his house, but his mom’s van was gone and it didn’t look like anyone was home. I went to school and realized we had been together for over a week and I didn’t know where to find his locker. I found Cher and explained my dilemma.
“I have no idea where his locker is babe,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s going to be OK. That boy is crazy about you.”
“Don’t
worry about it?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure everything will be OK.”
OK. I was so tired of that word. It didn’t mean anything. OK, okay, fine, blah, blah, blah. Really, it just meant that you had accepted whatever life had handed you and agreed not to fight it, knowing that in the end, everything would work out the way it was supposed to.
But everything wasn’t ok and I was sure of it. I hadn’t heard from Rusty in almost two days. I knew that even if he had lost his phone, he would have come over to my house to let me know what was going on.
I wondered if maybe his phone was in my car. I walked outside before lunch and searched under the seats and in the trunk, but didn’t find his phone. I thought maybe his phone had died at the hospital or maybe he had left it somewhere. Surely there had to be a reason why he wasn’t calling me.
During the rest of the day at school, I couldn’t stop thinking about Rusty and wondering what was going on. As the hours progressed, I could feel myself feeling light headed and my palms begin to sweat. It had only been one week, but in that week, everything had changed and for the first time, because of Rusty, I was starting to discover myself. I couldn’t lose that feeling.
By the time school ended, it had started to rain again. Outside, black clouds hung over the parking lot and the wind pulled our hair in a hundred different directions, as Cher and I walked to my car. On the way to her house, I drove by Rusty’s. I didn’t pull into the driveway but just idled in the street, unsure of what to do.
“Are you going to get out and see if he’s home?” Cher asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, playing with my lip as I stared up at his bedroom window.
“Fuck this,” she said, getting out of the car and walking up to his front door in the rain. I watched as she knocked on the door, which Carlos opened a few minutes later. He stared around her and waved at me. Then he closed the door and Cher started walking back to the car.
“So what did he say?” I asked when she got in the car.
“Cute kid,” she said.
“What did he say?”
“Do you really want to know?” she asked, turning to me. I nodded, feeling the tears form in my eyes, unsure of what she was about to tell me. She sighed, “He said that Rusty isn’t home from school yet. He said that his mom just left to go pick him up.”
It didn’t really register for a few minutes. I sat there staring at Cher, unsure of what to say. “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, babe?” she asked, putting her hand on my arm.
I shook my head in confusion. If Rusty had been at school, why hadn’t he found me? Why hadn’t I seen him? “I don’t know what it means.”
“Do you want to wait here until he gets home?” Cher asked. I started to cry and shook my head. I put the car in drive and took off.
When we got to Cher’s house, she made me come inside with her. “I don’t think you should be by yourself right now.”
We walked inside and found her mom in the kitchen making tuna casserole. “Mom,” Cher whined, “I hate tuna casserole.”
Ruth smiled, “Well, you’re eating for two now so you better start liking it.”
She was dressed in her scrubs and I assumed she was getting ready to go to her nursing job. Cher grabbed my hand and led me back to her bedroom.
She threw her bag onto the floor and fell onto the bed. “Let’s figure this thing out. When did you first notice that he was acting weird?”
I wasn’t really sure. “That’s just it. He wasn’t. We were having a great weekend and then his mom called him to the hospital and now I haven’t heard from him in two days.”
“Text him,” Cher said.
I pulled out my phone and texted him. “Hey. I’m really worried. I haven’t heard from you. I know you were at school. Please let me know what’s going on. Text me please.”
Neither one of us spoke. We waited for a long time for him to respond, but he never did. I just wanted to be at home, with Boo. “I think I’m going to go home.”
“No you’re not. If I have to eat tuna casserole, then you’re going to eat it too.” She smiled and messed up my hair, “Cheer up, beautiful boy.”
But I wasn’t cheerful and even though I smiled, I couldn’t fake it. Something was terribly wrong and I had no idea what it was.
I ate the tuna casserole with Cher and her mom, listening to their stories about Cher wanting to be a singer when she was younger. But I wasn’t really listening and even though I think they noticed, they didn’t say anything. Finally, when I was done, I said goodbye and headed home in the storm.
When I got home, Mom was playing with Boo in the kitchen. “Did you already eat or should I order something?”
“I ate at Cher’s,” I said. The house was quiet and dark. “Where’s Alex?”
Mom shrugged, “He took the car and said he would be back later.” I noticed that the house was hauntingly silent with just me and Mom at home. I picked up Boo and started heading upstairs when she said, “Rusty stopped by.”
I turned around, excitedly. “What did he say?”
“Not much,” Mom said, as if it was no big deal. “He just said he needed to leave you something in your bedroom.”
I turned and ran up the stairs to my bedroom. When I opened the door, I saw the black pirate hat sitting on my bed on top of my opened journal. I immediately started crying, knowing this was not a good sign.
I walked to my bed, picked up the journal and read the short message he had left on the open page.
I’m sorry.
I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. I couldn’t catch my breath. I sat down on my bed and tried to yell for Mom but no words came out. I reached for the phone and texted Rusty a question symbol, but I knew he wasn’t going to text me back. It was over and I didn’t know why.
I laid back on my bed and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. What hadn’t I done to be perfect? To be loveable? I picked up the journal and searched through it, trying to find other messages, other clues, but there were none.
I tried to convince myself that it was a sick joke that Rusty was playing and that he was going to have some great surprise waiting for me at the end, but I knew it wasn’t true. I picked up my phone and called him. It immediately went to voice mail. I left a message, pleading with him to talk to me. I called back three more times, right in a row, but each one went to voice mail. I threw my phone at the wall and started to scream.
And scream.
And scream.
Mom opened the door and looked at me confused. Between my screams and tears, she immediately figured out what had happened. I didn’t say anything to her, but instead just showed her the journal.
“Why, Mom? Why?”
She patted my hair and pulled me into her. “I don’t know, honey. Have you talked to him?”
I shook my head. “He won’t talk to me. I’ve texted him and called him over and over again. I’ve even tried stopping by his house.” I caught my breath. “Everything was perfect and then he just stopped.”
“Nothing is ever perfect, Danny,” Mom said with a softness in her voice.
“No, Mom, it was perfect. You don’t know.”
She laughed, but more to herself than at the situation. “Yes, Danny. I know very, very well. When you’ve lost something important to you, you live the rest of your life being afraid of losing something again. Don’t you feel that way?”
She was talking about Sam. “No!” I shouted. “And I’m not talking about Sam. Not everything is about Sam, Mom! Fuck, don’t you get it?”
“I’m not talking about Sam,” she said, standing up. “And I understand that you’re angry and sad, but I’m not going to allow you to talk to me that way.” She walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.
I started pacing around the room, feeling my heart race in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, but I couldn’t sit down either. I had to keep moving. I turned on the record player and started playing The Cure�
��s Icing Sugar at top volume, but it reminded me of Rusty, so I grabbed the record and threw it against the wall, where it smashed into pieces.
A moment later, Mom opened the door again. “No more,” she said with a stern look on her face. “I understand you’re pissed off at the world but you are not going to trash your room. If you want to talk, come downstairs and we’ll figure this out.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Get out!” I screamed. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
Mom nodded and closed the door behind her.
Balling my hands into tight fists, I closed my eyes and screamed as loud as I could. The pain inside was overwhelming and I wanted it out of me. I finally sat on the edge of the bed and tried to calm myself down, but my leg kept tapping restlessly and I couldn’t stop looking at my phone, desperately hoping that Rusty would call or text me.
After a few hours, I was so sweaty and worn out that I laid on my bed in silence and looked at the ceiling. I watched the fan spin slowly, counting its repetitions, until I heard Mom ready herself for bed downstairs. I snuck out and got into my car. The storm had broken and I put down the top of my car, blasting the mixed tape Rusty had made for me as I cried in the wind.
When I reached his house, I parked across the street and looked up at his bedroom window. His light was on and I knew he was on the bed, gently falling asleep inside the giant wave. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to kiss him. Inside my head, I was screaming his name. Afraid that sooner or later he might see me, I finally drove away, but not before driving back and forth past his house four more times.
Chapter Thirty-One
I woke up and immediately checked my phone, but I still hadn’t received any texts or calls from Rusty. I slowly got ready for school but could hardly even put on my clothes. I didn’t have any energy. Mom came in to check on me and I noticed that she was being extra nice.
“There are poppyseed muffins in the kitchen,” she said. I just smiled and nodded.
The Before Now and After Then Page 20