Swansong

by Rose Christo

  "Everything good with your brother?"

  "He's the best," I say. I mean it.

  "He's not too hard on you, is he?"

  Jude being hard on me is so unfathomable, I start to laugh. I stop myself, worried that Mr. Tenner will interpret it the wrong way.

  "He makes sure I don't, you know," I say, "crack my head open going down the stairs, things like that. He's good. He sets guidelines."

  "And does it bother you when his parole officer drops by?"

  "I--" I pause. I've never met Jude's parole officer.

  That I know of.

  "Are you taking your medicines?" Mr. Tenner asks me.

  What's that got to do with--? "Yes. Is it okay for you to talk to me when my brother isn't here?"

  "Yes." Mr. Tenner jots something down on his notepad. "That should be enough for today. I'll be in touch with your therapist."

  "Alright..."

  Dazed, I watch him leave. I leave my muffin half-eaten on the table.

  Parole officer?

  * * * * *

  It doesn't surprise me that I can't remember Jude's parole officer. Every day I forget something seemingly small, seemingly trivial. My mind is porous; unreliable. I'm my own betrayer.

  I sit at the kitchen table, my cell phone on my lap. My fingers act of their own accord. Judas Rozas, I type into the search bar.

  Only a handful of results return to me. Most of them are outdated articles from when Judas was nineteen. Boy Sentenced to Prison for Manslaughter, the headlines read. Opening them doesn't give me the name of his parole officer--just old photographs of Jude as a teenager. The photographs are heartbreaking. He looks like a different person. He looks like a little boy. His shoulders are frail, his arms thin, his widow's peak half-hidden under curtains of lank hair. Widow's peak. That's something we don't have in common. His eyes are mean gray slits on a freckled face. He stares blankly into the camera as if he's lost his soul. I don't want to believe that's true.

  The compulsion nags at the back of my mind. I bring up the search engine a second time. I open the Tillamook County news. I search for the date of the car accident.

  Ten different articles fill my cell phone screen. Swallowing fear, I click on the third.

  Four Killed in Motor Vehicle Accident, the tagline reads.

  I beg the words to stay with me. It's so difficult to read these days. It's the brain damage, it's got to be.

  A road collision at the intersection of Blue Spring and Broad Ridge claimed four lives this Thursday: Ash Galloway, 27; Jocelyn Jordan, 16; Maria Rozas, 52; Hector Rozas, 55. Wendy Rozas, 16, is in critical condition.

  Investigators believe a corner crop obscured both drivers' vantage points, causing Galloway to crash head-first with the passenger-side of the apposite vehicle. Jordan, who sat in the passenger seat, was killed on impact. Hector and Maria Rozas were ejected through the back window.

  Authorities have not yet released the results of Galloway's toxicology report.

  County officials are calling for a traffic light installed at the junction.

  Thrown out the back window. Oh, God. Mom. Dad. The pain they must have been in while they waited for help to arrive. Oh, God, I can't--I shouldn't have read--

  Back window.

  Mom and Dad were in the back. Joss was in the passenger seat.

  Oh.

  Oh, no.

  My cell phone falls to the floor with a clatter. It skitters somewhere under the kitchen cabinet. My head splits wide open, pain devouring me, devouring my thoughts. It burns me from the inside out. It scorches my tears before they can fall.

  * * * * *

  Wednesday. No school. No leaving my bed.

  It's dark in my bedroom. The paint fumes are faint in the air. I wrap my blanket around me like a cocoon and pretend I can block out the rest of the world. I pretend I exist on a plane where I wasn't behind the steering wheel, where I didn't kill my parents and my best friend.

  My hair sticks to my face in patches of dry tears. It's funny. My hair doesn't even reach my chin. I don't look like me. Maybe I'm not me. Maybe I'm some other person. Maybe some other person is responsible for all this heartache.

  I killed my family and my best friend. I killed an innocent stranger.

  His family. They must be so--they must be devastated. As devastated as I've felt all these months.

  I didn't have the right to feel devastated. I didn't know. All these months, I didn't know.

  Judas must have known.

  Why would he keep this from me? How could he even think to spare my emotions? I killed his parents. I killed my parents.

  I killed...

  The pain in my head is a constant now, blunt, muted, pulsating at the back of my skull, at the tip of my spine, at the hard contours above the tips of my ears. Thud, it echoes in my ears. Occasionally my eyes mist over. Occasionally I forget to blink.

  I should have died. Judas never told me.

  Maybe Judas did tell me. Because how much have I already forgotten? Every day I'm forgetting something. Sometimes it's as small as my pencil. Sometimes it's as big as what month we're in, who our president is.

  November. Gibson.

  Maybe November was last month. Maybe Gibson was last year.

  What year is it?

  I pull the blanket over my head. I burrow underneath it. I want to forget. Not the small things. Not the big things.

  I want to forget everything.

  * * * * *

  A little after three, somebody knocks on the front door. I consider leaving the summons unanswered; except Jude told me the super's sending a technician our way to look at the radiators in the sitting room. With great reluctance, I heave myself out of bed.

  The walk from the bedroom to the threshold feels like it comprises several long, uneventful years. Along the way I start to think that whoever's at the door, maybe he'll have gone home; maybe I want him to.

  I open the door.

  It's Azel. There's a plastic shopping bag around his wrist. His long curls look windswept.

  Azel sees something when he looks at me. I don't know what it is; but I know it's not good. His bag drops to the floor. His eyes dilate. They're a shade of kind green, cosmic green, the kind you want to swear doesn't exist anywhere else in nature.

  "You look sad," Azel says.

  A switch flips. My eyes cloud over in tears. I cover them quickly. Crying is cowardly enough. Crying in front of Azel is a low I'm not willing to descend to.

  He doesn't give me a choice in the matter. He takes my hands in his. He takes them away from my face. I try to duck my head but he stops me. His hand finds its way to my cheek. He brushes the tears away with his fingers, like they're nothing, like they're small and inconsequential and he can banish anything if he tries hard enough. I want to believe that he can.

  "I killed them, Azel," I say. I smile. It comes automatically. There's nothing behind it, a smile of glass and lies.

  "You read the articles." His face doesn't even change.

  "You knew." He knew, and he never let on.

  "I thought you knew." He picks up his shopping bag. He steps inside the apartment. I press the door closed with a click, the lock automatic. "It's not the sort of thing you pry into. If you didn't want to talk about it, we weren't going to talk about it."

  "I killed them." I was behind the wheel. "I killed them." They're gone because of me. "Oh, God, they're gone--"

  Azel puts his arms around me. He draws me against him.

  The warmth is instantaneous. It covers me like a shield. Azel's shirt is soft against my cheek, his shoulder hard. His curls curtain me, tickling my neck. And isn't it funny how much taller boys are? Or how much bigger their arms are? Azel's arms are long, dark. They feel heavy around my waist. They feel safe.

  I hug him, hands furled in his shirt. I try not to cry on him. I tell him I'm sorry. He tells me he doesn't mind.

  "It was an accident, Wendy."

  "I know. But I..."

  "You don't know. If
it had been your father, your mother, your friend--the accident might still have happened. You'll never know."

  "I wish I didn't know. I wish I'd never found out."

  "Don't say that. You're stronger than that."

  He thinks I'm strong. I don't know what I did to earn his confidence.

  Once I've finished crying, I pull away. My cheeks feel burned with tears. My head feels tight. I rub the dampness from my eyes.

  Azel gestures lamely with the shopping bag. "Cohen said you were sick..."

  "I'm okay."

  "I brought luqaimat. Aisha put sprinkles on them."

  I force a smile onto my mouth. "That was so sweet of her."

  "She has her moments."

  Suddenly I realize: I'm still in pajamas. Mortified, I turn halfway away. Azel tangles his hand in his hair.

  "I'll be right back," I murmur.

  "Okay."

  I scamper into my bedroom. I dress hastily in whatever clothes don't smell like mothballs and vomit--surprisingly not a big selection. When I return to Azel he's in the exact spot where I left him, staring at the paint-splattered wall in the sitting room. I grab him by the hand. He stumbles. I pull him into the kitchen.

  "Uh," he says, sitting at the table. "Started your semester project?"

  I give him a muffin. I pour two glasses of milk. I think we need more milk. I find a pen in the drawer by the sink, write a quick reminder on the post-it on the refrigerator. "Sort of," I say.

  "Thank you," he says.

  "What about you? Do you have to put together a dance?"

  "Yes." He stares idly into his glass. I sit at the table with him. "They give us time slots. Five minutes to move the audience. It hardly seems fair."

  "You can do it."

  He tries not to look at me. His face is a ruddy red-brown with embarrassment. I smile. Isn't that weird? My heart hurts, and he can make me smile anyway. I want to rummage his curls with my fingers until his hair stands up like a hapless mess. I want to kiss the flushed splotches on his cheeks.

  Oh.

  I distract myself with the luqaimat. It still tastes good.

  "Cohen told me you were working on a watercolor," Azel says.

  I almost laugh. "You mean you're having civil conversations with him now?"

  "We share a common interest," Azel mutters, flustered.

  Interest. My face heats. I wish it would stop that.

  "I like impressionism," I say. Anything to change the subject. "Do you know The Poppies at Argenteuil?"

  Azel shakes his head, slowly.

  "It's amazing." I think back to paintings hanging in frosty, seaside museums. "It's so bright, but so soft. I like that about impressionism. Up close, it doesn't look like much of anything. Just smudges and blots. It's only when you pull back and look at the whole picture that it makes any sense."

  "Life's sort of the same way," Azel remarks.

  I slouch in my seat. "Do you think there's anything after life?" Mom and Dad--Joss--are they still cognizant? Do they know what I've done? Can they forgive me for it?

  Azel hesitates. "I don't believe in the scented garden and the eternal drinks. But I don't believe death is the end."

  "How?"

  "All the atoms in your body--they're recycled from somebody else. When Albert Einstein released his last breath years ago, it scattered across the planet. It became absorbed by the trees, the plants, the grass that needed it to grow. Those trees, plants, and grass released a sigh of their own--which we're still breathing today. That sigh fills the blood in our veins. It fills the ATP in our mitochondria. It builds up all the cells our bodies need to move, to think, to be. Did you know that every single person on the planet inherited one billion atoms from Shakespeare? Another billion came from Buddha. Another billion came from Gengis Khan. When you die, your atoms will be released and go on to become somebody else. Maybe you were Beethoven in your past life. Maybe you were Monet."

  "I hope I was Monet," I say quietly. "He's my favorite."

  "Don't you think we go on forever?" Azel asks. "That there isn't any beginning to us, nor any end?"

  My mouth is dry. "Kory says the universe is dying. It'll be gone someday."

  Azel's face slackens peaceably. "Surely the universe can't disappear. That's the first thing they teach you in physics. Law of Conservation--matter can't be destroyed."

  "But it can lose its mass. Its shape." I think about the glowing lights, the snowglobe, expanding, fading. "That's what's happening."

  "Then all we have to do is find a way to give it more mass."

  "We're sixteen." I smile.

  "You're sixteen," Azel says. "I'm seventeen."

  The ridiculousness of this conversation--this tangent--it sends me into a fit of hysterics. I can't stop myself. A look of surprise passes across Azel's face. He takes a moment--I guess to gauge my sincerity--and when it's safe, he joins me.

  Our laughter bounces and echoes and dies. And now--it's strange, isn't it--I feel as if I could cry again.

  "They're gone, Azel."

  They're gone and I killed them.

  Azel's chair scrapes back against the floor. He stands. He walks around the tiny table and grips my shoulders.

  "I'm sorry," I say. I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Dad. Jocelyn. I'm so sorry. "I'm sorry I keep--" What's the word? "--unloading on you."

  "Why would you be sorry for that?" Azel asks. His voice is admonitory. His voice is gentle. "Didn't I say we're friends?"

  Still, I don't like it. "How are your sisters? How's your dad?"

  "Dad's in Abu Dhabi," Azel says. His hands knead my shoulders. It feels as if it's second nature, as if he doesn't have to think about it. "Dad's always doing that. Traveling. Convincing people to buy things they don't really need." Is that--bitterness? "Layla's going out with this boy I don't like. She deserves better. We have words. Aisha grows up so fast, sometimes it hurts."

  "Time moves too fast," I agree. I smile a small smile.

  "It's so cruel," Azel says. He sounds like a wounded bird. "I don't understand it. It's just cruel."

  If he's thinking about his mother, I won't ask him. I don't want to hurt him worse.

  Azel's hands loosen around my shoulders. I almost forgot his hands were there. My pulses all come to life at once. I feel so heavy right now; but if you told me my body had left my chair, I might still believe you.

  I feel his fingers on the back of my neck. His fingertips brush through my hair. For once I don't mind that it's so short.

  I don't think I can move.

  "You'll be okay," Azel says quietly. "You can't change the truth; but you can contend with it. Struggling makes you stronger."

  "You think so?" I really can't move.

  "Do you know what jihad means? It means struggling with yourself internally. You're supposed to struggle with yourself. Your truths, your beliefs. God doesn't care that you're not perfect. Nobody walks through life knowing all the answers. It's better if you don't. That's what makes us real."

  Please don't move. Please don't stop touching me. "You believe in God?"

  "I think so," Azel says. "I don't know how else to explain the unexplainable."

  If there's a God, then why did he let me live? Why didn't Mom and Dad and Joss live?

  Azel follows my train of thought. "I said I believe in God," he says. "That doesn't mean I know why it does the things it does. I don't even know if it does much of anything. But you," he says, "you do things. Things logic says nobody can do. If it's not logic, then it has to be something else. It has to."

  "I'm scared," I tell him. It's the first time I've said it out loud. "I'm scared of what that 'something else' is. I'm scared to engage it. I don't think I want to. Not anymore."

  "Not anymore. Then what changed?"

  "It's bigger than me," I say. "I didn't realize that before. Maybe I was too arrogant."

  "You're not arrogant."

  I tilt my head back to get a good look at Azel. It's around the same time that he tilts his head forward.
His curls fall around me like a veil. His eyes look no less tremendous upside-down than they do rightside-up. Blazing and green. Dangerously close to poison. But not quite. Not him. Never.

  "Did you get pretty for me?" Azel asks. "Wendy?"

  My shirt's white. My stockings are red. I like stockings. If it made sense to wear them with pajamas, I would do it.

  I swallow. "I tried."

  His eyes close. I wonder what he's thinking. My heart pounds maddeningly at the thought of it. I've never felt so stupid before. I've never felt so young.

  When his lips meet my forehead, it's soft, sweet. It stops the breath in my throat and the blood in my veins. It makes me want to cry with catharsis. His hair tickles my cheeks. His hands hold my shoulders.

  I am anchored. I am not afraid.

  * * * * *

  Judas comes home that night looking wasted. I know he's not--because he doesn't drink--so I figure he had a rough day at work. He snacks on a muffin while a pilaf cooks in the oven. Dad's recipe. I don't know what I'd do if not for Dad.

  "The technician come today?" Jude asks.

  "Yeah." I'm back in pajamas. I don't need to look pretty for my brother.

  "Good. He fix the thing with the thing?"

  "Jude."

  "What?"

  I lean back against the kitchen counter. I choose my words carefully. I don't want him to think I'm mad.

  "I was driving the car," I say.

  Jude pauses with a mouthful of muffin. I'd probably find it funny on any other day.

  He swallows. "Who told you that?"

  "I read the news articles." I scuff my socks against the ceramic floor.

  "Hell."

  "Can I ask...? Why didn't you tell me? Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

  Jude shrugs. "Didn't want you to find out," he says. "Best case scenario, you'd never ask questions. I'd never answer 'em."

  I nod, but my heart's not in it. I was driving the car. Everything's different now. Yet paradoxically, nothing's changed.

  "Wendy. You ever tell a lie to someone just to make them feel better?"

  "No," I start to say. But when I think about it--sure I have. How many times have I told Joss I liked that skirt on her, that shade of lipstick? You don't want to hurt your best friend's feelings.