“You had it in your pocket for how long?” “You went to class with it?” “The principal told you to take it to the library?”
Steven’s house had stables out back, and a three-car garage. I hadn’t realized Steven’s family was that rich. I wondered why he went to E. O. James instead of the private school, Forest Oaks, where the kids wear blue blazers with gold buttons up the front and play field hockey instead of normal sports like basketball.
Steven was in his bedroom, which I located only with detailed directions from Darla. When I went in, he was lying on his bed. He wasn’t listening to music or anything, just lying there with a scowl on his face, still in his suit, hell, still in his shiny shoes. His right hand was bandaged.
“I’m sorry,” I burst out. “I should have taken your finger to the nurse’s office.”
“Fuck that finger,” said Steven. “I never want to see it again.”
I sat on the edge of his bed. It had a nice bedspread with matching pillows. It looked like someone other than Steven cleaned his room. There was an acceptance letter from NYU on his desk. I realized that even though he was lying down, Steven’s body was rigid, the same as if he were standing. I could feel the tension in his muscles through the mattress. A cat padded into the room, looked around disdainfully, and padded out again.
“She won’t even look at me,” said Steven.
“I know,” I said quietly. “She won’t look at me either.”
Quiet, quiet. Two rigid people on a bed. I reached over and touched the place where Steven’s finger used to be.
119
“HE’S BETTER OFF WITHOUT HER,” WIN said, shoving an armful of books into her locker. “Steven needs to kiss a few boys before he decides to nest for life with a girl like Noe. Or any girl, really. Or any boy.”
“I know,” I said. “Once he gets away from his parents, he’s going to explode with pent-up brilliance. I wish I was going to be there to see it. I don’t think he’s even going to realize how badly he was hurting until he goes to New York and experiences something different.”
“I think a lot of people are going to realize that once they leave here,” Win said.
120
LATER THAT DAY I OVERHEARD NOE conferring with Ms. Bomtrauer by the water fountains. It turned out she was going to assistant coach the E. O. James gym team next year while she was going to Gailer.
Noe stopped carrying around Foucault’s Pendulum. Now the book under her arm was a catalog of gymnastics equipment. In English she leafed through it with a highlighter, swiping in yellow the item numbers of mats and trampolines and bar equipment. Funding had come through for new leotards: at lunch, the gym birds huddled around a glossy spread of styles to choose from. Did they want a sequined starburst across the breasts, or a sporty flash up each side of the rib cage? I strained my ears to hear Noe’s voice in spite of myself, listening to the authoritative way she wielded her new vocabulary of V-necks and bias cuts and sparkle counts.
As I listened to her holding forth on pricing and sizing, a spooky thing danced on the crown of my skull. I thought of her trading air kisses with Darla at the Java Bean and putting girls through their paces at the crumbling YMCA. Buying hair gel at the Walmart, watching circus videos in her bedroom, arranging the dried flowers on her dresser.
Her voice trailed after me all the way out of the cafeteria, like a song you can’t get out of your head, a scent you’re surprised to find still lingering on your clothes.
You’d be amazed who leaves and who doesn’t, at the end of the day.
121
STEVEN WASN’T IN SCHOOL THE NEXT day, or the next. His spot next to mine in the art morgue was empty. The school had run out of art supplies, so we were down to the cheapest possible art form: that old standby, the collage.
I worked on my collage in silence, cutting pictures out of magazines and dutifully gluing them to the page. My collage looked like everyone else’s. Maybe the assignment would have worked better if we weren’t all cutting things out from the same stack of magazines. Or maybe that was the point: we were all working from the same material, even if we didn’t acknowledge it, even if we could trick ourselves into thinking we were so different from one another by holding the scissors differently or getting creative with the layout of the words and images on the page.
Win and I sat together at lunch. Dominic and Kris sat with us too. Sometimes Margot and Eliza joined us and sometimes they didn’t. Steven had succeeded in that regard: suddenly, we were our own little friend group. It was actually really nice. If I hadn’t been so sad about Steven, it would have been even nicer. I still felt something inside me shrink when I walked past Noe or one of the girls from the gym team, but now at least I had people to be with, and I wasn’t completely alone.
“Have you heard anything from Steven?” Win said.
That surprised me. I always assumed everyone was closer with everyone else than I was, but in this case Win thought I was the closer friend, and as I started to talk about Steven I realized it was true.
I am close with Steven, I thought to myself. It was a strange thought. It was strange to think of myself as being close with someone who wasn’t Noe. I didn’t know it was possible to add people to your repertoire of closeness. I don’t know why I thought that; I just did.
“Yeah,” I said, and I told Win some of what I knew.
It felt strange to be the person who knew things, instead of the person who had to find them out by asking other people. It meant that someone trusted me. Did that mean that Noe had never trusted me?
I slipped the thought into my pocket with all the others that had been collecting there that year.
122
I WENT TO SEE STEVEN AGAIN later that week. He was still lying on his bed. Still wearing his suit. Still wearing his polished shoes. I wondered if he got dressed like that every morning, or if he had never changed.
“I still have your finger,” I said. “It’s in my freezer. If you don’t ask for it soon, I’m going to get it taxidermied.”
When Steven didn’t make any sign of answering in the near future, I took out my music player and slipped an earbud into his ear. I lay down beside him on the bed and slipped the other one into my own.
We listened to The Velvet Underground, then a few chapters of Kingdom of Stones. When I got up to leave, Steven spoke suddenly.
“They all wanted me to cut off a piece of myself.”
I paused in his doorway. “Who?”
“Noe. My parents. The school. And I thought, I’d rather cut off my finger than my soul.” He looked at me with grim amusement. “I guess that’s pretty emo.”
I walked back to his bed and sat down. For some reason, my heart had begun to hammer. Normally, I would take that as a sign that I should make a hasty exit or steer the conversation toward a neutral topic, but then a funny thing happened in my throat. An unblocking.
“Steven?” I said. “If I tell you something really personal, will you tell me something really personal?”
“Annabeth Schultz wants to tell me something personal?” Steven said. “Even I’m not messed up enough to skip an opportunity like that.”
123
I HAD THOUGHT THAT THE FIRST time I told anyone about Scott, I would break down. And maybe I would have four years ago. But it was like I’d grown stronger without noticing it, the way a seed doesn’t look like much until you turn around and see that it’s grown into a tree whose fruit you can actually eat.
“You’re the only person I’ve told,” I said to Steven.
He made a small bow. “I’m honored,” he said.
There was a beautiful quietness to his bedroom, a sleepiness interrupted only by the occasional noise from downstairs. I thought about how grateful I was for that day in art class when Steven had said, In that case, we must introduce ourselves. How awful it would have been to miss out on all this—to miss out on knowing him. It was no small thing to turn to another human and say, I want to know you, with the implied opposite, I wan
t you to know me.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “What happened the night you tried to kill yourself? With Dominic?”
There was a long silence. Downstairs, I could hear Darla jingling car keys and opening the garage door. When the car had pulled out and the garage door had rumbled closed again, Steven said, “I know what you’re really asking.”
“You don’t have to tell me. It just seems relevant.”
A bird called outside Steven’s window. He curled his remaining fingers, suddenly agitated.
“The answer is ‘I don’t know.’ It’s too loud inside my head to know. When I think about it, all I hear is alarm bells. Nothing happened with Dominic, but he asked very sweetly if I was maybe-possibly-theoretically open to the idea of something happening, and the alarm bells started ringing so loudly it short-circuited my brain. I still don’t know if the alarm bells mean I wanted something to happen, or if it was just knowing that I would be completely fucked, in terms of my parents, if I even entertained the possibility. And then I fell in love with Noe and it seemed like everything was going to be okay.”
“That’s how I felt about Noe, too,” I said. “Like she saved me from myself.”
“Hear my soul speak,” quoted Steven. “Of the very instant that I saw you, did / my heart fly at your service.”
“I’m glad you’re alive,” I said, and hugged him.
“I’m glad you’re alive, too.”
124
DAFFODILS WERE UNFOLDING THEIR YELLOW trumpets in the flower beds in front of my house. At school, we had a motivational speaker come in to talk about the K.E.Y.S. to success. He was thick-necked and greasy and sweated a lot. I sat near the back and read the poem that Loren sent me.
I read while the speaker jabbered and ranted, and while he had the whole auditorium shout the four keys like a cheer, and while the Senior Leaders presented him with a gift bag and shook his hand.
Afterward there was a draw to win a copy of his new book, The K.E.Y.S. for Students. I had the winning ticket. I folded it up into an accordion and dropped it on the floor on my way out of the auditorium.
in castles of wind, went the poem. in halls of rain.
125
THAT NIGHT I WROTE AN EMAIL to Loren. I didn’t know Wilda McClure wrote poetry.
He wrote back, I can send you the book.
I wrote back, How was the hike to Garramond Lake?
By the end of the week, we were emailing two or three times a day.
126
I WENT TO STEVEN’S HOUSE MOST days after school. He gave me his key so I wouldn’t have to talk to Darla when I came in. She had figured out that I was the girl Noe had told her about, the one who had refused to die.
“When are you coming back?” I said. “I miss you in Art. My collage sucks. Win and Dominic miss you, too. Margot Dilforth sends her love.”
“I’m not going back,” Steven said.
“What do you mean?” I said. “You can’t drop out of school. What about graduation?”
“I’m going to move in with my uncle,” he said. “I can finish my classes online.”
“But why?” I sputtered. The thought of finishing the year without Steven was preposterous. School would be so empty without him. I couldn’t imagine graduation without Steven there to make a Royal Society of Pee Sisters salute. “Everyone loves you,” I said. “We can figure things out so that you don’t ever have to cross paths with Noe and Alex.”
“Do you know why I’m lying here?” said Steven.
“Why?”
“It is taking every ounce of effort I have not to kill myself.”
“Steven.”
“It’s okay. I’m not going to do it. I just need to focus.”
“Focus on what?”
“Not doing it. And I think that will be a lot easier once I’m living in a place where being myself isn’t going to make anyone hate me.”
“How will you do it?” I said. “I mean, how is your mom letting you?”
“I’m eighteen,” said Steven. “That means nobody has to let you anymore.”
“When are you going?”
“Tomorrow. My uncle was all set to come up and get me tonight, but I wanted to say good-bye to you.”
“Today’s your last day here?”
He nodded. “Hopefully forever.”
“In that case,” I said. “Let’s go. There’s something we need to do.”
127
WE DROVE TO MY HOUSE TO get the finger out of my freezer. At my house, I put on Nan’s old wedding dress, an armful of beaded necklaces from the Halloween box, and the straw hat Mom wore to mow the lawn. We made a shrine out of tinfoil and birthday candles and laid the finger inside it. It was wrinkly at the knuckle and flat and dull at the nail: a stubby gray saint on its way to a resurrection.
As we drove away from my house, Steven lit the birthday candles. They cast a warm glow on the finger. Presently the tinfoil was spotted with dots of pink and blue wax.
We went to the Botanical Gardens first to get some flowers for the shrine. It had rained in the morning and now warm air heaved up from the ground in damp waves. Children in frilly socks were chasing geese across the lawn while their parents strolled along the stone pathways. I led Steven through the labyrinth and past the sundial to the rare plants section to pick some blood lilies and African moonflowers for his finger, but Steven thought they were too pretty to kill so we ended up scooping out handfuls of soil and fertilizer instead, as if Steven’s finger were a bulb that could grow a whole new Steven underground.
At the SkyTram I bought him a hot dog. We rode over the river in the shuddering red car. A pair of tourists from Milwaukee asked what happened to Steven’s finger. We told them he lost it in the war.
“You look too young to have been in a war,” the tourists said, shaking their heads like the world had truly hit the pits. The man of the couple gave Steven a hug and thanked him for his service, and we stood by the gift shop for a long time while they told us about life in Milwaukee.
After the SkyTram we followed the river upstream, parking the car when we got close to the waterfall and going the last half mile on foot. This part of town was always noisy with tour buses and school groups. People were always looking for the bathroom. Still, if you could imagine it without the knickknack shops and overpriced restaurants, it was an awesome sight.
The waterfall was churning out rainbows. Tourists in gauzy yellow rain ponchos floated along in the mist.
We stood by the railing and said a prayer and threw the finger over. It tumbled down, down, down in its tinfoil coffin like a tiny daredevil in a canoe.
On the way up the walkway, a pair of Australian tourists asked to take our picture. We posed with our arms around each other’s shoulders, the waterfall behind us. I think someone said “Cheese” but I couldn’t hear it for the roar.
128
A FEW DAYS AFTER STEVEN WENT to New York, I got my first letter from him. It was in a plain white envelope that someone had stepped on; there was a dusty footprint on top of the address.
Dear A, the letter said.
How goes the Society of Pee Sisters? Have you gained girth? I miss your furrowed brow. Send me some artwork.
Steven McNeil
I wrote back:
Dear Steven,
Please find enclosed a Pee Sisters ID card, valid for entry into any opposite-sex bathroom in the Western world. While my brow remains furrowed, the nutritionist assures me I am now eating almost as much as three beavers, six raccoons, or one medium-size deer, which is apparently an improvement. I miss you.
A. Schultz
129
WIN AND I STARTED WRITING OUR one-act play together. We mostly worked at her house. Win had a nice room. We’d get lost in our ideas for hours, thinking up all the details of the set and costumes, writing and rewriting the script. Somehow, bits of other conversations always snuck in.
Win had brown hair that curled on its own. She had a button collection. She was obses
sed with anime. She had an older sister who lived in Chicago and was in a band, and a half brother and half sister who lived with their mom in Virginia. She had once spent the night in a cave during a rainstorm. She had a boyfriend, Felix, who was a professional juggler. He was homeschooled, so he could do whatever he wanted, and he traveled around with this juggling troupe and did shows in schools. He had invented a juggling pattern and named it after her: it was called Win’s Wiggle and it involved six balls. She showed me a video. It looked hard. The balls went so high, and the flow of them really did seem to wiggle in the air.
One day I was at her house and I noticed a pair of scissors on her desk.
“Hey, Win,” I said. “Can you give me a haircut?”
I sat on the floor and she sat above me on her bed. Her hands moved around my head. “How short do you want it?” said Win.
“Short.”
“Like bowl-cut short?”
“Like spring chicken short.”
“Oh man,” giggled Win. She started snipping, schick, schick, schick. She snipped forever. Shards of hair fell on my shoulders and lap.
When Win was done cutting my hair, we took a picture of the pile of hair and texted it to Steven. He texted back immediately.
is that what i think it is?
I texted back.
your finger needed company.
I walked home from Win’s house feeling lighter. My neck and ears got cold, but it was a good cold, a clean cold.
“You cut your hair!” said Mom. “Wow!”
I smiled back at her, a real smile. I floated wordlessly up the stairs to my room.
130
“NICE HAIRCUT,” SAID BOB.
“Thanks,” I said. “My friend cut it.”
A Sense of the Infinite Page 19