The Art of Escaping

by Erin Callahan

  But I did answer. And I answered a lot of other questions. Over the course of an hour, I came clean about everything I’d hidden from her. When we finally said goodbye, a few tentacles of early morning sunlight were poking through the trees behind the house, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead, I shivered in a deck chair and thought about what my life was going to look like from this pivotal moment on.

  In the grand, relative scheme of things, Mattie and I are going to be okay. We’re going to go to Bristol and get all liberal-artsy, and we’re going to graduate even though Mattie will fail two required science courses, and my twentieth birthday will throw me into a raging quarter-life crisis. Stupid boys are going to break our hearts, and we’re going to break the hearts of stupid boys. And we’re going to stay friends even after rooming together for two years and then realizing we aren’t built to fight with each other over stuff like laundry piling up on the floor and someone’s initial-labeled yogurts mysteriously disappearing from the mini-fridge.

  But in the wee hours of that morning, I couldn’t see that far ahead. All I could think about was Meadow outing me on Monday morning.

  “Hey.” Frankie, all sleepy-tousled-hair and wrinkled clothes, climbed up the steps of the back deck and saved me from hours of wallowing in shoulda-coulda-wouldas and what-ifs.

  “Hey.”

  “I fell asleep in the car.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “I know.”

  “I’m starving but all I could find in Stella’s car was a few granola bars. You want one?”

  “Sure.”

  The granola bars tasted like dry almonds and cardboard and had probably been sitting in Stella’s glovebox for a year, but we enjoyed them anyway as we watched the sun come up and dry the dew on the grass.

  The cab pulled up to my house in Grayton at ten a.m. The court-appointed trustees clearly had neglected to hire someone to mow the lawn for at least a month. Weeds climbed skyward out of the stone walkway and a pile of junk mail lay on the porch. I shuddered to think of the layers of dust that had probably collected inside, all over my antique dining room table and the crystal chandeliers I’d spent a small fortune on.

  The Hummingbird stepped out of the cab and paid the driver before hoisting her suitcase out of the trunk. As the cab pulled away, she stood at the end of the stone walkway and smiled. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen from her in a long while. She didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the tall grass.

  She spoke aloud, though I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself. “Now that I’m home, I’m never, ever leaving again.”

  – Akiko Miyake, Grayton, November 15, 2000

  Mattie, Messages, and Microfiche

  “Of all people, why Meadow?” Stella asked as we drove to school on Monday morning.

  My hyperventilating lungs couldn’t get a grip, and I could feel my heart rattling against my ribcage. The symptoms of my dread only served to remind me I had something to worry about, which made me worry even more, like a sick feedback loop I couldn’t seem to disrupt.

  “I don’t know,” I whined. “You were at St. Joe’s and hers was the first name that came to mind. Did you get in trouble?”

  Stella shook her head. “I told my mom I was sleeping at Will’s house because that’s what I was doing.”

  I wanted to slap the haughty pout right off her face. “Wow. Lucky you. Not all of us have such progressive parents.”

  “Ginge, I know you’re not really upset with me.”

  I rolled down the squeaky window, hoping the fresh air would dry the sheen of sweat on my forehead. “Ugh, you’re right.”

  My limbs stiffened as Stella parked the car. I buried my face my in hands, fighting off heart palpitations. I couldn’t stop my mind from playing out every worst case scenario that might result from Meadow thinking Will had cheated on Betsy with me. People will know who you are. They will be looking at you. And judging you. I pictured myself holed up in a ladies’ room stall, staring at all the nasty graffiti scribbled on the back of the door. I pictured roughly a gazillion snarky comments on LifeScape, all directed at me.

  Stella reached over and unbuckled my seatbelt for me. “I know you’re freaking out, but being late isn’t going to make it better. And Meadow’s more mature than she was in middle school. Maybe she’ll surprise you. If you had a boyfriend and I mistakenly assumed he was cheating on you, I wouldn’t start rumors.”

  “You are not Meadow, Stella. And she promised fallout.”

  She gripped the steering wheel with her bone-white fingers. “That’s all the pep talk I’ve got in me this morning, Ginge. Please get out of the car.”

  I took a deep breath and opened the door. One foot at a time, I hoisted myself out of the safety of Stella’s Volkswagen and shuffled up the steps and through the double doors. Those hallways lined with lockers wrapped around me tighter than a straitjacket, squeezing the sanity out of me, only I couldn’t free myself with calculated shimmies and elbow grease. My back ached and I realized my shoulders had been stuck in tense little knots all morning. I tried to shake them loose as I opened my locker and pulled out my books for Liam’s class.

  “See?” Stella said. “No one’s giving you the stink-eye. Even if Meadow told them, maybe they’re just like, ‘Who cares?’”

  I slung my backpack over my shoulder and took a look around. The hallway full of students chatting, sipping coffee, typing on cell phones, and digging through lockers looked as it always did.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  I closed my locker and turned around to find myself eye-to-eye with one of the basketball players who had a locker a few down from mine.

  “Hey,” he said with a smirk. “So . . . you and Will, huh? I have to admit I did not see that coming. I heard Betsy went pretty batshit. Are you guys gonna, like, have it out over him? You know, feline style?”

  This was it. This was the moment I’d spent all morning dreading. The basketball player chewed on his upper lip, and I could only assume he was fantasizing about a Betsy vs. Mattie catfight that would never, ever happen. I waited for my adrenaline to surge and for my feet to carry me to the restroom on fear-based autopilot. But it didn’t happen. A few butterflies flapped in circles around my stomach, but the paralyzing anguish I’d expected to engulf me never came.

  The guy kept smirking at me, probably waiting for some kind of predictable, histrionic response.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have literally nothing to say to you.”

  He squinted at me and then stalked off, muttering, “Bitches be trippin’.”

  Stella laughed, loud enough for the basketball player to hear. “Where did that come from?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  Meadow gave me, Will, and even Stella the cold shoulder in homeroom, keeping her eyes and hands glued to her phone. No icy glance, no snort of derision, nothing. I couldn’t blame her, really. I’d burn bridges to the ground if I thought someone hurt Stella. Hell, I’d do the same for Will, and probably Frankie, too.

  Will and Stella chatted about Honors English, but Will gave an alarming number of one-word responses, like yeah and nope. And he kept gazing off into space, his face falling into a frown until Stella coaxed a fleeting smile out of him with a witty comment about Camus or Woolf. Saying the right thing in the right moment had never been my strong suit, and my mind drew a blank as I sat there, staring at the back of Meadow’s head.

  A discussion on wartime propaganda in my first period class with Liam succeeded in distracting me temporarily from Will’s visible slide into mope-ville. The smelly kid and I were knee-deep in a heated argument about the significance of Rosie the Riveter when my phone buzzed in my pocket. And then buzzed again. And again.

  As the conversation shifted to duck-and-cover cartoons, I slid my phone out and slipped it beneath a page in my notebook. Will had sent me a sob-fest.r />
  >I’m a genuinely horrible person. First, I screwed over Betsy. Now you’ve been dragged into this whole mess.

  >Stella told me Ryder came up to you and was like, “You and Will, huh?” If I wasn’t such an inexcusable drip, I’d march into the locker room this afternoon and tell them what’s what.

  >But I am a drip.

  Once again, I cursed the fact that I’d missed the era of innocent note passing by only a few decades. There was nothing I wanted to do more than pen a beautifully handwritten letter to Will full of inside jokes and quirky doodles and life-affirming words of encouragement. A lovingly crafted message in a bottle. Instead, I pulled my phone into my lap and settled for empty electrons.

  >Oh my god, stop. Just stop. Yes, you lied. Yes, you made a mistake and Betsy got hurt. Everybody makes mistakes. And now you’ve come clean to her. You could have kept lying to her, but you didn’t.

  >And I don’t care if people think the two of us are hooking up behind her back. You held my hand when I turned into a petrified, irrational psychopants. You protected my secret, I can protect yours.

  I said I didn’t care if people thought the two of us we’re sneaking around because I thought it would make him feel better. But as I pressed send, I realized I kinda-sorta meant it. Maybe it was because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it was because I’d found a better version of high school at Salone Postale. Cianci Regional just didn’t carry the weight it used to.

  ***

  Will perked up by lunch, or at least stopped frowning into space and sending me tortured text messages.

  “Thanks for holding my hand,” he said before shoving a tater tot into his mouth.

  A few fellow students gawked at us as we ate our lunch, though none of them said anything, at least not to our faces. I shuddered to think of the snarky noise that was undoubtedly flying around LifeScape. Empty electrons, I reminded myself. Just ones and zeroes.

  After lunch, I headed to the library for my fifth period study hall, hoping to get started on an outline for my history project. As I rounded a corner by the science wing, I spotted Betsy leaning against her locker. I kept my gaze straight ahead and hoped she’d ignore me like Meadow did.

  “Hey.”

  Oh fuck.

  I thought about nodding and continuing on my merry way, but I couldn’t be that dismissive. “Hey.”

  “I gotta get out of here or I’m gonna lose it. Wanna come with me?” she asked. Her wispy blonde curls had lost some of their springiness, and the circles under her eyes looked darker than my mom’s.

  “Uhh . . .”

  She snagged me by the elbow and dragged me toward a back exit. We cut across the courtyard to the parking lot. Sun glinted off the hood of her car as we piled in. She didn’t bother to start it, so we just sat there, stewing in the heat. I cracked a window and surveyed the collection of beaded necklaces hanging from her rear view mirror. Each time a breeze snuck in through the cracked window, the beads would clack softly against each other. Clack, clack. Clack, clack.

  Betsy cut the silence first. “I’ve never skipped class before.”

  “I did once, in middle school. I was supposed to give a presentation on Inuit tribes and panicked at the last minute. I took my sugar cube igloo and hid in a corner of the library, where the microfiche readers used to be.”

  “Sometimes I really miss microfiche. Using it always made me feel like a dogged reporter or something. Is that weird?”

  “No.”

  Clack, clack. Clack, clack.

  “I’m really sorry about what people are saying,” she said.

  I took a breath. Empty electrons. Ones and zeros. “It’s not your fault Meadow’s the vindictive master of the rumor mill.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, resting them on the dark denim of her jeans. “It wasn’t Meadow. I asked Meadow not to say anything because I didn’t want her to feel like an ass if the truth finally came out.”

  “So . . . it was you? Why?”

  She chewed the pink gloss off her bottom lip. “I can’t keep up the charade, and I knew people were going to ask questions. It was the only way I could think of to protect him.”

  “Oh.” Clack, clack. Clack, clack.

  “We talked for a long time last night. I knew he wasn’t ready to come out. No one should be forced out of the closet. Meadow always told me I coddled him, giving him space when he needed it and never telling him how mad I was if he blew me off. I guess I’m still doing it.” She laughed one of those pinched laughs that sticks in your throat when you’re trying not to cry.

  I recalled sitting in Stella’s bug with Will, thinking the little world I’d eked out for myself was about to fall apart. Cianci Regional might not carry the weight it once did, but if Will had exposed me then, I would have crumbled into jagged little pieces that refused to go back together.

  “You did the right thing, Betsy.”

  “You really think so?” She fiddled with her keys, jingling them in the ignition. “Aren’t you pissed I named you? I could have said it was anyone.”

  “Anyone else you named would have denied it. You know I won’t.”

  She nodded. “I had a feeling.”

  “So . . . on a scale of one to nuclear, how mad are you about the whole thing?”

  She coughed into her fist. “Nuclear would be a hideous understatement. I know this is sick, but I honestly wanted to strangle him through the phone. The last time I wanted to strangle someone through the phone was when my mom called from a motel to tell me she was leaving my dad for another man.”

  I smiled. “It’s not sick, it’s great. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know that nice people like you still get that pissed about stuff.”

  Betsy let out a weak laugh as she wiped her tears in that awkward, open-mouthed way girls do when they’re trying not to smudge their mascara. “Isn’t it insane that he’s going to get less flak for cheating on me than he would for coming out?”

  I sucked my lips into my mouth. “Yup. But I’ve known for a long time that good-looking boys who play sports and get good grades can get away with murder. You know, as long as no one knows they’re gay.”

  “I still wonder if he’d be better off getting it over with.” She sniffled and I wished I had a tissue to hand her. “Hiding a part of himself can’t be easy, you know?”

  Clack, clack. Clack, clack. “The night before our first day of freshman year, I was a wreck,” I confessed. “Couldn’t sleep. Kept getting up to pace around my room. My dad came in and said, ‘Relax, Mattiekins. Just be yourself.’ I love my dad, and he’s a smart guy and always means well. But in that moment I . . . I just wanted to claw his eyes out. One, because he tried to comfort me with a pathetic platitude. And two, because it’s so much more complicated than that.”

  Betsy laughed—a real laugh this time, not a precursor to crying—and tucked a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear. “I think I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why Will could talk to you the way he did. I feel like I could tell you anything right now.”

  I smiled, and watched the breeze blow around a few pieces of litter that had escaped the trash bin.

  “You can’t stay in here forever,” I told her.

  But apparently that wasn’t true. The wonders of the modern world, with email and online banking and groceries delivered to your door, made it possible to imprison yourself in your own home indefinitely.

  There was an insidious side to it, too, like scaling a cliff. The farther up you went, the harder it was to climb back down without falling. Sometimes, I’d watch her stand on the threshold, trying to force her feet forward, stuck in some kind of emotional quicksand.

  — Akiko Miyake, Grayton, April 7, 2004

  Mattie in the City of Weird and Wonderful

  It took roughly three days for the hoopla ov
er me and Will to die down at Cianci Regional. Not that there was a whole lot of hoopla outside the basketball team and Betsy’s little posse of pretty people, but after a big, old-fashioned fist fight broke out at a football game and a bunch of people got suspended, Will and I were old news.

  But that doesn’t mean he was left unscathed. Each time we ran into Ryder, he very helpfully reminded Will that Betsy was a wreck. Then, because Ryder is gross, he would grin at Will and wink at me and go, “But it was worth it, right?”

  Betsy maintained radio silence for almost a full month. Then she texted Will out of the blue the day after Thanksgiving to tell him she had some of his stuff and would toss it if he didn’t want it. I rode over to her house with him, for moral support. They shared a silent hug, and he didn’t even look through the box of stuff until we got back to my house. When he pulled out a copy of an old VHS tape, he burst into tears. The cover had David Bowie with some kind of fashion-mullet that defies explanation. But I didn’t pry. Some things, like rock icons with terrifying hair, are best left between Will and Betsy.

  When Stella came over later that weekend, she found Will lying facedown on my bed, groaning into a pillow.

  “Will, you need to get back into a routine,” she said. “What would you normally do on Sunday?”

  “Go to brunch with Betsy,” he said, though it came out all muffled by the pillow.

  “Then let’s go to brunch,” I said.

  So brunch became our Sunday thing. On the third Sunday, Will smiled at me from across a table that looked out over Wickenden Street.

  “I have something to tell you, and I want to tell you before it turns into a thing.”

  “Please let it not be that you’re actually straight and all of this was a clever ruse to become friends with me.”

  He laughed. “No, though that would’ve been impressive.”

  “Okay then, what?”

  “I’ve been hanging out with a guy. And I don’t mean shooting hoops and giving each other man-hugs. He’s more than a friend. And you know him.”