The Window

by Amelia Brunskill

  Because obviously, I needed to stop.

  Yet I couldn’t. It was inevitable, like magnets.

  That’s an excuse. That’s the truth.

  I still can’t explain how both of those things can be true at the same time.

  SARAH TEXTED ME LATER THAT morning to let me know that Mona would meet us in the computer lab at lunch. When we arrived, she was already there.

  Waiting for her to finish up something she was doing on the computer, I found myself mesmerized by her hair. I wasn’t a hair person, but I had to admit that Mona’s hair was a work of art. Each curl appeared to have a full and complete life of its own.

  “She won’t let you boing them, if that’s what you’re wondering. I tried once and she wasn’t having it.”

  Sarah was grinning at me from her seat on one of the computer lab tables, her feet pushing a chair onto its back legs until it almost tipped over.

  I flushed. “I wasn’t wondering that. I would never—”

  Mona shook her head. “It’s okay, I know.” She shot Sarah an unimpressed look. “Sarah is just winding you up. She’s a big fan of doing that to people.”

  Sarah tilted her head and looked dismayed. “Oh no—was that a dig at my social skills, perchance? Should I reform my ways so I can be part of your idiotic girl gang?”

  Mona rolled her eyes, then typed a few more words. “Okay, I’m done,” she said. “And it’s a squad, not a gang. And dialing back the sarcasm wouldn’t be a terrible idea, if you’re planning on asking me for a favor.”

  I started to relax. I’d been worried about this meeting, about how awkward it might be between me and Mona. But this Mona was an entirely different creature from the Mona on the roof, or even the Mona with Lauren and Beth. She seemed confident, at ease. Like she was slipping right back into a conversation she’d been having with Sarah forever.

  “Favor?” Sarah asked, eyes wide and innocent. “I don’t know about that. Of course, if you’re bored, then I might have something you could take a look at. Jess might have something too, if you can handle it.”

  “Thanks oh so much. What do you have for me this time?”

  “Well, since you insist—my phone is being kind of weird.”

  “Weird? Did you try turning it off and then on again?”

  “Yeah, like ten times. You’ve drilled that into me. I even do that with my damn toaster now when it starts burning the bread. Off, wait ten seconds, and then on again. I’m a goddamn off-and-then-on-again robot.”

  “Does it help with the toaster?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, there you go. Have you been making all the updates to your phone, like I told you to?”

  “Yes.” Sarah paused. “Like, most of them, anyway.”

  Mona sighed. “So what’s it doing?”

  “It will barely hold a charge. It’s completely drained after two hours. I’ve started carrying my charger around everywhere I go, but competition for the outlets is fierce.”

  Mona made a beckoning gesture. “Give.” Sarah pulled it from her pocket and Mona frowned as she reached over to take it. Then Mona turned to me. “So what did you bring me? I’m hoping something more exciting than this piece of junk.”

  I unzipped my bag and gently pulled out the Ziploc bag containing Anna’s phone and handed it over.

  “Whoa,” she said, eyebrows shooting up. She turned it over with a reverent expression. “Now, that’s what I’d call broken.”

  Sarah smiled. “Glad we could bring you something worth your while.”

  Mona opened the bag, slid out the phone, and examined it more closely.

  “So what did you do to it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, it’s not…it’s not really my phone.”

  Sarah frowned. “Wait, then whose…” She trailed off.

  Mona looked at Sarah and then back at me. “Anna?” she asked gently.

  I nodded.

  Mona started to put Anna’s phone down. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know if this is a good idea. Besides, this is just a hobby for me, and this phone—I don’t know if anyone could do anything with this phone.”

  “Couldn’t you try?”

  “I could, but…” She shook her head. “Look, I know she was your sister—”

  “She wasn’t just my sister; she was my twin.” I closed my eyes tight, embarrassed at how suddenly they’d begun to flood. Don’t cry, I thought. Just take the phone and get out of here. This was a bad idea. The phone is obviously ruined; it was only going to be a dead end anyway.

  “Okay,” Mona said quietly. “I’m sorry. I— Phones are just really personal things. But I get that this is different, especially since—”

  Especially since Anna’s never coming back.

  “—you guys were twins,” she finished awkwardly.

  “Thanks,” I said, pinching my arm hard to keep the tears from spilling out.

  “Do you think there’s any way you might be able to fix it?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mona said. “I’d like to try. I’ve never seen a phone this messed up before, though. Not in person.” She stared at the phone. What she said next was so quiet I barely heard her, so quiet I wasn’t even sure she knew she asking it aloud. “Two stories, right?”

  I nodded. “Two stories.” Two stories and the weight of my twin sister. This is what your phone would look like, Mona, I thought, if you had jumped. And when I looked up at her again, as she moved her fingers softly over the shattered screen, it seemed like she was thinking that same thing.

  The three of us were silent for a minute. Then Mona closed her fingers around the phone and gave me a single decisive nod.

  “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.” She stood up, tucked Anna’s phone back into the bag, and placed it in the front pocket of her backpack. Sarah’s phone she left on the table.

  “Hey, what about mine?” Sarah asked.

  “I changed my mind,” Mona said. “It’s time for you to get a new one.”

  LATER THAT WEEK, I SAT outside Mr. Matthews’s house, looking into his living room. He’d been quieter than usual at track practice, distracted. He’d claimed to have a cold, but when one of the girls told him he should take vitamin C, he’d given her a blank look before smiling weakly and promising to stock up on orange juice.

  After he arrived home, he’d hung up his coat slowly. I waited for him to go to the kitchen as he usually did. Instead, he stood in the middle of the room, staring at the window. I worried that he’d seen me, careful though I was, and then I noticed that his gaze was unfocused. He walked over to the couch, his gait unsteady, and lowered himself onto it. There, he crumpled in on himself and started to cry.

  The only grown man I’d ever seen cry before was Dad, the day Anna died. Dad’s tears had seemed almost painted on his rigid face, like rain on a statue. This was something altogether different. Mr. Matthews gave himself over to it completely, crying the way you cry when no one is watching, when there’s no reason to try to keep it together. Ugly, heartbroken crying. His whole body curled up and he shook.

  It was hard to watch, yet I was mesmerized, unable to look away.

  I didn’t know that he was crying about Anna. He could have been crying for any number of reasons—a sick family member, a bad teaching review, anything. The weird thing was, at that moment, I wanted it to be about Anna. I wanted him to be crying for her. I wanted someone to have been so in love with her that it broke their damn heart she was gone, that pressure built up inside them every day she wasn’t there. I wanted her to have had that. Not some guy who’d already forgotten about her, who never realized how special she was.

  Also, more selfishly, I wanted there to be someone else who knew the specific grief that was no longer having her in their life. Who wasn’t sure how they were supposed to make it th
rough the rest of their days without her. Because the thought of there being someone else like that made me feel, for a brief moment, less alone.

  I thought I’d never be the kind of girl who changed because of a guy. Yet I did. When he said he liked my hair down, I started wearing it down more. When he said the perfume I was wearing was too strong—even though I wasn’t even wearing any—I switched to an unscented deodorant. When he told me not to think too much, to cancel plans, I did that too.

  I made those changes.

  But then, after a month, I decided it had to end. Whatever it was. Whatever he and I were.

  UP TO MY ELBOWS IN warm, soapy water and worn-out from a particularly grueling track practice, I felt relaxed. Very relaxed. So relaxed that I pondered aloud about the theoretical appropriateness of relationships with older men, right as I was handing my mom a sharp knife to rinse off and place on the drying rack.

  The knife slipped in her hand and the tip grazed her palm. “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “I think the knife got you,” I said as I watched a dot of blood blossom on her hand.

  “I’m fine,” she said, not looking at it. “Did you just ask me whether I thought a relationship between a teenager and an adult could work out?”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what I said. And you really should put a Band-Aid on that,” I told her as the dot grew larger. “If you don’t, you’ll get blood on the dishes and I’ll have to redo them.”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “I’d really like you to tell me why you brought that up just now. Why you think that kind of relationship might be a good idea.”

  By now I was pretty clear that she was not a fan of the concept, but her tone made me want to dig in. “There was that female teacher and her student we saw on the news. She went to jail but they stayed together. Even had a kid, I think. Doesn’t that mean something?”

  “No, all it means is that she preyed on that poor kid and he became infatuated with her. That’s not a healthy relationship.”

  She was probably right about that not being the best example. I tried another tack.

  “Okay, fine. But don’t people talk about age being only a number, and don’t people sometimes fall in love with someone you’d never expect? And maybe it isn’t all happily ever after but it’s still real? They still care about each other?”

  She stared at me, her eyes searching my face. “Is there something you want to tell me?” she said slowly.

  “Tell you? No.”

  “Because if there’s a teacher at school, or maybe a friend of the family, who is pressuring you—”

  It clicked. “Oh God, no. No.” For some reason, my mind went not to Mr. Matthews, but to a visual of Mr. Richards using his potbelly to trap me against the circular saw.

  “Are you sure? Because you won’t be in trouble, but if there is, then it’s very important that we talk about—”

  “No.”

  “There isn’t?” A sliver of hope entered her voice.

  “No,” I repeated firmly. “I promise.”

  “Oh, thank God.” She leaned against the sink. “Because age really isn’t just a number, Jess. Remember that, and never trust someone who says otherwise. Okay?”

  I nodded, because I really wanted us to get off the subject already. Bringing it up had been a huge mistake.

  “Okay,” she said. Then she glanced down at her hand. “Oh, I really should put a Band-Aid on that.”

  “I’ll get you one,” I said, happy to have an excuse to get away.

  As I went through the bathroom cupboard, I wondered why I’d said it. And I kept coming back to how I wasn’t so clear anymore about how I felt about the idea of Mr. Matthews and Anna. Initially, I’d thought if they’d been together, that made him a creep, a predator. Yet watching him in his house had made it more difficult for me to think of him that way. I wondered if it was possible there’d been something good between them. In a way, I hoped there had been, because there would be no do-over for her, no second chance to find someone who’d get it right.

  Still, maybe it was delusional to think they could’ve had anything good together, naïve to feel differently toward him because I’d seen him cry and talk to his cat. I wasn’t sure.

  I missed being sure.

  POLICE OFFICERS TALKING ABOUT DARE had been a mainstay of school assemblies since middle school. Once a year, a well-scrubbed officer wearing a starched uniform would come out and give us all a speech about the perils of drugs and drinking—how taking one sip of alcohol before legal drinking age, or one hit/shot/dose of any drug ever, would lead to a rapid decline into addiction, homelessness, and (for girls) pregnancy.

  I wasn’t really in the mood for this annual round of cautionary tales, but it wasn’t like there was anyone to appeal to, so after the announcement was made for everyone to assemble in the gym, I trudged along.

  When I got there, Sarah waved me over, forcing the guy who’d just sat down next to her to move.

  “Hey, did I mention that I passed my driving test?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Several times now.”

  “Wow, you really know how to make a person feel good about their achievements,” she said. Then she frowned. “You doing okay?”

  I followed her gaze and found that I was cradling my left arm.

  “I smacked it on the doorframe coming in,” I told her. “I broke it once, so it’s just a little sensitive.”

  “You broke it fighting crime, I presume?”

  “Rope swing accident. I misjudged when to jump.”

  “I prefer my explanation.” She nodded toward the microphone set up on the floor of the gym. “So, what do you think it will be this time? One of those ‘Hey, I was young once too and thought I had to drink and take drugs to be cool’ guys, or one of the tough-love ‘Let’s look at pictures of baby-faced kids and the flaming car wrecks they died in’ guys?”

  “Hard to say.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I’m hoping for one without all the gruesome photos. Actually, scratch that, what I’m really hoping for is a reenactment of the time when one of the debate kids started cross-examining the guy about how bad was marijuana anyway given how a bunch of states have legalized it already.”

  I smiled. “I remember that. The guy got all red in the face.”

  Sarah dropped her voice. “Look, kid, it’s illegal here, right? I don’t make the laws and I’m not here to get into arguments about it. Just don’t do it.”

  “Critical thinking at its finest.”

  “Yep. They should just focus on meth. I mean, with meth, it’s got to be easier. One look at a photo of a meth addict, with their creepy hollow faces and their messed-up teeth, and I’m pretty much convinced to never touch the stuff.”

  The principal walked up to the podium and smoothed her hair behind her ear, looking calmly out at the crowd of disgruntled and fidgeting students. The drone of conversations dimmed, and then she cleared her throat and the room became silent.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “Let’s give a warm welcome to Officer Myra Heron from the Birdton Police Department.”

  What followed was a mixture of perfunctory applause and ironic slow clapping.

  Officer Heron walked up to the front and exchanged a quick handshake with the principal. I hadn’t recognized the name, but there was something familiar about her broad face, her steady forward gaze.

  When she reached the podium, she spread her hands out, held the corners, and surveyed the room. It was then I placed her. She was the policewoman who’d offered me hot chocolate at the hospital. Details from that day rushed back to me, and I had to lean forward, suddenly dizzy. I pinched my arm hard, willing myself to snap out of it. Not here, I thought. I pinched the same spot harder and made myself look up and focus on Officer Heron.

  “I attended this high school
fifteen years ago,” she was saying. “Sat in this room and listened to how drugs and alcohol ruined young lives. I didn’t think it applied to me, and didn’t really care if it did. So I ignored it. Did all the things I wasn’t supposed to do.”

  She looked out at the room before she continued. “Until one night I got high and decided to go for a drive.”

  Everyone in the room stopped shifting around, stopped whispering, waiting to hear about how she plowed into a pregnant lady, or woke up hours later hanging upside-down from a tree with four broken ribs.

  Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.

  “Which was a terrible idea, of course, especially since I was too bombed out to actually open the garage door first, so I only got three feet before I smashed into it.”

  There was a smatter of laughter in response, as well as a distinct wave of disappointment that the story didn’t have a juicier end.

  “I was grounded for a month,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “And my parents made me pay for a new garage door and for the repairs to the car. And let me tell you, garage doors are a lot more expensive than you’d think. I’m talking years of babysitting money down the drain.”

  She stopped smiling. “That’s the thing—it sucked, and it was embarrassing as hell. But now it’s a funny story because in the end nothing really happened. Because the door was closed, I didn’t end up hurting anyone, didn’t even have the space to get up enough speed to hurt myself beyond some minor whiplash. If it had been open, though, who knows what would’ve happened? What I might have done to a neighbor or a friend, what I might have done to myself? That’s the thing. You never know. In mere seconds, your life can change forever.”

  There were over three hundred students and teachers in the room, including kids whose substance abuse had long passed from open secret to running joke—any number of people at whom that message could have, should have, been directed.