If I Fix You

by Abigail Johnson

  I was staring at the thick bluish veins visible in Sean’s arms, unable to contradict him. If Dad had been the one to overhear Daniel... “You don’t understand.” I was still trying to understand.

  “You’re right, I don’t.” Sean pushed up from the ground, using the wall behind him for support. He stopped right in front of me, one blue eye pleading with his words. “So help me.”

  Help him. Help Daniel. Fix them both, and me, and Dad, and Mom. Fix everything. The impossibility of any one of those tasks hit hard as I stared at the boy I used to think I’d love forever.

  I shook my head. “Why did you come over tonight?” My voice was weak under the weight of all my failures. “I didn’t want you here.” And then more quietly, “I don’t want you here.”

  Sean stood in front of me, bleeding. Bleeding for me. Because he thought someone had hurt me. And he couldn’t stand that someone would hurt me.

  The irony robbed me of words.

  I left him there on my porch.

  And as I closed the door, the only person I hated was myself.

  CHAPTER 31

  On Monday, my world didn’t end. I kind of thought it would.

  Mom didn’t show up again.

  Neither did Daniel. Neither did Sean.

  Mrs. Vanderhoff called to say that Claire wasn’t allowed to resume cross-country training until she could move without crying. Apparently her sunburn was much worse than mine. I didn’t even get to talk to her.

  Dad was still gone so the shop was closed.

  It was just me.

  I cried for a while. Then I sat for a while longer after that. When I couldn’t stand myself anymore, I got up.

  The gravel in the front yard crunched as I walked across it before squatting down to uncoil the hose we almost never used, ostensibly for the plants that might have existed at some point. The hose heated in my hands as the sunbaked water expelled first. I aimed it at the porch, washing away the brownish stains that looked nothing like the blood from the night before.

  There was a smear against one wall. I hosed that down too.

  Me, I’d already washed until I was pinker than was comfortable. Again.

  I had to throw away Dad’s robe.

  Back inside my phone flashed with a missed call from Sean, but no message.

  I almost called him back. Then I almost called him back half a dozen times more.

  When he called again that afternoon I counted the rings until it hit voice mail.

  No message.

  Dad wasn’t due home for hours, so I filled the day with trashy reality TV and turned up the volume loud enough to feel. I was watching a woman who no longer had what I’d consider a human face taking her Chihuahua to see a psychic when I felt the slight shudder of the garage door lifting. I clicked off the TV and stilled in the recliner.

  He’s not your father.

  I flung myself out of the chair and ran to the garage, halting at the open door when he got out of his car. Dad. Too-long brown hair, grease-stained jeans, a Jim’s Auto Shop tee that showed off the beginning of a paunch. He had bags under his eyes, but he smiled when he saw me.

  “There’s my girl.”

  I barreled into him and held on tight. I couldn’t breathe enough of him in.

  “Whoa. Miss me, or did you crash the truck?”

  My face was pressed into his shoulder so my voice came out muffled. “Both.”

  Dad released me to look at the truck. The damage from my little fender bender with Daniel’s mom was almost impossible to detect since we hadn’t started any of the body repairs yet. He’d think I was teasing. “I missed you too. In fact...” He reached in the pocket of his jeans and tossed me something that glinted in the overhead light. Keys. “I’m not gonna lie, it needs work.”

  I read the logo and looked up at him, not really believing the word carved into the black leather fob. I’d completely forgotten his note about bringing me something. I owned a 1967 Triumph Spitfire Mark III convertible. Dad got me a Spitfire. I should be flying, grinning to the point of pain. But I wasn’t.

  I stood staring at the shiny key in my hand, tracing the jagged little teeth that would start my Spitfire. I was glad it needed work. Between choosing a brand-new model and a clunker, I’d pick the clunker every time. In that moment between reading the name on the fob and looking up at Dad, I saw the rest of my summer. My sneakered feet next to Dad’s booted ones, tapping together from underneath the Spitfire while some awesomely bad Hall & Oates song blasted through the tinny garage speakers. Sharing takeout while arguing over engine specs. Mini road trips to salvage yards for parts. Seeing Dad smile at me the first time I brought the whole thing roaring to life, proud of me.

  All of that was worth more than the car.

  He’s not your father.

  Mom’s words were a relentless rhythm banging in my head. Slamming around in my skull with greater and greater intensity the longer I watched him. My father. Not my father.

  “That’s all I get, huh? One hug?”

  He got everything. All that I had. I felt my eyes begin to prick as I went into his open arms, holding him, and by sheer force of will I kept them dry.

  “Nothing will ever mean more to me.”

  Dad laughed. “Now you’re overdoing it.”

  I squeezed my fist tight around the key to my dream car and followed Dad into the much brighter lights of the kitchen.

  “All right, let me get a look at you.” Dad maneuvered me around by the shoulders, twisting this way and that. “Nasty sunburn. It looks like your face had a fight with the stove and lost.”

  “I know.” I tried to smile at his teasing, but I was suddenly so choked up I had to look away. “Are you hungry? There’s half a frozen lasagna left.”

  “My favorite. Let me change, then we can start making plans for your Spitfire.” He dropped a kiss on my head and headed for his room.

  Down the hall I could hear Dad opening and closing drawers. He was whistling. Happy. Because I knew he saw our summer the same way I did. The last time I’d listened to him in his room, he’d been yelling at Mom, pleading with her. He’d told me that day that she wanted everything. Everything meant me. And not just me. She wanted to rend the only part of my family I had left. To say being his daughter was a lie.

  The key slipped through my fingers, spinning as it fell, clinking as it hit the tiled kitchen floor.

  But if it was a lie, he would have told me. He’d have warned me that she was going to spin this story about some neighbor. He’d have told me not to give it another thought. He’d have told me about his father’s eyes and explained that was why mine were greenish and his were blue. He’d have said all of that to me.

  But he hadn’t. He’d told me it was okay to love her. Why would he do that after she told him she wanted to take me away? He’d yelled at her over the phone. He’d been mad and...and...afraid.

  Maybe she hadn’t told him. Maybe it was a lie just for me, to make me doubt him and cling to her. Maybe she knew better than to try and lie to him about something like that. Maybe...

  I picked up the key and closed it in my fist. It could all be a lie. It could be. It could.

  I nuked us both a slice of lasagna. When Dad came back he hugged me again and told me all about his trip while we ate. I was only half listening, even when he related the bidding war he got into over my Spitfire. It was so awful, looking at his face and being terrified that all of the little things I’d thought I’d gotten from him might come from some stranger. Wondering if he felt the same way looking at me, had always felt that way and I’d never known it. It had been only ten minutes and I was making myself sick.

  “So, the sunburn. Are you going to try and tell me the Vanderhoffs ran out of sunblock?”

  I forced a laugh and rattled off an excuse about
how much fun we’d been having at Sunsplash and hadn’t remembered to reapply.

  Dad smiled and started telling me a story about the last time he remembered getting sunburned so badly he couldn’t walk for days. “Maybe we should move to Oregon, huh? All that year-round cloud cover?” He stood up and took our plates.

  “Yeah, maybe. We could franchise the shop.”

  Dad’s laughter from the kitchen made everything hurt less. And then I killed it.

  “We wouldn’t even have to tell Mom. We could just pack up and go.” Through the pass-through into the kitchen, I saw Dad stop in front of the fridge. “No forwarding address. New phone number. It would just be you and me and she couldn’t find us.” I watched him stand there, immobile, while I spoke. I leaned forward on the couch trying to see him better. When he moved, it was like a projector starting up again, sound and picture lurching back together.

  “I think I’d miss the sun, wouldn’t you?”

  The sun visibly hated me at that moment but I smiled and nodded when he came back. Yes, the sun. That’s why we couldn’t go. Nothing about the fact that I might not be his, that maybe he couldn’t take me if she didn’t want him to. That she might try and take me away, split me in half between them.

  “But if I wanted to go, if I wanted us to go somewhere away from here, could we?”

  Dad came back with two bowls of ice cream and inexplicably propped my feet up on a pillow, his cure-all for anytime I was sick or hurt. He tucked me against his side in a way that actually hurt my skin, but felt good anyway. “We could go anywhere you wanted.”

  We watched SportsCenter after that, and I never once felt the urge to escape to the roof.

  CHAPTER 32

  The upside of Dad getting me a Spitfire was everything. I didn’t have to worry about Daniel (much) or brood about Sean (obsessively). I didn’t even have to agonize about Mom (ad nauseam).

  Because finally I had something in front of me that I knew exactly how to fix. And I had Dad with me.

  He seemed lighter too after that. I think that since he’d brought me something he’d known would make me happy, he couldn’t help but be happy himself. He wasn’t quite grooving around the garage yet, but that might have been because he hadn’t beaten me to the shop when the Spitfire arrived. And when I say arrived, I mean it was towed. It didn’t actually have four tires, or windows, or a steering wheel.

  Or a transmission.

  Dad’s grin matched mine. “Pretty great, isn’t it?”

  It was better than great. It was late nights and long weekends. It was Dad and me, and Hall & Oates, and fingernails that might never be clean again. I don’t think I’d ever been happier in my life.

  Yeah, Daniel and Sean and Mom were still circling, but some dreams were so sweet they demanded to be savored.

  And damn it, the Spitfire was sweet. Or it would be when Dad and I were done with it.

  I beat a drum solo on Dad’s back waiting for him to lift the hood so I could see my baby in all her glory.

  Yeah, well, that was a stretch. Dad had prepped me for the gorier details, but the live show was still a bit stunning.

  “Did you find her in a tub full of ice with stitches around her gut?” When Dad frowned at me, I added, “You know, because her organs have obviously been harvested and sold on the black market.”

  “Always with the jokes. I warned you she’d been pretty well stripped.”

  “Yeah, but...” I leaned in through the driver’s nonexistent window. “Somebody actually took the pedals. Who does that?”

  Dad rocked back on his heels, watching me as I climbed over seats and ran my hands over every neglected inch of that car. “Lot of work, that’s for sure. Long days, weekends...”

  He’d been hunting for a Spitfire for me since I was fourteen; we both had. We’d found some in good condition and others in better than good, but Dad always passed them by. It was because we wanted the project, the car that would require the two of us to work over every valve and hose, every bolt and seam. I wanted a Spitfire, but what I really wanted was a Spitfire to rebuild with Dad.

  “But we can do it, right?” I slid out from underneath the chassis. “I mean, we can make her run again?”

  “Yeah, we can make her run. Are you kidding? She’ll be perfect.”

  The initial parts assessment was easy, since a lot of stuff was just plain gone or in obvious need of replacement. Once we really dug in, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. There was a lot that could be salvaged, and Dad was confident we could find the rest without completely draining my bank account. After that it became a question of when, not if.

  I pulled the calendar off the wall and laid it on a worktable for me and Dad to see. I flipped ahead and circled a date.

  “This is D-day. I will not ride my bike to a single day of my junior year. So, that leaves us...” I started ticking weekends off on my hand and adding in after-work hours. Dad still had his truck to finish, not to mention the Mazda and two other cars he’d gotten along with the Spitfire. I also had to factor in the inevitable problems we’d encounter along the way, and potential delays with parts...

  There was no way. Maybe Dad would take pity on me and let me drive something with four wheels to school instead of pedaling something with two. I looked at the Spitfire. However many weeks it took, it was going to be worth it.

  I started to close the calendar, but Dad stopped me. He tapped the same weekends I had before school started.

  “The two of us working together. Shouldn’t be a problem. The others can wait.”

  It took me a second to realize he meant his truck. And the Mazda. And the other flip cars. He was going to put all his projects aside—the ones that actually made us money—to help me with mine.

  I looked up at him. “You love me a lot, huh?”

  Dad looked like he might embarrass us both by tearing up, but fortunately the door chimed up front.

  “So much that I’m gonna let you take care of the oil change that probably just walked in while I go grab an early lunch.”

  “Fine, I will!” I called after his retreating form, grinning for all I was worth.

  Only it wasn’t an oil change waiting up front.

  It was my freshly battered neighbor.

  And we froze; Daniel unable to step forward, and me unable to step back.

  He was wearing sunglasses, but I could see the dark tinge of double black eyes protruding from around the edges. I pulled my lips tight looking at him, realizing how hard Sean had hit him. There was another bruise blooming along his jaw and my sadness bloomed along with it.

  “Your face...” I took a step, but Daniel immediately backed up. And that was a good thing. It hurt, like a piece of metal flying from a bench grinder and embedding straight into my chest, but it forced me to focus on everything that had happened and not just him being hurt.

  I wasn’t mad that Daniel had defended himself when Sean attacked, but he went so far beyond defending himself that just remembering it made me queasy.

  All those nights on my roof, and that one almost kiss in the pool, that’s what I wanted to remember. I wanted to blot out the night he got drunk, to dismiss it as an aberration. Before that night, I never would have believed he could treat me so callously. Not when I was beginning to think I meant something to him, when I was beginning to want to mean something to him.

  It all hurt so much that there wasn’t room left for butterflies. I missed the butterflies.

  And I couldn’t decide if that meant I missed Daniel too or just the way I felt with him, because they weren’t the same thing.

  I’d learned that with Sean. Even after everything with Mom had shredded my heart into teeny tiny broken pieces, I’d still missed Sean. I’d missed him enough to try and fix something that maybe was meant to stay broken.

  And I
knew that was messed up. All of it was.

  “I’m sorry that happened.” That was as much as I could give. It felt like a lot and somehow not nearly enough.

  Daniel slipped his aviators off and I sucked in a breath. Sean had hit him really hard, like burst-a-blood-vessel-in-his-eyeball hard. “Why did it happen?”

  I couldn’t look at his face; I could not do it. It made me think of all the times it probably looked worse. And it made me think of Sean, who most definitely had fared worse in their fight. And the whole thing was awful. Even knowing why Sean had hit him and understanding why Daniel had hit back with such brutality, I couldn’t unsee it.

  Daniel still didn’t know why he’d gotten in that fight. The reasons were little comfort to me, and I doubted they’d be any better for him, but maybe this could be the first of hopefully many things I got to be wrong about.

  “Sean overheard some things out of context. He thought you’d hurt me.”

  “I did hurt you.”

  I didn’t correct him. “He thought you did something that deserved being hit over. You didn’t. You never have.”

  Daniel shook his head slightly, but didn’t refute me.

  A loud banging from the garage distracted us both. What was I doing? Dad could walk out any second and see us, and there was nothing casual about the way we were looking at each other.

  “Can we go somewhere then? We need to talk without—” He gestured toward the garage. “Take a ride with me?”

  CHAPTER 33

  Daniel was waiting outside when I returned after telling Dad I was grabbing my own lunch with a friend—a friend I let him assume was Sean.

  He waited until we pulled out of the parking lot before saying, “So you met my mom.”

  That sick feeling of shame slobbered over me. “If by met you mean backed into her car while she was parking, yeah. Did she tell you I offered to fix the damage?”

  “Kind of.” Daniel pulled out the card I’d given his mom. It was creased all over, like it had been crumpled up into a fist and smoothed out again. When I saw the words scribbled on the back, I understood why: