Micah: The Good Girl

by Ashley Woodfolk

  * * *

  It was so humid and hot outside, even without sunlight, that the air felt sticky and gross. But Micah didn’t care; she ran down her block feeling wild and free. Ty stood waiting for her on the platform of the subway station closest to her apartment so they could take the train to his place together.

  “Hey,” she said. She walked up to him slowly and reached out to hold his hand.

  “Hi,” he said. “You look . . . good.”

  Micah blushed.

  They boarded the next train that entered the station and barely spoke all the way to his apartment. As they climbed the stairs to his unit, Ty let go of her hand for the first time since he’d met up with her. He pulled out his keys.

  “I didn’t think this would be scary, since I’d be doing it with you,” Micah said from behind him.

  “Me neither,” Ty agreed. “But I’m a little nervous.” He stepped closer to her and kissed her slowly.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I am too,” she said. “But I’m happy we’re here.”

  His apartment was empty, just like she knew it would be, but Micah wasn’t feeling nearly as confident as she’d felt when she’d imagined this moment. She followed him down the hallway that led to his bedroom. They stepped into the dark room, and Ty reached for the light, but she stopped him.

  “I think it will be easier . . . at least for me . . . if we start things with the lights off,” she said. Her voice wouldn’t stop shaking, and neither would her hands. She sat down on his bed and stuffed her fingers under her thighs.

  Micah thought she heard a tremor in Ty’s voice when he replied, “Okay.”

  He sat down on the bed beside her and kissed her on the cheek. A rush of warmth made her neck and face so hot, she couldn’t look at him, so she smiled and stared down at her bare knees. She held her breath and pulled her tank top over her head before she could talk herself out of it. Without thinking, she unbuttoned her skirt so that the hemline of her lacy underwear showed. Ty gasped a little and said, “Damn, girl,” like she was doing something other than sitting there awkwardly in her bra and underwear.

  He pulled off his shirt, too, and then they were touching each other again. He pushed a sweatshirt on the foot of his bed onto the floor before he cracked a joke about how he should have cleaned his room better. She laughed. She just about melted when he touched her neck. But something made her slow down as they inched closer to the center of the bed.

  “Are you okay?” Ty asked her. Her breath suddenly started coming quicker than it had been a second before.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. She was alone in an apartment with the boy she loved, but she didn’t feel 100 percent sure about what was about to happen. And she needed to be sure. “Are we rushing this?” she asked, pulling away from Ty.

  He took a deep breath like he’d been running and he needed to slow down. “If you think we are . . . ,” Ty said. “We don’t have to do more than this.” He touched her face and kissed her neck, and she touched his cheek and kissed him back.

  Her hesitation wasn’t about disappointing her parents or even what she’d learned in church. Micah suddenly knew that being with Ty like this—with jokes and gentle touches, kisses and some of their clothes still on—was enough for her. She decided she didn’t need to be with him in any other way. At least not yet.

  “I like this,” she said. “Just this. For now. Is that okay?”

  Micah didn’t think she imagined the look of disappointment on Ty’s face. But a second later he smiled and said, “We have time. And I want to do it right.”

  They’d only been dating a few months, but it felt like they’d known each other forever. Waiting a little longer didn’t seem like such a crazy idea.

  “Maybe we should watch a movie?” Ty suggested after they’d gotten dressed and kissed a bit longer. And Micah smiled and nodded.

  * * *

  When Micah heard Ty’s phone ringing for the third time, she finally realized it wasn’t a dream. She opened her eyes to find the sun shining brightly, and she sat straight up. She didn’t even remember seeing the end of the movie.

  “Oh no,” she said, jumping out of Ty’s bed. “No, no, no.”

  “Huh?” Ty asked, stretching and yawning. He glanced at his phone and picked it up. “Hello?” he said sleepily. “Lux? . . . Yeah, she’s here with me. Why?”

  Micah grabbed the phone from him. “Lux?”

  “Micah, your parents are freaking out,” Lux said. “They must be calling everyone in your phone trying to figure out where you are. I didn’t know you were gonna stay over!”

  “I wasn’t planning to! I guess we just fell asleep!”

  Micah pulled the phone away from her face to check the time and saw that it was nearly ten a.m. “I gotta go,” she said to Lux and Ty at the same time, and tossed him his phone. She grabbed her purse and ran out of Ty’s apartment without looking back.

  Micah’s heart raced as she ran to the closest subway station, and her fingers felt numb as she swiped her MetroCard. Throughout the ride, she tried to calm her breathing, but she felt too tense and jittery. It was Saturday, July eleventh, and on this day last year, Milo had died. Micah had been pretending the day wasn’t coming. But now the truth of it hit her like a freight train.

  When Micah pushed open the door of her apartment, all was quiet and still. For one short minute she thought her parents might not be home, that she’d somehow escape their wrath, but then her mother poked her head out of her bedroom and into the hall. She held Micah’s phone in one hand, and had the other hand on her hip.

  “Where in the world have you been?” she said, and then into the phone, “Yeah, she just walked in.”

  That meant her father must be out somewhere, looking for her. That meant when he got back, she’d be in serious trouble. Again.

  Micah expected her mother to yell at her, or to tell her how disappointed she was. But when her mom stepped closer to Micah, there were tears in her eyes.

  “How could you?” she asked, her voice breaking. This, Micah thought, was so much worse than anger. “What were you thinking? Doing this today, of all days?”

  “Mom, I—”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Micah. I’ve been going through your phone, calling every person in your contacts. Your father is driving around like a madman. I turned on the news, terrified something awful had happened to the only child I have left.”

  Her mother started crying then, and Micah closed the space between them, feeling full of guilt and sadness. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” Micah said. She reached out to hug her and her mom reached back.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” Michelle Dupree whispered into her daughter’s hair. “I wouldn’t be able to survive losing you, too.”

  Things were calm between them for the twenty minutes it took her father to make it back home. When he arrived, he didn’t say a word to her.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Michelle without looking at his daughter. And even though she hadn’t changed out of yesterday’s clothes, Micah silently followed.

  * * *

  On the corner where Milo’s accident happened, Micah’s mother left a bouquet of daisies. Micah stared up at the museum steps where she used to meet him to draw, and then looked back at the busy intersection. Her parents stood there holding hands, and her mother wiped the tears from her eyes, but everyone else went about their business because they had no idea what had happened here.

  TUESDAY, JULY 14, 4:00 P.M.

  Micah: I snuck out, but I didn’t actually do anything.

  Dr. Patel: I bet your parents disagree.

  Micah: I know. My dad’s barely speaking to me.

  Dr. Patel: Do you think sneaking out counts as doing something?

  Micah: I meant, like, I didn’t do anything sexual.

  Dr. Patel: I’m not judgi
ng you either way, Micah. I’m asking. You snuck out, and were late coming home Saturday morning, right?

  Micah: Yes.

  Dr. Patel: Do you understand why your parents might be upset about that?

  Micah: I guess.

  Dr. Patel: Why did you decide to sneak out that night? The Friday before the one-year anniversary of your brother’s death?

  Micah: I don’t know.

  Dr. Patel: You don’t?

  Micah: No.

  Dr. Patel: Do you think the two might be at all related? That the choices you’ve made lately were all about control, right when you were feeling the most out of control you’ve felt in a year?

  Micah: . . .

  Dr. Patel: Micah?

  Micah: Maybe.

  Dr. Patel: Right when you were trying to avoid being reminded of the most painful event in your life?

  Micah: . . . I don’t want to talk about it.

  Dr. Patel: Okay. I understand. And we don’t have to. But I’d like you to really consider the timing of all of this. I’d like you to ask yourself some hard questions and think about what might really be going on.

  Micah went to visit Zero again, this time on her own. She didn’t really want to talk to anyone about Milo, but being with Zero just made her feel closer to her brother somehow. Maybe it was because Milo loved him, and love like that can leave a mark. She took the sketchbook with her, and when she got to the courts, Zero looked like he might be leaving.

  “Hey, Z,” Micah said.

  “Hey, Mike-Mike,” Zero said. “How’s your heart?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  The wind was blowing hard, so the weather felt breezy and lighter than it had in the past few weeks. Micah had to keep fixing her hair and holding down the flouncy floral skirt she had on.

  Zero looked sad for a second before he said, “Yeah, Saturday was rough.”

  Micah nodded. “It was for us, too.”

  Zero grabbed his bag and tucked his basketball under his arm. “I was just about to go somewhere. You wanna come?” he asked her.

  “Sure,” Micah said. She didn’t even ask where they were going.

  They walked through the rest of the park where the courts were, past the corner store, and farther down the block. They kept walking through their East Harlem neighborhood, and as they passed Augusta Savage School of the Arts, Zero started to talk about Milo.

  “Yo, this one time, your brother tried to teach himself how to skateboard with my board, and he kept eating it. He fell, like, eighteen times in an hour. But he kept getting back on and doing it again. I swear he was trying to ollie, but he never really figured it out.”

  Micah shook her head. “That sounds like him. He could be so stubborn, and he thought he had to be good at everything.”

  Zero said, “I know, right? We used to get into these heated arguments about the dumbest stuff. He was such a know-it-all. He always had to be right.”

  They were still walking. Zero seemed to know exactly where he was going, so Micah just kept following his lead. They passed a guy with a bubble machine on the corner, and little, smiling kids were chasing dozens of the shiny bubbles down the sidewalk.

  Slowly, Micah began to talk, too.

  “What was that song he was always whistling?” Zero asked.

  “‘Amazing Grace’?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Oh, ‘Get Ur Freak On.’”

  Zero started laughing. “Yep. But just like the opening notes, right?”

  Micah laughed, too. “Yeah. Those same, like, six notes over and over again. It drove my mom crazy.”

  They were almost at the Harlem River when Zero pointed to a bridge and then to a narrow space under it.

  “We’re going right down there. Be careful,” Zero said.

  The underside of the bridge had been completely covered in bright, wildly painted graffiti. There were hard-to-read tags in a rainbow of colors, images of everything from soda cans to huge faces, messages written in curly script, and more.

  “Whoa,” Micah said.

  “Yeah,” Zero replied. “Me and your brother used to come here all the time.”

  “Did he ever paint anything here?” Micah asked.

  Zero nodded. “But it’s been painted over already. That’s why he liked doing it here. He liked that he could play around and just have fun. Be imperfect. He knew it wouldn’t last.”

  They stayed under the bridge talking and looking through the sketchbook until Micah had to head home. She was grounded again because of sneaking out. But before she left, Zero asked if he could hold on to the sketchbook for a while.

  “Of course,” she said. And as she walked away, she noticed a spray-painted image of a bright white bike with wings flying over a miniature NYC.

  It gave her an idea.

  That weekend, Micah invited Noelle over. They worked on their senior projects together on the roof. Noelle worked on mastering the final notes of her cello solo as Micah painted.

  “Your parents still pissed?” Noelle asked after they’d been working for a while with only the sound of her cello passing between them.

  “Yep,” Micah said. “I think they will be forever.”

  “Probably,” Noelle agreed. “How’s Ty?”

  “Pretty okay. Maybe kinda disappointed. But he’s not being a dick about it or anything.”

  “How’d you get the idea for this?” Noelle asked, gesturing toward Micah’s work.

  “Zero,” Micah said. “My brother’s friend. Well, actually, I just found out he was more than his friend. But he’s great. I’ve been hanging out with him a bit, and I think he’ll like it. I’m going to set it up next Saturday. Zero will be there. You and the girls can come.”

  “Wait. What do you mean, more than his friend?”

  “They dated. Milo loved him, but he wasn’t ready to tell me or our parents. That’s all I know.”

  Noelle didn’t say anything for a long time, so after a bit, Micah asked, “Is everything okay? Like with Pierre and the restaurant and stuff?”

  “We’re fine,” Noelle said, a little too quickly. And then, “I knew you weren’t going to do it.”

  Micah didn’t know why, but Noelle’s comment pissed her off much more than it normally would. She started to ignore it, but instead she said, “I don’t know what your problem is with me lately. All the low-key mean stuff you say is really starting to get to me.”

  Noelle didn’t look away from the sheets of music in front of her. She erased something and scribbled something else down. “It’s just that, you’re so worked up about Ty when the anniversary of your brother’s death just happened. I mean, if anything ever happened to Pierre, I wouldn’t give two shits about some random dude.”

  Micah felt her eyes instantly fill with tears.

  “Is that what you really think of me?” Micah asked. “That I don’t care about my brother?”

  Noelle finally looked at her.

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

  Micah started packing up her stuff. She didn’t know why Noelle would say something like that to her, but she wouldn’t stick around and figure it out.

  “You know what, Noelle? You’re so judgy when it comes to everyone else. But have you ever taken a moment to look at yourself?”

  Micah saw Noelle clench her jaw, and something in Noelle’s eyes softened. “Micah, look—”

  “No. You look. You act like you know what it’s like to lose someone. You act like you get it. But you never ask me, Noelle. You haven’t asked me how I’m doing or what I’m feeling or if I’m okay. You’ve only judged me for reacting to something awful in a different way than you think you would. The worst part? You know how bad it’s been because you’ve seen some of my worst panic attacks. You should be the last person to judge me like
this.

  “And you’re right.” Micah couldn’t stop crying now as she stood at the door to exit the roof. “Actions do speak louder than words.”

  TUESDAY, JULY 21, 4:00 P.M.

  Micah: I always hated that bike.

  Dr. Patel: . . . Milo’s?

  Micah: Yeah. He rode it everywhere, though. To work, to school, to his studio and back home. Over bridges and through parks, and once he rode all the way to New Jersey.

  Dr. Patel: Sounds like he loved it.

  Micah: Yeah, he did. It was bright yellow. And Milo put stickers all over the seat. That’s actually how I knew. Before I even saw the shoe, I knew it was him because of that seat.

  Dr. Patel: Do you want to tell me what happened? I think it would be helpful, just to say it all out loud. You never have before, right?

  Micah: No. Not even to my parents.

  Dr. Patel: Only if you’re ready. But, Micah, you can do this. You’re stronger than you think.

  Micah: [sniffs] Okay.

  Dr. Patel: Okay.

  Micah: Okay, so I saw the seat. Then I saw his red shoe. It had flown off, I guess from the force of the car hitting him, so it landed across the street.

  We were meeting at the museum because we both liked to sketch the people sitting on the steps. Milo was better than me at it, so he’d always give me tips and show me different ways of looking at things.

  Sorry, I’m going out of order.

  Dr. Patel: It’s okay. Take your time.

  Micah: Okay. It was hot and I was rushing because I’d told him we’d meet at five, and it was almost five thirty. So when I came up out of the subway station, I stopped to pull a tissue out of my backpack to wipe some of the sweat off my face. I could hear the ambulance then, but I was looking down into my bag as I walked up the stairs. And I remember getting so mad because I couldn’t find the tissue packet. The ambulance siren sounded really loud, but it’s New York, you know? It didn’t even faze me. I grabbed my water bottle instead and I unscrewed it. When I lifted my head to take a sip, I saw the crowd and the ambulance right in front of the museum.