by Susan Soares
****
The next morning, I was pulling books out of my locker wondering what I was doing at school. I should have been at the hospital by my grandmother’s side. Earlier that morning, I had spoken to the doctor, and he told me the MRI had showed less damage then he had originally anticipated. Bottom line, it looked like Gram was going to be okay. She would have to take it easy for a while and spend the next two days in the hospital, but after that she’d be prescribed a bunch of overly expensive pills to try to prevent another stroke and heart attack, even though nothing can truly prevent that type of thing. And I had to come into school to take a stupid algebra test and suffer through the other mind-numbing courses I had before heading over to the hospital to visit her. Then I had to work from five to nine.
“Hey, I didn’t think you’d be here today.” Zoe had come up on my left and wrapped her arms around me. “Any updates?” The night before, I had called her and told her everything that had happened.
“Yeah, she’s doing better. The doctor said it looks like everything will be okay. She can come home in a few days.” I slung my bookbag over my shoulder as we started down the hallway.
“Oh good. Hey, I’m sorry again for sending Brandon to your house. My mom had borrowed my car, and I was worried when you didn’t text or call me back.”
“It’s all right,” I said while adjusting my backpack on my shoulder again.
“Hey.” Zoe reached out and touched my wrist. “That’s beautiful.” She stroked the blue sea glass stone.
“Thanks. Brandon gave it to me last night.” His name felt cumbersome in my mouth.
We stopped in front of the door to my class. “So,” Zoe eyed me conspicuously. “You’re getting pretty close then.” Again her eyes were hot on me.
“Yeah, I guess so.” My backpack suddenly felt like it was cutting into my shoulder.
“Does he know?”
“What?”
“Marissa, don’t play dumb. I hate when people play dumb.”
I knew she did. And I knew what she meant. “No.”
She made some dramatic, exasperated hand gestures. “You still haven’t told him about your mom?”
I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Not yet.”
“What about the race? You could have opened up to him when you brought up the breast cancer race.” Her eyes wildly darted back and forth.
“Well, I still haven’t decided about the race,” I half-mumbled.
“You wh-at?” she broke the last word into two exaggerated syllables.
The bell rang, and kids were shoving past us rushing to get to their classrooms. I never understood why they rushed. What did it even matter anyway? You could be dead tomorrow.
Zoe looked over her shoulder at a girl who yelled to her that she was going to be late. “I’m coming,” she yelled back to her. Then to me, she said, “You have to tell him before things get any deeper. You know you do.” Her eyes locked with mine, and the gaze she gave me was so incredulous I had to break it and look to the floor. “And doing the race isn’t optional. Marissa, this is where you need to turn things around, my beautiful friend.” Her tone was softer now.
“Zoe!” the girl shouted again. Zoe kissed me on the cheek and turned to race down the hall. Whatever. The final bell rang, and Mr. Thompson came to shut the classroom door that I was still standing outside of.
“Coming in, Marissa?” he asked.
I didn’t even pause. “No, sir. Not today.” And I left school.
****
“I’m still not happy you left school early.” Gram said while drawing a card from the stock pile.
I grabbed the eight of hearts from the discard pile to complete my set of eights. “Nobody cared. Besides I wanted to see you.”
“When am I going to pull a six?” She discarded a five of clubs, which I quickly scooped up to complete a run.
Gin never was Gram’s game, and I was proving that again today. “Gin.” I laid my cards out, and Gram rolled her eyes.
“Gin’s not a game.” Gram tossed her cards by her side. “Poker’s a game.” She readjusted her sheets, pulling them closer to her chest. “Too bad you don’t like poker, Marissa.”
“I stink at it.” I began shuffling the cards.
“That’s why I want to play you.” She winked at me.
I was happy to see she was looking better. Her color had returned, and it looked like she had done the French braid in her hair by herself. The doctor had told me before I went in to see her that her most recent tests looked good. Her levels were where he wanted them to be. Stuff like that, doctor talk, whatever the terminology; he was saying that she was slowly improving. That’s all I needed to understand.
****
I was actually relieved to be at work that night. Work was stable. Work didn’t throw me massive curveballs. The store wasn’t going to suddenly get sick. It wasn’t going to have its feelings hurt. And it wasn’t going to want to know more about me or my life. The table of button-down shirts in front of me just wanted to be folded. That’s all. No more, no less. I could relax here.
“Marissa, I need you in the back. Now!” Taylor barked at me from the back of the store.
Okay, so maybe I couldn’t relax, but it was still better than being almost anywhere else right now. I walked into the back room to see Taylor standing with her hands on her hips. She was visibly upset. And I swear I saw the vein on the side of her neck throbbing.
“Look at all this!” She motioned to piles of clothes that surrounded her in the shape of a horseshoe. “I can’t believe this.” She dramatically threw her hands up in the air.
“Taylor, what’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” She whipped her head towards me. “What’s wrong, Marissa, is that every single one of these pieces of clothing that surround me is tagged incorrectly.” Again, she motioned to the mounds of clothing. “There was some screw-up at the factory, and all of this is priced wrong. Now we need to change out the tags on every piece.” She huffed.
I was guessing that “we” meant me. Changing out tags was a pain. I hated using the tagging gun that attached the plastic pieces of the tag to the garment; I always managed to poke myself with it. “So where do you want me to start?” My tone was less than enthusiastic.
“You start on that section over there, and I’ll start over here.” She grabbed a tagging gun and a pile of price tags, and plopped herself down at one end of the horseshoe of clothes.
“You’re repricing too?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice.
Taylor raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes, I’m repricing too,” she mocked me. “So, how’s school going?” Taylor said while clipping off a price tag.
I was completely thrown off by her question. Was Taylor making small talk with me? It was weird. “Good, I guess.”
“So, do you, like, come from a big family or anything?”
Were we honestly going to have a conversation? “No. Small family.” I felt a prickling sensation go down my back.
“So, like, who’s in your family then? Mom, Dad, sister, brother?”
I laughed out loud.
“What?” Taylor said.
I had to deflect the conversation somehow. “Nothing. It’s just funny, that’s all.” I concentrated on retagging a pink miniskirt.
“What’s funny?”
“That we’ve, like, never had a conversation and now you want my life story.” I laughed again, trying to lighten the moment that was causing a balloon of tension to fill my chest.
“Whatever, Marissa, I was just trying to pass the time faster. It’s not like I even care.” The hard, defensive Taylor was back.
Maybe she was just trying to be social. But who comes out and just asks people about their family life? Most people, I guess. And I guess most people have somewhat normal lives. But not everyone. Not everyone had a mom and a dad and other normal things. When you didn’t have a normal home life and people asked you about it, there was a place inside you that turned red with a
nger. It was a place that I swallowed down every time another teenage girl talked about her mom.
After about an hour of tagging, I had managed to poke myself with the tagging gun six times, three of which required bandages. Taylor had turned on her MP3 player to fill the quiet between us. Even though she played country music (gag), I was glad for the deviation from talking about my family, or my lack thereof.
“Hey Taylor,” Sarah, one of the cashiers, said. “The registers are a little backed up, and the front of the store is a mess.”
Taylor let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. Marissa, please go straighten up the front of the store. I’ll stay back here in tagging oblivion.”
“Okay.” I actually felt bad leaving her, but I quickly walked away before she could change her mind and drag me back.
Sarah had been right. The front of the store was a mess. A group of cheerleaders had made their way through the store, trashing each area where they browsed. Sarah and Kayla were frantically trying to ring them all up at the registers. I began working on the jeans wall. It looked like a mountain of distressed denim. There were piles of jeans just left on the floor in front of the wall. Were people that lazy? Ugh!
My feet were surrounded by a pile of Capri jeans when I heard a girl’s voice hovering near the store entrance.
“Come on, babe, I love this store.” she whined.
“But babe, I wanna go to the video game store.” Even though he was trying to plead his case, his tone still sounded defeated.
“Just five minutes, okay? For me?” I heard the soft sounds of a kiss.
“Okay, but only for you,” he said, and as he did the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I knew what I was thinking wasn’t possible, but I slowly turned around. As they walked into the store, hand in hand, his eyes caught mine.
His name choked in my throat as I said it. “Marc?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Marissa? Wow, I mean, hey.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously.
I wanted to hug him and punch him at the same time. Marc was standing before me. Marc! It was like seeing his ghost or something. His hair had grown long and looked like a sandy brown mop on his head, and his wavy bangs grazed his eyelashes. He was wearing a faded Van Halen shirt, vintage 1984. The T-shirt hung loose on his body, and he looked thinner. He had always been thin — the kid couldn’t put on weight to save his life — but now he was even thinner, like he didn’t eat often. I watched him squeeze the hand of the girl next to him. My eyes shifted from him to her. She looked similar in age to Marc, early twenties. Twenty-two or twenty-three. Her copper hair had soft beachy waves to it that cascaded like water down to her waist. Heat was coming out of her bright blue eyes as she looked at me. She appeared to be sizing me up, wondering who I was, and how I knew Marc, and why I looked like I’d seen a ghost.
“You two know each other?” There was an edge to her voice, like she was wondering if I was a psycho ex-girlfriend.
Unable to speak, I remained still and stared at Marc. I couldn’t believe he was standing just five feet in front of me. Where had he been for the past year? Why hadn’t he called me? Had he found out about Gram somehow? Had he been to visit the grave? Was he living locally? Could he feel the pain that was rushing through my body at that moment?
“Ginny, this is Marissa… my sister,” Marc said. I watched the flush cover his cheeks.
She blinked rapidly. “Your sister?” From the raise of an octave in her voice, I knew she was unaware Marc had a sister. “You told me you were an only child.”
“You what?” I snapped. The desire to punch him was overwhelming. Instead, I crossed the space between us and shoved him in his chest. “You told her you had no sister? How could you? Why would you say that? What’s wrong with you? Where have you been?” With each question I shoved him until we were in the hallway in front of the store. I had managed to fight back the tears that stung at my eyes, only by the rage that filled me.
“Marissa, stop!” he shouted at me while grabbing my arms before I shoved him again. “Just stop!”
Then I heard Taylor’s voice behind me. “Marissa, what’s wrong?” Marc dropped my arms, and Taylor stood in front of me. “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t looking at her. My eyes remained on Marc, who kept his gaze on the floor.
“I have to get out of here,” I spat out. Then I walked back inside the store, grabbed my purse, and started walking out.
“Marissa, I need to know what’s wrong,” Taylor said as I huffed past her.
“Family emergency,” I called over my shoulder. Marc and Ginny were still standing in front of the store as I exited it.
“Marissa, wait!” he called after me. And I heard his voice calling my name growing more and more distant as I raced to my car.
****
My feet dragged as I walked into my house. Without looking, I flung my bookbag onto the kitchen table. The house was silent. Of course it was silent. All that remained here were the memories of the people that used to live here together — my mom, Marc, and me. As I looked to the corner of the living room, my thoughts flashed back to Christmas the year before we found out Mom was sick.
****
We all huddled in front of the tree. Marc and I rapidly tore open our gifts. A pair of black suede ankle boots was my big gift that year. While I walked down the hallway, I ran my hand along the patch in the wall. It was from when Marc and I tried to sneak a dog into the house. We had found it as a stray, and as we were carrying it down the hall to Marc’s bedroom, we heard my mom come in the front door. I screamed, the dog barked, and when Marc dropped the dog, his elbow smashed into the wall. His bony elbow chipped through some of the paint, and his punishment was patching it up. He did a terrible job.
****
My arms crossed over my chest as I stood in the doorway to Marc’s room. Everything was just how it was the day he left. Gram had wanted it that way so when he returned, he would be comforted knowing that all his stuff was right where he left it. She never could have imagined that he wasn’t coming back. I ran my hand over his collection of records. The Beach Boys Greatest Hits album was still covered in scratches from when I got mad at him and used my comb to ruin it.
I suddenly felt like the whole room was swaying. My stomach was flip-flopping, and sweat was forming at my brow. It took a massive effort just to swallow. Fear that I might pass out ran through my body, and I had to get out of Marc’s room. It still smelled like him, all boyish and musty. Everything felt overwhelming, and I fled to the kitchen and grabbed my phone.
“Hey,” his voice was tender. “I was hoping I’d hear from you.”
“Brandon, listen.” I could hear the frantic sound of my voice, and I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t control it. “Can we hang out?”
“Definitely. You want me to pick you up?”
He sounded so sweet. “Is your mom home?”
“No, she took Nicholas to his Cub Scouts meeting. Why?”
I didn’t have time for his questions. “So, they’ll be gone for a while?”
“Yeah, a few hours. Why? Are you all right?” I could hear the mix of confusion and concern in his voice.
“I’m coming over then. Okay?”
“Okay, but Marissa—”
I cut him off before he could keep on with the questions. “I’ll be there soon.” I hung up.
****
I was on autopilot as I drove to Brandon’s house. My GPS was my only connection to me that I was actually driving. My brain was swimming with images of Marc, my mom, and Gram. They were drowning me. Too bad the GPS couldn’t identify stop signs for me, because I blew through two of them. Getting stopped by the police wasn’t something I wanted to add to an already horrible day.
I pulled into Brandon’s driveway. The fifteen-minute drive had taken me ten. My knuckles stung as I pounded on the door. The rate of my pulse elevated, like a frightened lab rat. And I needed some water.
He greeted me with
a kiss. When he tried to pull away from the kiss, I grabbed the back of his head and pushed my lips against him hard. His breathing began to quicken as my tongue found its way into his mouth. The front door shut behind me. I moved our bodies toward the living room and onto the couch, never letting his lips leave mine. We tumbled onto the couch together, and for the first time since my arrival, our lips broke free from each other. Instantly, I lunged for Brandon’s lips again.
“Whoa.” He held me by my shoulders, my face just inches from his. “I don’t wanna be lame or anything here by stopping you, but what’s going on?”
I avoided his eyes and concentrated on his lips. His soft, pink, waiting lips. Like a lioness, I tried to advance on him again, but his hands on my shoulders kept me at bay.
“What?” I whined. “Nothing’s going on. I just… I just want to kiss you.” Heat coursed through every part of my body. It was like an electrical surge was rushing through me. My brain had too much to process, and I had to shut it down somehow. Brandon could help me shut it down. His lips could help me shut it down. The tension he had kept on my shoulders lessened, and I pounced on him, pushing him onto his back. Like an acrobat, I straddled myself on top of him and pushed my lips onto his again. My skin was hot with anxiety, and kissing Brandon was like applying aloe to a sunburn. I felt his hands weaving through my hair. We were both breathing heavily, and I could feel his body tensing below me. His hands traveled down to the small of my back, and I clawed at the collar of his shirt. In one quick beat, I moved my lips from his mouth to his neck. I pulled his shirt collar again and bit his collarbone.