A Penny on the Tracks

by Alicia Joseph

  I was to be at school at three o’clock in preparation for the four-thirty ceremony. Because there were close to five hundred students in my graduating class, the organizers wanted to be sure there was adequate time for everyone to know how they were supposed to line up and where they were sitting.

  My mother, Franklin, and I drove together. Even though there was ample time before the ceremony began, the stands at the football field where the ceremony was to take place, filled up quickly. I sat in the backseat, thinking about Abbey the entire way. I had called her earlier that afternoon, but she hadn’t answered. I didn’t know for sure if she had gone to visit her mother like she said she was going to, but I figured she did. I didn’t know where else she would have gone.

  I tried to imagine how an afternoon visiting her mother in an institution would play out. I supposed it would depend on how lucid her mother was, or maybe the place would keep her incoherently complacent with too much drugs. I wasn’t sure which scenario would be easier for Abbey to take in. Since she’d already lived through her mother’s emotional public meltdowns, I supposed a more subdued encounter with her mother would be preferred.

  I didn’t have much time to consider the situation much further as Franklin turned the car into the school’s parking lot. A stream of teenagers poured from their cars, and red graduation gowns and matching caps lined the pavement. Teachers were already gathering up the near five hundred soon-to-be graduates in the order they were to walk in the procession.

  Franklin parked the car in the closest spot to the football field entrance, which was about a hundred parking spots away. I stepped out of the car, and immediately my mother patted at the back of my gown, straightening out the supposed wrinkles sitting in the car for the short ride had created.

  “I told you not to wear your gown. You should have carried it with you and put it on later.”

  “Look around us, Mother. Everyone has their gowns on. No one carried it with them. The seven-minute car ride didn’t wrinkle my gown, but sitting around waiting for five hundred fucking students to get their diploma sure will.”

  “Watch that mouth,” my mother scolded.

  Franklin scratched the back of his head. “There really five hundred kids in your class?”

  “Just about,” I replied.

  “Damn, this thing’s gonna take forever,” he said.

  “No shit,” I muttered.

  “Lyssa. The mouth,” my mother repeated. “Now hurry up and give me a kiss. You need to get in line and we need to get a seat before they’re all taken.”

  I quickly kissed both my mother and Franklin goodbye and hurried toward my class while searching the lot for any sign of Jess.

  THE CEREMONY ENDED four long hours later, and the football field was packed with smiling new graduates searching for their families, and their families scouring the crammed field looking for them.

  I finally found my mother. Franklin was standing beside her with a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand and big smile on his face.

  “Where’d those come from?” I asked.

  “I hid them in the trunk.” Franklin handed me the flowers and gave me a hug. “Congratulations, sweetheart.”

  “I’m so proud of you my baby.” My mother pulled me into her arms. She kissed my cheek. “This is such a big deal. I’m so proud.”

  My mother had Franklin take a picture of the two of us, and then she took a picture of Franklin and me. She then asked a man standing nearby to take a picture of all three of us.

  I watched as my classmates shared similar scenes with their own families. Hugs and kisses, and flowers and balloons were passed around in almost every family huddle. I took a couple moments to reflect on what Franklin had said about this day being the last time my classmates and I would all be together, and maybe I felt a little nostalgic even though I couldn’t stand to walk the same halls with most of them.

  The one person I did want to see wasn’t there. Abbey’s absence that night was immense. My mother and Franklin and I were supposed to go to the restaurant right after leaving the ceremony, but I hoped to talk my mother into stopping home so I could make a quick phone call to Abbey. Maybe I would be able to change her mind about joining us for dinner.

  I scanned the field in search for Jess, but it was impossible to find her amid the crowds of people. Jess and I had planned on hooking up to take pictures after the ceremony, but neither one of us had anticipated how chaotic the reception would be.

  In my search for Jess, I ran into Matt and Kirk. Neither of them had seen Jess. Between five hundred graduates and all their family, I knew chances were slim I’d find her. My mom insisted on taking a picture of me with my friends.

  After the picture, the guys pulled me to the side.

  “I heard about Abbey.” Matt’s long black hair was pulled into a neat ponytail underneath his cap. “That’s fucked up, man. Is she okay? Is she here?”

  “Nah, she didn’t want to come,” I said.

  “I don’t fucking blame her,” Kirk said.

  “Steve Hansen’s having some people over tonight,” Matt said. “You, Ab, and Jess should stop by if you’re not doing anything, especially Abbey. My bro gave me some good shit for my graduation present. One hit and Abbey won’t give a fuck about any of this shit. I guarantee it.”

  I glanced back at my mom and Franklin, but they were absorbed into the crowd, and I was sure they didn’t hear any part of our conversation.

  “I’ll let you know,” I told him. “Hey, if you see Jess, tell her I’m looking for her. Okay?”

  “All right. Catch you later,” Kirk said.

  Matt and Kirk would be going to the same community college Abbey was. For some bizarre reason it was comforting to know Abbey would at least have Matt and Kirk here with her. They acted like morons most of the time, but they meant well.

  “Come on, honey. We need to get going if we’re gonna make our reservations.” My mother tugged at my arm.

  With one last glance around the crowd, I followed Franklin and my mother to the car.

  “I LOOKED FOR you, but I couldn’t find you. I took a picture with Matt and Kirk, but I really wanted a picture with you.” I turned onto my side and readjusted the phone against my ear.

  “I did too,” Jess said. “I’m sorry. It was so damn crowded and then my English teacher, Mrs. Bannister, talked my parents’ ears off about college and other stuff, I couldn’t get away.”

  “You’re such a teacher’s pet. Was she going on about how smart you are and how she’ll miss having a student as attentive as you in her class?”

  Jess laughed. “Stop it. Mrs. Bannister and I share a love for the written word. That’s all.”

  “I bet she’d flip if she found out we were together. Not just because of the whole gay thing, rather because of the whole my being a big dip shit thing. She’ll want you to do better. Your parents probably will too once they meet me.”

  “Hey, where the heck is this coming from? No one thinks you’re a dip shit. And once my parents see how much you love me and how good you are to me, they’ll know there’s no one better for me.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so. Besides, you’re going to college, too. You act like you’re some loser who’s just gonna sit around here and do nothing.”

  “I’m going to a state school that I just barely got in. You’re going to Vanderbilt.”

  “Stop knocking yourself down. You’re a better person than you give yourself credit for. You’re a great girlfriend and an extremely loyal friend. Which reminds me, did you talk to Abbey today?”

  “No. We stopped home before going to dinner. I called her to come with us, but she didn’t answer. She couldn’t have still been with her mother. Maybe I should head there later.”

  “You think that’s such a good idea?” Jess asked.

  “Why not?”

  “Abbey just saw her mom today. Maybe she was home when you called, but she didn’t answer because she wants to be left alone. This is what
I mean when I tell you you’re a better person than you even know. You want so badly to help your friend through this. And I get it. But you’re losing sight of what Abbey wants. Abbey isn’t shy to tell you when she needs you. Don’t crowd her. Give her space if she needs space. All you can do is offer your help. Let her decide if she wants to take it.”

  “You’re telling me to step off.”

  “Baby, I’m telling you to let Abbey lead this one. Give her tonight if she needs tonight. You can go there tomorrow.”

  I sighed. “But I really want to go there tonight. Just to see that she’s okay, or at least as okay as she can be during all this.”

  “You care so much about her and I love that, but I really think you should leave her be tonight. See her tomorrow.”

  I considered what Jess was saying and maybe she was right. I had to accept that Abbey wanted to deal with this on her own.

  I fell asleep that night without going to my best friend’s house.

  I JERKED FROM my sleep while the phone was still buzzing its first high-piercing ring. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It read 4:17 a.m. I knew something was wrong.

  The second ring was abruptly broken up, and my mother’s muffled voice carried into my room. I was already sitting upright in my bed when my bedroom door squeaked open, and my mother’s slight figure appeared as a shadow near my door.

  “Lyssa? You up?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong?” My voice was no louder than a whisper.

  My mother made her way into the dark room. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face, but her movement was stiff and hesitant.

  She turned on the lamp and sat down beside me. Her face was pale and she let out short, shallow breaths. It seemed difficult for her to look me in the eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  My mother looked at me with pain in her eyes. “Lyssa . . .” She smoothed her hand gently across my arm. “Abbey’s dead.”

  I took in her words without an ounce of denial. The reality of what my mother had told me was instant.

  My best friend was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three Days Later

  I DROVE MY mother’s car into the driveway, tears pouring out of me, blurring my vision so bad I almost drove the car straight into the garage door. I regained my composure and slammed on the brakes just in time before any damage could be done to the garage, the car, or me.

  I opened the door and stumbled out of the vehicle the way I’d seen drunken people in movies stagger out of cars. My legs didn’t move the way they used to. The last fifteen minutes of my life replayed in my head and those girls in the post office, especially the blonde, reading about Abbey’s death and making their ugly comments.

  I lost every sensation in my body and latched onto a thick branch hanging from a tree in my front yard before I fell on my face. I settled myself against it and enjoyed the brief reprieve from feeling as though I was going to fall.

  As I clung to the branch, I remembered as children Abbey and I climbing up and down the sturdy tree and across the strong limbs. We’d pretend to be firemen scaling the outside of a burning building, saving as many people as we could.

  I’d scramble to the highest branch I thought could safely hold us and lift Abbey’s petite body onto my back and climb down with her legs wrapped around my waist. Sometimes, she’d hold onto me so tight she’d practically strangle me.

  “Why can’t I ever play the fireman?” Abbey had asked one day.

  “Because you’re too small. You can’t carry me on your back,” I’d answered.

  “I could pretend to. Just like I pretend that you lift me all by yourself.”

  “What are you talking about? I do lift you all by myself.”

  She shook her head with strong defiance. “Sometimes I help you. I push off the branch with my foot.”

  “No you don’t,” I’d argued. “I lift you on my own.”

  “I help. You might be strong, but you’re not that strong,” she’d said.

  As I stood clinging to the tree, I remembered that day and how embarrassed I’d felt when it was revealed that my best friend had let me believe I was stronger than I actually was. Proud of my strength, I had spent hours flexing in front of a mirror while imagining real-life scenarios of me saving people from their imminent death.

  I had been so confident in my ability, but in one instant, Abbey had taken that away from me. I pushed myself off the branch and steadied myself on my now functioning legs. I wiped the tears off my face before heading into the house.

  I opened the front door and was relieved to hear the sound of the shower running. I was sure my mother would take one look at my face and know something awful had happened. I headed straight to my room, without the package I had gone to the post office for, and locked the door behind me. I called Jess and told her about the girls in the post office and their insufferable conversation.

  “They talked about Abbey’s death like it was nothing,” I cried into the phone. “Nothing but something to talk about, something to . . . to . . . entertain themselves for a little while.”

  “I’m so sorry you had to hear that. Are you okay? Want me to come over?”

  “No, I’m fine. But their words were so cruel. So cold. I just stood there, staring at them, and then finally, I left. When I got home I almost fucking lost it. I was crying so much. I hung onto a tree for support and then a memory popped in my head about Abbey, me, and the tree. We used to play firemen, and I’d pick her up and climb down the tree with her on my back, saving her. Then she told me later that she was helping me lift her all those times. I had felt betrayed that she let me believe I was so stronger than I really was. Maybe that was the same kind of betrayal Abbey felt when I let her believe I was straight all those years because I didn’t trust her enough to tell her I was gay.”

  “Please, you have got to stop blaming yourself. Abbey didn’t throw herself in front of a train because you didn’t tell her you were a lesbian. Her father left her to be with the family he started with another woman. He didn’t even say goodbye to her. And her mother, well, she was never really a mother.”

  I turned onto my back, lying on my bed. The tears in my eyes and on my face had dried. “I never told you about this place Abbey and I used to go to one summer, years back. We called it our Hideout. We met a boy there. He was in high school. His name was Derek, and he was a good guy. He was our friend, and he killed himself on the train tracks that cut through our Hideout.” I paused, took a breath, but Jess remained silent. “Abbey killed herself on those same tracks.”

  “Oh my God,” Jess softly breathed out.

  “We were there the day they found him. Watched his body wheeled out to the ambulance on a stretcher. I didn’t know until the stretcher was being lifted into the truck that it was Derek. Not until I saw his shoes.” I paused. “Abbey used to ask me what I thought being hit by a train felt like. I hated when she asked me those questions cuz I didn’t want to imagine it. I don’t know how a person could stand on train tracks and hear the train coming, feel the train coming, and not move . . . Have you ever stood close to a track while a train races by?”

  Jess remained silent.

  “The ground vibrates and the trees around you shake. Your entire body trembles and you feel your heart pounding against your chest in excitement because it’s all so loud and the train is so powerful. It was thrilling and petrifying at the same time, and I loved every second of it . . . but the train I used to love killed two of my friends. And I don’t want to imagine the pain they must have felt the moment it happened, but that’s all I think about. Every time I close my damn eyes I see a train roaring down tracks with Abbey standing right in the middle of them . . . and I don’t want to envision that kind of pain.”

  Jess made a muffled sound and I was sure she was crying.

  “I can’t be certain now that she wasn’t already thinking about doing this, even back then,” I said. “I don’t rem
ember a time when Abbey was completely happy, except maybe the days spent at our Hideout, hanging out with Derek. I haven’t stepped foot in that place since that summer when I was eleven years old. I know what I have to do. I have to go back our Hideout.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I have to. It just came to me suddenly, this urge. And I know that’s what I need to do.”

  “You can go so soon after her death?”

  “I have to. Can I tell my mom I’m gonna be at your house tomorrow night?”

  Jess groaned nervously into the phone. “I don’t like this. You going out there alone. Why do you have to do this?”

  “Because I do. Give me one night. Please.”

  “You want to go to a place where two of your friends died and that scares me . . . it scares me a lot.”

  “I’ve been avoiding that place far too long. But it’s always held a piece of me, more so now since it’s where Abbey took her last breath.”

  “Okay,” Jess said softly. “Do what you have to do, but call me when you’re done doing it.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “And, Lyssa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for not hating me for telling you that night to leave Abbey be when you wanted to go to her.” Jess cried harder, but she talked through her tears. “I’ve been beating myself up about this. You wanted to go to her, but I talked you out of it. Maybe you could have stopped her, and I . . .”

  I closed my eyes and fought back my own tears. Maybe for a moment, when I first learned Abbey was dead, I had hated Jess for keeping me away from her that night. But even in the midst of my most vulnerable, heartbreaking moments I hadn’t lost all of my sense of reality. I realized this was what Abbey wanted. Even if I’d gone to her that night, I don’t know how I could have stopped her from doing something I had no idea she was planning on doing.