One of the Guys

by Lisa Aldin

  “Hi, Dad,” I say, kneeling on the frozen ground. I pull the hood of my coat over my ears. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  Sometimes I wait for the stone to speak back to me, for a low hum or whisper, anything, but not even the wind humors me. It’s a stark quiet around here, as if sound’s forbidden. I lean forward and read his name again and again. I hope the letters will somehow morph into someone else’s and this could all be a bad dream. Like maybe he’ll walk up behind me, tell me to come home, that it’s late, and he’ll throw his arm over my shoulder. We’ll laugh about our bad dreams because that’s all it ever was—what happened to him, what happened to me, what happened to our family. A bad dream.

  I wipe my nose on my sleeve, surprised to find hot tears on my skin. I thought I had mastered the art of keeping them away. I examine the rows of Tweety Bird stickers in the notebook. They’re starting to fade, the once-bright yellow bird now sickly. There must be at least a hundred of them, lined up page after page, the cartoon bird smiling and then scowling and then wearing glasses, the stickers all various shapes and sizes.

  Abruptly, they stop. Blank pages follow. I got too big for them, I guess. If I’d let him, Dad would have kept handing them out for every little thing I did, probably forever.

  I sit like that for some time, the stickers on my lap, trying to remember why I earned each one, and then I hear crunching gravel. A pair of headlights appear on the horizon. A car moves steadily down the road. I close the notebook and stand.

  “Dad, I hope you can see me,” I whisper to the tombstone. “I hope you can see everything. I hope you can know the new me. And all the new mes to come. Because I don’t want to stay the same forever, Dad. I want to be a girl with painted nails. A girl who can wear a skirt now and then. Well, maybe.” I chuckle. “I want to be the college girl. The brave girl. The scared girl. The businesswoman. The engineer. The teacher. The nurse. The doctor. When we meet again—and I know we’ll meet again—I hope you can still recognize your little tomboy with the skinned knees.”

  The car parks in the small lot to the right. A figure steps out and walks swiftly along the foot path toward me. I step behind a tree to hide—a strange instinct, but a part of me wonders if this is the mysterious visitor to my father’s grave. The one who leaves a new bandana now and then.

  I watch the tall figure navigate the foot path, half-jogging, and stop at Dad’s tombstone. The clouds move, allowing the moonlight to push through for a moment, shining on the boy standing there. The boy with the scruffy chin and the wide jaw and the buzz-cut. He’s wearing a suit, his tie loose and crooked.

  I watch him set a red bandana on the ground. He stands for several minutes, his head bowed. And then Micah looks up and walks away. I don’t move until his Honda vanishes into the darkness.

  He and my dad got along well. We hadn’t reached the age for romantic entanglements yet, so Micah was just the boy next door. But I didn’t expect this—his special visits to my father.

  A feeling—a strange, full, lovely feeling—balloons inside my chest and spreads. It’s a feeling I can’t shake on the drive back, no matter how loud I play country music. Micah. Of course he visits my dad. Even though we’re not talking right now. I take the long way home and cruise along the lake. I glance over now and then, half-expecting to see Champ splashing in the water, his black tail whipping about. He must be so lonely down there. Especially tonight.

  Maybe change doesn’t have to mean growing apart. Maybe it can mean growing closer. I won’t know unless I let Micah see the part of myself I keep hidden. Emma’s right.

  I gotta talk to him.

  When I pull into my driveway, I see him sitting on the front porch. My heart pounds. Maybe he has the same idea I do tonight. I slam the car into park and jump out, breathless and excited. Man, I’ve missed him.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to hide my smile. I don’t want to appear over eager.

  I stop when Cowboy appears around the corner. Something’s not right. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “It’s Ollie,” Cowboy says, fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket. He looks to Micah, who stands with his beautiful face scrunched and serious. “He’s in trouble.”

  twenty-five

  I SINK INTO THE WORN LEATHER OF the Honda’s passenger seat and reach for the loose thread near my knee. Nervously, I pull at it. It feels different without Ollie here. Heat from the vents blasts my cheeks, and I pull my coat sleeves over my cold hands, watching the night through the window. I ignore my pale reflection in the glass.

  “Before his phone cut off, he said he was somewhere on Lake Road,” Micah says. “We’ll start looking there. Keep an eye on your phone in case he calls.”

  My phone rests in my lap, but I’m still not sure how I can help the situation—whatever that may be, exactly. I’m here though. All I know is that Ollie called Cowboy about thirty minutes ago, desperate for a ride home, and Cowboy recruited Micah as back-up.

  As we drive along the shore, the headlights punch the surface of the lake. There’s so much I want to say to Micah, I need to say, but I don’t. Not with Cowboy here, silently watching. Cowboy’s quiet nature never bothered me before, but tonight his presence feels loud and obvious. Micah sniffs, groans, and pulls a tissue from his pocket to wipe his bright red nose.

  I look at him, tugging at the seat thread. “You’re not taking care of yourself.”

  “It’s a cold.” He shrugs. “It’s nothing.”

  “In two days, you’ll be imitating a corpse in your bedroom,” I say. His jacket is wrinkled, his tie loose. Dark circles rest under his tired eyes.

  He flips on the radio. The volume, as always, is stuck on low, but a Keith Urban song plays. He doesn’t change the station, and I know that he’s playing the radio for me tonight. He sniffles. “You can’t predict the future,” he says.

  “I can predict yours.” I lean back. Glance at him. “It’s a gift.”

  He suppresses a smile. “Or a curse.”

  I shrug. “Or both.” Maybe the way I feel about him is a gift and a curse. A gift because of the butterflies and whatnot and a curse because it means everything will change. Not just with us. Like Ollie implied, what happened with Micah and I affects the whole group.

  All of a sudden, he blurts out, “I wasn’t making fun of you about the dancing at the cabin, Toni. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth. I was asking for some advice. That’s the only reason I said anything about it.”

  I stare at the stick-figure I drew on my cast, my eyes shifting to his words below the drawing. I look at those words more than I care to admit. It feels nice, sitting beside him, almost like old times, except that everything beneath the surface is different. Like we’re hiding a lake monster of our own beneath polite words and nervous gestures and childhood nicknames.

  “Can we just focus on finding Ollie?” Cowboy asks. “He sounded drunk or something.”

  Micah coughs and slams on the brakes, jolting me forward. The car screeches to a halt. The seatbelt digs into my skin.

  “Dude!” Cowboy yells, waving his arms.

  “Sorry about that, but I think that’s him.” Micah points at something in the distance.

  I squint through the windshield. Someone waves near the water, dancing in the headlights. A boy with curly black hair. A boy with something red smeared across his face.

  “Oh my God.” I get out of the car. Cowboy follows and runs ahead of me. Micah climbs out but keeps the car running. The headlights shine across the road.

  Ollie stumbles toward us. He halts when he sees me and shouts, “What the hell, Cowboy? I told you to come alone!”

  “I didn’t bring her,” Cowboy says, shaking his head. “Loch did. Dude, what happened to you?”

  Ollie’s injuries come into focus. Dried blood decorates his nose, and his right eye is swollen shut. A large gash slices through his eyebrow. His dirt-smeared shirt flaps in the wind, and his black pants are spotted with more blood.

  “What the he
ll happened?” I ask, my gut twisting. Poor Ollie.

  Ollie snorts. “What does it look like? I got my ass kicked.”

  “By who?” How did Ollie end up stranded in the middle of the night, beaten to a pulp, when he’s supposed to be working for Lemon tonight? Maybe he pissed off the wrong person with a snarky comment or something, but I fear this has something to do with the job. Which means this is my fault.

  Ollie looks at Cowboy and then Micah. “I don’t want her here, guys. She’ll tell Emma. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Let’s get out here,” Cowboy says, ruffling his hair.

  I slide off my coat and hand it to Ollie, but he stares at it like it’s a bomb. “It should fit you,” I say. “Come on.”

  Micah adds, “Take it, man. You’re turning blue.”

  Ollie yanks the coat from my hand and wraps it tightly around his bruised body. He leans on the guys and limps to the car while I walk behind them. A few minutes later, we’re all back in the car. The heat blasts. Ollie sits in the back behind me, his head resting against the window. He doesn’t kick my seat. He’s very, very still.

  Cowboy sighs. “Who did this?”

  “I don’t know,” Ollie says.

  “You must’ve seen something?” I tread carefully.

  Ollie runs his battered hand through his curls. “One second I was sitting in my car, waiting for Lemon to leave her girlfriend’s house so I could take her home, and the next thing I know some guy is beating the shit out of me on the road. He stuffed me into the trunk of a car that smelled like fish and then dumped me here. He wrecked my cell phone, too.”

  “We should go to the cops,” Cowboy suggests.

  “No!” Ollie protests. “No way my parents will let me go to Colorado if they know about this.”

  “They might notice the broken nose,” I add, turning around in my seat. “And that cut above your eye looks disgusting. A trip to the hospital isn’t a bad idea either.”

  “Thank you for the unsolicited advice,” Ollie snaps. “Take me home. That’s all I need.”

  Micah and I exchange a look. What else can we do? He shifts the car into drive and pulls onto the road. We head toward Ollie’s house in silence.

  Ollie doesn’t keep quiet for long. “I want to be paid extra for this,” he says. “This is an occupational hazard.” I glance in the rearview mirror to see Ollie dab at his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, but the bleeding seems to have stopped.

  “It’s a dangerous business,” Cowboy adds.

  I wave my broken arm. “I know all about dangerous, thank you.”

  “We don’t know if this incident is related to the job,” Micah says. He turns away from me and coughs into his hand.

  “Please!” Ollie cries. “The job is to lie! Maybe someone found out the truth! All I know is that this is the first time someone has punched me for no damn reason at all!”

  “I’ll talk to Lemon,” I interject, tugging at the loose thread in the seat. “I’ll figure this out.”

  “I can’t do this anymore.” Ollie shakes his head. “I quit, okay?”

  I turn around. “What?”

  Ollie wipes dried blood from his nose. “Cowboy was right to get out early. Do you have any idea how bat-shit crazy these Winston girls are?”

  “They are pretty crazy,” Cowboy says.

  My cheeks burn. “Winston girls aren’t crazy. They’re just people. They need a break every now and then. Like everybody else.”

  Ollie laughs. “Like I said. Crazy. And you’re one of them now.”

  “SO WHAT?” I scream. “I’M PROUD TO BE ONE OF THEM!” I point at him. “You know what? You’re fired, Ollie!”

  “You can’t fire me!” he spits. “I already quit!”

  Micah slams on the brakes, and we all slide forward. This time, I am semi-prepared, but Ollie smacks his nose against the back of my seat and cries out, “What the hell, Loch?”

  “Toni’s just trying to help us, man,” he says.

  Ollie pauses. He goes in for the kill. “She’s going to Purdue next year. She tell you that? You two tell each other everything, right? You lovebirds—”

  “Will you just shut up for once in your life?” I ask, my heart thumping. I tug harder at the thread. It pops off, loose in my palm. I stare at it to avoid looking at Micah. Emma told Ollie about my decision. I’m leaving Vermont next year. He knows, and I wasn’t the one to tell him. I waited too long.

  After a few moments, I find the courage to look over at Micah. He studies the steering wheel and scratches his red nose. I drop the thread to the floor. “Micah—”

  Ollie throws open the door and stumbles out of the car. We aren’t far from his house, but he’s in bad shape.

  “Someone should go after him,” Cowboy says. He taps my shoulder, as if I should be the volunteer.

  “Um, he hates me,” I say. “You go.”

  “This has gotta stop,” Cowboy says. “Go, Toni. Work it out.”

  Ugh. I climb out of the car and catch up to Ollie. Before I reach him, he says, “Back off, McRib. I’m serious.”

  I fall back a few steps, but I follow. Behind us, the Honda creeps along, the headlights illuminating Ollie’s bruised face. Man, he looks awful.

  “I’m sorry I got you in trouble with your parents,” I call after him. “I’m sorry you can’t go to Colorado. I’m sorry about whatever happened to you tonight.”

  Ollie just keeps walking. Limping. I continue to follow but stay several steps behind. I stop at the end of Ollie’s driveway. When he reaches his front door, he goes inside without so much as a wave. I’ll probably never see my coat again. Well, so much for working this out.

  I get back in the car and close my eyes and pretend. I pretend I’m a ten-year-old girl dribbling a basketball down the center of a road. Pretty houses with emerald lawns border my path. A lake shimmers in the distance. Beneath the surface, a lake monster lurks. I’m surrounded by my three best friends. Boys who protect me. Boys who make me laugh. Boys who challenge me. Boys who make me feel big.

  Moments are fossils. I dust them off. I keep them in my pocket.

  I turn to Micah. “Are you done, too? Because I understand. If you are.”

  Of course we’re talking about something larger than Rent-a-Gent. This is the conversation hidden beneath insults and bloody noses, beneath basketball games and monster movies. I wonder what Mrs. Kemper would advise here. Is honesty the best policy?

  Micah lets out a huge sneeze and blows his nose. He keeps driving, silent. When we get to Cowboy’s house, Cowboy opens the back door and says, “Well, this has been an interesting Valentine’s Day.”

  I turn around. “Hey, Cowboy.”

  He pauses, halfway out the door. “Yeah?”

  “You should ask Katie Morris to prom,” I say. “Just ask, dude. You don’t need money to win her over. Just be honest. Be yourself. Be a person. Next year, everything could be different and you may always wonder about her. Just say hello. Start there.”

  Cowboy stares at me blankly and then blinks a few times. His face turns red. He opens his mouth to say something, but then climbs out of the car and jogs to his front porch. I guess my advice isn’t that valuable. At this point, I probably wouldn’t listen to me either.

  We pull into Micah’s driveway, both of us quiet. I climb out of the car, weak in the knees. Maybe it’s the excitement of the night, my anger, or maybe this feeling stems from something else entirely. He gets out and sets his keys on the hood of the car and slides out of his suit jacket.

  “I got my job back,” he says, his voice scratchy, “but I’m not done.” He hands me the suit jacket. “Here. You must be freezing.”

  I curl my hands into the vanilla-scented sleeves. “Thanks.”

  It’s time to go inside, time to begin the transition into a new day, but I can’t bring myself to move from his driveway. The basketball hoop looms above us. This is what I wanted, to be alone with him, but now it feels strange.

  He smiles. “This has been qu
ite the violent Valentine’s Day.”

  “My Bloody Valentine would be an appropriate movie choice for the evening.” It sounds like an invitation, and it is. I want him to come to my room and curl up with me, but his feet don’t move. The pause between words is torture. He coughs and sneezes and wipes his nose. On second thought, he should rest. Maybe this isn’t the best time for this conversation.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” he says, scratching his nose. “On Purdue. That’s great. Your dad would be psyched.”

  “Thank you. I…” I should explain, but I don’t know how. I changed our plan without consulting him. I wish space didn’t exist so everything could be in one place and we wouldn’t have to separate.

  “Good night, Toni Valentine.” Micah sniffles and walks away, sliding his hands into his pockets. A sharp, clear thought races through my mind. A thought swimming inside my head for weeks, months, maybe even years. A terrifying, distorted, illogical, lovely, wonderful, vibrating thought.

  I’m in love with my best friend. I’m in love with Micah Garry. SHIT.

  twenty-six

  THE FOOD COURT IS LOUD, HOT, and reeks of French fries. How I loathe the mall. A cluster of colorful bags with tissue sticking out the top fall over Emma’s feet and Lemon’s pink high heels. I have no idea how she walks in those things without breaking an ankle. Unlike my friends, I have just spent the last three hours pretending to inspect overpriced shoes while trying to convince myself that my recent revelation is a mistake. A side effect of some sort.

  I can’t be in love with Micah Garry. I’m leaving for college in the fall. Long-distance relationships don’t work. Assuming Micah shares the same feelings, which, let’s face it, he probably doesn’t. I’m like Ben Mayhew, pining for someone who will never want me.

  Lemon folds her hands in prayer-like fashion and says, “I’m sorry, Toni. I’m an idiot. No. I’m a moron.”

  In her maternal way, Emma pats Lemon on the back. “You couldn’t have known this would happen.”

  Lemon smooths the ends of her black bob. “But I should’ve been more careful. Me and my big mouth.”