by L. E. Flynn
He tilts his head up to the sky and laughs, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. “I’m starting over. Everything over. Toby did it, he rolled on, so now it’s my turn.”
“You’re going to disappear.” I can barely choke out the words.
“No,” he says. “Not like he did. But I’m not living in his shadow forever either. I’m done. Just like I told you at the party. Remember?”
Now he’s looking right into my eyes, and I do remember, of course I remember. At the party, when he banged his head against the glass kitchen table and told me to fix him, to fix his whole life. It doesn’t have to be so hard, I said. I swear I won’t let you unravel.
I don’t even know if I believed the words myself when I said them. They were drunken, not properly formed, spewed out like candy from a dispenser, and it was advice I wasn’t even following myself. I didn’t know how to live my own life. I had lived Mom’s version of it and Jenny’s version and Trixie’s version, but never my own.
“So what are you going to do?” I whisper.
“I’m going to get clean. And I’m not going to school here next year. I want to be surrounded by buildings on all sides. I don’t want to be able to see the ocean, no matter how high up I get. And no more football.”
No more Jenny, I wait for him to say, but he doesn’t.
“So you’re leaving everything behind,” I say.
He says nothing. I watch the wind ruffle his hair.
“Not everything. You can never leave everything.”
I’m about to ask him something, but then he kisses me, softer, like he always did when it happened in my head, and I don’t remember what I could possibly have to say.
77
I WANDERED AROUND the party. I wanted to call you but I couldn’t find my purse, couldn’t remember where I left it. The rooms in Alison’s house were mostly empty. There were a couple people passed out in the upstairs bedrooms, one on the carpet in her dad’s office, mouth wide open, probably drooling. Alison’s dad was going to be pissed.
“Trixie,” I kept saying, over and over. “Where are you, Trixie?”
She never answered.
I found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table, trying to pour tequila into a shot glass. He was doing a crappy job of it, sloshing the liquid all over the surface of the glass kitchen table.
“Hey,” I said. It was the first time I had struck up a conversation with him in so long. But I wasn’t shy anymore. I was bold, fueled by all those drinks Trixie had fed me. “Hey” felt so good that I wanted to say more, wondered why I had waited so long.
He didn’t look up, not at first. Not until I sat down beside him and took the bottle out of his hand. Our fingers brushed, just a bit, just enough for an electric current to run through my whole body.
“Let me do that for you,” I said. And somehow I managed to pour a perfect shot, which made him smile. I silently thanked Trixie, because after a summer of mixing our own drinks, I finally managed to look cool at just the right time.
He didn’t thank me. Just kept grinning like an idiot. He drank that shot and wanted another one, and then I took the shot glass and poured one for myself. It stung my throat on the way down, but he looked at me with admiration, so I poured myself another one. The second time, it didn’t sting so badly.
“Usually girls need salt and limes and shit.” He leaned onto the table. His elbow, on the glass, was bright red.
I shook my head. My hair was a heavy weight and I hoped it still looked okay, that the curls hadn’t fallen flat. “Lemons,” I said, passing a shot back to him.
After two, three, (four?) more shots, the chair was too high for me. I was dizzy, weightless, effortless, like I might float away. So I sat down on the kitchen floor. It was cold down there and the tile bit into my legs. I noticed that my dress had ridden up and I was yanked back to reality, the unfair reality where I was bigger than I wanted to be and alone in the house of someone who didn’t even want me there.
But I wasn’t alone, because he joined me on the floor, rubbed his forehead with his hand and started muttering under his breath, some kind of drunken incantation.
“My friend ditched me,” I felt obligated to say, and then I wished I could unsay them because they made me sound like a total loser.
He pulled his hat down over his face and rested his head on his knees and said nothing. I thought he was asleep for a minute, passed out like that guy in Alison’s dad’s study. But then he nudged my knee with his denim-clad one. “I’m glad your friend ditched you.”
Wherever Trixie was, I said another silent thank-you. Thank you for ditching me. Thank you for disappearing.
I had no idea what I was really thanking her for.
78
BY THE TIME I get back to Cabana Del Shit to pick up my order, I’m in a daze. I walk up to the bar feeling like I just came out of a dream, or a nightmare. Beau staggered away after he kissed me, but he looked back like he was really seeing me, and it was enough to make me feel like I had seen a ghost—the ghost of the old Beau, the one I knew was still in there. I jump when a hand touches my shoulder, thinking it might be him. But it’s not.
“Where were you?” Jasper says, his voice sharp. “I went by your house and you weren’t there. I thought we would do something tonight.”
“I was here. I-I took a walk,” I stammer. “I just went to the beach to get some air. I didn’t even think we had plans tonight.”
“You’re my girlfriend,” he says, leaning into the bar. “I didn’t know I needed plans to see you.”
Skylar raises an eyebrow as she hands me the takeout bag. I notice the look she gives me, the intake of breath and the unspoken I told you so. I walk to my car with the bag and Jasper follows me.
“Are you seeing someone else?” He grabs the bag from my hand. “Because you’re not acting like yourself.”
I put my fingers to my lips and remember the taste of Beau’s kiss there, the way his mouth felt on mine. I think of what he just told me, roll the words around. I’m starting over. I’m done. Then I remember how easily his promises are broken.
“No,” I say. “I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Jasper puts the bag on the ground and wraps his arms around me, running his fingers down my back. My shoulder is pressed into his chest and I can feel his heart beating hard and fast, his blood pumping like that for me, because he’s afraid of losing me. I wonder if Skylar is watching us from inside the restaurant, if she’s rolling her eyes again, if she’s genuinely afraid for my safety. I wonder where Beau is now, how he became the Preacher in the first place. I want to tell Jasper because we’re in this together, but I don’t really think we are anymore, so I don’t say a word.
I hug Jasper back, limply, because he’s here and because I know he won’t leave me. But there’s something different in our embrace, something cold. Because I don’t know what will happen if I try to leave him, and part of me is scared to find out.
79
DAYS BLUR INTO weeks and I’m a robot going through the motions, taking notes and writing tests and being Jasper’s girlfriend. I sit in front of Beau in class every morning, trying to forget about our kiss and that he’s the Preacher and that the search for Trixie and Toby has no more leads, no more bread crumbs at all. The path is clean, and everyone wants me to leave it that way.
Alison moved to the back of the classroom in astronomy, and sometimes I feel her eyes on me, like she’s watching me and knows what I’m thinking. Maybe she has noticed the elaborate hairstyles I’ve been trying lately. Braids and low buns and twists, and today there’s a fake white rose clip in the middle, just because I thought it might make him remember.
It needs a drink. It’s dying.
Today, she finds me after class when I’m shoving my books in my bag and clears her throat, and I’m sure she’s about to make some declaration, like Stay away from my best friend’s boyfriend or I know what you’re up to. But she just grins and claps her hands.
“I got i
n,” she says. “At NYU. Have you gotten your acceptance letter yet?”
Relief floods through me. I nod. “Yeah, a few weeks ago. Have you decided if you’re going?”
She leans against the desk beside me. “I don’t know for sure. But I think so. I need a change, you know? My parents want me to stay here and live at home, but I’m not living my life for them. I need to do my own thing.”
“What about Jenny?” I say, because I can’t help myself. “I figured you guys would be roommates.”
Alison crosses her arms. “What about Jenny? We talked about being roommates, doing the whole dorm room thing. Then she decided she was just going to move in with Beau, even though it’s a terrible idea. She wants to, like, have his babies and stuff. She wants to save the guy.” She blows out a breath and her bangs flop to the side of her face.
I wonder if she’s testing me, if she’s expecting me to have an opinion. Panic surges through me at the thought of Beau and Jenny in a cute little off-campus apartment. Jenny trying on white dresses. Jenny painting a nursery. That’s not going to happen. Not after what Beau told me at the beach, that he’s putting an end to all that. But how many times has he said something he didn’t mean?
“I’m just leaving the high-school drama behind,” Alison says. “You know? I’m over it. Time to move on.” She laughs. “I’m taking my shrink’s advice. She’s actually not as bad as I thought she’d be.”
She makes it sound so easy to detach, so simple to step out of everything that used to matter. Then I realize that it’s basically what I did last year when I chose Trixie. I detached. I disentangled. But I got myself tangled up in something even stickier, even harder to escape.
“Maybe we’ll see each other there,” Alison says, nudging my desk with her foot. “If I end up going. Who knows, maybe we’ll be in the same classes. We should grab a coffee or something.”
I nod. “We should. That would be fun.”
I watch her walk away, her hair swishing against her back, and promise myself that if I end up at NYU, I’ll keep that date. Maybe whatever friendship I had with Alison doesn’t have to end, but can change shape into something else.
80
“MARCH IS THE worst month when you’re a senior,” Mom says over breakfast the next week, pushing a bowl of granola toward me. “The end is so close, but yet so far away.”
Like you’d even know, I want to say. You had a baby when you were my age and weren’t even in school.
“Have you made your decision yet?” She cradles her hands around a giant mug of coffee. “You know, whatever you do, don’t base your choice on that boyfriend of yours. He’s a good kid, but you need to pick the school that’s best for you. The rest will fall into place.”
It’s easy for her to say. She doesn’t even go on dates anymore, not since the last guy she met online, who told her he was some big-shot investment banker when he really worked at Foot Locker. Mom’s life has been a series of men letting her down, starting with my dad. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be in love and want the other person to love you back badly enough to believe it’ll happen. But then again, that hasn’t exactly worked out for me.
“Not yet,” I say. “I’m still thinking.”
She’s right about one thing, though. March is the worst month, because March is Trixie’s birthday month. And even though she’s not here, by choice, even though I hate her for Beau and for Jasper and for not saying goodbye, I still miss her like crazy today. March fourth. Last year on Trixie’s birthday, we ended up going shopping. We went to the mall and got milkshakes in the food court, and I waited while she tried on clothes, wishing I could join her but being paralyzed by the fear of knowing what size I actually was.
I want to let March fourth pass me by. I want to pretend it’s not even happening, treat it just like any other day. But it refuses to pass like any other day. Every time I manage to forget about her, she comes back. She’s banging around in my head and doing jumping jacks in my stomach and waving her arms around like Hey, remember me?
To make things worse, when I get to school, Jasper completely ignores the fact that March fourth is not like every other day. Maybe he forgets it’s her birthday, but somehow I doubt that. The love, or whatever he felt, doesn’t just go away or heal up like a wound. Like the heart-shaped mark on my back, still pink after all these months.
“Are you mad at me?” he keeps asking, and I keep telling him no, because the truth is, I don’t know who I’m mad at. Maybe him, for being better at moving on than I am. Myself, for lying to everyone. Or her most of all.
When the final bell rings, I drive to the mall instead of going home, wandering aimlessly through stores. I close my eyes for a second and imagine she’s beside me, flinging through the racks, grabbing anything and everything, pushing clothes into my arms that I’d never wear in a million years. This would look great on you, Fi. This would bring out your eyes. You totally have the boobs for this. I wish I would look as good in that dress as you do. Because that was what Trixie did when I was with her. Made me feel special. Made me feel like a spotlight was shining down on me, even if she was the only one who could see it.
I stumble on the shirt by accident. It’s in the window, on a mannequin, accompanied by the same kind of tiny denim cutoffs Trixie lived in all summer.
JERSEY GIRL
If I try hard enough, I can picture her there, her arms poking out of the holes like they did that night. Her nude-colored bra and armful of bracelets covering silvery scars.
I walk into the store and tell the girl behind the counter that I want to buy the shirt off the mannequin. I tell her it has to be that one, that it’s a gift for a friend. She eyes me dubiously. I know what she’s thinking. You’re too big to wear this.
When I’m home, I fold up the shirt and put it in my top drawer, on top of all my summer clothes. It seems fitting, somehow. A friendship that doesn’t fit anymore. A friendship I used to think fit perfectly but was the wrong size the whole time.
81
YOU DIDN’T BOTHER to tell me it was your birthday. I never would have known if it wasn’t for your dad, who pulled into the driveway in his station wagon when we were on our way out your front door.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
“Where’s my birthday girl running off to?” he said, stepping out of the car and reaching back into the open window. He pulled on a shiny piece of ribbon and a comically large balloon came launching up to the front seat. It was almost too big to fit through the window.
I whipped my head to face Trixie. “It’s your birthday?”
She stared at the driveway. “I don’t like to make a big deal about it. It’s stupid. I was hoping to just pass it by this year.”
I was pissed off that she kept something like that from me, and mad at myself that I never asked when her birthday was. That seemed like something friends should do. Jenny and Alison and I made a huge deal over each other’s birthdays. There was always a cake and plastic tiaras and a gift that cost more than what we said we would spend. And I never got to do any of that for Trixie, because she didn’t give me the chance.
“Don’t go anywhere, your ice cream cake is melting,” her dad said, passing her the balloon string before lumbering back to the car.
She pinched the string between her fingers, then let it go on purpose. I jumped up in the air to try and catch the tip of the string, but it was too late. The balloon was already floating away, passing the roof of her house and the trees lining her street.
“I hate ice cream cake,” she whispered.
I tilted my head back and watched the balloon get smaller and smaller, until I couldn’t see it at all.
82
MOM IS GONE for most of March break, so I spend it with Jasper, in our own little world. I try to lose myself in him because it’s easy, and because I haven’t heard from Beau since that night at the wall. He still walks down the hallway holding hands with Jenny and still plays football and he still slept with Trixie a
nd I have no reason to believe anything he says.
“Do you believe everything happens for a reason?” I say to Jasper. “Like, even the really shitty things?”
His smile fades and his face is unreadable. “Yes. I actually do.”
I know what he’s probably thinking. Trixie disappeared and we both thought it was the worst thing ever, the worst thing that could happen, and it brought us together. He hugs me tighter, breathing into my hair.
But I’m not thinking the same thing. I’m thinking of something similar, equally selfish. Trixie getting me drunk at the party made me stay, made me talk to Beau, made him talk to me, made him trust me. Made him maybe, despite everything else, despite the fact that I’m not the same girl he looked up at the sky with, feel something for me again. Trixie would have hated that she brought us together when she wanted so badly to keep us apart.
“Where’d you go?” Jasper whispers. “You’re somewhere else.” His fingers trace a path down my back. I flinch as he puts the pad of his thumb over the heart-shaped mark on my back.
“What’s this from?”
“Nothing,” I say, pulling on my hoodie, but what I really mean is everything.
“Sometimes I feel like you go away,” he says, stroking the skin under my sweatshirt hem. “Like you’re a million miles away.”
My skin erupts in shivers where he touched. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’d tell me if you didn’t want to be with me,” he says, his lips grazing my neck lightly. “You wouldn’t fake it.”
I turn around to face him. “I don’t get where this is coming from. We’re always together. We’re in bed together right now.” I force myself to smile, even though it makes my cheeks hurt.
He lets out a shaky breath and looks sad, sad enough that I start feeling sorry for him. Of course he’s insecure. He’s probably afraid that I’m going to do the same thing to him that Trixie did. Leave.