by L. E. Flynn
I hang my head and avoid meeting her eyes. She’s all wrong. Who I am isn’t great, and I did change myself to become what someone else wanted. I’ve been doing it my whole life.
“I know this has been a rough year, losing Trixie. But I’m so proud of how you’ve come out of this even stronger.”
I haven’t, I want to scream. I can barely stand up on my own.
“You can talk to me about anything, you know,” she says. “I was such a follower in high school. I did whatever my friends were doing, even if it felt wrong for me. But you … you’ve made your own path.”
It’s a compliment I don’t deserve. The only path I’ve created this year is a trail full of dead ends to a girl I never knew in the first place.
The phone on Mom’s desk starts ringing, and she pecks me on the cheek before springing up to answer it, and then she’s all business again. She gives me a wink and a wave as I leave her office and shut the door behind me.
She’s right about one thing. I know both paths will sprout their own roots for me to trip over, and neither will be straight and simple. Then I remember what Jasper said at the motel after our search in Tijuana. If life were that easy, everyone would be in it.
Later, when I’m in my room, Mom knocks on my door. “I’m going to Denver tomorrow, sweetie. I’ll probably be gone a full week, or at least five days. But when I get back, I want to take you out to celebrate whatever choice you make.” She kisses me on the forehead, like she used to when I was a little kid. “Because I have faith that whatever you pick will be the right decision for you.”
I only wish I believed her.
88
YOU CAN’T PLAY spin the bottle with only two people. It kind of defeats the purpose of the game. Unless your game has a totally different purpose.
“It’s supposed to be a wine bottle,” he said, but he was grinning and his face was shiny and I had never seen anyone look that happy, not ever.
I stared at the label on the bottle I was holding. My vision was blurry and the words were swimming together, but there was a picture of fruit on it. Peaches. I put the bottle to my lips and took a long swig until there was nothing left but a sticky-sweet smell.
“This’ll work,” I said.
I spun the bottle first. The funny thing was, it didn’t even land on Beau. It pointed in the other direction, toward the laundry room.
It didn’t matter.
He pressed me onto my back, his lips landing hungrily on mine. His breath was hot and smelled like tequila and his hands were sloppy and everywhere. I felt a pinch in my back but ignored it because it didn’t matter. Maybe I was in a dream, the kind where you pinched yourself to see if it was real.
I fumbled with his belt buckle. I didn’t know what I was doing and half of me expected him to stop me. That same half waited for the guilt to creep in. I’m kissing Jenny’s boyfriend. Jenny’s boyfriend is on top of me. Jenny’s boyfriend has my breast in his hand.
It didn’t happen like I thought it would. It’s not like I had spent that much energy imagining my first time, but I thought it would at least be in a bed, maybe with soft music playing. Not on a floor, with the bass from the party still reverberating when I pressed my ear to the tile. I didn’t ask what would happen after because I knew that whatever answer I got would only be for tonight and would dissolve before tomorrow morning.
I expected it to hurt. When Alison lost her virginity to Brad Colton, she told me and Jenny with big serious eyes and a stern tone about how painful it was. But Beau nudged my legs apart and I pulled him down so that his heart was directly over mine, our ragged breathing in sync, and it didn’t hurt at all. Later, I wondered how we could be so careless about not using protection, and I promised myself next time would be different. If there was a next time.
When I sat up afterward and pulled the top of my dress back up, I saw the blood on the floor and realized that’s what the pinch in my back was from. I had cut myself open on a piece of amber-colored glass from the bottle Beau smashed. I pushed my index finger against the cut but it kept bleeding profusely.
Beau barely had his pants back on before he started to panic. “No,” he said, tripping over the bottom of his jeans and hitting a wall. “This isn’t how we were supposed to happen. This isn’t right.”
I wanted to cling on to what just happened, cleave to the Beau I just shared everything with. But that Beau unraveled. He started smacking his cheeks with his hands, gently at first, like he just wanted to wake up, then harder, so hard that he left red marks on his cheekbones.
I used my dress to wipe the blood off the floor. It was red anyway. “Nothing from tonight will matter ever again,” I consoled him. “This never happened.”
Then I made myself smile, even though I suddenly wanted to cry.
89
THE NEXT DAY, I wave at Mom through the window as she leaves, even though I woke up feeling nauseous and just wanted to stay in bed. This used to be my favorite month of the year. May, when everything is lush and the end of the school year is almost here. But this time it feels like everything is happening too fast and there’s no beginning or end, like the farther into the year we get, the more Trixie seems like she never existed at all. Her gestures, her mannerisms, her voice, everything that I used to hear so loudly is more like a whisper. Come back, I want to shout with my hands cupped around my mouth. Don’t leave me. Give me the chance to leave you.
The doorbell rings a few minutes later, when I’m on my way back upstairs, and I roll my eyes, thinking Mom forgot something as usual. Her wallet or her briefcase or the shoes she wanted to wear to her business dinner. But when I open the door, I’m face-to-face with Beau, standing on my porch with his crutches.
“Hi,” I say awkwardly, hating the fact that I’m wearing a huge pair of sweatpants and a ratty pajama top that says MEOW in big pink letters.
“We need to talk,” he says, hopping on his good leg. “Well, I need to talk. I’m just asking for you to listen.”
I nod and open the door wider. He eases himself in and sits right at the bottom of the staircase. I realize he has never been here before, and maybe it should be strange, having him in my foyer, but it’s not.
“You’re getting around okay on those things,” I say, sticking my slippered foot toward one of his crutches. A dull pain manifests in my abdomen, throbbing steadily, but I ignore it.
“Yeah,” he says with a laugh. “I could get used to this. Guys on crutches get special treatment.”
I sit down on the stairs beside him and he turns toward me, his face suddenly serious. “I can’t just let this happen anymore. You know, they were right. All those people in AA. I’m killing myself. And I think I wanted to die, because of how guilty I felt. Because it was all my fault.”
I suck in a breath. “You went to an AA meeting?”
He stares at the ground. “I wanted to ask you to come with me, but it’s not your battle. It’s not your demon.”
“I would have.”
“I know.” He reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls something out, a little square-shaped blob in a Ziploc bag. “I did something for you. I unburied it. Turns out, you can do that.”
I hold out my hand. It’s a book. The one he buried when I didn’t show up that night. The cover is brown and I can’t read the title and there aren’t pages, just crumbling mush. It’s barely a book at all anymore.
“It’s Lord Byron,” he says. “I know you read the one I asked you to hold onto that day, so I got you your own copy.”
I force myself to look up at him even though it’s the most scarily intimate thing, him seeing this much emotion on my face, even scarier than seeing my body without clothes on. But then I see that he’s blushing too. “How do you know I read it?”
“I watched you,” he says. “You stood at your locker and read it, and I stood there like some kind of creep. That’s when I really knew.” He pauses before I can ask him what he really knew. “Anyway, since it’s been underground for more than
a year, it’s pretty much just mulch. I’ll buy you a real copy. I just needed you to know that this one existed.”
I press my back into the stair behind me. I want to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that Toby would have run away no matter what. I want to tell him I forgive him for what he did with Trixie. I want to tell him that everything will be okay. But I don’t know that anything will be okay.
“I’m doing what you told me to do,” he says. “But after graduation, you’re not going to see me for a while. I’m sick of being this person. I’m sick of screwing everything up.” He hangs his head and pulls on the brim of his baseball cap. “I’m doing the actual rehab thing. You know, my dad thinks if you put your mind to it, you can fix anything by yourself. And maybe he can, but I can’t. I need help.”
I stretch my legs out. There’s a rip in the knee of my sweatpants and I fixate on the skin underneath. “That’s good.” I swallow a lump in my throat that feels like a rock and fold forward over my stomach, willing the ache to go away. “I know you’ll get better.”
He balls up his hands. “You know something? I’ve been drinking every single day since Toby left. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. And it’s made me so numb. And everyone just let it happen, except you. And I need to know why.” He stares up at me with watery blue eyes.
Because you know me. Because you care. Because you brought snow to Southern California. Because you can do the impossible.
“Because I let my best friend disappear,” I say. “And I couldn’t let you disappear too.”
He shifts over, planting his hands on the wall behind me, our faces almost touching. “I’m kind of excited, in this weird way. And I haven’t felt like that in a really long time. It’s like I’m seeing that light at the end of the tunnel that people always talk about.” He pauses. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, after rehab. Who I’ll be. It freaks me out, you know? Like, I won’t know the guy who comes out of there.”
“It’ll be good for you. You’ll still be you.”
“But I don’t want to be me,” he says sharply. “Not this version of me. Which is why nothing’s going to carry over. From this life. It’s all a reminder of the mess I made.”
I nod, feeling small and far away, like a speck of dust. I’m part of the mess he made and he doesn’t want me to carry over. You can’t have a fresh start when there’s a big stain soaking in on the surface.
“Except for you,” he practically whispers. “I don’t know what it is, why I feel like this around you.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t want me to be anyone but me. Like I can be myself without trying to be Toby too. It’s like, everyone’s adding weights around my ankles and you’ve got the key to cut them off.”
“So what are you trying to tell me?” I say, my voice shaking. “What are you saying?”
He stares up at the ceiling and I follow his gaze. I smile because there’s pink spray up there, and I realize it must be from last summer, when Trixie’s cream soda exploded everywhere. I’m glad I didn’t do a good job of cleaning up that mess, because now it’s a memory that doesn’t make me hate her.
“That first night we looked at the stars,” Beau says. “I knew you felt what I was feeling. But I didn’t know what to do with those feelings. You know?”
My heart pounds out an erratic rhythm. I do know.
“Well, that was the last time I ever felt totally peaceful. Like, everything had stopped and it was just you and me and those stars and that moment. That was the last time the world stood still.” He traces the shape of my face with his finger. “I wonder if we could go back to that.”
“But what happened at the party—what happened that night. You were so afraid of Jenny finding out. You said your life would be over.”
He moves his hand to my lips, his fingertips brushing them lightly. “I think my life was over after I cheated on her with you. I fucked it all up and let everyone down. Especially you. But it wasn’t over in the way I thought. I don’t know. I guess I’m different now than I was then. What I used to think was important somehow doesn’t matter at all. And everything I wasn’t looking for that I need is right in front of me.” He blinks repeatedly. “That sounds totally lame. But it’s true.”
“So how do I fit into all this? What do you want me to do?”
“I want a fresh start,” he says. “I want to do everything right. I just want it to be us looking at the sky, like none of the shit between then and now happened at all. And I know you’re seeing that other guy and I have no right to ask you not to see him, but I’m asking anyway.”
Tears sting my eyes. It’s everything I always wanted to hear, but now that it’s actually happening, it feels different, better and worse, more sticky and complicated than I ever thought was possible. “Why? Why me? I’m not who I used to be. I’m not the same girl.”
“You’re not who you used to be,” he says, twirling a piece of my hair around his finger. “Trixie changed you, just like she changed Toby. And me.” He pauses. “We’re not the same anymore, but I still feel the same about you.”
I don’t know how long we sit like that, staring at each other. “I’ll call you,” he eventually says. “I promise. If this works, if I make it out in one piece. And if you want to talk to me, you’ll answer. If you don’t want me in your life, I won’t bother you again.”
He’s saying everything I’ve always wanted to hear, but I’m not ready to hear it, to attach myself to the idea of Beau all over again. After a long pause, I tell him not what I think he wants to hear, but the truth.
“I need some time too. You put me through a lot. I need to figure out who I actually am, not who I am with another person. I think you understand.”
He nods. He does understand. He has been Beau the brother and Beau the boyfriend and Beau the football star, but never just Beau Hunter. I’ve been me with Jenny and Alison and me with Trixie, and now I need to find out who I am when I stand alone.
After I help him up and we say goodbye, I watch him walk down my driveway, pulling his hood up over his head. “I love you,” I say, even though he can’t hear me. Or maybe because he can’t hear me. And when I can’t see him anymore, when he’s fully out of sight, what he said hits me. And everything I wasn’t looking for that I need is right in front of me.
I run upstairs as fast as I can, pain shooting through the right side of my stomach. I open my dresser drawer with trembling hands and pull out the tank top I bought at the store.
JERSEY GIRL
I rummage around on my desk for my NYU acceptance letter. Underneath it, buried in the pile, is my letter from Princeton, folded up and stuck back in its manila envelope. I stare at the return address. New Jersey.
The tank top she wore to the party, the one the police found folded on top of her flip-flops on the beach. It was too big for her and I wondered why she chose it that night. She didn’t wear that shirt by accident. She didn’t leave a suicide note. She left a two-word map, a clue I failed to see, even though it was there the entire time, begging to be discovered. She left me a bread crumb after all.
I open my laptop and pull up Trixie’s email, my fingers hovering over the keys, terrified to hit the letters in case I’m wrong and this isn’t her password. Or in case I’m right, because the truth is, I’m scared of whatever there is to find.
j-e-r-s-e-y-g-i-r-l
The two seconds it takes for her inbox to open are agonizing. Then I see them, all of the messages.
I start from the beginning.
90
EMAILS FLOOD THE screen. Hundreds of them, all from Toby Hunter, all the same email thread with the same completely benign subject line: hey.
I didn’t think I would be surprised. This is what I have been looking for the whole time, everything I suspected was under the surface. But the shock is still crippling. It still sends waves through my body, a flurry of invisible knives slicing up my gut. I scroll down to the very bottom, dated January 18, 2017, and read the
conversation between them.
[email protected]
Sorry you got stuck with me for a lab partner, I know I suck. But hey, I’m great at orals.
[email protected]
Fuck you.
[email protected]
I meant oral presentations. What did you think I meant? Look, sorry I bailed on the last assignment. Football crap got in the way. Let me make it up to you?
[email protected]
And how do you plan on doing that, exactly?
[email protected]
Meet me in the library after school. I’ll bring the coffee, you bring the textbooks and that wizard brain of yours. (Just kidding, I’ll bring my own textbook. But you should still bring that wizard brain, because mine’s, well, kind of crappy. Too many hits on the field, you see.)
[email protected]
More like too many beers.
I scroll farther up the chain, heart pounding, landing on March fourth. Trixie’s birthday.
[email protected]
Happy birthday, Wizard. Did you like my present?
[email protected]
That was from you? And stop calling me that.
[email protected]
You told me you it was your favorite, remember? Or did I get it wrong? I thought you said peace lily. You told me you liked plants, not flowers, because flowers are already dying.
[email protected]
I barely remember that. How do you?
[email protected]
Because it was important.
When I reach April, my chest constricts and I can barely breathe. The pain in my stomach amplifies, an excruciating crescendo.
[email protected]