by Deb Caletti
Annabelle focuses on the daily steps, and she keeps the uproar away, as if it’s happening to someone else. It is happening to someone else. At least, she’s not yet the girl they’ve made her out to be.
Not this week, especially.
• • •
He’s there with her every night, just as he intended. She sees him when she closes her eyes in her bunk of the RV, the Saint Christopher medal hanging over her in the darkness. She tries to concentrate on Ernest Shackleton and the men clawing their way to civilization, and she tries to give in to the fatigue that pulls her toward sleep. But he’s there. The Taker. He peeks at her behind every thought. He stares. He reminds. He taunts.
He is standing by her car the week after the winter dance. She’s seen him at lunch every day, and now that it’s second semester, they have AP English Comp together. There’s a seating chart, though, so they don’t sit near each other, and there’s not as much walking and moving around as there was in Mixed Media, so they don’t really talk.
And, the truth is, she hurries out of class. She’s A in the seating chart, front row, and he’s W, so she jets. After the hard-on, after the physical evidence of some—she doesn’t even know—need, maybe, she feels a weird urgency, some uneasy sense that she should distance herself from him. So she flies out of class, and sits at the other end of the lunch table. She rushes or lingers at the salad bar, so that she can sit by Kat or even Sierra, who she doesn’t even like all that much.
But on that day, he’s standing right by her car, and she can’t avoid him. He’s holding his clasped hands in pretend prayer, begging, and it’s raining, and the bus is pulling away.
“Throwing myself at your mercy?” he says.
“Sure, no problem.”
“Merci for the mercy,” he says.
He’s wearing a flannel jacket, now soaked, and a pair of combat boots that drip water on her floor mats. Combat boots are not some cliché. She wears them. Zander wears them. Kat does, and so does Geoff Graham. The Taker isn’t even really wearing the odd clothes anymore. He dresses like they do. There is not some marker or sign like you think. Not until later, when you try hard to find them. His green backpack sits at his feet, and it’s sopping wet, too.
“How long have you been out here?” she asks.
“Sixth period got out early.” He hasn’t been in her car since that day when they played the Clash.
“Wait. So you didn’t exactly miss your bus?”
He tilts his head and looks up at her with mock shame. “I missed talking to you. It’s like you’re always hurrying somewhere.”
Kat stays after on Wednesdays and Fridays for Yearbook, and it’s a Friday, so Annabelle will be driving home alone. She wonders if he knows that, if he’s keeping track. If he’d be standing here if it were Monday or Tuesday or Thursday.
She pulls out of the parking spot, waits in the line of cars leaving the lot. It’s raining so hard that her wipers are going a million miles an hour. It’s difficult to see. He’s so tall, too, that she has to crane her neck to make a safe turn because her visibility is impaired.
“Can I put some music on?” He’s holding her phone. What is it about someone touching your phone? It’s like they’re touching you, or reading your mind, or hunting through your most private places.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Hey, remember this?”
“Police and Thieves.” She understands immediately, the way he’s trying to replay the moment they had, where they were having fun, where he felt powerful, because she wanted him and he was all casual about it. And there’s nothing wrong with him desiring that again, is there? There’s nothing wrong with him pursuing her like this. Not really. Except that she’s trying to send a message about needing space from him, and he isn’t hearing it, and now it’s bugging her. It’s making her uncomfortable. She wanted him around and now she wants him to go away, and even though she’s annoyed that he’s in her car, she also worries that this wanting-not-wanting makes her kind of horrible.
“Oh, yeah,” she says. She hates herself when she’s not nice. And anyway, it’s what she’s been taught since she was a baby. Gina and That Bastard Father Anthony both drove home the message: Treat others the way you’d want to be treated. Be kind to those who are less fortunate. If you don’t, BAD STUFF WILL HAPPEN.
The Taker smiles. He turns up the music. It’s hard to concentrate like she needs to when driving in this weather.
“Shit,” he says. “I don’t know how you stand it.”
“What’s that?”
“This weather. It’s been raining nonstop for three weeks. I’m growing moss.”
“I forget you just moved from Vermont,” she says. “It seems like you’ve always been here.” She knows this is a gift, a message of fitting in. She gives it because of all the mean thoughts she just had about him. She gives it because she’d really like him out of her car.
“God, it’s depressing, though.”
“I don’t know. I like it. Well, maybe not right this second when it’s doing this, but otherwise . . . I mean, we’re used to it. It’s cozy.”
“Maybe when you don’t feel like slitting your wrists.”
“Hey, am I going to have to report you to Mr. Curley?” Mr. Curley is the counselor they all dislike. He’s known for eating rice pudding and picking at his cuticles while he talks to you about attending Whitworth, his alma mater. She’s joking, but when she looks over at him, The Taker’s face is rigid, and he’s staring out the window.
“Nah, my mother already wants me to talk to some guy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were kidding.”
“It’s stupid. Why would they pay money for some dude to sit there and listen to me? I'm fine, you know, playing the guitar and writing dark poetry, haha.” The song stops. The next one begins. “Hey, Bob Marley.”
“Waiting in Vain.” Heartbroken man is fed up with a woman who doesn’t care anymore. “Compliments of Kat and the ‘Good-bye, Sucker’ playlist she made me after Will and I broke it off.”
“Nice.”
“I saw him the other day.”
“Oh, yeah? On purpose or by accident?”
“Accident. It was weird, because he lives on the Eastside. He was at our Whole Foods getting a sandwich when I was at our Whole Foods getting a sandwich.”
“Douche. Does he have a new girlfriend?”
“He misses me.”
She has not told this to Kat or anyone else, even Gina, who had been waiting in the car. Annabelle wasn’t really getting a sandwich. She was buying milk and coffee. They were on the way home from picking up Malcolm from a sleepover at Terrence’s house, and Gina didn’t want to go in because she didn’t have her bra on. It was good to see Will. Really good. They hugged, and he smelled amazing—like himself. He told her about a cancer scare his dad had, and about a robotics project he was working on. His eyes got all excited and filled with light like they do. It wrecked all the good progress she’d made, making him a villain. He was just Will again, the boy she loved, which sucked. They hugged once more when they said good-bye, and he whispered that he missed her. It messed her up for a few days, and she had to give herself the hard-line lectures all over again.
Why she’s mentioning this to The Taker now, though—some part of her is being evil even when she’s trying to be nice, she thinks. What Dr. Mann will suggest much later—that maybe she was trying to say what she needed to say without saying what she needed to say—doesn’t occur to her. The mention of Will, the joint-sandwich-buying—she’s pushing The Taker away without pushing him away.
“Misses you? Too late, asshole.”
In spite of The Taker’s efforts, the car ride lacks the energy and fun and good feeling that it had the first time. And when she pulls up to his house, his mom is outside, fetching bags from the Volvo. Annabelle recognizes her from the photo she saw online. The Taker’s mom, Nadine, comes over to the car to meet her. Nadine is nice, but The Taker is irritated, and Annabe
lle feels like Nadine is checking her out. It’s awkward. Still, none of this seems to matter to The Taker. This doesn’t stop him at all. On Friday, he is there again, with his begging hands. His begging, depressed hands.
He is there every Wednesday and Friday, never on the days Kat is there, so he clearly wants to be alone with Annabelle. It’s making her furious. He won’t read her signs. She is cold, aloof, talks about other boys besides Will, exits the parking lot while pushing the accelerator a little too hard. He’s refusing to hear what she’s not saying. She’s trying to discourage him nicely, but what sucks is that he’s practically forcing her to hurt him. In the evenings before dinner, she goes on extra-hard runs to try to shake off the bad feeling.
“Just say no, Annabelle,” Kat says. “Tell him you can’t drive him anymore. Tell him it makes you uncomfortable. Tell him it makes you late for work. Tell him you don’t want to. God, it makes me crazy when you do this.”
It’s a Thursday, one of the days she drives Kat home. Sometimes, Annabelle just wants to be alone in her own car, but sometimes is only on Wednesdays and Fridays, when The Taker is there waiting. Annabelle is glad Kat’s in her passenger seat instead of him. She loves Kat. Kat is her person. Even though Kat is pissed at her right now, Kat loves her, too.
“Do what?”
“This passive-aggressive shit. Just tell him.”
“I can’t!”
Annabelle swears Kat’s face is getting red. “Why? Why can’t you?”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
Kat exhales loudly. Shakes her head. She’s so mad. “So you just allow something to go on that’s not right for you? He can be hurt, Annabelle. He’ll be fine.”
“He’s depressed.”
“So? Who isn’t something? Is all of his depression dependent on what you do? I don’t ask you to do certain stuff to keep me mentally sound.”
Kat’s struggled with periods of depression since her mom started drinking hard. And she’s right, because, it’s not all puppies and rainbows at Roosevelt High. Of course it isn’t. Zander is sometimes depressed, too, and Annabelle herself is anxious, and Sierra is edging toward an eating disorder, and those are only the things she knows for sure. People have stuff; people handle stuff.
“You’re just afraid of not being liked, Annabelle. You should try it out sometime. Say some bad shit. Say what you think. Say what you mean. Say no. Say ‘I don’t want that.’ See what happens.”
“Oh, God,” she groans. “I know what happens when people say what they think.” Annabelle is sure her mother drove her father away with her constant barrage of opinions, mostly about him.
“You know what happens when people are a bad match. There’s a difference. That Bastard Father Anthony didn’t leave because your mother was clear and assertive. He left because she was always picking fights with him. And she was always picking fights with him because he was aloof and distant. They brought out the worst in each other.”
Not many people can get away with talking about your family like that, but Kat can. She was there when Annabelle’s dad lived with them, and she was there when he left. After so much time at their house, Kat even has her own place at their table.
“Tell him you don’t want to drive him anymore, or I will.”
That afternoon, Annabelle works the register at Essential Baking Company. A man complains that his “expresso” doesn’t have milk, and a woman in an REI jacket wants to speak to Claire about the lack of gluten-free options. After her shift, she takes the day’s unsold baked goods to Sunnyside Eldercare. She reads aloud to Mrs. Alducci, and then brings her favorite resident, Mr. Giancarlo, a sugar cookie in the shape of a snowman. Throughout, her conversation with Kat about The Taker plays in her head like a radio turned down low. It bothers her. It disturbs her.
Things momentarily improve when she gets home. She laces up her shoes. Runs six fast, hard miles to Fremont and back. She takes a long, hot shower. Gina brings home KFC for dinner, and the red-and-white tub is in the middle of the table, and the little containers are spread around with their lids off. The spoon-fork combo inexplicably cheers Annabelle up, especially when it has mashed potatoes on it.
“Mark the calendar. We can have this again in one year. God, I can’t imagine the fat calories,” Gina says.
“Gross but delicious,” Malcolm says, licking gravy off of the spork.
“Pass the napkins,” Annabelle says. Bunches of them are already crushed and strewn around like weapons after the war.
“Annabelle, what’s wrong?” Gina asks.
“What? Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ I see when something is wrong. I know you. You were a part of me. I gave birth to you.”
“Gross,” Malcolm says again.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re trying to be fine but you’re not fine. You’re in a mood.”
“I’ll be in a mood if you keep telling me I’m in a mood.”
“Is it that boy you’ve been driving home?”
How does she do this? How does she zero right in on the thing? Maybe Gina does know her. Maybe there is some creepy ESP that passes through the umbilical cord, and she’ll never be free of it.
“I just . . . I don’t want to drive him home anymore. I think he likes me.”
“You’ve been acting weird since you started doing it. So tell him you don’t want to! Did you tell him?”
“Not yet.”
“For God’s sake! Tell him!”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“You sound just like your father. You can’t tippy-toe around! He’ll think you like him back, and you’ll never get rid of him. Remember Georgie Zacharro? You’ve got to be careful, Annabelle, I’ve told you a hundred times. Some boys, you smile at them and they think you want to have sex with them.”
“Ew,” Malcolm says.
“My entire school thinks that, then, Mom, because I’m a smiley person.”
“You know what I mean. If you don’t like him, don’t encourage him.”
“I don’t dislike him. He’s just pressing.” She doesn’t know how to explain it. It’s a feeling, one that she doesn’t know if she can trust or not. The feeling comes and goes. And it’s not like anything abnormal is going on here. Boys have had crushes on her before; she’s had crushes on boys. No big deal. It happens.
But this . . . There are small things. Texts from The Taker way, way late at night, ones she jokes about the next day, but that feel cryptic and intimate: Why does it seem like a forest keeps secrets? Or: Strange to think of a world with both rage and moonlight. She’s caught him, too, taking a photo of something because she’s in the background. He tries to linger in her car, asking her a complicated question right as they approach his house, or pretending to lose something under the seat. He smells of maybe weed and alcohol both. But, hey. A third of her freshman PE class smelled like that.
“You have to follow your instinct. Listen to the voice inside.”
“Why do people always say that? Voices say different things at different times.”
“Yeah, but you know when it’s lying, if you’re being honest with yourself. Here’s where it speaks.” Gina puts her hand on her chest. “Something is bothering you, you listen. Good stuff doesn’t nag at you. You feel nervous in a parking lot, you get out of there. You feel uneasy at a party? You fucking leave.”
“Twenty-five cents, Mom,” Malcolm says.
The problem with Gina, and maybe all mothers—she could overreact, but she could also be right. It was like trying to eat the ice cream around the nuts.
That next day, though, Annabelle grabs The Taker’s sleeve and pulls him aside at lunch.
“Hey, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a ride anymore. They changed my schedule at work, and I have to come in a half hour earlier. I won’t have time to change and stuff if I don’t just hurry home.”
“Oh. Okay. No problem,” he says.
She did not speak bravely or honestly as Kat tol
d her to do. She lied. But it’s out, she’s said it, and it’s done. No more driving him. She’s relieved.
It’s over, she thinks.
She’s wrong.
• • •
It’s a bad week anyway. A bad, bad week, but the shores of Albert Lea Lake are boggy. Swampy, too. It’s a small, shallow lake, with psychedelic swirls of green algae on top. She always looks forward to the bodies of water. Usually, they’re cool and inviting, and they break up the monotony of farmland. But this lake is a little spooky. On the true-crime shows, these are the places people disappear.
She’ll be meeting Grandpa Ed a few miles past the last bend of the lake on South Shore Drive. South Shore Drive will eventually turn into Highway 65, which will take her into Iowa. After he picks her up, Grandpa Ed will drive them into the nearest town of Hayward, Minnesota, population 250, where they’ll stay at the Myre–Big Island campground.
She’s almost at the end of her run. It is the second week in June, and the heat makes the shallow lake smell like murky stuff and old fish. She hoped the water would lift her spirits, but it’s doing the opposite. She’s been dragged down all day, as if her pack is full of boulders.
She sees the car coming down South Shore Drive. It is a small blue pickup. She likes to make eye contact with drivers, so she’s certain they see her. No one expects that a girl will be running alongside a mostly empty highway.
He’s too far away for their eyes to meet yet, though. She watches him approach. Soon, he’s almost there, and she can see the man who is driving. He’s wearing a baseball hat, and a T-shirt. His window is rolled down. She looks at him. He looks at her. She raises her hand in a wave.
He raises his, too. And in that split-second moment when his eyes are off the road, it happens. A deer shoots out and bounds across the highway. The truck is not even going that fast, but it is going fast enough. The driver slams on his brakes, and the back of the truck fishtails, but it is too late. There’s a sickening thud. It is the horrible sound of fast-moving metal hitting the once-solid side of the animal.