Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  We weren’t as tight as I wished we could be at times, like when my parents split up. I really needed Kara then, but she was focused on Adrian. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it now—I found someone new to lean on…well, to the extent that guys lean on each other. Christian and I skateboarded, listened to music, and remarked every once in a while about how our families sucked. But I looked up to him like I had Kara. I listened to his stories about how we’d leave Oak Park one day. I believed in him. He became the brother I’d sometimes wished I could trade my sister in for.

  Then he started dating Kara. A little awkward, but it was cool at first. I liked having a group of friends that felt like a family. I liked having my sister around on a regular basis. Until she screwed everything up.

  Kara tried to reach out when our dad abandoned us yet again. But I just couldn’t trust her. Whenever anything bad went down, it seemed like she took care of herself first and came back for me later. Christian, on the other hand, had always been there for me.

  When I told him about my dad’s impending move and how I just wanted to be a million miles away from my family, he said, “Let’s do it.” He said he couldn’t steal his dad’s car because his dad loved that thing more than him, so we took my mom’s. We swung by Maya’s and told her we were finally leaving for Florida and asked her if she wanted to come.

  She took one look at the big house that she and her dad had just moved into and said, “Yeah, I can’t stand this place. Let’s go.”

  Honestly, I wouldn’t have left without her. I’d gotten kind of attached.

  I always developed crushes on my sister’s friends: apple-scented Stacey with her big blue eyes that stated up front, “I’m trouble,” and smoky Cass, whose thick dreads reminded me of Bob Marley. But Maya, she was my sister’s prettiest friend by far. She smelled like the ocean, sounded like the South, and looked like Kate Moss with curves and bloodred hair. More important, Maya and I connected the first time we really talked.

  It was a Saturday night at Scoville when Kara was off hanging out with Christian and his little sister. I sat at the foot of the soldier statue, smoking up when Maya walked by. I nodded hello at her and she laughed and asked, “Is that dinner?”

  “I guess.”

  “Can I have a bite?”

  I shrugged and extended the joint, trying not to act as awkward as I felt with this gorgeous girl standing over me, gleaming beneath the shitty streetlamp that made everyone else look nicotine-stained. I stared at her knee, which peeked out from her ripped, doodle-covered jeans. She had one freckle on each side of her kneecap, perfectly symmetrical, like eyes. I pointed this out to her, immediately feeling like an idiot for making such a stupid stoner observation aloud.

  But Maya grinned and exclaimed, “You noticed, too!” She plopped down beside me and bent her knee, swinging her lower leg. “I pretend my calf is an elephant’s trunk.” She giggled to herself and handed me the joint, which tasted like Dr Pepper—the flavor of her ChapStick.

  I relaxed, realizing that pretty as she was, you didn’t have to play cool with her. She was the kind of girl you could really laugh with. We smoked a couple joints and did exactly that, examining the patterns our freckles formed, discussing other goofy theories we’d had since we were kids, and eventually exchanging stories from childhood.

  We’d moved to the grass so that Maya could stretch out and she told me about her days on the beach in Florida. “I spent all my time with this little boy, Taylor Williams. When I was eight, my grandmother declared that he and I were soul mates and we’d grow up and live happily ever after. So I tried kissing him once at a bonfire, but our lips were both chapped and we pulled away at the same time, going, ‘Ewww!’ Before we grew out of that cooties phase, his family moved to Sarasota.”

  “Maybe you’ll find each other again if you’re soul mates.”

  Maya shook her head. “I don’t believe in that crap.”

  “I don’t either. My sister says the divorce has made me cynical.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Your sister’s a romantic. That’s why I set her up with Christian. He needs someone who believes in love. And Kara needs someone she can trust, who won’t hurt her like Adrian did.”

  “But didn’t you and Christian sort of have a thing this summer?”

  Maya laughed and sat up to look at me. “Christian wanted love and trust. I just wanted to kiss. I can’t handle that other crap. After all, someday I’m gonna run away back to Florida and live on the beach, where I can see stars instead of city lights. What about you?”

  It would have been the perfect moment to kiss her, but Christian and Kara arrived. Maya and I did kiss a couple days later when we went for what was supposed to be a short walk at lunch and ended up two miles away at Thatcher Woods. And eventually, even though I told Maya I didn’t believe in love, even though we weren’t officially a couple, I fell in love with her. Not Johnny Cash-June Carter love, but when we were on someone’s couch or in a booth at Denny’s and she’d stretch out with her head in my lap, staring up at me as she talked, she was my favorite person in the world.

  Maya got a little weird sometimes, like she had these fits of sadness and didn’t want to talk to anyone, even me. But I figured it was a girl thing; my sister was like that. After Kara and Christian broke up, Maya was particularly quiet and moody, but we all were because Kara had betrayed us.

  I thought things would get better in Florida. The two-day drive down there was fun, full of that sense of freedom we’d always talked about. Then we got to Fort Lauderdale where it was unseasonably cold, not “sunny and green green green with palm trees and eighty-degree weather even at Christmas sometimes” like Maya promised. And we were broke because all our money had gone to gas, and spare-changing on the beach wasn’t very profitable. Worst of all, Maya sunk into an inexplicable depression. She cried herself to sleep in the backseat of the car three nights in a row, refusing to let either of us comfort her.

  Christian, who was already freaking out that we were broke and nothing was going the way it was supposed to, grew increasingly frustrated with Maya. On the fourth afternoon, he took our last ten bucks and said he was going to get us dinner. He disappeared for three hours. I waited on the beach with Maya, who wasn’t even talking anymore, and worried that Christian had ditched me with no cash, a car that was out of gas, and a catatonic who I couldn’t even really call my girlfriend.

  Finally, he came down the beach with a bag of McDonald’s and three large drinks. The sun setting at his back cast an orangish red glow around him, making him look heaven-sent, which it kind of felt like he was, at least for the moment.

  He put the food down in front of us, and then he opened his coat and said to Maya, “If this doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will.” He pulled out a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a carton of Winstons. He looked to me, reached behind his ear, and withdrew a skinny joint. “I met some punk kids in town,” he explained. “Stole them some whiskey and cigarettes, too, and they gave me this in exchange.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said.

  “Thanks, Christian,” Maya echoed in a soft, rusty-sounding voice.

  He smiled at her. “Good, you’re talking. Now start drinking and get happy, okay? ’Cause tonight we have the kind of fun we always talked about having when we got to Florida.”

  Maya nodded and took a shot of Jack straight from the bottle.

  “That’s my girl.” Christian quickly drank his pop halfway down and filled his cup back up with whiskey.

  I lit the joint, but since it was thin and there were three of us smoking, it went pretty quick. Even though I preferred pot to alcohol, I started drinking Jack and Coke, too.

  Everything was fun and games for about two hours. Even Maya was telling stories, laughing, and joking like usual. Christian and I started horsing around. We ran down to the edge of the water, daring each other to go in. After about ten minutes, I realized Maya wasn’t with us.

  “Hey, where’d Maya go?”
r />   “Shit,” Christian said.

  We wandered up and down the beach, calling her name, but didn’t see her anywhere. It had grown dark, particularly by the water’s edge because the light from the streetlamps that lined the road didn’t stretch that far.

  I panicked. “We’re never going to find her!”

  Christian put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Liam. Just give me a second. Let me think.” He took two long swigs from the nearly-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle. “You go check the car. I’ll keep searching the beach. We’ll meet back at the spot where we ate dinner in twenty minutes.”

  I nodded and took off in the direction of the car, believing it would be okay because Christian said so, trusting him in a way I’d never even trusted my own dad.

  We’d parked about three blocks from the beach. I ran as fast as I could, slowing only when I started to feel queasy. The whiskey-pot-McDonald’s combination was not settling well. I felt sicker still when I got to the street where we’d left the car and saw flashing lights: a tow truck and two cop cars.

  Shit. We hadn’t had a chance to switch out the license plates as planned. No doubt my mom had reported the car stolen and me missing. The police would be looking for us. I fought off my nausea and sped back the way I’d come. I had to find Christian and Maya. We had to get the hell out of town.

  Approaching the beach, I noticed a faint glow coming from the window of the bathroom where we washed up in the mornings. The building was closed for the season, but Christian had managed to bust the padlock off the door to the men’s room. I hurried toward it, hoping Maya was inside.

  She was, but Christian had found her first.

  Before I reached the door, I heard Christian screaming at her, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop moping around like someone died. If you’ve got a problem, then talk about it!”

  Maya shouted back, “Someone did fucking die, okay? My mom killed herself. That’s the family secret. That’s why I left Florida. And being back here is making me relive it all over again. Are you happy? Now let me go!”

  “Seriously? That’s all? You broke up with me because you couldn’t tell me that?”

  I stormed through the bathroom door and found Maya struggling in Christian’s grip. He’d hoisted her up the same way I’d seen him lift his little sister, taking hold beneath her armpits. But he’d always tossed Naomi in the air, making her giggle. Instead, he’d slammed Maya against the wall and pinned her there, her feet dangling two inches above the cement floor. Maya helplessly flailed her fists into Christian’s arms. She was pink-faced and sobbing, the dark makeup she so carefully applied each morning streaking her cheeks like skid marks leading up to a bad accident.

  “Let go of her!” I exclaimed, charging Christian the way football players did when trying to knock an opponent off balance. My right shoulder caught him in the ribs, forcing him to release Maya. Even though Christian was slightly bigger than me, I had rage on my side. I moved like a snow plow, shoving him across the room and pinning him against the opposite wall.

  Palms firmly planted against Christian’s chest, I looked over my shoulder at Maya. She’d sunk to the floor and wrapped her arms around her shins. She stared unblinking at Christian and me with her lips slightly parted, like she was about to speak. But when I asked, “Maya, are you okay?” she didn’t respond.

  I turned back to Christian, pressing him harder against the tile wall. “Why the fuck did you flip out on her? She was obviously upset, why’d you go and make it worse?”

  Christian ignored me, speaking to Maya instead. “Why didn’t you tell me about your mom? My mom died, too. I understand. If you’d just told me about it months ago, none of this would have happened. Kara never would have happened. I loved you, Maya. I always loved you.”

  Christian was obviously drunk. There were telltale red splotches on his cheeks and his eyes were bloodshot. But for him to profess his love to the girl I was with, right after he’d attacked her, no less…Before I could organize my feelings of betrayal into words, Maya started to laugh.

  I looked over my shoulder again, watching her rise shakily to her feet. “You love me?” She chuckled without opening her mouth; it sounded kind of like a growl and kind of like a sob. “You love me and you did this?” Maya pointed to her left cheek; the rest of her face had gone pale while it remained pink.

  My head whipped back to Christian. “Did you fucking hit her?”

  Before he could respond, Maya tossed out another accusation. A worse one. “You did this to Kara, too, didn’t you?” The acoustics of the bathroom amplified her angry whisper. She repeated, “Didn’t you?” and it echoed, bouncing off the walls, the urinal and bathroom stall to my left, and the mirror that hung above the sink to my right. It wouldn’t stop echoing in my brain for weeks.

  “What?” I murmured in shock. My grasp on Christian loosened. I held him with one hand, turning sideways to look at Maya.

  She walked woodenly toward Christian and me, massaging her chest and shoulders where Christian’s hands had been. She fixed her gray eyes on Christian. They looked as cold as the ocean that we could hear pounding against the shore outside. “Kara showed me the marks on her chest before she ran out of Denny’s that night. She told me they were bruises, but I didn’t believe her because you told me they were hickeys. I told her Christian would never hurt someone he loved. But if you loved me…”

  As Maya trailed off, I whirled on Christian, clenching my free hand in a fist. “Did you hit my sister?”

  He just stared at Maya over my shoulder, slack-jawed.

  Maya continued, speaking in a monotone, punctuated with that strange laugh that sounded more like a cry. “She said you’d grabbed her like you had Mary at the park last fall. I laughed when you grabbed Mary like that. I thought you were cool for defending us. I thought Mary was getting what she deserved for talking shit about Kara and me. But Kara didn’t deserve to get choked. I don’t care what she did. She didn’t deserve what you did to her. What we did by leaving her…”

  What we did. I pictured my sister collapsing on the messy floor of Adrian’s room after I dismissed her as a lying junkie. “Just once, she’d cried out. “Because of Christian.” But I’d ignored her.

  Christian’s angry snarl snapped me out of the memory. “Kara did deserve what she got. She’s a lying, cheating, junkie whore!”

  I swung for his jaw, screaming, “She started using because of you!”

  He ducked my punch and shoved me backward. I collided with Maya, who caught herself by grabbing the sink basin. Before Christian could open the bathroom door, I regained my footing and leapt at him. We tumbled to the floor, narrowly avoiding cracking our heads against the urinal. I rolled on top of Christian, punching him in the face three times, blood splattering from his lip and nose.

  I bellowed, “I hate you!” though I hated myself as much as I hated him. I’d walked out on Kara, thinking she deserved it for all the times she’d let me down. “She didn’t deserve it!”

  “Stop it!” Maya shouted, and when I turned blindly to look at her, Christian caught me square in the cheek.

  We flipped over: him on top, me scrambling backward, protecting my head by sliding it under the toilet stall wall. Before he could pull me out, Maya screamed “Stop!” again and glass shattered. Christian flattened himself on top of me for a moment, but as soon as the last shard clinked to the cement, he pushed himself up and took off out the door.

  I turned over on my stomach and wiggled out from under the stall wall. Maya was huddled beneath the sink, holding the broken neck of the Jack Daniel’s bottle. She’d smashed it against the mirror, leaving a big dent in the center surrounded by a web of cracked glass ready to fall into the sink above her head. I dropped to the floor and dragged her out, ignoring the glass that dug into my knees.

  After I pulled Maya from the bathroom, I studied her in the light that leaked through the door. There were scratches on her hands, but I didn’t see blood anywhere else. “Are you
okay?”

  “Forget about me,” she urged. “Go after Christian. He has the car keys. You can’t let him take the car.”

  I started laughing then, so hard I bent over to brace myself against my knees to catch my breath.

  “It’s not funny,” Maya sobbed. “I can’t be here anymore. With the memories of my mom and now this.”

  I stopped laughing as quickly as I’d started and stood up, drawing her into my arms. “I’m so sorry about your mom. I wish you’d felt comfortable enough to tell me…”

  Maya went stiff and jerked herself out of my embrace. “You should hate me for not telling you about Kara.”

  I shook my head, reaching for her hand. “Christian had us all fooled. But he’s going to get what’s coming to him.” I pointed toward the street. “There are cops at the car. They caught us and I was upset, but now I’m glad. We’re going to go up there and tell them how he attacked you—”

  “No!” Maya interrupted, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest. “I deserve what happened because I let him hurt my best friend.”

  “Maya, he fooled us. And now he’s going to pay for what he did to both of you—”

  “No! Stop defending me, Liam. You of all people shouldn’t defend me. Do you know why Christian had me fooled? Because I was in love with him! I watched all those sweet things he did for your sister and I wondered why I ever let him go.”

  “But—”

  I wanted to tell Maya that I loved her, but she silenced me. “Don’t. It’s time to go home and apologize to Kara. It’s over.”

  She meant “We’re over,” whatever we’d been in the first place. My first instinct was to run into the bathroom and cry the way I had when Lizzie Jordan laughed at my attempt to serenade her in third grade. But this pain was too crippling.

  “No, Maya,” I moaned.