Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  Before I could walk away, she pleaded again, “No more heroin, Kara.”

  Still angry, I mocked her. “No more black hair dye, Maya. It makes your skin look sallow and you’re not nearly as pretty.”

  I stormed down the hill, not knowing that those bitchy words would be the last I’d ever speak to Maya, that the unfamiliar black hair would be my last sight of her.

  I wish I could rewind time and undo a lot of things: failing everything but English junior year, dating Christian, getting hooked on heroin, Liam’s meth problem, Quentin’s overdose. But that conversation with Maya is my biggest regret.

  I’d never get a chance to apologize to her.

  The next morning Maya’s dad found her soaking in cold, bloody bathtub water with her wrists carved to hell.

  7.

  ACCORDING TO THE AUTOPSY, THE CAUSE of Maya’s death was drowning. Before she slashed her wrists, she’d taken a handful of pain pills to ease what had to be unbearable pain, and a handful of sleeping pills to ensure she wouldn’t wake up. She’d fallen asleep, slid into the pinkish bathwater, and suffocated there.

  Maya’s death was more gruesome than Quentin’s, but it only appeared on page five of the local paper. I saved the article, but not in the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook. That remained in my backpack, where I’d stuffed it after Maya returned it to me.

  Wes flew in from California for the funeral. It was the first time I’d seen him aside from the photographs that Cass and Maya had shown me. In those, he’d worn his hair in fuzzy dreadlocks that reached the bottoms of his ears, revealing the thick hoops in his earlobes. He also sported rings in his left eyebrow and right nostril. He’d been perpetually stoned in all of the photos, his bloodshot eyes in desperate need of Visine.

  In person, he looked older, more mature. Escaping our hometown had clearly been good for him. He’d cleaned up while the rest of us hit rock bottom. He’d cropped his hair close to his head, leaving little more than black fuzz along his scalp. It revealed cheekbones that were sculpted, not hollowed out by drugs like my brother’s. His chocolate eyes were remarkably clear, unlined, no purplish pillows beneath them like mine. He’d taken out all of his piercings, but when he rolled up his shirtsleeves tattoos of brightly colored swallows emerged.

  Wes’s old friends nodded at him, but kept their distance; the only person he spoke to was Cass. He put a strong arm around her and led her to the front of the church. The death of her cousin following so quickly on the heels of losing her boyfriend had made Cass look smaller, ashen. She only smiled when Wes mentioned that he’d talked their father into letting her spend the summer with him in California as long as she came home to finish out her senior year.

  Watching them together made me wish I had an older brother. Cass leaned on Wes, letting him be her caretaker for once, while I tried my damnedest to care for Liam. I held his hand as we followed them to our seats. Big tears dripped from Liam’s sleepless eyes and he kept sucking back snot or wiping it on his sleeve like a little kid. I hugged him against me through the service.

  I went to the bathroom before we left church. But I didn’t set up a line like I had after Quentin’s memorial. I opened the Altoids box I had in my purse and flushed the heroin down the toilet.

  As I watched it go, I addressed Maya. “I’m quitting. Like you asked me to last week. I’m really sorry I yelled at you like that. And slapped you. And made fun of your hair. I’m sorry…” I sobbed, squeezing my eyes shut and turning around, hoping that when I opened them, she’d be standing in front of me.

  Of course she wasn’t.

  Liam clung to me at the grave site, but I felt really alone. My best friend was being put into the ground next to her mother. A few miles away, Quentin lay in another box. Cass was leaving for the summer. Adrian might never come back. I looked for him, hoping he’d show, but he didn’t. A lot of other people did, though, because unlike with Quentin’s funeral, the information was public. Harlan held hands with Shelly, who’d just gotten out of rehab. Harlan had dyed his hair black when he heard about Maya’s suicide and cried inconsolably for an hour. Shelly wore a long, black sundress that Maya would have liked and had her thick, blond curls tamed into a braid down her back. She looked very sober; I hoped she’d be a good influence on Harlan and my brother before she left for boarding school. Craig, Mary, and Jessica stood at the back. I didn’t have the energy to be angry at the two girls for coming when they’d been so hateful toward Maya; besides, they both wore expressions of remorse. If Christian had shown up, I would have freaked, but fortunately he stayed away.

  Stacey and Jason didn’t go because they didn’t know Maya well enough, but after I returned home with Liam, Stacey called a few times. As evening approached and my craving for heroin increased, I finally picked up the phone because I wanted something to do to distract myself. Stacey sounded like she needed me and when she invited me to her mom’s house instead of Jason’s, I worried briefly that she’d broken up with him, and I really couldn’t deal with consoling her over something as seemingly unimportant as that. But I borrowed my mom’s car and drove into Berwyn.

  Beth was at work, so we sat in the living room on the futon that doubled as Beth’s bed and fired up a bowl, which I was grateful for, hoping the pot would temper my body’s desire for heroin. I’d already started to get mild chills and shakes.

  As Stacey exhaled, she said, “I guess you haven’t read that ballad thingy I wrote in your notebook or you’d be lecturing me.”

  I wrinkled my brow, confused. “No, I haven’t looked at it since Quentin…”

  “I figured.” She sighed heavily, relinquished the bowl to me, and stretched out on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. Her hands slid over her stomach. “I’m pregnant, Karalina.” She used my old nickname with a wry smile and turned her head to the side to look at me. “You’re gonna be an aunt.”

  I coughed up pot smoke. “Wow.” I took another hit and held it in for a moment before placing the pipe in an ashtray on a nearby table, out of her reach. “You’re right, you can’t have this.”

  She sighed again, pouting like a child. “I know. I have to quit today. This was the deadline. Jason and I said we would decide by tonight if we’re keeping it or not. Actually, Jason said I should decide and he would support me either way. He’s a good guy, Karalina.” Her gaze drilled into the ceiling. “And he’ll make a good dad. Even if I make a shitty mom.”

  I tried to keep emotion out of my voice-not hard because I didn’t know what emotion to have. “So you’re keeping it. The baby, I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Stacey shrugged, dragging her shoulders up and down against the futon. “My mom kept me. I’d feel bad otherwise. But I’m gonna do it right. I’m gonna move in with him and get married. The whole”-she popped her lips open into an O and widened her eyes-“shebang.”

  I snuck a glance at her belly, which still looked flat beneath her T-shirt. “Is that what you want or do you want me to talk you out of it?”

  She laughed. “No, that’s what I’m doing. But I needed to tell my best friend before I told Jason and I wanted to smoke one last bowl with you for old time’s sake.” Stacey maneuvered into a cross-legged position and met my eyes, fat tears streaming down her cheeks as she blubbered. “I’m sorry I was a shitty blood sister and a shitty friend and I ditched you for boys, but now I’m pregnant and I’m sure that’s not a surprise. Our teacher looked at me when she mentioned teen pregnancy during the sex lecture in sixth grade.”

  “Oh, Stace.” I snorted. “She looked at you because you were passing me a note.” I pulled her into my arms and let her cry. My face also grew damp as I told her, “And you don’t have to apologize for being a shitty friend. I’ve been one, too. I could have talked to you and…” I choked back a sob as I mentally added, I could have talked to Maya.

  Our cryfest lasted only a few minutes. Then Stacey sniffed back snot and asked me to relight the bowl. “One last time,” she said.

  Before we parted ways at her front
door-she was heading to Jason’s and I was heading home-she made me promise to read her ballad immediately. I dropped my mom’s car off at home, grabbed my backpack, and walked the mile to Scoville Park.

  I trekked up to the top of the hill and picked out a spot on the grass slightly east of the soldier statue, positioning myself beneath the yellow glow of a lamp so I could read easily. Stacey’s entry should have been the last one, but the last handwritten pages were filled with Maya’s careful script.

  The Ballad of a Redhead: Maya Danner

  “If you live through this with me I swear that I will die for you.”

  —Hole

  June 1995

  WORSE THINGS HAPPEN AT SEA. THAT’S WHAT my grandma always said when we had rotten luck. One of her many “wisdoms,” her fancy name for her clichés. She reassured my mother with those words when the Thanksgiving turkey came out of the oven still frozen in the middle. She said it to my father on the side of the road when the tire of our rental car blew out on vacation in Arizona. She consoled me with that phrase freshman year when my best friend, Lori, told me she was never speaking to me again. Grandma stopped reciting that particular wisdom after my mother’s suicide ’cause even though it happened on dry land, it seemed like nothing could be worse. But as it turned out, Grandma was right: the worst things do happen at sea, or near it at least.

  That was one of the thoughts that ran through my head when Christian found me crying over my mother in that bathroom in Florida, picked me up, slapped me across the face, and pinned me to the wall to scream at me. It all happened so fast. Probably less than a minute went by before Liam busted in and pulled Christian off of me. Amazing how many thoughts I had in that brief moment. Now I know what they mean by the phrase “watching your life flash before your eyes.”

  In the same instant that I thought about Grandma’s old saying, I also saw Kara standing in the bathroom stall at Denny’s with the front of her shirt yanked down to reveal blue and yellow splotches on her chest. I heard her implore, “Christian really hurt me.” But before I could relive the way I dismissed her claim—flash!—I was reliving how my friendship with Lori fell apart.

  It was all because of Adam Irle, a junior that Lori had a huge crush on. He threw a party a month before prom and Lori insisted that we go and I talk to Adam to find out if he liked her. She thought it would be the best thing in the world to go to prom her freshman year. I didn’t care about that kind of stuff. I was still a tomboy even though my body had betrayed me a year earlier and gotten all girly and curvy and people started calling me pretty instead of funny.

  I was happy to help Lori out, but wasn’t able to track down Adam that night until I was pretty wasted, and I guess when I asked him to go someplace quiet to talk, he thought I was coming on to him. He led me up to his bedroom and before I knew what was happening he had me pinned to his bed with his tongue down my throat and his hand down my pants. I hate to think what would have happened if Lori hadn’t barged in, but part of me wishes she hadn’t.

  She dragged me outside and stood by disgusted as I puked in the oleander. I collapsed in the damp grass and tried to explain, “I didn’t want that! Couldn’t you tell by the way he was holding me down?”

  Lori loomed over me, hands on her hips, and said, “Yeah, right! Like Adam would just attack you. He’s a great guy. You’re a traitor and a whore and I’ll never forgive you for this!” Then she stormed out of my life forever.

  I never bothered trying to explain what happened with Adam to anyone else. If Lori didn’t believe me, it didn’t matter. And Lori told everyone her version of the story. I went from being relatively popular to school tramp in a matter of days. But I didn’t care about my reputation. I mourned the five years of friendship that Lori’d thrown away because it was easier to think I was a slut than that a guy she liked was scum.

  So what’s my excuse for doing almost exactly the same thing to Kara? I don’t have a much better one than Lori did: I was in love with Christian even though I didn’t fully realize it until I kissed him on New Year’s Day.

  Yeah, that’s right. I’m the pot who called the kettle black, as my grandmother would say. I kissed Christian after lecturing Kara about pining for her ex. I betrayed her and I also betrayed her brother.

  Liam, the beautiful boy I should have loved if I’d known what was good for me. Liam, as loyal as his Irish eyes were green. I can’t even count the nights that he listened to me while we wandered the town, smoking cigarettes and shivering against the cold, midwestern winter wind. On New Year’s Eve, I’d aired my concerns about Kara and Christian. After seeing the way Kara had reacted to Adrian at Ambrosia’s on Christmas Day, I’d become convinced she was going to break Christian’s heart. I worried about them so much that it made me physically ill and I left Liam to talk to his sister. He came over to check on me later and told me that he thought Kara would probably break up with Christian that very night.

  So I went to see Christian first thing the next day. He was one of my best friends and I knew how heartbroken he was going to be.

  Christian answered the door in his pajamas even though it was noon. He rubbed bleary, hungover eyes and I apologized, remembering that he’d probably been at Shelly’s until dawn, drowning his sorrows if Kara dumped him.

  Christian grabbed a couple Cokes for us and we went down to the basement. “What brings you by?” he asked as we settled on the couch.

  “Actually, I wanted to talk about you and Kara. Did something happen between you guys last night?” I bit my lip nervously, not wanting to upset him. He’d been acting so casual, maybe nothing had occurred.

  Suddenly Christian burst into tears. “I caught her kissing Adrian at midnight,” he sobbed. “We had this big fight in Shelly’s bathroom, but by the end of the night, we were dancing together. I love her so much, I can’t let her go.”

  “Whoa, slow down.” I scooted closer to him and took his hand. “Tell me everything.”

  Christian sniffed. “Well, what did Kara tell you?”

  “Nothing, but I’ve been worried that something might happen with Adrian.”

  “Oh, okay.” He leaned against me, putting his head on my shoulder. I stroked his messy red hair as he told me the whole story—his version—about Kara being wasted and falling all over the place, about the hickeys on her chest.

  By the time he finished, he was stretched out across my lap, using my knees as a pillow. He started talking about all the things he’d done for Kara. “She used to cut herself. Did you know that?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve been helping her to stop, encouraging her to call one of us when she’s upset. Part of the reason I gave her my mother’s ring was because I was so proud that she hadn’t cut in a month. I really wanted to help her get healthy. But Adrian…I’m afraid he’s getting her into heroin. I’m afraid she’s really going to self-destruct. I just want to take care of her and protect her. I love her so much.”

  Christian’s lip quivered and tears trickled down his cheeks, soaking the ends of his hair. Kara was so lucky to have someone so devoted to her. I thought about the way he’d defended her honor—defended both of us, really—when Mary called us sluts in the park. I remembered how he’d anguished over which chain to buy for the ring when we’d gone Christmas shopping together. But his real gift to Kara had been the way he’d carefully watched over her and encouraged her to heal. And she didn’t appreciate it. She didn’t want to heal; she wanted the false escape that Adrian provided. But I wanted to heal. I wanted to turn back time and tell Christian about my mother so he’d take care of me. I wanted…

  I bent down, brushing my lips against Christian’s.

  He immediately rolled off of me, landing on the floor in front of the couch. He scrambled to his feet, stuttering, “I…I can’t. I love Kara.”

  My hand flew to my mouth I wanted to cry and vomit like I had the night Lori found me with Adam Irle. I managed to stammer, “I didn’t mean to…”

  Christian walked me to the d
oor and gave me one of those just-friends-pat-on-the-back hugs. “I won’t say anything,” he assured me. “Liam, Kara…I wouldn’t want to hurt them.”

  So I trudged home in the gray, January cold, thinking Christian loved Kara. He would never hurt her. /would be more likely to do that.

  And that’s all I could think about when Kara showed me those bruises at Denny’s. Kind, gentle Christian, he would never do that. It must have been a misunderstanding.

  It wasn’t until Christian had me pinned to the tile wall in the men’s room in Florida that I realized it was all an act. Christian had burst into tears on New Year’s Day because he thought he’d been caught, that I’d come to confront him about hurting Kara. When he realized I didn’t know, he took advantage and put on a performance so powerful that I left thinking I’d taken advantage of him.

  After the police brought us back from Florida, I tried to tell myself that it was over and Christian had lost. I mean, he’d lost all his friends, but then again, so had I. I’d watched Liam’s heart break when I admitted that I’d loved Christian. I knew Kara would never truly forgive me and I didn’t deserve to be forgiven. I was lucky she hadn’t shunned me the way Lori did.

  Worst of all, Christian found a way to torment me that no one knew about.

  He stayed away from me—from all of us—in public, probably because he was afraid of Liam, but he used his little groupie girls to hurt me in the worst possible way. Two of them flounced past me when I was sitting alone in the cafeteria. One said loudly to the other, “That’s the crazy redhead Christian dated last summer. Her mom killed herself, that’s why she’s totally nuts.”

  Rumors. The kind I’d tried to avoid by not telling anyone but Kara about my mother’s death when I moved to Oak Park because I hadn’t wanted to feel like I did during my last two months of high school in Florida. After my mom died, no one talked to me, like my bad luck was catching. Instead, the whole school scrutinized me from afar, waiting for me to snap like Mom had. Of course, Christian only had the ears of ten little freshman girls, but it was enough. I passed them in the hallways and watched them stare at me, giggle, and whisper. From time to time, I’d see Christian, too. If I was with other people, he’d ignore me, but if I was alone, he’d flash a smug sneer.