The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  5

  Hannah was upstairs, Mom was still out, and sneaking out of the house when Dad was watching sports was almost criminally easy. I felt a little pang of guilt for boosting his car, but I wasn’t going to be gone for very long; I just hoped Mom wouldn’t get back before I did.

  Ten minutes later, I was standing at the end of Derek’s driveway, sending him a text: “I’m outside, we need to talk.” Within a minute, I got one back: “Okay, be right there.”

  I felt like I was going to be sick right there in his mother’s hydrangeas. This was where it was all going to end. Maybe I should’ve known that from the start; maybe I had. I never thought I’d be in this situation, though, treading through a conversational minefield to break up with him before he could break up with me.

  A few minutes later, Derek came out his front door and strolled toward me. He smiled when he caught my eye and held out his arms for a hug. I let him hold me, because I loved the feeling of being touched by a boy, especially this particular boy. I loved the way he always squeezed me a little too tightly, the way he ran his fingertips lightly down my back as he released me. He didn’t try to kiss me, though, I noticed.

  “How was camp?” I asked when the embrace ended.

  “Pretty good,” he said. “How was everything here?”

  “Pretty lame,” I said. He laughed softly.

  “Want to take a walk?” I suggested.

  “Sure. Park?”

  “Yeah.” There was a park two blocks from Derek’s house where he and I had hung out most afternoons and weekends before he left for camp. It was large and full of trees. We used to take a blanket from the trunk of his car and lie out in the shade as far away from the noisy playground as possible. He would run his fingers through my hair and I would close my eyes and just enjoy the feeling, the murmur of his voice as he talked about nothing in particular. We’d spent an afternoon together just like that right before he left for camp. I’d thought I might want to say “I love you,” but I’d held back, and now I was glad.

  We walked to the park in near silence. I didn’t try to take his hand and he didn’t try to take mine. I spent the time psyching myself up, reading his body language for any evidence that he might not be plotting exactly what I was, that he might want to stay together, that he might still like me enough to want to keep being my boyfriend, but there wasn’t any. It was pretty clear what he wanted, and now I was in a race with him to say it first. I hated this game, but my dignity was important to me, and I’d be damned if I was going to lose it to a boy I should’ve known better than to date in the first place.

  It was sunset, so the park was deserted. I steered him toward the swings and sat down in one, pushing off the ground with the toes of my Converse and drifting back and forth lazily.

  “Caro—” he began.

  “Hold on a minute,” I said, my mind spinning.

  “I think we should break up.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  He arranged his face in his most sympathetic expression, which for Derek was pretty much just a douchey smirk. “I’m so sorry. I really like you, but I don’t think I’m ready to have a girlfriend. Being at camp made me realize that.”

  “This isn’t fair,” I groused, shoveling wood chips with my feet.

  “I know,” Derek said.

  “No, goddammit, I was going to break up with you,” I told him.

  “Oh. Well, that’s convenient.” He didn’t believe me at all. In fact, just the opposite. He was really smirking at me now, probably thinking, Poor Caro, trying to save face by saying she wants to break up. What a dick.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “I want to break up.”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  I groaned. “Derek, stop being such an asshole. I came here to end our relationship. You just beat me to it.”

  “Sure,” Derek said. “That’s fine. If that’s what you want to tell people, you should. I won’t say anything.”

  “It’s not a story!” I yelled. “It’s the truth. And you will definitely say something, I know you.”

  “There’s no need to get hostile,” he said.

  “I’m not being— Ugh, just forget it.” I launched myself off the swing, stumbling a bit on the landing. Derek reached out a hand to steady me, but I shrugged him off. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I want us to still be friends,” he said halfheartedly.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I snapped, walking away, tears of frustration pricking at the backs of my eyes. Fortunately, I didn’t actually cry; that would’ve been even more embarrassing. Derek didn’t follow or call out after me. When I reached my car, I looked back, but he wasn’t there. I wished I hadn’t looked back.

  “Crap,” I said out loud as I pulled into the driveway. Mom’s car was parked in the garage; she was back, and there was no way I was getting away with sneaking out when I was supposed to be confined to the house.

  “What are you doing?” Mom asked as I went in through the garage. I trudged down the hallway to face her; she and Hannah were sitting on the couch in the family room. Hannah was pretending to be engrossed in a back issue of Smithsonian; she looked up with mild curiosity when I stormed in.

  “Going to my room,” I said glumly.

  “Where have you been? I didn’t give you permission to go out.” She knew where I’d been; my mother knew everything, always. It was her freakish gift.

  “Dad did,” I lied. I didn’t even care if she believed me; I just wanted this conversation to be over so I could call my friends and rail against Derek in private.

  Mom called me out. “He did not. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “Can we just drop it? I have homework to finish.” I didn’t want to cry. I knew if I escaped to my room right that second, I could avoid it, but if Mom kept pressing, I might burst like a water balloon. The only thing I hated more than crying was having people see me cry.

  But my mother, bulldog that she was, would not be deterred. “No, we can’t ‘just drop it.’ When have you ever known me to ‘just drop it’? You’re my child, and when I tell you to do something—or not to do something—I expect you to listen.”

  “Okay, Mom, I get it, I’m a terrible daughter. Can I go now?” A part of me knew that the reason most of my schoolmates were such entitled twits was that their parents didn’t expect anything out of them or discipline them when they misbehaved, and I knew I was likely not to turn out like that because my parents were old school and demanded obedience and I probably should be grateful they weren’t disinterested zombies who spoiled me so I would go away, but at that moment I wished my mother would disappear in a puff of smoke.

  “Go where?” Mom demanded, not getting the hint. Hannah looked uncomfortable, her eyes darting from Mom to me and back to Mom, her shoulders tense and the corners of her mouth pointing straight down like little arrows. I thought she might intervene, and maybe she was thinking about it, but she kept quiet in the end—which was fine. Mom and I had these little squabbles all the time; we didn’t need her help progressing through the stages. Stage 1: Confrontation. Stage 2: Teenage back talk. Stage 3: Real talk. Stage 4: Forgetting all about it.

  “To my room. To do my homework. So that I don’t start the year off with a zero. Is that okay with you?” Teenage back talk: check. Stage 2 was a go.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying,” Mom said.

  “I hear you! I didn’t ask permission to go to Derek’s, or to use the car. I’m sorry. Believe me, it did not turn out as I planned.” The levees broke and tears poured down my cheeks.

  “What happened?” Hannah asked, getting up and putting her arm around me.

  I knew she was just trying to help, but I didn’t want her comfort, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Hugs couldn’t cure humiliation. I stepped out of her embrace and wiped furiously at my eyes. “He broke up with me,” I told them.

  “Oh, Caro,” Mom said. Her forehead wrinkled in sympathy. “I told you that you were too
young to have a boyfriend.”

  “Mom! Is that really all you have to say?” That was just typical. Mom thought high school boys were a distraction, and she would’ve been happier if I didn’t date until I had my master’s degree. To her credit, she hadn’t tried to keep me from going out with Derek, but she did love to make it difficult.

  Hannah stood by, rigid after I shook her off, but her eyes were soft with sadness on my behalf. Anger swirled around me like a mist—anger at Hannah, at my parents, at Derek, but most of all at myself for winding up in this situation when I had known better. I felt like the world’s biggest loser.

  “Okay, calm down,” Mom said, lowering her voice. “It’s going to be all right. There are plenty of boys out there, boys who will really like and appreciate you. Derek is a doofus—Dad and I have always thought so.”

  “Really. A doofus.” I couldn’t believe she thought that was going to make me feel better, but sympathy for sympathy’s sake wasn’t Mom’s style. Real talk: check.

  “Did you love him?” Hannah asked.

  “What? No!” Ugh. They weren’t getting it. “He wasn’t returning my calls or my texts, and Erin said that he was probably going to break up with me and to do it first before he got the chance, so I went over there to dump him and before I could get a word out, he dumped me. And now I have to go to school tomorrow and everybody’s going to know about it and I’m going to be totally humiliated. That’s why I’m crying!”

  “You’re really not sad about him at all?” Hannah seemed mystified about the whole thing, but you couldn’t really blame her for that; she had been celibate her whole life and locked in a convent for almost a decade. She didn’t even have the benefit of having watched years and years of wildly unrealistic relationships on television like I had. But I could see her point, sort of. The situation did sound convoluted coming out of my mouth.

  I sighed. “Of course I am. But mostly I’m so pissed off I could scream. He asked me out! He asked me! And then he acted like I was just a stranger with some pathetic schoolgirl crush who he was letting down easy.”

  “You seem really upset,” Hannah said. “Maybe you should go lie down. I can make you some tea?”

  “I don’t want tea,” I said. “I just want this whole nightmare to be over.”

  “What can I do?” Hannah asked, clearly bewildered by my melodrama. Mom was watching the two of us with rapt attention, as if we were exotic animals.

  “Turn back time,” I said. “Give me a do-over of the last hour so I can dump Derek via email. Do you think God would do that for me?”

  “Caro,” Mom said, using her scariest Voice of Steel. “You’re going to go to your room right now and collect yourself. Then you’re going to come out and apologize to Hannah.”

  I turned toward Hannah and started to say I was sorry, but Mom interrupted me.

  “Not now. When you’re really sorry.”

  “It’s okay, she doesn’t have to,” Hannah said softly.

  “No, it isn’t,” Mom told her sharply. “She has to learn to control herself and watch her mouth. We’re not your friends, Caro. You can’t talk to us like that.”

  I shook my head at her and walked away, bursting into my room a few moments later and throwing myself onto the bed. My inability to hold a thought in my mind that I didn’t express got me in trouble a lot at home, but I’d never fought as much with my parents in one short period of time as I had in the past few days. Plus, I’d said that really shitty thing to Hannah, which even I knew was unfair. The only thing that would have made it worse was having to talk to someone about it, which was why I ignored two of Reb’s calls and one of Erin’s.

  Unfortunately, they would not be put off. I got a text from Reb that said, “Pick up. Heard about you and Derek. How are you feeling?” and one from Erin saying, “I thought you were going to dump him first. What happened?” I texted Erin back with “He’s a quicker draw” and called Reb. I knew that at the very least, she would coddle me.

  “I’m so sorry about this, Caro,” Reb said when she picked up the phone.

  “How did you find out so quickly?” I asked.

  “Erin. I think Derek might’ve told some people and it got back to her.”

  “I just got home from his house—how has he had time to declare his new relationship status to the entire school?”

  “Blame the Internet,” Reb said.

  “Ugh. This is so awful.” I put a pillow over my face. Was it possible to intentionally smother yourself?

  “It’s not that bad. People break up all the time. It’s high school, remember? It’s not like you were married for twenty years and suddenly you’re a single mom living on a fixed income.” Reb stopped talking abruptly, then said, “And apparently I’m not over my parents’ divorce.”

  “Did you really think you were?” I asked.

  “I can barely hear you. Your voice is muffled.”

  I threw the pillow on the floor. “Better?”

  “Much. Anyway, I know you’re super upset right now, but I just wanted to give you a little perspective—it’s not the end of the world! You will survive. You will love again.”

  “I wasn’t in love with him,” I insisted. Of that, at least, I could be sure.

  “I was kidding.”

  “I know.”

  “You want to get out of your house? I’ll take you for ice cream to celebrate your newfound independence,” Reb offered.

  “Can’t,” I said. “I think I’m grounded.”

  “No problem. I’ll come over.” Reb, whose parents were notoriously lax when it came to rules and punishments, didn’t quite understand or respect other people’s restrictions.

  “Bad idea. Mom’s on the warpath.”

  “What did you do that was so horrible she’s locking you in your room right after you’ve been dumped?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow morning? I know Diva’s sort of a clunker, but it beats the bus.” I could hear the smile in her voice and couldn’t help feeling a little better. Reb was good at being upbeat for other people; she would’ve made a great cheerleader, although I would never say that to her, given her deep-seated hatred for cheerleaders.

  “I would be honored to ride in Diva,” I said.

  “Good. See you tomorrow at seven-forty-five sharp. I’m honking once, then leaving.” Rides from Reb came with hard-and-fast rules. I wasn’t a very punctual person, and she left me behind a lot.

  “I’ll try my best. Thanks, Reb.”

  “No prob, Bob.”

  I hung up feeling relieved. Sure, Erin would hassle me at school the next day about letting Derek dump me, but Reb knew exactly how I felt and was on my side. And as soon as she was done lecturing me, Erin would be, too. I wasn’t alone in the world.

  In fact, I was the opposite of alone; my world had just gotten a little more crowded.

  The entire first floor was empty. Dad was probably upstairs in the spare room, reading or watching television, and Mom was in bed already; I could hear a Golden Girls rerun blasting from the other side of the door. Hannah, I figured, was in the guest bedroom—her room now. I couldn’t imagine what she might be doing; at least she wasn’t pacing the floor like she had been the night before. I knocked tentatively, hoping she’d tell me to go away.

  But no. “Come in,” she called.

  I stepped into the room hesitantly, not knowing quite what to expect. I found her sitting up in bed, reading The Bell Jar.

  “Hey,” I said, without even thinking. “Is that my book?”

  “Yes,” she responded. “I took it from your room while you were out—I hope you don’t mind, it didn’t look like you were reading it.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t like the idea of her or anyone in my room, going through my stuff, when I wasn’t there, but it wasn’t the opportune time to bring it up. “I read it sophomore year in English class.” I paused for a second, then ventured another question. “Do you like it?” It both
ered me that I couldn’t even predict how she would react to anything. Not only did I not know Hannah; I’d never known anyone even remotely like her.

  “It’s one of my favorites,” she told me. “I read it in high school, too, for class, but I’d forgotten most of it.”

  “It’s one of my favorites, too.” Hannah smiled at that. “Were you allowed to read at the convent?”

  She shook her head. “Just the Bible, of course, and some theology. No fiction.”

  “That would really suck for me,” I said. “I can’t imagine not being allowed to read.”

  “It did suck,” she agreed. Hearing her say that was so weird that I sort of laughed.

  “So …,” I began. “I just wanted to say that I was sorry for what I said to you earlier. About God. I didn’t mean it. I was just mad. Not at you. Just at the situation.”

  “I understand,” she said, nodding in sympathy. “And anyway, if I thought God would turn back time for you if I asked, I absolutely would.”

  “Ha.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking or serious. Probably a little bit of both. Then I voiced a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind since I’d found out she was coming home: “Do you even believe in God anymore?”

  Maybe it was too personal. Maybe it was a stupid question. Hannah’s face became more serious, and she hesitated for so long I wondered if she would even answer. But then she sighed and said, “I don’t know. Sometimes I think maybe I still do, but there were stretches—long, painful stretches in the convent—when I just couldn’t anymore.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  “I left for a lot of reasons, but that was one of them. It was probably the root of all the problems I had in there.” She closed The Bell Jar and put it in her lap, folding her hands over it delicately.

  I wanted to offer her something, some consolation, in exchange for the comfort she’d tried to show me earlier, but it wasn’t exactly my strong suit.

  “Father Bob says that faith is nothing without doubt,” I said. It sounded so lame coming out of my mouth, especially because I didn’t even really believe in or think about God, like, ever. But I had always remembered that, what Father Bob said about faith. He said that doubt provided contour to faith, like shading in a drawing, that it allowed you to see what was really there. At the time we were learning how to sketch in art class, and I felt like it was the one thing he said that I actually understood.