We Were Never Here

by Jennifer Gilmore

  King and queen were two assholes who were dating and who had parties in their gated communities that were seniors only. They both drove to school, one in a Lexus, the other in a Jetta, and it was pretty nauseating. It was just so expected. I was tired of all that by then. The bad teen movie. I kind of hoped it was the movie where some crazy person comes in and takes out the whole lot of them. I wished that it was just me and Connor, here to save the world.

  Connor and I couldn’t even save ourselves. So I sat there, sneaks toeing the wooden gym bleacher in front of me, watching the hockey team, everyone dressed for the rally in their little plaid skirts, their collared, numbered shirts, all seated up front with the football players, the lacrossers, and so on. I knew that everyone but Annabelle Loughton was wearing boxers beneath her skirt. Annabelle? Well, her father left when she was young; that’s why she was so needy, we all told one another as we watched her skirt fly up on the field.

  I felt that tickle in my bag, and the always accompanying panic that something had come undone, but nothing had, and I just sat there watching the king and queen smile absurdly, doubting seriously that these two would ever be crowned in Georgetown, at Connor’s school.

  But now he was gone.

  King, Queen, Prince

  Lydia did not seem to care about my lack of . . . enthusiasm for the evening’s sanctioned activity, which was the homecoming dance.

  “I won’t take no for an answer,” she said when she called again. Still she sounded like she was forty-five years old.

  “Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Fine.”

  She showed up and sat with me while I got dressed. I changed in the bathroom. By changed I mean took off my big jeans and put on some that had once been “skinnies” but were now regulars. A nice three-quarter-sleeved striped cotton shirt from when I cared. Flats. My hair was coming out in clumps. The things I now know: first your hair gets crazy long from the steroids, and then it falls out a few weeks after all the anesthesia. So I just braided it and circled a rubber band loosely around the end.

  So: homecoming.

  The walls of the gym were streaming with long strands of colored lights, some kind of a rainbow that Leandra R had orchestrated, representing equality for all. It was all terribly cheesy, and then everyone in these huge clusters, just masses of people, fists in the air, freaking. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I never would have been in the middle of that, sweating, dancing, laughing, anyway, but now? No way. Not 1 percent of a way. What took the cake, though, was Dee-Dee, who along with Kenickie was trying to get the music changed so they could do a whole Grease dance-off. She had a corsage on her wrist and wore a strapless taffeta dress (it really was a gown), and then all the hand movements—the bumping of closed fists, the thumbs-up—with her boyfriend was incredibly ridiculous.

  So there was that and then the people making out beneath the bleachers, and then there were all the haters, who sat around lurking in dark corners. Like the guy of many flannels, the one who drew everyone. He was there, wearing a flannel, with another guy in another flannel.

  “Hey,” I said, walking over to him, way out of the fray, practically in a cave. The refracted lights from the twirling disco ball moved above us, occasionally dipping between a bleacher seat.

  He nodded at me, his long black hair flopping over his face. He had a bunch of deep red zits embedded in his cheeks. They call them craters for a reason.

  He handed me a flask, and I took a swig from it.

  “You’ve been gone a while,” he said.

  I liked the feeling of whatever that was burning down my throat. I handed it back to him. “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for noticing.”

  “Sure thing.”

  His friend was silent and looked straight ahead, just tapped his foot—not to the rhythm of the blasting Demi Lovato at all—while looking at the ceiling, bored.

  The guy from last year’s class passed me the flask again and I took another swig—bourbon or whiskey or scotch, I think, something brown for sure—and then I crossed my arms and leaned against the cold tile wall. Everyone . . . trying. Thumping and laughing and freaking, and shifting and trying and trying. It was nice, I thought, to be done with all that, just above it all for once. I liked that feeling of invulnerability.

  Oh, Dee-Dee. She was doing some kind of fifties thing where she swung under Kenickie’s legs and came up kicking, jumping and smiling brightly.

  “Jesus,” I said, sort of pushing back and forth off the wall with my toes.

  That’s when Michael L came sauntering up. It was before his prince status had been officially conferred upon him, but his princeliness emanated just the same. As in, there wasn’t a lot of insecurity in his strut: skinny jeans, Pumas, plaid shirt, shock of long hair, a serious saunter. What was it about him? Because now he seemed regular to me. Or more: I was in control of myself around him. This, I liked.

  Then again, what did Connor seem like? Preppy. Rich. Golden. I can’t even remember. Sometimes you stop seeing what the person is to the world. You only see what the person is to you.

  Sometimes. Because I could see everything about Michael L. And yet . . .

  “What assholes.” He stood next to me, looking out at the dance floor, back against the wall. Flannel shirts one and two scooted away as if they would catch whatever disease the prince-in-waiting had.

  “Bye,” I said, extra loud. “Thanks for the drink!” I could still feel the harsh, thick taste along the roof of my mouth, my throat.

  The guy from last year’s class gave me a backward wave as he walked away.

  “Who?” I said.

  “I don’t know, the cast of West Side Story.”

  “Grease,” I said. “That’s the play they’re putting on. I can’t imagine how you’ve missed it. I could hear them singing from my bedroom.”

  “I know,” he conceded. “Believe me. Bedroom, eh?”

  “Please.” I stood there, watching.

  “Hey, so you’re barely speaking to me,” Michael L said.

  “Yes I am.”

  “You’re not. I don’t get it. We used to be amazing friends.”

  Amazing friends meant me biking over to his house and hanging out in his backyard while I pigged out on Oreos and he told me about whatever girl he loved. “I guess.” I shrugged.

  “You guess?”

  “I’m kind of wondering about this instant change in you,” I said.

  “It’s not instant. You know what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  “They? Who is that? Please, Michael. Please. Anyway, I’m not talking to anyone really. I’m just on my own right now.”

  “You’ve changed, man,” he said.

  I turned toward him, now just my arm touching the wall, if it were a lifeboat and not having some kind of contact with it would mean sure drowning. “You think?” I said. My eyes were leaking tears. I wished they weren’t, but they were. That’s the way it was then.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Because everything’s different now! I was in a room with a lady who died. I almost died. I’m all fucked-up!” I said. “I am totally different!” I tried to tamp down everything. Everything. But it was untampdownable.

  “Hey,” he said, softer, sweetly. He brought me close to him and hugged me.

  I stood there stiffly, but I let him. It was difficult not to remember the way I would once have thrown myself in traffic to have him.

  “Lizzie.” He brushed my hair out of my face, which felt like he was doing something he’d once seen someone do.

  I looked down.

  And then he brought his face to mine, his lips.

  We kissed. He had such full lips, and I could taste my tears on them. It felt good to kiss him, actually. He was an excellent kisser, his mouth open but his tongue pretty much staying put there. He was holding me so tightly and I felt myself relax, my shoulders sort of sigh back to their normal position, and then I felt him run his hand lightly across my stomach.

  I went rigid. “What are you doin
g?”

  “Kissing you,” he said. “Finally.”

  “And?” I pushed away from him.

  “And nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  “What happened exactly, Lizzie? I’ve heard stuff, I’m not going to lie. What does it feel like?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Drop it,” I said. It used to be the girl with the eye patch, and then it was the kid who had to be in a wheelchair after falling off a horse, and now it was me. I was the freak. Here he was in the closest proximity possible.

  “I just wanted to know what happened,” Michael said. Michael L, who I’d loved forever and who I didn’t love at all anymore. How does that happen? One second you think you’ll die and the next you can’t even remember it.

  “Then just ask me.” I pushed him away. I knew what he was doing. Be close to the person everyone’s talking about. The one who might be princess even though she’s never been princess material. Be the one who knows.

  “I think I just did,” he called after me as I raced out of the gym.

  “What Now” was playing. “I don’t know where to go, I don’t know what to feel, I don’t know how to cry, I don’t know, oh, oh why.” The high school gym. Rihanna. How cliché can you be? Can I be? Either way there I was rushing out of the gym, and there I was being met by Mr. Gallagher patrolling the hallway.

  “Hello, Ms. Lizzie Stoller! Having fun? We’re so happy to have you back!”

  I ignored him, which was rude because Mr. Gallagher was the nicest teacher and he also organized the poinsettia sale and the ski trips and trips to Disney World.

  But I ignored him anyway and ran outside and called my mother and then I sat on the bike rack in front of the gym entrance, waiting for her, and then she was there, pulling up in her green Subaru, and then we were home and I ran into my room, Greta and Mabel following behind me, and then I closed my door. Greta chewed on one of the legs of my bed and Mabel climbed up on the bed with me and we lay down facing each other and she licked away my tears.

  Dogs. Dogs. Dogs. Way better than humans.

  “Honey?” My mother.

  “I’m fine!” I said. “Really.”

  “Okay, honey,” she said. “I’m downstairs if you want to talk.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t going to happen, not tonight anyway.

  What was going to happen?

  This: I put on my father’s sweats, soft and old and enormous, and one of the school T-shirts I’d been fool enough to buy as a freshman, and I got out my ridiculous study buddy, red with white stars, and I put it on my knees. I took out some typing paper.

  Hi there, I began. Hi. I got your letter. Where do I begin? I wrote. But then I began so easily, as easily as I had talked to Connor in the hospital that very first day I told him how tired I was of being me. I wrote about school. About Dee and Lydia and how they didn’t understand me anymore. Or maybe I didn’t understand them. I wrote about the pep rally. I asked him what it was like there. And if he felt lonely. Too lonely.

  What I didn’t write: how wrong I felt it was that he hadn’t told me he was going. That he was gone. What I also didn’t write: anything about the dance.

  And then: I debated. I debated saying it. I wrote it and I crossed it out. I ripped up the paper and started again. And then I wrote it. I love you, I wrote. In the end, I left it in.

  Under the Clock

  When I woke up on Sunday, I decided I would discuss Connor—finally!—with Nora when she visited. I had told nobody. It was the opposite of me, but I hadn’t figured out how to talk about it, maybe because I hadn’t figured out what exactly it was.

  What was it? Maybe Nora could help, not define it necessarily, but think it over. Like I had with her so many times. So I decided I would tell her everything. I wouldn’t show her the letter but maybe I could just tell her about him and us and, maybe, see what she thought.

  So that was my plan for Sunday.

  My mother and I went to pick her up at Union Station. We parked and then we went inside to wait, which makes it sound like we just pulled up and got out, which we did not because, parking, but after all that: slipping my letter to Connor inside the mailbox. After that: fluttering heart. And then waiting beneath the clock for Nora.

  We waited for a really long time, though. Like, twenty-five minutes. No text from Nora. We checked the arrivals, and her train had come in, but Nora did not seem to be among the passengers. She wasn’t answering my texts. So Nora. Her world and we just happen to be roaming around in it.

  “I hope everything is okay,” my mother said. Was it only recently that my mother went first to that bleak, bad place where no hope lives?

  “Of course it is. She got on a train for half an hour in the morning on Sunday. I mean, what could happen? She’s probably got no phone service is all.”

  She’s off being Nora is what I didn’t say, but after ten more minutes of loitering, I called her house.

  “Mrs. Branford?” I said when her mother answered.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Lizzie!”

  “Hi, honey,” she said. Here’s the thing with camp friends. You barely ever see their parents. They just come to get us, throwing our massive bags of dirty laundry and our army blankets and our hideous birdhouses into the minivan and turning back for home. So as long as I’d known Nora, I think I’d maybe said thirteen words to her mother. Now, on the phone, she let out this massive sigh.

  “Nora was supposed to come,” I said. “I mean, my mom and I are waiting for her. Under the clock. At the train station, I mean. Where we’d arranged.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Branford sighed. Mrs. Branford, by the way, sounded the opposite of British. She sounded, I don’t know, like she was Canadian or from Cleveland or something. Her consonants were pronounced really close together. And the sigh made it seem like I was supposed to ask her about why she’d made it.

  “Is everything all right?” I didn’t look at my mother, who I could see out of the corner of my eye was plaintively giving me a nervous, knowing glance.

  “Nora’s been arrested,” Mrs. Branford said.

  “What?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Branford said.

  I waited, breathing. I pictured her in the dressing room, layering bras over her big boobs.

  “Yes. She was arrested for shoplifting last night, out with some friends. I’m sorry she didn’t let you know she would not be coming. Obviously.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I said.

  “Yes. She’s home now, but she has no access to phone or computer. The store is deciding if they’ll press charges. Obviously we’re hoping they won’t, but Nora will not be visiting anytime soon either way.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What store, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Oh God, some tarty place. The Bottom Drawer.”

  I giggled.

  “It’s a lingerie store here,” she said. “Very expensive.”

  “I see.” Oh Nora.

  “Yes. We are all disappointed. In Nora. I will let her know you called, Lizzie. How are you feeling, by the way? Nora was so worried about you.”

  “I’m good. Thank you.”

  “Glad to hear it. Okay, I will let her know you called.”

  We said good-bye, and I slipped my phone in my back pocket. There were two ways to do this. (1) I could tell my mother what I once would have told her for sure: Nora had food poisoning. She was so sick she couldn’t call, and her mother forgot. Bad fish. It will do it every time. Or there was option (2), what actually happened. Which would make being friends with Nora pretty hard from there on out.

  I looked at my mother. “Nora got caught shoplifting,” I said.

  The moment ended. Very abruptly. “Oh my,” she said.

  I nodded grimly.

  “Well!” she said, taking me by my elbow. “Let’s give ourselves a treat and have a nice lunch!”

  Not the response I was expecting, but a better one. Only apparently there are no nice lunches in Union Stat
ion, and so we walked a few blocks to E Street into a restaurant in a really swanky hotel.

  “Two,” she said to the waiter.

  “The brunch here is supposed to be fabulous, but I only come here during the week,” she said when we were seated. “I just love this place.” She smiled at the bar and the other tables.

  “Looks yummy.” I peered over the enormous menu, waiting.

  “What did she steal?” my mother asked as she placed a starched white napkin on her lap.

  “I have no idea,” I lied. “Her mom didn’t say.”

  “I wonder,” she said. “How does this make you feel?”

  “Can you please not do that?” I asked.

  “Yes. I can not do that.”

  “Thank you. It was lingerie.”

  My mother shook her head and her eyes widened. “Don’t quite know what I was expecting.”

  “Truth is, Nora did tell me she was stealing. It was recent. She got some kind of odd rush from it. I don’t think she’s, like, wanting for bras and underwear.”

  My mother nodded, trying to quell the evident thrill of my decision to go with option two: truth telling. Which, she couldn’t have known, was also a way of not telling number three, which was the truth about Connor.

  “Don’t worry; I don’t get it at all.”

  My mom paused. “You know, I was caught stealing once.”

  I looked at her. Anything my parents told me about who they once were, before Zoe and me, like when my father got drunk and threw up at some Neil Young concert, or when my mother kissed a famous actor, always shocked me. I didn’t really want to hear about it either. I wanted them to have always been just this. My parents.

  “I stole a ChapStick when I was with your grandmother. I got caught stealing ChapStick with my mother. In a drugstore. I was ten.”