We Were Never Here

by Jennifer Gilmore

  But I knew we wouldn’t. Maybe we were just camp friends. The gum tree. The moldy old cabins. The flashlights shaking through the woods. Kid stuff. Summer things. Maybe it’s not turning off the light. Maybe it’s just letting the seasons change.

  I couldn’t help but think that about Connor too, our season. The hospital—not camp—but this eerie alt place. Maybe the real world was not for us. We were all about parallel universes.

  I didn’t write him back. I didn’t try to call him or email or find a way to talk to him. His voice was the same, but still he felt like a stranger.

  I will try to reach you. Remember me? I remember you.

  As sad as I was, I could feel myself getting stronger, everything healing, the scar sealing things in securely, like a change purse. I never liked it, that would be insane, but I had gotten used to changing the bag, all the ointments and contraptions I needed to make sure it didn’t get too irritated or worse, come undone.

  I was transforming from werewolf back to human. And from human it was like I could spin three times and there were my bulletproof bracelets, my lasso. My superhuman Wonder Woman speed and strength. I felt like that sometimes, like I was some girl superhero now. My dark, sad alter ego, felled by kryptonite, was the girl sick in bed in the dark, waiting for a nurse to take her blood, a girl I hope never to meet again. I wasn’t much for meeting the girl I was before I got sick either. She didn’t know anything. She was ashamed of everything.

  I knew a lot by then. I was smaller but I was bigger. What was my special power? I didn’t know. But I did know that Dee and Lydia were off on a different path. Mabel and Greta were my sidekicks now.

  That’s when I decided it was time to take my sidekicks in for proper training.

  We went to Petiquette because, I mean, it was called Petiquette. Also it was the closest dog training place to us. We’d missed a class, but I didn’t want to wait until the next session, so I drove Greta and Mabel and me to our first class, my mother in the passenger seat.

  I looked in the rearview at Mabel and Greta, scratching and scrambling.

  “Do not get distracted, Liz.” My mother turned around in her seat. “Girls!” she said to the dogs. “Oh my God!” my mother said. “Center lane, please!”

  Just then a text came in with a delicate ping!

  “You’re driving!” My mother was borderline hysterical.

  I gripped the wheel. “Mother. I’m not looking at it!”

  My stomach clenched and I felt my bag. I really never didn’t feel it, but sometimes it was more . . . pronounced than others. My mother gripped the door handle like she was in a movie. My mother was always acting like she was in a goddamn movie. Or maybe I just made her act that way. Whatever the case, we managed to arrive at Petiquette, and early too, and we signed up and I headed into the Good Citizen training, ready to go.

  I checked my phone. The text was from Michael L: One more try? I really did miss you. How about the movies with Dee and K on Fri? Wink wink clapping hands smiley face.

  K. He’s going by Kenickie now. I don’t even remember his actual name anymore.

  K, I wrote back, but I think the irony might have been lost. Why the hell not, I thought. What’s to lose here?

  Think better of it was just one of the things I learned that night. The others? Greta and Mabel could not be in the same class. They were barely even the same species. And Greta could not go into hospitals and nursing homes, both places that don’t have a lot of use for dogs that jump up and bark and get down on front legs to play and then whimper when they are dragged away. The trainer, a tall woman named Esther who had long hair with so many split ends it looked like she’d been plugged into a socket and who introduced herself by saying if she were a dog she’d be a whippet, gave me some serious stink eye and told me this was a class for dogs who have already had training.

  Oh. So this was the AP class.

  I went to get my mother.

  “That dog is way too young for hospitals,” the trainer said. “Think about it. How will she be soothing? How could her visit possibly be a comfort to someone?”

  I didn’t say how it totally would be, but I did think that was what we were here for, to train the dogs to be a comfort. Maybe it’s not the Petiquette we need to be working on, I thought as I handed Greta over to my mom, who was reading in the waiting area, where she thought she’d be the whole hour we “trained.” She took Greta into the novice class. Like so, so novice.

  As soon as my mother walked out with Greta, Mabel got on her doggie smile and sat perfectly and gave me her paw and generally was her best Mabel self. I imagined bald kids smiling when she walked into their hospital rooms. I imagined old ladies motioning to her with their gnarled old-lady hands.

  That was the night I met Stella B.

  Stella and her pit bull, Samantha. Stella with her Clash T-shirt and her bicycle chain bracelets and her blue suede creepers, her dark black eyeliner. Her hair—kind of like a mullet—stuck out in all directions. She had three safety pins in each ear. She waved at me and she smiled, not angry like her clothes or, like Connor, all dark and menacing, a killer, beneath his beachy face. Me with my bag, scarred up, no one knew what was there. Once my weakness but now, maybe my secret armor. My Superman S—that scar—beneath my regular clothes. None of us are what we seem. Stella Sammy Mabel and me. Twice a week at Petiquette. Mom and Greta trailing, tangled, behind.

  Who knew I had been waiting for someone like Stella?

  Finally, my own girl band.

  House of Wax

  I guess I was expecting him to call me and chase me and try to win me back, make me understand what had happened and why he had lied. But no call came. There was no mail call either, just a strange and quiet void, snow falling, as silent as before those letters had ever arrived.

  I wondered if he’d gotten my letter. And since it didn’t mention anything about the accident, I wondered if he was angry. Or maybe he’d moved on already. Found some prep school girl in a plaid skirt and a crewneck cashmere sweater and expensive boots who’d also been sent far away from home. A girl as perfect on the outside and as blue inside as Connor was. I pictured them listening to My Chemical Romance late at night on the school record player and cutting the insides of each other’s forearms with razor blades.

  I pictured them needing each other.

  No call, all lies, so why not go to the movies with Michael? My parents were thrilled when I told them I was going out. They practically pushed me out the car door onto the street when they dropped me off.

  So here we were: at a horror movie from the fifties. House of Wax. Chosen by Dee-Dee, of course. (WWRW: What Would Rizzo Watch?) So: A wax museum, a house on fire, a crippled, burned man who rebuilds the museum by killing people and using their dead bodies. First one ever in 3D. Did that make it scarier? It was all lost on me. Once it would have sent me to the café next door, but now it just creeped me out. I had lost most kinds of fear.

  What made it even less scary was that we had to go in the daytime. Because after 9:00 p.m. it turned into a place where you could drink beer while watching the burned man kill people.

  I felt Michael’s hand reach for mine, and I took it. Perhaps, I thought, I could live my life in the old way, at school, feeling lucky that princely Michael L might pick me, even if it was because I was the sick girl. Hadn’t that been why Connor chose me? Sickness: a magnet. Our fingers interlocked. I could feel Michael’s smooth nail with my thumb, normal nails, not ripped at the cuticles and bitten to the quick. He put his other arm around me and I leaned into him.

  Michael’s hand on my shoulder. He brought me closer and we started to kiss. It was long and slow and I will say this again: Michael L is an amazing kisser. Not a lot of slobber. A little tongue, just enough. I think we kissed well together, actually.

  It was nothing like with Connor; there was nothing serious about it. And then I sensed his hand along my shirt again. I sat up straight. I looked up at the screen at some girl realizing her dead frien
d was already dead, and then at Kenickie, who was practically nailing Rizzo to the seat, fifties drive-in style.

  “Hey,” I said to Michael as he leaned back into his chair. He snapped his head in a way that moved his hair out of his face. Michael was all-over adorable, and I don’t know what he was doing with me. “I’m going to wait outside.”

  “Are you joking?” he asked me.

  “I scare easily!” I said, laughing.

  “That,” Michael said, “is truth.”

  “Ha-ha. Come on,” I told him. “I just can’t. Understand.”

  I feel like the entire movie theater was listening to us as they gazed at the display that was Dee and “K.”

  “Is it because you don’t feel well?”

  I shook my head, but not sure he could see that in the dark. I know he was thinking, why else would freakish Lizzie Stoller not want to be felt up by me?

  “I’ll go with you.” He looked over at our friends and rolled his eyes, which caught the light of the gruesome scene. “What, I’m supposed to sit with these guys? Please.”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  We grabbed our jackets and shuffled out of our aisle and went out the side of the theater. Momentarily blinded by the shock of the sunlight, I heard the door shut loudly and permanently behind us. I turned my face toward the sun.

  “Okay, Lizzie, spit it out.”

  “Spit what out?” I shielded my eyes.

  “What’s up? I know you like me.”

  “Oh really,” I said. I kept my eyes shielded and now looked up at him and smiled. My first post-hospital flirt. I admit it felt nice to be free of everything, what had happened to me, what was happening to Connor, what would happen to us both. “I know you never liked me.” Post-hospital rules: say anything.

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  “It’s not like there weren’t other opportunities. For years. So why now?”

  “It’s just now for me,” he said.

  “Hmmm.”

  “You know the thing I said about absence.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Is it because you’re still sick? Like, do you feel sick now?” Again he swept his hair out of his face with a flick of his head. It was starting to look like a spasm.

  That’s how it is, right? So easy to flip over. Michael from beautiful perfect to freakish and hideous. One small move and anyone can cross a line.

  “Nah,” I said. “I feel okay. I’m just not ready.” Connor lied and he was sort of a criminal, but I couldn’t let go of the thought of him, the maybe of him. I didn’t mention him to Michael, though. If I’m being perfectly honest, I think I was also keeping my options a little bit open.

  “Well, the night is young,” he said.

  “So young it’s day.” I kicked at the building with the toe of my sneaker.

  “We could still hang out. What do you want to do? Where should we go?”

  “Hey,” I said. “Michael? Can we go to a pet store?”

  Scars Make the Body Interesting

  Michael’s older sister, Jillian, picked us up and we all went to Pet Planet. I got a new tank and an aquarium light for Frog and some accessories for her new aquatic universe. Jillian got a guppy in a plastic bag, and Michael got one of those Siamese fighting fish for himself. “Pow, pow,” he said, old-school evil-fighter-style, punching me when we stood waiting at the register. “Pow.”

  When Jillian pulled up in front of my house, I hopped out. She held up her fish to the light. “Thank you,” she said, leaning over the passenger seat. “For making little Oscar possible!”

  Michael got out and unlocked the trunk, bent down and took out Frog’s new world. “It’s heavy.”

  “I got it!” I tried to take the awkwardly large box from him.

  “No, Liz,” he said. “Chill, okay? If I take it into your house, I don’t get your firstborn.”

  I felt everything relax. Shoulders, thigh muscles, stomach, heart. “Thanks.”

  I followed Michael L up the stone steps and unlocked the door. He set the box down in the hallway and placed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He might as well have been holding them up to show me he was unarmed.

  He cleared his throat. “We can just be friends, you know.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” I really wanted to be friends with Michael again.

  “Let’s just go back to before everything.”

  “We can’t really,” I said. “But I totally get what you mean.”

  “Lizzie?” my mother yelled down from the top of the stairs.

  “Hey, Mom.” I sighed. I unzipped my jacket. “I’d invite you in, but your sis is outside.”

  “Well, she has her new guppy to keep her company.”

  I laughed. It’s a funny word. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure.” Michael cuffed me on the chin. He totally did this! Like I was his little sister. It felt awesome. Then he put his arm around me in this I’m-about-to-mess-up-your-hair kind of way.

  I looked down at the Moroccan rug and laughed again. It turns out Michael Lerner really was a prince.

  “A’ight. See you later!” he said, and then he was out the door, and I watched him go back down the steps and make his way to his family Volvo. I knew I might regret sending him away, but that was how it was for me now.

  My mother was halfway down the stairs. “How was the movie?” she asked me.

  “Fun, Mom.”

  “See?” she said, hands on her hips. “Told you so.”

  I made sure Frog’s new tank was the right temperature, with all the perfect amounts of UVA and UVB light. I added my purchases to the scenery: little rocks and fake and real ferns, a piece of driftwood for her to bask on or hide beneath.

  I sat on my bed and watched her. Actually, I sat in my bedroom for a long time that night. I listened to Birdy, but she felt so soft and sweet, too good and young and pretty. I had this thought: What if all of us Birdy fans—all us girls, really, who wanted to be good and young and pretty, too—were sitting here in our rooms, looking at our turtles or our hamsters or our parrots, whatever live thing we had here, separately listening to this thing that connects us all? But we couldn’t find each other. We were alone in our rooms, invisible in the world.

  In the hospital I wasn’t alone. Those nurses checked on me all night long. I had a roommate. She might have pretty much only slept and watched television, and we might have been divided by that disgusting curtain, but we were connected too. And our room was connected by Connor and Verlaine, an unbroken line. In a way, me there in my bedroom, my parents downstairs, my sister off at Tim’s studying for the SATs yet again, I was more alone than ever.

  Maybe that’s why I got so happy seeing Stella B at Petiquette on Tuesdays. Every week I looked forward to seeing her.

  The first time I really talked to her was the next week. All the sessions began in a circle, our dogs at our feet, underneath the glare and hum of the fluorescent light. That night it was me, and Stella B and gray Samantha, and then a bunch of older ladies and their little King Charles spaniels and Havaneses and then two guys, one with a beagle, the other with a Rottweiler. Looking around the room, I could see the truth: dogs really do resemble their people. If I was going to resemble a dog, I was lucky to look like Mabel.

  There was some monitored dog socializing, and then we were off to train. What were we doing? I think we were still at sit and stay then.

  “Look at you. Heeling,” Stella said, eyeing Mabel.

  I hadn’t heard her approach us. I straightened. How did she know? “Well, I’ve been sick,” I said. It just came out.

  “Oh! Okay.”

  I then saw that Mabel was in fact heeling. I laughed, but I could feel heat rising to my face.

  “Flawless,” Esther said, her split ends silhouetted in the evening light. “Heeling is extremely difficult for dogs. True heeling, that is.”

  I looked at Mabel and she was looking at me, part of the heeling process.

  Stella’s pit bull was pretty
close to her side, and I watched her arrange her leash in a way that would get her at her hip, on the left side. She did it with such ease.

  I’m telling you: she trained with ease, but Stella looked crazy. Her hair, so black it was practically blue, those black-lined eyes, which were bright blue, a faded wife beater with a huge men’s short-sleeve striped polyester vintage button-down over it, and so on and so on. She was giggling.

  “What are you going to do with her?” Stella said when we’d all sat back in our circle, our dogs subdued by our feet.

  I placed my hand firmly yet gently on Mabel’s back, and she sighed.

  “If you guys get the certificate?”

  “‘If’?” I said. “Please, sister. Does it look like there’s going to be an ‘if’ here?”

  “True. Okay. When.”

  “Children’s hospital?”

  “So were you that kind of sick? Or like flu sick?”

  “That kind of sick.” I looked down at Mabel.

  “That’s shitty,” she said.

  I nodded. I didn’t laugh at the second pun she didn’t know she was making.

  “I understand you might want to help little kids now,” she said.

  I pictured Mabel smiling at a bald five-year-old. I pictured him smiling back, cured of sorrow and maybe even cured of cancer.

  “But man, that sounds fucking depressing.”

  I don’t know why. Maybe because she was a stranger or because she was a girl or because she was truthful or because she had a velvety gray pit named Samantha, but that night, after training, when she waited with me for my mother to finish up with Greta, I told her everything about the hospital.

  It didn’t take that long. There was something calm about her that made me want to talk.

  “You said it’s going to be removed?” she asked. “The bag?”

  “Supposedly by summer,” I told her. We were on a bench outside Petiquette, and the night was dark and super starry.