“Are you glad?”
“Of course I’m glad,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be? This thing is no fun. At. All. And it keeps me from things.”
“From what things?”
“I don’t know. Being close to people.” Is that what had kept me from Michael L? Maybe a little.
“I would think it would filter the bad people out.”
I thought about that. I thought not just of the people who might actually see it, but the ones like Dee and Lydia, who really weren’t there anymore. I could filter them out.
“I see your point.”
Of course I thought of Connor. He was, then, in everything I thought. And I also thought how much I liked Stella’s point of view. You think you’ve heard everything about being sick or getting better, all of it. But then, it turns out, you haven’t because Stella tells you something new.
“I don’t know.” She fingered her bike chain bracelet. It was rusted.
“Did you buy that?” I pointed to the bracelet.
“Buy? God no. My friend made it for me,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know. Anyway. I think if it were me, I might just keep it. I mean, I’m sure it’s a total pain and uncomfortable and surreal to have and life changing, but now you’ve got another surgery, and if you remove it, it’s like the whole thing is over.”
“That’s what I’m going for. Overness.” Inadvertently I brought my hand to my stomach.
“I’m all for war wounds,” Stella said. “I wouldn’t want them taken from me.”
“Well,” I said. “You have no idea.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’ve got no fucking idea, but I think scars make the body more interesting.”
“Scars, maybe,” I said. “This is not a scar. I could deal with the scars. I could.” I will.
“See this?” She pointed to the corner of her eye. A fine line slashed diagonally across her brow. “I fell when I was a kid.”
“That’s not really the same thing.” Seriously? That she equated my experience with falling down might have ended it with Stella B, which would have been a shame, because I could tell I really liked her.
“But I didn’t tell you that I was being chased. It was really bad. Chased by a neighbor. Who caught me. If I hadn’t fallen and gotten blood everywhere and had to go to the hospital, which gave me this scar, it would have been a very, very bad thing.”
I was silent.
“Let’s just say this reminds me of a lot of things. Mostly about being lucky.”
“I’ve been lucky,” I said. “But I think I can remember that part without this.”
“Can you?”
I could.
That’s when my mother came prancing out with a crazed Greta straining at her leash, trying to get to us. “Wait, why am I doing this again?” she asked me. “Wasn’t this your and Daddy’s idea?”
“Hi, there,” Stella said, standing. “I’m Stella.”
“Hi,” my mom said.
“Daphne,” I said, nodding my head toward her.
“Hi, Daphne,” said Stella.
My mother looked stunned. Finally! Then she turned to me, and trying to get hold of Greta, she flashed us both a massive grin.
Fruit
I could tell this about Stella B: that just a few months before, we never would have even noticed each other. But now, hanging out with her made me think of all of us, a string of girls, connected as we lay in our beds listening to music in our lonely bedrooms by laser beams of pink light. And I pictured my beam crossing over Dee-Dee’s and Lydia’s house and making my way to Stella B. What was Stella B’s room like? Stella, who had a license and who was waiting to hear about early decision. Stella, who looked all beat up and punked out and biker and broken but was sweet and straight A’s and smart and also wise. How did she get that way? And what did she see in me?
What was Stella doing tonight?
But beneath all that I was as always thinking of Connor. If Stella was right about my being sick and having this bag sort of filtered out the soulless, and I think she was right, then I was keeping him. Keeping Connor. But why had all this happened? Why did he have to make it so hard to see the good? How was I supposed to pretend it never happened? Was Connor also filtering out the bad people? Maybe I was also being tested.
What, I wondered beneath all of that, was Connor doing tonight?
Laser beams of light. Did they reach Nora all the way through the tunnel to Baltimore? Possibly. I put her music on. Le Tigre: “Oh, we could rock, or we could bomb, or we could try, like super hard. . . .”
Kathleen Hanna versus Birdy. Like rip open a pomegranate or bite into a sweet red apple. Which would you rather? This is what I was thinking about when, at 11:55, the phone rang again.
202!
Washington, DC. Connor’s cell.
202.
This time I was ready.
Making Plans
“Hi!” he said. Connor said. Connor on the other end of the line.
“Hey,” I said. Both so happy and so . . . sorrowful. Both at once. Always.
“I got your letter, Liz.” He seemed so happy.
“I got yours too.” I leaned my head back against that stickered headboard, right on Hello Kitty. Bump. Bump. Bump went my head against the wood.
“Did you get mine before you sent yours?” Connor asked me.
“No,” I said. “Your letter, it came after.”
“Oh,” he said. “I knew that, but I was still hoping. Because your letter said I love you.”
Really, I thought. Because of course I knew that. I had written it and crossed it out and thrown the paper away and then written it again. All this is to say that I knew what I had written. I knew what had made me write it too. Everything was different now. But I didn’t say any of those things. What I said was, “That was before.”
“Before what?” Connor said flatly.
I was silent. I could hear myself breathing. I got out of bed and went to my desk, sat down. Leaned in and looked at Frog from her level.
“Before the letter, you mean,” he said.
“Yes, Connor. Before the letter.”
Now it was his turn to breathe.
“It was before I knew the truth! Which was that you lied to me,” I said.
“I see,” he said.
“You see? Oh, good!”
“You don’t have to be cruel.”
Now I didn’t say anything. What was cruelty, really? I always thought about it in relationship to how people treated animals. How beings treated beings who were weaker. I wasn’t cruel, but I hadn’t known I had the power to be either. “I’m not meaning to be cruel,” I said. “That’s a harsh word.”
“Sorry. You’re right. This isn’t about you.”
I gave out a fake laugh. “Thanks!” I said.
“No, I mean the past. What happened. But can I just ask? I mean, I know there is so much to say about how sorry I am and how much I want—no, need—you to forgive me, but I just need to know: Is it that I didn’t tell you the truth, that I lied, or is it the thing? The thing that happened?”
“The accident? You mean the girl dying? That accident? You mean the time you hit her with the car you were driving when you were high?”
“Yes that. And that’s also what I mean by cruel.”
“I think it’s both. It’s a little bit about the Thing, but that was this single thing. It’s more the crazy lies, though. Those were for so long.”
“Okay,” Connor said.
“I see what happened really clearly.” I don’t know why, but I opened the drawer and picked up David B’s God’s eye. My talisman. “That it was like a moment. And then it was over.” I tilted my head and twirled it a little in my palm, felt the rough bark of the sticks that held the softest purple yarn together. “It all makes me feel really bad for you, actually. And for her. And her parents.” I set down the God’s eye. I looked in on Frog, basking on her log beneath the fake sun.
“Me too,” Connor said. I th
ink he was crying a little.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yeah. That this . . . happened.” I stood up.
“Thanks,” Connor said. “In a way, it never really happened. I didn’t mention in the letter that my mom is this incredibly famous attorney. She gets people like congressmen and actors out of trouble. Once a senator was found drunk and cheating, and she got him off by blaming Ambien, and then she sued Ambien and he got a zillion dollars. So all this? It doesn’t exist. I was never even there. But of course I was. I hate myself. No cutting that part out, right? All the ugly stuff.”
“That’s crazy. Because it happened. And you lied to me about it. I told you everything!”
“I’m so sorry, Liz. I would do anything to take it back. To sit next to you in that awful hospital room and tell you the truth and have you still be there waiting for me the next day. But you can see that wasn’t going to happen. If I told you, you would have hated me.”
I didn’t know what I would have felt, if I was being honest. He had a point. Maybe I needed to love him first for him to tell me the truth. “You know, I looked for you online,” I said. “You really aren’t there. Like at all.” I went back to my bed, lay back. Bump, bump.
“She got rid of everything. It’s disgusting. You looked for me?”
“Of course. You fell off the surface of the world.” I remembered just searching and searching and coming up with nothing. Like I’d totally dreamed Connor. The whole thing.
“I know. I’m so sorry,” Connor said.
“Also? You’re not ugly. You are so wonderful! Like, seriously wonderful. I gotta say, you’re not the guy I thought you were, but I know there is nothing ugly about you.”
Connor was silent.
And so was I. If the conversation had been different, I’d be mortified to have said such a thing. But not in this conversation.
“Thanks, Lizzie,” he said.
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to be the guy I thought you were anyway. That guy was just this perfect private-school boy who partied in the day and had no problems at all.”
“Ha.” It came out a little bitter.
“When you and Verlaine first came into my room, I barely remember what I thought. That was so long ago, in sick years.” I sat up.
“Right?” Connor said. “Verlaine. I miss him.”
“Sorry,” I said. I wished Mabel was near me.
“How’s Mabel?” Connor asked, because he will always be able to read my mind. Always.
“Perfect. And we got a rescue. Greta. Totally bat-shit crazy.”
“Perfect,” he said, and I could just tell he was smiling. “Are you still listening to Birdy?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
“And the Beatles? There’s an old-school record store near here, and I’ve been buying a bunch. Old stuff. But I keep looking for new-pressed Birdy for you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I didn’t want you to hate me,” Connor said quietly.
“Are there other lies?” I asked him.
“No.”
“To me or to anyone else?”
“What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath. “Have you lied to other people?” I was thinking of Tim’s friend’s friend. Of her. The one who Connor never spoke to again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yes, I’ve lied to other people. But I’m not lying to you or to anyone else anymore.”
“Other girls?”
“I haven’t outright lied. But I haven’t always been a good person. No. I know that. I am not that person anymore, though. I am up here at school and I’m just alone a lot. And sometimes at night in this garden, harvesting the fall stuff other kids planted, I feel like a fucking carrot. Like I’m tearing myself out of the ground too. It sounds so cheesy. As you can see, I’m in therapy!”
“I see!”
“Gardening at night. Heh. R.E.M. You know?”
“No, don’t know that song,” I said. I never was going to know the right song. Like, ever.
“You don’t? That’s crazy. I thought everyone knew that song.”
“No, I don’t. I just said I don’t.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll send it to you.”
“I can look it up on my own, Connor.”
“All right then,” he said. “How’s Frog?”
I looked up at the ceiling. Everything in this room was blue. “You know I do love you,” I whispered, ignoring the question, even though my answer seemed connected to it.
“You do?”
“I do.” And I did. I just felt it so big. Out of sadness, maybe. So much was coming from me from that place then.
“Me too,” Connor said. “Since before I ever met you.” He said that.
“What does that even mean?” I asked. I was teasing him, but I also wanted to know. I really wanted to know.
“It means.” He was quiet. “Let me think. It means I went in there—to the hospital—looking for you and I didn’t even know it. Not looking for a you, but for you. Because I loved you.”
“Click,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
“That’s us just fitting together. Just being perfect.”
“Okay,” Connor said. “Click, click, click.”
I burrowed under my covers like some kind of hamster and watched my alarm clock’s digital face make its way toward late, late night. Connor was lonely and alone and sent away and fearful, but I was those things too, minus the being-sent-away part. And finally there was this person on the other side with me. Here I was on the moon, and who knew someone else was suited up and waiting for me there?
When my clock read 2:00 a.m., I panicked a little. Connor was talking about reading Hamlet. “Hey, Connor? It’s so late. And I’m already so behind,” I said, but this time I only meant in school.
“I’m not supposed to be on my cell anyway.”
“What?” I said. I was shocked. How many rules could Connor break?
“It’s okay. It’s a minor infraction. No one will ever know. My roommate’s at his mother’s house tonight.”
“Oh, okay, I guess. I have no idea.”
“It’s all rules. There are so many.”
Rules. I didn’t have that many, actually. Just the ones I was making for myself. I said, “Okay, so how about this. Let’s pretend this never happened. I mean not ignore it totally, but, like, what would we be from here? Without all the bad shit? Like, what are the good things? About us? Let’s just be them and have them.”
“I love that,” Connor said. “I wish I could see you and tell you in person.”
“I know. Me too,” I said. “Soon, okay?”
“I have another idea,” Connor said.
“Where is it again?” I said before we hung up again. I wrote down the address.
“I’ll be there waiting,” Connor said.
“But are you even allowed to leave school?”
“I’ll arrange it,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
That’s what he’d said the last time, when we snuck out of the hospital together like thieves.
Thick as thieves. It had to have been from some song I was supposed to know.
But I didn’t. What I did know was this: we were thieves. But what were we stealing?
I thought of it more like we were taking our lives back.
Our lives together. The very least I could do was see Connor again.
Lost and Found
Halloween was coming. There was not a holiday I hated more, other than perhaps Valentine’s Day. Costumes. Pretending. Covering up the covering up. Thank God for Petiquette.
Another night at Petiquette. And: another funny thing about Stella B? She drove a white Ford Fiesta.
“Don’t.” She shook her head when I watched her park. She rolled down her window. “It’s my mother’s car. It’s totally my mother’s.”
Greta and my mother were already inside, but I waited for her
. I laughed. I mean I covered my mouth and full-on laughed.
“I added the accessories,” she said. A hula girl hung from the rearview. And one of those bobbing dogs was on the dusty dash.
“But anyway? This is kinda who I am too.” She sort of cackled as she poked the hula girl’s skirt, making her dance, and then unlocked the door to get out.
“I get it,” I said as we all four went inside, entering the hallway of paper pumpkins and chunks of white cotton that were somehow supposed to represent spiderwebs. Who decided that? Because they don’t look like spiderwebs at all. “I totally do,” I said, and it was true, I really got Stella B. She was just so clear to me.
Greta’s novice class always went at least ten minutes long, and it’s amazing how much of getting to know a person you can pack into those ten minutes when you’re not in school or near school or with people from school. It’s like being on a plane with someone. Or a hospital. Alt universe, enclosed space, anything goes.
We waited on the bench outside and we both kicked at the pavement. Stella was going through a breakup with this guy she’d been with since her freshman year. “Forever,” she said. “Before I was even a person. I was an unhatched egg. A little downy chick.”
I couldn’t picture it. Stella all sweet and yellow and soft and breakable. “Why’d you guys break up?” I asked. “I mean, in three sentences or less?”
“He’s in college.”
My heart skipped at the thought. So old and far away. And so close. Stella was just so much older than I was in experience years, though I supposed I’d gained some time in sickness years. Though I do think I got some time in there with the sickness. Serious sick years.
“And just away,” she said. “He’s away now. That’s all.”
I nodded.
“And he started dating someone at school.”
“What an asshole,” I said.
“Yes and no. I mean, I’m a little relieved. It’s been a long thing. Complicated, I mean. What isn’t, right?” She laughed, but it was a dry, brittle laugh, branches cracking.
“I see,” I said. “Where is he?”
“UPenn.”
“Name?” I said.
“Jared.”
We Were Never Here Page 16