by Anne Pfeffer
I was in a big armchair with Phoebe, who seemed very far away, even though she was right there in the chair with me. She was doing something wet and frantic to my mouth with her mouth. She must have popped a breath mint or something, because I caught this intense blast of peppermint.
I went with it. I didn’t really like this girl, but her tongue was in my mouth, which made up for a lot.
I knew nothing about kissing at age twelve, but I did my best. Doing it with Phoebe was like wrestling with a suction hose. I was sure kissing had to be better than this – otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular. But at the same time, I had a wicked hard-on and was sliding my hand lower and lower down her back until it was almost on her ass! She seemed fine with it. See, Michael? You’re not the only one with game around here.
Then, someone said, “Heads up! I hear something!” We all froze. Phoebe’s pointy elbow was boring into my ribcage. Footsteps walked up to our door and stopped. Then a soft tapping on the door, as if the person outside was testing to see if anyone was awake in there.
In absolute silence, we waited. I thought my heart would knock Phoebe off the chair, it was pounding so hard.
The footsteps started up again and disappeared down the hall.
“Okay, that’s it, I guess!” I threw off Phoebe, peeled Michael off of Kayla, and dragged him down the hall to our room. Once safely back, I let go of his arm and said, “Dude! We could have got thrown out of school!” My lips felt huge and rubbery, and the room was slowly rotating around us.
“But we didn’t.” Michael was already climbing into bed.
I fell into my own bed, my head pulsing, thanking God we had escaped uncaught.
“Hey, Ryan.” Michael’s voice was muffled from his pillow.
“Yeah?”
“Phoebe’s hot, huh?”
He could have her.
On the bus ride home from the retreat, the guy who had been in the room with us, Josh, was caught with weed in his backpack and was expelled from Pacific Prep.
“Bummer,” was Michael’s comment. After that, he started smoking dope and trying harder stuff too with this druggie crowd at school. “Come party with me, man!” he would say, and I did a few times, but finally told him I didn’t like it and didn’t want to get into trouble. We stayed best friends, though. What with our regular lunches and tennis games, schoolwork, and the closeness of our two families, Michael was too much a part of my life to be anything else.
As for Phoebe, I avoided her for the rest of the school year and was glad when she transferred to this alternative hippie school for eighth grade. I heard she thought the Pacific Prep kids were boring and uptight.
Chapter 17
My folks have been talking to Nat and Yancy a lot since the funeral and have invited them over for dinner. It figures, I think with a flash of anger, that we kids aren’t enough to make them stay home at night. They need a good reason, like the Westons coming over.
We’re all sitting around our big dining table, with Nat on my right and Yancy across from me. It hurts me to see only seven places at the table. From the sad way that Maddy and Molly are picking at their food, I can see that they’re feeling it, too.
Mom sits next to Yancy with an arm around her shoulder. People always say Yancy’s beautiful, but I think if you took away the fancy clothes and hair, no one would ever look at her twice.
Tonight, she has this lost, sad look on her face. Both she and Nat look older and really tired. Nat’s a handsome guy—Michael took after him—but now his face is puffy, like he’s acquired an extra chin. He speaks only occasionally and his hands shake through dinner.
We sit for a long time at the table and share memories of Michael. I don’t say much, since I still haven’t forgiven my folks or the Westons for what they did when he overdosed.
“Remember that summer on Martha’s Vineyard?” Mom says. Dad and Nat were filming a movie, and we were all living together in this big house we had rented. “When Michael and Ryan slept in a tent in the backyard every single night? They never used their bedroom at all, except to store their clothes!”
“During tennis matches,” Maddy says, “any time Michael had to change sides, he would always do a crazy jump over the net instead of walking around. It was so funny!”
“And he put fourteen cherry tomatoes in his mouth one time!” Molly says.
“He did?” Yancy says. “I never saw him do that!”
“I think you were in Barcelona that day,” I say in a bored tone. Heat crawls down my spine, as the room gets quiet.
“Ryan.” My dad’s voice holds a warning. He goes on, “I remember when he broke his leg snowboarding, and the Ski Patrol had to bring him down the mountain.”
“Of course, he had to do it on the first day of our trip,” Nat says. For the rest of the trip, we had all taken turns staying at the hotel to play Scrabble and Monopoly with him during the day, while the others skied.
All of a sudden, Yancy starts to cry. “We made so many mistakes.” She twists her hands together, while my mom puts both arms around her.
Even I feel a little bad for her then. If that baby of Chrissie’s were Michael’s, it would mean everything to Nat and Yancy—to all of us, really. But it’s not.
“We’re suing the Breakers Club,” she says, her lips set in a thin line. “For negligence. When the valets gave Michael his car.”
“You’re gonna win,” Dad says.
I wonder what they think that’s going to accomplish. It sure as heck won’t bring Michael back.
She answers my unspoken question. “If it stops them from doing it again, it’ll be worth it. Nadine, we’re going to give any settlement we receive to the Teen League.”
Mom nods her head, looking sober. “That’s a great idea.”
“What’s the Teen League?” I ask.
“Yancy and I are on the Board there,” Mom says. “They give support to disadvantaged teens, including counseling for drug and alcohol abuse. They help a lot of kids.”
Too bad Michael didn’t get any help.
Yancy tears up again and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing. She turns to me. “You were with him his last hours. What did he say to you? What was he thinking?” She digs in her bag for tissues. Even the candlelight on the table cannot soften the hard lines around her mouth and eyes.
They’re all looking at me, waiting for my answer. She has to know the thoughtless, reckless way Michael spent his last evening on earth. What does she want me to say to her?
Then something comes to me: Michael’s last five minutes of conscious life were in his Mustang, the car he loved, barreling down Pacific Coast Highway. For Michael, it didn’t get much better than that. When he was thrown from the car, I was told, he had probably blacked out immediately. He never woke up.
“I think he was happy when he died,” I say, “and he didn’t suffer.” It makes me feel better, anyway.
Nat reaches out and crushes my hand in his.
Chapter 18
I’m driving up Laurel Canyon, with the top down and Emily sitting in the passenger seat beside me. Her legs are close to mine in the small front seat, and her hair whips around in the wind. If the karma gods weren’t watching, I would reach out and take her hand, which is resting on her thigh.
Toby, her golden lab, sits in the back seat, warming our necks with his smelly breath. I enjoy maneuvering my car up the twisting road toward the top of the ridge, looking at the matchbox houses on stilts perched along the sides of the canyon. A few houses along the road sport scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns in honor of Halloween, which is next week.
We reach Mulholland Drive at the top, turn right, and wind our way along the ridge to the Runyon Canyon turnoff. On this beautiful afternoon, half of Hollywood is out walking its dogs.
I wasn’t lying to Jonathan when I said that Emily and I were just friends. I’ve never held her hand or kissed her, although I’ve thought about it probably a hundred million times. But then I think of Michael and that giant wor
ksheet in the sky. I don’t want to spend my next life as an earthworm.
Toby trots along beside us as we walk on the road that winds high along the canyon wall. In all directions, we see steep hillsides and patches of trees intermingled with people’s homes.
We stop for a minute while Toby digs under a bush, scratching up dirt with his paws. The freshly turned earth is darker than the dry, dusty stuff on the surface.
Out of nowhere a thought hits me. “She came to the funeral.”
“What?”
“Chrissie. She came to Michael’s funeral, even though she wasn’t invited.”
“Really?” Emily thinks about it. “Strange.”
“Not strange if he’s the father of her baby.”
“There could be another explanation,” she says slowly, as if her mind is racing in ten different directions, trying to find one.
“I don’t know what it is.”
“If it bothers you that much, maybe you should talk to her.”
“What, just go to her, and say Is Michael your kid’s father?”
“Something like that.” She speaks slowly again, as if she’s trying to figure out a puzzle in her mind. “Maybe then you could introduce her to Michael’s parents. Wouldn’t they be excited to have a grandchild?”
“I guess. They sure weren’t the greatest parents.”
“They might still be good grandparents. And they could help Chrissie out.”
We round a corner in the road and stop to admire the combined city and canyon view stretched out in front of us. “It’s so clear today,” she says.
“Los Angeles,” I tell her. “Greatest city in the world.” She and I have a running argument about it, since I love LA, while she can’t wait to move to the East Coast for college.
We start walking again. By now, I’ve learned that Emily has big plans for her life. For college and grad school, she wants to go Ivy League, then after that, live in Washington DC or Europe, working at a think tank or maybe as a diplomat.
“I’m not sure exactly what,” she says. “But it would be nice to—I don’t know—help make the world a better place.” She looks almost shy. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“No.” I feel about as deep as a piece of tracing paper. “I wish I knew what I wanted.”
“You’ll figure it out. You’re really smart, Ryan.” She slips her hand through my arm, and I press it close to my side with my elbow.
“You really think so?” I feel humble hearing Emily say I’m smart.
“Of course. You were smart about Michael that night. You took him off to a private place and took care of him. You knew he couldn’t drive himself home. You told him to wait for you. It’s not your fault that he ran off while you were gone for a couple of minutes.”
My eyes get this prickly feeling, like I’m going to start crying like a big baby. Horrified, I stop dead in my tracks, which, since her hand is clamped under my elbow, makes her jerk to a stop alongside me.
I focus on a couple of little dogs that have run up to Toby, bristling and yapping to make themselves look scary. “You’re not fooling anyone,” I say to them.
Toby is rooted in one place, sniffing something interesting by the side of the road. I look down at Emily and her insanely kissable lips, and I know at that moment that she would let me kiss her—in fact, she wants me to kiss her—but I can’t. If I do, I’ll be lost—so in love that I’ll never come back to my old self—and I don’t deserve to have love when Michael is dead. And I killed him.
Besides I have a job to do, a debt to Michael that I have to repay. If he has a baby out there in the world, I need to know about it. My family and the Westons need to know about it.
I have to go see Chrissie.
We stand there looking at each other, and then the moment passes. Emily stares off into the distance, her mouth tightening a little in disappointment. We turn around and walk the road back to my car, not speaking.
I can’t fall in love when Michael is dead. But the problem is, I think to myself, it’s too late.
I already have.
Chapter 19
I arrive at the tennis club, parking my BMW in one of the good spots marked “reserved.” My parents are on the Board here, and the parking spot’s one of the perks.
I can’t get used to going to the tennis club without Michael. Like Camp Evergreen, the club and tennis—for me—are tied to him and his memory. I actually turn to him a couple of times, or rather, I turn to the place I expect him to be, and start to tell him something, then stop abruptly.
I am becoming strange.
Just thinking about the conversation I have to have with Chrissie sets my stomach on a roller coaster ride. Rather than deal with it, I load three hundred balls into a ball machine and adjust the settings. Every two seconds it will fire a ball at me in a random pattern: lobs, drives, slices with every kind of spin. I tell myself if I can return all three hundred balls to my imaginary partner, Michael will come back to life. On maybe the sixtieth or seventieth ball, the machine surprises me with a shot to my backhand. My feet are in the wrong place; I’m in the wrong place.
I miss the shot. Michael will stay with the dead.
After ten minutes, I reload the machine and start over. Maybe I can save Michael this time. Nope. A ball catches me in no-man’s land and passes me by.
I do it a third time ten minutes later.
Nope.
Over and over, I reset the machine—I’m not sure how many times I do it. My legs start to shake, and sweat’s pouring into my eyes, blinding me. I’m gasping for air, and my lungs are on fire. I’m missing every other ball now, tripping and stumbling.
I am back by the base line when the machine throws me a drop shot. My shoes squeak as I dig in for traction to sprint forward, lunging for the ball and missing by yards as I fall and skid on the court. Patches of skin separate themselves from my legs and forearms. I lie there, starting to bleed, while the machine continues to spew balls. A couple of them hit me.
Maybe I’ll just lie here forever. It seems like a good idea to me.
I feel a cool hand under my arm. It’s careful to touch only skin that’s still intact. The hand helps me up, leads me over to a bench, and puts a bottle of cold water in front of me. I squint my eyes open. It’s Chrissie.
“Thanks,” I say, downing the water in one gulp. She leaves for a minute and returns with a medicine bottle and eye dropper. I sit there like a statue, while she douses my cuts with something that hurts, but is supposed to be good for me.
I start to say thank you again, but instead I say, “You wanna go to lunch?”
She walks with me as I limp into the club dining room. We find a booth. Chrissie’s condition is now obvious to even the most clueless observer. Even I can see she’s pregnant. Chrissie tries to exchange club gossip and small talk for a few minutes, but I’m not up for it. It’s strange, after all the time I’ve spent with Emily, being with a different girl. But, I’m not really with Chrissie, of course. I’m just here because of Michael and the baby.
“So you holdin’ up okay, honey?” she asks me finally. Her accent is so down-home I can almost smell catfish frying. She looks at me kindly.
“Sort of,” I tell her. I realize my voice is shaky. “I think about Michael all the time. It shouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t be dead.”
“I know. It’s sad,” she says. “But his spirit’s alive.” She sips her lemonade from a straw and looks at me from under a fringe of blonde curls.
When the waiter comes, I order a burger, wondering why I’m even bothering. I’m not going to eat it. I’m still thirsty, though. I down half of my iced tea in one swallow. Meanwhile, Chrissie orders a club sandwich, extra mayo, with fries and extra ketchup.
I want to get to the real subject. “Michael talked about you. The night he died.”
“What did he say?” she asks.
I try to make it sound better than Michael did. “He said the two of you were,” I hesitate for a second, �
��seeing each other.” I find myself looking out the window across the lawn toward the Pro Shop, then shooting my eyes back to her. Someone arrives with our food.
She bites into her club sandwich, then corrects me. “Michael and I had—a moment.” Seeing my face, she adds, “What can I say? It was preordained.”
“Preordained? What do you mean?”
“It was fate. It was meant to be.” She touches her napkin to her lips.
I have the same thought I always get when I’m around Chrissie: maybe this girl’s driving without a steering wheel.
“How old are you?” I look at my burger and push it away. Chrissie is working through her French fries, dipping them in ketchup as she goes. She seems to be taking this better than I am.
“Twenty,” she says. So I guessed right. Chrissie’s tiny, and with those blonde curls and blue eyes, she looks like an angel. But she eats like a lumberjack. She beams at me. She actually looks happy. A little corner of my brain thinks, I bet a camera would love her.
“It was Michael’s idea. He came into the Pro Shop one night, right before closing. And, Lord, that boy could talk fish right up onto dry land.” Her eyes are bright from the memory, then dim as a new thought hits her. “He told me he was eighteen, and I believed him.”
I know she’s telling the truth. Michael lied sometimes the way little kids do, like I’ve seen my sisters do. At that moment, he wanted to be eighteen. So he said he was.
“I told him that morning, the day he died. I told him I was with child.”
I feel a cold finger go down my spine. So, I was right. That’s what he was going to tell me that night in the stairwell. Michael knew that he’d gotten a girl pregnant and that, of all his many screw-ups, this was his worst.
When I can speak again, I ask, “What did he say? When you told him?”
“He said he was only sixteen. And I said, ‘A little late to be tellin’ me that now, don’t you think?’“
“What else did he say?” I’m hungry for anything about Michael on that day, his last day of life. What was going on with him?