by Anne Pfeffer
“How do I know that you love me for me, and not for my looks?”
There’s a good answer for that question, but it’s hard to put into words. I finally say, “I feel good around you. I can be myself.” I think some more. “But the other part is, you make me better than I am. I can’t describe it. When I’m with you, I feel like I can do anything. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she says. She puts her head on my shoulder. I pull her close and curl up with her on the sofa, thinking this is as good as it gets. Right here. Now. This moment.
We sit there for a long time, listening to the rain.
• • •
That evening, my cell rings, and it’s Chrissie. “I’m in the hospital.”
“What!” I jump up from my sprawl on the bed. “Why? What happened?”
“I started to bleed. Jay and Spencer brought me here,” she says. “But the baby’s fine.”
I look at my watch. It’s seven o’clock on a Tuesday night. “Which hospital? I’ll be right there.”
Forty-five minutes later, I’m standing beside her hospital bed. A blue curtain cuts across the middle of the room, giving us privacy from Chrissie’s roommate, who’s by the window. Jay and Spencer, in ratty t-shirts and gym shorts, take up the only two chairs in sight.
“You tell him,” Spencer says. He fans himself with his hand.
“We were in the laundry room of our building, and Chrissie comes in,” Jay says. “And we were talking about how to get chocolate stains out…”
“Because they’re the worst,” Spencer says.
“And then I started to bleed on the floor,” Chrissie cuts in. She’s propped up in bed in a hospital gown, her blond curls spilling across her shoulders. She has one arm around her pregnant belly, like she’s protecting it.
“Why? What’s wrong with you?”
“The doctor called it a … an eruption,” she says.
“An abruption…” Spencer starts to say, but Jay cuts him off.
“It’s called a placental abruption. It means the placenta has separated from the wall of the uterus.”
“How serious is that?” I ask. I sit on the edge of the bed, since there’s nowhere else available. Jay has his arm across the back of Spencer’s chair.
“Mine’s a small separation.” Chrissie raises her chin. “It might even heal on its own. I’m fine. I’m goin’ home tomorrow.”
“Excuse me, may I get a word in?” Spencer says. “She has to go on bed rest.”
“What? For how long?” I demand.
“Not long,” Chrissie announces. Her voice is calm, but her arm tightens around her belly.
“For as long as it takes!” Jay says. “Could be for the rest of the pregnancy— as much as ten weeks.”
“Ten weeks?” I say. “That’s two and a half months!”
“But it could also heal, in which case I could get up,” Chrissie says. “I don’t want to miss the audition, Ryan!”
“We’ll see. Until it does heal, she has to stay in bed,” Spencer says, giving her a meaningful look. “All the time!”
“So, you can’t work?” I ask her. “Or go out of the apartment?”
“No!” Jay and Spencer say it at the same time.
“That doctor was over-reactin’.” Chrissie waves her hand in the air.
“Look, we talked to the doctor,” Jay says to me. “This is really serious.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if she doesn’t stay in bed and this abruption thing gets worse, she could die, and so could the baby.”
Did he say die? Panic swarms me. I’m a sixteen year old kid. I didn’t sign up for this. Or maybe I did sign up for this, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I start taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm.
“We’ll help you, honey,” Spencer says to Chrissie. He moves over and sits on the edge of the bed beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders.
My thoughts are racing. The baby could die.
It would be like Michael dying twice.
“How will you pay your rent?” I ask.
“I got it covered. I have a call in to our landlord, Mr. Park.”
“Good luck with that,” Jay says in an ominous tone.
“No, I can sweet talk him.” Chrissie sounds very sure of herself. “He likes me. I just paid this month’s rent, and I’ll tell him to keep my security deposit. I’ll hold him off for anythin’ else I owe with fried chicken and banana cream pies. He loves my cookin’!”
There’s a plan. Pay your rent with banana cream pies.
“Chrissie, you have to tell Nat and Yancy.” I try to catch her eye, but she avoids me. “This is serious. You need their help.”
“I told you before – NO!”
“But, Chrissie…”
“I gotta get outta here!” She throws off her sheet and blanket and tries to move past Spencer to get off the bed, but he pins her down. “You’re not going anywhere, Missy!”
I just know it—she’s going to run off and die and kill the baby, and it’ll be my fault, just like with Michael. “I won’t tell them!”
She sinks down. “You promise?”
“Swear to God.” I’m thinking frantically. It looks like she’s got her rent covered for now. I get a big cash allowance every month from my parents. It could go for some of her other expenses.
“Ryan?” Chrissie asks. “My place is only five minutes away. These guys have been here all afternoon. Would you mind picking up a few things for me? The clothes I was wearing are ruined, and I need something to wear home tomorrow.”
“No problem.” I walk out with Jay and Spencer. “I don’t know what to do,” I tell them. “I live a half hour from here, and I have school and other stuff.”
“We’ll help. We love Chrissie,” Jay says, while Spencer nods his head.
I get their phone numbers and follow them to the apartment building, where I let myself into Chrissie’s place with the key she gave me. It’s nine forty-five by now.
I flip on a light and look around. It’s weird being here all by myself. In my jeans pocket, I find the list she wrote for me. Pants, blouse, underwear, bra. Jeez.
I go through her drawers. I am numb, unable to think about what all this means, how it will affect me, what might happen if I mess up. The last time I messed up, a friend died. Now it could happen again.
I focus on the job in front of me. Chrissie wears tiny, lacy little thongs in pink and red and black. I try not to look, but of course I do. Seems like she needs something to sleep in, but I don’t see anything that looks like that. No nightgowns or even a big t-shirt. Maybe she sleeps in the nude.
Too much information. In my back pack I have a size extra-large Pacific Prep athletic shirt – a clean one. I’ll give her that.
I’m in Chrissie’s little bathroom when I see the clock on her wall. I get a prickling sensation on the back of my neck. At the exact moment that my mind registers that it’s ten o’clock, my cell rings.
I don’t have to look to know it’s Emily, for our regular good night call. For a split second, I consider not answering it. But I don’t want to sneak around and lie. I pick up.
“Hi.” Her voice is warm and breathy in my ear. I stand there in the bathroom, looking at Chrissie’s perfume bottles and trying to sound normal as I speak.
“Hi. What’s up?” I say.
“I’m in bed already,” Emily says. “What about you?”
“Well, funny thing,” I say, eyeing the shelves. “I’m at Chrissie’s place.”
Silence greets me on the other end. I rush to fill it, explaining what happened and what I’m doing. As I talk, I look around. I’ve never been in a girl’s bathroom before, except for Mom’s, which doesn’t count. Chrissie’s got this arsenal of girl products: lipsticks, bottles of nail polish, and glass containers with cotton balls, nail files and cruel-looking pointy little scissors.
“You’re packing up clothes for her? Like personal things?”
“Just a few things.” I try not to t
hink of that purple bra and panty set that caught my eye.
“Ryan, this is getting really weird.”
“Tell me about it.” I’m looking at Chrissie’s nail polishes, which are at eye level.
“Why do you have to do this? Talk to Nat and Yancy. They can get her a nurse.”
“I’m afraid what Chrissie would do if I did.” Some marketing dude must have been hungry when he made up the names of these polishes: Raspberry Mist, Strawberry Swizzle, Peachy Keen.
“Honestly, Ryan. She’s holding you hostage.”
“She doesn’t mean to. She’s just scared. The neighbors are going to help.”
“What a mess! It’s too much responsibility!”
“Maybe, but what am I supposed to do?”
“Get a grown up to handle it!”
“Well, I can’t, Emily, okay?” I’m losing patience now. “I gotta finish here. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“But, Ryan…,” she is saying as I hang up. I didn’t mean to hang up on her, but I had to go. I still have to take this stuff to Chrissie, and I’ve got a test tomorrow that I have to study for. Chrissie can’t even get up for a glass of water, and it could go on this way for a couple of months. And she or the baby could die.
Emily’s right. It’s too much for me to handle.
What am I going to do?
Chapter 38
That night I lie in bed trying to breathe. It feels as if something bigger and heavier than me—like one of those giant Zamboni machines at the ice skating rink—is moving across my chest, crushing it.
My life is spinning out of control. I can’t help Chrissie with this. I’m too young. I’m not ready.
I throw off the covers and go to the drawer with my ski clothes. I’m looking for the big manila envelope full of photos, but the box of drugs is on top. I pull it out and put it on the bed. After a minute, I open it and sit with it in my lap, looking at the envelopes of white powder.
Did Michael use to feel the way I do right now, that everything was screwed up and that it was all because of him? Is that why he did drugs? To make himself feel better?
In one minute, I could feel better. It’s right here, relief in a bag, courtesy of the drug cartels.
I force myself to set aside the box and grab the envelope, pulling out the photographs and going through them. All those memories of Michael. I’m in a bunch of the shots, too. I find the one that Michael had labeled “Soldier Rock,” showing me and Michael, dripping wet, coming out of the lake. Our fists are raised in the air, and giant grins split our faces in half. I hold the photo for a long time, thinking and remembering.
Soldier Rock. It was one of the best moments of my life. And it happened because of Michael.
• • •
It was the summer we were eleven. A bunch of us at camp had broken the rules and sneaked over to Soldier Rock, which stood in Lake Evergreen, just far enough from the shore that you had to swim to get there. Most of us had climbed up to a ledge we used for diving that was probably a fifteen foot drop to the water.
But Michael had climbed to the top. He was maybe forty feet up from the lake. If a counselor had caught him up there, he would have been in big trouble.
“Come on down, Michael!” I yelled to him. “Dive from down here.”
“It’s awesome up here!” he yelled to me. “You gotta see this!”
As so often happened, I followed his lead. I half-crawled, half-climbed my way up, grabbing small outcroppings of rock and gripping with my toes, like some humanoid-gecko life form. Too late, it occurred to me that it would be awfully hard to go down the same way.
We could see the entire lake, the surrounding forest, and a backdrop of saw-toothed mountain peaks. An eagle floated by, very close, and Michael and I stared at it, following it with our eyes until it arrived at a messy bunch of branches and twigs in a tree some two hundred yards away.
“Look, it’s got a nest!” Michael said.
The others were yelling to us. It was time to go. One by one, they dove into the water and swam to the beach where our backpacks lay. I looked at Michael, and he was laughing at me.
“Only one way down,” he challenged me. We peered over the edge. Huge boulders surrounded the rock, poking up out of the water. It looked like we were a million feet in the air. I leapt back from the edge, gasping.
“Jeez, Michael!” I was practically shouting. “What’re we gonna do?”
“We’re gonna jump,” he said.
“We can’t jump! We’re gonna die!”
“Look.” He pointed down. “All we have to do is aim for that patch of deep water. See?”
I followed where his finger was pointing. “There are big rocks down there!”
“So, we jump past them. We can do it.” Michael said it like he was suggesting a walk on the beach. He stood there in his swim trunks, with his sunstreaked hair, already starting to look studly at age eleven, while I pictured our lives coming to a swift end on the boulders down below.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
“Sure you can. You’re a beast.”
There was no choice, other than waiting to be helicoptered off the rock by a rescue squad of grown-ups. I decided I would rather die.
“On the count of three,” he said.
I tensed up. The rock felt hot and rough under my bare feet.
“One, two, three…” Together, we ran across the top of the rock and jumped. I remember the rush of air, the slap of my legs hitting the water, plunging down, down, down into the green depths, then fighting my way to the surface, breaking free of the water with a huge intake of breath, Michael bobbing up beside me, and then the cheering of campers on the beach as we paddled for shore and struggled out of the lake. One of the guys took a Polaroid of us, arms raised over our heads, exhilarated by our incredible leap.
The word spread between the kids at camp. No one that we knew had ever been brave enough to jump off the top of Soldier Rock. For the rest of the summer, Michael and I were gods, secret heroes among the campers, unbeknownst to the counselors.
And I owed it all to Michael. When I tried to tell him that, he brushed it off. “I knew you could do it,” was all he said.
For me and Michael, “Soldier Rock” became our mantra for those times when life really sucked, or when it seemed like we were completely screwed. When we got caught toilet papering the Hathaway’s cactus garden, that time we got lost hiking on the mountain up at camp, and even when my dog Jasper died, one or both of us would say, “Soldier Rock!”
It meant If you can jump off Soldier Rock, you can handle anything. But it meant more than that, too. Although we didn’t say it, Michael and I both knew that when you jumped off of Soldier Rock with someone else, you were going to be friends forever.
Soldier Rock. They were the last words Michael ever said to me.
Feeling suddenly really tired, I slide the photos back into the envelope. I replace it in the drawer along with the box of white powder and climb into bed. But I still can’t sleep.
I lie there for hours, looking at the ceiling, while the giant Zamboni machine returns and does a slow parade across my chest.
Chapter 39
Jay and Spencer meet me outside Chrissie’s door late the next afternoon. This morning, while I was at school, they brought her home from the hospital. When Chrissie opens the door, Spencer screeches at her.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
“Lettin’ y’all in.” Chrissie looks as tired as I feel. Four hours of sleep has turned my brain into oatmeal.
“I gotta to go to the bathroom,” she says, leaving us alone.
“She’s still on her feet!” Spencer moans.
“We’ve gotta make a schedule,” I say. Someone has to check Chrissie every few hours to see what she needs. All errands, shopping, and food preparation have to be done for her.
“Where do you guys work?”
“I go to Cal State Northridge during the day,” Jay says. “and tend bar at night. Spence
r works at Bloomingdale’s.”
“Fine linens and towels. Afternoons and evenings,” Spencer says.
“Don’t worry,” Jay says to me. It turns out one of them is usually home in the morning, so they can check in on Chrissie regularly and help her up until about two in the afternoon.
Chrissie comes back from the bathroom and climbs into bed. “Juanita in 401 said she would help, too.”
We call Juanita, who’s a nurse at the same hospital we took Chrissie to. She can take weekends. The three of them will help with Chrissie’s groceries and errands.
Which means that I’m responsible for Chrissie Monday through Friday, from whenever I can get there until bedtime.
I go into shock. Every day during the week. Images run through my mind. The guest house. Hot sex in the bedroom. Spooning together on the sofa. Emily, her hair ruffled, padding around bare legged in one of my t-shirts. Studying together side by side.
The hours we spend after school in the guest house are our favorite times together. We can’t go there on weekends, because my family’s usually home then.
Gone. Emily will kill me. I’ll kill me.
“I can’t do this.” It takes a minute before I realize I’ve spoken aloud.
“You don’t have to,” Chrissie says. “I’ll be fine in the afternoon by myself.”
“You will not!” Jay says. “You need someone here.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be here,” I say. I can still take Emily home after school. I’ll just have to drop her, then go straight to Chrissie’s. The fact that Emily lives south of school and Chrissie lives north of it, and that dropping Emily will add an hour every day to my travel time, are not important.
I’m glad I can get her home every day. I try not to think about the other part, that all trips to the guest house are off, at least for now.
• • •
“So you’re just going to let it all go?” Emily says. “Us? Our relationship?” We are sitting in my car, parked in front of her house.
“No! We’ll still have lunch together. I’ll still take you home from school. And see you on weekends. And on the East Coast trip in May. And this summer in England.” Please understand.
She crosses her arms in front of her. “You’ll take me home from school, then five days a week go off to play nursemaid to some blonde flirt you barely know?”