Bone Deep

by O'Brien, Kim;

  On the third morning of my isolation, after my father leaves for the park, I go for a run around the neighborhood. It’s hot and I don’t get very far. Afterward, I come home, take a long, cool shower, and then sit in front of the television wondering when Emily became more my dad’s friend than mine.

  Around four o’clock my father calls to tell me that he won’t be home for dinner. He has a department meeting at the university—which he has forgotten about until now—and hopes to be home by nine. He says there’s frozen pizza in the freezer or a box of macaroni and cheese in the pantry. Neither appeals to me. I end up eating a bowl of cereal in a house that is colder and more silent by the minute. Why did he even want me to come to Arizona when clearly he doesn’t care I’m here?

  I leave the bowl in the sink and then pad through the house to my father’s room. His door is shut, but I feel no guilt whatsoever as I turn the knob and step inside. The room is neater than I would have expected. The bed is made with a striped tan comforter. On the dresser that used to be in our guest room in New Jersey, he’s got a couple pictures of me, one of his parents, and one of himself and Dr. Linton standing on top of a shelf of rock with a breathtaking view of a desert valley behind them.

  Starting in the bathroom, I systematically go through his things. I feel like an archeologist digging through the rubble of my father’s life. I hold up a bottle of aspirin, a jar of Vicks VapoRub, rubbing alcohol, a small tube of Neosporin. The medicine chest says my father is relatively healthy—no prescriptions, nothing that really says anything about him.

  I go through his closet, flip through the line of jeans on hangers, smell his shirts, and even check the pockets of the one sports jacket he owes. Nothing.

  Inside the bedside drawer—he still has that stupid leather and lace comb holder I made him back in, what, first grade? My grandfather’s Timex with the Velcro band is there, too, with the hands forever frozen at 3:12.

  In the bureau, I plow through his sock and underwear drawer. In the second drawer, I flip through a stack of T-shirts—a lot of them from Rutgers—and then my fingers freeze as I touch something paper. An envelope.

  It isn’t sealed, but it’s a little bulky and my father’s writing sprawls across the top—Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 1989.

  Inside are three very old photographs—the thick, square ones that popped out of instant cameras. They’re black-and-white, so at first it looks like two teenagers sitting together on top of a boulder, but then I realize they’re pictures of my parents. They’re both much skinnier, and my mother’s hair is long, permed, a darker brown than she has it now. When I turn over the back of one of the photos I see my mother’s writing.

  D, love you with all my heart, A.

  Another picture is of them kissing, on top of that same boulder, and then one of them laughing self-consciously as if they just realized they’d been caught.

  I stare at the photos. My parents look so young—like my age—and in love. You would never guess they would end up hating each other so much that they would fight not just for the things they wanted, but for the things they didn’t want the other person to have.

  I put the envelope back in the drawer exactly as I found it and then open the next drawer. As my hands travel through yet another stack of shirts, I keep thinking about those photos. My father moved across the country to get away from my mother. So why does he have these in his T-shirt drawer? There are no displayed pictures of her. Why not just throw them away?

  By the fourth day of staying home I have searched the entire house, watched hours of mind-numbing television, stalked my friends in New Jersey on Connections, and in a low moment, even called my ex-boyfriend, Aaron Dunning, hanging up before he answered.

  For the second night in a row, my father works late. He says he has departmental business, but I think it’s a form of what my mom calls “tough love.” He wants me to get so lonely that I’ll stop being mad and talk to him. Although I recognize this, I also realize that staying at the house alone all day is driving me crazy.

  That’s why, on the morning of the fifth day, I’m actually relieved when my father tells me the medicine man has finished the ceremony and asks if I’m interested in coming to the reopening of the park. I force myself to embody indifference. With a casual shrug, I say, “Whatever.”

  We stop for gas and pick up sandwiches that come out of a machine and probably have been there for ten years, but at least it’s not cereal or frozen pizza, and if I get food poisoning maybe he’ll send me back to New Jersey. Providing I survive. Providing I want to survive, that is.

  We get to the park early, but John Yazzi and the rest of his crew are already waiting near the information center. My gaze goes immediately, uncontrollably, to Jalen, laughing at something one of the other men said. He doesn’t make eye contact, but his smile fades as if he can sense me looking at him.

  Emily sidles up to me. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  Although I’ve been waiting to hear this, something in me refuses to acknowledge or accept her apology. Instead, I straighten my spine and stare straight ahead at my father, who is going over the morning schedule.

  Emily moves a little closer. Her shoulder is warm and soft against mine. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I hate this—not speaking. Can we talk about what happened?”

  I look at the white shirt on the back of the man in front of me. “What’s there to say?”

  “Lots. I was awful. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “But you said them.” And now she has to live with that.

  “I wasn’t thinking. Please, Paige. I can explain.”

  I let myself look at her for the first time. There’re dark circles under her eyes and a tight set to her mouth. “You took his side. What’s there to discuss?”

  “I know it sounded like it, but I didn’t mean to.”

  I’m not ready to forgive her, but I think of how alone and friendless I’ve felt. It’s been like carrying a heavy weight, this anger. Not just at her, but at my dad, my mom, even my friends back in New Jersey who barely bother to send me any email. It’s almost like dark emotions can put up a force field around you. No one can get through it to hurt you, but it gets awfully lonely.

  “Please, Paige.”

  The rest of the summer stretches in front of me like the shimmering black strip on the highway to infinity. Besides, I’ve always forgiven Emily. And even though she hasn’t said it, I owe her. I will always owe her, and we both know this. I grind the toe of my sneaker into the floor. “Not here. Not now.”

  She exhales in relief. “At lunch,” she says. “I know a place.”

  Around noon, we climb down from the ruins and follow a narrow, twisting trail that brings us to the creek. A short distance later, Emily walks out onto a long gray rock that rises like the back of a whale above the slow-moving brown water.

  She unpacks a container of blueberry yogurt and a bag of trail mix. I unwrap the ham-and-cheese time capsule.

  “Listen,” Emily begins, “about what I said. I’m really sorry.” She stirs the yogurt. “I’m not excusing myself, but it’s just that your dad has been really good to me.”

  “I’m happy for you.” It’s a lie, but I say it anyway and manage, just barely, to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  “I know you’re really mad at him, but he’s trying, Paige. He’s trying to make things right.”

  I balance my bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper on the uneven rock. “Why are you taking his side? You’re supposed to be my friend.”

  She fingers a silver chain around her neck. “I am your friend—that’s why I want you to patch things up with your father. He loves you. I know you love him.”

  Shaking my head, I feel the anger burning inside me as hot as the full sun searing my shoulders. “Are you crazy? He walked out on my mom and me and I’m supposed be happy about that?”

  “Maybe not happy,” Emily concedes, “but you could try to see his side. Maybe if you understood why he left New Jersey, you woul
dn’t be so mad at him.”

  I break off part of my sandwich and then throw it into the water as a fresh wave of betrayal crashes over me. My parents gave me a generic “we’ve grown apart” reason. It kills me to think my dad talked to Emily, confided things he never told me—that he is a different person with her. I look at her and imagine them discussing me. Him saying how emotional I became—how I took my mother’s side, refused his calls, deleted his emails. All true, but all justified.

  I throw another piece of sandwich into the water. As much as I’m angry, I’m also consumed with a need to know what was said.

  “What did he tell you? About the divorce?”

  She finishes chewing and takes a long drink of Diet Coke. “He said that in New Jersey he was becoming a person he didn’t like. That leaving the field and going into an academic career had been the wrong choice for him. He wanted to get back to where he started.” Her green eyes are clear, marble-like, and I think she might be directly quoting him. “He thought he could be a better father here.”

  “How could he have thought that?” I snap. “All he cares about is work.”

  She shakes her head. “That isn’t true. He was dying inside. He would have had nothing to give you.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  She gives me a slightly sheepish smile. “No, but he didn’t have to.” She stays silent for a moment and then begins stirring her yogurt. “I have a friend at school, and her parents stay married but they don’t love each other anymore. There’re going to stay together until she graduates high school and then they’re getting divorced. They think she doesn’t know, but she does. She talks about it. How polite her parents are to each other, but they sleep in separate bedrooms. Her mom is so lonely, Paige, she cries at night.” Emily shakes her head. “My friend wishes they would go ahead and get a divorce. Every day it’s a little worse. Like taking a small sip of poison.”

  She’s said this before, when she was talking about my father. I hate to think of him saying something like that to her, even though part of me knows it was true.

  Emily fingers a turquoise bead on a long chain and then lets it fall back inside her tank top. “I read somewhere that infants need to be loved or they die. I think it’s like that no matter how old you are. People either get love, or they start to die inside. It’s how our brains are wired.” She gathers up her unfinished lunch and climbs to her feet. “We’d better get going,” she says, offering me her hand. “I’ve got to get my blog to your father by two.” She pulls me to my feet and then looks into my eyes. “Friends?”

  I think about what she said, about people needing love, about dying a little on the inside when they don’t get it. I think maybe that’s what’s been happening to me, dying inside. At least that’s what it feels like.

  I nod slowly. “Friends.”

  EIGHT

  Paige

  Several days later, Emily takes me on a long hike that follows the creek south and winds us through a grove of wizened hickory trees frozen into painful, arthritic-looking shapes. The trees become sparser the further from the water we walk. After about ten more minutes, the tree line ends. Emily comes to a stop in front of a knee-high rock wall and wipes the sweat from her forehead. “We’re here.”

  Looking over her shoulder, I see a small, cleared area enclosed by the rock wall. The ground is flat, the color of rust, and dotted by crumbling headstones. “A graveyard. You brought me to a graveyard.”

  “An ancient graveyard.” Emily’s eyes gleam. “Come on. It’s way cool.”

  We step over the wall and move among the headstones. I feel like a giant in this city of graves. I pause by a marker so eroded the lines are no more than scratches. The name is too faded to read, but the date says 1590.

  “A colony of Europeans tried twice to settle here,” Emily explains, “but they all either died or disappeared. Just like the American Indians.” Her voice lowers. “A lot of people claim the park is haunted. They’ve seen the spirits of people walking around the grounds or climbing up to the ruins just before dark.”

  We’ve told each other ghost stories far worse than this one. I frown. “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what?” She walks over to one of the graves and lies down on top of it. “Take my picture,” she says. “I’ll post it on my blog.”

  She tries to hand me her cell, but I don’t take it. “We’re not little kids anymore,” I snap. “Get up.”

  Emily pushes the camera toward me. “Come on. Just one.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  Her brow furrows, and she squints up at me. “It’s not like it’s actually a grave anymore. There isn’t anyone still buried here.”

  “I know, but I don’t do that stuff anymore.”

  She looks at me for a long moment. “I’m not asking you to do anything but take my picture. Come on. I need it for the blog.”

  Annoyed, I take the phone from her hands. She lies back, folds her arms on her chest, and closes her eyes. “Ready.”

  I snap a shot, not caring how it turns out, and then hold out the phone. “Here.”

  She sits up, takes it, and then shades the screen with her hand to look at the photo. “Perfect.” Pulling out her canteen, she takes a long, thirsty swallow. “Thanks.”

  “I can’t believe my father is going to let you post that photo.” Easier to imagine is my father’s face turning red with anger that we were goofing around inside this cemetery. He was always like that, even when I was little. It had to do with respecting the past, honoring the dead. He once fired a man from his crew for making crude remarks about the skeletal remains of a 300-year-old woman they found near the Arizona/Utah border.

  “Well, maybe not the photo,” Emily concedes, “but as long as I keep the blog factually accurate, he’s pretty chill.” She pats the ground next to her. “Come and sit.”

  I plop down across from her, not on the grave but nearby. The earth is hot and crusty. As I stroke the blanket of dirt and loose pebbles, it feels like they are large crumbs of bread in a giant’s fairy tale.

  I realize that already I am imagining the start of the game I swore I would never play again, and I lift my hand from the ground. We were such idiots, but back then the games became so woven into our friendship I don’t think either of us knew how to stop.

  Emily tosses a pebble at me. I jump when it stings my chest. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “What?”

  “You looked so lost in thought I figured it had to be about a boy.”

  I blink at her, both relieved she hasn’t brought up the game and trying to focus my mind on this new topic. “No.”

  “No, there’s no boy at home, or no, you’ve never been in love?”

  I think of Aaron Dunning and feel a stab of guilt. “No to both.”

  “No boyfriends?” Her voice is skeptical, the pupils of her eyes tiny black dots in the sea of her green eyes.

  My mind flashes again to Aaron Dunning, and another stab of guilt pierces me. “Well, one.”

  “I knew it,” she laughs. “You’ve been holding back on me. Tell me about him.”

  I’ve never really talked to anyone about Aaron before, but part of me always wondered why I didn’t fall in love with him. I wanted to—I seriously wanted to. But it never happened.

  It takes a little more coaxing, but eventually I cave. I tell her how my mother and Aaron’s were friends. How we had pre-AP chemistry together. One night he showed up at my front door and with flowers and movie tickets. You get them either way, he said, but I hope you’ll want to go with me.

  Every girl I knew wanted to be his girlfriend. It wasn’t just that he was tall, blond, and blue-eyed; he was nice. And he was smart—just a little ahead of me in class rank, or at least where I used to be.

  He did everything right, but after a couple of dates, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t look forward to going out with him—instead I felt tired just thinking about it.

  Sometimes in the hallways, I’d see my fri
ends walking with their boyfriends. They’d have their arms linked, and their faces turned to each other, like sunflowers to the sun. At first it made me jealous and then just plain sad.

  Everybody was shocked when I broke up with Aaron. My mom tried to hide it, but I knew she thought I’d made a huge mistake. The only mistake in my mind, though, was staying with him for so long.

  Emily nods sympathetically when I try to explain how I kept telling myself things would get better, that my feelings would change—that it was somehow my fault.

  “You did the right thing,” she says. “You shouldn’t be with someone just to be with someone.” She pushes back a sweat-soaked strand of hair and looks at me very seriously. “Love should be something big. It should be obsessive and a little dangerous. Something you can’t control—it controls you. When you kiss, it should feel like a bolt of lightning slamming into your chest.”

  I laugh, but inside I’m jealous. It’s never been like that for me. “When did you become such a romantic?”

  “I’m not. But the thing is, the chemistry is either there or not, and you know it right away.”

  I think of the first time I kissed Aaron Dunning. He came to our house to watch Australia, which turned out to be the-movie-that-would-not-end. First, he’d put his arm around me, and then he’d stared sideways as me for so long it got uncomfortable. When I turned to comment on it, he’d leaned forward and put his lips on mine. I felt something in me pull back, although I didn’t physically move an inch. It was like a very soft sea creature had attached itself to my lips and was moving slowly through the water, pulling me along with him.

  Afterward, I’d smiled at him, but I had to fight the urge to dry my lips. I could tell Aaron was pleased, though. I told myself that this was the only thing that mattered. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t enough.

  A thought floats through my mind. What would it be like to kiss Jalen? I imagine the strength of his arms coming around me, his face lowering, his lips warm and firm. I think it would be good, but maybe it wouldn’t. I decide it doesn’t matter. I’m more likely to get hit by lightning than get kissed by a guy who won’t even say my name.