Random

by Tom Leveen

  “You were on the phone all night with him.”

  “How did you know that was his name?”

  “Because I’m the one who gave him your number.”

  A mourning dove whistles in the corner of our small yard. Low, high, low . . . low . . . low.

  “Can you—say that again?”

  But even as I ask the question, I know it’s true.

  Of course it is. It makes sense now, at least in terms of how Andy got in touch with me. And he called me Vic, something only Jack does. I should’ve realized it before.

  “Forget it,” I say. “I heard you the first time. Jack . . . what the hell, man?”

  “You saw what I went through in high school,” Jack says, gesturing to the worst of his acne scars. “But that didn’t stop you from picking on another kid. I don’t get that, Vic, I really don’t.”

  Jack’s right about how people treated him, and I know it. It was pretty awful. Sitting here on the porch with him, I remember days when he’d refuse to go to school because of a horrific breakout, and the things people would say to him that I only knew about because he’d repeat them to Mom and Dad, screaming, even crying. It was hell for him for a while.

  That’s what Kevin felt like?

  “I don’t know what Mr. Halpern told you,” Jack says, snapping me back to the present. “But the truth is, holding someone really, legally responsible for someone else’s suicide is super hard to pull off.”

  He pauses and sits back in his chair again, looking out at the street. It’s too early for traffic, and our neighborhood is peaceful.

  “You’re going to get away with this,” Jack says.

  I don’t like the way he phrases it but don’t bother to argue.

  Maybe he’s right to put it that way.

  “They might convict you of some lesser deal,” Jack goes on. “Like the harassment, maybe, or something like that. But let’s call this what it is. You’re a sixteen-year-old white female with no prior record who made a bad joke on the Internet to a kid already diagnosed with depression. That’s it. That’s how it’ll come out in the end. You’ll get some community service, maybe probation or something, and that’ll be that. Don’t worry, kid. You’re not going to prison.”

  I wish that idea made me feel better.

  The front door opens then, and Noah squeezes through. He shuts the door so quietly, I assume Mom and Dad must still be asleep.

  “Hey,” Noah says.

  I stare at him, trying to melt him with my brain waves. I feel like . . . like I’ve been cheated on, somehow.

  “You were in on this?” I say.

  “Well . . . yeah.” Noah moves to sort of sit-lean against the porch railing, on Jack’s side, so my brother is between us.

  “So tonight, when I called you after dinner, you knew this was going to happen?”

  “Yeah,” Noah says. “I tried to end it. Remember, I told you to turn off your phone and just go to sleep? I had second thoughts. But then . . .”

  Noah shrugs.

  “How could you do this to me? After everything I’ve been through?”

  Noah blows out a breath and looks at Jack. Jack leans forward toward me.

  “We were trying to help you,” my brother says.

  “Help me,” I say, and almost—actually, nowhere near almost—laugh at him, because now I sound like Andy, phrasing questions as statements. “Don’t you mean punish me? That’s what this is, isn’t it? In case we’re all let go, or, or . . . acquitted or whatever?”

  “Punish you?” Noah says. “Have you even heard yourself these past few months? I hardly recognize you, Tori. This isn’t you, this isn’t the person—”

  “You could’ve just said that instead of faking all this!”

  “I did! I did just say it, all the time! I said it tonight on the phone, and you still didn’t hear me.” Noah makes a face like he wants to spit on the floor. He stands up straight, taking himself off the railing. “What is it you see in those people, anyway?”

  “What do you mean, those people?”

  “You know who,” Noah says. “The same ones who were charged? The ones who wrote all that stuff on Kevin’s car . . .”

  “I tried to fix that,” I say. “I went to his house myself to clean it up and the car wasn’t there.”

  “Did you, uh, knock?” Jack asks.

  I glare at him, but it’s perfunctory. “The point is I tried. And, besides, I didn’t know they were going to do that. I said I was sorry.”

  “Okay, that’s great, but why hang around them at all after that?” Noah insists.

  “Because . . . everyone looks up to them.”

  “Not everyone,” Noah says. “Trust me on that.”

  “Look,” I say, “friends . . . change, okay? It’s normal, it happens, that’s what happened.” I go to take a drink from my coffee, change my mind, sit back in my chair. It’s hard to keep from pouting, which is not something I do regularly anyway.

  “Friends change,” I say again.

  “Maybe,” Jack says, “but it doesn’t usually get them killed.”

  “So that’s it, then. You all—all of you think I killed Kevin.”

  “No. It’s not that,” Jack starts, but Noah jumps in.

  “It’s that this wouldn’t have happened a year ago,” he says. “You wouldn’t have let it. And I—well, Jesus, Tori, I miss you, okay? And I promise you, I swear to you, those assholes you’re trying to hang with do not.”

  The mourning dove coos again from one of the trees in our yard. Low-high . . . low . . . low . . . low . . .

  In the relative silence, as I feel the warmth from my coffee cup slip away and fade into the morning, I know they’re right. A year ago I just wanted to keep playing ball. A year ago I was happy that Noah and Kevin still talked to me.

  What I told Andy, about feeling alone, that wasn’t a lie. High school was big, and freaky, and scary, and my older brother who was a senior at the time could barely manage it. How was I supposed to fare? So I kept my head down and played ball, and suddenly the varsity girls were paying attention. Then their baseball-playing boyfriends were paying attention. And the next thing I knew . . .

  But who do I have now?

  Jack stands up. “Look, Vic,” he says. “I don’t care who your friends are, who you hang out with. Whatever. And I don’t blame you for anything. You’re my sister, and I love you. Okay? But Noah is right. This whole mess? It’s not you. I know you better. He knows you better. I think Andy said everything I wanted you to hear, and I knew you wouldn’t hear it if I said it. So, I’m gonna leave it at that.”

  My brother puts his hand on the doorknob but hesitates.

  “And I’m sorry for cutting you out,” he says. “I was mad. And embarrassed. But I’m here. I’ll be there in court today too. If you’ll still let me.”

  He goes inside, closing the door quietly behind him.

  I try a sip of coffee. It’s gone cold. I sip again anyway, and turn to Noah.

  “How’d you know I’d call Kevin’s cell this morning?” I ask him, and my voice is starting to croak.

  Noah almost laughs. “Oh, we didn’t. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We were going to sit you down tonight. Like an, uh . . . what is it. Intervention.”

  I shove my elbows deep into my gut and lean forward over them, desperate to get the truth from him. “Why couldn’t we just talk about this, Noah? Why did you have to go through all this stuff tonight?”

  “Like I said, I tried,” Noah says. “I swear. I wanted to get your attention, but with Lucas and them . . . I couldn’t compete. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to—”

  He shuts himself down, fast.

  “God, I’m afraid to ask. Wanted to what?”

  Even though he’s standing and I’m sitting, he somehow manages to peek upward at me.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. Just wishful thinking.”

  I set my coffee down on the table between my chair and Jack’s, and move to sta
nd beside Noah. I put my hands on the railing surrounding the porch, looking out at our street. Our hands, our pinky fingers, are almost touching. There’s no more than a whisper of warmth between them.

  “Was all that stuff Andy said about his girlfriend even true?”

  Noah blinks. “Girlfriend?”

  “Andy’s girlfriend, Kayla. She ran her car off the road? But at the gas station, he said he didn’t have a girlfriend, so I figured he made the story up entirely. . . .”

  “Tori,” Noah goes, “no offense, but you know how some people are what they call ‘sharp as a tack’? Sometimes you’re about as sharp as a Post-it.”

  “What?”

  “No, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Um, ever. Do the math, Hershy.”

  Tori, you stupid, stupid bitch, is the first thought to race through what’s left of my mind. How did I miss it? Maybe because Andy was a real good actor, okay maybe, but come on.

  “So Kevin really was . . .”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “With Andy.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Meeting at the comic shop, the Superman movie . . .”

  “Everything except the car going off the road, yes.”

  I swallow. Whatever’s in my mouth, it tastes bitter. The implications of this are pretty freaking awful on a number of levels.

  “What about Rachel?”

  “Yeah,” Noah says, scratching his head. “She kinda wondered but didn’t ask questions. And I mean, Kevin was a nice guy. Who’d blame her? Then when he met Andy, Rachel found out and ended it.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Me, you now, and Jack. Rachel, but she’d never bring it up. As far as I know, that’s it. He died without telling his mom, even. Nobody knows for sure, but the way Andy tells it, she might not’ve been entirely supportive if he’d come out to her.”

  That makes me stop for a second. I can understand not wanting to be out in high school, even at some of the more accepting places around the country. And Canyon sure isn’t one of them. And I know Mom and Dad are upset about this mess I’m in, but I can’t imagine not being able to tell them something. That has to suck.

  Of course, this train of thought brings me back around to my favorite subject: me. My needs, my fears, my worst-case scenario.

  “If Andy tells anyone that Kevin really was gay,” I say to Noah, “if he can prove they were together—”

  “He’s not telling anyone, Tori.”

  I try swallowing again, only this time I can’t make the muscles work.

  “How come?”

  “Because that was never the point. The point was to . . . get you back. I mean, get you back. The old you. The you I liked.”

  The old me. The old me feels like a really long time ago. I’m not sure I’d recognize her. For one insane moment I want to say, “You mean like me, like me, or just like me?” as if we were still in junior high.

  Instead I say, “Liked, as in, past tense?”

  “No. No, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Promise.”

  I accept that. Noah’s not a liar. Well, except for the whole fraudulent phone call thing.

  “So what was in it for him?” I ask Noah. “I never met Andy. Why’d he go to all this trouble?”

  Noah takes a long, deep breath through his nose, like he’s not sure he should answer. Then he says, “He was talking shit about you. And I told him he was wrong. We had a pretty long fight—er, argument, I mean. But then afterward we sort of came up with this idea. Brought Jack in, ’cause I knew he was pissed too. I wanted to prove you weren’t awful, and Andy wanted . . . I dunno, to see if I was right.”

  “Wait, how’d you even meet him?” I ask, scanning my memory for some moment where I’d crossed paths with Andy. The fact that he was angry isn’t exactly a surprise. “Where was he talking shit?”

  “At the funeral.”

  My eyes bulge. “You went to Kevin’s funeral? Why?”

  “Because I knew him, Tori. From junior high. I mean, we didn’t hang out a lot or anything, but we were cool.”

  “Did you ever defend him?”

  I expect this brilliant riposte to freeze him up, but Noah only sighs.

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t, not really. I never saw the posts—you know, those last posts—until it was too late. But there were times before that I could’ve said something. Don’t think that hasn’t bugged the crap out of me ever since.”

  I wait for him to add more, but he doesn’t.

  “If I change my plea today, maybe it’ll, you know, say something,” I say. I suddenly really need Noah to be okay with me.

  “Say something? You mean like, making a point?”

  “I guess. Maybe it would help.”

  “It might. Or it might just be a sideshow. You should probably do whatever’s best for you. But I see what you’re getting at. It’s a nice thought.”

  I almost say thanks, but that seems stupid, trite, and overall dumb. So I don’t say anything, and neither does Noah. Not for a long time. We just look out over my yard. More birds are singing now. The storm clouds from last night are virtually gone.

  Finally Noah turns his head. He holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, during which I’m pretty sure some kind of signal gets transmitted between us, like the minuscule head shakes a pitcher gives a catcher: Pitch it here, not there. No. Pitch it this way, not that. Yes.

  Noah starts to lean toward me—but stops, pulls back, looks down. Shakes his head, ever so slightly. Licks his lips. Looks up at me again.

  “Listen,” he says. “When this is all over, the trial and everything, when you have time to think again, maybe we can—”

  I have nothing to lose, and I’m pretty sure I read the signal right. So before he can finish, I lean up and kiss him quickly. Just once.

  “Or, you know, now would be okay too,” Noah says, his eyes wide.

  “Okay, so that wasn’t just me,” I say.

  “No. Huh-uh. No.”

  “Okay. Good.” I pause. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Noah says, and slowly begins to smile. “Yeah, definitely do not be sorry.”

  Except, I am. Just not about Noah.

  We both face out again. Whatever just happened, it’s a relief to think about something nice for a change.

  “What about Lucas?” Noah asks me a moment later.

  I shake my head. “I’m over it.”

  “Well, no offense, but thank God.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  When another minute goes by without either of us saying anything, Noah abruptly says, “So, I’m gonna go.” He takes a step toward the stairs. “If you want to call me after the thing today . . . I’ll be around.”

  “Cool. I probably will. But I might also be asleep for like eighteen hours.”

  “Right. See ya later, Tori-chan.”

  He takes the stairs slowly, heads down the carport, and hangs a left, headed toward his house, hands in his pockets. Unexpectedly, I feel more than hear Andy’s words at the gas station vibrating in my head. You’re special. You’ll see. Eventually. And I get it. I wait till Noah’s a few yards down the sidewalk.

  “Noah.”

  He stops, looks back.

  “Thanks.”

  Noah smiles a bit. “Sure. Sayonara.”

  He says it with what I believe is perfectly accented Japanese: Sigh-oh-nada. I say it back to him, making it as American as I can: Say-oh-nair-ah. It makes Noah laugh, and then he’s gone.

  I go inside. Mom is sitting at the breakfast bar with the newspaper spread out in front of her. A fresh pot of coffee sits on the counter. She must’ve been up for a while, then, and gone to get a new bag of coffee, and saw Jack’s car gone, and me gone. . . .

  I guess she wasn’t asleep all this time after all.

  Mom doesn’t even bother raising her voice as she says, “Whatever it was, I certainly hope it was worth it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was.”

  I can tell my voice sounds weird. Differ
ent. Because Mom looks up then, frowning.

  “Whatever you want to do to me, that’s cool,” I say. “I’m sorry I took the car. But, actually, not really. I’d do it again under the circumstances.”

  I’m almost surprised to hear myself say it, honestly.

  Mom lets the corner of the paper she’s been holding flutter to the counter. “What circumstances?” she says. “What have you been up to all night? And why was Jack still up? He won’t tell me anything.”

  “Maybe later, Mom,” I say. “Sorry.”

  She nods, clearly not convinced. “All right,” she says. “You should get some sleep. We need to be out of here by noon.”

  “That’s the plan. Mom?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Do you think I’m guilty?”

  Mom sits up straight on the stool. “Tori . . .”

  “It’s just, you never actually said.”

  Mom clears her throat a little. “I . . . ,” she says slowly, “expected better from you.”

  Right. I suppose I did too.

  “Okay,” I say. “G’night.”

  “Good morning, you mean.”

  “G’morning.”

  Mom gives me a small smile and goes back to her paper. I can hear Dad snoring down the hall.

  Sounds good to me.

  I go into my room, shut the door, and plug my phone into its charger. Sunlight bleeds through my blinds, casting everything in orange. I pull off my shirt and sit on my bed to yank off my shoes. Holy crap, I’ve never been so exhausted in my life.

  My life.

  Still got it. Whatever happens when the trial begins, I’ll still have that.

  I almost fall asleep sitting up, peeling my socks off. They’re drenched in stale sweat.

  My bed feels so warm, so ready to let me pass out and forget this night ever happened. Except . . .

  I probably shouldn’t do it, but if Andy’s right about the password, then what the hell. It’ll just be between us.

  Leaving my phone plugged in, I dial Andy’s—Kevin’s—number. Sure enough, neither Andy nor anyone else actually answers. I assume Andy’s still got the phone, and that he’s probably asleep already himself. Or still driving back to Flagstaff. How many times did he make that drive to be with Kevin? Could he make it out here every week so they could hang out?