Natalie pulled the car in front of Bishop’s huge mock-palatial house, and he left without a goodbye. Mik’s thumb started to draw small circles on my palm, and when Natalie slammed to a stop in front of Zach’s house, I almost wanted her to keep driving.
“Get out,” she said.
“You’re not going to take me home?” I had assumed that she would drop everyone off and then take me home the long way so that she could berate me into oblivion for giving Zach that note. This felt worse.
“Mik will take you.”
We got out, and I stood on Zach’s driveway where a thousand hours prior, Mik had thrown a basketball at Tyler Ferris’s face and made us all laugh. I watched Natalie’s out-of-fashion rectangular taillights disappear, the sudden lack of humor deafening.
Mik was busy cleaning out his front seat. He dumped an armful of things in the back and then went to the driver’s side. I got in, sitting awkwardly on a few items that had missed his sweep.
I held up a small, plastic BIC razor. “How often do you have to shave?” His stubble was creeping up like a shadow around his jaw. He didn’t answer, and I felt newly wounded by the wall I was talking to. The one I couldn’t see over. I yanked a deodorant stick out from under my leg. “Old Spice? Isn’t that a grandpa thing?”
Mik tossed it into the back, expressionless.
He drove me home, and with each street, I grew heavier again. I tasted water. Sipped at the air. I saw the surface slip farther away, turning the world into a blurry mosaic. I remembered all the kids and teenagers on the playground that day. At least a dozen people from Jake’s graduating class. And Mik. I remembered how the paramedics took one look at Jake and shook their heads. Then there were the cops who roped everyone off from the scene and the black tarp they dropped over his body…
The digital clock on Mik’s dashboard read 3:83.
“How can you have eighty-three minutes in an hour?” I asked. “Is it broken?”
Mik nodded.
I eyed his mouth—the same mouth that had tried to breathe for Jake while I stood by unmoving. “Say something.”
Give me something else to think about.
Mik pulled into my driveway. He killed the engine, and his face held too much anxiety. I could tell that he was working himself up to speak, and now I hated myself for making him.
“Don’t worry about it.” I released my seat belt, needing to get out of this car before I said something I’d really regret.
What do you want from me?
You.
“Natalie said I should be clear about my intentions, and I agree with her for once. I don’t want dates or anniversaries or anything that’s going to confuse me with the promise of normality. So that’s it for us. Sorry.” But that wasn’t really it, and this was the first time I’d ever struggled to brandish the whole truth. “You can’t trust me. You saw what I did to Natalie and Zach.”
Disappointment flickered on his face, and I remembered that he’d hero-hauled Natalie out of that drunken hookup and threatened Tyler. “I’m sorry I ruined…” I shook my head. It wasn’t ruining anything to tell the truth. Zach needed to know, didn’t he?
“Whatever, I wish you luck, and thanks for fixing my wrist.” I left the car in a rush, but Mik followed me to the front door, and for a radical second, I hoped he was there for me. Instead he held out Jake’s skateboard like it was sacred and fragile. Like I had been holding it earlier.
I took it by one wheel, and the wood banged on my knee as I let it dangle between us. “Do you ever picture what it’d be like if Jake were here?” I blurted. “Do you remember how much he hated it when we hung out? He would never let us date.”
Mik didn’t move, and I stared at his chest, roughly at the spot where his heart was beating beneath a black T-shirt and skin and ribs and blood. Natalie had insisted that there was something notable about his chest. What was it? Muscles? Chest hair? Scars?
I was suddenly desperate to know what I was missing, and I touched him. He reached into my hair, around the back of my neck in a way that made me lean into his fingers and want to moan, and for a whirl of a second, I thought he was saying my name.
“Jay…” He cleared his throat, his voice raw. “Jake isn’t here.”
Wrong answer.
I pulled away. “I hope I see you next June 26.”
I shut the front door behind me. In the living room, I turned off the TV and tossed a blanket over my dad’s bare feet. They looked exactly like Jake’s. Second biggest toe popped up. I took the stairs to my brother’s room like usual, but I couldn’t lie down. Instead I stared at the shrine of Jake’s things until my insides felt like they were morphing.
Suddenly I was furious I’d found that journal. That it had existed, period. My fists clenched as I knelt on the carpet. I wanted to beat something. Anything. I dragged the toolbox out from beneath the bed.
The skateboard rocked and creaked while a wrench took care of the wheels and my thoughts blazed against Jake. He was to blame for everything. For my dad’s personality change and my mom’s psychosis. I went back to the toolbox and found a hammer to take out the trucks. One knocked off for Natalie’s broken friendship. One for my frozen life.
It wasn’t enough. Jake’s stenciled name peered up at me, and I scratched a screwdriver through every letter, thinking about how good Mik’s hand had felt in my hair and how I’d probably never find the courage to let him touch me like that again.
Breathing swears, I sat back on my heels and surveyed the damage. It could still be fixed. Put back together and re-drawn—unlike Jake. He was a rotted mess by now.
I took out Jake’s hatchet. Held it high with two hands.
The first blow bounced away with little more than a notch, but the rest of them bit in. Searing words poured out faster than tears ever could as my arms swung down over and over until the skateboard was nothing but a pile of shredded grip tape and hardwood splinters.
Chapter 31
Zach
When Tyler pulled up in the Tim Horton’s parking lot, Zach almost didn’t get in the car.
He’d called Tyler because he was going to have it out with his brother. Maybe beat him to a bloody pulp. Also because he was drunk. Very, very drunk. So drunk that Darren had to get on the phone and give Tyler the address, because Zach was in the background puking.
But how could he beat up his brother when there was a pretty, college-aged girl in Tyler’s passenger seat?
Zach got in the back, slamming the door. “Who’s this chick?” he slurred.
“My brother is real mature,” Tyler said to the girl before turning back to glare at Zach. “She’s my date. From the date you interrupted when you demanded I come pick you up in motherfucking Columbus, you dickweed.”
“You, you ass! You slept with—”
Tyler cranked the volume in the backseat. Zach fell over on the stiff and stained upholstery. He clasped his hands over his ears and cried out because the noise hurt. Or maybe that was just his heart exploding. He tried to imagine himself as Mario in overalls and a plumber’s hat, but this wasn’t a game. Not even close.
Zach passed out with his chest rumbling along with the car’s souped-up bass, and when he woke, he was on his huge bed in the basement with Alianna next to him. She was reading one of his comic books. “How bad is it?” she asked.
Zach screamed into his pillow. She touched his shoulder, and he nearly punched his little sister. Instead he jumped off the bed and slammed his fist into the cinderblock wall again and again until his knuckles were as mashed as raw, ground meat.
No Man’s Land
Chapter 32
Natalie
Thirteen days and she’d be gone.
Natalie tried to keep her mind on that fact, but her resolve kept falling to pieces. She hadn’t been out of her room in a week except to see her therapist, and even then, the woman had s
aid she was just suffering from transition nerves. Of course she’d say that, because Natalie never really told her what was going on. Natalie never told anyone.
She could feel a panic attack coming a mile away, and she dropped onto the floor on her back, waiting for her chest to spasm and her mind to roll black. It didn’t. Even her anxiety was broken. She felt blank. Was Zach okay? Was Jaycee destroyed without Jake’s journal? Were they all hanging out without her?
She dragged herself upright and touched her three matching suitcases. Each one was filled with precision that was embarrassing. She’d picked out her outfits and even labeled them for the first few weeks of classes. Glancing down at her stiff clothes, she longed to dig out some of her laid-back wardrobe. But those outfits were for Future Natalie. And she was still Old Natalie. The Natalie who was strung so tight that she might have slept with the worst human on the planet. God, not knowing was hell.
Thirteen more days, and she could pretend like this summer never happened. In the meantime, she stared at her phone and willed it to ring. Ring!
The phone began to buzz, and Natalie jumped backward. She picked it up and checked the caller ID: Jaycee.
Jaycee?
Natalie paced while the phone hummed in her hands. They had to fight, of course, about Jaycee busting the Tyler news so cruelly on Zach. Natalie wouldn’t win, but who cared about winning anyway? Natalie did, especially when it came to Jaycee. She slid the bar to answer and slammed the phone against her ear. “We need to talk.”
“Ah, hello! Is that you, Miss Natalie?”
“Mr. Strangelove?”
“Yes, it’s me!” He was whispering, kind of. “Jaycee jumped in the shower, and I stole her phone. I feel like a villain in one of the Muppet movies.” Natalie couldn’t stop a smile. “I’m calling because I need…help. With Jaycee. She’s a bit off her rocker.”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh, it’s not too bad. She’s been breaking Jake’s stuff. Even his old toys that were in the attic.” He paused. “She nearly burnt down the shed this morning trying to torch his G.I. Joes. And I think, yeah, I think I need backup.”
He was trying so hard to be cheerful. Natalie wanted to hug the man for his commitment to optimism in the face of all things Jaycee. She dropped into her desk chair. “I’m not really qualified for that anymore,” she admitted.
“But you guys seemed like you were getting back together.”
“That didn’t go so hot.” Natalie accidentally imagined Jaycee in a burning shed with all that long, dirty-blond hair dangling like a ready fuse. “Have you talked to Mik?” Natalie remembered Jaycee laughing psychotically in the backseat while Natalie’s heart burst apart over Zach, only to catch Mik and Jaycee holding hands. “He’s better with her than I am.”
“I don’t know how to get in touch with him. Do you have his number?”
Natalie frowned. “His number is on Jaycee’s phone. I’ve seen it there.”
“She must’ve deleted it,” he said. Natalie put her hand over the mouthpiece and groaned. Jaycee, how did you ruin it this time? “I thought maybe they were dating, but when I asked her about it, her eyes started gleaming like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining. I’m really on Wit’s End Road over here, Miss Natalie. If I get her to the coffee shop next to her work around five, would you meet us there? Maybe talk with her?”
“Yes.” The word flew out so fast that she was shocked.
“Oh, great!” Mr. Strangelove said. “I always thought you two were yin and yang. Perfectly matched. That being said, you might need to bring your boxing gloves.” He paused. “Oh boy, the shower shut off. You’re the best and brightest, young lady. I’m proud of you.”
He hung up so fast that Natalie didn’t get a chance to tell him that he deserved Dad of the Year. Her own dad was either on a business trip or jet-lagged. Their connection had waned ever since she’d grown up too much to be excited about presents hidden in his suitcase.
Natalie put her phone down, feeling suddenly ill-equipped to handle Jaycee. It was too bad she couldn’t call Bishop…or Zach. He was sort of shockingly good with Jaycee. Mik was the answer, of course, but where would she find him? Did he really spend his days at the library?
Natalie ran out the door, jumped in her car, and in a few minutes, she was trekking up the brick path to Alden Library. The air-conditioning whooshed in her face as she pushed through the revolving door. The summer kept getting hotter, especially at night, and Natalie missed the cool of Zach’s basement. If she was being honest, she missed the ease of being with Zach in general.
Like Jaycee, he wanted to make every afternoon an adventure. Just a few months ago, he’d insisted that they make a fort out of the couch cushions, and when they were crouched inside, laughing, he’d told her that pretending to be a kid was more fun than pretending to be an adult. After that, he’d shook his lovely blond hair and added, “You probably don’t have to pretend to be anything.”
Oh, Zach. She should have told him the truth then and about everything since. About her broken-necked night terrors and constant panic attacks and Tyler—maybe even about Jake. Natalie headed downstairs to the study rooms and nearly glanced right past her quarry. She doubled back, stepped around the chairs, and sat down across from Mik. He was alone with a serious stack of books, and Natalie hadn’t recognized him because he wasn’t wearing the trench coat.
“So you don’t always wear that abomination. That’s good,” she said. “I worried about you in such heat.”
He didn’t look up. “I wear it for Jaycee. She warms up to me faster when I look like the boy she used to know.”
Natalie opened her mouth to comment on the fact that Mik was talking but thought better of it. “Have you seen her over the last two weeks?”
“No.” Mik turned a page. He was reading an anatomy book, and the image before him was all veins and arteries. “She dismissed me until next year. I now walk the long way around the green so that she can’t see me from her bookstore.” Mik looked up, and Natalie read pain and hints of anger in his expression. “You had something to do with it,” he said. “You and Zach.”
“Well, no one will talk to me. Not even Bishop. So don’t think I got off light.”
Mik closed his book. “What do you want, Natalie?”
“Closure,” she said. “I want to tell Zach how sorry I am, and I want Jaycee’s forgiveness. I have thirteen days, and you’re going to help me.”
“Should I be writing this down?”
“Oh, you’re sarcastic. What a sweet match you make for her.”
Mik scooped up his pile of books and started toward the stacks. “There’s no point. I’m pretty sure that if Jaycee sees me again before she wants to, she’ll act like she can’t. Like I physically don’t register. Invisible.” His words faltered. “She’s done it before.”
“Jaycee’s always been pretty powerful.” Natalie imagined the Jaycee that Mik was probably seeing. Headstrong, gorgeous. Intense. Jaycee had always been as daring as Jake but smarter, and therefore more infectious. “Niagara Falls, am I right?”
He glanced around. “If she ever hears you make that joke, we’ll all be dead.”
Natalie crossed her arms. “That only makes me want to go yell it at her and see if she gives chase. I want her back. Not the girl who’s married to her grief. The real Jaycee.”
“If she’s still in there,” he said. “I’m beginning to doubt that.”
Natalie felt a sharp jab in his words. She followed him out of the library, trying to find something to say to keep him from leaving. “Mik, can I ask you a question without ruining this whole conversation?”
“You want to know why I’m talking,” he said. Natalie nodded. “Because you were right. You kept speaking like I might respond. Now I feel like I can.” He stopped walking by the outdoor amphitheater. “Why are you here now, Natalie? It’s been weeks.”
“She hurt herself?” His voice sounded scraped.
“She’s okay.” Natalie took a deep breath. “Apparently she’s been breaking Jake’s things. Her dad is freaked out, and that’s saying something. He’s seen a lot from her, you know?”
“So she’s not okay.” Mik sat on the grass incline and put his hands over his face.
Natalie understood that look. “Guess I’m not the only one terrified for the day she finally kills herself.”
There was a strange peace in sitting next to Mik, talking to him openly. “I missed you,” she said. He looked at her strangely, and she added, “I miss all of you guys. A lot.” She pretended to adjust her glasses and shoved away a few tears. “Give me your phone. Please.” Mik handed her his cell, and she dialed Bishop’s number. “He won’t answer if I call on my phone,” she explained. She pressed the screen to her ear, waiting for him to answer. “Bishop, we’re getting the band back together.”
Bishop sighed. “No, Natalie. Just…no. I think I’m done with you forever.”
“I’m calling bullshit. You say you’re done with Zach and me, but then how many texts did you send about telling Zach the truth? Admit it, you do care about him. About all of us.”
Bishop was silent on the other end. “He shouldn’t have to go through what I did.”
“Well, he is. Right now. Have you been hanging out with him? Or has he been all alone since everything blew up?”
More silence and then, “What do you want me to do?”
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