The Leading Edge of Now

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  Forty-Six

  I was four years old when I first met Janna. It was a fluke, really, that our paths even crossed. Back then she lived on the other side of New Harbor. But she just so happened to know Andy, and he just so happened to be having a birthday party on the lawn, and Dad and I just so happened to be arriving at Rusty’s that day.

  As I helped Dad drag in our bags, I glanced up and saw Janna standing on the grass next door, a mess of boys wrestling and shouting behind her. She looked supremely out of place in her bright orange dress, twirling a daisy between her thumb and first finger, staring at me.

  I gazed back at her. “Hey,” I said after a moment, using my heel to scratch my opposite ankle. Then I pulled a foil package out of my shorts, ripped it open and held it out in her direction. “I have lemonade fruit snacks. Want some?”

  When you’re four, that’s how friendships are born.

  Now, thirteen years later, as I look out Rusty’s front window, I feel like I’ve fallen back in time. Janna is standing in almost the exact same spot on the lawn, staring at me.

  My legs heavy with the weight of our impending conversation, I wrench open the front door and step outside. Gripping the porch railing for balance, I watch her approach.

  She looks so, so sad.

  This is her goodbye is all I can think.

  It’s her chin that gives her away. She has it pulled down clear to her chest. And the way she walks — slow and tentative as she steps across the grass. She stops at the bottom of the stairs. Tears spill furiously down her face, but she doesn’t move, not even to wipe them away. I want to hug her, but I don’t dare. Instead, I watch her unload on the steps, wrap her arms around her legs and look out at the shoreline. I sit down hesitantly beside her, all my words tangled together into a thick ball in my throat.

  “I don’t know if it’s okay to talk to you right now,” she says, her voice raw and broken, “so tell me to go home if it’s not.”

  I flick a clump of sand off the step. “It’s fine.”

  Janna nods once, a quick, jerky motion. Then she inhales, and in her exhale she says, “I just wanted to come over and say that I’m sorry, for all of this, for my dad, for everything, and I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Janna, you don’t need to apologize.”

  She’s really crying now. Completely hysterical. “It was my dad, Grace.”

  “Which means it isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault but his,” I say. After a short pause, I repeat the last sentence, hoping she’ll understand. Hoping I’ll understand, because I’ve been blaming myself, too. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years, thinking about all the little things I might’ve done differently, and how altering just one of them could’ve changed the outcome of everything.

  Janna slaps the tears off her face. “My dad confessed to everything — did you know that? He’s in jail until his arraignment, and he’ll probably stay there for at least six months, until his trial, because Mom already said that she won’t bail him out. And Owen — you know what he does when he’s upset. He shuts down. Won’t talk to anyone. He’d rather carry it all on his shoulders until he finds a way to unload it on his own. He took off last night and we haven’t seen him since.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “Logan’s.”

  I nod, trying not to think about the beautiful boy who’s avoiding his family, avoiding his life, because I just stomped all over it. I focus desperately on a stray weed in the flower bed, because I know the million-dollar question is coming, I can feel it, thickening the air as it rolls and gathers like a thunderstorm in Janna’s head. When it comes, though, it’s so quiet I barely hear it: “What happens now? With us?”

  A stark sort of silence falls between us.

  I feel so bare, in this moment.

  I don’t look at her, but I’m honest. “I’m not sure. Everything has changed,” I say. I feel like I’m untangling, spinning away into a different version of myself, and I don’t know where I’ll land when I finally stop.

  #

  Two weeks pass before I talk to Owen. By then, I’ve already spoken to his mom, who materializes on our front porch late one afternoon holding a huge dish of lasagna, like she’s consoling me for a death in my family or something. I stand there, staring at her red, swollen eyes and her devastated expression, feeling as though I should be offering her lasagna. Or at least offer to divide this one in half. I invite her in, barely getting the chance to put the dish on the counter before she crushes me in her arms, muttering, “I’m so, so sorry, honey,” over and over, her cheeks wet with tears.

  I’ve done a lot of crying, too, mostly with my therapist. Sometimes, Rusty sits beside me, bawling as well. Sometimes I’m on my own, staring at the most heavily mustached man in the history of the world, spilling all my secrets. He’s a weird caricature of a guy, this therapist of mine, but he’s patient and kind, and I sort of love him for it. I don’t need someone to yank me toward wellness. I need someone to walk beside me as I find it on my own.

  I told him about the wallets I’d stolen. That was a weird day. I walked in, sat down across from him, said hello and said his suit was a good color for his complexion and said — oh, by the way, I had a bit of a criminal past.

  Yeah.

  He took it like a champ, though, not even blinking. He told me that I was doing the right thing, talking to him about it, that it takes courage to admit mistakes.

  Now, it’s one in the afternoon, and Rusty, Faith and I are walking through the hospital’s parking lot, toward the entrance. I need a physical assessment, something the courts requested for their investigation, something I’ve been dreading. But I’m here. Which feels like a small victory.

  I’m weaving around a car when I see Owen, shuffling toward us, head down, shoulders low. I freeze, a pang of sadness piercing my chest, because he looks so miserable. It’s followed by another pang, because I feel guilty for his misery.

  An ache as big as the planet swallows both of us as he makes his way toward me, stopping just a couple of feet away. His face is peppered with stubble and his eyes are puffy and red.

  I glance toward Rusty and Faith, who are waiting for me a few yards away. Rusty points at the hospital’s front doors like, We’ll wait for you inside.

  I nod.

  And then it’s just Owen and me and a million unspoken words. I start with the easiest one.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he says quietly, his eyes on his shoes.

  I swallow. “How’ve you been?”

  “I’m still here. You?”

  “Same.”

  Silence falls between us like a screen.

  I clear my throat and shift my weight. A raindrop lands on my arm. I glance up at the gray, rolling clouds tumbling across the sky, and then back at Owen. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed a meningitis shot for college before our insurance changes.” Then he drops the bomb: “We’re moving to Illinois — Mom and Janna and I.”

  I don’t say anything at first. I’m not even sure that I breathe. I don’t want to lose Owen again. I know what that feels like, how much it hurts. Fate has always been pulling at us, trying to separate us, trying to worry one of us free.

  I suppose it was only a matter of time.

  I say, “Are you still going to University of Florida?”

  He shakes his head no. “Mom is making some calls, trying to get me into a school up north.”

  “Were you even going to say goodbye to me?” His eyes shoot down to the asphalt, and I have my answer. “Why, Owen?”

  His voice is soft. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

  The rain is coming down harder now. My T-shirt is sticking to my shoulders, my stomach, my back. A car to my right pulls out of a nearby parking spot, revealing the McAllisters’ Jeep. I sa
y, “Why would you think that?”

  His words tumble out all at once. “Because my dad is a monster. Because I left you alone the night you were sexually assaulted. Because I ran away the past couple of weeks, when you needed me most. Because I couldn’t help you.”

  This is what it always comes down to — blaming. Me blaming myself. Owen blaming himself. “None of this is your fault, Owen. You didn’t know who your father really was. You couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen that night. And staying at Logan’s? I get it.”

  “And moving away? Do you understand that?”

  I glance at the Jeep. It breaks me a little, looking at it, knowing that he and Janna will be driving away from me for good. A single crystalline raindrop dangles from Owen’s eyelash. “Yeah. I get that, too,” I say. And I do understand. How can I expect his family to stay here after everything? And who am I to tell anyone how to grieve? Because that’s what we’re doing — grieving. We’ve all lost so much. I’ve lost my innocence and my dignity, and Owen has lost his father. Owen and I — we were hit with the same wrecking ball, but we flew in opposite directions. I can’t blame him for how he picks himself back up any more than he can blame me.

  In my heart, I know he should go.

  I need some time to move beyond this, too. I’ve hidden the rape inside myself for so long that it’s grown roots. I’m not sure I can remove it without cutting out a piece of myself.

  “Why did he do it, Grace?” Owen says, his voice cracking. “Why? It just doesn’t make any sense. He’s known you practically your whole life. You’re like a daughter to him.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Owen glances away from me, his throat working. I can tell that he’s trying to untangle the mess his father made, trying to smooth it out into a straight line that leads to the truth.

  I start to shiver. Every part of me is soaked. I wrap my arms around my chest and rub them with my palms, trying to warm up.

  “You’re cold. You should head inside,” Owen says, and I nod.

  I can see our goodbye stampeding toward us.

  So this is how it will end this time. At one in the afternoon, standing in a hospital parking lot in the pouring rain.

  I force myself to look him in the eye. There are no guarantees that I’ll ever see him again. And if this is the last time, I want to remember everything about this moment. Because life is hard and it’s messy, but it deserves to be lived. And if you’re always turning away from it, you aren’t really living it. Living, really living, is standing on the very tip of the moment — right on the leading edge of now — no matter how heartbreaking or beautiful or terrible it might be.

  Still.

  I hate goodbyes.

  And I don’t know how to let him go. It was so much easier to walk away from him when I thought he was a monster. Here, now, with our shared pain, with our past and present so matted together, saying goodbye feels unnatural.

  “Owen,” I begin, and my voice cracks. I pause, trying to find the right words. Owen doesn’t need my permission to leave town, but he needs my blessing. And so I give it to him. “Your leaving — it’s what you need right now, and I’ll never hold that against you. Please don’t feel guilty. Your family deserves to get past this. You deserve to get past this. You deserve to have a life. You deserve happiness. You deserve love. Real love. And if you can’t have it with me when this is all said and done, if you just can’t move beyond what your father did, then I hope you find it with someone else.” The last sentence strangles me a little bit, but I get it out.

  It isn’t clear who reaches for whom. The space between us is gone and we’re kissing. His hands frame my face, and I don’t know what is rain or what is tears, because both of them are everywhere as he says, “I’ll miss you,” and I say, “I know,” and he says, “This is killing me,” and I say, “I know.”

  And just like that, he’s gone.

  Forty-Seven

  I’m standing outside on the porch the next day, a couple of hours after sunrise. It’s a cool morning by Florida standards. There’s a hurricane off the coast of Texas, and it’s kicking up the waves into choppy white peaks. In the McAllisters’ driveway, backed up to the house, is a large U-Haul truck, which evidently arrived yesterday, while I was at the hospital.

  Eleanor comes bumbling out the front door, wearing both a one-piece swimsuit and a somber expression. She probably weighs only a hundred pounds soaking wet, but the deck groans loudly under her feet as she stops beside me and says, “I had a dog once — did I ever tell you that? A shih tzu. Yapped all the time. The vet found a tumor on him when he was only five years old. Killed me to have to put him down, but I didn’t have much choice.” She blows out a breath. There’s a long pause punctuated by the caw of a seagull. Then she says, “The day I had to let him go — that was the day I loved him most.”

  I turn toward her. She looks sincere and honest and maybe even a little bit sad. I didn’t realize how accustomed I was to her sarcasm. Now that it’s gone, I actually miss it a little.

  We stay there like that, silent for I don’t know how long. Then she nods at me, walks down the steps and crosses the road to the beach. I watch her wade into the water and then dive under, paddling out past the swim buoys. She stays there for a moment, just bobbing, and then she ducks under an oncoming wave like it’s nothing, as easy as breathing, only to come to the surface and get blasted full-force with another massive wall of water. Reflexively, I suck in my breath and hold a hand over my mouth. But within seconds, her head bursts through the water. I can almost swear I hear her laugh.

  #

  Eventually, I wander inside, where Faith is dumping white flour into a mixing bowl. “Pancakes,” she tells me. “With extra vegetable oil.” She swallows and forces a smile. “I got my period today.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I walk across the kitchen and hug her, spontaneously and hard. She stiffens for half a second, surprised, and then she wraps both arms around me. It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve hugged her on my own. Even so, she smells familiar, like vanilla and flour and clothes that have been hanging out on a line.

  I hang around the house all morning, one ear on next door. Strange as it sounds, I want to spend as much time here as possible with the McAllisters still living next door, still in my life. So I eat breakfast with Faith and curl up on the couch with a book while Rusty watches TV.

  When the moving truck fires up, I inhale sharply, hit all at once with this weird instinct to burst outside and tell them to get back in their house, as though I feared for their safety. Instead, I sit perfectly still, listening to the truck bump down the driveway. All I can think is, Nobody came over to say goodbye, even though that’s all we’ve been doing the past several days, just by acknowledging how screwed up everything is.

  Still, though, it hurts like hell.

  As the noise of the engine grows quieter and quieter, Rusty gives my shoulder a squeeze and says, “You want to go see a movie or something?”

  I shake my head no, my rib cage crushing my heart into a tiny grain of sand. “I think I need to stay right where I am.”

  #

  That evening, someone shuts the door to the spare room. And it remains that way, a two-inch-thick wooden barricade, safeguarding us from the things we can’t change.

  Forty-Eight

  Sarah visits me one afternoon in early August. She tells me that she wishes I had confided in her, that everything will be okay, that she’ll help me in any way she can. That Mr. McAllister is still in jail, awaiting his trial.

  Even so, I’m restless. Late at night, when the house is quiet and everyone has gone to sleep, I tiptoe into the kitchen, slide Eleanor’s car keys off the counter and slip off into the night. I drive in circles, down the coast, through Bradenton Beach, past Longboat Key and then back to New Harbor the long way. Just before sunrise I arrive home, where I pad quiet
ly into the house and collapse in bed, finally able to sleep. And that’s how it goes for days on end. Drive. Come home. Sleep. I feel like I’m looking for something, looking to get away from something. Just … looking.

  Currently, it’s four thirty in the morning and I’m pulling Eleanor’s car to a stop at a gas station in Sarasota. I slide the car into park and just sit there for a moment, staring down the street. Mr. McAllister is in a jail cell somewhere. I know this should make me feel better, safer.

  It doesn’t.

  I pull my phone out of my purse and check it for messages. I don’t know why. I guess I keep hoping that one of these days I’ll find a text from Owen or Janna, even though I fear in a real, bruising way that I’ll never hear from them again.

  I’ll understand, but it will still break my heart.

  I take a shuddering breath, blinking until my eyes clear, and then I open the door and climb out. The gas station looks washed out and dingy in the blinding fluorescent light. I stare through the windows of the station’s convenience store, wondering whether I should walk in and buy something to eat.

  That’s when I see him. The guy whose wallet I stole. The lifeguard. He’s standing at the counter inside the store, holding a to-go cup of coffee, his feet kicked out in the same casual stance I’ve gotten used to seeing lately. He waits, unaffected and idle, for the woman behind the counter to ring him up.

  I shift my weight, a swirl of apprehension in my stomach. I haven’t been hiding from him. Not for several weeks now. The weird, confusing truth is that there’s a part of me — and I’m not sure how big a part it is — that actually wants him to recognize me. To figure it all out. To just storm on up to me and demand his wallet. But he hasn’t so much as looked at me, or maybe he has and I just haven’t seen it.

  Anchoring myself to the car with one hand, I watch him put his coffee on the counter and reach into his pocket, pulling out a wad of money. He gives two bills to the cashier, holding up an easygoing palm and shaking his head when she tries to give him his change. With a tip of his head, he gestures to the little plastic dish that customers use when they’re a few cents short, and then he ambles away.