“I didn’t know we’d go to the same school,” I told her.
“We wouldn’t have. My mom remarried. We moved the end of last year.”
Remarried because she lost her first husband. Because of you. I heard it in the way she clenched and stretched her fingers. I looked down where the first impatient mums were starting to bud at my feet. “How did you know I was here?”
“I heard your name at school. I’ve always known your name.” Her face twisted with a quiet pain. I dropped my gaze, ashamed I never learned hers. “I just double-checked and found out you were the same girl. I knew the second I saw you. I could tell.”
I gave myself one second to look at her. That seemed the longest I could bear the heat in her eyes without it scalding me. I would have never known she was the baby in the red blanket. I stopped and stared at her red shirt, wondering if I was making the blanket color up or if I had really seen it once in a picture. It didn’t matter. There was no way to wrap her up and make her feel better now. Our pain outgrows our comforts sometimes.
“I’m here to forgive you,” she stated, the angry tone contradicting her words. I looked at her and found the same fearless determination I saw the first time she met my eyes. She was not afraid of me at all. Not afraid to offend me or trouble me or crush me. I wondered if she knew that she could do all three.
“It wasn’t my idea—to forgive you,” she continued. “It was my dad’s.”
“Your stepdad?” I tried to clarify.
Her eyes narrowed as she recoiled. Everything about her looked like a snake drawing back to strike. “My dad. You only get one.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the question that came out was one I didn’t know I harbored. “Do you remember him?”
“No,” she snapped. “Not at all.”
She let the truth settle in with the silence and it was blacker and more terrible than I imagined. So that’s it. I took all of him. Didn’t even leave a memory. My eyelashes crushed back a tear, but it escaped out the far corner of my eye into my hair.
“What do you mean it was his idea to forgive me?” I silently prayed he had spoken from the grave, or predicted the future, or something miraculous and indisputable happened to confirm that he held nothing against me. “How would he have known?”
She made a scoffing noise and pulled her hand up so I could see an old sheet of notebook paper, legal sized and folded over to fit inside a plastic page protector. “He didn’t know you. It’s just the closest I could get.”
“I don’t understand.”
Charlotte flashed the paper toward me. “My dad left a list. A list of things he wanted to do someday.” She clenched her teeth together and it reminded me of a dog warning someone to back away. “This is the most important thing I own.”
A razor sharp anchor dropped through me, slicing my heart as it sank into the blackness of my stomach. Sometimes I forgot how much I had stolen. Every dream. Every accomplishment. He had thought of his tomorrows. Planned them.
“The first thing on the list is to forgive his dad.” She shifted the paper even closer to me, revealing the first thing of Bryon Exby I ever saw other than a picture in a newspaper—his handwriting. It was small and tight and difficult to read. But there it was: Forgive my father even though he doesn’t deserve it.
“I don’t…” I started.
“His dad was a jerk. I never met him but my mom says he left when my dad was a teenager. They never made up. But my dad wanted to forgive him. My grandpa died three years ago before my mom ever showed me this list. Since I can’t go forgive my grandpa for him I had to think of someone else to forgive. And I thought of you.”
Because you killed him. The rest of her sentence hung horrible and indestructible in the air. I took a breath but it seemed to jump sideways, miss my lungs, and pass like a cold wind through me.
“I thought if I did something on his list it might be…” She ran out of words and fumbled for a new sentence. “Maybe I would feel…”
“Better?” I asked her.
“Maybe.”
“Do you?”
She looked up at me with no emotion other than bewilderment. “I have no idea. I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry it’s not working,” I dropped the words like a robot. All I could process were the words on the page: even though he doesn’t deserve it.
“Maybe it would if I meant it. I’m trying to forgive you. I guess I just don’t … want to.” She slid her hands over her tanned legs and grabbed her knees, her knuckles paled by the strength of her grip.
I compared the picture of Bryon Exby in my mind to the girl next to me. He was black and white. She was sun-kissed and sarcastic. I could not connect the two. “Maybe you started with the hardest one. Is there anything easier on the list?”
She lifted the page from the bench where she set it and let me read.
Forgive my father even though he doesn’t deserve it
Surprise party
Skinny dipping
Walk Char down the aisle
Watch a meteor shower
Give Melissa diamond earrings
Whitewater rafting
Perform live on stage
Backpack without a tent
Sleep under the stars in a hammock
“I don’t think he ever finished writing it,” she told me before I got to the bottom of the list. “I think he was just doodling. My mom found it in his work notebook a couple of years after he died. It’s a short list. It can’t be everything.”
“Surprise parties aren’t hard,” I offered.
Her eyes met mine. “I’m not exactly in a party mood.”
“You could sleep under the stars,” I tried again.
“I did. I mean, I will. I tried a sleeping bag in my backyard last year, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the right spot. I’ll figure out a way to do it all. I just figured, ‘start at the top.’” Her voice was rough, defensive, and she stood up. “At least I tried.” Her eyes passed over me and I felt an emptiness as she took in my dark hair, my face, my arching eyebrows, my long body. I knew what she was seeing. She was seeing a girl not worth her father’s life. A girl who didn’t “deserve it.”
She started to walk away, but at the fence she threw her rich voice over her shoulder. “I won’t stare at you anymore. I’ve seen enough.”
Something broke inside me. I’d been found wanting. Not even worth her contempt. I glanced down and saw a gnat stuck on my wet fingernail. One wing struggled but there was no hope. He would die on my hand.
I wanted to apologize. And fight. There was a battle warring under my skin. I followed her to the front yard and my voice came out broken and uncertain. “I could help you, you know.”
Charlotte stood still, only halfway turned to me, her eyes darted on my face the way light strikes and retreats on lapping water.
“I don’t need your help,” she said. But it was like a bad lip reading because I heard her asking me to realize she was lying. She built up volume and continued. “I don’t even know if any of this counts. You can’t do a bucket list for someone else, can you? The point is to do it before you die. So, that sucks.”
She was asking me to disagree, to prove to her that she could somehow reach her father through that small slip of paper. “I think you can,” I promised. “But some of those are big things. You might need help. You can’t drive. I have a car.”
She wavered. Her resolve tilted, just like her chin that she tipped to the side as she assessed me. “We don’t have to get my mom diamond earrings. Doctor Dave already did that.” Her expression soured.
“Who’s Doctor Dave?” I asked.
“My old therapist. Apparently that whole doctor/patient thing doesn’t apply to parents. While I was telling him about my dad, he was falling in love with my mom.” Her raspy voice nailed disdain. She made disgust its own dialect. If she didn’t have such smooth, plump cheeks and eyes the color of graham crackers I would swear she was a bitter ol
d woman.
“So that’s one down.” I pulled on my hair and shook it behind my shoulders the way I do when I’m nervous. “You can pick what to do next.” When her demeanor softened I tried one last tactic. “It might help with the first thing on the list. Might help you forgive me, I mean. If I help you.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But only if we do it all my way. I only call you if I can’t do it alone.”
I nodded. I heard her real terms: I am in charge. You obey my orders. You owe me.
“One condition,” I pushed back. Her eyes flared with indignation, but I kept speaking. “You tell me about your dad.”
That seemed to placate her. She took a step closer to me and I thought of her father, wishing I could remember the moment he saved me. Wishing I could see the look in his eyes when he made his choice. As Charlotte wrestled with her decision I realized that might be the closest I would ever come to witnessing that instant.
When she still didn’t answer I wondered what she was waiting for. Wondered what I said wrong. What I didn’t say. “I never got to thank him,” I added. “ I’ve always wanted to. Maybe if I helped you I would finally feel like I got to do that. Say thank you.” I was two years older and half a foot taller, but I stood nervously under Charlotte’s gaze. She was right. I owed her. I owed everyone. If I didn’t find a way to pay somebody back I would be the one thing I couldn’t bear—I would be useless.
“Okay,” she agreed.
My breath rushed over my lips and the wind washed the sigh of relief somewhere I could not see. Beneath her glare Charlotte was merciful. She inherited at least that from her father.
CHAPTER 5
“Wrong again. You forgot the line about the green thickets.” Phillip leaned against the cinder block hallway, a battered script in his hands. There was no better class than drama for upperclassmen. Mrs. Schatz let us wander the hallways next to the theater to practice our scenes. As long as we are students she trusts who deliver on performance days, the time is largely unsupervised. When I didn’t respond fast enough he rolled his script and hit me on the arm, making a few classmates turn from their scenes to watch us. “What’s your deal?”
“No deal. I just forgot it. Start again. I’ll get it.” I bent so far over my lines that my hair made a black veil to hide the way my lips refused to relax. They are always the first thing to give me away. “I didn’t sleep well,” I added. Even though I had stayed asleep, I spent every minute of my dreams negotiating with Charlotte, begging her not tell everyone. By the time morning crawled into my bedroom it found me pink-eyed and exhausted.
Instead of reciting his line, Phillip scooted across the wide white hall until he reached my hand and took it in his. “Is that weird girl still bugging you? You hid all day yesterday.”
“I don’t have to hide anymore.” I rubbed my red pencil across my paper, watching the crimson streaks gather on top of the black words. “She found me.” I told him how Charlotte had turned up on my doorstep.
“Crazy freshman stalked you to your house?” He turned around as if he expected her to be sneaking up behind us.
“Her name is Charlotte and she didn’t stalk me. She found me. She came to forgive me.” I couldn’t look at him when I said that.
“Forgive you for what? You don’t even know her!”
We’d known each other for over five years and I’d never told him about Bryon. How does one bring that up in conversation? How do you apologize for not bringing it up? A trio of sophomores came into the hall to block a scene and I grabbed Phillip’s hand. “I’ll talk to you inside.” I led him to the stage doors. “Tell Mrs. Schatz that Phillip and I are practicing on stage if she can’t find us,” I told the girls. They agreed before we disappeared, their eyes wide with curiosity, probably from imagining all sorts of carnal activity happening in the empty theater. The heavy doors slammed behind us and my eyes adjusted from the fluorescent hallway to the darkness of backstage.
“I have to tell you something important. Something secret I’ve never told anyone,” I said to Phillip as he slid up a dimmer switch, lighting the wings. The curtains were open so I made my way to the edge of the stage and sat with my feet swinging over the void of the orchestra pit.
He dropped his voice to mock my serious tone as he settled beside me. “What? Did you kill someone?”
Tears popped instantly, blossomed over my lower lids. My voice sounded barren in the silent, echoing room. “Yes.”
Phil stuttered over whatever word he planned to say. I knew I couldn’t leave him holding the impossible weight of my answer so I just kept going. “When I was two I was almost hit by a car. Except a man saw it coming and pushed me out of the way. He died.”
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. And I saw exactly what I’d always feared. His eyes flickered as they flashed from shock to appraisal. There is only one way people look at you when they find out your life came at such a price. They want to judge if you are worth it.
I pulled my knees tight against me to still the shaking. “His name was Bryon Exby. He was Charlotte’s dad.”
“Stalker Charlotte? The freaky one? Her dad saved you?”
“Not stalker! Like I said, she came to forgive me.”
Phil’s face was half hidden in shadows but I could tell he was searching for the right words. What a horrible burden, to make someone feel like they have to say the right thing. “Forgive you?” he shook his head, noticed my shaking chin. “It wasn’t your fault,” he reassured me.
“Sort of was. I stepped into the street. Bryon wouldn’t have had to save me if I had stayed where I was supposed to.”
“You were two.” He calibrated his voice to make my argument sound ridiculous. No matter how many people pointed out that fact, it flooded me with relief every time. Phil slid to my side and wrapped his arm tight and warm around my shoulder. I leaned into him, grateful for the gesture. The still air was thick with the scent of sawdust and truth. Phillip’s voice filled the dark room, floating up to the high ceiling. “I’m glad he did—save you.”
I turned to him in the shadows so he could see my surprised smile. “That is really nice.” And because he put on his most sincere and humble face I couldn’t help adding, “Sometimes I think I should date you.”
“Just say the word,” he joked. But it was always a joke, for both of us. He was so much more backup than boyfriend. A safe place to flirt, a safe place to fall. A batting cage for love, but never the ninth inning.
“I could kiss you now to see how it goes,” he said, his face bending over mine, his eyebrows raised in jest.
“Opportunist.” I elbowed him away. “Maybe when I’m a little more desperate.”
“Hard to imagine,” he argued.
“Sadly, that’s true.” I wound my hair into a knot and stabbed my pencil through it. A few dark strands sprung free. “I told her I would help her do something.”
As I explained about the list a strange smile played across his wide lips that annoyed me. As soon as I finished I crossed my arms against my chest. “What?”
“You’re pretty,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Idiot. You would flirt with an extension cord. You were supposed to be listening about the list. What do you think?”
“I think it’s awesome. I’m in.”
My mouth opened in confusion. “You can’t be in. It’s just for us. Charlotte and me.”
“Have you ever been whitewater rafting?” he asked. “How exactly did you plan to tackle that one? Seriously Megan, you backpacking?”
“I … have you been whitewater rafting?” I asked.
Stages do strange things to people. He looked mysterious in the thin light. “Yes. And trust me, you would,” he studied me with a doubtful smile, “need a little help.”
“I really can’t stand you sometimes.”
His laughter bounced over the curving walls. I looked across the empty, red seats and imagined the ghosts of every audience staring at us, leaning forward, ready for the next act.
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CHAPTER 6
I didn’t see Charlotte again until the next day when her cafeteria tray landed on the table in front of me. I think she planned it to startle me because she approached from behind and let it fall with an unnecessarily loud clatter that sent a few french fries flying.
Her eyes were steady and strong, piercing me when I spun around. Phillip looked up from his homework and I knew he was thinking too many things to decide on any one to say.
“So where do you think we start?” she asked. My classmates looked to me for an explanation and I was afraid she was going to keep talking in that loud voice. Since you killed my dad should we go on a campout this weekend?
I shuddered and lowered my voice, hoping she’d follow suit. “Let’s eat outside.” I didn’t wait to see if she followed me, but when I stood I sensed Phillip, almost like a bodyguard. I headed into the courtyard, grabbing a spot on the hard packed dirt under a scrubby tree.
“What’s he doing?” she asked as soon as she reached me.
“He’s…” As soon as I started speaking Phillip gave me a smile calculated to annoy because translated into English it meant, You can say anything you want. I’m not leaving. I didn’t argue because I knew he was there for me, making sure nothing happened I couldn’t handle. “He’s sort of like a puppy that follows me around. Hard to get rid of. Just ignore him and throw scraps of food.”
Phillip laughed and I patted the ground next to me for Charlotte. She lowered herself without taking her hostile eyes off Phillip. She didn’t like him. Certainly didn’t trust him. “Is he your boyfriend?” she asked me while she stared straight into his face. He loved it. He flopped at our feet and took a bite of his hot dog.
“Yeah, Megan. Am I your boyfriend?”
The Truth About Fragile Things Page 3