Anywhere but Here

by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  This is what Lauren and I could have. This sort of living, breathing creature in our lives. In some ways, the whole idea seems fascinating. And in other ways, it seems so scary that I want to push back from the table right now and sprint for the highway.

  Sheri reveals plum cake for dessert. It’s nowhere near as delicious as Mom’s, which makes me happy.

  After dinner and after my dad and I have done the dishes—“only fair after the girls have cooked all day,” he says in a cheerful voice I’m no longer used to hearing—Brittany Anne and I play a two-hour game of Monopoly. She cheats, but I let her, because as long as we’re playing, I can pretend to be completely absorbed in the game and ignore Sheri and Dad nuzzling each other on the living room couch.

  Nausea can be a side effect of a concussion. They warned me about it.

  Brittany Anne is surprisingly bright.

  “You should change your name to Britt,” I tell her. “It sounds less like a s-soap opera star.” I was going to say “stripper,” but that seemed a bit harsh.

  “Do you like Britt better?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” she says. Then she yells into the living room, “My name is Britt now!”

  I can’t help smiling, and she responds with an ear-to-ear grin that would get her on one of those reality TV beauty pageant shows. Actually, that would be right up Sheri’s alley.

  “You shouldn’t change your name,” Britt says.

  “No?”

  “I like it.”

  I have to admit, the girl is growing on me. She’s a little ion-powered whirlwind that’s sucked all the stale air out of the house.

  This doesn’t mean I’m okay with her moving in permanently. Not if she wants to bring her mother with her.

  • • •

  At least with Sheri in the house, I’m more motivated to hang out in my bedroom and finish my film. It definitely turned out dark—and I don’t mean the background lighting. If this were to hit theaters, researchers would flock to Webster to investigate the population’s hopeless, helpless existence. Even to me, the film seems bleak.

  It’s done, though. Today, I even packaged it up, ready to drop in the mail with my reference letters and my application forms. Since there’s going to be a baby in my life, I’ll probably never get to film school. But I’ve spent too much time on the short not to submit it. This way, I can spend the next few years knowing whether or not the studio would have accepted me.

  In a sad way, I’m feeling quite confident about it. The film is stark, sure, but they must be used to that at a film school. The whole thing has a rough, raw edge to it. Somehow I’m sure I’ll get in, and then I won’t be able to go. . . .

  I’m thinking about this crazy situation as I search through the linen closet for a sheet to turn into a toga. Lex came through for me, miraculously. She called to say she’s convinced Lauren to come to Dallas’s party.

  Lauren will be there, and I’ll be there, and Lex will help arrange a way for us to talk. My chest feels tight even thinking about it. This is a conversation that’s going to shape my entire life, Lauren’s life, and the baby’s.

  We’re going to make what will probably be our biggest decision ever. While dressed in togas.

  • • •

  “Cole!” There are a dozen people on Dallas’s deck who shout my name as I arrive. The bass is pounding. The crowd is a sea of white, although some of the girls dancing outside are wearing ski jackets over their togas.

  Both Sheri and Britt ended up helping with my costume, which means my toga has a belt of grape vines. I also have a laurel crown, which I left in the truck so I don’t get beat up for looking a whole other level of ridiculous.

  “It’s freezing out here,” I yell.

  “It’s like a sauna inside,” Dallas shouts back. “We go in there to warm up, then out here to cool down. It’s like the Swedish-Roman system of good health, bro.”

  “How’s your arm?” I ask him.

  “Healing. How’s your head? I heard you cracked it open on the ski trip.”

  “No pink elephants, but I’m still having hallucinations,” I say.

  “Nice.”

  “Instead, there’s a small child and a stripper living in my house.”

  “That’s awesome!”

  The older you get, the more surreal everything becomes. It’s possible that this is how life works, I think as I shoulder my way inside in search of warmth.

  Another example: Across the room from me, Hannah is wearing a toga made from a red satin sheet. She’s dancing on top of the kitchen table, which would be surreal even if Lauren weren’t dancing on a kitchen chair beside her, wearing an ankle-length toga skirt with a ski jacket zipped up over top. Inside the sauna house. Lex is on the floor below them, dancing with both arms in the air and her head bobbing at whiplash-inducing speed.

  As I watch, Hannah slips off the table and is caught like a rock concert bodysurfer by the guys conveniently admiring her red satin. She pops back up and keeps dancing. She’s like the sexy foil to Lauren’s blond angel. Except . . . not so angelic.

  It’s enough to make you wonder if Salvador Dalí ever hit his head while on a ski trip.

  There’s a whole field of surrealist documentary filmmaking that blends fiction and fact. It started when Robert Flaherty fiddled with reality in Nanook of the North, and it developed into all sorts of craziness. If I wanted to join that particular stream of filmmaking, this party would be the place to start.

  Greg comes in. He nods to me as he makes his way through the kitchen to the cooler of beer.

  “How’s it going?” I shout.

  “Okay.” An answer worthy of a sulking woman. I would tell him as much, but he’s already squeezed past me again, toward the stereo.

  I’m not about to agree with my dead mother’s theories of friendship, but parties where no one is speaking to you are less fun than you would think. Lauren’s still dancing on the chair, so our Lex-engineered talk is not going to happen anytime soon. Bracing for the cold, I head back to the deck, where Dallas—now wearing a cowboy hat with his toga—appears to be demonstrating a line dance. Only Dallas could get away with that.

  I lean on the porch railing, freezing, and wish I had somewhere more comfortable to go. And not just the choice between the heat inside and the cold outside. It’s the choice between (a) this party with a bunch of drunk people and (b) the building that used to be my home, a place that suddenly has whole milk instead of skim in the fridge. Sheri says Britt’s underweight, and she’s supposed to drink the full-fat version.

  Whole milk is disgusting.

  As Dallas and his followers step-cross-step away from me, I decide another thing’s gone wrong with my world. Everything in Webster was supposed to stay the same when I take off for Vancouver. That’s how I assumed it would work. People were supposed to wait for me so that when I breezed into town to give my this-is-my-birthplace tour to entertainment news shows, they could be suitably impressed.

  But no. They all have their own shit going on. Plans or lack of plans. Babies or stripper families. Brand-new video game systems or roast chicken dinners or lesbian romances.

  Most of these people don’t even know I’m in a life-altering crisis here. But if they don’t understand that, and I don’t know what predicaments they might be facing, then something’s just not right. And I have a heavy feeling weighing in my gut, telling me it might all be my fault.

  chapter 27

  surrealism on a whole new level

  When I make it inside again, Hannah and Lauren have disappeared from the kitchen table and there’s a commotion just down the hallway at the bathroom door. A bunch of drunken girls are pressing into the room as if they’re playing sardines, that hide-and-seek game that Greg and I used to like when we were kids.

  “Oh my God,” one of them shrieks.

  “We should call someone.” That’s Hannah’s voice, surprisingly clear.

  “She can’t stay here.”

 
If I had to guess, I would say some girl’s boyfriend got drunk and kissed another girl, which caused the first girl to slap the second girl, ruining her eye makeup, and now all the girls are crying.

  That’s what I would guess if I had to, but I don’t bother. I’m not exactly concerned. At a house party, girls crying in the bathroom is common background noise. I decide to crack a beer and plant my ass on the kitchen counter until Lex signals me. Then I’m going to talk—really talk—to Lauren.

  That’s my plan—until Lex pushes her way into the kitchen. There’s a streak of red down the front of her toga that’s definitely more horror movie than surrealist doc.

  “There’s something wrong with Lauren and the baby,” she announces to the room.

  “What baby?” someone beside me asks. “Who brought a baby to the party?”

  Meanwhile, I’ve slid from the counter and I’m standing in this weird hyper-alert position, ready to run in whatever direction Lex points. “What do you need?”

  It’s like she doesn’t even see me. Lex spins around with a finger extended and aims it at a random guy.

  “You. You gotta call an ambulance,” she says.

  “Okay,” he says, amused. With her mascara smeared and her toga about to fall off her shoulder, Lex is a portrait of a drunken lunatic. This is the person I trusted to broker my future with Lauren?

  Sucking in air through her teeth, she draws herself up to her full height—somewhere around the guy’s belly button—and stabs her finger at him again.

  “The ambulance!” she shouts.

  “Ambulance. Got it.” He doesn’t move.

  I’m patting my pockets for my own phone, but it must be in the truck. I can’t see a house phone through the crowd. And then all hell breaks loose. More people try to jam themselves into the bathroom. Someone starts screaming for help, and everyone on the deck attempts to press inside.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s as if I’m caught in one of those melodramatic silent films, in which some girl is tied to the railway tracks and everyone is running this way and that. Except in this case, Lauren is stuck in the bathroom and Lex is trying to punch the guy across from me. He’s blocking her blows and her mouth is still moving, lips flapping in exaggerated motions, though no sound is reaching my ears except friggin’ Charlie Chaplin music until finally—finally—Hannah steps into the center of things.

  “Cole!” Her voice snaps like a whip. This is not the dancing-on-a-kitchen-table Hannah. She is undeniably sober. “I can’t get them out of the bathroom.”

  I nod.

  “Cole! You need to get these girls out of the bathroom. Can you do that?”

  Clear the bathroom. I take a breath, and wonder how long I’ve been holding the same air in my lungs. Breathe. Get them out of the bathroom. I can do that.

  Maybe they’re wrong about Lauren. Maybe it’s indigestion.

  As soon as Hannah’s out of the way, I take Lex by the shoulders and physically lift her to the side. As I move the few steps down the hallway to the bathroom, I do the same to another dozen girls. I’m a bulldozer removing boulders. Eventually, I clear my way to Lauren, who is sitting on the vinyl floor staring at the blood on her toga. Her skin is the same color as the sheet, which seems eerily impossible. Her entire body is shaking.

  This is not indigestion.

  Is there supposed to be this much blood when you have a baby?

  Lauren looks at me as if I’m a knight who will save her, but my brain is threatening to shut down again. I can feel my heart beating. The human heart is not supposed to beat this fast.

  Behind me, the word “pregnant” ripples from mouth to mouth in a sound wave traveling away from the bathroom.

  “Cole?” Lauren says. I sink to my knees beside her, not sure where it’s safe to touch her.

  “Can you get me out of here?” she asks.

  Outside, the stereo stops. I hear Hannah shouting instructions. “Everybody out! The party’s over. Greg, call an ambulance. Dallas, get the fucking hat off your head and turn on some lights in here. Somebody give me a cell phone.”

  Behind us, girls are pressing into the bathroom again. The pressure’s building like the weight of snow on a mountain cliff, ready to bury us.

  Lauren is still staring up at me, skin damp, eyes wide and scared.

  I move to a squat, snaking an arm under her shoulders and another beneath her legs. “Had enough of this party?”

  When she nods, I scoop her up in my arms, then shoulder my way out of the bathroom. Once I’m in motion, my brain seems to work. Maybe that’s the trick to crisis management. Stay in motion.

  “Cole, I haven’t talked to her yet! Stay away!” Lex screams at me. I refuse to break focus.

  The kitchen is crammed with people and the deck is no better, so I carry Lauren all the way to the driveway.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” Hannah says, following us.

  A wave of people pours out of the house and gathers around, pushing close. Some of the girls are crying; they all seem to be yelling.

  Lauren grows heavy in my arms but I can’t exactly lay her on the snow or the gravel.

  Lex is here too, shrill and insistent.

  “Leave her alone, Cole Owens!”

  Lex seems to think she’s supposed to be between us. When I don’t respond, she swings her purse at my head, and then she actually starts kicking me. Kicking me! The girl’s wearing high-heeled boots.

  Eventually, I manage to get the door of my truck open and settle Lauren on the passenger seat.

  “You can’t take her!” Lex screams. She has backup now—a gang of drunk girls who echo everything she says.

  As Lex winds up to kick me again, I consider grabbing her foot. But what would that accomplish? It wouldn’t get help for Lauren any faster. I can hear a siren growing closer, so I angle the truck’s passenger door between my legs and Lex’s boot, and I put my jacket over Lauren.

  “I think I’m dying,” Lauren whimpers.

  “You’re not dying,” I tell her. “The ambulance is coming. Can you hear it?”

  “If I’m not dying, my parents are going to kill me,” she says.

  I consider this. “It’s possible. But only after they kill me.”

  A fire truck is the first to arrive, and an ambulance squeals up behind. Flashing emergency lights paint the masses red, then blue, as if we’re all at some alien dance club. The sight of men in uniforms finally makes everyone back up. The crowd grows quiet.

  It’s only me and Hannah and Lex standing by the truck when the men drop red bags and a stretcher beside us. Lex is still ranting, but I’m concentrating on the deep voice of the paramedic. It’s like Valium, slowing everything.

  “So what happened here?” he asks.

  “She needs a hospital,” I blurt.

  “She’s pregnant,” Hannah says. I wince at the word. “She was bleeding all day and didn’t tell anyone and then she was drinking, and she fell, and . . .”

  How does Hannah know all of this? It’s as if my ex-girlfriends have formed a secret society behind my back.

  A crying Lex interjects something unintelligible, and a second paramedic puts a hand on her shoulder to calm her. There is stuff streaming from Lex’s nose the way little kids on rainy days have unnoticed snot.

  The paramedics examine Lauren, calling numbers to each other. Then, like choreographed dancers, they step away from the truck and whisk a stretcher into place, lifting Lauren onto it like a life-size practice doll.

  My brain must be in shock again because as Lauren’s loaded into the ambulance, I find myself thinking that the stretcher is a cool invention. It wheels out, the legs unfold to the exact height of my truck, then fold back up to be slid into the ambulance. While I’m pondering the mysteries of hydraulics, Lex climbs in beside the paramedic and sits by Lauren like a watchdog, as if she rides in ambulances every weekend. As if she’s Lauren’s best friend.

  I try to join them, but the paramedic reaches out and puts a hand
on my chest.

  “You been drinking?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I never got to drink that beer I popped.

  “Follow us, then. Use the ER entrance.”

  Then the ambulance doors close in my face like theater curtains and I can’t help worrying that “The End” has appeared in scrolled letters.

  Cursing, I race back to my truck and climb in, revving the engine to clear the bystanders from behind me. I’m about to rip backward when the passenger door opens and Hannah climbs in.

  “What the . . . ?” I’m supposed to follow my pregnant ex-girlfriend to the hospital with my other ex-girlfriend in the truck beside me? I open my mouth, but I have no idea what to say.

  Hannah, apparently, has no shortage of words. “I was going to make her see you. I swear. We’ve been talking a lot in the last couple weeks. I thought it was completely unfair of her to shut you out. She said she’d talk to you tonight. But then it was crazy in there, and when I saw you . . .”

  I have this urge to wrap my arms around Hannah. I want to rest my forehead right in that dip above her collarbone. . . .

  No.

  The ambulance is out of the driveway, turning onto the main road. Right now, I have to follow Lauren.

  I reach for the gearshift, and the truck door whips open. Again.

  “Move over.”

  There are very few people who would argue with Greg when he sounds like that. Without a word, Hannah slides onto the console, and Greg climbs in beside her.

  “What are you thinking?” he says to me. “Go!”

  And with a spray of gravel, I floor it.

  • • •

  Again, I’m remembering the time Lauren called me to her house and I found her curled on the couch, a pillow pressed against her stomach. She was trying to tell me something until she noticed Hannah idling outside.

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s how it usually happens,” Greg says. His head has rolled back against the headrest and his eyes are closed. “I told you months ago that something was wrong with her.”