Before Goodbye

by Mimi Cross

  He wrote in bursts about these things, but the lyrics were the steady pulse, running through, between events and boring student council notes. A steady pulse at first, that is, that then became erratic. He was desperate, I think, toward the end. Wrote, “My head feels full of static.”

  Awkward dates, strained conversations, a girl who turned him down for prom. These were the last things he wrote about, these girls, and one line to our mom:

  “I’m sorry, but it hurts too much. I love you.”

  I glance at the two girls beside me, one then the other. They jostle me gently now and again as they talk across me, ocean waves at low tide, eddying around a jetty. Their eyes flick up to my face, then away— scurrying sandpipers, like their smiles. They imagine I’m listening.

  Girls like my manners, they like that I read. That I’m sensitive—that’s what girls call it. When they call it anything. When they need an excuse for why they want to have sex with me.

  I think girls want sex as much as guys do. But girls, for some reason, have to keep this a secret. It’s an unspoken thing I can’t fathom, but there it is. Any girl who lets that secret out? Gets branded by enemies, sometimes by friends. Slut. But no one calls me a name, except in jest.

  Some girls think it’s cool that I play—played—sports. Others like that I’m an AP student. A few girls I’ve dated are into money and know that my family’s got big bucks. But mostly I think they just want to touch the muscles along my arms, my chest. Touch the ridges of my abdomen, look at my face—they talk a lot about my face. Then they say, “I love you.” It makes them feel better.

  “Our boy has charm,” my father said one night, looking canny.

  “What he’s got, darling, are your good looks.” My mother ran her fingers through my father’s too-long-for-a-dad hair as she said this. She used to do that a lot. Touch him. But not in the same way girls touch me. More like clinging.

  Later, when we were alone and my father had downed another drink, he said, “She didn’t used to be so helpless, but after Jack . . . well. She’s right about your looks, though, Son. They working for you yet? Mine always did.”

  He’d sized me up then, his eyes glinting in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. I smiled uncertainly. He laughed, swirling the drink in his hand. Then he poured himself another. Clink went the ice cubes. I was about fourteen at the time.

  Not too long after, I found out what he meant. Found out I could be someone Jack hadn’t been. That I could forget about Jack for a while. Forget about everything but skin on skin.

  This belonged to me, this gift with girls, something I didn’t have to work so hard at, like all the Being Jack stuff. Like with my entire imitation Jack life.

  Here, finally, was something I was good at.

  The pretty girl on my right reaches across me now. Takes a phone the other girl’s offering. They both giggle as they lean into me. The girl on my right is offering more than a phone, and she wants me to know it. When the girl on my left sits back, the girl on my right does not.

  She’s wearing a scent that doesn’t suit her. A woman’s musky perfume. Still, her top is cut low, and when I look down, I see the shadowy promise between her breasts.

  She looks up at me before I have a chance to look away. Now I feel her hand on my leg—noncommittal at first, then firmer when I don’t object, and close, closer to my crotch.

  My body responds—I hate myself. Adjusting my jeans, I stand—

  Her hand topples away.

  Still she asks me, “Do you want to do something later?”

  I scan the cafeteria for Cate Reese.

  SWEAT

  CATE

  David Bennet’s walking toward me, but he’s not here, that’s the only way to put it. He’s not in this gym, not in this world. (And certainly not in this detention, because why? In what universe does David Bennet get a PE detention?) His head is down, and for some reason, I imagine he sees earth beneath his feet rather than the supershiny floor. Imagine he sees rocks, and dirt, and pine needles. That he sees Canada.

  I’m not sure what gives me this idea, except . . . David makes me think of the outdoors, of woods and fields and . . . air.

  His chest hitches up and down like he’s been running, or trying to. Spots of color top his cheekbones. I might not have noticed except that the bones of his face are so prominent these days. I notice the faint shadow along his jawline as well now, and the smudges beneath his eyes. I notice his long lashes—

  And the fact that we’re staring at each other.

  “What are you doing here?” He’s clearly surprised, and for some reason, that gets me.

  “Me? What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be on a playing field somewhere scoring points for some Middleburn team?” My voice is too high. It sounds wrong. I’m overreacting. It’s just—I feel strangely put out that he’s here. I’d been thinking about Cal and trying to write—I don’t know—something. I know he can’t know that, but still I feel . . . naked.

  “I quit the teams,” he says softly. “I thought . . . you knew that.”

  And then, David Bennet blushes. I’m stupefied.

  “Oh. Right. I did know.” Of course I knew.

  “No, I mean, why would you know?”

  “Because I’m at your house practically every day?” And because . . . The afternoon light slants through windows set high on the walls, hitting his eyes. Because of that, the golden spill of honey in your eyes. God, what’s wrong with me?

  “You are,” he says, “at my house a lot.” His brow furrows, as if he’s attempting to solve an unusually difficult problem, something I imagine is a rare thing for David Bennet, for whom everything seems to come easily. “But not lately.”

  “No, not lately.” Lately is not something I want to think about. And maybe that’s why the past rises unbidden, memories suddenly tumbling through me: David lounging on the couch, or laughing on the phone. Playing football in the yard, the stretch of green beyond the pool. David in the kitchen, making Kimmy pancakes—handing me a plate, a CD, the remote. And those sunlit end-of-summer days . . .

  “Extra credit,” he says suddenly, like he’s just found the answer. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You need extra credit? You can’t take it with you, you know.”

  David’s smile fades.

  “I mean, when you graduate,” I say hastily. I don’t want to talk to him about this, about Cal, about how all I can think of is dying. How it can just happen. But even my throwaway comments are laced with dark thoughts and death, like I can’t keep it in.

  “True,” David says. “You can’t.” He’s still looking down at me, only, it’s like he’s looking into me now. Like he’s . . . searching. I fidget and see him take in my discomfort.

  He smiles one of his David Bennet smiles. “Okay,” he says. “That’s not why I’m here. Although I figured if I clocked a few miles on the track Close and Henderson might let me off easy.”

  “Close and Henderson? Both of them gave you a detention?”

  “Several.”

  “For what? You’re their rock star.”

  “Was their rock star.”

  When he lifts his hands to push his hair back from his face, I notice his shirt is soaked with sweat. Close and Henderson may or may not let him off easy for whatever he’s done, but David’s obviously gone for a punishing run, and I want to ask why—why he insists on running when his leg can’t possibly be up for it yet. Why he pushes himself to the point of pain.

  “Okay . . . so, what did you do?” Besides quit the team, all the teams, all the clubs.

  “Nothing. Just—got involved in a scuffle.”

  “A scuffle.”

  “A fight. Nothing major, although . . . I may have broken Rod Whitaker’s nose.” He wrinkles his own nose as he says it, as if the idea is distasteful.

  “Oh.” Oh.

  David drags a thumb across his lower lip, looks away. Slowly his eyes sweep the enormous gymnasium. It’s a gaping, hollow place now that
the October late-day gold has slipped from the windows. We’re both thinking about Rafe Hall’s party, I’m sure of it.

  “Close, Henderson, they’re probably pretty pissed,” I say quietly. “Senior year. Star quarterback. And . . . you’re not sorry you hit Rod, are you? You did hit him, right? Is that how you ‘may’ have broken his nose?”

  “Yes. I should have done it that day on the ice. Should have done it sooner than that. And no, I’m not sorry, but . . . I am kind of mad that I let him get to me. That I lost my temper.”

  “I’m actually kind of proud of losing mine.” The words spill out.

  “Calm, cool, and collected Cate Reese blowing up at someone? I can’t see it.”

  Calm, cool, and collected? “Trust me, you don’t want to see it.”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know about that.” He sits down on the bleachers next to me. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you lose it.” His grin is wicked—then suddenly gone. Checked, between folded lips.

  “I—I could never get mad at you.” My cheeks grow warm.

  “You might.” He looks down at his hands. Then he asks, “So who are you mad at?”

  But I don’t want to tell him how I yelled at Dee in PE and then felt out of control. How I’d kind of liked the feeling of giving over to anger, of letting go for once. How I’d liked the buzz of adrenaline that raced through me, the way it made me forget about everything, just for a minute, like getting high does.

  Thank God Laurel made me that to-go bag after the funeral. Ketamine . . . in some ways it’s like music, it mirrors the feeling music gives me. I get the good feeling, but without the work.

  For when you’re really sad, L had said as she put the package in my purse.

  As if David knows what I’m thinking of, he says, “I heard about the accident you were in, with that guy.” His voice is soft. It makes me think of how he is with Kimmy.

  That guy. So he doesn’t know. Of course he doesn’t know, how could he? Why would he?

  Then again, how could he not know, how can anyone not know?

  Yes, stupidly, like everyone else, I’m attracted to David, but I loved Cal—how can anyone not see the gaping hole in my chest where my heart’s been ripped out?

  The answer is, they can. I see the look in their eyes. Hear their pitying voices, echoing all over school.

  Isn’t she the one who—

  Shh! Yes. She’s the one. That Lucky Girl.

  Love. It’s a totally different thing than a crush. And losing love, that touches everything. Or maybe it’s just me, losing Cal, but I swear, I can’t pull out of this. Can’t pull the music out of me, the way I did before. Every note I play . . . sounds different now. I can’t find that sweet spot on the strings, can’t get those full tones that come once the warmth of my body, the warmth of my hands, has opened up the wood grain of the guitar.

  Maybe it’s because there is no warmth in me, no music. The music was in Cal.

  “I’m sorry,” David says in that same feather-soft voice.

  I just shrug, swallowing around the lump in my throat. I can’t share this with him. Why would I? Shoving my laptop into my backpack, I pull out a notebook. He gets out a tablet.

  After a while we shift in our seats, move to the floor. David lies on his stomach, propped on his elbows. Rain patters the windows high up on the walls.

  I draw a staff, some bar lines, a handful of notes. Beneath the notes I add a few words.

  Summer. Fall. Every dream I dream.

  I stare down at the page in confusion. Then strike a line through all of it. I need to get home and practice. The final Strings with Wings concert is coming up—my concert. I’m not ready.

  It’s weird to even think about it: I’ll be on a different stage, in a different venue, but I’ll be part of the same series of concerts that Cal was part of. It seems horribly unfair, that the concert dates should even continue, with the players playing, the audience attending, the notes ringing out.

  But the other show—the one that Cal booked in Brooklyn—that’s not going to happen. I need to call and cancel—can’t believe I haven’t. But every time I think about calling, about saying that Cal can’t play, saying why, my brain just . . . shuts down.

  After a few minutes, David asks if I want to see some pictures. To see the screen I move closer, lie next to him. Which feels kind of weird, and kind of good. And because it feels good, I get this idea that being even closer to him would feel even better. So in the next several agonizing minutes, I inch my leg over, till it’s nearly touching his leg.

  I point to the screen and my forearm brushes his. When we touch, everything else falls away. Accidentally on purpose I knock my ankle against his calf.

  As we look at photos, we barely speak. Each time I anticipate the tiniest touch between us—all of them accidental on his part, I’m sure—my stomach dips, and I wish so many things.

  I wish David would go back to being Kimmy’s semi-anonymous older brother who was too busy to pay attention to me. Wish the charged air that hangs between us these days would disperse, and at the same time wish I had the courage to breathe it in.

  Mr. Close doesn’t show, but we stay for the entire hour anyway. All the while I revel in the energy buzzing through my body. It’s mercifully distracting, despite my silent mantra:

  David Bennet has slept with a million girls. I am an idiot, idiot, idiot.

  LICHEN

  DAVID

  “Fungus?” Cate asks incredulously.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” I hadn’t meant to show her the pictures from the trip, but lying on the gym floor with a thin layer of energy pulsing between us, connecting us almost, I’m not so afraid. Of course there are lots of photos I won’t show her—can’t look at myself without shaking, breaking down: the last campsite, the falls. I stay clear of those.

  Sharing the miniature worlds of the lichen I’d captured through the lens of my Nikon, this feels dangerous in a different way. But I want to do it. Want to show her.

  “Some of them look like coral, or . . . sea anemones.” She reaches toward the screen, as if forgetting we aren’t looking at an actual photograph, or the thing itself. I get a chill. Her arm brushes mine and I get another, goosebumps rising beneath my shirt.

  “This one looks like a flower, like Queen Anne’s Lace.”

  I’d edited a lot of the lichen photos. Altered the exposure of some, so they look almost like X-rays. Others pulse with color. A few are black-and-white, the contrast stark. Striking.

  “Lichens aren’t actually fungus,” I tell her. “They’re composite organisms, consisting of a fungus and a photosynthetic partner growing together in a symbiotic relationship.

  “Did you know lichens occur in some of the most extreme environments on earth? Arctic tundra, hot deserts, rocky coasts. They’re also abundant in rain forests, wooded areas, on bare rock, including walls, gravestones—”

  We both kind of freeze.

  “You must think I’m nuts,” I finally mutter.

  “No, I’m just . . . surprised.”

  I want to tell her, about the watching, the new kind of seeing. But I don’t think I can explain it. Explain how I’d sat there for weeks, struggling with the stillness. Struggling with the fact that someone was dead because of me. I don’t know how to describe how I’d started looking at things differently, looking at all—

  But I took the lichen pictures before.

  I feel almost dizzy. I’d already been looking—it had nothing to do with Dan.

  I’d been looking before—for something that wasn’t my father, wasn’t my brother.

  My brother. Who’d been so alive one minute, but not the next.

  Dan had been the same. There, then—gone.

  The two deaths tangle in my mind.

  “What are you looking at?” Cate asks me.

  Her eyes. I’m looking at her eyes now. They’re opening onto a world, like the photos, like the pool when I swim and swim.

  I swing my gaze back to the screen. �
��Lichens have also been used in dyes, perfumes—medicine, too. Sorry. Didn’t mean to stare.”

  “It’s okay.”

  We go quiet. I open a music application. We listen.

  Once in a while Cate shifts. Now her ankle bumps my calf.

  I think of the girls at lunch.

  Move my leg away.

  BOULDER

  CATE

  David tells me his father hadn’t let him use any of the Bennets’ cars today. He laughs a little after he says this, the sound short and dry. The late bus is long gone, so we walk up the twisty back streets leading from school to Chapel Hill Road. We come out on the part that’s just been repaved. It smells like tar. Our houses are in opposite directions.

  We’re close to the end of the driveway that belongs to Circle Stables. David eases himself up onto the largest of the peanut stone boulders that sit below the swinging horseshoe-shaped sign and holds out a hand. Taking it, I hoist myself up onto the reddish rock. It’s only a little bit damp. The sky’s overcast, promising more rain.

  David keeps hold of my hand for an extra second—does he? When he lets go, his hands turn to fists. He presses them against his thighs.

  “Cate. That party . . . the weekend before school.”

  My throat tightens. “What about it?”

  “You know how you—needed a ride?”

  I nod. Can we please not talk about this?

  “I didn’t go back. After Rafe and I dropped you off, he dropped me off. At home.”

  “Okay.”

  He shakes his head. “My sister. Rod . . . gave her some trouble.”

  I stop breathing. Was it the same kind of trouble he’d given me? I can’t imagine it, not Bryn. “It’s—my fault,” I say haltingly. “If I hadn’t needed a ride—”

  “How is it your fault? I’m the one that left her at the party.”

  “But if it wasn’t for me, you would have been there for her, would have gotten Rafe—”