Damage Done

by Amanda Panitch

  “What kind of chauffeur would I be to make you do that?” she said, though she was frowning. “I guess I can make my mom cancel my appointment. I hate the dentist anyway. Where are we going?”

  I wondered if she was going to see Joseph Goodman, self-proclaimed dentist to the stars. Maybe she’d get to see him after all. What an unpleasant surprise that would be. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “A surprise!” she exclaimed, perking up. “How exciting!”

  This was why I loved Alane. It wasn’t the same kind of love I observed yesterday, the glowing looks and admonishing touches to the shoulder, but it was love regardless. I think, anyway. I’ve always found it hard to tell.

  —

  School was a shooting star; before I could even make a wish, it was gone, and I was meeting Alane outside the chorus room. Alane bounced into the hallway, hair twisted back off her shiny face. “So, where are we going?” she asked as she followed me out into the parking lot.

  “To Gates Avenue,” I said. “Outside Sunny Vale. On the border of Madison.”

  “All the way out there?” she said. “Why?”

  I might as well stick to the same story I told Michael. Keep things consistent. That was one of the rules for lying well: don’t confuse yourself unnecessarily. Always choose the easiest path, and the easiest path was usually the most consistent one. “Did I ever tell you about my ex-boyfriend?” I said. I picked a name, ripe for the plucking, from the air. “Andrew?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, climbing into the truck. I followed, doing my usual scan of the pavement under the hole. No change today. Too bad. I could’ve used a lucky penny just then. “Did I ever meet him?”

  The truck roared to life. “No,” I said. “He was from before I moved.”

  “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew,” she said. The waves of kids passing by, their cheerful chatter, washed over us. “No, I don’t think you ever did. But you might have. You know my memory.”

  “Like a sieve,” I agreed. “In one ear and out the other.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sound so damn cheerful about it.” She flung an arm around the back of my seat and turned her head to back out. The waves of kids parted, scattering to the sides. “What about this Andrew?”

  “He was…” Strategic pause. Lowered eyes. Pause held long enough so that she’d glance over and take note of my lowered eyes. “Not a nice person. The total opposite of that, in fact. He…” I stopped. Another lesson in lying well: sometimes your silences can say more than words without actually saying anything at all.

  “I understand,” she said kindly. “You don’t have to say any more. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged and did that thing where I touched a phantom bruise, this time on my cheek. “It built character,” I said. “It made me who I am today.”

  “That’s a good way to look at it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But…” I waited for her to look over again. I wanted to make sure she saw me touching my cheek. It was one of my best strategies. “I think he’s here. I think he found me, and that he’s following me.”

  She went rigid in her seat, nearly rear-ending the car in front of us. “That guy after show choir…the old one.”

  “That was him,” I said. “And he’s not that old. I’m almost positive it was him. And he was at Crazy Elliot’s, too. That’s why I freaked out.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, and her lips moved again, saying the words silently. As if she were praying. “So…”

  “I want to talk to him,” I said. “I don’t want to call the police. It could be nothing.”

  “Are we going to his house?” She slammed to a violent stop. I opened my mouth to protest before realizing we’d just hit a red light. “Lucy, that could be really dangerous. If he’s following you…”

  “You’ll wait in the car and watch,” I said. “I’m not going to go into his house. I just want to confront him and tell him to leave me alone. That I’m not the weak little girl I used to be.”

  “But still, Lucy…”

  “You have my permission to dial nine-one-one if he tries anything,” I said. “But he won’t. I know he won’t…hurt me.” She looked skeptical. “Not in front of people, anyway.”

  A storm passed over her face, shadowing her eyes, but she sighed. “I don’t approve, but you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. She sighed again. “So it’s safer if I’m there with you.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Seriously, though—”

  “I need to do this,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything else.

  I could tell when we left Sunny Vale and entered Madison—and not just by the big sign announcing just that; the land beside the road turned from charming homes with manicured lawns and cheery shopping complexes to dirt and trees. I could barely make out the small, shabby houses nestled far back from the road. Even the road got bumpier; though, really, everything was bumpy in Alane’s truck.

  We finally turned onto Gates Avenue, which was so rutted and rocky it might as well have been packed dirt rather than asphalt. It was lined by houses, but sparsely, so each resident could just barely see their neighbor; it would take real effort to ask to borrow a cup of sugar on this street. A mile or so up the road, we pulled over in front of number 477.

  Alane regarded it uneasily. “It’s not too late to turn around and call the cops.”

  I clapped her on the shoulder. “You wait here, okay? With your phone?” I asked. She nodded, her lips pressed so tightly together they turned pale around the edges, like a sore. “I’m going to talk with him on the stoop. If I go inside, call the cops.”

  “Okay.” Her knuckles on the hand clutching the phone were pale, too. “I hope this…helps you.”

  My own hands balled into fists. “Me too.”

  As I got out of the car, my heart was hammering and my hands were shaking. I pushed my shoulders back, though, and lifted my chin high. Spence wouldn’t hurt me. If he wanted to hurt me, he could’ve done it already. I repeated it like a mantra, a rap, against the pounding in my ears.

  I gave three quick taps on the door. The front of the house was streaked with brownish-green mold; the blinds were drawn tight, and part of the gutter dangled off the roof over the stoop, loosing a steady drip of rusty water onto the concrete.

  The door eased open a crack, and all my muscles tensed. “Julia Vann, it’s about time. I’ve been waiting.”

  Not Joseph Goodman. It was Spence, the lenses of his glasses shining through the crack. I craned my neck to peer inside and noticed the chain lock was on. Almost like he was the one who was scared.

  Of me.

  The idea filled me with enough confidence to speak. “You’ve been following me,” I said. “I’m here to tell you to stop. To leave me alone. Or I’ll call the police.”

  Spence let out a dry laugh, though he didn’t unlock the chain. “It’s been surprisingly hard to get you alone, Julia—”

  “And my name isn’t Julia anymore.” I talked over him. “It’s Lucy. If you’re going to talk to me, if you’re going to come to my school and invade my space, my name is Lucy Black.” My heart beat so fast I thought I might pass out, just give up, and crumple to the stoop. “And it doesn’t seem like you’ve been waiting a long time to talk to me, considering every time I get near you, you run away like a coward. Even now you’re hiding behind that door. What are you so afraid of?” My voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I’m a teenage girl and you’re a grown man. Are you worried I might pull your hair? Scratch you?”

  “No,” Spence said. He sounded thoughtful. “That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t care.” I was on a roll, gathering words as I tumbled, a snowball rolling through newsprint. “Just stay the hell away from me or there’ll be hell to pay. For you.” In case that wasn’t clear.

  I turned to go, my chin held high, shaking in the breeze like the upper stories of a skyscraper.

 
“You sound just like your brother.”

  I froze. Being careful, very careful, I turned back around. One careless motion and I might shatter. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve been trying to get you alone for a reason, you know,” Spence said. I could tell he was being careful, very careful, too. “You didn’t wonder why?”

  I didn’t care. I didn’t care. Spence was part of Julia Vann’s life, like Ryan, and I was Lucy Black now. Lucy Black didn’t have to wonder why. “I just want you to leave me alone,” I hissed.

  Alane was still far away in her car; she couldn’t have heard Spence’s comment. I couldn’t let her hear any of Spence’s comments. Maybe it had been a mistake to have her drive me here. “I don’t want anything more to do with you or with Elkton.” I turned again to go.

  “He said to tell you he loved you.”

  I stopped and swiveled again. “Why are you doing this?” My voice broke. Somewhere distant I heard a car door bang shut, and the sound reverberated through me. “I’ve been through enough. Just leave me alone.”

  Spence’s face was grim, his chin set. “He told me last week.”

  Everything came to a stop. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me, Julia Vann.”

  “Lucy?” Alane, jogging across the lawn, face flushed, held her phone before her like a shield. What had she heard? “What’s he doing? Do I need to call nine-one-one?”

  He slammed the door shut. Of course he did. I wasn’t alone anymore.

  “No,” I said. “Go back to the car.”

  Alane stopped in her tracks. “Are you okay?”

  It couldn’t be. I would’ve known. Hell, the world would’ve known. It would’ve been in every newspaper, on every breaking-news alert, on everybody’s social network. If Ryan Vann had woken from his coma, even Lucy Black would’ve known within minutes.

  And if not Lucy…Julia would have known. Julia would have known in her bones, because she knew everything about her brother. She would’ve felt his awakening as her own, a heightened consciousness, a nagging feeling of “something isn’t right.”

  I launched myself at the closed front door and pounded on it with my fists. “Open the door!” I screamed. Words scraped at the inside of my throat. “Get back out here, you coward!”

  “Lucy! Lucy, stop.” Hands grabbed at my back, but they couldn’t pull me away from the door. I was a girl possessed, the Big Bad Wolf blowing, blowing, blowing in vain at the pig’s brick house.

  Alane’s shriek brought me back to earth. I spun, panting, to see that I’d thrown her off me in my flailing. I’d pushed her right off the stoop. She was trying to lift herself up, though from the wincing as she tried to put weight on her left leg, it wasn’t easy. Fury drained out of me into a puddle around my feet. “Oh my God,” I said, and jumped down beside her. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  “My ankle,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again, my heart fluttering in panic. She had to forgive me. “We’ll go to the hospital. I’ll take you to the hospital.” I glanced behind me, fleetingly, at Spence’s door. I wasn’t done with him, but I wasn’t going to learn any more today. And I wasn’t going to play into his game; look what he’d done to me with a few carefully chosen sentences. He was probably lying anyway. My brother was never supposed to wake up.

  Alane snorted. “You’re going to drive me to the hospital?”

  I leaned over so she could put her arm around my shoulders, so she could use me like a crutch. She couldn’t be mad at someone who let her use her as a crutch. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s my left ankle,” she said. Again, no forgiveness. “I can still drive.”

  The drive to the hospital in Sunny Vale was a short and silent one. Alane tried to call her mom but got voice mail. I spent the ride staring out the window, Spence’s words tumbling over and over through my mind. He had to be lying, I told myself. He had to be playing some kind of game with me. My brother couldn’t really have woken up.

  I sat with Alane as we waited in the emergency room; I figured it was the least I could do. I kept the conversation light, talking about Michael’s legs and Ella’s new haircut, but Alane stuck to one-word answers and head shakes and nods. Still, she let me go with her into the examination room, sit beside her, and hold her hand as the doctor poked and prodded at her ankle and she sucked in her breath.

  “Looks like a sprain,” the doctor said finally. “I’ll wrap it up for you. You should try to stay off it for a few weeks, but you won’t need crutches or anything. How’d you do it?”

  Alane opened her mouth, but I spoke over her. “She fell,” I said loudly. “Tripped. On a root.” I couldn’t let her say anything that might expose what we’d been doing.

  She let me talk for her but shrugged off my arm the second the door closed behind the doctor. “What the hell, Lucy?” she said. “Or is it Julia?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said slowly. I thought I might vomit.

  “Your ex called you Julia Vann,” Alane said. “Did you change your name when you moved here?”

  My breath caught in my throat. I could bash her over the head with that IV stand so hard she’d lose her memory. I should. Because all she had to do was Google Julia Vann plus California and she’d see everything. I was results one through seventeen, where I was briefly interrupted by a Julia Vann who had died of cancer at age eleven in San Francisco and a high school–aged Julia Vann who was agonizing over whether to go to college at Stanford for no money or play volleyball at UCLA with a full scholarship, and then it was back to me. “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I heard him. Why did you change your name?”

  My mouth opened and closed. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything. But it was risking too much. I couldn’t handle seeing her face dim as she looked at me. Nobody in Elkton had wanted anything to do with us. I couldn’t handle the same thing happening here. But I couldn’t hide anymore, either. She already knew the truth, or would as soon as she Googled me.

  “I have to go.” I pushed the words out through tears, and turned and walked out.

  I was really, really, really going to miss her.

  Still, my mind was whirling with what Spence had said. It was a blessing, kind of, because it drove away the thought that I’d probably just lost the best friend I’d ever had. I had to call my parents and tell them we’d have to leave. Again. I knew for a fact that my mother couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the looks, couldn’t take the reporters. She’d scrub her way straight through the downstairs carpet and into her own grave.

  I couldn’t call them now, though, not when I was still shaking. So I called Michael. “Hey,” I said. My voice was shaking, too. “Are you done with swimming? I kind of need a ride.”

  He didn’t ask questions. When his car rounded the curve of the visitors’ lot, I felt as if I were going to burst into tears for the second time in only a few days. For the second time ever. “Thank you,” I said as I climbed in. “Alane sprained her ankle. And…” If I was going to be leaving town anyway, why bother telling the truth? “Her mom is there with her, and she told me I could leave. I have a ton of homework.”

  “I hope she’s okay,” he said. “You want to go home?”

  “Yes, home,” I said. Home, for however long it would be mine.

  We kept ourselves busy with inane small talk (“How was the swim meet?” “How was band?” The farthest from “How are you feeling as your life crumbles around you?” as we could get) the whole ride home. All talk, though, was immediately extinguished when we saw what was waiting for us in my driveway.

  Both my parents’ cars. And a black car, smooth and sleek, license plate 3RTR779.

  * * *

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. ATLAS SPENCE

  * * *

  Re: Ryan Vann, age 10

  It hasn’t been two weeks since my last session with Ryan, but his parents called in this morning to arrange an emergency sessio
n. Fortunately I had a cancellation this afternoon and was free. They practically dragged him into the waiting room, accompanied by his sister, Julia. There were black smudges around his hairline, like he’d been covered in tar or black paint and someone had tried to scrub it away.

  “What happened?” I couldn’t help but ask, right there in the waiting room. I should’ve known better. The parents did. They didn’t speak until the five of us were safely in my office. I sat at my desk, the parents in the chairs across from me; the twins sat on the couch, their heads bowed together. The girl shook like a leaf, but Ryan was, as always, calm and still as stone, staring at the floor. His sister was whispering in his ear, her hand on his, like she was trying to calm him. “She should be trying to calm herself,” I thought before turning back to the parents.

  “Ryan decided it would be a good idea to light a little girl’s tree house on fire,” the father said, his teeth clenched. “The little girl was inside at the time. She barely escaped.”

  Ryan’s cheeks were working unconsciously, like he was grinding his teeth. He was nervous, I was surprised to see. He’d never appeared nervous before. The sister seemed to have taken note, too; she was patting his hand now, and while I couldn’t hear her, from the movement of her lips it seemed as if she was telling him everything was going to be okay.

  “The girl’s family isn’t going to press charges,” the mother said, her voice shaking. “The poor thing was traumatized enough. We need to—you need to make this stop, Doctor. Fix him.”

  I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out with I’ve been trying to treat him, and you’ve been stymieing me at every turn! “First of all, there’s no fixing to be done, because he isn’t broken,” I lied. Even then, I knew I was lying. “Second, we all need to do our part. You. The school therapist. And Ryan. We can’t help Ryan if he doesn’t want to be helped.”