Whisper to Me

by Nick Lake

  Okay. So you hadn’t told him about us.

  “Wait,” he said. “Are you guys together?”

  “Not anymore,” said the voice. “She **** on his heart.”

  “Um … ,” I said.

  Your dad spat again. “Told him to keep away from girls,” he said.

  “He’s eighteen. He can do what he wants.”

  A short bark of a laugh. “Trainin’ comes first,” he said.

  “Swimming training.”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh come on, I was just—”

  “Distraction,” he said, talking over me. “You’re a distraction.”

  “Was.”

  “Was? What?”

  “Was a distraction. We broke up.”

  “You can say that again.” That from the voice.

  “Good,” said your dad. “Maybe that’ll make him focus. I timed him the other day, and his ass was a second down on the hundred meters.”

  “What are you, his trainer?” I really don’t know what had gotten into me. A voice, maybe. Animating my vocal cords. Speaking for me.

  “Yep,” said your dad flatly. “You know he’s been selected for National team trials?”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack. So that’s why swimmin’ comes first. Now I’m going. I hope that’s okay, princess?” He began to turn away from me.

  “He doesn’t even like swimming,” I said, lamely. I was angry—with myself as much as anything. I wasn’t really in control of what was coming out of my mouth.

  Your dad shook his head. “What?”

  “He doesn’t like it, but he does it, instead of music. Because of you.”

  You dad rolled his eyes. “We all have to do things we don’t like. Boy has to learn that.”

  “He should be making music. You should see how happy he is when he plays.”

  He shrugged. “Ain’t none of your business,” he said. Then he got in the car and slammed the door.

  I said,

  “Wait—” but the revving of the engine drowned out my voice.

  The car peeled away, black smoke billowing from the exhaust. I realized I was still holding the banjo/ukulele. Your dad had never taken it—he was so sure it wasn’t yours. He was so sure you didn’t like to play anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him you did, maybe I shouldn’t have exposed you like that, I don’t know. He just made me angry, and I know it sounds weird when I’m the one who broke you, but I wanted to protect you too. I wanted you to be happy.

  I still want you to be happy.

  INT. AN APARTMENT ABOVE A GARAGE. A TEENAGE GIRL IS SITTING ON A BED THAT USED TO BELONG TO HER …

  HER WHAT, ACTUALLY?

  BOYFRIEND?

  FRIEND?

  HER FRIEND. LET’S GO WITH FRIEND.

  SO …

  A TEENAGE GIRL IS SITTING ON A BED THAT USED TO BELONG TO HER FRIEND. SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE HAS BEEN CRYING. IT’S LATE; THE MOON IS SHINING IN THROUGH THE WINDOW. VERY FAINTLY, WE CAN HEAR THE OCEAN IN THE DISTANCE.

  THE GIRL: You here?

  A VOICE WE CANNOT SEE: Always.

  THE GIRL: You have any suggestions for what to do now?

  THE VOICE: Yes.

  THE GIRL: Like?

  THE VOICE: The house. You haven’t been to the house.

  THE GIRL: Which house?

  THE VOICE: Which house do you think?

  The house Julie had driven to.

  That house.

  I had never been there.

  I had only pictured it, in my mind, shown myself terrible movies. A hand raising a hammer. Paris’s dad, waiting to ambush her. His hands around her neck. The bare walls, bare except for graffiti. Curse words on white plaster.

  I had seen the outside, on Street View on your phone. The clapboards, the damp.

  But something had kept me away. Some force field. Some uncrossable barrier of pain.

  Well.

  Maybe it was time to let the pain back in.

  The next day Dad had to go back to work, even though what he really wanted to do was stand guard over me, make sure I stayed grounded. “House arrest” might be a more accurate term. But he couldn’t keep it up. He couldn’t avoid the restaurant anymore.

  He did lock the door so I couldn’t get out.

  But I had pretty much always been able to climb out my bedroom window, down the apple tree in the front yard. I opened the window, grabbed a thin branch to steady myself, and jumped down onto the joint with a thicker branch, then shinned down to the ground.

  There was a chill in the air. The sky was gray and dirty as a sidewalk, mist rising off the water. Over the ocean, I could see dark clouds. Fall was just around the corner, but it wasn’t usually this cold in the morning. There was something coming. A storm.

  I almost wanted it to come. To wash away the town, wipe it clean. Leave it sparkling, the streets empty, like a mind with no memories, all the dog walkers gone, the kids building sand castles, the joggers, the old people driving their mobility scooters.

  All gone. The sidewalks shining.

  I shook away the fantasy.

  I knew where the house was of course—even if I hadn’t remembered the address, it was in the notes I had photographed while Dwight was getting me candy.

  I rode the bus—I needed to get the 9 and then the 7, to the north side of the boardwalk. I tried to switch off and just watch stuff go by. A T-Mobile ad. A L’Oréal billboard. An Arby’s. A load of kids following an adult wearing a yellow vest; kids on some kind of trip. A couple of bums drinking from paper bags, outside a Blockbuster that had closed down years before, a big crack in its window.

  The town was still busy, but it was winding down a bit. There were fewer people on the streets, fewer tourists. It’s funny how we still call them tourists. I mean they’re not on some grand tour, taking in the art and landscape of France and Italy. They’re getting drunk in a crappy town in New Jersey, and throwing up on amusement park rides.

  I watched men, in particular. I felt like the Houdini Killer could be any one of the guys passing on the main road: the businessmen in suits, the frazzled-looking guy in the Cure T-shirt, the IT geek with the non-ironic glasses.

  The 9 stopped at the central bus station in town and I got off. The doors slid shut behind me with a hiss; a predator closing its mouth. The little square was busy with kids arriving on buses from New York City. A cold breeze was now blowing, and I saw people shivering in their T-shirts, underdressed for Jersey with a storm coming.

  I just hoped it wasn’t going to rain till the evening. I was not dressed for rain. I was not dressed for anything much. I have told you already that getting clothes right is a difficult thing for me.

  I didn’t even realize I was just around the corner from the plush warehouse until I saw your Ford F-150 turn the corner in front of me. It was unmistakable—white, with the Piers logo on the side, and of course your face, your beautiful face, behind the wheel.

  You didn’t see me; you kept on driving toward the warehouse.

  On an impulse, I started running. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve. It had something to do with talking to your dad, I think, that new insight I had into your life. I wished you’d told me about him. About … where you came from.

  I don’t know.

  I just wanted you to know I was sorry.

  About everything.

  And that you … I guess I wanted you to know that you could be whoever you wanted to be. I know, I know. The arrogance of it. Like I was a counselor or something.

  Which brings me full circle back to the sorry thing.

  Anyway.

  I veered around the corner, nearly knocked over an old woman pushing a Wonder Wheeler beach cart. I jumped some cardboard boxes that had been left out behind a Chinese restaurant, pounded down the street in my Converses, feeling the hardness of the concrete below my feet.

  You were just pulling up outside the warehouse doors when I came running u
p, panting. You saw me, frowned, and put the pickup back in gear. You looked down as you started turning the Ford, to leave again. The afternoon sun caught the windows of the office block across the street, fired them like lava flow.

  Suddenly I couldn’t let you go, not without speaking to you one more time anyway.

  I sprinted around to the front of the truck, banged my hands down on the hood as the big Ford began to lurch forward. I saw your lips mouth a curse, and the pickup juddered to a stop. You opened the door.

  “Cass, get out of the way,” you said.

  “No. I just want to—”

  “I don’t care.”

  You started to close the door again, and I started to cry. My eyes were burning; I felt like I was choking. I felt like the anger on your face was the worst thing I had seen.

  “Please,” I said. “Please. Just one minute.”

  The scene in front of me blurred with tears—the truck, the street, the windows of apartments, the blocks of the air-conditioning units. I heard rather than saw your door open again, and then you were standing in front of me.

  “What, Cass? What do you want?”

  “I just want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  You spread your hands, like, whatever. “Fine. Can I go now?”

  “I saw your dad,” I said.

  Silence.

  “He said you were training for the National team,” I said.

  A shrug. “Just tryouts.”

  “Still. You never told me that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Cass.”

  I could hear the bitterness in your voice. I really didn’t know what I thought I was doing, what it was going to change.

  “But I wanted to say … ,” I said. “I wanted to say … you don’t have to do what he wants you to do. I mean, you don’t have to live his dream. You could be a musician. You don’t even like sw—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Music! Your passion! I tried to give your dad your banjo or whatever it was and he wouldn’t even—”

  “My banjo? I don’t have a banjo.”

  “Ukelele, then.”

  “I don’t have a ukulele either.”

  “But … ,” I said. “It was on top of the wardrobe.”

  “Cass, I don’t have a uke or a banjo, and I didn’t leave anything on the wardrobe. Just my necklace.” You touched your chest. “Which … um … thank you for finding.”

  “Oh,” I said. An image came to me as a sudden flash—the hipster kid who had stayed in the apartment last summer. The one with the beard and the super-tight jeans. He was just the kind of guy who would have played a ukulele. Or a banjo. “But the swimming, you don’t have to—”

  You shook your head sadly. “Cass, you don’t understand anything. You think my dad made me stop playing music? I’m my own ******* person, Cass. I can make my own decisions. I chose to stop playing, at home anyway. Because I could see how much it hurt him. Don’t you see? I chose.”

  “Oh,” I said again. I sounded so dumb. “But you could go to music school, you don’t have to take the swimming scholarship, you could—”

  You laughed, a hollow, bitter laugh that reminded me unpleasantly of my dad. “Colleges give sports scholarships,” you said. “That’s just the way it is. People watch American Idol, and they think there’s money in music, but they’re not even being logical. I mean, most of the contestants don’t win. That’s the whole thing. No one makes money from music. Hardly anyone anyway. I wanted to go to college. My dad couldn’t pay. So I took a swim scholarship.”

  “But you’re so talented.”

  Another laugh. “I passed a dude busking on the street yesterday, playing sax. He was, like, one of the best players I’ve ever heard. And he was busking, Cass. People don’t want to pay for music. But people will pay for sports.” You shrugged.

  I looked down at my dirty Converses. I felt like such an idiot. I had shouted at your dad and for what? For no reason at all.

  “Anyway, what about you?” you said.

  “What?”

  “You, lecturing me about doing what my dad wants. What about you?”

  “I don’t …”

  “You think I’m stupid? Your dad busts us and you disappear for three whole days, and then suddenly you’re with some guy on the street? And you want me to believe you didn’t see me before you kissed him? I saw you notice me. My truck. I don’t even know what you’re doing. But you’re ****** with my mind, whatever it is. And you’re not even doing it for your own reasons—me, I have a feeling you’re doing it because of your dad, because of whatever messed-up thing is going on between the two of you. It’s not even you pushing me away. It’s him. I think that’s the hardest thing to forgive.” You climbed into the truck. “I hope for your sake you sort your **** out.”

  It wasn’t him, not really. It was me. You know that now.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I was crying again; I felt like there was a heat behind my eyes that I had to get out.

  You were half in the truck, one leg inside it, the other out. Something about your stance softened then. “Listen, Cass. If you didn’t do anything with that guy, not really … You could tell me. If your dad is … I don’t know. If he’s hurting you, or threatening you or something … I could help you. We could face it together. But you have to be honest with me.”

  I was wrong.

  That was the moment when my heart broke.

  “My dad isn’t threatening me,” I said. Which was true. Kind of. “He has never hurt me. Not once.”

  “Then what?” you said. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of you. I just cheated on you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve known him longer than you. Sometimes we hook up. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sex.”

  I used the word deliberately. I wanted its hardness.

  You stared at me, like I was someone you didn’t know anymore. The sun caught on the hood of the Ford and flashed white, blinding me for a second. I couldn’t see your face. I couldn’t see you at all. It was like the light was washing you out of existence, washing you out of my life.

  “Also,” I said, every word feeling like a heavy stone that I was having to lift out of my mouth, with my tongue, so heavy, so hard to say. “Also he kisses better than you. Is that good enough for you?”

  I turned around and walked away. I didn’t look back. A moment later I heard the engine of the truck start again. And you drove out of my life.

  Please come back?

  I mean, I want you back.

  I was stupid. I know that now.

  But I didn’t do the thing they said I did.

  I swear.

  I changed to the 7 bus.

  I mean, what else was I going to do?

  I rode for fifteen minutes. Something like that. Finally I got off, which was a relief because there was a creepy mustachioed guy in a shiny plastic jacket who was checking me out the whole time, thinking he was being subtle. I was like four blocks away. I walked and turned, following the little map I had drawn, after looking up the place on Google Maps on Dad’s computer in his study.

  The same computer I’m sitting at right now. With the insects around me. Appropriate, I guess. Being surrounded by lowly little insects.

  Am I overdoing it with the self-flagellation? I think maybe yes. I’ll stop now. I mean, either you’re going to forgive me or not.

  It was weird, walking the north side of town. The buildings got dirtier, and more run-down, as you walked. Once past the piers, the poverty and dilapidation set in and everything seemed to slump. Like a time-lapse movie of the aftertimes—once nuclear war has come or a virus or whatever—the whole town slowly rotting, falling into the sand and the marsh, once all the people are dead and no longer caring for it.

  That was the kind of very cheerful thought I was having.

  Anyway.

  For a while, I
walked on the beach, listening to the gulls, breathing in the ocean air. Then I turned up, past the tufted dunes, to the streets. This was Bayview, the part where Paris had gone missing. I was walking the street closest to the beach; there were swirls of sand on the cracked concrete, abstract shapes, as if the wind was trying to write something, to pass on some message that no one could understand.

  I kept walking. I was on the block now, maybe a hundred yards from the house—I glanced at my hand-drawn map again. Yes. Nearly there.

  And …

  And just then a black Jeep came driving toward me, down the perpendicular street to the one I was on, slowing as it reached the junction with the beach road.

  A Jeep SRT8. Like the one Julie had seen turning in front of her.

  I shrank back, spinning the other way, as if I had just been curious about which way this street went, and now I was returning to the beach—north, away from town. I walked quickly, until I was a little sheltered behind a row of crappy cars, Civics and Daewoos mostly, and some rusted old American sedans—Chevys and Fords. The crappy cars of Bayview. Rusted by the ocean. Local cars.

  The SRT8 was not rusted, that was clear. Even from the brief glimpse I had gotten, I had seen that it was shiny. Gleaming like something built for evil. Some black tank from some private army.

  I leaned against a car and took out my phone as if it had just rung; I don’t really know what I thought I was doing. Trying to act inconspicuous, I guess, since my pulse was an engine, two stroke, rattling in my veins. I held the phone to my ear and kind of half turned around, and that was when I saw the car turn, leaving the stop sign where it had been pulled up. Onto the beach road. The road where Paris had gone missing.

  KRS1-GH7 said the license plate.

  I felt the breath catch in my throat.

  Why?

  What did that mean to me?

  “The song,” said the voice. “The song that Julie had stuck in her head.”

  “What?”

  “The song,” said the voice.

  “What song? When?”

  “When you went to the apartment the day after … you know. When Julie was telling Horowitz what happened.”