Lucky Girl

by Amanda Maciel

Finally I turn, looking back the way I came, deciding to cut around and into the neighborhood to take the side streets. It’s at least two miles from Gabe’s to my house, but hopefully at this hour everyone’s still asleep, waiting as long as possible to deal with the aftermath of the storm. I wish I was still asleep, too. Or I wish I could wake up from this nauseous, foreboding feeling inside my stomach and my heart and my muscles.

  Never mind. Walking.

  I find a street that wasn’t too hard hit, and I walk down the very middle of it, almost enjoying my personal Mad Max moment. I hear a machine whir to life—a chainsaw, I guess—but it’s far away.

  I don’t hear the car. It’s driving so slowly that when I see it, I wonder if it’s just rolling by itself down the street that intersects the one I’m on. It’s a pale silver sedan of some kind, ghostly in the flat morning light. The shadow of a person fills the driver’s-side window and I stop, waiting for them to keep moving. For an instant I’m tempted to lie down in the street, cover myself with leaves, and hide. I remind myself not to be dumb—this isn’t really a dystopian wasteland, and that driver isn’t a zombie—but the urge doesn’t go away.

  The car stops. I’ve been spotted.

  And I just stand there, paralyzed, wondering if this is what happens to deer when they get caught in the headlights, not that I’ve ever seen a deer, the most I’ve run into is a really big raccoon that scared the shit out of me and Maddie when we were driving one night, it looked like it was going to grab the car and bite it but instead there was just a gut-churning thump and I realized I’d killed something and it would never make it back home and oh, God, that’s how I feel now, I’m so far from home, I’ll never make it, why am I even trying—

  “Rosie? Is that you?”

  I haven’t covered myself in leaves, but I’ve done the next most embarrassing thing: I’m standing there with my hands over my eyes. The old I can’t see you so you can’t see me trick. Which only three-year-olds think actually works.

  It’s pure insanity, but for a few seconds I stay there in the dark, steadying my breath. The voice is close—whoever was in the car has gotten out. I hear them stepping carefully on the leaves.

  “Hey, Rosie, are you okay?”

  Oh, for the love of shit.

  “Alex, hi.” My hands fall to my sides like dead weights. The tendons on the insides of my elbows ache, reminding me that my arms have been trying to protect me all night, to push back, and they’re just too weak. They can’t do anything.

  “I thought that was you. I mean, I was just . . .” He points back at the silver car. “Do you need a ride somewhere? It’s probably faster to walk, honestly, but there’s air-conditioning. And a ton of bagels. I was just taking them over to the church.”

  His face turns a litttle pink at the word church and I’m suddenly afraid that the next breath I take will make me start laughing or crying. What a combination—Mr. Way Too Goode and Walk-of-Shame Girl, out on the town.

  “I’d kill your whole family for a bagel, actually,” I say. It’s definitely the wrong joke to make to this guy, but I just let it hang in the thick air between us. Who even cares anymore.

  “It probably won’t have to come to that,” he says easily. “I have more than enough to share.”

  I follow him to the back of the car, and sure enough, the trunk has five big, open boxes of supplies: several bags of bagels in one, a few gallons of orange juice in another, and various paper products and cleaning supplies fill the rest.

  “Wow. What are you, saving the whole city this time?”

  Alex opens one of the bagel bags. He’s good at ignoring my awful jokes. “Plain and cinnamon raisin in here,” he says. His voice is flatter than the gray clouds over our heads now, and I’m sure I’ve gone too far this time. I should just stop trying to be funny, ever.

  Ryan once told me that no one could ever hear me being funny, anyway, because I was too pretty. They were always distracted by my looks. “Nobody can hear what you’re saying, dollface,” he said, smiling affectionately, like he meant it as a compliment. Maddie had argued, said that was ridiculous. But I didn’t need him to tell me that, and I didn’t need Maddie defending me. I already knew it was true.

  “Plain,” I say to Alex. The hunger that had flared in my stomach at the mention of bagels has disappeared, and now I just want something soft to hold. Maybe bite down on a little.

  Alex hands it over and slams the trunk closed. I’m not sure whether the offer of a ride is still on the table, but before he climbs into the driver’s seat he turns back to look at me.

  “I don’t know how far you’re going, but you should let me take you,” he says. “Those shoes aren’t going to get you two blocks.”

  I get in the car. For a while we drive in silence. The only sounds are the murmuring of the radio news and the sharp breaths we both take every time a particularly huge branch blocks the road. It’s like we’re watching the same scary movie.

  After a few minutes I start pointing the way to my house, but we still don’t speak. My mind flits back to last night, to Maddie’s face, and I squeeze the uneaten bagel in my hand until the image goes away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Alex. It’s the wrong person, but I do owe him an apology. And maybe this can be practice.

  “It’s fine, I was going out here anyway.”

  “No, I mean—about the stupid jokes. I wasn’t making fun of you. But I was being, you know. Insensitive. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh,” he says. There’s so much surprise in that tiny syllable, I can’t even understand it. “That’s okay. I wasn’t offended.”

  “It’s really amazing, what you did. I mean, I wasn’t there, obviously, but I know about it from the news. Like everyone else. And it’s amazing.”

  I thought it would be a relief to talk about Alex’s famous, heroic act—I thought that once I got to know him well enough, we could openly discuss what a great person everyone thinks he is. What a great person I think he is. But it feels wrong, somehow. It feels like it should be a compliment but is actually the opposite, and I have no idea why.

  “Sorry,” I say again, before he’s had a chance to reply. “I’m gonna shut up now.”

  He leans over the steering wheel, creeping around a garbage can that’s landed in the middle of the road. “Well, don’t shut up quite yet,” he says, still concentrating on the street. “I still don’t know where you live.”

  “Ha, right. Okay.”

  He’s silent for a minute, and at the next intersection he looks at me so I can wordlessly point the way.

  “Honestly,” he says softly, once we’ve made it another block, “it wasn’t that amazing. In real life. Somehow it got pretty amazing when other people told the story, you know? So you don’t have to . . .” His hands lift for a split second, releasing the wheel, palms up. Then he clamps down again, his knuckles white.

  We stare out the window and go back to not talking. The streets have suddenly gotten so much cleaner, and I’m sure it’s because we’re driving past the nicest neighborhood around here, Emery Woods. My house is on the other side of school from here, in an older group of streets, and pretty much the only thing we have over Emery is that our trees are taller. And I’m sure their trees will catch up in a few years. Probably get gigantic, make ours look sad.

  For a whole block, it’s like there isn’t a blade of grass out of place, and then we pull up to another stop sign, and for some reason we both look to the left at the same time.

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  Alex’s hands slide off the wheel, into his lap.

  The street—an entire block, just on one side—is leveled. Pipes stick out of the ground here and there, but otherwise what should be houses has been reduced to piles of rubble. Smoke hovers over one of the piles and I see a fire crew nearby. They’re all standing so still they look like statues. The truck behind them blinks soundlessly.

  A third of the way down the block, closer to us than the firemen, a car has been flipp
ed onto its roof. It looks almost peaceful, almost normal. There’s an American Girl doll sitting on it, probably right where the engine is. She’s staring straight at us. For a second, I think someone must’ve put her there on purpose, but the longer I look, the more I realize her hair is supposed to be blond. Not gray. And her face is gray, too. She’s covered in ashes. Her eyes stare into me, through me. I feel empty.

  “I heard there was a touchdown, but I didn’t know . . .” Alex shakes his head. “This is awful.”

  He waits another few seconds before pulling away from the stop sign. We drive slowly past Midcity, and it looks fine from the outside. The fences around the fields are standing as straight and strong as the light posts; the big school sign out front still says Welcome Back Lions!; the windows passively reflect the clouds, uncracked, unfazed.

  And then we’re on my side of town, and everything’s fine. The roads are messy, but the houses look good. The cars are upright. There aren’t any toys sitting where they shouldn’t be.

  When Alex turns onto my block I reach out and grab his arm, hoping he’ll stop before he gets to my door. I can see Dave and Ayla outside, raking.

  “Here?” he asks, braking hard in the middle of the street.

  If I get out here, Alex will keep driving right past my house. Maybe I could pretend to walk up to the Brezinskis’ door, but that would be super weird.

  And yet. Look at my family. They’re so normal. Whatever Alex must think of me right now, walking home alone, obviously up half the night— God, I don’t even know what I look like! Why didn’t I check a mirror before I left Gabe’s house?

  Just the thought of Gabe’s house brings on a wave of nausea so intense that I’m pretty sure I’ll vomit in Alex’s car. Which, I mean. Is not going to make me feel less like an asshole right now.

  Who says you shouldn’t feel like an asshole? the voice chimes in.

  “Sorry,” I say for the millionth time. “It’s that one up there. With the happy family.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but yet again, it’s completely unfunny.

  “Okay.” Alex eases the car forward, stopping more gently at the foot of my front yard. Dave and Ayla look up, squinting at the car.

  “Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Here we go.”

  “I should walk you up, but I’m already late . . .” Alex trails off, gesturing vaguely toward the trunk of the car.

  “Right,” I say. “Do you guys need more help? Should I”—what am I even saying right now?—“come over there later or something?”

  “That would be great,” he says, his voice full of surprise again. “I’ll give you my number if you want to text me.” He pauses, as if exchanging numbers suddenly seems like a terrible idea, but then he keeps talking. “I’m just not sure where we’ll be, exactly. But you can just come to St. John’s, obviously. That’d be great, if you want.”

  I blink. This is a lot of words all at once, especially from Alex. Especially this early in the morning.

  “Okay, yeah, just put your number in.” I hand him my phone.

  When he gives it back our fingers touch, and the little flare of heat it sends up my arm is familiar, expected. But I’m not expecting the way the nausea hits me again, almost as bad as before. My urge to crawl under something and hide is so strong that for a second I can’t even move.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say quickly, yanking the car door open.

  “I’m glad I saw you,” he says.

  He saw me.

  A million things I’d normally say to a boy skitter through my brain, like coins falling out of a bag onto a hard floor. But this isn’t “normally” and Alex doesn’t look at me the way boys usually do, not even now, post–number exchange. And I’m so tired.

  I give him a small smile and climb out of the car, my leg shouting with pain. On the lawn my stepdad and little sister are looking at me like the trainwreck that I am, and I just have to hurry, slipping and shuffling in my stupid, worthless sandals, to the safety of my own house, the soft, quiet darkness of my own room, where I can finally, finally hide away. Preferably forever.

  11

  “ROSEMARY? THOUGHT YOU might want to come out now—we’re getting pizza and Ayla’s picking a movie, so I could use your help . . .”

  Dave has my door cracked open, but I know without even looking that he’s keeping his eyes averted—fixed on the ceiling or the wall, sometimes his phone—to give me a little privacy. It’s one of those things we do, like how he calls me Rosemary, and I call him Dave. We’re family, but we respect each other’s space.

  When I squint out from under my quilt, though, I see something I wasn’t expecting: it’s almost dark outside. I slept all day.

  And no one woke me up. Not even to go to my shift at Dairy Queen, which—crap.

  “Did work call?” I ask, sitting up so fast my vision blurs, threatening to go black.

  “Yeah. Actually, I called them,” Dave says, sounding embarrassed for some reason I can’t figure out yet. “We tried to wake you earlier and it just—I told them you were sick. Sounded like it wasn’t a problem.”

  “Oh.” I haven’t missed work before, even one time when I think I really was sick, which was kind of messed up, probably. I used to skip school last year, basically whenever Paul wanted to, but skipping work seems stupid. They give me money to go there. And it’s just ice cream—I mean, it’s not something hard, like calculus.

  An uncomfortable mix of relief and guilt worms around my insides. I do feel sick, but not the kind that medicine would help. Not the kind that gets you a day off.

  “Anyway, I figured you’d probably be hungry by now. Are you feeling okay?”

  I can’t look directly at Dave, for some reason. He’s tall, and though he’s not as wide as the football players I was with last night, he still blocks the door in this way that feels . . . I don’t know.

  “I’m okay.” The lie falls out, like when you accidentally laugh with gum in your mouth. It’s out and it sticks. And I can’t take it back, so I add, truthfully, “I could eat.”

  “Great! We were arguing about the pineapple situation, and I couldn’t remember where you fall on the issue.”

  “I like it if there’s no ham,” I say.

  “Right! Gotcha. Ayla’s acting like she wants mushrooms?”

  Now I look at his face, and the confusion I find there is kind of hilarious. “I think she’s trying to be more mature? Or maybe she read that they help you lose weight.” I seem to remember reading something like that myself, or that the mushroom flavor made you less hungry, maybe.

  “It better not be the weight thing,” Dave says, his face instantly going serious. “Ayla!” He starts walking away, calling to her as he goes. “You better not be on a diet, young lady!”

  I shake my head, even though there’s no one here to see me. Dave is always giving us these male feminist lectures about stuff like body image, which, I don’t know. I guess it’s good that he tries with Ayla, but it usually ends up sounding ridiculous to me. Besides, I don’t really have any body issues, aside from usually wishing I could lose like five pounds. And have smaller ears.

  But then I swing my legs over the side of my bed and feel the sharp stab of pain behind my knee. So there’s that body issue.

  I’m still wearing my skirt and bikini top and tank from last night, and within seconds I’ve jumped up, ripped off all my clothes, and run across the hall to the bathroom. I’m so desperate to take the hottest shower possible that it doesn’t even occur to me that someone—like Dave—might see me naked, which is definitely worse than wearing my stupid skirt for five more seconds. But he and Ayla are laughing about something downstairs, and Mom’s at work again, and I’m alone.

  I spend twenty minutes in a scalding stream of water, thinking about nothing but how much it hurts. I never realized how helpfully distracting pain could be. Even the scratch on my leg—it’s just a really bad scratch, already scabbed over, at least until the water hits it—is keeping my brain focused in this way that I
’m grateful for.

  By the time I’m ready to get out and open the door, letting steam billow into the hallway, the smell of pizza has reached the second floor. I dig through the back of my bottom dresser drawer until I find my oldest yoga pants, but none of my shirts feel right. Finally, keeping my towel pressed to my chest, I tiptoe down to Mom and Dave’s room. Mom has a whole collection of huge sweatshirts, plus all her body-disguising scrubs sets. I choose a bright red UNL pullover. It’s like wearing a blanket.

  Finally I grab my phone. I’m afraid to look at it. Maddie and Ryan must think I don’t care what happened to them last night. They must think I really did want to hook up with Cory, that it was all my idea.

  You were flirting with him, that voice in my head pipes up. And you drank enough for a shipload of sailors.

  I can’t argue with that. How can I explain what was happening when Maddie walked in if I can’t even explain the rest of the night? Or the whole week—everything since we picked her up from the airport. Since school started. Since Alex. Everything is off. I didn’t mean to flirt with Cory. It was just habit. Right?

  “Pizza’s here!” Dave calls from downstairs, but I don’t answer. I stand in the middle of the dark hallway and click my phone on.

  The light from the screen reflects off the family photos on the wall next to me, our smiling faces hidden behind the glare. Most of the missed calls and unanswered texts are from Ryan—saying they got home okay, hoping I did, too. Wondering what happened. I’m sure Maddie told him everything and for a second I fall in love with him a little bit, just for wanting to hear my side of the story. Then I remember that this is how Ryan survives being our third wheel: he doesn’t pick sides. He doesn’t carry messages back and forth, he doesn’t let one of us vent to him about the other. It’s smart. It’s annoying as hell sometimes, but it’s smart.

  There’s nothing from Maddie, though. Mom called once, and so did DQ, and there’s even a text from Alex about volunteering. Shit, of course, of course I said I might come help out and then slept through the whole thing. I don’t even know what our yard looks like right now.