“Don’t you think Robert—”
“Marriage? We haven’t even gone to college, Linds. You’re just talking, right?”
“I’m not sure I’m even doing college.” She glances down and picks at a thread sticking up from the band of her sock.
“What? Okay, that’s the crap of bat crap. Like a big pile of crap took a crap. That.”
“You’re the one who wants to go to college. You’re smart. You got that whole fight-crime-and-tame-the-gorillas plan. But that’s not me. I never wanted anything but to find a good guy, get a little house, maybe have a baby somewhere down the road. I’ve never wanted anyone but Robert.”
“Ugh. Seriously? But what about—life? Don’t you want to go out dancing with some guy you’ve never met? Or do… whatever it is married people don’t do?” I veer to avoid a stray jogger. “Think about it, Linds. We haven’t seen the Eiffel Friggin’ Tower. We’ve never gotten thrown out of a bar. We can’t even get in a bar. We haven’t jumped out of a plane or hiked the Appalachian Trail. We’ve never gone skinny-dipping.”
“Calm down. It’s not like he’s asked me.” She flips down the visor. “He will. But he hasn’t. Yet.”
“And that’s going to be enough? Don’t you want something more? A good job doing… something?” I wave my right hand aimlessly.
“I like my job.”
“Big Lots?”
“Well, no, not that one. But the church. And Miss Mirabelle says I should apply to teach at the camps next summer.”
“And that’s… I don’t know, Linds,” I say. “That’s great. I just don’t want to see you stuck.”
“I love Robert. I love him.”
“Does he love you?”
“Yes.”
“He told you?”
“No. Not in words.”
“You can’t believe the words when some guy says them. I mean, look at Sander. If Robert hasn’t even said it…”
“You just can’t—” She is staring out the passenger window, and her voice comes to me muffled and flat. “Why can’t you be happy for me?”
I glance over at her as I pull into the senior parking lot. She looks like a balloon that’s had all its air drained out.
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry,” I say. “I want to be happy for you. I mean, it’s your life, right? Whatever happens, I’m happy for you.”
When she doesn’t answer, I poke her leg and paste a smile on my face. “See, this is me. Happy.” I point at my face.
“I see.” And when she looks at me, her eyes are as tired as my smile.
There Are the Players
So I’m officially a rotten friend.
Rotten person in general.
I’m not anyone’s rotten girlfriend, though I’m sure I’d be especially rotten at that today, too.
I’m on autopilot as I drift through the halls.
When I’m leaving psych, Ms. Ramano holds me up, waving me over to her desk as everyone else is shuffling out the door.
“I heard some things about this weekend,” she says, once the room clears. “Some kids were talking in my first-period class. There was a fight?”
It seems like a question, but I don’t answer.
Ms. Ramano sighs. She is wearing a black dress today, like a short and lumpy grim reaper. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Not much,” I say.
“But something?” she says.
“Not really,” I say.
“Look.” She doesn’t touch me, but her gaze is so intense, it feels as if she has tipped my head down to peer into the bland moon of her face. “Look, if someone did something to you, it’s okay to talk about it.”
“Nothing really happened,” I say. “I’m fine.”
She searches my face for some crumb of a lie.
“For real,” I say.
And even if I were inclined to talk to Ms. Ramano about that a-hole Todd Firebaugh and his filthy, grope-y hands, what is there really to tell? That he might have tried to force me—you know, maybe, if Charlie and Jared hadn’t stepped in? That he made me feel scared and dirty and small?
Because I’m pretty sure the world doesn’t much care what might have happened. It’s not interested in how small I feel. To the world, I’m just another drunk girl at a party.
Fuck the world.
“Well, if you need help, you know you can talk to me,” Ms. Ramano says.
“I’ve got to get to English,” I say, hiking my backpack higher on my shoulder. “But thanks.” I stop on my way out the door. “It’s good to know, you know… whatever,” I say, not sure what words I’m looking for.
In English, the words don’t come any easier. We are back to Hamlet, doing our scenes for the entire class.
Nick Richert, in a tight black T-shirt, makes a disturbingly hot Hamlet. The entire female population of the class is practically drooling. Not to mention Doug Howe, who is gay, and Russell Soto, who might be.
When it’s time for me and Charlie to get up there next to Nick, I have trouble focusing on anything but his muscles.
Mr. Campbell lets us hold our books for reference, but he doesn’t want us just reading.
“Act!” he proclaims. “Own your character! Be dramatic!”
“O, there has been much throwing about of brains,” I read, having no clue what I’m saying.
Nick as Hamlet gets all up in my stuff. I stare, mesmerized, at the way his collarbone emerges from the neckline of his shirt.
“Do the boys carry it away?” he asks, his voice like hot maple syrup. He places his hand on my shoulder and lets it drift slowly down the curve of my arm.
“What?” I murmur.
Charlie, a shop-worn Rosencrantz, pries us apart, declaring something equally perplexing: “Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load, too.”
I sway slightly, trying to hold it together until my last line of the scene.
Nick steps back, offering his next speech for the benefit of the girls in the front row. Something about his uncle… blood… philosophy.
When I miss my next line, both Nick and Charlie look at me expectantly for a beat. I stare back, clueless. Then Charlie steps in, announcing stiffly, “There are the players.”
I can feel the heat of him beside me, the comfort of him. The bruise on his cheek has faded from yesterday’s purple to a vague moss green.
I nod, as if it all makes sense, and mouth a tiny “thanks”—relieved that I’m in this with Charlie.
Hamlet and his freakishly alluring collarbone mean nothing to me.
Ducks
I look for Lindsey, but she isn’t waiting for me after school, and when I call, she doesn’t answer. I know she’s pissed at me, but even so, it isn’t like her to avoid me—or her phone—and I’m worried.
It’s Monday, not one of her days with the after-school kids, so I drive by her apartment on my way home to make sure she got there. I don’t see her car, and when I knock, no one answers.
Where are you?
She doesn’t answer.
Want coffee?
But that doesn’t work either.
She probably just lost her phone. It’s happened before. I slip back in my car and drive.
When I get to the turn onto Main, I find myself steering left, toward the river, instead of right, toward my house.
Just because Lindsey isn’t answering, it doesn’t mean she isn’t. I know that, of course, but while I drive, I find myself inspecting every car I pass, trying to remember little details, as if they might be important later. Yes, Officer, it was a powder-blue LeBaron with a dent in the front fender and a license that began “QRT.”
Would it have helped? How would I have described Kyle, anyway? White male. Twenty-one. Glasses. Baby face. Not fat, exactly, but soft. Harmless. A weird guy in a world full of weird guys. I never bothered to look twice.
But as I inspect the tenth car I pass, I can’t help feeling that something’s been stripped from me. What normal high school senior thinks this way, l
ike a PTSD grandpa prepping for end times? I should be worrying about college applications, not whether the guy with the beard has Lindsey stuffed in his trunk.
When I get to the river, I park where I usually do, in the little gravel patch near the eternal cluster of ducks.
I pull the crank and, leaning my seat back, focus on the ducks. Their random waddling, pecking, fluffing. I watch curled yellow leaves drift down from a tree on the bank. And I think about that dirt-wad Todd Firebaugh.
I guess I should just be happy he didn’t get me alone in some room.
And I am.
But I’m also sick of being thankful that some horrible thing miraculously didn’t happen to me.
I’m sick of thinking, Oh, goody, that guy who wanted to rape me got the crap beat out of him. Or, Yay! the dude who wanted to kill me is up for the death penalty.
Are either of those things even remotely good? Yeah, they’re better than the alternative, but still, they suck.
I check that my doors are locked and then close my eyes for a second.
When I open them, it’s dusk and my neck is stiff. There is a noise—a knocking. I look up, confused, and see a hand and a dark blue sweatshirt sleeve in the dim light outside my window.
I follow the arm up to find the sharp angles of Charlie’s face as he squints down.
“You okay?” His voice is muffled through the pane.
I nod and pop the lock, then realize I can’t open the door without it ramming into him.
“Yeah, you?” I say through the glass.
He cups one hand to his ear like he can’t hear me.
I open the car door, slowly enough that he has time to scoot out of its way. Behind him, ducks scatter, a couple edging down to the water.
The movements of the world seem strange, an awkward animal ballet.
“Hi,” I say as I climb from the warmish womb of the car out into the brisk river air. “You getting ready for a run?”
“Just finishing one up,” he answers. “I parked down in the other lot, but passed you on my way out. And since you were still here on my way back, I wanted to make sure you were okay. You looked pretty washed out today.”
“I was.” I smirk. “Always nice to hear it, though.”
He laughs. “Sorry.” A stray duck waddles over to peck at the ground around his shoe. “How are you? You know, since Saturday?”
“Okay. Yeah, better.” I comb my fingers through my hair, which feels ratty and frizzed. “So, thanks again—for stepping in, I mean, with Todd.”
“Yeah, that guy.” He says it like it’s all that can be said.
And for a minute, it is all that we say.
Charlie finally breaks the silence. “Those ducks look hungry,” he says. Then, “That sounded so random. I’ve got some crackers in my car. Want to walk over with me?”
“Trying to lure me away to my doom?” I tease, and then when I realize what I said, I put my hand to my mouth, like I could shove the words back in. “I mean, no, I mean…” I scratch the back of one leg with the toe of my other shoe, feeling my face go hot and speckled. When I glance up at Charlie, he’s not looking at me. But not I’m-so-pissed-I-can’t-make-eye-contact, more just giving me space.
“Sorry,” I say. “Let’s go get those crackers.”
I’m glad for the quiet as we walk. At Charlie’s car, we toss crackers, listening to nothing more than the guk-guk-guk of ducks peppering the air.
Then, while my brain is preoccupied with keeping my left foot out of my mouth, I open up and shove the right foot in.
“That bruise on your cheek is hypnotic.… Uh, I didn’t mean that how it sounds.”
Up close, his bruise is almost beautiful. At the center, a deep purple boat drifts in a lake of green.
“Are you getting me back for what I said earlier about you looking washed out?”
I laugh. “Can I touch it?” I ask, knowing that asking is weird, and that wanting to is even weirder. And kind of not caring, either way.
He tilts his head to one side, considering. “Will you be gentle?” His tone is joking, almost like he’s flirting, but I’m serious when I nod yes.
As if I’m petting a small odd creature, a baby hedgehog or something, I reach up to brush his cheek with the pad of my index finger.
“Does that hurt?” I ask.
“I hardly feel it,” he answers. For a second his face relaxes, then something shuts down in his eyes. He pulls back just enough to break contact, and I drop my hand.
“That’s what I get for drinking,” he says.
The ducks have formed a semicircle around us. They shuffle closer with eager beaks.
I take a cracker from Charlie’s box and toss it into the mosh pit. A duck lunges, chomps. The others flutter enviously.
“So, it’s like that?” I gesture toward his bruised cheek, but I don’t touch it. “Drinking, I mean. It makes you want to fight?”
“Mostly it makes me forget why I don’t fight.” He passes me the cracker box and dusts the crumbs off his hands. “I didn’t used to be that way. But now, it’s like there’s this… I don’t know, like this acid in my stomach, just there. It boils up—and I want to fight. I want to fight, drunk or not.”
“Because of what? Kyle?” I spit his name out without thinking, like it’s a hunk of gristle.
Charlie flinches.
“Because of him,” he says. “And now this trial…” His words drift away, and he digs into the gravel with his heel, making a jagged line.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says.
“My mom said Lindsey and Taylor and I will probably have to be at some hearing. In the same room with him. For the sentencing or something.” My voice goes up at the end. It’s my way of asking Charlie if he has to go, too.
He keeps his eyes on the river. “Mrs. Strand told my mom she and Daniel, Jamie’s brother, have to make an impact statement. I wish I could, but it’s only family. Which is… It’s not like I wasn’t impacted.”
He crunches a handful of crackers and showers the ducks with crumbles. “I’m going to be there, though. I want to see that bastard’s face when they make him pay for what he did. I want him”—and I’m not sure if he’s even talking to me now. Just getting it out—“I want him to know we remember her, that every day, we think about her. But he’s forgotten. Less than forgotten.”
It’s a lie. We haven’t forgotten—but the lie doesn’t matter. The idea of it, the wish of it—that’s what matters. Kyle said that we’d see him on the front page, but why should we give him what he wants? And not just Kyle. Why should any a-hole who stalks or kills or shoots up a crowd get his name in the paper?
Maybe we should stop naming them. Stop showing their picture.
We could replace “Cowardly Asshole” for their name and show a wilted carrot for their face.
Breaking news: Cowardly Asshole shot ten people and then himself at a mall in Atlanta earlier today.
“I want to forget him, too,” I say. “After it happened, I drank too much, so I wouldn’t have to think about him. And for a while, it worked.” I toss a cracker. “I was… blissfully stupid.”
A fat white duck nudges aside a small brown one and claims the cracker.
“This is where I need to change the subject,” I say, keeping my eyes for a moment on the elaborate duck dramas playing out at my feet.
Charlie tries for a smile, but it doesn’t take; he shakes out a few crackers and throws them at the fringe of the duck cluster. One cracker skitters to a stop right in front of a small speckled gray duck who pecks at it tentatively. Another duck, big and white and bully-ish, edges him aside. The first duck, the little one, circles aimlessly.
Charlie aims another cracker at the small duck’s feet—a gift. This time the little guy snatches it up and waddles off to enjoy it in the relative quiet of the bank. It’s silly, but it warms my heart that Charlie was watching out for him.
“That was kind of you,” I say.
“What?” It�
�s not the ask of someone who wants to hear his kindness spoken of aloud. It’s the ask of someone so used to doing kind things that he doesn’t realize he’s done one.
Messages
Between Monday at 9:15 PM and Tuesday at 11:22 AM, I have sent the following text messages to Lindsey:
Sorry.
Really.
I get it. I rained on your parade. I’m a parade-raining jerk.
If you forgive me, I’ll sing the piña colada song at your wedding.
Your wedding with Robert.
If you DON’T forgive me, I’ll sing the piña colada song at your wedding. With Robert.
I will give you a huge mugging. Yum!
No, not mugging.
I am typing mugging. Not mugging.
MUGGING! MUGGING! The things my mom bakes! MUGGING!
Unlike, Lindsey, I have NOT turned off auto-correct.
I hate my phone.
It is not in her nature to hold a grudge, and I know she loves my mom’s muffins, but she still doesn’t answer.
Did I piss her off that much?
On the second day of her silence strike, I wait around after lunch as the third shift files in like ants following invisible trails to food.
My thumb absently smooshes the roll on my tray until it’s paper-flat. Five minutes. Ten. I am beyond late for psych, but still no Lindsey.
I try not to let it bother me.
It doesn’t mean anything happened, I tell myself.
But when I go to dump my tray, instead of Lindsey, there’s Todd Firebaugh, two tables away. His face is like a freaky still life, the marbly red of uncooked steak.
I want Todd to be frowning into his tray of corn and lasagna; I want him to bang his own head with his fists. But of course, he’s not doing any of that. He’s chewing with his mouth open as he talks to some hunched-over green jacket in the seat across from him. And he’s grinning his big goonish grin.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 7