The sight of him there, corn rattling around his mouth like yellow teeth, makes my chest tighten with anger.
Without thinking, without any sort of conscious plan, I hold my milk when I dump my tray. It’s like I’m being led by a force outside myself when I take a swig and keep it in my cheeks. I walk the ten feet to Todd’s table, letting the warmth of my mouth infuse the milk with what I hope is venom.
Leaning over the back of the guy in the green jacket, I stare at Todd until he looks up at me, square in the eye, and I spit my mouthful of milk in his face.
He splutters, enraged, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
I drop the carton, then walk away.
When he calls “Bitch!” down the long empty hallway, I don’t stop. I don’t even look back.
Strawberry
I pass Lindsey after school outside the Jiffy Lube. The sight of her, healthy and whole, fills me with relief. Mostly relief. I’m also a little pissed I have to feel relieved in the first place. And a little pissed she hasn’t answered my texts.
She’s wearing another bit of outrageousness. A short dress as purple as it is tight. Against the flank of Robert’s cherry-red truck, she looks determinedly cheerful, like a young girl’s makeup kit.
I consider pulling over, but it’s too weird between us right now.
I think about Monica and Andie. How many silences sprang up in the spaces we used to share. There was that blowup, but there was also all the stuff that led to the blowup, when I stopped talking, stopped answering their texts or calls. Before I knew it, I was on the other side of a wooden bridge and I had set it on fire behind me.
I turn, circling around to the Jiffy Lube again, but Robert’s truck is already gone, and Lindsey with it.
I pull over and text her one more time.
Forgive me.
When I get home, I can tell from the driveway my mom’s not back yet. She does freelance writing and usually works from her home office, but she’s meeting with a client this afternoon.
I hate coming home to an empty house, so I go in the front way. It’s more open than the kitchen entry. There’s an easy sight line from the street.
As I fumble with the key, a red something on the welcome mat shimmers in the afternoon light. I pick it up—a candy wrapper, the old-fashioned kind that looks like a fake strawberry, red on bottom, green twist on top.
It must have fallen out of someone’s pocket.
Which is weird because no one ever comes to this door.
I hold the wrapper in my open palm—the tint of a memory rising from it in little ripplets. I know I’ve tasted that hard strawberry shell, the liquid in the center. But when? This is not a type of candy my parents ever buy, or my grandparents. And it’s not the kind of thing you get for Halloween.
Then I remember. It was Kyle. In that algebra class. He’d have a whole pocketful of them sometimes, and he gave me some once.
I chuck the wrapper to the ground like it’s diseased; it skids off the front porch and lands under a bush.
Okay, okay, breathe in, breathe out.
I look over my shoulder, scouring the street for signs of life.
This is stupid. I’m being stupid, right? Kyle is locked up in some jail cell somewhere.
There are a thousand ways that wrapper might have randomly ended up here. Maybe a Jehovah’s Witness dropped it… or a Boy Scout selling popcorn. Or, I don’t know, a roving clown.
Still, I can’t help feeling a needle of fear puncture my spine as I enter the foyer.
“Hello?” I call. No one answers. But then again, murderers lurking in closets generally don’t announce themselves.
I deadbolt the door behind me, hating how paranoid I’ve become, then walk through the house, checking each room. When I’m done, I text my mom.
I’m home.
Just getting ready to leave. I’ll be there soon.
In those minutes of waiting, the house feels like a tomb—so quiet that the lack of sound becomes its own noise. It reminds me of those final lines from Charlie’s poem:
Where I can talk to silence
And hear the silence talk back.
What must it be like for him—speaking into the void, listening for Jamie’s voice in every empty room? With a death as brutal as Jamie’s, what would anyone even say?
There is no I miss you, but I know you needed to go.
No you’re better off this way.
I even wonder about welcome to heaven, no matter what the obituary suggests.
Because who wants to go to a heaven that plays harp music and acts like it never happened when somebody just bashed your skull in?
Heaven should be pissed.
I flop on the couch, toss my backpack on the coffee table. Opening my government notes, I listen for a minute more to the empty house, thinking of that strawberry wrapper. Just a random candy wrapper, about as harmless as you can get. It probably blew there on the wind. It’s stupid that I let it unnerve me.
Then I stuff in my earbuds and drown the silence out.
Outside
Behind me, the late Wednesday afternoon sun is a warm hand on my back. I am eating a tart green apple as I perch on the cement wall of one of the ginormous circular planters outside the main entrance to the school. It is so huge that they’ve not only filled it with a bunch of scraggly flowers but a good-sized tree in the middle as well. A dozen people could fit around the perimeter, but this afternoon it’s only me and a few stray freshmen.
Mr. Simpson let me finish my trig test after school. And now, I am watching the deserted parking lot like it’s a time-lapse movie that hasn’t started yet.
Someone comes up behind me and covers my eyes. Dry, calloused fingers. The smell of sweat and cologne. Coconut. A faint underlayer of motor oil.
“Hello?” I try not to panic. This is normal, I tell myself. No one is abducting me. This is what people do.
“Hey there, hot stuff.” The cologne should have given him away. His choice of words definitely does. The voice is Jared’s.
I reach one hand up and pry the fingers off my eyes.
“Hot stuff?” I say. “Really? What decade is this?”
He shrugs. “You can’t deny what you are, baby.”
I stifle a laugh.
“Least I made you smile,” he says.
“I’m laughing at you, not with you,” I tease. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Mr. Wirt,” he says. “Apparently making a homemade stink bomb in the chem lab is frowned upon. So now I have detention for the rest of the week. What about you?”
“Math test,” I say, then wiggle my apple core, “and snack.” I toss the core in some weeds along the side of the school building, then rummage around in my backpack. “I think I have some peanut butter crackers in here if you’re hungry.” My fingers land on the plastic wrapper and I pull the package from my bag. “They’re kind of smooshed.” Dubious, I hold it out for Jared to inspect. “Really smooshed.…”
“Thanks.” He takes it. “I don’t mind smoosh. And I’m always hungry.” He winks suggestively.
“Sometimes I think you were raised by porn stars,” I say.
Now it’s Jared’s turn to laugh.
“I’ll have to introduce you to my parents sometime.” He flicks out his tongue-stud.
“Gross.” I guilty-laugh.
Popping open the end of the wrapper, Jared shakes the cracker crumbs into his mouth like he’s drinking.
“So,” he says, chewing, “my band is going to be playing Saturday at Bobby’s Barn.”
“What band?”
He swallows. “We call ourselves The Operators. Me and Randy, Tyrell, a couple guys who work down at the warehouse, Joey and Motor. You know Motor—the guy whose garage we slept in.”
“Seriously? What kind of songs do you play?”
“Gecko Blue, Dragon Interrupted, some original stuff.” He crumples the wrapper and stuffs it in his jeans pocket.
“I’m sensing a strong lizard theme
.”
“You should come Saturday.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I can’t quite see myself hanging out alone at Bobby’s Barn on a Saturday night, and all signs suggest that Lindsey has given up on me.
Plus, I don’t want to lead Jared on.
“Where you headed after this?” he asks.
“Home.”
“Mind giving me a ride?”
“I guess not.” I shoulder my backpack. It’ll be good to have company, even Jared’s. “Ready?”
“I’m always ready for you, hot stuff,” he says.
I shove his shoulder. “Someone needs to teach you how to talk.”
Huckleberries
Lindsey finally texts me back Wednesday night.
Hey. Not ignorinh you. Lost phone charger. Plus busy. Work and school and Robert. You ate still my huckleberry. We good?
I smile. The huckleberry thing was from an old Western we watched over the summer. Some guy kept telling everyone “I’m your huckleberry,” which seemed extremely funny to us at two in the morning, and for the next week we could hardly say hello without announcing that we were each other’s huckleberries in our most southern accents.
Instead of texting back, I call her before she has time to put her phone away.
“Busy how?” I ask.
“Hey to you, too,” she says. I hear a guy’s deep voice in the background, talking to something that beeps.
“Busy with Robert?” I ask.
She giggles. I take that as a yes. “You’re one to talk,” she teases. “I saw you drive by with JJ today.”
“What? Where were you?”
“Front field bleachers, waiting for Robert to get done with practice. Imagine my surprise when you two just hopped into your little Pony and cruised on by. So what’s the deal?”
“No deal. He needed a ride.”
“Uh-huh. I bet. So did you give him a ride?”
“Ugh!” I say. “I’m gonna clean your mouth out with soap!” We joke about it, but it’s actually something Lindsey’s grandma did to her when she was little.
More giggling. More guy’s deep voice.
“You’re busy,” I say, “but call me later?”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ll call you. Oh, and Robert has to go out of town with his folks Saturday. His cousin Andrew’s got a thing. Maybe we could have a girls’ night out.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “But do you really think you should go around telling everyone about his cousin’s ‘thing’? I mean, that’s kind of personal, isn’t it?”
She laughs this time, not giggles. “It’s your mouth that needs cleaning, young lady!”
I grin so loudly she can probably hear it through the phone. “So Saturday,” I say. “Girls’ night, right?”
Relays
In gym Friday, Jared comes up beside me and pops me on the leg with a big purple elastic workout band. It’s been raining that miserable October rain and we’re inside, doing stretches.
“Ack!” I squawk, popping him back with my green band.
“Girls! Settle down!” Coach Flanagan yells at us, even though one of the “girls” is clearly a guy.
“You know,” I whisper to Jared once Flanagan has turned away, “you don’t get to go around popping random people.”
“Whoever said you’re random?” he whispers back.
“Puh-lease.” I roll my eyes.
Jared looks like he’s about to say something, but the coach roars, “Relays!”
Flanagan waves us all over to one side of the basketball court, where we clump up like overcooked noodles.
Beside me, Shavelle Rylan tosses her braid and mouths a mock “Yay!”
Mr. Flanagan grabs a handful of batons from a cart.
“Here! Roland! Joe! Other Joe! Randy!” he barks, striding across the free-throw line as he points to where the newly appointed baton-people are supposed to stand. “Now, the rest of you, line up behind them. Six in a line! Move, people, moooove!”
I squeeze in behind Randy, Shavelle, Jared, Mark, and Charlie.
As we wait for the coach to blow his whistle, Jared leans over and yells past Charlie and Mark at me, “You coming Saturday?”
I give him a blank look.
“The band, at Bobby’s Barn. It’s going to be badass.”
“Ummm,” I say. “I’m not sure—”
TWEET! Coach blows his whistle, and Randy, Other Joe, Joe, and Roland take off across the length of the basketball court, filling the gym with the clatter of feet pounding the hardwood.
After a moment’s distraction, Jared turns back to me and picks up where he left off, shouting, “It’s going to be epic. We’re going to burn—”
Randy blasts across the line, passing Shavelle the baton. She stomps off in an awkward canter.
“Tell her, Randy,” Jared says, nodding toward me. “Tell her we’re going to burn that place up.”
“We’re… gonna… burn it… up,” Randy pants, getting in line behind me.
Jared turns to Charlie and Mark. “You guys’ll be there Saturday, right?”
Mark shrugs. Charlie nods, pulls at the neck of his T-shirt. “Yeah,” he says. “I was thinking I’d go.”
“See,” Jared shouts. “Everyone’s gonna be there.”
“Okay.” I hold my hands up in surrender. “Okay, I’ll come.”
Jared grins. “Good. There’s a song I want you to hear,” he shouts just as Shavelle crashes into him from behind. From there it’s like dominoes: Jared pushes into Mark, who stumbles back into Charlie, who does an awkward side step to avoid falling into me, which he ultimately doesn’t avoid (but thanks for trying anyway). And at the end, there’s Charlie pressed up against me, one hand on my rib cage, the other gripping my arm—which he yanks toward him to keep me from falling to the floor—and which ends up pressing me even harder into his chest.
I look up into his face, with the scab on his chin, and his lips that curve like a dove’s wing, and his mesmerizing bruise, and his deep, almost rust-colored eyes, and—no, no, this is so not good.
That’s when I admit what I maybe should have known all along. I’ve been telling myself that Charlie might be able to help me figure out how to deal with Jamie’s murder, and that’s… not entirely a lie. But not the whole truth either. It is what it is, but it’s also an excuse for some other true thing.
Because I don’t only want answers. I want to kiss him. Not a comforting kiss either, not a kiss that intends to save anyone. I want to watch the veins in his hand as it glides down my arm, to feel his fingers twine with mine. I want his other hand to glide that half inch higher on my chest. I want him. God help me.
In a half second, everyone straightens. Jared grabs the baton from Shavelle and starts running across the gym. But Charlie and I remain tilted together for a half second more. I’m not about to break away. And his face, mapped with some unspoken emotion, makes me wonder if he wants me like that, too.
Limits
Lindsey comes over early Saturday and we paint our fingernails and watch the latest two episodes of Baby Mamas in the den. The first episode features a country singer who has kids with three different women, each tough and spike-heeled—the kind of women who would bite one another’s ears off in a cage match. The second shows a hippie cult leader who has eight different “soul mates” and fourteen children, all living on the same commune and eating organic vegan meals at a huge picnic table.
“Can you imagine trading off like that?” Lindsey says. “‘You have him on Friday, I get him on Saturday.’”
“Who knows,” I say. “Maybe on Saturdays they all get him at the same time.”
“Gross! I’d never share Robert,” she says, pushing her bangs off her forehead with the flat of her hand, careful not to touch her hair with her still-wet silver sparkle nails. “I mean, please. Have some limits.”
“You guys are getting serious?” I ask, careful to keep my tone even. No judgment here, my voice says, just asking.
She doesn’t a
nswer, though, and I’m worried she’s thinking about last time we talked about Robert, when I shoved my whole marriage-bashing rant down her throat.
“It’s okay,” I finally break the silence. “I’m not going to say anything.”
She gives me the look that means, Well, but…
“I’m not going to think anything either,” I say. “I’m just going to listen. I want to know how you’re doing, Linds. I swear.”
So she tells me about Robert, how gorgeous he is (which I already knew), how sweet (which I can’t entirely believe), how sexy (which I can). She says she’s sure he’s serious about her, that there are “some things you just have to trust to love.”
I keep my mouth shut this time and give her a big hug when she’s finally done going on about the wonders of Robert Leuger, future husband of the century.
Then we talk about everything else. Lindsey, who spent the week in a phone-less, Robert-induced haze, is clueless about most things non-Robert. At least most things in my orbit. I start by catching her up on Todd Firebaugh and the milk.
“You spit in Todd Firebaugh’s face!” She snorts. “Now there’s something I would have liked to see.”
“It was stupid,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like it changed anything, except for making him pissed at me. But it felt really good.”
“I bet,” she says.
“It makes me so mad that just because I’ve got this”—I point to my butt—“some guy thinks he gets to grab it. It’s messed up. It’s like…” It’s like Kyle, I think. We haven’t talked yet about Kyle’s trial, or hearing, or whatever they call it, and I’m not sure how to bring it up, or if I even want to.
I take a chip out of the bag on the coffee table in front of us and chomp it, stalling. Too late, I realize that chip dust is magnetically attracted to almost-dry nail polish. Two fingers and the thumb of my right hand are now coated with salty little nubs. I lick the thumbnail; it tastes vaguely chemical, but the nubs don’t go anywhere.
“Ugh.” I hold out my hand for Lindsey to inspect.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 8