The whole night I’ve felt like I was on some foreign planet where words mean other words.
I see Charlie when he returns from the back hallway. Not that I’m looking for him. The girl he’d been talking to is now talking with a guy in a Thor T-shirt. But Charlie isn’t walking in their direction; he seems, in fact, to be heading toward me.
I try not to watch him, to act like I haven’t seen him at all, so if I’m wrong, if he strolls right on by, takes a turn, sweeps that other girl in his arms and there—smack-dab in front of the Norse God of Thunder—sticks his tongue down her throat, at least I won’t be looking.
I don’t need to see Charlie, though, to sense him. It’s like my brain is wearing night-vision goggles.
He doesn’t veer. I feel the table shift slightly as he sits down beside me.
“Hi again,” he says. “Can I sit here?”
“Sure,” I say, turning to him, feeling jittery. “Sure. Of course.”
“So what do you think of the band?”
“They’re… burning the place up,” I say.
Charlie laughs. “Yeah.”
I stare at his lips. Then realize I’m staring at his lips, which are full and dusky red and infinitely kissable. I feel myself swallow but I have nothing to swallow and for a second I think I’m going to choke on the dryness in my throat.
“You okay?” Charlie asks.
I nod, still staring at his hypnotizing mouth.
“Yeah,” I say. I am suddenly unable to move my eyes. Is this what guys feel like when they keep looking at girls’ breasts? Like they know it’s wrong, but they’re not in charge?
I need someone to smack me. Where is Lindsey?
Under the table, I grind the heel of one foot down on the toes of the other. The pain helps bring me back. With a snap of my head, I look out at the crowd and spot the back of Lindsey’s pink ripped shirt in a crowd of girls.
So far, so good, I tell myself. Now when you look back, focus on something other than Charlie’s lips.
I don’t trust myself with his face, so I go in low, staring at my hands on the table instead.
“Hey.” Charlie’s fingertips nudge the edge of the table, skirting the frame of my vision. When I don’t look up, he props up his pointer and middle fingers like they’re little legs and walks his hand over to mine. One of his finger-feet pokes the back of my hand. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Sorry.” I say. “I’m good.”
“Do you…?” he starts, but drifts off. Lowering his head, so it’s closer to my frame of vision, he reaches up and gently tilts my chin, and now I’m back looking at his lips.
“It’s okay,” he says, and I’m thinking, Okay how? Okay that I want to drown myself in you?
“I could use some fresh air.” He grins, slowly, like he’s reading my mind. “You want to go outside?”
And I don’t know if I should be embarrassed or happy. I can guess what an invitation to the parking lot of Bobby’s Barn has meant for countless girls in the past. I wonder if it means the same thing for me.
Before I answer, I want to know: Am I reading him right or am I just hearing what I want to hear?
And is that truly what I want anyway? An invitation to make out with Charlie in the parking lot of a roadhouse in the brisk October night?
“So what do you think?” He nods in the direction of the exit. “Want to head out?” His voice skims over possible meanings, but doesn’t settle anywhere.
I open my mouth to ask something, though I’m not sure what, and—eeeeeeeeee!—the stage microphone makes a high-pitched squeal. Everyone in the room simultaneously cringes and turns to look at the stage. Jared is there, in a spotlight, with a single red rose in his hand. He steps back from the microphone, like the light is blinding him. “Whoa!” he says, and people in the crowd good-naturedly laugh.
“So, um.” He adjusts something on his guitar and steps back in the spotlight, up close to the mic. “I wrote this song for a very special person,” he says. He cups the hand with the rose at his forehead like the brim of a baseball hat and squints out at the crowd. “I can’t see her, but she’s right back there.” He points in the general direction of our table. A wall of faces turn in my direction.
I look behind me for some other girl.
“This.” He lays the rose down on a stool beside the mic. “This is for you.”
And then he begins to play.
People say we don’t belong together
But maybe we just don’t belong
In a black-and-white world
Every guy, every girl
Singing some sugarcoated song.
Bright eyes grow darker
Searching the horizon
For the things only you can see
But I know we can get there
Yeah, I know we’ll get there
If you’ll only reach for me.
Reach out for me.
Reach.
When this town has locked you out
When the gray clouds scream with doubt
When you lose what you’re all about.
Reach.
When you don’t know where you’ve been.
And your nightmare’s closing in.
Think you’ll never love again.
Reach for me.
Oh reach, oh reach,
reach for me…
The Starting Gate
The song is good, beautiful even, but I don’t stay to hear the end of it.
With every note, every word, I feel another lifetime of redness pool in my face.
And here’s where you know for sure I’m not a nice person: After the first verse, while a boy I kissed is still standing in front of a room full of drunks, singing words that shimmer with stardust—while he’s singing them to me—I bolt.
Without even looking in his face, I grab Charlie’s hand, tug him up, and lead him out the door. My need to be released is almost a physical thing, and it makes me fidgety. Like a horse at the starting gate, I can’t get out fast enough.
In the parking lot, I can still hear Jared’s music, but not the words. It’s all muffled sound, a distant radio.
A few random people are leaning against a parking post, smoking, talking low and sloppy in that half-drunk way. Fixing my eyes down, I keep Charlie’s hand in mine as I lead him past the group, around the side of the building. When we get to the dumpster, I stop, suddenly thick with the realization that I don’t have a plan.
I look up, and sure enough, Charlie is studying me like I just sprouted a second head.
“So, you and JJ…?” he asks.
I don’t know how to answer him. In fact, I’m not sure I even have it in me to speak at this particular moment. So I don’t. Instead, slowly, I reach up and feather my fingers across Charlie’s bruised cheek.
He leans back against the cement of the building, and I’m glad it’s not too cold out. Brisk, but not bad for early October.
Without letting myself think, I stand on my toes and paint my lips ever so gently onto his.
He stops me with the same question, soft as an exhalation: “So, you’re not? You and JJ?”
“No,” I say. “We’re definitely not.”
Charlie’s smile brings out a dimple I’d forgotten he had. “In that case,” he says, and he pulls me to him.
His kiss isn’t as gentle as mine. It’s eager, messy, demanding, complicated.
Irresistible.
For a few minutes, I’m lost in the touch of him. The absolute thereness of him. I’m soaring above all the crap in my life. There’s no everything that happened or who Charlie was or who I’ve become or poor Jared singing his beautiful song to an empty chair.
And then I make the mistake of letting myself think.
When I stop kissing him back, everything feels tilted and raw. Like someone else was using my body without me knowing.
Charlie’s eyes are still half-closed as I pull back. His face is the way I imagine his face looks when nobody is watching. Vulnerable. Hiding nothing
. It makes my heart pinch.
I try to convince myself I would have made out with anyone right then just to get away from Jared and all that earnest guitar playing.
It’s not about Charlie, I tell my brain.
But it’s always been about Charlie for me. At least sort of. Only, I know it can never be about Charlie because how can Charlie be with anyone after Jamie?
Anyone, and me in particular?
Then there they are, the words I never wanted to think: How could Charlie not blame me for living when the girl he loved died?
“Sorry. Sorry,” I say.
“Sorry?”
“I shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have.”
“What? Why?” Charlie looks lost.
“Look, I can’t do this.” And I’m in bolt-mode again. I step back, pull my cell from my back pocket, and start texting Lindsey, Got to go. Now. Meet me out…
But before I finish, before I press send, Charlie’s hand claims mine. “Hey, whoa. What’s going on?”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why not?” He looks impossibly earnest. Like he really doesn’t know.
“Because,” I say. I pull my hand from his, put my phone back in my pocket. “It’s not right.”
“What’s not right?” He bends down to my level so I have to meet his eyes.
My face answers for me.
“Okay,” he says. He slides his hand down my shoulder and holds my hand again in his. “Okay. Why do you think this”—he squeezes my palm—“you and me, is a problem?”
“Jamie wouldn’t want—”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know what she’d want. And she can’t tell us.”
I remember the dream where Jamie came to me as an angelic floaty thing. I didn’t think to ask what she wanted, and what she did say was all nonsense—though it probably wasn’t Jamie in the first place, just my subconscious.
“Look, don’t you think I’ve been over all this?” Charlie asks. “I’ve been up one side of it and down the other. Like it was playing on a loop in my brain. But here’s the truth, and I just have to accept it: The truth is that Jamie’s… She’s gone. And as much as that—as much as that hurts, it’s not going to change.”
Charlie lets go of my hand and runs his fingers through his hair. He leans back against the wall again, bending one knee and propping the sole of his shoe against the cement.
“I’ve been writing more, you know, since I did that thing in Mr. Campbell’s class,” he says. “It’s like it’s just pouring out of me. And getting some of that stuff down… I can think things through for once. I can let myself—I don’t know, like I don’t have to hold it in my head the whole time. I don’t have to hold on so tight to… to…”
I look at Charlie’s hands, not his face. His left fist is flexing and letting go. Flexing and letting go.
“I’m not going to forget her. I’ll never—never. It’s just—I can’t—do we have to talk about this?”
I shake my head. “So where do we go from here?”
“How should I know?” Charlie says. I look up and the gleam from a parking lot light is reflected back in his eyes. He shrugs. “But is it going to hurt to find out?”
I lean into him then, resting my head just below his collarbone. Thinking, Yeah, this could hurt. This could hurt a lot.
But out loud, I whisper, “I guess not.”
A Song Like That
“I looked for you everywhere.”
Lindsey’s reflection is staring me down through the full-length mirror that hangs over my closet door. She puckers her lips as she unscrews her gloss, but her eyes are on my face, reflected behind her. She’s spending the night for real at my house this time, and it’s just us, so I’m not sure why her lips need to be any pinker than usual. Still, she layers on the gloss like armor.
“JJ’s up there singing his heart out. And you’ve—disappeared.” She turns to where I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed. “And when I do find you, it’s like your brain has been taken over by aliens. So, what’s the story?”
After Charlie and I were done talking, I didn’t want to wade back through the swamp of humanity in Bobby’s Barn to find Lindsey, so he walked me to my car. From there, I texted Lindsey to come out. And yeah, I was pretty spacey on the drive home. I’m not sure she got two coherent words in a row from me.
“No story,” I say, feeling my smile give me away.
“Yeah, and that goofy look on your face is… because what?” She perches beside me on the bed. “Come on, this is me you’re talking to.”
I grin and chew the skin around my fingernail, a habit I’m trying to quit.
“Or not talking to, as the case may be.” Lindsey taps her foot.
“I’m talking,” I say. “I’m talking, I’m—” I spread out my arms, which could mean anything from give me a hug to wow, the universe is huge. “It’s just—” I flop back on the bed and start making these little burbly giggle sounds that are entirely beyond my control.
“Are you—are you drunk?” Lindsey asks.
I giggle more, shaking my head and holding my sides.
“Ooookay.” Lindsey lies down on her side so her face is only inches away from mine. She sniffs, as if trying to catch a hint of the green, mulchy scent of pot. “Did you smoke something?”
“No,” I spurt out, laughing harder, even though I’m not sure what I’m laughing at in the first place.
“So while you were missing,” she says, “I happened to notice that I didn’t see Charlie anywhere either. Hmmm.” She rubs her chin in a Sherlockian gesture. “Your little giggle fit wouldn’t happen to have something to do with that, would it?”
“Kind of,” I say.
“Aha!” Lindsey squeals. “I thought so!” She pushes herself up on her knees and half bounces on the bed. “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!” she shouts.
“Shhhh,” I say. “You’ll wake my parents.”
“Tell me everything,” Lindsey whispers, poking me in the ribs.
“I guess, you know, we sort of got together.”
“Ahhh—!” Lindsey yells again, and then when she hears herself, she soundlessly mimes Ahhhhh!
“I know.” I say. “I can’t believe it.”
She curls up on the bed beside me. “So is Charlie a good kisser?”
“It’s not even really about the physical stuff. I just like being with him.”
“For the record, that’s what someone says when the physical stuff sucks.”
“No, no,” I say. “He’s a good kisser.”
Lindsey squints, like she’s trying to peer through a fog of lies.
“He’s a great kisser,” I say. “Really. Great. I mean it. Really. Like, wow!”
“You know, when you’re defensive like that,” she says, her voice tease-y, “it almost seems like you have something to hide.”
“Screw you,” I say.
She laughs. “Go on,” she says. “Great kisser, and…?”
“Great kisser, and I guess we’re just going to see where it goes.”
“Oh, geez, I bet this is going to kill JJ.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“No,” I say.
“Yeah, well, it is.”
“Jared will live,” I say. “He—he doesn’t even really know me. He’s just… full of hormones or something.”
“That song, it was really—”
“Yeah, I heard it,” I say. “Some of it.”
“And he was looking for you after. The whole time he was playing, he kept scanning the crowd.”
“Look, Jared’s nice. I’m sure he’ll find some girl who just wants to listen to him strum his guitar all day long,” I say.
Lindsey snickers. “His guitar?” she says suggestively.
“Yuck!” I say. “Where’s my soap?”
“Oh, come on,” Lindsey says. “You said it.”
“But you thought it. And anyway, what I meant was that he�
��s going to find someone right for him. Someone worth a song like that.”
“You’re worth a song like that.”
“No,” I say. “No, I’m really not.”
“Of course you are,” she says. “I’d write a song for you like that, if I wrote songs.”
“You’re such a goofball,” I say.
“Ohhh… your eyes, they remind me of marbles. Beautiful, beautiful marbles…” she sings.
I laugh. “Are you sure you didn’t smoke something? Maybe I should sniff your hair.”
“Hey, so, what about—” She sits up.
“What about what?” I ask.
“Never mind,” she says. She stretches, exaggerated. “You ready to turn in?”
“Sure.” I toss a pillow down to the bottom of my bed. It’s a twin, so Lindsey and I always sleep head to foot.
I change into sweats and toss a pair to Lindsey, then turn out the light. But as I lie there in the half dark, making room for Lindsey’s knees, I replay that stretch in my mind, and I can guess what she was thinking:
Jamie.
What about Jamie?
“Hey,” I say in the dim room. “Do you think it’s too weird?”
“What?” Lindsey’s voice is muffled by her pillow.
“You know, me and Charlie.”
“Because…?” Lindsey stalls.
“Because of what happened,” I say. “I mean, Charlie’s kind of in a no-man’s-land, right? And I have my own, I guess you’d say, issues. Do you think there’s any chance it could work?”
Lindsey doesn’t answer right away.
“He’s not really over it,” I go on, “and it’s not like I even want him to be. I mean, you don’t just get over something like that.”
“Are you over it?” Lindsey asks.
“I guess,” I lie. “Are you?”
“I guess.” After a minute, she adds, “Sometimes I really hate Kyle.”
“Yeah,” I say, and this time I’m telling the truth. “Me too.”
“Do you think he’s going to get it?”
“Get what?” I ask.
“You know, the ‘ultimate punishment.’”
Death.
I picture Kyle in an orange prison suit lying back on a metal table. Beside him, a doctor with a long coat and a fat needle waits. I imagine on the same metal table Jamie’s mutilated body, her face crusted with blood.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 10