The wind picks up and a smattering of leaves whoosh down, beautiful and doomed.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Sorry?!” I stop, face him. He stops, too. “For what?” I say.
“You know,” he says.
“I don’t know anything,” I say.
“For—” He gives a frustrated sigh. “I had a rough weekend. A rough week.”
“Yeah? Me, too.” I stare laser beams.
“I was kind of a jerk.”
“You think?”
“Kind of,” he says.
I start walking in the opposite direction and after a second, he half jogs to catch up.
“No, really,” I snap. “I want to know, what exactly are you apologizing for? Why is it, after ignoring me all week, you suddenly feel the need?”
“That was… bad, I know. And like I said, I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you—”
“Oh, don’t worry. You can’t hurt me.”
“—but I was—”
“You were what?”
Charlie putters to a stop, rubs his temples. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.” He begins to back away, and the bottom drops out of my rage, leaving me grasping.
“What happened?” I ask, and it comes out as almost a groan.
He stops, but doesn’t answer.
“Tell me,” I say. “Why…?”
“It came back.” He shrugs, shakes his head, walks off the path, down toward the water. I follow.
“It all came back.” Crouching, he sorts through the pebbles at the water’s edge. “I thought I was done, you know. I was finished feeling like that. So, so—” He waves his hand out, like trying to push some invisible something away. “After I dropped you off last Friday, when I went home, I was restless. I was happy. I climbed up the tree house out back. I just wanted the air. I wasn’t thinking.” He scoops up a handful of pebbles, stands, picks one out, and skims it at the water. I count the skips—one, two, three, four, five, six—almost to the other side of the river. “I wasn’t thinking. It was her… where we… and her sweater was there, from before. There were bugs… her sweater… I kept thinking…”
His face pales, like I’m seeing it underwater. Wordless, I place a hand on his shoulder.
“So.” The pebbles drop from his fingers, clattering to the ground. “This is me. Fucked up as ever.” He gives me a wry smile. “I was trying, but…”
“Hey, hey,” I murmur.
His eyes—sleepless, hunted—say what he can’t.
Whatever hell I’ve been through this past week, it’s been nothing compared to his.
“I’m sorry,” he says. And this time, I have no choice but to believe him.
I sneak my hand in his. There’s still grit from the rocks on his palm.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, giving my fingers a rough squeeze. “I hope I didn’t—I wish—I mean, it’s been over a year, I’m supposed to be—”
“You’re not supposed to be anything,” I interrupt. “It’s not like there’s an expiration date on any of this.” I sigh. “It’s messed up, but you didn’t mess it up. It’s not on you.”
He turns to face me, full-on, taking my other hand in his, like he’s making a solemn vow.
“I started feeling things,” he says, “with you. Things I didn’t think I’d feel again. And I lost myself in it, it was—I guess, a relief. But I won’t ever, I won’t ever—”
“You love her. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he says. “It’s not fair to either of you.”
“Fair?” I drop his hands, walk toward the water. “When did you expect anything to be fair?” I nudge rocks into a small pile with my toe. “I don’t expect you to forget her. I don’t expect anything.”
“But you should, you deserve everything—”
“Just stop there!” I humph. “No one deserves everything, Charlie. Don’t put me on a pedestal just so I’ll be out of reach. Because that, that isn’t fair.”
“It’s not as easy as—”
“Oh, come on, why not?” I’m looking at him now. His full lips slightly open, the almost imperceptible cleft in his chin.
“What?”
“It doesn’t have to be hard.”
I go to him, raise myself on my toes, and press my lips lightly against his, quick and matter-of-fact—like a handshake, but with lips. “What’s easier than that?”
He kisses me back, ragged and searching and full of long, white urgency. Not like a handshake at all.
“I can’t promise I’ll be able to put all that behind me,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “You have stuff. Everyone does. Just don’t shut me out.”
“Okay,” he says, but he still seems wary. “I can’t promise I’ll be the person you want me to be.”
“No promises,” I agree. “Got it. And for the record, I want you to be you. I want you to be my friend.”
“Hmmm.” He scratches his chin, and smiles in a way that changes everything—my mood, his mood, what can happen between us. “Do you kiss all your friends that way?”
I snort—and the sound of it surprises me. I’m not sure if it’s nerves or relief, but I feel a little-kid restlessness jolt through me.
“Just the ones with your lips,” I say, moving my face closer to his, as if I’m going in for the kiss, but instead I give him a quick grin, pull back, and skip away down the path. He follows, and my skip turns into a sprint.
“Hey!” He laughs, following fast, and before I can blink, we’re running again.
Eighteen
November 5. Charlie is eighteen today. My age. The age Jamie was when she died. All three of us the same.
The same, except Jamie will be eighteen forever.
When a person dies, they’re frozen in time. Frozen at who they were when they died.
So Jamie is frozen in goodness. She is always and forever the girl who makes time for the loser, misfit kid. Want to hang this afternoon?
Should it tell us something that Kyle thought an offer of pot would appeal to me, when all he asked of Jamie was a sympathetic ear? Yet, she is the one who answers his text, spends her afternoon beside him in that field while he rattles on about his problems. She is forever Charlie’s adorable girlfriend. Older than us, at least then, but with a little-girl innocence about things like boys with crowbars.
I see her sometimes in that field, Kyle’s boot coming down at her head. I can’t know what she was thinking, but I wonder.
Was she angry? Confused? Did she try to fight back? Was she so scared she could only scream? If she’d had jujitsu training would she have made him cry for mercy? Would she have had any mercy to spare?
I can believe she forgave him. I can believe she was, at the moment of her death, the same girl she’d been all her life. A pure heart. If there was time for such things, she probably forgave.
Of course, she never had the chance to find out the kind of person she could become once she knew her life was disposable. There wasn’t time for anger and fear to settle in, become part of her skin, of her breathing. She never walked the halls and saw her name on the boot of every boy she passed. She didn’t even know she was a target. That some miserable asshole jerked off at the thought of his hands squeezing her neck until she went limp.
Jamie. Forever eighteen.
Charlie seems totally okay with the whole birthday thing. I don’t think he’s done the math, and I’m not about to bring it up. Ever since his reappearance by the river, he’s been his old self. Charming, funny. Fine. He hasn’t cut out. There have been some moments when he seemed sad, maybe, but nothing major.
When Halloween came, for example, he said he was maybe coming down with something and asked if I was okay going without him to Desiree Ballou’s party. Which of course I was. Lindsey and I made a pretty awesome Wonder Woman/Vampire Queen duo, though she was more of a Vampire-Pirate Queen because she insisted on spicing up the black with a pink bandanna and a necklace made out of skeleton keys.
>
But afterward, Charlie never actually got sick. Maybe it was just a false alarm. Maybe he needed some alone time. Or maybe he was busy mourning his dead girlfriend.
Sometimes when we talk, there’s a fogginess I can’t cut through. I haven’t told him yet about Lindsey’s blue bear and Taylor’s strawberry candy—or how Todd visited Kyle in jail and how Lindsey and I stalked Todd. I’m pretty sure he’d just go off and do something stupid involving his fists slamming into Todd’s face. Plus, bringing it up now, after all this time has passed, just seems stupid.
Charlie said I should go out to dinner with his parents for his birthday, but I’m not about to set myself up for an hour of uncomfortable chewing, followed by who knows what—cake, communal singing, balloons. I don’t particularly enjoy celebrating my own birthday, and that’s with presents.
When I met them last week, I might as well have carried around a big neon sign reading UNCOMFORTABLE GIRL WHO LIKES KISSING YOUR SON.
Hello, Mrs. Hunt. Hello, Mr. Hunt. Smiles, smiles. Yes, thank you for the iced tea.
They were the kind of couple my mom would call attractive, but to me they just look like long-faced people in cardigans with identical brown-shoe-polish hair. Sometimes I think adults are from another country. The Land of Back Aches and Broken Dreams. I drank my tea and tried not to make eye contact.
So I text Charlie that I’ll see him after his birthday dinner. He says he’ll come by for me around nine.
Between now and then, I have my own plans. There’s something I need to do without him around.
Climb
At a quarter after six, I cruise by Charlie’s house. His silver car is still parked out front by the curb, but his parents’ minivan isn’t in the driveway. Just in case, I park my Bug down the street, a throbbing blue thumb on an avenue of well-manicured fingers.
I check to make sure no one is looking, then shimmy around the chain link gate beside Charlie’s house. Scooting down a narrow strip of grass, I slip into the Hunts’ backyard. A large tree sprawls out in the far corner, where their fence meets the Strands’. Slats nailed in the oak’s trunk make a sort of ladder leading up to a simple wooden platform, like a deck.
The sun has set, but it’s not yet dark, and the branches make black veins in the sky. I slip across the yard and begin to climb.
The platform is farther up than it needs to be. I go fast, wanting to remain unseen, my hands gripping the rough slats.
I crane my neck back. Another four slats and there’s a small hole in the floor of the tree house that I climb through. Pulling myself up, I kneel on the floor.
The boards are damp and now so are the knees of my jeans. I rub my hands, brittle with cold. I’m not sure why I’ve come.
Wet leaves, an old paperback of a Star Wars novel, a yellow plastic flashlight, and a pale blue lump of fabric.
Jamie’s sweater.
Still on my knees, I crawl closer and inspect the lump. The fabric is sour, like something that’s gotten wet, then dried stiff in the slow heat, then gotten wet again. A small bloom of mildew accents two splotches of whitish goo. Bird stuff, probably. A queasiness rises in me as I watch a dozen or more black bugs scuttling across the sweater’s surface, vanishing into the folds.
Is this why I came? To see what Charlie had seen. To see what sent him back.
It’s not my place, I know, but I pick up the sweater anyway. I stand and, with force, shake the bugs off. They make a random put-put-put as they smack against the wooden rail of the tree house. A few are flung against my jeans leg and one by one I flick them off.
The sweater was pretty once—a light, summery V-neck with a dainty crochet ruffle down the front, where the buttons meet. There’s a hole near one shoulder, and another at the waistline in the back. I take a leaf and scrub across the splotch of bird crap, trying to rub it off, but I only smear it around.
This was worn by a living girl, I tell myself. Charlie would have touched it. Unbuttoned it, maybe. Pushed it off her shoulders.
I look at my hands—wet, dirty, cold—then carefully fold the sweater, trying unsuccessfully to press out its wrinkles, and place it back where it had been.
But that isn’t right either, is it, just leaving it there on the rough boards? A small blue package of grief.
I think of all the people who wrote to Jamie in the funeral home guest book. You’re with the angels now, and Your life touched us all, and a hundred other words that essentially say the same thing: Your existence had meaning.
Because we all want to think we have a purpose, right? That we’re here for a reason. But if Kyle had gotten me instead, if I was already dead, what would my great purpose have been?
Is it pitiful that I don’t know? That I haven’t figured out yet why I was put on this earth?
So kill me now, and there’s no answer. No reason. But I bet people would still write on my page, Your existence had meaning. Because they want to believe it so badly. We’re all desperate for something so senseless to make sense.
Jamie should have had an entire lifetime to figure out why she was here, what she was doing. She should have been able to grow up—to grow old—before needing to make her beautiful mark on the world.
My cheeks are cold and damp. It’s only when I brush the wetness with the back of my hand that I realize it’s tears. I’m not a crier, but something like a sob escapes my mouth. I don’t know what makes me sadder. The waste of Jamie’s life. Or the impossibility of ever letting her death go.
The Sweater
I take it with me. It won’t fit in my jacket pocket, so I tie its arms around my waist as I climb down in the dark.
Pucker Up
Charlie texts me at 8:50 to say he’ll be about a half hour late. I plop on the bed with a sigh of relief. Since I got home, I’ve been running like a gerbil on a wheel—showering, dressing, doing my hair and makeup, wrapping up Charlie’s present.
Jamie’s sweater, stiff and sour, is sprawled on the trunk at the foot of my bed. I’m not sure why I brought it here. I have a bad habit of picking at scabs.
I roll over. Beside the sweater sits a useless purple stuffed frog Sander won at the Midland Fair and, on top of the frog’s fat front feet, the Martin Trundel poetry book. It occurs to me that I should have returned it by now; I’m not sure why I haven’t. Forgetfulness in general? Or the specific desire to forget all the weirdness with Jared?
At any rate, Jared’s been back in our gym class for a week now, and there really hasn’t been any weirdness, anyway. We say hi. He jokes in that mildly goofball way of his. I gave him a ride home on Thursday. No drama, thank goodness.
I pick up the book, too, and stuff it in my purse.
Then, because I have fifteen extra minutes, I start fooling with my makeup again, so by the time I finish, it’s way too much of everything.
Before blotting, I make a kiss-face and text Lindsey a selfie.
Pucker up, beyotch!
RED!!! I like red.
Baloons are red.
Why yes, they are.
clownnoses!starberries. Tricks are red.
Robet’s truck is red. lol
Are you drunk?
no
Are you high?
…
It’s TUESDAY.
I am too.
What?
Where are you?
with very nice boy named max.
He has a cat in his room but no one is
spposed to know.
What?
hidden cat. Like Ann Frsnk.
He is peeing
Lindsey, what’s going on?
cat not peeing. max peeing.
Who is Max?
I am lovely.
Max has a tattoo around his arm.
It is keltic. And beuatiful. Boutiful.
The hell. I all words re
Where are you?
Im stil young and pretty. Fuk Robert
Where are you? Tell me your address.
Shhhh
She attache
s a picture of a furry gray blob with ears.
Downstairs, the doorbell rings. I hear the floor creak where Mom goes to answer it. I yell down the steps, “GIVE ME A MINUTE, ’KAY?”
I dial Lindsey’s number.
“Helloooo.” She sounds airy. Definitely high.
“Hey, where are you, honey?” I ask.
“I’m right here.”
“Okay. Um, where did you meet Max?”
“He came to the store.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “He’s a college boy.”
There’s only one college in town, but I make sure. “Midland?”
“He has a lava lamp.”
“You’re in his room?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the building called?”
“Something someone president. I don’t know. The cat’s on me.” Lindsey’s voice goes up into baby talk. “Who’s a pretty kitty?”
“What room are you in?”
“Twenty.”
“You remember exactly? Twenty?”
“Because Max is twenty. It was soooo funny.”
“Okay. Should I come get you?” I ask.
“Shhh.” And then, like she’s talking to someone else, “Hey!”
“Is that Max?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She giggles.
“Hey, Lindsey, could you hand the phone to Max for a sec?”
“Whaaat?”
“Just give him the phone, okay?”
I hear some muffled discussion and then a male voice. “Hey?”
“Um, hi,” I say. “I’m Lindsey’s friend. She sounds a little out of it.”
“You could say that,” Max says. He laughs, but not in a crass way. I try to take that for a good sign.
“Are you… um, yeah, this is a little weird, but…” I keep talking, trying to find the right words. “She’s on something, right, and—”
How She Died, How I Lived Page 18