“For a long time, I’ve been bitter and twisted up into knots from the loss of my brother. He was a great guy, you know? Everybody loved him. He was bright and kind and funny. Just the best.”
“He sounds kinda … perfect.”
“Maybe I’m idealizing him. He could be an irritating know-it-all, and he couldn’t catch or hit a ball to save his life. But he was a genius, a real one – he got accepted to Harvard pre-med, with a great financial assistance package thrown in … He was everything I’m not.”
Something clicks in my mind.
“Not_A – your online name, is that what it means? Not Andrew?”
“Yeah, I was feeling kinda sour and sarcastic when I made the name up. He was special, and so good that you felt bad to envy him. My folks were so proud of him – he was their golden boy, you know? When he died, they seemed to lose … their way. So did I. We all gave up in some way. But I’ve learned something from you: we can’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond. What happened to me, to my parents, was not our choice. But who we’ve become since, is.”
“Luke –”
“Hang on, I’m trying to say something important here. I’m trying to say that we Naughtons don’t have exclusive rights to grief and misery. You lost a lot, too. Your mother, and your swimming. And you were badly injured – I know you’ve suffered. But you didn’t give up, you’re trying to move on. You keep living and fighting – that takes courage. I admire that. I admire you.”
He takes my hand, squeezes it.
“I’m not the only one who has suffered – that’s what I’ve realized. And it’s time to let go of what was, and deal with what is – now, in the present. He’s not coming back – I’ve got to accept that. And I’ve got to accept what your mother did, and know that she didn’t do it on purpose. I’m ready to forgive her, Sloane.”
But is he ready to forgive me? I need to know.
“And what about –” I begin to ask, but he’s not finished.
“It was an accident. That’s the long and the short of it – it was an accident. Yeah, she was on the cell and she should not have been. That was wrong. But if she’d just gone straight, she wouldn’t have hit Andrew. Your mom swerved to avoid those kids and there wasn’t time to swerve again to miss him. In a weird kind of way, my brother took a bullet for those kids. He saved their lives. Huh, just like him to be the hero.”
“But … but…”
Doesn’t he know? A black hole of terror and loss is opening up behind me. Just a few words will push me into it, but I have to speak them.
“Luke, in the accident, it wasn’t really her – my mother, I mean – who swerved …”
“Yeah, I know – it wasn’t a conscious decision, it’s like your instinct and reflexes take over. Like another part of her was behind the wheel.”
He doesn’t know. I just assumed he knew the details. Knew that I am the one who was indirectly responsible for Andrew’s death. I thought that he was growing to like me in spite of it. But he doesn’t even know. And if this is how angry and bitter he’s been with me when he thought my mother was to blame, how will he be when I tell him it that my hands were the last ones on the wheel? I’m going to lose him. The panic rises inside, a hot red tide.
“Luke, I need to tell you something. Something important.” My heart is in my throat now, I can hardly speak past it.
“Me too. Me first.” He looks at me and his eyes are intense and full of tenderness and a peace I’ve never seen in them before. “I’m falling for you, Sloane. I’m falling deep and fast.”
He kisses me then and God forgive me but with his mouth on mine and his hands tangled in my hair, I cannot find the words or the courage or the will to tell him the truth. I have to tell him, I know I must. But I don’t.
I can’t bring myself to kill the joy that transforms his face, or the happiness that has transformed my life. Until just a few months ago, it felt like I had lost everything: my mother, my talent, my future, my health, my beauty, my hope, and any sense of feeling truly alive. I can’t survive losing him, too. Not when I’ve just woken up from the deadness and the pain.
He leaves when the storm ends outside; inside of me it continues unabated.
30
Heaven and hell
I’m in heaven.
And I’m in hell.
Heaven is going out with Luke. (It’s official now.) Heaven is sitting in the couples’ loveseat at the cinema, watching him watching a movie. Heaven is going for long walks in the park beside the lake and having a pizza picnic in the last of the Fall sun. It’s waking up on a Saturday and knowing I’ll be spending most of the next two days with him. It’s the smile of delight that lights up his face when he first sees me in the morning, and the lingering last kiss when we say goodnight. Heaven is talking for hours and holding hands and staring at his beautiful eyes whenever I want to. And it’s his hugs, which make me feel safe and calm and wanted, like I’ve come home.
Hell is the guilt which termites holes into my happiness, and which cripples my hope with fear. Hell is holding onto the secret which has the power to destroy my heaven. It’s the deceit and the hidden and the unsaid which holds me back from completely letting go. Hell is the terror of knowing that I will lose him if I’m ever brave and honorable enough to tell the truth, and it’s knowing that unless I’m brave and honorable, I’m not worthy of him.
I’m a coward. I’m still clear on what I should do, and I still can’t bring myself to do it, especially now that I know how he feels about deceit and cheating.
And it is a kind of cheating – not telling Luke the truth. I’m betraying him into liking, maybe even loving, someone he would hate if he knew the whole truth about her. I know what I must do, but the heaven is so good and the hell of losing him would be so bad, that I do not confess. I concentrate instead on life at school, and my aunt Beryl, and Sienna’s blog, and anything else that will distract me. It’s easier to focus on someone else’s problems or bad behavior than my own.
L.J. is back at school and Perkel wastes no time getting on his case, picking on him to answer questions in class, checking his (and only his) homework on a daily basis, keeping up a steady barrage of snide comments, and reading L.J.’s every English exercise aloud to the class. I don’t think L.J. writes too badly at all, actually, even though his essays and poems are filled with zombies and violence and something he calls the “bliss of non-being”. But Perkel reads them in such a sarcastic and belittling tone that they wind up sounding moronic.
L.J. is still a walking contradiction. One moment he’s unexpectedly thoughtful or kind, and the next he’s being repulsive again. The other day, for example, he saw me walking down the hallway to Miss Ling’s room, struggling to keep all my art supplies balanced in my arms, and he offered to help me carry them. He even opened the door of the classroom so I didn’t have to touch the handle. But when I thanked him, he said, “I can think of much better ways you can thank me, Munster.” When I told him to shut up, he laughed and said he was just kidding, but I wasn’t sure. I can’t read him and that makes me feel off-balance around him.
I’m worried about him, though. At lunch yesterday, I saw him intently reading something on the cafeteria notice-board. I checked what was posted there on my way out. Unless L.J. is planning on auditioning for the school’s new acapella singing group, or has lost a pair of jazz shoes, or wants to volunteer as a mascot for the upcoming basketball tournament, then he was reading a poster about teen suicide prevention.
The Jaysters still haven’t given up their quest to discover L.J.’s real name though, for a while, they are completely distracted by the mind-blowing reality of Luke and I hooking up.
“Her?” Juliet exclaims loudly in perfect range of my hearing when Jane tells her the news. “Luke Naughton is dating her – the scar monster? I don’t believe it!”
“She must be putting out big-time. What else could the attraction be?” says Jayweedledee.
�
�Yeah,” says Jayweedledum. “I bet they spend a lot of time in bed at night. He can’t see her face in the dark.”
Juliet glares at me whenever she sees me. When she is confronted with the evidence of Luke and me sitting together in the cafeteria at lunch, or holding hands and sneaking kisses in the hallway between classes, she comes up with a new theory.
“It’s pity – that’s all it is. He feels sorry for her. Luke’s all about community service and helping the less privileged and taking care of ugly dogs. She’s an ugly bitch, too. She’s just, like, his latest project.”
I suspect that a lot of other people probably think the same thing. Luke is hot property, and he’s out of my league, no question. Hell, it’s a mystery to me why he likes me. The more time I spend with him, the more I discover how wonderful he is. He’s strong and talented and admirable. He’s a truly good person: kind and thoughtful and generous. He’s also smart and funny, despite his theory that only his brother possessed those qualities. And, of course, he’s so gorgeous he makes my eyes water.
He’s doing well in his swimming, too; he’s qualified for sectionals and is determined to make the national team. I go to all his swim meets, watching and cheering from the stands. Sienna often keeps me company, bringing her laptop and updating the Underground online news while I watch the heats. She chides me for not submitting more photographs to the gallery, but between homework, dating Luke and helping out at the shelter, I don’t have much time. Suddenly, my life is full to the brim.
I’ve confided in Sienna about Luke’s misunderstanding and my perfidy. I was half hoping she would advise me to keep the secret, but she only said, “Stop drowning in guilt and fear. Guilt demands confession and then paying your debts or making amends. And the only cure for fear is action. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do – and only you know what that is.”
I forced myself to tell The Shrink, but she won’t tell me what to do either, though she points out that both ‘fessing up and staying silent come with positive and negative consequences.
“I can’t make up your mind for you, Sloane, but I will say this: lasting relationships are built on mutual respect and honesty.”
She asks me every session if I’ve decided what to do yet. It makes me feel worse, so I’ve cancelled the last two sessions with her. Eileen would say I’m avoiding and evading. Eileen would be correct.
At least Sienna doesn’t nag me, but this might be because she’s been too busy worrying about the security on her website after a recent incident when someone tried to hack into it.
“Though why anyone would want to, I’ve no idea,” she complains to me crossly. “It’s not like I’ve got celebrity sex videos or credit card information stored on the site. You would think that they’d rather try to hack the school system – upgrade their academic records or something!”
“You think it’s someone from the school, then?”
“Who else would give a rat’s rotten rear about Underground West Lake?”
The pixie has not been in the best of moods lately. She’s been out on a few dates with a student from the local college where she’s taking an advanced course in digital photography, but I gather it’s not going well.
“I don’t know that I’m ready for college boys – they want it all and they want it now,” she grumbles.
There’s a flurry of dating happening lately: Luke and me, Sienna and her pushy college-boy; Miss Kazinsky and (if rumors are to be believed) Coach Quinn; and Juliet and the geeky Tyrone Carter. I’m cynical about the motives behind this last unlikely hook-up. Tyrone’s status and hallway cred have risen markedly – he gazes adoringly at Juliet, visibly delighted and amazed at his good fortune in landing one of the hot babes. Juliet mostly looks at Luke. If she’s doing this to make him jealous, she’s wasting her time. He is as unaware of the coy glances she throws his way as he is of the cuddles she smothers Tyrone in every time Luke is in the vicinity.
Back at home, all three of the triplets have a cold, which is keeping my aunt conveniently out of my business. I help her out by doing some grocery shopping for her, but she trusts no one to take care of the boys when they’re sick, so I’m off the hook when it comes to baby-sitting. I haven’t told her about Luke. Partly this is because it’s all so unbelievably bizarre – “Yes, thanks, I’d like another piece of pie, Aunt Beryl, and oh, by the way, I’m dating the brother of the boy who died along with mom in the car crash,” – and partly it’s out of a superstitious dread. If I say it out loud, if I tell anyone (apart from Sienna, who is an exception due to her pixie magic) that I’m in love with Luke, or even dating him, I’ll jinx it.
I’ve taken to finding, printing and sticking up awful news stories again. (First I had to straighten and repair the line of articles – our passionate hallway-kissing ripped a few pages off the wall.) The obsession had faded for a while, but now it’s back with a vengeance, and a twist. Before, I used to measure the degree of badness against my injuries and past losses, but now I measure it against my guilt and deceit and dreaded future losses. I stick up the latest report: “Mass shooting in cinema kills 12, injures 50”.
“Worse. Much, much worse,” I tell myself, comparing the killer’s crimes to mine.
Tomorrow is Saturday and Luke’s eighteenth birthday. I’ve bought him a present I know he’ll love and I can’t wait to see his reaction. I’m taking him out to breakfast, and then we plan on going over to his house to hang out and maybe watch videos of the swimming events in the last Olympics. I’ll probably stay there for lunch and we’ll have the whole day together. I’ll get to see his room and play with the other girl in his life – Banjo, his Beagle puppy. It’s going to be heaven!
I’ll meet his parents for the first time, and tell them who I am (sort of – not the whole truth, of course). I’ll have to eat at the table across from them and make conversation. I’ll see photographs of Andrew and maybe even his bedroom – which Luke tells me has been kept exactly as his brother left it that November morning.
It’s going to be hell.
31
Damage
The door opens and we’re assaulted by a baying, barking ball of fur.
“Down, Banjo. Down!” says Luke, pushing the puppy back inside the house with a foot. It immediately begins chewing on his laces.
I greet the woman who has opened the door. Luke gets his caramel hair from his mother. Her hair is thick and shoulder-length, but is somehow lifeless in a way his is not. She’s an insubstantial woman – as pale as paper and almost as thin. When I shake her hand, it’s limp and without pressure. Her face is bare of make-up and there are dark shadows under her eyes.
I don’t know what Luke’s father looks like, because he isn’t there.
“He had to go in to the office. He always has to go into the office,” Mrs. Naughton says, tonelessly.
She leads us, and the crazed puppy, into the living room of their small house and we sit – Luke and me on a sofa, and Luke’s mother opposite us in a wingback chair. The puppy drapes itself across Luke’s feet and promptly falls asleep. Mrs. Naughton fiddles with a hole in the fabric of one armrest, then picks up a glass of iced water from the coffee table between us and takes a sip, looking at me over the rim of the glass. Her eyes don’t stick on me though, or on anything, but seem to wander around the room of their own accord. It’s eleven in the morning, but the blinds on the windows are lowered two-thirds of the way.
“Luke told us about you, last night.”
I am relieved; I’ve been stewing over it all night but I still hadn’t come up with the right words to explain who I am.
“We already knew that he was dating you, of course. But last night he told us who you are. Who your mother was.”
“Mrs. Naughton – ”
“I found it difficult to understand why he would want to be with you, how he could stand it.”
“Mom!” Luke startles the dozing puppy awake.
“But it’s a funny old world and here you are, in my home,” she says
in that same lifeless voice. It’s like she’s gone, even though she’s here. Even her face is blank of expression. From the way Mrs. Naughton holds the glass and takes small sips, I’m beginning to suspect the clear liquid inside is not water. From the rosy blooms in her cheeks and the unfocused stare of her gaze, I’m beginning to suspect it’s not her first of the day. The fingers of her other hand stray to the hole in the armrest again and pull threads from the fabric.
“Mrs. Naughton, please, I really want you to know that I’m so sorry for the loss of Andrew. Death is always terrible, but when it’s your child, and when it’s caused by someone else’s negligence, it must be unbearable.”
“Oh it’s a tragedy when your children die before you. And you’re left alone.”
I’m puzzled by this. Did they lose another child? Why does she think she’s alone when she still has Luke, and her husband?
“He was a beautiful boy, Andrew. So bright, so good. He had such a future ahead of him. Now … it’s like the lights have gone out and there’s nothing left.”
“But what about –” I want to point out to her that she still has Luke, that he’s still alive, but he squeezes my hand – he’s telling me not to bother.
She’s not listening, anyway. She stares at the mantelpiece where there are at least ten photographs of a young man whom I presume is Andrew, and none of Luke, and then her gaze wanders back to me.
“He’s gone. Gone... And you’re still here.”
“I’m sorry. This is too hard for you – I should never have come,” I say, standing up. “Luke, this was a mistake. I think you should take me home, now.”
“No,” he says, taking my hand. “You’re staying. We’ll see you later, mom.”
He leads me to his bedroom. Banjo trots ahead of us. On the way, we pass Andrew’s room and I catch a brief glimpse of certificates on the wall, clothes draped over a chair, shelves jammed with books, a pair of sneakers half-tucked under the bed. There’s a half-eaten chocolate bar lying on his cluttered desk; it’s as if he might walk in at any moment. My stomach clenches.
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