by Tom Leveen
“It’s no big,” Becky said behind me.
“Clearly, you’re not referring to the TV,” I told her.
She snickered, which made me feel good. I’d almost forgotten I was there to talk to her about the Matthew thing.
But talk about what, exactly? I couldn’t decide. Mostly I wanted to find a way to be able to talk to her again like we used to. I couldn’t figure out how to do that without bringing up how it felt to have caught them the way I did. Which would by necessity include telling her how much I cared about her, which could end up getting back to Sydney, who, I assumed, believed my days of crushing on Becky Webb were over.
I moved toward the fireplace to look at the photos. Becky as a baby. Some young guy with her color hair. Becky in a soccer uniform, early grade school. The same young guy in a high school baseball uniform.
“Who’s this?” I asked, pointing to the guy. He looked like an all-star something or other.
“Ugh. William. My brother. He’s a cocksucker.”
“Literally?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. He’s a jerk.”
I almost snapped my fingers when I realized where I recognized him from. This was the guy who’d sat beside her last year in the cafeteria. Not a boyfriend, not even a student—her big brother.
“I saw him at school once last year, right?”
I thought I saw Becky’s shoulders tense. “Yeah,” she said in a sharp bark. “Like I said. Jerk.”
I fell back into step behind her as she walked down a long, tiled hall toward her room. “Why’s that?”
“Because he told me the truth.”
“Doesn’t the truth set you free?”
Becky stopped cold and whirled on me. “No, it doesn’t,” she snapped. “It just makes you go ass-over-elbows crazy in the head.”
I am so dumb.
“Sorry,” I said.
Becky rubbed her eyes. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not you. He told me Mom and Dad were planning on getting a divorce because of me, but because of work they had to stay together, and that as soon as I graduate, they’ll finish the job. That’s all.”
That’s all? I thought. What a messed-up thing to tell someone.
“What do you mean, ‘because of you’?”
“He’s my half brother,” Becky said.
“Your mom was married bef— Oh.” Call me Captain Obvious.
“Yeah,” Becky said. “Oh. See, according to William, Mom had a little romp with the pool boy, or the tennis pro, or the mailman … whatever porn cliché you want to choose. And a few wakachicka wakachickas later, enter little old me.”
“Did you ask them if it’s true, though?” I said carefully. “I mean, if he’s a jerk, maybe—”
Becky spit out a laugh void of any trace of merriment. “Ask them?” she repeated. “I don’t have to. They have separate goddamn bedrooms. When they’re both here at the same time, that is. Which is, oh, once every never.”
“Why do they stay together? I mean, if they have separate rooms, that sounds serious. People get divorced all the time with kids involved.”
Becky pursed her lips. “Ready for this?” she said. She lowered her voice, as if imparting a great secret. “It might cause a scene at the club.”
“What club?”
“The country club,” Becky said. “Golf, tennis, that kind of thing. Dad plays the former, Mom plays the latter. If they got a divorce now, people would talk, don’tcha know. Can’t have that. Not yet, anyway. See, it’ll be easier on their precious professional and social lives to pretend like everything’s fine until I get out of here. That way they can be seen as brave and caring for sticking together for the sake of their younger child. You know, the one with the problems.”
I had no idea what to say after that. What problems? I screamed in my head. You can’t have any problems—you drive a new car at fifteen without a license, you live in a swank part of town, you’re talented, you’re beautiful …
The Matthew thing, that was a mistake, a—an error in judgment, that’s all. We all made mistakes, right? Didn’t we?
“They’ve both got clients there,” Becky said, probably in response to the confused expression I wore. “Lots of clients, lots of money. A divorce could ruin all that, at least at the moment.”
“What do they do?” I ask as we continued down the hall.
“Hell if I know. Insurance or something.”
We reached her bedroom door. She opened it and went in.
She opened her bedroom door. For me. I could barely breathe.
Becky tossed her backpack on the floor and paused to yawn and stretch. When she did, her midnight-blue shirt lifted up an inch or two, and the small ribbon of skin I saw made my eyeballs spin. I’d have given anything to touch her there. My god, it was just her waist, but it was killing me.
Not wanting to get myself into any more trouble than I already was, I began studying her room, which mine would have probably neatly fit into, memorizing its every texture, its every essence. The walls were off-white, with a black-bladed ceiling fan above. A smooth, polished desk sat pushed into one corner, with a row of books neatly lined above it. One was the old copy of Night Shift I’d seen her reading that first day in the cafeteria. The desk matched a bureau and vanity along the opposite wall. She had an attached bathroom off one corner. Her bed—a queen, I thought—was covered with a floral-patterned comforter.
Becky flopped onto her bed and began massaging her scalp. “So, this is it,” she said. “We have arriven. What’s on your mind?”
Not daring to sit beside her, I chose her black leather swivel desk chair instead. “Huh?” I said.
“You wanted to talk about something?”
“Oh!” I said. “Yeah. Right. Well. I guess …”
She pulled her legs up and crossed them on her mattress, turning to face me more squarely. I swear, the look on her face … she had no idea what I was going to say.
Which made two of us.
“Are your parents home?” I blurted out.
“Nah. Dad’ll be by in a bit, probably. Maybe.”
“He sells insurance, huh?” Quite suddenly, I did not want to bring up Matthew at all.
“Sells it, buys it, trades it, embezzles it, takes it out for drinks … I dunno, couldn’t tell ya.”
“How about you, you any good at math?”
“Probably.”
I laughed, but she didn’t.
“Hey, you’re in Honors English, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to conceal my surprise that she knew this about me. “Are you?”
“Heh. No,” Becky said, rolling her eyes. “I’m an exceptional student.”
I knew what she meant: she was in the Exceptional Student Program, which, despite its name, was basically for all the burnouts, idiots, and losers of the school. Dumbed-down classes. I’m just calling it what it is, okay? Ask Justin; he’d been in those classes since freshman year, and he’ll be the first to admit it’s where all the dumb kids—who aren’t dumb enough to drop out—end up.
And she didn’t belong there. How could a student perform the lead role in a play as well as she did and yet be thought of as stupid?
“Really,” I said. I didn’t want to sound as shocked as I was. Fictional Becky wasn’t dumb, and I didn’t think Real Becky was either.
“That’s what they tell me,” Becky said. “Kind of a misnomer, don’t you think? ‘Exceptional’?”
See, that’s what I meant. A dumb kid wouldn’t use a word like “misnomer.”
“I’ve always thought so,” I said.
“It’s a hoot,” she said.
“I don’t think you belong there,” I said.
“You don’t? How’s that?”
“You’re not stupid.”
“Stupid has little if anything to do with it, Sparky,” she said. “It has everything to do with …”
She stopped herself and bit her lip. Damn. Shoot me. If I was a tenth as debonair a
s my fictional characters, I would have eased her down on the bed right then and there. Alas, I was only me.
“With?” I asked, praying my jeans were concealing where my mind was headed.
“With what you can get away with when no one’s looking.”
The phrase was loaded, I could feel it, but I couldn’t tell how. Then it hit me.
“Like getting high.”
“Sure,” she said. “For example.”
I don’t know what my expression revealed, but Becky squinted at me and added, “Does that bother you?”
“Not— I mean, it just surprised me, is all.”
“Why?”
Because you’re perfect, I thought.
“Because you’re different,” I said.
“Am I, now!”
I shrugged.
“Don’t you ever want to just forget about everything for a while?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I only do it on very specific days, okay?”
“What days?”
“Days that they’re looking for it.”
I started to push the question, but Becky laughed—whether it was to herself or at me, I couldn’t say—and spoke again before I could.
“So how do you do it?” she said.
“Do what?”
“Forget about everything for a while.”
“Oh. Write, I guess.”
“One-act plays?” she asked, wriggling her eyebrows.
“That was my first,” I said. “Mostly I write … stories.…”
Uh-oh. Didn’t mean to say that. What if she asked me—
“What do you write about?”
Danger! Retreat! What the hell had I gotten myself into?
“All sorts of things, I guess.”
“That’s cool,” Becky said. “You never said anything about that before. Can I read some of it?”
I could’ve laughed out loud. “Um, yeah, sure,” I said. I could always dig up one of my old horror stories or something, I figured. And as terrified as I was, with her coming so close to finding out what—or who—I generally wrote about, having her ask me to read something made my breath go shallow.
Her door was still open, and through it, I heard the front door open and close. The click-clack of business shoes against the white tile in the foyer. Very adult noises. My daydream of lying beside her on her bed ended abruptly with me getting gut-shot with a single blast of her father’s pearl-handled .45 pistol I conjured just for the occasion.
I tensed. Becky grinned.
“Don’t worry, it’s just my dad,” she said.
“It’s okay that I’m here?”
She held up a finger. “Hi!” she called through the open door.
I heard things being set down, keys jingling, the fridge being opened. No response.
Becky raised her eyebrows at me. “See?”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
But then I heard his heavy, leather-clad feet clacking. Headed this way. I got nervous all over again.
“Chill out, Sparky,” Becky said, and stretched casually out on her bed. “It doesn’t matter.”
I almost begged her to sit up. Her relaxed position—T-shirt creeping upward just an inch—gave the impression we’d been up to some bit of naughtiness and I’d just leaped to the desk chair to avoid looking guilty.
Didn’t she have any idea how the scene would look to her father walking in? That my life was in mortal peril?
Mr. Webb showed up in her doorway, riffling through mail. Again in a suit, again looking almighty and powerful.
He gave me the briefest nod in the history of dismissals, and said to Becky, “Did you make up that test in math?”
“Nope,” Becky said carelessly.
“Why is that?”
“I’m failing everything anyway,” she said, running her fingers through her short hair. “So I’ll probably drop out, go live on the street somewhere.”
“You think this is real funny, don’t you, Rebecca.”
“Don’t you see me laughing?”
Mr. Webb snorted. “Fuck you,” he said, and went back down the hall, re-riffling his mail.
The room became an igloo, all ice and chill. I stared at the empty hole of her doorway, seething and scared. Scared of what, I wasn’t sure. Possibly of what I was considering doing to that asshole with my bare hands.
“Told ya,” Becky said, and flipped over onto her stomach. Suddenly, she buried her face into her pillow, fists gripping it and pressing it up over her ears, and screamed. Screamed.
The sound tore me in half. My first, most base instinct was to go to her, but I didn’t.
After a few minutes of breathing heavily, while I sat there being silently stupid and useless, Becky pulled herself back up to a sitting position, her face splotched red. I was glad to see there were no tears in her eyes.
“Anyway,” she said, and blew bangs off her face. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Are you really failing everything?”
“That’s why you wanted to talk to me? To ask about my scholastic achievement? Gotta say, Ty, that doesn’t exactly get my motor running.”
“But are you?” I persisted. Because in my stories, she was a straight-A student. Possibly valedictorian. It was part of her perfection.
“Maybe not failing,” she said. “I mean, I do need Daddy to pay for college, right? Somewhere out of state. I’ll be fine.”
She winced when she said it. Slightly, but it was there.
“So that’s our big talk, huh?” she said.
“No, um … I just wanted to ask you about …”
As I tried to find the words to confront her about Matthew, I realized I’d already decided I didn’t want to know after all.
There was nothing to be gained. Even if I asked her if they were dating, so what if they weren’t? Would I ask her out, then? No. It was too risky now. I was in her bedroom, for god’s sake, and I wanted to be invited back.
“… about whether you think I should stick around the drama department,” I finished.
“Totally,” Becky said. “You did great. And everyone really likes you.”
But why don’t they like you? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“Okay, cool,” I said. “Thanks.”
Becky slowly smiled at me, tilting her head, giving me a quizzical look. I had no idea what she was thinking. Suddenly, she shook herself, like she’d been chilled.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said. “You want a ride home?”
I walk back to the wall, where Sydney has resumed sitting. Beyond her, at the table, Justin is trying vainly to win an arm-wrestling contest with Robby.
“You don’t know the first thing about Becky,” I say to Sydney.
“But you do?”
“I know enough.”
Sydney shrugs. “Okay. What do you want to do, then? Are we done here?”
“Hey, I didn’t invite you to come scouring the city park system for—”
“No, I mean, are we done, Tyler.”
“It doesn’t look like that would upset you.”
“Would it upset you?”
“I don’t know.” I pause. “You can do better.”
“Wow, thanks,” Sydney marvels. “You want to break up to save my poor soul from you?”
I don’t reply.
Sydney stands back up, comes to me, and takes my face in her hands. I start to resist, then give up. Sydney puts a single, gentle kiss against my lips. It’s not unlike putting on your favorite sweats in the middle of winter—warm, comforting, and familiar. Even though you know they’re threadbare, full of holes, and on the verge of disintegrating.
“I’m going to do you a favor,” she says, still holding me, forcing me to look into her eyes. “I’m going to break up with you right now. Done. Snap. It’s over. See, that wasn’t so bad. But I’m telling you, Tyler … your ‘love’ isn’t going to be enough for her. Hear me?”
What am I supposed to do, say yes?
“She can only hurt you,” Sydney adds. She gives me another kiss, this time on the cheek. Her hands drop from my face. “I at least never did that.”
I can’t argue that point.
“I’ll make it easy for you,” Sydney says, pulling her keys out of her pocket. “Don’t call. Don’t text me. Don’t come over. We’ll see each other Monday, and we’ll be civil, and that’ll be that. Okay?”
I nod slowly. The reality of my new situation is not sinking in very quickly.
“Okay,” Sydney says. “Take care of yourself.” She waves at the table. “Bye, boys!” she calls.
Robby waves. Justin cries out, “Later on, Pink Floyd!”
Sydney stops. “Okay, what’s up with the Pink Floyd thing? Every time I ask—”
“They just laugh,” I finish for her. “One of the founders of the band was named Syd Barrett.”
I say this even as I’m still trying to ascertain who and where I am now without her.
“Oh.” Suddenly, she giggles. “Oh! Really? Wow. Who knew?”
Sydney draws one finger beneath one eye. Nothing more. She tips her head backward. “See ya in English.”
Without waiting for a response, she walks back to the white Sentra, climbs in, and drives out of the parking lot. It occurs to me she still has the magazine.
I have the decency to wait until I can no longer see the car before calling Becky.
It’s almost midnight.
“Did I ever tell you your girlfriend wants to kick my ass?”
It was the fourth or fifth time I’d been to Becky’s house since rehearsals for the one-act plays started. I was on her bed—let that little bit of info sink in for a moment—with my back against her headboard, chowing on a bowl of microwave popcorn while she sat at her desk working on a book report for her English class. The book? To Kill a Mockingbird. She had to ace that one.
I choked on a piece of popcorn skin. “Say what?”
Becky tossed a wry grin over her shoulder at me. “Well, okay, maybe that’s overstating it. She said to stay out of her way.”
“When did she say that?” I demanded. I reached for my phone to call Sydney and yell at her.
“Oh, man, this was the first day of school,” Becky said, twisting her hips in the chair to swivel it back and forth. “She walked up to me out of nowhere and said, ‘I’m going out with Tyler Darcy now. I’m asking you as a friend to please stay out of my way.’ ”