Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  It took him a while—forty-three and a half hours—but he responded.

  She was on a bus on her way home from school when her phone announced a text from Brian. Even though she’d been waiting and obsessively checking for messages, she jumped when heard the personalized ringtone he’d composed one night back at Ernestine’s when they were sitting out on the roof, so she’d always know when a text was from him. It worked on her like a bell on Pavlov’s dogs. As soon as she heard the first three notes, her heart started pounding. She clicked on the message and found:

  Thx!

  Carly took it as a good sign. Those three letters—plus the friendly exclamation point!—gave her hope. It wasn’t exactly I miss you and can’t stand being alive without you by my side. But it wasn’t go away forever, either.

  The lines of communication were open, Carly told herself. And where there was communication, there was hope. She didn’t notice how much this sounded like something out of her mother’s collection of self-help books.

  Encouraged, she decided to wait a week longer, and then try a face-to-face. She would drop by String, the music store in the Village where he worked Saturdays. It would be a casual visit, a “happened to be in the neighborhood, stopping to say hi” pop-in. He would see that Carly could be normal, that she had a life outside of him. She wouldn’t make a scene, beg him to take her back, or anything like that. She would just pop in and pop out.

  And she really would happen to be in the neighborhood. She’d been planning, ever since she’d decided to write about the Triangle Fire, to visit the site. Not that there was much to see. Only a plaque on the side of a building that now belonged to NYU. But it was just a matter of blocks from String.

  She wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to get from “Hi, I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by” to back together with a clean slate, but she figured the details would work themselves out over time. The important thing was for Brian to see that the clingy, needy, jealous person he’d seen wasn’t the real Carly.

  It didn’t go as she’d imagined.

  When she got there, he was in the back, in the glassed-off room where customers could try out instruments, helping a young girl—she was maybe eleven, twelve—and her father test out electric guitars.

  Sampson, the big, dreadlocked store owner, was at the counter, doing something at the computer. “Hey, Carly. Long time no see.”

  Carly could tell by the way he nervously glanced back at Brian in the demo room that he knew something.

  The question was, what? Carly hadn’t told a soul about what she was sure was just a temporary breakup. What had Brian told people?

  “Hey, Sampson.” She tried to sound casual, and she might have been succeeding until she actually said the cheesy words, “I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop by.”

  “Oh, yeah? What brings you down here?”

  “I’m doing a paper on the Triangle Fire.”

  The look on his face told her two things: he had no idea what the Triangle Fire was and he didn’t believe her.

  And so she stupidly started rattling off facts: the number of girls who died, how the doors were locked to keep them from leaving before their shift was over, how a lot of them jumped out the window rather than burn.

  He nodded, like he was humoring her. Like he knew better.

  As she was talking to Sampson, she kept an eye on Brian and so she saw his face when he realized she was there. He did a double take. She raised her hand in a tentative wave and smiled.

  He didn’t smile. His eyes didn’t light up. He didn’t even wave back. He just turned away and kept talking to his customers.

  After a while he walked the girl and her father out of the demo room. The girl was cradling a shiny red guitar in her arms, beaming.

  He wouldn’t look at Carly. “Hey, Sampson. So Hayley here’s decided on the Squier Fat Strat.”

  “Ex-cell-ent choice. Excellent choice, young lady. ‘A double deadly tone machine with rock-star looks’ from the fine people at Fender. Come right over here, Dad. I presume you’re buying?”

  “Thank you,” said the dad to Brian, reaching out for a handshake. “Thank you so much for your help.”

  “No problem,” Brian said. Then he pointed at the beaming girl. “Good choice. Come back and show me what you learn in a couple months, okay?”

  She looked at the floor, blushing. “Okay.”

  When he turned to look at Carly, the smile disappeared. He stepped aside, holding the door open, and nodded for her to come into the demo room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to stop in and say hi. I was in the neighborhood. I’m doing a paper on the Triangle Factory fire in 1911. Did you know that was right around here?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yeah. Over near Washington Square—”

  “Carly—I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to—”

  “I just wanted—”

  The heavy glass door swung open. It was the guy who just bought the guitar for his daughter.

  “Hey,” Brian said, smiling his broad Brian smile. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” the father said. “We forgot the name of your band.” He lowered his voice, “My daughter was too shy to come in herself.”

  The girl stood on the other side of the door, looking down at her feet. Brian walked over, tapped on the glass. When she looked up, he gestured for her to come back.

  Carly slipped out the door as she walked in.

  18

  CARLY LEFT String mortified. Humiliated. Denial had disguised itself as hope and made a fool of her.

  She forgot all about going to the Triangle Factory site and spent the rest of the day crying, slowly making her way all the way uptown on foot for work that night at SJNY.

  Now that she’d been face-to-face with Brian again, she had to accept the truth. Instead of lighting up at the sight of her, Brian had recoiled.

  She had to face it. She knew she had to face it. The first thing she had to do was tell Val. She would swallow her pride. She wouldn’t just tell Val about the breakup; she’d tell her everything. About how she’d been obsessively reading his old texts, listening to his songs over and over, clicking through the pictures again and again. She wouldn’t hold back anything.

  Val would set Carly straight. Save her from herself.

  As soon as she got to Val’s room, she spilled the whole sad story.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Val. “We’ve got to nip this thing in the bud.”

  “I think we’re well past the bud stage. This is more like full bloom.”

  “Yeah, okay. Whatever we want to call it, it ends tonight. I am not letting you turn into another Katrine.”

  After they’d both showered and dressed for work, Val made Carly erase all the texts and pictures on her phone right then and there. She said Carly had to do it while she was motivated. Carly wanted Val to do it for her, but Val refused.

  “Uh-uh. You gotta hit that button yourself. It’s part of the healing process.”

  Val stood over Carly with her blow-dryer. If Carly so much as slowed down, if she looked like she was getting ready to read one of the texts or study one of the pictures, Val would blast her with hot air until she picked up the pace.

  “Uh-uh. Delete. Delete. Delete. That boy is taking up too much rent-free space in your head and it is eviction time.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Delete. Delete. Delete. His number, too.”

  They couldn’t delete the music or pictures from the iPod without Carly’s computer, so they agreed that the next day, they’d do it by phone. Carly would call Val, and Val would talk her through those.

  When they went downstairs, Val made Carly tell Luis the news. She said this was also part of the healing process. If Carly didn’t tell people, it would be too easy for her slip back into her old ways.

  When Carly had to say it out loud to him, the tears started all over agai
n.

  “God, I’m such a mess.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Luis. “I was a mess after Katrine and I broke up.”

  “You were not.”

  “Yeah, I was. I didn’t show a lot of it in public, but I was.”

  “But you broke up with her.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So usually it’s the dumpee who’s a mess.”

  “You think he’s not upset, just because he did the breaking up? I broke up with Katrine, sure. But it’s not like I stopped thinking about her. You don’t stop caring just like that. I’m sure Brian still thinks about you.”

  Carly hoped he wasn’t thinking about her right then, because she knew that if he was, he wasn’t thinking good thoughts.

  Sitting at the bar with Luis, with the truth out there for all to see, Carly felt calm. The grief was there. Her eyes were hot, and she had that exhaustion that comes after a day of tears. But she knew she’d be okay. She hadn’t realized just how hard she had been working to keep her secret. She was glad she’d told Val and Val had made her tell Luis. With Val’s support she could face the truth. It was a breakup, not a hiatus. People went through them all the time. Val was right: people lived.

  “¿Valería?” Angela called from the podium by the front door. “Ven. Vente aquí y escúchame. ¡Ahora mismo!”

  “Un momento, mamá.” Val slid off the barstool.

  Luis said, “You shouldn’t worry, you know. There’ll be other guys.”

  “I’m not worried.” It hadn’t even occurred to Carly to worry about whether or not there’d be other guys.

  “Good.”

  Val rushed back and breathlessly announced—repeating Omigod and Dios mío—that Bernie Williams—the former Yankee center fielder and pride of Puerto Rico—was coming in for dinner that night.

  Val threw her arms around Carly. “He’s going to sit in with the band!”

  The first thing Carly thought when she heard this news was how the Quinn family loved Bernie Williams. Especially Sheryl. Until she spent the summer hanging around the Quinn family, Carly had been only vaguely aware of Bernie Williams. She knew who he was, of course. You couldn’t live in New York and not have a passing acquaintance with the Yankees’ roster. Thanks to Val she even knew that Bernie Williams was Puerto Rican, despite the misleading name. But she hadn’t known anything about his music. And then all summer long, whenever they were losing a tough game, Sheryl would put his CD on at full volume and dance around Ernestine’s kitchen. She said it brought them good luck. Sometimes—about half the time—it did.

  Now Bernie Williams was coming to SJNY.

  Sheryl needed to know this. She and Carly were friends, right? And a friend would let a friend know if there was a possibility of meeting her idol, right? Carly could reserve a table for Sheryl, and she could drive down from New Paltz in a couple hours.

  “Really? Wow. What time?” Carly stood up and turned toward the ladies’ room, her phone in hand.

  “Not till late. Ten o’clock,” Val said.

  Good, Carly thought, she’ll have time to get here.

  From a stall in the ladies’ room, she called Ernestine’s. That number had escaped Val’s notice. As she counted the unanswered rings, she imagined Ernestine’s cluttered kitchen. Empty. With the old-style yellow wall phone sending its ring through the big empty house.

  There was no answer, and so she left a breathless message for Sheryl and told her to call back if she wanted Carly to try to hold a table for her.

  Angela was strict about phones at SJNY. A sign by the podium and a note on the menu asked customers to silence theirs and take any conversations outside. She said it would be totally tacky for her staff to be checking messages or texting or whatever while they were supposed to be taking care of customers. Employees weren’t even supposed to carry their phones at work. That way they wouldn’t be tempted.

  Most nights Carly and Val left theirs in a cabinet in the coatroom.

  But that night, when it came time to put their phones away and Val offered to take Carly’s, she said she’d do it herself, making an excuse about needing to check with her mother about picking up Jess the next day.

  All night long, while people around her were enjoying themselves and each other and the music, all she could think about was whether Sheryl would call back.

  Every chance she got, Carly called Ernestine’s again. From the linen closet, the walk-in fridge, the coatroom.

  Sheryl never picked up the phone.

  It was closer to eleven when Bernie and his entourage arrived, and by then SJNY was completely packed. The dining room was full, the bar was five deep, and there was a line out the door. The band, Los Postizos, already had a huge following both in New York and in San Juan. Somehow word that Bernie Williams was going to play with them spread through uptown Manhattan and over to the Bronx, and it seemed like all of Spanish-speaking New York had come out for the party.

  As Angela led Bernie through the dining room to his table, the place went nuts. People stood up. The band broke into a fast and funky, Latin-jazz version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” complete with congas, bass, guitar, and a full horn section.

  A lot of New Yorkers go out of their way to be unimpressed by celebrity—or to appear unimpressed because they like to think of themselves as celebrities waiting to happen. They think living in the city places them above the ordinary citizens of the world. If one of those New Yorkers passes, say, Scarlett Johansson on Fifth Avenue, he’ll check her out, for sure. And he’ll probably tell his friends about it later, but he won’t let his excitement show out there on the street. And he’d never ask for an autograph.

  At SJNY nobody was pretending to be unimpressed. People kept a respectful distance—after all, the man hadn’t even sat down yet. But no one was playing it cool. Bernie Williams was in the house, and the house was very, very happy.

  Except Carly. Carly was miserable.

  All around her, people were clapping, dancing, waving, throwing kisses, snapping cell-phone pictures. She was standing against a wall with her hand resting on her phone, her eyes locked on the door, hoping. If you’d asked her then, she would have told you that all she was hoping for was that Sheryl would get a chance to meet her idol. She believed it herself. But of course what she was hoping for was that not just Sheryl but the whole lot of them would show up and it would be like it was before.

  Before she ruined everything.

  There was one brief moment when she felt like she was actually at the party and not watching it on TV. It was close to midnight. Bernie was up onstage with the band, and the whole restaurant had turned into one giant dance floor.

  Val came over, smiling and holding her hands out, insisting Carly dance with her. Reluctantly, Carly put her hands in Val’s and let herself be pulled away from the wall. As she followed Val’s lead—shook her hips and shimmied her shoulders—she experienced a few blissful moments of freedom. She felt the music traveling through her body and stopped looking at the whole thing as something Brian was missing, something that would be a hundred times better if Brian were by her side. When Val lifted her arm and twirled Carly once, twice, three times around, Carly’s phone came flying off the waistband of her skirt. It clattered across the floor, landing at Angela’s feet.

  “Oh. Wow. I totally forgot I had that,” she mumbled as she rushed to pick it up.

  She would soon lose track of her lies, but that one, to Angela, felt creepy. Angela had always been so nice to Carly. She gave her the job, and let her work as much or as little as she wanted. Angela didn’t even notice the phone or hear Carly’s lie. The music was too loud, and she was too distracted.

  Later that night, Carly’s phone vibrated as she lay half sleeping on the pullout in Val’s room. She’d turned off the ringer so if Sheryl called back she wouldn’t wake Val.

  Her heart sank when she saw BRIAN on the caller ID. This couldn’t be good.

  He didn’t even say hello. “You called my mom?”

&
nbsp; “Um. Yeah,” she whispered, hoping not to wake Val, hoping he’d take the hint and lower his voice, too. “Did she tell you why?”

  “I know why you said you called her.” He didn’t lower his voice. If anything, it got louder. “I know you called her eight times.”

  Carly rolled off the bed, holding the phone to her chest to muffle the sound as she stumbled across Val’s room and down the hall to the bathroom. Eight? Could she really have called eight times?

  She turned on the light, closed the bathroom door, and sat on the cold tile floor with her back against the door.

  “She wasn’t home. I just kept trying because—”

  “She was home, Carly. We were all home. We all heard.”

  When she’d called, she’d imagined the old phone’s retro ring echoing through dark, empty rooms. Across the room, on the desk where Sheryl kept her computer, they had a more contemporary phone, complete with caller ID and an answering machine. But Sheryl always kept that phone’s ringer off, because she liked the sound of the old one. She said it reminded her of Ernestine.

  “You were there?”

  “Yup. Drove up after work. It’s her birthday, and we were having a little family party before our gig at Pi-Ep, and we had to turn all the phones off because you wouldn’t stop calling and what I want to know is—”

  Carly pictured that scene. All three of the boys, plus Liam’s parents, sitting around Ernestine’s table, listening to her squealing message. She cringed as she imagined the looks exchanged, the eyes rolled, the elbows dug into Brian’s side.

  “—am I going to have to change my number? And my mom’s, too?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “First you come by my work.”

  “Brian, I—”

  “Then you call my mom? Come on, Carly. You don’t want to be that girl, do you? That’s not you.”

  “No. I don’t—I’m not—I wasn’t—I just wanted to tell Sheryl about Bernie Williams, that’s all.”