Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  “You’re doing it,” Andrew said. “Right now. By telling your side. If people still don’t believe you afterwards, you did all you could do.”

  I nodded, obediently, but I was unconvinced. “You know what drives me crazy most of all?”

  Andrew bit into his slice, releasing a shiny rivulet of oil that trickled all the way to his wrist. He caught it in his mouth before it disappeared under the cuff of his sweater, sinking his teeth into his flesh. I watched the white bite marks recede from his skin.

  “The Dean Stalwarts,” I said. “I think I hate them more than I hate Dean. Especially the women. You wouldn’t believe the crap they send me. Still.” I adopted the stern voice of a midwestern church lady with multiple chins and hairy knees. “The Lord knows what you did and you will answer to him in your next life.” I ripped apart the crust of my pizza. “Fucking inbred Jesus fuckers.” I cowered at my own words, immediately regretful. Luke might laugh when I said stuff like that, but that was not what Andrew wanted from me. Broken, I reminded myself, that’s what works on him. “Sorry. It’s just, if they even knew what Dean did to me.”

  Andrew took a sip of his soda. “So why don’t you tell them?”

  “It’s the one thing . . .” I sighed. “It’s the one thing my mom doesn’t want me to talk about. Luke doesn’t either. He knows what happened with those guys, of course, but I don’t want his parents to know about that night. It’s humiliating.” I found a piece of crust without any red and nibbled on it. “It’s not just for my mom or Luke though. I’m hesitant to go on the record about this too, especially when it comes to Liam. It’s a serious allegation to make against someone who is always going to be fifteen in everyone’s minds.” I watched a group of teenagers tease each other on the sidewalk, Starbucks cups in their hands. Coffee tasted like gasoline when I was that age, now it’s lunch. “A fifteen-year-old who was chased into a classroom and shot in the chest. Something about it sits funny, even with me. I don’t know. Haven’t his parents been through enough?”

  Andrew sighed. “That’s a tough one, Tif.”

  I wrapped my hands around my shins. “What would you do, if you were me?”

  “If it were me?” Andrew dusted crumbs off his lap and shifted so that his knees pointed at me. “I think there is a way you can be honest but not speak ill of the dead. And I certainly wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to expose Dean for what he really is.” The edge of his knee grazed my thigh by accident, and he quickly pulled it back. “There is no one in this world who deserves that honor more than you.”

  I let the tears rise to the surface and turned to him to let him see. It didn’t take much. My chest felt like a washcloth, wringing, wringing. “Thank you.”

  Andrew smiled at me. He had arugula in his teeth, and I loved him more.

  I took my shot. “Want to drive by Bradley and see if anything’s going on tonight?” I had pictured us doing this, of course, I just didn’t think I would actually ask. But the sky was losing its fight against the dark and there was only the crust left on Andrew’s pizza and I couldn’t let him go yet. Andrew said yes in a way that made me think he had been waiting for me to ask, and my heart extended its beat to every limb in my body.

  Andrew offered to drive. He had a BMW, but it was the perfect amount of weathered to convey that old money nonchalance I will never naturally project. There were golf clubs in the backseat and an empty Starbucks cup in the center console. Andrew reached for it. “Hand me that, would you?” he asked. As I passed the cup his way I caught ‘Whitney’ scribbled on the side. There was a line struck through the boxes for latte and nonfat milk. I couldn’t think of a more apt description for Andrew’s nothing-burger wife: Whitney is the type of woman who drinks Starbucks nonfat lattes.

  Andrew chucked the coffee cup in a nearby trash can and climbed behind the wheel. He turned the car on, revealing he had been listening to the nineties station on Pandora. Third Eye Blind wailed, eerily. How many times had I driven these same streets, listening to these same songs? So long ago that this situation, Andrew and I next to each other in his car, would have aroused concern. It still did now, just for different reasons.

  It wasn’t a long drive to Bradley. A left onto Lancaster Avenue, another left onto North Roberts Road, and a right onto Montgomery. Bradley kids frequently walked to this Peace A Pizza before they passed their driving tests. I used to do it with Arthur all the time.

  The soccer field stretched out on our left, empty and stubborn summer green. Andrew’s large hand flicked the turn signal, and we waited patiently for an opening in traffic. Then we were blazing alongside the soccer stands, passing the opening to the path I used to take to Arthur’s house. Mrs. Finnerman never moved away, remained visible as the mother of the boy who gleefully plotted the death of his classmates at the prestigious Bradley School. The media lamenting, “How could it happen here?” and, for once, really meaning it. School shootings belonged to the Midwest middle-class, strip-mall towns where there was no Ivy League legacy and guns were given as stocking stuffers. The car sputtered at the curb, and Andrew turned to me. “Wanna break in?”

  I looked out the window at the school’s black eyes. More times than not, I had entered Bradley with vomit roasting in my throat. I should have felt it now, a sort of Pavlovian response to the place, but Andrew was like a net, keeping the dread out. I was vaguely aware that this was something Luke had done for me once, when we first met—reminded me that hope and warmth resided in me, so that even sleep was possible—when Andrew reached for me and I started out of my seat. “Sorry.” He smiled, and his fingers fiddled with my seat belt buckle. “This sticks sometimes.”

  “No, sorry, you just surprised me,” I stammered. I heard a click, and the pressure on my chest lessened.

  The Athletic Center was unlocked. “Way to go, Bradley,” I muttered, and Andrew murmured his agreement as he held the door open. Bradley should have better security measures in place after what happened, but the school stood strong against state and media pressure to erect metal detectors and hire armed security guards. As far as the administration was concerned, this was a one-time incident and there was no reason to further terrorize students by infringing on their privacy and subjecting them to random pat downs by trigger-happy rent-a-cops. They had the support of the parents too, as so many of them were graduates of Bradley themselves, and no one wanted to see the institution that J. D. Salinger’s first wife attended held to the same security standards as an inner-city public high school.

  We descended the stairs into the basketball courts. “Pretty sure shoes like that are not permitted on these floors.” Andrew nodded at my suede flats, the ones with the clunky silver heels, and started for the carpeted flooring that ringed the court.

  I ignored him, stepping onto the polished maple. My shoes ticked off a few beats, and Andrew stopped and watched me drag my heel along the surface, drawing a fuzzy white line that ended with an ear-piercing squeak. He stepped off the carpet next to me, grinding the heel of his loafer into the floor, matching my mark.

  The gym deposited us in the Science wing, where a brass framed poster of the periodic table of elements made me smile. “You know Mr. Hardon?” Mr. Hardon was the Honors Chemistry teacher. He had a mustache that twitched involuntarily, and due to his unfortunate name and odd disposition, he was mostly known as a pervert and referred to as Mr. Hard-On.

  “You mean Mr. Hard-On?” Andrew grinned, and it wiped the fourteen years off his face.

  I stopped walking. “You knew that’s what we called him?”

  “Tif, the entire teaching staff called him that. His name was literally Mr. Hard-On.” He tipped his chin at me, an ask for more credit. “It was a logical leap to make.”

  My laugh somersaulted down the empty hallway, hit the seven steps to the old mansion. Ascend them and the cafeteria was to the right and the English wing was to the left. I thought about that sound ricocheting in the space the Shark and I had crossed, after we’d lost Liam, and immediately wished
I could reel it back.

  The computer lab appeared on our right, once such a throwaway room, now stocked with iPads mounted on futuristic looking stands. The dark room held our image in the glass, looking in.

  Andrew pressed his knuckles into the pane. “I can’t even imagine what everyone said about me.”

  “They didn’t say anything. Everyone loved you. We were all crushed when you left.”

  The glass caught Andrew dropping his head to his chest. “Those Bartons, they play dirty.” He eyed me in our reflection. “It would have been my last year anyway. Teaching was always a layover for me until I grew up a little. I just wasn’t ready to get a real job after I graduated. Though”—he swished his mouth side to side, considering—“I probably would have stayed on longer after what happened. At least another year to help you guys out.”

  This had never even occurred to me, that I could have had him for more time than I did. Anger tightened my chest as I realized how Mr. Larson was just one more thing Dean had taken from me.

  We continued down the hallway, arriving at the entrance of the Junior and Senior Lounge. I stepped inside, the space still intimidating in its unfamiliarity. I’d rarely spent time there, not even as a senior. There was an exclusive code to the place even when you were of age, and it wasn’t a spot where the marginalized could enjoy a free period. It wasn’t like I was completely friendless for my remaining years at Bradley. I had the Shark. We’d been really close, but we lost touch once we got to college. I still regret that. I also had some of the girls on the cross-country team, which I continued to sign up for every year. I really did love running before I made it into something torturous and hard, something I did to impress Luke. There was a solace that settled in me as I collected the miles beneath my feet, a total absence of self-doubt.

  Andrew lingered in the open doorway. He was so tall he could rest his hands against the arch in the ceiling. He leaned forward, his broad chest stretching even wider, his body blocking the way. I used to play this game when I first began to toe the line of adolescence, when my boobs came in and I was hungry for the boys my age to catch up: I’d scan the damp basement room containing whatever seventh-grade party I was attending, and wonder which boy was strong enough to overtake me. Whoever he was, no matter how pimpled and squeaky, if he was big enough to hurt me, I wanted him. It’s something I’ve come to understand about myself—I want someone who can hurt me but won’t. Luke has failed me there. I know Andrew wouldn’t.

  “Do you think about Arthur ever?” I asked him.

  Andrew slipped his hands—all but his thumbs—into his pockets. The body language expert at The Women’s Magazine told me that when someone puts his hands in his pockets, he’s feeling shy—unless he continues to reveal his thumbs, in which case it’s a sign of confidence. “A lot actually, yes.”

  I nodded. “I do too.”

  Andrew took a few steps into the lounge, closing the distance between us and setting off all my signals like an airplane in distress. If he wanted to cross this line, he could, this place had ground what remained of my steely resolve fine as flour. There was nothing left of the day but gray, and with the white of the room bruising all around us, we could have been in a black-and-white movie. “What do you think about when you think about him?”

  I traced the arch of his rib cage with my eyes while I considered the question. “I think about how smart he was. Savvy smart. Arthur understood people in a way I never will. He could really read them. I wish I could do that.”

  Andrew took a few more steps closer, until he was right in front of me, resting his elbow on the high ledge of the window. There was just the slightest curl to his top lip. “You don’t think you can read people?”

  “I try.” I smiled, pleased. Was this flirting?

  “You’re very grounded, Tif.” He pointed right at my gut. “Don’t ever doubt this.”

  I looked down at his finger, inches from my body. “You know what else?” I asked.

  Andrew waited for me to continue.

  “He was funny.” I looked out the window, at the low frame of the quad. “Arthur was funny.” I said that to Luke once, and he recoiled from me.

  Andrew’s eyes crinkled at an old memory of Arthur. “He could be very funny.”

  “But I don’t feel bad,” I said, quietly. “Is that bad? I don’t feel bad about what I did to him. I feel nothing.” I slid my hand from left to right—this is how flat it all is. “I feel neutral when I imagine killing him.” I sucked in a breath and released it, the sound like blowing on a hot bite of food. “My best friend thinks I’m still in shock over it. That I’ve blocked out any emotion to spare myself the trauma.” I shook my head. “I wish that was it, but I don’t think it is.”

  Andrew pinched his eyebrows together and waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, he asked, “So what do you think it is then?”

  “That, maybe”—I sunk my incisors into my lip—“I’m a cold person.” I rushed out the next part. “That I’m selfish and that I’m only capable of feeling about things that benefit me.”

  “Tif,” Andrew said, “you are not selfish. You’re the bravest person I know. To go through what you went through at your age—and not just go through it, but survive it and thrive like you have—it’s remarkable.”

  I was holding back tears now, terrified I would scare him off with what I was about to say next. “I can stab my friend to death but I can’t admit I’m about to marry the wrong guy.”

  Andrew looked sick. “Is that true?”

  I thought about it before I did it, there was still time to take it back and excuse away all the doubt, like I always did to myself, but I nodded.

  “Then what are you doing? Why not just walk away?” Andrew sounded so disturbed it only made me feel worse. I thought everyone, on some level, felt some reserve about the person they were with.

  I shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  I fixed on a spot beyond Andrew’s shoulder and tried to think of a way to explain. “With Luke, I feel this . . . this crushing loneliness sometimes. And it’s not his fault”—I swiped a finger under my eye—“he’s not a bad person, he just doesn’t get it. But then I think, Well, who would? Get this nasty piece of my life? I’m not easy, and maybe this is the best I can hope for. Because there are a lot of good things there too. Being with him is insurance in its own way.”

  Andrew’s face pinched. “Insurance?”

  “I have this thing in my head”—I brought my fingers to my temple and tapped—“no one can hurt me if I’m Ani Harrison. TifAni FaNelli is the type of girl who gets squashed, maybe, but not an Ani Harrison.”

  Andrew hunched down so that he was eye to eye with me. “I don’t remember anyone squashing TifAni FaNelli.”

  I held my thumb and index finger an inch apart. “But they did. To this small.”

  Andrew sighed, and then his smart-looking sweater was scratching my face, his fingers curled into the back of my head. We had touched so few times in our lives, and it broke me, really, that I didn’t know his smell and his skin better than I did. An inexplicable sorrow swelled up at Luke, at Whitney, at his beautifully named children, all the hearts invested that would keep us apart, caught them all in its pit and came crashing down.

  The setup in Andrew’s old classroom hadn’t changed; there were still those three long tables pushed together to create a bracket, the teacher at the front of the room in its clutches. But sleek metal tables and stools had replaced the old linoleum tables and the janky, mismatched chairs. It was very Restoration Hardware, a set that wouldn’t look entirely out of my place in my own apartment, the style I’ve curated something Mrs. Harrison describes as “eclectic.” I hovered above the table and examined my distorted image: the long pointy chin, one eye here and one eye there. Whenever I had a pimple in high school, I would assess its severity in anything remotely reflective—the glare in the classroom window, the glass panel between me and the deli meats in the c
afeteria. I would never have been able to concentrate in class with so much opportunity before me.

  Andrew wandered over to his old desk and examined a few of his successor’s knickknacks.

  “You know Mr. Friedman still works here,” Andrew said.

  “Really?” I remembered the day he hauled Arthur out of the classroom, Mrs. Hurst trying to pretend like she wasn’t as frightened as she should have been. “He was always kind of dopey.”

  “Actually”—Andrew turned and leaned against the desk, folding one ankle over the other exactly like he used to do when he taught class—“Bob is very smart. Too smart to be a teacher. It’s why he doesn’t connect with the students.” Andrew touched his hand to his forehead. “On another level than the rest of us.”

  I nodded. It was more dark than dusk outside now, but the English and Language wing faced a main street, ablaze with streetlights and the Bryn Mawr College art building.

  “That’s why everyone loved your class so much,” I said. “You were on our level. More like a peer.”

  Andrew laughed. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”

  I laughed too. “No, it is.” I glanced down at my fun house reflection again. “It was good to have someone so young. Only a few years removed from it all.”

  “I don’t know how much help I was,” Andrew said. “I’d never seen this kind of viciousness before. I don’t know, maybe it did happen when I was in high school and I just wasn’t paying attention.” He thought for a moment. “But I think I would have noticed. There was something very cutthroat about Bradley that I picked up on right away. And you”—he gestured at me—“you never even had a chance.”

  I didn’t like that. You always have a chance. I just screwed mine up. “I wasn’t very sharp when I was here,” I said. “But if I have to find a positive in it, it’s that I learned how to fend for myself.” I brushed my knuckles over the table’s metal scales. “Arthur taught me a lot, believe it or not.”