Until the Day I Die

by Carpenter, Emily

  The black woman pipes up. “Jessalyn. Jess.” She looks at Deirdre, who’s pinching the bridge of her nose and looks like she may have drifted off to sleep even though she’s still on her feet. “Hangover. What’s your name?”

  “Deirdre.”

  “Quick question, Deirdre,” Jess says. “Where’d you find booze at a rehab?”

  Deirdre turns away.

  “Try to stay dry, if you can.” Agnes finishes braiding her long hair, then dips a hand in her bra, pulls out a little piece of square blue plastic, and fastens the end of the braid with it.

  “What’s that?” I demand.

  “Bread tie.”

  “Smart,” Jess says. “Do you have an extra one?”

  “Sorry.” Agnes plants her hands on her hips. “Also, you should try to find a weapon.”

  “A weapon?” I say.

  Her eyes meet mine for a brief moment. But she doesn’t elaborate.

  “You guys,” Deirdre says. “I totally think Antonia set me up. She did this to me. She let me drink on purpose.” As if to punctuate the statement, she then vomits all over her hiking boots.

  “Good Lord,” Jessalyn says. “Honey, no offense, but you did that to yourself.”

  I check the clock. We’ve got roughly six more minutes before the alarm goes off. Six minutes to see what we can salvage for the days ahead. I fling open Lach’s truck door and check the floor. “Bingo.” I hold up two stray rubber bands.

  “Oh, me, me, me!” Jessalyn says. I hand her a band and twist my hair up into the kind of topknot bun thing Shorie does. It feels like heaven to have my hair off my neck. Jessalyn and I also find a couple of extra rubber bands, which we pop over our wrists, a stick of gum, and a half-empty pack of cigarettes.

  Then the alarm goes off, and we all stare at each other. Jess shuts it off, and that’s when I realize Agnes is no longer with us. She’s gone.

  23

  SHORIE

  I wake up a little before nine on Saturday morning and lie in bed, strategizing. I’m still $600 shy of the $3,750 I owe Rhys. I consider withdrawing the money from my personal budget allocation—there’s enough extra in there that it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. But even though I know Mom doesn’t have her phone or computer at Hidden Sands, I’m worried it’ll somehow get back to the school or someone at Jax. And I can’t risk that.

  For a split second I wonder how much the emerald band Mom gave me would bring. But no. That would be beyond shitty.

  I consider seeing if I can get Dele and her friend Rayanne to agree to eat someplace nice tonight, maybe order steak and dessert and let me pick up the check in exchange for cash to at least get me started toward the six hundred. But then I think of something better. I call Gigi.

  She’s up, of course, making Arch’s daily oatmeal. I tell her I’ve decided to take her advice and trade my trendy wardrobe of sweats and T-shirts from Goodwill for a few classic, well-made pieces—including but not limited to a cashmere coat for winter, an expensive leather bag, and some wool trousers and cashmere sweaters, maybe even a status pocketbook.

  My grandmother practically dies of happiness. In fact, Gigi’s so excited about my deciding to dress like a Junior League member she doesn’t even question me when I ask her if she can wire it to me, since my roommate wants to drive to the mall in Montgomery first thing this morning. Shockingly, she agrees, and I send her phone kisses, promising to text pictures of me in my new old-lady clothes.

  When we hang up, I only feel a tiny twinge of guilt. I love Gigi, but she was so mean to Mom at the intervention, and in a way, that feels a little like my fault. It’s hard to untangle all the threads of blame. But I’m not changing my mind about the money. Or about letting one of Rhys’s surrogates take my classes. This is what I want to do. What I have to do.

  Dele’s still asleep, so I get dressed and brush my teeth as quietly as possible. Out in the hall, the floor is quiet; in fact, the whole dorm is silent as death. Seems like everybody was out late last night but me. It’s depressing, being awake when everyone’s asleep, asleep when everyone’s awake. Just another way it feels like I’m constantly out of step with the world.

  I haul my Huffy into the elevator, down to the first floor, and head out toward the Winn-Dixie on College Street. The cash safely stuffed in my purse, I pedal over to Mama Mocha’s, where I gobble a bagel with cream cheese, nurse a cappuccino, and slowly flip through a local real estate brochure like a middle-aged person. I’m wondering if 11:07 a.m. is a reasonable, nonstalker-y hour to text Rhys when I hear a voice behind me.

  “Investing in some real estate?”

  Rhys is dressed in black gym shorts and a dingy blue T-shirt. He’s holding a zucchini muffin wrapped in a napkin and a paper cup of coffee, his adorably mussed cinnamon-colored hair flipping out from under an Auburn cap.

  “Oh, hi,” I say. “I was just . . .” For the life of me, I can’t think of a single lie.

  He sits and breaks his muffin in half. His arms are hairy in a nice way, and look warm. I try not to stare.

  “Did you just happen to be passing by?” I ask. Now I sound like an episode of a Masterpiece show. But still. It’s kind of strange that he’s here.

  “You mentioned liking this place last night, and I was hoping to run into you.”

  I want to scream with happiness. But I don’t. There are other things I remember from last night. Like him saying that he has a buddy, one who lives on an island and works at a five-star resort. Maybe or maybe not in the Caribbean. Where Mom is.

  He crams half the muffin into his mouth. “Oh my God. I was craving this so bad. You want half?”

  I shake my head, and he smiles at me, his mouth full.

  “You were hoping to run into me?” I ask.

  “Yeah. For the fee.” He smooshes a couple of crumbs on his thumb and pops them into his mouth. “Not that we have to do it in person. But, it’s more fun that way.” He smiles.

  That smile, my God. I quietly die a rapturous death.

  “You want to Venmo me?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “You know, at my house, Venmo’s kind of a dirty word.”

  “Ah. My apologies. You know, Lowell was joking, but we really could use a revamping of our site. Like a program that would help me with all our surrogates. If you want to barter.”

  Even though the idea of writing a program—and all the puzzle solving that entails—does kind of fire me up, I shake my head. “I should probably just pay you, like everybody else.”

  “Okay, cool.” The other half of the muffin goes in his mouth. Amazing how somebody can eat like a total pig and still somehow come off looking completely adorable. I’m hit with the memory of how it used to drive Mom crazy when Dad would mix up all the food on his plate. He would do it with the grossest stuff: spaghetti with salad, or eggs and sausage and hash browns. He’d swirl it all up into one lumpy mountain, then attack the whole thing at once, while she howled in disgust. I wonder, though. Had she thought it was cute when they were dating?

  I reach for my purse, but he puts a hand on my arm. “You don’t have to pay me right now. Do you want another coffee?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Moments later he’s back with two steaming mugs.

  “Thanks,” I say, and gulp it down black. It burns the back of my throat.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” He cradles his mug, and I study his hands. They’re rough-skinned, perfectly proportioned, with knobby fingers and squared-off nails.

  “Sure.” I steel myself, thinking he’s about to ask me where I got the money to pay him. If we’re rich because of Jax.

  “Before your dad died, did he . . .” He hunkers closer to the table. “Did he give you anything special? I mean, like a graduation gift or something that felt important? Like, I don’t know, meaningful to you in a way that you knew you would keep it forever?”

  I stare at him for a second, thinking about the plastic bag Mom and I got at the hospital.

  I swallow. “No.”
Just a Beanie Baby spider.

  He nods thoughtfully. “It’s weird, you know? I think about stuff like that a lot. That I wish my father had given me, like, an old knife of his, or a watch or something. So I would have something concrete to pull out and look at any time I wanted to remember him.”

  “Your father died?”

  “Cancer, yeah. It was the worst. He was in hospice for about six weeks. He handwrote this five-page letter to me, on notebook paper, the kind you tear out, with the fringe . . .” He flutters his fingers, but I know what he means. “He didn’t put it in an envelope or anything. He just handed it to me one afternoon. I took it up to my room and stapled the pages together because I was so afraid of losing any of it. But I didn’t read it for the longest time.”

  Envy stabs at me from the inside out, tiny pinpricks in my heart and gut. It shocks me how bad it hurts. How instantly resentful I feel. I mean, yes, I have one unread message on Jax, but it’s not a goodbye letter; it’s just instructions about school and Jax. Nothing like what Rhys is talking about.

  “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but you seemed—I don’t know—a little wrecked last night about the ice cream card.”

  “I guess I was.” I manage a smile. “Pretty pathetic. Getting upset about something like that.”

  “Not at all. I get it.” He hesitates. “I was eight when he died. So maybe I was just a dumb, ungrateful little kid who wanted a cool knife instead of a letter.”

  “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

  He shrugs but doesn’t say anything. I get it. Talking doesn’t really help; sometimes it feels like it just diminishes the whole experience. I toy with my mug. The coffee looks oily to me now, and my stomach turns.

  “You’re lucky about the letter, though,” I say.

  “Well, your dad wanted you to have his freebie cone. That’s pretty touching too.”

  I grin. “I guess.”

  What I really want to ask is what Rhys’s father had written to his son, but I can’t force the question out of my mouth. It’s none of my business, first of all. But the main reason I don’t ask is because, if it turns out he wrote something really wonderful and perfect and life-changing, I may start crying.

  Rhys shifts in his chair. “So, the fee.”

  I lean down and dig into my purse, crestfallen and glad for the opportunity to hide my face. I hand over the padded envelope full of cash. He doesn’t look inside to count it or anything, just tucks it in his messenger bag and drums his fingers on the table.

  “Okay, you’ve got my top woman all ready to go for the main four: English comp, tech and civ, Calculus I, and core science. For Intro to Engineering, I had to cast a wider net.”

  “Is there a problem? Can the other girl not do it?”

  “No, apparently once she got a B in it, and—”

  “Yeah, no.”

  “I already found another girl. Same height, same hair. Pretty—”

  I freeze.

  “But that means I’m going to have to get two Tiger Cards, so—”

  “The price goes up,” I finish for him and then feel my face warm. He thinks I’m pretty.

  “It’s no problem, Shorie. It’s my cost. You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “No. I’ve got it.” I open my purse and plunk down five more hundred-dollar bills. He sweeps the bills off the table, fast, then we return to our coffee.

  “So what’s your job at Jax?” he says. “I mean, if you’re paying me a shit ton of money to get out of your first semester of college, it must be a great company to work for.”

  Now I’m not just warm, I feel hot all over, and my eyes water a little bit. It’s none of his business, and yet part of me is wildly grateful that somebody’s asking, that someone’s interested. But I just can’t tell him the truth. Not until I know more.

  “It is.”

  “You know,” he says slowly. “If you ever want to talk about your dad, you can hit me up anytime.”

  I so desperately want to tell him about my dad: He was a brilliant, goofy, fun nerd. He liked poetry and science and coding. He hiked with my mom and me, and followed this group of French mathematicians and poets called Oulipo, who wrote entire novels without the letter e or made up stories that follow mathematical problems like the knight’s tour of a chessboard. He learned the songs from Wicked and sang them with me. He called me “Shorie, my sweet.” And I scared the shit out of him every time we played hide-and-seek . . .

  But if I say all that I’ll probably start bawling like a baby, and I’m sure not ready to let this guy see me ugly cry. Besides, I have plenty of stuff to sort out already—getting to the bottom of this glitch at Jax, finding my dad’s missing journal—without dumping my entire personal emotional dictionary on some random dude I just met.

  So I just nod.

  When he finishes his coffee, he gives me a hug, and we say we’ll see each other around. Then I ride my bike down to the drugstore for the most formidable-looking combo lock I can find.

  24

  ERIN

  The hash is slow going. Besides the fact that Lach’s flour marks seem to be immediately absorbed into the damp, mossy jungle ground, we keep having to stop while Deirdre is sick all over the same damp, mossy ground.

  The checkpoints appear roughly every half mile or so. At each one, we find and guzzle the tiny mini water bottles Lach has left, then attempt to decipher the next set of flour signs, most of which are designed to purposely mislead us. To find out which mark is the one to follow, we have to split up and explore each trail. I don’t like that part. The way it forces us to separate. Most of the trails dead-end, and we wind up yelling for each other, echoing back and forth through the trees until we can locate each other and start all over again.

  The air has a weight to it, a suffocating heat that’s intensified by the thick canopy of trees and bushes that wrap their muscular arms over the land. Alabama is hot, but this is a whole different universe. Also none of us has eaten since the night before. By afternoon, Deirdre has begun dry heaving.

  Jessalyn plops down on a rock. “I’m not doing this anymore,” she says, ripping the rest of a torn fingernail off. “I don’t give a shit if I fail the test and have to stay here another month. I’m done.”

  “I’m going to die,” Deirdre announces then leans against the trunk of a knotty tree.

  “We have to keep going,” I say. “There’s food at the end.” I have no idea if what I’m saying is actually true, but I feel compelled to keep everybody’s spirits up. The CEO in me, probably. I’m also legitimately worried about Agnes, by herself in the jungle. She clearly had her reasons for cutting out on the L’Élu, but I don’t know if not telling anyone was the right thing to do.

  In fact, as we’ve been leaping over fallen branches and roots, splashing through streams, and slogging up muddy hills, I keep seeing the fear in Agnes’s eyes. Hearing her tell me to find a weapon. What the hell was she implying?

  After I give Jessalyn and Deirdre my best mom/cheerleader/CEO routine, they seem to rally. An hour later, we’ve made it to the big flour on-in checkpoint where we get (hooray!) full-size bottles of water. Just on the other side of a clump of bushes, we find our camp. It’s a simple space, a generous-size clearing matted with ferns and encircled by four small tents and a fifth, larger one. A neat campfire bordered with rocks crackles in the center. Off to the side, a picnic table loaded down with plastic containers of sandwiches and cookies and chips and fruit beckons. I have no idea what time it is, but the sun is low in the sky, and it’s cooled considerably.

  I want to cheer. I want to cry. I want to lie down on the ground and sleep for three consecutive days.

  “Chickadees.” Near the campfire, Lach’s slouched on a folding chair with his ankle propped on his knee, flip-flop dangling. He’s changed into a fresh T-shirt and a light-blue bandana holds back his hair. His tent must’ve been fully stocked beforehand. He holds up a bottle of tea, beaded with condensation, and waves it at us. My mouth
waters in response, then I see his eyes cloud. “Where’s Agnes?”

  “She opted out,” Jessalyn says.

  “She what?”

  “She opted out of the experience,” Jess enunciates. “By which I mean, she bounced.”

  Lach straightens. “Which way did she go?”

  “Back in the direction of away from here.”

  He addresses me. “Where?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. We didn’t actually see her leave.”

  “Jesus. Oh, shit.” He starts pacing in tight circles, scratching the back of his head. He gestures toward the picnic table. “Get some food and wait for me. I need to make a call.” He pulls a phone out of his pocket and walks to the edge of the campsite.

  “Dude’s going to get fired,” Jess says.

  “I don’t know. But I do feel bad,” I say.

  “Me too,” Deirdre says. “But not for him.” She jerks her thumb toward the tents, a couple of yards beyond the campfire. “It’s naptime, chickadees.”

  Jess and I settle at the picnic table, where we descend on a stack of turkey wraps. They’re warm and limp from sitting in the sun, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite so delicious.

  “I wonder what Antonia’s going to do about Agnes,” I say. I can’t forget Agnes’s prayer in the showers. Her crying in the spa as the woman—Antonia, I assume now—berated her. The universe is trying to tell you something, Agnes.

  Jess plucks a cluster of grapes from a plastic bowl. “I don’t know, but truth? Not our problem.”

  “Yeah.” I check out Lach pacing at the edge of the clearing. He’s still on his phone and gesticulating in earnest now.

  “We should probably put some food in Deirdre’s tent,” Jess says. “And a bottle of water.” “Who knows when we’re going to eat next.”

  “Aw, look at you. Having a heart.”

  She grins just as Lach trudges past us back to his chair.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  He sits heavily. Takes a swig of his tea. “She made it back to the resort. So that’s good.”

  Jess and I exchange brief looks.