I have to look down. “I don’t even know why you care. I’ve been a bitch to you for years.”
“No, you haven’t. Not really. Plenty of people have been a lot worse.”
He’s still waiting for an answer, so I give him my old smile, the real one, the one with teeth. “Okay, Kirby. I really am sorry, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are you going to the dance?” I ask.
Kirby shakes his head. “I might have, but . . . I don’t think so.”
“Maybe I won’t either. They’re kind of miserable, aren’t they?”
“That’s putting it lightly,” he says.
And then he’s gone.
* * *
The next morning I bite into an almond from my stepdad’s office kitchen, stick the EpiPen in my thigh before my throat can close up, and go to bed. He’s still at his office in New York, and mom’s hysterical about me missing the pep rally, maybe even the game.
I point to my swollen lips and eyelids as she looms over me, arms crossed. “Can’t be at the top of the pyramid looking like a pig, Mama. Must’ve been that new lip balm Mia gave me.”
As I lounge in bed, my mom tears my backpack apart, looking for the potentially murderous lip balm that doesn’t exist and cussing at me for letting it touch my mouth. When she doesn’t find it, she screams at me for a few minutes before excusing herself to fix her makeup and go to a charity luncheon at the country club.
“You take care of yourself. Answer my texts. Let me know the moment the swelling goes down. And don’t eat a damn thing! You could still make the game tonight, if you’re careful. Remember, sugar: the grass is always greener on our side of the fence. You don’t want to miss that. Don’t you let anybody steal the top of your pyramid.”
“Yes, Mama,” I say obediently.
As soon as her Mercedes pulls out of the driveway, I’m raiding my stepdad’s office cabinet for his hidden private snack-food stash, Nilla Wafers and potato chips and Coke that my mom would never let into her kitchen. My belly sloshes contentedly as I wait for my phone to start buzzing, as I know it will. It’s not like me to rebel.
ELSA (7:31 a.m.): OMG COACH IS GOING TO KILL U WHERE R U
MIA (7:48 a.m.): Guess who’s on the top of the pyramid, bitch?
JAVIER (7:49 a.m.): where were u last night babe? u sick again?
MIDDLEBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL (8:20 a.m.): WEAPON ON CAMPUS. SHELTER IN PLACE.
* * *
There are more texts. Dozens. From my mom, my stepdad, Javier. No more from Elsa or Mia.
None of it makes sense.
I gave him chocolate. I gave him hell.
He gave me a second chance.
I’m going to start by ordering a pizza. I dig through my closet until I find my oboe case. It’s stumbling and awkward, but I play “Memory” and cry as I watch the TV footage of what Kirby Matheson did to my friends. And then to himself. What he could’ve done to me.
I wish I could go back. Back to sixth grade. Back to last night.
I wish I could ask Kirby Matheson what it’s like to be a ghost.
I wonder if he can fly now, all by himself.
FEET FIRST
Day of
I stood in the parking lot of Munson’s with two coffee cups in my hands. The cups had sleeves but were still too hot. I put one on the curb and texted Kirby. When he didn’t text back, I called. He didn’t pick up.
After fifteen minutes, I realized he wasn’t coming back and threw his coffee in the trash. Why did he bother choosing a coffee shop five miles from school if he was going to ditch me? If this was his way of teaching me to “gradually” fend for myself, it was crap. I started the long walk to school, getting angrier with each step. Truth be told, I was madder at myself. I followed Kirby. Again. Why didn’t I have the guts to be my own leader? I promised myself this was the last time. Kirby was right about one thing that morning: we were even now, and I didn’t owe him anything.
Before
Sometimes I think if I had been more coordinated or less scared things would have turned out differently. I wouldn’t have needed Kirby, and I wouldn’t have owed him. It’s not even Kirby I started off needing. It was his feet. His sneakers, actually. White Converse with a treble clef on the side. Clarinet in my hands, heart pounding, I sought them out every band practice. When they came into view, I relaxed and did what I did best—played. If I could just follow those shoes, I didn’t need to remember the marching band formations. All I had to do was let the music guide me. It was two weeks into band camp before I matched a name to the Converse.
“Kirby,” said Joe, our drill instructor, “you’ll lead the saxes.”
My head snapped up to see who he was talking to, and it was Converse kid. That’s when I noticed his dark hair and brown eyes. And the whispers and giggles from the girls. I guess he was good-looking, but the whole thing was jarring. It was weird connecting a person to those shoes. I now felt obligated to thank him for the use of his feet.
I tried to get him alone for a week, but he was always surrounded by moon-faced majorettes. They were like a mini harem, and he was an unwilling sultan, looking like he wanted to get away from the attention but wasn’t really sure how. Finally, right when we were about to break for lunch, I rushed up to him.
“Your shoes are a lifesaver,” I blurted, feeling like a moron.
Kirby ran his hand through his hair and smiled a lopsided grin. He did this a lot when dealing with the harem girls, like he didn’t know what else to do. But I wasn’t a flirt. I didn’t want him. Not then. Then, it was really all about those Converse sneakers.
“Yeah?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “How’s that?”
My face reddened. All I had wanted to do was thank him. I hadn’t expected he’d want to talk. I had expected the same pained look he wore when surrounded by majorettes.
“I—I follow them,” I stammered. “My parents are banking on a music scholarship.” Ever since I first picked up the clarinet at age ten, and it became the third hand I never knew I needed, college became a real possibility—as long as I earned a music scholarship. In high school, you couldn’t do band without marching band, so here I was.
He laughed. “That’s a new one.”
“It’s the truth.”
“What if I get sick?” Kirby asked.
“Not an option.”
Kirby let out a low whistle. “Is that so?”
“We’re talking about my future here!” I tried to look serious.
“Well then,” he said, “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you have one.”
After
First, I was the girl Mr. Daniels saved. I mean, Kirby needed coffee to stay awake for his midterm, which is how I ended up at Munson’s. Only when I told the police my story, I left out the part about going with Kirby. I made it all about me. How I needed the coffee for midterms. And, in the wake of the deaths, no one bothered to further question the hiccupping, shocked, freaked-out girl. No one asked me why I chose Munson’s, which was five miles from school, when I didn’t have a car. Instead, reporters ran with the miracle angle. How the smallest decisions can make a difference. People wanted to find meaning in a senseless tragedy. And I let them.
But then a go-getter detective realized it was downright crazy to walk five miles for coffee, no matter how good that coffee might have been. So the cops questioned me again. This time I told them the truth. Only then did I realize what sitting on the facts looked like to the police. The newspapers and blogs grabbed hold of the story through a leak in the police department, and sensationalized headlines followed. From the straightforward “Kirby Matheson’s Accomplice?” to the oh-so-witty “It Takes Two.”
I wanted to throw up. We got death threats. Police raided my room. They took my phone and laptop. Finally they realized that I wasn’t a mastermind, just a clueless idiot. New headlines followed: “Survivor’s Guilt: Coping with the Aftermath.” They found a picture where I looked like death, my hair unwashe
d, my face pinched, my eyes lost. I don’t know where they got it. Maybe they hid out in the bushes beside my apartment building snapping photos of me falling apart. People apologized. Someone sent a cake. My parents breathed easier now that they had confirmation that their daughter wasn’t a mass murderer in training.
Throughout the emotional strip search, I let them see everything. I even told them about playing for Kirby on our balcony. But there was one question I never answered. One answer I kept hidden from their probing mics and tape recorders. “Why do you think Kirby abandoned you that day?”
I said I didn’t know. I said he looked stressed and frazzled. Mr. D’s midterms were killer. He probably panicked and split without thinking. I never told them what I knew to be the truth. That he meant to save me.
Before
In October, after three months of being at the mercy of Kirby’s Converses, I began to wonder about the guy behind the shoes. Like why did he care about me? There was one time Joe wanted to change the instrument order. While I sat on the side playing with my clarinet keys, my hands getting clammy at the prospect of trying to follow someone else, Kirby stood up in the middle of the field to deliver a three-minute soliloquy against moving the saxes. Something about the pitch and being drowned out by the percussion.
Joe shrugged. “You raise good points, Mr. Matheson. I’d still like to try it my way and see how it goes.”
How it went was disastrous. The saxes were drowned out. I tried to remember where I was going but couldn’t do that and play at the same time. So I did neither. I kept the clarinet in my mouth but didn’t blow, then proceeded to trip over my own feet. Kirby went the wrong way, and the saxes collided. Joe sighed.
“Today is not a good day for change,” he said.
When practice ended, I retreated to an empty corner of the field. As much as I loved playing, I hated marching. Maybe if I’d tried harder to learn the steps, it would have been a different story, but I had already decided I couldn’t do it.
I could never tell my parents. They loved going to the football games and competitions and determining which blue-and-white uniform was me among the rest of the marchers. I watched them on the bleachers, clutching each other, probably the only people in the stands who didn’t give a damn about whether our football team scored. After the games or competitions, we’d move the performance to the balcony of our apartment. I’d play Flight of the Bumblebee or Jean Françaix’s Theme and Variations—the kind of soul-stirring music I adored but couldn’t play in marching band. Usually our neighbors opened their windows to listen too.
“Jenny’s concerts are almost like being at the Philharmonic,” my parents said, eyes shining with pride and hope. Always the Hope. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Little Mexico, the poor side of town. In a section where all the streets were named after rodents. Ours was called Gopher Lane. I was not only my ticket out, I was theirs, too.
The day that Joe created the new formations, I put away my clarinet and lay on the grass, feeling both annoyed and sorry for myself. Suddenly, I felt a tap on my toe. It was Kirby.
I sat up. “Thanks for today,” I said.
“It’s all for the good of the band.” He smiled that lopsided smile that I thought might actually be real.
“Just the band?” I said. This boy saved me from embarrassment. I was starting to like him.
He looked me in the eyes. “Not just the band.” He extended his hand to me. “If I’m going to keep saving you, we should get to know each other.” I took his hand and let him pull me up.
* * *
We hung out a lot that month. He lived in Birdland, in one of the many white-picket-fenced houses on streets named after birds. Egret, Cassowary, Dove. That threw me because he didn’t act or dress like a Birdland kid. He didn’t have that Birdland stench of entitlement. I told him where I lived. I searched his face for the ever-present disgust that appeared on Birdland kids’ faces when they came in contact with Little Mexico kids. Especially when they found out which section of Little Mexico. They went out of their way not to touch us, saying rodents carried fleas and diseases. But I couldn’t read his face.
I liked the posters in his room. Instead of half-naked centerfolds, Kirby’s posters were of books. I recognized them from the list Mr. D gave us in the beginning of the year, but I hadn’t read them yet. Catch-22, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, The Once and Future King. The last one was on his ceiling. We were scheduled to start it in Mr. D’s class in January, after midterms and holiday break. I wasn’t a big reader, but I was excited about it. Mr. D told us it was a retelling of King Arthur, based on Le Morte d’Arthur. He said we’d create our own kingdoms, with the opportunity to throw social order on its head. Serfs could be rulers and kings could be peasants.
“What kind of world did you create when you had Mr. D freshman year?” I asked.
“No knights. No kings or queens or princesses needing rescue.” He talked like he’d given it a lot of thought, like I’d find a blueprint of his world in a dresser drawer if I looked hard enough.
“No damsels needing rescue from marching-band fiascos,” I added.
He cocked his head and studied me to the point that I became uncomfortable. All I was trying to do was flirt. Kirby, though, seemed to want to see inside me. Before the shootings, I was pretty boring. I had no deep secrets or tragedies. Then he smiled a smile I hadn’t seen yet. It was wide and toothy, and I remember thinking, “This is the real Kirby.” Later, reporters would write he rarely smiled. A few majorettes said he’d had a lopsided smile. Not their fault. I once thought that was a special smile too. Looking back, I think it was a grimace. Then there’d come the photo. The one where he’s smiling that same toothy smile. The one where he seems truly happy. The one where he’s pointing a gun.
He kicked me lightly with his toe. “Marching-band damsels are okay.”
Then he got close. He put his hand on my cheek, and I didn’t pull away. His lips brushed mine, and I leaned in, wanting more. He stroked my hair. “Marching-band damsels are definitely okay.”
* * *
We hung out after band almost daily. Checking out local parks, climbing rocks, grabbing food from food trucks. Each time out felt like an adventure. There was never talk of what we were or what we were doing in the romantic sense. I liked not being one of those couples that sucked face at each other’s lockers or laid claim to the other’s time. My life was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and being with Kirby was like Debussy’s Rhapsodie. I’d follow those Converse anywhere.
One night, a week before Halloween, we heard music coming from behind a park we were exploring.
“Let’s follow it,” I said, and we crossed over railroad tracks trying to find the source of the jazz.
Kirby squeezed my hand as the music reached a crescendo, but when we finally spotted the source, he deflated. “It’s a country club,” he said.
It wasn’t just a country club. It was the country club owned by Nate Fiorello’s parents. Nate hadn’t bothered me in years. I was old news, and he preferred fresh victims. But I still hated him for leaving dead rodents on our balcony, his disgusting laugh echoing through the night as my dad scrubbed at the metal slats to remove the blood and guts.
“Let’s crash it,” I said.
Kirby laughed. “I like how you think, but we’d be thrown out in two seconds flat. My parents don’t need the drama today.”
Instead we climbed behind the gazebo and lay flat on the grass, part of the celebration but not really. Strung-up tiny lights twinkled like stars, and the air was laced with the smell of roses. I wondered if it was a wedding, sweet sixteen, or an anniversary party. My family never threw parties like that. We decorated our paltry balcony and ate our cake while we watched the people below. It never bothered me. I never wanted fancy. The balcony felt special and different, and I thought my parents were cool for creating something pretty out of the dark and broken. But that night, I wanted to dance on the mirrored floor of the country-club hall.
br /> “What do you think they’re eating in there?” I asked.
“Pretentious finger sandwiches, twice-killed meat.”
“Twice-killed meat?”
“Yeah,” said Kirby, “they kill it once, cook it, and then spear it again with a skewer.”
I knew he was trying to make me laugh, but it sounded so good. “Why does everything taste better on a stick?”
Kirby rolled his eyes. “Be right back.”
He was gone so long, I was beginning to think he’d ditched me. I closed my eyes and let the orchestra music wash over me. I imagined joining in with my clarinet. If I had to march and play right then, I could have done it.
“Hey,” said Kirby, beside me again. “I brought you something.”
He carried three plates of appetizers. Chicken skewers, sushi, mini empanadas. “How?”
“I have my ways,” he said.
For a second I wondered if there was a country club girl he’d sweet-talked into giving him food, but I decided it didn’t matter. He’d done it for me.
After we finished eating, after our lips danced to the sounds of slow jazz, he pulled me to him and said, “Saved the damsel once again, huh?”
It was another thing to add to the list. Something else I owed him for. And I wondered if that’s what he wanted. For me to feel forever in his debt. But that night, it seemed like a small price to pay.
After
The We Go There interview is when it all fell apart. The title alone should have warned me, but I was still paying penance, still thinking that the more they gutted me, the more the world could make sense of Kirby Matheson. I owed it to the dead I didn’t know, but whose screams still ricocheted off the hallway walls. To Mr. D. To the families who were now less well off than mine.
The interview began like the others. Carrie Conlan, interviewer extraordinaire, showing the many faces of Kirby, ending with that notorious image Billie Palermo took. Billie, who was a junior, who struggled with who she was, keeping her secrets inside. Whose name I didn’t know until the photo came out.