That was kind, and it made me laugh a little as I followed him out through the alley and down to the edge of the arroyo. It was still filled with shiny dry leaves leftover from winter that glinted below the budding trees.
I’d actually never smoked pot, so I think Tristan thought I was just going along to sit with him. But when he pulled out his pipe, I said, “I want some.”
He raised his eyebrows at me, but he passed it over.
Before I started to try to figure out how it worked, I said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Hit me.”
“Do you think it’s true, what you said about being saved? Do you think Sky found someone better at saving him? Like Francesca? Maybe I just couldn’t do it. And maybe she can. Maybe he’s happier now. Like really happy.”
“You’re too good for him, Buttercup. You deserve a better man. As for her, she couldn’t save a ladybug from a rainstorm if you gave her a fifty-foot umbrella.”
“But what about my sister? Why couldn’t I save her?” My voice wavered, and I could feel myself tilt inside. Maybe outside, too. I never say things like that out loud.
Tristan paused for a minute and got very serious. But not quiet the way most people get about these things. He looked at me and said, “I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“What I told you about saving people isn’t true. You might think it is, because you might want someone else to save you, or you might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really. Not from yourself,” he said. “You fall asleep in the foothills, and the wolf comes down from the mountains. And you hope someone will wake you up. Or chase it off. Or shoot it dead. But when you realize that the wolf is inside you, that’s when you know. You can’t run from it. And no one who loves you can kill the wolf, because it’s part of you. They see your face on it. And they won’t fire the shot.”
A long moment passed with me looking at him. I knew what wolf he was talking about. I feel its teeth all the time. And I understood, too, that even though Tristan seems tough, he is afraid, like me, that there is something inside of him that could eat him alive.
Then he said, “Laurel, you couldn’t have saved your sister. But, love, you’ve got to save yourself. Do that for me, okay? Because you are worth it.”
No one had ever said that to me before.
I realized I was still holding the pipe when Tristan said, “Do you want to pass that over here? You don’t need it.” So I did, and smiled at him. It was already almost three o’clock. Tristan was waiting for Kristen to come out, so I said bye and started walking back.
I went past the alley, on my way to the bus stop, and I nearly bumped into him. Sky. In the corner of my eye, I saw Francesca pulling away in her yellow car.
“Hey,” I said, startled. I was closer to his body than I’d been since we broke up, and it hurt how badly I wanted him to touch me.
“Hey,” he said back. He shifted awkwardly. “How are you?”
“All right.” It was quiet for a moment. I knew that I should just walk away, but I couldn’t do it. Everything in me that was angry at him for leaving started bubbling up to the surface. I thought of his arms around Francesca now, the way they’d been around me, and of his voice hot and gravelly, the way it would get when he said things that he meant. I kept telling myself not to cry, but the tears were already coming to the edges of my eyes. I wiped them away with the sleeve of the stupid lavender velvet shirt. “How could you do that?” I asked. “How can you just … be with her?”
I could see the muscles in his body get tense, and his voice was, too. “’Cause that’s my way of dealing. You have these great friends. I don’t. So yeah, it’s nice to have someone around. It’s nice to just be with someone who’s easy to be with. I’m not proud of it. But that’s what happens sometimes.”
“But you said you love me. You don’t just leave after that.”
Sky was speaking low, like if he let himself go, he would explode. “Yeah, I did. You were the only girl I’ve ever said that to. You think it’s just you who got hurt, but it’s not like that. How do you think it was for me when I saw you climb up on the edge of that balcony? How do you think it was watching you cry all the time and not being able to do anything about it? I wasn’t lying when I said I love you. How do you think it feels watching you in the fucking middle of the street waiting for a car to come and hit you?”
Sky was angry at me. Although maybe it’s messed up to say, it felt good in a way, because it meant he cared. I guess when you love someone and they put themselves in danger, you are supposed to be mad.
I thought about what he said. That I’d hurt him. I’d never actually realized that. We do things sometimes because we feel so much inside of us, and we don’t notice how it affects somebody else. I’d been selfish. I remembered the feeling of Sky’s moths fluttering, looking for a light. I felt like a street lamp that had gone out.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I reached my hand out to his chest. He didn’t pull back.
“It’s okay. It’s just, I know that you love your sister, but it scared me, seeing you act the way that she would.”
“What do you mean? How did she act?” And then I took a deep breath and asked, “How did you even know her?”
Sky paused a moment. “Do you really want to know?” He sounded nervous.
“Yes,” I said. Although honestly, I wasn’t sure.
“We had a couple of classes together freshman year. She was pretty much the life of any room she walked into. And she was the only girl in our grade who was always at all of the parties with upperclassmen. I never used to do that kind of stuff. Then when my dad left that year, I started going out, too. So we’d talk sometimes. She was usually drunk. She’d tell me about your family, and your parents getting divorced, and she talked about you, too. But she was always hooking up with these seniors. She got a reputation for being, um, wild, I guess. Maybe she needed the attention. I just thought that she’d get sick of all of that eventually…”
Sky trailed off. He was looking at me expectantly. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. I was trying to put it together, and the puzzle pieces fit, but the picture didn’t make sense. I was trying to see May, but it wasn’t the May who rushed off into high school like a new world was waiting to greet her. I guess it shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise. I’ve known for a long time how she snuck out at night and came home drunk, about Paul and all of that stuff, but part of me still wanted to believe that there was something beautiful on the other side of it. That she was happy.
“What are you thinking?” Sky asked.
“I don’t know. What happened after that?”
“Nothing really. By sophomore year, it’s like she was somewhere else entirely. She’d sit in the back of the class, and she’d do her work, and she’d hardly talk to anyone. She was seeing that older guy. I saw them at a party together once. She was so drunk, and he was all over her. It was clear that she was out of it. They disappeared into some bedroom together. The whole thing made me sick. A few days after she died, I spotted him hanging around the parking lot at school. Maybe he was looking for her. I guess he didn’t know yet. I was so pissed off. I beat the shit out of the guy. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. When I got questioned about it afterward, I didn’t want to say anything about who he was. I knew May had a family, of course, and I didn’t want to cause any trouble. Anyway, that’s why—I got kicked out of Sandia after that.”
He finished talking, and then there was this gulf of silence. I wished that all of the words that Sky had said could go back into his mouth and never come out. Because there was one thing about the whole thing that was sinking in, that came through in his voice when he talked about her, and soon it was all I could hear. “You liked her,” I said flatly.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said reluctantly. “I mean, maybe I had a little bit of a crush on her.”
Why did that hurt so much? I’d known it all along, anyway—when he looked at me, he’d
only seen a shadow of May.
“So that’s why you talked to me that first day. That’s why you wanted to be with me. Because I was the next best thing.”
“No,” Sky said. “No, Laurel, it’s not like that. I mean, of course I thought about May at first. But then I didn’t. It’s you I was in love with. You’re actually … you’re so different from her.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”
I started walking away, toward the parking lot. “Wait. Laurel!” Sky called, but I didn’t let myself look over my shoulder. And he didn’t follow me.
When I got home, I went into my room and I put on “Rehab” and turned up the volume. I tried to shout along, “No, no, no,” but I couldn’t stop thinking about the irony of it. Amy, you were saying I am who I am. Don’t tell me what to do. But now you’re dead. Nobody did anything about it. You wouldn’t go. You wouldn’t get better. Happy in love, tripping on the stage, and we loved you for being yourself, but we let you go.
I shut off the music and the room got quiet. I tried to shake Sky’s voice out of my head, but I couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what I did. I kept hearing him telling me that both of the things I was afraid of were true—May felt shattered, too, and I’ll never be as good or as beautiful as her.
After Dad went to bed tonight, I knew I couldn’t sleep. I snuck some Scotch out of his liquor cabinet. I’ve never been drunk before without Natalie and Hannah. This time I didn’t even mix it with cider or anything, I just swallowed up the burn of it.
When things started to spin, I lay down and put on Back to Black again and listened to you sing the whole thing from the beginning. When I got up and went to brush my teeth for bed, I stood in front of the mirror, looking at my face and not understanding it. It was just me, plain and blank, and I didn’t know what to see in it. I kept looking, looking for something else that I couldn’t find anymore. I stared until there were just shapes that didn’t figure into a person. But nothing reformed. I kept waiting for it to change, for May to be there, looking back at me. But I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t find her anywhere.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
I’m really sorry about the poster and about everything. But I need to talk to you. Since I got in the fight with Sky last week, everything has felt terrible. Then tonight, Hannah and Natalie and I went to this big party with Kasey. It was at the house of a football player who graduated last year, and he said that it was going to be a rager. When we walked in, Kasey started looking around for the booze, and that’s when we saw that Hannah’s brother, Jason, was there. Jason was not at all happy to see Hannah. In fact, he said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Hannah looked afraid. Kasey came over and put his arm around her. She’d kept him a secret from Jason so far, and she was trying to squirm away.
But Kasey said, “She’s with me. And if you can’t deal with that, we can take this outside.” He was trying to be super tough for Hannah, blowing up like a blowfish.
Hannah muttered, “Kasey … don’t…” but it seemed like her face had resolved into knowing that something bad would come.
Jason seemed like he was about to punch Kasey, but then one of Jason’s buddies said, “Who gives a shit about that douche bag? Let’s not waste the opportunity to drink some free beer.” So that’s what they did.
Hannah kept tucking her hair behind her ears and glancing back and forth between Kasey, Natalie, and the back door, where Jason and his friends had disappeared to the keg. I guess she thought the best way to deal with all this would be to get drunk. So she and Natalie and Kasey and the college boys took tequila shots, clinking glasses and sucking limes and cringing. Hannah started acting wild, slamming her glass on the table and asking for another. Finally, after the shots, she wandered off with Natalie, clinging on to Natalie’s arm to hold her up.
I found a corner and tried to look absorbed in things, examining the sheen on the leaves of a houseplant, which was browning at the top, and inspecting the loose threads in the curtain. The party was a carnival of so many people, laughing and bouncing and blaring. It seemed everyone knew their place in it, but I was in the mood where I would rather be alone and look at the houseplants. Part of me kept wishing that Sky would show up, but I hated myself for even thinking about him.
Then, while I was arranging a bowl of M&M’s by their colors, this guy Teddy, one of the soccer boys who’s friends with Evan Friedman, walked up and said that I should come hang out. It was clearly just me and the M&M’s there, and I couldn’t think of an excuse, so I followed him. When I got outside, I saw Evan with some of the college guys, ex-baseball/soccer/football players, including Jason. Jason must have been really drunk, because he didn’t seem to notice me. Evan said, “Hey,” and sort of shifted back and forth from foot to foot nervously. “You look good,” he said. I looked down. I was just wearing a tee shirt and a cotton skirt, and I didn’t really agree. The world was all off its axis. I was confused about why he wanted to talk to me. A couple of the older guys nudged Evan, and he offered me some beer. The taste was like a yellow raincoat, but a dirty one. They also had caffeine pills. They said they wouldn’t do anything, hardly, except wake me up. I would rather have been asleep, honestly, totally asleep.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.
The guys kept bugging and trying to convince me. Evan said, “Come on, it’s a party.”
Then I heard one of the college guys whisper, “That’s her sister.” I shouldn’t have done it, but that’s when I grabbed the pill and took it, whatever it was, washing it down with the beer.
Soon after, I wasn’t feeling too great. Everything was starting to get fuzzy. Evan was putting his hands on me, on my back and stuff.
He whispered in my ear, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to find my friends.” So I walked inside, and Evan followed me. As we were trying to make our way through the party, I kept asking, “Where are Natalie and Hannah?” I kept looking at the faces going by, looking for their faces.
I was really dizzy, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I was walking really slowly. Evan kept saying, “Let’s go.”
I said, “Wait,” because I thought maybe I really would throw up. The whole party was dizzy, so many people, too many, all heavy, all sweaty. Finally I found the bathroom, and I guess there was a line, but I skipped it and opened the door, because I was about to be sick. Then I saw them there—Natalie and Hannah.
They were kissing like they couldn’t get close enough. Like they wished they didn’t have bodies to keep them apart. I caught Hannah’s eye before I closed the bathroom door quickly, to hide them. But it was too late. People had started talking. Some guys were already pounding on the door. “Hey, ladies, open up! I want to join the fun!” I walked away, feeling sicker than before. The room was spinning. Finally Evan found me again and I said, “I don’t feel good.”
He said, “It’s okay, come in here. Lie down.”
So I did, because I didn’t know what else to do. The room we went in was dark, with bunk beds, like May and I had when we were kids. I wanted to lie on the top bunk. May always got the top. I told Evan I wanted the top, but he put me on the bottom. I kept saying, “I don’t feel good,” and he kept saying, “It’s okay,” and rubbing me all over. When I tried to sit up, he pushed me back. I was swimming through the thickest fog. Everything that was happening seemed already to have happened before. He was rubbing everywhere, under my clothes. Under my skirt. What he was doing felt all wrong. I said no, but he wouldn’t listen. All I could hear was my heartbeat and the cars outside. Evan kept doing what he was doing, and the cars got so loud, as if I were lying down on the highway. And I thought May would come in one of those cars. She would pick me up and take me away. We were going to the ocean. We were going to drive all the way there together. The waves would come and wash us over and over.
Then I started to hear it, “Heart-Shaped Box.”
It seemed as if they were playing it somewhere in the party, but no, maybe you were singing just for me. I couldn’t tell. But I could hear your voice, full of anger. Hey, wait … It woke me up. It’s like you were screaming from inside of me. I pushed Evan as hard as I could, harder than I knew I could, and he fell against the other side of the bed. He looked stunned and put his hand on his head, which had hit the wall.
That’s when Sky came in. He was with Francesca.
When he saw me there, he stepped toward the bed. He said, “Laurel, what’s going on?”
“I don’t feel good” is what I said.
Sky told Evan, “Get the fuck outta here before I kick your teeth in.” I’ve never seen him so mad. Evan got out, fast. Francesca lingered, but Sky turned to her and said, “Could you leave us alone for a minute?”
“Whatever,” she said. “I don’t need this shit.” And she left.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I want to go on the top bunk.”
“You should go home. Where are your friends?”
I started to panic, because I remembered Natalie and Hannah and how I opened the door so that everyone saw them.
“They were kissing.” I tried to fix my skirt, which was pushed up and tangled around my shirt. I was so ashamed that Sky was seeing me this way.
“Come on. I’ll take you home,” he said.
When we walked out, there was a fight. Kasey was screaming at Natalie, “Get out!”
Natalie looked at Hannah with these wild scared eyes, but Hannah’s eyes were down. She whispered, “Come on, Kasey. She’s just a girl. It doesn’t count.”
Hannah was almost hidden behind him. I wanted to help them, but Sky wouldn’t let me stop. When I wouldn’t walk, he picked me up. The worst part was when we passed Jason standing in a corner. I saw what Hannah didn’t want to see. His face was red and his veins were popping out. He was worse than angry.
Once we were in the car, I didn’t look at Sky. I looked out the window at the treetops. I wanted to say something to make everything that was bad get better. But I couldn’t think of a single thing. I guess Sky couldn’t, either. So I closed my eyes until we got home.