who will never know
the pain that I do
I worry that he could be the next domino to fall. He could be trembling on the brink of Ty’s oblivion, about to step off into the abyss. I don’t know. I don’t know how to make things better for him.
But I’m going to try.
I find him at lunchtime. He’s sitting at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, all alone, glumly picking at a pile of soggy french fries.
“So,” I say, sliding into a chair across from him like it’s what I do every day. “I want to talk about Heart of Darkness. I thought it was so interesting, the way Conrad explores how a person chooses between two different kinds of evil. So relevant, don’t you think?”
Thank you, CliffsNotes.
Damian’s face brightens, and he says, “I know. I think he was writing about the absurdity of it all. I mean, how can there be such a thing as insanity in a world that’s already gone insane?”
“I know!” I agree enthusiastically. “So,” I add, “I was wondering if you could give me some reading recommendations now that I’m done with Conrad. I really liked that one. What else could I try?”
His eyebrows come together thoughtfully, considering what I might like.
“Have you read Kafka?” he asks after a minute.
“Kafka.” I jot the name down in my notebook.
“Classic existentialism. Start with The Metamorphosis. It’s short, but it’s brilliant.”
Short is good, I think. Short is very good.
“I will check it out, literally,” I say. I reach across the table and pop one of his french fries into my mouth. Damian smiles, a real, genuine smile, revealing a row of crooked teeth.
I’m so happy to see that smile.
In Honors Calculus Lab, when (after our initial ten minutes of homework) we pair up to play a blackjack tournament—winner gets cookies of their choice baked by none other than the multi-talented Miss Mahoney—Steven asks if he can challenge me in the first round.
I can’t think of a good excuse not to. At least Steven’s reaction to me is genuine. Even if it is awkward. “Okay.”
I pull my desk to face his.
“Dealer or player?” he asks.
“Dealer.”
He hands me the deck.
“Are you doing all right?” he asks as I shuffle.
Here we go. The bomb squad interrogation has officially begun.
“I’m fine.”
“You missed school. You never miss school.”
“Never say never,” I joke, but he doesn’t laugh.
“I tried to call you.”
“I went on an impromptu road trip with my mom.”
His eyebrows furrow. “A road trip. Where?”
“Tennessee.”
More furrowing. “Tennessee.”
“Yes. Are you ready?”
He nods. I lay a card faceup in front of him and one facedown in front of me. A nine for him. A two for me.
I lay down one more for him. A five. Then one more for me, face up. A jack.
“What’s in Tennessee?” he asks.
I consider telling him that it’s none of his business, but I know he’s asking because he’s worried. In spite of everything, he still cares about me. I shouldn’t throw that back in his face.
“Graceland,” I answer softly. “We went to Graceland.”
His eyes light up with understanding. “Because your mom loves Elvis.”
I can’t help a smile. “Because my mom loves the King.”
“Awesome.” He smiles too, relaxes his shoulders. “That’s great.”
“So, the cards,” I say, trying to get us back on track, because other pairs are finishing up now and ready to move to round two.
He glances at the cards. “Okay, hit me again.”
I do. It’s a six, which puts him at twenty. He passes, and I’m at twelve, so I draw one more for myself, a king. Twenty-two. Bust. It’s over. He wins.
“Congratulations,” I say. “Mahoney makes a killer chocolate chip. That’s what I’d pick.”
“Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he replies. “I’ve merely won the battle, not the war.”
But he goes on to win the next three hands. And he does pick the chocolate chip.
“I told you so,” I say as we’re leaving the classroom. Beaker and El fall into step behind us, but they hang back and let us talk, which feels weird, but what am I going to do about it, stop and insist that we walk all together?
“Yes, yes you did,” he says. “How did you know?”
“Clairvoyant,” I explain, tapping my temple like my brain is something magical.
“Ah.”
For a minute things feel like they used to be. Before, I mean. When we were friends.
“So, I know you haven’t felt like being involved in Math Club lately,” he says as we round the corner into the commons. “But we’re all going bowling tomorrow night. Parkway Lanes. Six p.m. Be there or be square.”
“Well, you know I’m a square,” I joke.
Steven shifts his backpack to the other shoulder and stops to squint at me. “I’d say you were more rectangular.”
“You’re so sweet,” I say.
“So you’ll come.”
For once I really wish I could. “I can’t,” I tell him. “I have the stupid dinner with my dad.”
Which is really the last place I want to be, considering. But that’s the rule: I eat dinner with Dad on Tuesday nights. If I start breaking the rules now, who knows what could happen?
Steven tries to look like he’s not disappointed. “Okay. Fair enough. Another time, then.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Another time.”
17 March
This is going to sound trite, I suppose, but you never know when it’s going to be the last time. That you hug someone. That you kiss. That you say goodbye.
I don’t know what my last words were to Ty. Probably something like, Smell you later, as I went out the door that morning. I can’t remember. It wasn’t significant, is all I know. We were never one of those families that says “I love you” at the end of every conversation, just in case.
Steven’s parents do that. When he calls to tell them he’s going to be late or something, he always ends by saying “I love you, too.” Even if he’ll see them in 10 minutes.
I used to think that was the tiniest bit lame. If you say something that often, it loses its meaning, doesn’t it? But now I understand. If the unthinkable happens—a car accident, a heart attack, whatever—at least you’ll know your last words were something positive. There’s a security in that. A comfort.
I broke up with Steven on New Year’s Eve. There was a party at his house with his family—his 3 sisters and his parents and his aunts and uncles and cousins and half cousins once removed.
That night they treated me like a china doll, poor dear Alexis with the broken life.
Then we were counting down to New Year’s, and I thought, This will be the first year without Ty in it in 3, 2, 1 . . .
Steven leaned in to kiss me and I flinched away.
“I’m sorry,” I remember I said. “I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“No, you don’t.” I wished he would stop being so understanding with me, for once. “I don’t mean this. I mean us. I can’t do it anymore.”
So many emotions crossed his face, but he swallowed them all down. “Okay,” he said, his voice rough with the words he was holding back. “I know things are bad right now, so it makes sense that you need space. I can give you space.”
“This isn’t about Ty,” I said. “I’d be doing this even if Ty hadn’t died.”
Hurt in his brown eyes then. A universe of hurt.
“Oh” was all he said.
“It was a good experiment, but . . .” I couldn’t look at him. Out the window snow was falling in fat flakes, the kind of snowstorm that makes everything seem muted. “I’ve concluded that you and I aren’t compatible.
In the long run, I mean. I think you’re a stellar guy, I do, but it was never going to work between us.”
I sounded like a Vulcan. It was the lamest breakup speech ever, in the history of mankind.
All around us there was music and laughing, his little sister and cousins shrieking in a game of tag, drinks clinking and resolutions being made, a cacophony of noise, but all I could hear was the way Steven caught his breath.
“This is bad timing. I’m sorry. I should go,” I said, and fled for the front door.
He found my jacket in the heap of coats on the guest-room bed, and held it out for me as I slipped my arms into the sleeves. Then he followed me outside to where the Lemon was parked down the street and helped me scrape the snow off my windshield. He said nothing the entire time. He didn’t rage or argue or try to assign blame.
But when at last I met his eyes over the roof of my car, he held my gaze. There was snow in his hair, and his cheeks were red, the streetlight reflecting in his glasses.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Why wouldn’t it work between us?”
I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t tell him about the text, so I floundered for some reasonable lie. “Do you know that there are different types of sperm?”
He stared at me. “You’re breaking up with me because of my sperm? But you don’t—we haven’t—you have no basis for—”
“No. Not your sperm, specifically. Just . . . there are different types of sperm. I read about it. There are some sperm that are meant to swim as quickly as possible up the . . . well, you get the idea; they’re meant to sprint for the finish line, so to speak. But there are also sperm that are supposed to curl up along the way and die. Do you know why they would do that?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“So they can block other sperm. They’re like defensive-linemen sperm. Kamikaze sperm.”
“Fascinating,” Steven said wryly.
“So you know what that means?”
He thought for a minute before I saw the answer flare in his eyes. “It means that we’re biologically engineered to be nonmonogamous. Females aren’t designed to have one single mate. Not if our sperm is meant to compete.”
“Exactly.”
He ran a hand through his hair, dusting off snow. “That doesn’t have anything to do with us, Lex. This isn’t biology.”
Then I told him the biggest lie of all.
“I didn’t mean it. What I said that night. I got caught up for a minute, but . . . I don’t believe in love. I believe in biology.”
His eyes dropped from mine immediately. He started backing away toward the warm, welcoming light of his house and his family and his future.
“Drive safe, Lex,” he murmured.
That was the last thing he said to me, as my boyfriend.
Drive safe.
27.
THIS WEEK WITH DAD IT’S THE OUTBACK. He’s late. I sit at a table drinking strawberry lemonade for twenty minutes before I take out my phone, but I don’t call him. I stare at the screen and think about calling him. I resent him for making me think about calling him.
Finally he shows up, jogging toward me in the darkened restaurant.
“Sorry,” he says as he slides into the booth across from me. “Megan wanted—” He stops himself. He remembers I don’t want to hear about Megan.
I suck down more lemonade as he takes off his coat and gloves and picks up the menu.
“How was your week?” he asks.
“Fantastic,” I deadpan.
“I know things must have been difficult, what with the Murphy boy. It’s such a shame.”
I stare at him. Yes, a shame.
“You got into MIT, I hear,” he says. “You’re making plans.”
He doesn’t look thrilled. Why doesn’t he look thrilled?
“How do you know that?”
“Your mother called me.”
A swallow of lemonade goes down the wrong pipe, and I cough. “Mom calls you?”
“From time to time. She’s worried about you, and she wants to discuss what to do with you.”
I continue coughing. “What to do with me?”
“How to help you,” he corrects himself, because obviously he phrased that badly.
“I’m not the one who needs help.” This comes out without me meaning it to.
Dad looks away like he’s embarrassed that I would be this rudely straightforward. Like he doesn’t know me at all. The waitress comes for our order. Dad orders a huge steak and a Wallaby Darned, some kind of peach drink. I order a salad. Then we sit in awkward silence for a while, sawing off pieces of the dark rye bread that was served to us, chewing our thoughts.
“That’s tremendous news, about MIT,” Dad says finally.
“Yes. Tremendous.”
“Do you have any idea how much . . .” He trails off, and that’s when I understand what his hang-up is. He wants to know how much it costs. Of course he does. He has no money to send me to MIT.
“How much it will cost? Here.” I fish the fat envelope out of my bag and hand it to him. He rifles through the pages until he lands on the financial-outlook sheet.
“So . . . you have a scholarship.”
“A bunch of scholarships, yes. Which should cover tuition. But then I have to pay for housing, food, books, fees and other stuff, which I estimate will cost another fifteen thousand dollars a year. I can get a part-time job when I’m there; they have tutorships and stuff set up. And I have some savings.”
“You have savings?” he asks, like the idea of me with money defies all logic.
“I have a little under twenty thousand,” I admit.
His eyes widen. “Twenty thousand dollars?”
“No. Twenty thousand beaver pelts. Of course twenty thousand dollars.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I saved every penny I made from my summer jobs for the past three years. You remember when I worked at the Jimmy John’s downtown? That was eight dollars an hour, and a lot of sandwiches, so it was two birds, one stone that summer. I babysat for the Bueller triplets a bunch this year. I got birthday money from Grandma. It adds up. Specifically, it adds up to like $19,776.42. So, I can afford this. Without taking loans, I hope.”
I watch the tension leak out of him.
“Lexie, this is . . . tremendous news,” he says, and he means it this time. He breaks into a wide smile. “Congratulations, Peanut.”
Peanut.
All it takes for me to become his little girl again is to pay my own way into a top-notch university.
“I’m so proud of you, honey.” He points at the letter. “Did you read what it says here? You’re one of the most talented and promising students they’ve had in the most competitive applicant pool they’ve had in years. You’re one in a million.”
“I’m one in eleven,” I clarify. “There were 18,109 applicants and 1,620 students admitted, so that’s one in eleven.”
“Still.” He refuses to let me take the wind out of his sails. “That’s impressive. That’s amazing. That’s—”
“Can you stop?” I say.
He looks baffled. “Stop what?”
“Stop celebrating.”
“Why? This is it, Lex. What we’ve dreamed about for you, all this time. The life we’ve wanted for you.”
I can’t hold it in. “Is it? This is the life you’ve always wanted for me?” I gesture around us, at all the happy people eating their happy steaks, celebrating anniversaries or birthdays or paychecks. “This?”
The waitress shows up with my salad and looks uncomfortable, because we’re obviously having an argument.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “Take it back. I’m not hungry anymore.”
She sets the salad on the table anyway, then speed-walks away. I grab the MIT materials and return them to the envelope, then stuff it into my bag and start to gather up my coat.
“Peanut,” Dad says.
br /> “Don’t call me that,” I bark. “I am not your Peanut. You don’t get to call me that anymore.”
His expression hardens. “What is wrong with you? You’re acting like a child.”
“I am your child, technically speaking,” I retort. “Or did you forget?”
He rears back like I slapped him. “Why are you so angry?”
Oh, let me count the ways:
Because this is not what I wanted my life to be. This is not the situation I pictured in my head when I told my dad I was going to MIT. We should be gathered around the kitchen table, Mom, Dad, Ty, and me. I would pass the letter around to them, and everyone would be smiling, and Ty would tease me about being an egghead, and I would fake-punch him, and we would laugh and celebrate my escape from Nebraska, but it wouldn’t feel like an escape from anything bad. I shouldn’t be telling Mom in order to get her through a crying jag and Dad at some crappy chain restaurant and Ty in the cold ground.
But that’s my life.
And can I say any of this to him? Can I say, You screwed up everything; it’s all your fault, the way I said it so easily to Steven last month? Can I tell him what I really think, call him a cheater? A liar? All the pieces of broken glass that night in the park with Ty after Dad left us?
Of course I can’t. If I told him those things, I would lose him more than I already have. I would lose him for good.
I can’t lose anyone else.
But I can’t tell him about the photo, either. About Ty wanting that space in the collage for him. I can’t.
He doesn’t deserve that.
“I have to go,” I say to Dad, my voice catching. “Enjoy your steak.”
He stares after me as I storm out. I sit in the car for a few minutes, fogging up the windshield with my ragged breaths, trying to get myself together enough to drive.
“Please, Lemon,” I plead, stroking the steering wheel. “You can do this.”
I turn the key. She starts up with an unhealthy little sputter, but she starts.
“Thank you,” I breathe, and then I put her in gear, and I refuse to look at Dad’s face in the window as I make my getaway.
Sadie McIntyre is waiting on the front porch when I get back to the house, sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette. I don’t know why I’m surprised.