After Obsession

  “No. You’re just looking for excuses to break up with me.” His voice is full-on angry, tight, compressed. A muscle twitches under his eye.

  “You’re a racist, Blake. I mean, that’s not all you are, obviously. You’re funny and you’re a great singer and stuff, but you—you—” I can’t find the words. “I just can’t go out with you.”

  “It’s because of him, isn’t it? Because of that Indian?”

  “You said it again!”

  “Whatever. You like him. He’s faster than me, so you want to go out with him now, right? He’s just this giant stud.” His jaw clenches and all the happy-fun-singing Blake is gone. It’s just gone. It’s like something else is looking out of his eyes. He glares at me and spits out the words. “You are freaking insane.”

  “I’m not crazy!” I push myself farther away from him and lean against the car door, trying to stay calm. He’s hurting inside. That’s all. That’s why he’s saying these sorts of things that he’s never said before. That’s why his face is a twisted mask of rage. “What is wrong with you? You aren’t acting like you.”

  “Right. I’m the one who’s acting like a freak.” He snorts. For a second he’s silent. For a second nothing happens. For a second cars just pass on the street. Then he roars—literally roars—“It’s that kid! It’s that stupid Indian kid!” He slams himself out the driver’s side door. Two seconds pass and he’s on my side. My door flies open before I can figure out what’s happening. He’s yanking me out. “Out of my car. Out of my goddamn car.”

  My bag falls on the ground. “My seat belt.”

  It’s still attached. I’m tangled up. I’m a mess. I’m stuck in the car. He’s grabbing both my arms, yanking. I manage to reach over and unclick the belt. The moment I do, I’m tumbling out of the car sideways. I land on my hip and my elbow and my bag. Blake is standing above me and I’m sobbing out, “Don’t you kick me. Don’t you dare kick me.”

  His face suddenly changes. It loses its anger, just snaps into his normal face. His lips quiver for a second. His eyes widen and he says, “Oh my God. Oh … Aimee … I’m … I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. Aimee, I’m so—”

  He reaches his hand down to help me up. I’ve held that hand a million times, but I know I won’t ever again.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snap, holding on to my anger so I can stop crying. “Don’t.”

  The bus goes by. I swear eight hundred million people look out the windows at us. The one face I recognize for sure is Courtney’s. She smiles. They are all smiling.

  I cringe and haul myself up. My knee barely holds my weight, wiggling, trying to find its place. Dirt marks my jeans, smeared across the side of my leg.

  “Aimee. I’m sorry. I was just so mad—” Blake starts. “I don’t know what I was doing. I—I can’t believe I just did that. Aim—I’m—I’m so—I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately—”

  I raise my hand to stop him talking. My shoulder aches. “Don’t.”

  I haul my bag up and start walking. Each step sends a knife of sorrow-pain through my leg and right into the core of me. I go around him, putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the trash that’s on the shoulder of the road, the old McDonald’s bag, the Ziploc sandwich bag, the newspaper, wet and moldy and discarded. I keep walking to school, limping, hurting, but that’s all. It’s over. I’m okay. I am perfectly okay.

  Blake has never been like this before. He’s always been a tiny bit competitive, but he’s never been jealous, never been racist or sexist. He’s the kind of guy who wants to succeed, win some running awards, go to college, sing, be happy. He was nice. He was good. Everyone knows that. In a town like this everyone knows everything, really, and … I swear, I’m just walking down the hall before first period and people are already whispering about what happened with Blake and me on the side of the road. Their voices come at me from all sides, girls, guys, high, low, worried, know-it-all.

  “He just hauled off on her … totally not like Blake. Everyone’s so freaking pissy lately—”

  “She and Blake broke up.”

  “Her mom was totally psycho. I heard she—”

  “What crap. You know it’s a rumor. They’d never break up. They’re perfect. They put like a hundred hearts on each other’s status updates.”

  The two-minute walk to Spanish seems to take hours. All I want is the safety of my desk and conjugated verbs. I manage to hold it together before I remember that I’ll see Alan in bio next period and I need to have some kind of plan for us to talk—like I’m in any condition to talk right now. But I have to be, don’t I?

  Courtney corners me after Spanish. She’s got her ancient orange textbook under her arm. With her free arm she grabs my elbow and pulls me closer. She speaks softly. “Aim, are you sure about this?”

  I want to say, “About what?” but instead I just nod.

  “He told me. Wow, Aimee, you and Blake. You’ve been going out forever and …” She struggles for the words. Her dark brown eyes close and then open again. “I don’t think you should just dump him like that. He’s really sorry.”

  “I know …” I remember her face smiling in the bus while I was on the ground. “It doesn’t matter. How about you? Are you okay?”

  “Me?” She stops walking. Her voice goes shrill. “Oh, yeah. I’m brilliant. You know, it’s not like my dad is missing and everyone insists he’s dead.”

  “Court …” I don’t know what to say.

  “And, my stupid-ass cousin barged into my room without knocking.”

  “He did?” My brain shudders. Alan’s supposed to be the good one. Why would he do that?

  “Yes.” She shakes her head, lets go of my elbow, and wraps her arms around her rib cage. “Everyone is acting funny lately. Have you noticed? It’s like all the bad in them, all the bad qualities are getting pumped up more often, like everyone’s losing their temper, like everyone’s getting more insecure or mean or jerky or something. I don’t know … I don’t know. I can’t believe you dumped him.”

  I start to say something, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what to respond to. She’s all over the place.

  She talks before I have a chance, letting go of her ribs and running both hands through her hair really quickly. “That’s not what matters. What matters is … do you remember what happened at that séance?”

  I swallow. I don’t answer. Our feet move us forward through people weighed down with backpacks and book bags and secrets.

  Court keeps going. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “Yeah,” I say, flat and hard. How can I not remember the pencil catching on fire? The way my hair was suddenly wet and how I’d screamed and screamed because it felt like someone was ripping my arms off, and how I’d freaked everyone out. “Why? What’s this about?”

  “It’s just … There are certain things, Aimee, things that you can’t do anything about, you know? Certain things are totally beyond you.”

  I adjust my bag, which is slipping. Everything smells stale, like old-lady houses and nursing homes, or clothes that haven’t been washed in a while. “And you believe that?”

  She smiles, a slow half smile that is far from happy. We’re at the place in the hall where she goes left and I go right. Some people wave and say hi. We all jostle forward into the middle of the intersection.

  I head to the wall and open my locker, shoving my Spanish book onto the top shelf.

  “Aim …” Court’s voice tugs at me.

  I shut the locker.

  “I just want to make sure you know what you’re risking. Going out with Blake made you seem more normal.”

  “What? So everyone will think I’m a freak again if we stay broken up?” I angry-whisper at her. And for a second I almost think that I made the wrong decision when I broke up with Blake, but it isn’t just because of what happened today. He’s been getting progressively jerkier and I’ve been getting less and less happy with him. You shouldn’t make do when you’re dating
, should you? You shouldn’t date just because dating makes you seem less crazy.

  Courtney shakes her head. “No. That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

  “What, then?”

  She swallows. “I’m worried something bad will happen to you, like at the séance, and with Chuck. I’m worried that he’ll notice you again.”

  My heart stops beating, but my mouth still works and I whisper, “Who?”

  “The River Man.”

  Everything stills. Shivers seem to creep around my hair. “He could be a figment of my imagination.”

  “Aimee. We both know that’s not true.” Her face is a crashed-apart painting. Her eyes and mouth are rigid-scared because she knows how bad things can be. “I think he’s doing something, right now, to the town, making people mean.”

  “So you’re saying Blake isn’t a jerk because he’s a jerk. He’s being a jerk because of the River Man.”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Yes.”

  About a week after that seventh-grade séance, Court and I tried this Ouija board thing. It’s supposed to connect you to the spirit world. We wanted to find out why Chuck died. The Ouija board has this little pointer that you place your fingertips on. Then it spells out words by moving to letters of the alphabet.

  “Why did Chuck die?” Court had asked the board, because we’d agreed that I was not the person to communicate with the spirits anymore.

  The pointer spelled out, “Because I wanted him to.”

  I took my fingers off the pointer and hugged my arms around myself, terrified.

  Court battled on. “One more question, Aimee. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to do this,” I’d said, my voice edging into hysteria. “I don’t want to.”

  “Aim. One more,” Court said, and like an idiot I put my fingers back on the pointer thing. Then she asked, all strong and calm, “Who are you?”

  And it answered: “The River Man.”

  Hayley finds me outside the door to bio. Her hair is all crazy because she has PE first period. She grabs my hands. “You’re limping.”

  I shrug.

  “You broke up with Blake this morning.” She makes it a statement.

  “Yeah …” I start and stop because Alan’s super-big self is suddenly there. Something flutters in my stomach. His eyes meet my eyes. He takes in the dirt on my jeans and his mouth starts to form a question, but then he clamps it shut again. Instead, he just nods and ducks his head, fast-walking into bio like he’s embarrassed to see me or something.

  “Did he hit you?” Hayley says.

  I have to do a double take. “What?”

  She gets insistent. “Did Blake hit you? You’re walking funny. Your jeans are dirty. And people are, well, talking. Did he hit you?”

  “He dragged me out of the car,” I whisper, because I can’t hold it inside anymore.

  Hayley’s mouth drops open. Then she grabs me, crushing me to her chest. “Oh, baby … I am so sorry. Oh, that asshole. I never thought he’d be like that—not ever. Oh, Aimee.”

  “It’s okay.” I sniff. She smells like rain.

  “No, it’s not. It’s not okay,” she whispers as people move by us into class. “It is never okay. You know we all have times where we freak out a little, get moody, whatever, but throwing you out of the car is not okay, Aimee.”

  “I know. That’s not what I mean. It’s just … I’m okay.”

  She pushes me away to look into my eyes. “You’re crying. You are not okay.”

  I have no answer.

  “Girls. Class.” Mr. Swanson is totally ignoring my teary face, which is nice of him, I guess, or else that’s just a symptom of what Courtney was talking about.

  We walk into the classroom. I’m still limping. Hayley goes to her seat by the window. I slide into my desk behind Alan. He turns to look at me. His eyes are huge and deep and questioning. I try to smile but can’t quite do it.

  “You okay?” he mouths.

  I do this fast nod. His eyes narrow the tiniest bit. I can tell he doesn’t believe me. Opening my bag, I grab some gum and put it in my mouth. Then I take out my notebook and a pen and write: Five minutes. I’ll pretend to faint. You take me to nurse’s office. Okay?

  When Mr. Swanson turns to the wipe board I reach forward and slide the note over Alan’s shoulder. He catches it.

  There. Step one, done.

  • 8 •

  ALAN

  I read the note one more time, then fold it once, twice, and stick it between some middle pages of my biology book before I check out the clock. Five minutes. I try to focus on Swanson, but I’m really just staring blankly at him, thinking about Aimee.

  There’s something wrong with her. Her jeans are covered in dirt that looks ground in, and she limped when she came into class. There’d been talk in first hour, talk about her and Blake. Someone said they’d seen him hit her. Someone else said that would never happen. I wondered. Granted, I barely know the guy, but he—

  I sense Aimee standing up behind me.

  “Mr. Swanson,” she says, “I don’t feel—”

  She’s taken a step forward and is beside me when she crumples sideways. I catch her as I’m standing up. Dead silence. All eyes are on us as I hold her up, clamped against my chest, her cheek pressed hard against my medicine bag. The world shimmers and slams just like the last time I touched her. Images swarm into my mind, a river, being pulled deep into the water, a man’s voice … It’s not quite as powerful as last time, but it freezes me for a second. Then I shake myself out of it.

  “I’ll take her to the nurse,” I announce, then put an arm behind her knees and scoop her up. She’s so light! I hold her high enough that her feet won’t kick anyone in the face and head for the door.

  “Across from the front office,” Mr. Swanson calls as I push through the door. I guess he’s telling me where the nurse’s station is. I don’t know.

  The classroom door closes and Aimee whispers, “Go left to the end of the hall and out the door.”

  I move fast, passing closed doors with those little slits for windows. I can’t tell if anyone sees us. No one confronts us, and I keep moving until I get to the blue steel door at the end of the hall. I push it open with my hip and step into the cool morning air.

  “Okay, you can put me down,” Aimee says.

  I look down into her face and think about that. Her skin is so white and flawless, her eyes so green and bright and full of life. A little breeze ruffles her magnificent red hair. I don’t really want to put her down.

  “You were limping,” I say. “Maybe I shouldn’t make you walk.”

  She smiles up at me. What a smile! I mean, it sounds all mushy, I know, but damn, that girl has a smile that makes you want to smile right back at her.

  “I’m good. Really,” she says, but she doesn’t wiggle or try to get out of my arms.

  “Me, too.” Okay, I have to admit that I’m not usually so bold with girls. Looking into Aimee’s eyes, though, I know there is depth here. There’s already some kind of connection. “Where are we going?”

  “You are so not going to carry me all the way,” she argues, but still, she’s not trying to get down. “You’ll get hurt.”

  I lower her feet to the ground and let her go, then realize how warm she’d been against me. She crosses her arms over her chest and hunkers against the cool breeze.

  “All right, but you start limping and I’m carrying you again.”

  “Are you always so gallant, so knight-in-shining-armor?” she asks.

  “Just bossy,” I answer, and I’m still smiling because she is.

  “Come on,” she says. “Behind the field house.”

  We dash across a short stretch of lawn and into the parking lot. I follow her lead, staying low between the parked vehicles. She’s limping, but managing to move pretty fast anyway. We get to the side of the field house and scooch along the wall like SWAT cops until we slide around to the back, where she collapses to the ground, her back against the cinderbloc
k wall.

  “You were limping,” I accuse.

  “Yeah, but you couldn’t catch me.”

  All I can do is laugh.

  “What’s in the bag?” she asks, nodding toward my chest.

  I touch the leather. “It’s a medicine bag. It’s kind of like a good-luck charm.”

  “What’s in it? I mean, you don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just nosy. It smelled—” She stops, like she’s embarrassed to finish.

  “Probably smelled like sweat,” I finish.

  “Well, it smelled like you, but there was more. Kind of … earthy.”

  I finger the bag, watching Aimee, but thinking back to Lake Thunderbird. Her eyes, so clear and green, promise me I can trust her.

  “A rock,” I say, and my throat is surprisingly dry. I’ve never told anyone, not even Mom, what’s in the bag. “A white rock about as big as a robin’s egg. Some hair. And some dirt.”

  Her eyes ask a question, but her mouth doesn’t. She nods.

  I change the subject. “First off, Courtney wasn’t good this morning. She told her mom to fuck off and ran out of the house. She doesn’t like me.”

  “That’s not normal. She’s not acting like Courtney, you know.” Aimee’s tone is very serious. “She would never say that to her mom … this thing with her dad has really changed her.”

  “Tell me,” I urge. A bruise has formed on my spine from the picture hitting me and it hurts as I sit with my back against the wall.

  “They were pretty close,” Aimee says. “You could tell he really loved her, like she was everything to him, and she loved him soooo much. Sometimes she’d even skip out on going to the movies or hanging out with us to go for a walk or play Monopoly with her dad. She was a total daddy’s girl.”

  I’m listening, but I’m also thinking about my own father. I’m a little jealous. At least Courtney had her dad for fifteen years.

  “She hasn’t accepted that he’s not going to come home,” Aimee says.

  I nod.

  “There’s more, though. Now she’s …” Aimee stops. I’d looked away. I was looking at the grass between my shoes, actually, just taking in what she was saying. Now I look up at her face again and I can see the confusion. Her voice is a whisper. It’s very, very sad. She’s really struggling with something big, struggling to say what she wants. I figure she’s wondering if I’ll think she’s weird.