“Okay.” He looks down at the key ring, which has two house keys and the key fob for the Mini. “What is this thing?”
“It’s the key.”
He runs his index finger over it. “It doesn’t look like any key I’ve ever seen.” It’s round, about the size of one of those dollar coins, with concave sides. It kind of looks like the starship Enterprise. There’s nothing metal sticking out of it.
“Trust me, it’s the key,” I say as we walk out to the student parking lot. I see people noticing me. It reminds me of this girl, Jordan, who went to our school last year. Her older brother took their dad’s gun, went downtown, and shot into a crowd waiting for a movie to start. He hit seven people, killing two, and then shot himself in the head. Before her brother did that, no one noticed Jordan. After, everyone stared, but still no one talked to her. About two weeks later, Jordan stopped coming to school. I don’t know if she dropped out or transferred. Now I wish I had said something to her. Although I don’t know what it would have been.
Fifteen feet from my car, Drew carefully presses the button to unlock the doors. Once we put our stuff on the back seat and get inside, he runs his fingers over the blank column of the steering wheel without finding the ignition switch.
“You put the key in there.” I point to a slot on the dash labeled stop start.
He slides the key in and then presses the button. Nothing happens. And again. The third time, he tries holding the button down. Still nothing.
I’m used to this car, so it takes me a minute to figure out what Drew’s doing wrong. I lean over and look at his feet. “You have to have your foot on the brake before it will start.” He smells like Ivory soap mixed with a little bit of sweat.
Drew looks down at the pedals. “Jeez, even the pedals are round. Everything is round in this car—the rearview mirror, the gauges, the seat backs—”
“Someone had fun designing it.” Everything in the world is designed. Someone decided how deep and how wide to make your cereal bowl, how long to make your spoon handle, and what shape to make the puffs or squares you pour into your bowl. I’m always looking at things, deciding if I would make them the same way or not. But the Mini? The Mini I would keep as is.
When Drew does things in the right order, the car starts smoothly. The melody of the seat belt chime makes us both smile. When we buckle up, our hands brush. I feel funny that I blush and quickly give him directions to my house.
Drew’s careful. I like that. I watch as he checks his sideview mirror, the rearview mirror, and then my sideview mirror, his hands at three and nine o’clock. Then he lifts his right hand as he turns toward me. At first I think he’s going to touch my face, but instead he rests his fingers on the back of my seat. Keeping his head turned, he slowly backs up.
Once we’re out of the parking lot, we both relax a little. It’s funny, but when it was me driving I wasn’t that aware of him. Now all I can think about is how close he is. I hear the breath going in and out of his lungs. He has to keep his eyes on the road, but I can study him, his deep-set eyes and his sun-streaked hair. The backs of his fingers have fine blond hairs.
“So who taught you how to drive?” Drew asks, without taking his eyes off the road.
“My dad. In the cemetery, really early in the morning. He said there was no one there that I could hurt. When I first got into the driver’s seat, I thought there was something wrong with the car. The gas pedal kept shaking. I told my dad, only it wasn’t the car—it was me. My leg was shaking because I was so nervous.”
“Maybe it’s good to be a little nervous,” Drew says. “If you’re too confident, then you’ll screw up.”
“My parents never get nervous,” I say.
“Never?”
“Not that I’ve seen. Sometimes they’ll get a call that there’s been a huge car accident, or some kid who lost both his arms in a hay thresher is being Life Flighted in, and when they hear that, they both get amped, like they just drank a lot of coffee. They don’t seem scared at all.”
“It’s probably good that they love what they do.” His teeth press his lower lip. “I know I wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Me neither.” I don’t tell Drew that sometimes it seems like my parents are only fully alive at work. “So who taught you how to drive?”
“First my mom tried to. She’s one of those people who brace their hands on the dash and scream and pray and stomp their feet on imaginary brakes.” He shoots me a sideways glance. “You can imagine how well that worked out. Then she got one of her boyfriends to do it. He made me go out on I-5. I’d had about ten minutes of driving experience, and all of a sudden everyone is going seventy. I think the most I ever managed was forty. I was sweating so much the steering wheel was slippery.” He smiles with that cute crooked grin.
“That’s like teaching you to swim by throwing you into the deep end of the pool.”
“Kind of like that, yeah.” His silver eyes flick over to me. “It’s pretty much my mom’s whole approach to being a parent.”
“And your dad? Where’s he?”
He shrugs. “No idea. I’ve never met him.”
I try to imagine that. “Do you know if he’s alive?”
“My mom’s never told me his name.” His voice gets softer, like he’s talking to himself. “Sometimes I wonder if she even knows it.”
When we get to my house, the open garage doors show my parents’ matching blue BMWs. My mom’s out on the front step, getting the mail. She does a double take when she sees who is driving the car.
“Just park on the street,” I tell Drew.
He bites his lip and pulls in next to the curb. “Are they going to be mad that I’m driving your car?”
“No,” I say, although I have no idea. They’ve never met Drew. They’ve never really met any of my friends. Not that I have that many.
“Maybe I should just take off.” He looks out at the street.
“No. Come in with me. I need to talk to you about something.”
He presses the key into my hand. We get out, pick up our stuff, and start walking up the flagstone walkway. Drew stays a half step back.
My mom looks up and smiles. “Hey, Gabie—who’s your friend?”
The Sixth Day
Drew
I KNOW WHAT Mrs. Klug sees when she looks at me. A loser. A skinny kid in torn jeans, hair that’s too long, and Vans that were black and white checked before they got worn a couple of hundred times. She probably thinks there’s a pack of cigarettes in my backpack. Which there is. But they’re not mine. I took them from my mom when we were arguing about how much she smokes. Plus there’s the longboard under my arm.
Or maybe because she’s a surgeon, Gabie’s mom sees the longboard and no helmet and thinks “donor.”
She’s slender and really pretty for a mom, dressed in green scrubs. Her hair is blond, but a brighter blond than Gabie’s, so maybe she dyes it. Gabie’s mom looks important, like five minutes ago she was making life-or-death decisions and yelling “stat!” and talking about femoral arteries and stuff like that.
“Hi, Mom. This is Drew. We work together at Pete’s.” I wait for her to say why I was driving the car, but she doesn’t. Do Gabie’s parents even know about her plan? “Drew, this is my mom.”
I shift my longboard and reach out to shake hands. “It’s nice to meet you—um—should I say Mrs. Klug or Dr. Klug?”
Although her skin is soft, her grip is firm. “Call me Gail. Dr. Klug is for the hospital, and Mrs. Klug is Steve’s mom.” I figure Steve must be the other Dr. Klug.
“Okay. Gail.” I nod.
“We’re going upstairs to study,” Gabie says, hefting her backpack like a prop. We don’t have a single class together. Her mom doesn’t say anything, just smiles again. I follow Gabie inside.
If the twin BMWs weren’t bad enough, my first sight of the inside of her house convinces me that I will never, ever let Gabie see the inside of our apartment. Her house is big and perfect. It’s not like a rea
l house where people live. Everything is in the right place; there’s nothing left out—no candy wrappers, no newspapers, no mail, no empty glasses, no magazines, no shoes kicked off. It looks like how I imagine a really expensive hotel would look.
“I’d offer you a snack,” Gabie says, “but unless you like baby carrots, you’re out of luck. My parents have zero tolerance for junk food.”
Just then a man in dark blue scrubs walks out of a hallway that leads off the living room. His eyes are on a BlackBerry, and he’s talking while he types. “We just want you to be healthy, Gabie.” Then he looks up, sees me, and stops.
“Dad, this is my friend Drew from work.”
I step forward and shake his hand, too. The same soft / firm combo as his wife, although his is a little firmer, as if to remind me that it’s his daughter I’m with. “Hello, Dr. Klug.” He’s a little less than six feet tall and not as thin as you might think, given his feelings about junk food.
He just says hello back. No “Call me Steve.”
“We’re going upstairs to my room,” Gabie says. Now there’s not even a mention of homework.
He looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just nods. I follow Gabie up the stairs, past a series of what I guess must be family photos. The first one shows Gabie and her parents standing outside this house. At least I think it’s Gabie. She looks about six, and they’re dressed like they’re getting ready to go to church. The one above that is just of her parents, I think, but looking a lot younger. The farther they are up the stairs, the older the photos look. They start out in color and then go to black-and-white. Toward the end, I think they might be daguerreotypes, or whatever they called photos 150 years ago. Each one is more stiff and formal than the last. The final portrait shows a family staring at the camera. The men all wear weird white high collars with a sort of bow tie. The women wear long gathered dresses. One of them holds a portrait of a little boy on her lap.
“That’s my great-great-grandmother,” Gabie says when she sees me looking. “The painting’s of her son. He died two years before, but she wanted him to be remembered.”
I follow her down the hall.
Gabie’s room is the only room in the house that looks lived in. The twin bed isn’t made. On the floor next to it is a paperback, open to the page she was on when she put it down. On one wall is a huge canvas covered with headlines and images cut from magazines. At first glance I see “Fever,” “Underground Girl,” “It’s Pure Adrenaline,” and “Your Head Would Probably Explode.” There are girls in crazy clothes, pictures of Wonder Woman cut from a comic book, a photo from a newspaper of a man holding a knife, and dozens of eyes, just eyes with no faces. The whole effect is kind of disturbing.
I like it.
On another wall is a poster from the band Flea Market Parade, which surprises me. I love their music, but it’s dark. Songs about longing and suicide and memories that you can’t change. I tap on the lead singer’s face. He’s wearing suspenders, and the circles under his eyes are so dark they almost look like makeup. “I like their music, but not that many people have heard of them,” I say.
“I’m pretty sure neither one of us is ‘many people,’” she says.
I turn the chair at her desk around and sit down. Gabie closes the door. She pulls up the covers before she sits on the bed.
“So now are we going to study?” I say, and raise one eyebrow. Somehow I feel more relaxed because we’re in Gabie’s room. The rest of the house is like a shell, or armor. This room feels softer. Maybe it’s the part the armor is protecting.
“I just wanted to talk some more about Kayla. My parents don’t like me to talk about her. It’s been nearly a week. They’re sure she’s gone. That she’s”—Gabie hesitates—“dead.”
“But you said you can feel her. That you know she’s alive.” I shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be talking Gabie into something that I know can’t be true.
“Maybe her spirit is watching us now, and that’s what I feel.” Her mouth twists. “Like her ghost.”
“Maybe. But you seemed so sure.”
“But Kayla being dead is what makes the most sense.” Gabie’s voice gets very quiet. “What do you think it would feel like to drown? Or to be strangled to death? Do you think it would be agony until the very end? Or would you pass out and stop feeling it? Is it just blackness?” Her voice shakes. “Is it like sleeping? Or is it this torture that goes on and on?”
Now the shaking has reached her shoulders. I get up, kneel in front of her, and put my arms around her. It’s different than the few other times I’ve touched her, which were mostly just in passing. Then I was aware of Gabie as a girl. Now I feel like her brother. Someone stronger. Even though I’m not. I mean, she’s the one who saved me in the river.
But with her trembling in my arms, it really feels like I’m her brother.
Until she kisses me.
The Sixth Day
Gabie
WHEN I KISS Drew, I feel like I’m drowning, or drugged, or I’ve gone someplace where things are beyond my control. Like I could fall inside Drew and never come out.
Instead I jerk my head back, push my hands down on his shoulders, and stand up. I walk over to my window. Drew is still kneeling on the floor. He turns his head to look up at me. I don’t know what he’s thinking. His mouth is soft. He’s not grinning, not gloating, not even as lost as I was.
“You should probably go,” I say. I don’t want to talk about what just happened. I don’t want to think about what just happened. It feels like whatever was between us has shifted. Before, I was giving Drew what he needed—more days on the schedule, the keys to my car, even fishing him out of the river. Now I realize how much I need him myself.
Except I don’t need anyone. I learned that a long time ago. I don’t need my parents. I don’t need brothers and sisters. And after Maya’s family moved away last year, I learned I don’t even really need a best friend.
In some ways, Pete’s is the closest thing I have to friends and family.
Drew gets to his feet. I turn to look out the window at the deep blue sky and the dark green oak leaves silhouetted against it. I’ve always liked those colors, the contrast. When I was a kid, I used to lie on the front lawn and stare at them. I could lie there and not think.
Now I think way too much. So much that I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. What’s stupid and what’s smart.
I know what my parents would say. They would say Drew is a mistake. I’m going to Stanford next fall. Drew isn’t going anyplace.
I wait to hear his footsteps walking away, muffled on the soft carpet. Instead, I feel his warmth as he comes to stand behind me. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t need to.
“Cerulean,” he says, looking past me. Suh-roo-lee-uhn.
I turn to look at him. “What?”
“That’s what color blue the sky is.”
“I know what it means. I’m just surprised that you know the word.”
Drew’s face closes up like a fist. He pivots on his heel, and in two steps he has picked up his backpack and skateboard. In another two steps he is at the door to my room.
“Wait, I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “Drew!” I run after him, but he’s already halfway down the stairs. My dad stands up, like he wants to challenge him. Like he thinks something is wrong. It is, but not the way he thinks. I can’t go bleating after Drew now. So I head back to my room before he can ask what’s going on. Drew closes the front door at the same time as I close my bedroom door.
I just never thought of Drew as a reader. But cerulean is a reading word. Nobody says it. “Reading words” is how I think of all the words I read that no one ever says out loud. No one uses scamper in real conversation. Or hearth. It wasn’t until last year that I learned it didn’t rhyme with mirth. That it really rhymed with Darth, as in Vader.
I don’t want to leave my room. It’s rare for my parents both to be home. And even rarer for me to bring a boy home
. Scratch that—I’ve never done it before. They’re going to want to talk about it, ask me questions. I probably can’t avoid that, because they insist we eat dinner together anytime the three of us are all home. Which is about twice a month.
But until dinnertime, I want to stay away from them and their questions and the looks they’ll give each other.
I could read or do homework (although there’s less and less homework as we get closer to graduation). Instead, I turn on my computer.
I need to keep away from the Internet. But after I push Drew away, push away the one person who might be my friend, I Google a certain term. There are more than three million results. These are parts of the headlines I find under the News tab for “body found”:
in suitcase
ablaze in bin
in farm field
on roof of apartment building
by side of road
burned, beheaded
in car that had been towed
in wooded area
floating in pond
behind Dumpster
in burned car
wrapped in carpet
wrapped in plastic
in vacant lot
in some bushes
in lake
buried in snow
at entrance to golf course
And this is what I read when I click on “in suitcase”:
Body of Teen Found in Landfill Stuffed in Suitcase
It all started when police found the body of 16-year-old Marissa Johns stuffed in a brand-new suitcase in the Houston city landfill. Inside the suitcase, investigators found a bar code, and they were able to trace it to a specific Walmart store in the area. Cops pulled surveillance video from the night Marissa disappeared, and, sure enough, they spotted a man buying the suitcase that held Marissa’s body. Police identified the man as Alberto Rodriguez III, a neighbor of Marissa’s, and arrested him.