“Like if I see someone bullying somebody in the hall or whatever, it bothers me and I’ll think about it a lot, like a lot. To the point where I replay it in my head and create this situation where I’m really nice to them, and tell them I’m sorry that happened or whatever, ask them to sit with us at lunch.”
Alex is quiet like she’s thinking, so I keep going.
“My mom and dad get all these Christian magazines, right? And when I was little there were always pictures of kids in Africa with cleft palates on the back cover, and if you give five bucks or whatever they can fix this kid’s face. There was this one girl who was a big mess, like her face was split in half, and I had this whole thing where I pretended I made Mom and Dad go to Africa and adopt her. She’d come home and live with me and we’d fix her face, but also she’d be my sister because I never had one, and I’d give her half my room and half my toys and half my clothes.
“And it was kind of screwed up because that made me feel better, you know? Like me thinking about doing a good thing took away all my guilt. Kind of like how me imagining hitting Branley helped me take care of wanting to without actually doing it.”
“Except in this case it’s not a good thing because that girl in Africa benefits in no way from you daydreaming about being her hero,” Alex says. “If my dad only considered giving us his money instead of actually doing it, I’d be homeless and eating free lunch.”
“And your mom would have to drink bottom-shelf scotch,” I add.
Alex fake shudders. “Good thing we’re flush.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“So did you send in five bucks?” Alex asks.
“No. I asked Mom if we could and she said that it was a stock photo that charity had been using since, like, the eighties and she didn’t entirely trust where the money went, anyway.”
“That sucks,” Alex says.
“Yeah.”
The conversation dies, each of us drifting away. Alex’s breathing evens out and I know she’s asleep, but I can’t get there myself. Every time I close my eyes I see that girl’s cleft palate. I go ahead and pretend that I went to Africa and got her, that she came to live with me and we were like sisters, even though if Mom’s right, that girl is probably twenty years older than me, or even dead by now.
But that’s not going to help me sleep, so I pretend.
I pretend that I make the world a better place.
37. JACK
Newness wears off.
This is something I’ve learned about relationships. I’ve had more than a few run their course, the idiosyncrasies that were once endearing becoming annoying, the jump of my heart into my throat at the sight of her lessening to a skip, then a pause, then the bare recognition that at some point slips into dread, and you know it’s time to end it.
It’s different with Alex. The newness might have faded, which is inevitable, but it’s grown into something better. The panic of not being able to come up with something to say to her has settled into the comfort of companionable silence, my hand resting on her knee, or her head on my chest. The frantic need to be near her and know how she feels has morphed into an almost pleasant ache of missing her when she’s not with me, because I know we’ll be together again.
We’re happily entangled with each other in my basement, a basketball game on the TV that neither one of us is watching, an empty pizza box on the floor that I really need to grab before it’s obvious we have a mouse problem. But I don’t want to unravel my fingers from her hair, or shift her off my chest.
There are things I haven’t talked to her about yet, though. Things I keep wanting to mention, but am afraid to ruin whatever moment we’re in. I tug on her hair to make sure she’s awake, fully aware it would be my luck to say something important to a girl who’s fast asleep. She sits up, and I immediately miss the pressure and warmth of her against me.
“What?” she asks, pulling her hair off her shoulders and into a ponytail.
“Do you remember when we met?” I ask.
It’s an odd question to ask someone in a town this small. Chances are there was never a time we weren’t in each other’s lives, whether we knew it or not. We probably splashed each other in the kiddie area at the public pool, while our soaking-wet swim diapers sagged forever downward. We may have reached for each other from child seats in grocery carts as our mothers passed each other at the store.
But I want to know if she remembers the night Anna was discovered, if she thinks of the version of me who participated in that, the guy with a fog in his brain and his pants around his ankles, a half-naked Branley underneath him. I want her to not remember, but I also want to rectify it if she does, prove to her and to me that’s not who I am. Being with her has killed that guy.
“Do you mean in the guidance office?” she asks, and my heart lifts at least three feet out of my stomach.
I could say no and come clean, but she looks so happy right now, and bringing up Anna can’t possibly be the start to a good conversation.
“Yeah,” I say.
“What about it?”
My mind is still in the woods that night, back when I was still a jackass and she still had normal posture, not always tense.
“Jack?” She taps my leg. “What about it?”
“You said you weren’t going to college. Why not?” I blurt the first thing that comes to mind, my initial reaction to her statement months ago that I never got around to asking.
Her face closes immediately, the tiniest shift of muscles making it obvious even in the dim basement that the conversation is over before it even begins.
“I’m just not,” she says, the words even and measured.
I sit up and our legs unfold from each other, the heat we’d made evaporating quickly in the cool, dark basement air. “You’ve got the grades. You’re smart as hell. And it’s not like tuition would be a problem.”
Alex doesn’t say anything, her eyes shifting to the ground.
I nudge her leg with mine, trying to reclaim the easy communication we’ve shared before. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s not for you to understand.”
The first stab of annoyance comes fast and hard, painful because it’s a mar on the perfection of our relationship. I never wanted to feel this way. Not about Alex.
“Try to explain,” I say, my hand finding hers.
“My life isn’t like yours,” she begins.
“I know,” I say too quickly. She closes her eyes and I know she just felt that stab, too. “Sorry,” I say. “Go on.”
“It’s not like yours,” she says again. “You’re supposed to move out among people, widen your horizons.”
“And you’re not?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head emphatically. “It’s better if I don’t.”
“It’s not better,” I argue. “What are you going to do? Get a job at the gas station? Waste your life flipping burgers?”
“Not better for me,” she says quietly. “It’s better for others.”
I’m about to tell her that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard when I remember the sound of skin tearing, and Ray Parsons’s blood on the church stones.
Her hand pulls away from mine, pointing at the empty pizza box.
“You’ve got mice.”
They scatter as I jump to my feet, receding into the shadows. I grab the box and take it upstairs to the trash, Alex following me and pulling her coat on. We kiss at the door, the conversation unfinished but over.
I lie in bed pondering the wound that the first stab of our relationship left behind, wondering if it’s one that can heal or if it will be fatal. I think about the conversation that might have happened if I’d had the balls to ask if she remembered the night they found Anna, and if it would’ve gone better.
I text Alex and tell her good night, she responds with the same, and I hold my phone tightly, too aware that the present is all we have if I can’t mention the past and she won’t talk about the future.
38. A
LEX
I don’t like to come home.
Other houses have warmth in them, the lines between the people who live there humming with unspent energy ready to unreel. Conversations from the past still hover in the air, waiting for the threads to be picked up again. The air here is cold, empty to the point of sterility. When I hear my name it’s shocking, a word that isn’t spoken. Taboo.
It came from the living room, so I follow it, the only light provided from the moon bouncing back off the snow outside. My mother is sitting on the couch, a cut-crystal decanter on the coffee table in front of her, glass in her hand.
“Mom?” I say, which doesn’t sound right and never has. The word carries a history that we don’t share, implies picnics and swing sets and trips to the pool.
“Who else?” she asks, and I don’t know what to say to that. “Come here,” she says. “Have some scotch.”
I don’t want scotch and I don’t want to drink with her, but it’s the only olive branch she has to offer, so I take it, the alcohol heavy and hot as it rips down my throat. She throws hers back like water and pours another for both of us.
“You’ve been out a lot,” she says.
I have, and I don’t like the guilt that seeps over me with her words. Like maybe I shouldn’t be.
“I have a boyfriend,” I tell her. That word feels so meaningless here, lacking the fullness it carries at Jack’s house, the weight of his mom’s hand on my shoulder as we stand side by side in the kitchen, pouring off-brand root beer into plastic cups. I take another drink of scotch, hoping it will make words come more easily. “His name is Jack.”
Mom investigates the bottom of her glass like she can’t figure out how it became empty so quick. “The boy who brought your car back?”
“Yes.”
“He’s good-looking.”
I know he is, so I don’t reply.
She pours herself another and frowns a little when it overflows onto her fingers, flicking sticky amber drops off into the dark. “Do I need to talk to you about . . .”
“No,” I say.
We drink quietly in the dark, each swallow going down more easily than the one before. I feel it in a few minutes, my head floating and the words I need to string together in order to get through this sliding off the surface of my suddenly slick brain.
“Do you have other friends?” Mom asks eventually.
“One,” I say. I think about Sara for a second, a person who I spend time with because we both spend time with Claire. “Maybe two.”
“Gotta start somewhere,” Mom says, her words beginning to slur.
We’re quiet again, this unfamiliarity of talking to each other not comfortable but not as painful as I thought it might be, either.
“You’re so much like him,” Mom says. “It’s not easy for me, you know.”
I don’t say anything because I don’t want to talk about this. Not about how my anger builds in my stomach and boils up into my head, venting out through my hands and mouth like steam escaping on the way. Not about how he was the same and I saw that once or twice, how he wanted to throw a punch or break her jaw. But he always stopped himself, and maybe that’s something he could’ve taught me if he’d stayed.
“Once he was gone I hoped the parts of you that are from me would have more room to breathe,” Mom says.
“That didn’t happen,” I say.
“No.” She nods. “I wish I could open you up, Alex, unspool everything inside of you and burn out the parts that are from him, put you back together and see my daughter instead of my husband every time I look at you.”
I take another drink. If she doesn’t instinctively understand that’s the same thing, then I can’t explain it.
“I’ve been trying to get him out of my life for ten years,” she says, refilling her glass again. “Little things build up when you live with someone. Six months ago I found a vase someone gave us as a wedding gift and I took it outside and broke it. But I can’t do that with you. A decade trying to get everything he touched out of this house and I end up raising him instead.”
My mom has poetry in her, something I never would have guessed. It must be where my words come from, flowing through me with a power equaled only by the fire in my gut. They’re moving now, escaping in a way I didn’t mean to or expect.
“I killed Comstock,” I say.
“I know,” she answers.
And we drink a little more in the dark, that thread hanging in the air. And maybe one of us will reach for it again.
39. PEEKAY
My dad has some crutch phrases. One of his big ones is this too shall pass (2 Corinthians 4:17–18, if you’re wondering). My mom always tacks her version onto that—time heals all wounds, although I’m not sure she’s placed her trust entirely on the earth continuing to rotate, because she supplements with chamomile tea. So most of the crying done in my life has been over steamy mugs with herbs floating in them, the musty whiff of Dad’s big-ass King James Version flopped open across from me, while well-meaning pats on the back are supposed to make everything okay.
This is how my trauma is handled, everything from Grandma dying to my first kitten tangling with a speeding Jeep to getting my period. I did call Dad out on the this too shall pass thing on that last one. Then Mom got all loyal and explained menopause and the fact that technically Dad was right, it would just take about forty years, and then I cried harder.
So it’s understandable that I didn’t bring my broken heart to them, dumping the bloody pieces onto the dinner table after we finished our cherry cheesecake. They knew, though. They couldn’t not notice that suddenly Adam was no longer a fixture in our house, a guy who was so welcome and trusted that he didn’t have to knock anymore. But I guess maybe Mom and Dad are smart enough to realize that pointing out the second hand on the clock isn’t going to suddenly mend the fissure straight through my aorta.
Here’s the thing, though—they were right.
We’re deep into winter and I’ve stopped feeling like there is a spear in my chest every time he’s up against Branley in the hallway. To her credit, I actually saw her push him away a couple of times when I came around the corner. It’s not like we’re friends or anything. We’ll give each other a nod in the hallway or cautiously say excuse me when we slide past each other in the senior cut line at lunch, but we’re not coordinating our clothes every night. Still, the fact that she’s trying to not throw it in my face set a warm glow in the black gaping hole where I picture that spear passing through, so many times that the wound keeps getting bigger.
Except I think it closed up when I wasn’t paying attention.
The other night I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize, an anonymous how r u?
I shot back: who is this? A call came in from the same number two seconds later. I let it go to voice mail, listening immediately after I got the notification. And then Adam’s voice, definitely injured: “Seriously, you deleted my number?”
I didn’t add him as a contact, but I did keep the voice mail. The righteous indignation buried there amused me.
I texted back: Yeah, I did. What’s up?
U talking to Park?
Also amusing. Yes. I am talking to Park, kind of. It started when he texted me to make sure I was okay after what happened at the church, an innocent brotherly text that I didn’t read anything into, responding that I was fine and thanks for checking. A couple of days later he asked if I was coming to the basketball game and I answered yes and his response—a simple good—kind of set that glow I mentioned earlier into a spark.
So we’ve been playing this careful game with each other, one that’s fun to play because I know I can’t get hurt too badly when all we’re doing is texting sometimes. Once we went on an accidental double date when me and Alex and Park and Jack all ended up at the same diner one night. Except when I went to grab my bill I realized that he’d already paid for my grilled cheese. When I said something he smiled at me, so maybe it wasn’t an accident that we met up after
all.
So when my ex-boyfriend asks, U talking to Park? I answer yes, and our text conversation out of nowhere ends abruptly.
And I couldn’t give less of a shit.
40. JACK
I kind of miss Branley.
It’s weird. In a lot of ways Branley is my best friend, and suddenly cutting her out made that really clear to me. Yes, sometimes I’d have to plow through piles of shit to get down to the real Branley, the girl who used to sneak up on me in seventh grade and buckle my knee from behind. And it’s work to bring that out of her, but it’s worth it, always, and I miss that girl even if she’s buried inside of a tanned, waxed, lip-glossed, pouty Barbie doll who wants to fuck before starting a conversation.
Because that’s what would happen if I tried. I know because she keeps sending me nudes, each a little trashier than the one before since I never respond. She worked up to a video, and I watched it because duh, and then I felt kind of terrible. If she just sent me a damn text with words instead of shots of her tits I might actually answer her.
But I can’t. Because she’s a crowbar in a door I’m trying to shut and she’ll wedge her way in and use the leverage to get me in bed and goddammit I don’t know if I could tell her no. I miss Branley, but I miss sex too, and I’m trying to be a good guy and why can’t the two of those things be separate anyway?
Tonight is not going to be easy. Park wants us to hang out at the church, even though it’s ass cold outside. He’s got this big idea that if Alex is there with me then Peekay will be with him by default, but the downside is Adam somehow got in on this too and that means Branley will be there. Park’s fine with that because it’ll just make it even more obvious that this is a couples thing and he’s totally into Peekay. And I can’t exactly explain to him that Branley sends me palm-worthy vids and that makes the whole thing weird for me, because then he’d want to see it and I’m definitely not doing that.
I tried to communicate my non-interest in this group thing by just making throat noises when he talked to me about it, or responding with texts that just said meh or whatever. But somehow Alex and I have become an integral part of getting him and Peekay together, and now there will be three couples there. Me and Alex, Adam and Branley, Peekay and Park.