The Rest of Us Just Live Here

She waits.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I thought you’d figure it out,” Henna says, as we drive. “It was a surprise to me, too, but eventually I realized I was getting no vibes off Nathan at all, no matter how strongly I felt. And then I’d see him looking at Jared a little too long.”

  “I don’t…” I say. “I didn’t… Jared’s always been secretive.”

  I said goodbye to everyone, even Nathan, wincing through his hangover, and Jared, who kept his distance, waiting for me to come closer. But I left instead.

  “This is stupid,” I say, feeling my chest get tight, like I’m going to cry. I cried during the night when we lay on the couch together. She let me. And even though she didn’t tell me about Jared and Nathan before either, I’m not mad at her.

  I just feel so dumb.

  “You guys don’t have to treat me like I’m going to break,” I say. “Everyone does. Mikey with the OCD. Mikey with the medication now–”

  “We never did, Mike–”

  “Mel died. She’s still weird around food and everyone treats her the same. Like they should. I do. I spend a lot of time doing that.”

  “Jared is a quarter God, Mike. And I’ve got freak parents who are taking me to a war to talk about Jesus and feet. Everyone’s got something. Not even just us, everyone we know.” She looks thoughtful. “Except maybe the indie kids. They’re probably the most normal ones out there.”

  “I wonder what was going on last night. With the lights.”

  She shrugs. “Probably some apocalypse.”

  “I feel so stupid,” I say. “Just so, so stupid. Right in front of my face. And no one tells me.”

  “If it helps,” she says, “it means I really was your date to prom.”

  I drive some more. I don’t say out loud whether it helps or not.

  My mom hands me an envelope as I walk in the door. “I checked,” she says. “You aced them.”

  Our finals results. I open it. I did ace them, even Calc. College was kind of a formality – I knew I wasn’t going to fail – but it’s nice to have the formality all wrapped up. New life, here I come, I guess.

  “You’re back early,” my mom says, going to the kitchen.

  I follow her. “So are you.”

  “Meredith made me.” She smiles, but I know it’s true. “That freak lightning storm.”

  She says it in a way that’s almost asking me about it. “I don’t know either,” I say. “I don’t know a lot of things.”

  “You know enough to go to a good school.” She takes some drinks out of the fridge, not even asking what I want, just somehow knowing that I’d love a cream soda. “You know enough to face a future with some confidence.”

  “Do I?”

  “I’m proud of you. I’m proud of your sister, too.”

  “How’d she do?”

  She grins, pouring me my soda. “It’s like you’re twins sometimes.”

  “Good,” I say. “Good.”

  She hands me my drink. We just stand there for a minute, drinking, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “I really am proud of you, you know,” she says, then she gets a tough look. “I want a world where you can live and be happy.”

  “That’d be nice,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

  “I’ve gotten it wrong in the past. Really wrong. I haven’t even managed to get you guys to believe in my political party.” I open my mouth to object, but she stops me. “Don’t deny it. I don’t even care. All I care about is keeping trying. To make the world safer for you and your sisters. Any way I know how.” She takes a drink. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, Mike.”

  “You said that before. What kind of things?”

  “Things that would keep you awake at night. Things that would make you desperate to try and protect your own kids.” I see her look past me. “Hey, sweetheart.”

  Meredith’s come in, holding her pad. She looks worried.

  “What’s wrong?” my mom asks.

  Meredith turns her pad to show us.

  “I didn’t know!” Jared says. “I swear it.”

  “Your dad sure as hell knew!”

  “And I’m as pissed off at him as you are!”

  “Are you? It’s my sister!”

  Mr Shurin’s campaign got hold of Cynthia the blogger. The story was pretty much dead, gone, Mel a hero, my mom the mother of a brave daughter. But now the footage of Mel punching Cynthia has been recovered from her destroyed pad (recovery paid for by Mr Shurin’s party). Unlike all the news cameras who turned to us too late, this is footage that shows Mel having a bit more time to recognize the woman, more clearly decide to punch her, and then a great big shot of Mel’s foot stomping on the pad.

  It’s all been put up on Mr Shurin’s website along with photos of Cynthia looking like she’s fallen off a cliff face-first. Mr Shurin’s campaign site has big ol’ headlines on it: “Questions asked about brutal attack by Alice Mitchell’s daughter!” “Political blogger says First Amendment rights breached, will sue!”

  Because yeah, she’s suing us, too.

  Jared didn’t answer his phone as I drove over and wasn’t at his house when I got there. I had to wait for him to show up from the drive back from the cabin with Nathan. I barely let them get out of the car.

  “She’s my friend, too,” Jared says.

  “Really?” I’m shouting a lot. “Like you’re my friend?”

  “That’s… Shit, Mike–”

  “I thought your dad was a good guy–”

  “He is a good guy. I’m sure there’s an explanation–”

  “I don’t want an explanation! I want him to lose like the loser he always is!”

  Jared’s face gets harder. “Watch it,” he says, quietly.

  “Watch what? What are you going to do?”

  Nathan’s standing off to one side, still hangover-squinting. He says, “I’m sure this can all be straightened out–”

  “Shut up!” I shout at him. “Things were fine around here until you showed up.”

  “Christ sake, Mike,” Jared says. “Is that was this is about? I knew I couldn’t tell you! I knew you’d be jealous!”

  “Jealous?” Nathan asks.

  But Jared’s still going. “You stick to me like a tick! I can’t breathe without you wanting to know it! I can’t live my life without you wanting to crowd in.”

  “You never tell me anything, Jared! It’s always the same. All this stuff you don’t want me to know! Like some power trip you have to have over me at all times.”

  And then he says–

  Well, he says this:

  “Maybe if you were a real friend instead of an endless bag of need, I’d have told you about Nathan first. Did you ever think of that?”

  At that, I just stand there.

  And stand there some more.

  Jared’s face softens. “Mike–”

  “Just get your dad to take it down,” I say, looking at the ground.

  “Mike, please, I didn’t–”

  “Get him to take it down.”

  “I will.”

  I get in my car. They watch me go.

  “But I’m not worried,” Mel says, as we sit on her bed.

  “Are you sure?” I ask her.

  “It’s politics,” Mel says, leaning back with a frown. “It’s filthy and it’s disgusting and dirties everything it touches.” She shrugs, still frowning. “It’ll blow over in a week.”

  “Mom went mental,” I say. “She’s already got lawyers on it. There’s no way that lady wasn’t made-up in those photos.”

  “They don’t want me, they want Mom. So it’s her problem. I told her that and she agreed. She says she’s fixing it.” She hugs herself, lightly. “I’m just … really disappointed about Mr Shurin.”

  “I know–”

  “Maybe even nice guys get tired of losing.”

  I feel an ache in my stomach when she says the word “losing”. I want him to lose like the loser he always is, I said
to Jared. About his own dad.

  But so what? He attacked my sister.

  Almost like my thoughts summoned him, both of our phones buzz at once. It’s from Jared. He’s taking it down. Today. Says the campaign team kept pushing him on it and he finally said yes and regrets it. He’s pulling out of the race altogether. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

  “Wow,” Mel says, quietly.

  “Won’t stop the blogger suing, though,” I say. “The damage is done. It’s already spread to other sites.”

  “But so has his resignation.” She shows me her phone. Congressional Candidate resigns over attack on opponent’s teenage daughter.

  “That’s a site friendly to Mom, though. There’ll be more.”

  Mel sighs and starts texting. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Texting Jared back. I don’t blame him. He’s probably the one who talked his dad into pulling out of the race.”

  I don’t say anything. It’s kind of loud.

  “He didn’t mean to hurt you,” Mel says, looking up at me. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I run my fingers across the top of her bedspread. “You’re more important. This is way bigger than my stupid thing.” She looks at me. “You see? That’s what I mean. The pity. That’s what I don’t want or need and you just have to stop.”

  Mel’s phone buzzes. I assume it’s Jared texting back, but it’s not. “Steve’s shift doesn’t start until midnight,” Mel says, getting up. “I’m going to go see him. Get some smartness and squeezing.”

  I get up and hug her. “I’d kill anybody who tried to hurt you,” I say.

  She hugs me back. “Not if I was too busy killing them first.”

  After she leaves, I press a number on my phone.

  “Can you come over?” I say.

  “Absolutely,” says Henna.

  We sit on the edge of my bed in a surprisingly nice kind of silence.

  “You’re not all right,” she finally says.

  “No,” I say. “I said some things to Jared. He said some things to me.”

  “Bad things?”

  “End of friendship things.”

  “I’m sure that isn’t true,” Henna says. “I’m sure it isn’t–”

  “Don’t pity me,” I nearly snap. “Jesus, why does everyone–?”

  I stop because my eyes are filling up. Again. This is ridiculous.

  “I think you’re wrong about that.” Henna puts a single finger on my chin and makes me turn my head to her. It’s kind of funny. We both smile, but mine doesn’t last. “I think you mistake care for pity,” she says. “We worry about you.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No, it isn’t. We worry about Mel, too. And you worry about me and so does Mel. It’s care, Mike. Who have we got to rely on except each other? For example, this isn’t pity.”

  She kisses me. I’m so surprised I barely kiss her back.

  “I don’t do pity kisses,” she says. “I don’t do pity anything. Pity is patronizing. Pity is an assumption of superiority.”

  “That sounds like your dad.”

  “It is my dad, but he’s right. He says kindness is better. Kindness is the most important thing of all. Pity is an insult. Kindness is a miracle.”

  “So you’re kissing me out of kindness?”

  “No,” she says, frowning. “I’m kissing you because I’ve always wanted to, Mike. You never let me.”

  “I never let you–?”

  “We’re each other’s questions, aren’t we? The question that never gets an answer.”

  “What do you mean–?”

  But she’s already kissing me again.

  This time I’m definitely kissing her back.

  No one’s home. My mom went to handle her lawyers and dropped Meredith off at a Saturday horseback-riding lesson (the first, it’s a new thing). Dad is at work or wherever. And Mel’s out with Steve. There’s no one in the house except for me and Henna.

  Then she pulls my shirt off over my head, and there’s no one in the world except me and her.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH, in which Satchel and second indie kid Finn close nearly every fissure the Immortals have made; “I love you,” Finn says, before they close the final one in the basement of the school on the morning of graduation; Satchel realizes that Finn was her true love all along; they finally kiss, but then the Court of the Immortals emerges through the fissure; Satchel and Finn run out of the building, but the Prince of the Immortals kills second indie kid Finn; overcome with grief, Satchel is dragged back down under the school by the Prince to perform the final ceremony once and for all.

  On graduation day, it’s about nine hundred degrees. So thank God we get to wear long black gowns and hats on the football field for a couple hours.

  The last few days have been a blur, a tough, weird blur. I haven’t spoken to Jared, even though he’s called me and texted me a bunch of times, apologizing for saying what he said. I texted back saying I was sorry, too.

  But I didn’t call.

  We’ve been kind of set free from our classes the last two schooldays of this last school week. Senior privilege again, which you can take or not. I took it, going everywhere I could with Henna: the little northwest zoo just up the road, where we saw moose and elk panting in the sun; the bigger zoo in the town about an hour away, where a rhinoceros did the same; miniature golf again; the movies. Even just sitting in my room looking at our phones for hours on end. But doing it together.

  Either way, I didn’t go to school. Mel went, but she said Jared wasn’t there either.

  Mel’s thing is still churning, my mom still fighting it, helped a lot by Mr Shurin dropping out of the race. Not helped by Cynthia deciding she’s going to run instead. For most of the week, Mel’s stayed over at Steve’s – who my parents now know the existence of and are seemingly in no position to argue that Mel wants to hang around him and not them – so I’ve barely seen her either, except over the phone on videos and chats.

  Nothing more happened with the blue lights, though we’re all worried that means we’re leading up to something even bigger and more horrible that’ll end it all.

  “As long as we can graduate before they blow up the school,” Henna said.

  Because Henna.

  Because Henna, because Henna, because Henna.

  We slept together. It was everything I’d ever wanted, everything I’d ever hoped for, even the parts where I’d imagined we were in it together and it was something she wanted as much as I did and we were a team and it was for us both.

  It was beautiful and amazing and so hot I’ve pretty much jerked off to it every day since (shut up, you would, too) and the way she smelled and the way her skin felt and the way we laughed sometimes (quite a lot over the condom) and the way we were serious other times and just the being there, in that way, her body against my body and mine against hers. It felt like my heart was breaking – and it was breaking, over Jared, over graduation, over everything – but it was okay because Henna Henna Henna…

  It was all those things, and it was also more. Because we realized something, both of us.

  We don’t belong together as boyfriend and girlfriend.

  “I think I see what you mean,” I said to her, after, arms around each other. “About being each other’s question.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was the car accident that made me finally want to know the answer. You were there, holding my hand, and I thought, Is it him? Is it really him?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that since we were kids.”

  “It always kept me from really committing to Tony. I kept thinking, in another life, if I made different choices, it could be you and me instead. I suppose I just got sick of expecting somebody else to give me the answer.” She leaned up on one elbow. “I love you, Mike.”

  “I love you, too, Henna.”

  “And I loved that, what we just did. But this isn’t us, is it?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think it is.”

&nbs
p; “It’s love. But it’s a different kind.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less love, though.”

  She lay back down and snuggled into me. “Just think, all this time we could have been each other’s best friend.”

  “That would have been awesome.”

  “Still can be.”

  I smiled. “The spirit of exploration?”

  I could almost feel her smiling back. “We could give it a shot.”

  And now I’m picking her up at her house, cast and all, cap and gown and all, on our graduation day. The graduation pairs are, for some reason, still old-fashioned boy-girl; it’s long been the plan that I’ll walk with Henna, and Mel will walk with Jared. Which will probably be fine.

  “Big day,” Henna says, getting into my car. She shuts the door and looks back at her parents. Nobody waves to each other.

  “What’s going on?” I say, driving away.

  “Later,” she says, smiling. “This is a happy day. In a whole bunch of ways.”

  The ceremony’s at noon. The sun is already baking the trees, making the whole world smell dusty. Mel is coming with Steve from his apartment. My mom’s bringing Meredith later and will see us at the ceremony. My dad was so drunk he passed out in his office this morning in his work clothes and couldn’t be woken. Me and Mel are just hoping he lives until rehab, though hopefully Mom will make sure of that.

  Jared and his dad will be there. Which won’t be awkward for anybody.

  “It’s going to be okay, Mike,” Henna says, like she’s reading my mind.

  “You think so?”

  “I mean everything,” she says, looking out the window as we drive down the road to school for the millionth time. For the last time. “I think everything’s going to be okay. All of it. All of us.”

  This makes my stomach hurt. I squirm in the driver’s seat so much, Henna notices. “Do you really believe in fate that much, Mikey? Do you really believe it exists only to punch you in the face?”

  “It’s done some pretty good punching so far.”

  She just looks back out her window. “I think it’s going to be okay. Even you.”

  And I begin to count the telephone poles we pass.

  I can’t seem to stop.

  –But then I do.