“Every day since he died. What about you?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
We stared at each other for a minute. Duce’s stare felt like a challenge. Like the way a dog will stare down another dog when it’s ready to fight.
“So what are you doing here now?” he asked.
I locked eyes with him, this time doing the challenging myself. “You can’t chase me away from here,” I said. “And I don’t know why you blame me so much anyway. You were his best friend. You could’ve stopped the shooting, too.”
“You were the one with the list,” he countered.
“You were the one who spent the night at his house two days before the shooting,” I snapped, and then added softly, “We could do this all day. It’s stupid. It’s not going to bring anyone back.”
A car rolled up and an old man gingerly piled out of the back seat, then picked his way to a grave nearby, holding flowers at his hip. We watched him as he knelt slowly, his head bent over, his chin nearly touching his chest.
“The cops, they questioned me too,” Duce said, still looking at the old man. “They thought maybe I was in on it because I hung around with him so much.”
“Seriously? I never heard that.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, his face sour. “You were all about poor you, poor Valerie. You were shot. You were grieving. You were a suspect. You never even considered any of the rest of us. You never even asked, man, how the rest of us were doing. You totally just ditched us.”
I looked at him, stricken. He was right. I hadn’t asked Stacey during our one visit how anyone else was doing. I hadn’t called anyone. E-mailed. Nothing. I hadn’t even considered it. “Oh my God,” I whispered, and suddenly I could hear Jessica’s voice in my ear: You’re just selfish, Valerie. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”
“That Detective Panzella practically lived at my house, man. Took my computer and everything,” Duce said. “But the real kicker is… I really had no idea. Nick never said anything to me about shooting anybody. He never even warned me or anything.”
“He didn’t warn me either,” I said, but my voice was almost a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Duce.”
Duce nodded, fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette, took his time lighting it. “I felt really stupid for a while, not knowing. I figured maybe we weren’t as good of friends as I thought. And guilty, too. Like I should’ve known and then I could have done something. Helped him. But now… I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t tell us to spare us.”
I let out a sarcastic grunt. “Well, if he did plan to spare us, it so didn’t work.”
Duce chuckled softly. “No kidding.”
The old man was struggling to his feet again, pulling his jacket tight around him as he headed back toward his car. I watched him. “You remember the time we went to Serendipity together? The water park?” I asked.
Duce chuckled. “Yeah, you were a drag that day. All whiny about being cold and hungry and nag nag nag. You wouldn’t let him have any fun.”
“Yeah,” I said. I looked back at the grave. Nicholas Anthony. “And at the end of the day when you guys took off and Stacey and I had to look all over for you and we finally found you eating Oreos with those two blond girls from Mount Pleasant…”
Duce’s grin widened. “Those girls were hot.”
I nodded. “Yeah, they were. And do you remember what I said to Nick when I found you there?”
I looked up at Duce. He shook his head no. Smiling. Hands dangling.
“I told him I hated him. I said it, in those words. ‘I hate you, Nick.’” I reached down and picked up a dried leaf and began flaking it to bits with my fingers. “Do you think he knows I didn’t mean it? You don’t think he died thinking I hated him, do you? I mean, it was forever ago and, you know, we made up that day. But sometimes I worry that he still thought about me saying that and that maybe, on the day of the… the shooting… when I tried to stop him he remembered me saying I hated him back at Serendipity and that’s why he killed himself. Because he thought I hated him.”
“Maybe you do hate him.”
I thought about this and then shook my head. “I loved him so much.” I let out an exasperated laugh, shaking my head. “My tragic flaw.” That’s what Nick would have called it, had I been one of the suffering characters in one of his beloved Shakespeare tragedies.
I heard a scraping of clothing against concrete. Duce had moved to one side of the bench and was patting the concrete next to him. I got up and sat next to him. He reached down and picked up my hand. He was wearing gloves and the warmth of his hand enveloped mine, radiating through my whole body.
“Do you think he did it for me?” I asked softly.
Duce thought about it, spat on the ground at his feet. “I think he had no idea why he did it, man.” It was a possibility I’d never considered before. Maybe I couldn’t have known what Nick was about to do, because Nick himself didn’t even know.
He let go of my hand, which quickly grew chilly again without the warmth of his glove around it, and slid his arm around me. It made me feel weird, but not entirely in a bad way. In some ways Duce was the closest to Nick I’d ever be again. In some ways it felt like Nick’s hand behind me, Nick’s warmth beside me. I leaned my head back into the hollow of his shoulder.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
I nodded.
“If you loved him so much, why weren’t you here before now?”
I chewed my lip. I thought it over. “Because I didn’t really feel like he was here. He was still so much everywhere else I looked, I didn’t think it was possible for any part of him to be here.”
“He was my best friend,” Duce said. “You know?”
“He was mine, too.”
“I know,” he said. There was an edge to his voice but it was very soft. “I guess. Whatever.”
We sat there in silence for a while, both of us staring at Nick’s grave. The wind picked up and the sky darkened and the leaves swirled around my ankles in tighter and tighter circles, making them itch. When I began to shiver, Duce pulled his arm away from me and stood up.
“I’ve gotta go.”
I nodded. “See ya.”
I sat there for a few more minutes after Duce left. I stared at Nick’s grave until my eyes watered and my toes felt numb from the cold. At last I stood up and brushed a leaf off of the headstone with my toe.
“Bye, Romeo,” I said softly.
I walked away, shivering, and didn’t look back, even though I knew I’d never again go visit his grave. He was Ma’s Beloved Son. The words carved in the granite said nothing about me at all.
37
A police cruiser was sitting in the driveway when I got home, Dad’s car parked behind it and a battered red Jeep behind it. A feeling of dread washed over me. I trudged up the driveway and let myself in the house.
“Oh, thank God!” Mom cried, rushing from the living room to the front door. She wrapped herself around my neck. “Thank God!”
“Mom… ?” I said. “What’s… ?”
A uniformed officer followed her into the entryway. He looked none too pleased to be there. He was followed by Dad, who looked even less happy than the officer. I peered into the living room and saw Dr. Hieler, sitting on the couch, the lines in his face making it look harsh and tired.
“What’s going on?” I asked, pulling away from Mom. “Dr. Hieler… ? Did something happen?”
“We were about to issue an Amber Alert,” Dad said, his voice ragged with anger. “Jesus, what next?”
“Amber alert? Why?”
But then the officer was ambling toward me. “You probably don’t want to be picked up as a runaway,” he said to me. “Just so you know.”
“Runaway? I’m not. I wasn’t. Mom…”
He headed for the front door and Mom followed him, thanking him and apologizing. The radio on his shoulder was squawking and I missed most of what they said.
Dr. Hieler
got up and shrugged into his jacket. He came toward me, his face looking confused and sad and angry and relieved all at the same time. Once again I thought about his family at home. What domestic serenity had I kept him from tonight? Was his wife at home, secretly wishing I had run away for good?
“The grave?” he asked very quietly. Neither Mom nor Dad heard him. I nodded; he nodded. “See you Saturday,” he said. “We’ll talk then.” And then he, too, was speaking softly to Mom in the doorway—apologies on both sides of the conversation now—and shaking Dad’s hand as he left. I watched the officer race away in his cruiser and Dr. Hieler climb into his Jeep and pull away without fanfare.
“I’ve got to get back,” Dad said to Mom. “Let me know if you need anything. And my opinion still stands. She needs more help than she’s getting, Jenny. You’ve got to stop letting her make all of us miserable.” He cut his eyes to me. I looked away.
“I’ve heard you, Ted,” Mom said with a sigh. “I’ve heard you.”
Dad put one hand on Mom’s shoulder and gave it a quick pat, then disappeared through the front door.
Mom and I stood in the empty entryway regarding one another.
“This was quite a show,” she said bitterly. “Once again. We had reporters in our yard. Once again. Dr. Hieler had to chase them away. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, Valerie, and once again look what’s happened. Maybe your father’s right. You can’t have an inch or you’ll take a mile.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. I swear, I wasn’t running away. I just took a walk.”
“You’ve been gone for hours, Valerie. You didn’t tell anyone where you were going. I thought you’d been kidnapped. Or worse. I thought that Troy kid had done something to you like he threatened.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t realize.”
“Bull,” said a voice from the landing above us. We both looked up. Frankie was standing there in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, his hair sticking straight out to one side.
“Frankie,” Mom warned, but he cut her off.
“Dad’s right—all she does is cause trouble.”
“I said I was sorry,” I repeated. It seemed like the only thing I could do. “I wasn’t trying to cause anything. I went to the cemetery and started talking to Duce and lost track of time, I guess. I should’ve called.”
Mom looked at me, startled. “Duce Barnes?”
I looked down.
“Oh, Valerie, he’s one of them,” she breathed. “He’s one of those Nick-types. Didn’t you learn? Everything you’ve got going on and all you can do is hang around with boys and get into trouble?”
“No, it’s not like that,” I said.
“I had soccer tryouts today,” Frankie yelled from the top of the stairs. “But I couldn’t go because both Mom and Dad were here, freaking out because you were missing. God, Valerie, I try to be on your side, but all you think about is yourself. You think you and Nick were everybody’s victims,” he said. “But even now that Nick’s gone, you still do stuff to make people miserable. It’s impossible. Just like Dad says. You’re impossible. I’m sick of my life always having to revolve around yours.” He stomped back into his room and slammed the door shut.
“Very nice,” Mom said, gesturing to the space where Frankie had just been standing. “Why is it that you can’t let us have just one good day? Here I was trusting you and—”
“And I did nothing wrong,” I interrupted, practically shouting. “I took a walk, Mom. I didn’t ruin your day. You ruined it by not trusting me.” Mom’s mouth hung open, her eyes wide. “When are you guys going to get it? I didn’t shoot anybody! I didn’t do it! Stop treating me like a criminal. I’m sick and tired of taking all the blame around here.” I heard Frankie’s door squeak open a crack, but didn’t look up. Instead, I briefly closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. The last thing I wanted was to cause more drama for Frankie. “I took a walk to say goodbye,” I said evenly, opening my eyes and looking at Mom. “You should be really happy. Nick’s officially out of my life forever. Maybe you can trust me now.”
Mom closed her mouth, dropped her hands to her sides. “Well,” she said after a long while. “At least you’re safe.” She turned and walked up the stairs, leaving me in the entryway alone. Above me, I heard Frankie’s door click shut again. Yeah, I thought. Safe.
38
Frankie went to live with Dad during the week and only came home on the weekends. Mom swore it wasn’t because of me, but I had a really hard time believing it after the scene he’d made, especially since he left without saying goodbye. I felt really guilty about it. I’d never meant to hurt Frankie. I’d never meant for his life to revolve around mine. But I seemed to have a way of doing that—hurting people without meaning to.
By the time spring wrapped around us full force, I had noticed that he’d cut his hair to match the rest of the soccer players and was wearing a pair of glasses that completed a clean-cut look for him that I’d never have imagined.
He didn’t speak to me much, except to give reports on how Dad and Briley were doing when Mom wasn’t around.
“Dad’s got a new car,” he would say, or, “Briley is so nice, Val, you should give her a chance. She listens to punk, can you believe it? Can you see Mom listening to punk?”
I pretended not to care one way or another what was going on with Dad and Briley, but once while Frankie was in the shower, I dug around in his backpack for his cell phone and scrolled through the photos he had stored on it until I found pictures of them. I then sat on the floor and stared at them until my eyes felt sandy.
The divorce was almost final. I noticed, though, that Mel, Mom’s attorney, was still coming over pretty much nightly and sometimes he’d bring hot sandwiches from Sal’s with him or a bottle of wine. And I noticed, too, that Mom wore makeup on the days he came over and would sit raptly at the kitchen table with him and laugh every few minutes and touch his forearm lightly with the pads of her fingers when she did it.
I could hardly stand the thought of it, but every so often I’d wonder what kind of stepdad Mel would make. I brought it up with Mom once and she blushed and simply answered, “I’m still married to your father, Valerie.” But she’d walked away sort of dreamily after that, fiddling with her necklace and smiling softly, like Cinderella did the morning after the ball.
Even though Duce and I had technically made a truce that day at Nick’s grave, it didn’t change anything for us at school. We didn’t talk. We didn’t meet at the bleachers in the mornings. And we didn’t eat lunch together. Instead, I managed to finagle Mrs. Tate into letting me eat lunch in her office with her, by promising to look through college catalogs while I was there.
It was the time of year when school seemed interminably long and boring. Somehow, hearing the birds chirping right outside our open classroom windows made the hours of the day multiply and pile one on top of another. Schoolwork seemed stupid, too, this close to graduation. Like we were just filling time. Hadn’t we learned everything we needed to know already? Couldn’t we just go out and play like we did when we were kids? Don’t seniors deserve recess?
May second came and went without a lot of fanfare. We held a moment of silence in the morning, followed by a reading of the victims’ names over the intercom with morning announcements. There were a few prayer vigils at some local churches that night. But mostly people just went on about their lives. Already. After only a year.
Everyone was talking about graduation. About party plans afterward. About dreadful family parties before. About what they were wearing, how they were keeping their hats from falling off, what joke would be played on Mr. Angerson.
It was tradition in our school for each graduating senior to hand the administrator something small and concealable as he shook your hand on stage during graduation. One year it had been peanuts. One year pennies. One year it was plastic bouncy balls. Angerson would be forced to put whatever was handed to him in his pockets, and
by the end of commencement his pockets would be bulging under the strain of seven hundred bouncy balls or pennies or peanuts. Rumor had it this year it was going to be condoms, but the cheerleaders were heading a strong campaign against it. They wanted jingle bells, so he couldn’t move without making noise. I, personally, liked the jingle bell idea. Or maybe nothing. Maybe what poor Angerson needed from our class was simply a break. A great big handful of nothing.
And when the graduation talk ebbed, conversation turned to college talk. Who was going to MU? Who was going overseas? Who wasn’t going at all? And did you hear the rumor that J.P. was going to join the Peace Corps? What’s the Peace Corps? Will he get malaria and die? Will local rebels kidnap him and behead him in a hut hidden by banana trees? The talk never ended.
Every day at lunch, Mrs. Tate would grill me about my future plans.
“Valerie, it’s still not too late to grab a scholarship to one of the community colleges,” she’d say, looking pained.
I’d shake my head. “No.”
“What are you going to do?” she’d asked me one day as we ate lunch together.
I’d considered this, believe me. What would I do once graduation was over? Where would I go? How would I live? Would I stay at home and wait for Mom and Mel to possibly get married? Would I move in with Dad and Briley and Frankie and try to repair the relationship that I was pretty sure Dad didn’t want anyway? Would I move out and get a job? Get a roommate? Fall in love?
“Recover,” I’d said. And I’d meant it. I needed some time to simply recover. I’d consider my future later, when Garvin High had slipped off me like a heavy coat in a hot room and I’d begun to forget the faces of my classmates. Of Troy. Of Nick. When I’d begun to forget the smell of gunpowder and blood. If I ever could.
Everything seemed to be going along all right until one rainy Friday, the smell of wet grass clippings permeating the hallways. The storm clouds were thick outside and made inside the school feel like evening. The final bell had just rung and the hallways were a flurry of activity. As usual I wasn’t part of it, just moving around in my bubble, waiting to mark another X on the calendar—another day closer to graduation.