There was a staircase just to my right, one of those split ones for people with houses on three levels. The upstairs part was barricaded with the gates people get for little kids. The downstairs part led to a hallway.
“I thought you weren’t coming till after six!” It was the woman again, still shouting, and before I could say anything, she added, “I’ve got Milton in the tub, Wendy, so just go downstairs and get Patrick to help you carry the bikes out. He came home early to get them ready.”
I went downstairs. I didn’t bother knocking before I started opening doors. The first one led to a laundry room, and the second room was full of hospital-type stuff: a bed with railings, a wheelchair, and one of those walkers medical shows use during the very special episode when someone learns to walk again.
The third one was Patrick’s room and Patrick was sitting on his bed, which was just a mattress on the floor. His room was a total mess, clothes and books and CDs everywhere, and I could barely get the door open. When I did I just stood there, staring at him sitting cross-legged and hunched over his laptop.
He didn’t even look up, and after a minute he said, “I know, I promised I’d get the bikes together and help with Dad before Wendy comes over, but I had a really bad day.” I thought of a million things to say like, “Yeah, must be tough to get to leave class whenever you feel like it,” or “I just came by to say you’re a loser freak. Later,” but instead I just stood there, and eventually he looked up and said, “Amy?” and I said, “You don’t know how I feel.”
I said that, and he looked at me for a long, silent moment, and then said, “You hate yourself,” quietly, so quietly, and I clapped my hands together slowly, applause for a moron because of course I do, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and felt a smile cross my face because I’d shut him up.
Except I didn’t because he said, “You hate her.”
I stopped clapping and moved toward him like Julia used to when she was going to fight, deliberate steps, and for once being so tall was great because I’d be able to see the look in his eyes when I hurt him.
I wanted to hurt him. I wanted his words gone, shoved back down his throat, undone, unsaid. My mouth was open, my hands were curled, but I—
I didn’t hit him. I could see it, my fists smashing into his face, his mouth opening not around words but breath, blood, but I didn’t do it.
I didn’t hit him. I remember seeing my hands, balled into fists and outstretched. I remember feeling something ripping up my throat, and then there was the bright whiteness of my knuckles smacking his chest. And my open mouth, the one that was so full of words ready to rip out of me, you’re so wrong so full of shit you hide from the world so what do you know? It didn’t form words.
I didn’t say anything. I was silenced, like something inside me was broken. I just stood there, mouth open in a silent scream.
If he’d put his hands over mine, trying to comfort, I would have hit him. If he’d said something—anything—I would have hit him. If he’d done any of that, it would have been—I could have dealt with it. My hands have been touched earnestly a thousand times, by my parents, by stupid counselors at Pinewood who “just wanted to reach” me.
He just looked at me.
He looked at me, and I saw he didn’t want me there, that having me in his home, in his room, in his space, was bothering him. He looked at me, and I saw that he wanted me to go so badly he couldn’t say it, that he was afraid. That he knew what it was like to wake up every day and know that this life, the one you live, is not the one you ever saw or wanted but is yours all the same.
I always wanted to be grown up. When I was little I couldn’t wait to be a teenager and go to high school. When I got there I wanted to be done with it, wanted to get out into the world, the real one, and live in it.
The thing is, that world doesn’t exist. All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along to fix things. No one will come along to save you.
I put one hand on his throat. Palm down, resting against skin. He breathed, and I felt the rise and fall of his breath against my hand. I pressed my fingers in a little, flexing. Skin is so fragile.
The whole body…it shouldn’t be like it is. It shouldn’t be so easy to break. But it is, and in his eyes I saw he understood that too. I slid my hand up, rested it against his mouth, and in a moment replaced it with my own.
As soon as I did, I knew what would happen. It started one night, back when Julia was still here, and I pretended it away. It never happened, I told myself, but it did.
I touched my mouth to his because he hadn’t done what I expected, hadn’t tried to comfort me. I touched my mouth to his because he didn’t say he was sorry for me, for my loss, or for what he’d said. I touched my mouth to his because he understood everything.
I touched my mouth to his because I wanted to. I kissed him, and this time I didn’t run away.
Patrick smells like fall leaves, the orange-brown ones that blow around your feet when you walk and swing into your face smelling of sunshine and earth. His skin is cool and pale, and I’ve traced his back, mapping the play of muscles under skin. I’ve felt his mouth against mine. I’ve felt his hands on my skin. There is a scar on his stomach, round and white, tucked up against the side of one rib. It is smooth to the touch.
I know all these things, and now they will not leave me.
I lay there afterward, eyes closed, feeling his mouth ghost across mine, and felt…I don’t know. I just know I felt okay.
I felt okay, and that wasn’t how I was supposed to feel. I got up, tucked my body back into my clothes, and shook my head so my hair slid over and around my face, covering me. It’s long now, almost to my shoulders. It hasn’t been cut since before Julia died.
Patrick was dressed when I finally looked over at him, his head emerging from his T-shirt and a red flush along his cheekbones. He saw me looking and the red deepened, blossomed across his face. I opened my mouth, then closed it. He did the same.
I left his room, shut his door behind me. I didn’t look back, not once, but I walked home feeling strange, like I’d somehow lost part of myself, like somehow part of me was still with him.
Was this how it was for Julia with Kevin? Did it feel like this? Did she see him when she closed her eyes? Did she see him even when he wasn’t there? How could she stand it? Why would she want it?
I wish she was here. I wish. I wish. I wish.
I wish I didn’t hate her so much for leaving me.
150 days
J—
I thought some stuff about you the other day, but I didn’t mean it. I should have said so sooner, but it’s just—after everything that happened with Patrick two days ago, I haven’t been…
I wasn’t myself then.
I wasn’t.
Look, I know sex was a big deal to you, that you liked being with someone you thought you’d connected with, but I don’t want that. I don’t want a connection. It’s a stupid word.
What does it mean, really? Connection.
Nothing. That’s what it means, and I didn’t connect with him. What happened didn’t mean anything. It didn’t, it doesn’t, and I don’t—I don’t want to be thinking about it. About him. I don’t want to wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s doing, if he’s thinking of me—
God! Look what you’ve done to me. Look what you’ve made me into. I don’t know why you—
We were both in your car. We both had our seat belts on. What was so different for you? That you were driving? You always drove. Why was that night so different? Why did you have to leave me?
Patrick was right, J. I hate myself.
But I hate you too.
152 days
J,
I meant what I said the other day. I hate you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
And knowing that—Julia, knowing that makes everything so much worse. I hate you for dying. It’s beyond screwed up. If I was the one who’d died you’d miss me and maybe talk to that picture of us y
ou kept tacked up on your dresser mirror, the one from Splash World, but you wouldn’t write letters to me, boring wah-wah-wah letters.
You wouldn’t blame me.
I miss you all the time; how you’d henna your hair because it was a Tuesday, the way you’d laugh and say, “A, you mope,” when I said something stupid, how you somehow always knew when I needed a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips from the vending machine to get me through the last few periods of school, but the past couple of days I’ve missed you so much it’s felt like missing you is all I am.
Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn’t be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There’d just be memories of you and all the things I’ve tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can’t because I don’t have the words. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. How can you? I can’t even begin to say.
I don’t know what to do about Patrick. It’s been four days, J. I haven’t spoken to him since that afternoon. He hasn’t spoken to me either. I should be happy about that.
I shouldn’t be keeping track of how many days it’s been. I shouldn’t care if he ever speaks to me again or not. It was just sex, and I shouldn’t even be writing about him. But I—
I keep thinking about him. His skin. His voice. The way—listen to me! It’s like I’m in some freaking romance novel. It. Was. Just. Sex. What is wrong with me?
I have spoken to Mel. It was just once, two days afterward. The last time I wrote to you.
He came up to me after English and said, “You know why I asked you all those questions, right? And why I brought Patrick to the movies?” an odd note in his voice.
“What?” I said, and looked around for Patrick before I could stop myself. He wasn’t with Mel. In class, he’d sat at his desk (all the way across the room, now that our group project is over) staring at the door. He never looked at me, not once.
“Patrick,” Mel said. “He’s my friend, he likes you, and I thought that if I talked to you, asked all the questions I knew he wanted to, that maybe he’d get to the point where he’d talk to you himself. But—look, I don’t know what happened, but I saw you two talking after our presentation, and whatever you said to him, you need to do something about it, take it back or whatever, because he’s acting really strange now.”
I walked away. What else could I do? What could I say? “Well, actually, Mel, I did more than talk to him. We had sex. And I can’t really take that back, can I?”
This is insanity. A couple of minutes of someone grunting over you is just that and nothing more. You thought you were supposed to have feelings about it, about the guy. You couldn’t see sex for what it is, a random moment with someone, a moment that has meaning only if you let it.
I can’t believe that’s what I used to say to you. That I said it whenever you were upset about a guy. I said it a lot to you about Kevin, didn’t I? “This is insanity,” and “it has meaning only if you let it.” No wonder you always rolled your eyes and said I didn’t understand.
I thought I did, but I didn’t. I so didn’t. Even though Kevin was a total ass because he cheated on you and lied about it (badly), he still meant something to you. When you were with him, it was always more than a random moment to you, and meaning wasn’t something you could put there if you wanted to. It was just there, and you felt it.
I wish I’d gotten that before now. You don’t know how much I wish it.
TWENTY-ONE
THIS AFTERNOON I went to Caro’s after school, and her sister came over to show her a picture of the bridesmaid dresses. They were hideous, a weird orange-pink with ruffles everywhere. Plus there were matching hats.
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh, and Caro said, “Please tell me the hat has ruffles on it too, Jane. I don’t think I can be in your wedding looking like a diseased piece of citrus fruit if I don’t have a hat with ruffles to wear.”
“I like the hats,” Jane said. “And no, they don’t have ruffles. Yet.” She smiled at me, and then said, “And Caro, I love your hair,” as she left.
“See?” I said, and Caro rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling too. The other day I’d dragged her to the drugstore to get some temporary hair color because she’d mentioned it like eight hundred times.
It turned out pretty good—I made her get purple—and this morning I heard Beth telling her how great it looked in the bathroom. Of course, it was a Beth compliment because she said, “Caro, your hair actually looks really nice for once!” Caro just smiled, but as they were walking out, she glanced at me and whispered, “Is it wrong that I want to jam a fork in her face?”
When we were waiting for the hair dye to process, I told Caro what Patrick had told me in the library, about Beth and the things she’d said to Mel. I thought she’d be surprised but she wasn’t. She just sighed and said, “I know.”
“You know?”
“Well, not exactly know, but it figures,” Caro said. “See, back in September, right after school started, I got really drunk at a party and ran into Mel. We went outside and were standing around, just the two of us, and he looked so good that before I knew it, I told him I liked him. Then I ran off and threw up. I thought—he was drunk too, so I figured he didn’t remember. I mean, he never said anything. But I was still so embarrassed I couldn’t even look at him until we ended up in that group in English. And then it was like…I don’t know. The way he talked to me, I thought maybe he liked me too. But then Beth said she liked him, and—”
“And that meant you couldn’t.”
“Yeah,” Caro said. “But…okay. If I tell you something, will you be honest with me? I mean, will you tell me what you really think?”
“Yes. Beth’s a complete shit.”
She laughed. “Besides that. Remember when Beth told me to ask Mel if Joe was going to a party, and I told Mel I thought Joe was hot and acted like I—?”
“Wanted to hook up with him?”
Caro nodded. “Right. Beth did all that for a reason.”
“Because she wanted Mel to think you liked Joe instead of him.”
“Yeah, but here’s the thing. I never told Beth what happened with Mel. I didn’t tell anyone because it was so humiliating. So Beth never knew I liked Mel, which means—”
“Crap,” I said. “It means Mel remembers what happened at the party—and told Beth about it. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. But I guess when he and I talked in English and stuff, it was just talking. I guess he’s always liked Beth.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. That one time he asked me to go to the movies with him, I could tell he liked you.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter now,” she said. “And, okay, what exactly was that movie thing about? Not that you aren’t—I mean, it was just—”
“Very random?”
“Yeah.”
I shrugged. I knew why Mel had asked me to the movies. He’d done it for Patrick, just like he’d asked me all those questions. No wonder he’d never looked interested in my answers. “I think your hair’s done.”
Caro looked at me, and for a second I thought she was going to say something. That maybe she had an idea of what had happened with me and Patrick. But she didn’t say anything, and we just rinsed her hair out.
“It looks good,” I told her when it was done.
“Thanks,” she said, and I made a face at her.
“No, for real,” she said. “Thank you.”
I knew what she meant. She was thanking me for being there, for listening.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, but it kind of was to me. For me. No one has said thank you to me for real in a long, long time.
152 days
J—
There’s some other stuff I need to tell you, okay?
Caro and I are still talking. I’ve even gone to her house a couple of times. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I tell her stuff or anything like that. I know she’s Corn Syrup, who trails Beth
around school like a whipped loser. But she makes fun of herself for it, and…I don’t know. She’s not that bad.
God, this—just doing this, just writing to you—it’s hard. I’ve never been nervous talking to you before, but I am now. I’ve wanted to tell you everything, but I would look at this notebook and think of what I said to you before and hate myself.
Talking to you used to be so easy and now…now I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
I wish I wasn’t so angry. I wish I was a stronger person, a better one.
Mom and I talked the day after…after Patrick. She picked me up from school and drove me home. She followed me into the study when I went in there to do my homework and started talking. She said she was sorry she’d pushed me to go to the mall, that if she’d hurt me by talking about getting a haircut she didn’t mean it.
You should have heard her, J. I always wanted her to sound the way she did then. I wanted that pleading note in her voice. I always wanted her and Dad to feel the way I did around them. I wanted them to realize that you can be in a room with someone and yet not really be there to them.
And yeah, it felt okay. But it didn’t feel great. I sat there, watching her talk and trying so hard, and I—I felt sorry for her. For Dad. Things had changed so much for them so fast, and here she was stuck at home with me in the middle of the afternoon. She wasn’t working on a paper or going over stuff for a class or talking to Dad or doing the things that used to make her glow.
She and Dad might not have noticed me before, but hell, at least they were happy.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m—this really sucks.”
“Amy,” she said, her face crumpling. “Please don’t say that. Your father and I are trying so hard, and if you would just let us—”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry for you. It sucks that you have to do all this. It must be really hard.”