“So,” she said suddenly, rolling over onto her stomach. “When’s Scarlett due, anyway?”
“May,” I said, and my voice sounded strange to me. “The second week, or something.”
“I can’t believe she’s having Michael’s baby,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t even know they’d hooked up.”
I licked my lips again, taking a tiny sip of beer, then looked around Ronnie’s room, at the towels hung over the window for a curtain, at the Penthouse magazine by my foot, at the litter box that was by the door. I didn’t see any cat.
Then I remembered I was talking to Elizabeth, so I thought back to what we’d been saying, which was hard, and then said, “They didn’t hook up. They went out all summer.”
“Did they?” Elizabeth said. Her voice didn’t sound strange at all. “I had no idea.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, taking another precious sip of my beer, which was warm and flat. “They were really in love.”
“I didn’t know,” she said slowly. “They must have been awfully secretive about it. I saw Michael a lot last summer, and he never mentioned her.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I had the feeling we were getting into sticky territory, so I changed the subject. Scarlett didn’t belong in this room, in this place, any more than my mother did. “So is Ronnie your boyfriend?”
She laughed, like she knew something I didn’t. “Boyfriend? No. He’s just—Ronnie.”
“Oh.”
“It’s funny that she’s keeping the baby,” Elizabeth said, pulling Scarlett right back between us. “I mean, it’s going to ruin her life.”
I was looking at that litter box, wondering about the cat again. “No, it won’t. It’s what she wants to do.”
“Well,” she said, and there was that hair flip as she sat up, pulling another cigarette out of the pack on the headboard. “If it was me, I’d just kill myself before I’d have a baby. I mean, I’d know enough to realize there was no way I could handle it.”
I decided, at that moment, that I truly hated Elizabeth Gunderson. It was all clear to me now; she was evil. She lived her life to swoop down and catch me off guard, dropping bombs and walking off, leaving them to explode in my face.
“You’re not Scarlett,” I said.
“I know it.” She got off the bed, tucking her cigarettes in her pocket. “Thank God for that, right?” She walked to the door, brushing past me, and pushed it open. “You coming?”
“No,” I said, looking back at her, “I think I’ll just—” But she was already gone, the door left half-open with light spilling in, and I was alone.
I sat there on the bed by myself for a long time, the music drifting in from the hallway along with voices and noise, girls giggling, the bathroom door slamming. I lost all track of time and I was sure hours had passed, that I’d missed the New Year altogether, when Macon finally slipped back through the door, locking it behind him.
“Hey,” he said. I could only see his teeth in the dark, just a mouth coming toward me. “You okay?”
I leaned forward, determined to make out his face. As he got closer I was relieved to see he looked the same. My Macon. My boyfriend. Mine. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at his watch, glowing green in the dark. “Eleven-thirty. Why?”
“I just wondered,” I said. “Where have you been?”
“Mingling.” He handed me the beer in his hand, which tasted good and cold going down. I’d lost track of how many I’d had. I felt liquid and warm, and I curled up against him on the bed, kissing his neck as he wrapped his arms around me. As I closed my eyes the world began to spin in the dark, but he held me tight, his hand already moving up my leg, to my waistband. This was it.
I kept kissing him, trying to lose myself in it, but the room was hot and small and the bed smelled bad, like sweat. As we went further and further, I kept thinking that this wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. Not here, in a smelly bed, when my head was spinning and I could hear each flush of the toilet in the room next door. Not here, in a room with a dirty litter box and Penthouse magazine on the floor, where Elizabeth Gunderson had preceded me. Not here.
I started to get nervous, jumpy, and as Macon kept on, un-snapping my jeans, the noise from the bathroom only got louder, and outside some girl was coughing, and I felt something pressing against my bare back, something hard. When I reached around I felt it cool against my palm, and held it up over Macon’s head to the dim light. It was an earring, a gold teardrop; the one Elizabeth had lost. Scarlett had the same pair.
“Wait,” I said suddenly to Macon, pushing him up and away from me. We were very close, almost there, and I could hear him groan even as I squirmed out from beneath him.
“What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel sick,” I told him, and it wasn’t really true until I said it, and then I thought of all those beers and that bong hit and being here in this sweaty stinky bed and the reeking litter box. “I think I need some air.”
“Come on,” he said, sliding his hand up my back but it felt cold and creepy, suddenly, “lay back down. Come here.”
“No,” I said, jerking away from him and standing up, but I was off-balance and everything slanted off to one side. I leaned against the door, fumbling with the lock. “I think—I think I need to go home.”
“Home?” He said it like it was a dirty word. “Halley, it’s early. You can’t go home.”
I couldn’t get the door open, the lock slipping past my fingers as I tried to find it, and suddenly I could feel everything on its way up, slowly. “I have to go,” I said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Wait,” he said. “Just calm down, okay? Come here.”
“No,” I said, and I was crying suddenly, scared in this strange place and I hated him for doing this to me, hated myself, hated my mother and Scarlett for being right, all along. And then I heard it: voices, counting down. Ten, nine, eight, and I was sick and lost and the lock wouldn’t budge even as I felt everything coming up, the first taste in my mouth, and then finally the door was somehow open and I was running, seven, six, five, down the hallway, busting past the people crammed and chanting the numbers in the kitchen and living room and out into the cold, down the steps and the driveway four, three, two and into the woods and then, as the one came and everyone cheered, I was finally, violently, sick, alone on my knees in the woods, as the New Year began.
Chapter Fifteen
He didn’t speak to me for the first part of the ride home. He was mad, as if I’d elaborately planned getting sick. When he found me in the woods I was half asleep, wishing I was dead, with leaves stuck to my face. He put me in the car and peeled out down the driveway, going way too fast and fishtailing as we headed out onto the main road.
I was huddled against my window, my eyes closed, hoping I wouldn’t get sick again. I felt terrible.
“I’m sorry,” I said after about five miles, as the lights of town started to come into view. Every time I thought of that litter box, and those sheets, my stomach rolled. “I really am.”
“Forget it,” he said, and the engine growled as he changed gears, careening around a corner.
“I wanted to,” I told him. “I swear, I was going to. I just drank too much.”
He didn’t say anything, just turned with a screech onto the highway that led to my house, gunning the engine.
“Macon, please don’t be like this,” I said. “Please.”
“You said you wanted to. You made this big deal about spending New Year’s with me and what that meant, and then you just change your mind.” We were coming up on the main intersection to my neighborhood now, the stoplight shining green ahead.
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“Yes, it is. You never really wanted to, Halley. You can’t just play around like that.”
“I wasn’t playing around,” I said. “I wanted to. It just wasn’t right.”
“It felt fine to me.” The light w
as turning yellow but he kept pushing it, and we were going faster and faster, the mall shooting by in a blaze of lights.
“Macon, slow down,” I said, as we came up to the intersection, faster and faster. The light turned red but I knew already we weren’t stopping.
“You just don’t get it,” he said, punching the gas as we got closer, under the light now, and I turned to look at him, wondering what was coming next. “You’re just so—”
I was wondering what he was going to say, what word could sum me up right then, when I saw the lights come across his face, blaringly yellow, and suddenly he was brighter, and brighter, and I asked him what was happening, what was wrong. I remember only that light, so strong as it spilled across my shoulders and lit up his face, and how scared he looked as something big and loud hit my door, sending glass shattering all across me, little sparks catching the light like diamonds as they fell, with me, into the dark.
Chapter Sixteen
This is what I remember: the cold. The wind was blowing in my face and it was shivery cold, like ice. I remember red lights, and someone’s voice moaning. Crying. And lastly, I remember Macon holding my hand, tightly between his, and saying it finally, in the wrong place at the wrong time, but saying it. I love you. Oh, God, Halley, I’m sorry. I love you, I’m right here, just hold on. I’m right here.
When the ambulance came, I kept telling them to just take me home, that I’d be okay, just take me home. I knew how close I was, all the landmarks. I’d traveled that intersection a thousand times in my life; it was the first big road I’d crossed alone.
I tried to keep track of Macon, his hand or his face, but in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, I lost him.
“He had to stay at the accident scene,” a woman with red hair kept telling me in a steady voice, each time I asked. “Lie back and relax, honey. What’s your name?”
“Halley,” I said. I had no idea what had happened to me; my leg hurt, and one of my eyes was swollen shut. I couldn’t move my fingers on my left hand, but it didn’t hurt. That was strange.
“That’s a pretty name,” she said as someone shot something into my arm, a slight prick that made me flinch. “Real pretty.”
At the hospital they put me in a bed with a sheet pulled around it and suddenly people were hovering all over me, hands reaching and grabbing. Someone came and leaned into my ear, asking me my phone number and I gave her Scarlett’s. Even then, I knew how much trouble I would be in with my parents.
After a while a doctor came and told me I had a sprained wrist, lacerations on my back, stitches to bind the cut by my right eye, and two bruised ribs. The pain in my leg was just bruising, she said, and because I’d also banged my head they wanted to keep me overnight. She said again and again how I was very, very lucky. I kept asking about Macon, where he was, but she wouldn’t answer, telling me to get some sleep, to rest. She’d come back later to check on me. Oh, and by the way—my sister was waiting outside.
“My sister?” I said, as they parted the curtains and Scarlett came in, looking like she’d just rolled out of bed. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and was wearing the long flannel shirt I knew she slept in. Her stomach was bigger than it had been just hours ago, if that was possible.
“Jesus, Halley,” she said, stopping short a few feet from the bed and looking at me. She was scared but trying not to show it. “What happened to you?”
“It was an accident,” I said.
“Where’s Macon?” Scarlett said.
“I don’t know.” I felt like I was going to cry, suddenly, and now everything was beginning to hurt all at once. “Isn’t he outside?”
“No,” she said, and now her mouth was moving into a thin, hard line, her words clipped. “I didn’t see him.”
“He had to stay at the accident,” I told her. “He said he’d be right here. He was really worried.”
“Well, good,” she snapped. “He almost killed you.”
I closed my eyes, hearing only the beeping of some machine in the next room. It sounded just like the bell halfway up Grandma Halley’s stairs, chiming.
“I didn’t do it,” I said to her after a long silence. “In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “But I’m glad.”
“When my parents find out about this, I’m dead meat,” I said, and I was so sleepy it was hard to even get the words out. “They’ll never let me see him again.”
“He’s not even here, Halley,” she said softly.
“He’s at the accident,” I said again.
“That was over an hour and a half ago. The cop was in the waiting room, too. I talked to him. Macon left.”
“No,” I said, fighting off the sleep even as it crept over me. “He’s on the way.”
“Oh, Halley,” she said, and she sounded so sad. “I’m so, so, sorry.” But she was getting fuzzier and fuzzier and the beeping quieter, as I drifted away.
When I woke up next, the first thing I saw was a quarterback going out for a pass on the TV over my head. The ball was flying, curving through the air, as he just reached up, grabbed it, and began to dodge through the bodies and helmets, running, while the crowd screamed behind him. When he hit the end zone he spiked the ball, high-fived one of his teammates, and the camera zoomed into his smiling face, his fist pumping overhead. Touchdown.
“Hi there,” I heard my mother say, and I turned to see her sitting beside me, her chair pulled close. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” I said. My father was on the other bed in my room, still in the tacky Mexican shirt he always wore for the New Year’s party. “When did you get here?”
“Just a little while ago.” I looked at the clock on the wall as she reached over and brushed my hair out of my face, smoothing her fingers over the bandage on my eye. It was three-thirty. A.M.? P.M. ? I wasn’t sure. “Halley, honey, you really, really scared us.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and it was work just to talk, I was so tired. “I ruined your party.”
“I don’t care about the party,” she said. She looked tired too, sad, the same face she’d had that whole week we were with Grandma Halley. “Where were you? What happened?”
“Julie,” my father said from the next bed, his voice thick. “Let her sleep. It’s not important now.”
“The policeman said you were with Macon Faulkner,” she went on, and she sounded uneven, as if she was running over broken ground. “Is that true? Did he do this to you?”
“No,” I said, and it was coming back to me now, the cold and the bright light and all the stars, falling. I was so drained, I closed my eyes. “It was just—”
“I knew it, I knew it,” she said, and she was still holding my good hand, squeezing it now, hard. “God, you just can’t listen to me, you just can’t understand that I might be right, I might know what’s best, you always have to prove it to yourself, and look what happens, look at this....” Her voice was getting softer and softer, or maybe I was just slipping off. It was hard to say.
“Julie,” my father said again, and I could hear him coming around the bed, his steps moving closer. “Julie, she’s sleeping. She can’t even hear you, honey.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t see him,” she whispered, close to my ear now, her voice rough. “You promised me.”
“Let it go,” my father said. Then, again, so soft I could hardly hear it, “Let it go.”
I was half asleep, wild thoughts tangled in with the sounds around me, pulling me away. But right before I fell off entirely, or maybe I was already dreaming, I heard a voice close to my ear, maybe hers, maybe Macon’s, maybe just one I made up in my head. I’ll be right here, it said as I drifted off into sleep. Right here.
Chapter Seventeen
January was flat, gray, and endless. I spent New Year’s Day in the hospital and then went home with everything aching and took to my bed for the next week, staring out the window at Scarlett’s house and the planes overhead. My mother took complete control
of my life, and I let her.
We didn’t talk about Macon. It was understood that something had happened to me that night before the accident, something big, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t offer. Instead she rebandaged my eye and wrist, and gave me my pills, bringing me my meals on a tray. In the quiet of my house with her always so close by, Macon seemed like a dream, something barely visible, hardly real. It hurt too much to even picture him.
But he was trying to get in touch with me. My first night home I heard him idling at the stop sign, our old signal, and I lay staring at my ceiling and listened. He left after about ten minutes, turning the corner so that his headlights traced a path across my walls, lighting up a slash of my mirror, a patch of wallpaper, the smiling face of my Madame Alexander doll. Then he beeped the horn, one last chance, and I turned again to the night sky and closed my eyes.
I didn’t know what to think. That night was a mad blur, beginning with my fight with Scarlett and ending being cold cold cold on the side of the road. I was hurt and angry and I felt like a fool, for my wild notions, for turning even on Scarlett, the only one who really mattered, when she tried to tell me the truth.
Sometimes when I lay in bed that week I still felt for the ring he’d given me, forgetting they’d cut it off at the emergency room. It was on my desk, in a plastic baggie, next to the saucerful of candy I’d never touched. He wasn’t what I’d thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn’t what I’d thought I was, either.
Of course, some of us had already formed our opinions. “He’s such a jerk,” Scarlett said after the first week, as we sat at my kitchen table playing Go Fish and eating grapes. We never discussed our argument on New Year’s Eve; it made both of us uncomfortable. “And today he kept asking about you at school. He would not leave me alone. Like he couldn’t come over and visit you himself.”