The Last Good Day of the Year

by Jessica Warman

  “Oh.” Hannah seems to accept the answer. “Can we stay a little longer?”

  I can’t see Remy or Heather anywhere now. If they’re still fighting, they’ll probably go somewhere where they can be alone. “Sure. We can stay as long as you want.”

  By the time we start walking toward the exit, I haven’t seen Remy in over an hour. Once it got dark and we could pass through the crowds without being so visible, I actually managed to enjoy myself.

  We didn’t need a car to get here tonight. My house is less than a mile away, and most of the distance can be covered by cutting through alleys and fields. As we walk through the parking lot, I see Remy’s car parked in a spot up ahead. I look at the windshield once I’m close enough to see all the way inside. Remy is alone in the driver’s seat. His eyes are closed.

  “Is that Remy?”

  “Yes. We should leave him alone, though. Come on.” I tug at Hannah’s hand. She plants her feet in the packed dirt beneath us, shaking her head. “I’m too cold to keep walking. Ask him to give us a ride.”

  “Hannah, it’s a short walk. Please don’t argue with me.”

  She frowns, shakes her head, and skips away to knock on his window. He wakes up—if he was really sleeping in the first place—and rolls down the window to speak to her for a few seconds. I can’t hear anything they’re saying until Hannah turns to me and shouts, “Come on, Sam!” She waves me over with a self-satisfied grin.

  As we’re buckling up, I realize that Hannah, who is in the back, doesn’t have a booster seat.

  “She’ll be fine.” Remy has already shifted into reverse.

  “My mom will slaughter me.”

  “What’s ‘slaughter’ mean?” Hannah isn’t smart, not in the same way that Turtle was. Turtle would have been able to figure out the word’s meaning from the context.

  “Never mind, Hannah.”

  “She needs a booster seat,” I repeat, even though I know it’s useless. We’ll be home in thirty seconds.

  “Why?” Hannah demands. “Why do I need one? I’m not a baby anymore.”

  “Because you’re too short to ride around without one. It’s dangerous.”

  “Ugh,” she moans. “Everything is more fun when it’s a little bit dangerous.”

  * * *

  My parents still aren’t home from their movie when Remy pulls onto our street. All the lights in our house are out; Gretchen isn’t home, either. I don’t see Abby’s car anywhere on the street, which means the two of them are out together, doing who knows what until who knows when. And I don’t have a key.

  “You’ll wait at my house. Stay as long as you need to.” Remy has been mostly quiet on the short drive. He didn’t mention Heather, and I didn’t ask.

  “You don’t have to do that. We’ll figure something out.”

  He doesn’t answer me. He just rolls his eyes and walks into his house, leaving the door open for us to follow.

  Susan and Michael are out for the night, too. Remy drinks a glass of water while I flip through TV channels until I find The Muppets Take Manhattan for Hannah. We dim the lights in the living room, and I spread a blanket over my sister’s tiny body.

  “Will you watch the movie with me?” Hannah asks when she sees that I’m following Remy toward the stairs.

  “Sure. In a few minutes, okay?”

  Hannah sighs. “You won’t come back. You’re trying to trick me.”

  “I am not.”

  “You think I’ll fall asleep right away. You’re tricking me.”

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  She sits up to shake her head at me. “I’m wide awake. You better come back.”

  “I will.”

  On the stairs, Remy murmurs, “You’re going to watch the movie with her?”

  I press a finger to my lips and hold up five fingers. She’ll be asleep in no time.

  “Okay, then. Let’s chill out.” Remy walks backward on his tiptoes, reaching behind his back to open his bedroom door. “Finally,” he says, kicking off his shoes once he’s inside. “What a night.”

  I freeze in his doorway. “You mean in there?”

  “Yes.” He laughs. “What’s the matter? Are you a vampire? Do I have to formally invite you into my room?”

  “No.” But my feet are still planted in the hallway.

  “Sam, get in here and shut the door.”

  “You aren’t going to believe this.” I’m too embarrassed to look at him.

  “What is it?” In my peripheral vision, I see him tugging his T-shirt over his head.

  “I’ve never been in a boy’s bedroom. I haven’t—it’s not that—I’m not technically allowed.”

  “That’s not true.” He throws his T-shirt at my face. I duck, but it still lands on my shoulder: damp with Remy’s sweat, smelling like summer and smoke and cotton candy. I can’t throw it back to him fast enough.

  “It is true.”

  “No, it isn’t. You’ve been in here plenty of times before, when we were kids.”

  “That was different.”

  “Sam. You can’t be serious. What are you afraid of? Is it this?” He gestures to his bare chest. “Are you worried you won’t be able to control yourself around me?”

  “No!”

  “I’m not going to attack you or anything.”

  “I’m not afraid of that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” He steps toward me and takes me gently by the arm, as though I’m an old woman he’s helping across the street. We both stare down at my feet against his dull hardwood floor. “See?” he breathes. “Now you’re in my bedroom. Nothing to it.”

  An entire wall of his room is covered in a collage of rock and punk band posters. Clothing—including underwear and socks—is scattered across the floor. Beside his bed, a turtle no larger than a silver dollar paddles around the shallow water inside a small aquarium. His desk is piled with CDs. The whole room reeks of aftershave. His unmade bed still has the same flannel Star Wars sheets from when we were young.

  “I assume you don’t want me to tell Heather I was up here,” I say.

  “Heather. Right.” He picks up a framed photo of the two of them and stares at it. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “What exactly are you sorry for, Remy?”

  “I know how it seems, but I didn’t lie to her about you.”

  “It kind of sounds like you did.”

  “Look, it’s not important what I did or didn’t say to Heather. We’ve been having problems for months.” He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes before slowly breathing in and out a few more times, as if he’s trying to calm himself.

  “Is Hannah okay?” His eyes are still shut.

  “Yes. I told her it was nothing. She seemed to forget about it.”

  He looks at me. “Good. Then don’t worry.”

  “But what happened with Heather?”

  “The end happened, that’s what. We got into a big fight, and she got so pissed off that she told me she fooled around with Noel Gilligan at a track meet last spring. I could never respect a girl who let that loser put his tongue in her mouth.” He pauses. “Besides, she was dating me at the time.”

  Remy drops the picture—frame and all—into his trash can. The glass shatters dramatically, and he smiles. He grabs a box of Girl Scout cookies from his windowsill and tosses me an entire sleeve of Thin Mints, which I barely manage to catch.

  “They’re your favorite, right?” he asks.

  I nod. “How do you—”

  “I remember. That’s how I know.”

  “Oh.”

  “Heather wouldn’t eat them. She only likes the shortbread ones.”

  “Trefoils? Gross.”

  “I know. What a monster, right?” He sits down beside me on his bed, reaching into my lap for a few cookies. I’m not sure whether he notices my body tense up when he leans across me to reach into the aquarium and scoop the turtle into his hand. We sit side by side, our backs against the wall of posters, heads tilted together, wat
ching as the turtle looks around the room, probably terrified. “I found this little guy in the parking lot outside Shop ’n Save. He was on his back in a puddle. No idea how he got there.”

  I don’t say anything. From downstairs, I can hear Kermit singing “Right Where I Belong.”

  “Is it okay that I’m sitting here?” Remy watches the turtle pacing in circles on his palm.

  “What do you mean? Beside me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what to say. The turtle reaches the edge of Remy’s hand and peeks over the side before quickly shrinking into its shell. “He’s scared,” I say.

  “I know.” Remy leans over to return the turtle to the aquarium. When he leans back again, he shifts his weight a little closer to me. It’s obvious what he’s doing; I know it, and he knows that I know. I don’t know how I’ll react when he tries to kiss me. I’m not even sure I want him to try.

  “Sam? What are you thinking about right now?”

  I blurt out the truth before I have time to think it through. “I wish we hadn’t come back to this town.”

  It’s not the answer he expected to hear. From the look on his face, I know I’ve completely killed the mood. “Well … so do I, sometimes,” he says. He sounds baffled by the sudden turn our conversation has taken.

  “You mentioned that before. Thanks, Remy.”

  “Aw, Sam … come on, you know that isn’t what I mean. It’s just that before you got here, I had a pet turtle in my room, and now every time I look at him it’s like I’m aware of the deeper symbolism because of your sister. I feel like my life has turned into a goddamn short story where everything has to mean something.”

  “Welcome to every day of my life for the past ten years.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t complain, because I know it’s so much worse for you. But you’re the only one who knows how this feels,” he continues. He turns around and brings his face close to mine. “If I’d never met you, none of this would have happened. But it did, and now you’re the only one I can talk to about any of this.”

  I kiss him more to shut him up than anything else. He’s surprised at first, but then his arms snake around me and he shifts his weight onto my body until I’m lying beneath him in bed, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to let him keep going. Kissing Remy is nothing like kissing Noah. With Noah, I was at ease until we started kissing.

  “Hey! No smooching!” Hannah stands in the doorway, her small arms crossed against her chest, a look of absolute disapproval on her face. She stomps a bare foot against the wooden hardwood floor and it thumps weakly, with neither the weight nor the authority she’s going for.

  “We weren’t smooching.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My lips and part of my face are numb and raw from the constant pressure of Remy’s short whiskers, combined with the heat and moisture that our contact has generated.

  “Yes, you were.” She raises her right eyebrow in a practiced gesture. “I saw you with my own eyes, Sam. Those weren’t family kisses. They were wedding kisses.” Then, without skipping a beat, our make-out session instantly forgotten: “You said you would watch the movie with me.”

  “I know. I was going to come down in a minute.”

  “I want to sleep with you tonight,” she says.

  “You will. I’ll be there soon.”

  “But I’m afraid to be alone.”

  Even though we are so much farther apart in age, Hannah and I are closer than Turtle and I ever were. I’ve always blamed Remy for this. If he hadn’t been around to monopolize my time, Turtle would have been my natural playmate and closest friend. It’s been a struggle not to punish myself for ditching her so often, either because she was too slow or too small to keep up with the differences in our development. When you’re that young, three years is a big age difference.

  Hannah crawls into bed between Remy and me, oblivious to the possibility that she’s intruding. I remember feeling the same way when I was her age and would sneak into our parents’ room at night after a bad dream: it didn’t occur to me until years later that they were anything but thrilled by my arrival.

  Remy produces his television remote from somewhere beneath the sheets. “You want to keep watching the Muppets, Hannah?”

  She burrows closer to me, warm and soft as a little squirrel. “I’m afraid of the animal.”

  “You mean ‘Animal.’ That’s his name.”

  “I don’t care what his name is. He’s ugly. We can watch it, okay? But you both have to snuggle with me in case I get afraid again.”

  On the screen, the Muppets are assembled onstage in a Hollywood theater. Remy reaches across Hannah’s body to hold my hand. “I said no smooching,” my sister mutters.

  By the time the credits start to roll maybe fifteen minutes later, she is fast asleep between us, her tiny hands clenched into fists beneath her chin. Remy’s eyes are closed, too. When I try to wriggle my fingers free from his grasp—my hand is starting to fall asleep—he only holds on more tightly, our arms forming a kind of gate across my sister’s chest. The irony of the scene is not lost on me, and I lie there feeling like the two of us are traitors for keeping her so safe tonight. If I were Turtle, I think I would hate Hannah for the simple fact of her existence, and I would hate me for loving her so much, for locking the front door, for letting Hannah crawl into bed between us. There are so many reasons for Turtle to hate us, and I wouldn’t blame her for a second. As I’m falling asleep, I pretend that we are in the basement again. The credits on the television screen could be the credits from any movie. It’s not Hannah sleeping between us but Turtle. Our arms across her body have created a barrier in time, allowing everything in the room to age except for her. Remy and I have grown older, but Turtle is perpetually four years old. Our will is so strong that nothing, not even time, can touch her. And with my eyes closed and the music from the television in the background, I can almost believe it’s true. Maybe that night hasn’t happened yet; maybe what I saw was just a vision of a single possibility among thousands. Maybe if we stay like this, we can keep her safe forever.

  Partial Transcript of Interview with Steven Handley, Conducted March 16, 1988, by Davis Gordon

  Steven Handley: They didn’t care about the other suspects. Ask that detective—ask him about Space Barbie.

  Davis Gordon: Space Barbie?

  SH: You don’t know about that?

  DG: No.

  SH: Turtle wanted this Barbie doll. She went crazy one day at the store about it. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened; Gretchen told me later. But you can imagine, right? Turtle wanted the doll, her mom said no, and she threw a fit. But a couple of days later, when Gretchen was babysitting, I was there. We’d had these rolling blackouts—remember them? They started up in New York, I think, and then moved down the coast, and we didn’t have power for two days. Remember?

  DG: I do. It was around Halloween.

  SH: Yeah, it was a few days after Halloween. Gretchen let the kids binge on their candy so they would leave us alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about them stuffing their faces. It was Halloween, you know? But their mom was so uptight about food. On Halloween night, she let her kids pick out two pieces of candy—only two—to eat, and then she hid their bags in her closet. Gretchen didn’t think it was a big deal to get it down for them—would you? Anyway, Turtle threw up. Skittles—oh, man, I remember the Skittles. It was all over her shirt, so she went upstairs to change—Sam went with her—and she found a Space Barbie sitting on her bed. Brand new, still in the box. Well, she’d taken it out already before we saw it, but the box was still there on her bed. I wouldn’t have guessed it was a Barbie if I hadn’t seen the packaging; the doll looked like David Bowie. You know, like Ziggy Stardust? She had this short, spiky hair and crazy makeup, and she was wearing a jumpsuit. Gretchen told me they never could figure out who’d bought it for Turtle. It sure as hell wasn’t me.

  Forty-Eight Minutes of Doubt, pp. 165–67


  Chapter Seventeen

  Summer 1996

  We’re watching Saturday Night Live when one of those old anti-drug commercials comes on: a father confronts his teenage son with drugs he found in the kid’s room. “Who taught you how to do this stuff?” he demands, his mustache twitching with emotion. “You, Dad,” the boy replies. He looks at his father with this sad, weary expression, and you’re supposed to be able to tell that he’s already numb from life’s disappointments, probably because his parents are potheads. “I learned it by watching you.”

  There’s a tornado warning for the whole county until tomorrow morning. The weather has been breezy and humid all evening. The rain will be here any second, I know. In the last five minutes, the wind outside has built into a frenzy, gusting with enough strength to set off a car alarm a few streets over.

  “It’s true, you know.” Remy holds a joint between his lips. He nods at the TV screen. “Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs.”

  The smell of marijuana makes me ill if I’m around it for too long, so I lie flat on the floor with my head beside the open window and breathe in as much fresh, cool night air as I can. The floor creaks beneath the weight of our bodies. When I close my eyes, I can feel the whole playhouse rock in the wind.

  “This seems like a bad idea.”

  “What does?”

  “Being out here in a storm. We could get struck by lightning.” The TV is plugged into a long, thick extension cord that goes out the window and across the yard, all the way to the power outlet beside Remy’s back door.

  “Nah.” But he unplugs the television anyway, and we’re suddenly alone together in the dark. Any light from the moon or stars is blotted out by the clouds.

  I don’t say a word while Remy smokes. When the joint gets too short for him to hold without burning his fingers, he puts it out with a dab of spit and balances it on top of the TV. It’s dark enough in the playhouse that I can barely make out his face as he lowers his body onto mine.

  “What if the floor collapses?” This place wasn’t built to support the weight of two horny teenagers in bad weather.