Whatever It Takes

by Ritchie, Krista

  Garrison makes the first move. He kicks the tampons at a couple girls and guys, grouped several lockers away. When he swings his head to me, pieces of his hair fall to his eyelashes, and he says, “Blaze.”

  Blaze.

  From Streets of Rage, an early nineties video game, she’s one of the strongest female characters in a slew of men. While I don’t have her judo skills or her physique, it’s easy to pretend I’m her when someone pretends with me. And by saying her name, I know Garrison is trying to bolster my confidence.

  On our trek from the parking lot to the school this morning, Garrison asked if I’d ever played Streets of Rage. When I said I did, he told me, “So imagine you’re Blaze and I’m Axel and this hallway—the one we’re going to be walking down—is nothing we can’t handle.”

  “Axel,” I whisper and brush the tampons out of my locker.

  I remember the phone call from Rose Calloway—after I spilled tampons accidentally on the street. In front of the world.

  I’m not going to be embarrassed. Remember what Rose said. I take a few deep breaths, my stomach twisting in knots.

  It’s harder than it sounds.

  Garrison says, “Now I wish I had a crowbar.” It’s the go-to weapon in Streets of Rage.

  My eyes widen behind my glasses.

  “Kidding.” He glares at the cluster of people, just now coming down from their laughing fit. “Sort of.”

  I quickly stuff my backpack into my now empty locker, slamming it shut. Just as I turn, I realize that Garrison has left my side. He’s taken a few lengthy strides towards the group, all laughter faded.

  I try to grip my backpack strap, only to meet air.

  I stand stiffly, more in the middle of the hall. My uniform is as uncomfortable as I feel. I check the state of the bow, like a teacher will yell any second about its off-kilter state.

  It looks okay though.

  What doesn’t look so great: the scene in front of me.

  “That’s not cool,” Garrison tells the shorter girl with dirty blonde hair. I wonder if she’ll have to take out her nose piercing before first period. This thought is trying to trounce the bolder, bigger one that screams, these are his friends.

  He approaches them like he knows them. Like he’s talked to them often. Like he’s so familiar with who they are.

  The shorter girl pushes out her chest and pulls back her shoulders to gain some height. “You know what’s not cool? Betraying your best friends.” Her eyes redden, and she takes an angrier step forward. The other girl clasps her shoulder. “You should be in there with John! You deserve jail time more than any one of them, and you know it!”

  Her friend says, “Carly—”

  “Leave me alone.” She swats her hand off her shoulder and then points at Garrison again. I can’t see his features, just the back of his head. He’s unmoving. Even his fingers hang loosely, not curling into a fist. “You’re a piece of shit, Abbey. You’re a piece of shit—and you know it.”

  Garrison nears Carly a little more, and she goes still at his closeness. He hangs his head and whispers something to her. In seconds, she breaks down and bursts into tears.

  “It’s not fair!” she cries, sinking to the floor. I can only guess that she was close to John, maybe even in a relationship with him.

  And I expect Garrison to swivel back towards me.

  Am I being presumptuous? To assume that he’d come back?

  Because he never does.

  I watch him walk past his old friends. Away from me. I watch him disappear alone around a corner. I watch him vanish all together without another word. Without a goodbye.

  The bell rings, and I’m left standing immobile in the middle of the hall. People pass around me like nothing occurred.

  And I have two choices.

  I can go to first period and forget about Garrison. I can act as though this intro to class never happened. Act like everyone else. Forget about him, Willow Moore.

  Or I can go find him. I can step over my hurt feelings. The ones that say, he left me, and just make sure he’s okay.

  He approached them for me. To stand up for me.

  That means something.

  I make my decision.

  I trace his footsteps down the hallway. I veer around the corner where I expect another hallway or a cluster of vending machines. Instead, I’m met with two bathrooms. Girls and boys.

  “Oh God,” I mutter.

  I’m staring at the boy symbol. Just go in. This will be my first foray into this great unknown that is the boys’ bathroom. I wish I didn’t give a shit. I wish I could just push inside without a second thought or care.

  It’s just the boys’ bathroom.

  It’s trivial, right?

  Just go in.

  I do this time.

  I push the royal blue door with my shoulder. I’m met with one long row of sinks, two stalls, and three urinals. Not too shocking.

  Garrison is sitting on the sink counter, a lit cigarette between his fingers. His head is hung, hair in his eyes, but as soon as I enter, he looks up. His bones seem to cement, joints unoiled. Frozen.

  Maybe this wasn’t a smart idea.

  “I…” I gesture to the door I came from, as though that explains everything. It actually explains absolutely nothing.

  Smoke wafts around his body, and it takes him a second to shift the hand that holds his cigarette. He casually sucks on it, quiet.

  I like quiet.

  I’m familiar with quiet more than I am loud. I walk further inside and rest my back on a locked, out-of-order stall.

  He blows smoke up at the air vent. Then his aquamarine eyes study his cigarette, embers eating the paper. “Did you hear the bell?” He finally speaks.

  “Yeah.”

  He nods a couple times, almost in realization, and then he takes another drag.

  “Thanks for trying to help me,” I say softly.

  “I probably made it worse.”

  I cross my arms, feeling naked without my backpack. “They’re your friends?”

  “Were,” he corrects. “They pretty much want nothing to do with me after…the thing.” The thing. He takes a deeper drag of his cigarette. I know he must mean when his friends broke into Loren’s house with gargoyle masks.

  “What’d you say to Carly?”

  He stares off past me, his gaze haunted. “I told her that she’s right.”

  “What?” A weight bears down on me. And the room.

  He puts out his cigarette in the sink basin. “I’m a piece of shit.” He says it with such finality, as though he’s accepted it for a long time.

  I open my mouth to tell him that it’s not true—that he’s a great person. I pause.

  I falter.

  And I think. How much of Garrison Abbey do I really know? Not much.

  Not yet.

  I lick my dried lips and stare at the tiled floor. “You’re better than your friends, you know?”

  He says under his breath, “What an accomplishment.” His pretty eyes land on me. “You don’t have to cheer me up. It’s a lost cause, honestly.” He expels a deep breath and rubs his tired eyes with the heel of his palm. “You should go to class, Willow.”

  “Are you going?” I wonder.

  “No.” He pulls a carton of cigarettes out of his slacks. He undoes his navy tie and pops some of the buttons at the collar. Like the uniform has been slowly but surely choking him.

  I unbutton some of mine at the collar and untuck my blouse. Feeling better. I don’t brave a glance at him, but I do climb awkwardly onto the sink counter, right next to Garrison.

  My legs are much shorter, and I push my glasses up before splaying my hands flat on my thighs.

  “Do you smoke?” he asks me, staring down at my features. Our arms skim, and a thunderous sensation pounds inside of me, grasping tight of my lungs, reaching and stretching for my heart.

  “Not a smoker,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t offer me a cigarette, and I’m glad there’s no p
ressure to join him. When he lights another one, he blows the smoke away from me.

  We’re utterly silent, but it’s the kind that begins to slow my heartbeat. Silence and calmness, void of that aching loneliness.

  After maybe five minutes or possibly ten or twenty, the door swings open, and in walks a five-foot-something student with short brown hair, expensive loafers and shock at the sight of me, a girl.

  Garrison smiles in his next drag. He motions from the guy to me. “Barry, this is my girl, Willow.”

  My girl.

  I begin to smile.

  In context, it sounds just as Garrison described—somewhere between good friends and boyfriend-girlfriend.

  Barry nods in recognition, at my name or the title Garrison has attached to it, I’m not sure. “Ohh…” He draws out the word, then he points at the cigarette. “Coach says you need to cut back for conditioning.”

  Garrison looks at me. “The lacrosse coach has this delusion that I can run a mile faster than my older brother. God forbid I fall behind Hunter Reagan Abbey.” He spins the cigarette between his fingers. “Birthplace: Mt. Olympus. Age: Unidentifiable. Handsomest fucker there is.” I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or just bitter.

  Maybe both.

  Before I can say something, Barry adds, “Cutting out cigarettes would help though.”

  Garrison gives him an irritated look. “Or I could just cut out lacrosse. How about that?”

  Barry rolls his eyes. “Don’t talk like that. You know we need you for state this year.”

  Garrison just takes another drag of his cigarette, more agitated. I remember his questionnaire answer about lacrosse being his favorite sport but hating it the most of his brothers. I wonder how deep that hate runs.

  Barry briefly glances at me before disappearing into the stall.

  Then Garrison hops off the counter and douses the cigarette in the faucet. “Calculus in ten.”

  Ten minutes? I check my watch, realizing it’s almost time to go. I tuck in my blouse and button it higher while he fixes his tie.

  I catch him glancing at me.

  He catches me glancing at him.

  His lips rise. I feel mine pull upward too. And I’m beginning to realize something.

  I really like being in the company of Garrison Abbey.

  20 BACK THEN – September

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  GARRISON ABBEY

  Age 17

  I slump down in the back storage room of Superheroes & Scones. I’m not on break. Not even fucking close. Unless this place gives breaks after only an hour stocking comics.

  Unlikely.

  I just needed to escape for a second. My fingers instinctively slip into my leather jacket for a cigarette, but I quickly ditch the attempt. I don’t need to ruin the good thing I have going here by infusing Groot plushies with cigarette smoke.

  I reach for my other pocket instead and slide out my phone.

  A cardboard poster of Thor pokes my back. Pushing it away, I readjust and discover a bare patch of cement wall to lean against. Not like there’s much. The fucking storage room is crammed with shelves of comics and merchandise, half of which is packed in boxes. It’s easy to hide back here.

  To get lost.

  I log onto Tumblr and search for Willow’s new username that she changed from willowbadaboom33 and gave me ten minutes ago.

  vegablaze33

  It slightly matches mine. Vega is a character from Street Fighter. She told me that she usually dresses up as Vega for Halloween, so it has sentimental meaning.

  What’s terrible—what makes me hate myself more than she could even understand, more than she could know—is that I’m not even sure I would’ve befriended her if she came to Philly last year.

  My group of friends—we’d been pretty tight since grade school. It would’ve been too hard to break away from that security. It’s such bullshit.

  I’m bullshit.

  Because I already like her more than any shit friend I’ve ever had.

  She dressed up as Vega, for Christ’s sake.

  I laugh and I smile. Just trying to picture it. I wish I’d been there. Right beside her, for every Halloween she had the balls to wear that costume. And I don’t mean literal balls, but Vega is a dude.

  What’s worse: I think I’d return to my friends if it would be like it was. When I lost some of them to juvie and when the rest of my friends turned their backs on me, I lost people.

  Not happiness. Just people. And that’s what fucking hurts the most.

  I’m not used to being alone. Having people near me, returning to what was, sounds comfortable and easier. Even if I wasn’t really happy.

  Willow’s still a mystery to me. She’s shy but brazen enough to enter a party where she knows absolutely no one, all to find her cousin. I can’t even be without people that I don’t really like and who don’t really like me, and she could do that.

  And she’s wary of touch.

  But she let me touch her.

  I might be bad for Willow. I’ve been bad for everyone at some point, but I selfishly need something that will keep me riding down this road. I’m scared that Superheroes & Scones won’t be enough over time, and I’ll find a way to turn back around.

  To return to people I’ve known practically all my life. To people who will never make me happy.

  I’m just terrified. Of every single option in front of me. Even the good ones. Even the horrible ones.

  To distract myself, I stick to Tumblr. Something I actually like. I scroll through her archive and find the questionnaire easily this time.

  Here it goes.

  What was your…

  Last drink: Fizz Life

  Last phone call: umm, my Grandma Ida. She wanted to crochet me a scarf for next winter and needed to know what color yarn. I told her blue.

  Last text message: “I bought it! I bought it!” to Maggie, in relation to Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud—I’ve been saving up babysitting money to purchase the comic book. I read ANYTHING that Loren Hale recommends (my comic book guru), and he suggested this one not long ago on social media.

  I didn’t realize that she needed to save up money just for a comic book. I just figured her parents were loaded since she’s related to Loren Hale.

  My brows knot as I continue on.

  Have you ever…

  Been cheated on: never gave anyone the chance to

  What does that mean? She’s never dated? I don’t know why that surprises me. I just thought…Maine. She probably knew some guy up there, right?

  Kissed someone and regretted it: never been kissed (don’t judge)

  Willow…

  I reread this part about five times, not able to move on yet. My hand is frozen to my mouth for a second. I drop it after the shock lessens. I’m not judging. (I promise.) I’m just confused.

  Why hasn’t any guy kissed her before?

  Did she not want them to?

  Did no guys want to? That pulls at me because it fucking sucks and I’m still just…confused. Then again, it’s not like a person has to be kissed by a certain age, right?

  Drank hard liquor: a couple times. I didn’t like the taste.

  I’ll remember that.

  Been drunk and thrown up: nope

  Good for you. It’s not fun.

  Met someone who changed you: I met Loren Hale once (my only celebrity run-in). He was standing on my front doorstep (long story). Loren Hale left within like five minutes—but he actually spoke to me. He noticed my Mutants & Proud pin, and I mentioned liking X-Men Evolution (the cartoons). Then he made a comment about the comics and Lily Calloway. He called her his girlfriend, but they were and are still engaged if Celebrity Crush is right. It made me think that girls could read comics too—and the way he spoke, he presumed I already did. I never tried to read them until that moment, until he left and I thought yeah, I’m allowed to read these too.

  I started New X-Men and related so much to Wallflower, a girl I reall
y needed a year ago, when my dad divorced my mom. And I would’ve never read comic books and fallen in love with them if I didn’t meet Loren Hale

  There’s a lot to take in there. She only met Loren Hale once before moving to Philly—which makes a lot more sense. The pieces click together. Why she was searching for his house that one night at the party. Why she didn’t have any way to contact him. Why she doesn’t have as much money. Their families must have been estranged.

  She really loves comics then…

  Wallflower. I make a note to look that character up.

  Her parents divorced a year ago. That’s got to be fucking hard. Unless, it was a good thing. One of my old friends, Jesse—his parents split and his mom seemed much happier afterwards. Divorce isn’t always that great and terrible monster some people believe it to be.

  But that line a girl I really needed a year ago makes it seem like it may not have been a good change.

  Shit.

  Should I stop reading this? I skim the next question instinctively.

  I’m in way too deep.

  Fallen out of love: I’ve never fallen in love to fall out of it

  Yeah well, in high school, love is for liars.

  At least, that’s how I feel.

  Found out who your true friends are: this is why I keep my circle small. Maggie is the truest friend there ever could be.

  How small is small? And Maggie must be the girl she tagged in this questionnaire.

  Lost glasses: multiple times. My little sis sometimes takes them to be funny.

  That’s not funny.

  Sex on the first date: …idk maybe I’d do it? Thinking about it makes me nervous…

  The hairs on my neck bristle. I figured she was a virgin if she’s never been kissed, but this causes a wave of panic. I reread that line over and over idk maybe I’d do it?

  It makes me nervous that she’d even contemplate doing it if she’s nervous about it.