The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel

by McCandless, Sarah Grace

  “Yeah, you should feel really special.” I try to deliver this with as much sarcasm as possible, but when I check Jack for a reaction, he’s staring at the steering wheel like he’s watching TV.

  “How much time do you have left?” he asks.

  I lean over and check the digital clock on the dash. “Twelve…no, make that eleven minutes.”

  “Pres?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They asked me to clean out his locker earlier this week…so your uncle wouldn’t have to do it.”

  I pause, listening to Lionel Richie singing “Sail On.” “I didn’t know that.”

  “I waited until after school so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone or explain what I was doing…” His voice trails off, and his eyes wander toward the house across the street, where the path is lined with waist-high plastic candy canes.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Jack turns back toward me, and for just a moment his face looks blue from the moonlight falling across it. He leans down and reaches underneath the driver’s seat, pulling out a spiral notebook. “Most of the stuff I found was textbooks that belonged to the school. There weren’t any pens, or erasers, or calculators—nothing—just the textbooks and this notebook.” He pauses briefly. “Most of it is blank.”

  “Most?” My voice starts to quiver. “You know what, I should go.”

  “But you still have a few minutes.”

  “Not really,” I stammer, gathering my purse and buttoning my jacket. “I’m sorry, I really have to go.” I reach to open the door.

  Jack grabs my shoulder. “Presley. Did Barry say anything to you before—I mean, did he give you anything?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble, trying to shake myself away from his reach.

  “Did he give you his varsity jacket?”

  My hand freezes on the door handle. “How did you know that?”

  “Because it’s in this notebook. He made a sort of…list.”

  “What do you mean, a list?” I ask, and as the words come out of my mouth, I want to catch them and stuff them back inside, but they break into the air around us like bubbles blown from a wand dipped in a jar of soap. Jack sits silently, leaning his forehead against the notebook, which is propped between him and the steering wheel.

  I deliver my verdict in a voice that is a block of ice. “It was an accident.”

  As I leave, I slam the car door hard enough to make the icicles in the trees behind me shatter and fall to the ground.

  Barry’s jacket is buried at the bottom of my closet under a stack of sweatshirts, behind my roller skates and next to a shoe box filled with every note Hannah and I have passed since third grade. I sit on the edge of my bed facing the closet door, hands neatly folded in my lap, knees together, both feet firmly planted on the ground as if I am in church.

  The marigold-trimmed cuff of the navy jacket sleeve peeks out at me from underneath the pile. I lurch forward and give it a tug, yanking the jacket free. It’s not the way the coat looks or feels in my hands that overcomes me; it’s the smell, a mix of pine needles and campfire that is so distinctly Barry. I close my eyes and hold the jacket in my hands like a deflated balloon, sliding my hand into one pocket. I pull out a pack of cinnamon gum with three of the five sticks left, a stub from Tiger Stadium dated last spring, a book of matches from the Freeman Dodge dealership where Betsi works, and three crumpled dollar bills. I place everything on my bedspread in an even line, like instruments on an operating table.

  In the other pocket, there is only one item—a piece of notebook paper, folded twice. I drop it on my bed like I just pulled out a body part.

  I sit with all of Barry’s things and watch the numbers on my clock go deeper and deeper into the night. When I finally open the note, there are two words inside, printed neatly in Barry’s handwriting. I stare at them until they blur into an optical illusion and then come into focus again.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Chapter10

  Graceland

  What awakens meis her breath—a puff of red wine mixed with tobacco. After opening my eyes, I try to back away slowly until I notice hers are closed. She is next to my bed, her face only inches from mine, whispering the same jumble of words I still cannot decode. She’s planted in the spot where I used to kneel for my nighttime prayers, and she stays there even when I reach over to the bed stand and turn my table lamp on to the lowest setting. The haze spills across my bed where I had fallen asleep surrounded by Barry’s things. She doesn’t seem to notice the clutter and continues repeating her chant, the words tripping over each other in a hush.

  “Betsi?” I ask. “What are you doing in my room?”

  Her eyes snap open. She looks around as if she doesn’t remember how she got herself here. My blinds are closed, and though the morning hasn’t made its way into my room yet, my clock reads 10:12A.M . I wonder how I slept so late.

  When she speaks, her voice is sloppy. “You need to get your things.”

  “What things?”

  “You need to pack. We’re leaving soon. I’ll help you.” Betsi pushes herself up, using my bed for leverage. Underneath her leather jacket, she’s wearing a black dress cut low in the front, more evening than office wear. On high heels, Betsi staggers toward my desk, where my backpack sits, and I notice runs in her matching black nylons, racing up the back of both legs. She fumbles with the zipper on my bag for a minute until she figures out how it works, and then she pulls it back in one quick swoop. The entire backpack falls open, and all of my books come crashing to the floor, with pieces of loose-leaf paper fluttering down behind them.

  “What are you doing?” I am sitting up in bed now, trying to keep my volume low but failing.

  “I told you,” Betsi slurs. “We hafta pack. Gotta get on the road soon.” She’s still holding on to my bag and seems oblivious to the mess she’s made as she wanders back to my dresser, yanking open every drawer. She finds my purple bathing suit crumpled in the back of one and throws it into the backpack, along with a rolled tube of gym socks and a pair of jeans I’m too big for but haven’t gotten around to throwing away. She rummages around on my closet floor and adds a single sneaker but not its mate, then my travel umbrella, hanging from a cord on the back of my desk chair. She zips the bag shut again.

  “Oh,” she says, trying to steady herself. “You should get your toothbrush too. Your mom would want me to make sure you brush your teeth. Every night. Every night, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “You’re drunk,” I say.

  “No, I’m not,” she answers. It’s the same voice I used when I was six and guilty.

  “Yes. You are. Please put my things down.”

  “Okay, I am!” she says, bursting into a cascade of laughter. “But it’s okay, Presley. Really. Come on, now! Don’t look at me like that. I just want you to like me again. I like you liking me.” She starts singing the phrase: “I like you liking me, I like you liking me—”

  “Stop.” I want to yell it at her, but my voice cracks, and it comes out sounding broken. I try a different tactic. “We aren’t going anywhere,” I say, like my dad would, as if I am in charge.

  “Of course we are!” She starts singing her words again. “Do you wanna know? Do you wanna know?” She drops her head and shakes her hair, then lifts her head back up. Her eyes are glassy and her lips are pursed as she announces in a low southern drawl, “We’re going to Graceland, baby!”

  She flops down on my bed, crushing Barry’s jacket and the note beneath her.

  I remember how to shriek now.

  “Get up! Get up! You’re ruining him! You’re ruining him!”

  I push her off my bed, and the wine in her system keeps her limber as she tumbles easily to the floor. I wonder where my parents are and why they aren’t bursting into the room. As I wait for them to come in and take charge of the situation, I gather Barry’s things in my arms and listen to Betsi on the floor.

  “Hump
ty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,” she chants softly, still curled up in a ball. At first it sounds like she’s giggling while she speaks. She starts to push herself up, and her staccato laughs become coughs and then turn into cries as she tries to go on. “All the king’s horses and…all the king’s people…and all of the people…and no one could put Humpty back together again.” Tears run down her cheeks, taking her mascara hostage with them.

  I get out of bed and place Barry’s things in the bottom of my closet, then close the door. My arms are shaking as I slip on my robe over my pajamas and slide my bare feet into my house slippers. I watch Betsi on the floor, crumpled and sobbing, and reach my hand out toward her. “I’m sorry I pushed you.”

  She looks up and takes it, but once she’s steadied herself, she brushes me away.

  “Fine,” Betsi says, her voice dull. “If you won’t come with me, I’ll go by myself.” Her walk across my bedroom is more confident now.

  I follow, trying to keep up. “You can’t drive,” I tell her, racing down the stairs behind her. She ignores me, grabbing her purse from the hallway table. She tries to keep her balance as she sifts through the bottom of the bag for her car keys, pulling out a flurry of receipts and matchbooks and loose change, all of which she dumps on the floor to find the keys.

  The rest of the house is strangely quiet and empty. I try to think of a way to stall her, closing my eyes and praying my family will pop out from around the corner and yell, “Surprise!” so I can find out that all of this has been one big misunderstanding.

  I am standing behind Betsi’s car so she can’t back out of the driveway. I am still wearing my slippers, and the snow has seeped through them quickly. I cannot feel my toes.

  “I’m not going to tell you again, Presley. Get out of the way.” Betsi is sitting in the driver’s seat, trying to warm up the engine of her Jeep. She pops her head out of the window to give me this warning. The air is so cold, there’s a good possibility the Jeep won’t start, but I am not taking any chances. When she opened the door to get in, I spotted at least three empty wine bottles rolling around on the floor. I doubt she’d make it out of our driveway or the street before wrapping the Jeep—and herself—around a lamppost or tree.

  I’m also a little afraid she might run over me, so I yell back, “I changed my mind. I want to go with you.” The smoke coming out of the window from her lit cigarette is her only response. “Unlock the passenger door?” I ask.

  After a moment, I hear her click the door open.

  I limp toward the car door on feet that are now frozen ice blocks, and lift myself into the passenger seat. Betsi has a fourth bottle of wine nestled between her legs, and her cigarette dangles from her lips. She rolls the driver’s-side window up until there is just a crack of outside air. The engine spits and coughs but can’t seem to clear its throat. Betsi taps the accelerator and balances her cigarette in the ashtray as she takes a swig from the open bottle. The cork is wedged between the dashboard and windshield next to several others. A minicorkscrew dangles from her key chain.

  “I just need to give the engine another minute. Then we can get going,” she says, her speech much slower now.

  “Do you have the map?” I ask. It’s the only thing I can think of as my eyes dart toward the side mirror, wishing for a glimpse of my parents’ car coming up our driveway.

  “Map? What map?”

  “The map to Graceland. How will we know how to get there without it?”

  Betsi thinks about it for a minute, taking another drag.

  “I bet Peter has a map,” I tell her, my feet thawing in the car’s heat. “We could go back into the house and look in his room. It won’t take long.”

  “I got it. Hold this,” she says, handing me the bottle of wine. “There’s an atlas in the back here somewhere.” She climbs through the space between us, rifling though a stack of magazines and clothes on the floor behind us. Her body blocks me from the ignition, and before I can reach beyond her, she is settling back into her seat with a tattered atlas.

  “It’s not very far, I think,” Betsi mumbles, flipping through the book until she finds the two-page spread of the United States, with highways running across the land like arteries. “We’re going here,” she explains, pointing to the capital of Missouri, a good three states away from her true target.

  “No, Betsi. Here,” I say, moving her finger to Memphis, Tennessee. She nods, the ashes from her cigarette sprinkling onto the pages like a burst of snow flurries.

  “We need to pick up Barry too.”

  “We can’t pick up Barry,” I tell her, the water surfacing in my eyes.

  “We’ll make room,” she insists, taking the bottle back and coating her throat with wine again.

  “No, Betsi. Barry’s gone,” I say. “Barry’s dead.”

  It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and the words hang in the air between us with her clouds of smoke.

  The engine grows tired of trying and sputters to stillness.

  “Yes. He is,” she says. “And I can’t call do-over, can I?”

  Betsi closes the atlas and lets me turn off the car. I slide the keys out of the ignition, in case she changes her mind again, just as my parents pull up behind us. Peter is with them, and I watch in the side mirror as he jumps out of their car while Mom and Dad unload paper bags of groceries. They approach us on both sides of the Jeep, their arms full of food for the holidays, their eyes becoming narrow and puzzled as the scene between me and Betsi comes into focus.

  There’s a fresh layer of snow across the neighborhood, light and fluffy and barely touched by harsher elements. Peter lies on our front lawn to make snow angels, his arms and legs fluttering furiously as if he might grow wings and fly away from here.

  “Tell them,” Betsi says as my parents tap the car windows for a response. “Tell them everything.”

  Chapter11

  New Year’s Resolutions

  “Maybe I should leaveout a sweater or two, in case the weather changes again,” my mother announces. She holds up her yellow cashmere cardigan, inspecting it for snags or holes.

  “I think we’re okay for now,” I tell her, pulling at the fray on my denim shorts. I am sitting on the edge of her bed as she packs our winter coats and heavy wool sweaters into a cedar chest with mothballs tucked into each corner. Before placing each item inside, she folds it precisely to maximize the storage space. I am waiting for her to finish so we can start dyeing the hard-boiled eggs set out in a bowl on the kitchen table. Easter is in one week, and I have opened the kit from the drugstore, lining up all of the colored tablets next to the wire holders used for dipping.

  “Are you going to put the chest in the attic?” I ask.

  “Eventually. But I guess I’ll wait until your father is here so he can lift it.” She moves on to a forest-green cable-knit pullover, tucking the arms underneath the body.

  “Will he be home tonight?”

  “I’m not sure.” She starts to sigh but catches herself and clears her throat instead. “They’re making good progress on Tim’s deck, now that it’s staying light out later.” Dad has been spending most of his time after work and on the weekends at Uncle Tim’s house. Mom says he’s just keeping Uncle Tim company and helping with repairs so the house can go on the market by summertime, but I know better. Even when Dad is here, he usually sleeps on the couch. On the nights when he doesn’t come home at all, our mother makes a big production out of telling me and Peter how much work is left to get the house in shape.

  “Your father says the problems are structural—in the foundation—places that need reinforcement, she’ll say, repeating exactly what my father told her and sounding like a building contractor. “I bet he just crashed out on Uncle Tim’s couch. Poor thing,” she’ll add, as though she’s his mother and not his wife.

  “Presley,” she says now.

  “What?” I say, pretending like I’ve been paying attention the entire time.

  “Does this s
till fit you?” my mother asks, handing me a cream-colored cowl-neck sweater.

  I spread it out on my lap. “This isn’t mine.”

  “It has to be yours. It’s not mine.”

  “No,” I repeat. “It’s not.”

  “Oh,” she says, realizing her mistake. “Well, then. I guess I’ll just set this aside.” She tucks Betsi’s sweater into the top dresser drawer and continues searching through her closet for other items to put into storage. A slice of the sweater sleeve edges out from the corner of the drawer, preventing it from closing all the way, and for a moment I wonder if my mother did that on purpose so she would remember it was there.

  Later that evening, I hear my father come in through the back door. Peter and I are sprawled in the family room with homework on our laps, a rerun ofThree’s Company playing on the TV.

  “Hey, kids,” Dad tosses out as he darts upstairs, and right then we know it’s just a change-of-clothes pit-stop visit. Our mother follows him anyway.

  I count to five and then tell Peter, “Don’t change the channel. I’m just running to the bathroom.” When I get upstairs, I peek around the corner into my parents’ bedroom and see my father packing several pairs of underwear, socks, and a wind-breaker, as if he’s going away for camp.

  “Are you staying for dinner?” Mom asks, hopeful.

  “Tim and I were going to grab a couple of sandwiches and watch the hockey game.” I retreat farther back in the hallway so I can still listen to the rest of their conversation, but I keep the nearby bathroom door cracked open in case I need to hide.

  “I see.” Her voice falls several stories.

  “Kath, don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that. He needs me right now. He doesn’t have anyone else left.”

  “Well, your family needs you right now too.” My mother mumbles this, but I’m surprised she says it at all.

  “I would’ve expected you, of all people, to be a little more understanding,” my father responds, sighing with every word. It’s the same voice he used when I brought home a report card last year with a C in math.