Also, his name is Stephen, but he wants people—including me—to call him Skip. Anybody who shortens themselves to a dog’s name is automatically suspect. I pointed this out to Syd; she agreed. She practically embroidered it on a throw pillow.
Syd throws the behemoth into gear, and I open Neko Atsume on my phone. It’s a pointless game, but I love it. I have to check on my tiny kitties, to see what presents they brought in the night. I earn coins to buy cuter cat toys to attract more cats so they’ll bring me more presents. Like I said, pointless. But cute.
My phone fills the cab with a low glow, and Syd glances over.
“Anything good?”
“One of them brought me birthday candles.”
Cheerfully, Syd turns onto the main road. “Thanks, mau mau kitty.”
As I sort my digital cats and buy them digital toys, I settle beside Syd. I settle, but I don’t relax. I’m waiting for her to look over and see this secret written into my skin. To know what I’m not telling her; to see that face in the snow, eyes unclosed forever. My face flushes. My scar feels red and hot. Glowing—a beacon.
Syd turns on the radio, then talks over it. “I’m not trying to make you mad—”
“Never a good start,” I interrupt.
“I just want to know what the deal is with Hailey.”
My god. She’s actually wound up about this. Syd’s proud face is a little softer this morning. Her voice is, too. It’s a statement but not a demand.
I buy my cats a macaron pillow to sleep on. Cute kitties sleeping on cute cookies. Is there no end to the high-grade kawaii I can mainline with this game? Rubbing my lips together, I say, “There’s no deal, Syd. I dropped my glove, and she gave it back to me.”
“And she drove you home.”
“No, she drove me into town, which I told you.” I’m nitpicking, but it’s all in the details. “I walked home.”
Shocked, Syd exclaims, “What the what?!”
“It’s really not that far,” I say, rearranging furniture so more cats will visit me. Nothing bad happens in Neko Atsume. Even when the cats bring something dead, like a cicada skin, it’s in the most adorable fashion possible.
At the stoplight, Syd drapes her wrists over the wheel. “It’s far.”
“It’s really not that far,” I repeat.
All around us, the snow glows red from taillights. People are slower this morning. They edge through intersections and start braking a quarter mile away, at least. With the heater on full blast, our windows in the Jeep are bright and clear. Our breath doesn’t fog in the air. But I can feel the cold from the outside pushing in.
Wriggling her gloved fingers, Syd takes the wheel again when the light changes. “You went to town. You got a tattoo?”
“Two,” I say.
The tires make a soft kissing sound. The road whisks as the wheels cut through slush. We feel solid and safe; Syd drives slower than usual, but I think that’s because it’s Skip’s car, not because of the weather. Every so often, we’ll cut a curve and the kiss turns to a groan—tires compressing new snow.
(She’s out there, under new snow. She’s safe there.)
“Well?” Syd says.
I turn my phone facedown. The cab goes dark. Underneath the radio playing Top 40, the jingly, jaunty music of Neko Atsume tootles on. (What a small, strange, leather-clad circus this is.) I raise an arm. Syd can’t see through my coat, but it gives her an idea where the words sting under layers of wool and polyester and Tegaderm.
“‘Things I Can’t,’” I say. Then the other arm. “‘Things I Can.’”
Syd frowns, her face bathed in the red glow of taillights. “Whose are they?”
“Harry Styles.”
“Oh.”
Then quiet. Not silence; there’s too much music, too much traffic and weather, to call this silence. It’s a voicelessness that has its own waver to it. It’s a space to fill with assumptions, which I do. I say, “I didn’t think you’d care; you got your beehives without me.”
“You weren’t here when I got the outline, though,” Syd points out. “If you’d been here . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean it. Again, it’s assumptions, but with some people, you can make them. You know them well enough to think for them and call back to them before they speak. She’s been my best (only) friend for so long, it is a little weird for me to talk to someone else, get a ride from someone else, potentially get ink with someone else.
It probably felt to her like I was shopping for replacement parts, auditioning for the role of best friend—the new girl! I can see how it looks if I stand there in her embroidered boots and pastel curls.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Syd says; she means it. There’s guilt in there now, for feeling insecure, for taking it out on me.
With a nod, I accept an apology she didn’t give.
“I really don’t. I mean, Hailey’s nice. If you want to hang out with her, you should. We could even hang out together.”
That pulls a thread, a curling, twisting thread that’s supposed to hold my stomach in place. My everything shifts, misplacing my insides. Uncomfortable, I say, “Yeah, maybe.”
“Cool.”
Mollified, Syd drums her fingers on the wheel again. I lay my temple against the window and look into the woods. In this light, there’s the black insinuation of trees and white snow. Was it this curve? I wonder. This curve on the road where I came up from the river? Was it that rock there? Are my footprints buried here?
I exhale heavily, my breath steaming the glass. The heat in the car wipes it away, and there, with arms stretched between two forks of a tree, my secret girl stands. The wind pulls her hair; the silver stud buttons on her jacket flicker as cars pass. Twisting, I turn to watch her until we cruise around the bend.
If she’s going to haunt me, she needs a name.
I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW OFTEN MY SCHEDULE LINED up with Hailey’s until today. Between first and second block, and again between second and third, I smile and she waves.
When I stream into the caf with the rest of B Lunch, my gaze falls on her instantly. She cradles a GladWare bowl to her chest, and she’s turned on the bench and talking to (pretty sure it’s) Avery Grace (could be her twin sister, Harper).
With my turkey sandwich in hand, I stand beside one of the pillars and watch Hailey. Her fingers skim through her hair, sweeping it behind one ear. A gold earring climbs the shell, a design I can’t make out. All I know is that it glitters when she moves, and she moves so much when she talks.
Every part of her lives: light in her eyes, music in her fingertips. When Avery/Harper backs away, Hailey smiles a goodbye. She waits till Harper/Avery turns away to go back to her lunch.
Except her amber eyes play across the faces around her, then land on me. There’s a spark under my skin; it feels like a fire trying to start.
I push off the pillar and take the long walk across the caf. My face is warm, the kindling inside me starting to catch. My feet glide, and I reach Hailey without taking a step. That’s what it feels like; that’s really what it feels like.
“Hey,” she says, sliding over.
Accepting that invitation, I sit beside her. “Hey!”
Too loud? Too excited for a hello? I can’t tell. The plastic on my sandwich crinkles between my hands; why am I smashing it instead of opening it? “Thanks again for the ride yesterday.”
Her smile is warm and round, and she shrugs. She tips her bag of mini chocolate-chip cookies toward me. “I was happy to help. Anytime.”
Somehow I laugh. I tease. “You probably shouldn’t feed strays.” I take a cookie anyway.
When she looks down, then up at me again, the hair she smoothed back falls against her cheek. “I’m a fan of rescues, actually.”
Ignition. The spark finally catches, and my whole body goes hot. Too hot. My face feels sweaty; my hands stick to the wrapper on my sandwich. I’m not sure what to say, so I pivot awkwardly. “So, strength training. How was it?”
“I love it, like, so much.” She forks up a bite from her bowl. “It makes me feel so good. If you ever want to try . . .”
She lets the silence ask the question. And even though the caf roars with starving juniors, I hear Hailey’s breath over all of it. I hear the click of her fork against plastic; it’s like knowing someone in the school chorus. No matter the song, no matter the show, I can always hear Syd over the rest.
Finally, I say, “Do you have, like, tiny baby barbells?”
“The tiniest,” she says with a laugh. Fingers in her hair, swoop again. The gold that decorates her ear is a series of climbing leaves. They climb the curve, reach the peak, curl against her skin possessively. “We have infants in class, you know. They bring weighted rattles.”
“I’m going to bring two of these,” I say. And a possessed demon spirit inside me tosses my sandwich in the air gently, and thank god, my hand catches it. What is wrong with me?
Hailey’s smile spreads. “Protein is important.”
I don’t know what to say next, and I don’t know why. I’m not usually bad at making conversation. But I’m sitting beside and not across. Hailey’s elbow brushes mine, and it’s not bad. It’s an unexpected touch, but it doesn’t make me want to jerk away.
Since I let my end of the conversation drop, Hailey picks it up. Not seamlessly but with effort. “I’m glad you came over. I was worried about you getting home okay.”
She worried about me. She sat in her room, in her house, with her parents downstairs and she thought about me. I was in her mind, alive and present.
That means she was there, with me, walking along the river—in the glow of the sunset, in the cold of the snow.
She was with me when I climbed, when I fell.
When I found her.
(I still don’t have a name. Jane? Maybe too generic. Did she look like a Lauren? A Taylor? Maybe a Hannah?)
(She looks like a dead girl—
There’s snow falling on her right now and . . .)
Not that. Not that thought. I push it down hard. “I walked. Didn’t plan that very well, did I?”
“Oh my god, no,” Hailey says, and she catches my arm. My bicep, below my shoulder, above my elbow. “You should have called me. I mean, how long did that take? I could have driven you home.”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me,” she says as her grip softens. Now it’s more like she’s just resting her hand against me. “I don’t mind. Seriously.”
All of a sudden, I feel out of my body. Not in a bad way, exactly. More like I’m there but not quite there; taking up space and no space at all. I hear myself talking, but I don’t feel it. I witness it.
Fortunately, the thing that keeps my body moving and my mouth speaking doesn’t embarrass me. “I will. Next time, I’ll bother you. Maybe I’ll bother you even if I don’t need anything—bother you just for fun.”
Hailey’s fingers curl on my arm. As they slip away, her nails catch on the loops of my sweater. It’s like the strum of guitar strings, the vibration transmitted directly to my spine. It pulls me back into place, so I feel the shock of what she says next. “Good.”
The half bell rings; we both look at the ceiling, accusing it of interruption. Hailey takes two tries to screw the lid back on her lunch bowl, and she shoves the whole thing into her backpack. Half standing, she slings her bag over her shoulder. “Time for trig, lucky me.”
“I’ll catch you later.” And then I say, “See? Strays. You never get rid of them.”
Her smile burns everything away.
YES, I AM DOING THINGS. I’M GOING TO CLASS, TO lunch, to the media center. I’m checking my tattoos because they burn a little and need more lube. I ate my dinner. I ate my lunch. I’m probably going to buck for pizza again tonight. I am getting by.
How to Get By, a quick guide, by me.
The key factor in getting by is boxes.
So many boxes. Compartments of varying security where each thing goes.
Happy memories only need boxes if they’re the kind that turn bittersweet. The smell of fennel and star anise in your grandmother’s kitchen, floating up with onion and garlic in olive oil. So good. Until grandma passes away, and then the scent takes you back in time to a place that doesn’t exist in the present.
I wouldn’t say you avoid this box. The lid can stay on loosely; it just needs to be set aside so you can survive Italian restaurants without breaking down.
Boxes for the bad things—you’re gonna need a lot of them. The stupid things you said two years ago to somebody you just met: those need to be packed away in boxes with sealable lids. The memories still get out sometimes, late at night, but otherwise, they suffocate in the dark, unexamined.
Fights you had with your father when he moved out one day and left your mother to explain where he went. Leave that box open. That way, when he does something else inexcusable, like calling the day after your birthday or asking what grade you’re in again, the box is ready with all your grievances. They stay fresh this way, and if you give them enough air, they grow like sourdough.
Some boxes are mysterious. You don’t label them at the time, and now they’re full of vaguely familiar dust. What was it that you said that made Uncle Leonard so mad? Why don’t you eat green bean casserole anymore? There are REASONS, but they’re lost.
The things in some boxes beat against the walls to be let out. The man who once promised me something that felt good in the summer lives in a box like this. There are lies in there and also the big ugly truth.
It thrashes around. Sometimes it explodes, and shrapnel buries deep in your heart and your bones, and you have to pick out every single piece before you can put it back.
Boxes like that—with things that you know but deny about yourself—those boxes rattle all around. They threaten, like hand grenades.
Maybe they need tape or staples or chains. But you have to keep them closed, or they’ll explode and kill you.
One of my boxes is now a hollowed-out tree heaped with snow.
So what do you do with a box like that? You tell yourself you can’t see it. Can’t see it; it’s not there. Look past it; admire the scenery all around it. Check out all those trees, happy little trees. And the memory of the box recedes into some fold in the corner of your brain. This is good. This is fine. This is the way things should be.
This is the way all the boxes should be, really. Closed up, stacked, manageable, and managed. Beneath notice, inert. That’s how you get by: you live in the present and you do NOT look back at the rows and rows of memories. Don’t look. Just keep going.
Keep moving. Don’t ever stop.
Things I can. Things I can’t.
This is how I get by.
I’M CAREFUL TO TEXT SYD, TO EXPLICITLY TELL HER that I am on the bus.
She replies with a perfectly curated wtf? that I ignore. I worry the phone in my hands, ignoring Syd and wishing I could text Hailey. Too bad for me; I was too busy throwing stupid sandwiches to ask for her number.
Now, I could figure out her email address. The school gives them to us—[email protected]—but it would be weird to write her. That’s seriously a step up. Email is bigger than text; I will not email her.
I listen for the last bus to leave; the cars are next. Then I slip out of school and tighten my hood. I need to think about geography: the nearest curve of the river, how far that is from town, and which bend is the right bend.
I open Maps on my phone and figure I’ll see just how long my signal holds. The woods line the back of the track. By heading across it, toward them, I’m pointed right for the river.
Thick trees pull at my coat, and a heavy pack of snow tugs at my boots. This is a crazystupiddangerous thing to do, but I have to. She’s out there alone, and I need to make sure she’s okay.
(I think I’ll call her Jane; it’s a name that melts to nothingness.)
Jane Pending, Jane Until. Until what, I don’t know.
&
nbsp; I do know that seeing her last night, through the dark and on the other side of my bedroom window, means that she’s with me. She trusts me not to betray her.
I won’t tell anyone about her. She’s a secret, locked up tight.
I know her, at least a little. I know her fear in her almost last moments.
I bet she wouldn’t even ask me about the scar. She’d sit next to me on a fallen tree, and we’d look at the water and not talk about that thing they did to us at all, both knowing what we know, sharing what we share.
This all makes me laugh, a little, with running nose and wet gloves, as I slog through the trees to the riverbank. Syd’s acting like a nervous cat because I’m talking to Hailey. She would lose it completely if she knew about Jane. I mean, all I got from Hailey is a ride. Jane’s got my secrets cut into her flesh.
Following the river backward, I feel like I’m unpeeling time. The water’s current moves in the wrong direction. The sun creeps ever lower behind my back, like it’s trying to sneak into the horizon. No wind scours my face today. Instead, it pushes me along. walk faster, walk faster, it says.
And it’s a good thing I do.
I recognize my landmarks and turn to look up the hill where Jane lies, closed up in her tree like the heart of a secret.
I would go to her, but I can’t.
Someone’s there.
A BOY IS THERE.
He’s standing thereTHERETHERE where her eyes are open but her body is covered and protected and safe and he’d have to KNOW what’s there to stand there, he’d have to KNOW.
Time slows down. I feel the pull and push of my own ragged breath. I take in so many details, not even on purpose. But I see him, and it’s like bullet time, the world an anchor point that I revolve around. His skin is pale, stark white against his black coat, like snow spilled into the wool to make his shape.
He shivers; he chews his full lips. His thick brows dig deep into his forehead. He stands over Jane’s quiet place; he just stands there. Hands in pockets, head hung low. He’s at a funeral, at her funeral.
A funeral he must have planned, because otherwise, how would he know where to stand? I found her by accident, and there’s no sign of her on the brand-new snow. There’s a shapely curve in the white; a nearby stump stands like a headstone.
All the Things We Do in the Dark Page 5
