“It’s not like everybody in the whole world doesn’t know who I am anyway,” I’d said, running my fingertips along the arm of Dr. Hieler’s couch. “It’s not like I could find a school where nobody has heard of me. Can you imagine how much of an outcast I’d be at a new school? At least at Garvin I know what to expect. Plus if I ran away from Garvin, everyone there would be even more sure I was guilty.”
“It’ll be tough,” Dr. Hieler had warned. “You’re going to have to face a lot of dragons.”
I’d shrugged. “What else is new? I can handle them.”
“Are you sure?” Dr. Hieler had asked, his eyes narrowed at me skeptically.
I’d nodded. “It’s not fair that I should have to leave. I can do this. If it’s terrible I can always transfer at the end of the semester. But I’ll make it. I’m not afraid.”
But that was back when summer stretched in front of us, impossibly long. Back when “going back” was just an idea, not a reality. As an idea, I still believed in it. I wasn’t guilty of anything except loving Nick and hating the people who tormented us, and there was no way I’d slither away and hide from the people who believed I was guilty of something else. But now that it came down to putting my idea to practice, I wasn’t just afraid; I was terrified.
“You had all summer to change your mind,” Mom said, still sitting on my bed.
I snapped my mouth shut and turned toward my dresser. I grabbed a pair of clean underwear and a bra, then scavenged the floor for some jeans and a T-shirt. “Fine. I’ll get ready,” I said.
I can’t say that she smiled just then. She did something that was kind of like a smile, only it looked a little painful. She took a couple false starts toward the door and then apparently decided it was a good decision and headed for it completely, gripping the phone in both hands. I wondered if she’d accidentally take the phone to work with her, thumb still poised over the 9.
“Good. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
I dressed, pulling on the wrinkled jeans and T-shirt haphazardly, not even caring what they looked like. It’s not like dressing well was going to make me feel any better or any less conspicuous. I hobbled into the bathroom and ran a brush through my hair, which hadn’t been washed in about four days. I didn’t bother with makeup, either. Didn’t really even know where it was. It’s not like I’d been to a lot of cotillions over the summer. For most of that time I couldn’t even walk.
I slipped on a pair of canvas shoes and grabbed my backpack—a new one that Mom had bought a few days ago and that had sat empty in the very place she’d left it until she finally came in and stuffed it with supplies herself. The old backpack—the bloody one… well, that probably ended up in the garbage, along with Nick’s Flogging Molly T-shirt, which she’d found in my closet and thrown away while I was stuck in the hospital. I’d cried and called her a bitch when I got home and saw that the shirt was missing. She totally didn’t get it—that shirt didn’t belong to Nick the Murderer. It belonged to Nick, the guy who surprised me with Flogging Molly tickets when they came to the Closet. Nick, the guy who let me climb up on his shoulders while they sang “Factory Girls.” Nick, the guy who had the idea that we would pool our money to buy one T-shirt and share it. Nick, the guy who wore the shirt home and then took it off and gave it to me and then never asked for it back.
She claimed that throwing the shirt away was advice from Dr. Hieler, too, but I didn’t believe it. Sometimes I had a feeling she just blamed all her ideas on him so I’d roll with it. Dr. Hieler would understand that Nick the Murderer didn’t own that shirt. I didn’t even know who Nick the Murderer was. Dr. Hieler understood that.
All dressed, I was struck with a sensation of being too nervous to go through with it. My legs felt almost too weak to take me out the door and a light coating of sweat covered the back of my neck. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t face those people, those places. I just wasn’t strong enough.
With shaky hands, I fumbled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Dr. Hieler’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, sinking down onto my bed.
“No, I told you to call. Remember? I was waiting for it.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said. “I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. I think it was a bad idea to—”
“Val, stop,” he interrupted. “You can do this. You’re ready. We’ve talked this through. It’s going to be tough, but you can handle it. You’ve handled a lot worse over the past several months, right? You’re very strong.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and I wiped them off with my thumb.
“Just concentrate on being in the moment,” he said. “Don’t read into things. See what’s really there, okay? When you get home this afternoon, call me. I’ll have Stephanie patch you through even if I’m in session, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And if you need to talk during the day…”
“I know, I can call.”
“And remember what we said? Even if you make it through only half the day, it’s already a victory, right?”
“Mom’s going back to work. Full day.”
“That’s because she believes in you. But she’ll come home if you need her. My prediction is you won’t, though. And you know I’m always right.” There was a smile in his voice.
I chuckled, sniffed. Wiped my eyes again. “Right. Whatever. I’ve gotta go.”
“You’re going to do great.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. And remember what we said: you can always transfer after this semester if it doesn’t work out. That’s, what? Seventy-five days or so?”
“Eighty-three,” I said.
“See? Piece of cake. You’ve got this. Call me later.”
“I will.”
I hung up and picked up my backpack. I started to walk out the door, but stopped. There was something missing. I reached under my top dresser drawer and fumbled around until I found it, tucked into the frame of the drawer, out of Mom’s investigative reach. I pulled it out and looked at it for about the millionth time.
It was a photo of Nick and me at Blue Lake on the last day of school, sophomore year. He was holding a beer and I was laughing so hard I swear you could see my tonsils in the picture, and we were sitting on a giant rock right next to the lake. I think it was Mason who took the picture. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was so funny, no matter how many nights I stayed awake trying to drum it up.
We looked so happy. And we were. No matter what the e-mails and the suicide notes and the Hate List said. We were happy.
I touched the laughing still shot of Nick’s face with my finger. I could still hear his voice loud and clear. Still hear him asking me out in his serious Nick way, at once bold and angry and romantic and shy.
“Val,” he had said, pulling himself off the rock and bending to pick up his beer bottle. He picked up a flat rock with his free hand and took a few steps forward and skipped it across the lake. It skipped once, twice, three times before it dove into the water and stayed. Stacey laughed from somewhere nearby in the woods. Duce laughed just after her. It was getting on to nightfall and a frog started croaking somewhere to my left. “Do you ever think about just leaving it all behind?”
I pulled my heels up against the rock and grabbed my knees. I thought about Mom and Dad’s fight the night before. About Mom’s voice drifting up the stairs from the living room, the words unclear, but the tone venomous. About Dad leaving the house around midnight, the door shutting softly behind him. “You mean like run away? Definitely.”
Nick was silent for a long time. He picked up another rock and slung it across the lake. It skipped twice and fell. “Sure,” he said. “Or, you know, like driving off a cliff and never looking back.”
I stared at the setting sun and thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “Everybody does. Totally Thelma and Louise.”
He turned and kind of laughed, then swigged the last o
f his beer and dropped the bottle to the ground. “Never saw it,” he said. Then, “Remember when we read Romeo and Juliet in freshman English last year?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned over me. “You think we could be like them?”
I crinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I guess. Sure.”
He turned again and stared out into the lake. “Yeah, we could. We really could. We think alike.”
I stood up and brushed the backs of my thighs, which felt dimply from the texture of the rock we’d been sitting on. “Are you asking me out?”
He turned, lurched toward me, and grabbed me around the waist. He picked me up until my feet were dangling above the ground and I couldn’t help it—I let out a squeal that turned into a giggle. He kissed me and my body felt so electric up against his even my toes tingled. It seemed like forever that I’d been waiting for him to do this. “Would you say no if I did?” he asked.
“Hell, no, Romeo,” I said. I kissed him back.
“Then I guess I am, Juliet,” he’d said, and I swear as I touched his face in the photo I could hear it again. Could feel him in the room with me. Even though in May he became a monster in the eyes of the world, in my eyes he was still that guy holding me above the ground, kissing me and calling me Juliet.
I stuffed the photo into my back pocket. “Eighty-three and counting,” I said aloud, taking a deep breath and heading downstairs.
MAY 2, 2008
6:32 A.M.
“See you in the Commons?”
My cell phone chirped and I grabbed it before Mom or Frankie or, God forbid, Dad heard it. It was still early and dim outside. One of those tough mornings to wake up to. Summer break was right around the corner, which meant three months of sleeping in and not having to put up with Garvin High. Not that I hated school or anything, but Christy Bruter was, like always, giving me trouble on the bus and I had a D in Science because of a quiz I forgot to study for, and finals were going to be a killer this year.
Nick had been a little quiet lately. In fact, he hadn’t shown up at school for two days, and had texted me all day long, asking about “the shits in homeroom” or “the fat bitches in P. E.” or “that scab McNeal.”
He’d been hanging around with this guy, Jeremy, for the last month and every day he seemed to pull further and further away from me. I was afraid he was going to break up with me, so I just played along like it was no big deal that we hardly ever saw each other anymore. I didn’t want to push him—he’d been so volatile lately and I didn’t want to start a fight. I didn’t ask him what he was doing on those days he didn’t show up and instead just texted him back that “the shits in Bio need 2 B dunked in formaldehyde” and that “I h8 those bitches” and that “McNeal is lucky I don’t have a gun.” That last one would really come back to bite me later. Really, they all would. But that last one… that last one would make me vomit every time I thought about it for a long time. And it would inspire a three-hour conversation between me and Detective Panzella. And it would make my dad forever look at me differently, like I was some sort of monster deep down and he could see it.
Jeremy was this older guy—like twenty-one or something—who’d graduated from Garvin a few years ago. He didn’t go to college. He didn’t have a job. From what I could tell, all Jeremy did was beat up his girlfriend and sit around smoking pot and watching cartoons all day. Until he met Nick and then he stopped watching the cartoons and started smoking his dope with Nick and only beat up his girlfriend on nights when he wasn’t in Nick’s garage, playing drums, too stoned to remember she existed. On the rare occasions that I’d been over there when Jeremy was there, Nick was a totally different guy. Someone I didn’t even recognize, really.
For a long time I thought maybe I just never knew Nick at all. Maybe when Nick and I were watching TV in his basement or dunking each other at the pool and laughing, I was totally not seeing the real Nick. Like the real Nick was the one that showed up when Jeremy came over—that hard-eyed, selfish Nick.
I’d heard of women who were completely blind and ignored all these signs that their man was some sort of pervert or monster, but no way could you convince me I was one of them. When Jeremy wasn’t around… when it was just me and Nick and I looked in Nick’s eyes… I knew what I saw and it was good. He was good. He had a sick sense of humor sometimes—we all did—but no way did we mean it. So sometimes it makes sense to me that maybe it was Jeremy who put those ideas about shooting up the school in Nick’s head. Not me. Jeremy. He’s the bad guy. He’s the one.
I picked up the cell and fumbled it down under the covers where I had been slowly waking up to the idea that I had to get through another school day.
“’Lo?”
“Baby.” Nick’s voice was thin, almost wired-sounding, although at the time I just figured that was because it was so early and Nick hardly ever got up early anymore.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Going to school today for a change?”
He chuckled. Sounded really happy. “Yeah. Jeremy’s gonna drive me.”
I pulled myself to a sitting position. “Cool. Stacey was asking about you yesterday. Said she saw you and Jeremy driving out toward Blue Lake.” I let the unspoken question hang in the air.
“Yeah.” I heard the flick of his lighter and the crackle of a cigarette filter. He exhaled. “We had some stuff to do out there.”
“Like… ?”
He didn’t answer. Just the sound of the filter burning and his steady exhale.
Disappointment washed over me. He wasn’t going to tell me. I hated the way he was acting. He’d never kept secrets from me before. We’d always talked about everything, even the hard stuff like our parents’ marriages and the names kids called us at school and how sometimes we felt like nothing. Like less than nothing.
I almost pressed him, told him I wanted to know, I deserved to know, but decided to change the subject instead—if I was finally going to get to see him, I didn’t want to waste that time fighting with him. “Hey, I’ve got some names for the list,” I said.
“Who?”
I rubbed the corners of my eyes with my fingertips. “People who say ‘sorry’ after everything. Fast-food commercials. And Jessica Campbell.” Jeremy, I almost added, but thought better of it.
“That skinny blond chick that goes out with Jake Diehl?”
“Uh-huh, but Jake’s okay. I mean a little jockish, but he’s no way as annoying as her. Yesterday in health I was totally just spacing out and I guess I was looking in her direction. So all of a sudden she looks at me and goes, ‘What’re you looking at, Sister Death?’ and she had this scowl on her face and she rolled her eyes and goes, ‘Hell-o, mind your own business,’ and I was all, ‘Trust me, I don’t give a shit about what you were saying anyway,’ and she was like, ‘Don’t you have a funeral to go to?’ and then her stupid friends started laughing like she was some sort of stand-up comedian or something. She’s such a bitch.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He coughed. I heard a rattle of papers being turned and could imagine Nick sitting on his mattress writing in the red spiral notebook we shared. “All those blond chicks should just disappear.”
At the time I’d laughed. It was funny. I agreed with him. At least I said I did. And, okay, I really thought I did. I didn’t feel like a horrible person, but I laughed because to me, they were the horrible people. They deserved it.
“Yeah, they should be run over by their parents’ Beemers,” I said.
“I put that Chelle girl on the list, too.”
“Good one. She won’t shut up about making varsity. I don’t know what her problem is.”
“Yeah. Well.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I don’t know what Nick was thinking. At the time I took his silence to be some sort of unspoken agreement with me, like we were speaking at the same time in some wavelength that had no breath. But now I know that’s just one of those “inferences” Dr. Hieler was always telling me about. People do it all the time—assume that t
hey “know” what’s going on in someone else’s head. That’s impossible. And to think it’s possible is a mistake. A really big mistake. A life-ruining one if you’re not careful.
I heard some mumbling in the background. “Gotta go,” Nick said. “We gotta take Jeremy’s kid to day care. His girlfriend’s being a pain in the ass about it. See you in the Commons?”
“Sure. I’ll have Stacey save us a seat.”
“Cool.”
“Love you.”
“You too, baby.”
I hung up, smiling. Maybe whatever was bugging him was resolved. Maybe he was getting sick of Jeremy and Jeremy’s kid and Jeremy’s cartoons and Jeremy’s pot. Maybe I could talk him into skipping lunch and walking with me across the highway to Casey’s for a sandwich. Just the two of us. Like old times. Us sitting on the concrete median, picking onions off our sandwiches and asking each other music trivia questions, our shoulders butted up against one another, our feet swinging.
I jumped in the shower without bothering to turn on the light and stood enveloped by the steam in the dark, hoping maybe Nick would bring me something special today. He was pretty good at that—showing up to school with a rose he’d picked up at the gas station or sliding a candy bar into my locker between classes, slipping a note into my notebook when I wasn’t looking. When he wanted to, Nick had a hell of a romantic side.
I got out of the shower and dried off. I took extra time on my hair and eyeliner and wore a torn black denim miniskirt with my favorite pair of striped black and white tights with the hole in the knee. I stuffed my feet into socks and a pair of canvas shoes and grabbed my backpack.
My little brother, Frankie, was eating cereal at the kitchen table. His hair was spiked and he looked like one of those kids in PopTart commercials: perfectly coiffed skater types. Frankie was fourteen and totally full of himself. He thought he was some sort of fashion guru and was always dressed so stylishly he looked like he’d just stepped out of a catalog. We were close, despite the fact that we tended to hang out with totally different crowds and we had completely different definitions of what was cool. He could be annoying at times, but most of the time he was a pretty good little brother.
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