Since We Last Spoke

by Brenda Rufener

  I hit the metal door with my hip and lead us onto the roof. Chairs stack on top of each other, and black plastic wraps garden boxes filled with last season’s dirt.

  “Just a second.” I jog to the other side of a metal box used to warm the entire science building. “Probably should stay away from that!” I shout over my shoulder, pointing at the whirling metal fan.

  “You’d better be bringing back a pizza!” Umé shouts.

  “Keep your voice down,” I whisper-yell back. “The last thing we need is to get caught on the roof having a pizza party.”

  “So you are getting pizza?”

  I slide my phone from my pocket and order a BLT pizza from Lucio & Sons, which will arrive in thirty minutes or money back, guaranteed. I rattle off the address but follow with: “I should probably just meet you at the back door that faces the parking lot.”

  I drag two lounge chairs over to Umé as she gazes onto the courtyard and campus.

  “I can see why you talk about this place so much,” she whispers.

  The sky is black, but not as black as the sky above the lake. It’s fuzzy with the glow from the streetlights. A perfect night to sit on the roof of the science building with your best friend and make memories that will replace old ones filled with heartbreak. I scoot a metal crate and center it in between our two chairs like an end table.

  “Voilà!” I pull the cover off the crate to show Umé that we will be having heat soon.

  “What the hell’s a portable fire pit doing up here?”

  “The roof acts as a storage unit. Look at all this crap!”

  A rusty barbecue, two wheelbarrows—one tipped on its side—stacked metal crates, folding chairs, and miles of black plastic.

  “Well, unless you’ve taken up smoking, we have no way to light a fire.”

  “Maybe I can find some matches in Dr. Nelson’s lab.” I trot over to the door. “Be right back!”

  As I pull the handle, the door snaps back. I tug again, and the same thing happens.

  “What the—?”

  “What the hell?” someone shouts.

  “Shit!” I plaster my body against the wall and the door swings wide, the toe of my shoe preventing it from smashing my face.

  “Aggi?” Dr. Nelson says. “What are you doing here?”

  I’d love to ask Dr. Nelson the same thing, but Grace slips through the open door and sprints onto the roof.

  “This place is so cool!” Grace twirls in circles, arms outstretched as she takes in the view of campus.

  Dr. Nelson cranes her neck over my shoulder as Umé jogs beside me and drapes an arm over my shoulder. “We were just leaving. Need to get back to my brother’s dorm. Some dick threw my hat up here. Aggi was nice enough to help me retrieve it.”

  Umé hasn’t learned lying to Dr. Nelson gets you nowhere.

  Dr. Nelson clicks her tongue. “You shouldn’t be up here, Aggi.” She glances at Umé. “And especially not with your friends.”

  Clutching my hands, I begin to apologize. “I’m so sorry. I needed someplace quiet. I didn’t want to go home, and this is the only peaceful place I know.”

  “You live on a lake, Aggi.”

  “But I needed a change of scenery.” I drop my chin to show Dr. Nelson I’m filled with remorse. “I’m sorry.” She may be my mom’s friend and practically family, but she’s still my boss.

  Dr. Nelson grunts, and I ask, “Did you follow us here? Thought it was Yahtzee night.”

  Dr. Nelson’s mouth opens, snaps shut, opens again. “Grace was worried about you.”

  I glance over at Grace, spinning circles in the few patches of snow left unmelted on the roof. “Sure she was.”

  “You showed up at the house with wet clothes and hair. What else was I supposed to do? Ignore the signs of trouble?”

  A car crunches snow in the parking lot below the science building, and Umé and I exchange glances. Pizza delivery. Now we’re screwed. The car door slams and footsteps crunch. Dr. Nelson walks over to the railing. “Pizza?”

  I cover my mouth as someone pounds the metal door below us.

  We follow Dr. Nelson as she stomps down the first flight of stairs. She hesitates at the landing. “Someone needs to stay out there and keep an eye on Grace.”

  I nod at Umé, and she saunters back up the stairs and onto the roof. Dr. Nelson flies from the landing, bounding two steps at a time in steel-toed boots. On the bottom floor, she kicks the door open like a badass professor.

  “That’ll be nineteen fifty,” Lucio & Sons’ pizza guy says, shoving the pizza box at Dr. Nelson.

  “Wrong dorm, bud—this is the science building.”

  “Dr. Nelson?” I say, my voice squeaky. “So . . . uh . . . I ordered pizza. Sorry again. I really needed to be here tonight. To feel like a whole person and not the sliver of pie nobody wants. I needed to eat pizza and stare at the sky and talk about things that make me happy.”

  Dr. Nelson’s hand slips off her hip. Her face softens.

  “You of all people,” I continue, “actually, probably only you, would understand.”

  Everything I say is truth. I can’t lie to the only adult in my life who’s given a damn about me and Grace since Kate died.

  Dr. Nelson exhales. “What’d you say the price was again?”

  Lucio & Sons’ pizza guy stares at the receipt, then at Dr. Nelson. “Nineteen fifty, ma’am.”

  Dr. Nelson yanks out the wallet chained to her back pocket. She slaps thirty into his hand. “Keep the change.”

  “I have money,” I say, and she holds up a finger to shush me.

  “I’m paying, but I fully expect you to share.”

  21

  Max

  “THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA,” I tighten the laces on a pair of tennis shoes Henry grabbed from the bed of his rusty Chevy pickup. They are two sizes too big and wet inside, and my big toe keeps popping out of a nickel-sized hole, but I am in the parking lot of the science building with the truck engine running, desperately trying to keep my shit together.

  “Umé thought you and Aggi could talk,” Henry says. “In a private place without the risk of someone who knows Aggi’s dad seeing you.”

  I rub my temples. “But what did Aggi say? She didn’t act like she wanted to talk at Connor’s.”

  “Well, Rebecca was draped over your back.”

  I groan.

  Henry shrugs. “You jumped into the lake to save her sister! Believe me, Aggi wants to talk.”

  “But you know this how?”

  “I just do.”

  I drop my head against the window. “Sure hope you’re right, because if you’re not . . .”

  Henry’s right about a lot of things. When your home life and the people you live with are as chaotic and unpredictable as Henry’s—twin brothers who resolve disagreements with backyard mixed martial arts—you become an expert on seeking out refuge and places of comfort. The four of us—Henry and Umé, me and Aggi—found comfort in each other. Our friendship was smashed to pieces when my dad’s lawyer said it would be best if all family members kept their distance. When Aggi and I ended, the relationships we all had—Henry and Aggi, Henry and Umé, me and Umé—ended, too.

  “Will you tell me the truth?” I ask, and look over at Henry.

  “Always.”

  I knuckle my forehead, focus on my words. “One minute you suggest I move on, try new things, which I assume means see other people, and I tried, Henry, but nothing about it feels right. Then the next minute, you imply I could have a future with Aggi and I shouldn’t give up.” I half smile, wondering if I’m concealing the irritation stirring inside me. Not at Henry, but at the situation, and the frustration I feel.

  Henry sighs. “Sometimes I see how confused you are and I think, wouldn’t it be better if you and Aggi were through?”

  I chuckle nervously.

  “But then I see the way you defend Aggi when Connor says something disgusting about her. I see the spark in your eye, Max, when someone says her name.
How you look at her, searching for an opening that will bring you back together. We can’t fix the past, but we can always fight for a better future and what makes us happy. Shit, you know I’ll always war for love.”

  Henry slumps against the door, staring out the window and chewing his bottom lip. At home, Henry witnesses a lot of fighting, yet he remains hopeful. My parents love each other. They love me. Yet I’m filled with frustration, as I think they should act differently. Henry’s father has been arrested three times this year for busting up property and people. His oldest brother sits in the county jail for breaking the bridge of someone’s nose, and Henry’s twin brothers are constantly beating him up for no reason. That’s how Henry’s family resolves their issues. Henry’s father sends the kids outside to fight and tells them not to return until shit’s handled. Henry never throws a punch. He says, “They’re my brothers. I can’t bring myself to hurt them.” Henry is much bigger than the twins. He could take down either one. Some might say Henry has the right to protect himself—I’ve said it—but they are not Heart-of-Gold Henry.

  “You remember when my dad forbade me to hang out with you after your brother died?”

  Henry is the only person who admits that my brother died. People—even me—mention the “accident” or the “tragedy,” but Henry confronts the truth. I nod and stare at the dash.

  “Fear,” Henry snaps. “Selfishness, too, or maybe self-centeredness. I don’t know which, but I guess it doesn’t matter. My dad didn’t want me around you. You know why?”

  I nod. “Fear. Selfishness.”

  Henry chuckles. “You’d spoken to the police. The cops popped up on your property unannounced. When you have things to hide—stolen things—you don’t want your kid hanging with people the police visit.”

  I laugh. “Like your dad or his stolen Porta-Potty were on my mind.”

  Henry rubs the bridge of his nose and winces. “Yeah, that’s what I told him, but my brothers insisted I was going to rat them out.”

  “Which one did that?” I tap my nose.

  Henry clears his throat. “Doesn’t matter. They’re both scared of me. They know it takes two of them to take me down.”

  I tilt my head, letting Henry know I’m eager to listen if—and when—he wants to talk. Henry’s always been there for me. This past year, he hasn’t left my side, even in the wake of his father’s warnings.

  “That’s why they do it,” Henry continues. “Mama’s not around to referee anymore,”

  I drop my head, remembering sixth grade, when Henry lost his mother to cancer.

  “Your mama made the best fudge.”

  Henry glances over. “You remember that?”

  “Shit yeah. How could I forget? Remember when we ate the whole platter she’d made for my parents? Remember how big that platter was? How sick we were?”

  “I shit for days.” Henry laughs.

  “Oh God, me too.”

  “What I’d give for another bite.”

  We both nod, neither saying a word.

  I don’t know much about Henry’s mother except that she always called him Henry, not Hank. She got pregnant very young, then married Van Bobby Beacon, Walabash Woods’s finest specimen. (Cough, cough) Henry says people warned his mother that Van Bobby Beacon was bad news, but she thought she could change him.

  Henry’s mother, Cynthia Kristine Riggs, left his father a few months before Henry was born. The twins must have been three years old, Henry’s oldest brother eight, when a very pregnant Cynthia Riggs boarded a plane headed for Honolulu. Henry doesn’t divulge why his mother left, although I can imagine a few hundred reasons. She showed up at her parents’ home in Hawaii with sad eyes and begged them to bury the hatchet. Henry’s grandparents—both professors before they retired from where Dr. Nelson teaches—had cut ties with their daughter when she married Henry’s father.

  Henry swears he’s going back to Honolulu one day. If his mother could peddle enough fudge at farmers markets and businesses in town to buy a plane ticket out of Walabash Woods, Henry insists, he’ll do the same.

  “It’s where my heart is,” Henry always says. “Where I belong.”

  Henry spent six months in Hawaii (half that time living in a womb) before Van Bobby Beacon begged his wife to return to Walabash Woods, using false hope and fucked-up promises. But when Henry shares the story, it sounds as though he’s lived in Hawaii his entire life. When Henry meets a new girl from town and they ask where he’s from, guess what he says? “Where the wind tastes like coconuts.”

  “Well,” I say breaking the silence, “thanks for the shoes, bud.”

  Henry nods. “Poor Grace. And Aggi. Did you see the worry on Aggi’s face?”

  Pure terror. I can’t think about what would have happened had I not been there. Not like I’m some kind of hero. I just reacted the way anyone else would have.

  “Everyone’s been through so much,” Henry says with a sigh.

  “Yeah, and I feel like I should say thanks a million times.” Henry raises his eyebrows. “You’re always there for me. For Aggi. I just . . . I’m just . . . really glad we’re friends.”

  Henry grins. “Likewise.”

  “You know,” I say, drawing a deep breath, “there’s something I want to talk to you about, but I’m fucking embarrassed.”

  Henry sits up and offers me his serious face. The long pause encourages me to continue.

  I exhale, clear my throat. “You know Aggi and I . . . you know that night . . . of the accident?”

  Henry furrows his brow. “I guess?”

  “Well, ever since Cal . . . and then Kate died . . .” I stop. Unsure how to proceed or even if I should, but Henry nudges me with his head.

  I draw another deep breath. “Well, that night of the accident . . .” I can’t. I haven’t shared these private details with anyone. Not even the therapist. I know Henry won’t judge me or laugh or say anything that makes me more uncomfortable than I already am, but I’m afraid of the vulnerable feeling you get when you open yourself up. There is always some degree of uncertainty how the person will react.

  “The night of the accident, you and Aggi were together. I know that,” Henry says. “And you know it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Aggi’s and it sure wasn’t yours.”

  I nod. “Yeah, but since then . . . I mean, I’m a shell. I feel so empty.”

  Henry shifts sideways on his seat. “I’m no counselor, but you lost your brother, man. Emptiness is your normal. At least for now.”

  “Yeah.” Hearing someone else say these words comforts me. Like maybe these hollow feelings won’t last forever.

  “I remember the school counselor talking to me after my mother died. She said when we lose someone we love, a hole forms in our heart. Mind you, she was talking to an eleven-year-old, and I envisioned a literal hole in my chest where my heart once beat. But she said the hole was normal. That it wouldn’t destroy me. It would only make me feel empty for a while. She didn’t pretend to know how long I’d feel this way, and I’m glad she didn’t lie or feed me a bunch of bullshit like time heals all wounds, though I suppose it does heal some. My point is that what you’re going through—how you’re feeling—isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s your ordinary.”

  I fidged and pat the seat. “Yeah. Some people go numb like my mom and dad. And others . . . well, let’s just say, I’ve lost sensation in some places, too.”

  Henry looks confused.

  “I am empty,” I say. “Really fucking empty.”

  “I bet.”

  “And I’m numb. Sometimes I’m just like my parents when they stare at the television and laugh at things that aren’t funny.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I haven’t been able to get an erection since Cal died.” My face heats. Immeasurable embarrassment. I cup my hands over my face and groan, which only adds to my humiliation.

  Henry draws a breath but says nothing. I think I hear him swallow.

  A car engine revs beside us, and I look up
. Lucio & Sons pizza delivery.

  “O-kay,” Henry says. “All part of the process.”

  I stare at the floorboard. The old Max, the one springing boners right and left, would have busted out laughing by now and shouted, Joke! Just fucking kidding! But the Max of today, the one on the verge of giving up on myself and my future, sits still and listens to the ping-ping of water droplets hit the windshield. I am drowning in humiliation.

  Henry sniffs and wipes his nose. “Seriously. I think it’s part of the loss, or the guilt you feel over losing someone you love.”

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t mean that.” Henry motions at his crotch, and I wince. “Let me clarify. You have to look at the timeline. I’m not at all surprised. Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumble and hold my head.

  “This is really messing with you?”

  Silence.

  “Well, you haven’t exactly had another opportunity.”

  I groan, unsure how to explain that I’ve had many opportunities.

  Henry switches to his doctor voice. “Have you tried other methods?”

  I chuckle. “Yeah. I’ve tried all methods.”

  A ridiculously long pause ensues, followed by Henry’s cheerleading voice.

  “I hear it’s like a bicycle. Once it’s happened, it will happen again. You have to give it time. Some people get holes in their hearts. Others, well . . .”

  We smile at the floorboard.

  “I believe when the time’s right, when your mind’s clear, and you’re not under so much stress . . . I mean, you’ve got a lot of shit on your plate, Max . . . but give it some time. Life will rise again.”

  We side-eye each other, expressionless, then burst into laughter. I mean, what the hell else are we supposed to do?

  Henry refuses to leave us feeling awkward for long. He grins, slaps the steering wheel with an open palm, and says, “Let’s go find our friends.”

  22

  Aggi

  AFTER SLICES OF PIZZA, THE four of us are laughing and crying and expressing just how much we love science and one another. Well, Umé doesn’t exactly say she loves science, but she’s at least playing along without protest. Dr. Nelson retells stories from her high school years and has Grace and Umé sitting on the edges of their chairs begging for more.