“Lake.” His voice grates.
“I was just coming to look for you and Mom,” I say. I try to make my eyes wide and innocent looking: You’ve seen nothing. You’ve heard nothing.
My dad’s lips purse and I can tell he’s trying to gauge the situation for himself. When did I get here? Do I know he and Mom have been arguing and, if so, do I have any idea why?
I forge on, not wanting to give him enough time to sort this last bit out. “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to take Matt out for a while, if that’s okay. We’ll need to borrow the van.”
His hairline lifts like he’s questioning, but then he nods repeatedly with a faint smile on his lips. “Sure, sure. I think that’d be really nice, Lake.”
Another pang of guilt, because I’m responsible for planting that look of hope there. Me. But I’m not the only one here holding back. And it looks like nobody is going to tell me anything unless I figure it out on my own.
So it’s up to me to fix that.
“You have one hour,” Matt says the moment I raise my fist to knock on Ms. Bryan’s door. “Anything longer with Jeremy and my brain will literally melt.”
I peer down at my brother, surprised that we’re side by side, let alone speaking to each other, after what happened at St. Theresa’s. When I asked for his help, I was expecting to have to negotiate, although what I could offer him that he would want at this point, I don’t know. Instead, Matt agreed to come willingly. Almost too willingly. I try to convince myself that the reason was my comment about his not acting like my brother, and that I finally, against all odds, got to him. But with Matt, it’s not ever that simple.
But I don’t have time for games or reverse psychology. “Oh, come on, Jeremy’s not that bad,” I say. “He used to be your friend, you know.”
“That was before he turned into a huge stoner loser.”
“He’s not always a huge stoner loser. Besides, I’m sure he’s not dying to hang out with Captain Sunshine over here, either.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Well.”
“One hour.” Matt sets his jaw and glares at the door, like he might see right through it if he tried hard enough. When was the last time he hung out with anyone his own age? I wonder. It has to have been years. Maybe even pre-accident. There’s a glisten of sweat on his cheeks and, if I didn’t know better, I’d guess that he was nervous.
“Okay, okay, fine. One hour.” I knock on the door and it swings open right away, like Jeremy had just been on the other side waiting for the formality of the knock.
“Welcome, Devereaux-ses—Deveri?” Jeremy chuckles to himself. “Sorry, I don’t know the plural.”
Matt looks up at me and lifts his eyebrows. I put my hand on his shoulder, a gesture the meaning of which I hope he registers with his eyes, even though he can’t feel it. “Thanks for having us, Jeremy.”
“Come in, come in.” He steps aside. “Jolene is at work or whatever, but she said she’s glad you’re here. Make yourselves at home, mi casa es su casa.”
“Except it’s not really ‘su casa,’ so…” Matt says. I jerk his wheelchair to warn him not to be rude and then push him after Jeremy into the kitchen. And just like that, we’re in.
I have to remember to breathe.
“Dude, it’s been forever.” Jeremy holds out his hand as if for a high five. It hangs for a second in the air until he realizes his mistake and redirects it to sweep through his uncombed hair.
“Yes, well,” Matt begins, “I suppose it’s not terribly convenient to—” I kick the wheelchair hard. Matt stops and clears his throat. “I mean—yeah—good to see you too.”
“So…” Jeremy rocks back on his heels. “This, uh, this is more awkward than I thought. A lot of bummer energy going on in this room.” He holds his fingers out in front of him as if he could feel it.
My eyes go fishbowl wide. There’s a long pause.
But then something happens. Matt tilts his head back and laughs—like, really laughs. Jeremy peers down his nose. His mouth quirks into a quarter of a grin and he says, “Really? That? Okay…Hey, well, actually I do have a collection of Tolkien action figures. You want to see?”
Matt looks at me. “He has a collection of Tolkien action figures.”
“I heard.” And the thing about Matt is that sometimes it’s hard for me to tell whether or not he’s mocking, but today it might be hard for him too. Because I think he probably really does want to see, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He forgets—there was a reason he was friends with Jeremy. And there was a reason that Jeremy was friends with him.
“I’ll bring them up,” Jeremy says.
Watching them, I nearly forget why we’re here. My cue. Matt gives me a meaningful look this time, and I get it.
“Great.” I clap my hands. “I can see you two have a lot to catch up on and, hey, don’t let me stand in the way. I’m just going to be upstairs. Ms. Bryan said I could help myself to a few pictures of Will’s in case I want to make something memorable for…for after.” I gulp down the lie and try to digest it. I hike my thumbs over my shoulders, pointing upstairs. Jeremy stares at me all grouper-mouthed. I don’t think he expected to be abandoned this quickly. “So…” I finish ungracefully. “I’ll be back.”
One hour, Matt mouths.
“In an hour,” I add.
Both boys look palpably relieved. I check the time on my watch. One hour, I repeat to myself and clomp up the stairs.
After a short walk down the hallway, I find that Ms. Bryan still hasn’t touched Will’s room. The only difference is that I’m now catching whiffs of that un-lived-in smell. Like an attic. Light flooding in from the window catches specks of floating dust. The space feels emptied of Will.
I force myself to pause at the center of the room and take a deep breath. I’m here for a reason. Penny’s dash of prose, the ChatterJaw thread, the fact that my boyfriend and my best friend might have been talking to each other—really talking to each other—behind my back. Thinking about it, even in the abstract, is like pressing on a bruise. I keep circling back to the possibilities each time thinking, Yep, it still hurts.
While I’m here, I decide to spend at least some of my time poking around.
The closet feels like a logical beginning. I throw open the doors and am hit with the pungent scent of sweaty sneakers. On the floor, tennis shoes and flip-flops are piled in a heap. Rumpled shirts are thrown over hangers and scrunched into cubbies. I kneel and push the mound of shoes to the side, uncovering a kid’s baseball glove, a detached surfboard leash, and a beat-up cardboard box.
I pull the box into my lap and flip open the lid. There are stacks of papers, each covered in drawings. I hold one up to study. Like the others, it’s been done in colored pencil. It’s a picture of a pelican perched on a channel marker, a fish hanging halfway out of its beak. Everything seems to still, even the thoughts swirling in my head. I didn’t know that Will drew so much. I’d seen doodles in his notebooks, but nothing like this. And yet he’d mentioned it in the thread. He’d mentioned it, but never to me. I don’t understand why the people I love keep parts of themselves buried, like it’s a treasure they don’t want to give me the map to.
I set down the pelican and choose another. This one’s of Penny’s Jeep. The sketch is detailed and I can tell by the eraser marks that he took pains to get the wheels and roll bar just right. Tears fill my eyes because I still can’t believe the Jeep is gone. The Jeep and everyone who rode inside it.
On the back of the Jeep is another drawing. I recognize it instantly as one of Penny and me. I’m whispering something in her ear. Her eyes are closed, but she’s smiling.
I press the picture against myself. It’s comforting to be holding what feels like a piece of both Will and Penny. But none of the rest are helpful: there are cartoons, pictures of waves, scribbled attempts at various animals.
I fold up the picture of me and Penny and pocket it. Then I shove the box back into the closet and turn to the res
t of the room. Where next?
I slip a few photographs out of their frames, because I told Ms. Bryan I would. I will make copies. I will make something with them. I will.
But they’re not why I came. I hate how I feel in this moment, which is completely crazy—like one of those jealous girls who’s constantly snooping through her boyfriend’s phone.
I could still turn back. I could choose not to know. I could decide to trust him. I could leave it forever and maybe someday a long time from now I’d actually convince myself that I’d forgotten. I chew on one of my fingernails.
I pause and listen for any signs of trouble downstairs. There are none. And meanwhile, my conscience is at war. I’ve always respected Will’s privacy, but of course I’ve had no reason not to.
But this is important. Without this, I’ll never have the full picture. And I will live an eternity without knowing what it was that I truly decided and who it was decided for. The computer cord snakes from an electrical outlet to a cabinet built into the desk where I find Will’s laptop.
I take a seat on the rolling chair parked nearby and slide the computer onto my lap. The machine emits a quiet hum as I open it up and hit the on button. The generic geo-patterned background fills the screen and up pops the little box asking me to log in. I know this one because I used his computer for homework sometimes when we were hanging out. I type in the name of his favorite baseball player and add his birthdate at the end. My eyes are wide and darting around as I launch the web browser. I’ve come this far.
When the e-mail page loads, I again type in the same password. An error message appears on the bottom of the screen. I type it again. Another error. This time I check to see if I’d hit caps lock or something else I wasn’t supposed to. Nope. I’m typing the password with such care that I know I’ve done it correctly.
The password, though, has changed. When did Will change his password? He’s had the same one for as long as I can remember. I know, because one time when he was flying to New York for his mom’s family reunion he asked me to check him into the gate early because he’d forgotten to and his phone was acting up. And then there was that time he needed to know if he’d remembered to e-mail a biology assignment. Little things like that. Always the same password. We trusted each other. One hundred percent.
Except here I am staring at an error message. I set the laptop down on the chair and begin to pace the room. He could have been hacked. But no, I would have known that. The password could have expired. Mine never expires. He could have forgotten it and had to change it.
None of these reasons feel right. I stare at the computer like it’s something radioactive. If there was any question about whether I was going to snoop through Will’s personal files, it’s gone. All semblance of rationality has fled the building. Will wanted to keep something from me. It was no accident.
There aren’t even tears when I think the next part. I’m beyond that. It’s open heart surgery with no hope of recovery.
Because it was Penny.
And I don’t know what to do. I will never know what to do, not ever again.
I spin on my heel, thinking nothing but feeling everything amplified. If emotions could be loud, mine would be deafening. I want to know why, why, why, why, but there is no one left to tell me.
“Damn it.” I kick the waste bin beside Will’s desk and it goes clang-bang onto its side, spilling crumpled papers and chewed-up erasers onto the carpet. “Damn it, Will! Damn it, Penny!”
I feel like I have been sprinting for weeks and all of a sudden look down to see that I’m out of runway with nowhere to go. I don’t want to live inside my own body. I want to take my fingernails and claw my way out, but I can’t. And in the next moment, I don’t even know why I had that thought or why I have any thought.
I’m hyperventilating now. I’m not sure when that started. But I am walking around the short track of Will’s room with a heaving chest and I can’t catch my breath no matter how shallow the pumping of my lungs becomes. I clutch the side of the bed, clutch the quilt that, of course, reminds me of him.
I jerk my hand back. My knees quiver. I turn and sink to the floor with the bedpost at my back. Breathe, Lake, I command myself. In and out. Now. Do it. Breathe. Unlike when I had asthma, my lungs try to obey, working hard to slow down, to find a rhythm.
But what now?
I press my phone into my forehead. Nothing coherent comes to mind.
Except that I wish someone were here.
Which makes me think of Ringo. Which makes me think of “Anna.”
And I find myself pressing my thumb to the screen and punching “The Beatles” plus the song name together into the search function of my phone. I just want one single thing to make sense and I also hope that maybe Ringo is right, that there is a song for every moment, and that perhaps I can borrow his for now.
I hold the speaker next to my ear as the song begins with a midtempo guitar and drums. I close my eyes and listen while attempting to drown out every other thought. The beat is deceptively happy. My lessons with Duke Ellington have taught me to tell the voices apart and it’s when John Lennon first takes the microphone that I know that the melody is only a façade.
Anna comes to the singer asking him to set her free. Anna believes that another boy loves her more than the singer, so rather than state his case, the singer tells Anna to go with the other boy. He sets her free. “Go with him,” Lennon sings.
And I hear Ringo’s message. Go with Will.
And I’m hollow. I stare at nothing in particular. Ringo is trying to give me what I want, but how is that possible, when not even I know what that is anymore? I might not want to be set free. And does being set free mean I have to go with Will?
I have no clue whether I’m doing the right thing, but I type out a text to Ringo. I need to talk to you. I send the message. Then add: and Margaret.
My abdomen clenches. Then I’m nearly jumping out of my skin at the sound of a soft knock on the bedroom door. “Uh, Lake?” Jeremy hovers in the doorway. His eyes are red and bloodshot and his mouth droops open. “It’s been an hour.” He sounds embarrassed.
Look natural, I tell myself. Nothing to hide. “Thanks, Jeremy.” I smile warmly. “I’ll just be one more second, ’kay?”
Even in Jeremy’s clearly impaired state, I notice him scan the room, and maybe I’m paranoid, but I can’t help but feel it’s with a bit of suspicion. “All right,” he says. When he doesn’t move to leave right away I think that he might wait for me, but after an uncomfortable silence, he fades into the hallway and then I hear footsteps pounding down the stairs.
Quickly, I grab an old shirt out of Will’s closet, wrap it around the computer, and tuck it under my arm. The shirt is a reminder of Will, I’ll tell Jeremy if I can’t stash the computer in the back of Matt’s wheelchair fast enough. That should do the trick.
With a final glance back, I steal the key to my boyfriend’s private life and all the things he may or may not have hidden from me—and leave.
I drive faster than I should toward the coffee shop, faster than I knew I was able to, as fast as I’ve driven anywhere since the car wreck, fast like I don’t even care about it, fast like there was no car wreck in the first place. Fast because everything is a wreck.
I glare into the rearview mirror without letting my foot off the gas a single inch. “I don’t know if you can tell, Matt, but I’m having a major life crisis right now and you are high.”
“A little.” He chuckles. “Like on a scale from ground floor to airplane. I’d say I’m no higher than an office building, though.”
We should be there in seven minutes. So my world should hold up for at least seven more minutes. “I didn’t say anything about smoking pot,” I snap. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“But you didn’t not say anything about it either. Wait,” he says, tilting his head, “is that what I mean to say?”
“It was implied!”
“Maybe your plan wasn’t my plan. Did
you ever think of that?”
I roll my eyes. Six minutes. “You’re impossible.”
“Im-poss-ee-bluh,” he says in his best French accent. “Besides, you should relax, Lakey Loo. I’ll be dead in less than a week. Who cares?”
I step harder on the gas, willing the minutes to cut in half. Ocean, condos, marina, all blur across the window. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Matt.” I dismiss him.
“Dead.” He laughs and I wish I could punch Jeremy in the mouth. What was he thinking letting my brother smoke pot? “Man, isn’t death funny? It’s just…it’s ridiculous. It’s, like, it’s like this. It’s like the only sure thing in life is that we die and yet…and yet…here’s the crazy part: we keep being surprised when it happens.”
Four minutes. Another mile and I’ll be able to make out Neville’s. I turn in my seat to give him a proper withering stare. “Can you puh-lease pull it together,” I say.
“‘Can you puh-lease pull it together,’” Matt mimics.
So now he acts like a real sibling. Fan-freaking-tastic.
Green light. Green means go. Go to figure out who my boyfriend was, who my friends really were. Go, go, go. “Oh my god, I’m going to kill you if you don’t cut it out,” I snipe back at him.
“Well that would work out nicely.”
Two minutes.
“Stop it,” I tell him. My mind is racing with the car and not all in one direction. Like: What would life be if Matt hadn’t gotten himself broken? Would he be a writer? Would he have a girlfriend who he brought home from college at Thanksgiving and on Christmas? Would he have ever played a sport, even if it was only junior varsity? Would we have stayed close? Would we have found new books to read and would we have inside jokes? Would he buy me beer, be a protective older brother, would we have secrets from Mom and Dad? Would I have ever met Will and Penny, or are there no such things as soul mates after all? One minute. “You’re going to meet some new people in here. Be nice. Okay?”
“Aye-aye, captain.”
Yeah, that doesn’t bode well.
This is Not the End Page 24
