The Art of Losing

by Lizzy Mason

  “I just needed to get out of the house,” I said.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “My mom keeps trying to get me to do puzzles with her. She’s got a five-hundred-piece one on the kitchen table and the picture is Paris from Above. Do you have any idea how much most of Paris looks exactly the same from above?”

  Raf chuckled. “I think you made the right call.”

  “She’s just trying to avoid talking to me about Mike. And the accident. She blames me for not driving Audrey home that night. I can see it in her eyes.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because I feel like it would make more sense for her to be blaming Audrey. Or Mike.”

  “No,” I said, firm in my conviction that my mom thought I was an asshole. “I brought Audrey to that party; I should have taken her home, too.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

  I hunched my shoulders, avoiding his eyes. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of Raf knowing that Mike had cheated on me with my sister. I didn’t want to plant the idea in his head that she was the more desirable one of the two of us, if it wasn’t there already.

  “Because of reasons,” I said finally.

  “Oh, reasons,” Raf said. “Why didn’t you say so?” He leaned against me gently. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

  I gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you,” I said. I paused for a beat and added, “I did break up with him, though.”

  “Atta girl,” he said with a broader smile.

  “He said he has to go to rehab. It’s court-mandated.”

  “Interesting,” Raf said. He even stroked his chin. “In residence?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He has to stay there. He doesn’t get to go home at night.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right. But he only has to go for a month. Do you think that could be enough time to get him to realize what he did? To make him stop drinking?”

  Raf shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Some people never stop.”

  “Well, if you see him at an AA meeting, you have my permission to kick his ass. He’s about six feet tall, with shaggy surfer-type blond hair, blue eyes, and a little beer belly. Usually wears a comic book or lacrosse T-shirt.” I looked at him seriously. “Break his fucking legs.”

  Raf gazed back at me for a few seconds, then said, “Can I say something without you getting mad?”

  I made a disgusted noise. “I hate that question. If you have something to say, just say it. Why do you care if I get mad?”

  I knew I sounded like such a brat, but I was too drained to play games.

  To my relief, Raf smiled. “Okay, fine. I’ve been thinking about it, and I just don’t get why you stayed with him for so long.”

  I shrugged. “Why does anyone stay with someone?”

  “But why would you feel like you deserved to put up with his bullshit?”

  I stared at him for a few seconds and then said, “You’ve been in therapy too long.”

  He laughed, but his eyes were serious. “Maybe, but I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  “Listen,” I said. “You don’t know what happened. And you might think you know me, but you don’t. So just keep your opinions to yourself, okay?”

  I stood, and Raf quickly sat up.

  “Wait,” he protested. “See? I knew you’d get mad.”

  “And yet you asked me not to. That seems a little unfair to me.”

  Raf smiled once more, frustrating me further. “You’re right,” he said. I turned to go inside, but he reached up a hand to stop me. “I want to show you something.”

  “What?” I asked warily.

  “You don’t have to be so suspicious,” he said, pretending to be offended. “I’m not going to murder you. The boy next door is such an obvious suspect.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Fine. Just let me put the dog inside.”

  Once Floyd was secured behind the storm door, I followed Raf into the woods behind our houses. About thirty feet past the property line, there was a nature preserve with a large pond. My dad had taught me how to skip stones here—Raf, too. We’d spent a lot of time by the pond together, playing hide-and-seek or tag, or sometimes Red Rover if we could round up more of the neighborhood kids.

  I brushed a branch out of my way and stopped. “Raf, what are we doing back here? There’s nothing I haven’t seen down here a thousand times already.”

  He looked back at me. “Quit whining,” he said. “Can’t you just appreciate the mystery for two seconds?”

  “I’m not whining!” I said. But he was smiling, so I couldn’t smile back. “My sister is in a coma, and I just broke up with my boyfriend. I’m fragile.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, composing himself. “I didn’t realize you were such a delicate flower. I must have mistaken your anger back there for tenacity.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “The Harley I used to know was feisty and confident.”

  “You want to see feisty?” I said in a threatening tone as I put a fist in his face.

  I couldn’t even tell if I was joking or not. I was reacting in the moment. Sure, I was a wreck, but I kind of liked that I didn’t feel the need to please him.

  He took hold of my fist and pressed it against his chest. “I just want to help you forget about everything that’s going on for a few seconds, okay? Will you just trust me?”

  I got a little lost in his dark brown eyes. He was so close and he smelled familiar. Sort of the way his house smelled, like warm bread, but I caught the faint scent of his cologne, too: sweet, inviting, and a little spicy. I found myself nodding, but I still managed to sound a little annoyed when I said, “Fine.”

  Just past the far side of the lake was a willow tree. Seeing it brought back a rush of memories: Raf and I used to pretend it was our house. It was quiet and spacious under the long branches. We’d say the canopy was our roof and the muddy grass was our living room, bedroom, and kitchen.

  Raf held open a curtain of limp branches, and I walked through.

  Suddenly it dawned on me what we were doing here.

  I gasped. “It’s not really still here, is it?”

  Raf nodded. “I used to sneak out here to get stoned, sometimes with my friends, sometimes alone, and one night I ended up face-to-face with it.”

  He crept around the far side of the tree. At the base of two roots was the body of a mini My Little Pony, so entwined with the growth that it had almost become part of the tree—impossible to move without hacking the roots away.

  “No way,” I breathed, moving closer. The paint had worn off, and its eyes were now smooth turquoise spheres. Gone too were the bright polyester strands of hair. But the rest of the body was intact. “I can’t believe this is still here.”

  “Imagine how surprised I was when I was high,” he said with a grin.

  I laughed as I bent down to stroke the nose of the Pony. We’d tied it to the tree with a shoelace almost a decade earlier. It was supposed to be a decoration for our “house.” The shoelace was long gone.

  “Do you miss it?” I asked after a minute.

  “What? The Pony?” he said with a grin. “I’m pretty sure it was yours.”

  I hit him in the arm.

  His smile faded. “Yeah, sometimes. It was a good escape. I just kind of floated along for a while there.”

  I wanted to hear more. “But . . . ?”

  He sighed. “I mostly miss my friends. One of the things about rehab is you have to cut ties with all of your old friends from your ‘using days.’”

  “That seems a little unfair,” I said. “You went to school with those people. It’s not like you could just stop seeing them.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, but . . . I get it. I
mean, without those guys, it’s a lot easier to stay sober.”

  I didn’t really know what to say. If anyone told me I had to give up Cassidy, I’d fight like hell against them. She was the only person who really knew me. But she was good for me. My relationship with Mike was the biggest strain on our friendship. Especially after the first time we broke up because I found out he’d made out with another girl. Surprise: while he was drunk at a lacrosse party. Cassidy never understood why I got back together with him. And because of that, we saw a lot less of each other.

  “Ow! Damn,” Raf cried, pulling me out of the sinkhole of my thoughts. He swatted his calf. “Mosquito.”

  “Want to go back?” I asked.

  He seemed hesitant. I studied his face in the moonlight. He avoided my eyes. “Are you hungry?”

  I couldn’t lie. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  “How about the diner?” he suggested.

  The diner held memories. Of my parents taking us there on Saturday mornings after sleepovers. Of Raf and me riding our bikes there for milkshakes when we were finally old enough to leave the neighborhood.

  But also of Mike. Of eating there after lacrosse games and school dances. A few weeks ago, the morning after prom, he was so drunk, he knocked his whole plate of pancakes off the table. I tipped the waitress 60 percent to make up for the disgusting mess of syrup she had to clean up. But I took the money from Mike’s wallet.

  “Another time,” I promised. “I should probably go see how Mom’s progress on Paris is coming along.”

  Raf smiled, but it was strained. “Okay,” he said. “Say hi for me.”

  I nodded but knew I wouldn’t tell her I’d seen him. It would open the door to questions I didn’t really know how to answer.

  Two and a Half Years Ago

  I first met Mike when he was still new at school. It was the end of October of our freshman year, and he walked into the cafeteria that first day alone. He was going to be on the lacrosse team. His reputation from his previous school team guaranteed him superstar status. He could have sat with his future teammates; he could have sat with anyone, really. But he happened to walk by my table, and when he saw that I had the first volume of Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey, he just sat down next to me and started talking about it, asking if he could borrow it when I was done.

  Cassidy didn’t know what to make of this lacrosse star suddenly sitting at our table, completely ignoring everything around him except our conversation. But Mike didn’t care. Neither did I.

  It turned out Mike was also in my Life Sciences class (a.k.a. biology—snooty prep schools always feel the need to rename perfectly normal subjects) and because he was new, he didn’t have a lab partner. Since we were supposed to dissect fetal pigs, Mr. Davidoff didn’t think it was fair for Mike to do it alone. At the time, I believed it was fate: my lab partner, Sanjay Patel, happened to be out that day. So Mike was assigned to me. His gleeful expression as he took his seat next to me would have made anyone think Mike had engineered Sanjay’s ear infection.

  “Hey, Harley Quinn,” he said.

  I actually wasn’t much of a Harley Quinn fan. She let the Joker treat her like garbage for so long. Plus, I couldn’t even dress like her for Halloween because I’d never go out in public in a black-and-red bodysuit or short shorts. But I never told Mike. He was one of the only people who knew I wasn’t named after the motorcycle company. I liked that.

  His blue eyes were focused only on me, despite the handful of girls who were more popular, with shinier hair and thinner thighs under their uniform kilts. Their eyes were on me, too. The room was full of death glares.

  “I didn’t realize we were at a point in our relationship where we were using nicknames,” I told him.

  He grinned. “Would you prefer Harley Elaine Langston?”

  I shook my head. “No way. I hate my middle name.”

  “Okay,” he said with a laugh. “I just wanted to show you that I remember it.”

  I leaned over, partly to get close to him, partly so no one else heard. “Don’t worry. I know how memorable I am.”

  I don’t know where that confidence came from, except maybe from him. His attention made me fluff up like a peacock. But my confidence took a nosedive when the time came to pin the fetal pig’s feet belly up inside its tray.

  “Harley Quinn, your hands are shaking like a junkie’s,” Mike said.

  He took the pin from me and sat me down on the stool. Then he took both my hands in one of his and tilted my chin back so I could look at him. His fingers were warm, and his eyes were kind and concerned. And beautiful.

  “You don’t have to do anything, okay? I’ll do the whole thing. You just sit here.”

  I nodded, trying not to look at the shriveled body of the fetal pig.

  Mike did exactly what he said he’d do: he completed the entire dissection—which took about a week—by himself.

  When Sanjay came back to school, Mike told him to find a new lab partner. Even Mr. Davidoff didn’t argue with him.

  That was the day I fell for him. I never stood a chance.

  Chapter Six

  A little more than a week after the accident, Audrey’s doctor announced that he’d seen enough positive results from the steroids that they were going to try to bring her out of the medically induced coma. Mom practically fell to her knees while Dad and I listened to the practicalities of what would happen. We had to fill her in after the doctor left the room.

  “It’s going to take a while to ease her off the anesthetics,” Dad said. “And there’s no guarantee she’ll wake up. But Dr. Martinez is very hopeful. The swelling in Audrey’s brain has gone down, and her last CT scan showed that the damage from the brain injury was minimal.”

  I nodded, smiling for Mom’s sake. Dad’s tone was calm and even. I got the hint. If Audrey didn’t wake up relatively soon, the chances of a full recovery just kept decreasing.

  Mom must have known, too, because she began to cry. With his arm around Mom, Dad told me to go home and get some rest. Instead, I just drove around for a couple of hours. When I got back to the hospital, I could see on their faces that it hadn’t worked. She hadn’t woken up yet.

  For now, we would wait. Again.

  There was a knock on my bedroom door late Saturday morning. I was already awake. I’d gone to the bathroom and brushed my teeth even. But that didn’t mean I had to leave the comfort of my bed. Besides, Floyd was snuggled up next to me. I kept quiet, but the door opened anyway. Cassidy walked in. She carried a tray with two coffees and paper bags from The Flakey Pastry.

  “Hey, lady,” she said. “That’s quite a nest you’ve created there.” She gestured to the tangle of blankets, the pile of pillows, and the lump of dog.

  “Oh, I thought you meant my hair,” I said.

  She laughed. “That, too,” she said, motioning for me to move over.

  I scooted sideways as she set the coffee tray on my bedside table. Floyd shifted, too, but not without a heavy sigh. You gotta love dogs for their honesty.

  “Your mom said to tell you that if you don’t get up, she’s going to send your dad in with a bucket of ice water,” Cassidy informed me. “She also said you needed to find a job.”

  I sighed through my nose, in a pretty decent imitation of Floyd. “If you’re playing messenger, would you be willing to tell her I said ‘Bite me’?”

  Cassidy snorted. She slipped off her flip-flops and slid onto the bed, leaning against the headboard, drinking her coffee. “You doing any better?” she asked.

  “Does it look like I am?”

  “Then let’s do something today,” she said. “A movie or a mani-pedi or something.”

  “Aren’t you grounded?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “They tried, bless their hearts. But with the three terrors at home, grounding me is really more of a hassle than my parents want to deal with. Get
ting out of the house and out of their way is a blessing for them.”

  Cassidy’s brothers, Loren and Kelly, were five and eight. They didn’t stop moving from six in the morning until nine at night. Her younger sister, Morgan, a.k.a. “The Nuisance,” just added a moody haze to any situation.

  I could see her point.

  “So? What do you want to do?”

  I turned my face back into the pillow. “I want to go see my sister,” I said, “and hate my ex-boyfriend some more.” I glanced back at Cassidy, knowing her exasperation would motivate me, and then sat up. “Fine. Hate Mike, see Audrey, then mani-pedi.”

  Cassidy’s face lit up. “Super. But while you do the first one, take a shower.”

  I tried to act offended, and I was annoyed that people kept feeling like they could dictate my sanitary habits, but she was right.

  “Fine, but keep Floyd company while I’m gone. He misses Audrey.”

  When I got back from the nail salon, I went to the hospital for a few hours, where I watched Mad Love and Boys on the Side with Audrey (two of her Drew Barrymore favorites, both of which ended with me in tears—what was happening to me?), and then I grabbed a fast food meal on my way home and settled in for a night of reading. I’d finally gotten that week’s pull list of comics—the new books Dad and I had the store put aside to make sure we got them every week—and while I tried to space them out, I ended up reading them all in one binge, as always.

  It was nearly one in the morning when I finally came up for air. Or, more accurately, food. I almost wasn’t surprised when, after finishing a bowl of cereal, I saw the side-porch light from next door cast a glow across the corner of the lawn. I headed outside to find Raf.

  “Are you stalking me, Juarez?” I joked. “And can I bum one of those?”

  Raf smiled, but it was small and forced, not his usual crooked grin. “Not a stalker,” he said as he pulled another out of his pack for me. “Just an addict.”