Seven Sins

by Piper Lennox

  So it shouldn’t stab through my head like it does, sharpened by the realization that a girlfriend—a real one—wouldn’t even suggest it.

  And a boyfriend wouldn’t even entertain it. But here we are.

  I can’t believe I thought we’d work.

  What’s really pathetic is, for once in my life, I was actually thinking with my head. Common sense told me of course we’d work, if we just wanted it enough. Of course she’d tell me the truth before it was too late to matter.

  “Just drop me off at the ranch, period.”

  The silence buzzes so bad, I’m convinced it’s the aux hookup until I confirm the stereo’s off. She’s got her iPod in her hands, holding it like it’s still the most precious damn thing she owns. Like she’s scared I’ll take it from her.

  The beast wants to. It knows, without a doubt, that throwing that hunk of metal and computer chips onto this highway would break Juniper Summers, the way she’s done to me too many times to count.

  The guard dog won’t let it dare fucking try.

  “Thought you didn’t want me ditching you,” she says.

  I keep my comeback on my tongue. It hurts too much to even think it.

  You’re not. I’m ditching you.

  “Consider us even, Juni.” I hit my inhaler again so she can’t hear how hard I swallow. “Your debt’s done.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t care. I’m calling it.”

  I don’t add the rest. Unless.

  Unless she can tell me, once and for all, what she ran away from. What she’s still running from, whether she wants to admit it or not.

  But it’s too late. Whatever her story is, it can’t possibly be enough to undo the rest.

  “Okay,” she says, so soft it drowns in the rush tearing through our windows. I put them down to try and breathe better. Now I think I’ve just created a vacuum, sucking anything remotely valuable right out of this car.

  She goes to bed. All I can think to do is keep driving.

  People always say things will look better in the morning. I’m guessing this isn’t the kind they’re talking about.

  “Christ,” Van sighs, when he gets back inside from smoking. I thought to offer him an umbrella, but it was too late; he’d already barreled into the downpour. In the two hours I’ve been awake, we’ve watched the sky steadily grow darker. At one point, I think it was green.

  “Here.” I pass him a towel he refuses to take, then changes his mind. He even thanks me.

  We have a similar exchange when he lapses into a coughing fit and can’t find his inhaler, but I unloop it from the rearview where he hung it and throw it to him.

  That’s how we’ve been since breakfast—quiet and polite.

  He doesn’t hate me again. It should bring me comfort. Instead, it chisels my heart down to nothing.

  This is worse than hatred: indifference.

  I’m not special enough to protect, and too unimportant to be hated. I’m getting forgotten.

  “How far out are we?” he asks.

  “Depends.”

  He stares at me, then shrugs impatiently. “On what?”

  “On whether I’m taking you to Medora and waiting through the competition, then taking you to the ranch,” I say, refusing to look up from my phone while he changes into dry clothes, “or if you’d rather go straight to the ranch now, and have Howard take you to the competition.”

  Translation: if I get two more days with you...or a few more miles.

  I can’t decide which I’d rather have. The latter is slightly less painful.

  The former means a little more time in the sun, but farther to fall.

  “Look, Juni...last night—”

  “We’re three hours from the competition site,” I tell him, before he can finish his thought, “or an hour from the ranch. Just tell me where I’m taking you.”

  Don’t second-guess last night.

  Please don’t leave me to be the stronger person, here.

  For all our soft words, and this sadness clinging to us like the haze of rain across the road, we both know last night revealed two crucial truths we can’t ignore.

  One: Van has to get my story, the entire, ugly thing, in order to trust me.

  And two…I can’t tell him until I know he’ll trust me anyway.

  We’ve reached an impasse, one we should’ve seen all along. It’s better we admit it to ourselves now, rather than later. We can’t work.

  Not seven years ago. Not now.

  I get in the driver’s seat and clip my phone into the holder, finger poised over the GPS app. My hand shakes, but I draw a breath and steady it, then press the address for the ranch. He doesn’t correct my choice.

  “Last night was inevitable,” I tell him. For all the tears locked up in my throat, my voice is steady. I actually mean these words, even though it kills me to say them.

  Van and I are made of wax and feathers. It was never a question of if we’d fall, too close to the sun for our own good.

  Always, it was a matter of when.

  Twenty-Nine

  Usually, Van insists on driving when the weather’s bad. His vision is worse than mine, but his confidence in storms is exponentially higher. He liked joking that it was, in its own way, a good balance.

  Today, we get about twenty minutes into the storm when he says he wants to switch.

  “I need to lie down.” He coughs into his elbow as he pulls over, halfway in a ditch. The pitched angle of the floor feels like a fun house when I climb into his seat.

  Desperately, I want to ask if he’s okay. That urge to take care of him almost yanks my hands right off the wheel.

  Then I remember it’s not my place to take care of him, anymore, so I stay quiet and start driving.

  He sleeps fitfully, instead of face-first and stone-still like he normally would. I pretend he’s close enough in my mirror for me to trace the angles of his jaw one more time, or the stubbled shadows of his throat...or the tattoos wrapping across his shoulder.

  I still can’t decide if it’s fitting or ironic that the boy who loves flying through a sun-filled sky, forgetting he’s mortal, is stained with a flimsy paper airplane and an imperfect, crater-filled moon, instead of wings and a sun.

  Fitting, I decide. Paper airplanes are manmade, and just as fragile. The moon is every bit as beautiful as the sun.

  And it’s just as dangerous and deadly, if you land on the wrong side.

  My heart doesn’t pound when we reach the ranch. As I navigate the ruts of the main driveway, sweeping my eyes over the familiar buildings and pastures, I don’t feel much of anything.

  Then I see the farmhouse, and Van’s old window, right next to mine.

  “Talk to me.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Then tell me how to make it better.”

  “Fuck,” I breathe, letting the curse rush from my chest so the tears won’t burst from my eyes.

  It’s not just sadness. It’s anger, fiercer than any I’ve ever felt, towards whatever controls this universe.

  Why did it put me in Van’s life, knowing how shattered and star-crossed we were?

  How cruel is it to do it twice?

  “We’re here,” I call, choking the sob down. I refuse to cry until he’s gone, because I don’t want him to think I’m second-guessing, too. I’m not.

  My heart’s just breaking, the way it does when you have to leave behind everything you know best.

  “Van?” I check the rearview. He’s still tossing and turning, but slower than he did during the drive. He doesn’t wake.

  I park far enough away that Howard won’t feel obligated to come say hi, then swivel to the aisle and call his name again.

  Behind his mumbling, I hear a ragged and strained breath. I get up and touch his shoulder, right on the moon, to shake him.

  He’s burning up.

  “Van.” I tear the blanket off him. His inhaler isn’t around his neck.

  I climb overtop h
im, patting every last inch of the bed until I find it underneath his pillow. Throwing off the cap, I direct my shaking hands to administer it. It’s no use. He can’t breathe the medication into his lungs deeply enough.

  Through the window, I see the farmhouse door open.

  Howard smiles from the porch, but it vanishes when I screech to a stop at the bottom of his steps.

  “Van’s sick,” I blurt, almost falling from the driver side door. “He’s got a fever, he isn’t breathing right—”

  “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll fix him up, Juniper, don’t worry.” Howard hesitates for just one half-second before putting his hand on my shoulder. “Where is he?”

  “In the back,” I tell him, feeling like a child who’s so happy to pass this off to a real adult. It must be the ranch: this feeling like I’ve gone back in time, no less helpless and unsure than I was at fifteen. I watch Howard throw open the door and climb in.

  “Juniper,” he calls, “do you have ice packs? Washcloths, towels?”

  Fear is useful; the adrenaline it dumps into my system guides me through the actions my brain can’t handle. I wet a beach towel in the sink and watch while Howard lays it across Van. I fumble with my phone and activate the stopwatch while he takes his pulse.

  I dial 911 when he tells me Van needs an ambulance. His lips are blue. He’s not getting enough air.

  It’s too familiar, too fresh: the wail of sirens through the treetops, the paramedics sweeping me along. When they ask if I’m riding with Van, my heart screams yes. Yes, I’m going with him. I’m staying.

  “I’ll go,” Howard says, before I can summon the words. The mouth doesn’t answer as quickly as the heart.

  “Juniper,” he tells me, before climbing into the ambulance, “do me a favor, run inside and tell my wife I’ll be at the hospital.”

  “But....” Come on, mouth.

  Say you’re not leaving him.

  “You should stay, try and calm down. Candace will take care of you, all right? Whatever you need.” He hefts himself into the back and sits, adding, “I’ll call the house phone and keep you updated.”

  And with that, they shut the doors.

  They drive off.

  They take my protector, my fallen Icarus, and pull him from my life like the thread I didn’t want to believe he was.

  Thirty

  “Been a long time.”

  My frozen face can’t even mirror Candace’s smile. It does manage to thank her for the oolong tea she pours me, so I guess that’s something.

  It’s been ten minutes since the ambulance left. Howard’s sons run through the farmhouse like nothing’s happened. I guess nothing has, in their lives.

  The furniture is mostly the same as when I lived here, but the walls look naked without those photos of Van. Only one, a candid of him with his father and Howard in front of the barn, still hangs above the microwave.

  The air smells the same. Under the superficial scents of new fabric softeners, different foods, steeping teas embedded in the kitchen walls…this house still smells like aged paint and closed-up closets, lilac that blows in from the back deck, and sunbaked soil.

  It breaks me.

  “Juniper?” When I start sobbing, Candace puts her hand on my back the same way her husband touched my shoulder: unsure, but determined to help me.

  He must have told her I kissed him. That’s where her hesitation comes from. They can’t trust me.

  I don’t deserve her kindness, but I’ll greedily accept every drop.

  “He’ll be all right, sweetheart.” She drags her chair close to mine and hugs me. I cling to her like she’s my own mother, and hate that my gut reminds me Crown Plains is nearby. I could go find her.

  No, you can’t, logic cruelly reminds me. Crown Plains is long gone. Wherever it moved, Mother moved with it.

  And she doesn’t want to leave.

  Candace rubs my back in slow circles and tells me things I know she can’t promise. I’m glad she does, though. My tears dry up. My limbs steady, especially when I open my eyes and see each of her boys in the doorway, silent and staring.

  Cherish your mother, I want to tell them. She is where your home is.

  And if you ever lose her, you’ll never really feel at home again. No matter where you go.

  When I’m calm enough to pull away, I drink my tea and think about telling Candace the truth of what happened between me and Howard. On the surface, yes, it’s as simple as the version I’m sure he gave her: I blindsided him in the carriage house, when he sat on the cot he loaned me to test its weight.

  “Try it out,” he told me, and patted the space beside him.

  I did.

  Then I leaned in and pressed my mouth to his, just to get it over with. After all, it was inevitable.

  Wasn’t it?

  But instead of kissing me back, Howard had gently pushed me away.

  “Don’t,” he whispered, anger darkening his eyes. He dragged his hand across his mouth like scrubbing paper with an eraser.

  Then he left, while I wondered what on earth I’d done wrong.

  Where I came from…men didn’t just sit on your bed for no reason. They didn’t just help you out. They always wanted something.

  Nothing on this earth is free.

  I could start with this. A few simple sentences.

  They lock up my jaw, though. There are memories chained to them, and every last one wrings my stomach just to imagine saying them out loud.

  Van thinks I ran away from my old life, the night I arrived here. A far more accurate description: I escaped.

  The running happened after, when I left the ranch. And I’ve been doing it ever since.

  I can’t stop moving. That’s when memories catch up.

  “Are you sure you’re all right to drive?” Candace shuts the driver’s side door of the Transit with me, pushing when I pull, like she’s secretly glad to be rid of me. “Howard should be calling with an update, soon.”

  I’m not waiting. My heart won’t calm down until I see or hear for myself that Van is all right.

  The hospital is twenty minutes away. I let the robotic voice of the GPS guide me the same way Howard told me what to do earlier, glad my brain doesn’t have to do actual work yet.

  The parking deck is small, but crowded. I park at the top and grab my purse, then Van’s duffel.

  I put the book inside first.

  Then I grab all his clothes, his phone, and the one charging block. His beach towel is still soaked from when Howard tried to break his fever, so I pack mine in its place. He’ll probably never use it; there’s a mandala on it. Far too hippie-ish for Van.

  But there’s a sense of fairness in giving it to him, and me keeping his balled-up wet one, that goes beyond convenience. There’s some kind of balance.

  I leave the boards and gear in back. For now.

  “Juniper.” Howard gives me a stern look when I enter the waiting room.

  I wonder if it’s the same one Van once waited in, for me.

  “Candace told me you were coming,” he says, “but I really wish you hadn’t driven yourself.”

  “How is he?” I stammer, skipping reassurances that I was okay to drive. Maybe I wasn’t. I can barely remember the trip from the ranch to here.

  But: I am here. I’m where Van is. That’s all I care about, even if can’t stay for long.

  “Haven’t heard yet.” Howard motions to a chair, so I sit. He fixes me coffee. I like that both he and his wife thought to comfort me with hot drinks. It’s like how Wes and Theo let me use their showers: such a small, simple gesture, but filled with more figurative warmth than literal. I’m not sure any of them know how much these things mean to me.

  “He almost drowned,” I say suddenly, sitting up straight and sloshing my drink. “A few weeks ago, at Lake Linon—I need to tell the doctor. What if he’s got pneumonia?”

  “Hey, hey, sit down, I’ll make sure they know.”

  I do sit, at first. Instinct tells me to shrink and let so
meone else handle this. Van is not mine to protect, anymore.

  “No.” This time, my heart uses my mouth like the microphone it’s supposed to. I pass Howard my coffee and stride into the hall. “I’ll tell them.”

  The nurses’ station is quiet. This doesn’t stop me from slapping my arms across the counter and spewing all the info I can give them at once, until a man blinks and asks me to slow down so he can type it into the system.

  I tell him everything: how long Van was underwater at Lake Linon, his doctor’s name that day, the antibiotics he didn’t finish. I even add his smoking, all the dirt he’s probably inhaled from skating, and when he fell in the pool at Theo’s.

  “Thank you,” the nurse says, looking a little drained after listening to my spiel a second time. “His doctor may already know, but always better safe than sorry, right?”

  My face mimics his smile, but I don’t think it does a convincing job.

  Hours pass. Howard offers me chips from the vending machine, which I turn down in favor of more coffee. I drink each cup right after it’s poured. Hot as hell, the way Van likes his.

  Bacterial pneumonia, the doctor tells us. Never in my life have I so thoroughly hated being right.

  “His fever is down, and we’ve got him on antibiotics and oxygen. He’s already responding well, but we need to keep him here a few days. Maybe longer, with his asthma.”

  He adds that we can visit him, if we’d like.

  “Juniper?” Howard asks, when he gets halfway down the hall and realizes I’m no longer beside him.

  Tears roll down my face again, even more than in the farmhouse when Candace hugged me. I want to see Van. Even just once, so my heart will stop its incessant screaming and accept he really is okay.

  But I’m too afraid, because if I take his hand even one more time...I’m not sure I’ll be able to let go.

  All the panic and activity haven’t undone what happened between us last night. Nothing’s changed.

  Better safe than sorry.

  “This is his stuff,” I tell Howard, shoving the duffel bag at his chest because my heart is trying to crack its way out of mine. “Just clothes and his toothbrush, deodorant...stuff he might need, while he’s here.”