by Dana Mele
“You don’t have to go,” Nola says, her voice rising in volume and pitch.
“This is my house,” Bernie growls.
Nola stands, slamming her fists on the table. “No it isn’t. It’s not supposed to be. You lied to get the house. You’re a hypocrite.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Bernie turns to me calmly. “Katherine, we’d be pleased to have you another time, but I’m afraid this week just won’t work. If you pack your things, I’ll happily pay for your ticket home and drive you back to the train station right away.”
I flee up the stairs as Nola screams at her parents and they shout back at her. There are all sorts of ugly phrases bouncing back and forth, mostly with the tags “my” and “mine” attached. “My guest” and “my house.” “My sister” and “my friend.” And from Mrs. Kent, “you promised” and “last chance,” though I can’t tell whether that’s directed at Nola or her father.
I wait outside in the biting cold until Bernie comes out to drive me to the train station. Nola doesn’t come outside to say good-bye, though I see the light go on in her room upstairs and watch her fling herself down on her bed. I wonder what’s up with Bianca’s fiancé, and whether Nola’s parents are as shitty as her cousins. Her mother definitely didn’t look pleased when she walked in on us. Maybe that was the deal with Bianca, too. Nola never actually said the fiancé was a guy—but I did, at the dinner table. Now that I’ve seen more of them, I’m not sure I want Nola’s family to like me.
I sit quietly in the backseat as Bernie drives me to the station.
He clears his throat. “I’m very sorry about that,” he apologizes awkwardly. “You really are welcome to return another time.” Yeah. I’ll be on the next train. “It’s a complicated issue. My life coach has been adamant that I deal with family conflicts directly and right away, and I just don’t think we’re able to do that with guests.”
I wonder about the life coach (code for shrink, maybe) but also about how much progress you can possibly expect to make when you only see your daughter a few times a year.
“Sure,” I say.
When we arrive at the station, he walks around the car and opens the door for me. “Thank you for being understanding,” he says. “And for being a friend to Nola. And for not mentioning this unfortunate incident to any of the other girls at school,” he adds with a meaningful look, and presses an envelope into my hand. “Happy holidays, Katherine. Buy yourself a ticket to visit your folks.” I’m too stunned to react as he gives me a hug and then disappears into his car, waving as he drives away. I sit on the bench waiting for the next train, the lone figure in an empty station, and peer into the envelope. It’s stuffed with fifty-dollar bills.
* * *
• • •
MY FIRST IMPULSE is to call Brie, but even if I hadn’t sworn not to, I don’t think she would pick up. So I follow Bernie’s advice. I go home. It’s well after midnight when I arrive, and I take a cab to the darkened house.
It’s the last one on a dead-end street lined with skeletal shrubs, leafless trees, and yards littered with rusty bikes, frozen kiddie pools, and broken cars in an endless state of refurbishment. Ours is the smallest, a two-bedroom with a combination kitchen-laundry room, a living room that has just enough space for our ancient TV set and a battered couch, and an attic loft my father converted to my room when I was ten.
The last time my parents and I spoke, we fought, and I’m not even sure they’ll be here now. We haven’t had Thanksgiving at home since before Todd died. I don’t bother to knock; I just let myself in, creep up the stairs, and then look for evidence that they’re here. Mom’s purse on the kitchen table, Dad’s wallet on the counter. Tiptoeing around the kitchen, I’m pleasantly surprised to see how well things look. The room is tidy, no dishes or stacks of bills piled up. I peer into the refrigerator, and tears actually well up in my eyes when I see signs of a partially prepared Thanksgiving dinner. There are peeled potatoes in a big bowl covered in plastic wrap, cartons of cider and eggnog, oranges and packages of cranberries, even a small, half-frozen turkey. I blink and the tears spill down my face. I wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years before actually getting here, but I’m glad I came home. Even if I regret it tomorrow, even if Mom is a raging bitch and Dad won’t shut up about getting the soccer team going again, just for this amazing sight of food prepped for Thanksgiving dinner, I am so grateful that I got kicked out of Tranquility and sent home in disgrace. Hallelujah.
24
The first thing Mom does when she sees me in the morning is scream like she’s seen a ghost. Then she hugs me and cries. Dad hugs me, then asks about soccer. He says I look just like Mara Kacoyanis. I can tell they’re both extremely pleased to see me, and neither asks about Brie.
I take on the task of dicing potatoes without asking. We don’t do mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving; we do potato salad. It’s an ancient Donovan tradition. Dad chops cranberries and Mom tries to boil the turkey in an attempt to finish defrosting it.
She sees me watching her and shoots me a defensive look. “It doesn’t have to be edible until tomorrow, Katie.”
“Is this the first time you’ve tried to cook one?” I say as she stirs it awkwardly in a giant pot.
“Since Grandma died,” she answers, avoiding the more precise date. Dad doesn’t look up from his cutting board but clears his throat loudly, as if to warn me away from this line of questioning. He looks like he’s gained weight since summer, and Mom has more color. Her silver-streaked auburn hair is swept up into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and she’s wearing a denim dress that she’s had since before I was born. I’m convinced it’s the softest item of clothing in the world, though I’ve begged her repeatedly over the past seventeen years to burn it.
I wonder what they’ve been doing. We only talk about me when they call, and even then it’s just questions about school and soccer. Occasionally what’s Brie up to, or how is Spencer. I realize that they don’t even know we’ve broken up.
“What have you guys been doing the past few Thanksgivings?” I ask, and Dad clears his throat again, this time with a warning look.
Mom just turns up the dial on the gas stove, and the flame flares up underneath it. “Chinese,” she says. “Cooking is such a headache.”
“What’s the special occasion this year?”
“Well,” she says, placing the wooden spoon down on the counter. “This year we have something to celebrate.”
Dad stops chopping. “Karen, maybe this isn’t the time.”
Mom sits next to me at the table and takes my hand in hers. “Katie, we need to talk to you about something.”
“You’re pregnant,” I blurt out. No, that doesn’t make sense. They’re too old. Aunt Tracy’s pregnant.
“Actually, yes,” Mom admits, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed. “But it’s very early, and at my age a lot of things can go wrong, so we’re not telling anyone, even Aunt Tracy. We weren’t even going to tell you until Christmas, but . . . well, here you are.”
I study her. Is this a replacement baby? Then it dawns on me that there are certain expected reactions in these situations, and I give her a big hug and say, “That’s amazing!”
“You don’t have to pretend you’re not shocked,” Dad says, and I swear I see the first smile crack across his face since Todd died. “We realize how ancient you think we are.”
“I wouldn’t say ancient,” I protest. Well, not to their faces.
“The house is empty without you, Katie. We just felt ready.” Mom squeezes my shoulder and I force myself to smile. I manage to freeze my face into that idiotic grin until the rest of the potatoes are diced, and then I walk as casually as I can to the stairs and up to my loft before collapsing onto my mattress and sobbing into my pillow. They made me go to Bates. It was the solution to all of their problems. Those were her exact words. That’s why the goddamn house is
empty. Todd’s death and my exile.
Mom calls up after a little while to ask if I’m all right and I use my standby excuse, cramps. Then I tiptoe into Todd’s room to find a new comfort item to replace the coat Nola hurled into the sea, something new I can cry into, but to my shock, the room that had been preserved into a museum exhibit for four years is empty. No furniture, no trophies, no posters or photos on the walls, no cardboard boxes of his things, even. The closet is empty, and the walls have been scrubbed and painted a creamy white. The hardwood floor has been covered with a thick fuzzy carpet, and the window blinds have been removed in favor of gauzy yellow drapes. I close the door and walk back downstairs.
“What happened to Todd’s room?”
Dad casts me another warning look. “It’s going to be the baby’s room.”
“What about all his things?”
“We needed to let them go,” Mom says in a calm, measured tone, as if repeating something told to her, something that had to be said over and over until it finally made sense.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t up to you,” Dad says, dumping the contents of his cutting board into a bowl.
“It should be. I’m part of the family, too.”
“Not the part that makes decisions,” he says, handing the bowl to Mom and retreating into the family room, where a football game is blaring.
Mom holds the bowl helplessly. “Brad,” she calls after him. “Katie, what would you have wanted us to tell you? You have enough to worry about with your grades and your soccer.”
I laugh. I almost tell her right there about the things I actually have to worry about. But the fallout just wouldn’t be worth it. “What if I wanted to keep something to remember Todd?”
Mom starts crying.
Dad bounds back into the room. “This is why you can’t be here, Katie. You won’t let the past go. Hasn’t your mother gone through enough?”
“It’s not her fault, Brad.”
“What exactly did I do?” I can’t keep my voice from trembling, but I stand my ground. “Apart from not saving Todd, what did I do to get kicked out of the house?”
Mom reaches for me, but I yank myself out of her grasp. “You were never kicked out of the house.”
“Yes, I was, and now you’re making a new person to live in it. What did I do?”
“Katie, no one blames you.” Mom takes my hand tentatively and strokes it. “Bates was never a punishment. Being here was painful for all of us. You were miserable. Those kids were awful to you. All the things they wrote on your locker, the names they called you. The girls that followed you around and made your life a living hell? After everything that happened, we wanted to get you out because you deserved better.” She chokes up and that makes me start crying. “We’re trying so hard, Katie. We’re not going to let everything that’s happened break us. We’re looking at a fresh start. You have four years of a premier school behind you, and four years of a college education in front of you.”
I look to my father. “Dad?”
“No one blames you for anything.” His voice is a perfect echo of my mother’s.
I don’t believe him. I can’t. I’ve been pushing myself too hard for too long, past the limits of what I can reasonably accomplish to make up for Todd’s loss so they can forgive me for letting him die.
But Mom refuses to see this and goes on. “You have your soccer, your friends, Brie and Spencer. We’re so proud of you. We just don’t want you to slip away from us.” She tries again to hug me and I let her. “We love you, Katie.”
I wrap my arms around her tightly. I wish there was some way to rewind, to go back to the place where I had a choice about slipping away. I miss my mother. I miss my whole family. But there’s no way to explain everything. It’s just too much. “What would you do if something bad happened to me?” I ask.
She squeezes me harder. “Please talk to us. Whatever it is.”
“That came out wrong. I’m just afraid I’m going to let you down.” I straighten up and look at both of them. “I might not be cut out to be a soccer star. I might not get a scholarship. I might fail at school and life and everything. Spencer and I broke up. Brie and I aren’t even talking.”
They both wait as if I’m leading up to a big revelation. I could do it. I could tell them right now.
Instead, I just say, “I don’t want to make things any worse.”
Mom shakes her head. “Don’t shut us out and you won’t,” she says.
Easier said than done.
* * *
• • •
I WAIT UNTIL the next day to visit Todd’s grave. I always get massive amounts of anxiety about these visits because I’m afraid the headstone is going to be covered with graffiti like my locker was, but it isn’t. It looks just like all the other headstones, indistinguishable but for the name and dates. Thanksgiving must be a popular day to visit the dead, because the cemetery is filled with flocks of extended families. I recognize some people I knew way back in the day. I hope none of them recognize me. I really don’t keep up any ties with my past in this town. It wasn’t a happy time in my life, not after Todd and Megan died, or really after the Todd-Megan scandal. That was the turning point. There was soccer after that, and some partying, but I couldn’t call that happy. Just busy. Throwing myself into the act of being alive.
The earth is dry and cracked and the grass matted and yellow, and it crunches under me when I sit. I run my hands over the face of Todd’s headstone, tracing the words with my fingertips. I can’t help thinking about Hunter’s body when we dug him up, about that pile of bones and tufts of fur. It’s been much longer since we buried Todd, although (and it grosses me out so much to think about it) he was pumped full of preserving chemicals before he went into the ground. Despite that, I still would guess he would mostly be a pile of bones by now. I am literally sitting on the earth above my brother’s bones. I think when I die, I will insist on one of those environmentally friendly burials where instead of a casket they bury you in a biodegradable sack and mark your grave with a tree. I like the idea of my earthly essence being absorbed into a tree to go through the seasonal cycle of life year after year, budding green and blooming wildly, and then bursting into autumn flame and dying all over again just to be reborn. Better than spending eternity as a box of bones.
I remember my last unspoken promise to Megan, that I would find the person who stole Todd’s phone and make him pay in blood. Todd had vowed to help me. But the morning Megan was found dead, Todd and I both sat in his room on the floor crying, and there was nothing left to fix. Nothing would make it right. Mom hovered over us, trying to force us to eat, and threatened to take us to the doctor. I threw up after choking down a piece of toast. Todd wouldn’t even look at food, wouldn’t leave his room for days. He was inconsolable. It wouldn’t be okay.
The fact is, he did lie to me. He sent the pictures to his four best friends: Connor Dash, Wes Lehman, Isaac Bohr, and Trey Eisen. Collectively, the four of them sent the pictures to twenty-seven more students, including Julie Hale, who sent them back to Megan. It didn’t stop there. No one is sure who posted them on the Rate My Girlfriend website. Or who wrote the hundreds of degrading comments.
I know this because, six weeks after Megan’s death, her brother, Rob, pulled his truck up beside my bike on the way to school and forced me inside. I was terrified I was about to be kidnapped or murdered, but instead he just silently handed me a folder of evidence from the civil case they’d been building against Todd before Megan died. He stared straight ahead, his fingers tightly gripping the wheel, as I read page after page proving everything Todd and I told the police to be false. Then there were pages and pages of little notes, scraps of torn, wrinkled paper with ugly words written on them. Slut. Skank. Whore. No one ever wrote on Megan’s locker. They just slipped anonymous notes inside. I never knew. At the end of the folder
was a list of names on a legal pad. Todd. Connor. Wes. Isaac. Trey. A chain of people who destroyed Megan. And off to the side, one name with a circle around it, connected to Todd’s with a thick red line. Katie.
I don’t think Todd shared those pictures to hurt her. It was like them being broken up meant it was some random girl now and not his girlfriend. It was creepy and messed up. I think he thought they would stay between him and his crew and she’d never know. No one would. And not until they were forwarded did it really hit him that they weren’t going to stay between them. Nothing stays between friends. If any of this had occurred to me, in time, I would have told the police. Todd would have been arrested. And he wouldn’t be dead.
His headstone isn’t as smooth as it should be. Graves should always look new. Nola had said I talk about Todd like he’s not dead and maybe that’s because it still feels so recent. But it isn’t. He’s falling further into the past.
I kiss my fingers and press them to the cold granite and then stand, dusting myself off.
Good-bye again, Todd.
25
Mom asks me to stay the rest of the weekend, but I tell her I need to get back to study for my remaining exams. I do need to study, but I also need to put an end to this investigation once and for all. As I’m standing on the train platform, my phone rings and I glance down at it. Greg Yeun. I pick up cautiously.
“Hello?”
“You missed a lot.”
“Like?”
“Thanksgiving in a holding cell.”
A train passes and I can’t hear what he’s saying. “Hold on!” I shout, running down the platform to try to find a quiet spot. “Are you calling me from jail?” Just at that exact moment, the train passes and everyone on the platform turns and gawks at me. I flash a sarcastic smile and wave.
“What? Like I would waste my one phone call on you. I’m out, obviously. I’m calling to warn you.”
