by Amber Smith
“I’m not,” I lie, feeling the ground slipping out from under my feet.
“I think we need to call it, Brooke,” he blurts out. “This is over. You can’t say we didn’t go down without a fight.”
“It’s not over. I mean, can’t she appeal?”
“No, she can’t appeal. She pleaded guilty. You can’t appeal that. It’s done, Brooke. It really is. And we can’t stay here—I can’t.”
“Aaron, please. You can’t leave. Please.” I grab on to his arm. “Please? I need you. I’m sorry that we fight. I’ll be better, I’ll be more understanding. I’m trying too, you know?” I feel this overpowering desperation taking hold of me. I’m begging. I can hear it in my voice and hate it.
“No, stop.” He pulls his arm away and stands, seeming so tall, so far away from me already. “Listen to yourself, Brooke. You know, lately, if you’re not sounding like Dad, you’re sounding just like Mom.”
“I do not!” But he’s not listening; he’s backing away from me, toward the door.
“Look, I’m wrecked, okay? I’m sorry,” he says one last time, leaving me alone outside in the cold at four o’clock in the morning.
I watch as the wind drags the snow across the street in slow motion, S-like patterns, quivering snakes, making the invisible air visible. It’s strange how absence can take up so much space sometimes. I guess that’s what ghosts are. I stay outside until I get so cold I can’t stand it anymore.
CRASHING
IN THE MORNING I put on a pot of coffee for Aaron. I eat a whole bowl of cereal and sit there at the kitchen table, feeling okay about the silence. I’m planning out my talking points for the conversation we’re going to have. We’ll both be more rational in the daylight. We’ll figure it out. We’ll make a new plan.
But then all of a sudden my eyes fix on something. A sheet of lined paper folded in half like a tent. It’s been sitting there right in front of me this whole time; my name is scrawled out across the front.
I unfold it, but the words don’t make sense at first.
Brooke,
I’m sorry. I swear I tried my best. I’m sorry I couldn’t say all of this to your face. If I had, I wouldn’t be able to leave. I’m taking that job with Mark. It’s out of town. I wasn’t going to go with him, but I realized tonight that I have to. I can’t be here anymore. Neither can you. We all need to leave this place. You and Callie need to go to Jackie’s. Jackie and Ray are good people and they want to help. Let them.
This is not forever, I promise. I just need some space to get my head together. Forgive me someday?
—Aaron
The paper slips between my fingers. It hits the table with a hollow tap and then flutters to the floor, shifting something in the air around me. I march into the hallway and throw open the door of my parents’ room. The bed is made perfectly. The closet empty. The bathroom clean.
I walk back out and look around. Everything is different. New. Raw.
All my worry, my fear, it all turns, like some kind of previously contained fire inside of me, suddenly raging out of control in all directions. I sweep both of my arms across the kitchen table, throwing everything to the floor: dishes, apples and oranges, the full cup of now-cold coffee I poured for Aaron. I knock the chair over too. It feels good. I don’t care if it breaks. I don’t care if I break. I don’t care about anything, anyone.
In my ears I hear something—something loud and terrible. I cover them with my hands. And then I realize that loud, terrible noise is me. I’m yelling, screaming, crying. I’m throwing things. I’m pacing. I want to punch a wall—so bad. The inside of my chest feels like it’s freezing and burning at the same time.
“Why?” I’m yelling. “Why?” I’m shouting. “Why?” I’m sobbing until I can’t tell anymore if I’m even saying it out loud. I’ve slowed down, like someone struggling against quicksand. I’m suddenly taken down; I’m lying on the floor, part of the debris.
Someone’s knocking on the door. I cover my ears again, but I can still hear it.
Knock-knock-knock. Louder, louder, louder.
“Hello? Helloo-ooo?” It’s Mrs. Allister. “It’s Mrs. Allister. From downstairs. I heard some commotion.” Knock-knock-knock. “Just making sure everyone’s okay.”
“Go away,” I whisper.
“Hell-ooo?” Knock-knock-knock.
“Go away,” my voice squeaks.
I’ve hit the ground—literally, metaphorically, and everything in between. I’ve finally stopped falling. I take a good look around me. At the mess I’ve made. It looks so much like the aftermath of my dad on some psychotic rampage. I feel my heart start pounding inside my chest, banging, thumping wildly. Then, abruptly, it slows, slows too quickly, so quickly I’m afraid it’s going to stop. I close my eyes. And then I’m gone.
“Hoooh-leeee shit.” I open my eyes. Callie’s standing over me, wearing her coat and gloves and scarf, her overnight bag slung over one shoulder. I’m flat on my back on the living room floor.
“What the ef happened in here?” she asks, almost laughing, but not quite.
“Callie?” I say, uncertain of my voice, my body, my anything. Because it feels like I’m waking up, not from sleep, but from my whole life.
“What happened?”
“I—I fell,” I whisper, pushing myself up to sitting.
“Fell?” she repeats, raising her eyebrows. “Are you hurt?”
My head feels like it has cracked open once and for all. I hold it between my hands, trying to put the pieces back together. “No.” I clear my throat. “When did you get here?”
“Just now. Jackie dropped me off. Where was everyone last night? Why didn’t anyone call me? I was worried. Where’s Aaron?” she asks, looking around suspiciously.
I stand, shaky on my new feet, on my new ground, testing it like ice with each step, not sure if it’s solid or if I’ll fall through again.
She stands in front of me, crossing her arms, and we’re nearly at the same eye level. When did she get so tall? “Are you having a breakdown?” she finally asks, surveying the damage.
“No, of course not.” But she looks at me like she’s not convinced.
“Dr. Greenberg says people don’t break down, they’re really breaking open. So. It’s not that bad, if you are.” She reaches for the chair to turn it upright.
“No offense, but I don’t think I should be taking mental health advice from a twelve-year-old.”
“It’s not my advice. And I’ll be thirteen next month, anyway.”
“Fine,” I relent, beginning to gather the miscellaneous pieces of broken things at my feet. “But I’m not breaking down, or breaking open, just so you know.”
She scowls and shrugs. “Fine.”
“Look, Callie. I need to tell you, Aaron left town this morning, but—”
“What?” she interrupts, her face draining of all color.
“Remember his friend Mark?” She nods, then sits down in the chair she just turned over. “Well, they’re doing a job together and he’ll only be gone a few days—it was a last-minute thing,” I lie.
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know. Soon. A few days. A week, tops.” Or at least, that’s how long I figure he might need to cool off and realize he can’t just leave us like this.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure about what?”
“Are you sure that he’s really coming back?”
“Yeah, of course.”
She opens her mouth but then shuts it. Then she stands without a word, walks to her room, and closes the door behind her.
CONTRAPASSO
OUR ENGLISH TEACHER FURIOUSLY scrawls a word out on the whiteboard at the front of the room, her letters in all caps: CONTRAPASSO.
“Who knows what this means?” she asks, turning around, searching for recognition. “Come on, who’s taking Latin?” Radio silence. “Has anyone bothered to read Inferno over break? Anyone at all?”
I look at Dani. We bothered to rea
d it. We read it out loud together as we sat on her bedroom floor with our legs crossed over each other’s; we took turns as we lay in her bed with our feet touching.
She could answer this question. So could I. But we don’t.
“It means ‘punishment,’ ” some guy shouts out, not bothering to raise his hand.
“Yes, but more specifically than that?” she asks, a glimmer of life lighting up her face momentarily.
He shrugs in response.
The teacher looks annoyed. It’s Monday—the first Monday after winter break—everyone looks annoyed. It’s cold, gloomy, and gray, and no one gives a damn about Dante. “All right, are your brains still on vacation? Someone look this up,” she demands.
I see a few students flip idly through the pages of our textbook. Our teacher lets out a long sigh and starts writing more words on the board.
“It comes from the words contra and patior. Anyone? It translates to ‘suffer the opposite.’ And it’s one of the major rules in Dante’s Hell. What does it mean, though?” she asks.
I roll it around in my head a few times. It means me looking across the room at Dani. It means having her ignore me. It means me telling her to leave me alone when I meant to say I love you, when what I really meant was Don’t leave me alone like everyone else—I have this hole inside of me that’s getting so big I think it might swallow me up. But I didn’t tell her that, either. I yelled, I scared her away, and then I ignored her phone calls. So now I’m suffering the opposite.
I wonder if that’s what Dante had in mind.
Probably not.
When the bell rings, Dani bolts out of her seat, like she did in AP Psych, and like she did in AP American History, where it felt as though we were having our own private civil war from opposite sides of the room.
“Dani! Will you please talk to me?” I ask, catching up with her in the hall.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she finally says, turning to give me the coldest glare I’ve ever seen. “That’s kind of why I was calling you all weekend. Because I wanted to talk. I don’t anymore, in case you couldn’t tell.”
Tyler joins up with us as our hallway spills into the main thoroughfare that leads to the cafeteria.
“Hey, Brooke,” he says, wincing—clearly, he’s heard all about our fight. Dani walks ahead of us, faster, until she disappears into the crowd.
I turn to Tyler, at a loss. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You better figure it out, this shit’s bad for my complexion.”
“You’ve known her longer than me. Tell me what to do, please?”
“Did you lie to her?” he asks. “She thinks you lied to her.”
“I didn’t lie,” I lie. “I mean, I didn’t mean to. It’s more like I haven’t told her the whole truth about some things.”
“Well, then it’s easy. Just tell her the whole truth.”
“That’s the opposite of easy,” I tell him, suddenly losing my voice.
“Look, why don’t you keep your distance till the end of the day, at least? I’ll work on her for you. Call her tonight, okay?”
I took Tyler’s advice. I didn’t go to lunch. I went to the nurse’s office instead. I told her I had a migraine, which, as it turned out, got me a lot more sympathy than a simple headache—it got me out of school early. I’ve been missing so much school lately that somehow it has stopped seeming so important.
But when I get home, I’m greeted by a notice stuck on my door with a crooked piece of clear tape: 7-DAY NOTICE TO PAY. From the landlord. I rip it down, but I’m afraid it’s already been seen by our neighbors—one more thing to be ashamed of.
Damn you, Aaron. He could’ve mentioned in his little good-bye note that he didn’t pay the rent. There was some cash Aaron left in an envelope that I found mixed in with the debris I threw off the table, but I thought it was extra money, since it clearly wasn’t enough for rent. Aaron didn’t care what would happen, apparently. Just like Mom.
Or maybe this is Dante’s contrapasso at work again: I freaked out, lost my temper, wrecked the place, scared the neighbors. But it was all because I wanted to stay. I wanted us all to stay. Therefore they’re trying to kick me out. A just punishment, according to Dante.
Well, screw Dante. Screw Aaron, too. Screw Mom and Dad.
I start making calls before I’ve even closed the door. I leave a message for the landlord. “There’s been a mix-up, I’ll have the rent to you this time next week, I promise.” I bring Mrs. Allister’s paper to her, sure to give her extra smiles and pet her cats. “Oh, the noise—that was nothing. I fell trying to move the furniture by myself—that was stupid, huh?”
By the time I get back upstairs, Callie’s home from school. She’s eating cereal from the box, the volume on the TV too loud.
“Can you please turn that down?” I shout.
She turns it off instead. Then leans back into the couch and stares at me.
“What?”
“Are we getting kicked out?” she asks, tilting her head in the direction of the letter that I stupidly left out on the coffee table.
“No, of course not. We just had a mix-up with the rent this month, that’s all.”
“Where’s Aaron?” she asks, her voice flat and hollow.
“I told you already, Callie. He’s out of town for a few days.”
“It’s been a few days.”
“Well, I don’t know exactly when he’ll be back. Remember, he said it could be a week.”
“No, you said that. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s probably busy, Callie—he is there to work, after all.”
“But where’s there?” An uptick in her voice. Is it anger, worry, frustration? I’m not sure, but it sparks all those things in me.
“What do you want me to say? I’m not sure, okay? He didn’t tell me.”
“This is . . .” But she stops short before finishing, shakes her head instead.
“This is what?”
She stands abruptly, brushing past me on her way to her room.
I make endless calculations. I call Jackie and beg for more shifts. I scrounge up every last bit of money hiding in piggy banks and coat pockets and dresser drawers and even in the basement laundry room. Miraculously, I come up with $35.32 in under an hour. I add in my paycheck from last week and the social security check. If I don’t pay the electric or buy any more groceries, I’m short only $75.00.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself, hunched over my calculator and pad of paper, chewing on the end of my pen. It’s possible to keep this going for at least the next month.
I have to squint to see what I’m doing, and then I realize that’s because it’s getting dark outside already. I’ve been at this for hours. And even though this is shit, somehow I feel invigorated. Because here’s a problem that has an actual solution. Whether I’ll be able to solve it is another question entirely, but at least I know, as of right now, what has to be done.
Unlike those other problems. People problems. Mom. Aaron. Callie. Dani. Those are trickier to fix, maybe impossible. School problems are another thing, but in a different class of trouble. I make myself a grilled cheese for dinner and eat it on the couch, watching the snow fall down outside the window.
FREEZING
I PLANNED ON TALKING to Dani first thing, but she wasn’t in class this morning. So I’m sure to make it to chem lab early. Tyler walks through the door right before the bell and slides into the seat next to me. Without looking at me, he says, “Oh good, you are here. I thought you might have suffered a stroke last night, or something.”
“What?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, a gesture of exasperation I’ve noticed he sometimes does. “Okay, you know I love you girls, but this kind of drama is exactly why I don’t love you girls.”
“Um. Okay,” I say, trying to act casual as I set up our beakers and test tubes, adjusting the ring stand for our
experiment, double-checking to make sure the Bunsen burner is turned off.
“I’ll have you know I did some of my best work on her. She was this close”—he brings his thumb and index finger together so they’re barely touching—“to forgiving you. Why the hell didn’t you call her? Now she’s mad all over again, and I don’t know if I can go through this another time. I don’t do stress, as a policy. But dammit, this is giving me heart palpitations.”
Looking at the strained expression on his face, which is usually so placid and smooth, I cave in. “I’m sorry, really. I was planning on it, but—”
“Listen. Don’t make excuses. She hates them. And I’m not so fond of them either.”
I’m sure I flinch at his tone, the way he interrupted me—he’s serious. Which means Dani is too, which means I’ve really messed this whole thing up.
“I’m giving you tough love, all right?” he explains. “Don’t screw her over. And don’t make me choose sides, because I’ll choose hers, and that’ll blow because I happen to like you. That’s all I have to say.” He sets the Erlenmeyer flask in between us, as if that officially marks the end of this conversation. “Except do your hair like that more often.” He flips my loose hair over my shoulder.
When I get home from school, I go straight to my room and call Dani. Except, listening to the ringing on the other end, I feel like a different person than I was only a few nights ago, when I was safe in Dani’s bedroom, her arms around me, her wanting to know me—and me wanting her to. With each unanswered ring I feel myself being swept farther and farther away from her. So much has changed I don’t know how I’ll ever get us back to where we were. I know I probably don’t have a right to be mad, but I am. I don’t have the time or the energy to be dealing with this. Everyone’s shutting me out—Mom, Aaron, Callie, now Dani—and I’m starting to think maybe it’s better that way.
I hang up without leaving a message.
I’m a mess at work. Dropping things and screwing up orders. It’s just me and Owen. Jackie’s not here—she’s been here less and less lately, which, I guess, is one of the perks of being your own boss. I haven’t seen her since before Aaron left, haven’t talked to her since that night on the phone. She called me this afternoon, but I didn’t answer and she didn’t leave a message.
