“Hey!” a voice shouts.
I jerk away from Amos. Shit. It’s not just a voice. It’s Rachel Almond.
“Chastity and some guy are in the other bathroom,” Rachel wails. “If you know Chastity, you know how long they’re going to take, so please let me in. I’m going to keep knocking until whoever’s in there opens this door.”
I can feel my stomach churning. I can feel saliva pooling under my tongue.
“Amos.” I push him toward the door. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Want me to hold your hair?”
“I don’t think so.”
Amos unlocks the door and I press myself against the towel rack so Rachel won’t see me. But as soon as Amos mumbles that there’s still another person in there, Rachel flicks the light switch and peers inside.
“V?” she asks in this horrified voice.
For a second, we both just stand there, staring at each other. Then she turns and disappears through the dining room.
I close the door and sink onto my knees in front of the toilet bowl. I attempt to puke, but nothing comes out. I can’t believe how drunk I am. I can’t believe I just fooled around with Amos. I can’t believe Rachel saw us. I can’t believe my mom didn’t come to graduation. I know deep down she doesn’t love me, but I guess I’m always hoping for her to prove that wrong.
I slump against the bathtub, sobbing. Someone bangs on the door. I keep crying and eventually they go away. After a while I wipe my face with some toilet paper and wander out of the bathroom. I grab my sandals from where I’d slipped them off under the kitchen table and stumble through the house.
As soon as I get outside, I see my car parked on the grass. I know for a fact I’m in no shape to drive. Besides, Sam has the key. Even so, I check the doors. The back is unlocked, so I toss my sandals onto the floor, grab my phone, and walk down the empty street.
I hear a car pulling in the driveway. It’s pitch-dark. I’m not really awake, not really sleeping. Mostly, I’m just gripping the edges of my mattress, trying to keep the room from spinning, trying not to heave up whatever is sloshing around in my stomach.
I fumble on my bedside table for my phone. The light from the screen pierces my eyes. No missed calls. No voice mails. No text messages. I moan and drop my phone onto the bed.
I hear an engine cutting out. I hear a car door opening. Is it Sam? Should I go down and talk to him? What would I say? Thanks for returning my car. It was nice knowing you. Sorry I fucked everything up.
I hear a car door close. I hoist myself out of bed, but the second I’m upright my stomach seizes. I barely make it to the bathroom in time to puke my guts into the toilet.
“V?”
It’s bright out, brutally bright, and the doorbell is ringing. My clock says 7:14 A.M., but it’s way too bright to be 7:14 A.M. Besides, who would ring the doorbell at this brutal, brutal hour?
“V?”
My grandma is at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to my room. This used to be the guest room, but I’ve been staying here ever since last January. It actually took me eight months to unpack my bags. But once I learned that Aimee had moved to Florida, and my grandparents convinced me to stay here for senior year, I folded my clothes into drawers, taped up some photos, and bought a beanbag chair. It probably doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people, but to me, at the time, it was huge.
I press my face into a pillow. My temples are pounding even worse than last night.
“There’s someone at the door for you,” my grandma is saying.
Oh, my God.
Is it Sam?
Oh, my God.
“It’s the FedEx guy,” my grandma adds. “I think something from Aimee.”
I mumble that I’ll get it later and then burrow my face deep into the pillow.
“V?”
My grandma is back at the bottom of the stairs.
“We’re heading to work,” my grandpa chimes in.
I attempt to open my eyes, but it’s even brighter than before.
“She must be sleeping still,” my grandma murmurs.
“I’ll call her later,” my grandpa says. “See if she wants to have lunch.”
Argh.
My grandma works in Rochester, so I’m off her radar most of the day, but my grandpa is a dentist in Brockport, which means he’s constantly inviting me to have lunch with him or go for afternoon power walks on the canal.
“That sounds good,” my grandma says. “I know she had a hard time yesterday.”
As their footsteps recede down the hall, I turn onto my side, hug my knees to my chest, and fall back asleep.
My phone is ringing, but I can’t find it anywhere.
I glance at the clock: 10:23 A.M.
The ring tone is this tinny version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Sam put it on there a few days ago, after I snuck “Oh, Shenandoah” onto his phone. I know it was funny in the moment, but when you’re just waking up from the worst hangover of your life, the last thing you want to hear is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” courtesy of the guy you just cheated on.
I finally discover my phone wedged between the sheet and the side of my mattress. Just as I’m opening it, the ringing stops. I glance at the last call. aimee. I quickly dial her back.
“Hey!” my mom says. “I just tried you.”
“I know. I was sleeping.”
“Want to call me when you’re awake?”
“No . . . that’s okay.” I fold an extra pillow under my head. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to say I’m so sorry about missing your graduation. We went back to the emergency room in the middle of the night for more testing, but they sent us home again and . . . Oh, hon, I really am sorry. You know how much I wanted to see you walk across that stage.”
I’m getting the hugest lump in my throat.
“Did my package arrive?” Aimee asks.
I remember brightness, a searing headache, my grandma shouting from the bottom of the stairs.
“It should have come this morning,” Aimee says. “It’s lots of stuff for college. I was going to bring it with me to Brockport.”
My eyes are filling with tears.
“Speaking of college,” Aimee says, “I was thinking I could use my ticket to fly back east in August. We could rent a car and I’ll drive you to Boston, get you settled in. What do you think?”
“That sounds nice.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. Then I wipe my eyes and say, “What’s his name, by the way?”
“The Cowboy?”
“Yeah.”
“Steve,” Aimee says. “And do you want to know something? We’re talking about buying a house together, maybe even a ranch.”
“In San Antonio?”
“Yeah . . . you should come visit.”
“Really?”
“You’d like it here. Steve has three horses that he boards in a nearby stable.”
“Horses?”
“We could take them out whenever you want.”
I say that sounds nice, even though riding a horse around Texas was not exactly what I had in mind for myself this summer.
Twenty minutes later I’m down in the kitchen sucking a saltine and wondering whether Rachel told Sam that she saw me with Amos. I’m sure she did because Sam hasn’t called or texted yet, and we’ve never gone this long after an argument. Then again, I’ve never cheated on him before. But I can’t really call it cheating because we never made any monogamy pledges.
The home phone rings.
“Hello?” I ask.
“Hey,” Mara says. “I heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About graduation . . . Mom and Dad told me about Aimee not showing up.”
“That was fast.”
“You know them,” she says. “They’re talking about sending you to therapy this summer.”
“At least it’s not rehab this time.”
“Seriously,” Mara says, laughing.
&nbs
p; Mara is my grandparents’ other daughter. Officially, that makes her my aunt, except they had Mara when Aimee was eighteen, so she’s only a year older than me. When I moved here last year, Mara was a senior. She was this super-uptight, perfectionist overachiever, and I was, well, the opposite. At first we wanted to murder each other, but things got better throughout that spring. By the time Mara left for Yale in August, I’d even say we liked each other.
“Are you okay?” Mara asks.
I snort. “Hardly.”
“How so?”
“I fucked things up with Sam.”
“Oh no,” Mara says, and I can hear genuine regret in her voice. She’s spending the summer in Chicago, but she was home for five days after Yale let out. While she was here, she hung around with Sam and me a few times and kept saying how she’d never seen me that happy.
“What happened?” Mara asks.
I tell her about the fight, the party, Amos.
“That sounds awful,” Mara says.
“I know.”
“Do you think you guys are over?”
“It can’t be over because it never was anything to begin with.”
“You really believe that?”
“Hmmm,” I say. “I guess I’ll have to discuss it with my therapist.”
“Stop joking. I know you’re upset.”
I pour myself some Dr Pepper, but my stomach is still too queasy, so I dump it into the sink and fill my glass with water.
“Have you talked to Aimee yet?” Mara asks.
“Yeah . . . she FedExed me this package, all these body scrubs and picture frames for my dorm room. She even sent a lava lamp. That’s nice, right?”
“I guess,” Mara says.
I’m sipping some water when I realize my temples are pounding. I tell Mara I’ll call her later and then gulp a few Advil and head upstairs to my room. I grab a marker off my desk, write I HATE MYSELF on the back of my hand, and crawl into bed. I attempt to fall asleep but no matter what, I can’t get “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” out of my head.
Sam is everywhere.
Over the next four days, I can’t step out of the house without seeing him trimming the shrubs across the street. Well, not him. But for a second, I think it’s him and my pulse starts racing and I wonder whether I should say hi. But then I realize it’s actually our neighbor, who also happens to be a middle-aged Korean woman, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
I see Sam as I’m driving to Pizza Hut. He’s taking a right onto State Street and, for some reason, behind the wheel of a mail truck.
I see Sam as I’m delivering a pan pizza to a table by the door. He’s hunched over the gumball machine, forcing in some coins. But then I look closer and discover it’s a prepubescent boy with braces and a botched crew cut.
I see Sam as I’m driving home from Pizza Hut. This time I swear it’s him, and I practically mow down two cars to catch up. But once I’m on his fender, I realize he’s got a pancake-size bald spot and a car seat in the back.
That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. Driving to Pizza Hut, thinking I see Sam, waiting tables, thinking I see Sam, driving home, thinking I see Sam. During the hours I’m not working, my grandparents leave for their offices and I stay in bed for as long as possible and then watch TV for as many hours as possible and then, when I can’t stand it any longer, I check my phone for calls from Sam. Of course, there’s never anything, so I linger in front of the fridge for as long as possible and then stay in the shower until I’m as wrinkly as possible and then, when I can’t stand it any longer, I check my buddy list to see if Sam is online or, at the very least, if he’s posted some revealing away message. Of course, there’s never anything, so I climb back in bed or turn on the TV or graze in the fridge or paint my fingernails and then chip everything off and then paint them all over again.
On Friday evening, four days after what I now refer to as The Night I Fucked Everything Up, I’m just settling down on the couch when I hear my grandparents whispering in the kitchen. I have this telepathic sense they’re about to lasso me into a Family Meeting, so I grab my flip-flops, shout that I’m taking a walk, and hurry out the side door.
When I reach the end of the driveway, I consider turning right on Centennial, except that would send me in the direction of Sam’s house. I consider going straight down Chapel, except Sam’s friend Luca lives there and sometimes they go cycling together in the evenings. So I take a left and cross the intersection. I walk through the middle-school parking lot, over the track, past the grid of yellow buses, all the way to the high school.
There are three or four cars in the parking lot. Someone has propped open the pool door with a brick, probably a janitor on a smoke break. I hesitate for a second and then slip inside. As I wander the empty halls, littered with rusty apple cores and battered notebooks, I’m overwhelmed by the scent of chlorine and French fries and something else, probably hormones, but it doesn’t kick in the slightest trace of nostalgia. Not that I was expecting any. I went to Brockport High longer than anywhere else, but by the time I got here, I’d attended seventeen different schools. Some were longer, like when I did all of third grade in Seattle, but that was balanced out by the time Aimee moved us to Bangor, Maine, for twelve days. That was in seventh grade. We arrived in early December and were crashing in a motel while Aimee scouted for longer-term accommodations. But then, when she picked me up from school one Wednesday, she announced that Maine was too damn cold. We checked out of the motel the following morning, did Christmas with my grandparents and Mara, and then drove to South Carolina for the winter.
I pass Sam’s locker and suddenly remember all those times we used to meet here between periods. I’m especially remembering last Thursday, when I was helping Sam clean out this very locker. We were returning from a trash run when we discovered a neon-pink Super Soaker someone had left behind. We filled it up in a water fountain and got into this huge war on our way to the student parking lot. Of course, we ended up having to go to his house to change and, of course, changing involves taking off your clothes, which I guess was the point in the first place.
I spin around, hurry back through the hallways, and push open the pool door. Just as I’m stepping onto the path, I trip, go flying, and smack down hard on the concrete, ripping the hell out of my right knee.
That fucking brick, I think as the blood trickles down my shin. I limp over to the lawn area, wincing in pain. I stay there for a long time, watching the sky turn pink and orange. It would actually be beautiful if I weren’t slumped on the edge of a parking lot, wiping blood off my leg and smearing it onto the grass.
It doesn’t help that my grandparents are obsessed with the idea that I need therapy. It started on Tuesday evening, the day after The Night I Fucked Everything Up. It was obvious they’d been scheming all day because the second they saw me, they were like, “We know you’re upset about what happened with Aimee. We’ll get referrals for therapists, so just let us know if you’d feel more comfortable with a woman or a man. Younger or older? And are you okay driving into Rochester by yourself?”
Then, on Wednesday evening, they tag-teamed me again and asked about Sam and why weren’t they seeing him around. When I told them it was over, my grandpa shook his head and said, “This is just the sort of thing to explore in therapy.”
My grandpa touched my arm. “You know, sweetie, a woman probably makes sense, especially if you’ll be talking about . . . errr . . . romantic issues.”
On Thursday night I dragged Chastity and Trinity into Gates for a movie and then forced them to drink coffee with me at Common Grounds until it was well past the hour when my grandparents went to bed.
But on Friday night, when I returned home with that bloody knee, my grandparents were like, “Aaaah! Self-mutilation!”
“I tripped on a brick,” I said to them. “I just need some Band-Aids.”
Even as they hovered over my leg, squeezing on the Neosporin, they still acted suspicious, as if I ha
d plunged to the pavement to act out repressed anger that I needed to address in therapy.
So this is why, as I’m sitting at the breakfast nook on Sunday morning, I have my headphones on. I just want to send that extra signal that I’m not available for conversation right now.
“V?” My grandpa presses his hands onto my shoulders. “Grandma and I would like to have a Family Meeting.”
“Huh?” I ask.
“FAMILY! MEETING!”
“Oh.”
“Now.”
My grandparents settle onto the couch. I sit in the comfy chair. They start by saying how things have gotten so much better since I arrived in Brockport and how they’re proud of my accomplishments, but they’ve suspected all along that I’ve got some issues from my past still haunting me, so when Aimee didn’t show up for graduation and they saw the effect it had on me, it made them think I’d benefit from a summer of therapy.
I have no idea where to even begin defending myself. When they’re done, I just say, “Things are actually okay with Aimee now. We talked on Tuesday and she sent me that package. Plus, she’s going to fly out here at the end of the summer and drive me to Boston.”
My grandparents stare at me.
“Aimee even said I could visit her in Texas this summer,” I quickly add.
My grandparents exchange this skeptical look, and then my grandpa says, “Do you really think Aimee will make it in August?”
“I hope so,” I say.
“How are you doing about Sam?” my grandma asks.
I gulp hard. Should I tell them how I’ve been imagining I see him everywhere? Should I tell them how, as I was tossing in bed this morning, I remembered what his skin smells like after he’s been in the sun? On Senior Ditch Day last month, a bunch of us went to this quarry and drank beer and swung on a rope into the chilly water. In the late afternoon, Sam and I cuddled on a blanket and he stretched his arm around me and I rested my head on his chest and oh, my God, his skin smelled salty and sweaty and just so . . . so not what I feel like telling my grandparents.
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