She looks me up and down with a crooked smile, and I can’t help but grin back, even though my mind has gone completely blank. I spend so much time thinking about her when she’s not around that I’m always shocked when I come face-to-face with the real person.
“You look good in black,” she says.
“It suits you, too,” I say. I resist the impulse to comment that I’ve already worn too much black this year; it’s the kind of self-pitying crap I’m prone to, and I know it’s no way to make a girl fall for you. Viola knows that my father died.
“Seen your best friend around?” she asks. “I have a funny story for him.”
“Matt? No, I haven’t seen him. Haven’t seen him since yesterday. No idea where he is.” I glance over her shoulder to where Matt is walking across the parking lot as we speak, black gown streaming behind him like a cape, cap held in one hand, the other held aloft with the middle finger extended toward the crowd of reporters. We’ve been told not to acknowledge them; reference to the shooting is to be confined to one moment of silence, followed by a reading of the names, and to the silent tribute of the black, empty chairs. No one, in other words, is to turn to the crowd after taking their diploma and shout, “Fuck Sam Keeley!” Or do the sort of thing that Matt is doing right now.
“What’s the funny story?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s about someone I don’t think you know. She’s a junior on the volleyball team. She had a thing for Matt.” She shrugs, apparently resigned to talking to me instead of my friend. “You didn’t play any sports, did you?”
“No. No sports.”
“Were you in any clubs?”
“No clubs.”
She gives me a quizzical smile. “What exactly did you do in high school, Cole?”
Think about you, I want to tell her. “Mostly wait for it to be over,” I say.
She pauses for a moment and then bursts out laughing. I love the way she throws her head back but keeps her eyes on me, as if she’s watching to make sure I don’t pull something on her in this moment of vulnerability. I want to surprise her and make her laugh so hard that she closes her eyes.
Viola moved to town midway through the ninth grade. She came from England, and everything about her has always been different. She did lots of things in high school: field hockey; the fall play a couple of times; speech and debate. She had a fair number of friends, but she always seemed like she was watching us from a little bit of a distance.
“I was just talking to Paul Gerber’s parents,” I say, trying to keep her talking. “You know, about helping him line up.”
“I don’t think he’s actually graduating, is he?” she asks.
“I think that kids like him get a blank diploma and then come back to school next year to do life skills.”
“Do you think he understands that all the rest of us are done with school? I’m just imagining when he gets home and takes his piece of paper out of the tube, unrolls it, and finds that it’s blank. Will he feel left behind? Does he know we’re all leaving?” She must see a look on my face, because she quickly adds: “I mean, you’re going too, Cole. Eventually, right?”
“Right,” I say. “Right. Next year. That’s heavy, about Paul. I don’t know.” I can’t remember any of the thoughtful, reflective lines I came up with for a serious moment.
Matt has reached the field, but Viola still hasn’t turned and seen him.
“So,” I say, “are you supposed to be giving a speech today? Going to quote some Eliot? Tell us not to live out our lives in coffee spoons?”
“Measure out our lives with coffee spoons, not in them. And the salutatorian doesn’t get to speak, Cole; only the valedictorian. There’s no silver medal, and if there were, I wouldn’t want it.”
“Right. Uh, right. Well, it was so close, I thought they might put you in anyway. What were you off by, a thousandth of a GPA point or something?” I laugh. She doesn’t. This is pretty much why I talk to her only a fraction as much as I plan to: I will inevitably say something agonizingly stupid.
I quickly start blathering on about summer plans and whatever else comes to mind, which honestly is not much. I haven’t met many British people, but Viola is listening and nodding with one raised eyebrow in what I interpret as a classic posture of resigned English indulgence. I love that she can raise one eyebrow like that.
Matt has disappeared into the crowd, and I soon run out of things to talk about. Viola’s family is nearby, and she excuses herself to go and join them. I ache as I watch her walk away. Things have to work out this summer. I don’t know what will happen to me if I have to watch her walk away for good in August.
I look around, wanting something to stay busy with. Mom has found a seat with the Gerbers. Paul is with one of his special-education teachers and seems to be all right. The clouds are a little bit darker. A bunch of younger kids are milling around, looking bored.
Something stirs down front, near the podium. There’s a change in tone, a little murmur, people looking and then quickly looking away. Maybe someone is having a breakdown, I think. Maybe seeing those black-draped chairs was too much. Maybe the school shouldn’t have done that. We couldn’t have done nothing, though. There’s never a right thing to do or not to do. Say something, don’t say something—it doesn’t change it. I start to make my way down to get a look. Whatever’s happening can’t be too serious, or else the police would be getting involved. I get a little closer, craning my head to look in the direction where Mrs. Maiden had been standing; for some reason, I think the most likely thing is that she’s collapsed. There are a few parents by the risers, arms crossed on their chests, speaking quietly to one another. One of them turns and looks over her shoulder. I follow her eyes, and I see him.
Matt is sitting in one of the chairs. Right there, in the front row, all alone. He’s set himself down in one of the black-draped seats and he’s just sitting, staring at the stage, rubbing his right elbow. I stop and watch for a moment, but no one is doing anything, so I go over and stand in front of him. He looks right through me.
Matt Simpson has always had a special status. I don’t mind saying he’s handsome: over six feet tall, big and athletic, sandy blond hair. The guy’s going off to college on a Division I baseball scholarship, and he looks the part: all American. He even has the square jaw. Right now, though, he just looks lost.
No one else is coming over. For the last eleven years, the school has always made a big deal out of providing counselors for everything, and now here we are at the finish line, and there’s no one to be seen.
“Matt,” I say. He doesn’t look at me. “Matt, get the fuck up.”
He just sits, holding his elbow.
“I thought your arm was getting better.”
“It was.”
“Is your blood sugar low?” I ask. “Do you need some juice?”
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t look like that’s the problem. He usually gets all sweaty when his sugar’s low.
“Do you smell something?” Matt asks.
I sniff the air. “No.”
“It’s some sort of chemical or something.”
I shake my head. He has to get up. “Matt,” I say, “you’re being disrespectful. These chairs are supposed to be empty. They’re memorials, you know? You can’t just sit in them. It’s wrong. It’s like you’re taking a leak in a reflecting pool.”
“Why are they empty?” he asks. “Why do you think they’re supposed to be empty?”
What a stupid question. “Because they’re gone,” I say. “Because they’re never coming back and . . . and they’ve left a gap here. It’s symbolic. The holes never closed up, you know?” I shouldn’t have to explain it to him. My eyes turn toward the press on the far side of the parking lot, and I wonder whether that’s what he’s upset about, whether he thinks the chairs are some sort of media stunt. That’s the sort of thing that would drive him nuts. Matt’s always had a hard time with the tributes and memorials. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over
not being at school that day.
“Think of Andy,” I say. “That chair is for Andy. You have to get out of it. I know you hate shit like this, but you have to go along with it. This is the last time.”
He shakes his head. “You remember that movie Andy liked?” he asks. “The cartoon one with the spaceman?”
“Yeah?
“What was the stupid line he liked to say? I’ve been trying to remember.”
“Get up and I’ll tell you.”
“He said it all the time. I can’t remember.”
“I remember. Get up and I’ll tell you.”
He gazes off to his left, down the long line of black seats. “I don’t know, Cole,” he finally says. “Maybe this is where I was meant to be sitting.” Before I can think of a response, he looks up and really focuses on me for the first time. “You want to hear something crazy?”
I’m not sure I do, but I nod. It’s something you do for your best friend. You listen to the crazy stuff. He’s always done it for me.
“I don’t think I can remember what Andy even looked like anymore.”
I remember. Andy had curly black hair and dark eyes and a dimple in his chin. He looked like his dad and, of course, like Paul. “I have some photos,” I say. “I can show you.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to remember.” He gets up and turns to stand next to me, gazing out over the crowd like nothing happened. I look up at the sky: not a hint of blue. It’s time to start lining up. I put my hand on Matt’s shoulder, and he lets me guide him back to the center aisle and to the rear of the field, where people are taking their positions in line. Matt heads toward the S’s. I remember to look for Paul and make sure he’s in the right spot, and then I stand and wait for the ceremony to begin.
It’s only when we start walking that I realize Matt forgot to ask me what Andy used to say, and that I forgot to tell him.
Two
— Matt —
The lake is there, whenever I close my eyes. I see it from the beach where Andy, Cole, and I used to make sand castles, and where they’d gobble their double-scoop ice cream cones while Mom weighed my serving and prepped an insulin injection. I see the water, green and cold and deeper than anyone knows, stretching out to the far shore. For months, it’s the only thing I’ve been able to dream about, and now it’s where I have to go.
But first, I have to get Cole off this motherfucking bus.
I’m scanning the school parking lot as soon as we pull in. They should have cops here, but they don’t. A reporter could step right up to him, take a photo, stick a microphone in his face. The Boy in the Picture, eleven years later.
The brakes squeal, the bus stops, and I’m out of my seat before anyone else. I push my way down the aisle to the door, and I’m the first one off. It’s completely still. The sun is just beginning to rise, but there are plenty of shadows where someone could hide. I walk along the edge of the lot, looking in between cars, examining the trees that separate it from the town dump. Nothing.
“Captain!”
I turn and see Luther Schmidt coming toward me, duffel thrown over his shoulder, the usual grin on his big, wide face. He slaps me on the arm, hard. Luther does everything hard. He sees me flinch.
“Still sore?” he asks.
“Yeah. A little.” My elbow is throbbing, the injury that almost ended my season stubbornly refusing to heal.
“It’s not gonna be a problem in the fall, is it?”
“Nah. I’ve got some meds, and I’m doing PT all summer. I’ll be ready.”
“Good.” He walks over to his pickup, flips the gate down, and sits. I pull myself up next to him. “So what’re you now?” he asks. “You’re a moose, right?”
“A bison. They’re the Bucknell Bisons.” Luther is the only person I know who’s even worse with names than I am.
“Huh. Anyone famous ever play for them?”
“Christy Mathewson.”
“Never heard of him.” Luther opens his bag, takes out a two-liter Sprite bottle, and has a long sip. He hands it to me, but I push it away. I don’t feel like vodka. We sit and watch the rest of our class streaming off the bus. People are milling around, some heading for their cars, some signing yearbooks. I spot Cole, finally talking to Viola. She’s yawning and clearly wants to go home. It’s fair; we’ve been up all night. Cole’s never been good at picking up on other people’s signals, and he’s never known how easy his own are to read.
“You do laser tag?” Luther asks.
“No.”
“What about the zipline?”
“No.”
“Skating?”
“I didn’t make it to the rink.”
“So what’d you do?”
The truth is, not much. Project Graduation is always at a mystery destination. They keep us there all night so that some kid doesn’t get drunk and drive into a tree. It turned out to be at this massive indoor sports place up the Turnpike: tennis, ice skating, laser tag; they had everything, and I wanted to do it all. I wanted to try to shake this feeling off, this thing that’s been in my head for weeks now, maybe months. I wanted to try to have some fun.
Even more than that, though, I wanted Cole to actually talk to Viola. He barely ever talks to her. I mean, he talks to me about her. All the time, he talks to me. He’s crazy about her. Cole thought she was going to NYU; he didn’t come to school for three days when she decided on UC Berkeley.
Still, he wouldn’t do it. He can be so pathetic sometimes, and the closer I get to leaving, the less I can stand it. So I tried to do it for him. I went up to her and started a conversation, and then I tried to hand it off, but he just did his Cole thing, staring down and mumbling and turning red and basically looking like he wished he wasn’t there.
Which left me to listen to Viola go on and on about the government and the job market and God knows what else. I mean, she’s cute and all, but I honestly don’t know what Cole sees in her. Talking to her was like listening to my dad at a dinner party, all plans and opinions and breaking details down into more details, when I should have been playing laser tag.
I remember when Cole first started talking about her. He was so excited that she knew some poem he liked. He was all, “She actually knows it by heart!” and I’m pretty sure he was in love from that moment on. I don’t see it, but I just want him to be happy. Which is why I wanted him to talk to her, and why I tried so hard to be nice to her when he wouldn’t.
And now, when I’m ready to go, when she’s half-asleep on her feet, Cole picks now to try to get something going.
A couple of girls stop on the way to their cars and start talking to Luther. He elbows me in the side. “Simpson. Wake up.” All three of them are looking at me. I have no idea what they just said. “Are you?” Luther asks.
“Am I what?”
“Dude, are you coming over to my place on the Fourth? My parents are out of town. I have it all to myself.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Yeah, you will.” Luther passes the bottle to the girls, and they look over their shoulders for the chaperones and then each have a drink. One of them holds it to out to me, but I shake my head. They chat with Luther for another moment, and then they leave. Cole is still talking at Viola, and now she’s openly staring off toward her car. He’s hopeless. I love him, but he’s hopeless.
“Crazy, man,” Luther says.
“What’s crazy?”
“Everything. You see the press yesterday? There haven’t been that many since I don’t know when.”
“The fifth anniversary.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I fucking hate them.”
He shrugs. “They’re doing their jobs, I guess. Did you think they were gonna skip it?”
I didn’t. I look past the bus, toward the school. The risers are still up, but the chairs have been put away.
“Luther, do you ever think about it?”
He pauses, bottle halfway to his mouth. “Nah.”
“Really? Never?”
He shifts his weight and squints into the bottle. “I was in Mr. Davis’s class.”
“Yeah, but you could’ve been in our class.”
Luther takes another drink. “My mom said it wasn’t my time,” he finally says. “Like, I was meant to live, right? I was meant to live so that I could do something good. That’s why I’m gonna be a teacher, to do something good in the world.”
“You’re going to be a teacher?”
“Yeah, a gym teacher. Teach little kids to play ball and cooperate and shit like that.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to be a teacher.” I slide down off the tailgate, stretch, and then I turn, take the bottle from his hand, and pour the remainder out onto the ground.
“I wasn’t done with that, Captain!”
“I’m not team captain anymore. High school’s over. Anyway, it’s part of your plan. You’re not supposed to drive off the road.”
“I can drive buzzed.”
“Time to go home, Luther.”
“See you on the Fourth?”
“Sure. See you.” I start to walk away.
“Simpson.”
I turn back. He’s still sitting in his truck, looking at me. “What about you?” he asks. “Why were you meant to live?”
I look at the puddle of vodka below Luther’s dangling feet, mixing with oil and the first light from the sunrise.
“I’m not sure I was.”
I turn my back on him again without waiting for a response. Luther’s not a bad guy. He was a solid first baseman, and he’ll be a hell of a gym teacher.
“Cole!” I call. He stops talking and looks around. I walk toward him. “Cole!” Now he sees me, and I wave him over. He turns back to Viola, says a few more words, and then trots toward me. I turn and head for my car, Cole falling into step alongside. “Let’s go.”
“We were talking,” he says.
“You had all night to talk,” I tell him. “She’s tired. She wants to go home.”
“I talked to her last night.”
“Sort of.”
“I can never think of the right thing to say.”
Every Moment After Page 2
