Soulstruck

by Natasha Sinel

The rest of the day was a blur of teachers’ voices, lockers slamming, the buses grumbling. When I finally got home, I showered for what felt like hours, and I even dried my hair and swiped a bit of eyeliner and mascara on. Reed’s place was on the other side of town, toward Truro, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to get there by bike on the back roads—all the times I’d been there, he’d driven and always on Route 6. I looked up the fastest bike route on Google and got going.

  Getting there didn’t take as long as Google said it would, so I pulled up to the old house and put my bike on its side next to the front steps. Even though the front lights were out, I could see lights on in the house. I knocked, hoping someone would hear over the music coming from inside the house. I heard movement, the sound of someone walking. And then the door opened.

  A skinny guy opened the door.

  “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

  Maybe this was Chuck. He was the one housemate I hadn’t met before. Even though he didn’t know who I was or why I was here, he didn’t seem to care. I followed him inside.

  “What’s your poison?” He turned to me for a quick second as he led me into the kitchen, which was overflowing with dishes, glasses, and dirty pots and pans.

  I shook my head. Inside the living room about twelve people sat on couches, on the floor, standing, swaying to the music. It was smoky and dark, but I could see that none of them was Reed. The guy opened the refrigerator and held a bottle of water out to me. I took it. I didn’t want it, but I could tell that he would keep trying until I accepted something.

  “Is Reed here?” I asked.

  “I assume so since it’s his going-away party.”

  Going-away party? My mouth suddenly felt dry. I took a sip of the water and then put it back on the counter.

  The guy poured vodka into a cup. I watched it glug glug, almost to the top. Then he poured a quarter inch of orange juice on top.

  “I’m just gonna go look for him,” I said, though it came out more like a whisper. He shrugged, as I left the kitchen.

  Reed was going away? Was he going back to Cleveland? Did Mom know? My hand felt shaky as I grabbed the handrail and walked up the stairs. They must have had a few parties in the last couple of weeks because Clarissa’s basket on the landing was almost overflowing with empty beer bottles and rusted pieces of metal.

  I knocked softly on Reed’s door. No answer. I slowly turned the handle and peeked in. It was dark, but I could see that Reed was asleep in bed, his hair showing above the sheets, his soft snores barely audible. I was surprised that he was sleeping while there was a party for him downstairs.

  I tiptoed toward the bed and sat on the edge. Reed shifted a little in his sleep, and that’s when I saw her. Clarissa. Her brown curly hair touching the side of his face, her bare shoulder pressed against his chest. My heart stopped. The earth shifted.

  “Oh my god,” I said, but it came out as a horrified whisper. I stood but I kept my eyes on her, this girl Clarissa, sleeping soundly, with Reed’s bare arm around her. Reed opened his eyes and his body jerked when he saw me. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do or say anything.

  Clarissa’s arm snaked around him in her sleep, trying to pull him back down to her, but he kept his head up, his eyes on me.

  “What time is it?” he whispered. “You’re early.”

  As if my being early was the issue. Even if I’d been on time, he would’ve been fine seeing me right after screwing his housemate? And I knew he had because there was a condom wrapper on the floor next to the bed.

  Clarissa turned her head then and her mouth puckered into a surprised “O.”

  Reed put his hand on my forearm. His fingers that had just been on, maybe in, Clarissa’s body. I pulled away.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Let me just—let’s talk, okay? Gimme a minute. I’ll be right out, okay?”

  I knew what he was trying to say. He wanted me to leave the room so he could get up and get dressed because his naked body and Clarissa’s naked body were under those covers together. Exactly where I’d been only a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Rachel,” he said, when I didn’t budge, when I couldn’t move my eyes from the spot where her shoulder was still pressed against his chest. Clarissa had turned back around, hiding her face.

  “Oh god,” she said. “Fuck.”

  I stumbled to the door. I looked back. He got out of bed and stood, not a stitch of clothes on him.

  I burst into tears and ran as fast as I could toward the stairs. Tears blinded me as I ran, sliding my hand along the wall. I felt sharp metal on my hand. It sliced through my palm, and then there was an awful ripping sound as the hook holding Clarissa’s sculpture pulled out of the wall. The huge copper circle fell, crashing against my shoulder, and then I was no longer upright. I tumbled, tumbled down, slid down, bumped down the steps as the sculpture knocked over the basket of broken bottles, gnarled wood, and pointy metal objects. Everything was on top of me, underneath me, with me. Clarissa’s art and junk tumbled down the stairs with me and I no longer knew whether the things slamming into me were stairs or her creations.

  I heard Reed call my name as I landed hard on the floor.

  SIXTEEN

  Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher)

  Monday is a warm, early spring day, so at lunch, I know I’ll find Jay sitting on our favorite bench in the courtyard. Serena mixes up who she eats lunch with. Sometimes with us, sometimes with the cheerleaders. But since she told Jay last night that she needs a break from me, I know she won’t be eating with us today. Maybe ever. And that hurts like hell.

  I sit next to Jay and drop my messenger bag on the damp grass. I peek inside my lunch bag as though something has miraculously appeared since this morning. I pull out my granola bar and groan. Jay nudges me with his shoulder and offers me half of his sandwich. It’s always the same—four slices of roasted turkey, one slice of Muenster cheese, and one lettuce leaf between two pieces of whole wheat bread.

  “I’m good. Thanks,” I say.

  A few of the junior guys from the lacrosse team walk by us. Wade Rush, bulky with hair buzzed so short, you can’t even tell what color it is—plants himself directly in front of me and makes a weird sound, sort of like a growl.

  I probably should feel threatened, but I’m more grossed out by the smell of his breath—garlicky and sour.

  “Stay away from our boy,” he hisses. “He doesn’t need any distractions.”

  Jay stands, six-foot-five and solid.

  “You know,” Jay says calmly. “A hard hit on the helmet can fracture the basilar bone of the skull and you can leak cerebral spinal fluid from your nose without even realizing it.”

  “Freakin’ mutant freak,” Wade says, but he wipes his nose as he walks away.

  “My hero,” I say to Jay in a high-pitched voice as he sits. The corner of his mouth twitches up.

  Wade and the other guys keep looking at me and whispering as they cross the walkway to the lawn and sit with Sawyer.

  “Shut it, assholes.” Sawyer says. “She didn’t do anything.”

  Serena’s sitting a few yards behind Sawyer, next to Rylin. I want to catch Serena’s eye, see if she’ll acknowledge me at all, or that this is happening, but she seems oblivious to it, and she’s not looking over here.

  Sawyer gets up and walks toward us. I can feel Jay’s body tense next to me.

  “Don’t listen to those dicks,” Sawyer says. “I played shit lacrosse at the game yesterday and, using their exceptional logic, they assumed it was because of you. But it’s not.” He looks at Jay quickly, then back to me. “I’ve just got some stuff going on at home, and I don’t feel like telling the guys yet.”

  Given his mom’s visit to our house Friday night, I’m pretty sure I know what the stuff at home is.

  “We’re okay, you and me,” he says. “I’ll make sure they lay off.”

  Not that my life depends on whether Sawyer Bas
kin and I are okay, but if he wants to play the good cop to his bad-cop friends, I’ll let him.

  He nods at Jay, then goes back to the other guys.

  “That was … odd,” Jay says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Kyle did say the game was abysmal yesterday. But still—”

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “I got a 98 on my bio test,” Jay says.

  “That’s great.”

  “It’s not great at all,” he says. “I got all the answers right but Billings dinged me two points because I didn’t show my work on one problem. Does that even make sense?”

  I shake my head no.

  “I’m going to talk to him,” Jay says.

  I watch Serena as she gathers her stuff, says good-bye to Rylin, and walks away by herself. I can just make out the back of her as she enters the school building. The bell is about to ring for sixth period. I know Jay must be watching her go, too. In her too-short skirt that’s way too cold for today.

  SEVENTEEN

  The idea of a soul mate is beautiful and very romantic in a movie or a song, but in reality, I find it scary.

  —Vanessa Paradis (musician)

  At the ER after my fall down the stairs with Clarissa’s sculpture, the doctor pulled about seven shards of glass and pieces of copper out of the backs of my thighs and then stitched up the wounds. It felt awful, but the tetanus booster the nurse gave me almost hurt more. Afterward, she said I could get dressed and wait to be discharged.

  “You know when people ask what your most embarrassing moment is?” Serena asked, handing me the sweatpants she’d brought me from home. I pulled them on gingerly over my newly bandaged wounds. “And you can never think of anything good, so you have to say something like ‘I farted at gym in second grade and everyone laughed?’ Well, now you really have something.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Except it was the worst, most painful moment of my life. Even more than embarrassing.”

  Serena sat on the bed next to me and put her arm around my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Can I start talking shit about him now?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  She got up and handed me my sweater.

  “Is he still here?” I asked.

  Reed had driven me to the hospital. I’d lain on my stomach on the bench seat in the back of the van, and Clarissa kneeled on the floor in front of me, holding my hand as my tears rolled onto the faded gray upholstery. Given the circumstance, I wanted to tell her to get the fuck off me, but her other hand was smoothing my hair and calming me, and she seemed so genuine and kind, so I allowed myself to forget who she was.

  “No,” Serena said. “They left right when your mom got here.”

  That stung. I’d pictured Reed sitting in the waiting room, worried, feeling guilty, hoping to get a minute to come in to see me and apologize. To beg my forgiveness.

  “Why did you go to his house?” Serena asked.

  “I just needed to see him. I wanted to see if, I don’t know, I thought—”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “But he wasn’t. He isn’t your soul mate. You deserve so much better than him. You know that now, right?”

  I felt like a child being reprimanded. I didn’t answer.

  “I’ll go see where your mom is and tell her you’re ready. She’s probably out there hounding someone for your discharge papers.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I lay on my side—it hurt to put pressure on the backs of my legs—and reached over to the nightstand to grab my phone, which had been retrieved from my torn and bloody jeans when I first arrived.

  No message from Reed. One from Jay, who was out on an all-night EMS training run. If Reed and Clarissa had called 9-1-1 instead of driving me to the hospital, Jay probably would’ve been with the EMS team to show up. I didn’t know whether that would’ve been better or worse.

  JAY: Did they get everything out? Make sure they give you tetanus booster. Call when you can.

  I smiled. That text was clearly from EMT-in-training Jay, not from Friend Jay. But it was okay. Both versions made him who he was.

  ME: Got the shot. Pain in the butt.

  JAY: The shot or me?

  ME: Both. Thanks for checking in. Hope to leave here soon.

  I put my phone next to me as Mom came in the room.

  “I never understand why it takes so long to sign a few papers and get out of here,” Mom said. “You got dressed okay?”

  I nodded.

  “It hurts?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you know Reed was leaving Wellfleet?”

  She nodded.

  “Where’s he going? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mom sighed, then sat on the chair next to me.

  “He’s going to stay with friends of Angela’s in Vermont. They have a room and a job for him,” she said.

  “Did you tell him he had to go because of me?”

  “No,” Mom said, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. “I made it pretty clear from the beginning how I felt about the two of you together, though.”

  Reed was moving away, probably in part because of me. It was officially over. He didn’t love me.

  “I thought he’d change his mind, but—” The tears started again.

  “I know, sweetie, I know.”

  She sat on the bed next to me and rubbed my shoulder.

  “I really thought he was my soul mate,” I said.

  Mom nodded. “I know,” she said. “He wasn’t. He isn’t.”

  I jerked away from her. Mom had never even hinted to me about my soul mate. She’d always sworn that she would never, ever see who my soul mate was. No matter what.

  “What?” I said. “I thought you can’t see—or won’t look—or whatever. So now you can see who it is?”

  “No, honey,” she said. “I don’t know anything about your soul mate. And you’re right—I can’t see who it is because I won’t look.”

  I knew I was doing that squinty thing I do when I’m starting to get angry.

  “God, Mom. Then how can you possibly know that Reed isn’t my soul mate? If you can’t see, then how do you know it isn’t him?”

  “Because, Rachel,” Mom said, her voice louder now, too. “I know because I’m your goddamned mother, that’s how. I know that he’s not someone you would end up with because I know you and you’re seventeen years old and I’m a grown woman, and I just know. Jesus.”

  I started to cry.

  Mom wiped my tears with her thumbs.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”

  I sniffled some more.

  “Your heart is broken. It will take time, but I promise you’ll be okay. Your legs will heal, and your heart will, too. I promise.”

  “I just want to go home now,” I said.

  Mom straightened. “I’ll go see what’s taking them so long.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I would kiss you, had I the courage.

  —Edouard Manet (artist)

  On the way home from my first full day of school without Serena speaking to me, Jay and I are both quiet, him concentrating on driving, me watching the evergreens zip by. We have the windows open, and the breeze is making Jay’s hair stir.

  “I’m going to turn the garage into my bedroom,” I say.

  He glances at me before turning back to the road.

  “Isn’t it, like, a storage room or something? It’s kind of a mess, right?” he asks.

  “Yeah, it’s a big project. I’ll have to clean out all the crap, and paint and get a rug and stuff.”

  “What about heat? Is there heat?”

  I smile because—I don’t know why—because he cares, maybe.

  “There’s an electric heater in the wall. I think my grandfather used to do woodworking in there.”

  Jay nods. “Your mom okay with it?”

  “I haven’t told her,” I say. “And I’m not going
to yet. I found a box in there.”

  Jay doesn’t look at me, but his eyebrows lift a bit.

  “I think I want to look in it before I tell her, in case she takes it away before I have the chance.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s sealed. But I just have this feeling that it has to do with my father.” The word father feels strange to me. Formal. But since he died before I was born, and Mom doesn’t talk about him, dad feels too familiar.

  “Am I a horrible person?” I ask. “If I look inside?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yeah.”

  He laughs, and it’s cute the way his dimple bounces on the side of his cheek. I’d been noticing things like that about Jay more and more lately.

  “You find a box that could have stuff in it about your mom, who you can never get a straight answer out of about your dad or anything from her past. Who wouldn’t look? It seems like a logical thing to do.”

  “But I mean, it’s sealed and the label isn’t in her handwriting. Maybe she doesn’t even know it’s there. I thought you might think I was being dishonest, like I should give it to my mom right away.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, maybe.”

  I punch him gently on the arm.

  “Like I said: You’re asking me?”

  “I feel like I’m so close,” I say so quietly, I’m sure he couldn’t hear me.

  “Close to what?” He has bionic ears.

  “To knowing something. I’ve never really known anything. I’m just feeling my way around, you know? Banging into walls, reacting. I want to just know stuff and then get started with my life.”

  Jay’s quiet for a few seconds.

  “Would it make a real difference to you? Knowing more about him?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I was never one of those fatherless kids whose mission in life is to find out everything about their biological father. It really didn’t matter to me. I have my mom and she always told me that the support group is our real family. But as I get older, it’s become clearer that they aren’t. I mean, every one of them has been struck by lightning. But not me. I don’t fit in.”

  “So you want to know where you fit in? You want to know who he was so you can see if you’re exactly like him or something?”