by Sarah Dessen
“Come back later,” he called out as the kitchen door swung shut behind me. “I’ll be here. Okay?”
I walked quickly through the living room, hitting the screen door hard with the palm of my hand. But just as I started to step out on the porch, I saw something sitting on the little table in a small glass dish where Corinna always kept her keys.
The bracelets. They were all there, stacked neatly, glinting in the small square of sunlight coming through the window above them, like a treasure, shining and waiting for me to find them.
I wasn’t sure what I was thinking as I scooped them out of the dish, then slid them, one by one, onto my own wrist. I watched as they fell down my arm: clink, clink, clink, a sound I knew so well. I stepped onto the porch, wondering where Corinna was, and how she could leave them behind. But as I watched them catch the light on my own wrist, making her music, I knew the truth was that at home, or California, or anywhere in between, even Corinna couldn’t help me now.
The first thing Rina did when we got to the lake house was put on her bikini and pop open a beer. We sat out on the front porch, overlooking the water, where she slathered Bain du Soleil all over her until she stank of coconut, and I sat in my dress—and jacket—chain-smoking, the cordless phone in my lap. I still couldn’t get ahold of Rogerson, and I was starting to panic. If he showed up at Dave’s and found out I’d been with Rina, and didn’t tell him—no. I couldn’t even think about it.
“Will you put that thing down, for God’s sakes?” Rina snapped at me after I’d been dialing for a solid ten minutes, reaching over with one slippery hand to grab the phone away from me and dropping it onto the deck beside her chair, completely out of my reach. “Honestly, I have never seen anyone so co-dependent in my life. Why don’t you go put on your suit, have a beer, and relax?”
“I’m fine like this.” I stretched my legs out to make my point, easing the hem of my dress over the fading bruise on my upper thigh. The truth was I was sweating under my jacket: It was unbearably hot. I turned my attention to the lake, where I could see someone waterskiing, the motor humming as a girl on skis cut a swath back and forth across the water.
“Caitlin.” She lifted up her sunglasses and looked at me. “What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”
She kept her eyes on me, as if daring me to tell her, like I’d told her a million other secrets in this same place the summer before: my crush on Billy Bostwick, lifeguard at the community pool. That I secretly liked liver as a child. That I’d stolen Cass’s pearl earrings, the ones she thought she’d lost at school. But this was too much for me to tell Rina. Even if I really wanted to.
“You’re just not yourself,” she said softly. “You haven’t been in a long time.”
I leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes, and reached my arm up to my face, letting Corinna’s bracelets fall down my arm. I could still hear that motorboat, humming past, the girl on skis laughing as she cut across the waves. “I’m fine,” I said.
“It’s like he’s done something to you,” she said, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter behind my sunglasses. “Like he’s changed something in you. Hurt you or something.”
I opened my eyes and looked at her, my best friend, her face worried as she waited for me to respond. I hated to treat her this way. But her face, slowly, was replaced in my mind with a flash of Rogerson driving, looking for me, his face changing and eyes growing darker, angry, the way they looked right before impact. It was like the mean lady on her bicycle in The Wizard of Oz, the music building as she raced to find Dorothy: You knew she was coming, you just didn’t know when.
“Caitlin,” Rina said softly. “Please. You can tell me anything. You know that.”
But I couldn’t. Rogerson was somewhere, on his way, looking for me. I could feel it, the way Boo always said she could feel rain coming in her bad elbow. I just knew.
I took a deep breath and sat up, grabbing my cigarettes. “I need to use the phone,” I blurted out, reaching over her to grab it. My hand brushed against her skin, damp and sticky and warm, as I started inside the house, pushing the sliding glass door open. When I looked back she was lying flat on her chair, one arm thrown across her face, having given up on me.
I called Rogerson at every number I knew, standing under those rows of stuffed fish. They stared back at me, bug-eyed and scared, as the phone rang on and on, endless, with nobody home.
It was late afternoon and I was long ready to go when Jeff showed up. He snuck around the side of the house, crept soundlessly behind our chairs, and expertly dropped an ice cube on the small of Rina’s already pink back, scaring the crap out of both of us.
“Jeff!” Rina squealed, sitting up quickly and slapping her top—which she’d untied to avoid strap marks—against her ample chest. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack, you jerk.”
“Lighten up,” he said easily, sliding a hand around her leg as he sat down next to her. He waggled his fingers at me and did his signature move, flipping his hair out of his face with a snap of his neck. I could see myself reflected back—anxious, angry, glancing at my watch one more time—in his sunglasses.
“Rina,” I said, for at least the twentieth time, “I really need to go.” I’d been pressing her for what seemed like forever, while she kept drinking beers and waving me off.
“What’s your rush?” Jeff said. “I brought some steaks, invited over some of the fellas. Thought we’d have us a little cookout.”
“Umm, that sounds good,” Rina murmured, rolling over onto her stomach again. “Who’d you invite?”
“Ed and Barrett,” he said. “Oh, and Scott from the store.”
“I can’t stay,” I told him. “Rina was just about to take me home, actually.”
“I told you, I can’t drive home right now,” she said in an irritated voice, scooping some more pimento cheese out of my mother’s Tupperware container onto a cracker and popping it into her mouth. “I have to sober up first.”
“Rina,” I said, feeling panic rising in me, higher and higher, even as I tried to squash it down. I’d been circling like this madly for over an hour, like an animal about to gnaw its own leg off to get free. “I told my mother I’d be home by six-thirty, remember?”
“She doesn’t care,” Rina said easily, as Jeff rubbed her leg, taking a sip of her beer. “She won’t even notice if you’re late. Have some dinner and then we’ll go.”
I lowered my voice. “Rina. I have to go right now. Okay?”
“Caitlin, relax,” she said. “God, have a beer or something.” To Jeff she added, “She’s been like this, like, all afternoon.”
Jeff looked at me, flipped his hair again, and I wanted to kill both of them.
“You promised you’d drive me home,” I said to Rina, and I could feel my throat getting tight. “You promised.”
“Look, give me the phone,” she said, grabbing it sloppily from where it was lying on the deck between us. “I’ll call Rogerson and explain everything. What’s his number? Oh wait, I think I know—”
“No,” I said, yanking the phone out of her slippery hand. I could only imagine how Rogerson would react to hearing where I was from her. “Please, just take me home. It’ll only take a second. Okay?”
“What is the matter with you?” she said angrily. “God, you’d think it was killing you to be here with me or something.” And then she looked at Jeff, raising her eyebrows in a can-you-believe-this kind of way.
For two hours I’d felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker parts of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.
Out on the lake the sun was hitting right by the dock, glittering across the water like diamonds.
“Fine,” I said, standing up. “I’ll get there myself.” I walked off the porch, across the scrubby pine yard and out onto the road, which snaked ahead of me over a long bridge, around a bend and
miles and miles into town. But I didn’t care. Just walking would get me that much closer, give me the forward motion to feel that I could somehow fix this.
“Caitlin,” I heard Rina calling out behind me, her voice sun-baked and drunk. “Don’t be ridiculous. Come back here!”
But I was already hitting my stride, sandal straps rubbing my feet and Corinna’s bracelets clinking, playing her theme music, with every step I took.
I must have walked about a mile when a car pulled up behind me and beeped, quickly, three times. I walked closer to the edge of the road, eyes straight ahead, willing them to pass, but they didn’t. Instead, the car rolled closer, slowing down to stop right beside me. It was Jeff.
“Would have been here sooner,” he explained, flipping his hair as I fastened my seat belt. “But Miss Rina threw a little fit about me leaving her. You understand.”
“Yeah,” I said, as he hit the gas and we sped toward town, his big convertible sucking up the road beneath us. “I do.”
We might have talked on the way home: I don’t really remember. My mind was already working my defense, figuring the play, setting the pick and the run and shoot. As we got closer to town, the pine trees and flat fields giving way to asphalt and strip malls, I could feel the dread that had been building in me all afternoon finally fill me up. And by the time we got to my house, every muscle in my body was tight and I could hear my heart beating. I had a crazy thought to tell Jeff to just keep going, gunning past what was waiting for me, driving on and on to someplace safe. But I knew Rogerson would find me. He always did.
There were cars parked all up and down the street for the party, but I could see Rogerson right in front of the walk. The BMW was right by the mailbox, windows up, engine off.
“You know,” Jeff said in his slow drawl as he pulled into Boo and Stewart’s driveway to turn around, “Rina was just a little tipsy is all. You shouldn’t hold it against her.”
“I don’t,” I said, opening my door before he’d even come to a full stop. The sight of Rogerson waiting for me, just like all those times at the turnaround, filled me with a fear that clenched hard in my chest, like a fist closing over something tightly. “Thanks for the ride, Jeff.”
“Looks like quite a party,” he said, nodding at my parents’ backyard, where I could see the tent—still standing—all lit up, with people milling around beneath it. Someone was playing the piano, tinkling and sweet, and it was slowly getting dark. The perfect Fool’s night.
“Yeah,” I said, already backing away from the car. “It always is.”
The grass was wet on my feet as I ran across it, with Jeff yelling good-bye behind me. My house was all lit up to my right, and I knew that inside it smelled like potpourri, all those dolls arranged in their intimate groups.
Rogerson’s car was dark as I came up on it, with that eerie green glow from the dash lights coming from inside. I opened the passenger door and got in, shutting it quietly behind me. He didn’t say anything.
I turned to face him, ready with my explanation, the defense I’d drawn out in the long walk and ride home: I tried to call you, I couldn’t get here, I’m sorry.
But I didn’t even get a word out before he turned, with the face I’d never captured on film—wrenched and angry—and slapped me across the face.
It was hard enough to push me back against my door, which hadn’t shut completely and so fell open just a bit. I reached out behind me to try and grab the handle, but he was already coming at me again.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said, moving so close that his breath was in my face, hot and smoky-smelling. He grabbed me by the front of my dress, yanking me even closer to him, the fabric bunching in his fist, bulging through his fingers. “I have been waiting for you for an hour. ”
“Rina,” I said quickly, gasping, “Rina invited me to the lake, I tried to call you—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he screamed, and then pushed me away from him, hard, so that I fell back against the door again and this time it swung open fully, making a loud, scraping noise against the sidewalk. I felt myself tumbling backward, losing balance even before I hit the pavement, my elbows grinding as I tried to catch myself. My face still stung, my dress bunched up at my chest, and then he was suddenly out of the car, standing over me.
“Get up,” he said, and behind me I could hear the party, the piano, now with voices singing along. “Get up!”
“Rogerson,” I said as I struggled to my feet. “Please—”
“Get up!” he yelled, and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me toward him. I tried to duck my head, to turn away, but he was too fast for me. I saw his fist coming and it hit me right over my left eye, sending a flurry of stars and colors across my vision. I slid down, out of his grasp, onto the grass: It was wet and slimy against my bare skin.
I lifted my head and he was standing over me, breathing hard. I knew I should get up before someone saw us but somehow I couldn’t move, like those voices—all those voices—were suddenly shaking me awake, pulling me to the surface. It was the first time he’d done it out in the open, not inside the car or a room, and the vastness of everything, fresh air and space, made me pull myself tighter, smaller.
“Goddammit, Caitlin,” he said, glancing at the house, then back at me. “Get up right now.”
I tried to roll away from him onto my side, in the hopes of getting to my feet, but everything hurt all at once: my face, my fingers, the back of my head, my eye, my arms, my skin itself. Each place he’d ever struck me, like old war wounds on rainy days.
He nudged me with his toe, in the small of my back. “Come on,” he said quietly. And I remembered the first time he’d said it, when all this had started, standing by that open door: Come on.
“No,” I said into the grass, trying to tuck every bit of me in and hide, to sink into the cracks of the sidewalk beneath me.
“Get up,” he said again, a bit louder, and now the nudge was hard, more like a kick. I rolled a bit, curling tighter, and closed my eyes. Out in the tent, the song went on to the rousing finish, then a burst of laughter and applause.
“Get up, Caitlin,” he said, and I closed my eyes as tight as I could, clenching my teeth, thinking of anything else. Corinna, standing on a cliff in California with the blue, blue water stretched out ahead of her, with even Mexico in sight. Cass in New York, sitting in her window with a million lights spread out behind her. And then, finally me, left behind again. And look what I had become.
I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself for the next hit, and felt something. Something grainy and small, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park.
Oh, Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.
“Caitlin,” Rogerson said, and I snapped back to reality as he reached down and yanked at my jacket, trying to pull me up with it. But I just shook it off, letting it slide over my arms and away from me, keeping the sand in my hand. My bare skin was cool, exposed under the streetlight with the white of the dress and the green ivy almost glowing.
I was tired. Worn thin, my springs broken, spokes shattered. I felt old and brittle. I braced myself, waiting for the next kick, the next punch. I didn’t care if it was the last thing I ever felt.
“Caitlin,” Rogerson said again, and I felt him draw his foot back, readying. “I told you to—”
And that was as far as he got before I heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice.
It was my mother.
“Stop it!” she said, her tone steady and loud. “You stop that right now.”
“I didn’t—” Rogerson said. And in the distance, suddenly, I could hear sirens. Rogerson stepped back from me: He heard them, too.
“Get away from her,” my mother said, crouching down beside me. “You lousy basta
rd. Caitlin. Caitlin, can you hear me?”
“No,” I said. “Wait—”
I could feel her smoothing my hair off my face, her own chest heaving against my shoulders. Then, suddenly, she said, “Oh, my God, Caitlin. Oh, my God.”
I turned to her, but she wasn’t looking at my face. Her mouth was open, horrified, as her eyes traveled over my arms, shoulders, back, and legs. Under the white of the streetlight, my skin was ghostly pale, and each bruise, old and new, seemed dark and black against it. There were so many of them.
Rogerson was backing away now, even as my mother wrapped her arms around me, so gently, sobbing as she tried to find a spot that wasn’t hurt. The sirens were coming closer, and I could see blue lights moving across the trees.
The front door slammed and I could hear voices gathering, getting closer. The piano music had stopped. It seemed like everything had stopped.
“Margaret?” I heard Boo call out. “What’s going on?”
“What’s happening out here?” I heard my father say, his voice choppy as he ran through the grass. “Caitlin? Are you all right?”
“It’s over now,” my mother said, still crying softly as she rocked me back and forth, smoothing my hair. “It’s okay, honey. I’m here. It’s okay.”
“What happened?” my father said, but no one answered him. The police car pulled up and I heard a door slam, a voice garbled and hissing over the radio inside.
I looked up, trying to find Rogerson, but it seemed like the dark had somehow sucked him up and he’d disappeared. I could hear everything that was going on around me: the murmuring of the Fool’s Party guests, my father talking to the policeman, Rogerson complaining angrily as the cuffs clicked shut. I could hear the streetlight buzzing and Boo crying onto Stewart’s shoulder when she saw the bruises on my skin, the way she whimpered again and again, I should have known. I should have known.
And all the while my mother was crouching over me, her voice steady, rocking me back and forth like she had the day Cass had cut my eye, saying everything would be all right. I couldn’t even tell her I was sorry.
