How It Ends

by Laura Wiess

And here is where poring over all those biker thumbnails on his website finally served me.

  “I can’t forget it,” I said and, cocking my head, recited, “‘Gas, grass, or ass, no one rides for free.’ That’s the big rule, right?”

  His jaw dropped, the guys eavesdropping at the next table choked on their potato chips, and I just stood there, eyebrows high and cheeks burning.

  “Jesus Christ, Hanna,” he said finally, lips twitching.

  Oh, God, I so didn’t want to smile but there was no way to stop it, and I ended up shaking my head and laughing and waving him away. “Go eat your lunch, and if you want to give me a tip, you have to leave it on the table just like everyone else.”

  He nodded and found a seat, and I went about my job wiping counters and slicing tomatoes and shredding lettuce and making more subs for more guys and joking and laughing and stuffing my apron pockets with tips, and when the hour was up and the first crew was leaving, Jesse paused at the counter and smiled and said, “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you,” I said lightly.

  And you know what? He’d left me a five-dollar tip for a four-dollar sandwich.

  Interesting.

  No Jesse today.

  According to Ronnie, who just couldn’t wait to trumpet out the news, Jesse had planned on coming, but some girl had shown up at the site looking for him right as they were about to pull out, and she’d brought Burger King, so he’d stayed to eat with her.

  “Well, that’s nice,” I said. “BK’s always good.” I pulled out my pad and pen and said, “Now, what’ll you have?”

  I’m getting good at pulling the curtains shut around my “glass head.”

  I don’t want to be read anymore.

  Not by Seth.

  Not by anybody.

  We got robbed.

  I keep thinking, I’m okay, I’m okay, but then I just start shaking and crying all over again.

  I told the cop the guy must have known our busy time, because he came in early before lunch when there was no one there but me and little Antonio. I was slicing tomatoes and Antonio was sweeping and singing “That’s Amore,” making me laugh by dancing and pretending his broom was someone named Lola Brigitta, and then this guy came in wearing a hoodie, and I remember thinking, Holy crap, it’s August!

  I wish I hadn’t put my tomato knife down, because something just didn’t feel right, but I put it down anyway because, I mean, really, what was I gonna do, carry it to the counter just because he was wearing a hoodie? For all I knew he’d had chemo or something and was embarrassed because he didn’t have any hair.

  I don’t know! I never met a criminal before!

  So I grabbed my pad and pen and went to the counter and was like, Can I help you? And he just whipped out this box cutter and grabbed my shirt so hard, it was like he punched me in the chest, and yanked me half over the counter and said, Open the register. This surge of hot terror washed through me and I started shaking and I couldn’t hardly stand because his eyes were flat and he didn’t care at all, I was like nothing, and he threw me at the register. I stumbled and hit my mouth on the edge and started to cry and he didn’t care that I was bleeding he just said, Open the fucking register before I kill you, bitch, and he would have, he would have, but I couldn’t because I was shaking so bad…

  …And then Antonio was coming up behind him with the broom, but the floor creaked, so the robber just turned around and…

  …He cut Antonio’s face—just slashed it—and his skin opened across his mouth and up to his eye, and it just split and gushed blood and looked like meat inside, and I couldn’t even breathe but I was hitting all these buttons on the register, going crazy trying to make it open, and it finally opened, and when Antonio fell, that guy kicked him in the chest and he didn’t have to do that, he didn’t, because the register was open and he could take the money, he could have just taken it, but he didn’t, he stopped to kick Antonio again…

  …And then he just swung a fist and bashed me in the face so I would get out of the way, but I was already trying, I was trying, and he didn’t care, he took the money and then he ran and left us there on the floor.

  My head was spinning and all I could hear was the cord on the ceiling fan clicking against the blades, and then I heard a car door slam and started freaking and tried to get my cell phone out, but I was shaking too bad. The door opened and I started going, No no no, and I heard somebody go, Shit! and then, Call the cops! And it was Ronnie, one of the construction guys, and he got down next to me and said, It’s okay, Hanna, don’t move, you’re gonna be fine, and that just made me cry even more because I hardly knew him but he stayed with me anyway…

  …I think Antonio is dead but I don’t know, I don’t know.

  Why did he have to kick him? Antonio never hurt anybody

  He was just a little old man.

  The whole side of my face is purple. Blood vessels burst in my eye so it’s like one big red blood spot and the lid is swollen. My lip is split, my tooth is loose, and I have a giant knot on my head. My breastbone is bruised and there are fingerprints squeezed into my arm.

  Antonio is alive but he might lose his eye, and his heart is all messed up.

  I’m home from the hospital. My mother made me a bed on the couch because she was afraid I’d get dizzy and fall down the stairs.

  People are calling and sending flowers and balloons.

  It’s surreal.

  I’m surrounded by people who care about me and all I can think of is the look on that guy’s face.

  If I hadn’t gotten that register open, he would have killed me.

  I would have been over forever, murdered by some guy with a zit next to his left nostril, scabby knuckles, and blond eyebrows, a guy maybe six years older than me, wearing a gray USC hoodie and jeans.

  He would have taken my life. Taken it.

  Death by box cutter. Death by fists. Death by stomping.

  It’s unbelievable that someone I don’t even know would touch me, not to mention punch me in the chest and the face. That making me bleed was less than no big deal.

  I don’t even know how to get my mind around this.

  If he had killed me, my heart would have stopped while I was wearing a smeary apron, jeans, and an Olympia’s Sub Shop tank top. I would have never seen my room again or laughed or said hi to my parents or good-bye to anybody or gone any farther, in any way, than I already had.

  I just would have ceased. Exhale. Period.

  I get cold sweats when I think of it.

  He would have killed me for the twenty-three dollars in the register.

  He hit me for twenty-three dollars.

  It would have been more, but he left the change.

  Sammi’s mother brought her down to visit. She came in, took one look at me, wailed, “Oh, no!” and burst into tears.

  My mother was ready to send her right back home, but I was like no, it’s okay, because that’s how I felt, too. Crystal came and started crying, too. Then I started crying and it stung my face, so I kept trying to stop, but then my mother started and poor Gran came and got all white like she was gonna faint and had to sit down, and Grandpa and my father looked like they were gonna go hunt the guy down and kill him.

  My mother finally pulled herself together and took everyone but Sammi and Crystal out into the kitchen for coffee.

  Crystal gave me a sealed envelope after they left and said Jesse had stopped at her house to find out how I was and had asked her to give the envelope to me.

  “He didn’t stay long,” she said. “He just said he’d heard what happened from the guys at work and told me to let you know he was thinking of you and hoped you were okay.”

  “That was nice of him,” I said, because he didn’t have to do it, we weren’t anything to each other, not really, not friends, not going out…not nothing.

  “I ran into Connor down at McDonald’s this morning and told him what happened,” Sammi said and blew her nose into a tissue. “Sorry. That was gross, I know. A
nyhow, I figured you’d want to know, just in case you hear anything from you-know-who.”

  I shook my head and slid the envelope under my pillow. “That’s not gonna happen.”

  Sammi shrugged. “Well, just in case.”

  We sat around for a while but they were antsy, I could tell, so I asked them if they’d walk down to Rita’s and get coconut gelatos. My mother gave them money and they took off. I lay back like I wanted to rest just so everyone would leave me alone. When my mother got the hint and left, I slid the envelope out from under my pillow.

  It was a card, not a funny get-well card or a cutesy, cheerful one or anything like that, but one of those thick-paper art cards with butterflies on the front and blank inside except for what he’d written.

  Chin up, Hanna.

  You’re a trooper. You’ll make it through.

  Keeping the faith,

  Jesse

  p.s. I’d come see you but I don’t own a long-sleeve shirt.

  I smiled, but it hurt doing it.

  The juvenile crime detective told my parents that I should talk to a psychologist because posttraumatic stress disorder is common, but I think I’d rather stay here and become a hermit. You never read about hermits getting beat up, only sending letter bombs and living in squalor. I can be a hermit without the bomb thing, no problem, and the squalor might actually be fun.

  Crystal wants me to come over but I keep making excuses.

  My bruises are fading and my lip looks a lot better, but my eye is still pretty ugly, and besides, they haven’t caught the robber yet.

  Gran fell down and the ambulance came and rushed her to the hospital.

  Grandpa wanted to ride in the ambulance with her but they told him to follow them instead, so my mother drove him because he was totally freaked.

  I locked all the doors when she left, but then I started hearing noises and broke out in a cold sweat and couldn’t breathe too well and ended up sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, shaking and crying like a big baby.

  I think I just had one of those posttraumatic stress flashbacks the detective had warned me about.

  When my mother came home, I asked her to make me a psychologist appointment.

  Crystal keeps saying I have to go out sometime, but it’s easy for her to say, as she’s not the one who was attacked and almost died.

  Plus, I’ve been eating so much ice cream that I’m starting to gain weight. I should stop because it isn’t making me feel any better but I don’t have anything better to do.

  Pathetic.

  I don’t feel very “chin up” at all.

  I feel lonely.

  I told the psychologist that life keeps moving for everybody but me. I’m stuck. There’s prerobbery Hanna and there’s postrobbery Hanna; my life is halved now. Pre Hanna was so sure of her world she just, like, I don’t know, strode through it like there was nothing she couldn’t find a way around, like there was nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Post Hanna knows better. She doesn’t stride, she hesitates, because now she knows what it feels like to be hit in the face by a guy who thinks she’s less than nothing.

  These are the kinds of thoughts I have now, like nothing is certain anymore, like I could peel up a thousand layers for answers and still never find one absolute.

  The psychologist, an older guy with a potbelly, ragged cuticles, and a waiting room full of twitchy people, yawned and said how I feel is perfectly natural and that I must grieve for the Hanna I lost and learn to love the more experienced Hanna I’ve become.

  Normally I would have told Gran what he said and we would have spent time dissecting it and trying to turn it into something I could actually use, but she was still in the hospital, so I told my mother instead.

  She frowned slightly, as if trying to make sense of it and said, “Well, he is a psychologist, so I have to assume he knows what he’s talking about, although I was hoping for something a little more concrete.”

  Talking to my mother is just not the same as talking to Gran.

  Gran is home again. My mother said she was so shaky because she has Parkinson’s disease and the doctors diagnosed her within half an hour of her getting to the hospital. She’s starting medication and is going to be okay.

  Good.

  Now Grandpa doesn’t have to worry anymore.

  I wish I could stop worrying, too.

  My mother took me to see little Antonio, who is out of the hospital and back at work. She didn’t want to take me—I think maybe she thought I’d go catatonic or something, but I didn’t.

  We went right before lunch when I knew the construction guys would be showing up because I wanted to thank them for the big bouquet of wildflowers they sent, but all that went out of my head when I walked in and saw Antonio, looking so small and fragile, sweeping near the jukebox.

  “Hey, look who’s here,” he sang out, and then he set the broom aside and turned so I could see his black eye patch. When I started to cry, he gave me a big grin and said, “What, you don’t think I’m cute like the pirate Johnny Depp?”

  And that made me laugh, tearfully, yeah, because he’d lost his eye, but then he came limping over and wrapped a gnarled hand around my mother’s arm and the other around my hand as if drawing us all together, and looking hard into her face, he said, “You’re a lucky lady, Mrs. Thury. This nice girl, she makes the whole place bright like the sun.” And then he looked at me and said, “So, when you coming back to work?” And there was a smile in his voice but the look in his eye was serious, like he was saying a lot more, and my mother said, “Well, school starts soon so I don’t think—”

  And he said, “I’m sorry for interrupting, but I gotta say that figlio di puttana took my eye and stole a young girl’s…” He paused, struggling for words. “Peace of mind. That’s not a man, that’s a stronzo and you don’t let a stronzo tell you how to live.” He released us, hands shaking, his eye fierce and the scar puckering his cheek red and angry looking. “You hear me? You don’t let him win! You say”—he slapped a hand down into the crook of his bent arm—“right here and put it behind you and keep going.”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t know what half of his words meant, and he nodded in return and hobbled back to his broom. We said good-bye to Olympia, who was kind of reserved because my parents had asked her to pay my hospital bills and her insurance company was giving her a hard time, so she was really worried that we were going to sue and she was going to lose the sub shop. (We didn’t and her insurance company finally paid. I was glad because it wasn’t her or Antonio’s fault that some shithead kid lost his mind.)

  He’s the one that should be sued.

  Too bad they’re probably never going to catch him.

  On the brighter side, we ran into the construction guys in the parking lot and it was cute how polite they were in front of my mother. Ronnie gave me this awkward hug and they all wished me well, smiled, and then went in to eat because even though I might have died, they still had only an hour for lunch.

  My psychologist visits are over. The psych told me he was proud of how well I was doing, which I guess was good because the HMO insurance paid for the appointments but not an unlimited number of them, so we both knew I had only like six visits to get right with everything.

  I could have said a lot more, but time ran out, so I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

  Sammi came over and surprised me with a pair of excellent new shades she said I was going to wear to Crystal’s brother’s party to cover my eye so I would have no excuse not to go. She’d already talked it over with Crystal and they both would watch out for me and leave whenever I was ready, but since I was going to have to get out and catch the school bus within the next two days, they figured I had better have at least one dry run getting off the couch, away from the TV, and into real life again.

  I must have been ready because I didn’t need too much bullying to go take a shower, and get ready.

  And the party was easier than I thought, w
ith no crying or extreme paranoia or anything bad.

  I didn’t drink, so I was more aware of what everyone was doing, though, and maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I was listening for that cold “I’ll kill you, bitch” tone, but of course it wasn’t there. That would have been too easy.

  Nobody made a big deal about my shades either, so I ended up taking them off and just hanging out, watching everybody party.

  That’s what I like about Crystal’s.

  You can just be.

  My parents are starting to get on my nerves. They’re being too nice, like I’m some kind of freak who’s going to implode at any second. My mother keeps trying to get into discussions with me and even suggests more counseling, saying we could pay for it ourselves, but I’m like, Mom, I’m fine, will you just let it go already? It’s over, okay? I don’t want to think about this forever, I just want to move on and live my life.

  God.

  Then my father asked if I wanted to go to self-defense classes and I was like, no, because I don’t want to be where people are fighting all the time, okay?

  It gets tense, and the best thing I can think of to do is either read or go hang out at Gran’s. It’s like my refuge and we can get into good conversations if we want to, not like we have to. She always looks out for me but she doesn’t try to make the world pretty and bright when it’s not always that way. She’s honest and when I told her how much I’ve always loved that about her, she started to cry—I mean really cry—and then I started crying, too, and it felt great to just let go.

  Chapter 19

  Helen

  After Hanna leaves I go inside, sit with Lon, and tell him I can’t take it any longer, that our secrets can’t stay secrets, and even if it destroys us, I have to find a way to reveal the truth because we cannot die and leave Hanna with nothing but lies.

  And Lon, who has loved me steadily and completely, who has never once let me down, and who has kept good care of my heart even when it cost him everything, dries my tears, eases my anguish, and says, All right, Helen.