by Laura Tims
“Hhhh,” breathes Tito, hearing something close to his name. Lena named him after a Hawaiian character in a cartoon she liked when she was little, since Mom was half Hawaiian. I don’t think Tito is a real Hawaiian name.
“Seventeen is fetal. They should all be titless like you.”
I wait until Rex faces the TV to flip him off. Then I raid the kitchen. Now that Dad has sole reign of the groceries, the cupboards are stuffed with Cheetos, SpongeBob mac ’n’ cheese, and those gummy bear dinosaurs made for five-year-olds. Dad prescribes junk food for himself like antidepressants, devouring endless bags of chips after we go to bed and stashing the evidence in the garage so we don’t notice.
In the days after Mom died, we lived on pity casseroles. It’s not that Mom did the cooking—Dad did. Before. We do always have lasagna, though. Somebody still leaves a warm lasagna on our porch once a week, wrapped in tinfoil. Dad thinks the neighbors take turns.
Suddenly Tito falls on my foot. This is normal. He has epilepsy, and the pills we feed him, wrapped in slices of Kraft cheese, produce a constant state of mild sedation—hence the drooling, Darth Vader breathing, and falling down. I kiss him and set him on his paws. The fact that Tito is the best dog ever is the only thing Rex and I agree on.
“Anthony punched some kid today,” I yell into the living room. If I was more aggressive and less on crutches, I might’ve punched Eliot, too. He’s punchable.
“Who?”
“Some kid.” Some random stupid kid who can’t hurt me with a couple random stupid words. When I think about Mom, I can fix it so it’s nothing. But when people bring her up out of nowhere . . .
But even Aggressively Boring (the truth) doesn’t bother me as much as it should. Being offended takes too much emotional energy. And it’s almost nice that someone has something to say about me other than THAT’S the girl whose MOM got KILLED.
“I told you to stay away from Anthony,” Rex yells back.
“As if I’d be scared of somebody who cried at your tenth birthday party because he lost at Mario Kart.” I sift through junk food for something that contains nutrition.
“He has issues.”
“Luckily he can afford a therapist.” Unlike us and Dr. Brown’s low-income co-pay discount. I grab a bag of chips and try to sneak through the living room past Rex, but he whips up like a manic security guard.
“How’s school?” he demands.
“Fine.”
“C’mon, Sam.”
I throw my hands up. “There’s pencils and teachers and stuff.”
“Any guys bothering you?” He cracks his knuckles.
“I thought I was titless.”
“Some guys are into that.”
All I’d have to do is breathe Eliot’s name and Rex would eat him alive. “Boys don’t bother me, Rex. It’s like in zombie movies when the people cover themselves in zombie guts to hide the fact that they’re not zombies. Boys miss the fact that I’m botherable.”
But the Vicodin train is leaving the station. His gaze drifts over my shoulder, and he sinks back into the couch. I have no idea how he tolerates that couch. The mystery stains were there when we bought it.
“I’m almost out,” he mumbles.
All aboard for the guilt trip. I count the swans in our faded wallpaper. “I’m not giving you more.”
“You don’t know what it’s like.”
Not just a guilt trip, a guilt vacation, an all-expenses-paid stay at a guilt resort. His last resort. “It’s illegal,” I say like a brat.
“They’re for pain, and I’m in pain.” He buries his face in one of the throw pillows. They don’t match. Mom got them off craigslist from a chiropractor with five ferrets. They’re scratchy and smelly, like Tito, like the rest of our furniture. But SMD, the steady flow of weird secondhand stuff has stopped. We have to preserve what we have.
“You know what’s illegal?” he adds. “Pulverizing somebody else’s car and driving off.”
My leg aches. I move toward the stairs.
“I want to talk about it,” he says to the pillow.
“I don’t,” I say to the stairs. He doesn’t usually go straight from acting-like-Mom to asking-me-about-Mom.
“You got to be there with her.”
I submit a request to my brain to please not pick up the orange lamp (origin: waitress from craigslist) and smash it on his skull. But I’m already pissed off, courtesy of Eliot, and my leg still hurts. “You’re jealous, is what you’re saying.”
My voice is flat and sharp, like pavement with glass glittering on it. He flinches. Tito whines.
“Maybe next time it’ll be Dad, and you’ll be the one in the car and then won’t you be so lucky.” And I run (hobble) upstairs and slam my bedroom door.
I’m a terrible person, I guess.
To punish myself, I stare hard at everything in my room. It’s full of lacrosse gear—sticks propped against the wall, cleats under my bed, photos from last year’s game against Brighton—because I like to be reminded that now I can’t do the only thing I was ever good at. Other than the glass, I don’t remember the accident. I had nothing for the police. And nothing is all I want. Nothing is safe.
I find my emergency bottle of Vicodin in my sock drawer, dump half the contents into a Ziploc, and return to the stairs long enough to lob the bag into the living room. “Sorry,” I bellow.
Back in my room with the other kind of guilt, I switch on my broken lava lamp (origin: craigslist hippie), hurl my crutches on my bed, and grab my notebook. Family counseling is this weekend. Dr. Brown gives us homework, which is unbelievable, but Lena—who now comes down only for the appointments—lectures me if I don’t do it. I’m supposed to write down my goals.
I make a fake list for Dr. Brown and an honest list for no reason at all.
LIST #1
Make new friends
Do good in school
Heal with my family
LIST #2
Make new friends without having to actually hang out with anyone
I’m doing fine in school, fuck you
Kill Rex, avoid Lena (not hard), avoid Dad
Kill Dr. Brown
Never talk to Eliot Rowe again
When the honest list has enough murder victims to get me interrogated if it’s found, I rip it up and poke the shreds into a Coke bottle, where they drown in the muddy liquid at the bottom.
Chapter Two
THE ONLY INTERESTING THING THAT HAPPENS the next day is that Anthony gets arrested.
I leave English to pee and stick my head into the hall just in time to witness him being marched down the hall by a cop and Principal Chase. The news rockets around school, pinging off lockers, breaking windows. Anthony’s gang sulks in a mob. Trez darts between classes with her books clutched to her chest, feverish satisfaction in her expression. Eliot was right.
Every year, at least one student is caught with pills, enough of an epidemic for an auto-expulsion policy, but it’s supposed to be the ones with bad posture and no extracurriculars. Rexes, not Anthonys. This event is right up there with my accident and Eliot moving in.
I try really hard to care. I’m not jaded. I want just a zap of the electricity from yesterday, a plug-in to the energy. But as my next lectures are drowned out by everyone buzzing, as my teachers flop at their desks, I keep dissociating, the whiteboard blurring and smearing across the room in a stretch of nothing.
The truth is, I’m blank most of the time. Static.
Sometimes I think I’ve used up all my emotions.
On Friday, the first words anyone addresses directly to me are these:
“Punch me.”
I’m loading books from my locker into my bag, and the suddenness makes me jump. Books topple. Before I can tackle bending over, Eliot Rowe stoops.
“What?” I ask.
“I said punch me. Or hit me with your crutches. Judging by Monday, you might prefer the latter.” He tips the books back into my locker. Up close, he’s startling: his high ch
eekbones, hair so dark it’s almost blue, the smirk that makes it impossible to tell if he’s being serious. He seems even less human with the mottled bruise on his vampire-pale cheek. Next to me, he’s probably even more exotic. I look like a twelve-year-old boy with baby cheeks, and my short hair is the kind of brown that you can’t compare to chocolate or coffee because it’s not the shade of something delicious.
“Mind if I ask why?” Four days have passed since Monday, I realize—time passes without me noticing nowadays—and he hasn’t spoken to me at all.
“You’re a lacrosse player—”
My leg throbs. “Was.”
“The point is, you’re physical. I was going to apologize for what I said on Monday, but it’d be easier if you got rid of your anger the quick way. Then we can move on.”
I gape at him. “Move on where?”
He pauses, then shakes his head. “Nowhere. Never mind.”
Something about that saddens me. “I’m not going to punch you.”
“Sure, men are more socialized to deal with anger by hitting things, but I think you’ll find it surprisingly liberating.”
“Are you joking? Or is this like some kind of fetish thing?”
He snorts. “I just hate apologizing.”
“Nobody hates apologizing that much.”
“I hate lying,” he corrects himself. “And I don’t really feel that apologetic. It’s not a secret, about your mom.”
“And what about calling me boring?”
“Point taken. You’re not boring. You do interesting things like stand up for me.”
The halls are mostly deserted, like they usually are by the time I get to my locker. Nobody to overhear. “You were right about Trez,” I say, changing the subject.
He rolls his eyes. “Of course I was right about Trez.” Then a momentary silence in which he seems to remember something. “I’m sorry for your loss, by the way.”
He doesn’t give me warning signs. No forehead wrinkling, no hand on my shoulder. He just adds it bluntly.
“Are you?” The platitude always annoys me, but I’ve never been rude enough to be a jerk about it. Now he’ll either call me out or grant me concessions. People let you be mean when you’re grieving. Funerals turn a lot of us into assholes.
“Not particularly,” he says instead. “I’m sorry in theory, but I didn’t know your mom and I barely know you.”
Which is why it annoys me. “I thought you hated lying.”
“I meant I usually don’t bother.”
I sag against my crutches. Talking to Eliot uses up a week’s worth of emotions. I can’t decide if I’m annoyed or amused, but the last one is the least amount of work. “Does that mean I’m special?”
“We’ll see.” He leans into my locker, his sharp shoulder pressing into the orange metal in a way that looks painful. It’s definitely possible that he’s been messing with me since he opened his mouth. “Mainly it means I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me.”
“A ride home, at least.”
“I don’t—” I start, but through the glass doors at the end of the hall, I see that the last bus is disappearing. “Oh.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
The only thing left to do is follow him.
Eliot drives like he’s taking his license test as he pulls out of the lot. His Porsche (!!) is practically new, loaded with that new-car smell they aerosol on the upholstery. I stroke the white leather, the enameled wooden dashboard. Before Mom died—BMD—I liked cars. Now driving feels like a dentist appointment: scary but too necessary to avoid.
“My brother’s,” he says before I can ask.
“He lets you borrow this?”
“Using the term lets broadly.” He rolls down the window and takes out a cigarette.
“Smoking’s bad for you.”
“When has that ever stopped anyone?” Smoke swirls above his head. “Driving is worse for you, in terms of how likely you are to die from it. Yet here we are.”
I don’t say anything. A pulse of pain courses through my leg, and my chest aches with something similar.
Eliot grimaces. “I can’t avoid every mention of car accidents forever.”
“Most people can.” Usually I hate it when someone blunders into topics like accidents or crutches and acts like they’ve set off a trip wire, but what if it’s my expression that makes them think they have? Maybe my face isn’t as blank as the rest of me.
His grimace deepens. “I reiterate my offer to punch me.”
“What is it with this weird joke?”
“Not joking.”
“Yes you are,” I say, scowling.
Silence forms. I wait to slide back into blankness like always when I’m not being forced to pay attention, but instead I’m practically caffeinated, microfocusing on Eliot’s elbow propped against the window. It’s cold for March, but he has no jacket.
“How’s your face?” I find myself asking.
“Expected worse. Anthony’s an ENTJ—the Maverick. Charismatic, elaborate, perfectionist. He knows how to get people to do what he wants, and he’s violent with whoever threatens him because it’s the fastest way to send a message.”
I picture No-Moore in third grade with peanut butter–smudged cheeks. “Then why did you warn him?”
“I like him.” He grins. “We have a lot in common.”
One cares more than anything that everyone thinks he’s cool, and one makes sure everyone thinks he’s weird. “So you knew he was going to punch you and you let him because . . . ?”
“I’m the type to say things. If others don’t like it, they can handle it however they want.”
I can’t politely phrase the question on my tongue: What’s wrong with you? There has to be a name for it, some diagnosis with a Wikipedia page. But apparently I’m not the type who says things. Instead I ask, “Which Myers-Briggs thing are you?”
He looks at me sideways. “Guess.”
“Um—”
“Not now. You barely remember what they are. Do your research first.”
“Okay?”
“This is the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone from school,” he notes suddenly. “Thanks again for Monday. You’re good with those crutches.”
“You’re good at making people want to punch you.”
His smile’s surprisingly genuine. It’s crooked, breaking the symmetry of his face. I can’t figure out if I like him or not. If I do, that’s concerning.
And then I’m saying, “I had self-defense lessons two years ago. My sister made me take them with her. I can teach you how to block.”
“That would involve spending time with me.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Interesting,” he says. Then he sort of laughs.
“What?”
“Interesting isn’t usually a word I use to describe people.”
It’d be so easy to dislike him. Liking him has to be against the rules.
“Are you going to ask what type you are?” he says.
He was obviously waiting. “Fine. What type am I?”
He stops at a light, tips his head languidly against his seat, and gazes at me. His eyes are neon. I shift away.
“ISFJ. The Defender,” he says finally.
“I haven’t taken the quiz.”
“It’s not a quiz,” he snaps. “And self-administered personality tests are nonsense. An assessment needs to be objective, and you can’t be objective about yourself.”
“You’re guessing my personality type after five minutes with me,” I point out. “It’s not like you know me better than I do.”
“It is like that.”
He’s not a loner because he doesn’t talk—it’s because of what happens when he does talk. “What’s my favorite color?”
“Trivia,” he snorts. “Look, you’re exposed to all kinds of information that warps your perspective. Old versions of yourself that haven’t been you in years, private thoughts you judge yourself for.
You’re in the worst position to give yourself a fair assessment.”
“Nice theory,” I sniff, mimicing my sister. “Why does my personality type even matter? It doesn’t tell you anything about my life.”
“Of course it does. You don’t visit your mom’s grave with your family, do you? ISFJs don’t like people to see them upset.”
I work around the thickness in my throat. “That’s creepy.”
His hand tightens on the wheel.
“And also kind of brilliant. Are you, like, a genius?”
“More or less,” he says happily, slowing to let a tailgater pass. “Though the teachers here would disagree. They wouldn’t notice intelligence if it told them their classes are a waste of time.”
“I’m sure it has.”
“You just have to watch people. They don’t hide as much as they think. Like your expression.”
I inspect my face in the rearview mirror. Same heavy eyebrows, stupid snub nose.
“You have an injured look.” He taps ash absently out the window. “You see it with traumatized people. Don’t worry, it’s not obvious.”
How can I be traumatized by something I can’t remember? I take the antidepressants, I go to school, I’m fine. I open my mouth, but I’m distracted by the fact that the street we’re on is unfamiliar. I realize I never gave him my address.
“We’re making a stop first,” Eliot says. “I need your help with something. Nothing much. Just drug dealers.”
“You mean Anthony and his group? Remember Monday when he punched you in the face?”
“That’s why I brought you.”
“Wait, what?” Sure, Sam, get in the car with the freaky dude who says he hates lying and owes you one. I guess “The Defender” makes him think I’m a bodyguard. “Number one, I can’t fight anyone off for you. I’m on crutches—”
“Which is convenient. Otherwise you’d be weaponless.”
“Number two. What are you meeting with them for?”
“Anthony asked me to. And I was curious.”
I’ve never been stunned into silence before. There has to be a medication he’s supposed to be on.
“If you really want me to, I’ll take you home,” he says.
“And you’ll have a nice chat with Violence-Before-Words Anthony, who probably thinks you’re the one who narced, because you’re curious.”
