Tell Us Something True

by Dana Reinhardt

  Mom and Leonard really liked Penny, but I was less worried they’d mourn her than I was they’d start to focus unwanted attention on me. Right now I came and went as I pleased without having to account for my whereabouts. They trusted me partly because I had such a trustworthy girlfriend. Ha.

  Christopher, of the Molly habit and enviable sneakers, was standing out front with the shoplifter and Mason, the brutish bulimic.

  “It’s the snack man!” Christopher called when he saw me approaching. “What’d you bring us, snack man?”

  I handed over my shopping bags for inspection.

  “You know why you got assigned snacks, right?” Mason asked.

  “Um, no?”

  “ ’Cause you understand the munchies.”

  “You got the experience,” added the girl. “You got, like, the institutional knowledge.”

  “And? How’d I do?”

  She peered into the bags again. “I give you a C-plus.”

  “A C-plus? That’s all?”

  “Well, you got sweet and savory, yes. And you have soft and crunchy. You get bonus points for the fat-free option. But you don’t have anything crispy. Nothing fresh. And let’s not even get started on how you didn’t bring anything to drink. With all this sodium?” She waved a finger with a long pink-painted nail at me. “Tsk. Tsk.”

  “I’m new. Go easy on me.”

  She looked me up and down. “Okay. B-minus.”

  “Grade inflation.” Christopher blew out a final plume of smoke and stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his gorgeous shoe.

  “Don’t be mad, Christopher,” she said. “You’re still the reigning snack champ. But that’s only ’cause you’re rich as hell.” She looked at me. “Club kid. Club drugs. You know the type. He brings those individually wrapped nut bars that cost two bucks each. Those are sick.”

  Everett opened the door to the meeting room. He was wearing a green T-shirt with an elephant on the front.

  “Hello, Mason. Christopher. Daphne.” He nodded at me. “River, I’m glad you came back.”

  “Well, I had to bring the snacks, so…”

  “It takes courage to come here.”

  “Or a consent decree,” muttered Daphne.

  “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes the terms of one’s arrest and restitution dictate that the defendant attend a counseling program, but it’s our goal that we all come here because we want to, not because we have to.”

  “I’m just messing with you, Everett,” she said, shoving him playfully. “You know I live for this.”

  He let us inside and we all unfolded chairs and set up a circle. A quiet fell naturally over the group, and then Everett began a call and response.

  “Here,” he said.

  “Is where we belong,” the group chanted.

  “This.”

  “Is where change begins.”

  “Now.”

  “Is the time.”

  I’d chosen my seat in the circle so that I’d share last, but Everett pulled a fast one, switching the direction to clockwise.

  I told everyone I’d had a hard week, which triggered many of those hand gestures. I said I’d fought for what I wanted (Penny, which they interpreted to mean my sobriety) but that I’d lost (Penny, which they interpreted to mean I’d gotten high). I said I wanted to get better, to be better. I said I wanted to think about things more.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Everett said.

  “Yeah,” Daphne added. “If you wanna be hard on yourself, be hard on yourself for bringing mediocre snack foods.”

  This kid with a lazy eye talked next about how he stole a six-pack from his stepmother and blamed it on his sister.

  “She’s only fourteen and she doesn’t drink,” he said. “But my stepmother hates her and is always looking for an excuse to punish her, so I knew she’d believe me…or at least pretend to. I did feel kinda bad about it, though. My sister was, like, crying for hours because she had to miss her friend’s party.”

  I couldn’t imagine making Natalie cry. Ever hurting her on purpose. If I wanted to dodge blame for something, Natalie would be the last person in the world I’d throw under the bus. But I knew I was in a much different place than most of the people in this room. That my issues, whatever they were, paled in comparison.

  This girl Bree spoke about eating only green leafy vegetables for three days straight. Daphne told us she’d put a mascara in her pocket but then returned it to the shelf before leaving the store. And Christopher dreamed of feeling the same kind of euphoria without the drugs.

  Despite all the talking—So. Much. Talking.—the meeting quieted something inside me. Outside this room, everything in my life reminded me of Penny, and I couldn’t catch my breath without breathing in more of her. Even though I’d stumbled into A Second Chance because of her, she felt far away from that circle. I spent my time in the room thinking about people other than Penny; I could even start to see her in my rearview mirror.

  Here was where I belonged. This was where change began.

  The meeting ended before I felt ready for it to. It was Saturday night at eight o’clock and one of my best friends was off listening to a comedian with cancer and I didn’t know where the other two were because I’d become a lousy friend. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

  Out on the sidewalk Everett asked, “So we’ll see you next week, even though you’re relieved of snack duty?”

  I nodded. I wanted to come back. Penny was onto something when she said I didn’t think about things. Now I was working on that.

  I watched him and most of the kids walk away, toward their own cars or cars that waited for them out front. Christopher lit another cigarette and Daphne hung back, so I did too, and then it occurred to me that maybe there was something going on between them and I was just a third wheel.

  She tugged on one of her large hoop earrings and narrowed her eyes at me. “So why are you really here, River? What’s your real story?”

  I felt my face go bright red. It was a curse of my partial Nordic heritage. One of the many unwelcome gifts my father left me along with fatherlessness. And my stupid first name.

  “Awww,” she said. “I made you blush.”

  “Nah.” Christopher took a deep drag from his cigarette. “He just knows in his heart that an addiction to weed is wicked embarrassing.”

  “Kids don’t usually come here because it’s how they want to spend a Saturday night,” Daphne said. “So what’s your story? Your parents find your stash? You get caught dealing at school? You got a lady who likes you better when you’re straight?”

  “I’m just…here because I want to be here,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What?”

  “That reeks of bullshit,” Daphne said. She stared at me long and hard. Christopher chuckled. “But you do look like you’re hurting. I can see that. It’s in your eyes.”

  I brought my hand up and rubbed my forehead, shielding my face.

  “The problem isn’t that you need weed, River,” she said. “It’s why you need weed. So why? Why do you need weed?”

  I wished I smoked cigarettes like Christopher so I could take a long, thoughtful drag off one. Instead I just stared at the sidewalk and thought of Penny. “I guess it’s what made my life feel full. And without it…”

  “You’re empty.”

  “Well, thanks for the Hallmark memories, guys,” Christopher said. “I’m outta here.”

  “Right. Me too.” I turned and started walking west. I figured Largo wasn’t too far out of the way—maybe I’d wait for the Tig Notaro show to get out and hitch a ride home with Maggie. Or maybe I’d get lucky and there’d still be tickets left. I could have used a good laugh.

  Daphne called out after me. “Yo, River! You…walking?”

  “Yep.”

  “But nobody walks in LA!”

  “Nobody but me.”

  —

  There weren’t any tickets left, and the bouncer was unmoved by h
ow my best friend was inside and I needed a laugh, so I waited across the street at a bus stop for the show to get out. Penny was right. I had never once, in all my seventeen years in Los Angeles, taken a single bus. And waiting for Maggie helped illustrate why—I sat in that bus stop for forty-five minutes and no bus ever came.

  When the crowd started spilling out onto the sidewalk, I searched for her. It was a big crowd, so I stood up on the bench to get a better view, and that was when I spied them, shoulder to shoulder, still smiling at some joke: Maggie, Will and Luke.

  I didn’t call out to them. I’m not totally sure why it bothered me that Maggie never mentioned they were all going to the show. They usually did things together while I spent my time with Penny. But now I’d lost Penny and it was starting to sink in that I’d lost my connection to my friends too. I’d ruined everything.

  I watched them climb into Will’s car—he’d scored the rock star spot out front because Will always had luck on his side—and I watched them drive away.

  I sat back down on the bench in the bus stop. I had no idea if the bus that hadn’t arrived yet would take me anywhere near where I lived, but I gave it another fifteen minutes and when it still hadn’t come, I took out my phone and dialed my mom.

  I’m not going to lie—I thought about calling Penny. After everything we’d been through together, how could she have left me sitting alone at a bus stop at the corner of La Cienega and Oakwood at ten o’clock at night? But I didn’t call because I wanted her to think I was out somewhere having fun, out forgetting her, maybe even with another girl.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, um, I sorta need a ride.”

  “Where’s Penny?”

  “Long story. Can you just come get me?”

  “Of course.”

  Mom’s way of dealing with what I told her on the ride home was to make me pancakes for breakfast. The kind where she has to separate the eggs and beat the whites, not the kind from a mix.

  “Oooo, homemade pancakes,” Leonard said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “It’s okay, Leonard. You don’t have to pretend you don’t know. I know Mom told you, and I’m fine with that. In fact I’m fine all around.”

  “Mom told Dad what?” Natalie asked.

  I looked at her. She had Leonard’s dark hair and the biggest brown eyes you’ve ever seen. No Nordic curse for this one. She was still in her striped pajamas with the feet. I envied her pajamas. It was so much simpler being eight.

  “Well, the thing is, Nat,” I said, and I put my hand on hers. “Penny and I broke up.”

  Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. “Oh no!” Quick as a flash her big eyes filled with tears. “No! No, no, no!”

  “It’s okay, kid. Really. I’m okay. See?” I took her hand back and put it on my forehead. “No fever.” I took her fingers and poked myself in the chest with them. “No pain.” I smiled at her, hoping I’d made it look genuine. “I’m shipshape.”

  “But…Penny was so nice. Penny was so pretty.”

  “Yes, Penny was both of those things. And she still is, actually.”

  “Well, she’s not nice if she broke up with you.”

  “How do you know I didn’t break up with her?”

  She looked at me like I was an utter idiot. “Because you would never.”

  “True.”

  We ate our pancakes and I did the dishes and Natalie disappeared into her room. I had loads of homework to do—I’d let it pile up last week, getting extensions and basically treating myself like an invalid. Now the mountain in front of me seemed totally unscalable. All I wanted to do was to crawl back into bed, which I did. I slept for another two hours.

  When I woke I forced myself to sit at my desk and open up my precalc textbook, but the numbers and symbols just swarmed in front of my eyes, unreadable as hieroglyphics. All my college applications were in, I’d earned my senior slide, but I couldn’t flat-out ignore my homework.

  A light knock that could only have been delivered by a hand as small as Natalie’s.

  “Come in.”

  She slipped a folded piece of red construction paper underneath the door. I opened up her card. She’d used glitter, which got all over my hands and spilled out onto the floor.

  Dear River Dean—

  Would you like to go out to ice cream with me today? Check the yes box for yes. Or the no box for no.

  Your sister,

  Natalie Marks

  That we had different last names, and different fathers, was a major obsession of Natalie’s. It didn’t matter how many times I told her I couldn’t possibly adore her any more. That I felt happy for her that she had Leonard and not my narcissistic asshole as a father. Okay, so maybe I didn’t say narcissistic asshole, I probably said something like jerk. Anyway, she’d always had a hard time accepting our family situation and begged me to change my name.

  “Don’t you like the sound of River Anthony Marks?” she’d ask.

  “Sure, Nat. But I’m used to my name.”

  “Why?” A favorite question of hers.

  “Because it’s who I am,” I’d say.

  “I think you’re more of a River Marks than a River Dean.”

  Now we walked the extra distance to the new gourmet ice cream shop. Ice cream after pancakes seemed a little like overkill, but how could I turn down a glittery invitation, especially when it gave me such a good excuse to close my precalc textbook?

  The vibe of the place was old-school soda fountain, and we took two stools at the counter, where a guy in a bow tie and paper hat took our order.

  Natalie reached into the little purse she’d brought along.

  “Are you planning on picking up the check today?”

  “No way. I’m just getting out my notebook.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, silly, we have to take notes.”

  “On what?”

  “On how you can get Penny back.”

  How much did I love this kid? Nobody else, not one other person in my life, held out any hope for Penny and me.

  I thought for a minute. “I brought her soup,” I told Natalie. “Her favorite soup from her favorite deli. A whole quart of it. I have no idea if she ever drank it.”

  “Girls don’t like soup. They like pretty stuff.”

  “I also bought her flowers.”

  She took out her pencil and wrote flowers in her notebook and then put a little box and a check next to it.

  “Flowers. That’s much better.” She tapped the pencil to her chin. “What about poetry?”

  “What about it?”

  “Does Penny like poetry?”

  Does Penny like poetry? We’d done a poetry unit last year in our AP English class. Most of what we read was bullshit. Honestly, I can hardly remember anything except for this poem about a guy out driving at night who finds a dead deer by the side of the road. I remember Penny being really bummed about how the guy pushed the deer over the edge of a cliff at the end. She was a total sucker for animals, especially sick or vulnerable ones, which was how she wound up with a three-legged dog. Anyway, I was pretty sure the key to winning Penny back didn’t have anything to do with a dead deer.

  “Maybe you could write her a poem?”

  “Hmmmm. I don’t think so, Nat.”

  She placed an X in the box next to poetry.

  “Girls like jewelry.”

  “I know. I’ve seen all the same movies you have and then some. Plus I gave Penny plenty of jewelry over the last two years.”

  “Did you ever give her anything with diamonds in it?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not a gajillionaire.”

  “I have some money in my piggy bank.”

  “Listen, Nat.” I took my spoon and tried to dip it into her ice cream, but she blocked me with her spoon like an expert fencer. “I don’t need to buy Penny stuff. That’s not what this is about. And it’s
not what it should be about for you when you’re old enough to fall in love.”

  “I am old enough!”

  “Fine, but just don’t pick your boyfriend based on what he buys you.”

  She thought this over. “Okay.”

  “Penny broke up with me because…well, because…” I still didn’t have a good enough answer to this. “Well, she said I have issues and that I don’t think enough about things.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It is weird, isn’t it? But I’m working on it.”

  We sat and finished our ice creams in silence. Natalie licked her spoon clean and as much of the inside of the cup as she could get to.

  “I liked Penny,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “It’s not fair that I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye to her.”

  That was when I got my idea. The kid wanted the chance to say good-bye to Penny, and what kind of brother would I be if I didn’t help the kid get what she wanted? I’d bring her to Penny’s house.

  We went on Wednesday after school. I told Mom I’d pick up Natalie from her gymnastics class.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how?”

  “I’ll get Maggie to drive me.”

  Mom eyed me. Much as she adored Maggie, we shared the same opinion about her driving.

  “Fine, I’ll get Will or Luke to do it.”

  “Okay. You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes, Mom. Totally sure.”

  “Because she’s eight years old. If you forget her at her gymnastics class, those scars won’t heal.”

  “Mom. I’m not going to forget Natalie. If there’s anyone who understands about those scars, it’s probably me.”

  “Honey. I just meant that sometimes you get…distracted.”

  This was precisely why I didn’t want to tell her about Penny and me breaking up. She thought I couldn’t be trusted to do anything on my own.

  I asked Will to drive me over lunch.

  “So…you’re trying to use your adorable little sister to get to Penny.”