Dr. Wallace stands and opens her door. “Like I said, I’m ready to listen.”
I toss all my tissues in the trash and thank her. As I step out the door, her hand lands on my shoulder, the touch featherlight. “Becca, grief isn’t something we can ever really leave behind. You’ll learn to bear it, though.”
I open my mouth, but there’s nothing in me worth saying.
…
When I step into the hallway, Max and Victor are waiting for me, silhouetted against the light from the large windows across the hall. I’m painfully aware that my face must be all red and splotchy like I’ve been stung by a thousand angry bees.
Max grabs Victor. His fingers lock like pincers on the flesh just above Victor’s elbow. “Victor has something to say.”
Victor’s face flushes. “Look, Becca, I’m sorry.”
I cross my arms across my chest. “Yes. You are. A sorry, stupid ass.”
Victor, who’d been about to continue, freezes with his mouth open. It looks like he’s trying not to smile, which infuriates me even more.
He closes his mouth and swallows his smile. “I was being an idiot. I was jealous, and that Thomas Harrison, he really bugs the hell out of me. He’s so stupid handsome and perfect and gets everything he wants—anyone he wants. And for years now I’ve been watching him be all look-at-me-I’mperfect and”—Victor looks lost for a second, but then picks up steam as he continues to rant—“and, I mean, he drives a freaking Escalade. Why does anyone our age need an Escalade? Shouldn’t we all be doomed to bum rides with our friends in their crappy trucks? It’s just not right. It’s not natural.”
Max pops Victor on the shoulder. “Right,” Victor says, shaking his head like a wet dog. “Look, this is totally a case of it’s-me-not-you. My reaction today wasn’t really about you. Of course you’re our friend, Becca. Max may have brought you into the group, but we all really like you. I mean”—he tangles his hands in the hem of his overlarge T-shirt—“I like you.”
“But why? Why do you like me?” I realize it’s unfair to expect Victor to answer this for all the people I’ve ever wondered it about, but Charlotte’s not around to ask anymore, and I’m too afraid to ask Max. And Victor owes me.
“Why?” Victor blinks, like a mole adjusting to the sunlight. “Because you’re actually kind of funny, and you know how to shut me up—a skill few possess—and you make Max happy.”
I look from Victor to Max, whose face is now the color of a shiny penny. He’s looking at his feet. He doesn’t look happy. He looks like he’d love for the heavy glass window behind us to collapse on him in a catastrophic failure of structural engineering. It’s kind of adorable.
I can feel my insides melting. “Are you just saying all of this because Max told you to?”
Victor’s crooked grin answers me. “A little. But only because I’m immature and like to hold grudges, so I’d have preferred we drag this out and stare daggers at each other for a while, and maybe you’d make up some vicious rumor to get back at me, and then eventually, before we graduate, I’d ask for forgiveness.”
I want to stay angry, but, I don’t know, there’s something about his honesty. “You really are an insufferable ass.”
“And you are getting very proficient at the Shakespearean insults.”
Scene Fifteen
[The woods]
“You know what we need to do tonight?” Victor asks from the back of Max’s truck. “Ghost train.”
I turn in my seat. “What?”
“Ghost train,” Victor repeats. “It’s cool and spooky.” He smirks. Max is silent, focusing on the road ahead like we’re driving through a blizzard. I may have forgiven Victor, but Max is taking a little longer to thaw out. “It’ll be fun. Kelli, Miles, Greg, and I are all going out to dinner tonight, so we’ll meet you two out there.” Victor leans forward to look at Max. “Nine o’clock sound good?”
I try to read the look that passes between them, but I’m no expert at guy code so I’m not sure if Max thinks it sounds like a good plan or if he thinks a better plan would be to abandon Victor on the side of the road. When he doesn’t say anything, Victor turns to me. “Looks like it’s up to you then, Becky dearest. What do you say?”
I glance at Max. I’m not a fan of spooky (overactive imagination), but if it means I can spend some time with Max tonight, then—“I think it sounds great.”
…
The ghost train is way out in the country. Max and I hardly talk on the drive there, and the silence isn’t comfortable like when we work together in the barn or do homework at his kitchen table. This silence is filled with ghosts and regret and unanswered questions.
We turn onto a road that isn’t a road so much as a rut between the trees. The forest swallows us as we drive. When we get to the meet-up spot, a small clearing in the woods, Greg’s giant blue Malibu is there, but it appears that they’ve gone on without us.
We walk down this nearly invisible dirt track. Max has a flashlight that illuminates our path with soft blue light. The night is loud with the rattling of pine needles in the breeze and chirping of crickets and toads. But the quiet between Max and me keeps growing and I feel like if I don’t reach out to bridge the gap now, it’ll grow too large, like Grand Canyon sized, and I’ll be stranded on one side wondering what if?
I take a deep breath, screwing up all my courage, and whisper, “This is scary.”
“It is a ghost train.” His mouth pulls upward in a smirk. “It’s supposed to be scary.”
“Not this,” I say, pointing at the dark forest around us. “Well, actually, maybe that, too, but I meant this.” I point first to my chest and then to his.
“Me? I’m scary?” He tilts his head, watching me. It shouldn’t be allowed—being so charming and handsome, funny and talented. There should be rules.
I link my arm in his. “Terrifying.”
Max hugs his arm into his side, pulling me closer, and the warm pressure of it all makes me dizzy. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Becca.” He looks down at me as we walk again. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
We look at each other for a few beats. I want to believe him. But Charlotte didn’t mean to hurt me, either. I have to tell myself that. Every day. Otherwise, the fiery anger I feel when I think about her leaving would burn me from the inside out.
“So,” I say, trying to breathe normally. “How do you know about this ghost train?”
“Beni.” Max’s voice sounds like he’s farther away than the narrow trail would allow. I study his profile as we walk, listening as he elaborates. “He brought me out here when I turned thirteen. He had been talking it up for years.”
I watch the beam of light wandering down the path ahead of us.
“The story goes that the engineer was behind schedule and was pushing the train as fast as it would go. He was in a hurry himself, because he was going to pick up his fiancée at the next station, and it was getting dark. Apparently some ne’er-do-wells—”
“Ne’er-do-whats?”
“You heard me,” Max says. “Tricksters, shysters, rogues, flimflammers.” He wiggles his dark brows, making me laugh.
“I see,” I say, composing myself. Max leans closer, sending a wave of tingles down my spine. Is he smelling my hair? Oh thank you gods of cleanliness for suggesting I wash it twice when getting ready for tonight.
“So the ne’er-do-wells had accosted his fiancée while she waited at the station. They’d dragged her down the tracks, had their way with her, and left her for dead stuffed under some undergrowth beside the tracks.”
“Geez, Max.” I grab the flashlight from him and start swinging it around into the leaves all around us.
“I didn’t say it was a nice ghost story.” He squeezes my hand before continuing. “They never are.” A dry smile puckers his thick lips. “Do you want to turn around?”
I look behind us. We can’t see the truck anymore, but ahead, in the slim beam of light, I can see an opening in the trees. “Please, fi
nish.”
“When the engineer reached the deserted station, he saw the louts stumbling up from the brush, covered in filth and blood. Long ghost story short, the engineer hopped off the train and went all ninja on the bad guys. He was near death, but dragged himself back the way he’d seen them coming, looking for his girl. They say that when she came to, she could see where he’d finally lay down in despair of never finding her—five feet from where she was hidden.”
“Star-crossed.”
Max nods. “Now, the engineer rides slowly along the tracks, back and forth, looking for his love.”
“What about her? What about the girl?”
Max shrugs. “She lived.”
He says this like it’s supposed to make me feel better. “And?” The frustration in my voice scratches my throat.
“And it’s a ghost story, so no one knows about her. We only know about the ghost.”
We come to the edge of a long, narrow corridor cleared of trees. Here and there you can see large railroad ties still rotting in the ground, but the iron girders have been pulled up. Max leads me to the middle of what used to be the tracks and nods at the flashlight still in my hand. “You’ve got to signal him.”
“What?”
“Signal the engineer. Flash the light three times.”
For a long moment, I’m frozen, but I finally work up the nerve to flick the light off and on three times. It’s not like I expect a ghost train to come barreling down the forgotten tracks, but I do have the feeling in my chest that something is about to happen.
One breath, five, ten, twenty breaths later and still nothing.
I peek at Max and notice he’s not looking down the tracks, but right at me. Everything in me flutters like the pages of a favorite book as I flip to the best part. His eyes, bright in the starlight as they look into mine, are becoming my most favorite passage in this story.
In the distance, we hear the whistle of a train. Suddenly, there’s a flash of white light that washes through the corridor of trees, illuminating Max’s whole face in its arc.
Shit. Eating. Grin. It’s the only way to describe the look of glee on his face as I nearly hyperventilate.
He pulls me close so he can whisper in my ear. “Gotcha.”
And, oh my God, he does. He’s got me, all I have to do is give in, let him have me, whatever I’ve got left to give. I turn toward the light as it disappears in the darkness, and spy the outline of a lumbering train, about one hundred yards away, running perpendicular to where we stand. I can feel the clacking of the wheels inside my chest, matching, click for clack, the beating of my poor, broken heart.
“That’s not a ghost.” I am trying to keep my voice light, trying to rebury the thing inside me that keeps trying to get out, the thing that I need to stay dead if I’m going to survive. “That’s a real train. How’d you know it’d come by?”
Max’s laugh is loud and liquid; his mouth opens with the sound.
He’s still holding me by the waist, and pieces of me are craving more, but I swat at his chest. I’m not mad, though. Not really. I’m disappointed that his mouth is so close, so open, and not on me. Disappointed that I can so clearly see what I want, but am too afraid to take it.
“I didn’t know. Sometimes you can stand out here all night and never catch a glimpse of anything. Just dumb luck.”
Yes. Dumb luck.
The gang comes stumbling out of the underbrush moments later. Greg is in the lead with Miles and Kelli behind him. Victor steps into the clearing last. He looks like he’s sulking.
“Where were you guys?” Max asks.
“We took a wrong turn,” Miles says.
“Sev-er-al,” Greg adds, drawing the word out.
Victor’s scowl deepens. “How was I supposed to know?”
Greg shakes his head. “You said you knew where we were going, said you’d been here plenty, said you knew it like the back of your hand. That’s how you were supposed to know.”
“We know you know your own hand, Vic,” Miles says, trying to choke back giggles, but it’s no use. Everyone laughs—even Victor—and it sounds sweeter than all the frog songs in the night.
“You just missed the train.”
They all groan. “Was it scary?” Kelli asks me.
Max snickers and I smack his shoulder. “Yeah, it was certainly unexpected.”
“Maybe another one will come by.”
Everyone starts plopping down in the clearing, settling in to wait for another train, lying side by side in the scratchy grass, watching the stars. They’re clearer out here, away from the lights in town.
Max tips his head toward mine in the grass and whispers, his lips almost touching my ear, “For the record, Becca, I’m scared, too.”
When I turn my face to look at him, his eyes are fathomless in the darkness.
“You thought you got a scare tonight, Becky,” Victor says. “But it’s nothing compared to the first time Beni brought us out here. Remember, Max?”
Max tenses, a reflex like when a ball is thrown at you. I reach out and take his hand in mine. Maybe it’s the darkness, maybe it’s the stars, or maybe it’s just that a piece of me knows that’s where his hand belongs—in mine. He traces a pattern on my palm with his thumb. An owl screeches in the wood behind us.
“I remember,” Max says, propping his head up on his other hand. He tells the story of his thirteenth birthday when Beni brought Victor and him out here. How Beni’s buddies hid in the woods. How Max and Victor screamed. How Victor fell flat on the ground—“like he’d been shot in the chest”—when the guys jumped out at them.
That story melded into another and another, and before long I felt like I knew a little about Beni, but more importantly, I knew so much more about Max and his loyalty, kindness, and capacity for unwavering love.
And that I am a fool. I know that for sure now. I am a coward and a fool.
…
Max and I leave the clearing first, the others lingering behind, still telling stories, still waiting for the ghost train to reappear. When we reach the truck, I lean against my door so Max can’t open it for me. Not yet.
He steps close; we’re toe-to-toe in the trampled grass. “Thanks for bringing me,” I say.
Max grins.
“I’m serious.”
“You’re seriously thanking me for dragging you out to the middle of nowhere and scaring the crap out of you?”
“No.”
His brow and one side of his grin tic upward.
“I’m thanking you for sharing this with me.”
This time his laugh is louder. “Yeah, the look on your face was pretty priceless.”
I tug on the sleeve of his shirt. “I mean your friends, this place, the memories of Beni.”
His laughing quiets, but his smile remains. “You’re welcome.” He takes a lock of my hair and twists it around his finger, studying the way the light reflects off it in the dim clearing before tucking it behind my ear.
“It was a stupid accident that took Beni away.” Max swallows and I watch the shadow of his Adam’s apple bob.
“Max, you don’t—”
“I want to share this with you.” His head is stooped so he can look me in the eye, and a lock of black hair falls over his forehead. I want to touch it, feel if it’s as silvery smooth as it looks in the moonlight.
“He and his friends were drunk,” Max says, looking up at the sky. The hair falls back from his forehead, and I feel angry that gravity has deprived me of the feel of it in my fingers.
“He’d been doing that a lot, getting drunk. Said it was no big deal, he was just blowing off steam. Said the pressure at Stanford was high, but he could handle it.”
Max shifts, like he’s going to move away from me, but I reach out and catch his hand.
His head shakes, like he’s still in shock from the accident as he finishes speaking. “He stepped out in front of a moving car. They were playing chicken or something. He wanted to see what would happen when an irres
istible force collides with an unmovable object.”
I try to swallow the thickness in my throat. I should have swallowed my words along with it. “That doesn’t make any sense. He could have moved. He did move, right into oncoming traffic.”
Max nods, looking up at the treetops. “You’re right. It makes no sense.” I squeeze his hand and he looks at me with a mournful smile. “But tonight was good. I need to remember him more—the good stuff. Thank you.”
“Do you ever worry that you’ll run out?”
“Run out?”
I nod. “Sometimes, I’m afraid I don’t have enough memories of Charlotte to sustain me. I keep playing the ones I have on repeat, but there’s never anything new. I get angry that there are never any new ones. But I didn’t know her as long or as well as you knew Beni, so it’s probably different.”
Max doesn’t say anything. His eyes almost quiver with strain from how deeply he’s trying to look into mine. He places his hands on the sides of my face, his long fingers at my temples and palms cupping my chin. “I do. Every day.” His words are so quiet in the still clearing that I’m not even sure if they were said aloud or if I just felt them in my core.
I slide my hands around his waist and up his back to bury my face in his chest. His arms are around me, holding me safely like the straps of a parachute, breaking my fall.
Scene Sixteen
[Sandstone Library]
Before first period on Monday morning, I part ways with Max and Victor at the library to grab a new book. I’m on my way to the fiction stacks when I notice Darby sitting at one of the long tables to the left of the circulation desk. She’s hunched over, scribbling furiously. She even writes like a drama queen, I think as I put my head down and make a break for the stacks.
Once I have a few books picked out, one new read and one old familiar one, I peek around the last shelf to see if the coast is clear. Darby’s no longer writing furiously, but sitting with her head in her hands, which seems sad, but also means I can probably check out my books and leave without her noticing me.
But as I’m making my way to the self-checkout kiosk, my ears pick up a terrifying sound. Darby is crying.
Life After Juliet Page 14
