Life After Juliet

by Shannon Lee Alexander

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “By hiding? By reading?” Darby picks up my book and shakes the pages in my face. “What happens when the book ends?”

  I snatch my novel back from her. “I get another one.” Each of my words is enunciated with crystalline clearness.

  “And that’s how you want to live?”

  If every move I make creates ripples and those ripples affect other people’s lives, and then their lives send ripples out toward me like tidal waves, then yes, being very, very still is definitely the way to be. “That’s how I intend to survive.”

  Darby nods. “Yeah. Okay. I see the difference.” She stands, and her seat cushion bobs up. “But that friend of yours, Charlotte, she would be pissed if she knew what you were doing to your life.”

  I jump up, too, shouting, “Don’t you talk about Charlotte.”

  “See,” Darby says, stepping toward me, her face six inches from mine. “That’s just it. I get to do whatever the hell I want. I’m living my own life. Can you say that?”

  Without waiting for me to respond, she whirls on her heels and stomps down the aisle. Her groupies are all giggling and whispering behind their hands. I want to slap them all. I want to rip out their hair and toss it in the air like confetti. I want someone else to hurt like I’m hurting. I want to scream in Charlotte’s face. How dare she let me love her! How dare she die on me! How dare she ruin me!

  Owens calls me to the stage, but I won’t be going up there. Not today. I slam open the doors, letting the sunlight from the hallway flood the dark theater. When they close behind me, the sound reverberates in the soles of my feet.

  Scene Eleven

  [Darby’s car]

  The next morning as I’m getting my stuff together to wait for the bus, there’s a sudden braying noise from the driveway. My traitorous heart skips a beat—Max!—before my mind catches up and reminds my heart to shut up. Max is in the hospital, my brain says, very rationally. Right where you left him, my heart hisses.

  I run to the porch and find Darby, laying on her horn like she’s trying to raise the dead.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. Darby motions for me to get in. I walk slowly toward the passenger side door, like I’m walking through a land mine.

  Darby pulls out of the driveway without a word. She fiddles with the radio instead.

  “Am I being abducted?”

  Darby rolls her eyes and turns out of the neighborhood. We drive in silence until she pulls into the drive-thru at the Dunkin’ Donuts where she orders a coffee, black, and then motions for my order.

  I wonder, briefly, if I should tell the barista about my abduction. “French Vanilla with cream and sugar, please.”

  Darby pays at the window and hands over my drink. She inhales a large sip, grimacing as it must have burned the inside of her mouth a little, then turns to me with a bleary-eyed grin. “I’m rescuing you.”

  “From what?”

  “At the moment, from the bus. We’ll see what else needs work as we go along.”

  “What if I don’t want your help?”

  Darby slams on the brakes right as she’s pulling into the street. A car veers, blaring its horn at us, and my coffee spills out the edge of my cup. The hot liquid singes, but my jeans soak up most of the pain.

  “Christ,” I swear at her. “How is that helpful?” I rub at the spot on my thigh.

  “Becca, I don’t give a shit if you want my help. It’s not all about you. I want to help you. Therefore, that’s what I’m going to do. You do whatever the hell you want.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s your life.”

  I furrow my brow, trying to piece together what she means.

  She rolls her eyes. “Do what you want because it’s your life. And don’t ask why. Sometimes things just are what they are. Why did Charlotte like you?”

  An invisible hand clenches my throat. “I have no idea.”

  “And in the end, did it matter why?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why does Max like you?”

  “He shouldn’t,” I say. “He shouldn’t like me. I’m damaged. Seriously.”

  “Oh, I know,” Darby says, pointing at herself. “That’s what I’ve been saying all year. But it’s not like any of this is permanent, Becca. It’s not like any of this is forever.”

  That I know.

  “So enjoy it while you can.” She takes another gulp of her steaming hot coffee and grimaces as it burns its way down her throat.

  She sets her hands at nine and three o’clock on the steering wheel, just like we’re taught in driver’s ed—except she’s got a cup of coffee balancing on the wheel in her hand at nine. “Now I’m going to go to school. Would you like a ride?”

  “Yes.” I take a sip of coffee.

  Apparently I’ve moved out of the way of one irresistible force and directly into the path of another.

  “Have you talked to Max yet?” She asks as we’re pulling into school. The question freezes me, and it takes a moment to remember how lungs work. She nods, watching me. “That’s what I thought. His leg wasn’t as bad as they initially thought, just bruises and cuts. His arm is healing in a cast. I heard he’ll be getting out of the hospital Sunday.”

  “You heard?”

  “I asked Victor.”

  “You talked to Victor?”

  Darby rolls her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Thanks.”

  She shrugs. “I was curious. That’s all.”

  I nod, but I know she’s trying to help me.

  “It’s my birthday,” I say, fiddling with the strap of my bag. Darby’s face pinches like she’s sucking on a lemon. “Sunday,” I explain. “It’s my birthday.”

  “Well, what a lovely birthday present for you, then.”

  I run a finger around the rim of my coffee lid. Darby groans beside me. “You know,” she says, like the words are painful, “I may have heard one more thing.”

  I look at her fearfully.

  “He looks for you. Every time he wakes up.”

  My heart, already beaten, stops.

  Scene Twelve

  [On a road trip]

  Charlie got home Saturday evening. I’d told him he didn’t have to come home for my birthday. We’d just seen him at MIT, and I know his classes are crazy, and he can’t afford to take a day off, and yet, bright and early Sunday morning, he barges into my room and sings a horribly out of tune version of the birthday song. It reminds me of baby rhinos jumping on pianos. When he finishes, he takes a low bow before sitting on the end of my bed. “Do you want to take a road trip?”

  “Are you going to sing again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then no. Definitely no.” I pull my pillow over my face.

  He smacks me with a pillow, the very pillow I’d been hiding under. “I said”—he emphasizes his words with more flurries of the pillow on my face—“Do you (pillow thump) want to take (pillow thump) a road trip (pillow thump, thump, thump)?”

  I try to deflect the pillow with a blanket force field. “No.”

  Charlie studies me for a beat, hugging the pillow to his chest, before asking, “You sure?”

  I know exactly where he wants to go. I want to go with him. I do, but then again—“No.”

  He picks at a loose thread in the pillowcase. He looks lost. He looks like he did when he figured out the scientific improbabilities of Santa Claus actually living at the North Pole.

  “Okay,” I say, relenting, feeling myself stacking up the bricks in a heavy wall to protect myself from today.

  “Good,” Charlie says. His voice is soft like dandelion fluff. “Charlotte wouldn’t want to miss your birthday.”

  I haven’t been to visit my best friend since the day they buried her in the ground in a faraway cemetery in a picture-perfect mountain town. I mean it’s far, but not that far. Charlie went back when he left for college. He said it was on his route up to Cambridge anyway, but I’ve studied the maps. I know.<
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  We don’t talk much on the drive up. We talk about Thanksgiving and whether Dad will make that god-awful gluten-free stuffing he made last year. We talk about Charlie’s work with Dr. Bell at MIT. He tells me funny stories about Greta and James in California. He misses them. But they’ll be home at Christmas. He’ll see his friends at Christmas.

  “How’s Max?”

  All of my insides feel like they are bolting for the exits, shoving and pushing at one another to abandon ship. “I, uh…”

  “Mom said you haven’t been back to the hospital all week.”

  “She noticed that, huh?”

  Charlie gives me a sidelong look. “You know intelligence is partly genetic, right?”

  I try to roll my eyes at him, but my heart’s not in it (probably because it’s too busy fighting my spleen to be the first to get out).

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I clamp my jaw shut and shake my head. Charlie looks both disappointed and relieved all at once.

  Charlie puts an audio book on to fill the silence between us. I watch the trees as we pass them, and eventually I fall asleep.

  When I wake, Charlie is standing outside his door, stretching his long arms up toward a clear sky that’s the color of Charlotte’s eyes. There’s a rush of panic that starts clamoring up my spine, until I notice we aren’t at the cemetery, but are parked along a main street with boutiques and beautiful pots of autumnal-colored mums.

  “Where are we?”

  “I need to pick something up. Plus, you’re boring when you’re drooling, so we need to get you some coffee.” He waves an arm toward a very pink door on the street.

  Inside the pink door, the world smells like vanilla and sugar. It smells like Charlotte. There’s a dark-haired woman behind the counter with a wide white smile and lips as pink as the door.

  Charlie steps right up to her, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible if I hadn’t seen it myself, but her smile gets wider. “Mornin’, Miss Rose,” he says, the southern drawl that he usually works to keep hidden, spreading out between them like butter on toast.

  Miss Rose’s pink lips twitch, and she tilts her head, birdlike. “Back again?” she asks, but like she already knows what he’s going to say next, like Charlie and this baker woman are in some play together, reciting lines.

  “I have it on good authority these are the best doughnuts in all of ever,” Charlie says.

  Miss Rose’s eyes get glassy. “And who might that be?”

  “Charlotte Finch,” Charlie says. Charlotte’s name goes through me like a bolt of lightning.

  I must gasp or flinch or something because the next thing I know, Miss Rose is coming around the counter and gathering Charlie and me up in her ample arms and squeezing us so hard I can’t breathe. Or maybe I just can’t breathe because Charlie and Miss Rose have a whole play together and it centers around Charlotte and I’ve got nothing. Nothing.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Becca,” Miss Rose says as she lets us go.

  “I, uh—”

  “Charlotte spoke of you when she visited.”

  I’m shocked she would remember something like that. Who is this woman?

  Reading the question in my expression, Miss Rose smiles in her open way. “It’s my business to know the Finch girls’ business. Their momma was my best friend.”

  “Oh,” I say, and I think I say it out loud, but I can’t be sure because there is so much going on in my head, it’s like a building being evacuated in a fire, a big, blazing, alarms-are-blaring kind of fire.

  “Y’all need coffee,” Miss Rose says, her hand still lingering on my shoulder.

  “And I’ve got that special order to pick up,” Charlie says.

  Miss Rose winks at him, squeezes my shoulder, and then bustles behind the counter and into a back room.

  “What’s going on, Charlie?” And with that, I’ve successfully evacuated all the air from my burning lungs. There’re black splotches blooming in my vision and my eyes are tearing up—probably from the smoke.

  Charlie leads me to a small table by the window. “It’s okay,” he says, holding my hand. “You’ll be okay.”

  But I don’t believe him. I’m alone and adrift, and God this sucks so hard that I want to tear open my own damn flesh. Because how? How do we go on when we’ve lost so much? Charlotte was not just any friend but my person, the person I was put on this earth to befriend and, without her, what am I? Nothing. Nothing. It’s just one more reason why I had to leave Max. I’ve got nothing to offer him.

  “Becca?”

  I force myself to look at Charlie. His ears are bright red, so red I imagine they’d be hot to the touch. And his mouth is a straight gash of a line across his face. And his eyes are so loud. Screaming eyes. Shouting with pain and worry and loss and hope.

  Hope.

  Charlie is looking at me with the barest shred of hope he can stand to hold on to.

  And so I hold on to it, too.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he says, leaning his forehead against mine, whispering the words for only us to hear. “We’re going to be okay. Please, Becca. Can’t we be okay?”

  I nod and, with our foreheads pushed together, the motion makes him nod, too.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  Scene Thirteen

  [A cemetery]

  When Miss Rose comes out from the back, she’s got a large brown bag with twine handles, which she hands to Charlie. She bustles over to the coffee and pours out two large to-go cups. Charlie sets the bag down and takes the coffee over to the counter with the cream and sugar. I watch him tear the tops off three packets of sugar, splitting the contents between our two cups. He’s got a funny little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  Miss Rose chuckles from behind the counter and, once again, I know they know something I don’t know. It’s theirs and not mine. I take a shaky breath, though, because I promised Charlie I’d try to be okay. And I can do that. At least for today.

  Becca Hanson makes a stunning reprise of her role Girl Being Okay for one show only.

  Charlie has topped off the coffees with thick cream and pressed the lids on them. He hands me mine and says good-bye to his strange friend in this strange town, while I linger by the door.

  We drive in silence toward the cemetery with the windows cracked open so that the hissing wind is the only sound between us. The warmth of the coffee cup against my hands helps chase away the chill in the mountain air. I look out at the small town, which quickly thins to wider green pastures with houses leaning on the backs of mountains, and I wonder about Charlotte’s life here. She didn’t talk about it much. It was in the past. Charlotte lived in the present.

  “How do you know Miss Rose?”

  Charlie’s lips curl into a smile. “Met her when I brought Charlotte here to see her dad.”

  “Just the once?”

  “Well,” he says, sipping his coffee, “I stopped in for coffee and doughnuts this summer, on my way up to MIT.”

  I nod.

  I take a long sip of my coffee to wash down the jealousy that is sitting like bile at the back of my throat.

  Charlie turns onto the cemetery drive. There’s a tall brick archway with wrought iron gates swung wide open. As we drive through it, all my senses spark like fireflies at dusk.

  Once the car is parked, Charlie reaches into the back to retrieve the bag Miss Rose gave him. He carries it and his coffee around to my door, opening it for me. “When you’re ready,” he says, nodding off in the direction in which I know Charlotte is buried.

  I watch him through the open door as he heads for the path that will wind around the old gravestones, bleached white like bones themselves, toward a small pink dot near the back corner.

  I can choose to stay here. I can just sit here in this car, drinking my coffee, and being miserable, or I can get out, walk down that path, and what? Sit and be miserable by a pile of dirt and a broken-down angel wearing a coat of ugly pink paint?

 
; I close my eyes against the bright sun and remember Charlie carrying that broken statue toward Charlotte’s grave on the day of her funeral. He didn’t want Charlotte to be alone. And I’d carried the paint and brush for him. And her wing. I’d carried the angel’s wing.

  I’d felt so calm then. I didn’t feel good, but I didn’t feel this constant panic inside—this need to peel away my skin so I can escape from the chaos inside myself.

  I’d tied the angel’s wing back on and kissed my brother’s cheek and said good-bye to Charlotte. Then walked to the car without another look back, straight into Charlie’s best friend Greta’s arms. She’d held me and rocked me and shushed me, even though I wasn’t crying anymore. And Charlie had sat by that grave and talked with his girlfriend and painted the angel that hideous shade of pink. What did he call it? Flamingo-ass pink.

  When I open my eyes again, I find Charlie, a lone living figure amongst the dead. He’s so tall, dwarfing the stones around him, like they are children frozen in a game of tag. I have the urge to run around tagging them all, shouting, “Unfreeze,” with every touch.

  Charlie suddenly doubles over, no longer taller than the stones around him. He’s squatting next to the pink angel by Charlotte’s grave. I’m struck with a realization like lightning to my system. He needs me. My big brother needs me. I launch myself through the graveyard. I can’t get to him fast enough. He needs me.

  When I reach him, he’s got his hands wrapped around the back of his head, his elbows pinned around his ears, crouched down, rocking himself. And sobbing.

  My brother is crying, loud bursts of pain like the sudden cawing of crows as they startle from a field.

  Beside him is a headstone.

  And Charlotte’s name is on it.

  This wasn’t here last time. It’d been too soon. There were rolls of sod pressed with gaping seams over the fresh dirt. There were flowers, so many flowers. But there was no stone with her name. No stone summing her life up in the short line of Daughter, sister, and friend.

  I want to scream. I want to kick at the stone, shove it, topple it. And I must make some sort of strangled sound, because Charlie looks up from his well of sorrow. Seeing me, he reaches out one of his long arms, catching my hand in his, and pulling me down with him, like we’ll be safer down here—safer together.