Fall for Anything

by Courtney Summers

Page 8

  A chorus of sympathetic murmurs. Mary walks over and gives Missy a big hug and then Missy cries. She cries beautifully this side of the bonfire and Milo is looking at her with such … I don’t know, such want, I think, and that’s beautiful too. I hate that I’m so numb and empty and disconnected from most of these people but even I can see worth in stupid little moments like these. These people aren’t even my family, but I can see their value and if I can see it in something this small, when I feel this bad, then—

  Then why didn’t he?

  I take another sip of the beer. Try to distract myself from the knot in my throat and the fact that I feel like I’m going to cry.

  “If I lived in Pikesville, I’d kill myself,” Deacon mutters.

  “Deacon,” Jenna hisses.

  I stare at the bonfire until I realize it’s fallen uncomfortably quiet and everyone is staring at me. I have to replay the conversation to understand why and then I understand why.

  “Oh. It’s okay,” I say to Deacon. I’ve just glimpsed what my life is going to become after the initial grief passes: people making jokes about offing themselves in front of me and apologizing for it after and then all the awkward silence that follows. “It’s okay. ”

  “Sorry about your dad,” Deacon says. He doesn’t look embarrassed or apologetic about what he said. All its potential offensiveness probably never would’ve occurred to him without Jenna’s help. “That was supremely fucked up. ”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “It was. ”

  “Is it true your mom’s like, catatonic?”

  “Deacon!” Jenna again.

  “What?” Deacon asks. “It’s not like we’re not all thinking it. ” He turns back to me. “Jenna’s plan of action once she found out you were coming was to shut the fuck up, basically. ”

  “It’s okay,” I repeat.

  It actually is okay. The casual way the questions roll off Deacon’s tongue makes me want to answer them. It’s like it’s only us, him and me, talking about this. Everyone else slowly fades into the background until they’re ghosts.

  “She’s kind of catatonic, I guess. She doesn’t get dressed a lot. ”

  “Did he leave a note?” Deacon asks. I nod. He gives an impressed whistle. “For a while there, my mom thought it had been a murder—”

  “Okay,” Milo says, not so much a ghost anymore. “That’s enough. ”

  “It’s fine. ” I turn back to Deacon and sip at my beer. “My mom thought that too, for a minute. It just turned out we didn’t…”

  “Didn’t what?” Deacon prompts.

  I shrug. “You think you know someone and you don’t. ” And then I take it a step further: “I mean … I don’t know. You could all be jumpers. Wrist slitters. OD’ers. Stand in front of a train. I had no idea my dad was suicidal. ”

  Missy shivers. “God, that’s a terrible thought. ”

  “Did you see it?” Deacon asks.

  “Okay, that’s the line,” Aaron says. “You crossed it. ”

  But everyone is staring at me, waiting for me to speak.

  “I did,” I say.

  They all go so still. They all seem to stop breathing at once.

  I clear my throat. “It was getting late and I knew he liked to go to Tarver’s Warehouse sometimes. He’d spend hours out there, just taking photographs. Dinner was getting cold—he misses dinner all the time, so I don’t know what made me go to get him this time … but I went and I get there and—” I finish off the beer and everyone is eating this up. “I saw him on top of the roof and he was doing something with his hands…” I shrug. “I don’t know what he was doing with his hands. So I waved and I shouted and he looked up and he crossed his arms over his chest and he stepped off. ”

  “How close were you?” Deacon asks, leaning forward.

  They’re all leaning forward.

  “I heard it,” I say.

  Milo drops Missy off at home first. I like that. I’m in the backseat, staring out the window, counting the tops of streetlights.

  “Why did you lie to them?” Milo asks.

  I shrug but I don’t say anything.

  After that, I become my mother.

  Which means for four days I stop brushing my hair and live in my housecoat and shuffle around the house, mute and sad, and I don’t answer my phone.

  Milo sends me four text messages. One a day.

  STATION’S BORING WITHOUT YOU. MISSY’S NOT HERE ALL THE TIME, WHATEVER YOU THINK.

  COME OVER TODAY.

  OR CALL ME.

  ARE YOU OKAY?

  The truth is, I’m fine. I’m kind of tired of everything, I guess, but I haven’t given up—I’m only pretending to, so I can drive Beth insane.

  It might be working. She says one hundred words for every three she manages to force out of my mom and every two she forces out of me and her eyes develop this panicked glint.

  That’s sort of cool.

  Day four starts like: Beth bursts into my room and tries to wake me up. I keep my eyes closed, but I pick at the mattress, so she knows I’m awake—I’m just not responding to her.

  “Eddie! Up!” She sits down on the edge of my bed and shakes my leg. “Up! Up! Up!”

  She waits about five minutes for me to acknowledge her and when I don’t, she gives up, gets off the bed, and leaves the room. That’s nice. I stretch out and stare at the ceiling.

  “Eddie!”

  When I finally come downstairs, Mom is curled up on the couch with a book. When she sees me, she puts the book down and holds her arms out. I go to her and I let her hug me.

  She kisses the side of my face and says, “I love you. ”

  “I love you too, Mom. ”

  Just that—it exhausts her. By the time I’m halfway out of the room, she’s leaning back and her eyes are closed. Her chest rises and falls so purposefully it’s like she’s telling herself to breathe because she can’t remember how to do it without thinking about it.

  I shuffle into the kitchen, where Beth’s washing dishes. There’s a tall glass of orange juice at my seat, plus two vitamins. I’m vitamin-worthy now. Incredible. I sit down and stare at them and then I pick up one of the vitamins. Hold it up and study it. It’s round and orange. Wouldn’t it be amazing if it could fix everything? You put it on your tongue and let it dissolve. All your emotional trauma will end and that broken, cold dead soul will be alive again! And all your physical problems will be cured too. Cancer, illness. Vitamins made out of Nanobots or something, I don’t know.

  “You need a boost,” Beth says of the vitamins. She turns the water off and faces me. “I want you out of the house today. ”

  “What?”

  “Get dressed, get out of the house,” she says. “I let you laze about for three days, but don’t think you’ll be spending the summer like that because you won’t be. ”

  “What?”

  “You’re not spending the rest of summer vacation sleeping in late, hanging around inside, breathing recycled air and—” Her eyes travel over me and I can’t believe she’s mistaken my fucking grief for laziness. “Not brushing your hair. I don’t know if you spend every summer like this, but it doesn’t matter. I need you out of the way while I help your mom. Besides, this isn’t the kind of time you should be wasting. Go! Live!”

  I imagine so many horrible things happening to her.

  There’s a dirty, rusty old station wagon parked in the muck at Tarver’s.

  I press my face against the driver’s side window and look in. There’s a Coke in the drink holder and crumpled fast food wrappers scattered on the passenger seat. On the floor, a nickel catches the sunlight and glints at me. In the backseat, there’s a discarded jacket and an iPod and a couple of paperbacks with the front covers ripped off.

  “Hi, Eddie. ”

  I step back. Culler is rounding the building, lowering his camera. I know instantly he’s taken my photo and he knows I know
it. He points behind him. “I couldn’t tell it was you from way back there. I took the shot just in case you were stealing my car. ”

  “Not stealing it. ” I shove my hands in my pocket. “I thought it was your car. ” I pause. “I mean, I knew it was your car. ”

  He stops a few feet from me.

  “Thank you for the card,” he says.

  “It was nothing. ”

  “No, it was really nice. And I appreciate it. ” He looks away. “I do miss him. ”

  “I just thought…” I shrug. “I mean, sometimes I forget I’m not the only one. ”

  “Well, in a way you are. You’re his only daughter. ”

  “I guess. Thank you for your card…”

  “Of course. ”

  “So, did you figure it out?” I ask.

  “Nope. You?”

  “No…”

  He squints at me. “He leave a note?”

  “Would you believe that’s the second time I’ve been asked that in less than a week?”

  “I’d believe that. ”

  I swallow. “He did. ”

  “I won’t ask you what it said,” he says, which is good, because I don’t want to tell him it didn’t say anything. It didn’t say why. He leans against the car and taps his fingers against his Nikon and stares up at the sky. “What do you come out here for, besides that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pats the side of the car. I lean beside him.

  “I take photos,” he says. “Just knowing it inspired him; that he came here to be inspired … I’m hoping to feed off that. You don’t take photographs, do you?”

  I shake my head. “Does that surprise you?”

  “No,” Culler says, smiling. “Did you ever really get how famous he was at a certain point in his life? Within certain circles? I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have a kind of celebrity parent. Can their kids ever understand that scope? Their impact?”