by Cyn Balog
I cringe. How it was makes it seem like I’m some bald, three-legged cat he decided to adopt from the animal shelter. Like I need Kane to take care of me. I’m fine. I’m just peachy—until people start asking me how I’m doing, not in a casual, what’s up way, but in a lingering, oh you poor thing way. Whenever I answer “fine,” they always seem suspicious, as though they want me to have a nervous breakdown at their feet.
My eyes trail to Kane’s backyard. They removed the shed months ago, but there’s still a stark brown rectangle of dirt. A giant scar. So, so ugly and sad.
So unlike the Declan I knew.
I shiver, recalling the day the world tilted. The day everything got a little brighter, more intense. The day I met him.
“You okay, Hail?” Kane asks me.
I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles are white. I loosen my hands. “Yeah. I hope you’re doing something nice for that girlfriend of yours. Girls expect that.”
He frowns. “You don’t.”
I give him a smile and bat my eyelashes. “I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.”
He laughs like it’s the most hilarious joke in the world. Like he wasn’t the one who made me that way, if it can be said that sex makes a girl a woman. Which honestly is a crap thing to say, since it didn’t make me feel any different and it gives him way too much credit. He took my virginity, not my freaking soul. “Whatever. Today is just another day.”
He’s only saying that for my benefit. It’s not a day of suck because I have no one to share it with. I’ve never shared Valentine’s Day with anyone, ever, and I’ve survived.
Before, it was simply another day.
Now, it’s the anniversary of the worst day of our lives.
If that isn’t the definition of a day of suck, I don’t know what is.
I climb out of the Jeep, and Kane comes around to the driver’s side, standing there as if he wants to say something. When we were fifteen, he was about my height. Now, he’s a solid nine inches taller than me, and I hold my own at 5’6”. It’s a good thing he’s this tall, because from down here, it’s easier to avoid his eyes. I look at the scuffed toes of my black Converse high tops and tell him I’ll see him later.
Halfway up the drive to my house, Kane’s stepmom calls to me.
I’ve talked to Mrs. Weeks about a dozen times since our worlds collectively turned to crap. Funny, she used to be such a straight-laced, business-suit-wearing, un-Californian person. Since she left the West Coast, though, she’s become about as California hippie as you can imagine, with wild blond hair and a soft, faraway voice that makes you think she’s been sucking on some really strong weed. The only feature she shares with her son is the arched, expressive shape of their eyebrows, though his were black as tar and hers are the color of honey.
But it’s enough. Enough to make me see his face in hers, every single time.
It’s both sad and pathetic that something as innocuous as an eyebrow tears me apart.
She waddles down the drive toward me, the bottom of her amorphous maxi skirt dusting the asphalt, her expanding belly poking out the front of her cardigan. I break into a run, because she looks like she’s about to give birth on the sidewalk. When I get across the street, I notice the bulging black garbage bags on the porch. “We’re getting ready to paint the nursery,” she huffs out.
The nursery, a.k.a. no-man’s-land. Hell of a time to clean out Declan’s room. But she’s said before that keeping busy helps her cope. In the past eight months, she’s remodeled the house from top to bottom.
All except for one room.
Since I’ve gotten out of the hospital, that room has had its door closed every time I’ve stopped by. It’s at the end of the hall and is visible from the foyer, right when you walk inside. Inescapable.
Mrs. Weeks told me, months ago, that I could take anything I wanted, anytime I wanted.
I didn’t want.
I take a breath.
I fasten my eyes on a patch of gray snow on the sidewalk as she hands me a large Yuengling beer box. “I know you’d like to keep these things.” Wrong. “But come on up and see what else.”
“Actually, this is good.” I hold the box like it’s toxic waste. I don’t want to go in his room. I imagine it smells like him, like soap and woodworker’s glue and motor oil. Even this box does. Or maybe that’s my imagination.
She looks over her shoulder as Kane helps lug the bag to the curb. She calls out, “Kane, there are a few more upstairs, for Goodwill.”
“On it,” he says, jogging inside.
She lowers her voice for me. “I wanted to get you alone, because I have to ask you something.”
She starts unfolding an envelope. I already know it’s something I don’t want to see, like that brown scar in the backyard. Instinctively, I step back.
“Do you know what this is?”
She pulls a tiny photograph out of the envelope, the kind from one of those instant cameras. My gaze catches on it, and I can’t look away.
It’s like one of those kids’ puzzles where objects are magnified to such an extent you can’t really tell what they are. Body parts melding. Hair. Light and dark, smooth and textured, some shadowed, some overexposed. Skin upon skin. Declan’s skin. My skin? And in the white space underneath, printed with a Sharpie in harsh block letters, the words:
THIS ENDS HERE.
583 Days Before
Bitch, bitch, bitch. Kane bitched like crazy sometimes.
This time, though, I had to admit he had a good reason.
His mother had been out of the picture for twelve years, and it’d been Kane and his dad ever since, living in that three-bedroom bachelor pad like a couple of fraternity brothers. His father was neater than the average frat guy, sure, but the absence of a woman’s touch was obvious—Penn State curtains in the living room, where the only decor on the wall was a fifty-six-inch television set. The place always smelled like nachos, and there was never anything but beer and ketchup in the fridge. His father kept an antique carburetor from an old Mustang on the kitchen island because he thought it made a good centerpiece. Stuff like that.
Earlier that summer, Kane’s dad had gone to SoCal on what we all thought was a business trip. Kane was pissed because he’d had to go to his aunt’s house in Union for a whole week and miss out on baseball camp. I’d spent the entire week missing him. Luisa summered in Europe, so without either of them around, I was alone. Though things had been different in the months after we had sex. I’m not sure how. He didn’t exactly avoid me, but something shifted. I tried to pretend like everything was the same. But I couldn’t look at him without feeling him between my legs, closer to me than anyone could possibly get.
Funny, that thing I’d said was not worth all the fuss? As forgettable as it was, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why had we done it? Wasn’t it supposed to be about love? I did love Kane, in the pervasive, unmindful way that you love your own hands. I knew life would be shit without him. But maybe that wasn’t love. Maybe that was dependence.
It was a humid day, one that makes everything stick together with sweat and everyone grumble. When my father drove me home from day camp at the local Y, he was harrumphing about how my mother hadn’t picked up his dry cleaning before they closed that day. We both just wanted to get home, but we couldn’t pull into the cul-de-sac because a huge moving truck was parked in the narrow opening, which made him mutter more. He ended up driving over the curb in his frustration, and I could see Kane sitting on his front porch steps, bouncing a ball and looking miserable in the way he would when he was alone and didn’t have to put on his charming airs. I rushed across to see what was going on.
When I got there, Kane said, “He got married.”
I was stunned. “Who?” popped out of my mouth before I could train my lips how to respond.
“Donald Trump. Who do you think? My
dad. It wasn’t a business trip. He went there to meet her, and then they got hitched in Vegas on the way here.”
My mouth gaped. Kane’s dad wasn’t what you’d call a free spirit. He was a quiet, background IT guy prone to tinkering. The type of person you’d expect to carry an assortment of extra computer parts and cables on his person at all times. Steady, not one to do anything worthy of gossip. “Wow.”
Kane mumbled under his breath and stood up. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
He threw the ball so hard against the pavement that it bounced over our heads but didn’t touch ground again. It must have rolled up onto the roof and into the gutter. He cursed some more. I was beginning to understand his rage. His dad had gone on vacation without him, which would be enough to get me riled. But bringing home a new mom? I’d probably never speak to my dad again.
I thought Kane was bringing me inside to meet the new wife, which I didn’t really want to do, but supposed it was polite. I followed him inside, doing what I usually did around him those days: trying my damnedest to force away the memory of that day in January. He brought me upstairs and stopped at the third bedroom at the end of the hall, which is my bedroom in my house, but in Kane’s house had always been his dad’s office. The door was open. Someone was strumming a guitar.
I looked at the person holding the guitar, and my heart stopped.
Everything stopped. I couldn’t move in, out, anywhere.
He took his time raising his eyes to me. Time seemed to be slowing down. I’d find out later that was the Declan Effect. He prided himself on doing everything carefully, slowly—on being the tortoise while everyone else was trying to be the hare. He wore thick-rimmed, geeky glasses. He had on a white T-shirt under a loose bowling shirt, the colors contrasting nicely with his deep brown skin. Tight blue jeans. White socks and sneakers. All those things that, packaged together, you’d think would be quite goofy, and yet…it was hipster cool. No kid at our school dressed like that. They were all lemmings, too afraid to stand out. But this kid had style; he had a personality. I knew that much, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth.
Me? I couldn’t close my gulpy fish mouth.
“Hi,” he said first.
Kane leaned against the door. “This is Hailey Ward. She lives across the street.”
“Hailey, like the comet?” he asked.
My mouth had done half the work by opening, but words failed me.
Then he started to strum his guitar. He looked up at me and sang in a strong voice—something about a girl wearing a dress, her hair done up so nice. My hair was falling in my face. It was not done up nice at all. No dress, either. I’d come from Lazy Dazy Camp, where I’d spent eight hours teaching second-graders how to make bottle-cap ornaments in the hot sun. I was sweaty and probably smelled bad.
When he sang about my heart being cold as ice, I realized it wasn’t an original work. Then he hit the guitar and broke into the chorus, which I’d heard before. “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.” He stopped and grinned, and that’s when I figured out who he looked like: one of those old-time dudes from the early days of rock ‘n’ roll. It was like he was caught in the fifties.
“Buddy Holly?” I murmured, not really sure, but I’d seen a movie on him. I think he died in a plane crash at the end.
“Bill Haley and the Comets,” he said, breaking into another song, one I’d never heard before.
Oh. Who? I looked at Kane, who gave me a look like Pity me because I have to live with him. “So yeah. This is Declan. My…”
The kid stopped strumming and pulled the guitar strap over his head. “Stepbro. Right, man?” He held out his hand, palm up, but Kane just stared at it.
I said, almost too eagerly, “I’ll give you some skin,” and I did. I trailed my hand over his, light enough so we were barely touching.
His hand snapped, and he made like he was shooting me with his pointer finger. “All right,” he said. His voice was so smooth, but not oily. Low already, seamless, like a man’s. Nice. “My girl.”
His girl? I had to giggle. Kane scowled at me.
I made an attempt to dig my hands into the pockets of my jean shorts but stopped after the third try. I was wearing sports shorts, without pockets. Declan noticed, because this amused smile crossed his face and his brown eyes danced. I pushed a lock of stray hair back to my ponytail. “Where are you from?”
“San Diego.”
I looked over at Kane, reading his thoughts. We called California The Land of Nuts and Honey. I could hear his voice in my head. Declan wasn’t looking at him, so Kane mouthed, Nut, and pantomimed crazy by twirling his finger by the side of his head.
“Are you…going to school with us in the fall?”
Declan studied me with these dark, almond-shaped eyes that were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. My face flamed. “Depends. What grade are you?”
“Tenth.”
“Then nope,” he said. “I’m going to be a junior. From what I hear, your high school is split into two. I’ll be in the senior building.”
He was right. Because of overcrowding, the district had to split us into two buildings that were, essentially, on the same campus but separated by a football field.
“Oh.” Not only was Declan Kane’s brother, but he was older. First. And Declan looked comfortable, even surrounded by cardboard boxes in his brand-new bedroom. No wonder Kane seemed like he wanted to punch him.
Instead, Kane grabbed my sleeve. “Come on.”
I didn’t want to. But I followed Kane, new feelings bubbling inside me. As I left, the kid started playing his guitar again, this time singing, “See you later, alligator…”
When we went downstairs, we sat in the gazebo at the back of his house. I sucked in humid air as if it were laced with a drug, feeling dazed, as if the world had shifted once again. Kane noticed and said, “What?”
I started to get defensive until I put together what was pissing him off. I had a grin plastered on my face, a goofy one. My cheeks were sore, probably because I’d never used those muscles that way for that long. I quickly wiped off the grin and said, “Wow. I can’t believe your dad… I mean…he didn’t even tell you?”
“Nope,” he said, digging at a knot in the wood of the bench with his thumbnail. He trembled like a time bomb ready to go off. “It was supposed to be a visit, but they hit it off so well, they just went with it. You know California people. They’re all free-spirited hippie types. They live for shit like this. How’d you know how to do that, anyway?”
“Uh. What?”
He seemed annoyed at me. “The skin thing?”
“Oh. I don’t know. I think I saw it in a movie,” I answered, still feeling tingly from where Declan’s and my skin had almost touched. My goofy smile threatened to return, so I squelched it. “But your dad is…”
“Insane. Obviously.” Kane stood up. “I’ve got to go. My dad wants to take us out to a family dinner. Some family.”
Thursday, February 14
Just Before Midnight
I can’t eat unless I’m under a blanket.
I’ve always been weird about food, but it’s been a year since I stopped eating meals at the dinner table, in the cafeteria, or any place you’d normally eat food. It’s been ten months since Juliet, my therapist, told my parents to let me. She said that they should allow anything that helps with the healing process, as long as it doesn’t hurt me.
I’m not sure scarfing down Cheez-Its while under the covers of my bed is helping the healing. Still, I do it every night. Sometimes an entire box will disappear while I’m getting ready for bed.
I’ve slept with covers over my head since I was a little kid. My mother hated it because she was afraid I’d be smothered in my sleep. But I like being insulated from the world like this. Safe.
It’s only since I got back from Shady Harbor that I’ve been inviting the Cheez-Its to a
ccompany me.
My sheets are gritty with electric-orange crumbs. I smell and feel the sour cheddar and chemicals, and most mornings, my stomach hurts. I’m chubbier now, a side effect of the antidepressants. Or maybe I should say pleasantly plump. Chubbier implies that I care. And I really don’t. Though Juliet says exercise would do me good, she agrees my improved mental state is more important than gaining a few extra pounds.
Not that my mental state is anything to cheer about.
I support the flashlight under my chin and shove another handful of cheddary goodness in my mouth as I turn the pages of a scrapbook I’d put together to give Declan last year. I never could take a good photo with my phone to save my life, but he was a master of selfies. He’d take them and text them to me, so after he died, I had more than a thousand of them.
Hence, smashing my phone. My parents packed me off to Shady Brook after that, before I could turn my wrath on the scrapbook.
I lean forward, squinting. In every shot, he has that same enormous smile. We’re usually hugging tight, cheeks smushed together for the camera. Declan was a hugger. Unlike Kane, he was always touching me, and in all the best ways, making my spine dance and tingle, my every nerve bend toward him.
I’ve been through the Book of a Thousand Selfies so many times, and though every picture is essentially the same, I can tell you where each one was taken. I have my favorites, like the one taken after the giant slingshot ride at the shore. Or the one in front of home base at the Phillies game.
But God, that smile. You could harness its power and light all of Jersey with it for a year. It wasn’t a sly, mischievous one like Kane’s. Imagine a five-year-old boy’s smile after catching his first fish on the Seaside pier. That was Declan’s smile. Declan was never up to no good.
At least…
I shake crumbs off my T-shirt and unfold the envelope Mrs. Weeks gave me earlier. I turn the tiny photo around, adjusting the flashlight to illuminate the parts of it I want to study, but it doesn’t become clearer. The light skin blurs with the dark, and the image is too pixelated and grainy to figure out. But something about one blotch looks familiar in color and shape.
