That Night

by Cyn Balog

  Because the six of us always hung out together, eventually Nina and Javier became a couple. Kane may complain about Luisa in secret to me, but Javier and Nina have the opposite dynamic. They constantly look like they can’t stand each other. Their fights are explosive, the result of being two people who probably never would’ve gotten together if it weren’t for us pushing them that way.

  They’re at each other’s throats again. Nina’s dark cheeks are flushed, and she’s scowling. She grabs my arm as I approach and says, “Oh good, Hailey. Tell him.”

  I run the dial on my lock, cursing when I can’t remember the numbers. Details I know by heart leak away, somehow. Finally I pull open my locker and look over at Nina, who is looking at me expectantly.

  Nina has a habit of thinking people can read her mind. “Tell him what?”

  She sighs. “That you can’t go naked under your cap and gown.”

  I raise my eyebrow at Javier, happy to have something else to talk about.

  He grins at me. He usually says shit like this to get Nina riled up, and even after more than a year together, she still hasn’t wised up to the ploy. Nina is more serious than a heart attack. Javier says, his accent thick, “Oh come on, Nee. It’s going to be hot under there.”

  I don’t have to look at him. From his tone of voice, I can tell he’s kidding. I get my books for first period and say, “He can if he wants to. But I think the fabric is kind of sheer. We might see your junk.”

  She screws up her face. “God forbid. No one wants to see your junk.”

  Javier nods. “But my junk is so impressive, no?”

  She punches him. “You wish.”

  He grabs his arm and winces. Overpowered by a girl who’s half his size and probably weighs ninety pounds soaking wet? Javier is the biggest wimp ever. “Come on, Nee. I was kidding. Mi madre bought me a three-piece suit with a top hat, un reloj de bolsillo, y un monóculo. Happy?”

  “I have no idea what that is, but it sounds better.” She smiles and smooths her shiny, black pixie hair as I slam my locker door. When I look back up, she’s peering at me in a very familiar way. Javier is too. Nina’s father is a police officer and was first on the scene when Mrs. Weeks called 911 about Declan. It’s highly likely Mr. Paradis shielded his daughter from the most gruesome details, but I can’t help thinking that she knows more about what happened that day than all of us, simply because of her connections.

  I wince, waiting for it. The two of them exchange glances, daring each other to broach the subject first, so I say, “Nice talking to you,” and turn to make my escape.

  Nina hooks my arm in hers and walks with me toward first period. “Really. We just want to know how you are. You know. Because of everything.”

  Because of everything. It occurs to me that she can’t zero in on one thing because everything in my life is shit. “Everything”—I emphasize the word—“is fine.”

  “You were okay yesterday?”

  I take a sip of my water. “Sure. Easy-peasy.”

  She touches my water bottle. “So, what’s that?” she singsongs.

  I sigh. “Water. Really.” I ignore the fact that she’s leaning in, probably to smell my breath. “Geez. Can’t I make a mistake once without everyone getting on me for it?”

  Javier falls in line behind us. “It was twice.”

  “Thank you for keeping score, Jav,” I grumble. They’re not the only ones taking an interest in my water bottle. Mr. Vanderbilt, my chem teacher, watches from the door of his classroom. It’s hazy, but I think I fell shitfaced off one of the stools in his lab before Christmas and he had to carry me to the nurse’s while I drifted in and out of consciousness.

  “Fine. You know what?” I stalk past a trash can and drop the bottle in it. “I’d rather dehydrate like a sad raisin than hear it from you guys.”

  I try to be light and fun about it, grinning, but there’s this underlying tension to my voice. The more I push for normalcy, the less I succeed. “You look tired,” Nina observes.

  “I never wear makeup first thing. Gym,” I tell her. Or at least that’s what I tell everyone. It doesn’t make sense to dress up first thing when I’m going to have to change into sweats and run the track. But really, I haven’t put much into my appearance for a long time. The meds have wreaked havoc on my body, making my skin break out, adding pounds… I know I look different, but I’m here, at least. I make a mental note to put on some lip gloss when I change into my school outfit. “So what’s the deal? You guys have a good Valentine’s Day?”

  Nina and Javier exchange worried glances. I don’t know who issued the command that the V-holiday couldn’t be mentioned in my presence. I brought it up, after all. Finally, Nina says, “Um, fine.” Then she quickly adds, “Did you do that problem set for trig?”

  I might never have been the class clown, but people used to joke with me. They used to have fun around me. Now, I can’t get through a conversation without awkward silences and half-uttered sentences. “Yeah,” I answer. “It sucked.”

  Trig is usually easy for me. But last night, it wasn’t. Every two seconds, my eyes would wander to that Yuengling box filled with Declan’s stuff. It had seen his last moments. Those moments before he went down into the basement and pulled Mr. Weeks’s handgun out of its case. Before he’d gone out to the shed, broken open the lock, and…

  Before, we used to go to the movies at least once a month. To the diner. To the mall. As six, it worked out nicely. We’d all pile into Javier’s SUV. Now, we’re an odd five. We haven’t been anywhere as a group in more than a year. The last time, we’d gone to see some forgettable comedy that wasn’t worth the price of admission. It was such a low-note ending. Like Declan’s last tweet, a day before: Wawa packed with people getting bread and milk. Couldn’t get gas.

  Not exactly profound.

  All of it was so dull, so everyday. In fact, nothing he had done said, This is my last.

  When I break out of my trance, Nina and Javier are staring at me. It’s obvious Nina asked me another question while I was spaced out. “Huh?” I ask.

  Nina massages my shoulder. “I was asking if you heard what happened with Luisa and Kane. I heard they had a real big blowout yesterday.”

  The six of used to hang out before first period in front of my locker and Javier’s, since they were central to our classes. But that changed last year. Luisa and Kane usually go off on their own to who-knows-where, and I barely see them throughout the day. “That’s old news,” I mumble. “I saw them this morning. They’re fine.”

  “Oh. Really? Well, that’s boring. She’s a total bitch anyway, ignoring us like she does.”

  Not ignoring us. Ignoring me is more like it.

  I tell Nina I’ll see her in trig and head off toward the locker rooms, my mind swirling more than ever. Juliet said that I’d think about him less and less as time went on, but she failed to tell me that every anniversary—of our first kiss, our first date—would stir up the memories afresh.

  IT ENDS HERE.

  Yes, if by “it” you mean everything normal about my life. It all ended that day. These days, I’m the odd girl out. The leftover. Maybe I’ll never be anything else.

  Gym is my least favorite class because I don’t have a single ally there anymore. I used to be…not popular, but someone who held her own. Popular seniors wouldn’t be buddy-buddy with me, but they’d talk to me here and there. Now, they turn the other way when I come near.

  They don’t know what to say, so they avoid, avoid, avoid.

  It’s probably good, since even the stupidest, silliest comments have a way of reducing me to tears. Declan was the brain, the thinker. He wanted to go into engineering and architecture—urban planning, he thought. He was constantly working with his hands, getting them all cut up building models. At any time, he’d have half a dozen bandages on his hands. So a couple months ago, when I got a paper cu
t in art, I started to sob uncontrollably when the teacher offered me a Band-Aid.

  No wonder they all expect me to have a mental breakdown. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  I trudge into the locker room, and the smell of body odor and baby powder assaults my nose. Everyone in my row stops and looks at me as I sit on the bench and bend over, taking my combination lock in my hand. I spin the lock face, trying to clear my mind so that I can focus on the numbers.

  IT ENDS HERE.

  Not the pain. Juliet was wrong. The pain grows. It grows and stretches until it’s bigger than me. It’s spiraling out, and sometimes I can feel it not only in my chest, but radiating out of my arms and legs, suffocating me and everything around me.

  That feeling comes, silent and dark as fog. Before I can channel one of Juliet’s coping techniques, it settles over my mind, extinguishing all but one thought there.

  Bleed.

  Cut yourself, and bleed.

  Bleed. Declan bled out too. I’d joked that he was the Gentle Californian Soul, but nothing about his death was gentle. I didn’t see much, but in my mind, he’s crouched in the corner of the shed, his head reduced to nothing but globs of flesh and shards of bone sprayed out onto the particleboard wall like a child’s excited finger painting. He reduced the shed to something so grotesque and irreparable that the only solution was for his father to burn the damn thing to the ground.

  Declan never did anything half-assed. Go big or go home.

  Me, however? I was always the wishy-washy one. The I don’t know, what do you want to do? type. I never had an opinion. The scars on my wrists have become chicken scratches, half-hearted cries for help.

  Mrs. Wilbur calls everyone out to the gym. The others file out, their voices fading away, leaving me with the sounds of the whirring of the fans above me.

  I finally pull open the lock and look at my hands. They’re white and trembling. I spy it on the ground. A flash of silver. Someone left a nail file. I pick it up. I feel like it’s here for a reason.

  There is a reason for everything.

  And that reason is still haunting me every damn day: Declan.

  Using the faint, raised scar on my wrist as a guide, I watch the blood bubble up as I begin to slice.

  514 Days Before

  Once upon a time, my parents liked each other.

  But I sure as hell couldn’t remember it. That’s why I spent most of my time outside, away from the demilitarized zone.

  I got another splinter climbing up the pirate-ship playhouse in the giant swing set behind my house. The thing hadn’t been varnished in years. It was the part of summer that dips its foot into September, and when I wasn’t in school, I was milking the last of the warm weather, wearing short-shorts and going barefoot. Mosquito bites and scrapes riddled my body. I didn’t mind. I liked sitting up in the playhouse, feeling the breeze and watching the ducks play in the retention pond below me.

  Tucked in the corner of the yard, at least I couldn’t hear the arguing. This time, my dad was getting it because he’d bought the wrong kind of taco meat at the store. Last time, my mom got it because she’d thrown away my dad’s favorite shirt, which was full of holes. It always started with something small, then escalated to all-out war.

  I’d brought my sketchbook with me, even though I sucked at drawing. I wasn’t good at anything, sadly—not even dance, though I’d done that after gymnastics, which I started when I was three. I’d also tried softball, clarinet, soccer… None of it stuck. Kane said the same thing my parents said: that I got bored with things too easily. But after working so hard with dance only to constantly lag behind the other girls, I wanted to be a natural at something.

  I wanted a talent.

  I leaned back against the ship’s wheel, stretched out my black-and-blue legs, and swept the pencil over the paper, liking the scratchy sound it made.

  “Hey,” a voice said.

  Startled, I dropped my pencil. His black hair was wet, as if he’d just gone swimming, and he was barefoot, wearing nothing but shorts. He’d already started climbing up the rock-wall rope toward me. I pulled my knees up to my chest as he reached me. He slid in easily and draped his long legs over the side.

  “You writing?”

  I clutched the notebook to my chest and wiped a stray hair from my braid over my head. I’d slept in that braid, which meant my hair had to be a horror. “Just drawing.”

  I hadn’t seen Declan since he’d moved in earlier that summer. He’d started his junior year of high school in a completely different world from the freshmen and sophomore building. His arrival at Kane’s house had come with a tarp-covered something—a truck, I’d guessed by the shape, which took up much of the one-car driveway. Sometimes I’d see a set of big feet poking out from under the chassis.

  His arrival also meant that Kane was at my house a whole lot more. Well, at first. In the beginning, Kane did nothing but complain. He eats all the food in the house. His mom makes me do shit, like make my bed. They act like they own the place. But as Declan climbed up, I realized I hadn’t seen Kane much in the past week. When I had seen him, he’d been so tired from baseball practice that he hadn’t complained once.

  “Can I see?” he asked.

  My heart thrummed. I buried the sketchbook in my lap. “No.”

  He looked out over the retention pond, which was dry, baring its pasty bottom. A couple of geese plodded along the bank, oblivious to us. He watched them, and I used the time to study his profile. Luisa was definitely right. He had a strong jaw, a little bit of uneven, dark stubble too. There was a small scar over his eye, like a little red star. His arms were muscular, his chest dark and lean, with awkward angles that showed the promise of more. He was almost seventeen. Older. The only older boy I knew.

  And Kane’s stepbrother. That meant Declan was probably off-limits.

  Which, of course, made me fall for him instantly. I can’t explain it. One second I was totally aloof, annoyed that he’d invade my personal space. The next, I felt a giddiness I hadn’t known. He’d played guitar for me, and I’d thought he was okay. He was exciting—like that new outfit you can’t wait to wear to school. Geeky, but not repellent, as were so many boys at school. Suddenly, I felt a flicker of desperation, like please stay.

  His eyes scanned my scabby legs. I hugged them to my chest, covering them with my arms, then wondered if my underwear was visible, peeking out of my Daisy Dukes. I quickly threw my legs over the side of the platform. “Um…how do you like Pennsy?”

  His gaze hovered on my bruised knees. “’Sokay. Some things pale in comparison.”

  I blushed, thinking he was talking about me, to be specific. I’d been to California once, for a family trip when I was twelve. All the girls there were impossibly skinny and smooth-skinned and plastic. And here I was, a giant scab with unruly hair.

  “For example,” he went on, “no In-N-Out Burger. What’s with that? I have to eat at Wendy’s. Not the same.”

  I relaxed. “Oh. You’re lucky you survived. That stuff can kill a gentle Californian soul like yours.”

  He grinned, then leaned back on his elbows, staring up at the shredded green tarp overhead. “It’s nice here, though.” Then he sat up and jumped to the ground. He eased down into one of the swings and nodded his chin at me. “You swing?”

  I put down my notebook, climbed down, and sat on the swing next to him. It was the most weight that old swing set had seen in a long time, so it groaned as we started to pump our legs and drive toward the sky.

  “How long have you known him?” he asked.

  “Kane?” Well, duh, Hailey, who else? “Oh. Forever, I guess. I mean, we’ve lived across the street from each other all our lives. And he always sits behind me in school, because I’m Ward, and he’s Weeks. He used to pull my pigtails and stuff. But we didn’t really become friends until third grade. All the kids were calling me Hurly and
making throw-up sounds around me. He beat them up.”

  “Defended your honor, huh?”

  “Not really. I think he wanted to be the only one to pick on me.”

  Declan laughed. “That sounds like him. Funny kid.”

  I snorted. “Kid? He’s a year younger than you.”

  “Nine months.” He grinned. “The devil is in the details with us gentle Californian souls. Plus, I’ve always wanted a kid brother.”

  “You guys must be getting along better. He hasn’t come over to my house with his mopey face in at least twenty-four hours.”

  He smiled. “What, that disappoints you?”

  Truthfully, I had been disappointed. A little. I wouldn’t call myself possessive, but Kane was like a favorite pair of jeans that I’d outgrown but still couldn’t bear to give away. “No,” I said. “I mean—”

  “Are you guys together?”

  “Together as in…together?” Um, yeah, really bright, Hailey. “No. No. No. No. Kane is…Kane. He changes girls more often than he changes his socks.”

  “Oh yeah? So my kid brother is a player, huh? Interesting.” He dragged his feet on the ground to stop swinging, so I did too. When he jumped off the swing, he turned to me. “I get the feeling you can teach me a lot, young Hailey.”

  I nearly swooned at the way he said my name. He spoke slowly, always, but he said it in a singsong, breathy way that I felt all the way down to my toes. “What do you want to know?”

  He shrugged. Then he reached through the wooden slats of the pirate ship and pulled out my notebook. I cringed as he looked at the picture I’d drawn. I’d only managed a few horizontal lines, with small peaks meant to be the ducks swimming across the pond.

  He said, “Impressive.” Then he climbed up into the ship and put a pencil to the paper. “You mind?”