by Cyn Balog
He gazed through the eyepiece, as I stared at the full moon rising in the sky. I could see the objects of this expedition pretty clearly. Small, clear, glowing Venus beside the moon and the red dot above, Mars, in a picture-postcard tableau. I’d never cared much for astronomy, but this was cool.
“Look,” he said, motioning me toward the eyepiece. I stooped and squinted at it.
Yep, there they were, the planets, only slightly larger. “It’s amazing,” I breathed.
He looked up, then slid beside me under the blanket. “I think this piece of crap is pretty useless. It looks better naked.”
The moon was full, casting light onto the icy water in the retention basin. Our breath puffed out in white clouds in front of us. “Well,” I acknowledged, “some things do.”
He turned toward me, pulled the blanket up around our ears, and I felt the pad of his finger under my chin, lifting my face toward his. He kissed me lightly on the lips. His lips were surprisingly warm. I’d expected drool and other gross stuff, but this was anything but gross. My lips parted, wanting more.
He said, “Have you never done that before?”
I blushed. “It’s obvious?”
He laughed softly. “No. But you looked surprised. Like you didn’t expect it.”
“I’m surprised I enjoyed it so much.”
He looked confused. “You thought kissing me would be disgusting?”
“No,” I backpedaled, blushing more. “I… Forget it. You can do it again.”
He didn’t have to be asked twice. He leaned in and kissed me, still gently, but with tongue this time. Eventually all those shivers went away, and it was entirely too warm. He lowered me back on the wooden floor of the playhouse as we each grew bolder and the kiss became deeper. We started to feed on each other’s lips until I was pretty sure we’d tear them clean off.
But we didn’t do anything else. His hands stayed firmly on my shoulders. Every so often he’d pull away and trace a line down my cheek, or look into my eyes. But he concentrated solely on my lips.
After a while, I pointed to his watch. “What time is it? I’d better go in.”
He shrugged.
Punching him, I grabbed his wrist and thrust the watch into the moonlight. I could barely read it because the face was badly scratched. It said something like 3:15. Kissing him had been magical, but I didn’t think I’d lost complete track of time. Then I saw the second hand wasn’t moving. “Your battery’s dead.”
“Hasn’t worked since I put it on. It’s my dad’s. He had it on when he…”
Declan cleared his throat, and it sounded as though he was trying to choke back a sob. His body was tense. The butterflies that had been fluttering in my stomach became cinder blocks. Before, I’d never thought much about how his father had died. Yet I really wanted to know. “Was he sick?”
“Car accident.” The words were so soft it was as if he’d traveled to a faraway planet. Long moments passed before he squeezed my hand.
Right. His faith had gotten him through. I guessed that if his dad hadn’t died in a car accident when Declan was thirteen, his mom never would’ve been on the internet looking for companionship. And Declan and I never would’ve met.
It was his death that made this moment possible. Beauty from suffering.
When I realized that, I figured my parents could wait a little longer. I lifted my head and kissed him again, drawing him down to me.
I’d known Declan for a year. He had a way of walking, loping about, that made him never seem to be in a hurry. When he hovered over a new model, he worked calmly and deliberately. I knew he’d take things slow with me.
But that night, I wanted to speed everything up. It’s the feeling I think you can only get when you know that you’re finally headed in the right direction.
Tuesday, February 19
I wonder if therapists wait for their patients to leave, then pull a bottle of whiskey from some hidden stash and go to town.
I’ve been with Juliet every other Tuesday morning, before school, for nearly five months. Before that, when I lived at Shady Harbor, it was every day. I’ve told her the same things a thousand times. It’s been eleven months of her asking me the same questions, offering me validation for feeling the way I do, gently suggesting ways I might break through whatever’s bothering me. She’s been making suggestions for forever, but I’ve never actually stepped up and done what she said. Every time I see her, I think she’s disappointed in me.
“Do you think I’m in a rut?” I ask her, sitting in her plush office. She has about twelve mismatched chairs gathered around this enormous, rust-colored shag rug, possibly because crazy people are picky, like Goldilocks. If a chair is too hard or too soft, they might not adequately pour out their souls.
She looks at me over the top rim of her glasses. “Do you think you might be?”
Her old standby: answering a question with a question. Sometimes I wonder why we pay her, since she always makes me solve my own problems.
“Because, I mean, his own mom has cleaned out his room. Everyone has moved on but me.”
Juliet smiles. She’s slight and kind of pinch-faced, so even her smile has a way of looking feline, as if calculating my demise. I’ve never felt one hundred percent comfortable with her, but that didn’t stop me from spilling my guts. She knows everything about me. Everything. “Some people simply take longer to grieve. There is no script for getting over this type of hurt.”
I knew that already. I nod and look over at the enormous, wall-size aquarium. Sometimes it feels as if we’re the two clown fish in there. Juliet and I keep going in circles, rehashing everything I know to be real, day after day. None of it has helped. None of it will ever help. It won’t bring him back.
Boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…
“Are you still having eating issues?”
I nod. “They’ve gotten worse. Kane thinks I’ve gotten worse.”
“Well, that was to be expected with the anniversary.” She writes something on a legal pad. “How’s Kane?”
“He’s fine. He’s always been fine. That’s Kane.”
“You sound bitter.”
“I am. I’m infuriated, actually. I wish I could turn off my emotions that easily. Tune out the way he does. Of course, he wasn’t as close to Declan as I was.”
“You are very close to Kane, though.”
“Not as close as I was to Declan.”
“You ever think Kane was jealous of that? Of you and Declan?”
“What, you mean…? No, Kane has no interest in me in that way. He has a girlfriend. Lots of girlfriends.”
She nods, writes something else. Every time she makes a note, I can’t help but think I said something wrong. “Are you jealous of that? Because Kane has moved on after your relationship and wasn’t there to pick up the pieces after Declan died?”
“What relationship?” I mumble. “He convinced me to have sex with him once, when I was young and stupid. That’s all.”
“Did you need that much convincing?”
“What?”
“What I mean is, were you hoping then that it would be more?”
“No. Of course not.”
More scribbling. I don’t think she believes me. “That was your first sexual experience, yes?”
I nod. “My only. Declan and I never… I mean…it never happened.”
“Tell me about last week.”
I cross my arms defensively. “Yeah, the anniversary was hard. Then Declan’s mom gave me a box of his things. She thought I wanted them.”
“And you didn’t?”
I unscrew a Poland Spring bottle and take a sip of water. “No. I put it under my bed.” I swallow. “And then she gave me this picture. It started me thinking. I’ve been going over his death in my mind again and again. For so long, I felt l
ike I was the only one who knew the real Declan. Except he kept secrets from me. Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t been able to move on—because he’s been begging me to solve the mystery of his death from his grave.”
She straightens. “Declan killed himself, Hailey.”
I nod. Whoops. That was a little too Masterpiece Mystery for therapy hour. Best not to test my out-there theories with a lady who has the authority to commit people to the nearest mental ward. “Yes. I mean, obviously. But I still don’t know why.”
She presses her lips together. “You don’t?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s so twisted in my head. I can’t remember a lot. Details come to me randomly. As if someone ripped up my past and scattered the pieces in the air.”
“We discussed this. That’s called selective retention. It’s a perfectly normal coping mechanism of someone with dissociative personality disorder brought on by trauma. Your brain is simply not willing to process memories it might find uncomfortable, so it ignores them.”
“Yeah. Like what th—” I stop. Things that I might find uncomfortable. Bad things, obviously. “I want to remember it all. So I can…” Solve the mystery of his death? He’s begging me from the grave to do so! Nice try, Sherlock. I shrug. “So I can understand why. I think if I know why, I’ll be able to move on.”
She pulls out her file and starts to read back a few pages. “It says here you did know why. You thought it was stress.”
“I don’t believe that anymore. Maybe that’s what bothered me. It never seemed right. He was excited about college, not stressed. And he…he was really religious. I mean, don’t suicides go to Hell in Catholicism? He totally believed all that. He never would’ve done it. Never, even if he was under stress.”
She rereads the file, nodding. “You said a few sessions ago that you never saw any signs at all. He wasn’t sad. Didn’t give away belongings. Didn’t cut off friends or family.”
“Exactly. None of that. He was totally happy.”
“Sometimes people can put on very good masks, though.”
“Not Declan. Not around me,” I say shortly, giving her a scowl. “He had no reason to hide anything from me, and I never thought, even once, that’s what he was doing.”
“But…you say you don’t remember a lot of details. Is it possible you might be—”
“No.” I say it with such force that I surprise myself.
She makes more notes. I can tell she’s doubtful. “Why don’t you tell me about the last time you saw him.”
I nod, but very little comes to me. I remember being at his house. I remember the snowstorm was coming and he’d had to get gas. I remember waiting for him to get back. And then… “I don’t know. It’s hard to… I can’t. It was all very normal, though. He wasn’t upset. I’m sure of it.”
Juliet likes to think she knows Declan. But what I’ve shared over a thousand hours of therapy can’t paint a full picture of him. Declan may have had only one mode—happy—but it was of a thousand different colors, like a rainbow, each hue different and beautiful in its own way.
“What was that you said, about a picture?” she asks.
I blink. Hadn’t I already explained it to her? “Oh. Yeah. It was shady. It felt like, I don’t know, something that couldn’t have belonged to Declan. It was a picture of bodies, too blown up to see everything, and it said, THIS ENDS HERE.”
“Can I see this picture?”
“No.” I flash back to Kane ripping it up and sigh. “That’s another thing. Kane tore it up, and I got the feeling he isn’t being totally honest with me, either. I think maybe he got Declan in the middle of something. Declan was probably trying to help him sort it out, and…”
I trail off when I realize I’m babbling. Juliet is staring at me as though I’ve gone off the rails again.
“If he was trying to help out Kane, that doesn’t offer an explanation as to why he killed himself, does it?”
The words sit there, on the tip of my tongue, waiting to come out. In my mind, I see Juliet’s finger hovering over a red “commit” button, ready to press it.
He didn’t kill himself.
He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t.
“No,” I mumble. “But I still think there’s something wrong with this picture.”
She studies me for a long moment. Then she says, “Let me ask you something. If you want to remember, why did you hide the box under your bed? Go through it. It won’t be easy, but maybe your heart is strong enough to withstand the memories. It might be therapeutic and give you the answers you’re looking for.”
I stare at my hands, fingers laced together on my lap. Usually I toss her suggestions out the window before they finish leaving her mouth, but this time, I play the recommendation over and over again in my head.
Maybe.
Maybe that’s what I need to do.
256 Days Before
I had it in my head. Me, coming downstairs on prom night, my parents and my adoring boyfriend gazing up at me, thinking they’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
That didn’t exactly happen.
After painting my toenails, I’d accidentally lost my balance while hobbling to the bathroom and twisted my ankle in the hallway. I collapsed like a house of cards, the pain shooting its way up my calf. I also smudged the heck out of my pedicure; there were rug fibers stuck to my red toenails. The zipper on the side of my dress got stuck and wouldn’t go up no matter how much I pulled, so with one final yank, I ended up ripping it from hip to underarm. And I hadn’t gotten any better at applying eye makeup.
So there I was, raccoon girl, hobbling down the staircase with a safety-pin-closed dress, a flubbed pedicure, feeling all hot and sweaty and like the night I’d dreamed of was ruined.
Then I saw Declan in his tuxedo. He was always a hottie, but that night, he looked debonair, the bow tie accentuating his warm brown eyes and luscious full lips. Even though it was a rental, he owned that tux. James Bond couldn’t have worn it better.
And you know what he said?
He leaned into my ear as my mother snapped a photo and murmured, “I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.”
After that, all my stress and worry melted away. He offered me his arm and walked me down the driveway to the most immaculate old truck I’ve ever seen. It was gleaming red and seemingly had appeared out of nowhere to be parked in front of his house. My mouth dropped as I realized that was the vehicle that had been under the tarp all this time. I said, “Is this what you’ve been working on with Mr. Weeks?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s my grandfather’s ’51 Chevy. I figure this is a special occasion, so we ride in style. Do you like it?”
He asked as if he didn’t know the answer, as if it wasn’t already written all over my face. “Oh my God. Yeah.”
He tossed the keys in the air and caught them. “Technically, it’s my mom’s car until I turn eighteen. She’s letting me drive it tonight.” Then he jogged over to the passenger side, pulled open the door, and bowed with great flourish. “My lady.”
Still shaking my head in wonder, I stepped into the pristine cab. It smelled like pine needles, and the leather was shiny white. “What about Kane?” I asked.
Kane had complained like a girl that we were going to have fun without him at Declan’s junior prom. So he managed to get Ella Butler, a cheerleader from the junior class, to ask him. He’d casually said that it was a “friend thing,” that he was using her for the junior prom ticket, but that didn’t mean there weren’t rumors swirling around school about him doing Ella too. Kane never could escape that kind of rumor.
Knowing Kane, they were probably true.
Up until then, he’d been flirting hard-core with Luisa, so needless to say, Luisa was crushed by those rumors. But Kane went along as if he was doing nothing wrong, as if he was above the controversy. That’s Kane.
“Ella and her girls rented a limo,” Declan said as I reached over my shoulder for the seat belt. Before I could, he pulled it across my dress, careful not to destroy the corsage, and clicked it for me. Then he gave me a kiss that made my insides tingle, that made me feel precious, safe.
After he slammed my door, I pulled open the glove compartment and found nothing other than the registration papers and a Bible. This one was filled with sticky notes. He slid into the driver’s seat and took it from my hands.
“Sorry if I’ve been out of it lately,” he said, thumbing through the pages.
I hadn’t noticed. Declan was Declan. He was always happy. “Oh, it’s—”
“Things get jumbled in my head sometimes. At the moment, my feminist beliefs are at odds with my religious ones,” he said, tapping the worn leather cover. “Like, I think women shouldn’t be equal. I think they should be on pedestals. But sometimes the Bible talks about honoring your husband and I’m like, eff that, it works both ways.” He picked up the Bible and showed me a few of the sticky notes. “So I mark the passages I want to talk to Father Brady about. For further clarification.”
“You…read the Bible?” I blubbered. I’d never read the Bible. To me, the whole thing needed major clarification because it might as well have been written in another language. “And talk to Father? Voluntarily?”
He nodded as he put the Bible back into the glove compartment and the key in the ignition. “Come on, Hail. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like anyone else.”
We’d been sort of “together” for a couple months, hanging out in the backyard, looking at stars or swinging on the swings. But this was the first event that could qualify as an actual date. He talked about his faith as if I was his equal, and I usually nodded along, not knowing what to say. I’d been born Catholic and had gone through the sacraments, but it didn’t mean I wanted to have a stirring discussion about Jesus. Hell, no. So I told him once that religion wasn’t a big deal to me. He smiled and said, “That’s okay. As long as you don’t mind that it is a big deal to me.”
