by Paul Griffin
“Excuse me?” Nicole said.
“The swimsuit issue? You’re a model, right? If you aren’t, you should be. I know some people in the industry.” He’d approached her from her right side.
Nicole turned to show him the left side of her face. She pulled back her hair.
I was at the end of the aisle, pretending to look at bunion pads to hide myself behind the corner shelf unit, but I saw that the bandage on her cheek was not small. How bad was it under there? How deep was the burn?
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Nicole said. “What did you say?”
The dude backed away with his hands up, staring at the bandage. Just before he stepped out of the aisle, he said, “I’m sorry.”
By the time my line of sight was clear, Nicole had swept her hair to cover up the bandage. She headed for the exit, stopping briefly to check if the coast was clear. How do you live like that? Afraid to turn every corner?
I went to where she’d been in the aisle. Bandages. All different kinds, each promising it was the gentlest on your skin.
ELEVEN
By the time I was out on the street, Nicole was gone. I jogged to the bus stop. The rain hit me like thrown stones. I was trying to shake off the rainwater when somebody behind me grabbed my coat collar and spun me around. “You were following me,” Nicole said.
“No I wasn’t. I was pricing out, like, vent brushes. Seriously, I was.”
She practically gasped, disgusted by the obviousness of my lie. She pointed to my earbuds. “Nice Skull Candy. I peg you the classic rock type. The Stones, Zeppelin, Hendrix, nothing after you were born.”
“You got me.”
“Then I know you have The Smiths all over your playlists, right?”
“In my top ten favorite bands, maybe even top five.” I hadn’t heard of them.
She pointed to my hip. The jack end of my headphone set had fallen out of my pocket. Clearly my Skull Candy knockoff wire led to no music player. “If you’re going to pretend to be listening to music,” she said, “you should also pretend not to hear what I’m saying.” She hurried across the street to the east side waiting area. The eastbound riders had a well-lit modern glass awning that actually kept them dry. We westbound folk made do with poorly patched corrugated metal that leaked rainwater the color of old blood. The light in the ad box was dead, and the sun-faded poster was for a zombie show that had gone off the air three years before. Across the street, Nicole was leaning against an ad box that featured seasonal fare from Whole Foods, the prettiest pumpkins you’ve never seen in real life. We stayed like this for a while, each under our respective awnings, until the ridiculousness of the situation fully hit me. Why didn’t I just tell her I was worried about her and apologize?
I jogged across the street. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what? Stalking me, or lying about it?” She looked down the boulevard for signs of a bus, none coming. “Did you see it?” she said. “The bandage?”
“No.”
“You’re lying yet again.”
“Not all of it.”
“How much?”
“Only, like, the edge of it.”
“Good.”
I stood there for another half a minute or so, just nodding, waiting for an eastbound bus when she knew I was headed for the west side. “Take care,” I said, flipping up my jacket collar in anticipation of the rain.
“The dude in CVS,” she said.
“He was a douche,” I said.
“He wasn’t apologizing for being creepy, for hitting on me. Did you see his eyes? They were filled with it. Pity. Genuine pity. He might as well have said ‘I’m sorry your life is over.’” Her voice had softened, and I had a hard time hearing her. She was talking to herself. “Like at the hospital, with Emma.”
“Emma?”
“The way everybody looks at her. The way I try not to.” She seemed to remember I was there, turning to me. “My friend. She’s sick.”
I’d gathered that much. “Sorry.”
“She doesn’t let it get her down, though. She’s amazing. Seriously, why did that dude have to look at me that way?”
Did she really expect me to have the answer? I regretted crossing the street. I should have just left her alone. “I’m running a little late,” I said.
“Me too.”
I caught myself before I said good luck. “Bye,” I said, stepping off the curb.
“Work?” she said.
“Huh?”
“Running late for work?”
“Yeah. You?”
“No.”
Course not, I’m thinking. Why ever would you have to work? Rich people’s four-letter word. I wondered if I could make it across the street without being run down. The cars wouldn’t stop coming.
“Your car in the shop?” she said.
“Not allowed to drive,” I said.
“You’re not sixteen after all?”
“No, I am. It’s just, I have this condition. Long story.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“Not your fault.”
“No, I know, I was just saying.”
A thunder blast seemed to slant the rain for a second. She flinched, grabbed my sleeve, let go. I felt bad for wanting to leave her there. “I do, though,” I said.
“Do?”
“Drive. Forklift.”
“A forklift.”
“For work.”
“Clearly.”
Where not to work if you’re a hacker who aspires to stay off government radar: the Apple Genius Bar. A better choice: a big box wholesale club, restock department.
“You don’t need a license to drive a forklift?”
“The dude who’s supposed to work the forks is always out sick. After a while I got tired of putting my life at risk to climb the racks to the fourth tier to pull down eight-packs of Similac for stroller mafia who don’t know the words thank you.” I stopped myself before I told her that whenever I worked the forklift, I always made sure I took my meds, usually.
“Costco?” she said.
“BJ’s.”
“Cool.”
“Not really. How come you can’t drive?” I said.
“Car’s in the shop.”
“Gotcha.” I’d found myself hoping she had some kind of condition too. Not like she didn’t have enough going on with her face. I’m an idiot.
She checked her phone for the time. “Yeah, I think I’m going to have to hoof it.” She stepped out into the rain, east. “Good luck with the stroller mafia.”
“You too,” I said.
She turned back and looked at me like, Wha?
I wondered why, having been stranded by Dave, she didn’t just call somebody else to pick her up. That’s when it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t have anybody to call. That maybe everybody thinks the pretty girl with the big brain has the world by the tail, that she wouldn’t want to hang out with somebody average like you, so why bother trying to be friends with her. Or was it that she just didn’t want to be around the people from her old life, their pity?
She walked fast up the avenue. Her backpack straps were uneven. She didn’t have an umbrella. I pulled a busted one from the trash and splinted the broken spoke with a rolled magazine and a plastic bag ripped into strips. It held together perfectly for thirty seconds, the amount of time I needed to catch up to Nicole, and then it punked right in front of her. The one side of it was still okay. I handed her the umbrella. A truck flew through a pothole lake and threw a wave of muddy water onto us.
Nicole dropped to her knees in a silent scream. She covered her face as if to protect herself from a second splash. She was balled up on the side of the road. The gutter water tugged at the half umbrella. “It burns,” she said. “Oh god. Please. It burns.” I helped her up. She wouldn’t let go of my arm. “Walk me? Please?”
The bandage tape was peeling off her cheek. She tilted her head so I couldn’t see it. I’d always thought she was statuesque goddess height, at least five ten
, but she was more like five five. In my mind she was all curves, but here, now, up close, my hands on her waist to hold her up, she was slight. She was just a girl, and she was shivering.
TWELVE
“As in rhymes with Sbarro?”
“Exactly, as in, exactly.”
I found it hard to believe she didn’t know my last name after I was the YouTube sensation of freshman year, spazzing out in the middle of the gym floor at the pep rally. Could she not have seen the video? Maybe she wasn’t at the pep rally altogether?
“Nazzaro,” she said. “I think I knew that. Wait, I’ve seen that name somewhere. Somewhere else, I mean.”
“My father, maybe. It’s a lame paper, but you ever read the Clarion? He’s the art critic.”
“Your father is Vincent Nazzaro?”
“Steven, but everybody always thinks his name is Vincent too. Not like I mean he has two names.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
I shrugged.
She stumbled. I grabbed her arm. She regained her balance but kept her arm hooked through mine as we walked. “Was it as lame for you as it is for me, home school?” she said.
“My father just let me read whatever I wanted, as long as I passed those tests the state makes you take.”
“I have to take them if I don’t head back next quarter. How were they?”
“I took them all in the beginning of the year to get them over with. I home schooled online. This pilot program thing.”
“And you passed everything, no tutors?” she said.
“Tests were designed to let a moron pull at least a B. You’ll kill them. If you don’t come back to the Hollows. Are you? Coming back, I mean?”
“I’m not sure. I’m being told I need to hunker down for a while, hang home with my mom. She’s been awesome, total rock.”
“Why didn’t you call her? You know, to pick you up?”
“I can’t have her dropping everything for me anymore. As it is, she’s pretty much stopped her life to help me get through this. She needs to take a break from me every once in a while. From it.”
I wondered how I’d react if I saw it. I’d read that burn wounds were the worst. Catastrophic disfigurement. Identities just erased.
We came to where the main road tied into a tunnel of very old, well-pruned elms, no cars at the curbs. A sign said: PRIVATE COMMUNITY, NO PARKING, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED. “I’m just down the street,” she said.
I lived on a street. This was a drive with estates on either side. I had a cousin who lived in Englewood, plenty of money there but gaudy rich, lots of lawn statuary, half the saints in the Gregorian calendar sticking out of the Ficus benjamina. Nothing so cheesy as a prefabricated statue in this part of town, though. Just wide fields of flawless lawn. The mowing lines were invisible, as if the grass had been hand-combed.
“Your clothes are soaked,” she said. “You can borrow some of my father’s. We’ll go visit my friend, and then I’ll drive you home.”
“Your car’s in the shop,” I said.
“Our housekeeper’s. We have this old Subaru wagon for when she runs errands.”
“Why didn’t you call her for a ride?”
“She’s in Florida for the week.”
“Your friend,” I said. “The one in the hospital?”
Nicole clicked her phone to play me a message. “Nicole Castro, I wait for thee. Will I be eleven by the time you show up? This is my subtle reminder that E-Day is next week. I’m currently soliciting several presents, with a new OtterBox topping the list. Pink preferred, though lemon yellow is fine too, anything bright. Also, all forms of gift cards will be accepted, but I definitely wouldn’t mind a Dolce and Gabbana certificate.”
Nicole laughed. “She’d so never wear Dolce, you know?”
I laughed and nodded, like of course I knew the wardrobe inclinations of this person I’d never met. We’d come to a guardhouse in the middle of the street. The attendant came out with an umbrella for us. “Nicole, let me call the car to take you to the house.” His eyes ticked toward the main road. An older model Civic was parked off the shoulder, somewhat camouflaged by the woods. Somebody was leaning through the driver’s-side window, aiming a telephoto lens at us. The guard frowned. He shined his flashlight toward the camera as he clicked his radio. “John, he’s back again.”
“I see him,” came back through the radio.
A tug on my sleeve. Nicole pulled me behind the guardhouse. “Rag mag reporter,” she said. She peeked around the gatehouse.
Across the road, a security company SUV zipped up to the photographer’s car, and the photographer sped out of there. I memorized the plate number, MBE-7921. “Let’s go,” Nicole said.
“Can’t. I’m running seriously late for work.”
“So that much was true.”
The west side bus was coming. “See ya,” I said. I started for the pickup spot.
Nicole hurried alongside to cover me with the umbrella. “Next week, right?”
“Next week?” I said.
The bus rolled in with foot-high waves. We backed up to keep the water from rolling over our ankles. “At Dr. Schmidt’s,” she said.
“Right. Take care, Nicole.”
“I hate it,” she said. “That they call you Spaceman. I’m sorry. That must have been awful for you. The thing at the pep rally.”
I was seeing it all over again, and so was she, apparently. No hoping anymore. Nicole Castro had seen me wet my pants.
“On or off,” the bus driver said.
I stuck my foot in the door to keep it open. “You must be really into art to know my father. It’s not like he works for the Times.”
“My mother’s an artist. She calls herself a hobbyist, but she’s good. She’s serious about it anyway, reads all the reviews. She likes your dad. Says he’s one of the nice ones. You freaked me out, following me like that.”
“I was just trying to-”
“I know why you did it. What’s your number?”
I gave it to her. A second later my phone vibrated. “There’s mine,” she said. Nicole Castro had just given me her phone number. How was this possible?
“My friend,” the driver said, “stay and play, or let’s be on our way.”
I hopped onto the bus. Nicole tossed me the umbrella the guard had given her.
“You keep it,” I said.
“I have this one.” She opened the crummy umbrella I’d put together for her. “Hey, Nazzaro? You’re my hero.” She saluted me with the messed-up umbrella.
The bus doors closed and I grabbed a seat with one last wave to Nicole.
“Excuse me, hero?” the bus driver said. “That’s two seventy-five.”
I dunked my card, a slug, but the machine showed PAID $2.75 because I was palming my phone as I leaned onto the card reader. That junky little Nokia with the cat-scratched display could work some minor magic.
THIRTEEN
From the notes of Dr. Julian Nye, MD, PsyD:
Thurs, Oct 21, third session with Nicole Castro, begun at 8:30pm, at Castro residence. Patient initially appeared withdrawn and expressed that she was exhausted, complaining of a headache with pain 8 out of 10, but very quickly became agitated when I suggested I could write her a prescription for Relpax.
Per NC’s mother, NC was AWOL after session with school psychologist Dr. Schmidt, for approx. one hour. I expressed concern that patient was walking around in the rain, alone. Patient said she wasn’t alone. I asked who was with her. She frowned and said, “People. You know, just people on the street.” Patient then asked what I thought about liars. I asked her to be more specific. She asked if I thought a liar could be a good person. “You know, if he or she is lying to do a good thing.” When I asked for an example of a “good thing,” patient stared out the dining room window and said, “I can’t think clearly. I’m afraid to picture it. His face. If they ever find out who did it, I mean. I don’t know whether I�
�d have a heart attack or claw his eyes out. We’re doomed, the human race, when you have people like that walking around. Absolutely zero empathy. I want to live on the Moon.”
I am beginning to suspect patient is holding back more than the name of the young man who, per security guard, walked NC home.
FOURTEEN
BJ’s closed to the public at eight p.m., and I got to my restock work. At ten I grabbed my fifteen-minute break. I clicked one of the laptops to the local news links and found a short update on the Nicole Castro story, except it was hardly an update. That afternoon, some idiot had tackled some other idiot in Sports Authority after the dude tried to shoplift a Volta-Shock bottle. Other than that, there were no new leads in the case.
“Can you believe she actually got a boyfriend?” the woman who ran the electronics section said. She tapped the keyboard to a gossip site. The headline ran BURNED BEAUTY QUEEN BAGS NEW BEAU. I panicked, expecting to see a picture of Nicole’s arm hooked through mine at the security gatehouse that blocked off her neighborhood. The follow-up would then be BENDIX VOWS TO BASH BEAU’S BRAINS IN, but the picture wasn’t of Nicole and me. I wasn’t the only one following Nicole in CVS. The picture showed Nicole with the guy who tried to pick her up, until he saw the bandage on her face. The headline and the camera angle were enough to suggest they were together. The photo credit was ©Scorpion Imageworks.
“What kind of guy would want to go out with her after that?” my coworker said.
“Dude must be desperate,” I muttered, scanning the article.
“I bet you he’s burned too. You know, like where you can’t see?”
I got home from work at 11:00. We lived in one of those efficiency apartment complexes that are always full of bitterly divorced men and the odd widower with kids. The power lines sprayed from the phone pole and attacked the side of our building like blown snot. Dented, pigeon-crap-covered Dish Network discs tilted like begging hands. Even so, the rent wasn’t cheap in this last outpost of the coveted Brandywine zip code.
