The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  Half an hour later, Demeke knocks on the door. The blond hair is gone, his head’s freshly shaved, there’s a red tint to what remains. Otherwise the same kid, weathered T-shirt, jeans.

  “You changed your hair.”

  “You changed your order.”

  Demeke stares at the food as he sets down the tray. “This is a lot of saturated fat for a guy your age.”

  “What age is that?”

  “Dude, you watch Jeopardy!”

  In fact, they’d done this several times in the past three weeks, he and Demeke, watched Jeopardy! together. With Alex Trebek and his missing mustache. Martin would eat dinner while Demeke called out answers, sneakers scuffed and dirty, long legs hugged by his shrink-wrapped jeans, watchful and lethargic in the way of teenage boys.

  Martin tucks into his food. “So what’s new?”

  “I hate my life,” Demeke says.

  “That sounds dumb.”

  The kid stretches his arms and folds back his fingers.

  “I met someone,” Demeke says. “He’s a total jerk.”

  “You went on a date?”

  “What?” The kid laughs, sniffs, and wipes his nose. “No. Forget it.”

  “How was he a jerk?”

  “He hoped I was lighter-skinned. He said this, like, right after we hooked up.”

  “Sounds like an asshole.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you use protection?”

  “Oh, wow.” Demeke laughs, adds darkly, “There is no protection against assholes.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” says Martin. “I don’t think I could handle being gay.”

  The kid sits up straight. “Who said I was gay?”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t say I was gay.”

  “But this was a guy you were with.”

  “So?”

  Martin stares at the television, completely confused. Like the pool he’s been swimming around in turns out to be twice as big as he thought.

  “Demeke, I apologize if I got it wrong, I didn’t realize—”

  The kid yawns and stretches his arm. There’s a long silence, as if to give Martin time to recover from his gaffe. Which is fine by him.

  “So I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he says, still a little unsure where they stand. “What you’re going to do next.”

  “Smoke weed. If you mean tonight.”

  “This fall. Are you going to college?”

  The kid exhales loudly.

  “I have an internship. In October. At a music production company in Boston. I’m taking a year off. My parents are so pissed.”

  “You should go to college.”

  “Yeah, thanks, I know.”

  He looks Demeke in the eye, doubtfully. The kid holds it openly, unafraid. And with the height, the hands, the knock knees, and despite the skin color, the sexuality, whatever he is, Martin is reminded of himself.

  “Tell me something,” he says. “How involved do you want your parents?”

  “In what, my life?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like, not at all.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “If they weren’t involved for a while, you’d be okay with that.”

  The kid laughs. “That’s like my dream scenario.”

  “Because they’re adults, they’ve got their own lives.”

  “Exactly. They’ve got shit to deal with. Let me handle my own.”

  “So in this scenario you’re not angry. Or insulted. That what they need to do is more important to them than you. I just don’t buy that, respectfully,” he says. “You’d be upset. You’d feel rejected.”

  “Respectfully, I disagree,” the kid says. “The sooner they leave me alone, the better.”

  “I don’t think so,” Martin says, laughing. But the laughter tears open a bit. Bleakness inside. Anger, cold fire. Commercial break. He uses the bathroom. The piss that dribbles out looks like juice from a gray lemon. What is he doing? He never would have believed it two months ago. He’d already called the bank, arranged the money for Nick’s bail, to pay anonymously. Yet it only occurs to him now, with a sudden gob-smack—idiot of idiots—that the same amount of money, even half of it, could have gone to his daughter, for something she’d desired him to participate in. He hadn’t put two and two together.

  He comes back, sits heavily down on the bed and feels all of his years, and says angrily, “You need to go. I have to make a call.”

  “Whatever.”

  The kid clumsily grabs the tray, makes to leave, face vacant.

  “So what do you want, huh? You want to forget about your parents? All they do is pay the rent, right?”

  “Dude, you need to chill.”

  “I’m being serious. What do you want, Demeke?”

  “Jesus, I’m so gone.”

  “You think you’re so cool. I’ll tell you something, it’s a front. I’ve seen tough. That’s not you. You’re just ungrateful.”

  “Well why don’t you go fuck yourself.”

  “Great. I’ll do that.”

  The kid shifts away, tray in hand, then pauses, turning back, vividly eighteen, shell slipped and with an individuality, Martin sees, that he never had at that age, at any age.

  “Like a year ago, there was this family staying, right? It was snowing out, a whiteout, we’re all stuck. So we’re playing this game. You pick a piece of paper out of a hat. You’re trying to get your team to guess the clue. So it’s the daughter’s turn. She’s like the little bunny rabbit they take care of. Except her brother’s making fun of her, saying how stupid she is. And she can’t get it, whatever’s on the paper. She’s pissed, so she points at me. ‘Where he comes from.’ As her clue. Now everyone’s, like, oh shit. All freaked out. So the girl’s dad is like, you know, ‘Oh, god, not Africa.’ And then the mom’s like, ‘Baby, Africa’s a continent. Do you mean Nigeria?’ Then the brother says, all pissed, ‘Mom, they said he’s from Kenya.’ You know, bless him. But the girl, she’s clueless, she’s flipping around the piece of paper. ‘I meant from gorillas,’ she says. ‘It says gorilla.’ And it does. ‘Gorilla.’ At which point, you know, we’re all like, wow. She’s totally sincere. And I’m the dumbest. I mean, I took AP Bio, everybody comes from monkeys, the girl’s on point, even if the point’s not the one she’s trying—whatever. They’re embarrassed. This isn’t Tamir Rice or some shit. But my dad, he’s so angry. Like he’s going to kick them out. But he didn’t yell. He came to my room later. We just hung out. We talked. I mean, I haven’t made it easy on him. But you hear what I’m saying? So don’t talk to me like I’m some little piece of shit. Because that shit’s on you.”

  * * *

  Nick’s been out of jail for two days, they’ve had utter paradise for two days, when Alex explains the complete truth of her treachery, after Emily returns her phone call—because in her voicemail Alex was so overcome with hiccupping apology that she barely could make herself understood, through sobbing, to the best friend and soul sister whom she had so utterly betrayed, had never understood, who contained inside her this terrible history all along that Alex had never even detected—that on top of stoner dickface Jersey Mike seeing the pics, Emily’s photographs, on Meg’s laptop, as they all knew, it appeared that he’d gone back to them a few days later while Alex was taking a shower, and, being a complete and utterly heartless sex-crime-committing scumbag, whom Alex will never speak to again outside of the voodoo curses she plans to inscribe in her own blood on the backs of shaved rats before she jam-packs them up his asshole, Jersey Mike then decided to log into his email, attach some JPEGs off Meg’s hard drive, and send them to a chick named Corrinne, a friend of his, a senior girl from school and a mighty Zeta, and everything might have stopped there, Alex points out mournfully, because Corrinne is actually a decent human being, at least an easily frightened one—she’d later told Alex that she texted Mike along the lines of What are you doing you creep, and
You know this is illegal, but before Mike read her reply, he’d already emailed two shitheads on the hockey team, who emailed other shitheads on the hockey team, who emailed their shitty friends, and soon several of them were loading the files into digital vaults, posting images elsewhere, and now those images were everywhere, potentially, all of which completed a most heinous act of betrayal, that Alex had set in motion, that Alex is responsible for and will regret hugely forever, for which she’ll never forgive herself.

  Alex gathers her breath, but Emily hangs up before she can say another word.

  She feels sick, flattened, and full of hate.

  Nick vows he’ll murder the kid that night.

  * * *

  Five days later, on the same day that Leela and Justin confront Emily Portis in the Claymore Denny’s about nude photographs that have appeared online, the same day that, later on, Justin Johnson departs New Hampshire for New York City, with his story complete on his laptop but not yet published online, not yet news in its own right, Leela Mann does not sleep well in her roost.

  All night long there are weird noises around the house. Waves of sulfur smells that punch through the window screen, source unknown, and wake her up and turn her stomach. In the morning she stares at her blotchy face in the bathroom mirror. She pinches her cheeks. Her face is doughy, bruised from not sleeping, weirdly yellow in spots. Who is she? What is she? There’s no way she can do this job. Why should the Portis girl ever talk to her again? Definitely not for her credentials. A few articles, a shitty start to a shitty novel. What if Emily thought to look her up online? Even in the virtual world, she’s basically profile-less, with few followers, no channel of her own, no wallpaper to say: This is me.

  On a typical post, for pictures of his snowboard, Satnam got double the likes she’d ever received.

  And still her ego demands greatness; it’ll even stand for mediocrity. Anything but an unfurnished-rental suicide.

  Somewhere nearby, within twenty miles of that room, her poor parents wake to yet another day of an uncertain future. And still don’t know that their only daughter is staying nearby. Back in New York, two of her roommates always complained that they couldn’t escape their families, that they weren’t being allowed to grow up. She wrote an article around it, quoted both of them. And in the same story wrote about those sad young adults her age who were forced by economic reasons to move home, nestle back down in the pillowy parental bosom.

  And then there was Leela Mann, who only wanted family at her own convenience, like a microwaved burrito.

  The sun outside is a heat lamp. She drives not to the Claymore Starbucks, but to a shopping-center Dunkin’ Donuts in Merrimack. At a corner table she sets up her laptop, phone, notebook. French leather jacket draped on the back of her chair, if only to feel officially in step with old rituals. Still feeling fearful, clueless, more than a thousand times a little unsure of herself. Which somehow enables her to text the girl.

  Hi this is Leela. Just wanted to say again I’m so sorry about Denny’s. That guy Justin is a total jerk. I’m here to talk if you ever want. Apology face, flower, sunshine.

  Then she revisits the plan she typed up the night before, after wasting a long hour looking up stuff with her phone, like, How do you report a big story, and How to be a journalist, and What am I doing. But she does have a plan. At least half of one, to confirm her journalism degree. First off, to visit CHS, her old school. Look through old yearbooks that she knows are stored in the library’s stacks, to see if she can figure out more of the girl’s social circles, find some friends online or in the phone book to interview. Hopefully by that time she’ll have heard back from Emily and can further befriend her—and not, Leela confirms in her gut, just for the story. She actually likes the girl. Admires her strength, her rawness.

  After that, she’ll attempt to track down those photos Justin mentioned, of which so far she hasn’t seen a trace, even within the CHS friend groups she’s infiltrated online. Also find out if she can pester a stray teacher or school official into an interview. Mr. Fockers, her old calc teacher, maybe he taught Emily, too? Finally, for shoe leather’s sake, as one of her college professors used to put it, she’ll take a walk in the afternoon by the beach and look for teenagers to bother. Maybe even visit Whitehall, see if anyone young still hangs out up there.

  For the moment, though, she nurses an immense coffee and stares at the laptop screen in a daze. It’s the moment of transition, the step into the hologram. Whereby the slow motions of imagining herself as the writer she is not quite yet prepare her to open the proper files, type the proper keys. And at the same time, in the background—command-tab, command-R—she refreshes DROP’s website every minute, in case Justin’s story should appear.

  A voice says, “Can I get you a refill?”

  An employee looms over her, materialized into place. Leela laughs. Dunkin’ Donuts has table service now? “No thanks, I’m good.” She strains to see his face, the guy’s so tall.

  “Holy shit,” the guy says. “Leela?”

  She jolts awake.

  “Robbie,” she says. Robbie Miller? “Hey.”

  He laughs. “It’s Rob now. Holy crap, this is amazing. What are you doing here? I thought you were in New York?”

  The fact that Robbie/Rob Miller not only remembers her name, but also attaches enough significance to her identity that he knows something of her life, post-CHS, what does it mean?

  She says, lightly laughing, “I was. I mean, I am.”

  “Let me get you a refill, hold on.”

  He’s back a minute later with another coffee.

  “Seriously, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m here for work. How are you?”

  “I heard you’re a journalist. That’s really cool.”

  “Thanks,” she says, feeling weirdly nervous. The same way she would have been if Robbie had complimented her when she was seventeen. Mortifying! “So you work here?”

  “My parents own the franchise. I’m taking classes at UNH. So who are you a journalist for?”

  “The Village Voice. Most recently.”

  “And you’re here about the murders?”

  “You’ve heard about them?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  He laughs, looks at his shoes, stuffs his hands in his pockets. Hands that once strummed acoustic guitar onstage during talent shows. Robbie Miller is nervous around me. She sat behind him in English class, two years in a row. He used to write poems in her mind.

  “You know, if it helps, my mom knows somebody,” he says offhandedly, “who knows the kid’s mother or something. She says he did it for the money.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I can put you in touch with her, if that would help.”

  “That could be great.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m having people over on Friday. Do you want to come? You could make some connections, maybe someone can help you out with your story.”

  She laughs, but he’s serious.

  “I’d love that. That would be fun.”

  “Rad,” he says, grinning. “I’ll shoot you the address. You don’t surf, do you?”

  Robbie Miller surfs, of course he does.

  “I don’t, actually.”

  “No worries. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to it.”

  He smiles and walks away, to help a pair of teenage girls who’ve just appeared at the counter, girls who probably know leggings aren’t really pants but don’t care, and why should they, with such bodies? Those white bodies that fill out in all the right ways? They look just like the girls she remembers from CHS, the Zetas, bodies that hers never resembled.

  But are they invited to Rob’s place to hang out?

  If they knew she’d been invited, would they be jealous?

  She hits refresh on her browser and puts on a stern frown to appear more serious, to conceal a smile. But now the DROP site has a new headline, “The Claymore Kids.” And below the massive
typeface and Justin Johnson’s byline is a large, semi-blurred photograph of Emily Portis posing on a bed, innocent but sultry, mostly nude.

  * * *

  OK so this will be the longest series of texts I’ve sent in my life and it may ruin my fingers but if so I deserve it because EMILY I WAS SOOOOOOO WRONG

  So stupid and so sorry I was totally wrong please forgive me and take me back and in the meantime I’ll be over here breathing deeply because I would call you again and say all this over the phone or just come over and say it to your face but I’m worried you hate me enough and I don’t blame you at all and fuck me forever literally FOREVER but hopefully I can put into words all my regret and you’ll hate your so-called best friend a little less

  Basically I’m a self centered bitch and you were so much completely in the right. What I’m trying to say is I really screwed up and I’m so sorry

  Tonight I was taking a bathroom selfie and then it all started to click. I swear this will make sense but basically I figured out that girls taking pics of themselves? Are probably the BEST thing that’s come out of the internet. Because how hard is it to be girls IRL right when in actuality I hate my face body hair THE BIRTHMARK clothes everything. But so does Meg and all her friends that’s just the way it goes. You are what you eat and you’re as good as you’re judged by somebody else somebody who probably can get you pregnant and then that’s the way society is going to be anyway BECAUSE PENIS so grab your friends and vagina blab etc FML crawl back into the buttcrack of self hate. But actually I feel kinda awesome taking photos of myself and so what? At least I did. And it’s not like the whole world is my costar or that bullshit but it makes me feel good about myself and I feel confident, glittery eye shadow and all and isn’t that sort of cool to feel good about myself and how I look ANYWAYYYYYYYYY

  But listen the point is YOU taught me that. Even if I wasn’t being a good listener friend eventually it sank in and I had to calm the hell down. Because this isn’t about me for once it’s YOU Emily my best friend in the whole universe the most amazing strongest biggest superhero survivor and I want to shout out the window right now that you were right!!!!!!!!!!