Silent Alarm

by Jennifer Banash

  “So, how did this thing happen with Riley?” my mother asks nonchalantly, pretending to be engrossed in her sandwich, which looks dry, like it needs more mustard. “Prom, I mean. He was always more of Luke’s friend than yours, wasn’t he?”

  I love it when my mother pretends not to care about my life. It’s such an obvious fiction that it amuses me to no end.

  “I mean, we’ve hung out a few times since Luke . . .” That sad look creeps back onto her face, and I can’t finish the sentence. “But that’s it. I think he just thought it’d be nice to go as friends, since I’m not going with Ben and all.”

  Ben. I can’t say the name aloud without feeling vaguely seasick. I push my cup of Pinkberry away, toward the center of the table, disgusted.

  “Doesn’t Riley have a girlfriend?” My mother takes a small bite of her sandwich. “Or am I thinking of someone else?”

  “No,” I say slowly, hoping she changes the subject soon. “He had a girlfriend. But she broke up with him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” I say, which is not really the truth. After all, no one wants to date the best friend of the freak who opened fire on her classmates. No one.

  “I’m really proud of you for going, Alys,” she says after a moment, taking another bite of her sandwich and chewing thoughtfully. “To prom. I’m not sure I would if I were in your shoes. I’d be too scared, I think. I was always scared at your age.”

  “Of what?”

  My mother takes a deep breath, then releases it, looking off into the distance.

  “Of everything, really. What people thought of me. What they might say.” She picks at the bread on her plate, pulling off the crust with delicate fingers. “But then I met your father. He made me feel like I could do anything.” Her eyes cloud over, lost somewhere in the past. “It’s funny how things work out.”

  Her bottom lip begins to tremble, and I reach over, covering her hand with mine. I know that whatever is going on between my parents right now, even though the cord that binds them together is frayed, unraveling, it isn’t severed completely. Not yet.

  “He’ll come back, Mom.” She looks at me, tears wetting her eyes, then glances off to the side, the line of her jaw so finely etched that it breaks my heart. “I know he will.” Her expression changes to one of wariness, apprehension, and it dawns on me that she may not want him to come back, that maybe she’s glad he’s gone. That maybe, somehow, it’s easier.

  A group of girls sits down at the table next to us, all wearing some version of the same hideous sweat suit in pastel colors, rhinestones decorating their asses, their laughter ringing out into the air, dripping over us like syrup. If they recognize us, I can’t tell.

  “It’s not that simple, Alys.” Her lips move clumsily, as if the words themselves are thick and sticky in her mouth.

  “You love him,” I say, and she turns to look at me, startled. “Right?”

  She nods quickly, a slight dip of her head that tells me that sometimes she wishes it weren’t true. That it weren’t true at all.

  “So maybe it is. That simple. You guys belong together.”

  And they do. Something that, despite their ever-increasing fights over the last few years, despite my mother’s growing bitterness, widening the chasm between them even further, I’ve always known to be true. They are two parts of the same whole, one making no sense without the other.

  The words hit my mother hard, and her mouth opens then closes again, her face crumpling, tears falling from eyes that she lowers shyly, squeezing my hand tight. I concentrate on the feel of her warm skin and fragile bones. The golden gleam of her engagement ring scratches against my palm like frost scraped from a window, a language that neither of us can decipher or understand.

  THIRTEEN

  As I’m gathering up our trash, stacking it on top of the trays in preparation for the long walk to the garbage cans, I see Arianne, Ben’s mother, across the food court. She’s alone, her curly brown hair unbound, falling messily to the middle of her back. She’s wearing a pair of faded black pegged pants and a ratty gray button-down. I want to look away, but I can’t—I watch helplessly as she searches the food court—for what, I don’t know—her gaze drifting over the food stands and out over the room until it comes to rest on my face. Whatever she’s thinking, her face betrays nothing. But before I can say anything, she walks toward us, weaving around the crowds waiting in line until she is standing right in front of our table.

  “Arianne.” My mother’s face is white as bone. “Hello.”

  Arianne looks at my mother, stone-faced, before her attention shifts back to me.

  “How are you, Alys?” Her voice is warm caramel, slightly husky. But the inflection in her words is absent, robotic, as if the organs and blood in her body have been stripped out, replaced with rows of gleaming metal screws and springs, pulleys working mechanically beneath her skin.

  “I’m . . . fine,” I stammer, not sure how we’re going to make polite conversation. Everything feels surreal, the plastic trays of food in front of us, the girls lining up in groups at Pinkberry.

  “You’re looking so . . . grown-up these days.” Her tone is wistful, and her eyes sweep over my face and body as if she wants to possess them, consume me whole, leaving nothing remaining but a few random nubs of bone and a pile of dust.

  In the silence, Arianne glances at the shopping bag at my feet, missing nothing. The girls next to us have gone quiet, and I can feel them watching us closely, their bodies tensed, waiting for something to happen.

  “Doing some shopping?” The question is innocuous enough, but there is an undercurrent that sets me immediately on alert. We are teetering on the edge of things, I am thinking. Teetering on the edge . . .

  “Katie might have gone to prom her junior year,” she muses, reaching down into my shopping bag before I can stop her or protest, pulls out my new blue dress, holding it up to her own body, fitting its contours against her frame dreamily, as if she doesn’t quite realize just what it is she’s doing.

  “Of course, as a freshman, she was a little too young this time around. I would never have let her go—even if she was asked.” She looks at me, her eyes flat. That cornflower blue of spring, so enticing in the dressing room earlier, now repulses me with its sickly tinge, the indigo of corpses, bodies dragged up from the sea. I look at my mother, pleading for some kind of help, and, to her credit, she leans forward in her chair and tries again, raising her voice this time, determined to be acknowledged.

  “Arianne. How have you been?”

  With these words, the moment between us is broken. Arianne finally looks at my mother as if she’s just noticed that she’s seated right there with me at the table. For the first time, a spark comes into her eyes, a smoldering, and at once I am not only uneasy but afraid.

  “I’ve been . . . as well as can be expected, I suppose.” She stares at my mother like a stranger, as if she’s never seen her before. “Considering your son killed my daughter.”

  I cannot move. I blink once, twice, hoping that I’ve hallucinated. My mother could not get any whiter if she were on an operating table. I am aware that the people around us have stopped eating and are now watching us with hungry fascination. The girls next to us begin to twitter again, whispering softly to one another.

  “Arianne,” I say, jumping in. Everything is slipping out of control, moving too quickly. The elevator music piped through the speakers is suddenly loud and brash, an orchestra out of tune, out of time. Arianne’s jaw is set in concrete, and I want to wake her up, to remind her of the driving lessons, the afternoons on the front porch, our eyes closing drowsily amid the sounds of bees droning away in the garden.

  She glances at me with a look that immediately dismisses anything I could even hope to say. I am reminded of the futility of words, how they often do more harm than good.

  “Did
you hear what I said?” She leans in a bit closer. I don’t like the way she is looming over my mother, who looks small and frail in her chair, but I feel powerless to do anything to stop it. This scene, whether I like it or not, has to be played out. “Your son killed my daughter.”

  “I heard you the first time,” my mother says quietly and without malice. She looks up at Arianne, her gaze weary and exhausted, and I watch as they consider each other for a long moment. I wonder if they remember all those afternoon coffees at our kitchen table, the laughter that used to spring up between them like bubbles in a cold pool. The loaves of bread and bottles of wine my mother brought over when Arianne’s mother died, cradling Arianne in her arms like she was her own child.

  Finally, after what seems like hours, Arianne straightens up, pulling back into herself.

  “That’s all I wanted to say.”

  And with those words, I hear my mother exhale sharply, a long sigh that seems to come from the very center of her being, a moan escaping her lips, and I reach across the table and take her hand, holding on tight. Her palm is sweaty and cold against mine, and I try to tell her with my eyes that it’s okay, that it will be over soon, but if she understands, she makes no sign of it. Instead she watches as Arianne walks away from us, her feet a broken shuffle against the dirty floor, just one of a hundred lost souls milling through the wide, empty space, all trying to find our way home.

  FOURTEEN

  The rest of the month crawls to a close, the days repeating themselves in an endless parade of sameness. I drag myself through the halls, head down, avoiding eye contact, eat my lunch on the stairwell, sometimes with Riley, but most of the time I’m alone, picking at a bag of chips I won’t finish, a book sprawled across my lap, open and unread. Riley at least has basketball; long mornings in the gym, where he sweats himself mute; lunch hours spent on the court, tossing endless balls through metal hoops. When people pass by me, sitting there, I look away and try to pretend it doesn’t bother me when they begin to whisper, their voices harsh and guttural. When I drive home in the early spring afternoons, the lilac bushes are heavy with blossoms, the rich, heady scent a forbidden perfume, violet petals wet with rain. In my room, it’s the same dance every day. I pick up my violin and put it down, only to pick it back up again, hugging it to my chest and closing my eyes. I’ve blown off my lessons with Grace, let her calls go unanswered, my cell phone going straight to voice mail. Each day I wait for Luke, for Miranda to emerge from the closet, blood trailing behind her on the floor as my fingers pluck nervously at the strings. Mostly I stare into space, the house so eerily quiet without Luke moving around in his room, without my father’s ball games on TV, his voice loud and jovial in the halls. My mother down in the basement, the sound of piano drifting through the house like a delicate snowfall, the classical CDs she plays now when she’s working, her foot pressed against the pedal of her potter’s wheel, shutting everything out. Not that it seems to help her art any. I find pieces of pots in the trash each week, shards of pottery sharp enough to cut open a vein, the glaze cracked and bubbled.

  Suddenly, prom night has snuck up on me. I should be excited. I should be jumping out of my skin considering this is my first prom ever. But as I stand in front of the mirror, contemplating myself in the glass, I am full of dread. There are girls standing in front of their mirrors tonight, a dreamy look in their eyes as they pin a creamy blossom in their hair, picturing the good-night kisses or even more, the slow dances, their head on some boy’s shoulder, lulled into a kind of slumber by the music, the dim colored lights, the tickling sensation of hot breath in their ear.

  I am not one of them.

  My mother bustles around me, clucking like a hen, her mouth full of pins as she secures my hair in a neat bun that reminds me of a cinnamon roll. The blue dress shines against my skin, brightening my face, the blush she swept over the apples of my cheekbones earlier heightening the effect, my eyes lined with black pencil, the lashes darkened to a thick fringe. Her diamond studs sparkle in my ears, and as I watch myself twist before the glass in an attempt to see my body from every angle, my mood begins to rise. Maybe in all the excitement, I tell myself, trying to sound confident, they’ll all just forget about me, forget I’m even there. Forget that Luke—

  (—shot and killed all those people. People who should be there tonight, standing in front of mirrors, feeling pretty for maybe the first time ever—)

  The phone rings, and my mother pats me on the head once before rushing out of the room to answer it, yelling over her shoulder as she exits.

  “It’s probably a telemarketer.”

  No one calls much anymore, so she’s probably right. Still, my body tenses up as I await her return. I am leaning into the mirror, fixing a small smudge under my left eye, when Miranda appears behind me, the dried blood on her face cracking in the yellow light. She fingers the silky material of my dress, a wistful expression altering her features, making her almost pretty again.

  “It’s such a nice dress,” she says with a sigh, and her touch burns right through me, my thigh aching beneath her hands, the skin deadened with frostbite. I hold my breath until she lets go.

  “My dress was black.” She looks into the mirror, fixing the snarls of her hair. “My mother said it was too sophisticated for someone my age, but I didn’t care. It made me feel beautiful, like I was almost finished, you know? Grown-up.”

  I nod, and she smiles at me like we’re sharing a secret. Since she’s been dead, I’ve never seen Miranda smile, and her teeth are white and even in her ravaged face.

  “You look really pretty,” she says with a soft hesitancy, smoothing down the back of my dress, pulling the zipper all the way to the top.

  I whirl around to face her, the light shining through her limbs like a Chinese lantern.

  “Why didn’t you save me?” she asks, her eyes tired and sad, the bullet wound on the side of her head pulsing softly with the rhythm of her breath.

  I cannot feel myself breathing, though I know there is air in my lungs. If there weren’t, I’d look like Miranda. Slightly blue. Transparent. Dead.

  “I’m sorry.” I swallow hard, my tongue coated with sand. “I didn’t know how to. I was scared.”

  (—her shrieks getting louder with every step of Luke’s boots. The barrel poking beneath the table, her screams rising through the air, a broken siren—)

  “I should’ve done something.”

  I say this, even though I don’t know what, if anything, I could have done differently. Could I have stopped Luke if I had tried? I’ve never really thought about it. The idea makes me pause, Miranda’s face flickering before me. Could I have walked over to him, placed a hand on his shoulder, spoken softly, persuasively in his ear until he put the gun down, lowering it to the floor? I will never know. And now it’s too late.

  “Maybe I could’ve stopped him,” I say tentatively, more to myself than to Miranda, a faint muttering. “Maybe I should have tried.”

  There is a weight that slides off of me as the words leave my lips, and I take a big breath, my chest wide-open, the air moving effortlessly in and out for what feels like the first time in months. There is something freeing in hearing the words aloud, taking responsibility—no matter how small—for what I could’ve done, the path not taken.

  “Thank you.” Miranda’s face fills with something like relief, a pearly glow emanating from her eyes, her limbs, her very being, and all at once, she disappears from sight, leaving the eggy smell of sulfur and the lush reek of wild roses in her absence.

  “Your father’s on the phone, Alys.” My mother steps back in the room and immediately begins recapping the bottles and jars strewn across the top of my dresser in a fit of what is either industriousness or anger. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  I knew my father would call, but I didn’t think it would be tonight. I wonder if this is the first time they’ve talked since he left, and judging from
my mother’s jerky movements, I suspect that the answer is yes. “Maybe later,” I say, my lips barely moving. I do want to talk to him, and I will. But not yet. I’m not ready to hear his voice, to hear his answer when I ask when

  (if)

  he’s coming back to us. I feel hot and cold all at once, and the air in my bedroom shimmers slightly, as if it’s full of handfuls of broken glass. My mother’s footsteps in the hall coincide with the ringing of the doorbell. I watch the girl in the mirror, standing there alone, wearing a blue dress that announces the rites of spring.

  • • •

  I’ve never seen Riley in a suit, but here he is, groomed, bathed, and cologned, his hair slicked back so that the bones of his face stand out beneath the hall light, his cheekbones set at a rakish angle. He takes in my dress, the jewelry sparkling at my wrists and ears, his eyes broadcasting his approval.

  “You look great, Alys,” he says, sweeping the length of my body. “Really great.” We smile at each other as if we are the only people in the room, in the city, on the planet, until I remember that my mother is in the house, walking down the stairs behind me.

  “So do you,” I say, and I suddenly cannot meet his eyes. I look down at the small black clutch in my hand instead, trying to remember if I’ve actually put anything useful inside it, like lip gloss or money.

  “Don’t you two look gorgeous!” my mother chirps, her face bright, holding a camera in one hand. I roll my eyes at Riley, and he smiles, willing to forgive her for anything, to tolerate what I know will be a complete and total photo-op embarrassment. “Let me get a few pictures before you go.”

  She stands in front of us, raising the camera to her face as I lean into the warmth of Riley’s body, his arm draped lightly around my shoulders. We smile broadly, real smiles, and I want Luke to stay away tonight, up in his bedroom, where he belongs, and not out here in the real world, the place where he messes everything up. Even so, I can hear his voice in my ear, a low mumble.