by Leah Stewart
“You poor baby,” I say, and I reach up a hand to stroke the back of his head. His hair is slightly damp with sweat. His head is heavy on my shoulder. “Allison,” he says. I try not to stiffen. This is the second time someone has murmured that name into my skin.
“I want her back,” he says. “I just want her back.” He steps back and stares at me hard, as though he’s searching for her in my face. “Nothing can make it better,” he says. “I’ve never wanted anything so much that I couldn’t have. Do you know what that’s like?”
“What if they catch them? The guys who did it.”
“I don’t know if that will make me feel better,” he says, his voice weary and adult. Then he asks, “Will it?” and now his voice is like a child’s, like he really thinks I know the answer.
“I hope so,” I say. “I’ll do my best to help.”
“Why are you so nice to me?” he says. I touch his cheek with my fingertips. “You haven’t asked me anything about her,” he says again. “Why did you really come here? Was it to see me?”
“You asked me to come.” I lift my hand from his face.
He fingers a strand of my hair. “Why don’t you wear your hair long, like you used to?” he says. “It looked good on you.”
“You remember what I looked like?”
“Of course,” he says. “I never forget a pretty girl.” His hand slides to my shoulder and tightens there. “I really want to kiss you,” he says, and his voice cracks, so that I can hear how much he wants it. “Is that okay?” Over his shoulder as he leans in toward me I see his sister’s pink-and-white bed, and then I close my eyes and he slips his tongue inside my mouth. He tastes of coffee and faintly of cigarettes. Downstairs, the front door slams. Peter jerks away. “Shit, my mother,” he says. He looks both frightened and defiant. “She’s early.” He goes to the door and looks down the hallway. “Stay here.”
He slips out of the room. I hear his feet on the stairs and then voices below. In his sister’s mirror I see my face. My cheeks and neck are flushed, my lips red.
Something pink is wedged behind the mirror where it’s propped on the dresser. I pull it out. It’s a wig—a bob, with bangs, in a brilliant pink. In the mirror I slip it on and tuck my hair beneath it. It looks good on me, though I feel distant from the image in the glass, like a cat thinking she sees another cat instead of her own reflection.
Someone is coming up the stairs. I yank off the wig and shove it in my bag, and when Peter comes through the door it’s too late to change my mind.
“Come on,” he whispers. “I’m going to sneak you out off the deck.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Do you want my mother to see you up here?”
He hustles me down the hall into the upstairs den, out through the sliding glass doors onto the wooden deck. I let him help me up and over the railing, but when he tells me to reach for the thick branch of the tree that grows less than a foot away, I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“I’ve done this a million times,” he says. “Allison showed me. You can do it.” Then he wraps his arm around my waist and holds me, the muscles of his arm tense and hard against my stomach. He kisses my cheek. “Reach for the branch,” he says, his breath warm against my ear. “I’ve got you.”
“I must be crazy,” I say, I reach out and wrap both hands around the branch like a gymnast on the parallel bars.
“Now swing,” he says, and letting go, he gives me a little push. For a moment I’m just dangling, my throat full of a scream I can’t let out, and then my frantic feet find the branch and I’m standing. My heart is jumping, and it’s not with fear, it’s with exhilaration. I look back at Peter leaning against the rail, his hair a golden brown in the setting sun. “I knew you could do it,” he says. “It’s all easy now.”
Half-falling, half-climbing, I make it down the tree. I jump from a low branch and fall to my knees. When I’m standing, Peter leans over the deck railing and sails my bag down to me. A pink strand flutters out the side. I grab the bag and push the wig to the bottom. “Cut through the neighbors’ yard,” he says in a stage whisper. “I’ll meet you at your car.”
The neighbors’ dog barks at me from behind their screen door as I pass through the yard. I hear a voice ask the dog, “What is it, Apollo?” but no one comes to the door. I want to laugh at the idea of a dog named Apollo, and then just as suddenly I feel like crying. I break into a run, and reach my car sweaty and panting. The air inside the car is thick with heat, and my thighs stick to the vinyl seat. In the rearview mirror I pull my hair up into a tight bun, trying to breathe evenly. I fan the back of my neck with my notebook and wait for Peter.
When he comes, he opens the passenger door and sits in the car. “So Allison taught you that?” I say. “Was she a gymnast?”
“No, she was just brave. If she wanted something, she got it.”
“Like what?”
He tells me that Allison had heard that a boy at her college was the son of a Nashville music executive. She found out what classes he took and went to one of them—it was something like advanced calculus, he says—and sat beside him and took notes. Then she asked if he wanted to study together. For two weeks she studied for a class she wasn’t even taking, and then one night she put one of her own tapes in the stereo and waited until he asked who it was to tell him that it was her voice coming out of the speakers. He told her he would play the tape for his father. “I don’t know if he did,” Peter says. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
He tells the story in praise of his dead sister. I’m thinking about that poor kid, the way she manipulated and used him. Then I picture Carl, leaning in close across the table, the way I smiled as though I wanted him to touch me. I’m no better than Allison Avery. I’m just not as good at it as she was.
“You know a guy called today who wants to put out her CD?” Peter says. “I guess she’ll finally get what she wanted.”
“Your parents said yes, then?”
“I think so. He told my mother it would be tastefully done. A tribute.”
“I know that guy,” I say. “He’ll do a good job.”
“You know him?” Peter turns to look at me. “He sounded real interested in my sister. Did he know her?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. I should have just said no, but maybe David did meet her. Maybe he just didn’t remember it until he heard her gorgeous voice, saw her pretty face. “If Allison always got what she wanted,” I say, “why was she going to med school when she wanted to be a singer?”
“Did my mother tell you that?” I nod. He says, “She was never going to go to med school. It doesn’t hurt for my mother to believe it. None of it matters now.” He is quiet for a minute, and then he reaches over and punches in the cigarette lighter. “Do you mind?” he asks, pulling a pack from his pocket.
I tell him I don’t mind and watch him take out the last cigarette, hold it in his mouth and reach for the lighter. These things seem to take a long long time. He inhales deeply, as though it’s been a while since he’s had a smoke.
“Can I have a drag?” I say. When he passes me the cigarette, his fingers touch mine. I inhale and pass it back. He has one arm folded across his stomach. The other lifts and lowers, lifts and lowers as he smokes.
This is what it’s come to. I ask for another drag. His fingers touch mine. When he finishes the cigarette, he starts to talk. He tells me that he loved his sister, that she was pretty and brave and wonderful. The light outside fades while he remembers. He tells me that she got him through algebra, that she taught him to drive, that whatever he did, she had already done, and come back to show him the way. She always took care of him, no matter what.
“You sound like your mother,” I say. “She tells me your sister was perfect.”
“She wasn’t perfect.” He sighs. “But my mom refuses to admit it.” Peter says he’s not even supposed to mention that she smoked, almost a pack a day, for a while, though she was trying to quit. He says, “She got me th
at fake ID, you know. She used to take me out sometimes.” He shakes his head and says bitterly, “My mother never really knew her at all.” He falls silent, staring out the windshield at nothing.
This is the moment.
“Peter,” I say softly. “Tell me about the morphine.”
His jaw tightens. He doesn’t look at me. “So you know,” he says flatly. “I should’ve known you’d find out.” His voice grows sharp. “The medical examiner said only the cops and the family would know, but I guess nothing is sacred to a reporter. Who told you, anyway?”
What I say next has to be perfect, enough to make him go on. To ask him directly what he means would be to reveal I don’t know. Medical examiner, he said. That means he’s talking about autopsy results, the tox screen, maybe drugs in her system. “Sometimes we have a source,” I say carefully.
“Well, that’s vague.” He shakes his head angrily. “They told my parents the media would never know.”
“I was only told about the morphine. Nothing else.”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?” He turns to look at me. In the fading light he looks years older than he is, his mouth strained, dark circles under his eyes. “It was a lot of morphine,” he says. “Enough to kill her, maybe, if someone else hadn’t.”
“I’m surprised your parents told you,” I say.
“They wanted to know if I knew why she had it.”
“Did you?” I ask. “Did you know she was a user?”
His eyes widen and he laughs, a short, astonished laugh. “But she wasn’t, that’s what’s crazy. That’s what doesn’t make sense.”
“You don’t have to lie to me, Peter.” I put my hand on his thigh and give it a gentle squeeze. “It happens to a lot of people in medicine.”
He stares at me, then speaks very slowly, as though to a child. “What does?”
“Painkiller addiction.” I’m weighing whether to tell him about the heroin. Maybe she was trying to move down the ladder, one rung at a time. Why else would she be using morphine when she still had heroin in her room?
“Olivia . . .,” he starts, then subsides. He returns his gaze to the windshield, his whole body gone oddly wooden. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. I can’t even hear him breathe.
“Peter?” I reach out to touch his shoulder. With a sudden movement, like a cat pouncing, he grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Please don’t print it, Olivia.” His voice shakes, though he’s trying to sound calm, reasonable. “It’s not fair.”
“Why not?” I say.
“It has nothing to do with . . . It doesn’t even make sense.”
I say gently, “If Allison was buying or selling drugs, it could have a lot to do with what happened.”
“But she wasn’t,” he says, his voice rising with frustration. He snatches his hand from mine. “She wasn’t. I know it.”
“It’s not just the morphine.” I hesitate. He’s staring at me now, so intently that I almost feel frightened. “I found heroin in her apartment.”
“You found . . .” He looks away and for a long moment says nothing. When he speaks again his voice is calm. “How did the police miss it?”
“It was well hidden. I’m not even sure what made me look.”
“Where was it?”
“In her bedroom.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I left it there.”
“I don’t want my mother to find it.”
“It’s well hidden,” I say again, reluctant to tell him where.
“This is hard enough already.”
“I know.”
“You won’t print it, will you?”
“I can’t promise that.” He turns to look at me, his expression pleading. “I won’t print it now,” I say.
“People should be talking about what happened to my sister,” he says bitterly. “Not about the things she did.”
We sit without talking for a moment, the only sound the crinkle of cellophane as Peter unwraps a new pack of cigarettes. He slaps the pack hard against his hand. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He keeps his eyes down. He told me a secret. I told him one. Why do I feel like he came out ahead?
“When can I see you again?” he says abruptly.
“Peter,” I say, “I know that you miss your sister . . .” I’m not sure how to finish the sentence.
“I want to see you,” he says. “You don’t believe that? Or you don’t want to see me.”
“I don’t know what I want.” My head is floating above my body like a balloon on a string, a cocktail of caffeine and nicotine and adrenaline pounding through my bloodstream. I’m tired of testing the water, trying not to scare him off. What I want is to ask him “What else can you give me?”
Peter lights another cigarette, his hand shaking. “You’re the only person I can talk to,” he says, not looking at me, his voice flat. “Nobody else understands.”
“All right,” I say. “All right.”
He turns to me quickly. “When?”
“Friday,” I say. “If we talk about your sister. I’d like you to take me to the places she used to take you. I want to meet the people she knew.”
A smile breaks across his face. He nods. “Friday.” He leans forward as though to kiss me, but I turn my face away and his lips meet my cheek. “Friday,” he says again, and swings his long legs out of the car. He shuts the door gently and steps away.
I grip the steering wheel hard and pull away. He stands smoking, watching me go, and I know what I want. I want to stop the car and hold my hand out for that cigarette, just to feel him touch me again.
One thing I know, if you get what you want, the only thing that happens is you want something else.
• • •
When I turn the key in my front door, I remember my plans with Hannah. The apartment is dark, and there’s a note from her on the coffee table. “Waited for you until nine,” it says. “Went to the movies with Linda from work. See you. P.S. Carl called.”
I sit down heavy on the couch, fold the note into a square like the ones we used to pass each other in school. Then I unfold it again, turn it over and write on the back. “Hannah, I’m so sorry. I got hung up with work stuff. Wake me when you get in. Love, Olivia.”
The sun wakes me in the morning. Hannah never did.
12
I’m in my car, strained forward over the steering wheel as though the movement of my body could translate to the line of traffic in front of us. Beside me Bryce mutters a steady stream of invective, most of it directed at the cop up ahead who just waved a Channel 5 van on through. The sun through the windshield pricks at my eyes, making them water. “Goddamnit,” Bryce says. “God fucking damnit. Holy fucking shit. He’s not going to let us through.”
There’s an accident on the interstate—a tractor trailer and at least three cars. We’re trying to reach it.
Bryce rolls down the window and sticks his head out. “Officer,” he says. “We’re reporters, too. Newspaper.” The cop just looks at him and doesn’t say a word. “Come on, you let them through,” Bryce says, and when the cop still doesn’t answer, he says, “What’s the deal, you like the way you look on TV?” The line starts moving. Bryce shouts out the window, “I could take your picture. You could get it framed.”
“Forget it,” I say. “We’ll find another way.”
Darting in and out of slow lanes of traffic, I get us onto the overpass that rises above the accident scene. I pull onto the shoulder and we get out. A line of people has already formed, leaning over the railing and shaking their heads or pointing. Newcomers slow their cars, pull over and get out, their faces eager with the question “What happened?” Bryce shoulders his way up to the railing, saying, “Excuse me, media,” and holding his camera before him as proof. Once up there he digs film out of one of the innumerable pockets on his photographer’s vest and starts shooting pictures. The scene spreads out before us, an overturned tractor trailer in the middle of the road, one car in the ditch beside it, two more sp
un out away from it, one half crushed. Ambulances and cop cars with their lights going, cameramen readying their equipment. I can just make out Lydia McKenzie, combing her bleached-blond hair.
I lean way out over the railing. A few feet down is a grassy hill that slopes down to the interstate below. You have to be brave, I think, to get what you want. “Bryce,” I say, “I’m going over.”
He lowers his camera and leans out to look. “It’s too far to jump,” he says.
“That’s why you’re going to lower me,” I say. I look around at the crowd. “Excuse me,” I say, raising my voice. “Can someone help lower me down to the hill?”
A large black man steps forward, lifting his arm. “I’ll help,” he says. A slow grin spreads across his face.
“You picked the wrong day to wear a skirt,” Bryce says as I hike my skirt up and clamber up and over the metal railing. I turn around, slowly, slowly, on the concrete until I am standing on the other side of the railing and gripping it with both hands. Then Bryce holds one of my hands, the man holds the other, and in unison they lean their bodies over while I push off with my feet. No one is watching the accident anymore, all their shiny faces turned down to look at me. Behind me an ambulance siren wails. I am dangling. The two men grunt, their hands gripping mine slick with perspiration, as they lean more and more forward, inching me toward the ground.
“That’s as far as we can get you,” Bryce says. He draws a deep breath. A drop of sweat falls from his forehead onto my face, and since I can’t lift my hand to wipe it, it makes its way down my cheek.
