The View from the Top

by Hillary Frank

  The first floor was empty. Unless you counted the smell of his mom’s way-too-strong coffee. Good, that meant she’d probably stayed here last night. He hoped that was a sign it was over with her and Skeeve. There had been rumblings recently about a possible engagement—how he was finally ready to commit to her. But Matt didn’t buy that for a second. Guys like Skeeve didn’t commit to anyone but themselves.

  Matt went to the basement door and listened. No piano music; Anabelle must not be down there. As he ran up to his room, his stomach started to feel all whirry, like it did last week when he’d spun too fast on the Tipsy Teacups. Lately he’d had this feeling that something was going on between Anabelle and Jonah; over the weekend he’d convinced himself that it was probably true. And the longer it took him to find her, the more sure he became that it was absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt true. Please let her be sitting on my bed waiting for me, he thought. Please, please, please.

  She wasn’t.

  He banged on Lexi’s door and didn’t even wait for her groggy “Yeah?” before busting in.

  Lexi was lying there, all tangled up in her sheet. It was one o’clock—why wasn’t she up yet? She was usually driving him crazy with her operatic shower singing by at least ten.

  “Where’s Anabelle?” he demanded, as if he were a detective and Lexi was a criminal hiding Anabelle away in an undisclosed location.

  “I don’t know,” Lexi said, blinking her bleary eyes. “She never came back.”

  “Came back from where?” Oh God, he was right. She was out fooling around with Jonah.

  “Nowhere,” Lexi said with melodramatic exasperation. “She just... she left early. Really early.”

  “But it’s her day off,” he said, dumbfounded. “She knew I was coming home today.”

  Lexi rolled over and put a pillow over her head. Big help she was.

  Matt ran back downstairs, imagining all the different places where Anabelle and Jonah might be making out: on the beach, on the jetty, in the back room at the taffy shop.

  He paced around the kitchen island. It was covered in smashed bits of chocolate. His mom always overdid it on the chocolate when she was having man issues.

  On his third time around, he grabbed a cantaloupe from the fruit bowl and tossed it back and forth between his palms. Where could they be, where could they be, where could they be? Maybe they were hanging out on the swing set in Anabelle’s yard. On, like, a real date. Which somehow felt even worse than if they were groping in a closet.

  Matt had been right. He’d been right all along to not want to leave them alone. Why hadn’t Anabelle come with him to Boston? She could’ve taken a few days off from work. He’d even offered to give her the money she’d be losing. There was only one answer to why she didn’t take him up on it, and that was Jonah. It had to be.

  Matt raced out the back door, forgetting he was still holding the cantaloupe. But, agh, there was no time to bring it back inside. He smashed it in the driveway, the orange flesh exploding on the pavement like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  There’s gotta be a metaphor there, Matt thought, staring at the cracked-open, bald-headed melon. Something about destroyed innocence? He made a mental note to remember that for tonight when he smoked up and started writing. Which he actually hadn’t done in a few days; his dad didn’t allow pot at his place. And Matt couldn’t write without being stoned. Or not his really deep stuff anyway. He had so much buzzing around in his head, he couldn’t wait to get it all out. So much that maybe the best way to express it would be with a gigantic paintbrush. Or a wet ball of clay. It was always so hard to choose the right medium.

  First, though, he had to get this Anabelle-and-Jonah thing settled.

  Matt bolted out to the street, not sure where he was heading, but knowing he had to find them. And boy, were they going to be sorry when he did. As he bounded toward the street, he felt strong. He felt like the Incredible Hulk becoming big and green.

  He looked back at the cantaloupe brains.

  Yes, they were going to be sorry.

  When Matt got to Anabelle’s house, her dad was lying in a half-full kiddie pool reading the paper.

  “Hey, Karl,” Matt said, trying to hide his post-run wheezing. “Anabelle home?”

  Karl jolted up, the bottom half of his paper dipping into the shallow water. “Matt!” he cried, messily folding the unwieldy pages. “Long time no see! Yeah, she’s up in her room practicing. Go on in!”

  “She by herself?”

  “Yeah, the girls are out with Marnie.” Karl lifted the brim of his sweat-stained, sun-bleached Normal baseball cap and faked a menacing look. “But I’m not budging, so don’t you go trying anything.”

  “I won’t.” He really wouldn’t. Anabelle had never felt comfortable messing around in her room. She said it was too weird to do stuff right near where her sisters slept. And aside from that, her place was so small and old you could hear every little creak no matter where you were in the house.

  Matt climbed the stairs, relieved to know Anabelle was home. And alone.

  He found her sitting on her perfectly made bed under her poster of Thelonious Monk in a kids’ wagon. She was hunched over the keyboard with big bulky headphones plugged into a Walkman—who used a Walkman anymore?—wearing that baggy red hoodie of hers, the one she’d stolen from her dad. When she saw Matt she stopped playing and pulled off the headphones. But she didn’t come to greet him. No hugs. Just a quick “Hi.”

  Well, no hugs from him then, either. Matt sat down on the corner of the bed. “What’re you playing?” he asked.

  “It’s Schubert,” she said. “Piano Trio in B-flat.”

  “Anabelle,” he said, scooting closer to her on the bed.

  “When—” No, he couldn’t just ask her when she was going to start being honest with him. When she was going to come clean about whatever the hell was going on with Jonah. If he just accused her, she’d never open up. You’ve gotta lead up to it, he told himself.

  “When what?” she asked, her eyes getting squinty.

  “When are you going to start playing meaningful stuff?” It was unrelated to Jonah, but something he’d wanted to bring up with her for a long time.

  “What’re you talking about?” She swallowed hard. “This is meaningful. To me, it is.”

  “But I mean, when are you going to start composing? Making your own music?” He hit one of the black keys sharply and she flinched. “That’s why I got you this thing.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shutting off the keyboard. “I’m not really interested in that.” She held up the Walkman. “When I figure out stuff, I almost feel like I did create it.”

  “But it’s like if I copied a Van Gogh, instead of trying to be the next Van Gogh. You could be the next Van Gogh, too, but for piano.” He could tell he was making her feel bad. But in a way, he felt that she deserved it. Because even though she wasn’t with Jonah right now, she’d definitely been all over him lately. And was probably out late doing God-knows-what with him last night. And that was not how a girlfriend should behave with her boyfriend’s best friend.

  Anabelle inhaled so hard he could hear her nose whistling. She looked out her window, then back at him, then up at the ceiling, then out the window again. She got up and shot over to her sisters’ beds and curled up on the bottom bunk, hugging an enormous pink stuffed rabbit—one of the many animals Anabelle’s dad bragged about winning for her at balloon darts when she was a kid. She buried her face in the bunny’s matted fur and started to sob. “I think we should maybe...”

  “Speak up,” he said, raising his hand to his ear. “You think we should maybe what?”

  She pulled the rabbit away from her lips and looked him dead in the eye. “Maybe break up, Matt. Okay? Was that loud enough for you?”

  Wait, wait, wait. Break up? Break up? This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to get mad at her; she was supposed to apologize. And then things were supposed to get back to the way they were. They weren’t
supposed to end. And even if they did, it wasn’t supposed to be her dumping him. Back when they’d started dating, he could’ve had his pick of girls, but she was nobody—a loner. Now, just because some other dude was paying attention to her, she thought she was better than him?

  He tried to make his voice steady, calm. Calm enough to make her see that he could be rational, that breaking up was not the answer. “You have to tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing happened,” she insisted, tears rolling down the sides of her nose.

  “If you’re saying you want to split up, something definitely happened.”

  Anabelle squeezed the rabbit against her chest and sniffled. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’ll kick his ass.” Matt rose to his feet and slammed his foot into the bed frame. “I swear to God.” He didn’t really intend to fight Jonah—Jonah was bigger and would probably beat Matt. But he liked that when he said it, it sounded like he meant it. Like he was a guy who could actually pull off that kind of thing.

  “Don’t,” Anabelle said, now full-on crying. “Please.”

  “Then tell me.” Matt sat back down beside her and she pulled back slightly. Wow, she’s afraid of me, he thought. Good, maybe she’d quit whatever was going on with Jonah.

  “All that happened,” she said, staring him down with her red-rimmed eyes, “is Jonah and I snuck into one of the McMansion pools.”

  “I knew it,” he snapped.

  “Lexi was there, too,” she added quickly. “The three of us went.”

  “And...?”

  “And nothing. We swam, someone came out of the house, we left.”

  “Then what? Lexi says you never came back.”

  “Well... yeah.” Anabelle backed slowly into the pile of stuffed animals in the corner behind her. “Lexi took off,” she said. “And Jonah and I hung out on the beach for a while talking. Just talking, that was it.”

  “And that’s what convinced you you should dump me?”

  “No. It’s actually something I’ve been thinking about. Maybe talking to Jonah helped me to see things more clearly. But I promise, I’m not dumping you for him. It’s not like that.”

  “You’re attracted to him, though.”

  “No.” She said it so emphatically it had to be a lie.

  “Come on, admit it. It’s obvious.”

  “Okay, yeah, if that’s what you want to hear, I think he’s good-looking and all that. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. Everyone does.” She was clenching and unclenching her fists. Her knuckles were white. Four white mountain peaks. Plus the sad thumb knuckle, all low and rounded and off on its own. “Matt, I wouldn’t be doing this if it was just about having a fling with someone else,” she said, looking down at her feet. Her toes were curled under. They had knuckles, too. There should really be a poem about knuckles, he thought. How they’re a reflection of our emotions. “It’s about you and me,” she continued. “And I can’t do it anymore.”

  She burst out crying again. Hard. There was heaving and wailing and snotty snorting. “This is the hardest thing in the world I’ve ever had to do. Can’t you see that?”

  The crying was either a manipulative way to cover for cheating on him, or she was telling the truth about Jonah. The way she was bawling right now, he kind of believed her. But still, even if nothing physical had happened, Matt couldn’t help feeling like Jonah must’ve said something to make her want to end things. Why else would she suddenly decide to do this? There had to be more to it than what she was telling him. In one way or another, there had been a betrayal.

  “You know what?” he said. “People don’t cry like this. They don’t cry like this unless someone died.” He realized as he said it that he was repeating something his father had told him during the divorce. It was something that had just made him cry harder, and it had the same effect on Anabelle.

  God, this was a mess. He needed a drink. A hit. Lots of hits. How had things gotten this bad? Did they really have to break up? He didn’t want to. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. For whatever he had done. For getting her so worked up. He couldn’t imagine life without her.

  He wrapped his arms around her shaking shoulders, pulled her head to his chest, rubbed his fingers against the ridge on the back of her skull the way she liked. He felt her muscles relax a bit. “You really want to break up?” he asked.

  She nodded and barely audibly said, “I think so.”

  “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

  “Probably not.”

  “It’s just, it’s a big decision. One we shouldn’t make so quickly.” Matt looked her in the eye, wiped away her tears with his thumbs. “Look, I know I’m an asshole sometimes. I can work on that.”

  He offered her the bottom of his shirt to blow her nose into. The snot came out all clear and a little bubbly. He told himself to remember later to cut out that bit of the fabric once it had crusted up and use it in a collage.

  “This sucks,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Good, it sounded like her mind wasn’t totally made up. He had to get out of this room, though. Someplace where he wasn’t being watched by teddy bears and figurines and other cute little-girl things. “Can we, like, go for a walk or something?” he asked.

  They didn’t say a word to each other as they walked. But there was no need to say anything; they both knew they were heading toward the cemetery. The little one on the hill with eroding headstones so old they were slanting into the earth at odd angles. It was the place they’d first kissed. Where they’d made snow angels. Where he’d read to her from William Blake, e. e. cummings, and his favorite, Charles Bukowski. And on days when he was feeling brave, he’d lay her head in his lap and read to her from his notebook. He wished he had a poem for her right now about why she shouldn’t leave him.

  The sky had clouded over into a Rothko-esque slate-blue color field, saturating the graveyard with prestorm hues: the green of the grass, the white of the birch trunks, the yellow of the dandelions. As Anabelle and Matt silently climbed the hill, he picked a dandelion bouquet for her, and when they reached the top, he presented the flowering weeds to her with both hands, in the same pose as the sculpture he’d made on her jewelry box. He hoped she’d get the reference.

  As she took the dandelions, she gave a knowing smile. A sad smile, but knowing nonetheless.

  They sat down on their favorite bench in the shade of a few trees, their papery bark peeling like pencil shavings. Thunder grumbled in the distance.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Anabelle said, tying the stem of one dandelion around the head of another.

  “We don’t have to end this,” Matt told her. “We can make it work.”

  “How, Matt?” She added another flower to the chain.

  “How will we make it work when we’re in different states?”

  “We won’t see each other as much as we do now, but we’ll visit.”

  “I’ll probably have lots of homework. It’ll be hard.”

  “I can drive out and see you. It’s only like ten hours or something.”

  “But I might have so much work that I won’t be able to spend much time with you. And then you’ll feel bad.” Anabelle tightened the knot on the next stem, and in the process popped the head off the last dandelion. “And you’ll take it out on me.”

  She was making him feel like such a monster. Didn’t she get that his anger over not showing him enough appreciation, his jealousy over Jonah, was all about how deeply he loved her? Wasn’t that obvious? “I just wanted to prove that people can do it,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “That they can stay together. That they can be high school sweethearts and stay together. I just thought, if you’re devoted enough, if you never stop showing each other that you’re totally, completely in love, you can get through anything.”

  Anabelle held the dandelion chain up to her head. Her brow was all wrinkled and Matt wasn’t sure if it was because she was trying to fig
ure out if the chain was long enough, or because she was concentrating on what he’d just said. “You really think your parents could’ve worked it out?” she asked him.

  “Well, not once my dad cheated. But before that. They could’ve stopped everything from going so wrong. If my mom hadn’t been such a flirt. If my dad had paid her more attention in the first place.”

  “Maybe, sometimes, people shouldn’t have ever been together.” Anabelle carefully tied one last flower onto the chain and joined the two ends, completing the loop. “And maybe it’s better to recognize it early, before you’re married and have kids and it’s too late.”

  “But we can do it. We can, I know we can. We care about each other.”

  Anabelle rubbed the top of one of the dandelions with her thumb.

  “What’re you thinking?” Matt asked.

  “You said we care about each other.”

  “Yeah...”

  “But you never seem to think I care about you.”

  “No, I do. Of course I do. I just get frustrated sometimes because I feel like I’m putting in more effort. Making you stuff, buying you stuff. But you’re the most caring person I know.”

  There was another thunder roll, this time much closer. Anabelle gazed off into the direction of the impending storm. She had this look on her face as if she wasn’t buying a word Matt was saying. As if it were impossible for her to believe that he actually thought she was caring.

  “You are,” he said. “I first fell for you because of your kindness. That night when I was wasted and you brought the trash basket to my bed and sat with me while I puked? Nobody else would’ve done that for me. Maybe Jonah. But it’s not like I’d ever want to date Jonah. I’m just saying, no other girl has ever been so sweet to me. You used to do stuff like that all the time. You used to play me jazzy lullabies when I was sad. But then at some point you stopped. And I guess I felt abandoned.”

  A lightning bolt flashed in the baseball field across the street. The thin crackly line looked unreal, as if it had been drawn in a comic book.