Red Velvet Crush

by Christina Meredith

  I love you, Luke Warm. I shivered, waiting next to a naked little Billie for the tub to fill.

  Steam fills the tiny bathroom and fogs up the window and any chance at my reflection. I shut the cabinet door and sink in, my hollow bones filling with hot water.

  I hover over the water, arms stick straight on the sides of the tub. I’m unable to let go and let the heat pull me in and soften me up. I’m afraid of what will follow: the tears, the remembering. The aftermath.

  The grainy stop-action film that has filled my thoughts since last night starts to play again. It’s been skipping through my head, frame by frame, over and over, every hour, every minute, every moment—long and stretched out and interminable. I shake my head. Worst movie ever.

  Music trails in to take its place as I sink into the tub; a haunting whisper of guitar overtakes the gurgle of water. I let my eyes shut and drift, but it isn’t a dream. I hear a chord, two notes, and another chord. I breathe them in as they steal in under the bathroom door, steady, true, and real.

  I pull the plug with my toe and stand up in the steamy air. My hair drips down my back, and I hope to see my pain swirling down the drain, a trail of lather and heft that circles clockwise and then disappears. But I don’t. It is too deep inside, hidden away where soap and bubbles and a soft towel can’t get to it.

  I dry off and follow the notes down the hall. Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, lit only by the blue flame hissing under the kettle. His toes rest one on top of the other, clean white socks with red stitching along the toe. A guitar sits in his lap and a coffee mug at his elbow.

  My eyes trace his fingers. My own fingers flex, reaching out for strings that aren’t there. I reach up and rub my neck where my strap always sits. My skin soaks in his melody, and I am filled with a sharp, deep emptiness.

  “Sorry,” Dad says when he realizes I am there, leaning against the wall in the dark hallway. He silences the strings with the flat of his hand. I shake my head softly, not wanting him to stop.

  “It’s good,” I say as I move toward him.

  “And you?” he asks before he looks down.

  He finds his fingering and starts again.

  I don’t know if he means my music or me, but the answer is the same: shattered.

  “He could have been everything,” I say.

  I take a breath. It is so hard to miss someone and hate them at the same time. And right now I hate and miss Ty and Billie in equal measure.

  Dad’s rough fingers slide along a string as he straightens himself up to look at me. He seems more solid, more sure of himself than before we left.

  That makes me a little jealous. Not that I want his life to suck, but it feels like he found himself in solitude, while I went off on a great and horrible adventure only to come home more broken and lost.

  “Nobody else should be everything,” he says, leaving a shivering note floating between us. “Then where are you?”

  Right here, standing in my pajamas in the dark, the loser who gave everything away to my soul-sucking little sister and the best boy I ever met when I should have kept something for myself. I swallow that down, trying to find a place for it to sit in my stomach as I turn away.

  Dad keeps strumming, winding his way through a familiar tune that waltzes me into my bedroom.

  I steel myself in the doorway before I walk inside. Billie is everywhere: on the bed, tumbling out of the closet, dancing across the floor. Even the air inside still smells like her perfume.

  I pause on the pink rug and wonder: Which is worse, never knowing your sister or knowing your sister and wishing that you didn’t?

  Right now I vote for the never knowing, because the other one is making me remember everything—every embarrassment, every triumph, every betrayal, and every sunshiney moment. They claw at my heart and squeeze the tears from my eyes.

  I shut the door, launch my backpack onto Billie’s bed, and watch her stuffed animals bounce.

  A kitten drops to the floor as I climb under my covers.

  There’s a plane outside my window, blinking on and off as it steals across the night sky. It pulses, a singular heartbeat at fifteen thousand feet, pacing me as I curl up and wait for the stars to settle, for this day to be done, for the empty silence inside my head to finally stop.

  The sun is bright this morning, way too bright for someone not even two weeks into total heartbreak. The house is too quiet, too. And someone is knocking on the front door.

  I roll over. Go away. Get off my porch.

  They knock again.

  Please stop knocking, please go away, and please die—in that order. I put my pillow over my head.

  Another loud knock tells me Dad and Winston must be gone. One of them would have stormed to the door by now. I sit up and rub my eyes, feeling sick and groggy from sleeping so late. Sleeping is good, though. It stops the silence.

  Knockety knock knock knock. Knock.

  Oh my God. I huff out of bed, wrench my bedroom door open, and head for the front door.

  Jay is on the other side, his arms straddling the doorframe, his freshly shaved head poking right in at me. Stunned, I smile before I can stop myself. Then I look behind him for Ty. Old habits die hard.

  “So Winston thinks he’s keeping the van?” he asks, thumbing toward the front yard, where the van is parked as he walks through the open door.

  “Looks that way,” I say.

  I follow him across the living room and sit down cross-legged on the couch. I got crushed, and Winston got the van. He probably thinks we came out even.

  Jay is wearing dark jeans and a white T-shirt with a surfer on it that says “Can’t we all just get a longboard?” He takes over the lounger, flipping the footrest up and leaning back.

  I try to smooth down my hair when he’s not looking, wondering why I care; he’s seen me in worse shape.

  “I came to say good-bye,” Jay announces, sounding awfully grown up.

  Even in my state of disrepair, I am pleased. Not a lot of people take the time to say good-bye to me. They usually just disappear.

  “Off to school,” I say, very aware that Ty would have been off to college now, too, right along with Jay. That no matter what happened, we would have been saying good-bye.

  He could still be going, I guess, but I’m not thinking about that.

  “Yep”—Jay sighs—“off to school.”

  I can see Jay in a decked-out dorm room full of speakers and kick-ass stereo equipment and a remote control for everything. He will wire it all up to the light switch and blow the university’s circuits on the first day.

  He crosses his arms behind his head, squeaking on the worn leather chair.

  Next week my senior year starts. Billie should be a sophomore, but it looks like she isn’t coming back.

  We should have known that she would turn out to be just like my mom. All the signs were there: the slutty-chic fashion sense, the accidental cigarette burns, the utter disregard for schedules and personal boundaries, and now the ability to abandon everything at a moment’s notice.

  “Maybe someday we’ll get the band back together,” Jay says, staring at a stack of Auto Traders that Winston left on the end table.

  Here it comes, I think, the thing that breaks your heart.

  “Ty would like it,” he says, glancing at me.

  That line is a torpedo to my stomach. Ooof. The sun does a deep dive inside me.

  Jay folds the leather chair down in a sudden, swift movement. He squeezes tight onto the armrests and then breathes out, one big, long breath.

  “About him and Billie . . .” he says.

  So, this is why he is here. I can’t make myself look up at him. I study his hands instead. His nails are short and clean. He really is all ready for school.

  “They did some things they shouldn’t have.”

  My head starts to swim. I can still smell the pot smoke; see the glaze in Ty’s eyes. The sight of the bottom of Billie’s boots is burned into my brain.

  “They wer
e hanging out,” he says.

  Yep. And hooking up—the fact that Ty fell for Billie’s shit, that he went from not noticing her at all in the beginning to jumping right into the trap she had set for him—that hurts most of all. He’s a smart boy with a fancy high school diploma. He should have seen her coming. So should I.

  Jay leans forward and taps my knee.

  “Teddy Lee, they got drunk; they got high. But that was it. That was all.”

  Was it?

  Jay is watching me with raised eyebrows. Maybe that’s what he heard, but I know Billie better than that. Don’t I?

  Slowly I sink back into the couch and stare straight ahead, the shattered bits of what I thought had happened rearranging in my mind. I remember all the times Ty disappeared on his own, his silence toward the end of the trip. I thought Billie was the one getting high that night, not him.

  Did she push Ty over the edge or did he run and jump?

  Does it even matter? I only saw him crash.

  Maybe if I had stayed with Ty every night or if I had given in like I always did and let Billie sing my songs, she would still be here, Ty would still be mine. Maybe I could have saved us all somehow.

  I’m overcome with the sudden desire to smoke, the need to have something to do with my fingers, an excuse to look busy and do something self-destructive at the same time.

  “He didn’t ask me to come.” Jay wipes his palms along the front of his jeans. “I haven’t seen him since that night. No visitors and all that.”

  He rests his freshly tanned arms on his knees and says to me, earnestly, “I thought you should know. I thought it might help.”

  I feel like I should say thanks, but I’m not sure I want to. There has to be more to the story, but I might only ever get to know half of it. And I have to find a way to live with that.

  The leather chair rocks and squeaks as Jay gets up. He stands in the middle of the living room, waiting for me. I know he’s trying to make things right, but that doesn’t make them hurt any less.

  I stand up and step toward him. He squeezes me tight, a good hugger, lifting me off my toes.

  “It was the best band ever,” he says over my shoulder.

  I try to laugh a little, but it is just air in the shape of a smile.

  “Way better than the Trigger Brothers,” he says as he sets me down.

  My toes touch the floor, and I let him go.

  “It made the Trigger Brothers seem like a popgun,” he adds, stopping at the front door to shoot his fingers at me, Ben style.

  I watch him through the front window as he walks out across our grass and past the whitewashed van.

  He turns back when he gets to his car and waves with a hopeful smile and a big Jay bounce that breaks my heart all over again because he is back to normal and I don’t even know where to begin.

  19

  Being a senior gets me a better locker, but that’s about all I can say to recommend the experience so far. Everyone is running around, crazed and college bound, talking about scholarships and grants and early acceptance.

  College is not even on my mind. All those decisions still seem light-years away somehow, completely insignificant, even though I am here every day, books and backpack, pens and paper in hand.

  I am glad to be upright. Out of the house. Away from Winston’s jiggling and Dad’s worried looks. The farthest I can see down the road right now is the bell at the end of the day.

  I thought about not going back. It seriously crossed my mind. And then I thought: How many hours a day can I spend watching stolen cable? Or swallowing down Winston’s secondhand smoke? Sure, school kind of sucks, but at least they give me a ticket every morning for a free hot lunch.

  Rumors about Billie flourish and grow. She is touring the world. Has leukemia. Got knocked up over the summer and was sent away to a home for wayward girls to save our family from further embarrassment.

  On the fourth day of classes, one of the rumors catches up to me in the library during study hall. My books are spread out in front of me on a round table, warding off any spirited sophomore with bad skin who might decide to sit down next to me sporting his first boner. It happens.

  Instead I get two little freshman girls in striped tights, short skirts, and tiny T-shirts stretched over long john tops. Billies in training.

  The one with auburn hair steps up to me and says, “Is it true your sister ran away with a carny?”

  The other one gulps.

  I look up from my notebook and stare.

  “Yes,” I say. “She did.”

  The two freshmen turn and look at each other wide eyed.

  I sit up straight and glance around the room before I lean in closer.

  “I saw them,” I say. I slide my American literature book over and nudge her beige little fingernails off my table. “They all had tiny hands.”

  She pulls her hand back and grabs her friend by the arm, their chain-linked purses swinging as they skitter across the quiet library, only checking back once to glare at me.

  At least that version of the story is closest to true: the Blasting Cap boys are freakishly small. But mostly I let people believe whatever they want. September is slipping by one week at a time, and I am still rocking myself to sleep at night, watching the moon make its way across my window. The world is still moving; life, apparently, still goes on. My heart doesn’t believe it much.

  I sleep little, and my dreams are full of long, empty hallways and glimpses of Ty—his back, his arm, his hand—but never him.

  Billie shows up, too, in somebody else’s shoes, smiling like the Cheshire cat. I miss seeing her messy blond hair pooling on top of her pillow across the room in the moonlight. I even miss hearing her annoying loud breathing when I wake up.

  I stay in my bed late one Saturday morning, feeling battered and frayed, another week’s worth of schoolwork and just as many sleepless nights behind me. My fingers are stiff. I haven’t played in so long.

  My nose is cold outside the blankets. It is finally, definitely fall. The weak slant of light sneaking under my curtains confirms it. Fall.

  I roll over, smushing my pillow so it will fit my neck, and listen to Dad outside my door as he packs his lunch in the kitchen and leaves.

  Rolling onto my other side, I wait for Winston.

  He coughs to life. There is the flick of a lighter, the flush of the toilet, and then the slam of the front door. The van roars from the front yard before it calms down and then rattles away down the street. Will Jay ever come back and take that thing away?

  Flipping over again, I face the wall, snuggling down under my quilt and the extra blankets I stole from Billie’s bed. I stretch, slipping into the soft sheets and silence of the empty house, reminding myself that swimming around in thoughts and memories of Ty won’t do me any good. He is still gone. So is Billie.

  I think I hear something in the garage. It sounds like a guitar. I lie still, my ears straining. Thieves don’t usually tune up before stealing your shit, do they?

  There’s the creak of the side door and the sound of shifting, as if the boxes and other crap out there were being put into place. Followed by a bass line—I’m pretty sure. The windows shimmy in their frames.

  I sit straight up. Is that “Smoke on the Water”?

  I tiptoe out of bed and peek out the corner of my window. The side door to the garage is cracked open. The glass in front of me vibrates with a low, long note. I grab a sweatshirt, pull it on over my pajamas, and head for the garage.

  The grass between the house and the garage was a beaten-down dirt path when we left, but over the summer, it had a chance to sprout up and spread out.

  My bare feet step lightly on top of the springy green shoots, and I pass the peony bush, unsure what I am about to find, other than someone now playing The Doors, and playing them well.

  I cross the threshold to the garage with the doorknob held tight in my hand. My guitar has been set up across the room. It rests against a stool, the case locked and stowed under
Winston’s workbench.

  Someone has straightened up since the last time I was in here. That was the night we got back, when all I could manage to do was dump my stuff into a shitty pile. Now I can see the floor; a semicircle has been swept clean. A road map of black cords navigates toward the nearest outlet.

  Ginger Baker is standing in the shadows. He lifts his chin at me when I walk in, but he doesn’t stop playing. I smile. It is the closest we have ever gotten to hello.

  Blocks of morning light are breaking through the dirty windows of the garage door: warm, glowing squares that land on the spots where Billie and I used to stand. The sound of Ginger’s guitar pulls me closer. When he can play like that, there is no need for us to talk.

  I take a seat on a stool as Ginger rolls into another song. I listen, my toes curling around the base of the stool and warming in the morning sun.

  The music loosens the lock on my thoughts, softening up the black hole that Ty left behind and towing me back to earth. I haven’t played a note or heard a song in my head since the night I saw the two of them together. I didn’t realize how much I have been missing it, how much it means to me. But I’m not ready yet. I just listen for now.

  The squares of light grow warmer and brighter, song after song, as they slowly slide up the wall behind me while Ginger plays.

  They are long and skinny and angled, stretching all the way up to the cobwebby rafters to shimmer there in the dust when he finally packs up his bag hours later and sneaks out through the crack in the side door, leaving his guitar resting next to mine.

  Ginger shows up again on Wednesday after school. Dad and I are washing dishes when he suddenly appears, tall and skinny, rolling through the backyard on his gold twelve-speed.

  He ducks under the clothesline with a soft guitar case strapped to his back and a plaid thermos gripped against his handlebars.

  Dad looks over at me, and I shrug.

  Winston leaves the table and squeezes in next to me to see through the window over the sink.

  “He’s baaa-aaaack,” Winston sings quietly over my shoulder as we all watch Ginger lean his bike up against the side of the garage and walk into the open side door, taking the guitar off his back as he goes.