by Blake Nelson
I continue forward through the next chapter, writing other things down, taking careful notes.
I continue like this for nearly two hours, which is a record for me. When I finally turn off my desk light, I am drained. But I also feel strangely satisfied, not to mention proud of myself.
On Monday, I take the test. I get a one hundred.
10
Usually Martin sits with me at lunch. The Monday after the funeral he doesn’t come to the cafeteria. I look for him at his locker, but he’s not there either.
Then I see him in the breezeway hanging with some of his nerd buddies.
I try to join in, but they ignore me. I try to get Martin’s attention. He ignores me too.
I tug on his sleeve. “Hey,” I say.
He doesn’t answer. His nerd buddies are talking about superhero movies. Could Iron Man take Batman in a fight? Stuff like that.
“Uh, hello? Martin?” I say again, quietly so his friends don’t hear. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”
“What?” he snaps.
I step back. “What’s the matter?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“I…I don’t know,” I say. “Are you mad at me?”
He stomps off, away from his friends. I follow. He won’t talk to me, though. He keeps walking. He’s actually mad at me. Martin Farris is pissed.
“Martin?” I say, very serious now. “What is it? What did I do?”
“What don’t you do?” he says bitterly.
“Martin? You have to tell me what it is.”
“I just wish we could do one thing together where you didn’t have to tell me what a dork I am. That’s it. That’s all. Just one thing.”
I walk along behind him. “When did I call you a dork?”
He stops, turns on me: “You do it constantly. You’re always criticizing me. Like at the funeral. Telling me how to stand. I mean, seriously. Do you think how I stand has anything to do with you?”
“How you stand? What are you talking about?”
“The funeral. I go to the funeral. I wear my little coat and tie. I try to conduct myself properly. I do all of these things for you, and when it’s over, what do you say? Thank you? Thanks for supporting me? No. You have to criticize how I’m standing. You had something to say about my posture.”
“Oh right,” I say. “Because you were standing weird. You were standing like a little choir boy —”
“What!?” he says with sudden violence. “What did you just say?”
“I said you were standing there like a —”
“Like a little choir boy?”
I step back, amazed by how angry he is. “Yeah,” I say sheepishly. “I thought it was weird.”
“This is the deal, Maddie.” He’s actually shaking, he’s so mad. His lower lip is quivering. “I’m done with you. No more lunch. No more going places. No more helping you out. You suck as a friend, you know that? You’re mean and you’re selfish and…and I’m done with you. Good-bye.”
I stand there in utter disbelief. I don’t have a clue what just happened. I stand there as he walks back to his nerd buddies.
I probably shouldn’t refer to them as his “nerd buddies.”
That’s probably exactly what he’s talking about.
11
And so I go from two friends, to one friend, to zero friends.
I am back to where I started, back to the library at lunch, back to eating baby carrots at my locker.
I think about what Martin said, of course. But I don’t feel capable of doing anything about it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to apologize to people in situations like this. Maybe someday I won’t even get into situations like this.
But that someday is not now.
Then, as if to fill the friendship void, Emily Brantley starts sniffing around me again. She says hi to me a couple times, once in the bathroom, once in the hall.
After school, as I’m walking through the parking lot, she sees me and calls me over to her and her friends. This includes Amanda Davidson and Petra Brubaker, two popular juniors.
I’m a little nervous, but I let myself be called. I walk over to Amanda’s car and we all stare at each other. Emily tells me they’re going to a party on Friday, it’s people from Bradley Day School. Do I want to come?
I hesitate.
“Don’t worry. We’ll protect you,” she says.
Amanda and Petra have no comment. Then Jake and Alex and Raj drive by in Raj’s car. They slow down and talk to us.
“Hey, Maddie,” says Jake. “Where’ve you been hiding?”
“Nowhere,” I tell him.
Everyone sort of chitchats for a minute. They talk about parties they went to last weekend. People they hung out with. Fun they had.
As I stand there, I think of Trish going into the ground. I think about the dirt covering her up so she never has to hear about someone else’s awesome party weekend ever again.
Lucky her.
I’ve got a couple days to think about the Bradley Day School party. In the meantime, I’ve got other things to do. I have school stuff to do. Bizarrely, I feel a need to study.
It’s now the end of April, so there’s one month of school left. It’s a pretty important month. I didn’t do too well at the beginning of the semester. So now I decide to try to make it up. Maybe I can pull what would probably be a B-minus average up to an A-minus.
Why I decide to do this, I’m not sure. All that nervous energy, I guess. I gotta put it somewhere. I gotta do something.
The weather doesn’t cooperate with my efforts. All the next week, the sun is out, it’s warm, and people start showing up at school in shorts and T-shirts. One day, my parents want me to come play tennis with them. My dad tells me I have to relax and enjoy my life more. He wants to take me on a river-rafting trip in June.
I don’t want to go river rafting. I want to study. I want to catch up. I hate that my high school transcript is such a total disaster.
I’m a bit of a perfectionist, it turns out. Who knew?
12
Later that week, I’m in my room doing math problems when my mom taps on my door. “Madeline. There’s a young man here to see you.”
“Is it Martin? Can you tell him —”
“It’s not Martin.”
I remain frozen for a second. Then I jump out of my chair, run to the window, and look out.
A dirty pickup truck is parked in our driveway.
I run to my closet, kick off my flip-flops, change my shirt, fluff my hair once in the mirror.
I nearly flatten my mother as I race down the hallway…then I collect myself to walk down the stairs.
It’s him. He’s here. Stewart’s in my house. Stewart is talking to my dad.
“Hey!” says Stewart when he sees me. My dad politely moves away.
“Hey!” I say back. “What are you doing here?”
“I just came up. I had a day off.”
“A day off from what?”
“From my job. I work for my dad now.”
I grab his hand and lead him out into the front yard. He’s wearing carpenter pants, a T-shirt. He looks tanned and healthy. He looks great.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“Google maps,” he says. He smiles at me with that classic Stewart grin. “Is that okay?”
“Of course,” I say, squeezing his hand.
“Can we go for a drive?” he asks me.
“Yes!”
We drive around my neighborhood in the pickup. I’m a little embarrassed how posh my street is. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
“So I get down there,” Stewart tells me, “and I meet my dad. And he’s totally different than I remember. He’s actually nice. And sorta quiet. And then he tells me he’s got four years clean and sober. And I’m like, whoa!”
“Oh my God, Stewart. That’s great!”
“It’s totally great. And he’s become this master carpenter. The minute I got there he put me to work. He’s the
busiest man in Redland!”
I’ve never seen Stewart so excited.
“You wouldn’t believe my life down there…we get up at six a.m. every morning…and the sun is just coming up and there’s dew on the grass…there’s even a rooster that crows…we go to work…we build these awesome decks or stairs or hot tub mountings, whatever the people need…and at night, I’m so tired, the minute my head hits the pillow I’m out, like that! Talk about healthy living!”
“That sounds amazing!”
“Here’s the thing,” says Stewart. “I think you should come down there. You should come down and stay with us.”
“I’d love to.”
“Well, why don’t you? I’m serious. You could come down for the summer. Or any time. I’ll build us a bed. I’ve got this little shed next to my dad’s cabin. There’s a little woodstove and a sink and everything.”
“I would love that. But I…I think I have to go to summer school.”
“Summer school? What for?”
“So I can graduate.”
He looks at me funny then. “But we could be together. We could sleep together every night. You could help us build decks. You totally could. Can you hammer a nail?”
“I don’t know. I never tried.”
“Seriously, Maddie, it’s like paradise down there. I went fishing with my dad. We went way up in the mountains and caught fish and cooked them on a little fire. Right there beside the stream. But the whole time, all I was thinking was, I wish Maddie was here. Everything I do, I think about you being there. I want to take you places. I want to show you stuff.”
It does sound great. It sounds like the greatest thing ever. But it’s not really possible. Doesn’t Stewart know that?
“Maybe I can come down after summer school,” I tell him. “Maybe for like a week in August.”
“But why can’t you come down right now?”
“Because I have to finish school. I’ve totally screwed it up and I’m trying to fix it.”
“But if you were in Redland, it wouldn’t matter. I thought that’s what you wanted? For us to be together?”
“But, Stewart, you made the decision to go down there by yourself. You didn’t ask me. You just decided.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No! Of course not. Who else could there be? It’s just, I have stuff I have to finish. I’m still in high school. I’m not even eighteen yet.”
Stewart looks away. “I think about you all the time.”
“I know. I do too. But maybe…”
“What?”
I take a deep breath and I say it: “Maybe for now we both have to take care of certain things.”
There’s a long silence.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This was stupid. Driving up here, thinking you could just walk away from your parents…your nice house…”
“It’s not that. It’s school. I really want to fix that. I want to be able to do stuff when I get older. Go to college. Get a job.”
“Then that’s what you should do.”
“I still want to see you. I always want to see you. I would move down there in two seconds. I just have to do this first.”
An hour later, I’m standing in my driveway. I kiss him one last time, through the window of the pickup. Then I step back and watch him steer backward out the driveway.
Once he’s gone, I go back inside. My parents are waiting for me.
“So that’s Stewart,” I say.
“He seems nice,” my mom says politely. “What did he want? Just to say hi?”
“He wanted me to move to Redland and live with him in a little shack in the mountains.”
My parents stare at me, bewildered.
“I know,” I tell them. “That’s what I said.”
13
I go to Emily’s party. I drive myself in my mom’s Volvo, so I can escape if I need to. I park behind Emily’s car down the street and walk in with her and Petra and Amanda.
I haven’t been to a real party since I got out of Spring Meadow.
This is a real party.
There are hot boys everywhere. In fact, there are no un-hot boys. Bradley Day School is a private school, so not only are they hot, they’re well dressed and smart and they’re ready to party their asses off.
The house is big with a large, sunken living room and huge windows that look down on the suburbs below. There’s music and expensive liquor. People are smoking pot on the deck.
I follow my crew into the kitchen. We make ourselves drinks, with the help of a boy named William, whose house it is and who’s got the charm on full blast.
“All right, ladies, what can I do you for?”
“Tequila sunrise,” says Petra.
“Rum and Coke,” says Amanda. “And I’ll make it myself.”
“I will make it. I’m the host here,” says William, grabbing the rum bottle from Amanda. He makes a big show of being the bartender.
I hide behind Emily and then pour myself a glass of orange juice and put some ice cubes in it. I avoid talking to William. I avoid everyone pretty much.
We walk around. Petra and Amanda go talk to William some more and Emily and I end up standing on the deck. Two cute guys immediately come talk to us.
The more aggressive one starts talking to Emily. The other one stands there. He’s wearing a Dartmouth T-shirt so I say, “Do you know someone who goes to Dartmouth?”
“Nah, I just got the shirt,” he says. He drinks some of his beer and checks out my breasts. He seems interested in them.
“Whatcha drinkin’?” he asks me.
“Orange juice.”
“Orange juice and what?”
“Just orange juice,” I say.
“No vodka in it?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he says. But I can see his disappointment. If I’m not getting drunk, how is he going to get to my breasts? He sees someone else he knows, waves and walks away.
I wonder what Martin is doing at this moment. Probably solving advanced calculus problems in his basement. And yet, if I could beam myself into Martin’s basement at that moment, I probably would.
Around eleven, a bunch of new people arrive. The party really kicks in then. People are dancing in the living room, crowding into smaller rooms, making out in corners.
It’s extremely weird to be sober in the midst of it. It’s like I’m watching everything on TV. Then there’s a commotion near the front door. I don’t see what it is exactly, but the tone of the party suddenly changes. Someone important has arrived. All the attention shifts to the front door area. It’s two girls. They cross the room with several boys following behind. The lead girl is actually hiding under her hat as if she were a celebrity.
“Those two girls are causing quite a stir,” I say to Emily.
“Tell me about it,” she answers.
“Who are they?”
“Who do you think,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s my sister.”
“That’s your sister?” I say.
“Ashley Brantley. In the flesh.”
But Ashley’s appearance turns out to be brief. She quickly disappears into some inner sanctum. Everyone kind of buzzes for a moment, and then the party gets back to normal. I dance some with Emily, but I’m getting bored and I tell Emily I have to go. She doesn’t want me to. She wants to go find the boys we were talking to on the deck. The Dartmouth boy liked me, she claims, and she likes his friend.
So I hang out a little longer. For her. We walk around the house, but we can’t find the boys. We try upstairs.
This is where we stumble upon Ashley in a small study. We open a door and find her and six other extremely cool underclassmen, passing around a mirror of cocaine. They are not happy to be interrupted. “Ever heard of knocking?” a girl says.
“It’s okay,” says Ashley from the center of the room. “It’s my sister.”
Emily and I stand in the doorway. One of the guys gestures anxiously for us to come in and shut the door.
We do.
Against my better judgment, I find myself sitting down with Emily. Nobody’s very excited we’re here, but they’re not kicking us out either.
Emily tries to talk to Jayna, one of Ashley’s friends. But she doesn’t seem to hear. Nobody is listening to anyone. They’re all too busy watching the coke go around. Everyone watches a heavily eyelashed girl snort a line.
I know the drill. I’ve been in a lot of rooms like this.
I look over at Ashley. She’s so stoned and drunk and coked up her eyes are shiny slits. But even still, she’s so unearthly gorgeous you can’t help but stare.
“Oh God, I lost my beer!” she giggles, her hat falling sideways off her head. A boy offers her his.
The people here have no interest in me or Emily. We are in the way. I wait for Emily to make up an excuse and get us out of there. But she’s drunk now too. And she wants some cocaine.
It’s probably time for me to go home. In fact, I know it is.
But just then, Ashley sees me and blurts out, “Hey look, it’s Maddie who went to rehab!”
Every face in the room turns. I can feel the eyes burning into me.
“She’s a legend,” Ashley says to the boy sitting next to her. “Mad Dog Maddie. She partied so hard they had to lock her up!”
I say nothing.
“Seriously, though, what was that like?” Ashley asks me in front of everyone.
“Not that exciting,” I say.
“Well, get her some coke!” says one of the boys.
Everyone agrees this is a good idea and instantly the coke mirror — with the straw, the razor blade, and several rows of white lines — is in front of me. A fresh beer comes with it.
For a moment, I swoon…the sight of it, the smell of it…I actually feel high for a second, just from looking at it…just from having it so close to my face.
But then I recover.
“No,” I say. “Actually I’m good.”
“She’s not partying right now,” says Emily in my defense, taking the mirror away from me.
“She’s retired!” laughs Ashley. “The legend retires!”
