by Blake Nelson
I think I do okay. I finish all the questions.
Then I go to my car in the parking lot and cry for two hours.
Later that night, when I see my dad, I resolve to tell him what happened. That’s what I have to do, right? But I’m cried out and exhausted and somehow the words won’t come.
Besides, I’ve been lying to my parents about “what happened last night” my whole life. It’s not like I know how to tell them such things. Nor do they know how to hear them.
2
School starts two weeks later. On the first day of my senior year, I go to Mr. Brown’s office. He seems genuinely happy to see me. “How was your summer?” he asks me in his office.
“All right,” I say.
“And summer school?” he says.
“It was harder than it looked,” I say. I hand over my transcript.
He takes it, unfolds it, sits back in his chair. Then he reads my grades out loud: “A, B, A, B-plus.”
I sit there, watching him.
“Excellent,” he says. “That’s very good.”
“I know I promised you I’d get straight As,” I say, embarrassed.
“You did very well, Madeline. I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“Yeah, but can I still go to college somewhere good?”
“Honestly? No. But you couldn’t have done that anyway. We will do what we can. I’ve already talked to the college counselor about your situation. She has some excellent ideas for you.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He continues to read through the transcript. “No absences, no tardies. This is an excellent showing, Maddie. In all my years of teaching, I have never seen anyone turn themselves around quite like you have.”
“Thanks,” I say again. “The straight As thing, something sort of happened —”
He waves his hand at me. “Don’t say another word about it. We’re all very proud of you here. We will do everything we can to help.”
3
Then Stewart calls. He wants to meet me downtown. He says he’ll take the bus in from Centralia. I go. It’s been almost three weeks since I left him at his sister’s.
We meet at a McDonald’s by the bus station. He’s totally broke. And without his grandmother around, he can’t afford Spring Meadow. So he’s staying sober without rehab. He’s going to AA meetings in Centralia every day. He goes every morning and every night.
He’s been sober nineteen days.
“How do you feel?” I ask him.
“Not so great,” he says. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“It happens,” I say, staring out the window. “That’s what Cynthia always said.”
We both drink our coffees. No hot chocolate today.
“What was it like?” I ask him. “Being drunk again?”
He shakes his head. “At first it was the greatest feeling in the world. Like for one instant, everything made sense again. My brain was like: thank God!”
“And then?”
“And then everything went to shit.”
I nod.
“There’s one thing,” he says. “That night. What was going on in the parking lot? Someone else was there. Some guys. Were they giving you a hard time?”
“I don’t know what they were doing,” I say.
Stewart stares at his coffee cup. “That town — what a scene that was. Rednecks on meth. It was messed up.”
“You were pretty messed up yourself.”
“Yeah. I guess I was.” He thinks for a moment. “Thanks for doing that. Coming down there in the middle of the night. I mean it. I know you had your tests and stuff.”
“Yeah…” I say.
I’m about to say something then, a little speech I’ve been practicing for days. Something like, I don’t think we should see each other for a while.
But before I can say anything, I notice something about his hand.
“Your grandmother’s ring?” I say. “Where is it?”
“Oh,” he says, looking down at his fingers. “I lost it.”
“You lost it?”
“I know. I’m so pissed. I don’t know where it went.”
“But how could you do that?”
“I didn’t do it. It just happened.”
“But, Stewart.”
“I didn’t mean to lose it,” he says, annoyed.
I touch his bare finger. His whole hand, it looks so exposed.
“I knew you should have kept it,” he says. “Then we’d still have it.”
I walk him back to the bus station. We sit in the plastic seats and wait for the bus. When it pulls in, we go into the concrete loading area, he kisses me on the cheek. We hold each other. Maybe I don’t have to say anything. Maybe he understands we should just be friends for a while.
“I know how it looks,” he says to me over the roar of the buses. “It looks like I can’t make it. But I can. I will. I’m gonna stay clean this time.”
I can’t meet his eyes. So I hug him again. I hold him to me. He holds me back, kisses the top of my head.
Then I let him go. And walk away. And go to my car.
And drive.
4
September passes more quickly than ever. One week, it’s eighty degrees and the soccer team is running around without shirts. The next week, it’s cold and the leaves are changing and there’s that familiar burnt-wood smell in the air.
Sitting in study hall, I get bored one day and count up my sober time: a little more than nine months. That’s a lot, I realize. It is for me, anyway.
I feel more normal too. I no longer hide out. I eat in the cafeteria. I hang out in the hall. I go from being scary Rehab Girl to being just like any other senior, a little superior but liked and respected anyway. Every senior has some embarrassing story. I’m not so unique.
October comes. I seem to spend most of my free time with Martin and Grace. I’m not sure Grace enjoys my company as much as Martin, but too bad for her. Another guy, Doug Gerrard, who’s Martin’s friend, also hangs out with us. He appears to like me but does nothing about it. He is content to follow us around, not talk, stare at me when he thinks I’m not looking, lend me pens, give me pieces of gum.
I am now in two AP classes, history and English. I love the teachers in these classes and they love me — a good student they didn’t even know they had. I ace my tests. I talk in class. It’s kind of fun to shock people.
Another interesting thing that happens as the semester wears on: I become even closer with Emily Brantley. We start to become, dare I say it, best friends. Or at least the best of my girlfriends, since in a way, Martin is my real best friend.
My friendship with Emily rises to an even higher level when she confides in me that she’s not going to drink anymore, at least not from Sunday to Thursday. She says she’s sick of people not taking her seriously. She wants to be more like me: serious and mysterious.
This becomes our running joke: serious and mysterious. Like I have any secrets left.
Of course, Emily’s no-drinking policy doesn’t last; she still has to smoke a little weed before school, and she figures a couple beers with Raj and Jake aren’t going to hurt anything…but for a while she manages it, and we spend a few weekday nights studying together or driving around, eating frozen yogurt. She’s actually sort of smart, that’s the interesting thing. We’re both the same in that way, smart girls who somehow decided we shouldn’t be, or were afraid to be, or just decided to rebel against our own abilities for some reason.
Martin changes a lot senior year too. With Grace at his side, he becomes less clueless, more confident, a little more fun. Also, I begin to comprehend how smart he really is. He kills on his SATs and wins every scholarship he tries for. When he applies early admission to Stanford, he gets in, no problem.
I think about that a lot. Martin at Stanford. I’m totally happy for him, of course. But it also makes me sad for myself. No matter what I do now, there are certain doors I have already closed, certain opportunities I’ll never get b
ack.
There’s nothing to be done, I guess. It is what it is.
The good news is Stewart. He continues to keep himself clean and sober. He begins to call me regularly, to give me updates. He gets three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. He’s doing it. He’s making it.
He moves into the basement of his new AA sponsor’s house. He works a part-time job at a local garage. He sends me e-mails from the Centralia Public Library, telling me about AA and working the Twelve Steps. He talks about God. He talks about “spirituality.” He talks about Sober Bowling and hanging out with his sponsor, fixing motorcycles.
We don’t see each other in person for nearly a month, and then, one beautiful autumn night, he shows up at my house on a huge Harley-Davidson. We talk in the driveway, under our big maple tree with its bright yellow leaves. Stewart sits on the Harley in his greasy coveralls, his helmet in his hands. I stand there like the schoolgirl I’ve become, a copy of Macbeth under my arm.
I haven’t slept with him now since last spring. It seems like a century ago. And yet standing there with him, in the driveway, I love him as much as I ever did. I don’t let him know this of course. I can’t afford to, really.
I ask him about his life, about Centralia, about his sponsor, and how you adjust the choke on a two-cycle Yamaha engine. I watch his eyes while he describes certain things. I watch his beautiful lips as he talks.
But when he’s gone, something happens in my chest and I don’t love him. I can’t. I don’t love anybody.
And that night, as I’m falling asleep, I see the two men behind the Hungry Bear Saloon. I smell their foulness. I feel their clawing hands, tearing at my clothes.
But I put that memory away. I push it down, lock it away, with all the other memories like it. I can’t dwell on the past now. I have to study. I have to work. I’ve already lost so much time. I can’t waste one more second of my life on such things.
That’s what it seems like anyway. That’s the race I seem to be running.
5
Since we’re now best friends, Emily asks me to come hang out with these two boys she met over the summer in the San Juan Islands. Paul, the boy she sorta likes, and his friend Simon are seniors from back east. They’re in Portland with Paul’s dad, checking out Reed College and some other schools out west.
Paul and Simon meet us in the lobby of the Hilton downtown. Paul is handsome and tanned, with curly black hair. He’s wearing a pressed white shirt and jeans. “I apologize for the Brooks Brothers shirt,” he says immediately. “My dad made me wear it, since that’s what people did when they visited colleges in, like, 1982.”
The other guy, Simon, wears a T-shirt, jeans, and has medium-length dirty-blond hair. He stands up to meet us — very polite — and then sits back down when we sit.
We talk about colleges for a while. How all the Eastern people want to come west, all the Western people want to go east.
I babble on about how I think Eastern schools are so old and established and steeped in tradition, and I would give anything to go to one. Simon and Paul have a laugh at that. That world is exactly what they’re trying to escape from.
Paul has his dad’s credit card, so we go to a fancy restaurant. Paul goes through this whole conversation with the waiter about which local wine we should have, which vintage, which vineyard, which year, only to have the waiter — with incredible dignity — inquire as to the actual birth dates of the four of us.
So no wine for us.
Emily loves all this, of course. She and Paul are really warming to each other. When we go to Starbucks afterward, they can’t keep their hands off each other as they make fun of the lifestyle CDs at the counter.
After that, we wander around downtown. At Pioneer Square, Paul borrows a skateboard from some unsuspecting local and takes off down the sidewalk on it.
Emily chases after him, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Simon and I stand holding their lattes, while at the end of the block, Paul falls on his ass. Emily runs to him, helps him up, and then gets on the skateboard herself. She then falls and is caught by Paul, who seems to like the feel of her.
“Seems to be a spark,” I say to Simon.
“Might even be a flame,” he says back.
We hold their lattes and watch Paul and Emily help each other ride the skateboard. There’s a lot of touching, groping, giggling…and then they kiss.
“Hmmmm,” says Simon. “This might take a while.”
We take a seat on the brick wall. I look more closely at Simon then. He’s cuter than I originally thought.
“So what do you think you’ll study in college?” I ask.
“Philosophy.”
“Really? Why that?”
“I like to think a lot,” he says. “How about you?”
“I don’t know. English maybe. I like to read.”
“Reading’s cool.”
“I like following other people’s thoughts.”
“Yeah, me too. I like if you’re reading something, and they’re saying something you always thought, but they’re putting it in the exact right way.”
“Yeah, or like in a novel, if someone describes something a certain way and at first you’re like, what? But then you’re like, oh, I see.”
“Yeah,” says Simon. “Good metaphors are awesome.”
We sit there for a second. I look at Simon. He looks at me.
I think he might like me. Which is weird. Normal people never like me.
6
When Emily and I get in the car to drive home, I don’t say a word at first. I don’t have to, though, because as soon as we’re moving, Emily bursts out laughing hysterically. “Oh my God, I LOVE THAT BOY!”
I’m laughing too. “I thought you guys were gonna do it on the sidewalk.”
“I know. He was very grabby, wasn’t he? What about Simon — what did you think of him?”
“He was nice.”
“Oh, come on! You liked him. He’s the perfect guy for you.”
“How so?”
“He’s smart. He’s cool. He stands up when you’re introduced to him. You should totally be with a guy like that. No offense to Stewart. But you need someone who’s interested in the same things you’re interested in.”
I don’t really have an answer for this.
“Oh my God,” says Emily when her phone buzzes in her pocket. “That’s probably Paul. He’s probably going to want to meet up.…”
But it’s not Paul.
“Oh Jesus,” she says, reading it. “It’s my stupid sister.”
“What does she want?”
“She’s probably wasted someplace.…”
Ashley Brantley is indeed wasted someplace. She’s at Jayna Rosenfeld’s, one of her hot sophomore friends. It’s actually Jayna sending the message. Emily calls her, the two have a short conversation, and Emily hangs up.
“Would you mind terribly if we go pick up my sister?” Emily asks me.
“Not at all.”
We drive to Jayna’s house, where we find Ashley, Jayna, and Rachel in her basement. Ashley is sprawled in a reclining chair with her head lolling back. When we come in, she sits up.
“Hey, you guys,” she says in a slightly too-loud voice. “Wudup?”
“C’mon, Ashley,” says Emily, who is pissed and does not want her brilliant evening spoiled in this way. “We’re taking you home.”
Ashley sees me. “Hey, Maddie, what are you doing here? Out partying with my sister?”
Emily doesn’t let me answer. “Get up, Ashley. We’re leaving.”
Ashley doesn’t seem that bad…until she tries to stand up. “Ooops, I seem to be a little tipsy,” she says, laughing. Jayna and Rachel help her steady herself.
We help her out the basement door and onto the wet lawn. We walk her slowly around the house to the street.
“Why are we going this way?” she asks us.
“Because last time you couldn’t make it up the stairs,” says Emily.
“I can make it,” says Ashl
ey. “God, you guys are so uptight.”
I say nothing during all of this. I watch as Rachel and Emily help Ashley into my car.
We get her into the backseat. We strap her in. Jayna, who is disgusted, walks away without another word. Rachel, who must be a new friend and is probably still thrilled to be in the presence of superstar Ashley, squeezes her hand and says good-bye.
“Whatever,” Ashley replies with contempt.
It’s a ten-minute drive to the Brantley residence. Emily directs me away from the driveway and tells me to park in the street. Emily studies the front of the house for signs of her parents’ whereabouts.
“I can’t deal with Mom and Dad right now,” Ashley says from the backseat.
“Well, too bad,” says Emily. “’Cause you’re gonna have to.”
“They’ll freak out, and you know it.”
Emily studies the house. “They might be in bed,” she says to me. “It’s almost one.”
“Maybe you should go find out,” commands Ashley from the backseat.
“Maybe you should shut the fuck up!” Emily snaps, glaring back at her sister.
“Okay, okay. It was just a suggestion.”
“I’m sick of covering for you,” says Emily. “Okay?”
“I’m sick of covering for me too,” mumbles Ashley to herself.
Emily gives me her most exasperated look. “Would you talk to her while I’m gone?” she asks me.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell her what happens if you keep getting trashed every night.”
Emily gets out and quietly shuts the door. She walks quietly, stealthily up her own driveway.
I look at Ashley in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Ashley,” I say.
“What?”
“Bad things happen if you keep getting trashed every night.”
“Yeah? Like what?” she says.
“Lots of things.”
