The Ethan I Was Before

by Ali Standish

  “’Lo, Ethan,” Grandpa Ike calls from the other side of the car’s hood, which is popped open.

  “Hi. What’s going on?”

  “Your brother asked if he could try to fix up the Fixer-Upper,” he says. “I’m showing him some basics. If you want—”

  “That’s okay,” I say before he can finish. “I’m going to lie down.”

  I pass Roddie coming out of the kitchen with two bottles of water, stumble up the stairs, and collapse into the window seat.

  My stomach churns like a lava pit. I feel guilty for ignoring Coralee today, but guiltier for abandoning Kacey. I know Dr. Gorman would say that I haven’t really abandoned her, but I have stopped thinking about her all the time, which is almost the same thing.

  But that’s not Coralee’s fault. Sure, she tells some pretty wacky stories, but she also makes me laugh. She makes me feel almost like the Ethan I was before the incident. Like everything I do isn’t going to be wrong.

  The Ethan I was before liked diving and baseball and video games and skateboarding. He was always up for a practical joke, always ready for a dare.

  But that Ethan disappeared after the incident. That Ethan is gone forever.

  Isn’t he?

  Why Coralee and Kacey Are Completely Different

  1. Kacey played soccer, but Coralee just likes to run. Kacey skateboarded, but Coralee rides her bike.

  2. Coralee always volunteers to talk in class, but Kacey never did unless the teacher called on her. Coralee talks a lot in general, but Kacey liked to listen.

  3. Kacey’s favorite color was green, and Coralee’s is pink. Kacey hated pink.

  4. Coralee’s favorite food is saltwater taffy. Kacey liked beef jerky, which Coralee would never eat.

  5. Kacey’s family was always around, at school and at her soccer games, and Coralee never even talks about her family.

  6. Coralee is a violin prodigy, but Kacey couldn’t carry a tune to save her life.

  7. Kacey’s favorite movie was The Secret Garden, even though I always thought it was too girly for her. Coralee says she doesn’t really watch movies.

  8. I knew everything about Kacey. Coralee is still a mystery.

  Amelia Blackwood

  I MUST HAVE DRIFTED off, because the next thing I know there’s a knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I call, groggily blinking the room back into focus.

  Grandpa Ike pushes the door open. “Your mother said to come check on you.”

  “You’re taking orders from Mom now?”

  He grimaces. “Well, she was going to come herself, but I thought you might like to take a drive with me to the store instead. I’m out of ham. So I told her I’d handle it.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Yeah, I guess.”

  I need something to take my mind off things.

  Grandpa Ike drives us down the gravel road and stops. Right outside the Blackwood house.

  I sneak a glance at it while we switch places so I can drive. The front door is closed, so someone must have shut it after we left. There’s no movement in any of the windows.

  “What’s the deal with that place?” I ask once Grandpa Ike is settled. I try to keep my voice casual.

  He glances at the house. “No one’s lived there in a long time,” he says.

  Wrong, I think as I press down on the gas a bit too hard.

  “Easy, kid.”

  “Sorry. Why did they leave?”

  “They didn’t.”

  I look over at Grandpa Ike, who strokes at his beard. His face is hard to read under his old hat.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Arnold Blackwood died a long time ago, back in the eighties, and Amelia lived there by herself for another twenty years. She had a nurse or someone taking care of her, but eventually she left. Not long after, Amelia took a tumble down the stairs. No one found her for days.”

  “You mean she died in that house?” I ask, picturing the woman silhouetted at the top of the staircase. “On the stairs?”

  Grandpa Ike shoots me a sideways glance. “Never mind all that,” he says. “Anyway, she never had any kids, so her nieces and nephews own the place, but they live in Michigan or Minnesota or some other icy wasteland. So they’ve let it go to pot.”

  I’m thinking so hard about Amelia Blackwood that I miss the turn onto Main Street and have to pull into someone’s driveway and turn around.

  I’m still thinking about her that night as I wait for sleep to come.

  There’s no such thing as ghosts, I tell myself.

  People don’t come back from the dead.

  But I can’t stop the small voice in the back of my head from asking.

  What if?

  A Lesson

  CORALEE IS NOT IN homeroom the next morning.

  She’s not in gym, either.

  Or in science.

  I feel a flicker of worry when I remember that Ms. Silva is planning to give us a spelling test in English. Coralee loves spelling tests because she always finishes first and hands in her paper before Ms. Silva says the words for the second time.

  Why isn’t she here?

  At lunch, I sit in our normal spot by myself. I think someone will probably come and sit with me. School is lonely without Coralee. I talk to some of the other kids, like Herman, but Coralee’s the only one who feels like a real friend.

  Back in Boston, I wasn’t popular, exactly, but I definitely wasn’t unpopular. Kacey was pretty and athletic, and everyone liked her. People always sat with us at lunch and assemblies and pep rallies. Once, I told Kacey she was the reason people hung out with us. She rolled her eyes and punched me in the shoulder. “Like all the other girls don’t have a crush on you? Oh, Ethan!” she said, swooning. “He’s so dreamy! Those dark curls! Those blue eyes!” Then she fake fainted.

  No one comes to sit with me.

  In Palm Knot, I am an outsider.

  When I’m halfway through my tasteless hamburger, someone finally slides into the seat across from me.

  Suzanne.

  “Where’s your little friend today?” she asks.

  Her hair is in two blond braids that rest on her shoulders. Kacey used to wear her hair like that to play soccer.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “She’s not here.”

  “Duh,” Suzanne sighs. She spoons out some yogurt and smacks on it.

  Why is she sitting with me?

  “Are you two having a lovers’ quarrel?”

  “What?” I sputter. “No, we’re not—we’re just friends.”

  Suzanne smirks. I can see Maisie craning her neck around like an owl, trying to see what Suzanne is up to. I glare at her.

  “Well,” Suzanne says, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “My lesson?”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she clucks, shaking her head. “You chose to be friends with Coralee, and now look at you, sitting all by yourself. If you had just listened to me, you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

  By trouble, I guess she means all the times I’ve heard Daniel and Jonno laughing and making fun of me in class, or when Jonno “accidentally” knocked my lunch off the table, or the time Daniel elbowed me in the face during a basketball game in gym class and gave me a bloody nose.

  Suzanne bats her eyelashes at me as she digs into her yogurt cup for a last spoonful. “Anyway,” she says, “that’s all I wanted to say. I have to get back to my friends now.”

  I’m overcome with a desire to take her spoonful of yogurt and flip it into her face. I think back to my third day of school, when Coralee demanded Daniel give my money back while Suzanne watched without a word. Hot splotches of shame splash across my face. How did I not see it before now—how lucky I’ve been to have a friend like Coralee?

  “Hey, Suzanne?” I call, just as she’s turning away.

  She looks back at me.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I did learn my lesson. One real friend is worth more than a hundred fake ones. Maybe you’ll figure
that out one day too.”

  The Wall of Coralee’s Past

  AFTER SCHOOL, I COLLECT extra copies of all our homework assignments. Then I go to the main office and ask Mrs. Oakley for Coralee’s address.

  “I’m her friend,” I say. “She wasn’t at school, and I need to take her make-up work to her.” I wave the worksheets convincingly.

  “Well, aren’t you a sweet thang,” Mrs. Oakley coos. Her yellow hair is piled up on her head like an abandoned beehive, and I can’t stop staring at it as she prints out Coralee’s address and gives me directions to get there.

  “Oh, and can I call my mom? To let her know where I am?”

  Mrs. Oakley’s hand flies to her chest. “That is just the most considerate thing I have ever heard. Your mama sure did raise you right. Go on ahead, honey.”

  She tosses me two mini Snickers bars while I’m on the phone. I pocket them to give to Coralee later.

  Riding my bike to her house takes fifteen minutes. Instead of turning left after the strawberry farms, I head straight past the marshes and keep going for two miles or so. I don’t have to make any more turns. Coralee’s house is on the highway.

  I lay my bike down in the shell-splattered gravel next to a mailbox that looks like it might be rusted shut. The house in front of me is built in the shape of a perfect hexagon. Two concrete pillars run from the small porch to the dark shingled roof. A pair of rocking chairs adorns the porch, which is not in the same state of disrepair as the Blackwood house, but it’s pretty close.

  I can see remnants of an old barn in Coralee’s backyard, which stretches out into what once might have been a crop field but looks more like a swamp now. Even the house sits low to the ground, like it’s been slowly sinking into the muddy earth over many years.

  In fact, it looks like it might slip into the ground at any moment.

  I feel a twinge of guilt pinch my stomach. Is this why Coralee never invites me over? Because she doesn’t want me to see her house?

  I could slink back to my bike, hop on, cycle away, and never tell Coralee I came. But no. I owe Coralee more than that. I owe her an apology.

  Cautiously, I inch my way up the stairs and to the porch, where a screen door hangs off its hinges, welcoming me to knock on the wooden door behind it.

  I knock three times and wait for a long minute.

  Just when I start to think no one’s home, a woman comes to the door. She is whip thin like Coralee, and her skin is the same smooth dusky brown, like I imagine the polished wood of Coralee’s violin must be.

  I attempt a smile and say, “I’m a friend of Coralee’s.”

  She opens the door wider so I can see she’s dressed in navy scrubs. “You here to see Coralee?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Ethan, from school. I brought her work for today.”

  The woman eyes me for another minute and then steps aside, ushering me in. “I’m Adina,” she says. “Are your shoes clean?”

  “I think so.” But Adina’s mouth curves down at the corners, so I take them off anyway and place them by the door.

  “Coralee!” she calls. “You have a guest!”

  I look around the small house: dining nook to my left, living room to my right, kitchen straight ahead, separated from the dining table by the back of a staircase. In the living room, where the walls are covered in peeling floral paper, a television flickers, playing a game show with canned laughter.

  Even though everything is old, the floors shine and the windows gleam. The house is spotless.

  “Coralee doesn’t have many friends over,” Adina says. “That’s why I didn’t let you in right away.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m her friend.”

  “So you said.” Adina raises an eyebrow. “I’m just gonna go get her. I don’t think she heard me call. Probably playing that violin.”

  She gestures to the couch. “Have a seat.”

  I walk over to the sofa as Adina disappears upstairs. I have a strange sensation of eyes upon me, but I still jump when I hear a voice croak, “Hello.”

  My eyes land on an armchair, where an old woman curls up under a quilt, her form so frail she almost disappears into the chair completely.

  “Oh!” I cry. “Hi.”

  “I’m Coralee’s granny,” she huffs. My eyes fall on the oxygen tank next to her chair. “I’m sorry my daughter didn’t introduce me.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I’m Ethan. I’m a friend of Coralee’s.”

  Coralee’s granny puts a finger behind her ear, and I repeat myself louder. Unlike Coralee’s mother, her granny accepts my answer happily once she hears it.

  “That’s nice,” she says. Her voice comes out in a coarse chirp, like a grasshopper song. “Can I get you some lemonade? Cookies?”

  “No, thank you,” I half shout. Granny doesn’t look like she could even make it to the kitchen, let alone fix me an afternoon snack.

  She nods and gives me a toothless smile. She has a crop of iron-gray hair, and lines cut so deep into her face that her skin looks like tree bark. Her brown eyes glaze over, and she turns her head back toward the TV.

  My gaze wanders to the wall behind her, in the dining room, where dozens of pictures and mementos have been tacked up. I walk over to examine them. A picture of a family barbecue on the beach. A photograph of the barn out back when it still gleamed with red paint. A man in a white coat holding a diploma. Coralee’s old yearbook pictures. A fishing hook. Half a dozen newspaper clippings. A few programs from school plays and rehearsals, and one from a funeral of someone called Calvin Jessup, who must be the man Coralee’s brother is named after. Handwritten recipes. A homemade shelf boasting a wooden rolling pin and what looks like a stack of poker chips.

  I’m so busy soaking up the wall of Coralee’s past that I don’t notice Coralee behind me until she speaks.

  “You’re here,” she says.

  I jump-spin around. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you!”

  She scoffs and flicks a few braids behind her shoulder. “It’s my house.”

  Her eyes glint like new pennies, and I think I detect some of the same suspicion in them that I saw in her mother’s.

  “This is a cool wall,” I say as a peace offering.

  “Yeah, well, we’re redecorating the rest of the house soon,” she says defensively. “We just haven’t had time to do it yet.”

  “I think it’s a great house.”

  Her eyes soften a bit. “My grandfather built it himself,” she says. “And Granny won’t live anywhere else. Anyway, why are you here?”

  “I wanted to bring you your homework,” I say. “And to apologize.”

  Some of the fight goes out of her shoulders.

  “Oh.”

  “Is that the rolling pin you told me about?” I ask. “The one that saved your life?”

  “Coralee?” calls Granny. “Is that you?”

  Coralee goes to the old woman and puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s me, Granny.”

  “All right, dear,” Granny says, patting Coralee’s hand.

  Coralee returns to my side and runs her fingers over the rolling pin. “That’s it,” she says.

  “How did it save you?”

  I may not know everything about Coralee, but I have a feeling that the fastest way to make her forget she’s mad at me is to get her telling a story.

  “We were visiting relatives in Ohio for Christmas,” she says. “And I fell through thin ice. My aunt saw me from the kitchen and ran out to save me. She was making sugar cookies, so she had the rolling pin in her hand. She used it to pull me out of the water. If she hadn’t had the pin, she couldn’t have fished me out.”

  “Cool,” I say with a grin. I reach out and touch the rough surface of the pin. I hear Mom’s words in my head. She does tell some colorful stories. Maybe so, but this one must be true. Why else would they keep a rolling pin on the wall?

  And maybe that means they’re all true.

  I hear Adina’s footsteps thudding down the stairs. Coralee
takes my arm in one of hers, grabbing her backpack with the other, and tugs me along so that I have no choice but to follow her out onto the porch and back into the sticky afternoon air.

  She throws herself into one of the rocking chairs, and I take the other.

  “I, um, I missed you at school today,” I say.

  “Adina had to work a double shift at the hospital,” she explains, pulling her knees up into the chair and rocking herself back and forth. The floorboards creak with her weight. “Granny wasn’t having a good day, so I had to stay home and watch her.”

  “She’s sick?” I ask.

  Secretly, I’m relieved that I’m not the reason Coralee wasn’t at school today.

  “Emphysema,” Coralee confirms. “And dementia.”

  “Oh.” I’m not exactly sure what those words mean, but they don’t sound good. “That’s horrible.”

  “Adina takes care of her most of the time, but it’s hard. Her bills are really expensive and Adina has to do a lot of double shifts to cover them.”

  “You call your mom by her first name?” I ask.

  Coralee shrugs.

  “That’s cool. If I called my mom by her name, she would probably ground me.”

  Coralee looks at me like she’s waiting for something, so I clear my throat.

  “I wanted to say sorry for the way I acted the other day. I don’t know—”

  “It’s okay,” Coralee interrupts. “I’m just glad you’re here. I thought you didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

  We sit listening to the cre-EE-ak, cre-EE-ak of the floorboards under Coralee’s rocker.

  “I need to tell you something,” I blurt out.

  It has just dawned on me that I am not only here to apologize for not trusting Coralee. I am here because I do trust Coralee.

  This house with its peeling wallpaper and sagging porch—this is the secret Coralee has been hiding. She deserves to know mine.

  The creaking stops, and Coralee turns to me.