by Darlene Ryan
Her eyes are red-rimmed, and the shiny pink lip gloss she always wears has been chewed off. “D’Arcy, I’m so sorry,” she says. “I had no idea your dad...” She doesn’t finish.
Did she ring my doorbell four times just to tell me something I already know?
“I know you’re upset. I understand now.”
“No, you don’t.” Did I say that out loud? “I’m sick of people saying they understand when there’s no way they can.”
She sucks in a shaky breath. “I want to help.”
I smack the screen with both hands. She jumps.
“Stop,” I shout. “Doesn’t anyone hear me when I’m talking? You. Don’t. Understand.” I spit each word at her. She winces. “You don’t know how I feel. You can’t help me.”
Her eyes fill with tears. A couple slide down her cheek. “Just let me come in,” she pleads. “Just...just talk to me. Please, D’Arcy.”
I put my hands over my ears and shake my head hard. “I don’t want to talk.” I want to scream at her, but if I do I might never stop. I suck in my top lip and bite it hard before I open my eyes. “You can’t ever understand. So leave me alone.”
I slam the door and lean against it. After a minute I look out the living room window. Marissa is leaning against one of the railing posts on the verandah. I can’t see her face but her shoulders are shaking. I think maybe I hurt her feelings, but there isn’t any way I can fix that.
It’s after seven o’clock when my mother gets home. I hear her moving around downstairs but I just stay on my bed with my chemistry book. I’m not studying or anything, but it looks good.
She walks into my room without knocking. “I thought we agreed, no more cutting class,” she says. No “Hello dear, how was your day?” I know by her voice that she’s pissed. Not that she’s yelling or anything like that. When she’s mad, her voice gets flat and steady. That’s how I know.
“I was sick,” I say.
“I know what the assembly was about, D’Arcy,” she says.
“I was sick,” I repeat.
“I understand why you didn’t want to sit through that. But you can’t just disappear for the whole day. You’re grounded— for the rest of the week and this weekend. I straightened things out at school. You pull something like this again and I won’t.” She picks at a piece of loose skin on the side of her thumb. “It happened, D’Arcy. Life goes on. We have to go on.”
I just sit there, silent.
As my mother turns to go, she says, “I found a plate, to replace that one you broke, from one of those discontinued china places online. I’ve ordered it to be sent to Claire. You owe me seventy-six dollars altogether.”
“Claire said she didn’t want a replacement.”
Mom stops. Her shoulders tense. “I don’t care what Claire said. You will replace what you broke.”
I push my chemistry text aside. “She didn’t deserve—”
She doesn’t let me finish. “Seventy-six dollars, D’Arcy. I want it by the end of the week.”
“What are you doing?”
My mother’s voice makes me jump. I’m by the back door, lacing up my black boots. I turn and look up at her in the doorway. She’s changed into jeans and a gray sweatshirt.
“I’m going for a walk,” I say, standing up.
“You’re grounded.” She bites the end of each word. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I put on my beanie hat and pull my gloves out of my pocket.
“D’Arcy, did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah,” I say. I zip up my jacket. “I’m going for a walk.”
Mom grabs my arm. “You’re not leaving this house.”
A rushing sound fills my head, like the beating wings of a thousand hummingbirds. “I’m not listening to you anymore.” I hear my voice getting louder. “You never listen to me. I don’t have to listen to you!”
She lets go of my arm as though it was suddenly hot. “D’Arcy, go to your room.” She says each word slowly, as though I were deaf or stupid.
“No. Do you think anything you say matters to me anymore?” I’m shouting. “Yeah, I ran out of that assembly. Then I ran to the girl’s bathroom and puked up my breakfast. You didn’t want to hear that. You grounded me for getting sick.” It’s hard to get my breath.
“And...and how long did it take you to find that...that stupid plate for Claire.”
She doesn’t say a word. She just stands there, arms hanging by her side.
“You’re supposed to be on my side, Mom. Not hers. She didn’t deserve anything.” Tears are making everything blurry. “You gave her Daddy’s watch. You took it off of.... and you gave it to Claire. How could you do that?”
The pain hits as though someone had come up behind me and taken a good whack at my head with a two-by-four. I want my dad. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I whisper over and over, pressing my hand to the back of my head, digging in the fingers.
“D’Arcy,” Mom says. She tries to put her arms around me but I push her away hard. She stumbles against the side of the kitchen table. “Listen to me,” she starts.
But I talk right over her. I am full up to the back of my throat, full of words and feelings that I’ve swallowed, and now there isn’t enough space left inside to hold it all. I am vomiting words.
“I don’t want to listen to you,” I shout, right in her face. “I don’t want you. I want Daddy. Why did I have to be left with you? I hate you.”
Mom’s hand snaps out like a whip, cracking the side of my face. In all my life, no one has ever hit me.
The coffeepot is sitting on the counter next to the sink with a puddle of cold coffee from this morning still in the bottom. I grab it and fling it against the wall. The glass smashes into dozens of tiny pieces, just the way my life has.
I run out of the room and just keep on going. Out of the house. Away.
I walk across the park, up one street and down another as it gets darker. I end up at the Majestic without even thinking about it.
I check the pockets of my jacket and find a wadded-up twenty in the little inside zippered one. I join the end of the line that’s edging toward the box office. I don’t bother looking up to see what movie’s playing. I don’t care.
Someone touches my arm. “D’Arcy?”
I suck in a breath and take a step back, bumping the woman ahead of me. “Sorry,” I mumble, holding up a hand to show her I wasn’t trying to knock her down on purpose. I see the wheelchair out of the corner of my eye before I get completely turned around.
“It is you.” Andrew smiles up at me from the chair. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to see if you’re all right.”
I can barely hear what Andrew’s saying. In my head I see the man, that day at the meeting, with the drool going down his face, except it’s not his face. It’s my father’s.
I take a step back. Andrew reaches out his hand—the one with the brace. For a second I don’t see his hand, I don’t see him in the chair. I see Dad. “D’Arcy,” Andrew says. But I don’t hear his voice. I hear my dad’s.
I turn and run.
I run until my chest burns, until every breath scrapes like sandpaper. I run until my legs start to shake. I have to keep moving. I keep my hands in the pockets of my jacket, jammed against my stomach to help hold me together.
My dad is everywhere inside my head. I can see him. I can hear him.
The car. His foot on the gas. That long bank down to the water. I see him undoing his seatbelt. I see the car rolling over and over. My eyes are open, but I can see it. Was there time to know it was the last second of his life? And if there was, was he sorry? Did he think about me?
My legs finally give out. I bend over, hands on my shaking knees, and try to catch my breath without puking. When I straighten up, I see that I’m at the top of the hill, beside the wall of the old hospital, where Seth and I were this afternoon. I pull myself up and look for the gap in the bushes where the path starts. I follow it up the rise. Back to that partly broken
section of wall.
I sit and tuck my legs against my chest, wrapping my arms around them to stay warm. No one’ll care that I’m here.
After a few minutes, a girl walks over to me. “Got any cigarettes?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Just one?”
“I don’t smoke. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She smiles at me. “They kill you, anyway.”
I watch her go back to her friends—another girl and three boys clustered around a bench under a dim streetlight on the slope near the old hospital driveway.
She must be cold. She’s wearing a baggy pair of painter’s pants and a stretched-out old pink sweater with the sleeves pulled down around her hands. I watch her talking to the others; the way she stands, legs apart, the breasts she barely has shoved forward.
They’re passing a bottle around. I watch it going around the circle and think about having a drink, that heat burning away the ache in my stomach, burning away all of these feelings I don’t know what to do with. Maybe I should go talk to them.
One of the guys takes a long pull from the bottle, then says something, and the girl who was looking for a cigarette laughs really loud and tosses her head so all the uneven layers of hair around her face fly out. He gets up and takes a couple of steps in my direction. She grabs his arm, but he swings her around and suddenly he’s doing the grabbing.
He kisses her on the mouth, hard, pulling her head back with one hand caught in her hair. The others laugh. She shoves him away, then spits and wipes her mouth against her shoulder, which brings more laughing. He sits down again, but I see him look over at me as he does.
My pulse starts to twitch in the little hollow space at the bottom of my neck. I lean forward and search the ground for the broken bottle I remember from this afternoon. When I find it, I pick through the few small shards of glass from the middle, where it broke. I find a piece about three inches long, shaped like an arrowhead with a jagged point. I fold my hand carefully around it, the point extending beyond the crease of my thumb. Then I curl up on the old foundation again.
After a while, I don’t know how long, I hear an engine and the sound of a muffler that’s not working right. I look up the slope to the road and see an old van pull up and stop at the turn. Kids are clustered around the back door before it even opens. I hear voices and more laughing. I turn away and watch the lights down below on the bridge. I count sets of headlights.
I’m up to eighty-three when I hear someone coming. I tighten my fingers around the piece of glass in my hand, reassured by its sharpness.
I move only my head, slowly sideways, to see who it is.
“D’Arcy?”
Seth. My body goes slack with relief, and I realize I’d been hoping to somehow find him here.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I had a fight with my mother. I just started walking and this is where I ended up.” I don’t want to tell him what happened at the Majestic.
“Here.” Seth offers me a steaming Styrofoam cup, then sits down next to me. “It’ll warm you up.” He has a blanket rolled up under one arm. “You want this too?”
I shake my head, tuck the piece of glass in my pocket where I can get it quickly, and take the cup in my empty hand. It’s hot chocolate, with a heap of little marshmallows floating on top.
“What’s that van?” I ask, gesturing up toward the road.
“That’s the Chuck Wagon,” Seth says. “For Father Charlie, who drives it. He goes all over the city with food, coats, blankets and other stuff, for kids who need it. Sometimes I ride shotgun.” He shrugs. “You know, to help him out.”
“That’s nice.” I sip the hot chocolate.
“Father Charlie’s the one who introduced me to jazz. Charlie Parker. Oscar Peterson. He has all these old vinyl records.”
“I thought all priests listened to was hymns and Gregorian chants.”
Seth smiles. “Father Charlie’s not a real priest. I mean, he used to be, but he’s not anymore.”
We sit in silence for a while. Seth tilts his head back and looks up at the sky. “Look at all those stars,” he says. “Some of them are already dead, you know. Burned out a million years ago. It’s taken all that time for the light to get here.”
I turn my head so I can see the sky too. It’s filled with stars.
“Father Charlie says that when you remember someone who’s dead, it’s just like the light coming from those burned-out stars. There’s something of them left, still shining.”
“I like that,” I say.
The wind comes up suddenly behind me, sending an empty burger box skittering past us. I jump at the sound, slopping the steaming hot chocolate onto my hand. I drop the cup, press my hand to my mouth as tears fill my eyes.
“Did you burn yourself? Are you all right?” Seth leans over me.
I shake my head.
“Let me see.” Seth takes my hand, pats it dry with the hem of his jacket and gently examines the skin.
I wince and suck in a breath. He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses the place that was burned.
I know what’s going to happen, even as the moment stretches between us. Then Seth leans in and kisses me on the mouth. His lips are soft and warm. I kiss him back and he tastes like oranges.
We keep kissing and one of his hands is in my hair and the other is pulling me against him. I know where this is going and I’m not going to stop. I don’t think about whether I should or I shouldn’t. I don’t think at all.
twenty-five
My mother’s waiting in the living room, curled in a corner of the sofa in her robe, with a mug of something—coffee maybe—propped on her knees. “Where were you?” she says.
“Out.”
She stares at me without speaking for a long time, long enough that I have to fight the urge to squirm. “Okay,” she says finally. “If that’s how you want to do it. Fine.”
Yeah, this is how I want to do it. I go upstairs without answering. I turn on the lamp in my room and pull my sweater over my head. That’s when I notice my Mp3 player is missing. It was on the bed when I left and it isn’t there now.
I go back down the stairs. Mom hasn’t moved. “Where’s my Mp3 player?” I ask.
“I took it,” she says.
“You can’t take my stuff,” I say, clenching and flexing my fingers behind my back because I don’t know where to put the anger I suddenly feel.
“When you pay me the seventy-six dollars you owe me, you’ll get it back.” She lifts her mug and carefully folds her robe over her knees.
“I’m not buying a stupid plate for Claire.”
“Then I’ll sell your Mp3 player and get the money you owe me that way.”
“You go into my room and steal my stuff just to pay for a plate that Claire is never going to use anyway. And that she shouldn’t even have.”
I want to throw something. Behind my back I link my fingers, squeezing my knuckles until they hurt so I won’t grab the lamp and hurl it across the room. “How many times did Claire come here for Christmas? Or Thanksgiving? Or anything else? Claire should get nothing because that’s what she gave.”
My mother’s nostrils flare as she takes a breath, but it’s the only hint that she’s angry. “It doesn’t matter what Claire did or didn’t do. You had no right to do what you did.”
Rainbow swirls of color dance in front of my eyes. “Fine,” I shout at her. “Take it. Take all my stuff. Like I care.”
I storm upstairs into my room, stand in the middle of the floor, half out of breath, and look around. My CD player. My mother gave it to me for my birthday. I unplug the speakers, carry the pieces one at a time down the hall and set them outside Mom’s bedroom door. Then I go back for the pillows on my window seat and then the blanket from the back of my rocker and my fleece hoodie and the glass witch’s ball that hangs in my window. I leave everything my mother has given me in a heap in front of her bedroom door.
And then I go to bed.
I wonder if Seth will be waiting for me as I start down the hill to the school in the morning. He is, sitting on the wall by the bottom door of the school, juggling three polished wooden balls. I clap when he finishes, and he dips his head in my direction.
“Hi,” I say, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Hi.” He catches all three balls and stuffs them into a side pocket on his backpack.
I don’t know what to say. Things are different with us now. But I don’t know what it means. I realize I’m shifting my weight from one foot to the other, swaying from side to side.
Seth leans forward and tucks a stray curl of hair behind my ear. His finger lingers on my cheek for a moment. And it’s as though time is holding us there, the same way it did last night when he kissed my hand. “I’m going to remember last night for the rest of my life,” he says, locking eyes with me.
I nod. “Me too,” I say softly. I’m not sure if this is an ending or a beginning. Then he smiles at me and there, finally, is the Seth I’ve been trying to find for days.
Mr. Keating gives me his mournful, I’m-disappointed-in-you horse face again. I have the urge to laugh as I go past his desk. I bite the inside of my cheek so that I’ll look sorry. Because I’m really not.
Marissa is avoiding me. She wasn’t waiting at the lockers like every other morning. But I see her watching me all through the announcements when she thinks I’m not looking.
What would I say to her anyway? She can’t understand me or my life anymore. I wonder if she’s told anyone about my dad. I could just say she’s lying.
I sleepwalk through my morning classes. I take notes I probably won’t ever look at. In English we have a quiz on a book I’m not sure I’ve read. At lunchtime I leave the school and just walk around. I’m pretty sure I won’t be eating lunch with Marissa and Andie anymore, and I don’t want to sit in the cafeteria by myself like some loser. And anyway, I’m not really hungry.
Math is my last class of the day. Seth is already there, working at the front of the room with Mr. Kelly. I stop just inside the doorway and watch them while everyone else files in around me.
