The Lighter Side of Life and Death

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  I park down the road from my house like she wants. “Take care of yourself,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt. I push her hair out of her eyes and smile at her. “I’m glad you didn’t cancel.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She reaches out to hold the tip of my finger. “You’re very sweet. Kat doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  I blush in the dark. This is as vivid as life gets. It doesn’t matter that we’re not lying on her couch with her weight pinned under mine anymore. I still feel the same.

  “Call me when you’re better,” I say. “Or if you just want some company.”

  “You too.” She pecks me on the mouth and watches me climb out of the car.

  It feels perfect, despite her cold, the sneaking around and Ari (who we didn’t mention). Even walking away from her feels perfect because now I can think about it all in a way I couldn’t while it was happening.

  I stick my key into the front door and start from the beginning.

  thirteen

  Dad tries to wake me up when I sleep through my alarm. I’m very convincing. I sit up in bed, eyes alert, and tell him that I’m absolutely getting up and can I have a late note for the school secretary? After he writes the note I climb back under the covers, just for a second. This particular second turns out to be an hour long but it’s cool; I have my note and now I’m actually wide-awake buzzed again.

  I have to check out Lunatic Fringe and find out if they’re as good as Colette says they are. I have to find a job. Maybe Chris Cipolla can put in a good word for me at JB. There’s so much to do.

  First I shower. Then I eat a huge container of yogurt and a waffle. Billy winds himself around my legs under the table as I gulp down orange juice. He meows loudly in complaint when I ignore him. Either he’s forgotten snubbing me or we’ve unexpectedly graduated to a whole new level of camaraderie. I lean back in my chair and glance down at my feet. Billy stares back at me with his eerie cat eyes and meows more.

  “You’re just going to run off,” I tell him. But I can’t help myself; I put my hand down to pet him anyway.

  Smack. He slaps me with his paw, his claws drilling mercilessly into the middle of my right hand. “Fuck,” I scream. “Holy FUCK.” Billy tugs me towards him like a dead thing. If I pull back my entire hand will rip open like some gruesome horror movie special effect. “Fucking cat,” I repeat, glaring at him. “Fucking homicidal psycho cat.” Then I realize I have to be nice. Calm. I need my fucking hand back in one piece. It’s fucking killing me and I need it back. I’m not a piece of string or a fucking dollar-store chew toy for Christ’s sake. This is too fucking ridiculous.

  “Let it go,” I whisper, gazing down at Billy with benevolent eyes. “There’s a good cat, Billy. Just let it go.”

  Billy eyes me with a cold expression. He only has one expression and he’s definitely mastered it. For a few seconds he doesn’t do anything but stare up at me with his fucking malicious paw hooked into the back of my throbbing dead hand.

  Then he suddenly releases me, as though he doesn’t want to waste any more precious energy—he has better places to be, more important people to mutilate. He slinks away, leaving me to deal with the blood. Now that the claws are gone there’s so much of it. Red drips down my fingers and I rest my injured hand gingerly on my lap and stare at it, mesmerized. Weirdly, it doesn’t hurt much anymore. It just looks like the biggest fucking mess imaginable.

  After a couple seconds I get up to run my hand under the kitchen sink. The gashes don’t look quite so grisly once they’re clean. Maybe I don’t need stitches after all. Maybe I can just play field medic and pile on a bunch of bandages. I disinfect the wound, wincing as I do it, and apply pressure with a wad of paper towels. Fifteen minutes later it stops bleeding enough for me to stick a slew of Band-Aids on and leave for school.

  I’m not quite as happy as I was an hour ago and I want to strangle Billy with my bare hands but I still have my late note. The secretary gives me a pass and I head over to Twentieth-Century History. Mr. Echler doesn’t comment on my late pass. He just coughs and motions for me to take my seat.

  Kat glances over at me with the tiniest smile as I drop into my chair. She reaches out and sets a small square of folded paper on the corner of my desk. I open it and a happy face beams up at me.

  I don’t know why Kat’s sending me happy faces now, after we’ve spent nearly two weeks staying out of each other’s way, but I guess it’s cool. It’s not like I’ve stopped missing her during the past two weeks. I still want us to be friends again.

  I draw three lines under each of the happy face eyes, fold the paper back up and plonk it on Kat’s desk. Now it’s a tired happy face.

  The note bounces back to me twenty seconds later, the tired face unaltered. Under it she’s written: r u ok?

  My head snaps up and we take a good look at each other for what feels like the first time in forever. She’s wearing a striped polo shirt I don’t remember having seen before and her eyes are purposeful, like she genuinely wants to know how I’m doing. That familiar Kat feeling slips under my skin, warm and aching, and I nod to say, yes, I’m fine. Her eyebrows twitch in curiosity as she points to her hand, silently requesting the whole story.

  The gesture flashes me back to eighth-grade geography, when our fresh-out-of-college teacher was determined to be everyone’s friend. You could get away with anything in that class and Kat and I got away with writing a semester’s worth of notes. Simple stuff mostly, like what’d you do last night? or if you could be anywhere right now, where would you be? (and don’t say anything dirty because you know I don’t want to hear that!).

  I guess those notes are landfill now. No one thinks to save stuff like that. I probably won’t save the happy face either.

  Or maybe I will.

  I pick up my pen, rip a page out of my notebook and start to explain about Billy, the savage cat that lives to taunt me. Hairy fingers reach across my desk and snatch the paper out of my hand before I can finish. Shit. Mr. Echler crumples up my note and pitches it into the garbage next to his desk without a word. Kat and I exchange stealthy glances, sure that Echler will have his eye on us for the rest of the class.

  Sure enough there are no more opportunities to pass notes, but Kat stops me in the hallway afterwards and says, “That was so boring. His voice was putting me to sleep.”

  I rub my eyes with my able hand. “I know. Me too.”

  “So what happened?” Kat motions to my bandaged hand.

  “Crazy fucking cat thinks I’m a scratching post,” I say, smiling despite my words. Then I yawn so wide that Kat can probably see my tonsils. Let’s just say I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m lucky I made it in this morning at all.

  “Ah, you tried to make friends with it.” Kat grins back at me. “It looks like you were right about that being a bad idea.”

  “Disastrous,” I say emphatically. I’m feeling pretty good about having an actual conversation with Kat again and I’d love to give her the gory details but unfortunately we both have classes to get to.

  “I get it now—so the picture was an angry face.”

  “A tired face,” I correct. “I was out late last night. Totally overslept. Hence me being alone with the cat and making this incredibly bad decision to—”

  “I bet you wanted to kill it,” Kat interrupts. “The cat, I mean. So what were you doing last night until all hours?” She smiles like this is an entirely normal question and it is, but I don’t know how to answer.

  Kat raises her eyebrows when I don’t answer straightaway. Silence is a reply in itself. She has a pretty good idea what it means and now she has this dazed look on her face, like she’s not sure how she should feel about it. I completely understand. I don’t know how she should feel about it either.

  “I’m going to make you late again,” she says quickly. “You should get to class.”

  “Yeah, right.” My gaze drops to her beige-and-navy-striped shoulder. “I’ll see you later.” We shuffle away without looking
each other in the eyes—at least I do; I can only guess about her.

  The conversation leaves me with a raw, restless feeling but I don’t let it stick. I can’t let Kat scramble my priorities with a dazed look. We’ve been there before and it doesn’t lead anywhere that we can both agree to go. So I sleepwalk through the rest of the morning and at lunch I decide to catch a quick nap out by the track. It’s summertime warm and I’m not the only one out there. A bunch of ninth-grade girls are sitting on the bleachers, painting their toes. Some couple I don’t recognize is running around the track, Frenching each other every twenty feet. There are people pretty well everywhere you look and then there’s me, lying on the grass with my arms under my head.

  “Wake up,” a voice says.

  Freshly painted toes line up near my head. “You’re gonna be late,” one of the girls continues. “The bell rang.”

  “Thanks.” My throat’s dry from falling asleep in the sun like that. I’m starving too. “Does anybody have any food? Anything at all?”

  “I have some rice crackers,” a skinny girl with gold toenails says. “You like rice crackers?”

  I eat her sesame seed rice crackers as I head towards English class. I feel a lot better after sleeping through lunch, except that I’m ravenous. After school I bum money off Charlie Kady and head straight for Domino’s to pick up a cheeseburger pizza. I finish off a slice along the way and immediately start in on a second but there’s plenty left so I tell Burke and Brianna to help themselves.

  Brianna stares at me like I have five heads but she takes a slice. “Thanks,” she says.

  I hold the box out to Burke. “What about you, buddy?”

  “He doesn’t eat it,” Brianna says.

  “No pizza?” I ask skeptically.

  Burke gives his head an energetic shake. “It’s sticky.”

  “He doesn’t like the way the mozzarella stretches,” Brianna explains, and I wonder what it’s like to have your own personal translator. Burke could sit there with his mouth shut and she’d probably still be able to provide subtitles.

  “You know, your cat is frigging vicious,” I tell her, showing her my bandaged hand.

  “He doesn’t like people touching him,” Brianna says. “We told you that.” And how insane is it to have a pet that doesn’t like to be touched? He should be out in the wild, mauling baby birds. “He didn’t bite you, did he? That’s a scratch, right?” Brianna’s eyes look vaguely worried.

  “It’s one hell of a scratch.”

  “A scratch is better than a bite,” she says knowingly. “With a bite you’re more likely to get an infection.” Am I supposed to be relieved? “You want me to look at it? I took first aid last fall.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I tell her. “I took care of it.”

  The phone rings and Brianna stares at me like she’s waiting for me to pick it up, so I do. “Hello?” I cram the cordless between my ear and shoulder and pick up another slice.

  “Mason?” That’s Colette’s voice and I grin into the phone. I didn’t expect to hear from her so soon and that she’s calling my landline doubles the shock. Today’s full of surprises.

  “Yeah, hey. You sound better.” Brianna faces the TV but Burke’s eyes are on me. I back out of the room with the phone in one hand and my slice in the other.

  “That’s my medication talking,” she says.

  “Let me guess—the nighttime formula?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you at work?” By now I’ve closed the basement door behind me and am safely out of earshot.

  “I’m on break and I’m calling on your home line—which you should know was giving me a heart attack and a half because I was sure one of the kids would pick up. But then, I didn’t have much choice since you left your cell at my place last night.”

  “Shit,” I mutter, setting my slice down on the kitchen table and patting my pockets, which is completely unnecessary seeing as Colette just told me she’s in possession of my phone. “I didn’t even notice it was missing.”

  “Do you want me to drop it in your mailbox tomorrow? I’d do it later tonight only I need to crash, for real this time. This nighttime crap has me exhausted.”

  “I can swing by your place tomorrow and get it.” The thought of her driving over here to dump my cell phone in the mailbox is too weird. Besides, I want to see her again. I want to know what happens next.

  There’s a noticeable pause in the conversation. “I have plans tomorrow,” she says. “It’s probably easier if I drop it off.” She hesitates again before adding, “This doesn’t feel right, does it? All these furtive meetings and phone calls.”

  “It’d be easier if you didn’t know Nina.”

  “All the other facts would be the same.”

  True. There’s nothing I can do about that. If she decides it’s too risky, we’re over. This could all be finished in about ten seconds. The thought makes me frantic but I play it cool and say, “I had a really good time with you yesterday but if you’re that worried maybe it’s not worth it.”

  At first Colette’s quiet. Then she says, “You’re really logical about this.”

  “Not really. I just don’t want us to spend all our time asking ourselves whether this is a bad thing or not. If it’s not clear that it’s a good thing, what’s the point?” This isn’t a lie exactly; it’s what I would think if logic had any place here.

  “Things are never as cut-and-dry as that.” She sounds pretty rational herself. “I don’t know what you expect but I can’t switch off my concerns at the drop of a hat. Liking someone isn’t necessarily just a good or bad thing. It can be both.”

  “Okay, I know that. You’re making my head spin here. Can we at least appreciate that we had a nice night yesterday?”

  “It was very nice,” Colette confirms. “You’re very nice. There’s no question of that, okay? We had a nice time but right now I need to get back to work so please tell me what you want me to do with your phone.”

  “I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” I say. Then I remember that she has plans tomorrow. “Sorry, you’re busy—Thursday then, okay?”

  “I have some things to do on Thursday,” she tells me. “But you can drop by for a while beforehand if you want.”

  That’s how we leave things. I don’t ask what her plans are and if they involve Ari. There’s more than enough for her to worry about without me dragging him into it and maybe I really don’t want to know anyway.

  I pick up my slice and carry it downstairs to watch TV with the two Bs. I’m tired of being accommodating. It won’t kill Brianna to miss The Doctors for once.

  fourteen

  A strange thing happens to me in the cafeteria the next day. Jamie drops into the chair next to mine, whacks his unwrapped samosa down on the table and says, “You kept a low profile yesterday.” His eyes shift to my freshly bandaged hand, his anti-Mason attitude conspicuously muted. “What happened? She bite you or something?”

  “The cat took a swing at me,” I tell him, popping a french fry into my mouth. That reminds me, I should ask Nina to add waterproof Band-Aids to this week’s shopping list. The others can’t survive a vigorous hand washing, let alone a shower.

  Jamie rocks in his seat. “So how’d it go on Monday? Were you serious about this girl being twenty-three?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I say.

  “Sorry.” Jamie puts his elbows up on the table and tilts his head towards me. I know it’s mostly curiosity that has him there but the fact is, I need someone to talk to about Colette.

  “Thanks for splitting the other day,” I tell him. “It’s kind of awkward. She doesn’t want anybody to see us together.”

  “Seriously, wow.” Jamie rubs his knuckles against the table. “How did that even happen to begin with? How do you get into a situation like that with a twenty-three-year-old? And what is that like?”

  “What’s it like?” I repeat. Confusing, weird and wonderful. I think of her Lunatic Fringe T-shirt with the scratchy faded le
tters. I remember scooping her breasts into my hands and kissing her short and sweet so she wouldn’t have to hold her breath too much. But that doesn’t explain what I felt. You could do that with lots of different people and it wouldn’t feel like much. With her, it was pure magic.

  “It’s complicated,” I tell him. “I don’t know if it’s actually happening with us or not. She has a lot of doubts—the whole age thing—and to make it worse she knows Nina.”

  “Are you serious?” Jamie says. “That’s a little close for comfort.”

  “Yup.” I rub my hair. “And she’s got a boyfriend too. Well, not a boyfriend but she has another guy.”

  “Jesus, Mason.” Jamie’s head jerks up and I catch a glimpse of underlying irritation that reminds me we aren’t quite done with the Kat stuff after all. “What happens if he finds out?”

  “He’s not going to find out. Anyway, barely anything’s happened between us and they’re not a couple.”

  Jamie scratches his forehead as he considers this. I don’t expect him to understand. He’s only hooked up with two girls in the past two years and even then I got the feeling he just did it because he thought he should. A tenth of my current complications would easily be enough to put him off—even with the possibility of sex thrown into the mix.

  Of course, if Kat was interested in him, that’d be different. He’d jump through flaming hoops and suffer the risk of third-degree burns to his genitals but I don’t want to think about the three of us in the context of this senseless romantic triangle anymore.

  “So what happened with your driving test yesterday, anyway?” I ask, because we’re not having the Kat conversation again if I can help it.

  “Aced it.” He mangles a smile. “I even nailed the parallel parking. I already have the keys to my mom’s car and a promise of Saturday-night usage.” He digs his key chain out of his pocket to show me and I can almost see the battle going on inside his skull—he’s not sure he’s through being mad at me.