Good and Gone

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  “But you were listening, and how could I forget you were there?”

  He shakes his head. “Lexi, I—”

  “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you feel guilty for standing next to me.”

  “I’m not sure how else to look at you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because—” And then he stops. He can’t say the words. Because he raped you. Clay’s face is pale except for two slashes of red on his cheeks, his scars standing out like chalk marks. Because he raped you. Because you are broken. Because you are fragile. Because no one will ever want to touch you again, so sure they are that you will shatter into a thousand fragments too small to ever be put back together.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “Lexi, I didn’t mean that.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  He rubs his flat nose, jams his hands back into his pockets. Then he takes them out and rearranges his hat on his head. I watch him. Just watch him. He closes his eyes longer than a blink but not so long I think he’s trying to avoid staring at me. He shifts his weight from side to side.

  So I let him off the hook. “Come on,” I say. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”

  I push open the closet door and let him follow me out.

  “Do you remember Killer Hill?” Charlie asks me. We are walking side by side, our feet crunching into the snow while in front of us Gabe, Clay, and Zack argue about the relative merits of southern rock and modern hip-hop. Arabella trots behind them, trying to keep up.

  “It’s all party on top,” Gabe is saying, “but underneath it’s about the protest.”

  Zack puts both hands on his head. “I can’t even believe I’m hearing this.”

  I think of Seth because I always think of Seth and how he was always so sure about the relative merits of everything.

  “So do you?” Charlie asks. He is wearing the L.L.Bean boots from the dining hall and I’m more than a little jealous of how toasty warm his feet must be.

  “Killer Hill? Sure.” I keep my voice flat. I’m not about to give Charlie an inch. You know what they say about that. And Charlie wouldn’t just take a mile. He’d wiggle right inside me and the next thing you knew I’d be agreeing with everything he said. But of course I remember Killer Hill. My parents took us sledding there. Sometimes kids give a place a name like Killer Hill and really it’s just a bump. Like imagination and exaggeration take over and make it bigger in the collective mind’s eye. Killer Hill isn’t like that.

  “Remember that time you were at the top and Scott MacFarlane pushed you onto your snow tube and jumped on top of you and rode down?”

  “What is this, like, the greatest hits of Lexi’s life? Next are you going to talk about the time I got smacked in the head with the baseball at the Fisher Cats game?”

  Clay turns over his shoulder and looks back at us. He has his hat pulled down so low I can’t see his eyebrows. “If you ask me,” he says, “you should forget about southern rock and hip-hop and go for some good old-fashioned country. A little Johnny Cash. A little Dolly Parton.”

  Zack holds up a hand. “You’ll never get me to say a word against the man in black. Or Dolly Parton.”

  “So when we got to school that Monday,” Charlie says as if we weren’t interrupted, “I picked up the top layer of snow. You know, the frozen, hard, icy sheet of snow on top?”

  “Surrounded by it,” I say.

  “We’re surrounded by fresh snow. I’m talking about a few days after, when it melts a little then hardens up overnight and it’s an inch thick and hard and jagged.”

  “Write a little poem about it, why don’t you?”

  He reaches up and bats a branch so the snow tumbles down into the woods beside the road. “You make it really hard to apologize.”

  “You’re apologizing? I thought you were reminiscing.”

  “I’m apologizing. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “So you know the snow I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, sure, what about it?”

  “I picked up a big slab of it and I smashed it on Scott MacFarlane’s face. He got a big scrape down the front of his nose and had to wear a Band-Aid over it for a week. When he talked, he sounded like Bert from Sesame Street.”

  I don’t mean to, but I crack a smile. Then I turn away so he won’t see it. Like I said, you can’t give Charlie even a millimeter.

  “It was a real heroic moment, Lexi. He was holding on to his face and the blood was gushing out and I said, ‘Don’t mess with my sister.’ And then Mrs. Robbins came over and I was suspended.”

  I turn back to face him, eyes wide. “That’s why you were suspended? No one would ever tell me why.”

  “Mom and Dad didn’t want to give you the idea that violence was the way to solve interpersonal dilemmas.”

  I grin.

  “But then they bought me three packs of Pokémon cards, so, you know, I guess they thought I was doing something right.”

  “What? They never told me that!” And I realize there’s probably a lot they haven’t told me about Charlie.

  We walk on under a heavy bough that crosses over the road like a canopy.

  “Anyway, that doesn’t sound like much of an apology,” I say. “I mean, a very belated thanks and all. No one ever used me as a sled again.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that if I had known, I would have done something. If I had known, I would have—”

  “Smashed snow in his face?”

  “Smashed something, Lexi. I would have. Honest.”

  The cold is starting to seep into my feet, tickling around the edges, testing the waters. “I didn’t need you to smash something in his face. I needed you to come get me when I called you.”

  “Is that when it happened?” His voice cracks. “That time you called and I wouldn’t come to get you? That’s why you called?”

  In front of us, Clay bends over and with a smooth motion scoops up a handful of snow, balls it up, and hurls it at Gabe. “That’s for your hip-hop,” he says. Another snowball, this one for Zack: “And that’s for your southern rock.”

  Gabe responds in kind: a big, fat one that smashes on Clay’s chest.

  “Lexi?” Charlie says.

  “It was the one time he didn’t,” I say. I try to storm ahead into the snowball fight, but the snow is too deep.

  Charlie grabs my arm. “Lexi,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You don’t—I can’t. I’m so mad at myself. And I just—” His eyes are red and (oh, God, I don’t want to see this) tears stream out of them and his nose is snotty and his cheeks are pink.

  “Charlie,” I say.

  “Lexi, no. You called me and you said you needed me and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I remember that day. I was in bed. I hadn’t gotten out of bed all day and I didn’t even care. I didn’t want to get out of bed.”

  “Well, of course you didn’t or you would have.”

  “Maybe. There are some days I want to—I don’t know. That day I didn’t. I didn’t even want to be the kind of person who wants to get out of bed. But I should have gotten you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. It’s like having him admit that he was wrong and I was right is making me furious all over again. Like when we were little: I told you so! Or maybe I’ve held this anger so long that I don’t want to let it go.

  “It does matter.”

  “It was over then.”

  “Lexi.” His voice is so full—full of sorrow and anger and weakness and guilt—that it makes my heart want to break.

  “It was all over,” I tell him, my voice soft.

  Gabe turns then and arches a huge snowball. We watch it falling down toward us. It smashes right in the middle of Charlie’s chest, exploding out like a firework. But he doesn’t move.

  Clay puts a hand on Gabe’s shoulder and turns him around, his eyes on me the whole time.

 
“Anyway, you were there when it counted. You pulled me out of the water.”

  “I did save your life.”

  “I’m your Morgan Freeman.” Maybe we can joke about this. Maybe we can just joke and move on.

  “But still—”

  “It’s all over, Charlie. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay.” I say the words even though they are not true. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “That story—when he pushes the princess off, I used to tell myself that she didn’t fall. She flew. She flew someplace better. I’m tired of falling, Charlie.”

  My toes freeze and then I don’t feel them, which is fine. Clay tries to give me his hat, but I say, “No, thank you,” and he tugs it farther down over his ears.

  “Colder than a witch’s teat,” Gabe says.

  “A witch’s tit,” Zack says back.

  “It’s the same thing,” I say. “And either way it’s horribly sexist. The frigid woman unable to suckle her child. Mother Nature isn’t out to get you all.”

  “Isn’t the whole idea of Mother Nature sexist?” Gabe asks.

  “No,” I say. “You’re just jealous.”

  “It’s true,” Gabe replies. “I am jealous of fictional deities.”

  “And a waster of wishes,” Ari says. She grins at me.

  “Also, falsely angelic,” I say.

  “Anyone else?” he asks.

  “You fart in your sleep,” Clay tells him. “It’s nasty.”

  “Is that who that was?” Zack asks. “I was afraid it had been me. Sweet potatoes don’t always agree with me.”

  Clay has a shovel in his truck (of course) and he starts digging out Zack’s little car while I use my arms to sweep the snow off the windshield. When we finally uncover it, the poor thing looks small and neglected. I give it a little pat.

  “I thought we could tow it out with my truck, but I’m not sure what we can connect to without risking breaking something,” Clay says. He squats down and looks under the car.

  Things Seth Winthrop would never know how to do: use a pickup truck to tow a car.

  “Gentlemen, we are going to have to push,” Gabe says. I watch his chest puff up with air, his muscles pop.

  “Great!” I say. My own muscles tingle a bit.

  “Lexi and Arabella, you get in,” Charlie instructs.

  “In what?”

  “The car,” Charlie says. “We’ll push you and when the car gets going you just need to back it out, okay? You don’t even need to turn.”

  “I can push, too,” I say.

  “Someone needs to drive the car,” Gabe says.

  “Why not Charlie?” I ask. “He’s practically smaller than me, and I bet you I can lift more. Or Ari. You can steer, right, Ari?”

  “Just get in the car, Lexi,” Charlie says.

  “So you want both of us in the car weighing it down?”

  Clay says, “Ari is too small to reach the pedals and I want her in the car where she will be safe.”

  “Then I’m driving back to town.”

  “You can’t drive yet,” Charlie says.

  “I’m fifteen and a half. I can drive, just no one will let me.”

  “Do you have a permit?” Clay asks.

  “We don’t do permits in New Hampshire,” I say.

  Charlie says, “Stop being such a pain in the ass and get in the car and I will take you driving when we get home.”

  “You’re not old enough to take me driving.”

  “What are we even arguing about then?”

  We stare at each other across the trunk of the car. I think we both know the answer to that question: we are arguing because that’s what we’ve grown accustomed to. “Please, Lexi.”

  “Fine.” I give in. Because in the woods we made a tiny little bit of peace between us, and I don’t know how I feel about everything yet, but I know I don’t want to break that peace. If it falls apart, I don’t want it to be because of me.

  I have to hitch the seat way up. Clay stands in the open doorway. “So you just leave it in neutral and as soon as we start you rolling, drop it into reverse and ease it back. Don’t hit my truck if you can manage it.” He grins.

  “What if I put it into drive and roll over you all and then just keep on driving.”

  His grin falters for a moment. “I guess we just have to trust that you won’t do that. Not today anyway.”

  I shut the door and then look over my shoulder at Ari. “We could keep driving, you know. Where do you want to go? Someplace warm? I have a friend who’s working at a restaurant down in Florida.”

  “I’ve never been to Florida.”

  “Florida it is, then!”

  The boys all stand at the front of the car. It’s so narrow and they are so broad—well, with the exception of Charlie, of course—that they barely fit. They crouch down, their feet in the snowbank. They look like runners ready to explode from starting blocks, dogs ready to chase the rabbit with their squinting eyes and open lips.

  They push.

  I try to watch Clay, sure that he will nod when it’s time for me to put the car into reverse, but it’s Charlie who I stare at. He nearly disappears between Zack and Gabe. Not that they are pushing him away, but like he is fading. I can see him erasing himself right before my eyes.

  “Now!” Clay yells. “Now, Lexi, now!”

  So I do what he said. I put the stickshift down into reverse, feel the wheels grip, then I slide the car back right next to Clay’s truck. The engine hiccoughs and farts and the rest of the range of unseemly noises, and a black cloud of smoke belches out behind it, but it is free from the snowbank.

  I could just drive. I could just put it into gear and pull back out onto the country road. Ari and I could escape. I guess that’s one way I could keep her safe. She’d be safe and I could be new. We could keep driving back to the strippers maybe, or in an entirely different direction. We could go to New York and pick up Harper so she wouldn’t have to hitch to Florida. We could go to Connecticut to get Annie from the college, too, and help her on her quest for the worthy man. Hell, we could get that reporter and bring her to a more exciting city. We could even go get Caroline and get her away from that guy and whatever drugs she’s taking. We’d all go down to Florida together and walk across the warm sand to put our toes in the ocean. Florida could be our Oz and all our wishes would be granted there. And all those boys with their huffy-puffy breathing, their boy smells, their dirty thoughts, their soft lips. We could just leave them.

  But we don’t.

  Because there is no wizard in Oz, and there is no protection and no starting new. You just have to find your code, your costume, your mask, your armor: the way to try to keep yourself safe even in a dangerous world. You have to keep going because there is no way around or over or under. So I put the car in park and open up the door and I step out into the snow-white world.

  Clay’s truck is clean. Like gleaming surfaces and smooth leather clean. No fast-food wrappers on the floor. No pebbles at the bottom of the cup holders. I let out my breath.

  I ride with him while Gabe and Ari ride with Zack and Charlie, so no one gets lost, they say, but I wonder—hope like a little balloon with fading helium—that maybe Clay arranged it this way on purpose. Maybe he does not see me as permanently breakable.

  Riding in the truck is like being in a parade float, stacked up on pillows, like being on top of a mountain looking down at the whole tiny world. “I want to move into this truck and live here,” I tell him.

  He glances over at me, but only for a second. He’s a careful driver. “I think you might find it a little small after a while.”

  I shake my head and run my fingers against the smooth, black dash. “This is your favorite thing, isn’t it?”

  “What’s yours?” he asks.

  I have so many favorite things. Small tiny things like shells and ceramic lions and a single black pearl earring. And bigger things like my perfectly soft pillow back home and my zip-up boots and the wig that is all pink and makes me look like
a totally different person. But what I think of is my booklet. “It’s called the Good Feelings Book. You write little messages—or they have ones printed in it—and you put them down somewhere and it’s supposed to bring a little joy to someone’s life. Which was probably not what you were expecting, right? I mean, what were you expecting?”

  “Make your tomorrow today. You deserve it.” As he speaks, he keeps his eyes on the road. His nose looks straighter from this direction, almost regal.

  “You found it?” I ask. “But it was under the pomegranate.”

  “Yeah.” He rubs his cheek. “I’m not saying I followed you through the store or anything.”

  “Because that would be weird.”

  “That would be weird,” he agrees.

  It changes everything and nothing.

  “The truck isn’t my favorite thing,” he says. “It’s maybe my third favorite thing. Or second. But it’s not my favorite.”

  “What is your favorite then?”

  “When I was little we went to a carnival and my dad won me this stuffed dog. It has a big black circle around one eye, which is blue, and its other eye is brown. I think it was a reject dog.”

  “Did your dad die or something?”

  “What? No. I’ve just had it forever.” Another quick glance. “It knows all my secrets.”

  Those lips whispered secrets into the dog at night, filling it up like a piggy bank until there was no more room. I can’t imagine what type of secrets a boy like Clay might have.

  “They really don’t do permits in New Hampshire?” he asks.

  “Live free or die, I guess,” I reply.

  He pulls the truck off to the side of the road. Not quick, abrupt, impulsive, but slow and easy. Miss Ruka drives away. He is going to kiss me, I think. And I also think that I might like it.

  “Swap,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You crawl over me and I’ll slide that way—and don’t try any hanky-panky.”

  “But why?” I ask.

  “Because you’re going to drive.”

  A herd of elephants, a stampede of horses, a pod of dolphins—all under my control. He puts his hand on mine on the stickshift. “Foot on the clutch?” he asks.

  “Yep.”