Four Three Two One

by Courtney Stevens

  “Go, the future is tough to control. Those people know that.” I knew what he meant. I’d lived it. But then he added, “Ideally, the future was me kicking a black-and-white ball. It’s not. I have a cathing bag, a digital stim machine, and I actually need the handicapped bathroom because infections are a real thing. I have to live with the future the past gave me.”

  “Rudy, what’s wrong with your legs?” He heard the question below the question. Would he ever walk again?

  He shifted his torso and repositioned his thighs. “The explosion threw me into a street sign and injured my spinal cord. Doctors call it an incomplete injury, so there’s some hope of healing, of the paralysis lifting, but there’s been no improvement over the last year in PT. It’s not likely.” I watched the definition of his chest as he exhaled. “What was wrong with your feet?”

  “Third-degree burns. A random piece of metal. Melted right through my soles like butter on a skillet. ‘Butter on a skillet.’ That’s what the doctor at Bellevue told my parents later. He was from the South, doing a residency in the city, and was delighted to hear my parents’ accents.”

  “And the cut?”

  “Shrapnel. Technically, part of the handrail. Went right through”—I found his hand and placed it near my hip—“this area.”

  “Through the bone?”

  “No.” It spiked my right ovary.

  “Can you have children?” he asked, removing his hand from my hip bone.

  “Probably. Can you?”

  “Probably.”

  “That’s good.”

  His breath caught and he turned his face toward me.

  I lay there feeling sacred things—things I’d only ever felt for Chan. Attraction. Anticipation. Maybe even desire. Did I want Rudy to inch closer, to touch my face, to kiss me, to see what his bare stomach felt like against mine?

  Sometimes, after Chan and I were together, I’d lie almost covering him, two bodies stacked like bricks on a wall, and I’d press my ear to his heart and listen for the downbeat. What did Rudy’s downbeat sound like? Did each heart have a signature sound? I didn’t know, but I clutched the sheets so I wouldn’t move or give myself away. The sensation didn’t pass.

  “Rudy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m gonna sleep on the floor, okay?”

  “Me too.”

  I rolled off my side of the bed and listened as he moved to the floor on the other side. Was sleeping on the floor bad for his body? If you wouldn’t ask Becky, don’t ask me. I left his decision alone. He knew how to take care of himself better than I did.

  “Good night,” I said, the queen bed now between us.

  He didn’t answer.

  38. THE OPPORTUNITY TO RIP ON DOLLY, RODDY, AND COMMUNES

  $89,100.00

  A sliver of cream-colored moon hung in the morning sky when I parted the hotel curtains. I had a theory about days where you saw the sun and the moon in the morning. God sent you extra light.

  He was also sending extra heat. Outside, the air was muggy, reminding me of the night before. Rudy’s fingers against my hip bone. The pressure in my chest. There was nothing erotic about my medical history, but what happened in my brain turned chemical and potent and very unmedical. I’d put Rudy’s hand near the most vulnerable region on my body. My parents, doctors, Chandler Clayton: that was the exhaustive list of people who had touched my hip bones. I repeated the gesture now to remind myself a hip was only a hip. We’d done nothing wrong. Rudy had bags under his eyes from not sleeping. The floor must have sucked for him too.

  We’d brushed our teeth at the same time. Afterward, he’d sat quietly in his chair, watching me dab concealer under my eyes. He’d said, “Sometimes I wish guys wore makeup.”

  “You always can.”

  Even that sounded sexual.

  He’d left with his bag in his lap and I waited to follow so we didn’t go down the hallway together. Five minutes and a trip across the street later, Auto Fix Nation hit me with the old one-two punch. The bill for Dolly was a whopping six hundred dollars, and Digger said, “I hope y’all aren’t taking her far.”

  “New York.”

  “That truck makes North Carolina, Roddy’s a fuggin’ wizard.”

  When we were in the parking lot, Becky tossed an indignant hand at Auto Fix Nation. “Does anyone want to trust Roddy the fuggin’ wizard on a single seat belt and a truck older than our combined ages?”

  “Dolly’s from 1990.”

  Becky said, “I told you a long time ago I was bad at math. But I am very good at vehicles, and this one isn’t up to the task.”

  She was right, and I was on fire with frustration, pacing along the yellow parking space line. Back and forth. Back and forth. This wasn’t right. We couldn’t end the trip here. We hadn’t gone anywhere. No offense to the people of Wherever the Hell We Were, South Carolina. Becky placed her body in front of mine so I was forced to stop. She clamped my shoulders tight as a vise. “I’m sorry. This sucks like Orlando traffic.”

  “Are y’all saying we’re done?” Caroline suddenly sounded desperate to be on the trip she’d disdained at every turn.

  “Roddy and Digger say we are.”

  Caroline said, “I have a personal rule about letting people named Roddy and Digger dictate my life.”

  Becky provided logic. “None of us are old enough to rent a car. If Dolly can’t make it, our option is drive to one of our houses and swap vehicles. If we pick Orlando, we’d have to figure a way back to Kentucky. If we pick Kentucky, I’ll donate the Mustang to the cause. But there’s still the trouble of getting them home.” She pointed to Rudy and Caroline.

  Either choice made New York by Sunday more difficult, a fact Becky already knew, no matter how bad her math skills were. After everything had been so hard, why couldn’t this part just be easy? I was feeling pretty sorry for us when Rudy backed into the shade; he’d been turning anxious wheelies as I paced. “If we hit Orlando, you’d probably have to tow Dolly home. Roddy and Digger might be dumb as dirt, but every mile we put on this Dodge is a stretch. Let’s gamble on Kentucky. It’s not that far out of the way, and I don’t want to be done yet.”

  His bolstered resolve helped me. Caroline was looking waify and slight, like she might fall over if Becky wasn’t serving as a human buttress. But she was almost smiling.

  “My place is probably ten hours from here,” I said.

  Becky struck a Supergirl pose. “PS, my girl here lives on a commune.”

  “Yes, and you’re going to love it,” I said matter-of-factly. “Speaking of, I need to call Gran.”

  That concluded the big discussion. We were going to New York by way of Kentucky. The three of them disappeared to Shoney’s for to-go breakfast. Which gave me a minute to call Gran and gave them the opportunity to rip on Dolly, Roddy, and communes. I assumed Becky would fill them in on the latter. Not a cult. Not religious. Not dangerous.

  Gran answered right away. “Hey, chickadee!” She loved talking on the phone, even when we could easily speak in person. I didn’t have to be present to see her sitting at the breakfast table, the long spiral telephone cord stretched from the wall. Her Bible was open, her prayer list beside it. My name was written there. The commune wasn’t religious, but Gran was steadfast.

  I ripped the Band-Aid fast. “I’ve got bad news about Dolly. Transmission problems. I’m not done with my trip yet, but I wanted to let you know on account of how much we love the truck and . . . I might need to use the credit card you gave me.”

  She gave me permission straightaway. I was lucky; when I called home to ask for help, someone was there to give it. Not just one someone, thirty someones, if I were counting. That was the benefit of living where I lived.

  “By the way,” Gran said. “Chan told your mom and dad that you and Becky went to Disney World.”

  “He said what?”

  “That camping was a bust and you were at Disney World having a ball. I didn’t call him on it, but I thought you should know.�
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  I shook my head and stared at my group, who were emerging from Shoney’s laden with bags. Chan had invented a narrative and spread it like mayo on a bun. Maybe he was protecting me, but I found the decision strange.

  “So is Disney World wonderful?” Gran asked facetiously.

  I thought of fireworks and alligators and the empty hotel bed between Rudy and me. “Let’s say it’s eventful.”

  “Sounds true. And is this snafu with Dolly big or small? Do you need me to put you on a plane or something?” Gran asked. I heard her bustling about the kitchen making something. Probably coffee at this time of day. I imagined her red cup and saucer with the dainty blue flowers.

  “We’re driving home to trade vehicles. Will you tell Mom and Dad I’ll be there for supper and I’m bringing friends?”

  She giggled. “I’ll set the table, chickadee. Do you want me to tell Chan you had a great time at Disney World?”

  Under my breath, I dropped a few indelicate curses. “No, leave that for me.”

  39. DICKHEADS ARE LIKE GEYSERS.

  $89,500.00

  Tall, nearly naked pines lined the interstate, and somewhere nearby workers set controlled burns in the Carolina forests. Digital road signs warned of smoke and slowdowns. I tasted ash in the air. I drove because no one wanted to be responsible if Dolly broke again. Caroline rode in the camper nest with Rudy. We’d been cruising the highway for fifteen minutes when Becky said, “Caroline has something to say.” Caroline glared at Becky, who smiled cunningly in return. “Don’t you, Caroline?”

  Perhaps Becky and Caroline had had an emotionally active night in their hotel bed too.

  A reluctant Caroline said, “I’m telling a story now.” When she spoke, the words were aimed at my eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m going to ruin South Carolina,” she said, not cruelly, but like this was a helluva story.

  Rudy knew pieces, the cousins shared some things, but he twisted until his face was near Caroline’s, and the four of us made a strange circle in the truck.

  “I’m not going to cry,” she announced. “So if you’re thinking I’m about to be all waterworks and weepy and you’ll have to pull over, it will not happen.”

  I kept my eyes on the road. “Okay.” Fine by me. I didn’t plan to cry either.

  Becky echoed me.

  Rudy said nothing, and Caroline began.

  “Mom and Dad went along with Aunt Linda’s suggestion of a summer tour of New York. They were heading to Italy with the Westwoods to investigate some new grape hybrid and thought the trip would keep me occupied. Generous, right?” She didn’t pause for a response. “Simon’s parents signed him up about two seconds later. The Westwoods and Ascotts are vital to each other.” She was mimicking someone; I suspected her father. “They’re Pour me another shot of Pappy Van Winkle’s sailing buddies. If you don’t know the bourbon, it’s, well, God-only-buys-one-bottle-a-year expensive.”

  My body tensed. I tried to remain a blank slate while she was willing to talk, but Simon, rich? One of the newspaper articles said he made the vests to sell, and I always assumed that was for enterprise rather than boredom. I also never thought of him as someone who might have the means to lounge on a sailboat in the Finger Lakes or drink expensive bourbon. In my brain, he was a poor, angry racist who zipped that second vest onto Jim Conner’s chest.

  “We went on the trip. Bada bing, bada boom. You were all there. Yada yada. Explosion.”

  Rudy watched his cousin closely, like a cobra that might strike her own tail. The urge to interrupt and say something like Seriously? Bada bing, bada boom? He’s paralyzed edged my tongue. I bit down and studied Caroline in the mirror.

  She’d shaved her eyebrows to stubs, which enhanced the freckles across the bridge of her nose. We’d all awakened to an electric razor buzzing and shared a collective sigh. I hadn’t realized she’d shaved more than her head until that pretty purple headband was framed in Dolly’s mirror. There was even a small cut above her eye.

  She continued, “After Bus Twenty-One, Mom thought it best to keep everything quote, unquote”—Caroline laughed bitterly—“normal. As if that were possible for them or me. Still, she made me enroll at the University of Rochester as previously planned. ‘They would be close but not too close,’ she said, as if they’d always been present and supportive. I would live in the dorm instead of this massive house they’d already bought. ‘You’ll be around good people,’ she said. I’d be around people who didn’t know everything, is what she meant. Turns out, I was around people who knew plenty.”

  Those early days had been hell. When I finally went back to school, acquaintances checked on me in the hallway and I stumbled away, assuring them I was fine. Classmates dropped questions about violence into world history discussions, baiting Chan and me to answer. Everyone wanted the real story.

  “College was always going to be rough.” Caroline paused again. “Especially since my roommate was tangentially connected to a victim. The distant cousin of a girl who lost her boyfriend on Bus Twenty-One. You all know him.” Caroline disappeared from view.

  “I didn’t know anyone on the bus,” I said.

  “You knew him.”

  Jim Conner.

  “Did you tell your mom you didn’t want to go to school?” Becky asked.

  “I hardly spoke for a month after the bus, so, no. I bought a duvet from Pottery Barn and went off into the wild blue yonder of higher education. As the Ascotts all do.”

  Mom and Dad hadn’t made me do anything. I even had a little sit-down after my wounds healed to explain that I wanted, in fact needed, to leave the Hive. But that was months later. My first sixty days of senior year were homebound.

  “It went like you’d expect. As word spread, people harassed me about Simon. They harassed me about me. They were grieving and pissed, and I didn’t blame them. I left the theater one night—I like to watch late shows alone—and one of them warned me, ‘You can’t sweep this under the rug, Ascott.’ To which I said, ‘No kidding.’ But they didn’t think I took them seriously enough.”

  Caroline said all this with zero emotion. As if she were talking about someone else’s life.

  “Dickheads are like geysers. They go off every few days. I got used to their slurs and icy glares. Until one night I came back to my dorm and there were three people in ski masks. One of them had to be my roommate—I recognized her perfume—and someone had to let them in.”

  “Jesus, Care, you should have told me,” Rudy said.

  My fingers ached from holding the wheel. Beside me, Becky Cable cried quietly into the collar of her shirt.

  “They duct-taped me to a chair and played barber. First, with scissors. Everyone took a turn. Then, an electric razor. There wasn’t anything left, but they dumped a pail of water over my head, lathered, and shaved my skull with a blade.”

  “My God!” Becky’s voice squeaked.

  In a clinical, measured tempo, Caroline finished the story. “One of them, I don’t know which, wrote ‘I date bombers’ in superglue along here”—she drew a half-moon between her ears—“and then glittered the letters. They left me taped to a chair in the shower.”

  Becky faced Caroline, her hand stretching through the glass toward Caroline’s shoulder for contact. “Did you turn them in to campus security?”

  Caroline shoved Becky away, and curled into the nest. From the fetal position she answered, “No. I decided they were right. People should probably know straightaway I’m toxic as hell.”

  40. GETTING THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE FROM THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER

  $90,140.00

  Caroline’s story ruined South Carolina and Tennessee, and had the steam to destroy future states as well. Stories could be thieves. I wanted to do something besides drive, but we needed to get home and switch cars. I rolled down the window and leaned into the air. Across from me, Becky did the same. A tunnel of wind wreaked havoc on her bangs and my curls. Neither of us said a word. We didn’t have to.

 
She hated those kids who hurt Caroline, and I hated them too.

  I wanted to hurt them.

  For one long minute I imagined MMA versions of Becky and me beating those college kids with tennis rackets until they were unrecognizable. And then I pulled over and hurled Shoney’s bacon and eggs into the weeds.

  When I was driving again, I said Caroline’s name.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said, her voice mildly threatening.

  I was sorry, but that wasn’t what I planned to say. I didn’t know what I planned to say. Not only had an atrocious thing happened in the wake of the bombing, she’d adopted that atrocity as truth. The ghosts of those roommates had placed a razor in her hand this morning. The ghost of an enemy had whispered, “Be ashamed. Be ashamed. Be ashamed.” The ghost of Simon had wrapped her brain like jellyfish tendrils—long and poisonous—saying, This was your fault.

  Was there really anything I could say to that?

  I wanted to tell her to stop. To explain that life didn’t have to be toxic because she dated a bomber in high school. I wanted to shove Rudy’s free writing into her hands and demand that she see the whirlwind of dates and heartbreak, and how no one thought of him as Crystal Abernathy’s ex anymore. Surely, if Caroline waited, no one would think of her and Simon together. Listening to her attackers was like getting the story of your life from the front page of the National Enquirer.

  Caroline didn’t need two-cent wisdom for a million-dollar problem. She needed something better than words, better than an argument.

  All I could hope was this trip would heal her insides.

  That was what Stock said in episode 41. He had a do-rag on his head and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He’d looked into the camera and said, “Empathy is the antidote of hate, people. I can’t bring anybody back to life, but if I can bring life back to people through honoring everyone injured by this tragedy, well, I’ll have done my job.”

  I prayed then, because my gran says God is a doctor at heart. Dear God, save her insides. Bring life back.