All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  “I’m just trying to have a life too, Aimee.”

  “Oh! O.K. Sorry. Didn’t realize you didn’t have a life before. Or that going to basically a serial date rapist’s big party was going to give you one.”

  “Whatever,” Scott said, once again feeling like a bratty child. “I just want to go. If you don’t want to come with me, fine.”

  “Oh,” Aimee replied. “I guess I thought we were gonna hang out tonight no matter what. I wanted to tell you more about the trip.”

  “There’s more? Good God.”

  “You know, you’re being a real jerk right now, Scott.” She was right, of course. He was being a jerk, or worse. “Maybe you should go to Sam’s party. We can talk tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow was Sunday, and Scott had work all day. Aimee no doubt knew that. He’d worked practically every Sunday since they’d met.

  “No, I’ll stay.” Scott sighed.

  “Honestly, I don’t know if I want you to. Not if you’re gonna just shit all over me for being happy about my trip.”

  “I won’t, I won’t,” Scott protested. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a dick.”

  Aimee looked at him, hard. “I kinda think you did?”

  Scott didn’t know what to say. He’d clearly fucked this whole thing up, this grand reunion when all his fears about Aimee—and about how he’d been reacting to her lately—were supposed to be allayed, the strength of their relationship reaffirmed. “I didn’t” was all he could come up with, probably pouting as he said it.

  “Well, whatever.” Aimee sighed. “I’m actually pretty tired from the plane and stuff. So maybe we should just, like, rain check on tonight or whatever.”

  Scott wanted to keep talking, wanted to stay and make things better. But he was worried he might mess things up even more. So he just said, “O.K.,” and got up and walked out, not kissing her goodbye or anything. “Scott!” she called out after him, a pleading annoyance in her voice, but only calling for him once. Scott walked downstairs and out the front door, Aimee’s parents looking surprised to see him leaving so early.

  Scott didn’t really want to go to Sam Stein’s party, especially not alone, but he didn’t want to just sit at home either. He could have a night out without texting too, just like Aimee had in Ohio or wherever the hell she’d been. So he texted Pete, yo you wanna go to steins party. Pete wrote back quickly, aimee bringing taissa? Scott’s stomach did a little plunge. He wanted to go back and apologize to Aimee. That’s where he belonged. But instead he texted, no Aimee. boyz nite bruhhh. Pete wrote back LIT, and Scott zipped up his jacket and started walking toward Pete’s house—a long walk, but he didn’t really care. He pressed on into the cold, leaving Aimee behind.

  • • •

  At the hospital, months and months later, Scott sat at a table with the grave but funny girl he’d just met. Alexa occasionally looked up and out through the crowd of people, waiting, hoping to spot her brother maybe, but otherwise they kept each other calm by talking. She went to a private school, lived downtown, so they didn’t know any of the same kids. But there was enough else to talk about. Really, anything but the accident and the fate of their loved ones would do. They talked about soccer, about movies, about Cape Cod.

  Scott had gone a few times with his parents, packing up the dented SUV and staying in a little bungalow in Barnstable for a few days. Alexa’s experience seemed to have been, well, a little different, out there for whole summers at a time in some big house by the water, way out in Wellfleet. He could almost picture it, all those sunny days and breezy nights, the kind of summer the girls were always having in the books Aimee liked to read, by Judy Blume or whoever else. The perfect kind of summer when magical things happened. Of course, bad things happened too. Alexa mentioned something about a friend of hers, making it seem like something dire had happened, but then she caught herself, looking up once again and scanning the room for her brother, frowning a little when she didn’t find him.

  Was it terrible to notice that she was pretty? His thoughts should be on Aimee. Of course they should be. But what was he going to do, blind himself? She was pretty, feathery and pale like something out of a painting at the MFA, one of the portraits Scott’s art teacher, Ms. Li, had droned on and on about during a field trip in ninth grade. All the great families in Boston—great families like Alexa’s, just a hundred years ago—sat for portraits, she explained. It was a sign of status and, of course, a way to preserve the memory of a person in a time when photography was rare. All the people in the paintings looked sad, Scott had thought, or at least distracted. Like there was something just past the frame that was bothering them, some secret or heartbreak or something. Alexa looked that way, like there was a lot happening past where Scott could see. She was worried about her parents, obviously, but there was something else too.

  She looked older than she was. More precisely, Scott realized with a sinking feeling, she looked older than Aimee, with her high ponytails and theater-kid fizziness. Alexa was something else. “Still waters run deep,” Scott’s dad would say sometimes, whenever Scott’s mom would chide Scott for being too quiet at the dinner table, or she’d catch him at work at the store, staring off into space. “He’s thinking things through, Inez,” Scott’s dad would say.

  Scott liked that idea, that he was some deep, pensive person. Truth was, he wasn’t. Not really. Usually if he was daydreaming he was thinking about sex—with Aimee, yeah, but also with Victoria Justice, or Danielle Hughes from physics class. Or, more recently, he was thinking about Aimee leaving, about what his last year at school would be like after she was gone. He’d entertain fantasies about her forgoing some faraway school, about visiting her at BU or somewhere, just up the Green Line, not so far away at all.

  Now maybe none of that would happen. Maybe Aimee was dead. Jesus. No. That couldn’t be true. That couldn’t actually be true.

  These thoughts ran through his head and then he’d ask Alexa something else about herself, where she wanted to apply next year (“Not sure, maybe nowhere”), what music she listened to (“Taylor. I’m boring.”), and his mind would settle a little again. She had a calming effect, Alexa, the adultish rich girl with tired but piercing eyes.

  Those eyes darted up suddenly, and Alexa made a little sound. Scott followed her gaze and saw a tall kid, broad-shouldered but skinny, making his way toward the table. The brother, he figured. Jason. He was wearing tight jeans and a dirty-looking sweater, longish hair swept back in a messy bird’s nest on top of his head.

  “Glad you decided to come back,” Alexa said to him, the annoyance in her voice not really masking the relief that was in there too. Jason sighed and sat down across from her, slumping over the table and rubbing his eyes. “I was just outside again. I didn’t really go anywhere.”

  “You see anything?” Scott asked, figuring what the fuck, they may as well all act like they knew each other. Jason turned to him, looking a little confused. “Where?”

  “Outside,” Scott pressed. “Did you see anything?”

  Jason, eyes a little glassy, still looked lost. “Um . . .”

  “He means, like, ambulances or anything, Jason,” Alexa said, leaning in toward her brother.

  Jason nodded. “Oh right, no. I mean, nothing new. I tried to find that lady, but I couldn’t.”

  “Mary Oakes,” Alexa explained to Scott.

  He nodded his head. “Ah.”

  “Jason, this is Scott. He goes to Newton North. He’s waiting to hear about his girlfriend, Aimee.”

  Scott extended his hand to Jason, who tentatively took it in his own, gave it a thin little shake. “Nice to meet you,” Jason said. “Sorry about your girlfriend.”

  Scott nodded, said thanks. “Sorry about your parents, man.”

  Jason nodded too. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “They’ll be fine.”

  Which, of course, Jason had no way of knowing. None of them d
id. Mary Oakes had disappeared behind her swinging doors, and everyone in the waiting room was standing around aimlessly. Scott, Alexa, and Jason were among the few people sitting down. Scott felt a quick pang of guilt, like maybe he should be up and doing something, trying to get an update on Aimee. But what could he really do? He wasn’t family. Aimee’s parents would be on their way. They were both doctors. They’d know what to do, and Scott would just . . . be there.

  “Hey,” Scott heard, and looked up to find Alexa giving a friendly little wave to a girl perched on an end table a few seats down from them.

  “Hey,” the girl replied, quiet, shaky.

  Alexa waved her over to the group, and as the girl approached, Alexa sat up straighter in her chair. “Are you here alone?”

  “Oh. Um. Yeah,” the girl answered. “Waiting to hear about my sister.”

  “What’s her name?” Alexa asked.

  “Kate Vong. I asked the woman at the desk about her, but no one really seems to know anything.”

  Scott could sense the girl’s frustration; he felt it too. “Yeah, we’re getting that sense too. I’m Scott, by the way. This is Alexa.”

  “Skyler,” the girl said, giving another small wave. “Hi.”

  “This is my brother, Jason,” Alexa said, but Jason just crossed his arms and gave a quick nod to Skyler.

  Was this guy an asshole or what, Scott found himself thinking. Jason came off like he thought he was better than everyone else, even though he was obviously a total mess. Scott could see why Alexa seemed so annoyed with him, this hipster prick who didn’t even seem to notice where he was, let alone why he was there. Scott wasn’t really the aggressive, get-in-a-fight type, but he thought, sitting at the table and looking at Jason draped in his chair, that he would absolutely punch him in the face if Alexa asked him to.

  Skyler sat down next to them, but kept furtively checking her phone and then putting it back in her bag, and it made Scott anxious, like something was about to happen. He turned to Alexa, who was staring hard at Jason as he picked at his nails. “You think we should go try to find Umbridge? See if she knows anything?”

  Jason looked up. “I thought her name was Mary.”

  “Yeah, it is. I was just . . . It was a joke. Like Dolores Umbridge.”

  Jason looked at Scott blankly.

  “From Harry Potter?”

  Skyler laughed, but Jason’s expression didn’t change.

  “Oh. Right. I didn’t see it.”

  Alexa rolled her eyes. “My brother isn’t into Harry Potter. Or anything else that involves joy of any kind.”

  Jason glared at her.

  A tension settled over the table and then, surprising everyone, Skyler said, “I hate Harry Potter.”

  Scott laughed, bigger and louder than he expected. “How can you hate Harry Potter? Who hates Harry Potter?”

  Jason raised his hand. Asshole.

  Skyler thought for a second. “I don’t know. It’s just, like, I hate those stories where a kid has some shitty life but then he finds out he’s special and his life gets really cool and exciting. Like he’s saved. What about the kids with shitty lives who aren’t special, who don’t find out they’re magic or whatever? Shouldn’t there be books about those kids? Why does the story have to be about, like, wizard Jesus?”

  “Totally,” Jason muttered.

  Alexa pursed her lips. She had nice lips. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

  “Me neither,” Scott said, wondering which one he was, the special kid or the nobody, but also sort of already knowing. He wasn’t going to be whisked away to anywhere magical, probably not. The only good thing, like really good thing, in his life might be dead or dying as they spoke. Crushed in her car, with Taissa and Cara.

  “She was driving to Salem,” Scott said. The group turned to look at him. “Aimee, my girlfriend. She and two of her friends, Taissa and Cara. They’re in The Crucible? The play? So the cast was driving up there to, like, I dunno, do research about witches or something.”

  Scott swore he heard Jason snicker a little. He looked up, gave him a hard stare, but Jason didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Anyway, that’s why they were there. On the bridge, I mean.”

  There was a silence. People shifted in their chairs.

  “My sister was just driving back from work,” Skyler offered after a moment. “She drives that way, like, every day, I think, each way. I was . . . I was on the phone with her when . . .”

  “Jesus . . .” Alexa muttered. “My parents—our parents—they were . . .” She trailed off. The others waited for her to continue, but all she said was “I don’t know. They were just there.” The group fell quiet again.

  Scott sat back in his chair. It was so bizarre to think about. That they could all be gone. To think of how scary it must have been to be on the bridge. I should have been with Aimee, Scott thought. Maybe he would have skipped class and he and Aimee would have driven up together, stopping at Aimee’s house for a quickie or something, and then they would have missed it, they wouldn’t have been on the bridge when it happened. There were so many things that could have been different, that could have prevented it all from happening. To Aimee, at least.

  Skyler’s phone started buzzing in her pocket, snapping Scott out of his fantasy, the hazy vision of an entirely different November afternoon disappearing. Suddenly the Mary Oakes doors swung open and there she was, striding through alongside a girl with streaks of purple in her hair, wearing a black hoodie stuck through with safety pins. The girl’s eyes were sunken and red from crying, and she was wiping her nose with her sleeve. Mary Oakes had a tentative hand on her shoulder and murmured something to her before turning away and walking back through the doors.

  The girl, tall and tough looking, collected herself and then, standing there alone in the middle of the room, seemed not sure what to do next. She stood there, fiddling with her safety pins, shifting her weight from one boot to another. Scott, feeling some wave of charity, or just wanting even more distraction from the realities of the moment, called over to her.

  “Hey!”

  The girl turned, eyeing him a little suspiciously. “Yeah?”

  “Did she tell you anything? Mary Oakes?”

  Something flashed across the girl’s face, then disappeared. She nodded. “Yeah. Uh. My dad. I was finding out about my dad.”

  Alexa frowned. “Is he O.K.?”

  The girl shook her head. “Um . . . I don’t know? I don’t know. He’s just . . .”

  Scott was confused. “He was at the accident? They already brought him in? I thought none of the, uh, the victims were here yet.”

  The girl walked closer to the table, her messenger bag making a jangling sound—keys or something. “Yeah, no, he’s still there, I guess. My mom used to work here, at the hospital, so I know Mary a little. She just wanted to make sure I was O.K. or whatever.”

  “Oh,” Scott said, wondering what else Mary Oakes might have told this girl. He gestured toward the table. “Well, want to sit with us? While you wait for your dad?”

  The girl pulled her sleeves over her hands, crossed her arms. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Cool, thanks.”

  She walked the rest of the way to the table and sat in the remaining chair, the five of them introducing themselves. “I’m Morgan,” the girl said, giving everyone a wave.

  “I like your pins,” Jason said, leaning forward and giving one a little yank. To Scott’s surprise, the compliment sounded sincere.

  Morgan looked down at her sweatshirt, as if she’d forgotten the safety pins were there. “Oh, thanks. I put them on in, like, eighth grade. They’re dumb.”

  “They’re cool,” Jason said, nodding with certainty, before turning his attention back to the surface of the table.

  “You come here often?” Scott said to Morgan, for no other reason than to fill
the silence.

  Jason picked his head back up and shot him a withering look. Scott felt immediately embarrassed, but Morgan laughed. “Actually, yeah,” she said, her face then falling into a darker expression.

  “Sorry, I didn’t—” Scott stammered, but Morgan waved it off.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It was funny.” Scott nodded appreciatively as Jason rolled his eyes and returned to his inspection of the table.

  The other four smiled at each other nervously, but maybe hopefully too. If Morgan had heard something about her dad, had heard that he was alive and on his way, maybe that meant good things for the rest of them. For Skyler’s sister and Alexa’s parents. (And Jason’s parents.) For Aimee.

  Scott pictured Aimee doing her ponytail thing, one effortless motion pulling her hair tie off her wrist and then up into her hair, just a little idle thing that she did, Aimee whom he knew so well. Aimee, the first love of his life, the girl he’d lost his virginity to. The girl he wanted to follow into her new life and never look back. If she was O.K., Scott knew then that he’d say goodbye to his parents, goodbye to the store, and head off wherever Aimee was headed, if she would let him.

  They just had to get through this. This shitty thing. This awful bit of life before they became special together.

  Chapter Five

  Skyler

  SKYLER WONDERED IF she should clarify for Mary Oakes that her sister’s real name, her Khmer name, was Kun Thea. What if news came in and no one knew to update Skyler because she had only inquired about “Kate”? But they had her last name, Skyler reminded herself. Which would probably be enough.

  Everyone called her sister “Kate,” just like everyone called Skyler “Skyler.” Her real name, or her birth name anyway, was Srey-leak. But only her grandfather called her that, and even then not that often. Only when he was in one of his weird, misty moods, lost in the past. Skyler had two cousins who grew up in Cambodia, though they were both at university in France now. When they were younger, they’d cooed over Skyler’s American name, calling her a “Valley girl” with jealousy and awe. But to Skyler it was just Skyler, not terribly special, just her name, just who she was.