That Night

by Amy Giles

  Pete pretends it’s no big deal, but I saw the look on his face. Pity! The worst!

  “It’s okay, Jess. It happens,” Pete says, then looks over my shoulder.

  I feel Lucas’s presence behind me, but I can’t make myself turn around and face him. He walks around us and bends over to inspect the damage.

  “Oh yeah, it’s a goner.” He looks at me and winces. “You okay though? Did you get hurt?”

  I shake my head. “No . . . I’m fine. I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it. Take it out of my salary.” I bumble the apology through my fingers.

  I’m waiting for him to say, I told you so. And he’d be right.

  But he doesn’t. He laughs, not at all what I was expecting. “Shit happens, Jess. It just happened sooner for you than anyone else.”

  Pete and Joe both laugh at that.

  Lucas points at Pete. “What are you laughing at?” He turns back to me. “Just last month, this guy backed the forklift into a shelf and knocked down all the household cleaners.”

  “Oh man.” Pete squeezes his eyes shut and winces. “They had to evacuate the building. The ammonia and the bleach mixed together. A hazmat crew had to come in to clean it up.”

  “Cleanup in aisle six,” Joe says, giggling.

  “What about you?” Pete shoots back at Joe.

  Joe sobers immediately. “Don’t,” he growls.

  But Pete does: a fertilizer spill that took them all night to clean up.

  Pete turns to me. “We can’t make it a week without some kind of accident. I have no idea why Enzo hasn’t fired us all yet. Remember the time . . .”

  As Pete tells another story, Lucas catches my eye. He shrugs and smiles. I accept it. At least I still have a job.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening shadowing Joe or Pete, stocking shelves with hammers, paintbrushes, ceramic tile, even carpeting. I hardly see Lucas for the rest of my shift.

  At seven o’clock, Enzo turns the sign on the door to “CLOSED.”

  “You survived!” Joe says over his shoulder as I follow him to the back.

  Barely, I think, but I force a smile. A heroic smile. A triumphant smile. A smile to try and convince him I’m really not a walking liability.

  “Quitting time!” Pete skids around the corner and races past us.

  At our lockers, I slip my heavy arms through the sleeves of my coat, and I know I’m going to be in agony tomorrow. My arms tremble from today’s workout; my lower back aches with every step. But I don’t let it show on my face, even when they snicker as I slowly slip my backpack over my sore shoulders.

  “Need a little help?” Pete teases.

  I smile back, pretending to be in on the joke, not the butt of it. Then I pass by Lucas, who’s flipping through some paperwork.

  “Good night,” I say tentatively.

  “You coming back tomorrow?” he asks. He looks up with a smile, a big one, the first real smile all night, and . . . whoa. It’s like opening the window on a perfect spring day.

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” I say, shuffling past him on tired legs.

  He makes a snorting sound not unlike that of a wild horse.

  Every muscle in my body mocks me on my walk home.

  I stop and pull my phone out, staring at it. I don’t want to go through old texts. I need someone to talk to. A little voice of reason begs me to put the phone away and just go home. But I can’t. Tears pulse behind my eyes rehashing the day.

  I find my and Marissa’s old thread, the one I keep rereading.

  I know it’s pointless. I know she won’t get this text, not for months at least. But that doesn’t stop me.

  So hey . . . Colorado, huh? What’s that like? I checked out the school’s website. Therapeutic horseback riding. That’s cool.

  I hit send.

  A part of me unravels just a little bit more when instead of the chirp of her reply I get silence. But I keep texting.

  Yeah, okay, enough with the small talk. By the time you get this, this will be old news. I started a new job. Remember Lucas Rossi and Pete Brickner? A year older than us? I work with both of them now.

  Send.

  So THIS happened: I was only there for about 15 minutes when I knocked over a sink and broke it. Like the one you have in your downstairs bathroom. Expensive, right? No, don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I thought I’d set the world record for getting fired!

  Send.

  They all tried to make me feel better about it. But . . . ugh . . . PITY! *shudder*

  Send.

  Pete’s super nice. So’s this other guy who works there, Joe. He’s older. Graduated a couple of years ago. Lucas, though . . .

  Send.

  I wrangle up the thoughts racing around in my head about Lucas.

  He’s harder to crack.

  Send.

  But he’s cute. And speaking of crack, he’s got one of those butt-crack chins.

  Send.

  Cleft! Ha, looked it up.

  I glance around to make sure I’m still alone.

  Here’s the thing. He can barely look at me. It’s WEIRD!

  It’s like if he looks at me for longer than two seconds he’ll turn to stone or something. And I really don’t think he wants me to be working there.

  Send.

  Actually, I KNOW he doesn’t want me there. He pretty much said as much.

  But I need this job.

  Send.

  Why do I even give a crap what he thinks?!!!

  I lean back against a brick wall and watch a plane roar over the Rockaways, so close I can see the blue-and-red Delta tail.

  Swirls of emotions tangle up inside of me. Gratitude for the job, and for Pete’s and Joe’s kindness. Humiliation over the sink incident. But it’s Lucas’s first and last impressions . . . and that smile . . . that rattle me the most.

  Out of nowhere, my brain comes up with a line from Young Frankenstein, aka the best movie ever made. Gene Wilder shouts, “Alive! It’s aliiive!”

  Quietly, I maniacal-laugh to myself, just a little. It’s something Marissa and I would’ve done under the circumstances if she were here to listen to my tale of woe. Because this is a laugh-or-cry moment if there ever was one.

  Lucas

  I beat the crap out of the heavy bag, trying to build up my southpaw to keep my body in balance. I’m way past ten rounds by the time Leo checks in on me.

  He taps his forehead. “What’s going on up there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Ha! You said it, not me!” He laughs. I keep punching. “Something’s going on up there. I’ve never seen this much fight in you.”

  I dance around to keep the adrenaline going. “Had a bad day. Just trying to work it off.”

  “Bad day” is an understatement. Bad day is stepping in dog shit. Cracking the screen on your phone. Forgetting to hit save on the English paper you worked hours on. No, this was a rotten day. And the worst part is it’s all on me.

  That accident with the sink wasn’t Jess’s fault; it was mine. When Reggie trained Pete and me, she gave us plenty of time to ease into the job. Jess felt she had to prove something on her first day because I made her feel like she couldn’t handle it.

  She proved me wrong.

  Why’d I have to make that stupid crack about her tearing out of there on her first day? I can’t stop replaying how fast her face went from open and friendly to a tightly clenched fist.

  I rip off my gloves and grab the rope. Today, for the first time, none of this seems like enough. I could wear myself down to a puddle of sweat and I’d still feel like I had more to give.

  Leo starts to walk away.

  “Hey, Leo?” He turns back. “I think I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  I nod over at Honor, who’s training on the speed bag for a match this weekend. “A match. I want to do it. I think I’m ready.”

  Thwack thwack thwack.

  Leo walks back over as I whip the rope around. “Yeah, b
ut are you ready ready?” He taps the side of his head again.

  Thwack thwack thwack.

  I nod and pant. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Know so. Then we’ll talk.”

  Thwack thwack thwack.

  “I know it. I’m ready.”

  Leo claps his hands. “Okay, then. Get your gear on. You’re gonna spar with Honor.”

  I swallow back the nervous bile that creeps up at just the thought of sparring with the undefeated Honor “Big Mac” McAllister.

  Kenny helps me lace up my gloves. Honor climbs into the ring with a huge shit-eating grin like he knows he’s about to mop the floor with my sorry white ass. Leo shakes my shoulder to draw my attention back to him. He holds up three fingers in front of my face.

  “Three rounds. Then, if you still want to fight, come to my office and we’ll get started with the paperwork.” He turns to Honor. “Challenge him. But dial back the charm a bit. Got it?”

  Kenny pops my mouthpiece in and Honor grins at me. “I’ll try not to mess up his pretty-boy face too much.”

  Three rounds.

  The bell buzzes. “Here we go,” Leo says.

  “Keep the ice on it to keep the swelling down,” Leo instructs me as I’m leaving the gym. Honor and I bump knuckles as I pass him on my way out. Funny how that works, how there’s no hard feelings outside the ring. There’s a time and a place for all that anger, and I’ve finally found it.

  Tonight I learned that I don’t mind getting hit. Every punch Honor got in, I shot back with three more. The pain fueled me; it lanced all that poison inside of me that’s been festering. I finally figured out what to do with it.

  On the walk home, I stop outside the meat store and look at my reflection in the glass. I grin, and then immediately regret it because it splits my fat lip open.

  Leo said he would get the paperwork started for my boxing license. Once that’s in, I can fight my first match. I’m ready.

  From my bedroom window, Mrs. Graham’s open garage door stares back at me. Her maroon Buick Century, as old as I am, is parked inside. It was open when I got home from the gym, over an hour ago. She never leaves her garage door open.

  She probably just forgot to close it. Focus, I tell my racing thoughts, the ones that seem to leap to the worst-case scenarios lately. I try to shake the disturbing images popping into my head: Mrs. Graham’s frail, broken body crumpled at the bottom of her stairs, calling out for help in a feeble voice. Mrs. Graham bound, bruised, and battered by some guy pretending he needed to come in to read the gas meter.

  I’ve been trying to make some headway on my term paper. It’s on Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower, about how as a young Jewish concentration camp prisoner he was summoned to a wounded Nazi’s bedside. The Nazi (his name is Karl, but I prefer to call a Nazi a Nazi) begs Simon to absolve him for his part in the burning alive of an entire village of Jews. He says he can’t die without Simon’s forgiveness. Simon says nothing. Unfortunately, this plagues Simon for the rest of his life, wondering if he should have forgiven the Nazi soldier.

  My assignment is to write a paper supporting the power in extending forgiveness. I wanted to do it on the power of withholding forgiveness. That makes more sense to me. So much more sense. But that’s not what Mr. Wong assigned.

  The paper’s not due until May, but I’ve been having a hard time getting anywhere with it. I think it’s pretty obvious why.

  My blinking cursor seems to ask what I want to do: work on this paper or quiet the chorus of worried voices in my head over Mrs. Graham’s well-being.

  I already know the answer.

  I race down the carpeted stairs that do nothing to buffer my pounding feet.

  Sitting on the couch in the den, Mom looks up from her book. “What’s wrong?” It doesn’t take much to trigger a five-alarm panic from her either.

  I open the junk drawer.

  “Mrs. Graham’s garage door is open. I want to go check on her. Where’s her key?”

  Mrs. Graham gave us a spare key when she got locked out a few years ago. She hasn’t needed it since, but we always have it in case of emergency. Like now.

  Mom jumps up off the couch and comes to the kitchen, shutting the drawer. “You can’t just barge in there like that. I’ll call her first.”

  She picks up the phone, waiting while Mrs. Graham’s line rings. Mom looks up at the kitchen clock. Nine twenty. “It’s late. I hope I don’t wake her. You’re sure her car is there?” Mom looks over at me with the receiver still pressed to her ear.

  “Yeah. It’s in the garage.”

  The phone rings seven times and then the voice mail picks up.

  “Hi, Marie. It’s Jill. We noticed your garage door has been open for a while and wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m sending Lucas over now to check on you.”

  She hangs up and takes the key out of the junk drawer and hands it to me.

  “Ring the bell a few times first. She doesn’t hear well these days.” I can see the change of heart in her face. “You know what? I’ll come with you.”

  I hold my hands up in the air to stop her. “I got it. You stay here. I’ll call you if it’s . . . something,” I say, hoping, praying it’s nothing, not something. Because I don’t know if I can handle another something.

  As I jog across the street, I turn on the flashlight on my phone to check Mrs. Graham’s garage first to make sure she didn’t fall down and . . . God, that would be so awful to find her here. But no, the coast is clear. No sign of Mrs. Graham.

  On her porch, I ring the bell, holding it for a beat longer than I would for any other home because of Mrs. Graham’s hearing issues. I open the screen door and press my ear against the wood door for any sound, preferably her footsteps.

  Nothing.

  I ring again.

  Then I pound.

  I step back onto the walkway and crane my neck up. The lights are on. A bedroom window is open.

  I cup a hand to my mouth. “MRS. GRAHAM! CAN YOU HEAR ME? HELLO?”

  Then I pound on the door again and hold my finger against the bell until Mrs. Graham throws the door open, a phone pressed to her ear.

  “Hold on, Louise . . . Lucas! For God’s sake, what wrong? Are you all right?”

  My body sags in relief. “Oh thank God . . .” I mumble. Then in a louder voice so she can hear me, I say, “We tried calling!”

  “Was that you?” She holds her phone away from her ear to look at the receiver. “I don’t know how to use that call answering yet. Every time I push a button, I hang up on someone.”

  “Your garage is open. I got worried.”

  She steps farther out to look.

  “Oh . . . will you look at that!” She presses a veiny hand to her forehead. Then she says into the phone, “I blame you, Louise! You got me so exhausted today running all over the place taking you to all your damn doctor appointments, I left my garage door open. The boy across the street thought I died or something!” She cups a loose hand over the mouthpiece and whispers loudly, “She’s a hypochondriac.” Then she reaches her hand out and squeezes mine. “Thank you, Lucas. You’re a sweet boy. Do you mind shutting it for me while you’re here?”

  “Sure.” I nod. She turns away but not before I hear her arguing with Louise again.

  “Well, you weren’t supposed to hear that. But you are a hypochondriac and you know it!”

  Mrs. Graham shuts the door, even though now I’m wondering what Louise hit back with. I reach into the garage and push the remote to shut the door. Her empty garbage cans are still out on the street. I bring those up and deposit them neatly behind her fence gate.

  Back home, there’s no sign of my mother in the den.

  “Ma!”

  She calls down from upstairs, “One sec!”

  I open the junk drawer to put the key back. Something familiar peeks out from under the organizer tray. I slide it out with one finger. My boxing-glove key chain.

  I shut the drawer just as Mom comes down the stairs.
>
  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  I nod. “She’s fine. She forgot to shut the garage door when she got home.”

  Mom walks past me to the sink to wash the frying pan. With her back to me, she says, “I worry about her living alone. I hope her kids are checking in on her from time to time.”

  I watch as she cleans up the mess from dinner. Tacos, again. We’re more like a Taco Monday family. The Old El Paso taco shells are still on the table, waiting for Dad to come home from another late night, next to a bowl of shredded lettuce, a bowl of diced tomatoes, and a jar of mild salsa. It’s how my family does Mexican food. We pretend it’s the real thing.

  Like how I try to pretend I didn’t just discover my mother hid my keys from me so she’d have one less thing to worry about—me dying in a car accident—because then we might actually have to talk about our feelings.

  I’ll need my dad’s help on this one. I don’t want to embarrass her by telling her I found the keys, and I definitely don’t want to talk about how she’s been too overprotective because that will lead to why and I just can’t deal right now. Maybe Dad can talk to her without me actually being involved.

  Up in my room, I’m no closer to filling in the blank document open on my screen. The cursor still blinks at me, judging.

  I go to my desktop and open RAK.xlsx instead. I reread the last entry and add a new one.

  April 1 Covered Joe’s shift when he called in sick

  April 2 Found a dog that got loose from his yard, brought him home

  April 3 Checked in on Mrs. Graham. Brought her garbage cans in.

  I scroll through each entry. Two hundred and thirty-three random acts of kindness to date since I started counting, when I was desperate for something to make me feel my being here wasn’t a mistake. Some are no-brainers, things people should just do anyway, like give someone a seat on the subway if they obviously need it more than you do. But some days it’s a struggle to find a way to make a difference.

  If the randomness of my continued existence is still a huge, giant existential crisis, I hope these small acts count at least a little toward earning my continued room and board on this planet.