by Meg Haston
“I have to graduate. For my mom. I don’t care what happens to me after that, but I have to graduate this weekend.”
“I know, Wil. I just—I need to think.” I pull out of the lot. He rolls down his window silently. The breeze can’t cool my fevered skin.
“You have to tell the cops,” I say.
He doesn’t respond. I close my eyes and let the neon lights bleed over me.
“I love you,” I say.
BRIDGE
Summer, Senior Year
“YOU have to let me see her,” I tell Rita the next morning. “Please. I know it’s early, and I know she hates me, but I have to talk to her. I’ll do anything, Rita. Please.” My face feels like rubber and my head is full of hot air, three times its usual size. I am one of those giant blow-up people, bobbing and waving from the parking lot of a dealership on Atlantic. A flimsy cartoon version of a distraught girl. My eyes are bloodshot. My tongue is thick. I haven’t slept. Eaten. I have to talk to her. She is the only person in the world who can help me.
Rita sucks in a deep breath and releases it slowly, ballooning her cheeks and then deflating them. Life has wrung her out. She turns off the television. The metal chair shrieks when she pushes herself to standing. She leans into the truck and pats my arm. There is a red lipstick gash on her front teeth.
“You can’t talk to her, honey.”
“No. I know. I know she’s mad, but this is an emergency.” I want to shake her.
She closes her eyes. “I mean, you really can’t talk to her. Miss Minna had a fall last night and hit her head. They haven’t been able to wake her.”
My blood runs cold. “But she’s going to wake up, right? People don’t just fall and not wake up.” I feel better as soon as I say it. Women like Minna don’t expire this way. She is bigger than that. She’ll go out fighting, in some sweeping, grand way. Giving the world the finger. Spelling LATER, MOTHERFUCKERS on a giant Scrabble board.
“I’m real sorry, honey.” Rita rests her hand on my arm and leaves it there.
“Can I at least see her?” I close my eyes and picture the truck mowing through the gate. I’ll do it. I am just sad and lonely and crazy enough to do it.
She squeezes my arm. “Let me call up to the nurse’s station and see what I can do.” She ducks back into the cottage and closes a door I didn’t know existed. I watch her red lips move.
Rita opens the door again. “Her daughter said you’re welcome to stop in.”
“Her daughter?” I parrot back.
“Yeah. Lady from Winter Park, drove up late last night when we called. Brought the granddaughter, too.” Rita winks. “I guess somebody’s letter did some good, after all.”
I shake my head. Lift my hand and block the words. I won’t take them.
“Anyway, Miss Minna’s in room 302. Just follow this road past her place to the center of the development. She’s in the—”
“Epicenter of Death,” I mumble.
She squints at me. “Hospital.”
“Right.”
“Hold on.” Rita rummages around her desk and unearths a bag of mini chocolate chip cookies. “Take these. Just in case she wakes up. The Jell-O around here is shit.”
I pull through the gate and wind around and around until the hospital looms up, several stories high. I take the elevator to the third floor. It opens directly to a nurse’s station. It’s quieter than I expected. Slower. Nothing like the hospitals on television. There’s a nurse on the phone, sipping Starbucks, and when she sees me, she raises her index finger, like Just a second. But the call is personal, so obviously personal, the way she’s smiling into the receiver and laughing like Minna isn’t somewhere on this floor, not waking up.
Finally, the nurse slides the phone into its cradle. “Here for Mrs. Asher?”
“Ms. Asher, I think,” I say.
“Second room on your left, there.”
Outside room 302 are a few plastic chairs, the kind we use for assemblies at school. The kind in the police station. I wonder how many people have sat in these chairs and cried. Waited. Sipped bad coffee. I wonder how many people were sitting here when they heard that their mother or father or grandmother or great-uncle was never coming back.
The door is open a crack, and I knock lightly. There’s no answer. The crack is person-sized, and I slip through it and close the door behind me. She is lying in a hospital bed, eyes closed. Her hair is down, pretty but tangled. She looks like Minna sleeping, like the morning I slipped into bed with her, only there’s a deep purple mark on her forehead. A small cut, and a teeny bit of dried blood. I pull a tissue from the dispenser on the bed and I wet it with my tongue. I dab the blood away. I can’t find a trash can, so I stuff the tissue in my back pocket.
“Hey, Minna,” I say out loud, and I feel stupid and embarrassed.
There’s a chair pulled next to the bed, and I sit. She is plugged into too many things. Recharging. My eyes fill with angry tears and I want to sprint into the hall and yell that there is someone in here who needs help, does anybody know that?
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” I say. I pat her hair. “Or if you got my letter? But just in case, it said how sorry I was for mailing that letter to your daughter. It was, ah, stupid, and just . . . I didn’t think. Which isn’t an excuse.”
I think I see her lips move.
“Leigh says I stick my nose into other peoples’ business. Micah says that, too. Like, all the time. He says I’m controlling.” I exhale, and it comes out sounding like a laugh. “That’s not an excuse, either.”
I lean back in the chair. I am so tired. I want to twist the blinds shut and crawl into bed with her and sleep until we both wake up. I want her to tell me the right thing, because she will know the right thing. This is the one decision I can’t make on my own, the one time I don’t want to make the call.
“I have to tell you something.” I lean close, and lower my voice. I get it over with, fast. “Wil killed his dad. Did you know that already? On the way over here, I was thinking that maybe you had a feeling. I didn’t. I didn’t know.
“He asked me not to tell.” My face is hot and full again. “And I don’t know what to do, because I know he had to do it. And I know what kind of person he is, and I just wish he’d told the truth from the very beginning, because I don’t think I can carry this secret around. What am I supposed to do? Go off to college without saying anything? Come back on weekends, and have breakfast at Nina’s and sit across from each other and talk about pancakes?”
I watch her for a sign, but her face is blank. Empty.
“And the other thing is, I just keep thinking about how unfair this is. No matter what, he’ll have to walk around with this for the rest . . . of his life.” My lungs crumple at the thought. “And I don’t blame him for that. I blame Wilson.” I want to punch something. Shatter something. Ruin something, but too much is ruined already. I close my eyes, only for a second, and I see Wil bringing the golf club down. I force my eyes open at the moment of impact. Launch out of the chair and pace next to the window. Beyond the blinds is a parking lot. I wonder if there are ocean views on higher floors. I’ll tell someone: She should have an ocean view.
“I came here so you could tell me the right thing to do, and you can’t tell me the right thing to do. I don’t even know what you’d say.” I screw my eyes shut again, and I listen hard. But there is nothing, only the sound of my own breath and a nurse’s laughter outside.
“He didn’t have a choice,” I whisper. “He had to. And if I tell, it will ruin him.”
There’s a light knock on the door, and I jump.
A young nurse pokes her head in. She’s holding a clipboard. “Hi there. You the granddaughter?”
I nod. “No,” I say. “Just a friend.”
She pauses. “Well, whoever you are, I need to check on her. Mind stepping out for just a moment?”
“Okay.” I squeeze Minna’s hand and give her a kiss on the cheek. Her skin is papery, thin and dry. “Do y
ou know if she’s gonna be okay?”
She purses her lips in an apologetic smile. “If you’re not family—”
“Got it.” I don’t look at her as I slide out of the room. I drop into one of the chairs outside the door and lean back. Close my eyes. I could sleep right here. Wait for her to wake up. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t want to go home.
I feel someone close, too close, and I open my eyes.
“You must be Bridget?” The woman in front of me is not what I expected. Maybe I expected a miniature Minna: long, flowing goddess hair and a caftan. Just younger. Instead, she is short. Athletic. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, shot through with streaks of gray. She’s wearing yoga pants with a stain on the thigh and an oversized sweatshirt. I imagine her getting a call in the middle of the night. Pulling whatever clothes she could find from the floor.
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.” I stand up, because it feels like I should stand up.
“Virginia,” she says. She is not friendly but not unfriendly. “And this is my daughter, Elizabeth.”
A girl about my age steps out from behind her mother. She is staring at the floor.
“Hey,” she says, without looking up.
“Hey,” I say.
We stand there for a while, not looking at one another, exactly, strangers with a strange thing in common.
“Is she—did the doctors tell you anything?” I ask.
She rubs her eyes. “They’re optimistic,” she says slowly. “But she’s older, you know, so these things are harder to . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence.
“Okay, well,” I say. “That’s good.”
“Yes.” Virginia nods.
I don’t know what else to say. I thought maybe we would hug or cry together, or I’d tell her stories about Minna that she’d been dying to know for years. But she doesn’t ask and I’ve learned not to tell.
“If you, ah, need to get out of here and want some good comfort food, Nina’s Diner is good,” I tell them. “I could bring you takeout, if you want.”
“That’s kind,” Virginia says. “But we’ll be all right.”
I nod. “Yeah. Okay. Well . . . Would you call me or text or something when she wakes up?” She doesn’t say no, so I give her my number and the granddaughter enters it into her mother’s cell. I want to ask Virginia if Minna got my letter, if she read it, if we are okay now. Instead, I say an awkward good-bye and take the elevator down to the lobby.
When I pull into my driveway, a familiar outline is sitting on my steps. Henney looks deflated; on the verge of total collapse. Her skin is a pale gray. Her dark hair is pulled in a tight knot at the nape of her neck. Silver strands flutter around her temples. I feel a sharp, hot jolt of fear settle into my gut.
“Hi,” I say carefully as I lock the truck. I linger in the yard, not too close. “What’s going on, Henney? Can I help you with something?”
“He told you. I know he told you.” She tries to stand up and falters. I rush to the steps and help her to standing. She’s wearing a HINES T-shirt. The familiar letters swim in front of me.
“He shouldn’t have told you, but he did.” She leans into me, the way a child leans into her mother. I steady myself against her weight. “He loves you too much to keep anything from you, even something like this.”
“I love him, too,” I say carefully.
“I know you do.” She looks up at me. Her eyes are wet. “I know you love him. I know you don’t want to end his life, Bridget. Bridge.” She peers into my eyes. “And if you report him—if you say anything to anyone—”
“That’s not fair,” I say. I pull away. “Don’t.”
“It isn’t,” she says forcefully. “None of this is fair. It isn’t fair that I married a man who hit me, and it isn’t fair Wil’s father tried to kill him. It isn’t fair. But I’m asking. Because I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for that boy.”
“I know.” I take a step back. “I just—”
“Think about it,” she says. Her mouth hardens into a thin line. “Think about what this would do to him. You would end him. I made a promise to him that I would protect his future, Bridge. And I’ll do everything I can to keep that promise.”
I’m silent. There is nothing left to say. After a while, Henney leaves me there, standing in the yard. Holding Wil’s future heavy in my trembling hands.
BRIDGE
Summer, Senior Year
I would dream about us . . . if I could sleep. I would dive down deep to the bottom of me and scoop up the earliest memories, the very best seconds of us, and string them together like saltwater pearls and we would go on for years. Maybe when I woke up, I would know what to do. I would know whether those memories are enough to hold us up. Push us forward. Instead, I’m lost, treading water. I can’t find land.
We haven’t spoken in days. Just one text from him.
I’ll wait for you to call. I fancy you, no matter what.
I’ve read it a million times, because I miss him. On the morning of graduation, tucked under my stale sheets, waiting for the light, I read it again.
I’ll wait for you to call. I fancy you, no matter what.
I type a quick response and press SEND before I can yank it back.
I fancy you. Pick me up at 8.
I sit up in bed and power off my phone. My skull is stuffed with sparking wires. My eyes are dry and my heart beats faster than it should. I love him. I know that. But it’s all that I know, and I’m not sure it’s enough. Downstairs, Mom and Micah are whispering too loudly, dropping pans, spilling orange juice. I smell burning butter and coffee. I throw on my robe and slip into the bathroom. I can’t make the shower hot enough. I fill the bathroom with steam, and it opens me up. I let myself cry under the spray, and I feel closer to him.
I wrap a towel around my head and pull on the graduation dress Leigh lent me: a crisp white sheath with a white-jeweled neckline. I blow-dry my hair and straighten it. I find the fake pearls that Mom bought for my thirteenth birthday. I haven’t worn earrings in years, and it takes too long to snake the posts through my ears.
I stand in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom. I look normal (pretty, even, which should feel better). I look like a girl with a future, with a next step. But it’s a lie. There is nowhere to go from here. Call the cops, tip them off, and Wil could go to prison. Keep my mouth shut, and this secret will erode us slowly. I turn away from the mirror and hurry down the stairs.
“Happy graduation to you, happy graduation to you! Happy graduuuaaaation, dear Briiiidget! Happy graduation to yooooouuuuu!” Mom and Micah bellow from the kitchen when they hear me.
My breath catches when I see what they’ve done. Purple streamers wind from the front door to the kitchen faucet and back again. Someone (Mom) tied streamers to the spinning ceiling fan, which will mean a call to the landlord later. The floor is blanketed with so many balloons, there is nowhere to step. Mom blew up my senior picture into several unnecessary posters, and they’re plastered on every available surface. I love the two of them, hard.
“Happy graduation, firstborn.” Mom hands me a plate of Funfetti waffles. “You look beautiful, honey.”
“You guys!” I set the plate on the steps and pull them both in. Micah obliges me for a full two seconds. “I can’t believe you did all of this!”
“Come on.” Mom grabs two more plates from the counter. “We’re having breakfast in bed. Like a sick day in quotes.”
We pile onto the pullout in the living room. Micah says, “I swear to God, if you guys tell anyone about this . . .” but I haven’t seen him smile like this in months. We stuff ourselves with waffles and Mom tells us school stories that we’d forgotten years ago, like how Micah caught a lizard (Bernard) on his first day in Florida and kept it in his desk with a peanut-butter cracker and a Dixie cup of Capri Sun, until the kid next to him noticed the smell.
And then Mom gets serious around the eyes. She tells the story of my second day here. How I came home just in
time for dinner, glowing with aloe and stories about a boy and his dad who made sailboats. How when she tucked me in that night, I asked if people got married on boats. She stops halfway through the story because she can’t, and I can’t, and even Micah coughs and says he needs to shower. He takes our plates into the kitchen and runs upstairs.
I tuck into Mom and we pull the covers up. She combs my hair with her fingers. I lean into her and close my eyes. I am happy, full, content enough to forget about Wil for a fraction of a second. But then I hear the doorbell, and I slide out from under the covers and he’s standing on the other side of the door, holding flowers. Tulips.
“I fancy you,” he says, kisses me.
I kiss him back. I let myself pretend that I’m an Ordinary Girl and he’s an Ordinary Boy and this is an Ordinary Special Day. I hold on to the feeling for as long as I can. I want to make it last.
WIL
Summer, Senior Year
WE don’t speak on the way to school and I get it, but, God, I wish she would say something. It doesn’t even have to be real. We could talk about the weather, about how this heat is the wet kind that sneaks down your throat and into your lungs. We could talk about what we ate for breakfast or we could guess how many last names the principal will screw up. I don’t need her to say the real things: that she loves me, that she understands why I did what I did, that it will be hard, but we’ll find a way. Because we are us, and that’s enough. I can wait for those things. I’ll wait forever.
“It’s hot,” I say as I snake the parking lot rows, looking for a forgotten spot. Girls in white dresses that are too short and too tight hobble toward the gym in heels. The ones who aren’t naturally tan are spray-tanned (Kylie Mitchell! I think, and I want to tell Bridge). The guys look just as uncomfortable in khakis and shoes that aren’t flip flops. I catch a glimpse of Ana in this nightgown-looking dress that’s short in the front and long in the back. I can’t remember us. I can’t remember anything other than Bridge and me, because nothing else is important.
