You Were Here

by Cori McCarthy

  When the night hit its blurriest stretch, Mik found me. He stepped out of the dark like he’d materialized from it, leaving me to wonder if I’d conjured him.

  Deep in the trunk of my drunken brain, I remembered how I’d once longed to be a magician. Not the hokey kind with rabbits and capes, but the chains and leather and near drowning. The year I asked Santa for a tank of electric eels, my mom drew the line, but still it had been a large part of my childhood. Just like Mik.

  He hunkered before me on the swing, and I thought about asking if he remembered the day I finally twisted out of my straitjacket, but instead I stole a hand through his hair. He touched my face, and I slumped against his chest that—according to Natalie—was remarkable in some way. I suddenly imagined Mik with scars. Many, many scars. I tugged at his shirt, desperate to see what lay beneath.

  “Are we interrupting?” Zach said, stumbling out of the night with Natalie holding him up.

  “Nope,” I said more loudly than necessary.

  Natalie took the swing beside me, and Zach sprawled out on the turf. “Where’s Bishop?”

  “He’s making something.” I pointed toward the deserted road that ran around the backside of The Ridges. “He’s dragging broken bricks out of the creek.”

  Natalie stopped swinging. “He’s doing what?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. You should be happy that I decided to sit here and feel sorry for myself. My first instinct was to go climb the bridge.” I looked up. All the booze had boiled through me until I was nothing more than mad. “You know what’s great? After this, there’s nothing. Isn’t that great? I mean I’m not even being sarcastic. I’ve been looking for ghosts and spirits for years, and it finally hit me. There aren’t any. When we die, this is all over.”

  Mik took my hands, looking over the bloody scrapes that I couldn’t feel.

  “Liquor makes you stupid,” I told him. “I scrubbed away his footprint in the stain room. It’s gone now. I made room for someone else.” I laughed maniacally, and Zach laughed too for whatever reason. “I made room,” I said again. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  Bishop approached. He was sweating, and his teeth were bared like he’d just wrestled a wild creature. “Did you let your brother out, Zach?”

  “Natalie did,” Zach said. “He totally pissed himself. It was so cool.”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Natalie said matter-of-factly.

  Mik kept looking at my hands, and I leaned my forehead into his. “You going to talk to me now that you need to fix me? This is all about fixing me, isn’t it? It is for Natalie. Ask her. She needs to go to New York with a clear conscience.”

  “This isn’t about Cornell,” Natalie said. “I love you, you jerk.”

  I looked up at her. “Dad’s going to send me to Stanwood Crazy Hospital. I can even room with my mom. Will you come visit, Natalie, when you’re on break from your wonder education? You can write a paper on me.”

  “She’s a mean drunk!” Zach kicked his legs out like a dog scratching its back.

  “You’re not going insane, Jaycee,” Natalie said. “I’ve researched your behavior many times. You’re depressed and lonely with a serious self-destructive streak. That’s what you are.”

  “Hey, what the hell do you look forward to?” I snapped. “My dad wants me to ‘look forward to something.’ He seems to think you’re good at this.”

  “I look forward to getting out of this small town hell,” she said. “Starting over.”

  “Should I be offended?” Zach asked.

  “No. Be quiet.” Natalie turned back to me with her eyes sparking. “I’m planning my life the way I want to live it. That’s what I look forward to.”

  “What if your plans don’t work?”

  “I’ll think of a new plan,” her voice wobbled. Maybe none of us knew how to grow up.

  I hung my head and felt Mik’s hand on my cheek. “I can’t get to the other side of this.”

  “That’s the whiskey talking,” Zach said. “It always makes me feel like I’m dying in a good way.”

  “We’re on the other side of this,” Bishop said. “We’re your friends.”

  “More than friends,” Natalie threw in. “Right, Mik?”

  I stared at Mik’s face only a few inches away. The darkness of his brown eyes was unbelievably deep. “Do you know what I realized tonight?” I asked. “I hate him.”

  Mik flinched.

  “Oh, you don’t hate Mik,” Zach said. “You guys got something happ…en…ing.”

  I got to my feet, but every step was soggy. “I hate Jake. I hate him for being in my life. I hate him for leaving it all fucked up. I hate him. You know what? He was kind of an asshole!”

  Natalie smiled. “Hate is a good step. It’s a—”

  “If you say it’s a stage of grief, I’m going to run at you like a bull.”

  Zach laughed riotously. “What? That was sooo funny.”

  “Excuse me for trying to understand you, Jayce. You freaked out when those kids burned Jake’s journal, but now you’re voluntarily destroying his stuff. What the hell?”

  “Because my brother is not his stuff!” I stepped toward her and almost fell. Mik’s arm circled my waist, and I gave him my body. He sat down on the swing and pulled me onto his lap. I was surprised to find that he was better than a couch, and I let myself go loose into him.

  “None of it makes him feel real anymore,” I said. “Not the clothes. Not the stories. Nothing. The only thing that worked was climbing that chimney.” The playground started to spin. My stomach twisted. “No offense, Zach, because I know this is your favorite pastime, but I think I hate liquor.”

  “Give me the map.” Natalie grabbed Jake’s map out of my pocket and held it up to the moonlight. “Cleveland. We’re going next weekend. No. Tomorrow. We’re finishing this so that you can move on. So we all can. This is important.”

  “Hey, wait.” Zach sat up, struggling with his phone. “Say that again, Natalie. I’m going to play the Braveheart soundtrack in the background for effect.”

  “Zach,” Natalie warned, but suddenly we were all laughing. Even me. Even Mik, his face so close to mine. I’d somehow smeared my blood on his chin, and when I tried to wipe it off, he stared into my soul.

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s private.”

  He kissed the side of my face, and I laughed a bizarre, hyena-drunk laugh.

  “We need to take her somewhere to get her cleaned up,” Natalie said. “If we bring her home to her dad like this, he’ll have heart failure. That is not an exaggeration.”

  “Basement sleepover!” Zach surged to his feet and nearly toppled. “Let’s go!”

  Natalie herded the two drunken boys toward the parking lot. “Don’t you dare get sick in the Bonemobile. Either of you.”

  “Are they really my friends?” I asked Mik. He lifted me onto my feet. The fact that he wasn’t going to answer seeped through my drunkenness, and I realized that I could say anything to him. This was suddenly a challenge. As much of a challenge as trying to walk without falling down. “I went into the attic and found all of Jake’s old stuff, but you know what I also found? My stuff. Stuff I’d completely forgotten about.

  “Remember my straitjacket?” I asked. “Remember when I dragged you into my room to play audience? It was the first time I got out of it in less than two minutes, and I was so excited that I jumped on you and we fell over on my bed, and Jake came in screaming that if we loved each other so much, we should just get married. He threw the blanket over us, and I kissed you.”

  Mik cleared his throat like a whole traffic jam of a response was lodged in there.

  “I don’t think that kiss counts,” I said. “We were just kids.”

  He laced his fingers with mine, and I wanted to kiss him. No, I wanted him to kiss me. For real this time. I pressed my cheek
into his shoulder and held on tighter.

  “When I look at you, I don’t think about Jake anymore. Feels terrible. Feels great.”

  Chapter 38

  Bishop

  Randall Park Mall

  Chapter 39

  Natalie

  Natalie never really fell asleep, so she never really woke up. Instead she lay between a now snore-whistling Zach and a silent-as-death Jaycee on Zach’s king-size bed. Dawn threw an orange pall through the rectangular basement window.

  Her parents weren’t as absent as Zach’s or forgiving as Jaycee’s. She needed to get home before her mom noticed that she’d been out all night. Zach had moved the desk that she used to climb out the window, so she headed up the stairs, pausing to glance over her night’s work.

  Bishop was asleep on the couch. He was the only one of the “Drunkateers” (copyright Zach, three a.m.) who hadn’t thrown up. Whatever Bishop had been doing in the creek had burned all the booze out of his blood, which begged the question, what had he been doing? Natalie thought that he was emerging from his Marrakesh nightmare, but now she wasn’t so sure. Something had spooked him.

  Zach was another story, and one that Natalie had a read a few too many times. He was passed out on one side of his huge bed—coincidentally his parents’ pre-divorce mattress, although that fact was glossed over with the help of the cartoon sheets she’d gotten him for his sixteenth birthday.

  On the other side of the bed, Jaycee and Mik were spooning, their hands entwined and resting on Jaycee’s hip like it was no big deal. She was wearing his trench coat, and even though her skin looked pale from her hangover, she seemed more human than ever. More like the girl who had insisted she wasn’t scared while clutching Natalie in a headlock when Jake made them watch The Ring. That girl was still in there somewhere, under all that demigod-quality sarcasm.

  Natalie snapped a picture with her phone. “Evidence,” she muttered.

  Mik heard the faux-shutter click and glanced up at where Natalie crouched on the stairs. She waved. He lifted one finger as a response like he was petrified of waking Jaycee, and Natalie didn’t blame him. Which Jaycee would open her eyes? The Jaycee who glared at all boys as if they were muskrats wearing pants? Or the Jaycee who’d whimpered on the bathroom countertop while Mik scrubbed The Ridges’ filth out of her scraped palms, and who’d then buried her face in his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist like she’d been waiting her whole life to do it?

  Mik closed his eyes and turned his face into Jaycee’s hair, and Natalie took that as her cue to sneak home. While she swept the Bonemobile for evidence of the night’s wildness, she couldn’t help remembering Jaycee on that swing set, sitting there looking lost and delirious. Like maybe she’d never left the place where her brother died—the place where Natalie had abandoned her all those years ago. Natalie flooded with familiar guilt. How could she really help Jaycee? This was beyond getting Mik to kiss her. Beyond getting Jaycee into college or on a career path. Jaycee needed something much more basic…like hope. But then, so did Natalie, damn it.

  When they were kids, everything had been possible. But then they split up, and high school played out like a sitcom full of prom dresses and pop quizzes and movie dates that barely bumped the bar of interesting. When Jaycee had been with Natalie, life had skewed dire. Fights were toothy. Laughter made you fall off the bed. Natalie sighed deeply, unsure if she was longing for Jaycee’s friendship or for the simplicity of childhood, or if the two were so tangled that she’d never be able to tell them apart.

  “Hey.”

  Natalie jumped as Jaycee leaned through the open passenger window. She was no longer in Mik’s trench coat and squinting from the sunlight. “Give me a ride home?”

  “Mik.” Natalie straightened her glasses and pushed down her memories. “You should let Mik drive you home. He’ll want to do that.”

  “Too weird.” Jaycee got in the car. “We were holding hands when I woke up.”

  Natalie relented and started to drive. “Did you at least say goodbye?”

  “I said I was going to the bathroom.” Jaycee seemed nervous—confused and disgustingly pretty for someone who’d thrown up all night. “I think maybe that wasn’t such a nice move.”

  “True.” Natalie tried to put herself in Jaycee’s shoes. There was something holding Jaycee back that wasn’t Jake. It wasn’t Mik either. At the stoplight, Natalie thumbed through her phone until she got to the picture of Jaycee and Mik spooning. “A memento for you.”

  Jaycee stared at it. “That doesn’t look like me.”

  “It looks like you when you have your guard down. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize yourself.” Jaycee was still staring, and Natalie added, “Your children will be giants.”

  Jaycee snorted or laughed or gagged. It sounded like all three. “You have to sex to have kids, Natalie.”

  “And that’s not in the cards for you?” She tried not to beam too brightly. Girl talk—she was actually girl talking with Jaycee Strangelove. “Come on, Jayce. If Zach looked at me the way Mik looks at you, it wouldn’t have taken me three and a half years to sleep with him.”

  Jaycee was turning red. “I don’t know…wouldn’t know… Nat, I’m one hundred and eleven percent out of my comfort zone when I’m with him.” She looked at the fine gauze on her palms. “That’s not what it’s supposed to feel like, is it?”

  “You’ve really never had a crush on anyone before, have you?” Natalie pointed at Jaycee’s hands. “That’s what a crush looks like. Last night, Mik cleaned out your cuts so you wouldn’t get an infection. He studies medicine. Did you know that?”

  “Don’t.” Jaycee tipped her head against the seat and closed her eyes. “It’s bad enough that he won’t talk to me. Don’t go bragging that you two are great pals.”

  Natalie swelled with justification. If Jaycee was jealous, than her feelings really were genuine. “He’s quite talkative once you get him going. He even told me about his longtime girlfriend back at school.”

  Jaycee opened a wary eye. “What girlfriend?”

  “Ex.” Natalie turned onto Jaycee’s road.

  “Then you should have said ‘ex.’”

  “But then how would I prove that you’re one hundred and eleven percent into him?” Natalie tried not to look too smug. “Why don’t you just ask me how I got him to talk?” Jaycee didn’t say anything, and Natalie took that as an invitation. “All I do is speak to him like he’ll answer. Not like I’m waiting for him to answer, but like, at some point, he might chip in. Mik said it took the pressure off. His condition is all about social anxiety, you know.”

  Jaycee scratched her ear and acted like she wasn’t listening. She tried to turn the radio on, and Natalie knocked her hand away.

  “I’m going to say thank you now, and you’re going to say you’re welcome.”

  “What am I being thanked for?” Jaycee asked.

  “For Tyler. For getting to the bottom of everything last night.” Natalie squeezed the steering wheel. “Thank you. I…I needed to, well, not knowing was making me malfunction.”

  “No problem.” Jaycee looked down. “It was a bit insane. No clue what came over me.”

  “Oh, I know. You were being you. Crazy Jaycee who got suspended from school for kicking the shins of that girl who pushed me off the monkey bars.” Natalie dug deeper. “Crazy Jaycee who stole Jake’s favorite baseball bat after he stomped my American Girl doll’s head in.”

  “That bat is still buried in the backyard,” Jaycee said, her voice low.

  “Maybe we should dig it up. Bury the hatchet instead.” Natalie pulled into the driveway. She took out her notes from last night and set them on Jaycee’s lap. “I did some planning while you were hurling. We leave for the greater Cleveland area at dark. I’ve found us a hotel so we can sleep and then enter the mall around dawn. There will be fewer people outside, and from what I
’ve read on the Internet, we’ll need the light from the skylights to explore. Oh, and I even talked to this urbexer about his entry point on the side of the mall, by the old cinema.”

  Jaycee touched the notes. “Nat, I don’t think we should go. I…I was drunk when I agreed. I don’t want to go on any more of Jake’s adventures. They never turn out the way I need them to. And what about you? Don’t you have to pack for college or something?”

  Natalie bit her lip, aching to tell Jaycee the truth. And not just about her worries and paralyzing anxiety, but the truth about everything. How would she take it? “I have enough plans,” she said. “I want something different. Maybe that’s what I need.”

  She was just about to open her mouth, about to let the words, I don’t even want to be a psychologist, spill out.

  Jaycee beat her to it, staring at her house. “I’m afraid to go in. My dad’s going to bring up sending me to Stanwood again. Do you know what’s the worst? He’s right. I’m cracking. I belong there with my mom.”

  Natalie shook her head vigorously. “No. You’re going to be okay.” Jaycee had to be okay because Natalie had to be okay, and they were now, as much as when they were kids, linked. That’s the way it’d always felt. That’s what felt best. Yin and yang. “I’m going into psychology so you should listen to me. You’re coming out of the grieving process. This is all good. Natural.”

  Jaycee chuckled sadly. “Remember when you said that thing in Moonville…about how you see yourself in the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s me too. I thought Jake was the light, but now…”

  “He’s the shadow?”

  “I’m starting to wish him away.” She looked at Natalie, and her eyes were streaming silent tears even though her expression was flat. “I have these flashes when I’m, like, Jake who? My dad’s not wrong. It feels so good to pretend like he was never here. It’s goddamn heroin.”

  “What do you know about hard drug abuse?” Natalie managed. “You’re not even good at getting drunk.” Jaycee gave her a sad smile. Natalie wanted to take her hand, but Jaycee had never been one for hugs or holding. “Come to Cleveland. We’re…something together. You, me, Bishop, and Mik. Even Zach. There’s something important when we share our crap feelings.”