Grit

by Gillian French

  I leave. Go past her, feeling the dog grab a quick sniff at my jeans, out the door into the shock of fresh air, surprised to see it’s still daylight, it feels like I’ve been in there so long. I take the steps two at a time even though it sends sick jolts through my arm, and hit the sidewalk running. I’m Nell a year ago, running from him, from the words I care about you, but and I can’t hurt Elise this way, you have to understand and finally at least let me drive you, don’t just leave, Nell, how are you going to get home—

  Hunt’s truck is parked at the curb. He followed me—if I’d looked back even once, I would’ve seen him. Weak with relief, I climb in, shut the door, hit the lock, and let my head fall back against the seat. Hunt’s asking me something over and over, but all I can do is breathe and wait for the darkness to stop spinning behind my eyelids.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I START SCHOOL on Tuesday with a cast on my arm. The ER doctor said I’d fractured my radius. From Irish Lane, Hunt took me straight up to Eastern Maine Medical Center and stayed with me through it all; he did real good, too, considering he doesn’t have any kids of his own. The nurse let me pick what color plaster I wanted. I went with hot pink.

  So I’m back at SAHS, in the stink of dust and old books and horny kids and hot lunch. This place never changes. The freshmen still show up wearing stiff new jeans and hoodies and melt in the sweltering classrooms by ten a.m. The locker rooms are full of smoke, ditched butts unraveling in the toilet bowls. The hollow bounce of basketballs echoes down the hallway from the gym. And the flyers for the fall one-act play tryouts are everywhere I look. School sucks.

  I’ve got study hall second period. I ask for a library pass so I won’t have to sit around playing what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacay. I pass some kids in the hallway. “Cliff divah!” one of them calls, fist-bumping me. “Badass mofu.”

  I kind of smile, not remembering him being at the quarry, but whatever. Maddie’s wasting time at the water fountain, and she gapes at my cast as I go by. “You broke your arm?” Sounding thrilled.

  I get more stares and a devil-horns sign in the library before I drag out a chair at one of the long tables and drop into it. I’m not stupid. For every person who fist-bumps me, there’s another two talking about what an ass I made of myself, how I had my tongue down Braden Mosier’s throat. I got this whole place figured out, and it’s a friggin’ bore. Never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather be raking berries.

  There’s a stack of one-act play flyers on the table. They’re doing The Crucible this year, directed by Mr. Brassbridge, the freshman English teacher. Nell will try out, get a part with a couple lines. Our family will go to opening night, and I’ll sit there, trying not to picture Brad Ellis pressing Nell up against the backstage wall sophomore year, the two of them touching each other in the dark behind the scenery after everyone else had gone home. Wonder what he said to Elise about my visit. The milk on the floor would be easy enough, but the way I ran out—that would take some work. Not that I don’t think he’s up to it. Brad Ellis snows better than a January nor’easter. Scary-good.

  “Darce. Heard about the quarry.” Jake Curtis, my chemistry lab partner from last year, claps my back. “Nice.”

  I nod. The librarian’s got her eye on me; she’s pretty strict about your actually doing something like homework or reading while you’re down here. I get up and wander over to the shelves under the windows, tugging out a couple yearbooks like Mags and I do when we’re bored. I sit, leafing through last year’s. Dedicated to Rhiannon, of course. Her picture looks back at me. Strange to think of her the way Kenyon knew her. Depressed. Messed up. Talking suicide if she couldn’t get out of Sasanoa.

  I open our sophomore yearbook, which was where I was headed all along. Brad Ellis, Ed Tech, looking perfectly nice in his photo, right next to Mrs. Hanscom, Special Education.

  He pops up in some candids, too, kids hugging him, giving him bunny ears, having a tinfoil swordfight with a senior during a rehearsal. Forgot how popular he was. I close my eyes and see his mouth moving, telling me about this girl he knew, and far-reaching consequences. His slim forearms against the table. His hair looking soft and a little out-of-control, making him seem younger than he is, young enough so girls can fall in love with him.

  I reach drama and pictures of The Tempest. Nell onstage in a gauzy veil and leotard, her hair pinned up. The spring musical’s next. They did Tommy that year. Nell doesn’t do the musicals, even though she loves to sing; Libby keeps her to one play a year so she doesn’t get behind in her schoolwork. There’s a curtain-call shot, and when I see her, I have to lean so close that my nose touches the page, and even then, I’m still not sure who I’m looking at.

  A girl who looks like Rhiannon peers out from between two seniors, half-bleached in light. Easy to miss with all the leads hogging the applause up front. Her hair’s pulled back and it looks like she’s all dressed in black, which is what stage crew wears. I never knew she did drama. She never did when we were friends.

  There’s no cast and crew list or anything, but there’s a candid from the cast party of Mr. Ellis getting a bouquet of roses from everybody. He’s smiling.

  I sit back slowly, my mouth gone dry. Out in the hallway, some girl shrieks like she’s being tickled. A mumbly teacher voice hushes her.

  I could find out if Rhiannon worked on the crew of Tommy pretty easily. I could ask around. I don’t really hang out with anybody who does drama except Nell, but she might know. Maybe she’s known all along.

  But she can’t know all of it. Even with how she feels about Brad, I can’t see her keeping quiet about this. I mean, if one plus one really equals two here.

  Jesus. Even I can do that kind of math.

  I go to lunch in a haze, passing the line for soggy pizza and tater tots.

  Shea’s sitting at the first table to the left, legs stretched out to take up a bunch of seats. Don’t see his junior around. He sees me. His gaze goes to my cast, then travels up to my face, and he smirks as the guys around him bullshit and arm-wrestle and pay us no mind. A whole school year with him. Awesome.

  “There she is.” Kat climbs off a stool at a crowded table, touching my cast. “Holy shizz, I heard you busted something. Everybody thought you were dead, man. Like straight to the bottom.” She pulls me over to the table, pushing me down onto a stool. “You guys blind? Move over. Chick’s hurt.” She squeezes her bony butt in next to me and pushes a bag of chips my way. “Tell these losers you really did it. You jumped the quarry.”

  Everybody’s asking me questions at once. A two-pack of cupcakes lands in my lap. I open the plastic with my teeth, letting them swap half-truths and whole lies, just eating my cupcakes and letting the whole story get bigger than life without even having to say a word. When I finally glance over at Shea, he’s turned back to his buddies.

  I’m the only senior riding the bus home. Humiliating. Nell never got on, so I guess Libby must’ve picked her up to make sure she came straight home.

  The house is quiet as I dump my backpack on the floor and the mail on the table. No big fat bill from the hospital yet, but it’s coming. Mom’s still at work and Mags is out picking up applications for waitressing jobs. If she was speaking to me, I would’ve asked her to grab some for me, too.

  I go upstairs to Mags’s room and sit on her bed, resting the laptop on my knees. I stare at the screen. It’s been so long since I actually wanted to get in touch with Rhiannon. I’ve deleted and unfriended her from every account I have.

  Except my sent folder. I never clean that out. I scroll through practically every email I’ve ever sent. About two years back, early October, I hit a big chunk of replies to Rhiannon Foss. I open one and hit reply without looking at the message. I know what we were talking about. Those beautiful senior boys we thought we were in love with.

  I sit staring at the blank email. Are you alive? Are you ever going to read this? It feels fake to begin with, “How are you?” For the longest time, I didn’t care. Who knows if she even
uses that account anymore; the email will probably bounce right back. Even if she gets it, there’s a good chance she won’t answer me anyway. Guess I’ve got nothing to lose.

  I try to put myself in Rhiannon’s shoes for once. Where would she go if she was hurt and messed up and needed to get away? I’d say Camp Mekwi, but a place like that wouldn’t hide some runaway. Maybe her camp friends would, though. If she kept in touch with them. Maybe if one of them is older, has their own place, they might let her crash with them, and keep it a secret. Maybe that was who picked Rhiannon up from the barrens that night, and took her away from Sasanoa.

  I type, Did you leave because of him?

  The cursor blinks. I hit send.

  Supper is painful. Nobody’s talking, and Libby and Nell don’t even come. I get the message, loud and clear. Nell can’t be my friend anymore.

  I stab at my food. The faucet drips. Another job for Hunt, but Libby isn’t around to complain. He’s almost done painting the house, only a small section near the roof left bare. I’ll miss having him around. I want to ask Mags which restaurants are hiring, which places seem like you’d get the best tips, but I don’t bother, not with her face looking like it belongs on Mount Rushmore.

  Mom’s got another headache. Her color’s bad. She’s eaten maybe three bites of food with her aspirin, coffee, and nicotine. When I get up and start filling the sink to wash dishes as best I can, she says, “Darcy—”

  I jerk around. She looks at me for a second, her eyes flicking to my cast, then away. She taps ash into the tray. “Leave it.”

  I stand there, then slam the faucet closed and go upstairs, ignoring Dad in his frame, holding that little blond girl I hardly remember being.

  They stay downstairs, clearing the table and pretending I’ve fallen off the edge of the earth. I take the laptop out of Mags’s room and bring it into mine, mostly to piss her off. If she wants it, she can come get it.

  She doesn’t. Two nights later, it’s still there. I’m curled up in bed at seven thirty, dozing because I’ve got nothing better to do.

  I wake up to the sound that the laptop makes when a new email pops up.

  Holy crap.

  The email stands out in bold. Sender Rhiannon Foss, no subject. It hits me hard: tight chest, eyes open so wide that they burn as I stare and stare. I’m scared of what she might say after all this time, after everything that’s happened. I’m scared to feel what’s coming next.

  I double-click. There’s no message. Only a link.

  It brings me to a page on a poetry site. The poem’s called “The Uses of Sorrow” by a lady named Mary Oliver:

  (In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

  Someone I loved once gave me

  a box full of darkness.

  It took me years to understand

  that this, too, was a gift.

  I press my hand to my mouth. The words won’t let me go. I see myself in them. I see the night of the boys waiting in their cars for us. I see Nell, and Mags, and the summer behind us. And beneath all that, like some underground stream, runs Brad Ellis.

  I see Rhiannon standing in the cold that night after I got out of the Explorer, hands jammed in her pockets, her expression closed off to me. I changed my mind. Or maybe her feelings for somebody else had. Even before that, I hear her say, Isn’t she in special ed? and then making sure we started hanging out at her house, far away from Nell.

  That was freshman year. That far back? Had he been working on her longer than Nell, adding them both to his chain? Rhiannon wasn’t in drama freshman year, but that didn’t matter, not for him; he could’ve talked to her in the halls, planted the seeds, charmed her into turning out for stage crew the next year. Later, selling the whole I don’t want to hurt Elise, but I can’t seem to get you out of my mind thing? Had both she and Nell been trying to tell me in their silences, in their looks? Rhiannon, holding her car keys out to me, eyes deep wells in the firelight. Understanding everything. Just take them. And later, after I dropped Nell off at our house and took the Fit back to the barrens, I just left the keys in the car and went to find Kat, who was finally sober enough to drive me home. I never even told Rhiannon thanks. I never saw her again.

  I make a soft sound, jerking away from the computer, leaving the bed. I’m in the hallway before I know it. My feet take me to the place I always go when I’m hurting.

  Mags reads in bed, her glasses on the nightstand. I stand there in the doorway until she notices me, raises an eyebrow, and looks back at her book.

  I bite my lip. “Mags.” My voice wavers, and I take a couple steps in. She doesn’t look up. “It’s about Nell.”

  My face is in the lamplight now, and she finally gives me her full attention. Some of the hardness fades from her eyes. She lays her book down. “So talk.”

  It’s bad. My words weave a long snarled string, tangling Mags into the mess Nell and I have spent a year making.

  Her eyes go wide, her mouth goes grim. She shakes her head like she’s got too many words to let out. At one point, she slams her fist against the wall, sending a hollow vibration through the upstairs. I wait, shoulders hunched, to see if she’s going to pound me, take the hurt and anger out on me like I almost hope she will because we’ve beat each other up before, we know how to deal with that. Instead she stares dully at her hands. If she could make it better with her fists, she would. Out of all of us, it never should’ve been Nell.

  “How could you not tell me this?” she finally whispers.

  “Because you would’ve made us do something.”

  “Goddamn right.”

  “Like tell the school or the cops. Then everybody would’ve ripped Nell apart. You know they would’ve. She was seventeen when they did it, not some little kid. Everybody would say, there’s the girl who slept with the teacher and got him fired. There goes that slut.”

  “So you were gonna just keep on swallowing it. Taking it on you. Letting us all think—” She cuts off. Then Mags’s arm goes around me and holds on tight, so tight my shoulder pops. It feels good.

  Finally, she says, “Come on,” nudging me out of bed, leading me to the hallway.

  Mom’s watching her little bedroom TV in the dark, a pillow hugged under her arm, another behind her head. She sits up, her face watchful as we come in. Mags guides me, her hands on my shoulders.

  The blue glow flickers and flashes across Mom as she takes us in. Then she reaches over and turns on the light.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  AROUND ONE O’CLOCK on Saturday, Edgecombe pulls up to our house, but he doesn’t come in. He walks through the side yard to the trailer, a big guy with big strides and his hand hitched in his equipment belt. Mags and I are on the porch playing Whist. We like Hearts best, but like I said, you can’t play with two people.

  I go over to the railing, watching him walk up the trailer steps and knock. After a second, the door opens partway, and he goes in. I guess they’ve been waiting on him.

  “We playing or what?” Mags doesn’t take her eyes off her hand, holding our can of Moxie out for me to sip.

  He’s in there a long time. We play two more hands of Whist and a full game of Spit, pretending to care about winning quarters and dimes.

  They could’ve come to the station with us on Friday afternoon. Mom says it would’ve been better that way, if we’d all gone. But you can’t make Libby do anything she doesn’t want to do. And right now, she doesn’t want anything to do with us.

  Eventually, we hear the screech of the trailer door again. Mags goes with me to the railing. We’re hoping to see Nell.

  Edgecombe steps out into the daylight. I catch a whiff of Libby’s hazelnut coffee on the air, picture her asking, Cream or sugar? and pushing a plate of of Nilla Wafers on him while Nell sits there, ripped wide open with all her most private parts on display. It was hard enough for me to talk about, and it really wasn’t my story to tell.

  Just walking across the station house to Edgecombe’s desk felt like a journey. He sat over some paperwork
and a steaming Colby College mug he must’ve brought from home. He didn’t look smug, like I’d expected, or like he was going to give me some big lecture. There was heavy stuff going on behind his eyes. Almost like I’d proven something to him. I dunno, maybe that’s stupid. He took us into a private room with folding chairs waiting for Mom, Mags, and me. When we were situated, he leaned forward, clasped his big hands, and said to me, “When you’re ready.”

  Now he turns and says something quietly to Libby, who comes out onto the step. She looks sick, washed-out and rumpled, like she slept in her clothes last night. Maybe I was wrong about the coffee and Nilla Wafers. Edgecombe puts a hand out and she gives it one stiff shake. He looks around her to speak to Nell. Keeping a grip on her shoulder, Libby lets Nell step out into the sunlight.

  My heart gives this big leap at the sight of her, then shrinks back just as quick. You can see it in her face, a tightness that wasn’t there before. She’s grief-stricken, eyes swollen, standing with her hands behind her back, a little girl being good for Mom, but it’s too late for that and there’s no going back.

  Edgecombe starts toward his cruiser. He sees me sitting on the railing, and, his eyes as grave as ever, gives me a nod. For Rhiannon, I guess. For telling him about the email and camp friends and giving him a place to start. We’ve put that to bed. For better or worse.

  When I turn back, Nell’s looking at me. Her light’s been snuffed out as cleanly as a cup over a candle flame. I open my mouth to say something, but she’s going now, pulled inside by Libby, who acts like she can’t even see us. Maybe if I’d waved, Nell would’ve waved back. It’s too hard to speak right now.

  I end up on the swing, dragging one foot slowly over the rug. Mags plunks back on the floor and crackles the cards, using her mad shuffling skills to flash the matches by me, king-queen-jack, jack-queen-king. “Don’t let them make you feel bad.”

  I pick at the fringe of my cutoffs. “Nell hates me.”

  “She does not. She’s just all turned around.” She frowns, chopping stacks together. “It was never your secret to keep.”