“Whatcha doin’ down here?” Rad said, swinging from the pole at the base of the stairs.
I shrugged. I didn’t tell him I don’t have anything in common with these people. I didn’t tell him I wanted to go home. He must’ve seen it on my face.
“Everybody loves you, you know? They think you’re cool as shit.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Really. They’re all upstairs saying they’re too lame for you. They think you ditched us and walked home. Jess sent me to find you.”
Rad’s face is all angles and planes. There’s nothing soft about him. He juts out all over—hip bones, backbone, elbows, knees. When he runs, he looks like a jackknife folding and unfolding.
“I can’t leave,” I said. “My house is like ten miles from here.”
His laugh reminds me of my dad’s: high and warm and light. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said. “Unless you’re wasted, Kylie’s parties are boring as hell. You didn’t smoke with them, did you? Good. That shit stays in your system. Coach’ll kick you off the team. This’ll get you kicked off, too.” He pulled a small bottle of clear liquid from his jacket. “But I won’t tell if you don’t,” he said, offering me the first sip.
Whoever says vodka has no taste is a liar. It’s like drinking hairspray, but it’s worth it. After my face stopped seizing, I sat back and let its queasy warmth ripple through my belly and out into my limbs.
“They’re all basically good guys up there,” Rad said. “Everyone’s just nervous around you.” He raised his hand. “Wait. Don’t take that the wrong way. You’re not like the other girls. They’re—”
I twisted my bracelet and thought of Madeline. “Normal?”
Rad made a face like I was crazy. I shrugged and took another sip.
We talked cross-country for a while and then we got onto music. I’d like to think it was New Ellie talking, but I know it was the vodka (and that I thought Rad was gay) that kept me from saying anything stupid or out of place. He’d been standing the whole time—hands in pockets, legs crossed—so I scooted over, making room on the couch, and said, “You can sit down if you want. I promise I won’t bite. I won’t try to kiss you, either.”
Rad kicked the coffee table leg like he was testing its sturdiness.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“Which one? The biting or the kissing?”
“Both.”
He lowered his body next to mine and rubbed his palms on his thighs, and that’s when I knew Madeline had been wrong. A current passed between us, a pulling, like magnets just barely touching. He offered me the bottle again, and this time I didn’t hesitate—I took a good, long drink. Upstairs, it sounded like some of the boys were wrestling. Someone had let the dog in and it barked and barked until someone put it back out. There was stomping and shouting and laughing, but Rad and I were fixed to the couch. We talked for what seemed like hours and would’ve kept talking if Duggers hadn’t come barreling down the stairs with a fire extinguisher, threatening to put us out. Nothing happened, I swear. I’m still a good girl on the outside, but inside I know what it’s like to want someone so badly it hurts. Not like with Madeline. She’s my sister. This is different.
forty-seven
I heard it from Autumn first, at the lockers, after homeroom.
“So what’s the deal with you and Rad?”
I kept my eyes glued to the Pegasus sticker I’d slapped on my binder the first day of school and tried not to smile. “Nothing.” I shrugged. “Why?”
“Something’s going on. Everybody’s talking about you two.”
She’s right. They are talking about us. Ellie and Rad. A giddy current trickling through the halls. They’re not saying anything bad, nothing gross. Just that we were alone in Kylie’s basement for a really long time. We’d be so good together, they say. Wouldn’t we make a cute couple? That’s what Jess thinks. In English, she poked me with her pencil and flashed her toothy smile. “He needs to ask you out.” Like I don’t already know that. Like I’m not dying inside, hoping Rad knows it, too.
I saw him a lot in the halls today. More than usual. I think it’s a good sign, the way his hand shot up over the sea of heads, the way his eyes lingered. Madeline says I shouldn’t get attached. There are things I don’t understand. I do understand. She’s paranoid. She doesn’t know everything.
We didn’t have practice today. I thought about not getting on the bus and finding Rad and pretending I’d missed it, so I could go to his house and call my mom. I didn’t though. Old Ellie would’ve flooded his locker with notes. Old Ellie would’ve hounded him for his phone number or just looked him up in the phone book. I would’ve called his house and begged his mom to tell him I’d called. And if I didn’t hear back in five minutes, I would’ve kept calling until someone took the phone off the hook.
When I got home, I downloaded all his favorite music on my MP3 player and added all the movies he raved about to the DVD queue. I know where he lives. I found his address and mapped it on the Internet and then zoomed in on the satellite view. The photo was taken in summer when the trees were full of leaves and the grass was deep green. It’s a big house with three chimneys and a circular drive and an in-ground pool—the only one in town.
Elanor Lane. It has a nice ring to it. Better than Moss. My mother was right about life, about my life: I have so much to live for. Priscilla Hodges. Natalie Paquin. Jackson Middle. It all seems like a lifetime ago. I still have the scars to remind me. But even they’re fading.
forty-eight
I want what we share to be perfect and true. Freshly fallen leaves. Clear, crisp mountain air. Darkly scented pines. Instead we get a condom wrapper on the trail, dishwater-gray skies, and Coach’s belly jiggling obscenely. Suddenly everything seems grotesque and distorted, like seeing the world in a fun-house mirror. I concentrate on the sun dying beyond the trees and a V of geese honking and flapping.
We’re not a couple yet—it’s not official—but when Rad passed me in the woods, he turned and smiled, and there was something different, something knowing and sweet. Rad is pure. His heart pumps blood to his cheeks. His knuckles turn blue from the cold. He’s not like other boys. Boys like Brent—always pulling at his crotch—or Joel, with his pockmarked cheeks and creepy eyes. I want to slap boys like that, boys who crack up over a condom wrapper on the trail, boys who talk about tapping girls like we’re kegs of beer. I can smell them—the raw stench of adrenaline—and it makes me sick. They cut their eyes at me and elbow Rad, and Rad smiles uneasily, and my face burns and I hate them.
Why do they have to desecrate what is good and absolute? I turn away, pretending not to hear, refusing to let them pollute us. It’s like we’re in color and everything else is in black-and-white. I will not let them cast their dark shadow over us. When Rad passes, I barely resist the urge to take his hand and run with him, faster and faster, away from here, away from the monsters, threatening and spiteful, waiting to devour us.
forty-nine
I’m still grounded but my mother didn’t have the heart to hang up on Rad—the first boy ever to call our house. I knew it was coming. He’d found me in the library, slouched behind a skinny book by the poet who locked herself in the garage with the car running. Autumn must’ve told him where I disappear to everyday. No one else knows where I go, or how I’m good friends with the librarian now. Ms. Merrill thinks I’m smart and loans me books—poetry, mostly—from her personal collection. She’s got good taste. Probably because she’s young. Just looking at her, you’d never guess she was a librarian. She doesn’t act like one. She rides a motorcycle to school. Not some big hulking thing, but one of those streamlined ones that sounds like an angry swarm of insects. She keeps her helmet on her desk, next to the stapler. Sometimes she brings out coffee from the French press she keeps in back, and we sit together and talk about books and writers and stuff.
Rad likes books, too, just not poetry. I told him he’s probably never read anything good. I’m not talking a
bout the crap they make you memorize for English, poems about urns and sailors and May mornings. I read him one about dreams festering and exploding, and another one about a guy selling hot dogs in a ghetto, and then he read me some song lyrics, which are like poetry, too, he said.
I know it sounds corny, but that’s what we did all night. I read him poems, and we talked about their meaning, and then we talked about Rad, his life, his family. The conversation was pretty one-sided because I didn’t want to scare him off. I’m a freak and my life is even freakier. I learned a lot about him, though, that his mom and dad are still married and teach at the college where my mom is taking classes. That he has two older brothers, Tim and Miles. One’s engaged and lives in Boston, and the other is a senior. Rad isn’t into sports, just cross-country, and he rides a snowmobile, which he promised to take me out on. And he plays piano—there’s a keyboard in his room. He was playing a song when my mother got home. I thought she’d have an aneurism when she heard me still on the phone. But she just poked her head in the door and smiled, and whispered, “Not too late, okay?”
I would’ve talked all night, but Madeline was getting restless, bored. When she started kicking me to get off the phone, I said good-bye. For the first time since the accident, I feel something for someone other than my sister, and I think it scares her. She’s afraid I’ll break the spell, jinx us in some way. Don’t get attached, she says. You’re going to get hurt. But I know she’s not thinking of me. She’s thinking of—
I’m trying to protect you.
From what?
Everything. The boy. He’ll never understand you. Not like I do.
But I think I—
Listen to ME. Your heart is—
Stop looking at my scars. I would never do that. Not again. Not over anyone.
That’s not what I mean. You can’t understand. You’re not ready. Not yet.
fifty
I can spend hours on the phone every night with Rad, but I can’t go out with my friends on Halloween. My mother makes no sense. It’s my favorite holiday. I love it more than Christmas, more than my birthday.
“I thought this was what you always wanted for me,” I said. “Friends, a life…”
“Lose the attitude,” she said, then shook her head like she was sorry. She’s not sorry. She’s enjoying this, ruining my shot at happiness.
“I know what teenagers do on Halloween and you’re not going. You’re in enough trouble with me. I don’t need you getting in trouble with the police. End of discussion.”
It’s all her fault, what I did at the party. She’s the one who wanted me to go in the first place. What did she think we were going to do, sit around and play games all night? That’s the kind of party Autumn would throw. Kylie’s one of the popular girls. This is what they do. This is what my mother wants me to be. She’s been telling me my whole life that I need to jump in, take risks, believe in myself and others will believe in me.
“I had a drink. One drink. Why are you acting like it’s a federal crime?”
“I said no. Don’t ask again.”
Everybody’s meeting at the Farm Supply lot. They’re probably there now, with their shaving cream and eggs and Silly String. Jess and Derek, Kylie and Brent, Duggers and Joel and Rad. This could’ve been the night, my night. What if Rad was planning to kiss me?
She can just forget about me helping carve the pumpkin. She’s down there now, making popcorn, filling the candy bowl for trick-or-treaters. We’ve had exactly two: the girls from wherever. I think it was them, dressed as fortune-tellers. I doubt we’ll get any more, not on this road.
I hate her. I hope some knife-wielding psycho in a hockey mask comes to our door and stabs her a million times.
That’s cold.
Why are you siding with her?
Madeline says I’m not being fair. She says my mother’s confused right now, torn. She wants me to go with my friends, but she’s worried. So much has happened: my father’s death, my head injury, the move, college, her pregnancy. She’s under a lot of stress right now. She thinks she’s doing the right thing, setting boundaries.
Let’s go down and help her with the pumpkin.
Nice costume. Very funny. You know my mother’s going to blame me—right?—for putting holes in her good sheet.
C’mon.
You go. I’m tired. I’ve done everything my mother has asked. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time coming up with a costume. This is the first year I haven’t dressed up. I love Halloween for the free candy and the horror-movie marathons, but more than that, I love it because it’s the one day when you get to be whoever you want. Last year I went as a Rocker Chick. The year before that, I was a Hippie. When I was little, I dressed as a Princess three years in a row. My mother couldn’t talk me out of it. It’s what I wanted to be. This year was hard. I couldn’t think of anything. What do you go as when you are who you want to be? This year I went as Elanor Moss. I went as Miss Popularity. Cross-Country All-Star. Honor Roll Student. The Future Mrs. Lane.
Unless you talk to my mother. She thinks I went as a Ghost. I can hear her down there now, freaking out about her stupid sheet.
fifty-one
The doctor heard two heartbeats. They’ll do an ultrasound to be sure. This changes everything.
fifty-two
Someone wants to kill me. I don’t understand. What did I ever do to anybody? What did I do to deserve a note in my locker that says I must die? ELANOR MUST DIE. That’s what was printed on the pink sheet of paper, in a font nobody uses. DejaVu Sans, I think. I’m sure it’s the same demented person who drew the picture in the girls’ bathroom. It has to be.
Rad said it’s a joke. Somebody messing with me. That’s all. Don’t freak out.
He doesn’t know it’s not the first time. He doesn’t know about the baby eating the baby on the bathroom wall. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to explain what the picture meant, how I knew it was meant for me.
I can’t concentrate. I failed a test in math. I kept reading the note over and over under my desk. Why would someone write something like that? I’m nice to everybody. I have friends. No one wanted to kill me when my life sucked. When I wanted to die, no one wanted me dead. I had to try to do it myself. Maybe it’s someone like Old Ellie, someone with nothing, someone with no one. I used to hate girls like me—New Ellie—because they had what I wanted: a life.
Don’t freak out. How can I not freak out? How can I not take it seriously? Rad’s being naive. My fear isn’t irrational. Stuff like that goes on all the time. You see it on TV, in the breaking news and in the crawlers:
Bully Poisons Classmate.
Troubled Boy Apprehended in School-Shooting Rampage.
Teen Dies from Knife Wound.
Just because we live in a Podunk town doesn’t mean it can’t happen here:
Girl Stabbed 17 Times with Pitchfork.
Friend Says, “I’m Pretty Sure She Wanted a Closed Casket.”
It never comes out of nowhere. There’s always a journal hidden in a closet or the bottom of a book bag. Sometimes it’s a drawing of the killer mowing everybody down.
Other times it’s a simple note warning the victim that someone’s out to get her.
fifty-three
I don’t know where I stand with Rad. We talk all night, every night, but he doesn’t act like Derek acts with Jess, he doesn’t act like Brent acts with Kylie. He never puts his arm around me. He’s never tucked his hand in my back pocket or hooked his thumb through my belt loop or pressed me up against a locker. I think we’re a couple, but I’m not sure. How can I tell? On TV, it’s always the fidgety boy doing the asking. Maybe that’s not how it works in real life. Maybe in real life you meet at a party and then talk on the phone for hours every night and then eventually you kiss and then you are going out. Except we haven’t kissed. Not yet. What if tomorrow he decides to stop calling me and calls another girl. Then what?
He did introduce me to his parents at the last cross-country mee
t. I think that counts for something. His father was nice—he shook my hand—but his mother stood back, her lips curling like I was some diseased skeeze. That means she thinks I’m his girlfriend, right?
Maybe my expectations are too high. I should be happy he’s not pressuring me to have sex. I know Jess has, and if she hasn’t, she’s planning to soon. You can just tell by the way she sits on Derek’s lap, the way he pushes the hair from her ear and whispers things that make her slap at him. We’re a long way from that. We’ve never even held hands. We sit together on the bus on the way to meets, and we sit together going home. It’s always dark then, and once I tried to touch his leg, but he flinched.
See? I told you.
Told me what?
Never mind.
fifty-four
Autumn’s been dressing a little nicer lately, like she’s starting to care about herself or trying to impress someone. I don’t know who she would’ve been trying to impress today. It was just me and her, in her freezing clubhouse with the plywood floor and the beanbag chairs, trying to stay warm inside a couple of musty old sleeping bags she’d dragged up from the basement. It seemed grungier than last time—the clubhouse—or maybe it was the lack of light. We haven’t seen the sun in days. And it smelled bad, too, like the deer that’s rotting on the path with an arrow sticking out of its neck.
“You want me to put on some music?” Autumn asked, lighting a tea candle, strong and flowery to help with the darkness and the smell.
I didn’t want to listen to music. I wanted to talk. I’m not grounded anymore and I needed someone to listen to me—that’s why I was there. Autumn’s the only one I trust. Jess has a big mouth, and Kylie tells everything to Jess, and Rad went to visit his brother in Boston. I trust my sister, but she doesn’t understand what I’m going through because she’s never lived. She keeps telling me there’s a plan. Everything that’s happening is happening for a reason. But everything that’s been happening is keeping me up at night. I can’t help it. I worry. That’s just me.
The In-Between Page 10
