by Alex Flinn
“‘Please, Kirsten,’ she was begging. ‘I just don’t know if I can handle it.’
“‘What’s to handle?” I said. ‘Just go to bed and lie there. That’s all you do anyway.’
“The words just sort of stayed there, like a piece of furniture in the room. I tried to say I was sorry, but it was too late. My mother sighed and said, ‘You’re right.’ And she went to bed.
“My birthday’s in February, and that February was one of the coldest I can remember. But we stayed warm, partying, getting trashed. I think I was trying to forget what I’d said to Mom. When I got home, I stumbled up the stairs. It was so dark, I couldn’t see anything.
“But the next morning I found her. She was slumped on a bench in the backyard, where our rose garden was. I don’t know if she was waiting for me or if she just forgot it was cold and wandered out there.”
“Aw, Kirstie, you couldn’t—”
“I’ll never know if I could’ve saved her if I’d been home. But a few weeks later, when I was upstairs cleaning out her things, I found about two weeks’ worth of pills, stuffed under her mattress.” Kirstie’s voice caught in her throat. “I hadn’t been there to give them to her, so she hadn’t taken them.”
“You don’t know that’s what happened.” I put my arm around her. “It could have been old pills. You said they didn’t work anyway.”
“Yeah, I told myself that. And I told myself she might as well be dead, as much as her life was worth. And then I picked up every one of those pills and shoved them under my own mattress. I was going to take them myself, all of them at once. But I didn’t because I didn’t know what they’d do to me. Like, maybe they wouldn’t kill me. Maybe they’d just make me crazy like Mom. When your mom’s nuts, you start thinking you might be too, you know? That was a big part of the problem.”
She pulled away and showed me her wrists again.
“But instead, I did this. I failed at that, too. My sister found me and called an ambulance. I remember her sitting beside me while she waited for them. I wasn’t totally conscious, but I remember her holding my arms, begging me, ‘Don’t leave. Don’t you leave too.’”
Kirstie walked away, over to where we’d been sitting, and picked up the leather bracelets. She started to put them back on.
“At the hospital they put me in, they told me it wasn’t my fault. Everyone told me that. I had individual therapy, group therapy, role playing—all to tell me I wasn’t responsible. I still didn’t believe them, but I decided not to think about it. I decided I wanted to live anyway, just not with my family. A few weeks after I came home, the carnival was in town. I went there with Erica, but I ditched her with some friends at the funnel-cake booth. I told her I was going on the Zipper, but really I went to the circus tent. I found a circus performer who told me how to get a job with them. I lied about my age. I’ve been here ever since.
“What I like about it here is you never have to apologize. You never have to live with your mistakes for more than a week or so.” She played with her bracelet, the one she hadn’t put on yet. “And no one needs you for anything more important than work.”
“So you never saw your father or sister again?”
She shook her head. “Didn’t want to.” Then she thought about it. “No, that’s not true. I want to see Erica. Some days I’ll see a kid who looks like her and I just about fall apart … but if I ever went back, she’d probably hate me for leaving.”
I walked over and sat beside her. “I bet she wouldn’t hate you. I bet she’d be happy to see you back.”
Kirstie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not going back. I couldn’t handle it there. I had to get away, or I’d…” She looked at her wrists.
I did too. “Kirstie, I …” I touched her wrist. “I thought about doing that too. Or something like that anyway. I know how it is.”
She didn’t ask why, just put her arms around me. She held me there a few minutes, listening to the sounds from the fairgrounds—music and laughter over the trees.
“I hate the real world,” she said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Are you still good at football?”
I nodded.
She pulled away from me, walking toward the shadows where the moon didn’t reach. I thought maybe she was leaving, but she came back a moment later, holding an old, squashy-looking football.
“Some kid must have left it here,” she said.
“Poor kid.”
She walked to me, touched my nose. “Poor kid.”
“Nah.”
She held up the ball. “I want to see you throw a pass.”
I started to shake my head no, but she shoved it into my hands, and suddenly, I did want to throw it, for old time’s sake. Even if the ball was rotting and old. I gestured for her to run out, and she did. I waited until she was far away, near the goal line, before I made the pass, predicting where she’d be when it dropped. It didn’t go as far as a good ball, but she ran up and caught it.
She started running the other way. “She intercepts!”
I pursued her, slowly at first, to give her a chance to get ahead. But then in earnest. I caught her on what would have been the fifty-yard line. I tackled her, kissing her. She let me this time. Then she kissed me back. Her kiss was a powerful drug that made me forget about goalposts and the scars on her wrists and what I was going to say—anything but my hands on her body, her warmth against the cool night. I started unbuttoning her jeans.
She pulled away.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Sure. Where? I mean … wherever you want.”
I started to stand.
“No,” she said, stopping me. “I mean, come with me. When I go, we go.”
I realized what she was suggesting and slumped back down.
“You mean, come with you … like forever?”
“Nothing’s forever. But for now. Yeah. Come with me, Michael.”
Her voice was excited for the first time since I’d known her. For an instant, the word yes was on my tongue.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You just won’t.”
“I can’t.”
“The same thing will happen, Michael, whether you stay or not. It’s not your responsibility. And—not your fault.”
She meant at home. I said, “It would be easier if I could believe that.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t know what I believe. But I have to stay.”
She nodded. “Guess that’s why I like you. Most guys, they’re just looking for a way to leave.”
She sat down again on the grass a second. I wondered if she was mad, but then she took my hand in both of hers.
She didn’t move to kiss me again. In the distance I could hear the carnival people even though it was close to three. The lights from their trailers and from Eighth Street kept the stars from showing, so it was almost like daytime. Kirstie guided my fingers to her scarred wrist. I felt the healed ridges and knew she was showing me that healing was possible.
I felt the steady beat of her pulse beneath them.
THIS YEAR
“What will you do now?” Angela asks as we get into her blue Mini in the jail parking lot. She hasn’t spoken since we left the visiting room. Or maybe she’s spoken but I haven’t heard. I’m still thinking about what Mom said, the decision I know I’ll need to make soon: Tell the whole truth, or go.
I notice for the first time there’s people around, cops and stuff. All I’ve seen since I left is Mom’s face, her face the day it happened. All I can hear is her screams, Walker’s falling body.
“What happened to the house?” I ask.
“The house?” But I can tell she knows what I mean, so I wait.
“I’m not sure. Your mother will get it—and everything of his—if she’s acquitted. But I’m not sure what they’re doing with it while she’s on trial.”
“Can we go there?”
She doesn’t ask me why. She says, “If someone
had a key, they could probably get in.”
“I can get in.”
“Drive around back,” I tell Angela.
“Michael—trespassing.”
I’m so beyond caring about trespassing. But I say, “I’m not breaking in. And we’ll only stay a few minutes. I just have to see it. I just have to …” remember.
Angela looks like she wants to say something else, but drives around. I walk to the garage and punch in a combination on the keypad. 323. Walker and Mom’s anniversary. The door rumbles up, and I remember all the times, sitting with Mom, waiting to bolt when I heard it. I feel my armpits get wet under my T-shirt. The sweat is cold in the March wind. I lead Angela through the garage, close the door, and use my key to open the inner door.
Inside feels gray, still. Dead palmetto bugs, legs up, litter the floor like they came out when the house was quiet, then died for lack of food. I picture the floor swarming with them.
“She used to clean so much,” I said, “to keep bugs from coming in. It’s a big house. It took most of her day just to clean.”
“Were you surprised to hear she did it?”
“Huh?” I’m still thinking about the house, but then I realize what Angela means.
“Seeing her today,” Angela says, “I understood what you meant. She didn’t seem capable of it.”
I wonder if she knows the truth, knows I was there and is testing me. I say, “I don’t know. Maybe, sometimes, you just don’t know what people are capable of. I mean, if you’re just getting beat up, day in, day out, maybe you just … snap at some point.”
Angela nods. I walk through the kitchen, dining room, living room. At the front door I look back.
“They left the furniture,” I say.
“It will be a while. This house will be a hard sell, with its history.”
If you didn’t know the place well, you’d think it was exactly the same. But I notice right off that my mother’s embroidered runner’s missing. I start toward the stairs, to my room.
“This is where I slept,” I tell Angela. I can tell the room’s been gone through, maybe by someone cleaning, maybe by someone looking for clues about where I am. Things like trophies and even my Sports Illustrateds are placed differently. I remember the room like I’m seeing a photograph.
“Why are we here, Michael?”
I have to see it. I have to make sense of it. My mother has given me permission to leave, ordered me to, even. I should take it, I know.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say to Angela. “I studied. I slept. At night, I’d be here, hearing them. I heard him hurting her, and I didn’t do anything.”
“You were a kid, Michael. You shouldn’t have been in that situation.”
“Why didn’t I do anything?”
“You were afraid. It’s okay to be afraid, Michael.”
I walk away from her and crank open the window. I can hear the ocean. And then it seems like all the sounds close up around me and there’s silence. I know what comes next, and I can’t be there anymore. I bolt for the stairs.
When I reach the bottom, I stop:
Downstairs, the lights blazed yellow. The runner on the hallway table was ripped. Stuff that had been on top of it lay scattered, broken, on the floor.
My body felt cold, then warm. Then I heard the scream.
The cold heat moved me. I ran toward the study.
“Michael! Wait!” Angela’s voice sounds like it’s at the bottom of the ocean.
I keep going.
There was a full moon the night Walker was killed. That and the lights from downtown should have made it easy to see, even in the dark house.
Easy.
But I couldn’t see. I tiptoed into the study, staring straight ahead out the terrace doors, knowing where I was going, but not seeing. I heard footsteps, stopped, then realized they were my own. Heard my breath in my ears, sounding like the inside of my football helmet when I used to play.
The walk seemed long, but it was really only a few feet. I reached the sofa but didn’t touch it. I looked out the backlit doors and tried to decide where to go next.
I didn’t want to step on him.
I leaned toward the table lamp. My hand brushed something wet, and I recoiled.
“Stop, Michael!”
It was my mother’s voice.
“Michael!”
I’m in the study. All the furniture is missing, rugs, everything. But I stare at the spot where I know Walker’s body was. Know Walker’s body was because I was there. Because I saw it.
Angela, I was there. I…
But I can’t say it. I can’t. Angela touches my shoulder.
“Michael, are you okay?” Her voice comes from somewhere else.
“This is where it was, right? Where it happened?” Even though I know.
“Yes.” Angela points to the fireplace. I see her pointing, her mouth moving.
“Sometimes, I can still hear it,” I say.
What? she mouths. Hear what?
“Her screaming,” I say. And Walker’s body, hitting the ground.
Sometimes at night, and even during the day when there’s a lot going on, the noise around me closes up and goes away and I hear it. The impact.
I hear it now, Walker’s body hitting the floor, then her scream. Since I’ve been back in Miami, I hear it more and more. I try to make myself think about something else, but the sound is stuck in my ears like guitar feedback. The impact of his death.
“I wanted him to die,” I say.
“But that’s normal. He beat your mother. He emotionally tortured you. He—”
I know it’s not normal, but I let myself believe her words, believe that what my mother is saying is right, and I say, “Let’s get out of here.”
And then we’re back in her car again, driving on Rickenbacker, seeing the water on both sides like it’s going to engulf us and swallow up the road. Angela’s silent, and so am I. But I hear it still. Finally, I reach over and turn on the radio. It’s the top of the hour, so I fiddle with the dial until I find a news station.
Jury selection completed in the Lisa Monroe murder trial … twelve jurors and four alternates … opening arguments beginning tomorrow…
“That means…?”
“They have a jury,” she says. “Tomorrow the lawyers will start their opening arguments, telling their side of the story.”
“Will my mother be there?”
“Yes, they bring the accused to trial to watch. It’s part of the Constitution, and it humanizes her to the jury. She won’t say anything, though. First the lawyers make their opening arguments. Then the state attorney—the other side—presents their evidence.”
“Why do they go first?”
“They have the burden of proof. They go first because if the state doesn’t prove what it needs to, the trial stops.”
“And will that happen?”
She shakes her head. “She confessed. They’ll present that confession, the physical evidence of the crime, like blood-spatter patterns, the fingerprints. It should take a week or so. Then her lawyers will present their evidence, their defense.”
“Will she have to talk… I mean, testify?”
“She is their evidence.” Angela turns off Rickenbacker onto the mainland.
“Do you think she’s guilty?” I ask.
“I think she’s afraid. I think she thought he’d kill her.”
“You think that because of what I said?”
Angela nods. We sit in silence.
Finally I say, “Tell me the truth—do you think she’ll be convicted if I don’t speak up?”
Angela turns on her signal and changes lanes before saying, “I think she may be convicted either way, Michael. Seeing her today, it seemed like she wants to be convicted.”
In my ears, I hear the impact again and again.
LAST YEAR
The fair would be there another week, no more. It was in town nineteen days total—started on a Wednesday and ended on a Sunday. Next Sund
ay. The following day they’d take down the games and the circus tent, dismantle the Tilt-a-Whirl and the double Ferris wheel, pack up the petting zoo, and head for their next stop, leaving the fairgrounds a wasteland of trodden-down grass and broken pavement.
“You can make good money helping with teardown,” Cricket told me.
I shook my head. “It’s a school day.”
But it wasn’t school. I’d become barely a shadow at school anyway. It was that I was wondering whether I could do it. To see this place without the lights, the music, and more important, without the people. And to know that they were someplace else, without me.
And the thought nagged at me that Kirstie was right. I didn’t need to stay. There was nothing I could do—Walker had proven that.
Since that day at the football field, Kirstie and I hadn’t discussed her leaving. But I felt the truth between us like a force field. We spent hours just walking around the fairgrounds talking or doing stuff with her friends after hours (Karpe sometimes tagged along, and he said he was becoming more limber). But she never took me behind the scenes, where she called home. I didn’t ask her to either. It wasn’t that I was scared of sleeping with her. I wasn’t. But maybe I was scared that if I became too much a part of her world, I wouldn’t be able to go back to my own.
The night that Cricket asked me about teardown, I tried to talk to her. “Kirstie, about what we were discussing. About staying. . . .”
She put her finger to my lips.
“Shh. Let’s just enjoy it while we can.”
At school, Miss Hamasaki called me up to her desk.
“Michael Daye, I need to speak to you.”
It was Thursday, the day of Alex Ramos’s party, and more people were talking about it than thinking about English. Still, Miss Hamasaki noticed when I fell asleep during a pop quiz and she’d had to peel my blank paper out from under me.
“I’m sorry about the quiz,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“It’s not that—although Mrs. Gorman said you were a solid B student in her class last year, which surprised me quite a bit. But your grades aren’t specifically what I’m concerned about.”
