Phoebe Will Destroy You

by Blake Nelson

  I settled my head back down. Just a few more minutes, I thought. She continued to stare into the soft light of her phone. It was odd how blank her face was. Wasn’t she happy about what had just happened?

  “You’re sure you want me to go?” I said.

  She nodded her head yes. Which didn’t feel so great. But she probably had her reasons.

  So I did it. I forced myself to a sitting position. I swung my legs out of the bed and stood. I untangled my ripped Dickies and put them on. I slipped on my Happy Bubble shirt. Phoebe hadn’t moved. She typed something into her phone with her thumbs.

  “Who are you texting?” I asked.

  Phoebe didn’t answer. I buttoned my shirt. I felt my cheek. The Band-Aid was still there. It didn’t hurt as bad as it had before. “Hey, thanks for patching me up,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, without looking up.

  “Okay,” I said, when I had all my clothes on. “I guess I’ll go.”

  She finally glanced once in my direction. “Give me a kiss?” she said.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” I said, grinning. I lay across the bed and touched her hair and kissed her lips. It was an amazing kiss. All of Phoebe’s kisses were amazing. So warm and soft, but also with just the right amount of pressure and never trying too hard or going too fast, just perfectly relaxed, and in her slow, sensual rhythm.

  “You’re really good at that,” I whispered, brushing her hair away from her face with my fingers.

  When she didn’t respond, I lifted myself off the bed. I stood and watched her for another few seconds. She shut off her phone and set it down on the table beside her. “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye,” I said back. I turned and walked through the kitchen. I opened the front door and went outside.

  The air was colder than I was expecting. Low clouds had rolled in, and a light mist was visible in the one streetlamp on the block.

  As I walked down the driveway, my head began to hurt. And my bruised knee made each step painful. Phoebe’s presence had made me forget my injuries, but now that I was alone, I could feel myself again. I hobbled into the street and limped along as best I could. The misty wetness swirled in the streetlight. You could see the actual water particles. What a strange and mysterious world, I thought. And at its center was a person I was now joined with forever. Phoebe. Phoebe Garnet. I was in love with the most extraordinary girl I’d ever known. It was like I had entered a new phase of my life. The phase where my dreams came true. Where the impossible was possible. Where a guy like me got a girl like that.

  * * *

  I couldn’t move very fast. Every part of me hurt. It took me ten minutes to get to the highway.

  There weren’t many cars out at that hour. As I stood at the intersection, an oversized pickup truck turned toward me off the highway and rumbled down Phoebe’s street. I could see the driver in his cab, a big, burly guy in a baseball cap. I continued to watch the truck as it slowed for the individual stop signs.

  I went back to watching the traffic light. When the WALK sign came on, I limped across the highway and began the two-mile hike back to the Reillys’. It took a while, but I made it, and when I got to the basement door, I paused for a moment. I turned and looked into the dark, silent forest behind the house. I would remember this night for the rest of my life, I knew. I already loved Phoebe in a way I didn’t know was possible. More than Kate even. More than anyone.

  And it had only just begun.

  33

  Justin was at work the next day, without a scratch on him. He’d escaped the prep guys by locking himself in the maintenance room next to the bathrooms under the Promenade. Being tourists, they couldn’t find him at first, and when they did, they couldn’t get him out. They pounded on the thick metal door, but Justin just sat there patiently, playing solitaire on his phone with his three fingers like he does.

  I gave him a short version of what happened to me—leaving out the part about being with Phoebe. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him that. I guess I was afraid it would ruin it somehow, or he might tell me something I didn’t want to hear. He had acted so lukewarm about her the night of the Fourth of July party.

  Anyway, there was no time to talk. We had a million customers that day. We ran around vacuuming and windexing. Needless to say, I kept seeing Phoebe in my mind, not an exact picture, more like a pale blur of softness and warmth, the feeling of being so close to someone, so connected, so entwined. Like the morning I found her on the beach, there was a vague feeling of unreality to it all. Like had I really been there? In her bed? Had that part really happened? But it had. I knew it had. I could still feel it in my body. I could still smell it on my skin. Phoebe was all over me.

  I thought about her life, making her T-shirts and being so cute and being in love with me (I hoped) and me being in love with her (totally). I wondered if she could teach me how to make T-shirts. I’d rather do that than vacuum. Maybe I could live with her for the rest of the summer, and help her and her mother with their business. But no, that wasn’t realistic. That was too much. I had to be careful with Phoebe. She wasn’t going to tolerate too much mushy stuff, or me trying too hard to involve myself in her life.

  So I went back to remembering how she smelled, the taste of her neck and her lips, the feel of her bare skin under my fingers. And how she touched me and how I touched her. And how her eyes looked when we were pressed together, so intense and quiet and whispery in her bed.

  I imagined going to her house some morning. I would sit in her work space, leaning back in a chair and drinking coffee, while she made trucker hats and told me about her life. Outside the birds would chirp; the sun would shine. Maybe I could think up some new slogans for her T-shirts, something better than “Life’s A Beach.” Then later, at night, we’d drink wine in her kitchen and talk, and she’d smoke cigarettes in her sexy way, though of course I would need to work on her about her smoking. I mean, it looks cool, but it’s terrible for you and gives you cancer. Phoebe getting cancer, that would kill me. I couldn’t even let the thought into my mind. Instead, I pictured Phoebe in her workroom, surrounded by her T-shirt boxes, gliding from table to table and saying odd, sarcastic things. She always put up this bored exterior, but you knew some inner part of her was happier than that. How else could she be so cute, so funny, so sexy? She was like a child, in a way, innocent and yet not innocent, but still smart enough to keep the world at a distance. That was the part that really drew you in. Her separateness. That elusive, unknowable quality. What did she think of me? What did she think of anything? It was a mystery. A mystery you wanted to crawl inside of and be ecstatically confused by for the rest of your life.

  * * *

  When I got off work, I didn’t feel like being around people, so I slipped out right at six and walked to the beach. I didn’t have Phoebe’s phone number. That was weird. How did I forget to ask for her phone number? And why hadn’t she offered it?

  Another thing was Nicole. If Phoebe became my girlfriend, I would be hanging out with Nicole a lot too. Which was fine. The three of us would do things, drive places in their Jeep, though to be honest, the Jeep seemed a little unsafe. And Nicole’s driving, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But I did like how Nicole took charge of things. And her attitude in general: yakking and loud and funny . . . and sexy when she wanted to be . . . and a holy terror at other times.

  But back to Phoebe: Hopefully, we’d spend most of our time alone. We’d go for walks on the beach, a blanket over our shoulders. I would put my arm around her waist and smell her hair and tell her about my life in Eugene. Maybe she would want to visit me there once school started. She could hang out at my dad’s house—there was plenty of space; we had two empty bedrooms now. What if she wanted to come live with us? She totally could. And she could go to college. Oh my God, why hadn’t I thought of that before? She could come live with us, and she could go to school and learn about clothes or fashion or whatever. Because that was another thing about Phoebe: Sh
e always looked fantastic. From the moment I first saw her, my eye always went to her first, not Nicole, who dressed in obvious party-girl clothes that any Seaside girl might wear. Phoebe actually had a style all her own. And the way she moved, like when she was dabbing my face with the alcohol, there was that super-cute, girlish quality to her gestures. And how incredible it felt to be the receiver of those gestures. Like in the bathroom, when she put the Band-Aid on my face and then touched my shoulder and my neck and my hair. And her lips, grazing my lips, the lightest possible touch, oh my God, I couldn’t think about that without my heart practically exploding. And then into her room, into her bed. To be so close. To be so in love. To be making love. Because that’s what it felt like: making love, drowning in love, being devoured by love. And letting yourself feel it. All of it. Letting yourself go. Losing yourself completely . . .

  But yeah, anyway, thinking more practically, she probably needed help with more ordinary things. Maybe she could put her T-shirt business online. She’d probably make more money. Then she could move to Eugene. She could get her own car. The smoking and drinking so much, that was not good. But I could help her with that. Having a steady boyfriend would calm her down. I could do that. I could be that rock she needed.

  * * *

  I walked all the way to Gearhart, lost in my Phoebe dreams. Since I was there, I trudged up through the dunes into the town. It was August, and warm, so there were plenty of people around. The parking lot of the Pacific Grill was full, I noticed. People were driving in and out on the polished gravel. I thought about Jace and our dinner there. That was fun. I’d done a lot of fun things with Jace. And that time we kissed in her car, that had been very sweet, very high school. Maybe we’d stay in touch. I could friend her on Facebook so I could follow her progress.

  And then I realized I could friend Phoebe on Facebook. I pulled out my phone and searched for her. But she didn’t seem to be on there. That was odd. Who wasn’t on Facebook? Nicole was, but she didn’t post much, and most of her pictures were random party shots of half-naked girls falling out of cars or passed out on the stairs at some party. I kept searching Phoebe Garnet, but however I tried it, I couldn’t find anything. I’d ask her about that. Why no Facebook? Wouldn’t that be good advertising for her T-shirts? I’d be sure to tell her that. It seemed like she might not have the best sense for business. I could help. Maybe she could take some marketing classes, while she was living with me and my dad. . . .

  34

  I never mentioned Phoebe around Emily, or anywhere at the Reilly house. When Kyle came back from Oregon State, I considered saying something to him, but I didn’t, even though it made me secretly proud to be linked to him, since he’d been with Nicole and I was now with Phoebe. Though I also knew that the reason Kyle wasn’t with Nicole anymore was because she’d gone too far in the party-girl direction, while he was going the other direction.

  Then one night Emily texted me that she and Jace and some other people were having a beach fire. They picked me up at work. It was getting dark now at nine instead of ten, like it had at the beginning of summer. I sat in the back seat of Jace’s car while they gossiped, and I looked out the window and thought about Phoebe. At the Cove, we climbed down the trail and joined a small gathering of people who already had a fire going. Kelsey was there and Lauren, standing around with some other younger people. Emily’s boyfriend, Oliver, was there, with some of his friends from Astoria.

  Jace had a blanket, and I helped her lay it out. There was beer and marshmallows, and Oliver and his friends had a box of wine. So then we drank and ate potato chips out of a bag, which had somehow gotten full of sand. This time someone did have a guitar, two guitars actually, and since there were only eight of us, the whole group sang and tried to remember the words to different songs. But even then, even singing in the firelight with Jace and Emily and all these other nice people, I kept thinking about Phoebe and how I’d found her on this very beach, and when I would hopefully see her again. I wondered if she might show up here, though Emily’s friends were too young for her, and too nice and too respectable. Phoebe would be bored roasting marshmallows and singing old Nirvana songs with a bunch of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. Or maybe she would be totally into it. That was the thing about her—you really didn’t know. Which was good in a way. You could sit around and wonder about her as long as you wanted, or as long as you had time, or forever if you felt like it.

  “So you’re Emily’s cousin?” said the guy next to me. This was Alex, one of Oliver’s friends. He didn’t look like a Seaside person; he had a nice haircut and an expensive shawl-style sweater like college kids wore in Eugene.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been staying with her family over the summer.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Eugene.”

  “Ahhh,” said Alex. “University of Oregon. That must be fun.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “What about you?”

  “Astoria. Me and Oliver drove down.”

  “You guys come down here a lot?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Seaside’s more fun than Astoria. You guys have better parties than us. . . .”

  “Yeah?” I said, smiling. “So Seaside’s more the party town?”

  “Seaside’s definitely the party town.”

  I smiled and drank my beer. “Do you know Phoebe and Nicole?” I asked.

  “Sure. Everyone knows them.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  He shrugged. “Just, you know . . . cuz they party. And they do crazy shit. And Nicole went out with Kyle. So everyone knows who she is.”

  “What about Phoebe?” I asked him.

  “Phoebe? I dunno. Same thing, I guess.”

  “She seems quieter,” I said.

  “I guess so,” said Alex. “I mean, I don’t know either of them myself. They’re just the people you hear about. The people other people talk about.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I mean, Phoebe. She’s supposedly . . .” His voice trailed off. Then he drank some of his beer.

  I waited for him to finish his sentence. He didn’t.

  “She’s supposedly what . . . ?” I had to ask.

  “I dunno. She’s like . . .” He shrugged, and then lowered his voice: “Sometimes you hear things.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “I dunno. Nothing in particular. Just . . . you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, pressing him. “What do you hear?”

  But now Alex heard the urgency in my voice. He could see the intensity in my face.

  So he became diplomatic.

  “You just hear stuff,” he said. “It’s none of my business. People talk. Nicole and Kyle, when they were together, they were like ‘the couple.’ Every high school kid knew about them. Even in Astoria.”

  “But what about Phoebe?”

  “Phoebe was Nicole’s best friend,” he said, shrugging. “Still is, as far as I know.”

  He was avoiding the question. I had to figure out a different way to ask it. But then I saw Jace walking toward us, which forced me to drop the subject.

  35

  When Jace came over, Alex left. She took his place on the blanket. She was wearing shorts, so her long white legs turned a yellowish gold in the firelight. She was also wearing Nikes. Brand new. She did that sometimes, dressed very prep, even though she actually lived in a tiny house in Seaside. It was part of her plan to escape.

  “Hey,” I said as she settled herself. She had an old Starbucks cup with some of Oliver’s red wine in it.

  “Hi,” she said back.

  I smiled at her. We really did like each other. That was the thing that annoyed me about Emily. Jace and I were fine. We were genuine friends.

  “Have you talked to your parents any more?” she asked me.

  “I talked to my dad.”

  “How was that?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’ll have to go back soon.”

  “Do
n’t remind me,” I said, sipping my beer. I stared up into the night sky and looked at the moon over Tillamook Head. I could hear the gentle rush of the ocean waves behind us. I could smell the salty tang of the sea.

  “Well at least you’re a senior,” she said. “That’ll be fun, won’t it?”

  “Hopefully,” I said.

  “I mean, family stuff,” she said. “Everybody hates their family.”

  “Do you hate your family?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “I mean, I don’t hate them. But you know. They definitely make things difficult.”

  “Are you looking forward to your senior year?” I asked.

  She laughed. “At our school you get senior privileges. Which means they let you drive down to the Freezie Burger at lunch. So that’s a big thrill.”

  “Hey, I like Freezie Burger!” I said. “I wish we had a Freezie Burger near my school.”

  Jace smiled and drank her wine. Someone threw a large piece of driftwood into the fire, and it exploded in a cloud of sparks and glowing embers. Jace had to brush one off the shoulder of her hoodie. Another one landed in her hair, and I had to swat at it several times to get it off.

  She seemed to like it when I touched her. Poor Jace. There weren’t any boys for her in Seaside. Except for maybe someone like Alex. But he wouldn’t appreciate her the way I did. No, I had been her best chance for a summer romance. But I had fallen for someone else.

  Later the four of us, Emily and Oliver and Jace and I, went for a walk on the beach. Oliver and Emily were having a private conversation, so Jace and I lagged back. As we walked, I felt a sudden urge to tell Jace about Phoebe. I had to tell someone, at some point. I turned and looked at her. She turned toward me, too. But I couldn’t say it. Because I knew it would hurt her. It was a painful moment. Maybe Emily was right; maybe I wasn’t handling this correctly. But how was I supposed to handle it?

  * * *

  The next day, after an early shift at the car wash, I went to the coffee shop and sat in one of the cushy chairs with Letters to a Young Poet. But I couldn’t focus. I literally could not get through the first paragraph. So I went for a walk. And as I walked, I got out my phone. I found myself calling Dr. Snow.