I can’t trust my instincts. Trusting my instincts gets me stuck in a locker with someone else’s shit in my hair.
I arrive at McCormick’s fifteen minutes early and snag the same booth we ate in last time. I order two milk shakes, one for me and one for Kit, while I wait. If there is a multiverse, somewhere else, not here, instead of sitting and waiting for the horrible moment when I will tell Kit that the accident did not happen in the way she thinks it did—that it’s all lies—we would be kissing. Yes, we would be kissing, maybe even on a bed.
And then she is here. Her face is free of makeup and she’s wearing her K-charm necklace and that big man shirt she’s taken to donning twice weekly, and this way, without any attempt to hide the blue circles under her eyes, she seems even more essentially herself.
I decide I like her even better with her natural face. The red mummy dress last night was a little intimidating. Now she just looks like a girl. My favorite girl, maybe. But still just a girl.
“Wow,” I say, the words escaping before I have a chance to think them through.
“What?” she asks, and sits down across from me and reaches for her milk shake. Takes a sip from the outside of the glass and ends up with a white line above her lip that she wipes away with a napkin.
“You. I like you even with a milk mustache.”
“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” she says, and then, like magic, her brown cheeks get a pink glow. “Listen, your texts, I don’t know, freaked me out.”
“First, can I kiss you?” I ask, and she shrugs and I don’t know if that means yes or no. I decide to be brave and go for it. I switch to her side of the booth, and I put my hands on both sides of her face and I lean in slowly and touch my lips against hers. It’s different than last night. It’s soft and sweet—in both senses of the word—and too short, and when Kit pulls away she looks at me with wet eyes. She shakes her head.
“You’re the one who wanted to talk, remember?”
“Right,” I say. “Right. So the thing is…”
“What?” The way she’s sitting, it looks like Kit is bracing herself. Her hands are in front of her face, as if I’m going to sneak in an uppercut. Why would she think that? Or is she shielding herself from my lips? I have no read on the situation.
“I’ve done a lot of research, and I don’t think your dad was driving that car,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” Kit asks, and her voice is all growly and low.
“Well, I did the math and I studied the blood spatter and the photos and, well, everything, and given that his injuries were ultimately fatal, there’s no way he was driving that car. The newspaper never actually specified he was alone, and I’m pretty sure he was in the front passenger seat. So someone’s been lying to you and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you and please don’t hate me. All I wanted was to solve the equation for you.”
“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t smile or say thank you or slap me, all of which seemed like equally reasonable possibilities when I played this out in my head.
“Maybe he was having an affair, like your mom, and his, um, mistress was driving and that’s why no one told you?” I ask.
“What? My dad was not having an affair.” Her voice goes even quieter. Almost a whisper. Like she is water evaporating.
“There could be lots of explanations. But the how—that’s what you wanted to know, right? The how of it? It isn’t what we thought. And I know you don’t like open loops just like me and this is one hell of an open loop,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Actually, it’s not an open loop.” Still quiet. Too quiet.
“A woman was definitely driving. I can tell by the positioning of the seat that the driver couldn’t have been more than sixty-five inches tall, most likely sixty-four. Unless he was having an affair with a very short man.”
“My dad wasn’t having an affair!” she shouts, and just like that, everything changes. Kit is so loud the other people in the restaurant look over. “And my dad wasn’t gay, you dumbass!”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and hold up my hands much like she did earlier, when it looked like she thought I might hit her. I don’t understand what’s going on. We went from kissing to yelling in fewer than three minutes. I suspected she’d be mad, that I could be ruining things by telling the truth, because that seems to be my downfall—my genetic predilection toward honesty and disclosure. Still, I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought Kit was different from the other kids. That she didn’t hurl hurtful words—dumbass, idiot, retard—at me just because she could.
I was wrong, like usual.
But unlike usual, this feels devastating. Like recovering from this moment is impossible.
“I’m sorry,” I say for a third time. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, other than being too much myself. Kit drops her head onto the table and starts to sob. Her crying is gulpy and wet and unpleasant. I go to pet her hair—because even after all this, even after the dumbass, I still can’t help but want to touch her, but then I decide against it. She hates me, and maybe I hate her too.
My mind races. We will never eat sandwiches across a table from each other again. And when I think about that—the seventy-three school days left in which I will now be sitting by myself, how my world will now be Kit-less—my hands start to flap. I cover one with the other and feel relieved Kit’s face is down. I can’t let her see this version of me.
I recite pi silently so the balloon in my head doesn’t go loose again. I stare at the back of Kit’s neck. Study the curve of her hairline. Imagine drawing it in my mind. Imagine tracing it with my fingertip.
And I wait.
This table smells like french fries and my cheek feels sticky with someone else’s leftover ketchup or maybe jam. Better not to know. I lift my head, take a paper napkin from the dispenser, and dry my drenched face with the little dignity I can still muster. Who knew you could hit bottom twice in one day?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because it’s hard to find my voice. I don’t want to be the girl who spent the morning sitting in her own vomit and the afternoon crying in public with recycled condiments on my cheek. I want to be better than this. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
On the way over to McCormick’s, I resolved to be brave and honest. I realize I can’t keep going, not like this. My mom wanted us to build and then live in a glass house of lies. But it’s time to start throwing rocks. Let it shatter and rain down and cut us all up.
I will say these words out loud, the truth: I was driving the car. It was me.
No. I cannot say anything. My mouth has gone dry.
David stares at my shoulder. His fists are clenched tightly in his lap. He probably wants to throttle my neck. I don’t blame him. My mother was wrong to try to bury the truth like it was a physical thing. As if keeping my name out of the newspaper meant it never happened in the first place. My mom’s job is to spin things, and so she did what she does best. Ten minutes after a doctor told us my dad had died, she was in action, like the covert superhero I always knew she could be—Mandip Lowell to the rescue!—spinning what had happened into something more easily digestible.
We all know this was an accident, she said to the reporter, a grizzly older man with an unruly white mustache who looked annoyed that our family tragedy had interrupted his dinner plans. Why ruin a sixteen-year-old girl’s life? As if my life hadn’t already been ruined, as if reality turned on what people read over breakfast the next morning with their coffee.
Let’s just leave her out of this, she said, and I stood next to her, totally numb, it never once occurring to me to speak up and object. I’m not asking you to lie, she said. I’d never to do that. Just keep it vague enough to let people come to their own conclusions. The next morning, a picture of the accident scene graced the front page of the Daily Courier, and the reporter did exactly as my mother suggested. No mention was made of a second passenger; anyone who read the article came to the natural conclusion that
my father was driving. My mother and I did nothing to correct this wrong impression. One more verbal sleight of hand.
Poof, just like that, I was never in the car, my involvement almost completely erased. There was no follow-up, no additional questioning, just my name on an accident report buried in the bowels of the police station. Apparently people die in car accidents all the time.
My mom said, Dad would have wanted to protect you. I believed her because I wanted to.
But we should have started clean. When the whole thing is not sugarcoated with euphemisms like accident, when my mom doesn’t pat my back and say It wasn’t your fault, when she doesn’t spin the truth. There are words for what I did: vehicular manslaughter.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” David says.
“I knew he wasn’t driving.” I stop, because the tears are getting in the way. I want to do this right, but I am not naive. Words are not things that can be handed over, simply passed from person to person and let go. They are a string. You’re still left holding one end in your hands. “There’s something I didn’t tell you—”
David can be trusted. He can keep my secrets. He’ll help make it better. Hold up the other end.
Maybe this is what I wanted all along when I started the Accident Project—for David to find out the truth, for me to finally be exposed and honest. For me to spectacularly self-sabotage and start over.
When I was little, my dad used to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to me before bed, even that sad second verse no one else seems to know or remember: The other night, dear, while I lay sleeping, I dreamt I held you in my arms. When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, so I held my head down and cried.
The song echoes in my head, in his voice, and it makes me think about David’s theory of consciousness. Maybe my dad lives on in something as intangible as song lyrics. Maybe my dad can be with me when I need him.
When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, so I held my head down and cried. Can I sing that as my confession to David? Those are simpler words. Easier to say than: I was driving. It was me.
“I get it,” David says, before I have a chance to explain myself. “Of course. How could I have missed it? I am a dumbass. You were driving.” The words come out with enthusiasm, like he’s just aced the SATs, emphasis cheerily on the you. He is smiling and his volume is too loud.
This is nothing like those other times, when David’s honesty felt good and refreshing: air, underwater. This time, it’s sharp and cold and precise, like being stabbed, and he whips my dad’s singing right out of my ears.
People at the other tables can hear us. I’m sure of it. I need him to stop talking; I need to undo whatever it is I’ve started. The world begins to spin, and his face morphs from handsome to cruel. I fold over myself. “You were driving, right? Your dad was the passenger. It all makes sense! You’re exactly sixty-four inches tall. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it until now!”
He sounds perversely excited. Like this is one for the win column. Like I should high-five him in celebration: Yay, David! You figured it out—I killed my dad!
“Please, stop. Let’s not…” I am begging. I can’t do this. I can’t. Not here. Not like this, with his maniacal grin and booming, self-congratulatory voice. I understand my mother’s lies. The truth is too ugly. I want to put our string back in my pocket. What was I thinking?
Help me, Dad.
I was mistaken.
I was mistaken.
I wanted David to tell me that nothing could have been done to stop the car in time.
I wanted David to exonerate me.
I did not want this.
“I don’t understand why you lied to me, Kit,” David says, and then his face morphs again, and now he sounds accusatory. There is no warmth to be found. Not even a sliver of compassion or humanity. He’s Hannibal Lecter sitting down to an ice cream bowl full of my insides.
“Please…Please stop.” But my words are lost to the Formica table. I cannot lift my head. The tears flood my face, but I am not crying anymore. I am what happens after crying.
So I held my head down and cried.
Where are you, Dad? Where did you go? I can’t hear his voice. It is gone.
“How could you, Kit?” David demands, as if this has anything to do with him.
“David—”
“You’re like everyone else. A liar. You were driving that night. It was you. You lied!” David shouts, and then, like in a horror movie, because that’s what this has become, my very worst nightmare, everything goes quiet.
Someone drops their fork. I hear an audible gasp.
I had stupidly expected a soft landing. Not free fall.
I was wrong yet again, because of course I haven’t yet hit bottom. Here it is. Even colder, darker, lonelier than you’d expect.
I was mistaken.
I turn my head and that’s when I notice: Gabriel and Willow in a booth right next to us, eating pancakes covered in whipped cream. The kind of food happy, simple people get to eat.
They’ve heard every single word.
I figured the puzzle out. I did exactly what Kit asked. But it was a setup. A wild goose chase. A lie. Her lie.
McCormick’s goes quiet and then there’s a collective gasp. A man I’ve never seen before unfolds his long legs from a nearby booth, comes over to our table. I am supposed to get up and move out of the way, though I don’t know why. Kit is leaving open too many questions: Why didn’t she trust me with the truth? And doesn’t she want to know the math? I have hard numbers for her. Comforting facts and calculations. I stayed up all night for this.
The man puts his arms around Kit and starts to walk her out of the restaurant. The whole thing happens so quickly, I almost miss it. Kit doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t say anything except “Jack?” like it’s a question, even though it’s clearly not, because that must be the man’s name. He looks like a Jack.
I hate him.
“I got you, Kitty Cat,” he says. Kitty Cat is the perfect nickname for her because cats are confusing and creepily smart and can contort themselves. I can see a cat using the sleeves of a sweater like gloves.
“Wait!” I say, but they don’t stop. Kit looks back at me, one last shocked look, and I see that her face is wet and pale, and for the first time I can read her eyes, even though I don’t want to.
And then, only then, when I force myself to make eye contact, do I finally understand what has happened. How and how much I have broken.
—
“Oh crap,” Miney says when I tell her the whole story. I ran home from McCormick’s, so discombobulated I left my car parked in the lot. I am cold and wet from rain and my body is shaking. I’m trying not to lose it, because losing it won’t help.
I don’t let myself think about pi. I do not deserve its numbing relief. I also don’t allow myself to think about Kit’s face, because it hurts too much. Like being irradiated.
“I mean, I was so nervous, I forgot rule number four. Think about the situation from the other person’s perspective. Everyone there heard, Miney. Everyone. What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Miney says in a quiet voice.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You have to know. You have to help me,” I say, my voice thick with panic.
“I’m not sure I can. Let me get this straight. First, you smiled like you did something good? And then you started yelling at her and accused her of killing her father and other people heard you?”
I nod, too ashamed to explain the sequencing of events. I was happy to solve the puzzle and then heartbroken to learn about the lie and then, too late, always too late, I realized I was seeing everything upside down.
“I screwed up,” I say. I notice that Miney’s suitcase, which has been open and throwing up clothes all over her floor for the past two weeks, is zipped closed and next to the door. She is fully dressed. Her hair is combed, and she smells fresh. “Wait? You’re leaving? Like right now?”
“In a couple of
hours. I told you I was going. I’ve been giving you warnings in daily intervals just like you asked.”
“But, Miney, you can’t go. I need you to fix this.”
“I can’t always fix things for you. Honestly, I have to get back to school. I have my own things to fix, David—”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Okay, sorry, Little D. I don’t know if she’ll forgive you, but I think you know what you need to do. You don’t need my help the same way you used to.”
“Of course I do. Today demonstrates that I absolutely, unequivocally need your help.”
“No. Today demonstrates that you are still you and you’ll occasionally make Aspie mistakes.” She takes a quick breath—we’ve never used the term Aspie between us. And yet of course the word fits so much better than David. I’m not sure why I’ve resisted it for so long. So Asperger’s is no longer in the DSM. It doesn’t mean it’s not at least somewhat descriptive of me. “But look how quickly you figured out what you did wrong. The old you might have not even noticed Kit was upset. Or might have insisted that she was being overly sensitive. You’re getting better at this empathy thing. Like anything else, it requires practice.”
“Not for you.”
“Well, don’t tell Dad, but I’m basically flunking physics, so you know, we all have things to work on. Apparently, though, you can learn anything in ten thousand hours.”
“So in one point one four years I might be normal?”
“Nah. Probably not.” She smiles at me, squeezes my arm. “But normal is way overrated. Believe me.”
“I need to apologize to Kit.”
“Yes. Yes, you do. Even though she lied to you.”
“And maybe buy her a present? Like an Edible Arrangement. Or a pair of those odd-duck pajamas that you like so much.” I stare at Miney’s desk. I don’t want to look at her suitcase. Or at her. She already looks gone.
What to Say Next Page 21
