by S. Massery
I glance at the notebook sitting next to my purse on the passenger’s seat. That thing carried me through high school. I filled it, first with letters to Jared, and then journal entries for therapy. Dr. Sayer had me fill two more after that, too, which I subsequently filed away and never dreamed of looking at again. The first pages of my first journal spell out my desperation for Jared. I don’t know if I’ll show him, but I am betting on needing it to clear my head. It will remind me of who I thought he used to be.
In no time at all, I am home.
My mother meets me in the driveway, her purse and keys in her hands. “Charlotte, honey!” she calls. I hug her, and for once, I mean it enough to give her a good squeeze. “Oh, honey,” she whispers. She squeezes back.
“I missed you,” I say.
She inhales and takes a step back, then pats my cheek. “I’ve missed you, too. I’m glad you’ve decided to visit your poor old family.”
I can’t help turning and glancing in the direction of Jared’s parents’ house.
When I look back at my mother, she has a knowing smile on her face. “Your father is out golfing with his friends. I believe Rick is with him.” Rick is Jared’s dad. I shake my head at her when she adds, “And Julianne is meeting me for lunch in a little while, after her manicure.”
“Did you set this up?” I ask.
My mother sheepishly shrugs. “I always regretted what happened between you two. I’m just doing my part to make things right. As right as they can be, anyway.” She leans forward and kisses my cheek. “You have a key to the house?”
I tell her yes, and she waves goodbye, getting in her car and pulling out of the driveway. Within seconds, she’s gone.
I look toward Jared’s house again. Fourteen-year-old me would have never hesitated.
Then again, I didn’t view him as a stranger, either.
I suck in a big breath as I walk across the street. There’s a spotlight on me—a million eyes that are screaming their judgements. My face is hot when I knock on his door, and I can’t seem to kick the slight tremor that runs up my body.
“Coming!” he yells from somewhere in his house.
I wonder how long it takes him to maneuver his house. Is he on crutches? A prosthetic? Is he still wheelchair bound?
When he opens the door, he simply gapes at me.
“Hi,” I say after a notable silence.
“What are you doing here?”
He’s standing. Crutches hold him upright. Where his left leg should be, there is only empty air. I can’t see other burns, but I imagine they’re under his sweatpants and loose white t-shirt. He had rolled up the sweatpants of his left leg, so the fabric swings just below where his leg ended. Or, that’s what I’m guessing.
I try not to stare.
Jared looks haunted, the same way Avery looked when I found him in Chicago a year and a half ago. His eyes are the same, yet harder. Different than the last time I saw him. He’s lost weight, too. I remember how he looked two and a half years ago. I had pictured how he should look now: strong. He is not strong. He tries, though his face is gaunt, and his waist is too tapered. He has such a death grip on those crutches, it must hurt to be standing here.
“Oh, Jared,” I whisper. “Can I come in?”
He grunts and steps out of the doorway.
The Browns’ house is eerily similar to the last time I was here. I think I went over with eggs for Jared’s mom when I was seventeen. She had grilled me about everything happening in my life. I was angry at her, and her husband, for taking away my best friend. Maybe that’s why I told her everything. In the end, we sat at her kitchen table—the one by the large windows that overlooks their big, sloping yard—and she passed me tissues as I cried.
I wander toward the kitchen, unsure, and pause when I see the same table. When she told me on the phone that she wouldn’t tell her son’s secrets, I knew that she had never told him about our conversation.
I turn back to look at Jared, but he’s gone.
“Jared?”
I follow his voice, a string of curses floating toward me, into what used to be his dad’s office. It’s now his bedroom, and he sits on the bed, glaring at me.
“Charlotte, I asked why you’re here.”
I flinch. My toes curl in my shoes. I hate apologizing. I hate admitting when I am wrong. I never have, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s clearly been a point of contention between Avery and me.
And yet, this was my first friend. My dearest friend.
If anyone deserves to hear me beg for forgiveness, it’s him.
“Have you come to stare?”
I swallow. I’ve stared too much. “No, Jared.”
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Someone weak? Someone strong?
There’s a chair in the corner of the room, but it’s too far from him. Instead, I take a few steps forward until I’m directly in front of him. He just watches me, teeth clenched, as I sit down next to him. I pick his uninjured side, because I don’t want to hurt him.
“I’m so sorry, Jared. That’s why I’m here. I came to apologize.”
He just looks at me.
“We talked, and I accused you of—” I shake my head. “It wasn’t fair. I should’ve asked you, and I know that my, uh, outburst must’ve hurt.” I roll my eyes, because I’ve become good at self-deprecation. “I never even asked about you, beyond your leg. How selfish am I?”
He puts his hand on mine. Tiny sparks zap through my body, and I’m so relieved that he is here, that he’s touching me, and that he hasn’t kicked me out of his house yet. “We can talk about it, Charlie.”
I’m back to being Charlie.
I inhale my first breath in nine years.
“Okay,” I say. “Tell me everything.”
He does.
His story starts four months before the Labor Day party at my house, two and a half years ago, in Washington D.C. This was the end of his college career, just a month before graduation. At this point, he knew he wanted to be a firefighter. He had already been part of a local volunteer firefighter unit for the better part of three years, and his degree in Fire Science made him a shoe-in for a paid position… somewhere. His ultimate goal was to become a smokejumper or hotshot out west. They were the real tough ones, Jared told me, who battled the front lines of wildfires. But first, he had to work his way up the ranks.
He met Macie at a bar in D.C., and he was enamored by how she acted: as if the world didn’t matter outside of her friends. He watched guys approach her and be rebuffed. When he sent her a drink, and the bartender pointed him out, she smiled and raised the glass in a silent cheers. He approached her after that, and it was instant attraction.
There was more than just looks that drew them together. They actually had more in common than they knew at first. She was from a small town west of Springfield—maybe only forty minutes from Jared’s house. She lived with her mom; her dad was an attorney in Boston, whom she occasionally visited. They had both experienced house fires as children. It inspired Macie to be a nurse, to help burn victims. She was still a junior, like me at that point, but eager to get out and explore the world.
They started dating right around the beginning of May, and their romance carried them back to Massachusetts for the summer. They got to the point of spending weekends at each other's’ houses, talking seriously of living together the following year—if Jared got a job in D.C., that was.
The weekend of the Labor Day party, Jared had planned on travelling down with Macie to D.C. and moving into their apartment. He had accepted a part-time job working the reception desk of the D.C. Fire Department’s main hub, which would cover his half of their expenses, and he also remained on the volunteer team to get in more structural fire experience.
But then, Macie freaked out on him. She said she had to go home, that they could move the following weekend, and she essentially disappeared on him three days before they were supposed to leave. Jared’s room, upstairs in his parents’ house,
had been packed away in boxes. Suddenly, he was thrust into limbo—something with which I was familiar.
His mother, Julianne, insisted he make an appearance at the party. “The Galstons were so disappointed when I told them you wouldn’t be able to make it. Don’t you want to see Charlie again?”
Jared went to the party, fully intent on just making an appearance, when Macie showed up looking worse than he had ever seen her. She was a wreck, and she blurted out that she was pregnant. Luckily, Jared had been talking to Nathan, and Nathan swept them up to his bedroom and left them to their privacy. There, Macie told him how she had missed a period, and had gone home to see her doctor to confirm her suspicions.
“I reacted badly,” he tells me. “I asked her, ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ and she immediately started crying. That’s pretty much when you saw her trying to leave.”
“Okay,” I say. For Jared, I can be strong. “It’s okay. What happened next?”
“I ended up following her after we talked. I drove to her parents’ house, I begged her to talk to me. It took hours, but she opened the door. Let me in. I told her we could make it work. I said something about figuring it out.” He laughs, but it’s hollow. “I told her we could get married.”
My stomach drops, and I find myself looking at his fingers for a ring.
“We didn’t, Charlie,” he murmurs.
They went back to D.C. and moved in together. She continued at school and held job, and he continued work and volunteering. He came home one day, three months into her pregnancy, and found her in the bathroom. Her legs and the floor were covered in blood. She was sobbing.
I can see this story like flash cards thrown up against my eyes every time I blink.
The tears.
The grief.
The anger.
Oh, I know all about anger.
He says, “After that… it was different. We were just orbiting around each other. There was the arguing, and she…” He shakes his head, dislodging the words from his throat. “She hated me. She told me that more than once. Engaged and estranged,” he muttered. “I moved out shortly after that, and got a job out west.”
Here, he smiles. It changes his face, and I suddenly recognize who he used to be.
“I started working on wildfires. I worked with the hotshots in Washington until I fell off a cliff and tore my ACL.” My mouth drops open. “Don’t worry, it was my left one,” he jokes.
I stare at him, and then at his left leg—what remains of it, anyway.
I start laughing. “You joke?”
“It’s amazing how I still have a sense of humor, right?”
It’s easy to nod. To put my hand on his.
Touching like this should be forbidden. His hand wakes up every last nerve in my body, and that makes me feel guilty. Avery thinks I’m visiting a girl. Is this cheating? Is touching Jared’s hand, talking to him, lessening my guilt, actually something sinister?
“Do you forgive me?”
He nods and traces my jaw with his free hand. It’s too intimate, but I have to stop myself from leaning into his fingers.
“I just—” I swallow, “I’m sorry I didn’t know your story. I didn’t want to know, because I didn’t want to think you were talking to me in the middle of the night when you had someone—a wife—and a baby…”
“Charlie. Stop. If anything, I felt bad calling you when I knew you had a boyfriend.”
I straighten my shoulders. “It’s okay, Jared. It isn’t like we were flirting.”
He leans backwards, slightly, and rolls his eyes. His smirk looks the same—plus a five o’clock shadow, which fifteen-year-old Jared most certainly did not have. “We’re not flirting?”
“No!”
Right?
“Okay,” he laughs. “Just checking. God, I missed you.”
My eyes fill up with tears. Bam. Just like that.
“Oh, no…”
“Jared—”
“Charlie Harper, do not start crying.”
I stand up. It feels good to have some of this energy come out. “You missed me? When? When did you start missing me? When did you decide to come back into my life? Because I sure as hell could’ve used a phone call when I was sixteen. Or, I don’t know, a reply to my phone calls?”
Jared’s cheeks turn red. “I told you, that was a mistake.”
I flinch when I hear Jared’s mother’s voice call, “Jared, we’re home!” Her voice gets closer when she says, “Did Charlie visit? Her mother mentioned… Oh! Hello, Charlie!”
I pretend we didn’t just talk on the phone. “Mrs. Brown, nice to see you.” The last time I saw her, I was seventeen and miserable. Do I look different? Am I twenty-three and miserable? “I should get going,” I say, scooting toward the door. “I’ll… uh…”
“Maybe Jared would like to visit you in Boston sometime?”
My eyes widen. I should’ve figured this level of meddling from our parents. I can only guess whose idea that would’ve been: Julianne’s or my mother’s.
Jared tilts his head. “That might be a little awkward, Mom, since Charlie lives with her boyfriend.”
“Oh! Well, surely he wouldn’t mind an old friend visiting…”
I hold back a smile at Jared’s mortified expression.
“Mom,” he hisses, “you can’t just invite me to spend the weekend with Charlie and her boyfriend.”
Julianne smirks. She has the same mouth as her son, the same straight white teeth and lips. “Oh, hush. You have an elevator, don’t you, Charlie?”
I manage to nod, biting my lip. Not smiling is getting more and more difficult.
“Your father and I have discussed it,” she says to Jared. “We think it’s time that you start leaving the house more.”
“I leave the house,” he mutters.
“To go to physical therapy appointments.”
I blurt out, “That’s it?”
He scowls at me. “Don’t pity me.”
“It seems you’ve been doing that enough,” I reply.
Julianne laughs. “Oh, Charlie, we’ve missed you.”
I look down at my feet. “I’ve missed you guys, too.”
After Julianne tells us about her day, I manage to excuse myself. I practically run back across the street to my parents’ house. My mother is home, and she smiles to herself when I shoot a glare in her direction. Ugh, meddling parents.
Even so, it’s nice to be home and to spend some time with my parents as an adult. This is the first time I’ve been home of my own volition alone, for no occasion other than seeing them—and Jared. I talk with my mother about real things. Now that I’m an adult, we can have real conversations. We’re almost friends. Maybe that’s the way it happens when kids grow up. Parents are obligated to love them, and maybe they’ll like them, too. But then, the kids get older and develop a personality that’s completely separate from their parents. It’s shaped by their life experiences: how their friends treat them, how their bullies treat them, and how they choose to react.
Hopefully, my mother likes the version of me that I’ve become. I hope she doesn’t look at me and think: this girl is a mess. Hopefully she wants to be my friend.
For kids, we grow up and we realize our parents aren’t all sunshine and roses. They have flaws, and they make mistakes, and sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing, either. Even my mother, who is the queen of put-together, sometimes just doesn’t want to deal with any of it. There were days as a kid—rarely—that she’d let me stay home from school. We’d do at-home facials and eat popcorn and watch TV shows like Cheers and Golden Girls that played through the day. I forget about those days, because the bad sometimes outnumbers the good.
Dad talks about the stock market and my 401k, and I try to keep up. In fact, I can contribute something to the conversation because of my Economics background. He smiles at me as I talk.
Mom and I talk about cooking and the weird people we run into in gas stations or grocery stores. We trade recipes.
I tell her about Rose and Eve. Mom describes the new women at the country club who started a book club with her.
After dinner, I wander around outside with my dad.
We go down the porch stairs together, and he puts a hand on my shoulder. “That night…” I immediately know the one he’s talking about. The night Colby got arrested. “It was the most scared I had ever been.”
I swallow. I wish I could say, Me, too. Instead, I just shake my head and look toward the setting sun. The sky is streaked with oranges and pinks. This is the therapy session Dr. Sayer had tried to push on me when I first started seeing her: talking to my parents about my ordeal.
I never managed to open up to them. Not fully, anyway.
“Not for me, Dad,” I whisper. I think, Holy shit, I’m doing it.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised, but something about his expression is open. It reminds me of when we sat outside of Dr. Sayer’s office for the first time, and he told me to get on track to fix myself. “What is the most scared you’ve been?”
I tell myself to keep breathing. “The day Jared beat up Colby.”
He hums. “You never said a word about why it happened. You never even said you were there. We suspected, but...”
I force a laugh. We’re by the tree in the back, where that platform still stands. The tree has grown, and the planks the construction workers had built to help me get to the first branch are now almost out of reach. It’s funny how life moves on when you aren’t looking.
“I was there. I was always with Jared.”
He grumbles, “That boy covered for you about something?”
“No, I decided to come home alone.” I shake my head, because I used to always come back and tell him about Jared’s and my epic adventure, no matter how small. “Our adventure was interrupted by Colby and all of their popular friends. It was too much. But.” Breathe. “Colby followed me. I-I don’t know what he was going to do, but he touched my face—”
