The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  Now I swore under my breath as a bead of blood appeared on my hand. “What am I going to do, Jess?”

  “Good morning. Or, should I say good afternoon, Mr. Beaumont,” Mr. Wallace said.

  Colby had arrived. His face was thunderous, and when he apologized for his tardiness, I could hear anger in his voice.

  “Let’s start with you, Miss Hale.” Mr. Wallace was old — fifty-five at least — and old-school. He always addressed us by our surnames. “What are you measuring, how far are you, what have you found?” he asked Ashleigh.

  Colby took his seat beside me, slammed his notebook on the lab table, and gave me a tight smile.

  “You okay?” I said, eyes on the muscle pulsing in his jaw.

  “What’s up?” Jess asked.

  “Your brother, that’s what!” Colby snapped back.

  “Whoa, there! Him James, me Jessica. Don’t take your beef with him out on me.”

  “I walked Cassie to her class today because she’s not feeling well,” Colby said. “And who do you think I found hanging around, chatting to the kids? Blunt, that’s who!”

  “Maybe he just—” Jess began.

  “Just what? They’re middle-schoolers, Jessica. Middle school! What’s he doing hanging out with them if not getting an early stake in the market?”

  “You three,” Mr. Wallace said, frowning at us, “settle down. And get ready, I’ll be checking on your progress next.”

  Rubbing his wrist as if it was hurting, Colby whispered, “I’ve got a good mind to report him to Chief Turner.”

  “For reals?” Jess challenged him, and then muttered, “Snitch.”

  “When it comes to saving lives? You bet I’ll snitch.”

  I was stuck in the middle of their fiercely muttered conversation, with each of them cutting me glances that demanded I weigh in on their side. I was glad when Mr. Wallace interrupted the argument.

  “Mr. Beaumont, how is your project coming on?” he asked.

  Beside me, Colby drew in a long breath as if trying to calm himself. “It’s okay. I’ve finished the theory section.”

  “And the experiments?”

  “I got an impossible result on one of my tests. But I think it’s because my little sister’s been fiddling with my chemistry set. I’ll repeat the experiments.”

  “Fine, let me know how it goes. Miss Armstrong?” Mr. Wallace turned his attention to Jessica. “You’re focusing on acid rain, is that right?”

  “Yes. I’m comparing the PH of rain in Pitchford last month to the annual averages to see if it’s increasing. And I’m comparing to national averages to see if we’re better or worse. I’ve done the measurements, but I haven’t finished the statistical analysis yet.”

  “What’s the matter with your wrist?” I asked Colby. “Did you get into a fight with Blunt?”

  “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it. Listen, I need to talk to you,” Colby murmured to me. He looked serious, worried even.

  “What about?”

  Colby leaned closer to me and murmured, “It’s … big. I want to run it by you before I decide what to do.”

  “Me, too,” I whispered back. “I mean, I need to talk to you, too, about something big.”

  Mr. Wallace came to stand directly in front of us, effectively cutting our conversation short. “The last two years have had exceptionally heavy rainfall, Miss Armstrong; don’t forget to factor that into your discussion and analysis.”

  Colby scribbled something in his notebook. A reminder to call me later, perhaps.

  “And how about doing a retest in a few months’ time, just for the fun of it?” Mr. Wallace said.

  “I’ll schedule it in my planner right away,” Jess replied. I could tell she was being sarcastic, but he looked pleased at her diligence.

  “Right, then. Miss McGee? How are you coming along?”

  I had no patience for this now. I had bigger things to worry about than the sugar content of fruit juice. “Not well. I mean, I’m feeling sick. May I be excused to go to the restroom?”

  Mr. Wallace looked taken aback but he gave me a hall pass, and even allowed Jessica to accompany me in case I needed help.

  As we walked through the hallways, Jess asked, “What’s got Colby so bent out of shape? He’s not usually so hostile.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was too preoccupied with my own problem to worry much about anyone else’s. In the girls’ restroom, I went to the farthest stall, locked the door, pulled down my jeans and underwear and sat down, trying to summon the courage to look. I took a quick glance, then leaned forward and looked harder. Every inch of my panties was spotlessly white.

  Jess’s head appeared above the top of the partition. She must’ve been standing on the toilet in the next stall. “Well?” she demanded.

  “Nothing. Not a speck. How is this possible?” I wailed. “We’ve only had sex five times. And we used a condom.”

  “Did you use it right?”

  “I don’t know!” It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of experience.

  “Maybe it tore. Maybe God’s punishing you.”

  “I don’t believe in God,” I retorted, unraveling a long piece of toilet paper and wadding it up into a ball.

  “Doesn’t mean He doesn’t believe in you. Doesn’t mean He hasn’t got it in for you.”

  I gave her an irritated look. “Him Colby. Me Garnet. Don’t take your beef with him out on me, Jess!”

  “Sorry.”

  I wiped myself, hard. Backward and forward, and pushed inside a little for good measure, then inspected the toilet paper.

  “Fuck!”

  I’d never wished as hard for anything as I wished for my period to arrive that day.

  “I swear, if I start, I’ll never ever complain about the curse again,” I said.

  “Do your boobs feel tender?” Jess asked.

  I gave them a few experimental squeezes. “Yes.”

  Jess winced. I moaned.

  “Don’t worry – it’s also a symptom of PMT,” she said hurriedly.

  I yanked up my clothes and flushed, watching the water swirl around the bowl. If I was pregnant, it would be my life going down the toilet. What the hell would I do? If I kept it, I’d be stuck in this town living with my folks forever. I didn’t see how I could trot off to college in Boston ready to pop a baby into the world, or how I’d cope trying to get a degree while being a new and single mother. Maybe I’d have to stay and get married. At seventeen! Good guy that he was, Colby would surely pop the question if I told him, but I didn’t think a teen marriage would be a good start to the rest of our lives. He’d surely feel trapped and resentful. I know I would.

  I could terminate it. I didn’t want to think about that — not the process, and not how I’d feel afterward. And what would Colby’s opinion on abortion be? My gut told me he wouldn’t want me to do that, but it was ultimately my choice, right? Only, that would mean I’d have to keep the truth from him, and keeping such a big secret didn’t seem like a great start to our happily ever after, either.

  There was no good solution to this, except that I wasn’t pregnant. Anything else would be catastrophic. At the basins, I washed my hands furiously, rinsing away the smear of red around the picked scab on my hand. I wanted blood in my pants, dammit, not anywhere else.

  “I think I’m going to win my bet about who gets pregnant first,” Jess said, inspecting a pimple on her chin in the mirror beside me.

  “Don’t even put those words into the universe, Jess! You shouldn’t even have said them in the first place back in the summer.”

  “Because now they’re manifesting? You sound like your mother,” Jess said, laughing.

  “Don’t say that either!”

  I had no desire to sound like my idiotic mother who, while I’d eaten breakfast that morning in the kitchen, had dealt her tarot cards for me and drawn one with a lightning-struck tower on it.

  “Ooh, it’s the chaos card,” she’d announced. “It’s the card of
upheaval, of being blindsided. Dramatic and cataclysmic change is nigh.”

  “Well, at least it’s not the end that’s nigh,” I snarked.

  “Have you been feeling fear and anxiety recently?”

  “No, not the least bit.”

  The truth was, I always felt anxious. That was how these stupid fortune-tellings worked. You were always worried about something and going through change in some part of your life, so the “predictions” were always true at some level.

  “Well, you will. Hopes and promises may be shattered.” My mother gave me a concerned look. “Of course, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Bettina says the tower card signifies a cosmic kick up the ass! Now, in numerology, chaos is number sixteen” — she tapped the number on the bottom of the card — “which reduces to seven, and that’s all about change and options.”

  “Are those bodies falling out of the tower?” I asked, peering more closely at the picture.

  My mother nodded grimly. “A male and a female, conscious and unconscious, contemplation and action. They’ve been shaken out of their ordinary existence. That means a loss of control. And see these giant waves and the climbing fire? They signify that the signs have been around you. This storm has been brewing for a while, but you’ve been too blind to see it while living in a tower of illusion.”

  “So basically, you’re saying some shit is about to go down in my life.”

  “Honey, please don’t curse.”

  “Well, this was a delightful experience. I can see why people pay good money to get tarot readings,” I’d said, and banged the door shut on my way out.

  Hours later, with all signs pointing directly to cata-freaking-clysmic upheaval in my life, I was still trying to convince myself that her reading had been mere coincidence.

  “You’ve got to relax, though,” Jess said, rubbing my back in what I guess she thought was a soothing way. “I read online that extreme stress can delay the onset of a period. So, the more you worry about it, the less likely it is to come.”

  “Then I’m screwed, because I can’t relax until it comes! I need to know, but no way can I just march into the drugstore and ask for a pregnancy test.”

  “Hey, I just remembered! My mother has one hidden in her underwear drawer. I could swipe it for you.”

  “Your mother has a pregnancy test?” I asked, momentarily distracted. “For herself?”

  Mrs. Armstrong must’ve been in her mid-forties, and if she and the doc were still doing it — and just the thought of that totally grossed me out — they’d surely be using contraception.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she had a scare, and then before she could use it, she got her period? Maybe she’s keeping it for the day I need it. I can’t ask because she’s told me to keep out of her private stuff.”

  “Why were you looking in there?”

  “She’s got such hectic lingerie. Like black lace-up bustiers and lacy red thongs. There was even a pair of crotchless panties in there! Is it for her and my dad? It weirds me out. She’s too old for sexy,” Jess said, looking deeply uncomfortable.

  For perhaps the first time I realized that other people were also embarrassed by their mothers. We walked back to chemistry class in silence, each lost in thought. I needed to talk to Colby, but not yet. I’d give it two more days. If my period didn’t arrive by Sunday, I’d tell him.

  As Jess passed Colby, I heard him say to her, “Give your brother a message for me: He’d better stay away from Cassie. If he goes near her, I’ll knock his block off.”

  26

  NOW

  Wednesday December 20, 2017

  After breakfast with my parents, I drove into town, and scanning the old-timey facades of the stores on Main Street, I eventually found one selling computers and cell phones. When I showed the guy behind the counter Colby’s phone, he snickered at the idea that they might have a charger to fit it.

  “That phone is ancient, man. I suggest you try Hugo’s on Cabot Street — he stocks loads of museum pieces.”

  Hugo’s Hardware didn’t have an old-fashioned storefront, at least not in the way that Michelle Armstrong and those who wanted the town to have a cutesy feel for the tourists would define it. But none of the snow-blowers, window scrapers and snow shovels in the window display looked like recent models, and the knee-high-sized plastic reindeer nestling in a bed of Styrofoam-ball “snow” was covered in dust and faded tinsel.

  Bells jingled as I opened the door and stepped inside, and a man’s voice called out from the back, “I’m comin’. Just give me a minute!”

  I made my way past a clutter of Christmas lights and tinsel trees, plastic sleds, an old-fashioned wooden toboggan and, bizarrely, a life-size pink plastic flamingo. It was musty and stiflingly warm inside the store. I slipped out of my parka and took in the eclectic collection of wares displayed on every available surface.

  Barrels stuffed with tiki torches, rakes, brooms, mops and fishing rods bookended isles of shelves that were jammed with all kinds of supplies arranged in no discernible order: BB guns, sealed packs of hinges, rolls of chains and nylon rope in different thicknesses, DIY equipment, and jars of zinc cream and hand degreaser.

  An old man emerged from a door at the back of the store and limped over to ease behind the counter, where shelves of hunting rifles and ammunition were cheerfully, if incongruously, interspersed with Christmas cards featuring nativity scenes and doves of peace. He had a narrow face as brown and deeply grooved as an old hickory stump, a full head of snow-white hair, and a beard long and luxurious enough to be the envy of any Boston hipster. He wore a holiday sweater psychedelically patterned with red snowflakes and green reindeers.

  “Hi, hi,” he said, the words sounding like hoi hoi in his old Vermont accent. “Sorry to keep ya waiting. I was just having a bite of breakfast. I’m Hugo, what can I do for ya?”

  As he spoke, an overpowering odor of garlic wafted across to me. I took a step back and switched to mouth-breathing.

  “I’m looking for a charger for this.” I handed over Colby’s phone.

  “Well, let’s see if we can help ya,” he said, making no move to do so. Instead he studied me for a few seconds with faded blue eyes, then snapped his fingers and announced, “You’re Bob and Crystal’s kid, ain’t ya? Name of … don’t tell me, don’t tell me — Mandy!”

  “Garnet,” I corrected.

  “Fer sure? It’s a very unusual name.”

  “So they tell me. Do you have a charger for that?” I pointed to the phone.

  He spared it the briefest of glances before returning his gaze to me. “Haven’t seen you around here in years.”

  “I live in Boston now.”

  “Is that right? And what d’ya do over there in Boston?”

  “I’m studying psychology.”

  “Studying psychology!” he exclaimed — like it was the oddest thing to be doing over there in Boston — and cackled more pungent fumes in my direction. “Married? With a couple of ankle-snappers?”

  “No.”

  “Lonely, are ya?”

  “No! Look, do you—”

  “Now you were the girl who dated poor Colby Beaumont, weren’t ya?”

  I sighed. All roads inevitably led to Colby.

  Hugo rubbed his hands together gleefully and gave himself a small round of applause. “I never forget a face. And nor a name, either.” He tapped a gnarled finger to his temple. “I store them all up here.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Do you know where you store your phone chargers?”

  He stroked his beard. “Hard tellin’. Could be in a few places. That’s an old piece of equipment. We don’t get much call for such.”

  He scrunched up his eyes and scanned the countertop, as if he might find just such a charger there. That part of the surface not stacked with goods — boxes of batteries, key rings, lighter fluid, and a pyramidal stack of bottles of kosher dill pickles — was covered by a huge laminated sign, its corners curling up against the yellowed, peeling tape ho
lding it in place. To go by the services advertised, Hugo’s was a wondrous emporium of services: We sharpen knives, scissors, axes, machetes, garden tools; We fill gas bottles; We pierce ears (only!); We repair screens and replace windows; We Cut Keys! And Pipes!

  Could they tighten the screws coming loose in my head, I wondered?

  Hugo poked about in a few drawers under the counter but seemed more intent on extracting news from me than unearthing the item I needed. “Why are ya back in Pitchford, then?”

  “A couple of reasons.”

  “Visiting your folks, I betcha. How’s your mother’s hip?”

  “It’s her ankle, and it’s healing well, thank you. Could we look for the chargers now?”

  “And you’ll be seeing the Beaumont family, fer sure?”

  “If you tell me where you think the cell phone accessories might be, I could help you look.”

  “Hmmm,” he said, rotating on the spot as he stared around the store for inspiration. “Can you hand me that box up there on the top shelf? No, not that one, the one next to it. That’s it.”

  I placed the cardboard box on the counter, and he blew dust off the top — or perhaps it voluntarily took flight to escape his noxious breath — then opened it.

  “This looks hopeful,” he said, tilting the box to show me the jumble of old phones, wires, adaptors, plugs and screen protectors. “Now, the Beaumonts … Their little girl is very sick, did ya know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cancer’s a right son of a bitch. Let’s see, how about this one?” He tried to disentangle one charger from a knotted bundle, gave up, and handed the whole bunch to me. “One of these should be the ticket.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, seeing nothing that looked like an Apple product.

  “Cassie! That’s the little girl’s name, eh?” He tapped his head knowingly again.