Stay

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I hope this is okay,” I said. “I hope it’s something you’ll like. My first thought was to take you out someplace to dinner. But I thought a picnic would be more romantic.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Just looked into my eyes. But I could tell by her face that I’d done well. I had struck the right note with her. And just in that moment my life was so perfect I could hardly stand it.

  “Mom!” she called over her shoulder. Into the house. “Lucas and I are going. See you later.”

  And then we were walking down the street together hand in hand. And life was just the way you see it in the movies or on TV.

  My life. Was all that.

  “If anybody asks you,” I said, “we had this picnic in the park.”

  We were up in the woods, on the highest hill I knew how to find, looking down through the trees at the town spread out below. I hadn’t chosen a spot looking over the river. Libby might have thought it was a nice view, but I didn’t. Not since reading that newspaper story.

  “Probably smart,” she said. “Parents are weird about the woods, and I don’t know why.”

  “I don’t know why, either. I like it up here.”

  I lifted the checkered tablecloth off the basket. Unfolded it and spread it carefully on the forest floor.

  “Have a seat,” I said.

  She settled on one edge of it.

  “This is nice,” she said, looking down over the town. “I like this.”

  “I hope it doesn’t seem weird to have sandwiches for dinner.”

  “I don’t see why a person shouldn’t,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t exactly think you had a roast turkey or a baked lasagna in there.”

  I sighed out a bit of tension and began unpacking the food. Carefully laying out two sturdy china plates, cloth napkins. I arranged the fruit and the wrapped sandwiches on a third plate in the middle of the cloth. The cookies were in a plastic storage container, and I set those beside the serving plate.

  Then I saw the pink rose, which had apparently fallen to the bottom as I walked. I’d forgotten it. And it was supposed to come first. But anyway, better late than never, I figured.

  “Here,” I said, pulling it up by the stem. “This is for you.”

  She took it from me, her eyes soft.

  “You’re a very thoughtful boy,” she said. “You know that?”

  It made me blush, so I turned my face down. I pulled the two small bottles of apple juice out of the basket and put one by her plate, one by mine. I never answered. I was too embarrassed by her praise.

  “I can’t believe some girl hasn’t already snapped you up.”

  Flustered, I became a tour guide for sandwiches.

  “This is sliced ham,” I said, pointing. “And this is deviled ham.”

  “Ooh. I like deviled ham. And I haven’t had it for ages.”

  I put that one on her plate. I wasn’t sure if I should take it out of the plastic first. Maybe that would have been more polite. But maybe she didn’t want my hands all over her food. By the time I remembered I had made the sandwich with my hands, I had already gone ahead with giving it to her wrapped.

  “There’s also turkey and tuna,” I said. “If you’re hungry enough for two.”

  She ignored the statement and stared into my face as she unwrapped her sandwich.

  “Have you had a girlfriend before?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  The honest answer would have been not at all. Not in any way. But I thought what I said sounded better.

  “I wonder why.”

  Now we were traveling down a less comfortable road. Were we really going to analyze whether there was something wrong with me? Why I repelled girls like the wrong end of a magnet?

  “You do know I’m only fourteen,” I said. “Right?”

  “I know.”

  “Does that bother you? That I’m a little younger than you?”

  “No. Who cares? It’s only a year. And you’re very mature. And you seem to know a lot about how to have a girlfriend for a guy who never had one.”

  I did not wade into the minefield of replies.

  We began to eat our sandwiches. I took the sliced ham, since I figured she was less likely to choose it after eating deviled ham. We ate in silence for a time, staring down over the town. The sun was on a long slant through the trees, off to the west. And I felt unbalanced.

  Turned out I had no idea what unbalanced even felt like. Not yet. I was right on the cusp of finding out.

  “I think I might know why,” she said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why you haven’t had a girlfriend.”

  Her words iced my belly in a heartbeat. Was she really going to tell me what I was doing wrong? After everything had gone so well up until this moment?

  “If you want to know, that is,” she added.

  I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.

  She looked over at my face and seemed to pick up on my discomfort.

  “Oh, it’s not you,” she said. “I wasn’t going to say anything bad about you.”

  I breathed a little. Not much, but more than I had been breathing.

  “Okay. I guess I want to know, then.”

  “It’s just that you have to really think about who you want to hang around with. People will judge you by that.”

  I had a bite of sandwich in my mouth, and I chewed it before answering. I didn’t know who she meant. Maybe Mrs. Dinsmore? But how would she even know that? My intention was to ask, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to.

  She went on to tell me.

  “I really think you can do better than Connor Barnes for a friend.”

  I swallowed hard. The bite of sandwich seemed to hang up on its way to my stomach, and I felt a wave of something like heartburn.

  “What’s wrong with Connor?”

  “He’s just kind of weird,” she said. “And kind of a sad sack. He always has this big black cloud over his head, following him everywhere he goes. I mean, not really, but . . . you know what I mean. I think you’d have a lot more friends if he weren’t with you all the time.”

  My mind had begun to run circles inside my head. I was trying to get a feel for whether this was a “game over” sort of thing, or if I could still think of her as a potential girlfriend.

  “He’s been my best friend since we were three.”

  “Maybe that’s too long. Maybe it’s time to make new choices.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

  “Okay. I didn’t mean to upset you. Just trying to help.”

  We finished every last bite of that meal without finding one other thing to talk about.

  I learned something about kissing that day. I learned it can wipe the slate clean of just about everything that came before it.

  We were lying side by side on the big tablecloth. The dishes and any leftover trash had been carefully packed into the basket, which I’d placed off to the side. Out of our way.

  She moved her face over close to mine, and I kissed her. And suddenly everything felt okay again. I knew there had been something bad back there, behind us. Something had happened and I hadn’t forgotten it. Not by any means. But it felt like such ancient history now. Like it couldn’t possibly still matter.

  I’ve had the same feeling many times since, over the years, in relationships. Some little tip of an iceberg peeks up above the surface. Then it goes down again, and you think, Oh good. It’s gone. I guess it was nothing.

  Only now I’m not a kid anymore. So now I know.

  We kissed for a long time. I have no idea how long. Might have been ten minutes that felt like a second. Might have been a few seconds that stretched out forever.

  She rolled over onto her back and sighed. Not a bad sigh. More of a contented one. She laced her hands together behind her head and looked up at the late afternoon sky through the trees. So I did the same.

  “This is nice out here,” she said.

  “Yeah. I like it out here in
the woods.”

  “You seem to know these woods pretty well.”

  “I run out here.”

  “Oh. Right. I heard you were a runner. I heard you scored a place on the track team for the fall semester.”

  Suddenly, in my head, I was on the team for the first time ever. Really on the team. Not resisting. Not planning to weasel out of it.

  “You run through these woods all by yourself?” she asked. Before I could think how to answer.

  “No. Not usually alone. I have a couple big dogs who run with me.”

  “I didn’t know you had dogs.”

  “They’re not mine.”

  “You run with two dogs that aren’t yours?”

  “I do.”

  “Whose are they?”

  “You know that lady who lives out here in the woods?”

  The silence that followed my question felt weird. It felt much too silent.

  “You mean . . . ,” she began. But then she didn’t seem to want to ask me who I meant.

  “Zoe Dinsmore,” I said.

  Looking back, I’m not sure why I felt safe enough to say it. I guess all that kissing had softened up my brain. I had misplaced all my best walls and boundaries.

  She sat bolt upright.

  “You know her?”

  “A little. Do you?”

  “No. But I know who she is. And I’m shocked that you know her, Lucas. I’m . . . shocked.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s . . .”

  But then she seemed unwilling to finish her thought again.

  “What? She’s what?”

  “She’s a killer.”

  I sat bolt upright, too.

  “She’s not a killer,” I said.

  “She killed two kids. That makes her a killer.”

  “She didn’t kill them.”

  “So why are they dead?”

  “An accident killed them.”

  “And she caused the accident.”

  “But it was an accident.”

  “But she caused it.”

  I could feel that we were going around in a loop, like that traffic circle in Blaine, but I couldn’t find a place to turn off.

  “Sometimes things happen,” I said. “It’s not like she did it on purpose.”

  “She showed up to work on hardly any sleep. And drove innocent kids around. Why didn’t she call in sick to work? Why didn’t she pull over when she knew she was sleepy?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know. My mother fell asleep at the wheel once. With me in the car. I think I was about seven. We were coming back from the north county, and her head nodded, and then she drifted over the centerline and scraped a car going the other way. Just sort of scraped the trim off the guy’s door. She kept saying the same thing over and over—that she hadn’t had any idea she was so tired. She hadn’t known she was about to go to sleep. She couldn’t feel it. Every night I lie in bed and try to go to sleep. And then the next thing I know, I’m opening my eyes and it’s morning. I never feel myself fall asleep. Ever. Do you?”

  We sat there for what felt like a long time. Staring down at the town, which I thought looked less welcoming than it had a minute ago. She never told me if she could feel herself fall asleep.

  “Why are you defending her?” she asked after a time.

  Her voice was like glass. Whatever door she had opened into her life for me was closed and locked now. And you didn’t have to be an expert on girls to know it.

  “I just think things happen sometimes and it’s not really anybody’s fault.”

  “I don’t,” she said. Still like glass. “I think we have to take responsibility for what we do.”

  “So if my mom had hit that guy’s car head-on, and somebody in the car had died, you’d think my mom was a killer?”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  Now she really had my mind spinning in circles. Uncomfortably so. It was dizzying.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Your mom is a good person.”

  “You know my mom?”

  “Not really. But I know she is.”

  That was the moment when my door closed.

  I locked it.

  I could have continued to argue. I could have pointed out that she had decided my mother was an angel and Zoe Dinsmore was the devil without knowing either one of them. And that her worldview made no sense.

  I didn’t. Because I knew she was not my girlfriend and she never would be. So why even bother trying to get through?

  That disastrous conversation had allowed me to look through the window of her and see the space inside. And it was not a nice place. And I no longer wanted to go there.

  “Let’s go back,” I said.

  I got to my feet and began to take up the tablecloth to fold it. Which involved more or less pulling it out from under her. I was upset, to put it mildly.

  “Wait,” she said. “Give me a minute to get up at least.”

  I waited, and she did.

  I folded the cloth, hoping she wouldn’t keep talking.

  She kept talking.

  “See, this is just what I was trying to tell you before. You have to be careful who you hang around with. People will judge you by who you hang around with. And then they might not want to be around you, either.”

  “Stop,” I said. And I looked her right in the face. She was shocked that I had spoken to her so abruptly. I could tell. “Stop talking. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I just want to go home.”

  “What about our date?”

  “It’s over.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  She snorted. Literally snorted through her nostrils like an angry bull. Then she stomped off toward town.

  “Wait,” I said, picking up the basket and following her. “Let me walk you home at least.”

  “I don’t need you to walk me home.” She threw the words over her shoulder, like something she spat out.

  “You might. It’s easy to get lost in the woods.”

  “I can see the town.”

  I was nearly jogging to keep up with her.

  “But when you get down off this rise, you won’t. And it’s easy to get turned around.”

  “I’ll manage,” she said.

  But I followed her. To make sure she would find her way out okay. I didn’t try to talk to her again. I didn’t want to talk to her again. But I followed her until she stepped out onto my street and turned toward home.

  Then I followed her home.

  She glanced once over her shoulder at me as she disappeared into her house. Then she slammed the door hard.

  And that was it. My first girlfriend. My very first relationship. Two whole days of it, and that was that.

  I showed up at Zoe Dinsmore’s cabin at what I guessed was about seven o’clock in the evening, judging by the sun. I was out of breath from running. I was deeply feeling my lack of sleep. But I was far too upset to go home.

  I pounded hard on the door. Raised my fist high over my head and banged with the outside edge of it. The dogs were inside, and they barked a few deep barks, because they couldn’t see it was only me.

  “Who is it?” she called through the door.

  “It’s Lucas.”

  The dogs stopped barking at the sound of my voice.

  The door opened and they came spilling out, lashing me with their wagging tails. For the first time ever, I paid them no mind.

  Zoe Dinsmore looked into my face in the fading light.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  “Why do people do that? Why do they need to make you wrong? Or make you out to be some kind of bad person? Everybody knows bad things happen. I know we’re not supposed to talk about this. I know you don’t want me to. But I’m talking about it. I’m just talking about it. Because I need to know.”

  In the moment of silence that followed, I watched her face. She was looking down at the threshold and her own bare feet. She didn’t look angry
that I had asked. She didn’t look much of anything.

  “I suppose you’d best come in,” she said.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “If they admit to themselves that what happened couldn’t have been easily prevented, then they’re admitting it could happen to them.”

  “But it could.”

  “But they don’t want to admit that. Until it actually does happen to them, they want to be completely sure it can’t.”

  It was a good while later. The sun was nearly down. We were sitting on the floor of her cabin, our backs against the end of her bed. She had started a fire in the woodstove to get her through the night, and we were staring at it. The little cast-iron door was open, and we were sitting there transfixed by the fire.

  I wouldn’t have thought it would be cold enough for a fire in June. But then, I didn’t live in an unheated cabin in the woods. She obviously knew more about it than I did.

  I had long ago told her about my date. I had spared not one ugly detail.

  “So they would do that to you? Just to make themselves feel a little more comfortable?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Even though it’s just a lie in their heads and they’re not really safe at all?”

  “They’ve been doing it to me for seventeen years, kid.”

  “Everybody?”

  “No. Not everybody. Some are more understanding, but the way they look at me is almost worse. I swear I’d rather have the contempt.”

  “Why did you stay?”

  That fell to her floor and lay there for a moment. I swear I felt like I could look down and see the question lying—uncomfortably—on the floor near the sleeping dogs.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Your daughter told me that everybody thought you should go far away and start again somewhere new. Someplace where nobody knew you. And that nobody knew why you didn’t do it. Not even her, and she’s your daughter.”

  “I was born in this town, kid. Lived here all my life. Everything I know is here.”

  “So? If you’d gone someplace else seventeen years ago, you’d know that place like the back of your hand by now. There has to be more to it than that.”

  “I don’t think you’d understand.”

  “Try me.”

  The fire crackled and snapped while I waited for her to try me.