Come Back to Me (16 page)

A branch
snapped, and I jumped again, but I was afraid to move.  I felt her there or the
guilt that pressed between my future and me.

The yard was
empty, the swing was empty, but I couldn’t see farther than the wall of
shadowed trees.

What if .
. .

I turned to
run, only to fall.  Scrambling to my knees, I crawled a step until I could get
back up, then I stumbled my way to the house without looking back.

I was in a
free fall after waking up in the middle of my backyard—a fall that took me away
from the tenuous thread of contentment that connected me to my life.  I wanted it
back, but I didn’t know how to access it.  I wasn’t even sure how I got it in
the first place.

I thought
Evan was a way there.

I was wrong.
Evan had only been a distraction.  I still needed to figure out a way around
this insurmountable regret.  Kyle was the key.

But just
hanging around with Kyle wasn’t working.  He was almost never sober and seemed
to have forgotten graduation night.  And it became increasingly difficult to
sit in his cold basement and watch TV when I wasn’t drinking.  I kept hoping my
brain would fill in the blanks simply by being around him.  But it wasn’t
happening.

I would have
to try harder.

“Hey,” I
said, nudging his foot.

He didn’t
take his eyes off the TV.

I hesitated
next to the couch, reminding myself why I was there, but it wasn’t easy when he
couldn’t even look at me.

I’d brought
up graduation several times in the past few weeks, but with no luck, so I quit
asking.  Because grilling him felt wrong.  I didn’t want our relationship to be
only about me wanting something from him.  I was also trying to repair a friendship. 
Kyle was once my friend, too.  Sure, he was Katie’s boyfriend, and he and I
were the reason for all the wreckage, but he also had been a part of almost
every aspect of my social life in the last couple of years.  He was all that
was left of that.  Plus, he probably saved my life by carrying me from the creek
on graduation night,
and
he made me laugh during a period when it seemed
impossible.  Kyle was an important part of my life.  But I wasn’t ready to give
up on that elusive happy moment from that night.  I sat on the couch next to
him. He lifted a hand and placed it on my knee.  Still, he didn’t look at me.

If only I
could put the pieces together myself.  If only I could remember more, instead
of just bits and pieces.  In my memory, I laughed and swatted Kyle’s hands away
from the board, but when I replayed it, I couldn’t even see his face, only his hands,
the Scrabble board, and tiles.  I wanted to know why we were laughing, but all
I could dredge up was something about Godzilla.  Maybe.  The memory was far too
blurry, gray clouds covering my sight.

I pushed at his
side.  “Hey, Kyle, tell me what you remember when we played Scrabble in the
Adler’s library.”

Kyle glanced
at me, his face expressionless, except for his eyes blinking in slow motion. 
“Huh?”

“Graduation
night?  We were in Jake’s library room, and we were laughing . . . um, something
about Godzilla?  I think.  Do you remember what it was, your Scrabble word?”

Kyle drained
his beer, then shook his head.

“Godzilla?”
he asked, his head pushing back, like he was holding in a burp.

I waved my
hand.  “Forget that.  What about the ditch? Do you remember finding me there?”

Kyle
shrugged.  “Yeah.  You passed out, right?”

I nodded,
moving to my knees, swaying toward him, closer to remembering.  “Before that we
were in the library, sitting in those leather chairs?”

Kyle stared
at me and nodded.

I waited. 
My breath was so still that I could almost hear the cold guilt shift further away
from my core, tapping my rib cage like an icicle as it retreated.  Warmth was
so near. Again, it was right there at my fingertips.

Kyle blinked
several times, slowly. Then his chin tipped up, and he laughed.

I had the
sudden urge to punch him in his neck, make him hurt, make him feel something.  Then,
I thought of the angry Katie I imagined in Jake Adler’s backyard.  What did I
think I would do?  Reach inside of Kyle’s throat and pull out his memories?

Defeated, I slumped,
sitting on my heels, continuing backwards until my head rested on the arm of the
couch.  Then I covered my face with my hands.  My fingers tingled against my eyelids.

It was just
another memory that wouldn’t come back to me, lost to a blackout.  All that was
left was a hazy picture, but I would cling to it, because otherwise what were Kyle
and I?

We were just
a consequence of Katie not being there.

* * *

It was stupid
to put it all on Kyle, especially when I recalled the plan he had in February. 
The one he thought would get Katie back.

When he’d
called me a week before prom, I was stunned and immediately dismissed his idea,
because talking to him felt like another betrayal.  Plus, it was
prom
. 
After Brandon revoked his invitation, I had no plans for it.  Really, I was
just so messed up over the Katie crap that I didn’t even care.  But Kyle must’ve
thought differently.  In fact, I’d never seen him that motivated before.  He
was positive that we could convince Katie together.  I didn’t see how showing
up in the Windsor ballroom on Kyle’s arm would help Katie believe I didn’t want
Kyle for myself.  But the day before, I caved, only for the big after-party at
Jake Adler’s house though.  I was desperate to have my friend back.

My careless
hope flared.  A tiny part of me always believed our fight would blow over.  It
explained why I didn’t make any effort to make my own connections.  Sure there
were other people—acquaintances, lab partners, quiz bowl teammates. The kind of
people I chatted with when I bumped into them at Smoothie Palace or in the
cafeteria, but nothing more.  After I screwed up things with Katie, I couldn’t
turn to them, because it felt desperate, shallow.  And Kyle?  After the stupid
kiss, we pretended each other didn’t exist, as if we were trying to prove there
was nothing between us.  Because somewhere inside of us we believed all would
one day be okay.

So when we
got to the after-party, Katie was there, looking like her usual self, well her
new usual self, the one who ignored me.  I wanted to approach her, but I let
Kyle take charge as I drank.  Except Kyle’s plan was beyond absurd—together we were
like dumb and dumber.  I asked him repeatedly when we would talk to Katie, but
he kept pushing it off.  Finally, I cornered him in the hot tub on the deck,
but the moment I dangled my feet in the water to get close enough for him to
hear me, Kyle pulled me in with him—onto his lap.  It was unexpected and weird
(and not just because there were like nine other people in the bubbling water
with us), but because it was Kyle.  Weren’t we supposed to be proving our
loyalty to Katie?

“Kyle stop.”
I pushed his hand away from my waist.  My tank top floated up, and when his hand
brushed against my bare skin, I was shocked.  I looked at him, but his eyes
were dark, reminding me of a shark, not only because he came after me, chick in
the water and all that, but because they looked lifeless.

He was
completely wasted.

“You know, you
love it.” He nuzzled my neck.

I felt a
shiver.  It was part repulsion and part attraction, because temporarily liking
someone sometimes happened when I drank, the beer goggle effect.  But mostly, I
shivered out of fear, not from Kyle but Katie.  I didn’t want her to see us
like that—not again.

I moved to
pull myself out of the hot tub, but with that one turn of my head, Kyle kissed
me.  It was sloppy, and our teeth bumped up against each other.  I shoved at his
shoulders.

Kyle laughed. 
I half expected him to shake it off as another mistake.

“We’re going
to have to try that again later,” he said, then climbed out of the tub,
grabbing my plastic cup from my hand to get refills.

I finally
realized Kyle’s plan was to make Katie jealous.  I stood up, the air turning my
wet clothes and skin cold.  He used me.  I already knew Katie didn’t want me as
her friend anymore, but now, I felt like Kyle only saw me as a means to an end,
a sloppy tooth-banging kiss in the hot tub.  In that moment, I was truly alone. 
Friendless.

Maybe Kyle
thought by purposefully kissing me, he would somehow have some control over the
situation for once (because Katie always kept a short leash in their
relationship), but it didn’t work because, of course, Katie blocked us out. 
She danced, hung out with her friends, and ignored Kyle and me.  Plus, she did
it in such a way that no one knew anything was wrong.  Classic Katie—
never
let them see any tarnish on your armor
.  From the start, there hadn’t been
any gossip about our friendship, or the betrayal.  None that I heard.  Maybe because
it was the end of senior year, when everyone focused on the finish line, or
maybe it was just high school with people drifting in and out of each other’s
lives, switching up friends and relationships.

But she was
the same way when her mom got cancer.  It was like she planned on never
allowing anyone or anything to make her feel bad, upset, sad, or out of control—her
mom’s death obviously did all those things.  I never thought it was wrong that Katie
didn’t want to feel bad anymore.  I just didn’t realize I played a role in her
life—the role of the perfect best friend.  I screwed up with the kiss, and
maybe it was irreparable, but then again, Katie didn’t allow for any improvisation
in our friendship.  She wanted me as her friend but only on her terms.  It was
like after her mom died, Katie couldn’t take any more randomness.  She allowed no
room for mistakes.  Katie lived the last few years of her life carefully
orchestrating every aspect of it, and it all ended in a few seconds in an accident
a couple miles from home near the I-95 interchange.  She reached for the stars,
carefully and purposefully, only to fall.  According to the news online, she
was running errands when a tractor-trailer sideswiped her vehicle near the exit
ramp.  Her car rolled several times, one of the turns landing her upright again
on the other side of the road.  She died instantly, but I couldn’t reconcile
all that steel, glass, and force to a light going out.  Not Katie’s light.  How
could Katie end up on the side of the road staring up with empty eyes at the twilight
sky—a sky dusted with her beloved stars?

I couldn’t
picture it.  I couldn’t accept it.  Because I thought I should’ve known when the
crash happened, like I had some sort of sixth sense about when her light went
out.  She had been my best friend.  Why didn’t I know?

When my mom
came into my room the next morning, I was sick, hung over, with my tongue stuck
to the inside of my mouth.

I had no
reaction to the news about Katie.

I had
wondered what I’d been doing when it happened—ogling my blank, starless ceiling?
My head lolling to the side, because it was too heavy, too wasted to hold up
anymore?

Is that
why I didn’t know?

The funeral
was another numbing haze, mourners at the funeral home, the cemetery, circling Katie’s
dad, like crows over the highway.  I moved with the crowd, blending into the
sea of black, invisible as Katie had declared months before.  My remorse over
our friendship now frozen forever at my core.

I’d already
lost Katie.

And all I
could think about was her mother’s funeral when I left the gravesite alongside
Katie.  She mumbled something about not seeing stars that night, because it
made me look up.  The sky was bloated with dark, heavy clouds.

Around us
the grass, the trees, even the air somehow appeared gray.  So when the tiny red
ladybug landed on Katie’s arm, it was easy to spot.

“Katie, wait.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and pointed out the ladybug.

Katie
stopped and glanced down at her arm, her head moving slowly.

I didn’t
know what I thought.  Too bogged down in the heaviness of the day, my mind hadn’t
gone to the idea of wishes yet.  But ever since that day when we made dozens of
wishes on ladybugs, they signified something happy to me.

Katie just
waved her arm, forcing the ladybug into flight.  She whispered something about the
impossibility of wishes.

Like the
impossibility of Katie coming back to Kyle and me.

At heart, Kyle’s
motives had been good.  Of that, I was sure, but his execution had been so
wrong.

Why was I still
looking to him for the answers?

I walked to
Katie’s house with the book
100 Things to Do Before You Die
under my
arm.  It was the one thing in the box of random stuff Mr. Ryan dropped off that
actually wasn’t mine.  I needed to return it.

In front of
the large oak door, the familiarity pressed in on me.  I ignored it, pushing it
out of me as I rang the doorbell.