Girl Parts (21 page)

Charlie nodded.

The cop released his shoulder and marched back to the barricade. His partner followed. “Twenty bucks says it’s over a girl.”

David and Charlie sat on the curb and watched the Sakora guys load the last of May’s stolen equipment into the van. They stayed until the street was empty and the green neon clock above the bank flashed 1:00. David put his head in his hands.

“What did they tell you?” Charlie asked

David took a breath. “That they could bring her back. And also make her forget.”

“Forget that you kicked her out?”

“Yeah.”

“She would have come back to you,” Charlie said. “She would have forgiven you. At first, anyway.”

David spat onto the curb. “I don’t think they’re going to bring her back.”

“No,” Charlie said. “Your lip still bleeding?”

“A little.” He stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

Charlie biked home. Pedaling took a conscious effort. Thaddeus didn’t ask him where he’d been, and in the morning, when he left for school, Thaddeus patted him on the back and gave him a reassuring smile.

A door opened, Charlie wanted to tell him, and then it closed again, too fast for him to really see what was on the other side.

David wasn’t in school that day, nor the day after. When he returned, he nodded to Charlie in the hall, the barest sign of recognition. Charlie didn’t know that first day, but the nod would become a kind of tradition. Over the next few weeks, every morning when Charlie came to homeroom, David would nod, and Charlie would give a half-articulated “Hey.” This was the one ripple in the pond of their everyday existence, the otherwise unchanging glassy surface of their lives. David was still David; Charlie was still Charlie. Same as always.

At semester’s end, Charlie went to see the play. Rebecca, who’d decided to rejoin, was brilliant, even though she was only in two scenes. (Willow Watts’s Eliza Doolittle was atrocious.) The program read
In Loving Memory of Nora Vogel.
Charlie waited for Rebecca at the stage door with a bouquet of lavender and peonies, and they walked around to the front of Saint Seb’s, where a group of pigeons, displaced by cars parked on the grass, roosted on the statue’s spokes, along with that old necktie, still ensnared. Grinning, Charlie ran toward them, squawking and flapping his arms. The startled birds burst up in a gray plume. Rebecca’s laughter thundered as he swung back for another pass. The birds were already settling back, except for one red-tipped flutter that spiraled up in a gust of wind.

Then one night Charlie was out riding when he saw flashing lights across the lake. He rode down the hill toward a pair of police cruisers. David’s Cadillac had run off the road and was nearly into the lake. The front end was half-submerged. The guardrail was broken, and a pair of tracks drew straight muddy lines from the road to the bank. Otherwise there didn’t seem to be much damage. David sat on the back bumper of the ambulance, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, looking pale but unharmed. The car was only partway submerged; David must have regained control enough to brake before driving all the way into the water. But from Charlie’s vantage point it looked like the lake stopped the car, as if the water wasn’t water but an impermeable barrier the luxury automobile didn’t have the strength to shatter.

There was water in the Caddy’s engine, and the onboard computer was permanently fried. David suffered worse from his parents.

“Were you drinking?”

“He’s high right now! Look at his eyes!”

“You
terrified
us.”

“Do you see what you’re doing to your mother?”

David stared at the ground.

“You’re grounded,” said Mr. Sun. Then, into his headset, “No, not you, Larry. Talking to the kid.”

The grounding itself wasn’t so bad — only a week. David guessed they felt guilty. Sakora had been their bad idea, after all. It was their fault he was depressed. Or so he
let them think. And he was depressed. He didn’t need Dr. Roger to tell him that.

He walked at night, something he’d never done before. On foot it was difficult to find his way. He’d memorized the back roads from the vantage point of a bucket seat, and on his quieter, slower rambles he frequently got lost. He recognized nothing.

What had happened? He’d been driving too fast — a simple idea that didn’t need explanation. But he kept returning to that question over and over again.
What happened?
He liked to drive fast, and this time he’d gone too fast. It didn’t
mean
anything. So his foot slipped, or he was distracted. It was definitely an accident, absolutely. So why should it matter so much to him? The point was the result — his car was totaled, and he was walking around in the woods like a hobo.

At night it was so black he had trouble seeing his hand in front of his face. It got his mind going, thinking crazy thoughts. What if he was changing? What if he was becoming a wolf-man or some slimy, scaly thing with suckers on his fingers? In the dark he couldn’t tell. On some nights he scared himself so bad he’d rush home, just to turn on the lights. And somehow, when he saw himself in the hall mirror, and saw that he hadn’t changed, he felt almost disappointed.

One night, two weeks after the crash, he began to wonder if he was dead. He knew he wasn’t really dead — he’d just been on the phone with Willow, and ghosts didn’t
text-message. But just . . . what if? What if his spirit was wandering around the woods, only thinking it was alive? David didn’t believe in heaven or hell, but it made sense that a ghost would hang around the place where he died, as if he were trying to climb back inside the world, though the door had shut behind him.

David found himself by the lake. The moon reflected in the black, near-frozen surface. And then David saw what looked like a real ghost in the water. Something white glided toward the shore. David froze, his mind shouting at his legs to run. And then the ghost broke the surface, and he saw it was Charlie Nuvola, out for a midnight swim in sub-zero weather.

“What are you doing?”

Charlie looked up. Not surprised, just curious. Instead of answering, he sloshed onto the bank. There was a duffel bag waiting for him. He pulled out a towel and three pairs of sweats. There was steam rising off his moony skin. He pulled the sweats on, and only then did he seem cold, his teeth chattering.

“Aren’t you freezing?”

“My dad and I used to do the polar-bear plunge at Olive Lake when I was a kid,” he said. He put on a fur-lined coat and laced up a pair of heavy-duty hiking boots. “This isn’t even fully frozen.” Charlie paused to stare out at the water. “It’s so deep. Deeper than a regular lake, you know. Because it’s a reservoir.”

“That’s what they say.”

David wanted to get away from him. It was creepy — finding Charlie of all people, swimming in the middle of the night in December.

“It’s deeper at this end,” he said. “When they dynamited the rock, they ended up going deeper over here. It’s kind of like a big swimming pool, with a deep end and a shallow end. I’m surprised you don’t see more people swimming in it.”

“It’s illegal to swim in it,” David said.

Charlie shrugged. “Lots of things are illegal.”

David zipped his jacket to his chin and stuffed his hands in his pockets. They were done talking. But he lingered a moment by the shore.

“Do you think she’s still . . . ?” David searched for the word, but he already knew it. “Do you think she’s still alive?”

Charlie nodded. “I don’t think,” he said without hesitation. “I
know
she is. In fact, I . . .” But he stopped himself, watching David.

David opened his mouth to reply. A car horn cut him off. Headlights swept the trees and the gravel rustled as a busted Cadillac pulled off Cliff Road. Charlie gathered his things and jogged toward the passenger door.

“That’s my ride.” He turned back to David. “Do you want a lift?”

David said nothing. Charlie waited another beat, then climbed inside. The driver was a dark-haired girl David knew from somewhere. The car reversed and pulled onto
the road. David watched the brake lights as they came to the intersection of Cliff and Horizon, and then broke away from the lake’s circle, down Route 28A, bathing the night in crimson before disappearing from view.

It was a long, slow, cold walk home.

When he got in, he called Willow. They talked a lot lately. Clay and Artie had razzed him about it, said he was on the rebound. But David could tell it didn’t bother them too much. If anything, they seemed relieved he’d moved on. He was amazed how he and Willow could pick up where they’d left off, like a sequel to a movie, where they use all the same jokes.

That night they v-chatted for hours. David liked her face on his monitor, her thin red lips and golden hair. He kept her vid-window open in the center on Mon2. As they talked, Mon3 flashed away, pages on dating advice, dinner reservations for two, even blond hair dye. Mon1 took its cue and showed famous blondes like Marilyn — Mon2 popped up black-and-white vids from Retro_Flix.com. Mon3 scrolled old-time movie quotes, then the post from StarryEyedStranger42 flitted by:
“If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain.”
—
Peg Entwistle.

The pages cycled as David and Willow joked, feeding on each other, around and around, over and over, everything associated. With all the lights on and the monitors going and his music on the speakers and Willow’s bright smile, David felt better, and forgot about everything unconnected.

My deepest gratitude to my agent and mentor, Scott Treimel, for all he has done for this book and its author. A very special thanks to Deborah Noyes Wayshak, my editor, who believed in this story and helped make it shine. Many thanks, and much, much love to Sarah Elmaleh, my first reader and best friend. Thanks to Kit Reed and David Vilandre, who taught me so much about writing. Thank you to all my wonderful and supportive friends. Thanks to all the people who inspired characters, glances, images, and sensations in this book. And thank you to all the authors, living and dead, who have been my dearest companions.