Last Train to Babylon (6 page)

I rolled a piece of spearmint-flavored gum into a ball with my two front teeth and the tip of my tongue. It had lost most of its flavor and started to taste like spearmint-rusty-key-brass-flavored gum. I spit it out onto the cracked dirt and took a drag from one of the older boys' cigarette. Purple smoke ribboned above my head, and I let my body fall against the bare mattress.

The sun was low in the sky, but it illuminated the copper-colored earth with its dull, orange glow. Even though it was still August, dead leaves lay shriveled and curled, like dried fire around the perimeter of the mattress.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have the greenest eyes?” Max said as he fell onto his side and leaned over me.

I propped myself up on my elbow and leaned back to put some distance between us, but I think he took it as an invitation to come closer.

“Thanks, I guess,” I said. He was hovering now.

“And I like your ring,” he said, grazing my hand with the tips of his fingers. He lifted my hand to his face. “What's it supposed to be?” He traced the silver ring with his fingers. I tried to smile, but I could feel my hand shaking in his.

“A mockingbird,” I said. “I think.” I knew, obviously.

“Like the book?”

“No,” I said. “I'm not really sure what it means. My grandma gave it to me for my confirmation.”

“Oh, a Catholic girl,” he snarked. “Too bad,” he said. “I liked that book. And too bad, because you know what they say about Catholic girls.” He looked at me hard, stoic and unblinking. “Hey,” he said. “You know what my favorite book is?” I shook my head, unable to swallow, feeling the booze flow through me. He leaned in and whispered into my ear.
“Tequila Mockingbird.”

I spit out that last sip of brassy booze and let out an awkward laugh. The lines around his eyes softened and creased, and he busted a toothy smile. It was at that moment when he leaned in to kiss me. His tongue flopped into my mouth—sloppy and hysterical.

I
WALKED HOME
at dusk by myself. Rachel stayed behind with The Guys. Two hours with them, and they were already
The Guys.
Funny, that would be the last time we'd hang out with them all together, ever.

A basketball bounced against a nearby driveway, and the whole street smelled of sweet, smoky barbecue as I walked home toward my house. I stared down at the cracks in the sidewalk, stepping around them, and practiced walking a straight line, heel to toe, just in case a cop car barreled around the corner and demanded that I prove sobriety. It was an unlikely turn of events—but a drunken habit that would stick with me for years.

I could see Karen's Cadillac in the driveway, and my throat began to thicken as I approached the house. We had a split-level home with white vinyl siding, and it looked out of place among all the high ranches on our street.

I cupped my hands in front of my face, blew out a breath of hot air, and sniffed. Karen would smell me the moment I walked through that door—tequila and cigarettes—so instead I headed over toward Tonya's backyard and peered over the fence.

“Hey, Ton,” I said. I don't know why I called her Ton. I don't think I, or anybody for that matter, had ever called her Ton. But it just felt real. I was smashed, and it felt real. “What are you doing?”

“Painting shells,” she said, so matter-of-factly that I felt slightly dumb for not knowing.

“Oh,” I said. The spaces between the wire fence started to move like a kaleidoscope, and I slipped my fingers through the green rubber holes. She walked up to where I stood. Up close, she looked even paler, but she had these striking blue eyes—celadon blue.

“Hey,” she said, a look of confusion on her face. We hadn't spoken in years, even if she did live just a few steps away. “I like your ring,” she said. “Is it a mockingbird?”

“It is,” I said, tugging it off my finger and holding it in the palm of my hand. “Here, you can have it.”

She took it from my hand, slipped it over her finger, smiled, and walked back to her shells.

Sunday, October 5, 2014.

“A
UBREY
?” A
DAM'S VOICE
catches me off guard, and I swallow my breath before he can hear me on the line. His voice is deeper than I expect, even after hearing the voice mail. I sit silent, my voice caught in my throat. Part of me wants to answer him, part of me wants to scream into the phone until my throat is raw, but mostly, I just want to hang up and sprint down the street. I try to remember why I called back, but the reasons just swirl around in my head, and I'm starting to feel dizzy from holding my breath.

“Hello?”

It would be so damn easy for me to just speak, to just open my mouth, ask him to come outside, talk things out, maybe even clear the air. Maybe that's the key to all this—just talking it out. And it occurs to me that I don't even know what he looks like anymore. I still picture him as the shy, lanky boy with dark hair and a zip-up hoodie standing on my street corner. It's times like this I wish I had Facebook.

“Hello,” he says one more time, and then the line cuts off. I stare up at the window and the light from Max's bedroom flickers off. I scoop up my bag, pull my hood back over my head, and take off down the street.

I'
M WALKING, JUST
walking, and I end up near the Seaport Diner. It looks pretty empty, so I slip in through the revolving door and seat myself in the far booth. There's a young family at one of the round tables, and a couple of teenagers at another booth, but other than that it's just me, and I'm relieved. I'm not in the mood to see anyone. I've had enough blasts from the pasts today to last me a year.

Yet I can't stop checking my phone. Adam hasn't called back, but part of me wishes he would just text me. It would give me the control I need right now. I've never been a phone person anyway, and I don't get why calls haven't become obsolete.

A thick-waisted waitress comes to take my order, and I realize I recognize her, but it's too late; I've been spotted. “Oh hey,” she says. I force a smile. “How's it going?”

“Melanie, hey,” I say. Her hair is pinned up in a half-up, half-down bun, and her cheeks are plump and red.

“How are you?” she asks again, and I guess now I have to answer.

“I'm okay,” I say.

“I heard you're living in the city. That's so exciting.” She speaks in this slow dreamy tone that sort of makes me feel hollow.

“It's not that great,” I say. I pretend to read the menu, even though I already know what I'm getting, and I can feel her standing over me, too close, her hot bologna breath filling the space between us.

“You meeting the girls?” she asks, craning her neck toward the entrance, as if my high school posse is about to parade through the front door.

“What girls?”

“You know.” She smiles. It's a nervous smile, and it bothers me for some reason. “The girls.” She shimmies her shoulders and does a sort of dance. I know she means Rachel, Ally, and company, but I just shrug and go back to staring at the menu. I don't bother saying that I haven't seen “the girls” in years, or that Rachel is dead,
just in case you've been living under a rock, and despite your delusions, I don't actually have a gang of female companions who accompany me on late diner romps.
I'm probably just as lonely as she is.

“No,” I say. “Just me.” She seems almost disappointed, and I suddenly remember the last time I'd been at a diner. It was with Rachel. And it was the last time I saw her.

“Can I get a glass of red?” I say. “Whatever's cheapest.”

“Sure,” she says. “Can I just see your ID?” I look up at her, and realize it's the first time I've made eye contact with anyone tonight. She's sweaty and pink and swallows with her mouth open as she waits for me to comply.

“Are you serious?” I say. “You know how old I am.” She tilts her head, and I can't tell whether she's embarrassed or reveling in the sudden power shift.

“Restaurant policy,” she says. I make a big show fumbling around for my ID. And as I hold it out for her, tilting my head and mimicking the same overenthusiastic grin from my driver's license photo, she finally drops the R-bomb. “Sucks about Rachel,” she says, her voice going an octave lower. “She was an awesome girl.”

An awesome girl.

I drop the license on the table. “Didn't she used to call you ‘Melons'?” I say. It was fourth grade, and Rachel unsnapped Melanie's bra in front of the entire girls' locker room. She continued to call her “Melons” well into middle school.

“That was a long time ago,” she says, swallowing again. She picks up the license and examines it for a bizarre amount of time, her bracelets clanking together around her thick wrist. She hands it back to me, swallows, smiles, and says, “So I guess I'll see you at the after-party?”

I start clicking the buttons on my phone, pretending to text, even though I realize I have nobody to talk to. “I don't think so.”

When she brings me my wine—which is served in a plastic glass—she slams it down on the table, and thrusts her shoulder away from me. I eye her as she saunters over toward the hostess and whispers something in her ear.

I finish the wine in two gulps, throw down a ten-dollar bill on the table, and get the hell out of there.

T
HE NEW GIRLFRIEND'S
car is still in the driveway when I get back. I slip in through the back door and go straight to the kitchen for a glass of water. I catch my reflection in the window over the sink—flushed cheeks and a purple-stained mouth.

When I open the cabinet, my stomach plunges to the floor, and everything feels still and limp. I see them, lined up, two rows of five on the bottom shelf.

Everything tastes better in a mason jar.

I'd forgotten about the jars, and how I'd come outside one winter morning to find them in a big white box cradled in Adam's arms. I'd used them as drinking glasses all through high school—way before Pinterest, hipsters, and gastro pubs. Mason jars had been a sort of obsession for me back in high school, but now the sight of them lined up in my mother's kitchen made my throat feel thick, and I wanted to vomit all over the granite.

I stumble into the den, forgetting that Eli is entertaining his lady friend. She stands up when she sees me, as if she'd been waiting all this time to make an introduction.

“Hoiiiiii, Awwwbry, I'm Ashley.” Her accent is so thick and so Long Island that I know it can't be real. “It's so nice to meet you.” I only catch a glimpse of her but I can tell she's got red hair, like Eli, and is wearing a Nassau Community College sweatshirt.

“Hi,” I say, and nod at Eli, who's still sprawled out on the couch and looks stoned out of his mind.

“Where were you tonight? Mom's been asking a million questions.”

“About what?”

He puts on his best Karen impression. “‘Where did your sister go? Did you talk to your sister yet? What's wrong with your sister? Why is your sister so sketchy?' You know. The usual.” Ashley laughs uncomfortably, until she realizes that I'm not really amused.

I shrug. “I went out.” He nods at me and sits up, planting his bare feet on the carpet.

“I ran into Adam,” he says, so casual, and I instinctively catch my breath again.

“What? When?” He reaches into a bag of Doritos and stuffs a handful in his mouth, before wiping his hand on his basketball shorts.

“Earlier today at the bagel place,” he says through a full mouth of chips, spitting bits of nacho dust.

“What did he say?” Ashley looks between us, as if she expects one of us to explain who Adam is, but I just stare down at Eli, waiting for an answer as he swallows.

“I don't know. Just asked me if I heard about Rachel.”

“Did he ask about me?” I start, but Ashley cuts in.

“So sad. I heard she was a really cool girl.” I catch myself midscoff, but it's too late, and this Ashley girl looks pretty embarrassed, but I don't have time to deal with this, so I smile, obnoxiously, and turn toward my room.

A really cool girl.

August 2005.

M
AX
'
S BODY WAS
found almost exactly one month after he kissed me. He was my first and only kiss at the time, and it had been the last time I ever saw him alive.

The deli was pretty empty the morning they found him. Rachel and I hadn't been back to the Jumps since that day. She said she was just being elusive, didn't want to come off as desperate and immature. But I think one of the senior girls must have warned her to back off—that or she'd been too embarrassed to admit that Jason had never called her.

A rush of cold air hit us as we walked through the door. The girl behind the counter was in Marc's grade. I think they dated once. I flashed her a phony smile and noticed her eyes were raw and watery, like she'd been crying. Rachel scanned an issue of
Cosmo,
and I placed Strawberry Crush in front of the register.

“That it?” she asked, snapping her gum. I nodded, but when she tried to ring it up, the bar code wouldn't scan. She tried twice more, flashed me an annoyed smile, and went to get the owner.

“Hey,” Rachel whispered, when the girl was out of sight. “Dare me to take these?” she asked, holding up a handful of Blow Pops.

“Are you insane?”

She raised her eyebrows in that Rachel way and shoved them in her shorts. At that moment the owner came out from behind the cans of pineapple juice. Rachel's face hardened as the man approached.

“Hey, girls,” he said. He went to the other side of the counter and started typing numbers into the register. “Sorry about that,” he said, handing me the Crush. Rachel stood stiffly behind, her hands cupped over the front of her shorts. The girl cashier came back and stood beside the manager and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

I looked over at Rachel, and she shrugged.

“I guess you heard about Max, huh, Lex?” The voice came from behind us, where another guy in Marc's grade placed a bag of chips and a Coke on the counter.

The guy—I think his name was Pete—talked over us to the crying cashier as she rang up his bag of Doritos. She shook her head, wiped her eyes again, and he turned to us. “You guys know Max Sullivan? You know he was found dead today? Saying it was probably a suicide.” His name staggered on my tongue for a moment, in my mind, like I couldn't quite place him, as if he were some has-been heartthrob, once plastered all over my bedroom walls. “Right in the park.”

The scent of smoke and perfume lingered as we came out onto Jackson Avenue and the heat made my whole body ache.

“That was close,” Rachel said. I stared at the cracked sidewalk. She pulled the handful of lollipops out of her shorts and stuffed them into her bag. “And can you believe it? I can't believe Max is dead,” she said, almost in the same breath. “You like made out with him, remember?”

The news hit me with a dull thud. The words swirled in the heat and felt hazy, and I felt hazy, and everything was just hazy: Rachel's voice, Max's death, our first kiss, my second cigarette. Rachel and I stood out on the hot asphalt, dizzy from the sun and news and fear. It felt like a dream, a dull, deafening dream.

“God, Aub,” Rachel said. “You must have been a really shitty kisser.”

W
E DECIDED TO
go to the wake. We sat in the back, wearing black silk scarves we stole from Karen; Rachel always had a flair for the dramatic. I couldn't help feeling like a funeral crasher, but it seemed the whole town had shown up. Max's body was set down in the open casket at the front of the room, his freckles muddled beneath a cakey layer of foundation, and his black hair styled in a wispy pouf. His family decided to bury him in his prom tuxedo. I guess that was his fanciest occasion, up until his funeral. How fucking depressing. His popped collar covered the markings on his neck.

I walked up to the casket, signed the cross, and imagined moving the collar aside and fingering the bruises that tracked across his Adam's apple, tracing the freckled white skin of his neck down to the gold crucifix that rested upon his unmoving chest. I could not remember the color of his eyes.

The Younger Sullivan—that's what we called him then—was our age. He went to the Catholic school in our town, so we didn't know much about him. Actually we knew literally nothing about him, except for that he was Max's younger brother. He stood stone-faced against the back wall, his suit pants too short, exposing a pair of black dress socks. I guess no one ever really has time to buy a new suit for a funeral. His eyes were fixed in the direction of his brother's casket. Green and white flowers, our school colors, decorated the area around the body.

A funeral is really the only occasion when it is appropriate to give a guy flowers. They're given to women all the time—first dates, the birth of a child, weddings. They're a symbol of love, given for every important event, right up until death, and even after a person is buried in the ground. It's the only gift you can really ever give a corpse, and people do it all the time. That's why I never understood guys who gave flowers on first dates—like,
Hi, I don't know anything about you, but everybody loves flowers. Even dead people!

I watched as a few distant aunts and uncles approached the surviving brother—the women going in for a lingering embrace, their respective men offering a halfhearted pat on the shoulder. But in any encounter, his arms hung limp at his sides, his gaze vacant. When he was alone, he reached into his pocket, his wrist twisting against his pant fabric as he fidgeted.

I hadn't noticed at first, but I caught sight of Tonya sitting with her mom in the back of the room. I squinted, trying to see if she'd been wearing my ring. A small part of me wished I could ask for it back. Not because I didn't want Tonya to have it, but because Karen had asked me several times over the past month what happened to it. I didn't feel like explaining I'd drunkenly given it to Tonya Szalinski.

I started looking around the room for Rachel, when I watched the Younger Sullivan slip out the side exit. I slunk out close behind, hoping that I'd catch Rachel out back, smoking a cigarette with some of Max's friends, but when I pulled the door shut behind me and stepped outside, there was just Adam, leaning against the side porch. He shifted his weight away from the railing when he saw me, and I noticed the chalky, white, chipped paint had left the slightest stain on his navy suit jacket. There was no Rachel in sight, and I was standing face-to-face with the dead boy's brother. I didn't really have a choice but to try and strike up a conversation.

“Hi,” I said.

His chest rose with breath as if he were about to speak, but just as quickly, he sank back into his slouched stance.

“Sorry about your brother,” I said.

His jaw tightened, locking in his words, the muscles protruding just beneath his ears. His cold, gray eyes stared past me at the moths floating beneath the motion-sensor lights.

“You're a freshman this year, too, right?” I asked, feeling incredibly awkward. “Are you going to Seaport or St. Christopher's?” He took another deep breath, but stopped himself before the words could leave him.

“Look,” I said. “You don't have to say anything. But I'm really sorry, and if you need someone to talk to, I live just over there.” I pointed to the direction of my street, not that he'd have any clue where my house was, but it was a gesture and that was enough.

O
N THE FIRST
day of high school, the Younger Sullivan stood at the corner of my street—a blue, zip-up hoodie hugging his skinny arms and a saggy backpack slung over one shoulder. He was shy, raising his hand awkwardly at me, with an embarrassed half smile. He had black shaggy hair, and this cool, blue tone to his skin and lips, like he'd been out in the snow too long.

“Thought you might want someone to walk with,” he said, nothing like the mute, broken boy I had met the week before.

So that's how it happened, Adam and me. And after all those years, he never even knew that I had kissed his dead brother.