My Beating Teenage Heart (21 page)

Jules bit one of her black nails and said, “It sounds like what you’re saying is that you think you need to be at your best for us to be together and that’s not true.”

“I know it’s not like that.” Even explaining took too much energy. “But imagine if you were going through something where it was all you could think about. And you needed whatever space and time you could get just to work things out for yourself.” My shoe scuffed at the asphalt. “My head isn’t in it, Jules.
Us
. When you’re talking about summer theater and Boleyn’s and all that. I’m just
not there
. I’m so far from that, I can’t imagine being there.”

“Breckon.” She shook her head, her eyes clinging to mine in a way that would normally have made me want to pull her close. I wish it still worked like that. “I want to be with you
wherever
you are. If it’s shitty isn’t that all the more reason for me to be around?”

There was a time when I would’ve agreed with her. “I need to be on my own for a while, Jules. Don’t make it harder by trying to talk me out of it.”

I knew that what I was saying didn’t make sense to her. She thinks she can be good for me. Stiod 01D;

want to sink.

Ever since Skylar died but especially since the dream, I can’t fight it or pretend to myself that there’s some other kind of way through this for me. Jules would want me to try. She’d start off slow, but little by little work on convincing me to do things like start playing guitar again and then follow through with my idea to get up on stage at Boleyn’s and make other future plans. And all I want to do is stop breathing.

If I was braver—and if there was a way for me to be done with this without hurting my parents and everyone else—I’d be through with it already.

“I need to step back,” I added. From everyone, but from her the most.

Jules’s eyes were wet. She said nothing.

Our time at her parents’ house last week felt like a dream. I wanted to get in the car and leave her behind but there was still a sliver inside me that her tears reached. It made me say, “I still love you.” As much as I could feel anything. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

And then we were over or on hold or whatever you want to call it but she still walked up to me today and gave me a hug, forced a closed-mouth smile and said, “You know where to find me if you need me.”

“Thanks, Jules.” I hugged her back and wondered if I’d been wrong and whether she really could help me. The feeling had dissolved again by the time I let go.

That leaves me right where I am, sitting in my grandparents’ light-blue dining room, listening to them coax small talk from me and my parents. My mom and grandmother are discussing natural products that can be used instead of pesticides in the garden when my grandmother turns to look at me, smiles softly and says, “Can you feel her today? She’s all around you like a greenish-blue light.”

I shake my head. “I can’t feel anything.” Sometimes I can but I know it’s not Skylar and it’s not something I want to talk about. My parents would think I was losing it, and in a way I know I am, but whatever the thing around me is it’s not Skylar and it’s not my imagination. Whatever it is doesn’t matter anyway—it’s one more thing I don’t have the energy for. Something that can’t change the past, a gray form drifting in the dark shadows of my mind.

“Can you feel her?” my grandmother asks, shifting her gaze to my mom, who whispers that the feeling my grandmother’s talking about is a memory.

“It’s more than that,” my grandmother insists.

My grandfather stares uneasily at his plate and then I hear my father say, “Sometimes I think I can feel her around me. Certain moments. Sometimes when I’m just drifting off to sleep or …” His voice trails off as his eyes land on my mother. Her face projects sadness and skepticism.

My grandmother’s slate-gray ;s es land eyes seek mine out again. “She’s with us often, all of us.” Inner calm lights her face. “Even if you can’t sense that, I want you to know.”

I realize my grandmother’s intentions are good but her kindness burns. She may be able to convince herself that we’re all living a fairy tale but some of us live in the real world. Skylar isn’t here and she hasn’t been in a month.

My fingers tremble as my fork slices through the blueberry cake. Everyone’s watching me, watching the sliver of cake on the end of my fork and how I’m holding it in the air, twitching.

And then my cell rings in my pocket. The timing’s so perfect that I couldn’t have choreographed it better myself. I’m not supposed to have my cell on at dinner but I excuse myself and answer it as I push my chair out from the table and step into the living room where no one will be able to hear me.

“So what’s up?” Ty asks. “You still at your grandparents’?”

I sit on their couch, pointing a cautionary finger at Moose, who wants to jump up and join me but isn’t allowed on my grandparents’ furniture. “Still here,” I tell Ty, aggravation bleeding into my voice. “And it’s a nightmare. I don’t know why I didn’t let my mom turn them down.”

“Help is on the way,” Ty declares. “I’m in the car with Big Red. Just lay an address on me and we’re there.”

“You know they live in Middlefield, right? It’ll take you at least forty-five minutes to get here.” I told Ty days ago, just like I told everyone else, that I wanted to ban any birthday celebrations in my honor, but if having him pick me up means facing down some birthday shit later in the night so be it; it’d have to be an improvement on this.

“Pedal to the metal,” Ty assures me. “Shouldn’t take more than thirty.”

I give him my grandparents’ address and hang out in the living room for another seven minutes before slipping back into the dining room and breaking the news. Everyone jumps all over themselves telling me how great and natural it is that I hang out with my friends today. It’s another one of those things that make me feel like I don’t want to be
anywhere
, but at least I know Ty won’t grill me about whether or not I can sense my dead sister.

Ty and Big Red roll up in just over half an hour, like Ty promised, and my grandmother offers them blueberry cake. “I’d love that,” Ty says politely, “but we’re meeting up with some other friends in Strathedine and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

My grandmother chops the remaining cake in two and places the bigger half in a cookie tin with skating penguins on the lid. “So you can eat it wherever you boys end up,” she says, handing it to me.

Dad tells me to call him if I need a ride later. “No matter what time it is,” he adds pointedly.

Three mitifmy nutes later we’re in the car. Rory has pried the cookie tin open and is scooping his fingers into the cake while Ty warns him not to eat it all because he wants his share. Since Big Red called shotgun first, I’m in the backseat and I notice an orange plastic bag shoved down in front of the seat next to me. A flesh-colored bump of vinyl
something
is sticking out of the top and I reach in and tug at the side of the bag to find out what it is. A grinning full-head Bill Clinton mask, that’s what. I set Bill’s head on the seat and pull out the masks underneath it: George Bush Junior, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.

“What the fuck?” I ask. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ty says, looking over his shoulder at me. “That’s not for tonight. You weren’t even supposed to see that.”

“We just picked it up before we dropped by your grandparents’ place,” Big Red adds. “We found this cool costume store in Bourneville.”

“I wanted to get the Hillary one too but Big Red said it wouldn’t go with the presidential theme,” Ty tells me.

Rory drives one of his hands through his red hair. “They didn’t have any Beatles masks and it’s better to have four of the same type. Besides, wouldn’t it be a little too freaky to see the Hillary mask on a dude’s body?” He shudders at the thought.

I throw all the masks back in the bag, leaving Bill Clinton’s for last. Whoever designed it gave him enormous cheeks and a mammoth chin, but the smile sort of looks like his. I’ve already stopped caring about the masks and the streaking stunt but Ty says, “We’re going to pull it off with Brett and Kostas. We didn’t want to bother you with it. I know it probably seems … I mean, we know you’re dealing with more important things and now with Jules—”

Rory faces me in the backseat. “Dude, I can’t believe you broke it off with Jules. What happened?”

Ty groans. “Can we maybe not talk about this on his
birthday
?”

“I don’t want to talk about my birthday either,” I growl. “I just want to get hammered.” The path of least resistance. I haven’t been plastered since New Year’s and never enough to black out. That’s going to change.

“Hell yeah!” Ty howls. “I’m down with that plan.” He tells me that he and Big Red were on their way to Anya’s when they called. I know that he’s hooked up with her a couple of times since they met that night at Zavi’s but I haven’t seen her since. “Her parents are out of town so she’s having a few of her girls over,” he explains. “They’re knocking back vodka coolers as we speak.”

Girls. Shit. Just because I want to get loaded doesn’t mean I want some random drunk girl trying to ram her tongue down my throat. But I go with the flow and we drive over to Anya’s place, which is one of the last houses on a quiet cul-de-sac in Cherrywood.

Her house has a historical society plaque on it that reads: “John Forester, Merchant, 1879.” There are only three cars in her driveway and one parked against the curb, and I can’t hear any music until we’re standing directly outside her front door. Then some shitty generic pop song that makes me frown harder than I already was spits in my ear.

Anya opens the door and throws her arms around Ty, then Rory and then me. “I’m so glad you guys are here!” she cries. Her legs are bare and she’s wearing a frilly pink dress that Jules would roll her eyes at. She wraps her right arm around Ty’s waist and leads us through the foyer and into the family room where six other girls (some who look familiar from that Saturday night at Zavi’s) and three guys are hanging out amongst leather couches, a massive flat-screen TV, plastic cups and bowls of tortilla chips and pretzels. Two of the guys are Wii boxing in the center of the room while four of the girls dance to the bad music and the remaining two huddle on the couch, whispering into each other’s ears. The leftover guy’s sitting in an armchair, texting with one hand while dropping tortilla chips into his mouth with the other.

Anya turns to explain, “It’s just going to be us. This girl I know had a big party three months ago and it spun completely out of control. Her house got trashed beyond recognition and a senior guy ODed and the paramedics had to come so I want to keep this small.”

“I think I heard about that party,” Ty tells her. “Some people just don’t know when to get a grip on themselves. But don’t worry, we’ll be careful.”

“Definitely,” I say, scanning the room for whatever alcohol I can get my hands on. “You can’t be too careful about who you invite into your house.”

“I know, right?” Anya nods. “Some people are total animals.”

She must be keeping the booze somewhere else. I hope there’s a healthy supply. There’s a guy at school whose older brother delivers to underage drinkers for a steep surcharge. I’ve never been desperate enough to call him before but I’m sure I can find someone who has his number if I have to.

Anya makes Ty hand over his keys and says one of her rules is that nobody gets them back until the personal Breathalyzer her friend brought over gives them a thumbs-up. Ty says that’s cool and Anya takes us into the kitchen where a row of large bottles line the counter—brandy, tequila, whiskey, rum, vodka, gin. The smaller vodka-cooler bottles are so colorful that they look like they must be filled with Kool-Aid, and a Rubbermaid cooler stashed with ice squats on the floor in front of the sink. I grab a plastic cup from the stack next to the bottles and start filling up.

Ty and Rory fill up too. Anya and Ty drift back towards the family room, leaving Rory and me to hang out with the bottles. I drink my double vodka down like it really is Kool-Aid. Cherry Kool-Aid on a hot summer’s day after playing soccer, my hair sopping and my jersey glued to my back with sweat.

“Are you gonna go in or what?” Big Red asks nervously, his face mimicking his nickname.

I’m not thinking about him; I’m thinking about oblivion—and reaching it as soon as I can. But suddenly I get his subtext anyway; Rory doesn’t want to go into the other room because he’s afraid he’ll hook up with some girl who isn’t Isabel Castillo. If he thinks I’ll stop him he should think again. I only have one thing on the agenda for tonight.

We go into the family room and take our turn at Wii boxing. I drink more. Rum this time and then two of those vodka coolers, which are so sweet that I have to chase them down with gin. Every time I look at Ty he’s got one or both of his hands grafted on to some part of Anya’s pink dress. Soon they both disappear, and shortly after that another girl and guy slip away together too.

Big Red and I ignore most of the other action going on in the room and play Wii hockey with the remaining guys for so long that a girl in a black miniskirt and tall boots hops over to one of the guys and plays with his hair until he can’t ignore her. He throws her over his shoulder, stomps over to the couch and drops her on her ass, grinning all the while. “Enough with the stupid video games already!” she shouts petulantly, grabbing his arm before he can get away. “I need someone to dance with me.”

And so we lose a player, and before long I’m too tanked to see straight anyway. I half-sit, half-lie on the carpet in front of the love seat and watch drunken guys and girls grind against each other to the sound of hip-hop tunes.

It’s hard to believe this is the same life where I lost Skylar. I can’t get the two separate realities to merge in my head. One of them must be a lie.

A hand falls on my shoulder. I turn to stare at the girl curled up on the love seat behind me. Her name’s something like Kathryn, Kirsten or Kaitlin and I thought she was asleep but I guess not. She blinks slowly, like each of her eyelids is as heavy as a freight train, and says, “Hey, I heard it was your birthday.”