We Were Never Here (21 page)

Before I knew that Connor would get lost again, which he became, terribly so, I went back to my regular life. I continued training Mabel and doing my homework (we'd moved onto
Antigone
now . . . ), and, bizarrely, I hung out a lot with Michael L, who, surprise, surprise, had a girlfriend now, so in a way it was like things used to be when I had pined and pined for him. Only that was gone now. How nice was it not to yearn and ache and want and want? But how is it that one second you will die for someone to only brush by you, and then the next, just nothing?

But it was great to be friends. He tried to get me out and about more. The week I got back from my adventure with Connor, he convinced me to go to a field hockey game.

“Don't think so,” I said initially. What would going to a hockey game possible do for me? Aside from make me sad.

But he insisted. “You gotta support your girls, Lizzie! You're strong enough.”

I wasn't sure, but it seemed wrong not to go. And it involved too much explanation.

From the bleachers I watched. The sidelines: big yellow plastic barrels of Gatorade and water. The gleaming bench. The pile of
extra hockey sticks; the land of lost toys. And Mr. Crayton cupping his hands over his mouth from the sidelines, screaming. And yes, my old team on the field,
moving
. Lydia. Dribbling out front. Her plaid skirt. Her shin guards. Her ponytail. On the field Lydia was still herself. She was quick and nimble and beautiful. How I missed her as I watched her do what we had once done together so often.

I missed all of it. The grass, the scorekeeper, that
smell
, the pep talk before, the talking-to we got during, the losing, and winning.

No going back for me. Elbows on my knees, head in my hands, Pumas on the bleachers in front of me. I missed being teeny. I was smaller than I'd been before the hospital, but tininess was behind me. I turned to Michael, who was crouched over. “I'm going to be sick,” I said.

“Fuck,” he said. “What do you need?”

I looked out at the field. “No, no, just watching this. I just can't. I'm leaving, okay?”

He moved to stand. “You sure? It's kind of lame to just leave.”

“Oh well.”

“Okay, I'll come then!”

“Nah, I'm good!” Whodathunkit: Michael L would turn out to be the nicest guy of all. “I'm going to walk home.” I stood up and looked down at him. In any other life I would have chosen him. In any other moment in my life I would have stayed and waited for him anywhere. “Thank you, though,” I said.
Such
a prince. Who knew.

I felt him watching me as I made my way down the bleachers,
one for each step, the sound of feet stomping on metal. And then I was out the exit the nonathletes use to leave the field.

When I was out and crossing through the school parking lot, I could hear the crowd cheering behind me.

There's a shortcut through this apartment complex by the train tracks that I used to take when I walked to school, back before my mother started dropping me off and picking me up each day.
Before
before. After leaving the hockey game, I went down that little path and sat on the train tracks. I laid down a penny, like Zoe and I did when we were kids, waiting for the trains to come, watching the penny tremble and then running, coming back for it, all flattened.

I sat on the cold metal tracks and dialed Connor. Straight to voice mail. It was the drill, our drill, I knew. I didn't leave a message. Also part of the drill. Maybe he had his phone; maybe he didn't. It was so hard to know. But if he did have his phone, he knew it was me. He knew my number.

Then I called Nora, because I missed my obnoxious, selfish,
criminal
friend.

“Dahlink!” Nora said when she heard my voice.

I picked at the sticks along the tracks and decided to tell her about Connor. “Hey, hunny!” I said. “I miss you!”

“Likewise, Bun-bun,” she said. We had just taken to these odd forms of endearment. Bizarre but sweet. “I'm so glad you rang. I wanted to tell you about this party I went to this past week-
end
. Just cracking, I tell you. Crack-ing.”

I sighed. There was no talking to Nora. Or more, I didn't want to talk to her. Our relationship was just me listening. “Cracking?
How is everything over there?”

“Smashing, my good friend. Sma-shing. Three kegs. Dancing on tables. That was me, of course. Did you have to ask?”

“I thought your parents were keeping you home, Rapunzel-style.”

“That's all over,” she said in her regular Nora voice. “They couldn't bear me. Shall I tell you about the game of Truth or Dare that went
très
far afield?”

“Lovely,” I said. I toed the dirt. There were smashed beer cans and burnt sticks scattered across the tracks.

“Et vous?”

“
Tu
,” I said.

“Tutu!” said Nora. “I need one. Lots of tulle and sequins. Hot, hot pink.”

“A good look for you,” I said.

“Bien sûr.”

“Anyway, same ol', same ol',” I told her. “Living the dream over here.”

I heard her sigh, air out of a tire. “Actually,” Nora said, “actually it's all shiit here. Really, doll, school is shiit, the party was shiit. There was no dancing. Not on tables, not on chairs, not even on the hideous wall-to-wall carpet. Truth or Dare was a snooze. I had to be home by ten p.m. Honestly, I just can't wait for camp.”

The tracks rumbled beneath me. That meant at least three minutes before it arrived.

“That's the only time it's any real fun. Angelo or no Angelo. That will be aces, my dear. Aces. Not so far away, really. In some ways.”

“I'm not going back to camp,” I said.

“Of course you are! You'll be all done with being hanged, drawn, and quartered. And we'll be counselors! After all these years. It's finally going to be
our
turn. Our time,” she said. Her accent was just regular now. She was only herself.

I hadn't thought it over really, but just then I knew. “I'm not going back. I'm going to be volunteering with Mabel. In hospitals and old-age homes. I'm training her now.”

“That sounds perfectly dreadful,” Nora said.

“And maybe I want to try and work at a vet's. Maybe Mabel's vet even.”

“Dear God,” Nora said, British once again. “Is this for college applications? No one cares if you like
animals
. That's not going to get you into
college
. Sign up for Model UN or
debate
and call it a day.”

“True,” I said. “About the apps.”

The train was getting closer. “Well, there you have it anyway,” I said. “I gotta go. I'm about to lose service,” I said, holding the phone up to the oncoming train.

“Talk soon, luv,” she said.

“Talk soon, Nora,” I said.

I imagined watching sick dogs come into the office, and I imagined them leaving healthy.

I hopped off the rails, slipped my phone in my back pocket, watched the train speed by.
Chugga chugga chugga.
Everything was different now. I held my face up to the wind. Where was Connor? Was he okay? When would he come back to me? Why wasn't I worried? For some reason I wasn't worried.

I imagined holding kittens and snakes and birds with broken wings.

I watched the train recede in the distance, and I went to get my penny. It was flat and smooth and as warm as a stone on the beach.

What can I say? I just felt so happy.

I expected not to hear from Connor, but I didn't expect it would be for so long. It took about a week and then, suddenly I got nervous. Very nervous. Was he all right? Did he ever even get back to school? He was lost again. With Connor that could mean just so many things. How lost? How deep into the fairy-tale forest did he go? Would he find his own way out? How long would it take? Would I have to grab the nearest woodsman and my own ax to find him?

Why had I just assumed that he was fine and I was fine and we were fine? What kind of moron was I? Why had I not been nervous? Because the longer Connor didn't contact me, the longer I realized that I was still the girl in the hospital, waiting for the sound of a boy and his dog to come walking down the hall.

And beneath all that was also that Connor had revealed himself to be someone else. He was a little sad and also broken. What do broken people do? Many different things.

I was broken but I was healing.

“Connor,” I said into his voice mail. “Connor! Please call me.”

“Hello? Hello. It's Lizzie. Please, tell me you're okay.”

I called always. Like, thirty times. I called at least thirty times by the time the letter arrived.

This is how I feel: that I will never be good enough for you now. That you are this pure angelic fixed person and that while you think I helped you, I didn't because I used you to help me and now you're better and I'm still the same and you need to go be better with someone better.

This is how I feel: that you got better, you were cured, but that I will never be cured, because there's no Thing to cut out or draw blood about. No IV.

This is how I feel: oatmeal.

This is how I feel: that you are so special. That you don't see it at all. How smart and funny and unique and pretty you are. It's not for me to tell you: look at yourself. But you must know, Lizzie, that you are moving through the universe with power, and that night on the shore, even the trees noticed it.

This is how I feel: at sea will never mean anything bad again.

This is how I feel: that I don't care that I don't know about the future. The immediate one. Like where I'll go. I got kicked out of Stone Mountain. I really wasn't allowed to leave on the weekends. It's pretty much lockdown there. I snuck out and took the bus home and took my car. And it was worth it. That moment when I saw
you see me on the boat. That was worth everything.

This is how I feel: that even though I'm back in DC (!!!) and even if my parents are keeping me away, I don't need to see you because I can feel you. I feel you everywhere. But I want to let you go. I have to.

This is how I feel: wherever they send me next, you will always be with me. Verlaine too.

This is how I feel: horse blanket. Swing. Cassiopeia. Open window. Raisins. Moonlight.

Yours always,

Connor

You're in DC? Seriously?

Connor.
Please pick up the phone.
Hello!

Connor. I got your letter. Can you please talk to me?

Connor. This is Lizzie. Come on! How long have you been here?

Hello? Are you ever going to call me back?

Fuck you, Connor. I'm not going to call you again.

How many messages do I have to leave here?

Fuck you, Connor.

Hello?

And then, finally, there was a voice.

“Yes?” the voice, the woman's voice, said.

I was so shocked to hear a human that it took me a long moment to respond. “Oh, hi! This is Lizzie Stoller.” I paused again. I was pretty sure who I was talking to, but I wasn't positive. “Is Connor there, please? I'm sorry, I thought I was calling his cell phone.”

“It is his cell. This is his mother,” the female human said.

“Oh!” What a great way to meet Connor's mom! I thought. But then I thought, something terrible has happened or is about to happen. “Hello, Mrs. Bryant. Sorry to leave so many
messages. I just haven't heard from Connor in a while.” Like forever, I thought. It has been seven centuries since I have heard your son's voice.

She sighed.

I was silent, a kind that was waiting for someone else to break it.

“I'm very sorry, Elizabeth, but Connor can't talk to you or see you,” Connor's mother said.

The last adult to call me Elizabeth was my great-aunt Leonora from Buffalo, and that was at her husband's funeral. But of course that was not the important part, and the important part just then began to register. My heart beat in my ears.

“I know you're a lovely person,” she continued, “but Connor has exercised a lot of poor judgment around you.”

“Around me?” I said. Because what was I supposed to say? Again I found myself out of the land of age appropriateness. I was shaking.

“Well, poor judgment in general, but now, with you. He can't see you anymore. I know it's painful for both of you. I'm sorry about that. I really am.”

I began to cry, as softly as I could.

“I'm sorry, dear. I'm just trying to protect my son. He needs to find his own way right now. This has been hard on everyone.”

I was still crying.

“I hope you can understand,” she said. It was a little bit of a question but not one that was asking for an answer.

“Yes,” I said. “Can you please tell him that I called?” I wondered if he had gotten any of my messages.

“Of course I will.”

“Can you please tell him that I”—I stammered because I didn't know how much to say—“that I miss him?” is what I decided on.

“I will certainly tell him that. And I can tell you that he misses you too. Let's just try this for a while and see. Let things cool down. I don't have to tell you that leaving school and taking out the boat and bringing you to the beach house was not responsible or acceptable,” she said.

“No. I know.”

“I know you've been through a lot. Both of you really have. Not what most teenagers deal with. But let me tell you because I'm older and I know. That is not enough. It feels like it is, but it isn't.”

I was sniffling but I didn't try to cover it up. I couldn't tell Connor's mom that it was enough. That what we'd been through was everything. Because she was a lawyer, and I'm sure there was some statute that proved me wrong. And because she was Connor's mother and she was holding him hostage.

“I will tell Connor I spoke to you, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Good-bye then,” she said.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Bryant,” I said before I threw my phone across the room and threw myself on my bed. Good-bye Connor Good-bye Connor Good-bye Connor: those were the only words I could hear or see until Zoe knocked on my door and called me down for dinner.