What Remains

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

What Remains
© 2015 by Helene Dunbar.

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First e-book edition © 2015

E-book ISBN: 9780738744742

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Flux

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Manufactured in the United States of America

To:
Tami Davis Brenner, Laurin Buchanan, Lindsay Craig, Suzanne Kamata, Patrick Northway, Ike Pulver,
Emilie Richmond, Scott Sitner, Tom Tanner,
and Christopher Tower

Lux Esto

And to John, because in a way they're all for you.

One

No one ever calls in the middle of the night to tell you that you've won the lottery.

Or that you aced your chem final.

Or that your favorite team won the series.

If the phone rings in the middle of the night, it's a pretty sure bet someone has died. Or broken up with his girlfriend. Or, in my case, that something awful has happened to Lizzie.

She doesn't always call me. Sometimes she calls Spencer. Sometimes, I suspect, she just deals with her mom's drinking and her loser stepfather's temper and doesn't tell either of us. I hate that even more than I hate the phone ringing in the middle of the night.

This time when it rings, I'm dreaming that I'm kissing Ally Martin while standing on first base on Maple Grove's baseball field. Yeah, I'm getting to first base on first base. My subconscious obviously has a sense of humor.

I know I'm dreaming because you can't really kiss someone you haven't had the courage to speak to. But that doesn't keep me from pulling her closer and, as I do, her breasts rub against me and suddenly I know why most guys have been drooling over girls while I've been perfecting my swing and kicking myself for being too much of a coward to even talk to her.

My cell keeps ringing, shrill and demanding. I pull my hand away from Ally and fumble around on my nightstand just as the Maple Grove Mustangs' theme song stops.

Somehow, I resist the urge to smash the phone against the wall in frustration. Then it starts again and I take a deep breath because it doesn't seem like I've done that in a while. On the screen I see two things at the same time. It's two in the morning. And it's Lizzie calling.

My voice cracks a little when I answer. I really just want to be back in that place in my head where baseball a
nd Ally converge.

“Cal, I need you to come get me.” Lizzie's voice is rushed and insistent enough to pull me out of bed.

It's been a long time since she needed me to get her in the middle of the night. Whatever lingering hope I had about returning to my dream disappears and she has all my attention.

Still, I have to blink a few times to make sure I'm really awake. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

On the other end of the phone, glasses clink, traffic hums, and raised voices are, well, raised. It's a combination of sounds that make my teeth ache.

Lizzie answers, “I'm outside Sidewinders. You know, at fourth and Madison?”

My stomach drops and the muscles in my neck tighten like I've taken a bad swing at an outside pitch. It's a school night and I can't think of any good reason for her to be outside a bar at the edge of a crappy part of Detroit.

“What the hell are you doing there?” I ask, although I'm not totally sure I want to hear her answer.

“Can we save story time for later? I'll explain everything but I need you to come get me.” She sounds impatient even though she knows there's no chance I won't come for her. I always come when Lizzie calls.

“Yeah, be there in five.” I hang up without wasting the time to say goodbye. It's usually a ten-minute drive. It won't be tonight.

I pull on yesterday's jeans, grab a T-shirt off the floor, and throw on some sneakers without bothering to tie them. I'm sure my hair is all sorts of crazy, but it isn't like that with me and Lizzie. It isn't like that with me and anybody except in my dreams. Besides, I'm unlikely to run into anyone I know near Sidewinders.

I've learned the hard way that I'm not going to make it out the front door without waking my parents and that's a conversation I'm not eager to have more than once in a lifetime, so I slink through the kitchen to the back door and out around the side of the house.

My Corolla is in its usual space a few houses away in preparation for occasions like this, but it feels farther. The sky is the kind of dark it gets when it isn't really night anymore, but it isn't morning either. The street is creepy quiet, which makes every other sound way too loud: my steps on the concrete; the sound of the car door opening and then closing; a raccoon rummaging in a garbage can. It's the kind of quiet that things hide in.

I crank up the stereo, hoping to force the silence out of the car. Two guys on talk radio are debating whether or not
the American League should do away with the designated
hitter rule. Usually I'd care, but tonight I can't work up an opinion.

I kill the volume and drive, not even looking at the speedometer. I can't figure out what might have happened to make Lizzie call
this time
. All I can come up with is that, since Spencer and I bought her a phone to use when things are bad, I guess they are.

My tires squeal around the corner at Fourth. Lizzie is standing in front of the bar in a slightly paint-stained black dress with her long, dark hair pinned back, one purple-dyed strand hanging down free from the clip. I idle at the curb and lean over to hug her as she gets in. “Are you okay? Should I take you home?” I don't bother to mention that she hasn't buckled her seat belt. It doesn't seem like the right time for that age-old fight.

“Not home,” she says as she rolls her eyes and plants her worn Doc Martin wannabes on the dash.

I feel stupid. Of course she doesn't want to go home. Home is what caused this in the first place and I'm an idiot for even suggesting it.

“Just take me somewhere,” she demands.

I nod and start to drive us back into a better neighborhood, which is pretty much any area other than this one. Soon we're in the parking lot near the playground of the old monastery. I have no idea why a monastery needs a playground. I mean, the monks don't have kids or anything, but it's always a good quiet place to come. It's late enough that even the stoners and the couples looking for a parent-free place to make out have gone home.

We don't say a word until we get out of the car and head over to the swings and then the not-knowing starts to get to me.

“Lizzie?”

We each grab a swing and I watch as she takes a deep breath.

“I was in the shed,” she says. No surprise. Lizzie practically lives in the shed, which she's transformed into a make-shift art studio.

She pumps her legs so she's soaring, almost level with the top of the swing set, which is creaking from our weight. I don't try to match her altitude because I've got a thing about heights and I'm pretty sure my puking won't help anything.

I give Lizzie a few minutes to continue her story, but she doesn't say anything else. Her silence makes me more nervous than anything I'm expecting her to come out with and finally, I can't take it anymore. As she slows down, I get up and grab the chains of her swing to stop her.

“Come on, talk to me,” I plead.

She looks up at me with tired, dark eyes and drags her boots in the dirt.

“I was working on a new piece when the old bat came home drunk and they started fighting,” she says in a dull monotone. “I cranked my speakers, but I could still hear
her screaming. I mean, if she was that loud I figured I
needed to see what was up.” Lizzie's eyes hold me in place, a challenge. Talking about this doesn't make her the least bit uncomfortable.

“What was it?” All of the tension in my voice makes up for the lack of any in hers.

“He hit her, I guess.” She shrugs like it's no big deal that she had to listen to her mom getting smacked around. “When I went in, she was chasing him with that shitty orange lamp we have in the living room. I tried to stop her, but she started coming after me. I couldn't get her to back off so I just left.”

I nod, wishing this sort of thing was rare at Lizzie's house but knowing it isn't.

I wait for the missing piece. “So how did you get to Sidewinders?” Lizzie can't afford a car and it's way too far for her to have walked.

Now she looks away because she already knows what my reaction is going to be and her voice is low when she answers. “Hitched. It's just where the guy on the bike was going.”

I pause, trying to swallow the urge to yell at her. “Lizzie, you promised.” I don't mean to give her a hard time, but she used to hitch a lot and it would literally keep me up at night, wondering if I was going to wake up to hear she'd been stabbed and dumped by the side of the road.

She scrunches up her face, knowing exactly how much her admission upsets me. “Yeah, sorry about that. I figured I'd just get away from them and then sort it out from there.”

I'm suddenly aware that the chains of the swing are really, really cold. The frost covers the metal and bites at my freezing hands. I blow on them until they start to sting.

“You should have called me when you left the house,” I tell her. “You didn't need to go out there.”

“Yeah, I know.” She twists her swing around and around and then lets it unwind before she answers. “I guess I was hoping this wouldn't turn into one of those times where I needed a knight on a white horse to come rescue me.”

I try to smile, but I'm pretty sure that I've only managed a twisted grimace. “I'm not much of a knight,” I say, looking down at my rumpled jeans and untied shoes. “But you know I'm always here for you. Spencer and I both are.”

She smirks. “Yeah, I think Spence might be fed up with my shit for a while.”

“Why?” I ask, puzzled. “What is it?”

She doesn't answer right away. I put my hands, which are either numb or starting to get warm, I can't really tell, over hers.

Then she looks up at me, the streetlight reflected in her eyes. “I just get sick of it, you know. Being a pain in the ass. The two of you having to make sure poor Lizzie isn't in any trouble.”

I kneel down in front of her so that we're eye-to-eye. “Is that really what you think? That we just love you out of pity or something?” I can hear the frustration in my words and am flooded with guilt. I'm determined not to be one more difficult thing in her life.

A lot of expressions cross her face and then it settles on one I really can't read. “We slept together, you know. Me and Spence.”

I almost fall backwards. She isn't telling me this for shock value because
that
expression I know well. But whatever her intent, I
am
shocked. Really, really shocked. Like breath-catching-in-my-throat shocked. Not just shocked because Spencer is gay, though that's part of it. And not just because I didn't know, though that's part of it too. Really I'm shocked because … I don't know. I just am. I mean, Lizzie has been totally in love with Spencer since the first time she met him, but Spencer … well, that's more complicated.

But under the shock, I'm embarrassed because it confirms what I figured anyhow. I'm the only one of us that
hasn't had sex. It shouldn't surprise me. It shouldn't really
matter. But it does. It makes me feel like a total loser to have it confirmed just like that.

“I didn't,” I say. “Know, I mean.” I stand up and kick at the dirt under the swing, uncomfortable for too many reasons.

“Yeah. I can tell.” She smiles and her face lights up. I'm not sure what's making her so happy; whether it's her memories, or that her secret was kept, or that she's pretty much rendered me speechless.

“And?” I'm not sure what I'm waiting for her to say. I certainly don't want a play-by-play. I guess I just want to know if this changes anything between all of us.

“There is no ‘and.' It happened once. It was wonderful. It won't happen again and I can now cross having sex with Spencer Yeats off my bucket list. What more do I really have to live for?” She has that wry Lizzie look on her face now, the one where half her mouth is smiling and half is frowning. That's definitely an expression I know well and I don't want to go down the path she's dragging this conversation. As much as I don't want to know how wonderful sex with Spencer was, I equally don't want to hear about how she thinks she has nothing to live for.

I wrestle for something to make her feel better and settle on, “You know he loves you, right?”

“I know,” she says softly and closes her eyes. “Just like he loves you.”

I think of all the things the three of us have been through together since we met in first grade. “Is that really so bad?”

“No, of course not. I wouldn't trade it for anything,” she admits. There's a small crack in her usual armor before she pulls it together and continues. “Well, except for the obvious. But I suppose being born the wrong sex to be with Spence is one more joke the universe has played on me.”

“God, Lizzie … ” My brain spins in the way it does when I see a hundred different options and all of them suck. Just like always, I'm helpless in the face of her hopelessness.

We've had assemblies at school on how to spot depression in our friends: loss of interest in doing things you like, sad thoughts, and on and on. But Lizzie hasn't lost interest or developed sad thoughts. She's always been this way.

Spencer knows how to deal with her when she's like this. He knows how to distract her and make her laugh. But I always feel like her sadness is stronger than me and drags me under so that I'm drowning with her instead of lifting us both up.

I lean over to hug her and we stay like that. Wrapped around each other. Quiet. Looking up at the stars. I point out that if she squints she can see the light of Saturn sitting just under the moon. I point out Polaris, the North Star, and tell her to wish on it, but she just smirks. Lizzie is convinced her wishes never come true.

So I try something else. “You know, Polaris won't even be the North Star forever. The way the Earth shifts means there have been other North Stars. Eventually when we look up in the sky it'll be another star we see there.”

She looks at me, vaguely curious, but obviously unsure what I'm getting at. “Everything changes,” I whisper into her hair, which smells a little like paint thinner. “It won't always be this hard.”