What We Knew (13 page)

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. I can’t leave Katie. You either, dummy.” She shoved me lightly before glancing around the snack bar furtively. “I have to ask you something,” she whispered. “Have you been back in the woods?”

My face got hot. I couldn’t tell her without telling her about the eyes he’d left for me. After the other night, I decided ignoring him might make him go away. That’s how I got Jerk Face to stop calling. I pretended he didn’t exist and eventually it was like he didn’t. Poof. Gone. Like magic.

I answered her question with a question: “Why?”

“No, it’s just … I found a jackknife with your dad’s initials. What are the chances?”

“You found it in the woods?” I said. “What were you doing there?”

Lisa shrugged.

“You’ve got to stop this,” I said. “You’re going to get hurt. Why are you stalking him?”

Lisa’s face turned stony. “
He’s
stalking
me
.”

“Then go to the police.”

“With what? I don’t have any proof. A glass eye doesn’t prove anything. It’s just a feeling. Like I’m constantly being watched. I want him to know I’m watching, too.”

I just sat there, chewing my thumbnail, rolling my feet back and forth nervously. I was as guilty as Lisa for believing in him. I told my mother I’d lost my keys so she’d change the locks. How demented is that?

“What?” Lisa huffed. “I can see you want to say something.”

“It’s a myth, Lisa. A dumb story. My mom said when she was a kid they called him the Hillhurst Demon.”

But a story can’t leave things for you to find …

“What about the eye?” Lisa challenged.

“It could be anybody,” I said. “Remember when we all watched that scary movie that pretended to be a documentary, and then we all woke up the next morning with piles of rocks on our lawns?”

“I still think it was Rachel,” Lisa said.

“Me, too.”

The punch in the back startled me. Lisa’s cup crashed to the floor, ice flying.

“Jesus, Katie!” Lisa said. “Stop much?”

Rubbing her wrist, Katie said we could have some cake if we wanted. The birthday song came on and Katie shot out of the snack bar and across the rink. Helping Lisa scoop up the ice, I longed for the days when Banana Man was just a creepy story we told at sleepovers and cake could fix anything. Maybe it still could. I grabbed Lisa’s hand and dragged her toward the birthday room, toward Katie and her goofball friends fighting over frosting flowers.

sixteen

I’d just stopped sweating when Adam met me in the hospital cafeteria. He looked paler than usual and didn’t stop to kiss me, just tossed his head for me to follow. I did—up the service stairs, down the hall with the gift shop and the pharmacy, through the lobby and the sliding glass doors, and out into the clinging humidity. A taxi coasted into the drop-off lane. An ambulance screamed across the lot. My body, loath to quit the cool and the quiet, turned instantly sluggish. Adam lowered his hair against the blistering sun and parted the heat waves rippling off the asphalt. Keeping up was an effort.

“You really need to work on a base tan,” I joked.

The muscles in his jaw pulsed like he was working a wad of gum. He unrolled his sleeves. “I wash dishes in a basement all day. I don’t have time to lounge around, catching rays.” There was an edge in his voice I had never heard. Out on the street, he lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the sky, and trudged up the hill. Watching his back, his oxford billowing behind him, I wanted to run up and throw my arms around him and beg him to tell me what was wrong.

“Where are we going?” I called.

He didn’t answer. Not his house. That was in the opposite direction. Up ahead, tree shadows darkened the sidewalk as a flock of birds swiftly scattered. We needed to cross soon. When Adam stepped off the curb, I let out the breath I’d been holding against the woods. Cars zoomed past. A helicopter shuddered overhead. Adam waited by a hydrant for me to catch up.

“What did you want?” he said. “What was so important that you had to send me sixteen texts?”

What I wanted was to see him, to know if he wanted to meet me for coffee at that little place on lower State Street. It was open mic night. Music or poetry, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

“Yeah—no,” He squinted into the smoke swirling toward his eyes. “I’m not really up for hanging out tonight.”

We were silent all the way to the middle school, two strangers who just happened to be walking in step. A crew was sandblasting graffiti off the fifth-grade wing, so we kept going, past the main entrance to the playground. A couple of boys were kicking a ball around, and Adam stopped to watch. Leaning against the chain-link fence, he lit another cigarette off the one he’d just finished.

“I’m leaving for California on Friday,” he said casually.

My shoulders fell. “I thought you weren’t going for another week?”

He shrugged. “I’m leaving early. Staying longer, too. The rest of the summer.”

“But the rest of the summer is forever,” I whined. “What happened?”

“I should be asking you that,” he said coldly. His lip curled in disgust, and suddenly I knew.
He
knew. I started shrinking then, my brain scrambling for excuses. Adam raised his hand. “I’ll save you the embarrassment,” he said. “I won’t ask. I’ll just tell you. I know you cheated on me with Foley.”

My stomach lurched. The weightless terror of missing a stair, when it’s too late to stop yourself from falling. I looked to the woods.
No.
Then who?
Lisa?
Her words:
Wait till you slip up.

“Adam, please,” I begged, my voice breaking. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Growling, he turned and rattled the chain links. The boys froze mid-pass. “Chris was right,” Adam said, nodding slowly.
Chris? He told Chris.
A second wave of shame washed over me, like I’d somehow betrayed him, too. I’d earned his approval and then made him look stupid for liking me.

“Chris said some girls can’t handle being treated right,” Adam said. “They don’t know what to do with a guy like me. It’s like they enjoy being used. They want someone who makes them feel like shit about themselves.”

“That’s not fair!” I cried. “You don’t understand!”

“No!” Adam shouted, jabbing his finger at my face. The harshness in his voice made me recoil. “You don’t get to be mad. This is your fault. You did this. We were supposed to go to dinner that night and you lied. You lied so you could…” He pulled at his bangs. “I can’t even say it.”

The softness in his eyes was dying. He inhaled a shaky breath and blinked once more and it was gone, replaced by something cold and hard. Silent tears stung my face. The boys on the playground smeared. Everything went foggy. I don’t know why, but all I could see was Lisa and me on the steps at graduation, firing finger pistols into the air, like finishing middle school was some big accomplishment. I slumped down on the hot sidewalk and wished for the days when the worst things possible were forgetting your lunch and being nicknamed
Melon Head.

“For future reference,” Adam said, grinding his cigarette into the sidewalk. “The next time you cheat, do it with someone who’s not compelled by honesty to confess every wrong he’s ever committed.”

Watching him walk away—my heart already aching for what I’d lost, for what might’ve been—my shame turned to rage. If you could be imprisoned for murderous thoughts, that’s where I’d be for what I wanted to do to Foley. It started as a rumble in my throat, a low snarling that grew and grew, until my jaw slackened and I was howling. A woman pruning bushes across the street stopped and stared. The kickball rang against the fence. I pried myself off the sidewalk and cried all the way to Lisa’s.

“What happened to you?” Larry asked, his face knotting with concern as he let me in. “Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”

I looked around the living room and wiped my cheeks with the palms of my hands. “Boyfriend,” I said, my voice cracking. My lips started trembling again. “Is Lisa here?”

Larry looked distressed, like my dad used to when I’d skinned a knee. I think if he’d tried to hug me, I would’ve hugged him, too, but he was holding his lower back like it pained him.

“You need anything?” he asked gently. “You look thirsty. We’ve got some juice boxes.”

Shaking my head, I flashed him the OK sign, then hurried down the hall before I lost it again.

“Lisa?” I shouted over the music behind the bedroom door. I leaned against the cool wood and knocked with my forehead. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

The bathroom door behind me popped open and Lisa stepped out.

“What the hell happened to you?” she mumbled around the toothbrush jutting from her mouth.

I pushed past her and yanked a bunch of tissues from the box on the counter, slumped down on the edge of the tub, and dried my stinging face.

“Adam,” I said. “Foley told him.”

Lisa bulged her eyes and then spit in the sink. She dropped her toothbrush in the holder, unwound a strand of floss, and tossed me the little white box like I needed to floss, too.

“Did you guys break up?” she asked the mirror.

“What do you think?”

Examining her teeth, she flashed me a look:
You don’t have to get snotty.
She raised a tube of toothpaste and said, “This stuff foams like crazy. Try it. You’ll like it.”

What was wrong with her? My life was going to pieces and she was carrying on about dental hygiene. She was acting like one of the witnesses in that crime show my mom loves. Nobody ever has time to talk to the police.
Hello, people, there’s a dead body in the alley! Stop stuffing your face with hot dogs! Put your cell phone away!

The tears started again and Lisa hugged my head. She knelt down on the bath mat like she was about to give me her undivided attention, but then Katie barged in with a pencil under her nose.

“It’s popcorn! Wanna smell?”

Lisa stood up and took a sniff. “It
is
popcorn. Does the taco smell like taco or feet? Remember those stickers we used to get?” That question was for me, but I didn’t answer. I turned my face away and focused on a cracked tile behind the toilet. “My favorite was the pink soap,” Lisa said. “Tracy’s was candy cane. Right? That and root beer.”

Lisa and Katie were going on and on about their favorite smells when Larry knocked.

“Are you guys having a party in there?” he asked.

Lisa gave the door the finger. Katie snickered behind her palm and then asked Lisa to straighten her hair for her. Two seconds later their mother was calling down the hall: “Don’t forget, it’s garbage night!” And then, “Are you almost done? I have to get ready for work.”

“Gabe’s taking us to Thursday in the Park,” Lisa said, fishing the flatiron out of the basket beneath the sink. “Ryan, too. Wanna come?”

A mix of shock and disappointment, but mostly hurt, turned my face to stone. She didn’t even care enough to cancel her night to be with me, her
best friend
who’d just had her heart broken. The air around me suddenly became heavy and cloying. My face shriveled and I was crying. Again. Squashed in that tiny bathroom with the two of them, I’d never felt so alone. I had to get out. I needed a break from the Grants—Katie
and
Lisa. A long one.

When I got home, my mother was in her bedroom watching TV. Thank God. I didn’t think I could stop the shuddering in my chest long enough to hold a conversation. I turned off my phone and pulled the shades, wrapping myself in Adam’s oxford—the one I’d never washed—and crawled into bed with the remote. My mother looked in on me once, on her way to the kitchen, but I pretended to sleep. She was the last person I could go to.
Oh, Tracy. How could you?
The hopelessness and loss building and building, I switched to some inane comedy. There was a slight delay, but my mother was watching the same thing. Both of us stuck in bed, trapped in the light of a TV, our long faces frozen in blue.

seventeen

Our garden was brown and weedy. Everything was dying. I wanted a tomato for my sandwich but the bottoms were black with rot. I’m not into growing stuff—that’s my mother’s thing—but I squeezed between the rows, searching for a pulse. My face sagged at the squash leaves, brown and mildewy, plastered to the soil like wet newspaper; the pole beans she’d started from seed shriveling from atrophy; the willowy carrot tops a matted nest of yellow. Scott’s the Rescuer of All Things Helpless, but I’m not totally heartless. It’s hard to stand passive in the face of neglect. I plucked a dandelion and tossed it over the fence. It was probably too late to save anything, but once I started I just kept going, down on my knees in my pajamas, yanking, tossing, the wilting pile growing and growing.

It’s not like I had anything else to do. Adam was gone. Drinking iced coffee on a boardwalk with Chris, hating me, moving on. I imagine it’s hard to stay sad in California, with the sand and the surf and all those palm trees gently swaying. And Lisa … I was still pissed at Lisa. I hadn’t called or texted, and neither had she. What was her problem? The silent treatment is my thing, not hers. She hadn’t even liked the throwback picture I’d posted of the two us huddled beneath a poncho on the eighth grade camping trip.

I put my phone aside and grabbed the hose coiled against the garage. I didn’t need a green thumb to know that a good soaking wouldn’t hurt—nothing had been watered in ages. Setting the nozzle to mist, I sat there with the water trickling down my arm, wrapped in the smell of sun-warmed dirty hair and earth and vegetation. I’m not sure how long I was outside, but the tops of my feet were starting to pink so I went in. After baking in the sun, the house felt cool. I was going to wash up, but I sort of liked the soles of my feet black, my fingernails ringed with soil. My palms, stained yellow from pulling weeds, stung like I’d been climbing ropes in gym. I filled a glass with ice water and sat down at the computer. I wanted to find something about reviving tomatoes, but I clicked on my mother’s dating site bookmark instead. She had three unread messages, all from decent-sounding guys who wanted to meet her. One of them was a volunteer fireman who liked dancing and horses. The other two listed interests like long walks and quiet Sundays. If she started now, she’d have a date for her reunion, but she had no intention of going. The invitation was in the trash by the desk.