What We Knew (14 page)

Enough was enough.

I was still grimy when I knocked on the door, a million different emotions rioting in my chest. The hallway smelled of stew and cigarettes. Decades of traffic had darkened the carpet from one stairwell to the other. I’d changed out of my zebra-striped pajama bottoms, but my pajama top was just a T-shirt so I hadn’t bothered. I stood there wiggling my dirty toes, a nervous fluttering in my belly, as I listened to a chain rattle against wood. A bolt clunked. The door creaked open.

“Tracy!” my father said, sporting a beard that made me want to punch him and run.

“When did you grow that?” I asked. “You look ridiculous.”

My father’s brow crinkled with confusion. I could tell by the creases on his face he’d been sleeping.
Maybe he thinks he’s dreaming.
Just like me that day at Action Adventure. Only it turns out it wasn’t a dream. Behind him, in a cardboard frame, I could see a picture of my father and that ugly woman and her stupid child on the Log Flume.

“You can’t go to your reunion.” I glared.

My father rested his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged them off.

“Your high school reunion,” I said. “Did you get an invitation? You can’t go because I want Mom to go.” I hated how whiny I sounded.

“Get in here,” he said. “I’m not having this conversation in the hall.” He turned and disappeared behind the door, expecting me to obey, which I did. It wasn’t my first time there, but it still felt strange. Your parents’ things are your things, but everything in that apartment was foreign. The faux leather couch and glass coffee table and new appliances. I felt like I was visiting my grandmother’s: look but don’t touch. My eyes skated from room to room. The place was neater than I’d expected. No stray socks or dirty glasses. An empty pizza box was tucked behind the trash can and all his World War II DVDs were neatly stacked. On the back of a chair hung a uniform shirt with an embroidered badge. He was still working as a night guard.

My father came out of the kitchen with a blue and white box of chocolate chip cookies. At least that hadn’t changed. We had the same box on the microwave at home. It made me want to go through his fridge and cupboards, to see if he still ate the same spaghetti sauce and cereal. Like a good guest, I took one cookie instead of a handful and closed the lid.

“You walked all this way to tell me I can’t go to my own reunion?” my dad asked.

I nodded, unable to peel my eyes from the picture in the cardboard frame. I don’t know why, but her being ugly made it harder to take. “Do you love her?” I asked, pointing. My father followed my finger. “Are you going to marry her?”

“Her name’s Cindy,” my father said after a brief pause. “We’re not getting married.”

“Then why did you leave?”

My father plunked down on the couch and gave me another cookie.

“You know, those people were my friends, too. What you’re asking, it’s not fair.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I shrugged. “You made your bed.” I knew what I was talking about because I was in the same situation. When Adam returned, I couldn’t ever go to Trent’s again. Even if Lisa went, it was forever off-limits as long as Adam and Trent were friends.

“Listen,” my father said. “I don’t want to bad-mouth your mother…”

I flashed him a scalding look. “Then don’t.”

“Look, she’s not perfect, either,” he said gently. “She loves me, but she wasn’t
in
love anymore. It’s not the same thing. You’ll understand when you’re older. Maybe. I hope.”

“The romance is gone, so you just abandon her? Me, too?”

My father sighed, rubbing the back of his neck like he had a kink. “The last time I saw you,” he said, “you called me some pretty nasty names.”

“I’m your kid,” I said. “You have to love me even if I hate you.”

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, I have to love you. I do love you. There will never be a question about that. But, I
don’t
have to put up with your crap.”

“You would if you lived with us,” I said. “You wouldn’t have a choice.”

My father picked a crumb off the floor. “Have you heard from Scotty?” he asked, changing the subject.

“No,” I said, helping myself to another cookie. “You?”

My father took one, too. “I got a card, but I haven’t talked to him.”

It was awkward, sitting on a strange couch with my dad, watching him chew. I wanted everything to go back to the way it was before our lives got so broken. When the universe revolved around my next play or Scott’s latest campaign to save the world. Back when my mom and dad used to sit on
our
couch, eating
our
brand of cookies during the eleven o’clock news, the two of them taking bets on whether or not Scott and I would make it home for curfew.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“Let me give you a ride,” he said, reaching for his keys.

“I’ll walk,” I said. “I need the exercise.

My father offered me the box of cookies, but I refused them, too.

“Don’t be a stranger,” he said, kissing my nose. “You’re welcome here anytime.”

I didn’t think I ever wanted to see him again, not after I walked in on my mother crying silently in our kitchen. There’s nothing sadder than watching someone iron her own tears. That’s what she was doing, hunched over the ironing board, eyes overflowing, staining the wrinkled shirt draped over the pad. The metal plate sizzled. She looked up and sniffed. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

“Did you see the garden?” I asked, picking through the mail, hoping we’d gotten something from Scott, too.

“I did. Thank you.” My mother leaned into a cuff and zigzagged around the button and then glanced up. “It’s your father’s birthday today,” she said flatly. “You should call him.”

The needle on my rotten-daughter meter pitched toward the red zone. That’s why Scott had sent him a card. “Is that why you’re crying?” I asked. “Because it’s his birthday? He’s probably out celebrating with that sleaze. They’re probably—”

My mother shot me a look. “Don’t start,” she said.

I tossed my hands in the air. “God, Mom, get over it! I saw your account on that dating site. You’re never going to meet anybody—”

My mother slammed the iron on the board. “Get over it? Get over it? You don’t
get over
twenty-eight years of marriage, little girl. This isn’t one of your high school romances. I’ll
get over it
when I’m damn good and ready.” Her face dark and stormy, she clobbered the collar, pounding it flat.

I ran out of the kitchen, afraid that if I stayed I’d start crying and make it worse. I closed my door, but my mother’s voice penetrated the walls: “And stay off my account, or I’ll ground you from the computer!”

I hammered my pillow and then sank like a rock to the floor. I was a jerk. I’d been soothing my conscience imagining Adam in a better place than me. Jealous, almost, that he had Chris and California while I was stuck here, alone, in this dying city. One of the things that killed me about my father was that he’d obliterated our family without punishment. The universe wouldn’t punish me, either, for what I’d done to Adam. Karma is a fiction victims invented to find comfort in suffering. It doesn’t exist. If it did, Jerk Face would’ve been in an alley getting the snot kicked out him instead of answering my text:
Meet me @ Pyramid Mall.

It was too hot to ride my bike, so I took the bus. I was hoping for Reese or Davis, but Al Minty was driving, my mother’s nemesis. “Hot date?” he asked, as I trudged up the steps with my pass out. I knew he was joking—my hair was a wreck and my T-shirt and cutoffs were limp and grungy. But I stared at him coldly.
Don’t mess with me.
I slid into a seat and watched the festering city swarm my reflection and wondered what the hell I was doing. Sleeping with Foley hadn’t fixed anything. I’d been an idiot thinking what happened with him and what happened in Troy were opposite sides of the same coin. And facing The Jerk wouldn’t change anything, either, but when the doors shushed open, I still got off. I didn’t think he’d show. But there he was, in the food court, by the carousel, his thumbs working his phone. My vision tunneled and I started sweating. I remembered him taller, bigger. More muscles. Not one of those puppy-dumb boys from that band Katie loves. Everything about him screamed weak: the green plaid shirt, the skinny jeans, and white sneakers. That hair sticking up as if his dad had tousled it on his way out the door.

The phone in my pocket chirped, startling me.
Where r u?
But my entire body had gone numb. I stood in the shadow of a kiosk and watched his eyes search the tables, my veins flooding with the hatred and shame of that day, trapped beneath him, writhing, struggling, and then giving in. I wanted to slink out from hiding, slowly, steadily, and then leap, claws extended. To drag him out behind the mall, behind the Dumpsters in the deepening dark, and rip and tear and grind, hissing,
How do you like it? How do you feel?
But that’s the difference between boys and girls—
that
boy and
this
girl, at least. He’d enjoy it.

The next bus wasn’t for an hour. I shut off my phone and waited in the shelter. The orange streetlights turned my skin a sickly purple. I needed a shower badly. I picked at my nails and faced the truth weighing on my heart: there was a reason why Foley was the only one who knew what happened. No one else would’ve believed. It seemed unbelievable to me, too, that I hadn’t been able to defend myself. But I hadn’t. The killing part, the part that kills me inside: I won’t ever be able to fight him off now.

He’s with me forever.

eighteen

Lisa’s house was the only one on the street that didn’t look like the people inside had given up on living. From the end of the block, their yard was a green raft in a sea of scorched grass. It was all Larry, out there every night, spraying, killing, coaxing. Our yard used to look just as nice—not a scrap of paper or stray weed—until my dad moved out. The yard was the last to go. First it was a shutter we lost in a storm, and then a broken porch board, and then the paint started peeling off the garage. For a while we had Scott to send up on a ladder or handle the heavy lifting. But now that Scott’s gone, too, my mother’s bar for what’s acceptable keeps getting lower and lower.

I was wondering what it would take to get on one of those home makeover shows when Lisa’s storm door swung open and Foley stepped out. My brain backfired:
What’s he doing here?
The urge to tackle him was strong but so was the need to run. I spun in place and shot across the lawn, not caring about Larry’s grass.

“Hey, Trace!” Foley called, pounding down the stairs. His sneakers slapped the sidewalk behind me, but I gave him the finger and kept going. “C’mon, Trace,” he pleaded. “Wait up.” I refused to look, but I knew he was gaining on me. I cursed my stupid flip-flops and lengthened my stride. I hustled through the crosswalk just in time, but Foley wasn’t so lucky. The screech of brakes stopped my heart. I wanted him dead but not like that, with his beautiful head crushed beneath the wheel of a truck. I slowly turned, expecting blood, but Foley was on his feet, smiling and waving at the woman behind the windshield. The driver shook her fist and took off.

I took off, too, but Foley caught up, grabbing me from behind and wrenching my shoulder. My anger restored, I wheeled on him, my hand connecting harshly with his cheek. Foley dropped to his knees, cupping his face. I rubbed my wrist.

“Damn!” he wailed. “I know. I know. Lisa told me Adam broke up with you.”

“Dumbass!” I shouted. “What did you think he’d do?”

A girl with massive hoop earrings and black lip liner watched nearby. Glaring at her didn’t work. She smirked, folding her arms, and leaned against a telephone pole. Foley got up and kneaded his neck. “I did it for you,” he said. “After what happened, you needed someone safe. Adam was a crutch, but now you have to walk on your own.”

“What are you, my effing shrink?”

Foley’s eyes looked so warm, so kind. Something in me weakened and I looked away. I watched a stray dog bob along the curb, and then I stared straight at the sun.

“You didn’t love him,” he said.

“I did love him.” I blinked. “I still love him.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

Foley shook his head.

I seized a fistful of curls, and he cried out, squirming, trying to pry my fingers loose, but I locked my grip. It felt good hurting him. Really good. The sound of someone cracking up made me turn. The girl was still there, laughing behind her phone, recording the whole thing: Foley twisting in pain, whimpering for me to let go.

“Mr. Sympathetic Ear,” I said, dragging his face to mine. “Mr. Problem Solver. You go around acting like your motives are innocent. You’re only there to help, right? I’m not stupid. You get off on damaged girls.” My knuckles started to ache so I released him. Foley stumbled back, rubbing his scalp. “You’re pathetic,” I hissed.

Lacing his fingers on top of his head, he stared into me, those heavy eyelids creased with pain. It was the same look he’d given me the day I told him everything.

“Enlighten me,” I said sharply. “How many messed-up girls have you slept with? Besides me.”

Foley smiled weakly, like I’d told a bad joke, and made a zero of his thumb and finger.

I inhaled sharply, darting across the street before he could follow. Storming toward Lisa’s, I turned back. Foley—
Foley, who never lies
—was gone. The girl was using her phone to talk now, holding her belly and laughing. I rushed up the walk. One of Katie’s friends answered the door. Katie was in the living room with a game controller in her hand, trying to keep up with the faceless dancers on the TV screen.

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

Katie rocked from foot to foot, popping her chest. “Bedroom.”

Lisa and I hadn’t talked in a few days, but I’d been stalking her feeds for posts. Other than some random pictures of shadowy figures, she’d been silent. I’d been stalking Adam, too—palm trees, a guy juggling fire sticks on the beach, everything he ate—until he blocked me.

Wailing, I busted into her room and flopped on the bed beside her. “What was he doing here?!”