Who I Kissed (4 page)

The sound of sirens reaches the house. People cry and screech, in a panic. Two medics charge in the house and run out to the deck.

I don’t have to ask. It’s not good.

I don’t know how long it’s been since the Amazon pointed an accusing finger at me as the girl who had been with Alex, but people have finally stopped firing questions at me. I’ve answered questions over and over again.
What
did
I
eat
before
kissing
Alex? When did I have the peanut butter sandwich? What happened after?

Almost all the kids are gone. Taylor is at the kitchen table, crying softly. Justin sits beside her, looking like he’s about to.

A police officer’s walkie-talkie crackles. She speaks into it, then walks over to me.

“Alex died on the way to the hospital,” she says softly.

Taylor moans, and Justin drops his head to his hands. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. Back and forth. Back and forth. As if the motion can stop the truth from becoming real.
No.
I want to scream. This can’t be real.

The police officer puts her hand on my arm. “Have you been drinking?” she asks.

I shake my head no. I wonder why it even matters.

“You’re sure?”

“I swim,” I say, as if that’s an answer. My voice sounds foreign to me.

Her eyes soften, and I guess she’s a mom, thinking about her own kid, hoping she won’t drink either. Or kiss boys she doesn’t know at parties. “Did you drive here?”

I nod.

“I’ll drive you home in your car. My partner will follow us.”

I don’t argue. She pulls me up. I don’t look at Taylor or Justin. I don’t look at anyone. I wonder if I can stay inside my head and make it all go away.

It’s raining outside and the wind is whipping leaves around. The cop asks me a couple more questions on the way home, but other than supplying my address in a squeezed voice, I can’t speak. I can’t talk anymore. I can only shake my head and stare at my lap. I’m holding so many emotions inside, and they’re fighting hard to blast out. Swallowing is virtually impossible.

“We already contacted your dad. You won’t be charged with anything,” she’s saying. “In a case like this there’s no intent. No liability.”

My joints weaken and my stomach gurgles. I should go to jail. Live behind bars. Be punished forever for what I did.

She parks in the driveway and walks me to the door, and my body starts to shake when my dad opens the door. For a second I imagine Chloe going home. Her parents waiting at the front door. No son or brother will walk inside again. Horrified, I slip past my dad while the policewoman has a hushed conversation with him in the doorway. They talked earlier, but he’s just learning that Alex died. I hover behind him. Waiting.

When she finally leaves and he closes the door, my body lets go. I throw my arms around him, crumpling against him. He squeezes me harder than he ever has before and the tears I’ve somehow kept down gush out. I’m a snotty, blubbering mess.

Horrible sounds emanate from a deep, dark place inside me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…Daddy…Oh my God. I killed him.”

My dad murmurs soft words that make no sense. A part of me recognizes how stiff my dad’s arms are, but he’s holding me close and not letting go, even as I soak his golf shirt with my groaning and weeping. I’m certain I’ll never be able to stop. I rock against him, unable to process the horror of what I’ve done.

Time must pass, but instead of dying, like I should, I start to breathe a little more slowly. My guttural sounds turn to normal sobs. My dad tries to untangle himself, but I cling to him, terrified to be alone. He gently but firmly removes my arms from his.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Stay here.”

I curl into a ball on the couch and squeeze my eyes together. I don’t want to see or to hear anything. I don’t want thoughts or images in my head. A notion formulates in my brain. I want my mommy. Oh God. I want my mom more than I’ve ever wanted her in my life.

I start another whimpering sound, but it’s almost a song of sorrow that I hum to keep myself sane on some primitive level.

Dad’s footsteps return and then he crouches down beside me. “Butterfly?”

I open my eyes, and he holds out his hand, flat. In the middle of his palm is an oval blue pill. In his other hand is a glass of water.

“Take it,” he commands, holding the pill closer to me.

I don’t have the wits to question his order. I don’t ask what the pill is or protest. I can only sit up and obey. Someone needs to tell me what to do. I place the pill on my tongue, take the glass of water and swallow it down. Bitterness taints my taste buds.

Dad holds out his hand again, but this time it’s empty. I recognize that I’m expected to take it. I slip my smaller hand inside and he tugs me up. He puts his other hand under my legs and swoops me up, and my arms wind around his neck. He walks slowly, carrying me, climbing the stairs with me, taking me down the hallway to my bedroom like I’m a three-year-old, not a five-foot-eight seventeen-year-old who weighs almost 130 pounds.

He grunts a little and kicks open my bedroom door. He has to step over a pile of clothes before he can plop me gently down on my bed. I immediately roll away from him and curl into a ball, but instead of tight I’m almost limp. My brain is black and emotionally spent. I’m so exhausted it feels like I’m sinking inside my head.

Dad sits on the bed, and his weight moves me a little closer to him. He strokes my hair the way he did when I was a little girl.

The pill is already working. I’m beginning to drift, and I welcome the escape with only a tiny level of awareness.

“Why, Sammy?” he whispers. “Why were you kissing a boy you didn’t even know?’

I don’t answer him. I’m so tired. But a lingering thought survives the weariness and travels through the dark. It goes deep and imprints on my already contrite soul.

“Why did Mom die?” I whisper.

How can I possibly get through this without a mother? Maybe with her guidance I wouldn’t have gone around kissing boys I barely knew for attention.

He doesn’t say anything, and the drugs make my brain hazier. As I close my eyes and succumb to darkness, one last coherent thought flits through my head:

I wish I could join her.

My mom.

In theory I understand that I am grieving, but I haven’t wept since Friday night. My insides give me sensory proof that I’m still functioning, but it seems likely that while I was drugged my organs were replaced with robot parts. Everything works the way it’s supposed to. My heart beats. My lungs expand and contract. But it’s like I’m hollow or watching a movie about someone else. None of this feels real. I can’t break out of the trance.

I lie in my bed and think about poking something sharp into my skin. To see if it will hurt, to see if I’ll bleed, to test whether I’m still alive. I don’t, though. For one, because moving means effort. Two, because I’m afraid if start bleeding that I won’t stop myself from draining all life from my body. Or worse, that I will.

I ignore my cell phone. Dad tells me Clair and Aunt Allie are texting and emailing frantically. Taylor too. He brought the phone to my room and it quickly ran out of juice. I leave it dead on my dresser and ignore the landline. Taylor calls, and Aunt Allie persists longer, but in spite of knowing how much she’ll persevere, I don’t want to talk even to her.

Monday morning is the first time I’ve missed a swim practice except for when I’ve been too sick to move and once when I pulled my hamstring. I ignore my dad and refuse to budge from my bed for the 5:00 a.m. swim. He stands in the hallway outside my room for a while looking confused and unsure of what to do.

“What’s the matter, Dad?” I say in a flat voice. “You look like someone died.”

“Oh, Sam,” he says and comes in and sits on my bed, asking over and over if he should stay home with me. I shake my head and tell him to go to work. Finally he pats me on the head and says he’ll leave me for a few hours but tells me to call if I need him. Clearly he’s out of his league here. But so am I.

Hours later when he gets home, he comes directly to my room. I’ve become an extension of my bed. My hair is unbrushed, my teeth are still filmy. I’ve been up to use the bathroom, but other than that I’ve drifted in and out of sleep and, between naps, stared at the ceiling. I know a lot about my bedroom ceiling. The stains. The spider web in each corner.

“Clair called me at work,” Dad says.

Nothing about that makes me react. “She offered to take you to a grief counselor. To go with you.” I roll over on my side, so my back is facing him.

“But I made an appointment for you myself. Just you. I mean, I can in go with you if you want. But Clair shouldn’t have to take you.”

It sounds like he’s asking me a question. If I do want Clair to take me. I can’t deal with his uncertainty and contemplate my wall. Clair is from an old world. One I can barely remember.

“I got you in right away,” he says. “Wednesday morning. The doctor made a special arrangement to get you in.”

“Lucky him,” I mumble to my wall. “I’m sure I’ll be fascinating.”

“Sam.” He doesn’t move from the end of my bed.

I don’t answer, but I sense him staring at me. A sigh drifts in the air until he leaves. I flip onto my back again, and a few minutes later Dad walks in with a sandwich and some snap peas on a plate.

“Can you eat something?” He hands me the plate, and I take it and place it on top of the messy sheets bunched up on the bed.

“Sammy,” he says. His voice cracks. “I can’t stand to see you like this.”

I don’t answer. There’s no other way to see me.

“I want to help you. Please. Talk to me.”

The thing he doesn’t realize is that he can’t help me. And because he’s so good at keeping things he doesn’t want to talk about inside, somewhere along the way I developed the same ability.

“I’ll be fine. Really. I just want to be alone.”

“I need to do something to fix this.”

“I know, Daddy.” We look each other in the eyes. I haven’t called him that in a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, and his voice is uneven.

“Did you know that the funeral is tomorrow?” I ask, staring at the flat peas on the plate.

“I know,” he says.

I pull a loose thread on my comforter. “Do you think I should go?”

“Do you want to?”

No. Yes. No. I can’t imagine which scenario is worse. “I don’t know.” I look up at his face. The familiar crooked nose. The thinning brown hair that doesn’t take away from his still handsome face. Age is being kind to him.

“I understand.” He clears his throat. “But it might be good to have closure. Say goodbye. Let me know, okay? I’ll go with you.”

He’s never used the word closure before. I wonder if he’s reading psychology books.

I close my eyes to avoid thinking about that too long. When I don’t say anything more, he leaves the room.

By the morning I’ve moved the plate to my dresser. The bread is hard and stale. The peas are untouched.

***

I’m wearing ugly polyester-ish black pants that Dad bought me for an awards banquet in the summer. I have on a black turtleneck with black boots. It feels like I’m playing a part in a movie,
the
Mourner
. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten my lines. The cues are all jumbled in my head.

Unseasonably warm temperatures drop to honor the seriousness of the day. It’s cold enough that my classmates are wearing their coats zipped up. Dad and I are sitting in the idling car watching them walk by. There’s no room to park in the church parking lot. We’ve stopped in front of a house a block away from the church. The street is lined with cars. Dead teenagers collect quite a crowd.

I’m made of ice, so it surprises me that my breath is invisible in the air. I expect white clouds to float from my lips. The heat must be on and the air must be warm, but it doesn’t reach my insides.

I can’t move.

“Come on, Sam.” Dad reaches over and presses his gloved fingers into my arm. We touch so much lately, more than we have since I was a kid.

“We’re here. We should go in.” I sense his desire to push me out of the car. To make me do the right thing. He wants me to go inside and show the world he didn’t completely fail raising me alone.

“I can’t.” I try to imagine the stares from Alex’s mom and dad. I close my eyes tight and try to feel their hatred from inside the car. I deserve to let them have that, to let them pour it into me, blame me for their loss. But I’m afraid, terrified I’ll never thaw out if their faces reveal what I did to them.

I’m the last person they’ll want to see, I tell myself. Going inside would be for me. It’s best for everyone else that I stay away. I’m unable to push myself out of the car. I want to have something useful to say to them. Something to make amends. But how do you say you’re sorry for killing someone’s son? What do I expect them to say back?

“It’s okay. We forgive you.”

Of course not.

There is nothing. There is no apology. There is no Hallmark card.

I want to tell his parents I’d gladly trade places with Alex, give my life for his. But how do you say something like that without sounding like a complete asshole?

It’s too ridiculous to imagine.

“I can’t, Dad. I’ll make things worse. Please. Take me home.”

***

Hours later, Dad pokes his head inside my room. “Sam? Get up. You’ve got to move around.”

I do? I have no idea why he thinks that. When we got home I walked straight to my room and crawled under the covers. I don’t know what time it is now. It ceased to matter long ago. Dad makes sounds in his throat and then walks inside my room, goes to the phone, and plugs the line back in the jack. “Your Aunt Allie wants to speak to you. It might help to talk to her.”

I don’t point out that he’s done his best to keep us from talking in the past. He takes away the breakfast I didn’t eat and returns with another plate—a grilled cheese sandwich and purple grapes. My favorite. He throws my cell phone at me and leaves the room. He’s charged it. I stare at it for a minute and see a long string of texts from Clair. Taylor. Aunt Allie. I delete them all without reading them.

Almost immediately the landline rings. Dad picks it up in the living room. By the tone of his voice I guess it’s Aunt Allie, but I don’t listen to what he says to her.

I drift in and out of sleep, and then there’s light in my room and I guess it must be morning. Dad walks back into the room and stands in front of my bed with his arms crossed.

“If you don’t get up and into the shower I will pick you up and shower you myself.”

He means it, and the horror of being naked in front of him forces me out of my stupor. As warm water pounds down on my body, cleansing my skin, I squeeze my eyes tight, trying to stave off my thoughts. I reach for the faucet and turn it to cold. The icy water prevents me from thinking. Shivering, I wash my hair, and when I’m done, I towel off and change into the clean clothes Dad set out for me on my bed, like I’m five years old again. I floss my teeth until my gums bleed.

As we drive to the emergency peanut butter killer meeting he’s set up, Dad babbles, carrying on a nervous monologue that sounds a lot like gibberish in my ears.

I walk into the office of the counselor and figure out a few things. His name is Bob. It’s written on the plastic sign on his door. Bob Kissock. Also, he wears too much cologne. It smells up the tiny room and makes me think of men wearing towels around their waists on TV commercials. He’s middle aged and reminiscent of Santa Claus with his gray hair and beard. He’s wearing a red sweater vest over a round belly that stretches over his black pants. He’s got glasses on, but when I look closely I can see that his eyes are kind.

I sit on the leather couch, preparing to ignore him, but when he speaks his voice is gentle. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says. “For what happened.”

His voice chisels away some of my frostiness. Cold snaps in my bones. I pull my sweater tighter around me, breathing in and feeling tightness in my chest.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. He slides into the chair across from me. His voice is smooth and deep. Reassuring.

The tightness in my chest expands and travels up to my forehead. It pounds, and I press on my temples to try to relieve the pressure.

“I would like to help you.” He says it simply but enunciates the words so that they sound authentic and sincere.

“Yes.” It surprises me. I open my eyes wider, looking at Bob. “Please. Help. Me.”

He leans over and pats my hand. My shoulders collapse against the back of the couch.

“I didn’t mean…” I stop, unable to continue, wringing my hands around and around.

“Of course you didn’t,” he says, and the understanding in his voice nearly slays me. “You need help coping, Sam. And that’s why you’re here.”

He asks me simple questions in his gentle voice. I answer in one-word sentences at first. My voice is throaty and froggy, as if I haven’t used it in a very long time. Bob gently but firmly describes the stages of grief and guilt. He never takes his eyes off me. He never condescends or tries to tell me how to feel. He explains himself and why he’s asking and continues with more and more personal questions. My body melts a little further. I find myself relieved to be able to feel again, though an hour ago that seemed impossible.

“Have you been bothered by reporters?” he asks after a pause.

I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, obviously it’s all over the news. But none of the reports have named me. They’re not coming after me. Even though it’s no secret in this town.”

“Good.” He nods and presses his fingers and palms together like a yogi or something. “Sometimes the ethics of the news world surprise me. In this case, in a good way.” And then he asks another simple question.

“Tell me about your mom.” The question throws me off. I struggle not to cry and he looks me in the eye. “It’s okay to cry,” he says.

I press my lips tight. Swallow and inhale deeply through my nose. I wave my hands in front of my face as if fanning will keep me from giving in to everything I’ve been burying. His permission rips at the imaginary duct tape I’ve wrapped around my heart to keep the sorrow inside. A sniffle escapes, and then I can’t hold it in anymore.

I use up almost a whole box of Kleenex before I can speak again.

As I sniffle, Bob talks about loss. And then asks more questions. His gentle voice and kind demeanor allow me to purge things from deep inside, and when the questions finally stop, I’m exhausted.

“What can I do?” I ask him. “What can I do to make amends? I mean, I can never do that. But I feel like I need to do…something. What can I do?”

Bob settles back against his chair. Folds his hands. “That,” he says, “is a very good question.” He leans toward me. “I want you to think about that. We’ll talk about it again.”

He stands then and tells me my dad wants to join us for our last few minutes, and then he goes to the door to invite him inside. Dad walks into the room and sits beside me, darting glances at me and then at Bob.

“What about school?” Bob asks. “Have you thought about how to continue her education in a safe manner?”

Dad glances sideways at me. “I could hire someone. For homeschooling.”

“No,” I say. Both men stare at me.

“I want to go back to school.”

“Are you sure?” Bob asks. “Your dad tells me you’ve only been going there a couple months.”

I nod, and he leans over and makes a note in the notebook beside his chair.

“What about the swimming?” my dad asks. “You need to go back to that too.”

“No.” My voice snaps, quick as a starting pistol.

They both look at me like I’m a little unhinged. They think I’ve got it backward. Yes to school. No to swimming. But they don’t understand my need to be punished.

Bob asks me to explain in my own words why I can’t swim, why I won’t get back in the water. Sorrow that has been consuming me turns to anger, as if I’m being forced to say things that are vile and dark. I press my lips tight. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“She’s close to breaking records,” my dad says to Bob, his voice pleading. “She’s close to a national record in freestyle.”

Bob nods but doesn’t take his eyes off of me. “She’s going through a very intense trauma, Mr. Waxman. She needs to heal.”

“But there’s a meet coming up. This is her senior year. She’s been training most of her life for this. College scouts…” He stops.