Wrecked (10 page)

When we’re pulling out of the gas station, I turn his music on for him. I turn it up really, really loud. He changes the CD from Spoonerism to some other band. I close my eyes against the brightness. It’s all I can do not to cover my ears now. Partly because the music is so unbelievably loud, and partly because it sucks. Instead I tuck my hands under my thighs and grit my teeth. I stay like that, eyes closed, hands jammed, jaw locked, all the way to the bank.

“THAT’S EASY,” LISA SAYS. “LIKABLE. EXTRA LIKABLE.”

We’re at Ellen’s studying for the SATs, which are totally screwed up this year. Instead of being on the first Saturday of December, like always, they’re the Saturday before Christmas. So that gives everybody two extra weeks of anticipatory agony. Because at my neurotic school, people start studying early and worrying earlier.

“Popular,” Seth says. He’s sitting next to me on the floor at the coffee table in Ellen’s living room. He’s half concentrating on what the rest of us are doing and half writing something on a piece of paper he’s hiding underneath his thigh. Every now and then he rubs his calf on my ankle. I try to see what’s got him so interested on that piece of paper.

“
Charisma
means ‘popular,’” he repeats.

“It’s more than that, though,” Jason says from the couch next to Lisa. “Right?” He’s asking Ellen because it’s the sort of thing she would know. “Doesn’t charisma have something else to it?”

She’s been getting quieter and quieter since she got home. Not as quiet as Rob, but noticeable. At least, I can tell Jason’s noticed. He’s always making a point of directing what he says to her. Maybe to get her into things again. I don’t know.

She’s sitting in the wheelchair with her leg propped on an ottoman right next to the coffee table and a huge chenille blanket wrapped around her shoulders. We’ve got a bunch of markers out, and every time we review a word, someone makes up a sentence with it and then writes the sentence on Ellen’s cast. The word has to be in a different color than the rest of the sentence. So far we’ve got
Ellen’s cheeks are gaunt from the shitty hospital food
and
The pornographic cable channels present tawdry options for the masses,
and a few more like that.

Ellen shrugs at me and Seth. “What do you guys think?”

Seth looks up from whatever it is he’s working on underneath his leg. “I thought charisma had to do with how people look, too,” he says. “Don’t you have to be hot to be charismatic?”

“Read the definition,” Jason tells Ellen. Seth pulls a Tootsie Roll out of his pocket, unwraps it, pops it into his mouth, and then picks up the bowl of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips and passes it to me. I grab a bunch and pass the bowl to Jason. It goes around the circle while Ellen reads. Seth rubs my ankle again. I rub back.

“‘ personal magic of leadership arousing special popularity
or enthusiasm.’ That’s One. Two is ‘a special magnetic charm or appeal.’”

“But people who are charismatic are always good-looking,” Seth insists.

“I thought we just disabused ourselves of that,” Ellen says.

“Disa-what?” Lisa asks her.

“Proved ourselves wrong.” Ellen sighs.

“Whatever.” Lisa leans back onto the couch in a huff. I don’t blame her. Who but Ellen would know a word like
disabuse
? The SAT people, I guess.

“So it’s not attractiveness,” Ellen says, holding the bowl and then not taking any chips. “It’s some other thing. Some other quality. Like … like …” Then she shrugs again and gives up. Before the accident Ellen was not a shrugger. Or a giver-upper.

“Weirdly sexy?” Jason offers.

Ellen perks a little. “Yeah,” she says, and she sort of straightens. “Think about it. Who are the most long-lasting celebrities or politicians? Some of them are objectively hot. But most have this weirdly sexy thing happening. Charisma.” We all sit there and think about it. It seems sort of true.

“That girl in those frozen-dinner commercials,” I say. Everybody nods.

“Bono,” Lisa goes.

“They’re not pure good-looking,” Ellen says. “But they’re weirdly sexy, and they have that magnetic charm and appeal.”

“But just because you’re good-looking doesn’t mean you have charisma,” Jason says. “That’s the point.”

“Cameron,” I say. I’ve been thinking it since before Ellen even read out the definitions. Everybody gets quiet. I look over
at Ellen. She nods and stares at her cast and then at the dictionary. She kind of sags, like a balloon, deflated.

“Let’s do a sentence with her,” Lisa says. “Anna, you write it.”

Lisa hands me the box of markers she was holding. I look at all the colors for a while, trying to decide. I end up choosing black.

“Do you have a sentence?” Seth asks. I’m not sure. I sit here, the tip of the marker poised over Ellen’s cast. It trembles, so I pull it away and cap it while I think. Everybody’s waiting. “Cameron,” I finally write, “= charismatic.” It’s the first sentence I’ve done today. The lines are jittery and wavery They’re strange next to Lisa’s bold, curvy letters and Seth’s wiry chicken scratch. It makes me not be able to look at Ellen, or at any of them, for some reason.

“That’s not exactly a sentence,” Lisa finally says.

“Without the desire to see there is no seeing,’” Jason tells her.

“And that means what exactly?” Lisa goes.

Jason arches his left eyebrow. “It means shut up.”

My cell rings. I toss the marker onto the coffee table and flip up the phone. “It’s my mom.”

They wait politely, smashing open a bag of baked corn chips, while my mother talks. She says I need to get someone to drive me home to pick up the Audi to drive to the car dealer on Bateson Avenue to pick her and my dad up because the new Honda they were supposed to buy today got accidentally given to someone else.

“Can’t Jack do it?” I ask my mom.

“We called you first,” she says. “You’re closer than he is. He’s at Rob’s.”

“Rob’s isn’t that much farther,” I say.

“Anna, please.”

“Why is the Audi at home?” I ask. “Why don’t you or Dad have it?”

“We miscommunicated,” my mom explains. “I thought Jack was taking it, so I got a ride with Phyllis. Your dad thought I was taking it, so he got a ride with Russell.”

“I’m in the middle of studying,” I say.

“Anna, this isn’t an option. We’re stuck here,” my mom says.

“Is she giving you a hard time?” I hear my father ask in the background.

“I can’t—,” I start to tell my mother.

My dad gets on the phone. “Get over here now,” he says. And he hangs up on me.

“What’s the matter?” Seth asks. “Your teeth are chattering.”

“No, they’re not,” I say. They all look at me funny.

“Can someone give me a ride home?”

Seth does. I have to direct him because he’s never been to my house.

“Are you okay?” he keeps asking. I keep nodding behind my sunglasses. I’m going to need them for at least a few more weeks. Even though I stopped using the drops a couple of days after that gonioscopy.

“What happened on the phone?” Seth tries.

“Nothing,” I say. “My mom just needs me to pick her and my dad up.” I pull my arms around myself, and he drops it.

“So, what was that piece of paper you were so interested in at Ellen’s just now?” I ask him. My teeth are chattering, and it’s not even that cold out.

“My next big thing,” he says.

“Your what?”

“My next big thing.” He grins. He has sort of a goofy grin. “You need a big thing every now and then,” he goes. “To keep life from getting boring.” He reaches into the pocket on his door and grabs a Tootsie Roll.

“Here,” I say. “You’re driving.” I unwrap it for him. Instead of holding out his hand, though, he opens his mouth. I ignore that and toss the naked Tootsie Roll into his lap, so that he has to fish for it. “So, what’s a big thing?” I ask him.

“My first one was in seventh grade,” he says, rolling the candy between his front teeth. “You know that huge waterwheel moat thing by the library?”

“Yeah,” I go. “The one somebody made into a bubble bath about four yea …”

He’s rolling and smiling.

“Oh my God,” I go. “That was you?”

More rolling. More smiling.

“What about the colors?” I ask him. “That started later, right? Like, a year later?”

“Food coloring,” he goes. “My favorite was the purple.”

“Mine too!” I go. “How did you not get caught? I mean, they could have arrested you or something.”

“Yeah,” he goes, tucking the Tootsie Roll into the side of his cheek, making a little bulge. “Life without parole.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Never.” He chews and swallows. “I’m glad you don’t have that robot eye anymore during the daytime,” he says as he turns onto my street. My arms have become uncrossed
somehow, only I’m shaking again, so I recross them.

“Because I’ve been wanting to kiss you, only that thing was messing up the physics of it.”

“The physics?”

“Who have you gone out with, anyway?”

I cross my legs now too. “Nobody,” I say.

“I thought you and Paul what’s-his-name were a thing.”

“No,” I say. We’re around the curve now, almost at my driveway. “He liked me, but I didn’t like him back.”

“Why?” Seth asks. I don’t really know why. He was cute and cool, and he played soccer, and Ellen thought I should like him. “And what about Rothman?”

I roll my eyes. “Rothman is ridiculous,” I say. “Here.” He pulls into my driveway. I unknot my limbs and get out of the car. I try to seem calm while I make myself walk around to his side.

“Why do you like me, Seth?” I ask through his rolled-down window.

“Am I ridiculous if I don’t have a reason?”

I shake my head. He reaches out and pulls a curl. And doesn’t let go.

“Let go,” I tell him.

The truth is, I’ve been kissed by only two guys. Paul what’s his-name and Rothman, and I’ve never really had a boyfriend, and I’m sort of old not to have ever had a boyfriend, and it’s embarrassing and the idea of dealing with it all just makes me shake, only I’ve been shaking for weeks anyway, so maybe it’s hard to know exactly what the shaking is about.

“Lean down,” he says, keeping gentle hold of my curl.

“You never said what your next big thing is,” I tell him.

“Lean down,” he says.

“I’d really like to know.”

“Lean down,” he says again.

“I didn’t say you could kiss me,” I tell him. He keeps hold of my hair.

“Lean down.” He’s like a broken record. “I’m going to kiss your other eye.”

I lean down. He lifts himself through the space of the window and very gently raises my sunglasses.

“Hmm,” he goes. And then he very, very gently kisses my left eye.

“See ya,” he says, and he’s out of here. I’m shaking and shaking and shaking.

I get to the end of my block. That’s how long it takes before I lose it. Chest leaping, body shuddering, sweating like I’m running a marathon.
Something happened to me in the accident,
I think as my slick palm slides all over the steering wheel.
I got injured somehow that nobody realized. My heart got hurt, and now I’m having a heart attack
. I manage to weave the Audi over to the side of the road and pull out my cell phone. I call 911. I stumble out of the car and think I’m going to vomit on the street, only I don’t. I collapse onto the pavement, but by the time the ambulance gets here six minutes later, I’m almost fine, and Mrs. Caldwell is sitting with me in that navy blue sweatsuit with the white stripes up the sides.

“She was in a car accident about a month ago,” Mrs. Caldwell explains to the EMTs. So even though they don’t see
anything obviously wrong, they decide to take me to the hospital. Mrs. Caldwell picks up my parents at the Honda dealership and drives them home. And Jack is at the house by then, and my whole family drives to the hospital in the Audi to get me, and I’m fine.

On the way home again, Jack and I sit in the back, with my parents up front, and it’s like a trip to the beach, because when else are we all in the car together these days? My father’s humming. Jack’s got his earphones in and turned way up. I can hear that squawking sitting next to him. My mother keeps twisting around with this concerned expression.

“Okay, look,” my father says finally. I tap Jack and nod at the back of my father’s head, at his mass of gray hair. Jack pulls out his earphones. But then my dad doesn’t say anything else.

SETH AND JASON AND LISA BRING TWO MOVIES OVER TO ELLEN’S.
Her mom has to go into her room to wake her up about three times before Ellen finally wheels out with her hair messed up and the same sweatshirt she wore yesterday.

“We got them both off Rosebud Is a Sled,” Jason tells her. “They’re in Jack’s top fifty list.” I flop onto Ellen’s couch next to Seth. He puts his arm across my shoulders while we look.

“
My Life as a Dog
?” I say, looking at one of the DVDs. “What is that? My brother is so weird.”

“
Big,
’ Seth says, crunching into his Toffee Crisp and reading the title of the other movie. “Which one should we watch first?”

“
My Life as a Dog
will make you cry,” Ellen’s mother informs us, walking through the family room to get to the stairs.

“Out, Mom,” Ellen tells her, loud, and then she winces. Her ribs and the spot where her bra strap meets the cup must still really hurt. It creeps me out to think a tube poked right into her body there. I’ve seen the aftermath, once, when Ellen changed her shirt in front of me. It’s all this gauze and white tape and a wettish spot in the middle. She has to change it twice a day. Ugh. Poor Ellen. I saw her laugh at something Jason said at school earlier, and then immediately grit her face and almost cry.

“I never weep at movies, Mrs. Gerson,” Seth is saying now.

“Weep?” Lisa goes.

“Am I allowed to respond?” Mrs. Gerson asks Ellen.

Ellen shrugs. “A-parent-ly.”

“That movie will make every single one of you cry,” Mrs. Gerson announces. Then, at Ellen’s look, she speeds up, saying, “Yes. Yes. I’m going.”