CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Illusory Power of Black Friday My dorm room is perfectly quiet when I slip back in after the shower. Sabin is flat on his stomach with his arms and legs spread out, hogging more than his share of my futon. Estelle, Zach, and Eric are also still asleep. I am still unnerved from the shower and glad to have silence, but I also want to revel in the absolute relief I feel now that I’ve purged myself of that fire story. Later, I’ll have to examine every detail, but for now I want to take the high and run with it because I’ve had too much angst for today.
I settle in next to Sabin, and when he lets out a loud morning yawn, I clamp a hand down over his mouth. “Shhh!”
“What time is it?” he whispers.
I lean down and put my mouth by his ear. “Still early.” He starts to snore, and I have to stifle a giggle. “Sabin, Sabin, Sabin!” I pat his shoulders.
He rouses slightly. “What is it, baby?”
“It’s Black Friday.”
“Oh.”
“Wanna go buy an unnecessarily big TV?”
“Totally.” He rolls over and beckons, so I crawl onto him and pin him down by putting my knees on either side of his belly. Sabin rubs his eyes and then blinks up at me. His voice is scratchy and raw, but he once again sounds like the boy I know and love. “Can we get one of those breakfast station thingies, too?”
“I don’t know what a breakfast station thingy is.”
“You know. It’s a combo toaster, coffeemaker whatchamahoozey with a teeny fold-down skillet.” He yawns again. “For half a strip of bacon and one small fried egg. A quail egg or somethin’.”
“Yes, we can get one of those.”
“And maybe a pair of roller skates?”
“If it’s a good bargain, yes.”
“Awesome. Let’s go.”
He sits up, pulls me closer so I’m grabbing onto him like a koala baby, and scoots us to the end of the futon.
“Chris’s room,” I direct him. “He’s making coffee to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He carries me easily, opening the door with one hand and holding me with the other.
He takes us down the hall, with me plastered to his chest and my arms and legs wrapped around him. I rub my nose against his. “It’s gonna be a really giant television, okay?”
He rubs my back. “Obscenely so.”
We get to Chris’s door and Sabin pauses before he turns the knob. “I’m so sorry. Last night was f*cked up. Really f*cked up. I love you, B.”
I am not going to cry again today. I’m not. “I love you, too,” I tell him.
***
An hour or so later, after stopping at a diner for breakfast, Chris, Sabin, and I pile back into the truck. I feel more than ready to shop. After what I just went through, and what I put Chris through, something more mindless seems direly necessary.
Sabin throws himself into the small back cab and lies down, giving me the front passenger seat.
“Which mall are we going to?” I ask. Chris pulls out of the parking lot and drives for a minute. “I was thinking the one in Reinhardt.”
I look at him. “Isn’t that, like, two hours away?”
“Yeah.” He takes a right turn and heads toward the highway. “It is.”
“Why that one?”
He shrugs. “Do you have anything else to do today?”
I smile. “No.”
“Good. I thought we could just drive.”
Sabin, who I’m guessing is horribly hungover, falls asleep the minute we hit the highway. I suppose that I should be exhausted, too, but I don’t feel it. All I feel is such a shocking level of tranquility that I can’t imagine sleeping right now because I want to enjoy this new feeling.
Chris turns up the radio and then takes my hand as he settles in for the drive. We say nothing for the first hour. Occasionally he drops my hand to change the music, but then immediately takes it back in his. Perhaps I should find this confusing, given that we are not anything other than friends. Friends don’t go around holding hands all the time. I mean, it’s not like Estelle and I sit around our room holding hands while we do homework. I wonder whether I was wrong to think that we are meant to be more. Then I decide to focus on what I know for sure: that I have found a friend, this spectacular boy, who has saved me from drowning.
Chris turns down the radio. “Blythe?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happened to the summerhouse that your parents bought? The one you never got to stay at?”
It seems like such a funny question to me, maybe because I haven’t thought about it in so long.
“Oh. Well, James and I own it, I guess. The last I heard, it was pretty much shut down, and a maintenance guy checks in on it a few times a year. My aunt has been paying the taxes and stuff from our account.”
“You haven’t been to it since that summer?”
“No. It … this is going to sound crazy … but it’s never occurred to me. It wasn’t even officially ours yet when my parents died. They’d bought it, but we’d only walked through it; we’d never moved in.”
“But you haven’t sold it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“How long has it been? Four years?”
“Four years last July.”
“July?” Chris squints into the bright sunlight. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just … It’s nothing. Well, maybe you’ll go to the house one day.”
“Maybe.”
For a moment he takes his hand from mine and moves his fingers over my forearm. “How badly were you hurt? You said your arm was bleeding a lot, and with all the smoke … Were you in the hospital long?”
I like that he’s not afraid to ask me more about that night. “I was treated for smoke inhalation, but it wasn’t too bad. My arm was … messy. No permanent injury except for the scar, of course. We were not exactly in the big city at a top hospital. I was stitched up and otherwise put back together, but James needed more help than I did.”
“James? So he was really hurt,” Chris says.
“Yes. He severed a vein—or, I guess, I severed his vein—and some muscle, which is why there was so much blood.” Even though I’ve just relived the trauma of that night a matter of hours ago—and I now have new, sharp, graphic memories—the clarity and full understanding of what happened makes this easier to talk about. I have the complete story and the complete truth, and that is already freeing me. “They were concerned about shock because of all the blood loss.”
“You said that he hates you because of that night. Why?”
“So many reasons. He nearly bled to death and was in the hospital for weeks. Before, he’d been a serious soccer player. Incredibly talented, and it seemed clear that he’d go on to play professionally. It seems crazy that he was only going into his sophomore year of high school and going professional was already something on the table, but that’s how that stuff works.”
“Yup,” Chris agrees. “I played sports in high school, and a couple of guys on my team were good enough to attract that kind of attention.”
“You did? What’d you play?”
“I ran track. Not very well, but I liked it.” He flips down the visor to keep the sun out of his eyes. “So after the fire, your brother’s soccer career was blown, I assume.”
“Yes. Months of physical therapy. Months of pain. Some muscle damage. He was devastated. He was the one who was good at something, not me. I was never good at anything. I don’t have a … a special skill or talent. An injury like his wouldn’t have been as big a deal for me.” I realize it feels so good to talk about it. I’ve spent four years having conversations with myself, and now I get to have them with someone else. It’s a relief because there are no longer secrets. “So he lost his parents and his potentially amazing future in soccer. He thought that I was stupid and careless in getting him out of the house.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, maybe not, but he wasn’t that coherent for most of it, so I don’t think he can understand. He thinks he would have had the sense to get us out safely. It’s easier to think that way when you weren’t the one responsible. All he remembers is that I f*cked up in every capacity, and he cannot forgive me.”
“It’s probably easier to blame you, because then there is somebody to blame.”
“He’s welcome to blame God,” I say, half joking. “If he still went to church, our priest might insist that he forgive me because that’s what a good Catholic should do. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’”
“You grew up Catholic, too?”
I nod. “Well, my dad was Catholic, and so we all went to church mostly to keep him happy. James and I never took it all that seriously, but … I guess there were pieces of it that we liked. Mom was more agnostic than I think my father knew,” I say, laughing. “She was famous for flashing major eye rolls to me and James during Communion. Dad caught her once, and she pawned it off as being irritated by an especially dry Communion wafer. She and I secretly shared a wish that they’d instead feed us small bites of the delicious bread from the French bakery down the road.”
Chris laughs. “Very sensible. So you hated every minute?”
“Sort of. I guess I liked the idea that … well, that there might be some kind of larger meaning to life or whatever. My mother was into that. She had a nonreligious spiritual side to her, if that makes any sense. She believed in the idea of fate and destiny. An interconnectedness and purpose in life.” I fidget with the zipper on my jacket. “Do you believe in that?”
“Not at all,” he says immediately. “Estelle was hooked from the first time she went to church. Which was mostly after my mother died, by the way. My father took us on holidays and whatnot, but Estelle made me take her every Sunday. I’d wait outside. Here’s the truth: We want to read too much into life because it’s convenient. Or fun. But there’s no imaginary, invisible man in the sky who makes things happen. There is no magical reason that we’re dealt what we’re dealt.” Chris has the same unromantic view of the world that I do. I suspect that neither of us wants a predictable march through life that includes marriage, kids, and a white picket fence. We both have histories that preclude us wanting to seek out tradition.
“Take this man who brought you off the ladder,” Chris continues. “I know you well enough to say that you don’t think he was sent by God to save you.”
“No. He wasn’t. I don’t know who he was, and I have never seen him since that night, but it was him, not God or any other … illusory power … who tore me away from that fire. I give credit where credit is due. One human being made a choice, he acted, and I owe him my life. No god killed my parents, nearly killed James, and spared me. I know that, and I can’t go back and believe in things that I used to believe in … or that I used to want to believe in. I don’t know how much faith I had to lose that night, but whatever I had is gone now.” I take an incredibly refreshing deep breath. “And you understand that.”
“I do.”
“Yes,” I agree. I put my hand on top of Chris’s so that I am holding his between mine and look at him while he focuses on the road. “We want what’s real. Heroes are real.”
“Some,” he concedes, “but not all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure many people would consider my father a hero, but—”
“But not you,” I finish for him.
“No. Never me. And that, Blythe,” he says without taking his eyes off the road, “is reality. What is also reality is that I don’t have to see him again. I can make that choice.”
“What does your father do?”
“He’s an artist. All sorts of mediums. Sculpture, painting, you name it. The house was always filled with materials. Paint, plaster, sheets of metal. Wire. Lots of copper wire.”
Chris tightens his grip on my hand. I turn to face him and rest my leg on the cushioned bench seat. “What about winter break? If you don’t go home, what do you do? Thanksgiving is one thing, but you can’t stay on campus over winter break.”
He checks the backseat quickly and then says in a low voice, “Hawaii. But don’t tell anyone. They don’t know. It’s our new family tradition to go away for the month. Last year I rented us a place in Huntington Beach. I don’t tell them where we’re going until we get to the airport.”
“Oh my God, I love it. You guys are going to have a blast. Sounds kind of expensive, though.”
“I … I have access to money. My mother had money. A substantial amount. And her will, unbeknownst to my father, left all of her money to her children. I’m in charge of the trust.” He pauses. “What about you? What are your plans for break?”
“Just me and James. This year we’re going to the house we grew up in, not my aunt’s like we always used to. Kind of the first time we’ll be there in a long time. It’s going to be … weird.”
There is a deep roaring grumble from the backseat. “Where is my ginormous TV? Where is it? I need me some big plasma love.”
I smile. Sabin is awake. “We’ll be there soon.”
“HERE WE COME, STORE OF THE GIANT TVS!” he screams, planting a hand on top of Chris’s head and then mine and ruffling our hair. He leaves one hand resting on Chris’s shoulder as he sits back. “It’s a good day, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Chris and I say.
When we get to the mall, we fight our way through the crowd of frenzied shoppers to reach the department store. Sabin disappears into the mob while Chris and I spend twenty minutes assessing the television options.
“Which one do you like?” Chris asks.
“The black one with the big screen.”
He slaps my arm. “You’ve narrowed it down to twenty.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They all look the same to me.” I look around at the array of sets. “It just needs to work.”
“That’s an excellent quality to look for in a TV.”
Now I slap his arm. “You pick. Don’t zero out my bank account, but pick the most awesome one, or there’s going to be hell to pay. I’m going to check on Sabin.”
I locate him, not surprisingly, in the small appliance section. When he sees me coming, he joyfully holds up a box and yells, “See? I told ya! Coffee, toast, eggs, and bacon! All at once! It’s a miracle!”
I laugh. “I’m very glad you found what your heart desires. Let this be my gift to you because I could never pick out such a lovely, er”—I look at the box again —“baby-blue gadget.”
“It’s not a gadget. It’s a ‘breakfast station’,” he corrects me.
“I would love to buy you this breakfast station.”
“Fine. But in return, I’m buying you some DVDs to go along with your new television.” He puts his hand on my back and guides me to the movie section. “Let’s see … We’ll start with Blue Crush.” Sabin starts piling discs into his arms. “And then 50 First Dates. Oooooh! Lilo & Stitch! How about Pearl Harbor?” He waves the movie at me and winks.
“Kind of a random selection.” I stare at the movie until it clicks. It’s not a random selection at all. All of those movies have one thing in common. Hawaii. “Oh, God damn it, you were awake in the car, weren’t you?”
Sabin starts to dance idiotically in the aisle. “We’re goin’ to Hawaii! Oh yes, we are! Gonna be some hula girls and some mahi-mahi dinners! Swimming and snorkeling—”
“Shhhh! Stop it! You’re not supposed to know!” I look around to make sure Chris isn’t nearby. “Don’t tell him you heard anything, okay? He’s really excited to surprise you.”
“Okay, okay. I promise. Not a word.” He turns serious for a minute. “I do have some words for you, though.”
I frown. “Shoot.”
“Chris is smart, but he doesn’t know everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Blythe, last night you told me to let Estelle have her God, to believe in what she needed to.” He sighs. “You have to do the same. If you believe in …” He looks around the chaotic store and starts over. “I didn’t hear the whole story, but I don’t have to know details to realize that you’ve been through some shit, and you have every right to hold tight to whatever gets you through the night. Know what I mean, sugar? Maybe you believe that coincidences aren’t coincidences. Maybe you have your own version of a higher power, or you trust in the belief that there are connections among seemingly disconnected parts of the universe. Maybe you have a spiritual side that has nothing to do with God or religion, it’s just your own.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t.”
“I think you do. Don’t let Chris talk you out of something that’s real to you. He’s brilliant, and beautiful, and about as perfect as they come, but that doesn’t make him right about everything. Hell, even though I freaked out on Estelle, I don’t know there isn’t something else. You don’t know that, and even Chris doesn’t know that. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t have to know everything. If you believe in fate and some kind of meaning and sense in this f*cked-up world, then believe with abandon. Enjoy it.”
For a minute, despite the sound of the loudspeaker sales announcements and the nonstop chatter of shoppers, everything seems quiet. It is just me and Sabin in this huge store, and I’m overwhelmed at how well he’s tapped into my internal battle. My secret wish to believe in fate, spirituality, or something so I don’t only have to exist with the cold certainty I feel that there is nothing bigger than random chance. Yet Sabin’s words have somehow alleviated the pain I feel over the discord, and for a moment I wonder if it’s okay to be undecided. Or maybe to even hope for something.
Chris appears. “All set.”
I break away from Sabin’s stare. “What’s the damage?” I ask.
“Nothing. You’re all set. We can pull the truck around to the back and they’ll load it in for us.”
It takes me a second to understand what he’s telling me. “You bought me a ginormous TV?”
“And we’re going to Hawaii?” Sabin starts jumping up and down and tossing movies at us.
Chris just stands there grinning.