Five
I have a moment of rational thought, but I quickly shove it away and stalk forward, knife at the ready. It's really just for show, because I don't posses any knife-wielding skills.
My chest gets all tight again and my throat threatens to close up, like it's preparing to be assaulted again.
Calm down, Ava.
Of course, there's no one there. Making sure, I glance all around, even peering into the darkness of the mausoleum, stale air reaching for me. The fact that it's still open tells me that I didn't hallucinate what happened. I mean, my imagination is active, but not that active.
I'm totally alone. Nothing, no evidence anyone has been here. No backpack, soda cans, sleeping bags, spray paint. Nada. No cell phone either, which sucks. All I see are urns on shelves with plaques beneath them, covered in dust and I-don't-know-want-to-know what. Just to be absolutely sure, I search the tangled grass. It shows no signs I'd been lying on it last night.
Suddenly exhausted, I collapse next to a stone with the name George Barber, 1873-1927, Beloved Husband and Father. I hope he doesn't mind. My skull bangs against the stone as I lean back.
“You came back.” The voice makes me freeze. I guess I'm not alone. I recognize the voice as the one who didn't strangle me, so I might not be completely screwed. I still have the knife held tightly in my fist. The problem is that I'm sitting he's standing, thus the advantage is in his favor. My back is also toward him, with George's headstone between us.
“I can come here if I want. It's a public place.” The words jump out of my mouth. Of course, the first thing I say isn't a question like, what he's doing here, or what the hell that was about last night, or if he was the one who put me in my car. I suck at saying the right things. I need to write them down.
“If you had wanted me dead, it would have happened already.” I read this in a book once, or saw it in a movie. It pops into my head and I say it. It sounds good. Fear slides down my back, covering me like a suffocating blanket.
“True enough.” He's still behind me. I don't like it so I turn so I can at least see him. I don't want him to know that I'm shocked. Stay cool, like that song from West Side Story, only I won't be singing and dancing and snapping. My skin crawls with the need to go home, get away, but I'm not going to let him see it.
“You're still here.” I go for casual. I turn my head just enough so I can see him. Always watch your back.
“Yes.” He's just as dirty as he'd been the night before, but the clothes are different. He's also bonier than I remember, like he's starving. Maybe he's got Manorexia. His clothes are full of holes and there are leaves in his hair, like he spent the night in the woods. He stands with his hands at his sides, hair covering his eyes. I wonder how he can see.
“What do you want?” Something about him crawls under my skin and makes me say snappy things I normally wouldn't to a stranger. The breeze blows that strange scent my way. It weirds me out, because he should seriously stink, given how dirty he is. Instead, I smell something crisp and fresh. I catch a glimpse of one his eyes. I think it's green, but I can't be sure.
More silence. I don't know what to do, how to extricate myself from this situation. My feet beg me to run, but I stay where I am.
He still hasn't moved. Not a twitch, no knuckle cracking or shuffling feet. He's barely breathed, as far as I can tell. I finally look up at him, squinting. I have the insane urge to stand up and brush his hair out of his eyes. Instead, I fiddle with my own stray strands.
“You were nearly killed last night, and yet you came back,” he says, not answering my question. He speaks with the same casual almost-monotone. His voice sounds like an echo through something hollow. “Reckless.”
“I guess.” I really want to leave, but I don't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me run. Maybe I am reckless. He wasn't the one who'd tried to kill me. In fact, he might have been the one who saved me from whatever it was the other guy wanted to do with me.
“What were you doing here last night?” I turn my whole body to face him. Fear slides over me like the fog. I have to put one of my hands on the ground for something to hold onto.
“Trying to kill myself,” he says in that same tone. I bite back a shocked sound I was going to make.
“What? Why?”
“I did not want to exist anymore, but I failed.” I remember the other guy saying something about him failing. I don't know what he meant. How messed up is that? Mocking someone for not being able to commit suicide? Not very nice.
“You didn't want to exist?” He pauses before he answers, as if he's choosing his words carefully. As if we're playing Scrabble and he's trying to get the most points.
“No.” The wind moves his hair out of his eyes for a second, but not long enough for me to see what color they are. I remember that moment we had, last night. It freaked me the hell out, even with everything else going on. I do not want a repeat, so I keep my eyes to myself.
“What happened? Who was that other guy?”
“My brother.” He only answers the second question. I swallow before I ask the next question.
“Did you save me?” I don't ask from what. I really don't want to know. The whole thing was bad enough.
“More or less.” He turns his head to the woods, as if he hears someone calling his name.
“I shall leave you now.” Seriously? I look where he's trying to see something through the murk. I'm fine with that.
“Okay.” I don't know what else to say, but when I look up he's gone. I don't even hear his footsteps rustling in the leaves.
***
I stayed in the cemetery. I had no other place to go, so I let a day pass as I sat in the mausoleum with what was left of my family. My human family. I watched the clouds gather and the fog roll over the ground like a blanket that covered everything, making it look unfamiliar. There were a few new graves, but most were the same as last year. Monuments to lives that had come and gone, like dust blowing in the wind, with only a piece of granite to mark their passing.
I thought about the girl. Her face flickered in my mind like the flames of a fire. After Ivan left me with her, I bent down to feed, but she made a sound. No words, just a sound. A little cry of pain. I pulled back and studied her for a moment. She couldn't have been more than seventeen. I looked back at the mausoleum, searching for answers. I had come here many times, over the years. Begging for their ghosts to haunt me, to save me from the endless road of my existence.
I heard my mother's voice, telling me that the right thing to do was often the most difficult. I couldn't remember when or why she had told me that, but the words whispered through my thoughts. So I picked her up and carried her to her car. Brushed her hair back once as I set her inside. If I remembered how to sigh, I would have. I hoped never to see her again. This record of my flickle humanity. If it would have been any other night... she would have been pale with the glow of death. Instead, she got lucky, but I didn't believe in luck.
***
“I can't believe you lost your phone.” Tex shakes her head at me, eyes narrow behind her purple-framed glasses. Her full name is Texas Sarsaparilla Anne Hamilton, but no one is really allowed to know that under penalty of death or dismemberment. She can't wait until she's eighteen to change it. She still hasn't decided on what she's going to change it to.
“I don't know what I did with it. Must have fallen out of my pocket.”
“No wonder you didn't text me back, you whore.” I bump her with my shoulder, hoping I'm forgiven. Tex and I have been friends since first grade.
We'd had a teacher that believed little girls wanted bathroom breaks so they could get into shenanigans. I'd raised my hand and begged her to let me go, but it was too late. While all the other kids laughed and said how gross it was and I died a little inside, Tex volunteered to take me to the bathroom. I was in tears, but she told me a funny story about a puppy and had me laughing when my mom came to bring me a change of clothes. We've been bonded ever since.
“Listen, if you want me to come with you to help pick out your phone, I can call and get off work.” She puts her hands together in a pleading motion and gives me her best doe eyes. Tex hates her job and will do anything to get out of going to work.
“No, it's fine. I think I can do it without you.” She rolls her brown eyes.
“That's such a load of crap. If you didn't have me, you'd be lost.” I raise my eyebrows.
“I think it's the other way around, Tex.”
“Fine, fine.” She cracks her knuckles, making me wince. Her skirt is longer than usual today which means it almost reaches her kneecaps. Tex's goal in life is to be hot librarian so she wears a lot of skirts with button-down shirts tucked into them. It's a style I can't pull off if I tried.
“Hey, can you do me a favor?”
“Depends on what it is. As long as I don't have to put a body in my trunk or hide a bunch of cocaine, you know I'm in.” God, I love her.
“I need you to go over my history paper.” I make a similar-looking plea face.
“I don't know, that seems like a lot.” She pretends to look worried and chews on her fingernails.
“You're such a liar, you know you love it.” Tex sighs.
“What's it about?”
“Spanish Influenza.”
“June 1918 to December 1920,” she rattles off as she watches Justin Strang swagger down the hall.
“Yeah, right. So, will you do it?” I snap my fingers to get her attention. She's still making sexy eyes at Justin and twisting her blonde hair around one finger. She always does that when she's seriously flirting.
“You know I will.” She finally looks at me. History is like crack to Tex. For some reason she has this freakish ability to remember dates and for someone who doesn't like fiction books much, she collects historical fiction, biographies and non-fiction like she's stockpiling them in case of a nuclear disaster. Sometimes we play a game where I'll ask her about an event and time how long it takes her to come up with what year it happened. She beats Google eight out of ten times.
“I'll drop it off in your locker later.”
“And I'll drop off my Jane Austen essay for you to look over.” She holds out her hand.
“Done,” I say as we shake.
“One of these days we're going to have to swap brain cells,” I say as the bell rings. Despite our best efforts, Tex and I don't have any classes together, so I don't get as much time with her as I want. We spent a lot of time texting when teachers aren't looking.
“You just tell me where and when and make sure they give me good drugs and a killer wig and you're on.” The crazy thing is that if I asked her for brain cells, or anything, she'd give it to me, no questions asked.
She flips her blonde ponytail at me as she struts down the hall. Tex never just walked. “Call me later and tell me what you get, and don't forget to add unlimited texting so you don't get stuck next time.”
“I won't.” I wave and she's off, pleated skirt swirling so that I can almost see her underwear. I want to tell her about what happened, but the words dry up in my throat before I can. She knows my mother is sick, but she never really asks about it. I've been able to put her off enough times.
Tex believes that secrets are like poison that slowly kills you unless you slash your skin and suck it out, like a snakebite. Now I have not one, but two pretty huge secrets I'm keeping from her. Two snakebites.
I have geometry first and English in the afternoon, which is kind of like eating a cyanide salad and having red velvet cake after. I walk as slowly as I can, prolonging the moment when I have to walk into class and remember that I'm missing most of my math-type brain cells. I've been pulling a B-average, which is pretty much a miracle. I'm slinging my heavier than death bag over my shoulder when I feel someone behind me.
“Hey, short stuff.” Jamie taps me on the shoulder, and I swat his hand away. I throw my chin in the air and start walking, pretending I want to get away from him.
“I'm not going to respond to you if you're going to degrade me like that.”
“Come on,” he says, catching up with me. I slow down and we walk side-by-side. People kind of stare at us as we walk by. We do make an odd pair. Short, average me and Jamie Barton. Tall, blond, athletic, captain of every team Harper High had to offer. Enough said.
“You know, James, you'd get a lot further with the ladies if you didn't insist on insulting them.”
“But you're the only one who's insulted when I call you that. Everyone else thinks I'm a hottie.” Taylor Abbot gives him the once over as she walks by, testing out the model walk she learned a few months ago when she'd been in a mall runway show. She hasn't shut up about it since.
“That's because they're blinded to your faults.”
“And you're not?” He looks at me, raising his eyebrows. It makes him look adorable. What Taylor doesn't know was that he hated his ears and thought they stuck out She doesn't know that he has nightmares and still has to sleep with a nightlight, but I know.
“I know too much. It's why we're friends.”
Where once I'd been saved by Tex, I had been the one doing the saving with Jamie. Once upon a time, he'd been scrawny and really into comic books and had bad skin. We'd been forced to sit next to one another in most of our classes by sheer dumb luck, and he was always drawing funny cartoons of the teachers on his notebook and showing them to me. We bonded in detention.
Since then, he discovered the dermatologist, grown over a foot, and started playing sports. I knew most girls think he's a hot piece of man meat, but he'll always be that scrawny boy who made me laugh.
“So what's this I hear about you losing your phone?”
“Did Tex tell you?” One of the downsides of having Tex as a friend is that she tends to share things unless you specifically tell her not to. Otherwise, she's like one of those boat horns.
“Yeah. I was wondering why I hadn't heard from you.” Apparently, if I'm not in touch for more than a few hours, I'm presumed dead.
“Sorry. I didn't really notice it was missing until yesterday. I'm getting a new one.” We stop outside of my class. Most everyone else is there and Mr. Galakis is already putting notes on the whiteboard. Oh, joy.
“Listen, I have practice tonight, but call me later and tell me about it.” He gives me his winning smile. Braces had also helped him in his transformation from Peter Parker to Spiderman.
“Will do, captain.” I give him a little salute. He smiles and jogs toward the gym.
Before Jamie had gotten all attractive, people thought I was some sort of saint for being friends with him. Now they can't understand why he's friends with me. Why he skips out early on the team dinner if he's promised to take me to a movie. Why I'm one of the first people he wants to see when he wins a game or a meet. I can't explain it; we've been friends and we'll continue to be friends. Even if he gloes off to business school and becomes a CEO of a huge company, or a famous artist. He'll be good at whatever he does.
The morning crawls by, without the distraction of hilarious texts from Tex or Jamie. Even the riveting project of drawing molecules in chemistry can't distract me from the thoughts I try to shove away. I've had a lot of practice splitting my brain into two parts, one that continues to function in the real world, and the other part that obsesses about my issues, so I'm able to make my way through the morning without anyone the wiser.
Lunch is the hardest because I have to smile and laugh and pretend that I want to eat and make small talk. Pretend I still care about who's having a party this weekend or what that player from Madison did, and who do they think they are, and the ref was totally biased. I. Don't. Care. My bitter thoughts make me feel like a total bitch, so I just keep my mouth shut. Is this what it's going to be like?
Finally, I can't take it anymore. I forge my mother's signature saying I have a dentist appointment and skip out on my last class, which is gym and pointless anyway. I have nothing better to do, so I go to the tiny electronics store downtown to get a phone.
“Can I help you?” The guy behind the cell phone counter looks like the typical techie, as if he knows more about gigabytes and motherboards than football or getting wasted. Still, he seems nice enough, but you never know.
“Yeah, I need a new phone. I can't seem to find my other one.” I play the ditz. He starts going on about apps and towers and using a bunch of acronyms that he probably thinks sound impressive. I quickly settle on the phone with the rebate, which is essentially free while he goes on and on. “Dave,” I read on his nametag, is crestfallen at my simple choice, that I haven't been convinced by his spiel. Poor guy.
“Now do you want to keep the same number?” he says as he's setting up my account.
“Uh, no. I don't want some wacko picking it up and making calls on it.” Cough, cough.
“Well, we'll keep it active for the next thirty days, since you've paid your bill. If you end up finding it, just let us know and we can disable it.” I remember to add unlimited texts to my plan and leave. It's still too early to go home, so I head to Dunkin' Donuts and grab an iced cappuccino and a croissant to give me a little jolt. The sleepless nights are catching up with me. I wolf down the croissant and call Tex.
“Can you hear me now? I'm talking to you on my new phone.”
“Did you get the one with the touch screen?” Her voice is muffled, as if she's holding the phone with her shoulder while she's doing something else.
“No, I got the free one.” She sighs. I can hear her eyes rolling.
“You are so lame.”
“You weren't the one who had to pay for it.” I shiver from the iced cappuccino. I should have gotten something hot.
“True.” There's a crash and she swears. “I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job,” she whispers. She especially hates it when I'm not there. She'd wheedled her parents into hiring me for a few after school shifts at their bookstore. I get to keep my job as long as we don't goof off, which we do, but not when they're watching.
“Hey, how's your mom doing?” Oh, we are going to the land of I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it. Words choke me as they try to come up, as I try to think of something that doesn't sound like total crap. I could chuck the phone and run over it with my car, but I just bought it, so that's not going to work.
“She's good. Well, I'll let you get back to that. I gotta go home, but I wanted to give you the maiden call.” Another crash. More cursing. Thank God for Tex being pissed and distracted. My mother is going to die.
“I'm touched. Listen, I have to get back to work, Toby is giving me the evil eye.” Toby is the weird guy with a unibrow that works part time at the bookstore and has an inflated sense of his own importance. He takes his job extremely seriously.
“Ohhh, sexy. Better get back to work.” I fiddle around in my backseat for a sweatshirt.
“What are my parents going to do, fire me? You're so lucky your parents don't have a business.” Her voice is muffled as I pull the sweatshirt over my head. I finally get my head through the opening and pull it the rest of the way down.
“True. Hey, I'll see you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
I drive around for an hour before I have to go home. It takes a lot of energy to pretend you're fine when you're not. A bit like being in a play that never ends. I get an intermission, but I always have to go back on stage.
***
My house is filled with the smell of homemade macaroni and cheese when I walk in the door. My mother thinks macaroni and cheese from a box is some sort of sacrilege. I've only ever eaten it at other people's houses.
“Hey, baby. How was school?” The soft sound of James Taylor greets me from the kitchen stereo.
“Fine.” I drop my bag at the door, shuck off my shoes and try to make my voice sound as bright as I can. I'm not mentioning that I skipped class. I'm not mentioning the phone. So many secrets.
“Oh come on, it has to have been better than fine.” She's dolled up for something, her sassy reddish-brown wig done up with pins that have little pearls on them and she's wearing a cocktail dress that looked better on her when she'd had something to fill it out.
I grab a cucumber from the salad she's making, but she slaps my hand when I go for another.
“Hands off. What did you learn?”
“That the periodic table is really stupid and that parabola is a really cool word.” We do this routine every day. I give a sarcastic answer most days.
She bends over to put the casserole dish in the oven to crisp the top. She's crumbled Ritz crackers on it, just how I love it. The knobs of her spine are like a row of giant pearl buttons down her back.
“What did you do today?” I say to distract myself from spewing my secrets. She has this way of looking at me that makes me squirm and want to tell her anything and everything. I'm pretty sure she uses it on five-year-olds who've told lies about pinching each other. It's very effective.
She's been a kindergarten teacher for twenty years, but she had to quit when she'd gotten sick. It was strange seeing her without glue and crayon marks on her skirt, a happy and tired smile on her face and a story about how she'd quelled three tantrums and taught the letter S.
“Your father took me to the beach. It was freezing, but we went for a walk in the water and I found the prettiest piece of seaglass. Look.” She holds it out to me. It's a large bluish-green. I run my fingers over the smooth edges. It's very old.
“It's lovely.”
“Your father had to go in to work for the afternoon, so it's just us tonight.”
“What's with the outfit?”
“I just felt like dressing up. All women like to look pretty.” She's even put on mascara. It makes her green eyes look huge. Looking at her is starting to make my throat hurt, and I feel the panic building. My secrets are threatening to explode.
“I'm going to take a shower.”
“Okay, sweetheart.” She puts a kiss on my cheek, leaving a tiny bit of lipstick. I get a whiff of her perfume. It smells like home.
I listen for a moment as she hums along with one of the songs before I go up the stairs. Her voice is sweet and soft. The voice I've heard a hundred thousand times, but in less than a year, won't hear anymore, except in memories or on home movies.