When I get to Wil’s street, its blankness surprises me. There are no cop cars or news vans. The crime scene tape is gone.
I cut across the side yard and stand just outside the workshop doors, listening to familiar sounds: the buzz of the circular saw and the electric sander. It sounds like Wilson is in there and for a second I think maybe he could be, until Wil calls, “Come on, Bridge. Everybody knows what happens when you stand in the sun too long.”
I smile a little.
“How’d you know I was here?” I ask, ducking into the shop. Wil is wearing an old HINES T-shirt and shorts, and he’s sanding a flat piece of wood by hand. I try not to notice his lines beneath the T-shirt; the way they deepen around his chest and arms with every stroke. “Saw you coming through the window.” His voice is quiet. Sad. There’s an old stereo on the floor in the corner of the shop, playing a Beach Boys tune. At the back of the shop, sheets are draped over the long, thin form of a boat.
I stand there, wishing I had flowers or a casserole after all.
Fix it, Brooklyn.
“Is this okay?” I pick at a sore hangnail.
He looks up at me, and I see him taking me in. His face softens; then his Wil wall goes back up. “What?” he says.
“I don’t know.” A thin, dark crescent of blood appears. “Me. Here.”
He keeps sanding. “None of this is okay.”
Fleetwood Mac comes on the radio, a band I know because of Wilson. I take a step toward Wil. I feel him curl inside himself, like he’s afraid of me. “Wil. I’m sorry, okay?”
“You’re always sorry, Bridge. But what does that really even mean?” He flings the words across the table, and I can’t duck in time. “You should”—he sucks the remaining air from the room—“be sorry. It’s like—where were you?” White dust coats his fingertips as he presses the sandpaper harder.
“What?” I force the word past my lips. “I was there. At the funeral?”
“I’m not talking about the funeral!” His expression is a volcano: molten anger and neon sadness exploding from the deepest part of him. “I’m talking about where you’ve been for the last year and a half! You can’t just show up like this!”
My skin goes cold, then hot again. I thought I felt something at the funeral. An opening of the door between us; just the tiniest crack. I thought I saw the light streaming through. But it’s dark again now, and too quiet. The only sounds are Fleetwood Mac and the lullaby of the sandpaper, back and forth. There aren’t enough words in the world to make this okay.
“It’s just . . . I get how much you loved your dad, Wil. I know how close you were.”
“That’s the thing, Bridge.” He finds a hammer. His hand goes pale when he grips it. “You think you know about my family because you hung out over here.” He says the last words slow, waits for them to sink beneath my skin. “You know nothing.”
That’s a lie, I want to say. I know enough to know that Wil has never eaten a casserole in his life. I can imagine the smell of this workshop in three seconds and get it exactly right. I was there when Wilson caught Wil trying his first and last cigarette in eighth grade, and I’ve seen the way Wil’s face goes blank when he’s really mad. Like now. I know plenty.
“I’m sad, too, you know,” I spit at the floor.
“Yeah, well. Sorry for your loss.” Wil drops the hammer and goes back to sanding.
“I just meant that I’m sorry, Wil. Okay? I won’t come back. I just wanted to say sorry.”
I turn away from him, and I’m slow to leave, even though I should be bolting for the door. But it’s the last time we’ll be here like this, just the two of us and real music on the stereo, and I miss us so much that the broken version is better than nothing at all.
WIL
Spring, Junior Year
IT’S been almost three months since Bridge wrecked us. Four days since she stopped trying to repair the damage.
I still feel her staring at the back of my neck in class. But she’s finally stopped apologizing—no more I never should have texts, no more Please, Wils sniffed onto my voice mail. No more notes beneath the workshop door. She evaporated from my life, but like salt film on beach glass, she’s there, and always will be.
She stopped trying because I asked her to, in a note that I slipped through the vents of her locker like we were middle-school kids. I hated how she lived everywhere: in the halls and on my voice mail and scrawled across pages and pages of yellow legal paper. Everything reminded me of who we weren’t anymore. So I asked her to stop, and she did, which was somehow worse.
“Seam needs caulking,” my dad announces. We’re in the workshop, just before sundown. We’ve been working all afternoon and I’m stiff, like my joints are screwed together wrong. Dad is bent over the sweet wooden skiff on the worktable. It’s quiet in here, cool and dark, with the sun filtering through the cracks in the shed, striping his face pink.
“Oakum’s on the bench over there. Want to try feeding it in?” Dad rakes his varnish-stained hands through his hair. It’s pulled back in a ponytail like always. But there’s silver around his temples, and his hairline’s creeping back.
I’m ready to quit for the day, even though we can’t afford that kind of attitude around here. The word money has been seeping through the vents into my room lately, a lot more often than usual. Mom usually brings up college and then Dad says But he doesn’t want—and my mom counters with But one day he might. Maybe if we’d gotten more jobs recently. Maybe if I worked faster.
Still, I’m tired tonight. It will take me forever to sweep up and hang the tools just right. And hell if I’m gonna do it before early-morning crew practice tomorrow. I stop for a second, shake the thought from my head. It’s a Generic Teenager thought, not a Real Me thought.
Sometimes thoughts fly through my head that don’t actually belong to me. Truth is, I don’t mind staying late to clean up. I like how every tool has a hook and how Dad keeps the cord to the stereo wound with a yellow trash tie so nobody trips. I like sweeping the wood dust into straight lines and Skynyrd in the background singing “Simple Man.”