Maybe I shouldn’t have let the ugly parts through
Disagree on premise alone
You’ve got two more
Why did you post your poem-nonpoem to ChatterJaw?
The real me needed a place to live in the real world
Does this count as the real world?
I can see it. I can say it. So it must be so
So things are only real if you can see them
or say them, not if they’re just inside?
Sorry, you’ve already gotten your five ;) ;) ;)
That’s when the ringing in my ears starts up. I have a vague sense that perhaps someone is saying something behind me. Perhaps to me. I don’t really know, though, or care.
That day is only the beginning. There are pages of messages. Pages and pages. I hear Penny’s voice in them. And then I hear Will’s. But neither is a comfort. And then there’s this:
Text me one of your cartoons that you’re always telling me about They’re dumb
Cop out
I don’t have your number
I don’t even know who you are
What would you do if you did know who I was?
What would you do if you knew who I was?
Pray you weren’t a child molester or a serial killer
After that
I don’t know
I don’t know…
So put it in a drawing for me
I don’t know your number
That can be fixed
267-823-9936
Now you have it. No excuses
There is a pause in the stream of thought and the two talk about other things. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been scrolling. Five minutes? Fifteen? An hour? It’s a blur.
I imagine Will at his desk typing. Hitting send.
I just punched your number into my phone…
A contact came up…
I didn’t get anything???
Penny?
Black creeps in at the edges of my vision—darker, darker, darker still. I lean on the table. My head is heavy. I can’t look away. I wish I could say that the messages stop. Right then, right there. But the damage is done, so who even cares?
There is no point in wishing. We wished three years ago. We were a family. No secrets.
When I finally look away, my eyes burn like I’ve been swimming in chlorine. I’m numb while at the same time wanting to scratch the skin off my bones. It’s a strange, unreal sort of sensation.
I turn to find that Matt is the only one there. “Where’s everyone else?” I ask.
“How should I know?” he asks.
I stand up out of the chair. I want to move. Moving is good. My hand is on my forehead. It’s hot. I might even be running a fever. Calm down, Lake. Calm down.
“Well, you were sitting right here,” I snap.
The retort changes him, abracadabra. I recognize the hardening of his face. The return to the Matt I’ve known for the last few years. I register it only vaguely. Like a slight change in temperature. But it’s there. Bubbling beneath the surface.
“I’m not a lapdog for you to carry around in your purse,” he says.
“Shut up.” Try to concentrate on your breathing, I tell myself. Because I want to run. I want to take off. Leave him. Be anywhere but here.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “Look, Matt, look at Ringo, look how okay he is with his lot. Look what you could be if only you tried. You could go by Stiff—no that’s not as catchy, whatever—and show everyone how okay you are with it. Why can’t you be more like him?”
He goes dark. “This shit is not the same, Lake.”
I can’t handle one of Matt’s rants. Not right now. “Just…just let me think.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. All this is pointless. Your birthday is in a couple of days and I’ll be dead.” It’s a challenge. His brow is lowered, casting a deep shadow over his eyes so that they practically disappear.
I whirl on him. “Stop reminding me.” I raise my voice without meaning to. I hear it echo. Duke Ellington looks up. I whisper at him, “Stop saying you’re going to be dead, Matt.”
“I’ll be dead either way.” I watch Matt close off piece by piece until his face is as still as the rest of his body.
Just then, though, Ringo reappears with Margaret carrying a tray of four coffees. Ringo stands still. Did he hear Matt? Does he know?
“We have to go,” I say. “Thanks, Margaret.”
I shove the computer into the back pocket of Matt’s wheelchair without caring whether I cause any damage, grab the handles, and start pushing as though there’s a gas pedal on this too. We make it out into the open air and that at least begins to alleviate the black dots floating everywhere. I press the button six times in a row, trying to hurry the van into opening up and letting out Matt’s ramp.
I don’t care if people stare at me. I stuff Matt in the back of my mom’s car like he’s shipping freight. I am so done with him and with everyone and…
As I’m going around to the driver’s side, there is Ringo. His eyes stop me dead in my tracks. Of course the tears are now flowing steadily from mine. It’s not fair. I have nothing and I’m breaking, but I can’t break like Matt, and nobody will feel the right kind of sorry for me because I’m alive and I’m healthy and Will and Penny and Matt, they’re not.
So why do I feel like I’ve just been stripped apart bone from bone?
Will would have chosen her. Eventually. I know it the same way I know that the earth is round and that the sun rises in the east. I know it and I don’t think I would have Penny’s grace to wait, to be the understanding friend.
A man should choose a friend better than himself, she’d written. She shouldn’t have chosen me.
“Lake,” Ringo says. Unreadable the same way Matt is. I hate the buried parts of people. Why can’t everyone put themselves on the surface the way I do?
I want to stanch the blood that is pouring out of my arteries and into the rest of my body. I see Ringo and feel my heart pulsing for him, for all the days that I’ve thought he was a type of handsome that could never be replicated, for all the times I’ve wished his hand would linger longer on my knee or on my back, for the long moment when he held me in the car and told me he was sorry, sorry, sorry.
I walk over to him, clench my fists around either side of his denim shirt that hangs unbuttoned, and pull his mouth into mine. I kiss him with hot tears pouring onto my lips and the taste of salt that reminds me of seawater, that reminds me of Will, but it’s not Will. It’s Ringo and Ringo likes me. I’ve known he has for days or weeks or I can’t remember how long. But I work my tongue against his and smash my nose into his cheek and he smells good and real. This is real life.
He wrenches away and I press my fingers into my bottom lip, stunned.
“What are you doing?” he asks. He’s not happy.
“Kissing you. You were right. About…about everything.”