PEOPLE LIKE TO ask if Rose was a jealous girlfriend. I’m not sure that it matters, but back then I would’ve said yes. My answer today would be different, of course, but I’m allowed to change my mind, just as much as Rose was allowed to change hers.
It is true that when we were together I was leery of spending time with other girls. Rose was never the type to make catty remarks or sharpen her nails at the first sign of competition, but on those rare occasions when I happened to neglect her, it always made her so sad. I couldn’t stand it, to know I’d hurt her like that. My mother liked to tell me I was being manipulated, that girls used their tears as a weapon—their kindness, too—but she wasn’t looking out for my best interest when she said stuff like that. Just the opposite: She could only conceive of a girl using me because she saw no value in me in the first place.
My mother, by the way, was the sole female in my life Rose was ever openly jealous of. That should’ve been a clue, perhaps, but neglecting Rose to care for my mom didn’t make her sad so much as it royally pissed her off. Tension had smoldered between them from the first day they met and Rose accidentally called my mother Mrs. Gibson.
Admittedly, the name mix-up was my fault. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Rose that my mom had dumped my father’s name the minute he’d dumped her. Later, she’d gone on to take Marcus’s Salvatore and pushed me to take that name, too. Insisted, even—apparently it was the Christian thing to do, like Jesus wouldn’t want people knowing my mom had ever screwed anyone else. But I refused, mule stubborn, finally growing so furious with her prodding that I wrapped a piece of cord around my neck and tried to hang myself from my closet door in rebellion. I was only six when I did this and it was stupid; the cord snapped almost immediately, sending me crashing to the floor. But it must’ve scared my mom because she never mentioned the name-changing thing again.
Anyway, not causing Rose pain was the reason I didn’t want Tomás to tell her about catching me staring at Shelby Sawyer’s ass. It was also the reason I assumed he would. And maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal in retrospect, but I felt sick over what I’d done, physically sick, which meant I shouldn’t have done it.
The strangest thing was, in the days that followed, Rose never once mentioned Shelby or what her brother caught me doing. She didn’t say a word about it. Instead, she did the most surprising, yet most Rose-like thing of all—she joined the orienteering club. She didn’t tell me she was doing it, either. She simply showed up at the next meeting and jumped into the trip planning with the rest of the group, full of unexplained fervor and verve—the type of energy I hadn’t seen her expend since she’d gotten back from Peru. As if spending three days backpacking without electricity or running water was just the rejuvenating opportunity she’d been dying for.
“To spend time with you, Ben,” was Rose’s coy answer when I asked her why. Those were words I longed to believe, but there was something in the way she said them—with not a trace of sadness or hint of regret—that felt wrong. Disturbingly so, especially in light of her it’s-okay-if-you-hooked-up-with-someone-else comment over the summer, which on its own had been enough to make me black out. My Rose, it seemed, had either changed completely, was no longer the girl I knew, or else was biding her time to let me know how she really felt. Both were options that left me beached on the shore of helplessness. I couldn’t ask Rose what was wrong because she was acting like everything was fine. But fine can so often be the very worst of feelings.
For me, at least.
Look, I’m going to tell you the rest of what happened now. How we all went up on that mountain and ran into the Preacher and his brother and got some stupid ideas that led to some really bad decisions. I’m going to tell you everything, including what happened to Rose, and exactly why I did what I did.
But there’s something I need to say before I get into all that because I don’t want my intentions misinterpreted: This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here for a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not.
Not for any of it.
DAY ONE
8.
WE LEFT FOR Thompson Peak at noon on Friday on the twelfth of October. For her part, my mother seemed glad for my departure, which was worrisome. She usually didn’t approve of my leaving her alone overnight for reasons I mostly understood; a spinal injury she suffered in the same impact that had damaged my frontal lobe made it hard for her to move or stand for long periods of time—not without assistance.
In truth, she rarely left the house unless it was to hobble down to College Lane, our seedy neighborhood bar. Having grown up in Teyber, she knew everyone at the Lane every night of the week—both a blessing and a curse. Hell, even I was welcome at the bar, which made me feel more grown-up than it probably should’ve considering the place wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of maturity.
I guess now would be a good time to tell you that my mother can be unpredictable. It’s not just the spine thing. Or the drinking. Life’s been hard for her in ways it isn’t hard for other people. She’s sensitive, I guess. Overly so, and no, I don’t know what makes people like that. I also don’t know how to fix it.
I do know that when my mother was growing up she didn’t have a good relationship with her family. Her dad was kind of a dick, and I gather he liked to take it out on her. Marcus was the same way, really, only he had God on his side, which didn’t help matters any. Anyway, the bottom line is you should know that doing normal stuff—like holding a job or going to the store or keeping up the house—it’s all too much for her. So those were things that I did. And while I didn’t always like it, I also tried not to get too hung up about it. At least she loved me. That wasn’t something everyone had, so I tried hard to remember that shit could’ve always been worse.
That Friday, however, my mom couldn’t have cared less about my leaving. I ducked into her bedroom to say my good-byes only to find her in the grips of her bed husband—that’s what she called this stained denim pillow with outstretched arms and a pocket for the TV remote—with a beer already in hand, chain-smoking her Camel Lights. Her green eyes, the same watery shade as my own, were bloodshot and droopy. When I tried telling her the details of my trip, like when I’d be back or who to call if she needed something, she cut me off with, “I don’t need to know any of that. It’s fine, Ben. Go on. Do whatever the hell you want. It’s all okay with me.”
“It is?”
She waved a hand. “Of course. I can’t possibly expect you to take care of me when you have so many other interesting things to do.”
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