After Nothing (9 page)

Kane and Wayne made up, and Kane moved back home. I wasn’t allowed to know anything about it, which made me think Kane had given Wayne a whole lot of that money he’d been making from whatever it was he was doing that I also wasn’t allowed to know about.

Thing was, with Kane being back at home, we didn’t seem to be spending any more time there than we had been when he was kicked out. He was getting even more serious about school. It was his last year, and he was determined to graduate, but sometimes he took his studying too far. Like the times, when we were in the library, he would get books out that weren’t even part of what he had to do for school. Math books written by genius math people. Art books filled with as much text as pictures. Additional design books that covered everything from buildings to furniture.

One day he put a photographic book in front of me filled with pictures of Black British people. I barely glanced at it. He took it back and looked through all the photos.

Kane would get really frustrated with me. He was always trying to help me with my homework, but I didn’t want anything to do with it. I think psychologically school and me were over by then.

I’d discovered where the magazines were kept in the library, and the hours Kane put in to making himself smarter, I put in to keeping up to date on celebrity gossip and the latest fashion trends. I also got quite obsessed with the human-interest stories in those magazines. You know the ones: the quadruplets separated at birth who are reunited as adults, only for one to die the following week in a pig-hunting accident in Canada. Or the family with sixteen kids who is hit by a tornado and then a flash flood, then just as soon as they’ve rebuilt from the tornado and replaced the ruined carpet from the flood, lightning strikes their house and it burns to the ground. It doesn’t matter of course to the multitude of smiling faces in the family pictures taken by the magazine – even though it seems like God’s trying to put an end to them, they’ve all still got each other.

Kane would get so annoyed with me when I tried to recount some of those stories to him. He’d be like, ‘What do you want to go reading about that for? Only have to look next door to know the world’s got problems.’

‘I like reading them.’

‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Okay, let’s talk about what you’re doing tonight,’ I’d say to him, or something similar, and he’d get this tense look on his face and stop talking altogether.

I was sitting at the dining table by myself eating Mom’s overcooked ground beef stir-fry, while she sat on the couch watching TV and pretending I wasn’t directly behind her. The news was on, and there was coverage of a shooting downtown. The shooter and two bystanders were dead, a cop was in hospital and the reporter on the scene kept stammering when the news anchor asked her questions.

And I got a bad feeling.

The feeling was nothing to do with the news story. That’s just what I happened to be doing when I got it; watching the news and eating dry ground beef with limp vegetables.

The feeling itself had to do with Kane.

To begin with, Kane hadn’t replied to a message I’d sent him that morning. He
always
replied, even if it was just one word or one letter or an emoticon.

But that morning, I’d got nothing. He wasn’t at his locker, and later, I sent him another text saying I’d see him at his place after school.

He replied, ‘K.’

I didn’t go to his place after school though. It was spur of the moment. I was just over not knowing what he was up to. It wasn’t how I wanted us to be. I didn’t want protecting. I wanted to know, and I decided enough was enough. If he wasn’t going to tell me then I was going to make it clear how angry I was about it.

It was the first time I ever stood him up. He sent me a text half an hour after I got home.

‘Where are you?’

‘I couldn’t make it.’

‘Y?’

‘Busy.’

‘Fuck you, Natalie.’

I messaged a repentant, ‘I can come over now.’

‘Got shit to do.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Nothing came back. And that was it, until I was sitting there eating dinner and watching a stammering reporter try and say the same thing three different ways to a Ken-doll news anchor.

I couldn’t leave the house fast enough.

It was dark when I got to Kane’s, and the fall night air was cold. There were no lights on upstairs, but when I walked down the side of the house I could see light around the edges of Kane’s drawn curtains. I knocked and Kane immediately appeared, moving the curtain aside and unlocking the door.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ said Kane.

Despite this greeting, he stood to one side to let me in, and then slid the door shut behind me.

I could feel the nervous energy coming from his body. It was like how he used to be before a fight: his body wired and ready. Except rather than focusing on his breathing and having his head together, he was looking anxious, and couldn’t stop pacing.

‘I missed you, and I’m sorry about earlier.’

‘Yeah, okay, but I told you I’ve got shit on.’

‘Can I stay tonight?’

‘What about your mom?’

‘I told her, she didn’t care.’

‘I ain’t gonna be back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you can stay, but I ain’t gonna be here. I’ll have to see you at school.’

‘Where are you going to be?’

Kane shook his head at me.

A rectangular object on the bed caught my attention.

‘What’s this?’ I said, going over to the bed and picking it up.

‘A computer,’ said Kane, taking it off me, and putting it back down.

‘It doesn’t look like a computer.’

‘Nat, what did I just say? It’s a fucking computer.’

‘I want to know where you’re going.’

He snapped, yelling at me, ‘I ain’t fucking doing this now. Why you always gotta make everything about you? I said I had shit on. You know what that means. Why couldn’t you just –’

Kane stopped mid-sentence and frowned. I’d crossed in front of him and picked up one of his weights off the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

The weight I’d picked up was heavy – almost too much for me to hold in one hand.

‘I want to know,’ I said resolutely.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said Kane, as I moved closer to his wood dresser with all the carvings. I placed my arm so it was hanging half off it.

‘Nat, no!’

He lunged toward me, but the weight was already a short distance above my arm.

I dropped it.

Sweet Jesus, it hurt.

Pain like that – I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. It was more than I could bear. I’d pulled away from the dresser as soon as the weight hit, and I kept trying to lift my arm up against my chest but it wouldn’t come. I used my other hand to hold it, cradling it against my stomach. I couldn’t speak. I was struggling to draw breath.

‘You stupid fucked-up bitch!’ yelled Kane. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

His voice was loud and distant at the same time. I know that makes no sense, but it was like he was at full volume, but I couldn’t properly hear what he was saying, because the only thing I could concentrate on was the pain. All the blood seemed to rush from my head, and I thought for a moment I was going to pass out. I made it to the edge of Kane’s bed and sat down. Kane went silent, and then he crouched down in front of me.

‘You’ve broken it,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Natalie, look at it,’ he said furiously. ‘You’ve fucking broken it. Badly too.’

I looked down at it. There was something wrong with my skin. It had a big lump in it. My forearm looked shorter.

‘It’s not broken,’ I managed.

‘Turn your wrist.’

There was no way that was going to happen. It was too busy hanging limply off the end of my arm.

I looked at Kane.

‘I’m sorry.’

He stood up.

‘You need to go to hospital.’

‘I’m sorry, Kane.’

‘Don’t talk to me,’ he said moving away from me.

I watched him take his cell phone out of his pocket.

‘Kane –’

‘Shut up or I’ll break your other arm.’

The slightest movement of my body was killing me. I sought out the weight, lying harmlessly on the stained carpet. I tried to fix my mind on it; the shape, the color, the matted surface – anything to keep the pain out.

Kane got off the phone.

I told him it hurt. He didn’t reply.

‘What do I do?’ I asked.

‘Wayne’s coming home with the truck,’ he said, putting the phone back to his ear.

‘I’m sorry, Kane.’

‘Bey,’ said Kane, talking into the phone. He opened the sliding door and went outside. ‘Something’s come up. I ain’t gonna make it.’ He pulled the door closed behind him.

I was still covered under Dad’s company insurance policy. You hear about companies screwing their employees over at the first hint that they might become less than fit to work; Dad’s company wasn’t one of those. It was a third-generation family company founded on strong Christian beliefs. Dad had never been made to resign, and he and Mom and I were still under their health insurance. Which was lucky, because my stupid attempt to get my own way put me into an operating room and then into a hospital ward.

Mom came in twice: the first time to sign the insurance forms, and the second time when I was discharged, and only because the hospital would have called DCFS if she hadn’t come and got me. Melissa had come and seen me every day. So had Kane, but he never spoke much. He never kissed me hello or goodbye, and the most he ever stayed was ten minutes.

I asked him if we were still together.

‘Figuring that out,’ was his reply.

I was scared that if I pushed it further he’d end it altogether, so that’s where things were at between him and me when I went back to school.

I stopped by his locker my first morning back at school. He was talking to a friend, and ignored me. The guy realized something was up, and soon left us alone.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Don’t stop here,’ said Kane, his eyes briefly lighting on the splint around my forearm.

‘I don’t get to talk to you anymore?’

‘Bitch, you don’t stop here. We clear?’

His face was tense, and the hand that was taking his weight as he leaned against his locker had curled up into a fist.

I left. Went to class. Told myself I wasn’t going to cry over him, but at first break, there I was crying in the girls’ toilets. When I came out of the stall I realized that my eyeliner had run. As I tried to fix it with my good hand, there must have been about twenty girls coming and going who saw me. By lunchtime the story through the whole school was that Kane and I were broken up. Just about everyone knew – although only one person actually asked: Melissa.

She took me aside before our history class and demanded to know if it was true.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, did one of you break up with the other or not?’

‘It hasn’t been said. But he’s so angry at me, Mel. Don’t say anything, though. Kane would rather people assume what they like than actually know his business.’

‘What’s he angry about?’

I didn’t reply.

‘If he’s not telling you where he’s at, then screw him, Nat. You don’t have to play his games. You end it with him. Plenty of others will be around first chance they get.’

‘I don’t want anyone but Kane.’

He wouldn’t even look at me. And it wasn’t like a mind game; it was like ‘I am straight-up not looking at you because I do not want to see you.’

It felt so bad. I missed him, and the feeling of wanting to be back with him made my chest ache constantly. It made the ache in my arm seem like nothing in comparison.

Each day I’d see him standing at his locker, and each day I would try and catch his eye, but if he even saw a glimpse of me he’d turn away. It was totally by accident that I almost ran into him outside school about a week after he told me to stay away from him. He was coming out of the main building as I was going in. I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his hoodie with my good hand.

‘Are you never going to talk to me again?’

‘Get off me,’ said Kane, pulling his arm away. He went to walk off but I stepped into his path.

‘Kane, I went crazy for one moment. I’m not like that – you know I’m not.’

‘That’s exactly what you’re like. Now get out of my motherfucking way.’

‘Don’t say that to me.’

‘Bitch, you don’t tell me what to do; you don’t tell me nothing. I’m telling you. Fuck. Off.’

I responded by trying to get closer to him, attempting to cling to his chest, but he held me off with an outstretched arm.

‘What the fuck did I just say? I don’t want you near me. I don’t want you talking to me, and I don’t want you touching me. Can’t make it any clearer. Stay the fuck away from me.’

I stopped struggling to get near him, and just stood and looked at him.

‘You’ve got to forgive me.’

‘Some shit you can’t come back from,’ he replied harshly.

‘Kane, tell me you love me.’

Kane looked at me in disbelief. He would have walked away then, if not for my next words. ‘Tell me you love me, or I’ll fuck three different guys at school. Today.’

Kane froze, but I couldn’t read him.

‘I know which three,’ I said quietly. ‘And I know they want me, and you know I’ll do it. I bet I can do all three before the last bell goes.’

The look on Kane’s face changed to one of rage.

‘Tell me that you love me,’ I hissed, ‘or it will be your fault that I do it.’

He lost it. He really lost it. And because it was the end of morning break, and we were standing right at the entrance to the main building, about half the school witnessed it. He called me the worst names. Used every swearword about ten times over. He was breathing so fast it was like he’d just come out of the ring, his chest rapidly rising and falling as he closed the short distance between us.

‘You sure three gonna be enough, you fucked-up slut? I know some niggas. Niggas who’ll give you what you want – who’d really get off on beating the shit out of a mouthy whore like you.’

By now, a teacher with an accompanying security guard had reached us. The security guard stood back a moment, while the teacher tried to get Kane’s attention by speaking directly to him. She called him ‘young man,’ and told him to go to the vice-principal’s office.

Kane ignored her. Moments later the security guard tried to get between Kane and me. Kane anticipated the movement, using his body to block the guard’s interference, while grabbing me by my good arm and hauling me close.

The security guard started yelling at him to let me go. Kane didn’t.

‘You manipulative bitch,’ said Kane to me. ‘I hate you. I don’t hate anyone more than I hate you. I swear to God, bitch, if you even look at someone else I will fuck up your sick, twisted, hole of a life to the point where you’ll wish you’d never met me.’

‘You think you can make my life any worse than you already have?’

Kane pulled me even closer, so my body was flat against him.

‘If you ever fuck someone else,’ he said in my ear, ‘I will never touch you again.’

He released his grip on me and walked away, leaving the school grounds without a backward look.

I sat surrounded by four adults in a meeting room: the vice-principal, who everyone just called ‘the V.P.’, the head of the junior class, Mr Pembrooke, the school guidance counsellor, Ms Kelley, and the history teacher who’d witnessed the whole thing, and whose name I didn’t actually know.

I wouldn’t talk. But that didn’t stop them. They asked in thirty different ways if my relationship with Kane was abusive. I eventually realized they weren’t going to let me go until they got something out of me, so I finally gave in and opened my mouth, saying that Kane wasn’t abusive. That he’d never hurt me the whole time I’d been with him, and that he never would.

They didn’t believe me. It didn’t help that the green splint on my arm was a clear reminder that I had an injury. It also didn’t help that the stupid history teacher had misquoted some of the more extreme things Kane said – like that I deserved getting the shit beaten out of me because I was such a mouthy slut, or that he would fuck me up if I even thought about breaking up with him.

I told her that wasn’t exactly what he’d said. Again, no one believed me. The guidance counsellor, Ms Kelley, used the words ‘possessive behaviour’. And then the questions started as to how I broke my arm.

I was pretty annoyed by then, and I wanted to leave. So I made up a story about how I’d slept with this other guy I knew, and that I’d just told Kane and that’s why he’d yelled at me – but that Kane had never hit me in all his life, and that my arm was my own stupid fault for getting drunk and falling down some stairs at a party, which I’d gone to with the other guy I’d slept with.

That seemed to floor them for a bit. Then they asked a few more questions, and after that I didn’t pay much attention, until the history teacher asked when my parents were getting there. The others looked at each other awkwardly, then the V.P. said he’d rung Mom but she wouldn’t be coming in.

After that I was allowed to go.

By the next day the news throughout the school was that Kane had broken my arm. I told everyone who asked that it wasn’t true, and everyone pretended to believe me, but it was a hopeless cause. When it comes to high school dramas, I guess the worse story is the better story.

Kane wasn’t at his locker in the morning, and when I scouted around some of his classes I saw that he wasn’t in them either. I told myself that if he didn’t care enough to show up and put things straight, I might as well give up trying.

Things kind of took care of themselves that week though. Two guys from the football team got shot at by a crackhead in a petrol station one night. Then a rumour started circulating about one of the more preppy girls at school having a hard-core foursome with three guys. Kane and me were still kind of news after that, but no longer front-page news. What he’d supposedly done to me became whispered about behind my back, rather than flat-out gossiped about in the cafeteria.

Despite it almost being winter, I went back to dressing every day in the tight, short skirts I had worn when Kane and I first got together. This meant that sometimes I froze, and soon I had to cover myself in a long coat going to and from school. But at school, walking the halls, I always had bare legs. I wanted to remind Kane that he liked my legs; that he liked them wrapped around him while he moved inside me. It was desperate, but I thought if I could just remind him that he wanted me physically then he would take me back, and forget the horrible thing I’d done, and the terrible threat I’d made.

Dad was no longer talking, and Mom was barely talking either – she hadn’t even commented on the vice-principal ringing her. I began imagining Lisa screaming my name every time I saw the shut door to her room. Then I got to the stage where I couldn’t stop hearing her scream. Every time I came into or out of my room, and even if I didn’t look at her door, I could hear her scream my name. I hated it. I hated her, and wanted her gone. She was dead – what did she want? Why couldn’t she just shut up and leave?

Worse than the relentless screams of my sister was the fact that Kane was nowhere.

I’d spent my whole childhood going to church on Sunday, but my relationship with God had always been at my parent’s insistence. I’d never chosen to know him: my parents made that choice for me when I was baptized at two weeks old. When they stopped going to church, I stopped too, and I hadn’t had anything to do with God for a long time. I believed in him though, so I guess you could say I’d been ignoring him. I started praying again. I prayed before going to bed, and then again in the morning, that I’d see Kane at school. I even promised God that if I could just see Kane one more time then I’d start going to church again. Then I began calling Kane, and texting him, and emailing him, but I never got anything back. I went to his house once. I stood outside on the sidewalk, shivering in the freezing cold, and imagined every possible outcome if I were to go down to his room. There wasn’t a single scenario I could think of where he would welcome me turning up, so I left.

I lost my appetite, and my schoolwork went completely out the window. I’d spend most of my classes feeling the weight and strapping of the stupid splint wrapped around my arm; thinking about the metal plates screwed into each of the two bones in my forearm and how the ugly scars on either side of my arm would be there for the rest of my life.

I’d tell myself it was over with Kane, that he didn’t want me anymore. But I couldn’t quite convince myself, because always, always in my mind was the last thing he’d said to me. That he’d never touch me again if I slept with someone else. So if I didn’t sleep with someone else, what did that mean?

One day after school, Melissa and I went shopping for something she could wear to her mom’s fortieth birthday party. We weren’t in the normal bargain stores we haunted but in one of the more expensive designer shops. Melissa had fallen in love with the first dress she’d tried on. It was a beaded fringe dress that swayed with every movement she made.

‘I feel like even just standing here I’m dancing in this dress,’ she said, staring at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. ‘Look, I’m completely still and it’s still moving. What do you think?’

‘You look amazing.’

‘Amazing? No dress is going to make me look amazing. I’d need surgery for that. If only Mom and Dad would pay for it,’ said Melissa, touching her nose.

‘You said you’d never get a nose job.’

‘I said
I
wouldn’t pay for it. How could I with all those starving children? If someone else offered though …’ She looked at herself in the dress again. ‘It’s quite heavy. Heavier than you’d think. I don’t know. If I buy it, that will be all my money.’

‘Where else will you wear it?’ I asked, moving toward the sales rack on the off chance there was a dress hanging on it that Melissa might like.

‘Prom? If one of the seniors ask me. Even if I don’t get asked, I think I’d just like to have it in my wardrobe to put on and dance around the house in from time to time. Natalie, that is all last season. Don’t even bother.’

I paused partway through shifting hangers. A light strip of denim had caught my eye. I pulled it off the rack and held it up. ‘Look at this.’

‘At what? I can’t see anything,’ said Melissa, pretending to squint at the tiny skirt. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, as I moved toward a changing room.

‘I just want to see it on.’

‘You are such a ho.’

She laughed when I came back out. ‘Girl, if you don’t have anything on underneath do not bend over.’

I frowned at her. ‘Are you not wearing anything underneath?’

‘We’re talking about you,’ said Melissa hurriedly, ‘and that non-existent excuse for a skirt.’

‘Mel, have you been at school with no underwear on?’

‘Bitch, I want your legs.’

‘And you call me a ho? Anyway, you got great legs.’

‘Only if I’m
not
standing next to you.’

I looked at myself critically in the mirror. It was the shortest skirt I’d ever worn. Actually it was the shortest skirt I’d ever seen. But I liked it. The denim was distressed, the hemline frayed in some parts and curling in others. And it looked good on me.

‘I think it needs a belt,’ I said to Melissa.

‘As long as you realize the belt would be wider than the skirt. Nat, you know it’s winter, right?’

‘I can wear tights under it.’

‘Even our school wouldn’t let you get away with a skirt that short.’

‘What’s the price?’ I asked. I couldn’t read the tag from behind.

Melissa reached for it. ‘Only seventy-five dollars. And that’s half price,’ she added dryly.

‘It wants me to buy it.’

‘You mean you want Kane to see you in it.’

‘No, I just like it.’

Melissa raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘If you say so.’