All We Left Behind (10 page)

I want Lilith to explain it to me.

How she does it.

How she closes her eyes, takes off her clothes, and comes back intact.

I want to tell her about Kurt, and understand how it's possible for her to do what she does. How after, she can still be 100 percent Lilith—maybe even more Lilith than before.

But I can't ask.

After the firefly field, a rumor started in middle school about an eighth grader who'd lost her virginity. Pretty quickly
Lilith's name started to circulate, and then she outright claimed it. It made her popular with the girls who wanted to know about sex and even more popular with the boys.

At lunch the girls would crowd around Lilith and ask questions.

“Did he tell you he loved you?”

“Were you embarrassed taking off your clothes?”

“What does it look like? You know, his thingy?”

She held nothing back.

“No, he didn't tell me he loved me. That's stupid.”

“Go somewhere dark if you're embarrassed. And trust me, you don't have to take off
all
your clothes.”

“It's called a penis, not a thingy. And it looks like—”

I plugged my ears. I didn't want to hear her talk about what it looked like. What it felt like. I hummed to blot it all out and ignored the other girls' faces flushing pink.

“What about you, Marion?” Lilith turned to me one afternoon and asked point-blank. “What do
you
want to know?”

I ran a hand through my chopped-off hair, and the other girls waited. In the distance I could hear the rush of creek water, and a hint of smoke filled my nostrils.

I didn't want to know anything.

“Did it hurt?” one of the other girls asked, breaking the silence, and Lilith looked straight at me.

“Of course it did,” she said, and my feet went cold. “It hurts more than you can imagine.”

*  *  *

At lunch Lilith drags me outside to the bleachers by the soccer field, where the metal is edged in frost. She hands me half of an uncooked Pop-Tart, and I pick at the frosting.

The field is empty. Ice crystals hang on the grass and I kick a mud print of cleat marks, but the ground is frozen. Lilith flops down on the bench and I look at the chain link where I stood yesterday, before I got in his car. It makes me wonder if she deliberately brought us out here because this
is
the soccer field. Does Lilith have a sixth sense about this sort of thing? Can she look at me and just
know
?

Of course she can't. I cut off all my hair after the barbecue and she didn't think that was abnormal, just like my father. And then there was the firefly field and the mason jars and the things we don't talk about. A lie with Lilith isn't really a lie. Not if it's something no one brings up. If I don't tell her about Kurt, it's just an omission. It becomes the negative space between two rungs of a chair. I think that's where our friendship lies. In that space where no one has to see the invisible parts of me.

“What if I can't do it?” I say quietly, scratching my nail into the tin grooves of the bleacher. “The whole boy sex thing.” I eye Lilith, thinking maybe I can get her to lay off this hookup business. “I mean, let's face it . . .” I try to make this sound lighthearted, like a joke. “I'll probably freak out and cry or something.”

“God, I hope you don't cry,” she says, dropping her
Pop-Tart back on her plate, midchew. Her tone crawls through me, barbed with how disastrous that would be, and how miserably I've already failed at this.

“Exactly, that's my point,” I say, coughing to cover the quake in my voice. “I mean, it's going to end badly anyway.”

I toss the crumbs of my pastry onto the dirt and they fall into the tiny mud holes frozen into the ground.

“No, it's not,” Lilith says. “No, really, Marion. It's not.” She touches the ridge of my ear, and her fingers are so warm I pull away.

“I'm not you,” I say, my voice only a whisper.

“I know that,” she says, dropping her hands to her knees. But I don't think she gets it. Fire isn't afraid of the fire. Fire thinks it's easy to burn and spark and take control.

“I just . . . I think we should drop it. That's all.” I take a bite of the Pop-Tart but all the sweet crumbles feel like sand.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and I don't look at her because I can hear the reluctance in her voice. “But when you and Abe broke up,” she says, fidgeting with her bracelets, “it was because of this, right? Because he wanted to fool around and have sex?”

My jaw tightens and I stare at the ground. I don't know how to tell her that what happened with Kurt happened with Abe. That it all turns to mud. The chime of her bracelets tangles with the wind, and I wish she'd drop this and be on my side for once.

“Look, I get that you're not me,” she says, raising her hands quickly as if she can feel my annoyance. “And you don't have to be me. You can wait as long as you want. But . . .”

“What part of ‘drop it' do you not understand?”

She waves her hands like white flags. “Sorry, sorry. It's just . . . I
know
you liked Abe. And hell, Marion, you
still
like him.”

“I—”

“You do, Marion! I saw that look in your eye when he was waiting for you after gym class. So . . .” Her shoulders raise to her ears like the solution is as plain as day, and I hate that everything feels so simple to her.

“So what?”

“So, forget the hookup and pick the guy you
like
. You're never going to surprise yourself if you don't try. And that's the thing, Marion—” Her arms rise in excitement. “You are
amazing.
You're beautiful and sensitive, and the second you try, the second you give this a real shot, you're going to realize just how awesome you are. And then you'll knock the socks off whatever guy you want to be with.”

I shake my head and laugh. It's a fast and hasty laugh that comes out my nostrils, because she doesn't understand. S
he
can fall into firefly fields and lift her skirt to the shadows.
She
can skip back to the light with stars drawn all over her thighs. There aren't fingers of mud dragging her down.

“I can't wait till you realize you can do that,” Lilith says,
ignoring my laugh, and I press my knuckles into the ice of the bench.

“Yeah, me too,” I force out, knowing I
can't
tell her about Kurt now. Because telling her one thing means telling her everything—Kurt, the creek, that man—and she thinks there is this other part of me, something solid that isn't negative space, something that knows how to shine in a jar with no air, like all those fireflies. I can't tell her I was half-naked and I freaked out. I can't tell her I cried. Lilith doesn't understand that it takes air to keep those fireflies alive. It takes air to kindle a fire. And somewhere in the middle of this conversation, I stopped breathing.

There's popcorn all over my
car. Stupid fucking popcorn on top of everything.

I swing open my door and start throwing kernels onto the driveway, crawling over the damn seats till every damn kernel is out. It makes me hate Marion. Hate her for making me feel like this. For making the ridge not okay, and my car not okay. And for existing. And I hate that too. That I want her not to exist, like my father doesn't want me or Mom or Josie. And the last fucking thing I want to be is my father. Ignoring
everything.

But there's nothing I can do. I can't fix the fact that I took Marion up there. I can't change the fact that I wanted her and that was supposed to be okay. And I don't know why she got in my car in the first place if it wasn't okay with her.

But people get in cars all the time when they shouldn't.

People drive into the dark.

*  *  *

Josie's eyes were always bloodshot after Mom died. Maybe they always were before. I don't know. They were definitely bloodshot that night I took out the trash and found her sitting on the front porch waiting for someone. It was Friday, a date maybe. She looked nice. Short skirt. Hair down.

“You going out?” I asked, sitting beside her on the stoop. It was her senior year, so it was a stupid question. She went out every weekend. She took a drag off her cigarette and handed it to me before nodding.

“Yeah,” she said quiet, like it was something she didn't want to talk about.

“This one of Dad's?” I asked, turning over the rolled paper. He was at work, like always.

“He won't miss it,” she said, wiping her eye, and I couldn't tell if she had something in it or not. The porch light was burned out.

“You gonna give me a lecture about how I'll ruin my soccer career with this thing?” I waved the cigarette at her before taking a drag. She laughed.

“That thing's harmless.”

I couldn't see her smile, but I imagined it. Josie had the best smile.

“You got a party to go to, with Madeline or something?” I asked, and she shook her head.

“Just a party,” she said, taking the cigarette back like she was annoyed at sharing it. “Not with Madeline.” She
took a drag. “Do you still have a crush on that girl?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Why's that good?”

“She's an asshole.”

I squinted at her, trying to make out her face. I thought they were best friends.

“Hey.” Josie laughed and nudged me with her shoulder. “Don't take anything I say too seriously, little brother.” I liked it when she called me that. It made me feel like I had a big sister again. “The world's full of bullshit, all right, the least you can do is see through mine.”

I didn't know what that meant.

She reached down and started scratching her ankle, and there were a pair of high-heeled shoes on the bottom stair. Fancy shoes. Too fancy for a high school party.

“You want to go bowling?” I asked, and she laughed again before taking a drag.

“What, like when you were ten?”

“Yeah, exactly like that. Just you and me. Forget the party.”

She checked her watch and looked up the street. “I would totally destroy you at bowling.” She pointed the cigarette at me. “Did you forget how good I am?”

“No,” I said. “I like how good you are.”

She smiled for real this time. My eyes were starting to adjust. This smile I actually saw.

“You're adorable,” she said, mussing up my hair. “No wonder the girls love you.”

“I don't take girls bowling.”

“You should.” She laughs. “God, remember that fake baseball move you had?”

“I didn't know how to hold the ball!”

“You kept knocking over the guy's pins in the next lane. Man, you're shit at bowling!”

“It'd be fun.”

“It'd be
something
,” she said, still scratching that ankle. “I'd obliterate you.”

“Bring it on.”

She smiled again.

“Put on some jeans.” I motioned to the house. “Forget the party and let's see if you still got it?”

A car honked.

We looked up to see a dark vehicle pulling up to the curb. Josie stood quickly and handed me the cigarette, slipping into those heeled shoes on the bottom step. They made her taller than I was used to. I didn't like how they made me look at her legs.

“Kurt, hey.” She bent down and put a hand on my cheek. “You should go out yourself, okay? Forget bowling. You made varsity. The girls think you're adorable. You run like nothing can catch you. Get out there and enjoy it. Okay?”

She said that in a way that made it sound like it wouldn't last.

She turned her back on me and got in that car. I ignored the fact that I was pretty sure that car wasn't taking her to a high school party. And I ignored the fact that two days later I saw bruises all over her legs.

I put my books into
my locker and afternoon light pours down the hallway. Abe leans against the locker next to mine, his fingers drumming along the metal, not impatiently; it's something he's always done, like his brain clicking its way to order. Only it makes me think of the other day, after Lilith kissed me, and how he thinks I'm better than her. Whatever that means.

“So I'll do the charts and you'll write the paper?” he says, holding up his notebook.

We've been nothing but business in class. Theorems, solutions, charts. We haven't quite returned to the tight-lipped silence after we broke up, but it's close, and I don't know how to navigate this unspoken space between us.

“I didn't appreciate what you said the other day,” I blurt out. Abe's hand drops from the locker and his face gets serious.

“Okay.”

“Lilith's my friend,” I start, pretending to organize my
locker. “I'm not
better
than her. I don't even know why you said that. She expresses herself the way she expresses herself, and that's just Lilith. And I love Lilith. And you shouldn't shame her, okay?”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

“Well, that's how it came off.”

“All right, I'm sorry.”

“If there's something you need to say to me, about—”

Abe looks at me so seriously, I almost drop my books. I shove them into the back of my locker with a clang.

“About me, or us . . .” I swallow hard. “Before, or whatever. Then say it to
me.
Okay? Don't go backhand and make it about Lilith.”

“All right, I didn't mean to make it about her. I—” His hand runs through his curls and his fingers drum against his skull like he's unsure what to say. But then he suddenly breaks into this adorable smile and his hand drops, the tension falling with it. “I missed you.”

“What?”