All We Left Behind (24 page)

“It wasn't like that,” she counters, but I head for the door.

“I don't know what anything
is like
around you anymore,” I say, feeling out of control and needing to be out of this room. But Lilith races in front of me, getting in my face.

“Where do you get off, Marion?” Her eyes blaze. “Do you think tiptoeing around
you
has been a picnic for me?! I don't even know what's going to set you off anymore. You're like a minefield of ‘look over here, and don't talk about that, oh, and holy shit, Lilith lost her virginity and I totally saw it, but I'm going to pretend for
five years
that I didn't.' What's that about, Marion? Huh? Tell me, how am
I
supposed to be
your friend
?!”

I can't breathe. Shower steam crams down my throat and everything is spinning. I can't be here. Lilith's eyes are so hard it feels like maybe I'm seeing her for the first time, seeing who she really is.

“You ever think that maybe we aren't friends?” I say
coldly, and it surprises me to see her flinch. “Maybe we haven't been for a long time.”

Her eyes water and she purses her chalky red lips together. Part of me wants to hug her and say I don't mean it, but I don't know if that's true. I don't know how to be her friend, or for her to be mine. Just because we grew up together doesn't mean we're supposed to be friends forever, does it? Maybe we're just too different now. Maybe
not being friends
is who we were always supposed to be.

My head throbs, right behind
the eyes, like someone cut them out. I blink, and light scrapes pain through my skull.

“Jesus,” I hiss, turning on my side, nausea budding in my throat. The paper mattress under me crinkles and I hear Conner's voice.

“Hey, man, are you okay?”

A fuzzy figure moves beside me and what looks like yellow confetti drops from his lap when he stands.

“Did I pass out?” My voice cracks, tongue dry as cement. “Water?”

“Yeah, here.” Conner puts a Dixie cup in my hand and I gulp it down. He gives me a second and I drink it, too. “You scared me,” he says, his tone serious. I rub my face, and my vision clears enough to see a pamphlet in his hands. It's yellow and wrung-out. Torn to bits. Small yellow pieces litter the floor.

“Nothing scares you,” I tease, but he doesn't laugh.

I sit up and twist my legs off the cot. That seemed like a good idea, but the room spins. I grab the metal railing and Conner throws a hand on my shoulder.

“Just chill out,” he says. “You're not going anywhere till your dad gets here.”

“You called my dad?”

“Coach did,” Conner explains. “He had to, by law. You passed out on school property.”

The headache pings behind my eyes and the small room comes into focus. White walls. Inspirational posters. Plastic curtains.

“He's pissed, you know,” Conner says, refilling my cup.

“Who, my dad?”

Conner's eyes flash at me sharply. “No, Coach.”

I look at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights sting like vinegar. “How long have I been out?”

“Only about a minute on the field,” Conner says, handing me the drink. I gulp it down and my eyes water from the lights. “But you were so woozy when you came to, Coach called your dad and I took you here. You've been in and out for about twenty.” He squeezes my shoulder, and I hear the clanking of the water pipes through the wall.

“I'm fine,” I say, and he nods.

“Of course you are.” But the look on his face says I'm anything but. “You know . . .” He wraps the yellow pamphlet around his finger. “If you ever need—”

“I know,” I say, so he doesn't have to. Of course I know.

The fluorescent lights buzz and Conner stuffs the pamphlet back in his pocket. “Okay, well, if you ever—”

“I know,” I repeat, louder, and Conner steps back. He sits down on the confetti-covered chair and I close my eyes. I can feel him staring at me, like after Mom died, when we were in my kitchen the week after her funeral. There were half-eaten casseroles covering the entire table, triple-wrapped in Saran. They probably should've been in the fridge, instead of rotting out in the heat. But I wasn't going to touch them. I refused to eat dead-mom food.

Conner sat at the table, fishing a pinkie through the plastic of one of the dishes, thinking I wouldn't notice. I was making PB and J as he slid a bean between his teeth, and I let him get away with it. I tossed him a sandwich and headed out back.

There was a little patch of grass behind the porch where Mom used to sit, and a green shed with the paint peeling. I ate two bites of my sandwich before I got out the soccer ball and started pounding it against the shed, trying to obliterate the rest of that paint.

Somewhere in the middle, Conner joined in.

I was kicking the ball against the shed, and then he was kicking it, and then I was kicking it, and I don't know if he could tell I was crying, but he didn't say anything.

We just kept kicking the ball.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

*  *  *

Dad dangles a cigarette out the open window as he drives me home. It's the first one I've seen him with since he brought Josie home. My head throbs. I lean it against the passenger door and the rumble of the road shakes through me.

“Conner says you were pushing too hard,” he says, eyes on the road. I'm pissed Conner told him anything. “You can't do that.”

“I can do whatever I want,” I mumble, letting the pulse of the tires ring through my ears.

“I wish you wouldn't,” he says softly. “I wish you'd realize soccer is a way for you to get to college. To get out of—”

“College didn't do shit for Josie, now, did it?” I interrupt, and he grips the wheel, the veins of his hand bulging.

He takes a long drag from his cigarette.

“When did you get it in your head that you're like your sister?” he says finally, and I don't know what to say to that.

We've got the same blood. Josie. Mom. Me. We're all locked up in this together.

“What is that thing on her ankle?” I say, and he flicks ash out the window. “You got her locked up and you're upset that I ran too hard on the soccer field? Where do you get off?” His jaw tightens. “Huh?” I press.

He chucks his cigarette out the window and puts both hands on the wheel. I think about opening my door. To shake him up. Make him react.

I unhook my seat belt.

“Put that back on,” he scolds, and I like the edge in his voice.

“Why?” I say. “Mom didn't? Mom threw herself—”

The brakes
screech
and he spins the truck to the curb. We haven't stopped, but he's grabbed my shirt, yanking me toward him.

“Is this what you want?” he yells, spit in my face. “You want a rise out of me? You want me to hit you?”

“Yes!” I struggle, hoping he will.

His hand trembles and he pumps the brake as the truck rolls to the curb. His face is red.

“Do it,” I say. “Hit me for being the only one left.”

He pushes me hard against the seat. Fist in my chest. My head smacks against the seat and then his weight is on top of me. Only—

This isn't a fight.

This
isn't
him roughing me up or setting himself up for a punch. This is him grabbing the seat belt and yanking it over the front of me. It's him strapping me in, and clicking it shut.

Like I'm a child.

Like he wouldn't dare lose what is left.

I sit in the arms
of the oak tree in my backyard. Stars dot the sky above and my bare feet press into the trunk. It's so cold we could have a frost, but all I want is the contact of my skin on this tree.

I run a hand over my name carved into the trunk, not sure my childhood self still exists somewhere under the puckered bark, and I wonder if it's possible that growing up has nothing to do with what you do right, but everything to do with what you do wrong.

“Marion?” Light flashes up the tree and I look down to see my father below. “What are you doing up there?”

The sight of him makes my toes curl and some silly piece of me says—

“Come up.”

As if it's an offer he might accept.

I remember the sun dappling this tree, and how the green leaves glowed like stars. The branches were firm underfoot as my seven-year-old self raced higher and higher
into the light. My father was below, stomping around the tree and huffing.

“Fee fie foe fum,” he called out, hunched over, pretending to be the giant, and I scrambled above, as Jack.

“Come up,” I yelled to him. “Come up and catch me!”

“Fee fie foe fum.”

He swung into the tree, climbing higher and coming after, and I giggled and squirmed above but didn't go too high. I wanted him to catch me. It was the best part of the game.

Dad's flashlight wavers and the light falls off me.

“Come up and catch me,” I whisper, not loud enough for him to hear.

I can't make out his features in the shadows below. There's only the dark stillness of his shape. The light swings again and floods over me and I'm caught, but only by the light of him.

“Come down,” he says quietly, pointing the beam to the ground. “Come down.”

I get up early and
go to school. I park next to Abe's silver pickup in the lot and look in the cab, but he's not inside. I find him in the library sitting in one of the cubicle desks near the stacks with papers spread out around him, back to me. One hand is in his curls and the other is on the desk with his index finger tapping. I knock lightly on the cubicle, but he doesn't look happy to see me.

“Can I sit down?”

“I've got to get this done, M,” he says, but the fact that he called me M means it isn't a “no.” I pull out the chair beside him and he goes back to his homework. I sit down and pick up a stack of Post-it notes, pulling off the top note.

“I'm sorry about yesterday,” I say, pressing the Post-it to my thumb. “About Kurt.”

Abe doesn't say anything, but his pen has stopped writing.

“I . . .”

I run the edge of the Post-it against his desk. It bends and starts to peel off, just like me, flimsy and unable to stick to any of this.

“You were right about Kurt,” I continue, jamming my finger against the Post-it, trying to make it stick. “That was—
is
—nothing.”

He chews on his bottom lip.

“Why do you even like him?” he asks, not looking at me. “Guys like him are shitheads.”

Suddenly I feel the need to defend Kurt, because he isn't like that. I mean, maybe it started out that way on the cliff, but there's more to him. A tender part. A quiet part, like he can see the shadows in all the negative spaces. Like he can feel the sorrow and the weight of the silence.

“You don't know him,” I say, but I catch myself. “I mean,
I
don't really know him,” I admit. “He isn't what you think.”

Abe's reluctant expression turns dark, and I know he's thinking about how Kurt treated him yesterday. I can't deny how he acted. It's not like Kurt said nice things to me, either. But I know he isn't only one thing. Kurt's both shitty and tender. He ignores me, then shares his music. He's ocean and air.

“Look,” I say, knowing I can't tell Abe all that, and wishing this was simpler. Only, we can't go back to dandelion wishes and pretending half the seeds won't burn up in the sun. “I want to apologize for the way Kurt treated you. And
I want you to know that he and I aren't anything. Or whatever . . .”

Abe doesn't move. He presses the tip of the pen into his notebook and the dot expands into a small black stain. I drop the Post-it on the table and get up.

“M,” Abe says, not looking at me. He taps his calculus papers with his pen. “I have to do this. It's due first period.” His pinkie grazes the side of my hand. “But stay, if you want.”

There's nothing to look at
in chemistry but Abe and Marion.

Her hair is down.

At one point Abe reaches over and touches it and I don't think she even notices. Not like when Tommy's hand was in her hair. Not like when it was mine.

I look out the window and think about the game. I wonder if Coach will even play me. He bitched me out in front of everyone and benched me in practice yesterday.

But I can still run. I
need
to run. Especially if I'm going to have to sit here for another fifty minutes and watch the backs of their heads.

*  *  *

Coach benches me.

I dig my cleats into the grass and bounce my knees to keep them warm. I haven't sat the bench since freshman year.

Time clicks by. I keep looking to Coach. Waiting for that head-nod. But he doesn't look my way.