All We Left Behind (33 page)

Hair blows in my face and he stops at the curb. He takes in my rumpled clothes, my bra-less shirt, my tangled hair.

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses through his teeth, realization forcing him to turn away. Both his hands ball up and all the muscles in his neck tense. I hate that he can't look at me.

“Give me your keys and get in the car!” He points to the Lexus, and I do as I'm told. My keys jangle too loudly as I put them in his palm and we peel out into the street.

I see my car getting smaller in the rearview mirror and my stomach turns knowing Abe will have to see it in front of his house in the morning. I hear his ragged voice in my head, pissed at me, with his buttons all over my floor. Buttons I scattered.

Cold crawls up my legs. Squishy and mud-water cold.

My father grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white. I lean into the armrest and hold tight, trying to keep steady, to breathe, swallow.

“I'm sorry Mr. Doyle had to call you,” I say, and he scoffs.

“No,
I'm
sorry he had to call me!
I'm
sorry my daughter can't be a respectable young adult.”

“We didn't do—”

“I don't want to know!” His lips jam together and his eyes bore into the road. He huffs, nostrils flaring, like there's water rising inside him. “Jesus,” he growls, almost to himself. “And who was that
other
one? The other day? Your
friend.
”

I taste salt and the ocean.

“Kurt.”

“Right.” Saliva flings from his lip. “How many—” He cuts himself off, grinding a palm into the wheel.

“Just the two,” I admit.

“Stop talking.”

“I didn't sleep wi—”

“Stop talking!”

Silence razors between us. Silence thin as ice. It's toxic. It lumps with rose hips and worms in my throat. Ramming quiet. Ramming down. Ramming shut. How long can he ignore me? How long can we pretend not to see?

“You're grounded,” he snaps, but all I hear is the clang of belt buckles and the sizzle of raw meat on the grill.

“Do you remember the barbecue?” I wheeze.

“This discussion is over.”

“Do you remember the barbecue?”

He speeds up and tightens his grip.

“
Your
company barbecue,” I insist. “The one where I got sick?”

“I said you're grounded! I suggest you think long and hard about the type of girl you've be—”

“What type of girl is that?” I snap, and he stares at me, his eyes scared.

He doesn't say it. He goes silent, and yellow road signs flash by us in a blur, threatening caution and dark.

“I cut my hair,” I say, my voice sand-caught and harsh.

“What are you talking about?” he whispers, his arms locked on the wheel.

“The Fourth of July barbecue. The day I cut off my hair.” I grab a clump of my blond, wishing I could razor it off. “All of it. Gone! And you barely noticed. You didn't care!”

“I thought—” He looks at me, and his face goes white. Something naked and afraid floods his expression and his eyes snap back to the road.

“What?”

His Adam's apple presses against his throat. It moves like a marble pressed hard against the skin, thick and impossible to swallow.

“What
did
you think?” I press, but he refuses to look at me. “You're upset I'm out late with a boy my own age, but
you didn't care about
that man
!” I dig my feet into the floor and it isn't solid anymore. It squishes like dirty mud in my toes. “Do you
remember
that man, from your work?”

His hands tighten, and
I know
he knows.

“He played horseshoes with me?” I cough. “You remember?”

His head shakes slightly and my pants stick to my thighs.

“
That man
who took me for a walk.”

“Marion, stop.”

“That man—” It catches in me. The water. The current.

“Stop.”

It swells.

“That man who kissed me.”

He frowns and shakes his head.

“That man who put his . . . put his . . .”

Rose hips jam in my throat. Worms and rose hips and—

“He put himself in—”

I choke. I gesture.

“Goddamn it Marion!” Dad pulls the car over, banging his trembling fist into the dash. “What's wrong with you?”

I gasp for air.

“Why would you say that?” he yells. “Why would you—”

I gasp—

“You were
fine
after the barbecue.” He's so loud. Louder than I've ever heard him. Ocean loud. “You were sick!”

I gasp and choke, trying to dislodge the rose hips and the water. I gasp and hack and roll down the window and
spit out the snot, and suddenly he isn't yelling anymore. He's grown so still beside me it's like he isn't even there.

But he is.

He stares at me in the dark. In this pitch-black dark, as I cough and wheeze. Spit dribbling down my chin. He stares at me. His little girl: hair tangled, water stung, grown-up. Too grown-up.

He looks at me, for real.

“You were . . .” But he can't finish that sentence because he's crying.

My father is crying.

Because I'm not invisible anymore.

Tubes wrap Josie's arm and
there are needles in her wrist. IVs drip whatever they're giving her and the machines beep. She lies on her side, curled in the fetal position, wearing a paper gown. She's asleep. She's breathing. Thank God, she's breathing.

I sit down beside her and see short spiky hair, visible on the left side of her head. I touch the fuzzy strands next to her scalp, brushing my thumb against the tender area where the hair grows from the skin. Always growing. Always trying again.

Dad sits down on the opposite side of Josie and takes her hand, pressing her bony knuckles against his lips.

“I'm sorry, Josie-girl,” he says quietly. “Stay with us.”

I watch him. His face is covered in wrinkles. Hard work. Seams. Regret maybe.

He looks up and it strikes me—how scared he is. How certain he was—when he walked into this hospital, flinging ash and fire—that she wasn't going to survive this. His
chin trembles against her fingernails and I'm not sure he believes, even now, that she'll keep breathing.

“Don't let go,” I say, picking up Josie's other hand, and I don't know if I'm saying it to her, or to him, or maybe even to me. But this is my family. And I want all that we have.

Lilith agrees to meet me
outside her house and I wait by the sidewalk. There's a small dust of snow on the grass and frost-etched crystals paint the curb. Winter is coming. Real winter with real cold.

Lilith walks out in her boots and scarf, and before she can say anything I put the blue mason jar in her hands. The one with the stars punched into the tin lid. The one with the dead bugs inside. I think her lip falls open, but I'm already walking toward the path in the backyard.

“This way,” I say, and she follows in silence as we walk to the firefly field. It's barren when we get there. The grass is dead and the goldenrods have shriveled to fists. Reeds hang low on the powder-sugar ground, and the air is crisp as our feet crunch on snow.

“You're right, I saw you,” I say, taking the mason jar from her hands and unscrewing the lid. She looks at me and then at the blue glass holding the tiny bugs and their tiny legs.

“I know,” she says quietly, reaching into the jar and taking out one of the flies. She balances it on the tip of her finger, black and fragile against all this white.

“Did that boy rape you?” I ask, barely above a whisper, and the wind whisks that bug off her finger and into the sky. My lip begins to tremble.

“What?” Lilith looks at me sharply. “No! No, he didn't—is
that
what you thought?”

I look at the jar, the cold glass ice in my hands.

“Why would you think that?” she asks, and I can feel the wet on my face. I breathe deep, standing in the cold and the quiet, and I know I can be louder than this silence.

“I cut my hair?” I say, looking up. “Do you remember that? How I cut my hair?”

She nods slowly.

“That was the same summer,” I say. “Before I saw you . . .” I tip the jar over and the bugs drop out, catching the wind, falling to ground. “There was a man—”

Understanding washes over Lilith.

“Oh my God!” She grabs the jar and tosses it to the ground, grabbing me. Hugging me. Hugging me so damn hard, like she'll never let me go, like she could melt all the snow.

*  *  *

I tell Lilith everything.

About the creek.

About Kurt.

About Abe.

We walk back to her house and sit on her porch, wrapping ourselves in blankets and warming our hands with cups of hot chocolate. Sunlight streams through the trees and makes the frost sparkle, a hundred tiny glints of truth all caught in the light. I can hide from the sun all I want, but its starlight is everywhere.

None of this is easy to tell her. But the more I give it breath, the more I'm able to breathe.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Lilith asks, her head tilted down and away, and I shake my head because there are too many answers to that question.

“Because you never asked,” I say, thinking of how easy it's been for all of us to pretend. “No, that's not really fair,” I say, not wanting to lay the blame. This is mine to carry. “I never
let
you ask.”

I think of her sitting beside me on my front step with that mason jar in her hands. Of all the things she's silently wanted to talk about and I ignored, allowing them to fall into the negative space between us, as if that much emptiness wouldn't tear a hole in our world and invade.

“I never listened when you asked,” I say. “Because I thought I could push it all away. You were right about the touching. I liked it. I needed it. You were the only one I'd allow that close. I thought that would be enough. I thought if I never said anything out loud, if I left it in the quiet, it would evaporate.”

But nothing truly evaporates. Water changes to steam,
but the clouds catch it. The clouds hold it till it's time to rain. And when it rains, the rain comes to drown.

I reach out and take Lilith's hand and draw invisible circles over the ridge of her thumb.

“You feel it, but it's invisible,” I say. “It doesn't leave a trace. But it's there, under everything. And it wakes.”

Lilith shakes her head like she doesn't know what to say.

“If I'd known . . .” Her gaze gets faraway, like she's thinking about all the years we've known each other. And perhaps she's thinking about all the possible signs, the maybes, and the way I slid the sun into a shadow and covered it with paint.

“I'm sorry about the virginity thing,” she says finally. “I was pissed. I
knew
you knew about the guy in the firefly field, and I was pissed you wouldn't talk to me about it. I kept testing your boundaries. I thought that after a while . . . If you, you know . . .”

Her eyes flick to me, cautious.

“If I lost my virginity?” I say.

Lilith nods, wrapping her arms around her front, oddly uncomfortable in her skin.

“I guess, I thought if you finally did it, it wouldn't be this thing you avoided all the time. And I resented you for avoiding it.
I
needed someone to talk to, Marion . . .”

Lilith's pinkie trembles against the side of her hot-chocolate mug, and her defenses crumble. The light slants and for a moment Lilith doesn't seem like invincible fire.
She looks like a girl. Plain, and oddly ordinary. Fighting her way forward, just like me.

“I can't believe this happened to you,” she says, looking out at the field of frosted dew and sun.

“It did,” I say, because I need to hear it out loud.

Over and over.

I need to give invisible words breath and sound, to make it real and solid.

“It did happen.”

*  *  *

Lilith drops me off in front of Abe's house so I can get my car.

I climb into the driver's seat and see Abe's buttons scattered over the floor. I collect the tiny white disks, carefully, cradling them in my palm.

My chest tightens and I know this is the end of a friendship. Maybe this was never a friendship in the first place. I liked Abe, I always have. But somehow I've always been looking backward, to that first kiss, to the promise of what might have been waiting out there for us. Of what I hoped we could be, but we never were. Like a childhood princess wishing for her prince. But I can no longer live in that space where you never show who you really are. And I'm out of dandelion wishes.

I look up the lawn to Abe's house one final time before driving away. I don't know how I will face him at school. He'll never forgive me. And he doesn't have to.