Aspen (14 page)

“I’m not—” but I can’t get the rest of the words out. The closer Officer Hubert and Katelyn get to our table, the blurrier my eyes get, until I think I might pass out. I clasp my hands in my lap when I notice they’re shaking.

“Aspen, it’s good to see you,” Officer Hubert says with a smile. But she just stands there. Silent.

I tap my finger on my leg, focusing on the beat. “Hi,” I choke out, breathless.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine.” I force the corners of my mouth upward.

“That’s good. You look good. No more cast.”

“All healed up.” My voice practically squeaks as I hold out my leg, my finger tapping faster. But I don’t let my eyes shift to her.

“I’ve thought about you a lot,” Officer Hubert says with genuine concern. He tips his Rockies baseball cap to Ben. The same one he wore that night. “Take care,” he says over his shoulder as he makes his way down the street. Katelyn follows and soon she’s lost in the crowd.

“Not a fan of cops?” Ben asks.

“Ninny taught me to be wary of authority.”

“Aspen, what’s wrong?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

The corners of Ben’s eyes are pulled down, and he looks pale. He glances at my busy hands. “I can just tell.”

I press my hands against my legs.

“That was the police officer—” Ben starts to say, but I cut him off.

“I’m freezing. It’s too cold to eat this outside.” I stand up and throw my shake out.

Ben doesn’t say a word, just follows suit. He doesn’t bring up Beta Particle or his parents or how I make him nervous again.

Kim and I go shopping on Sunday. I walk around Common Threads, my eyes hanging at half-mast, as I clutch a large chocolate macchiato.

I couldn’t sleep again last night. Officer Hubert’s voice kept ringing in my head. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I looked up Ben’s address on the Internet and walked over to his house. It’s only a few miles from mine. I stood across the street from the one-story box house and waited to see if any lights turned on or if I could see him moving around in the darkness. It’s not like I would have knocked on his door or anything. It just would have been nice to know I wasn’t the only one awake in the darkness.

My legs started to hurt from standing, so I sat down next to a pile of leaves. I’d pick up a handful and crumple them to bits and let them drift off my palm into the wind. After awhile, I ran home and crept back into my house, tiptoeing past a snoring Ninny, asleep on the couch. A joint rested in an ashtray on the coffee table.

“Are you okay?” Kim looks at me sideways as I limp around the store. “You look extra gimp-ish today. Does your leg still hurt?”

The run home in my Birkenstocks caused little blisters to form on my feet. I had to put a bandage on every toe. This morning, I found an old pair of sneakers in the back of my closet. I haven’t put them on since gym class freshman year. “Time for new Birkenstocks.” I shrug.

“Are you sure that’s it?”

I hold up a baby blue puff-sleeved dress. “This one is totally you.”

“If it’ll keep Jason Park away from my boobs, I’ll take it.” Kim skims a rack of dresses. “Uma’s
way
too proud of this moment. I need to do something disappointing ASAP.”

“You could tell her you’re going to community college,” I offer.

“Jesus, you sadist, I don’t want to give her a heart attack.” Kim and I both laugh.

In the end, we find two dresses, a long, pale pink off-the-shoulder number for me, and a mustard yellow muumuu for Kim.

“If Jason thinks I’m sexy in this, he’s delusional.” Kim gives the cashier ten dollars for her $8.99, male-repellant homecoming frock.

That next day, at my appointment, Dr. Brenda sits in front of me, her trusty notebook on her lap, a new snow globe on her desk. This one has the Seattle Space Needle inside.

“Did you go to Vegas again?” I ask.

“No, that one is actually from Seattle. I spent the weekend at a conference.” Dr. Brenda sips her coffee.

“A head-shrinker conference? Aren’t you worried everyone is psychoanalyzing you?”

“I know they are,” Dr. Brenda laughs and sets her coffee down. “It’s not that different from high school.”

“It’s all a fishbowl.”

“A fishbowl?”

“You know, like the ones at the doctor’s office that kids press their noses against and tap on. Have you ever thought about how the fish feel, being stared at all the time?” I pick at the loose fabric on the couch.

“Do you feel that way?” Dr. Brenda asks.

“Sometimes.”

“How does it make you feel?”

“Like a fish in a fishbowl.” I sound like an ass.

Dr. Brenda makes a note in her notebook, and I cringe. I shouldn’t have said anything. I gaze up at the dead deer head hanging over the door.

“Why can’t we just let go of the dead?” I ask.

“What?” Dr. Brenda sets her pen down.

“That deer. I’m sure if it could talk, it would say, ‘Take me down. I’m sick of sitting up on this pedestal for people to look at.’”

“But it means something to me.”

“So you keep this dead thing around because you can’t bear to let it go? Or maybe you want to admire its perfection. But I’m sure the deer wasn’t perfect. I’m sure it had dirt on its face and bad hair days, too. And I get that it’s complicated and all that. But what does complicated mean? Why can’t we just take the deer off the wall and let it rest in peace?”

I yell the last part. It shocks Dr. Brenda so much that she sits back in her seat and sets down the notebook. It even shocks me. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m nervous about my physics test.”

“Aspen, this isn’t about my father’s taxidermy,” Dr. Brenda says. “This is about you grappling with the fact that a young person was killed in a car accident that involved you.”

“You know what this is about?” I sit forward in my seat. “This is about how one accident has become
the
accident. My life has been punctuated with a proper moment. But we’ve already established that life is filled with accidents. Hundreds and thousands of moments that I have no control over, because they’re unexpected. And yet, we keep going back to one. Like maybe I can change something or do something different. But I can’t. So what’s the point?”

“Our past and our present can be very firmly linked. Our memories have a way of creeping up on us.”

“Not if we don’t let them.” I stand up and sling my backpack over my shoulder. “Mind if I leave early? I need to study.”

“For your physics test?”

“Yeah.”

Dr. Brenda nods as I walk to the door. Before I can close it, she stops me and says, “If life is totally out of our control, Aspen, why study for a test? Think about it.”

Mr. Salmon hands a Scantron sheet to each student who walks through the door, announcing we have 45 minutes to answer 200 multiple choice questions. “If you think I’m grading an essay my last year of teaching, you’re crazy.” Then he sits down behind his desk and reads
The
Denver Post
.

Ben looks up at me as I walk to our joint desk. He doesn’t say a word, but pushes a folded piece of paper towards me. I open it and find a hand-drawn picture of an emblem: a bunch of red and blue circles clustered together, and two circles jumping out of the back. It reads:
Official Electron for Beta Particle: Let the radioactive revolution begin.

“Did you draw this?”

Ben nods, a sly grin on his face. “Sorry for being a jerk.”

I stare down at the poorly drawn picture and smile back. Taking a mint from my purse, I hand it to Ben under the desk. He pops it in his mouth as Mr. Salmon begins to pass out the test.

After class, as I’m taping the picture to the inside of my locker door, Suzy comes up behind me.

“Beta Particle. What’s that?”

“It’s a joke,” I say, practically caressing the picture.

“Do you want to take my car or yours?”

“Take your car where?” I close my locker door.

“Dress shopping, silly.”

“I already have a dress,” I say as a vague memory pops into my head: me, agreeing to go shopping with Suzy, even though I’m not sure I actually agreed. I think I grunted and walked away. “And I can’t—” But Suzy cuts me off.

“I already told Twitter we’re going.” She looks so excited; she’s practically bouncing on her toes.

“I forgot to tell my boss I can’t work.” But the bouncing doesn’t stop. “I guess I could get a new shirt. Can we swing by Shakedown Street?”

Suzy claps and grabs my backpack, dragging me out the doors of the school.

We drive in her black SUV over to Shakedown Street. When we walk in the door, Suzy’s jaw falls open and she says, “This place is rad.”

I leave her to look around, and find Ninny in the back storage room. She gives me a wad of cash and tells me to buy something pretty. I count the money, and realize it’s a bunch of one-dollar bills. Ten one-dollar bills, to be exact. I stuff the money in my pocket, thanking Ninny for any type of donation.

Suzy and I search rack after rack of clothes at Nordstrom in Cherry Creek Mall. I peel through the clothes, unsure what I’m supposed to be looking for. I already have a dress for the dance.

“So do you know where you’re going next year?” Suzy asks, looking through a stack of black dresses.

“I’m going somewhere?” I say.

“College, silly.” She adds a short black strapless number to the pile of dresses slumped over her arm.

“I’m not going to college.”

Suzy stops in her tracks. “Everyone goes to college.”

“Not everyone. Starving teenagers in Africa don’t go to college. The majority of India doesn’t go to college. I’m pretty sure this whole college push is an American thing.”

“But you’re American,” Suzy whispers like it’s a secret. “I thought for sure you’d be off to art school in New York or something.”

“Nothing’s ever for sure,” I mumble to myself as I examine a rack of designer jeans. “Are you ready to try those on?” I ask.

In the dressing room, I take a seat on a bench next to a full-length mirror. Suzy locks herself in one of the stalls with all her potential dresses and shuffles around behind the closed door. All I can see is her feet as she takes off her pants and slips on dress after dress. She finally comes out in a super short black silk dress. It looks more like lingerie. She walks over to the mirror to investigate.

“So I’m going to the dance with Aiden,” Suzy says, twisting and turning to see every angle of her body. “And I like him, but I don’t like-like him. He’s just a friend. What do you think?”

“I think he’s going to like-like you in that dress.”

Suzy frowns at herself in the mirror. A few minutes later, she comes out in a dress not very different from the black one. Short, shimmery and uncomfortable looking.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“It’s purple.”

Suzy assesses herself and sticks out her tongue. “Bleh.”

She disappears back into the dressing room. The sound of clanging hangers and rustling clothes follows. I stick my finger in the hole of my jeans and feel the scaly skin where my cast was.

“Was Katelyn perfect?” I ask.

“What?” Suzy pokes her head out.

“It’s just . . . that’s what everyone keeps saying.”

Suzy comes out of the dressing room in an aqua strapless number and sits next to me. She looks around the Nordstrom like people might be spying on us.

“I think people just want to remember Katelyn how
they
want to remember her,” Suzy says.

“But what was she really like?”

“Does it matter?” Suzy cocks her head at me. “And, anyway, it’s complicated.”

“Ben said the same thing.”

Suzy sits up straighter. “When did he tell you that?”

“When we studied together for the physics test.”

“Did he say anything else?” Suzy shifts in her seat, like her dress is uncomfortable.

“Just that he’s not into dating right now.”

“Wait.” Suzy’s mouth falls slack. “You
studied
together?” Her voice is loud and surprised.

“You make it sound like we had sex,” I whisper.

“Did you?” I cock my head at her. “Do you like him?”

“No,” I say, too emphatically.

“You like him,” Suzy mocks like a third grader. I get up and start pacing the dressing room. “Aspen, it’s okay if you do.”

I stop, unable to hold back anymore. “How is it okay?”

Suzy looks down at her feet but doesn’t say a word. I tap my foot on the ground, waiting. She stands up, pushing down the wrinkles in her dress.

“How do I look?”

“Not bleh. Beautiful, really,” I say.

“Great.” Suzy’s usual sparkle returns fully to her eyes. “Let’s take a pic.”

She wraps her arm around my neck and holds the phone out in front of her. She makes a pouty face into the camera, her butt popped out behind her. When I laugh, Suzy snaps the picture. She types the caption “Shopping with Aspen,” followed by seventeen hash tags, and posts it on Instagram.