Belzhar (15 page)

EVERYTHING’S CRACKING APART NOW, AND WE
know it. Kept separate from one another all week, we can’t talk openly about what to do about the rapidly arriving end of the journals. We only get together in class and at meals, but we never have extended privacy. And finally we’re each down to having five pages left
.
One single trip remains, and then no one knows what will happen. Or maybe we do know, and it isn’t good.

At breakfast, speaking as cryptically as possible, we all agree to postpone our next visits. None of us will go back to Belzhar until we have some kind of plan in place.

“
Belzhar
?” asks DJ from two seats down the table, her mouth full of egg. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just, you know, a thing in a book.” This seems to satisfy her. Or at least bore her enough so that she immediately loses interest.

Maybe, I think, once the last line of a journal is filled in, that person’s Belzhar ceases to
exist.
Maybe it shuts down for good, like a business whose owners have left town overnight. Or maybe it explodes like something deep in space, unseen and unheard by anyone, gone for good.

What would it be like to leave Belzhar behind? I have to ask myself this, because we’re all wondering. When I think about letting go of that world, I picture myself off in the
real
world—maybe back in New Jersey, living my life again, a new version of it.

What would that life look like? I guess I’d just be myself. Someone in high school with some kind of future. Maybe I’d join the a cappella group there. I could even try and convince Hannah to join too; she has a good voice. I might have things to look forward to again, things I can’t even imagine yet.

On Friday night I’m in my dorm room watching DJ get ready to go out to the social. “Being grounded is so unfair,” I say, sitting on my bed in Griffin’s hoodie. “I feel like a prisoner.”

“I don’t get it,” she says. “You hate socials as much as I do. What do you care if you can’t go?”

Of course, DJ has no idea about Belzhar, so she wouldn’t understand why I need to be with everyone in my class now. And, also, why I need to be with Griffin. “I do hate socials,” is all I say, “but it would be better than being grounded.”

“I’ll come back and tell you all the highlights,” DJ promises, and then she’s gone.

So I sit and try to do my homework while the whole school except the Special Topics people stands around under the disco ball in the gym. I resist going to Belzhar now, though it would be the easiest thing in the world to simply write in my journal and be with Reeve one more time, in that place where everything’s familiar and predictable and easy and good. I’d worry later about how to get back there even after the journal is filled.

But, like we agreed, I keep myself from making that visit. Instead I throw myself into math, which is pretty hilarious, given my subnormal math skills. And what’s even more hilarious is that I actually understand all the concepts for once, and I have a feeling I’m going to ace the homework, and the upcoming test. I’ve actually been doing well in most of my classes since I started going to Belzhar. This, like so many other things that have happened, is totally unexpected.

• • •

In the morning I sit at breakfast with Sierra; Griffin hasn’t shown up yet, and I keep looking toward the door to see if he’s coming in. Then Casey enters and comes right over to our table. She parks her chair in front of us as if she has an announcement to make. “What is it?” I ask nervously. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Casey says. “But I have to tell you both something.” She looks around to see who else might be listening. It seems safe, and she pauses for several seconds, then quietly says, “I went to Belzhar last night.”

“You
did
?”
I say
.
“I thought we weren’t going to do that yet.”

“I know. But Marc and I were kind of talking in code at dinner last night. And we both basically decided, enough already. We hated the stress of not knowing what was going to happen when the journals finally ended. And we decided to find out. To take the plunge, despite what we all agreed. So we both went back. Yes, even Marc, who never breaks rules.”

“And?” Sierra says, staring at Casey, and I realize that I’m staring at her too.

“What exactly do you want to know?” Casey asks.

“Well,
everything,
” says Sierra.

“Like, when it was over and you looked at your journal,” I say, “was it definitely filled in all the way to the end?” Casey nods. “So did you figure out a way to get back there
next time?” I ask. I know we really shouldn’t be talking like this out in the open, but there’s no other choice.

Casey shakes her head no. She looks at us as if she feels sorry for us; we’re ignorant about all of this, and she’s knowledgeable. “There’s no way back,” she says gently.

We’re both silent. “Are you sure?” Sierra asks.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” she adds, as if we might think it’s her fault.

So: Once you’re done, you’re
done
? This means that Casey will never have a place to go where she can walk, and run.

And after I make my final visit, I can never see Reeve again. I won’t touch him, or talk to him. I’ll never hear his voice again. I want to shut out what Casey’s just told me, and make it not be true.

“So we actually lose Belzhar, and everything that comes with it?” Sierra asks in a dull, low voice.

“Right,” Casey says.

If Sierra were to go back, at the end of the visit she would lose her brother all over again, but this time it would be forever.

“But what’s it actually
like
going there for the last time?” Sierra asks. “Is it different from all the other times?”

“Oh yeah,” says Casey.

“How?” I press.

Casey takes a moment. “It’s traumatic,” she says.

This is not what either of us wants to hear.

“I can’t really put it any other way,” Casey continues. “I don’t want to scare you, but I have to tell you what I know. The thing that happened to you in real life, on your worst day? You have to live it again. At least, I had to.”

“Oh,” I say, my voice coming out so small. I don’t think I could live through that last day with Reeve again.

“For me, it started out like every other trip to Belzhar,” Casey tells us. “But soon it was different. I was in the car, and my mom was driving, but this time it was clear that she was drunk and that
no way
should she be behind the wheel. I could finally, totally see through all the charming leprechaun bullshit. Her judgment was
off.
The car was weaving. It skidded off the road and slammed into that stone wall. And it was like a building fell on me.”

Casey is suddenly crying, and Sierra and I both lean forward and try to comfort her. Other kids look at us from their tables again, and one girl, a friend of Casey’s from the dorm, gets up and starts to come over, but Sierra waves her off.

“I felt
everything
,” Casey says in a quiet, fierce voice. “I didn’t black out as soon as I thought I had. My mom was leaning over me when the ambulance came, and she was saying, ‘Oh God, it’s all my fault. I’m drunk, Casey, and I did this to you. I did this to my little girl.’ I never remembered that before. And you know what, it
was
her fault, and I
can’t
totally
forgive her, at least not now. It’s so hard, but at least now I remember what’s what. At least now it’s real.”

Sierra and I both nod, not saying anything.

“Then they put me in the ambulance, and I was slid forward, and the light dimmed and it got really quiet. I was, like, where are the EMT guys? They were here just a second ago. But I was alone. And I sat up and looked around, and I was back in my bed in my dorm room here at school, with my journal next to me. It was all filled in; there wasn’t a single line left to write on.

“And I knew that that was that. I’d relived the worst thing I’d ever been through, and then I came out the other side. So for me, that’s the end of Belzhar.

“I was just sort of sitting there in a daze. I looked over and saw my wheelchair folded and leaning against the wall. I saw the gray rubber handgrips, the silver wheels. It made me want to cry. But I was also relieved that I was back. That I’m here. At school, with my friends, and with Marc. He doesn’t take the place of being able to walk. Nothing can. And I’ll always miss that so badly. Walking, running. But I’ll never forget what it felt like. Oh wait—” she says, looking up.

Marc comes toward our table, and Casey backs up and wheels herself over to him. They meet in the middle of the room, and Sierra and I watch as he bends down and says something to her.

“Could you actually do that?” I ask Sierra. “Go there for the last time and go through the whole thing all over again? And then come back here and be like, ‘Okay, now it’s time for me to get on with the rest of my life.’”

“No, I couldn’t,” Sierra says.

“So what are we supposed to do?” I ask her. “Mrs. Q is going to collect the journals. One way or another we’re going to have to do something.”

“It’s a hopeless situation,” Sierra says. “I can’t go to Belzhar, and I can’t not go. You know, I snuck downstairs yesterday to call Detective Sorrentino. I left him another voice mail saying the same thing I already said to him over Thanksgiving: ‘Please, please try to track down that scrawny guy who came to the show at the dance academy.’”

Griffin appears at the table now, near the end of breakfast. He’s in his hoodie again, and right away I can see that he looks closed up and miserable. Not being able to meet in the classroom at night has been a strain for all of us. “Hey,” he says, sitting down.

“Bad night?” asks Sierra.

Griffin nods. “Yeah, but keep talking, I don’t want to interrupt.”

“I was just telling Jam about calling the detective in DC again. He’s not interested in what I have to say. I don’t know what else to do.”

“You’ve got to keep pushing him,” I tell her.

“But I’ve gotten nowhere. Going to Belzhar is basically the only thing I have. I can’t pull a Casey and Marc.”

“What does that mean?” Griffin asks.

We explain that Casey and Marc each went to Belzhar the night before, and that it was the last time for them both, and that, no, there’s no way to ever go back. And we tell him how they each had to live through their traumas and end up with the journals all filled in, and the rest of life—that imperfect thing—waiting.

“It sounds rough,” Griffin says.

“I just can’t imagine seeing André walk off that bus,” Sierra says. “Just letting him go, knowing something was going to happen to him.”

“So don’t, this semester,” says Griffin. “Keep trying with the detective, but don’t write another word in your journal. Why would you put yourself through that, Sierra?”

“Well, she has to,” I say. “Because Mrs. Q is going to take back everybody’s journal on the last day of class.”

“She’ll have to rip it away from me,” Sierra says, and abruptly she stands and carries her tray off, not even saying good-bye.

When she’s gone, Griffin says to me, “I just made a decision. I’m never
going back to Belzhar. I’m going to hand in the journal to Mrs. Q with the last five pages empty, and say sayonara. I can’t go through the fire again, Jam. And that whole fucking night. My parents always want to make me talk about it, but I am
done.
”

“I think what your parents want,” I say, “is for you to see the whole thing.”

“Yeah, right.”

“They do.” I don’t know how I know what I know, but I keep talking. “They aren’t bad people. I met them. They’re not trying to torture you.”

“Then why do they keep bringing it up?”

“Maybe they need you to admit you made a big mistake.”

“It wasn’t me, it was Alby,” he says with self-righteousness.

I don’t say anything. I just keep looking at him, and he gets uncomfortable. He knows he can’t dump all this on his friend Alby, and he knows that I know he can’t. Griffin was there too, he smoked that joint in a barn full of straw and living goats. It was his barn, his goats; he was in charge of himself and his friend.

He looks more uncertain, and he says hoarsely, “I wouldn’t know how to apologize.”

“Yes you would.”

“I’d probably break down crying or something. That would be pathetic.” And he probably
would
cry. He’d have to see the devastation, and feel his part in it, even though it wasn’t on purpose, and even though he’s not
bad
. It was just a stupid, careless teenaged thing. An accident.

He’d have to feel everything all over again and not shut down the way he did after it happened. He’d have to get high with Alby once more, then go to sleep for the night and wake up smelling smoke, and seeing all the goats lying dead, including Ginger, his favorite. And he’d have to feel the rage of his parents, and hold himself accountable.

“Go back there,” I tell him. “Just do it. And then come out and call your parents and say what you have to say. And then maybe you can love the goats again. The ones that died, and the new ones. Frankie, the new kid.”

For the first time in this conversation, Griffin smiles very slightly. “The kid that you delivered,” he says. “My girlfriend, the goat obstetrician.”

My girlfriend.
The words are startling. I can’t be his girlfriend; I love someone else. Someone very different. But whenever I’m alone in my room, I wrap myself tightly in Griffin’s hoodie.

Griffin agrees to go back to Belzhar early that evening, before the winter concert begins; I’ll be performing with the Barntones. “When you see me after the concert,” he says, “it’ll be done.”

He doesn’t want to have to wait until much later when his roommate, Jack, is asleep, the way he usually does. Instead, without being seen, Griffin is going to close himself in the closet in his room, among the gym shoes and damp boots and fleeces and crumpled hoodies. And under the dim light of the bulb he’s going to write in his journal and disappear into another world one more time
.