Bitter End (16 page)

Once inside, he didn’t move. Just sat there, his hands lying limp in his lap, staring straight ahead at the peeling paint
on the back wall of The Bread Bowl. I watched him, then turned my head to the cars passing by, and at one point watched as
the back door opened and Jerry hauled a trash bag out to the Dumpster, the whole time eyeing Cole’s car suspiciously. I sank
a little lower in the seat.

After several long minutes, Cole cleared his throat, tapped his thumbs on his thighs, and said, “About last night. With your
friends. I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “You already told me,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound accusatory.

He ran his finger along a ledge of his dash, swiping the dust off. “I know. But I wanted to tell you again today. You know,
not in the heat of the moment. I could tell you were really mad all night.”

I nodded, my fingers automatically lifting to the dream catcher. “They’re my best friends,” I said. “I don’t even understand
what happened. Bethany was trying to be nice. What you did was really… uncool.”

He gazed at the peeling wall, his thumbs drumming on his thighs rhythmically. “She’s controlling,” he said. “She controls
you. You know that, right? With all this Colorado
shit…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “What’s the deal with this trip anyway? You know, I would never ask you to be okay
with me going on a trip out of town with another girl. A ‘best friend.’ ” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers
as he said the last two words.

Suddenly it made sense to me. Yes, Cole was jealous of Zack. That much I knew. But he was jealous only because he didn’t know
everything. How could he? Every time we’d talked about our families, I’d changed the subject as quickly as I could. He had
no idea what it meant to me to keep my best friends in my life. He had no idea how many times they’d been there for me, or
how many times I’d been there for them. He wasn’t there when we made the plan to go to Colorado to figure out the mystery
of my life. He wasn’t there when we vowed to take this trip together, the three of us, sitting on the woodpile in Bethany’s
backyard. He had no idea about any of it.

I bent one leg under me and turned to face him. I grabbed his hand, stopping the agitated drumming, and pulled it into my
lap. His cheeks had flushed red circles high up on them. I reached over and touched one. It felt hot under my fingers.

“Colorado is everything to me,” I said. “It has been since I was eight and my dad gave me this.” I pulled the dream catcher
necklace out from under my shirt and let it dangle between my finger and thumb.

He stared at the necklace, his face confused, then looked back into my eyes. He’d stopped drumming with his other
hand now, and I knew that I would make him understand and everything would be good again.

I let the necklace fall against my chest and held his hand with both of mine, looking directly into his eyes. And I told him
everything. I told him about Mom dying. I told him about the photos and how I used to obsess about them when I was little,
and about Dad calling Mom crazy as goosehouse shit. I told him about the nightmares and the therapy and the necklace that
was supposed to bring me closure and how I’d never taken it off since, and about Shannin and Celia and how they never seemed
to really care. I told him about how Dad could barely tie his shoes in the morning, much less do anything to take care of
us, even all these years later.

And I told him about Colorado. About how it wasn’t just that it sounded fun, but that I needed to go there. That sometimes
I felt as though no matter what I said or how hard I tried, I’d never be able to put into words why I needed to go there.
That it was like describing a hole to someone—other than deep and black and lonely, there was no description.

I told him that it wasn’t about playing games and getting romantic or letting Zack and Bethany get so close to me there was
no more room for him. It was about closure. It was about solving the mystery. Getting the answers Dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t,
provide. It was about me getting where Mom wanted to go and putting her memory to rest. It was about me stepping up on a mountaintop
and seeing if I could
feel her there. It was about my life, and I couldn’t just let it go because one of my best friends happened to be a boy. I
needed to know that she wasn’t just… abandoning me. That there was something better in Colorado. There had to be. I wasn’t
left behind because of… a whim. A stupid road trip.

I’d talked until the sun had gone completely down, and the lights had turned on, bathing us in an orangey glow. The cars whizzing
past were using their headlights now, and I was glad for the feeling of privacy in the car.

At some point I’d started to cry. “You have to understand,” I said, tracing the back of Cole’s hand with my finger. “This
is something I have to do. And I have to do it with my best friends, because they’ve been there through all of it. Both of
them. Sometimes Zack even more than Bethany.”

Cole had stayed silent through everything I said, and when I finished, he didn’t move for a few minutes. Then, slowly, gently,
he pulled his hand out from under mine. With one finger, he traced the strap of my necklace. “You’ve never taken it off?”
he asked.

I shook my head.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because,” I said, making a fist over the necklace, my hand enclosing his. “Because it’s all I have left of her.”

He seemed to think about it for a while, then pulled his hand out of mine, straightened up just slightly, and dug his car
key out of his front pocket. Then he started the car with a roar.

“I have to get home,” I said. “I have to talk to…” I
paused at first, then sat up a little straighter and finished. “I have to talk to Bethany and Zack. About last night. I have
to smooth things over with them.”

“This won’t take long,” he said. “I just want to show you something.”

He put the car in drive and headed out of the parking lot.

“I have to be home by seven,” I said, curiosity winning out over my sense of urgency. I’d just have to tell Bethany and Zack
that I’d had to work a little late is all. They’d understand. They always did.

Cole flicked on the radio and pulled into the street, hitting the gas pedal so hard I felt pressed back into my seat. He had
that determined look on his face again. The same one he’d been wearing last night at the lake while playing football. The
one that said he was going to get exactly what he wanted, no matter who or what got in the way. The one that said “winner.”

After a few turns we were in a neighborhood, and Cole finally slowed down. A few more turns later, he parked in front of a
gray house.

I peered out the windshield at the darkened house in front of me and then looked at Cole questioningly.

“C’mon,” he said, opening his door. “I want you to see what you’re missing out on.” He stepped out and shut his door, but
this time, rather than walk around and open mine for me, he just stood where he was. I opened my door and got out, looking
at him over the top of his car.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” I said.

“Oh, she’s home,” he said. “They both are.”

He didn’t say another word to me as I followed him inside, wondering why his voice sounded so bitter when he said the word
“she.”

The house was completely dark when we walked in. Cavelike, almost. And had it not been for the echoing drone of sitcom dialogue
off in the distance, followed by bouts of prerecorded laugh track, I’d have thought for sure Cole and I were alone.

Cole deposited his keys with a clatter on a little table next to the door, then strode through the front room so quickly I
had to follow fast in order to keep up with him. I tried to take in as much as I could while we walked, but it was hard in
the dark.

The house looked minimally decorated. No pictures on the walls. Only a couple knickknacks here and there on the sparse furniture,
just blobby shapes in the dark. A basket on the floor with a blanket spilling out of it. A candle here. A book there. I wondered
if the rest of their things were still in moving boxes, or if their house always looked so bare.

We walked through the front room and into a kitchen. Here the sound of garbled audience laughter got louder, and I noticed
the blue-gray flickering of changing television images lighting up a short staircase on our right. Someone was downstairs
watching TV.

“Want anything to drink?” Cole asked, opening the refrigerator. A yellow light patch cut across the linoleum and made me squint.
Already my eyes had gotten used to the darkness.

I shook my head. He grabbed a can of something and popped it open, shutting the refrigerator and blanketing the room in what
seemed like an even darker dark. Did Cole always live like this? Wandering around a shadowy house, listening to wisecracking
and cheap laughter all night long?

“Cole,” I said, but he’d already started toward the stairs.

“Come on. I want you to meet my parents.” He stopped at the top of the stairs and held out an arm toward me. I couldn’t see
his face in the shadows and was suddenly glad of it. Something told me it was grim. Something told me the warmth of the guy
caressing my cheek and telling me he’d wait for me until the end of time was missing at the moment. I walked toward him slowly,
then grabbed his hand and held it as he led me down the stairs.

We ended up in a long, skinny living room that, had the TV been off, would’ve been darker than any room I’d ever seen in my
life. The floor was tiled in a deep color—brown, maybe, or even black—and the walls were paneled. A sliding glass door was
covered with a dark-colored curtain, and
in front of it sat a large shadowy mass that I took to be a couch.

The television sat, facing us, on an old-fashioned aluminum stand at the other end of the room, by the fireplace. An old sitcom
from the seventies was playing on it, the sound blaring. Directly in front of us, pointed toward the TV, was a set of recliners.
One was in the reclined position, and a pair of bare feet—definitely male—stretched out on the footrest. The other chair,
from the back, anyway, looked empty.

Cole pulled me between the chairs and into the room. “Hey, guys,” he said in a flat voice. “I wanted you to meet my girlfriend,
Alex.”

I turned and saw the owner of the reclining feet. He was a large, gut-heavy man wearing boxers and a ribbed T-shirt. He held
a beer against his stomach. He looked like Cole, only older and fatter. It was hard to believe that this was Cole’s dad. I’d
imagined someone handsome and successful. This guy almost looked like a caricature of the exact opposite of the way I would
have pictured Cole’s dad. Something you’d see on a cartoon—a spoof of a dad.

“Hi,” I said, starting to raise my hand in a wave, but he cut me off.

“What the hell you doin’, Cole? I can’t see the TV, dammit!”

Cole and I shuffled a few inches to the side. “Dad. This is Alex,” Cole tried again, and this time the man at least acknowledged
that I was in the room, even if he didn’t exactly look at me.

“’Lo,” he said distractedly, waving his beer in my direction.

“Nice to meet you,” I practically whispered.

“That’s my dad,” Cole said. “And this is my mom. Brenda, this is Alex.”

I turned to the other recliner, where Cole was pointing, and almost jumped. I’d thought nobody was in the chair, but sitting,
curled practically into a ball, was a wafer-thin woman with giant, vacant eyes. Her head laid against the armrest, her legs
pulled up into the seat, her hands holding her shins tight. She looked like a toddler, hiding, frightened by a thunderstorm.
She blinked slowly, taking us both in, but didn’t say a word.

The TV switched over to a commercial, and Cole’s dad shifted in his chair.

“So,” he said. “Alex, you say? You a girl?” He laughed, like he’d made a particularly funny joke. “When I was your age, Alex
was a boy’s name. You not datin’ a boy, are ya, Cole?” Again with the laughter. “Hell, I’d have to kick your ass if you were
datin’ a boy.”

Embarrassment flooded my limbs, and I was actually glad for the dark. I opened my mouth to say something but wasn’t sure how
to respond.

Cole tugged on my hand a little.

“Just a joke,” he said in a low voice. Correction: a defeated voice. “He doesn’t mean anything.”

The woman blinked her giant eyes and shifted them back to a space of linoleum about three feet in front of her.

I heard the other recliner shift again, and Cole’s dad’s voice boomed so loud I actually did jump this time. “Brenda, Cole’s
got company.” He gave a bark of laughter that made me inch closer to Cole. “She’s not so good with people. Woman’s scared
of her own shadow. Ain’t that right, Brenda?”

The woman pulled herself up to sitting and peered over the arm of the recliner at her husband. She made a noise in the back
of her throat and mumbled something I couldn’t make out. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to Cole or to Cole’s dad,
and I shifted uneasily. Fortunately, the TV show came back on, and Cole’s dad was engrossed once again.

“We’re going upstairs,” Cole announced, and began pulling me out of the room. I felt relief wash over me. Even in the dark,
that room may have been the most uncomfortable room I’ve ever set foot in.

“You want me to bring you some sodas?” came a meek voice at our backs. So small and nasally it might have been mistaken for
a meow or an electronic squeal. I saw a shadowy lump hanging over the side of Cole’s mom’s—er, Brenda’s—chair that I took
to be her head.

“Nope, Brenda, just stay there,” Cole answered. I detected something in his voice. Annoyance, maybe? Embarrassment?

“For God’s sake, Brenda, they’re going upstairs. They can get their own sodas. They want to be alone,” Cole’s dad boomed again.
And I could hear him continue as we climbed the stairs back to the kitchen. “Jesus, do you always
have to smother people?… So what if they’re up there alone?… Leave him alone, dammit…. This is why you’re always…”

Cole pulled me through the kitchen and back into the front room. But instead of heading for the front door, he turned and
pulled me up another short staircase. We climbed the stairs into a hallway that was so dark I put my free hand on Cole’s back
to follow him.