Dead to You (5 page)

I fall apart.

Alexandra: Ethan?

Me: I don’t know. I don’t know.

I feel the mess inside me start to quiver. Mama grabs my hand now, her other arm still around my shoulders, protecting me, and Dad is on the edge of his seat.

Alexandra looks at me for a long moment as I pull away from Mama and sink back into the couch, covering my face. Feeling the panic rise in my gut. Alexandra raises her hand to the camera team. “Cut. Shut it down,” she says to them, and they do it. To me, she asks, “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. Embarrassing sobs and inappropriate laughter force their way out like vomit I cannot stop.

I get up and Mama leads me out of the living room, away from the questions, away from the cameras. But I feel exposed in this house.

Mama whispers comfort and encouragement to me, but I tell her I really just need to be alone. She stares at me for a long minute, then nods and squeezes my shoulder and goes back out to do her piece for the news crew. I don’t want to listen. Instead, I sneak downstairs in the dark and burrow out a place for me among boxes marked ETHAN and books about lost things.

Things are happening backward. I didn’t want it
to be like this, out of control. Emotional. I feel like I really fucked this up.

I lie curled up on my side on thin green carpet in my basement hideout and try to figure out how I can fix this mess. I’ll explain to Mama that I felt threatened by the reporter and that’s why I was crying. I’m just not ready to talk about Ellen yet. I mean, everybody in my life now—they’re all strangers. All of them. You don’t just blurt out stuff like that to strangers when you have no ally. I hear their voices and footsteps above my head and, not long after, the steady, soft rumble of the reporter and crew walking from one end of the house to the other. Doors closing.

Mama doesn’t come after me and I’m glad. I wonder if she even saw me sneak down here, if she’s worried about where I am. I hear her footsteps overhead walking from one part of the house to another, as if she’s looking for me. But soon I hear her at the top of the stairs, calling down, “It’s time for me to pick up Gracie from kindergarten. Dad’s working in the den. He’d love to talk if you want to, just go on in—but we understand if you need some alone time. I left you some lunch up here . . . it’s your favorite sandwich.” She pauses. “Maybe later you and Gracie and I can go shopping, get you some clothes and toiletries and things of your own before Grandpa and Grandma come over. I’m locking the doors, so don’t, you know . . . don’t go anywhere. Don’t let anybody in.” She laughs anxiously, like she knows how paranoid that sounds, but keeps going. “Just stay inside while I’m gone, okay?”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer; she just goes. I like that. Maybe she’s not too pissed at me for ruining the taping after all.

A while later I go upstairs and sit at the table, where there’s a sandwich wrapped in plastic on a plate. I unwrap the sandwich and stare at it, open it up carefully. Bologna and smashed potato chips between two pieces of buttered white bread. “This is my favorite?” I mutter, and then I take a bite. It’s not half bad. I get up and grab a soda from the fridge, and then I feel weird, like maybe there’s a rule about soda at lunchtime like at the group home, so I put it back and drink water instead.

The phone rings three times while Mama is gone. I don’t answer it, but once I hear Dad talking from the den.

Mama and Gracie come home just as I finish eating. “Thanks for the sandwich,” I say sheepishly as Mama gets the bread and bologna out again, this time for Gracie.

“Of course! How are you feeling?” When Mama finishes making Gracie’s sandwich, Gracie presses it flat with her hand so that the chips crunch.

“Fine.” I watch Gracie eating. She’s like a flamingo, all pink and poised. “Didn’t you already have lunch?” I ask, pointing to her lunch box, picking up the game again.

“Mama,” she says coolly, looking straight at me. “Efan is trying to get into my private property.”

“Now, Gracie. Be nice. He’s just curious,” Mama says, phone to her ear and distracted as she’s trying to listen to the voice mails.

I flash Gracie a triumphant look.

She scowls and takes her lunch box to her bedroom.

With Gracie gone, Mama comes over to me and hugs me. Holds me tight and whispers, “I’m sorry about the TV thing.”

“Me too. It was my fault.”

“Not a chance. You’re perfect.” She doesn’t let go. Just asks, still whispering, “So . . . that woman Eleanor didn’t hurt you?” She can hardly get the words out before she’s crying again.

“No, Mama,” I say. “No. She didn’t hurt me. She just wanted a kid.” I want to tell her how it really was with Ellen. I want to. But I can’t hurt Mama like that, and I need to stop thinking about it now so I can focus on remembering. I just pat her back and let her cry it out.

We go to the mall. Mama asks what styles I like, and I don’t know the answer.

“You’re supposed to wear your jeans so your butt hangs out,” Gracie says when Mama goes off to find more shirts.

I laugh. “Then my butt gets cold. I’m tired of being cold.”

“Why did you live outside, then? How come I never seen you before if you’re my brother?”

I look at Gracie in one of the mirrors. “I went away. A long time ago, before you were born. I lived somewhere else. And then that person couldn’t take care of me anymore so she dropped me off at a bad place. And I ran away and lived on the streets until I found you. I even lived at the zoo for a while.”

“Ha-ha, the zoo!” Gracie says. She ponders it for a while. “I would have runned away too.”

I nod. “Of course you would have. Because you’re smart like me.”

She laughs. “I’m smarter than you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I wouldn’t have gone away from Mama in the first place. Why’d you do that?”

I’m grateful to see Mama coming back with more stuff. “I dunno why, kid,” I say to Gracie. “Maybe you can teach me how to be smarter.” My sarcasm is lost on her.

When we get home, Dad is in the garage unloading a bed frame and a mattress from the back of the minivan. I help carry them into the house. Everything inside me wants to ask for my bed to be set up downstairs so I can have a place of my own, but I don’t dare. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. So we set it all in the hallway outside Blake’s bedroom until we can move his crap around to make space for mine. It’s going to be a tight fit.

I go out to the garage to close the minivan’s hatch when the school bus pulls up in front of the house. I slam the door hard, and then turn and watch as a dozen kids get off the bus. Shivering like crazy, I fold my arms across my chest. It’s fucking freezing in this state.

Blake is the third one off. And there’s the group of girls. Some of them look at me, all shy and curious, and some are oblivious. The girl in the red coat I saw this morning yells good-bye to her friends and turns in the opposite direction from them, but stops in her tracks when she sees me. She catches up to Blake in the driveway and walks with him. Says something that makes him laugh. She’s a little taller than him, and when they approach, I can tell she’s older than him. My age, maybe. I’m guessing I’m supposed to know her.

“Hey, Ethan, wow,” she says. “I can’t believe it’s really you.” She has crow-black hair and deep, dark eyes, not quite perfect teeth and big, soft-looking lips, the kind you want to bite. She hops in place, apparently excited to see me, which feels nice. Despite the slicing cold wind, I feel a stirring and shove my hands in my pockets.

“Hey,” I say, teeth chattering, looking at Blake for help. “Um . . .”

“It’s Cami,” Blake says, rolling his eyes like I’m stupid. “She’s lived down the street since birth?” He says it like a question, as if making me feel stupid will bring her back to my memory.

“I’m sorry,” I say, looking back to her, and boy, am I sorry. “I don’t remember much.”

She grins. “It’s okay. I can’t believe you’re back. Everybody thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, I figured.” I’m sure I’ll hear that a few more times before everybody settles down, too. It’s a pretty sick thing to say to somebody, if you ask me.

“I cried for weeks. It was horrible. You were my best friend. We took baths together when we were babies. Our moms used to be friends, back when . . .” She trails off, not embarrassed, but looking at me curiously, like she hopes I remember.

“Wow.” I don’t know what to say to that. Taking baths together. Jesus. I just look at my feet and stomp them on the garage floor, watching the fluffy new snow skitter away, leaving my footprints looking huge, like a monster’s. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I wish I did.”

“You look different,” she says then. “Not how I pictured you.”

“I need a haircut.” I shrug, trying not to blush thinking that she’d been picturing me. But blushing in the cold wind probably wouldn’t make a difference anyway.

“When are you coming back to school?”

“Monday, I guess.”

“Cool. Well, I gotta get home. See you around?”

“Yeah . . . we’re having a party or something tonight, so I’m sure you’re invited. . . .”

She grins, reaches out, and squeezes my upper arm, then turns and waves over her shoulder.

I wave back like a dork.

Blake scowls at me.

“What,” I say.

“Dude. How could you possibly not remember
her
?” He shakes his head and we turn to go inside.

What starts out as a quiet visit by Grandpa
and Grandma De Wilde turns into an extended family reunion. And after the six o’clock news hits, the neighbors start coming too. The phone rings nonstop and finally Dad turns the ringer off and lets everything go to voice mail. People bring food and drinks and it gets really loud.

I recognize some people, aunts and uncles and cousins, from the photos I had studied. But after about the millionth time of having people expect me to know who they are, and then the disappointed looks on their faces when I don’t, I get kind of sick of it. It’s so hard letting people down over and over again. It’s making me feel a little out of control, and I get that anxious skittering in my stomach again.

Finally, I escape. I throw on my new winter coat and step out to the side of the house that is blocked from the wind, and I suck in the freezing night air. My cousin—I think his name is Pete or Phil or something—is out here too, having a smoke, so I bum one, wanting it so bad but hating myself for doing it, because I quit like a year ago. But I can’t help it. This is all a little too much.

I’m glad when Phil-Pete leaves so I can be alone, clear my head. And here I stand, freezing my balls off, sucking down a cigarette, and wishing for some of the booze that is flowing inside the house, when across the frozen freaking tundra comes a sweet red coat of distraction.

I bury the cigarette in a snowdrift, wishing I hadn’t smoked it, but loving the fleeting rush. Wishing I had a mint. Wishing I could remember Cami, even just a little bit. Her looks remind me of a girl I hooked up with at the youth home—Tempest, her name was—only Cami has class. My gut tightens. I step out into the wind.

“Hey, Cami,” I call out.

She’s walking up the driveway, hovering over a dinner plate, shielding it, and her hair is going wild. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”

“I needed to get away from the noise.”

“It’s freezing.”

I wave off her concern. “Cookies?”

“Brownies. From my mom. We’re all really glad you’re home.”

“Thanks.” I remember what she said earlier. “Why aren’t our moms friends now?”

A gust of wind nearly upends the plate in Cami’s hand. Her teeth chatter. “I don’t know, exactly. But I think it’s because maybe your mom couldn’t handle it once you were gone. My mom still had me, but your mom didn’t have you. Constant reminder. That’s what my mom thinks.”

I nod and try to shield her from the wind. “That would be hard, I suppose.”

We go inside.

It always happens like this for me, you know? Blindsided by a girl. Back with Ellen in Oklahoma, when I was thirteen, there was this girl, Bree Ann, in the apartment next door. Her mother left her alone a lot too. She was older, fifteen, maybe. I used to listen for her. Climb out the window to the fire escape when I heard her go out there to smoke or write in her little notebook. I longed to jump across just to be closer. We didn’t ever talk, and she ignored me, but she was my secret and I loved her. I did. I loved just being near her. I wanted to get closer, sit down with her. Talk to her. But back then, before I had to really go out and learn how to get what I wanted, I didn’t dare.

I guess I just wanted Ellen to come home, but she was always out working her johns . . . or partying, toward the end of things. That was right before she got rid of me. Everybody gets caught up sometime, she said.

I watch Cami talk to my mother and father and I can hear that laugh. It’s like a cat bell, so pretty yet alarming, because I know I’m letting myself fall when maybe I should fly away. But that loneliness inside, it’s so fucking painful. It’s that longing feeling that scratches to escape and makes you want to blurt out all kinds of gushy crap just to get the girl to look at you. It’s like I had with Bree Ann, trying to guess her schedule every day so I’d know when I could just be near her, and a little bit with Tempest, who was always disappearing. I hate it. Love its melty-ness and hate its leash around my neck.

When she’s done talking to them and I can pry myself away from other guests I don’t remember, she says near my ear, “Let’s get away from the mob. Go talk somewhere.”

I shiver and nod. We find a spot on the basement steps, away from the noise. Close the door to the rest of the house, and sit. I lean against the wall and she hugs her knees.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asks.

“Black.”

She laughs. “You can’t have black as a favorite color.”

“Why not? It’s all the colors. Maybe I have a hard time committing to just one.” I smile. “What’s yours?”