Fall For Anything (5 page)

It’s a beautiful morning. Hangovers abound, so it’s mine and mine alone.

I stay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, my mind blank. Empty. That sounds depressing, but it’s not. Sometimes you can think too much. I actually made myself sick the first three days after because I had thoughts bigger than the space that contained them and too many of them were happening at once. Sometimes the quiet is good. Most times not, but just for now, in this tiny moment where the sun is edging up the sky, it’s okay.

And then I get out of bed.

I get out of bed and I get dressed.

I get out of bed and I get dressed and I go downstairs and I find a piece of blank paper and I fold it into a card. I stare at the empty space inside of it for a long time.

I grab a pen.

I’m sorry for your loss.

Eddie Reeves.

I hate when people say that to me, but this feels different because
I’m
the one writing it. It’s more important. I want him to know it’s not just me, that I know he must be in pain too.

That I understand.

I find Culler’s address on the envelope he sent us. I tuck my card into a new envelope and address it to him, stamp it, and then leave the house on my bike and mail it.

When I get back, Beth is awake. She’s making some complicated puke-green smoothie and she winces every time she pulses the blender. Every time she takes the lid off to see how it’s coming along, she covers her mouth like she’s going to barf. She does this so many times, I sit at the table and just watch, crossing my fingers that she’ll vomit everywhere, just suffer some gross indignity while I’m there to witness it.

It doesn’t happen.

When she finally acknowledges my presence she says, “There’s a message on the answering machine.”

“So?”

“So listen to it.”

I walk over to the phone and press the play button. It doesn’t occur to me that I should prepare myself for what I’m about to hear, even though Beth is the one who told me about it. Half of me is thinking maybe it’s Culler. I don’t know why. It’s not.

“Uhm, hello Reeves family! This is Maggie Gibbard, at the studio. We have some things of Seth’s here that we think you might want to come down and get … as soon as possible. It’s just, we’re in the process of renting the space again and we don’t want anything lost in the shuffle. Also, we’ll need the key back. Okay, please call us so we can figure this out. Thanks.”

I stare at it.

“I don’t think,” Beth says carefully, pouring the green smoothie into a very tall glass, “your mother needs to hear that.”

I’m going to pretend I don’t know what’s coming next.

“You could get down to Delaney, couldn’t you? Milo could drive you or something? Get his things, return the key, drive back…”

Before I can tell Beth exactly what I think of that idea, Mom comes into the room. In Dad’s housecoat. Her lips are a thin line on her pale face and her eyes are as sad as they always are. She’s back to being a zombie. Beth hands her the green drink and gives me a look.

I delete the message from the answering machine.

Deacon Hunt is staring at me from his side of the room. His right hand is resting over his crotch and he’s pressing down hard and
kneading
it with his fingers and acting like no one else can see him doing it, and I really wish I were making this up.

This is a party.

I don’t like parties. Milo doesn’t even really like parties. But when Missy said Deacon Hunt invited her to a party, it was only natural that she would drag Milo to it and, I guess, only natural that
he
would drag me. It’s not natural that I would let him, but now that I share a living space with Beth, I can’t be really picky about what gets me out of the house.

Anyway, Missy is in her element. She was born to party. Being here makes her happy.

This wasted Friday night makes her happy.

She’s dancing with Milo. Grinding with him.

Deacon Hunt lives in a musty old retro farmhouse and I’m sitting on a grandma-style couch in the corner. It’s weirdly soft, like velveteen, and it’s striped orange and gold. It’s next to a grandma-style floor lamp with plastic crystals lining the outside of the shade.

This is so lame.

After a while, Milo extricates himself from Missy, or she gets pulled away by yet another old friend who thinks it’s
so awesome
she’s
back
and by the way, she
looks fucking hot
!

“Do you want to leave?” Milo asks, sitting next to me.

“God no,” I lie. “I’m having a great time.”

And I can’t make Missy leave before she’s ready. We sit there watching her free-float, and I feel lonely. After a while, I lose sight of her movie-star frame and bleached-out hair and watch the minute hand on the grandfather clock in the corner move forward. I glance across the room and Deacon is still massaging his crotch.

“Deacon’s hand has been on his dick and balls all night.”

“He’s wasted.” Milo grins and I realize how long it’s been since he’s actually really smiled at me and that makes me feel worse, but good. But worse.

“Hey, Eddie. Hey, Milo.”

Jenna Trudeau nods at us as she passes. I wave at her and then I realize something else: everyone here is talking about Missy’s return, but no one here has said one thing about my father being dead. Even though it’s nice not to talk about it, I think that makes these people assholes. I go to school with assholes. What kind of people wouldn’t ask me about my dead father? Assholes.

After a while, Missy comes back, sparkling sweat.

“They’re going swimming,” she says. “Down at the lake.
Clothing optional.
”

“Wow,” I say.

Milo holds up his hand. “I’ll pass.”

“Oh, come
on.
”

She grabs our hands and tries to pull us up. I think I hate her. And then I feel bad for thinking that because Missy has a huge heart that’s open to everything. She’s not cynical.

That should be a beautiful thing.

“Please?” she whines. “I’m not going without you.”

Milo glances at me. He waits for me to say it.

“Okay, sure.” I sigh. “Whatever.”

She squeals and grabs my hand. Grabs Milo’s. Her palm is warm and alive and I let her lead me out of the house, into a pack of semi-sober almost-seniors who want to take it all off and get all wet, and there are so many reasons this is a bad idea, but I’m not here to save anyone’s life. Milo is beside me. I can’t tell if he’s into this or not. I can’t read him around Missy. She finally lets go of my hand, but stays holding on to his. I look around. There’s about ten of us. The night air is sticky and smells swampy even though we’re nowhere near a swamp.

Aaron Romero bounds up beside me.

“Getting naked, Reeves? Vinton?”

She laughs and I roll my eyes. “You wish.”

“Of course I do. That’s why I asked.”

“I could get naked,” Missy says. “Are
you
, Aaron?”

“I hope not,” Milo says.

“Hey, fuck you, man,” Aaron says. He trips over a rock and does a face-plant. Milo laughs and we move past Aaron, trudging farther and farther away from the house, down the road, eventually turning onto the trail that leads to Orbison Lake.

As soon as everyone sees the water, they turn into lemmings, rushing at it, laughing, whooping. Clothes go flying. I glimpse Missy’s perfect ass and her perfect breasts before she disappears into the lake with the rest of them, having the time of her life.

“Weird,” Milo says as soon as we’re alone.

“What?” I ask.

“We’ll have seen most of our senior class naked before school even starts.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah.”

Milo smiles at me again. I smile back and I get a weird feeling in my stomach. A smile and a laugh. These things feel wrong in their rightness. Distant splashing noises reach my ear. I look up. The sky is a black pool of ink, dotted with stars that look like they know where they’re supposed to be. It makes me sort of dizzy.

I lose my footing and bring my heel down on the toe of Milo’s shoe.

“Be careful.” He steps back.

“What would you do if I died?” I ask.

“Where the fuck did that come from?”

I shrug. “I just want to know. Have you ever thought about it?”

I glance at him. He’s staring at the ground, like he’s spacing out. He stays like that for so long, I think I’ll have to wave my hand in front of his face to bring him back, but I don’t.

“No,” he finally says. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“So think about it now.”

“Stop it.”

Moonlight is cast across the floating heads in the lake and there’s nothing truly interesting about it. Missy swims next to Dale Mugford.

“Is that what you like?” I ask Milo.

“What?”

I point in Missy’s direction. “That’s what you like.”

He doesn’t say anything. I kick a little dirt at him and take my sandals off, curling my toes into the grit and grass that bleed down into a dirty bank that turns into the water. I should go in. I imagine myself swimming, all my clothes on and how heavy they’d feel. I imagine diving under, swimming down, down, down with my eyes open and not being able to see anything in front of me. Not even my hands. I imagine forcing myself farther down, until I feel weeds everywhere, brushing the sides of my arms, my feet, and then I’m surrounded. Tangled up in them so bad the lake would have me forever. I imagine drowning and what that would feel like, if I’d be scared. If I’d let it happen or if I’d fight it. I read in a book once you can’t drown yourself. Your body will fight to survive, whether you want to or not.

But I don’t think it’s the same when you jump.

*   *   *

Aaron gets a
bonfire going after the lake and by that time the crowd has thinned. It’s me, Missy, Milo, Deacon, Aaron, Jenna, Mary Lennon, and Jeff Kingsley. Missy and Milo sit next to each other, so I sit on the other side of the fire and watch them touch shoulders through the flames because it’s more dramatic that way.

I wonder if they’ve had sex yet.

Milo would die if he knew I thought that. Now and before. I thought about him and Missy having sex every single minute they were together the first time around, but not jealously. I
am
jealous of Missy in some ways, but not in that way. I just wonder about it. Imagine it. It might be weird, but it’s not jealous. I think it’s because I always thought Milo and I would be each other’s first time. I secretly wanted it. I wanted us to be clumsy and bad and awkward with each other first, practice until we got crazy good, and then we’d stop and go find other people to impress in bed. Or whatever. But his first time ended up being with Missy and my legs never opened for anyone, which in Branford is probably not a bad thing.

“Yo, Eddie,” Jeff says. I look up. He tosses a can of beer at me. I pull the tab and take a gulp. I don’t like the taste of beer, but there are worse ways to be a follower, I guess.

“You know, this time next year we’ll be getting ready to leave,” Jenna says loudly enough to silence everyone around her. “One more year at BHS and then grad.”

“Don’t say that,” Missy says.

“Do you like Pikesville High?” Milo asks her.

“It’s nice. I’ve met some really great people. I have friends,” she says. “But I don’t know, being back here … I just miss you guys … a lot.”

A chorus of sympathetic murmurs. Mary walks over and gives Missy a big hug and then Missy
cries
. She cries beautifully this side of the bonfire and Milo is looking at her with such … I don’t know, such want, I think, and that’s beautiful too. I hate that I’m so numb and empty and disconnected from most of these people but even I can see worth in stupid little moments like these. These people aren’t even my family, but I can see their value and if I can see it in something this small, when I feel this bad, then—

Then why didn’t he?

I take another sip of the beer. Try to distract myself from the knot in my throat and the fact that I feel like I’m going to cry.

“If I lived in Pikesville, I’d kill myself,” Deacon mutters.

“Deacon,”
Jenna hisses.

I stare at the bonfire until I realize it’s fallen uncomfortably quiet and everyone is staring at me. I have to replay the conversation to understand why and then I understand why.

“Oh. It’s okay,” I say to Deacon. I’ve just glimpsed what my life is going to become after the initial grief passes: people making jokes about offing themselves in front of me and apologizing for it after and then all the awkward silence that follows. “It’s okay.”

“Sorry about your dad,” Deacon says. He doesn’t look embarrassed or apologetic about what he said. All its potential offensiveness probably never would’ve occurred to him without Jenna’s help. “That was supremely fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “It was.”

“Is it true your mom’s like, catatonic?”

“Deacon!”
Jenna again.

“What?” Deacon asks. “It’s not like we’re not all thinking it.” He turns back to me. “Jenna’s plan of action once she found out you were coming was to shut the fuck up, basically.”

“It’s okay,” I repeat.

It actually
is
okay. The casual way the questions roll off Deacon’s tongue makes me want to answer them. It’s like it’s only us, him and me, talking about this. Everyone else slowly fades into the background until they’re ghosts.

“She’s kind of catatonic, I guess. She doesn’t get dressed a lot.”

“Did he leave a note?” Deacon asks. I nod. He gives an impressed whistle. “For a while there, my mom thought it had been a murder—”

“Okay,” Milo says, not so much a ghost anymore. “That’s enough.”

“It’s fine.” I turn back to Deacon and sip at my beer. “My mom thought that too, for a minute. It just turned out we didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Deacon prompts.

I shrug. “You think you know someone and you don’t.” And then I take it a step further: “I mean … I don’t know. You could all be jumpers. Wrist slitters. OD’ers. Stand in front of a train. I had no idea my dad was suicidal.”

Missy shivers. “God, that’s a terrible thought.”

“Did you see it?” Deacon asks.

“Okay,
that’s
the line,” Aaron says. “You crossed it.”

But everyone is staring at me, waiting for me to speak.

“I did,” I say.

They all go so still. They all seem to stop breathing at once.

I clear my throat. “It was getting late and I knew he liked to go to Tarver’s Warehouse sometimes. He’d spend
hours
out there, just taking photographs. Dinner was getting cold—he misses dinner all the time, so I don’t know what made me go to get him this time … but I went and I get there and—” I finish off the beer and everyone is eating this up. “I saw him on top of the roof and he was doing something with his hands…” I shrug. “I don’t know what he was doing with his hands. So I waved and I shouted and he looked up and he crossed his arms over his chest and he stepped off.”

“How close were you?” Deacon asks, leaning forward.

They’re all leaning forward.

“I heard it,” I say.