Harmless (15 page)

Silas and Bronwyn broke up. He got into Columbia like everyone knew he would and she was going to Smith College, which is all women, and why anyone would want to go to an all-women school made absolutely no sense to me. Smith hap-pened to be just a few hours away from New York City, but it might as well have been light-years away, because Silas de-cided he didn't want to have a girlfriend at another school. I knew this was coming. I knew he didn't love her the way he used to. I know these things about people. I pride myself on it. I'd learned some valuable lessons since my time with DJ. I can tell when there's an imbalance of love and affection between two people. Like, for instance, with Mom and Carl. He may be an asshole, but he worships her, and for that, she likes him just fine.

I could tell it was over with Bronwyn by the way Silas talked to me, and the way he always managed to catch my eye in the hallway and touch my arm or shoulder as I passed by. He was using this Smith College excuse just to let her down gently, which just goes to show you how sensitive a guy Silas Calhoun is.

He found me after school; he was lurking by my locker and he asked if I wanted a ride home. I said sure and he said, “Great. I'll meet you at the corner of Spruce and McDonnell.” He flashed me a quick smile and then disappeared in the crowd of Odious students, all fighting their way out the doors for a taste of the sweet freedom that comes every day at three.

The corner was only a few blocks from the main gate to
campus and I didn't mind the walk because the day was per-fect, but it seemed kind of foolish to walk to Spruce and McDonnell because that basically cut in half the distance between school and my house. I hardly needed a ride, but I was pretty sure that wasn't what Silas was offering.

He was waiting for me in his black Honda Civic. I threw my bag in the backseat, which I noticed was cramped and cluttered. He was listening to the college radio station's jazz hour. The car smelled like bubble gum.

“How about a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“Sounds perfect.”

I assumed he'd head toward the Big Cup, but instead he turned onto the parkway and started driving north. The trees on either side of the road were full and created a big leafy tunnel that we drove through in near silence, with just some piano chords and the
dlum dlum
of a stand-up bass, and I didn't ask where we were going. I kind of hoped we'd drive all day and all night, out of Orsonville, past Kapachuck, away from the river, away from ghosts, across the New York border into Canada and beyond.

But Silas pulled off in Greenfield, the small town you hit just after leaving Orsonville, and he parked at the Greek Corner, a shabby-looking diner. We ordered two plain coffees, and he got a grilled corn muffin. The booth was small and our knees almost touched under the table.

“I'm confused,” he finally said to me. “And I don't know who else I can talk to about this other than you.”

“So here I am.” I opened a small plastic creamer and dumped it in my coffee. The white disappeared in the thick
black sludge. “You talk. I'll listen.” I looked up and caught him staring at me and the intensity in his eyes made me feel dizzy.

“I was hoping this was just a passing thing. I was hoping it would go away by now.”

I moved my fingers across the table so they were almost touching his. He slid his the last few centimeters.

Contact.

“They've gone and caught this guy and still, Emma isn't herself. Something is wrong with her and I don't know how to fix it.”

He pulled his hand away and ran his fingers through his hair. I stirred my coffee slowly and watched as it turned from thick black sludge to a muddy, murky brown.

Anna

Tobey wanted to know everything.
What's it like to be questioned by the police? To identify a suspect? Was I going to testify? Would there be a trial? How did I feel when I saw him? Did I want to kill him? Could I forgive him?

I decided to do something I never do. I decided to take the first step. I decided I was done waiting, done being a follower.

I asked Tobey if he wanted to do something sometime.

I can't imagine what that would feel like, in those few sec-onds of waiting for an answer, if you had to ask a boy you liked face to face if he wanted to do something sometime. Waiting for a typed response, watching a flashing cursor, a blank page, was torture enough. I forgot to breathe.

sK8teR817: sure

Relief came like a cool rain falling on me. I stood up from my desk and opened my window. It was hot in my room and I wanted to take my time responding. I adjusted my pink and white curtains and thought about how it was time to redo my bedroom in more grown-up colors. I stared for a moment across the street at my neighbors' empty house. I came back to my computer screen to find:

sK8teR817: the river? Saturday at 4?

It wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking a movie, a cup of coffee, maybe hanging out at his house if his parents were out, not going down to the one place in the world I wanted to forget. But the first-step-taking, outgoing Anna was done for the day, so I just wrote:

AnnaBanana133: sure, see u there

This date with Tobey or whatever it was put me in an awkward position with my parents. I'd taken a silent oath to always tell the truth and never lie to them, but could I really tell them that I was going to meet a boy from school? Even if I could, even if that would be okay with them, even if they could finally acknowledge that I was growing up, I most definitely couldn't tell them that I was meeting him down by the river.

I decided to tell them I was meeting a boy from class (not exactly true as I have no classes with him, but kind of true since he is in the ninth grade with me) to go over some home-work (who's to say we wouldn't talk about homework?) at the Big Cup (who's to say we wouldn't end up at the Big Cup after hanging out by the river?). They just smiled and said, “Fine, but go easy on the caffeine and make sure you're home by eight-thirty.” That's when it gets dark here at the end of May.

I didn't know what I should wear. I felt like calling Emma. I wanted to tell her that I was going to meet Tobey and that I didn't know what to wear or what to say or what to do. But I wasn't talking to Emma. She was all wrapped up in herself and didn't seem to have any interest in being my friend anymore, and she also didn't seem to be friends with Mariah, so I had no idea who her friends were, or what she did with her time, other than spending it doing everything she could to avoid me. I missed her, but only as much as you can miss someone who you know doesn't miss you too.

I knew she was going through some stuff. It couldn't have been easy for her to have that crowd around her yelling about what a big perv her dad is. I tried. I called her the morning after the march to talk, to tell her that I was here if she needed me. She never called me back.

I picked up the phone to call Mariah, but then I decided that I didn't need anybody's help. I could do this on my own. I could figure out what to wear when meeting a boy on a Saturday afternoon down by the river. Not a skirt. Nothing too dressy. But no running shoes either. No baggy T-shirts. I settled on a pair of green Capri pants, some black platform sandals and a black scoop-neck shirt. I put my hair up in a pony-tail.

Tobey was waiting for me when I arrived. He was riding his skateboard on the sidewalk and he did a jump off the curb when he saw me and then flipped the board up into his hands. I wondered if he was showing off.

“Hey, Hendricks! What's with the book bag?”

I'd left the house with it to keep up appearances for the sake of my parents.

“I'm coming from the library,” I lied.

“Cool.”

We stood there staring at each other. Seconds ticked by. A minute? Two? Where was the bold instant-messager who'd suggested this outing? I wished she would speak up.

He looked down at his feet. He kicked a rock in the direction of the river.

“So, if you wouldn't mind … would you show me where this all happened? The night of the march the crowd was pretty thick—I was stuck way in the back.”

“Right over there.” I pointed to the spot where Mariah and Emma and I were sitting the night we made up the story, when it was only the three of us and the river, the night we were terrified of getting in trouble with our parents for lying about being at DJ's house. From where I stood, in the warm sunlight of a Saturday afternoon in May, I looked back at that night and tried to remember why it felt like such a big deal to get caught in that lie. All things considered, the lie about being at a movie when we were really at DJ's was pretty small. There would have been consequences, for sure. But by now it would have been over and done with.

“Where did he come from?”

“We're not really sure.”

Tobey looked down the river. He looked up the river. He put his hand up over his eyes to block out the sun, searching the horizon for something, maybe a sign of some kind, or a clue, some evidence the police might have overlooked. He took his notebook out of his pocket, scribbled something in it, and then seemed to give up and sat down on a rock and motioned for me to sit next to him.

“Poor Hendricks,” he said. He swung his arm around my neck and gave my ponytail a playful tug. “It really sucks that this happened to you, but at least it all turned out okay.” He paused. “Well, for you anyway.”

I sat perfectly still. I was afraid that if I talked or breathed or even blinked my eyes, this moment would end.

“It's a good thing they caught that guy and that he's locked away because I swear, if I ever saw him, I'd seriously kick his ass.”

No one had ever offered to do anything like that for me before. A huge grin spread across my face, out of my control.

“You look thirsty, Hendricks. Do you want to go get something to drink at the Big Cup?”

See. We were going to be at the Big Cup. That's the thing about lies. You never know if they just might end up becoming true.

Emma

I had sex with him.
Somehow saying those words out loud to Ms. Malachy made it real. I knew this was true, I was there, and sure, I was drunk, but not so drunk that I didn't know it was happening, and yet it didn't seem real.

I don't know why I told Ms. Malachy. I hadn't told any-one. Ms. Malachy's sneaky that way; she can get you to tell her things you don't even tell your best friends, or things you don't even admit to yourself. But now the secret was out there in the world, or at least, floating around her little stuffy office, and I couldn't take it back. I couldn't preserve it in ice. It was alive. It flew around me like a gnat, buzzing annoyingly in my ear.

I thought about the way he nodded at me the night of the march. That slight movement of his head. There was
an infinite world of meaning in that motion. Sometimes I thought it meant “Thank you for the special night we shared.” Sometimes I thought it meant “Thank you for keeping your mouth shut in front of my tall, skinny girlfriend with short brown hair and hips that knock into mine as we walk.” And sometimes I thought maybe I imagined the nod altogether.

Mostly, I tried going back to not thinking about it, or him, at all, and that wasn't too hard. I was getting pretty good at not thinking about things I'd rather not think about. I was an expert, really. The champion of nonthinking. If there were some kind of medal or award, I'd be the one up onstage, ac-cepting it.

You wouldn't think sand castles were any kind of scientific mystery, would you? But up until very recently, physicists couldn't explain what made them work. Now they've learned that water holds sand together by forming tiny liquid bridges between dry grains, creating tension strong enough to support a structure.

But no matter how soundly you build your sand castle, there are still things like wind and rain and the tide that will break these bridges apart, and in time, your sand castle will fall.

Silas and Bronwyn broke up. I watched them and their life fade away. The apartment a short walk from Central Park, de-molished. Goodbye, kids. Dog. Important jobs and fashion-able clothes. Dinner parties and theater. Visits from Aunt Emma. Gone.

I wondered, briefly, if this had anything to do with Mariah. Since she didn't come over to see me anymore, her contact with Silas was cut off. She wouldn't dare talk to him at school. Not in front of Bronwyn or any of the other senior girls. That left nothing. When else could she see Silas? No, Mariah was not a factor. She wasn't an unexpected tidal wave. Mariah was stuck out at sea, bobbing around, treading water. Silas and Bronwyn were stronger than Mariah, but not strong enough to withstand the natural erosion that comes along with things like graduation and going away to school.

The college was out for the summer. The students had packed up their cars, driven one hundred miles or three thou-sand miles back to the rooms they'd slept in when they were still children. Mom had a two-week lecturing gig at Oxford that was apparently very prestigious, and Dad had planned to go with her. The idea was that Silas and I would stay home and finish out the school year, and they'd be back in time for his graduation. But Dad decided to stay. He wasn't going with Mom and I took this to mean that maybe their future was made out of sand too.

I was seeing Ms. Malachy weekly. I saw her during my free period on Tuesdays and nobody knew. It felt strange sneaking off to see Ms. Malachy and revealing my secrets to her when she herself was one of the biggest secrets in my life.

“I'm in therapy.”

I tried saying that to myself, out loud in the shower when I knew no one was listening, and even then I wanted to look over my shoulder to make certain I wasn't heard. Therapy was something that other people did. Other people with problems.

After the Tuesday when I told Ms. Malachy I'd had sex with Owen, I skipped my appointment. I spent my free period alone, in the library, reading a back issue of
Scientific American
. The library was a ghost town. Everyone was outside; they'd given up on books. Summer was too close. There was studying to be done, notes to be reviewed, but that could happen outdoors, barefoot, sitting in clusters, surrounded by friends.