Into the Deep (11 page)

A
s we walked back towards school, we came up to a chain link fence. Brant kicked it. The fence shook and rattled, the metal links sounding like a dull chime. It seemed to have eased some of the tension that had been coiled up in his veins, but I could tell Brant was still angry.
    
Prick
.
     I stood a few feet from him, wanting to give him some space. “I really didn’t like that guy.”
     “I still think it was him,” he said and we continued walking back toward school.
     “I don’t know. He’s a total creep, but he didn’t have any idea what we were talking about, and he didn’t sound right.”
     Brant sighed. “Damn, I really thought we’d figured it out.”
     “Yeah, me too.”
     He stopped walking and so did I. He turned to me, sighing again. His blue eyes were calm now and he opened his mouth to say something. I watched his lips slowly part. It was then that we both heard the loud screeching of Mrs. Farrow’s whistle. I winced at the sound and turned to see her walking towards us. She was wearing a pink polo today, but she still looked rough and somewhat masculine.
    
God, I don’t want to deal with this right now.
    
“What do the two of you think you’re doing?” she asked as she approached us.
     “We were just…” I began.
     “Just nothing, you’re supposed to be in class right now. Do either of you have a note or a pass?” Her eyes narrowed on Brant.
I know you don’t
, she thought.
     He rolled his eyes then looked down at her. Brant towered over Mrs. Farrow as she was a good six inches shorter than I was. Her size made her scowl and stiff posture far less intimidating.
     “No,” I sighed. There was nothing else I could say.
     Brant didn’t even bother to say anything. Mrs. Farrow had already pulled out her pink-slip notepad and was writing us up. She ripped the slip from the pad and shoved it toward us.
     “The two of you can report directly to the principal’s office.”
     Brant snatched the slip out of her hand crumpling it in his grip, and walked off. I followed.

W
e sat in the uncomfortable wooden chairs outside Principal Donohue’s office. He currently was talking to another student, and so we were left to wait to hear our punishments. It was well into second hour now. Brant sat beside me, slouched in his chair with his head leaned back against the wall. He stared at the ceiling while I crossed and uncrossed my legs, unable to get comfortable. An air vent was directly above our heads and cold air poured down around us causing goose-bumps to form on my arms and legs.
    
I hate waiting
, I heard Brant think
, always waiting, waiting now, was waiting yesterday, been waiting around for eight years
.
     I turned to him then and the look he gave me was as if he just remembered that I could hear his thoughts.
    
Just stop thinking about it.
    
Mr. Donohue’s office door opened. A girl with red hair and an excessive number of piercings stepped out. She ignored us as she left, swinging her black messenger bag across her shoulder. Across the room, the receptionist, a plump brunette woman with her hair pulled into a tight bun, nodded at Brant and I.
     “You two can go in now,” she said and we did.

W
e were both given in-school suspensions, and for the rest of the day were required to clean the desks in the detention hall. Mr. Donohue said if we were going to skip class that it was a fitting punishment to make us stay at school. He then added that if we were caught skipping again, it’d result in a Saturday morning detention. Brant didn’t seem fazed by the threat, but the thought of spending even one Saturday at school was enough to make me never want to skip class again.
     After getting to the detention hall, I realized that it wasn’t such a bad punishment. Basically I traded a day of classes for cleaning. However, our punishment also came with a phone call home which I knew would be a lot worse. I tried not to think about the disappointment I’d later see on my mom’s face. She’d start to worry if I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, might even think I’d started doing drugs. She always overreacted.
     For a short while I focused on the task at hand. With a soapy rag in my grasp, I scrubbed at the profanities that had been scribbled on the desk before me in marker, pencil, and pen. Most of them would come up. Those that had been etched into the wood of the desk would not. I didn’t realize that Brant had not chosen to do the same as me to keep himself occupied. It wasn’t until I heard a soft chuckle tumble from his lips that I looked up and saw him sitting in the desk beside me. He wasn’t cleaning it, wasn’t doing anything, he was just watching me.
     “Never had an in-school before, huh?” he asked.
     “No, why?”
     “You don’t need to work so hard. They’ll only check on us once an hour in between classes. So long as you’re working then you’re fine… the rest of the time though, you can just sit there.”
     “Oh,” I set the rag down and dropped my hands to my sides. “Won’t they notice the desks aren’t clean?”
     “The desks are never clean, you won’t be able to get half that stuff up, and even if you do someone will just write on it again tomorrow.”
     “Right… so what do we do then?”
     He lifted an eyebrow at me and I saw his lip curve up just ever so slightly. It was somewhat suggestive, but he wiped the look from his face almost as quickly as it had appeared. If he’d been thinking anything then, I hadn’t been listening.
     “Not sure, usually I’m in here with Skyler or Jason, or both of them and we find something stupid to talk about.”
     “So let’s talk.”
     “’Bout what?”
     I frowned, “I don’t know, what’s your favorite color?”
     He raised his eyebrows. “My favorite color?”
     “Alright, fine, that’s kind of lame… you got anything better?”
     He laughed then swiveled in his seat so that he was facing me. “How about… what kind of things do you like to do? And my favorite color is green.”
     I smiled. We talked for some time after that about your regular ‘get to know you’ kind of chit-chat. I told him that lately I’d been enjoying reading, particularly suspense novels, as well as watching chick-flick romances with my mom. He told me that he played guitar and enjoyed reading as well and was currently working his way through
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
. It was an easy conversation, the kind that flowed naturally; the kind where you didn’t have to think of what to say next. I found myself really enjoying talking with him.
     “So where did you go yesterday?” I asked watching as the light that he had in his eyes suddenly darkened.
     His muscles tensed up and he looked away from me. Suddenly the silence of the room was deafening. I thought about listening in on his thoughts, but decided not to. This was something he needed to be able to tell me on his own. He deserved that privacy.
     “You listening in?”
     “No… but I was earlier when you were thinking that… that you were waiting yesterday, that you’d been waiting for eight years.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I know this is none of my business.”
     “You’re right, it’s not,” he sighed again, “I was at the Westfield Shopping Square.”
     My brow wrinkled in confusion.
     “When I was ten, I went there with my mom. She had errands to run, Dad was working, and being ten, they didn’t trust me enough to leave me home alone and not have it burn down… so I got dragged along, and naturally I was bored out of my mind. We ran into Jason and his mom when we got there and so my mom and Mrs. Davis let us go off on our own.”
     “There was a skate park within walking distance, and I had my board in the car, so Jason and I went there. I was supposed to be back at the square by two. I’d promised her I’d be back on time.” Brant’s eyes looked glossy as he spoke, as if he were focusing on some imaginary point in the distance. “But we lost track of time, we were having too much fun. At about three, Mrs. Davis pulled up to the park and picked us up. She was a little mad that we’d been so absentminded, but I think she’d gotten caught up shopping as well so she didn’t yell at us too bad.
     “She drove me back to the Square and we all made our way to the fountain in the center where we were supposed to have met the hour earlier. My mom wasn’t there. Jason’s mom tried calling her on her cell. She didn’t answer. We waited there another hour before Mrs. Davis just took me home. Mom never came home after that.”
     Brant looked at me with an expression I’d never seen him make. He looked soft, vulnerable. I stared at him, feeling a knot in my stomach twist, thinking about his pain and I noticed he had one freckle or maybe it was a birthmark just above his left eyebrow that was shaped like a tiny heart, but I only saw it for a second as he shook himself free of the memory and took a deep breath.
     “Since then I’ve gone back there on the same day every year. It’s stupid, I know. I don’t actually expect to see her, but it… it makes me feel like I’m doing something.” We were both silent for a while. “So yeah, that’s where I was yesterday.”
     I couldn’t offer him any real comfort, I knew that. “I’m sorry,” I said even though I knew it didn’t help. “I wish I knew what to say, but…”
     “It’s okay, I don’t expect you to know what to say, I don’t expect you to understand. Your parents are probably both still together and
living the American dream
or what have you.”
     I snorted, “Yeah right, they’ve got the
perfect
marriage,” I looked away. “My dad’s cheating on my mom. She doesn’t know. No one knows… except me.” I looked to him, realizing how personal of a thing I’d shared. I felt embarrassed, like I’d said too much and I wished that I could take it back. Quickly my eyes found the floor and I felt my cheeks growing red.
     “I’m sorry,” he said and we both nodded. “I didn’t mean to assume…” He seemed flustered.
     “I haven’t told anyone that,” I confessed. “I just…I heard him thinking about this other woman and it’s like…like everything I thought about him is a lie. I don’t know what to think about any of it, I don’t know what to do.”
     He was nodding and had a faraway look in his eyes again. “I know what you mean. I wonder all the time where she is. Is she alive… is she dead, did someone take her, did she leave us?
It’s like I don’t know who she is any more… I’ve never told anyone that either, I mean Jason and Skyler know that she… disappeared, but I don’t really talk about it much anymore.”
     I wanted to ask more about his mom. I wanted to know if they called the police. Did they file a missing person report? Did they ever find any clues to where she might have gone? I tried to think about what I would have done had it been my mom, tried to think of reasons that would have explained her disappearance. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand any of it. But despite my eagerness to know more, I could tell that this was a tough subject for him, so I kept my questions to myself.
     I nodded. “Guess we both have our secrets.”

14

Irresponsible

W
hen I got home I found that it wasn’t Mom I should have been worried about. She was there with that look of disappointment across her face. Her arms were folded and her shoulders slumped as she sat at the edge of the oversized brown loveseat, but Dad was there as well. I walked into the living room and found both sets of eyes on me. Dad was sitting on the sofa. He had his hands folded in his lap and he and Mom looked like they’d just been talking. He looked at me. His gaze so strong that it pinned me in place and then he stood up.
     I hadn’t expected to see him. He usually wasn’t home from work until dinner time or later, but then again he usually wasn’t really at work either. I shifted my weight from one hip to the other, feeling uncomfortable under his stare.
    
God, what is happening to my baby girl?
I heard Mom think.
     “We need to talk,” Dad said as I walked into the living room. He was still in his work clothes which made him look even more imposing and added to my anxiety.
     I didn’t sit down.
     “We got a call from your principal today.” He said.
     “Yeah, I figured you would.”
     Mom was looking at me as if I’d just shaved my head and had been brought home by the cops. She looked like she was scared for me. “Honey, what is going on with you? You can talk to us.”
     “Mom, it’s nothing, really.”
     “I don’t call skipping school nothing,” Dad said.
     “Dad, really it’s not how it sounds. I was on my way back into school…”
     “I don’t care what happened; you got an in-school suspension. That’s not okay. You were being completely irresponsible.”
     “I’ll catch up on everything I missed, it’ll be fine.”
     “No, it’s not fine. You were supposed to be somewhere and you weren’t there.”
     “Were you doing drugs?” Mom interjected.
     “What? No, Mom…”
     “Ivy,” Dad began again, “this is unacceptable behavior. From now on, you are not to go anywhere other than school for the rest of the week. After classes, I expect you to come straight home.”
     My skin burned hot and my cheeks flushed red with anger. “You wanna talk about not being somewhere you’re supposed to be,” my eyes burned holes into my father. Howard Randal Daniels returned the stare with equal intensity. “You’re never here anymore. You’re my father, you’re supposed to be
here
… but you’re always
working
, always away… we’re your family, you’re supposed to be responsible for us, so don’t talk to me about responsibility… God, you’re such a hypocrite, and you can’t keep me here.” I spun away from them and stormed toward the door.
     “Ivy, don’t you dare walk out that door,” my dad yelled.
     In the corner of my vision, I saw my mom stand up, one of the turquoise throw pillows falling to the floor. I walked out the door. Looking back, it was a fairly childish response, but it was all I could think to do. I had felt trapped, like a lion living like a housecat. Finding the person that was planning to blow up the school was higher on my priority list than going to class, but I couldn’t tell them that. I couldn’t explain what I had been doing or what I could do. They wouldn’t understand. I also couldn’t explain why I was so furious with my father, why I felt like he had no place telling me right from wrong. I couldn’t confront my mother with that information. So I walked out the door slamming it behind me.
     After that, I found myself driving more than a few miles over the speed limit. My fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, the bones of my knuckles stretching the skin until it blanched white. I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed to drive. I needed to get away. My mind raced as I drove on autopilot. I felt bad for running out of the house. I’d never done anything that disrespectful before, and yet I felt like my father didn’t deserve my respect anymore. That was truly how I felt, but to think it sounded awful. He was still my dad, he still loved me and I still loved him even if I felt disappointed with him at the time. I just didn’t know how to act around him anymore. My thoughts were conflicting and my head ached as I tried to sort them through. So distracted by the drama that was my life, I failed to notice where I’d driven to. It wasn’t until after I’d passed the sign that read ‘Laurel Hill Estates’ that I realized where I was.
     I was in Christy’s subdivision, which was also Brant’s subdivision, and I was nearing his house. For some reason my subconscious had directed me here. I tried not to let the Freudian psychology seep into my thoughts, trying to tell me that I secretly wanted to be here, but it got through anyway. It was then that I realized I was crying. Wet, hot tears rolled down my face, creating rivers through my makeup and smearing my mascara. They dripped from my chin and landed in my lap. His house came into view and I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
     I was going to turn around. I didn’t really want to see him. I certainly didn’t want him to see me, not like I was. I was a mess. So I was just going to pull into his driveway and turn around, turn around and go straight home. I was going to apologize to my parents and forget about the fact that I had the lives of nearly a thousand students to save weighing on my shoulders, forget about the fact that I could read minds and knew that my father was having an affair. I was going to shut myself off into a deep drowning pool of denial and go about my life like it had been before. Then he walked outside. My car was fully in the driveway. He had a full black garbage bag in his hand. For a moment we both froze. He stared at me and I stared back. Then, as quickly as I could, I put my car into reverse and started to back up. He dropped the bag and ran over to my car. I was halfway in the road when his hands came up to my window, palms flat against the glass. He called my name. I stopped, leaving my car half in the road. I rolled my window down and stared up at him and into his deep and concerned blue eyes.
     “Ivy, what’s going on?”
You look so upset.
     I tried to talk. My mouth opened but I was upset and my throat felt like it had swollen shut. The words refused to come out. I couldn’t speak. So instead I sighed in frustration and shut my eyes, causing my tears to spill out onto my lashes and trickle down my face.
     “Come on, get out of the car.”
     I did, and he got in. I stood to the side of the driveway with my arms crossed as if I were trying to hug myself while he pulled my car up to the garage. Then he made his way over to me.
     “Hold on just a second, okay?”
     His eyes were reassuring and I nodded. I focused on the chipping yellow nail polish on my toes which were peeking through my sandals and took a deep breath. Brant returned and put both his hands on my shoulders. The warmth from his hands on my arms was comforting.
     “Come on, let’s go inside, okay?”
     I nodded. “Is your dad home?” I asked when we stepped into the kitchen.
     He turned around to face me. “No, he’s away on some conference for the rest of the week.” He paused before leading the way down to his room. “Do you want anything, soda or something?”
     “Um, Coke, if you have any.” He walked over to the fridge and opened it up. I watched silently as he scanned the shelves.
    
Sprite, Mountain Dew, Pepsi.
    
“Pepsi’s fine.”
     His head jerked to face me and he blinked, seemingly thrown off by the fact that I had just listened in on his thoughts. Then he grabbed a soda and popped the top for me.
     “Sometimes I forget that you can do that. Here,” he said handing me the Pepsi.
     “Thanks.”
      He smiled and then turned to walk down the stairs. I took a sip of my soda and followed.
     For a moment, as I stepped into the finished basement that was Brant’s bedroom, I felt awkward. There were tingles of fear and uncertainty running through my veins as I thought about what would happen next. Here we were alone in his house, no parents, no friends, hanging out in his bedroom, and I was emotionally charged and feeling needy. In that moment, I actually understood the phrase ‘butterflies in your stomach’ as I felt like I had a swarm of them flying around in mine. Suddenly some-not all, but some-of my concerns with my parents and my abilities were forgotten as I became hyperaware of the fact that I was alone with a boy in his bedroom, a boy who, despite my previous dislike for him, I could not deny that I was attracted to, a boy who, despite his bad boy reputation, I found myself truly getting to know and liking for the person he really was.
     “Ivy,” he said, and I was shaken from my thoughts. He was standing before me.
I’m worried about you
. “What happened?”
     “Sorry, I didn’t mean to come here and…”
     “Don’t worry about it… just talk to me.”
     I sighed. “It’s just stuff with my parents.” I sniffled.
     He brought his hand up to my face and wiped away a tear from my cheek with his thumb. His skin felt hot against mine. My eyes looked up at him wide and glossy with unshed tears.
    
God you’re beautiful
, I heard him think. Then he shook his head as if trying to keep me out, keep me from hearing his thoughts. His hand fell back down to his side and he turned to look back into the depths of his room.
     “Let’s sit down,” he said when he turned back to me and I followed him over to the couch.
     He cleared off the papers and notebooks that were scattered on the leather sofa and I sat down beside him. I took another sip of Pepsi then set the can down on the small end table beside me. Without the cold aluminum in my grip, my fingers felt restless. My hands fell into my lap and I pulled at a hangnail on my thumb.
     “It’s my dad.” I was still looking down, examining my fingernails as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. “Mr. Donahue called home and…” I sighed. “They were both pissed. Mom was more worried than anything I guess, but Dad just wanted to punish me. He didn’t even ask me what happened. He didn’t even hear my side of the story, he just wanted to dish out my sentence so he could be done with it, no real parenting required.” Even I could hear the resentment in my voice. “It was like he was mad that he had to leave work or his mistress or whatever to deal with his daughter.
     “I feel like he was madder about that than anything I actually did. He told me I was being irresponsible,” I laughed bitterly, “I was being irresponsible by trying to prevent someone from blowing up the school, right….
Irresponsible
… And what makes it all worse is that I know he’s cheating on my mom, but I can’t call him out on that. I can’t ground him or tell him that he’s to come straight home after work instead of seeing that
whore
.”
     I bit my lip then. I was surprised by my own words. Finally my eyes flickered up to Brant and I saw him looking on at me intently. I felt the tears returning to my eyes and, as they welled up again, I ran my hands through my hair. That was when he moved to me and pulled me into a hug.
    
It’s not fair
, I heard him think and I began to sob uncontrollably.
     With the anger released, all that I had left was pain.
     He held me tight and shushed me while he stroked my hair.
I know how you feel
. He tried to calm me down.
I know what it feels like to feel alone, to feel like you have no one to lean on.
My tears began to ebb. His words of understanding were in my head and I felt his strong hands rubbing my back. He had me feeling like he was on my side, like I could lean on him.
     I pulled away slowly, feeling the warmth drain from my body as the distance grew between us. His hands twisted away from my back and moved to my arms, rubbing them up and down. For a moment, as my face moved past his, my eyes fluttered down to his lips. I could feel his breath against my cheek, feel his comforting touch on my skin, and the butterflies returned to my stomach, swarming as if they were caught in a windstorm. I pulled back a little more, feeling the need to put more distance between his lips and mine. At that moment, I was far too focused on my own thoughts to even think about listening in on his.
     “You okay?” he asked.
     I nodded, “Yeah… yeah I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come here and get all weepy on you.”
     He smiled. “Don’t worry about it.” He dropped his hands back to his sides.
     I watched them fall, wishing they were still on my arms comforting me.
     “I know how you feel. After… after my mom disappeared, Dad got real distant. I think he blamed me… sometimes I blamed myself. I’d think that if I had just stayed with her then I could have… stopped her, or protected her, or I don’t know exactly but I would at least have known what happened to her.
     “Maybe that’s where you and I differ in all this. I feel alone because I need to know more, but you…you’re alone because you know too much.”
     Our eyes met and we had a moment of understanding, a moment where just that look conveyed every emotion either of us needed to express-the sadness, the anger, and the regret of wishing we would have done something to change how things were, wishing that there was something we could have done.
     He sighed. “You may think your dad is being out of line, that he doesn’t have a right to tell you what to do with… with what he’s doing, but he does care about you. Trust me, he took the time to come home and yell at you. If nothing else, that means he worries about you. My dad’s never around anymore. When I get in trouble, I’m lucky if he even mentions it. He doesn’t yell at me. Instead he just throws some money at the school and acts like that fixes it… Your dad still notices. That’s something.”
     I offered him a wan smile. In that moment, I wondered if his bad boy reputation was a product of years of trying to get his father to notice him. I wondered if he picked up habits like drinking and smoking and skipping school in an attempt to get his father to yell at him, to get him to pay attention to him, to show him that he still cared. Brant’s dad must have been a wreck after his wife disappeared, but he lost sight of the fact that his son was drowning. In that moment, I felt selfish for pouring my concerns onto him. My problems suddenly seemed much more manageable.
     “Thank you,” I said with true sincerity.
     He nodded. “So what are you going to do now, with your dad?”
     “I don’t know. Go home and apologize I guess. Don’t know if I’m quite ready for that yet though.”