Into the Deep (14 page)

T
here was a
Subway
on Fifth Street. As I drove us there, I gave my mom a quick call. I told her that I’d stayed after class to catch up on homework from skipping school and that I would be getting a quick bite to eat with friends before coming home. She was glad to have me check in, but seemed somewhat concerned when she asked if I was out with Christy and Tiana and I told her that I wasn’t. I hadn’t told her yet that I was no longer hanging out with them. I imagined her wondering if I’d fallen in with a new crowd, a bad crowd. And the truth was that maybe I was hanging out with a new crowd, but they weren’t a bad one. I was starting to like Charlie, and Brant was good company. Maybe a bad influence in the way that he was part of the reason why I skipped school earlier in the week, but it was for a good reason. Also he stood up for me when Craig Fister started to get too pushy and creepy, and he was a good listener too, much better then Christy had ever been.
     We sat down at a table near the window to eat our subs.
     “So, what are we gonna do with this guy when we do find him?” Charlie asked.
     “Try and reason with him,” I said as I unwrapped my sandwich from its paper constraints, “tell one of the teachers about him, the police.”
     “Why don’t we just do that now? I mean we could say that we know someone is planning something, like an anonymous tip or something. Or, since we know when this is going to happen, we could just call in a bomb threat on that day. They’d evacuate the school.”
     “Can’t,” Brant said, “it’s too hard to do anything anonymously anymore, they can track calls, look up phone numbers, and they’d probably think we were involved just for suggesting it. Same with calling in a bomb threat, that’s the best way to be suspect number one. It’d be different if we had a way to explain how we know what we know, but we can’t… Once we know who it is then at least we can lie, say we overheard him talking about something, though that’s not the best excuse.”
     “People probably say they’d like to blow up the school just about every day,” I said, “doesn’t mean they actually plan to.”
     “Right, so we need some proof, and good reasons to explain why we’re not involved. I’m just hoping that’s easier to figure out than who this guy is.”
     Our conversation quieted down for a short while as we ate. Homicidal teens were no match for hungry bellies. When you’re seventeen, food wins out over serious conversation every day. After a short while though, Charlie’s questioning picked up again.
     “Who do you think it is?” Charlie asked.
     “Hopefully someone on our list,” Brant responded as he took a bite of his sandwich.
     “I don’t know,” I said. “It could be anyone. Could be someone we see every day. Someone who’s gone to school with us for years that we just never noticed, never paid any attention to… or maybe we did notice them, maybe it’s someone I’ve picked on, or you.” I looked at both Charlie and Brant, “Or someone who’s been picked on and we just stood by and watched… Whoever they are, they feel this way because of us, because of people at our school. It makes me feel kind of sorry for them.”
     Charlie nodded in agreement.
     “Not me,” Brant said, “I don’t feel sorry for anyone who’s trying to kill me. Everyone gets picked on, we all feel alone sometimes. I don’t care if you’re Eric Thompson or Christy Noonan, we all feel alone, feel left out, looked down on. Everyone gets talked about behind their back, but we don’t all go out on killing sprees. Whoever this guy is, whatever he’s been through, that doesn’t make what he’s doing right.”
     He took another bite of his sub and I let his words soak in. I thought about what it would take to drive me to kill someone, thought about what someone would have to say to me or do to me to push me to the point where I wanted them dead. I couldn’t come up with anything. I understood what Brant was saying. Being picked on didn’t excuse whoever this was, he was still responsible for what he was doing.
     My mind mulled over Brant’s words, but then the sight of something across the street jostled me free of them. My eyes became cemented to the window; my sub sandwich was momentarily forgotten. Across the street was Oregano’s Pizzeria, and standing outside its doors were Christy and Chase. He was twisting a piece of her blonde hair in his fingers and she was looking at him with the brightest grin.
     “Ivy, you alright?” Brant asked me and my eyes snapped back to him.
     I watched as he looked out the window to see Christy and Chase.
     Charlie was looking that way as well. “You’re friends with her, yeah?” Charlie asked me.
     “Not anymore… least I don’t think so.”
    
I wonder why
, she thought but she didn’t voice the question aloud. For that, I was grateful.
    
She’s still caught up on that tool
, Brant thought. His eyes were glaring out the window.
I just don’t get it.
    
“So, what are you guys doing this weekend?” Charlie asked and I was glad for the change in subject. I didn’t like the fact that it bothered me that Christy and Chase were seeing one another, but I couldn’t help the fact that it still stung.
     “I’m going shopping with my mom tomorrow after school,” I said. “You wanna come with us?”
     “No, thanks, but I’ve got a thing… I teach guitar lessons to a few kids in the grade school Friday afternoons. Maybe another day this weekend?”
     “Yeah, that’d be fun. I don’t have any plans for Saturday, what about you Brant?”
     “I’d be up for something.”
     “Here, lemme get your number,” Charlie said pulling her phone from her pocket. I did the same. As I told her my number, Brant grabbed my phone and began to type his number into it. I didn’t mind. As he did, though, I listened in on his thoughts and they weren’t about me.
    
Guitar lessons, hmm. I’ll have to see if the girl can really play.
     I felt a sinking sensation in my belly. It wasn’t that I liked him; I shouldn’t have been bothered if he was expressing interest in someone else. And it wasn’t that he was even doing that. He played guitar, it was only natural that he’d be interested in the fact that Charlie played too. For a second then, I thought about asking Charlie to teach me how to play something.
     “Alright, I’ll text you,” Charlie said and went about typing in her phone. While she did, Brant slid my phone back to me. A moment later, my phone lit up with her text message and I saved her number.
     “Well, we should probably get going,” Brant said.
     We were all finished eating and left shortly after that. I dropped the both of them back off at school and went home for a quiet night to myself.

18

You Learn a lot from Listening

T
hat night, as I was lying in bed, I found it hard to fall asleep. I twisted and turned, flipping from one side of the bed to the other. My sheets got caught around my ankles, winding into knots. I tried sleeping on my back, then my side. Nothing felt comfortable. My queen-sized bed suddenly felt too big for me. It was like I was swimming in a sea of blankets. I had always liked to spread out as I slept and usually took up all available mattress real estate, but that night I felt like no matter how I laid nothing felt right. It felt cold and empty as if I was lying on the immense, bare surface of the moon.
     Turning on to my side again, I spied my phone sitting on my side table. It was plugged into the charger and blinked a tiny green light at me. I stared at it for a moment then shut my eyes, but I could still feel the illumination of its green light against my eyelids. My eyes snapped open and I rolled onto my back, then with a sigh I grabbed my phone off the nightstand.
     I began scrolling through my contacts, and stopped when I came to ‘Brant Everett’. I paused for a moment, looking down at my screen which had his name lit up. I realized then that I had his number, but he didn’t have mine. I almost set my phone back on the nightstand and tried to force myself to sleep again, but I didn’t. I clicked his name and typed a text message.
     ‘Hey, this is Ivy,’ I typed. My finger hovered over the send button for what seemed like an hour. Finally, I hit send. I set my phone back on my nightstand and turned onto my side and tried to sleep. Just because I messaged him didn’t mean he’d respond. After a few minutes, though, I heard the low buzzing that was my phone on vibrate. I turned over and grabbed it. Lying on my side, I looked at the message.
     ‘Hey, what r u up 2?’ his message read.
     ‘Nothing, can’t sleep, you?’ I responded then left my phone beside me in bed.
     After a few moments, it lit up again.
     ‘Nm, was playing guitar.’
     ‘What can you play?’
     ‘Lots, I’ll play u something sometime, u play anything?’
     I thought for a moment. Mom tried to get me into piano lessons when I was younger but it hadn’t stuck. ‘No,’ I said.
     ‘Maybe I’ll teach u something.’
     When I got that text, I felt the iconic butterflies return to my stomach. It was that feeling of being so excited that you were short of breath, a giddy tingling feeling deep down in the pit of my belly. The butterflies fluttered about, and finally I realized that I kind of liked Brant Everett. I liked him in a way I never thought I would. We texted back and forth for some time after that. I told him about how my dad still wasn’t talking to me, and he told me that his dad’s business trip was getting extended. As we texted, I finally felt my body relax. Sleep finally sounded like a place I could reach, but as we talked, the last thing I wanted to do was to end our conversation. As it got later, however, I found my eyelids growing heavy and the need to sleep starting to overcome my want to text.
     We finished talking about what music was currently in our iPod playlists, his being a mix of alternative rock including bands like
The Calling
and
The Black Keys
. Mine was a mix of classic rock including
The Outfield
and
Bryan Adams
. Then we said goodnight and I floated off to sleep with ease.

T
he next morning at school, I ran into Charlie as I walked onto the common. She and I talked until the bell rang. Mostly our discussion consisted of idle chitchat about what classes we were taking and what we thought of our teachers. I looked around for Brant at one point and saw him standing against the side of the building with Skyler and Jason. Our eyes met for a brief second and he gave me a short wave. I felt the sinking sensation return to my belly that had been there when I heard him thinking about Charlie the other day. It bothered me that he didn’t come over to say hi. I had gotten used to talking with him in the mornings. I suppose I forgot that he had other friends.
     Classes went by fast that day and lunch, for once, was just lunch. Brant and I had looked over the list we’d made when we met up halfway through the day, but there weren’t any names that stood out to us. It was hard to know what to do next, who to talk to. We didn’t know where anyone on our list would be during the lunch hour. And, it seemed, no matter how many times my eyes scanned the crowd on the common, I never saw any of the people we were looking for. Those ten people could have been hiding just beyond my sight, or they could have gone out to lunch as a number of them were seniors. Possibly a few of them were in the gym playing basketball. I was pretty sure that at least one of them was on the basketball team, another was a football player. Maybe some of them were in the library, or skipping school. Wherever the ten people on our list were, we didn’t see them, but in truth we didn’t look for any of them very hard.
     Brant and I sat down. He’d gotten a small personal pan pepperoni pizza from the lunchroom and a Mountain Dew. I hadn’t made myself a lunch that day so I bought a chicken Caesar wrap and grabbed a bottle of lemonade. We didn’t talk about our texting from the night before, nor did we discuss in any detail the doom that awaited our school in a little over two weeks. Instead we talked about our favorite movies and discovered we both had a love for comedy zombie flicks such as
Shaun of the Dead
and
Zombieland
. Then we talked for another twenty minutes, discussing if either one of us would survive a zombie apocalypse. I had insisted that I would live longer than Brant since I could use my gift to hear the zombies coming before they got to me. He, however, shot down that idea, arguing that zombies didn’t have thoughts.
     It was refreshing to have a silly, lighthearted conversation with him. It almost made me forget that I was the only thing that stood between the school and its total destruction. Just before we parted to go our separate ways for the rest of the day, he smiled at me and it made me feel warm. It was one of those rare moments of true comfortable silence.

A
fter class, I was walking to my car when I heard something that made me stop. Ahead of me, Christy’s hair flapped in the wind. She held her cell phone to her ear by wedging it between her face and shoulder and dug through her Coach backpack. She’d stopped walking in the middle of the parking lot. I thought about walking past her and just going home, but for some reason I stood there and listened in.
     “Why can’t I just bring him to dinner tonight?” Christy said into the receiver.
     I wanted to know who she was talking about so I listened in on her thoughts. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to hear whoever was on the other line speak, but I tried anyway.
    
Because tonight we have to go shopping to get you something to wear to the
Play in the Park.
Organizing this event is really important, Christy
. It was Christy’s mother’s voice that I heard. As Christy listened to her mother’s words, I was able to hear them in her head.
     “I thought we were shopping next weekend?” Christy said pulling her datebook from her backpack.
    
We had to move the event up so there’s not going to be time next weekend. I’m sorry, Christy. I’m glad you have this boy you want me to meet, but you need to remember you have to keep…
    
“College in mind and make sure I get the grades and have extracurricular activities like community events and clubs on my application, and yeah, I get it Mom, I just…”
    
Just nothing, school and
The Play in the Park
first, we’ll talk boys later.
    
The Play in the Park was an event we had every year. Students in the Drama department at the local community college would put on a performance with the kids in the community in mind. Last year, they did
Peter Pan
. This year I heard they were doing
Alice in Wonderland
. Mom and Dad would take Sadie and me to see it every year. We’d go early to get a good spot and lay out a blanket in the grass then fill up on carnival food like corn dogs and cotton candy. They always hired kids from the high school to work the booths, selling tickets and food. Christy’s parents organized it. Her dad was a board member on the Community Council, so I always had Christy to hang out with when we went.
    
Now there’s going to be an assembly at your school on Friday the fifteenth and I want you to help your father talk to the kids at your school about working in the booths and getting their families to come. I want to have a better turn out than last year.
Christy’s mom continued on the other line, but soon I heard Christy’s own thoughts louder than the echo of her mother’s in her mind.
    
God, sometimes I swear you ask me to meet these absurd expectations to keep me from having a boyfriend,
Christy thought.
All my friends are on the honor roll, we all play varsity sports… well except Ivy but who knows where she’s been lately. Now I finally find a guy that I like that meets all your requirements… I mean how many guys on the football team get a 3.8 GPA and go to our church?
     Christy, are you listening to me?
     “Yeah, I’m here, sorry.”
     Her mother sighed.
Alright, well I’ll see you when you get home. Love you, sweetie.
    
“Love you too, Mom, see you soon. Bye.”
     I watched as Christy hung up her phone and put her datebook back into her bag. She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath then walked to her car. I stood there watching her as she drove away. I always knew that Christy’s parents pushed her to succeed, but I never before realized how they expected excellence from her in every part of her life, including the friends she chose, the boys she dated, the way she managed her time. For the first time, I realized why Christy judged everyone around her the way she did. She had to surround herself by people who met her mother’s standards or she herself wouldn’t meet them.