Penpal (21 page)

While all of these conversations were taking place, I slipped Veronica’s phone back in her purse to hide the evidence of the conversation that I was too much of a coward to have. The police talked to each of us, including me for a second time – I told them what happened again, they made some more notes, and then they left.

Veronica came out of surgery several hours later with a thick, white cast covering 90% of her body. Her right arm was free, but the rest of her was cocooned in plaster. Her parents and I walked to Veronica’s room; they never asked me for her purse, so I just set it on the table to the right of her bed. She was still under the anesthetic, but I remembered how I felt when I had my cast before kindergarten. I asked a nurse for a marker, but I couldn’t think of anything to write. I slept in a chair in the corner, and went home the next day.

I came back every afternoon for several days. At some point, they had moved another patient into her room and set up a screen around both beds to act as a partition. The divider was always closed, so I could never tell if the person in the adjacent bed was sleeping; however, I once caught a glimpse and saw that in addition to the cast on his left wrist, the occupant’s face was completely covered in bandages, so I decided to always speak in hushed tones just in case.

Veronica didn’t seem to be feeling better, but she had more moments of lucidity. But even during these periods, we wouldn’t really talk. Her jaw had been broken by the car, so the doctors had wired it shut. I sat with her for a while, but there was nothing much I could say. I got up, walked over to her, and kissed her on the forehead. As I turned to leave the room, she whispered through her clenched teeth,

“Josh …”

This surprised me a little, but I looked at her and said, “Has he not come to see you?”

“No …”

I grew infuriated.
Even if Josh had gone down the wrong path at some point, he should still come see his
sister, I thought.

I was about to express this when she said, “No … Josh … he ran away … I should’ve told you.”

I felt my blood turn to ice.

“When? When did this happen?”

“Two years ago. A little after his thirteenth birthday.”

“How … Why do you think he ran away?”

“The note … on his pillow …”

She started crying and I followed her, but I think now we were crying for different reasons, even if I didn’t fully realize it. There was still so much that I didn’t remember – so many connections I hadn’t yet made – but I remembered the letter, even if I didn’t know what it had truly meant. I told her that I had to go but that she could text me any time; I pulled the phone out of her purse and set it on the table right next to her free hand. I asked her if she was going to be okay alone, and she told me that her mom was coming in a little later that day, so she would be fine.

I got a text message from her the next day, and I hesitated before opening it. When I read it, I wished that I had hesitated just a little bit longer. It said, “Please don’t come back here.” It took me almost a full minute to type a simple “Why not?” in reply, because my flustered brain kept directing my fingers to the wrong keys. She said that she didn’t want me to see her like that again, and I agreed begrudgingly because it was only a temporary quarantine. We texted each other every day, though I kept this from my mom because I knew that she didn’t like me talking to Veronica.

The events of the night at The Dirt Theatre had caused an intense strain in the dynamic between my mother and me, and our interactions became abruptly cold and infrequent after I asked her why she hadn’t told me that Josh had run away. She claimed she simply did not know; that she didn’t talk to his parents anymore. In a way, I thought this made sense – if I had fallen out of touch with Josh, my best friend, then why should I expect our respective parents to stay in close contact? But the fact that she had called them before coming to the hospital meant that she had their new number, which was something that I was never privy to, and this bothered me.

Veronica’s texts were generally fairly short, and mostly only in response to more lengthy texts that I would send her. I tried calling her only once; I was sure she was screening her calls, but hoped that I could at least hear her voice. She picked up but didn’t say anything. I could hear how labored her breathing was; I thought I might have heard her say my name, but it was hard to tell. Eventually, I just had to hang up to stop myself from crying again.

About a week after she told me not to come see her anymore, she sent me a text that simply read,

“I love you.”

I was filled with so many different emotions. No one from outside my family had ever said that to me before, and somehow reading those words – which came not as the compulsory and reflexive expression that ends phone calls between family members, but from someone who really felt it – showed me why those words were so powerful. There were so many words that I wanted to say, but only a few that I felt I needed to say:

“I love you, too.”

Over the next several weeks, the intensity grew. Veronica said that she wanted to be with me, and that she couldn’t wait until she could see me again. She told me that she had been released from the hospital and was convalescing at her house, but every time I asked to come see her, she would always say, “soon.” In the back of my mind, a nagging guilt tore at my jubilation. I realized that her feelings for me were most likely artificial symptoms of her injuries; maybe she only felt close to me because she had almost been taken away from everything. Each time I received a message from her, however, these concerns evaporated in the heat of my happiness, and I would insist again that she let me see her.

Finally, the following week she said that she thought she might be able to make it to the next midnight movie. I couldn’t believe it; I suggested that we meet somewhere that would be a little less strenuous, but she insisted that she would try. She said that she wanted to redo our date, and I admired her strength and optimism for that. I got a text from her the afternoon of the movie saying, “See you tonight.”

Chris’ parents had found out about everything that had happened and said I wasn’t welcome at their house anymore, so I got Ryan to drive me. My mother tried to stop me, but I was bigger than her now, so I simply walked out of the house and got into Ryan’s car. I explained to him that Veronica might be in bad shape, but that I really cared about her so he should give us some space. He accepted that, and we headed to the theatre.

Veronica didn’t show.

I had saved a seat for her right next to me near the exit so she could get in and out easily, but fifteen minutes into
Akira,
a man slid into the chair. I whispered, “Excuse me, this seat is taken,” but he didn’t respond at all; he just stared ahead at the screen. I remember wanting to move because there was something wrong with the way he was breathing, but I forfeited after a while because I realized that Veronica wasn’t coming, so it really didn’t matter where I sat or who sat next to me.

I texted her the next day and asked if she was all right. I enquired as to why she didn’t show the previous night. But she didn’t respond. Despite my attempts to restrain myself and be patient, I messaged her repeatedly, pleading with her to at least tell me how she was feeling. She responded with what would turn out to be the last message I would receive from her. She simply said,

“See you again. Soon.”

She was delirious, and I was worried about her. I sent her several replies reminding her about the movie and saying it was no big deal, but she just stopped replying. I grew increasingly upset over the next several days. I couldn’t reach her at her home because I didn’t know that number, and I wasn’t even sure where they lived. However, I knew that my mom knew at least one of these things.

With no other options, I turned to my mother. I told her that I knew that she must know Veronica’s parents’ phone number since I suspected that she had called them the night of the accident. I told her that I needed that number. She asked why, and when I told her that I hadn’t heard from Veronica in days, I felt all of what little warmth was left in her disposition dissipate.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to get into an argument with you over this, but she was supposed to meet me at the movies yesterday. I know there hasn’t been much time since she got hit, but she said she would try to come, and after that she just stopped talking to me altogether.

“She must hate me. If we wouldn’t have gone to that movie, then she would still be okay right now. I don’t know what to do now. I just want to tell her that I’m sorry … that I’m sorry for everything.”

She looked confused, and I could read on her face that she was trying to tell if my mind had simply broken. There was intense compassion in her eyes that lingered for as long as she thought that my hold on reality had slipped. When she saw that it hadn’t, this compassion dissolved into defeated tears, and she pulled me toward her to embrace me. She was beginning to sob, but it seemed too intense of a reaction to my problem, and I had no reason to think that she particularly cared for Veronica – quite the opposite seemed true. She drew in a shuddering breath, and then said something that still makes me nauseous, even now.

“Veronica’s dead, sweetheart. Oh God, I thought you
knew …”

I pulled away aggressively. “What? What are you talking about? She said she was doing better … She said she was feeling better, mom!”

There was a long pause.

“What happened to Veronica?!”

“She’s dead, sweetie. She died on the last day you visited her. Oh honey, she died weeks ago.”

She had completely broken down, but I knew it wasn’t because of Veronica. I staggered backwards. This wasn’t possible.
I had just exchanged messages with her yesterday
. I could only think to ask one question, and it was probably the most trivial one I could ask.

“Then why was her phone still on?”

She continued sobbing. She didn’t answer.

I exploded. “Why did it take them so long to shut off her goddamned phone?!”

Her crying broke enough to mutter, “The pictures …”

My mother told me that Veronica’s parents had thought that her phone had been lost in the accident, despite the fact that I had put it in her purse the night she was brought to the hospital. When they retrieved her belongings, the phone was not among them, but they didn’t deactivate the line. I asked my mom why this was – why they had failed to close her account – but she said she didn’t know. But I think I know. I think they just couldn’t bear to do even one more thing that forced them to admit that she was gone. They probably would have kept that line active forever, but they received a call from their service provider informing them of a massive impending charge for hundreds of pictures that had been sent from her phone.

Pictures.

Pictures that were all sent to my phone. Pictures that I never got because my phone couldn’t receive them. They learned that they were all sent after the night Veronica died. They deactivated the phone immediately.

I tried not to think about the contents of those pictures. But I remember wondering for some reason that I couldn’t place whether I would have been in any of them.

My mouth went dry, and I felt the painful sting of despair as I thought of the last message I received from her phone …

See you again. Soon.

Friends

On the first day of kindergarten, my mother had elected to drive me to school; we were both nervous, and she wanted to be there with me all the way up to the moment I walked into class. It took me a bit longer to get ready in the morning due to my still-mending arm. The cast came up a couple inches past my elbow, which meant that I had to cover the entire arm with a specially designed latex bag when I showered. The bag was built to pull tight around the opening in order to seal out any water that might otherwise destroy the cast. Since I still had use of my dominant hand, I had gotten really adept at cinching the bag myself; that morning, however, perhaps due to my excitement or nervousness, I hadn’t pulled the strap tight enough, and halfway through the shower, I could feel water pooling inside the bag around my fingers. I jumped out and tore the latex shield away, but
could feel that the previously rigid plaster had become soft after
absorbing the water.

Because there is no way to effectively clean the area between your body and a cast, the dead skin that would normally have fallen away merely sits there. When stirred by moisture like sweat, it emits an odor, and apparently, this odor is proportionate to the amount of moisture introduced, because soon after I began attempting to dry it, I was struck by the powerful stench of rot. As I continued to rub it frantically with the towel, the cast began to disintegrate into thick white strips that rained down upon my feet while small white flakes wafted into the air and seemed to hover like snowflakes.

I was growing increasingly distressed – I had put as much effort as a child could into his very first day of school. I had sat with my mom picking out my clothes the night before; I had spent a great deal of time picking out my backpack; and I had become exceedingly excited to show everyone my lunchbox that had the Ninja Turtles on it. I had fallen into my mom’s habit of calling these children I hadn’t yet met my “friends” already, but as the condition of my cast worsened, I became deeply upset at the thought that surely I wouldn’t be able to apply that label to anyone by the time this day was over.