Places No One Knows (10 page)

In class the next day, Marshall is ragged. His eyes are bruised-looking and he's wearing the clothes he had on last night.

I get out my compact and hold it so the mirror reflects the room behind me, trying to determine if this is what a hangover looks like. After roll call, he puts his head down and doesn't move until the bell.

If I had any doubts left as to the truth or untruth of my dreams, this effectively dismantles them. There is one way I could know what Marshall would be wearing.
Know,
with unerring accuracy, that his shirt would be blue, his jeans would be torn, and his complexion would be colorless. And that is if I stood over him in the bathroom of his brother's house last night and observed these things for myself. If I was
there.

The lesson is on seasonal vocabulary, which it seems like we covered a year ago. I'm now five full chapters ahead. I was memorizing Thanksgiving verb forms back in the second week of September.

I'm not sure what's happening to me. In theory, I should be crumbling into chaos and madness right now, doubting everything I've ever known or believed. In practice, it doesn't feel much different from opening my binder to find my homework ready and waiting, even though I don't actually remember doing it. My body seems insubstantial. Made of smoke and vapor. Like responsible, studious Waverly is barely even a thing anymore.

I spend my shift in the counseling office staring at the clock, touching the dark showy grain of the reception desk, reminding myself that I am
here.
This is real.

When the second hand ticks and ticks and no one comes, I let myself out on a forged bathroom pass and read through the crop of new secrets that have appeared on the wall since yesterday.

It's mostly the usual fare—boys, bodies, self-loathing. The embarrassments and the crushes and the stupid crushing boredom.

And something else. Under my insider information about the access to confidential counseling, there's a new cluster of graffiti. In three different pens, in three different hands, someone has written:

Thank you.

After cross-country, Autumn waits for me in the locker room, standing at the sinks while I brush my hair and take off my running shoes.

“Hey,” she says suddenly. “What are you doing right now?”

I glance up from the tangle of my laces, trying to parse the question. “Doing?”

“Well, do you want to come over or
what
?”

I zip my shoes into the side pocket of my track bag like everything about that sentence is normal, but my face keeps wanting to do strange things. A smile is working its way toward my mouth for no good reason. I don't understand what's happening. It's like she's just
deciding
to be my friend. “I can't. There's a meeting to discuss the dance budget.”

“That sounds horrible,” she says brightly. “I should definitely come with you.”

“Are you even listening? It's a
budget
meeting.”

“What, is it all secrets or something? Am I not allowed? You do realize you're just making it sound funner, right?”

I give her a sardonic look and shake my head. “If comparing discrepancies between spreadsheets is what does it for you, you have a weirdly specific definition of fun. Anyway, it's not the kind of thing where you can just show up because you feel like it. You're not on student council.”

Autumn turns away, raking her fingers through her hair like she's thinking about that. Then she looks up. “If you don't even
like
your flawless little life, why bother?”

“I do like it. Kind of.”

She stares at me, her mouth tugging to one side. “God, you are
so
fucked up. I
love
it!”

When I smile, it feels harder and grimmer than usual, like her attitude is catching. “The normalcy odds are kind of stacked against me. I'm the only child of an ad man and a shrink.”

Autumn laughs, throwing her head back, hugging her sides. She's pretty when she laughs.

Her hair is messy, but a pleasing shade of burnt red that makes me think of foxes or fawns. Her willingness to just devote her attention to whatever comes along is fascinating. It's refreshing—like with Autumn, there's no such thing as in character, out of character. It's all just a question of
what next?
and
why the hell not?

I put my hands against my forehead and consider what Maribeth might find acceptable. What she would call down vengeful thunder for, and what she would allow. What she wouldn't be able to actively prevent.

“You could,” I say finally. “You could come. Not to student council—it's too late in the semester. But if you wanted, there's a volunteer meeting at Maribeth's next week. You could come help with decorations.” Then, because I feel a certain obligation to be truthful, I add, “You won't like it, though.”

Autumn gives me a patient smile. “Do you actually think I'm incapable of making my own fun?”

Her cheeks are flushed, like this is all just some delightful game we're playing, and a small, sensible part of me immediately regrets inviting her. The very idea of Autumn in the same room with Maribeth is alarming. But also just the tiniest bit thrilling.

“Look, there's something you need to understand. Maribeth is kind of…territorial. She takes this really seriously. You don't have to actually care about homecoming, but you have to at least pretend.”

“I don't even know how to act like I care about letting Andrew Wiesman's frog eat the dissection worms in biology last year, and apparently
that's
going on my permanent record. Tell me more about this magical technique for faking your own feelings?”

I press my palms against my eyelids and sit down on the bench, considering how I'd approach this scenario if I were in Autumn's position. There are all kinds of ways to trick people into thinking you belong. “You'd need to seem deferential, but invested. Helpful. We still don't have a theme for the dance, so you could suggest one.”

“What, like Enchantment Under the Sea or Love Among the Stars?”

“No. It would need to be a real one—not a joke, not from a movie. Also, it should have enough room for Maribeth to change the wording around and pretend it was her idea.”

Autumn raises her eyebrows like I've just proposed something graphically offensive.

Her reaction shouldn't bother me, but still, I feel reproached. Overcome by a need to explain myself. It's vital, suddenly, to make her see that yes, I might sound cynical, but my understanding of the social order is unparalleled. It's supremely functional. It's really not as ugly as it sounds.

“Okay, I know this seems convoluted, but it's actually pretty simple. You'd suggest something like A Brief Moment in Time, which Maribeth will love, but she won't be able to use it because it wasn't her idea, so she'll change a phrase or a word, and then you'll wind up with Romantic Times or Time Stands Still.”

The underlying mechanism is self-explanatory, but experience has taught me that other people don't always think about interpersonal dynamics the same way I do. “Or whatever. That part doesn't matter. What
matters
is that you're making yourself into a commodity. Most of being socially successful is really just being valuable.”

Autumn is still looking at me like she finds me vaguely traumatic, chewing on her lip, but all she says is, “So. If I was going to be palling around with the Future Corporate Overlords of America, I'd probably need someone to show me how to do this whole…wholesome look.”

“Are you saying that by
not
giving the impression I applied my eyeliner with a shotgun, that's a ‘look'?”

“Of course it's a look. Everything's a look. Come on, it'll be fun—we'll hit City Drug and you can help me pick out a costume!”

I'm supposed to be going over the party rental budget with Maribeth and Palmer in forty-five minutes, but most of the big-ticket stuff is already paid for, and calculators exist. They'll figure it out. And anyway, it might be nice to go someplace with someone who doesn't expect me to manufacture transports of joy over color-coordinated barrettes.

We walk across Detmer Avenue to the drugstore and I make a brief itinerary in my head, laying out a shopping plan for Autumn as we go.

She needs new accessories and a different eyeliner. The one she has makes her look like a pissed-off raccoon.

In order to occupy Maribeth's immediate space, you can't look like you're faking it. Maribeth doesn't fake things, and so—my own carefully crafted persona aside—she has a towering disdain for anyone who does. It is absolutely crucial that Autumn appear to blend seamlessly into the environment. Like she has always been there.

Generally speaking, I prefer a sense of order. I like to have an agenda, but Autumn wanders the aisles completely unchecked. She's a dabbler. She has to try every lipstick, every variety of powder and gloss, even the ones that are glaringly wrong. She spends fifteen minutes comparing eye shadows, layering the testers on in rainbow strata all the way up to her eyebrows.

When she uses the little sponge to add a row of meticulous circles along her brow bone in Goldie Glitter, I finally intervene. “What are you
doing
?”

“I'm a peacock,” she says, opening her eyes very wide and fluttering her lashes.

The look on her face is priceless, and I laugh even though I don't mean to.

It's sort of charming how entertained she is by lip stain and colored eyeliners. The makeup selection elicits far more interest than she has
ever
shown toward social customs or cross-country.

While Autumn deliberates between powder eye shadow in Platinum Glow and cream eye shadow in Pearl Perfection—shades that look identical to the naked eye—I kill time an aisle over, uncapping different brands of men's antiperspirant.

It makes me feel a little like an abject loser, but I take a few minutes, comparing scents until I find one that reminds me of Marshall. It's one element to his dark, complicated smell, and for a moment, I just stand there breathing it.

When Autumn peeks around the end of the aisle I almost drop the stick.

“What are you doing?” she says. She's wiped off all the powder and the glitter and her face is pinkly bare. She looks kind. Like someone who could keep a secret.

“Nothing.” I jam the cap back on and feign interest in the wide variety of whitening toothpastes.

The cough is nothing new, just a natural side effect of smoking. I've been working on it for months.

Only somehow, overnight, it's turned into a bad hacking mess.

Now I'm home, sprawled on the couch with the TV on. The light is nice, as long as the volume's down. The house is dark in unexpected places. Lightbulbs keep burning out and no one changes them. It's weird how fast the little things start to pile up. Dead leaves and dead batteries and slow, creaking hinges. The house is falling asleep like a cursed kingdom in a story. We're all just waiting for someone else to fix it.

Since my dad got disability, some things are still normal. My mom still goes to work at the power and water building downtown, comes home again, turns on the shopping channel or starts knocking around in the kitchen. My dad used to pack computer chips at AgiTech, and after work or on the weekends, he'd play guitar or build shelves out in the garage, but now he's on weekly injections and most of the time his hands shake too much to do anything fiddly. He sleeps a lot. Or else, pretends to.

In the kitchen, I can hear my mom cutting stuff up, making some stir-fry with free-range chicken and vegetables from one of the health food stores we can't afford, with no preservatives or dyes because she read on the Internet that chemicals are the reason people get sick.

I want a glass of water. I want a blanket. If Annie were here, she'd find me one. She'd probably sit around and watch bad cop shows with me and talk about college football until I fell asleep.

I want to be still and small, and not have to man up or act like everything's okay, but the thing about living in a house where someone's sick is, it's like they have a monopoly on it. If one person is always needing things, then no one else is really allowed to.

There's a family portrait over the TV, the five of us posed against a marble-gray background. It's from three years ago. Justin and my dad are at the back, matching baseball jerseys and matching sneers, while in front of them my mom pretends to be out of her mind with happiness and I work hard at being invisible. I stare at myself and wonder when my face got so hard, wonder when I stopped talking. Stopped smiling. Out of all of us, Annie is the only one just posing cheerfully like a normal person. In the picture, I look worried. Embarrassed by the fact that I exist.

The quieter and stiller I lie, the easier it is to be someplace else. I don't remember a lot about last night, but the part with Waverly is very clear, like it's the only real thing that's ever happened. I shouldn't be thinking about her. Mostly, I shouldn't be thinking how maybe, just maybe she'll come back.

I bury my face in the couch and picture her next to me, there on the edge of the tub. Her clean-smelling hair, her shoulder against mine. Ignore the other part—how she disappeared from Hez's bathroom in less than a second. It makes me feel too crazy. My head hurts like a car crash. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the weight of her hand on my neck and how fucking
hopeful
I felt suddenly, like maybe everything was pretty bad, but it was going to get better.

It's weird, the way she keeps asking if I'm okay when it's obvious I'm not. That night on the Captain's porch, she sounded sad as hell, and I could feel a tight, waspy buzzing coming off her. Something in her voice hurt like a bruise, but the way she looked was so untouchable. I think I get it now.

Asking someone if they're okay has got to be some dirty kind of genius. If you can prove someone else is a disaster, you never have to let them see what's wrong with you.

Our dog, Chowder, hangs around because she seems to think that if I sit in front of the TV long enough, the petting will start and food will appear, but I'm not in the mood to eat anything.

I take a couple NyQuil Cold and Flu and wait for them to work, to kill the pounding in my head. With my arm across my face to block the light, it's easy to be nowhere. Nothing. I think about Waverly and don't even care that I shouldn't. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't. It can't. Because Jesus Christ, it's not like it's real.

I fall asleep and dream that someone's drilling into my skull with a power saw. When I wake up, it's time for another dose of NyQuil. I'm still waiting for the first one to kick in.