Say Something (7 page)

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. “How do you know I’ll be all right? You can’t know. I wasn’t okay last May and you didn’t know that.” I pulled myself out of bed. My chest felt tight and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to cry.

She sat, gripping the cordless in front of her. “I just know, Valerie. That day won’t ever happen again, honey. Nick’s… he’s gone. Now try not to get all upset…”

Too late. I was already upset. The longer she sat on the side of my bed and stroked my hair the way she used to do when I was little and I smelled the perfume that I thought of as her “work perfume,” the more real it was. I was going back to school.

“We all agreed that this was best, Valerie, remember?” she said. “Sitting in Dr. Hieler’s office we decided that running away was not a good option for our family. You agreed. You said that you didn’t want Frankie to have to suffer because of what happened. And your dad has his firm… to leave that and start all over again would be so tough for us financially…” she shrugged, shaking her head.

“Mom,” I said, but I couldn’t think of a great argument. She was right. I’d been the one saying that Frankie shouldn’t have to leave his friends. That just because he was my little brother didn’t mean he should have to change towns, change schools. That Dad, whose jaw tightened angrily every time someone brought up the possibility of our family having to move to a new town, shouldn’t have to build a new law firm after working so hard to build his. That I shouldn’t have to be stuck in my house with a tutor or, worse, to switch to a new school my senior year. That I’d be damned if I’d slink away like a criminal when I’d done nothing wrong.

“It’s not like everybody in the whole world doesn’t know who I am anyway,” I’d said, running my fingertips along the arm of Dr. Hieler’s couch. “It’s not like I could find a school where nobody has heard of me. Can you imagine how much of an outcast I’d be at a new school? At least at Garvin I know what to expect. Plus if I ran away from Garvin, everyone there would be even more sure I was guilty.”

“It’ll be tough,” Dr. Hieler had warned. “You’re going to have to face a lot of dragons.”

I’d shrugged. “What else is new? I can handle them.”

“Are you sure?” Dr. Hieler had asked, his eyes narrowed at me skeptically.

I’d nodded. “It’s not fair that I should have to leave. I can do this. If it’s terrible I can always transfer at the end of the semester. But I’ll make it. I’m not afraid.”

But that was back when summer stretched in front of us, impossibly long. Back when “going back” was just an idea, not a reality. As an idea, I still believed in it. I wasn’t guilty of anything except loving Nick and hating the people who tormented us, and there was no way I’d slither away and hide from the people who believed I was guilty of something else. But now that it came down to putting my idea to practice, I wasn’t just afraid; I was terrified.

“You had all summer to change your mind,” Mom said, still sitting on my bed.

I snapped my mouth shut and turned toward my dresser. I grabbed a pair of clean underwear and a bra, then scavenged the floor for some jeans and a T-shirt. “Fine. I’ll get ready,” I said.

I can’t say that she smiled just then. She did something that was kind of like a smile, only it looked a little painful. She took a couple false starts toward the door and then apparently decided it was a good decision and headed for it completely, gripping the phone in both hands. I wondered if she’d accidentally take the phone to work with her, thumb still poised over the 9.

“Good. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

I dressed, pulling on the wrinkled jeans and T-shirt haphazardly, not even caring what they looked like. It’s not like dressing well was going to make me feel any better or any less conspicuous. I hobbled into the bathroom and ran a brush through my hair, which hadn’t been washed in about four days. I didn’t bother with makeup, either. Didn’t really even know where it was. It’s not like I’d been to a lot of cotillions over the summer. For most of that time I couldn’t even walk.

I slipped on a pair of canvas shoes and grabbed my backpack—a new one that Mom had bought a few days ago and that had sat empty in the very place she’d left it until she finally came in and stuffed it with supplies herself. The old backpack—the bloody one… well, that probably ended up in the garbage, along with Nick’s Flogging Molly T-shirt, which she’d found in my closet and thrown away while I was stuck in the hospital. I’d cried and called her a bitch when I got home and saw that the shirt was missing. She totally didn’t get it—that shirt didn’t belong to Nick the Murderer. It belonged to Nick, the guy who surprised me with Flogging Molly tickets when they came to the Closet. Nick, the guy who let me climb up on his shoulders while they sang “Factory Girls.” Nick, the guy who had the idea that we would pool our money to buy one T-shirt and share it. Nick, the guy who wore the shirt home and then took it off and gave it to me and then never asked for it back.

She claimed that throwing the shirt away was advice from Dr. Hieler, too, but I didn’t believe it. Sometimes I had a feeling she just blamed all her ideas on him so I’d roll with it. Dr. Hieler would understand that Nick the Murderer didn’t own that shirt. I didn’t even know who Nick the Murderer was. Dr. Hieler understood that.

All dressed, I was struck with a sensation of being too nervous to go through with it. My legs felt almost too weak to take me out the door and a light coating of sweat covered the back of my neck. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t face those people, those places. I just wasn’t strong enough.

With shaky hands, I fumbled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Dr. Hieler’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said, sinking down onto my bed.

“No, I told you to call. Remember? I was waiting for it.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said. “I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. I think it was a bad idea to—”

“Val, stop,” he interrupted. “You can do this. You’re ready. We’ve talked this through. It’s going to be tough, but you can handle it. You’ve handled a lot worse over the past several months, right? You’re very strong.”

Tears sprang to my eyes and I wiped them off with my thumb.

“Just concentrate on being in the moment,” he said. “Don’t read into things. See what’s really there, okay? When you get home this afternoon, call me. I’ll have Stephanie patch you through even if I’m in session, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And if you need to talk during the day…”

“I know, I can call.”

“And remember what we said? Even if you make it through only half the day, it’s already a victory, right?”

“Mom’s going back to work. Full day.”

“That’s because she believes in you. But she’ll come home if you need her. My prediction is you won’t, though. And you know I’m always right.” There was a smile in his voice.

I chuckled, sniffed. Wiped my eyes again. “Right. Whatever. I’ve gotta go.”

“You’re going to do great.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so. And remember what we said: you can always transfer after this semester if it doesn’t work out. That’s, what? Seventy-five days or so?”

“Eighty-three,” I said.

“See? Piece of cake. You’ve got this. Call me later.”

“I will.”

I hung up and picked up my backpack. I started to walk out the door, but stopped. There was something missing. I reached under my top dresser drawer and fumbled around until I found it, tucked into the frame of the drawer, out of Mom’s investigative reach. I pulled it out and looked at it for about the millionth time.

It was a photo of Nick and me at Blue Lake on the last day of school, sophomore year. He was holding a beer and I was laughing so hard I swear you could see my tonsils in the picture, and we were sitting on a giant rock right next to the lake. I think it was Mason who took the picture. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was so funny, no matter how many nights I stayed awake trying to drum it up.

We looked so happy. And we were. No matter what the e-mails and the suicide notes and the Hate List said. We were happy.

I touched the laughing still shot of Nick’s face with my finger. I could still hear his voice loud and clear. Still hear him asking me out in his serious Nick way, at once bold and angry and romantic and shy.

“Val,” he had said, pulling himself off the rock and bending to pick up his beer bottle. He picked up a flat rock with his free hand and took a few steps forward and skipped it across the lake. It skipped once, twice, three times before it dove into the water and stayed. Stacey laughed from somewhere nearby in the woods. Duce laughed just after her. It was getting on to nightfall and a frog started croaking somewhere to my left. “Do you ever think about just leaving it all behind?”

I pulled my heels up against the rock and grabbed my knees. I thought about Mom and Dad’s fight the night before. About Mom’s voice drifting up the stairs from the living room, the words unclear, but the tone venomous. About Dad leaving the house around midnight, the door shutting softly behind him. “You mean like run away? Definitely.”

Nick was silent for a long time. He picked up another rock and slung it across the lake. It skipped twice and fell. “Sure,” he said. “Or, you know, like driving off a cliff and never looking back.”

I stared at the setting sun and thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “Everybody does. Totally Thelma and Louise.”

He turned and kind of laughed, then swigged the last of his beer and dropped the bottle to the ground. “Never saw it,” he said. Then, “Remember when we read
Romeo and Juliet
in freshman English last year?”

“Yeah.”

He leaned over me. “You think we could be like them?”

I crinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I guess. Sure.”

He turned again and stared out into the lake. “Yeah, we could. We really could. We think alike.”

I stood up and brushed the backs of my thighs, which felt dimply from the texture of the rock we’d been sitting on. “Are you asking me out?”

He turned, lurched toward me, and grabbed me around the waist. He picked me up until my feet were dangling above the ground and I couldn’t help it—I let out a squeal that turned into a giggle. He kissed me and my body felt so electric up against his even my toes tingled. It seemed like forever that I’d been waiting for him to do this. “Would you say no if I did?” he asked.

“Hell, no, Romeo,” I said. I kissed him back.

“Then I guess I am, Juliet,” he’d said, and I swear as I touched his face in the photo I could hear it again. Could feel him in the room with me. Even though in May he became a monster in the eyes of the world, in my eyes he was still that guy holding me above the ground, kissing me and calling me Juliet.

I stuffed the photo into my back pocket. “Eighty-three and counting,” I said aloud, taking a deep breath and heading downstairs.

I could hear shouting. Screaming and crying. Glass breaking.

And then I heard nothing but the drone of the sirens outside my window.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Jennifer Brown’s newest novel,
Torn Away
.

COMING MAY 2014

Marin wanted to teach me the East Coast Swing. It was pretty much her only goal in life. She was constantly pulling on my arms or standing in front of the TV, her hands on her square little hips, sparkle nail polish glinting and ratty rose-colored tutu quivering.

“Come on, Jersey, it’s fun. You’ll like it. Jersey!” Stomp. “Are you listening to me? Jerseeey!”

She’d learned swing in Miss Janice’s dance class. Technically, it wasn’t a routine they were there to learn, but one evening Janice, in an old-school mood, had popped in a swing CD and taught them how to do it. Marin thought it was the best dance ever.

She was forever counting off, her pudgy five-year-old arms around an imaginary dance partner, her brown curls bouncing to a beat only she could hear as she hummed what she remembered of the song they’d danced to in class.

But she really wanted me to be her dance partner. She probably imagined me grabbing her wrists, pulling her through my legs, tossing her into the air, and then catching her. She probably envisioned the two of us in matching costumes, wowing an audience.

“Not now, Marin,” I told her time and again. I was always too busy watching TV or doing homework or texting my best friends, Jane and Dani, about what pests little sisters can be. Especially little sisters who think the whole world is about the East Coast Swing.

Marin lived in leotards. She had sequined ones and velvety ones and some that looked like tuxedoes and plain ones in every color of the rainbow. She wore them until they were so small her butt cheeks hung out and her tutus sported holes in the netting that she could fit a fist through. Still, Mom had to throw them away when Marin wasn’t looking, and had to buy new ones to make up for the favorites that were lost.

We’d begun to wonder if Marin would insist on wearing leotards when she started kindergarten in the fall and what exactly would happen when the teacher said she couldn’t. We feared meltdowns, epic morning battles, ultimatums.

Because Marin wore those dance leotards everywhere. Around the house, to the store, to bed.

And, of course, to dance class.

She was wearing one on the day of the tornado. It was tangerine-colored with black velvet panels on the sides, a line of rhinestones dotting the neckline. I knew this because it was what she’d been wearing when she asked me to do the East Coast Swing with her before she went to class that day.

“I can teach you,” she’d said hopefully, hopping on her toes next to the couch, where I was sprawled back doing nothing but staring at a car commercial. As if I’d ever have money for a car.

“No,” I said. “Get out of the way. I can’t see the TV.”

She’d glanced over her shoulder at the TV, and I could see where something sticky had adhered a bit of black lint to her cheek. Wisps of curls around her face looked like they’d once been sticky as well. Probably a Popsicle. It was the end of May and already warm enough for Popsicles. School would be out in less than a week, and I would officially be a senior. She leaned in closer and prodded my shoulder with her fat little fingers—also sticky.

“It’s a commercial. Get up. I’ll show you.”

“No, Marin.” I’d groaned, getting annoyed, brushing my shirt off where her fingers had touched, and when she’d commenced to jumping up and down in front of me, repeating
Pleasepleaseplease
, I yelled at her. “No! I don’t want to! Go away!”

She stopped jumping and pouted, sticking out her bottom lip the way little kids do when they’re getting ready to cry. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t cry. Didn’t throw a fit. Just blinked at me, that lower lip trembling, and then walked away, the bling on her leotard catching the light from the TV. I heard her go into Mom’s room. I heard them talking. And when they left for dance class, I felt relieved that she was finally out of my hair.

I loved Marin.

I loved my little sister.

But after that day, I would hear myself over and over and over again:
Go away!
I would shout at her in my dreams. I would see that trembling lip. I would see the slow blink of her big, pixie-like eyes. I would see her walk away, up on her toes the way she always did, the glint of the rhinestones from her leotard blinding me.