Speechless (15 page)

Not to mention, I could use the money. I just threw out most of the contents of my closet, and I’m pretty sure Mom will be in no hurry to fund an impulsive overhaul of my wardrobe.

I smile slowly at Dex and nod, and Asha’s and Sam’s returning smiles don’t escape my notice. Neither does the way Andy immediately walks out of the room.

“Okay then,” Dex says, and I guess that’s all there is to it.

I’m part of the team.

* * *

When I walk through the front door, I drop my messenger bag right there in the foyer, too tired to carry it any farther. I smell like dish soap and the grilled cheese sandwiches Sam made for me and Asha before I took her home (“A congratulatory gesture for your new employment,” he explained to me with one of his tilted smiles, and seriously, what is with the sudden somersaults my stomach does whenever that happens?).

I want a shower. I want a nap. Maybe a nap
in
the shower. But before that I want something to drink, so I head into the kitchen, and I have the refrigerator door halfway open before I realize Mom and Dad are seated at the table.

Whatever they’re discussing, it’s bad. I know it before either of them say a single word. For one, they always break bad news to me in the kitchen; like when I was nine and our old cat Whiskers was put down, and I came home from school to find Dad waiting in here with a glass of chocolate milk, or when Grandpa Murphy had a heart attack last year and Mom started crying over the sink as she told me.

Second, they always have the same look on their faces. Thinly veiled panic.

I shut the refrigerator and lean against it, unscrewing the top of my bottled water. They both stare at me. Do they expect me to say something? Did they forget already? Maybe they did, because after a minute Dad clears his throat, an awkward and delayed conversation starter.

“Hey, sweetness, why don’t you sit down for a minute?” he says without looking at me.

I obediently pull back a chair and sit at the table, watching them carefully. I wonder who died this time.

“I’ve got some bad news,” he tells me, his gaze still focused on the wooden tabletop. I wish he would look at me. But at the same time I’m sort of afraid of what I’d see. “I…I lost my job today.”

Mom reaches across the table and grabs his hand. It’s weird. My parents have never been very lovey-dovey with each other. Maybe they’re different behind closed doors—not that I have ever thought about that, or would ever want to—but the most they ever do in front of me is cuddle on the couch while watching television. So I know this must be really bad.

I want to ask what this means. For him. For us. How did this happen? He’s worked for his company ever since I was born. He’s never late, hardly ever takes a sick day. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to take his vacation. How could he lose his job, just like that? With no warning? Or was there warning, and they just didn’t say anything so I wouldn’t worry?

“It’s going to be okay,” Mom assures me. I can’t understand how she can be so calm, but I’m grateful for it. “It’ll be tight for a while, but we’ll get through it. We can get by for now with me at the shop, and your father will find another job, and…” She trails off, swallowing hard, like she’s lost the energy to remain so optimistic.

Dad meets my eyes, his own rimmed red. I’ve never seen him cry before. Not ever.

“I’m sorry,” he says, so soft I barely hear him, and covers his face with one hand.

It kills me to see him act like this. Like he’s let us both down. It makes me feel sick inside. I go stand behind him, wrapping my arms around his neck, holding as tight as I can at the awkward angle. He breathes out and rubs his thumb across the outside of my wrist. Mom pushes off her chair with a huff, leans hard against the sink, and I can tell she’s barely holding it together by the way she clenches her fists.

“Roger was just looking for any excuse to get rid of you,” she spits. Roger is—or, was—my dad’s boss. “You should sue. You really should.”

“Irene,” Dad says tiredly. Clearly they’ve already gone over this.

She whirls around, wringing a dishcloth in her hands. “It’s a conflict of interest! He’s that Snyder boy’s uncle, for Christ’s sake!”

I let go of Dad and look at her. I’d forgotten that Warren is his boss’s nephew. It’s not something that ever came up, really, only in passing mention. It never mattered before. Does it matter now? Would his uncle really fire my father because of what I did? Yours hurt mine, so I hurt you—that’s really what it breaks down to?

I never thought—I mean, my family wasn’t supposed to be hurt by this. So many people have been hurt already. It’s like a ripple effect. I thought the aftershocks were over, the casualty list limited to Warren, Joey, Noah, Andy. Me. But it keeps growing. And it’s my fault.

I want to crawl under a rock and die.

I settle for slipping upstairs into my room. Mom and Dad are too busy launching into another argument to notice my exit. I should take a shower and get the diner smell off, but I’m too tired and too sad, and it’s kind of comforting, somehow. To curl up in a ball in the middle of my bed and breathe in Rosie’s. To pretend I’m back at the diner, with Sam and Asha and Dex and Lou, where I clicked into their little system like a missing puzzle piece. Where people looked glad to see me. People like Sam.

And that’s what I’m thinking about as I fall asleep—Sam, smiling, Sam, standing at the grill, Sam, trading notes with me in art, adjusting his glasses and giving me his default look, skeptical but amused, Sam, his body pressed against my back, Sam, pressed against my front instead, Sam, his mouth near mine, not touching, just breathing, Sam, his hand warm and steady on my hip, Sam, Sam, Sam Sam SamSamSamsamsamsam—

day nine

In the morning, I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock five times before rolling out of bed, exhausted and sore all over, and then I stand under the shower for way too long, take too much time finding something to wear in my meager closet and burn my bagel on the first try and have to start all over again. As a result, I’m almost ten minutes late for first-period geometry. Mr. Callihan is writing something on the board when I slink in.

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Chelsea,” he says without turning around.

I drop into my seat and lay my head down on my desk. I’m too tired to be embarrassed.

I’m dragging all day, totally out of it, preoccupied with feeling guilty about Dad. And with thinking about Sam, and how much I’m looking forward to working at the diner again tonight, and then I feel even guiltier, because—hello!—this horrible, awful thing has happened to my father, something I am at least partially to blame for. I should not be happy about anything right now.

Asha notices. At lunch in the library, she pokes me in the elbow with her pencil and says, “Hey, did you even hear what I said? About finding the axis of symmetry?”

I definitely did not. And I definitely do not care. I’m too busy zoning out. A much more productive use of my time than geometry.

She sighs and rolls the pencil between her fingers. “We can work on it later,” she says. She pulls out her knitting—the yarn is a mix of green and silver, this shiny, glinting material, and I remember the scarf she told Sam she’d make for him.

I write
Sam?
on my whiteboard and slide it over to her.

She nods and says, “I finished Noah’s a few days ago,” and then looks at me from underneath her eyelashes. “I’m visiting him this weekend.”

I scratch Sam’s name off the board with my thumbnail. I don’t want to think about Noah in the hospital. What are people like after they wake up from comas? Even I’m not naive enough to believe it’s like the movies, where the person just opens their eyes and is perfectly functional. I wonder if he can talk. If the police have interviewed him yet like they interviewed me. If he even remembers that night at all.

“You could come,” Asha says, carefully neutral.

Come to the hospital? Yeah, right. I’d probably be kicked out on arrival. There is no way Noah wants me there.

I don’t answer. I just take out my sketchpad and doodle absently. Sam and I still have to figure out our project. The last time we talked about it, he mentioned maybe making the characters out of papier-mâché, but the wire netting Ms. Kinsey has doesn’t bend well enough for it to seem feasible. So now we’re back to square one.

I consider the possibilities. Maybe set the Peanuts characters in a classical painting style? Nah. Too complicated, and besides, we’re supposed to mimic the artist’s style, not reinterpret it. It needs to be straight-up comic strip style. But how to do it without being completely boring?

There was a really big roll of thick paper in one of Ms. Kinsey’s supply closets. What if…what if we recreated a big comic strip with it? That would be pretty cool. A magnified comic. I wonder if Sam will go for it.

I’m still mulling it over when Asha tucks away her knitting needles and says, “I have to go to my locker. I’ll meet you after the assembly?”

Assembly? What assembly? She walks away before I can ask what she’s talking about.

After lunch I haul ass to art, hoping Sam will be there early, too, but he comes in two seconds before the bell rings. He shoots me a brief smile as he sits down at our workstation. I want to tell him my idea, see what he thinks, but before I can find a way to explain it, Ms. Kinsey announces that we’re heading to the auditorium. So Asha’s right; there
is
an assembly.

We all file into the empty theater. Our seats are close to the stage, on the left end. Sam sits beside me, his wrist touching mine on the shared armrest, as more students pour in like a tidal wave through the two entrances, all of them talking to each other, laughing, excited to be out of class. It’s so
loud.
Was it always this loud, or does it just seem amplified, since I haven’t spoken in so long? God, it’s obnoxious.

Sam isn’t talking, though. He looks distracted. I want to ask him what’s up, but I left my whiteboard in the art room, and then it doesn’t matter anyway because the lights dim.

People whistle and whoop in the sudden darkness, shifting in their squeaky seats. Someone from the balcony sails a paper airplane toward the stage that makes it all the way to the third row. When the spotlight comes on, illuminating the single microphone stand center stage, the conversation and laughter fades into a hushed swell of whispers. The sound is like rustling insects.

Mr. Fenton, our assistant principal, walks onto the stage and takes the microphone. He spends a minute trying to quiet the audience, saying things like, “Quiet, please,” and clearing his throat as he paces a few steps back and forth.

Eventually everyone shuts up enough for him to get on with the program.

“Most of you are aware that recently there was a grievous incident involving a few of our students, one of whom is currently still hospitalized due to an act of violence instigated by a fellow classmate,” he says, voice booming out through the room. “Though this did not happen on school grounds, we felt it was important to take some time today to address what has transpired and reiterate our zero-tolerance policy toward any and all harassment, whether it be physical or verbal.”

Mr. Fenton goes on, something about counselors being available for support and unanswered questions, and the evils of discrimination and necessity of tolerance, but his words barely register with me. I have this dizzy, sinking stomach sensation, like being trapped in an elevator with the cables cut loose. Nothing but bottomless falling.

He says something else, a final word, and walks off, but I know that can’t be it, it can’t be over. Just as I’m wondering what’s next, Brendon Ryan emerges onto the stage.

This does nothing to help my stomach.

Brendon holds the microphone and looks out at the sea of faces with a somewhat nervous—though still as dazzling as ever—smile. “Hi. My name is Brendon Ryan,” he says, “and Mr. Fenton wanted me to talk to you a little about what I’ve been organizing lately. Starting this week, we’ll be forming our own Gay/Straight Alliance chapter at Grand Lake. Any student is welcome—whether you put the Gay or the Straight into the alliance. Or even if you fall somewhere in between.” This garners a few titters from the audience, and Brendon looks down and back up with another smile. “Ms. Kline has been kind enough to offer us use of her room—A214, it’s on the second floor—Tuesdays after school at three-fifteen. It’s really just a place for us to talk, to have open conversations about this stuff, you know, answer any questions, so what happened to Noah Beckett can be prevented from ever happening again.”

I swear he’s staring straight at me when he says this. I swear
everyone
is staring, all eyes on me, blaming, knowing. Everything I did; everything I didn’t do. This is like one of those recurring nightmares I have, where I’m naked in front of the whole school, and I’m supposed to ride a tricycle and juggle bananas at the same time, even though I don’t know how to do either. Except this is for real, not just a concoction of my stupid subconscious.

My legs act of their own volition, and suddenly I’m standing, squeezing my way out of the row, stumbling down the aisle toward the exit. It’s fight or flight, and my brain has apparently chosen flight.

No one stops me. Not as I bolt from the auditorium, Brendon’s voice ringing in my ears. Not as I run down the hall, push through the heavy doors and outside. It is, of course, only twenty-something degrees, and I have no jacket. I slump against the brick wall and hug myself, shivering in the cold.

“Chelsea!”

It’s Sam.

They always say misery loves company, but right now I kind of want to be miserable and
alone,
so I can wallow in my self-loathing properly.

“Chelsea,” he says again, out of breath, but I’m too ashamed to look at him.

So instead I watch as snowflakes cascade down and stick to my wild red hair. Irish red. Red like dried blood on pavement. Like Noah’s blood. Like—

“What’s wrong?” Sam says, and then, gently, “You can tell me.”

But I can’t. I don’t have my whiteboard.