The Bargaining (22 page)

He shakes his head like he knew I'd ask that question someday. “I was a sophomore,” he says, as though that explains everything.

“And I was a junior. So?”

“Come on, Penny. You know what it's like. Sophomores are innocent bystanders in a mafia shootout. Nobody saw nuthin'. We're all just trying to get by until we become upperclassmen.”

“Yeah, but you did hear things.”

“What do you want me to say, Penny? It's the same with every new kid. Especially girls. Guys talk about whether or not they're going to bang her, girls talk about whether or not she's a slut, nobody says anything to the new kid directly, and eventually some other new kid moves in, people start
talking about her instead, and that's the end of it.”

Most people have certain “tells” when they're lying. Like they get all twitchy or something. Since Rob doesn't lie, he has those same tells when he has to be honest about the painful things. He's fidgeting now.

“Did they know why I was there? Did they know about Phoenix?”

He chuckles a little. “They thought you were a pyro.”

“What?”

He ducks under his embarrassment. “I heard one guy in the locker room talking once about how you got kicked out of your last school for trying to light it up. You know, people just make shit up.”

I remember what Rae said about how teenagers are sociopaths. I try to decide what makes a kid worse—being a pyro or being a liar.

Or being the girl who lets another girl get beat up for something she didn't do.

“Don't worry, I set him straight,” Rob says quietly, and I feel maybe my first glimmer of summer warmth. I know I can make it stay as long as he's walking next to me, this strange nonsibling I never thought I wanted.

“Why are you asking me all this now?” he says. “I mean, what does it matter? You'll come back. You'll be a senior, and
part of that will probably be independent study anyway—assuming your grades don't totally suck—and then you'll be done with high school forever. I'm jealous.”

I step over a high tree root jutting from the ground, and Rob follows my lead.

“I guess I just wanted to know how bad it really was. And my grades do suck, by the way.”

He sighs, a gesture maybe more mature than I think he's ready for. It's only occasionally that I look at Rob like an actual little brother. He's too close to me in age, and of course not actually related. But every once in a while, I find myself fighting the urge to turn his shoulders and steer him down a certain path when he looks like he might be veering, which is practically never. I wonder not for the first time how often he feels the need to do that to me. I wonder if that's why he's here now.

“I think what you want to know is how bad
you
were when you first moved out here. But see, that's the thing. You don't have to be in that place anymore, you know?”

I don't say anything, but I slow my stride, and he almost bumps into me.

“I mean, I'm not going to be all ‘move on with your life.' I know you've heard enough of that by now. I guess I'm just asking why you don't feel like you can yet.”

The trees are gossiping louder than ever. We're giving them a lot to talk about, I guess. But there's that maturity again, only this time, it feels like he's the one turning my shoulders straight.

“I think we're kind of close to where they went looking for those kids,” Rob says, and I do stop now. Fully. And Rob does walk into me.

I lose my balance and catch myself on a tree, and when I pull my hand away, I take a sharp sliver of bark with me. Pulling the sliver out, I release a fine trickle of blood down my palm.

“Damn, I'm sorry,” Rob says, pulling the edge of his shirt up and pressing it against my hand, squeezing.

“What did you say about those kids?” I ask, barely feeling my hand or anything else. “How do you—”

“Huh?” Rob is pressing harder on my hand, and now I do flinch a little.

“Hey, how bad does that hurt?” he asks, ignoring my question and checking my hand again.

“It's fine,” I say.

“You don't look fine. You look kinda pale. I think we'd better start walking back.”

I let Rob turn us around, and we trace a path back to the house and enter through the back door and into the tiny kitchen with April's cherished oven.

“I think there's a first aid kit in that second box from the bottom,” I say, pointing to a crooked stack of sagging cardboard boxes. Rob unpiles them until he reaches the bottom of the tower.

“There, next to the vodka,” I say.

Rob pulls the bottle out, lifts an eyebrow, and sets it aside gently.

“I don't suppose that's gotten any use lately,” he says, only half turning toward me. Then he guides me to the sink and orders me to wash the cut out.

“It's not that bad,” I say, but I can't stop my hand from shaking, so of course he doesn't believe me.

“Peroxide,” he grumbles and digs out a brown bottle, unwraps a cotton ball from the tiny white kit, and exposes a fresh bandage, prepping it like a surgeon.

I can't help but smile at him, but he doesn't seem convinced.

“I feel bad,” he says. “I practically body-slammed you into that tree. I wasn't expecting you to stop so fast. Did you trip or something?”

My smile drops, and he snugs the bandage over my wound before crossing his impossibly long arms over his chest. And he waits.

I slide the bottle of vodka around on the countertop for a second before I confess.

“It's a little weird here,” I say, wondering how vague I can be without sounding completely crazy. Not that complete honesty will make me sound sane.

Rob doesn't say anything. But I think I see his arms tighten across his chest.

“I keep thinking . . . sometimes when I'm alone, it's like . . . I'll hear . . .”

I focus intently on the bottle of vodka. “Sometimes I think I hear things. And . . . see things. Like, maybe . . . Rae.”

For a minute, I think I've imagined Rob, too. Maybe he's one of the kids I've conjured along with Rae and the girl in the woods and the boys behind the curtains.

And that thing under the mattresses.

He's so quiet, I almost don't want to look up to see if he's really there. If he wasn't, I think I'd bolt into the woods and run as far as my legs and lungs would let me, and once I couldn't run any longer, I'd sink to the ground and die, numb and breathless.

But he is there, and I'm glad I looked up because his arms aren't across his chest anymore, but he's rubbing his chin. Both hands, just rubbing and smoothing out the skin around his jaw, like maybe the answer of how to fix me might appear like a genie.

“She's gone, Penny.”

“I know.”

“I know you know, but I don't think you're letting yourself feel it. Any of it.”

I nod. I know.

“I don't even know if you're hearing me right now,” he says, growing frustrated, something I've never actually seen on Rob. I'm getting that feeling again that this emotion is too mature on him. It doesn't fit.

“What do you want me to do, Rob? You asked, okay!”

“I shouldn't have mentioned anything about those kids.” He's shaking his head like he's blaming himself, but he still sounds upset with me.

“Why, because I'm too fragile to say the slightest thing around? ‘Oh, nobody say anything about anything. It might set Penny off. Oh, nobody talk about her like she's in the room. We might spook her!'”

“Not me. I don't pull that shit with you, and you know it,” he says, taking a step back.

“You just did.”

And now we're both quiet. His arms are back across his chest, and I'm fiddling with the vodka bottle again, and even though I haven't wanted to drink since that night in the woods, I would love nothing more than to struggle to focus on this moment, to have to squint to pull my thoughts
together. I would love it if I could act exactly how I feel around the only person I thought I didn't have to pretend to be okay around.

And then, just when I'm considering uncapping the ­bottle and pouring a burning stream down my throat, Rob sinks into a squat beside one of the boxes, then lowers himself to the floor like he can't bear to stand a second longer.

“I didn't know her,” he says after a few false starts. “Hell, until March, I barely knew you.”

He's not wrong. Aside from the occasional e-mail, which I'm pretty sure was initiated less by Rob and more by April, Rob and I only ever saw each other on the rare visits I'd make up north to see my dad. And I'd made every effort to associate Rob with April, April with divorce, divorce with the way Mom is now, and everything else that went wrong all those years ago.

“But maybe this doesn't have as much to do with what happened.” And he stops here and looks at me pointedly. “Whatever that might be.”

He knows most of it. Maybe not all, but most. He's giving me a pass on the rest, and I'm positive I don't deserve it.

“But maybe,” he continues, “it has more to do with how much of it you're not sure you would take back.”

And this surprises me. Because up to this point, I would
have told him the same thing I told Miller that night in his trailer. That I'd take it all back. Every last ounce of it from the moment I locked eyes with Rae.

“When I went through that stuff with my mom,” he says, unearthing the conversation about his dad that he vowed would stay buried, “I regretted a lot of what I said to her.” He stops rubbing his chin, and I see red splotches in place of his hands. “But not all of it. And once I figured that out, I knew what I could let go and what I'd have to keep.”

I consider the prospect of inventorying all those moments with Rae and start to feel a little dizzy.

But I nod anyway.

“It'll probably take awhile,” he says, divining my thoughts not for the first time. “Just . . . I don't know. Give yourself the time.”

It's maybe the most reasonable advice I've ever received, and because I now feel that distance shrinking between us, I nod again. Just once. But I think he believes me because he drops the conversation into the box with the first aid kit, then slides the vodka bottle out of my loose grip without a word and buries it in the box too.

“You never told me why you ditched out of soccer clinic,” I say, ready to lift the weight of this conversation.

He shrugs, clearly not prepared to answer that question.

“You just sounded funny the last time I talked to you. Actually, you and my mom have both been sounding funny. I guess I wanted to see for myself if everything was cool. You know, make sure you two weren't going all Jack Torrance up here or something.”

I try to laugh, but it feels impossible. I picture April cackling away with Cynthia Doom at the Registrar's Office. I reflect back on her pinched face, the dark half moons under her eyes, her shortness with me when she's normally nothing but patience personified. And today with Cynthia, that wasn't anywhere near her real laugh.

“Hey,” I say, dark inspiration seeping in. “Do you want to take a drive with me? I need to talk to someone.”

17

R
OB AND
I
SIT IN
the parking lot of The Washingtonian, staring at the front doors like the answer of what to do next might be written on them.

“I can't count all the ways that this is a bad idea,” Rob says, running his hand up and down the seat belt absently. The flashing Bud Light sign reflects off the surface of his eyes.

“I could have come alone,” I say. “I'm sure you have to get this car back to your friend. He's probably missing it. Plus, don't think I haven't noticed how you've managed to avoid explaining how you snuck out of soccer clinic without being noticed.”

He looks down, a tiny smile fighting its way to his lips.

“She doesn't need the car back for a couple of days.”

“Ah. I see. She,” I say, arching an eyebrow at him. “And I suppose
she
is also the one covering for you while you play hooky from your very expensive summer camp?”

“Okay, one?
She
is Gwen Brzinski, and she's really funny and smart and beyond gorgeous, and she's a better forward than me. Two? When you say summer camp, you make me sound like I'm nine. Three? I'll give you a ride to school every day this year if you promise to let me be the one to tell my mom about her
if
I ever get anywhere with her.”

I'm getting that feeling again: the urge to take him by the shoulders.

“You would have given me a ride to school regardless,” I say.

His eyes plead.

“Okay! Yes. Besides, I'm not really sure how I would have told her about your maybe-girlfriend without somehow involving the story of you actually being here. Which, according to me, you never were,” I say before he can beg me not to tell April that part, either.

“And not Dad either,” he adds, which only gets a grunt from me in return.

“What?” he asks.

“Oh, come on, Rob. When am I going to confide that ­little secret? During one of our daily chats?”

Rob isn't as good at ignoring sarcasm as April. “Well, when's the last time you tried talking to him?”

“Don't you start on me too. April's tried,” I say, though I try to think back to her nagging me about my relationship with my dad, and I can't think of a specific instance. Maybe it's just the way she cocks her head at me whenever I blow off a message my dad has sent through her.

Because he can't say anything to me directly.

“Sorry,” Rob says, and for a second I forget what he's sorry about. “It's just . . . why would a guy who doesn't care about his daughter carry that stupid penny around in his wallet?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” I say, because I'd rather not be having this conversation at all right now. Since when is my relationship with my dad on the table for discussion?