The Other Way Around (27 page)

I don't know how I knew this. I figured I was about to go down in history as the lamest teenage guy ever. I could picture my own freak-show exhibit.
He refused sex from not one, but two girls!
I even liked Emily. And she liked me, thought I was a good person and supposedly even loved me. But somehow I knew I was right. I thought about Mima and how much I really missed her, because when I was with her I was really there, I was someone worth being and worth being with. I guess I thought Emily made me feel that way too, some of the time. I thought I was doing the right thing for both of us.

Emily's eyes were blazing, picking up a bit of the bonfire's glow. I crossed my arms over my chest to suggest that I wasn't backing down. But then I saw it. I saw it before I could say anything, before I could soften my posture and say something that would allow us both to back down and talk like people who actually cared about each other. I saw fear. Behind her anger, beneath her buzz, Emily was terrified. I opened my mouth to speak, but she spoke first. “Suit yourself,” she said coldly and left me standing there alone in the night.

I stop writing and chew on the end of the pen. I've reached the last part of the story that I'm really sure of. I'm nervous about putting anything else down in writing because maybe it's true and maybe it's just how I imagine it happened. But once it's written down it's sure to have a kind of reality that doesn't exist when it's just in my head.

I never really liked the book
Where the Wild Things Are
, but it was one of my dad's favorites. I never really liked it because I never really liked Max. I always thought Max had it pretty good, and I couldn't understand why he felt the need to run off. If he hadn't been such a pain in the ass in the first place he wouldn't have been sent to bed without any supper. He wasn't beaten or abused or even yelled at, and still he stormed around like he was so mistreated and unhappy. I never thought he deserved to be angry.

Now that I'm thinking about Emily and how she treated me, I feel a little bit like Max. I wonder if I deserved to be angry. It's weird, and I don't really want to connect the two, but I'm also thinking about Mom and wondering if I deserved to be angry at her. It's all completely exhausting.

I put the pen back down to the paper, but the words aren't ready yet. And then, like she can read my mind, G opens her eyes. I sit straight up; the pen and notebook fall off my lap onto the floor. I'm wondering if I should ring for the nurse or something, but instead I wait to see if she'll stay awake or do anything else. I mean, G hasn't actually been in a coma for ten years or anything, and opening her eyes, while significant to me, probably doesn't represent a major medical breakthrough for the nursing staff.

Her eyelids flutter a little bit like Mima's used to do when she was falling asleep during
Jeopardy
. She hated to get caught falling asleep while watching TV. She said it made her feel like a
real
old person. So whenever she did, she would shout a random answer out at the TV as soon as her eyes opened again. It was pretty funny. The clue would be something like “gas that makes up 70 percent of the earth's atmosphere” and Mima would scream out, “What is Andrew Jackson!” “I thought I had that one,” she would say. And I would nod, and we would keep on watching.

G is definitely waking up, though. Her eyes are open now and she's taking in the surroundings of her room, the blinking machines and the new daylight coming in through the long hanging blinds. I pick my notebook and pen up off the floor without taking my eyes from her face. She slowly licks her lips and makes a face like the taste in her mouth is pretty bad. There's a cup of ice water next to her bed that I grab and maneuver the straw towards her face so she can drink. She takes a small sip and licks her lips again. “Thanks for staying with me,” she says. Her voice is a little scratchy. She lifts her head to look down at her leg suspended in the air and surrounded by white plaster.
“Hmm, that doesn't look good.”

“Compound fracture,” I tell her. “The bone came through your leg.”

She turns a little pale and waves off the details with one hand. “Did they call your mom?”

“Not yet. At least I don't think so.”

“They will. And they'll probably send a cop in too. Have you thought about what you're going to tell them?”

“Kind of,” I say, and I pick up the notebook from the floor.

“That's good,” G says. “I'm glad you're getting it all down, but that's not what you want to tell the cop when he shows up.”

“Okay, what should I say?”

G is quiet for a minute. She looks out the window thoughtfully. “We were hiking. Just you and me. Let them think we're boyfriend-girlfriend or whatever. I mean, you don't have to come out and say it. They'll just assume it, and don't tell them otherwise. But it was just the two of us; that's the important part. I fell and hurt my leg and some people gave us a ride to the hospital.”

“Why can't we tell them the truth?”

“They'll go straight to Burdock,” G says. “As long as they fly under the radar, the cops around here don't really care what goes on there in the off-season. But we don't want to give them a reason to go sniffing around. I'm sure you noticed that not everything there was completely legal. Plus, you're underage. I don't want to get Jesse or Tim in trouble for transporting a minor across state lines.”

“Okay, but how did you and I meet in the first place?”

“The same way we actually met; a bus station. We hit it off and decided to travel together for a while. A runaway story.
The cops won't look too closely at that. They don't really care that much as long as everything has a tidy ending.”

“What about when my mom shows up? I don't know if she's going to go along with our story.”

“Nancy might surprise you,” G says.

“Hey, when did I tell you my mom's name?”

G shrugs and looks out the window again. “Will you see if there's a nurse around? I could use some more of whatever painkiller they're giving me.”

I walk out in hall, dazed, thinking about the story G fed me and wondering if the police officer will buy it coming from me. I've never been a particularly good liar when it comes to massive deviations from the truth. Little things are easier, like calling a C-plus a B-minus or telling my mom I was studying with friends at the library when really I was sitting by myself.

The nurse sitting at the desk goes quickly down the hall to G's room with some pills in a paper cup. I take my time walking back. G hasn't asked me what happened yet—how she fell and broke her leg. I wonder if she knows the truth. I wonder if I know the truth.

When we pulled up to the hospital I didn't hesitate for a second. I knew what would happen. I knew that unless I gave a fake name, they would track me down and call my mom and I would be heading back on the first plane to Glens Falls. I knew all this, the same way I knew that Jesse and Tim weren't going to park the van and follow us in. They looked sad and they looked sorry, but they pulled away all the same. I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye. I guess I'll worry about that later. Tim at least is still in school. I could probably track him down someday if I really wanted to.

The point is, I chose it. I chose to care about G and even Mom. I chose to think about the kind of attention that really matters, and I decided to let Emily go, for now. Because if I've learned anything in the last few weeks it's that sometimes you do have to choose. After what happened, it seems like the right decision.

Back in the hospital room, the medicine is kicking in and G's eyelids are already beginning to quiver. Pretty soon she's out cold again. I take my notebook and my pen and pull a chair into the hall. What I have to write, I don't want to write with her lying right there next to me.

After my fight with Emily I went back to the Bike Derby, but it was over and people were drifting away from the fire. It was like I was in one of those teen movies where the main character races to get to the prom and arrives just as the janitor is sweeping up the last of the confetti.

Emily didn't make it back to the tent that night either, and when I woke up her backpack and her sleeping bag were gone. She wasn't at breakfast, but she turned up at lunch hanging all over one of the squinty-eyed anarchist guys. She sat sideways on the picnic table, rubbing his shoulders and picking little bites of food off his plate. I tried not to stare. She was laughing a lot and tossing her head around. The guy she was with looked more annoyed that she was eating his food than like he was enjoying his backrub.

G assessed the scene and gave a one-word opinion, “Classy.” I didn't respond. In spite of the way she'd been acting, jealousy still burned like acid in the back of my throat.

I spent most of the afternoon alone. I didn't feel like going to any of the workshops or hanging around the hot springs. It was too hot to swim anyway. Burdock had lost a little bit of its
shine; now it just seemed dusty and dirty. I walked up the road to Steamers on the off chance that they had a pay phone. Inside the shop a kid was wiping down some huge coffee urns. In the back I found a payphone but there was no dial tone and three pieces of hot pink gum stuck to the receiver. “No phone,” I said conversationally to the kid cleaning up, hoping he might offer to let me use the shop's phone.

“Nope,” he agreed without looking up.

By the time I got back to the campground it was time for my meal-prep shift. Danielle gave me the job of making “no bake” chocolate peanut butter cookies. She gave me a grease-stained recipe card and showed me where she had laid out all the ingredients. I wondered if everyone got this treatment or if she could tell by looking at me I was clueless in the kitchen. Regardless, it was good to do something to take my mind off Emily, and the cookies came out okay, as far as vegan no-bake cookies go.

Dinner was finished in a bit of a rush. Most people seemed to be hurrying to prepare for the Christmas Eve Carnival. Personally, I was doing my best to pretend it wasn't Christmas Eve so I wouldn't think about Mom all by herself. There wasn't much for me to do since I wasn't performing, so after dinner I took a slow walk around the campground, waiting for the night's events to begin.

I saw Emily. She was hanging out around a small fire with the guy I'd seen her with earlier and a few other people. I felt like a stalker, but I crept in closer to get a better look at what was going on. The sweet stink of marijuana hung in the air, and there was a bottle being passed around the circle. I winced as Emily took a big swig and handed it off to the person next to
her. Suddenly she stood up and announced loudly that she had to pee. She headed right for the bush I was hiding in. I stumbled backwards, and a stick snapped loudly beneath my weight. For a second I thought our eyes met in the firelight, but then one of the guys said something about coyotes and everyone started laughing and howling loudly and I managed to escape unnoticed.

I trudged back to our campsite, but it was empty and a bit depressing to be there all alone. I'd never been alone to make a point before. It just seemed to happen by default. I didn't feel noble or righteous without Emily around. I just felt lonely. Eventually I found the rest of the Freegans near the bonfire site setting up for their show. They were rushing around, trying to get everything ready for their big performance. I knew it mattered a lot to them to put on a good show for Burdock. Emily's Hula Hoop and props were there, laid out like she was just about to show up and grab them.

“Seen Emily?” G asked as she bustled by with an armload of costumes.

“No,” I lied without meeting her eyes.

“Can you help Lyle with the ropes?” she asked. “He's stressing out about finding somewhere to set up the tightrope.”

“Sure,” I said, glad to be given a task.

I found a very stressed-out-looking Lyle trying to rig a tightrope between two gnarled scrub oaks. The trees were brittle. Every time he found a place to tie off one end, the other would snap. He was sweating, and there was a big streak of dirt across his forehead. “Can you do the high ropes?” he asked before I'd had a chance to offer or say anything. He looked up at me, a little panicked. “I found a spot and they're all laid out. Someone just needs to tie them up. I showed you that, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can handle that.”

“Just have G check it when you're done,” he added.

“No problem.”

Lyle had shown me the intricate set of ropes and knots that allowed the trapeze to swing freely and safely enough for them to perform their act. I hadn't done it in about a week, but he had been so determined to make me practice the knots that they came easily with muscle memory. I grabbed G as she passed by and she gave the whole thing a cursory look. “It's great,” she said without really looking.

“Seriously,” I said and grabbed her arm. “Make sure it's right; it's the first time I've done it alone.”

“All right, all right.” She stopped and looked over the knots I had tied. She grabbed the trapeze bar and gave it a few test swings. “It all looks right, Andrew—” She stopped midsentence. I turned to look at what had caught her attention. It was Emily. She was hopping on one foot, trying unsuccessfully to get the other into her striped tights. She was clearly in an altered state. One by one the other Freegans took notice. First Jesse, then Tim, and finally Lyle. They were all staring at her. I looked down at the ropes in my hand instead; the whole thing had the feeling of dry brush about to burst into flame.

Emily stumbled and sat down, finally getting her other leg through the opening of her striped tights. She looked up at the group. “What?” she said icily. Everyone except G looked away. Emily stood up, marched over to me, and threw her arms around my neck. I turned my head as she leaned in to kiss me and her open mouth fell on my neck, which she began licking and nuzzling. “I missed you, Drew,” she said. “I'm sorry I was acting so crazy.”