Wake (52 page)

If Willa hadn’t made her cry none of this would have happened.

I grab my phone off the dresser and send a short text:
I told her about you.
Before I can tell the rest of the story—that Elise actually agrees with her messed up, borderline homicidal method—Willa replies with:
You don’t deserve friends.

So that’s what she thinks of me, is it? I may be standoffish and grouchy, but I’m not inherently a bad person. I don’t deliberately harm the people I love.

I can’t believe I ever liked you.

It’s not necessary to tell me what a monster I am.

I don’t think I could. There’s no word for what I think of her.

Ask Hudson to assign you a new lab partner tomorrow,
she texts.
Don’t put yourself through the trouble

of having to acknowledge me.

For once, I’m glad she’s shutting down and pushing me away. It spares me the trouble of having to make peace with her.

I’ll do that.

I toss my phone aside and flop back on my bed with an angry sigh. It’s not cold in here, but the air pricks at my bare skin. I should stop wallowing, get up and put clothes on. But I don’t. I lie there and stew in anger.

I only relent and sit up when my teeth begin to chatter. I’ve still got the waterproof patch on my central line. I peel it off and toss it at the wastebasket. I miss.

The guy in the closet mirror is watching me again, studying me where I sit on the corner of the bed.

Jesus, he’s gross. I want to tell him to fucking eat something and hasn’t he ever heard of a tan? He’s like an androgynous alien, boney and hairless with a machine sprouting out of his chest.

I shut the closet door on him. But then I’m left alone with myself, cold and naked.

As I put on clothes, systematically covering up the disgustingly pale flesh and jutting bones, I find some relief in Willa’s confession. Now that we’re no longer involved, my inadequacy doesn’t matter.

If only I could get her out of my fucking head.

Friday

Elise doesn’t say anything to me over breakfast. Or in the car. Or when I sit down with her clique at lunch. I chance a look over at Willa’s usual table, but she isn’t there. Weird. As I cross the parking lot to get to the portables I notice that her rusty Toyota isn’t here, either. She’s absent. Willa is never absent.

Maybe she’s sick.

She was fine yesterday.

Maybe she transferred out.

That bothers me far more than it should.

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Are you sure you want to?

I want some closure, at least. I want her to apologize to Elise. I want to part ways with the knowledge that she’s going to a place that will be able to deal with her problems.

Willa’s absence distracts the hell out of me all through Social Studies. Maybe I could talk to Paige Holbrook or Hannah Trilby—Willa might have mentioned to her other friends if she was planning to leave school.

Her
other
friends?

Slip of the tongue.

I take stock of the parking lot once more as I head to English for my last class of the day. Her car still isn’t here. It’s stupid, but I head for the nurse’s office instead of my English class. It’s weird. I’ve never come here as a visitor. The nurse looks up at me from her desk and asks if I’m not feeling well.

“No, I’m fine. Has Willa Kirk been in here today?”

The nurse finds my question surprising. “No, she hasn’t.”

“Great.”

I leave the main office to…stand in the parking lot. Where was I going?

My phone is in my hand and I’m dialing her home number. Hopefully she’s just sick and stayed home to rest.

Hopefully? What do you care?

Frank answers the phone with a gruff ‘hello.’ I ask if Willa is available to come to the phone and he asks to know who is calling.

“It’s Jem Harper.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“well then would you like to explain why you’re obviously not in class, calling my sister in the middle of the afternoon?”

“I...uh, I noticed Willa was absent from our Soc class. I wanted to know if she needed me to bring anything she might need. Homework, things in her locker…”

“Get to class,” he says. “And leave Willa alone, while you’re at it. She’s had enough trouble.” He hangs up on me. I have this rotten feeling of dread in my gut.
She’s had enough trouble.
Maybe her brother or parents pulled her out of school without warning her—a reform school might be in the cards after all.

One of the hall monitors sees me standing in the middle of the parking lot. He comes out of the building and calls out to me, “Do you have a pass?”

She’s gone and you’re never going to see her again.

I turn and vomit between the cars. My head is spinning. The only thing that keeps me upright is the hand I have braced on the trunk of the nearest car.

“Hey!” The hall monitor approaches me and lays a tentative hand on my back. It’s such a light touch, like he’s afraid I’ll break. Willa never once touched me like that.

“You all right?” Before I can answer he announces that he’s going to walk me to the nurse’s office.

Stupid overeager freshman.

Then I realize the tire I threw up on belongs to Chris Elwood’s car, and I feel a little bit better.

Saturday

The sun is high in the east by the time I roll out of bed and walk, still more asleep than awake, to the bathroom to take a shower. I strip with my brain on autopilot and cover my central line just as steam begins to rise from behind the curtain.

As I doze under the warm spray coherent thoughts begin to circulate. They’re timid and fragmented at first:
I’m hungry. The chord progression needs work. Where’d I put my iPod? It’s Saturday—what time

is it? Late enough to go over to—

That’s a sobering thought. No more Saturdays at the Kirk house. Not that I want to go over there, but…

what the hell will I do with my time?

Having no friends turns out to be really good for the homework situation. I bet that’s why dorks are all so studious; not by choice, but by virtue of boredom. I knock out all my assignments by noon and have nothing left to do. There’s nothing on TV. It’s too rainy to go for a walk. There’s nothing to do in Smiths Falls. Mom and Dad are out of the house, shopping for shrubs to plant by the porch. Elise won’t talk to me and Eric is at work. And I can’t stop thinking about Willa. Every hour it gets harder to resist the urge to call her. For all I know she could already be on a campus where students wear wristband tracking devices and lockdown is the norm.

I don’t really care about her. I just want to know what’s going on with her.

Riiiight.

Shut up.

I call Ava. I need a dose of her twisted reality to take the edge off mine.

“What do you want, bitch?” Ava’s familiarly crass greeting makes me feel a little bit better. I ask her if she’s busy and she says she’s setting up for a band practice.

“Why are you calling?”

“Boredom.” It’s a synonym for loneliness in my case. Ava sees right through me and asks if I’ve got nothing better to do.

“Pretty much.”

“How’s that girl you’ve been chasing?”

“Uh, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What, is she dating some shaved goril a now? Doesn’t know what she’s missing out on with you?”

“It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like?”

“Never mind.”

“You sound sexually frustrated. Your voice goes up an octave like that when you’re horny.” She laughs at me. “Is your girl a tease?”

“No.” Maybe. Or maybe I just have an overactive imagination. But it’s hard to picture her in a nice way now. Al that comes to mind are fistfuls of pills and the ragged scar on her hand.

Ava can tell I’m not being truthful. “Rub one out. Ease the tension.”

“Ava.”

“Oh, right.” Her tone dips from lighthearted to flat and sarcastic. “Is that what happened? Did you get her into bed and then disappoint her?” Damn it. I thought it had been long enough—Ava’s attention span is a short one—and that she wouldn’t be sore about our abortive screw anymore. I guess not.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I knew, you didn’t.”

“Why did you do it?” she says shrewdly.

“Why did you?”

I’m used to that trick causing the end of a conversation, the way it does with Willa. Just ask her something she doesn’t want to tell , and the whole discussion shuts down. I’m so used to it that I’m caught off guard when Ava actually answers the question.

“I felt bad for you.” I don’t need to hear that. “Your turn.”

I swallow, considering how I can lie plausibly about this. I can’t.

“I…sort of, um…I liked the feeling of being wanted.”

“Was the, uh,
problem
really because of the cancer?” Ava asks. I can’t help but smile. She’s not trying to give me a hard time; it’s just that her pride is wounded. I know a thing or two about that, but she doesn’t deserve to second-guess herself.

“Ava, we both know you’re the sexiest chick to ever attach an amp to a violin.”

“Flatterer.”

“Fine, whatever, but it ups my street cred to say I banged you, so don’t go telling people otherwise.”

That makes her laugh and she calls me a lying cocksucker. I’m officially forgiven. I let the tension out of my shoulders and crawl onto the bed, relaxing against the pillows for a comfortable and hopefully time-

consuming conversation with my foul-mouthed friend.

“Come on now, how’s your girl?” she asks. She had to bring that up, didn’t she?

“I don’t want to talk about it.” And Willa certainly isn’t mine in any sense of the term.

“Did you give up on her already?”

“It’s not like that.”

Ava scoffs. “You want to explain it in a way that doesn’t make you look like a gaping vagina? Because you were already behaving like a pussy about her before, and this sounds worse.”

“I was not.”

“Yes, you were. Massive vag. And not even the good kind with a wax job and a hood piercing—I mean a had-six-kids bat cave kind of vagina.”

“Ava.”

“Spil . What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You were freaking depressed over her just a few weeks ago. What, did your ‘crush’ burn out?”

“Something like that.”

“Bullshit. It wasn’t just a crush.”

“Yes it was.” I can’t let Ava think she’s right. She never can resist the urge to say ‘I told you so’ when opportunity presents itself.

“Did you finish that song for her?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

Ava crows. “I knew you were writing one! Did she like it?”

“I didn’t give it to her.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“She’s-screwing-someone-else complicated, or she-plays-for-the-other-team complicated?” Figures;

those are the only two obstacles Ava has ever encountered in her romantic life. Except for that awkward non-screw with me, of course.

“In a we’re-not-even-friends-anymore kind of way.”

That takes Ava aback. “Why not?” she demands.

“She’s not who I thought she was.”

“well …so what? You knew she wasn’t perfect, and you still had it bad for her. It’s not like you’re so perfect—you play
Mozart
, for crying out loud.”

“I can’t explain it. Just take my word for it, okay?”

“Jem,” Ava says seriously. “You were happy when you talked about her. Your whole face lit up. You were the old you again. It’s stupid to throw away the things that make you feel that way.”

“She doesn’t make me feel happy.”

“Liar.”

“She makes me feel…exposed.”

Ava laughs, low and sultry. In the background I hear the feedback of an amp being plugged in. “Same thing sometimes, isn’t it?”

This is making me uncomfortable—cue subject change. “Are you still cheating with that cell ist?”

“Jem.” Ava’s tone is light, but there’s a no-bullshit business about it. “I’m going to break this down for you, because the powers that be gave you a cock instead of a clue, and you’re a chronic fuckup when it comes to women: you still like her. Don’t tell me you don’t. You tolerated five whole minutes of conversation about her and just now tried to change the subject. So whatever the reason is that you’re not friends with her anymore,
fix it.
”

“Or what?” The attempt at false bravado sounded better in my head.

“Don’t get me wrong, I still love you bitch, but you could do with a little happiness.”

I groan. “The cell ist, Ava?”

“Demon in the sack. Phil doesn’t know—too busy sucking endangered seal dick to notice. Now back to you: start working on fixing your shit. Get that smile back. Oh, and find a way to empty your ball s.

Celibacy doesn’t agree with you.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re grouchy when you’re horny.”

“Let go of the idea of Willa and I—drop it right now ‘cause it’s never going to happen.” It hurts to say that out loud, but it’s probably true.

“Ah, she has a name,” Ava coos. “At least talk to her, okay? Never burn a bridge.”

I sigh and Ava scolds me for being pessimistic. “Don’t be a twat.”

“You’re a twat.”

“No, I
have
a twat. And if you want me to keep quiet about that time with my twat and your dick, you’ll smarten up and fly right.”

“You can be a real bitch, you know.”

“Bitch, please, you love me.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

She laughs at me and says she has to go. “Gotta make real music. You know what that is, you classical dork?”

“Does it sound like an elephant being raped? Cause your last song—”

“Twat.” Ava blows a raspberry into her phone. “Okay, really, I have to go. Love you, bitch.”

“Ditto. Whore.” Ava hangs up, and I’m back to being bored. I play my cell o for a little while, but once again it fails to satisfy. How is it possible that every separation from Willa messes up the most basic things in my life—my family, my music, my sleep? She’s like a virus.