We Were Never Here (14 page)

October 6, 2013

Dear Lizzie,

Dear Lizzie,

Dear Lizzie,

Sorry. I can't figure out just how to start this letter. I've got a lot to tell you. I wanted to write a letter to you so I can think of what to say and how to say it. And because where I am we're not allowed to use our phones and there is only one public phone.

Remember landlines?

What am I saying? Of course you remember landlines.

Okay. Let me back up. First of all, I'm sorry I didn't tell you when you came home from the hospital that I was leaving. I have been craven. This is a word I have learned here, and it's a good word and it applies to me because I meant to tell you I was going, and then there you were with your family, almost back to the person you must have been before you got sick. It was so strange to see you out of the hospital. Like a person. It's not that I saw you as a nonperson before, I just saw you differently. You like rose up into yourself, or maybe out of yourself.

It was great to see you, both ways. All the ways you are. I mean that.

That day was my last day home. I'm at boarding school now. This place in New Hampshire. Stone Mountain. As if. My parents sent me here after the semester had already started—so it was a lot of hurrying and packing and throwing things away. I had to say good-bye to Verlaine. I can't really even write about that.

That's part of why I didn't write or call, but mostly it was because I didn't know how to tell you and everything was so chaotic. Basically, I couldn't get the girl out of my head. I saw her everywhere. I had this feeling that I was . . . breaking apart. So I started skipping school. And not doing my homework. And also, I was smoking a lot of pot. Alone. We never talked about this stuff, so I'm not sure how you feel about it, but I'm just trying to be honest. So my mother caught me and then my parents sent me to Dr. Farrell, who said I was self-medicating, that I was finding a way to make those thoughts stop.

I was at sea was what he told me. And I really felt like that.

And now I keep thinking about your surgery. How I know it must have been horrible, just awful and painful, but now it's gone. The sickness. I feel like my thing is unfixable, like I can't get it out or something. I was so stupid. I think I really thought going into the hospital, I could save people. I think I truly thought that visiting you would help—like you would get better. But you had to get that surgery anyway. And patients like Thelma died.

So here I am, at this place. It's teeny. There are, like, twenty-five kids, all boys. It's super strict. Everyone has their own little garden plot! The theory is that taking care of a garden teaches you about growing and tending and caring. I know a little bit about that already, but just a little.

It's all kind of complicated.

I just wanted to write you, now, to tell you where I am. I want to say that I miss our visits, my visits to you. I want to say that I miss everything about everything. I see you everywhere. But I don't want to keep you from starting over. From beginning your life all over again.

Your first day home was my last day home. So it goes.

I think that's all from me for now. But more from me soon.

Yours always,

Connor

I was shaking as I read that letter. It was in Connor's handwriting. And Connor's handwriting? ALL CAPS. Little blocky neat all caps. Beautiful and perfect.

Of course.

As I read, Frog sat there as if she were deciding if she should walk or just enjoy the break from her usual home, but I was having
feelings
. So many, all over. I was happy to hear from Connor and shocked to hear what had happened and then I was so, so, so sad. Like blue all over for him.

I went downstairs and found Mabel and Greta. There are strange ways you realize you're getting better, and one of the goofy ones was that I could take them out together now. (The bad ways involved, sadly, my thighs starting to get back to my prehospital thighs.) Greta was so manic and crazy, and Mabel was kind of over it, sort of looking at me like,
This is how I'm going to spend my old age?
But as I untangled their leashes and made my way up the rise of our street, I tried to picture Connor all alone at some freaky boarding school and all I could think of was some
Vampire Academy
place where the school seems like this place of safety and protection but really it ends up to be the
worst place of all.

I imagined him alone in his bed in the country in the dark like I was alone in the dark.

When I got home, I did this strange thing I still don't understand. I put his letter in my top left desk drawer, just underneath David B's God's eye, where my pens and scissor and Scotch tape were. And then I shut the drawer.

I didn't write Connor back.

It just
happened
. Connor wrote me when he was ready.

And so I would write him back when I was.

I went to the damn pep rally.

Oh sweet Jesus, the pep rally. I ask you: Is there anything worse? I only mention it to say, if it wasn't clear already: I was not voted princess. No matter what, there's always that crazy secret hope, isn't there? So pathetic, but true. But Michael Lerner was, of
course
. Voted prince, I mean, which just seemed so, I don't know,
ironic
I guess. Yes, ironic, because here he was paying attention to me finally and here he was all
validated
in the world and I didn't care. Our class princess was actually an amazing girl, Leandra Robbins, who had built houses in West Africa this past summer and who was also really into all kinds of equality and always got people to march on the Mall when there was something important about equality to march about. It made me feel kind of sorry for Michael L. He looked so, well, empty compared to her.

King and queen were two assholes who were dating and who had parties in their gated communities that were seniors only. They both drove to school, one in a Lexus, the other in a Jetta, and it was pretty nauseating. It was just so
expected
. I was tired of all that by then. The bad teen movie. I kind of hoped it was
the movie where some crazy person comes in and takes out the whole lot of them. I wished that it was just me and Connor, here to save the world.

Connor and I couldn't even save ourselves. So I sat there, sneaks toeing the wooden gym bleacher in front of me, watching the hockey team, everyone dressed for the rally in their little plaid skirts, their collared, numbered shirts, all seated up front with the football players, the lacrossers, and so on. I knew that everyone but Annabelle Loughton was wearing boxers beneath her skirt. Annabelle? Well, her father left when she was young; that's why she was so needy, we all told one another as we watched her skirt fly up on the field.

I felt that tickle in my bag, and the always accompanying panic that something had come undone, but nothing had, and I just sat there watching the king and queen smile absurdly, doubting seriously that these two would ever be crowned in Georgetown, at Connor's school.

But now he was gone.

Lydia did not seem to care about my lack of . . . enthusiasm for the evening's sanctioned activity, which was the homecoming dance.

“I won't take no for an answer,” she said when she called again. Still she sounded like she was forty-five years old.

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. Fine.”

She showed up and sat with me while I got dressed. I changed in the bathroom. By changed I mean took off my big jeans and put on some that had once been “skinnies” but were now regulars. A nice three-quarter-sleeved striped cotton shirt from when I cared. Flats. My hair was coming out in clumps. The things I now know: first your hair gets crazy long from the steroids, and then it falls out a few weeks after all the anesthesia. So I just braided it and circled a rubber band loosely around the end.

So: homecoming.

The walls of the gym were streaming with long strands of colored lights, some kind of a rainbow that Leandra R had orchestrated, representing equality for all. It was all terribly cheesy, and then everyone in these huge clusters, just masses of people, fists in the air, freaking.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh
. I never would have
been in the middle of that, sweating, dancing, laughing, anyway, but now? No way. Not 1 percent of a way. What took the cake, though, was Dee-Dee, who along with Kenickie was trying to get the music changed so they could do a whole
Grease
dance-off. She had a corsage on her wrist and wore a strapless taffeta dress (it really
was
a gown), and then all the hand movements—the bumping of closed fists, the thumbs-up—with her boyfriend was incredibly ridiculous.

So there was that and then the people making out beneath the bleachers, and then there were all the haters, who sat around lurking in dark corners. Like the guy of many flannels, the one who drew everyone. He was there, wearing a flannel, with another guy in another flannel.

“Hey,” I said, walking over to him, way out of the fray, practically in a cave. The refracted lights from the twirling disco ball moved above us, occasionally dipping between a bleacher seat.

He nodded at me, his long black hair flopping over his face. He had a bunch of deep red zits embedded in his cheeks. They call them craters for a reason.

He handed me a flask, and I took a swig from it.

“You've been gone a while,” he said.

I liked the feeling of whatever that was burning down my throat. I handed it back to him. “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for noticing.”

“Sure thing.”

His friend was silent and looked straight ahead, just tapped his foot—not to the rhythm of the blasting Demi Lovato at all—while looking at the ceiling, bored.

The guy from last year's class passed me the flask again and I took another swig—bourbon or whiskey or scotch, I think, something brown for sure—and then I crossed my arms and leaned against the cold tile wall. Everyone . . .
trying
. Thumping and laughing and freaking, and shifting and trying and trying. It was nice, I thought, to be done with all that, just above it all for once. I liked that feeling of invulnerability.

Oh, Dee-Dee. She was doing some kind of fifties thing where she swung under Kenickie's legs and came up kicking, jumping and smiling brightly.

“Jesus,” I said, sort of pushing back and forth off the wall with my toes.

That's when Michael L came sauntering up. It was before his prince status had been officially conferred upon him, but his princeliness emanated just the same. As in, there wasn't a lot of insecurity in his strut: skinny jeans, Pumas, plaid shirt, shock of long hair, a serious saunter. What was it about him? Because now he seemed regular to me. Or more: I was in control of myself around him. This, I liked.

Then again, what did Connor seem like? Preppy. Rich. Golden. I can't even remember. Sometimes you stop seeing what the person is to the world. You only see what the person is to you.

Sometimes. Because I could see everything about Michael L. And yet . . .

“What assholes.” He stood next to me, looking out at the dance floor, back against the wall. Flannel shirts one and two scooted away as if they would catch whatever disease the prince-in-waiting had.

“Bye,” I said, extra loud. “Thanks for the drink!” I could still feel the harsh, thick taste along the roof of my mouth, my throat.

The guy from last year's class gave me a backward wave as he walked away.

“Who?” I said.

“I don't know, the cast of
West Side Story
.”

“
Grease
,” I said. “That's the play they're putting on. I can't imagine how you've missed it. I could hear them singing from my bedroom.”

“I know,” he conceded. “Believe me. Bedroom, eh?”

“Please.” I stood there, watching.

“Hey, so you're barely speaking to me,” Michael L said.

“Yes I am.”

“You're not. I don't get it. We used to be amazing friends.”

Amazing friends meant me biking over to his house and hanging out in his backyard while I pigged out on Oreos and he told me about whatever girl he loved. “I guess.” I shrugged.

“You guess?”

“I'm kind of wondering about this instant change in you,” I said.

“It's not instant. You know what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“They? Who is that? Please, Michael. Please. Anyway, I'm not talking to anyone really. I'm just on my own right now.”

“You've changed, man,” he said.

I turned toward him, now just my arm touching the wall, if it were a lifeboat and not having some kind of contact with it would mean sure drowning. “You think?” I said. My eyes were
leaking tears. I wished they weren't, but they were. That's the way it was then.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Because everything's different now! I was in a room with a lady who
died
. I almost died. I'm all fucked-up!” I said. “I am totally different!” I tried to tamp down everything. Everything. But it was untampdownable.

“Hey,” he said, softer, sweetly. He brought me close to him and hugged me.

I stood there stiffly, but I let him. It was difficult not to remember the way I would once have thrown myself in traffic to have him.

“Lizzie.” He brushed my hair out of my face, which felt like he was doing something he'd once seen someone do.

I looked down.

And then he brought his face to mine, his lips.

We kissed. He had such full lips, and I could taste my tears on them. It felt good to kiss him, actually. He was an excellent kisser, his mouth open but his tongue pretty much staying put there. He was holding me so tightly and I felt myself relax, my shoulders sort of sigh back to their normal position, and then I felt him run his hand lightly across my stomach.

I went rigid. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing you,” he said. “Finally.”

“And?” I pushed away from him.

“And nothing.”

“Okay.”

“What happened exactly, Lizzie? I've heard stuff, I'm not going to lie. What does it feel like?”

I rolled my eyes. “Drop it,” I said. It used to be the girl with the eye patch, and then it was the kid who had to be in a wheelchair after falling off a horse, and now it was me. I was the freak. Here he was in the closest proximity possible.

“I just wanted to know what happened,” Michael said. Michael L, who I'd loved forever and who I didn't love at all anymore. How does that happen? One second you think you'll die and the next you can't even remember it.

“Then just ask me.” I pushed him away. I knew what he was doing. Be close to the person everyone's talking about. The one who might be princess even though she's never been princess material. Be the one who
knows
.

“I think I just did,” he called after me as I raced out of the gym.

“What Now” was playing
.
“I don't know where to go, I don't know what to feel, I don't know how to cry, I don't know, oh, oh why.” The high school gym. Rihanna. How cliché can you be? Can I be? Either way there I was rushing out of the gym, and there I was being met by Mr. Gallagher patrolling the hallway.

“Hello, Ms. Lizzie Stoller! Having fun? We're so happy to have you back!”

I ignored him, which was rude because Mr. Gallagher was the nicest teacher and he also organized the poinsettia sale and the ski trips and trips to Disney World.

But I ignored him anyway and ran outside and called my mother and then I sat on the bike rack in front of the gym entrance, waiting for her, and then she was there, pulling up in her green Subaru, and then we were home and I ran into my room, Greta and Mabel following behind me, and then I closed
my door. Greta chewed on one of the legs of my bed and Mabel climbed up on the bed with me and we lay down facing each other and she licked away my tears.

Dogs. Dogs. Dogs. Way better than humans.

“Honey?” My mother.

“I'm fine!” I said. “Really.”

“Okay, honey,” she said. “I'm downstairs if you want to talk.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, though I knew that wasn't going to happen, not tonight anyway.

What was going to happen?

This: I put on my father's sweats, soft and old and enormous, and one of the school T-shirts I'd been fool enough to buy as a freshman, and I got out my ridiculous study buddy, red with white stars, and I put it on my knees. I took out some typing paper.

Hi there,
I began.
Hi. I got your letter.
Where do I begin?
I wrote. But then I began so easily, as easily as I had talked to Connor in the hospital that very first day I told him how tired I was of being me. I wrote about school. About Dee and Lydia and how they didn't understand me anymore. Or maybe I didn't understand them. I wrote about the pep rally. I asked him what it was like there. And if he felt lonely. Too lonely.

What I didn't write: how wrong I felt it was that he hadn't told me he was going. That he was gone. What I also didn't write: anything about the dance.

And then: I debated. I debated saying it. I wrote it and I crossed it out. I ripped up the paper and started again. And then I wrote it.
I love you,
I wrote. In the end, I left it in.