What Happens Next (12 page)

But it’s starting to catch up to me. My grades are in the crapper. It’s Thursday, I’m at school, and the minutes are creeping forward like paralyzed snails. I take my midterms and use my arm to prop myself up, but my head keeps rolling forward, jerking me awake. I’m on a narcoleptic-insomniatic roller coaster with no brakes. The up-and-moving moments between classes are only slightly more bearable. I walk like the living dead from class to class wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts.

On top of that, I feel like a jackass because I’ve avoided Corey all week. For the last couple of days, instead of going to the AV room last period, I’ve been going to the nurse’s office carrying tall tales of migraines and PMS. But two days on the nurse’s cot is about all you can get around here before they start talking doctor’s notes. So I have no choice now—time to face the Ginger Bitch music.

I feel weird seeing him after what happened. I mean, what he did, writing that letter, it was really cool, and I should feel grateful and relieved to have a person in my life who would do that for me. But somehow, right now at least, the gratefulness and relief are being outweighed by feelings of utter humiliation. I might have been able to shake the mortification earlier if gingerbitch.com weren’t still such hot gossip around here. Unfortunately, even though Corey put gingerbitch.com out of her misery, the stench of her rotting corpse lingers on. A couple guys made shitty comments to me yesterday at lunch, and it’s pretty much sucked up my whole week. I’m usually fairly adept at shutting haters down, particularly if it’s in defense of someone else, but when someone cracks off about my boobs or ass, especially right to my face, my sharp tongue tends to curl in on itself. The worst part? Bethany, my new BFF? She pretended she didn’t hear the comments when I damn well know she did. She was standing right next to me when two sophomores looked at my chest and said:
I wonder if there’s any melon back there? For some reason, I’m craving melon.
I grabbed a juice, threw fifty cents on Bethany’s tray, and stepped out of line, headed to the table.

Back in the day, Kirsten would have dressed those guys down until they ran crying from the cafeteria holding onto their shrunken wieners. Even tiny little Paige wouldn’t have stood by and done
nothing
. She would have thrown a spork or called them assholes or
something
.

Not Bethany. Newp. Bethany busied herself with intently studying salad toppings and just left me flapping in the breeze. When she finally made her way to the table, she immediately launched into an overblown tale about her sister’s pregnant guinea pig getting lost in the couch for two days. It was obviously fiction, but everyone laughed, and so I pretended to buy it, too.

Ha, ha, ha, that’s so funny, Bethany, ha, ha, ha.
So on and so forth. Whatever, point is, gingerbitch.com and her big, brassiered breasts are still out there, lingering.

But… no more hiding out. Despite the fact that the Awkward is crawling up my insides like a fungus, I trudge forth.

Downstairs to the basement.

Headed for the AV room.

Gnah.

I stand outside the door, take a deep breath, and turn the knob. When I step inside, I stop in my tracks. The room is different. The table is pushed to the side to make room for a big flat-screen TV and two beat-up, mismatched recliners. The TV is propped up and anchored to a dolly using several strings of bungee cables. Corey’s behind it, plugging it in or something.

“Hey, Sid. Welcome to our new home theater,” he says from behind the screen.

I walk in and set my stuff on one of the beat-up chairs. I think he’s hooking up a DVD player.

“How’d you get a TV that big down here? And furniture?”

“Simple,” he says. “Mrs. Nicholson? Teaches freshman history or some shit? She went on maternity leave. The sub couldn’t get the TV to work, so instead of telling him he’s an idiot who can’t work a simple remote, I told him the TV was busted and I needed to take it down for repairs. Then I snagged my friend TJ from one of his many study halls and had him help me roll it down here. The chairs are from one of those storage rooms down the hall. I jimmied the lock—drama club props or something. Wanna know the best part?”

“What?”

“Nicholson’s out for the rest of the grading period. TV’s all ours.”

“Clever, clever,” I say, laughing, and then sit down. For a Goodwill chair, it’s not bad.

“So what are we watching?” I ask. “Soaps?
Judge Judy
?”

“Got it. Finally,” he says to himself, and then pops up from behind the screen waving a DVD. “I thought we could broaden our horizons with a little community theater.”

He says it in a snotty, professorial accent.

“Uh. Okay,” I say.

So I guess we’re watching some PBS crap. Well, at least we’re not talking about gingerbitch.com and Siddy, Siddy’s Big Fat Titties….

He walks around to the DVD player and turns it on.

“You see, Ms. Murphy,” he says, continuing on with the accent, “I’m a big supporter of the arts, so I thought a local production of
Peter Pan
would be just the thing. It was filmed in 1982 and was recently transferred to DVD, and it stars a young but dashing Albert C. Davis as that lovable rascal Peter.”

Okay, now I’m thinking he might be high or something. Yes, he’s definitely high. He and this TJ guy got high in the bathroom and stole a big-screen TV off the freshman sub and then they broke into a storage closet and stole Goodwill furniture off the drama club. Maybe Bethany was right about him.

He turns to me, sees me looking at him like he’s nuts.

“Albert C. Davis?” he says.

Like I should know who or what he’s talking about. I look at him blankly.

“Lakewood High’s version of a third-world dictator? ‘You! With the red curls! Slow it down!’ ”

“Oh!” I laugh. “Mr. Davis. Got it.”

And so that’s what we do for most of the period. In between running videos and equipment around, we laugh our asses off at Mr. Davis, age twenty, swinging from a ceiling in green tights to the tune of “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!”

And because our recliners are right next to each other, I am able to zone in on something I haven’t noticed before. The way Corey smells. I mean, I’ve picked up the aroma of cigarettes before—it’s kind of a hard scent to miss—but I’m picking up something else now, something better. Doughnuts, maybe? I detect a definite Irish Spring, soapy thing going on, too. The blend of it all is rather intoxicating.

I try to ignore it and focus in on the TV. I laugh as Mr. Davis flits back and forth on the stage, jumping around on a poorly constructed pirate ship that is about to fall out from under him. I laugh and focus and try to ignore Corey’s presence next to me and the smell of cigarettes, Irish Spring, and doughnuts.

12

I am dreaming
of him. I’m dreaming that we’re on the ski lift and he has his arm around me and is pulling me close and talking into my ear. I can’t hear what he’s saying; it’s just whispered mumbling. Then I look ahead at the other side of the lift, the side with the empty returning chairs, and see Liam coming toward us. He’s wearing his pajamas that look like a baseball outfit. He sees me and pushes his safety bar up and then slowly stands in the seat holding his arms out from his sides for balance.

“Look, Sid! No hands!” he yells.

I start to scream for him to sit down, to put his bar down and hang on, but something cold and slippery slides over my mouth and I’m unable to move it away—my limbs, my whole body is paralyzed. Frozen stiff, I sit with this snake of a man next to me and watch helplessly as Liam starts to fall, starts to plummet to the ground.

My eyes roll back in my head and my eyelids fly open. My heart is pounding and I’m soaked in a frightened sweat. I slip out of my bed and across the hall to Liam’s room to sit on the edge of his race car bed and carefully, quietly, lay my head to his back. I want to wake him up. I want to fold him up in my lap and hug him tightly into me. But I just sit and listen to his heartbeat and breathing until my own heartbeat and breathing settle down again. When I’m calm and the nightmare seems far enough away, I get up and tiptoe out of his room and head downstairs. Out the back window, I can see Ronan staring at the back of the house. He is outside in his run, sitting attentively at the gate waiting for me. He is used to our routine by now.

Tonight, we have to run all the way to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy on Hilliard. It’s kind of far, but it’s the only place where I can get what I need at this hour. I get Ronan out of his pen and he makes no noise—no barking or jumping. He knows to be quiet and slip into his leash. We sneak around the house and down the driveway. He waits until we’re down the street to start huffing and puffing and butting my legs with his head, the way dogs do when they’re excited to see you and want petting or a treat. I stop walking and give him his due. I scratch behind his ears and give him the hamburger I didn’t eat at dinner. Then we are off and running. We cut down a side street and onto Detroit. Everything is dark—all the bakeries, gift shops, and galleries are closed. The only places open are The Diner and Malloy’s. I stop in front of the window at The Diner and jog in place so I can look inside. It’s empty except for one man who hangs over a cup of coffee in a booth, and the night waitress is manning her post in front of the TV, watching that show where paparazzi stalkers hunt celebrities around the clock. They lurk in bushes or outside nightclubs and then report to base command with their photographic kill shots. Ugh, I would never see Shelley Keep It Green watching something like this. She’s Discovery Channel or Nat Geo all the way.

Ronan snorts, letting me know he’s had enough of this waitress and her dumb TV show, too. We take off, finding a steady, even pace for about half an hour. At this time of night, it’s green lights the whole way down Detroit, where the pharmacy sits at the Hilliard intersection.

I don’t want to leave Ronan outside, so I poke my head in the door to ask the cashier if I can bring him in. My night vision has kicked in, and the brightness of the store assaults my eyes.

“Can I bring my dog in? I’m afraid someone will steal him or he’ll get spooked and run off.”

She looks him up and down.

“I dunno, he’s kind of big,” she says.

“If he takes a crap, I’ll clean it up, I swear. Besides, there’s nobody here and I’ll only be a sec.”

She looks at me, still uneasy, but nods.

“Just tie him up by the door and make it quick.”

“Thanks.”

I walk over to the racks and candy machines by the door to look for a way to hitch him up. Easy listening music is playing overhead, Christopher Cross, waxing “poetic” about the inner serenity he has found through the pastime of “Sailing.” I tell Ronan to stay and I loop his leash around the leg of the free circulars rack. I freeze when I see my mother’s face staring back at me from
Homes Magazine
. That unsold Tudor on Lighthouse Road made the cover this issue, and her picture is in the corner of it. I get a stab of shame; it’s like she is watching me and going, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” for what I’m about to do. I turn the magazine over so the cover isn’t showing.

I walk quickly toward the pharmacy counter, where all the scandalous items are kept in plain view. The pharmacy window is shut and has a pharmacist on break, ring bell for assistance sign, with a big arrow pointing toward a makeshift doorbell.

I look over the shelves: packages of condoms, tubes of lubricants, cans of feminine spray.

And pregnancy tests.

Yes, I am late. Very, very late.

I scan the choices. So many different kinds—ones with little urine cups, ones with sticks to pee on, ones with blue lines, ones with pink dots. And then there are the simpleton ones that scream out PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT in the little results window. I guess these tests are for the truly rattled, for the petrified basket cases who can’t even bear to decode directions. I look at the prices, shocked at how expensive they are. A piece of plastic that you take a whiz on, stare at for three minutes, then toss out costs twenty dollars? I only have fifteen. There’s a cheaper test, a generic store brand that costs twelve, but its spot on the shelf is empty and has an out of stock sign in place of it.

I need one of these tests.

I stand deliberating for a minute and contemplate shoplifting. It’s a small store. I look up at the round mirror at the end of the aisle that reflects back toward the cashier. She’s at her counter. I can see Ronan, too. He’s standing at attention, poker straight and looking in the direction where he had last seen me.

Shoplifting?

I don’t even know how to go about it.

Do I shove it in my pocket? Slide it up my sleeve? Do I divert attention, take the heat off by buying something else?

I am suddenly terrified. I have never deliberately stolen a single thing in my life. When it comes to anything even remotely resembling thievery, I start to sweat and wear the guilt like a thrift-store wedding gown. I even feel guilty when I get free drink refills at Taco Bell. In fact, one time when I was about eleven, I accidentally walked out of a store holding a pack of gum in my hand. Kirsten, Paige, and I were at Everything’s A Dollar buying candy and junk food for a sleepover. I’d meant to put the gum in our little shopping basket but was so engrossed in conversation while shopping that I just clean walked out with the gum in hand. About twenty minutes later, when we’d walked almost the whole way back to Paige’s house, I realized I was holding a sweaty, melted pack of Bubblicious in my fist and made them walk all the way back in the roasting July heat so I could pay for it. Kirsten and Paige tried the whole way to talk me out of returning it.

You didn’t mean to steal it, so it doesn’t count, especially if you don’t actually open and chew it.

Just throw it away at my house.

We can stop by the playground and pass it out to some little kids or something. That way it’s like charity.