What Happens Next (32 page)

“God! What is it with you?” I yell. “All you want to do is talk. Talk, talk, talk! Can’t you just get over shit like a normal fucking guy? Can’t you just move on already? You can see I don’t want to talk about it. Jesus, you and the fucking talking!”

He looks at me, speechless, and I’m glad; I want him to feel that way. It might get him off the talking for five fucking seconds.

“Don’t talk to me that way,” he says, looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am right now.

I spew my words at him because if I don’t spew, I’ll cry. I will bust out crying and never ever be able to stop. And what I say next is utter viciousness; I’m setting him up for the knockout punch.

“I’m trying not to talk to you that way!” I yell. “But guess what, Corey? You keep making me! You keep making me talk about things I don’t want to talk about and it’s funny that you do that, you know? Because you’re hiding your shit, too!”

His face twists. “What?”

“Yeah! That’s right! And I’ve never pressed you about it. About your drug dealing and your kiddie prison and your pothead
mother
! You never want to talk about any of those things, do you?”

And I’ve hit my mark. Corey’s face looks like I’ve decked him. And what’s horrible is that it feels good somehow. Dear god, what’s wrong with me? I
want
to deck him. I get out of the truck before I actually
do
deck him.

He comes after me in the parking lot. He takes me by the elbow and I turn to look at him. I’ve never seen him this upset. He looks like he could slap me. So I slap him first, before he gets the chance. I slap him hard.

He flinches, and his other hand goes to his face.

“You hit me?”

He says it like a quiet question, like he can’t believe it. He’s not even angry now. He’s in complete shock. So I slap him again to snap him out of it. I try to slap him a third time but he catches my arm, pushes it down to my side and then spins me around into a bear hug. He squeezes me snugly so I can’t move. Not hurting me, but still. I’m immobilized completely in under a second.

“Let go! I wanna leave!” I yell, trying to buck him.

“Like hell you’re leaving! You don’t get to say that shit to me, hit me, and walk off. You want to know about my mother, Sid? You want to know about my drugs? Well, now you’re gonna hear it. You’re gonna hear the whole damn story.”

I squirm and fight, but he has me good and he’s not even trying. His words come out like darts into my neck.

“My mom is sick, Sid. Got it? Sick!”

He turns me around to look at him and he is holding me by the shoulders. Firm, like he held my wrists that day of the fight in school. Only this time when he’s looking at me, he hates me. His eyes are tearful and wounded, but angry, too. He wants to shake me; I can feel him wanting to shake me. But he doesn’t. Because he is a person who would never do that.

“She has MS. Multiple sclerosis? I’m sure you know what that is, Miss College Prep 3.7, smart-ass, know-it-all grade point average, but let me enlighten you further. MS is a life of never knowing if your next step is going to be your last. It’s never knowing if you’re going to wake up one day and be blind. It’s a life of
endless, excruciating
fucking pain that
never
goes away. And the only thing that makes it bearable? The only thing that gives you any relief at all? Well, it just so happens to be illegal in Ohio. So that’s why I grew it! That’s why I
still
grow it! Because she needs it. And I’m going to keep growing it if it means I can make her life bearable. She smokes it and it makes her life bearable! And that’s why I don’t want you to come over—I don’t want you involved. I don’t want you to be there if the police come busting my door down again. I don’t want you to be locked up like I was!”

Oh, god.

What have I done? Someone please tell me why I’ve done this? Why have I said these terrible things? It’s unforgivable, what I’ve said, and I want to take it all back. I need to tell him I’m sorry, tell him everything. I’m going to tell him everything.

“Corey, I…”

He releases my shoulders. He holds up his hands and shakes his head. “Don’t. Just don’t. I don’t wanna hear it. The talking is over, Sid. You win. No more talking. We’re done.”

I am left standing in the parking lot, watching Corey’s truck get smaller and smaller.

I want to run, but something in me just can’t do it anymore. Plus, it hurts. Did I mention that? That I have to go to bed with frozen peas on my shins? I just lay there while my shins throb and throb under the bags of frozen peas.

I can’t run anymore. Running’s out. No more running.

So I walk.

I walk and walk and walk.

30

It’s still unsold.
This beautiful house on the lake, and nobody wants it. I’ll take it. I’ll take this house on the lake with a ceiling that points the way to heaven. I thought I would get here and be able to expel that voice, that angry voice, that ball of hatred and shame and despair that haunts me, even in my sleep. I thought I would scream my head off, pull my hair out, and tear my own skin off.

But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is something quiet and unimaginable, something wonderful. I lay and look up at the painted sky, and the rage just dissolves; it just drifts out of me. This peaceful feeling overcomes me, and I feel soft and still inside. I look up at the painted ceiling and remember that night.

I’m standing in the condo kitchen. Rapist Tom Hamilton is asking me about cheerleading. The cheerleading is fascinating him. I am telling him about camp and how awful it was and he’s laughing and I really think he likes me. I think I’m being a regular laugh-riot comedian. Then this strange sort of giddiness washes over me. I look down at the glass and there are three of them in my hand. I try to tell Rapist Tom Hamilton that I feel dizzy, but I can’t move my mouth. He smiles at me just as my fingers go limp and the glass slips out of my hand. Down the glass goes in slow motion, crash, all over the tiles. And I’m falling into nothingness.

I lay here and remember that feeling, that sensation of falling and floating, of giving in and sliding under. But it’s not scary and horrible under this painted sky. Because this time, before the darkness comes, something new and amazing occurs to me.

Tom Hamilton did his worst to me, and I’m still here.

I’m still here.

I can shut my eyes without fear now. For the first time since last winter, I welcome sleep. Because I know that when I wake up, I’m going to text my mom to come and get me. I’m going to tell her everything. Then I’m going to call Corey and tell him everything, too.

I don’t know how long I sleep. My body can’t tell time. It feels like it did that night, like nothing and everything all at once, like a spark of a moment stuck inside forever.

Until I wake up.

No—until I’m
woken
up.

Someone is shaking me by the shoulders, saying my name, saying it loud. But I’m not afraid, because I know that voice. I’d know that voice anywhere. I could pick that voice out of a crowd of thousands. I open my eyes and see him—Corey is looking down at me. His eyes are red; he’s been crying.

“Are you okay?” he says, pulling me up and toward him.

I nod my head and blink. I can tell from the heartbreak in his eyes that he knows.

“You know about me,” I say, fighting back tears.

He nods and then pulls me into him, hugging me close. After a moment, he pulls back and looks at me very hard.

“You could have told me,” he says, his eyes filling up. “I want you to know that you could’ve told me. Because it doesn’t change anything. For me, it doesn’t change a thing. Okay?”

I nod, and the tears spill out. This time, I don’t fight it. I let them fall.

We hug each other and cry.

“And we couldn’t find you,” he says, sobbing into my hair. “Oh, god, your mom and Kirsten and Paige, we looked everywhere and couldn’t find you. I’m so sorry I left you in the parking lot. I’m so sorry.”

We hold on to each other and he tells me how he found out. He knows because Kirsten and Paige told my mother, and she told him. When I didn’t come home from work, my mother called Kirsten’s house, and even though I swore them to secrecy, they still told. They told because they know my mom and they know me and they knew it was the right thing to do.

I have good friends.

The best.

After a while, Corey pulls back again and smooths the curls out of my face. I study his eyes. I study what his face is doing now that he knows. I search my mind for the emotion that will describe the way he is looking at me. And it reveals itself to me:
Assurance
. Corey will pull through for me. He will love me in the exact same way. I know this now.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” I say. “I’m sorry for what I said about your mother.”

“I know. I know you are,” he says.

“I need to call my mom.”

“She’s on her way. We’ve all been driving around Lakewood for hours. I called her from outside. I saw your shoes at the steps.”

We hug some more and say nothing else for a long time. The silence is comforting, all by itself. After a while, I hear my mom and Liam coming through the house.

“In here,” Corey calls out. My mom rushes in and kneels down next to me. She takes my face into her hands. She looks at me closely, her swollen eyes purposeful.

“You’re going to get through this.
We
are going to get through this. You hear me?”

I nod and our eyes cry out to each other with such relief. She kisses me and hugs me tight.

“Why is everyone crying?” Liam asks quietly, carefully crouching down to look at us. “We should play Tinker. That’ll make everyone feel better.”

Corey gets up and takes Liam by the hand.

“Come on, buddy. Let’s go to the truck. Everything’s fine. Your mom and Sid need to talk for a little bit.”

After they leave, I look at my mom.

“It was you I wanted to tell,” I say. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I just… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to be sorry. Ever,” she says. “I’m here now, we’re all here, and it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

I tell her what happened. All of it. And when I’m done and we’ve cried ourselves out, she says it again, with renewed intensity: “You’re going to be okay.”

Then she stands up and stretches out a hand to me and leads me through the house to the conservatory. We stand together, looking out at the lake, for a long time, watching far-off boat lights flicker on, one by one, in the dusky light. After a while, my mom runs her hand gently over my hair, and then walks outside to wait for me.

I stay a moment longer.

I step up to the wall of windows and press my fingertips against the cool glass, my mother’s words echoing in my heart and mind.
You’re going to be okay.
I watch as the endless ribbons of water rock and swell under a quiet, cobalt sky, and I choose to believe. I choose to believe that I will be okay.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank God. Cliché? Probably. But it’s how I feel and what I know to be true and right. I firmly believe that whatever creative gifts I have, they have been given to me by God, so I thank Him. Forever and ever, I thank Him. I’d like to also thank my first family: a father who provided me a safe and loving home to grow up in and a mother who has always believed in me and who, in my adulthood, has become my dearest friend. Thanks also to my brother, Randy Clayton, and my sister, Irish twin, and other dearest friend, Stacey (Clayton) Reynolds. Love and gratitude to my second family: my husband, Ray, who has loved me for going on twenty years now; my bright, beautiful daughter, Mary; and my strong, patient son, Ryan.

If praise were an actual physical object, I’d get a shovel out and start heaping it onto the members of Team Sid. My amazing agent, Alyssa Reuben, who took a chance on this big old nobody from Ohio and worked tirelessly for over two years on my behalf and on behalf of this book. My wonderful editors at Poppy, Pam Gruber and Elizabeth Bewley, who took a good story and made it great, and my copy editor, Martha Cipolla, who took a great story and made it flawless. This book would not be what it is today without the input of these incredible women. Also, much thanks to my cover designer, Liz Casal, who captured the essence of Sid so, so perfectly.

I would also like to mention and thank my first reader, Dr. Rosemary D’Apolito (Rosebud). I was a former social worker, a stay-at-home mom, and a dog-walker when I met her nearly a decade ago. (Also, I occasionally liked to write stuff down….) I used to walk her dogs—bearded collies named Lily and Frasier. Rosebud was the first person to ever read my work, and she helped me to realize that my “midlife crisis” was actually an attainable dream.

I want to give special thanks to my friend Alyssa Brugman, an Australian author whose exceptional way with language and voice motivated me early on in my writing journey. Her young adult novels made me want to be a better writer. While I thank her for being such an inspiration, I mostly want to thank her for writing me back. About three years ago, I was feeling pretty down and riding full-blast on the “query-go-round” of rejection when I wrote her a fan letter. It meant the world to me when she replied back with the kindest e-mail.