Words and Their Meanings (7 page)

15

T
wenty-one days before he died.

Two days before he got sick.

He'd drive to her house.

People wouldn't forgive them.

No one would have guessed.

Who?

Who?

Who?

16

I
run and run and run. Stopping only to hack, heave, gasp for more, more, more air. My shin muscles push away from the bone or wherever they belong. My side cramps and throbs and cramps again. But I keep going until I reach Nat's house, four miles away.

Nat's subdivision is named Willow Brook even though there are no willow trees (not even chopped down) and no brooks nearby. The houses are enormous and look like they are different arrangements of the same set of Legos. Identical circle driveways cut through bright lawns that are adorned with identical collections of dogwoods and crabapples and hydrangeas and bright-colored annuals. Mom hates this kind of cookie-cutter landscaping, but never says so in front of Nat, who believes the sameness is kind of nice in a disorderly world.

I walk in the side door without knocking.

Nat's sitting at the kitchen table, one knee propped up on the chair. Her forehead is tucked against it, but I can tell her eyes are closed and she's listening to some musical I'm not familiar with. She does this, closes her eyes and dissects every note, the way a sculptor might inspect every chisel mark in a great masterpiece.

“Hey,” I say extra loud as I open the refrigerator and pull out one of the water bottles Calandra, Nat's mom, keeps full and chilled at all times.

Nat opens her eyes and nods, holding up one finger and listening to the last rising and falling notes of the song. When the soundtrack stops, she answers.

“Hey. What are you doing? Why are you so red? And sweaty?”

“I ran.”

“You ran here?” Her eyebrows disappear under her bangs. “From where? Were you being chased by a pack of wild dingoes?”

I planned to fork the letter over to Nat the second I got to her house. Nat's years of being in plays make her a classic detective. She can imagine the motivations of any character you throw her way. But when I reach into the tiny pocket of my shorts where I stuffed the folded and re-folded paper crane, I can't pull it back out. I can't bring myself to share what it says.

So I make up a story, kind of.

“I slept in Joe's room last night,” I begin, talking faster right away because I can tell by Nat's face she's about to bombard me with questions. “And I found something under his bed, this note written on the back of a receipt for a motel that he stayed in on May 24, and the note said sorry it won't work out, and I know Sameera would have told me if they were fighting right before he got sick and so now I'm, like, sure he was cheating on her and—”

“Hey, wait a minute. Back up. Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“Joe was … he was … ”

“What did it say? It was written on what, again? Was there anything else? Did you look?”

Nat is leaning against the table now and the side of her hand hits the wood with every question. I want to pull out the crane, but instead I keep saying this lie.

“On a motel receipt. It said, ‘This wouldn't work out.' Oh, and that too many people would be mad. It said that too. And there wasn't anything else—”

“Do you have it with you?”

“What?”

“The receipt! A motel? What motel? In what city?”

“Um, I flushed it down the toilet.”

“You flushed it down the toilet?”

“Yes. I didn't want Mom to find it or something.”

“Do you really want to know?” Nat's eyebrows are scrunched with worry. Her hand is on my back. “I mean, are you sure it was even Joe's handwriting? It could have been some scrap that was blowing across a gas station parking lot. You have no idea. It probably means nothing, Anna. Joe loved Sameera. We all know that.”

She is so final about her last statement. I try it out in my head. Joe loved Sameera. Except the paper crane is hot against my thigh. Why can't I tell Nat?

Because then she'll know all of his secrets too. She'll know the words he said to this mystery girl. She'll know exactly as much as I do, and that isn't fair because he was my family and my other best friend, not hers. I need her help, but I want to get at the truth of the situation without giving her the truth of his letter.

“It was his handwriting. Obviously I know what that looks like,” I say with more righteous indignation than should be allowed when lying to your oldest and dearest friend in the universe.

Nat begins biting both her thumbs, which is what she does whenever she's nervous or thinking really hard. “Okay,” she says slowly. “Okay. So he went to a motel and wrote a note on the back of the receipt saying it wouldn't work out. That people would be mad. So why wouldn't he leave the note there?”

“Maybe he wrote it in the bathroom when the girl was sleeping. Maybe she woke up and he told her to her face.”

“What motel?”

“The Riverside.”

“That's right out of town!”

“I know,” I say, nodding gravely. “And the credit card was his so there is no denying he was there on May 24. Plus, it has to be someone we know. I mean, why else would he say no one would have ever guessed?”

While I'm talking, Nat gets up and starts pacing furiously around the square slate tiles in her kitchen. When I say this last thing, her head flicks up like a hunting dog's.

“Wait—what? You didn't say that before.”

“Yes I did.”

“No, you definitely didn't.”

“Oh. Um, well I thought I did. Yeah, it also said no one would have guessed they were together. And something like, ‘People would be mad.'”

“I'll be right back.”

Nat tears out of the room too fast for me to ask what she's doing, but I can hear a bunch of commotion coming from her dad's office. A minute later she returns looking flushed and carrying a notebook, pen, and highlighter.

“I knocked over two of the globes in my dad's collection trying to reach his pen holder,” she says. “Before we get into this, Anna, I think we have to decide if it's worth it. Because he's not here. And we might learn things that he'll never be able to explain away. We might never find the truth.”

She frowns and exhales noisily.

“If you really want to go there, then we have to decide how to go about this. Like, do we want to go tell Sameera—”

“No! Are you crazy?”

Nat holds up her hands in surrender.

“All right, all right. I'm just asking. Don't bite my head off. You know we need to have a plan and you know I can help you organize it, which is why you're here. So, no Sameera. At least not yet. Then we have to start at ground zero. Make a list of possible suspects.”

“Let's make the list,” I say, settling the decision.

Nat waits a second, the end of the pen clattering between her top and bottom teeth.

“I'm not going to change my mind. I have to know.”

“Why?”

I can't answer. How do I explain? Because I need to believe the Joe I knew and the Joe who wrote the letter I found this morning are the same person? Ever since I found the crane, there's been this stir of excitement hanging in the shadow of all my shock and confusion. It's like as long as I have this mystery and this story of Joe's world I never knew, he's alive again in some way. Even if that way is bad.

“Because I just do,” is all I say.

17

S
arah Sallenton—because she's been obsessed since their fake marriage on the playground in third grade, and came over with Sarah Gerber on the deadaversary.

Sarah Handy—nicest of the Sarahs (which isn't saying much). Talked on the phone with Joe sometimes. Good at soccer. Brought stinky roses to the house.

Sarah Gerber—likes to conquer the unobtainable ones.

Joanie Anderson—Joe's seventh grade girlfriend for a week. Also was valedictorian and is playing field hockey for University of Michigan.

Liz Whitehouse—cute in a girl-next-door way and always volunteered for same stuff as Joe. Has a long-term boyfriend.

Helen Petrovsky—Joe said she was the prettiest girl in the whole school when we played two truths and a lie once. He also said his favorite food was a dill pickle. He puked if he even smelled dill pickles.

Layne Trotter—quiet, beautiful, and generally not interested in boys. Would fit the total shock factor.

–––––

Two hours of arguing, dissecting possibilities, and scouring Nat's yearbook left us with seven sort-of-solid possibilities. We've moved to her room, which is still princess pink and has a fake zebra rug, loads of Broadway musical posters signed by cast members, and more tchotchke than any one person should be allowed.

Sandwiched between three families of matryoshka dolls, Nat has this prehistoric-looking plant with thick stalks and wide, shiny leaves. The flowers have long, angular orange and purple petals. It's called a bird-of-paradise, because the flowers look like paper cranes. I shove the note deeper into my pocket.

“I hate that plant,” I say, glaring at it.

Nat doesn't look up from the list. She's repeating the names out loud, running through them again and again.

“
We need to see who was around, back when Joe was home right before he got sick,” she says. “Five of the people on that list were just finishing their freshman year too. Maybe some of the
colleges went later?”

“Yeah, but Sarah Handy went to community college here. So it doesn't matter when she got out, and Joanie Anderson was at Michigan too.”

“Well, we have to start somewhere. So we'll check the schedules of the other five and see if we can cross them off the list. I mean, Liz goes somewhere in, like, Maine or Massachusetts, right?”

We get on the computer and cyber-stalk. Liz goes to a little college in New Hampshire. The school's website says classes start in late September and don't get out until late June. We put a line through her name.

“A motel receipt,” Nat repeats for the tenth time. Her eyes are slits. She glares into blank air and says, “Really, Joe? Really?” as if he can answer.

She chews the end of her pen. Taps it against the paper. Twitches her mouth back and forth.

“I think we need to go back in his room,” she says, spread out on the floor in a position one could mistake for coffin yoga.

“I know.”

“But not today, okay?”

Nat also reads minds.

“Good plan,” I agree, and slump down into an overstuffed fluffy white beanbag that resembles a sleeping baby yeti. Wisps of white hairs float near my face, and I bat them toward the floor.

“My mom cleaned up the mint jungle this morning.”

“Wow. That's a good sign, right?”

“I guess. I think so. It was weird. I sorta thought I'd be in trouble for sleeping in Joe's room, but nobody said a word.”

“Why did you go in there?”

It's my turn to bite a nail.

“I don't know. I guess I wasn't thinking. I got a ride home from Mateo last night.”

This gets Nat's interest.

“What? Why didn't you call me? What happened? Did you talk? Did he make a move? Did you just go up and ask him for a ride? Did any of those Catholic Central girls see you? I bet they were freaking pissed!”

Nat and I have become masters in the art of other conversations, like who we think will win the presidential election, or who will be homecoming queen, or how good the sushi is at the new sushi bar in town and how bad it will suck when the owners figure out they can make more money someplace like Birming Pointe, where more people still have good jobs. We don't talk about what—or who—could be important to me. I wish I wouldn't have said anything.

“Anna!”

“I was just getting ready to call my mom.” White lie. Almost not even a lie. “And he just came up and offered me a ride. Nothing happened. We went to the Cowboy Grill and ate a banana split. How was the movie with Alex?”

“Movie was great. But seriously, can we please talk about you getting a ride home with the mysterious hottie that every single waitress—me excluded, of course—is totally longing to have a summer fling with?”

“It didn't mean anything.”

“Oh yes it did. Who paid?”

“For what?”

“Don't be like that! Who paid for the banana split? Those things are like, twelve dollars!”

I groan.

“Don't remind me,” I say, shaking my head. “My wallet was in your car. So he sorta had to pay.”

“Oh.” Nat thinks on this for a second and then breaks into a grin. “No, it still means something. He offered you a ride. And he didn't want to take you right home. Do you know how many times I've heard girls ask him to hang out in the month I've been doing these catering jobs?”

“Well, until a week ago, you only did them on weekends because we were still in school. So it couldn't be that many.”

She ignores my reasoning.

“I knew it. You two totally had a spark.”

She gets up and claps her hands, beaming like she does for an audience after her final bow. Then she disappears into the bathroom for eight minutes. I count in an effort to stop replaying the end of my night with Mateo. Specifically, the part when he didn't kiss me.

When Nat comes back, she's quiet.

“Are you OK?”

She nods yes, then pauses and looks at me. “I'm worried this thing with Joe will make you backtrack or whatever and I just really want you to start getting better.”

I remember Nat's face when she came to my hospital room during supervised visitation hours and saw my new haircut. The same gullible nurse who let me download Patti songs also agreed to help me cut it in huge, chunky pieces. Her reasoning (“it was a healing expression”) didn't go over too well with my mother and father, who needed me presentable at a funeral in the near future.

“Why?” she asked, picking up one angled piece of still-mousey-colored hair.

I tried to tell her. I tried to explain how Joe was dead and I was locked up and how the echo of Patti Smith's music and words might save me. How latching onto a crazy-strong stranger was the way I'd make it through.

“I don't get it,” Nat said, shaking her head. “I just don't get it.”

She always got it. I didn't know how to respond.

I went through this conversation with the first eight shrinks too. I told them that part of the truth. They didn't understand. Instead, they handed me books or papers or pamphlets with soft blue and gray tones.

The therapist before Liza explained, in his radio-ready voice, that copying a 1970s beat poet turned punk rocker had no correlation to dealing with my feelings about death or my family falling apart.

He said I should be journaling.

I said, “Therapists aren't supposed to say ‘should.'”

He said I needed to snap out of my costume so I could begin the real work of getting my mind back on track.

I fished a watermelon Jolly Rancher from a sea of sour green apple in his candy bowl. When I'd sucked it into a tiny sliver, I opened my mouth and said he was ignoring the possibility of me being a teenager who simply figured out who she is. I said, “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”

The shrink made sad eyes through his Buddy Holly glasses and replied, “Yes, that's what I'm most afraid you believe.”

Idiot didn't even know a good Carl Jung quote when he heard one.

We moved on to Liza the following week. And I don't tell her anything except what she wants to hear.

So sitting in Nat's room, I say, “I'm good,” over and over again. Her dubious expression gets wiped away the second I add, “Mateo called this morning. He asked me out.”

I'm pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard her squeal in delight. In fact, I'm a little worried Mateo heard it, clear across town.

Got to love a drama queen, I suppose.