Breathless (32 page)
It’s one week before graduation. The seniors are lined up along the wall of the gymnasium for a rehearsal, shifting back and forth on our feet, fanning our faces with programs for the ceremony. Most of the girls have removed their skirts and tossed them in a pile in a corner, so we stand in button-down shirts, boxer shorts and knee socks rolled down to our ankles. The heat is so intense that I’m dizzy.
Estella rolls her head back and forth against the wall. “This is ridiculous,” she mutters. “Like we don’t know how to walk single file. This is completely lame. I’m leaving.” But she doesn’t move. She rolls her eyeballs upward in their sockets, her lashes fluttering.
Behind her, crouching with her elbows on her knees and face flushed to the point where I can see the veins in her neck beating against her white flesh, Lindsey is quiet. Mazzie and I are a few bodies back in line, and it doesn’t surprise me that Lindsey is pretending not to ignore us, even though she’s actually ignoring us.
“What are you doing after this, Linds?” Estella asks.
“Um . . .” She tries to lower her voice, but we all hear. “Going to Amanda Hopwood’s graduation party.”
I haven’t been invited to many parties lately. I could just show up, and it might not be a big deal—but then again, it might be a bigger deal than I can imagine.
“Good.” Estella smiles. “I’ll be there. We can ride together.”
Lindsey won’t look at me or Mazzie. “Okay.”
Everybody is quiet again. In front of the crowd, the headmaster and his administrative staff are arranged in a tight circle, his secretary’s hairline dark and glossed with sweat.
Classes are over. The upcoming week is finals week, and since seniors don’t have to take finals, we are free to do pretty much whatever we please. But it’s too hot to do much of anything but stand there, waiting for everything to be over.
In our dorm room, I know, Mazzie’s bags are packed, six suitcases and a duffel bag piled in the center of the room. The only thing left is her open backpack, containing loose toiletries and a few changes of clothes. Her bed is stripped down to a fitted sheet.
• • •
The night before graduation, Mazzie and I are awake, the only two students left in the dorm. Mazzie’s things are completely packed now, except for the outfit she plans to wear tomorrow and what she’s wearing right now. Even her toothbrush has been thrown away; I walk into the bathroom and find her using mine, giving her gums a good scrub.
In our room, the beds are now stripped completely. We’ll sleep on my bare mattress tonight. “You should smoke a cigarette in here,” she says.
I’ve been trying to quit for good. “I don’t have any. Why should I, anyway?”
“Because you snuck so many with your fat head sticking out the window. You could light up right now in the middle of the room and nothing would happen to you.”
“I guess.”
“. . . ”
“. . . ”
“Mazzie,” I begin, but she sees the way I’m looking at her and holds up a quick hand to interrupt. “Shut up, Katie. I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it.”
“What do you think I’ll say?”
“A bunch of sappy bullshit about how much our friendship means and how important it is that we keep in touch after graduation. That kind of crap.”
“Don’t you want to keep in touch?”
“No.”
“Come on.”
She sighs. “Listen, you. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”
She’s right. I lean toward her, as if to give her a hug, but it seems like the most awkward thing I could possibly do right now.
She steps back. “I’m serious, Katie. Don’t.”
“Won’t you miss me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll miss you so much.”
I look past her, out our window, at Puff raising his leg against Mrs. Christianson’s newly planted tulips.
“I want to tell you something,” Mazzie says.
“What’s that?”
She licks her lips. I feel the room tilting a little bit as she speaks. “I want to tell you how my mother died.”
In three years, I never would have expected this.
“Okay,” I say. “So tell me.”
She comes close to me, and we both sit on the floor, our legs folded. She closes her eyes—I love the way her eyelashes are long and flutter shut with such grace—leans toward me, and whispers in my ear.
What does she tell me? After so many years of her keeping my secrets, there’s no way I’ll ever tell a soul. Not ever.
We both stand up. “You ready?” Mazzie asks, staring me straight in the eye.
“For what?”
“For your party, dummy.”
As a graduation present, Drew is throwing me a surprise party tonight. Mazzie told me about it weeks ago.
“I guess so. I don’t feel like going.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for starters, it’s going to be you, me, Drew, and his mom at Elbow Room.” Elbow Room is a local Italian restaurant. “You know—same stuff, different day. At least, that’s how it’s been for the past few weeks.”
For some reason this is amusing to Mazzie. She cocks her head at me. “But not for long.”
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yeah. Do you have everything? Keys? A good surprised expression?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see it.”
I flash her my most surprised face.
“Okay, then,” she says, “let’s go.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
We don’t move.
“I love you,” I say. “You’re my best friend.”
Mazzie’s shoulders slump. She’s trying not to cry. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”
“Don’t forget about me.”
She nods.
We stand there looking at each other. I remember the first day I ever met her.
“I’ll miss you, Madeline Moon,” I tell her.
She moves toward the door. “You won’t have to. You know where to find me.”
I take one last look around the room. With all of our things packed, I barely recognize it. Everything will be different soon. Everything will be new. I don’t know what’s going to happen. The only thing I know for sure is how to swim.
Once I get through airport security, I easily spot Drew’s head of curls above the crowd gathered to meet their loved ones. It’s the day before Christmas Eve.
His hugs haven’t changed. He squeezes me so tightly that he picks me up off the ground. Once we let go of each other, we stand there grinning.
“Wow,” I say. “You never seem to get any older, Drew.”
“Neither do you.”
“Oh, please.”
“I mean it. In fact, wait a second.” He pats his coat pockets. “I can prove it to you.” He pulls a wrapped package from his inner pocket. “Shelly found this while she was going through our old stuff.”
I open the present. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe you still have this!” It’s a framed photo of me and Drew, taken back in high school. We’d just started dating. We’re sitting side by side in our bathing suits, our feet dangling into Lindsey’s pool.
“I remember this,” I say, clutching the photo to my chest. “I was smiling so hard that my cheeks hurt.”
He nods. “What did I tell you? You look exactly the same.”
I study the photograph a little closer. I had the same blond hair, the same swimmer’s build, but it’s obvious from the tension in my shoulders, the lack of confidence in my eyes, that I was just a baby back then. I had no idea what I was getting into—not with Drew, or with anything.
“Shelly’s amazing,” I say, once we’re settled in his car, on our way to my hotel. “If I were married, I don’t think I’d ever give my husband’s old girlfriend any pictures of them together.”
He grins at me. “Come on, Katie. You’re the one who
introduced
us. Besides,” he adds, “you and I were a terrible match.”
“Hey! We weren’t that bad.”
Drew shrugs. “Oh, whatever you say.”
We drive in silence for a few moments. The roads in Pittsburgh are covered with a light dusting of snow, but it’s nothing compared to what I’m used to in New York. The afternoon feels calm, a little lonely. I know Pennsylvania will never feel like home again.
“How’s Mazzie?” Drew asks.
I shrug. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”
He grins. “So you haven’t talked to her in, what, a few hours?”
“A few weeks, actually.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Okay, it’s been, like, two weeks. She’s busy finishing her residency in Santa Monica.”
He shakes her head. “I can’t believe people trust her with their
kids.
I always thought she’d be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon.”
I smile. I don’t say anything. Her choice—she’s a pediatrician—doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Just before we reach the hotel, Drew says, “Wait—I almost forgot. You have to see this.” He reaches across me, into the glove compartment, and pulls out a travel magazine.
“Turn to the back,” he says, “to the advertisements.”
Sandwiched between two full-page brokerage ads, there’s a section for wedding announcements. As I look them over, I gasp. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
There’s a full-page article, along with a glossy color photo of the new bride and groom. It’s Estella, looking radiant as ever, standing beside her new husband, whom I don’t recognize. I scan the article. Dress handmade from Italian silk . . . reception at the Atlanta Museum of History . . . “Lindsey was the maid of honor?”
Drew nods. “I guess they’re still the best of friends. You know, my company buys space in this magazine, and those wedding announcements are technically ads. Can you believe she
paid
just so everyone would know about her wedding?”
I nod. “Sure. Were you invited?”
“Nope.” He grins at me. “Thank God for small favors.”
Once we’re at the hotel, Drew carries my suitcase into the lobby for me.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say. “I could have taken a cab.” Drew lives just outside the state line, about an hour west of Pittsburgh.
“No problem. I would have insisted you stay with us, but Shelly is in nesting mode. She’s going nuts, Katie. Last week I caught her cleaning the floorboards with a toothbrush at three in the morning.”
“I hear pregnant women can get like that.” I give him a hug.
He pulls away, holding on to my shoulders. “What about you? Any wedding plans yet?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Katie!”
I can’t stop myself—I reach out and muss his curls. Just for a moment, I feel a twinge of the same excitement from the first time I touched them. I know it will never go away completely. “I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m the marrying kind of girl.”
In general, institutions for the criminally insane are not the most warm and fuzzy places. But Will seems happy enough.
We talk on the phone a lot, but for the past few years, I’ve seen him only on Christmas. There isn’t much we’re allowed to give him. This year, I’ve brought him a game of checkers.
My parents stop by the hotel to pick me up on their way to the prison. We stand in the lobby for a few moments, catching up. I only talk to them every few months, but it feels okay. I think we’re as close as we’re ever going to get, at least in this lifetime.
My mom smoothes my hair. She has tears in her eyes. “It must be so
cold
in New York. How do you go swimming? Do they have a Y in that little town?”
“Mom,” I laugh, “the school lets me use the pool. It’s kind of like my office.”
My dad gives me a hug. As we’re holding each other, I can’t stop myself from smelling his hair, his neck, trying to take in every detail.
“You quit smoking,” I say, surprised.
He nods. “It’s been almost six months.”
“Good for you.”
My dad looks back and forth, from me to my mother. “Well,” he says, without a hint of sarcasm to his voice, “let’s go celebrate Christmas.”
Will loves the checkers. We spend a good two hours playing; each of his moves is slow and calculated and interspersed with frequent commentary and attempts at conversation.
But it’s impossible to ignore where we are: there is only one small, depressing Christmas tree in the corner of his common area. None of the other inmates have guests today. My parents and I are the only people not wearing scrubs or robes or worse. And Will still has the scars on his arm; of course, it doesn’t matter in here, but every time I look at them I feel a pang and imagine how things might have been different if only we’d found him sooner, or been able to stop him before he got out the front door. But we didn’t. And we couldn’t. So here we are.
He triple-jumps three of my pieces and lands in my back row. He puts his arms in the air, fists clenched in triumphant victory, and says, “King me!”
So I do. It will be, I know, the highlight of my brother’s Christmas. It is the best I can do for him, but for the rest of my life, that is what I will always give to Will: my best. For the rest of my life, no matter what becomes of us, he will always be my big brother. No matter how far I go, I know now that there is no escape—and I know, too, that there was never any point in trying. He will always be with me.
I’d like to thank my agent, Andrea Somberg, for her seemingly endless support and encouragement, as well as my editor, Stacy Cantor, for her consistent enthusiasm, confidence, and hard work. My gratitude also goes out to my amazing parents and my big brother, whose love, hilarity, and pathology have warped me permanently—I can only hope to return the favor. Thanks to my little daughters, Estella and Esmé, who keep me constantly motivated to show them the endless possibilities that come with being a woman, and to my most enduring and patient friend, Alisa. This book would not exist without all the knowledge and support I received at Seton Hill University, particularly from my wonderful mentors, Pat Picciarelli and Leslie Davis Guccione. My English professors at Indiana University of Pennsylvania—Jean Wilson, Chauna Craig, and Michael T. Williamson—all deserve recognition and thanks. I would especially like to acknowledge Curt Gsell, my amazing trainer, who showed me the peace and meditation that can be found in long-distance running. Thanks to you, I have learned that my most valuable thoughts have room to surface when I am surrounded by the calm of perpetual motion. Finally, I need to recognize the years I spent at the Linsly School, and its fabulous faculty and staff (both former and current) including Matt DiOrio, Robin Follet, Chad Barnett, and Reno DiOrio.