Come Back to Me (5 page)

I felt like
I was just waiting for something to happen, too.

I rested my
head on the couch arm, making me eye level with the tiny Christmas tree we’d
set up in Kyle’s basement.  It wasn’t anything like the ginormous silver one my
mom had put in our foyer.  For one, this tree was a tabletop Fir, with lumps
and bald spots, and two, the ornaments we’d collected over the last couple of
years didn’t have any sort of matching color scheme.  Earlier that night, we
added ornaments to represent our first choice schools.  Katie actually found a glass
one in the shape of an MIT sweatshirt. I hung a postcard from Colson, a winter
scene of the quad with a snowman wearing the school colors.  Kyle forgot.  I’d
been curious what he was going to do, because he still didn’t seem to have any
plans.  I think Katie thought our little tree decorating ceremony was going to
be his declaration or something.  When he came up with nothing, she narrowed
her eyes at him.  I half-expected her to breathe dragon fire.

Surprisingly
though she said nothing.  She pulled out an elaborate, gold, Christmas angel
and set it on top, the tree bowed a little under the weight.

The topper
didn’t go with our cute, mismatched (but meaningful) ornaments anyway.  It belonged
on the tree upstairs—the white one with the red glass balls that towered in the
center of Kyle’s formal living room.  But I didn’t say that, because when I
glanced at Katie after she crowned ours with the angel, the expression on her
faced seemed to dare me.

Kyle turned
back around and flopped on the couch, landing on my ankle.

“Ow.”

“Sorry,
Whit,” he said, watching the TV, while he absentmindedly rubbed my ankle.  The
wrong one.

Kyle tossed
me another mini bottle, hitting my elbow

“Ow,” I said
again.  “You hit my funny bone.”

Then Kyle
looked at me, and we both laughed until we were in hysterics, holding our
stomachs and gasping for breath.

Kyle cackled
so loud, he sounded like a donkey.

“Bray
much?”  I asked.

“Well, you
sound like a dolphin.”

“Dolphin?” 
I giggled.

Kyle picked
up the bottle and poked me with it.  This time, I heard the high pitch squeak
out of me.  “Okay, but a dolphin is better than sounding like an ass.”

“Whatever,”
Kyle said.  He threw the bottle in the air.  I think he intended to catch it,
because he mumbled something about “Polish juggling,” except the bottle went
over my head.  Kyle lunged for it and the next thing I knew, he was on top of
me.

He knocked
the breath out of me, and we got quiet.  All I could hear was the loud buzzing
sound in my ears that I always got when I drank too much.

Kyle’s face
was too close; his features blurred and swam in front of me.  I moved to push
him away, but the way he’d landed, his elbows pinned my arms to my sides.

I gave up. 
I felt so tired anyway, and Kyle’s breath was warm and sweet, probably because
of the soup he always ordered from Thai Express.  It had a ton of ginger in
it.  I never liked that soup.  It always tasted too flowery to me, but it made
Kyle smell sweet.

Then Kyle’s
lips touched mine.  They were soft.  With his lips pressing against mine, I felt
something other than the pathetic I’d grown so accustomed to.  I chalked it up
to some sort of odd power, because when his lips moved on mine, I felt a surge
of energy moving along my spine, throughout my nerves.  I moved my arms, then
placed my hands on his cheeks.

I kissed him
back.

Kissing Kyle
was weird and not weird all at the same time, the exact definition of surreal. 
I didn’t know how long we kissed.  My pickled brain just registered that it was
Kyle, my best friend’s boyfriend, who I was kissing, when I opened my eyes.

Katie was
there.  Staring.  She didn’t yell.  She didn’t run away.  In fact, she just
stood there, arms straight by her side.  I thought I imagined her because I was
so wasted.

I pushed on Kyle’s
chest, and he made some sounds of protest, until I pushed harder and he caught
the look on my face.

“Don’t throw
up on me, Whitney.” As he moved to the other side of the couch, he did a double
take at Katie’s presence.

“Katie . . .
ohmigod.”  He jumped to his feet.  He swiped a hand through his hair in some
automatic, misplaced moment of vanity and sidestepped slightly, as he tried to
gain his balance.  He tripped over the edge of the couch and landed on his
knees in front of her.

But she
didn’t even look at him.  She just turned and left, without saying a word.

* * *

The moon
woke me up in the middle of the night.  I’d fallen asleep with my drapes open,
and it cast a white light across my face, brightening my room to fake morning.

Lying there,
I realized I’d been dreaming about Katie, reliving my mistakes, my drunken
vision of her on graduation night.  I glanced at my window.  I could see stars,
too.  I didn’t want to see any of it, nothing that would make me think of
Katie.

I rolled out
of bed and stumbled to the window, hesitating as I reached for the shade.

Was there
something out there?

Only shadows
under the tress, but my mind registered a blurry suggestion in my peripheral
view.

My heart
dipped low.

I slid the
drapes shut, but my imagination bloomed into something haunting.  I imagined
Katie not outside, but behind me, and I panicked, ripping my comforter off my
bed and running for the closet.  Once ensconced inside and under the thick
fabric, my heart sounded unnaturally loud in my nest of darkness.  I curled
into a tighter ball and leaned into a corner, but I sat on something hard.  I
moved, reaching under me for the object.  A sneaker.  I pulled it into my cover
cave.  The rubber sole smelled like tires, and I thought about bicycles, summer,
and freedom.  That memory crowded out the sinister and otherworldly perceptions.

I snaked a
hand out and upward reaching for the switch to my closet light.  Once on, I
squinted, focusing on the shoe in my hand.  It was a pale pink Converse shoe
with a white rounded tip.  They were my favorite shoes freshman year.

I smiled a
little.

I turned the
shoe over, noticing the wear on the treads.  Well worn.  There was a grass
stain on the instep.

I thought of
the glue room at Gosley again.  There were so many random objects to decorate.
We even covered sharpie markers in glitter at one point.  Sneakers could be a
good medium.  And crafting was a better way to occupy my summer than
instigating fights with my mom.  All I needed was glitter, glue, and maybe some
sequins.  Then they’d be good as new, better.

With sparkly
thoughts and ideas crowding out the guilt-induced darkness, I fell asleep in
the corner of my closet.

Bloom Town
Center wasn’t the same.  There were new stores, a new parking lot, and a
cobblestone walkway dotted with dogwood trees that split the whole shopping
center in half.  There was also a front loader next to orange cones and a Porta
Potty at the far edge of the last row of parked cars—evidence of even more construction
to come.

The change
clashed with me.  I didn’t fit.  Maybe from the outside I looked different walking
away from the craft store with my short hair and a raffia string tied bag of glitter
supplies, but deep down I was still the same old Whitney.

I clenched
my teeth.  My free hand slid into the pocket of my shorts.  I curled my fingers
around the mini vodka bottle that was supposed to be some bizarre good luck
charm, the shape imprinting on my palm.  I squeezed, like it was a stress ball.

What was
wrong with me?

I’m not
going to drink it.  Holding it is proof of that.

My shoulders
slumped, and I pushed the bottle deeper into my pocket as I continued along the
sidewalk.  I was halfway across the shopping center, almost on the road that
would take me on a ten-minute walk home, when someone called my name.

I looked
up.  Victoria “Kiki” Stone waved at me.  A white flowered branch bobbed in the
breeze next to her.

“Whitney,”
she said, standing twenty feet away from me in a gauzy, printed maxi dress. 
I’d recognize that super friendly smile anywhere.  She was
the
face of
Steeple Academy’s spirit club for the last four years (or the “muffin brigade”
as Katie once joked).

Seeing Kiki
was like seeing a ghost, a remnant of my old life.  She must’ve left me a dozen
messages on my phone after Katie died, ones I never returned, because I didn’t
really know Kiki all that well.  She’d been Katie’s new BFF.  Plus, it was
weird to hear her expressing her sympathies to me of all people.  Katie
hated
me.

This,
however, was just a wave, so I raised my palm up to match her greeting.

Kiki
hesitated.  Would she cross the cobblestone plaza to talk to me?  She blocked
my way out of Bloom Town Center, so I wasn’t sure what I would do either.  It
was an odd moment, like someone had pushed a pause button.  What would we even talk
about?  Katie?  The weather?  Summer plans?

The frozen
coffee drink I had earlier sloshed in my stomach.  I should’ve stuck with my usual
iced tea. But being at Bloom Town Center, I’d found too many memories that I
didn’t want, so I thought I’d drink something different.  It was weird wanting
normal, but at the same time not.

Then, two
more girls, whose names I couldn’t place, approached her, and she turned to
them.  With her gaze off me, I swiveled on my heel, walking fast in the
opposite direction, into the parking lot, weaving through the maze of cars.  I
would have to walk the entire width of the complex and around the back in order
to avoid Kiki and her friends.  A long detour.

A guy crossed
the lot in front of me.  He looked like Brandon.

Why did I
come here?  Was a bag full of glitter worth this cringing walk down memory
lane?

My heart
skittered a bit.  I slowed my pace.  The last time I saw him was when he was at
the podium at graduation giving his valedictorian speech.  But the memory of him
peeling off the silly photo of us that he’d taped to his locker (the one I’d
cut from a group photo of us taken at the winter formal), fanned the flames of what
was apparently still a simmering humiliation.  It was a Steeple Academy
tradition to display a photo of your date for upcoming dances, and Brandon had
asked me to prom right before the disastrous kiss happened.

It wasn’t as
if Brandon said anything to me the day he’d taken down the photo.  There were
no harsh words, or mean things he couldn’t take back. He was simply silent. 
Just like Katie, once she decided we were no longer friends.  Besides, it
wasn’t as if he and I had been boyfriend/girlfriend.

My hand went
up to my hair, but there was no ponytail to grab.  I felt annoyed, but then
slight relief as I realized Brandon might not recognize me with short hair.

Kiki did
.

I was
considering another zigzag getaway, when I noticed it actually wasn’t Brandon.

My jaw went
slack.  I was so paranoid.

Feeling
safe, I focused on the guy, noting the details I missed at first glance.  His
hair was darker, and he was taller.  He only seemed shorter because he was sort
of hunched over as he walked, both hands shoved into his pockets.

Sure, he had
that Brandon Look--the clothes and the regulation hair that all headmasters in
the three prep schools in and around Bloom demanded, the one that said prep
school graduate on his way to a career in finance, law, or politics.  However,
he didn’t have the car that went along with The Look because he stopped at a
Mercedes—an older, funky orange one.  A Mercedes that looked nothing like the newish
black one I had gotten for my seventeenth birthday, the one with satellite
radio and GPS, the one that now had a new bumper and paint job, currently
banished to the garage until I went off to Colson.

Again, my
hand reached for my ghostly ponytail, but with nothing to hold on to, my hand
fluttered, falling on my neck, shoulder, and back down to my side.  I shoved it
into my pocket, only to come up against my stupid courage talisman.  My psycho
lucky rabbit’s foot.

But my arm
movement must’ve caught this guy’s attention, because he turned in my direction
and stopped.  I froze, my fingers wrapping around the bottle in my pocket.

He was
definitely not Brandon, but . . .

He squinted,
then smiled at me, as if he recognized me.  Unless I was imagining it, after
all, I’d stuck vodka in my pocket that morning in hopes that it would help me
feel strong about my sobriety.

The guy
nodded, acknowledging me, but he didn’t move to open his car door.

Feeling
trapped, my legs shook with the need to leave.  Again.  I abandoned my
potential conversation with Kiki only to run into another awkward opportunity.

I needed to
avoid Bloom Town Center.