Falling Into Us (7 page)

“What movie are you watching?” He sounded suspicious.

“
Far and Away
,” Nell answered without a hint of hesitation. “It’s about—”

“I know what it is,” Father cut in. “Be home in twenty minutes, Rebecca. We shall discuss this when you are home.” He hung up, and silence filled the car.
 

I jumped when my phone rang again.
 

“Ohmigod,” Nell said, half-laughing. “Your dad is so scary. Do you think he bought it?”

“I don’t even know. I’m still in trouble for checking in late.”
 

“So. You’re not with me, and it’s almost ten-thirty. I’m guessing you’re with Jason?” She sounded sly and pleased with herself.

“Yeah. You could have warned me, you know.” I let a little of my irritation with Nell show through.

She didn’t sound sorry at all. “Would you have gone if I’d called you first?” I didn’t answer, which was answer enough for Nell. “Exactly. You’d have chickened out.”

“So what happened with you and Kyle?” I asked.

“Don’t you have to be home in twenty minutes?” She was avoiding the question, and we both knew it.

“You’re not getting out of this, Nell.”

“Call me when you’re home, if you can.”

“Fine. ’Bye.”

“’Bye.”
 

I turned to Jason. “Can you take me home?”

He nodded and put the truck in gear. “Sure. We’re not that far from your place, actually. I’ve been driving in a big circle, more or less.”
 

True to his word, he was slowing to a stop just inside the subdivision entrance. “Stop here,” I said before we reached my house.

As I got out, Jason reached over and snagged my hand, stopping me. “Can we go out again sometime?”

I stared at his strong fingers circling my wrist. “I don’t know, Jason. I want to, but I’m not sure it’s possible.”

He nodded. “Sure. I heard how he was. I’ll see you at school on Monday?” He released my wrist, and I shut the door behind me.
 

I stopped and glanced at him through the open window. “I had a great time, Jason. I didn’t think I would, but I did.”

Jason grinned. “I guess we can thank Nell, huh?”

I frowned at him. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

He just laughed. “I’m joking. I had a great time, too. Thanks for giving me a chance.”

I turned away and waved at him with my hand over my head. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Call me!” he said, slightly too loud.

“Not going to happen,” I said, walking backward.

“Then text me?” He was leaning out the window, his entire upper half visible.

I grinned at him. “That I might do. Now go before you get me in even more trouble.”

He slapped the roof of his truck and ducked back in, peeling out and fishtailing the truck in semi-circle with a slight squeal of tires. I shook my head at him, laughing.
 

When I turned around, however, I stopped laughing. Father was standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed over his broad chest, silver hair slicked back, dress shirt open one button and his tie loosened.
 

My heart dropped. Judging by the dark scowl on his face, he’d seen Jason.

Not good.

THREE: Romeo & Juliet Redux

Becca

October, same year

“Y-y-you can’t keep me l-l-l-locked up in my room forever, Father!” I stood in the doorway to my room, fury pounding through me, taking all my fluency with it.

He stood impassive in the hall outside my room, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were narrowed, dark, angry. “Yes. I can. And I will. You lied to me. You were out with that football player. I’ll keep you in here for as long it takes for you to learn your lesson.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, breathing deep with each number. “This isn’t fah-fah-fair. We just went to dinner. Drove around. I know I lied, and I’m sorry. But p-p-plea-please, I’m going crazy. I already don’t have a life, but now you won’t let me do anything.”

“Your sanity is at no risk, Rebecca. Stop exaggerating.”

Another ten-count, ten more deep breaths. Father never rushed me; he always waited until I was ready to speak. He had a stutter as a child, and didn’t completely shed it until he moved to the States and did some fluency shaping therapy. He understood that much about me at least.
 

“It’s not an exaggeration, Father. School, my room, homework, piano, speech. That’s all I ever do. Even before this, that’s all I ever did. Now? You might as well enroll me in online school and literally lock me in my room. I’ll be seventeen in two months, Father. When will I get to make my own decisions?”

“
Basta, figlia.
” He didn’t yell, because he never yelled. The words were delivered quietly, intensely.

I clamped my mouth closed around my screams of protest. I clenched my hands into fists and refused to cry. “You’ll regret this, Father. Remember that.” I closed the door in his face and sat at my desk, staring out the window at the trees waving in the afternoon sunlight.
 

I stuck my earbuds in my ears and scrolled through my iPod until I found the song I wanted, “Flightless Bird” by Iron & Wine. It was a song from the
Twilight
soundtrack, and I’d since devoured every song by Iron & Wine I could find. I liked the poetry in the lyrics, the slightly off-kilter sound and deep-felt meaning in every song. “Singers and the Endless Song” came up next, and I let myself go, let myself stare out the window and listen, just breathing and not speaking, not stuttering, not failing to properly express myself.

At some point, my pen began a frantic scribble across the page, giving vent to my thoughts.

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

Trees wave and tease
 

Blown in the long free breeze

Urging me out and into the blue

Into the sunlit green spaces

Where no words trip over clumsy tongues

Where no tensions drip like rain from eaves

I don’t even wish I was a bird

I only wish I was out there

Walking in the grass or climbing in the trees

Heated by the sun or chilled by the wind or wet in the rain

Anywhere but here

Chained to this stagnant shore

A prisoner of perfection

An enemy of state

For no more crime than being

A teenaged girl

In like with a teenaged boy

For no more crime than driving

In lazy dusty endless circles

Listening to country songs

And my own nervous heartbeat

My pulse pounding and my nerves twanging

Like the banjos on the radio

I can’t even shout my anger

Can’t even scream my frustration

Can’t even curse

It would only come out a jumble

“Fu—fu-fu-fuck you!”

Fu fu fu fu

Bu bu bu bu
 

Duh duh duh

Childish stumbling words

Tripping syllables and slippery syntactic screw-ups

That’s me
 

The silent girl

The stutterer

The prisoner

The smart girl

The valedictorian scribbling maledictions to no one

I heard my doorknob twist and the door banged open, revealing my older brother Ben. He glanced around my room, found me at my desk, and nodded at me, his long, stringy black hair hanging in tangles in front of his face. He kicked the door shut, stopping it from slamming by catching the knob at the last second.

“’Sup, Beck?” He plopped onto my bed and kicked his feet out on my comforter, shoes and all. “Still locked in your tower, huh?” He tossed his head to clear the hair away from his mouth and eyes.
 

His eyes were cloudy, hazed, reddened. I sighed and turned away from my desk, closing my notebook. “Are you high again, Ben?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, so? I’m havin’ more fun than you.”

“Dead people have more fun than me,” I deadpanned.

Ben laughed. “True.
Old
dead people, at that.”

I laughed and lay on the bed next to Ben, crawling over him to lie on the inside next to the wall, shoving him over with my hip. “You better not get mud on my comforter, Benny.”

“I won’t. And don’t call me Benny. I hate it.” He dug in his pocket, pulled out a glass pipe and a lighter, then lifted up and shoved open my window. He lay back down and dug in the cargo pocket of his baggy shorts and pulled out the brown tube from a paper towel roll. Each end of the tube had fabric softener sheets rubber banded over the opening. He sparked the lighter and put the pipe to his lips, lit the pot and sucked it into his lungs, setting the pipe and lighter on his chest before settling back onto the bed.

“You’re really going to do that right here in my room? In the house?” I asked, pissed off.

He shrugged, grinning a closed-lipped smile at me. He lifted the tube to his mouth and blew the thick, acrid smoke through the dryer sheet and out the window, the pungent smell now masked enough to not be readily noticeable.
 

“If Father catches you, he’ll send you to military school, Ben. You know that, right?”
 

Ben shrugged again. “He can try. I’m eighteen anyway, Beck. He can’t do shit but have me arrested.” He glanced at me, gesturing to me with the pipe; I shook my head, like I always did, and he took another long drag. “Why do you call him that?” he asked around his lungful of smoke.

“Call who what?” I felt loose, and realized I was getting a slight contact high from the fumes.

He blew out the smoke before answering. “Dad. You still call him ‘Father’ like we’re in the fucking eighteenth century or some shit.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do.”

Ben glanced at me in irritation, brushing a strand of hair away from his eyes with the end of the clear yellow plastic lighter. “I call bullshit on that. You’re a certifiable genius, Beck. You’ve got a reason for everything you do.”

I sighed. “Fine. You want to know? I call him
Father
because it creates distance. He’s not
Dad
to me, much less
Daddy
or anything else. He’s my father, so that’s what I call him. It’s a formal word, and it connotes a formal relationship.”

Ben laughed. “‘It connotes a formal relationship,’” he repeated, half-mocking. “Only you, Becca. Only you would say something like that. I just don’t get why you still put up with his crap. I stopped a long time ago.”

“But you don’t care. I do. That’s the difference.”

He glanced at me. “Meaning what? What don’t I care about?”

“Yourself. The future. I have plans, and need Father’s money to get there. I can’t afford the universities I need if I’m going to get my doctorate.”

“That’s shallow and short-sighted,” Ben said. “You could get scholarships. Take out loans. You don’t need his bullshit. He’s a fucking tyrant, a dictator. I hate his ass. Soon as I get a job and save enough for an apartment, I’m moving my ass out.”

“It is not shallow or short-sighted,” I argued. “Do you have any clue how much it’s gonna cost to get my bachelors, masters,
and
doctorate? Depending on the university, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ll still have to take out loans, but with Father’s help, it’ll be manageable.”

Ben just stared at me. “Listen to you. You skipped your childhood, I think. What sixteen-year-old is thinking about this stuff? Just be a kid, man. Sneak out. Make out with a guy behind the bleachers or some shit. Get into trouble and make me beat some dude’s ass for you. Quit being so goddamn serious all the time.” He took a long drag on his pipe and then leaned over and blew it straight into my face before I could roll away. “Smoke some pot and loosen up. We’re young. We’ve got time. Just chill and don’t be so serious.”

I coughed and waved the smoke away. “Goddamn it, Ben. Don’t be an asshole. Now I’m going to get high. I tried it with you once, remember? I hated it.”

Ben nodded, staring at the ceiling. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. You freaked the fuck out, thought Amma was going to come back from the dead and yell at us, even though Amma was alive and living in Beirut at the time.”

I laughed. “You said yourself you thought it was laced with something.”

He nodded again without looking at me, tamping down the ashes in the bowl with his thumb. “Yeah, dude, I remember. That shit was potent. You were so wasted I had to carry you up to your bed.”

“I really hated that, Ben.” I snatched the pipe and lighter from him and shoved them in his cargo pocket. “I hate it now. I hate what it does to you. It messes with your moods, and you know it. The doctor said—”

Ben stood up, suddenly angry. “I don’t give a fuck what the doctor said!” he yelled. “I hate all those stupid meds they want me to take. They make me feel like a freaking zombie, like I’m half-dead. I’m tired all the time, and I lose a ton of weight ’cause I can’t fucking eat. I hate it. You don’t know what it’s like. This stuff helps me more. Keeps me level, you know? When I get all whacked out and crazy, smoking brings me down, and when I’m depressed, it brings me up. It works better than any of that shit no one can pronounce. Fucking Zoloft and Wellbutrin and Xanax and Clonazepam and Valium and Ativan. It’s all bullshit. Doesn’t work.
This
shit works.” He grabbed the paraphernalia from his pocket and shook it at me.
 

I could already see the down-shift in his mood happening. “Ben, you know that’s not true,” I said, my voice soft and careful. “I know I don’t know what it’s like for you, but the way you’re dealing with it isn’t healthy.”

Ben blew out a frustrated breath, pocketing his things again and heading for the door. “You’re not a doctor yet, Becca, so quit trying to fix me.”

“Ben, wait. I’m sorry. I just—just—I want you to be happy. Th-that’s all.”

He stopped in the doorway and glanced at me through a curtain of stringy hair. He gave me a look that was deeper than I thought Ben capable of. “The problem is, when I
am
happy, no one can handle it. And when I’m not happy, they can’t handle it.
 
It’s not that I don’t care about my life or my future, Becca. I do. I just know that I’m limited, okay? What happens up here,” he tapped his temple, “inherently limits what I can do in my life. Drugs, no drugs, pot, no pot, there’s just no good way to handle my shit. I’ll never accomplish important stuff like you will, Beck. I know that. I’ve accepted it. I’m just gonna live it up and enjoy my life as much as I can for as long as I can. Eventually it’ll all catch up to me. I know that, too. But it’s my life, my choice, and no one else’s.”