The Rest of Us Just Live Here (11 page)

The first time I do it, whole slabs of make-up come off – I’m going to look like an Easter Island head in my senior pictures – so I wash again in the same exact order. Third time through, I know I’m gone. Forehead, nose, cheekbones, chin, neck. Forehead, nose, cheekbones, chin, neck. Forehead, nose, cheekbones, chin, neck. Shit shit shit shit shit.

My shirt is soaking wet now. I can feel my fingertips starting to crack again as the oil is washed away. The repeated washing of my black eyes and cheek scar, no matter how gently I do it, gets more painful each time. The eighth time through, I try to force my hands to rest on the sink and fail.

I know how crazy this is. I know the feeling that I haven’t washed my face “right” makes no sense. But like I said, knowing doesn’t make it better. It makes it so much worse. How can I explain it? If you don’t know, maybe I can’t, but as I wash my face yet again, I hate myself so much I want to stick a knife in my heart.

When Jared finally opens the bathroom door to see what’s going on, I’m actually crying. With fury. With embarrassment. With hate for myself and this stupid thing
I can’t stop doing
. I’m doing it again even now, knowing all of those things.

Jared takes one look, disappears for a sec and returns with a dry shirt, one of mine I’ve left here over the years.

The simple act of taking it from him breaks the loop.

I bend forward at the waist and say a long, angry “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck” under my breath. I’m still crying, so Jared just puts his hand on my back until I’m ready to stand up again.

“There’s no shame in therapy, Mike,” he says, as I change shirts. “Or medicine. You shouldn’t have to go through this.”

The skin on my face is now so dry it stings. Jared fishes out some man moisturizer and holds it out to me. “Can you do it?” I say. “I’m afraid I’ll get stuck again.”

He doesn’t question me, just starts dabbing the goop on my face. “Is it going out with Henna tonight? You’re afraid it’s changing. That could be it.”

“Maybe.” I wince as the cream bites a bit. “Maybe it’s you.”

He pauses. “Me?”

I try to smile. “Who’s going to save me from these when I go to college?”

“You’ll work it out, Mikey. You’re stronger than you think, and I’ll be there anyway.”

“It’s not just that. Where’ve you been lately, Jared? Where do you go on Saturday nights? What are you doing
tonight
that no one can know about?”

He puts more stuff on my face. And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.

“I got some stuff going on, Mike,” he says.

“What stuff? I can help you with it.”

He smiles. “Not this stuff. But thank you.”

“You could talk to me about it. You can talk to me about anything.”

“I know.” He finishes with the moisturizer. “You’re going to be shiny, but you’ve known Henna so long, I doubt she really sees you any more.”

“Jared–”

“Here’s what’s important, Mike.” He takes a long time screwing the lid back on the moisturizer. “What’s important is that I know how much you worry about shit. And what’s also important is that I know a big part of that worry is that, no matter what group of friends you’re in, no matter how long you’ve known them, you always assume you’re the least-wanted person there. The one everyone else could do without.”

All I can do at this is swallow. I feel like I’m naked all of a sudden.

“Even when it’s just you and me,” he says. “I know how you worry that you need me as a friend more than I need you.”

“Jared, please–”

“I’ve known it since we were kids, Mike. You’re not the only one who worries.” He play-punches me in the chest, leaving the flat of his fist there. “I wouldn’t have made it without you. I got my dad and I got you and I need you both. More than you know.”

I swallow again. “Thanks, man.”

“I’ll tell you about everything when I can,” he says. “I promise. I
want
to. But talking about it, even with you, would change it and I can’t risk that yet.”

“Okay.”

“And if you don’t kiss Henna on the lips tonight
for real
, I’ll make sure you have black eyes all the way through graduation.”

He grins, and though I’m still worried about him – I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t – the happiness I feel at what he said is just like he really did punch me in the chest.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you?” Henna asks, before we’re even half a mile from her house.

I stop right there in the middle of the road.

“What?” is pretty much all I can come up with.

“It’s kind of in the spirit of exploration,” she says. “We’ve both always wondered, haven’t we?”

“We have?
You
have?”

“You’re a cute boy I’ve known for a hundred years. Of course I’ve thought about it.”

A car pulls up behind us in the wooded dark, its headlights shining on the backs of our heads. After a second, it honks. Without taking my eyes off Henna, I hit the hazard lights. The car honks again, then pulls around us.

“Don’t you feel like the world’s shaken loose?” Henna says.

“Yes,” I say, because it has. “You think I’m cute?”

“Here’s this future we’re looking at. And it’s not far away like the future normally is. It’s here, now. Like any second.” She rubs her shoulder. “I got vaccinated for the Africa trip today. We’re still going. Even when I’ve just had surgery on my arm. My dad says he’s a doctor and can look after me and God will watch over us as we do His will and so nothing’s changed. We’re going and it’s real.”

“You could stay with us,” I say and then I think, no, she probably couldn’t. She knows it, too, from the look she gives me. “Or Jared. For the summer at least–”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s happening. There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing I can do about graduating. Nothing I can do about going to a different college than all of my friends. Nothing I can do about these feelings for Nathan that surprise me as much as anybody. Sorry, but what’s the point of lying about it? What’s the point of lying about anything? We could keep being too afraid to say we don’t know stuff and then the future will come and eat us anyway and we’ll regret not doing all that stuff we wished we did. You know?”

“Not really.”

She smiles. “There’s the truth, see? Isn’t it great?”

Another car passes us going the other way. It goes pretty slowly, though, and we wait for it to pass, as if it could somehow overhear our conversation.

“Why do you want to kiss me?” I ask.

“Because I don’t know if I should. I don’t know what it’ll feel like.” She shrugs. “I used to like you that way. Way back when Mel started school again. I could see how much you cared for her, Mike. How much you looked after her.” Her eyes have gone a little wet. “I don’t know if Teemu would have looked after me like that in the same situation.” She swallows away the tears. “I’d like to think so but I’m never going to find out. And I don’t like that I’m not.”

I’m just staring at her. “You used to like me?”

“Yeah,” she says, simply. “But I was with Tony and I also liked him. A lot. Still do. We’d have had the most incredibly pretty black Finnish Korean babies in the world.”

“Why’d you break up with him then?”

She finally looks away. “He wanted us to get married this summer.”

“What?”

“I thought about it, too. As a way to get out of the Africa trip. But then I realized that was the
only
reason I was considering it. You can’t marry someone just to get away from your parents.”

“People do.”

“Not me, it turns out. It also made me realize I couldn’t see myself marrying Tony at all. Not yet, anyway. At least not until I’d gone out and had a life of my own, where I could make my
own
decisions, maybe find out what
I
want.”

“And you want to find out if you want me?”

She looks back at me. “We could have died together. But we didn’t. And all I could think while we were waiting for the ambulance was how glad I was it was you with me there. Because if it was you, I didn’t have to be afraid.”

“I felt the same way.”

“I know. I’ve always known.” She unbuckles her seatbelt. “I
don’t
know if it’s the right thing for us to kiss but I don’t want to leave not having found out. I’m not trying to play with your feelings and I’m so scared you might get hurt but being too afraid isn’t–”

And I’m already kissing her.

She’s…

Well, I don’t know, you’ve kissed people, haven’t you? So you know what the physical part is, and though we do just fine at that and the closeness and the smell of her and the taste of her mouth is so freaking amazing and though I can feel every part of where she’s touching me with her non-injured hand on the back of my neck and her cast digging into my chest and, yeah, I have such a hard-on I have to readjust myself before we kiss again because it’s so uncomfortable against my jeans but–

But it’s really inside your head where it all happens, doesn’t it?

Because I’m just thinking,
I’m kissing her I’m kissing her I’m kissing her I’m kissing Henna We’re kissing It’s Henna and we’re kissing
.

And maybe that’s stupid, but maybe it’s not, maybe that’s just what people do.
I’m kissing her
.

That’s what I’m thinking.

There’s a knock on the window so loud and surprising, we jump apart.

A car is stopped a little behind us, its headlights off. I have no reason to think so, but I have the immediate thought that it’s the same car that stopped behind us before. And the same car that drove by slowly a minute ago. It turns on red and blue lights to flash at us once or twice before going dark again.

It’s a police car.

“Shit,” I hear Henna say.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” I say.

The knock comes again and we both jump again, too. I don’t think either of us are especially afraid of policemen, but two people have been killed and a zombie deer jumped over my head, so I think it’s fair to say we’re a little on edge.

I roll down my window. The cop is standing so close to the car, I can’t even see his face at first. I do see the big truncheon-like flashlight that he knocked on the window with. It’s about two inches from my head.

“Hi,” I say, kind of stupidly.

“‘Hi’?” he says, leaning down slow to put his head in the window. “Is that how you address an officer of the law?”

With shock, I recognize him. It’s the cop who came to the school and completely failed to take us seriously when we said we’d seen indie kid Finn being chased by a little girl across the Field. He’s wearing a scarf, which clearly isn’t part of his uniform, and it’s pitch black and he’s wearing sunglasses.

We’re in trouble
, I think,
and not just being-stopped-by-a-cop trouble
.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” he says. His words are clear and strong, nothing like the slightly drunk version we saw in the Vice Principal’s office.

“I’m sorry, officer. I know we’re not supposed to be–”

“No,” he interrupts. “You’re not.”

The flashlight comes on right in my face. I flinch and I hear the cop laugh. He moves it over to Henna, who doesn’t look away. She’s frightened, I can tell, as frightened as me, but she’s defiant, too. The accident really has shaken the world loose for her. We may be in big trouble here but if we are, she’s going to look at it square on.

She’s never looked more beautiful. And I’m so afraid for her I can barely keep from throwing up.

“You kids,” he spits at us. “With your impudence and your sex–”

“Our what?” Henna says.

“Thinking no one understands you because you’re young. Thinking only you can see the world as it truly is.” He hits the flashlight, hard, on the door of my car. “You know nothing.” He hits the door again, hard enough to leave a dent. “Nothing at all.” Almost casually, he smashes my wing mirror, shattering it.

“Hey!” I say, and the flashlight is suddenly bright in my face again.

“It’s not safe to be out here at night,” the cop says, amusement in his voice.

Still looking at the cop, I try to sneakily raise my hand to the gearshift, wondering if I can gun it and get us out of here–

“You try it,” the cop says. “You just go right ahead.”

“Mikey,” I hear Henna whisper. She’s looking out the back window.

There are policemen all around us. I don’t see any cars besides the first one but there are at least twenty other cops out there, standing in a wide circle around the car, hands on holsters.

All wearing sunglasses.

I’ve still got my hand on the gearshift. Henna and I both glance down at it, using only our eyes. She gives me a little nod. I’m just about to shift it–

When the voice comes. It’s like a whisper mixed with the whine of a buzzsaw. It seems to come from everywhere at once, miles away but also in your head, too.

“Look closer,”
it says, over and over, in scraping words that make both me and Henna wince.
“Look closer, look closer…”
The sound is like glass breaking against your skin, you hear it and feel it, before it vanishes, making you feel like someone’s touched you in a wrong way.