What Happened to Lani Garver (28 page)

Suhar and I had met Ellen for breakfast in the Liberty Mall, and between Suhar's artistic tastes and Ellen constantly egging me on, we went on the shopping spree from hell. I now had on my black leather pants, which I decided looked very cool with a tattered T-shirt. Ellen had planted a hat on my head called a fedora, which she said gang members wore. But it's brown and velvety, with a brim
and a feather!
It looked very cool on me, and I didn't think I looked like gang bait. It just kind of fit with Claire-black-leather. Suhar not only bought it, but she bought me a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots that I had fallen in love with, god knows why. Like I wasn't tall enough already. I thought Ellen was going to fall onto her side, laughing "with me."

I was wearing the boots and had both my jackets shoved into a huge shopping bag. The streets were pretty deserted, which is not unusual this time of year. But as I got near the corner of Hackett and Tenth, I saw a group of girls hanging there. Eighth graders, I thought hazily, because I recognized one as Eli's younger sister, Jule. She was a sweet kid. I just gave a small wave as I started past them, but Jule piped up.

"Tough hat. Where'd you get those pants?"

"Philadelphia."

Her three friends came up a little closer behind her, and their eyes crawled all over me, trying to decide if these pants were really tough. I don't think anyone from Hackett had seen a pair of black leather pants on anything but a mannequin.

I let them get their stares in, and Jule finally pointed to my Liberty Mall shopping bag and said, "You went shopping in
Philadelphia?
"

To them, anywhere west of the mainland mall was a big deal. "Yeah, my dad lives there. He's a session musician in Philly."

"Yeah, we know about your dad." Jule's eyebrows raised up, and I snorted out a laugh. My dad had a false reputation on the island of being a "famous musician," because after he left my mom, he got in this Philly band and they had cut an album. People around here didn't know the difference between an album you pay to have produced and a Columbia Records contract.

"My dad is
not
famous," I corrected them, used to their thought. "But some of the stores near him are way cool, and I've got some really generous friends, so..."

I started to move past them, locking eyes with a girl I knew as Jule's best friend, Kaitlin. She could get a Macy-type of judgmental glare going sometimes. She had her arms folded across herself, and after I passed by, her mouth went off.

"But aren't you the girl hanging out with that faggot?"

It hit me in the back of the head like a boomerang. The bag with my jacket in it left my hand, and I turned with both hands free.
Don't lose your mind again, Claire. Don't start...
My sensible thoughts rang through, but my expression must have looked like something to be reckoned with. Kaitlin jumped behind her three friends. I stopped coming, but they still took three steps back.

"If I so much as dream that word comes out of your trash mouth again, I will come find you," I said.
Shouldn't threaten people, Claire. You might have to back it up.
I didn't know if I could back up a threat, but the three sweet girls looked so scared I figured I wouldn't have to. I turned my back again, then figured I had gotten Kaitlin in the pride button. She pretended she was talking to her three friends, loud enough for me to hear.

"Oh! Okay! I guess she doesn't care that this ...
Lani Garver
dressed up in nightgowns. He dressed up in nightgowns, and Macy Matlock caught him in them.
She's
been away in Philadelphia. I guess
she
missed that part."

I did another one eighty, and my sensible voice pizzled to nothing. I reached past the three friends, grabbed Kaitlin by the collar, and pulled her through them. They all froze dead, including Kaitlin, which is a good thing, because I might have hit her. I shook her once, some version of sanity coming through in my voice.

"I know about that story. And this is important. If you have never thought of anything before in your life, you damn well better think fast and clear right now. Repeat to me exactly what Macy told you."

"Nothing! My big brother told me..." She rattled off the name of some kid I barely knew who was on the tennis team.

"Jesus Christ...," I breathed. "Then tell me what
he
said."

"Let me go!"

I just shook her out again and pulled her up closer.

She pealed off automatically, "He said Macy Matlock told him that she caught that gay kid in ladies' nightgowns!"

A box gets stolen from a porch and it mushrooms into a fashion show in less than twenty-four hours.

"So, you said, he said, she said." I shoved her into her three friends, frustrated by the idea of probably never knowing who added what.

I could hear her let out a cry of relief. I just grabbed my bag and started off before my conscience could set me on fire. She sniffed, blabbering, "She's your best friend! Why don't you ask her what happened? She's got the nightgowns! They're hanging up in her front yard! Everyone knows that story! And they're all driving by to see what that new kid was dressed in!"

I turned slowly to look, being sure I heard them right. They took off.

"
Claire ... there's this wonderful thing called middle ground.
" I tried to remember what Lani meant by "middle ground," but as I walked down my own street, my blood was on fire. I imagined my fingers wrapping around Macy's throat and her eyeballs bugging out if I found those nightgowns hanging there.

I stormed into my house, and my mom was wigging out with a million questions, from "Why in hell did you take a bus?" to "What the hell do you have on your legs?" to "Why don't you talk to me anymore?"

I kept saying, "Calm down ... I'll talk to you later ... later, Mom!" I finally shoved her out of my room and locked the door. At that point I realized my whole motive for being in my house was to change out of my pants, so they wouldn't get ruined if I had to kill Macy. I was shaking, scared of killing someone. I called Ellen, got her voice mail, and so I called Erdman's office and got his voice mail. I left the same message each time. "It's Claire. I think I'm going to hit someone ... else. I really don't want to hit anybody else. Please call me back. I'm scared ... being this mad. Call me back. Please?"

I didn't want to tell Lani this new development until I saw what was going on with my own eyes. By the time I had changed into jeans and sneakers, neither Ellen nor Erdman had called back. My mother was shouting stuff up from the living room that sounded like "Fine, go live with your airhead father if you don't care about me anymore."

I passed her again. "I care, Mom ... just
don't fucking guilt me!
I'll be back."

As I walked the four blocks to Macy's, I took deep breaths and got calm enough that I decided Kaitlin had probably passed along an untrue rumor. It just was not Macy's breed of meanness Kaitlin had described—which was over in a flash, meant as an observation more than an attack, and forgotten by us ten seconds later.

I was surprised when I first caught sight of Macy's front yard, because the situation was not better than Kaitlin's gossip—it was worse. Three nightgowns were suspended by strings on hangers from the metal bar where the awning hangs in the summertime. There were three signs over the top:
LANI
GARVER JR. PROM, LANI GARVER SR. PROM, LANI GARVER HONEYMOON
. The signs were not done in Macy's pretty straight up and down writing, but some choppy printing. I smelled the influence of Phil, even though I did not see him. I saw Macy and Myra lounging on the porch furniture, trying for a last-minute tan in the absence of the summer awning.

I had frozen when I first saw all this, but a car came down the street, honking at the nightgowns, and I jumped out of my skin. Macy and Myra were sitting there to get attention, not a tan, I realized. My sanity went down the drain again.

Macy sat straight up, her psychic instinct probably sensing me coming across the grass, and she had the good sense not to say anything, for once.

"Definitely not your style, Macy." I yanked two of the nightgowns, and the hangers flew across the lawn.

"Phil did it ... I just left it to let you know how mad we are."

"To let
me
know? Looks to me like you're letting everybody in town know. Do you have to create a drama? There's this lovely thing called the phone. The doorbell. The e-mail, the mailbox—"

I pulled one nightgown over the top of the other. It was easy to figure out ... so easy I could not believe Miss Hawk Eye had missed it—considering the third nightgown had the sleeves ripped out and an opening cut down the front. I pulled the last one over the other two like a vest.

"What does that look like? Ever see a costume before? As in ... a
play?
"

For once her eyes failed her. She would not even look. Would. Not. Look. She spun her back to me and said into the garage door, "We're just trying to shock some sense into you! You're my best friend! I'm not letting you turn loon without a fight."

"How am
I
turning loon?" I should not have tried to reason with her. To let something get this dramatic, she would have had it all thought out.

"You hit Vince Clementi!
Hit
him!"

"I was supposed to let him half kill somebody?"

"You hit a guy!" She went on, deaf. "Over someone who tries to shove off his porn magazines on people—"

"Oh! Is that what happened!" I made Lani's singsongy voice.

"I was standing right there!"

"And I suppose by now that's how Phil saw it, too, right?"

She was backing away from me, looking me up and down like she expected me to jump her. Maybe that's why I grabbed her by the hair.

"Where's that magazine, Macy?"

"None of your damn business, and let me go, you maniac—"

"It
is
my business ... and I'm not letting go until you tell me where it is."

"What the hell do you want with it!"

"We're going to take it to the cops. We're going to see whose fingerprints are all over it. I'm gonna prove something to you—"

"We threw it out! Vince did, or something—"

"Hey, that's convenient. Lani said you would do that." I shoved her and held up the costume. "Tell me what this looks like!"

She looked for a half a second before screaming, "Why should I care if it's a costume? Try and tell me he doesn't like wearing that shit!"

I hurled her to the lawn, probably because she had a point, and there was no way to argue it. I drove my knee into her chest, blindly. She started screaming.

"I don't care if I have to lay on you all day! You are going to tell the truth about what happened at the Rod 'N' Reel. What did you really hear?"

She was crying, but she spit out, "He told Tony ... not ... to blow smoke rings—"

I slapped her across the face. "Tell the truth!"

"That
is
the truth!"

I slapped her again.

"Claire, Jesus Christ! Myra, get her off of me!"

I could hear Myra on Macy's cell, to Phil I supposed, and didn't care. "Tell the goddamn truth, Macy!"

She went on wailing, and I realized there was no other truth in her brain. Lani had told Tony not to blow smoke rings on a street corner if he wasn't gay and didn't want sex. She looked really and truly scared. I was a loon, and she was telling the truth, and I was trying to force a lie out of her. That's how she saw it, how she would always see it, until she died. I had never hoped before for a Judgment Day, but I did now.

I got off her, snatched up the costume, and trudged off. She was crying the soul-filled cries of a hurt person, somebody who had sincerely lost their best friend, who had been dumped, without cause, whose best friend had turned lunatic, and there was not a blessed thing she could do about it.

"I just hit Macy. Twice..."

"Okay, stop crying and try to chill out." It was a huge relief to hear Ellen's real voice instead of her voice mail, despite my mom banging on my door, demanding that I come out and explain my weekend to her. Before I could think, I hurled a can full of pens and put a big dent in the floor. Pens flew everywhere, and she hollered some shocked moan.

"Ellen, what the fuck am I doing? I'm losing it! Somebody's gotta come lock me up."

Her voice was intentionally calm, and I tried to focus on it instead of my mom's cursing. "Claire, are you, like, not used to being mad?"

"I'm the type who just never gets mad! All of a sudden—" I broke off because I started sniffing up tears.

"Never been mad? That's not what Erdman would say."

"What would Erdman say? Tell me!"

"Granted, stuff like this always happens on Sunday, when he ceases to exist. She sighed. "I'm not him. I can only tell you what he told me. You know how I'm always laughing these days?"

"Yeah..."

"That's so
not
how I usually am. I'm usually the opposite, stone-cold serious. When I started this thing with finding the world so funny, he said it was something I was allowing myself to feel for the first time. He said it would dominate for a while, and then eventually it would gel with my whole personality. I'd be more balanced after that."

I had my finger in one ear and the phone smacked up against my head, trying to focus on her over my mom. I slid down into a curled-up ball between my dresser and the wall, but pulled the phone away, screaming, "Shut up! And get away from my door! Fucking moron!"

Ellen's voice came through. "Claire, Erdman can show you some stuff like how to take your anger out on, like, beanbag chairs until you balance out—"

"Well, he's not here! And if she doesn't get the fuck away from me—" I could hear my mother backing away finally. "Now
she's
crying. She's gonna call Macy ... I swear, they've been gossiping all weekend. She's like an overgrown child ... She's gonna get drunk..." I broke into pretty big sobs.

"Okay, you can't calm down in there. Just get out of the house."

"And go where?"

"Go over to Lani's."