All We Left Behind (9 page)

“This is fine.”

She doesn't leave, despite the fact that everything about her says she wants to. I swallow, with the door half-open as she strains her neck to look at me.

“Which car is your—?”

“My last name,” she says, cutting me off.

“What?”

“What's my last name?” She says it quietly, barely above a whisper, and I notice her hair is up. At some point she pinned it away and all that's left is this raw question in her eyes.

And for some reason I want to answer it. But . . .

“Are you the Honda?” I say, nodding to the closest car.

“Sure. Why not,” she says, which means it's not, and now I really don't know what to do. I could drive her to the Honda, even though it's not her car. Or I could sit here and let her get out, which somehow seems worse.

“Medford,” she says, forcing me to look at her. I expect her to smack me, but there's this weird resign in her eyes instead. She's not angry, which I hate, because I could deal with this if she were angry. Only she's not. She's whatever this is, with my name dead in her mouth.

Medford.

And I wish more than anything that, right now, I could tell her hers.

But she already knows that I can't.

Two blocks from my house
I pull over and throw open the door. I can't be in this car right now.

Any car.

Not even my own.

Streetlamps slash light over the pavement, and I walk—run—up the sidewalk to my house. I don't go inside. Instead, I head into the backyard, where a giant oak rakes a thousand branches against the sky.

I kick off my shoes, and the leaves are too soft beneath me. The tree tall above. The scent of bark enticing me up, away from this ground. I grab a branch and pull myself to the first bough, and then the second, my feet finding the niches of the tree without looking. My feet remembering this bark, knowing its roughness and skin, carrying me higher, to where the boughs are thinner; higher, to where the leaves are wider; higher, to a place where it feels like I might be able to fly up beyond everything below me and never fall back down.

Near the top, the wind is fierce and screaming through.
My hands shake, and I grab the tree, gulping down breath after breath, despite everything that's caught in my throat. His hands. My skin. All of it. My heart pounds from climbing this tree, showing me that this body is meant to be physical, made to move and climb and sweat and run, and I hate it for reminding me of that.

I tuck myself into a top branch and I pull out my cell phone. I try to punch in the numbers, but they're a blur, and I can barely grip the thing.

Breathe. Swallow.

My keys jangle in my pocket and I chuck them to the ground.

“Mar-i-doodle, what's up?” Lilith's voice jolts me, and I realize somehow my fingers have managed to dial.

When in doubt, call Lilith.

“Hey,” I wheeze, but the words are pinecones in my throat. I don't want to talk about Kurt, but I can't imagine not telling her either. “I . . . um . . .”

In front of me I see my initials, carved into the tree. A lump lodges in my throat and I remember hacking them out in quick, careful jabs, peeling back the bark till it exposed the flesh below. Only now the bark is a puckered black scar.

“Marion? Hello? You there?”

“Hey.” I try again, coughing and looking up at the sky, punctured with stars. “Did you DVR that new vampire show?” I manage. “Ours didn't record it.”

That does the trick. Lilith starts blabbing ten words a second about how stupid and awesome the show was, and I can breathe again. I press my feet into the bark and listen to the steady in her voice. It's like a drug anchoring me in the fine and the normal, as if nothing happened today. As if all that exists is high school and homework and the ever-important debate between the hotness of vampires versus werewolves. And I wonder if she can hear the fact that I'm crying. If she can, she doesn't stop and ask.

*  *  *

Later, I walk into the house and see a light on in Dad's home office. I peek in the doorway to see him sitting behind his desk, rubbing his temples like the papers in front of him make no sense. The skin is loose around his eyes, showing off his wrinkles. He doesn't seem that old to me, but then, I guess he is. His hair is peppered with gray and trimmed perfect, like everything else in this room, having its place.

“Dad?” I inch into the doorway, not hiding my wet face, but he doesn't look up. “Hey,” I say a little louder, and his eyes find me. He glances at the clock, but doesn't say anything. He doesn't ask where I was or with whom. He doesn't ask why I'm not wearing my shoes.

I grew back all my hair, but I'm still invisible.

“I'm going to be up late,” he says, picking up his stack of papers and tapping them against his desk. It's his way of showing me how much work is left to be done, and dismissing
me. “There's supper in the fridge.” He nods to the door. “If you could . . .”

I reach for the silver knob and it feels as cold as those scissors in my little-girl hands, always shutting doors instead of opening them.

Dad's pickup is sitting in
the driveway when I pull in. He should be at work. Not here. Not at this hour.

The house is dark when I unlock the door, but I can smell fresh ash. The TV flickers and I see him on the couch, sucking on a cigarette with his back to me. For a second, I think we've put Mom's box in the ground again, and he won't move from that couch for days.

“Where've you been?” he says, not looking up.

“Out.”

“Out?” He lifts the cigarette to his lips. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I wasn't
here
.”

“Oh, you're funny.” He looks at me, face in shadow, and all I can see is smoke streaming from his nostrils. “Fun-ny man.” He flicks his ash and turns back to the show.

The only thing moving is a spray of hair next to his ear, caught in the light of the television. I decide he's done with me.

“Popcorn?” He holds up a plastic bowl. “It's that kettle-corn shit you like.” He lowers it and nods for me to join him. “Sit down, they're running that James Bond flick.”

I don't move. Popcorn makes me think of all those kernels spread out on the floor of my car. Under Marion's feet.

“Come on.” He pats the seat next to him. “I don't ever see you. Sit down.”

I don't go near the couch. It smells like mildew and the left seat is busted on the inside, the springs twist wrong so they poke into you. I've learned not to sit there. I stay away from that couch. Dad's couch after all.

I take the recliner near the door.

“How's school?” he asks, handing me the bowl. “You passing math?”

I scrunch a handful of the corn in my fist.

“Sure.”

I could fail math and he wouldn't even blink.

“What about soccer? How's it looking for state?” He follows it with a string of others. Girls. Grades. Whatever he thinks a good parent is supposed to ask.

“You ever think about going to get her? Josie,” I say, and he coughs—ash in his throat. He hacks, trying to clear it, as smoke billows against the ceiling. “I know where her apartment is.” Only that's not really true. I visited her that one time, but she probably doesn't live there anymore.

“It's not that simple,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette.
“She's nineteen. I can't force her to do something she doesn't want to.”

I squeeze my fistful of popcorn.

“Do you even call her back?”

“Of course I do,” he snaps, glaring at me. “What kind of father do you think I am?”

He doesn't want to know the answer to that.

“So, this—” I stand up and nod to the couch, throwing the corn in the trash. “Is this the new thing? Your schedule change?”

He slumps back and starts flipping channels.

“Maybe.” The word comes out deflated. “That going to be a problem?”

He looks small. The TV flickers and I want to ask him what happened—if he got fired or whatever—but instead I head for my room.

I flick on the overhead lights as I leave, flooding the space, and hoping he'll yell at me.

He doesn't.

I go into my room and flop onto my bed, annoyed that he shrugs everything off like it doesn't matter, like if he pretends it doesn't exist, it will go away. Only there's a problem with wanting things to go away. Sometimes they do.

The curtains blow over my head and a light from the street makes them glow. That image of Marion standing in those woods fills my head. Her staring at the dark like there's something in that emptiness. I saw Mom look like
that. On our back porch, gripping her guitar, drinking. Not playing. Like there wasn't any music left.

I heard the tires grinding the gravel of our driveway before I saw the lights—that morning—red and blue lights on my curtains. I almost laughed. I'd thought about calling the cops the night before, but I didn't have the nerve. Yet here they were anyway.

The steps against the gravel were steady. Slow. Cop footsteps. Not Mom's.

The door latch snapped open and there was a creak of hinges before those footsteps got out a single knock.

“Officer?”

It was Dad's voice, and it was the only word I heard clearly. The rest came in a jumble, too low for me to understand. But I could imagine the lecture those footsteps were giving my Dad. Drunk driving. Jail cells. Threats about fines and reckless behavior and body bags.

We'd done this before.

The officer would tell Dad that Mom was in a cell at the station and he could pick her up. But Dad would leave her there for the rest of the day. He'd clean out the house, taking all the empty bottles to the firing range, where he'd explode them into the dirt. Once it got dark, once she was sober, he'd go and get her.

I stood in the door frame waiting to hear the clank of glass, but Dad was empty-handed when he padded down the hallway.

“You know she deserved it,” I said, imagining her in that station cell. Curled up. Hungover. I stepped into the hall. “You know that—”

Crack!

I was on the floor. Fire in my face. Erupting through my jaw.

He shook out his wrist, like it hurt, but I couldn't focus. There was too much pain to register.

“Dad?”

It wasn't my voice. He'd slashed out my air.

Josie's foot came into view.

“What did you do to him?”

Stars danced in my vision.

“God, you're just as bad as sh—”

“Don't say something you'll regret,” he spat, storming past her and slamming the door behind him.

Josie pulled me into the bathroom and pressed a cold washcloth to my cheek.

“What's his problem?” she asked, her eyes bloodshot.

My face throbbed and I looked away from her, not wanting to think about her white-stripped eyes or what Josie might be coming down from. I nodded to the front door, where the officer had been. “They got Mom.”

“Figures,” she said. “She was a mess. What did you say to him?”

“Nothing that isn't true.” A smile crept up my face. I
didn't know yet. “The truth hurts,” I joked, and she laughed, shaking her head.

“No shit.”

My cheek throbbed and I kicked myself for not finding those damn keys the night before. In the dirt. I kicked myself for not keeping her home.

“I'm glad he hit me,” I said quietly, looking at Josie to see how she'd react. But she kept dabbing at my face with the cloth.

“Better you than her,” she said finally.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She tossed the cloth in the sink and walked to the door.

“It means you know how to take it.”

Dad didn't collect any bottles that day.

He didn't collect any bottles ever again.

I sit behind Lilith in
English class. We're supposed to be reading, but I can't stop looking at the fallen strap of her tank top. It dangles over the curve of her shoulder like an invitation, and I'm not the only one who's noticed. To my left, Sean Cole presses the paper edge of his book against his bottom lip. He's reading the freckles of her skin like they're printed in ink.