Cracked Up to Be (23 page)

“Yes.”

“Who was she with?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

So I tell him.

“You didn’t . . .” He stares at me like I’m some kind of monster.

My mouth is dry, parched. I feel slightly sick again but beyond that—nothing.

“Why?”
he demands.

“I don’t know. I don’t—”

His hands come out and he shoves me hard and I fall back and hit the ground hard and I want to stay there, but he’s on me, clawing at my arms and my shirt, anything he can get a hold on, trying to get me up again, and all I can think is
yes
and he’s screaming at me, “You bitch, this is your fault, I thought it was me this whole time,” and his fingernails dig into my skin and I keep saying, “I know, I know, I know,” but I can’t feel anything and then Chris is there and he’s pushing Evan back, and he’s screaming, too, “What the fuck are you doing, man? Get the fuck out of here!”

I scramble to my hands and knees, gravel digging into my skin. As soon as I’m on my feet, Evan makes another lunge at me, but Chris pushes him back.

“It was her! I thought it was me!” Evan’s voice is hoarse. “It was her—”

“Get the fuck out of here, Evan!”

Chris gives Evan one last shove and Evan swears and stalks across the parking lot. There are angry red fingernail scratches up and down my arms, a little blood here and there. But it feels like nothing. Chris turns to me, furious.

“What did you say to him?” he says. “What the
fuck
did you say to him?”

“Chris,” Becky says, “don’t—”

And then Jake asks if I’m okay, but I shrug, shrug, shrug them all off. This is so stupid.

“Get away from me.”

This is
so
stupid. I have plans and I’m not letting this ruin them because Jessie’s been dead forever and I’m still alive and I still have things to do.

I head back inside, straight for my locker.

I wait for the JD to settle before I exit the stall. I wait until I know I’m good and wasted and everyone would know it to look at me, just like old times, and I walk unsteadily across the washroom floor and I fumble with the door for a minute before I pull it open and I step into the hall and crash into someone.

I hope it’s Grey.

Or Henley.

twenty-five

Jack Daniel’s is a more unsavory color coming up than going down—it always is—
and I’m hunched over a toilet I don’t recognize, puking my guts out.

I don’t know where I am.

I hope I’m so wasted I can’t tell I’m actually at home. After I’m done puking—it feels like forever—I float to my feet and a pair of hands guides me to a bed that swallows me alive. It’s not my bed. I’m definitely not at home.

Maybe the hospital?

I inch my eyes open and the room goes in and out of focus. I catch a glimpse of a photo on the wall I’ve seen before. I’m at Chris’s house. Saved again. But I don’t want to be saved. I try to say it, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth, only garbled sound. Someone says something to me in a soothing tone and I mumble something back, but I don’t know what I’m saying, hearing, anything.

I don’t know how to live with myself.

Even before Jessie disappeared, I never understood how I was supposed to work as a person or how I was supposed to work with other people. Something was really wrong with me, like I felt wrong all the time. I longed for some kind of symmetry, a balance. I chose perfection. Opposite of wrong. Right. Perfect. Good.

I get caught up in outcomes. I convince myself they’re truths. No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right. The rest becomes incidental. So incidental that, after a while, you forget. Maybe you are perfect. Good. It must be true. Who can argue with results? You’re not so wrong after all. So you buy into it and you go crazy maintaining it. Except it creeps up on you sometimes, that you’re not right. Imperfect. Bad. So you snap your fingers and it goes away.

Until something you can’t ignore happens and you see it all over yourself.

And there’s only one thing left to do.

I throw myself at Chris, wrap my arms around him and press my lips against his, something I haven’t done in a long time. He holds on to me, surprised, and I reach into his pocket and grab his wallet. It snags on his jeans and I give it a little tug. Maybe he feels it and pretends he doesn’t. Two hundred miles later, he’s three hundred dollars poorer and I’m at the Morton Motel getting ready to die.

I debate leaving a note, but it comes out like a legal waiver.

I unscrew the bottle of pills and the booze, and with every bitter swallow I’m less afraid of myself. I’m finally doing the right thing. Except I fuck it up and I end up in the hospital where I get my stomach pumped and I live. The first time I wake up, I think I’ve died and I think it’s heaven.

The second time I wake up, I know I’m in hell and Chris is crying over me.

“I can’t pay you back,” I murmur thickly.

“Are you awake?”

I take a deep breath in. The air is sweet, dead-flower sweet. My stomach turns and I think I’m going to throw up, but I don’t. A minute later, I open my eyes. I’m in Chris’s guest room and he’s sitting on the bed, peering at me. The lamp on the nightstand is on, casting a weak yellow wash over both of us, and the window reveals a black night sky outside.

My head aches.

“I know that face,” Chris says quietly. And then he starts explaining, like I asked, like I even care. “Becky found you, and Jake and I got you out of school by—by the grace of God, I think.”

My mouth tastes vomit sour.

“Because we were looking all over for you after Evan . . .”

He edges up the bed until he’s close enough to hold my hand and then he does it and I wish he wouldn’t. And I wish he’d shut up.

“She’s been dead awhile. Jessie.” He says it like he can’t believe it. His voice breaks. “I mean, a long time ago. I heard it on the news this morning, before I came to school. I guess they found her over the weekend. That was on the news, too. But they didn’t say who it was because they had to . . . they had—it’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, when you think about it. It doesn’t feel real.”

“Chris.” My voice comes out splintered, gravel. “Stop talking.”

“But no one thought she was alive anyway, did they.”

He stares at the wall, his eyes bright. He swallows once, twice, three times, his Adam’s apple going up and down. A couple tears slide down his cheek and he brushes them away.

“Jake said you told him you wanted to die.” He turns to me and the look in his eyes reminds me of Bailey on the side of the road. “I went downstairs to get water and you told him you wanted to die.”

“Anyone would say that after a bottle of Jack Daniel’s,” I say.

“That’s not how you meant it and you know it.” He keeps looking at me until I’m the one who has to look away. “Why?”

I want to sit up, but I can’t guarantee my stomach won’t revolt and it’s a miracle I haven’t already puked on the white duvet.

“I want to die, I guess.”

It gets so quiet.

“Why?”

But I’ve had enough. He wasn’t even supposed to find me. Henley, Grey—
they
were supposed to find me and kick me out of school so my parents would give up on me and then everyone would give up on me and I wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I push the duvet off, swing my legs over the bed and stand.

“I’m going,” I tell him.

“Parker—”

My legs are shaky, but I make it across the room and then I get to the door and I puke. I mean, I feel it coming up, clamp my hand over my mouth and reach the bathroom just in time. My stomach muscles scream. A few dry heaves later, I’m propped up against the wall, panting. I rest my head against my knees while Chris stands in the doorway, watching. A bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck and under my shirt collar. I gulp air like it’s going out of style.

“You think I ever stopped wanting to die after the motel?” I ask. “You think a feeling like that just goes away?”

He steps forward and steels himself like he’s about to give a speech to a room full of people. He probably thought one up the whole time I was out, just waiting for me to wake up so he could say it and we could have A Moment That Would Turn It All Around. But if you learn anything by the time you’re eighteen, it’s that those moments don’t happen in real life. Ever.

“I don’t want you to die,” he says woodenly, but the funny thing is, he really means it. “I don’t want to go to your memorial service.”

“Memorial service,” I repeat. “When’s Jessie’s memorial service going to be?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

I groan, rest my head against the wall and close my eyes.

“I’m just tired, Chris. And my stomach hurts and I have a headache and—” My voice breaks. She’s dead and I am not going to cry. “I’m tired.”

“Then you should sleep,” he says.

I find my way to my feet and head back to the bedroom. Chris follows close behind. I crawl under the covers and he pulls the duvet up around me.

“It shouldn’t be like this for you,” he says. “You need help.”

“What I need is for everyone to leave me alone. That’s what I want.”

“Parker, you don’t want that. Everyone’s on to you and you don’t even know it. You have to stop this; you have to—” I think he’s crying. “I don’t want you to die.”

I roll over so my back is to him.

“It’s just Jessie,” I say into the pillow. “I’m just shocked about it. That’s all.”

But the truth is, I haven’t felt a thing since Evan.

“Yeah, but you’ve always needed help,” Chris points out. “Even she knew it. I think she’d want that for you.”

“And I don’t think we should be talking about me.”

I close my eyes.

twenty-six

“How are you doing?”

It’s not like when someone who’s there one minute is gone the next.

It’s worse.

“I’m great.”

“So,” Jake says, staring at me expectantly. “Are we going to stand in front of the school all day or are we going in?”

I stare up at the concrete building. The memorial service is today.

“You could always go in without me,” I tell him. Before he can say anything, I ask, “Do you think if I’d told you it would’ve made a difference? About how I knew Jessie?”

“Between us?” he asks. I nod. “Probably not, unless you had a completely different personality or something. But then I doubt I’d have found you as interesting.”

“Sounds like I was destined to screw you over, then.”

“Doesn’t it.”

At least I didn’t have to stress over what I was going to wear to the service. Thank God for school uniforms, just this once. But I couldn’t find my dress shoes, so I’m wearing muddy running shoes. And I forgot to brush my hair.

“Too bad it couldn’t have been different.”

He shrugs. “It can always be different.”

It’s weird the way all of this has dulled the fact we had sex and I ran. My parents have forgotten about Bailey. Henley and Grey don’t care about me skipping afternoon classes. It’s okay I spent the night at Chris’s. It’s okay because Jessie’s dead.

Because they don’t know what I did. Didn’t do.

“Are you ready to go in?” Jake asks.

“I can’t go in.”

“Chris will be there and I’ll be there.” He clears his throat. “Uh . . . and Becky will be there, too.”

“Well, if
Becky’s
going to be there . . .”

A few cars pull into the parking lot. I recognize Mr. and Mrs. Wellington’s Saab right away. My chest tightens.

“I can’t go in,” I repeat. I snap my fingers. “Make an excuse for me. Please.”

“I can do that for you,” he says. I must sound desperate enough. He pauses. “What was she like?”

My stomach ties itself into little knots and I keep snapping my fingers.

“You have this knack for asking questions I don’t want to answer.”

“You don’t have to answer it.”

“She was like . . .” I raise my head and look to the sky and try to think of a way to put it. “She was like a buffer between me and the rest of the world. Nice. Good.”

He reaches out and gives my shoulder a squeeze before heading into the school without me.

After a while, Evan shows up.

Or maybe he’s always been there, watching from his car in the parking lot or behind the sole maple tree they planted in front of the school to make it look less like a concrete penitentiary; I don’t know. He’s just here, which means I have to leave.

I hurry up the steps, wrench the front door open and—

Except I can’t go inside.

“I just want to talk,” he says.

“Is that all? Sure you don’t want to attack me again, too?”

He sighs.

“I shouldn’t have done that. I—”

“Evan, I don’t care.”

“Oh, right, I get it,” he says. “You’re right back into it, aren’t you?”

“Back into what?”

The wind picks up, pushing my hair in my face. I shiver, brush it away and face him. I try to read what’s in his eyes, but there’s nothing there. I remember when I caught him with Jenny. How scared he was. And I was happy because I wanted to hurt Jessie for caring that I spent junior year hiding out in the girls’ room between periods, hyperventilating. She wanted to help me and I wanted to hurt her for it because I didn’t want anyone to know because it was important because . . .

Perfect people don’t break.

I can’t remember what was running through me when I saw her face pressed into the ground with that guy on top of her, I was so out of it, but I can’t convince myself it wasn’t bad. All I know is I went to a party and I was the catalyst for every horrible thing that happened there and after and I don’t know why I didn’t say anything when I saw her and I don’t know why I didn’t say anything later and I don’t know how to fix it and I’m afraid of what happens next, so I have to keep doing it this way until it’s right again, but I don’t know how to make it right again because I’m always wrong.

I’m a bad person.

“You’ll just go on until the next party,” Evan says.