Fall For Anything (20 page)

“I knew it,” Milo says as we pass the
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING LISSIE, WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR STAY!
sign. “I knew he was just fucking with you—”

“We don’t know anything,” I say, but even I know how weak it is coming out of my mouth. I don’t want to believe this. “Maybe he had a good reason—”

“We
know
he left you stranded in a fucking motel fourteen hours away from your home. What kind of reason would make that okay—”

“I don’t
know.
Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over,” I repeat.

“Why?”

I unbuckle my seat belt. “Would you
pull over
?”

He finally pulls the car onto the shoulder and we roll to a halt. I push my door open, get half out of the car, and vomit all over the gravel and the pavement. I swallow once, twice, three times, pull my legs in, and close the door. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and lean my head against the seat.

“Okay?” he asks.

I nod, staring straight ahead.

He starts to drive again.

And then it starts to rain.

After a while, the sound of the rain falling against the car and the landscape blurring past the window suffocates me into sleep. Milo shakes my shoulder after I don’t know how long. We’re parked outside a gas station and it’s not raining anymore.

“I have to fill up,” Milo says. “I’ll get some drinks, food. Break for a minute. I’ll call your mom. Stretch your legs or get some air … or something.”

He gets out of the car. As soon as I can’t see him anymore, I get out my cell and call Culler. He must be there by now. It rings. It’s a lonely sound. Pick up, pick up,
pick up.
And then, after thousands of rings—it feels like—someone picks up.

“Hello?” Topher.

“Is Culler there?”

“I don’t know. Culler, are you here?”

And then I hear him. His voice in the background, asking,
who is it?

And Topher says, “I think it’s the lovesick high-schooler.”

It’s quiet for the longest time, then the muffled sound of someone putting their palm over the receiver. He’s there and I want to scream into the mouth of my phone,
I know you’re there. I know you’re there. Why are you doing this to me. How could you do this to me.

This kind of anger I’ve never known before. That I’ve gone from Seth Reeves’s daughter who meant something, to this lovesick high-schooler in the span of like twenty-four hours is so unbelievably cruel.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Topher says, and I hear Culler in the background again:
Topher, don’t.
“Sorry, I mean, he’s not here right now.” He pauses. “But I’ll tell him you called.”

After he hangs up on me, I spend ten minutes in a sleazy gas station bathroom trying to keep it together. If I can get through the next ten minutes without crying, vomiting, or screaming myself hoarse, I can be in a car with Milo. But I don’t know what to do about this humiliation, this hot, uncomfortable sensation all over me like the world can see this on me. I close my eyes and I count, trying to work it out. I count until ten minutes have gone by. I’m shaking, but not crying or sick or screaming.

I make a decision.

When I step out, Milo is leaning against the car.

“I want to stop at Haverfield,” I tell him. “I want to see Culler.”

Culler does not just get to do this to me.

When we finally reach Haverfield, it’s dark.

I watch Milo drive. He’s resigned to this. He doesn’t want to do this, but he’s going to do it for me. I’ll never feel more guilty and less deserving in my life than I do in this moment, and I don’t know why I can’t just say that to him because he deserves that much. I think I don’t say it because I’m too nervous to speak.

Haverfield’s
WELCOME
sign sends me reeling. My head gets full of all the things I’m going to say to Culler, ask him. If he answers the door and lets me in. Talks to me.

This is so fucked up. No one changes this quickly. I don’t understand how they could. And if he didn’t, that means he was like this all along, but I don’t accept that either.

I’m not that bad at reading people. I can’t be.

I try to give Milo the directions to Culler’s apartment, but I’m hazy on remembering or maybe I’m just tired or maybe part of my brain wants to sabotage me, so I don’t have to do this. We circle street after street for ages, turn left, right, and when I’m about to give up—

There it is.

Milo parks across the road and turns the car off. I sit there for a minute that’s not really a minute, but several minutes, twisting my hands. I want to ask him how to do this.

Because I don’t know how to do this.

“Buzz up,” Milo says. He gets my silence. “Say you have a delivery for Culler Evans.”

“But it’s night.”

“They won’t even think about it until after they’ve answered the door and it’s too late.”

“They’ll recognize my voice.”

“They won’t recognize mine. Come on.”

He gets out of the car. I have no choice but to follow him across the road and he asks me Culler’s apartment number and he buzzes it and does the rest exactly how he said he would.

There’s a delivery for Culler Evans.

The voice upstairs—Topher’s—says he’ll send him right down.

“Easy,” Milo says.

I stare at the door, nervous.

“You have to go for this,” I tell him.

“I’d love to stay,” he says. “Punch him in the face.”

“I don’t need you to do that for me.” I look at him. “Please, Milo.”

“I’ll circle the block.” He steps off the curb and onto the road. “Ten minutes tops, Eddie. We should have been home by now.”

I nod. Milo is getting into the car at the same time Culler opens the door.

When he sees me, he stops.

His eyes widen, his face pales.

And then before I can say anything, he’s holding me.

And the worst part is—I want to hold him.

But I also want to slap him, hit him. Punch him. Tear out his throat.

I want him to tell me what he did to me was a mistake. Some horrible mix-up.

… After I’m done holding him back.

“What are you doing here?” he asks into my neck.

It breaks the moment. Ruins it. Brings me back to this awful reality. I push away from him—not hard. But it’s difficult. There is still that part of me that wants to be near him.

I hate that part of myself. I want to be strong about this.

“You thought I wouldn’t—” I break off. “You really thought I wouldn’t want to know why you—why you left me there?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Eddie, I’m—”

“Why did you leave me there?”

He doesn’t say anything when I want him to be falling all over himself, trying to explain. He opens his mouth—closes it, like the words were there, but left before he could speak them. And then I remember this isn’t just about the motel. Leaving me.

The church. What about the church. Everything.

“Were you scared?” I ask, and my voice is shattering already, hopeful, and I know tears aren’t that far off but I refuse to cry in front of him. “Was that it? Was it about the church? You went to the church—” He flinches and I know I’m getting warmer. “You got rid of the message, didn’t you? What did it say?”

“Eddie,” he says.

“I mean, I was scared about the church too. It’s okay—it’s okay if you were scared.”

But as soon as I say it, I hate myself for giving it to him. He’s quiet. I wait. I want to shake an explanation out of him.

“You
left
me,” I say.

“I was going to call you in a couple of weeks,” he says with a feeble kind of urgency. I can’t believe this is all he’s giving me. “Eddie, I—”

“Why did you ruin the message? That was
mine.
It was more mine than yours—”

“I
was
scared,” he chokes out. “Eddie—”

I cover my mouth with my hand. His words send a shock through me. That’s what I wanted to hear. It’s true. It’s true. Didn’t I say I would forgive him that, if he was scared. But maybe not. Maybe I can’t forgive him this. But maybe I should. And what does that mean, if he was scared? It was bad? Worse than what we found in the house?

“Was it bad?” I ask. He doesn’t say anything. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

He just stands there for the longest time. I wait and I wait and I can’t stand it and I realize that’s it: it just stops here. He won’t say more. If Culler won’t say more, I have to leave. I blink back tears. I’m not ready to leave. I can’t. I didn’t get what I came for.

I turn to look for Milo. He hasn’t circled back yet.

“It doesn’t matter,” Culler finally says. “What was at the church.”

I face him. “It’s
all
that matters! It’s the
only thing that matters.
” And he starts shaking his head and I can’t believe this. “What’s
wrong
with you? What did I—Culler, what did I do?”

“Eddie,” he says, and the way it comes out of his mouth is too many things, it’s familiar, almost comforting, and that makes me think,
no, Culler would never leave me stranded at a motel, fourteen hours away.
But it’s sad, too. It’s pitying me. “You didn’t do anything … you…” He pauses. “You did everything but everything you did was right.…”

“I don’t know what you mean.…”

Culler closes his eyes. They stay closed and he breathes slowly, like this is hard, but I don’t understand. If he didn’t want it to be hard, he shouldn’t have left me at that motel. He opens his eyes.

“I felt something for you,” he says. “And I got ahead of myself … I couldn’t…”

“Culler—”

“Eddie, I put the messages there.”

It’s like—I can’t breathe. There’s no air. I step back from him. The words sink in and I decide—no. This is a joke. He’s joking now. This is crazy and cruel, but it’s a joke.

“I don’t…”

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” he says. “I’m—”

“You’re lying—”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I—”

And he keeps saying it, he won’t stop saying it, and the more he says it the more I know it’s true because people aren’t just this sorry for nothing.

My face starts to crumple. What he says goes all through me and makes me numb.
He put the messages there.

“Eddie, your father—”

“Stop it—don’t talk about my father—”

“He was my … idol,” he says, and his voice breaks. He rubs his face and steps back and from here, I can see he’s shaking. “He was the only person who had any kind of belief in what I was doing and what I was trying to do.…”

“Stop it—stop talking—”

“And I’m so like you. I just wanted to know
why
—”

“Stop,” I moan. “You lied to me.”

“I couldn’t work. I couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t get it out of my head—why he’d do that, but he didn’t leave anything behind—but you know that.” He sounds desperate now. He knows I’m shutting down. “I’d go to Tarver’s all the time with my camera and try to figure it out and then I met you, and you were sneaking out there and I thought—she’s like me—and the feeling got worse, because I know you needed to know too—”

“Don’t…” I bring my hands to my eyes and all I can see is him, his camera. It’s in my head. Everywhere. His stupid artist statement, what he said to me in the car:
sometimes lies bring you closer to the truth.
“Did you make it up just so you could
photograph
it?”

“
No—
not—I mean—”

I bury my face in my hands and he touches my arm and I jerk away.

“Don’t touch me—”

“I told you—my work is questions, I can make answers out of art. And then I can let it go. Eddie, that’s what I
do.
Except—I didn’t know how to this time and then we went to the studio and you gave me those photographs—”

I shake my head. “I can’t believe this—”

“And you were so upset because they didn’t mean anything, and I thought,
I can give that to her. I can make them mean something
—and I thought I can work it out, I can make sense of it for myself with my camera, and I’ll be okay and I can give you some kind of peace too. And I thought … I thought that’s what Seth would have wanted. Or that he would understand—”

“Please stop, Culler—”

“But mostly because I felt something for you. I wanted to help you.”

Milo says I died the night my father died, but he was wrong. I’m dying here, in front of Culler. I can feel my blood stop flowing in my veins, my heart slowing until it stops, and when I try to breathe, nothing happens. My lungs have given up. They don’t want air.

“I thought I could give you an answer you could live with, but…” He swallows. “But it was just … lies. And you were so, so honest with me. In the motel, that night. And I couldn’t lie to you anymore. I woke up. I panicked and I left.” I am dead. I’m dead. “Eddie, I’m sorry—”

But I don’t want to hear anymore. I turn and make my way off the curb. I don’t know how I make my legs move me forward when all I want to do is sit in the middle of the road and wait for the first car to take me out. I’m already dead, see. It wouldn’t make a difference.

“Eddie, wait—”

I stop. I don’t know why I stop.

But I don’t turn around.

I won’t turn around.

“Tarver’s,” he starts, and I close my eyes and it’s almost like he senses it, because he breaks off and waits and when I open my eyes again, he speaks: “His initials in the door there … that wasn’t me. It was him.”

I spot Milo’s car making its way towards me. It sidles up to the curb and I cross the road and get in the passenger side and then I stop dying. I come alive. The worst kind of alive. My heart beating.Blood raging through my veins. I’m breathing too hard, too fast. Milo stares at me, alarmed, but he doesn’t ask. He won’t ask. But I have to tell him.

I can’t not tell him this.

“Culler lied,” I say. “About everything. The messages. Everything.”

“What?”
He turns off the engine, grabs the door handle, and gets half out of the car before I grab him by the arm and pull him back in. “I’ll fucking kill him—”

“Don’t,” I say, and he gives me this look, like out of all the sad people on the planet there are to feel sorry for, he feels sorriest for me. And my heart breaks again and again and again. Again.

“Eddie,” he says.

“Please take me home,” I whisper.

He starts the car.