How it Ends (11 page)

I sit on the back porch
in the shade petting Serepta and watching Hanna come and go. She’s so busy these days, so lively, and I’m happy for her, I am, because her world
should
be expanding, she should be meeting new people and having new experiences, only…

I miss her.

Lon has taken to napping through the hottest part of the day. The heat drains him in a way it never did before, and that worries me because we have no air-conditioning and can’t afford to have it put in. I have a fan set up in the bedroom and another in the hallway and he says this helps, but it’s still stifling up there.

And when he sleeps, the silence that settles over the house scares me.

I go up to check on him often, forcing my knees to take the stairs and avoiding the creaky spots in the hallway. I ease the door open, and if he isn’t snoring, I watch his silhouette in the murky light until I’m certain I can see his chest rising and falling, then go carefully out and back down the stairs.

I should go out to the garden and weed or pick cucumbers or walk the deer path or hang some clothes but I don’t want to be too far away in case he needs me.

I would never forgive myself.

I got a new job!

I am now a counter girl at this ratty little sub shop outside of town that caters mostly to construction workers, so I’m definitely flexing my flirt muscles and earning big tips.

The owner, some crabby old lady named Olympia, trained me and then left me alone to fend for myself with nobody but her
father
, Antonio, an ancient, wizened little peanut of a man with chipmunk cheeks and crippling arthritis who putters around all day washing the dishes and cutting the moldy parts off the sub rolls. He has a heavy accent and I can’t always understand him, but he’s nice, so it’s cool.

There was a keg party down Crystal’s after the Fourth of July parade.

I went, thinking maybe Jesse would be back by now, but he wasn’t. His last website post had said,
Riding hard for home,
and that had been two days ago from wherever they were, along with some new pictures of the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, and one of him and some girl with huge boobs and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s standing on the bank of the Mississippi River. He looked beautiful, tanned, lean, forearms muscular and body relaxed, straddling the Harley, and
I don’t know, maybe it was because I was getting older, but the whole thing kind of bemused me, knowing I’d kissed him and it hadn’t ruined anything because we were pretty much just flirting anyway.

It was cool. We were cool.

That girl with the boobs, though…she bugged me.

Jesse came into the sub shop today.

He must have been working at a construction site because he came in with the normal group of guys and almost dropped his teeth when he saw me behind the counter.

“Hanna,” he said, stopping dead in surprise.

“Hey,” I said, crouching to pick up the wad of boiled ham I’d lost hold of when he walked in and handing it to little old Antonio, who would trundle it into the kitchen, wash it off, and use it for a takeout order. “You’re back.”

“Yeah,” he said, running a hand over his bandanna and flushing under the gleaming-eyed scrutiny of the other construction guys. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said with a noncommittal smile and waving at a guy behind him that always left me a great tip. “Hey, Ronnie.”

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said.

“So how was your trip?” I said while motioning to the guys to spew their orders. I wrote them down as fast as I got them—most of these guys ate the same thing, the same way, every day—and said to Jesse, “What’re you having?”

“I don’t know, it went right out of my mind,” he said.

“Yeah, she has that effect on all of us,” one of the guys said with a grin.

“Speak for yourself, Huey, I’m married,” someone else said, winking at me.

“Well, it looked like your trip was a blast,” I said.

“You checked out the website?” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said and, thinking of boob girl, hauled a long slab of salami out of the refrigerated case, stuck it on the meat slicer, and proceeded to lop off about six inches in slow, even, determined strokes. “Let me know when you decide what you want, okay?”

“Uh, okay,” he said and stepped back to let the regulars pick up their orders.

It was mayhem for the next ten minutes, and in the midst of it, he finally ordered a number four, so I whipped his together, too, only I saved his paying for last.

“I still can’t believe you’re working here,” he said, pulling a wad of cash from his pocket and peeling off a damp ten. “Sorry, it’s a little sweaty.”

“Aren’t we all,” I said blandly, taking it and making change.

“Keep it,” he said when I offered it to him.

“No, I still owe you gas money,” I said, trying to hand it to him.

“I told you to forget that,” he said, shaking his head.

And here is where poring over all those biker thumbnails on his website finally served me.

“I can’t forget it,” I said and, cocking my head, recited, “‘Gas, grass, or ass, no one rides for free.’ That’s the big rule, right?”

His jaw dropped, the guys eavesdropping at the next table choked on their potato chips, and I just stood there, eyebrows high and cheeks burning.

“Jesus Christ, Hanna,” he said finally, lips twitching.

Oh, God, I so didn’t want to smile but there was no way to stop it, and I ended up shaking my head and laughing and waving him away. “Go eat your lunch, and if you want to give me a tip, you have to leave it on the table just like everyone else.”

He nodded and found a seat, and I went about my job wiping counters and slicing tomatoes and shredding lettuce and making more
subs for more guys and joking and laughing and stuffing my apron pockets with tips, and when the hour was up and the first crew was leaving, Jesse paused at the counter and smiled and said, “See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” I said lightly.

And you know what? He’d left me a five-dollar tip for a four-dollar sandwich.

Interesting.

No Jesse today.

According to Ronnie, who just couldn’t wait to trumpet out the news, Jesse had planned on coming, but some girl had shown up at the site looking for him right as they were about to pull out, and she’d brought Burger King, so he’d stayed to eat with her.

“Well, that’s nice,” I said. “BK’s always good.” I pulled out my pad and pen and said, “Now, what’ll you have?”

I’m getting good at pulling the curtains shut around my “glass head.”

I don’t want to be read anymore.

Not by Seth.

Not by anybody.

We got robbed.

I keep thinking, I’m okay, I’m okay, but then I just start shaking and crying all over again.

I told the cop the guy must have known our busy time, because he came in early before lunch when there was no one there but me and little Antonio. I was slicing tomatoes and Antonio was sweeping and singing “That’s Amore,” making me laugh by dancing and pretending his broom was someone named Lola Brigitta, and then this guy came in wearing a hoodie, and I remember thinking,
Holy crap, it’s August!

I wish I hadn’t put my tomato knife down, because something just didn’t feel right, but I put it down anyway because, I mean, really, what was I gonna do, carry it to the counter just because he was wearing a hoodie? For all I knew he’d had chemo or something and was embarrassed because he didn’t have any hair.

I don’t know! I never met a criminal before!

So I grabbed my pad and pen and went to the counter and was like,
Can I help you?
And he just whipped out this box cutter and grabbed my shirt so hard, it was like he punched me in the chest, and yanked me half over the counter and said,
Open the register.
This surge of hot terror washed through me and I started shaking and I couldn’t hardly stand because his eyes were flat and he didn’t care at all, I was like
nothing,
and he threw me at the register. I stumbled and hit my mouth on the edge and started to cry and he didn’t care that I was bleeding he just said,
Open the fucking register before I kill you, bitch,
and he would have, he would have, but I couldn’t because I was shaking so bad…

…And then Antonio was coming up behind him with the broom, but the floor creaked, so the robber just turned around and…

…He cut Antonio’s face—just slashed it—and his skin opened across his mouth and up to his eye, and it just split and gushed blood and looked like meat inside, and I couldn’t even breathe but I was hitting all these buttons on the register, going crazy trying to make it open, and it finally opened, and when Antonio fell, that guy kicked him in the chest and he didn’t have to do that, he didn’t, because the register was open and he could take the money, he could have just taken it, but he didn’t, he stopped to kick Antonio again…

…And then he just swung a fist and bashed me in the face so I would get out of the way, but I was already trying, I was trying, and he didn’t care, he took the money and then he ran and left us there on the floor.

My head was spinning and all I could hear was the cord on the ceiling fan clicking against the blades, and then I heard a car door slam and started freaking and tried to get my cell phone out, but I was shaking too bad. The door opened and I started going,
No no no,
and I heard somebody go,
Shit!
and then,
Call the cops!
And it was Ronnie, one of the construction guys, and he got down next to me and said,
It’s okay, Hanna, don’t move, you’re gonna be fine,
and that just made me cry even more because I hardly knew him but he stayed with me anyway…

…I think Antonio is dead but I don’t know, I don’t know.

Why did he have to kick him? Antonio never hurt anybody

He was just a little old man.

The whole side of my face is purple. Blood vessels burst in my eye so it’s like one big red blood spot and the lid is swollen. My lip is split, my tooth is loose, and I have a giant knot on my head. My breastbone is bruised and there are fingerprints squeezed into my arm.

Antonio is alive but he might lose his eye, and his heart is all messed up.

I’m home from the hospital. My mother made me a bed on the couch because she was afraid I’d get dizzy and fall down the stairs.

People are calling and sending flowers and balloons.

It’s surreal.

I’m surrounded by people who care about me and all I can think of is the look on that guy’s face.

If I hadn’t gotten that register open, he would have killed me.

I would have been over forever, murdered by some guy with a zit next to his left nostril, scabby knuckles, and blond eyebrows, a guy maybe six years older than me, wearing a gray USC hoodie and jeans.

He would have taken my life.
Taken
it.

Death by box cutter. Death by fists. Death by stomping.

It’s unbelievable that someone I don’t even know would touch me, not to mention punch me in the chest and the face. That making me bleed was
less
than no big deal.

I don’t even know how to get my mind around this.

If he had killed me, my heart would have stopped while I was wearing a smeary apron, jeans, and an Olympia’s Sub Shop tank top. I would have never seen my room again or laughed or said hi to my parents or good-bye to anybody or gone any farther, in
any
way, than I already had.

I just would have ceased. Exhale. Period.

I get cold sweats when I think of it.

He would have killed me for the twenty-three dollars in the register.

He
hit
me for twenty-three dollars.

It would have been more, but he left the change.

Sammi’s mother brought her down to visit. She came in, took one look at me, wailed, “Oh, no!” and burst into tears.

My mother was ready to send her right back home, but I was like no, it’s okay, because that’s how I felt, too. Crystal came and started crying, too. Then I started crying and it stung my face, so I kept trying to stop, but then my mother started and poor Gran came and got all white like she was gonna faint and had to sit down, and Grandpa and my father looked like they were gonna go hunt the guy down and kill him.

My mother finally pulled herself together and took everyone but Sammi and Crystal out into the kitchen for coffee.

Crystal gave me a sealed envelope after they left and said Jesse had stopped at her house to find out how I was and had asked her to give the envelope to me.

“He didn’t stay long,” she said. “He just said he’d heard what hap
pened from the guys at work and told me to let you know he was thinking of you and hoped you were okay.”

“That was nice of him,” I said, because he didn’t have to do it, we weren’t anything to each other, not really, not friends, not going out…not nothing.

“I ran into Connor down at McDonald’s this morning and told him what happened,” Sammi said and blew her nose into a tissue. “Sorry. That was gross, I know. Anyhow, I figured you’d want to know, just in case you hear anything from you-know-who.”

I shook my head and slid the envelope under my pillow. “That’s not gonna happen.”

Sammi shrugged. “Well, just in case.”

We sat around for a while but they were antsy, I could tell, so I asked them if they’d walk down to Rita’s and get coconut gelatos. My mother gave them money and they took off. I lay back like I wanted to rest just so everyone would leave me alone. When my mother got the hint and left, I slid the envelope out from under my pillow.

It was a card, not a funny get-well card or a cutesy, cheerful one or anything like that, but one of those thick-paper art cards with butterflies on the front and blank inside except for what he’d written.

I smiled, but it hurt doing it.

The juvenile crime detective told my parents that I should talk to a psychologist because posttraumatic stress disorder is common, but I
think I’d rather stay here and become a hermit. You never read about hermits getting beat up, only sending letter bombs and living in squalor. I can be a hermit without the bomb thing, no problem, and the squalor might actually be fun.

Crystal wants me to come over but I keep making excuses.

My bruises are fading and my lip looks a lot better, but my eye is still pretty ugly, and besides, they haven’t caught the robber yet.

Gran fell down and the ambulance came and rushed her to the hospital.

Grandpa wanted to ride in the ambulance with her but they told him to follow them instead, so my mother drove him because he was totally freaked.

I locked all the doors when she left, but then I started hearing noises and broke out in a cold sweat and couldn’t breathe too well and ended up sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, shaking and crying like a big baby.

I think I just had one of those posttraumatic stress flashbacks the detective had warned me about.