Life Before (8 page)

“I’m fine.”

She’s very quiet. Infinitely calm. “We know you’re not fine. No one expects you to be fine. How are you really?”

“I’m fine.” I look at Gretchen, who looks at Jill, who looks at Tucker, who studies his cards.

Grant Blakely looks at me. “I’m sorry, man, I don’t know what to say either.”

“I’m just tired,” I lie.

Gretchen says, “We’re all here for you, Xander. We want to help.”

“And what does that entail, exactly?”

Gretchen wraps her arms around her waist and stares at her lap. I feel bad, but I can’t exactly apologize. These people can do nothing for me.

When I stand, Grant Blakely jumps right in front of me. “Listen, I kind of know how you’re feeling.”

He won’t let me get around him.

“Just hear me out,” he says, and I’m still. “Did you know my uncle died two years ago?”

“Not the same.”

His eyes soften a little. “You’re right, it’s not the same, but hear me out. He had two young kids—really young, like two and three—and my aunt had to deal with this and them all together. She says life will never be normal again.”

He’s said it, the thing everyone else has been too stupid or too afraid to admit.

And Grant Blakely has more. “She says all they have is the new normal, which is marred with this huge void left by his death. So what she did—the only thing she said that worked—was to pretend she was going on with life. She took the boys to school. She made dinners and resumed the routine and put up a Christmas tree in December. Balloons and streamers for birthdays. She made herself go through the motions until it became the new normal. But, yeah, it’ll never be the same.”

The honesty helps, it really does. Grant Blakely just gave me permission to accept that nothing will ever be the same. I’m not ready for a new normal, though; I might never be ready. This is one of those times for baby steps. The best I can muster is a whisper. “Maybe a movie.”

Their bodies relax in unison.

Grant Blakely pats me on the shoulder. “It’s worth a shot.”

Jill leads us into the living room. Gretchen saves the smaller couch—the one Mom referred to as a love seat—for us. Jill rushes back to the kitchen for Oreos and we round-robin veto movies before settling on a stupid Ben Stiller comedy.

Tucker reaches for an Oreo and Jill snatches it back. “Get your own.”

Twenty minutes into the film, Grant Blakely turns off the lights and Gretchen rests her head on my shoulder. A moment later, she lifts her mouth to my ear and whispers, “I’ve missed you.”

I can’t say anything to that. I haven’t exactly been focused on Gretchen for the last two weeks. I wish I could go back to that place where my only concern was shrinking a playlist to a suitable size.

Something flickers outside the sliding glass doors, and I hop off the couch to close the curtains.

I can’t sit back down with Gretchen. I can’t just pick up where we left off. The thought of wrapping my arms around Gretchen seems sacrilegious when I will never again wrap my arms around my mom.

I retreat to the bathroom and close the door.

I usually avoid mirrors because, come on, my hair does what it wants anyway. But I can’t help looking now. Scratching my hair, I try to move it around into something presentable. Probably, if I let it grow, it would be curly. It has the course texture of a curly-haired person’s hair. Like Mom’s. Mom’s hair was wavy.

It’s gone.

Mom’s eyes are gone, too, and with them the sorrow and fear that lived there. I’ll never be judged by them again. I won’t see disappointment or pride in them. Never again. Mom had the palest blue eyes.

Mine are Gary’s eyes—a deep, dark brown. Looking into them now, a huge sob rises from my gut and I reach for a towel.

Dropping to my knees, I heave sobs into the stupid, pink, embroidered towel. Why is this happening to me? Why am I alone in the world?

I want to lie curled up on this floor forever and create a world in my mind. A world where Mom is outside the door and everything is fine and graduation is still ahead of me. And I will have a date with Gretchen tomorrow, and everything will be fine. If I could wind back the clock and live in that moment, I would never leave this bathroom, I swear.
I promise.

Sobbing, I promise a thousand times that I would give anything—anything!—for everything to go back to normal.

After a million promises and a forever of relentless sobbing, I’m done, apparently. And, as much as I want my old life—my life before Mom died—on the other side of the door, I know I can’t have it. I know I have to make something of this new normal.

I wash my face and study my reflection again. I can’t stay in this bathroom, no matter how much I wish I could.

I turn the knob and crack the door. Thank god Grant Blakely turned off the lights; if I return to the movie with more food, maybe no one will realize how long I’ve been gone. When I grab a Coke and a bag of Cheetos from the counter, Gretchen joins me in the kitchen.

She’s very quiet. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine! Just hungry, I think?”

“I’m so sorry about all of this.” She wraps her arms around my neck, and her warmth radiates through our clothes again. Closing my eyes, I conjure our mini-forest in my mind. I just want to go backward. Just seventeen days back to that forest.

Gretchen is staring at me when I open my eyes. We stare for a long time, but there’s no silent conversation between us. There’s nothing to say, really. She licks her lips and my stomach does a little flip to signal either excitement or impending vomit.

Without thinking, I close my eyes and we kiss quietly. I know what I’m doing this time, and for a second my mind is free. For maybe the first time ever, I am literally thinking about nothing.

When Gretchen tousles my hair, Mom springs to mind.

I pull back. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I just can’t do this right now.”

I can’t take it back, don’t want to, so I hustle up the stairs and lock myself in Jill’s bedroom.

My life is over. My mother is dead. A killer is after me. I just blew off the most amazing girl I’ve ever known. I am alone in the world.

I have nothing to lose anymore.

E
LEVEN

Janice serves us french toast and bacon for breakfast. Yesterday was pancakes. Saturday, waffles. They’re all my favorite things, which is a testament to the fact that, really, I am full.

Jill picks through my breakfast after Janice leaves for work.

She’s munching my bacon when the phone rings. We’ve had two hang ups in the last fifteen minutes. This annoys the hell out of Jill, the girl who spent half of eighth grade pranking everyone we knew.

This time I answer. “Bernards.”

This time Gary answers back. “Just give me five minutes with you, Alexander.”

I can’t speak. I can hardly breathe.

“Same assholes?” Jill asks lightly. She turns to find me clutching the phone and her face falls. “No. No!” she screams, running for the front porch.

Seconds later, Jill is back with Deputy Nolton. He reaches toward the phone, and I press it into my ear. The line is dead.

The world swirls around me: Nolton making calls on his cell and Jill frantically begging her mother to come back home. She closes all the blinds before bawling on the kitchen floor.

Minutes later, when Janice and Dale return, I’m still holding the phone in the kitchen.

What would Gary do with five minutes? It took less than that to break my clavicle. Three seconds to kick me down the stairs. With five minutes, he could actually kill me.

He’s going to kill me.

Jill maniacally repeats, “Trace the call, trace the call, trace the call,” and Dale demands to know what Gary said.

Once I’ve repeated Gary’s eight words a dozen times, Dale gets to work, converting the kitchen to a makeshift command center where five cops discuss how to proceed. One is talking with the phone company, one with the police station, one with a judge downtown.

Jill cries in her mother’s lap on the love seat. She’d made progress on breaking out of Dale Jail, but this will set us back several days.

The cops are done with me, so I creep down to the basement, where the cold concrete floor and cinderblock walls better suit my mood. I can hear everything down here. Jill screams at her father. “Just do your damn job and catch him!”

Janice uses the world’s loudest coffee maker and takes a cup to the cop on the front porch.

It’s going to be a long day.

And maybe a short life. Gary knows exactly where I am, and there’s nowhere to hide. And nowhere else to go, either. My grandparents didn’t even come to Mom’s funeral. They disowned her years ago, and I guess that applies to me, too.

Among my friends’ houses, Jill’s is my safest bet. But even here, I’m at risk. And staying means Jill also is in danger. She’s been looking forward to Infinite Summer for ages, and now she’s imprisoned.

I have to escape. I need to go somewhere no one will ever look for me.

T
WELVE

I plot my escape in the wee hours.

During the really bad years, when Gary spent our money on god-knows-what and Mom often went to bed without supper, I thought Mom could make it on her own if she didn’t also have to provide for me. Gary always complained that I was eating too much or that I grew out of clothes too fast. And he went apeshit once when I lost my gym shoes on a field trip. I desperately wanted to start a new life devoid of name-calling and those thumps on the wall and the constant screaming.

But then they divorced, and life improved, and I didn’t feel like running away anymore.

Until now.

I’m robbing Jill of her summer. Everything is on hold until Gary is found. If Gary finds me, he’ll kill me. I’m sure of it. The whole state knows he murdered my mother, so he has nothing left to lose. They need to find him before he finds me.

And while he’s watching this house waiting for his
five minutes,
I know just where I can hide out.

Like everyone else, I spent junior year poring over hundreds of college brochures, dreaming of the life that awaited me. The University of Vermont sits above the snow belt, so it was never on my short list, but one photo from their stunning brochure sticks with me: the Burlington Youth Hostel, where students in their hospitality program have the option to work.

Hostels are cheap.

Burlington also is one of the most educated cities in America, with high levels of reading. I like reading. And Burlington is in the opposite direction of where anyone will look for me. I can disappear there for a while.

I let the thought marinate, weighing the pros and cons against other options.

The only other option is to stay here and rot.

This is totally above board: I’m not a suspect, I’m not under arrest if you don’t count Dale Jail, and I don’t
legally
have to stay in Laurel.

I crawl over to Jill’s bed to rouse her. She sleeps through her name three times, but startles when I say, “Are you naked under there?”

“What the hell, Xander?”

“Sorry. I was trying to be funny. Remember? You used to wake me up like that.”

Jill is groggy. “That was a long time ago.”

It was three weeks ago, but that was Life Before. This is Life After.

“Jill, I don’t think Dale Jail is going to get any better.”

“They have to let us leave the house sooner or later.” Her silhouette appears over the side of her bed. “We just have to wait it out.”

“I don’t think I can. I think they’re right: if I leave the house, he’ll kill me.” My face contorts into a cry again. I’m getting used to it. “You aren’t safe with me here. And Dale Jail sucks. I just need to go away until they catch him.”

“This isn’t some pre-teen escape-plan fantasy, Xander.” Jill also remembers our Youngstown Escape Plan. “This is real life.”

And real death. She’s forgetting the death part.

“I can’t see any other way out,” I say. “For either of us.”

Back in my sleeping bag, I can’t get comfortable. The idea is out there now. I can elude my minders, get to the bus station, tell Jill I’m going somewhere, and head in the opposite direction.

Dale will lift Jill’s house arrest while I lay low in Burlington. Holed up in the hostel, I won’t have to watch my back. And when Gary is captured, I can return to Laurel and Infinite Summer will commence. Simple.

An hour of silence later, Jill says, “So, what’s our plan?”

“I thought you were asleep.”

She sighs. “Nah, it’s too fun to think about.”

Fun? Nothing will ever be fun again.

“So, where are you going?”

I hem and haw for a minute. I don’t want to tell her.

“Come on! This is me, Xander.”

It just comes out: “New York.”

It’s sort of the truth. I mean, in the messed-up route map that is Greyhound, I do have to pass through New York to get to Burlington. I guess it’s sort of a lawyer’s answer, but it’s definitely the first time I have lied to Jill in a big, big way.

“Alright then.” Jill flips on the light and pulls two pads of paper from her drawer. “What’s the plan?”

T
HIRTEEN

Standing on the threshold of my house for the first time in seventeen days, I’m having trouble focusing. From the landing inside the door, I have to choose: six steps down to the basement and laundry, or eight steps up to bedrooms, bathrooms, living room … and kitchen.

As a kid, I used to hold my breath while I ran to the basement for a clean pair of jeans. If I made the trip without releasing or drawing a breath, I was safe. Safe from what, I’m not sure. In my experience, real people are more dangerous than whatever supernatural horrors could be concealed in my basement.

Today I have no interest in heading upstairs, either. Some part of my brain believes Mom is still lying on the kitchen floor, just at the top of the stairs.

Deputy Nolton, who walked us to my house to get more of my stuff, keeps watch on the porch while Jill steps into my house.

She bounds upstairs. Nothing improves her mood like hijinks. “You coming?”

Do I have a choice? On my slow ascent, I focus on Jill’s feet and turn the corner at the top of the stairs without looking into the kitchen. She follows me down the hall.