Love You Hate You Miss You (15 page)

DURING DINNER TONIGHT,
Mom and Dad asked me to watch a movie with them. I took a bite of black bean burrito and chewed for as long as I could, hoping they’d ask me something else, or at least stop looking at me. I was still processing the Laurie thing from yesterday, was still raw from the things she said, the things I’d felt, and wasn’t ready to do anything else, much less play happy family.

“You can decide which one while your father clears the table,” Mom said, and grinned at Dad before looking at me. I stared down at my plate. I didn’t want to see her grin falter. I wish I’d never seen her cry like I did the other day because no one’s life should be driving their kid home from school and then sobbing.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Dad said. “You want me out of the way to influence the selection. You’re sneaky and beautiful.”

Mom laughed and I watched the two of them sparkle and wondered why we kept pretending. I was so tired of them trying to be what they’d never wanted to be before, of the whole “we’re available! and dedicated!” parents routine. I was tired of how they were always acting like they didn’t mind living with me.

“You know you love my taste in movies,” Dad said, picking up his plate and Mom’s and kissing the top of her head. She tilted her head back and grinned at him.

I never thought my parents deserved their…thing, their endless swallow-up-everything love. I hated it because it made me nothing. Love, to me, was all about exclusion.

I hated that we weren’t a family. We were a couple with an extra person tacked on because they simply happened to forget birth control one night sixteen years ago. They’ve never said it—not directly to me, anyway—but I heard them talking about it once. Mom realized she was going to have me, and eight months before I was born, Dad had a vasectomy. You don’t forget hearing something like that.

I pushed my plate away.

“You don’t have to do this anymore,” I said. “You don’t have to play perfect family with me. Things can go back to how they were.”

My father froze. So did my mother, head still tilted back toward him, the smile on her face fading.

“All right, I promise I won’t suggest any possible movies,” Dad said, trying for normal but failing. Teenagers only want to spend evenings bonding with their parents in old sitcoms, and no one in this house ever asked me to watch a movie with them before Julia died. And no matter what Laurie had said and how much part of me wanted to believe her, believe that I’d made choices and Julia had made them too, I couldn’t—I couldn’t forget what I’d done.

“Look,” I said, and my voice was rising, all the things I’d wanted to say and never had spilling out. “I know your story, yours and Mom’s. True love forever and ever, and then I came along and made the perfect couple into perfection plus an eight-pound shackle. You don’t have to pretend that this”—I gestured at the three of us—“is what you want.”

Dad sat down, the plates he was carrying making a cracking noise as they hit the table. He looked at me like he’d seen something surprising. Maybe even frightening. Even when he came into the emergency room the night Julia died he hadn’t looked at me like that.

“It’s true,” he said after a moment, his voice very quiet. “Your mother and I love each other very much. And it’s true that we—that we didn’t plan on having children. But Amy, it doesn’t mean we didn’t want you. That we don’t love you very much and want to make things better for—”

“Stop,” I said, and looked at Mom. “Please, just stop this. Make Dad stop. Make all of it stop. I saw you the other day. I was there. I made you cry. I know you can’t stand this. That you can’t stand what I did.”

“Amy, that’s not—that’s not why I cried.” She stretched her hands across the table toward me. “I cried because I can’t reach you. I can’t stand to see you so sad, so determined to be alone. Your father and I, we need to be better parents to you, need to—”

I shoved her hands away. “Why are you doing this? Why are you pretending? You know what I did to Julia. You know I—”

“Don’t,” Mom said, her voice shaking, and I could see the words she didn’t want to hear written on her face.

“I killed her. You know that. I know that. Why can’t you just—why won’t you just say it?”

“Because you didn’t!” Dad said, pushing away from the table and running a hand through his hair. “How can you even say it? How can you even think it?”

“How can I not?” I said. “I told her to get in the car!”

“But she chose to do it,” Mom said.

I shook my head, shoving her words away, shoving away her echo of what Laurie had said. Shoving away how those words—from Laurie, and now from Mom—made me think, hope.

Mom leaned over and grabbed my hands.

“Listen to me,” she said, and when I tried to pull away, she wouldn’t let go. She held on to me. “We all make choices, Amy. Sometimes we make good ones. Sometimes we make bad ones. You made choices that night, but Julia made them too. What happened was terrible, but it isn’t your fault—it isn’t—and you have to stop blaming yourself.”

“I—but if I didn’t do it, then it—”

“It was an accident,” Dad said, and his voice was so gentle. So sure. “A horrible one, one where you lost your best friend, but that’s what it was. What it is.”

“But—” My eyes were burning, all of me was burning, shaking, and Mom said, “Amy, honey, it’s all right,” and then she put her arms around me, she was hugging me.

She hugged me, and I let her. I wanted her to.

“Your father and I want to spend time with you, we want to be here for you,” she said. “We want you to see
that Julia’s death isn’t your fault. We want to be a family. Those are our choices.”

“I—” I pulled away, and looked at her. I looked at her, and then at Dad.

“Try,” Dad said. “Try to see how much we love you, try to see that Julia didn’t die because of you. That’s all we ask. Just…try. Please.” He cleared his throat, blinking hard. “Now, do you know what movie you want to watch?”

So I picked a movie, and we watched it. I didn’t know what else to do, and everything else, all the things they said, I…

I want to believe them.

I think about what Laurie said, about learning to be happy, and think that maybe—that maybe I can learn how to do that. How to be that.

Maybe.

Julia’s still gone, though. I still have to live with that. I still have to live without her.

I WENT TO A PARTY TONIGHT
.

There’s six words I never thought I’d say again.

The party was at Mel’s. His parents are in Aruba or something. I wasn’t invited, obviously—Mel hasn’t spoken to me since he asked me what I’d done to Patrick—but I knew all about it because Mel talks very loudly and also because right after English today he asked Caro if she was going.

Actually, what he said was, “I really hope you can come tonight. I need to talk to you.” And he said all that in front of Beth. I was in the student resource center during lunch, so I missed the drama, but Caro’s eyes were red afterward so it was easy to guess what happened.

I was in the student resource center because I’ve given up on lunch in the cafeteria. It’s not worth the
daily race with mustache girl to get a crappy seat and eat crappy food. I can eat yogurt in the resource center instead. The whole thing was Giggles’s idea, actually.

She cornered me as I was skulking down the hall, late to physics class, and made me come to her office. (Patrick had been standing outside the classroom door, looking like the world was going to come smash him in that way he does, and I’d ducked into the bathroom till after the bell rang. Fifteen days. It’s been fifteen days, and I still keep thinking about him.)

When Giggles realized I didn’t have enough tardies for detention, she said I needed to “give back to the school” and told me I had to work in the resource center every day during lunch for a month.

I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I tell her I want to keep doing it. Maybe I’ll even say she’s inspired me. She’ll probably explode.

Anyway, Caro came up to me in the hall after physics and said, “Can you come over after school?” while people—meaning Beth—were watching. That’s when I knew something huge was going on.

Caro didn’t want to go to the party. What Mel had said to her made Beth so furious that she’d stopped talking to Caro.

“Which explains why you actually spoke to me at school,” I said as we were sitting in her bedroom. I was lying on her bed and Caro was pacing around eating an ice cream bar. Her mom always buys the kind I like best now. I didn’t think I was over here that much, but I guess I am.

Caro looked at me and then tossed her wrapper in the trash. “Yeah, I guess it does. I sort of suck, don’t I? Why do you even talk to me?”

“Free ice cream. And besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

“You would too.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re the worst liar in the whole world.”

She flopped down on her bed and nudged me with one foot. “Fine. I’m too freaked out to argue with you. What am I going to do?”

“Go to the party and talk to Mel.”

“But Beth will—”

“What? Make you cry during lunch? Get you so upset you ask someone even the honors losers—sorry, but it’s true, you guys suck—avoid to come over after school in front of everyone?”

She sighed. “I know. But I can’t go.”

“Okay, don’t go.”

“But…I kind of want to go.”

“Duh.”

Then she surprised me. “So will you come with me?”

And that’s how I ended up at the party. I told Mom and Dad I was spending the night at Caro’s. I figured that and the fact that they hadn’t had to come pick me up after school was enough excitement for them. Mentioning a party would just be too much.

And besides, I didn’t think I’d actually go. I just…I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see myself at one without Julia. I figured I’d wait outside or something. Be alone.

That, I could see.

Caro and I went over her “plan” on the way there. She was going to go in and talk to Mel, then leave. I was supposed to stay with her the whole time.

“Seriously, you can’t leave my side,” she said.

“Seriously, you’ve already said that. But you don’t need me there.”

“I do too.”

“Fine,” I said, just to humor her. “But remember, you promised that even if Mel declares eternal love we won’t be there more than—”

“Ten minutes, tops. I know. We’ll go in, he’ll be with Beth, we’ll leave. I don’t even know why I’m doing this.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said, and tried not to think about the fact that I was going to a party and that the last one I went to was with Julia. It didn’t work, and by the time Caro and I walked inside Mel’s house, I was feeling really bad. Just walking through the door made me dizzy.

And inside, my stomach hurt, my hands were sweaty and shaking, and I could tell people knew I didn’t belong.

I’ve always felt like that at parties. It’s why I started drinking before J and I got there, so that walking inside wouldn’t be so hard. I needed that escape from myself.

I turned to Caro, ready to tell her I needed to leave, that I had to leave, when Mel showed up. He looked as freaked as I felt and like he was trying to hide from someone.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he told Caro, and that’s when I knew Beth was out there, in the crowd of people around us, newly single and extremely unhappy about it. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

Caro looked at me and I knew the ten-minute, we-stick-together plan was gone. I don’t know why I even fell for it in the first place. How many times did I agree to it
when Julia and I went to parties where Kevin was going to be and end up alone?

“I can’t,” she said. “Amy and I can only stay for a few minutes.”

“Oh,” Mel said, and looked at me. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

Classy. “Nice to see you too.”

“That’s not what I meant. Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, looked out at everyone carefully pretending they weren’t watching, and then looked back at Caro. “Just a few minutes. Please.”

“Are you feeling okay? Do we need to go?”

I looked at Caro and realized she was talking to me. I realized she was going to tell Mel she couldn’t talk and that we had to go. Not because she didn’t want to talk to him, but because she’d realized I was freaked out and was willing to leave so I could get out of there.

I know she was terrified of running into Beth too. But she did mean it because when I said, “No, go talk to him,” she shook her head and whispered, “I’m sorry. I should have realized—this must be so hard for you.”

“Go,” I said, and plastered what I hoped was a smile on my face.

“Ten minutes,” Caro said, and then she and Mel disappeared into the crowd. I forced myself to look around
even though my hands were shaking. Even though all of me was shaking.

This was what I saw:

People were dancing. People were making out. People were drinking. People were talking.

That was it. That’s all there was to see.

Just people having fun, and I knew it was stupid to worry about being there. It was stupid to be scared.

But I was scared. I wanted to get out of there.

But more than that, I wanted a drink.

And since I was at a party, I knew I could get one. There was a keg and a bunch of bottles on a makeshift bar not too far away, in the corner of the room. Twenty steps, maybe. All I had to do was walk over there.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t because if the people were less lame and the music was louder and the room a little darker, I could have been at the last party I went to. I could have been with Julia.

I walked away, tottering in my flat-soled sneakers like they were a pair of those monster shoes Julia would strap herself into, the ones with the stacked heels that made me so tall I smacked my head into her bedroom door the time she dared me to try them on.

I walked away, but I didn’t leave. I wanted that drink, I wanted to forget, and I’d been to enough parties to know where to look for the parental liquor stash, for those bottles that had been hidden because they’re the ones that are monitored.

Even wobbling and sweating, J’s face at that last party all I could see, I found it in less than five minutes. Mel’s parents had a very nice liquor cabinet, with a tricky lock, but when I got it open it was empty.

Mel might have been dating Beth, but he’s still pretty smart.

I could have left then. Probably should have. But I knew where to look next, though, and headed upstairs, pretended not to see the bedrooms with their closed doors, pretended J’s face wasn’t all around me, and went straight for the bathroom.

I found the liquor cabinet stash and a set of monogrammed glasses in the bathroom hamper, under a pile of dirty and wet towels. There was scotch, bourbon, and a nice bottle of vodka, the kind that’s good enough to come in glass, not plastic.

My hands were shaking when I opened the vodka, but not because I was scared. No, I wasn’t scared anymore. I wanted a drink, I wanted that escape from my thoughts. From everything. God, I wanted it.

I poured myself a cup and then put the bottles back, my sweet little secret.

I was never labeled an alcoholic. Not even at Pinewood. Why? Because I didn’t drink all the time. I drank too much, too often, but I didn’t drink every day. I could stop, and had.

Binge drinking, I was told over and over again. It’s dangerous, but common in teenagers, especially girls. What I did wasn’t a sickness, wasn’t a disease, and one day, when I was of legal age and much more sound mind, I would be able to drink normally. I think hearing that was supposed to make me feel better.

It’s bullshit. It’s so easy to label people, to look at a list of symptoms and say, “This is who you are. This is what you are.” Everyone—teachers, J’s mother, even people at school—they did that to Julia. She lived life fast and loud and fun. She didn’t listen when people who were used to being listened to talked. She had sex. She took drugs. Sometimes she drank. Checklist marked, she was trouble.

Except she wasn’t. She had a huge laugh, an even larger heart, and just needed to live in a world where it was okay to be under eighteen and have a mind of your own.

I will never be able to drink normally. I don’t want to. When I think about drinking, it’s release from myself I crave. I don’t need to drink to get through the day,
to smooth over problems, or because I want the drink itself.

I want to drink because I don’t want to be who I am. My problem, my disease, is myself, and I stopped drinking because Julia was dead and I wanted to feel exactly who I am. I wanted to remember what I did.

I knew I should put the drink down. Thanks to Pinewood and Laurie, I knew I was supposed to stop and think about what led me here. That I needed to think about what trying to outrun myself gave me. What it had cost.

I knew I should put the drink down because of Julia. Because she was gone, and even if I hadn’t made it happen, even if driving was her choice, I was still living with mine.

I didn’t put it down. I drank. I didn’t even notice the taste of the vodka. I didn’t care about it. I never have.

I drank, feeling that familiar heat on my tongue, in my throat, warming my stomach, a sign that soon I’d stop feeling so small, so stupid, so me. I drank and then walked back toward the stairs, ready to face the party. I knew it wasn’t a big deal. I knew it because I could walk back upstairs whenever I wanted and fill the glass I held over and over again.

Patrick was sitting at the top of the stairs. He was looking down at the party through the railing, watching everyone below us. I knew the look on his face. The “why” look: Why can’t I have fun like they are? Why can’t I just be normal? Why am I here?

When he turned and looked at me I froze. There he was, right in front of me, and everything—that night in the basement, all the things he’d said to me, that afternoon in his room—came rushing in all at once, filling my head.

I tightened my grip on the glass. I saw him see it. Saw him look at it, then me.

I was able to move then. I lifted the glass for another sip.

He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I drank.

He watched me. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see him. When I opened them, my mouth and throat on fire, my closed eyes stinging, he spoke.

“Can I have some?”

I stared at him. Fifteen days and what he said, it wasn’t—it wasn’t what I expected him to say. But then, he never said what I thought he would.

The thing is, deep down in a part of me I wish I didn’t have, a strange stupid soft spot full of hopes I try so hard
to pretend away, I’d thought maybe he’d say something else. That maybe he could be someone to me. That I could be someone to him.

Deep down I thought I created the same spark in him that he did in me.

I held the glass out to him. He took it, careful not to let our hands touch. I wish I hadn’t noticed that, but I did and it stung.

He closed his eyes when he drank too.

“God, that tastes like shit,” he said when he was done. “Are you sure you want it back?”

I didn’t say a word, just held out one hand for the glass. He didn’t give it to me, but that was okay. I was going to take it and march back to the bathroom for a refill—no, the whole bottle. I was going to take it and then ignore Patrick like he was a bad dream, go down to the party and…nothing.

I didn’t want to go to the party. There was nowhere I wanted to go. No one I wanted to see. My hands were shaking again.

“Give me the glass,” I said.

He closed both hands around it. “Remember when I told you I once talked to Julia? I talked to her about you. It was last spring, the Monday after—after that party in Millertown. I went up to her right before
third period. The halls were so crowded. I can still see it, all those people, but I went up to her and I told her—”

If I’d still been holding the glass, I would have dropped it then. He’d talked to Julia, and she’d never told me. I couldn’t believe it.

“She never said anything. You told her about what we…you told her what happened?”

He shook his head. “I told her I’d talked to you at the party. That I…that I liked you. I thought maybe she’d help me talk to you. That night, you—you just disappeared. I even went into the party looking for you, but you were gone. When we…when we were in the basement, it was the only time in I don’t know how long that I hadn’t thought about how screwed up I am. But when I was done talking she—”

I could guess what happened then. Julia hated third period because she hated history, and anyone who tried to talk to her beforehand usually got their ass handed to them. I met her at her locker before and after every class except that one.