My Beating Teenage Heart (15 page)

If even leaving won’t work, I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know how to keep walking, talking and breathing.

I want to hurt myself again. But I know I shouldn’t.

More than that, though, I just want to quit. Say fuck this all and walk away.

I loosen my grip on the steering wheel. About six weeks ago when Jules and I were on our way to Bourneville to hang out at Boleyn’s, I let her steer from the passenger seat while I chomped on a slice of pizza I’d picked up along the way. It was a clear night, no snow on the ground or in the air, and neither of us really thought of her driving for a couple minutes as dangerous or even gave it a second thought. But Renee and Cameron were in the backseat and Renee freaked out like we were the
Titanic
going down and there weren’t enough lifeboats to go around. I had to grab the wheel again and hand my slice back to Jules to stop Renee from screaming into my ear.

Something could have happened to all of us in the car that night and it didn’t. So why Skylar and why when she was just a kid in the second grade, not even old enough for long division?

Tonight there’s nobody with me to worry about and no one else to steer for me either. I take my hands off the wheel, still holding them out in front of me, grasping air. Then I shut my eyes and envision the world spinning on without me. Nearly seven billion people in the world. What’s one less?

Except to my parents. And Jules. And my grandparents and the guys I was hanging out with tonight …

I see all their faces from behind my closed eyelids and I lunge forward. My eyes snap open as I seize the wheel.
You’re such an asshole
, I tell myself.
What the fuck do you think you’re doing? What if you flattened an old man in a wheelchair trying to cross the street? Or a lady with a sleeping kid in a car seat? How many more people do you want to kill?

My foot eases up on the gas. The car slows until a jogger could pass it with no problem. I drive home, the feeling that I’m going to throw up clawing at my throat and my hands shaking. What did I just do?

Nothing
, I tell myself.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Calm yourself the fuck down before you go inside
.

I plug my iPod in after all, my fingers jerking, and listen to Johnny Cash sing “A Boy Named Sue” three times in a row. Tonight is the kind of thing that Eva would want me to call her for, but what can she do? Unless someone can change history for me they’re all just varying degrees of useless.

Breathe
, I say inside my head and the voice doesn’t even really sound like mine, but after a while I’m stable enough to get out of the car and unlock my front door. The TV’s still on in the family room and I follow the sound and find my mother curled up in the fetal position on the couch, with her eyes closed and her favorite china teacup (one her grandmother gave her before she died) full to di6;

A black-and-white movie’s flickering across the screen and I decide not to turn the TV off, in case the silence wakes my mother. A week before Christmas Skylar got the flu and camped out on the couch for days with a yellow beach pail on the floor next to her in case she had to puke and couldn’t make it to the bathroom. On the second day I was watching basketball with the sound down while she slept and she opened her eyes and looked at me but was too miserable to say anything.

“You want me to get you anything?” I asked.

“No,” she whispered in a small voice. She pulled the blanket closer around her chin and drifted off to sleep again.

I think if my mother opened her eyes right now she’d give me the same look that was in Skylar’s eyes that night.

“Mom?” I say quietly. Usually she’s a light sleeper, but not tonight. I should throw a blanket over her and let her sleep.

That moment in the car … I meant it. In those seconds I felt ready to leave everything, but in retrospect I’m terrified, my heart feels as though it will race all night, overclock itself and give out like a fried computer.

“Mom,” I repeat, raising my voice, “were you waiting up?”

My mother’s eyes open slowly. She stares at me, then thrusts herself up on her elbows to squint at her watch.

“Were you waiting up?” I say again, panic galloping inside me.
Breathe, man. Get a grip
.

“Breckon,” my mother mumbles. “It’s nearly two o’clock.” Her bangs fall into her eyes as she shifts into a seated position on the couch.

“I know—sorry. Some of the guys dropped by work and wanted to go to Denny’s after. You and Dad are usually asleep by the time I get home when I work late so I didn’t think—”

“You should’ve called.” Mom sweeps the hair from her face. She coughs dryly into her palm and takes a sip of what must be cold tea. “How’s Ty? Was he there tonight?”

I perch on the couch’s arm. “He’s okay. There was a streaker outside Denny’s. Some guy in a devil mask.” What I’m thinking, while I say that, is that what happened in the car tonight can only happen once. I’ve promised myself that before, about other things, but this has to be different. Skylar’s gone but I need to stay. That’s what she would want. That’s what everyone would want for me.

That’s what she would want
, a voice inside my head repeats, and once again it doesn’t feel like mine.
Hold on
, it begs.
Hold on tight
.

It should freak me out, hearing a voice otheg aeel lir than my own inside my mind, but somehow it doesn’t. Maybe because although it’s not exactly my voice, it doesn’t seem like someone else’s either. I don’t know how to explain it.

“At Denny’s?” my mom says, looking disconcerted.

“Outside—in the parking lot. It was pretty funny. He was dancing around and everything with no pants on.” I stare at my mother, knowing she’s as hollowed out as I am and that it’s unlikely that she’ll find anything funny. It doesn’t feel funny to me anymore either but I’m glad I woke her up. Talking to her makes me feel a little closer to okay than I did just a couple of minutes ago.

“It’s a bit cold for that, isn’t it?” she says, looping one of her fingers through the teacup handle and twirling it gently on the coffee table.

“I guess.”

And without warning my mother’s eyes begin to leak. She brushes the fattest tears away but she can’t brush fast enough to catch them all. The strays soak her face, turn the corners of her eyes pink until she squeezes them shut, her mouth dropping open.

I slide down beside her and slip an arm wordlessly around her shoulders. It hurts to see her like this but not in the knife-twist-to-the-gut way it did a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’ve gotten used to a steady level of pain and only notice it when it spikes, like it did in the car. I feel spent. Empty, inanimate. If I could stay numb forever the way I am right now I might be able to get through this.

But numb might as well be dead, because what’s the difference? Just a beating heart, and that, like other people’s good intentions, isn’t worth shit on its own.

Hold on tight
, the voice murmurs to me, soft but sure of itself.
Don’t let go. You’ll wish you hadn’t
.

“She’s always with me,” my mom says, a sob lodged deep in her throat. “It’s as though she’s just somewhere I can’t find her, but not gone. I feel that if I only look hard enough …” She drops one hand into her lap and lets the tears flow uninterrupted. “But I don’t know how … and those feelings.” She shakes her head, spreads her other hand along her forehead and kneads her temples. “They’re a lie. A
trick
.”

I know. And I don’t know what to say anymore or how this will ever be better than it is right now. There’s nothing to grab on to that will make it stop.

Moose doesn’t need words. He jumps onto the couch with us and licks my mother’s hand in her lap. She forces herself to chuckle through her tears. “That would mean more if it wasn’t just about the salt,” she says to him.

My mom bends over Moose, hugging him to her, her hair dropping over him like a curtain, partially obscuring him from view. She plants a kiss on the top of his head, and predictably, he swings around and slurps at her face.

Normally that wouldllyn t make me groan but not tonight. Mom makes fresh tea for herself and we watch the rest of the black-and-white movie that neither of us saw the first half of, Moose’s head resting in my mother’s lap.

On Sunday my grandparents (Mom’s parents) come over for lunch. A set of grandparents either drop by or have us over every couple of days and Lily calls constantly. She emails me too and then complains about my lousy response rate. Last time she wrote, “You’re allowed to avoid other people over the age of thirty and roll your eyes about them but I’m supposed to be your cool aunt! Also, I fully intend to continue pestering you until I begin to hear from you on a more regular basis so you might as well start typing now.” I sort of smiled at that one but I still haven’t emailed her back.

I don’t want to go to class any more than I did last week—I feel like I’m in a daze most of the time while I’m at school—but I show up and stay because if I don’t my parents will get on my back about Eva again. That’s not the only reason I stay; I need to avoid the rock-bottom place I hit on Saturday night. While I don’t want to talk to people much lately, their presence is a safety net. I know there’s no danger that I’ll do anything bad to myself when anyone else is around.

Not that I would anyway but … I mean, I
won’t
. I know I won’t, but it can’t hurt to have that extra safety mechanism.

So I go to school and stay there, even though everyone around me and everything they say and do feels pointless and/or stupid, like it doesn’t matter whether they say/do it or not. Whatever
whatever
WHATEVER whatever
whatever
WHATEVER. It’s not their fault that they don’t matter but that’s what it feels like: Whatever
whatever
WHATEVER whatever
whatever
WHATEVER whatever whatever whatever
whatever
.

And then the single thing in my life that feels real continually bursting through the bullshit like an aftershock that will never end: the paramedics checking for a pulse I knew they wouldn’t find.

But I keep going because this is what everyone would want, especially Skylar. For me to hold on.

On Monday I stick around after math class to ask Mrs. Reynolds if I can retake the test that I just finished messing up, and she says yes and do I have a date in mind when I think I’d be ready? I have no clue so I just blurt out “maybe sometime next week,” and she says that’s fine and that if I want we can set up a tutoring session beforehand to make sure I have a good grasp of the material.

Mr. Cirelli is just as helpful about the econ group assignment I’ve blown. He tells me he’ll take the assignment out of consideration for my final grade and balance it with work I’ve done/will do over the semester.

On Wednesday I put in another shift at Zavi’s, just me and Mr. Baldassarre because Wednesdays are usually slow. His wife Zavi drops by partway through the night and hugs me so hard that I practically feel my shoulders crunch. She looks at me with the kind of soppy sympathetic expression I’ve begun to hate while I pretend that I can’t see what’s in her eyes. Things are better when she leaves again and Mrs ae usually. Baldassarre and I can go back to making small talk and throwing together subs. He loves old movies, like the one my mom and I watched the end of the other night where a guy tries to make his wife think she’s going insane.
“Gaslight,”
Mr. Baldassarre notes when I start to tell him about it. “With Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.”

“Ingrid Bergman—she’s the one in
Casablanca
with Humphrey Bogart, right?” I haven’t seen it but it’s one of those old movies you sort of know about by osmosis.

“That’s her,” he confirms. “One of the most beautiful, graceful ladies Hollywood’s ever seen.”

She did have a nice smile. But most of the time she just seemed really frazzled. “I guess I should watch that one too—
Casablanca
.”

Mr. Baldassarre cocks his head. “You mean you’ve never seen
Casablanca
? What have you been doing with your life, Breckon? This is essential stuff.” He’s about to say something else when Toby, one of the tattoo artists from next door, saunters in to order the same veggie sub on whole wheat that he always orders and starts telling us about a first-timer who passed out on him, then came to and threw up the pad Thai she’d eaten earlier, mostly on herself and the floor, but he got splashed too.

“Occupational hazard,” Toby comments, absently rubbing the mermaid tattoo that runs from just underneath his elbow all the way down to his wrist.

His story about the Thai food reminds me of the time that someone spiked all the sodas at Lorenzo Casaccino’s Halloween party and Jules puked up moo shu pork and rice on her white Abba pantsuit costume. She went to rinse out her blond wig in the bathroom and got sick again. I held her real hair back in my fist so it wouldn’t get puked on too, while trying not to look at what she was spitting into the toilet.

“If I find out who fucked with the drinks they’re getting kneed in the balls,” Jules said between heaves.

Because Jules hardly drinks, her alcohol tolerance is negligible and she felt so dizzy that I had to call my dad to pick us up early (this was before I got my license and car). While we were waiting for him to show, this girl Cassandra from my French class told me she saw well-known asshole Jordan Carroll messing with the drinks earlier. I went over to Jordan and asked him straight-out if he did it. “So what if I did?” he asked with a moronic grin.

I told him in that case he owed Jules and a bunch of other people apologies for being a dickhead, and he stopped smiling. “Look who’s talking,” he said. “You’re the biggest dickhead here. It’s a party, dude. Drinks get spiked.”

I drew my right arm back and punched him in the jaw. It’s the only time I’ve ever thrown the first punch. Normally I’m not a violent person but 1) I’d had three beers and at least as many spiked 7-Ups and wasn’t thinking clearly and 2) Jules isn’t the type of person who’d want me to fight over her but I hated seeing her look so sick, and when someone crosses the line with her they’re guaranteed trouble from me.