Never Eighteen (5 page)

We continue, though it's hard for me to concentrate, but it's Kaylee's turn to pick rides. She likes the spinning ones, so after enjoying (or not) rides such as the Matterhorn, the Zipper, the Enterprise, and the Octopus, I'm done. I have to put my foot down at the Ferris wheel.

"You ready to go?" I ask. I've had enough "fun" at the fair. "If you are." We head out of the fairgrounds and back to Candy, who is patiently waiting in the straw-covered parking lot to take us to our next stop.

"Next destination?" Kaylee asks.

"Allie."

"Jesus, Austin."

"Kaylee, can you please just try to understand?"

She stares into my eyes with ... I don't know what: maybe sympathy, maybe insight. She's so beautiful. I think again about our almost-kiss, what I wouldn't give to do it all over. If I had only put my arm around her earlier. Sometimes my stupidity amazes even me. I'd try again, but when she laughed, it was as if it were all some terrible joke. Maybe I misread her, though. Maybe I'll try again later.
Yes, later,
I promise myself. She puts the key in the ignition, lets out a large sigh, and starts the car.

She doesn't speak all the way to Allie's house; I wonder what she's thinking. She probably thinks I'm nuts to try to do all of this in a day, or the weekend, however long it takes. Deep down I know she gets it. She gets my need to fix things that have broken along the way, to mend fences. Maybe if we all just tried to put the pieces back together as soon as they fell out of place, the puzzles in our lives would feel more like an accomplishment than a chore.

Kaylee pulls up to the curb in front of Allie's house. I turn to get out of the car, but Kaylee stops me. "Are you sure about this one?" she asks.

"I'm sure."

"She's not the same, you know. She's not the Allie we used to know."

"Yes, she is. Deep down, I think she is. I want to try to bring
that
Allie out again."

"What if you can't, Austin? You can't help everyone."

"At least I'll know I tried."

"I sure hope you know what you're doing," she says.

"I don't. But I know what I'm trying to do. Is that good enough?"

"I don't know, Austin. Just go. Go about your business. I'll be sitting here in the car, alone, if you need me."

I exit the car, head up the walk to the front door, and ring the bell. Allie answers. She's definitely not the Allie I used to know. That Allie was cute, lively, fun, and a bit fat. This Allie is dark, depressed, gaunt, and thin. Too thin.

"Austin, dude, what are you doing here?" she says. She reeks of pot.

"I wanted to see you."

"See me? Why? I mean, no offense, but we haven't exactly been best buds for a while."

"That was your choice," I remind her.

"So it was." She nods. "Who's in the car?" She motions toward Candy.

"Kaylee."

"Are you guys like boyfriend-girlfriend now?"

"No, just friends."

She eyes Kaylee out in the car as if trying to see something more than I've told her. She always did have a keen intuition, a knack for reading people. She looks back to me, gives a knowing look, nods, and says, "Why is she waiting in the car?"

"Because I asked her to."

She looks at me suspiciously now. I think maybe she'll turn me away. Instead she says, "Come in.

"I'd offer you something to drink or eat, but the cupboards are pretty bare. Mom doesn't shop worth a shit anymore, and, well, you know my dad's never home. You want to sit?"

"Sure." I take a seat on the couch. She sits down next to me. I survey the room carefully. It looks the same—the country décor, the pig collection in the corner—but there's something different about it, something not quite right. The air. I don't mean oxygen; I mean atmosphere. It's suffocating, as if at any moment I'll be gasping for breath. I shake it off, get down to the reason I'm here.

"So, how've you been, Allie?"

She stares at me blankly, as if I've not said anything at all. An awkward silence hangs between us. She finally speaks. "You know how I've been, Austin. I've been shit." She reaches over to the side table and grabs a little plastic bag. She takes a pill from the bag and begins to scrape the outer coating off with her fingernail. "So, what's up, Austin? Why are you here? What's with the visit?"

I'm mesmerized by her actions. She wraps the scraped pill in a piece of paper and places it on the coffee table in front of us. Grabbing a lighter, she pounds it on the paper over and over. "Austin?"

I look up at her and she's staring at me. I momentarily forget the purpose of my visit. "A lot of people miss you, Allie."

"Miss me?" She carefully unfolds the paper, revealing the pill, which is now nothing but a fine powder. "I see everyone at school every day; they don't miss me. I walk through the halls by myself, eat lunch by myself, sit in class by myself." Allie places lines of the powder in front of her and proceeds to snort them through a straw. Her eyes water as she wipes residue from under her nose and licks her finger.

Not able to help myself any longer, I ask, "What is that?"

She looks up and simply says, "OC," then snorts another line.

"OC?" I ask, feeling stupid.

"OxyContin."

"Do you have a prescription for that?" The look she gives me answers my question.

She continues our conversation without a second thought. "Austin, if everyone misses me so much, why don't they come over and say so?" She pauses shortly, then says, "I'm a ghost, Austin, nothing more than a ghost."

"You haven't exactly made yourself approachable lately. Plus, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, they miss the old Allie, that Allie you used to be, before, well, you know," I say.

She looks right through me. "That Allie doesn't exist anymore, Austin. That Allie is dead."

"She doesn't have to be," I say.

"Yes, she does. She belongs in a cold, dark place. This is where she lives now." She points to her head. "Up here, in an unmarked grave."

"Dig her back out," I say. She ignores me. More awkward silence, I'm struggling for the right words to make her see. "It could have happened to anyone," I blurt out.

"But it didn't happen to anyone, Austin. It happened to me."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." She becomes visibly frustrated.

"Have you ever talked about it?"

"No." Now she gets angry.

"I think you should," I suggest.

Allie rises from the couch and yells, "No! No one wants to hear that story, Austin. What? Do you think this is some kind of fairy tale? This isn't a fairy tale. It's a nightmare. My nightmare. I think you should mind your own damn business! What the fuck?"

"I just want to help."

"You want to help? Give me a lobotomy so I don't remember. Put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. Please! I've wanted to a million times—I'm just too chicken to do it." She begins to cry as she collapses back onto the couch.

Her body trembles. She looks so fragile, so bony, like she could be easily broken. She cries, "It's just been so hard. My dad, he ignores me as if I don't even exist. When I try to talk to my mom, she shushes me and tells me I just need to get over it and on with my life. They don't even care! They see me as a disgrace, damaged goods, a stain on their picture-perfect family."

"I'm sure they don't," I try.

"Yes, they do!" she screams, eyes wild with turmoil, chest heaving with what must be painful gasps. She continues until her body tires, slows, comes to a stop.

"It was broad daylight," she begins her story. "Broad fucking daylight," she repeats. "I can't believe nobody saw, nobody heard anything. He snuck up behind me, scared the shit out of me. I'm sure I must have screamed, but now the memory's so fuzzy, I don't know if I'm remembering it right. I was walking down to the Circle K to buy some candy, like I did every Friday after school."

"I remember. You always had a major sweet tooth," I say.

She looks over at me as if she had forgotten that I was there. She continues. "Yeah, I loved it all, chocolate, gummies, caramel, Nerds, Starbursts, Skittles. I'd always come home with a huge bag, enough for the entire weekend. Enough to share with you guys." She looks at me with disgust, as if she's casting blame, though I know she holds the expression for the memory, not for me.

"He forced me into the bushes, where the old folks' community is now. I can't believe how fast that place went up." Her eyes drift for a moment as if lost in thought; then she comes back. "He pulled me in there and threw me down onto the fucking ground, right on top of the sticker bushes. He put a hand over my mouth, the other held a knife to my throat. He said if I did what he wanted he wouldn't kill me. I just nodded like an idiot; I didn't even try to fight back. I was such a chicken."

"No, you weren't. You were scared," I say.

She glares at me, eyes still crazed. "Yes, I was. I should have fought him off or I should have died trying," she says, almost in a whisper.

"I stumbled home. There was so much blood. It got on my shoes. I loved those goddamn shoes; they were ruined."

"I'm so sorry, Allie."

"I tried to get back to normal after that, remember? Tried to hang, tried to forget. You tried to help, and Kaylee, I know. Don't think I didn't notice. But it was too much. Sometimes I wish he would have just killed me." Tears again fall. "And that's not all," she goes on. Although this is exactly what I have come here for, I'm not sure I want to hear any more, not sure I can take it. But I have to. I have her talking about it, something she's never done. I have to see it through.

"That fucker got me pregnant."

"Jesus, Allie, I didn't know," I say, shocked by this new information, heart now aching for my once good friend.

"No one knew that part. My world came crashing down. My dad continued to ignore it, ignore me. He couldn't even look at me. Still can't. My mom took me to get rid of what she called 'the abomination.' The old Allie died that day, on the sticker bushes, right along with her virginity and her self-respect. Sex is an act of love? What a fucking joke. Painful and ugly, that's what it is. And don't even show me a piece of candy—I'll ram it down your fucking throat. I don't touch it anymore, haven't eaten a piece since."

"It looks like you don't eat much of anything. Do you?"

"Sometimes. I usually get rid of it though."

"Get rid of it?" I ask, immediately regretting my ignorance.

"Yeah, get rid of it. Stick my finger down my throat, puke it up," she replies.

"Why?"

"Because it feels good. It feels good to force it out, like I'm ridding myself of everything, everything bad, everything toxic that's ever touched me, been inside me. I was so stupid, such a fat cow. I just had to have that damn candy. If it weren't for that candy, none of this would have happened."

"It might have," I say. "Another day, another place, another girl. It wasn't about you or your candy habit. It was about some psycho fuck that gets off on hurting people. You should get help. You're slowly killing yourself, you know."

"I don't care. No one cares. Anyway, like I said, I'm already dead."

"I care, Allie. That's why I'm here. And you shouldn't choose death. It'll come for you soon enough."

Allie turns her eyes toward mine, glossed over from drugs and tears. "I don't know how to live anymore, Austin, how to be normal, how to deal. I only know how to get numb, how to purge. I don't even remember that fat girl that used to be me, and you're talking about getting her back? I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Forgiveness," I tell her.

"Forgive who? That fucking rapist in the bushes who took everything from me?"

"No. You start by forgiving yourself."

"Myself ?"

"Yes, you can't blame yourself for what's happened to you. It's not your fault."

"Why does it feel like it is?"

"I don't know, maybe because the people around you made you feel that way by not hearing you, or seeing you, so it's been building up inside, eating away at you. You try to rid yourself of it through eating disorders and addictions. I want Allie back. My Allie. Fun, cool, totally hilarious Allie. I think she's still in there, dying to get out. You need to talk to someone—a counselor, your doctor, me, anyone you think can help."

"What if I just want to die?"

"Then I will be sad and disappointed that you cheated yourself out of your chance at existence. Not all of us have that opportunity, you know, to choose life."

She sits, nodding at nothing in particular, then says, "Why do you care so much? I mean, no one else seems to."

I have to think for a minute. It's hard to put into words what's been driving me this weekend. I wasn't sure I even understood it. Then I say, "Because I'm looking at the world through new eyes, that's why. And I don't like everything I'm seeing. I guess I'm also a little jealous."

She looks at me. "Jealous?" she says.