Random (17 page)

“Imagin [sic] life w/o Pooper,” says another post. “Ahhhhh ya!”

One particularly imaginative post reads, “Shut the fuck up faggit [sic] go die.”

Harmless taunting? Hardly. When one considers the outcome—one more young human life lost to homophobic terrorizing despite viral Web campaigns like the It Gets Better Project—the concept of “harmless” doesn't seem appropriate.

continued

My life is over.

I sit in the car, shaking with lack of sleep, lack of food, relief at seeing Andy alive, and, well, terror that he might still do something stupid. Plus, there's this absolute paralysis now that a cop is climbing out of his patrol car and walking up to my car. My
brother's
car.

I don't know what to do. Are you supposed to stay in the car? Get out? Put your hands out the window?

“Morning,” the cop calls.

My windows are still up, but I hear Andy call something back. He doesn't get off the hood of the Sentra.

The cop knocks on my window. I roll it down, praying my hands aren't really shaking as visibly as I know they are.

“What's the problem?” the cop says, peering into the car, checking out every nook and cranny.

“She's about an hour late is the problem!” Andy calls.

The cop looks over at him. He's still on the hood but now sits with his legs dangling over one side.

“What's that?” the cop says.

“I'm waiting for a tow, and my stupid little sister there was supposed to be here an hour ago to keep me company or give me a lift if the tow truck didn't show up,” Andy says, shaking his head. He yells at me, “Thanks, Tori,
you're a real gem
.”

His lie is so effortless, so smooth, I nearly believe it myself for a second.

The cop cocks an eyebrow at him, then glances down at me.

“You having any trouble?” he asks me.

“No, sir,” I say. “Just—yeah. Coming up to see him. Is all. Yeah.”

“You worried about something?”

“Sorry, I've just never been pulled over before.”

“I didn't pull you over. There something I should've pulled you over for?”

“No! No, sir. No.”

“Got some bodies in the trunk?”

Ha-ha-ha-ha, you funny son of a . . .

“Nope, not me, no, sir.”

The cop eyes me carefully, and I'm fairly certain my stomach liquefies and drains out of every open hole in my body. Hope I don't get any on his boots.

“All right, well, turn your hazards on,” he tells me. “Same goes for you,” he calls over to Andy.

“Oh, man,” Andy says, giving him an embarrassed smile. “You're right, I'm sorry. Duh.”

He hops down, reaches into the car, and the blinking hazard lights come on.

The cop nods. “Keep an eye out for traffic,” he says, and walks back to his car.

I watch in the mirrors as he gets in. He sits there for approximately eighteen years, doing whatever it is cops do in their cars, before finally pulling back onto the 57 and driving down the hill, riding the brakes the whole time.

It's a very steep hill.

I sit back in the seat, close my eyes, and try not to puke out the window. Call it God, call it Flying Whatever Monster, but I swear someone was looking out for me.

It's about
time
I caught a break.

When I'm able to get my heart rate down to something less than two hundred, I open my eyes and stare at the car parked in front of me. The Sentra has no stickers, nothing to make it stand out. The license plate frame is from a local dealer.

Through the Sentra's rear window and on through the windshield, I can see that Andy has resumed his seat on the hood, just a little off center, kind of in front of the steering wheel.

I step out of the car and walk carefully over to the Sentra. The car is mostly dry, with little jewels of rain dotting the surface. Andy doesn't even turn to look at me. This nongesture strikes me as very cinematic. Staged. Still—it's effective.

“Just in time,” he says.

I stand by the front fender, studying him. And, oddly, despite everything . . . he's kind of cute, I have to say. Not as cute as Lucas was, or maybe just cute differently, but cute.

Wait: As Lucas
was
? Past tense . . . ?

“Yeah?” I say to Andy.

“Well, maybe not
just
,” he says, and supports his face in one cupped hand. “I'd say you had about, mmm, two more minutes before the sun—oops, wait! There it comes.”

I turn to face east. The sun, which has been up solid now for a while, is only just beginning to crest a distant mountain. I've lived here my whole life, and I don't even know what the mountain is called. I really should start paying more attention to things.

“So when you said sunrise, you didn't mean from, like, the horizon,” I say.

Andy shrugs. “I don't know. I hadn't decided.”

And for some crazy-ass reason, I say, “So did I save your life or not?”

Andy finally turns his head to look at me. When he does, there's no study in it, no analysis. He looks at me like he's known me for years and isn't surprised by how I look, what I'm wearing . . . anything.

“Well,” he says, “that's the big question, isn't it?”

Licking my lips, I point to the hood. “Can I join you?”

“I'd be offended if you didn't. I mean, after all we've been through together.” He pats the hood.

I climb on. I sit with my knees up, like his, and wrap my arms around them, connecting them by grabbing my right wrist with my left hand.

“I thought you'd have long black hair,” I say after a moment.

“Do I disappoint?”

“No,” I say. “Not at all. What color are your eyes?”

He turns to me, raising what looks to me like a flirtatious eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“Blue,” I say. Except they're not just blue; they're practically white. Like a husky's.

“Close enough,” Andy says. “You handled the cop pretty well back there, by the way.”

“Me?” I say, and almost manage to laugh. “You were freaking brilliant.”

“Really.”

I squint one eye at him. “Can I tell you something you may not know about yourself? You have a habit of phrasing things as statements that most people would phrase as questions.”

“
Do
I.”

This time I laugh. And Andy smiles.

“So.
Victoria
,” Andy says. “Let's talk, shall we?”

My stomach grumbles. I ask him, “I don't suppose you have anything to eat by chance?”

“Backseat,” he says. “Ice chest. Have at it.”

“Thanks.”

I slide off the hood and go to the rear passenger door,
which is unlocked. Inside is a basic blue ice chest. I notice a laptop resting on the passenger seat too, and wonder if he composed a suicide note on it. The thought chills me, and I focus on the ice chest. I open it up and find an assortment of food and drinks inside. Cokes, water bottles, apples, crackers, cookies in Ziploc plastic bags, all nestled between packages of that blue ice stuff.

It's a lot of food for someone not planning on being around much longer, but then again, I'd want to go out on a full stomach too. These are probably some of his favorites.

I grab a bag of oatmeal cookies and a bottle of water, and rejoin Andy on the hood. The cookies and water are unbelievably awesome. I'd been keeping on my softball diet, lots of protein and fruits, but what the hell. I didn't know hunger could make things taste so good. I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday.

“Okay,” I say, after downing my first cookie practically whole. “Talk about what?”

“How about the trial?”

The cookie gets sticky in my throat. I have to wash it down with half a bottle of water.

“Um . . . it's just—”

“Oh, what, you're not supposed to talk about it?” Andy asks. “Please. You crossed that bridge quite a bit ago.”

Good point.

“All right,” I say. “What do you want to know?”

“What's the worst-case scenario? What could they do to you?”

“Well, the absolute worst possible thing is that they'll find me—us—no, wait, screw it,
me
. They'll find
me
guilty of all the charges.”

Andy raises that eyebrow again. “Ah, suddenly your compatriots aren't quite as important.”

I shrug. He might be right. Maybe I don't care so much about them anymore after all. Even Lucas. Broad shoulders and a good-looking face aren't much of a consolation if things go badly.

Andy says, “And if you're found guilty?”

“Then it would go to sentencing, and that could be up to ten years.”

I wait for the inevitable drop in my stomach as I say the words, but it doesn't come. Maybe I'm getting used to the idea. Maybe I'm just too tired to care right now. I suddenly wonder if Noah has gone to sleep or not. Is he waiting up for me? Did he go home or wait at the house? Maybe he was able to find a car and he'll come cruising past like he said. That would be great.

“Ten years,” Andy says, and shakes his head. “That's a long time.”

“Yeah.”

“So what's the
best
-case scenario, then?”

“Well, in a perfect world, I wouldn't be in this stupid mess in the first place. But since it's too late for that, I guess the best case is to be found not guilty on all charges. Or the case gets tossed out by the judge before the jury even gets to deliberate.
God, I really sound like I'm on
Law & Order
here.”

“That's okay,” Andy says. “I like
Law & Order
.” He puts his chin on his arms and stares out over the valley. “That's a lot to have on your mind, huh?”

“I guess.”

I shove another cookie into my mouth and chew it carefully. I'm not sure how much more I want to tell Andy about this. Mostly because it makes me feel a little sick. It makes me sick the way Jack—until tonight, anyway—wouldn't talk to me, or even look at me. How Mom isn't quite as affectionate as she usually is. How Dad hasn't smiled since he got the call from the school that day last month that the police had just picked me up.

Suddenly furious again, I spit out, “I didn't even talk to him. To Kevin. I mean, in person. At school. I barely even noticed if he posted something or not.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” Andy says, “but you barely noticed
him
.”

For a second I feel betrayed, punched in the gut. That makes me mad.

“Hang on,” I say. “That's a bunch of crap.”

“What, am I wrong?”

“It's not—yes! No. Look, lots of people feel ignored, okay? I have.
You
have. It's not something unique, it's not something Kevin Cooper got to call all his own, all right? Lots of people feel alone and don't jump off a balcony with a scarf around their neck.”

Andy says, “How many
want
to, I wonder?”

I ignore him and keep going with my point. “I'm just saying that it's high school, all right? Everyone gets depressed, everyone feels alone, this is not a new phenomenon. Maybe I felt that way too, until I met some new people.”

“True, it's not a new phenomenon, but it's not usually fatal.”

“Oh,
Jesus
 . . . !”

“What about him?”

I shake my head. Come to think of it, what am I still doing here? Andy's out of his car; he's clearly not emotional. Isn't it safe to say this is one guy who won't be throwing himself off a cliff anytime soon?

“If there's some kind of karma or whatever, for whatever it is people think I did, I'm getting it, okay?” I say. “You want to talk about being alone? Swing by my house the past month, or the foreseeable future as far as I can tell. I'll show you what alone looks like.”

“I never said he was alone,” Andy says. “I said you didn't notice him. Not unless you were laughing at him, anyway.”

“I
teased
him sometimes,” I say. “As a friend. I'm not a
bully
.”

“Well, what do you mean, whatever people
think
you did? Is what you did different from what the prosecutors are charging you with?”

“I didn't do anything! Haven't I been over this? I made a joke on a website—”

“More than one joke, wasn't it?”

“—
two or three
jokes on a social networking website and
a guy killed himself. And that is sad. And that is tragic. And I wish it hadn't happened. But
I didn't kill him
.”

Andy shrugs.

“I wrote a letter,” I say, and even
I
can hear the whine in my voice. Why do I feel like I'm losing some kind of battle here?

“A letter,” Andy says.

“To his mom? You know.
Apologizing? 
”

I see Andy's jaw clenching and unclenching behind closed lips. “Well,” he says, “that was . . . nice of you. What did it say?”

“I dunno,” I say, and Andy snorts. “I mean, I said I was sorry, and it wasn't . . . I don't
know
, just that I was sorry.”

“But she took you to court anyway.”

I rub my eyes. “No. That had nothing to do with Mrs. Cooper. It had to do with this bitch Allison Summers, who's a reporter and got a bug up her ass. Wants to make a big media case, sell more papers, win a Pulitzer or something. . . .  I dunno. Mr. Halpern tried to explain it, but I kind of glazed over.”

“Who's Mr. Halpern?”

“My lawyer.”

“He any good?”

“I guess we'll see. He'd better be, 'cause I'm not going to U of A anymore for it.”

“But, strictly speaking, unless they find you guilty and put you away till you're twenty-six, you do get to go to college if you want,” Andy says.