The One I Left Behind (5 page)

Reggie shut her eyes tight, seeing that little blue trident, tucked down in her twelfth house. She rolled over so that she was facedown against the pillow as she listened to Len snoring softly beside her. And she was sure she could feel it then: that little piece of Neptune inside her like a fishhook, jabbing away, reminding her she wasn’t fit to live with anyone.

R
EGGIE PASSED
Y
E
O
LDE
Antiques Barn, the Maple Leaf Inn and Hotel, and the Hare on the Moon glassblowing studio. Twenty minutes later, Reggie was signaling to turn onto the entrance ramp for 89 South, the road toward Boston. As much as she traveled, the truth was, she always hated leaving Vermont. As soon as she crossed the state line, the skin on the back of her neck prickled. The billboards, four-lane highways, and skyscrapers gave her a temporary case of attention deficit disorder, left her unable to make decisions, focus or concentrate. She hated the sameness of chain restaurants and big box stores, the “planned communities” of oversize, identically ugly houses that popped up overnight like horrid clumps of mushrooms.

She cranked up the radio, listening to solemn voices talking about the global economy. All wrong for a road trip. She flipped through stations until she hit the Kingsmen doing “Louie Louie.”

Fine little girl waits for me

Catch a ship across the sea

She was back in her mother’s Vega, the music pumping from the crackling speakers, her mother keeping time with her fingers on the steering wheel, mouthing the words of the song, her lipstick perfect. The windows were down, the wind blew through their hair, making them feel like they were flying.

“Where are we going, Mama?”

Her mother smiled a secret, conspiratorial smile. “Wherever the wind carries us, lovie.”

When they were alone together, it was the two of them against the world. Life was one big adventure and anything was possible. They could end up at the greyhound track, where Vera let Reggie put money on the dog of her choice, go to Bushnell Park in Hartford to ride the carousel, or drive to the ocean just for fried clams.

“The world is our oyster,” Vera would say, wiping tartar sauce from her chin. “Or at least our clam roll!”

The Vega was gone now, turned to scrap metal and rust.

Reggie wondered if she and her mother would even recognize each other.

She tried to picture the stump where her mother’s right hand had been—the hand that had once tapped out the rhythm of every song on the radio; the hand that held hers ice-skating on Ricker’s Pond.

Reggie pushed her hair back, fingers finding the small crescent moon of scars behind her prosthetic ear.

Maybe, she thought, feeling her own scar tissue, they’d know each other by what was missing.

Chapter 4

May 26, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“T
HE EAR’S A KEEPER
,” Charlie said when he first saw it. “Now maybe you can do something about this mop!” Charlie tousled Reggie’s long tangles, sending sparks through her scalp, down her spine, turning her into a glowing, live-wire girl.

They were up in the tree house in Reggie’s yard, looking over the plans Reggie had drawn for its renovations. The sun was coming through the tarp over the unfinished roof, casting an eerie blue glow.

“You should totally get your hair cut, Reg,” Tara said. She was on her back on top of a sleeping bag, and rolled over, reaching into her ratty drawstring bag for the pack of cigarettes she’d swiped from her mom. “Go see Dawn over at Hair Express. She does my hair.” Tara’s hair was long at the back and short and spiky in front; dyed black with blond tips. There were four earrings in her left ear and two in her right. She wore dark eyeliner, but no other makeup. With her pale, gaunt face and raccoon eyes, she looked a little like the undead, which is why everyone in the eighth grade called her a vampire.

“You got that right,” she’d say to the popular girls in their acid wash jeans and cheerful blue and pink eye makeup. “Mess with me and I’ll come flying into your window at night and drain you dry.” Kids pretty much stayed away from Tara, just like they stayed away from Reggie—the weird one-eared kid without a dad who lived in the creepy stone house. Charlie, a nervous, spindly boy who everyone said was gay, was an outsider, too. Reggie had known him her whole life—they lived two streets away, had gone to nursery school together—and she knew Charlie liked girls. All anyone had to do was notice the way he looked Tara—his brown eyes strangely glassy and full of longing.

Tara lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out through her nose, then fiddled with her lighter. She was one of those people who always had to have something in their hands. When she wasn’t smoking, shuffling cards, or scribbling out lines of poetry, she’d play with the tiny hourglass pendant around her neck, watching the pink sand fall through, then flipping it to watch again.

Tara was wearing a tight black V-neck shirt with long sleeves that had tears in them held together with safety pins. She ripped up most of her clothes, then put them back together with rough stitches, safety pins, even staples. She was pretending not to notice Charlie practically drooling as he stared at her chest. She wore a B cup already, while Reggie was so flat she was still in a training bra, when she even bothered with a bra at all. Reggie cast a self-conscious look down at her own baggy gray T-shirt Lorraine had picked up on sale somewhere.

“Can I have a drag?” Charlie asked, which was stupid, because he didn’t smoke at all. He didn’t believe in it. Even a month ago, he was hassling Tara, showing her pictures of blackened smokers’ lungs. His mom had been a heavy smoker and had died of cancer when Charlie was ten. Reggie could remember going to his house back when his mom was alive and coming out smelling like an ashtray. His mom was real nice, though. She’d taught Reggie how to do cat’s cradle and how to make a multicolored Jell-O parfait. The woman was a miracle worker with Jell-O. Once, for Presidents’ Day, she brought a Jell-O mold in the shape of Mount Rushmore for their second-grade class. It had been three years since she had died, and Reggie missed Mrs. Berr like crazy. And if she missed her like that, she couldn’t imagine how Charlie must feel.

Tara pushed the pack toward him. “You can have your very own.”

Tara had never met Charlie’s mom. She moved to Brighton Falls last year after her parents got divorced. Her dad stayed behind in Idaho with his new girlfriend, who Tara said was half her mom’s age. The girlfriend was pregnant, which meant Tara would have a little half brother or sister, but she didn’t seem all that thrilled about it.

“It’s not like I’ll ever even see the kid,” Tara had said. “I mean, why would I? My dad, he totally sees this whole thing as his second chance to get the perfect wife and kid. It’s not like he’s gonna want me hanging around to remind him of how crappy his life used to be.” She said it like she didn’t care, but afterward, Reggie watched the way she picked at the skin around her fingernails until it bled.

Tara and her mom rented a tiny two-bedroom unit at the Grist Mill Apartments, which was where people on disability and welfare lived. It was a big ugly two-story building in an L-shape with a courtyard full of broken glass and cigarette butts, where two old men were always perched on the bench like a pair of gargoyles. Tara swore one of them had once shown her his penis. Lorraine didn’t like Reggie going over to the Grist Mill Apartments, so on the rare occasions she went, she lied to her aunt about it.

The first few days of school, Tara sat alone in a corner at lunch. It was Charlie’s idea to invite her over to their table.

“She looks like a freak,” Reggie had complained.

“Oh, and we’re not?” Charlie had said, getting up to go talk to Tara without waiting for Reggie’s consent.

Tara’s mom had grown up in Brighton Falls and still had family around. That’s what Tara said anyway, but Reggie never saw any aunts, uncles, or cousins or even heard about them. When she pressed Tara for more, Tara changed the subject. Her mom worked as a waitress over at the Denny’s on Airport Road. When she wasn’t working, she was in her bedroom sleeping or watching TV while she sipped coffee laced with brandy. Sometimes Reggie, Charlie, and Tara would ride their bikes out to Denny’s, and Tara’s mom would give them free desserts. Her eyes were always puffy with dark circles underneath and her skin smelled boozy-sweet, like she had brandy seeping from her pores.

Tara didn’t talk about her dad much and it didn’t sound like he ever called her or sent letters or anything. Reggie had heard Tara’s mom lashing into her when Tara had asked for new shoes. “Jesus, Tara. Why don’t you call up your two-timing father and ask him to pay up all the freaking child support he owes? Maybe then we could afford your fancy new shoes. I’m sure that little baby he’s having already has a hundred pairs.”

Tara ended up shoplifting the shoes she wanted anyway. Her mom was always either working or sleeping, and didn’t seem to notice the many mysterious additions to Tara’s wardrobe. She could come back from the mall in an outfit with the price tags still attached, and her mother wouldn’t bat an eye, just rush out the door, stuffing her apron in her bag and uttering some vague warnings about not staying up too late. Sometimes it seemed like a game Tara played, like she was daring her mom to notice, like she actually wanted to get caught.

Charlie pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and began to smoke without inhaling. He’d take a little puff, then let it right out. His eyes got red and his nose started to run. He was wearing the Rolling Stones T-shirt his dad hated—the one with the
Sticky Fingers
album cover showing a close-up of a guy’s crotch. His dad said the shirt was obscene and made him look like a queer. He’d thrown it in the trash, but Charlie had fished it out and kept it hidden, always careful to layer another shirt on top of it when he left the house.

Charlie’s dad, Stu Berr, was a burly cop who showed his disappointment in Charlie by constantly trying to remold him into his vision of the ideal son. He bought him a weight bench, dragged him to football games, stopped paying for Charlie’s guitar lessons, and made him get a military-style buzz cut, which made the shape of Charlie’s head look strangely crooked.

Tara sat up, eyes glistening excitedly as she looked at Charlie. “The cigarette you’re smoking was poisoned with a deadly nerve agent. You have one minute to live.” She pulled out the small hourglass pendant, flipped it over, and watched the pink sand running through. “Only one thing will save you.”

“What?” Charlie asked nervously. Tara could go anywhere with this.

“You have to kiss Reggie. She’s got the antidote on her lips.”

Reggie shot Tara a panicked look—did Tara know how Reggie felt about Charlie?

Charlie looked at his cigarette, considering. He licked his lips, probably trying to imagine the taste of poison.

Reggie held her breath, wishing for the kiss, but also praying he wouldn’t do it. If he kissed her, then maybe he’d be able to tell how Reggie felt. Like all her secrets would travel by osmosis through her lips and into his. Did kisses work like that? Reggie didn’t know. She’d never kissed anyone but her mother and aunt.

“Time’s running out,” said Tara as the sand slipped through. “Do you live or die?”

Charlie gave a soft, defeated sigh, and leaned over and kissed Reggie. His lips were warm and tasted like smoke, but only stayed on hers for a second. It was the kind of kiss a big brother might give because his mother made him, but still, it made Reggie’s stomach do a flip. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the others could hear it. She felt her one true ear redden as the knowledge sunk in, deeper than it ever had before: she was in love with Charlie Berr, stupid haircut and all.

Tara smiled, letting go of the hourglass. Then she squinted up at the tarp ceiling. “So are we gonna get a real roof on this place or what?” she asked. “ ’Cause the blue light in here makes us all look like Smurfs.
Très
sexy.”

Reggie laughed a little too hard and loud, pleased to be moving away from the subject of the kiss. “The roof is next, definitely. Then I think we tackle the bridge.”

The tree house was a relic from Reggie’s childhood, built for her when she was seven by her uncle George. Turning it into a proper hangout had been Tara’s idea, and Reggie immediately went to work drawing up plans for a roof, walls with windows, and a door that opened to a suspension bridge that would cross the yard and lead right to the little balcony outside Reggie’s bedroom.

Reggie had scoured the library for books on design and building, taking notes on the distance between studs, the proper span of roof rafters, how to do a window header. She’d never thought about how buildings worked before, but she soon found herself hooked—here was something that took her love for drawing to a whole new level. She felt herself instinctively drawn to the neatness of plans and blueprints; the idea that you could put a design down on paper, then bring it to three-dimensional life with lumber and nails. It felt almost magical.

So far they’d framed the walls of the tree house and sheathed them with plywood. The simple shed roof was framed, and there was plywood over half of it, the other half draped with a blue tarp. They’d brought some sleeping bags up as well as a deck of cards, and an old fruit crate they used as a table. There was a stack of board games in the corner—Monopoly, Clue, Life, and an old Ouija board that had belonged to Vera. Empty Coke cans were scattered around as well as a hammer, saw, and boxes of nails.

Charlie had stashed his beat-up old acoustic guitar up there. When they hung out at night, they used votive candles stuck in glass jars and Charlie would play soft, bluesy tunes that Reggie would get lost inside; the notes carried her to a far-off place in some imaginary future where Charlie was famous and onstage, telling a crowded theater, “This song is for Reggie.”

Reggie looked at the guitar now, purposely keeping her eyes off Charlie. She fiddled with her new ear.

Tara said, “Let me see,” reaching out for Reggie’s ear, keeping her cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Does it come off?” Tara asked, tugging gently. When Reggie nodded, Tara pulled harder until the ear came off in her hand.