This Must Be the Place: A Novel (44 page)

The song was still playing on the radio.

Oneida didn’t know who sang it or what it was called, only that it was still playing on the radio, which seemed ridiculous—that after the windshield splintered and the car swerved and rocketed over and down and the seat belt dug into her chest and stomach and the edge of her neck—that after all that, once she stopped moving forward and her body had paid the price, the song was still playing. Like nothing had happened.

Oneida blinked. Looking out was like looking up from the underside of a ripple in a pond. Like opening your eyes underwater. She was underwater; she felt slow, pressurized. Dislocated and unable to breathe. Her stomach and her chest hurt, so she reached down and released the buckle and then she could breathe again. Once, in; again, out. She made fists with her hands and wriggled her toes and bent her legs at the knee and knew she was going to throw up, immediately, so she opened her door and vomited into the soft dirt lining the ditch where Eugene’s car lay dead.

Eugene.

“Eugene,” she said. “Eugene, wake up, we had an accident. Something—fell, Eugene.”

Eugene’s head was resting on the steering wheel. He’d been wearing his seat belt, but something must have happened, he must have hit his head on the wheel or—she didn’t know, she couldn’t remember anything other than the web of glass and the swerve and the seat belt and the song.

There was blood. She could see it now, a tiny drop rolling from his
lips. She watched the red drop trace a line from the corner of his mouth down his chin, giving him a ventriloquist dummy’s jaw; she watched the blood pool in a droplet, dangle, grow fat, and finally drop.

She couldn’t wait for it to land.

The door wouldn’t open all the way, but it opened far enough. She scrambled out of the ditch. Narrowly avoided planting her foot in her own puke. Where were they? Just past the bridge on Bleeker. She scanned the road in both directions, but it was deserted. It was always deserted. Who lived around here? Could she just start shouting, would someone show up? Did Eugene have a cell phone? She didn’t; the reception wasn’t that great out here to begin with, and anyway she didn’t have any friends and she never went anywhere, so there was never any need for her to call home—

Oh, God, she did have a friend and he was unconscious.

“Somebody,
help
!” she screamed. It sounded so stupid, so lame, to actually shout the word
help
. Her voice was so puny.

The song was still playing. She could hear it through her door, which was open; how long was this taking? How long had it been since the—whatever—had hit them? She wobbled up the road, eyes jerking back and forth, looking for—what? A rock? A soda can?

What was she supposed to do? Where could she run? There were woods beyond the ditch to her left, and there were more woods beyond the road to her left. She had no idea how close any houses were, she had no time to waste, she couldn’t move him to search for a cell phone without being afraid she’d break his back—

“I’m so sorry,” said a voice behind her, a very familiar voice—and she turned and it was Andrew Lu, his face red, eyes full of fear, hands cupped over his mouth and nose like he was terrified of the sounds he was making. “I was aiming for the roof, not the windshield, I just wanted to scare him, I just wanted to scare him, I swear to you—”

Andrew Lu, standing in the middle of the dark road, now starting to cry.

Andrew Lu, whom she had dreamed of; who was so beautifully different and worthy, her worthy soul, who would know her and save her—

Who had stolen her idea like a cheap bastard and had only been
trying to scare Eugene Wendell, had been aiming for the roof. He was still talking. Actually trying to explain himself—
Wendy destroyed my guitar and screwed up my GPA; you know you need a 3.2 to be on the cross-country team, and he screwed it up, and I hated him
—but Oneida had stopped listening. She thought of Eugene sitting in her kitchen, so obviously horny it was kind of hysterical, and his beautiful, wonderful secrets—and she thought of Eugene sitting on the beanbag chair beside her in the prop loft, telling her he loved her, which was so stupid it was almost certainly the truth.

“Do you have a cell phone?” she asked Andrew Lu, who was still babbling and quivering, a pile of human Jell-O. He reached in his pocket and handed her a small silver phone.

“Thank you.” She punched 9-1-1 across the glowing yellow-green buttons, and congratulated herself for not punching him, or tearing out his throat, or throwing a rock at his head, but only saying, “You are a piece of shit, Andrew Lu.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said, and grabbed her, hard; grabbed her by both arms and stared into her eyes. “You cannot tell anyone. If you tell on me, you’re going to ruin my life.”

The cell phone was warm against her ear. The line to 9-1-1 was ringing.

“I’ll do whatever you want, tell me, just—tell me, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it, I swear to God—” His grip tightened.

“Let go,” she said, just as a voice said, “Nine-one-one dispatch, what is your emergency?”

“I’ve been in a car accident on Bleeker Road in Ruby Falls, just past the bridge overpass.”

Andrew loosened his hold but didn’t let go. She could feel him searching to hold her gaze, even as she looked off, trying to concentrate.

“Are you hurt?” It was a woman’s voice, low and professional. Calm. Like she’d done this a million times before; how weird was that?

“I don’t think I’m hurt, I got out of the car fine. My friend was driving and is unconscious. There was blood coming out of his mouth, I think he bit his lip or something—”

“Have you tried to speak to him or move him?”

“No.” She swallowed. A huge lump had grown in her throat. She
couldn’t even swallow her own spit. “I said his name but he didn’t wake up. I think he hit his head on the steering wheel.”

“Is he breathing?”

“Oh my God.” She didn’t know where she’d been but apparently she was coming back, right now—back to a place where her body felt pain (all over,
God
, she hurt
all over
) and her eyes had tears and her voice wasn’t her own. “I think so,” she said. “How can I tell? Oh—mirror, I can use a mirror, I have to find a mirror.”

“Please remain calm, miss. Help is on the way and should be there very soon. Is there anyone else there with you?”

Andrew’s hands tightened, harder than before. He loomed close enough to hear every word the dispatcher said. She could smell something sweet and fruity on his breath—punch, maybe, or a Starburst. Even this close, where Oneida assumed most people became a lunar landscape of pores and blemishes, Andrew Lu was absolutely stunning: skin milky and bluish in the moonlight, eyes large and dark and beautifully lashed. She felt a twinge, a memory ache, the ghost of her not-quite-forgotten desire passing through her. He was near enough to kiss her, and for a moment she wondered if that would have made her answer differently. Not that it would have mattered. By using his cell phone, Oneida had already connected Andrew Lu to the scene—which actually had not occurred to her until that moment.

“I’m not alone. I’m with a student at Ruby Falls High named Andrew Lu who is both the cause of the accident and a complete piece of shit.”

“What was that, miss?”

Andrew Lu pushed her and spun away, running his hands through his hair, that beautiful inky hair that Oneida doubted she would ever get over.

“I’m not sure what happened exactly, but I believe Andrew Lu dropped an object from the overpass which struck the car I was riding in, causing it to go off the road and into the ditch. I am bruised but otherwise fine, but my friend, who was driving, is still unconscious and bleeding from his mouth, and I’m about to go check if he’s still breathing, but the thing is—”

“Miss, calm down. I need you to calm down and check on your friend. Do you have a mirror?”

“I will save you, Eugene,” Oneida promised the empty road. She could hear gravel crunching behind her, fast, as Andrew Lu ran away—actually
ran away
, that wuss. That bastard. Oneida wobbled back to the car. What had she been thinking when she put on these boots, other than that they would make Eugene’s eyes do that hysterical cartoon-animal bugging-out thing. She’d found them in the back of the hall closet and they’d surprised the hell out of her. She couldn’t fathom Mona ever wearing them, and it looked like she never had; they were old but hardly worn, the leather still tight and stiff. The inside tag that she remembered because it was shocking pink—Gumballs, that was the brand; what a stupid name for a company that made shoes—was rubbing the top of her calf raw.

“Have you found a mirror, miss?”

“Just a sec,” Oneida said, and plopped straight down in the road to rip off the boots. The simple act of standing up again took everything she had. Her body wasn’t going to last very long, she knew; she must have been running on pure adrenaline.

She didn’t have a mirror in her bag. She vowed to care more about makeup from now on, if only because it would always keep a mirror in her purse. There wasn’t any mirror in the car, either, that wasn’t attached to something or that she could remove without breaking. “I can’t find a mirror!” she told the woman on the phone. “I’m such a crap girl, I don’t even have a compact.”

“It’s all right, miss, it’s going to be fine.”

Then Oneida remembered what she did have in her possession, tucked into the pocket lining of her winter coat: a flask, half full of vodka, shiny and silver.

“I have a flask!” she said, and the woman on the phone made a confused noise, and the faint whine of a siren grew louder, like someone was turning up the volume on their television. Oneida, who had taken her first taste of vodka earlier that afternoon, unscrewed the cap and took her second. It had seemed the thing to do, when going to a lame school function; she had planned on shocking (and eventually sharing
with) Eugene. Why anyone would drink this stuff for any reason other than to get drunk was totally beyond her.

Shaking, she crawled back into the passenger seat and held the flask as close to Eugene’s nose as she could manage, but it was too dark in the car to see if his breath was fogging the silver. He was too awkwardly bent, too close to the steering wheel, for her to get the flask properly under his nose or his mouth.

A different song was playing on the radio now, an old song but one she recognized, something chipper and electronic-sounding from the eighties. It was too fast, too cheerful, to be real. It made Oneida feel like shouting at the radio. She told the woman on the 9-1-1 dispatch that she couldn’t get the flask close enough to Eugene’s face to be able to tell if he was breathing, and the woman on the dispatch told her to sit tight and wait. The siren was getting louder and louder. Oneida unscrewed the flask again and took her third and fourth slugs of vodka. The alcohol stung her throat, which was already raw from throwing up.

Oneida’s hands began to shake. Eugene wasn’t waking up, Eugene wasn’t moving, and it may have been the fifth and sixth slugs of vodka talking, but Oneida was gripped with the sudden terror of the truth—she actually liked him.
Liked him
liked him. She’d begun to suspect it approximately twenty minutes ago, when they’d smiled at each other in the student parking lot. It had reminded her of that day in Dreyer’s class when he’d slain Andrew Lu’s guitar, how they’d known each other with only a look, the two of them an island in a sea of meaningless sound. That one moment had shocked Oneida into going over to his house, into venturing toward what frightened but grew to fascinate her.

But everything she’d done with him since had been—what had it been? It had been easy. He had been obvious, and surprisingly easy, and it had felt so nice to have that much control over someone when everything else in her life was going to shit. It had been nice to play with Eugene Wendell.

And now he was broken.

The blackness of Bleeker Road was perforated by flashing white and red, and the siren was louder than ever. Oneida took slugs seven, eight, and nine and reached for Eugene’s hand, which was a little cool and
didn’t come to life in her own. “Wake up, Eugene,” she whispered into his big pink seashell of an ear. “Please wake up.”

A hand knocked on her window, three sharp raps. Three reminders of the world that existed outside of Eugene’s underwater car, that had no business existing, that Oneida had never felt like being a part of anyway.

Arthur came for her. He stepped through the revolving door of the emergency room. He looked like hell, and only half because of the sick fluorescent lighting. He hadn’t looked like hell in weeks, which made the backslide—shirt untucked, face unshaven and pale, eyes red-rimmed and glassy—all the more disturbing. Oneida couldn’t help searching him for parts of herself, now that the possibility that he could be her father had occurred to her. Is that what her nose would grow into, someday? Were those her ears, her arms; did she walk like that? She thanked God she was drunk. There was no way in hell she would have been able to deal with this sober.

“Hi, Arthur,” she said.

“Have—have you been drinking?” Arthur waved the air between them, which must have been a tiny cloud of vodka.