Try Not to Breathe (22 page)

I tried to take deep breaths. I jiggled my feet, scratched at my arms, pulled threads out of my bedspread. I counted into the thousands, lost my place, and started again.

Val didn’t want me. Jake was in trouble. My mother would never get over that night in the garage and my stay at Patterson. The only person I’d been able to trust recently was Nicki, and now she—

• • • • •

I wandered into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet.

After I’d been caught stockpiling painkillers, my parents had cleaned out their cabinets and closets. All our cleaners were now nontoxic, and my parents bought medicines in the tiniest bottles available. They kept my antidepressants locked up and doled them out to me one pill at a time. When I came out of Patterson, my parents and I had signed a “contract” saying that I agreed not to stockpile drugs if they would agree not to search my room. We were supposed to renew the agreement every month. But we got rid of it back in July, when I told Dr. Briggs that the only time I ever wanted to hoard drugs anymore was the one moment a month when I had to sign that stupid paper.

Now I leaned over the sink, studying those miniature bottles and boxes. Then I closed the cabinet, avoiding looking at its mirrored front.

I drifted back into my bedroom. I thought about running up to the quarry, but I had a feeling I shouldn’t do that. I had a strong pull to lean over the edge today.

I would’ve liked to smash my bedroom windows. I ran my fingertips down the glass. They left smears; my mother would have a fit if she saw. Then I pushed against the glass, testing it. I knocked against it with my knuckles, then again, harder. The glass flexed and didn’t break.

I should run, I told myself. In spite of the running and biking I’d already done that day, prickly nervous energy built in my arms and legs. Dr. Briggs would probably tell me to run, except not to the quarry. Well, what she really would do was make me talk about Nicki. About the psychics and Nicki’s father and the lies. The fact that Nicki had been fucking lying to me all month and I didn’t know why, that she’d curled up with me the night before and told me a story that probably wasn’t even true . . . the fact that she was “just being nice” to the neighborhood psycho . . . I took a breath. A deep, slow one, like they taught us at Patterson. Like Val taught me; she said it was good for warding off panic attacks. Not that I was going to have a panic attack. Not over Nicki; no way.

Nicki.

The thought of her made something surge up inside me, and I pictured my fist punching through the window, although I kept standing there with my knuckles against the glass. My teeth were clamped together. I tried to relax my jaw, and my arm, which had gone rigid.

I had to get the hell out of here. I would go running, I decided.

TWENTY-ONE

I ran out the
front door. At the edge of our yard, where the trail plunged into forest shade, I smacked into Nicki.

She’d been charging up the path to my house, hair flying. We bounced off each other.

“Kent said he—told you some things,” she gasped.

“Yeah, he sure did.”

She bent over, hands flat against her thighs. “I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

She rolled her eyes, her body heaving for breath. “You know what about.”

“Why don’t you tell me.” I crossed my arms. “Or, I know, I can get a psychic to read your mind.”

“Stop.” She gulped air. Finally she straightened up. “Can I come inside?”

I rocked back and forth for a minute. Then I walked back to the house and let her in.

She sank onto the couch. I stood in front of the windowed wall and crossed my arms again. My heartbeat drummed in my head.

“What did Kent tell you?” she asked.

“Why? You need to get your story straight?”

She sighed and leaned forward, pulling at the wisps of hair that hung over her forehead. “I just want to know how much I need to explain.”

“How about
all of it
?”

She closed her eyes. “You probably think I’m a big liar. But I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“That’s a good one,” I said. “What did you mean to do?”

“I don’t know. I just—I wanted things to
fit
.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I mean, I know what really happened, but it seems wrong to me.” Her eyes opened. “It doesn’t make sense. Like . . .”

“Like what?” I snapped when she didn’t go on.

“Well, like—why didn’t my dad write a note that meant something?”

“Oh, yeah. The note,” I said. The thought of that note scratched up another spark inside me. “The note you said didn’t exist.”

“All right, there was a note, but not a real note.”

“What do you mean, ‘real’?”

“All it said was ‘sorry’ and ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ It didn’t tell me what I needed to know. It didn’t say
anything
.” She swallowed. “So I had a note, but it felt like I didn’t have a note.”

She waited, but when I didn’t say anything, she went on. “And—the waterfall. Why would he pick such a beautiful place?”

“Why the hell not?” I had picked a garage because it was the only enclosed space I knew of where the car would fit. I would rather have picked someplace like the waterfall. If I had to pick a place.

“Why would he take Matt and Kent with him, but not me? And why did he take me to Funworld and not them?” Her face, which had started to pale to its normal color, flushed again. “Was he playing favorites?”

Her question hung in the air. In my mind I added the next question, which she didn’t ask:
And if so, who were the favorites—Nicki or the boys? The kid he took to Funworld or the kids he took with him on his last trip to the waterfall?

She said, “None of it makes sense. The pieces don’t fit. And that’s why it didn’t feel like lying when I told you—”

“It felt like lying to me.”

She looked up at me then, her eyes huge. “I’m sorry, Ryan.”

I didn’t answer for a minute. So much had knotted up inside me that I couldn’t pull out any single thread and identify it.

Then I said, “I trusted you. I don’t trust anyone, but I trusted you.”

“I—”

“I must’ve been out of my mind. It’s my own fucking fault—there’s a reason I never believe in anyone or—”

“I just wanted it to make sense!”

That cut off the breath in my throat. Her words lay in the middle of the room.

I knew what she meant. I wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but I knew.

“You want a glass of water?” My voice came out rough, and my hands shook, but I was cooling a little.

“Yeah. Please.”

She watched me cross the room, enter the kitchen, and stand over the sink. I poured her a glass of water and dropped in two ice cubes. She winced when they cracked.

I came back and handed her the drink.

“I couldn’t tell you about the waterfall,” she said. “I thought maybe you would get creeped out and wouldn’t meet me there anymore.” She sipped her water, still watching me. “And I have to go to the waterfall. Nobody understands that—not even Kent, who goes there all the time, too. He says it’s just to get high, but come on, he could get high plenty of other places.”

I watched the ice cubes bump against each other in her drink. “How come you picked me to talk to, anyway? Was it—‘he’s just the psycho kid, so who cares what I tell him?’”

“No! I picked you because—because I thought you would understand.” Her eyes were gray, flecked with black. They didn’t look away from me. “Not only because you tried the same thing he did, but because you were always at the waterfall. It’s like I was meant to meet you.”

“Hey, according to your friends, you’re just ‘being nice to the local loser.’”

“What friends? What are you talking about?”

“That skinny girl with the long hair who lives down on Maybrook, the guy who hangs around with her and wears that skeleton T-shirt—”

“Amanda and J.T.? They’re not my friends. We used to eat lunch together in eighth grade and they think they still know me, but they don’t.”

Moisture dripped off the glass she held, welled up between her fingers. I focused on that, to keep from looking at her eyes again.

“It’s the truth,” she said. “Do you think I would tell them about my dad? About Funworld? Do you think they know
any
of the stuff I’ve told you?”

I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t. My gut told me to trust her, but my brain, which was still unraveling her lies, thought that was crazy. I attacked on another front. “Why the fuck did we drive all over the state to talk to those psychics?”

She took another drink and set the glass on the carpet. “You know why.”

“No, I really don’t.”

“I wanted to find my father. Like I told you.” She wiped her hand on her shorts. “Not that they had any answers. So I kept coming back to you.” Again the pleading look.

I breathed in hard, hating that expression on her face, the belief she always had that I could speak for her father. That
responsibility
. More than anything, I could not handle that responsibility.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Seriously. Whatever I’ve learned about my dad—at least, why he did what he did—I learned it from you.”

I turned to the windows and faced the trees outside, the ferns, the sunlight filtered through green branches. The more I was tempted to forgive Nicki, the more it hurt. As if I were being pulled apart by inches, each cell stretched to its tearing point. Every alarm bell in my body clanged, warning me not to let her in again. With what she knew about me, she could rip my skin off in front of the neighborhood, spread my guts on the ground for them all to sneer at.

“I don’t want to be your—suicide guru,” I said. “I’m sick of you.”

“I don’t mean—”

“Is that why you made out with me? Is that why you told me about Funworld? Just trying to squeeze more information out of me?” I turned back to her. “Well, fuck that. You got everything already.”

She stood and took a step toward me, her foot knocking over the glass. Water spread across the carpet, but neither of us bothered with it. Instead she straightened her back and said, “I did
not
trick you. You know I didn’t. Maybe I was scared to tell you some of the real details, but all the important stuff was true. My father
is
dead, and he
did
kill himself, and I
don’t
know why. And everything I told you about Funworld was true.” She swallowed. “And I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. Because I like you. Sometimes I think I could like you a lot, if you’d let me. And I can’t understand why that stupid Val didn’t have the brains to kiss you herself.”

We were both breathing hard now, as if we’d been running on the trail or had just come up from under the pounding of the waterfall. I wanted to believe her and at the same time I didn’t want to trust her, didn’t want to risk it.

And so I didn’t let up.

“Why did you make up the part about the gun? About you and Matt finding him?”

“Matt was there with Dad. But I told you it was me instead of Kent because I wished I was there.” Her face went blank for a second, then flushed, and she sobbed. Her sob made me shudder. “Some people think that’s sick, but I don’t mean I wanted to see him die. I wanted to be there, I wanted to be there for him—you know, like people go to the hospital and say good-bye when people die there?”

She gasped, wiping her face on the back of her hand. “Nobody thinks that’s strange,” she said. “Everyone hangs over the hospital bed, and nobody thinks that’s strange.”

I wanted to touch her, stop her crying, stroke her hair, but I didn’t. Or couldn’t. My right hand trembled, but that was as much as I could move.

She sniffled, licked tears from her lips. And then she bent down to pick up the ice on the carpet.

“I’m sorry,” she said, ice cubes clinking into the glass. “I’m sorry.”

I inched over until I was right in front of her, the soggy rug squishing under my feet.

“Nicki,” I said. I reached out, slowly. But she jumped up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me closer to her.

I wrapped my arms around her. She pressed her face against my shirt, and her tears wet my shoulder. The air-conditioning hummed in the background, a white noise I usually didn’t even notice.

Her sobs quieted to sniffles. “I guess you think I’m crazy,” she said.

“I’m not one to judge.”

We both laughed a little. She sighed and let me go.

“Who’s Bruce Macauley?” I asked.

“What?”

“That’s who you said died at the waterfall. Did you make up that name?”

She stared past me for a minute, then laughed. “I forgot I used that name. He was a kid I knew in second grade. He moved away that year—thank God. He used to kill frogs and squirrels, and he was always throwing rocks at my friends and me.”

I brought towels from the kitchen, and we spread them over the spill on the living-room floor.

Nicki followed me out onto the porch. The day had turned hot, the sun heavy on our faces and shoulders. I leaned against the porch railing, facing the trees. I felt her watching me and glanced over. “What?” I said.

She shook her head, as if to say,
Nothing.
But she kept looking, studying me.

It was like being seen for the first time. Whenever I was behind the glass wall, I felt invisible, even though glass is supposed to be transparent. I’d been invisible back in the library; nobody had noticed me stealing a sweater in broad fluorescent light. I’d been invisible at my new school, except for whatever attention the suicide rumors brought me. Having people know
about
you wasn’t the same thing as having them
know
you, though.

But Nicki saw me.

• • • • •

“I’m never going to know what happened with my dad, am I?” she said, standing near me. She had a scent like wood and citrus and pine needles. I didn’t think she used perfume.

“Probably not.”

“Let me ask you something.” She rubbed the head of a nail on the porch railing.

“What?”