What Happens Next (6 page)

She’s forgiven me, though; the forgiveness bloomed right away, just like always. In the middle of that first night, I felt her tiptoe into my room and crawl into my bed to lay down beside me. I pretended to be asleep. It was comforting to know she was there. She reached out and put her hand on my back like she used to do when I was little. To make sure I was breathing. To make sure I was warm and safe and real.

But I’m still grounded. Katherine hasn’t budged an inch on that. Paige and Kirsten are grounded, too. Worse yet, they both got slapped with a week of detentions for covering for me, for knowing I snuck out and not telling a chaperone. Their moms called the house and spoke to my mom. Mrs. Vanderhoff and Mrs. Daniels? Not happy ladies. Especially Mrs. Daniels. Kirsten got her car taken away, but poor Paige—she has no car, no cable, and limited phone and Internet to begin with. There’s literally nothing to take. I dread to think what a Paige Daniels grounding might entail. Probably reading the Bible all day long and then copying it by hand. God, I’m such a horrible friend.

I know that I need to call them or pick up the phone and explain myself, but every time the phone rings, I plead with my mother to make excuses, then I go to my room and shut the door. She’s tired of lying, so she finally just unplugged the phone from the wall. But not before calling the principal to get the topics for my punishment essays.

The Importance of Curfews… 500-word minimum.

Why Society Needs Rules… 500-word minimum.

Respecting Authority. Peer Pressure. What It Means To Be A Leader.

500.

500.

500.

I only have two days left, and I haven’t even started them yet. So I hunker down and get it done. The essay is my true medium; I am a rock star when it comes to mixing bits of information with twenty-dollar words.

With 2,500 words completed in just under four hours, I start my other homework. I jump online for just a moment to e-mail this girl Bethany for calculus assignments, trying not to see the avalanche of e-mails from Kirsten. I can’t help it—I start to tally up Kirsten’s messages. After eight, I stop. And I don’t open them. In fact, I do worse than not open them. I delete them all in one fell swoop.

Check All—Delete—Are You Sure?—Yep.

I feel relieved, staring at my empty inbox, the slate wiped clean and all those blaring unread messages erased. The relief lasts exactly one second before I feel worse.

I push the guilt into the back of my mind and go back to cleaning the house. I spent Monday and Tuesday cleaning the garage and basement per my mom’s instructions. She didn’t say anything about cleaning before she left for work today, but I clean anyway, without being asked. Anything to keep moving. I clean everything that can possibly be cleaned and I wash, fold, and put away every piece of laundry we own. I organize every drawer, closet, and cabinet in the house. There’s a foot of snow on the ground and no gardening to be done, but trust me, if it were spring, I’d be out there in a giant sun hat and gloves, digging and yanking at every weed in sight.

When there is nothing left for me to do, I lie down, exhausted, and pray for the sleep that never comes. I just lay in bed until anxiety overtakes me. Anxiety creeps in on little cat feet and lurks over me.
Get up and move,
it hisses,
or I’ll suffocate you.

Night comes, and I finally crack around three a.m. I decide I am going outside in the morning; I don’t care if I get caught. I’ll suffer any punishment she can think of if it means I can be outside and moving. The last time I was truly safe, I was outside and moving.

Liam is talking but I don’t really hear him. We’re at the table and I’m sitting in front of a plate of cold scrambled eggs and looking at the half-empty water glass that my mother left on the table before she went to work.

“Huh, Sid?”

I look fuzzily at my little brother.

“What’s that, Liam?” I say.

Through a mouthful of toast, he says, “I
saaaaid
, why do they give you days off school if you do something bad?”

I look at him, smacking away innocently. He looks nothing like me, not even one little bit. He is about the most beautiful-looking creature on two feet, with dark, thick hair and eyes so brown they’re almost black and olive skin like his dad’s. Vincent D’Apolito: certified plumber and former stepdad to Sid Murphy. His name makes him sound like some kind of mob hit man, but really he’s just a serial womanizer. He’s a good dad, though. Unlike my dad, Vince pays child support and never misses a visit. My dad’s never even seen me. Vince lives a few miles away from us and sees Liam every week.

I answer his question.

“Because they’re so mad, they don’t want to see your face until they’ve cooled off.”

He looks at me with sadness and offers comfort.

“Don’t worry, I’m gonna do something bad today so I can stay home to keep you company.”

“Oh, yeah? What could you do?”

I ask this knowing full well that Liam doesn’t know the first thing about true rebellion. But under my strict tutelage, I may be able to fix this before he reaches middle school.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t thought of anything good yet. Help me think of something real good. I mean
real bad
.”

He scrunches up his face.

“Hmmmm… well, let’s see. Maybe you could pull the fire alarm and send everyone screaming out of the building?”

He rolls his eyes and laughs, and a piece of egg falls out of his open mouth. He knows I’m only kidding. I look up at the clock. School will be starting shortly, and he is still in his pajamas and a mess. I get up, pluck him out of the chair, and swoop him over my shoulder.

“Or
maaaaybe
you could cut Madison Kelly’s pigtails off. You sit behind her, right?”

“Oooh, yeah!” he says. “I wanna do that one!”

I tickle him and he laughs, kicking and squirming all the way through the house. I dress him and—because he sucks at it—brush his teeth for him. Then I walk him down the street to his elementary school. I watch from the sidewalk as he gets in line at the entrance. Madison Kelly is standing in front of him and turns around to tease him. He looks at me, so I make a scissor snip motion with my fingers, followed by a hard wink and a thumbs-up. He covers his mouth as he walks inside grinning.

I walk back home and look down at the food that I haven’t eaten. My stomach lurches. I hate to waste it, so on my way out, I stop and give it to Mrs. Leary’s dog. We own a duplex, and she rents the other side from us. She’s older than King Tut’s grandma, but really sweet. Her dog lives in the garage and has a nice fenced run that he can access from a giant door flap carved into the side.

The dog comes lumbering out of his giant door flap to scarf up the food. He’s an Irish wolfhound named Ronan and stands nearly to my chest on all fours. Like I said, I’m five-foot-nine, so that would make him positively the hugest dog ever born. Two gulps and the whole plate is gone. I give Ronan a pat, then shut the gate. He lowers his head and lets out a low
broooof
of a thank-you before moseying back into his freshly cleaned garage.

I walk a few blocks to the business district and stop in front The Diner on Clifton, known for its eclectic and spunky atmosphere. I like the name choice, straight and to the point. I go in and scan a menu at the door. Everything would normally look appetizing, but the thought of eating any of it makes my guts roil. I’m incredibly thirsty all of a sudden, so I order two Red Bulls and a glass of ice. I also order a plain bagel because I feel strange sitting down at a diner with no actual food. I have chosen a table near the window. I take my gloves off, set them in the sill, and sit listening to the clang of dishes and Regina Spektor playing overhead.

The waitress—SHELLEY, it says on her name tag—brings me my bagel and Red Bulls and asks why I’m not in school. I tell her I’m twenty but look young. She has a kind face and is wearing a “Keep it Green” T-shirt and silver earrings that jingle when she moves her head. I want someone to talk to, so I make up a whole story about who I am. How my name is Fiona and I go to Case Western. I’m majoring in ecology. I rent a room from this old widow for practically nothing. I just have to shovel the drive, mow the lawn, and walk the old woman’s horse of a dog three times a day. Incidentally, I am also a vegan and don’t believe in cars; I only walk, ride my skateboard, or take public transportation. I don’t want to leave my carbon footprint on our precious earth.

What a crock. I tell this story to the waitress. I know the words are coming out of my mouth, and on some level, I can hear them, but it feels like they are coming from the girl sitting behind me, like it’s someone else’s conversation altogether. But the lies feel good. For a moment, I am someone else entirely. Someone who has never cared about being in love in her whole life. I am someone who cares about real and important things, like carbon footprints. I am someone with lofty purposes who wouldn’t try out for cheerleading even if a gun were held to her head, someone who couldn’t care less that no boys at school have ever asked her out. A girl who would never fall for a predator’s bag of tricks just because she’s so desperate for attention.

No, I am not Cassidy Murphy EASY MARK right this second. Not in this diner, at this moment. Right now, I am Fiona-What’s-Her-Face-College-Student-Wise-Beyond-Her-Twenty-Years. I am Scholarship Girl, Environmental Warrior, and Caretaker of the Elderly. I am not sitting duck high school
idiot
who was lured in and—

Ow!
I wince hard.

I have been rabidly crunching on ice while chewing the fat with Shelley Keep It Green. My brain was elsewhere. It lost track of my mouth and I have bitten into my tongue. Fack! That hurt!

“You okay?”

“Just bit my tongue.”

Shelley smiles and walks away. I am left alone again with only the Truth to keep me company. I suck down my Red Bulls. When I am good and torqued up on caffeine and positively brimming with self-loathing, I decide to burn it all off by running. I need to keep moving. I throw down a ten-dollar bill and head back outside. I’m not sure where I want to go and I don’t care where I end up so I just pick a direction and keep going straight. I’ve never run more than a couple of blocks in my life, unless you count the pathetic, lagging sort of running that we’re forced to do during the first couple of weeks of pre-season cheerleading practice. I get two blocks and feel like I’m dying. I stop and lean against a building to spit and heave. My chest feels like I’ve swallowed a shattered dish, but the immediacy of the pain, the pain that I’ve created for myself, the pain that I have control over, drives me onward. I rally and keep going until the distant shoreline peeks itself out, surprising me through the backyards of some Lake Road mansions. I stop; bend over, gasping for breath; and think,
Huh, when did they put that there?

I live in Lakewood, Ohio, and drive by Lake Erie daily. But in winter? I clean forget it’s there. It’s like a giant invisishield slams down the day after Labor Day and the whole lake just evaporates off the map until May. I realize that it’s never dawned on me to visit the lake in the dead of winter. I make a turn onto Lake Road and cut through the park until I reach the boardwalk, where I collapse onto an empty bench swing, dripping in sweat. Then I stare out at the icy, gray water and wonder if on a clear day you can see all the way to Canada. Some gulls spot me and start milling about, bobbing their heads up and down, squawking for food. I break off pieces of the bagel in my pocket and throw them to the birds. One fat thug in the bunch gets most of the food, and I feel bad when it’s gone. Most of the punier birds didn’t get a single crumb.

I sit for a while, enjoying the shaky, wobbly feeling in my legs. After a few minutes, I can no longer feel my feet, fingers, or face. They are so cold from the wind off the lake that it doesn’t even hurt. I could be frostbitten black for all I know. It’s okay, though. I sit awhile longer. Numb is good.

I check my watch. It’s eleven, and my mother may call to check on me at lunch. My legs can literally go no farther with the running, and my boobs are killing me. Note to self: Buy a sports bra. I’ll need the whole hour to drag myself home. I stop only once on my way back, to look in an art gallery window at a painting of some flowers. Poppies that sit hopeful in a vase, waiting for someone to buy them.

I crawl back into bed, soaked in a cold, frozen sweat and completely fatigued. At the edge of sleep, I think about my life, before.

School.

Friends.

Cheerleading.

Mall.

TV.

Internet.

This is what my life has been for the past several years, and I was happy with it. An ignorant sort of happy, but happy nonetheless. I picture myself watching music videos or shopping now and it makes me feel awkward and glaringly self-aware. Like a fifty-year-old who picks up a dress in the juniors section, then puts it back quickly, hoping no one saw.

I pull the covers over my head and think some more.

I think of a shared joke with my little brother. I think of a single mother who buys suits secondhand so her kids can wear Gap. I think of a dog, grateful for a plate of eggs and a clean garage. I think of a pleasant waitress with jingly earrings. I think of the salty burn in my lungs and the satisfaction of running farther than I ever thought I could run. I think of a forgotten lake and hopeful poppies. I think of how I’ve lived in Lakewood all of my life and have never seen or felt any of these tiny, beautiful things until now.