What Remains of Me (2 page)

I
t was when Kelly Lund's science teacher, Mr. Hansen, asked her the third question in a row that she wasn't able to answer—the one about mitochondria—that Bellamy Marshall passed her a note. Kelly said “um” and swallowed hard to get her dry mouth working when she felt the balled-up paper hit her in the leg. She didn't think
note
at first, though. She thought
spitball
.

Kelly got spitballed a lot. So often, in fact, that she'd once told her mom about it. “They throw spitballs at me,” she'd said. “They laugh at my clothes because they're so cheap.”

“Cheap?” Mom had said. “Your clothes cover you up where you should be covered, which is more than I can say about those other girls you go to school with. If you want to talk about
cheap,
Kelly. Those girls are what I call
cheap
.”

Kelly had made a secret vow never to talk to her mom about school again.

So she didn't look at the note when it hit her leg. She ignored it, the way she ignored all the spitballs, the way she ignored so much of what happened to her, in school and elsewhere.
Ignore it and it will go away
. It worked for most things that hurt, if not all.

Mr. Hansen said the thing about mitochondria again, Kelly trying to hang on to the words, to mold them into something that made a little bit of sense. But she couldn't. She felt the sun pressing through the classroom windows and the itchiness of her cardigan sweater and the elastic of her peasant skirt cutting into skin—all of those things so much more real than the question.

Everyone was watching her. She felt that too.

“Miss Lund?” Mr. Hansen said.

Kelly gazed at the floor. Her eyelids fluttered. She felt herself starting to escape . . . “
Miss Lund
.”

For a few seconds, or maybe it was more, Kelly slipped into a dream—an actual
dream
of being seven years old and with her sister again, of sitting cross-legged on their bedroom floor, of sitting knee to knee with Catherine, staring as hard as she could into Catherine's bottle green eyes.

“Whoever moves first, dies.”

“But . . . but . . . I don't want to die, Catherine.”

Catherine places a hand on hers. It is warm and dry and calming. “Don't be scared, Kelly. You know me. I always move first.”

“Miss Lund! Am I keeping you awake?”

Kelly's eyes flipped open. She heard herself say, “No. I'm falling asleep just fine.”

Oh no . . .

A strange silence fell over the room—an airless feeling. Mr. Hansen blinked, his jaw tightening. Kelly knew she was supposed to say “I'm sorry,” and she started to, but before she could get the words out everyone started to laugh. It took Kelly a few moments to register that the kids were laughing
with
her, not
at
her. That never happened. Her heart beat faster. Her face warmed.

“Good one,” said Pete Nichol behind her, Pete a champion spitball
thrower who had never said anything directly to Kelly ever. Pete—tall and shining blond and rich too. The son of the producer of one of Kelly's favorite TV shows, swimmers' hair like white silk. Pete Nichol clapped Kelly on the back and Mr. Hansen said, “Miss Lund. You are on detention,” and that made everyone laugh louder. Some even cheered.

Kelly turned and ventured a look back at the class and that's when she saw the balled-up piece of paper on the floor next to her leg—
not
a spitball—and when she glanced up and toward the next row over, Bellamy Marshall was gesturing at the paper, her silver bracelets jangling.

Read it,
Bellamy mouthed.

Bellamy was new, the daughter of a famous actor named Sterling Marshall who'd been a big deal in the '50s and '60s and still kind of was. She'd started at Hollywood High after Christmas break, having been expelled from a fancy private school in Santa Monica for mysterious reasons. There was drama in that, high drama in the way Bellamy had shown up a week after school restarted, slipping into the back row of Mr. Hansen's class, the
very back row,
though Mr. Hansen had pointed at an empty seat in the front. Kelly had turned to look at this daring new girl in her bangle bracelets and designer jeans, her luxe leather jacket, Bellamy Marshall ignoring Mr. Hansen and breathing through frosty parted lips, like a movie heroine on the run.

Bellamy had smiled at Kelly and Kelly had smiled back, wanting to be her friend but a little sad for knowing that it wasn't possible. Not with this girl—this shining rich, leather jacketed girl who'd only smiled at Kelly because she didn't know any better . . .

That had been more than a month ago.

Once Mr. Hansen got everybody quiet, once he called on Phoebe Calloway in the front row and asked her the mitochondria question and Kelly felt reasonably invisible again, she kicked the piece of paper closer to her desk. She slipped it off the floor, unfolded it quietly.

PARTY AFTER SCHOOL. MY PLACE.

Kelly turned to Bellamy to make sure it wasn't a joke. She wore a different leather jacket today—a brown bomber. She probably had a closet full of them, all real leather.

Bellamy mouthed,
Well?
And then she winked at Kelly. She didn't look like someone who was joking.

Yes
, Kelly nodded, amazed at this moment. Amazed at this day.

IT WASN'T REALLY A PARTY. JUST BELLAMY, KELLY, TWO BOYS FROM
the soccer team, and a tall, skinny twenty-three-year-old guy named Len with a pencilly mustache and a sandwich bag full to bursting with what he called “Humbolt's finest.” They met up in the school parking lot, Len shaking the Baggie at Bellamy and grinning.

The two boys piled into Len's black Trans Am, while Kelly rode with Bellamy in her red VW Rabbit. They drove in the opposite direction from where Kelly lived, sped across Sunset Boulevard and past Barney's Beanery, Bellamy swerving around slow drivers, sunglasses focused on the road, silver bangle bracelets slipping up and down her wrists as she steered. They drove up, up, up, into the hills, neither one of them talking, just listening to the radio, to The Knack's “Good Girls Don't”—a song Kelly had never liked, not until now.

Kelly had expected to be nervous when she got in the car, but Bellamy not talking to her felt like not getting called on in class. It put her at ease.

“Hand me my cigs, would you?” Bellamy said. “They're in my purse.”

Kelly picked Bellamy's bag off the car floor—a Louis Vuitton. A lot of the girls at school had these. They called them “Louie Vouies” and treated them in such an offhand way, tossing them around like they were worth nothing, but Kelly knew better. Her mother had
shown her one at I. Magnin once, tapping her nails on the price tag. “
Who would spend this kind of money?
” she had said. Kelly's mother worked at I. Magnin behind the makeup counter. But even with her discount, she never bought anything there for Kelly or for herself. “
It's obscene,
” she would say, about the prices, about the entire store. Kelly never replied. She found it beautiful.

“
Someday,
” Mom would say, “
I'll get us out of this town.
”

Carefully, Kelly unzipped the bag. She plucked out a box of Marlboro Reds—Mom's brand—and handed it to her.

“You can have one too,” Bellamy said.

“Thanks.”

Bellamy lit one off the car lighter, then slipped it to Kelly without looking at her. The gesture made her feel as though they'd known each other for years. Bellamy rolled the windows down and Kelly blew a cloud of smoke into the warming air.

“Len likes you,” Bellamy said, “I can tell.”

Kelly felt her cheeks redden. “How do you know him?”

She shrugged. “Just . . . around,” she said. “He can be a jerk but he's always got good weed. And I love the smell of his car.”

“Is he really twenty-three?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

Through the windshield, the Hollywood sign loomed before them, making Kelly think of Catherine. It always did—how she used to brag about their view of it to anyone who'd listen. “
You can see the
sign
from our apartment
,” she'd say, leaning on the word
sign
as though she were talking about the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, when the truth was, the Hollywood sign had been an eyesore back then—full of holes, crumbling into the hills, the first and third
o
's missing almost entirely.

“
Who
wants
to see it?
” Kelly would say to her. “
It's ugly
.”

“No it isn't. It just needs fixing.”

Two years ago, a whole bunch of rich movie stars and politicians had taken interest in the rotting sign and rebuilt it. Alice Cooper had even donated his first
o
to replace the more destroyed of the two and declared himself Alice Coper for the rest of the year—something Catherine would have found funny if she'd still been alive . . .

On the radio, The Knack was fading into Tom Petty—that song Kelly liked about a girl raised on promises. She took another drag off her Red and gazed out at Catherine's sign—sparkling white in the sun, the letters whole and welcoming.
Some things do wind up getting fixed.

“You were killer today,” Bellamy said.

“Huh?”

“In science! How did you get the balls to say that to Hansen?”

“Oh,” Kelly said, remembering. “It uh . . . it just sort of came out, I guess.”

“‘I'm falling asleep just fine . . .'” Bellamy said. “Man. That made my whole year. My whole
life
.”

Kelly took another drag off her cigarette, smiled a little. “I just had to say it,” she said. “He was being so annoying.”

Bellamy laughed—warm and contagious—and Kelly joined in. She tried to remember the last time she'd laughed at something that wasn't on TV. It had to be back when Catherine was still alive, when they were still little kids. “Hansen's face,” Bellamy gasped. “He was clenching his teeth so tight, I thought his eyes were going to pop out!” And Kelly laughed some more, Tom Petty singing about his American Girl, the whole car full of music.

Finally, they caught their breath. Bellamy slowed down at a stoplight, braking smoothly. She was a good driver. Kelly couldn't drive at all. She'd signed up for Driver's Ed, but hadn't made it to most of the
classes. What was the point? Mom would never let her use the car anyway.

“So,” Bellamy said. “I guess they let you out early for a first offense?”

“Huh?”x

“You know. I expected you to be stuck in detention 'til sunset.”

Kelly's mouth went dry.
Miss Lund. You are on detention
. Mr. Hansen had used those words. She'd never been on detention before, woodwork kid that she was—one out of a mismatched set, the quiet twin, the dull one. Beyond bad grades, she'd never gotten into any type of trouble before today, never acted up, barely spoke. But here, this, her very first time and she'd . . .
Mom will kill me.
She turned to Bellamy, cheeks burning. “I didn't go to detention,” she said. “I never checked in.”

Bellamy blinked her mascaraed eyes. “You're serious?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I forgot.”

She turned back to the road as the light changed to green, her face cracking into a bright grin. “I think I'm falling in love with you, Kelly Lund,” she said.

Kelly grinned too. She couldn't help herself.

WHEN THEY GOT TO BELLAMY'S HOUSE, THE BOYS WERE ALREADY
waiting out in front. “What's your name, sweetheart?” Len said. He kept smiling at Kelly, a slippery smile.

“Her name's Kelly, not Sweetheart,” Bellamy said. “Try and keep from drooling.”

One of the soccer boys said, “Who cares about names? Let's smoke.”

Kelly was only half-listening. She couldn't stop gawking at Bellamy's house. It was huge—an adobe palace with a gleaming red tile roof, balconies all around. They'd driven through a gate to get here, up
a long, palm-lined driveway that slithered up the side of Mount Lee, Kelly's ears clicking with each rising turn. It had made her heart pound, this drive, like traveling to another world.

And it
was
another world, wasn't it? The Bird Streets. That's what this area of the Hollywood Hills was called, the roads named for birds and perched so high, driving them felt almost like flying. Bellamy lived on Blue Jay Way. (“
Like the song
,” Kelly had said back in the car. Bellamy had nodded. “
I hate the Beatles
.”
)

Bellamy's front door was made of polished, carved wood. A maid in a white uniform let them in and walked away quickly, eyes aimed at the floor. “Don't let my little brother come upstairs, Flora,” Kelly said. But the maid didn't seem to hear her.

Kelly saw a pink marble staircase, a crystal chandelier, huge windows, at least two stories high, overlooking the canyon. She bit her lip. She kept her eyes down like the maid, because she couldn't look too hard at anything. She wanted to seem like someone who'd seen a place like this before.

Bellamy's room was at the end of a long, carpeted hall. And as they all walked in, the two boys laughing about something that happened at practice the other day, Bellamy asking Len to show her the bag again, Kelly used every muscle in her body to keep her jaw from flapping open.

There was a stereo with a tape deck and turntable, speakers tall as Kelly's chin. There was a big TV, a vanity table with a huge mirror, a walk-in closet, door ajar to reveal rows of clothes, grouped by color. There was a record collection that filled an entire wall, a red leather couch, a zebra print throw rug that may very well have been real zebra. And best of all there was a king-size bed with a white puffy satin spread and dozens of throw pillows—the type of thing a princess would sleep on, or a queen. There was a framed movie poster over it—
Saturday
Night Fever
. Kelly noticed a pen scrawl across John Travolta's pants leg, and moved closer to it. Travolta's autograph . . . with a note.
For Bellamy,
he'd written.
Best wishes
. Kelly stared at the looping script and had to touch it. She had to press her fingers to the glass, just to make sure it was real.