What We Knew (16 page)

The corners of her mouth turned up. “What if you’re acting like a partial jerk?” A car door slammed out front. Lisa’s smile shrank. Larry clomped in with his lunch cooler under one arm, a rolled-up newspaper under the other, and tossed his keys on the TV. “Which one of you walked through my flower bed?” he asked.

Biting my lip, I raised my hand.

Larry swatted my foot with his newspaper and smiled. Clomping toward the kitchen, he announced that he was going to take a quick shower and then take Katie to get her new bike.

“Katie’s not here,” Lisa called. “She’s at the Dog House with Ryan.”

Silence and then the sound of Larry dropping his cooler on the counter. The clomping turned to stomping. Bottles rattled in the fridge door. Lisa mouthed,
one one-thousand, two one-thousand
. Larry mumbled something unintelligible and then barked her name. I wanted to stay where I was, but she dragged me with her. Larry was waiting with his hands on his hips. “Did you even think to ask my permission?” he asked.

Lisa grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and chugged. “Since when does Katie need permission to go to the Dog House?” she asked.

“I don’t like her hanging out with that boy,” Larry said.

“Too bad,” Lisa said. “I invited him to dinner.”

Huffing, Larry stomped toward the sink to rinse his thermos. I moved out of his way and he smiled kindly, imagining, I thought, how much easier his life would be with me as his stepdaughter.

“Ryan’s a nice kid,” Lisa said. “Just because his dad lost his job doesn’t make him a dirtball.”

Larry made a face like
whatever
. “What kind of guy lets his kids sleep in a minivan?” he said. “Moving from parking lot to parking lot like a bunch of gypsies?”

“First, what does that have to do with Ryan?” Lisa leaned on the counter and crossed her arms. “Second, having a nice house doesn’t mean you’re a good parent.” She rapped the counter with the empty plastic bottle. “You own this place.”

Boom.

Larry glanced at me and then aimed his gaze at Lisa, his face turning redder and redder, like he was slowly burning from the inside out. I wanted to backtrack down the hall, but I was stuck in place. Larry and Lisa were stuck, too, the three of us trapped in a freeze-frame until Mrs. Grant shuffled into the kitchen, massaging her temples.

“I swear, you guys are like oil and water,” she said. “Why does everything have to turn into a confrontation?”

Larry sucked his teeth. Lisa shrugged. Mrs. Grant wiped the sleep from her eyes and pressed the button on the coffeemaker. “Seriously,” she said. “What is it with you two?”

I wondered the same thing as Lisa shoved me toward her room.

“I am so sick of his shit,” she said to the mirror. “He’s just jealous because Katie went off with Ryan instead of waiting around for him.”

I was trying my best to listen only to Lisa, but the Grants’ walls are thin, thinner than ours. There was no tuning out the sound of Larry pounding his fist on the table, grilling Lisa’s mom:
Do you even know where your youngest daughter is right now? Do you?

Lisa put her hands on her hips and listened, too.

C’mon, Larry, it’s my first Friday off in a month. I don’t wanna fight.

The clatter of silverware followed by the clink of plates. Mrs. Grant unloading the dishwasher. The back door slammed. Once. Twice. Shading her eyes, Lisa spritzed her head with hair spray. I thought it was over, but then Larry started in again:

I thought we agreed, Sharon, no dating until high school.

You can make all the rules you want, Larry. She’ll just go behind your back.

So let her run wild? Do whatever she pleases?

That’s not what I’m saying.

She’s too young for a boyfriend! Case closed!

A car drifted up the street, rattling the house with its thunderous bass. Larry’s voice followed, equally thunderous:
Unless you want her to end up like Lisa!

My heart stopped.

Lisa exploded. The hairbrush hit the mirror, cracking her reflection.

I wanted to grab Lisa’s hand and leave the way I’d come in—through the window—but she towed me through the kitchen, past her mom and Larry, and out the back door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Larry hollered from the steps.

“Away from you!” Lisa shouted.

I’d seen Lisa hurt—bumps and bruises, her heart broken—but this was something different. A weariness reserved for adults. The pain in her eyes crushed any notion I had of comforting her. Fists clenched, her stride grew longer and longer. Helpless, hopeless, the tears flowed. And then the curses: “I hope he dies,” she choked. “I hate him. I hate him so much.”

Listening to her strangling on her own grief, I would’ve given anything for words. The right words. The wrong words. Any words at all. My silence ballooned, filling the space between us. I wanted to be the one leading us wherever, but it was all I could do to keep up.

“You have no idea, do you?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I think I do,” I said. “My mother told me.”

Lisa stopped in her tracks, confusion warping her brow. A car blew by and honked.

“My mother knew what it was, the thing you had done,” I confessed. “You could’ve told me.”

Lisa’s eyes turned flat and cold, pupils fixed, just like in the nightmare. Instead of dirt, though, I found myself wiping away black mascara. Lisa flinched as if I’d stung her.

“Who else knows?” she asked.

“No one.” I raised my right hand. “I swear.”

Lisa mumbled something and marched on. I thought I knew where she was going, but she took a left instead of a right, toward downtown. Nobody walks there from where we live—that’s why we have buses. It isn’t just far, it’s dangerous. Any other day I would’ve defected, but Lisa needed to walk off her rage. Heads low, eyes lowered, we moved quickly, quietly, past blocks of forgotten houses and dismal stores and graffiti-covered billboards, ignoring the scarecrows in basketball shorts and baseball hats thumping their concave chests. Bus after bus lumbered down the hill, but we trudged on—like one of those dreams where the hallway keeps getting longer and longer—until the houses turned into apartment buildings and the billboards were dwarfed by office high-rises.

This is downtown: hot sidewalks dotted black with gum, racks of discount clothes, broken windows and garbage and pizza. I smelled them before I saw them—the homeless sprawled on blankets and newspapers, withering in the heat. A simmering Dumpster took my breath away. It isn’t any better where Scott is—cities are cities—but at least he has the bright and shiny to distract him from the stench.

“I’m not complaining,” I said, stopping to tie my sneaker. “But I think my blisters are bleeding.”

“You should’ve said something,” Lisa scolded. “We could’ve hopped a bus.”

I wrapped my sweaty hands around her sweatier neck and pretended to choke her. Tongue lolling out of her mouth, Lisa crossed her eyes and went limp, then pried my fingers loose and led me around the corner to a pizza shop. It wasn’t any cooler inside. The heat from the ovens made my temples throb. Lisa waved to the guys tossing dough behind the counter.

“Gabe here?” she asked a woman hunched over an order pad, a phone pressed to her ear. A floury finger directed us to the empty dining room in back. My legs felt like jelly as I powered through the final stretch of our death march and collapsed on the first vinyl chair.

“Hey!” Gabe said, abandoning a gray tub of dishes to wrap his arms around Lisa’s waist and give her a spin. While they were kissing, I sniffed the plastic flowers and then examined myself in the gold-spattered mirror above the table. My shoulders glowed. My nose looked cauterized.

“Why are you so red?” Gabe asked. “Did you walk here?”

Lisa’s eyes wandered as she whistled aimlessly.

“Hold on,” Gabe said. “Let me get you some drinks.”

Plunking down across from me, Lisa wrinkled her nose and then sniffed her armpit. She picked up a paper menu, scanned it, tossed it, and then reached out and pressed her thumb into my shoulder. “Ouch,” I whined, watching the red seep back into the white oval.

“Sorry.” She winced. “Thanks for sticking with me, Trace. You’re the only person—” Lisa fell silent as Gabe returned with a water pitcher and cups. He poured from the side instead of the spout, giving us lots of ice. Pushing one cup toward me and the other toward Lisa, he ordered us to drink. “I hope you guys didn’t come all this way for the pizza,” he whispered. “It’s not that good.”

“Actually,” Lisa said, “I was hoping to get a little something.” Making tweezers of her thumb and finger, she raised it to her lips.

“Aren’t we going to Trent’s?” Gabe asked.

“It’s been a bad day.” Lisa gritted her teeth, then grinned, batting her lashes. “I need something
now
.”

I fished a chunk of ice from my water and swabbed my collarbone. Gabe refilled our cups. “I don’t have anything on me,” he said. Lisa’s whole body sagged as though finally feeling the effects of walking miles in the heat. “Hang on.” Gabe’s chair scraped the tile floor. “Let me see what I can do.”

When he came back, he had something clutched in his fist. He palmed it to Lisa, who peeled her thighs from the vinyl seat and pressed her body against his.

“I’ll thank you for this later,” she whispered.

Gabe’s face pinked. “You want some sodas?” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “To go?”

Jumbo paper cups in hand, we trudged back out into the heat. I took the lead this time, winding down side streets and alleys, searching for the sunken plaza where Foley and I first kissed one snowy winter evening. It was deserted this time, too. We hid behind a brick planter anyway, in the shadow of an office building. My father worked in one of them, patrolling dark halls with a flashlight and radio.

“I’m the only person?” I asked, rattling the ice in my cup.

Lisa squinted. “You’re the only person, what?”

“Back there, you said—”

Lisa flicked the lighter in her fist. “You’re the only person who knows. About … you know.” The thin white paper crackled as Lisa inhaled. Examining the glowing red ember, she said, “Except my mom and Larry. And your mom, too, I guess.”

“You didn’t tell Gabe?” I asked.

Lisa shook her head. A light went on in mine:
Trent?
I took a smoke and then sipped my drink. “Is it possible it wasn’t…”

The hatred in her eyes made me swallow my words. She leaned back and laughed harshly. “You think I’m a slut, don’t you?”

“Like I’ve got room to talk.” The smoke expanded my lungs. My vision expanded, too. I’d never noticed the fine red threads branching from the creases where Lisa’s nose flares. “I think you’re brave,” I said. “There’s no way I could’ve told my mom. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

Gone running to Foley, probably.

Lisa snatched the lighter from my knee and took another hit. “Did you hear about that woman who left her baby baking in the car while she was at Bingo?” she asked. “You should need a license to have a kid. You need one to own a gun or drive a car. Hell, you need one to own a dog.”

I laughed, releasing a puff of white smoke. My head grew light as if filled with helium.

“Nobody told me you can’t give gum to a three-year-old,” I said, referring to the one and only time I babysat.

“See what I mean?” Lisa slapped her thigh. “That kid could’ve died, and you’d be in juvie for neglect or whatever.”

Church bells echoed in the distance, tolling the hour, but my mind drifted and I lost count.

“I don’t think I want kids,” I said. “Not because I’d be a sucky parent. There’s just too much I want to do.” I poked the bendy straw between my lips. The empty cup gurgled. Lisa offered me hers. “Scott’s the opposite,” I said. “Which is sad because he’ll probably never have any unless he adopts.”

I leaned my head on Lisa’s shoulder, my body sinking into a sweet acceptance of heat and pain. Maybe the combination of smoking and clearing the air with Lisa would help me sleep. Dr. Dan told me to come back if the nightmares started interfering with my days. And I’m pretty sure nodding off in the park the other night counted. “What about you?” I asked. “You think you’ll want kids someday?”

Lisa raised the smoldering stub to her lips, but the sound of feet pounding jerked us upright. Lisa swatted the smoke curling above our heads. I peeked around the planter as a cluster of pigeons exploded. Just a panting jogger cutting across the square. Heart drumming, I leaned back and laughed nervously at the inky-blue sky. Suddenly, a lonely sunken plaza in the middle of desolate downtown seemed like a dangerous place for two wasted girls.

“We should get out of here,” I said. “Before it gets dark.” I checked my phone. If we hurried, we had a shot at catching the 8:06 uptown. Tossing our cups, we stumble-rushed toward the sound of traffic, then sprinted for the shelter. I knew we’d make it—the bus was a block away—but Lisa started waving like she was hailing a taxi.

“Act normal,” I begged, gulping air. “Seriously. My mom finds out
everything
.” The bus rocked to a stop. Paranoia set in. “Quick!” I pinched Lisa’s chin. “How do my eyes look?”

The doors hissed open. Lisa started giggling. “Purty,” she drawled, kissing my cheek.

I didn’t know the driver. I flashed my pass while Lisa pumped her money into the fare box. Bumping down the aisle, Lisa made chicken sounds until we fell into a row behind a guy eating french fries. My stomach rumbled for the cardboard scoop of fat and salt. Lisa walked her fingers along the top of the seat like she meant to swoop down and snatch one. My head was pretty messed up, but I had enough sense to know she’d get her hand broken. I bulged my eyes for her to stop, but Lisa just shrugged and cleared her throat. “Excuse me?” she said, leaning around the seat. I drove my knuckle into her leg and she snorted. “My friend wants to know if she can have a fry.”

The guy turned and smiled and raised the cup. I hesitated, wondering if he was a serial killer who preyed on girls with the munchies. Biting my lip to keep from giggling, I drew first and then Lisa. I got an extra-long one, the kind you have to bend to fit in your mouth. Lisa frowned at hers, brown and short and shriveled. As the giggles passed from me to Lisa and back again, I had one of those lightbulb moments: laughter is a lot like fear—highly contagious. Katie’d caught it, too. Poor thing. Imagining her crazy escape drills made me laugh even harder until I saw the driver watching in the mirror.