Whatever Doesn't Kill You (11 page)

“Hey. You still in here?”

“Where else would I be, you flying jackass?”

He flops down on the bottom bunk, making the whole bed sway a little. “No need to be rude. For what it's worth, it's about time you got your hair cut.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Simon puts his feet up against the bottom of my bed and gives the chunk of plywood supporting my mattress a kick. “Come on. There's no need to be nasty. I just…it's weird for you not to come home from school on time. And you've never missed meeting the kids' bus before. So when Katie said you weren't even at school today…”

“You talked to Katie?” I sit up abruptly, bumping my head on the stucco ceiling. “Ow. Crap. What'd you call her for?”

“Who else was I going to call? I don't have your new friend's phone number.”

“Ashley. Her name is Ashley. And I don't understand what the big deal is about skipping school. It's not like I make a habit of it.”

“I certainly hope not. You're the only one in this family who has a chance to make something of themselves. I'd hate for you to blow it off for a new haircut and a couple pairs of jeans.”

“I'm not going to flunk out over one missed day. And I don't know exactly what you expect me to make of myself. It's not like I'm some kind of genius.”

“Yeah, I know. I've seen your report cards.” He gives the plywood another kick, bumping my head off the ceiling again.

“Ow! Cut it out, you big wiener.”

“Look, I'm trying to be serious.” He stands up on the bottom bunk so he can lean on the railing and stare me down. I put my hand on his forehead, push him away.

“Well, you suck at it.”

“I know. I don't get a lot of practice. But don't you want more out of life than this? You're not much of a scholar, but you've got half a brain if you'd focus.”

“Gee, thanks. And what exactly am I supposed to be focusing on?”

“The future. Getting out of this neighborhood. Not getting pregnant when you're sixteen and winding up a crack whore in some dive apartment over a pawnshop on Kenilworth.”

“Aw, there go all my hopes and dreams, Simon. You're such a spoilsport.”

I lie back on the bed for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling at pictures of my dad that I found loose in an old envelope and taped up there. Dad behind the counter of his store, Dad setting up the Christmas tree, Momma and Dad on their wedding day, a million years ago in the seventies when collars were wide and big hair was in vogue. Simon makes no move to leave, and just lies there on Emily's bed for a while. I finally figure I should break the silence.

“Do you ever think about Travis Bingham?” I ask.

Simon doesn't say anything for so long that I think maybe he's fallen asleep. “No,” he says finally, decisively. “Why would I?”

“I don't know.” I wonder how much to tell him. Somehow, after his reaction to my skipping school, I don't think I should tell him I've turned into a stalker. “It's just…think about how different things would have been without him.”

There's another long silence before he says anything else. “Things are the way they are, Jenna,” is what he finally comes up with. “I don't see much point in worrying about things that aren't. You can't change anything by wasting time on what-ifs.” He sighs and gets up. “For what it's worth, your hair looks pretty good.”

“Doesn't it?” I roll over, slide down the ladder to the floor. “And wait till you see what I got.” I pull out the clothes Ashley picked out for me and lay them out on Emily's bed so he can see them. “Who knew I looked so good in blue?”

Simon cuffs me good-naturedly on the ear. “When did you turn into such a girl, anyway?”

I give him a shove. “Shut up, you giant turd. And get out of my room.”

I close the door behind him and grab my knitting, a sweater I'm working on for Simon. I flop down on the chair in the corner, an overstuffed monstrosity so covered in clothes that it's hard to tell what color the fabric is. It's brown corduroy, for the record, a holdover from the seventies, worn thin in spots and patched to the extent of my mom's sewing ability, which was never great. Knitting was always more her thing, although she hasn't done it in years. I guess it's my thing now. It calms me down. Besides, people usually like the stuff I knit for them—or they pretend to, anyway. This sweater for Simon is nice; I got a real bargain on this fluffy wool blend when the yarn store on Ottawa Street went out of business. I was rich at the time, with almost two hundred dollars I'd saved up from babysitting and from feeding old Mrs. Goldfarb's cats while she was down in Florida, and I blew every penny of it at the yarn store's closing sale. There are still bags in the Rubbermaid containers in my room and a few more in the basement that I haven't even touched yet, but I figured it was worth it. Who knows when they're going to open another yarn store around here where I can get good stuff? I could always go to Walmart, but all they sell there is the crappy acrylic stuff that rubs my hands raw and feels like plastic fishing line against my fingers. I'll use that stuff in a pinch, when I have to knit something I don't care much about—a baby sweater for one of the moms in our building, or a pair of slippers for Momma that's just going to get stolen by one of the other crazies in her home. But when I want to make something nice, something I'm really going to enjoy making, I'll dip into my stash of the good stuff.

Still, I don't feel much like doing anything nice for Simon right now. Not after he went and got all…parental… like that. I tuck the sweater back in the Rubbermaid container with the sticky note on the side that says
Work
In Progress
and pull out a fresh ball of yarn. It's bright green, made of cotton, and I run it through my fingers for a few minutes, trying to decide what to make of it. It's going to have to be a small project; I only have a couple of balls of this stuff, and it's too rough to be a baby sweater. I think about Mr. Morrison, the old man who lives upstairs with his little dog, Buster. I twist it around my fingers. Yes, I think Buster would look very smart in this color.

A few minutes online turns up a pattern that will work nicely, a handsome little jacket with buttons up the side and a turtleneck collar. I do a little math; if I want to make the sweater the same size as the pattern, I'll need a set of number nine needles. I look through my boxes but don't find any. Damn it.

I run through a quick inventory in my head of the assorted craft supplies packed in boxes in the basement. There may be a set downstairs. So much for holing up in my room for the evening.

“Simon, I need your keys to the storage locker.”

“All right. You know where to find them.”

He doesn't ask what I need; he rarely does. Usually I don't even ask him for the keys—I just take them—but after the blowout we had earlier, I figure I'd rather avoid any chance of conflict for the rest of the night.

I put on my slippers—that concrete floor downstairs gets cold—and head down the hall to the stairs.

A couple of the older kids from upstairs are going outside to throw snowballs in the parking lot, all bundled up in their coats and mittens. For a second I think back to last winter, when Griffin and Marie-Claire and Katie and I all had a huge romp through Gage Park in a blizzard, throwing snowballs and rolling around and making a snowman as tall as Griffin until we were all soaked and laughing hysterically. Suddenly I miss them, and I feel my eyes burn a little as I tear up. But I blink away the tears and shake my head. I guess I'm too old for that stuff anyway. I had a great time with Ashley, but I can't picture her doing any of those things. I can't imagine the cool kids ever getting goofy like that.

Down in the basement, I step over the boxes that contain Simon's yearbooks and the newspaper clippings I was showing Ashley the other day. Emily banished three or four boxes of my surplus craft supplies down here last year, because she kept tripping over them on her way to bed in the middle of the night. Somehow they'd got shuffled to the back of the locker when Simon pulled out the Christmas tree, a box of old clothes, whatever. I move boxes aside, building a wall between me and the open door of the locker that makes me a little nervous. It's a bit creepy down here at the best of times, and when I look back at the tower of boxes behind me, I let out a little shudder. I've seen rats down here. There's no quick way of getting out of here if one suddenly crawls out from between a pile of boxes.

I shove aside open boxes, stacks of old photo albums and a milk crate full of baby toys until I finally get to the big Rubbermaid containers of yarn in the back of the locker. There's a huge bouquet of knitting needles in there: round needles, bamboo needles, plastic and metal needles in just about every size. I find a couple of mismatched number nines, but by now I can't stop thinking about rats and cockroaches and spiders and whatever other manner of wildlife might be down here. I tuck the needles into the back pocket of my new jeans and start restacking the boxes. It takes me a few minutes to get everything rearranged again. It's like playing Tetris in real life. I don't know why I'm suddenly so creeped out being in the basement by myself; I've been down here dozens of times on my own. But suddenly I'm noticing the
thunk, thunk, thunk
of the boiler, the rattling of the overhead pipes as someone upstairs turns on their shower, the sound of someone pushing an old wheeled cart down the hall to the laundry room. I get everything stacked back up and am about to hightail it out of the locker room when my arm brushes a pile of boxes, and the whole thing crashes to the floor.

“Crap,” I say out loud, startled at the sound of my own voice. Some of the boxes have spewed out their contents in the avalanche, and with a sigh I squat down to start repacking them. One of the dumped boxes has all of Simon's old papers in it, the one I've been through so many times I don't even need to look at the newspaper clippings one by one to tell you what they say. I find the green file folder they belong in and start to tuck the papers back into it, calming down a little as I see the familiar words and pictures on the familiar yellowed bits of paper. This part I've done before. And with the open door behind me, I can outrun a rat or a spider if the need arises. I find myself lingering a little over the old stories, smoothing them out, tucking them back in like old friends. My life was much simpler, I think, when these were my only connection to Travis Bingham. Before I was stalking him. Maybe Katie and Simon are right: maybe I should just give up on looking for answers and get on with my life.

I pick up the stack of yearbooks that's fallen out of the box with the newspaper clippings and slide them one by one back into the box. For some reason I linger over the last book, the one Ashley and I were looking at. I idly flip through the back pages to see if I can find any other pictures of Simon. There are a few besides his basketball picture and goofy-looking headshot. True enough, he wasn't a bad-looking guy back in high school. There are pictures of him surrounded by girls in the cafeteria, looking preppy and popular, exactly like the kind of kid who's tormented me and my friends since kindergarten. I wonder what he'd have thought back then if he'd known he'd end up the superintendent of a slum apartment building instead of some college football superstar or something.

I'm about to close the book when an inscription on the inside of the back cover catches my eye. Written in red marker, in a tidy but definitely masculine hand, it says
To
the best friend a guy could hope to have. See you lots this
summer, Travis.

I can feel something happening to my stomach, like it's doing backflips. Could it be? How common a name could Travis be? I've never known anyone else by that name, but maybe fifteen years ago it was as trendy as Josh or Madison.

I look again at the photos of Simon. There are no pictures of him with Travis Bingham. But underneath each and every candid picture of my brother, printed in tiny italics, is the same thing:
T. Bingham, photo.

I perch on a pile of boxes for a long time, fretting, festering, fidgeting. I take the knitting needles out of my back pocket and twirl them in my hands like drumsticks. I use the metal tip of one to poke a hole in the corner of one of the cardboard boxes, digging at it until the entire corner is ruined. So this is why Simon never wants to talk about Travis Bingham. I wonder how long before my dad's murder they stopped being friends. Travis would have signed Simon's yearbook in June. My dad died in October. Four months. Well, I guess I went from having friends to not having friends in less than twenty-four hours. Maybe four months is a reasonable amount of time to go from best friend to murderer.

Suddenly I remember something my mother said when I saw her on Sunday, after I told her I'd seen Travis.
Such a nice boy,
she'd said. I'd thought she was just off on one of her nonsensical rants, but if Travis and Simon were friends, she might have actually known what she was talking about for once.

I contemplate taking a bus up the Mountain to talk to her, but in this weather the buses probably aren't even running. I don't feel much like going back upstairs. I wonder whether anyone would notice if I just stayed down here overnight. In the good old days—like, last week—if I was pissed off at Simon, I would just go sleep over at Katie's house, but that clearly isn't an option right now. I'm not ready to ask Simon about Travis Bingham yet—what would I even say? But I can't stay down here forever. It's cold and clammy and thoughts of rats and roaches are starting to cross my mind again, so eventually I bite the bullet, lock up the storage room and head upstairs.

Simon and Wex are eating pizza in front of the
TV
. I toss Simon his keys and grab a piece of pizza to take to my room with me.

“You were down there long enough, I was ready to send out a search party.”