Chapter 28
— Chapter 28 —
Once we got to sixth grade, the difference between Bee’s home life and mine made me feel like we didn’t speak the same language anymore.
My sister left for college that year, and when my mother didn’t have Steena to stroke her ego and occupy her attention, she looked to me to fill that void. I’d been largely ignored for most of my childhood and didn’t have the stamina to be Steena’s successor. And since my mother no longer had a spy in the house leaking intel to her ex-husband and his wife, she stopped keeping up appearances. She didn’t clean or make dinner. We were always running out of groceries. She didn’t get out of bed before I left in the morning. But she picked me up after school so I could run errands with her, which meant stopping at the liquor store for cooking wine , even though most nights we ate Swanson’s microwave meals in front of the television while Step worked until past my bedtime.
So, while Bee was starting to care about clothes and boys and getting noticed by popular girls, I was steeped in dread. I couldn’t focus in school. My best moments of the day were when I pretended I had to go to the bathroom. I’d leave class and sit in a stall in the empty girls’ room, tearing toilet paper squares into snowflakes and flushing them down the toilet. I tracked my bathroom breaks on a grid on the inside cover of my binder to keep my teachers from getting suspicious. Figuring out the right pattern for my complex rotation schedule was the closest thing to useful math I learned in grade school. I didn’t tell Bee any of it. I didn’t have words for what I was going through.
Jennifer Petrelli moved to town in seventh grade. There were only a hundred and fifty kids in our class year, and most families stayed in Somers until their children graduated high school, so a new kid was a big deal. And Jennifer P. was one of those girls who seemed like she was born knowing how to be cool. She had long wavy hair and the kind of bangs that had a top layer curled up and back and another layer curled down over her forehead. She wore pearly pink lipstick, smelled like Aussie hairspray, and wore a jean jacket from Hard Rock Cafe, even when it was freezing outside. The principal chose Bee to show Jennifer P. around, which suddenly made Bee more interesting to the rest of our class too. For a while Bee tried to make us all friends, but Jennifer P. didn’t like me. She didn’t care about frogs or climbing trees or nature. She didn’t read books for fun. She didn’t think it was cool that I had my own rowboat. In all honesty, I thought Jennifer P. was boring too, but I understood why Bee liked her. Bee was excited about growing up, and Jennifer P. had a really good handle on being a teenager. I was still clinging to childish things because I needed comfort anywhere I could find it.
So that spring, when Bee told me her mom said she could bring a friend to see Janet Jackson at Madison Square Garden, I told her it was fine if she asked Jennifer P. Anytime I tried to do something special, my mother would create a crisis to make me late. She’d accidentally bleach the outfit I’d planned to wear or lose her keys when she was supposed to drive me, and she could never find my inhaler. If I showed any sign of being upset, her breakdown would become the crisis. She’d stomp and slam doors, screaming about how ungrateful and worthless I was. “Oh, I’m such a horrible mother, aren’t I? Who bought you those clothes to begin with?”
If I’d gone to the concert, I would have been fighting tears the whole train ride instead of playing “I spy” with Bee. I’d be sick to my stomach through the performance and the ride back to Somers. I’d risk ruining Bee’s special night, the way my mother ruined mine. And then when I got home, my mother would be waiting in the living room to yell at me for keeping her up. “I’m glad you had fun,” she’d say, in her sharp, sneering voice. “Because I’ve been sick with worry! And you don’t even care. Thank god I had your sister, so at least I got to have one grateful kid. At least Steena wasn’t a waste of my life!”
When I saw the pictures Mrs. Shulman took of Bee and Jennifer P. flashing peace signs outside Madison Square Garden, I felt more happy than sad. I wanted Bee to enjoy every good thing she could have. I just wished she still loved catching frogs, climbing trees, and reading Ranger Rick over the phone.
Not long after the concert, Bee and Jennifer P. got invited to a sleepover at a popular girl’s house and started sitting with those kids at lunch. Bee saved a seat for me, but I didn’t belong with them. I didn’t have the energy to pretend. Eventually I started spending lunch in the library so I didn’t have to watch my old best friend with all her new ones. Bee never asked where I went. She stopped taking the bus home because she went to Jennifer P.’s house after school. If I saw her in the hallway, she’d maybe flash a smile, but mostly she avoided looking in my direction. I understood, but it broke my heart.
“Do you need a ride?” I ask as I lock the door to The Aster. I point to my parking spot, but Step’s car is where I was expecting mine. I wish I could take back the offer. I don’t want to drive the banana car with the windows closed. Or explain the banana car.
“Nah, I sobered up,” Bee says, pointing to the blue Ford Focus across the lot.
“Okay. Well, good to see you.” I look up at the sky. It’s barely orange tonight and the stars are bright.
Bee looks up too. “Nice out. Warmed up a lot.” She reaches in her coat pocket, then opens her hand to show me a perfectly rolled joint. “You want to go look at the water?”
“Sure.” I’m still curious about why she came looking for me.
We walk through the squishy grass to the reservoir. The moon is almost full, reflecting off the water, and once our eyes adjust, it’s not hard to see.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Bee says.
“Really?”
“Of course. You’re the one who hated me. Not the other way around.”
I didn’t hate you, I want to say, but the words are stuck in my brain.
We sit on the table part of the picnic bench by the water. Sam hasn’t made it down here with his renovations. The wood is withering away, but I can still find the place where I carved my initials into the bench with my corkscrew— F. A. After it someone has carved R T in slightly smaller letters. I laugh.
Bee says, “Yeah, I know. This is weird, right?” She lights the joint and takes a puff, passes it to me.
“Super weird.” I haven’t got the heart to tell her I was laughing at something else.
I don’t inhale. I’m good at making it seem like I’m right there with someone when they’re smoking pot, even though I try to stay several steps behind. I think my brain in its regular state is not far off from what people are trying to achieve when they get stoned—all the loose thoughts and convoluted connections that bubble up are basically what’s banging around in my head all the time. It’s probably fun if it only happens when you purposely send your brain on a long, looping journey, but when you’re trying to pay bills, do laundry, mail a form to the DMV, it’s exhausting to think in every direction.
“So, I’m going to talk to you like you’re Aubrey’s primary caregiver,” Bee says, as if she’s getting to the point she always intended to reach. “Because Aubrey told me I could.”
My heart does that flipping frog thing. It must be serious for Bee to track me down and wait all night to have this moment.
“That doesn’t make this legal,” Bee says. “Because Aubrey’s a kid and has no authority to authorize me, but let’s pretend, okay?”
I nod.
“Aubrey is getting bullied at school pretty badly. She doesn’t want me to report it. And I get why, but I think I may have to.”
“What is she being bullied about?” I ask, which instantly seems like the wrong question. Like I’m asking for the flaw of Aubrey instead of trying to understand what’s going on.
Bee passes me the joint again, blowing smoke to the sky. I don’t think she took it the wrong way.
“Aubrey used to be friends with a group that was mostly the daughters of Steena’s friends, and they’re… like their moms, who…,” Bee looks at me pointedly, “voluntarily spend time with your sister.”
“So, fun all around?”
“Super fun. Those kids have the kind of parents who book a hotel room for the weekend to leave the house and ‘let their kids be kids.’ That whole ‘At least if they’re drinking at my home, they’re not driving!’ bullshit. And yeah, I know kids drink, but these kids especially shouldn’t have free run.” Bee kicks at the bench board of the picnic table with the heel of her duck boot, flinching when the damp wood splinters a little.
“Anyway,” she says, taking the joint back from me, relighting it as she talks. “Aubrey was best friends with Kelly O’Leary, and last spring, Kelly started dating a kid named Josh Barrett—he’s such a little shit. Josh’s brother Carter—who’s a bigger little shit—was a junior and has a car, so Aubrey got stuck hanging out with him all the time because he drove them around. Everyone thought of the four of them like a standing double date, but I don’t think Aubrey even liked Carter. Then all of a sudden, Aubrey stops hanging out with all of those kids. It was around the time your parents died, so I think everyone just assumed she was sad. She started hanging out in the art room to avoid them. Which is the good part—that’s when she and Shray hit it off.”
“Is he Ravi Singh’s kid?” I ask, taking the joint when Bee hands it to me.
“Yeah. Looks exactly like him too! But… artistic. Shray is the fucking best, but Steena was convinced that Aubrey’s whole…,” Bee gestures to her face, “appearance is Shray’s fault. Kelly O’Leary got mad that Aubrey wasn’t under her thumb anymore. So she started telling everyone that Aubrey had an abortion.”
“Holy shit.”
“It gets back to Steena, and she confronts Aubrey, who totally falls apart, which your sister takes as an admission, and instead of having fucking empathy for her child, she tells Aubrey she can never see Shray again. They have a huge fight and—”
Bee keeps talking, and I can see her words in my head, but it’s like I can’t read them fast enough. Once I understand what she’s said, she’s already saying something else.
“Wait—”
“So we were all relieved when you came back.” Bee’s hand brushes mine as she takes the joint from me, and I swear I can feel every ridge of her fingerprints against mine.
“We?” Everything small is big. Everything big is faded. I must have forgotten that I was only pretending to smoke. “Wait—”
Bee is talking about Ravi Singh, and I keeping picturing his kneecaps, but I’m trying not to because she’s saying something important. I lose her words in my head.
“I have to go.” My voice feels like molasses. Time has started jumping and it’s terrifying. I was sitting, then walking; now I’m driving Step’s car, and my feet are damp—I must have a hole in my shoe—and then I remember that Bee, with her thirty-year-old face, looked at me through our breath and smoke and said, “Steena kicked Aubrey out of the house.”
I pull over and try to call Aubrey, then Jam, then Aubrey again. There’s no answer. Ringing and voicemail and neither of them have a real message; they only say their names. Aubrey Wells. Benjamin Olbrich. Both of them sound surprised, like they didn’t know the robot voice would ask them to state themselves. Aubrey Wells. Benjamin Olbrich. Aubrey Wells.
I don’t have Bee’s phone number. I don’t know where she lives now. Her words keep catching up with me. “Someone’s been leaving wire hangers in Aubrey’s locker,” she said.
Step’s car runs out of gas on Deans Bridge Road. I coast into the turn for my street, game the slope of the road, and park in the patch of dirt where I used to wait for the school bus.
The stars move in time-lapse across the sky.
I get out and walk.
I’m far down the road and don’t remember if I closed the car door.
I wish I could call Shray. Or Ravi. Or Eddie. I feel like Eddie would know what to do. Do white pages still exist? Could the operator find Eddie? Does dialing zero on a cell phone work? I don’t know much of anything.
Aubrey Wells. Aubrey Wells. Benjamin Olbrich. Aubrey Wells. I was trying to be good and I made it worse. I always think what I want must be wrong—that other people know better and do better than me. I thought letting Aubrey stay would be selfish because I wanted her to.
I think about my rowboat, maybe in the brambles, that I could row to Eddie’s house across the pond. But then I’m in my driveway and the house is dark. Then I’m in the house. Lenny Juice is chewing his paper castle and Aubrey isn’t on the patio. She’s not in my old bedroom. She’s not on the roof or in the bathroom. She’s nowhere. Not picking up her phone.
The gray clapboard walls of the toolshed flash in my mind. I picture Aubrey huddled next to the lawn mower, lips blue from cold.
When time stops folding inside itself, I am in the yard.
There’s a faint glow coming from the basement window.