Chapter 16
Christy does reply, at night after I’ve had two peanut butter sandwiches and tucked myself into bed.
Are you around?
I’m here, I reply.
Can you pick me up? she says. I have to get out of this house
I’ll be there in five, I say.
I don’t wanna bother you, she says.
See you in five
My brain is blank and my breath is short as I drive.
Christy’s yellow house waits at the end of a dead-end street, surrounded by fruit trees and flowers. She doesn’t come out when I pull up. In the downstairs unit, I see her half brother playing a first-person shooter on the TV while his kids watch. Up in Christy’s unit, her bedroom light is on.
I’m not certain what’s best, but I walk to the front door and knock.
Mrs.?Ryan opens the door, rolls her eyes, and shouts behind her, “You running away?”
The living room lights are off and the blinds are drawn. Mr.?Ryan doesn’t take his eyes off the TV. On the screen, women shout at each other.
“Hello,” I say, possibly to no one.
Down the hall, Mrs.?Ryan speaks too quietly for me to hear while Christy repeats, “I’m not talking to you.” Christy keeps saying it as she rushes past me with her little backpack. Mrs.?Ryan follows, her eyes wide. She stops when she gets to me.
“Why are you standing here?” she says. “Shouldn’t you be rescuing your girlfriend?”
I don’t play music while I drive. Christy pushes her shoes against the dashboard and bites her nails. I take us to the part of Lake Ronkonkoma where there’s the biggest beach. The clouds have cleared and the full moon is shining bright and white.
I unbuckle my seat belt. “Are you—”
She screams and slams her feet against the dash. She throws her arms in the air and flails her head and shouts until she’s out of breath.
Finally she leans back in her seat. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I keep my hands on my lap. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She flicks away a tear like it’s a speck on a table.
“I was out with some guys who come into 7-Eleven a lot and this one guy was an idiot. I came home pissed and my mom had to be a jerk about it.” From the back of her throat comes a muffled growl, and she presses her fists into the sides of her head. “Thank you for being around.”
“This is where I am.” I can’t figure out if it’s kind to ask more or to leave her alone.
With Tony and Andi, they don’t want me to ask more.
And I don’t want to seem like a guy who’s jealous of his girlfriend hanging out with other guys.
But what if it’s caring to ask more? Wouldn’t Elijah ask more?
“What happened with the guy who was an idiot? If you want to say.”
She leans her face onto her hand and gazes at me. She’s wearing blue eyeshadow.
I’m ashamed to find that I’m turned on.
“Let’s go outside,” she says.
I walk out onto the sand but she turns and goes toward the dense, woodsy brush. That’s where she showed me how to kiss this past summer. She pressed me against a tree, her knee slowly separating my legs.
I keep going my way, to the water, stopping where the sand gets damp. It doesn’t seem the appropriate time to be having these thoughts.
I hear her behind me and she puts a hand on my lower back.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you back earlier,” she says.
“I’m sorry I dumped all my thoughts on you.”
She turns me toward her. “I felt like you needed something I didn’t want to provide.”
“That sounds about right.”
She laughs. “But I’m sorry I didn’t want to provide it!”
I am attracted to…people apologizing?
I put a finger through a belt loop in her jeans and lightly pull her closer. “That’s all right.”
“Now that I’m done shouting, how’s your night?”
Sound presses against the inside of my skull. I run my thumb over the spot where her sides come out of her jeans. “How did you know you weren’t attracted to that girl Lauren?”
She makes a sound like a laugh. “I was definitely attracted to her.”
“Then why would you say you’re straight?”
“I dunno. Maybe I’m not.”
I pull her closer so the front of her jeans presses against the front of mine. “What do you mean?”
She kisses my neck. “I’ve thought about being with a girl.”
“You have?”
“How everything would be gentle and slow.”
She kisses higher up my neck.
“Like…like what?”
“Like this.” She kisses my lips softly, the way I always wished she would.
Then she bites my lip, hard, and I pull away.
“Don’t be a baby,” she says, grinning.
I step back.
She reaches out. “Was that too—”
“I can’t.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you said you liked that.”
I shake my head. “I was wrong.”
She puts her hands behind her. “Okay.”
I break into a sweat. “What’s the matter with me?”
“Nothing. You’re sensitive.”
“I wish I wasn’t.” Little waves come toward my shoes. “I’m sorry about when we tried to have sex and I panicked. I’m sorry if I freaked you out.”
“I wasn’t freaked out. I was embarrassed.” She says it like she hates having the word in her mouth.
“I was the one who should be embarrassed.”
“Most guys wouldn’t hesitate to have sex with a girl who was naked in front of them.”
“I thought it was good I’m not like most guys.”
“It is.” Her voice fills with the fire she had in the car. “But it’s still embarrassing for a woman to put herself out there and not be enough for a man.”
“So, what, a girl can turn down a guy, but a guy has to be ready for sex all the time?”
Her face hardens. “It’s a double standard, but I live with double standards all the time. Everybody does.”
I blink like the moon is shining directly and only at me.
She brushes a stray hair out of her eyes. “Why did you panic?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?”
My voice cracks. “I don’t know. It’s like I don’t have access to certain parts of me. They’re blocked off.”
Heat rises from my chest and my eyes get soft. I can feel the tears pressing against them. I try to shove the tears back down, but it’s like I lost the ability, or I gave it up, or everything inside is too strong now. I’m overcome by years of emotion I never allowed myself to experience.
I step toward Christy and I open my arms, ready to finally let myself cry.
“Would you hold me?”
She steps back and puts her hands in the air.
“I can’t be a mother for you.”
This would be a painful thing to hear but I’ve already left my body and traveled further away than I can find.
I’m not present when I point at her and say, “That’s a good call on your part.
” I’m not present when I start driving and say, “I gotta sort out a few things about myself.” Nor when I say, “For example, right now I am completely disassociating.” I’m not there when she says, “I can’t be what you need me to be,” nor when she says, “Actually, I can be, but I don’t want to be.
I don’t want to be anything for anyone except myself.
” I’m not there when she says, “I think we should just be friends,” nor when I reply, “How about acquaintances?”
When we get to her driveway and she closes the car door behind her, I recede further. I reach a new level of disassociation. I am no longer floating elsewhere without emotion. I cease to exist entirely. I am nowhere at all. I am nothing.
But when I pull out of her driveway, when I turn off her road and drive under the gold streetlights lining the path home, when I roll down the windows and smell the fresh-cut grass, all the feelings reappear.
My body tingles with pins and needles. My mouth goes dry.
A wild, unknown emotion presses against my face.
I turn my corner, and I see Mom’s car still isn’t in the driveway.
And I burst out laughing.
I stop my car in the middle of the road, and I laugh and laugh.
“I’m such a mess,” I say aloud to myself at full volume.
I touch a finger to my eye to wipe away a tear, but there are no tears, because I’m unable to let myself cry even when I’m alone.
I shake my head. “I mean, if nothing else, I’m me.”
Without any transitional thought, I take out my phone and the paper with Elijah’s number. It’s late at night, but—
GREETINGS, I message him. This is Sean O’Brien
From English
He replies immediately, Greetings to you!
This is Elijah Summers
From English