Best Friends Forever Part 5

I watched the house, the shutters, the bra.s.s knocker on the front door, the two elm trees in the front yard, trying not to cry, barely moving, barely breathing, until late that afternoon, when my parents pulled into the driveway and my mother and father crossed the street to get me.

"Your brother..." my mother said. Her face was pale and puffy, and her hair stuck out from her head in staticky clumps. Tissues were balled up in one of her hands; the other was curled in a fist on her knee.

"It was stupid," my father said, and rubbed the back of his hand against his red eyes. "Jon should have known better."

"What happened?"

What happened, as the whole town would eventually learn, was that there'd been three boys from the cross-country team in the car: two in front, and Jon in back. The boys weren't drunk-not legally-but they'd been drinking, and they were speeding, doing ninety miles an hour on an infamously twisty road, trying to get home in time for curfew. The boy behind the wheel had lost control of the car, which had slammed into a tree and rolled over. The driver and the boy in the pa.s.senger's seat hadn't been wearing their seat belts. They'd both died (and, the rumor that was all over school by Monday morning had it, one of them had been decapitated). Jon, who'd worn his seat belt, had sustained cuts, bruises, contusions, cracked ribs, and a concussion. And brain damage. "They don't know how much yet," my mother said, twisting a tissue in her hand. "They can't say how bad."

"But he'll be okay? He'll get better?" I looked from my mother's face to my father's, waiting for rea.s.surance, for a verse of "don't worry, Addie," and a chorus of "everything will be fine." Instead, my mother gulped back a sob and turned her face toward the window. My father rubbed his jaw.

"Is Jon going to be okay?" I asked again.

Neither one of them answered me. That was how I knew. Jon wouldn't be okay. He wouldn't get better. The brother I'd known, the one I'd loved and resented and envied, the one who'd talked to bus drivers and store clerks and strangers on my behalf, that swift, sure boy was gone. What came home from the rehab center twelve weeks later was a pale, pudgy, moon-faced Jon-shaped lump with seizures and an unsteady gait and faulty depth perception, a Jon-shaped lump that sat in front of the television set, or at the dinner table, staring incuriously at whatever was on the plate or screen in front of him, sometimes with a finger in his nose, sometimes, especially in the first few months, with his hand down the front of his pants. Disinhibition, said my mother, as if giving me the technical term would make it better. It will pa.s.s.

Jon had to relearn everything-how to dress himself and brush his teeth, how to tie his shoes, how to cut and chew and swallow his food, how to read, how to use the bathroom (that last one they'd mostly taught him in the hospital, which was good, because it was too awful to think about my mother having to go through that again). And that was just the stuff the doctors could agree on. There was the disinhibition, the nose-picking, and the other stuff that Jon's damaged brain had forgotten was private behavior. There were fits-actual seizures, mostly little ones where he'd just stare into the distance, and fits of rage, where Jon would scream curse words, sometimes because he'd gotten frustrated tying his shoe or re-capping the milk, and sometimes for no reason at all. He'd scream "f.a.gGOT! f.a.gGOT! f.a.gGOT!" at my mother, his legs flailing in front of him, bas.h.i.+ng at the chairs and the kitchen counters until she convinced him to stop. There were also "short-term memory issues," which meant that Jon could remember the scores of soccer games he'd played when he was eight, or who'd been invited to his tenth birthday party, but not his locker combination, or his teachers' names, or where he'd put his shoes the night before.

How long would this last? Would Jon ever be himself again? The doctors said that only time would tell, but that most of his recovery would happen in the first year. "It would have been better if he was older," I overheard one of the therapists say to my mother. Her name was Sue Stumps, and she came to our house twice a week wearing scrubs printed with teddy bears, silly, babyish things that I hated, because Jon wasn't a baby, and if he'd been himself he would have hated them, too. "If he was older, he'd be relearning stuff that he'd done for a long time-how to shave, how to drive. For young people..." Her voice trailed off, but I heard what she hadn't spoken. For young people, it was worse.

My father spent more and more time in the bas.e.m.e.nt, as if he couldn't stand to see what Jon had become. My mother hovered, smoothing Jon's hair, wiping his lips. I hung back, watching as Jon talked to himself, muttering words I couldn't quite hear. Sometimes, usually in front of the television set, he drooled. That, my parents explained, was a side effect of one of Jon's medications, and he wasn't doing it on purpose, and I should try to help him if I could by handing him tissues and reminding him to use them. "You'll have to take care of him," they told me over and over, when he was still in the hospital and, later, when he was still at the rehab place in Chicago. At first I couldn't imagine it-my taking care of my brother sounded about as likely, about as plausible, as my growing wings, but the Jon who came home was a different brother than the Jon who'd run lightly down the driveway on Halloween, and this brother, the new Jon, did need my help.

He spent the spring and summer at home, going to therapy, working with paints and clay and balance b.a.l.l.s and the penmans.h.i.+p workbooks I remembered from first grade. At night, my parents would take turns reading out loud to him until he fell asleep, snoring. That fall, he started high school again as a freshman, in the same cla.s.s as me and Valerie. Before, he'd been on the academic track, plus honors history. Now he was on the "modified" track, in cla.s.s with the handful of kids who would learn a trade or go to community college or the army instead of getting a four-year degree. Three days a week he had a tutor shadow him, to make sure he took notes and paid attention and didn't doze off or start shouting in the middle of a lecture or a quiz.

At first the other kids were on their best behavior. They'd offer to help with his homework or carry his books; his former teammates would scoot over to make a place for him at the lunch table. But that didn't last. By the end of September, Jon was alone, walking by himself down the hallways, in his old-man shuffle, one hand extended, fingers brus.h.i.+ng the wall for balance. All of his grace was gone. He sat by himself on the bus and at lunch, except on Fridays, when we shared the same lunch period and I'd sit with him. In cla.s.s, it was like there was a force field surrounding him, a barrier that no one tried to cross. Pa.s.sed notes flew over his head; the girls who'd once flocked around him avoided his desk and his locker. The cross-country team was an impossibility. Jon's medication had made him gain weight, and the injury had left him permanently off balance. The phone at our house stopped ringing. His friends had forgotten him. It wasn't their fault. He wasn't the same boy.

After school, Jon would sit at the kitchen table and work on thousand-piece puzzles, putting together pictures of the Milky Way, lunar landscapes, Venus and Mars, and the Challenger s.p.a.ce shuttle, with his tongue wedged into the corner of his mouth and his forehead creased in concentration. My mother would clap when he finished them, and I'd wonder, listening to the sad sound of her applause, whether she remembered his races, jumping up and down and cheering for him when his chest broke the tape. Now, when she asked him questions, he answered them. He sat with us at every meal and watched TV with us after dinner. No cars came honking up the driveway to take her son away. He was hers again, all hers.

I tried to help. I made sure that his shoes were tied, that his backpack was zipped, that his belt was fastened and his pants zipped up when he came out of the bathroom. I'd stay close, hoping for those rare moments of lucidity that would come at unpredictable intervals. That spring, when the school bus was stopped at a red light, Val and I watched out the window as a car full of Jon's old friends zoomed past us, the driver honking, the girl in the pa.s.senger seat with her feet on the dashboard, laughing. Jon, who was in the seat behind us, tapped my shoulder. I'd turned, expecting him to ask me for a tissue or a cough drop or to tell me he'd forgotten his lunch or his books or both, but instead, he was looking at me sadly. "I was in a car accident, right?" he asked.

My breath caught. "That's right," I said.

He didn't answer. I watched until his eyes clouded over. "f.a.ggot," he whispered. Val sighed. I felt tears clogging the back of my throat.

"Jon, remember? That's an inside word." This was what his therapist told us to say. "I love you," I told him. "I'm sorry you got hurt."

"f.a.ggot," he said, almost sighing. He closed his eyes and leaned the top of his head against the window. Underneath his hair was a jagged scar. Underneath that was a metal plate: it covered the holes where they'd drilled to relieve the pressure from his swollen brain. He opened his mouth and drooled a little onto his s.h.i.+rt collar. A minute later, he was asleep. I made myself look away until the bus arrived at school.

ELEVEN.

"Val?" I called, and spun around, my breath huffing out a white cloud in front of me. I went to the car and pulled on the handle. Locked. Of course. With everything I had-my purse, my keys, and most important, my cell phone-inside. "Stupid," I growled, and leaned against the door. I was so stupid. Why had I imagined that she'd changed? Why did I let myself think that she'd come back to me chastened, a true and loyal friend, that once she'd acknowledged the truth about what had happened back in high school she would be so grateful that she'd never leave my side? People didn't change. Not me, not Val, not Dan Swansea. I'd always be scared, she'd always be selfish, and as for Dan Swansea, he'd probably spend his whole life as a criminal and never get caught, and then I'd die of cancer and n.o.body would even care. Probably no one would even notice. I'd die one of those terrible single-girl deaths, my body undiscovered until someone noticed the smell, and G.o.d knew how long that would take, because Mrs. Ba.s.s had sinus issues and couldn't smell much of anything anymore.

I kicked the gravel as hard as I could, and muttered "s.h.i.+t," which improved neither the situation nor my mood. What now? I walked past the Dumpster, heading for the street. The country club was a few miles from the nearest gas station-I remembered pa.s.sing it on our way here. I could cover the distance in half an hour. I'd find a phone, call the police, and tell them the truth. I would tell them how Valerie had come to my house and what she'd told me she had done. I'd tell them that I'd been to the parking lot and that there was blood and a belt, but no Dan.

I pushed my hands in my pockets and hunched my shoulders against the cold when a thought hit me: What if they didn't believe me? What if they thought that I'd been the one to do something to Dan Swansea? What if Valerie lied again, took his side, defending him the way she had before? "Why are you telling these lies about me and Dan?" she'd ask, the way she had that day in the cafeteria in front of everyone, her voice cutting through the chatter until there was only silence and everyone was staring at me. I'd stood my ground, planting my feet, feeling my face turning red as I'd said, "I'm telling the truth and you know it," but my voice had come out a whisper, and Val's scornful laugh had been the loudest thing I could imagine. "Just jealous, I bet," she said, like she was talking to herself, but loud enough so that everyone could hear her. Just jealous. Fat Addie. That was me.

I sniffled and decided I'd just have to convince the cops that no matter what Val said, I was telling the truth. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit," I muttered, and knelt down, thinking I could at least try to wipe my fingerprints off the belt, just as I heard Valerie calling my name.

I turned around to glare at her as she trotted out from behind a bush. "Sorry that took so long," she said.

I glared at her. "What the h.e.l.l? Where did you go?"

"I had to pee."

"You had to pee?" I repeated.

"I had to find a good spot," she explained, smoothing her dress over her hips. "I'm wearing a bodysuit. I couldn't just go anywhere. It would have been very undignified."

When I could speak again, I said, "Didn't you once read the weather while you were riding a mechanical bull? I'm going to suggest that the dignity s.h.i.+p has sailed without you aboard."

Val had the nerve to look pleased. "Did you see that?"

"I read about it," I said, making the distinction clear. "I gather you have a lot of fans in the thirteen-year-old-boy demographic."

"Hey, it was sweeps week. And a viewer's a viewer. Is he dead?"

I waited long enough for her to start squirming, figuring it served her right, before I said, "I don't know if he's dead or not. He isn't here."

Valerie didn't appear to hear the news. "Well, I'm not turning myself in. f.u.c.k that. f.u.c.k a whole pile of that. First of all, it was an accident, and second of all, it was justice. Vigilante justice. Somebody should have stopped his clock a long time ago."

"Val, there's n.o.body here."

She finally shut up and stared at me, lips parted, hope dawning on her face. "n.o.body?"

"There's blood," I told her. "There's a belt. But no Dan Swansea."

"Huh," she said, tilting her head sideways, giving me her profile, which, I was becoming convinced, had been surgically altered somehow: the nose a trifle thinner, the chin a tad more firm. "The blood," she finally said. "Do you think it's his?"

"Jesus Christ, Val. How should I know that?"

She frowned and walked back to the Dumpster, kneeling down to inspect the sticky gravel. When she rose up she looked relieved... and puzzled. "I wonder if he just went home."

"Maybe he got abducted," I suggested. "The guy I was out with earlier says there's a s.p.a.ce shuttle that comes around."

Val lifted her head and glared at me. "Do you think joking is going to make things better?"

I jumped up and down, trying to get my blood pumping so I'd warm up. "Maybe he was Raptured. Although if that happened, his clothes would be here, too. And his clothes are still in your car, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "So you don't know whether it's his blood or not, but you know exactly what happens to clothing during the Rapture." I shrugged. Val stuck her thumbnail in her mouth and nibbled at it. "You know what we should do? We should go get the rest of them."

"Val," I said, struggling not to laugh. "You're a weathergirl. I paint greeting cards. This isn't the Wild West. We're not Thelma and Louise."

"Thelma and Louise had jobs, too," she said. "And as for me being a weathergirl, there is a long and honorable tradition of weatherpeople taking part in radical action. Perhaps you're familiar with the Weathermen?"

"Val." Giggles rose like champagne bubbles in my throat. "Those guys weren't actual meteorologists. You know that, right?"

She ignored me. "We should try to find him. Make sure he doesn't talk. Then we can go get the rest of them. Kevin, and Mark, and..."

"We?" I repeated. "Oh, no. You're on your own, sister. This isn't my problem."

She looked incredulous. Then, hurt... hurt and very young, in her high heels and red dress. "You're not going to help me?"

I shoved my hands deep into my pockets and spoke to her slowly, p.r.o.nouncing each word carefully so there'd be no mistaking my meaning, remembering that day in the cafeteria, Val at one end of the room surrounded by her friends and me, alone, at the other. "Perhaps you don't remember," I began, "but the last time I tried to help you, it didn't turn out very well for me."

She bit her lip, looking abashed. "I said I was sorry."

"Yeah, well, you know what? It's a little too late for you to be..." I raised my hands in the frigid night air and hooked my fingers into quotation marks. "'Sorry.' Do you have any idea what my senior year was like?" I asked, remembering the whispers that followed me everywhere I went: Fat b.i.t.c.h. Fat wh.o.r.e. Fat narc. Always fat something, as if fat was really the worst thing they could say about me, about any girl.

"Do you have any idea what my life was like?" Valerie shot back.

"Actually, I do," I said. "I was there, remember? I'm sure it was absolute h.e.l.l, having to decide which guy to go to prom with."

"You have no idea."

"No, I don't. I'm sure I couldn't possibly imagine what it's like to be tall, and blond, and gorgeous, and to throw your best friend under the bus..."

"I hated you," Valerie said. Her voice was flat and toneless.

I stared at her. "Excuse me?"

"I hated you because you had everything." She turned away, aiming her keys at the Jaguar. There was a click as the locks popped open. "Come on. Get in. I'll take you home."

"Wait. I had everything? What are you talking about?"

She turned to face me, heels dug into the gravel, hands on her hips. "You had a mom. You had a dad. You had a brother. You had f.u.c.king food in your refrigerator, which, in case you never noticed, was something I did not have, because my mother never ate anything but Tab and f.u.c.king Wheat Thins. You had clean clothes. You had someone to sign your field-trip permission slips and give you five bucks so you could buy lunch. You had someone to show up at parent-teacher conferences. You never had to wake your mother up after she'd pa.s.sed out on the couch with a lit cigarette. You had two parents who loved you..." Her voice caught. "You had everything." She turned away and jerked open the pa.s.senger-side door. "Get in."

"Valerie." I felt breathless, like I'd been hit in the stomach. What was she talking about? Her mother had been beautiful and fun, lively and full of adventure. Sure, she was a little scattered, but loving and good-hearted. At least that's what I'd always thought. Had I been that wrong?

"I wanted to belong somewhere," Val continued.

I stared at her, astonished. "How did selling me out help you belong?"

She lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug, then dropped her face again. I stood in the parking lot, the night air frigid against my cheeks, not knowing what to say. Of all the times I'd imagined this scene, all the ways I'd thought about it playing out, feeling sorry for Valerie had never been a possibility. I was the victim, she was the villain; I was the ugly duckling, she was the swan. She'd escaped Pleasant Ridge, and I was stuck here, tethered to my brother, tied down by fear. In all my years of fuming and resentful imagining, all the years I'd carried my grudge like a pocketbook I was afraid to set down even for an instant, I'd never considered that there might be a different way of looking at the situation, another truth.

I took the chill of the night air into my lungs and breathed out slowly. "If Dan's not here, where do you think he went?"

Val shrugged.

"We should try to find him." I could do that at least, I told myself. I owed her that much for all the years she'd been my friend.

"Why?"

"Because..." I had the sense of somehow having slipped out of my regular life where logic and the normal rules applied and into some other world, a place where you could hit people with your car and escape with impunity, where you could hurt the people who'd hurt you without suffering any consequences... where they'd just disappear, maybe back to the real world, where the rules did apply. Everything was upside-down and backward. "Because he could be hurt."

She turned slowly, looking, now, entirely grown-up, like a version of her mother, who could slide out of any tight spot with a pretty smile and a little judicious flirting. "Not our problem."

"But if you're the one who hit him..."

She rocked back and forth on her heels. "What if," said Val, "tonight is kind of a... kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card?"

I looked at her, wondering if she had any idea how close what she'd said was to what I'd been thinking.

"What if you could do anything you wanted?" she asked. "Get back at those boys? Get revenge?"

No, I thought. It doesn't work that way. There's no such thing as something for nothing; the bill always comes due. But then I thought about my life. I'd lost my mother and my father and my brother. I'd lost my best friend and my boyfriend. Worse than all that, I had lost my dreams of the life I'd imagined for myself... and now, if that stiffness in my belly meant what I thought it did, I was going to lose my life, too, probably quickly, and there'd be nothing left to show for the thirty-three years I'd spent on this earth except for a handful of greeting cards that sold in drugstores for a dollar ninety-nine, plus three mugs and a spoon rest, and a brother who didn't always remember that we were related and that I wasn't thirteen. I had nothing but Val... my best friend, who'd come back to me after all this time.

A rust-spotted sedan drove past the entrance of the parking lot. Without speaking, Val and I climbed into the Jaguar, Val behind the wheel, me beside her. The car started up with a purr and spat chunks of gravel in its wake as Val steered for the road.

"Where?" she asked as she accelerated, heading toward the highway, which could lead us back home or... well, anywhere, really. "Which one should we f.u.c.k up first?"

For some reason, the name that popped into my mind didn't belong to one of my cla.s.smates. Instead, I remembered the guidance counselor, one of the grown-ups, one of the people who should have been keeping me safe. Her name was Carol Demmick, and she'd kept a cruet of vinegar on her desk to sprinkle over the cut-up carrots she snacked on. The kids called her Summer's Eve, or Douche for short (I a.s.sumed she didn't know this). She'd called me into her office once in the spring of senior year, invited me to have a seat, asked me about my plans after graduation, and then asked me, gently, how my senior year had been going. It had been so long since someone at that school had looked at me with kindness, had spoken to me with anything besides indifference or contempt, that I told her. "Terrible," I choked. The details came spilling out of my mouth: the kids who tripped me and shoved me, and knocked over my lunch, the graffiti on the walls of every bathroom, how even the teachers seemed to hate me, to treat me like I had some horrible disease that might be catching. The guidance counselor had looked at me for a long minute, her big, buggy gray eyes magnified behind the green plastic frames of gla.s.ses someone had probably told her were "hip" and "cool."

"Addie," she said in her too-sweet voice, her double chins quivering gently as she studied me. "I don't mean to be unkind, but maybe, over the summer, you might think about a diet."

I'd stared at her, stone-faced. Did she think I'd never considered a diet before? That the possibility had never occurred to me? That I was not, in fact, on a diet right now, the same one I'd been on for the past six months and stuck to rigorously until nine o'clock every night? And who was she to talk to me about my weight? She was a fattie, too! "You know what they say," she continued, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression! And inside of every fat person there's a thin person dying to get out!"

I bent down and s.n.a.t.c.hed my backpack off the floor. What kind of first impression did she think she was making, with her calendar of kittens thumbtacked to the wall (Hang in there! read the legend beneath the little white kitty clinging to a branch) and her dyed-blond Mamie Eisenhower bob that had remained unchanged in all the years she'd been at Pleasant Ridge High? "I've got math," I said.

Ms. Demmick's plump face softened. "Addie. I can see I've hurt your feelings. That wasn't my intention. I only..."

... wanted to help, I filled in as I walked into the crowded hall and let her door slam shut behind me. Sure. They all just wanted to help: the doctor, my mother, those boys who followed me down the halls, oinking-just trying to help! The girls I'd overheard in the bathroom-I mean, she's got to weigh, like, two hundred pounds! That's almost two of me! giggle, giggle-just offering their a.s.sistance! The world was just bursting with Good Samaritans, all of them dying to help out poor fat Addie Downs.

"Addie?" Val said from the driver's seat.

I pulled myself back to the present, to the heated seats of the Jaguar, to my old best friend sitting beside me. "Who'd Dan come with?" I asked.

"Chip Mason," she answered.

"First we'll check around the country club. Maybe he's on the side of the road. Then we'll go to Chip's."

"Can we stop for doughnuts first?" She looked at me, wide-eyed and hopeful.

I bit back another gust of laughter. Vehicular manslaughter, then baked goods. Sure thing! Why not? It sounded like fun, and I hadn't had any of that in a very long time.

TWELVE.