Gone, Gone, Gone Page 9

  Amelia makes small talk about movies. I nod and say a few words when I can. We order, and I get chicken in some kind of wine sauce. It’s in the price range my dad would like, but it feels really gay. I feel like Amelia can tell, even though of course she doesn’t say anything.

  Really, I ordered it because it has the shortest name on the menu. Seriously, I’m pathological.

  “So how are you liking D.C.?” she asks.

  People around here have a weird habit of calling it D.C. This is Maryland.

  I say, “It’s okay.”

  The food tastes like something an old person would eat, but it’s not so bad, really, just suspiciously easy to chew. I get self-conscious about how many sips I take from my water glass and how many times I have to wipe my mouth on the scratchy napkin. We’re not talking anymore, and for the first time ever, I hate it. I hate the silence and I hate this date. Why did I let my sisters force me into this?

  It’s not like they pushed very hard. I folded.

  I was afraid of saying no to something I would like. And look where that got me. I think I need to figure out what it is, exactly, I would like.

  Besides a boy who won’t have me.

  I make a lot of efforts to smile at Amelia.

  The evening’s ending. Our plates are empty enough to not be embarrassing. She says she doesn’t want dessert, and I don’t drink coffee, so I guess that’s it. She sees me checking my watch. “Is your dad going to pick you up?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call him. You?”

  “Oh, I live just a little bit away, through the woods. I’m going to walk.”

  I look up quickly. “You’re going to walk through the woods?”

  “Yeah.” She must catch my expression. She laughs a little, back in her throat. She sounds old. Old enough for the food. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Lio. Don’t get paranoid like . . . I’ll be fine.”

  I say, “Listen, my dad can drop you off.”

  “No, really. I brought shoes to walk in and everything. It’ll help me burn off some of this dinner.” She laughs. But she didn’t eat that much, not enough to die for.

  I say, “Hey . . . please?”

  She blows me off again, and I don’t know any other ways to ask.

  Dad calls me when he’s at the door. I run to the car.

  “Did you have fun?” he asks me.

  I nod and look out the window. Amelia’s in the woods, alone.

  She is probably, probably, probably not going to get shot.

  Unless she gets shot, I don’t think I’ll remember her in a few years. But if she gets shot, I’ll remember. I’ll regret it forever. I’ll get fucked up again.

  Breathe.

  Statistics. It is statistically impossible that she will die.

  This is how I calm myself down.

  Breathe.

  Theo was a fluke.

  Cody’s dad shouldn’t have died.

  What do two flukes make?

  “Dad?” I say.

  He glances at me while he drives. His eyebrows are all together.

  I say, “Are you scared?”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” I look out the window again.

  He doesn’t ask me if I’m scared. I hope that’s because he knows, not because he thinks I already have a therapist and he doesn’t need to know.

  He reaches underneath my cap and messes up my hair. I haven’t had a cigarette in days, and it’s really getting to me. But I’m too scared to step outside and smoke one. If my dad knew I smoked, he’d eat me alive. He’d cry.

  CRAIG

  I SLEEP.

  I sleep.

  Heavy, breathless, unbelievable, I sleep.

  I sleep.

  That was a horrible dream.

  I look at my clock: 3:27 a.m. As soon as I swing my feet onto the floor, cold floor cold feet cold Craig, Kremlin starts pawing at my leg. No time like the present, so I hook the dogs up to their leashes and disable our new fancy burglar alarm. I make sure the cats don’t get out, and we go for a run.

  I wish I were a good runner.

  In my dream, Cody was screaming at me to run faster, and I don’t know what the metaphorical significance of this is because nothing about running ever happened to us. I could make it into some extended thing about me running into the Pentagon, but that feels like a stretch. A huge stretch, like a full stretch further than a regular stretch, even.

  I don’t think he and his father were that close. They never seemed to be. Once I saw them scream at each other so hard Cody’s throat went raw, and that was when I was there, when company was there, and even though I didn’t like to think of myself as company in my boyfriend’s house, his mom kept going, “Quiet, quiet, we have company!” but they didn’t listen. God knows what they did when I wasn’t there. One time Cody showed up with a big bruise across his mouth and asked if he could sleep over, but that and the time he hit me are the only evidence I have, and even evidence isn’t proof.

  For a while after September 11th, it looked like he was going to be okay. Once they gave up hope that Mr. Carter was coming home—and that took a long time—he and his mom squished together and supported each other. Cody came over to my house all the time, and that was nice, to see him, to have a chance to make things right. He was sad. We’d bake cookies. We’d have sex. We’d watch stupid movies, we’d cry, we’d fall asleep. We slept, in my bed upstairs, in my room upstairs.

  Then around January he started to forget where he’d put things, kind of like Dad does, except Cody never had a head injury. And then he was returning phone calls I never made, and then he stopped sleeping. Stopped sleeping completely, and that was the beginning of the end, I guess. He lost his mind and maybe it’s never coming back. At least, it’s probably never coming back to me.

  He hasn’t emailed.

  Why am I such a slow runner?

  If I continue not to sleep, maybe I’ll totally lose it and get shipped out to where he is. And I’ll see what he’s seen, and it’ll be like I’m being him, like I understand. And someone will finally, finally, bring me to him. I’m so lame. Someone has to bring me to him? I’m not a damsel in distress. I could go. I could hop on a bus or go with his mom next time she invites me or I could beg Mom and somehow I could go.

  I’m not going to go, but maybe I’ll go insane.

  My neighborhood is eerie and dark, but it’s familiar, and I’m only circling it over and over. And, to be honest, more people have their lights on than I would have expected at this time of night. It’s like they set out beacons for me.

  The dogs are faster than I am. I’ll never understand how dogs can be so fast. These dogs could outrun me forever. I should have tied them up out back. They’re going to get me so tired and I’ll pass out and die, and then what?

  Then what?

  I stop in front of a house I don’t know and pant with my hands on my knees. I feel my shoulder blades pressing against my sweater every time I breathe in. Maybe they’ll turn into wings and I can fly away. Then I’d beat the dogs.

  It’s not that I really want to beat the dogs, it’d just be nice to know that I could.

  I hear a soft growl, and I look to make sure the dogs are okay, but it’s a car, old and slow, trembling its way across the block.

  Its lights are off.

  It comes toward me. It has tinted windows and I can’t see the driver.

  I straighten up.

  It drives past me, wheels clanking. I can hear the torn-up tar on the sides of the sidewalk crunching under the tires. It gives me a half second of a heart attack, and then it’s gone. That’s what it left me with, a fucking half-second heart attack and then my heartbeat back and loud and clear, going you’re stupid you’re stupid you’re stupid.

  I stay out to see the sunrise, and when I get home . . . oh shit. My parents, both of them in their flannel pajamas, the ones I guess they wear when they’re not going to have sex. I wish they’d had sex. That’s really gross, but maybe they wouldn’t be glarin
g at me if they had.

  But they probably would be. I think adults can probably have sex and a life at the same time, which is sort of a foreign concept for me.

  “Where the hell were you?” my dad says.

  I hold up the dog leashes.

  My father says, “Jesus, Craig. Can you really be this incredibly oblivious?”

  “I’m not oblivious. I’m also not going to let my dogs, like, atrophy because a few people have been shot.”

  “A few innocent people!” my father says. “A few people who were shot for absolutely no reason except for where they happened to be.”

  But . . . but, no, I’m calling bullshit, because entire lives are determined by where we happen to be. It’s the only reason we care about the cities we care about. God, it’s the only reason we fall in love. It’s where you happen to be. I’m not going to spend my whole life fucking freaking out about it.

  “I’m not going to get shot,” I say. “You’re not actually sitting here thinking that I’m going to get shot, come on.”

  Mom has her head in her hands. She says, “I know you’re not. But you scared your father and me to death.”

  “But what are you scared of, if you know I’m not going to get shot?”

  Mom breathes out. “I know it must seem to you like there are so many other people out there who could be—”

  God, Lio and my mom and everyone need to shut up about numbers, I don’t care, I don’t care, I just care that I’m not going to die because I’m not.

  I don’t think I’m ever going to believe that I’m vulnerable the way other people are vulnerable, and fine, that’s stupid. I get it. But all this shit keeps happening and I’m still here, so what else am I supposed to even think? I shut the door to the basement and tramp down the stairs. Fine. It’s stupid. But I don’t know how to change it. I don’t know how to convince myself that I could be like the people I see on the news or the people I imagine at Cody’s school. Do I need to put a gun to my own head to feel it? I’m not going to die, and this is my life, and I feel it in my fucking bones, so am I supposed to understand how it’s possible to not be alive? Being alive is all that I am.

  This is all such bullshit. Hiding. Running in zigzags. The only thing I have to do is be me. That’s the way to not get shot. Be self-aware. I don’t mean that the dead people didn’t have a sense of identity or something. I just mean . . .

  I don’t know.

  They weren’t me.

  I’m not going to die.

  And I know how stupid it sounds, but even when I try to convince myself that it’s the dumbest way ever to think, I can’t talk myself out of it. It’s the same voice that keeps me from killing myself every time I want to a little. If I’m dead, who’s going to be me?

  My cousins were supposed to visit this Sunday from Pennsylvania, but now they’re not because their parents don’t think it’s safe to be in Maryland. They’re worried about the kids, and it’s so stupid, because no one’s been shot since Friday, and he lived, and there haven’t been any kids.

  “Your kids are safe at school.” The police chief said so himself. I mean, if anyone knows, it’s him. They’re probably safer here than in Pittsburgh, if you take air pollution into account, and the fact that if you trip in Pittsburgh you’ll probably get, like, speared through by a fucking piece of steel or some shit like that.

  No emails from anybody, except that old one from Lio still sitting in my inbox. I’ll answer it later, I will, I will I will I will. That movie we wanted to see, Phone Booth? They’re postponing the release because they think it’ll be too upsetting this close to the shootings. I bet Lio’s really pissed off and confused about that, because even I can’t believe the rest of the country even knows about the shootings, since I bet the same number of people have died in every single state in the United States this week, probably more, so God knows why they’re postponing a movie because of us. I really am starting to sound like Lio, I think, and I wonder if that means I’m starting to think like him too. I’m wondering what it’s like in Lio’s head.

  The shootings are on the news stations, all the time, which is how I guess the whole world knows. It’s like, weather, sniper, sports, sniper, international, sniper, local? No, local means more sniper. Can’t they report something different? It’s been days since anyone was shot, and I really don’t need to think about this all the time, but it’s getting to be like a song that’s stuck in my head, which is such a crude way of putting something where people are dying, I know, but with the news stories and ads for bulletproof vests and my father’s phone ringing again and again, it’s not as if I’m the first one making this vulgar.

  Li—

  I don’t know what to say to you. You were really an asshole. You’re probably still really an asshole while you’re reading this.

  I guess D.C. is more important to me not even because of Cody’s dad, but because it was D.C. and that was where I was.

  But it did suck about Cody’s dad. But you didn’t know that.

  You did know I was in D.C. so you should probably assume that I give a shit about things that happened here.

  Sorry if I insulted New York. But this is your home now, you know? Wheaton, Maryland, that’s yours.

  Craig

  He IMs me Sunday afternoon. This isnt my home. Im always gonna be from NYC.

  I reply: From NY yea but not in NY.

  home is where the you know

  I guess

  So his heart isn’t here. I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, neither is mine, really, right?

  And it was only a kiss. God, what would I have done with his heart, anyway? Knowing me . . .

  Before I try to sleep on Sunday night, I give Mrs. Carter a call. She’s got to be so lonely in that house by herself, no Cody, no husband. When I ran into her at the grocery store, her cart was practically empty. One tangerine, one thing of yogurt, one toothbrush, and all those avocados.

  “Craig,” she says. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, you know, yeah, I’m fine. Mostly I’m looking for all of my animals.” And then I tell her about all of the animals, and she says something about how she doesn’t remember me having all of them back when “she used to see me all the time,” and we both dance around the subject of why she doesn’t see me much anymore and why the animals are around now when they weren’t then. And what it could possibly mean that those animals are no longer around.

  Or I dance around it, because I guess she couldn’t possibly know most of that. But she makes sympathetic noises in the right places and then she asks me about the sniper, which I guess was what she meant the first time she asked how I was.

  She says, “God, I worry about you kids in a time like this. I still remember when JFK was assassinated. I was scarred for years after that.”

  What does JFK have to do with anything? Maybe she’s losing her mind too, and I can’t decide if that would be a bad thing, because maybe she and Cody could be together then? Did she know JFK or something?

  I say, “I was just wondering if maybe you’ve heard from Cody lately.”

  “Yep, he called yesterday. They had a dance at his school; isn’t that nice? He sounded like he had a good time.”

  Oh, God. He met a boy. No wonder he hasn’t been emailing. He has some boy and they danced all night like Eliza Doolittle and . . . whoever she danced with.

  I say, “That’s great. Did you tell him I said hi?”

  She says, “Oh, you know what? It might have slipped my mind. I thought you were still talking to him.”

  “I am.” I breathe out. “He hasn’t emailed me in a few days, so . . . yeah. That’s why I called, I guess. To make sure he’s okay.”

  Her voice softens. “Aw, honey, I’m sorry. I’m sure he’s just been busy. You know, he has a lot to do right now, with his junior year.”

  She keeps pretending he’s in normal school.

  “I know,” I say. “I didn’t call to make you apologize for him, really. I was really just making
sure he was okay.”

  “He’s fine,” she says. “Cody’s fine.”

  Yeah. “Okay. Thanks. Tell him I said hi?”

  She says she will.

  Maybe I’ll play therapist with myself. Maybe that’ll help. I mean, if Cody’s all better, and Lio says it helps, I mean, maybe they’re onto something.

  Cody’s happy.

  And how do you feel about that?

  Really good. I used to do everything I could to make him happy, you know? One time I cranked one of those ice-cream makers by hand for hours and hours because they didn’t have mint chocolate chip at the store and that was the kind that he wanted. And his smile made it all worth it. And when he was happy, it was so, so good. So it really is good that he’s happy now. That’s what I wanted all along. The problem is that he’s happy because of a dance, which probably means that he met a new boy.

  And how do you feel about that?

  Really shitty. I thought we were made for each other. But it’s not like I was sitting here waiting for him, or maybe I was, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be, or if I still am.

  And how do you feel about that?

  Lonely. Bored.

  And how do you feel about that?

  I feel like this is stupid.

  Am I four years old? All I do is cry and say things are stupid.

  I’m stupid.

  LIO

  I’M IN HISTORY ON MONDAY WHEN MY CELL PHONE starts buzzing. Luckily, we’re in the middle of a rousing conversation about Rochambeau, so no one hears it vibrate in my pocket.

  At that moment, we hear the bing of our teacher’s email, and he goes to his desk and checks it. He frowns, but he doesn’t tell us anything.

  The buzz and the bing are connected. I know it immediately.

  I fake a sneeze and duck into the hallway to fake-blow my nose.

  I check my phone. Michelle.

  She’s already sobbing when my phone connects to hers. She doesn’t even wait for me to say hi and then start crying. That’s when I realize it’s real.