Admission (25 page)

WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE IN MIND?

Jake no longer tried to sound civil. No longer tried to appear agreeable. All he wanted and needed was to be rid of everything and everyone.

The last five days had been like a smear across a freshly painted picture. What should have been the warm and beautiful start of summer and beginning of his adult life had been smudged with Carnie’s wake and funeral in Tennessee. Meeting family and friends, crying and being cried on, walking in silent numbness, all the while just wanting to get out of there. Jake and Bruce had just gotten back from the twelve-hour drive. And Jake wanted to get real drunk real fast.

He had graduated, yet had not received any diploma. Nobody said his name out loud last Saturday morning except for the shouting, shrieking voice of Carnie’s father when Jake spoke to him on the phone and delivered the news.

“It shouldn’t work out like this,” Bruce’s voice said across from him.

But Jake didn’t care. He didn’t give a rip. He could try to be cute or coy but those days were gone. Long gone.

You’re not the man you used to be
.

Amen to that.

You and I weren’t meant to be together
.

Hallelujah.

I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a liar
.

Yeah, sure, but you’re a deserter.

Do you really think there is a hell?

And I don’t know, I don’t know anymore, because if there is, I’m really afraid now, I’m terrified, because what then what then WHAT THEN, CARNIE?

You’re going to get what you deserve
.

Jake drank. Of all the things he could do or should have done, he sat in Shaughnessy’s drinking. Sitting across from Bruce, having a beer, a smoke, trying to comprehend the carnage that had taken place this past semester.

“You still gonna go to Europe?” Bruce asked.

“I have to get outta this place. This country.”

“You going with Franklin and Shane?”

“No. I’ve said four words to Franklin this past month. The guy never said a word to me about Carnie. Not a word.”

Jake felt anger but knew he couldn’t put it anywhere. All he could try to do was swallow it, drink it up, and let the drinking numb his pain.

He had found Carnie’s body five days ago. His roommate had taken an entire bottle of prescription medication and given nobody a reason why. There was no note, nothing.

And in the black and blue and blurry days since, all Jake could conclude was that Carnie felt guilt from Brian’s disappearance. That maybe he was the cause.

What about your own guilt?

Carnie had done something about his. Now Jake just sat back and did what he had always done. What his whole life had led to. This grand, climactic moment. Lots of people had adventures and went on quests and sought out their hopes and their dreams and their loves and their lives, but he sat in a bar across from a half-baked stoner doing nothing and saying nothing and giving nothing back.

Nothing. Everything turned out to be nothing. Hemingway said it and Kurt Cobain said it and his entire angry generation said it.

Nothing

He had lived twenty-two years for nothing. Carnie was the brave one because he had checked himself out permanently.

Liar

Bruce tried to talk a little more, but Jake was done. Bruce didn’t understand what was going on. Perhaps his stoned mind just couldn’t comprehend the guilt and the madness overflowing in Jake.

Sinner

All Jake could do was drink. And even after Bruce left, calling a cab because he knew he was too drunk and telling Jake to do the same, Jake kept it up. He didn’t care anymore.

Though it all looks different now, I know it’s still the same
.

At some point, he played darts with a seventy-year-old man who laughed at him. The guy told him not to drive back home, but Jake lived ten minutes away and, come on, who cared anyway.

On the drive home, the night lights bright and shiny and rapidly passing by, he blared Nine Inch Nails. It was angry and agitated and fit his mood.

Thank you, Trent, thanks a lot for adding to my pain
.

He thought of his last drive with Alec.

Where are you, Alec?

The farewell to Mike in the parking lot. The tears and the hug from Shane. The rest of them.

The rest of who?

You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? You did this to me and I know you did. You take every good thing away from me and I never deserved any of this.

The drive seemed longer. The roads felt stranger.

I didn’t do this on purpose and I never meant for it to work out this way
.

He cranked up the stereo.

Hear me?

He passed a slow-moving car.

Hear me up there out there mystical magical man?

He opened his sunroof and felt the gush of air blow down on him.

Are you there and I don’t think you are I bet you aren’t I bet my life you aren’t
.

“Grey would be the color if I had a heart …”
the singer sang.

Is there a hell

He could see Carnie’s face after he asked, a haunting, needing, desperate face looking toward him for something he couldn’t give him.

Is there a hell because if there is maybe I’ll find out maybe I’ll be seeing maybe I’ll be checking in soon maybe I’ll be seeing you Carnie see you Carnie see you Alec I’m coming

Flying, speeding, racing, cursing, gripping, bracing, Jake in his Honda CRX jumped the curb and tore through the ten-foot shrubbery lining the street and then clipped a tree and rolled.

I’m down to just one thing
, the voice on the stereo still screamed out,
and I’m starting to scare myself
.

THE SUN SHONE
on the courtyard outside the library on Providence campus. I sat on the edge of a cement bench, watching Alec come up the walk.

“You can pull off miracles, you know that?” Alec said.

In another life, this might have been our farewell. Me graduating, saying good-bye to Bruce and Mike and Shane and Kirby and Franklin
and Carnie
. And finally wishing Alec a happy-ever-after.

It was another thought, another life.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“You got me to come back. I never thought I’d set foot on this campus again.”

Alec sat on a cement bench facing mine and lit up a cigarette. His eyes squinted from the sun. “So why’d you want to come back here?”

“I wanted you to see it in daylight.”

Alec only laughed.

“Honestly? Because I’ve been to more bars and pubs and clubs in the last month than I have in the last ten years.”

Alec laughed. “I feel like I should be having a beer for this conversation.”

“We’ve had very few without being inebriated.”

“Yeah.”

The campus was still today, with students out for the summer and most of the faculty either on vacation or in their offices working. I never could remember just sitting on campus and looking around, enjoying the tranquility. I never pictured my college days in sunny serenity. I remembered the shadows.

“How’d it go with the cops?”

Alec shrugged. “I told them everything. I know you did too.”

“And Franklin?”

“He was released on bail. Should be interesting. They’re going to want me—want all of us—to testify.”

“I know.”

“Guess I can’t disappear then, huh?”

“Probably not.”

Alec smiled and took a drag from his smoke. “I gotta go back home,” he said.

“And where’s that?”

“Well—going back to see my mom. She’s still living in Florida.”

“And Claire?”

“She broke things off a few weeks ago. Things were, in her words, ‘a bit too intense.’”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means we’re over. And Mr. Jelen doesn’t have to worry about me being his son-in-law.”

I nodded. For a while we sat in silence, each waiting for the other to speak. Alec broke the quiet.

“I never did get a chance to explain my New Year’s Eve voice mail.”

“I’m still waiting,” I said.

“Carnie told me what happened near the end, before I left. Back then—I don’t know. It didn’t seem like a big deal … in light of everything. But I got it wrong. I should have said something. But I was—messed up.”

“We all were,” I said.

“It wasn’t just the drinking. It was something worse.”

“What’s that?’

“Selfishness. Arrogance. All those things I’ve been guilty of all my life. It just—the stuff he said didn’t mean anything to me because it didn’t affect me.”

I waited.

“You remember the night you got beat up?”

“Sorta hard to forget.”

“Before the end—before I took off—remember how Carnie just suddenly stopped being around? We all assumed it was because of what happened on spring break. And that was part of it. But there was more.”

“How so?”

“Carnie got liquored up one night and told me how he was outside of the apartment the night you got the snot beat out of you. He was in his car and saw Brian and his buddy storm inside.”

I looked at Alec and tried to think for a minute. “Did he know what they were going to do?”

Alec nodded. “It was pretty obvious.”

“But … I don’t get it.”

“I didn’t either. Carnie told me this, and he was bawling, man. I mean, he was a wreck. It was weird to see this big guy crying like a baby. I was like, ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ and all he could say was that he was scared.”

“Carnie? Scared?”

Alec nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said. That’s what we all thought. Big guy who could crack anybody’s skull. But he was—well, Brian freaked him out.”

“There’s no way.”

“That’s what he told me. He felt responsible for what happened to you that night. That was why—that was why he was bothered so much by everything that happened afterward.”

“I don’t get it. Why couldn’t he have just—just come into the building—”

“He did. He heard you yelling out and screaming.”

I looked out across the campus. I could picture Carnie and me ambling our way to a class, sharing a smoke, trying to walk off a hangover, planning what we’d do that night. With Carnie
by my side, I always felt somewhat invincible. I couldn’t believe Alec’s words.

“So you see why—you see why he—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. I wiped my eyes and sighed. My heart felt heavy. “Everything that happened—all of this—it was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“In a sense it was. I provoked stuff with Brian so that it escalated. Everything that happened afterwards—”

“Was
not
all your doing. Franklin’s going to jail, and you’re not.”

“I thought it would be easier,” I said.

“What?”

“Finding out the truth.”

“I never wanted to get back into all of that.”

“Me neither. But God has a way of putting things in your life you don’t want.”

Alec laughed.

“What?”

“Jake—come on. You really buy all of that stuff?”

“I have to believe it. It’s not a choice.”

“Why?” Alec asked.

“Because if I don’t—if it’s nothing—then I gotta cope with blood on my hands. Don’t you get it? It’s selfish, I guess. But if these mistakes and sins can’t be taken away—then I’m stuck with them. I’ll live my whole life with these things on my soul.”

“Yeah. But what if you don’t have a soul?”

“Then I go to my grave guilty.”

“You’re not guilty,” Alec said.

“We’re all guilty.”

“I don’t think so. They did it to themselves.”

“That makes you no different than Carnie.”

“How so?”

“You’ll die without hope.”

“I won’t
kill
myself.”

“Maybe not. But twenty—forty—sixty years from now—you’ll die. And then what? Then what?”

“Blackness.”

“I don’t want to go my whole life without hope, Alec. I did it for almost thirty years. I didn’t want to keep going. Not believing in something. Without believing that the pain I held—those awful memories—those failures that haunted me—that they couldn’t go away.”

“Have they?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale. Or a good shrink.”

“You remember the last thing—the last conversation we had? When you almost killed us in the car?”

Alec thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“You said that you might be a lot of things, but you weren’t a liar.”

“I’m not.”

“Same goes for me, Alec. I’m not lying. Especially not to you. We’ve gone through too much for me to start preaching something I don’t believe. I know when the time comes, something will be on the other end.”

“Maybe.”

“I want to see you there.”

Alec nodded, silent, looking up at the sky.

“We’re no different, you know,” I said.

“Yeah, we are,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.

“No, we’re not. We’re all in the same boat. A leaky boat that’s sinking. Going down until someone rescues us.”

“Until someone judges us. If God does exist, the only thing He’s going to want to do with me is send me straight down to hell.”

“And that’s what we deserve. That realization drove me to my knees.”

“I don’t particularly want to get down on my knees,” Alec said.

I didn’t know how to respond, wondering if I’d already said too much. The words sounded strange coming from my lips, my heart trying not to be trite or superficial or hypocritical. I just knew that if I never had another chance and if I let things pass just as I had with Carnie, I might never be able to get over that guilt.

I thought that this was all I could say for the moment, then I remembered the last words that I took away from Providence College, the very last words that haunted me years afterward and then finally ended up comforting me.

The last words I thought I’d ever hear from Alyssa Roberts.

I said them to Alec in the most honest, matter-of-fact way I could. “That’s all I can offer you, man,” I finished. “That’s all I know to do.”

“Yeah.”

And after what could have been an awkward embrace but turned into a strong bear hug that surprised me, I said goodbye to the friend I knew as Alec.