Five Minutes More (17 page)

I take a couple more steps back. I don't want to listen. And I can't talk to her. She isn't going to understand. Not about my dad. Not about my life. “Just leave me alone,” I say.
My voice sounds far away, like it's coming over one of those tin-can-and-string telephones I used to play with.

Marissa moves closer. “Talk to me,” she pleads. “Please, D'Arcy.”

I feel something heavy and dark pressing, pressing inside of me. I try to push it away, push Marissa's words away, but she's right in my face now. I turn my head away.

Just as fast she shoves my shoulders. “D'Arcy, stop it! Stop zoning me out. Talk to me! Talk to me!”

“He killed himself!” Through my teeth, over my lips. Somehow the words get out, angry, loud and hard.

Marissa is frozen in place, her eyes filled with tears, her arms hanging as if her anger has just blown away. I keep looking at her until she looks away, and then I go. This time she doesn't follow me.

I kick off my boots, drop my stuff on the table and open the fridge door. There isn't much in the refrigerator. I settle for bread and Cheez Whiz that's about as easy to spread as orange Play Doh. I lean sideways over the sink and eat so I don't have to use a plate, and I have a couple of mouthfuls of red wine and then drink some orange juice from the carton to get rid of the taste.

I'm on my second piece of bread when the doorbell rings. “Go away,” I say, even though the person out there can't hear me.

It rings again, and then a third time. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, I can still hear it. I go to the front door and look through the peephole.

Marissa.

“Go away,” I whisper.

She pushes the bell once more. I open the door, and we stare at each other through the screen.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, and the shiny pink lip gloss she always wears has been chewed off. “D'Arcy, I'm so sorry,” she says. “I had no idea your dad...” She doesn't finish.

Did she ring my doorbell four times just to tell me something I already know?

“I know you're upset. I understand now.”

“No, you don't.” Did I say that out loud? “I'm sick of people saying they understand when there's no way they can.”

She sucks in a shaky breath. “I want to help.”

I smack the screen with both hands. She jumps.

“Stop,” I shout. “Doesn't anyone hear me when I'm talking? You. Don't. Understand.” I spit each word at her. She winces. “You don't know how I feel. You can't help me.”

Her eyes fill with tears. A couple slide down her cheek. “Just let me come in,” she pleads. “Just...just talk to me. Please, D'Arcy.”

I put my hands over my ears and shake my head hard. “I don't want to talk.” I want to scream at her, but if I do I might never stop. I suck in my top lip and bite it hard before I open my eyes. “You can't ever understand. So leave me alone.”

I slam the door and lean against it. After a minute I look out the living room window. Marissa is leaning against one of the railing posts on the verandah. I can't see her face but her shoulders are shaking. I think maybe I hurt her feelings, but there isn't any way I can fix that.

It's after seven o'clock when my mother gets home. I hear her moving around downstairs but I just stay on my bed with my chemistry book. I'm not studying or anything, but it looks good.

She walks into my room without knocking. “I thought we agreed, no more cutting class,” she says. No “Hello dear, how was your day?” I know by her voice that she's pissed. Not that she's yelling or anything like that. When she's mad, her voice gets flat and steady. That's how I know.

“I was sick,” I say.

“I know what the assembly was about, D'Arcy,” she says.

“I was sick,” I repeat.

“I understand why you didn't want to sit through that. But you can't just disappear for the whole day. You're grounded— for the rest of the week and this weekend. I straightened things out at school. You pull something like this again and I won't.” She picks at a piece of loose skin on the side of her thumb. “It happened, D'Arcy. Life goes on. We have to go on.”

I just sit there, silent.

As my mother turns to go, she says, “I found a plate, to replace that one you broke, from one of those discontinued china places online. I've ordered it to be sent to Claire. You owe me seventy-six dollars altogether.”

“Claire said she didn't want a replacement.”

Mom stops. Her shoulders tense. “I don't care what Claire said. You will replace what you broke.”

I push my chemistry text aside. “She didn't deserve—”

She doesn't let me finish. “Seventy-six dollars, D'Arcy. I want it by the end of the week.”

“What are you doing?”

My mother's voice makes me jump. I'm by the back door, lacing up my black boots. I turn and look up at her in the doorway. She's changed into jeans and a gray sweatshirt.

“I'm going for a walk,” I say, standing up.

“You're grounded.” She bites the end of each word. “You're not going anywhere.”

I put on my beanie hat and pull my gloves out of my pocket.

“D'Arcy, did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah,” I say. I zip up my jacket. “I'm going for a walk.”

Mom grabs my arm. “You're not leaving this house.”

A rushing sound fills my head, like the beating wings of a thousand hummingbirds. “I'm not listening to you anymore.” I hear my voice getting louder. “You never listen to me. I don't have to listen to you!”

She lets go of my arm as though it was suddenly hot. “D'Arcy, go to your room.” She says each word slowly, as though I were deaf or stupid.

“No. Do you think anything you say matters to me anymore?” I'm shouting. “Yeah, I ran out of that assembly. Then I ran to the girl's bathroom and puked up my breakfast. You didn't want to hear that. You grounded me for getting sick.” It's hard to get my breath.

“And...and how long did it take you to find that...that stupid plate for Claire.”

She doesn't say a word. She just stands there, arms hanging by her side.

“You're supposed to be on my side, Mom. Not hers. She didn't deserve anything.” Tears are making everything blurry. “You gave her Daddy's watch. You took it off of.... and you gave it to Claire. How could you do that?”

The pain hits as though someone had come up behind me and taken a good whack at my head with a two-by-four. I want my dad. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I whisper over and over, pressing my hand to the back of my head, digging in the fingers.

“D'Arcy,” Mom says. She tries to put her arms around me but I push her away hard. She stumbles against the side of the kitchen table. “Listen to me,” she starts.

But I talk right over her. I am full up to the back of my throat, full of words and feelings that I've swallowed, and now there isn't enough space left inside to hold it all. I am vomiting words.

“I don't want to listen to you,” I shout, right in her face. “I don't want you. I want Daddy. Why did I have to be left with you? I hate you.”

Mom's hand snaps out like a whip, cracking the side of my face. In all my life, no one has ever hit me.

The coffeepot is sitting on the counter next to the sink with a puddle of cold coffee from this morning still in the bottom. I grab it and fling it against the wall. The glass smashes into dozens of tiny pieces, just the way my life has.

I run out of the room and just keep on going. Out of the house. Away.

I walk across the park, up one street and down another as it gets darker. I end up at the Majestic without even thinking about it.

I check the pockets of my jacket and find a wadded-up twenty in the little inside zippered one. I join the end of the line that's edging toward the box office. I don't bother looking up to see what movie's playing. I don't care.

Someone touches my arm. “D'Arcy?”

I suck in a breath and take a step back, bumping the woman ahead of me. “Sorry,” I mumble, holding up a hand to show her I wasn't trying to knock her down on purpose. I see the wheelchair out of the corner of my eye before I get completely turned around.

“It is you.” Andrew smiles up at me from the chair. “I didn't mean to scare you. I just wanted to see if you're all right.”

I can barely hear what Andrew's saying. In my head I see the man, that day at the meeting, with the drool going down his face, except it's not his face. It's my father's.

I take a step back. Andrew reaches out his hand—the one with the brace. For a second I don't see his hand, I don't see him in the chair. I see Dad. “D'Arcy,” Andrew says. But I don't hear his voice. I hear my dad's.

I turn and run.

I run until my chest burns, until every breath scrapes like sandpaper. I run until my legs start to shake. I have to keep moving. I keep my hands in the pockets of my jacket, jammed against my stomach to help hold me together.

My dad is everywhere inside my head. I can see him. I can hear him.

The car. His foot on the gas. That long bank down to the water. I see him undoing his seatbelt. I see the car rolling over and over. My eyes are open, but I can see it. Was there time to know it was the last second of his life? And if there was, was he sorry? Did he think about me?

My legs finally give out. I bend over, hands on my shaking knees, and try to catch my breath without puking. When I straighten up, I see that I'm at the top of the hill, beside the wall of the old hospital, where Seth and I were this afternoon. I pull myself up and look for the gap in the bushes where the path starts. I follow it up the rise. Back to that partly broken section of wall.

I sit and tuck my legs against my chest, wrapping my arms around them to stay warm. No one'll care that I'm here.

After a few minutes, a girl walks over to me. “Got any cigarettes?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Just one?”

“I don't smoke. Sorry.”

“It's okay.” She smiles at me. “They kill you, anyway.”

I watch her go back to her friends—another girl and three boys clustered around a bench under a dim streetlight on the slope near the old hospital driveway.

She must be cold. She's wearing a baggy pair of painter's pants and a stretched-out old pink sweater with the sleeves pulled down around her hands. I watch her talking to the
others; the way she stands, legs apart, the breasts she barely has shoved forward.

They're passing a bottle around. I watch it going around the circle and think about having a drink, that heat burning away the ache in my stomach, burning away all of these feelings I don't know what to do with. Maybe I should go talk to them.

One of the guys takes a long pull from the bottle, then says something, and the girl who was looking for a cigarette laughs really loud and tosses her head so all the uneven layers of hair around her face fly out. He gets up and takes a couple of steps in my direction. She grabs his arm, but he swings her around and suddenly he's doing the grabbing.

He kisses her on the mouth, hard, pulling her head back with one hand caught in her hair. The others laugh. She shoves him away, then spits and wipes her mouth against her shoulder, which brings more laughing. He sits down again, but I see him look over at me as he does.

My pulse starts to twitch in the little hollow space at the bottom of my neck. I lean forward and search the ground for the broken bottle I remember from this afternoon. When I find it, I pick through the few small shards of glass from the middle, where it broke. I find a piece about three inches long, shaped like an arrowhead with a jagged point. I fold my hand carefully around it, the point extending beyond the crease of my thumb. Then I curl up on the old foundation again.

After a while, I don't know how long, I hear an engine and the sound of a muffler that's not working right. I look up the slope to the road and see an old van pull up and stop
at the turn. Kids are clustered around the back door before it even opens. I hear voices and more laughing. I turn away and watch the lights down below on the bridge. I count sets of headlights.