Flash Burnout (24 page)

I head back home.
How many times how many times how many times
rings through my head.

Always back up your images. It's not a question of
if
you'll lose important photos, but
when.
—Spike McLernon's Laws of Photography

I stay in my room the rest of the day. I spend the whole time trying to write a letter to Shannon. There must be some way to explain. Some combination of words that will make her understand that sometimes things just happen, and that I really love her and will do whatever I have to to prove it.

So far I haven't figured out the right combination.

I try to listen to some tunes on my iPod, but I can't. I have never felt so bad that I couldn't listen to music. I've reached a new low.

My mom comes to the door after a couple of hours and knocks. "Honey?"

"I don't want to talk," I say.

When I go to take a leak later, I see that's she's left a bottle of Coke and a plastic container with a sandwich outside my door. The Dog Formerly Known as Prince is lying nearby. He sits up, wagging his tail as if to say,
I can haz sammich?

I pee, wash my hands, then come back and pick up the food.

Garrett's door is open. I find myself walking over to it without even meaning to.

"Hey," I mumble.

"Hey, Blake."

Great. If he's being all sensitive and not calling me Studly, he must know what happened.

I stand there for a minute, shuffling my feet. "Want to come in?" he asks.

I almost never go into Garrett's room, because of the smell. And because, well, he's forbidden me to. I step through the door, taking a tentative sniff. I don't smell farts or sweat, just a faint whiff of dog.

Garrett gestures to a beanbag chair on the floor, and I collapse into it, thinking,
I'll never get to share the soccer beanbag with Shannon again.

We sit there in silence. It's a relief. I don't feel like talking, and I appreciate that Garrett isn't questioning me.

He's IMing and studying. I can't concentrate on two things at one time like that, but he does it all the time.

I eat my sandwich and drink my Coke, belching a couple of times. When I'm finished, Garrett glances over at me and says, "You okay, man?"

I don't know what to say. Finally I shrug.

He studies me a second, then stands up. "Be right back," he says.

I stretch, then burrow deeper into the beanbag, feeling the tiniest bit better.

Garrett comes back into the room carrying a stack of DVD box sets. He hands them to me.

It's the first two seasons of
Doctor Who.
He knows they're my favorite, because Rose Tyler is in them.

"Want to watch in here?" he asks.

"Really?"

"Sure. I haven't seen those episodes in a long time."

"Thanks." I crawl out of the beanbag and put Season One, Disc One, in his DVD player.

When I become aware of the room again, Garrett is zonked out on his bed. It's four thirty. I've been watching Rose and the Doctor for three episodes. I crawl out of the beanbag and stretch, feeling my joints creak from not moving for so long.

Garrett starts up, blinking and disoriented. "What time is it?"

"Four thirty."

"Oh." He sinks back down on his pillow. "Man. I was sleeping hard. Having the weirdest dreams." He yawns.

"About what?"

"Wolves and forests and shit. Looking for something."

"Huh."

"I've got to snap out of it, though." He sits up groggily. "I've got a date tonight."

With Cappie?"

"Nah." He sees me looking at him and shrugs. "Not tonight. I'm going out with Aracely."

"Really?" I'm impressed. That girl is hotter than Dez Hayes. "The homecoming queen?"

"That's the one."

"
Damn,
" I say.

He chuckles. "She's really nice." He looks closer at me. "How you doin'?"

I blink. Oh yeah. For a while I forgot that my life was wrecked. "Fine."

"No. For reals."

I don't answer. It's all crashing back into me now: shame and guilt and sadness.

"Garrett?"

"Yes."

"I can't be like you."

He looks at me.

"I can't be with more than one person at a time."

"Ohhhh." He seems to understand now. "But you always said that Marissa was just a friend."

"She is!" I say automatically. "I mean she was. But then something happened. That day.
You
know."

He raises his eyebrows. He knows which day. "Ahh."

But it was just one time!"

He nods, even though we both know that just one time might as well be just fifty times.

"And Shannon found out today."

He shakes his head. "Brutal."

"I still don't even know how it happened," I say.

He nods.

"I mean, I never thought about, you know, doing it with Marissa. Really. I thought Shannon and I would—" I put my head in my hands. "I'm serious as a car crash, man. I still don't even know how it happened. It had something to do with all that other stuff. You know." I glance at the door and lower my voice. "That stuff at the morgue."

Garrett looks down at his hands. "Maybe—"

"Maybe what."

"It's something I've been thinking about lately."

"
What?
"

"Sex as medicine."

Blink. Blink. My brother is freakishly wise.

Just like that, I kind of understand. And I feel a glimmer of relief that someone else understands.

Not that it helps.

I'm still a loser who cheated on his girlfriend. But now I feel like a sliver in my soul has worked its way to the surface and I can throw it away.

***

I'm hungry again, but if I go downstairs, I'll see my parents, and I don't feel like talking. I hear Garrett leave for his date around six o'clock. I'm back in my room, curled up on my bed, letting Doctor Who take me on adventures.

I'm in the middle of Episode Four, where the Slitheen family have taken over the bodies of portly politicians so they can fit their alien bodies inside. It reminds me of the time Shannon was so bitchy I imagined her unzipping her forehead to reveal an alien inside. She never once farted in my presence, now that I think of it ... unlike the Slitheen.

There's a knock on my door.

I almost call out, "I don't want to talk," but figure I have to face them sometime, so I say, "Come in."

It's my dad. "You okay, bud?" he asks.

I shrug.

"What happened?"

I don't answer.

He sits down on my desk chair. "Mom told me Shannon ran out of here really upset."

I stare down at the floor.

"Blake, you didn't, uh, you didn't forget our little talk, did you?"

"What?" Confused.

"About no meaning no?"

"
Ohhh,
" I groan. "No, Da-ad! How could I ever forget our little talk? I'm still trying to stop convulsing."

He laughs. "Good. Hey, you made a joke. You must be going to live."

I find myself grinning a little. "I did, didn't I? And you laughed. One point." I score an invisible point in the air. Then I remember that I broke my girlfriend's heart today and I slam back into self-loathing. "She hates me," I mutter.

"Nooo." He leans over and rubs my arm. "How could she hate you?"

"She does." I feel tears squirt into my eyes. "She should." My dad wants to help.

But the truth is, I
am
a lying, cheating bastard. I deserve to feel horrible.

After my dad leaves, I load the last disc in Season Two, and I select the final episode, "Doomsday."

The one where Rose and the Doctor part ways.

Unauthorized substitution of parts could result in fire,
electrical shock, or other hazards.
—Mitsu ProShot I.S. 5.3 camera guide, 2007

I can't drop out of school. I can't run away from home. I can't join the Witness Protection Program.

But how am I going to face Shannon in public?

I've thought about calling her, oh, a hundred thousand times, probably. But I can't believe that she would talk to me. I've also thought about e-mailing her, oh, two hundred thousand times, at least. But what the hell would I say besides a bunch of empty sentences?
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.

Even I can hear how stupid they sound.
Sure, sorry you got caught, right. And if you didn't mean to hurt me, then why did you do it?

I lie awake in the dark as all of the day's terribleness hammers away at me. The image that stabs me over and over is Shannon's face when she realized the full extent of my betrayal.

When I wake up in the morning, I'm surprised to find that I ever fell asleep.

A letter, my brain commands. Write a letter. Yes, it will suck, but you have to do
something.

But first: breakfast.

The house is quiet when I go downstairs. Everyone is still asleep. The Dog Formerly Known as Prince is still in Garrett's room, so I make myself a lonely bowl of cereal and take it back to my room.

I spend an hour sweating over a letter to Shannon, trying to explain. It feels like trying to translate a book written in Blake-ish into the language of Shannon, which I don't speak very fluently. But I have to try.

After approximately sixty-five drafts, I have a letter:

Dear Shannon,

Please believe that I wish I could go back in time and do things over. I would say "I love you" every day. I would tell you everything about Marissa's mother, and all the messed-up things she's done, and how that led me to get involved in Marissa's home life. Most of all, I would remember that I wanted you and only you before I did something in a moment of weakness.

I hope someday you can forgive me. I know this is hard to believe, but I never wanted to hurt you.

Blake

I seal the letter in an envelope and set it on my desk. Now what?

I hear the door to Mom and Dad's room open, and a minute later there's a knock on my door.

"Come in," I say.

The door opens, and both of them stand there in the doorway with tentative smiles.

"Morning," says Dad.

"How are you?" says Mom.

I stare at them for a minute. Do they even know how lucky they are? I wonder if I'll ever fall in love again. Maybe I'll end up living here with Mom and Dad forever, a forty-year-old man whacking off alone for all eternity in his childhood bedroom. Oh well. Like Woody Allen says, "Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."

"Honey?" prods Mom.

"Fine," I say.

"Want some breakfast?"

"Maybe. I had some cereal before."

"Okay. Come down and join us, if you like." My mom's glance falls on the envelope sitting on my desk with Shannon's name on it. She doesn't comment.

"I'm going to—" I say, and stop.

"Yes?"

"I'm going to go to Shannon's later."

Now that I've said it out loud, I realize the thought has been stewing in the back of my brain like medicine you don't want to swallow.

"Did you talk to her?"

"No."

No?"

"I don't think she'd talk to me if I call."

"I see. Do you want a ride over there?" asks my mom.

"Um, no." To my horror, yet another set of tears bubbles to the surface! Whatever brain filter I have that keeps me from dissolving into babyhood every five minutes seems to be ripped. This time it's the thought of standing at Shannon's door and my parents witnessing it being slammed in my face.

My parents exchange glances. "Let's talk about this later," says my dad. "We'll see you downstairs."

I look up a minute later when Garrett comes into my room. He sets the keys to the Marauder on my desk and walks out.

***

It's ten a.m. I pace my room, trying to rehearse what to say to Shannon.

There must be some way to make her understand. It can't really be over, can it? Just like that?

My cell rings, and I jump on it, looking at the caller's number. Not Shannon. Marissa.

Oh shit!

"Hey," I say.

"Blake, what happened?" asks Marissa without even a hello.

"What?"

"Shannon just called me."

"What?!"

"I'm freaking out. All she said was, 'You can have him. I don't want him anymore.' Then she hung up."

My knees give out, and I sink down on my bed.
You can have him. I don't want him anymore. I don't want him.

Marissa says impatiently, "Hellllooo? Blake, what's going on?"

"She knows," I say.

Big bang of silence.

"She picked up my camera and was goofing around with it," I add. "She saw those pictures I took of you."

More gaping silence.

Then: "How could you be so stupid?"

I know," I say.

"I told you not to leave those photos on your camera!"

I know."

"I totally CANNOT BELIEVE YOU."

I know."

We sit together on the phone, not speaking. Just breathing. "If I could kick my own ass, I would," I say after a long time.

We laugh a little, then stop, appalled. How can we laugh?

"Are you going to talk to her?" asks Marissa. "Well, I have to. I can't drop out of school." Funny how I keep fantasizing about this.

"Oh no," she whispers. "School. How can we show our faces there ever again?"

"Maybe she won't tell everyone," I offer.

"Right."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"You are?"

Do I hear a tiny inflection of hurt?

"Not for ... you know. I'm not sorry about that." I examine my feelings quickly. It's true. I'm still not sorry about that. Even though my life is ruined.

"I'm sorry, too, Blake. But not for that, either. I'm just sorry things are messed up now."

Could this whole thing be any more complicated? I remember when my biggest screwup was buying the wrong necklace.

I miss those days.

***

I'm sitting in Garrett's car outside Shannon's house. I hate to turn off its comforting rumble.

I really don't want to do this.