Never Never (5 page)

I open the door and urge her outside by her elbow. Once the door is shut, I face her again. The phone is on its third ring. “You should answer it.”

She stares at the phone, her fingers gripping tightly around it. She doesn’t answer it, so I reach down and swipe right to answer. She crinkles up her nose and glares at me as she brings it to her ear. “Hello?”

We begin walking to the car, but I listen quietly at the broken phrases coming through her phone: “You know better,” and “Skip school,” and “How could you?” The words continue to come out of her phone, until we’re both seated in my car with the doors shut. I start the car and the woman’s voice grows quiet for several seconds. Suddenly, the voice is blaring through the speakers of my car.
Bluetooth
.
I remember what Bluetooth is.

I place the drinks and sandwich on the center console and begin to back out of the driveway. Charlie still hasn’t had a chance to respond to her mother, but she rolls her eyes when I look at her.

“Mom,” Charlie says flatly, attempting to interrupt her. “Mom, I’m on my way home. Silas is taking me to my car.”

There’s a long silence that follows Charlie’s words, and somehow her mother is much more intimidating when words
aren’t
being yelled through the phone. When she does begin speaking again, her words come out slow and overenunciated. “Please tell me you did not allow
that
family to buy you a
car
.”

Our eyes meet and Charlie mouths the word
shit
. “I…no. No, I meant Silas is bringing me home. Be there in a few minutes.” Charlie fumbles with the phone in her hands, attempting to return to a screen that will allow her to end the call. I press the disconnect button on the steering wheel and end it for her.

She inhales slowly, turning to face her window. When she exhales, a small circle of fog appears against the window near her mouth. “Silas?” She faces me and arches a brow. “I think my mother may be a bitch.”

I laugh, but offer no reassurance. I agree with her.

We’re both quiet for several miles. I repeat my brief conversation with Ezra over and over in my head. I’m unable to push the scene out of my head, and she’s not even my parent. I can’t imagine what Charlie must be feeling right now after speaking to her actual mother. I think both of us have had the reassurance in the backs of our minds that once we came in contact with someone as close to us as our own parents, it would trigger our memory. I can tell by Charlie’s reaction that she didn’t recognize a single thing about the woman she spoke to on the phone.

“I don’t have a car,” she says quietly. I look over at her and she’s drawing a cross with her fingertip on the fogged up window. “I’m seventeen. I wonder why I don’t have a car.”

As soon as she mentions the car, I remember that I’m still driving in the direction of the school, rather than wherever I need to be taking her. “Do you happen to know where you live, Charlie?”

Her eyes swing to mine, and in a split second the confusion on her face is overcome by clarity. It’s fascinating how easily I can read her expressions now in comparison to earlier this morning. Her eyes are like two open books and I suddenly want to devour every page.

She pulls her wallet from her backpack and reads the address from her driver’s license. “If you pull over we can put it in the GPS,” she says.

I push the navigation button. “These cars are made in London. You don’t have to idle to program an address into the GPS.” I begin to enter her street number and I feel her watching me. I don’t even have to see her eyes to know they’re overflowing with suspicion.

I shake my head before she even asks the question. “No, I don’t know how I knew that.”

Once the address is entered, I turn the car around and begin to head in the direction of her house. We’re seven miles away. She opens both sodas and tears the sandwich in half, handing me part of it. We drive six miles without speaking. I want to reach over and grab her hand to comfort her. I want to say something reassuring to her. If this were yesterday, I’m sure I would have done that without a second thought. But it’s not yesterday. It’s today, and Charlie and I are complete strangers today.

On the seventh and final mile, she speaks, but all she says is, “That was a really good grilled cheese. Make sure you tell Ezra I said so.”

I slow down. I drive well below the speed limit until we reach her street, and then I stop as soon as I turn onto the road. She’s staring out her window, taking in each and every house. They’re small. One-story houses, each with a one-car garage. Any one of these houses could fit inside my kitchen and we’d still have room to cook a meal.

“Do you want me to go inside with you?”

She shakes her head. “You probably shouldn’t. It doesn’t sound like my mother likes you very much.”

She’s right. I wish I knew what her mother was referring to when she said
that
family. I wish I knew what Ezra was referring to when she mentioned our fathers.

“I think it’s that one,” she says, pointing to one a few houses down. I let off the gas and roll toward it. It’s by far the nicest one on the street, but only because the yard was recently mowed and the paint on the window frames isn’t peeling off in chunks.

My car slows and eventually comes to a stop in front of the house. We both stare at it, quietly taking in the vast separation between the lives we live. However, it’s nothing like the separation I feel knowing we’re about to have to split up for the rest of the night. She’s been a good buffer between myself and reality.

“Do me a favor,” I tell her as I put the car in park. “Look for my name in your caller ID. I want to see if I have a phone in here.”

She nods and begins scrolling through her contacts. She swipes her finger across the screen and brings her phone to her ear, pulling her bottom lip in with her teeth to hide what looks like a smile.

Right when I open my mouth to ask her what just made her smile, a muffled ring comes from the console. I flip it open and reach in until I find the phone. When I look at the screen, I read the contact.

Charlie baby

I guess that answers my question. She must also have a nickname for me. I swipe
answer
and bring the phone to my ear. “Hey,
Charlie baby
.”

She laughs, and it comes at me twice. Once through my phone
and again from the seat next to me.

“I’m afraid we might have been a pretty cheesy couple,
Silas baby
,” she says.

“Seems like it.” I run the pad of my thumb around the steering wheel, waiting for her to speak again. She doesn’t. She’s still staring at the unfamiliar house.

“Call me as soon as you get a chance, okay?”

“I will,” she says.

“You might have kept a journal. Look for anything that could help us.”

“I will,” she says again.

We’re both still holding our phones to our ears. I’m not sure if she’s hesitating to get out because she’s scared of what she’ll find inside or because she doesn’t want to leave the only other person who understands her situation.

“Do you think you’ll tell anyone?” I ask.

She pulls the phone from her ear, swiping the end button. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not going crazy,” I say. “Not if it’s happening to both of us.”

Her lips press into a tight, thin line. She gives her head the softest nod, as if it’s made from glass. “Exactly. If I were going through this alone, it would be easy to just say I’m going crazy. But I’m
not
alone. We’re both experiencing this, which means it’s something else entirely. And that scares me, Silas.”

She opens the door and steps out. I roll the window down as she closes the door behind her. She folds her arms over the windowsill and forces a smile as she gestures over her shoulder toward the house behind her. “I guess it’s safe to say I won’t have a housekeeper to cook me grilled cheese.”

I force a smile in return. “You know my number. Just call if you need me to come rescue you.”

Her fake smile is swallowed up by a genuine frown. “Like a damsel in distress.” She rolls her eyes. She reaches through the window and grabs her backpack. “Wish me luck,
Silas baby
.” Her endearment is full of sarcasm, and I kind of hate it.

“Mom?” My voice is weak, a squeak. I clear my throat. “Mom?” I call again.

She comes careening around the corner and I immediately think of a car without brakes. I retreat two steps until my back is flush against the front door.

“What were you doing with that boy?” she hisses.

I can smell the liquor on her breath.

“I…he brought me home from school.” I wrinkle my nose and breathe through my mouth. She’s all up in my personal space. I reach behind me and grab the doorknob in case I need to make a quick exit. I was hoping to feel something when I saw her. She was my incubating uterus and birthday party thrower for the last seventeen years. I half expected a rush of warmth or memories, some familiarity. I flinch away from the stranger in front of me.

“You skipped school. You were with
that
boy! Care to explain?”
She smells like a bar just vomited on her. “I don’t feel like…myself. I asked him to bring me home.” I back up a step. “Why are you drunk in the middle of the day?’

Her eyes splay wide and for a minute I think it’s a real possibility that she might hit me. At the last moment she stumbles back and slides down the wall until she’s sitting on the floor. Tears invade her eyes and I have to look away.

Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.

Yelling I can deal with. Crying makes me nervous. Especially when it’s a complete stranger and I don’t know what to say. I creep past her just as she buries her face in her hands and begins to sob hard. I’m not sure if this is normal for her. I hesitate, hovering right where the foyer ends and the living room starts. In the end, I leave her to her tears and decide to find my bedroom. I can’t help her. I don’t even know her.

I want to hide until I figure something out. Like who the hell I am. The house is smaller than I thought. Just past where my mother is crying on the floor, there is a kitchen and a small living room. They sit squat and orderly, filled to the max with furniture that doesn’t look like it belongs. Expensive things in a non-expensive house. There are three doors. The first is open. I peer in and see a plaid bedspread. My parents’ bedroom? I know from the plaid bedspread that it isn’t mine. I like flowers. I open the second of the doors: a bathroom. The third is another bedroom on the left side of the hallway. I step inside. Two beds. I groan. I have a sibling.

I lock the door behind me, and my eyes dart around the shared space. I have a sister. By the looks of her things she is younger than me by at least a few years. I stare at the band posters that adorn her side of the room with distaste. My side is simpler: a twin bed with a dark purple comforter and a framed black and white print that hangs on the wall over the bed. I immediately know it’s something Silas photographed. A broken gate that hangs on its hinges; vines choking their way through the rusted metal prongs—not as dark as the prints in his bedroom, perhaps more suited toward me. There is a stack of books on my nightstand. I reach for one to read the title when my phone pings.

Silas: You okay?

Me: I think my mom is an alcoholic and I have a sister.

His response comes a few seconds later.

Silas: I don’t know what to say. This is so awkward.

I laugh and set my phone down. I want to dig around, see if I can find anything suspicious. My drawers are neat. I must have OCD. I toss around the socks and underwear to see if I can piss myself off.

There is nothing in my drawers, nothing in my nightstand. I find a box of condoms stuffed in a purse under my bed. I look for a journal, notes written by friends—there is nothing. I am a sterile human, boring if not for that print above my bed. A print which Silas gave to me, not one I picked out myself.

My mother is in the kitchen. I can hear her sniffling and making herself something to eat.
She’s drunk,
I think. Maybe I should ask her some questions and she won’t remember I asked them.

“Hey, er…mom,” I say, coming to stand near her. She pauses in her toast-making to look at me with bleary eyes.

“So, was I being weird last night?”
“Last night?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” I say. “You know…when I came home.”

She scrapes the knife over the bread until it is smeared with butter.

“You were dirty,” she slurs. “I told you to take a shower.”

I think of the dirt and leaves in Silas’s bed. That means we were probably together.

“What time did I get home? My phone was dead,” I lie.

She narrows her eyes. “Around ten o’clock.”

“Did I say anything…unusual?”

She turns away and wanders over to the sink where she bites into her toast and stares down the drain.

“Mom! Pay attention. I need you to answer me.”

Why does this feel familiar? Me begging, her ignoring.

“No,” she says simply. Then I have a thought: my clothes from last night. Off the kitchen there is a small closet with a stacked washer and dryer inside of it. I open the lid to the washing machine and see a small mound of wet clothes clumped at the bottom. I pull them out. They are definitely my size. I must have thrown them in here last night, tried to wash away the evidence.
Evidence of what?
I pry the pockets of the jeans open with my fingers and reach inside. There is a wad of paper, clumped in a thick, damp mess. I drop the jeans and carry the wad back to my room. If I try to unfold it, it might fall apart. I decide to set it on the windowsill and wait for it to dry.