Some of the Parts (7 page)

Then Mel scoots her chair noisily up to our table and shatters the calm. And before I can even register feeling silly about such hopeful thoughts, she says loudly, “Hate to interrupt, but it's about time I get this little lady home. Can't worry the parentals, y'know?”

Chase smiles stiffly. “I do.”

I stand, sling my bag over my shoulder, and turn to go. I know I should say something but I'm afraid of what will come out, so I just reach down and roll the finger trap toward him.

“Keep it,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

He smiles, for real this time. “You obviously need to work on your escape technique.”

I pick it up carefully—keeping my fingers away from the ends, as if it might grab on to me by itself—and tuck it into my pocket. Stand there, shift my weight.

“Ohfergodsake,” Mel mutters. “Let's go.”

But something won't let me move. Now that my brain has brought me the idea that Chase has been sent, I'm afraid that he'll disappear as suddenly as he arrived. What if I walk out of Common Grounds and never see him again? What if there's something I'm supposed to do or say and I miss my chance?

He knows something. He has to, because he stands up, too, and says, “I'll walk you out.” And then a miracle happens. Chase waves to Cranky Andy and calls, “G'night, man,” and Cranky Andy actually lifts his hand and waves back.

Mel gasps. “Unprecedented,” she whispers.

I stroke the finger trap in my pocket.

“Indeed,” I say.

Mel drops me off and roars away, revving her engine to show her disdain for people who go to bed before eleven. I watch her taillights shrink into the darkness and turn the corner, and then I stand in the black for a moment, letting it envelop me. Darkness was one of my trials after the accident, a penance I tried to pay. I blocked all the light from my room and imagined I was buried, trying to scare myself. It never worked. Now I can see a perfect square of light at the base of my house, a sign that my father is in his basement workshop, sorting his nails and screws into tiny labeled drawers.

I stop to get the mail before I go inside. The mailbox has been my domain for the last few years—my dad pays all the bills online and my mother does her shopping the same way, so neither one of them cares anymore about what shows up in our green plastic receptacle. Even my report cards are delivered by email, though the last one was all screwed up because of our arrangement with the school. I imagine I'll have to explain that someday, if I'm applying to colleges. But that particular someday seems impossibly distant. The depth of one dark mailbox is about as far as I can reach right now.

Awaiting me is the usual assortment of junk: shiny postcards from various politicians and real estate agencies, coupons for lawn care and gutter cleaning, catalogs. But then I notice a large manila envelope with a white label on the front.
TO THE FAMILY OF
, it says, and then my brother's name and our address. The return label in the upper left corner says
LIFE CHOICE
.

They're a little late,
I think. I tuck the envelope under my jacket so my father won't see it if he comes upstairs when he hears me in the kitchen. It is one of my unspoken tasks, making sure my parents don't have to see my brother's name in print.

There is a note on the kitchen table, something about Mom going to her office in the morning and bagels in the freezer, which I crumple up and toss into the recycling bin along with all of the mail except the manila envelope. That comes with me to my room and waits patiently on my bed while I wash my face and brush my teeth. And it is still waiting after I jam my clothes into the hamper and put on my favorite black T-shirt and a clean pair of underpants.

My desk drawer is full of mail addressed to him that I can't read but won't throw away. I opened the first thing that came for him after the accident, and it turned out to be a bill for the ambulance ride. As if he could have paid it. As if anyone should have to.
You didn't save him,
I thought. I couldn't bear to give it to my parents, so I stuck it in the drawer. Now it's under a pile of other envelopes: college brochures, magazine subscription notices, offers he can't accept or reject anymore.

I lay the Life Choice envelope across the top of the pile, like a blanket, and close the drawer slowly. I retrieve Matty from his hiding place, hoping the music will do something for me, but this time I go to the playlists. I need something more than shuffle, more than Matty's random selections. I need a design. I need my brother's thought process.

Most of the lists aren't titled, they're just numbered with dates, but there's one that's different:
FOR AMY.

It's a family of songs, all sad and sweet. I've heard them all before but not together, not this way—I've been listening to them on their own, separate links of a chain I didn't know existed.

FOR AMY.

No wonder she won't come near me. All this time I thought she just didn't know what to say to me. I thought if I got normal again, we'd be okay. But it wasn't about me at all.

He really liked her. He might have even loved her.

And I took him away.

I fall asleep stroking my river scar.

If I dream, I don't know it.

thursday
9/25

M
om is already gone when I wake up. She has an interior-design company with her friends Susan and Michelle—the three of them always liked to shop together, and while my father maintains that their business is just an excuse to flash their business cards at fabric stores, my mother insists that there's “more to it than that.” Of course, she never actually explains what the “more” is. Maybe she can't remember now. She stopped going for a while after the accident, and I had started to wonder if she felt the same way about Susan and Michelle that I did about Amy. But a month ago, on the first day of school, I came into the kitchen and found Mom showered, dressed, and ready to go. She's been working two or three days a week since then.

Dad leaves while I'm eating breakfast. I still have some time before I need to get ready for school, so I walk into Dad's study and wake up his computer. He never totally shuts it down—no matter how many times my brother lectured him about backing up his files and program updates and all that, Dad just can't be bothered. So all it takes is a shake of the mouse, and the screen lights up. It's not even password-protected.

Poor Dad. Does he really trust everyone so much?

The browser history, of course, has never been cleared. There's the usual list of sites and links to videos about electrical wiring and shower tile installation, and I'm just about to quit out when something new catches my eye. A search.

COMPASSIONATE COMPANIONS

A little bell rings inside my head. I know a grief-group name when I see one. If there's anything I've learned from Bridges, it's that talking endlessly about how sad you are, how much you miss the person who's gone, doesn't change anything. It might give you a good feeling for a little while, like you're doing something about your unhappiness, but it's really just the illusion of action. There is nothing to show for it at the end of the meeting.

I don't want Dad to get sucked into that vortex. He needs real results, he needs materials and supplies, tangible achievements. I make a mental note to tell him that I would like crown molding in my bedroom. If I can keep him working on
this
house, maybe he'll forget he wants a different one.

I take a quick detour on my way to the shower to check Mom's journal for new entries. Like Dad, she doesn't make any effort to hide it—it lives in her nightstand drawer, waiting to be written in. And then to be read. I know how wrong it seems that I do this, but I think of it this way: My parents have become like mannequins of themselves, like characters flattened in a book, and I need to follow their story. Sometimes I even need to direct it a little, push it in the right direction, because there's one thing we all agree on: None of us like surprises anymore.

And I'll admit there's a slightly more selfish motivation, too. I want to know if Mom and Dr. B. are talking about me.

Only one new installment since the last time I looked. Naughty Mom. She's supposed to write in it every day. (I know this because the first entry says,
Dr. Blankenbaker wants me to write in this book every day.
)

Drove past the Victorian on Sycamore Street today,
it says.
They painted the trim a new shade of blue again. It seems as if they can't decide on what color would be best. I could tell them. I know exactly what blue they should have there, and exactly what flowers should go in the planters. All they have in there is trailing ivy. It's such a waste. Everything seems like such a waste.

I close the book and set my hand on its cover for a moment, like a blessing. Then I tuck it away again, leaving it in its dark drawer home.

School proceeds in its pleasantly predictable way. I think I see Chase a few times among the sea of faces, but I don't allow myself to actually look for him. Now that the door to feeling has opened a crack, I'm not as insulated as I was before. A riot of noise and color hits me when I walk into the gym to help with the carnival prep. I manage to get Mel's attention with a wave.

“You are my only hope,” she says as she walks toward me. She is wielding a hammer in a vaguely threatening way. “No one here respects my authority.”

“That's because they've never seen you handle a chipmunk,” I hear myself tell her.

She taps her chin thoughtfully with the clawed side of the hammer's head. “Maybe I should suggest a taxidermy exhibit for the carnival. That'd shut them up.”

I nod, though we both know that displaying Mel's skills would probably cause more social harm than anything else. It wouldn't help me renormalize, that's for sure.

“Oh well. At least, I can order you around.” She winks elaborately, then yells, “Back to work, lackey!”

Her instructions are forceful, but not very specific. I look around for something to work on, something that doesn't require excessive risk or noise. There's a group of kids arguing about paint colors for the game booths, and I'm about to walk over and offer my services when I see Amy.

She's using a nail gun to put the booths together, the staccato shots ringing off the gym walls in a way that both excites and terrifies me. The fluorescent lights cast a glare on her safety goggles, so I can't see her eyes, but her jaw is set in a way that I recognize. She is squatting, and her whole body is tense, like she's an animal ready to take off running. There is nothing about her posture that says,
This would be a good time to come talk to me.
But I see her so rarely that I decide to chance it. I wait until she pauses between nail shots and cautiously walk over to her. My heart is hammering in my chest, but I won't let it show in my voice.

“Hey.”

It seems that I've been a bit
too
cautious, because she jumps back on her heels and then falls on her butt. The nail gun wobbles in her hand and threatens to hit the floor, but Amy grabs hold of it with both hands and sets it down carefully before she stands up and pushes her goggles onto the top of her head.

She squints at me for a second and then says, “Something I can do for you?”

Talk to me,
I think.
Tell me how you're doing.

Instead, I say, “I found the playlist.”

Amy crosses her arms, a shield. “What playlist?”

“The one that—the one he made for you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” But I know she's lying, because whenever Amy lies, she twirls her hair, and as she says this, her right hand creeps up over her shoulder and entwines itself in her ponytail and starts flipping strands around and around.

She sees me watching, and stops. “Just leave me alone,” she hisses, and yanks her safety goggles back down, to hide her eyes, to close the door.

I back away slowly, my heart still pounding, and peer around the gym to make sure no one else was listening, to search for some task that I can perform. My eyes skid across the collection of bodies in the bleachers and settle on a single figure at the top. A boy. He looks back at me.

This has happened to me before, seeing someone who looks so much like him that I am stunned into a kind of reeling panic. It's just like one of those dreams where something terrible is about to grab you and you think, frantically,
How do I wake myself up?
But you've forgotten how to walk or run or do anything but stare at the beautiful, menacing thing that is going to be the end of you. Closing your eyes is the only recourse you have. But this time, because Amy's voice is still ringing in my ears and I want so much to be able to undo what I did, and that boy up there looks
so
much like—I want
so
badly for it to be—

I don't close my eyes. And even though I know that the boy I'm seeing isn't my brother, I make myself believe for just a second, just long enough to say his name.

“Nate,” I whisper to myself, just to myself. I say it, and it stings, but it doesn't unravel me. I say it a little louder. “Nate.”

There's a crash from across the gym, and I look toward it by reflex.

“Scud!” hollers Mel.

When I look at the bleachers again, the boy is gone. New loss washes over me.

Act normal.
I find a paintbrush. I find a wooden board with outlined letters waiting to be filled in. I do what I am supposed to do.

That empty space in the bleachers looms over me as I paint.