What You Left Behind (18 page)

The rest of the week goes by pretty problem-less, now that we've figured out the whole day care routine. Alan's been picking up Hope after school, and I haven't been late to practice. Coach seems relieved I've gotten my shit together.

Now that school's in full swing and I'm getting piles of work thrown my way, I'm beginning to understand what my mom meant about school being harder when you have a crapload of other responsibilities—not that I would admit that to her. I'm only managing to get about half my homework done, and a couple of times, I've been called out by a teacher for dozing in class. But it's not too bad. For the most part, my teachers are going easy on me, giving me extra time to complete assignments and not calling on me except for when I have my hand raised. I know it's because they feel sorry for me, but hey, I'll take it. My economics teacher, Mrs. Schonhorn, is being especially awesome and told me that as long as I come to class and don't sleep, I'll get full participation credit. Plus, she excused me from the field trip to the Concord Chamber of Commerce, which was a total fucking godsend.

Joni is doing way better too. She's still shaken about the rumors, obviously, but there hasn't been any more crying at work. On Thursday, she even brings me a pumpkin cheesecake that she baked
herself
.

“For being you,” she says, and I feel another stab of guilt. You know, 'cause I'm not
actually
being me around her. Not really.

“Joni…” I begin. I want to tell her the truth. I want to invite her over to hang out at my house so we can share the cake. I want her to meet my mom and Hope and know everything there is to know about my crazy, fucked-up life. But then she'd know I lied to her, and that would make me the same as her dickwad ex-boyfriend and her stupid friends.

“What's up?” she asks.

Nope. Can't tell her.

“Thanks for the cake,” I say. “Looks amazing.”

I'm going to suggest to Mom that we have the cake after dinner on Friday, but when I get home from the game (the one where all I did was sit on the sidelines and watch ball after ball get past the depressingly incompetent backup goalkeeper), she's dressed in her skinny jeans and high-heeled boots. She only wears the skinny jeans on special occasions—she says she'd rather breathe than look hot. But I guess that's not the case tonight.

“Date?” I ask, taking the cake out of the fridge.

“Actually, yeah.” She's smiling.

“Where you going?”

“Dinner. Drinks. Maybe back to his place.” She winks.

I really don't need to hear that. “Have fun,” I say.

• • •

So it's just me and Hope and a giant pumpkin cheesecake.

This is too depressing.

I grab my phone and call Alan. “Wanna come over?”

“Why, your mom can't watch Hope?”

“What are you talking about?
I'm
watching Hope.”

“Oh.” A pause. “So you don't need a babysitter?”

“No. I just wanted to see if you want to hang out.”

“Really?” he asks. “Like, as friends?”

“Dude, you're starting to make me regret calling you at all.”

Alan laughs. “Yeah, I'll be over in a few.”

“Cool.” I hang up and call Mabel. “I know you're probably busy,” I tell her, “but Alan's coming over to hang out if you want to join us. Hope will be here.”

“Sounds awesome,” she says. “I'll bring wine.”

“Where you gonna get wine?”

“Um, have you
met
my dad? We've got it stockpiled in the garage.”

A half hour later, Alan, Mabel, and I are sitting around the kitchen table, drinking wine and eating pumpkin cheesecake. Well, Alan and I are eating the cake. Mabel had a tiny slice and claimed to be full. Hope's in her swing in the middle of the kitchen.

“No more updates on the journal search?” Mabel asks, pouring herself a second glass.

I shake my head.

“That's 'cause they don't exist,” she says.

“I'd have to agree,” Alan says through a mouthful of cake. “Where the hell did you get this cake from, anyway? It's glorious.”

“A friend,” I say. “But you're wrong—the journals are out there.”

“You know, Ry,” Alan says, his voice taking on a tone of
I'm about to say something genius, so listen up
. “There's this song by Eminem and Rihanna called ‘Love the Way You Lie.' It's about domestic abuse, so not
entirely
applicable here, but there's this line where Eminem says he can't tell you what it really
is
. All he can do is tell you what it
feels
like.”

I wait for him to start making sense. “And?”

“That's you, man. I think you're living a completely different version of Meg's life and death than the rest of us are. But it's real to you, because that's how it feels.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Think about it—you're convinced there are two other journals that hold magical answers to everything.”

“Not
everything
—just to tell me how to be a better father.” Is that really too much to ask?

“Wait—you're trying to find the journals so you can be a
better
dad
?”

I nod.

“But how? I mean, why? I mean…huh?”

I tell them how I know Hope hates me, and how I attempted to find Michael but failed miserably, and how I was hoping Meg would have left clues that would make this whole parenting thing click.

“For a smart guy, Ryden,” Alan says, “you're being pretty moronic.”

“Dude. Not cool.”

“Don't you think the way to do a good job with Hope is to forget all this other stuff and just work on
being
a
good
dad
?” He holds up his bracelet. “What would Sandra Oh do, man? You're focusing on the wrong thing.”

“
You're
focusing on the wrong thing!” I down half the glass of wine in one gigantic swallow. “The checklists. They mean something. I don't know why you're ignoring them.”

“Don't you think it's possible it was a note Meg wrote to remind herself of something? Or, like Mabel says, even if she did plan to leave behind two other books for us to find, that she got too sick to finish whatever it was she meant to do? Maybe
that's
the real truth.”

I gulp the rest of my wine and pour more. “I knew her. I
know
she left those journals for us. It's the least we can do to find them.”

“Just like you
know
you're responsible for her death?” Mabel asks, slurring her words a little.

I glare at her. “Yes. Exactly like that.”

“Wait,
what
?” Alan asks, palms braced on the table.

“Oh, you didn't know?” Mabel says. “Ryden is convinced he killed Meg and ruined all our lives because he got her pregnant.”

“That is such bullshit, man. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Your version is warped. You made her life
better
for that last year, not worse.”

“Oh, totally,” Mabel says. “Hey, Alan, remember how she got you to convince our parents to let her go out with Ryden in the first place? Didn't you get them to admit it would be good for her to do some normal high school stuff, and when they finally said yes, you casually slipped it in that it wasn't
you
she'd be doing that normal high school stuff with but Ryden?”

Alan laughs. “How badass was that?! That was some John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim shit right there.”

“Most badass Korean ever,” Mabel says, clinking glasses with him.

I really don't feel the need to join this conversation. I've heard this story before, and none of it matters now anyway. But Mabel and Alan don't seem to notice. They're drunk and haven't seen each other in a while apart from in passing at school, and they happily tra-la-la on their journey down memory lane.

I tune them out and focus on the wine in my glass.
Red
wine
is totally a misnomer. It's not red. It's more like crimson. No, maroon. Or burgundy. Wait, isn't Burgundy a
kind
of wine? Is that what Ron Burgundy is named after? There are little swirly shapes floating in the top of the wine from the grease in my ChapStick. It looks like a solar system. Not our solar system. A different one.

“Ryden!”

I snap out of it and blink at Mabel. I think I'm drunk. “What?”

“Did you know Alan has a
girlfriend
?”

“Dude, you have a girlfriend? No more Lane-whoever? From that show?”

“She's not my girlfriend,” Alan says quickly. “Not yet, anyway. So at the moment I am still Lane Kim. Virginal and tragic.” He bangs his head lightly against the tabletop. “But I do like her. It's Aimee Nam—you know her? She's in our year.”

“I don't think so. She's Korean?”

“Yeah, but that's not
why
I like her,” he says all defensive-like.

“Yeah, sure,” Mabel and I say at the exact same time. She fist-bumps me.

“No, really! Meg wasn't Korean, and I was in love with
her
, wasn't I?” Suddenly Alan's eyes get huge and he clamps his mouth shut.

“Whoa, dude. Back up,” I say, holding up my hands. “When were you in
love
with Meg?”

“I already told you about this…” he says.

“You said you liked her in seventh grade and she turned you down.”

“Yeah.”

“So…?”

Alan exhales in a huff. His breath carries all the way across the table to me. It smells like wine. And pumpkin cheesecake. “So, okay, maybe it was more than ‘like.' And maybe it was longer than seventh grade. But I don't think she knew. And it didn't last forever—by the time we hit sophomore year, I was completely over her. My self-preservation instincts kicked in.”

I glare at him. I'm allowed to be mad that he was in love with my dead girlfriend before I knew her, right?

“Well, she might not have known you were in love with her, but the rest of us sure as hell did,” Mabel says as she opens another bottle.

“Shut up, Mabel. You did not,” Alan says.

“Did so.”

“Did—”

“All right, all right,” I say. “Tell us about Aimee Nam.”

“Dude, she's gorgeous. She looks like Yunjin Kim. She runs the yearbook staff. She wants me to join, but I watch Hope after school, so, you know, that wouldn't work.”

I'm probably supposed to say,
Oh, that's cool, man. You don't have to watch Hope anymore. Live long and prosper.
But there's no way. I need Alan to watch her after school. He's the sole bridge connecting me and UCLA.

“But you like hanging out with Hope, right? Because she makes you feel close to Meg? Isn't that what you said?” I know I'm a dick for playing that card. But right now, I don't really care.

“Yeah.” He looks over at Hope, sleeping in her swing. “You're not wrong about that.”

We drink the rest of the wine (four bottles total…we're
wrecked
), and Alan and I eat the rest of the cake and decide that wasn't enough, so we order a pizza.

My mom comes home Saturday morning to find us sprawled across the living room, surrounded by empty wine glasses and a half box of congealing pizza.

“Looks like you guys had a fun night,” she says. She doesn't sound thrilled, but she doesn't sound super mad either.

“Yeah. You too,” I mumble into the throw pillow I was sleeping on. Nothing like seeing your mom come home at eight in the morning on a Saturday in the same clothes she left the house in the night before. I have a sudden vision of me and Hope in a frighteningly similar situation seventeen years from now. Ugh.

Mom smiles. “Most fun I've had in years.”

“Glad to hear it. Love you.”

“Love you too, buddy.”

And I close my eyes again.

Shoshanna was
pissed
on Friday when she found out she couldn't cheer my name because I was on a one-game suspension. She was more pissed when Addison beat our pathetic asses by six goals. And she was even
more
pissed when I told her I wasn't going to her postgame party. But by Monday morning, it's like she's forgotten about all that.

She meets me at my locker, smiling and upbeat, her cheek painted with a sparkly blue
#1
. She holds out a cookie tin.

“You know there's no game today, right?” I stash my gym bag in my locker and pull out a couple of books.

“I know that, silly,” she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her ponytail swinging back and forth behind her. Even her eyelashes are glittery. “Today is the first day of a brand-new week, and as your cheerleader, it's my job to make sure you're pumped and ready to kick some Clinton Central ass come Friday.”

“Actually, that's kinda
my
job,” I say.

“Every little bit helps, Ryden.” She hands me the cookie tin.

“What's this?”

“Brownies. Happy Monday!” She rises to her tippy toes, gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, and goes to class.

What is it with girls giving me food lately? Am I emitting some sort of “feed me” signal on a frequency only women can hear?

In homeroom, I try one of the brownies. They're pretty good. But not nearly as good as the stuff Joni's given me. I never thought I'd say this, but I'd take Joni's dad's vegetarian empanada over one of Shoshanna's brownies any day.

I pass the tin around homeroom, and by the time it gets back to me, it's empty.

Shoshanna's little Monday Morning Cheerleader Surprise did get me thinking though…

At work that afternoon, I locate Joni in the bread aisle, restocking the pumpernickel and cinnamon raisin.

“Wassup, homie?” she asks. She's wearing a tank top that has a picture of the Spice Girls on it. I think she's wearing it ironically, but you can never be sure with her. One of her earrings is in the shape of a question mark. The other is an exclamation point. I guess the stud in her nose could be considered a period.

“Hey.”

She holds up a bag of bread with a grin. “Look, this is your bread.”

I glance at the loaf and then back at her, trying to figure out what the hell she's talking about. “Huh?”

She points to the writing on the package. “Rye bread. See?
Ry
bread? Your name is Ry. This is your bread.”

I shake my head. “You do realize you're nuts, right?”

She points to a different loaf of bread with a dorky grin. It's banana nut bread. Nuts for the nut. I roll my eyes, and she laughs and shelves the package of rye. “Yeah, so I've been told.”

“Good. As long as you're aware, then it won't be too much of a surprise when someone finally has you committed.”

“Noted.”

“So we're playing Clinton Central on Friday,” I say. “It's an away game, so we'll be on your home turf. Want to come?”

Joni purses her lips. “I don't know, Ryden. I'm trying to stay away from school-oriented social events. It's bad enough I have to spend all day with a building full of people who know every embarrassing detail of my life. Spending after hours with them too? Not so much.”

I nod. “Makes sense. Okay, well, just thought I'd ask.”

I walk away but feel her eyes on my back right up until the moment I round the corner.