“So I chose death,” she says.
Her words are brittle poison.
Her lips are flushed pink.
“I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to escape.” She looks down and then back up. “I wanted to escape you as much as I wanted to escape everyone else. I wanted to be away from everything so I could start again, an unknown girl from an unknown town. I could reinvent myself and become something better.”
Yes,I think.Yes, that’s what you should have done, but you didn’t. Look at where you live, Carrie. Look at all of your dirty, mismatched things.
Tears trail down her face. “I was drowning in people who were hurting me, and I needed to get away from you all.”
“I thought you loved me,” I say, needing to say something, anything to bust through the wall of lies she’s building. And it was my turn now after all. That’s how it worked, my attorney taught me that all those years ago.‘They speak and then you speak afterwards.’
“I did, for a while. At least in my own way I did. But then you became suffocating.” She looks away, one hand going to her throat as if she could feel a noose around her neck.
She senses me looking and runs her hands through her hair. Her thin fingers snag on the knots. She touches the dried blood on her lip.
“I suffocated you? I never meant to,” I say, and I really mean it. It’s another thing I never knew I did.
I think of our times together, the way we played when we were little. I let her use my bike when hers was broken. I let her share my snack when she had none. I walked her home from the bus stop and I carried her bag when it was too heavy. I thought we were friends until we were something more. I didn’t know any of that was suffocating.
“Do you remember fighting with Cody Mathews on the Fourth of July?” Her voice is a whisper as she continues to try and work the knots out of her hair. But her hair is hopeless.
Like she is hopeless.
Like we are hopeless.
Like life is fucking hopeless.
“Do you remember?” she asks again, her hands falling to her lap.
I do remember that. I remember the sting of antiseptic as my mom bathed my wounds. I remember my dad staring out the window and I remember my stomach was grumbling because I was hungry because I hadn’t finished my burger.
“I do,” I say.
“Do you? Do you really?”
I nod and she shakes her head.
“Do you remember why you had a fight?”
I think back, and I see me outside with my mom and dad. We were having a barbeque. My dad had made a glaze for the chicken that was really sticky and tasted a little like whiskey smelled. Mom had made pecan pie and homemade slaw. My stomach gurgled in hunger as we said grace and Mom poured herself a glass of wine and me some soda.
Dad served up the burgers (the sauce on the chicken was really strong) and I was about to bite into mine whenI saw Carrie.
She was walking and he was holding her hand. She was smiling like she liked him holding her hand, but I knew that it was a fake smile because she was my girlfriend and she said she didn’t like holding hands. I was an attentive boyfriend. I listened, but Cody wasn’t listening.
Her fake smile had changed and now she looked anxious. I could tell because her cheeks were flushed and she was pulling her hand out of his. He followed her a couple of steps; he was shouting something, but she was ignoring him. That’s what she did when she was done talking to someone—she turned and walked away. She ignored you. I knew this, but Cody didn’t.
“Ethan?” My mom was saying my name, but I was already walking away, my burger forgotten. I was already going toward Carrie, and I was already planning what I would say to Cody.
My dad was saying my name too now, but I ignored him because Cody and Carrie were shouting at each other now. And I didn’t like him shouting at her. I was not a coward, not anymore. I would say something this time. I wasn’t afraid of Cody the way I was afraid of her dad. Cody was my age, my size. Carrie’s dad was older than me and much bigger.
Carrie’s gaze flitted to me, and I could see she was worried, probably anxious that I would get hurt, but ‘it’s okay,’ I wanted to soothe. It’s really okay.
“Get away from her,” I said to Cody. No, I didn’t say, I shouted it as he pulled her arm to stop her from walking away from him, and me. “Leave her alone.”
He turned to look at me. His face was ugly. He had acne. It was gross. His hair was greasy too. ‘Doesn’t your mom ever tell you to wash it?’I thought.
