Katie
December, Eleven Years Ago
Long Island
In the hospital’s waiting room, it was only Tyler and me. There was a butterfly bandage on his face, just below his right eye, but otherwise, whiplash. Otherwise, he was fine.
He sat across from me, unspeaking, eyes down. There were Christmas lights flickering on a small fake tree and years-old magazines nobody wanted to read stacked in too-tidy piles on too-shiny end tables. My parents were somewhere inside. Ingrid’s too. Her mother was a doctor here, and they were all corralled behind those sterile and swinging double doors, being grown-ups, doing grown-up things.
“Were you high?” I whispered.
His head was in his hands. He did not answer.
“Tyler,” I whispered again.
“We both were... we always were... It was just weed... I didn’t think...”
When he finally glanced up, when I finally saw him for what he was, I couldn’t breathe.
And neither, I think, could he.
56
Tyler
Present Day
Long Island
We lay on the damp grass of the cemetery, a half-empty box of pizza beside us, a foil tray of too-sweet, too-stale cake between us, and my best friend’s grave beneath us.
The sky had gone from blue to purple to black and was dotted with a handful of twinkling stars. The radio was humming, all lazy fly balls and static and strikes. The Mets were winning, thank god, it had been a terrible season, and Katie was laughing, and our hands were intertwined, and we were telling stories about our childhood, and I had not realized how much I’d needed this. To talk about the good parts.
“Do you remember,” I said, making triangles with our fingertips, “that Christmas we all got those pajamas? It was my first without my dad—I must’ve been, like, eight? Your mom had gone all the way to Long Beach to get those rainbow cookies from the bakery your dad loved, and Mikey ate all three dozen on Christmas Eve and blamed the whole thing on you?”
Katie laughed, scooting closer. “Yes! Which, for the record, I would never do. I’m not a thief, and those cookies were trash. I liked the lacy ones—with the chocolate.”
“Well,” I said, scooping up even more of her, “that’s not thewhole story. On Christmas, at, like, three in the morning, I woke up to Mikey shaking me—his cowlick, straight up in the air. He looked like the Grinch, remember? Because the pajamas were from your grandma, red with the lace collar? Anyway, he was holding on to his ass, jumping, whispering very loudly, ‘TYLER! SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH MY BUTTHOLE!’ And so I followed him into the bathroom, and... he’d been up for an hour, shitting hot pink and neon green stripes, completely ballistic. He thought he was dying! He forgot he’d even eaten the cookies, he’d clogged the toilet, there was shit everywhere. You were still asleep, everyone was. It was the middle of the night. And so then we started... plunging it?
“I mean, what else were we going to do? He was refusing to wake up your parents because then they would know it was him who ate the cookies, and we’re children, you know? We’re just trying to make all the evidence disappear. But then, out of nowhere, I start throwing up, like really throwing up, and then Mikey starts puking too. It’s so loud we wake up your dad, who storms down the hall and throws open the bathroom door—he was in the pajamas too! And, of course, he bursts out laughing because we’re dressed like little elves, covered in bodily fluids, and furiously cleaning as we projectile vomit, all while you and your mom are fast asleep, completely oblivious to what we’d done.”
“What! How has nobody ever told me this?”
“I know! It’s insane! And then your dad just throws us in the shower, uses the nozzle to hose the bathroom down, throws our pajamas in the washing machine, and throws us back into bed in our underwear. And then—this is the best part—when he’s tucking us back in, he kneels down next to my trundle and whispers,‘Happens to the best of us, son,’ and that’s when I realized it. That Mikey had thrown me under the bus too!”
“Of course he did! He was such an asshole!”
“Right? And then, obviously, I’m bright red because I did not do it, and I start telling your dad, ‘No, no, it wasn’t me,’ and Mikey is just laughing, rolling around under the covers, hiding his face, saying, ‘It’s okay, Tyler! We’re not mad!’ like the fucking dipshit that he was. And then your dad grins and says, ‘Good night, boys,’ and looks at me again and says, ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’?”
Katie smiled. I could feel, from the easy pull in my jaw, that I was too. This was the first time I could remember talking about Mikey without a tinge of guilt in over a decade. It didn’t make any sense, the quiet—if anything, it should’ve been louder than ever, but I didn’t dare question it.
A moment later, Katie’s face changed. It first fell into a neutral and unreadable state, then warped into a hint of a frown. Faint and distant, but there all the same.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
I pushed the hair out of her eyes. She was wearing a pair of bike shorts and a T-shirt. No makeup, no glitter, no headband, and it was the most beautiful she’d ever been. Right here, in my arms, in this quiet and horrible, moon-drenched place. Here she was, eyelashes lined with tears, irises blindingly green, the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, copper and sun-kissed and there for the counting. Her heart, practically levitating, some pink-gold and glowing thing I could almost wrap my fingers around. Was this what it meant to wear your heart on your sleeve? Was this what it looked like to be good? To shine on anyway?
“It wasn’t the same for me,” she said. “Even when we were little. By the time you guys were in elementary school, all I can remember was being that annoying little sister. Being locked out or laughed at or left in the basement. All I remember about growing up is being on the outside, looking in.”
