Truest (25 page)

“We played catch,” Whit continued, “and he seemed so happy. He told me about the day I was born and about when Jenna was born, and about when he and Mom got married, and I thought things were getting better. And then . . . not even twenty-four hours later, he was gone. And no note.

“Laurel,” he continued, “was so happy at the dance. I should have known. I should have said something.” He started to cry.

“No,” I said. “Shhh, you couldn't know.”

It would be so convenient to blame Whit. I
wanted
to blame him. Anything to make it someone else's fault. My tongue felt loose and ready, and I wondered if I was drunk.

“Did you—?” My words died on my lips. I had been going
to ask,
Did you love her?
but it was one answer I didn't need. Maybe didn't even want.

We lay on the trampoline, our heads together, and Whit cried. “I sh'd go,” I said, my words slurring a little.

“I drove you,” Whit reminded me. “I'll call someone to come get you.”

“Not my parents.”

“No.”

I forgot everything for just a moment while Whit dialed a number on his cell phone. “Yeah, can you come get West?” I heard him say as I eased into a stupor and fell asleep.

“You're an idiot, Whit,” I heard someone say what felt like only a moment later. “You got her
drunk?
”

“You don't know anything about it,” Whit replied. “You barely even knew her.” This I took to mean Laurel. “And I didn't force her to do anything.” This I took to mean me.

I blinked my eyes against the late-afternoon sunlight.

“You knew she'd be a lightweight,” he accused. “She hardly ever drinks.”

I sat up. My head felt a little dizzy, but mostly okay.

It was Elliot.

“Hey,” he said. “I'm your ride. Let's go.”

I didn't argue, but I felt stupid. I climbed down off the trampoline, then stumbled, falling onto my butt.

“Oh shit,” Elliot said, presumably still to Whit, “I'm going
to have to sober her up before I take her home. She'll be dead if her parents see her like this.”

“Hey, watch your words, man. Fuck you,” said Whit.

Elliot helped me up off the ground, slung an arm around my waist, and helped me move toward the driveway.

“Bye, Whit,” I chimed lazily.

We approached a junky white Pontiac with rust stains near the wheels. “No more minivan?” I asked, nodding toward the car.

“Finally saved up enough for this piece of shit,” he said, kicking at a tire. “C'mon, let's go.” He opened the passenger door for me and helped me in, taking care with my head, then walked around the car and climbed into the driver's seat.

“What about Whit?” I asked.

“He'll be fine. He's not going anywhere.”

“You yelled at him.”

“He yelled at me too. We do that. We'll be okay. Where to? I can't take you home yet.”

“I don't care.” I just wanted the wind in my face.

“Here, drink this,” he said, handing me a bottle of water. “Whit's an asshole. He could have gotten in big trouble for drinking with you today.”

“Really?”

“I don't know. Probably.”

“I think Sgt. Kirkwood likes him.”

“Sgt. Kirkwood likes everyone,” Elliot said. “But the last
girl Whit drank with is dead.”

Those words started to sober me up.

“Laurel,” I said, looking out the window.

“What?”

“You never say her name.”

“Look, are you pissed at me?” he asked.

I looked over at him, shocked. “No. Why would I be? Are you pissed at me?”

“A little,” he admitted.

“That's . . . fair,” I said, and he actually grinned.

Despite what I had said before, it turned out I did care where we went, because Elliot chose the public beach on Green Lake. Seeing the lifeguard stand, sentry of the empty beach, gave me this spastic attack of memories: wet shoulder to wet shoulder, feeling safe. The image felt like a paper cut on my heart, and I flinched a little, remembering. In my head, I heard Silas's voice, soft and low through his chattering teeth, reciting:

The broken heart has

its own stark splendor.

Did I believe that?
Not today.

“Keep drinking that,” Elliot said, nodding at the bottle of water. “Feeling any better?”

I gulped the water.

“How ya doing after—you know?” Elliot asked.

“I don't know,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and turning to face him. “Bad?”

“Is that a question?”

“No, I guess not. It's a statement.”

“How's he doing?”

He meant Silas. “I don't know,” I said. “We're not really speaking right now.”

Elliot's eyebrows went up. “What happened there?”

I shrugged, not wanting to talk about it, especially not to Elliot. Hadn't he guessed something was up when Whit called
him
to come get me?

“Thanks for picking me up.”

“Not a problem.”

“I treated you like shit, and then you didn't even think twice before coming to get me from Whit's house.”

“Ahh, that would be false,” he confessed. “I thought
at least
three or four times first.”

“You still did it.” My eyes were stinging, but I held back any tears; loneliness blanketed me. “I never deserved you,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“West—”

“You've always been there for me.”

“And always will be,” he said, leaning over to kiss my cheek.

But I turned toward him and kissed his mouth. I saw his eyes widen in surprise but felt him receive me as he returned the kiss. I wasted no time crawling over the center console into
his lap. I straddled him, kissing him harder and harder, while the steering wheel dug into my lower back.

His arms wrapped around me, and my hands were behind his head, forcing his face to mine. Our mouths bruised against each other, tongues forcing teeth apart, devouring, greedy. We had never kissed like this before. I tasted blood, and I wasn't sure if I'd bitten his lip or he'd bitten mine.

Elliot felt my tears on his face before I felt them on my own. I heard someone making a quiet sobbing noise, and was mildly surprised to discover it was
me.

“West,” he said, pulling away.

But I kissed him again, harder. “Please,” I said, embarrassed at how much it sounded like a plea.

“West. West, stop,” he said, surprisingly gentle as he conceded, “It's not me you're missing right now.” He looked regretful. “I wish it was.” Then he wrapped his arms around me and shifted my position so that he was holding me while I cried into his shoulder. “It's okay. It's okay,” he said, and I was being rocked like a baby by this huge football thug. I couldn't stop my tears. “Shhh,” he said. “Is this about Laurel or about Silas?”

I couldn't bear to tell him it was Silas, so we talked about Laurel instead. It all came rushing out like a manic feed: “There were no skid marks, and some people think it was a suicide, and I don't know what to do for Whit. I didn't cry when she died, and I feel like I was supposed to, and I
didn't.
The funeral
was miserable, and we skipped the burial like total cowards. I should have
been there
that night, and I . . . we . . . we
weren't
. . . and now she's gone. And what if it's all my fault?” My tears wet his T-shirt.

Elliot didn't say anything, but the silence didn't feel like judgment. Only like solace, like a place I could maybe rest a while.

“Do you believe in heaven?” I asked Elliot, my head still heavy against his shoulder.

“I don't know, West. Do you?”

I was quiet for a second, then whispered: “‘Death I think is no parenthesis.'”

“Huh?”

“Elliot,” I said suddenly, “I need to go to the library. Right away, before it closes. Can you take me there? Now?”

“After you get off my lap,” he said.

“Oh, right, sure,” I said, scrambling off.

“What's at the library?” he asked as he drove.

“I'm not sure.” Please be there, I thought. Please.

After he parked outside City Hall, I told him to stay in the car, that I would only take a minute. “Please be there,” I muttered over and over as I walked to the poetry section.

“Need help finding anything?” an amused Janice Boggs asked from the reference desk.

“Thanks,” I said. “I already know where it is.” My eyes scanned the last names of the authors, looking for the familiar
lowercase letters. An irrational fear choked me as I pulled the book from the shelf.

There in the corner of the tiny Green Lake Library, I flipped through the pages until a small scrap of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up, read his handwriting, and my heart tore open like cheap fabric. Again.

The next couple of weeks seemed to last a thousand years. After school I'd stop by the station to see Sgt. Kirkwood, hoping for some sort of news, some sort of update. “West, I'll make sure you know the police report is here just as soon as I find out, okay?” he finally told me. “Give yourself a break. Go shopping, out to eat—something to keep your mind off it. Call Trudy. I know she'd love to see you.”

“Okay,” I said, but I didn't call.

Instead, I spent my nights at home: calculus, my distraction; and sleep, my escape.

Silas called one night. His name on my cell phone screen incited riotous panic inside me, and just as I collected the strength to answer, it quit ringing. He didn't leave a message, and it made me wonder if the call had been an accident. I was
too scared to call him back.

His absence was a hollow cavity in my chest. I kept picturing Libby with those damn paper dolls, the way they ruined each other when torn apart.

What if Silas and I had just stayed at the dance? What if I had said something to Laurel earlier that evening? Was what Silas and I did that night wrong, and were we being punished? What if Whit had driven Laurel home? If he had, would he be gone now too? What if
Silas
had been the driver? He'd be . . . he'd be . . .

I couldn't even bear the thought.

And always, always the big question: Suicide or accident? Was one preferable? Did absolution for the rest of us come with either option?

Whit and I—and Silas, if I knew him at all—awaited the results of the police report as if it would put ground back beneath our feet.

Silas.

He had once said that if he was lost, I would know where to find him.

But I didn't—I was lost too.

He joined the rest of us at Green Lake High School about three weeks after classes had started. In a school this small, I couldn't avoid him, even if I wanted to—which I didn't, not exactly. His first day felt about a million years long: every class period was
like a Band-Aid, and every passing time was akin to ripping it off as I scanned every crowd for a familiar, ridiculously tall boy. I wondered if I would ever be able to act like a normal person around him again. My heart was branded with his initials.

The last period of the day, I walked into AP World History, and there he was. How had I forgotten that we had the class together?

I almost walked into him. He was waiting by the door, probably for everyone else to take their assigned seats before the teacher found one available for him. “Oh!” I said, looking up at him.

“Hi,” he said. It was soft and low and not unfriendly and sounded like the most profound statement of the century. He reached toward me, saying “West . . .” quiet as a prayer.

Before he could touch me, I took a step back, still staring, my throat blazingly hot beneath my collar.

I turned around and left not only the classroom but the school itself, completely unable to control the mix of fear, guilt, sadness, and desire that was storming my heart.

“Gordon, it's West,” I said as I stood in his Legacy House doorway. “Can I come in?”

“Westie! Yes, of course, of course. Come in, please. Shouldn't you be in school?”

I sat on the same couch as I had the last time I had been there with both Laurel and Silas. “I guess so,” I said. “Do you
want me to leave?”

“Don't be silly. How are you?” he asked, looking sad in his rocking chair. “I heard the news.”

“You did?” I asked.

“I did. How are you?” he repeated. His voice was tender, concerned.

It broke me, and the tears came again. Whatever plug had been preventing them in the hours after Laurel's death had certainly been pulled. Now I couldn't seem to stop. Gordon let me cry.

“Gordon, he thinks it's our fault that she's gone,” I finally managed.

“I know,” he said. “It's not.”

“You know?” I asked, though what I was really clinging to was the “it's not.”

“He stopped in.”

“Silas came to see you?” I wiped the tears onto my sleeve.

“He did.”

“What did he say to you?” When Gordon didn't answer, I changed my question. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him that his sister was finally at peace.” His calmness reached out to me across the room like a steadying hand. My disquieted heart didn't lose its agitation, but it felt grateful to have such serene company.

“No matter—no matter how she died? Even if she—?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can you . . . make sure Silas knows? Knows that you think that? I mean, if he—if he comes back to see you?”

Gordon nodded.

He lit his pipe and then reached for the jar of water that usually sat on his coffee table. He moved his hands tentatively around the table, not finding it. He blew out the match as it burned low toward his fingers.

“Hold on,” I said. “It's on the table; I'll get it.”

I retrieved it, set it in front of him.

He puffed on his pipe, and we sat in silence. Finally, I asked, “How is he doing?”

“He has questions in him, ones that have no answers, but he's clawing his heart out looking for them anyway. He's a broken boy—a broken man—right now, Westie, and struggling with intense guilt, feeling every emotion like a bomb inside him.”

I tried to hold back another onslaught of tears.

“He cares about you, West,” Gordon said. “Deeply.”

“No, he doesn't,” I said.

“He does,” said Gordon simply.

“No. You should have seen his face, Gordon.”

“Unfortunately,” said Gordon, with considerable kindness, “I don't have the luxury of seeing people's faces, which forces me to see their hearts.”

Soon, the trees around town were shocked into oranges and reds and yellows, preparing to fall like autumn confetti. Elliot
won homecoming king, and Ashley Kuiper was queen; I went to coronation but not to the dance. Trudy spent her evenings mostly with Ami Nissweller, and though sometimes they'd invite me along, I felt like a third wheel, a tire slashed open by sorrows and secrets, slowing everyone else down. Silas joined the cross-country team and even broke several individual course records. From what I observed at school, he didn't seem to care.

About anything, really.

I wanted to plumb Gordon for details, but I couldn't bring myself to ask, knowing he'd told me all he wanted. His genuine grief over Laurel's death, though he had barely known her, touched me. I kept thinking of the two of them talking about a dancing God. The thoughtful look on her face had been nearly identical to her brother's as he had taken in Gordon's ideas on dry water, on a black sun, saying they were impossible for those who love God, just illusions.

It made me think of Silas's poem—“Darkness destroyed by the glory of dawn”—how true those words had felt when I'd said them in the lifeguard stand that night, how they'd felt like this mystery I could own, or like a narrative I could crawl inside and be safe. I'd wanted it all that night. I still did.

Dad had had a persistent migraine since Laurel's funeral, and when it was bearable, he and Ed, the associate pastor, spent a lot of time with the Harts. Grief counseling. The tiniest part of me thought that Silas might call again, but my phone was quiet.

I was swamped in regret: Laurel, Silas, Dad, Whit, Trudy, even Elliot. I was like a ghost; all my blurry lines had reappeared, any definition I'd gained over the summer smeared like pencil lead rubbed with a malicious thumb. I wanted to matter to
someone
, someone who could lift my head above the grief.

One evening, I came out of my bedroom and looked down the stairs to where Dad was kissing Mom on the cheek as he slipped on his shoes. “I'm running over to the Harts',” he said to me, and Mom returned to her scrapbooking materials.

Sitting on the top step, I stared down at him. I liked having the whole family home for once, was somehow buoyed by this feeling that if we were all together in our home, then we were safe. It was a small and false comfort, but I'd take anything these days.

“Dad,” I said, calmly, chillingly, “please—don't go tonight.”

“Honey, I have to be over there. It's part of my job. We'll talk when I get back if you want, okay?” He reached for the doorknob.

“Please stay,” I said.
Please just understand.

“It's going to have to wait, Westlin.”

“Have Ed go instead.”

My mom looked up from her scrapbooking at the table. My dad hesitated.

“Dad,” I said, my voice rising in desperation and anger, “you jump through hoops for everyone but us. How come
we never matter—me and Libby and Shea?—and Mom! You're always running off to comfort or console or counsel or study or anything except spend some time with your goddamn family. And we need you.”

I
need you.

“Shea doesn't even . . . and Libby . . .” I was starting to ramble. Annoyed, I released my next words like a harpoon. “I'm so
sick
of hearing what a good man my father is. I don't even know you anymore.”

Dad stood motionless as if I'd just backhanded him. “Wink—” he started.

“
Don't call me that!
” Anger slammed into me, and without thinking, I stood up, pointed an accusing finger at him. “I slept with him, Dad! I
slept
with him, and he dumped me. And you never asked about any of it.
Any of it.
You're so busy saving Green Lake that you don't even realize that your own family is falling apart . . . that
I
am falling apart! You never asked where we were the night that Laurel died. We were in the church bell tower having sex. Did you hear me—
Silas and I had sex.
Now why don't you run off to his house and comfort
him?
” I gave him a look of disgust then stormed back into my bedroom, which looked like a disaster zone, overdue library books and dirty laundry everywhere, much of which had been lying around for the last month.

The linen romper. His finger hooking in my belt loop.

The lacy dress. My blood pulsing to the beat of the orchestra.

Her pink pin-tucked button-up. His hands, shaking but determined.

The scent still lingered on the shirt, even a month later: sweat and sandalwood, like leather and cedar and musk and
him.
I dragged it into bed with me, overwhelmed and ashamed and thinking about a thousand things at once: the disturbing lack of skid marks, Silas's body pressed heavily against mine, Laurel's swan song, my calculus exam coming up on Friday, Elliot holding me while I cried, the bridge, the coffin, the harsh suspicion that Trudy's and my friendship was not built to last, Libby's torn paper dolls, Whit's only tie, and how desperately I missed my dad, who I'd once believed could solve any problem. Then I started to cry—big, quiet tears that felt like the only living things coming out of the deadness in me.

And then my dad was kneeling beside my bed, silent, but his hand on my back was like the hand of God.