Belzhar (19 page)

“I can’t believe you’re saying this” was all I could tell him. And then, even more desperately, I asked, “You don’t love me?”

“What is it you don’t understand about what he’s been saying?” said Dana, practically shrieking. “He’s not in love with you!”

“You’re not?” I asked him.

“No,” said Reeve.

“You’ve never been in love with me? Not even that night at the party?”

“Christ, it was a
hookup.
I was tight.” Drunk, that means, in England.

“But . . . the jar of jam,” I persisted.

“What jar of jam?”

“That you brought. The Tiptree Little Scarlet Strawberry.”

He looked baffled. “What did that have to do with
you
?” he said. Then, “Wait, because of your
name
, is that it?”

I just stared and stared at him. We were out here in the wind and he was saying he didn’t love me and never had. Even the jar of jam wasn’t about me. Nothing was.

Reeve Maxfield had never loved me. He’d said it, and he couldn’t unsay it, and I could never unhear it either. And now the world turned instantly sharp edged and unlivable.

So in that swift moment of epiphany, forty-one days after we’d first met, Reeve became dead to me. It was just easier that way.

If he wasn’t in love with me, then I could make myself certain that he could never be in love with anyone else.

He didn’t love me, so I closed my eyes and killed him in my mind. It was as violent as anything, as shocking as a plane exploding midair. It made a
boom
sound that shuddered inside me and sent my image of Reeve lurching and pinwheeling through empty space.

Being rejected by him was the worst feeling I’d ever known. But now in my mind he was dead, which was traumatic too. But it was the only way to cope.

I felt the sensation of his death rip through me, and almost instantly it felt as true as anything. Even though, of course, I knew that it was just a “story” I was telling myself because the truth was unbearable.

I turned around and walked away in the wind. And as I did I heard Dana say, “Good-bye and good riddance, you psycho loser.”

At which point I turned back and screamed, “I’m the psycho loser? That’s hilarious coming from
you
, someone who feels good about herself only when she’s being cruel to other people!”

I didn’t even stick around to hear what she said in reply. Her words were swallowed up by the wind, and Reeve was already dead and swallowed up by my humiliation and then my grief.

I went home and lay in bed with the light off and all my clothes on, even my Vans. My parents were still at work in the gloom of this windy fall afternoon. Leo stood next to my bed and said, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Lying in bed in a dark room. Can you start dinner? Mom left a note saying you’re supposed to make couscous. And preheat the oven for the chicken. And that you’re supposed to spend time with me.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can’t what? Make the couscous or preheat the oven or spend time with me?”

“Get out of my room, Leo,” I said.

But my little brother just stood there, and he began to look worried. “Are you sick?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m in shock.”

“Shock? Why?”

I paused. “My boyfriend died,” I said, trying out the words, and I began to cry all over again.

Leo was confused. “I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend,” he said.

“Well, I did, and he
died
, okay? And I can’t get out of bed and start dinner and spend time with you. I’m sorry, Leo, but I just can’t.”

“Should I go?” he asked. He was hovering there in the room, almost as if he was afraid to leave me alone.

“As opposed to
what
?”

“I don’t know.” Then he said, “Maybe I should call Mom and Dad.”

“Maybe you should.”

“And what should I tell them?” he asked.

“Tell them my
boyfriend died.
And I am inconsolable.”

Then I lifted up the blanket so it covered my head too, and the world went dark, and basically it stayed like that for a very, very long time, until the first day I went to Belzhar.

• • •

And now here I am in Belzhar once again, confronting Reeve and Dana the same way it happened in real life. It’s just as terrible as ever, the way Casey warned it would be. My tears are already starting. But then I think of Sierra clinging to her brother in Belzhar when the sky began to get dim. She held on to him tightly, and she stayed with him, and she’s still with him now.

Reeve and Dana are just staring at me coldly, and I reach out and do something I didn’t do in reality behind the school. This was not part of what actually happened. But even so, I take Reeve’s hand, and he doesn’t resist.

“What are you doing?” Dana says, but by the end of the sentence her voice has gotten puny and insignificant, just like her. I can barely even see her now; she’s basically evaporated. It’s just Reeve and me, and his hand is cool in mine at first, but as I continue to hold it, it gets a few degrees warmer.

The sky begins to dim—it’s time—and if I keep holding on to him, then I can stay here with him and go back to the way we once were in my mind, when he loved me and I loved him, and we were together.

But now I imagine Casey and Marc breaking the news to Griffin. And in a distraught voice Griffin says, “She
stayed
? But she said she wouldn’t.”

And I have the predictable, clichéd thoughts: I picture my parents coming up to the hospital in Vermont, where I’m sitting in a bed attached to an IV and a monitor, unresponsive to human voices and staring at nothing, my hand rapidly moving in the air as if I’m possessed. My mother whispers, “Babe, oh babe.” And Leo’s in the doorway, trying hard to focus only on the game on his little handheld, so he doesn’t have to look at me.

But this is self-indulgent. How much everyone would miss me. There’s also what I would miss. And again, I think of Griffin, and how he wants to be with me, genuinely.

Reeve, though, loves me
here
, in this limited way. And he only loves me here because I can’t bear the idea that he doesn’t. He’s a boy from London with an ironic smile, clever words, sleepy eyes, and a scrape to his voice. He’s a boy who’s kind of a player. Kind of a douchebag, maybe, but not terrible. Just a teenage boy who came to the States for a few months, wanting to have a good time.

That’s all he is.

That’s all he was, and I can’t stay here with him.

Without realizing it, I’ve let go of Reeve’s hand, and he’s receding along with Belzhar itself, which slides away from me like water pulling back from a shore.

Somewhere out in the world—in London, England, specifically—he’s back at his old high school. And maybe another girl, not Dana, but someone with an English name, like Annabel or Jemima, is flirting with him right now, wanting him to pay attention to her. And maybe he will.

I killed him once, in order to tolerate knowing that he didn’t love me. Maybe Dana was right; I am a psycho loser. I killed him and preserved his “love” inside me in a little bell jar. I don’t know why I needed to do this. Why I had such a big reaction to a boy not loving me back. Why it felt like a tragedy, even though it wasn’t. Dr. Margolis said the mind plays tricks on itself in order to stay in one piece.

“It was self-protective for you, Jam,” he’d explained in one of our sessions. “And we can take a closer look at that.” But I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to see Dr. Margolis again sometime, like maybe when I’m home on break.

Maybe I should buy myself another journal one of these days. There are other things I could write down; I don’t have to be ruled by this forever. I might even try writing a few song lyrics; ever since joining the Barntones I’ve been listening closely to the words in songs. Song lyrics have a lot in common with poetry, at least good song lyrics, anyway.

I can do whatever I want, because it’s over now. I am done with it. Done with him.

“With who?” someone asks.

I look up, confused, and I’m back in my dorm room. Above me in the darkness stands DJ, her long black hair hanging down. “What?” I say.

“Who are you done with? You were talking in your sleep,” she says. “But you were also writing in your journal,” she goes on, holding up my journal. “It was very peculiar.”

I snatch the journal back from her and quickly flip to the end, peering down at the last line on the last page, which has been all filled in. This is what I see:

And I let him go. So I guess that’s the end of him and me. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world.

I close the journal. “What time is it?” I ask DJ.

“Two a.m.,” she says. “Can we go back to sleep now?”

I try to orient myself. It’s the middle of the night near the very end of the semester at The Wooden Barn. I just saw Reeve for the last time. “DJ,” I say, “I have to go somewhere.” I get up and grab my down coat from its hook, and shrug it on over my nightgown.

“Where?”

“To Griffin’s room. It’s important.”

“In the boys’ dorm? Why don’t you just go paint a giant
E
for
Expelled
on your nightgown? That was a
Scarlet Letter
joke, in case you didn’t know.”

“I did know.”

“You guys only had to read Sylvia Plath, unlike the rest of us, who were forced to read Nathaniel Hawthorne and other equally hip and cutting-edge writers.”

“Just let me go, okay?” I say quietly. “I need to see him. I think you know what that feels like.”

“Yeah,” DJ admits. “I do. Well, good luck,” she says as I head out. “Don’t get caught, Jam. That would be a shame.”

Silently I descend the stairs and head past Jane Ann’s room, hoping to escape her light-sleeper antennae, and then I push out into the night, the air cold on my blazing face. In the stillness I make my way down the path to the boys’ dorm. I’ve only been on the first floor of that building before, in the common room where girls are allowed, but when I climb the stairs it’s easy to find his room. The nameplate reads
JACK WEATHERS AND GR
IFFIN FOLEY.

I push the door open and slip inside. Jack is curled in a fetal position in the bed by the door, a lacrosse stick resting against the wall. In the bed by the window is Griffin, and his eyes immediately open when I appear, and he says, “Jam?”

“Should I leave?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer, but just draws back the blanket. All I can do is get in, and we lie squished together, side by side, in absolute silence. He’s waiting for me to say something. “I went to Belzhar,” I tell him.

“How bad was it?” he asks. “The death, I mean.”

I don’t reply at first. I know that when I tell him, he’ll have every right to think I’m an awful person for having been such a faker all semester. He’ll think I’m someone who just wanted everyone’s sympathy. But I have to tell him, because otherwise the story about Reeve and me might drag on forever. Griffin could keep bringing it up, thinking he’s being respectful of the memory of my boyfriend who died.

“The thing is,” I say, “it only felt like a death.”

Griffin doesn’t understand. He looks at me, trying to figure it out, and then he says, “Wait, he didn’t die, this guy? Not . . . back then?”

I shake my head. Griffin just keeps looking, and then he shifts his body away from me. I don’t know if this is the signal that I’m supposed to leave, and that he’s done with me. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and I realize he’s going to reject me now. I don’t think you ever get used to that.

But finally he says, “You know what? I’m glad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that you didn’t have to live through something like that.”

“You are?” I’m just astonished. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime,” I go on. “The whole thing, how it happened. I mean, only if you want to hear. There’s a lot more to say.”

“I’m sure there is,” he says.

And I’ll tell the others too,” I say. “I understand if you feel like you’ve been ripped off. You’ve all been through so much worse. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially you. But it all just sort of happened. If you want to get out of this, Griffin—”

“I don’t,” he says.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

And then, for the moment, there’s nothing more I need to say or do, no action I need to take and nothing I need to prove. I feel extremely tired, as if I’d been splitting logs for a year. I lean my head against Griffin’s chest and we’re silent. Just two hearts ticking away.

• • •

At some point we must have both fallen asleep, because a phone rings in the distance—who here has a
phone
?
—
and
wakes me up. I open my eyes and the unfamiliar room is starting to fill with light. It’s morning, and right away I understand that I’m about to get caught and be expelled from school. I’ve ruined everything, and it
is
a shame, as DJ said.

Without saying good-bye, I flee the room. As I race down the hall, Dr. Gant strides toward me. All I can do is skid to a stop, waiting for the inevitable.

But he only says, “Jam,” his voice vague and distracted.

“I know I shouldn’t be here—”

“True,” he says. “But I just got a call. I have to tell somebody.” He lifts his eyeglasses and rubs his eyes, then looks at me. “You’re good friends with Sierra Stokes, right?” I nod. “So you know about her brother.”

“Of course.”

“That phone call was from the chemistry teacher. He was watching the news, and there was a breaking story about André Stokes.”

I stare at him for a moment, feeling something flood through me, unsure what it is. I feel dizzy now, and afraid, but I ask him, “What did it say?”

“He’s been found! He’s alive and he’s okay. It’s the most amazing thing.”

For a moment I can’t really take this in. He’s waiting for me to respond and I’m just silent. “Is that really true?” I finally ask. I immediately think,
I have to tell Sierra.

But I know I can’t. She’s unreachable.

André has finally been found
,
but Sierra won’t ever know. She can’t be with her brother in the fullness and uncertainty of the real world. Deep inside herself she’s on a bus with him in Belzhar, just riding and riding.