Lies My Girlfriend Told Me (2 page)

I ring the bell.

Swanee’s sister, Joss, answers. I take one look at her and my breath catches.

“Who is it?” Jewell wedges herself between Joss and the door. Her eyes are puffy and red. She looks from Mom to me, hiccups, and says, “Oh, Alix.” She covers her mouth and then smothers me in a hug.

It can’t be true. It can’t it can’t it can’t.

Chapter 2

I cry into my pillow all night. I cry as hard as Ethan used to when he was a newborn. That hopeless, helpless wailing. My cell’s been ringing off and on, so finally I check the ID. It’s an unknown number. I can’t talk to anyone right now.

I don’t even bother getting up for school. Mom doesn’t make a big deal out of it, the way she usually does. She even asks if I want her to stay home with me. I tell her no. She has her job, her babies. She’s a doctor in the neonatal center at St. Anthony where she keeps preemies alive.

Why? I wonder. So they can live until they’re seventeen and then drop dead?

I cry. I must cry myself to sleep.

I’m awakened by a knock on my door. I roll over to see Mom stick her head in. “Joss is here to see you.”

I want to say, Tell her to go away. I want to say, Can she bring back Swanee?

I feel a tear trickle out of the corner of my eye. It’s 2:32.
AM
?
PM
? What day?

Joss plops on the edge of my bed. Her face is impassive, but I can tell she’s struggling to maintain control. She and Swanee are only two years apart, and they’re more like best friends than sisters.

A wave of resentment rises up inside me. All those years Joss had with Swanee, and I only got six weeks. Joss knows her better than I ever will. How fair is that?

She’s dressed in black. She always dresses in black. Joss is one of those invisible moles no one ever notices. So unlike Swanee, who is bright and fun and lively.

Is. Was. I’m stuck in present tense.

Joss asks, “Why?”

Like I have the answer.

I wish she’d go. I can’t engage with anyone right now, especially her.

“What are we going to do?” she says.

We? I know what I’m going to do. Lie here and die.

Swanee’s only been dead for three and a half days. She could still come back, right? People can be resuscitated. People’s hearts have stopped before, and doctors were able to restart them.

My mother could do it—if she wanted to.

Joss gets up, shuffles over to my dresser, and picks up my ski goggles.

GO! I want to shout. I want to push her out the door. I tuck my knees into my chest and turn over.

After about a year, she clues in. When she’s gone, I just start bawling.

We met on a ski trip the Wednesday after Christmas. My BFF Betheny and I were in ski club at the time and had planned to go to Winter Park, but Betheny called that morning with bad cramps. Even though we’d already bought the lift tickets, I considered not going, since I hate doing things alone. Ethan was home from the hospital, and I should’ve asked Mom and Dad if they needed me to stay and help out. With chores. Not with Ethan. He scares me. He seems so fragile I’m constantly afraid I’ll drop him or do something hideously wrong that’ll damage him forever.

In the end, selfish me decided she deserved a break from the crying and coughing and sleep deprivation.

The ski bus was packed by the time I boarded. There was only one empty row, so I snatched it up. Most people from ski club I knew enough to smile and say hi to, but I sort of rode on Betheny’s wings. She’d always been the popular one. She made the cheer squad this year, and even though we’d been friends since elementary, I sometimes felt totally outside her new flock of friends.

It wasn’t her fault. I’m just insecure, I guess.

As I was digging out my nano, I heard, “Is this seat taken?”

I looked up and saw Swanee. My stomach did a double flip. Of course I knew who she was. Superathlete. Most out lesbian in school. I think every other gay and bi girl lusted after her from afar. At the beginning of the year she was with this girl Rachel Carter? Carver? Then I heard through the
Gay/Straight Alliance grapevine that Rachel had moved. I didn’t know if they were still together or not.

“Hello?” Swanee said. “Sprekken zee Anglaise?”

“Huh? Oh, no. I mean, yes.” Shit, I thought. Could I sound more dense? I moved my pack off the empty seat.

“You’re Alix, right?”

She slid her pack under the seat in front of us while my mouth gaped open. “I’m Swanee,” she said.

She knew my name. It nearly took a force of nature for me to breathe out, “Hi.”

“A friend was going to come with me today, but she sprained her ankle,” Swanee said. “Did we meet at Rainbow Alley?”

Rainbow Alley is Denver’s LGBTQI Center. “I don’t think so. I haven’t been there in a while.”

“Me neither. Oh, I know.” She aimed an index finger at me. “You’re in the GSA at school.”

“Yeah.” Even though I hadn’t attended many meetings this year, since Betheny was always so busy and I still felt uncomfortable going alone.

“And you hang with the cheers.” She sort of wrinkled her nose.

“Just one,” I said. “Betheny. My best friend.”

Swanee’s eyebrows rose. “Is that all she is? Because everyone assumes…” The sentence dangled.

“What?” Everyone who?

She shrugged.

I might’ve let out a snort. Like a boar. “Betheny’s not gay.”

“You sure of that?”

“A hundred percent,” I said. “She would’ve told me when I came out to her.” In seventh grade. She was fine with it. In fact, she said she’d suspected as much.

Swanee held my eyes. Hers were so crystalline clear I felt like I was looking all the way to the bottom of the sea. “But do you like her that way?”

“No.” I hoped the heat in my cheeks didn’t register on the hot tamale scale. I’d wondered myself, and even fantasized about kissing Betheny. But it was only because I wanted so badly to find someone to love.

The bus rumbled off and Swanee sighed. I remember I couldn’t stop peering at her in my peripheral vision. She had this long strawberry-blond hair with a streak of blue down my side. I’d asked Mom if I could highlight my hair, since it’s this unremarkable shade of “dishwater” blond, sort of like splash back on your windshield after a snowmelt, and she said absolutely not, that I already had beautiful auburn highlights. I don’t know where she was looking, but it wasn’t in my mirror.

We weren’t even to I-70 before Swanee sighed again and said, “I really hate skiing alone. Want to—”

“Yes.” I cut her off.

She laughed and I about died of embarrassment.

We fell into an easy conversation, and by the time we were riding home, we were snuggling under a blanket and giggling our heads off.

I have to beg Mom—
beg
her—to let me stay home from school the rest of the week. Reluctantly, she agrees, but then
makes it conditional on me babysitting Ethan if Dad has to go to the office. Dad’s a Web consultant, so he works from home most of the time. I tell Mom, “No way.” We have a stare-down and I win because I break into tears. I know Mom thinks it’s all about Swanee, but it’s more: What if Ethan realizes he’s home alone with me?

“I only have one meeting with a client all week and it’s today,” Dad says, coming out of his office, “so I’ll drop Ethan off at day care.”

I want to hug Dad. We don’t hug in our family. “Thank you,” I tell him.

He adds, “You’ll need to pick him up at five. Can you do that?”

I sniffle and nod. He’ll screech all the way home. I’ll bring my nano.

Dad takes Ethan upstairs to pack diapers and stuff, and then they all leave. My stomach grumbles, reminding me I haven’t eaten much since… I can’t keep anything down. I toast a couple of frozen waffles and sit at the kitchen table. I think I’ll call Swanee and—

I press my fingertips against my eyes and choke back a deluge of tears. How could she go and leave me like this? Without warning. No last words. What were the last words we exchanged? Friday night after school she had a track team meeting. She kissed me at my locker and said she’d see me in the morning for snowboarding.

That hardly counts. We talked more on Thursday, when we went to an open mic night. I was at her house, in her room, sitting on her bed cross-legged, watching her put on
a shoulder-length, neon-blue wig and an all-black outfit like Joss would wear. Even though the shirt was oversize, I could see Swan’s breasts and nipples. Sexy as hell. “How do I look?” Swan asked me.

I got off the bed to go to her and kiss her my answer. “Good enough to eat.” I pretended to bite her neck and she went, “Ummm.”

Joss muttered, “I’ll meet you pervs downstairs,” and left.

I said, “You could wear those ebony button earrings I made you.”

Swanee sighed. “I would if I could find them.”

Her room was worse than a hoarder’s nest. Even though I bought her a jewelry box, she could never remember to put my earrings into it. If she could even find the box.

Swan said, “Anyway, I’m saving them for a special occasion.” She ran her hands through my hair and, with that twinkle in her eye, murmured, “We’ll play vamps later.”

It was almost ten. Three bands were left to play, and I had to be home by eleven. Swanee said, “You’re the only person in the world with a curfew that early,” and Joss said, “What
is
a curfew?” They both howled.

My parents’ rules and regs were so archaic.

Since she was a senior and I was a junior, Swanee and I didn’t have any classes together, but we did eat during the same lunch period. For the life of me, I can’t remember what we talked about on Friday. Trivia. Now I wish I had a recording of every word she ever said every moment of every day.

Saturday, I know, she got up early to run, the same way she does every morning. Did.

The end.

I feel myself losing it, so I slog up to bed, hoping to go to sleep for however long the grieving process takes. Forever?

My bedroom door flies open and Mom says, “Where’s Ethan?”

Oh my God. I sit up and my brain slips a gear. “He’s at day care.”

She checks her watch. “They closed half an hour ago.”

The door opens downstairs and I hear Ethan making his cranky/hungry sound.

“Thank heavens.” Mom presses a hand against her chest. Dad clomps up the stairs and Mom takes Ethan from him.

Dad fills the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I fell asleep.…”

He looks at me just long enough to pierce my heart.

No. He has no right.

Swanee was like a psychic when it came to reading people, and she said she didn’t like coming to my house because my parents always reeked of hater vibes around her.

Chapter 3

Mom says at breakfast, “The service for Swanee is Saturday at ten. There’s no burial, since she’s been cremated, but after the service Jewell and Asher are having an open house.”

Cremated. I can’t get past that word.

If her body was burned to a crisp, how will her heart ever be restarted? Can they even find your heart in soot?

Ethan slaps his high chair with both hands and Mom resumes feeding him baby slop.

I head up to my room.

“Alix?”

I ignore her.

“Alix!”

“What?” I swivel my head.

“I know this is hard for you,” Mom says. “Jewell wanted me to tell you that this will be a celebration of Swanee’s life, for as long as they had her.”

That sounds like she won’t be mourned. Or missed. How can anyone celebrate?

A volcano of hurt erupts in my gut and I sprint up the stairs to hurl.

The service is like no funeral I’ve ever been to, but then I’ve only attended one: my grandfather’s, when I was six. I remember the organ music was sad. People murmured condolences to Dad and said what a pretty girl I was. I wasn’t pretty because I’d been sobbing the whole morning. Grandpa was Dad’s dad and my favorite grandpa. I cried so hard during the service, Mom asked if I needed to leave. I shook my head no; I didn’t want to leave my grandpa. Dad gave the eulogy and not once did his voice even crack. Later, at the burial, he told us he wanted to stay a while, that he’d call Mom when he was ready. I looked over my shoulder on our way to the car and saw Dad with his head bent and his shoulders shaking. I wanted to run to him and squeeze him tight.

Swanee’s service has a carnival atmosphere about it. There are balloon bouquets and teddy bears. A flowered arch. A banner with the words
RIP, SWANEE
that looks like everyone from school signed it, or attached a card to it.

The Durbins have hired a mariachi band, and they’re playing “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” of all things.

We’re late because Mom worked the night shift in the preemie ward. That, and I kept changing clothes, trying to decide. Or forestall. Not go. Not accept.

Mom finally had to come in and tell me, “We need to leave now, Alix.”

I almost locked myself in the bathroom and told her to go without me. But I knew Swanee would want me there.

On the way to the service, we passed the Safeway, and my vacant stare wandered to our parking spot in back. What the hell…? Swan and I had discovered this gravel driveway that meandered into a copse of trees and then just ended. We’d park there in her little pink Smart car and make out for an hour or so after school. Now the entire area’s being razed. A bulldozer sat there, empty, but it had done its job of clearing the trees. Making way for apartments, or offices. Building the future.

I have no future.

Why didn’t I just succumb to my desire for her? Every time I made her stop, I’d have to apologize. Over and over. Once, she asked, “Why won’t you just let yourself go? I know you want me.”

I said, “I do. But I need to feel this is forever.”

“Alix, you can’t be sure anything is forever.” She drew a circle on my forehead with a slash through it, and then traced a heart on my chest. Like, Follow your heart and not your head. Stop thinking so much.

She was right about forever being meaningless.

At the church I can’t help noticing all the red and white uniforms and letter jackets. Support from Swanee’s teammates. I recognize faces of students, teachers, coaches, admins. Up front are the Durbins—Jewell, Asher, Genjko, Joss. Joss is sitting apart from the family, at the very end of the pew.