The Secret Side of Empty (23 page)

“M, it’s bound to happen anyway. I want to go to college not feeling like you’re sitting at home waiting. I couldn’t stand the thought of being away this summer and feeling you were home unhappy because I didn’t call enough or something.”

I sob and try to catch my breath on his shoulder. “It’s just that I love you. So. Much.” I say. That doesn’t quite put into words the way I feel but it’s all I can come up with.

He’s quiet for a moment. “I know,” he says. “And that’s what scares me.”

Nothing, anywhere, ever, will ever hurt as much as this moment.

I try to get out of the car, because it seems like that’s what would happen in the movie version of this, but he holds my hand and says, “Let me take you home.” He feels sorry for me. I put my face in my hands and sob the whole way home, hating myself for doing it. I want to explain to him that my world stops without him. I look inside my head for the words. I find none. His hand is on the knob that changes the car from park to reverse to drive. He grips it so tightly that the skin stretches around his knuckles.

He pulls up to my apartment building. I know the dignified thing would be to straighten up, wipe off my face, and say that I hope one day we will be friends. But I want to chain myself to the seat in his car so he has to take me with him. I can feel how uncomfortable he is, but this doesn’t make me move.

Finally, he says, “Can we still go to your prom together?” I notice he doesn’t mention his.

“I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity. It’s that I promised you months ago and it’s not fair to change things a month before.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I feel icky at his consolation prize.

“Honestly, I think it would be nice to go.”

“Whatever. I don’t care.” It’s the thought of the pity prom date that finally propels me out of the car.

H
e is near me. I’m on the grass on my back and he’s propped on an elbow, smiling down at me, the sun a halo behind him. It makes me squint. This beautiful boy is my boyfriend. I am so lucky. It’s so improbable. I look at the pattern of freckles on his nose, the sparkly green of his eyes.

Of course.
Of course
. I soak in the joy of him, the way his two front teeth are a little bigger than the others, the way his bottom lip is fuller than his top one, and that it reaches me a nanosecond sooner when he leans in to kiss me. His nose turns up and his eyelashes grow all the way to the very inside of his eyes in a way I’ve never seen anyone’s eyelashes grow before.

Kiss me
. I don’t say it, but he senses it and leans in, his smile turning into a soft laugh, sexy, happy. Yes. Of course. It’s perfect. Like a hammock on a warm day, safe. Like a stack of new books, chocolate mousse cake, swinging high on the swings. Like jumping off a branch and discovering you can glide. His shirt smells like cotton and detergent and sun.

He leans in closer. In the silence, the gap between the moments feels eternal.

“Just stay,” I say.

“Of course I’m going to stay.” I know he is going to kiss me and then he does it. My heart stops first, then speeds up.

But I’ve forgotten something. Like an item I’ve forgotten to put on a list. Towels. Sheets. A hair dryer. Band-Aids. What is it?

My eyes open. I am confused. Jerked into another time and place. Where?

My futon.

No sunshine.

What happened?

And then . . . of course. The thousand sinking wishes. The color bleeding out of everything. Of course. He isn’t really going to kiss me. My mind thinks it helps by bringing him to me in my sleep.

He isn’t ever going to kiss me again. I can’t think of anything sadder. I’ve just played the cruelest trick on myself, cracked some little thing inside. To lift up my hopes just to have to lose him all over again hurts just as much as the first time. It is raw and fresh and real, like he’s just now said the words again: “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” The loss I feel is bottomless, like I can never get any more alone than right now.

Anticipating it a thousand times didn’t prepare me. It only made it worse.

I
am getting used to not going to school. I keep my deal with Mr. A only some of the time. Some days I go for attendance and his class, then hang around inside. I stare off blankly in classes in which teachers take attendance, and nap in the locker room through those where teachers don’t. I haven’t been to gym in weeks, and no one seems to have noticed.

Other days, I leave the house but don’t go at all. A few times, when I’ve had stolen cash, I’ve taken the bus into the city and walked around all day until it’s time to go home. Today I don’t have the energy. Or the cash. I go sit in the bushes outside the library. Fire up the laptop. Facebook. Gossip sites. Email. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I am not sure how I am going to do five more hours of this.

And then I hear steps. Really close. I look up and there’s a cop.

He says, “I’m going to need you to get out of the bushes now. And let me see your hands.”

So this is how it ends
. After all the years of being afraid of it, knowing it’s here is terrifying but also weirdly calming, like at least I finally know. He’s going to ask for papers, he’s going to find out I have none, and I am done. On a plane to Argentina tonight. How could I have been so stupid?

“Is there a problem, Officer?”

“Yeah, the problem is that you’re hiding in the bushes when you should be in school. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Lying to me isn’t really a good idea right now. How old are you really?”

Is lying to him an offense that could get me arrested? Or am I in trouble regardless?

“Look, I’m going to be calling your family and your school, so we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.”

“Seventeen. I’m a senior.”

“You’re not done yet with school then, are you?”

“What if I told you I’m a dropout?”

“The way you asked me, I can tell you’re not. Let me see some ID.”

ID.
Thud, thud, thud
. My pulse is in my ears and I feel nauseous. He’s going to run me against some national database and I am going to be outed. I am already outed, maybe. Things look far away, like I’m looking at them through a tube. I try to suck in a breath so I won’t pass out.

I guess he can tell because he says, “Listen, relax. Walk over to the station with me.”

“Am I arrested?”

“I told you, I’m just calling your mother.”

“She’s working.”

“She’s getting called anyway. Or would you rather I called your father?” I guess the answer to that is usually no because he smiles a little when he says it.

“He’s in the city.”

“Let’s go, then. Let me see your license.”

“I don’t drive.” He looks at me funny. “Really, I mean it. I haven’t taken the test.”

He cocks his head like he’s trying to figure out whether that’s true.

“Your school ID then.”

That I do have. But it’s got my real name and everything. I curse myself for not getting some kind of fake ID for these situations. I fumble in my backpack and hand it over.

“Goretti, huh? Didn’t the nuns teach you more sense than to cut school when you’re almost finished?”

I’m not sure if he’s really expecting an answer to that, so I say nothing. I can’t believe it all ends like this. It’s all in slo-mo.

I wonder if I could outrun this guy. He seems a little out of shape. I should have stuck with the dropout story. But I just crumbled. I think of Baby Julissa with her dad in a van, off to jail, and then who knows where else. My mother. Jose.

I alternate between wild hope that somehow he’ll let me go, followed by the sinking feeling of knowing this is how I get busted. I am done here. Done.

The door of the municipal complex slides open noiselessly and I’m hit by a frigid wall of air. We walk past a big glass window like you’d see in a bank. There is another cop behind it.

He says, “Hey, Charlie.”

“Joe.”

“Whatcha got there?”

“A Goretti girl.”

Charlie chuckles. “No kidding,” he says, and moves his hand along the wall. A buzzer sounds. The cop called Joe opens a big metal door and lets me step through first.

“Okay, come this way,” he says.

I wonder how this whole thing will work. If I’ll get to see my parents before they send me back. Or if they’ll send us all back and it’s my fault that Jose will have to go back with them.

Cop Joe walks me over to a desk and points to a chair alongside it.

“Here, sit down.”

I do and hug my backpack to my chest.

“You got anything in that bag I should know about?”

I shake my head.

“I’m going to need to take a look inside. You okay with that?”

For a second I consider asking him if I’m under arrest and if he has a warrant or probable cause. All the cop show stuff. But I hand him my backpack.

He opens it up. It’s empty except for the laptop. And a few loose tampons at the bottom. He opens the front pocket, but doesn’t look too carefully.

“Traveling kind of light these days, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Getting ready to graduate?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going to make it if you keep cutting school.”

“I know.”

“Anything you want to tell me about? Any problems?”

“No.”

“So what are you doing?”

He actually doesn’t look that menacing. I have to remind myself he’s about to get me deported.

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you don’t. What’s your principal’s name over there?”

“Sister Mary Augustus.”

“She’s not going to be too happy to hear about this.”

“No.”

“I went to Catholic school. Those nuns are no joke.”

He reads the school’s phone number off my student ID and dials. When someone picks up, he says he is Lieutenant Joe Gallipano of the Willow Falls Police Department. He gets put through right away.

“Yeah, Sister, I’ve got one of your students in the precinct here. Seems she was hanging out instead of being in class.” He gives her my name.

“Yes, that’s her. Oh, is that right?” He puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “So your mom works at the school, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Mmmm-hmmm. Yes, sister. Sure, no problem. Right away.” He hangs up. “Boy, I think you’re in for it,” he says.
No kidding
. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Your school. Seems like Sister Mary wants a word with you.”

Wait, what?

He walks me out to the parking lot and puts me in the back of a black-on-black police car. It is scary looking as hell. There are no handles in the doors and I am in what appears to be a giant cage with a seat in it. He walks around to the driver’s side and starts it up.

“You know, you’re too young to be doing something so stupid,” he calls back to me. “I know you think you’re almost done and you’re sick of it. But you don’t know how many crazies are out there just waiting to find a vulnerable girl like you.”

“Around here?” It is bold, but I am getting wings from the idea that maybe, just maybe, he is really just going to bust me at school and not report me to immigration. He didn’t even check my name in a system or anything.

“Yes, around here. You kids walk around thinking you’re just safe everywhere you go. But there are a lot of wolves out there. And you’re just a helpless little sheep sitting out there in the bushes like that. That’s why we’re around, you know? We’re like the sheepdogs.”

Sheep? Sheepdogs? Huh?

He’s quiet until we get to the school. He walks me inside. In the principal’s office, Sister Mary Augustus and my mother are looking at me like I’ve just murdered the pope. But all I can think is that I am almost in the clear. Is this cop really going to leave? Leave me here and not send me to jail or Argentina or jail
then
Argentina?

“Sister, she’s all yours now.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

“No problem at all, Sister. I’m the proud graduate of a Catholic school myself.”

She seems to soften. “Then God bless you.”

He takes his hat off. “And you as well.”

And then he’s gone.

I fight the urge to dance.

But I still have the livid-looking nun and my mother to deal with.

“Explain yourself,” says Sister Mary Augustus after he’s gone.

“I can’t,” I say.

“I should say you can’t. This is unacceptable. Your grades are really suffering.”

“Yes.”

“I am informed that your grade point average has dropped below acceptable standards for NHS membership.”

“Yes.”

“And of course, we also expect our NHS members to uphold the highest values of our school. You’ve failed to do that.”

“I have. I’m sorry.”

“Consider yourself removed from the NHS effective immediately.”

I am surprised by how much this hurts.

“And I’ll expect you to stay for detention every day next week.”

“Yes, Sister.”

She turns to my mother. “Is there anything you’d like to say to her?”

She says in Spanish. “I’m only here doing this job so you can graduate. But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.” I expect her to sound furious, but she just sounds like she hasn’t slept in a week. So tired.

I stare at the tiles.

Finally Sister Mary Augustus says, “You can leave now. Go straight to class. I’ll be watching you.”