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I have been sitting for over an hour, not moving, just staring at the flickering light of the TV. I haven’t even registered what is playing; it’s just noise and light and distraction. There is banging coming up the stairs and the low voices of conversation. The banging clop, clop, rest, clop, clop of my mother’s ascent draws me up from in front of the TV, turning it off, moving toward the kitchen, Her key is in the lock, and the door springs open. I am putting a pan on the stove with water to heat for pasta when I hear them fully in the living room.
I poke my head around the corner seeing Cal settling her on the sofa. She is flushed and smiling, a happy place in her medication. “Hi,” I say and wave. “How are you feeling?”
“Well, I didn’t expect to have you home?” she questions.
“Yeah, well . . .” I have no place else to be. “I’m making spaghetti for dinner.”
“Garlic bread?” she asks. I nod, and we share a smile. “Stay for dinner?” She smiles her best “love me” smile up at Cal, who laughs and turns his head away.
I look at him, seeing where his bones and Warren’s bones are similar and where they are not. They are both tall and dark haired. They are both angular in their facial features, although Cal’s are sharper, and maybe longer. Yes, definitely longer, especially his sharp, angled chin. I wonder if that is his age or the roughness of his life that has etched him so sharply. The eyes are different. Warren’s are that beautiful storm-cloud blue, with exquisite arching brows above, long lashed and pretty. Cal’s brows are flat across, even slightly drawn together, and his eyes are brown. I think. I try to close my mind to the fact that it was Cal on Christmas, as revolting as that is to know. “There will be plenty,” I say and dip back into the kitchen. I can hear them, talking, laughing, then the TV comes on, and their voices are overshadowed.
When everything is ready, I make up their plates and bring them out to the living room. They stay seated at the couch, and I leave the plate of garlic bread on the end table. I go back to the kitchen and eat my own dinner, looking out the kitchen window into the alley below.
***
After I’ve cleaned the kitchen and after mom is asleep on the sofa and Cal has left, I sit in my own room, on a bed that isn’t mine, and I stare down at the angry, red gash on the inside of my left wrist. It makes my stomach churn, the sight of it, but that piece of glass is tucked safe under the mattress, and my fingers itch to take it out. I don’t, but oh how I want to. When I wake in the morning, the gash is puckered along the edges with a sharp line of scab like a ridge.
It is raining, and I am surprised, when I step out into it to start the walk to school, to see Dylan sitting in his truck at the curb. I tap on the passenger door, and he reaches across to open it. I slide in and shake out my umbrella.
“What are you doing here?”
He looks at me for a long second before saying, “I just thought I’d see if you needed a ride. Wanted,” he corrects.
“Thank you.” I hop in.
We drive to school, and he doesn’t say much else along the way, but when we park, he asks, “You good?”
“Yeah. I’m good.” I look at him and give him a smile. “Thanks for the ride.” His pale eyes search my face, but I flip the door handle and step out into the rain, jogging for the door. I stop at the guidance counselors’ office before even going to my locker. I figure I should probably put in a humble appearance after all my unexcused absences these past few weeks and after leaving yesterday. The guidance office is staffed by two counselors and one receptionist. Dina, the receptionist, points me to a table where I can wait for whoever comes in first. The table is scattered with puzzle pieces and a puzzle that is over halfway complete. I pick up pieces and put them down, trying to calm my jangled nerves. I wish I had eaten something before leaving, because now it feels like my stomach is gnawing on my backbone.
Mrs. Shaw wins me in the first-to-enter drawing. She comes in, peeling off her raincoat and hanging it on the coat tree. She is tall and thick with short, black hair, pixie cut, stuck to her head. “Miss Hayes.” She nods a greeting. “Come on back.” She leads me into her office, a small room with no windows but filled with shelves of whimsical movement and color. Pillows that students have made for her in sewing and home ec, art with student signatures gracing the corners. It is so full of knickknacks and color that for a moment I am unable to move; it is so overwhelming. She busies herself putting away her lunch, settling the papers she has brought back from her home. She is very precise. I notice that she leaves nothing visible on her desk, except my own file, which she has now taken out of her cabinet. I expect her to sit behind the desk, but she does not. She comes over to where I am sitting and joins me on the small couch. She is not too close. She is not threatening. She is just near.
“What brings you in, Alison?”
I have tried to think all morning how this conversation might go and know that I just need to lay it out and ask for help. I let out a deep breath.
“It’s been a really bad couple of weeks,” I start, knowing that she knows this already. “I need to know how to get a GED. I don’t think I can finish this way.”
“How is your mom?” she asks, completely skirting my GED statement.
“She’s okay. I think.” I look down at my fingernails, looking for something to chew, but they are gnawed to the quick times ten.
“Where are you living? Did you find a place after the fire?”
I tell her we are staying in an apartment off 5th Street, and she nods. “Is there anything you need? Clothes, furniture.”
“The apartment is furnished.” We could definitely use clothes, but there is no way I am admitting that. The jeans and shirts that I stuffed in my backpack the day of the fire are pretty much it for me, except for the sweatshirt that I’m wearing, which I found in the lost-and-found at the laundromat.
“Can you tell me about the accident in the parking lot last week?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really remember it. Derrick said I swerved into his truck. I wasn’t paying attention, I guess.” But I remember his words yesterday in the hall, the guilt in his eyes.
“Wow.” She looks me squarely in the eye for the first time. “What a month you’ve had.” I push my hands through my hair, pulling it off my face. I let it fall again when the cuff of my sweatshirt rubs against the ridge on my wrist, and I drop my hands down into my lap again.
“Yes. What a month.”
She reaches across the desk and takes my file off the desk. “You are missing quite a bit of work, but I think, with the extenuating circumstance of the past month, there can be leniency on getting that work completed. The days absent aren’t going to cause you problems, so long as you can return to your normal routine. You’ve always been a good student and never had any attendance issues in the past. I see no reason you can’t put his small blip behind you and maintain your graduation goals.”
“Great. That’s good to hear.” I don’t want her to be disappointed. She is so encouraging that I don’t want to admit I’ve just given up on everything and don’t want to have to face anybody anymore. I am so tired of hearing half-whispered comments when I pass certain people in the hall. I am so tired of the sort of pity I see in the teachers’ faces. I am Moses parting the Red Sea. I am the plague ship.