It’s amazing, but I don’t think Corey hates me or blames me for what happened to him. He sure scared the crap out of me though. I couldn’t stop worrying until I talked to him on the phone the next day. Letting him know I’m back was maybe the most intense thing I’ve ever done, and lately my life has had its intense moments. It’s strange how some things just fall into place and others don’t. I could easily have not been there, or not seen him, and he could have gone and done whatever he was going to do with that gun.
But he didn’t. The next day when I heard his voice on the phone all calm and normal, it made me wonder. We were there in the dark with the sky lit up and rockets whistling and exploding, and him feeling crazy with that gun, and me afraid that what I did would cause him to break. Then, when he finally understood that it really was me, that I wasn’t dead, but had chosen to do what I did, there we were, all normal, talking on the phone the next day. I had to wonder which parts were real and which were a dream. And I had to wonder why we were able to escape from the abyss when lots of people aren’t. All it takes is an icy road and a telephone pole to make a simple trip home from a friend’s house become a tragedy. It happened to a kid at our school last year, yet somehow we seem to be sliding through all this.
So what Corey ended up doing with the gun was actually pretty funny. He told me how he returned it, and about how he used to imagine having bombs strapped to him, which sounds pretty dramatic, but I get it. It’s like everyone gets wound up in their own agenda and other people get overlooked or pushed away. I don’t think Corey’s mom was trying to hurt him when she got with Harold, or my dad was trying to hurt me when he overdosed. I know I wasn’t trying to hurt Corey or my mom when I ran away. I just hurt inside. I was desperate and had to do something. In a way, what Corey was imagining with the bomb belt was like me standing up to Grant. I had to be willing to risk it all, or it would just keep going along the way it was.
Bonnie is letting me use the Taurus sometimes now. We talk quite a bit, and she trusts me. It feels pretty good, like we’re finally connecting. She’s standing up to Sterling, too. I don’t think that would have happened if I hadn’t left. I heard them yelling the other night, probably about me, and she threatened to move out. She started looking for a new job the next day and told me we might be poor soon, so I should enjoy our comfort while we have it. She seems happier. I know I am, but Sterling probably isn’t. Sometimes you need a big jolt to face the truth.
They didn’t charge me with anything, which is a relief. I guess I didn’t break any major laws. I didn’t steal the car. I did take some of Sterling’s money, but he gave me the debit card and the PIN to use in an emergency, so he would have to bring charges and he would look pretty dumb. The letter from Hawaii finally got here. It helped, even if it was three months late and not from Hawaii. It showed up in Natalie’s mailbox, sealed in a bigger envelope with Canadian postage on it. There was a note inside from Trudy’s friend saying she forgot to mail it in Hawaii.
I skipped school for two months. They could have a court hearing on that if the school makes an issue of it, but they won’t because I’m a good student and they have bigger problems to spend their time on. Now that Corey seems okay, school may be my biggest real problem. I’m short of credits for graduation. I missed half a semester, which means I don’t have passing grades in any of my classes. If the teachers would let me, I could make it up, but I doubt that all of them will. This isn’t like having cancer, or being injured in a car wreck, or even having mono, though they let a girl who had been drinking and got hurt when she ran her car off the road make up her work. As Sterling likes to remind mom, it was my fault, and there has to be consequences, so we shouldn’t expect any help from him to pay for my college, if I can even get in now.
It’s been a week since the fireworks. Bonnie let me have the Taurus for a night out. I think she knows I’ll see Corey tonight and probably accepts it. He’s definitely not her idea of good boyfriend material, but she knows I have a connection to him. I’m finding out that Mom’s pretty human when you find your way to her. So I park the Taurus in front of Corey’s dad’s house in Burlington. The neighborhood has a similar feel to the one where Natalie lives—kind of decayed, but in a different way—and the house is grimy inside, like Ian’s uncle’s house in Victoria when I moved in.
Corey shows me his room, which is a guy room and kind of messy. Then he says, “This place is depressing. I don’t want to hang around here unless you do. We could go for a walk, only the neighborhood is depressing too. I haven’t been out to the campsite since the night they took me to Juvie. We could go out there and build a fire.”
So we went. It was early and would stay light for hours. We stopped at the market and got some hot dogs and buns and chips. He had a pack all ready, with everything else we needed in it, which didn’t surprise me. There’s a road over the dike and a place to park on the river side, out of view from the road, but we didn’t care who saw us. Our story had been in the papers and even made the Seattle TV news. I was kind of the villain now and he was the victim, but we didn’t think anyone would bother us.
As we walked in, I remembered what it felt like to walk that trail in the dark that other night, and how alone I felt then, and how I trusted Corey because I thought he knew more about aloneness than I did, and that he respected me. I still think that. So I took his hand, just like I did that night, and we carried our picnic stuff to the river. The rock-circle fire pit was still there and, at first, the place had a weird feel to it. There were bits of colored plastic, numbered in black marker, tied to branches, and a stillness, an emptiness, like no one had used it since my tragic death. We built a fire.
He told me what it was like that last night, and about the fight with Harold that made him decide to sleep there and about hoping I would drive by and pick him up when he was walking. He wouldn’t talk about Juvie, so I told him about leaving the car and about Natalie’s neighbor giving me a ride and me hoping that he didn’t recognize me, and about all the strange moments that could easily have gone differently and made me turn back, but didn’t, like passing through Customs and finding a place to stay and a job. Then I told him again how really sorry I was.
And he kissed me.
And I kissed him back.