After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (11 page)

In this way Trina Holland and I become friends.

20

Hey, baby, want to hang out? After school meet me back of…

For so long there has been nothing. In Yarrow Lake. In New Hampshire. In the house on Plymouth Street. In the girly-decorated room in the brick colonial on Plymouth Street. Nothing happening except in my head somewhere that scares me. Now there is something. There is something-to-happen. It’s six months after the wreck. Cell phone rings, and it’s Trina.

Cell phone rings, and it’s Trina.

Cell phone rings, and (my aunt Caroline is surprised, puzzled, beginning to resent this new friend of mine not known to her, as I edge out of the room speaking excitedly) it’s Trina.

Jenna, baby, hey, I am totally sorry, forgot to tell you, oh, hell, if I did, anyway, baby, we’re—where are we, Rust?—somewhere downtown, it’s like five minutes from your house, we can swing around and pick you up just stand out front, baby, there’s these guys from Canaan who are just totally cool—

Cell phone rings, it’s Trina.

My friend Trina.

Trina Holland, my friend.

I’m like a little kid standing in front of a mirror, trying on some older sister’s sexy outfits. Staring, laughing aloud, it’s so amazing.

“Trina, hi. This is Jenna….”

Suddenly it happens Trina Holland wants to hang out with
me
.

Introduces me to her friends. (Some of her friends. Not the older guys, who aren’t in school. And not Crow, Trina is possessive of him.) If she wants to cut afternoon classes, Trina wants me with her. Hanging out at the mall. Hanging out at Kiki Weaver’s house when Kiki’s parents are working. Riding in Rust Haber’s battered Cherokee, or T-Man’s Dodge SUV painted black with red lightning bolts on the sides, listening to heavy metal music turned up so loud your teeth vibrate.

“Jenna baby, c’mon! You are too cool not to, like, try.”

Sharing a can of Bud Light with me, foamy beer spilling over her knuckles as she passes it to me in the lurching vehicle. Sharing cigarettes from her mangled pack of Winstons. Sharing her dope.

I can zone out, I think. Like
in the blue
.

Trina isn’t into “hard stuff,” she says. Not into “crystal,” she says. Mostly she’s into smoking dope—weed—and drinking beer with her friends. She’s scared of the other, how it makes your heart pound. How it can fry your brain. But dope, weed, pot, the kind T-Man supplies them with, it’s really mellow.

Oxys are really, really great but hard to get hold of. So many adults are into Oxys. The only people Trina knows who smoke dope are kids, but adults are seriously into OxyContin, so the price is high.

I tell Trina it’s supposed to be really addictive, OxyContin, so maybe that’s a good reason too for not taking much of it. Trina looks at me like suddenly she doesn’t care for my face, the way my face looks kind of washed out, plain, especially my grimy sailor cap annoys her, so she pulls it off, fluffs up my hair, stares at me critically, drags me to a sink and forces my head under the faucet and wets my hair, brushes my hair with the brush she carries in her zebra-stripe bag, decides it should be bleached ash blond like her own so people looking at us, “See, they’d think we’re sisters, like twins except you’re taller. You need a makeover, Jenna. Like on TV. I’m in charge.”

That’s so. Trina is in charge.

Trina, who trusts almost no one. Trina trusts me.

That first day, in the girls’ restroom. It’s “destiny,” Trina says. A girl she doesn’t know, a girl with no reason to be nice to her, steps forward as her “guardian angel,” supplying her with just what’s needed to bring her down from a bad high.

“That’s the test of a true friend. That’s, like, what a saint would do. Jenna baby, I will never forget that.”

Jenna
is the name I’ve told Trina. Now to Trina’s friends, I am
Jenna
. Nobody else at Yarrow High knows this name.

Ryan Moeller is bug-eyed, seeing us together. Me with Trina Holland. Me!

Trina and her friends don’t hang out in the school cafeteria much, but sometimes, if the weather is really bad, they will stay inside at noon and take over a table. The girls drink diet sodas and coffee for a caffeine high. They aren’t into eating, since if they eat, they become ravenously hungry and eat too much, have to stick a finger down their throats afterward to bring it back up, and as Trina says, that’s disgusting…and bad for your teeth. So some days they are there, in the cafeteria, at a crowded noisy table: Trina, Kiki, Dolores, Sandy, other girls I don’t know, and big guys like T-Man Dubie, Rust Haber, Roger Nabors. Always I’m hoping to see Crow with them, but it’s rare for Crow to eat lunch in the cafeteria. Trina complains that Crow isn’t reliable. Crow doesn’t show up when you’re expecting him. “He’s got this family, this cripple dad who was shot up in Vietnam, who’s a carpenter or something. You’d think Crow was the only one in that family, how they depend upon him. He’s working for his dad half the time. Even his sister, one day she comes home with an actual baby
and leaves it
.” Trina is excited and incensed talking about Crow, but if I ask a question, she loses interest and shouts down the table at someone else.

And there’s Ryan Moeller in her baggy shirt, sweater, size-fourteen jeans carrying her tray past our table, staring at me like she can’t believe her eyes. Quickly I look away. I don’t want Trina Holland and her friends to associate me with this sad-fattish sophomore girl drifting by our table alone.

My new life now, with Trina Holland.

Always there’s something-to-happen.

21

Cell phone rings, and it’s Trina.

Now I’m never lonely. Even alone, I’m not. ’Cause I can call Trina’s cell. ’Cause Trina has said for me to call. Anytime. Day or night. Even if Trina doesn’t answer, I can leave a message:
Hi, Trina, it’s Jenna, just checking in.

Next time my cell rings, it’s Trina.

“…was saying, you were in some wreck, Jenna? I guess it wasn’t the same one Crow was in, though.”

Trina is brushing inky black mascara on her eyelashes. She’s leaning close to the mirror, almost falling into the mirror. Taking a long drag from her cigarette, she gives it to me to hold. Not a joint but a cigarette. The smoke makes my eyes water, my throat close up.

I’m surprised that Trina would ask this question. As if Trina doesn’t know Crow all that well.

I tell her no. The car crash I was in wasn’t anywhere around here. It happened last spring.

I’m anxious. I have told Trina too much. But she doesn’t ask me about the crash. Like she hasn’t been listening. Peering at herself critically in the mirror. Taking another drag on her cigarette, exhaling, and saying, as she’s said before, that Crow isn’t reliable.

“He’s the coolest guy, but. He’s been into girls so long you can’t, like, make an impression on him, and I hate that. Other guys, you can be special with them. But Crow, he’s
sangfroid
, what he calls it—cold-blooded.”

I’m not sure what Trina means. If this is French, she’s pronouncing it flat, like English:
sangfroyd
.

“Not that he isn’t sexy. Oh, man. Crow
is
. But like, afterward. His mind just drifts off. He’s got family up in Canada, I guess. He’s got some secret kind of life. Like he says he wants to hang out, but he never shows up. Won’t give me his cell number either. That’s Crow for you. There’s older girls after him, in town. Like, in their twenties? Like, married? I swear. Crow smokes weed, but he’s off other stuff now, know why? T-Man says Crow almost died, snorting some crystal. Really pure crystal, you know? Maybe you don’t, Jenna. Better if you don’t. Crow nearly died, and it scared him. He was in with older guys then. They had to take him to the ER, like his heart had stopped? Oh, man. Glad I didn’t know Crow then. My friend Gil Rathke—he’s really cool, he’s older—was saying they were really freaked, Crow wasn’t, like, breathing, his buddies kind of panicked and, like, left him off there…at the ER…sort of, like, on the sidewalk?…’cause, see, they were scared of cops. Crow wasn’t pissed at them, I guess—Crow’s into, like, forgiving—anyway, they saved his life, Crow says. Weird, I was, like, this little kid then. Sophomore, like you. Seems sooooo long ago.” Trina laughs. She has finished with her mascara, and her eyes look really bright, glistening, beautiful. The curved silver pin in her eyebrow is glittering like a fishhook. Her lips are a rich dark plum purple, you can see why a guy would be turned on by them. The little coiled green snake on Trina’s wrist looks like its scales are glittering too. Trina sees me admiring the tattoo. “Crow and me, we got our tattoos at the same time. There’s a guy out by the lake, a tattoo artist. It’s like wearing the same rings, I mean, like wedding bands? ’Cause Crow and Trina, we are close. It only just pisses me off, Crow has such a thing for, like, hurt people. Crippled people and losers.” Trina’s sharp little chin juts out like she’s daring me to disagree.

Hurt. Crippled people and losers.
Trina didn’t mean this. I don’t think so. Trina Holland is my closest friend, she can’t be wanting to hurt me, can she?

22

Why’d I miss dinner? Why, three times this week?

I’m sullen, sulky. It pisses me off, having to explain like I’m a little kid.

Like adults explain
why
. Like my father ever did.

Oh, man! Like Trina would say, adults fuck you over and never say why.

Why didn’t I call home when I knew I was going to be late?

I did. I think I did. My cell wasn’t working.

Maybe the battery is low. Whatever.

Why’d somebody call from school? I don’t know. I attended all my classes this week. I think I did. Some of my teachers, they are always in my face. It’s like they hate me ’cause I’m a transfer.

No, I wasn’t drinking beer on school property! I was not.

I was not smoking on school property! If somebody saw me, they are lying.

Aunt Caroline is saying, Jenna, we need to talk. Please.

Aunt Caroline is looking hurt. Aunt Caroline is looking angry.

Uncle Dwight is nervous, asking what’s wrong. Jenna, we need to talk.

Damn, I can’t make it inside and up the stairs before they hear me. Before they catch me. Smell my breath.

Trina took my sailor cap from me and wouldn’t give it back, saying it was ugly. Wish I had it now, to yank down on my head.

Wish Trina were with me now, she’d tell my aunt and my uncle to mind their own business.
F---off
, Trina would say.

Wild! What Trina would say. I’m trying not to laugh. Buzz at the back of my head. In my mouth beer tastes soooo sour, but once it’s swallowed, once that buzz starts…

Jenna, please. Look at us, please.

Jenna? What is so funny?

…at the mall. With my friends. No, not the guys. Just my girl friends. You don’t know them. I said we went to the Cinemax, can’t think of the name of the movie. We ate there. At the mall. No, I don’t remember. No, I said it was just girls. I said we weren’t with guys. Somebody gave us a ride, okay? A ride to the mall. No big deal. How do I know when the mall closes? I’m not checking the time every five minutes. Who’s spying on me, whose business is it? I tried to call you, I said. I’m not lying. I worked hard on that paper. It’s because I’m a transfer to Yarrow High, which I hate, and they know it. The teachers know it. My English teacher knows it. Any chance he can, he makes fun of me. Stares at me.
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck is a novel that made me anxious, see. I knew how it would end. I knew. I hated it, the feelings that I would have, so I guess I never finished it exactly. I never read the last chapter. Flipping through the novel back to front, I thought:
Anybody’s life could be a story you would not know how it ended, except somebody who didn’t know you at all might know, flipping through the pages of your life and not even caring.
And that freaked me. So it was hard to write a paper on
Of Mice and Men
like Mr. Smart-Ass Farrell wanted, so I guess I didn’t write a paper exactly. Something I printed off the Internet. I don’t even remember. Why’d I do it, I told you. I did not cut so many classes. I did not cut gym class. I like gym class. I like my teacher Ms. Bowen. I tried to call you, I said. Not my fault if the cell battery is dead. Not my fault if you don’t believe me. If you think I’m lying. If you think I’m lying, maybe I shouldn’t be living in this house with you. Maybe I don’t deserve to live in this house with you.

If you can’t trust me, I mean.

If I can’t trust you.

23

“Baby, come
on
.”

Trina is laughing at me. The look on my face. The dazed way I’m blinking and staring.

Thinking:
Trina Holland lives here? In this house?

Trina laughs just a little impatiently. Pinches me like to wake me up. My head’s still ringing from high-decibel Metallica pounding inside T-Man’s SUV. My eyes are still watery from so much cigarette smoke. And I’m trying not to hiccup from the beer. This house Trina says casually is hers is so surprising to me, so awesome I guess I can’t believe it, almost. All this while thinking Trina Holland is what Ryan calls trailer trash, and it turns out that the Hollands’ house is twice the size of the McCartys’ house—and the Moellers’—and much more expensive.

I guess I’d been picking up that Trina isn’t what you’d call poor. From remarks she’s made, the kind of spoiled-sounding things a rich girl might say, and the fact that some of Trina’s things are expensive, like her boots, which are actual leather, not fake, her wristwatch she keeps losing, her wallet.

We’re walking up the driveway to Trina’s house. T-Man has let us out on the street. After school we’d been hanging out at the mall with Kiki Weaver, but Kiki’s mom came to pick her up, saying we should come with her too, she’d drive us both home, but Trina wasn’t in the mood, so luckily we ran into T-Man and his friends. T-Man drives his SUV so fast, laughs, swerving into somebody else’s lane and cutting them off, I’m in the backseat, jamming my fists against my mouth, not wanting anybody to know how scared I am, how I’m thinking:
They don’t know. They don’t know what it is like when the vehicle you are riding in begins to lose control, swerves, and crashes, and when screaming is so raw in your throat, it feels like flame. And that half second when you begin to know you have lost control but can’t get it back.
My friends don’t know.