Anywhere but Here (19 page)

I went in. I freaked out. I left. I walked right out the door, without saying good-bye to anyone and without ever talking to Hannah.

Five minutes later, I'm sitting in the ditch down the street from Hannah's house, hidden by the knapweed and struggling to breathe.

Hannah's family is perfect. An hour ago, I was trying to talk to the mother of my unborn child, then I drove over here and stumbled into a Stepford family dinner.

Do people actually live like that? Did my family used to live like that?

The woman from the supermarket is Hannah's mom. The one who gave me instructions on how to roast a chicken. She's
Hannah's
mom. The lady with the breasts so big they almost touched the shopping cart handle.

Breasts. Don't think about your girlfriend's mother's breasts. There's a rule about that.

Hannah's mom's the woman with the kind eyes. I thought maybe she'd be a teacher. Or a mother of four. Actually, she
is
the mother of four. Hannah has two brothers and a sister, all in college already.

My stomach is clenched as if someone just punched me, and my ribs feel as if they're cracking. My teeth start to chatter. I realize, as I stare into the dead knapweed, the brown stalks frozen by the cold, that I've left the truck in Hannah's driveway. Which means I'm going to have to go back and get it. Which makes my stomachache worse. I can't breathe. It's possible I'm going to pass out. I put my head between my knees the way they say to do in movies and concentrate on sucking in air.

This is crazy. If I'm going to fall apart like this, I may as well
go home, get drunk, and lie on the carpet with my dad. I'm sure he's collapsed there again by now.

Hannah was wearing a tight, shiny, black skirt tonight. How was I supposed to meet her dad for the first time if I kept accidentally staring at her ass? That skirt was way too tight for a family dinner. Way too tight to wear in front of a guy who just got another girl pregnant. I may never be allowed to look at Hannah's ass again. It was a bad wardrobe choice on her part. Inconsiderate.

I can hear her voice from up the road, calling my name. I sit completely still, praying she won't look for me here. It's dark now anyway. She won't be able to see outside the circle of the porch light. I can stay here all night, imagining the smells of roast chicken floating down the street, and no one will find me.

“Coooooooooole!”

When it's stretched out, my name sounds more like the fossil fuel and less like a real name. Strange I've never noticed that before.

The scene at Hannah's house replays itself in my head over and over again.

I stepped into the house. I stopped with my hand halfway extended and my mouth half open, the hearty handshake and hello I'd imagined forgotten somewhere by my tonsils. It was her. The lady from the supermarket. The one with the cooking instructions and feathered hair and huge, sagging . . .

Don't think about your girlfriend's mother's breasts.

“Well, Cole.” She smiled. “I've heard lots about you and I was beginning to think I was never going to meet you. Now I see we've already met.”

That's not what she said. What did she say? I can't remember her exact words, and I feel as if they might have been important.

I managed to smile and stutter and actually shake hands. Her hand—once removed from the oven mitt—was warm and dry and a little bit puffy. I looked to Hannah and back. That was her mom.

I feel as if Hannah stole her. I mean, I know that woman is not my mom. She's just someone I met in a supermarket. It doesn't matter, though. I still feel as if I had a grocery store guardian angel, a spirit guide of chicken roasting, and now Hannah's taken her away.

Hannah can keep wearing tight skirts too, and other guys—guys without babies—can enjoy the view.

The heavy feeling is back, and it's crushing. I can barely breathe with the weight of it on my ribs. I can't stand up. Just when I thought I was going to pull my life together, this baby is going to destroy everything. How can something so small do that?

Maybe I didn't have a life in the first place. Maybe in the great, cosmic blockbuster that is life on earth, I only had a walk-on part in a minor supermarket scene, and now it's been snipped from the film.

“Cooooooooooole!”

She's close enough to make me wince. Why doesn't she go home? At this rate, Hannah's going to call the police and issue an AMBER Alert. I can see it across the road conditions sign on the way out of town.
TEEN MISSING FROM CHICKEN DINNER.
On the radio, they'll add a few more details.
WITNESSES DESCRIBED COLE OWENS AS POTENTIALLY UNSTABLE AFTER ATTEMPTING A FAMILY DINNER WITH A FAMILY THAT WASN'T HIS. IF YOU SEE THIS BOY, CALL THE POLICE. DO NOT APPROACH.

I don't know why I'm so freaked out. I suppose it's no big coincidence—meeting someone in a store and later finding out that you're connected. Maybe it's the idea that if I hadn't knocked
up my ex-girlfriend, Hannah's mom could have become more than a cameo appearance in my life. I could have created a role for her.

In the kitchen a few minutes ago, she had lipstick on her teeth. I decide to focus on that, the hot pink smear. It makes her seem less perfect. I suppose it makes me want my mom back a little less.

Incidentally, my mom was not round or turquoise or puffy handed. She was tall—almost as tall as my dad—with skinny arms and legs, as if she were a gangly preteen who hadn't grown into her limbs. Even her fingers were long. In soft focus, with ambient light, I can remember my dad sitting beside her on the couch, touching her fingers and saying she had piano-playing hands. That was after she got sick. We never had a piano.

“Cole! I know you're here somewhere. Your truck's still here. Stop being a lunatic.”

Hannah's voice is so close I have to hold my breath. I can't see her through the weeds, but I can picture her standing on the road with her hands on her hips, yelling into the darkness.

You'd think she'd have some consideration for her neighbors. They're going to run her out of town at this rate.

It'd be better if they ran me out of town instead. I'd go willingly. I could take my almost-finished film school application. I'd rent an apartment in Vancouver. Maybe if I left,
Lauren really would work things out, all on her own. And then my mom, Hannah's mom, even Hannah—they'd all be behind me. I'd never have to think about dinner, or roast chicken, or grocery stores ever again.

I have the feeling that if I examine this line of thinking, it will crack like one of these brittle knapweed stalks, but I don't care. I cling to it. I'm leaving town. No baby, or dinner, or family is going to make a difference right now. Not if it's a family who eats roast chicken together and not if it's one with a drunk dad on the living room carpet. It doesn't matter. Parenthood is a thing of the past.

•  •  •

“I should have raised you differently,” my mom said once.

She was lying on the living room couch watching TV, wrapped in a lime-green crocheted afghan that was so ugly it was probably making her more sick just to be near it. I was sitting in Dad's recliner, balancing a plate on my lap. I'd come home from school to have lunch with her. This wasn't long before she passed away. If I'd concentrated, I probably could have seen the white lights moving in from the edges of the scene, the type of lights that movie directors use for the hereafter. As if dead people live inside clouds.

“We should have raised you Christian,” she said.

I almost choked on my fried rice. We'd taken to eating
mostly takeout by then, Dad and I. Mom wasn't eating much anymore, although she was pretending to nibble on a spring roll just to please me.

“Christian?” I said incredulously. We'd never gone to church. Not even at Christmas and Easter like Greg's family.

“Your great-grandma and great-grandpa met in the church choir, you know.”

I failed to see the relevance.

“I think it would be easier to explain things to you if we'd given you a strong faith,” she said.

“Mom, I'm not a kid.” Did she think we should talk about the pearly gates? Angels?

“I know. But it would be comforting. You could think of me floating around up there, wearing white.”

She did. She wanted to talk about angels. As if angels could flap their wings and make us all feel better about death.

I shook my head. “I don't think that's how it works, even if you go to church.”

She waved a hand in the air vaguely, brushing away the details.

Do
you
believe in heaven?
That's what I wanted to ask. You'd think, after the doctors tell you there are only a few weeks left, that you would say anything and ask everything. It's not like that, though. Impending death doesn't open the Hoover Dam
of communication skills. My thoughts didn't come gushing out like cold, fresh drinking water. They still stuck at the back of my throat like old sludge.

“You're not going to die.” That's what I said instead. Which was stupid. We both knew she was going to die. It just seemed like the sort of thing I was supposed to say.

After a few minutes, Mom closed her eyes, worn out from the effort of our conversation. I stood up to get my bag and return to school. She called me back just as I was at the door.

“Cole. Do me a favor and clean these plates off the coffee table before you leave? If I have to stare at them all afternoon, it might kill me earlier than expected.”

That time, I didn't say, “You're not going to die.” But I rinsed those plates and put them in the dishwasher as if they were talismans.

It's a sad thing when you're powerless to do anything except clean the last grain of rice off a plate and wait for everything to wash into brilliant light of Hollywood's version of the afterlife.

•  •  •

Hannah's street has turned eerily silent. There's not even a barking dog. I can hear the faint hum of electricity in the lines overhead and the faraway drone of a truck on the highway. Slowly, I climb out of the crusty snow and brush the dirt off my ass. There are burrs on my shirt.

“Cole, are we going to talk like normal human beings?”

I freeze. “You're still here.”

“Apparently.”

When the hell did this girl get so tenacious? Shouldn't she have been back inside her warm and cozy dining room, tucking into a drumstick? Instead, Hannah's been patrolling the street like a stealth bot from one of Greg's video games.

“I had to . . .” There is absolutely no way to explain leaving her house. Not even to myself. “I had a stomachache.”

“And you thought hiding in the bushes was the best cure for that? Didn't you hear me calling you?”

Now she's peppering me with questions like some CIA interrogator. I jam my hands in my pockets and turn toward the highway.

“You're just going to leave? My parents are totally confused.”

I can't believe she expects me to stay under this sort of onslaught.

“They're going to be hurt,” she says. “My mom made a roast chicken for you.”

Of course she did.

I have to admit, I've been so busy wallowing in my own confused embarrassment that I haven't considered their feelings. I stop for a second, but I can't look Hannah in the eye.

“Tell her I'm sorry. Just say I had to go, okay?”

“Come back inside! Listen, I know about Lauren. I know you must be freaking out right now. Can we talk about it?”

Damn it. Why didn't Lauren tell me earlier? I've got everyone cast in the wrong roles. In my head, Lauren's the girl next door or the caring sister and Hannah's the star. Which is all wrong now. I need to recast.

“No! Okay? I can't!” I'm yelling, screaming at Hannah in the middle of the street. We may as well go and argue in the Burger Barn parking lot. It was a mistake to let Hannah into my life in the first place. I was supposed to be separating myself from Webster and now here I am, surrounded.

She's talking again, but I turn and walk away, toward the highway, my shoulders hunched in an effort to cover my ears.

I leave her sputtering. She calls after me a few more times, but she doesn't follow. I'm halfway to the highway before I realize—again—that I've left my truck in her driveway.

With every ounce of my being, I wish I could jog back to her house, meet her family, and collect my truck as if nothing crazy happened tonight. As if I didn't flip out. As if Lauren weren't pregnant. But there's a distinct lack of rewind buttons in my life right now.

I'm going to have to walk all the way to Greg's and send him to get my truck. At the moment, that's my best plan.

•  •  •

By Monday, Hannah and I have broken up.

There's only one small problem: She doesn't know. Friday night, I got half a dozen texts from her, with another batch in the early hours of the morning after I snuck up her driveway to collect my truck. (Greg wouldn't answer his phone, completely failing in the bail-a-brother-out department.) She e-mailed and called all weekend, then again when I didn't show up at school this morning. The girl has a serious communication dependency.

Slightly stoned from sleep deprivation and three days of dedicated TV watching, I welcome Dad home from work by heating two cans of soup and making toast. That's like a two-course dinner, which counts as fancy around here. And to celebrate the occasion, we manage to talk about nothing more stressful than the hockey scores and the weather.

When we're finished, Dad retreats to the living room. The phone rings.

“Don't answer it!” I yell. He was out for most of the weekend. He hasn't heard about my new phone policy yet. (#1. Don't answer it.)

Dad doesn't ask questions.