Best Friends Forever (11 page)

I watched the house, the shutters, the brass knocker on the front door, the two elm trees in the front yard, trying not to cry, barely moving, barely breathing, until late that afternoon, when my parents pul ed into the driveway and my mother and father crossed the street to get me.

“Your brother…” my mother said. Her face was pale and puffy, and her hair stuck out from her head in staticky clumps. Tissues were bal ed up in one of her hands; the other was curled in a fist on her knee.

“It was stupid,” my father said, and rubbed the back of his hand against his red eyes.

“Jon should have known better.”

“What happened?”

What happened, as the whole town would eventual y learn, was that there’d been three boys from the cross-country team in the car: two in front, and Jon in back. The boys weren’t drunk—not legal y—but they’d been drinking, and they were speeding, doing ninety miles an hour on an infamously twisty road, trying to get home in time for curfew. The boy behind the wheel had lost control of the car, which had slammed into a tree and rol ed over. The driver and the boy in the passenger’s seat hadn’t been wearing their seat belts. They’d both died (and, the rumor that was al over school by Monday morning had it, one of them had been de-capitated). Jon, who’d worn his seat belt, had sustained cuts, bruises, contusions, cracked ribs, and a concussion. And brain damage. “They don’t know how much yet,”

my mother said, twisting a tissue in her hand. “They can’t say how bad.”

“But he’l be okay? He’l get better?” I looked from my mother’s face to my father’s, waiting for reassurance, for a verse of “don’t worry, Addie,” and a chorus of “everything wil be fine.”

Instead, my mother gulped back a sob and turned her face toward the window. My father rubbed his jaw.

“Is Jon going to be okay?” I asked again. Neither one of them answered me. That was how I knew. Jon wouldn’t be okay. He wouldn’t get better. The brother I’d known, the one I’d loved and resented and envied, the one who’d talked to bus drivers and store clerks and strangers on my behalf, that swift, sure boy was gone. What came home from the rehab center twelve weeks later was a pale, pudgy, moon-faced Jonshaped lump with seizures and an unsteady gait and faulty depth perception, a Jonshaped lump that sat in front of the television set, or at the dinner table, staring incuriously at whatever was on the plate or screen in front of him, sometimes with a finger in his nose, sometimes, especial y in the first few months, with his hand down the front of his pants. Disinhibition, said my mother, as if giving me the technical term would make it better. It wil pass. Jon had to relearn everything—how to dress himself and brush his teeth, how to tie his shoes, how to cut and chew and swal ow his shoes, how to cut and chew and swal ow his food, how to read, how to use the bathroom (that last one they’d mostly taught him in the hospital, which was good, because it was too awful to think about my mother having to go through that again). And that was just the stuff the doctors could agree on. There was the disinhibition, the nose-picking, and the other stuff that Jon’s damaged brain had forgotten was private behavior. There were fits—actual seizures, mostly little ones where he’d just stare into the distance, and fits of rage, where Jon would scream curse words, sometimes because he’d gotten frustrated tying his shoe or re-capping the milk, and sometimes for no reason at al . He’d scream “FAGGOT!

FAGGOT! FAGGOT!” at my mother, his legs flailing in front of him, bashing at the chairs and the kitchen counters until she convinced him to stop. There were also

“short-term memory issues,” which meant that Jon could remember the scores of soccer games he’d played when he was eight, or who’d been invited to his tenth birthday party,

but

not

his

locker

combination, or his teachers’ names, or where he’d put his shoes the night before. How long would this last? Would Jon ever be himself again? The doctors said that only time would tel , but that most of his recovery would happen in the first year. “It would have been better if he was older,” I overheard one of the therapists say to my mother. Her name was Sue Stumps, and she came to our house twice a week wearing scrubs printed with teddy bears, sil y, babyish things that I hated, because Jon wasn’t a baby, and if he’d been himself he would have hated them, too. “If he was older, he’d be relearning stuff that he’d done for a long time—how to shave, how to drive. For young people…” Her voice trailed off, but I heard what she hadn’t spoken. For young people, it was worse.

My father spent more and more time in the basement, as if he couldn’t stand to see what Jon had become. My mother hovered, smoothing Jon’s hair, wiping his lips. I hung back, watching as Jon talked to himself, muttering words I couldn’t quite hear. Sometimes, usual y in front of the television set, he drooled. That, my parents explained, was a side effect of one of Jon’s medications, and he wasn’t doing it on purpose, and I should try to help him if I could by handing him tissues and reminding him to use them. “You’l have to take care of him,” they told me over and over, when he was stil in the hospital and, later, when he was stil at the rehab place in Chicago. At first I couldn’t imagine it—my taking care of my brother sounded about as likely, about as plausible, as my growing wings, but the Jon who came home was a different brother than the Jon who’d run lightly down the driveway on Hal oween, and this brother, the new Jon, did need my help.

He spent the spring and summer at home, going to therapy, working with paints and clay and balance bal s and the penmanship workbooks I remembered from first grade. At night, my parents would take turns reading out loud to him until he fel asleep, snoring. That fal , he started high school again as a freshman, in the same class as me and Valerie. Before, he’d been on the academic track, plus honors history. Now he was on the “modified” track, in class with the handful of kids who would learn a trade or go to community col ege or the army instead of getting a four-year degree. Three days a week he had a tutor shadow him, to make sure he took notes and paid attention and didn’t doze off or start shouting in the middle of a lecture or a quiz.

At first the other kids were on their best behavior. They’d offer to help with his homework or carry his books; his former teammates would scoot over to make a place for him at the lunch table. But that didn’t last. By the end of September, Jon was alone, walking by himself down the hal ways, in his old-man shuffle, one hand extended, fingers brushing the wal for balance. Al of his grace was gone. He sat by himself on the bus and at lunch, except on Fridays, when we shared the same lunch period and I’d sit with him. In class, it was like there was a force field surrounding him, a barrier that no one tried to cross. Passed notes flew over his head; the girls who’d once flocked around him avoided his desk and his locker. The crosscountry team was an impossibility. Jon’s medication had made him gain weight, and the injury had left him permanently off balance. The phone at our house stopped ringing. His friends had forgotten him. It wasn’t their fault. He wasn’t the same boy.

After school, Jon would sit at the kitchen table and work on thousand-piece puzzles, putting together pictures of the Milky Way, lunar landscapes, Venus and Mars, and the Chal enger space shuttle, with his tongue wedged into the corner of his mouth and his forehead creased in concentration. My mother would clap when he finished them, and I’d wonder, listening to the sad sound of her applause, whether she remembered his races, jumping up and down and cheering for him when his chest broke the tape. Now, when she asked him questions, he answered them. He sat with us at every meal and watched TV with us after dinner. No cars came honking up the driveway to take her son away. He was hers again, al hers.

I tried to help. I made sure that his shoes were tied, that his backpack was zipped, that his belt was fastened and his pants zipped up when he came out of the bathroom. I’d stay close, hoping for those rare moments of lucidity that would come at unpredictable intervals. That spring, when the school bus was stopped at a red light, Val and I watched out the window as a car ful of Jon’s old friends zoomed past us, the driver honking, the girl in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard, laughing. Jon, who was in the seat behind us, tapped my shoulder. I’d turned, expecting him to ask me for a tissue or a cough drop or to tel me he’d forgotten his lunch or his books or both, but instead, he was looking at me sadly. “I was in a car accident, right?” he asked.

My breath caught. “That’s right,” I said. He didn’t answer. I watched until his eyes clouded over. “Faggot,” he whispered. Val sighed. I felt tears clogging the back of my throat.

“Jon, remember? That’s an inside word.”

This was what his therapist told us to say. “I love you,” I told him. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“Faggot,” he said, almost sighing. He closed his eyes and leaned the top of his head against the window. Underneath his hair was a jagged scar. Underneath that was a metal plate: it covered the holes where they’d dril ed to relieve the pressure from his swol en brain.

He opened his mouth and drooled a little onto his shirt col ar. A minute later, he was asleep. I made myself look away until the bus arrived at school. ELEVEN

“Val?” I cal ed, and spun around, my breath huffing out a white cloud in front of me. I went to the car and pul ed on the handle. Locked. Of course. With everything I had

—my purse, my keys, and most important, my cel phone—inside. “Stupid,” I growled, and leaned against the door. I was so stupid. Why had I imagined that she’d changed? Why did I let myself think that she’d come back to me chastened, a true and loyal

friend,

that

once

she’d

acknowledged the truth about what had happened back in high school she would be so grateful that she’d never leave my side? People didn’t change. Not me, not Val, not Dan Swansea. I’d always be scared, she’d always be selfish, and as for Dan Swansea, he’d probably spend his whole life as a criminal and never get caught, and then I’d die of cancer and nobody would even care. Probably no one would even notice. I’d die one of those terrible single-girl deaths, my body undiscovered until someone noticed the smel , and God knew how long that would take, because Mrs. Bass had sinus issues and couldn’t smel much of anything anymore.

I kicked the gravel as hard as I could, and muttered “Shit,” which improved neither the situation nor my mood. What now? I walked past the Dumpster, heading for the street. The country club was a few miles from the nearest gas station—I remembered passing it on our way here. I could cover the distance in half an hour. I’d find a phone, cal the police, and tel them the truth. I would tel them how Valerie had come to my house and what she’d told me she had done. I’d tel them that I’d been to the parking lot and that there was blood and a belt, but no Dan.

I pushed my hands in my pockets and hunched my shoulders against the cold when a thought hit me: What if they didn’t believe me? What if they thought that I’d been the one to do something to Dan Swansea? What if Valerie lied again, took his side, defending him the way she had before? “Why are you tel ing these lies about me and Dan?” she’d ask, the way she had that day in the cafeteria in front of everyone, her voice cutting through the chatter until there was only silence and everyone was staring at me. I’d stood my ground, planting my feet, feeling my face turning red as I’d said, “I’m tel ing the truth and you know it,” but my voice had come out a whisper, and Val’s scornful laugh had been the loudest thing I could imagine. “Just jealous, I bet,” she said, like she was talking to herself, but loud enough so that everyone could hear her. Just jealous. Fat Addie. That was me.

I sniffled and decided I’d just have to convince the cops that no matter what Val said, I was tel ing the truth. “Goddamnit,” I muttered, and knelt down, thinking I could at least try to wipe my fingerprints off the belt, just as I heard Valerie cal ing my name. I turned around to glare at her as she trotted out from behind a bush. “Sorry that took so long,” she said.

I glared at her. “What the hel ? Where did you go?”

“I had to pee.”

“You had to pee? ” I repeated.

“I had to find a good spot,” she explained, smoothing her dress over her hips. “I’m wearing a bodysuit. I couldn’t just go anywhere. It would have been very undignified.”

When I could speak again, I said, “Didn’t you once read the weather while you were riding a mechanical bul ? I’m going to suggest that the dignity ship has sailed without you aboard.”

Val had the nerve to look pleased. “Did you see that?”

“I read about it,” I said, making the distinction clear. “I gather you have a lot of fans in

the

thirteen-year-old-boy

demographic.”

“Hey, it was sweeps week. And a viewer’s a viewer. Is he dead?”

I waited long enough for her to start squirming, figuring it served her right, before I said, “I don’t know if he’s dead or not. He isn’t here.”

Valerie didn’t appear to hear the news.

“Wel , I’m not turning myself in. Fuck that. Fuck a whole pile of that. First of al , it was an accident, and second of al , it was justice. Vigilante justice. Somebody should have stopped his clock a long time ago.”

“Val, there’s nobody here.”

She final y shut up and stared at me, lips parted, hope dawning on her face.

“Nobody?”

“There’s blood,” I told her. “There’s a belt. But no Dan Swansea.”

“Huh,” she said, tilting her head sideways, giving me her profile, which, I was becoming convinced, had been surgical y altered somehow: the nose a trifle thinner, the chin a tad more firm. “The blood,” she final y said. “Do you think it’s his?”

“Jesus Christ, Val. How should I know that?”

She frowned and walked back to the Dumpster, kneeling down to inspect the sticky gravel. When she rose up she looked relieved…and puzzled. “I wonder if he just went home.”

“Maybe he got abducted,” I suggested.

“The guy I was out with earlier says there’s a space shuttle that comes around.”

Val lifted her head and glared at me. “Do you think joking is going to make things better?”