Bitter End (28 page)

I left her there. Standing halfway between the bathroom and bedroom, clutching a dripping, bloody washcloth on Trent’s parents’
off-white carpet, tears streaming down her face, the water faucet gushing behind her. Prom
ising to help a friend who no longer trusted her. Promising to be there for someone who insisted that there was no “there”
to be.

I found Cole in the basement, playing pool with Trent and a couple other guys from the basketball team. It was just the four
of them down there, no music, no Renee Littleton, no Bethany. I could think down there.

“Hey, there she is!” Cole said when he saw me. He took a long drink out of his beer can.

I ignored him and slouched back on the couch and turned on the TV. Some old black-and-white movie was on, and I vegged out
in front of it, not paying attention at all to what it was, figuring the lamer I could make it down here, the better chance
I had of nobody else wanting to come down and hang out.

Eventually I fell asleep, only to snap awake again when someone flopped down beside me, slinging an arm over my sore shoulder.
I opened my eyes. It was Trent, and he was way drunk. I crinkled my nose at the smell of his breath, and was immediately reminded
of my skinned-up face from the movement, which made my face feel as if it was being shredded up by razors.

“Heeey, Alex,” he slurred. “You look like shit.”

I glanced over the back of the couch. The pool game was over, and all the other guys were gone.

“Where’s Cole?” I said, clearing the sleep out of my throat and sitting up.

Trent laughed in my face, pelting me with drunk-breath,
and leaned into me. “You fall down go boom?” And then he laughed some more.

I edged my way out from under him, leaving him to melt into the couch, still giggling over his joke. Hopefully he would pass
out. Sleep it off. Hopefully the rest of the party wouldn’t destroy his house while he was down here face-first in the couch.

I went upstairs and plunged back into the party, which seemed to have thinned out a little. According to the clock, I’d already
missed curfew. Which meant I needed to get home before Celia realized it and woke Dad.

Problem was, I couldn’t find Cole anywhere. I checked every room. I checked outside. His car was gone, too.

Great. Abandoned. Very nice.

This was shaping up to be a really shitty night.

I sat on the porch to try to figure out what to do. People stumbled past me, got into their cars, and rumbled away. Soon I
imagined everyone would be gone. Just me and Trent, snoring away on the basement couch, my broken tooth rotting and me getting
grounded for pretty much ever for not coming home.

I found Bethany and Zack playing PlayStation on a big screen in the den. It was some sort of racing game, from the sounds
of roaring engines filling the room, and Bethany won, standing up and giving a victory dance.

Her eyes landed on me and her smile faded, stopping her in mid-dance.

“You’re still here?” she said.

Zack turned, still holding the controller in his hand. “Oh, hey, Alex. I thought you’d left.”

“I fell asleep downstairs,” I said. “Cole left.”

They exchanged a look that I couldn’t quite decipher; then Zack leaned forward and turned off the PlayStation. “I’m ready
to go, anyway. Kicking Beth’s ass was getting old.”

She slapped him on the shoulder but set down her controller and left the room, saying something about finding her purse.

I sat in the backseat by myself and pretended not to hear them joking with each other up front. Pretended not to notice that
neither one of them said a single word to me all the way home. Pretended not to be so relieved when we finally pulled into
Zack’s driveway, where I could bolt across the yards and into the darkness of my house, alone.

Half an hour later, I was showered, bandaged, and lying in bed, staring at the lights coming in through my window onto my
ceiling.

My chin still burned, even more so now that I’d clipped off the hanging piece of skin. My nose felt sore, too, and my tooth,
while it didn’t exactly ache, irritated me by poking into my tongue.

I couldn’t leave it alone. As I lay there, thinking, I pushed my tongue under the sharp edge of the tooth over and over again.
Jab. Jab. Jab.
Something about the pain felt familiar and—as weird as it sounds—good.

Because at least the pain in my tooth was something I could count on. Something I could expect.
Jab.
Pain. Sharp edge.
Poke.
Ouch. Good. I knew that was coming. I could predict and understand my broken tooth.

The rest of my life… not so much.

How did everything get so out of control? Where did I go from here? I was afraid to face everyone.

It must have gotten very late, because I lay there so long I actually began to contemplate just running off to Colorado myself
right then and staying there. Not telling anyone where I’d gone. Just going and being a memory. I had enough money saved up
to get out there. I had a car. All I needed to do was get a job once I got there. All I had to do was get away and leave the
pain behind me.

Just as I finally started to drift off, yelling outside pulled me awake again.

I sat up and looked out the window. I couldn’t see anything, so I got out of bed and pulled the blinds all the way open.

Cole’s car was at the curb, idling, the driver’s side door open. He was standing in the side yard, yelling something to someone
who was standing in the shadows of Zack’s front porch.

It was hard to understand what he was saying. His words were slurred, and there was a yard and a pane of glass between us,
but it didn’t take a genius to make out what was being said.

“Because I want to shee her and iz nona your business!… She’s not your girlfriend, dude, get a grip…”

I gasped, bringing my hand up to my mouth, unsure what to do. A light had gone on in the house across the street, and I saw
the neighbors lift up their shade to peer out. God, if Cole kept this up, Dad would wake up, and the last thing
I needed was to try to explain why my boyfriend was screaming in my yard, so drunk he could hardly stand up, at three o’clock
in the morning.
Oh, and by the way, can you schedule me a dentist appointment for, like, immediately?

I started to unlock the window so I could pull it open and, hopefully, shush Cole. But before my fingers could work the lock,
he yelled again.

“Shit, I’d liketa shee you try,” he said, and there was a streak of blue jeans and suddenly Cole was on the ground, rolling
around angrily with Zack, both of them punching wildly.

Lights went on in another house across the street, and someone stepped out on their front porch and shouted, “Hey!”

My fingers worked double-time then, and I yanked open the window. Cold air rolled in at me, and the grunts and thwacks were
loud and crisp. But I realized I didn’t know what to say.

Really, Cole was no match for Zack, who was at least as big as Cole, and not drunk. He hit Cole five times to every one of
Cole’s strikes, and eventually Cole stopped hitting back and went to simply covering his head. Zack rolled Cole onto his back
and grabbed his shirt, pulling him up off the ground, then letting him drop. Zack’s hands went slack at his sides.

“You touch her again,” Zack shouted in Cole’s face, “I’ll break your whole fuckin’ body.”

He got up and walked back to his house, flicking a glance at my window, where I stood, my hands pressed
against the screen, my mouth hanging open. His lip was bleeding and he was out of breath, but otherwise he didn’t look so
bad.

Cole looked much worse. Bloodied nose. Bloody lip. Blood gushing down his chin.

He kind of looked like me.

After Zack’s door slammed shut, Cole rolled on the ground a little, then stood up, spitting onto the ground.

Several neighbors were outside now, one of them holding a phone to her ear.

Cole stumbled, cussing, back to his car, stopping to spit every few steps. Then he got in and left, just before the police
rolled down the street. They paused at Zack’s house but must have decided that whatever had gone on was over now, and rolled
away silently.

I crawled into bed and went back to feeling my jagged tooth with my tongue, replaying over and over again in my head the look
on Zack’s face when he glanced up at the window.

There was no way I’d ever figure out this night, which began with the boy I loved, who was supposed to be my ultimate best
friend, hurting me, and the best friends I hurt at the basketball game standing up for me.

Zack had looked up at my window as if he’d expected me to be there. As if he knew I’d been watching him beat up Cole. As if
he’d not only been warning Cole but warning me as well that he wasn’t afraid to take on Cole if he had to, whether I liked
it or not.

There was another look in his eye, too. A look that said he wasn’t going to just let me be devoured by Cole. A look that said
he’d always had my back and wasn’t about to stop now.

Maybe I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought I was. Maybe it was finally time to tell.

“Let me see,” Bethany said when I slid into the seat next to her. It was opening night of
The Moon for Me and You
, and I’d had a late dentist appointment, so I’d had to meet her there. The community center was packed. I was nervous for
Zack, even though I knew he was backstage goofing around, not a nerve to be had.

I smiled wide, showing off my newly crowned tooth.

“Very nice,” she said. “Did it hurt?”

“Only on the drive over,” I said, closing my lips and running my tongue over my top teeth to remove any lipstick stains. I
dug through my purse for a mirror so I could check them.

“Big lecture, huh?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah.” I located the mirror and held it up in the light, looking myself over. My scraped nose, lips, and chin
had long since crusted over, the scabs fallen off.
All that remained were faint scars that I was mostly able to cover with makeup. “ ‘I can’t afford to fix your teeth every
time you decide to jack around in a parking lot,’ ” I said, adopting a gruff voice meant to mimic my dad’s. “Seriously, I
was so close to just saying forget it, I’ll live with the temporary tooth. I’d kind of started to get used to it, anyway.
This tooth feels so big in my mouth now.”

In my head, I replayed the conversation between Dad and me on the drive to the dentist’s office. There’d been more than just
a lecture.

“That boy’s been leaving roses on your car again,” he’d said, the question lying, unasked, between us.

“Yeah,” I’d answered, not sure what to say.

“Is it serious?” he’d asked.

I shrugged. I had no way to answer that question. I wasn’t sure what “it” was between Cole and me anymore. He had come in
to school that Monday, beat up but acting as if nothing had ever happened between us. He had started leaving the roses on
my car again, with sweet notes, calling me Emily Dickinson and saying he was sorry and begging for my forgiveness. Just like
always.

Only now… my skin crawled every time he touched me. He irritated the hell out of me every time he spoke. He scared me. But
I hadn’t left him. At this point, I didn’t know how.

“I don’t know,” I said to Dad, staring out at the trees whipping past us. We passed the spillway, and my stomach turned in
knots.
If only we could get that magical time back
, I thought.
If only I could get a lot of things back
. And
before I even knew what I was doing, I blurted out, “Dad, why did Mom leave?”

At first he didn’t say anything. Just stared straight ahead, his hands resting at the bottom of the steering wheel. Silence,
like always. No answers, just… silence. I rubbed my forehead with my palm, waiting for what I was guessing would be only more
silence.

But, surprisingly, just as the dentist’s office came into view, Dad said, “She got mixed up with some guy who claimed to be
a spiritual healer.” He shook his head, gave a sardonic laugh. “He was an unemployed blackjack dealer. But she believed him.”

I sat up straighter. “She had an affair?” My fingers felt cold, and I couldn’t make sense of it.

But Dad shook his head, pulling into the parking lot and swinging the car into a space. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t an affair.”
He held the keys in his lap, tossing them lightly between his fingers. “Alex,” he said with a sigh, “you were always the one
who missed her the most. But you need to understand. She was sick. Mentally. And she was drunk that night she left. It was
all just a big, sad accident.”

He opened his door and got out, but I stayed rooted in my seat. It didn’t make sense. Why would Mom need a spiritual healer?
What was their relationship if it wasn’t an affair? And why would Mom risk everything to be with him? I wanted to ask Dad
so many more questions, but he was standing at the back of the car, stuffing his keys into his pocket, and I knew he was done
talking about it.

I wanted to tell Bethany and Zack. See if they had any more answers than I did. See if it made sense to them. But I was still
learning how to talk to my best friends again after all that had happened. I wasn’t sure anymore what they were interested
in. I wasn’t even sure they were still interested in our trip. At least, with me there.

“Well, I think it looks good,” Bethany said, snapping me out of my memory. “Hopefully this one won’t get knocked out. Imagine
what your dad will say if he’s got to pay for it a second time.”

I dropped the mirror back into my purse and zipped it shut vigorously. “Bethany, please. Don’t start. I know what you think,
but I really was wrapped up in my coat, and if I hadn’t been, I would’ve been able to brace my fall. It was my fault. Really.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I know. I was just saying I hope you don’t fall down on your face again is all. A lot of people
die from falls every year. I just don’t want you to be a statistic.” She didn’t have to spell it out for me to know what she
meant. She believed it was “just a fall” about as much as she believed I could fly.