Come Back to Me (25 page)

With one
word, Evan flipped the switch.

On
graduation night, I accidentally stumbled into the Adler’s library, after
turning down the wrong hallway on my way back from the bathroom.  The only
thing I remembered about that detour was my right hand sliding along the top of
the wooden wainscot that lined the lower half of the walls in the hallway.  The
wood felt polished, and I pressed my fingers further into the tiny ledge.  Its even
surface somehow smoothed my own edges, like every step I took sanded away
another jagged piece of me.  How long a hallway before I was free of worries?

I found a
doorknob.

I swayed for
a second, my body still on a path moving toward self-erosion, but somehow I
found myself gripping the knob.  I turned it and pushed my way in because,
well, I was drunk and completely free of any inhibitions.

I don’t
remember the rest in any sort of order, or any way that made sense.  It was all
a pieced together mess in a backdrop of books, leather club chairs, and
Scrabble, except it wasn’t Kyle with me.

It was Evan.

When Evan
found me, I was huddled over the board game, moving tiles around.

“Abnegation,”
I said without looking up.  “One of the words I got wrong on the SATs.  Katie,
too, I think.  I’m so glad we’re…  
I’m
finished with that crap.”

“Abnegation,
it means self-denial, right?”

“Mm, yeah. 
Like a monk or whatever.  Why can’t it just be negation?  Makes more sense.” 
Then, using only those eight tiles, I formed another word.  “Antigone?  Wait. 
That’s familiar…”

“Daughter of
Oedipus,” he said.  “From the Sophocles Greek tragedy where her stubborn
loyalty to her family turns into a tragic error, and she…”

He stopped. 
Even through my muddled thoughts, I knew what stopped him:  the subject of
death.  It had become the Topic That Shall Not Be Brought Up around me. 
Besides, I thought I was talking to Kyle.  He also avoided any sensitive topic. 
But I was drunk and uninhibited.

“So Antigone
died, right?  Hello?  Greek tragedy.  I get it.”

Then there
was silence.  That I remembered.  It seemed to echo, like I sat in some tunnel,
but again I didn’t care, occupying the space by pushing at my Scrabble tiles. 
One by one, I took them away.  The A, the N and then the next two letters of
the tragic Greek heroine’s name, until I all that I was left with was
gone
.

I looked up
from the board but not enough to imprint Evan’s face in my memory.  “I want to
be
gone
from here.  Well, Bloom anyway.”

Evan pushed
gently at my fingers, the tiles clicking against one another, as he added to my
word.

“Negation,”
he said.

I pushed away
the “i” tile.

“Or, Negaton.” 
I laughed.  The sound fell out of me easily as if it had been waiting for the
right opportunity to pop out.  “As in Godzilla versus Negaton?”

“Well, if
you mean
Megaton,
then run for your life,” he said with a bad Japanese
accent.

I slapped a
palm in the middle of the Scrabble board, scattering the tiles, the bubble of
laughter rising up out of my chest.

It was
effervescent.  I laughed again.  I felt again. It was so sudden, so surprising,
that no matter how wasted I was, I couldn’t forget it.  It was as if I cracked
for a moment, and happy birds fluttered out of my open spaces.

Evan found
me at the creek, carried me, saved me.  Evan took me home.

I laughed
with Evan.

It was
always Evan.

* * *

“It was you,”
I whispered, barely able to breathe after he filled in the blanks of my
Scrabble memory.

Evan put a
hand over his eyes, then slid it downward.  “Whitney, I don’t have all the
answers, but I do know that what happened with you and Katie doesn’t have to define
you. We’re more than our mistakes. And there’s room for more in your life… If
you let it.”

Evan scooted
closer to me, pushing aside the table, until our knees touched, and my heart
hitched.

When he
dropped me off at home, I walked through the front door.  Voices came from the
kitchen.  As soon as I turned the corner, my mom ran to me and pulled me into a
hug.

“Whitney!  Oh,
thank God,” she said, squeezing me, locking my head between her neck and
shoulder.

My dad was
on the phone behind her.

“No.  She’s
home now.  Thank you for all your help.” He tossed his phone onto the counter. 
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I left my
phone at the quarry,” I said, pulling out of my mom’s clutches.  “Why?  What’s
going on?”

My dad
pushed a hand against his forehead.  “Do you realize that was the chief of
police on the phone, and they were getting ready to comb the quarry?”

“What?  I-”

“Your mom
was at the station, and she heard the 911 call about Kyle. Someone said you
were there, too, but no one knew where you went.  Do you know what we thought?”

“Where were
you?” my mom asked.

“I was at
TEA.” It sounded so stupid considering my parents had apparently been in some
crisis mode.

My dad
sighed.  “Something has to change.  You can’t keep doing this, walking around
like a zombie all over town, or taking off on trains without letting us know
where you are.  We know how hard Katie’s death has been on you.  It’s an awful
tragedy, but you’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive.”

It was odd
hearing my parents say these things.  So much easier to think they didn’t care. 
Maybe it was an adrenaline crash, but I found myself suddenly laughing.

“For Christ’s
sake, Karen, she’s lost it,” my dad said, holding out an arm like I was exhibit
A.

My mom put
her hand on my dad’s arm and kept it there as she turned to me.  “Whitney, I
don’t see how any of this is funny.  Are you okay?”

“No. I mean,
yes.  It’s just that you called me a zombie.  Katie and I, we used to say that
about everyone here in Bloom, about you, but you’re right.  I have been walking
around like one.  I just…”

“Oh, honey. 
Do you think Katie would want you to be so miserable?”

My chest
tightened, forcing the crack that started months ago to widen, and my breath wedged
itself in my throat.  It was suddenly hard to breathe.  Was I having that panic
attack I’d been avoiding?

I wasn’t. 
Behind my eyes, I felt the same pressure that was in my chest.  My whole body
felt like a fault line, ready to break open, and tears pooled inside my lower
lids until they couldn’t hold anymore.  Until the picture of my parents
standing in front of me blurred.

Then, finally,
I cried.

* * *

My mom drove
me to the cemetery.  After I broke down, crying until my head felt like it would
split in half, we sat in the living room (Bug pushed her way onto my lap), and
I told my parents about everything.  For once, they listened, or maybe it was
for once, I told them.  Somehow, though, I ended up feeling sorry for them. 
Maybe it was because as we sat there, I saw the photos on the table (the ones
of Lauren that ended with her college graduation) or maybe it was the snow
globe next to those pictures.  It made me see my parents as living in their own
tiny, glass covered, insular world.  Lauren’s life was complicated, too, but she
managed to be happy.  Whether or not they heard me, I felt like they cared, and
right then, it was all that I needed.

At the
cemetery, I said it was okay for my mom to wait in the car, but a part of me
was afraid to be there alone.  I kept thinking about graduation night, the hug,
and Katie’s scream.  So a part of me thought she’d be waiting there for me—good
or bad. Except once I stepped inside the Bloom cemetery gates, I realized all I
would see were green grass, trees, and rows and rows of headstones.

Her stone
was next to Mrs. Ryan.  There were fresh flowers on both, and a teddy bear
wearing our school colors. Were they from Kiki?

I stood
there, listening to the soundtrack of the birds, and a distant lawn mower.  I
stayed quiet for a while, unsure of what to say.  Katie had been my friend for
most of my life.  Still, there were no words.  It was hard to reconcile the marble
headstone and flowers with my friend.  So I thought back to when I used to
think we were perfect friends, but it echoed falsely in my memories now.  We
were friends.  We just weren’t perfect.

Katie didn’t
come to me when she was confused about her mother’s letter, and I never asked
her about her grief, always fearful I’d say the wrong thing.  I started
drinking, and Katie never questioned me.  We got stuck in worlds of our own
making.  We both forgot about turning to each other when we needed each other
the most. With my mistake with Kyle, I made it easy for her to leave me first.

I realized
now that I also never spoke my mind, deferring always to Katie, and Katie never
leaned on me, not when it mattered.  I wasn’t strong enough to be myself, and
she wasn’t strong enough to let me.

We were the
friends we knew how to be at the time.  Maybe if Katie were alive, we each
might have learned through new friendships that the thing with Kyle was not the
end of the world, that it was really only was a symptom of the cracks in our
friendship.

Who knew
what would’ve happened if Katie had lived to go away to MIT?  What her thoughts
and actions would’ve been once she got to leave Bloom in the way she’d always
wanted.  I liked to think that one day, maybe over Christmas break we’d run
into each other in Bloom, maybe even go to TEA together (although Katie would’ve
wanted to change it, and if anyone could get Steve to change his way of
thinking about the place, it would’ve been Katie).

I imagined we
would eventually say hi, because our future was wide open and so much bigger
than our past.

I crouched
down and touched my finger to her headstone, tracing over her full name
Katherine
Hannah Ryan.  Beloved daughter.

My beloved
friend.

I leaned
back on my heels, teetering for a moment before I finally sat. I told her about
Colson, about Holt, and Evan.  Once I got started, I talked until my voice was
hoarse.

The only
thing I didn’t say was good-bye.

I went home
for spring break.  Some things were the same.  Some were different, or I was different. 
For one, I talked more at Sunday dinner.  Willingly.  I found that I was happy
with myself.  I wondered less about what lay beneath everyone else’s words. 
Well, the stuff that wasn’t worth dredging up anyway.

Or maybe it
was that whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing—I got nostalgic for
Bloom.  I ran into Kiki during school breaks.  We hung out at TEA.  We shopped. 
We did the things that new friends do.

But the
night before I went back to Holt, I slept in my tree house.  It felt like a way
to mark the year that had passed since Katie died.

I woke up
early with the sun.  It was so bright and, without curtains to block it, my
eyes protested.  Blinking, I focused on a red plastic thumbtack with a corner
of some long ago torn away poster.  It was either a constellation poster or
Justin Timberlake (Katie had loved him when she was twelve).

I rolled onto
my side and tucked my makeshift pillow tighter between my chin and shoulder. 
Just like Kyle had Katie’s green cardigan, I had a Katie souvenir, too–her old
MIT sweatshirt, the one her dad had gotten her when she’d set her sights on the
school.  She used to sleep in it when it was cold, usually in the winter, and I
guessed she left it in my house around Thanksgiving.  I didn’t know if she even
knew she’d left it.  It never got to be winter again for her to miss it.

I thought
about our dreams of leaving Bloom.  There were plenty of moments since I left
that I imagined talking to her about them.  Just like we’d always planned, I’d left
Bloom.  Except, it wasn’t a finished thing.  Maybe I’d never be done with
Bloom.

Or Katie.
Because I still thought of her, still grew on those memories, like believing
that Katie found her hope again (the one she lost after her mom died).  Even
though I felt heartbroken, because the future she longed for wasn’t her fate, I
knew she’d gotten that hope back before she died. 
Something to look forward
to
.

Hope was an
important element no matter the outcome.

I sat up, my
head almost skimming the inside of the tree house roof.  I looked around at the
stuff that managed to stay on the walls:
The Goblet of Fire
book jacket,
a scan of
The Little House in the Big Woods
cover, and several pages
torn from one of Katie’s astronomy picture books.

Filled with
swirly nebulae and stars, one page’s caption read: