No More Us for You (9 page)

By third period the next day, news of the accident was falling down all over Millikan like ash. Bits and pieces of information swirled to our ears. Some fit with each other, some didn't. According to one story, Snake ran a red light and sideswiped another car, killing himself and Vanessa. Another rumor had it that they'd both survived, but everyone in the car he hit, a family of four, was dead. I also heard he crashed into a utility pole, that nothing happened to Vanessa, just a few scratches here and there, but Snake was gone, crushed between his seat and steering
wheel. I called Snake's cell repeatedly, but all I got was his voice mail:
Yo, leave me a message, beotch.

I walked around campus, stunned, full of dread, my heart a chunk of ice inside my chest. Lockers slid by me, the gills of their vents, then the classroom doors, their taped flyers. I glided with the students in a daze, outside and across the quad with the screeching seagulls, the orange tables and green trees, the radiant blue California sky. Someone called my name and I turned around and there was Christopher Olsson, his worried eyes, asking me what I knew, telling me what he had heard, that Snake was hit by a drunk driver and was now dead. “Shit, man,” he said, “last weekend he was at my party, laughing at my stoned dog, and now he's gone.” I heard my name again and it was Mira, her eyes wet, one hand over her mouth. “What happened? I keep hearing different stories,” she said. “Was he drinking? Were you with him last night at the dance? As soon as I heard, I thought of you. I'm sorry, Carlos, I'm so sorry. I'm here for you if you want to talk.” I wondered what was true, what wasn't—dead or still breathing, both or just one, and if just one, who? Then Will's voice, Will's
slackened face and hooded eyes, his shoulders hunched with the news.

“I just called his cell phone and his dad answered,” he said. “He's at Long Beach Memorial.”

I stood there and said nothing.

“His dad said he's on life support.”

I listened.

“He asked if I gave him alcohol.”

I stood there.

“He said if it wasn't me, then who ruined his child's life.”

A seagull wheeled above us and squawked angrily, over and over, like nails yanked out of a piece of wood.

“I was hanging out with him last night,” I finally said. “He was drinking. We both were.”

“Let's go to the hospital,” Will said. “I'll drive.” We walked across the quad, past the administration building and into the school parking lot. The sun blazed above the gymnasium and every windshield flashed under its harsh light. Our shadows slid in front of us, our legs scissored the pavement—open, close, open, close. Someone shouted
behind us, “Hey, where do you two think you're going?” It was an adult's voice, a teacher, maybe the principal, some authority who saw us as nothing more than delinquents skipping school. We ignored whoever it was and folded our bodies into Will's car and drove off.

The windows were rolled down and the air rushed over my arm, my shirtsleeve fluttering. We hit a red light on Willow and watched an old couple stroll arm-in-arm, their steps slow and measured, as if the crosswalk were a rickety bridge suspended over a canyon. On the freeway, as we were driving past the airport, I watched a 747 coming in for a landing, the wings and fuselage dazzling in the sunlight. Then Will pulled off the freeway and we headed south on Atlantic until we saw the L-shaped hospital looming to our right.

The glass doors at the hospital entrance opened automatically like the ones at the museum, and there, in the middle of the polished floors, underneath a skylight, was a circular planter made of concrete, a tree with a slim trunk and slimmer branches, shiny green leaves that looked almost plastic. Blue sofa chairs lined one wall where a man
sat alone reading the newspaper, his torso and face hidden behind the newsprint. He coughed loudly and the paper shook in his hands and I wondered if Snake and Vanessa's story was already printed, their names quivering with the other words, or if their story was too new for ink.

I was sliding my finger down the hospital directory, trying to locate the Trauma Center, when Will whistled me over. He was already standing by the elevator, pushing the button repeatedly with his thumb. “I know where to go,” he said.

Once we were both in the elevator, Will rested his head against the cold steel wall and stared up at the acrylic panels that shined from the tube lights above them. We swayed and moved upward, a low chime for every floor we passed, like a drop of water hitting a bell. I felt my stomach turn, anxiety pressing on my chest. I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else, a hotel in Las Vegas, so that when the elevator doors finally opened I would be greeted by the noise and lights of a casino, plush red carpets and the clamor of a hundred slot machines, mirrors and laughter and the green velvet of poker tables,
and rising up from all the chaos would be the siren of a jackpot, shrilling like a car alarm going off.

The elevator doors opened on a quiet waiting room, maroon sofa chairs lined up against two walls, more than half filled with visitors. A potted plant in the corner dangled its knife-shaped leaves beside a coffee table fanned with magazines.

I sat down beside an old man who smelled like mint aftershave, his knobby hands resting on his lap. Will went to the reception desk and talked to a woman in a baby yellow shirt with a name tag pinned over her heart. He leaned against the counter and said something to her. She tilted her head and said something back, then lifted the handset and spoke to someone on the other line. Will looked back my way and raised his hand with his palm up as if to say,
She doesn't know anything
or
We're not allowed to see Snake
. The woman hung up and said something to Will and he looked at his watch before walking back to the waiting room and sitting across from me. “Only family members are allowed to see him,” he said.

“Shit,” I said. “What should we do?”

Will stretched out his legs and positioned the heel of one shoe against the tip of the other. “I don't know, you tell me.”

“Did you ask her how he was doing?”

“She said she didn't know.”

“What about Vanessa?”

“I didn't ask,” he said.

I went to the reception desk and waited for the woman to put down the receiver. Her name tag read
ANDREA
and she had a gold cross on her necklace. “Dr. Holman wants to run a couple more tests….” she said to whoever she was talking to. “Yes, I understand…. Have a good afternoon.” When she hung up, she scribbled something on a bright orange Post-it and attached it to the bottom of her monitor. She turned in her swivel chair to face me. “Yes?” she said.

“I was wondering if you know anything about Vanessa,” I said. “She came in last night.”

“What's her last name?”

I bit my bottom lip. “I don't remember,” I said. “It begins with a B.”

The receptionist fiddled with her gold cross, waiting for me to give her more information.

“She was in a car accident with my friend Jeffrey McKenzie.”

“Is she a friend of yours also?”

“Yes. I work with her.”

“What's your name?”

“Carlos,” I said. “Carlos Delgado.”

The woman let go of her cross and picked up the receiver. “I'll see what I can find out,” she said.

I went back to my chair and slumped down into it and let my legs bounce nervously up and down.

“What did she say?” Will asked.

“Not much.”

“Is she okay?”

“She didn't tell me anything,” I said. “I know she knows something.”

“Stupid bitch,” Will muttered.

I looked around the waiting room.

A girl with a ponytail and ball cap talked softly into her cell phone, her hand cupping her words.

A man in a crisp white shirt and tie dug his finger into his ear and yawned.

A large woman in a flower-printed muumuu fidgeted with a Kleenex, twirling and pulling one end between her finger and thumb.

“Let me see your cell phone,” I told Will.

He fished it out of his pocket and lobbed it to me, but when I flipped it open and looked at the keypad, I realized I didn't have Isabel's number.

The elevators dinged open and a black woman walked into the lobby with her two boys—twins, it appeared. They both wore the same jeans and green-striped shirt, the same little brown shoes. The woman shuffled to the reception desk while her boys followed behind, heads lowered, grief-stricken, one clutching a portable PlayStation, the other empty-handed. Their mother exchanged a few words with the receptionist before sitting down on a sofa chair near the coffee table. She picked up a
Newsweek
and flipped through the pages casually, her face a brown stone smoothed by water. Then her boys began jostling over the PlayStation. “It's my turn.” “No it's not.” “Give it to me.”
“Stop it, Leo.” “You've been hogging it all day.” “No I haven't.” Finally their mother slapped the magazine down on her lap and hissed at them.

Will stared at his watch as if he could make it go faster. Above his head was a painting of a boy in red swim trunks, shin-deep in water. He was setting down a toy sailboat and the water was full of ripples, the blue sky and the boy reflected in it—the red squiggles of his trunks, the beige and peach of his skin, the white sail like a cloth napkin dropped on the floor. I imagined a strong gust pushing the sailboat away from the boy and gliding out into the heart of the lake, getting smaller and smaller and smaller….

“Are you Carlos?”

He wore a white coat, blue shirt and black tie, slacks and Nikes.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I was told that you were inquiring about Ms. Barcelos.”

“You mean Vanessa?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yes.” He took off his gold-rimmed specs. “Vanessa's
parents were here last night.” He folded his glasses and slipped them into his coat pocket. “She didn't make it. We tried everything that we could, but her injuries were too severe and extensive.”

The air was sucked out of me.

“Okay,” I said.

He placed his hand on my shoulder briefly and gave it a little squeeze.

“Okay,” I said again even though he hadn't said anything more.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

I nodded and he walked away.

Will had his head lowered and his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped together. He looked up and met my eyes and then let his gaze slide off to the floor. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

I felt my body getting heavier, or rather I felt the world around me getting lighter. It was as if I were on an elevator, dropping floor by floor, while everything around me stayed where it was. The walls. The maroon chairs. The
receptionist. The painting. Will. The ponytailed girl. The yawning man. The black woman. Her sulking twins. The large woman. Her dress crowded with flowers. The tissue she twirled and twirled into a candlewick.

It was almost a year to the day when Gabriel's car went into the canal, and I couldn't help but think Vanessa's death and his were somehow related. It felt like some sick joke, a cosmic prank that's only played on an unlucky few. I barricaded myself in my room, swaddled myself in bedcovers, and cried for hours. For both of them.

Late in the afternoon, when I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my eyes were all puffy and red, my skin was pale, more like dough than flesh. My dark hair, which was normally wavy, now hung limply to my
shoulders. I didn't bother to swipe any lipstick across my lips, so my mouth looked chapped and bloodless. Grief had turned my face into a stranger's. It was if I were looking at a sister I never knew I had, an older sister who lived in another state, who'd gone through many hardships and now was coming home, looking for shelter.

The doorbell rang and I went to answer it, brushing my hair with my fingertips. Heidi stood on the front porch with the same look of despair. The whites of her eyes were pink, her shoulders hunched. Above my neighbor's house across the street, dusk had turned the sky into different shades of maroon and orange like the skin of a nectarine.

Heidi sniffled. “You ready?”

“Let me get a sweatshirt,” I said.

In my bedroom, my mom came in and gave me a hug from behind. She kissed the top of my head. “We can talk some more when you get back,” she said.

I pulled my mint green sweatshirt from the hanger and slipped it on. My mom lifted my hair over the hood and smoothed it down with her hands. “Maybe you should wear your jacket instead. You might get cold.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Please don't come home too late.”

I grabbed the plastic bag on my bed with the two vanilla candles inside. “I won't.”

“When's the funeral?” she asked.

“Sunday.”

“I could go with you if you'd like.”

“You don't have to,” I said.

She brushed her hand down my hair again. “After school tomorrow, we can find a nice dress.”

“Okay.”

She kissed the top of my head again. “I love you, Izzy.”

“I love you too,” I said.

When I stepped outside, Heidi was sitting on the curb next to her car, buckled over and sobbing. I sat down on the curb and wrapped my arms around her.

“I wasn't nice to her,” she said. “I didn't want her to get too close to you.”

“It's okay, Heidi,” I said, rubbing her back.

“I was jealous. I'd see how you two were with each
other and I'd start hating her.” Heidi wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sweater. “I wanted it like it was, just the two of us. And now it is.”

“Don't do this to yourself,” I told her.

“I got what I wanted.”

“Don't, Heidi.”

“I'm not a good person.”

“Yes, you are,” I said. I brushed her hair away from her face.

“I'm sorry, Vanessa,” she said.

Then we both cried on each other, right there on the curb in front of my house, the sky above us getting darker and darker, porch lights flickering on up and down the street.

 

We stopped by a flower shop on Spring Street and picked out a dozen yellow roses that were inside a tin vase. When we placed them on the counter, the store owner asked if we wanted any baby's breath. I shook my head no. “Just the roses,” I said. The woman rang us up and I noticed that one of her hands was severely scarred as if by a fire, the skin
stretched and marbled white and pink. Her other hand, smooth and beige, pressed the keys on the register. We left and the door chimed twice behind us.

We climbed back in the car and placed the roses in the backseat with the candles. We drove in silence, just the sound of the tires on the road and the quiet purr of the engine. I fiddled with the zipper on my sweatshirt, dragging the flat metal under my thumbnail as if I had some dirt there.

“I don't understand why they left us,” I finally said.

Heidi looked at me and then back at the road. She rolled down her window, thin strands of her hair dancing around her face.

“They said they'd meet us inside the gym,” I said. “They said they wouldn't be long.”

“Where do you think they were heading?” Heidi asked.

“I have no idea.”

We stopped at a traffic light. A car honked and another lurched forward. A motel's neon
VACANCY
sign blazed hot pink beside a palm tree. In the evening sky, the moon
was almost full—a white balloon tethered to the roof of a liquor store.

“Maybe they were heading to his house,” Heidi said.

“I don't think so.”

“She was drinking, right?”

“We all were,” I said, “but Vanessa and I only had one cup.”

“I can't believe she's not here anymore.”

More silence, more low hums from the engine.

“Neither can I,” I said.

I watched the cars at the intersection turning left onto Los Coyotes. I watched the shadowy faces of every driver and wondered about their lives, if they were married or not, if they had kids, if someone they loved had passed away, if they were listening to music, if they were happy, if they were heading home, if they were lost.

The light turned green and we continued on down Spring, making a left and then a right and soon we were there. Heidi parked on a residential street lined with giant trees and I reached over into the backseat and grabbed the yellow roses, the bag of candles. I sat in the front seat for a
while and closed my eyes, the flowers and candles on my lap, and breathed in the vanilla and roses.

When I stepped out of the car, Heidi was already on the sidewalk, gazing up at a second-story window. A light was on, and someone's shadow passed across the wall and folded at the ceiling like a paper doll in a book.

The trees loomed above us and swayed in the night wind, the leaves rustling faintly.

I joined Heidi on the sidewalk and together we walked to where it had happened, where a fire hydrant was sheared off and a wall smashed in, covered with a blue tarp. There were bricks and pieces of brick strewn on the sidewalk. It was as though we were standing at the foot of ancient ruins. Nearby was a framed photograph of Vanessa propped against the trunk of an oak. The photo was surrounded with roses and daisies and carnations, handwritten notes and cards. A brown teddy bear held on to a stuffed heart with
I Love You
embroidered into the fabric. On the curb, blown-out candles stood upright in their hardened puddles of wax.

Heidi covered her mouth and cried. I was all cried
out. I was an empty well, a vessel holding nothing but air and dust.

I walked over to Vanessa's photograph and placed the yellow roses around it, leaning them against the frame and the trunk of the tree. I positioned three right in front of the photo so the petals touched her shoulders and throat. The wind picked up and one of the roses leaning against the tree tipped over. I set it back in place and then removed the candles from the plastic bag and put them on the curb beside the others. The bag filled with wind and took off, floating and bouncing down the street like a little ghost.

“Here,” Heidi said, giving me the book of matches.

“I think it's too windy,” I said. I tugged out one of the matches and lit it. There was a small burst of fire, a moment when my fingers glowed orange before the wind swallowed the flame. “It's not going to work,” I said.

Heidi sat down beside me and made a wall with her hands around one of the candles. “Try it now.”

I pulled out another match and dragged it across the strike strip. Another flame burst in my hands, wavered.
By the time we finally lit the candle, three matches later, the wind snuffed it out within seconds. “I knew that was going to happen,” I said.

“What should we do?” Heidi asked.

I looked across the street as if the answer were there, under the bright lights of a gas station where a woman was filling up her green sedan.

“Was she a friend of yours?” someone asked from behind, startling both of us.

He was in his mid-fifties, tall with a scraggly beard, with broad shoulders and thinning hair that the wind teased across his scalp. He wore plaid pajama bottoms and a tattered gray T-shirt with many holes.

“Yeah, she was,” Heidi said.

“A good friend,” I added.

“It's a shame,” he said. “A damn shame. I was home when it happened.” The man turned around and pointed at his house, a modest one-story with ugly lopsided bushes and a curtained window that flickered from the light of a television. “Scared me off my couch. I called
911. Took me a while to find the phone since I'd had a few.”

Heidi and I both stood up and faced the man. He was barefoot and leaned too heavily on one leg, keeping his balance.

“Did you see anything?” Heidi asked.

“Lots of water. It was like one of them geysers you see on those nature programs.” He made a sound then like a rocket taking off and threw his hands up in the air. He took a step back, regaining his footing. “It was amazing,” he said.

I cleared my throat. “So you just stood there and watched while my friend died?”

“No, no, it wasn't like that,” he said. “It wasn't like that at all. There were other people running to help. Besides, I'm not much good in situations like that. I mean, I can barely help myself.” He rubbed his face with his hand, from forehead to chin, and then raised his finger. “I
did
call 911. At least I was able to do that much.”

Heidi looked at the unlit candles on the curb and
then turned to the drunk man. “Do you have a lighter, by any chance?”

“Not on me,” he said, patting his pajamas. “You shouldn't smoke, anyway.”

“It's for the candles,” I told him, but what I really felt like telling him was,
You shouldn't be a fat drunk walking around in your pajamas.

“Oh,” he said.

“We've got matches, but the wind keeps blowing them out.”

“A lighter's not going to make much of a difference,” he said. “Let me see one of them candles.”

Heidi picked one up and handed it to the man and he brought it to his nose. “Mmmm,” he said. “Smells
good
. What is that?”

“Vanilla,” I said.

The man sniffed the candle again. “Va-nil-la,” he said, sounding out each syllable. “That's lovely. Isn't it wonderful that there are things in this world that smell like this?” He looked at the candle and smiled as if he
had found the key to happiness.

“I guess,” I said.

He encircled the base of the candle with his thumb and forefinger and then handed it back to Heidi. “I'll be right back.”

We watched him turn around and head toward his house, his hand held out before him as if he were still holding the candle.

“What's he doing?” Heidi asked.

“He's drunk,” I said. “That's what he's doing.”

“Should we go?”

“And just leave the candles here? Not even light them?”

A strand of hair flew across her mouth and she pulled it away. She set the candle back on the curb. “You want to try again?”

“Not really.”

Heidi sniffled. “What's the point then?”

At the gas station across the street, the plastic bag skidded on the ground by the pumps. It stopped, twirled
around in tight circles, then skidded again until it pushed itself underneath the tire of a black sports car. The headlights flashed on and the car rolled forward, flattening the bag.

“This oughta do the trick,” the man said when he returned. He was holding two glasses and I thought for a moment that he'd poured us a couple drinks, something to take the edge off our grief, but then I saw the glasses were empty. “Got these at a garage sale, oh, about three or four years ago,” he said. “Guy wanted thirty cents for each, but I talked him down to a dime a piece. Hand me them candles.”

I grabbed the candles and held them toward the man.

“Now drop 'em in,” he said.

Carefully I slipped a candle in one glass and it made a soft thud when it hit the bottom. Then I slid the other candle in the other glass and he held them both aloft, proud of himself.
“Perfect,”
he cried out.

When we attempted to light the candles again, the man stood close, blocking the wind with his body. He hovered over us and the scent of alcohol wafted from his
mouth. I tipped each glass at an angle while Heidi reached in with the lit match held between two fingers.

“Bingo!” the man said.

The candles glowed a creamy light in my hands as I turned them around, examining the emblems printed on the glass. They were football helmets, washed out from numerous cycles in the dishwasher or sunlight or both. One helmet was pale green with a single wing spread across it, the other was faded blue and had a red C at its center.

“Do you need these back?” I asked the man.

“Not really,” he said. “I don't care much for the Eagles, and the Bears, well, I used to love the Bears during the Perry and Payton era. Which was, what…two decades ago?” He open his hand and counted on his fingers. “Is that right?”

He looked at us like we would know the answer.

Heidi shrugged.

I put our candles back on the curb. “We don't follow football,” I said.

“It's a great game,” he said. “Brutal, poetic. You see,
most people think it's just barbaric. They don't see the beauty of finding the open man down the field, threading the defense with a perfect spiral. It's like an improvised ballet, you know?”

Heidi and I both nodded. She glanced at me quickly and had this let's-get-away-from-this-intoxicated-freak look on her face.

“Who knows what would've happened if I didn't blow out my knee,” he said, placing his hands on his waist. “I was one of the best young quarterbacks in the country. Hell, maybe
the
best.”