Red Velvet Crush (17 page)

A car is in the lot out front, waiting with its parking lights on. The engine is running, a soft humming that climbs its way up to the second floor.

“Thanks for calling, Jay.” A familiar voice sneaks up the open stairway and across the all-season carpet. I stop, hiding myself in the safety of my doorframe. “I know it was hard.”

Ty's dad.

I creep out of the shadows and tiptoe toward the voice. Four people are moving in a slow shuffle across the parking lot. Jay and Ty's dad are walking in front. Jay has his hands jammed in his pockets. Ty's dad carries his duffel.

Ty follows with his mom. He walks slowly, curved over, his head down. His dad opens the car door, and Ty ducks into the backseat, like an outlaw. His mom climbs into the passenger seat, and Jay bends down toward Ty, his checkered Vans rocking to the sides. He leans in, talking quietly. I can't hear a word.

Jay finally stands. He pushes the door shut, quiet in the night. Ty is shrouded and invisible behind tempered glass.

His hand resting along the top of the car, Jay thumps twice—drive safe—and they take off. There is a flash of bright headlights, the whir of new tires gripping wet pavement,
and that is it. Ty is gone. The sun hasn't even thought about cracking the sky, spilling orange and purple and liquid all over a new day.

I buckle and back into the room. The door shuts slowly behind me, my heart imploding into a billion pieces with the click of the latch, until I am only bits and pieces, a disappearing star, floating in a black, black sky.

D
ad is waiting up for us when Winston and I get home. Winston called ahead, telling him about Billie and about me. Dad is ready—arms out. He wraps me up in a hug as soon as I walk in. Winston leans against the counter and watches my bags drop to the floor.

I might hold on too long, maybe squeeze too tight, but in the dusky hours of early morning, my dad rocks with me and doesn't let go. All my music is gone, I want to tell him; I only hear the flat, empty sound of space.

We drove forever and ever to get home. The boys took turns at the wheel, stoic and solitary, while I sat in the back, curled up on the bench. I couldn't talk. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to be anywhere else, anybody else. I don't even know what really happened, only that I
was there and Billie was not. And neither was Ty.

In the end there wasn't much to decide or much to do. Two of our band members had disappeared. We had only three shows left anyway.

Winston spent the day canceling and apologizing and talking to Randy. Jay and Ginger holed up in their room, probably watching Mexican soap operas or composing intricate power ballads.

I stayed alone, sitting and crying, lying down and crying. Wiping my eyes with cheap hotel Kleenex until my skin screamed, looking out the window, longing for home. I checked my phone, blinking against its glare in the darkened room. No texts. No messages. I missed Ty.

Then I swore for a while. Punched the bed. I think I even slept.

Late in the day Winston banged on the door. “Let's go.”

My eyes swept the room. The worst night of my life happened here, I thought. Flowered bedspreads will always make me sad.

There was little left of Billie. An earring I stepped on in the night. A sock. Some hair spray. And one empty orange pill bottle, same as those in the dressing room the night before, glowing bright and clacking together on the table next to Billie and Ty.

I picked it up and read the label:
AS NEEDED FOR PAIN.
I dropped it onto the unmade bed. Looks like they worked; I have never hurt so much.

With each mile closer to home I gradually started coming back into focus. There's our exit . . . our town . . . our corner . . . our streetlight . . . our mailbox. Next stop, lonesome town.

Now I am afraid I am going to be cold forever—cold and wet and lonely. Stuck in this quiet, empty place in my brain, feeling these feelings. A storm cloud has settled in over my life, and I'm scared there will never be a wind strong enough to blow it away.

I avoid my bedroom at first and head for the bath instead. I can't look at myself in the mirror, so I swing the medicine cabinet open while I turn on the tap.

Our water heater takes a while to do hot. It's better now, but when we were little, lukewarm was all we had. I remember my dad describing the water that way, and it sounded so good to me. I immediately wanted a boyfriend named Luke Warm. He would have big hands and brown eyes, with soft, smooth skin that was satiny on my cheek when we kissed.

I love you, Luke Warm. I shivered, waiting next to a naked little Billie for the tub to fill.

Steam fills the tiny bathroom and fogs up the window and any chance at my reflection. I shut the cabinet door and sink in, my hollow bones filling with hot water.

I hover over the water, arms stick straight on the sides of the tub. I'm unable to let go and let the heat pull me in and soften me up. I'm afraid of what will follow: the tears, the remembering. The aftermath.

The grainy stop-action film that has filled my thoughts since last night starts to play again. It's been skipping through my head, frame by frame, over and over, every hour, every minute, every moment—long and stretched out and interminable. I shake my head. Worst movie ever.

Music trails in to take its place as I sink into the tub; a haunting whisper of guitar overtakes the gurgle of water. I let my eyes shut and drift, but it isn't a dream. I hear a chord, two notes, and another chord. I breathe them in as they steal in under the bathroom door, steady, true, and real.

I pull the plug with my toe and stand up in the steamy air. My hair drips down my back, and I hope to see my pain swirling down the drain, a trail of lather and heft that circles clockwise and then disappears. But I don't. It is too deep inside, hidden away where soap and bubbles and a soft towel can't get to it.

I dry off and follow the notes down the hall. Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, lit only by the blue flame hissing under the kettle. His toes rest one on top of the other, clean white socks with red stitching along the toe. A guitar sits in his lap and a coffee mug at his elbow.

My eyes trace his fingers. My own fingers flex, reaching out for strings that aren't there. I reach up and rub my neck where my strap always sits. My skin soaks in his melody, and I am filled with a sharp, deep emptiness.

“Sorry,” Dad says when he realizes I am there, leaning
against the wall in the dark hallway. He silences the strings with the flat of his hand. I shake my head softly, not wanting him to stop.

“It's good,” I say as I move toward him.

“And you?” he asks before he looks down.

He finds his fingering and starts again.

I don't know if he means my music or me, but the answer is the same: shattered.

“He could have been everything,” I say.

I take a breath. It is so hard to miss someone and hate them at the same time. And right now I hate and miss Ty and Billie in equal measure.

Dad's rough fingers slide along a string as he straightens himself up to look at me. He seems more solid, more sure of himself than before we left.

That makes me a little jealous. Not that I want his life to suck, but it feels like he found himself in solitude, while I went off on a great and horrible adventure only to come home more broken and lost.

“Nobody else should be everything,” he says, leaving a shivering note floating between us. “Then where are you?”

Right here, standing in my pajamas in the dark, the loser who gave everything away to my soul-sucking little sister and the best boy I ever met when I should have kept something for myself. I swallow that down, trying to find a place for it to sit in my stomach as I turn away.

Dad keeps strumming, winding his way through a familiar tune that waltzes me into my bedroom.

I steel myself in the doorway before I walk inside. Billie is everywhere: on the bed, tumbling out of the closet, dancing across the floor. Even the air inside still smells like her perfume.

I pause on the pink rug and wonder: Which is worse, never knowing your sister or knowing your sister and wishing that you didn't?

Right now I vote for the never knowing, because the other one is making me remember everything—every embarrassment, every triumph, every betrayal, and every sunshiney moment. They claw at my heart and squeeze the tears from my eyes.

I shut the door, launch my backpack onto Billie's bed, and watch her stuffed animals bounce.

A kitten drops to the floor as I climb under my covers.

There's a plane outside my window, blinking on and off as it steals across the night sky. It pulses, a singular heartbeat at fifteen thousand feet, pacing me as I curl up and wait for the stars to settle, for this day to be done, for the empty silence inside my head to finally stop.

The sun is bright this morning, way too bright for someone not even two weeks into total heartbreak. The house is too quiet, too. And someone is knocking on the front door.

I roll over. Go away. Get off my porch.

They knock again.

Please stop knocking, please go away, and please die—in that order. I put my pillow over my head.

Another loud knock tells me Dad and Winston must be gone. One of them would have stormed to the door by now. I sit up and rub my eyes, feeling sick and groggy from sleeping so late. Sleeping is good, though. It stops the silence.

Knockety knock knock knock. Knock.

Oh my God. I huff out of bed, wrench my bedroom door open, and head for the front door.

Jay is on the other side, his arms straddling the doorframe, his freshly shaved head poking right in at me. Stunned, I smile before I can stop myself. Then I look behind him for Ty. Old habits die hard.

“So Winston thinks he's keeping the van?” he asks, thumbing toward the front yard, where the van is parked as he walks through the open door.

“Looks that way,” I say.

I follow him across the living room and sit down cross-legged on the couch. I got crushed, and Winston got the van. He probably thinks we came out even.

Jay is wearing dark jeans and a white T-shirt with a surfer on it that says “Can't
we all just get a longboard?” He takes over the lounger, flipping the footrest up and leaning back.

I try to smooth down my hair when he's not looking,
wondering why I care; he's seen me in worse shape.

“I came to say good-bye,” Jay announces, sounding awfully grown up.

Even in my state of disrepair, I am pleased. Not a lot of people take the time to say good-bye to me. They usually just disappear.

“Off to school,” I say, very aware that Ty would have been off to college now, too, right along with Jay. That no matter what happened, we would have been saying good-bye.

He could still be going, I guess, but I'm not thinking about that.

“Yep”—Jay sighs—“off to school.”

I can see Jay in a decked-out dorm room full of speakers and kick-ass stereo equipment and a remote control for everything. He will wire it all up to the light switch and blow the university's circuits on the first day.

He crosses his arms behind his head, squeaking on the worn leather chair.

Next week my senior year starts. Billie should be a sophomore, but it looks like she isn't coming back.

We should have known that she would turn out to be just like my mom. All the signs were there: the slutty-chic fashion sense, the accidental cigarette burns, the utter disregard for schedules and personal boundaries, and now the ability to abandon everything at a moment's notice.

“Maybe someday we'll get the band back together,” Jay
says, staring at a stack of
Auto
Trader
s that Winston left on the end table.

Here it comes, I think, the thing that breaks your heart.

“Ty would like it,” he says, glancing at me.

That line is a torpedo to my stomach. Ooof. The sun does a deep dive inside me.

Jay folds the leather chair down in a sudden, swift movement. He squeezes tight onto the armrests and then breathes out, one big, long breath.

“About him and Billie . . .” he says.

So, this is why he is here. I can't make myself look up at him. I study his hands instead. His nails are short and clean. He really is all ready for school.

“They did some things they shouldn't have.”

My head starts to swim. I can still smell the pot smoke; see the glaze in Ty's eyes. The sight of the bottom of Billie's boots is burned into my brain.

“They were hanging out,” he says.

Yep. And hooking up—the fact that Ty fell for Billie's shit, that he went from not noticing her at all in the beginning to jumping right into the trap she had set for him—that hurts most of all. He's a smart boy with a fancy high school diploma. He should have seen her coming. So should I.

Jay leans forward and taps my knee.

“Teddy Lee, they got drunk; they got high. But that was it. That was all.”

Was it?

Jay is watching me with raised eyebrows. Maybe that's what he heard, but I know Billie better than that. Don't I?

Slowly I sink back into the couch and stare straight ahead, the shattered bits of what I thought had happened rearranging in my mind. I remember all the times Ty disappeared on his own, his silence toward the end of the trip. I thought Billie was the one getting high that night, not him.

Did she push Ty over the edge or did he run and jump?

Does it even matter? I only saw him crash.

Maybe if I had stayed with Ty every night or if I had given in like I always did and let Billie sing my songs, she would still be here, Ty would still be mine. Maybe I could have saved us all somehow.

I'm overcome with the sudden desire to smoke, the need to have something to do with my fingers, an excuse to look busy and do something self-destructive at the same time.

“He didn't ask me to come.” Jay wipes his palms along the front of his jeans. “I haven't seen him since that night. No visitors and all that.”

He rests his freshly tanned arms on his knees and says to me, earnestly, “I thought you should know. I thought it might help.”

I feel like I should say thanks, but I'm not sure I want to. There has to be more to the story, but I might only ever get to know half of it. And I have to find a way to live with that.

The leather chair rocks and squeaks as Jay gets up. He stands in the middle of the living room, waiting for me. I know he's trying to make things right, but that doesn't make them hurt any less.

I stand up and step toward him. He squeezes me tight, a good hugger, lifting me off my toes.

“It was the best band ever,” he says over my shoulder.

I try to laugh a little, but it is just air in the shape of a smile.

“Way better than the Trigger Brothers,” he says as he sets me down.

My toes touch the floor, and I let him go.

“It made the Trigger Brothers seem like a popgun,” he adds, stopping at the front door to shoot his fingers at me, Ben style.

I watch him through the front window as he walks out across our grass and past the whitewashed van.

He turns back when he gets to his car and waves with a hopeful smile and a big Jay bounce that breaks my heart all over again because he is back to normal and I don't even know where to begin.