Something Right Behind Her (13 page)

That’s the sort
of creeped-out thought I’d bring up to Randy. It wasn’t a five alarm fire, like
having a meaningless sexual encounter, and it wasn’t a dream that freaked me
out to think about, much less discuss, but it wasn’t nothing either. If those
sorts of creepy thoughts multiplied, if I started thinking about all the places
Eve no longer was, school could turn into a regular minefield.

I was already
shaken up by this Spanish class thing, when, during my free period, I went and
sat down in my accustomed place in the cafeteria, and this chill descended
around me. Everyone at the table seemed to be staring at me. Only Jill was her
usually bubbly self, begging me to split a grilled cheese sandwich with her
even though it was only ten o’clock in the morning. “I don’t do school lunch,”
I said, and I heard Gayle snicker and sort of imitate what I said, but in this
exaggerated snooty way. Then I remembered going off on Gayle the other day at
Eve’s house and I realized what was going on. Gayle’s the kind of girl who
can’t just let shit go - she’s got to involve everyone around her. She lives
for the drama. I decided to take the bait.

“Some people
should get a clue by November and lose their bronzer,” I said, to no one in
particular. Then I picked up my stuff and sat down over by the windows, away
from the rest of the junior girls. Jill followed, as I knew she would. That
girl’s a dope sometimes, but she’s a true friend, and just about all I had.

It wasn’t the
best start to the week, having a spat with Gayle, but it wasn’t the worst either.
Tom came over and sat with Jill and me and we all discussed the holiday
craziness as brought to you by Jill’s family. Jill’s parents are practically
afraid of food. Her mom was obsessed with getting this free-range organic
turkey and then, it seemed, she was sure the place she ordered it from had
given her a nonorganic one instead. The whole family apparently just sat there
eating potatoes and stuffing, waiting for the turkey to come out, and it never
did.

The week began
to shape up on Wednesday. Gayle seemed to have forgotten our fight, or forgiven
me, or something, because she started talking to me again at lunch and even
invited me to a party she was having that her brother and some other recent
alums would be coming to. Probably, her brother told her to get all her
girlfriends to come. He went to the community college in the next town over,
and always came around to hit on high school girls - not that Douglas didn’t do
the same thing, but Doug went to Princeton, and was, at least, sneakier about it.

On Wednesday, I
went to see Randy. I told him about Eve’s empty seat in Spanish class, and how
I moved into it, and how Dr. Galas seemed to realize it, but no one else even
said anything. I told him how I felt ok, until I realized there was now an
empty seat behind us - that’s Eve’s absence had really not been removed, but
just relocated. Randy leaned forward in his seat and touched his chin. He
closed his eyes like he was actually thinking.

“What if,” he
said, “ the desk and the chair were removed from the room altogether? How would
you feel then?”

I thought about
it for half a second. “Bad,” I said. “It’d be like she was dead.” I got a chill
just saying the word, and for a millisecond the image of Eve in her white
tunic, lying on the snow-covered sand, flashed in my mind.

“And you don’t
want her to die? Even the way she is now?”

“No,” I said. “I
don’t think she wants to yet either.” I was sure this was true. Whenever I went
over there I could tell she’d gotten up for the visit. She looked forward to
stuff, like everyone else.

‘Well,” said
Randy, back to his deliberate therapy-speech, “I think it’s like this: with the
chair in front of you, you felt like you should do something, act, make it
better. With the chair behind you, you feel like you do in real life, like
you’re leaving Eve behind. But if the chair were removed, you’d feel something
you haven’t experienced yet, which is her death.”

“Right,” was all
I said, because it was true.

Having Randy be
right about something made me feel like my parents’ money was finally being
well spent.

I was relieved
that Randy understood how I felt, and he didn’t think I was nuts to be worried
about Eve’s empty chair. It put me in a better mood, and made me feel like
maybe I could get through whatever was coming my way. I was even hopeful that
the nightmares, which I hadn’t had all week, would stay away.

I was in such a
good mood later at dinner I told Mom and Dad about the whole thing. Milly was
listening in, of course. “Oh, we had that problem after our frogs died last
year. No one knew what to do with the empty tank, after Julie got rid of Chubby
and Mike. We had to take a class vote about whether to get rid of it, or just
clean it out and let it sit there.”

“What did the
class decide?” Mom asked.

Milly giggled.
“We decided to leave it there, but then we made some little clay frogs to put
in it.”

“That’s funny,”
I said. “But I don’t think I’m putting a cardboard cut-out of Eve in Dr. Galas‘
classroom.”

“No,” she said.
“But it took a while after the frogs died before we made those little guys.
Right when it happened no one would have thought it was funny.”

“Milly,” Dad
said, “Maybe that’s enough frog talk?” It was nice to hear Dad try to protect
my feelings from Milly. It was so often the other way around.

Later that
night, I got a message on my phone. It was funny because I didn’t recognize the
number. I wondered for a heart-pounding second if it was Douglas. When I
checked my voicemail, though, surprise, surprise, it turned out to be
George-the-Dirtbag! He said he was going to be in my neighborhood on Friday
evening playing at his friend Alex’s house, who lived up the street from me.
What he meant was he was playing guitar at Alex’s. He wanted to know if he
could maybe swing by afterward and we could hang out.

I surprised
myself by texting George back. I was more curious than anything. I wondered
whether I could get over the Douglas curse more completely if I hung out with
George. After all, I had gone ahead and kissed George that day in the city.
Maybe George could be, if not boyfriend-material, a sort of Douglas-antidote.
Maybe it wasn’t enough to have distance from Doug. I told George I’d be around,
but he should come by after ten. That way my parents would be going to bed, and
not be all involved, asking questions. This wasn’t some kind of date. I’d just
tell them someone was coming over.

As I hit send I
remembered about how back in September Doug had joked around about how I was
going to go “dirtbag” on them now that Eve wasn’t around. It didn’t seem a bad
idea, now that I thought about it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mom didn’t act
real surprised when I told her my friend George might stop by after he was done
jamming at his friend Alex’s house. She kind of raised her eyebrows, but kept
chopping away at some mushrooms.

Mom was still
cooking up these mushrooms, adding a little of this and a little of that to the
skillet when she surprised me by asking wasn’t George the guy who sang at the
fair downtown last spring. “His band was terrible!” she said, “but he was kind
of cute.” She looked at me sidelong, like she had something on me by
remembering George.

“Yeah, that’s
him,” I said. I made my voice flat, so I didn’t sound surprised that she knew
who George was.

“You know, I
have his little half-sister as a student at the center,” she said. “Sometimes
George picks her up. He seems sweet.” Mom delivered this news absently, still
stirring the mushrooms that now sizzled in the pan.

I was really
busted now. I had no idea Mom knew anything about George. Now she had to know
he was a stoner-dirt-bag type.

But Mom kept
chopping stuff up, and cooking away. She smiled faintly, but she didn’t seem
concerned like most people would be if they thought their daughter was about to
turn the corner and become a pothead.

“It’s not like
George is boyfriend material, Mom” I said, trying to be direct. “He’s just
someone to hang with, instead of just hanging with Jill. There aren’t any guys
I really like right now. I have no love life.” I was surprised at myself,
because as I said this my voice kind of cracked.

Mom turned from
the stove and took my face in her hand. “You’re sixteen, Andy. There’s nothing
wrong with getting to know different people. Not everyone in your life has to
be a main event. You’d be kind of boring if you were always looking for The Right
Guy. If I’d met your Dad at sixteen, I wouldn’t have asked him for a pencil.”

“What? What do
you mean, you wouldn’t have looked at him twice?”

“No.” Mom spoke
pretty certainly. “No, maybe I’d have been friendly with him, but back then I
dated boys who were a little bit more mature than your Dad was at sixteen. I
guess I wanted to feel grown up and I looked old for my age, so I went out with
older boys. Some of the boys I liked at your age were, well, let’s just say I
wouldn’t look at them now. You’re very serious, Andy. It’s ok, you know, even
with what’s going on with Eve, for you to have some fun.”

Mom was right
that I was serious about school, and that I felt too guilty about Eve to enjoy
myself much with Jill or with the other girls, but she underestimated me. She
seemed to think I was afraid to breathe.

It was after ten
and George hadn’t called or texted me. I kept checking my phone as I watched
all these lame shows on my computer. Jill texted me to see if I wanted to meet
her at the diner, and I was tempted to go, but it seemed like too much of an
effort. Then, at about ten thirty, George, rang the front bell. I heard my Dad
send him downstairs without missing a beat. Obviously, Mom had tipped him off
to the fact I was having ‘someone over.’

George came
downstairs and I was relieved to see that he must have changed after his jam
session. He wasn’t in his customary ripped up T-shirt and baggy jeans. He had
on a turtleneck, of all things. It was a black cotton turtleneck kind of
stretched out at the neck, like it was the only one he owned and he had to drag
it out every winter. Still, he looked kind of sharp.

George gave me a
little kiss on the cheek as a greeting, like he was following some first-date
script. Then he just plopped down next to me and asked what I was watching, as
if all that formal interaction had exhausted him. We watched some dumb show for
a while, and then switched to a comedy channel that had some good stand up. We
were just sitting there, on this worn out brown couch, laughing at some of the
more outrageous stuff. It was nice to sit there together. It almost seemed like
the make-out session we’d had in the city had never even happened.

After a while,
George suggested we take a walk. That would have been a perfectly normal suggestion,
if it weren’t the beginning of December, and pretty damn cold, but I agreed and
we bundled up and went out the kitchen door. It wasn’t like I thought we were
doing anything really wrong, but, just the same, I didn’t want my parents to
hear the electric garage door. I didn’t really need to announce our departure
from the premises.

We walked down
toward the pond. There were no cars, and the night was dark. All the houses
were set back from the road, and the sides of the road were edged with trees
and thick undergrowth. We stayed as far over as we could so no car that chanced
to pass would catch us with its headlights. George put his arm around me, and I
enjoyed his closeness, like a girl in a teen movie. He had that almost-familiar
odor of cigarettes and fruity-smelling shampoo, half-hoodlum, half fresh-faced
boy. The pond was deserted. It was a well-known hang-out, so the chances of a
crowd of guys getting busted drinking beer in that place was about 100%. A
couple like George and I could melt back into the woods pretty easily, though.
George took out a joint, which I pretty much knew he would, and lit it. His
face was briefly illuminated by the flame of his lighter, and he seemed, for a
moment, deep in concentrated thought, but once the joint was lit, he raised his
eyes to me. “Here, you go, milady,” George handed me the joint.

I wondered why
stoner guys like George had that sort of fascination with lords and ladies. I
took the joint from him and decided it was best not to expect a real deep
conversation.

“You know my
sister, Milly,” I said. “She’s sleeping over this girl’s house who lives right
here by the pond. They’re probably up right now. If someone comes out of that
house and busts us, it’ll be Milly’s friend’s dad.”

George chuckled.
“You know, I am the master bust-evader,” he said. “I have never been caught by
any type of adult, male or female, in any kind of criminal endeavor. Of course
that doesn’t include my mom, ‘cause she knows I smoke.”

“You mean your
mom lets you smoke pot?” I asked.

“Well she sees
my bong. It’s right behind my bed.” George laughed again at the thought.

I wasn’t sure
whether to congratulate him on his unblemished record because, actually, it
seemed kind of fucked up to me that his mom didn’t call him out on the bong
behind the bed, so I changed the subject. “You know what Milly told me about
her friend’s family, those people who live in that big white house right there?
She said the dad walks around all the time without a shirt on and he has tons
of back hair. I told my mom I thought that was creepy, but she was like, so
what?” I was beginning to feel kind of giddy. The idea of back hair kind of
merged with the dark line of trees and gave me the creeps, as if that hairy dad
were out there in the woods, leering at us.