The Best I Could (26 page)

“This is you trying to talk my dick down,
right?” I asked, keeping it light because I could tell from the way
she looked that she wasn’t comfortable sharing things about
herself.

“Did that count?” Her gaze found mine again.
“As me telling you something about myself?”

Stepping back, I kept my eyes locked on hers.
“Yeah, except now I’m picturing you in a short skirt with safety
glasses on your face.”

Chuckling, she moved past me into the hall.
“Sex would have been more fun than learning that.”

I didn’t entirely disagree with her. I’d
definitely be picturing the safety glasses-wearing cheerleader
tonight in bed.

“Hey,” I said, following her, “come to the
boxing club Wednesday after Deena's class.”

Reaching the door, she walked outside, and I
stood in the opening, my hands on the frame above me. Jonathan
stood on the stairs, his curious gaze on my face. I ignored
him.

“Why?” Tansy asked.

“Just come.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

She left, leaving Jonathan and I alone, the
sound of the van starting filling the evening.

My brother looked at me, his brows arched.
“What is this shit, Eli? You never invited Mandy to the gym with
you, and you two dated seriously for two years. That’s a hell of a
lot longer than you’ve known Tansy.”

My fingers dug into the door frame above my
head. “Time doesn’t mean much, and looking back, I was never
friends with Mandy.”

Looking back, I hadn’t cared much about
anyone except myself and my problems.

Mumbling, Jonathan jumped off the stairs,
stomping into the night.

That night, I dreamt of
cheerleaders and science. Acid rain swept down from the sky,
trapping me inside an empty science room with a short-skirted
Tansy. Strange thing was, she was the Tansy
I
knew with her dyed hair, piercings,
and heavily made up eyes. Not the Tansy Deena suggested she had
been. Even the cut was still there, marring her palm. I didn’t give
a damn. I wanted her, mess and all. Acid rain pouring from the
sky.

Tansy

The memories assaulted me as soon as I
climbed behind the van’s steering wheel. Talking about me, about
what I used to be, had more of an impact than Eli realized. My
fists tightened around the wheel, and my injured hand throbbed. The
wound had grown pink and painful. Darkness closed in, cars zooming
back and forth around me in town, the end of the work day
congesting the roads. Street lights and headlights streaked my
face.

I drove on autopilot.

Eyes stared at me. So many eyes. Too many of
them.

The walls seemed closer than usual, lockers
slamming up and down the hallway. Whispers. Hushed
exclamations.

They all asked the same question: “What
happened to her?”

Only one was brave enough to approach me.
Ginny Weston, her naturally curly blonde hair straightened around
her shoulders, shiny and accusing. A violet peplum shirt rested
over a pair of stonewashed jeans, her favorite honey almond body
spray tickling my nose.

“What the hell happened to you, Tans?” she
asked, bouncing next to me. “What is this?”

She gestured at me, at my new
do-it-yourself, jagged haircut, streaks of blue peppered
throughout.

“I just needed a change,” I told her.

She stopped in the hall, her assessing gaze
on my face. “You’ve got to snap out of this. Seriously. What
happened to your mom was awful, but it’s been almost two
years.”

She wasn’t in the house with me. I had to
remember that, had to remember that she didn’t know about Dad’s
deteriorating mind and body. She didn’t know he saw Mom when he
looked at me, that he puked on the floor more often than he did in
the toilet, and that he even pissed the bed when he was at his
lowest. Our house stank, the smell of stale beer and urine an
underlying odor that never went away.

“I’m still me,” I protested. “I just changed
my hair.”

“And your makeup,” Ginny pointed out. “Your
clothes, too. Not to mention you dropped the squad and the science
club last year.”

“I got a job, and change isn’t a bad thing,
Gin.”

Head shaking, she hissed, “This drastic …
it’s fucking suicide in high school!”

Ginny had been right.

My network of friends, people I thought gave
a damn about me, crumbled, turning into whispering monsters. There
was no violence. Only whispers and rejection, which hurt me more, I
think, than physical pain. Still, I couldn’t hate them. They
distanced themselves from me because they thought they had to, like
my grief was a contagion they could all catch. They continued,
surviving in the high school rat race, and I eventually got off the
wheel everyone else was running on. I quit, finding solace in
plants, knitting, and later Jeff, a pierced, tattooed friend of my
brother’s.

Sex happened the second time Jeff and I were
alone together. Our relationship escalated after that, our bodies
more invested than our hearts. Even that failed because what I
needed was different than what he expected.

“You’re too intense,” Jeff scolded. “It’s
like I’m trying to reach this level I don’t ever reach with you.
Have you even gotten off, or have you faked it?”

I glared. “I’ve had orgasms with you if
that’s what you’re asking.”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. It just feels
off. You never seem completely satisfied.”

I wasn’t.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he continued.

I nodded, stupidly, because speaking meant
crying, and I refused to do that. Not over him.

“Friends?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

My only committed relationship had been a
purely sexual one, and I couldn’t keep him interested. It
stung.

A bright red, lit up sign caught my eye, and
I pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour
pharmacy, my eyes on the huge floor-to-ground windows. Employees in
blue aprons walked the floor, laughing with each other. A young
woman stocked the shelves. A mom with a crying child pushed a buggy
toward the checkout, her tired face wiped clean of makeup. Outside
the pharmacy, an older man in a blue jean jacket leaned against a
brick wall, a cigarette flaring in the night. Music boomed from a
car parked two lots over.

Climbing out of the van, I went into the
store, eyes blinking against the fluorescent lighting. Music from a
local country station played over the speakers.

“Did you see where I put my glasses?” an
elderly woman behind the checkout counter asked.

The blue apron she wore washed out her face,
making it paler despite what the lighting already drained from it.
Her wrinkled skin turned her into a walking piece of crumpled
paper, blue veins in her face flourishes of cerulean ink.

“I found them in the freezer section the last
time you misplaced them, Ms. Barbara,” the stocking woman
called.

My flip-flops thwacked the linoleum floors.
The smell of eucalyptus and air freshener hung in the air.
Surveillance mirrors threw my reflection back at me, harsh and
unforgiving.

I walked the aisles until I reached the hair
dyes, snagging a wash out purple and pink—the only two unnatural
colors they had—before hitting the medicine. Wincing, I loaded my
arms with Band-Aids, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, and antibiotic
cream. A pair of hair scissors caught my eye on the way out, and I
added them to my collection because I expected the scissors would
get less questions than a razor.

Damn Eli for his perceptiveness. Damn him for
not only being sexy as hell but thoughtful when I didn’t need him
to be. Damn him for giving a damn.

“Did you find everything okay?” the elderly
woman at checkout asked. She smiled, and her crumpled paper face
crumpled even more.

“I did.”

She rang up the purchases, throwing
surreptitious glances in my direction.

“I’m doing a gardening job this summer, and
it’s been rough on the body,” I found myself murmuring
defensively.

“Got to watch those thorns,” she uttered. “I
suggest some gardening gloves. We have them on aisle seven.”

“I have some. I prefer working without them
when I can.”

“Suit yourself. You got a rewards card with
us?”

I shook my head, and she sighed, typing
something into the computer, her eyes squinted.

Spectacles plunked onto the counter between
us.

“Sorry,” the stock girl apologized to me, her
gaze sliding to the older woman. “Found them on the candy aisle. I
thought you were diabetic, Ms. Barbara.”

“Humph,” Barbara grunted.

My total came up on the machine, and I handed
her cash I had stuffed in my pocket.

Accepting it, she handed me my merchandise
inside of a plastic bag, pulled open the money drawer, and offered
me my change.

“You should use biodegradable bags,” I told
her.

“We have reusable ones,” she replied,
bored.

“I’ll take one of those.” We switched
everything over, and I threw her a small smile. “Thanks.”

The glass doors swished open, the warm night
slapping me in the face.

Rushing to the van, I climbed in, plunked the
bag into the passenger seat, and pulled away, leaving the
building’s fluorescent world behind.

“I need to see your manager,” Dad bellowed.
“I have a prescription for these medications!”

Standing behind him, I wilted, wishing the
shelves of blood pressure cuffs would swallow me whole, taking me
away from the angry pharmacists and sympathetic eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the lab-coat wearing brunette
behind the counter replied. Her name tag pegged her as ‘June’. “It
says you refilled this on the fourteenth. You aren’t due for a
refill for another week.”

“This is ridiculous!” Dad ranted. “Why can’t
I get them now so I can have them when I run out?”

“Dad,” I soothed, touching his shoulder.

He brushed me off. “I have every right to
these medicines.”

“When you fill them on time,” June informed
him, her face stern. “Early isn’t the problem. Too early is. I can
report this, Mr. Griffin, and in that case, you may be completely
out of luck. Which would you prefer? Getting them in a week or not
at all?”

Dad backed down.

“Come on, Dad,” I begged. “Let’s just go
home.”

He staggered backward, his defeated gaze
landing on my face. “I need something for the pain, Tansy.”

“I know,” I murmured, taking him by the
elbow.

We made it outside, climbing into his
beat-up Buick, before he said, “Take me to Harry’s.”

“Dad, we already have drinks at home.”

“I need something stronger than what we have
there.”

Stronger than the whiskey?

“Dad—”

“Just drive, Tansy, or I’ll take
myself.”

Shifting the car out of park, I drove.

When I got to the house, Deena was plopped on
the living room couch eating cereal out of the box, the cats curled
in varying places around her. Except Happy. The long-haired black
cat was watching Deena’s every move, her yellow eyes on the
cereal.

“You’re back awful late for a gardener,”
Deena groused, eyes on the television.

“It’s only eight o’clock, and I made a stop
at the pharmacy for hair dye.”

“That stuff’s not going to stain my bathtub
is it?” Hetty called from the kitchen.

“I’ll do it outside under the water hose
later this week,” I called back.

She looked up from the stack of paperwork in
front of her. The soft yellow light above her head, and the steady
hum of the central air conditioner gave the room a peaceful
feeling. Normal. Except for the purring cats next to Deena.

Snow lumbered toward me, panting.

“I don’t get what that stupid dog sees in
you,” Deena muttered.

I could say the same about the cats. To look
at them, you’d think Deena had catnip in her pocket.

“Did it go well?” Hetty asked, ignoring my
sister.

“It was fine. Mr. Lockston is a nice man, and
he has a really beautiful piece of land with that orchard.” Walking
into the kitchen, I opened the fridge, the pharmacy bag dangling
from my free hand.

“Your supper is the saran-wrapped plate on
the top shelf,” Hetty informed me.

Pushing the bag onto my wrist, I took the
plate, pulled off the saran wrap, and placed it in the
microwave.

“He told me I’d get paid at the end of the
week,” I informed her. “I figure I can work on the stuff here at
the clinic whenever I’m not over there.”

“That’ll mean getting home earlier,” she
replied, glancing at the clock on the stove.

“I had to put down mulch and pick up an order
of flowers today. It won’t always take that long.”

Nodding, she turned back to her
paperwork.

The microwave dinged, and I pulled the plate
out, found a fork, and ate the macaroni casserole standing up,
sneaking a few bites to Snow.

Finishing, I scraped off the plate, rinsed
it, and then placed it in the dishwasher, the bag still hanging
from my wrist, mocking me.

Bickering from the television chased me down
the hall to my room, and I let Snow sneak past me before shutting
the bedroom door.

Dumping the contents of the bag on the bed, I
pulled the scissors, a Band-Aid, and the antibiotic cream free,
hiding them inside my oversized makeup bag before shoving the rest
of it into my combat boots in the closet.

Making my way to the bathroom, I closed the
door and locked it, my tired eyes meeting my reflection in the
mirror.

You’re stronger than this, Tansy.

Setting the makeup bag on the toilet, I
yanked the scissors free, staring at them in the dull light.

“Write something on the bag. Something you
want to get rid of. A demon,” Eli ordered.

There were lots of places a person could
write to release their demons.