What They Always Tell Us (4 page)

“You don’t seem into it.”

Oh God, here we go.
Alice is no different from all the other girls—a total head case, always analyzing and sensing stuff. Of course, James
isn’t
that into it, so Alice is no dummy. But can’t she just let it go? “I’m just tired,” he says.

And the feelings he’s had all day—boredom and disinterest and mild annoyance—come together as he stares at Alice across the bed. He’s filled with a strong desire to be rid of her, for good. It always happens with these girls. Sometimes it takes months, like with Clare. Sometimes weeks, which is the case with Alice. But eventually it happens—his interest, even sexually, goes kaput. It’s sad, really. He wishes those initial feelings of attraction and excitement would last. Wouldn’t a steady girlfriend sort of be great? Someone to rely on, someone to think about at night?

He feels bad for Alice, too. He can tell she likes him—a lot. And he never likes to hurt girls’ feelings. He doesn’t take pleasure in being a heartbreaker. For real, he doesn’t. But he also knows Alice likes him for the same dumb reasons he thought he liked her—because he’s a new flavor, something she’s never tried before. Vanilla. A nice, good boy. Smart, jockish, a rich kid, though James doesn’t consider himself rich. Maybe upper middle class. Maybe just middle class.
So,
he thinks,
she only likes this idea of me. She doesn’t like me.

“Why are you so tired?” she asks. “It’s not even that late.”

“I dunno.”

She laughs, not because he has said something funny. Probably because she’s exasperated.

“Do you even…,” she starts. “Do you even, well, like me?”

His knee-jerk response would normally be “Yes, of course.” But not this time. This time he is quiet, doesn’t say a word for a few seconds. He is on his back and stares up at the ceiling, then closes his eyes. “I’m just tired.”

“So you keep saying. Jesus. You didn’t answer the question,” she says.

If he’s totally honest and tells her he doesn’t like her, that he wishes she would leave—then what will happen? Will she start crying? Or worse, maybe start swinging at him?

So he decides one thing: no more girls after tonight. For now, anyway. He just can’t take it. With Alice, he thought it would be laid back, more about hooking up than romance. He wasn’t her first, and she wasn’t his. She’d had a lot of boyfriends, he knew, and he figured he’d be just another one for her to add to her list. But now she’s like the others—the doubts, the expectations, the big ideas of romance. Sure, he wants love, he wants sex, he wants all that stuff—but not all the crap that goes along with it. Not right now.

And so he decides one more thing: to be honest. “Alice,” he says, still on his back, but with his eyes now open. “I’m just…I’m just not looking for a girlfriend right now.” It’s the best he can do.

He can feel her looking at him. She mutters something like “hmm” or “uhh.” Some verbal hiccup of realization.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“So…you…you get me all the way to a hotel and…” Her voice is cracking now. She wants to cry, he can tell, but her anger is winning out. “Oh my God. I just…I don’t even know what to say.”

She hops off the bed and James just continues to lie there. He can hear her putting on her clothes. He wants to say something, maybe even explain himself. But he knows that if he does try to say something, he will just interrupt and delay what she is doing—preparing to leave. So he keeps his mouth shut. He listens but doesn’t hear any sobs or crying noises, thank God.

He hears her rustle around on the dresser for her keys and her watch. He finally steals a glance at her and sees that she is dressed now in her sweatshirt and jeans, with her earrings back on. He sees her face—she has brushed her hair out of her eyes—and it is a mask of stony rage. He keeps expecting her to look at him, but she doesn’t.

Finally, he hears the sound of shoes being laced up. Tennis shoes. Neither of them dressed up for the occasion. They were meeting at a cheap hotel, after all. So he’s thankful for that, at least—that Alice can quickly slip on her casual clothes without much fuss.

He sees her look around the room, as if checking to see if she left anything. Then she looks right at him and says, “Well, asshole. I’m leaving. I’m out of your hair. Now you can fucking go to sleep since you’re so fucking tired.” She turns and opens the door and then slams it behind her.

At last she is gone.

He’s relieved, but he doesn’t relax for a few minutes, until he hears her car rev up and then drive off.

After the doctors pumped Alex’s stomach, James sat with his brother in his hospital room while their parents were outside consulting with the doctors. James was still fuzzy on the details—He swallowed
what
? How come?—and he was also a bit groggy. It was almost light outside. He had pulled an all-nighter.

His parents knew a lot of the doctors at Druid City, though not the one who was treating Alex. Luckily. James knew his parents didn’t want word to get around that their son had swallowed Pine-Sol in some crack-headed attempt to—to what? Off himself? Grab attention?

This fact was not only upsetting, of course, but also, well, embarrassing. Tuscaloosa was not a large city. Maybe sixty thousand people, which seems like a lot but isn’t. People know things about people, word gets around. Hell, when his parents had friends over, James heard their gossip and stories. He knew who was cheating and with whom, whose business was failing. He knew who had health problems, who drank too much at the country club, who’d had boob jobs or face-lifts. Kids were fair game, too—whose kid flunked out of college, whose kid got a DUI, whose kid totaled the car. It all seemed so boring and clichéd to James, just like the similar gossip at school.

James knew his parents worried about Alex, about his well-being. First and foremost they would want to make sure he was okay. But then they’d also wonder if Alex’s stunt would become just another juicy morsel. Would it be confined within the walls and mouths of students at Central High? Or would it seep out into the adult world? They’d want to keep this little affair as private as possible, wouldn’t they? And maybe they could contain it. Their friends, at least, would have manners enough not to bring it up.

But kids were mean little bastards. What Alex had done would seem like a pitiful joke in their classmates’ eyes. No one had any mercy.

Poor, poor Alex,
James thought, staring at him. Alex was awake, but his eyes were closed. His hair was wet at the bangs, pasted to his forehead. His usually rosy cheeks—both he and Alex were blessed and cursed with fair, sensitive skin—looked almost yellowish orange. People always thought they were twins, but James thought this was ridiculous. There were so many differences between them. For one thing James would never have pulled this Pine-Sol stunt. James was bored, yes, and sometimes moody. But overall he was happy.

Alex wasn’t supposed to talk, even if he could. But James could talk, and he did: “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Alex kept his eyes shut, but James knew he had heard him.

“I mean, Pine-Sol? Wasn’t there beer at the party? Why couldn’t you drink that?” James regretted saying that the minute it came out. But he was mad. For so many reasons. Mainly because Alex had done something stupid, something reckless. Something that James couldn’t begin to understand.

“Why did you do it?” James asked. He knew Alex wouldn’t answer. But what James had really wanted to ask was,
Who are you and what have you done with my brother?

Outside the La Quinta room, it is dark and cold, but not freezing. James has slipped on his jeans and a T-shirt, but not his sweatshirt and jacket. In the distance, beyond the sparsely populated parking lot, and past a wide lot of dead grass and a kudzu-covered chain-link fence, he sees the interstate, cars zooming by, heading west toward Mississippi.

It is only nine-thirty. What is he going to do the rest of the night? Now that Alice is gone, he feels relieved, but also a little bummed. Not because she is gone, but that he is alone now. He could go home, just shut himself in his room. But avoiding Alex seems like too much work. And he doesn’t want to go back inside the hotel room, either. He’s in fucking limbo.

He looks down from the railing—he’s on the second floor of the hotel—and notices his Jeep. The navy blue Jeep his dad bought him for his sixteenth birthday, exactly the car he’d wanted. He loves this car like it’s his private traveling refuge. Some good times in that car, with girls and his friends, speeding around town, heading to this party or that one.

Then he notices the front tire, passenger side. It’s flat.
Son of a bitch.
James walks down to the stairwell, races down the stairs, and then makes his way to the Jeep. The light outside Room 104 sheds enough illumination for him to see that the tire is not only flat, but also punctured.

“God dammit!” he shouts, then kicks the tire, which looks droopy and violated. “That stupid bitch!” He’s had girls call and hang up on him in the middle of the night, had nasty notes shoved in his locker. But none of them have done something this violent.

He checks the rest of the car for damage, and though it is hard to see the back and the driver’s side in the darkness, he thinks everything else looks okay.

Now what do I do?
Shit. Double shit. He has to change the tire, which he knows how to do, but not in the dark, and not when he’s tired and had a few beers and not wearing his shoes or his jacket. He’ll also have to buy a new tire, and that’s going to cost a pretty penny. Unless he tells his parents what happened and they buy him the new one. But then he’d have to lie and say his tire blew out or something—not that his latest ex-girlfriend slashed it in an act of payback.

His head suddenly hurts, so he goes back to the hotel room and lies down on the bed. After a few minutes, he picks up the phone. He thinks about calling Nathen, but he doubts his college professor parents will let him out this late. Nathen’s dad was born in India, but he grew up in England, where he met Nathen’s mother, who is white. They both have these great British accents, though Nathen—and his college-age sister, Sarita—sound as southern as everyone else. Sure, they stand out in Alabama, but Tuscaloosa is a college town with a lot of foreign students and teachers. Plus, Nathen and Sarita are good-looking and athletic and smart, and people in school have always cared more about that than their heritage.

Instead of Nathen, he calls Preston. When Preston answers after a few rings, James says, “What are you doing home?”

“Me? Aren’t you supposed to be with Alice? Boinking at the Motel Six?” he says, then laughs.

“The La Quinta.”

“Big difference. So what’s going on?”

“Man, this weekend hasn’t gone so well.”

“Uh-oh. What happened?” he says, still chuckling. He must be stoned, James thinks.

“Alice got mad and left.”

“Nice,” Preston says, drawing it out like a hiss.

“Yeah, and get this. Before she left, she managed to slash one of my tires.”

“No way!” he shouts, drawing in his breath, then laughing again. “Man, that’s fucked up!”

“Tell me about it. I just went out there and noticed it. What was she thinking? Does she fucking carry a knife around or something?”

“Man…. I always told you that chick was messed up. Something about her, man.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Damn, I can’t believe she did that. What a crazy bitch!”

Preston himself doesn’t have a girlfriend, though plenty of girls are hot for him. He’s got shaggy strawberry blond hair that makes him look like a surfer boy, though he’s never surfed in his life as far as James knows. He seems more into his pot than dating girls. He’s perpetually single, which is how James plans to be from now on.

“Yeah, so I’m stuck here till tomorrow, when I can change my tire.”

“I’m not good with cars, but I can come help.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“You want some company? I’ll bring some pot.”

“Okay. Sure,” James says. He doesn’t really want to get stoned, but he also doesn’t want to be alone in this depressing hotel room. “It’s Room 204.”

James’s friends have largely avoided talking about Alex and the incident and anything surrounding it. They—Preston, Nathen, Greer, a few others—have been like his personal sanctuary from having to deal with that. The subject hovers out there in the air and is swatted away if it ever gets too close.

Tonight James is glad not to talk about Alex. He is lying on one of the motel beds, and Preston is on the other. The glow of TV provides the only light in the dark hotel room. It is late now, two in the morning, and they have been smoking since Preston got there. They talk every now and then, but James easily loses his train of thought. He feels like he is levitating.

Some horror movie is on TV—a rip-off of a rip-off about one of those masked psycho killers. The ones where stupid and horny teenagers are always the victims. Preston laughs each time someone gets it. James just smiles. Sometimes these movies scare him—after all, there
are
nutcase killers out there; this kind of awful stuff could happen. But tonight he is unafraid. Maybe it’s the pot, maybe it’s the fatigue. Maybe it’s the relief he feels to be rid of Alice.

“Want another hit?” Preston says. James hears the lighter flick.

“Sure,” he says, and reaches for the ceramic joint, from which he inhales in a quick, short burst, then hands it back to Preston. “You finish it, I’m done,” James says.

“No worries there, man.”

James doesn’t want this relaxed, calm feeling to end. Because under the haze, he thinks of Alex at home and wonders what he’s doing. Is he watching this movie by himself? These movies
really
scare Alex—he refuses to watch them, usually. James remembers seeing
Salem’s Lot
years ago when they were kids. The babysitter had fallen asleep downstairs, and Alex and James had snuck into their parents’ bedroom to watch it on their TV. Alex had spent most of the time with his face buried under the covers, while James had watched and told him when it was safe to look again. James can feel the worry and sadness trying to poke through the protective shell he feels around him. But oddly enough, he doesn’t feel the anger. Anger is exhausting, and he is tired of it.