Where You End (15 page)

thirty

Adam is in the student lounge, which is essentially a glass box, but he doesn't see me. He's wearing a sweater I've never seen before. He's talking to Victor, probably about photographs, and his hands are drawing something monstrous in the air. I already feel like I've betrayed him. Victor notices me first and motions through the glass for me to join them. Adam smiles a brave, handsome smile and my fingers feel shaky down there, at the tip of my body.

Actually, it feels like every extremity could just drop off, starting with my fingers, then my hair, then all the teeth in my mouth. I'm losing to the floor. Adam's face shifts from brave to scared, and he walks toward the door, toward me. The rest of the room fades, the kids and their laptops are all little dots in an impressionist painting. I back into a wall and lean while the room pirouettes giddily—my Adam, my fixed point.

“Hey,” he says.

His eyes are softer than they were yesterday, less determined.

“Does Victor know?” I say.

His face scrunches, betraying surprise and disgust in equal measure. I see how easily I can hurt him, how easily I can make him afraid.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“It looks like he knows. Does Victor know what happened yesterday?”

As the words come out, I suck all those lost pieces back into me. My body is whole in rage. Aggression glues it back together.

“No. Of course not.”

“Good. I don't want him to know.”

Victor has stopped at the door. He can tell we are talking about something important. He waves and sits back down on the fake leather couches. Adam is probably telling the truth. Victor probably doesn't know.

“Did you get my message?” Adam asks.

“Yes. My dad took me to school.”

He looks away to think for a second. “Oh. Cool.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“No, I know. It's nice.”

My heart is like playdough left out overnight. Crusty. Someone should throw it out already. Adam is struggling.

“Why are you so far away, Miriam?”

He reaches out for my hand, in the middle of the hallway, in front of every hungry beast in the student lounge. I let him have it, but I don't squeeze back. After a few seconds, he lets go, and I put it in my pocket, where I feel for Eva's key. It's not there. I can't remember if I left it under the pillow last night. Or in my other pocket. Maybe yesterday's jeans.

“Are you scared?” he asks.

I snicker. “You have no idea.”

“I'm scared too, Miriam, but we have to stick together. Like Robert Frank and Allen Ginsberg. Like James Agee and Walker Evans. Like Bogart and Bacall.”

I don't tell him Bogart's gone, or that I used his camera to take a picture of Elliot's house last night. I try to sneak out of his gaze, away to join the other bodies dragging or bouncing to class. To look for my key. I just want to find the key, then I can talk to him.

“Can we just talk? Will you walk home with me? I think we need to talk and figure this out,” he says, sounding urgent.

That last part makes me squirm, because there's nothing like a boy saying what he should be saying when you are trying to blame him for what's making you sick. I need to go now.

“Okay,” I say quickly.

“Okay,” he says, not moving.

“I gotta go to class,” I say.

“Okay. I'll see you after school.”

“Fine.”

“Main gate.”

“Okay.”

I walk to the bathroom and realize no one's life has been altered by our exchange. Victor welcomes Adam back into their conversation. The hall is still full of smart boys and girls planning how to drink themselves dumb. To them, it's just Miriam and Adam talking, the photo freaks, best friends since Torah school. But I remember last night and his face when he took off my shirt. I recognized those eyes. Hope and fear together make hunger. That's it. That's the one feeling in the world. Hunger. I was wanted, people. Wake up. I was loved.

thirty-one

I need my camera.

all my pictures are in there.

can you just answer me?

you can drop it off wherever you want.

are you okay?

i still have your key.

thirty-two

I consider getting a late pass from Ms. K, but I don't want to step into her talking trap right now. When I walk into Calculus late and sans excuse, Mr. L lets it slide because I do my homework every night, and occasionally ask useful questions. The only empty seat is next to Maggie Sawyer.

Maggie is pretty, but not scary pretty. She is funny, but not side splitting witty, never sarcastic. She knows when to talk and when to be quiet. She can negotiate with boys. She has friends who play tennis and friends who play guitar. She reads her Austen and her
Cosmo
. She's balanced, very very balanced.

So balanced she flashes me an empathetic smile when I duck into the chair and promise myself I will get through these forty-five minutes. After seventeen years of grooming, at my mother's imagined insistence, I smile back the most polite smile I can muster.

The class is in the middle of Mr. Lang'
s practice exercises, and I pull out my pencil to catch up. It feels smooth and familiar. I hold it under my nose. It smells like second grade.

“Do you want to look at my notes, Miriam?”

Her voice always sounds like she's got strep throat, which I imagine Elliot finds sexy, because I do, begrudgingly.

“Uhm, thanks. Sure.”

She slides her notebook across our joined desks, motioning for me to keep it on my side of the line. She's in no hurry. I look around to confirm what I suspected. Everyone is looking at us. This interaction makes for great gossip, since everyone knows Elliot and I were practically married last year, and that it's Maggie he's swapping spit with now. According to the general public, there was a grace period of about two months when Elliot belonged to nobody but himself.

What they don't know is he came to see me in the dog days of August. About two weeks before school started, when the city returns to its swampy origins, the mosquitoes come up with the sun, and the air conditioning doubles you over at the grocery store. My parents were at work. Adam was on his annual family vacation out West, in big sky country, channeling his inner fly-fisherman. I was debating whether to throw out every picture of Elliot I'd ever taken. Our low, limited sky was begging to release, like a kid who can'
t find a bathroom. It wanted to rain.

Elliot rang the doorbell, and I answered and let him in, like I had in every single one of my daydreams since Delaware. He looked as sad as he had in the best of them, as ashamed and desperate as I hoped he would. If I'd kept my mouth shut, if we had stayed in that doorway, he would've been mine forever.

The minute I told him to come inside, I started losing, leaking power and confidence, washing the floors with my resolutions.

“Can I sit?” he said.

“Sure.”

“I haven't been here in so long,” he said.

“It's not that long. You want something to eat?”

“Just water or something.”

I took my time in the kitchen, so he would think about me more. I was wearing Mom's yoga pants and a tank top. I considered changing and decided not to. Too desperate. Too obvious. I took off my bra instead, and temporarily hid it in the spice cabinet, behind the cumin and the turmeric and the five-pepper steak mix. Nothing is pre-meditated. Nothing is for a reason.
Everything is a decisive moment.
We do things because we do things. And then sometimes we deal with what we've done. Sometimes.

I poured Elliot a glass of orange juice. When I came back, he was looking at one of my baby pictures, smiling at what he'd lost. It was perfect. I could not have written a better script.

“You could tell you were stubborn back then too,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, all that hair and your smile. Like you're not scared of anything.”

I barely acknowledged him, but inside my head the redemption orchestra played a full house. I tried to focus on keeping him at arm'
s length, where he could look and not touch.

“So, what are you doing here?”

Sigh. Slouch. Green eyes up.

“I'm sorry.”

“Well, you can always leave,” says the girl whose bra is in the spice cabinet.

“I'm not sorry I'm here. I'm sorry about what happened in Delaware.”

He looks invigorated, like this is the part of the speech he remembers well, like it's coming back to him.

“I know we haven't talked in a couple of weeks, and that you probably don't want anything to do with me, but I just wanted to see you again. I have these nightmares.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah?” he says, hope lighting up his eyes.

“Yes. It's hard to go to sleep.”

“What do you dream about?”

I shake my head.

“Am I in them? Am I in your dreams?” he asked.

“It's none of your business.”

“I guess not,” he says. “In mine, you're always behind a camera, and I keep telling you to take it away from your face so I can see you, but you won't, and I never do. I never see your face. It drives me nuts.”

Now that I know what I know, now that I've finally bled, now that I kissed my best friend, maybe the only real friend I have left now, I think that this part may have been a lie, because nobody's nightmares make that much sense. Dreams are weirder, much messier than that. There's got to be an octopus that is trying to have sex with you, or a policeman telling you that you can't go to the snow mobile ball, or your mother with red monster eyes. Shit that makes you uncomfortable, stuff you don't want to repeat. Not me hiding behind a camera lens and you wanting to see my face. That's too perfect.

Never mind hindsight, though, because after the dream story is exactly when I turned around and walked up to my room, and he put down his half-drunk orange juice and followed me. When we got inside, he saw the ocean walls and didn't say a word. He just took off my clothes and kissed me. Everywhere he could reach. We stuck together and repelled like magnets in a kid's hands until the warmth of victory and recognition and desire kicked in, and I swallowed up all my righteousness for one, last, sweet time.

Against the wall, I could still smell the paint, the latest coat a few days fresh. To this day, I sometimes put my nose up to it, but whatever has happened since has dulled the smell. I clung on like a barnacle to a ship as he took his clothes off, and, my body being human and not holy, I gave in with great pleasure and hope. I like to think we both did, from whatever heights we had been standing on.

We didn't use a condom. This is the part where I should say we were drunk, or stupid, or didn't have time to think. That would be lying. I knew one of the thousand sperms could make it to one of my numbered eggs and that could mean the thing that didn'
t end up happening. I had been told, and I had been warned, and up until then I had been safe, and smart, and honest. But the thing I wanted was for him to want me. So maybe we could have had a baby. But nobody had explained to me how or why I should refuse the chance to feel whole again. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. All I wanted was for us to be enough to cover everything, from here until there.

Every moment after that was a little more dirt on the grave, until the day I knocked over the sculpture, when my body kicked my mind into gear and I could not hide anymore. That August afternoon, we slept until the heat got unbearable and we both had to shower. I tried hard not to say anything, but when Elliot came out of the bathroom, I could tell he had been crying.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“You look upset.”

“It's nothing, Miriam.”

“All right. I was just asking because you … ”

“Look, I'm glad I came,” he said.

That particular brick is still lodged in my chest.

“Whoa, well, I hope so.”

“I came to say I was sorry about the way I acted. At the house. With my father and you.”

“I know. I get it. Why are you upset right now? I feel like you're mad at me.”

“I'm not mad. I just don't want anybody to get hurt anymore.”

Ring. The. Alarm.

“Get hurt?”

“I don't know, Miriam.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand you right now. Are you saying you wish we hadn't … ”

“No. That's not it.”

“Well, what are you saying, Elliot?”

“I don't know. Just forget it.”

I wish I had wanted to pick him up and throw him against the wall, then kick him hard, a hundred thousand times. Right as he was putting his clothes back on, when he wouldn't see it coming. I wish I had wanted to hurt him, but all I wanted was
yes
. One, unmistakable
yes
.

“Do you love me?” I said, trying my best not to sound whiny.

“Of course.”

“Are you in love with me?”

He looked away. “I don't know, Miriam. I don't know.”

Thank God he kissed my wet hair and left right then, because I would have actually tried to make my case. Really. Nobody likes to take no for an answer, but “maybe” is even worse. It's nothing. He left me with nothing except for his socks, which is the only thing I can hold over Maggie Sawyer.

“Do you need Monday's notes too?” Maggie asks, all timid, but loud enough for our neighbors to hear.

I shake my head. “That's okay.”

“Are you sure? It's all right with me. I don't even look at my notes half the time.”

“I'm all right,” I say. “Thank you.”

“I didn't mean I don't
need
the notes. I do. I'm just so bad with math. Sometimes I don't even want to look at it.”

I scan the notes for any evidence that would support her cute self-deprecation. The writing is neat. The pages are supple. I am sure she looks at the notes, does her homework, and gets it right at least eighty-percent of the time. She's just good at making herself smaller, so you have more room to feel important. It's disarming. I will give her that. I hand the notes back.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Not a problem. If you ever miss class and need crappy notes, you know where to find them.”

I cock my head a little. “Thanks, but I don't plan on missing class.”

She looks away and bites her pink tongue. “I didn't mean that you do.”

“Look, I don't care. Don't worry about it.”

“You just missed some classes this week, so … ”

“I missed some classes, and now I'm back. Thank you so much for your notes. They're not at all crappy, and I'm not at all offended.”

She turns a little red, in uneven blotches, which immediately makes me feel better until I think of Adam, who is waiting for me at the main gate.

“Good,” she says, finally. “Good.”

It occurs to me that Maggie Sawyer will never know I could have been pregnant with her boyfriend's child, that he doesn't even have to know, that it doesn't even matter anymore. I'm not. As Maggie Sawyer writes numbers in her notebook, I see how easy it is to be around her, how much more humble and understanding she is. How much lighter.

Adam's last class is French, on the third floor, almost directly above me. When the bell rings, I can't think of a better place to hide than Ms. K's office
, where she opens the door and looks surprised. I have no plan, so I spend the first twenty minutes talking about the photo assignment and how it's going, throwing in an apology or two for my mother's outburst and for skipping class. Ms. K is pleased with my improvised enthusiasm, and she takes it as an invitation to ask questions, which leads to the signature tea and another twenty minutes of nodding and sharing my favorite photographers.

After the second cup of tea, she says she can't wait to see the pictures, that they're going to help me a lot. The clock reads 4:10, forty minutes past dismissal. Ms. K reminds me of our next family meeting.

“Right,” I say. “We'll be here.”

I stay on the couch for a few more minutes.

“Did you need anything, Miriam?”

“No, no.”

“Did you have a question?”

“No.”

“You just came in to tell me about your project and how excited you are about it?”

“You really can't wait to see the pictures?” I ask.

She smiles.

“That's pretty much it,” I say.

“Do you have a ride home? Is your father picking you up?”

“Nope. He brings me in. You know, for now.”

She's looking for her phone, packing her bag, grabbing her coat. She's in a hurry.

“Well then, let's walk out together. I have a workshop this afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“It's in Columbia Heights, and it'
s rush hour so I have to run. I would stay if you needed me.”

“Of course. No, no, no. I'm fine. I was just checking in.”

“All right then.”

Ms. K closes the door and says goodbye to everyone in the adjoining offices. Most people have cleared out already, except for the athletes and the extracurriculars. I exit through the parking lot with Ms. K so I won't run into Adam, in case he's still waiting after forty-five minutes. We both squint as we say goodbye. The days are getting shorter; the sun struggles to stay above the roof of the gym.

“You know I can't give you a ride,” Ms. K says.

“Right.”

“I would, but I can't.”

“I don't need a ride. I'll walk. It's nice out.”

“They said it might rain tomorrow. That's too bad, right? Not that you trick or treat.”

“No, but my mom usually makes me sit with her on the porch until the last candy has been given out.”

“That's nice. I'm gonna have to get a poncho for my niece,” she says, shielding her eyes from that sun.