Best Friends Forever Part 4

"I can't."

"Valerie..."

"I can't."

I exhaled, weighing my options, finally deciding that every second I spent in the car, reasoning with her, was a second in which Dan Swansea could be bleeding out onto the gravel. Behind a Dumpster. No matter what he'd done to Valerie, no matter what he'd done to me, I didn't want his blood on my hands.

"Fine." I left the keys in the ignition and Valerie frozen in her seat. The door slammed behind me with a discreet thunk. I cut across the parking lot, pep-talking myself along the way. Okay, let's just get this over with, it could turn out to be nothing, maybe Val just imagined the whole thing...

Then I saw something shiny and leather coiled like a snake in the shadow next to the Dumpster. My heart froze. I bent down in slow motion and saw that it was a belt, a man's black leather belt. I could see something wet and dark on the parking lot's gravel beside it. But there was no sign of Dan Swansea, living, dead, or anywhere in between.

I knelt down and touched my fingers to the wet, sticky stuff, then lifted them and sniffed. Blood. I picked up the belt, unrolled it, then rolled it up again. I reached into my pocket for my phone before remembering that I'd left it in my purse, and that I'd left my purse in Val's car. I straightened up to wave at her, then stopped, mid-wave, and stared at the car. The car was empty. Valerie was gone.

TEN.

With Val as my best friend, I didn't have to depend on my brother quite as much-Val was happy to speak up for me, for both of us, for anyone, and she was full of ideas for adventures, which left Jon free to go his own way. My brother had always been a charmed child, tanned and handsome and nice to me, most of the time, even though he called me brat and gave me Indian burns and told me that I was adopted.

When I catch myself wondering if it really had been that way-if he'd been that good-looking, that graceful, that beloved-I can look at pictures for proof. There he is, a beaming, sunny baby, a towheaded toddler, a chubby-cheeked, mischievous little boy who grew into a young man with wavy hair and long, curling eyelashes and an easy grin. There he is in high school in a maroon-and-cream uniform with his name written on the back, breaking the tape of a finish line; there he is, posed on the edge of the diving board, preparing for a backflip that would send him slicing cleanly into the water with hardly a splash. Jon was everyone's buddy, everyone's friend. All the boys liked him, and lots of the girls did, too. But by the time Jon was fifteen, his kindness toward me had dwindled to the occasional pleasant word or considerate act. Mostly, he ignored me. My sense was that he was getting ready to leave our family behind. To him, the three of us were like strangers who'd been a.s.signed adjacent seats on a train, foreigners who talked too loudly and gesticulated with their hands and ate strange, strong-smelling foods. Jon was resigned to being polite to us for the length of the trip, knowing he'd never see us once he'd reached his destination.

Each morning, Jon and I would take turns in the bathroom and eat breakfast in the kitchen-or, rather, I'd have toast and milk and cereal while Jon would slouch against the counter, lean and graceful, gulping orange juice straight from the bottle when my mother wasn't looking, then would grab a banana or a handful of crackers and run out the door.

After school, he'd have practice. He'd made the varsity squad as a soph.o.m.ore, so most of his teammates were seniors, and most of them could drive. After practice, he'd have dinner, usually at a friend's house, or the team would gather for pizza at the shop downtown. At twilight one of his teammate's cars would pull into our driveway. There'd be a burst of laughter and loud music as the door opened, a chorus of "byes" and "see yas" as Jon climbed out. By the time he'd made it up the driveway, his face would be shuttered, his smile would vanish, his shoulders would pull forward, like he was trying to protect himself from a blow. He would look at his feet, at the floor, at a schoolbook or magazine, anywhere but up at us.

When he came home, my mother would meet him at the door, barefoot in leggings and a long skirt and one of her loose cotton blouses, with a fringed shawl wrapped around her shoulders when it was cold. "h.e.l.lo, honey," she'd call. "How was school?"

"Hey, champ," my dad would say, emerging from the bas.e.m.e.nt and heading to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. "Good practice today?"

Jon would shrug off his backpack, let it drop to the floor, then kick it sideways into the closet. "Fine."

My mother would call questions as Jon shucked his shoes and his jacket: How was the geography test? Was he hungry? Did he think they'd win the meet this weekend, or...

He'd look at her, expressionless. "You don't have to come."

"I want to," she'd say. I'd be watching or listening from my seat at the kitchen table, and my heart would sink. Jon acted like he hated my mother. He flinched when she touched him, he answered her questions in as few words as possible, and he always had someplace else to be-the swimming pool, a friend's party, an extra session the coach had called, a team meeting, or, lately, a school dance. Maybe it wasn't that he hated her, I'd think as he'd hurry upstairs to his bedroom and lock the door behind him. Maybe he was ashamed of her. That, of course, was worse.

Teenagers, said my mother, unruffled, as she went back to her notebook, or the pot of whatever soup or stew she was simmering. Teenagers are like that. My mother never missed a race. She'd dress up in Pleasant Ridge's school colors, and she'd cheer for him from the bleachers near the finish line. I'd gone with her twice and seen that mothers did these things-they went to meets in red-and-cream sweatshirts and scarves, they whooped and hollered when their sons ran by, chests heaving, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed to pained slits-but none of the other mothers was anywhere near as big as our mother. When she'd jump in the air, clapping and calling "Yay, Jon!" her whole body would jiggle and quiver, and continue jiggling and quivering even after she'd stopped moving. People would stare. The boys on the other team would nudge one another, laughing and pointing, and Jon would turn his back to us, talking to his coach, splashing water from a squirt bottle into his mouth and over his face. If my mother noticed him ignoring her, she never let on... she'd just keep clapping, cheeks flushed, cheering as each of the Pleasant Ridge runners crossed the finish line.

I tried talking to Jon about it once, in October, when the team was six weeks into its season. My mother was out on the porch, my father had gone down into his workshop. I could hear the buzz of something from down there, a saw or a drill. "Go away!" Jon called over the throbbing ba.s.s of his angry-sounding rock and roll-Tom Petty's "Refugee"-as I knocked on his door.

"I need help with math." I didn't-and if I did, Jon wouldn't have been the one to ask-but he unlocked the door and I walked inside, gingerly making my way across layers of crumpled papers and comic books, dirty sneakers, T-shirts and shorts, grease-spotted napkins and sweat-ripened socks. His comforter lay in a heap on the floor, and the blue plaid sheet was pulled halfway off his bed, leaving the mattress bare. In one corner I spotted a cardboard box containing the marionettes my father had made him, tumbled in a heap, their wooden limbs dusty, their strings tangled. "Why are you so mean to Mom?"

"What are you talking about?" He was sitting at his desk, barefoot in shorts and a sweatshirt, with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird pinched between his thumb and forefinger. His room smelled like B.O. and rotting bananas, and the soles of his feet were callused and almost black.

"You're never home," I began.

"What do you care?" Jon asked. "You're home too much. You should get out more."

"This isn't about me," I said, feeling my face flush, worried that he was right. I was thirteen. My cla.s.smates were getting their ears pierced, sometimes twice; they were going to the movies at the mall with groups that included boys, but I wasn't interested in any of that. I was happy at home, with my parents, my books, my paints and paper, my best friend.

"Why'd you tell her not to come to your meet?"

Jon kicked his bare legs out in front of him, then lifted them straight into the air-some kind of runners' stretch, I thought. "I just said she doesn't need to come. She can come if she wants to. I never said she couldn't."

"Can't you just be nice to her?"

Jon set down the book, picked up his Magic 8-Ball and revolved it in his hands.

"I know she's... you know... kind of big."

"Kind of big," he repeated, with his lips tight and nostrils flaring in a way that let me know he was furious. "Sure. And the sun's kind of hot. And the ocean's kind of deep. Do you know what the rest of the guys say about her?"

I shook my head. "What do you care?"

"You don't know," he said. "You're not on a team. You don't have to deal with it."

"Why don't you just tell them to shut up?"

"Addie." He spoke with exaggerated patience. "Those guys are seniors."

"So what? You're faster than they are. Tell them to shut up. I bet they'd listen."

He shook his head and didn't answer.

"What about Dad?"

He looked at me blandly. "What about him?"

"Maybe if he came to the meets with her..." But Jon was shaking his head before I'd finished my thought.

"Oh, sure," he said. "That'd be great. Just have him show up at three in the afternoon in the middle of the week, so that everyone would know he doesn't have a real job."

I swallowed. A father without a real job would not cancel out a fat mother. It would only make it worse.

"No offense, but you don't know what you're talking about," Jon said. "And I've got to finish this." He turned away from me, opening his book. After a minute, I threaded my way through the rubble and out into the hall.

That night I lay awake long after I'd heard my mother's slow tread up the stairs, long after the line of light underneath Jon's bedroom door went dark. Other families weren't like this. What was wrong with the four of us? Why were we so different?

Why do you care? I heard Val asking in my head. What does it matter? Her family wasn't normal, and she didn't care at all... but her mother was beautiful, and somehow, I thought that having a father who was divorced was easier than having one who was home but didn't behave like the rest of the dads. It mattered to me that we didn't look right, that we weren't like everyone else, that Jon could pa.s.s for normal by pushing us away... and that maybe I'd never be able to do the same thing.

I lay there, watching the glowing numbers on my digital clock, until it was after one in the morning. Then I slipped out of bed and tiptoed down the hallway, down the stairs, to the door that led to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Barely breathing, I leaned against it, pressing my ear to the grain of the wood. I could hear my father snoring. I stood there, listening for a long moment before creeping into the kitchen. My mother had given me three Oreo cookies for dessert, and the bag on the top shelf of the pantry was still almost full. I slipped six cookies into my hand and carried them up to my bedroom, where I lay in my bed and inserted an entire cookie into my mouth, underneath a David Hockney poster I'd bought at an art fair that summer-the blue of the swimming pool, the way the light moved through the water, had enchanted me. I held the cookie against my tongue until it dissolved into a slick of grainy black mush. One cookie, two cookies, three cookies, six cookies. When they were gone, I licked my teeth clean and closed my eyes and finally fell asleep.

"Why do you think Jon's such a jerk?" I asked Valerie the next morning while we waited for the bus.

"I don't think he's a jerk. I think he's cute," said Val. It was a week away from Halloween, but it was cold already, in the forties some mornings, with an icy bite to the air. Val wore stiff blue jeans rolled into clumsy cuffs at the ankle and a too-big purple sweater. She was already taller than all of the girls and most of the boys in eighth grade, skinny and flat-chested, with sharp elbows and k.n.o.bby knees that she kept hidden under layers of T-shirts and turtlenecks and sweatshirts, and, inevitably, boys' jeans. Her teeth weren't good. There was a s.p.a.ce between her protruding front teeth big enough to hold a quarter, and her incisors pointed in different directions. "Valerie's got summer teeth," Jon had once said. "You know, some are here, some are there."

The thing was, Val didn't seem to know that she was weird-looking... or if she knew, she didn't care. Each year, she'd try out for Select Choir, even though she couldn't really sing in tune (although she was, in her defense, both enthusiastic and loud). In June she would audition for the leads in the summer music theater. She'd rehea.r.s.e her song and her monologue for weeks, and still end up being cast as a glorified extra-a non-singing urchin in Annie, a nun with no lines in The Sound of Music, a tree in Peter Pan-after the kids who could sing got roles as pirates and Indians and Lost Boys. None of the rejections and refusals dented her confidence. She'd use Elmer's glue to attach felt leaves to her green leotard, or pose in front of the mirror in her wimple as if she was the star of the show, as if everyone was there to see her.

"Did Jon do something?" she asked, and flipped open the social studies book (Exploring Our World) that she had in her lap. "Did he do something to you?" Before I could answer, she said, "Did you finish the worksheet?"

I handed it over. Val was smart-at least that's what the results on the standardized tests we'd taken in fifth grade had indicated-but she had an att.i.tude toward homework, and studying for quizzes and tests, that could best be described as haphazard. "He told my mom not to come to his cross-country meets. He's..." This part was hard to say. "He's ashamed of her."

Val pursed her lips, absorbing this. "Maybe she could go on a diet."

"I don't know," I mumbled.

"My mom does a good one," Val said. Her eyes were still on the worksheet as she copied my answers. "You eat a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, then an egg and half a grapefruit for lunch, and then you have salad for dinner, with a can of tuna fish and lemon juice instead of salad dressing. That's what my mom does every New Year's. She does it for, like, a week." She wrinkled her nose. "It makes her really ga.s.sy. But it works."

"I'm not sure," I muttered. Even though I knew by then that the world disagreed, I still clung to the idea that my mother was beautiful, a cloud come to life, and that everyone else had it wrong.

"Or how about Deal-A-Meal?" Val asked as the school bus came groaning around the corner. "You know, with the Sweatin' to the Oldies guy? I saw an infomercial for it. You get a videotape and cards to tell you what to eat for lunch or dinner."

"Maybe." The bus ground to a stop in front of us. Val handed me my homework and bent down for her backpack. We climbed aboard and took our regular seats, three rows back on the left-hand side, and that was the end of the conversation until that afternoon, when I came home from Girl Scouts and found Val sitting before our front door.

"I bet Jon's having wet dreams," she announced as we walked to the convenience store. Val didn't have a brother, but she seemed somehow to know a lot more about boys than I did. Most of what I knew came from a book my mother had given me when I'd turned twelve. It was called What's Happening to Me?, and it had provided me and Valerie with hours of amus.e.m.e.nt. There were cartoon drawings of a girl with b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a curly thatch of pubic hair, and an index in the back where you could look up "p.e.n.i.s" and "e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e" and "masturbation" and "nocturnal emission," as Val had done the instant the book was in her hands.

"Gross." Ever since I'd learned about wet dreams, I'd felt a mixture of queasiness and pity whenever I'd thought of them in conjunction with my brother. How awful it must be to have everything on the outside, hanging there so obvious, to have body parts getting bigger or harder or squirting stuff on your sheets without your having any say over them.

"Does he have a girlfriend?" asked Val. She put two cans of Diet c.o.ke and a bag of potato chips on the counter, and I dug three dollars out of my pocket, shaking my head, even though I wasn't really sure. At fifteen, Jon already had a life that was all his own, and I could only guess as to what that life included.

"I'll bet he's got a girlfriend," Val mused, cracking open her can.

"Do you think..." I said. Then I stopped. I knew what I wanted to ask-do you think my family's weird?-but I couldn't figure out how to ask it.

"We should be cheerleaders for Halloween," she said. "We can wear white sweaters and get skirts at JCPenney and buy pom-poms." For a minute we walked along in silence, past the Sheas' house at the corner, the Buccis and the Hattons, as I tried to figure out a way to ask Val what I really needed to know: What's wrong with us? What's wrong with me?

"Or we could be Barbies," Val said. "Or witches. Whatever you want."

We ended up going as witches, because we couldn't find pom-poms at the costume shop, but they had an abundance of pointy black hats, along with green face paint and black-and-white striped tights that we wore under our black choir robes. "I'm melting!" Val screeched as I pretended to throw a bucket of water on her and my mother snapped pictures. "Oh, what a world!"

Jon wasn't trick-or-treating. "It's for kids," he'd said, coming downstairs in his jeans and team sweatshirt. A station wagon zoomed down our street, swung into our driveway, and slammed to a halt with its front b.u.mper inches from the garage door. My mother frowned. She'd put her own witch hat on her head and wore bright-red lipstick and high-heeled red shoes.

"Gotta go," said Jon. He was going to a party at one of his teammates' houses. He'd promised my mother that there would be parents there, and no drinking. He'd even given her the phone number, muttering under his breath that she had to stop treating him like a baby. But then, on his way out the door, he surprised me by digging in his pockets and coming out with two Hershey's Kisses. "Here," he said, dropping one in my pillowcase and one in Val's. "To get you started."

"Be home by midnight!" my mother called.

"I will," Jon said. He hurried out the door and into the waiting car, which revved its motor and zoomed down the driveway.

Val and I went out into the chilly darkness. We spent an hour trick-or-treating, moving through the neighborhood with throngs of little kids dressed as princesses and pirates and ghosts, shivering under our choir robes, because, in spite of my mother's urging, we'd both refused to wear our winter coats. "Maybe we are too old for this," Val said, swinging her sack of candy over her shoulder and pulling off her witch hat.

"Maybe. Probably," I said. More than one of the grown-ups who'd answered our knock had made that point. "This is the last year I'll be giving you two treats," Mrs. Ba.s.s had announced before winking and dropping a handful of miniature candy bars into our bags. I was shivering, and my fingers were numb, and I thought that if I never went trick-or-treating again it would be okay.

Val grinned at me, her crooked teeth glowing against her green skin. "Poltergeist is on tonight. Remember that part where the meat was, like, crawling along the counter?"

"Ew," I said, recalling the scene. Val hated blood in real life, but she loved scary movies, especially the ones where, she swore, she could catch a glimpse of her father getting shot or stabbed or jumping out of a window on fire.

"Ask if you can sleep over, okay?"

I found my parents sitting in the darkened living room. My mom had a plastic salad bowl of candy in her lap, and my father was watching a rerun of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In on TV, with a mug of tea in his hand. "Can I sleep at Valerie's?"

"As long as you two don't stay up too late," said my mother. For a minute, I thought about not going. I could change out of my costume and sit with my parents, hand out candy when kids rang the doorbell-but Val and Poltergeist were waiting. I packed pajamas and a toothbrush and went across the street, where Val had taken off her robe and was in her sweatpants popping popcorn, with her face still painted. I wished for my pastels so I could sketch a quick picture of her, standing at the stove with her green face and her witch hat perched on top of her blond hair.

"You look like you have food poisoning."

She grabbed a wad of paper towels and started wiping her cheeks. "Here. Melt this," she said, tossing me a stick of margarine, which I unwrapped and put in a plastic bowl. I stuck the bowl in the microwave as Valerie dumped popcorn into a pan on the stove and shook it briskly until the first kernels exploded. We ate popcorn and divided up our Halloween haul, first by size, then by type, then by order in which we'd be eating it. I traded my SweeTarts for M&M's, and we both agreed that Junior Mints were the worst candy ever. We made it until the part where the meat crawled across the counter, then burst open with maggots ("I'm sorry, but that is so cool!" Val chortled while I looked away from the screen with my stomach roiling), and then we fell asleep, bundled in blankets on the floor.

"Honey?" Mrs. Adler's cigarette-and-Breck smell was in my nose; her voice was in my ear. "Addie? Are you awake?" For a minute I thought I was in the car, on our way home from the ocean. Goodnight to the front! Goodnight to the back!

I opened my eyes. It was still morning, but very early, the sky gray, just touched with pearly light. Through the window, I saw that there was a police car in front of my house. Its flashing light painted our walls red and blue, red and blue.

"Addie," said Mrs. Adler. "Honey. Wake up. There's been an accident."

I sat up. Beside me, Val rolled onto her side, her blond hair bright against the DiMeos' dark old carpet. "What happened?"

"Your brother was in a car accident. Your dad just called to let me know."

I got to my feet and walked to the window. The front door to my house was open, and I could see my mother in her bathrobe, standing in the doorway with both hands pressed to her chest. A police officer in a blue uniform shirt and black pants was talking to her. As I watched, he took her by the arm and led her out of the house to the cruiser.

"I should go." I started looking around for my shoes.

Mrs. Adler shook her head. "Your dad said for you to stay here. They'll call as soon as they know anything."

Outside, the cruiser backed down the driveway. My father ran out of the house, his pajama top so white it seemed to glow under the gray sky. He climbed into our station wagon and followed the cruiser down the street.

Mrs. Adler put her hand on my shoulder. "Try not to worry," she said. "I'm sure everything will be okay."

I climbed on the couch and sat with my face turned toward the window and my eyes trained on my front door until the sun came up and the paperboy made his way down our street, his bicycle wobbling in front of each house as he slowed to throw a paper toward the door.

"Hey," said Val. I turned, and she was blinking up at me from the floor. "What's going on? Did someone TP the house?"

My tongue felt thick. "Jon was in an accident. My parents went to the hospital."

"Oh my G.o.d!" Val sprang to her feet and came to sit on the couch beside me. "What happened?"

I shrugged. I couldn't look at her. I had to look at the house. Maybe it was a test, and if I kept watching, if I didn't blink, if I didn't miss anything, then maybe this would be all right. Val sat next to me, and I stared at our house, fixing it in my head, turning it into a still life. My father had painted the exterior a creamy brown that August. I'd helped him, hoisting cans of paint, bringing him gla.s.ses of lemonade, holding the ladder when he climbed down.