Page 22 of The Last to Let Go
She’s been talking more and more every day since we decided on coming home, but Aaron and I sit up straighter, silent as we wait to see what will happen. Callie stares at the coffee table, her face unchanging, as if she hasn’t heard, her arm dangling off the edge of the armrest, too still. And just when it seems like one too many seconds have passed and she isn’t going to answer, we hear the two most marvelous words pass across her lips: “Fucking hot.”
Aaron and I share a triumphant smirk—of course no one is going to reprimand her use of the f-word.
“That’s for fucking sure, right?” Carmen says, giving me a wink. She shifts her gaze to Aaron, who’s smiling at her with soft eyes. She purses her lips, then stands abruptly. “I guess I should get outta here too.”
Aaron stands up slowly and sighs. “I’ll walk you out.” Their footsteps on the stairs fade until Callie and I are alone again.
I open my mouth to speak, but all the things she’s still not telling us sit like a giant wall around her. She raises her eyebrows at me, making her eyes wide, as she crosses her arms, silently asking,What?I walk over to the couch and sit down. “It’s good to be back home, isn’t it?” A stupid, generic question, but it’s the only thing I can think of to say.
She stands and looks out the window, focusing in on something. I turn around so I can see too. Down below, on the sidewalk in front of our building, Aaron and Carmen look like they’re arguing, their voices too faint to hear what they’re saying. Carmen keeps her hands on her hips, and shakes her head as she looks off into the distance. Aaron throws his arms out to his sides, then turns away from her, taking a few steps in the opposite direction. She stares at his back for a moment, then spins around and walks away. When Aaron realizes she’s leaving, he starts walking after her fast, but then stops short and stands there, frozen.
I feel like I’m watching a play, something choreographed, steps on a stage.
“That doesn’t look...” But when I turn back around, Callie’s gone. “Good,” I finish, talking only to myself. The stench of cigarette smoke wafts up through the window. Looking back down, I see that Aaron now sits on the front step, hunched over with his elbows planted on his knees. The sun drops below the buildings, casting a deep shadow over the street. He brings the cigarette to his mouth, the burning tip glowing brightly as he inhales.
I wait for a while. I plan on asking if everything’s okay, but he doesn’t come back up right away. In my bedroom I pull out the stack of eight different summer reading books I was supposed to have been plugging away at over the past two months. Then I pull out the gigantic AP Psychology book I ordered online the day I found out I’d be going to Jefferson, before all of this happened. I even had it delivered priority. I planned on reading it cover to cover over the summer. I planned on memorizing everything. I wanted to be prepared. I wanted to show my new teachers how worthy I was of being there. But I haven’t so much as peeled the plastic wrap off.
I feel a tiny point of pressure pinch somewhere inside my rib cage—the familiar knot of panic, the shortness of breath. I rifle through my desk drawer until my hand finds the smooth plastic bottle. I quickly twist the cap off and pop four almost-expired aspirins into my mouth. Then I place my hand over my heart. I breathe air into that small bundle of tangled nerves, and something inside of me seems to loosen its grip, the pressure in my head and chest and lungs beginning to retreat.
I grab the book and my favorite orange highlighter and bring them out to the kitchen table, where I’ll wait to talk to Aaron. I sit down and rip off the vacuum-sealed plastic wrap, flip open the cover, and start reading the introduction. I uncap my highlighter and mark a passage. I’m halfway through the second unit—“Memory”—when suddenly I look up. Outside it’s darker. Time has passed. Aaron still hasn’t come back.
My eyes ache from reading for so long. I blink hard a few times. I’m tempted to call it a day and go to bed. But no, I have a little more in me, I decide. Just need to rest my eyes for a minute. I fold my arms over the hefty psychology book and lay my head down. Only resting my eyes, I tell myself.
FAULT LINES
I AWAKE WITH MYface in the folds of my textbook and glance at the clock. It’s 5:30 a.m. Aaron is asleep on the couch in the living room. I gather my things from the table and on my way to my room peek inside Callie’s. She’s sleeping with her covers thrown off despite the cool night air. I glance at her desk—my old desk—and see my old globe. A memory arrives in my mind like it has been on pause, waiting for me to hit play.
I see myself as a thirteen-year-old in the room, back when Callie and I still shared it, back when Aaron lived with us the first time. Before the day on the roof, before he moved out, before I took over his room and claimed it as my own.
I remember how I’d run my fingertips up and down the lines of longitude, across the lines of latitude. But one moment rushes forward.
It was October; I was in eighth grade. I had just spun the globe and set my finger down slowly, letting it skim against the molded surface. A sandpaper sound emitted from the sphere until finally it slowed to a stop, spinning to a time in the future. I took a breath and moved in closer to get a better look.
“So?” Callie asked me. “Where are you going to live now?”
“In the middle of the Indian Ocean.” I sighed, genuinely disappointed. Sometimes the middle of nowhere happened. Then again, sometimes it was Bali or Fiji. Sometimes Quebec or Malawi. Hawaii was my favorite. I looked at the big island dreamily and sighed again—I was big on sighing back then—“Someday.” I addedIndian Ocean (?)to the list that I kept in the back of an old notebook. It was pages and pages long by the time I stopped, by the time I realized I was going to have to stay put, at least for a while.
I walked over to our bookcase, cradling that precious globe in my arms like a baby—my only connection to the great, big world out there, a world full of better places, places I’d rather be, places that I was convinced were waiting for me—and set it back down in its spot on the top shelf.
I turned to Callie, my face suddenly serious and pinched in now that my daily allotted daydreaming time was over. “You have your geography test tomorrow, don’t you? What is it, capitals?”
She moaned and rolled her eyes—she’d been getting really good at that—and simply continued playing with her dolls on her bed. With a Barbie in each hand, she thrust the one on the right forward at arm’s length so that it was facing me. “You think that because you’re in eighth grade and I’m only in fourth, you can tell me what to do!” her Barbie accused me in a voice slightly higher than Callie’s, her whole plastic body being shaken for added emphasis. “Just becauseyou’rethe smartest person in your class doesn’t mean that I should be smart too!” Then the Barbies went back to talking among themselves, an indecipherable murmur passing between them.
“Shut up,” I mumbled, so casually that neither Callie nor the Barbies seemed to hear me.
Then there was a big crash out in the living room, shaking the walls and the floor like an earthquake, like a fractured fault line on my globe had just cracked the whole world wide open. I jumped, but Callie barely seemed to notice.
Mom shouted, “Stop it!” She was already crying. “I told you I don’t have it! Listen to me. I swear. Please, calm down.”
“Don’t!” he screamed—screamed. “Lie. To. Me.” Every word matched with abang-slam-bash-boom.
Callie started humming.
Money.
He always thought she was hiding money from him. She might have been too. But it washermoney, after all.
“Mrs. Allister’s gonna call the cops again,” Callie said in her singsong voice, more to her Barbie than to me.
