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Then I started to hear it, “Heart-Shaped Box.” It seemed as if they were playing it somewhere in the party, but no, maybe you were singing just for me. I couldn’t tell. But I could hear your voice, full of anger. Hey, wait … It woke me up. It’s like you were screaming from inside of me. I pushed Evan as hard as I could, harder than I knew I could, and he fell against the other side of the bed. He looked stu
That’s when Sky came in. He was with Francesca.
When he saw me there, he stepped toward the bed. He said, “Laurel, what’s going on?”
“I don’t feel good” is what I said.
Sky told Evan, “Get the fuck outta here before I kick your teeth in.” I’ve never seen him so mad. Evan got out, fast. Francesca lingered, but Sky turned to her and said, “Could you leave us alone for a minute?”
“Whatever,” she said. “I don’t need this shit.” And she left.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I want to go on the top bunk.”
“You should go home. Where are your friends?”
I started to panic, because I remembered Natalie and Ha
“They were kissing.” I tried to fix my skirt, which was pushed up and tangled around my shirt. I was so ashamed that Sky was seeing me this way.
“Come on. I’ll take you home,” he said.
When we walked out, there was a fight. Kasey was screaming at Natalie, “Get out!”
Natalie looked at Ha
Ha
Once we were in the car, I didn’t look at Sky. I looked out the window at the treetops. I wanted to say something to make everything that was bad get better. But I couldn’t think of a single thing. I guess Sky couldn’t, either. So I closed my eyes until we got home.
I felt the car stop and heard the engine purring in stillness outside my house. I sat there, feeling so sick. Finally I said, “Sorry.” And I reached for the handle.
“Did you do drugs or something?”
“I took some pill they gave me.” They weren’t caffeine pills, I realized now. Maybe I always knew.
“Why did you do that?”
I looked at him. “I don’t know,” I said.
I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to go back to the fall and the night when I was dressed as Amelia and I could fly over everything. I wanted his hands to burn on me and make me new again. To erase everything else. Everything that was wrong and bad and dirty.
I put my lips near his mouth. Then I put them closer.
“You’re messed up right now,” he said.
He was right. I was too messed up, in every way. “I know,” I said. “It’s not supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be in love.”
“Do you ever think that for one second you could forget about how it’s supposed to be and just deal with the way it is?”
“You don’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to leave me. She was supposed to love me.” I started to cry.
“Who? Your sister?”
I nodded. I tried to erase what I was feeling. I tried to get rid of the anger that seared me. I was sobbing now. I opened the car door. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I have to go.”
His engine idled as he waited for me to crawl in through the window. And then I heard his car pull away. I felt sick with regret. I wanted him to come back. I wanted to tell him everything.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
May and I are going to go to the movies. She just got her driver’s license, from Roadru
May and I used to always do everything together, before she left for high school. But now I am thirteen, a for-real teenager. And now we are going to be friends again. In my head, I am begging May to do what Dad said so we can still go to the movies in her car together.
Finally May says, “Okay.” And she goes to her room and puts on a giant sweatshirt. A Christmas one with puffy reindeer on it. It looks fu
“Go ahead,” my dad says.
We are going to see Aladdin at the dollar theater. Lots of times they play old Disney movies there, which May and I still love. We are in the old Camry with May’s pink beads hanging from the mirror. As soon as we are down the block, May pulls off her sweatshirt. She fixes the mascara smudged from crying and grins at me. I am wearing the shirt that I love, the one that I’ve had since fifth grade, with a picture of a rain forest and rain forest animals that snap on and off. I hope that it’s cool to wear again, the way that Rainbow Brite and the Smurfs are. I wonder now if I should have worn something else. But my hair is clean, and I can smell the sweet green apple shampoo. I think that the night is not ruined after all.
It’s the end of November, but we roll down the windows anyway and blast the heater, and May turns up the music. She sings along to “Heart-Shaped Box,” and then she looks at me and asks, “Do you like it?” I nod that I do.
She kisses my forehead. She says, “I am going to meet Paul at the movie, is that okay? You can’t tell Dad, or Mom, either.”
I nod. I am a little sad that it won’t be just me and May, but the most important thing is that she let me in.
When we stop at the light before the movie theater, she tucks her hair behind her ears, and then ruffles it up, and then tucks it again. And then she puts on lipstick.
She turns to me. Her lips look grown-up, like the ones she cuts out of her magazines for collages, but her face is soft. She says, “Do I look okay?” I say she looks beautiful. I haven’t ever seen anyone look like that before. Not even her.
When we get there, only a couple of people are left in the ticket line, and there is Paul with another man standing off to the side. Paul has on the same plaid shirt he wore the only other time I’ve seen him, at Fallfest. He looks a little cleaner than the other guy, who has jeans with holes and a shirt that says BACK IN MY DAY, WE HAD NINE PLANETS. When May sees Paul, she waves a little wave. She walks up slowly, her hair swinging behind her. I follow. When we get close, they don’t touch, but from her look, I can tell they will.
I am playing with the frog snap on my shirt. I am snapping it on and off.
May talks in a grown-up voice and says, “Laurel, you remember Paul, and this is his friend Billy.”
Paul says, “Hey, kid,” which is what Carl and Mark, the neighbor boys, call me, and ruffles my hair. I don’t want him to.
May says, “Paul and I are going to go somewhere, okay? Billy will take you to the movie.”
I don’t want to go see Aladdin with Billy, whose hair is long and dirty. I want to go with May. But I say, “Okay.”