Mistwalker

EIGHT Willa

At night, Broken Tooth could be quiet. It was on this side, most of the houses dark, most of the people sleeping. Streetlights hummed and spilled out sickly orange light. It hung in the fog, strange haloes at every corner.

My house was dark too. Daddy’s truck was gone, but Seth’s was in the driveway. Trudging toward it, I realized he was still inside. I saw his arms, curved over the top of the steering wheel, and his head, hanging.

All at once, I was exhausted. Rounding the back of the bed, I came up to the driver’s side and knocked on the window.

Startled, Seth jerked upright. At first, I thought he’d been sleeping. Then I realized there was nothing soft about his face. Every line was drawn tight, his lips, his eyes. He started to roll the window down, then something changed his mind. Waving me back, he opened the door.

But he didn’t get out. He pushed the door open as far as it would go. Then he turned to me, still perched on the bench seat. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“I had my phone.”

Seth nodded. He rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans, then scrubbed them over his face. I wasn’t the only one sideways. I could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t right. That he was wrong—we were too.

Then he turned, coming like he was going to get out of the truck. When he moved, I smelled perfume. Clinging to his coat, light and sugary.

A sharpness slid through my belly. All my insides fell, and I thought they might fall out. I knew that scent. The last time I smelled it, the girl wearing it spat at my feet. Probably would have gone for the face except she knew I would have punched her then.

Holding a hand up, I took a few steps back. My voice wasn’t my own. It was brittle, full of sharp edges.

“You spent the night with Denny Ouelette?”

Seth looked caught. Not ashamed, just surprised to be found out. Grimacing, he stopped his slide out of the truck. Leaning off the side of the bench seat, he pulled his own hair, then took a deep breath. Instead of sighing or finding some shame, he popped.

“I get tired of doing everything right, Willa. It’s not enough for you. I can’t make you happy, and fine. That’s fine—you shouldn’t be. But I can’t even make it better. I do everything you want me to, everything you need me to. And you couldn’t care less.”

Cold with disbelief, I stared. “So you cheated on me?”

“We just went driving around.”

“I know what that means!”

Seth bristled. “Nothing happened.”

I walked away, short, tight steps. My head screamed, anger that roared in my ears and cut my brain off from my mouth. Everything I said rolled out, like it was made on the tip of my tongue.

“Get out of my driveway. Go home. Go pick up Nick, he’s drunk at the beach. You can talk about how screwed up I am, and what a bitch I am, and when you drop him off, maybe Denny will let you stay the night and be all sweet to you. I bet nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to her. She’ll be sweet forever.”

“Willa, I’m—”

“I said get out!”

I may as well have slapped Seth, because he couldn’t have looked more wounded. But he didn’t have a right to be sad and sorry in my direction. He wasn’t gonna cry. The only time he misted up was at the end of war movies, when it was clear that everybody was going to make it home or nobody was.

His spine straightened. Seth slid back into the truck and dropped both hands on the wheel. He could see me glaring at him, waiting for him to go. Finally, he reached for the key. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Well, this is what you bought.”

Hiding under my hurt was sympathy. Or compassion. Whatever it is you feel when someone you love is in pain. Didn’t matter that I was part of it, or that he’d brought it on himself.

Because I could trace it all back: I was being a pain in the ass. And I was a pain in the ass because I’d done a terrible thing. So that explained why I was a bitch, and why Seth needed somebody sweet. None of that excused it. Nobody made him open the passenger-side door for Denny Ouelette. That was all on him.

So I watched Seth drive away. I stood in the middle of the street doing it too. Under my breath, I swore I’d be fine.

A fragile, just-been-shattered layer moved under my skin. It’s exhaustion, I told myself. I was tired and cold, and I wasn’t going to break down in the middle of Thaxter Street.

I was breaking down in the middle of Thaxter Street. I was the one making those awful, animal sounds. My belly wrenched, and my throat clamped shut. It wasn’t a pretty cry, a crystal tear slipping down my cheek. It was crying like vomiting. There was no fighting it; it came up on its own.

Seth and Bailey were my constants. My anchors, twin points that came together to be my north. I didn’t know how to be without them. When I looked up, all I saw was the nothing coming. The future where Seth drove around with other girls and Bailey went off to college and never came home.

That same future with an empty place at the dinner table, and half as many Christmas presents under the tree. The one where I stood on land and watched the tide go out without me.

Nick was wrong. July twenty-third wasn’t over.

And it wasn’t ever going to be.

Defeated, I walked inside. I heard a TV upstairs, and I followed the sound. Down the hall to my parents’ bedroom, I peeked around the door. My mother sat propped against the headboard.

A crossword puzzle book lay in her lap, her place kept with a ballpoint pen. She didn’t look at me, but she knew I was there. She patted the place beside her.

I didn’t ask where Daddy was. I didn’t want to know, and since she was sitting up late, she probably didn’t have an answer.

Sliding in beside her, I fit my head in the crook of her shoulder. Somebody else’s cigarette smoke clung to her skin, half met by the scent of her soap.

“How was the party?”

“It sucked.”

She hummed a reply. Trailing her hand over my hair, she started untangling it. It was an idle touch. One that moved because her body knew how to do it. Maybe we were all stuck.

Those thoughts didn’t get far. They crashed into the numb that spread through me. It started at the top of my head and drifted ’til I knew I had toes but couldn’t feel them.

Even my voice sounded detached. Mumbling against Mom’s shoulder, I said, “I thought you hated this show.”

“I do.”

It was on for the sound. Or the company. It was on because the house was too quiet. It was always too quiet now.

Squeezing my eyes closed, I burrowed closer to her. I wanted to be ten again. When I could lay my head in her lap and every bad thing slipped away. She combed her fingers through my hair then, too. She used to cure a bad day with idle touches while she read a magazine or watched shows she did like. I wanted it to work again.

“Seth could have come in,” she said.

I froze. Did she know he’d been sitting in the driveway? An ugly, tangled knot filled my throat. It choked me, and I wished for ten years old again. Tikki-tikki-tembo, Seth Ar-sham-bow: that was the worst of my problems then.

It was a relief when she added, “I know it’s a small town, but I feel better knowing he’s driving you back and forth from these parties.”

Shock and tears and all kinds of God-awful feelings threatened to spill out of me. It was on my tongue to tell her we broke up, but I bit down instead.

She’d want to know why. I’d have to dissect it. Sugar-sweet Denny Ouelette being mixed up in it would piss her off. But she wouldn’t understand just how deep that cut went. Maybe she’d think it was my fault. Nick did. Daddy did.

Strangling myself on all that, I shrugged. Made myself sound normal. “He had to get home.”

Swirling her fingers, she started at the crown of my head again. “All right.”

“He said hey.”

“Next time you see him, tell him I say hey back.”

With a nod, I agreed to carry that message. For a second, my life was normal again. Cuddled up with my mom, the TV playing on. Her fingers in my hair; a distracted message to carry like always. Normal. I had to lie to get there, to myself and my mother, and the whole world.

But it was better than falling apart, piece by piece.