Forever for a Year(88)

MOM


Going to pick up Dad. Will have long

talk. Will be home late. Please take

care of Lily.

I hated seeing her name on my phone but I also liked it. Maybe I liked hating it. Hearing from her allowed me to release my frustration instead of just letting it build louder and bigger and crazier in my head. After the movie, Lily and I got hot chocolate from Starbucks even though we had just had candy at the theater and chocolate pancakes at Roth’s. It didn’t even taste good. It made me feel sick. Maybe I wanted to feel sick. Who the hell knows? Life makes no sense.

As we were driving home, we stopped at a light. A police car stopped right next to us.

“Trevor,” Lily said, then pointed at the police. Which only made it worse.

“Don’t point,” I said. The police officer looked right at me. Crap. We were going to get arrested for me driving without a license. We were. I’d be thrown in jail. But then the light turned and the officer drove on. I guess I fooled him. Everyone was so stupid.

As I opened the garage door, my phone buzzed. I reached for it because I wanted it to be from Carolina but instead it was from Licker:





LICKER


Sorry about Carolina, dude.

Huh? He couldn’t know about our parents and that text wouldn’t make sense even if he did. So I texted:





ME


What about her?





LICKER


About Alex Taylor. What a dick. You

could totally beat the shit out of him.

The texts. He was talking about her New Year’s Eve texts. This seemed strange. And then I got a text from my cousin Henry:





HENRY


Told you not to go out with her.

What the f*ck? So I texted Licker:





ME


I know what happened but you tell

me what you think happened

I didn’t know. Maybe I did. But my gut said I didn’t. But I didn’t want anyone to know I didn’t. Licker texted:





LICKER


She gave him a hj in his car this

morning

“TREVOR!” Lily yelled as the BMW crashed into the back of the garage and my mom’s hanging bicycle, which she had never used once, dropped from the ceiling onto the car’s roof and made a dent so big you could probably sit in it.

Shit.

But then I looked back at the text. From Licker.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be.

Everything inside me twisted tighter. Tighter. Tighter. So goddamn tight I couldn’t breathe. My skin everywhere broke and shattered. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Why are we leaving again?” Lily screamed, but I didn’t respond. I just backed out of the garage, let the bike fall off the car and lay crumpled in the middle of the garage floor. “Trevor!” Lily said every few minutes as I sped faster and faster toward Carolina’s.

*

I parked in her driveway, told Lily to stay, opened the door to Carolina’s house without knocking, walked past her mom, who was watching TV, and maybe yelled at me, and then opened her bedroom door and there she was, crying, phone to her ear. She was calling me. My phone was ringing. I looked at it, saw her name, saw the picture of us at the Metropolitan Club, then pressed ignore.

“Did…?” But I couldn’t say any more.

“I didn’t!”

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” I screamed even though she said she didn’t. Because I just knew. Knew. Crap. I hated knowing every goddamn thing ever.

“He kissed me! And he tried to touch me! And tried to make me touch him! But I didn’t! And then he took me home! And I want to only kiss you forever! I hate myself! I hate myself! Please, Trevor, don’t hate me too!” She ran into my arms and sobbed into my chest and her whole body went limp and I caught her but I didn’t want to so I let her down on her bed. She looked terrible. So red-faced and snotty and boyish in her sweatpants. But I was still excited. My penis was still hard. That makes no sense! And I still wanted to kiss her so bad. But I wasn’t going to. I was never, ever going to kiss her again.

“I hate you as much as I hate my mom,” I said, and then I screamed again and then I grabbed the notebook I had made for Christmas and ripped out five pages just because and then I threw it against the wall and I left.





79

Carolina’s brain goes to mush

I wanted to run after Trevor, I think, but I was crying so loudly it made my legs wobbly so I crawled along my bedroom floor, yelling his name, I think, but maybe I wasn’t saying anything, not any real words, just loud yells and wails and crazy noises that people make right before they die from so much pain no person could survive it. No person would want to.

And then my mom was standing there, then she was on the floor, opening her hands, and I crawled the last few feet and collapsed into her lap.

“TREVOR!” I yelled. I think. Something like that. A word like his name. But filled with all this spit and snot and tears.

“He’s gone,” my mom said. And then she squeezed me tight against her, and my brain stopped knowing what to think or do so it just went to mush.

*

Later. I don’t how much later. But later. My mom led me back to my bed and laid me down. I slept. I think. But can you sleep when your brain is mush? Wouldn’t it be impossible? I don’t know. I should look that up. People in comas must sleep. Right? But my brain was more mush than a coma. I swear. It was worthless. Just worthless. I think. I suppose I’m kind of having these thoughts or kind of remember having these thoughts so maybe it wasn’t one hundred percent mush. Who knows? Maybe we are all two different people. One person who feels and one person who thinks. And the person who feels can think a little and the person who thinks can feel a little, but sometimes one of those people dies or gets hurt and can’t do what she is supposed to do. So maybe the person in me who feels died or at least went into a coma and the person who thinks just kind of lies there because she has never been so alone and afraid before.