Put Me Back Together(101)

“No,” I answered. “Because the two of us started it all, in a way, and I guess I want to end it with him, too.”

Lucas didn’t look the least bit satisfied with that answer, but he let me go anyway, staying in the car as I’d asked him to. It was my mother’s car. She’d let us borrow it after our mad dash to the taxi stand through the hordes of reporters surrounding our hotel, only to find a similar contingent besieging my parents’ house. Luckily, Lucas had surprisingly creative driving skills—considering he didn’t have a car of his own—and we’d lost the couple of journalists who were tailing us pretty quickly. Looking back, I waved at him, marveling at how natural it felt to see Lucas behind the wheel of my mother’s Volvo.

I stood by the fence watching the boys play, and waiting. Sure enough, after a few minutes he noticed me. He stood stock still among the grappling boys for a full minute before walking toward me. Even though it had been six years, I knew he would recognize me. I’d recognized him, hadn’t I? But it was more than that. We were woven into each other’s lives by what had happened in such a way that we would never forget each other for as long as we lived.


As he came closer and I could see his face more clearly, a feeling of intense nostalgia overcame me. There he was. Ricky Wesley. The boy who, for one afternoon when I was thirteen, I’d hated so much I’d wanted to kill him.

We looked at each other through the fence.

“What are you doing here?” he said. There was no hostility in his voice, and also little surprise. He seemed mainly just curious.

“I had to see you,” I answered. He was staring intently at my face, which unnerved me until I realized he was looking at my scabs. “I guess you must have read in the papers about…” I gestured at my face.

“Are you all right?” he said. Something about the way he said it made me immensely sad. His voice was full of real concern, as though he’d been worrying about me, and I had to admit that until this day I’d never once worried about him. “I mean, I can’t believe that bastard—”

“I’m fine,” I said before he could get too worked up. “I got away.” I didn’t add anything more, but I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it too:

I got away from Tommy’s killer a second time. I was big enough and strong enough to get away. I got away, and Tommy did not.

He looked back at his friends. The game had pretty much disintegrated and they were chatting up the three girls, wrestling with each other, and showing off. I looked him over while his head was turned. He was all grown up—fifteen years old now—and quite good-looking, with his blue eyes and blondish hair. He was almost a man. I noticed with a start that though he was slouching, he was taller than me. It was stupid, but in my mind he’d stayed forever nine years old, when in reality he’d left childhood behind years ago. Ricky wasn’t Tommy. Ricky had had the chance to grow up.

“I heard you hit him with a tree trunk,” he said, looking back at me.

I smiled. “More like a branch,” I corrected.

“But you hit him,” he persisted, his eyes zeroing in on mine.

“Yeah, Ricky, I hit him really hard,” I said, and he nodded once, as though that was all he needed to hear.

He looked away again and I began to worry he might go before I said what I needed to. “I wanted to come see you because there’s something… I just wanted to talk to you, and tell you… I never explained… Well, really, I lied, and I always thought—”

“Thought you should tell me that I was the reason Tommy died?” Ricky said. His tone was so matter-of-fact that it stopped me dead, and I could only stare at him. The right side of his face was streaked with mud and he scratched at it absently.

“W-what?” I stammered finally. “No, you aren’t the reason! Brandon is the reason Tommy died. But how did you—?”

“I know,” Ricky interrupted. “I know it was supposed to be me, but he got Tommy instead.”

I gaped at him. He started walking slowly along the fence and I followed him.

“How do you know?” I said a little too loudly. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How on earth could he know this?

Ricky looked around, but the other kids were clearing off the field. There was no one close enough to hear.

“I was in the woods, too, that day,” he said. My mouth actually fell open. “I saw Brandon kill Tommy and I didn’t save him. I let my little brother die.”

We came to a gate in the fence and I walked through it. We sat down on a yellow bench at the side of the field and I wrapped my arms around my middle, taking deep breaths.

“You were there?” I said finally, my eyes blurring with tears, though I wasn’t sure why. As I watched him nod, I had the sudden urge to throw my arms around him. A terrible kinship grew up between us in that moment, born of cowardice and fear and regret. I could see it all over his face. We both felt that we’d failed Tommy. We both blamed ourselves. For so long I’d thought I was all alone in my shame, when just three blocks away I’d had a partner in agony, and I’d never even known it.

Ricky licked his lips. “I wasn’t over at Steven Lipinski’s house. Steve wasn’t even my friend. That’s just what I said because I didn’t want to be at the house with you and Tommy,” he said. “I followed you guys to the woods. I saw him shove you down, and then…”