How to Save a Life(42)

I stumbled into my house, sodden and shivering, and went up to my room. On my desk lay the love poem I’d been assigned by Ms. P, ready to be turned in.

My eyes scanned the page and found a line at random.



He touches me and I think

This is what hope feels like



Rainwater dripped from my hair onto the page, blurring the blue ink. I took the poem and tore it in half. Then again. Again. I ripped it to shreds and then brushed the scraps away. I drew out a new sheet of paper and began to write.





In the days following Evan’s arrest I fought as hard as I could for him. I made statements, spoke to Evan’s public defender. But it was too late, and I was too weak.

The prosecution had the records from Woodside. They had the testimony of Evan’s brothers. They had the grief of a mother who saw nothing but her son’s broken face, and nothing from the little boy who hadn’t woken up to say what happened.

Harris Salinger claimed Evan had been cold and distant to Garrett over the last few weeks, uncharacteristically so. Shane spoke in great detail about Evan trying to choke him. Him, a frail, disabled boy, all the while screaming threats, “I will f*cking kill you!” And then Jared Piltcher’s family filed their own lawsuit for assault.

It piled on top of Evan, accusation after accusation, and I could do nothing to stop it.

Evan waited out his trial in county jail. While he was in custody, they wouldn’t let me see him or call him. I walked the halls of the high school like a ghost. I talked to no one and no one talked to me. Not even Marnie or Adam. Whispers followed me down the corridors, sounding soft and unthreatening, but cutting me to the bone.

Planerville was less discreet. They talked themselves hoarse, gossiping about the situation. They breathed a collective sigh relief when the verdict came back and Evan was sentenced to five years at the minimum security North Central Correctional Facility. A sentence that forever ruined his chances of becoming a firefighter. Destroyed his dreams, and ground them to dust. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.





I turned in the final version of my love poem to Ms. Politano.

I waited until the class had cleared out, then went up to her desk. My hair hung around my face in unwashed strands. I’d been wearing Evan’s blue and black plaid shirt every day and every night. The cuffs were grimy at my wrists as I laid a crumpled and tear-stained piece of paper on Ms. P’s desk.

“Jo,” she said, her voice heavy with grief. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Evan. I just wanted to say—”

“Here,” I said sliding the paper closer to her. “This is my assignment. So I can graduate.”

She took the paper and I watched her eyes skim the uneven pen scratchings that crawled down the page like an erratic waterfall.

“It’s a mess,” I said dully. “It has no form or structure. But it’s the truth. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”

She drew it to her slowly, her eyes never leaving mine. “Yes, it does, Josephine.”

I nodded, willing myself not to break, hugging myself tight. But the tears broke free anyway. A scrape of the chair legs and then Ms. P was holding me. I clung to her, great wracking sobs tearing me in two.

I cried and cried, not coming close to the end of my tears. I pulled myself out of Ms. P’s embrace, and walked out of her room without another word, down the hallway out of the school.

Nothing was left for me in Planerville, or in all of Iowa, now that Evan was lost to me. He and I had been on the verge of something beautiful. Something extraordinary. And then it was all ripped away with a violence that shattered me so that I hardly recognized myself, even years later. I lost Evan and lost myself. Faded away like a photo left in the sun too long.

They say all who wander are not lost. But some of us are. We’re really f*cking lost, wandering until our feet bleed, and it feels like we’ll never find our way home again.





I Never Told You



You can fill a book with everything I never said Or the lines of a poem

Or an empty pool

Or an empty bedroom,

the candles all blown out



I never told you

how the reflection of myself in your eyes Was the only mirror I could bear to look at Or how I fought every day

To transfuse the girl I saw there with the girl I am I tried to breathe in the words you made me: beautiful

good

brave

I tried to be them for you even though

they were weighted with impossibility



I never told you

how I always feared the rough edges of myself were too sharp for you And how I fought every day to blunt them To bring down the walls

To let you in

without cutting you because I could never bear to hurt you like the others did

Every day

a fierce pride roared in me

I was so lucky to know the truth

I was the beneficiary of your radiance

I basked in it and felt special

And if not for the pain of your solitude I would have been content to be the only one

I never told you

How your touch made me feel like laughing and crying and singing all at once

How your hand passing over my skin where atrocities Had not yet sloughed off,

Skin cells remembering the worst touches, Was like a tide washing over the ruddy sand And leaving it whole and smooth