The Girl He Used to Know(59)

On the way home from the corner store, I passed a man who was sipping something from a flask he pulled from the pocket of his dirty jean jacket. He looked older than me, maybe a worker from one of the nearby bars. He raised the flask in my direction and started toward me. “Come drink with me, beauty,” he said.

I quickened my pace, desperate to put more distance between us, but it only seemed to egg him on. “Come on, I won’t bite,” he yelled. “Unless you’re into that kind of thing.” His voice sounded closer now.

I wore a whistle on a chain around my neck, and as the footsteps grew louder, I pulled it out from under my shirt and put it in my mouth. It was silver, pretty, shiny. Almost like a necklace, although I never wore it on the outside of my clothes.

I felt a tug on my sleeve, and though it was gentle, I spun around, the shrill blast of the whistle piercing the otherwise quiet sidewalk. I blew as hard as I could, and I took a step toward him, stopping only to take a deep breath so I could blow it again. Bystanders and passersby stopped what they were doing and a few of them began to approach. But it wasn’t the man with the flask. The man who had tugged on my sleeve looked no older than me, and he held up his hands and yelled, “Hey, sorry! I thought you were someone else.”

“You shouldn’t sneak up behind people like that! It’s very rude.”

“Jesus Christ, chill out.” He turned on his heel and stomped away like he was mad. At me! I looked around and calmly dropped the whistle back down into my shirt. Then I went home and ate my cereal.

You might think the whistle was Janice’s idea, but it had actually been my mother’s. It was the last thing she gave to me before she and my dad got back in the car to go home after moving me into my apartment. “You must speak up if something should happen that frightens or endangers you,” she said. “If you can’t, let this be your voice.”

“I don’t want it,” I said, shoving it back into her palm. Why did my mother insist on scaring me like that? Giving me a whistle only filled my head with swirling thoughts of danger lurking on every corner, confirmed that the world was an unsafe place for people like me to navigate on their own. There’s no Janice to babysit you this time, Annika. So, here, have a whistle.

“Take it anyway,” she said, slipping the chain over my head. “Someday you might need it and you’ll be thankful you have it.”

My mother, as always, had been right.



* * *



Jonathan left a final message on my machine shortly before Christmas. I’d postponed my move to New York indefinitely by enrolling in graduate school. I finally felt like I was in control of my life, and I’d proven I could live independently. Leaving now would disrupt the routines that brought me such calm, rock the boat I’d worked so hard to keep steady. “I just need some more time,” I’d said into his machine. “I think I should complete my education before I move anywhere.”

Now, I listened to the message he’d left for me, tears running in a torrent down my cheeks. It should not have been a surprise; even I knew he would not wait forever.

Though my heart felt like it was splitting in two, I did not regret my decision. But I paid a steep price for my independence, and losing Jonathan was harder than all the things that had come before it, combined.





32


Annika


THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

1992



Will showed up at my apartment to drive me home for Christmas. I’d been expecting my parents, but when I opened the door I found my brother instead.

“What are you doing here?”

“Happy holidays to you too, sister.”

“Mom said she and Dad were coming.”

“Yeah, well. Mom’s busy cooking and Dad’s busy … being Dad. The roads are shit and I was bored, so I volunteered.”

“You never come home this early.”

“Clearly, I did this year.”

Will picked up my suitcase and I locked the apartment and followed him out to his car.

“Is Jonathan going to join us over break?” Will asked as he merged onto the snowy highway.

“No. That’s over.” I had never said it out loud. Now that I had, it meant that it was real and it hurt. I played Jonathan’s last message again in my head. Definitely over.

“By the way, in case you were wondering. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hold on to Jonathan. It was that I decided to let him go.”



* * *



Will had never been home in time to go get the tree. My dad and I were usually the ones who cut it down and dragged it back to the car, but it was bitterly cold and Will told our parents to stay home. “Annika and I can handle it.”

We drove to the same tree farm we’d been buying our trees from my whole life, and we walked down the rows until I found the perfect tree, a seven-foot Canaan fir. I waited patiently while Will sawed it down.

“I got fired,” he said as we watched the tree fall.

“Oh.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

That felt like a trick question. “Do you want me to know why?” We each picked up one end of the tree and headed toward the parking lot.

“I made a mistake. A big one. It cost the company a lot of money. I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. I just said I quit because I didn’t like the job.”