17 & Gone(34)

I didn’t want to let myself keep looking at him—like I’d given up that right—so I dropped my gaze and thought and thought of what to say. There was a drain in the middle of the tiled floor that I hadn’t noticed before and my eyes caught on it. Was that how Natalie had entered the room? And was that the exit she’d taken to leave? Could the girls travel through the pipes of the school?

Were they anywhere, and everywhere, able to find me wherever I went, no matter if I wanted them to or not?

“Lauren,” Jamie said. “You owe me this. You know you do. Just say it. I can take it.”

He was right: I did owe him an explanation. It was more than just that we’d gotten physical together and that made all of this so much more serious.

And with seriousness comes the lowering of the walls, and with the lowering of the walls comes the nakedness, and with the nakedness comes the connection and the fear. Both of us had done things we’d never done with anyone else before—at least that’s what he said; I know I was telling the truth—not to mention the talking and all the secrets spilled after, like when we’d lie in bed together, under the covers, at his house or my house, when no one else was home.

He told me how his dad used to hit him until one day, when he was thirteen, he hit him back and got lucky with his aim and bloodied his lip. I told him how my dad disappeared when I was three and a few years ago we thought he was in a homeless shelter down in Texas, but when we called to talk to him he wouldn’t come to the phone. Jamie told me how he used to think of suicide sometimes, when he was reading a lot of Camus. I told him how I never once thought of suicide, but I knew my mom had, before I was born, and knowing I was the one keeping her alive and happy made me more afraid to die than anything ever could. Jamie and I simply told each other a lot of things. And I guess that once you’ve gone that far with someone, once you’ve let him in, in all the ways a person can be let in, you should say why you don’t want to see him anymore. You should know why, yourself.

I didn’t, but I tried to explain.

“It’s me. It’s me and it’s not me.

There’s more of me than you know.

There’s more, and I can’t tell you, I can’t say. There are things . . . There are people.” I got the distinct feeling I was saying too much. It’s true that Jamie knew a lot about me, but he didn’t know everything. I’d never told him about Fiona Burke running away all those years ago. And, right then, I was relieved I hadn’t. She wouldn’t want him to know.

“Wait, so you’re saying I don’t know you? Are you serious?” He’d heard only part of what I’d said.

“You used to. You don’t anymore.”

“You’re not making sense.”

I agreed. It felt like we were having two separate conversations, that he was hearing things my mouth wasn’t saying, and I was saying things his ears couldn’t hear.

Then I remembered the phone call he’d taken when we were at the Lady-of-the-Pines Summer Camp that night. He was acting like all of this was my fault, but was it? Who was the guilty one here?

“Maybe I should ask you if there’s someone else?” I said. “If there was, would you tell me?”

“No,” he said, and hearing that answer felt like a slap. Then he clarified. “There’s no one else.” He added this last bit without looking at me: “But it sounds like you want me to get with someone else.”

I couldn’t blame him if he did. I wasn’t fit for consumption. I was defective. I was about to melt down that drain and share the pipes with the only people who understood me. The girls.

I don’t know what I wanted him to do: pull me into his arms, maybe, and say it didn’t matter. Sense there was someone in the stall and not be scared away by it.

He did none of those things. You see, Jamie Rossi was great. He was kind. He was really, really into me, or at least he used to be. But he was also a pretty typical 17-year-old boy, and you can’t expect so much from them.

“Whatever you want,” he said, his eyes hardening. “I guess we’re broken up then.” He turned for the door, and I thought he was about to leave; then he turned back.

“That’s mine. That hoodie you’re wearing. Take it off.”

“You’re kidding.”

He waited, and the expression on his face said it all. It was more a lack of expression, an iron door behind which he’d packed all his emotions; I’d never get close to them again since I wasn’t strong enough to lift that door. He absolutely was not kidding.

“C’mon,” he said. “You made me late to class already. Just give it so I can go.”

I unzipped the red hoodie, then pulled it off, arm by arm. Underneath I wore only a T-shirt of the thinnest cotton, and it was January, and my nipples turned to pebbles and the gooseflesh on my arms popped up, and surely he’d see this and let me hang on to the hoodie for the rest of the day.

Nope.

I held it out to him, dangling it in the open space between us. He closed the gap, tore it out of my hand, and left.

Natalie, upon hearing the door slam, dropped her feet down off the toilet and came out of the stall. She made me cough, and she made my eyes tear up, and I couldn’t look at her, not even in the mirror, and there was a lump in my throat so I couldn’t speak.