All We Could Have Been Page 4

  Rory drops her eyeliner. She doesn’t turn to face Chloe, though, instead holding on to the sink and staring into the mirror. “Shut up, Chloe.”

  “No, it’s ridiculous. It’s been, like, four days, and you’re defending her. You don’t know her, either. She could be a fucking serial killer for all you know.”

  I don’t hear the rest of the conversation. All I can hear is crying and the police and the way they said it like it was inevitable. There was so much blood, and all I could think was that it couldn’t be true, because no one had done laundry for days. This made no sense, but I couldn’t connect the dots logically and it was just the first place my mind went. We didn’t have clean clothes. Everyone should have been where they were supposed to be, or at least at home doing the wash. They wouldn’t have any reason to be anywhere else, because we had so many dirty clothes.

  NO. Not now, I tell myself.

  “Hello?” Rory asks.

  Shit. I didn’t mean to say it aloud. I didn’t want them to know I was here, but now they will, and now they’ll know I heard and they’ll see I was crying and then they’ll start to ask questions. They’ll start wondering what kinds of things I’m not saying when I’m quiet.

  But you can’t just sit inside a bathroom stall and hope people will go away, so I walk out like nothing happened.

  “Oh, hey,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

  Chloe gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe that for a second, but Rory tries a little harder.

  “Oh, Lexi, we were literally just talking about you.”

  “Yeah?” I say, and Chloe glances down at the floor. Because, of course, it’s all fun and games until someone comes out of the stall after you call them a serial killer.

  “Chloe was saying how … unique … your style is, and I was thinking you’d probably be awesome at costumes. You know, for drama?”

  “Right. Having a unique style inherently means I can sew and design Renaissance gowns for your Shakespeare production. Or I’m just really bad at dressing myself. Either one.”

  Rory laughs. “Stop. You look great. I think it’s interesting how you own it. Like no one would usually dare start at a new school and just say fuck it all to the rules, and you don’t even care. That’s pretty badass.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “But about the costumes … they won’t be elaborate at all. The show’s a contemporary take on the story.”

  “Fresh,” I say, cursing myself for my snark. But I’m still upset about the whole talking-about-me thing. And the comments about my clothes and the idea that I’m some kind of poor-girl pity party of one. Mostly, though, I’m upset that they were so close to the truth about me.

  Rory rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, Lexi. I know.” She drags this bit out like she can’t even believe it herself. “But we have to do something. It’s such an overdone play, but we’re going to set it in the heart of the upcoming gubernatorial election. Each of the characters is going to represent groups of people being slowly marginalized in our culture. We’re going to make people look at the world and talk about injustice. Because we’re in the middle of something massive with this election, and I don’t think anyone gets it.”

  “I don’t really follow politics,” I tell her.

  This invites a lecture, but it also sweeps away the awkwardness of their talking behind my back and my discovering it. Somehow I end up at lunch with them both, and none of it mattered or happened and everything’s just fine. And I let it be, because somewhere in that moment, I remembered, and that’s worse.

  * * *

  Ryan invites me to Galactic Empire over the weekend, but I claim homework. It’s a good thing people don’t talk to each other; they’d think I had seventy-five hours of a homework a day.

  When I get off the bus, I don’t see Marcus, and I figure he forgot about our “date,” so I start heading back to my apartment. I’m by the fountain when I hear him.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot,” he yells.

  He’s across the road, on the other sidewalk. He says something else, but I can’t hear him. It’s 3:17. Beethoven drowns out whatever Marcus is saying.

  “I thought you did,” I yell back, hoping he can hear me over the fountain, and I cross the street toward him.

  He leans against the streetlight, and it’s absurdly sexy. Dark hair, dark eyes, brooding look, and a sexy lean. Stop it, I tell myself.

  “A promise is a promise,” he says.

  “I didn’t see you when I got off the bus.”

  He shrugs. “I got a ride, but I told you I’d be here.”

  “We might have missed the ice-cream van. It’s too late, right?”

  “What kind of date would it be if I showed up only to let you down?”

  “I’m accustomed to disappointment,” I say.

  “Well, yeah. You live here,” he says, taking my hand.

  Marcus’s hands are callused but not rough. They’re comfortable. It’s odd how some people make holding your hand feel like such a chore and it’s always awkward because nothing fits right, but then with other people, it’s like your hands know something you’ve been missing.

  The music from the van flickers in the air, coming around the buildings, and when we get there, it’s already waiting, with a line of kids in front of it.

  While we stand in line, we don’t talk. I’m not sure if Marcus is quiet, nervous, or just uninterested, but of course it makes me wish he was talking. There’s something about standing near someone when you feel like you should be saying something but you don’t know what to say exactly. I open my mouth a few times to speak, but everything I can think of to say feels wrong. Being surrounded by a bunch of little kids doesn’t help.

  I like Castle Estates; everyone is old, and I don’t have to see all the faces of children who look like the ones in my nightmares.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “Um…” I’m not sure how to answer, until I realize the kids have all moved on and we’re ordering. “Oh. Uh…”

  It’s a pretty sparse collection. Of the maybe twenty things, half have duct tape pasted across them with the word Out written in black Sharpie. “Batman?”

  “Okay,” he says, and he orders a Batman for me and a Spider-Man for himself.

  “Big Spider-Man fan?” I ask once we’re away from the kids and we’re trying to keep the ice creams from melting all over ourselves.

  “Nah, it’s just the only one that doesn’t have some kind of weird-ass flavor in it. It’s just cherry and blue raspberry. That’s normal shit.”

  I look down at my Batman pop and see that it’s blue raspberry with banana. I immediately regret my bad choice. “You should’ve warned me.”

  “Hey, it’s not my responsibility to make your terrible decisions. Besides, maybe you’re into banana ice cream.”

  “Is anyone?” When I reach the banana-flavored bat shape, I swallow it quickly. It’s not really that bad; it tastes more like Yellow 40 or whatever than an actual banana.

  “In all my travels, I didn’t really develop a list of the flavors of ice cream people like.”

  “Well, you should have,” I tell him, and he smiles, revealing blue teeth and a purple tongue. I laugh, which makes him start laughing.

  “My tongue is purple, isn’t it?”

  I nod. “Me too?”

  “Yup. It’s one of the risks you take.”

  We head toward what was once a playground in the complex, though now it’s a metal bar and some chains where swings used to be. Marcus sits in the dirt carved by children’s feet ages ago, when kids still lived here, and I join him, taking his Popsicle stick and wrapper and tying them up with mine. Once they’re smoothed down and placed perfectly even on the ground, I sit back.

  “I haven’t seen you around school,” I say.

  He grabs a stick and starts to draw in the dirt. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I watch as he makes shapes in the ground. It’s like watching art happen in real time. First there was nothing, and slowly lines and shapes become something. I don’t know what it’ll be, but I find the process fascinating. Almost more interesting than the eventual result, because the pieces could have all fallen together in so many different patterns. But this is the one they chose.

  “I have ‘behavioral problems,’ they tell me. So they keep me and people like me in a room in the back of the building. Away from all the normal people.”

  “What behavioral problems?” I ask. “Like, anger or something?”

  He pauses, stares at the half-complete image, and wipes it away. I feel sad for all the things that could have been created.

  “I don’t know. They tell me I do, so I guess I do, you know?”

  “They told us my brother—” I stop.

  I want to tell him that people say a lot of things they don’t really know. How they said Scott was sick. That he had emotional issues. Everyone said my parents weren’t good enough. But all those things don’t hold up. I don’t have those problems, and we had the same parents.

  “You have a brother?” Marcus asks.

  “I did.”

  “I’m sorry. Past tense … yeah. It sucks, right?”

  I look away from him, out across the complex. So many stories. So many people who don’t have the right way of doing things, forgotten because they’re somehow the wrong people.

  “I guess. A lot of things suck.”

  “Where’d you come from, Alexia? I mean, before two weeks ago?” He starts to play with the trash from our ice creams, taking the wrappers and drawing them tighter around the sticks, trying to see how small a space they can fill. That’s how I feel most days—I want to become as small as I can and fill nothing, so no one even notices I’m there.
>
  “All over, I guess. I’ve lived in a lot of places.”

  “And this is where you ended up? That’s too bad.”

  I sigh. It’s really not a terrible place. Definitely better than the perfection of boarding school or the cold dullness of Maine last year. Better even than my cousin’s apartment in New Jersey. But it’s not where I should be, and that’s the worst part. It’s not home, and it’s lonely.

  Not that there’s anywhere to call home anymore. My parents’ new condo isn’t our house. It’s just a generic reproduction of the other hundred or so exactly like it. And the room where I sleep when I visit is an off-white, empty square. My mom tried to get me to decorate it, but why bother? No one goes in that room except me and my parents.

  “It’s just a place,” I tell Marcus. “I don’t know. It’s just a lot to talk about or explain. Forget it, all right?”

  “You can tell me,” he replies. “Anytime. But it’s okay if you don’t want to. I get it.” He pauses, about to say something else, and then shakes his head. “Let’s get out of the dirt.” He shoves the ice-cream wrappers and sticks into his pocket, then takes my hand again, helping me stand.

  I follow him back to his apartment. There’s a pile of broken planters out front, some still with dirt and rotten stems of flowers in them. The little patch of grass is too long, but not long enough for anyone to complain yet. It’s just long enough to be sad.

  Inside, all the curtains are drawn. A woman sits on the couch, watching TV. She looks toward us, and her eyes meet mine. She’s not old, but she looks like she is. Realistically, she’s probably only about thirty-five, but her clothes are all wrinkled and too big. She’s wearing a wig, except it’s uncomfortable to look at. The color doesn’t match the tone of her skin, and it’s too thin to look natural.

  “Hey, Mom. This is Alexia. She’s Susie Lawlor’s niece,” Marcus says.

  His mom smiles. The effort is almost palpable. She wants to be friendly, but I get the impression she’s tried too hard for too long to fake it, and she doesn’t remember how to mean it anymore.

  “Your aunt’s a nice woman,” she says. “There aren’t a lot of nice people.”

  “There really aren’t,” I reply, and I look away from her, into the room with its dust and its darkness. I wonder if this is what happens to people when they give up.

  “We’re going to my room,” Marcus says. His mom nods and turns back to the TV, exhausted from the effort.

  “She’s sick,” he explains as we cut through the kitchen to grab two cans of soda and a bag of pretzels. “I’m sorry. This was probably a bad idea.”

  “You don’t need to apologize to me. I’m sorry she’s sick.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  His room mirrors mine, since the apartments at Castle Estates are pretty much all the same. This one is a two-bedroom, though, so our dining room (where I sleep) is their second bedroom. If I peer through Marcus’s blinds, I can see the edge of my window behind one of the few trees in the complex.

  Marcus has lived here awhile—maybe his whole life?—and his room looks like it. He’s got a bunch of movie posters on the walls, but they’re all starting to fade, and the tape has been covered over several times. One—Taxi Driver—is falling down, the multiple layers of tape not enough to keep it in place.

  “You can sit on the bed,” he says. “I’ll sit here.”

  He leans against his window, hovering a bit but not really sitting. I settle onto the bed, which is made, but in that way where you simply throw a blanket over the bed. Not really making it, but it’ll do.

  “We can share,” I tell him.

  “I don’t want you to—”

  I scoot a bit to the side of the bed and put my hand down on the blanket. “Really.”

  He shakes his head and stays by the window, sipping his soda. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or offended.

  “You like old movies?” I ask.

  “I do. My dad and I used to watch them together all the time. He was really into On the Waterfront and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. You know. Stuff like that.”

  “I’ve never seen any of those.”

  “Really? You can’t be serious.”

  I stare at the poster falling off his wall. “I was twelve when…”

  I don’t know what to say. What parts of it I can tell him.

  When I was a freshman, I had a friend. My roommate. I told her things because I thought I could trust her, and it turned out I was wrong. I don’t know if I’m wrong about Marcus, too.

  “The first time I moved, I was twelve,” I continue. “I never had time to catch up on movies.”

  “I have most of them. We should watch one sometime.”

  I almost tell him I have time now. There’s a definite invitation in his voice. He watches me, and I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look at him.

  I want to stay. I want to ask him to go make some popcorn, and I want to curl up beside him and spend the afternoon here. It doesn’t even have to be romantic. I’m not sure that’s what this is. Sure, he’s cute and I could see myself being interested in him, but it’s just the way that being here feels like possibility. I simply want to be here. Present. I don’t want to go home and be lonely for another night. But that’s not his problem.

  Besides, wanting things doesn’t turn out well for me. For anyone. I should go back to my blank space of a room and decide who Lexi Lawlor is. Maybe call my parents and do some homework. Because Marcus doesn’t need all the things I carry.

  “I should get home, actually,” I say. “But yeah. Sometime would be great.”

  “I’ll walk you home,” he offers.

  “That’s okay. It’s not that far.”

  I leave him leaning against his window. It isn’t far to my apartment, but it’s far enough that I have to think about the acorns under my feet. About the sign with the knight. About Chloe and the things she said in the bathroom.

  I think about everything except Marcus and his old movies. About the way he leans.

  The opportunity brushes past me as I walk, disappearing into the early evening.

  Someday, I tell myself.

  Chapter Six

  My aunt puts a bucket of chicken and a giant salad on the table before heading to the bathroom to wash her hands. We’ve eaten nothing but takeout and sandwiches since I moved here. I stare at the salad, hearing my mother in it. I can imagine the conversation she had with Aunt Susie. Or the lecture, more like. My mom telling my aunt that vegetables are important for my recovery. That I need vitamins and minerals, salad instead of Chinese food. Like my problem is merely poor nutrition.

  “How was work?” I ask when my aunt finally sits down. Her hair clings to the sides of her face, a symptom of working too many hours for too little money. She yawns in response while I divvy up salad and chicken on paper plates. “If it makes you feel better, that’s pretty much how school was this week, too.”

  “Is it a lot different than your last school?”

  I poke at the salad but don’t eat it, twisting my fork so it tears holes in the pieces of lettuce. “Not really. It’s kind of the same thing every time. People aren’t much different regardless of where you go.”

  “You aren’t kidding,” Aunt Susie says. “I guess it’s better than the alternative, though. At least they’re leaving you alone, right?”

  I drown the salad in dressing. I don’t even like ranch dressing, but I know it’s exactly what my mom would consider a bad decision. I wish I had a reason for being angry at my mom. Besides the fact that she’s my mom and she’s not here and I need to be mad at someone.

  “For the most part,” I agree. “They’re not awful or anything. Not at all. Some are kind of nice, even. I don’t know. I’m just not sure who I’m supposed to be here, and it’s hard. Every year I have to figure it all out again, and I just feel like I’m lying to everyone.”

  “Maybe it’s better that way,” my aunt says, passing me the bucket of chicken. “Just get through the year. High school is almost over. Things will be different later.”

  “Maybe.”

  “They will.”

  I shrug, eating my salad and feeling sad about how wilted it is already. It probably sat near heat lamps all day in a fast-food restaurant, not sure why it was even there, and feeling a lot like I do most of the time.