“I don’t know what a breakfast station thingy is.”
“You know. It’s a combo toaster, coffeemaker whatchamahoozey with a teeny fold-down skillet.” He yawns again. “For half a strip of bacon and one small fried egg. A quail egg or somethin’.”
“Yes, we can get one of those.”
“And maybe a pair of roller skates?”
“If it’s a good bargain, yes.”
“Awesome. Let’s go.”
He sits up, pulls me closer so I’m grabbing onto him like a koala baby, and scoots us to the end of the futon.
“Chris’s room,” I direct him. “He’s making coffee to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He carries me easily, opening the door with one hand and holding me with the other.
He takes us down the hall, with me plastered to his chest and my arms and legs wrapped around him. I rub my nose against his. “It’s gonna be a really giant television, okay?”
He rubs my back. “Obscenely so.”
We get to Chris’s door and Sabin pauses before he turns the knob. “I’m so sorry. Last night was fucked up. Really fucked up. I love you, B.”
I am not going to cry again today. I’m not. “I love you, too,” I tell him.
***
An hour or so later, after stopping at a diner for breakfast, Chris, Sabin, and I pile back into the truck. I feel more than ready to shop. After what I just went through, and what I put Chris through, something more mindless seems direly necessary.
Sabin throws himself into the small back cab and lies down, giving me the front passenger seat.
“Which mall are we going to?” I ask. Chris pulls out of the parking lot and drives for a minute. “I was thinking the one in Reinhardt.”
I look at him. “Isn’t that, like, two hours away?”
“Yeah.” He takes a right turn and heads toward the highway. “It is.”
“Why that one?”
He shrugs. “Do you have anything else to do today?”
I smile. “No.”
“Good. I thought we could just drive.”
Sabin, who I’m guessing is horribly hungover, falls asleep the minute we hit the highway. I suppose that I should be exhausted, too, but I don’t feel it. All I feel is such a shocking level of tranquility that I can’t imagine sleeping right now because I want to enjoy this new feeling.
Chris turns up the radio and then takes my hand as he settles in for the drive. We say nothing for the first hour. Occasionally he drops my hand to change the music, but then immediately takes it back in his. Perhaps I should find this confusing, given that we are not anything other than friends. Friends don’t go around holding hands all the time. I mean, it’s not like Estelle and I sit around our room holding hands while we do homework. I wonder whether I was wrong to think that we are meant to be more. Then I decide to focus on what I know for sure: that I have found a friend, this spectacular boy, who has saved me from drowning.
Chris turns down the radio. “Blythe?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happened to the summerhouse that your parents bought? The one you never got to stay at?”
It seems like such a funny question to me, maybe because I haven’t thought about it in so long.
“Oh. Well, James and I own it, I guess. The last I heard, it was pretty much shut down, and a maintenance guy checks in on it a few times a year. My aunt has been paying the taxes and stuff from our account.”
“You haven’t been to it since that summer?”
“No. It … this is going to sound crazy … but it’s never occurred to me. It wasn’t even officially ours yet when my parents died. They’d bought it, but we’d only walked through it; we’d never moved in.”
“But you haven’t sold it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“How long has it been? Four years?”
“Four years last July.”
“July?” Chris squints into the bright sunlight. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just … It’s nothing. Well, maybe you’ll go to the house one day.”
“Maybe.”
For a moment he takes his hand from mine and moves his fingers over my forearm. “How badly were you hurt? You said your arm was bleeding a lot, and with all the smoke … Were you in the hospital long?”
I like that he’s not afraid to ask me more about that night. “I was treated for smoke inhalation, but it wasn’t too bad. My arm was … messy. No permanent injury except for the scar, of course. We were not exactly in the big city at a top hospital. I was stitched up and otherwise put back together, but James needed more help than I did.”
“James? So he was really hurt,” Chris says.
“Yes. He severed a vein—or, I guess, I severed his vein—and some muscle, which is why there was so much blood.” Even though I’ve just relived the trauma of that night a matter of hours ago—and I now have new, sharp, graphic memories—the clarity and full understanding of what happened makes this easier to talk about. I have the complete story and the complete truth, and that is already freeing me. “They were concerned about shock because of all the blood loss.”
“You said that he hates you because of that night. Why?”
“So many reasons. He nearly bled to death and was in the hospital for weeks. Before, he’d been a serious soccer player. Incredibly talented, and it seemed clear that he’d go on to play professionally. It seems crazy that he was only going into his sophomore year of high school and going professional was already something on the table, but that’s how that stuff works.”
“Yup,” Chris agrees. “I played sports in high school, and a couple of guys on my team were good enough to attract that kind of attention.”
“You did? What’d you play?”
“I ran track. Not very well, but I liked it.” He flips down the visor to keep the sun out of his eyes. “So after the fire, your brother’s soccer career was blown, I assume.”
“Yes. Months of physical therapy. Months of pain. Some muscle damage. He was devastated. He was the one who was good at something, not me. I was never good at anything. I don’t have a … a special skill or talent. An injury like his wouldn’t have been as big a deal for me.” I realize it feels so good to talk about it. I’ve spent four years having conversations with myself, and now I get to have them with someone else. It’s a relief because there are no longer secrets. “So he lost his parents and his potentially amazing future in soccer. He thought that I was stupid and careless in getting him out of the house.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, maybe not, but he wasn’t that coherent for most of it, so I don’t think he can understand. He thinks he would have had the sense to get us out safely. It’s easier to think that way when you weren’t the one responsible. All he remembers is that I fucked up in every capacity, and he cannot forgive me.”
“It’s probably easier to blame you, because then there is somebody to blame.”
“He’s welcome to blame God,” I say, half joking. “If he still went to church, our priest might insist that he forgive me because that’s what a good Catholic should do. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’”
“You grew up Catholic, too?”
I nod. “Well, my dad was Catholic, and so we all went to church mostly to keep him happy. James and I never took it all that seriously, but … I guess there were pieces of it that we liked. Mom was more agnostic than I think my father knew,” I say, laughing. “She was famous for flashing major eye rolls to me and James during Communion. Dad caught her once, and she pawned it off as being irritated by an especially dry Communion wafer. She and I secretly shared a wish that they’d instead feed us small bites of the delicious bread from the French bakery down the road.”
Chris laughs. “Very sensible. So you hated every minute?”
“Sort of. I guess I liked the idea that … well, that there might be some kind of larger meaning to life or whatever. My mother was into that. She had a nonreligious spiritual side to her, if that makes any sense. She believed in the idea of fate and destiny. An interconnectedness and purpose in life.” I fidget with the zipper on my jacket. “Do you believe in that?”