"Ugh, Mom."
"Are you?"
I looked her right in the eye. "Yes," I said.
I was as proud as I"ve ever been about anything, even felt defiant for some reason. But then my mom was so quiet I finally had to be like, "What, Mom?"
She shrugged. "Nothing," she said, "as long as he"s kind to you."
"Why wouldn"t he be?" I asked. I thought of the video he"d asked me to make, of how much he trusted me, how he"d already started telling me whatever his worst secret was. But my mom and I just stared at each other for a few minutes, fighting, neither of us willing to say the words.
My dad brought me a Greek salad and chicken noodle soup and fries, and I sat at the especially high red stool all the way at the end of the counter, waiting for Sam to come and sit with me. A friendly-looking fat guy came in in the meantime and sat down next to me on the stool I"d been saving for Sam. He smiled a big, overcompensating smile and said, "Good things come in small packages," like I needed to be comforted by him. Like I"d never heard that one before. Like, I don"t know, he knew me, was allowed to talk to me. Why is it that everyone in the world feels like they"re allowed to talk about my body-to me? I thought of saying, "Oh? Not huge packages? In that case, maybe you should hold off on the fries," but I could see my dad throwing me our knowing grin from behind the counter.
So I just said, "Yeah, thanks," and turned back to the food my dad had made for me.
Kyle waited another two weeks before he called me again. I hated this pattern, but at least once I saw it as a pattern, I found it endurable. And once again, as soon as his name flashed across my cell phone I was out the door. I didn"t realize on the bus over there that it would be the last time I would go to his house. It was Friday, February 5, the day before Meghan was coming, three days before Runaways was going up.
When I got there, Kyle opened the door and led me straight into the kitchen. His hair had gotten longer and was curling down over his ears. He blew some curls out of the way of his eyes.
"How are you?" I asked, because he didn"t say anything.
"I"m okay," he said, all mushed together, like one word. He opened the freezer.
And I said, "Kyle? Who"s Claire?"
Cubes of ice fell out of the tray into the freezer and onto the floor.
"s.h.i.t," Kyle said, but he made no move to pick them up, just clutched the few he"d managed to rescue to his chest and put them into the gla.s.ses.
"Can you not tell me?"
He took a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet, and poured both gla.s.ses full.
"Wow," I said. "I guess my parents are coming to get me."
"Why don"t you just stay?"
"Really? You want me to sleep here?"
"Why not? My parents aren"t back until Monday."
I stood completely still for a minute, trying to think. "Oh, um, where are they?"
He looked at me strangely. "Boston. Why?"
"Oh, okay, so . . ." I felt oddly dizzy.
He waited, didn"t rescue me.
"So, okay," I said again. "I guess I"ll call my parents and say I"m staying at Sarah"s?" I went to get my cell phone and called the house, knowing they"d be at the Grill, and left the lie on their voice mail. Then I texted Sarah, saying I"d told my parents I was sleeping at her place and could she cover for me. I knew I"d have to explain, but I didn"t care. When my phone buzzed twenty seconds later and "Goth Sarah" flashed across the screen, I didn"t pick it up.
Kyle was standing at the counter, looking at me.
"You want to hear about Claire?" he asked. Then he turned and walked into the living room with his drink clinking and sloshing, and turned the giant flat TV on. The Talented Mr. Ripley was on, and someone was beating someone else to death with a bat in a boat. I could hear Kyle slurping down his drink. I sat next to him on the couch, stared at the TV, held on to my gla.s.s.
All of a sudden, Kyle put his gla.s.s down.
"You know, you"re not the only one with problems," he said.
I want to say that he shouted this, because that"s what it felt like when he said it, because I was so shocked by it, but he didn"t shout. He"s not really a shouter. He more like steamed it, and I thought of his constantly calm demeanor. Maybe he had a geyser inside him, waiting to erupt and kill him and anyone else within a mile. He usually seemed so sleepy and mellow. But that night at his house, he was anxious, from the moment I arrived. Maybe he knew what he was about to do, and was defensive, trying to justify it. Or maybe it happened because he was anxious and angry, and not by design.
"What does that mean?" I tried to keep my voice even, but my heart was flapping and beating, trapped in my body. The TV noise seemed suddenly nagging and loud.
"I just mean that being small isn"t the worst thing that could happen to someone."
Now I was angry. "No s.h.i.t," I said. "Did you come up with that yourself ?" I"m glad I was mad enough to say this to him.
"I just think you act like a victim sometimes."
"Yeah? Like a victim? Compared to what?"
"I"m just saying, everyone has problems."
"Everyone has problems. Really, Kyle? Thank you. Do you think I"m, like, comparing my short self to the Holocaust? Is that what you mean by I"m not the only one with problems?"
This was very mean, of course, because I knew whatever he meant was about his own stupid problems, ones he must have wanted to tell me about, but I was so mad that I wanted to belittle his thing preemptively with the Holocaust. And it worked, because whatever shallow s.h.i.t he was referring to had to be smaller in scale than the Holocaust, so he was embarra.s.sed that I had made the very point he was pretending to have to make for me.
"I meant something else," he said, "which is that other people, even regular people like me, have problems too. You"re not the only one."
"Right. You said that already. And I never asked you to help me with my problems," I said. "I"m not even the one who brought them up. Maybe you"re the only one of the two of us who thinks my life as a short person is a problem. I mean, I"m just short. At least I don"t treat other people like s.h.i.t."
"f.u.c.k it," he said.
"What do you mean, "f.u.c.k it"?"
"I was-forget it."
"Forget what? Do you want to tell me what happened? Or what that video was about?"
"Nah, skip it."
"You should tell me."
"Why?"
"Because."
"I"m not sure I can."
Now he sounded pitiful. "Why me, Kyle? I mean, I know you said it"s not about me, but you could have made that video yourself with a tripod, obviously, right?"
"Right."
"So wasn"t asking me to tape it for you just a way to practice telling someone?"
"I guess."
"Have you ever told anyone else whatever it is?"
"No."
"Why not?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. It"s private, I guess."
"What about Alan and Chris?"
"Would you tell those guys your secrets?"
I was amazed that he said this about his friends. "Of course not," I said, "but those guys aren"t my friends."
"Do you tell your friends everything?"
"No," I admitted. I thought of how little I"d told anyone since I had met Kyle. And again, I had the thought that he and I were alike, that he liked me, felt connected.
"You can tell me your secret if you want," I said. "I won"t ever tell anyone. I absolutely give you my word. But if you don"t want to tell me, that"s fine too."
I meant this, and he could tell. And it made him want to tell me. It"s like Bill not caring about my dwarf story and therefore me wanting to tell him the whole thing even though there are lots of people who want to hear it and I don"t want to tell them. People are stupid in this way, but it"s just a fact. The less people ask you, the more you reveal.
"You"ve already guessed, right?" Kyle asked.
"No. How would I guess?"
"I don"t know. I"ve always thought you kind of knew anyway."
"Because I"m an elf ?"
"I meant that as a compliment. And you heard me apologize about Claire."
I asked, "Who"s Claire? Your girlfriend?"
He sighed.
"Did something bad happen?"
I could see his Adam"s apple move, and felt suddenly like it was hard to breathe in the room, like I was falling into a dark hole.
"I promised my parents I wouldn"t tell anyone."
"Oh."
"Claire was my sister. And we moved here because she died."
"Oh my G.o.d," I said. Why would his parents have made him promise not to tell anyone that? What kind of psychopaths were they? He waited.
"Kyle. That"s horrible. I"m really sorry."
"It was my fault," he said.
"People always think s.h.i.t"s their fault even when-"
"No, but I mean it was actually my fault."
I felt like he"d touched me with an electric prod. It was almost gentle, the feeling of that shock-like the point of someone"s finger had just come lightly into contact with my skin, and yet my spine straightened and my hair stood up in a p.r.i.c.kle that kept going. I felt weirdly tall, sitting there. My voice came from somewhere far away.
"What does that even-"
"I hit her. I-She was in the driveway, running out to greet me."
He stopped, and I had a sudden crystal-ball flash of his house in Boston. There was snow falling, or hail, ice on the driveway where she was running out to greet him and slipped under the wheels of the car. Or maybe the house was dark on a summer night, not even the porch lights on, her pink Schwinn parked up against the garage door. She was in a nightgown, running out to the car, hearing the sickening thunk of her own body against the hood. Had he pinned her to the garage door? The Schwinn crushed and mangled? The house switched to autumn, his sister hiding under a pile of leaves Kyle drove through.
"You don"t have to tell me this if you don"t want," I said. "Let"s talk about something else. Let"s go downtown and-"
"I still can"t believe she came outside so late."
"Of course," I said. "And if it was dark-"
"She heard the car. I was late and my mom was freaking out. That"s what kept her up."
"It wasn"t your fault," I said. "You couldn"t have-"
"I was really drunk," he said.
"Oh," I said. I thought for a moment.
"My parents covered it up." We both sat there, very still. Kyle finished his drink. I looked at mine, untouched, and took a burning gulp. It tasted like flowers and wood smoke. I coughed a little.
"What if your parents come home?" I asked.
"They"re in Boston until Monday," he said again.
"Really?"
"They"re never here."
"Why don"t you ever have parties?"
He looked at me. "You want to invite a few people over? Let"s do that."