I COOKED A CHICKEN POTPIE IN THE MICROWAVE AND SAT down with it at the table while my parents subjected me to the interrogation I'd been bracing for all day at school. They circled me like wolves.
"So you and Bridget spent the better part of last night and early morning texting each other questionable messages?" Mom asked.
"I think it's called 'sexting,'" said Dad. It was the worst sentence uttered in the history of my life.
"I didn't say anything in front of you guys before because I was embarrassed, but we explained everything to the deputies later."
Dad frowned. "I think that kind of 'conversing' is best kept private. I'm glad you're not going to be harassed by the sheriff's department anymore, but digital files are forever. You didn't send pictures, I hope?"
"No! God. No."
"Are you dating Bridget again?" asked Mom. "I thought you were still upset about Ellie. I mean, not that I think one is better than the other…"
"Yeah, no, Bridget and I were just joking around…" I squirmed in my seat, wishing the potpie would cool down so I could shovel it in my mouth. Actually, I should've shoveled it in anyway. Better to burn the roof of my mouth off and be rendered mute than deal with any more of this discussion.
Besides, clearly Ellie was better. How could there be any doubt? My mom's not one of those "No one's good enough for my baby boy" types, but Ellie was superior to Bridget both on paper and in reality. Did she really not see a difference between them?
"Speaking of Ellie, she called an hour ago."
Way to bury the lede, Dad. I bolted from my seat and reached for the landline.
"Finish your dinner first; she can wait," said Mom.
"Let him call her if he wants," said Dad. "It might be important."
"Did you ever figure out why she broke things off?" Mom asked.
It took me a second to realize she was addressing me and not just spouting theories to my dad.
"I think she's freaking out about college. I think she just needs time," I said, placing the receiver back on the hook. "Can I eat in my room?"
When I picked up the receiver, there was no dial tone. Odd. I was about to hang up when a voice said, "Charlie?"
"Yeah?"
"It's Ryder. Did the phone even ring? How'd you know I-"
"I was about to make a call," I said, mildly concerned. Ryder never called my house. "What's up?"
"I know you've been asking around about a flash drive," he said. "I'm saying this because we're friends, but I'm only going to say it once. You don't know what you're getting into, so get out before it becomes a problem." He never raised his voice. He didn't need to.
In some ways he was like Ellie. They could both be soft-spoken, which forced you to lean in, and it gave their words more impact than a shout.
I looked out the window at Bridget's house, as if I could find answers there. The whole thing had seemed suspicious from the start, but now my curiosity was piqued.
"What's the big deal?" I asked.
"The less you know, the better. It's not worth dragging yourself into, you know?"
"Can I call you back?" I said.
"I'm not at home. We'll talk tomorrow."
He hung up before I could respond. I'd already decided not to help Bridget anymore, but Ryder was a different story. Was this his roundabout way of asking for help, or did he genuinely want me to stop looking into the flash drive? What was really going on?
Nothing I could do at the moment except call Ellie back, so I put my questions aside.
I sat on the bedroom floor and leaned against my bed, the phone balanced between my shoulder and ear, as I'd done almost every night when Ellie and I had been dating.
My breath sped up as I dialed her number, because it was both familiar and terrifying to be calling her again. It felt like our future hinged on this conversation. I dialed slowly, holding each number down as long as I could, and listening to the robotic tones of each one. I took a deep breath and hit the final number.
"Sorry I wasn't there after choir, I had to go get Jonathan," Ellie said after picking up. I'd been vacillating between "Hey, babes" and "May I speak to Ellie, please?" so it was good she'd cut to the chase. Neither opening line would've set the right tone.
"That's okay. I'm glad you called," I said. Formality was painful, even more painful than fighting. Formality meant we were over, so we may as well be civil. But I didn't know how else to act. I had no visual cues to tell me her state of mind.
"Sure."
"So, um…"
"I know I owe you a better explanation. I just-let me close the door." She did so, and returned. "A week before we had coffee, a girl I've barely even talked to before saw me shopping at the mall and asked if I could hook her up with some snow for the holidays." She sounded far away.
"What?" I said, trying to draw her voice closer, scared she might fade to nothing.
"Yeah. I didn't know what she meant." I could tell this was hard for her to talk about-that maybe she was afraid her parents would hear, even with the door closed. She affected a dumb drawl. "I was all, 'Are ya goin' skiin'?'"
"What's 'snow'?" I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea.
"Cocaine." She attacked the Cs, then lowered her voice again. "She heard I was the girl to ask."
I was shocked. "What? Why?"
"I chalked it up to a misunderstanding at first, but then it happened again, a couple days later. Someone asked me to bring 'refreshments' to a party."
"Why would they think-"
"Because I was dating you. And you work for Ryder." Her voice solidified-hardened-and formed edges. "Apparently I have the hook-up, and I didn't even know it. So, what's fair-market price these days? Think I could get a discount?"
"Okay, okay." I nodded slowly, as though she could see me, or at least sense how seriously I was taking this. They say if you smile when making a sales call, the person on the other end will feel it in the tenor of your voice, so I nodded like my life depended on it. "Okay…I sometimes do favors for him, but it's not-it's not drugs. It's not what you think. It's the history classroom. I leave the window unlocked once a week."
"Why?"
I took a moment. "I've never asked."
"Sure. Why ask, as long as the money keeps coming in?" Her voice was soft again, but sarcastic, and it stung me like a cut lip squirted with pomegranate juice.
I swallowed. "Look. It didn't seem like a big deal. He's my oldest friend."
She exhaled, a brief snort. I could practically hear her rolling her eyes, and it drove me nuts. Everyone was happy to write off Ryder, because they didn't know him, but they were willing to use him when it suited their purposes. Even Ellie.
"Okay, remember when you got a parking pass junior year? And so did I? And so did all our friends?" I said.
She seemed perplexed by the subject change. "The parking lottery, yeah."
"Did you really think it was luck?"
"That's what a lottery is."
"There were only twenty-five passes available for juniors. Out of the whole school, you and I both got passes. And you didn't think that was strange?"
There was a pause. "You rigged the lottery?"
"I told you I'd take care of it, and I did. You were thrilled. You weren't asking too many questions then."
She gave a sound that was half laughter, half horror, like she couldn't decide if she should be impressed or concerned. "I can't believe you rigged the lottery."
"Ryder and I did it together. It was easy. We paid off the hall monitor who collected everyone's slips, and he paid off the dot-gov to read the names of our friends and yours and mine."
"You bribed the student council president?!"
"No, we paid off the VP, and Ryder 'delayed' the president from attending."
"Is that supposed to be better?"
"C'mon. You had to have known something was up, but you didn't say anything."
"Maybe," she conceded. "I guess I didn't want to know. And I didn't think it was a big deal-I mean, someone had to get those passes."
"Right," I said. "And if you'd ever spent time with Ryder, you'd know he's not like that. Yes, he gets high sometimes, but he's not a dealer. You'd get high, too, if you got beaten up every day freshman year. He's had a rough time at home, but he's a good guy."
"What he did for you in Little League was amazing," Ellie said carefully, "but that was a long time ago. I think you have to open your eyes to who he is now."
"He threw the bat for me," I said. "There's nothing else to say."
She didn't reply.
"Why didn't you tell me about the drugs?" I asked. "I could've explained all that to you."
"There were other things, too," she said quietly, reluctantly.
I hung on every word, nervous and sick.
"Like what?"
"When I met you, you played center forward-you were like this blur of light all over the field, assisting goals, taking shots. You were a leader."
"You dumped me because I got moved to fullback?" I said, incredulous.
"No, of course not!"
"Then what are you trying to say?"
"You were different. All of a sudden, it was like you wanted to hurt people-"
"It's a sport, Ellie. There's going to be contact."
"You used to play for sixty, eighty minutes…Now you're a hit man, in and out in five to kick people or shove them down."
"I'm just trying to help my team! I didn't want to be put on defense. It just happened, so I'm trying to make the most of it."
"It happened because you got more aggressive."
As the phone call had gone on, I'd been sliding inexorably toward the floor, until by this point I was basically lying down, a puddle of ooze, defeated. "Anything else?" I asked the ceiling.
"Both things made me scared for you. I got this feeling something terrible was going to happen, either with Ryder or with soccer. Like you were on the edge of something bad and you were going to get hurt, or you were going to hurt someone, and Jonathan-"
"What's this have to do with Jonathan?"
"He looks up to you. So much. And I didn't want him to see you this way, or have him be around drugs or-"
"I would never-"
"It just scared me, okay?"
"But you don't-you don't think I had anything to do with West Side Story Maria's overdose, do you?"
She didn't reply, which was worse than a straight-out accusation. At least you can defend yourself from those.
"I didn't…I swear to God I'm as much in the dark as anyone else is." My parents believed me unconditionally; why couldn't Ellie?
"I know. I think. I mean…"
"I wish you'd told me all this so I could've fixed it, you know?"
The silence was so long, I had to make sure she was still there. "Ellie?"
"I wanted to, but I got the feeling you don't trust me anymore," she said, which broke whatever was left of my heart.
I dragged myself upright again and propped my back against the bed. "Did you really apply to Lambert, or was that just something you told me?"
"See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. You don't trust me. Your first instinct when you saw me with Fred was to accuse me of, like, cheating on you."
I took a deep breath, painfully aware that she hadn't answered my real question. "I miss you," I murmured. "You said you still care about me, too." She hadn't, I knew; she'd said she still "worried" about me, but it sounded better to use the word "care." "If I change all those things, do we have a shot?"
"But you can't change those things," she said. "You didn't think they were a problem. So if you change them, you'd only be doing it because I asked you to, not because you agree with me."
There was a clicking noise, and we both quieted.
"Charlie?"
It was Jonathan.
I exhaled. "What up, J-Dawg." Maybe it was kind of mean that I called him that. He was a scrawny sci-fi nerd in glasses, hardly gangsta. But he seemed to like it.
"Jonathan, hang up. We're having a private conversation," said Ellie.
"I haven't been listening. I just got on because I need to ask Charlie something."
"Go for it," I said. Any distraction would be better than the conversation Ellie and I had been having.
"Do you remember saying you were going to take me to Blood of Mars this Wednesday for the sneak preview? We saw the trailer over Thanksgiving? Do you remember saying that?"
"Sure," I said. "The only problem is, I don't have a car right now."
"Oh, maaaan," he said.
"I know," I said. "My thoughts exactly." I waited a beat, as if the idea had just occurred to me. "Maybe Ellie could take us. If she's feeling generous."
Ellie laughed, a nice laugh, not a sarcastic one, and it felt like sparkling water being poured down my throat, bubbly and cleansing. "Subtle."
"Ugh, I don't want to go with Ellie. She hates sci-fi," said Jonathan.
"I know, but I don't think we have any other options. If you want to see it before everyone else, I mean."
This was torture for him. If he didn't see it the first possible night, he may as well not see it at all. It'd be ruined; the other kids or the Internet would spoil it for him. He must've read my mind because he nearly burst my eardrum. "Pleeeeease, Ellie?"
"Pleeeeease?" I echoed.
"Oh my God, fine, but only if you stop whining. Both of you."
"Pick me up at seven?" I said quickly, before she could change her mind. "I'll buy the tickets. See you Wednesday night."
Maybe I'd only succeeded in prolonging the inevitable. But for now, that was enough.
We hung up and I pulled my shoe box of Ellie memorabilia out from under the bed and turned it upside down, shaking the contents onto the floor. There were a bunch of folded, handwritten notes on her signature stationery, which was dark blue, like her Homecoming dress. She used to write in white pen-occasionally backwards, if she had snoops breathing over her shoulder, so I'd had to use a mirror to read those.
A few loose photographs and seven thick Post-it pads were mixed in with the notes. I picked up one of the Post-it pads and flipped through it. Ellie liked to draw these elaborate animated flip-book cartoons for me when she was bored in class. Sometimes she'd re-create me on the soccer field, or draw us kissing, or draw herself at Wahoo's Fish Taco, gobbling up tacos like Pac-Man. She loved California cuisine; couldn't get enough of Asian fusion and Cobb salads and tacos and sushi.
For our first date, at her request, I'd taken her to Wahoo's Fish Taco.
I'd been wolfing my food down, but she'd kept rotating her plate, taking a bite from each section of rice, guacamole, and taco, and when I asked her why, she said she was trying to plan it so she ended with a piece of avocado. She'd decided in advance what she wanted the last bite to be; she liked to end her meal on just the right note.
I ate that way now. Sometimes. Just because it reminded me of her.
She wasn't my alcohol; she never had been. She was my water, the thing I'd been thirsting for, the thing that would save me.
But how do you hold on to water? It never stops moving. It flows away, it changes shape, it returns to its source.
It evaporates.
