If I Fix You Page 3

  Dad made an odd growling noise as he yawned again and arched his back until it cracked. “Mmm...would it kill you to sleep in the house again? It’s gotta be ninety-five degrees and the sun isn’t even up.”

  I didn’t care how hot it was. I wasn’t ready to come back yet. I watched him, waiting for him to say it, to bring up Mom.

  But he didn’t.

  He never had. Not in the five months since she’d left. Not a word, like it was totally normal for us to wake up one day and find her gone. Had he known she was leaving? Did he know why? Did he want to? I didn’t know the answers, and I really didn’t know how to ask the questions. So we lived like that. We pretended and ignored the little and not-so-little reminders of her that we inevitably encountered every day.

  Slowly but surely she was disappearing from our house just as she had from our lives. Sometimes I’d notice a picture missing, or a pillow. We were both doing it. Purging her. Last month I took her favorite coffee mug up on the roof with me and dropped it on the driveway to watch it break apart. If Dad saw the pieces, he never said anything. I was going to break her reading glasses next. Maybe back over them with Dad’s truck.

  But she wasn’t gone yet. There were the things I couldn’t get rid of as easily as dropping them from the roof.

  The things I saw in the mirror.

  Sean.

  “It’s not that hot,” I said. Which was comparatively true when we considered how hot it would get, but not really the point, and we both knew it. I could tell by the pinched frown on Dad’s face that he wasn’t happy with my response. Neither was I, but sleeping inside wasn’t going to change that. The utter silence in the house at night crawled under my skin like tiny fire ants biting and stinging whenever I tried. And sometimes I’d hear Dad pacing at all hours. Maybe he wasn’t able to sleep in their bed alone. Maybe the quiet ate at him too. Either way, I couldn’t stand to hear it. Or not hear it.

  I pulled a smile onto my face. I didn’t want Dad to have to worry about me any more than he already did. “And I promise not to ritualistically murder and eat anyone this morning, no matter how great the temptation is.”

  Dad’s own smile took longer than I would have liked to match mine, but it got there. Better. I needed to find a way to keep it there.

  “You want me to make you something—” he yawned “—for breakfast?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Mom was the cook, which maybe explained why I’d never wanted to learn. Dad’s culinary skills were only slightly less hazardous than mine, which meant we were on a first-name basis with all of the take-out restaurants within a fifteen-mile radius of our house. Still, he tried. Or at least, he offered.

  In response to my undisguised skepticism, Dad half smiled, half yawned and then stared again at my still-made bed. He let out a soft sigh and looked at me.

  I held my breath.

  So did he.

  But all he did was sigh again. “I’ll leave the cereal box on the counter for you.” Then his face scrunched up. “I forgot to get your Froot Loops. Sorry, honey. We’ve got some chocolate-sugar-cinnamon things though. You like those, right?” He kissed the top of my head and disappeared down the hall.

  I shut my bedroom door and leaned my palms against it.

  We were never going to talk about it.

  Why she left.

  CHAPTER 4

  My dark red Schwinn was parked in the garage next to Dad’s current project. I eyed one with disdain and the other with enough desire to make my mouth water. The truck was a big, beautiful beast. Large enough that I had to hop up when I got into it. Driving it was like trying not to get bucked off a wild animal. No power steering and the brakes were a tad temperamental. Little by little it was becoming street safe, but not, according to Dad, daughter safe yet.

  Details.

  The bike was the same one I’d had since junior high and I took it as a deep, personal insult that I still had to ride it most mornings even though I had a driver’s license and a revolving supply of vehicles in varying stages of drivability at my disposal.

  Dad had yet to agree. I’d keep working on him.

  The wheels clicked softly as I rolled my bike out of the garage. At least the temperature hadn’t reached lethal limits yet. The wind that whipped my ponytail around didn’t feel like a hair dryer in my face. That fun would come on the bike ride home.

  I turned into my high school parking lot ten minutes later and saw a lone figure jogging around the track by the canals. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid with a few wispy curls escaping around her face. She looked like she’d stepped out of a toothpaste commercial with her big blue eyes, white-blond hair and matching smile.

  She’d been my best friend since the day her family moved in down the street from my old house. She’d knocked on my door with her mom in tow and introduced herself to my mother. “Hi, I’m Claire Vanderhoff. Do you have any kids I can play with?”

  She’d been six at the time and was still every bit as forthright at sixteen.

  She waved and hurried to meet me.

  “Hey! Look at you almost being on time.” Claire bounced in front of me, her body in perpetual movement. “Be careful, waking up this early is addictive. I alphabetized my entire pantry already this morning, and tried out a new juicing recipe. Here.”

  My hands were balancing my bike as I walked it to the rack, so I had no choice but to tip my head back when she lifted the thermos to my lips. The blackish-green liquid that hit my tongue tasted like super bitter—and chunky—grass. I mostly concealed a gag.

  Claire rolled her eyes and took her thermos back. “That’s your body crying out for more than milk shakes.”

  “Do I look like I pedaled through a drive-through on my way here?”

  “No, but that’s probably your plan for the ride home.”

  She had me there. “What did I just drink anyway?” I nodded toward her metal thermos.

  “Wheatgrass, kale and gingerroot.”

  I grimaced. “Seriously, Claire?”

  “What? It’s supposed to help detox and give you all this energy.” Claire took a whiff. “I found the recipe on this diabetes website that’s pretty good.”

  I noticed she was quick to put the lid back. “You need to start your own site. You could make something a million times better and it wouldn’t have to taste like grass and dog piss.”

  Claire widened her eyes, uncomfortable with anything that even hinted at crude language. She did brighten at my compliment though, which was completely true. In the two years since her type 2 diabetes diagnosis, Claire had transformed from an overweight spectator to a rather impressive athlete with an ever-expanding nutritional knowledge base.

  “I’ve been thinking about starting something...maybe.” She smiled at me. “I could definitely make a better juice.”

  “And I will definitely watch you drink it.”

  “So,” Claire said after I chained my bike, suddenly very interested in a rock by her foot. She nodded toward the end of the parking lot where a forest green Jetta was idling, its driver fast asleep behind the wheel.

  Sean.

  Unlike Claire and me, this was the end of his day, not the beginning. He came to the track straight from his summer job—the night shift working security at his dad’s construction site—so someone usually had to wake him. I kept waiting for the morning when the simple question “Do you want to get him today, or should I?” wouldn’t swirl misery through my gut.

  We’d been running together for five straight weeks, and I still didn’t know why Sean had agreed to run with us when Claire told him she wanted to go out for cross-country. There were days when I barely knew why I did.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. I knew exactly why.

  Sean had been sitting on my front porch the morning after my mother left, eyes as bloodsho
t as mine, waiting for me before I left for school. I hadn’t been surprised to find him there. He’d been calling and texting all night until I shut off my phone. He wasn’t the kind of person to give up easily. Growing up with four older siblings, he couldn’t afford to.

  But it had hurt, the sight of someone I used to love mired in a memory too fresh and painful to bear.

  He’d been wearing the same clothes from the night before, wrinkled and slept in; he hadn’t even fixed the button Mom had undone.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I’d said, in a voice that sounded stronger than I’d felt. I’d shut the front door behind me and kept a death grip on the knob.

  Sean had jumped up, never taking his gaze off me. “You don’t have to talk but I need you to listen.”

  I’d shook my head, feeling tears pricking my eyes as he drew closer.

  “I’m sorry.”

  And they’d spilled over, streams running down my cheeks. I’d wanted him to deny what I’d seen the night before. I’d needed him to make me believe my own eyes had lied. To tell me something, anything, that meant I could keep him, keep us. I’m sorry was a confession disguised in an apology.

  I’m sorry I was with your mom.

  I’m sorry you found out that way.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t love you back.

  I’m sorry you can’t tell your dad why his wife left him.

  I’m sorry your family was destroyed.

  I’m sorry.

  “I shouldn’t have left you last night,” he’d continued. “I panicked and I ran.” He’d taken a middling step forward. “I need to tell you what’s been going on. Your mom—”

  “Is gone.” My chin quivered. He was so close I’d had to look up. “And she’s not coming back.”

  His brows drew together then smoothed, and that easy acceptance had galled me. When he opened his mouth, I’d cut him off. My lips curled back. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry again.”

  He hadn’t. He’d shook his head and reached out a hand, brushing the back of his fingertips against mine. “I didn’t know. She said some things last night, but I didn’t know.”

  I’d pulled my hand back, breaking the contact with his skin. “I’m not talking to you about this.” I’d lowered my voice. “My dad is a mess and he doesn’t even know—” bile rose in my throat “—what I saw. That is the only reason I’m out here and not inside.”

  The muscle had tensed along Sean’s jaw. “That’s the only reason?”

  I hadn’t answered him; I didn’t have to. My cheeks were wet and my chin kept twitching.

  “I am sorry. It shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let it happen. But you have to believe that I—”

  “No!” I pushed his chest, but he’d caught my hand and kept it there, eyes unblinkingly focused on mine. His heartbeat had been wild beneath my palm. Guilt would do that. I’d pushed again and yanked free. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  I hadn’t push him hard, I hadn’t had the energy, but he’d staggered back a step. His eyes wet and welling up by the second.

  “How long have you known me? How long have we been—” he’d swallowed “—us? You won’t let me explain?”

  I’m sorry.

  He’d already said it. Nausea rose fast and high, forcing me to press a fist into my stomach. “My mom is gone and my family...isn’t anymore.” That bald admission had scraped at my throat and fresh tears needled my eyes. I’d dashed them away and blinked hard to keep any more from falling. “She was practically on your lap the moment it happened and there is not a single thing you can say to change that.”

  He’d bit both lips, nodding first at the ground and then at me. “Nothing I can say now or ever?”

  I couldn’t imagine a time when his words would change what had happened or the way I felt, but the anger and the sadness had burned through me and in their wake I was numb and done. “If I say I don’t know, will you leave?”

  He hadn’t, not right away. I’d watched the internal conflict flit back and forth across his features and expected him to rally for round two. But for once, Sean had done exactly what I asked, and like a masochist, I’d watched him leave.

  I wish I could say I hadn’t cried over Sean after that day, but I had. Like, Alice in Wonderland–level tears. I’d flooded my entire house and street and every place I’d ever stepped. I knew all the so-called stages of grief, so between pathetic bouts of sobbing, I’d waited for anger. I’d begged for its cleansing rage to overtake me and break me free from the fetal ball I reverted to whenever I was alone. I’d wanted to get to the stage where I burned things and cut his face out of photos.

  Where I dropped his things from my rooftop.

  But it never happened. My stage of grief over Sean was singular. I’d cried a lot until I didn’t.

  And it was all his fault.

  If Sean had been like Mom, he’d have switched his schedule at school so that we wouldn’t have any classes together. He’d have moved lockers so his wouldn’t be next to mine anymore. He’d have found a new lunch period, let alone a new table.

  He’d have completely blotted himself from my life, left those shattered, splintered shards of my heart to fester whenever I thought of him.

  Unlike Mom, Sean didn’t do any of that.

  He kept up his attempts to talk to me, to explain something that was unexplainable. I shot him down again and again and again. How could I do anything else when at home Dad still started every time the phone rang or someone came to the door, thinking it might be Mom?

  Claire didn’t help either, not the way I wanted. She’d always been Team Sean where I was concerned. She knew something had happened between me and Sean the night my mother left, but she had restrained herself—barely—from prying too much. It wasn’t a story I was eager to remember, much less tell, and even though it killed her not to know, Claire could see I wasn’t ready to talk about it. For about three weeks she left well enough alone, which was about two weeks and six days longer than I’d expected.

  “I need to tell you something,” she’d said, linking her arm through mine after school one day. “You’re probably not going to like it, so I’m holding on.” She drew in a deep breath, the kind that almost always precipitated a speech of some sort, and I braced for impact.

  “I don’t know all the facts, and that’s okay,” she’d added when I tensed. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. What I do know is that three weeks ago your mom walked out and you’ve barely been able to look at Sean since.” She let out a gust of breath and dropped her bomb. “I know there’s a connection.”

  The blood drained from my face. I actually felt the sensation, and it left me light-headed, unable to protest when Claire led us to the field before tugging me down to the grass beside her. I’d been fending off Claire’s increasingly probing questions, dreading and yet somehow feeling like this moment—the moment when Claire would connect the dots—was inevitable. It was almost a relief to get it over with. Until Claire started talking again.

  “I’m not going to speculate wildly here, I know who’s involved and that’s enough. On one hand, there’s your mom. I don’t want to say anything bad about her, but I’m struggling to find anything good to say. She’s made you cry a lot, I’ll leave it at that.”

  My eyes were dry at that moment, but only because I’d already cried that morning.

  “Then there’s Sean. He’s been the guy to pick you up when you’re hurting over her—sometimes literally—and get you past it. So if something bad happened with both of them on the same night, I’m not going to look at Sean afterward, I’m going to look at your mom. And if you can’t tell me why I should do otherwise—” she held up her hands when my head jerked to face her “—and I understand that you can’t right now—then I have to believe it was her and not him.”

/>   Her and not him. As if it were that simple. As if I hadn’t replayed that night over and over again, looking for ways to exonerate him. Because I missed Sean, I did. Seeing him had always been one of the best parts of my day, and now that was gone.

  Claire shifted onto her knees. “Think about it. Your mom has been gone all this time without a word. Whatever she did and whatever damage she caused, she doesn’t care enough to wade back in and try and fix things. Whereas Sean has done nothing but try to fix things, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon. You of all people should see that for what it is. Something is broken between you two, I’m not denying that, but if there’s a chance that it can be fixed—and he really seems to want to—how can you of all people not try?”

  To fix me and Sean.

  She didn’t have all the facts, but I couldn’t argue with the ones she did. Everything she’d said about Sean and my mom was true. Historically, Mom was the one who hurt me and Sean was the one who helped me heal. But that one night had changed everything. Sean was there. He’d stayed. He’d said he was sorry.

  Maybe Sean and I could be fixed. Maybe the damage could be buffed out, repainted, polished until it hid something only the two of us would ever know about. But that wasn’t the question. The question was...did I want to? Did I want to forgive him for the role he’d played in Mom’s leaving? Could I look at him and not see the ghost of her wrapped around him?

  There was no going back. Despite the often-conflicting signals I got from my heart and my head, I couldn’t love Sean anymore, but I didn’t want to hate him either. I didn’t know where that left me, and I wouldn’t know until I tried.

  So I did.

  Sssslllloooowwwlllyyyy. And trying was predicated on one very clear but unspoken rule: Sean and I would never talk about that night.

  At first he was just there, a presence floating around in my peripheral vision, a nod when we passed in the hall. When I stopped flinching every time I saw him, he moved to short conversations and even an awkward high five when I aced a test. After that, I didn’t freeze when he smiled at me—though there was a tension around his mouth that had never been there before. I didn’t move away when he sat next to me or hesitantly bumped my shoulder with his. Slowly but steadily, I was acclimating to something I never thought I’d be able to accept again, much less enjoy: him.