Unforgivable Page 4

  He’s talking about the pile of glossy pamphlets that has been collecting dust on the hallway table for the past few months, invitations from every college in the country that have gotten my name off some list that tells them I go to Templeton, which makes them drool for my family’s money.

  “Yeah, a little,” I lie.

  Dad sighs. Funny how he never worried about David.

  I step toward the fridge. When I open it, I’m shocked to see real food—vegetables and fruits and ingredients for cooking, not the usual prepared meals and condiments. “You went shopping,” I say.

  “Monica and I went shopping. She’s going to make us dinner tomorrow night. I want you to be here, Marcus.”

  I don’t respond. He’s been trying to get me to meet his current girlfriend for weeks, but I keep avoiding it. And now, more than ever, I don’t want anything to do with her. I don’t want any part in his trivial love life when mine is falling apart. I find an apple and a hunk of cheese in the fridge. I grab a box of crackers and a granola bar from the cabinet.

  “I really want you to get to know her,” he continues as I pretend to still be looking in the cabinet. I don’t want to look at him right now. “You can’t keep brushing her off. She means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. I want you two to be friends.”

  I turn around in a rage. How can he be talking about this right now? Pretending his new bimbo of the month matters when the girl I’m in love with just got out of a fucking coma and isn’t allowed to see me?

  “Yeah, Dad,” I say. “Sure, we can be friends. That totally makes sense since we’re probably pretty close in age.”

  I expect a reaction. I want a reaction. I expect him to hit me, to yell, to at least storm away. But he just sighs. He just stands there. I want to hit him. I want to knock that smug look off his face. But he is, and always will be, so much bigger than me.

  “I guess I deserve that,” he says, then emits a strange sound. If he were anyone else, I’d say it was a chuckle. “But for your information, Monica is forty-four and CEO of a successful tech start-up that’s about to go public.” He seems to register the look on my face that says this news means nothing to me. “I’m serious about this one,” he says.

  “Congratulations, Dad,” I say, and I walk away.

  there.

  THE DINING ROOM IS A MUSEUM, A PLACE FULL OF THINGS no one touches. But tonight is special, Mom says. It’s Dad’s birthday. The kitchen is a war zone, bombs of flour exploded on counters, floor, walls. Measuring spoons and cups thrown around. Boxes and cans and jars in disarray.

  We are sitting at the dining room table. Mom dressed us up. David kicks me under the table for pulling at the neck of my sweater vest. “It’s scratchy,” I whine.

  “Shhh,” he says, but I don’t know why we have to be quiet. It’s just us three. Mom’s sitting way over on the other end of the table, her face pale under her makeup.

  “Mommy, you look pretty,” David says.

  She smiles, but it is her own special sad kind of smile. “Thank you, honey.”

  “When is Dad coming home?” I say. David kicks me again, but I don’t know why. He knows so many things I don’t, like when to talk and when not to talk. Like when Mom is sad or Dad is angry, even when no one is talking.

  Mom says nothing. We’ve been sitting here for a long time. My stomach tells me we should have eaten by now. The food is in the fancy bowls we only use on holidays, covered by matching lids. There’s no way it can still be warm.

  There’s a cake in the kitchen, a surprise. Mom made it from scratch. David and I watched YouTube videos with her about how to make flowers out of frosting.

  “You boys must be starving.” She sighs. “Why don’t you make yourself a couple of plates and take them upstairs?”

  “Are you sure?” David asks.

  “We can eat in our rooms?” I say. “Like, while we play video games?”

  “Just for tonight,” she says with a weak smile. “It’s a special occasion.”

  David sits next to me in the back of Dad’s car, arms crossed on his chest, his face pinched in an angry pout. I don’t know what he’s so upset about. Most boys would jump at the chance to shoot a real gun.

  We drive by the sign for the Chabot Gun Club. “Here we are,” Dad says from the front seat. I can’t remember the last time we did something, just the three of us. I want David to be as excited as I am.

  I follow Dad to the front desk, David trailing behind. “I have a lane reserved for one thirty,” Dad says. “Bill Lyon.” As he fills out forms, I look around. Out the window, many of the lanes are occupied by people like us—fathers teaching sons how to shoot. Half a dozen old men sit on a bench and folding chairs near the front desk, as if this is a living room, comfortable in a way that implies they’ve been sitting there for a long time. David is still near the entrance, looking at a glass cabinet full of old pictures and trophies.

  “I tell you,” says one of the old men, in a raspy smoker’s voice, “this is the only place left in the whole Bay Area where the Second Amendment is still alive and well.”

  “Yep,” says another.

  “This town sure has gone to shit.”

  “Uh-huh,” says another.

  “What with all the bike lanes and gay marriage.”

  They all nod their heads in agreement.

  Dad hands me a pair of plastic safety goggles. I feel a little less tough than I was hoping to.

  “I don’t want to wear those,” David says.

  “You have to,” Dad says. “It’s the rules.”

  “I don’t see what the point is if I’m not even going to touch a gun.”

  “David,” Dad says in his taking-no-bullshit tone, “put the goggles on now.” He so rarely talks to David that way, it makes me feel uneasy, like the world is suddenly tilted in the wrong direction.

  David takes the goggles and follows us out the door to our lane under the wooden shelter of the handgun range. He’s got his arms crossed on his chest. “America’s obsession with guns is so screwed up,” he says, but Dad ignores him. “Did you know that every day, eighty-eight Americans are killed by gun violence? Did you know that every month, forty-eight women are shot and killed by domestic abusers? Did you know that American kids are sixteen times more likely to accidentally be shot and killed than kids in other developed countries?”

  “How do you even know that?” I say, but David ignores me.

  “I hate guns,” he says as Dad sets a black wooden box down on a small table. “I don’t want to touch a gun. I don’t want to fire a gun. I don’t want anything to do with guns. And I’m ashamed and appalled that you think so highly of them.”

  “Oh, get off your high horse, David. You’re fourteen years old. You know nothing about the world.” Dad opens the box and inside is a shiny silver old-fashioned revolver. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a gun in real life, besides on a police officer. And I’m going to get to touch it. I’m going to shoot it. Dad is going to show me how. He thinks I’m big enough.

  “A fourteen-year-old is smart enough to know that guns kills people,” David says. “In fact, guns kill fourteen-year-olds all the time.”

  “David, shut up!” I say. I am not going to let him ruin this for me. A girl in the lane next to us giggles. Her boyfriend has his arms around her, showing her how to hold his gun.

  “Just touch it,” I say. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

  He pokes at the gun with his finger, then pulls it away as if burned.

  “Be a man, David,” Dad says. “Men know how to handle guns.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be your version of a man,” he grumbles under his breath, and Dad pretends not to hear.

  “Do you want to be a woman?” I say, trying to make him laugh, but he rolls his eyes at me, slumps into a plastic chair, and takes out his phone and starts poking at it.

  Dad tears the phone out of David’s hand and shoves it in his pocket. “You are going to pay attention,” he growls. “You are g
oing to learn how to do this.”

  Birds chirp. The trees of the Berkeley hills surround us. On the other side of this patch of forest, people are golfing and hiking and having picnics. They can probably hear the guns going off. If a deer walked into the shooting range, I wonder if we’d be allowed to shoot it.

  As Dad shows us the boring stuff—how to clean the gun, how to load it, how the safety works—I try to ignore David sulking beside me. He’s like a sponge, sucking out my joy and excitement. When it’s finally time to shoot, I feel strangely sad. This day is nothing like I’d hoped it would be.

  I’m a terrible shot. I had imagined myself as some kind of action hero in a flashy movie, but I’m a kid in a run-down old shooting range who, after several rounds, only hits the target once, on the very edge of the paper.

  After everyone’s done shooting, the ranger announces the cease-fire and I walk down the lane to replace the target I hit. I roll up the piece of paper with one tiny hole in it, careful not to get any creases in it. I will put it in the box where I keep my most treasured possessions. When I return, Dad looks at his watch. “Time’s almost up,” he says. “One last chance, David.”

  David sits there for a while, silent and still, in his own little world. I load the gun for myself, expecting David to keep pouting until it’s time to leave.

  But then he stands up. He says, “Okay.” He walks over to me and pulls the loaded gun out of my hand. He turns to face the target. He raises the gun, aims, and shoots the six bullets in quick succession. They all hit the target, one just shy of a bull’s-eye.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Ha!” Dad exclaims with joy. He pounds David on the back with fatherly pride. “That’s my kid genius. That’s my big man.”

  David winces and says nothing. I’ve never seen him look so small.

  you.

  YOU HADN’T SEEN ME YET. I WAS SURE THE LOUD RUMBLING of my car’s diesel engine would give me away, but you were in your own world, looking up at the sky like you didn’t quite trust it. I thought, How is it possible for one face to tell so many stories and at the same time divulge nothing? You were a beautiful mystery I wanted to solve.

  I parked my car at the corner. I whispered, “Look at me,” and even though it was impossible that you heard me, you turned and looked me straight in the eyes. Like you knew exactly where my eyes were, these two gray-green pinpricks in the distance, like magnets. In that moment, my suspicions were confirmed: we were connected on a level that betrayed all laws of space and time and sound.

  We had barely kissed yet, but when you got into the car, I wanted to inhale you, I wanted to taste every piece of you. It wasn’t just a sex thing, wasn’t just my body’s hunger for yours. I wanted to know you with every single one of my senses. I wanted inside. I wanted everything. I wanted your molecules.

  It shocked me that you existed in the same world as other girls I’ve known. You were nothing like the prep school girls I met at Templeton parties, those girls with the swishing ponytails and easy laughs, their eyes warmed with vodka and entitlement as they curled up against me. You were nothing like the hipster girls I met at music shows, those spindly-armed poets who drank cheap beer as proof of their authenticity, who caressed my skin and laughed ironically about how white they were, who called me beautiful as if I were some kind of exotic art piece. You were something else entirely. Your identity was not theoretical, not a performance, not a role. You were the real deal.

  Your beauty was transcendent. The sky spun in your eyes. Maybe because you had tasted death and brought a little of it back with you, maybe because you had brushed hands with God, you looked and felt and tasted like heaven.

  And now this hell. Life without you. A vacuum, a black hole.

  here.

  I KEEP PICTURING EVIE IN THE HOSPITAL, LYING IN ONE OF those beds she hated, alone and scared. No matter how hard I try to think of something else, I keep seeing her there, I keep seeing myself with her, and everything in my body wants to be there, to wrap her up and take her away, and the impossibility of it all makes me crazy. She’s on the other side of town, locked up in a tower that I can’t climb, guarded by people who won’t let me see her, by parents who think I’m the reason she’s in there. But I’m the one who saved her. I’m the one who wants to save her still.

  It does no good wondering about the past, wishing I could change it. But I can’t help hating myself for not noticing the signs that she was in trouble. Those far-off looks she’d get. How she’d disappear sometimes when she was sitting right next to me. How she kept wanting to get higher and higher, how she was never high enough. I keep thinking I should have loved her better somehow. I should have said something sooner. Maybe there was a way I could have saved her from this.

  I can’t do anything about the past, but I can do something about now. I can find my way back to her. I can save us.

  I am on my way to the coffee shop where we met for our first date. I remember being so nervous I changed my outfit five times before I got in my car to meet her. She was unlike any girl I had ever met—so real, so authentic—I didn’t want her to think I was just another high school idiot. I wanted her to think I was cool enough, smart, funny. I wanted her to think I was worthy.

  Before Evie, I had made a habit of not getting close to anyone. It was my code. Don’t get close and no one can hurt you. They can’t use you. They can’t let you down. They can’t leave. But something about Evie made me go against my code. Something about her convinced me she was worth the risk.

  So now here I am, standing in the same spot where a few short weeks ago I tried not to stutter as I attempted witty banter with Evie. Here are all the hip people sitting around, poking at computers, and eating overpriced toast. I take a deep breath as I step up to the counter. The short, androgynous guy at the counter looks at me with confused recognition and pauses a moment before smiling and saying, “What can I get you?” For a moment, I consider running.

  “Hi,” I say, and it comes out sounding like a frog croaking.

  “Hi,” he says, his smile wavering. Maybe he thinks I’m going to steal the tip jar.

  “I don’t know if you remember me,” I begin. “You probably don’t. I came here a few weeks ago with Evie Whinsett.” His smile immediately fades into a look of pure sadness. “Um . . . she’s kind of in trouble right now and I can’t get a hold of her, and I guess I figured you know her, so I wanted to talk to you to, you know, see if you could help me or, I don’t know. Shit, I’m sorry. I’m probably not making any sense.”

  “It’s okay,” he says with a small smile. “I’m off in half an hour. Can you wait until then?”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  I wander around Telegraph Avenue for the next thirty minutes, trying to busy my mind with window-shopping so I don’t have to think about Evie, but she breaks through everything. Here’s the yoga studio (“Fifteen dollars to do some stretching for an hour?” Evie would say. “Ridiculous”). Here’s the tattoo shop (I wonder what kind of tattoo Evie would get. Something pretty and botanical, I bet. But not predictable. A weed, maybe. A dandelion). Here’s the Burmese restaurant (Evie’s favorite). Here’s the organic ice cream shop with the weird flavors (another of Evie’s favorites). She’s everywhere, in everything.

  The half hour is excruciating. When I get back to the coffee shop, Evie’s friend is counting the money out of the tip jar. I catch his eye and he smiles, and I remember the first time I saw him, how he looked so happy to see Evie, but she seemed almost scared, how she went outside to talk to him in private and returned, shaken, desperate to leave the café. She told me nothing and I didn’t push it. I was so wrapped up in my insecurities and expectations, I didn’t even notice how weird it was.

  “Let’s get a doughnut,” he says, and I follow him out the door.

  “I’m Cole,” he says as we walk down Telegraph and into the alley full of tiny, expensive boutiques. A window displays a red flannel shirt for $250 (“Try it on!” Evie would say, and we’
d laugh about how the five-dollar thrift store flannel I’m already wearing looks so much better).

  “I’m Marcus,” I say.

  “Are you Evie’s new boyfriend?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Wait. New boyfriend? Is there an old boyfriend?”

  He looks at me with kindness in his eyes that borders too close to pity.

  “Let’s go in here,” he says, and leads me into a tiny shop displaying four flavors of crème-filled artisanal doughnuts. Cole orders a chocolate-hazelnut and a vanilla-persimmon flavored one, and I order a raspberry one even though I am in no mood to eat.

  “She had a lot of secrets,” I say, like an apology. Cole nods as we sit on a bench outside.

  “So what’s up?” he says as he bites into a doughnut. “How’s Evie?”

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  He swallows. “Shit,” he says, shaking his head. “The cancer’s back?”

  “No, she had an accident. Swimming.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She was in a coma for a day. But she’s awake now. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I haven’t seen her. It’s a long story, but her parents aren’t my biggest fans.”

  “So you’re contacting me to see if I can help you see her.”

  “Yeah. Yes. I guess that’s what I’m doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, looking genuinely sorry. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t really have any idea how to contact her. We weren’t close. I just met her once, actually.” He’s quiet for a moment as he stares at his doughnut. He’s gone somewhere far away. “She was my girlfriend’s friend. My ex-girlfriend. Fuck,” he says, setting the doughnut down on his lap. “What do you call it when your girlfriend dies?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, but it is a stupid thing to say. Cole wasn’t asking for an answer.

  “Stella loved Evie like crazy,” he says. “I was a little jealous, actually. Stella liked girls, too, and Evie was beautiful. But you already knew that.”