The Lighter Side of Life and Death Read online

  eighteen

  I park three doors down from my house and kiss Colette goodbye. The two of us smell like sex. I didn’t notice that back in her apartment. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” I tell her. “I wish I could stay the night.” I imagine what it would be like to sleep with my body curved around hers all night and wake up with the morning sun in our eyes. We could have breakfast together. We could have morning-sunlight sex.

  “It’s okay,” Colette says sensibly. “We should get some sleep. We both have to be up early tomorrow.” She pecks me on the cheek and rests her hand against the back of my neck. “I’m really sleepy. Aren’t you?” Probably. But I’m too wrapped up in her to have much awareness of myself.

  I get out of the car and listen to her drive off. Inside the house I wander along the hall and into the kitchen, my brain gorging on details from earlier tonight, oblivious to the present. A male figure’s hulking at the counter in the darkness, his back towards me. I jump out of my skin, crying, “Jesus, Dad, you scared the shit out of me! What’re you doing creeping around in the dark like that?”

  Dad swings around with a jolt. “Mason!” Now I can make out a bottle of water in his hand. His fingers clutch it tightly as he takes a step forward. “You almost gave me a heart attack. I thought you were in bed.”

  “Dustin and I were out with Yolanda,” I lie. “She and Zoe had a fight. She was pretty upset.”

  Dad peers at the microwave clock. The luminous blue digits read 3:14. “It’s so late,” he says, coughing into his empty hand. The last time we had a conversation about me being out late on a school night I’d just turned fifteen, and so far Dad hasn’t mentioned anything about school but his tone implies it.

  “I know.” I yawn like I’ve had a tough night consoling a friend. Is that sex smell as potent as I think it is? Maybe I should’ve just told him I was with a girl. “I’m exhausted. I don’t know how I’m going to get up tomorrow.” I say it before he can. “What’re you doing down here, anyway?” I point to his water bottle, shifting the emphasis away from me. “You look like a serial killer down here in the dark.”

  “A serial killer in a bathrobe.” Dad laughs. He coughs again, raises the water to his lips and gulps some down. “I woke up with this annoying dry cough,” he explains. “I hope I’m not coming down with something.”

  “Yeah, well, I better get to bed,” I tell him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Night, Mason,” he says to my back.

  I head up to my room and collapse into bed with my musty sex clothes on. Some of the smell fades during the night, but when my alarm goes off in the morning the first thing I do is sprint for the shower. Brianna’s the only one in the kitchen when I get there. Lately we’ve been getting along okay, but now her face creases up like a seventy-nine-year-old woman’s. Shit. Do I still reek?

  “Morning,” I say guardedly.

  She nods and pushes another spoonful of cereal between her lips. She’s wearing blue eye shadow all the way up to her brows and gloopy mascara. It’s a terrible look, especially first thing Monday morning. I’m surprised Nina hasn’t said something to her.

  Then Burke stomps into the kitchen behind Nina, which makes four of us sitting around the table for breakfast. “Your dad’s canceling his appointments and staying home today,” Nina tells me as she shakes a serving of Lucky Charms out of the box for Burke. “He’s not feeling very well.”

  The way Dad sounded last night I’m not surprised to hear he’s taking a sick day. But that parallel universe where I can touch, taste and even be inside Colette makes this one—sitting around munching cereal with Nina and the two Bs—feel fuzzy and surreal, and it takes me a couple of seconds to muster a response. “I guess that cough medicine he was drinking down last night didn’t do the trick, huh?”

  Burke folds his ankles up under his legs and watches Nina pour milk into his bowl. “Didn’t seem to,” Nina says. “Poor guy. He was up most of the night.”

  I wonder if Nina knows about me coming home late. Next time I have to be more careful. Next time. I fixate on the details of my golden secret life all through breakfast and morning classes. Colette’s mouth. Her skin. Her gorgeous legs. The incredible things we’ve done together, the things we’ll do again. I’m on fire inside, tumbling over the memory of last night, hoarding the images.

  I’m so gone that I don’t realize how quiet I’m being until Jamie sidles up to me in the cafeteria lunch line later and asks where I’ve checked out to. I smile to acknowledge that I’ve been spacing. Meanwhile Monica G and Hugo are play-fighting over possession of a blueberry muffin in front of me in line, arms swinging and bodies twisting.

  Hugo slips his fingers into her armpit and tickles. Monica jumps back, accidentally elbowing me in the rib. “Sorry!” she exclaims, jaw dropping as she spins to look at me. “You okay, Mason?”

  “Just a punctured lung,” I joke.

  She hugs my shoulder apologetically, Hugo frowning as he looks on. The last time I talked to Monica she was telling me the bad news about the lotto ad (she didn’t get it). She said she’d learned her lesson and that if anything else came up she wouldn’t breathe a word unless she’d locked down the role. There are benefits to keeping quiet if you can; I understand that.

  I buy a Gardenburger, which is less grim than either the hamburger or cheeseburger, sit down with Jamie and try to stay in the moment. I could tell him where my mind’s at—he already knows about Colette anyway—but for now I just want to keep the news to myself.

  So I stay tuned in to the present for lunch and then switch my thoughts back to Colette and let the rest of the afternoon blur right by me. It’s not until I’m home from school later that the feeling that I’ve swallowed a star begins to jog towards something else. Needing to talk to her. Needing to know when next time will be.

  I check my cell for messages but won’t let myself call. I fucked things up with Kat; I can’t let that happen with Colette. It’s more important than ever that I be cool.

  Unfortunately Colette doesn’t get in touch for three days, during which my brain runs wild imagining the worst—that she’s busy with Ari, her palms on his chest, straddling him the way she straddled me. The worst thing about imagining the worst is that in this case it’s probably true. But I don’t call; I can’t. And when she does I’m as cool as James Bond in a custom-made Italian suit.

  Day four I’m back in her apartment, acting like Ari or whatever happened in the three days between doesn’t matter. Colette whips up a seafood risotto while I stand in the kitchen dicing whatever she needs me to dice and measuring whatever she needs me to measure, but mainly leaning against the counter and comparing notes on Vancouver with her because I just found out she and Andrea were there visiting a mutual friend a couple of years ago.

  We eat the risotto and pile the dishes into the sink. Then we’re stripping down on her couch and I honestly forget about every single thing in the universe except what we’re doing. There’s the couch, Colette’s legs folded tightly around my back, and then the floor beside the coffee table, where we both get carpet burn on our knees and laugh about it afterwards. “I hope you don’t have gym class tomorrow,” Colette jokes, tapping my chest with her foot as we lounge naked on the couch. “How would you explain your injuries?”

  “You don’t think they’d believe the truth?” I kid back.

  “They probably would.” Colette’s foot pushes harder against my chest. “And then all the teenage girls at your school would hate me.”

  A goofy smile bursts onto my lips. I love when she says cheesy things like that. “No reason to hate you,” I say, pinching her big toe. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

  Colette’s sexy laugh makes me want to start over again and we do, a little, but then she tells me it’s getting late and that “people will want to know where you are.”

  Generic people. Maybe that’s easier for her to say than “your father and Nina.” She’s right, though, and I promised myself that I’d be carefu
l this time, but careful in theory is easier than careful in practice. Once I step inside her apartment I never want to leave.

  Colette slides closer to me on the couch and presses my hand to her lips like she knows I’m disappointed. “I’ll drive,” I say. We both know she lets me do it to make me feel better about not having a car and not being twenty-three. But if I actually was a twenty-three-year-old version of myself, with a career as a struggling actor and a secondhand Volkswagen Rabbit, maybe she wouldn’t like me as much as she does right now. Maybe my potential is what she gets off on. My hot-young-thing status.

  She’s never really pretended otherwise so it shouldn’t bother me. It doesn’t really. I just …

  I don’t know.

  This time I’m conscientious about washing the sex smell off before we leave. It’s twenty to twelve when I walk through my front door and everyone’s already in bed, which means I could’ve spent another few hours at Colette’s after all.

  There’s always more to want. I’m already thinking about next time again. And the rug burns on my knees. The days in between. Ari Lightman. The way Colette’s breasts fit in my hands. The things I know about her body now. The same things Ari knows.

  Considering how great tonight and last time were, there shouldn’t be any space for him in my mind. I need to keep my head on the pluses of this arrangement, not the minuses. What Colette and I have should feel like a thing of wonder, lighter than oxygen.

  I remind myself that it does, mostly. It’s the leftover bit I need to work on.

  nineteen

  Brianna’s slathered on the mascara and blue eye shadow again, making my head hurt as she glances up from her cereal bowl at me the next morning. “Hey,” she mumbles as I pour myself a glass of orange juice.

  Brianna’s not a big morning talker so I don’t take the minimalism personally. Like I said before, we’ve been getting along all right lately. Not well enough for me to advise her that she shouldn’t wear blue eye shadow, but okay.

  “Hey,” she repeats with added volume as I raise the orange juice to my lips. “Was that Colette’s car you got out of last night?”

  “What?” I stop with my glass in midair.

  “You know, my aunt’s friend Colette. The one who was here for the engagement party.” Brianna shovels a spoonful of cereal into her mouth and scrutinizes me.

  “So now you’re spying on me?” My skull throbs.

  “Hardly,” she says sarcastically. “Your dad keeps waking me up with all his coughing.”

  He’s been coughing for days now, despite the medication his doctor put him on. And Brianna’s bedroom overlooks the street. My eyeballs go dry in their sockets as I stare at her. “Who I was with is none of your business, you got it?” My voice is tinged with anger but I don’t shout. I put my glass down on the counter and say, “You need to shut up about that fast.”

  Brianna stops chewing and glares at me. “You don’t have to freak, you know.” Her spoon scrapes against the bottom of the bowl. “I was just asking.” Her superior tone reverberates in my ears and I grind my teeth together, panic mixing with anger in my gut.

  “I really need you to do me a favor on this one,” I plead, changing tactics. “Just don’t say anything about what you saw, okay?” If Nina hears about this we’re done. Colette won’t let me within a hundred feet of her.

  “Whatever.” Brianna stares down at her bowl so that all I can see is BLUE.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I leave for school with an empty stomach. I need to put some distance between me and the house. My stomach churns as I walk. Trusting Brianna’s a gigantic leap of faith but I don’t have a choice. I can’t tell Colette about this either, not now that things are really happening between us. I mean, that stuff about Ari and the days in between could be purely my imagination. She might even be finished with him. That could be part of the reason the timing was right for us to finally do it.

  I speed up, determined to track down Jamie or Miracle as soon as I get to GS. I need a damage control plan. Fast. Unfortunately Y’s the first person I run into in the hall. “You look like hell,” she observes.

  “Thanks. You seen Jamie or Miracle around?”

  “Nope.” Her lips form a thin line. “You know, every time I see you lately you look like a version of this.” She motions to my distressed form. “Is it Kat?”

  “No.” I slouch, my gaze still searching the area for any sign of Jamie or Miracle. “Everything’s fine with Kat. I mean, the usual. Why? Have you heard something about Kat?”

  Yolanda’s eyes shrink as she processes my words. There she goes monitoring me again. Exactly what I don’t need right now. “No,” she says. “But she’s not the one acting strange.” She pats me on the back, opting to take pity on me. “If I see Jamie or Miracle I’ll let them know you’re looking for them.”

  “Great.” I hurry off to find one of them before homeroom, desperate to spill my guts. I rush past their lockers and homerooms. No luck. I check the cafeteria and then the parking lot. Nope. Nope. Nope. I don’t see either of them until lunch and then it’s too late. I’m burnt out on anxiety. The tension’s turned a corner and nothing anyone says will make a difference.

  Of course I have the conversation anyway. I pull Jamie aside and tell him. Maybe I’ll tell Miracle tomorrow and get her take on things too. I haven’t decided. Anyway, a pensive look hangs over Jamie’s eyes, like he’s thinking all the info over. “You think Brianna will say anything?” he asks.

  My stomach clenches again as I shrug. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “Maybe you should give Colette the heads-up,” Jamie says slowly. “And have some kind of backup story ready for your dad.”

  “A backup story that involves running into Colette and somehow ending up in her car at eleven-thirty at night but which I failed to bring up earlier,” I snap. “Like anything I could come up with would make for an even close to believable coincidence.” I work my hands into my pockets and stand there exhaling jagged bursts of air. I should’ve parked farther down my street. This is my fault. Bumping into Miracle and Ian in Toronto should’ve been enough to let me know we needed to be profoundly careful.

  “I know.” Jamie shrugs too. “It’s rough. I’m just saying you need to be prepared.” He cocks his head and adds, “You had to know this was coming. It’s one crazy situation.”

  I’m wasting my time. He thinks I have it coming because of Kat. I can’t believe everything comes back to this. I turn to walk away, tension spiraling into anger and pounding in my chest. “Where do you think you’re going?” Jamie shouts.

  “You’re still mad,” I yell back. “I don’t want to talk to you if you’re still mad.”

  “I’m not mad,” Jamie insists. “Fuck. Would you come back? You’re acting like a total spaz.”

  “And you’re not acting like a friend,” I shout. Two freshman guys sharing a pair of earphones on the bleachers glance over at us with puzzled expressions. “Just admit you’re still jealous. Kat and I are barely even speaking and you’re still jealous.”

  “You’re being a prick.” Jamie scowls. “I thought this was about Colette—or is it just about being able to bone whoever you want without getting caught?”

  “You’re never going to let it go, are you?” I stop dead in my tracks and swing around to face him. His mouth’s hanging open and he looks like he wants to rip my arms out of their sockets. If this wasn’t about Kat, it is now.

  Jamie jerks his head back and laughs hollowly. “Why don’t you try that line on Kat and see how she takes it?”

  “Fuck you,” I mutter. “You don’t know anything about that. You think that because the three of us were friends you’re some kind of expert on the situ—”

  “She’s not talking to me because of something that you did,” Jamie interrupts. “Don’t give me that shit about it not having anything to do with me. It’s like you don’t even care about her—you’re already in it up to
your eyes with this”—he waves both hands frenetically in front of himself—“this twenty-three-year-old woman—and now you expect me to give you advice on your love life.”

  I watch his hands drift slowly back to his sides. My arms feel like lead. I don’t know where to start with what he just said.

  “Of course I care.” I pull at my hair and scratch at my hand, right where the bandage used to be. “There’s nothing I can do about Kat. There’s nothing else I can say to her. It’s all …” I shrug helplessly and the truth is I don’t even know whether I’m angry with Jamie anymore. All I know is I’m losing it. The things he’s talking about are done and over with, whether I want them to be or not, but this thing with Colette’s still happening and it’s about to explode in my face. If I were any more shaken up I’d be having a frigging seizure.

  Jamie eyes me neutrally. He jerks his fingers inside his sleeve and listens to the silence.

  “All what?” he asks finally. His gaze shoots skyward as his fingers slip back out of his sleeve. “Forget it,” he mumbles. “That’s none of my business.”

  His mouth makes a clicking noise when he opens it again. “This is about Colette,” he says squarely. “So this is what you do—you talk to her. You go over there tonight and tell her about Brianna. You do it in person. In case she takes it really bad. It’s harder for her to break it off if you’re there in the flesh.” He shrugs and buries his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. “Either that or you just hold your breath and wait for Brianna to crack, right?”

  He’s got my options covered and they suck. I bob my head up and down, approximating a nod. We walk back to the cafeteria together and I don’t feel any better than I did ten minutes ago but I stay quiet. There’s nothing else to say.

  The house is empty when I walk through the front door later. Burke and Brianna both have dentist appointments straight after school and Nina won’t have them home until after five-thirty. For a minute after I remember that, I feel like I can breathe again. I lie down on the basement couch with my shoes on and blast the TV volume up until the entire house pulses with sound. There are so many things that I don’t want to think about lately, and before today they all went back to that Saturday-night party and this faceless guy named Ari Lightman.