The Lighter Side of Life and Death Read online

  I glance back at him behind the counter and he adds, “Under the coatrack in the staff room.”

  So I double back to the staff room where my phone’s lying facedown on the tile floor, underneath the coatrack, exactly like Chris said. I have two messages and I listen to the first one as I make my way out the front door. Jamie wants me to call him when I get home. Then Colette’s voice comes to life, tender and deliberate. It stings so much to hear that at first I can hardly comprehend her syllables as words.

  “Mason, that wasn’t as easy as it looked for me just now,” she says softly. “I hope you understand that we can’t speak privately anymore and I really hope you’re doing okay. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been avoiding The Java Bean lately and I don’t think I’ll be in there very often this summer. That’s probably better, isn’t it? … I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. I just hope that you’re not mad at me and I’m sorry if I did anything to cause you pain. That wasn’t my intention. Don’t be mad at me. Please. I’m sorry, Mason.”

  That’s it. That’s all she has to say to me after three weeks. I wrench the phone away from my ear, open my fist and let it drop onto the sidewalk. It makes a pathetically tiny ping as it connects with the cement in front of my feet. The blue screen stares reproachfully up at me, offering the time and declaring itself “Ready.” If I wanted to smash the damn thing I could pick it up again and hurl it full force; it’s not a black box, for God’s sake, it’s breakable. Instead I kick it a few paces ahead of me and watch it glide like a hockey puck on ice. When I catch up with it a couple seconds later I snatch it up and delete her message before I can change my mind.

  For the first few steps afterwards I’m proud of myself for being ruthless. I don’t need that kind of reminder weighing me down. How many times did she tell me she was sorry during that message—two or three? How many times did she say my name? I’ve already forgotten the exact details.

  What a pointless thing to do. Why’d she even bother?

  I’m furious with myself for being sad. If I hadn’t deleted the message I’d be listening to it at this very moment, twenty short seconds after I killed it. I sacrificed the message and spared my phone. Does that mean something?

  I’m so fed up with this shit I can’t even tell you.

  twenty-four

  My last exam is Twentieth-Century History and I’m the fourth person to finish. I know you’re supposed to sit there and look over your paper for a while but I’ve already done that too. The school year’s officially over. I’m done.

  I hand in my exam and head over to my locker one final time, feeling nostalgic. I get like that every year, no matter what happened, but this one was really memorable in lots of ways. During the last week of class I stopped Mr. Fiore in the hall and thanked him for riding us so hard during All My Sons rehearsals. He focused his eyes on me in that intense, ultra-intelligent drama teacher way and asked how I felt about musicals. So it looks like we’re doing a musical next year and that I should ask Miracle to be my vocal coach over the summer.

  Lynn’s already announced that next time she’ll fly out for the show. I spend a couple of weeks with her every summer and this year’s no exception. I’m flying over to Vancouver at the end of August and this time I plan to tell her we should try bungee jumping.

  Anyway, I guess I don’t need to explain about the memorable things. Sometimes it’s hard to think about them but that doesn’t mean I wish they didn’t happen. I’m okay when it comes down to it. Or I will be. It’s still early.

  So I stand in the hall digging the remaining crap out of my locker. There’s mostly trash left and I throw out everything but an old gray sweatshirt with a tomato sauce stain down one arm and a postcard Y bought me in Cuba on Christmas break but forgot to mail. I shove the sweatshirt and postcard into my knapsack, shut my empty locker and turn to go.

  I do that all quickly, thinking I’m alone, but I’m wrong. My body crashes smack into Kat Medina’s in the hall. “Jesus!” I exclaim, immediately recoiling. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” I think I may have stepped on one of her feet too and I glance down, checking for crushed toes. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” Kat replies, openly staring at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Clumsy.” I motion with my hands and try to avoid staring back. But you know how that goes. The second you aim for casual there’s nowhere else to put your eyes. Plus, her hair’s falling softly over her shoulders and her skin’s this beautiful cappuccino shade. Why wouldn’t I want to stare at her? “Sorry about that.”

  “I guess I was too quiet,” she murmurs, her head tilted to one side. “I just wanted to say hi before you took off.” Kat scrapes anxiously at a cuticle as she looks at me, and of course I haven’t forgotten her staring during the last few weeks of class, but with the Colette breakup still fresh I haven’t had much time to dwell on it either. “It looks like you and Jamie have patched things up lately,” she adds, going to work on a second cuticle.

  “Yeah. We’re okay.” I’m overwhelmingly grateful for my pessimism on the night of Charlie Kady’s pool party. Who knows what crazy things I might’ve said to her over the phone. When it comes to Kat, it’s better to be cautious. I don’t want her to let me down again.

  “That’s good,” she says. “I’m glad.”

  Silence crowds in on us in the empty hallway and I ease myself backwards a few inches so that we’re not standing too close for Kat’s comfort.

  “I’m glad,” she repeats, glancing down at my legs with an unreadable expression. Her gaze shoots back up to mine just as silence threatens to take over again.

  “Yeah,” I say loudly. I peer carefully into her brown eyes and realize that Kat wasn’t one of the three people to finish the history exam before me. What’re the odds she’d finish hot on my heels like that? “Me too. So what’d you think of the exam?”

  “No big surprises. What about you?”

  “Same.” Strangely breathless, like I’ve been out scrambling up mountainsides. It’s a familiar feeling and I don’t fight it.

  “You must’ve aced it,” Kat notes. “You were one of the first people finished.” She hugs her pencil case to her hip and studies the spot of floor between us like we’ve run out of conversation. “This is too weird. I’m sorry; I’ll let you go.” She bumps her arm against mine before she has time to think better of it.

  “Wait.” I twist around and watch her freeze in place. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you; I just don’t know what it means anymore.” Is that too much to confess? I have no idea where we stand. If we could sit around and have a conversation about us like we were two other people, we might be able to figure it out.

  “I know.” Kat raises a hand to her lips. It’s like a veil between us. “I don’t know what to say to you. Not speaking to you is weird and speaking to you is weird. Everything’s weird. I thought being apart might be easier, especially when we had class together and it felt so awkward, but now I don’t see you anymore and it still feels weird.”

  We stare uneasily at each other as she lowers her hand. The tension escalates until I can’t stop myself; the words rush to my mouth. “I almost called you a few weeks ago. I didn’t let myself.”

  She blinks rapidly, that cute pout plumping up her lips. “I don’t know what I would’ve said if you did.”

  I nod pensively. “That’s why I didn’t do it.”

  Two ninth graders rush noisily by, laughing and banging their lockers open. The interruption makes our discussion less daunting but that won’t last; in a couple minutes the hallway will be empty again.

  “And anyway, you wouldn’t have liked what I had to say,” I add. Those months of not speaking are crushing in on me full force. I want to tell her everything.

  Kat runs her fingers roughly through her hair. “It’s about some girl, right? I know there’s somebody. You don’t have to be so careful breaking the news to me.”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to do.” For somebody who starred
in the school play two months ago I feel unbelievably inarticulate. “Come out to the bleachers with me and I’ll explain.” She might hate me but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m tired of secrets, sick to death of omissions.

  We go outside together, Kat shivering in her flimsy white summer top. This time last year I’d have flung an arm around her and rubbed her shoulders to warm her up. Now I don’t do anything.

  We sit at the top of the bleachers and squint at three guys playing Frisbee out by the track. One of them is the barefoot Jedi Master that calmed me down months ago and seeing him gives my life this strange feeling of continuity. “I was involved with someone for a while,” I admit, shifting my gaze to Kat. “I figured that you knew.”

  As I watch her I begin to realize things have changed between us for the second time. I don’t know when it happened but I’m seeing her differently. That Saturday night isn’t front and center in my brain anymore; it’s the entire Kat there beside me, in all her complexity. “But it’s over now. Everything fell apart and it was one of those situations where I knew it would but …” I shrug, resting my arms on my knees.

  “You’re rebounding,” she offers, casting me a sideways glance.

  “That wasn’t why I wanted to call,” I protest. “I just wanted to be able to talk to you, like we used to talk all the time when we had things going on in our lives.” Sunshine’s grilling the back of my neck but she still looks cold. “Did you mean that about us still being friends?” I ask. “Was that just something to say?”

  Kat folds her arms snugly in front of her. “You know I don’t just say things like that, don’t you?” She answers her own question: “I guess you don’t.”

  “I don’t think I can avoid talking to you and still consider us friends,” I tell her, my eyes on the track. “If you want to cut me out of your life you should just do it.” My tone’s surprisingly harsh. “Make it official. Otherwise it just goes on like this forever—you staring at me in class next year and talking to me in the hall for two seconds like that proves something.” I train my eyes on hers. “If that’s the extent of our friendship it’s not worth anything, is it?” I want to dangle my arm around her shoulders and find out what’s been happening in her life these past couple months but instead I’m giving her an ultimatum. It feels like fate.

  “Maybe it’s not,” she says in a low voice. “Maybe we trashed it.”

  I breathe in slowly, expecting the air to sear my lungs. We’re finally going to have this conversation. I’m ultra-awake in my own skin, swaying slowly from side to side to calm myself.

  “I wish you wouldn’t think that. I wish things were different.” I wrap my hands around the back of my neck, still hunched over. A couple more twists and I’d be a human pretzel. “That night was my first time.”

  Kat hunches over next to me, her breasts pushed together under the weight of her arms. We look like a couple of food-poisoning victims. I feel like one too. This conversation’s exponentially tougher than it would’ve been two months ago.

  “I didn’t know that,” she says finally. She flicks her hair out of her eyes and looks at me in a way that makes me hold my breath.

  “We never had a chance to talk.” I’m not being judgmental; these are the facts. “I wanted to tell you but you were so shaken about the whole thing … and then … later we couldn’t talk at all.”

  Kat smiles a little and I lift my head and stare at her with clear eyes. “I know,” she says quietly. She smooths her hands over her jeans and looks away. “You’re making me nervous.” She shifts her gaze swiftly back to mine. “I’m glad you told me. I wish I knew that at the time.”

  I never even thought to tell her at the time and my stomach dips and then free-falls, like I’m some bottomless pit of bittersweet emotion. Maybe we would’ve felt closer if I’d told her that night and I made us miss out on something good. Or maybe it would’ve stopped everything dead. I thought I was over that night but the regret’s more acute now than it was months ago.

  “I should’ve told you before,” I say, my mouth bone dry.

  Kat presses her lips together and sits up straight. “It wasn’t how I expected it to be,” she confesses, her voice tentative. “Was it for you?”

  “It was great.” The awe’s there in my throat and I don’t try to hide it. “I thought it was amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Kat doesn’t look at me as she speaks. “I didn’t expect that either. I thought it would be scary and awkward.” Her knees draw together. “I thought I would bleed.”

  In some ways talking about that night feels more real, more raw, than living it. My stomach takes another dive and I quip, “And that I’d be Hugo, right?” The joke’s unexpected but we both smile.

  “Nooooo,” Kat says vehemently. “I never thought that—I just didn’t think it’d be you.”

  “So why would you bother having a boyfriend you never intended to sleep with?” We never talked about sex much when we were friends, not with any seriousness. This is uncharted territory. I can hardly believe I’m saying these things out loud.

  “I never intended to sleep with anyone anytime soon,” she says forcefully. “Why do you think I was so freaked out? Anyway, it was your first time too—what were you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know.” That’s the truth. “Something special, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” Kat’s laugh is streaked with sarcasm. “Does drunken fumbling on your father’s couch qualify?”

  I frown as I tap the aluminum under my feet and Kat frowns too. “It was more than that,” I tell her. “You know how much I like you.” This is the hardest thing I’ve had to say yet. “I mean for years, ever since we first met.” Kat’s silent next to me but I won’t let it go. “You knew that, right?”

  “Yeah.” She folds her hands into her lap and studies her fingers. “You and Jamie both. That’s what I meant about this being incestuous. It makes me wonder whether the three of us were ever really friends or if it was always this sexual thing.”

  “I think it was both.” I rub my forehead with one hand. “Maybe that’s why it was easier for me to deal with what happened. I didn’t see it as a bad thing.”

  “It’s not that it was a bad thing,” Kat says slowly. “It just changes things. Since that night my feelings for you are all screwed up. Half the time I don’t know what I want. I told you to leave me alone and then that day when you said you were out late …” She exhales heavily and rolls her eyes. “And now here you are telling me that you and this girl broke up and maybe I should be relieved but I don’t know …” Her front teeth scrape across her bottom lip as she stares out at the track. “Hugo was so much easier to deal with. Less complicated.”

  “I’m not complicated.” Part of me is ecstatic that she has enough feelings for me to be confused but that’s what made her give up our friendship in the first place. It’s too risky to even hope for more. “You’re the complicated one. Don’t worry about all this other stuff—it’ll work itself out. Just tell me that we can be friends and pick up the phone to call each other once in a while. Can we do that?” She’s still thinking that over and I raise my head to the cloudless sky and sigh inwardly. This all feels so critical that it’s almost like Colette never happened.

  “Just that?” she asks, and I have to admit she looks so beautiful with those wide brown eyes and pouting lips that I’ll probably have a crush on her for the next twenty years.

  “Just that,” I confirm. “If that’s all there is.” I’m tapping my feet like wild but I mean it. We’ve been friends for too long to let this get in the way. If I have to listen to her rave about how sexy and hilarious Sanjay is, I will. To a certain degree I’ll even get used to it. I’ve been there before.

  Kat locks her fingers together and watches me. “You think we can just keep going like this? As friends?”

  “I know we can. We just have to give it a real chance.”

  “I missed talking to you, Mason.” Her words sound heavy. “I want to be friends too but I don
’t know …” She chews her bottom lip. “What if it turns out that I want more?” I jolt backwards on the bleachers, beyond shocked. I know she said she was confused but I thought she was doing her best to smother that. “Sometime,” she adds hastily. “Maybe. Can we give it some time and see how things go?”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” Surprise surges through my voice. “Of course we can. You have no idea how much I’ve missed just talking to you—about everything.”

  “Me too,” Kat says haltingly. “We need to talk more from now on.” Relief softens her eyes. “But about normal things too, okay? Not just about that night and this crazy conversation. I’m glad we’re getting things out in the open but it’s … not easy for me … especially when it involves you, so can we talk about something else for a while?” She shoots me a pleading look. “Anything.”

  “Sure, Kat. Anything.” I can’t think of a single normal thing to say. This is Kat Medina. She’s like a goddess and my best friend wrapped into one. I’m shivering in the sun.

  After about ten seconds Kat tucks one hand under her chin and helps me out. “You know, Eric’s going to the Philippines for six weeks this summer,” she says. “You should see the way my mom’s acting, making all these preparations. You’d think he was royalty. And she thinks she has to send presents for all her family over there too. It’s a bigger production than All My Sons. I think it’ll be good for him, though. I hate the way he just lies around on the couch all summer.”

  My mind’s racing with possibilities and I swear I’m getting this happy ice cream headache in the middle of my forehead as my arms tan, but I’m listening too. “So who’s filling in for him with the catering?” I ask. Her brother has about two friends (who never go out either) and no hobbies, unless you include his laptop and Xbox. His life’s evenly divided between his parents’ basement and his aunt and uncle’s catering business. “You?”

  Kat laughs, her eyes gleaming in the sun. “With Tita Teresa? I don’t think so.” Her aunt Teresa is the bossy, competitive one in the family. Kat spends every family gathering actively avoiding her. Anyway, Kat explains that her fifteen-year-old cousin Cecilia (who’s this teenage Einstein with a ninety-nine percent average) is going to do it. Then we talk about me for a while. I fill her in on my most recent clash with Brianna, talk about how Burke cracks me up and how relieved I am that Chris hooked me up with the JB job because the house feels cramped sometimes, even now that we’re all more or less getting along.