Twenty-One
We drive a short distance away to a burger joint that’s getting ready to close as soon as we walk through the doors. A teenage boy a year or two younger than me is dressed in a striped shirt and stacking chairs as the doorbell chimes. When he sees us, he immediately looks away, annoyed.
Evan orders a large fries for us to share and two milkshakes. When our order is ready a few minutes later, we open the trunk of the Jeep and sit down on it. The teenage employee locks up the restaurant and starts walking down the street sporting a hoodie, but not before he gives us a disapproving look.
“Do you want to talk? You know, about everything?” Evan asks. He’s staring up at the star-covered sky as he holds our brown bag of French fries.
I finish my sip of my vanilla milkshake despite not wanting to stop and follow his gaze. The stars twinkle against the black and wish I had brought my camera. Somehow I thought that bringing it on our maybe-maybe-not date wasn’t appropriate.
“I don’t know,” I smile, “everything seems like a lot of talking.” Evan doesn’t say anything so I playfully snatch the bag from his grasp and grab a small group of fries. He grins as he takes it back and together we stuff our faces. I continue in between bites. “But yes, I do want to talk, about everything.”
Evan’s expression grows serious again and I realize that he’s purposely not looking at me. I think he’s doing what Hadley did the day I told her about Cade. It’s like it’s easier to talk about important things when you’re not making eye contact.
“Where do we start?”
“With tonight,” I say with certainly. “And then we can backtrack from there.”
“That seems like a lot of talking,” Evan says with a forced half-smile. “But I guess I better start. Do you know where I brought you tonight?”
I nod. “You brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous.”
“Do you know why?” he asks.
I shake my head no and take another sip of my milkshake before responding. “No one has said anything except for Hadley, about how you are now is good or something. She was pretty vague for your sake.”
Evan swings his right leg across the air underneath the trunk a few times. I watch it move back and forth as I continue to drink.
“Remember how I told you about my dad?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Well, after that, things weren’t very good. I fought with my mom a lot and kept leaving the house whenever things got bad. When she started seeing my step-father, before they got married, things were worse. I started hanging out with the wrong kids in the next town over.” He gestures around him.
“This town?”
“You know that scrawny kid we just saw? I’ve hung around him a few times,” he says to prove a point. “Somehow these friends of mine could easily get a hold of a six pack of beer and mickeys of vodka. Somehow I found it easy to get a hold of these things too, and even easier to consume them quicker than my so-called friends.”
I nod and hold my drink between my legs, not wanting to interrupt him. I hadn’t expected this story to come out of between Evan’s lips, yet it feels like it isn’t a big deal to me, like I don’t look at him differently. It feels like I’ve always known, even though I haven’t.
“When I came home so drunk one night that I threw up in my sleep, my brother, who was home from college found me and cleaned me up. He made me go to a meeting with him for my sake, and didn’t go back to college until things between my mother, step-father and I were okay. It was the worst two years of my life and since the first meeting, I’ve been going ever since. It’s kind of like…” he trails off, searching for the right word.
“Kind of like they get you,” I finish for him.
Evan smiles. “Exactly. I felt like the people there understood how I felt and though I never thought of myself of an alcoholic until then, I depended on it more than I should.”
“Why though?” I ask quietly.
“Because it was easier to get drunk and have fun to be sober and deal with life,” he states.
“But I saw you the first day, drinking a beer on your front porch,” I say, looking at him. He meets my eyes and my lips form a thin line. “You weren’t being yourself, at least the you I know now, and you were drinking.”
“It was the anniversary of my father’s death. It was a mistake but I drank that day for the first time in five months. I haven’t touched it since though.”
I smile. “That’s great.”
Evan bumps his shoulders into mine playfully and reaches into the bag of fries. He pulls out some and I snag one from his grasp.
“Now it’s your turn to backtrack.”
“Okay,” I say as I stare at the stars. I’m trying to think of what to say first as I chew on my stolen french fry. Somehow, after talking to Douglas and also hearing his story, I feel emptier than I usually do, as if a weight I’ve been carrying is no longer sitting on my shoulders. Telling Evan things I haven’t is a big deal to me, something that I’ve been avoiding, but it definitely isn’t the biggest. I don’t know how to face that obstacle. “Well, for starters, I told my parents about Craig earlier.”
“You did?”
“Yup,” I say with a pop. “We’re going to talk to the police tomorrow.”
Evan gives me a small smile and takes a sip of his chocolate milkshake. “That’s great, Bam.”
“Yeah, but I guess I have a lot more explaining to do, don’t I?”
He shrugs, setting down his drink. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” I say quickly. “It’s just hard.”
“I know, but if these things were easy, the world would be a lot easier to handle.”
“Okay, well, the day after tomorrow I have my second counselling appointment, and that’s because my parents made me go.” I quickly close my lips and shake my head to myself. “No, it’s because I guess I need it. Kind of.” I feel like I’m fighting with myself and don’t know which side is winning. “But it’s because of something that I haven’t told you yet, the real reason my parents and I came to Mermaid this summer.”
Evan is quiet the entire time I’m speaking and though he looks at the stars the most of the time, I can feel him occasionally glance towards me. Halfway through one of my sentences his hand finds mine on the plastic of the trunk and he places his palm over mine and his fingers through the gaps.
I take a deep breath. Telling Douglas had been so easy because he had understood – he had gone through something so similar. Telling Hadley had been hard but not as bad as I would thought. It shouldn’t be this hard to tell Evan but telling him almost feels like I’m betraying Cade, as if I’m still with him even though he’s gone.
“My boyfriend, he…” I look down towards the ground. “He died of a brain tumour shortly before I came.”
Evan doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, look at me like I’m something to be sad about or feel bad. Instead, he looks down at the pavement and his fingers tighten above my own.
“And what you saw last night at the beach,” I continue, “is a result of that.”
I cannot believe the words are actually leaving my lips. It feels as if I’m dreaming, like I’m practicing for the real thing and this isn’t really happening right now. Even my adrenaline is pumping like this is a huge mountain I’m trying to climb.
“So the scars…” Evan mumbles, still looking down.
I take off my light jacket and set it in the drunk behind me. As I roll up my sleeves I chew on my bottom lip, feeling as if I’m not myself. I still can’t face that this is really happening right now and there is no turning back.
On the inside of my left arm is an ugly looking scar that starts at my wrist and ends about an inch from my elbow. It’s one perfect, straight line from one, horrible, insane night. On my right arm is the same cut but it’s more slanted, staring at the top right of my wrist and ending at the bottom near the left side of my inner elbow.
Evan stares down at my arms with a blank expression as I let them out in full view, as if I’m a human display.
“The scars are from the night of the funeral. I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t handle the pain of losing Cade.”
“Your boyfriend,” he says.
I nod. “Yes.”
Evan says no more and his silence is both comforting and horrible.
“The right one is jagged because I cut my left first,” I explain, rotating my arm. I don’t know why I’m telling him this; why I sound so emotionless. I think I’m just trying to fill the silence. “And the pain and blood loss made my perception wrong.”
“Bam-“ he starts, but I’m not done my rambling. The words just keep coming out, one right after the other because I haven’t been able to tell anyone this. If I told my parents, they would send me away. The only person I would tell is Cade, and he’s gone.
“It was the only time I ever hurt myself,” I say as I look down at myself in a mix of disgust and detachment. “I didn’t want to use pills because we didn’t have any and there weren’t any bridges I could have jumped off.”
Evan picks up my hand and I look away as he presses the top of it to his lips. When he lowers it into his lap he runs his fingers along my skin, playing with my hand.
“I didn’t know that’s what happened when I brought you here tonight,” he says as I continue to look away to the right. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I thought that bringing you might help you, like I did. I also wanted to share this part of my life with you.” He pulls my arm more to the left and I feel his lips gently trailing the scars. He pauses in the middle and I can feel his lips moving against my skin as he speaks. “I’m glad you’re still here, Bam. I’m really, really glad.”
I don’t know if he expects me to say I am too like in some cheesy movie where everyone freezes mid-jump at the end. Instead I just nod, not saying anything. I don’t know if I’m happy that I’m still here or not. Ever since that day when Cade passed, I’ve wanted to just get away from all this pain and numb. I don’t know how I feel.
It seems like everything has changed in one night.