Chasing Tail Lights Read online

  I finally give a full and loud answer. "No."

  "Fine, if you don't want to talk with me, I can't make you," she says, then leans in a little closer. She's wearing perfume, but I have no idea what kind. It might smell nice, except the stink of Seth on me overpowers her scent. "I spoke with Officer Kay, you know."

  I jam my top teeth into my bottom lip, hard and fast. I feel blood forthcoming.

  "She says you don't want the police to follow up on your attack. On your r—"

  "I just want people to leave me alone," I finally speak, actually more of a shout.

  "I could have the police visit your house if you like," she throws down.

  "Is that supposed to scare me?" I snap back.

  "No, Christy, I don't think that will scare you," she offers. "I don't think much scares you. Kind of the way people who lived in castles with high walls and moats weren't scared. You've got all your defenses up, I can see that. There's maybe only one thing that scares you."

  "What's that?" I shoot back.

  "The truth," she says, then closes up the notebook she's been writing in. She puts down the notebook, then hands me a single tissue from the flowery box. "Your lip is bleeding. Here."

  I don't say thank you, I don't say anything. I take the tissue, wipe away the blood, jam the bloody tissue into my pocket, then get up from the couch. I don't look at her as I head toward the door.

  "I'm sure you've heard the truth will set you free," she says as I open the door. "It's not just a saying, Christy. I'll see you in two weeks."

  I resist the urge to slam the door behind me and in her face. I grab my coat, then head outside. I don't zip it up, instead I let the cold January air push into my lungs. I'm not thinking about Seth or Glen or even Mrs. Grayson, I'm thinking about Breezy. I'm remembering a year or so ago us putting together a jigsaw puzzle that Mama bought for her at Goodwill. We got most of the pieces together, but a few were missing. As I wait for the bus to my house, I think how I'm like that damaged and used puzzle. Anne holds some of the pieces from New Year's Eve, so does Glen. Mrs. Grayson might be able to figure something out, and Officer Kay thinks she already knows something. Everybody has a piece, but as long as they never talk to one another, they'll never put the pieces together. The truth is the missing piece; the truth is me.

  20

  january 30, senior year

  "What's going on with you and Glen?"

  I don't say anything. I remain locked in the stillness that overwhelms me even amid the cafeteria clatter. This is not shyness; this is about being strong enough to survive in silence. We're sitting in the cafeteria away from traffic and my Glen perch.

  "Does this have to do with New Year's?" Anne knows the end of the evening, not the start. And she never will.

  "Anne, I don't want to talk about it," I say as harshly as I've ever spoken to Anne.

  "Some friend," Anne says, trumping my harshness with spitting anger.

  "We are friends, but this is my business, not yours," I say, then stare at my feet.

  "Look at me, Christy," Anne says, but I don't turn an inch.

  "Fine, you won't look at me, but you will listen to me," Anne snaps off the words. "We go to a party together, you disappear, and next thing I know you're on a bridge barefoot with blood on your dress. I call my dad to meet us at the hospital, I sit with you, and I don't ask you anything. I've let it slide. I've let you slide, but this morning was too much."

  "What happened?" I ask, then yawn. It's a Thursday morning; I'm feeling pretty tired.

  "Glen called me and asked me to ask you a question, since you won't talk to him."

  I put my left foot over my right; I tie my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

  "He wants to know why you hate him." Anne's talking right into my ear.

  "I don't hate him."

  "Then why are we here, and not by the theater? Why don't we drive by his house anymore?" Anne's anger is boiling over. "If you don't hate Glen, you gotta funny way of—"

  "Enough," I say. Beg. Plead. Demand.

  "I'm good at math and I can add. You like Glen; something happens to you at a party. Now you're avoiding him, while he's wondering why you hate him. Did Glen do something to you at the party? Is he the reason you ended up in the hospital. He didn't—"

  "No," I want to shout, but it comes out as no more than a whisper.

  "Then what?"

  Anne's good, but if I didn't answer Mrs. Grayson or Officer Kay, I won't answer Anne. I will run. I will hide.

  "Nothing." I'm fighting both with my meds and with my best friend, but I stay silent.

  "Then at least you and Glen have to talk," Anne says, taking French fries off my tray.

  "I know," I say. I can't stand the way Glen glares at me, like I once stared at him.

  Anne's playing with a gold bracelet that Tommy gave her, trying not to look me in the eyes. "I'm sure Glen is as worried about you as Tommy and I are. I'll set it up with Glen."

  "Why bother?" I hiss, wondering where the laughter of lunches past has gone.

  "Because he's your friend," she says. "And because I'm your friend and I'm asking."

  I shake my head no, yet I know she's right and I need to correct this wrong somehow. "He used to be my friend, I thought," I say after a long pause.

  "Ironic, isn't it?"

  "What's that?"

  "You've spent almost five years practically stalking Glen," Anne says, releasing an almost now rare memory movie in my mind, "and now you do everything you can to avoid him."

  "I just want to run away from this," I say as I rub the sleep out of my eyes, clearing room for tears to flow. I get up to leave, but Anne grabs hold of my oversize T-shirt. "Let go!"

  "No, Christy, I won't let go," she says. "I won't let you run away from this, from Glen."

  "Screw you, or is that Tommy's job now?" I say, then turn on my heel and run to prove her wrong. But my meds are like a chain, and I don't even make it as far as the front door.

  Ten minutes later, I'm sitting alone in the school library. My face is buried in the book Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, another Ms. Chapman pick. The bell for sixth period rings, my history class with Anne and Glen, but there's no sense going. It seems as if I'm never going to learn from history, so why bother at all. Someday I'll face Glen again; this isn't that day.

  "I'm sorry," I hear Anne's voice whisper behind me.

  "Me, too," I say, as she sits across from me. Unlike me, she's got a pass to be here.

  "This thing is so hard to figure out, you know?" Anne, the smartest girl in school, says.

  "I've got an answer," I whisper to avoid drawing notice from the librarian, Mrs. Sullivan.

  "What's that?" Anne replies, and I swear she's almost glowing she's so filled with love.

  "I'm dropping out of school," I say without any emotion in my voice.

  "You can't do that!" Anne says instantly.

  "Why?"

  "Because," Anne says, then pauses. A pause you could drive a semitruck through.

  "Who am I kidding?" I say these words that have rattled around in my head for so long.

  "You won't be able to go to college, if you drop out," Anne says, reasons returning.

  "And do what?" I counter quickly, telling Anne the fate of most poor kids like me of every color in Flint. "Be a doctor like your dad? Or a college professor like your mom?"

  "You can be anything that you—"

  I cut her off. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

  She answers by not answering.

  "Never mind," I counter. Anne might kiss my cousin and share her secrets with me, but she's not part of the family. "I've decided."

  "No, I won't allow it," Anne says, reaching across to grab my arm again, but I retreat.

  "You're not my mother," I shoot back, thinking how my mother isn't one either.

  "Maybe not, but you can't do this," Anne says. "Promise me you won't drop out."

  "I promise," I say after a while. I know I'm just dreaming, not pl
anning. I'm thinking how hard it is to break free of anything, even something you hate. We sit for a while in silence.

  "About Glen," Anne finally says while flashing an out-of-place smile.

  I fidget in my seat. "I just can't face him, and I'm sure he doesn't want to talk to me."

  "Yes I do," Glen says from behind me.

  "How long have you . . . " I say, turning to look at him, then glaring at Anne.

  "I heard most everything," he says. Anne smiles, then exits. She gives her chair and pass to Glen, but I can't look at him. The brightness of those blue eyes seems faded, and I know I'm the one to blame. He's no longer my Romeo, and I was never ever his Juliet.

  "Glen, I'm sorry about everything," I say, my words falling short and stale.

  "I'm not angry at you, Christy," he says and I believe him. I always believe him.

  "About the police, about everything," I say, not wanting to go into detail.

  "I don't want people to think I'm some rapist. You have to tell them the truth," he says.

  "I have, I have." I've told the police it wasn't Glen, but they don't believe me. They won't believe me until I reveal the truth behind their evidence. "But don't you understand how humiliating the truth is?"

  "I'm sorry about that night, about what happened," he says, as if that is comforting.

  "That's not what hurts," I confess and unclench my jaw. "Why don't you like me?"

  "I'm sorry, Christy; I like you, but I just want to be friends," he says as gently as possible.

  I close my eyes tight, holding back tears. Glen doesn't love me and never will. "I don't blame you. Who could love someone as ugly—"

  "It's not you, Christy. Don't you know how funny and smart and beautiful you are?"

  Then he stops speaking, and my heart stops beating. I wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes, then he takes my chin in his hand. I stare him down and I realize he might be telling the truth. I know now Glen will never kiss me, and I doubt if Terrell ever will, but Glen saying these words delights me. I'm strangely at peace from the damage of his final rejection.

  "Thank you," I say as he releases my head from his hand and lets my soul soar. I wish this moment was recorded for Terrell to know he was right: beauty supplies. "But why, then?"

  "Can I trust you?" Glen asks, and agreeing with him comes instantly and instinctively.

  "Always."

  "I don't want you to think that I didn't, you know, because it's not about anything about you, it's me," he says. He looks around the mostly empty library, then leans across the table, so he's almost whispering in my ear. He lets out a sigh, like a weight lifting from his chest. "Christy, I'm gay."

  21

  february 12 , senior year

  "I want you to knock this crap off!"

  Tommy tells me that the second that Anne heads outside to take a call from her dad. We're sitting in a booth at Angelo's. I'm hoping that Terrell will somehow just show up.

  "What do you mean?" I say, sounding stupid, but wishing I was stoned.

  "Working for Ryan and selling his shit at school," he says forcefully.

  I'm more pissed at Anne for telling than Tommy for talking. I know Tommy didn't learn about this from Ryan, since they exchange only angry glares, not words. "But—"

  "I'm serious; you don't want to end up inside," he says speaking from experience.

  "I'm not a dealer," I might as well confess, since he knows. "I sell to Anne, Glen, and a few other people, that's it. I sell to the good kids who are afraid to buy from the bad kids."

  "Like you," he says, pointing his fork in my direction. What he doesn't know, of course, is I've tried to quit before. But when Ryan points his anger in my direction, he might just as well have a gun to my head or scissors to my throat. I can't get myself free of this chain either.

  "I'm not like one of those people," I say, thinking of Ryan's hangers-on.

  "Neither was I, but look what happened to me," Tommy says, looking over his shoulder making sure that Anne remains in the dark.

  "Wrong place, wrong time," I say.

  "Yes and no," he replies. "But I still made a choice to be in that place. That was my choice. If you blame everything on fate, then you're not responsible for anything."

  "When did you get righteous?" Tommy was never like Robert, but he wasn't any angel.

  "When I spent nine months living, eating, and going to school with the future Roberts of the world," Tommy says. "I ain't ever going back. It is the worst place in the world."

  "How did you get through it?" I ask.

  "I read, then read some more," Tommy says. "I avoided trouble and made sure that trouble never found me. And I prayed to God for strength. But I'm not perfect, you know."

  "What do you mean?" I ask.

  "I never had trouble with the other residents. I took their crap but it didn't stick, and they let me go my own way," Tommy says, talking faster now, not just to tell his story before Anne gets back, but because I think he just needs to tell it. Telling the story makes it real, not just a story. "But some of the staff, that's something else."

  "Tell me, Anne's not coming back soon," I tell Tommy. "She's gotta argue with her father for at least twenty minutes every day about something or even nothing. You'll learn."

  Tommy takes a deep breath, then speaks. "When I first came to the facility, I was scared. I wasn't catching on to what was expected of me, I'll follow the rules, I just have to know what they are. But this one dried-up CO always hassled me, I don't even know what for, and I finally yelled at him: 'Just because I'm in a cage, doesn't mean you have to treat me like an animal.'"

  "What happened?"

  "After that, he owned me because he knew he'd got to me. He'd see me in the hall and make sure to hassle me in front of the others. One time I was running late for class, he stuck his leg out and tripped me, but acted like it was an accident. He never laughed, he just smirked."

  "How terrible," I say, thinking instantly of Ryan's perma-smirk.

  "Then one day, I just didn't let him get to me anymore. I'd had enough. I can't say why or what caused it, but I said to myself, this son of a bitch doesn't own me. And he saw that in my face the next time he tried something on me. I told him that, and after that he left me alone."

  "That's great," I say.

  "Except for the kid he started picking on instead of me," Tommy says.

  "That's not your fault."

  "That doesn't mean I don't feel guilty about it," he says. "And the kid who he picked was like me, from the burbs, not from the hood, so he learned the same lesson the same hard way."

  "What lesson is that?" I ask

  "I tell you, Christy, one thing I learned inside is that if you're poor, young, and live in Flint, you just get used to people in uniforms, suits and ties, and other costumes pushing you around," Tommy says. "And I don't want that for you."

  "So," I whisper.

  "Stop slinging for Ryan," he says again.

  "But it's nothing. Why would the cops even bother to—"

  "Because that's how it works. They know the whole thing is a pyramid. They start at the bottom, bust the smaller dealers or the big users, then get them to snitch on somebody else to get less time. Even Ryan, he's small time, a punk. He'd snitch in a second to avoid hard time."

  "Okay," I say, realizing Tommy is becoming a tail light in my life. "But you tell him."

  Tommy laughs, but it's cut short when he sees Anne returning to the table. "No, it's up to you to tell him. If you don't tell him, then you'll never get free of it."

  I think about Brutus, then touch the tattoo on my ankle, and grab my coat.

  "Where you going?" Anne says.

  "Home," I say strongly. Not just because I don't want to be a third wheel, but because I want to ride free. Maybe this tail light I can chase, and it will actually get me someplace. I say my polite good-byes, zip up my coat, and walk outside to catch a southbound bus.

  "Bitch, where's my money?" Ryan shouts at me almost the minute I com
e in the door.

  He stands at the door of my room, blocking out the light from the hallway. Bree is with Aunt Dee, while Mama and Mitchell are both working tonight.

  I pull the bills from my jeans. I put my hand out. He takes the cash, counts it quickly, but his touch lingers, like a snail's slime. "You're light."

  I've been cutting into his profit since Glen confided in me. While it healed my rejected heart, carrying a secret that large is one heavy stone. "Too bad, Ryan, that's all I got."

  That laugh, that stinky smelly laugh oozes across the hall. "Too bad for you."

  "I'm not dealing at school anymore," I say, taking baby steps at age eighteen.

  "Little girl, you do what I tell you," he says, a step closer now.

  "I'm afraid I'll get caught, get kicked out of school," I counter, hiding Tommy's role.

  "You act all stuck up and smart like you're too good for us," he says, and I can taste his hot breath from a distance. I'm silent, my chewed tongue and rough bottom lip trap in words. "Ugly bitches like you are good for three things. You can sling shit, steal stuff, or suck dick."

  I turn around and slap his face. As he tries to wipe my hand print away, laughing as I stumble past him, finding my lost speed again. As I run toward the bridge, I don't hear the sound of cars, but of the smack of flesh, and it reminds me of when Anne and I ran away. I use the sting of Ryan's words to fight through my meds and remember how I learned two years ago that running away is easy; staying away is the hard part.

  sophomore year, february

  "I'm sick of this!"

  Anne's fuming mad at her father for telling us, for what he said was the hundredth time but I only counted ten, to be quiet and go to sleep. Anne and I are spending the evening of Valentine's Day at her house rather than at the Friday school dance or out on a date. It's past midnight when we finally turn off the lights.