Chasing Tail Lights Read online

  "You know how people are here," Glen states the obvious. "Southwestern is full of people like Seth who would make my life hell."

  I nod, but stare into Glen's eyes, letting him know he's not off the hook yet. I can understand the comment about Seth. He's still an annoying gnat always buzzing around me, Anne, and Glen. Almost weekly, he'll throw out an insult, make a crude remark, and then just go on his way. None of it hurts, but I certainly won't miss never having to see Seth Lewis again. Glen takes a bite of his veggie sandwich stalling for time.

  "It's too hard," he finally says. "Maybe when I'm in college next year, but not here, not now." Glen looks puzzled when I can't help replacing my usual serious look with a loud laugh.

  "What's so funny?"

  "It's just something Anne used to say to me about you," I offer.

  "I'm sure it was about how immature I was, right?" he smiles when he says it.

  "No, back when I had a crush on you," I start, and then I get tense thinking about the past tense. I probably still have a crush on Glen, but the fact that he can't respond no longer angers me. Still, I can't help wondering why I always want what I'll never have.

  "You couldn't have known," Glen says softly.

  "I just didn't know how to tell you how I felt," I say, looking outside at the melting snow. "Whenever I would come up with some excuse not to talk to you, Anne would say, 'If not now, then when?' So I just wonder why you won't come out to people right here, right now."

  "You don't understand, Christy," he says. "You don't know what it's like to feel different like this, and then to let other people know it. A tattoo and couple of piercings isn't the same."

  "If not now, then when?" I repeat, then the sound of chips crunching and pop swallowing fills the silence I've created.

  "Maybe," he mumbles, then picks up the script for the play The Miracle Worker. For the first time, Glen isn't acting in the play. Mr. McDonald has Glen directing under his supervision. I open my book, Girl, Interrupted, and escape into it as the clock counts down the rest of lunch until Anne comes up behind me.

  "Speedy, can we talk?" Anne says. I motion for her to sit down, but she's still standing, her arms wrapped around herself like she's trying to hold in her guts. She's got her new hat, a denim engineer's cap, pulled down over her eyes, but I can still see the black mascara running down her face.

  "Catch you later," Glen calls out as he exits toward the stage area.

  "What's wrong?" I ask. She takes off her big black frames hiding her small crying eyes.

  Anne slumps down on the floor, her back against the wall. She takes a tissue out of her purse, then wipes her eyes slowly. "My dad."

  "I thought you were talking to Tommy," I say stupidly.

  "I was, he's so great and understanding but," Anne says and I just let her hang out. She pulls out another tissue, blows her nose, and then lifts the cap away from her eyes. "I told my dad again last night that I wanted to quit my job and then we got into this big fight."

  "I'm sorry," I say, still clueless about the source of Anne's constant parental conflicts.

  "He said I couldn't quit under any circumstances," she says, her words falling on top of each other. "But it gets worse. My dad thinks that I won't go to Northwestern because of Tommy."

  I've got nothing to say to Anne about her parent pocketbook ride to a famous university. I've applied only to Central Michigan, but my acceptance letter never comes. "What's his issue now?"

  "He won't send me to college unless I break up with Tommy." Her voice cracks in pain.

  "Anne, that's terrible," I say, the shock obvious in my voice.

  "I can't afford college unless he pays for it. It isn't fair him holding something over me to get what he wants," Anne says, putting her glasses back on. She may look smart, but I can tell she's never been more confused. "He's got all the power, and I have nothing. Nothing!"

  "Then how can you even consider doing it?" I ask her, my heart breaking for the two of them. "How can you let him control your life like that?"

  Anne doesn't say anything, but the tears in her eyes are mirrors, and my words reflect back on me: how can you let him control your life like that?

  I wonder if Anne's father is like Ryan, just another school yard bully who only picks on those who won't fight back. Their power isn't real. It's something you give them, something you can take back. I'm just starting to realize this now. Ryan's a thug and a thief, but I need to take back the power I've let him steal from me.

  26

  morning, march 18, senior year

  "Stop crying!"

  I want to scream across the crowded bus at the small child who won't be quiet. Her mother is asleep, and the girl is upset. Her curly blond hair isn't combed, her clothes are dirty, and she's got some sort of red rash on her face. I can tell she's scared. She's sitting in the seat next to her mother, her arms reaching out across the inches, but it might as well be miles.

  Scenes like this, or the bag ladies in the front of the bus talking to themselves, or the kids my age in the back playing music through headphones loud enough to shake the windows, are why I hate taking the city bus to school. I use my books as a hard pillow, then try to sleep, like the inattentive mother, but it doesn't come easy. The radios blasting out the ears of my classmates aren't as loud as the ones running through my head. While my meds turn down the volume, there's still a crash of confusion mixed with fear. Looking at, and listening to, this girl cry, burrows into my memory, even as my meds try to dull down all the pain in my past.

  "Hi!" I say, then wave to her. I'm trying to remember what I did to calm Bree when she got upset like this, but that seems like a hundred years ago. The girl continues to cry, and the mother continues to sleep as the bus makes its way over Flint's potholed main streets.

  I see Anne standing by Southwestern's gray front door when I get off the bus. She shows and tells: I listen about the latest sexual remark from her boss, she tells me her dad is standing fast about college, but then she shows off a new bracelet Tommy bought her. She asks a few questions about Terrell, which I dance around, showing fancier moves than any ballerina. I'm so used to keeping my life private, it's hard to share.

  Anne and I agree to meet by her locker before first period, like pre T-times: before Tommy, before Terrell. She heads off toward the library to study calculus; I head off toward the bridge to explore human chemistry. Not to get wasted, but to feel washed in Terrell's words. We've met on the bridge almost every school morning since our first kiss. I'm not chasing strange red tail lights; instead I'm looking into familiar blue gray eyes, although he closes them when we kiss. I admit sometimes I peek just to prove this is real, not a dream.

  I run toward him, knowing Ms. Chapman's in her room and unable to see my acceleration. As I run, the wind blows back my short hair.

  "Hey, Christy," Terrell says, then leans in to kiss me. We're still at lips only. Anne kids me that my "stud" has yet to taste my tongue stud. But Terrell's not pushing me or pushing himself on me. Anne's boss makes more suggestive comments in one night than Terrell's ever made.

  "Good morning," I say after our lips part. It's a Thursday, so it's not a good morning, made worse by the screaming child of the bus and the screaming memory in my brain.

  He looks like he's ready to speak, but instead he kisses me again. My body's striving to feel the right things, the normal things that everybody else must feel. But it's like when your leg falls asleep: you know it's there, but you can't feel anything but numb. Yet each morning with each kiss, each minute we spend together and with every word, smile, and laugh, the tingling grows.

  As we kiss, Terrell slowly slides his hand into my back pocket. I fight the urge to knock his hand away. Instead, I allow him to pull me closer: an unnatural direction in my life. "So, how did people like your picture?" he asks once our lips separate momentarily.

  "Oh, great, just great," I say, turning away, looking down at the passing cars as lies shoot out of my mouth. What am I to tell Terrell: "All tw
o of my friends loved the picture you took." Does he really need to know that he's only one of three people who care about me?

  "I'd like to take more, just for fun," Terrell says, also looking at the traffic. Cars of all colors, sizes, makes, models, and condition share the road below us. "Maybe this weekend, okay?"

  "I have to sit for Breezy on Saturday, so," I mumble.

  "Could I come over? We could take them at your house?" Terrell says, very softly. The time Terrell and I spend away from work and from this bridge is usually spent in his car driving too fast, sitting at Angelo's laughing too loud, or walking around downtown hand in hand. But we don't go to his house, we don't go to my house: our lips touch, but our lives remain separate.

  The bridge shakes as a semitruck passes underneath; my body quivers in response to the truck and Terrell's request. I can't keep making excuses and hiding the truth of my home, my family, and my life from him. I can't push him away, but I'm not ready or able to let him in. Confronted with the ugly truth, I finally cut through the morning silence. "I'm not ready."

  "I know that," he says angrily. He's frustrated, like any normal guy would be with someone like me. I sigh in response, but he doesn't walk away.

  "Thanks, Terrell."

  We kiss again, holding it for the longest time. I can't breathe in all these new feelings.

  "It's time," I say as the kiss breaks and I look down at my watch. "I'll see you—"

  But time stops when he speaks. "Christy, I'm going away to school. I got into Oberlin." His eyes memorize the laces of his hi-tops, while mine start to fill with tears. I want to cry out, but I'm just like that child on the bus: there's no one to hold me. That one person is leaving me.

  "I'm sorry," he says, rubbing his face gently against mine. I pull it together, take a step back, wipe the forming tears away, and speak yet another lie. "It's okay, Terrell, it's what you wanted."

  "I shouldn't have—" he starts to say, but stops when emotions attack his eyes as well.

  The most recent book Ms. Chapman gave me a few days ago, along with her final track recruitment lecture, was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. It's a lie: the heart isn't the hunter, it is the hunted. I've run and hid, only to allow myself to be captured. And now to be killed.

  "I'd applied to schools before we got together, you know that?" Terrell says softly. "I have to get out of here for a while, Christy. I can't explain it. It's something I need to do."

  My eyes focus down on the cars. Next fall, I'll look for a car with Ohio plates, and imagine someone on their way to see Ter­rell and maybe I could catch a ride. "I know, I know."

  "I'll come home weekends, over break, this doesn't mean—" he starts.

  "Could I come with you?" I whisper.

  He takes a deep breath, then readjusts his glasses. "You have to find your own way."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Whatever you want, it's not going to be where I'm going. It's probably not going to be me either." He speaks slowly, like he's practiced his speech. "Christy, your dad was wrong."

  "My dad?"

  "I remember you telling me how your dad said you should chase the tail lights because it will get you someplace safe when you're feeling lost. Well, that's not always true. Maybe that person will take you in the wrong direction, or maybe your life is in a different direction. I can't be that person for you, Christy. You've got to find your own way."

  My hand is shaking: one half wants to slap him, the other wants to intertwine with his fingers. "So, are we breaking up?" I ask, but I want to take it back.

  "No, I want every minute with you I can have." He kisses me deeply with words, not lips.

  I close my eyes and realize: we're not breaking up; you're just setting me free. Maybe like my old dog Brutus, I'll be set free with tragic results. Or maybe I'll find my own safe way.

  "I'll see you after school," Terrell says, the last word lost in our kiss.

  I walk back to school and I merge into the massive herd filing into school as the bell rings.

  Anne's waiting by her locker, but then again, so is Seth Lewis and his hangers-on.

  "Anne, you look so fly!" Seth says as his pals laugh like trained seals.

  "And you are so lame," Anne sighs, then snaps back as she always does whenever Seth speaks to us. Anne's always fought this battle, not me. "Nobody says 'fly' anymore."

  "But you're like a fly," Seth says, then pokes one of his buds in the ribs, while pointing at me. "You just keep buzzing around trash like Christy, and now her cousin I hear."

  The last word is barely out of his mouth before I let my books fall from my hand. I smack him hard in the face. All my anger at that mother on the bus, and the one in my own home; all my anger at men who control us like Ryan and Anne's dad; all my rage against the cage I've allowed myself to live in explodes. He drops his books, then shouts at me: "Shit like you."

  I slap him hard again across the face, the smack of flesh against flesh booms through the hallway. He stops laughing through my blows, then advances toward me, anger filling his eyes. Anne's frozen in place, but hot blood runs in me as I ask him, "Why do you pick on me?"

  "Because you let me, bitch," he hisses. There's a wall of bodies surrounding us, so I can't run. He grabs my wrist and twists it hard. I don't scream out in pain. He pushes against my chest. As I'm falling backward, I'm thinking he finally got to touch my breasts.

  He's almost on top of me. Maybe it is the look in his eye, or the smell—that's it, the smell—that turns up my rage even hotter. I respond to every hurt he's inflicted upon me as I lift one of my powerful legs up straight, delivering a swift and stiff kick into his crotch. He falls down like a chopped tree, which the crowd around us hears clearly. As he's lying on the floor, doubled over, I start kicking him in the face, aiming for his ugly Ryan-like smirky mouth. He manages to get his hands up, but my feet, just as Ms. Chapman told me, are swift and I'm running laps around his greasy fat face with my dirty hi-tops.

  There's a lot of noise in the hallway, but it quiets when campus security finally arrives. I don't resist and let them drag me away toward the school office.

  Minutes pass like hours as I sit in the security office.

  "Christy, what happened?" Ms. Chapman says, running into the room. "Are you okay?"

  I just nod, acting as calm as I possibly can. "What's going to happen to me?"

  She looks over her shoulder at the group gathered in the security office. "I think they'll call the police, that's the school's policy on fights. You'll probably get suspended," she says.

  I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out a bent business card. "Call her then, please."

  "Who is this?" she says looking at the card with Officer Kay's phone number on it.

  "Just call her, please. Do this for me," I say, then take a deep breath.

  "He probably had it coming, didn't he?" Ms. Chapman asks, very quietly, like a secret.

  "Seth?" I ask, then she nods.

  "It's good to stand up for yourself, but you can't do it this way, right?" she says, and I nod as I'm gasping for air. "You're out of shape, Christy, but we'll take care of that real soon."

  "What do you mean?" I ask, but I can tell by the look on her face it's her payback time.

  "Track starts April 4," she says. "You'll use those feet for running, not kicking, deal?"

  27

  afternoon, march 18 , senior year

  "Christy, telt me why you did this."

  Mrs. Grayson sounds confused, and I can't say I blame her. When Office Kay picked me up at school, I gave her my usual avoidance answers. She told me she could take me to jail or to Mrs. Grayson's office. It was up to me to decide. I've decided to talk about something else instead to distract the both of us. Every time I meet with Mrs. Grayson now, I talk too much.

  "I saw myself on the bus this morning," I tell her, my voice numb. I feel lousy about what I did to Seth, but enough was enough. I feel worse about Terrell but mostly feel sorry for myself.

  "What do you
mean by that, Christy?" Her voice is perfectly calm, like her office.

  I'm sitting back on the couch, letting the pretty flowers swallow me as I tell my ugly tale. "When I was going to school this morning, I saw this woman with a crying child. The mom was sleeping, and I could see she was exhausted, but this child was just desperate to be held."

  "I understand," she says. "How did that make you feel?"

  "Angry, sad, and then angry again," I say, as the image of that crying child screamed into my head. It was like staring at a page of some unwritten yet forbidden emotional photo album.

  "And why is that?"

  "I don't know," I say, then put my head down. I realize this was a mistake to tell her, since there's no way I can take the ideas from head and get them to come out of my mouth.

  "Christy, this is important," she says. "Talking to me will help in the healing process."

  I slump back further on the couch. She won't let the past go. "No, it's not about that."

  "You still haven't told me what happened," Mrs. Grayson says, sounding disappointed.

  "I told you and the police the truth. Why can't you believe me? I don't want to talk—"

  "Because your rape kit came back positive," she cuts me off and silence swallows us.

  "I wasn't raped at the party," I slice the truth so thin I can see it bleed. I can see the obvious follow-up question pursed on her lips, but she takes a deep breath and holds back.

  "Fine, then talk about what happened today," she says, then tortures me with silence.

  "Fine," I finally say after four or five minutes, then put my arms across my chest.

  "You know, Christy, Officer Kay went out on a limb for you here," she says.

  "What do you mean?" I ask, my arms unmoved.