Be Ready for the Lightning, page 4
After that first incident, I tended to him with Tylenol and cold compresses and Epsom salts and ginger ale and many other things that worked not much in the short run and not at all in the long run.
“I could tell them what happened,” I said, sitting on the edge of his bed with its requisite blue plaid boy-comforter. The idea of it, the telling, made my joints feel like hot, heavy metal. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to say it out loud. I didn’t even know what I would say. But Conrad being expelled was so huge, it blocked out the sun; it was unthinkable. “They couldn’t expel you, if they knew you were trying to help me.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say anything.”
“But you can’t let them—”
“I was gonna screw things up at some point,” he said. He put his hand on top of mine, on the cold cloth I’d put on his forehead, where a bruise was forming, and pressed down into his own sore head. “At least this way, there was a point to it,” he said. “Promise me you won’t say anything.”
I could hardly look at him. I felt like I’d stolen something from him, that I was in his debt in a way I’d never be able to pay back, even though I hadn’t asked him to do anything. Hadn’t even wanted it. But I was relieved to be let off the hook, to not have to talk, to let it slide away into the past and wipe it away.
I looked at his hand on top of mine and thought, I am a coward.
“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
—
Our parents murmured to each other at night, when they thought I was asleep, about how tender-hearted I was, how lucky they were that their second child was so mild and kind. I heard them when I walked sock-footed to the kitchen to put away the things I’d used to look after Conrad. The first few times, my mother protested, said she wanted to do it herself. But Conrad said, “It’s okay, Mom. Veda can do it,” and after awhile, she stopped asking.
After that, it was easier for Conrad and me to get into a routine, to hide the worst of his cuts and bruises from them. We’d head to the basement to “play video games” or “watch Buffy,” and in the grim glow of the fluorescent-tube ceiling lights—like sunlight on a dead planet—I’d unearth the bag of supplies we kept under the old floral couch. It was an odd tradition, but it was ours, and even when he was wincing under the iodine, there was an impishness to Conrad, to his enjoyment of the trick we were pulling off. He kept my spirits up about his own pain, and if I let it slip, and he saw my lip tremble, he’d pinch it and smile, saying, “I saw that.”
We were close then, closer than Annie and Al, or my other friends at school and their brothers, and I thought what a good brother and sister we were—I was vain about it. Conrad was a boy, he was older, he was handsome; he looked like our mother, and I didn’t. He was removed from me in so many ways, but all that was erased, as I wielded those Band-Aids and cold washcloths. Is it strange to say I was never more sure of being loved than I was just then? I knew what Conrad did. I knew there might be another sister or a mother or father somewhere else at that same moment, patching up another boy or man because of Conrad. When I tended to him though, the universe shrank to just the two of us. A small room where I was both useful and safe.
But if in those moments Conrad went upstairs to get a drink or to use the bathroom and left me alone down there, the basement became cold again, a dour half-renovated space full of rejected furniture, and I became a girl with blood under her fingernails and hands that stank of disinfectant.
FOUR
The electricity in the cabin came back on by the time we got back from breakfast in town on Saturday, so our second night was easier. We had another bonfire, even though we could have cooked inside, and Al had managed to buy some beer in town. We’d already drunk everything we’d scavenged from home.
We played poker with dimes and quarters, and Conrad beat everyone handily. There was a moment between Al and Conrad, after Al was grousing about his bad luck and named his folded pocket cards before the hand was over, but Annie diffused the tension by throwing up in a (mostly empty) bowl of pretzels and needing to be taken care of. Al moved her to the couch, and I sat perched on the back of it, petting Annie’s silky head and offering her sips of water, while she moaned, proud little tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes.
“Don’t let me ruin it, guys,” she said. “Keep playing.”
She eventually passed out, and the boys went out to the beach to smoke a joint. I shook my head when they pantomimed that I should come along. I wanted to be outside with them, but I didn’t want Annie to wake up alone; she hated feeling left out. I laid myself along the length of the couch back, my fingers tangled in her hair. I’d already had my birthday that year, but Annie’s wasn’t until June—she was still fourteen. I hoped that when she woke up, maybe I could tell her about the kiss with Ted the night before. Or not tell her. I wanted to do both, to tell and not tell. I thought I could feel Ted’s body, out on the beach, a hundred feet away. Like there was something that linked us now, stretched pleasantly taut. I thought of Ted passing the joint to Conrad, the paper wet from his mouth, and worried that he would say something. How would Conrad feel about it? His best friend, his little sister. What did that mean in the world of men, of boys?
I knew better than to assume Ted would be my boyfriend, then or anytime in the future—Ted was nobody’s boyfriend—yet I did assume it. I looked at the assumption and thought, Oh my God, how stupid, but I couldn’t excise it. Already my heart was growing fusty and warm, a burrowing, nesting feeling blooming through my body, like I was getting pregnant with my own bad idea. I was laying foolish stitches of the kind nearly impossible to pick out, and a small part of me knew it and felt myself blanch with terror.
“Annie,” I said, massaging my fingers into her slightly greasy scalp. “Annie, are you okay? Wake up.”
Annie stirred slightly, convulsed with a gag that didn’t evolve into vomiting and lay still. “What?”
I brushed a dark shock of hair off her smooth forehead. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I love you,” said Annie. “I love you a universe worth, V. I love you, and I hate beer. I’m never going to drink again.” Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
The next thing I remember was Conrad shaking me gently and stinking of weed, as he walked me down the hall to bed. I was only half-awake, but I wished it was Ted who had slung my arm around his shoulder.
—
We wordlessly agreed to forgo poker on Sunday evening and even cooked inside, spaghetti and jarred sauce and Kraft parmesan cheese with garlic bread. Annie wouldn’t drink, and without her leading the charge, combined with our last-night feeling of melancholy, it was a quiet meal. We lolled around while Ted played his guitar. We played twenty minutes of a game of Monopoly, before we realized half the property cards were missing. Soon defeated, we drifted to bed, the dark circles under our eyes standing out as proud badges.
After everyone was asleep, I slid out of bed without waking Annie and went to the kitchen, where I waited without being sure what I was waiting for. I tried to seem casual, leaning on the tiny laminate counter with one elbow, then the other. The moonlight was strongest there, near the front door. Bright but colourless. Red was black, yellow was white. I thought of black and white movies. Good posture and women who hardly ever spoke, except to say something biting or tragic. I straightened up.
After about half an hour, I had nearly given up.
“Hey.” A dark figure, whispering.
Spit pooled in my mouth, and the muscles in my thighs and ass twitched in a fear response, before my mind caught up. It was Ted.
My jaw unclenched. “Hey,” I said.
“What sort of wicked plans are you hatching out here?” he said. His teenage face looked terribly grown up to me in the uncompromising moonlight.
“World domination, mostly. But maybe the slaughter of innocents, if I’ve got extra time. You know. Standard stuff.”
“A girl with a plan. You’re going places.”
“Am I?”
Ted stood with a sprawling stance, taking up more than his fair share of floor space. I was pigeon-toed and clad in ballerina pink Isotoner slippers that I now regretted packing. Kiddie crap. Uncool.
My feet were planted between Ted’s turned-out bare ones, and suddenly my arms were up over his shoulders, his were around my waist, and his mouth was soft, soft.
The keys to the Hearse hardly made a noise, just a metallic shlick, as Ted dragged them off the dresser that served as a hutch for dishes and an entryway catch-all. He closed his hand around them before they could jingle, and held the door open. As we padded to the car, I could feel the small stones in the patchy grass through my thin slippers.
There was some awkwardness getting ourselves arranged in the back seat. I pulled off the old Expo ’86 T-shirt and the sweatpants that I’d worn as pyjamas, and Ted bent his head, his mouth on my nipple, before pulling away and taking off his own shirt. I grabbed him by the hair and guided him back. I don’t know why I felt like I was in such a hurry, but I did. I leaned my head back against the cool window glass and spread my legs around him. Then we had to untangle to get our underwear off. Ted stroked me, and my body was buzzing; it was in a hurry too. Or it was the hurry. I pulled him to me, into me. It hurt a little, and then there was a problem, and I had to lie down flatter and tilt my pelvis, and then it was good, something better than good. It was like Ted wasn’t even there, or he was intruding on this delicious thing I was doing. It occurred to me to open my eyes then, and with my chin tipped back, I could see through the top of the window above me, to the blurry scattering of stars. I made a noise, and Ted put his hand over my mouth and kissed me, and then I was glad, glad, glad he was there. Wanted him always to be.
Ted pulled out and grabbed his T-shirt, held it to his crotch. He made a small affirmative noise.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“I wasn’t sure if you’re on the pill or anything,” he said. He pulled his boxer shorts back up from where they were caught around his ankles, and I got my underwear back on and pulled it up.
I realized he didn’t know it was my first time. I considered saying something.
What I said was, “That was nice.”
Ted grinned. “Nice? Don’t knock a guy over with positive reviews.” But he took my jaw in his hand, running his thumb over my cheek. “You’re so soft,” he said, and then, as if correcting himself, “You’re beautiful.”
There wasn’t really space to lie down beside each other, so we sat up, and Ted’s arms went around me. He pressed his mouth into my hair.
I said, “Remember the time we came up here for Conrad’s birthday, when we were little, and my dad set off all those fireworks and burned his hand?”
Ted laughed, more at the non sequitur than the memory. “Sure,” he said. “You little weirdo.”
“I think I love this place more than I’ve ever loved a person,” I said, and then I stiffened. That was the wrong thing to say. I should have said I loved him. Or no, that would sound crazy. That would scare him. I should have avoided talking about love altogether. Love was forbidden.
Ted leaned me back so that he could see my face. I closed my eyes, and he placed a kiss between my eyebrows.
“I know just what you mean,” he said. Then, “Come on, sweetie. We should get back inside.”
I closed the door after Ted was inside, so carefully it made no sound save a little click. In the kitchen the dull silver of the sink gleamed.
Annie came padding into the kitchen, barefoot. She looked at Ted, who was bare-chested with his crumpled shirt in his hand, and at me, frozen and obvious.
Her expression was a smile, technically, but there was something in it that I hadn’t seen before. I couldn’t yet know it, because it was Annie’s adult face, momentarily swimming up through the features of a fourteen-year-old beauty.
But all she said was “Come keep me warm, Veda.” And she took me by the hand.
FIVE
“I don’t want anyone to move,” the shooter says, though he can’t be heard over the sudden din of screams that follows the shot. He waves his gun at the people near him, telling them to step back. “Back behind this seat there,” he says, indicating the first forward-facing seat, beside the courtesy seats. “Please. Move there, and then don’t move any more, please. Everyone put their hands on their heads—no hands in pockets or bags. No phones. I’ll explain everything soon. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back. And then away we go. Away we will go. For now, please be good.”
I put my hands on my head like everyone else. People elbow one another by accident, move away, press back together. Someone’s arm knocks me in the back of the head. A horn sounds outside, followed by another, as irritated drivers make their way around the tilted, stationary bus. No part of the driver’s body is visible from where I’m standing then; the force of the bullet has driven him against the window, and he is concealed behind the jutting interior wall of the bus. He. It.
The small woman who had seen the shooter when I did is still sitting close to him, hands in her lap. She is done up much too warmly for the day, in a leopard print coat with a fur hat on her black hair, a large pair of sunglasses perched on her tiny golden nose and a bulky tourist’s bag from Dylan’s Candy Bar discarded at her feet. She is shaking in place, a jerking nodding of her head stuck on repeat. The moustache man reaches past me and pulls the woman back behind the seat the shooter had pointed to. The man picks up her hands and puts them on her head for her. I move too, past the seat we’re supposed to stand behind. I’m sweating and crying but in an incidental, physical way, like an overtired child. My mind is still blank except for an overwhelming fear of pain that feels itself much like pain.
Suddenly the shooter’s voice rings out, deep and loud, an utter mismatch to his sweet face. “Nobody move, please,” he booms, and he raises the gun, steadying his left hand with the right. He is looking at a man who is shoving the emergency window open near the back of the bus. “If you don’t stop,” he says, “I am going to have to shoot these people right now, and that’s not how it works, that’s not how it happens.”
He indicates me, the moustache man, the small woman and the others we are pressed against. “Come away from there,” he says. The man at the window pulls his hands away as if burned. “Come here to me,” says the shooter.
The man, a bald-headed, teamster-looking type, comes down the aisle without hesitation. He says, “Excuse me” in a polite voice, when he brushes by me and the small woman, his K-Way jacket swishing.
The shooter nods at him when he gets close enough, and the man stops, keeping his hands loose at his sides rather than on his head.
“Thank you,” says the shooter. He does not lower his gun. He has a huge backpack on the ground beside him. With one foot, he slides it toward the man. “Open it.”
The man bends down slowly, and for a moment, he does nothing. I don’t blame him; I half-expect the backpack to explode when he opens it, and I wonder how it feels to die in an explosion, whether it will just be like a light switch, or whether I’ll feel my body ripped apart, and at what point do you go into shock and stop feeling pain, or is there no upper limit—does pain just go up and up without ceasing?
There is the buzz of a zipper, and the man straightens up with a metal canister in his hand. “Spray paint?” he says.
“There’s more in the bag. Give one to him and one to her.” He points, indicating the teenage boy and the small woman with the leopard-print dress. “And her”—he points to me—“and you and him.” He points to another man. “But everyone else, you need to stay still. You need to keep your hands on your heads. Please, please listen, because this is just—it’s not the important part, it’s just necessary. We will get through this, and then I can explain everything. Keep your hands on your heads.”
The man hands us the spray paint cans.
The shooter says, “Close the windows and spray them and the back door, all the way up and down. Don’t miss any spots. Don’t try to leave the bus. Don’t make noise. Be careful with the spray paint. Try not to get it all over the place. Try to be neat.”
I’m struggling with the top of the paint can. It has some kind of safety seal, and I can’t figure out how to get it open.
“Goddamn it,” says the moustache man. His kind face is now hard and tense. “Give it here.”
The hiss of spray paint from the others’ cans is already filling the air, and the choking smell of it makes my head swim. The paint is black, and the light of the spring afternoon begins to disappear, the faces in the bus partially shadowed.
As the moustache man takes the paint from my hand, there is a crack so loud and wide it feels like someone boxed my ears.
It’s an explosion, after all. Death, after all. Of course. But no. It’s a shot. I die. But no. The moustache man drops to the floor. He is making a sound.
“Hands on your heads, unless I say so,” says the shooter, almost sadly, and then to me, “Pick up the can.”
The moustache man is on the ground, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. He says in a wet voice, “Tell Angie. Tell Angie not to,” and then he is making the sound again, and then he is not. He is dead, shot for putting his arms down, for trying to open the paint can for me. He is the first dead person I have ever seen.
I hear someone retching farther back. I bend down and pull the can from the moustache man’s hand. I have to pull hard. His eyes are still open, and I have a micro-thought that I should close them. That’s what they do in the movies. But I just take the can and stand up. I look more closely at the plastic cap, turn it the correct way and get it off.
