Push(96)

The last box contains some stuff from the desk I had in my bedroom. A mug I used to keep my pencils in, a Mickey Mouse stapler, a pink desk lamp, a flowered plastic desk set. There is a framed photograph of me and my friend Susan on a summer vacation at the beach. Her family invited me to come with them the summer before our junior year, and it was one of the few times that Michael didn’t interfere. There are also a couple of items from the corkboard that used to hang in my room. Ticket stubs, one or two postcards from my mother, and the Simpsons badges I collected in middle school. In the bottom of the box, in a small silk bag, is a gold bracelet that Peter gave me at our high school graduation. He told me he had planned to give it to me on prom night, but he never had the chance. I never wore the bracelet because it was inscribed with “E.S. + P.B. = <3.” It freaked me out to see the sideways heart and know that Peter might have loved me. Especially because I didn’t love him back.

David thoughtfully watches me sort through everything, asking an occasional question and offering a supportive comment whenever he thinks it’s necessary. I toss what I don’t want into a box and pack the items I do want into another. I tuck the “keeper” box back into the closet as David leaves the room and comes back holding the last two beers from the kitchen. I joke that I wish it was whisky instead. He grins and tells me to call in an order for Chinese. He’ll stop at the liquor store down the street on his way back from picking up the food.

“Now that is an exceptional idea,” I say with a smile, and he is out the apartment door before I can say thanks.

The Kooks were followed by the Crash Kings long ago, and when that album ended, David’s iPhone started playing a band that I never heard before. I pick up his phone to call in the food order. I’m about to dial when I see that the last number David called is still listed on the call screen. 241-375-2229. My stomach drops. It was dialed last night at 11:36, when I was already asleep. And it ended at 11:42. A six-minute phone call.

I stare at the number. It is the number that I had to memorize halfway through the second grade. It is the number that Peter Beckman and Bobby Sarson dialed over and over again. It is the number that I wrote on all of my college applications. It is the number that the police dialed to tell Michael about my mom’s car accident.

What the fuck.





Chapter Thirty-Six

I stare down at the numbers on David’s phone, and I can feel the blood rush into my head. My heart is pounding in my ears, and my skin is starting to bristle and burn. I suck air in through my nose, trying to keep myself from going ballistic, but I can feel the anger and confusion filling every muscle in my body. I can feel myself losing control. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my reflection in the bedroom mirror¸ and I nearly toss the phone into my own face, shattering it into a million shards of glass. But instead, I close my eyes and breathe, trying to think of a reason why David would spend six minutes on a phone call to a dead man’s house while I slept. I am trying to regain my composure. Trying to placate my enraged mind with a reason.

It isn’t working. I need a release. I need a way to make it stop. I can’t bring myself to think of a reason until I find a way to tamp down my anger. Then I can be rational.

I look around the room searching for my release. A split second later I have found an aggressive end to my fury. David’s phone drops to the floor, and a box of my childhood discards flies through my bedroom window, breaking the glass and scattering it across the bed and floor. I scream out a low, hollow noise as the box hits the window, and then I ball my hands into fists. I strike myself, landing two stiff blows on my thighs. I feel the surge of anger pushing its way into the muscles there. And then I am still. I am lighter now. Now I can think.

I reach down to pick up David’s phone, and before I can stop myself, my finger presses the call log list. I scroll through the entries, looking at all the phone calls David has made over the past few weeks. I see lots of numbers that I don’t recognize, along with several familiar names. Matt, Saz, John, Brad, Carl, Jake from the tattoo shop, and a handful of others are listed there. And then I see Michael’s number again. David called him a few weeks ago. On a Tuesday afternoon. It was the same day that David took me to poker. The same day that Matt held my hair over the toilet. And it was the day before Michael’s head met a baseball bat.

I notice that before that four-minute call to Michael, David made a call to 411 information. And after the call to Michael, another 241 number is listed. I recognize it immediately—Ricky’s cell. I can see David calling Michael to rip him a new one about sending me the dog tags, but why the fuck would he call Ricky? And how did he get Ricky’s number? From Michael? Maybe that’s why he called Michael—not to chew him out, but rather to get in touch with Ricky. But why? I don’t get it.