The Words We Keep

It takes all of two seconds to slip out of my body. It happens so fast, I don’t even get a chance to feel the weight of the moment—the way my dad is looking at me and somehow not looking at me, the way Porter scowls at me, his face drawn tight, his mouth a perfect little sphincter in the middle of his face.

But I’m above it now. Floating somewhere near the ceiling, watching the play unfold beneath me.

Camera pans toward Porter, his mouth shaped like a butthole.

PORTER

Blah, blah, blah…trespassing…unacceptable…misdemeanor.

DAD

(Looking disappointed. Looking tired. Looking resigned.)

I don’t know what to say.

PORTER

What do you have to say, Lily?

DISAPPOINTING DAUGHTER

(Who is not really Lily because Lily is not here right now. Lily has left the body. Please leave a message at the beep.)

We didn’t do it.

PORTER

Let me remind you that I have personally reviewed the security tapes, and while we can’t identify last night’s spray-painters, we can clearly identify you trespassing several weeks ago. Stealing art supplies. Vandalizing the lobby.

DISAPPOINTING DAUGHTER

No. No. We used paper.

PORTER

The school’s paper.

(Gifford and Friedman enter.)

FRIEDMAN

They’re artists. They took a risk.

GIFFORD

Blame us, not them.

PORTER

(Butthole mouth pinching tighter.)

You persuaded me once, but it’s gone too far. Just like I said it would. Someone has to be punished, or who knows where it will stop.

DISAPPOINTING DAUGHTER

We. Didn’t. Do. The. Spray-paint.

DAD

Lily. Just stop.

PORTER

Personal responsibility…blah, blah, blah…good academic record…shame to see one mistake knock you off track…two-day suspension.

DAD

(Looking/not looking at Disappointing Daughter.)

I can assure you this won’t happen again.

PORTER

I should hope not.

(Wags finger.)

You should consider yourself lucky, young lady. Your partner in crime didn’t get off so easy.

I slam back into my body.

“Wait, what? What did you do to Micah?”

“We didn’t do anything to Micah,” Porter says. “He did this to himself. Told us how all of this was his idea.”

“No, no, that’s not true,” I say as panic wells in my throat. Moisture pricks my eyes. “I had the idea first. I was the—”

Porter holds up his hand, dismissing me.

“No need to be heroic, Ms. Larkin. Micah has told us everything, and we’ve turned it over to the police.”

“The police?”

“Trespassing is a misdemeanor.”

“But that’s not fair—

“Lily,” Dad says, a warning in his voice. “Don’t push it.”

“Listen to your father,” Porter says. “You and your sister should consider yourselves lucky that he has convinced us to chalk all this up to a youthful indiscretion.”

“But Micah—”

“Mr. Mendez,” Porter says, cutting me off, “has a pattern of behavior. This isn’t the first trouble he’s been in, and it won’t be the last. He will be far better off somewhere more equipped to deal with his needs.”

Porter dismisses us with a wave of his hand. Dad thanks him. Thanks him. I focus all my energy on not crawling across Porter’s desk and socking him right in his butthole lips.

In the hall, Micah walks toward his locker, the school security officer escorting him, a crowd of students gathered round, watching, gawking. Damon’s got his cell phone up, filming every second. I start toward Micah, but Dad grabs my arm.

“No.”

I yank my arm free and run toward him anyway.

“Tell them the truth, Micah.” My voice is strangled and strange. “Tell them I was the one who wanted to do it.”

“They’ve made up their minds.” He won’t look at me. “About this. About me.”

He shrugs, and the gesture is so defeated, so un-Micah, that I want to shake him, make him stop this. But before I can, he reaches his locker, where someone has taped a picture of a man with the same black bushy hair and gentle expression from the photo in Micah’s kitchen. And a headline: cliff closed after man jumps to his death.

Below, in magnetic poetry letters:

Like father, like son.

My throat pinches almost shut. The man on the cliff. Micah’s obsession with going there. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Micah—”

He shrugs me off, rips the paper down, crumples it in his fist, and, without a second’s hesitation, turns on his heel, his arm smashing forward into Damon’s smirking face. Damon’s hand flies to his jaw, and then he’s barreling toward Micah and they’re pushing against each other until Micah has Damon up against the locker, and he’s hitting him, hitting him, hitting him, and a girl screams and the security guard is yelling at everyone to “Step back, right now!” and he’s grappling for Micah’s hands and clicking handcuffs into place.

Damon sucker punches Micah in the face before the officer yanks Micah away. Micah’s nose is bleeding as the security guard walks him down the hall, and our classmates point and laugh and hold up phones as witnesses. Manic Micah at it again!

My dad pulls me away from the blood on the floor, and the officer pulls Micah away

away

away.

And Sam is there, staring with the rest of them, like she has no idea who I am anymore, and a janitor is plucking the magnetic poetry off the lockers as we walk out. He plinks them, word by word, into a trash can.

—

Dad drives me home in unbearable silence. I wish he’d yell. Say something. Anything. Give me a chance to defend myself. After the longest drive in the history of driving, he pulls into the garage, shuts off the engine, and leans back against the headrest.

“I expect this from Alice. Not from you.”

He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not supposed to make his eyes squint like that, make his forehead wrinkle up as he tries to rub out all the stress.

“Because you expect me to be perfect.”

“I never asked you to be perfect, Lily.”

“You didn’t have to ask!” I’m embarrassed by the waver in my voice, by the emotions bubbling to the surface. “I’m the good girl. Because you need me to be. But I’m not perfect. I’m—”

broken

terrified

covered in scars

“What? You’re what?” he says.

“I’m tired.”

“I’m tired, too,” he says, closing his eyes with a massive sigh, as if he can blow all this away. Maybe me, too, while he’s getting rid of stuff. “And the fact that you dragged Alice into this with you. When you know it’s the last thing she needs.”

I don’t tell him that breaking into the school was Alice’s idea. Alice, with her wild eyes and wilder ideas. He doesn’t want to hear my excuses.

“It’s just not like you, Lily. Keeping secrets from me,” he says. “Obviously, you won’t be seeing that boy anymore.”

“This wasn’t his fault.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve worked too hard to throw everything away for someone like that.”

“Someone like that? You mean with black hair? Brown eyes?” My voice fills the car. “Or do you mean someone who went to Fairview, because in that case, your daughter is someone like that, too.”

“Your sister and that boy are not the same,” he says, his voice loud in the car now.

“But what if they are? And what if I’m like them, too? Are you going to send me away? Isn’t that your solution—ship off the problem and hope it comes back fixed so you don’t have to deal with it?”

I’ve gone too far. I know it the millisecond the words leave my lips. I wish I could stuff them back in, but I can’t, just like I can’t wipe off the look of shock/disappointment/hurt on Dad’s face. He opens his car door and gets out, but leans in before he leaves.

“Who are you right now?”

“I guess that’s the million-dollar question!” I yell, but he doesn’t hear me before he slams the door, leaving me alone with a lifetime of words left unsaid.

He doesn’t really want the answer.

And I guess, deep down, neither do I.