“So why are you—” I gestured toward the grass. “Are you one of those guys who thinks women are incapable of using power tools? Or pushing a lawn mower? Or moving a desk? I didn’t ask for your help, and at some point, it starts to feel kind of—”
He killed the engine, leaving enough silence for my last word to carry down the street and resonate through the neighborhood.
“Sexist!” I finished, then repeated under my breath, “I didn’taskfor your help.”
He brought the headphones down around his neck, leaning against the steering wheel of the mower. He really looked better than he had any right to. I reminded myself that the last time I’dseen him, he’d been covered in some mysterious substance that could’ve been blood and had been carrying plastic sheeting into his garage.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I used to mow for your dad, when I did my yard. And then after he... well, I’ve kept doing it. But I should’ve asked you. I’m sorry.”
Lately it felt like my entire life was one big AITA thread and the answer was always yes, it’s me, I’m the asshole.
“No, it’s not—” I rubbed my forehead. “You used to mow my dad’s yard for him?”
“He got tired easily,” Sam said. “This was a few months before the heart attack, and I don’t know if it was connected or not. But he was having a little more trouble getting around.”
I hadn’t known that.
“You can borrow the lawn mower, if you’d rather do it yourself,” he said.
“Not me,” I said. “I’d just as soon let the whole yard become Area X. But if mowing makes you happy, go for it. I’ll stay out of your way.”
There was an opening, maybe, where I could’ve asked what he was up to the night before. I could’ve worked it in real casual, like,By the way, I heard a crash last night from your garage... everything okay? Is there a tip line I should call?But then he was putting his headphones back on and giving me a little salute, and all I could do was disappear into the house.
?NOW THAT Ihad the book I’d been looking for the night before, I should’ve probably sat my ass at my writing desk and typed outanother three thousand words of analysis on Bugliosi’s role as prosecutor and truth teller in the Manson case. But instead, I tossed the books on the kitchen table and headed back to my bedroom.
I opened my closet doors and stood on tiptoe until I saw it. The Converse All Stars shoebox I kept with a bunch of notes from Alison we’d exchanged in eighth grade, all folded in intricate little rectangles with a pull tab to unfurl them for reading. Her bubbly handwriting, almost always in pink or purple or teal gel pen, was immediately familiar.
The first one I grabbed featured a doodle of the lasagna they’d served at lunch that day. I’d been weirdly obsessed with that lasagna, I remembered now. I used to pay extra to get a second one and take it home to reheat for dinner. That year, I’d been making a lot of Easy Mac and tuna sandwiches for me and Conner. It was funny how you forgot all about that kind of thing, until you saw a sparkly pink doodle of a steaming square of lasagna, and it all came flooding back.
You HAVE TO ask your mom if you can come to the movies Friday night. Stephen is going to be there. I know you said you didn’t like him anymore, but...
I unfolded another one, which featured large bubble letters taking up six whole lines, colored in rainbow stripes.I’M BORED!!!!
Another one:You ask the most morbid would you rather questions lol. I guess I’d pick drowning, too. I think it’s faster than fire?
And another:Sorry I didn’t call you back. My mom wanted to watch Friends together again. You ever seen the one where Joey puts on all Chandler’s clothes? So funny!
I shoved the notes back in the box without bothering to fold them all back up. Alison and I had the same science class, which was where we’d done most of our clandestine correspondence. Just handling the paper pulled me back to that classroom—the black Formica tables where we sat in groups of four, the chemical smell that never went away, the glare from the fluorescent lights on Mr.Ford’s bald head.
For the first few years after my mom and I moved out, we hadn’t gone too far. We’d stayed in the county, just in an apartment farther east. When I went back to my dad’s every other weekend, it took us only twenty-five minutes to get there.
Still, twenty-five minutes could be the difference between best friends forever and barely acquaintances when you didn’t drive yet. Alison and I had done our best to stay in touch, mostly by texting or through the phone, and I tried to see her in person when I could. But it wasn’t the same.
I also always had the feeling that her parents didn’t like her hanging out with me as much once my parents got divorced. Alison’s parents had doted on her—I don’t know if it was an only-child thing, or an adopted-child thing, or simply the right combination of neurotic parents with a child who never gave them any actual trouble. But they were very protective. They didn’t like Alison watching Disney Channel shows because they said that there weren’t strong enough parental figures in them.
And then there had been the Incident.
I’d been spending the weekend at my dad’s. Pretty much that meant I was holed up in my room, switching between fan fiction and Murderpedia tabs while I messaged back and forth withAlison. I didn’t even know how it had come up, but I’d made some joke about how I was going to swallow a bottle of pills.
Obviously, I know now that it’s really insensitive and shitty to joke about something like that. But at the time, I’d meant it as a dramatic way to say I was bored, or restless, or sick of something. It definitely hadn’t been an actualplan.
But I guessed something made Alison take it that way. She called my mom, my mom called my dad, and not long after that I’d convinced my mom that maybe I didn’t need to go over to my dad’s twice a month, or even at all.
I shouldn’t have made the joke. I knew that. And Alison had been trying to be a good friend. But I couldn’t help but be angry at the way she’d reacted—the way she’doverreacted, in my mind—and the sequence of events it had set in motion. Maybe that wasn’t fair. It didn’t change the way I’d felt then.
I closed the box and put it back up on the closet shelf. I’d look through it later, when I went through the room to clean it out. For now, I didn’t have the energy to excavate any more of the past.
FIVE