winter. Some kind of lavender soap with little rough things sticking out of it. Girl shaving cream and a pink gummy razor. I use them all: I want to. I even shave my face while I’m in the shower, lathering up with the flowery shaving cream, cutting myself all over.
I don’t know how long I’m in there.
I smell like a girl when I emerge. The bathroom is full of steam. I wrap a towel around my waist, not wanting to get back into my badsmelling clothes.
I crack open the door. Lindsay’s lying on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling.
Linds, I say. For some reason I’m whispering. Do you have any clothes I can borrow?
For a minute she blanks. Then she says, Hang on, and leaves the room.
I come out of the bathroom. Just to be in her room without her. Just to pretend, for a moment, that I can be here whenever I like.
When she comes back she’s holding a T-shirt that says PELLS LANDING HIGH SCHOOL and sweatpants. They are boys’ clothes. But they are not mine. My stomach lurches at the thought that they might be Matt Barnaby’s, and I almost say his name, but I don’t.
Instead I say, Whose are these?
My brother’s, she says.
I have nothing to say to this. I want to touch her but I can’t.
You shaved, she says. You’re all cut up.
I touch my cheek and my fingers come away bloody.
Lindsay looks at the rest of me, standing there in her parents’ towel. Oh my God, she says, you’re so skinny.
I feel very embarrassed when she says this. I cover my skinny chest with my arms.
Here, says Lindsay, and hands me her dead brother’s clothing.
I go back into the bathroom to put it on. It only seems right. The pants are too big at the waist and too short and for the first time I imagine Lindsay’s brother as a person.
I sit on the bed. Lindsay sits on the bed. I feel warm and relaxed. I feel safe with her.
Tell me, Lindsay says, in a voice that sounds tired of asking.
So I do, and it feels like the reversal of a hundred-year-long spell. It feels like waking up. It feels like the shower did. I lie down on my side, facing her, and she lies down on her side. Facing me. When I cry my nose runs onto her comforter and I wipe it on the back of my wrist. Lindsay touches me again: a hand on my upper arm, a squeeze.
•
When I am done, I turn over, toward the wall, so she can’t see my face. I bring my knees up to my chest and I hold them.
Why didn’t you tell me before? asks Lindsay.
Because I didn’t want her to think of me as a bad kid. Because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. Because I was embarrassed. Because I wanted to be part of a club that she was in. Because I wanted her parents to like me. Because I didn’t want her to think I was complicated, that I would burden her.
I say, I don’t know.
What are you going to do? asks Lindsay.
I don’t know, I say again to the wall.
I can’t take care of you, she says. I’m too young.
I know this. I knew it to be true before I told her. But something in me hoped she would adopt me she and her parents, together, would decide that I was too good and worthy to be alone in the world, and they would take me in, and all of us could take a family photograph. I could be in the next photo on their wall. I could play soccer with her sisters in the yard. I could fix things around the house.
I know, I say to Lindsay.
Let’s talk to my dad, she says, and I say, No way.
It’s his job, says Lindsay. His whole job is helping students.
She gets a look on her face like she is protecting her family’s honor, so I say OK, maybe.
Good, she says. When he gets home.
Maybe, I say again.
What about college? she asks.
I’m not smart enough, I say. I know it is a self-pitying thing to say.
But Lindsay doesn’t object. Well, she says. What about baseball?
I have a private practice with a scout for the Mets, I say, a little proudly. But after I say it I despair.
When?
Next week, I say.
Lindsay looks at me pointedly.
When’s the last time you threw a baseball? she asks.
I shrug. I’ve been playing football