Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,94

my anonymity. Up ahead I see a huge rectangle of glass with a neon Miller sign hanging in the middle, a cavelike interior beyond. Without a thought I swing open the door and step into the comforting dark of a neighborhood dive. Not my neighborhood, and the patrons can tell, but they merely look up, note my presence, and look back to their tables and drinks and video Keno.

I seek out a corner table. The middle-aged waitress recognizes my silence as a fortress. She bothers me as little as possible, no doubt well versed in the body language of those who’d like to get quietly drunk. As it’s afternoon, I go with my standard afternoon drink and order a beer on tap. There’s a college football game on a small TV in the corner. I don’t know who’s playing, and I don’t care.

The beer glass is cold in my hand. The bubbles pop against my nose. It’s more bitter than I remember, and for a moment my stomach heaves, No, not again, but soon settles down to the inevitability of it, the familiarity of it. Wake up, liver. Back to work.

I lose myself in the football game. I used to watch with Billy all the time, and he’d explain offsides and downs. I pick a team to root for based on the color of uniform, to keep myself interested, so I don’t think too much.

But the game ends, and my cash runs out. It’s getting dark already.

I should call Tony. I could borrow a phone, and it’s a local call. But I feel myself falling away from him, too, because he would be disappointed in me. Drinking twice in two days, and this time I’ve got no one to blame.

So I walk some more, not knowing how long, struck that it doesn’t matter now. Kid bedtimes, homework routines, band practices, all of it has winked out of my life at once. It’s only me again, and no one cares when I do anything.

Pondering this, I unfasten my watch and drop it in the snow.

I investigate the details of my surroundings as if I’ve never seen them before, as if I haven’t cycled past these places a hundred times. But everything looks different when you’re walking. Closer. Real.

I start to consider where to spend the night. I figure there’s room on my credit card for a hotel room, if I don’t go anywhere fancy. But that would require talking to people. I don’t want people now. I wonder about overpasses and cardboard boxes. I remember learning in Girl Scouts when I was a kid how if caught in the elements you could dig a trench in the snow and be actually quite warm.

The beer has made me sleepy, and the cold has been so constant now I don’t feel it anymore.

From the corner of my eye, I notice a car trailing me. I’m down a side street, I realize. I don’t know which street. I haven’t been paying attention.

The car pulls almost even with me, and my heart seizes up. The rest of me is unplugged, like someone’s cut a cord between my animal self, which wants to preserve my safety, and my higher brain, which is only mildly interested.

I hear the crunch of a door swing open and my feet take over, forcing me to a sloppy, numb, tipsy run.

“Casey!”

I turn before I think better of it, and it’s Michael. It’s his car, with the door open.

He holds out a hand, beseeching. I just stare at him.

“Please, it’s at least warm in the car.”

I shrug and allow my feet to carry me back to the car, though the rest of my soul feels banished and locked away, somewhere far from here.

Chapter 43

Michael

Casey didn’t get the heavy house door closed all the way, and it swings back open, revealing a sliver of white outdoors, letting in tendrils of cold. I shove the door closed, hard, and the sound punctures the quiet in the wake of her departure.

The color has come back to Jewel’s face, and I’m sickened with myself, suddenly, that Casey saved her life, actually saved her, and all I did was criticize.

“See what you all did!” shouts Dylan. I startle at this. “You drove her away!”

“And good riddance!” retorts Angel. “You should have seen what she wrote in her diary about me. All the while pretending to like me just because of Dad and secretly hating me. I expect that kind of crap at school, but not from a