What Remains of Me Page 16

  “I could have paid,” Jimmy said. “Or worked it out with a bondsman.”

  Kelly took a breath, that word swirling in her newly clear head. Bondsman. She’d been arrested. She’d spent three hours in a holding cell for women with Bellamy and some crazy prostitute, both of them laughing their heads off over nothing while Kelly tried not to scream about everything coming alive, and now she had a criminal record. That part was real. “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will I have to . . . like . . . go to trial?”

  “Not if John McFadden can help it.”

  She looked at him. “Do you know John McFadden?”

  “I worked on a few of his films back in the old days,” he said. “I wasn’t in the union yet and he was cheap as all get-out. Still is, I’m sure.”

  “But . . . how would he make it so I don’t go to trial?”

  “People like McFadden can make things go away.” He said it in as certain a way as Kelly had ever heard him say anything. She didn’t want to ask why, or how he knew. She wasn’t sure she cared. “That’s good,” she said.

  He stared straight out through the windshield, didn’t look at her. “It can be,” he said. “Sometimes.”

  KELLY WAS ASLEEP, COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING IN HER DREAMS, WHEN the car jerked to the right, jolting her into the passenger-side door. Her head smacked the window. “You okay?” Jimmy said it loudly, over a blaring truck horn.

  “What happened?”

  “I nodded off for a few seconds.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It’s late.”

  Kelly touched her fastened seat belt, her breath quick and shallow.

  “It’s late,” he said again, hands trembling on the wheel.

  “Okay.” Kelly rubbed her eyes. “That’s okay.” She looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was late—close to 2:00 A.M. on a school night. And, seeing the way she’d spent her supposed school day, there was no way she’d get away with ditching again tomorrow. She thought of Mr. Hansen’s science class, Mrs. Parks’s homeroom. She thought of the smirking cheerleaders with their swishy ponytails, the strong, jocky boys with their ski tans and varsity jackets, legs spread wide in their seats. All of them seemed like characters from a dream she’d had a long time ago, less real even than breathing cell bars or parking lines turned to snakes.

  Their off-ramp was coming up. Jimmy flicked on his blinker and swung the car into the right lane. “I wish you wouldn’t hang around with those kids,” he said.

  Kelly sighed. “You sound like Mom.”

  “Yeah, well. She has reasons.”

  “Everybody has reasons,” Kelly said. “Mass murderers have reasons.”

  The rest of the way home, Jimmy didn’t speak a word. The country station had long ago faded out, but he kept it on, the car filling with the crackle of static. Kelly’s head throbbed—a souvenir of her acid trip—and she was so thirsty, her tongue swollen from it. Too thirsty to ask questions. She closed her eyes.

  IT TOOK FOREVER TO GET FROM THE OFF-RAMP TO PICO AND, ONCE Jimmy turned on it, even longer to get home, which was half a duplex with a crispy brown lawn, a roof of crumbling Spanish tile, and plastic flowers in the window box courtesy of the old lady owner who lived in the other, bigger half.

  Jimmy pulled into the driveway. He undid his seat belt and winced. He was always wincing. He wore a plaid shirt under his beige vinyl jacket, and as he eased out of the seat, the shirt collar slipped open a little and Kelly saw the scars on his chest. War wounds, he called them. Even though he’d gotten them on some cheap horror movie.

  “Take a picture—it lasts longer,” Jimmy said, and she realized she’d been staring. He gave her a play punch on the chin.

  Kelly’s head was still throbbing from thirst, her mouth so dry she could barely form words. She tried to smile. “You’re a good dad,” she said, which was kind of a lie. But like most lies, it seemed like the right thing to say.

  “That kid—John McFadden’s son. I introduced him to your sister.”

  She looked at him. “You did?”

  “How old was she when she decided she wanted to be famous—thirteen? Fourteen?”

  Kelly closed her eyes, tilted her aching head back on the seat rest. “I thought she always wanted to be famous.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Anyway, she was about that age. I was working on some horror movie on the same lot as McFadden . . . He was shooting a miniseries, I think. Catherine got wind of it. Showed up on my doorstep one day out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen her in years and I was so happy. See, I wanted to be a good dad, Kelly. I’ve always wanted that, more than anything.”

  “You are, Jimmy. I told you . . .”

  “She begged me to take her to the set. And Vincent . . . Vee, whatever you guys call him. He had a small part in the miniseries. He and your sister hit it off. Started spending lots of time together.”

  Kelly opened her eyes. Jimmy wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing out the windshield, sad eyes aimed up at the starless sky above their roof. “I let them spend time together,” he said. “I’m not a good dad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If it wasn’t for me introducing Catherine to Vincent and his father, she never would have gotten in with that fast Hollywood crowd.”

  Kelly put a hand on his shoulder.

  “If I wasn’t so permissive about that stuff, your mother wouldn’t be so mad at me. She’d let me see you guys more often—not just when you run away.”

  There was a light on inside their house and Kelly’s eyes throbbed from looking at it. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she couldn’t get them out. It was hard, arranging her thoughts into words when she felt like this. “Vee is a really nice person,” she said.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “And also.” She took a breath. “I didn’t run away. Mom kicked me out. She gave me your address.” She put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “She sent me to you.”

  He turned, looked at her. “She did?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Can we go inside now, Dad? I’m really tired.”

  His smile came back. “Oh yeah, right. School day tomorrow.” He said it as though she’d never been arrested. As though it wasn’t two in the morning and he was picking her up from band practice or track and field, rather than a police station two hours away. “Do you have a lot of homework?”

  Kelly sighed. “I’ll be okay.”

  He groaned his way out of the car. Kelly followed him up the sidewalk, watched him open the door.

  Once they were inside, he hurled himself onto the couch and collapsed. Kelly hurried into the kitchen, poured a glass of water and gulped the whole thing down, the crippling headache finally starting to fade. From the other room, she heard her father’s moans, and so she put some ice in the glass along with a few fingers of Jack Daniel’s and grabbed the half-empty bottle of pills off the counter, where he had left them. When she got back into the living room, his eyes were closed, his head thrown back. She placed the glass in one hand, bottle in the other. She grabbed the maroon plaid comforter off the couch and draped it over him. “Thanks, kiddo,” he whispered.

  She kissed him on the cheek, walked back to her room.

  IN KELLY’S DREAM, HER MOTHER CAME AT HER WITH A MEAT CLEAVER. “Give it back!” Mom shrieked. “It’s mine!” Once she got closer, Kelly saw that it wasn’t Mom at all but some kind of monster-movie version of her, with snakes for hair, sharpened teeth, and pinwheeling red eyes. “Give it back or I will kill you!”

  Kelly stared at her, this creature she’d never known to be her mother but who had apparently been her mother all along, making meals for Kelly and Catherine, driving them to their old school, taking care of them when they got sick and giving them makeovers and cooking popcorn for them on top of the stove in the silver-foil container, the most delicious popcorn she’d ever had, Mom and Kelly and Catherine shoving buttery handfuls into their mouths as they watched the Academy Awards . . .

&n
bsp; She’d always been like this, a monster, even though Kelly was just seeing it now—bloodred eyes shining, the cleaver swinging.

  Kelly said, “You killed her. You killed Catherine.”

  “Give it back! Give the heart back!”

  Monster-Mom slashed at her with the cleaver. The blade connected with Kelly’s chest and she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t . . .

  Kelly gasped herself awake, panting in Jimmy’s tiny spare bedroom, sweat pouring down the back of her neck, her hand to her own throat, trembling all over. What a dream, she thought. What an awful dream.

  Kelly glanced at the dresser—at the bright numbers on the digital clock. 4:32 A.M. A countdown. She tried closing her eyes, but she couldn’t go back to sleep. Not now, not yet.

  She switched on the lamp next to her bed, crept over to the small closet in the corner of the room, and slid the door open. At the bottom of the closet, she’d stashed her empty suitcase. But it wasn’t empty, not really. She unzipped it, removed the framed picture of Catherine and then, the heart. She hadn’t even looked at it since arriving here at Jimmy’s, but she noticed now how frayed the red ribbon was at the front, how faded the fabric.

  Who had given this to her mother? Why had she kept it so long?

  From the living room, Kelly could hear Jimmy snoring. He’d never made it to the bedroom, but that was okay. He was a very heavy sleeper.

  Kelly headed into the kitchen, anger pulsing through her, Mom’s phone call echoing in her mind and that dream . . . that dream. A monster all along . . . She dropped the Valentine heart in the sink, opened it, and turned the hot water on full blast until the box started to fall apart, the stale chocolates destroyed, the entire sink filling with steaming water, drowning it. When she turned the water off, the box was in pieces, the chocolates floating. Ruined forever. A pang of guilt tugged at her—Why had Mom kept this box for so long? But she brushed it away. She wasn’t Mom. Not anymore. She didn’t deserve Kelly’s guilt—not even a pang of it.

  Kelly drained the sink. She scooped the chocolates out and dumped them in the trash can underneath, along with the remnants of the box, tied off the trash bag, sneaked out the front door and tossed it in the Dumpster around the side of the house. Sometimes, it was good having a dad who was such a sound sleeper.

  When she slipped back inside, Kelly found herself remembering a time when she and Catherine had been around eleven, left alone by Mom for a few hours in the afternoon, feeling like grown-ups. Kelly had immediately turned on the TV. Flipped the channel to All My Children—a show she used to love, mainly because Mom had said it was too mature for a girl her age.

  Catherine, meanwhile, had gone snooping in their mother’s closet and, as usual, she’d been the one to make the day’s big discovery. “Kelly!” Her sister had shrieked her name so loud, she’d thought something awful had happened. But when Kelly had rushed into the room, she had found Catherine on the floor, an open cardboard box in front of her. Kelly had asked what was in it, but her sister had been struck silent. All she could do was point at it.

  In the box was a stack of black-and-white postcards showing the same young woman in four different outfits: a bikini, a nurse’s uniform, a spangled, strapless evening dress, and a sexy farm girl outfit, complete with pitchfork. In the corner of the cards was the phone number of a talent agent and the name of the busty blond actress in the photos: Rainy Daye. It had taken Kelly a lot longer than Catherine to recognize Rainy Daye as Mom.

  “Wow,” Kelly had said. “It’s like we never really knew her.”

  “You know what, Kelly? I don’t think anybody really knows each other.”

  “Except you and me, right?”

  “Except you and me.”

  Kelly opened the nightstand drawer and reached in, to the very back until she could feel the delicate chain of Catherine’s necklace. Watching herself in the mirror, she carefully slipped the chain around her neck and fastened it. The golden heart glittered at her throat, the chain resting against her neck. It made her feel beautiful. Kelly would never take the necklace off. She would wear it forever, Catherine’s secret. She would keep it with her always.

  Kelly touched the two small diamonds at the base of the heart. She stared into the mirror, smiled at the girl she was turning into.

  KELLY MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRST HALF OF THE DAY, BARELY. THE low point was Miss Collins’s English class, when she fell asleep at her desk in the middle of a pop quiz. Miss Collins, a skinny, pursed-lipped woman whom Bellamy claimed was still a virgin at thirty-five (“I can tell these things. Trust me.”), had been so annoyed with Kelly she hadn’t woken her. As a result, she’d awakened with a snort in the middle of the next class’s pop quiz, enduring their laughter as well as that of her following class, American history, when she’d walked in bleary-eyed and twenty minutes late.

  It was all she could do to make it through to Mr. Hansen’s science class—and for that, thankfully, she was awake and on time. Bellamy showed up a few minutes after her, hair and eyes shiny as ever, notebook clutched to an electric blue V-neck sweater Kelly had borrowed from her once—a Dior. She looked happy and rested, as though she’d been able to squeeze in a spa visit between the fourteen-hour-long acid trip and school starting this morning.

  “Long time no see, Miss Marshall,” said Mr. Hansen, who had greeted the just-as-long-absent Kelly with a curt nod.

  “Yes, Mr. Hansen, it certainly has been a while.” Bellamy said it so sweetly, without a tinge of sarcasm in her voice as she headed to her desk, handing Kelly a folded-up piece of notebook paper as she passed. A few of the boys in the back row snickered, but Mr. Hansen just stared after her, his face reddening slightly, powerless to speak. How could he, after all? She hadn’t said anything wrong.

  Kelly touched the heart pendant at her neck, Catherine’s necklace, which, in a way, made up for the rest of what she was wearing—the tired flannel shirt, the green corduroy pants from JCPenney that Mom had bought her a year ago, when she was three inches shorter and at least a size smaller. No, the necklace fit. It always would. It wasn’t Catherine’s secret anymore. It was hers now, and to touch it reminded her of the changes in her life. Big changes. Wonderful ones.

  Something hit her in the back of the head. Spitball. Kelly heard them laughing behind her, Pete Nichol, Randy Butler . . . Evan Mueller, barking like a dog. Her face reddened, Vee’s voice in her head. Tell him to go fuck himself. It drowned out the other voice, the tiny, timid voice that always told her to pretend it’s not happening, ignore it and it will go away. Ignore them. But she couldn’t. Mr. Hansen scribbled on the chalk board, oblivious as he wanted to be, oblivious as he always was to the pain of students he didn’t care about. The invisible ones in cheap clothes who didn’t get good grades, whose parents weren’t rich. The ones, like Kelly, who didn’t matter.

  The chalk knocked and squeaked against the blackboard. Another spitball hit Kelly on the arm. She spun around, glancing quickly at Bellamy, busying herself with her notebook and then at Evan Mueller. She stared him down.

  Slowly, he brought his index and middle finger up to his mouth and stuck his tongue through the crook between them, his eyes half closed, his face lewd and ugly. Kelly’s stomach clenched up.

  “Freak,” he whispered.

  She said, “Go fuck yourself.”

  The boys stopped snickering. Bellamy’s eyes widened. Her hand flew up to her mouth.

  “What did you just say?” Mr. Hansen said.

  And she turned to him—that look in his eyes, a mixture of anger and shock, something else mixed in too. Was it fear? She could hear the rest of the class, whispering to each other, Phoebe Calloway in the front row saying, “Uh-oh . . .”

  “They threw spitballs at me.” Kelly’s voice was quiet, calm. “So I told them to go fuck themselves.”

  Silence settled in fast—like someone throwing a towel over a birdcage. For a long moment, everything froze. Time stopped. The air in the room turned thick and still.

  “Go to
the principal’s office,” Hansen said.

  “Okay.” Kelly slipped the note from Bellamy into her pants pocket and stood up. She dared to look at the row behind her as she did—at those boys staring up at her with shocked, unblinking eyes and then, at Bellamy.

  Bellamy smiled. Way to go, she mouthed.

  Kelly walked out of the classroom, her back straight. A different person. Perfect. As she walked down the hall to the principal’s office, she removed the note from her pocket, read:

  JAILBIRD PARTY TONIGHT AT VEE’S.

  BE THERE.

  “WELL,” JIMMY SAID AS HE PUT ON HIS BLINKER AND TURNED UP their street, “I guess you’ve got a few days off from school.”

  First thing he’d said to Kelly since he’d picked her up at the principal’s office. She wished he’d said something different: It wasn’t your fault. All you did was fight back, for once. Something like that. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I didn’t deserve to be suspended.”

  He shrugged. “Principal said you swore at some boys in the middle of science class.”

  She started to say something, then stopped. She looked at her dad’s bowed shoulders, his scarred hands on the wheel. He got beat up for a living—threw himself off of buildings and set himself on fire, did whatever directors told him to do, no matter how much it hurt or how long the pain lasted, just so some stupid actors could look brave. Jimmy didn’t fight back. Not ever. How was he supposed to understand? She remembered the hush that had fallen over the classroom as she walked out, the way Bellamy had smiled at her, the way she’d understood. And tonight, a party. A Jailbird Party. Kelly was going. She’d sneak out of the house if she had to. She’d wait ’til he was passed out, and then she’d hitch a ride . . .

  “I’ve got a shoot tonight.” Jimmy said it like he’d been reading her mind.

  “Huh?”