Chapter 7

                                    

                                          
SATURDAY, MARCH 16
22 days left
                          
The last ten minutes of my shift at DMC are always the slowest. I debate calling the next person on my log, but that would mean I actually care about being a good employee, which I don't. Instead, I play around on Smooth Passages.
I read more of the postings in the Suicide Partners section. It's strange how some people post multiple times. I wonder if they didn't like the people who responded to them, and then I wonder if someone other than me responded to Harry. Did he pick me over someone else? The thought makes my stomach flip in a way I'm not used to. Mostly because never in my life have I been picked when there was another alternative. Though, if I'm being completely honest with myself, Harry probably didn't have any other choices. Willis, Kentucky, is the middle of nowhere. Lucky for him, Langston is only fifteen minutes west of nowhere.
"I told you to stop checking dating websites when you're at work," Laura grumbles.
"Why do you care, anyway?" I quickly minimize the window before she can get a better look at the website.
She picks at her chipped pink nail polish. "I don't care. Though I have to tell you I think you're only going to find straight-up weirdos on there."
She has no idea how right she is. "Thanks for the advice." I do my best to maintain a straight face, but I can't. Laura shakes her head.
"Don't blame me when your computer gets a virus." She points at my screen.
"I'll make sure to inform Mr. Lendon that the straight-up-weirdo website was all me." I give her a wink before I pick up the phone, trying not to laugh, and dial the next number on my list—Earl Gorges, who lives on Rowan Hill Drive.
"Hello?" a deep voice answers the phone.
"May I please speak to Mr. Earl Gorges?"
"Speaking," the voice says.
"Hi, Mr. Gorges, this is Taylor Swift, I'm calling from Damon's Marketing Concepts on behalf of Fit and Active Foods. I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Go to hell," he says, and hangs up the phone.
I turn to Laura. "That man just told me to go to hell."
This time it's her turn to laugh. 
                          
I decide to take the long way when I drive to pick up Harry. My hands start to tremble as I pull onto Tanner Lane. I've avoided this street as much as possible since everything with my dad happened. Tanner Lane sits on the outskirts of town, home to only the recreational center and a few run-down shops. As I drive down the road, I let myself glance to the left.
And then I see it. My dad's old convenience store. The shabby gray cement building doesn't look any different now that it's abandoned, which says more about its past state than its current one. The town keeps talking about tearing it down. Apparently some developer bought it and plans to turn it into one of those fancy gas stations where you can treat yourself to a slushie of any color, buy a hot pizza, and fill up your tank. All you could get at Dad's old store was a candy bar, a cup of coffee, and the newspaper.
I know I should be eager for it to be torn down, hungry to see the memory crumble. Maybe if the scene of the crime no longer exists, people will start to forget. But I know that's not true. And even if it were, I don't want to see the building go. For better or worse, it's my childhood.
I stare at the building and remember sitting inside, behind the counter with my dad. We'd share a Snickers bar and listen to Bach. He'd tell me how when he was younger, he used to fantasize about learning how to play the piano. He said that once he made enough money at his store, he was going to pay for me to take piano lessons. He was going to send me to a fancy music camp. I guess things didn't exactly go the way he planned.
The parking lot is empty. I pull my car up to the building and turn off the engine. I step outside and run my hands over the familiar concrete blocks. I walk around on the front curb and search for the place where I pressed my palms in the wet cement of the sidewalk when I was ten.
When Dad first discovered what I'd done, his eyes blazed with anger and the vein in his forehead bulged, but then he stared at the tiny handprints and back at me and finally burst out laughing. He flung me over his shoulder and said, "I guess it's fine, Tay. This way everyone will know the place belongs to you."
I squeeze my eyes shut and put my hands into the old imprint. They're too big to fit now, but it still feels like more of a fit than anywhere else in the world does. I tilt my head toward the sky and slowly open my eyes. The sky is gray and still, like it's holding its breath. I hold my breath too and wait for the pressure building in my throat to fade. It doesn't.
"I miss you, Dad," I whisper as I turn my eyes back to the cement curb. "I know I shouldn't, but I do."
My phone beeps and I see a message from Harry. I tell him I'm on my way and I jump back into the car. When I reach Harry's house, I text him to come outside. I don't want to have to face his mom. But when the door opens, I see Mrs. Styles standing there. She walks toward my car at a brisk pace.
I take a deep breath and roll down the window.
"Taylor." she says, her voice tight, "I'm so glad you're here."
It doesn't sound like it. I nod at her because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that.
"Harry didn't get out of bed yesterday and refused to go to school. But he just told me that he's planning to go out with you. Is that right?" She squints at me like she's trying to determine what my allure is. Poor woman. She has no idea that it's not me that holds the appeal: it's death.
I nod again. "Yeah. We're going to hang out." I try to keep my voice neutral afraid that even the slightest shake in my voice will give our true plan away, the real reason for our hangout.
"Where?" She puts her hands on her hips. I sink farther into my car's seat. I hadn't prepared for an interrogation.
I'm fumbling around for an answer when Harrh comes up behind his mom. "We're going to the playground."
Her gaze darts from me to him and back again. A worried look crosses her face and she pinches her lips. Then she smiles slowly, but it's a weak one. "Are you going to play basketball?"
I look to Harry for the answer. His shoulders are hunched, as if he can barely stand to hold himself up, like he's uncomfortable with his own height. But he's one of those people who can never be invisible, even if they want to be. "Yeah. I'm going to teach Taylor how to shoot." He slowly gestures toward me, his hands clumsy and sluggish. I wonder if he used to talk with his hands, but now he's out of practice. "You're looking at the next basketball superstar."
I force myself to smile and can only imagine how awfully fake it looks. "He claimed he could teach a cat to shoot, so I gave him a harder student. Me."
Mrs. Styles laughs, but I still sense a bit of hesitance. "Okay, well, you kids have fun. But Harry . . ." She puts her hand on his shoulder and her pink lacquered fingernails glint in the glow of my car's headlights. "Will you call me if you're going to be out late?"
"Yeah, no problem, Mom." He gives her a weak hug and I look away as she runs her fingers through his  buzzed hair.
She waves at us as she walks back into the house. Harry slides into the passenger seat and we sit for a few moments in silence.
"Nice to see you, too," I say.
"I told you to stop making jokes."
"That wasn't a joke." I turn back on the engine. "So are we really going to hang out at the playground?" I use his same words from the other day. "Hang out" sounds so much less morbid than "Where should we go to plan our joint death?"
"Sure. The old playground sounds good." He stares out the window and seems even more distant than he was when I first met him.
I steer my car down his street and take a left turn onto Main. "You forget that I'm not from Willis. I don't know what you mean by the old playground." Maybe he's the type of person who turns his lies into truths in his head. Like just because he told his friends we met at the old playground, somehow the universe made that true.
"Keep going this way and then take a right turn onto Possum Run." Only in Willis, Kentucky, would that be the name of a street.
"You had me at Possum Run," I say.
He glares at me.
"Okay, okay. I'll be serious."
"You're freaking me out," he says.
"Why?"
"With the jokes. You seem serious about this whole thing, but then whenever you start to talk about it, you're all lighthearted."
I let out my laugh. The same one that comes out whenever I'm talking to Laura. It's high-pitched and strangled.
"See?"
"Sorry. I laugh when I get nervous."
"Why are you nervous?"
I take the right turn onto Possum Run. "Because you're interrogating me about my motives. Besides, I once read that a side effect of depression is an overwhelming desire to make stupid jokes."
He frowns.
"I'm serious."
"I don't think that's true."
"Look it up."
"Okay, I will." He crosses his arms over his chest and looks out the window. "So are you going to tell me or what?"
"Tell you what?" My car bumps over a pothole on Possum Run.
"Why you want to do it."
I see the playground on the left side of the street. The "old playground" apparently consists of a rusted swing set, a cracked basketball court complete with a metal chain basket, and three rotting picnic tables. It looks like it used to have a sandbox, but at some point, I guess, the sand got replaced with gravel. Soda cans and plastic potato-chip bags are littered across the muddy grass. In some ways, the playground feels more like a graveyard. Like it's a decrepit testament  to faded memories, better times. Maybe that's why Harry likes it so much.
I park the car and look over at him. His knees are folded up and knocking against the dashboard, but he doesn't seem to mind. His green eyes are wide as he studies the playground.
"You haven't told me why you want to. I didn't know that we were planning on sharing with one another," I say. My lungs constrict, a warning not to reveal any information that I'm later going to regret having shared.
He opens the door and gets out of the car. I stay seated for a few seconds longer and squeeze my eyes shut. I know it contradicts the whole idea of having a Suicide Partner, but a giant part of me doesn't want to tell Harry my reasons. I don't want him to start looking at me the way the other kids at my school do, like I'm a ticking time bomb. I like that Harry thinks he and I are similar. I like having someone relate to me. I don't want to ruin that.
And worse, with his connection to James Mckenzie, I don't think he'd take what my dad did lightly. Sure, he might not still be close to James, but it all feels very uncomfortable considering my dad is responsible for the tragedy that's haunted James' family—the very reason his brother didn't make it to the Olympics. No way I can tell Harry about my reasons. I'm not going to risk him bailing on me.
All he needs to know is that I'm ready to die. That should be enough.
He taps on my window. I get out of the car and lean against it.
"Sorry," he says. "I can be an asshole sometimes. Ever since . . ." He trails off and cups his hand over his eyes as he gazes up at the sky. The sun has almost set, so I don't know why he's so worried about shading his eyes. Maybe it's just a habit. It's funny the things we do out of habit.
"Ever since?" I prompt him.
He walks over to one of the picnic tables and sits on top of it. I take a seat next to him and breathe in the scent of damp, decaying wood. The sky is a hazy indigo. March sunsets are always like that in Kentucky. It's like the sky has too much moisture to produce any color that isn't some variation of blue.
"Ever since she died."
"Who died?" I don't miss a beat before I ask. It's probably not polite, but I figure none of the normal social rules apply to my and FrozenRobot's relationship.
"My sister. My little sister. She was only nine years old."
I bite the skin around my thumbnail and stare at Harry's profile. He's pulled his knees to his chin, folding himself up like a camp chair. "That's young." For a brief moment, I think of Rob. He's nine, almost ten. 
                          
"Too young."
"Nineteen is young," I offer.
"Are you trying to talk me out of doing this now?"
"No. I was just making a point that I don't think you have to die just because she did. There's like—"
He interrupts me, "She's dead because of me." His voice is a low growl and I scoot away from him.
"What do you mean?"
His shoulders tremble as he lets out a loud exhale. "I was babysitting her one night. But I wasn't really babysitting her, you know?"
I don't know, but I give him a slight nod, urging him to go on.
"My girlfriend was over and Jade, that was my little sister's name . . ." He takes a few shallow breaths and I'm terrified that he's about to start crying. I never know what to do when people cry. I haven't cried since I was ten. I think it's because the black slug sucks up any of my potential tears.
Harry continues, "Jade wanted to take a bath and I told her that was fine. But you see, Jade used to have seizures. Like really bad seizures. So she wasn't really supposed to take baths alone."
"Uh-huh," I grunt, taking a move from Laura's playbook.
"But I wanted to, you know, with Kelly."
"Wait," I say. "Was Kelly our waitress at the root beer stand?"
He shakes his head. "No. That was Suzie."
"But Liam implied that you guys used to date."
"We used to date like forever ago."
"You've had multiple girlfriends?" I try not to gape at him.
"That's seriously your question right now?" He tosses his hands up in the air. "I'm telling you this story and that's your question?"
I shrug and go back to chewing on my thumbnail. I kick at the bottom leg of the picnic table. It shakes, and for a second, it looks like it might fall off. "Go on."
"Aren't you going to say sorry?"
"Doesn't it kind of not mean anything anymore? That word? Especially if you're asking me to say it?"
He draws his eyebrows together like he's actually contemplating whether or not "sorry" has any power anymore. For an instant, I feel a little bit bad and say, "You're right, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, okay." He goes back to his camp chair pose. "So anyway, I told Jade she could take a bath because I was an idiot and all I could think was that her taking a bath would give Kelly and me fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time, so Kelly and I went to my room and I turned on my music really loud so Jade won't hear us, you know?"
I really don't know. 
"So Kelly and I . . ." He gives me an awkward look and dangles his hands at his sides. I fill in the nonverbal clues. "And then I come out of the bedroom to go check on Jade and—" His voice cracks and I hear him choke back a sob. "I found my sister dead in the bathtub. She drowned while having a seizure. If she screamed for me, I didn't hear it because I was too busy fooling around with my stupid girlfriend."
His story makes me feel like someone stabbed me in the chest with a shovel. I suck in my breath as I try to process what he just confessed to me. I know I should say something sympathetic, something kind and comforting. But the black slug inside of me has eaten every possible kind or comforting or sympathetic thing I've thought of to say. So instead I blurt: "But what does that have to do with driving? I like thought you'd been in some terrible car accident or something."
He jerks his head up and I see that the rims of his eyes are red. He jumps off the table. "You know what, forget it. I thought I could do this with you, as weird and screwed up as you are, but I don't think so."
"Harry, please." I stand up on the table's bench, glancing down at him. "That's not fair. I don't know what you expect from me."
He runs his hand through his buzzed hair, refusing to look at me. He stares at the muddy ground. "I expect you not to make fun of me."
"Make fun of you? How am I making fun of you? You're the one who just called me screwed up."
"You don't think you're screwed up?"
"I know I'm screwed up."
He slow claps. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. There's at least one thing we agree on."
I jump down and stand beside him. I resist the urge to grab his arm. "Come on. We can still do this. I just didn't know what to say. I'm not a psychiatrist."
"Obviously," he says, and shakes his head at me. Slowly, a crooked smile appears on his lips.
"You wanted me to feel sorry for you?" I walk over to the swing set. I grip the smooth chain links and sit down on the paint-chipped metal seat. I start pumping my legs, straining for as much height as I can get. Maybe if I pump hard enough, I'll fly into the air and my kinetic energy will project me out of this universe. Unlikely, but a girl can dream.
He doesn't answer me, so I say, "I don't feel sorry for anyone."
"Why? Because no one's life could be worse than yours?" He takes a seat on the swing next to mine, but he doesn't make any effort to move. His swing drifts under his weight, but he doesn't pump his legs.
"No," I say. "I just figured the whole world feels sorry for you. You obviously aren't looking for someone to do what everyone else already does."
I'm getting higher and higher and I feel the swing set creak.
"Be careful," he says.
"Why?" I'm not thinking about being careful. I'm thinking about one last push, of letting go, of flying, and of falling.
"You aren't allowed to die without me," he whispers.