I bought a knife for myself. Just take a look at this. One blade, two blades, three blades, and here’s a thing to clean your ears out with. These are some little scissors, and this is a sort of nail file.—lieutenant alexei fedotik
Rock woke Marianne, Graça, and I on Thursday morning with the smell of banana pancakes. Marianne inhaled her short stack and dove for the shower. I choked down one warm circle of dough because my brother had worked so hard to make them. Graça emerged towel-turbaned from the bedroom and ate five whole pancakes in careful little bites.
After the obligatory pancake, I hugged Rock long and hard. He picked me up and spun me around as he did when we were children and our parents were in their room laughing over another obnoxious letter from Grandma Hawkes. “How ya been?” my brother asked. His golden skin crinkled encouragingly around his brown eyes.
“Great!” I sighed, “I mean, I’ve been better, but I’ll survive.”
Rock led me to the living room and sat me down on the couch. He cleared his throat. “Mom said that you—that you and some guy—were—I don’t even know—were both, well, sleeping with—together, or something.”
“No!” I held my forehead, Will this never go away? “It’s not like that—we didn’t—I mean, we never—we just fell asleep. On the couch. And we’re not dating.” I heard the basement-backyard door close.
Sighing deeply, Rock relaxed. He smiled and patted my hand, “Well, if he ever hurts you, just tell me. I’ll pulverize him for you.”
Imagining a Rock-Chris smackdown, I chuckled. Rock’s shoulders were at least twice as wide as Chris’s but Chris was about four inches taller than Rock. I decided they’d be pretty evenly matched. “What’re you doing today?”
“Mom and I are meeting with the branch president of the Geneva Heights Ninth Branch—it’s Portuguese speaking, y’know—to see if he knows anything.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Yeah, well,” Rock stood up and left to clean up the kitchen.
Graça and I met outside in the driveway after going through our separate primping routines. My cousin looked at me, her naturally rosy lips moved, but before I discovered whether she really could speak, a screech of tires cut her off. Charlie Ramirez’s green sedan had braked quickly as a taxi-yellow car swooped in front of it.
Marianne bounced up behind me, “Derek and I want to take you to school today!”
I stared.
“Oh, Bekah,” Marianne held me close in a cloud of meadowy perfume, “I just want us all to be friends, okay?” She opened her jeep and slid into the driver seat. Derek parked his deathtrap and took the passenger side.
“Of course, Marianne,” I told her, “we’re not best friends for nothing.” As I climbed in the cramped backseat, I saw Charlie fumbling with his wheelchair.
Charlie shouted something at me from his open car door.
“I’ll talk to you later!” I shouted back. Marianne gunned her engine, and we shot away from the condo.
The jeep skidded to a stop in the Y-lot below Rape Hill a full fifteen minutes before the hour. As we climbed up the interminable concrete stairs, Derek and Marianne stumbled several times because they were holding hands.
“Bekah,” Derek panted, half turning back to speak to me, “did you know, we haven’t just all three hung out since,” he paused to hyperventilate, “since I dragged you and Marianne to One World Café?”
“Unh,” I moaned. My heart was pounding and my breathing loud.
Marianne shoved Derek. “What he means,” she explained over her shoulder, “is that we should hang out. Just the three of us. This afternoon.”
“Jus’ like . . . old . . . times,” Derek gasped.
We made it to the top of the longest set of stairs, and we paused before tackling the last flight that would take us onto campus proper. “Wow, you guys,” I breathed through my smile, “that sounds great!”
Derek clapped, “Okay, so at one today I expect to see my two best girls down there at the jeep.”
We started climbing again. “Great!” I answered.
“Great!” Marianne echoed. Derek flung his arm over her shoulder and kissed her. He came away with Estée Lauder Apricot Sun all over his mouth. “Don’t,” Marianne cried as Derek raised the sleeve of his light linen sport coat to his mouth, “wipe it on your jacket!” she finished, groaning.
The couple excused themselves to find some way to get out the spot. I sighed and kept moving towards New Testament in the JSB. It was pretty boring, so I sent Chris a text message from under my binder: Derek and Marianne asked me to hang out with them this afternoon.
As I walked to modern British drama, Chris’s reply came through: Good. You and Derek and Annie should spend some time together.
Well, see you at the play tonight, I pressed.
Chris’s reply, which he didn’t send until I was on my way down the hill at twelve-fifty, was irrelevant: You're a good friend, Bekah. Have fun!
* * * *
Derek and Marianne were already waiting at the jeep. We hopped in and accelerated down University. I thought we could find a sparkly red booth to talk in at the Malt Shoppe, but Marianne pulled up to the drive-through window and ordered three cheeseburgers, two large fries, and three exotic malts.
“Where—” I began, “what are the plans for this afternoon?”
Marianne chewed and swallowed a french fry at a stoplight across from Riverwoods. “Derek an’ I wanna picnic at
“I want the piña colada!” Derek protested.
“You suggested butterscotch, Derek,” Marianne’s voice was sharp. “No one likes butterscotch, and if you take the piña colada, then what do you expect Bekah to do?”
“Isn’t this beautiful, you guys?” I said. We entered
“Butterscotch is fine,” Derek grumbled.
“Um,” I ventured, “I’ll take the Oreo, if no one else wants it.”
Marianne tossed her glittering curls at her boyfriend, “See, at least someone’s reliable.” She handed me my malt while driving with her knees. Derek and Marianne’s argument soon turned playful. They parked at
At the park, Derek fastened his glossy black hair into a short ponytail. There’s no way he’s getting into the
My other best friend pulled three picnic chairs from the back of the jeep and daintily situated herself—malt, cheeseburger, white capris, and all—on the cleanest one. Derek and I followed her, arranging our chairs so we all had a great view of the sublime rushing springtime falls. I bit into my cheeseburger, reevaluated the washability of my light blue tunic, and decided to stick to the malt.
“You know,” I began, “I’ve never really noticed what a pretty place
Marianne tilted her head and looked at the mountains as if for the first time. “Oh, there’s definitely prettier places,” she finally said.
“Look now,” Derek said, “because every day our government authorizes ski resorts to rape more and more of our landscape.”
The majority of our little group groaned.
“I’m serious!” Derek’s eyes were shining, and he stretched his back out in excitement. “We’ve all got to do something about our environment.”
I looked at Marianne, “Yes, Derek, of course,” we answered simultaneously.
He rolled his eyes. “You,” he pointed at Marianne, “and you,” he turned his annoyed look on me, “are coming to the next Eco-Response meeting, and you’ll see what I mean. We’re watching An Inconvenient Truth.”
A cool breeze from the falls made me shiver. I closed my eyes and drank in its clean smell. “Isn’t that the movie that Al Gore made?” I wondered.
“Al Gore!” Marianne exclaimed. “I can’t believe they’d show that at BYU.”
“Okay, new topic,” I interrupted.
“I’ve got one,” Marianne leveled her glass-green eyes at me, “Bekah, what could you possibly see in my brother?”
Above us, the falls rushed on.
Derek opened his mouth, furrowed his stubby black brows, and closed it again.
“Nothing!” I protested. “He’s just not the villain you thought he’d be, Marianne. That’s all. He’s . . . nice. He’s, like, the first person who’s never once taken advantage of me.”
“You don’t think that I—that we—” Derek’s voice was deep with concern.
“No, no, of course not! Not you two! I was just saying . . .”
“Do you like Chris?” Marianne asked, her eyes narrowed.
“No!” I gulped. “I mean, he’s the only guy I hang out with whom I could see myself maybe dating, but I don’t think—”
“What’s wrong with me?!” Derek demanded.
“I couldn’t date you!”
“Why not? Aren’t you attracted to me, Bekah?” Derek stood and flexed his muscles, “I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I am irresistible.” His girlfriend threw a french fry at this head. Derek screamed and furiously patted a napkin on his hair. “Marianne! Do you know how long it takes to get fry-oil smell out of your hair?!”
“Of course I do,” Marianne patted her own curls, “but you’re the only guy I know who cares about that stuff.”
Derek scooted his chair next to Marianne’s and stretched his arm around her shoulders, “Ah, but where’d you be without me?” The flimsy chairs protested, but Marianne and Derek still managed to make out without breaking them. I stared fixedly at the waterfall.
None too soon, Marianne pulled away from her boyfriend. “Did you know, Bekah, that MicKayLah’s doctor said that she’ll be bald before she’s thirty?”
“Really?” I answered, and as we commenced an impromptu hike, I learned more about our general acquaintance than I had ever wished to know. Against my will, I wondered how much material in Marianne and Derek’s bottomless well of gossip involved me.
As the sun started to gild the mountains, Derek looked at his watch, “It’s four-thirty, think we should head back?” he asked Marianne.
Marianne bit her lip, “Probably.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I added, “I’ve gotta be at the theater in an hour!”
The Alpine Loop plan postponed, we drove out of the peaceful canyon into real life. The end of the afternoon settled in our bones like lead.
* * * *
As we approached the condo, I could see Charlie’s wheelchair and Graça’s black hair gleaming in the sunlight from our brief lawn. Marianne braked just before the driveway and fixed her bottomless eyes on me, “Just remember, Bekah, I’m just trying to protect my best friend.”
I tilted my head at her, but she had already turned back to pull in the driveway.
Someone outside the car screamed my name—a voice I did not recognize. Marianne and Derek hopped in his car and sped away. Graça grabbed my arms; her pale face was flushed and creased with worry lines.
Pai! “Ohmygosh, what happened?” I pictured my father lying dead in a thousand different places, his violet eyes flat and dull.
“Beki, your frien’ ze boy, the brozzer of Marianne, is . . .” Graça’s voice was low and musical. I contemplated envying her instead of hearing what ever she was saying about Chris. I’d just texted him a few hours ago. She kept talking, though: “The old boyfrien of Marianne and his friens, zey—zey fight
“What! That doesn’t even make sense! What are you even saying? Did they report his tattoo to the Honor Code Office or something?”
Charlie rolled up towards us, “Bekah, he’s at the ER.”
I sank into the grass. Moisture soaked through the knees of my jeans. All I could think was, But that doesn’t make sense!