The suffering that we see around us these days—and there’s plenty of it—is at least a sign that society has reached a certain moral level.—baron nicholas tuzenbakh-krone-altschauer
My heart was pounding even before I pressed end. I rushed into the condo, paused in the entryway to for my vision to come back, and dived into the bathroom. The crease in my hair was too deep, so I had to reponytail it after some vigorous brushing. I put on some lip gloss and mascara; then I ran into the kitchen where Rock, Graça, and Charlie were still sitting at the table.
“Chris’s coming back from the hospital!” I announced.
Charlie rolled away from the table and nodded at Graça, “Well, that’s our cue, then. See you later, Bekah.”
“No, you don’t have to—” I began, but Charlie had already rolled down the boards Graça had placed against the front steps. They were in his car. They drove away.
Rock’s cellphone rang. “That’s Mom,” he told me. He left too.
Just as I went into my room to find something better to wear, I heard car doors shut in front of the condo. I ran out the front door, but Marianne and Chris had already disappeared into the basement. I ran back inside, through the kitchen, and down the steps, flip-flops clicking. I shivered.
Chris’s bedroom door was ajar. As I approached it, I heard Marianne talking, pausing, and talking again with no audible response. I inched the door open to give whoever was inside ample warning of my presence.
But Marianne didn’t notice. She was on her cellphone, staring up through the window at the perfect fluffy clouds multiplying in the blue sky. Her lips were very white.
From his seat on the unmade bed, Chris glanced up at me. His glass-green eyes were about to shatter; one was framed in purple and brown. Black stitches crawled up from his right temple into his hairline. His square jaw had a large sandpaper scab running up it. In his battered hands he played with a wickedly sharp hunting knife.
“Um,” I grabbed the doorframe and cleared my throat, “how are you?”
Marianne tapped her phone off with a low shriek. She pushed past me out the bedroom door. A few seconds later her jeep started up and skidded away.
Chris tried to smile, but the scab on his lip pulled. The knife flashed as a brief ray of sunlight shone through a break in the clouds above the window. The lecture I had planned to give Chris about fighting vanished from my mind. Something about the way his eyes looked flat as they shifted from my face to the blade in his hand send a shiver down my spine. I lingered in the doorway.
Marianne’s brother looked up again. His voice was harsh and low, “I want to tell you something, but you have t’ promise not to leave.”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Promise!”
Taking the knob in my hand, I pulled the door shut. We were officially breaking the Honor Code just because I was in his room. I stepped across half of the distance to the bed and stopped.
Chris’s chest heaved as he let out a long breath. He carefully placed the knife on the dresser so it wouldn’t fall off. “I don’ even know what I want to say.” He pulled up his shirt to reveal a cluster of fresh bruises overlapping on his abdomen and the long scar on his left side that I’d seen before. He reached for me, and I came. His fingers guided mine along the uneven raised line. “This isn’t from appendicitis,” he began.
I took my hand away and sat down on the bed beside him. I laughed momentarily, “Well, I knew that.” At his amazed look I smiled, “The appendix is on the right side, Chris.”
Cheeks darkening for a moment, Chris pulled his worn white shirt back down. “How do you know that but don’t know not to wear navy, grey, and brown together?”
“Huh?” I looked down at my outfit. “I wasn’t really . . . I was worried, Chris. Really worried. I mean, you were on the news!”
He grabbed my wrist. His eyes were huge, “What?!”
“This fight was a bigger deal than you might think. Everyone was talking about it last night on the bloggernacle, and FOX News did a special with your ID picture. The BYU Brawl, everyone’s calling it.”
Chris rested his head in his hands and moaned.
“But I bet it’ll blow over quick,” I added, patting his knee.
Still moaning, Chris took my hand from his knee and crushed it in his grip, as if he were a drowning man holding a life preserver. He rocked back and forth on the bed, and then he stopped and looked straight into my eyes. My own burned under his stare. Just before my head burst into flame, I shifted my gaze to my chubby red hand in his long white one.
He cleared his throat. “When I was ten—I don’t even know if I want to tell you this—my dad and I left my mom and my sister. We . . . well, my mom’s kinda . . . icy, and she finally drove my dad away. This was before my mom and Annie were strong in the Church. It’s so weird that now she’s Relief Society second counselor or something.”
“First,” I corrected. “Your mom came in to my Young Women’s class once and told us about how we should never marry nonmembers or less-actives.[1] What she went through before she came back to the Church . . .”
“Is complete b.s.” he finished.
I swallowed.
Chris continued, still holding my hand. “Anyway we moved to
“Never been there.”
“Neither has anyone else.
“That’s where I met Gabriel Delatorre; he and his sister Felizi lived in the other half of our duplex with their grandma. Gabe and I became best friends: the day we moved in, Gabe comes running around the corner screaming a challenge and knocks me onto the sidewalk. I beat him until he bled and then we were friends. We even had the same birthday—cool, huh? I liked to say that Gabe and I were meant to be twins instead of me and Annie. For a few hours at a time I’d really believe we were brothers. Dad spent most of his time . . . actually, I didn’t know what he was doing most of the time.”
I bit the inside of my lip. Where is he going with this? I thought, and then, traitorously: I hope Chris doesn’t tell me something I don’t want to know.
“Our duplex had cockroaches and mice and who knows what else—plus Dad sitting on the couch staring at the wall—so I didn’t spend much time there. Gabe and I found plenty of stuff to do, like keying cars with nice paint jobs, stealing street signs, and daring each other to run across the freeway—when you’re twelve those all sound like good ideas. Gabe was perfect, Bekah; I know I’ll never meet a better man as long as I live. He was such a joker, and he always had my back no matter what. Felizi came with us sometimes on our adventures until she turned thirteen and started wearing makeup and tiny shorts.”
Chris had eased his grip on my hand, so I took it back into my lap. My fingers were striped with red and purple. I moved ever-so-slightly away from Chris as he continued his monologue:
“Anyway, did you know my dad came back to the Church a few years ago, when I was about sixteen?”
I shook my head.
“Yep. Suddenly one day he was all gung-ho for Jesus. He put on his too-small eighties suit and slicked his hair across his bald spot and went to church. He invited me along the next Sunday, and then I found out why he was going back to church—her name was Sherrie.”
“Ohhh,” I added helpfully.
“Yeah. The bishop married her and my dad last year. She’s pregnant now.”
“I didn’t even know you had a stepmom, but a brother or sister! Have you told Marianne?”
“She knows.”
“Well, that’s exciting then, a baby in the house!”
Chris looked at me for a long moment, brows semifurrowed (his stitches preventing the full effect). He touched the wound on his hairline and snatched his hand away with a hiss. “I wish I had seen their relationship through your eyes, Bekah. I ran away.”
“What?!”
“I ran away, lite—just down the street. There was a house of guys in their twenties who raced cars on
“Anyway, Gabe and I and the rest of the guys in our crew did these tattoos when we got to high school. That way, everyone would know who they would answer to if they messed with any of us. It’s protection.” Chris again showed me the crab tattooed on his bicep with crash written on the shell. On closer examination, I noticed that the lines were unsteady—a homemade job.
“Chris,” I scooted farther away until I was sitting on the corner of the bed, my knees straining to keep me from sliding off. “When I was in high school, my biggest problem was paying for my AP tests. I didn’t even date. Now you’re telling me that you . . . that your friends . . .” I shook my head. One question finally burst from my lips: “Why are you telling me this?”
His shy half-smile disarmed me. “You’re right, I’m rambling. Really I just wanted to tell someone about Gabriel. No, that’s a lie. I want to tell you about Gabriel, Bekah.”
How could I refuse his hopeful face? I scooted a little closer to Chris and stroked the back of his hand. “So tell me about him,” I prompted. “How did he . . . I mean, take your time.”
“Even though Gabe had Felizi and his grandma and I sorta had my dad and Sherrie, we were everything to each other. It felt like we were all each other had, like we were the only people in the world.”
“Wow,” I interjected appropriately, “sounds like you two were really good friends.”
He nodded and looked at his lap. His cheeks darkened a little, and then the feeling passed. He glared at the wall with steely resolve to finish the story. “One night two summers ago, Gabe and a few of our friends got wasted and decided to hit a 7-11. It was so stupid, it was so stupid. We had, none of us, ever done anything like that before. Gabe and I had got in a fight earlier that day ’cause I’d said something mean about his sister’s shorts, but I felt uneasy that evening, like they say one twin knows when the other’s in danger. One of the guys who went with Gabe, Zeke, texted me right before they did it to let me know what I was missing.
“I jumped in my car and raced to the 7-11 as fast as I could—I musta run about four red lights. When I got there I saw the backs of Zeke and Gabe and Tito and Charles standing in a semicircle. The owner of the store blocked the door. He was short and thin and brown, and he stood in the middle of the semicircle with a big silver handgun pointed right at Gabe. Gabe said something, and the owner pulled the trigger. Gabe’s head exploded—I’ve dreamt about it every night for two years—it wasn’t anything like the movies; his blood and brains were everywhere. Before he hit the ground I rushed at the man with the gun as the rest of my crew scattered like roaches. I was screaming bloody murder—at least my mind was screaming, I’m not sure about my mouth—I wanted to kill that man, Bekah, I really did. And then he shot me here,” he pointed to the left side of his abdomen. “That’s how Gabe died.”
As soon as I noted that my mouth was hanging open, I closed it. Possible responses faltered in my head: ‘I’m sorry’? Too trite. ‘How terrible’? Um, big duh there. ‘That must’ve . . .’ No, I have no idea what that must have felt like. What can I say? It’s like his life was a bad movie about the wrong side of the tracks—stuff like that doesn’t actually happen. He’s looking at me. He expects a response. Oh, dear God in heaven, please help me think of something to say!
Chris had stopped waiting for me to speak and instead went back to staring at his lap.
“Um, you must really miss him,” I ventured.
“I do. Sometimes he’s all I think about.”
Knees shaking, I stood up and moved to the door. Chris nearly got up, as if he wanted to stop me, but then he settled back down on the bed. As I approached the doorknob, he reminded, “You promised.”
I turned back, “Yes, I did.” The room was all around me.
A bright ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and shone straight in the basement window. It was warm on my face. Squinting, Chris considered me. He shook his head, “Never mind, Bekah, you can go if you want.”
For a moment I considered making the polite response—Oh, I don’t want to go! But who knew when he’d give me another out? “Well, we are breaking the Honor Code,” I excused. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I didn’t hear Chris’s answer. I rushed through the door, up the stairs, and into my empty bedroom. The door didn’t lock, and for some reason I pushed my desk against it even as my vision swam. I flopped on my bed and screamed and sobbed into my pillow. My tears were bitter on my lips. Round and round a single caustic thought spun in my brain: I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know.
[1] less-active member—someone who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but attends Sunday services less than once a month even though they are physically capable of attending.
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