Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

“… No.”

“Then I don’t care.”

“Who’s Jason Hensley?”

“My shithead boyfriend. Who thinks that buying a new guitar is more important than taking me to Magic Mountain as was promised for our three-month anniversary.”

“Cielle,” Janie said. “I love you, honey. And I know that in your fifteen-year-old brain, boy troubles are equivalent to your father’s getting stabbed in a bank robbery, but can we please focus on him right now?”

“You don’t actually believe him, do you?”

Pete said, “Whatever you want to think about your father, Cielle, he’s not a liar.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Nate walked them through the official version, leaving out the almost suicide and the threats that Number Six had leveled at him in the vault. When he finished, Cielle’s mouth was popped open, exposing a wad of fluorescent gum.

“Aren’t you worried?” Janie asked. “That they’ll come after you? I mean, you killed five men. They have to have … I don’t know, associates. ”

Nate thought about that tattooed hand curled through the gap in the Town Car’s window, pinching off the cigarette between the fingers without so much as a flinch. Just slow, steady pressure, suffocating the flame. Nate tapped his palm to his pocket, felt the comforting weight of the pill bottle against his thigh. His exit plan. “I’m not concerned about it,” he answered.

Cielle: “So you just came to…?”

“I wanted to tell you before you heard about it somewhere else,” he said. “And … um…” There was no good transition. “I’m sick. Too.”

Janie had forgotten about the towel, which was dripping pink onto the floor tiles. She looked as though she were piecing herself back together internally, and he felt a darkening remorse for bringing this here, to her and Cielle. “As in…?” was all Janie could manage.

Nate took a deep breath. Bit his lip. Here was that point before the world flew apart. The toughest death notification he’d have to serve.

He said softly, “I’m not gonna be around much longer.”

Janie shook her head. More fat drops tapping the floor tile. “What…?”

“ALS,” he said. And then, for Cielle’s sake, “Lou Gehrig’s. That’s why I cut off from you guys nine months ago. We were already … And … I didn’t want to put you through it.”

Though Janie’s face stayed still, there were tracks on her cheeks instantly, as if they’d sprung through the skin. He felt an overpowering urge to take her in his arms, but then Cielle said sharply, “That is so unfair,” and stomped away. They listened to her Doc Martens pound the stairs, and then a door slammed so hard that a magnet fell off the refrigerator.

Pete cleared his throat, then said, “I remember when Sally died, I couldn’t find any sense in getting out of bed. But after a while…” His hand circled, trying to land on a thought. “Someone said once that whenever a door closes in your face, another opens farther down the hall.”

“Which door is that?” Nate said. “To Valhalla?”

A sharp silence. Janie looked unsteady on her feet, and Pete pulled her in and rubbed her shoulders from behind. His face was heavy with sadness, and Nate felt a rush of regret.

He sucked in a breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.”

“No.” Pete shook his head. “It was a dumb comment for me to make. I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry to hear about it, Nate.”

Nate pointed upstairs. “Look, I’d better-”

Janie nodded, a quick jerk of the chin.

Upstairs, Cielle’s closed door waited, as imposing as a prison gate. The pencil lines on the door jamb marking her childhood heights were fading; a few more months and that piece of their shared past would be as lost and gone as Nate himself. He’d wasted so many chances. Countless nights he could’ve just walked down the hall to this room, pulled out a board game, read a story, picked her up, and breathed her in.

Gathering himself, he tapped the wood with a knuckle. No response. He entered cautiously, expecting to draw fire. She sat at her desk, hunched over schoolwork, facing away. He hardly recognized the room beneath the magazine collages, the posters of boy-men actors, the scattering of teenager clothes. But there, half buried by a cast-off jacket, was the stepstool that Charles had sent as a baby gift, her name carved in wooden letters. It remained where Nate had positioned it a decade ago so she could step down from her big-girl bed and come wake him if she had a bad dream. He clung to the sight of it, let it moor him.

He cleared his throat. Where to start? “Your boyfriend. Is he a nice guy?”

“Of course not. He’s an asshole who treats me like shit. I grew up with no positive male role model in the house, so that’s what I get.”

He watched her back, debated how to forge into a wave of sarcasm that thick. “Look, I get that you’re angry with me-”

“No. I’m just sullen and withdrawn in general. Ironically self-aware, too, which insulates me further. I could do drugs or cut myself or get a shoulder tattoo of some Chinese symbol for vagina power. But instead I think I’ll just stay pissed off.”

“Cielle.”

She whirled. “What?” Her face was fighting to maintain the tough veneer, but he saw right through the cracks.

“I’m sorry I’m not gonna be around.”

“I’m not sure what the big diff will be. I mean, even before you split, our seasonal dinners were hardly a mainstay.”

“You told me it was easier for you to see me less.”

“I was twelve ! I was a kid. You shouldn’t have listened. You shouldn’t have believed me. You should have fought me.” Her voice was wavering now, on the verge.

“Well, honey, you were convincing.”

“You left. I had no say. I had no say.” She noted the effect her words had on him, and her scowl lightened, if only for a moment. “You know what? Never mind. Fine. It’s all my fault.” She turned back around. “Buh-bye now.”

He stared helplessly at the clothes littering the floor, a black polo shirt catching his eye. Car-wash decal on the breast pocket, Cielle’s name stitched above. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re working at a car wash? Why?”

“That’s not really your concern either.”

“Cielle,” he said. “What’s going on?”

She turned again. “Pete lost most of his money in the recession. Some real-estate thing crashed. Which means we can’t afford my stupid private school. So I got a job. But it’s still not enough.”

He sank to sit on her bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She picked up her iPhone in its pink rubber case and poked at the screen disinterestedly. “Because you’ve been so available?”

“So you guys are…?”

“We’re fine. Or so Mom and Pete say. It’s not like we’ll be on the street or anything. There’s just no money for extras. Which would be-oh, that’s right-my education.”

“How much is Brentwood Prep?” Since she’d started last year at Pete’s urging, Nate was unacquainted with the price tag.

“Twenty.”

“Twenty thousand dollars?”

“No. Twenty thousand glass beads. They’re having a special.”

“Do you … do you like it?”

“No.” She tossed the iPhone aside. “The girls are all named Chelsea or Sloane, and if I have to hear from one more assclown that he’s sooo brilliant he has to smoke pot to slow his brain down, I’m gonna puke on his worn-out Vans.”

Nate was struggling to keep up with all this. “So you don’t want to go there anyway.”

“The thing is, I do want to go there. Annoying, sure, but hello? It’s high school. At least the teachers are smart and there’s honors classes and the students aren’t as lame as they could be. Plus, it’ll get me into a good college, too, not that I’ll be able to afford that now either. So I’d better enjoy this semester, since it’s my last hurrah before I move on to stitching wallets in some sweatshop.”