Todd Strasser: Blood on my hands

Just when I thought the topic of Slade had been dropped, Jodie said, “How long have you two been together?”

“Three years,” I answered.

“So… you’ve never been with anyone else?” Jodie was a funny girl, with short hair and a bouncy personality and a wicked sense of humor when she felt like displaying it.

I shook my head.

“How can you know if he’s the one for you?” she asked. “I mean, when you’ve had no one else to compare him to.”

“I just do,” I said, and thought, I don’t need to compare him to anyone else.

“I think you could do so much better,” Katherine declared.

My ears burned. This was something else I’d learned about Katherine. Sometimes she’d get into moods and had to stir things up, cause excitement, and push buttons. She was like a schoolyard bully who couldn’t resist picking fights. But unlike some bullies, who picked fights only with kids they knew they could beat, Katherine seemed to have this need to create confrontations even when the outcome was uncertain.

I could have reacted to what she’d said about Slade, could have gotten angry or more defensive, even argued. I think Katherine actually liked it better when you fought back than when you meekly obeyed her, the way Mia always did. But instead, I decided to try a strategy based on something my father used to say: A good offense is the best defense.

“Tell me, Katherine, have you ever been in love?” I asked.

Dakota and Jodie froze like meerkats on TV. Katherine conjured up a haughty “Ha!” but after that, the kitchen fell uncomfortably quiet again. I was tempted to push Katherine on the question-after all, “ha” didn’t exactly qualify as an answer-but I sensed I’d gone far enough. I’d stood up to the queen and silenced her.

Katherine glanced around and her gaze stopped at a block of wood containing a set of kitchen knives. Her hand closed around the largest handle and she drew out a long, heavy-looking blade and held it in my direction for a moment in a way that could have been either innocent or threatening. The mood in the kitchen was ominous. Even though what Katherine was doing was a teasing gesture, there was something menacing about it.

Staring at the knife, I noticed the design on the side of the blade-two tiny white stick figures against a square red background.

Katherine turned toward me. Dakota and Jodie could see what she was doing, but they couldn’t see her expression change from a chatty smile to an intensely unamused glare. Suddenly she jabbed the knife forward, not nearly enough to reach me, but enough to make me jump back.

“Aaah!” Jodie gasped, as if she really thought Katherine was going to stab me.

Katherine turned and smiled at her. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?”

A nervous grin appeared on Jodie’s face, while Dakota’s remained a mask. Katherine slid the knife back into the block and gazed at me again, nodding slightly. I couldn’t help interpreting the act as a serious warning not to overstep my boundaries.

Sunday 12:34 A.M.

CAN I BRING myself to call Slade now, after what I did to him? And I did it in the worst possible way and at the worst possible time. He was at National Guard training camp, far from home, his friends, and family. Farther away than he’d ever gone alone.

For the first two months he’d been allowed only one three-minute phone call-to tell his dad he’d made it to the training camp safely. After that, he was allowed to speak to me once a week. He’d confide about how lonely and miserable he was, about how scared he was of being called up for active duty and sent overseas, and about how much he regretted signing up for the guard in the first place. These were things he never could have admitted to anyone else. But he could say them to me, because he trusted me. At least, until I betrayed him.

Pangs of regret surge through me, but they’re nothing new. I’ve been feeling them ever since we broke up. Slade’s been home from Guard training for nearly a week. I’ve seen his pickup at the new town center. He’s working there with his father to get everything ready for the opening celebration. I’ve been so tempted to call and tell him how sorry I am. But how would I answer when he asked the inevitable question: why did I do it?

How could I tell him? How can I face him?

He’d be completely entitled to tell me to go to hell. After all, that was basically what I did when he was alone and needy.

And yet I don’t think he will. He’s a better person than that.

I call. As it rings, I feel myself growing tense and my heart revving up. Then that strange mixture of disappointment and relief when I get his answering message. I swallow and begin: “Slade, please call me. It’s urgent, a matter of life and death. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise, but something terrible’s happened. I know you probably hate me and never want to hear from me again, but you’re the only person I can trust. Please call me as soon as you can!”

I close the phone and wait for my heart to slow. But my emotions are a hurricane of yearning, regret, need, and fear. Just hearing his voice on the message brings fresh tears to my eyes.

Slade doesn’t call back. It seems like at least half an hour has passed, but when I check the time, it’s only been ten minutes. He could be at the movies, at a party, anywhere. And with anyone. Even now, in the middle of all this, that’s the thought I hate most.

I call again, leave another message. I imagine him listening to the first message and thinking I can drop dead. He owes me nothing. But maybe the second message will make him reconsider.

I wait in the dark. Seconds feel like minutes, and minutes feel like forever. It’s agony to imagine him listening to my messages and being unmoved. But what did I think would happen? Did I think he’d come back from Guard training brokenhearted and sit by the phone every night waiting for me to call and say I’d made a mistake and I was sorry?

In your dreams, Callie Carson.

I know it makes no sense to keep calling and leaving messages, but I can’t help myself. I call again, knowing there’s probably nothing I can do or say to change his mind, but feeling like I have to try anyway.

“Slade, please, I…” There’s a catch in my throat as tears well up in my eyes. I’ve cried so much tonight that they’re raw and sore. “I’m so sorry to put this on you, really I am. I know I was awful to you. But you don’t know how much I regret what I did. I mean, even before this… this horrible thing that happened tonight. I was sorry, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell you I’d made a terrible mistake. I felt like I’d already hurt you so bad that it wouldn’t be fair. But I… I…”

What I want to say is that I still love him, but it’s too much all at once. Some protective instinct deep inside won’t allow me to reveal that much or leave myself that vulnerable, even if it’s been all I’ve felt for weeks and has nothing to do with what happened tonight.

I’ve always loved him.

I close the phone. Three messages is enough. Salty tears sting my raw cheeks.

“Here’s to rapid metabolisms,” Jodie toasted one afternoon in late March when she, Zelda, Katherine, and I were in the city. She raised her s’more cupcake and we joined in.

“Rue the day these go straight to our thighs,” Zelda declared.

“Hear! Hear!” Katherine chimed in. It was one of those periods when she and Dakota weren’t speaking. We never knew why the two of them ran so hot and cold. But they were like the weather: all you had to do was wait and everything would change.

Before Katherine, I’d never gone to the city without an adult, but now we went practically every other weekend, and always to some special place she knew about. That day we were in the Magnolia Bakery.