The World Without Us Read online

  There were death-penalty supporters too. As we approached, an older man with a red face waved his sign at me. THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH was painted in drippy red letters. I shuddered and stepped around him, avoiding eye contact.

  “Bit bloodthirsty, isn’t it?” Jeremy whispered.

  I nodded, looking at the faces and the signs. An eye for an eye. Burn in hell, sinners. All that certainty and anger and self-righteousness. Who were these people for whom life was so black and white? So uncomplicated? It made me think about people being run out of town, of mobs and lynchings. Maybe these were the people who, back in those days, would have been exacting their own form of justice.

  “So everyone just waits?” Jeremy said.

  Vicky nodded. “Basically, yeah. Our presence is a way of saying that we are aware of what happens inside those walls. That we care. That these deaths aren’t going unnoticed.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Crazy.”

  I thought I knew what he meant. There was a man inside that building who, in just a few hours, would be killed. He would be strapped down on a gurney, a needle would be jabbed into a vein in his arm, and a lethal dose of drugs would be delivered until his heart stopped beating. And this murder was all legal, accepted, authorized by our government and supported by our fellow Americans. It seemed like we should be storming the building, screaming, fighting. There should be outrage. Instead, we had this handful of people with their polite signs. It was beyond inadequate.

  Vicky looked at me as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “It does make a difference, Mel.”

  “Yeah, but you have to think that,” I said.

  “Look at the opposition to what we do. People wouldn’t react so strongly if they thought we were powerless to make change.” She turned to Jeremy. “You wouldn’t believe the phone calls we get. One time when I was here for an execution, someone drove by and shouted at me that he hoped someone murdered my kids so I could see how that felt. And then he threw a bag of dog shit at me.”

  I remembered it well. Vicky had come home in tears, shaking from head to toe.

  “That’s disgusting.” Jeremy grimaced and looked around at the small group of protesters. “I hope nothing like that happens today.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll be fine. I just take it as evidence that we must be doing something right.”

  Jeremy shook his head and turned to me. “You want to hang around a bit? Or…”

  Hanging around the prison was the last thing I wanted to do. I shook my head. “Let’s get out of here.”

  My mother studied me with that measured, concerned look in her eyes. “Are you okay, Mel?”

  “Yeah. But would you mind if we didn’t come back after all? You said you could get a ride, right?”

  Vicky nodded. “Absolutely, Mel. I’ll get a ride home with Hanna, or Pam’s here too.” She tilted her head and smiled at me. “I think you two should just go and have some fun.”

  Last Meal

  It only took us half an hour to find Jeremy’s dad’s address in southwest Jacksonville. It was a small gray apartment building on a busy street, and it had a definite rental look to it—not ugly, just impersonal and bland.

  Jeremy pulled into a parking spot out in front. “Well, here we are.”

  “You want me to wait out here?”

  He shrugged. “He’s probably not even home.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. My stomach was queasy and unsettled, whether because of Ramon or Jeremy’s father, I wasn’t sure.

  “Right.” He didn’t move though. “I had another dream about my brother last night.”

  “You did? Could you talk to him?” I always trod carefully around this subject, because talking about dreams was the closest we’d come to arguing. I’d read some of the stuff he’d sent me, but it seemed kind of hokey. To me, dreams were just our brains doing nightly maintenance, neurons firing up a random mix of whatever we’d been doing or thinking about—but I knew that to Jeremy they were something much more serious.

  “He was at the beach, you know? Where I showed you; where it happened? Standing there in his shorts, holding the volleyball that Daimon and Carter had been playing with. I walked up to him and called out his name…” He shook his head. “And he stayed there, just staring at me, not smiling or anything. Just staring.”

  “And?”

  “I asked him if he was okay. I knew I was dreaming, Mel. It was totally a lucid dream. I told him that…” His voice broke. “I said I was sorry.”

  I wanted to reach across and touch him, put my hand on his arm maybe, but I didn’t do it. “Did he respond?”

  He shook his head. “No. He just turned and walked away. I ran after him, but he ran into the water and started swimming away from shore. And I swam too, but I couldn’t catch him, and then there was all this seaweed grabbing my ankles and pulling me under…and I couldn’t breathe…and I woke up coughing and choking.” He shuddered. “It was horrible.”

  “Kind of turned into a nightmare, it sounds like.”

  “I think maybe he was punishing me, you know? That he wanted me to know what it felt like to drown.”

  I shook my head helplessly. “You’re punishing yourself. I mean, it’s not him, it’s you. You’re torturing yourself, Jeremy.”

  “No. I was willing him to answer me, to talk to me. And up until then, I was in control of the dream.” Jeremy looked at me, his dark eyes locked on mine. “He refused to speak to me, Mel. He took over.”

  “It was a dream,” I said. “Just a dream.”

  “He’ll never forgive me,” Jeremy said, and in his voice I could hear his hopelessness. I could feel the powerful gravity of his guilt, sucking everything in, like one of Suzy’s black holes.

  “He can’t,” I said flatly. “He’s gone, Jeremy. He’s dead. You have to forgive yourself.”

  He snorted. “Thanks, Oprah.”

  I flushed. “That’s not fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair—” He broke off. “That’s my dad. Crap.” He ducked his head. “I don’t want him to see me.”

  “That guy?” A tall man with short fair hair had just walked out the front doors of the building and was heading down the path toward our car.

  “Crap, crap, crap.” Jeremy started the engine and hit the gas, peeling out with a screech of tires.

  “Jeremy!”

  “I can’t do this.” His voice was panicky.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The man was walking along the sidewalk, heading away from us. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. God. Did he see us, do you think?”

  “No. He didn’t even look our way.”

  Jeremy turned onto a side street and pulled over. “I’m sorry, Mel. I’m fucked up. I mean, I kind of dragged you all this way.”

  “I don’t care about that,” I said. “But are you really sure you don’t want to talk to him?”

  He leaned against the steering wheel, head on his arms. I could see his shoulders shaking slightly. I put a hand on his back, feeling the knobs of his spine through his thin cotton shirt. “You don’t have to. I mean, you should just do whatever you want.”

  Jeremy muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.

  “What?”

  “I said, I’m such a fucking coward.”

  “You’re not,” I protested. “What you’ve been through… anyone would have trouble dealing with it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You can talk to me,” I whispered. “If you want to.”

  “Nothing to say.”

  We sat there for a few minutes, Jeremy’s face hidden in his arms, me stroking his back softly and waiting. The clock on the dashboard flashed the minutes ticking away, and my mind kept wandering back to the jail, to Ramon watching those same minutes tick away: 1:12, 1:13, 1:14… I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know you had less than six hours left to live.

  “I was thinking about the Skyway Bridge thing,” Jeremy said, his head still down and his voice m
uffled by his arms.

  “Yeah?” We hadn’t talked about it for a while.

  “Maybe we should just do it, you know? Just jump off and be done with this.”

  “I know,” I said. “The world is a pretty shitty place.”

  Jeremy sat up, ran his hand through his hair and blew out a long breath. “Sorry to be such a basket case,” he said.

  “Forget it,” I said. His eyes were all red and bloodshot. “Remember when we first met? And talked about Camus?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “And you said you didn’t get it, how the character in the story didn’t really react to his mother’s death?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “That’s kind of how I feel sometimes,” I said. “Like, you crying and being emotional about your brother—that seems right to me. Normal. But I sometimes think I don’t feel emotions properly. Like, I have to fake it. Or I don’t know what to feel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This execution, you know? I don’t feel sad or anything. Just weird.”

  “Well, it’s not like you know the guy.”

  I nodded. “I know. But…Vicky cries at movies. She cries over books. I never do. Even when Bill’s mother—my grandma—died, I just felt kind of empty.”

  “Remember that note I wrote you?” Jeremy asked. “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.”

  “Yeah.” I hesitated. “It’s not just something philosophical though. I mean, it’s like I’m just shallow. Like I don’t have proper emotions.” It was true: even while he was sitting there crying, I didn’t feel empathy exactly. After a minute or two, I felt kind of bored and impatient, and then I thought about Ramon instead. And when Jeremy chose not to talk to his dad, I didn’t really feel sad for him. I mostly just felt disappointed that I wouldn’t find out what was going to happen. Which seemed so wrong.

  “Let’s do it tonight,” Jeremy said.

  “Do we get a last meal?”

  “Of course.” He looked at me. “What would you like?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Chocolate cheesecake.”

  He laughed. “How about I take you out for dinner?”

  “Tonight? Really?”

  “Yeah. Someplace fancy.” He tilted his head. “Okay? Is it a date?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. It’s a date.”

  Jeremy grinned at me as we pulled away from Jacksonville, and I felt my tension slip away. We ate junk food and laughed and joked all the way back to St. Pete. I wondered if he regretted not talking to his dad, but I didn’t want to spoil the mood by asking. “Still on for dinner?” I asked. “Or are you too full of Doritos?”

  “I’m never too full to eat,” Jeremy said. “Seriously.”

  I laughed. “You’re so skinny.”

  “I know, I know.” He made a face. “You try growing twelve inches in, like, two years. I’ve been starving since ninth grade.”

  Jeremy drove me home and waited downstairs while I changed for dinner. I didn’t know where we were going, but he’d said somewhere fancy, and even though he said I looked fine, and he wasn’t planning to change out of his khakis, I didn’t think jeans and a T-shirt counted as appropriate attire for a nice restaurant—or a first date.

  Which this was, kind of. There was something electric in the air between us, a new tension bleeding into our usual comfortable familiarity. I brushed mascara on my lashes, smoothed on tinted lip gloss, exchanged my faded jeans for a sleeveless black dress and my runners for knee-high black boots. I studied my reflection in the mirror. I hardly ever dressed up, and I felt like I was looking at a stranger. I looked good though—my arms and shoulders were still tanned from summer, and with this dress, my short hair looked less boyish and almost chic. Probably I should have replaced my silver studs with dangly earrings or at least put on a necklace, but I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard. I blew out an unsteady breath and went downstairs.

  Jeremy stood up, looked me up and down and whistled. “Look at you! Wow.”

  “Yeah, bit different, huh?” I folded my arms across my chest self-consciously.

  “You look beautiful.”

  My cheeks were on fire. “So. Where are we going?”

  “Ah.” He raised one eyebrow. “I thought I’d surprise you.”

  Jeremy drove my mom’s car to the restaurant because he didn’t want to go home and risk having to talk to his mom. “It’d be too weird,” he said. “You know what I mean?”

  I didn’t really. “Us going to dinner?”

  “No. Well, yes, but more just knowing that…” He trailed off. “I don’t know. Forget it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you want. Vicky won’t care if we take her car.”

  “Good.” He drove quickly, aggressively, weaving in and out of traffic.

  “Take it easy,” I said mildly. “I’d like to survive the drive.”

  Jeremy laughed, took one hand off the steering wheel and lowered it to my bare knee. I caught my breath and put my hand on top of his. He winked at me. “Wouldn’t it be ironic, getting killed in a car accident on your way to your last meal?”

  I wished he’d drop the last-meal stuff. I felt like things were just beginning.

  We parked in front of the Vinoy Renaissance Resort, home of Marchand’s. Only one of the fanciest restaurants in St. Pete. “No way,” I said.

  “Why not?” Jeremy got out of the car and came around to my side, taking my arm like we were in some old-fashioned movie. “Are you taller than usual?”

  I laughed and lifted one foot for his inspection. “I almost never wear heels. I got these during that brief goth period I told you about.”

  “Hmm.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Death Wish.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t call me that.” Our faces were only inches apart, and I lifted mine toward his. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

  Jeremy placed both his hands on my cheeks, cupping my face gently. “Melody.”

  “Yes.”

  “You…I hope you know…The thing is, I really…” His voice trailed off. “I mean, I want you to know that I…well…”

  I started to laugh. Maybe it wasn’t very romantic of me, but I couldn’t help it. He looked so terribly earnest, and he could barely string two words together. “Are you going to kiss me or what?” I whispered.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “So stop talking.”

  “Okay.” Then Jeremy’s lips were on mine, his hands still holding my face, and I could hardly breathe. I put my hands on his shoulders, holding on to him, and I felt for a moment as if we were one person, like the boundaries between us were blurring, like his breath was in my lungs and his heartbeat was racing in my body. I slid one of my hands across his collarbone, onto his thin hard chest, and found the steady thumping of his heart. His lips parted, his tongue touching mine, and his mouth tasted like mint and something sweet, licorice maybe.

  I’d kissed a few guys and done a bit more than that with a couple of them, but I’d never felt like this. I was melting. “Jeremy…”

  “Mel.” He pulled back, watching me with those dark eyes. “Are you…is this okay?”

  “Better than okay,” I said.

  It took us a while, but eventually we managed to pull ourselves apart and stumble into the restaurant. The lights were too bright and the tablecloths too white, and everything was making me giggle. “I feel like I’m drunk,” I whispered.

  Jeremy nodded, grinning goofily at me. His eyes looked as glazed as mine felt.

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  We turned our attention to the tuxedo-clad waiter. “Um, no…”

  “I’m afraid we’re booked until nine o’clock,” he said.

  “Oh.” Jeremy looked embarrassed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can go somewhere else.”

  “I wanted this evening to be perfect.”

  “It is.
” I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door. “It is perfect.”

  “I should have thought of that. Needing a reservation.”

  “Who cares? Come on, let’s go in there.” I pointed across the street, where a sign read Delia’s Café.

  “That’s a coffee shop,” he said.

  “I bet they have cheesecake.”

  “I was planning on having steak,” Jeremy said.

  “You’re a vegetarian!”

  “Yeah. Last meal, though, I figured…”

  “Cut that out,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Fine. Cheesecake it is.”

  A few minutes later we were sitting across from each other at a tiny corner table, sharing an enormous slab of chocolate-hazelnut cheesecake and drinking cappuccinos. I just wanted to kiss him again, but the whole business of not having a reservation seemed to have thrown him off in a weird way. “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Just, you know, distracted.” He shook his head. “It’s been a strange day.”

  I nodded, remembering watching his dad walk away and listening to Jeremy’s stifled crying. And then I glanced at my watch. It was past six o’clock. Sometime in the last few minutes, while we were kissing or walking into that restaurant or talking about cheesecake, Ramon was being strapped down on a gurney in the death chamber.

  A wave of nausea swept over me, and I pushed the cheesecake away. “I’m not really hungry,” I said.

  Jeremy took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Yeah. Me neither.”

  We sat there in silence for a minute. I pushed away thoughts of Ramon and focused on Jeremy—reliving the kiss, the feeling of his lips on mine, the melting inside me—and wished we were alone together, somewhere private. “You want to just go?” I asked. “Get out of here?” I met his eyes for a second and looked away, feeling like he must know what I was thinking.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.” He took my hand, and we walked to the car.

  But instead of turning onto the highway toward my house, he turned the other way. Onto the Skyway Bridge. That was when I realized that the song that was playing was the Clash: “Lose This Skin.”