The World Without Us Read online

  I was too busy wondering whether I was falling in love with my best friend.

  Over the next few days, Jeremy and I fell into a pattern of meeting up before school, spending our lunch hours together, coming back to my place after school. He stayed for dinner the next night, and the next, and my parents didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes I caught Vicky watching him with a thoughtful sort of look on her face, and I figured she was wondering what was going on between us. I was wondering too. Because although we spent most of our free time together and texted each other whenever we were apart, although everyone at school assumed we were an item, although we often sat snuggled up together like kittens, nothing had actually happened between us.

  He treated me like I was his sister.

  One evening up in my room, when we’d been playing a game on my PS3, he put down his controller and stretched out on the couch with his head in my lap. I studied his face in the glow of the screen. “Jeremy?”

  “Mmm.” He didn’t open his eyes. I could see the faint blue of veins in his closed eyelids, and his lashes dark as soot against his pale skin. I couldn’t decide if he was good-looking or not. His nose was too big, bony and arched. Beaky. His hair and eyebrows were black, his skin very pale and a bit broken out along his jawline, and he was really skinny. Practically skeletal. I could see his collarbones jutting out above his V-neck sweater. If he were a girl, everyone would think he had an eating disorder. He had a nice mouth though, with full lips and straight white teeth.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked him.

  “Music.”

  “What music?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “I made this playlist over the summer. You’d like it, Death Wish.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said automatically.

  He laughed. “My suicide playlist. I used to think that if I was going to kill myself, I’d do the car-in-garage thing. Carbon monoxide. So this was the music I wanted to listen to on the way out.”

  “What was on it?”

  “It keeps changing. ‘How to Disappear Completely’ by Radiohead. Frank Ocean’s ‘Swim Good.’ One by Forever the Sickest Kids called ‘What Happened to Emotion?’—you know it?”

  I nodded. “What else?”

  “Um, that old Clash song ‘Lose this Skin.’ I love that one. And ‘Hindsight,’ by Death Cab for Cutie. ‘Too Far Down,’ by Hüsker Dü. Um, a couple from The Used. Lots more. Velvet Underground. I’ll send it to you, if you like.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s not going to work so well if we’re jumping off the bridge. You better pick a short song.”

  He laughed. “Maybe we could listen to it over our last meal.”

  “I want some old stuff on it,” I said. “Jazz and blues stuff.”

  I thought it was all a joke. But who’s going to believe that now?

  The room at the hospital smells like antiseptic, and I can hear a kid wailing somewhere. Vicky holds my chin lightly in her hand so that I can’t look away. “Tell me the truth,” she says. “Were you going to jump too?”

  “No,” I say. “Vicky! No. Of course not.” But it’s not the whole truth, and I know she can tell.

  She looks past me, at Christine. “I don’t know if Mel told you, but there was…there was an incident last year. She took some Tylenol…”

  “That’s not fair,” I say. “It has nothing to do with this.”

  Christine is looking at me now, frowning.

  “It wasn’t a suicide attempt,” I say.

  “I didn’t say it was,” Vicky says carefully. “I just thought that perhaps…”

  “It has absolutely nothing to do with this,” I say. “It has nothing to do with anything.”

  There’s a long silence. Bill sits down heavily on a chair; he looks like he’s aged about ten years.

  “Jeremy is hurt,” I say. “Okay? He tried to kill himself, and now he’s really badly hurt. Can you please not try to make this all about me?”

  Vicky blows out a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Mel. Of course we’re worried about Jeremy. But you’re always going to be our first concern. We love you.”

  “I know you do,” I say, and it comes out sounding almost rude. “But dragging up something that happened last year isn’t exactly helpful, okay?”

  “The police said that Melody tried to stop him from jumping,” Christine says.

  Bill stands up, walks over, wraps his arms around both me and Vicky. “Can she see Jeremy?” he asks. “Or not yet?”

  “Probably not yet,” Christine says. “He’s just come out of surgery.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” I say. “I want to go home.”

  Black Holes

  A few weeks ago, at Halloween, Jeremy finally told me what had happened with his brother.

  I was taking Suzy trick-or-treating and I’d talked him into coming with us. “It’s the perfect excuse to go,” I’d told him. “I’m officially babysitting, which means I’m actually getting cash to dress up as a cat and walk around the neighborhood. My first paid acting gig.”

  He laughed, and after dinner he showed up at my place wearing a long white lab coat, dark-framed glasses and a frizzy gray wig. He looked ridiculous.

  “What are you supposed to be?” I asked him.

  “Scientist from Transexual Transylvania. Rocky Horror Show, you know? But you can tell Suzy I’m Einstein.”

  I lifted the lapel of his lab coat and peeked underneath. Black T-shirt. “Shouldn’t you be wearing sexy lingerie?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want to freak you out too much. Anyway, I thought I should keep it G-rated for the kid’s sake.”

  “She’ll be here any minute.” I turned back to the hallway mirror and started drawing whiskers on my cheeks with black eyeliner. “Her mom’s dropping her off.”

  “This is the same kid who did your nails, right?”

  “Good memory.” I glanced down at what was left of my lime-green shimmer. “She’s in third grade. Not your typical third-grader though.”

  “In what way?”

  “Freakishly smart.”

  “Like you.”

  “Not like me. I get by okay, but Suzy’s in a different league altogether.” I met Suzy a year ago, after her mom contacted the coordinator of the early college prep program at my high school, looking for someone who could be a sort of mentor-babysitter-big sister type person for her brainiac kid. I’d rolled my eyes a bit when Mrs. Williams had asked me if I was interested, but she’d offered a decent wage so I’d said yes. I wasn’t sure why Mrs. Williams had picked me, out of all the kids in our program, but I was glad she had. Suzy was cool.

  The doorbell rang. “Come on,” I said. “That’ll be her.”

  “You sure she won’t mind me coming too?”

  “Yup.” I took the stairs two at a time and opened the front door. “Suzy?”

  “Hello.” Suzy tilted her head, studying me critically.

  Her mom, Nina, stood behind her, black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, gold stud shining in her nose. “Hi, Melody. Thank you for doing this.”

  “Don’t you have cat ears?” Suzy asked abruptly.

  “I just haven’t put them on yet. See?” I held up a headband with pointed black ears attached to it. “You look awesome, by the way.” Suzy was covered head to toe in green feathers. Her hair was gelled up in a wild mess of spikes. In her hand was a silver flute, and a small birdcage dangled from a sash over her shoulder.

  “Are you a parrot?” Jeremy asked.

  “Papageno.”

  Jeremy looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  “The bird catcher. From The Magic Flute,” Suzy explained.

  He shook his head. “Sorry. Is that a movie?”

  “Opera,” Nina said. “Mozart.”

  “Ah.” He held out a hand to shake. “I’m Mel’s friend Jeremy.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Nina shook his hand and then turned to me. “Have fun, Mel. I’ll pick Suzy up at nine, if that’s okay? Jim and I are go
ing out for dinner together. At a nice, quiet, adult-oriented restaurant. No crayons, no kids’ menus.”

  I laughed. “Nine’s good. Have fun.” I waved goodbye, and she headed back to her car. Jim gave me a grin and a thumbs-up from the driver’s seat.

  “Hi, Suzy,” Jeremy said. “I’m Jeremy. Mel said it would be okay if I joined you guys tonight.”

  “I know. I told her she could say that.”

  “So.” I slipped my headband on and adjusted the pointy black ears. “It’s getting dark. And I can see some kids down the street. Shall we get going?”

  “What about your house? Who’s going to hand out candy?”

  “Vicky’s here,” I said. “And Bill.”

  “I want to show them my costume,” Suzy said.

  “Yeah, come on.” I led the way to the living room, where Bill made Suzy’s day by doing a very bad rendition of the duet between Papageno and Papagena—Pa-PaPa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Papagena! —while Vicky exclaimed over the brilliance of her costume.

  We finally made it out the door, and Suzy ran ahead of us down the sidewalk, flapping her arms wildly. “She’s a strange one, isn’t she?” Jeremy said.

  “She’s flying.”

  “I know. But I can see…I mean, she’s great, but she’s not going to fit in very easily, is she?”

  I shook my head and watched Suzy start up my neighbor’s driveway. “No. School’s hellish for her. Kids are so mean, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Jeremy cleared his throat. “I do know, actually.”

  I turned away from Suzy and looked up at him.

  Suzy hurtled back toward us. “Tootsie Roll and a Snickers! Can I go to the next house?”

  “Yeah, of course.” We followed her as she flapped her way onward.

  Jeremy gestured after Suzy. “I was a weird kid too, I guess. I didn’t talk until I was nearly three, and then I just began speaking in full sentences. When I started school, the teacher wanted my parents to get me assessed. They thought I was autistic or something. Mom says I liked to spin in circles. I made funny noises. Stuff like that.”

  “Kids all do weird stuff.” I thought of an old line Bill liked to quote: All the world is queer, save thee and me, and even thee is a little queer.

  “I guess. I always got teased though. Then Lucas came along, and he was the poster child for normal.”

  “Mmm.” I watched Suzy dash past a group of gauzy princesses tottering in high heels and race up the steps of the next house. “Well, you don’t spin in circles anymore.”

  “No.” He cleared his throat again. “I guess I outgrew it or something. Anyway. About what happened to Lucas.” Jeremy stared straight ahead, watching the kids clustering around the front door. “It was summer, so just over two years ago. He wanted to go down to the beach with a couple of his friends. Mom made me go with them—she was always trying to get me to do stuff with Lucas; she didn’t ever seem to get that he didn’t want me there.”

  “You were supposed to…I mean, she wanted you to—” I bit off the words.

  “Keep an eye on him? Yeah.” Jeremy’s voice was hard.

  “Jeremy, whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.” I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake.

  “You don’t even know what happened, Melody. So don’t give me that bullshit line, okay?”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it.” He waved at Suzy, who was walking back toward us, treat bag held wide open, lips moving as she counted candies. “How’s it going, kiddo? Lots of loot?”

  Suzy frowned. I suspected she didn’t like the kiddo. “Lots of those gross caramels. You want some? I mostly just like chocolate.”

  Jeremy held out a hand and accepted a caramel. “Thanks, kiddo. I call lots of people kiddo, by the way. Not just kids.”

  She cracked a hint of a smile. “No problem.”

  “Babe too. I call Melody babe sometimes.” He nudged me. “Don’t I, babe?”

  “You better not,” I told him.

  Suzy giggled. “I’m going to that house there, see? They’ve got a monster by the porch that moves when you get close. I think it has a motion sensor of some kind.”

  “Cool.”

  She scampered off.

  “Jeremy,” I said. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just…I was worried you were blaming yourself. Just because you were there when Lucas died. But you’re right. I don’t know what happened.”

  He nodded. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I had a dream about him last night,” he said.

  “Like what you were telling me about? That lucid-dream thing?”

  “Yeah. Sort of. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn’t control it. I wanted to talk to him about what happened. To say sorry, I guess.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. He was being such a little snot.”

  I laughed. “In your dream?”

  “Yeah.” He gave a reluctant laugh. “I guess that is kind of funny. But he could be so obnoxious, Mel. No one really saw that side of him except me.”

  “I guess siblings aren’t always friends,” I said. “I used to have this fantasy about having a brother or sister, but I guess the reality is that you’re just stuck with someone and you might not even get along.”

  Jeremy nodded. “It’s hard to say it now, but sometimes I didn’t even like him. He was younger, but in some ways, it didn’t seem like it.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “That day at the beach. There was Lucas and two of his friends, Daimon and Carter, and the three of them were basically entertaining themselves by making fun of me. Like they were so cool, and I was…well, not. It was the same crap I got at school, and I’d had enough, you know? I told Lucas to shove it. Went for a walk. When I came back, Daimon and Carter were on the beach playing volleyball with a bunch of other kids, and I couldn’t see Lucas. I wasn’t really worried. Figured he’d gone to get a burger or maybe was farther down the beach, trying to pick up some girl. Something like that.”

  “There’re lifeguards, right?”

  He nodded. “That’s who spotted him. But it was too late by then. He was already dead.”

  “But why did he…I mean, he could swim, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. He was a good swimmer.” He looked down at the caramel in his hand as if he didn’t know how it got there, shoved it into his pocket and stared down the street at all the princesses and vampires and ghosts and Harry Potters and the clusters of parents standing at the ends of the driveways. “He had epilepsy, Mel. Mostly really well controlled by meds.”

  “He had a seizure? In the water?”

  Jeremy nodded. “That’s what we think happened. It was the only thing that made sense.”

  I didn’t say anything, but what I was thinking was, So that’s why your mom wanted you to go. You were supposed to be watching him.

  Which meant it kind of was Jeremy’s fault after all. I felt a sharp pain in my chest, like my heart was cracking wide open. Poor Jeremy. How do you live with that? I couldn’t imagine it.

  No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

  I was trying to think of something to say when Suzy rejoined us. “Look at this,” she said. “Candy called Toxic Waste. Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “Uh-huh.” I took it from her and looked at the ingredients list. “Though it’s probably not too far off. Sugar, yeah, but listen to this: glycerine, artificial flavors, confectionary glaze (shellac, coconut oil, ethanol), artificial colors, blah, blah, blah.” I made a face. “That’s disgusting.”

  Jeremy took the candy from me. “Seriously? It says shellac? Isn’t that nail polish or something?”

  Suzy shook her head. “It’s actually a resin secreted by lac bugs.”

  “Lac bugs,” he repeated. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Nope. They live in India. On trees. It’s just the females who make the resin.”

  “Right.”
Jeremy looked at her with a new respect. “You should go on one of those trivia shows. You’d probably win a million bucks.”

  Suzy didn’t respond. She was on a roll, and when she gets like that there’s no stopping her. “It’s used in all kinds of things. I read about it on Wikipedia.”

  “Hope you’re not planning to eat it,” I said.

  “It’s edible. They use it to make apples shiny.” She shook her head as Jeremy tried to hand the candy back to her. “I don’t want it. It’s weird to give kids candy packaged as toxic waste. Maybe the people in that house don’t like kids.”

  Jeremy unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth. “Holy sour.” He made a bug-eyed face at Suzy and then looked back at me. “I should cut out, Mel. Get home.”

  “It’s early,” I said, surprised. “We’re not done trick-or-treating.”

  He shrugged. “Stuff to do. I usually help my mom hand out candy and all that.”

  “Okay.” I wondered if he was feeling uncomfortable, having told me what had happened to Lucas. Then I wondered if Halloween made his mom sad, thinking about all the years her two boys had gone out together. The Blues Brothers, I thought. Salt and pepper shakers. I cleared my throat. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, I guess.”

  He nodded. “Good to meet you, Suzy.”

  “Uh-huh.” She waved a feathered hand at him and, without waiting for him to actually leave, started talking to me. “Guess what I read today, Mel?”

  I mouthed another bye to Jeremy. “What?”

  “It’s about black holes.”

  I sighed. Suzy’s favorite subject was astronomy. I’d already heard more about supernovas and gamma rays and quasars than I ever wanted to know.

  “No, this is really cool. You know how stars burn hydrogen, right?”

  “Yeah.” Only because she’d told me a hundred times.

  “Okay. Well, you get a really, really big star—like, one that makes our sun look tiny—and its core is all hydrogen and it’s burning up, exploding outward with a lot of force. But because the star is so huge, it also has a ton of gravity, right? Pushing inward.”

  “They cancel each other out? The two forces?”

  “Yeah, basically. Balance each other.”