The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [52]
“There’s a phone call for you,” she says once the door to the science lab has closed behind me. Quietly, like she doesn’t want anyone to hear.
“A phone call?” Only something urgent could make them come get me like this. “Oh God, what’s wrong? Has my mother—”
“It’s not your mother.” I follow her to her office. I wonder why she’s being so quiet, but it occurs to me that it’s because any of the kids or faculty in the halls might hear and she doesn’t want them to. I still don’t think that it’s Jeremy; I still don’t think that it’s because anything has happened to Kate. My fantasy has made me believe that maybe Kate can and will be well again.
I pick up the phone and hold it gently to my ear, barely touching me.
“Hello?”
“Sternin?”
“Jer?” It’s a relief just to say his name. “Jeremy.” I’ve missed it so much that I say it again.
“I’m sorry to get you out of physics.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Of course it’s okay.” And then I know why he’s calling, why his call was enough to get me out of physics. It’s why, for the rest of my life, I’ll wish I’d called to wish them happy holidays, or a happy new year, or called just to say hi. And it’s why we’ve skipped over the making-up part of our fight. Best friends can do that, I guess.
I hear Jeremy take a deep breath, and then he says, “Kate’s died.”
I don’t say anything. I stare at the carpet on the floor of the assistant principal’s office, a hideous shade of maroon that makes her whole office seem dark and weighty. I hear Jeremy’s voice in my head again: Kate’s died. There’s a catch in it, something I’ve never heard before. It’s like he said it but he still can’t believe it. I wonder how many times he’s had to say it since it happened, how many family members and friends he’s already called. I wonder if every time he says it, he believes it a little more.
“Sternin?” he prompts.
“I’m sorry, Jeremy,” I say, half apologizing for her death, half apologizing for my silence.
Then I say, “I can come down there. I can leave right now.”
“Not right now. It’s strange here.”
Maybe he’s still angry at me. Maybe he’s angrier still because I didn’t call. I bite my lip.
“But I’ll see you later tonight,” he says, and I know he means he’ll come over for a cigarette. Then he hangs up, so I do too.
The assistant principal is watching me like she’s waiting for me to tell her something. I remember Jeremy’s voice saying, “Kate’s died.” It’s not as though I’d forgotten it, but while I was on the phone, I couldn’t really think about the way that it sounded. I’d been trying to say the right thing, waiting to hear what Jeremy was going to say next. Now I close my eyes, and I hear Jeremy saying it again: Kate’s died.
I sit down in the desk chair and cry. I cry so long that the assistant principal calls my mother to come pick me up. I cry so much that I’m sure my tears are making a wet spot on the ugly carpet, so much that none of the tissues the assistant principal hands me make a bit of difference. I feel pieces of them sticking to my face. I’m crying for Kate, and I’m crying for the Coles, and I’m crying for Jeremy and me, and for how happy I am to have him back, and how distraught I am that this is the reason why.
And maybe I’m crying for my dad; maybe I’m mourning him too.
18
My mother is white when she picks me up. As soon as I see her, I realize that the whole time I’d been crying, I’d been thinking, Oh God, I want my mother.
The assistant principal must have told her about Kate, but I don’t believe that my mother can understand what this means to me. She looks like she wants to hold me but she doesn’t know how. I wish, more than anything, that I could just climb into her lap and be rocked from side to side—but I’m too big for that, and anyway, I don’t know how.
My mother walks