Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr

Author:Garret Freymann-Weyr
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2007-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

I WALK WITH EAMON OVER TO SIXTH AVENUE, where he thinks we can get a taxi. It would have made more sense to head to Eighth, but I'm not up to thinking about directions. Instead, I ask if we can walk a little bit, saying,

"I'll probably get carsick in a cab."

At some point during the next couple of blocks, his hand slips into mine and I'm glad to discover that while the zing-zang-zoom still happens, it's a lot calmer. As if something unusual has become suddenly familiar.

We are waiting for a light when Eamon looks at me and asks if it's okay to ask me something.

"Sure," I say.

"Are you in trouble?"

With whom, exactly, and about what?

"I mean, ah, you know, guy trouble?"

It takes me a half a block to put everything in order and then understand. I fainted, he's really reluctant to ask me about the reason, and this can only mean:

"I'm not pregnant," I say, thinking how it's been almost six months since that was a danger.

"You're sure?"

"Oh, yeah," I say. "Positive."

I remember Rebecca once telling either Da or William, I have my period even as we speak, but decide that Eamon doesn't necessarily want to know that. Weird how you can tell anyone that you're pregnant, but the whole bleeding thing is top secret. The blood simply means your body works. Pregnancy, however, means that not only have you had sex but that you will shortly become a mother. Which is more life altering, and therefore more deserving of secrecy.

"I'm sorry," Eamon says. "I didn't mean to be so nosy. Really."

He looks and sounds as if some terrible mistake has been made. I wonder if I am like Rebecca in that I make people afraid of me. Afraid of intruding on a vast privacy that will turn out to be lethal. I stop walking and literally pull Eamon to a stop. People walking by are in the usual hurry, but we do not appear to be in anyone's way.

"I have a sister," I say. "I did. I mean, I still do have one, but the other one, the one I bad, she's gone."

I have his attention, and you know, maybe this is the thing I like about him. The way his whole body listens to me. The way anything and everything can and should be said.

"Rebecca killed herself," I say. "No one knows why. It's a mess. Like we all lost the end of a really important story."

"I could be wrong," he says. "But I think no one ever knows why in these cases. That's what makes them so hard."

I consider this. I don't like Rebecca being part of in these cases. Rebecca is special and different and unique. But I do like how he doesn't assume he's right. That he knows it's hard. It's hard like math, reading, and directions all rolled into one.

"There was someone at Acca," I say. "Someone who knew her, and I was—I was too afraid to talk to him."

And I almost cry but somehow don't.

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