Broken and Screwed

She continued, but I heard the tremor in her voice. “Anyways, Ethan was hanging out with us all the time. It was nice. He was a gentleman. He never did drugs like the rest of them. The only thing he ever did was drink, but not a lot. He was always cautious about not getting drunk. He was rare, you know.” She sniffled. “There are so many dirt bags out there and he was always real nice to me. He even told me about you once.” Her head lifted and she gave me a soft smile. Her lip quivered. “He loved you lots. I could tell. Him and Jesse would fight about you, too.”

“What?” My eyes went wide.

She shrugged. A faraway distant look came over her. “No one knows what they fought about that had to do with you; just that they did. Ethan didn’t like something and Jesse did, that’s all we could tell, but then it didn’t matter. The night he died, he was with us.”

I couldn’t breathe. Oh god.

“He’d been with me that night. He was always so gentle. I felt loved, like one of those types who get their prince in the end. It was nice. I wasn’t used to that from guys. I guess that’s why all of us loved him so much. He was a good friend to Jer, too; he even got him to stop fighting. And that says a lot. Jeremy loves to fight, but he stopped for awhile because Ethan asked him to.”

It hurt. Everything was starting to hurt again.

“But he got a phone call from Jesse and he took off. That was the last we saw him. The next thing we knew was hearing a few days later that he had died. I couldn’t believe it. None of us could. We tried to go to his funeral, but your momma wasn’t having it. She barred us from the place. We couldn’t even go to his headstone. I’d like to go sometime. I think Jeremy snuck out there one time, but he never told me. He took a flower from Herbert’s pot, but when he came back, he didn’t have it. That wouldn’t be a big thing with a normal guy, but Jeremy never gives girls flowers. When he came back, his shoes were all muddy, so were his knees, and he had that off look in his eye. He always got that and I’d know he was thinking of Ethan.”

When she ended, I heard her quiet sobbing. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even want to comfort her. All of it hurt so damn much. I told myself to breathe. Breathe in and out. Let it go. Exhale. Angie’s words came to me then.

‘You get up every morning. You go through the motions. You do what you’re supposed to and some day it won’t hurt as bad’

I sat there and kept breathing until it didn’t hurt as bad. When I could finally lift my head, I was jolted to see the haunted expression on her face. She reached over for my hand. As I gave it, she held onto it tightly. Then she choked out, “You had a good brother, you did. He was one of the best. I know Jeremy seems like a scary jackass, but he ain’t. He loved your brother like his own and I know he’d take care of you if you ever needed it. You don’t need to be scared of us, I promise. I’ll set him right. I think he was trying to scare you because he’s still mad at Hunt. He blames Jesse for Ethan’s death, though we know that ain’t right. Jesse was with his girl that night. Ethan told me that Jesse had some family dinner with the in-laws. That’s what we called them because we all teased Jesse about being wifed-up, ya know? I’d been hoping he would’ve come out to party with us. Those two together were fun to watch. They would bicker like a married couple, but you could tell they loved each other. With guys nowadays and all their egos, they don’t know how to be friends with each other. Anyways,” she squeezed my hand before she let it go. “You say hello to Jesse for me, would you? That’d mean a lot to me.”

She got up and left me then. There was so much to comprehend. I couldn’t figure it out. I was still sitting there trying to do that when I heard her truck pull away. I didn’t hear when the door opened from the taco place and I wasn’t aware that Eric sat across from me. I had no idea how long I sat there, but he would tell me later that he ate our tacos. Then he waited another half hour before he tried to move me. I think I went into shock after Barbie’s revelations. The only thing I could do was breathe, only breathe.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

I never told anyone about what Barbie said to me. Eric questioned me to make sure that Jeremy Benson wouldn’t be a problem. I always reassured him; I believed what Barbie had said. I saw the pain in Jeremy’s eyes as he spoke of Ethan, but I also saw the hatred he had for Jesse. Things still didn’t make sense to me, though. What had Ethan been unhappy about? And my parents never said a word about Ethan’s other friends to me. They knew. My mom had banned them from the funeral, so they obviously knew about them.

No one told me. No one had said a word.

And Jesse…he had called Ethan that night. What had he said to him?

I tried calling Jesse after that. I tried every morning and every night, but he never picked up. I left so many messages, I lost count of them. He was avoiding me and that meant he was guilty. Maybe Jeremy Benson was right, maybe Jesse had something to do with Ethan’s car accident. Why else would Jesse not take my phone calls? That alone was painful to admit. He didn’t respect me, whatever we had, enough to answer my questions.

But I refused to let his rejection send me into a tailspin again. I’d been numb for so long, too long. Angie was right when she said my old self was coming back. I was starting to laugh. I was starting to care about things. I was even nervous about prom, but Eric made sure it was my own fairytale. He and Justin got a limousine. They picked us up at Angie’s house. Karen fretted over me as if I was a second daughter. She took picture after picture until Angie pleaded for it to end.