Present: Normal
That summer, I got a job at a gas station and garage not far from Isaac’s apartment. Since I didn’t have to go to school, I was staying there almost all the time. I worked almost full time, enough to chip in a little on Isaac’s rent, even though he didn’t know I was doing it. We hadn’t talked again since my visit. I thought I heard Mom on the phone with him one day, but it didn’t sound like she wanted anything to do with him at all. When she hung up the phone, I heard her crying softly and I tiptoed away from the kitchen before she had time to realize I was there.
Having the job didn’t fill up as much of my time as I was hoping. Mostly I sat on my ass, or stood outside frying in the sun, waiting for customers to drive up. It gave me more time to think than I would have liked. But the pay was decent and I didn’t have to carry on much more conversation than just asking “How much?” and counting out change.
The other guys who worked there weren’t too bad either. Most of them were older than me, guys who had gone to school with Isaac and Taylor. It being such a small town, they had all heard the gossip. So they kind of kept their distance from me, like something might be a little bit wrong with me too. Like I was a rubber band pulled tight and ready to snap at any second.
When we took our lunch breaks, the other guys would usually crowd around their cars and trucks parked behind the garage. I didn’t join them. They didn’t invite me and I knew I couldn’t have invited myself. So I would just eat my sandwich in the corner of the garage, where I knew I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Sometimes I ate in our little bathroom. I hated too because it was so dirty, but I had to take a couple of my pills then, so it was just easier that way.
One day I forgot my pills in my van and I had to walk by the other guys on my way to get them. They were crowded around this guy Billy’s truck, and when I walked by all their voices got really low. I wanted to laugh out loud; they couldn’t have made themselves look more suspicious. But I didn’t, because I wanted to hear what they were saying and the whole thing really wasn’t funny anyway.
“–heard he’s locked up in some mental ward.”
“–reckon the other one killed himself–”
I didn’t want to hear any more of it than that. I grabbed the pill bottles from my glove compartment and shoved them deep in the pocket of my overalls, praying that the contents wouldn’t rattle and give themselves away.
When I went back into the bathroom, I poured out each and every pill into the toilet and flushed them down. I watched the different colors swirl and disappear down the stained bowl, finally sinking down and out of my life forever. I hadn’t been to a doctor’s appointment in weeks, anyway, but my parents didn’t know that yet.
I just wanted to feel something that I was certain was my own emotion and not something manufactured by the chemicals in my bloodstream. I knew that flushing the pills didn’t make me normal, but it made it easier to pretend that I was. I didn’t even know who or what I would be all on my own, but I figured it couldn’t be much worse. If it was, I’d figure out how to deal with that, too.
After I had managed to force down the peanut butter and jelly, I went back to work and pretended I hadn’t heard a word those guys had said. Pretended everything was normal. That was the point, wasn’t it? To be normal.
Later that afternoon, it seemed like all the other guys had wandered off and left me to work the gas station all by myself. That had a tendency to happen and it never failed to annoy me. It was getting really hot too, and sitting inside the little attendant’s booth just made it feel even worse, so I decided to stand out on the pavement, which felt approximately like the face of the sun.
I had to shade my eyes with my hand to see the cars as they pulled in, so at first I didn’t recognize the little Toyota when it pulled in at the first pump. As I stepped closer to it, I could see Shelby through the rolled-down window, a big pair of purple-tinted sunglasses covering her eyes. But I’d recognize her face anywhere, and I should have recognized her older sister’s car that she had inherited the summer before that, around the same time Taylor had bought his car.
I shook my head as I walked up to the car, hating how everything still reminded me of Taylor after almost a year. I wondered if that would ever stop. And at the same time, I wondered if I wanted it to.
“Earth to Zac,” Shelby said, smiling. “I think your head is always in the clouds.”
“Maybe it is. How much do you want?” I asked, leaning down a little so I could see into her window.
“Ten bucks is good,” Shelby replied.
I nodded and grabbed the pump handle. Flipping open her gas tank and unscrewing the gas cap, I pushed the pump in and turned back around to watch the numbers climb up. My back was still to Shelby when she spoke again.
“You know, I feel like I’ve barely seen you since the summer started. Where are you hiding yourself?”
I sighed, keeping my eyes on the numbers so I wouldn’t have to turn and look at her. “I’ve been working.”
“Yeah, but you sleep somewhere, don’t you? Pretty sure you don’t live in the garage,” she said.
I stopped the pump just as it hit ten bucks. I was getting pretty good at that. “I’m staying at Ike’s apartment, okay?”
“Am I ever gonna see you again?” she replied, fiddling with her purse and digging out the money. I could tell she was trying to delay handing it to me, counting it all out in ones and taking time to smooth the wrinkles out of each bill.
“I don’t know, Shelby. I kind of need some time to myself,” I replied, stuffing my hands in pockets and waiting for her to finish delaying. There was another car sitting at the next pump and I knew they were getting impatient waiting for one of the other guys to stop standing around and attend to them.
“Just let me come by and see you, okay? Just tonight. And if it’s that horrible, I won’t come by again,” she said, her sunglasses sliding down as she finally handed me the bills. I could see her eyes, big and pleading, from under the purple lenses and I hated myself for how weak I was.
“Okay, fine. But just tonight.”
It was late that night when I got back to Isaac’s apartment, and I was too tired to do any more cooking than just microwaving a plate of leftover pizza. While it was heating up, I slipped out of the dirty overalls right in the kitchen – I knew there was a big spot of grease on them and Isaac wouldn’t like that on his carpet – and changed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that I had left hanging over the couch. They weren’t exactly clean, but they didn’t smell like sweat and gasoline, and that was more than I could say about myself.
I had just flopped down onto the couch with a can of soda and that plate of pizza when a knock came at the door. I didn’t need the peephole to tell me who it was; something about the cadence of her knock always told me when it was Shelby. Setting the pizza and soda down on the coffee table, I walked over to the door and answered it. Sure enough, it was Shelby. She was, as usual, holding a cigarette between her fingers and she looked almost a little nervous.
I couldn’t help but give her a little smile as I stood back and let her into the apartment. As she walked by me, I caught a whiff of her perfume, something that smelled cheap and sticky sweet like bubblegum. It was a scent that used to surround me, permeating my clothes and lingering on the passenger seat, and occasionally the backseat, of my van. Smelling it again made me realize how long it had been since I had been so close to her.
The time I spent standing there thinking all this, Shelby spent making herself at home. She walked right into the kitchen and pulled a beer out of the fridge door. I hadn’t touched those in the months I’d been halfway living in the apartment.
“Well, are you gonna say anything?” Shelby said, fumbling through the drawers for a bottle opener, not even looking up at me as she spoke.
Realizing the door was still open, I pushed it shut. Then I looked back at Shelby, finally managing to get her beer open and taking a swig of it. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know. What am I supposed to say?”
“Anything. Anything at all to tell me why you’ve been ignoring me for months,” she replied, walking back into the living room and taking a seat on the couch in front of my pizza, which was probably working its way back to room temperature.
I sat down next to her, but not too close. “I haven’t been ignoring –”
“Zac! You’ve barely said more than five words at time to me since Taylor died. And we never hang out anymore. No one sees you anymore, except old ladies who don’t like to pump their own gas,” Shelby said, then picked up a slice of pizza and took a big bite of it before I could protest.
Her voice was high and a little pleading, but her face was all hard lines and angles. That look told me she wouldn’t put up with any bullshit answers. But I didn’t have any answers, bullshit or not, to offer her.
“I don’t know, alright?” I said softly, my voice picking up in volume a little as I continued. “Nothing makes sense now. Nothing. Tay is dead and Ike, he thinks it’s his fault or something. And I just don’t know what to think, I don’t know why any of this is happening.”
“And what does that have to do with me?” she replied, looking incredulous. I could see that half her beer was gone already, thanks to the large gulps she was taking.
I shook my head and stood up. I really didn’t know how to reply. What did it have to do with her? Was I being just as irrational as Isaac? I didn’t know. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed two beers from the fridge – another one for her, and one for me too.
Sitting back down on the couch and focusing on opening my beer, I finally spoke again. “It’s just weird. I don’t know. Like, you were here and we were together, then. You were part of it, even if you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You’re not supposed to drink with the pills you’re on, are you?”
“Not really. But I stopped taking them today.”
Shelby stared at me in what I guess was disbelief. Her mouth wavered a little like she wanted to say something but didn’t have the words. Then she clinked her beer bottle against the side of mine and smiled at me.
“Maybe that’s good. They always made me nervous,” she said.
“I dunno if it’s good. I don’t know who I’ll be without them. Let’s hope he’s a good guy,” I replied, tipping the bottle back and taking a long, hard drink. On second thought, I added, “Hell, let’s just hope he’s sane.”
“I’m sure he will be,” Shelby replied, putting her empty bottle on the table and scooting closer to me.
I hoped like hell she was right.