“Where are we going?” I said when she shoved me into her Mazda and put my seatbelt on. The irony of the situation was not lost on me.
“I don’t know yet. I’m making this up as I go along.”
She turned some music on that fed from her iPod and Ed Sheeran’s “Kiss Me” seeped through the speakers. It almost made me smile, because I’d put his music on there for her.
“Okay, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we’re going to. You made me talk about my Dad, so it’s my turn.”
“Katie.”
“Nope, I’m in charge of this grief committee. You had your turn.” She wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so I shut my face and tried not to think about how much I wished I was back in my apartment, drinking alone. I didn’t deserve a grief committee and I sure as hell didn’t deserve Katie.
Katie headed toward downtown. She scanned both sides of the street, looking for something. I had no idea what it was, so I just sat back as the music changed to “Dammit”, by blink-182. An oldie, but a goodie.
“Aha!” she said, nearly hitting a parked car. She put on her blinker and turned into a small parking lot at the end of the street. The building looked like it might have been an old church, with a steeple and a bell on top. The sign out front said something about a children’s art show. A gallery.
“Come on, Picasso,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt.
“Is he the only artist you can name?”
“No. There’s…um…Monet.” She blanked out after that. “Shut up.”
We walked up the steps to the gallery and Katie opened the door. It was quiet inside, but soft generic piano music came from hidden speakers.
“Should we just go in?” Katie whispered.
“The door’s open, so I think yes,” I said at normal volume, stepping around her. I was still a little buzzed from the scotch, so my steps weren’t as steady as they normally would have been. Katie took my arm and led me in.
The building was painted all in white to accentuate the art and had tons of windows and good light fixtures. For a small place, it was set up really well.
“Oh, this is so cute,” Katie said, dragging me to the right. From a quick glance, they had all sorts of things here, from finger paintings, to a table of pottery pieces to some little dioramas. The first piece was done by Olivia, age 6, and resembled a princess fantasy, if that fantasy were done by a strange little girl.
The princess had a pretty pink dress and a sword in her hand and was plunging it into the heart of what I assumed was a dragon. A guy in armor lay on the ground, his eyes wide open in death. At least I thought so. Maybe he was just lying down for a minute. With his eyes open.
“What do they teach girls these days?” I said.
“What? Princesses can’t kill dragons?” she said, smacking my chest in outrage.
I shook my head. “I never said that. It’s just a little creepy, that’s all. Did you dream about slaying dragons when you were six?”
“No.”
“What did you dream about?” I was desperate to know. To think about her instead of…instead of Ric.
She moved on to the next painting which was done by a boy and featured something that looked like a snowmobile.
“When I was six? I don’t know. A ballerina or something.” She wasn’t giving me a straight answer.
“No, really. You can tell me. I wanted to be a police officer, if that helps any.” She looked at me, surprised.
“A singer,” she said, stepping past the snowmobile picture to one that was a zoo panorama.
“Well, that’s obvious. Why didn’t you ever pursue it?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. My parents were down on it. I was in chorus in school, but I was in a bunch of other things too and they made me give up one, so I gave up chorus.” She looked at the zoo painting, turning her head to the side. “Hey! You’re not supposed to be helping me with my issues. I’m supposed to be helping you.”
“Talking about you is helping me.” It was helping me not think about Ric and what I’d done to her.
She glared at me for a second before she took my hand again.
“I guess. Do you think that’s an elephant?”
“Looks more wooly mammoth-y,” I said.
We looked through the rest of the art, trying to figure out what some of it was and coming up with ridiculous stories to go along with each of the scenes. She held my hand. Some of the older kids’ stuff was pretty good, and you could spot who had natural talent. We were completely alone. I could hear voices downstairs, but they never came up to check on us. Probably figured no one would actually steal a kid’s finger painting that wasn’t worth anything.
I let myself be surrounded by the art, and Katie and the sweet little moment we were sharing. I shouldn’t have. I should have made her leave the second she walked in and drowned my sorrows alone.
I was letting myself have a sweet moment with my girlfriend while Ric was…
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, but there are some things I need to tell you,” I said.
“Shh…” she said, putting her finger to my lips. “Not right now. We can do it later. Right now we’re looking at…um what are we looking at?”
I kissed her finger and slipped it into my mouth, tasting her skin.
“I think it’s a flower.”
***
“I knew looking at art would make you less a**hole-y.” She said as we got back in the car.
“Oh, I could still flip the a**hole switch.”
“I don’t think you will. You sober yet?”
“Getting there.” I was going to have quite a hangover though.
“We should probably get some water into you.” She drove back toward my apartment, but stopped at a fast food place to get us something to eat. I seized the moment to check my phone. I had several messages from Trish, asking where the hell I was and why I wasn’t answering my phone.
“We should go check on Trish,” I said, hating myself for not doing it sooner. After she’d told me about Ric, she’d said she was going back to her apartment, and I’d been in a such a state, I’d let her.
“Aud’s on it. Simon called her.”
“Still, she’s a bit of a wreck.” I’d never seen her like that, and she’d been through a lot.
“Were she and Ric close? I never got the impression that they were.”
I turned on the radio and flipped to the alt rock station. “No, not really. They used to have this weird love-hate friendship.”
“Huh.”
I was also in the dark as to why Trish was so upset over Ric.
“Okay, okay, we’ll go see her. I’ve never been to her place before.”
“She’d probably like to keep it that way, but desperate times.”
Trish’s apartment wasn’t as large as mine, but it was a little bit nicer, with the exception of her insane roommate.
Katie parked the car in the only empty space and I showed her where Trish’s place was. Her building had two apartments on the first floor, two on the second, and hers was on the second.
Katie knocked softly and the door opened a second later.
“Oh hey, where have you been?” Audrey said, her voice a whisper. “She’s in rough shape.”
“Yeah, guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Katie said, elbowing me. “Can we come in?”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” She held the door open and we walked in to find Trish wrapped in a blanket on the ugly flowered couch, a pile of used tissues all around her like giant snotty snowflakes.
“Hey, Trish,” I said, going over to her and crouching down. “How you holding up?”
“Where the hell have you been?” It was a little hard for her to glare through puffy eyes, but she managed.
“Katie and I just took a walk.” It would be weird to try to explain the art gallery interlude. “Are you going to be okay?”
“No, I’m not going to be okay. She died, Stryker. She died.”
“I know, I know.” Trish and I weren’t huggers, but I put my arms around her anyway and pulled her head onto my shoulder. Sobs shook her body and she melted into me.
I heard Audrey and Katie whispering behind me, catching each other up.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I said.
“What’s there to talk about? She’s dead. Just like that. Here one minute and gone the next. Just like Katie’s dad. Why do these things happen?”
I rubbed her back. “I don’t know, Trish. I don’t know.”
That was a lie. I knew why Ric had died. She’d died because of me. Because I should have taken her home, or stayed up and watched her, or maybe I shouldn’t have been such a world class a**hole.
But I kept my mouth shut and just held my little sister while she fell apart.
“Are you sure it’s okay to miss class?” Katie said to Audrey.
“Yeah, my professors have been cutting me a lot of slack. It pays to be the teacher’s pet sometimes.”
“I bet. How do I get in on that?”
“I could teach you.” They laughed a little and then went to the kitchen, giving us some privacy.
“Have you talked to anyone else?”
She nodded against my shoulder.
“Baxter is at her place with her mom.” Ric’s backstory was just about as tragic as Trish’s and mine. Dad split, mom married a bunch of jerks and never really cared about her. She dropped out of high school and moved in with whoever would take her, as long as she was out of her mom’s house. She worked whatever jobs she could get and barely scraped by. She and Trish had been a lot closer a few years ago, but they’d drifted apart when Ric had started partying really hard. Trish might look like a girl who’s seen some hard living, but I kept her away from a lot of it, even while I engaged in it myself.
“It could have been anyone, Stryker. She was just driving home and it killed her. It could have been us.”
“But it wasn’t. You’re okay. I’m okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Her voice broke again and she convulsed with sobs.
When it came to losing people, Trish and I were pros, but none of them had ever died. Our parents, as horrible as they might have been, were still alive out there, and so were the rest of our relatives. Trish and I had had our fair share of hardships, but death was something that had, by and large, passed us by.
I held her for a long time as I heard Katie and Audrey in the small kitchen. They tried to be quiet, but there was plenty of banging around until they came out with a tray of soup and some grilled cheese sandwiches.
“You should eat something,” I said, moving Trish’s head. It was strange to see her normal greenish-bluish eyes instead of the violet ones.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Well that’s too bad because you’re going to eat anyway if I have to shove it down your throat.” One of the only things that worked with Trish was tough love. Guess I wasn’t the only one.