She should have known something was wrong on that Wednesday afternoon when she heard Arturo talking on the hall phone in a low voice. Eddie had called earlier and would be there soon to pick her up, and she was moving for the front yard, past the hallway mirror, when she heard him.
"Look, man," he was saying. "Theresa, she's still upset, and I don't blame her. I just don't think it would be a good idea right now." There was a pause. "But maybe tomorrow we could talk somewhere else, or I could come by- hello? Hello?" She heard him slam the receiver down and mutter to himself. "Damn bastard hangin' up on me. Deserves whatever the fuck he gets."
She was going to ask him what that was about when she heard someone rapping at the door, bypassing the doorbell as usual, and she moved to open it. She smiled, because that was what she was supposed to do, and kissed Eddie briefly, because that was what she was supposed to do. A quick peck, a greeting, because it wasn't proper to even consider jumping him in public like this. She and Eddie didn't have that kind of relationship, he was too private.
A tinny, electronic chirping rang out. "Oh, shit, sorry, my phone," Eddie said apologetically. He glanced at it. He was still trying to figure out how the phone worked. He'd only acquired it a few weeks before, when he'd gotten the job and suddenly had to be on call all the time. It made him feel special, having a cell phone. Most of the guys around here who had cell phones were dealers. A.J. had a cell phone.
"Who?" she pressed.
"Dunno," he said. "The number, I don't recognize - that's weird. Hold on. Hello?" He flipped the phone open and hopped down off the front step, walking a few steps down the sidewalk. "Oh," he said, his voice sounding resolute as he processed it.
She paused in the doorway, waiting.
"After everything we just went through, shit, man. Pull that shit on Arturo, not me." Eddie's eyes flicked to her, then flicked away. "Yeah, ask him man, I'm the last person you should be asking for favors right now."She heard him curse at the phone and moved out onto the front step. "Who's that?"
He clicked the phone shut. "Don't worry about it."
"Is something wrong?" First Arturo, and now him... something strange was going on.
"Yeah," he sighed. "Ryan and Trey were being dumbasses again. What else is new? Don't worry about it, really. I'm not."
She smiled, knowing even as she did that it wasn't reaching her eyes. "Then I'm not either."
"Good," he said definitively.
She reached for his hand to hold it in hers, because that was what she was supposed to do. Ryan had never held her hand, so it was just as well that he wasn't here now, and that he was off being a dumbass, and that Arturo and Eddie were just protecting her, they always would protect her, and that was all.
That was what Theresa thought on Wednesday afternoon.
On Thursday morning even Theresa could hear the yelling from over at the Atwood house.
The noise woke her up early, winding its way into a dream she couldn't remember. She tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but she couldn't. Groggy, she pulled herself from her bed, reached for a robe, and inserted her feet into her slippers to pad out to the front yard and her driveway. She squinted from the driveway over towards Ryan's house, confused. She had heard yelling over there before, but usually could tune it out, and it usually didn't last very long. She would put it in the back of her mind and pretend everything was okay, and then it would be. But something was different.
She blinked and shook her head. Even if Ryan was over there, he wouldn't want her to go and see what was happening. He didn't like her to see things like that when they were friends, and now that they were – what were they now? – she knew that he wouldn't want her there. She shrugged and returned into the house. She was awake now. She would make breakfast.
Arturo came home a couple of hours later, covered in motor oil. "You see that truck out there?" he asked her.
"What truck?"
"Looks like the Atwoods are movin' out." He ambled through the house towards his room.
"What?" She dropped Harry Potter onto the sofa and sat up. She had to say goodbye. She reached for her shoes. She wasn't going to forget her shoes this time. She wasn't going to let him tease her about her shoes this time. Not if it was the last time she was going to see him. Not if he was moving, so suddenly.
Ryan had always lived next door. Theresa couldn't remember anyone living there before him. She couldn't imagine anyone living there after him. It was one thing for her to move. It was another for him to leave.
She scrambled out the front door and down the sidewalk, rounding the corner to the street. Dawn was standing to the side, her head bowed, her arms folded, watching as A.J. loaded another box onto the truck.
"Mrs. Atwood?" Theresa asked. A.J. scowled at her as he passed to retrieve the next box.
Dawn lifted her face. Theresa was shocked at what she saw. Her makeup was streaking down her face, lines of black and blue and red. "Where are you going?" Theresa asked. "Where's Ryan?"
Dawn looked like she was searching for the words, but she had none.
"Where's Ryan?" she asked again, her voice louder this time.
A.J. emerged from the house again with a suitcase. "Hey kid," he snapped, and it was the first time he'd addressed her directly in months, and it scared her. "Get lost."
She could only obey. She looked for his bike, for any sign that he was still here, but it was gone. She couldn't go home. Not now. What was it Mr. Medena had said? Get lost. Good idea.
She retrieved her own bike from the driveway and set off, pedaling furiously. She still wanted to look back out of habit, to see if Ryan was there, even though she knew that he wasn't. After a long ride she finally set her bike down on the leaves of the bank by the river by the train tracks behind Carver Dairy and stared out at the rushing water. She remembered him standing here, flushed, panting, squirming in her grasp with pleasure even against the pain that she knew, that she'd always known was in his heart. Even if he'd never really told her, even if she never really knew why, she knew Ryan had been hurting, and had never once been able to admit it to her.
She remembered him in her room, late at night, watching the music box spin around, singing a tune of unknown lovers from afar. She remembered him crouching in the grass like a tiger, furious at her for allowing herself to be hurt. She remembered him kissing her behind the gym at the dance for the first time. She remembered him studying the crystal on the bus on the way home from the geology museum in fifth grade, and she knew even then that he had been considering it as a weapon, missing the beauty in it. Ryan didn't see the beauty in life. He had seen too much ugliness, and too much of it had come from her.
She didn't cry, though. She couldn't bring herself to feel enough to cry.
When she got home, the truck was gone, and out on the sidewalk were several trash bags. She swallowed a little as she walked her bike up the block towards what used to be Ryan's house.
Her eyes fell on a clear plastic bag, dumped on the sidewalk with the other garbage. She recognized Ryan's lab book inside. She leaned her bike against the fence and fell to her knees, ripping the bag apart.
She flipped through the notes, all in his careful, trim handwriting. Detailed, precise. Sparse.
Something fell out on her lap. She raised it up to study it and recognized her own handwriting. She turned it over and saw herself as Joan of Arc, and Ryan as Louis Quatorze. The tenth grade history class presentations. Of course. The picture shook in her hand. She turned it back over and read the words she had scribbled to him on the last day of school. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
- Because everybody should have a friend who's always going to be there. I'm always going to be here.-
It was true. It hit her in a flash. She was always going to be here. Ryan Atwood was gone, and Theresa was here, coldly studying these objects that he had left behind, these artifacts, these relics of what used to be Ryan.
She had given him the photo to remember her by, and he had left it here. He wasn't going to remember her. He didn't want to remember her.
Theresa remembered a time when she had suspected that she was the only thing that kept Ryan from vanishing in Chino. She was right. She had been. And once she was gone, out of his life, there was nothing to keep him around.
She threw the lab book on the ripped trash bag, and after a second thought, she tore the picture in two and threw it at the trash as well. Objects. Things. They meant nothing now.
She walked back to her house. Arturo was watching NASCAR in the living room. "Ryan's gone," she said testing the words out loud.
"I know," he said. "Guess he ain't havin' a good week."
"Yeah?" she asked automatically, then shook her head. "I don't care. Hey, Eddie didn't call, did he?"
Arturo squinted at her. "Yeah, he did, actually. Said for you to call him back."
"Good," she said. She straightened up. "I think I will."
She felt Arturo watching her as she headed for the phone, but she didn't turn around. She didn't want his pity or his concern. Right now, she only wanted Eddie. And that was something she finally could be certain of.
An image flashed in her head. A dream. But she shook her head, trying to banish it. A memory of something. No. She would call Eddie. She wouldn't think about the dream. About the beach, and the tree, and the...
Before she could call out to him loud enough for him to hear, he rose up suddenly. His feet left the nest and she wanted to scream, but as the nest crashed to the ground, crumbling and breaking apart in its descent, Ryan flew up, up into the sky. High. Far away. And Ryan was scared of heights.
She wanted to call to him. Come back... wait... I'm here, I'll catch you... but the words didn't come. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Instead, Ryan grew smaller and smaller until he was a speck against the sun, too far for her to rescue.
Too far to rescue her.
A/N: One more chapter to go. -KM