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Part Two: Sinking Fast
So that was the beginning. And the end was coming, but before that, I endured some of the worst months of my life, in that time between.The middle, I think, is often the hardest time in anyone’s story.
The beginning sneaks up on you, of course, and there’s no time to prepare and so there’s no time to agonize over it either. Then the end comes, and that’s always such a relief because it’s the end, you know?
But it’s during the middle that everything starts moving, like creaky old machinery grinding into motion after years of disuse, clashing and creaking and groaning in protest, slow at first but gradually building this horrible, inexorable momentum.
Um, I need some better analogies. Sorry.
Anyway, looking back, I think it was the anxiety I found the most taxing. The anxiety, the frustration … and maybe, if I’m going to be completely honest, the fear.
It’s a hard thing to admit, but there it was.
It was a shock, to emerge from an idyllic childhood of bliss and ignorance into the fear and chaos of awareness. I got to the point where I didn’t care anymore what their secret was, it just hurt that they were lying to me. It didn’t even matter by then that they’d started making more of an effort to hide it from me. I still knew they were up to something, you know?
In some ways I wish they all hadn’t loved me so much, or that I hadn’t loved them all so much. Maybe then it wouldn’t have hurt so much. But they did, and I did, and it did.
Man, like being a teenager isn’t hard enough.
Maria dropped her bag on the seat next to me and collapsed.
“Was it everything you dreamed of?” I teased, laughing when she gave me a pained, ‘why are you talking so loud’ glare.
It was obviously a ‘morning after’, but we had a standing Sunday Study Date to prepare for tests and exams so she’d dragged herself out of bed. At that point I still had a chance at Valedictorian, and she’d agreed to study with me, to help me keep on track. She really did; I even had it in writing somewhere.
Maybe it was just guilt because she had Michael and I didn’t have anyone, but she never cancelled on me. And maybe it was petty, but I never let her off the hook.
My main competition, by the way, was Max and Isabel Evans, but I wouldn’t have minded losing out to one of them because they were friends and I knew they’d actually worked hard – not because an older brother writes their papers, like a certain Pam Troy. I didn’t have proof of it, but how else could you explain a brainless ditz like her getting such good marks? I sure couldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t like she could just download the information into her brain.
“Oh yeah,” Maria sighed dramatically, gratified by my giggly response. “I’m so happy right now, I’m not even going to ask why you turned Max down for the country club’s July formal.”
I cringed. How did she find out these things so fast? He’d just asked me the night before, when my shift ended.
“Out with it,” she coaxed, her voice a honeyed threat. We both knew she’d get it out of me, and I realized I might as well make it easy on myself.
“I won’t be here,” I confided, after checking to make sure the door was shut.
It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t think I’d get in,” I continued in a hushed tone, smiling tentatively. I was really excited and I wanted her to be excited for me. “But I applied for a pre-college summer program at Las Cruces and –” pause for effect “– I got in!”
She just stared at me, and my smile flagged.
“What, no congratulations?” I tried to joke.
“Congratulations,” she said absentmindedly. “Liz, did your parents say you could go?”
“I haven’t told them yet. Like I said, I wasn’t sure I’d get in.”
“But how are you going to pay for it?”
“I was going to ask my parents for the money,” I said haltingly, maybe a little defensively, wishing I had just kept my big mouth shut. “If they don’t want to give it to me, I have my savings.”
I was feeling a little ill now, because it never occurred to me that my parents might not let me go. It was such a good opportunity. How could they not?
Maria was completely silent now, and I knew from experience that this was a bad thing. “I leave the day after graduation,” I told her, and I could hear how stiff my voice had become.
“For how long?”
“All summer. Depending on where I’m going in September, I might just go straight there from Las Cruces.”
I didn’t know why I was telling her this. Why was I telling her this?
“College?” She sounded like it was hard to get the word out.
I nodded. “I haven’t heard back from any of them yet, but the guidance counselor says that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But surely I’ll get into at least one of them,” I said, not-so-subtly hinting that she could start being gushingly supportive any minute now.
“But – what about – ”
“I’ve thought of everything,” I said abruptly, understanding that if we were going to stay friends I needed to end this conversation. “Listen, maybe we should just get back to the studying. Forget I said anything.”
She just nodded and we bent over our respective books. I had a little trouble concentrating on mine, though. All of a sudden I felt all these doubts, and they were making me panicky.
I had thought of everything, damn it. I had. I had a plan, dammit.
Everything was going to be fine. Right?
Right.
There was a problem, all right.
I wasn’t accepted by any of the colleges I’d applied to. Now, before you start clucking sympathetically, let me explain that none of them rejected me, either. According to every single registrar I’d called, not one ever actually received an application package with my name on it.
They had no idea who I was.
I didn’t know what to do. It was too late to re-apply for September. A few places would have let me apply for January, but none of the places I really wanted to go.
And that’s when I started getting a little scared.
For one thing, no one seemed to think it was a big deal. Not my parents, not my friends, not even my guidance counselors.
Out of nowhere Mom and Dad began talking about me taking over the CrashDown, becoming a manager or something. Not “someday,” not “when we retire,” but “after graduation.”
When I mentioned college, they got upset. Dad said we couldn’t afford it.
I pointed out that I’d been helping with the CrashDown books for three years by then, and I knew exactly how much it brought in. And Parkers were savers, very frugal. So unless someone in the family had a huge gambling problem I wasn’t aware of, they could so afford to help me out. Even if they didn’t, I challenged him, I had my savings (which were, I was proud to say, considerable; I am a Parker) and there were scholarships and work-study programs. Lots of students used them.
Mom pulled the guilt card, not-too-subtly hinting that I was an ungrateful brat for not appreciating everything they did for me.
That one was harder to counter, but I was pretty secure in my logic that a) going to a good college is almost universally regarded as a good thing, a thing to be proud of, and b) I could still come back and oversee the diner on summer vacations – and maybe after I graduated from college I’d think seriously about taking over for them and settling down here in Roswell. That sounded reasonable, didn’t it?
So for the first time in my life, I defied my parents. I yelled and I stomped and I glowered. And just to top things off, I even stormed out of the house, heartbroken and unwilling to hear any more.
That was a bad day. And it got worse.
Max found me at the park that night, and he tried to comfort me. It was nice at first, and for moment I forgot my vow just to remain distant friends as I confessed what started today’s angstfest. It was pretty satisfying, actually, and I felt a lot better.
But then I asked him what he thought, and he backed up my parents.
The nerve of him, right? I mean, isn’t it some unwritten law that friends are supposed to back you up, no matter what? I couldn’t even look at him as I left him there, on a bench in the park, calling after me, obviously upset but not as much as I was.
And as I walked the deserted streets of Roswell, it happened. In my mind, I saw that bumper sticker again, the one about paranoia, and I started to get this ticklish sensation on the back of my throat, like I was being watched.
I stopped and looked around, but I didn’t see anyone. Soon the feeling went away and I shook my head, chastising myself for being an idiot. This was Roswell. Nothing truly bad ever happened in Roswell.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on, just underneath the seemingly placid surface of a nice, uber-typical little American town.
From that point on, it was all downhill. Or maybe I mean uphill. I forget; which is the one where … oh, never mind. My point is, that was when that momentum I was talking about hit peak velocity.
Before then, I could ignore things and go back to my old life and my old illusions. But after that day, all I could think of was escape.
I hate putting it like that. I had a damned good life, and I knew it. But even a gilded cage is still a cage.
Isn’t it?
Mom and Dad got pretty upset that I was upset with them.
They were so obvious about it too. You couldn’t look at them without cringing; it was like there was this tangible air of bewildered hurt just emanating them. I couldn’t spend more than a few minutes with either one of them before I started feeling like I’d just been fingered as a serial puppy killer.
I’d never been this obstinate about anything before, and they didn’t know how to handle it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do about it, either.
I tried talking to my friends, but Maria, Alex, Max and Isabel were just as confused. They just didn’t seem to understand what I was going through, and if anything, they seemed to feel just as betrayed as my parents, as though I was abandoning them all.
That floored me. For one thing, it was only for a few years. For another, hadn’t anyone noticed that I wasn’t planning on going far away? Visiting wasn’t going to be a problem. If anything, I was shocked to find out that no one else was even considering college, nearby or otherwise.
Michael was almost helpful. I thought for sure that Michael, who’d left home and become an emancipated minor at sixteen, would definitely understand. And he sort of did. In a rare burst of empathy, he stopped by one day and admitted that he knew what it was like to want to leave, to get out. The only thing was, he meant out of a bad home situation. He couldn’t understand why I needed to get away from my parents, my perfect, caring parents. So that’s when our little bonding moment fell apart, and he left, and that was the last I talked with him about it.
His visit did leave me feeling guilty though, so I went to talk with my mom, but that just blew up in my face. Somehow she got it into her head that if I had a nice, hometown boyfriend, I wouldn’t be so restless. She even – I swear, the woman who told me only months earlier that I was too young to date seriously, said this – suggested that maybe it was time I thought about settling down. What about that nice Max Evans?
I had to get out of there. She was creeping me out.
You know, I used to wish I could be invisible.
I mean, if I cut my hair it was like everyone had to give me their opinion on it. I was living in a fishbowl, and boy is there an analogy that makes me laugh, because there really were large picture windows in the diner we lived in and over and people looked into them all the time, like it was TV and we were that evening’s entertainment.
This was worse, though. Suddenly everyone was going out of their way to remind me how great we had it there in Roswell, and how bad the outside world was.
Somehow, they all knew.
Hey, I knew it got bad “out there”. I watched the news, remember? But it couldn’t all be bad. And maybe out there, I could grow into the person I was supposed to be.
I sure as hell couldn’t do it with all of them watching me. And they were.
I could feel it.
At some point Mom found my acceptance letter to the Las Cruces program and freaked.
She cried, and my dad got in on the act, and I couldn’t take it anymore so I walked out again. Then, when I went downstairs, I knew that everyone in the diner had heard the fight because they were all looking at me like I was carrying my latest puppy carcass.
Embarrassed, I ran out the back door into the alley and smack dab into Max. He didn’t say anything, just took me for a drive out on the old highway, and he didn’t ask why I was crying or why I’d run out of the CrashDown like that. He just drove, and it was exactly what I needed.
In the corner of my mind, a tiny voice whispered that it was awfully convenient how he always showed up whenever I needed comforting, but I was so far gone by then, I didn’t care.
We watched the sun set over Buckley’s Point, and it was chilly so he wrapped his jacket around my shoulders. But he didn’t try to talk, and I liked him for it. For once there weren’t any couples necking in the lane, and we had it all to ourselves.
Finally, when I’d had enough, I looked at him and he took me home.
The diner was already closed, and I just nodded at my parents when I walked past them to go to my room. And when I got there, I pulled out my duffel bag and my secret stash of money. I didn’t know why I’d started keeping it hidden beneath a loose floorboard instead of putting it all in the bank, but I had, and I knew then that I’d use it.
I couldn’t hide the truth from myself anymore: there was something going on, and I was trapped. They wouldn’t let me in on it but they wouldn’t let me go. I felt like I was floating in some kind of limbo.
And I’d rather be alone in a country of strangers than alone in my own home.
It might hurt less.
I planned my escape pretty carefully.
Hey, I'm me. What can I say?
It would have to be after graduation; there was no way I was going to become a dropout. I’d worked too damn hard to get that far. Until then I’d just have to be careful not to raise any suspicion.
So I put up a fight but finally I “let” my family talk me out of the summer classes. And then I relented and agreed to look into a business diploma program in a nearby community college, one that was close enough for me to live at home. We even started looking at cars for the commute, and I noticed that they stopped talking about how financially strapped we were.
I hung out with Max when everyone was doing the group date thing and then a couple times when he asked and I couldn’t think of an acceptable reason why not. I don’t think I was very good company, though. I just wasn’t that good an actor.
Because even though this was something I had to do, and I couldn’t stand the thought of going on like I was any more, I felt bad.
Really, really bad. And it’s hard to hide behind a smile when all you want to do is cry.
Understatement. I felt guilty. Guilty with a capital “G”. Horribly guilty, because I knew that what Michael had told me before was true: my parents and my friends were good people. They loved me and I loved them, and I knew this was going to hurt them.
But I could also feel myself fading away, like I was losing myself in the act of being what they wanted me to be.
There were just some things I couldn’t fake. At one of our weekly ‘girls nights’, Maria teased me for ignoring her to moon over Max, but all I could think of was how I wished I’d known him under different circumstances. Something about the expression on my face made her change the subject, and she stopped teasing me about him. Alex took a little longer to catch on; once he joked that “someone’s” legs must be tired from running through my head all night, and from that I gathered that I looked like I wasn’t sleeping well. But after Maria elbowed him in the side he shut up.
Michael and Isabel noticed that I didn’t go out with the group as much, and I was kind of touched that they asked about me, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie. I started telling them that “I had a lot of work to do and I’m going to get an early night” a lot more than I was comfortable doing, but I couldn’t tell them the truth, that I found it too hard to go out with them and pretend that I was happy.
Because I wasn’t happy. During that time I got an image of what my life would be like if I stayed here in Roswell, and the thought of spending my entire life surrounded by people who lied to me and controlled me was enough to make me nauseous.
Even my teachers were beginning to notice. To fill up my time I spent more of it on my schoolwork than ever, but my concentration was shot and my grades started to suffer. Once Mr. Seligman, my biology teacher, asked if I wanted some extra credit assignments to bring up my mark, but I just shrugged. “Why bother?” I asked, before it occurred to me not to.
He didn’t argue, but he did call my parents. I let them get halfway through their rather touching “The Importance of School” lecture and then I pointed out that it wasn’t like I was going to get the opportunity to follow up on the science in college, was I, so what was the point?
That shut them up, all right.
I was ashamed that calling their bluff was something of a guilty pleasure, and I almost couldn’t handle the look on their faces when I said it, but it was just the truth, and I’d always been a truthful person.
I couldn’t pretend that it made me happy to do it, though, because it didn’t.
So I started spending more time by myself, going over my plan in my head, trying to deal with the knowledge that if this worked, there was a very real chance that I might never see any of the people I loved again.
Not that it was a surprise, but I didn’t make Valedictorian after all.
My grades slipped too much towards the end of the year, and I just shrugged when Vice Principle Roberts talked to me about it. She was practically in tears, and I found myself comforting her.
“It’s okay,” I promised. “I’m sure it’ll mean much more to whoever gets it instead. So tell me,” I smiled gamely, “Max or Isabel?”
Not Pam, I prayed. Anyone but Pam.
“Isabel,” Ms. Roberts said, smiling like the brave little soul she was, but still misty-eyed.
“Excellent,” I exclaimed heartily. “I must go congratulate her.”
And I did. I think she even believed me.
The graduation ceremony was exactly what I expected, and in fact, I came perilously close to calling off my plan altogether. I saw a lot of people that day, people I’d known all my life, and not one wasn’t genuinely proud of and happy for me.
How could I hurt them like this? I couldn’t. Could I?
Thoughts of making the best of it, giving something back to the community that had raised me, danced through my head during the ceremony, and when Maria gave me a thumbs up at one point I just about gave up on my silly flights of overly-ambitious folly.
Then they pushed it too far. They awarded me the Science Prize, and I felt like they were just rubbing it in my face. What were they thinking? That I’d put it on a shelf in the CrashDown and polish it in between balancing the books and the till? Didn’t they know it was a slap in the face, a reminder of everything they were asking me to give up?
That night, I turned down every party invitation that came my way, and headed home.
To pack.
Dad was doing his nightly rounds, checking windows and doors and appliances, and I used the opportunity to toss my bags out on the balcony.
His knock came right on time.
“Liz?”
“Come in, Dad,” I called out, and he poked his head in.
“All done for the day?”
I held up a book that I’d grabbed off of my bookshelf at random. “One more chapter,” I told him. “Then I’m calling it a night.”
He nodded and smiled proudly at his smart little daughter. “Okay. Your mother and I are turning in now. Good night, and we both love you.”
“I love you too, Dad,” I told him, and I meant it.
Half an hour later, I climbed down the ladder off my balcony.
The bus depot was a twenty-five minute walk from the CrashDown, and there was a bus leaving for Albuquerque in forty minutes. Plenty of time, right? I even gave myself the luxury of turning around for one last look at the only place I’d ever called home.
Sniffling conspicuously, I forced myself to keep going. I almost made it, too.
I’d forgotten that it was Grad Night, and one of the biggest party nights of the year.
“Miss Parker?”
Damn. Busted by none other than Sheriff Valenti himself, who (no doubt) was going around town making sure none of the parties got out of hand.
“Hi, Sheriff,” I greeted him – lamely. It was weird to be talking with him now, when I used to have dinner with him and Kyle all the time.
“Need a ride home?” he asked pointedly, and I sighed.
Head drooping, I threw my bags in the back of his SUV and climbed up onto the passenger seat.
“I don’t mind telling you that I’m a little surprised to see you sneaking out, Liz,” he said, and I groaned inwardly, knowing he was going to lecture me the whole way. “I take it your parents don’t know where you are?”
I cringed. My parents? Somehow I got up the nerve to speak. “Sheriff, do – do you think it’ll be necessary to tell them? Please? I promise I won’t go anywhere else tonight.”
I held my breath until he nodded reluctantly. “Okay. You snuck out, I suppose you can sneak right back in. But don’t make this a habit,” he finished sternly. “No party is worth it.”
I smiled inwardly and nodded, because of course I agreed completely.
“Thanks, Sheriff, I really appreciate it.”
And I did – but at the same time, I resented it. I could almost hear the sound of steel doors clanging shut around me, trapping me for another day in Roswell, New Mexico.
So I tried again the next night. I only made it a couple miles before I got spotted twice; once by Max Evans of all people, and then almost immediately by Amy Deluca, Maria’s mom.
Ironically, it was Max who saved my butt. See, Ms. Deluca took one look at my guilty face and my bags and assumed I was off to meet some boy.
Amy Deluca’s a great lady, actually. She was like an aunt to me, and I couldn’t count how many times she had a piece of pie and a shoulder to cry on when I needed an adult’s perspective and I couldn’t talk to my parents. But she also had this thing where she thought all teenagers were sneaking around to have sex, and it was her mission to head as many of them off at the pass as possible, or something like that.
So I was this close to ratting out Maria, just to get her mother off my back, when out of nowhere Max swung around as if I was his destination all along, told her some idiotic story, and … she bought it.
“Liz! Sorry I’m late,” he said brightly, making a show of ‘seeing’ Amy with me. “Hey, Miz Deluca. How’s it going?” As he spoke, he picked up my bags and put them in his back seat.
Suddenly she was all sunshine. “Hello, dear. And how are you? Happy to be out of school?”
He ducked his head endearingly, like a puppy you just ached to scratch behind the ears. Or tackle to the ground and ravish thoroughly, but that’s a whole other conversation. “Fine, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Actually, it’s just lucky that we can sleep in tomorrow, because tonight’s a great night for stargazing,” he told her, gesturing vaguely to my duffle as if it contained something crucial to the act of viewing the night sky.
“Isn’t that nice,” she gushed while I looked on in disbelief. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer,” she practically cooed as she walked away.
After she was gone I let my smile drop. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
I shook my head. I should’ve known he would avoid the question. I shouldn’t even have asked. Hell, I should just plain know better after living here all my life.
I reached into his back seat for my bags and headed off. A moment later his car pulled alongside, going really slow so he could talk to me as I walked. “Need a ride?”
“No thanks,” I said politely. “I’m good.”
He didn’t take the hint. “Where are you headed? It’s no problem, really.”
A little frustrated now, I stopped and waited for him to come to a complete stop too, so I had his full attention. “Listen, Max, I appreciate what you did for me back there, but really, I’m fine, and I don’t need any help, honest.”
He didn’t say anything right away, and I started walking again. And there he was, creeping along next to me.
“Max, I told you –” As I spoke I took a moment to check my watch, and what I saw made me forget what I was saying. I was too late. The last bus to Albuquerque was just about to leave, and there’s no way I was getting there before it did.
I sighed. “I’d love a ride home. Thanks.”
What else could I do?
That wasn’t the end of it, of course. The end was coming. I was going to make one more run at the fence, and it would have unexpected consequences.
But until then, the streets of Roswell had become some kind of sticky quicksand, dragging me down.
And I was drowning in it.
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