What You Left Behind Read online

  “Bye, Ryden!” Shoshanna’s voice travels down the aisle after me.

  “Yeah, see ya tomorrow, Ry.”

  I shake my head to myself as I follow tie-dye girl to dairy. Good thing that wasn’t awkward or anything.

  Once we’re out of sight of the Mexican and Asian aisle, tie-dye girl stops walking and spins on her heel. “Right, so…” she says as I screech to a halt behind her. “There’s no cleanup in dairy.”

  “Huh?” That’s all I got. I’m so tired.

  “Sorry, it just looked like you were having a moment there. Thought you might need a little help with your getaway.”

  I lean back against a shelf of recycled paper towels. They’re soft. I could totally curl up right here on the floor and use one of the rolls as a pillow.

  “Thanks,” I say. “How did you know my name?”

  She points to my name tag.

  “Right,” I say. “Where’s yours? Or do you not even work here?”

  She pulls the top of her overalls to the side to reveal a name tag pinned to her tank top. Joni. “I’m new. Started the day before yesterday and already blew my first week’s paycheck on ungodly amounts of pomegranate-flavored soda. That stuff is like crack.”

  I smile for the first time in centuries. “Nice to meet you, Joni,” I say.

  “I saw you catch that kid,” she says.

  “Oh.”

  “That was cool.”

  I shrug. “I guess.” There’s an awkward pause, like she’s waiting for me to say something else. “Well, see ya,” I say and book it out of there as fast as I can.

  “Nice to meet you too, Ryden,” Joni calls after me.

  Chapter 2

  In the break room, I pull Meg’s journal out of my bag. It’s the only thing I have left of her—the old her, the person she was before I destroyed her life by getting her pregnant. She was constantly writing in these things. The first time we met, she was scrawling away in this very notebook, though I didn’t know it was a journal until I got to know her better. Turned out she had hundreds of these books—single-subject, college-ruled, all different colors—filled with her thoughts and experiences and observations of the world. She wrote about almost every single thing that happened to her, every single conversation she had.

  She once told me she started keeping the journals because they helped her cope with everything that was going on.

  “I remembered what Mom was like after she got the call that Granddad had died,” she said. “Instead of breaking down and crying, she went straight into practical mode—making funeral arrangements, calling relatives, packing up his house. When I was diagnosed, I realized that was what I needed to do too—keep myself busy. Make lists, keep a journal, dive into schoolwork. It turns out it’s a lot easier to deal with stuff when you have a plan.”

  I didn’t say her mom probably did that because she wasn’t exactly the “breaking down and crying” type. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that writing everything down helped Meg make sense of what was happening to her.

  But I think she wrote for the joy of it too. Her entries are more like little stories than memories. Perfect moments preserved forever.

  Not that things with us were always perfect. There was a big chunk of time in the middle that was pretty rough, actually. When she found out she was pregnant, and I realized what that meant not only for us, but for her, we, shall we say, disagreed on what course of action to take. But things happened the way they happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Apparently there was nothing I could do about it then either.

  Last August, we sat in her massive living room with her parents, her sister, and my mother. Everyone was well aware of the pregnancy. Meg had been scheduled to go back for her second round of chemo at the end of June, but that obviously hadn’t happened. Meg’s parents were disappointed, outraged, embarrassed—all the things a couple of uptight robots are programmed to feel when their perfect daughter doesn’t follow their perfect plans. My mom was just sad.

  But it wasn’t a done deal yet. Meg could’ve still gotten an abortion. She could’ve still gone back on chemo. If we acted fast, her treatment plan would’ve barely been interrupted at all. To me, it was a no-brainer. Her parents agreed. It was probably the only thing we ever agreed on.

  Meg saw things differently. And as I had come to learn over the last several weeks of shouting and crying and pleading and futile attempts at reasoning, her opinion was the only one that mattered. “I’m having the baby,” she declared.

  My mom didn’t say anything. Neither did her sister Mabel. Neither did I. I was still so, so mad.

  “I feel good,” she said. “Better than I have in a long time. All I have to do is hold out another seven or so months, and then I’ll go right back on treatment. I promise.”

  “But, Megan,” her mother said, “you know how quickly things can change. Seven months is a very long time when it comes to cancer.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Her mother shook her head and glared at me. Me, the asshole who knocked up her sick daughter. Believe me, anything she was thinking, I was thinking ten times worse.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” Meg said. “You just have to trust me.”

  Well, it wasn’t fine. Not even close.

  But there was so much good stuff in our relationship too. So much. I loved her. I miss her. And her journal helps me remember. Everything is so out of control lately. I’m so tired, and it’s really hard to just think. Sometimes I worry I’m going to forget her. Forget the time we had together, as if it was some strange, wonderful/horrible dream. I can’t do that. I need to tell Hope all about Meg when she gets old enough. I can’t control the fact that Hope’s going to grow up without a mom, like I grew up without a dad, which really fucking sucks, but I can give her what I never had—as many details as possible.

  When I read the journal, Meg’s words latch onto my tired brain, and the memories from those specific moments come flooding back. Not the big things, the mistakes. Believe me, I don’t need a journal to remind me of that. The journal helps with the small things—the things I’d forget without Meg’s notes, the things I need to tell Hope someday.

  I wish I had more journals, more reminders.

  Meg left this journal at my house sometime at the end of sophomore year, after she told me about the cancer but before we found out she was pregnant. I kept it without telling her. There’s writing in it up to the very last page, which is probably why she never missed it—she was ready to start a fresh one anyway. I couldn’t have known at the time that it would become my most valued possession in the entire freaking world.

  I open it up.

  May 20.

  Ryden Brooks spoke to me in Honors English today.

  I can’t do this again. The crush is absolutely, positively not coming back. I am going to carry out the rest of my high school days the same way I have for the past few months—in a rational, sane, Ryden-free mental state. Yup.

  Reasons why I love this part:

  1) I never knew Meg had a crush on me before we started going out. She never told me that, even after everything. So I know something I never would have known.

  2) I love the “yup” at the end. Like she’s agreeing with herself. It’s really cute.

  3) She wrote this entry the day we met. She goes on to document exactly what we said to each other. Which means our crazy conversation in Mr. Wheeler’s class meant something to her too.

  I keep reading, and it’s like a play button has been pressed in my mind.

  “There’s gum on that chair.” Those were the first words she ever said to me.

  I froze, my ass hovering above the seat, and looked over to find myself staring into the darkest pair of eyes I’d ever seen.

  I zoomed out from the eyes a little and found they were attached to a girl. Her hair was just as
dark as her eyes, but her skin was pale. Really pale. Like, Styrofoam-marshmallow-Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost pale.

  She was gorgeous.

  And she was smiling at me.

  Wait, scratch that. She was laughing at me.

  “What?” I asked, starting to feel kind of angry. I wasn’t used to getting this kind of reaction from anyone—especially not girls.

  “Nothing.” She grinned. “You just look kind of…confused.”

  “Huh?”

  She nodded in the direction of my still-frozen-in-midair butt.

  Oh. Right.

  I guess I did look a little mental, squatting over the chair and ogling this girl like she was a topless supermodel, when all she’d been trying to do was save me from sitting in a wad of Bubble Yum.

  I straightened up. “Sorry. And, uh, thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  I switched my chair with the chair from an empty desk nearby and tore a page out of my notebook to alert any future unsuspecting asses who wouldn’t be lucky enough to have a pair of mysterious, dark eyes looking out for them.

  Don’t sit. I wrote. Gum. I was about to tear it out of the book and put it on the chair when a little giggle stopped me. She was laughing at me again. What was with this girl?

  I sighed. “What now?”

  “What are you, a caveman?” she asked. “Don’t sit. Sit bad. Gum bad.”

  She was putting on a kind of gruff voice, her eyebrows pulled together, her shoulders hunched. She was totally making fun of me. I should’ve been pissed. Normally I would have been pissed. But it was funny. She was funny.

  “What’s your name?” I blurted out like an idiot.

  All traces of humor vanished from her face and she raised an unamused eyebrow. “Really?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve gone to school with you for four years. And we’ve been in this class together since January.”

  I was a complete and total asshole. “Oh. I knew that. Sorry, um…”

  “Meg,” she prompted. “Meg Reynolds?”

  No way. That wasn’t Meg Reynolds. Meg Reynolds was the girl from my eighth-grade gym class who couldn’t hit a ball or jump a hurdle to save her life. The girl who’d completely destroyed our chances of beating Coach Bell’s class in Downey Middle School’s End-of-Year Olympics.

  When did Meg Reynolds get hot? And where the hell was I when it happened?

  “Right. Of course. Meg! I’m—”

  “Ryden Brooks,” she said. “Star goalie of the state champion Pumas, future prom king and homecoming king, and recipient of the Most Likely to Conquer the World award.” She rolled her eyes. “I know who you are. Because we’ve been going to school together since seventh grade.”

  I nodded and focused on the front of the classroom, desperate, for the first time in my life, for class to start early. Where the hell was Mr. Wheeler?

  Since my Don’t sit. Gum. sign had been deemed unacceptable, I flipped to a new page and started over. Please don’t sit here. I wrote neatly. There is gum on this chair. Meg wouldn’t be able to object to this one. I used full sentences and everything.

  I tore it out and held it up, but she wasn’t looking my way. Her head was down, and she was writing something in a notebook. Her hair was all over the place, tumbling over the desk and obstructing her face, but she kept writing. Her handwriting was really small, like she was afraid of running out of room and was trying to squeeze as much information onto the page as possible.

  I watched as her pen moved confidently across her paper. Whatever she was writing, she was really into it.

  I couldn’t imagine writing anything like that, all intense and continuous. The only time I ever write anything is when we have to do essay questions in those blue books or type up term papers, and even then I feel like I have to stop every three words to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to say.

  “Hey, Meg,” I said.

  Her pen kept going. Didn’t she hear me? Or was she still pissed that I hadn’t known her name?

  “Meg,” I said again, louder.

  The pen stopped. She looked up. “What do you want?”

  Yeah, she was still pissed.

  “Is this okay?”

  She read my sign, and her dark eyes changed from coal to velvet as she laughed.

  I felt an inexplicable rush of relief. Fifteen minutes ago, I’d completely forgotten this girl existed. And now I cared whether she was mad at me or not? What the hell was wrong with me?

  “It’s better,” she said. “But kinda stilted, don’t you think?”

  “Stilted?”

  “Yeah, you know, too formal. Not enough personality.”

  “I know what it means,” I said. “But it’s just a sign about gum. Why does it need personality?”

  She tapped her pen at the corner of her mouth, right where her top lip and bottom lip met. The skin there looked really soft. I had the sudden urge to run my thumb over it. “How about doing a play on one of those no trespassing signs? Something like, No Sitting. Violators Will Be Prosecuted.”

  I laughed. “Or, Private Gum Residence. Trespass At Your Own Risk.”

  “Yes! Amazing. Or… Beware of Gum.”

  “Private Chair. Gum Only. No Butts Allowed.”

  Meg cracked up. “Yes! Do that one.”

  I was putting the finishing touches on the sign when Meg’s laughter cut off. I looked up, and she pointed to the chair, her eyes wide.

  Someone was sitting in it. We’d been so busy trying to come up with something funny for the sign that we’d forgotten the whole point of the sign. Oops.

  The guy sitting in the chair was Gary Fleming, this dude who always pushed around the underclassmen and wrote things like “homo” and “slut” on people’s lockers.

  I felt bad for about a second, and then I was kind of glad Gary sat in the chair. If anyone deserved it, he did.

  I turned to Meg. She actually looked scared, like Gary was going to think she was the one who’d made him sit in the gum and make her life a living hell because of it. Huh. Was that what people like him did to people like her? I’d never really thought about what school was like for other people.

  I shook my head. “That guy’s a douche bag,” I whispered. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She stared at me, her eyes latched on mine as if she was trying to figure me out. I smiled. She smiled back hesitantly.

  It felt good, holding her gaze like that. Safe. Comfortable.

  But then Mr. Wheeler came into the classroom muttering something about a broken Xerox machine in the teachers’ lounge, and Meg turned away.

  There were a million thoughts going through my head—and, let’s be honest, a million feelings in the, um, lower half of me—but one thing was certain: I’d never forget Meg Reynolds again.

  Chapter 3

  There’s so much noise. I pace around my room, bouncing Hope on my hip, rubbing her back, trying to soothe her. The vibrations from her little crying body seep into me. The music pumping through my earphones is like Febreze—it covers the sounds of Hope’s crying and Mom’s office music, but it doesn’t erase it. It’s an illusion. I still know the noise is there—outside me, inside me—and all this trying to fool my brain into thinking otherwise is a giant waste of time. And probably causing cancer.

  Fuck. Why’d I have to go and think that?

  I put Hope in her swing, pull off my earphones, wipe the baby drool from my cheek, and run my finger over my laptop trackpad. The Futurama screen saver vanishes, and I pull up Google. But I don’t know what to type. “Guy named Michael with a son named Ryden Brooks” doesn’t bring up much.

  Mom doesn’t like to talk about my father. She wouldn’t admit that, and she’s actually told me many, many times since I was a little kid that if I have any questions about him, I should ask her. But I get the
feeling that talking about him makes her sad, so I’ve tried not to ask many questions. Sparing her that pain is one small way I’m able to take care of her.

  Here’s what I do know about him:

  His first name is Michael.

  He was twenty years old when Mom got pregnant with me; she was eighteen, still in high school.

  They met at a concert in Boston, which was where he lived. They were together for four months, and he drove back and forth the two hours between her town in Vermont and the city to see her.

  He left her when she told him she was keeping the baby.

  Mom graduated from high school with a giant belly (I’ve seen the pictures). She didn’t get to go to college.

  I don’t know what he does for a living.

  I don’t know his last name.

  I don’t know what he looks like.

  I don’t know if he has other kids or not.

  I don’t know anything.

  I’ve thought about him a lot over the years. I’ve sort of come up with this vague, faceless image of him in my mind—a guy who wears his hair longish, like me, who’s a little bit taller than I am, who plays a musical instrument (maybe the piano), runs marathons, and travels the world doing something really important.

  I know it’s stupid.

  At different points in my life, I’ve found myself hoping he would come looking for me—not to replace my mom or anything, but to, I don’t know…complete the picture? Tell me how to, like, exist in the world. Things Mom couldn’t know. Guy things. But I never seriously considered looking for him.

  Meg thought I should. She was always trying to convince me to track Michael down and fill in that blank in my mind. I think it had something to do with her own parents being so cold and distant—both to each other and to their kids. I think she imagined that somewhere in my unknown, I might find the happiness she’d never been afforded. But meeting him was always something I knew I would do someday. I never felt any sort of urgency.

  Until now. Hope changed everything.