Кэндес Бушнелл - Carrie Diaries

I find her sitting on the patio with my sister Missy. Ever polite, Missy is helplessly trying to make small talk, probably as confused as I am about Lali’s presence. “And how’s your mother?” Missy asks awkwardly.

“Fine,” Lali says. “My father bought her a new puppy, so she’s happy.”

“That’s nice,” Missy says, with a glazed smile. She looks away and spots me coming up the walk. “Carrie.” She jumps to her feet. “Thank God you’re here. I have to practice,” she says, making a piano-playing motion with her fingers.

“Nice to see you,” Lali says. She stares at Missy’s back until she’s safely inside. Then she turns to me.

“Well?” I say, crossing my arms.

“How could you?” she demands.

“Huh?” I ask, taken aback. I’m expecting her to beg for forgiveness and instead she’s attacking me?

“How could you?” I ask, astonished.

And then I notice the rolled-up manuscript in her hand. My heart sinks. I know immediately what it is: my story about her and Sebastian. The one I gave to Gayle weeks ago and told her to hold. The one I was planning to tell her not to bother publishing.

“How could you write this?” Lali asks. I take a step toward her, hesitate, and then gingerly take a seat on the other side of the table. She’s playing the tough guy, but her eyes are wide and watery, like she’s about to cry.

“What are you talking about?”

“This!” She bangs the pages onto the table. They scatter apart and she quickly gathers them up. “Don’t even try to lie about it. You know you wrote it.”

“I do?”

She hastily wipes the corner of her eye. “You can’t fool me. There are things in here that only you would know.”

Double crap. Now I actually do feel bad. And guilty.

But then I remind myself that she’s the one who’s responsible for this mess.

I rock back in my chair, sliding my feet onto the table. “How did you get it anyway?”

“Jen P.”

Jen P must have been hanging out with Peter in the art department and she found it in Gayle’s folder and stole it. “Why would Jen P give it to you?”

“I’ve known her a long time,” she says slowly. “Some people are loyal.”

Now she’s being really nasty. She’s known me a long time too. Perhaps she’s chosen to skip that part. “Sounds more like a case of ‘like attracts like.’ You stole Sebastian and she stole Peter.”

“Oh, Carrie.” She sighs. “You were always so dumb about boys. You can’t steal someone’s boyfriend unless he wants to be stolen.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re so mean,” she says, shaking the manuscript. “How could you do this?”

“Because you deserve it?”

“Who are you to say who deserves what? Who do you think you are? God? You always think you’re just a little bit better than everyone else. You always think something better is going to happen to you. Like this” — she indicates my backyard — “like all this isn’t really your life. Like all this is just a stepping-stone to someplace better.”

“Maybe it is,” I counter.

“And maybe it isn’t.”

We stare at each other, shocked into silence by our animosity.

“Well.” I toss my head. “Has Sebastian seen it?”

The question seems to further agitate her. She looks away, pressing her fingers over her eyes. She takes a deep breath as if she’s making a decision, then leans across the table, her face twisting in pain. “No.”

“Why not? I would think it would be another useful brick in your we-hate-Carrie-Bradshaw edifice.”

“He hasn’t seen it and he never will.” Her face hardens. “We broke up.”

“Really?” My voice cracks. “Why?”

“Because I caught him making out with my little sister.”

I gather the pages she’s thrown onto the table and tap them up and down until the corners are neatly aligned. Then I giggle. I try to hold it in, but it’s impossible. I cover my mouth and a snort comes from my nose. I put my head between my knees, but it’s no use. My mouth opens and I emit a whoop of laughter.

“It’s not funny!” She makes a motion to get up but bangs her fist on the table instead. “It is not funny,” she repeats.

“Oh, but it is.” I nod, laughing hysterically. “It’s hilarious.”

June 20th, I write.

I press my knuckles to my lips and look out the window.

Amtrak train. Dad, Missy, and Dorrit take me to the station to wave good-bye. I kept saying Missy and Dorrit didn’t have to come. I kept saying it was no big deal. I kept saying I was only going for the summer. But we were all nervous, stumbling over one another in an attempt to get me out the door. It’s not like it’s 1893 and I’m going to China or anything, but we sure as hell acted like it.

And then we were standing on the rickety platform, trying to make small talk. “Do you have the address?” my dad asked for the umpteenth time.

“Yes, Dad. I wrote it down in my address book.” Just to make sure, I take the address book out of my Carrie bag, and read the entry out loud: “Two forty-five East Forty-seventh Street.”

“And money. You have money?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“That’s only for an emergency. You won’t spend it all in one place?”

“No.”

“And you’ll call when you get there?”

“I’ll try.” I’ll try — but my words are drowned out by the long, slow holler of the approaching train as the speaker crackles to life. “Eleven-oh-three train to Penn Station New York, and Washington, D.C., arriving in approximately one minute...”

“Good-bye, good-bye” — hugs all around as the giant locomotive rolls slowly down the tracks, wheels screeching like a hundred crows — “good-bye, good-bye” — as my father heaves my suitcase up the steps and I clap my hat to my head — “good-bye, good-bye” — the train starts with a jerk, the doors close and my heart heaves to the bottom of my stomach — “good-bye, good-bye” — relief.

I make my way down the aisle swaying like a drunken sailor. New York, I think, as I plop down onto a cracked red leather seat and take out my journal.

Yesterday, I said good-bye to all my friends. Maggie, Walt, The Mouse, and I met at the Hamburger Shack for one final hamburger with sautéed onions and peppers. Walt’s not working there anymore. He got a job at a law office, answering phones. His father said that even though he couldn’t forgive Walt for being gay, he was willing to overlook it if he was successful. The Mouse is going to her government camp in Washington, and Maggie is going to Hilton Head for the summer, where her sister and brother-in-law have rented a cottage. Maggie’s going to help out with their kids, and no doubt hook up with a few lifeguards along the way.

I heard Lali is going to the University of Hartford, where she’s planning to study accounting.

But there was one person I still had to see.

I knew I should have let it go.

I couldn’t.

I was curious. Or maybe I had to see for myself that it was truly over. I needed proof that he absolutely did not love me and never had.

On Saturday evening around seven, I drove by his house. I didn’t expect him to be home. I had worked up this idea in my head that I would leave him a note, saying I was going to New York and I hoped he would have a good summer. I convinced myself it was the right thing to do — the polite thing — and would somehow make me the bigger person.

His car was in the driveway.

I told myself I wouldn’t even knock. I would leave the note on the windshield of his car.

But then I heard music coming from the house. The screen door was open, and suddenly I just had to see him one last time.

I knocked.

“Yup?” His voice, slightly annoyed, came from the recesses of the family room.

I knocked again.

“Who is it?” he demanded, this time with more irritation.

“Sebastian?” I called out.

And then he was there, staring at me from behind the screen door. I’d like to say he no longer affected me, that seeing him was a disappointment. But it wasn’t true. I felt as strongly about him as I had on that first day I’d seen him in calculus class.

He looked surprised. “What’s up?”

“I came to say good-bye.”

“Oh.” He opened the door and stepped outside. “Where are you going?”

“New York. I got into that writing program,” I said in a rush. “I wrote you a note. I was going to leave it on your car, but…” I took out the folded piece of paper and handed it to him.

He scanned it quickly. “Well.” He nodded. “Good luck.”

He crumpled up the note and handed it back to me.

“What are you doing? For the summer, I mean,” I asked quickly, suddenly desperate to keep him there, for at least a moment longer.

“France,” he said. “Going to France.” And then he grinned. “Wanna come?”

I have this theory: If you forgive someone, they can’t hurt you anymore.

The train rattles and shakes. We pass hollow buildings scrawled with graffiti, billboards advertising toothpaste and hemorrhoid cream and a smiling girl in a mermaid outfit pointing at the words, “CALL ME!” in capital letters. Then the scenery disappears and we’re going through a tunnel.

“New York City,” the conductor calls out. “Penn Station.”

I close my journal and slip it into my suitcase. The lights inside the car flicker on and off, on and off, and then black out altogether.

And like a newborn child, I enter my future in darkness.

An escalator that goes on forever. And then an enormous space, tiled like a bathroom, and the sharp smell of urine and sweet warm sweat. Penn Station. People everywhere.