Sound Bites

I could feel the blood pulsating through my skull as I thought about all the buoyant clichés I had once believed in, only to have them mock me years later. Give it time, Renee. Everything happens for a reason.

“Right,” I mumbled, looking up at the sky as I shifted my car in reverse. “Well then I’d love to know what possible reason could exist for this.”

And when the impact of the crash jolted me back to reality, I was too stunned to realize that I’d already received my answer.

Chapter Three (#ue6596bfd-b712-54f1-b59e-ad3fe3ba99d3)

The summer before I entered my freshman year of high school, I had convinced my seventeen-year-old next-door neighbor, Pete Maloney, to let me take his car for a spin. It was a classic 1979 Cadillac Eldorado, his prized possession, no doubt. But given the fact that I had hair the color of sunlight and a newly sprouted chest, he agreed to my proposition, as long as I promised not to leave the neighborhood.

Everybody in Wyman’s Field knew that the Queenans had the nicest house on the block. Their lilac windowsills meshed perfectly with the indigo trim of their house and the display of hydrangeas that lined their front yard. Their entire garden looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid portrait.

So, naturally, when I drove by and noticed the Queenan brothers outside playing basketball in the driveway, I beeped and waved furiously at them, feeling like the coolest kid in the world to be behind the wheel at age fourteen. I then proceeded to drive the car up over the sidewalk and onto the lawn, leaving behind a giant row of tire marks in Mr. and Mrs. Queenan’s impeccable bed of flowers.

If you can imagine the embarrassment I experienced during that ordeal, that pretty much sums up the way I felt when I realized I’d just backed into my new neighbor’s car.

I was so busy cursing my own fate that I hadn’t even noticed the giant van that had pulled up behind me, waiting to slide into my parking space once I pulled out. The guy in the van behind me was throwing his hands up in the air and mumbling to himself. I wanted to crawl underneath my seat and hide there until he was gone.

I climbed out of my car, my cheeks burning, and waited for the other driver to follow. My first impression was that he was semi-good looking, in an unconventional, tortured artist sort of way. His T-shirt hung loosely on his lean frame, and a mass of dark hair wilted around his face and curled right below his ears. The cliff of his cheekbones was lined with a dark five o’clock shadow that ran down his entire jaw line. He looked like someone who would act the part of Jesus in a play. I chuckled to myself, thinking of how much my mother would love him.

As he got closer, there was a certain intensity about him that almost scared me, like he was withholding some kind of dark secret. His piercing blue eyes found mine and remained there, unwavering.

“Did you not see me behind you?” He crouched down and ran his hand over the dent in his front bumper.

“Obviously not.”

He tilted his head upwards, his face a pale sheet of white. His eyes were like ice, a cold blue-gray mass of bitter illumination. “Well, next time maybe you should look behind you before backing up.” He spoke softly and evenly, but I could sense an underlying tone of patronization in his voice.

Without a word, I turned and ducked inside my car to find my registration. I couldn’t believe the nerve of this guy. I had just moved across the country and lost my best friend and boyfriend in one swoop, and this dope was crying over a dent in his bumper.

I fished my registration out of the glove compartment and gave it to him. He handed me his information in return, which I jotted down on the back of a receipt, the only piece of paper I could find in my mess of a car.

Dylan Cavallari

10 Park Place Apt. 18

Boston, MA 02111

I stopped writing and tried to figure out if his apartment was on my floor or the floor above me. I wanted to be sure to avoid him at all costs to save myself any future humiliation.

“California, huh?” Dylan asked, glancing at my license plate. “What’s the matter, they don’t teach you how to drive in Beverly Hills?”

“Funny,” I said. “Actually, I just graduated from UCLA, but I’m originally from here.”

After handing me back my registration, I heard him mumble something about women drivers under his breath as he marched back to his van. I studied his hell-on-wheels contraption – a frightening navy-blue monster with tinted windows and dark rain guards that lined the edges – and wondered why he was so upset about it in the first place.

“Nice child molester van you got there,” I said, attempting a joke.

His eyes wandered to the van, gave it a silent appraisal, then found their way back to me. “Thanks for the input,” he said, unsmiling. His quiet confidence was both intimidating and irking at the same time. “For the record, a buddy of mine gave it to me. It’s not something I would’ve necessarily picked out for myself.” He toyed with the silver ring on his right index finger, his gaze now back on the van. “Not that it’s really any of your business.”

The flames in my cheeks had expanded, and I could feel the heat spreading to my ears, my neck, my chest. After everything I’d been through, the last thing I needed was some pompous ass giving me a hard time, especially when I hadn’t even done anything wrong. Not on purpose anyway.

Dylan was just about to open his door when he suddenly turned back around to face me, looking intrigued. “So, why’d you move back here, anyway? Cali wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”

“No,” I said, my blank expression mirroring his. “For the record, I moved back after I caught my best friend in bed with my boyfriend.” I started to head back to my car, then stopped and glanced back at him over my shoulder. “Not that’s it’s any of your business.”

***

I called Beth on the way to Noir to tell her I was running a little behind schedule, thanks to my impeccable driving skills. I ended up stuck on the phone with her for the entire drive because once Beth’s mouth gets going, it stops for no one.

Beth and I had known each other since grade school, and she was a great person to confide in when you were in the midst of a crisis because she never told you what you wanted to hear. She was gut-wrenchingly, wholeheartedly, one-hundred percent honest. Always. I hated her candidness when we were younger because my hormonal, sensitive teenage self didn’t exactly take well to constructive criticism, but now that I was older I really appreciated her honesty. Sure, there were times when little white lies were necessary, because no one wants to hear “Yes, you really do look fat in that dress” or “You’re right, your forehead does look like you’ve sprouted a third eye.” But there were also times when you didn’t want someone to sugar coat anything; you wanted them to give you their God’s honest opinion.

This was definitely one of those times.

“So you walked in on them?” she asked, wide-eyed, leaning forward in her seat.

“Yeah, I…”

“What did you do? Did you cause a scene?”

“I just… ran.”

“You left? Why?”

I shrugged. “I was in shock. I didn’t even know what to say. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and try to process what just happened.”

“So what did Justine say? Have you talked to her? She must’ve called you, right?”

Beth was very analytical. Conveying a story to her was like being on trial; she would constantly interrupt with one hundred questions and you had to offer up every single detail so she could analyze each aspect of the story and weigh her opinion carefully.

Beth and I met the summer before we both entered the sixth grade. She lived a street over from me and was the only girl in my neighborhood who didn’t think I was some sort of foreign reptile because I went to Catholic school. Our afterschool rituals consisted of riding our bicycles around the neighborhood and swapping stories about our daily adventures. I was always envious of her public school lifestyle, mainly because nothing exciting ever happened at Holy Family. No one ever got caught fooling around in the locker room or smoking pot in the bathroom. Her stories were like listening to the narrative of a soap opera, which, in my eyes, made her the epitome of cool. I couldn’t believe she actually wanted to be friends with someone who wore knee socks and saddle shoes on a daily basis.

“She’s called, but I can’t talk to her,” I said, answering her question. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to, but right now, I just can’t.”

“Do you think they’re, like, dating? Or do you think it was just a one-time thing?”

“I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t want to know.”

“God, I really can’t believe Justine would do that to you,” she said, covering her eyes with her hands. “I really can’t. You guys have been friends for so long.”

I bit my thumbnail nervously, and then asked the question I had been dying to ask all along. “Beth, why do you think she did it?”

Beth sighed. “Well, I think it could be one of two reasons. The first reason could be that she’s jealous of you.”

I shook my head. There was no way. The only time jealousy occurred was when someone felt they were being denied something they could have, something that belonged to someone else. Justine could’ve had any guy on the planet. It didn’t add up.

“No way,” I said. “I think I’d pick up on it if she was. I mean, come on, the girl was my best friend.”

Beth gave me that look that implied she knew what she was talking about. “Don’t be so sure. Sometimes people hide things well. Maybe she’s always secretly compared herself to you and you never realized it.”