That Night Read online

  Dedication

  For Pat, Maggie, and Julia. Always.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Jess

  Lucas

  Jess

  Lucas

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  A Note from Amy Giles

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Amy Giles

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Jess

  It’s funny, in a tragically not-really-that-funny kind of way, what I do remember of that night. Like how warm it was for March and Ethan wouldn’t shut up about how that was because of global warming. How the last of those dingy gray mountains of snow piled up in the corners of the parking lots had finally melted, leaving behind puddles as the only evidence of their once-towering existence. How Marissa was wearing Ethan’s hoodie because she said she was cold, even though it was warm, and how I realized with the passing of that sweatshirt that my brother and my best friend liked each other.

  The earth still feels off-balance without them. Even the weather has shifted: late March seems to think it’s winter this year, not spring. Rubbing my arms for warmth, I walk in the opposite direction of school, blowing off first period. Maybe even second. Some mornings it takes a little longer for me to get my act together enough to face another day without them, even a year later.

  On my way to the beach, I pass houses crammed so close together one neighbor could pass a cup of sugar to another through a window, which then give way to mom-and-pop shops. Queens never sleeps, but weekday mornings have their own jarring soundtrack. Buses lurch and belch down Mott Avenue, picking up people for work or dropping them off after their night shift. Car horns blare at trucks double-parked to make their deliveries. Planes taking off from JFK roar overhead every couple of minutes. Storekeepers lift their metal security gates with grinding metallic clangs. Inside of Shu’s Fish, Shu places whole silver porgies on mounds of fresh ice. The A train passing by rumbles in the air like thunder.

  Far Rockaway isn’t cool like Manhattan, or stuck-up like Nassau. We’re unapologetically Queens but with beaches. For me, that’s the best thing about living here, our beaches, the ones that attract day-trippers from Memorial Day through Labor Day. But they’re ours all year long.

  I turn right on Beach Channel and keep walking until my feet touch the boardwalk. Only die-hard power walkers and joggers brave this early morning chill at the beach. Cold wind, so much sharper here by the water, stings like needles against my exposed skin. I sit down on the sand and watch the swell lines roll in. To the east is the Atlantic Beach Bridge, which we used to take to get to Marissa’s family’s beach cabana. Marissa, Ethan, and I spent so many summer days there together. Not anymore.

  Everyone who survived that night at the Balcony has a story to tell. The movie was sold out by the time they arrived, they were in the bathroom, on the concession line.

  Eighteen people didn’t get to tell their story.

  People think we’re lucky, because we survived, because you can’t see our scars. But we feel them every day. We’re the walking wounded.

  At Ethan’s funeral Mrs. Alvarez, our next-door neighbor, came over to comfort me, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. Spoiler alert: no one in the history of death and dying has come up with any magical combination of words that can erase the pain of losing someone. Some people do even more damage in their awkwardness.

  “God spared you. His hand was on your back guiding you,” Mrs. Alvarez said, eyes red and watery from crying. But her faith was unwavering. There wasn’t even a hint of doubt in her voice.

  It had only been a few days and I was still numb, digging crescent-shaped gouges into my palms with my nails just to make sure I hadn’t died that night too. It would be a few more days until the loss really started to kick in. When I didn’t have to race Ethan to the bathroom in the morning. And later when my phone went deathly silent without the constant chiming of Marissa’s texts after her parents sent her to that private school in Colorado.

  If Mrs. Alvarez had told me her theories about God’s plan a week later, I would have been furious. “Really? So that’s how God works? He chooses favorites? Me over Ethan?”

  But I was still in shock at the funeral, so I said, “I was just getting candy.”

  Sno-Caps, to be specific. This is important because they were for Marissa. She handed me a five without even looking at me. “You know what I like.” And I did. I knew Marissa so well that I could tell she wasn’t coming with me to the concession stand because she wanted to stay with Ethan. I also knew that when Marissa was seven, she threw up after eating too many Sno-Caps and hadn’t eaten one since.

  So while he snuck in through one of the emergency exits, I was buying my best friend candy that would make her sick because I was pissed at her.

  And that’s how I was “spared.”

  Lucas

  Mom’s cool hand on my cheek startles me awake. “Wake-up time,” she says, like I’m three years old.

  I glance over at the alarm clock on my nightstand. 6:58. Two minutes before my alarm is supposed to wake me up.

  She pushes my hair away from my face. “I made you an omelet. Hurry up before it gets cold.”

  Omelets are safe. I can’t think of any bottled marinade or packet of artificial seasoning she can add to it to mess it up. Breakfast is actually the one meal here that isn’t smothered with synthetic-tasting flavors that cannot possibly come from the natural world.

  She reaches overhead to shut off the swooshing ceiling fan. I keep it on all night. The white noise helps me sleep—otherwise every creak of the floorboard, every noise out on the street, makes me jump out of bed.

  “That was some cough last night.” She reaches her hand to my forehead again and holds it there for a second. Then she replaces her hand with her lips.

  “Ma!”

  She puts her hand on my cheek to get another reading. “You feel warm.”

  “I’m fine. I just woke up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Her eyes are glued to my face looking for signs of illness that don’t exist. “I think you’re overdue for a visit to see Dr. Patel anyway. Isn’t it time for your annual?”

  “Pretty sure it hasn’t been a year yet.” I tread carefully. Cautiously.

  She busies herself picking up my dirty laundry off the floor. “I’ll call them today. Just to make sure.”

  I sit up in bed and stretch. “Did you get my text last night?”

  She finds a stray sock by my bed. “About your keys?”

  “Yeah. Have you seen them? I ended up walking to the gym.”

  She laughs at that as she gets on her hands and knees to search
under my bed for more laundry.

  I get it. It sounds weird to complain about walking to the gym when I willingly get up and run five miles every other morning.

  I pull my legs out from under the blanket. “I just don’t know where they went. I swear I put them on the peg.”

  She stands back up and adjusts the dirty clothes in her arms, holding them like a baby. “Well, they couldn’t have just walked off on their own. I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

  No, they didn’t walk off on their own, but my mother has been stooping to new lows lately and I have a bad feeling in my gut.

  Mom stops by my window, where my boxing gloves are hanging off the crank, and lifts one glove for a sniff. With a scrunched-up nose from the lingering BO, she says, “I’ll pop a couple of dryer sheets in these. That should help.”

  She heads toward the door, but not before stopping for a few painful heartbeats too long to stare at Jason’s Corner: the empty bed, the shelves of trophies and ribbons he collected over the years that she still dutifully dusts every week, the shrine to her spectacular firstborn. She bows her head and leaves before she’s overcome by the most God-Awful Thing in the World to Happen to the Rossi Family.

  Sometimes I miss the things that used to bug me the most about Jason.

  “Wake and bake, bro!” He’d shove his ass in my sleeping face. “Steak and onions last night! Take a good whiff!” He’d wave his hand so I could really enjoy the fine bouquet of his farts.

  I never thought Jason’s steak-and-onion farts would be something I’d look back on with nostalgia.

  The alarm clock goes off exactly at seven. I shut it off. The scent of eggs wafts up the stairs to my room. It’s not that different from the stench of Jason’s farts, actually.

  Jess

  Looks like I’m blowing off third period too.

  I take a few deep breaths, letting the salt air sink to the bottom of my lungs, before pushing off the sand. I head back to Mott Avenue to look for a job. School can wait today.

  The Ponsetis don’t need my babysitting services anymore, not since Mrs. Ponseti’s mother moved in with them, which stinks because they were the perfect family to work for: they went out all the time (they have more of a social life than I do); they could never break a twenty, so they always rounded up in my favor; and their pantry was a wonderland, chock-full of high-fructose delicacies. They even had Pop-Tarts. Pop-Tarts!

  I’ve been looking and applying for weeks. The Laundromat said to try back in a month. Key Food, where Ethan started working after Dad left, didn’t have any openings. The woman at the clothing store that had every shade and wash of denim hanging fashionably off emaciated headless mannequins looked me up and down before answering a hard no.

  There’s one last stretch of stores I haven’t hit yet. Squeezed in between the Korean grocer and the comic book store is Food of All Nations. Inside, the scent of spices fills the air; my mouth waters. I walk over to a box of Turkish delights and hold it up to inspect it. I remember reading about them in the Chronicles of Narnia. Edmund betrayed his family for them. I’ve never had one before, but they must be really something to sell out your family for a box.

  “Can I help you?” a woman behind the counter asks, straightening her hijab.

  I put the box down exactly as I found it and walk to the counter. “I was wondering if you were hiring?”

  She purses her lips. “No. I’m sorry. We’re a family-owned business.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.” I try to smile, but weeks of rejections weigh my cheeks down.

  “You might want to try Enzo’s,” she offers.

  I thumb to the right. “Enzo’s Hardware?”

  Not as if there is any other Enzo’s; it’s just that Enzo has terrified me since I was a kid. Always just sitting on a chair behind his counter, grunting, never smiling. I used to cower behind Dad every time we had to run in there for something.

  “Are they hiring?” I ask.

  She nods. “Ask for Regina, Enzo’s niece. Tell her Adab sent you.”

  I nod, encouraged. Adab, Regina . . . Enzo . . . I resist a shudder. I can do this.

  I thank her, then point to the Turkish delights. “When I make some money, I’m coming back for those.”

  She smiles and nods. “I’ll keep a box for you until then.”

  I walk outside and take a steadying breath before marching over to Enzo’s.

  “Fill out this form.”

  “Regina,” who is actually Reggie Scarpulla, a girl I went to high school with who graduated last year, shoves a piece of paper at me. We weren’t friends at school, but I remember seeing her in the bathroom, reapplying her lipstick.

  I fill out the form while sitting in an uncomfortable orange plastic chair next to a vending machine on the other side of the Employees Only door. Once I’m done, Reggie brings me into her office and closes the door, trapping the hot, stale air inside with us. A trickle of sweat charts a ticklish course down my spine.

  “Jessica Nolan. I remember you.” She bounces a pencil eraser across her desk, looking over my paperwork. Taptaptaptaptaptap. She glances up. “You turned seventeen last month. That makes you a junior, right?” I nod. “So you’re looking for hours after school?”

  I nod again. Clear my throat. “Yes.”

  “Why aren’t you in school now?”

  “I’m going in late. I have a note.” I add the note part so I don’t come across as a habitual ditcher, even if I am. I don’t mention I wrote the note myself and forged my mother’s signature.

  Taptaptaptaptaptap.

  She exhales. “So, Jessica. Why do you want to work here?”

  “Oh. Why?” As in why wasn’t I prepared to answer this basic fundamental job interview question? She raises her eyebrows, waiting. “I . . . I just really need a job.” I feel my cheeks burn.

  Judging by the way her head jerks back slightly in surprise, I take it no one’s ever answered that way before. Reggie uses the eraser tip to scratch the top of her head, then resumes her tapping. Seconds pass while she thinks my response over.

  “A little bit about us.” I take that as a sign that I haven’t totally bombed the interview yet. “We’re small, but we’re not that small. We expanded last year. Now we have everything here that the big stores have. Plumbing, heating, cooling, electrical, painting . . . We have lawn and garden, home organization. . . .” She ticks off everything on her fingers, scanning the ceiling for her mental inventory.

  She exhales and plants her palms on the desk. “Okay, so . . . we are looking to fill a position. But it’s not a specific position, you know? Not like customer service or kitchen design.” She wiggles her fingers in the air like kitchen design is the fanciest thing she could imagine. “Everyone who works here is expected to pitch in with everything and anything. Except registers. My uncle doesn’t let anyone touch the money.” She laughs and looks down at my paperwork before adding under her breath, “Not even me.”

  She glances back up. “That means unloading trucks and restocking shelves. You have to be able to lift up to seventy pounds.”

  Her eyes travel along my shoulders, my arms, everything she can see from where she’s sitting. I know what she sees, and it’s not much. I wish my clothes weren’t so baggy, exaggerating my small size.

  “I can lift seventy pounds,” I promise.

  “It’s a suuuper unglamorous job, Jessica. The day will come when I’m gonna ask you to unclog the toilet in the bathroom. You would not be-LIEVE the presents some customers have left us in there.” She rolls her eyes hard.

  I force myself not to show my disgust picturing that day. “It’s okay. I can do it.”

  She’s trying to scare me off, I can tell. But I’m more afraid of not getting this job than getting it. She stares up at the flickering fluorescent lights, thinking. I count each agonizing second of silence.

  “Your brother was at the Balcony, wasn’t he?”

  There’s no need to say more; everyone in our neighborhood knows what that means.
>
  “Yeah,” I say. “So was I.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. I avoided all the . . .” Her hand twirls in the air. “Ceremonies.” She makes a face, as if the word leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

  I know what she means. The tree planting, the bench dedication, the charity softball game. All intended to honor the people who died that night but ended up making us survivors and our families feel like some kind of freak show on display, people you wouldn’t want to trade places with in a million years. But still. Those “ceremonies” were for us, not for her.

  “I couldn’t,” she adds. “I just saw his name on the list.” She stands up from her chair. “Wait here.”

  She leaves the door open, thank God. It lets in a little air, but I’m still sweating. There’s a fan in the corner, unplugged. I’m desperate to turn it on, but then I picture all the papers flying off her desk and fluttering around her office like a flock of seagulls.

  I tug my shirt away from my skin and shake it around to circulate some air before the sweat stains soak through my shirt.

  Watch out for boob sweat. I hear Marissa in my ear. It makes me smile. I can just imagine what she’d say if she saw me here applying for a job unloading trucks.

  Don’t forget to pick up a jockstrap on the way home from work! Bwahahahaha!

  Large pockets of rust consume Reggie’s metal desk. The back of a picture frame faces me.

  Turn it around! Let’s see it. Marissa bosses me and I obey.

  It’s Reggie with a very tall, very muscular guy. He looks familiar. I can practically feel Marissa leaning over my shoulder. Wow, he’s cute!

  They’re at the beach, smiling at the camera, their tanned arms wrapped around each other. He looks like Paul Bunyan next to her, as if he could crush her between his arm and torso if he exerted even the slightest effort.

  And HUGE! The guy’s a friggin’ skyscraper!

  Reggie comes back in as I’m still holding the frame.

  Nailed!

  In a panic, I place the frame back where I found it.

  “I’m sorry.” I half expect to self-combust of embarrassment right here and now. Cause of death: mortification.

  “It’s okay,” she says, but her eyes are fierce, protective. I crossed a line; not smart on an interview. She exhales, as if to let it go. “He was my fiancé.”