What Remains Of Me | A Story of The Year | #001
CHAPTER 1
FEBRUARY 11, 1980
It was when Kelly Lund’s science teacher, Mr. Hansen, asked her the third question in a row that she wasn’t able to answer—the one about mitochondria—that Bellamy Marshall passed her a note. Kelly said “um” and swallowed hard to get her dry mouth working when she felt the balled-up paper hit her in the leg. She didn’t think note at first, though. She thought spitball.
Kelly got spitballed a lot. So often, in fact, that she’d once told her mom about it. “They throw spitballs at me,” she’d said. “They laugh at my clothes because they’re so cheap.”
“Cheap?” Mom had said. “Your clothes cover you up where you should be covered, which is more than I can say about those other girls you go to school with. If you want to talk about cheap, Kelly. Those girls are what I call cheap.”
Kelly had made a secret vow never to talk to her mom about school again.
So she didn’t look at the note when it hit her leg. She ignored it, the way she ignored all the spitballs, the way she ignored so much of what happened to her, in school and elsewhere. Ignore it and it will go away. It worked for most things that hurt, if not all.
Mr. Hansen said the thing about mitochondria again, Kelly trying to hang on to the words, to mold them into something that made a little bit of sense. But she couldn’t. She felt the sun pressing through the classroom windows and the itchiness of her cardigan sweater and the elastic of her peasant skirt cutting into skin—all of those things so much more real than the question.
Everyone was watching her. She felt that too.
“Miss Lund?” Mr. Hansen said.
Kelly gazed at the floor. Her eyelids fluttered. She felt herself starting to escape . . . “Miss Lund.”
For a few seconds, or maybe it was more, Kelly slipped into a dream—an actual dream of being seven years old and with her sister again, of sitting cross-legged on their bedroom floor, of sitting knee to knee with Catherine, staring as hard as she could into Catherine’s bottle green eyes.
“Whoever moves first, dies.”
“But . . . but . . . I don’t want to die, Catherine.”
Catherine places a hand on hers. It is warm and dry and calming. “Don’t be scared, Kelly. You know me. I always move first.”
“Miss Lund! Am I keeping you awake?”
Kelly’s eyes flipped open. She heard herself say, “No. I’m falling asleep just fine.”
Oh no . . .
A strange silence fell over the room—an airless feeling. Mr. Hansen blinked, his jaw tightening. Kelly knew she was supposed to say “I’m sorry,” and she started to, but before she could get the words out everyone started to laugh. It took Kelly a few moments to register that the kids were laughing with her, not at her. That never happened. Her heart beat faster. Her face warmed.
“Good one,” said Pete Nichol behind her, Pete a champion spitball thrower who had never said anything directly to Kelly ever. Pete—tall and shining blond and rich too. The son of the producer of one of Kelly’s favorite TV shows, swimmers’ hair like white silk. Pete Nichol clapped Kelly on the back and Mr. Hansen said, “Miss Lund. You are on detention,” and that made everyone laugh louder. Some even cheered.
Kelly turned and ventured a look back at the class and that’s when she saw the balled-up piece of paper on the floor next to her leg—not a spitball—and when she glanced up and toward the next row over, Bellamy Marshall was gesturing at the paper, her silver bracelets jangling.
Read it, Bellamy mouthed.
Bellamy was new, the daughter of a famous actor named Sterling Marshall who’d been a big deal in the ’50s and ’60s and still kind of was. She’d started at Hollywood High after Christmas break, having been expelled from a fancy private school in Santa Monica for mysterious reasons. There was drama in that, high drama in the way Bellamy had shown up a week after school restarted, slipping into the back row of Mr. Hansen’s class, the very back row, though Mr. Hansen had pointed at an empty seat in the front. Kelly had turned to look at this daring new girl in her bangle bracelets and designer jeans, her luxe leather jacket, Bellamy Marshall ignoring Mr. Hansen and breathing through frosty parted lips, like a movie heroine on the run.
Bellamy had smiled at Kelly and Kelly had smiled back, wanting to be her friend but a little sad for knowing that it wasn’t possible. Not with this girl—this shining rich, leather jacketed girl who’d only smiled at Kelly because she didn’t know any better . . .
That had been more than a month ago.
Once Mr. Hansen got everybody quiet, once he called on Phoebe Calloway in the front row and asked her the mitochondria question and Kelly felt reasonably invisible again, she kicked the piece of paper closer to her desk. She slipped it off the floor, unfolded it quietly.
PARTY AFTER SCHOOL. MY PLACE.
Kelly turned to Bellamy to make sure it wasn’t a joke. She wore a different leather jacket today—a brown bomber. She probably had a closet full of them, all real leather.
Bellamy mouthed, Well? And then she winked at Kelly. She didn’t look like someone who was joking.
Yes, Kelly nodded, amazed at this moment. Amazed at this day.
IT WASN’T REALLY A PARTY. JUST BELLAMY, KELLY, TWO BOYS FROM the soccer team, and a tall, skinny twenty-three-year-old guy named Len with a pencilly mustache and a sandwich bag full to bursting with what he called “Humbolt’s finest.” They met up in the school parking lot, Len shaking the Baggie at Bellamy and grinning.
The two boys piled into Len’s black Trans Am, while Kelly rode with Bellamy in her red VW Rabbit. They drove in the opposite direction from where Kelly lived, sped across Sunset Boulevard and past Barney’s Beanery, Bellamy swerving around slow drivers, sunglasses focused on the road, silver bangle bracelets slipping up and down her wrists as she steered. They drove up, up, up, into the hills, neither one of them talking, just listening to the radio, to The Knack’s “Good Girls Don’t”—a song Kelly had never liked, not until now.
Kelly had expected to be nervous when she got in the car, but Bellamy not talking to her felt like not getting called on in class. It put her at ease.
“Hand me my cigs, would you?” Bellamy said. “They’re in my purse.”
Kelly picked Bellamy’s bag off the car floor—a Louis Vuitton. A lot of the girls at school had these. They called them “Louie Vouies” and treated them in such an offhand way, tossing them around like they were worth nothing, but Kelly knew better. Her mother had shown her one at I. Magnin once, tapping her nails on the price tag. “Who would spend this kind of money?” she had said. Kelly’s mother worked at I. Magnin behind the makeup counter. But even with her discount, she never bought anything there for Kelly or for herself. “It’s obscene,” she would say, about the prices, about the entire store. Kelly never replied. She found it beautiful.
“Someday,” Mom would say, “I’ll get us out of this town.”
Carefully, Kelly unzipped the bag. She plucked out a box of Marlboro Reds—Mom’s brand—and handed it to her.
“You can have one too,” Bellamy said.
“Thanks.”
Bellamy lit one off the car lighter, then slipped it to Kelly without looking at her. The gesture made her feel as though they’d known each other for years. Bellamy rolled the windows down and Kelly blew a cloud of smoke into the warming air.
“Len likes you,” Bellamy said, “I can tell.”
Kelly felt her cheeks redden. “How do you know him?”
She shrugged. “Just . . . around,” she said. “He can be a jerk but he’s always got good weed. And I love the smell of his car.”
“Is he really twenty-three?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
Through the windshield, the Hollywood sign loomed before them, making Kelly think of Catherine. It always did—how she used to brag about their view of it to anyone who’d listen. “You can see the sign from our apartment,” she’d say, leaning on the word sign as though she were talking about the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, when the truth was, the Hollywood sign had been an eyesore back then—full of holes, crumbling into the hills, the first and third o’s missing almost entirely.
“Who wants to see it?” Kelly would say to her. “It’s ugly.”
“No it isn’t. It just needs fixing.”
Two years ago, a whole bunch of rich movie stars and politicians had taken interest in the rotting sign and rebuilt it. Alice Cooper had even donated his first o to replace the more destroyed of the two and declared himself Alice Coper for the rest of the year—something Catherine would have found funny if she’d still been alive . . .
On the radio, The Knack was fading into Tom Petty—that song Kelly liked about a girl raised on promises. She took another drag off her Red and gazed out at Catherine’s sign—sparkling white in the sun, the letters whole and welcoming. Some things do wind up getting fixed.
“You were killer today,” Bellamy said.
“Huh?”
“In science! How did you get the balls to say that to Hansen?”
“Oh,” Kelly said, remembering. “It uh . . . it just sort of came out, I guess.”
“‘I’m falling asleep just fine . . .’” Bellamy said. “Man. That made my whole year. My whole life.”
Kelly took another drag off her cigarette, smiled a little. “I just had to say it,” she said. “He was being so annoying.”
Bellamy laughed—warm and contagious—and Kelly joined in. She tried to remember the last time she’d laughed at something that wasn’t on TV. It had to be back when Catherine was still alive, when they were still little kids. “Hansen’s face,” Bellamy gasped. “He was clenching his teeth so tight, I thought his eyes were going to pop out!” And Kelly laughed some more, Tom Petty singing about his American Girl, the whole car full of music.
Finally, they caught their breath. Bellamy slowed down at a stoplight, braking smoothly. She was a good driver. Kelly couldn’t drive at all. She’d signed up for Driver’s Ed, but hadn’t made it to most of the classes. What was the point? Mom would never let her use the car anyway.
“So,” Bellamy said. “I guess they let you out early for a first offense?”
“Huh?”x
“You know. I expected you to be stuck in detention ’til sunset.”
Kelly’s mouth went dry. Miss Lund. You are on detention. Mr. Hansen had used those words. She’d never been on detention before, woodwork kid that she was—one out of a mismatched set, the quiet twin, the dull one. Beyond bad grades, she’d never gotten into any type of trouble before today, never acted up, barely spoke. But here, this, her very first time and she’d . . . Mom will kill me. She turned to Bellamy, cheeks burning. “I didn’t go to detention,” she said. “I never checked in.”
Bellamy blinked her mascaraed eyes. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I forgot.”
She turned back to the road as the light changed to green, her face cracking into a bright grin. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Kelly Lund,” she said.
Kelly grinned too. She couldn’t help herself.
WHEN THEY GOT TO BELLAMY’S HOUSE, THE BOYS WERE ALREADY waiting out in front. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Len said. He kept smiling at Kelly, a slippery smile.
“Her name’s Kelly, not Sweetheart,” Bellamy said. “Try and keep from drooling.”
One of the soccer boys said, “Who cares about names? Let’s smoke.”
Kelly was only half-listening. She couldn’t stop gawking at Bellamy’s house. It was huge—an adobe palace with a gleaming red tile roof, balconies all around. They’d driven through a gate to get here, up a long, palm-lined driveway that slithered up the side of Mount Lee, Kelly’s ears clicking with each rising turn. It had made her heart pound, this drive, like traveling to another world.
And it was another world, wasn’t it? The Bird Streets. That’s what this area of the Hollywood Hills was called, the roads named for birds and perched so high, driving them felt almost like flying. Bellamy lived on Blue Jay Way. (“Like the song,” Kelly had said back in the car. Bellamy had nodded. “I hate the Beatles.”)
Bellamy’s front door was made of polished, carved wood. A maid in a white uniform let them in and walked away quickly, eyes aimed at the floor. “Don’t let my little brother come upstairs, Flora,” Kelly said. But the maid didn’t seem to hear her.
Kelly saw a pink marble staircase, a crystal chandelier, huge windows, at least two stories high, overlooking the canyon. She bit her lip. She kept her eyes down like the maid, because she couldn’t look too hard at anything. She wanted to seem like someone who’d seen a place like this before.
Bellamy’s room was at the end of a long, carpeted hall. And as they all walked in, the two boys laughing about something that happened at practice the other day, Bellamy asking Len to show her the bag again, Kelly used every muscle in her body to keep her jaw from flapping open.
There was a stereo with a tape deck and turntable, speakers tall as Kelly’s chin. There was a big TV, a vanity table with a huge mirror, a walk-in closet, door ajar to reveal rows of clothes, grouped by color. There was a record collection that filled an entire wall, a red leather couch, a zebra print throw rug that may very well have been real zebra. And best of all there was a king-size bed with a white puffy satin spread and dozens of throw pillows—the type of thing a princess would sleep on, or a queen. There was a framed movie poster over it—Saturday Night Fever. Kelly noticed a pen scrawl across John Travolta’s pants leg, and moved closer to it. Travolta’s autograph . . . with a note. For Bellamy, he’d written. Best wishes. Kelly stared at the looping script and had to touch it. She had to press her fingers to the glass, just to make sure it was real.
“I hate disco but I still think John’s sexy,” Bellamy said. “My dad knows him.”
Kelly’s hand flew back. She felt herself blushing.
Bellamy smiled at her. “I met him once.”
“You did?”
“I wanted to touch that chin dimple so bad.” She leaned in closer, dropped her voice to a whisper. “I wanted to put my tongue on it.”
“Make it a fattie,” said one of the soccer boys. He was talking to Len, who was sitting on the edge of Bellamy’s princess bed, rolling a joint intently.
“If this were my room,” Kelly said, “I’d never leave.”
Len said, “Few hits of this, you might not be able to.”
“You want to spend the night?” said Bellamy. “My parents are in Switzerland, so it’s just me and the staff till Friday.”
Kelly swallowed. She hadn’t even called home, and she knew Mom wouldn’t approve. “Keep away from those Hollywood types,” Mom would always say—even though she’d sent her girls to Hollywood High, where the sports team was called the Sheiks after a movie character played by Rudolph Valentino. Nearly everyone at school was a Hollywood type in one way or another—what else would they be? Mom may as well have said to Kelly and Catherine, “Don’t make any friends,” Kelly following the rule, Catherine dying for breaking it. “My . . . my mom . . . I don’t think she . . .”
“Hey, it’s cool,” Bellamy said. “Some other time, though, okay?”
“Yeah, I’d love to.”
“Lotsa nice red veins in this stuff,” Len was saying, the two boys oohing and aahing over it. They were both short and stocky with floppy hair and pink cheeks. Kelly didn’t know either one of them, and they didn’t seem like jocks at all. They reminded her more of two puppies from the same litter.
“Ladies first,” said Len. He gave Kelly that slippery smile. Kelly nodded at Bellamy. “You can go first.”
Bellamy plucked the joint away from Len. She put it to her lips and pulled off it deeply.
Len said, “Bet you wish that spliff was my Johnson.” The soccer boys chuckled.
She pursed her lips to keep the hit down. “The spliff’s bigger,” she said finally, smoke curling out of her mouth.
Kelly laughed.
One of the soccer boys said, “Burn!”
“Baby,” Len said. “You know that ain’t true.”
Bellamy rolled her eyes, though her cheeks flushed a little.
Kelly took a closer look at Len—the tight black T-shirt, the veiny arms, the thick belt buckle, shaped like a coiled rattlesnake. He seemed so old. She imagined Bellamy with him and the thought of it made her feel kind of strange, panicky . . .
“Earth to Kelly.” Bellamy was holding the joint out to her.
“Sorry.”
Kelly started to take it, when Bellamy pulled back. “Get out,” she said—not to Kelly, to Kelly’s left shoulder. When Kelly turned, she saw a skinny boy with Bellamy’s same black eyes standing in the doorway.
“Hi,” Kelly said.
The boy smiled at her. He wore a Star Wars T-shirt, spindly pale legs sticking out of white shorts. He couldn’t have been more than ten.
“Don’t say hi to him. He’s Satan’s spawn.”
The boy blew a raspberry. One of the soccer boys laughed, and Bellamy got up from the bed in a rush. She slammed the door in his face. Locked it. When she turned around, her face was an angry pink. “My brother Shane.” She said it to Kelly like a swear word. “I swear to God he won’t leave me alone.”
KELLY HAD TRIED POT ONCE, WITH CATHERINE. THEY’D BEEN THIRTEEN at the time and Catherine had brought it into their room along with their mom’s pink lighter. Kelly had asked where she’d gotten the stuff, but Catherine had refused to tell her. “Just try it,” Catherine had said.
“What if I freak out?”
“Would it kill you, Kelly? Would it kill you to freak out just one time in your entire life?”
Kelly had inhaled too hard and coughed it all up and felt nothing.
This time, though, it had worked. At least Kelly thought it had. Her head felt soft and fuzzy, as though someone had rubbed lotion all over her brain. Bellamy had agreed to take the soccer boys home, seeing as they both lived nearby, and when Kelly had said good-bye to her, she’d seen her face in flashing frames.
Kelly had accepted a ride from Len—something she hadn’t thought very much about until now, but as she slipped into the front seat of the Trans Am, that panicky feeling flooded through her again. She found herself focusing too hard on each movement. The click of the lock echoed in her ears and the leather seats squeaked and clawed at her. Kelly felt Len’s syrupy gaze on her too, and when she turned a little, there was Len’s face. Close. God, he was so old.
“Good stuff, huh?” His breath was hot and sticky. His eyes blurred into one.
“Really good.”
Len’s hand slipped up under her peasant skirt and rested on her thigh. Her whole leg stiffened. The car did smell good, she thought—like warm leather and pine.
He leaned in and kissed her, his mouth spongy and lax. His lips were too wet and the pencil mustache scratched at her nose. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and then just let it lay there on top of hers, slimy and sleeping.
My first kiss. She hadn’t expected it to be like this. Catherine had once said her first kiss would feel like magic and she’d wanted to believe that. But then again, how was Kelly supposed to know what magic felt like? She closed her eyes, tried to relax. His mouth opened wider, so he was biting into her cheeks. What part of this was supposed to feel good? There had to be something. She tried running a hand through his greasy hair and he moaned, his wet lips vibrating.
The weed made Kelly nervous. It was getting hard to breathe, but she didn’t want to pull away because she didn’t want to have to look at Len. She didn’t know what to say to him. Thanks? That was interesting?
At one point, back at the house when the boys were laughing about something, Bellamy had set her head on Kelly’s shoulder. “I knew we’d be friends,” she had said. The memory of it relaxed her.
Len pulled away. Kelly’s mouth still tasted of him, a sour taste. “Better get you home,” he said. “Unless you want to stop somewhere first.”
She didn’t want to stop somewhere with him. But she didn’t want to go home either. She heard herself say, “I don’t care.”
Len started up the car but kept his hand on her thigh. Kelly closed her eyes and leaned back, Bellamy’s voice from this afternoon still in her head, making the hand feel lighter.
“You’re like me.” Bellamy had said it into Kelly’s ear, in a soft, pressing whisper she could feel more than hear. “You have secrets.”
CHAPTER 2 will be posted soon.