Part 92: Victoria

“Hannah?” Victoria said, hesitating on the porch. The duplex door was unlocked, as always, but suddenly this familiar house filled her with anxiety, making her think of horror movies as she turned the knob, pushed in gently, patted her sweatshirt pocket again, checking for Hannah’s phone. “Hannah?” she tried again, crossing the threshold, her voice faint.

Instead, she got Benji, a bundle of energy from being cooped up in the house all this time. He ran up to Victoria, barked a greeting, smelled her, circled her, let himself be pet, and cheered her up: she did belong here. Benji knew her. “Hannah?” a third time, but this time it was an announcement: here I am, Victoria, your best friend, someone you know so well she doesn’t need to say who she is.

“I'm in here,” Hannah said from her bedroom - a weird, cramped room attached to the kitchen like the sidecar of a motorcycle, mattress on the floor, no windows, no overhead light, but it fit her.

Benji careened back and forth between them like a ping-pong ball as Victoria made her way through the house, barking happily, wagging his tail.

“Shut up, Benji,” Hannah said, sounding distracted. She was on her bed, on her side, on her laptop. “He hasn’t shut up since I got home.”

“He missed you,” Victoria said, reaching down to pet him again.

“Of course he did. I missed him, too, obviously. That’s one of the main reasons I came back. But it’s not like she pays any attention to him. When she’s even home I mean.”

“Is she home?”

“Of fucking course not. She’s at his house.”

“Oh, I’ve got your phone, by the way,” Victoria said, holding it out.

“Oh, right, I forgot about that thing. You can just toss it wherever.” She was still reading on her laptop as they talked, reacting to it with her face, expecting Victoria to sit down next to her on the mattress and join her. Victoria’s presence wasn’t an interruption but an addition to what she was doing. Remembering her promise to her mother, remembering the c-word, Victoria sat cross-legged on the floor instead, facing Hannah, and placed the phone next to her. Benji settled in her lap. “So fucking stupid,” Hannah muttered under her breath.

“Your mom?”

“No, this person,” she said, pointing at the laptop. “Come look at this. What are you doing sitting all the way over there? Come on. I’m on the OBM boards and there’s all kinds of shit going on.”

“Shit? What kind of shit?”

“Come over here, I’ll show you. Why are you being weird? Why are you sitting like that?"

“I’m not, it’s just . . . I told my mom I wasn’t gonna go on the computer.”

“Did she say you couldn’t?”

Victoria thought back. “Well, no. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“So then you’re in the clear. She took your computer away from you, she didn’t take away every single computer in the world. I mean, you know I love your mom, but not even the great Theresa Brixton has that kind of power.”

“Yeah, but still, I kind of promised I wouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t’ve but I did. And with her having, you know . . . “ Victoria still hadn’t said the word cancer out loud. So far everyone she had told (Courtney, Hannah, Mr. Brown) had been able to guess it, and all she had to do was nod sadly. Much easier that way.

“Right. Sure. I get it. Or actually, I don’t get it. Since I’ve never experienced it myself. Obviously. But hey, look at it this way.” Was she going to put a positive spin on cancer? That would be an accomplishment, even for Hannah. “You’re not actually going on the computer, you’re just sitting near me while I’m on it.”

“Uh . . .”

“No, it is not fucking the same thing,” Hannah said to the computer, then turned back to Victoria. “Did your mom say you weren’t allowed to go near a computer? Did she say you had to stay six feet away from one at all times? Did she give you a restraining order? No? Then who’s to say how close you can get? Plus, don’t worry, if it makes you feel any better, I won’t even let you touch it. You don’t go on the OBM boards anyway, and plus I’m kind of in the middle of a whole thing so.”

“I’ve been on there before,” Victoria said, gently lifting up Benji and placing him down on the floor, shuffling over to see the screen, convinced not so much by Hannah’s argument as by her persistence. “But people on there are so . . . I don’t know.”

“They’re idiots is what they are,” Hannah said. She typed furiously for about ten seconds, smashed the Enter button, then kept scrolling, making her comment disappear before Victoria could read it.

“So what’s going on on there? What did you just say?”

“Alright, so like.” Hannah typed one more thing, then tilted down the laptop screen. “You know the whole thing about, like, The Letter and who really wrote it?”

“Bobby wrote it,” Victoria said confidently, proud of her knowledge.

“Well, yeah, that’s one theory, but then there’s also this whole other theory that Xander actually wrote it and he just said that Bobby did, but anyway--”

“Wait, why would he do that?”

“Well, there are different theories about that, too. But anyway, we’re way past that now, what happened today is there was this guy called D-something, and I guess he’s been trying to get people to read his theory about the whole thing--”

“About The Letter?”

“Yeah, about why Xander would say he didn't write The Letter, I didn’t really get a chance to read it, because it got deleted, and then this D guy got banned--”

“Banned for what?”

“Well, no one knows exactly, there are a couple of different theories.” Hannah looked annoyed, so Victoria didn’t bother to ask what she meant by theories. Wasn’t the computer supposed to be where you got the truth? Hannah flipped open her computer screen again. “But anyway. The point is, we’re trying to get D unbanned. And I guess now we’re trying to get OMB unbanned, too? Even though that makes NO. FUCKING. SENSE!”

Victoria said nothing. Every question she asked was just leading to more questions. Maybe she should just let Hannah do her thing on there, sit here and pet Benji until she was done.

“So some people think,” Hannah said eventually, the air of a mother finally explaining why you were grounded, “that Xander said Bobby wrote The Letter to, like, create hype for the new album. Which, like, the track list came out today - oh, right, you wouldn’t have seen that yet, let me pull it up - but, like, okay, so I don’t want to influence you, I want to hear your honest opinion, and then I’ll tell you what I think afterwards.”

“Okay.” Victoria waited patiently for Hannah to fire off a few more quick missives, then turn the screen towards her. With a sense that she was definitely breaking her promise - but cancer or no cancer, the woman next to you was the one you had to listen to - Victoria read through the list of song titles three or four times, trying to figure out what Hannah wanted her to say. She had a million questions, but Hannah wanted an answer. “I like it?"

“Yeah? What do you like about it? I’m honestly curious.”

Shit. That meant Hannah didn’t like it. But if she could come up with an answer, any answer, then Hannah might drop it, explain why she didn't like it, and then later, Victoria could pull an actually, I think you’re right and this moment would be erased from history. “I don’t know. It’s kind of cool how it has a prologue and an epilogue. Kind of like a book. Right?” Hannah liked books; that was safe.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Plus,” Victoria said, hit with inspiration, encouraged by Hannah’s response, “that makes sense, doesn’t it, since it’s based on a book?”

“But it’s not really based on The Letter, though, that’s the problem,” Hannah said, yanking the laptop back in her direction.

“It isn’t? But I thought Xander said--”

“He did. The same time he said Bobby wrote it, so obviously that must have been part of the act too. If it was an act, I mean. But this isn’t about The Letter, it’s about the guy who wrote The Letter.”

“I thought we didn’t know who wrote the letter?”

“We don’t, but--” Hannah stopped herself, frowned. “Do you mean the letter or The Letter? Italics or no italics?”

“Italics?” Victoria repeated.

“Yeah, like--” Hannah sighed. “What you use when you talk about books. Or albums. The slanted letters.”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Like, are you talking about the actual letter in the story or the story called The Letter?” She didn’t wait before she plowed on: “The actual letter, yeah, you’re not supposed to know who wrote it. But that doesn’t matter anymore. The album’s all about this K guy, the one who wrote the story.”

“Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.” Victoria’s mind was lagging, dragging, like a grocery cart with a single broken wheel. It thought it had remembered what italics were, pulled the knowledge out of some dusty corner where it had sat since some ancient math lesson, but then realized no - those were tallies. “I thought you said either Xander or Bobby wrote the story?”

“Yeah, in real life. But whoever really wrote it, they wrote it as K-whatever. That’s the name that was on there, remember? When you showed it to me?"

“Sure.”

“You know what, never mind. It’s way too much to explain and I feel--” fast typing “--like you aren’t even trying.”

“I am trying, Hannah, I promise!”

“Clearly your promises aren’t worth very much. Didn’t you also promise your mom you weren’t gonna go on the computer today?”

“Yeah, but you--”

“Your sick mother,” Hannah added. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not fair. It’s not her fault. But like, even if you were trying, you’d only be trying right now. And only cause I asked you to. Like, I’m kind of sick of having to explain everything to you all the time, Victoria. Like, it’d be nice once in a while if you just got things. And yeah, that might mean you'd have to spend some time, like, learning things. On your own. Getting caught up. Did you even read To Kill A Mockingbird yet?”

“The book for English?”

“No, the field guide for bird hunters. Yes, the book for English. It’s actually good, believe it or not. And like, what if I waned to make a reference to it? Did you ever think of that? What if I wanted to compare Xander to Atticus Finch? Would you even get what I was saying?”

One of Victoria’s hands pet Benji rhythmically, automatically; the other went to her mouth.

“No, of course you wouldn’t. And how is that fair to me?” Hannah spat. “How are you supposed to be my best friend if you don’t even understand what I’m talking about? You know, that’s the real reason I went to New York. I wanted to be around people who understood me. After having lunch with your sister that day, it just kind of hit me, like, oh my god, I don’t even like her and she probably doesn’t like me either, but at least she gets what I’m talking about. I don’t have to explain everything to her. We can argue about Socrates, and I don't have to explain who Socrates is first. And your mom too. Like, you don’t have to think I’m funny all the time, but at least understand that I’m making a joke, you know?”

Did this mean she was joking? Victoria wondered briefly before deciding it didn’t matter. If this was what Hannah found funny, then she really didn’t need to be here. She should have stayed home and did Quality Time with her mom; she should have just thrown the phone at Hannah and left. But it was too late now, and she was stuck here. She couldn't call her mom yet. That would make her angry.

Hannah went back to her Theories, turning the screen away from Victoria. Mostly for something to do, Victoria took her phone out of her back pocket and began to scroll through her Contacts. Then she started looking for someone to talk to. She needed someone with texting; someone who said what they meant instead of trying to confuse you; someone simple. Maybe - the thought hit her with a thrill - a guy. Even Hannah would understand if she was talking to a guy. And Courtney would eat it up tomorrow morning.

The only guys in her phone were James and Sean. That made for an easy choice.

Sean - her one and only ex, kind of perfect if you thought about it - maybe they were meant to be together, maybe this was fate or destiny or one of those words - it was.