A Little Friendly Advice (11 page)

From the back pegs of Charlie’s BMX, I lean forward and give directions out of the parking lot and onto West Market. His hunter-green baseball cap smells like salt and coconut shampoo. When I grip his shoulders, static electricity pops through my fingertips and my first instinct is to let go, but I don’t. Charlie pedals forward and our bodies collectively ease into a sharp left turn. I wonder if this is what sex is like.

He wisely chooses the sidewalk over the street because traffic is unpredictable, between all the stores and parking spots and traffic lights. Unfortunately, the pavement is just as treacherous because the blocks are laid unevenly, mimicking the aftermath of an earthquake. He twists and turns his handlebars expertly and steers us clear of the biggest bumps.

The sound of his fat, rubbery tires crunching fallen leaves keeps the silence between us from being too quiet. Still, I know I should try for some conversation — if only to prove that, contrary to my recent behavior, I’m actually capable of some normalcy. My veins knot up in fiery bundles, pumping bursts of energy and fear and giddiness through my body.

“That’s where my mom got my Polaroid,” I say, wagging my elbow in the direction of the camera store and remembering what brought me and Charlie together in the first place.

“Cool. Do you want to study photography or something in college?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I say, even though I never really have. But I guess that would be neat. Better than studying math.

“Hey, does that shop do repairs?” Charlie tries to turn and look at me, but we almost crash into Akron Library’s book drop. “Sorry.” He quickly locks eyes on the path ahead.

“Umm, I’m not sure. Why?”

“I found my dad’s old SLR, from his college days, when we were unpacking the Pittsburgh moving boxes. That thing is awesome, but I loaded the film wrong and messed up the advance lever. I’m afraid to take it apart to try and fix it myself. My dad will freakin’ kill me if he finds out it’s busted, so I’ve just been hiding it underneath some of his prints, hoping he doesn’t decide to take it out for a sentimental spin. Thank God Akron seems to have stifled all his creativity. Anyhow, the only camera place I knew of was Best Buy, and those guys have no idea how to deal with anything that’s not digital.”

“SLR?” I ask.

“Single lens reflex. Don’t you have one? It’s like every photographer’s first real camera. You can set your shutter speed, mess with the aperture, all that fun stuff. You haven’t really taken a picture until you use one of those.”

“Oh.”

Charlie’s hands strangle the handlebar grips. “I didn’t mean to sound like a know-it-all. I guess I’ve picked that habit up from my dad. He’s the kind of teacher whose lessons never really stop.” He clears his throat. “So, what kinds of pictures do you like to take?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I could be honest and admit that I’ve only really had a camera for four days, but I decide against it. “Just stuff really. People and things.” I’m basically describing nouns. How incredibly interesting.

“Okay … well, what was the last picture you took?”

A surveillance shot of my estranged father’s truck. “I can’t remember.”

“Who’s your favorite photographer?”

“You know, I never really thought about it.”

“Oh.” I take my hands off his shoulders to wipe the sweat onto my jeans. Charlie uses the opportunity to scratch where I’ve been holding him.

“I’m a fan of Annie Leibovitz,” he continues. “Not the recent
People
magazine crap, but her old
Rolling Stone
covers. She shot The Kinks, The Who. I mean, all the biggest names. When bands actually had identities.”

“Yeah,” I say, as if I have any idea who Annie Leibovitz is, though I think it would be awesome to get paid to take pictures of rock stars. Charlie seems like he’s waiting for me to say more. He keeps turning his head to the side, like he wants to make sure that I’m still on the back of his bike. “Sorry. I should have asked you who your favorite photographer was.”

He leaves it be, which is a relief and also awkward. A few more blocks pass, and we turn off into quiet Akron suburbia. The silence is back again, but different than before. We’re not enjoying it together, as an old man rakes his yard, or a bunch of kids play tackle football. Instead, we’re both conscious of the obtrusive emptiness. That loud kind of silence. It reminds me of hanging out with my mom, which is even more of a romantic buzz kill.

“I’m sorry if I freaked you out by just randomly showing up today,” he says suddenly, weaving though a set of empty trash cans. “I just thought about you a lot this weekend.”

“I wasn’t freaked out.”

“Right. I didn’t mean freaked out like, well,
you know
…”

I take a deep breath and am so thankful that I am on the back of this BMX and not looking him in the face, because I just couldn’t do it. Letting Charlie take me home was a mistake. For something that started off with so much promise, I can’t really see this ending any way but badly.

“Just let me off at the corner,” I say. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Why? Where’s your street?”

“Up there, on the right.”

Charlie turns his handlebars and diagonals across the street, taking aim at the wall of dense, prickly bushes near the curb at the beginning of my block. “Hold on,” he says with a laugh. “This’ll be fun.”

“Wait,” I say, because we are picking up some serious speed. A car engine purrs behind us. I look back and see my mother’s white Honda trailing from a distance. The ends of my ponytail whip me in the face, making my cheeks sting. I have no choice but to turn back around.

“You better hold on tighter than that,” Charlie taunts as he stands up and pedals us forward with even more energy.

We are rapidly approaching death, or at least a broken rib. I scrunch the shoulders of his scratchy blue sweater into my clammy hands as Charlie suddenly hits the brakes just seconds before we crash. His back tire skids out, sending us on a whirl that makes my heart thud into my Converse.

We come to a stop, and we’re both breathing heavily. I hop off the bike and let my eyes trace the long and graceful fishtail we’ve etched on the road. Somehow it’s blacker than the black of the street. Mom slows the car and stares us down as she passes by. She doesn’t wave hello or even smile, so neither do I.

“You’re crazy,” I tell him. Then the urge to take my camera out tugs on me and is impossible to ignore. So even though he’ll probably think I’m trying too hard, I take out the Polaroid from my book bag and point it at the ground. “That’s probably the longest fishtail I’ve ever seen.” It’s nearly impossible to fit the whole thing in the viewfinder, so I keep backing up on my tiptoes. Just as I snap the photo, Charlie comes up behind me, grabs my arm, and spins me around.

“You didn’t want to hook up with Teddy Baker, did you, Ruby? Because when I was asking him about you, and how I could find you, he seemed to think you were … well, into him.”

I fan my face with the Polaroid and take a step back from him. “What? No, not at all. I mean, my friend Beth was trying to …” I shake my head. It’s not even worth getting into. “Whatever. The answer is no. I did not want to hook up with Teddy Baker.”

Charlie doesn’t seem appeased. He untucks his white button-down from his navy Dickies and strangles himself with his felt tie, which is covered in his homemade buttons. “Still, that wasn’t very cool of me to touch your camera and pull you away from the party. I could see why that made things a little weird.”

“It was fine. I mean, I was happy to get out of that basement.”

“Really?” he says, with a surge of excitement. “I thought so! I mean, I was watching you for a while and I could tell by your face that you weren’t having any fun there, either.” He tempers himself and stares down at his feet. “Anyhow, I don’t blame you at all for getting upset with me when I tried to kiss you. I shouldn’t have done it like that. Not after we just barely met. I didn’t even ask you if you had a boyfriend or anything.”

I can’t believe it. He actually thinks it was his fault that I ran away from him in tears.

I am presented with the perfect opportunity to save face. I don’t have to tell him anything about why I was crying that night, or what’s made me such an emotional wreck. I only have to accept his apology and we’ll never speak of this again. It seems too easy. A lump bobs up in my throat. It takes a few swallows to get it down.

“Charlie, listen.” I’m overcome with something. Insanity, I guess. “You didn’t make me upset. It’s hard to explain, but …” I like Charlie. I do. But I’m just not ready to go there. Especially not with someone who is still essentially a stranger. Maybe in time I can tell him what happened, or maybe I won’t ever have to. But for now, I’m going to do something in the middle. “It was just some family stuff I was going through. Not anything that was caused by you.” My feet take big strides toward my house, putting as much distance between us as I can.

Unfortunately, Charlie has wheels and catches up to me within a few pedals. A hand presses on my shoulder and grounds me to a stop. “Don’t worry. I know what that’s like.”

To my surprise, he doesn’t ask me a million questions. He doesn’t try to figure out what’s wrong with me or fix my problems. And, best of all, he doesn’t leave. Charlie just rides in circles around the manhole cover in the center of the street, waiting patiently for me to catch up when I’m ready. And I know it’s weird timing, but I shiver with excitement at the prospect of him possibly trying to kiss me again.

“This is my house,” I say, pointing up at the stoop.

Charlie hops the curb and shows off a couple of BMX tricks for me before chucking his bike to the ground and meeting me at the bottom of my front steps. “Nice pumpkins,” he says.

I reach up onto the awning and grab the spare key. “Mine’s the angry-looking one.”

“Hmm, I never would have guessed.”

I knock into him playfully. Over Charlie’s shoulder, the fuzzy outline of my mother darkens the curtains of the front window. What little confidence I have evaporates. I make eye contact with her for the briefest of seconds, and then she steps back away from the glass.

I don’t have time to get my bearings. Charlie is leaning toward me, with his eyes closed, head cocked slightly to the left. It’s going to happen. My first kiss! I close my eyes and wait for his lips to hit me. When they do, there’s a definite spark. It might be static electricity. Or maybe something else.

I freak out over what I should be doing with my hands, but then after a few seconds, I just tuck them into my back pockets. His go around my waist. One of his fingers, maybe the longest one, snakes up underneath the hem of my T-shirt and grazes a couple of my ribs. He’s obviously kissed before. I wonder if he can tell that I haven’t.

After a few seconds, I crack open one eye and check that we still have some privacy. There’s a little part of me that’s so glad this is happening right in my mom’s face, on our front steps. Because even though I’m new at this, she could learn a thing or two from me.

Maria’s cell phone chirps the Pixies’
La La Love You
. She glances down, ignores the call, and continues our slow crawl out of the school parking lot.

The very next time she hits the brakes, she reaches into the backseat and grabs my cheeks in a kissy-face grip. “Don’t think for a second I’ve forgotten about yesterday, Ruby.” She’s not angry, just whiny in a cute way. “I always spill the absolute goriest details about all my hookups to you. Remember when Rich Gilfillan had a cold and kept dripping snot on the side of my cheek when we made out on the steps of City Hall?”

“I wish I didn’t,” I say, pushing the words out my scrunched-up lips. Her soft hands smell like gingerbread lotion and her nails are painted a deep cranberry.

I had successfully dodged most discussion about yesterday’s hookup with Charlie by devising a new hallway route, spending my lunch hour on the library computer looking up potential SLRs for myself on eBay, and letting Beth’s list of remaining party plans take center stage during our after-school walk to the Volvo. But when Maria received the call from the ring tone she’s assigned to whomever she was kissing at the moment, her memory of my love life sparkles awake and leaves me nowhere to hide.

An annoying array of car horns beep impatiently behind us. Maria releases me and tsks. “You are so mean, Ruby. You never share anything with me!”

This makes me feel a little guilty. I should be better about including Maria in more of my life. But I’m not about to start that now, with Katherine riding shotgun. And especially about my first real kiss. Maria shares that stuff easily because it happens so easily for her. I’m a different, difficult story altogether.

The car lurches forward. I ease back in my seat and reapply ChapStick because my lips aren’t used to being kissed and Charlie’s peach-fuzz stubble wasn’t as soft as it looked when we were standing forehead-to-forehead, nose-to-nose, at my front door. “You all saw the most dramatic parts. There’s not much else to tell.”

“Liar.” Katherine’s head is down in shotgun, copying someone’s homework assignment into her notebook. “Beth, make her spill it. Ruby listens to everything you say.”

“Shut up,” I mumble.

Katherine stretches back her arm and takes dead aim at me, her middle finger acting as the crosshair. I slap her hand away kind of hard. Borderline playing, but not really. She just laughs.

Beth shrugs her shoulders. “Sorry, guys. That’s about all I know myself.” Her voice sounds tired and bored. Both Katherine and Maria spin back to look at us because it doesn’t make any sense that Beth wouldn’t know every last uncensored detail.

Last night, just as I was climbing into bed, Beth called for the scoop. She was so happy for me, but even more so for herself. After all, she had been right — making out
was
good for me. But she was a little hurt that I hadn’t raced to the phone to call her first. I explained that I had a lot of homework, and she was slightly appeased.

While she talked, my finger traced our Polaroid fishtail. The arc of the line made the perfect half to a heart shape. It was so awesome. And I was really happy. So I did tell her a few choice details, like how chewed Charlie’s fingernails were and the glimpse I got of his adorable orange-and-red argyle socks when he climbed the stairs. All things considered, it would have felt weird not talking about it with her.

But then she did the Beth thing that I used to like, but now find incredibly annoying. She started giving me a few vague warnings. She said things like “Just be careful, Ruby” and “Take it slow.” I was excited about Charlie, but that didn’t mean I was going to do anything stupid, like instantly fall in love with him. I’m probably the last one who needs to be warned about opening up too fast.

Her little comments made me feel self-conscious. So right before we hung up, I asked Beth to keep the sordid details of my hookup to herself. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it in front of Katherine and Maria. They’d already seen too much. This morning, I was mortified to see that Maria had her souvenir Ruby button pinned to a piece of leather fringe off her favorite vintage purse. If Katherine spotted that, I’d never hear the end of it.

“No problem,” Beth had assured me. “You know how good I am at keeping secrets.”

Including from me, it seemed.

Now, Maria adjusts her rearview mirror to get a better look at me as she makes a left onto Beth’s street. “Well, can you at least tell me when you guys are seeing each other again? Did you make plans?”

“Nah. I mean, he asked what I was doing after school today, but I promised Beth I’d help her in the garage. So he told me to call him tonight.”

Maria gasps and bounces up and down in her seat. The Volvo screeches to an abrupt stop a half block away from Beth’s house. “You have to invite Charlie to Beth’s party!”

“Oh, I don’t know …”

“Why not? He’s cute, and he obviously likes you. Seriously, I bet you a million dollars he says yes.”

Katherine spits out the end of her ponytail. “Great. Ruby’s going to have a date and I’m going to be stuck in the corner hanging out with Beth’s little sister. Could my life get any worse?”

Beth buffs out a smudge on the window with the sleeve of her corduroy blazer, not saying anything either way.

“We’ll see,” I say casually. “I don’t really want to take things too fast.” Plus, it’s not my party. I can’t just hand out invitations to whomever I please.

“I think that’s smart,” Beth says. “You don’t even really know this guy and it’s not like you’re anything official, like boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Not
yet
…” Maria trails off, in a hopeful way that makes even my pessimistic heart race. Though I’m afraid to let myself believe it, I can’t help but smile. Charlie might just be my first ever boyfriend.

When I snap out of my little daydream, Beth has already left the car. I say a quick good-bye to the girls and catch up to her on the winding stone path that traces her white clapboard house. Her mother is in the kitchen, pushing and pulling a lump of brown dough across a thick wood cutting board.

“Check her out,” Beth says. “She’s already cooking up party food.”

Beth reaches a hand up, knocks on the window, and we both wave hello. Mrs. Miller, with shoulder-length wavy white hair and tiny green cats-eye glasses, waves back with a sticky hand. If my mom is the anti–Betty Crocker, Beth’s mom is the absolute real deal. She’s always preparing elaborate meals for the family, big sit-down dinners where the table is packed with different steaming dishes and everyone’s shouting to pass things around. I used to eat over a lot. I used to pretend I was just another one of Beth’s sisters. I had total functional-family envy.

Beth’s backyard is tiny but well manicured, even in the fall. Somehow the lawn is still green and thick, and there’s not a single dead leaf to be found anywhere. The border of the yard is edged with a low cherrywood fence. Chubby bright purple and red mums sprout up from the moist, dark soil. It could almost pass for spring, if not for the fact that it’s only four o’clock and the sun has almost completely set.

A two-car garage sits at the end of the driveway, in the far corner of the property. It matches the main house perfectly, with crisp white siding and green window shutters. Wooden flower boxes hang from the windows, filled with tiny gourds and pumpkins.

This used to be our clubhouse when we were younger — a place where Beth and I would play when it rained, or when we stole something from Suzy, like a curling iron, and wanted to fool around with it without getting caught. Or, later on, when I was upset and too embarrassed to be seen by anyone but her. The last time I was in here, I think I was twelve.

Beth unlocks the side door and pulls it open. I follow her into the cool, dark room, moving slowly while my eyes adjust to the lack of light. She takes a few steps into the center, tripping on something along the way, and waves her hand over her head until she swats a dangling cord. A single naked bulb flickers to life above our heads, illuminating an absolute disaster area.

The garage is full of stuff. Almost every available inch is occupied by electric tools, gardening accessories, or backyard toys. There’s an old refrigerator humming in the corner. That will come in handy, but the space is looking totally rough and nowhere near party-ready.

Beth pouts and crosses her arms. “We’re never going to get this place cleaned up in time. I should have started working on this yesterday, but I didn’t want to do it alone!” She collapses onto an old Strawberry Shortcake Big Wheel with peeling, weathered decals.

I won’t let myself feel guilty about blowing off our plans for Charlie, because Beth had said it was no big deal. I stoop to pick up a hula hoop, a basketball, a garden hose, and a power drill. “It’s going to be fine,” I assure her.

“But I’ve got to clean
and
decorate! And it’s freaking Tuesday already! Maybe we should just go back to the original plan and have the party in the basement like always. It’s just — I don’t want to get caught with that alcohol. That would totally ruin my birthday.”

I spin and take in the whole garage. It
is
a mess, but the space needs more picking up random junk than a real thorough cleanup job. “Listen, it’s definitely smarter to party in here than in the basement. It’s too easy to get caught inside your house.” I shrug off my book bag and hang it, along with my scarf, from Beth’s bicycle handlebar. “I say we pick up as much as we can for the next hour and then you decorate while I finish tidying up. My mom’s not going to be home until late tonight anyhow. I’ll stay with you until it’s done.”

Beth stands back up, divides her hair into two messy little buns, and smiles. “Thanks for helping me, Ruby.”

“Shut up,” I tell her. After all, what am I going to do? Beth is still my best friend. And regardless of all the craziness going on, I’ve got a lot of friendship debt to pay back.

We work in between spurts of conversation about how to best set up the room — where the stereo should be (on her dad’s worktable), where to send people to pee (her neighbors’ bushes), and places for people to sit down if they want (plastic lawn furniture, an old beanbag chair, a garden bench). We drag out the biggest stuff, like the bicycles and the plastic snowmen and the lawn mower, and hide it behind the garage for the time being. It only takes us a few trips before the space really opens up.

We are inspired and hungry after an hour. Beth disappears into the house to get us some snacks and to bring in her collection of decorations from parties past. Meanwhile, I stack a few of her father’s plastic planters into each other and stick them underneath his workbench. That’s when I knock something over. I reach deep into the darkness and pick it up.

It’s a heavy, glass mason jar filed with a bubbly, opaque oily mixture. I hold it up to the light and see the remains of a soggy Q-tip sink to the bottom. My knees go weak.

It’s one of the batches of bathroom poison we created to use on Jim. The idea was that, if he ever tried to come back, I’d pour a few glugs of this into his morning coffee.

Without a second thought, I grab my camera from my book bag and set up a shot with the jar poised on the edge of her father’s worktable. I take a big step back and inch slightly to the left, so that the raw bulb hangs in the background. It makes the whole shot look that much more depressing.

“Ruby,” Beth says flatly. I look over my shoulder at her in the doorway, holding two tall glasses of apple cider and a plate of cookies. “What are you doing? Why would you want a picture of
that
?”

“I don’t know,” I say. But I turn away from her and take the photo anyway.

Beth sets down the tray and picks up the poison, cupping it carefully with both hands. “I don’t understand you. Do you
want
to make yourself upset?”

“No.” It’s not like I went looking for the jar. I just happened to find it. I cross the room and bury the photo and my camera deep in my book bag.

“Well, what is it, then?” Beth asks, following me. She sets the jar down and gives my shoulder a supportive squeeze. “You can’t be mad at yourself for this!”

“I’m not mad at myself,” I say. I pick up the jar and hurl it into a nearby trash can. The weight sends it ripping through the layers of dead leaves and brittle newspaper until it thuds at the bottom of the can, puffing up a cloud of dust. “But you know, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through all this if my mom and I could have just talked a bit more about what happened. I mean, don’t you think it’s a little weird we’ve never discussed him? At all? Even to this day, after he randomly shows up?”

Beth’s face is blank. Totally emotionless. Which is crazy to me. I mean, this whole secret-letter business wouldn’t even be a thing to hide if everything could have just been out in the open from the start. Beth should get it. She should blame my mom too. Maybe I’m not explaining myself enough, so I struggle to string more words together.

“I didn’t even tell you that she was hiding behind the curtains, watching me kiss Charlie yesterday. That was after we’d had a fight about her moving on and trying to date someone else. It doesn’t get more messed up than that.”

Beth’s shoulders rise and fall with even, measured breaths. “I’ve never heard you talk like this about your mom,” she says softly. Definitely disappointed.

“I’m just saying, you know, that she could have made it easier on me if she wasn’t so closed off.”

“Ruby, your mom’s put up walls to protect herself. Like you did.”

I throw my hands up in the air. “But we don’t need to have walls from each other! We’re supposed to be in this together.” I stare at her. Hard.

“I’m not taking sides, Ruby. Even though I always have your side.” Beth says this with a tiny smile. “I just think it’s probably weird for her to talk about it
now
. I mean, so much time has passed.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. I really don’t. I don’t understand anything.

Beth shifts her eyes onto a knot of fake spiderwebs that need untangling. “Look. All I am saying is that if your mom still isn’t ready to deal with things, you can’t force her. There were times I’d get super frustrated with you. But I didn’t say anything. I had to let you work it out on your own.”