At Face Value (18 page)

Now it’s my turn to feel nauseated. If Leyla or anyone on the staff used the cliché “the truth hurts,” I’d make them do a rewrite. But here, in the empty, timeless café, it’s all I can think of. I can’t even offer a rebuttal. I stand up, my feet about a foot apart as though I’m about to sprint, which is maybe what I want to do but can’t. I sit down.

To her credit, Leyla doesn’t poke or prod with words. She just lets me wait out the silence.

Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably only one-tenth of that, Hanna materializes with tea for two. One mug is an ’80s remnant with
Who’s the Boss?
written across it and the other is left over from the Victorian tea house era—with delicate roses and a gilt-edged saucer. Nothing matches on the tray in front of us—plastic spoons and intricate silver forks for the salad she’s thoughtfully prepared—and nothing matches my visions of how things should go, either. Hanna’s even included ginger biscuits and honey cream, which she knows I love, but I can’t eat a bite.

Leyla takes a cookie and eats it, still waiting, the crumbs nestling into the soft fuzz of her peach-hued sweater.

“How long have you known?” My eyes find hers, my whole self feels rattled. It’s easy to know what to say when someone insults me—how to get back at them—but it’s near-impossible to know how to dig myself out of this pit. At least I don’t have to tell her about the emails now.

“Not that long,” she says and chews. “But maybe I knew all along, if that makes sense?” She sounds like herself now, same lilting voice, same gentle manner.

“I couldn’t tell you,” I say, and realize how futile it sounds.

Leyla pours some tea for both of us but doesn’t drink hers. “Remember that column I did last year? The one about janitorial expenses?” I nod. “You underlined when I used the word
couldn’t
.” She adds milk to the tea. “You said I meant
wouldn’t.
There’s a difference.”

It occurs to me how much Leyla has listened to me during the course of our friendship, how much advice I’ve offered, even if understated, and that maybe—“You don’t think I
made
you date him, do you?”

Leyla raises her eyebrows. Clearly I’m touching on something she’s already considered. “It’s possible.”

I inhale deeply. “Okay. So I liked him. But I really don’t think I meant for you to be with him as a sort of extension of me …”

“HOWEVER,” we both say, and while maybe it would have been funny a few weeks ago, now we don’t laugh.

Leyla drops a cube of sugar into her cup and I wonder why she bothers getting it ready if she’s not going to drink it. “But that’s what I became, you know?” Her eyes find mine. “Not really me liking a guy, more like me semi-liking a guy and you closing the deal. You making it go farther than it probably would have.”

What if I hadn’t facilitated their getting to know each other? What if they’d just had little crushes that passed?

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Are you apologizing because you lied to me, or because I figured it out?” Leyla’s voice has the edge again. An edge that doesn’t suit her.

“I’m sorry for the emails,” I tell her. I picture the full in-box, my contentedness at seeing a new message in bold print.

She shrugs. “Those are old news. We haven’t done that for over a month.”

A month? I think back. Eddie’s college trip was only a couple of weeks ago. “Not really a month.”

“Fine—five weeks.”

Five weeks? I study her face. She doesn’t know about the barrage of emails exchanged while Eddie was gone. Leyla’s still in the dark about that? A mix of shivers and sweat run their course down my back. “How’d you figure it out, anyway?” I wonder how she possibly could have not checked the account. I guess if you’re losing interest in someone, you stop trying to find out about them.

“When he came back,” she answers me. “That look you had on your face when he came into the
Word
room. It was like …” She pauses, searching for the correct word or phrase. “It was like you’d found something you’d lost.” She coughs. “I had a hunch even before then. At Halloween. I kept thinking that maybe you wished you were under my sheet instead of yours.”

“Because I didn’t wear a costume?”

“No, that was just you being determined to be left out,” she says, her mouth twisted and sad. “I knew because, even though you’re a great writer and editor and can think on your feet, you really knew just what to say to him outside in the moonlight. It was like you’d practiced. In your head.”

I look at my hands, wishing they’d stayed clasped with Eddie’s in that Drama box, that things in the light were the same as they were in the dark. “I had.” I look at Leyla for support, for understanding. But what I get back is—

“I’ve thought a lot about this, Cyrie. And the thing is, it’s not right. What we did wasn’t right—but what you’re doing is worse.”

Good thing she doesn’t know about the most recent emails or she’d be even more disappointed. My chest feels weighted with all those secreted words.

“What can I do?” I ask her with my hands out. “How can I make it better?”

“If our friendship means anything, you’ll give me a little space,” she says. She pulls her hair away from her face and looks away.

“I can do that,” I say. I’m used to being alone by now.

“And …” She stands up. “You can tell him.”

I drop my teacup onto the floor. Hanna appears with a broom and busies herself like an extra on a film—no interaction with us, just doing her job. “No way.”

“You have to,” Leyla insists. “Not for me. Not for him. For you.”

I shake my head. Telling Eddie the truth would ruin everything. If he knew how much I liked him, he’d never even go running with me—not even in the wintery dusk. “I can’t.”

Leyla looks angry. She coughs and heads for the door, leaving me with broken shards and spilled milk and this question: “Cyrie? How can you even look at yourself in the mirror?”

P
EOPLE ALWAYS THINK THAT
the hallways of school are where everything happens. Love by the lockers, brawls in the halls. Or in homeroom. Or the girls’ bathroom. But all those places are nothing when compared to the ultimate place to observe student life: under the bleachers.

I’m jogging in place to keep warm as I wait for Eddie. This will be our second time meeting here to go running, and I’ve been running after school every day to prepare my lungs for the icy chill I’ll battle when trying to keep up with him. Now, out here in the cold, my feet pounding the ground, it’s almost easy to forget what Leyla wants me to do. Not telling Eddie feels as normal as slipping into a well-worn sweatshirt—cozy and, yes, safe.

To my left is a couple engaged in what could only properly be called mouth-wrestling; to my right is a cluster of disillusioned drama-bes who didn’t make the cut for
Guys and Dolls,
the winter musical.

“I should’ve been cast as Sarah!” One girl wails. “I’m totally pure and good-natured.”

“Well, I’m much better at Adelaide than she is,” another intones, letting a few lines slide out in song.

“Whatever, you guys, I’m freezing,” says another, and I wish I had the
Word
camera to snap a shot of them bemoaning. I could submit it as a candid for the paper and Leyla could come up with a good caption. Or she would, if we were speaking, which we aren’t really, because I can’t bring myself to tell Eddie anything and she won’t go back on her speech at Any Time Now.

“Ready?” Eddie asks, his hands shoved into his gloves. He looks at the drama girls and says in a newscaster voice, “More downhearted Westies wonder if next time will be their shot at the stage.”

“Story at eleven,” I say. His cheeks are ruddy, and he claps his hands together to ward off the chill.

“Aren’t you going to be cold?” He motions to my head and I instinctively flinch, as though he’s pointing to my nose. He dodges it, though, and taps my head. “A hat would be useful.”

“True,” I say, stretching with one leg in front of the other. “Next time.”

“Right,” he says, confirming that there will be one. “You’re the only one who’s daring enough to jog in this weather. The rest of the guys are in the weight room.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty tough.” I try not to focus on being grouped with the rest of his teammates, with “the guys” and the thick-skinned sporty Westies. Then I think about something. “I’m not ‘daring.’”

Eddie grins and raises his eyebrows. “No?”

I couldn’t be. Daring means you’re willing to risk something—and I’m decidedly against risking these runs, or our friendship, or even embarrassment, by risking the truth. Although in some ways, every day I leave the house is a risk. I shrug.

“I’ll give you a head start.”

I shake my head. “No, thanks. I don’t need one.”

We run side by side along the track and then, without discussing it, veer off the path and into the woods. The frozen ground makes for a heavy impact and I feel it in my knees—but not half as much as I do when Eddie slows down, then stops.

Surrounded by trees emptied of their leaves, he turns to me. “Couldn’t you just stay right here for, like, ever?”

“‘Like,’ ever?” I put my hand over my mouth. “Please excuse my edits. Really.” I shake my head.

“Not
like
ever. Just ever.” He laughs. “Don’t go changing your editorial ways for me.”

We stand there, breathing hard in the winter air, our cheeks flushed, my nose probably Rudolph-red and just as prominent.

“Do you miss her?” I ask him, wondering if it’s a mistake to bring Leyla up when I’m alone with him.

He shrugs. “Do you? You’re never together anymore. I used to think you guys were inseparable.”

I nod. “Yeah, I do miss her. A lot.”

“What happened?” He leans on a tree and crosses his arms. His sweatshirt is faded and stretched out at the hem. I could fit in there with him.

“Just … we had a disagreement. That’s all.”

He sticks his chin out as a nod. “It happens.”

“What exactly happened with you two?” I ask as though I don’t know. Even pairing them in the sentence makes my stomach flip. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”

“Did you ever hear a song on the radio and think, oh I am so going home right now to download it?” I nod. He continues. “And then you do, and theoretically you should be psyched, right? I mean, here is this song you heard and wanted to—you know—own, right away. But then …”

I think about the discarded songs, the times I made the same mistake. “Then you listen to it again and it’s like the magic isn’t there. You thought this chord or that lyric was so incredible, but then it wasn’t.”

Eddie leaves his tree perch and comes right over to me. My heart flails. He hugs me. If only he would see beyond this moment, see that I am the person in the song he wanted. Or, I am the song.

“I wish it could’ve been like it was in the emails she and I wrote to each other. But maybe that’s the problem. Some things don’t translate off the page.” I nod. He hugs me and into my ear says softly, “I’m lucky to have a friend like you, Cyrie.”

A friend. One of the guys. Yeah. I swallow the cold air and my feelings, yet again, and follow him through the woods, back out onto the track.

Post-Thanksgiving, I kick into overdrive, mailing off applications and, with Eddie, finalizing the auction—the programs, the donations, the newspaper edition.

“I can’t believe it’s this weekend,” he says as we pour over the schedule again.

“Okay,” I say to Mr. Reynolds. “It’s finished.”

“I’ll take them to the printer,” Mr. Reynolds says, leaving me and Eddie to close up the
Word
office. The final bell rang a while ago, and the once-crowded hallways are vacant save for a few dropped gloves and a stray scarf.

“How cool would it be to win the stuff on this list?” Eddie asks, eyeing the auction list.

“I know. Lifetime supply of donuts?”

Eddie points to an item. “No—downloads for life. I’d take that.”

“Have you made your mix for the grab bag?” My mother sewed a giant pumpkin-colored sack for us to keep by the door—everyone who puts a CD in can take one out.

Eddie nods. “Of course. Led off with a little Van Halen and segued into classic Lou Reed. Can’t go wrong with a little Van, though.”

I nod back. “I spent way too long compiling a playlist. Way too long.” I stare at him, wanting to go over in minute detail each song I chose and why, and how, really, the mix is for him—but it’s one I’ll never give to him. I’ll drop it into the anonymous pumpkin bag and it will be picked up by some random person—and perhaps never listened to.

“So you’re hoping to bid on some Weston wonders—let me guess, a cup of tea at Any Time Now?”

“Could be good,” I say and tidy up around me as though neatening things up in the office will clarify my insides. “Or, maybe I’ll go for Wendy Von Schmedler’s cabin,” I say, wistful at the thought of it. “I know it’s great in summer—or so I’ve heard—but I think winter would be even better. Fireside, skating, hot chocolate.”

Eddie agrees. “If you’ve got pockets deep enough.”

I shake my head. “Actually, I’m not bidding at all.”

“Nothing worth your money?” Eddie queries while digging through his backpack.

“Nothing money can buy,” I say and then wish I hadn’t. What if he thinks I mean something by it? Even if I do, I don’t want him catching on. He doesn’t react.

I continue my organizational mission, chucking out slips of paper we don’t need and wondering if anyone will bid on my auction item. “You think they will?” I ask him.

“I don’t see why not,” Eddie says. “Seems like there are a lot of people who would want your help writing something.” He looks at me.

Every once in a while I wonder what he’d do if I just told him. Came right out and said
hey, I was the one who wrote all those emails
—
the good ones, anyway. The ones you like. The ones you couldn’t shake off.
Or, I wonder if maybe he knows. I lock eyes with him, to ask him that non-verbal question. But he just looks back at me and asks, “What? Do I have something on my chin? I had that soggy Eggplant Parmesan for lunch. Big mistake.”

I laugh, pushing aside my thoughts. The CD that’s playing switches over to a mix I made for Leyla last year. “Oh, I love this song!” I sing along for a few seconds and Eddie mouths the words. People bring in their CDs and end up leaving them here. We use them for coasters, or keep playing them until they’re worn out.