Capture the World (11 page)

“Christopher Lawrence, you didn’t take the pan off of the stove!” she yells, followed directly by, “Quit trying to ride the dog, Mia! He’s missing enough hair.”

Taking me by the wrist, Matthew pulls me out of the kitchen and into a hallway lined in photos.

We pass three doors, each one of them open. I feel like I’m in a boy museum, passing displays with nameplates that read things like, “Male gamer, not to be confused with female gamer, is a two-legged creature requiring little sleep, occasional food, strategic testicle adjustments, and plenty of batteries for gaming devices when required.”

In the first room, Christopher sits slouched in a flattened, red bean bag playing a sci-fi game on a television with a cracked screen, his stockinged feet draped over the seat of a desk chair. An empty plate of food rests next to him, a crushed soda can
flung
on top of it.

The door to the second room is half-shut and smells better, the opening framing an engrossed Anthony sitting cross-legged on brown carpet surrounded by tools. A YouTube tutorial flashes up at him from a phone on the floor, the speaker spitting out heavily accented words
.

The third door is a bathroom with burgundy walls, the paint a poor choice because it eats all of the light in the room. A small pile of clothes lies on an off-white linoleum floor with razors and toothbrushes slung on the cabinet. The faint scent of Pine-sol and urine wafts into the hall.

Matthew’s mom follows us, clicking her tongue. “Doesn’t matter how much I scrub, when you’ve got three boys with poor aim sharing a bathroom, there’s the increased need for potpourri.”

“Ma, it’s fine,” Matthew soothes, shooing her away. “The house looks great. Way better than normal. There are only three things anyone ever needs to know about this house anyway.” He glances at me. “First, don’t eat anything you find in the bedrooms. Ever. Unless you want a nasty case of food poisoning. Second, if it looks like you shouldn’t pick it up, then you probably shouldn’t pick it up. Last, and most important, if you walk into a bedroom and see a stiff sock, for God’s sake, just leave it alone.”

“Matthew!” Mrs. Moretti balks.

He laughs, rushing to duck into a room at the end of the hall, tugging me in after him, the door shutting with a bang.

My hand flies to the knob—fully intent on opening it—but he beats me to it, blocking me.

I stare at the door. “Shouldn’t you leave it—”

“Nope.” Seeing my face, he adds, “You don’t have to worry. There’s not enough privacy in this house for anything remotely risky.”

I am in a Matthew Moretti cocoon, his room exactly the way I’d imagine it to look. Very Matthew—all male, strangely neat, and full of surprises.

Against the wall under a small window, there’s an unmade bed with a navy-striped down comforter, the box spring visible under a poorly fitted sheet. Sports posters hang on the wall, basketball trophies line a dresser with clothes dangling out of the drawers, a beat-up laptop sits closed on a desk covered in textbooks and unwrapped cough drops, and a phone charger snakes unplugged across a shockingly clean floor.
 

It’s the books that surprise me.

They are everywhere, hardbacks and paperbacks. They line the room, some of them splayed open over the bed, others thrown on his desk chair, bookmarks poking out of the top. A waist high bookshelf is crammed full of titles, the ones that don’t fit sitting in neat piles on the floor.

His room smells like paper, cherries, and paradise.

I kneel next to the books. “You read?”

Joining me, he thumbs one of the covers, a worn copy of
Journey to the Center of the Earth.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”

I clamp my mouth shut.

“I’m kidding,” Matthew says. “Lighten up.” Leaning forward, he captures my gaze. “I had trouble with television as a kid because of my hearing even with the captions, so I did a lot of reading to pass the time. I guess you could say I developed a taste for it. You?”

“Sometimes.”

“So not a reader?”

I shrug, my fingers digging into his carpet. It’s a light blue color, like the sky or water.

Matthew scoots away from me, stretches his legs, lies back, and pats the empty space beside him. “Let’s do this, Lawson. You know, the whole get to know you bit.”

“I’ll stay sitting, thanks.”

“Your loss.” He pillows his head on his arms. “We’ll make it easy.” He sits up suddenly, springing up like a jack-in-the-box. “Actually, I’ve got an idea.” Grabbing a notebook and a pencil off of his desk, he returns to the floor.

He draws lines on the paper.

What is this? Tic-tac-toe?

I lean forward. “What are you doing?”

“Characterizing you.”

“What?”

Pulling a phone out of his pocket, he clicks a few buttons, types something on the screen, and then hands it to me.

I gawk at it. “Did you seriously just Google ‘characterize’ for me?”

“Google is the modern Wizard of Oz, but if you’ve got a problem with that, I’ve got a Magic 8 Ball in my sock drawer.”

“How old are you again?”

“Not sure I can count that high.”
 

I thumb over the definition in my hands.

Characterize: 1. To describe the qualities or peculiarities of. 2. To be a distinctive trait or mark of; distinguish.

“Do the people at school know how weird you are?” I ask, sliding his phone across the carpet.

He flips the notebook over, grips it in his hands, and flashes me my name and the numbered lines beneath it. “I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

How easy it is for him to be so cavalier.

“So, come on, give it to me. Something about you I can put on the list,” he says.

“I don’t have anything.”

Ignoring me, he scribbles on the page, and reads aloud, “Origami.” His gaze rises, meeting mine. “What else?”

“What if that’s all there is?”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I—”

His cell phone rings. It’s close enough to me I see the name that flashes on the screen: Kagen.

Matthew barely spares it a glance. “Hit me with it, Lawson.”

The phone keeps ringing.

“You’re not going to answer that?” I ask.

“Do you want me to?”

We face off, the phone chiming between us. This feels important somehow, but I don’t know why. This whole thing feels odd. My stomach is a mess, full of butterflies, pleasant things, and not so pleasant things. All tangled together.

Gracie’s lunch accusations ring through my head.

“I think I need to go home,” I say, standing up.

He stands with me. “Hey, Reagan, wait.” His eyes meet mine, and whatever he sees in my gaze makes him pause.

His phone dings, a text coming through.

Amber
flashes across the screen.

“Busy man,” I mumble.

Stooping, he sweeps up the cell, silences the ring, and then pockets it. “Do you have a phone?”

I nod. “I don’t carry it much.”

“Give me your number anyway.” Tearing a piece of paper out of the notebook, he hands it to me along with his pencil.

Against my better judgement, I write down the digits, my fingers folding the paper into a neat square. I smooth it out of habit.

“You should stay,” Matthew urges, taking it from me.

“Do you use your deafness to get things? Stuff you want? You know, like girls and other stuff?” I blurt the question, and it hangs blunt and heavy between us.

Matthew freezes. Somewhere in the house, the dog barks.

“Why do you ask me that?” His voice has darkened into something terrible, cold, and devoid of feeling.

“Because if you are, I’m not that girl, okay? I don’t pity you enough.”

His eyes flash. “I don’t use it for basketball. I’ve earned that.”

So, he knows what people are saying about him?

“What about with people?”

He doesn’t answer me.

Moving around him, I pull open the door.

“What about you?” he asks suddenly, stopping me. “Do you use your mother?”

I twist so fast, my elbow rams into his doorknob, the sting making my eyes water. “Never!”

“Then I guess we’re both liars.”

TEN

My world

The Origami Empire

Personal space exists for a reason, and I want Matthew Moretti to return the pieces of the bubble he’s stolen from me.

After high school, I plan to major in history, and yet the one thing history majors are supposed to excel in, I seem to flunk.

Learn from your mistakes, Reagan!

Bradley Cochran has taught me nothing, except that I make a terrible recluse. I crave attention, but I also crave anonymity and I don’t seem to know where the fine line is. Honestly, I’ve made myself lonely more often than not. Matthew is right. I wear loneliness like a shield, preferring to be a shrew rather than confronting the whispers about my mother; the truth and the lies.
 

Which begs a new question.

Do I use Mom as a shield, too?

Inside my room, I pull out paper, my fingers flying. Folding. Tucking. Folding.

In my hands, paper lives are born. Hearts form out of pink and red paper, and I make them beat against my palm.

They do everything except bleed.

My thoughts are too fast, so jumbled I don’t know where to start to sort them out.

It isn’t just Matthew; it’s everything.

Abandoning my hearts, I touch my bedroom wall, the one that separates me from my mother.

“Mom,” I whisper.

A knock sounds on the door. “Reagan?” Aunt Trish asks. “Do you want to talk? You looked upset when you came in.”

“I’m okay.”

She doesn’t leave the door, and when I press my ear against the wood, I can hear her moving.

“You’re sure?”

I should tell her no, open the door, and let her in—I know she wants me to—but I can’t.

“I’m sure.” Turning, I stare at my room, at the kingdom I’ve built, and I suddenly imagine what it would be like if it was gone. All of it. No longer here.

Life is a battlefield, and I’m fighting myself, a fine line drawn between me, the girl I think I am, and the woman I want to be. The love I think I need.

It’s then I realize something. I don’t need Bradley and his past betrayal, Matthew’s attention, or Kagen’s supposed jealousy. I need me.

I need Reagan.

Mrs. Powell’s project pops into my head, and I glance at my bedroom wall, at the space I know lies beyond it.

As much as I love Mrs. Powell, I hate that she wants to get so close to her students, that she feels the need to tear down all of our walls.

I despise that she’s making me do this project, and yet … maybe she’s right.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I pull sheets of brown and green paper free, folding them, a tree forming beneath my fingers.

My tree. Not too large. Not too small.

My gaze falls to the hearts I’ve left sitting on my floor.

Swallowing hard, I slide off of the bed, crawling to the pink and red shapes.

My hearts. My battle.

A light falls on my carpet, startling me, the bright, dancing ray coming in from my bedroom window, and I stand, striding carefully to the opening.

Night has fallen, the darkness oppressive and cavernous. The rain the day threatened us with still lurks in the shadows, making the air thick and hard to breathe.
 

The illumination is coming from a flashlight, the beam originating from the Morettis’ back yard.

Unlocking the window, I yank it up, wincing at the protesting squeal.

The flashlight beam blinds me, traveling from my face, down over my body, and to the windowsill, wavering there, uncertain, before dropping down the side of the house to the rusted grill on our back patio.

The light goes out, turned off abruptly, and then reappears, the beam highlighting Matthew Moretti’s face. He stands in his backyard, his glow-bathed features eerie.

Again the light vanishes only to reappear over our grill. On and off. On and off. Matthew. The grill. Matthew.

He’s trying to tell me something.

The house is quiet when I open my bedroom door. I like the feel of it, the stillness that settles when an entire household falls asleep, like the house waits all day for the moment to wake up. I can feel the walls breathing.

Inhale, exhale.

My feet are soundless on the stairs, practice having taught me which steps to avoid to maintain the silence.
 

Stopping briefly for a flashlight in the front hall, I make my way into the backyard, clenching my teeth against the cold, my feet bare on wet, soggy ground.

Matthew is either gone or cloaked in darkness, watching me.

The creepiness of it all sets in, scaring me, and I speed walk to the grill, my hands shaking, the flashlight I’m holding a crazy, wobbling strobe light as it trembles with me.

Lifting the grill’s lid, I discover an envelope resting on the grate within, my name scrawled across the front.

Grabbing it, I suck in a deep, fortifying breath and rush back into the house, locking the door before dashing up the stairs to my room, being quick to crawl into my bed, my numb toes shoved under the quilt.

In my lap, the envelope mocks me.

“Reagan,”
it says.

It is entirely possible for a piece of paper to speak.

Slipping my finger under the flap, I break the seal.

First off, you really need to turn on your cell phone. You’re a teenager, right? And a girl? How the hell do you exist without your phone attached to your hand? I texted you first, thought about calling your uncle’s business phone, and then went with the whole letter thing.

I DO NOT LIKE TO WRITE. Texting is faster. Typing, too

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off of my chest.

Not to be lame or anything, but I’m going to go ahead and reference S.E. Hinton’s
The Outsiders
and say, “I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”

Yes, I did that. I quoted a book because I plan to major in English, which sounds nerdy written down. I want to take it back, but I’m using a pen. One word for you, Lawson: Text. Repeat that ten times fast.

Turn your phone on!

Okay, I’m finished complaining … maybe.

I lied to you. There it is. Wow, that was much easier to write than I thought it would be.

I think it’s a good thing you left. I’m not good for anyone, as a friend or otherwise.

Not calling myself terrible here, btw. Just calling it like it is. Senior year, a basketball scholarship to acquire—that’s a good word, acquire. Anyway, I need to focus on that. You need to focus on your stuff.

That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. It looks good on paper. Sounds good in theory.

Again, I feel completely lame right now. Save this shit, Lawson, and you can blackmail me with it later.

I’m off topic. Yes, my grandmother talked to me about friending you. Yes, I think you are beautiful. Yes, I find you strangely interesting and mysterious. Yes, I have used my deafness to help me with girls. Yes, Kagen is a jerk. Yes, that same jerk is jealous. He’s had a thing for you since you broke the kite he did for Mrs. Easterling in the fifth grade—the one she let us do for extra credit—and to make up for it, you switched your projects, writing his name on your kite so that he’d get your credit. Turns out the way to a man’s heart is sucking up to a teacher for him. Go figure. Ha!

Then we grew up. High school happened. Rumors started. It became easier to be mean for most of us than to face ridicule.

Oh, and I think I figured out who you dated on the football team. Really, Lawson? You are SO much smarter than that.

Off topic again.

No, I’ve never used my deafness to advance on the team. That’s my triumph, and no rumor is taking that away from me.

I see why people keep journals now. This shit is bleeding me. And yet … TURN ON YOUR PHONE!

To end this, we don’t have to be friends. Maybe you’re right. Pity isn’t a good basis for friendship, and I do … I mean, I DID pity you. Not quite sure if I still do. Also, the last few days have just been crazy.

Your mom is not as bad as they all say. The whole Egypt thing is between us, okay? It was fun. Really cool.

So, yeah, I’m not sure any of this made sense, but there it is.

P.S. A bit of advice: Look in a mirror, Lawson. Lots of potential in that face of yours. Do not tell anyone I quoted a book. I lost man points there. Abbreviations are totally acceptable. Hashtagging shit, especially out loud … meh. TURN ON YOUR PHONE.

P.P.S. Keep it real.

I’m smiling, and even though no one is there to see it, I cover my lips to hide it. Matthew Moretti, the friend that isn’t a friend.

Gracie is wrong about him. She’s right, too.

Reaching into the night stand next to my bed, I pull out my cell phone, power it up. A group of unread messages appear, the most I’ve ever had on my phone. Most of them are from a number I don’t recognize, so I know they’re Matthew’s. I ignore them because, after the letter, I don’t want to know what they say.

The other messages are from Gracie.

The Brilliant One: I don’t want to fight. Sorry for earlier.

The Brilliant One: #forgiveme