Equilibrium (25 page)

Chapter 29

F
or Laura, one night without Aidan had proven to be torture.

Wearing her favorite comfort socks, Laura dangled her legs over the edge of the bed and stretched them out before her. She examined the socks’ turquoise and amethyst stripes, and the robin’s-egg blue raised flowers. Finding beauty in simple objects helped her forget the battlefield of her mind. How nothing made sense anymore. How her logic didn’t even seem, well, logical.

She was doing it again, questioning all the good solid reasons she’d given Aidan for ending their relationship. Even after replaying their conversation, she sensed something vital was missing that would hold the reasons together and solidify her argument.

Laura plodded down the stairs and into the kitchen. A white envelope stuck out from beneath the ceramic canister of flour. Aidan had written Laura’s name in caps, so she couldn’t miss it. She tore the glued-down flap, unfolded the crisp letter, and recognized the words of Rainer Maria Rilke.

Only once, she’d told Aidan about the poem she’d tacked onto the wall of her undergraduate study carrel for writing inspiration. She’d told him that every time she’d read it, the first line assaulted her. She’d told him that she could’ve stayed right there, blissfully lost, pondering the layers of meaning.

She batted at a tear, read the rest of the paragraph:

Below the poem, she found Aidan’s prose, his tidy handwriting as precious to her as the angles of his face.

You’re stubborn, and I love you
, he wrote, an observation and a reminder.

She flew out of the kitchen, paced the mudroom, tried focusing on the dust motes playing in a shaft of light flooding through the window, and her mind shifted to the pores of Aidan’s face, the gentle slope of his hips, the crevices of his lips. He loved her, but his love didn’t alter the facts of her life.

He’d called her
stubborn
, a close cousin to the term “control freak” she’d overheard Darcy use in reference to what her daughter considered unfair rules Laura set for her children’s well-being. As if somewhere along the line Laura’s boundaries had become errant, misguided, and completely inappropriate. As if over the years, the limits she’d created said more about her marginalized fears than realistic threats to her children.

As if Laura’s defenses had driven away the best man she’d ever known.

 

Darcy was gnawing at the soft flesh of her forefinger because she’d already bitten down the nail. She caught her reflection in the smudged rectangular mirror inside her locker door, and her sore finger fell from her mouth. The school day hadn’t even started, and already the darkness beneath her eyes made her look old, like maybe nineteen or twenty. Lockers opened and closed around her, voices thrummed past, and a girl’s for-show squeal sounded down the hall.

Funny, Darcy had always had trouble imagining herself past her teens, but today, she could see clear in either direction. She envisioned herself married, with a baby even, pushing a stroller to the park, a paperback under her arm and a bottle of spring water in the undercarriage netting. She peeked into the carriage and folded down the pastel-blue knit blanket away from her infant son’s face, and he squinted against the sunlight.

“It’s okay, Jack,” she said.

In a daydream, you could name your firstborn after your father without anyone looking down at you. In a daydream, you could love whomever you chose without shame.

Darcy-the-Mom settled onto a wooden park bench beneath a maple tree and slid out her book. Not fiction, but a book on gardening. She wanted to start her own business. Combining her passions, she’d grow a garden entirely made up of edible flowers, and then create cake recipes using their petals.

Apple blossoms on casual yellow cakes reminded her of grandmothers in picnic-ready wide-rimmed straw hats with starched yellow ribbons tied at the back. Roses and violets were best for formal celebration cakes. And little-kid-birthday-party pansies enchanted her. Their cheerful purple-and-yellow faces would smile up at her from a whiskey barrel beside her doorstep.

Half a dozen lockers down, Heather unhinged her lock and flung the door wide. The chipped blue metal door clanged against her neighbor’s. She peered around five students, waited the prerequisite three seconds, and then showed Darcy the back of her head, earning a high score for lively hair tossing.

So immature!
Darcy simply could not tolerate passive-aggressive girly crap. God, she missed Heather!

The very first time Mom had let Darcy and Heather plant a whiskey barrel of pansies, they’d been preschoolers. On the way home from Humpty Dumpty, Mom stopped at Lakeside Acres, and she let them choose four varieties of pansies: burgundy, yellow, deep drenched purple, and white with blue inkblot centers. At home, Darcy and Heather ended up with as much soil in their hair as in the planter. Gray sweat streaked their faces. Dirt smudged their shoes.

But Mom had let them learn by doing.

Another loud metallic clang warned Darcy that Vanessa was across the hall at her locker, arriving when all the other students were leaving for first period. Unlike Heather, Vanessa wasn’t
trying
to attract Darcy’s attention; the girl was just naturally loud. At high school graduation, they should give Vanessa a fiery red tassel to turn alongside the school’s standard blue-coiled mortarboard rope for the superlative Most Obnoxious.

“Darce!” Vanessa slammed her locker and came bouncing over, as if on a pogo stick. “Where were you Saturday? You missed everything!”

Darcy shrugged. “What did I miss? Did Boomer win another beer bong contest?” At last year’s unchaperoned spring fling, the two-hundred-pound football player had funneled one beer bong too many, and then, smiling, stepped out onto Vanessa’s parents’ porch and blew chunks across the horrified crowd of kids. Five minutes later, he’d gone back for more.

“Better.” Vanessa’s cheap rose perfume wafted into Darcy ’s personal space. Vanessa’s cheeks flushed, and energy poured off her. She glanced around Darcy toward Heather and lowered her eyelids, grinning at the floor. “I was with Stevie.”

“Uh-huh.” Poor innocent boy. She’d send her condolences. Darcy shut her locker.

“That’s not it.” Vanessa widened her eyes and spoke through bubble gum breath. “Stevie and me were scouting out a place to, you know, get busy, and you won’t believe what we found.”

“Try me.”

Vanessa smiled without parting her lips, savoring the moment. “I think I know why you and Heather aren’t talking.”

“I doubt it.” Each day, she’d walk by Heather’s locker, trying to transmit an extra sensory apology that never hit its mark. Last night’s transmission hadn’t worked, either. “Look, I need to go.”

“Okay, okay.” Vanessa leaned closer. “I saw her, Heather. She was making out with some girl. They were, like, totally all over each other, their hands under each other’s shirts—”

“Does she know you saw her?” Darcy’s mind raced to the PA system, wondering how she might dismantle it before Vanessa thought to transmit an impromptu morning announcement.

“Yeah! She was flipping out, fixing her clothes.”

“What did you say?”

“You know, the usual when you walk in on a couple.
Sorry, carry on, as you were
, that sort of thing.”

“Was Stevie there? I mean, did he see?” Stevie was even quieter than Heather. Most likely, he wouldn’t tell a soul.

“He has eyes! Anyway, I wanted to tell you first. I’m dying to know if that’s why you guys don’t hang out anymore. Did she try to nail you or something?”

Darcy wanted to say “Are you a fucking idiot?” but she already knew the answer.

Looking into Vanessa’s dark almond-shaped eyes made Darcy long for Heather’s sea-glass blue. “Nothing like that. It was something personal.” Like all the time she’d wasted hanging out with losers like Vanessa and going out with boys who spread lies about nailing
her
. Somewhere along the line, Darcy had strayed from her original course. She should’ve stayed closer to home and focused on the people she loved: Heather and Cam, Troy and Mom.

Weird, but Darcy couldn’t imagine her mother without picturing Mom’s just-a-friend Aidan.

“So you knew, right? Was she checking you out all the time? Did she ever ask you to do anything?”

Vanessa was trying to trap her and get her to say something, anything, to enhance the gossip about Heather. She’d seen Heather kiss a girl, information that might mean nothing at all if Darcy could convince Vanessa to forget it. Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer. Darcy had figured out back in middle school Vanessa spun the rumor mill, and she’d purposely made friends with the miller.

Darcy glanced over at Heather. Her blond head bent into her locker, no doubt trying to pick up the thread of their conversation. She even thought Heather’s narrow shoulders trembled slightly from the effort of remaining so still. Heather had nothing to be ashamed of, but by the time Vanessa got through with her, she wouldn’t be able to show her face.

“The triplets,” Darcy said, and she made sure her expression betrayed no trace of sympathy.

Vanessa blanched. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything.” Luckily, even Vanessa had done something she was ashamed of.

Moisture clouded Vanessa’s eyes. “You promised you’d never tell.”

Darcy smiled and inhaled success. “I lied.”

“I’d say I was drunk.”

“That’s not how you told it. You only had a couple of beers. You figured they were triplets, so it was almost like doing the same boy three times. Pulling identical cabooses, right? Vanessa Murray pulls a train. Worse than strapping a mattress to your back.”

Vanessa chin snapped sideways. She shook her head, small rapid-fire movements, as though trying to dislodge the memory.

“Oh, c’mon. You must know that’s what everyone already says about you. You practically say it about yourself. So, really, calling you a whore wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”

Vanessa bit at her quivering lip, and then her gaze darted to the right. She worked her gum. Each chew notched her eyes rounder until they opened into a wide smile. “The nightmare!”

Darcy’s stomach clenched around Daddy’s secret, as though it were hers.

The last time Vanessa had slept over, they’d camped out on the living room floor, and Vanessa had awoken with a start, Darcy’s father standing over her. Vanessa’s scream had sent Daddy scrambling to his studio, a finger pressed to his lips. He’d shut the door seconds before Mom had come tramping down the stairs, an excuse lighting on Darcy’s lips: Vanessa had had a nightmare.

Mom hadn’t needed to know Daddy’s OCD was flaring, compelling him to count the kids sleeping under his roof repeatedly. Or so Darcy had thought.

She shouldn’t have covered for Daddy’s nuttiness.

Darcy’s stomach relaxed, and she could breathe again. “Go right ahead. Tell everyone.”

“Wha-at?”

“You heard me. I couldn’t care less.”

Vanessa’s jaw flapped open, and she mouthed,
No
.

“So I’ll go ahead and tell about those triplets. If you don’t mind.”

“Don’t do it.”

“Triple the fun.”

“Please, Darce, don’t!”

The begging almost got to her. “Here’s the deal. Keep your stupid mouth shut about Heather. You didn’t see a damn thing. Ask Stevie real sweet to keep quiet about it, too.”

Vanessa scraped her fingers through her scalp and distributed the oil down to the ends, exactly the way she’d behaved when she’d originally trusted Darcy with her story of sleazy regret.

“Then I won’t spread your little three-part story. Okay, my friend? I’m going to tell one person about your story, so there will always be two people watching to make sure you keep your end of the deal.” Really, she wouldn’t tell a soul, but she needed Vanessa to believe someone else held the means to ruin her already mangy reputation. Just in case.

“So what was it you saw in the woods?” Darcy asked.

Vanessa’s lips curled. Her nostrils flared, and her breath hissed through her teeth with another type of sleazy regret.

“Give it.”

“Nothing,” Vanessa whispered.

Darcy glanced over her shoulder and found Heather exactly as she’d left her, an ace at playing statue. “Could you speak up?”

“I didn’t see a thing.”

Darcy pushed air upward with her palms, raising Vanessa’s volume. They both looked at Heather, and she turned completely around.

“I didn’t see a thing!”

Darcy nodded. “You can go now.” She didn’t bother watching Vanessa leave; she’d already given that girl too much of her attention. Instead, she went to Heather.

Her best friend scrambled inside her locker, tossing books and notebooks into her backpack. Her polished blond hair swished, scenting the air.

Darcy inhaled mangos, pineapples, and coconuts. “I’ve missed you. LU,”
Love you.

Heather swung the loaded backpack onto her narrow shoulder and clicked the locker door shut. She turned to Darcy, revealing her heart-shaped face, her eyes the color of frosted sea glass. “Thanks.”

Darcy crossed her hands at the wrists, one half of their best friends forever handshake. Back when they were in preschool, they couldn’t walk from the Play-Doh to the sand table without holding hands. Once, they’d even braided their hair together, interlocking wispy white-blond and coarse auburn strands.

Heather did another imitation of a statue, staring at Darcy’s hands, as though she’d offered her ABC gum: already been chewed.

The first-period bell shrieked through Darcy’s eardrums, pain coming from both sides.