Her and Me and You (12 page)

“Nope.”

I yanked on the bag zipper.

“Alex.”

“What?”

“Come’ere, please?”

“Why?” I wasn’t going to hug him, like him, kiss him, forgive him.

“Just come here. This’ll take two secs.”

I stood, wobbling forward. “Okay,” I said, facing him. “What?”

He wound his arms around my shoulders. “Love you,” he said, squeezing tight.

Fuck, fuck, fuck it.
With zero fanfare, after four months, I surrendered. “Me too.”

Forty minutes later I stood on the smooth cement driveway, loading my trunk.

Chicken nudged my kneecaps. “Sweet girl,” I cooed. She jumped up, patting my shoulders with her fat, fuzzy paws. “You gonna miss me?”

She whined. Licked my cheek. Nuzzled my ear. I laughed.

“You going?”

It was Caroline. Wiping her hands on a dish towel and walking forward.

“Yeah.” I stood up.

She nodded and pressed her lips together. “Well, it was good seeing you. Even briefly.”

“Thanks.”

“Next weekend?”

I shook my head. “Next weekend with Mom.” I waved, then gave Chicken one last pat. I reached for my door.

“Hey, Alex.”

“Hmm?”

We stood a foot apart. “I just—I want to say something to you.”

I waited.

“I know how you feel about me,” she said, licking her lips and glancing right. “I can only imagine what you must think of my relationship with your father.”

I try not to think about your relationship with my father.

“I just—please understand, I don’t like hurting you,
or
your mother. . . . But I love your dad. And I’m sorry. About the mess, you know?”

The mess. The mess, yes, I
did
know. I felt a quick, unexpected flash of compassion, then, as quickly as it came, it went. “Okay,” I said, making a face. “Is that all?” I readjusted my bag.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said. She lifted a hand, shielding her eyes from the sun. “See you soon?”

I slid behind the wheel, shut my car door, and rolled down the window. “Yeah,” I said. It was nice out. Breezy sixties. Bright. “See you soon,” I said, starting the car.

43.

It looked different now, their house. Less stately, more
broken-down and sad. I followed the path leading up to the front door and pushed the bell.

“Oh. Hi.”

I had a date. I was on the dot. “Adina.” She looked small and pale. Limp hair, no makeup. Young and meek in her yellow cotton robe. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Her voice broke but her face didn’t move.

“How’s your head?” She had a stylish line of stitches sewn into her hairline.

“It’s nothing.”

“It looks painful.”

“It’s fine,” she said. She screamed for her brother.

“Coming!” Fred’s voice sounded small and far away. Adina and I watched each other for several seconds, waiting. I wasn’t
sure what to say:
I hate you, I’m sorry, I hate you, I’m sorry
? I felt mixed up and mad and a tad regretful. Adina, though, was still Adina.

“When are you coming back to school?”

“Not sure.” Her lip twitched.

“Hi.” Fred strode forward looking shiny and clean. He passed Adina, then lunged for me, pulling me into a snug embrace.

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Big night out?” she asked.

Fred grabbed his keys off the armoire and glanced backward, only briefly. “Big night out, yeah.” He rested a hand on my back, sending a victorious blast up my spine. “Don’t wait up,” Fred said easily, ushering me quickly out the door.

44.

May.

Evie and I were in my new room, tacking paint swatches to the moldings and walls.

“He’s skinny.”

Mom and I had settled on the house with the refurbished attic. 633 Memory Lane. Small. White colonial. Right off Chester Hill.

“What’s wrong with skinny?” I held a violet swatch up to my eyelet bedspread.

“Did I
say
skinny was bad?” Evie’s new guy, of course. There was
always
a new guy. “
You’re
skinny.”

I wasn’t. “I’m not.” I’d been eating like mad for a month. Ever since Adina’s breakdown I’d sworn off starvation. Since, clearly, hunger = psychosis.

“How’s about this one?” She waved her finger at a swatch
constellation. “The yellow. Hand it to me. What’s the color code?”

I peeled the swatch off the wall. “Five four two zero zero. What is it with you and yellow?”

“Hmm?”

Evie’s room was a pale butter. “Your walls,
my
walls . . .”

She finished scribbling down the numbers and looked up. “It’s superior. Very calming.” She gestured to the window molding. “Cream, right? Numbers please?”

“Six eleven three zero eight.” I squeezed between my mattress and Grams’s boxed book collection and collapsed on the wood floor next to Evie. “It’ll be nice, right?”

“Better than nice.” She shouldered me. “You’ll need curtains.”

“Mom’s making some with Grams’s old lace.”

Evie gazed past me to my wide, wicker headboard. “What’re we doing after this?”

I heard birds and Weedwackers and cars on roads. “Diner dinner.”

“Gross.”

I looked left. At a tall stack of blue swatches, beckoning. “Hey, Eves?”

“Hey what?”

I smiled. I watched my clean, blank white wall. Wondered about this one little circular crack in the upper left-hand corner near my ceiling—how it got there, and what it would look like once it’d been patched with a little plaster and painted a pretty, brand-new periwinkle blue.

Acknowledgments

Anica Rissi, thank you. You are a fantastic editor and a stellar human being.

Jen Rofé, you’re top-notch.

Fine people at Simon Pulse, I appreciate,
endlessly
, all you do.

Adeline, Alisa, Milly, Amanda, Margaret, Justine, Jade, Anna, Jordan, Jenna: You talk me off writerly cliffs.

2k9-ers, without you this past year would’ve been one long freak-out. Thanks for holding my hand in the dark.

Friends, fam: I’m the luckiest. Much gratitude for the unrelenting support and encouragement.

FROM
nothing Like You
BY
L
AUREN
S
TRASNICK

We were parked
at Point Dume, Paul and I, the two of us tangled together, half dressed, half not. Paul’s car smelled like sea air and stale smoke, and from his rearview hung a yellow and pink plastic lanyard that swayed with the breeze drifting in through the open car window. I hung on to Paul, thinking,
I like your face, I love your hands, let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s do this
, one arm locked around the back of his head, the other wedged between two scratched-up leather seat cushions, bracing myself against the pain while wondering, idly, if this feels any different when you love the person or when you do it lying down on a bed.

This was the same beach where I’d spent millions of mornings with my mother, wading around at low tide searching for sea anemone and orange and purple starfish. It had cliffs
and crashing waves and seemed like the appropriate place to do something utterly unoriginal, like lose my virginity in the backseat of some guy’s dinged-up, bright red BMW.

I didn’t really know Paul but that didn’t really matter. There we were, making sappy, sandy memories on the Malibu Shore, fifteen miles from home. It was nine p.m. on a school night. I needed to be back by ten.

“That was nice,” he said, dragging a hand down the back of my head through my hair.

“Mm,” I nodded, not really sure what to say back. I hadn’t realized the moment was over, but there it was—our unceremonious end. “It’s getting late, right?” I dragged my jeans over my lap. “Maybe you should take me home?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Paul shimmied backward, buttoning his pants. “I’ll get you home.” He wrinkled his nose, smiled, then swung his legs over the armrest and into the driver’s side seat.

“Thanks,” I said, trying my best to seem casual and upbeat, hiking my underwear and jeans back on, then creeping forward so we were seated side by side.

“You ready?” he asked, pinching an unlit cigarette between his bottom and top teeth.

“Sure thing.” I buckled my seat belt and watched Paul run the head of a Zippo against the side seam on his pants, igniting a tiny flame. I turned my head toward the window and pressed my nose against the glass. There, in the not-so-far-off
distance, an orange glow lit the sky, gleaming bright.
Brushfire.

“Remind me, again?” He jangled his car keys.

“Hillside. Off Topanga Canyon.”

“Right, sorry.” He lit his cigarette and turned the ignition. “I’m shit with directions.”

Chapter 2

Topanga was burning.

Helicopters swarmed overhead dumping water and red glop all over fiery shrubs and mulch. The air tasted sour and chalky and my eyes and throat burned from the blaze. Flaming hills, thick smoke—this used to seriously freak me out. Now, though, I sort of liked it. My whole town tinted orange and smelling like barbecue and burnt pine needles.

I was standing in my driveway, Harry’s leash wrapped twice around my wrist. We watched the smoke rise and billow behind my house and I thought:
This is what nuclear war must look like. Mushroom clouds and raining ash
. I bent down, kissed Harry’s dry nose, and scratched hard behind his ears. “One quick walk,” I said. “Just down the hill and back.”

He barked.

We sped through the canyon. Past tree swings and chopped wood and old RVs parked on lawns. Past the plank bridge that crosses the dried-out ravine, the Topanga Christian Fellowship with its peeling blue and white sign, the Christian Science Church, the Topanga Equestrian Center with the horses on the hill and the fancy veggie restaurant down below in their shadow. That day, the horses were indoors, shielded from the muddy, smoky air. Harry and I U-turned at the little hippie gift shop attached to the fancy veggie restaurant, and started back up the hill to my house.

Barely anyone was out on the road. It was dusky out, almost dark, so we ran the rest of the way home. I let Harry off his leash once we’d reached my driveway, then followed him around back to The Shack.

“Knock, knock,” I said, rattling the flimsy tin door and pushing my way in. Nils was lying on his side reading an old issue of
National Geographic
. I kicked off my sneakers and dropped Harry’s leash on the ground, flinging myself down next to Nils and onto the open futon.

“Anything good?” I asked, grabbing the magazine from between his fingertips.

“Fruit bats,” he said, grabbing it back.

I shivered and rolled sideways, butting my head against his back.

“You cold?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Just a chill . . .”

He rolled over and looked at me. My eyes settled on his nose: long and straight and reassuring. “You freaked about the fire?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“They’ve got it all pretty much contained, you know. ’Least last time I checked.”

I grabbed a pillow off the floor and used it to prop up my head. Harry was sniffing around at my toes, licking and nibbling at my pinkie nail. I laughed.

“What?” said Nils. “What’s so funny?”

“Just Harry.” I shook my head.

“No, come on, what?”

I grabbed his magazine back. “Fruit bats,” I squealed, holding open the page with the fuzzy flying rodents. “I want one, okay? This year, for my birthday.”

“Sure thing, princess.” He moved closer to me, curling his legs to his chest. “Anything you say.”

Nils is my oldest friend. My next-door neighbor. This shack has been ours since we were ten. It was my dad’s toolshed for about forty-five minutes—before Nils and I met, and took over. The Shack is its new name, given a ways back on my sixteenth birthday. Years ten through fifteen, we called it Clubhouse. Nils thought The Shack sounded much more grown up. I agree. The Shack has edge.

“
Have you done all your reading for Kiminski’s quiz tomorrow?”

“No” I said, flipping the page.

“Where were you last night, anyway? I came by but Jeff said you were out.”

Jeff is my dad, FYI. “I just went down to the beach for a bit.”

“Alone?” Nils asked.

“Yeah, alone,” I lied, dropping Nils’s magazine and flipping onto my side.

Nils didn’t need to know about Paul Bennett or any other boy in my life. Nils had, at that point, roughly five new girlfriends each week. I’d stopped asking questions.

“Hols, should we study?”

“Put on Jethro Tull for two secs. We can study in a bit.” The weeks prior to this Nils and I had spent sorting through my mother’s entire music collection, organizing all her old records, tapes, and CDs into categories on a shelf Jeff had built for The Shack.

“This song sucks,” shouted Nils over the first few bars of “Aqualung.” I raised one hand high in the air, rocking along while scanning her collection for other tapes we might like.

“Hols?”

“Yeah?”

“Your mom had shit taste in music.”

I squinted. “You
so
know you love it. Admit it. You
love
Jethro Tull.”

“I do. I love Jethro Tull.” He was looking at me. His eyes looked kind of misty.
Don’t say it, Nils, please don’t say it
. “I miss your mom.” He said it.

I sat up. “Buck up, little boy. She’s watching us from a happy little cloud in the sky, okay?”

He tugged at my hair. “How come you never get sad, Holly? I think it’s weird you don’t ever get sad.”

“I
do
get sad.” I stood, dusting some dirt off my butt. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Chapter 3

School.

7:44 a.m. and I was rushing down the hall toward World History with my coffee sloshing everywhere and one lock of sopping wet hair whipping me in the face. I got one “Hey,” and two or three half-smiles from passersby right before sliding into my seat just as the bell went
ding ding ding
.