Hold Still (13 page)

An hour isn’t a lot of time, but it’s enough to do something, so I run across the backyard and down the hill and out to the oak tree and my pile of wood and box of tools and the bolts I bought. The treehouse book says that oak trees are perfect for treehouses, something about how their branches are shaped and angled. I’ve chosen to build the floor about ten feet up, in a spot where the branches aren’t very dense.

First, I have to build myself a ladder.

I hoist up a long plank of wood and lean it against the tree. I pick out a handful of one-inch bolts and hammer them through the plank and into the tree trunk, spacing the bolts a foot apart from one another. The hammer feels heavy and solid in my hand. I can still feel recklessness in my stomach. As I work, I lose myself in memories of Ingrid.

The summer after ninth grade, Ingrid and I met two guys who went to a high school a few towns over. It was hot. We were bored. So we wandered the streets with them, ended up at a park they knew. We climbed through bushes and over rocks and ended up at a creek.

We sat with our feet in the water and listened to the friends talk about nothing, and laughed when we knew that something was supposed to be funny. Then, almost midconversation, the taller one leaned over to kiss Ingrid; and the other guy, as if on cue, pushed his mouth against mine. I jerked away—this wasn’t what we had planned—and I was sure that Ingrid was going to also. But she didn’t. The shorter one put his hand on my leg, but even that was too much, and soon I stood up and stepped deeper into the creek. He muttered something to his friend, and left. I looked into the water, up to the trees, over to where a stranger’s hand inched up my best friend’s shirt.

Later that night, she said,
God, Caitlin. We were only kissing.
It was true, but I kept thinking about how she felt about Jayson, and how this had been so different, so much less.

When I’ve hammered nails up one plank as high as I can reach, I line up another one about a foot away from the first and nail it to the tree. After that’s done, I saw a piece off a third plank and bolt it in to make the first step. I look up through the branches and imagine what it will be like when the house is built and I’ll sit in this tree and watch the sky turn black.

My dad calls me from the house. I’ve never felt an hour pass so quickly. I put my hammer back in the toolbox and close the metal lid. My arms are sore from lifting and pounding, but for some reason this makes me feel satisfied, like I really accomplished something. I walk back up the hill to my house, and wonder what Dylan is doing.

7

Ms. Delani is wearing a dress today. It’s all black, sleeveless and billowy. She has a red scarf tied around her neck, and as she walks past me passing back work, her scarf trails behind her in the air. I watch the end of it swishing around. I want to reach out and yank it.

Then she stops in front of me, and drops a hideous, overexposed picture of dirt on my desk. My landscape. I flip it over. In thick red pen she’s written
D.
Below it,
See me.

Back in front of the classroom, Ms. Delani says, “Your next assignment is to take a self-portrait. Build off what you learned last year. And
please,
” she says. “I want some depth. Some
substance
.”

The bell rings and I slide to the edge of my chair. I don’t want to
see
her.

I try to follow everyone out the door, but Ms. Delani catches me.

“Caitlin.”

I shuffle to her desk.

“Yeah?”

She reaches for the photo in my hand.

“Caitlin.” She shakes her head. “What
is
this? This is not art.”

I give her my iciest stare. “You didn’t help me with my goals,” I say. “I asked you, but you ignored me.”

She sighs. “First a moving car for a still life. Now an empty lot for a landscape. I know that you are capable of much more than this.”

I look away from her, up at the walls. I scan all the photographs until I find the one of me. “Actually, that was Ingrid,” I say. “Ingrid was capable of more than this; I always sucked, remember?” I snatch my landscape from her, crush it in my fist, and shove it in my backpack.

She takes her glasses off and rubs between her eyes like I’m giving her the worst headache. She leans over her desk and puts her head in her hands. I stand there, awkwardly, waiting for her to look up and suggest that I drop the class, or tell me not to waste her time, or send me to the therapist again. I wait, and keep waiting. The freshmen start to come in for the beginning class. The bell for second period rings.

“Um,” I say, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “I kind of have to go.” She still doesn’t respond.

Then she sits up. And my heart stops beating. Ms. Delani’s lips are trembling, her cheeks are flushed. She closes her eyes and tears run down and pool at the sides of her nose. She doesn’t say anything. The freshmen are quiet, staring down at their desks, trying not to look at us. She reaches for a pad of paper and writes something. She hands me the paper and walks back into her office. I look down.

It says,
Please excuse Caitlin from second period tardiness.—V. Delani

8

“So, hey,” Taylor says as he’s cramming his stuff into his backpack. “I’m going over to Henry’s to wait for Jayson. We’re gonna go to this kick-ass restaurant in Berkeley to get Ethiopian food. Wanna come?”

We’ve been comparing notes about Jacques DeSoir in the library after school. So far we’ve decided that we’re going to start our presentation talking about how and why we chose him. We also decided to buy a map of Europe so that we can chart all the places he traveled for the class.

I feel kind of nervous about going to Henry’s, but I also don’t feel like saying no and walking home alone when I could be spending time with Taylor, so I say sure. Henry probably doesn’t even know I exist, even though we’re in English together and I know which block of which street he lives on. I know he lives in a three-story house and that his parents are never home. I know this because he has parties almost every Friday night, and because Ingrid and I would sometimes decide to go, get as far as the front yard, and then turn around when we saw the shapes of all the people inside, heard them talking and laughing, saw all the cars parked out front, and recognized whom they belonged to. Even though we wanted to go, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to walk into Henry’s house, see everyone already talking to people, already settled and gathered into little exclusive groups, and watch them look up at us and wonder why we were there.

So this is why I know the outside of Henry’s house so well, but once I follow Taylor through the door, nothing is familiar. Not the huge family portrait that hangs in the entryway, not the marble floor, or the fountain that spurts water in the middle of it. I wonder what a kid does who lives here alone practically all the time. We turn into the family room.

Henry and a couple other guys I recognize but don’t really know are sitting on an expensive-looking sofa, drinking Coronas and staring at the TV.

“Hey,” Taylor says. “You all know Caitlin, right?”

One of them, not Henry, says, “Hey.”

They all turn back to the screen. This is exactly what Ingrid and I feared all the times we turned around and walked away from Henry’s house. I stand caught in this moment, feeling so unwelcome.

I would like to say that a million possibilities are running through my mind and that I’m just having trouble choosing which brilliant exit line to use, or which joke to deliver that will make all the guys laugh, make Taylor look less nervous, make the tension in the room vanish. But really, I’m just trying to think of one possibility. I’ll do the first thing that comes to me. But before I’ve decided on anything, Henry speaks.

Still looking at the screen, he says, “Hey, so you’re friends with that new girl, aren’t you?”

I guess I was wrong; he does know I exist.

“Yeah,” I say, and wonder if this is still true. I guess he really is oblivious if he hasn’t noticed that Dylan and I haven’t sat together for half a month.

He nods. “She’s hot,” he says. “Does she like guys, too?”

I shake my head, but realize that no one is looking at me, not even Taylor, who is studying his shoelaces as intently as he had been our Jacques DeSoir book. So I say it out loud: “I don’t think so.”

“Does she have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Is
she
hot?”

“Um . . .” I roll up onto the balls of my feet and then back down. “It feels kind of weird to talk about this,” I say.

“It’s not a big deal,” Henry says. “It’s a simple question. So is she?”

“Taylor, I’m gonna wait outside,” I say. I step outside and shut the heavy door behind me.

A second later, Taylor is beside me. “Sorry about in there,” he says. “Henry’s usually pretty cool.”

“I’m sure he is,” I say, kind of deadpan, and I don’t know if Taylor can tell I’m being sarcastic. I’m so confused right now. I don’t even want to work on the treehouse or fall asleep in my car. I don’t even want Taylor to kiss me. The only thing that sounds remotely good is tracking Dylan down to tell her that I’m sorry about everything and that I understand I was being irrational and weird. A rumble comes from around the corner, and then a yellow Datsun appears with Jayson behind the wheel.

“Look, I’m gonna go,” I say to the concrete.

“But you need to try this restaurant. It’s really good, I swear. You won’t be sorry.”

“I’m just gonna go,” I say.

Jayson slows and stops in front of us.

“At least let me drive you,” Taylor says.

I raise a foot and step off the curb, pivot toward Taylor, and say, “I feel like walking.” I manage a smile and add, “Thanks, though.”

Taylor looks like a kid who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.

I say, “If you have leftovers, you can bring me lunch tomorrow,” and then I turn and head toward the strip mall.

I go into the noodle place. It smells like coconut milk and pineapple. Elvis is singing on the jukebox. Dylan isn’t in there.

I decide to get some soup anyway. I sit in our usual booth and eat alone.

9

I’m headed away from fourth period, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Alicia, her red hair piled on top of her head in a huge mess. I mean mess in a good way. Alicia always looks perfect.

“Caitlin,” she says. “I’m glad I found you. I never see you at lunch. Where do you sit?”

I can’t really bring myself to tell her that I’ve been spending my lunches hiding in bathroom stalls, so I shrug and say, “Different places,” and hope that it sounds vague in a cool way and not like I’m too embarrassed to tell her the truth.

She doesn’t seem too concerned with my answer anyway. Her eyes are busy darting from side to side, like she doesn’t really want to be talking to me right now. Once she’s convinced that no one more important is around, she looks at me again.

“Listen,” she says. “Caitlin.”

She pauses like I’m supposed to say something.

“Um, yeah?”

She takes a breath and launches into her speech. “We’ve been friends for so long. I mean a really,
really
long time. So I feel like it’s my responsibility to tell you that people are starting to say things about you and that, um,
girl
.”

“Dylan?”

She scrunches her nose and nods violently. “I mean, not that I would ever believe them, but it’s really something for you to think about. I know that this is a hard time for you, and I’m just telling you this because I care. I would just hate to see you fall in with the wrong crowd.”

I don’t bother pointing out that one person does not really equal a crowd. I also don’t mention that this advice is coming a little late.

“You have your reputation to consider,” she concludes. And tilts her face. And smiles.

I look at each strand of red hair lacquered perfectly out of place, at her bright green eyes darting away from me to somewhere in the distance, and without thinking, I blurt out, “Alicia, do you consider yourself a shallow person?”

Alicia’s attention jerks back to me.
“What?”
she asks.

“Because I don’t consider myself a shallow person, either. But I think that people who make judgments about people they don’t even know are shallow, and people who start rumors are shallow, and I really don’t care about what shallow people say about me.”

Alicia’s eyes are open wide and fixed on my face. I can practically see her brain ticking. She says, “I’m just telling you for your own good. Because we’ve been friends since first grade. But now I see that you aren’t grateful, so I’ll stop caring. It’ll make my life easier. So, thanks.”

“No,” I say, with my heart pounding and a brick in my stomach. “Thank
you,
Alicia.”

Then I turn and walk away from her, toward the bathroom.

I stand in front of the mirror. I didn’t turn in a self-portrait this morning. I didn’t even take a bad one. Ms. Delani told us to turn them in at the end of class and I just grabbed my backpack and left as everyone was lining up to drop their photographs in the pile.

Behind me, on both sides, are long rows of empty bathroom stalls with silver doors. I lean over the sink, closer to my reflection, and stare at myself hard. I don’t know what I see, I don’t even know what I want to see.

Some days I like to think of myself as visibly wounded—like Melanie, only quieter. I imagine people wondering about what went wrong in my life. But other days I want to be like Dylan and Maddy and their friends, who seem like they’ve lived a little, have been a little bad, but seem so healthy at the same time.

Really, when it comes down to it, I don’t know if it’s something I can decide. I back away from the mirror. I don’t know what I see.

After school is over, I follow Dylan from English to the science hall. We turn our combination locks at the same time. I keep glancing over, trying to say hi, but she ignores me. A buzzing noise comes from her pocket and she reaches in and takes out her phone.