Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up (25 page)

Nothing in my life was working out.

Lemonade Mouth? A complete wash with no future. My dad’s business? Failing. Nobody was admitting it out loud yet, but despite how hard my dad was working, it was pretty obvious from his phone calls that selling hot dogs wasn’t bringing in enough money to pay all the bills. My own personal prospects? Ha. Put it this way: despite everything, I was still a big goofy frankfurter waving at traffic on a street corner. ’Nuff said.

And then, of course, there was Olivia.

My concern for her had been growing through most of July. There was something happening with her, but I
couldn’t do anything to help if I didn’t know what it was. And then she disappeared for a whole day and conveniently forgot to mention it to me, even though we had plans? What was up with that? Did I do something wrong? Was she mad at me? I just think that if a person who cares about you is upset with you they ought to tell you so. Was that asking too much?

But at the center of it all was one issue, the burning question I kept coming back to even though it was eating me up inside: how can anybody ever get close to a person who keeps you at a distance? Okay, so maybe I wasn’t her official boyfriend or anything, but I cared about her. A lot.

And that’s why, when there was a knock at the door, I was sitting in a dark room staring into space and wondering if anything in my life would ever make sense. I noticed George padding past, and a minute later his head reappeared in the office doorway.

“Somebody’s here for you,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked, only vaguely curious. “Who?”

“Olivia.”

The information worked its way through the fog of my brain, and then I leapt up from the sofa so fast that it made me dizzy. When that passed, I straightened my T-shirt and went out to meet her. There she was on the front steps. As soon as she saw me her forehead wrinkled. She was looking at me like I had an extra nose.

“Olivia. What’s wrong?”

“Your hair,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it do that before.”

I touched it with my hand, immediately realizing that one side of it was flat to my head and part of it was sticking up. “I was on the sofa,” I admitted. “Resting, sort of.”

She nodded.

“Um … want to come in?”

There was a blast of electronic sound behind me—George, firing up a noisy video game. Olivia leaned around my shoulder to glance inside.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said after a moment. “Not here. Come walk with me? We need to talk.”

My stomach sank. Whenever my dad said “we need to talk” it was never,
ever
good news. But I nodded.

A minute later, after I took a few seconds to comb my hair, we were walking quietly down my street in the direction of the beach. And when I say quietly, I mean we weren’t talking—not at all. I was waiting for Olivia to begin but she wasn’t doing it, and the tension just got worse and worse. It was horrible. I could pretty much guess what was going on. I wasn’t even sure if it was technically possible to break up with someone you weren’t officially going out with in the first place, and yet I felt positive that that was exactly what was about to happen. My world was teetering and my mouth was dry and I wanted to curl up and hide. I told myself to put on a game face, as if I didn’t care about anything and nobody could hurt me.

If she wasn’t going to talk, then I wasn’t either.

Finally we reached the beach. We walked to the far end beyond the big boulders to an area where few people ever go, and that’s where we sat down in the sand. I tried to stay calm even as my throat was tightening and the world was about to fall apart. We were alone, just Olivia and me, gazing out at the water with the smell of sea salt in the air and a gentle breeze in our faces. Behind us, the sun was on its way down.

“I know I haven’t been very open with you,” she said at last, running her fingers through the sand, “but this has
been a weird time for me. I’m sorry. I really am. But I want you to know that it’s never been about trust. I trust you. It’s just that having a hard time trusting others is something that’s been going on throughout my entire life and … well … old habits die hard.”

“Okay …,” I said, trying to understand.

“The reason I was away yesterday, the reason I forgot about going to the movies with you and ended up being so exhausted this morning that I slept through my alarm, was that I was in Massachusetts. I was visiting my mother.”

It was like an explosion that hit me in waves. At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. Olivia’s mother had disappeared when she was really young. This was big. Huge.

“Your
mother
? Oh my god, Olivia.”

She nodded. “I told you. The past few weeks have been … weird.”

With her arms wrapped around her knees, she explained to me how she’d heard from her mom, whose name was Jess, and how her grandmother had known that she’d been back for a while but hadn’t said anything. I listened, but I had a hard time taking it all in. No wonder it wasn’t easy for her to talk about this stuff. A thing like this would have been an emotional roller coaster for anyone, but it must have tied Olivia in knots. I wanted to reach out to her, to somehow show her that she wasn’t alone.

“It’s okay,” I said, resting my hand on her shoulder. “I get it. You don’t have to say any more, Olivia. I understand.”

She spun on me, and without warning there was an edge to her voice. “No, you don’t, Wen. You really don’t. You have no idea what it was like to meet Jess after all this time. You have no idea how it felt—how it still feels. But I
want
you to understand. That’s the thing. I really do. Except I’m no
good at this. For me, things don’t come across right when I just blurt them out. And that’s why I went back home after I saw you this afternoon. I had to go get something and bring it back to show you.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little gray book. Its binding was frayed and some of the pages were folded at the corners.

“This is my diary. These are my thoughts. It’s all here,” she said, holding it toward me. “I want you to read it.”

I glanced at the scribbled handwriting. She’d opened it to an entry marked
Tuesday, August 3
, which was two days earlier. “Your
diary
? Are you … 
sure
?”

“Positive.”

I felt kind of weird about it. I’d never kept a diary, but I knew they were supposed to be kind of sacred places where people wrote things that weren’t supposed to be read by anybody else. Looking into Olivia’s diary would sort of be like sneaking into her private thoughts. But the way she was looking at me, I could tell she wasn’t doing this on a whim. This really was what she wanted. So what could I do? I took the diary.

And then for the next few minutes, with Olivia next to me staring at the ocean, I read.

T
UESDAY
, A
UGUST
3

It’s almost midnight and I can’t sleep. For days
I’ve been thinking and thinking about Jess, and now I’m picturing her in my mind. She’s standing in front of a mirror brushing back her long dark hair, and when she notices me watching, she smiles. Every time I close my eyes I see her. Which is ridiculous, since I really don’t have any idea what she looks like now, or who she is, or anything at all about her. All I have is a faded old photograph, a few foggy memories I probably made up and the stupid letter she sent me a month ago. That’s it
.

So why can’t I just forget about her and go to sleep?

I’m going to put down my pen and try
.

W
EDNESDAY
, A
UGUST
4

It’s past 2 a.m. Still awake
.

Daisy’s curled up in the corner of my room. I see her eyes on me and I can’t help wondering what she
’
s thinking. There’s something very peculiar about that cat. Today she decided to claim all of the food bowls as her own, standing guard over them and hissing whenever the other cats tried to come near. But as much as Daisy drives Brenda and me up the wall, as selfish and wild as she can be, there’s also something special about her. I see it in her eyes right now, a look of understanding, as if she knows what I’m going through. She might be a baby, but
she
’
s got a strong spirit, and I get the feeling she has an old, old soul
.

I’ve given up on trying not to think about Jess. I’ve taken out the photograph of my parents again. I’m staring at it
.

8:05
A.M.

I made up my mind. There are so many questions I don’t want to stay unanswered for the rest of my life. I want to know what happened. I have to find out why she left and where she went and what exactly was going through her head when she left me to grow up without a mother. Because no matter what else she is, she is that—my mother. And Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is only two and half hours away
.

Despite everything she did, or maybe because of it, I have to go see her. We need to talk
.

9:45
A.M.

I can’t believe it. It’s really going to happen. I told Brenda what I decided and she wasn’t happy but she didn’t argue. “If that’s what you want,” she said, “then there’s no point in putting off the inevitable.” There’s a bus leaving from Providence at two o’clock this afternoon. I don’t think it’s fully sunk into my head yet. We’re going. Today is the day
.

10:10
A.M.

I’m amazed to be writing this, but I’m actually worrying about what I should wear. What’s the rule for something like this? Do I dress up? Do I put on a skirt and blouse, maybe even a pretty dress for her, trying to look my best? Or do I just go as I am and not worry what the heck she thinks when she first sees me? After all, she had her chance to see me at my best, my worst and everything in between, and she decided to turn it all down. Maybe showing up in ripped jeans and a nasty old T-shirt would make a statement
.

1:00
P.M.

I’m a total mess. I didn’t even want to eat lunch but Brenda insisted, which I guess was good because now we’re heading to catch the shuttle to Providence. Brenda called ahead to let Jess know we’re coming, so now she’s expecting us. She even told Brenda that she’s excited to meet me. Just looking at those words on the page totally weirds me out
.

My mother is out there somewhere
.

She’s expecting us
.

She’s excited to meet me
.

Me. My mother. Mine
.

3:50
P.M.

We’re somewhere in central Massachusetts. It’s drizzling outside and Brenda’s asleep beside me, and somebody nearby has a radio playing softly. I brought a book to read but it’s no use. I can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about all the things I don’t know about her and all the things she doesn’t know about me. The music I like. The books I read. My friends. My favorite foods. I’m not even sure she knows where I went to elementary school. What will she ask me first? What will I ask her? Where to even begin filling in the gaps?

I also keep thinking about Lemonade Mouth and how everybody’s so unhappy right now. This has been the strangest summer I could have ever imagined, and it’s not about to let up. I wish my friends were here with me now. Especially Wen. He has a way of making me feel calm and safe. But even if I could have found the courage to talk with him and the others about this, I also know that whatever happens today, this is something that has to be between Jess and me. I know I should be excited—and I am, in a way—but I’m also dreading this. After all these years without her I’m less than an hour away from meeting the woman I barely remember, the woman I almost remember waving to from the window
just before she got into that taxi and disappeared from my life
.

My palms are sweating. My whole world is hanging by a thread
.

9:25
P.M.

On the bus again. It’s dark outside and we’re on our way home. I want to set down my thoughts while they’re fresh, but I’m not sure I have the words. Everything is all jumbled. It’s like I had an old storage attic where I kept things locked carefully away but now somebody’s gone in and messed it all up, leaving me with a huge pile of stuff to sort through. I don’t even know where to begin
.