Never Enough (17 page)

Maybe Marcus was jealous. And maybe that meant he had the kind of feelings for me that I had for him.

Maybe.

I hadn’t allowed myself to hope since that time in the genie outfit. Since the time I’d offered him three wishes, and he’d almost made one. A smile lit up my face. Let Marcus get mad about Josh.

Let him get really, really mad.

On Monday I was so happy to see Jasmine at our house, I almost hugged her
. Claire really needed a friend. Someone who knew how to talk to her and bring her out of her mopey, selfish funk. I couldn’t do it. I wondered if Claire acted this way at work, too. I doubted that would fly at a brand-new job. And didn’t she have to work today? I thought she’d said it was Monday to Friday.

I wandered into the kitchen at lunchtime, expecting them to be chatting and stop the moment they saw me, but they just sat there stoically, staring down at the table.

“Hey, Jasmine!” I tried to infuse the room with some cheeriness, even though I’d already said hi an hour ago when she arrived. Still, I swear, a look of relief crossed her face when she met my gaze.

“Hey, Loann. What are you up to today?”

“Working later,” I said. I told her about my job at the Arts Club, where I’d started working more than just Saturdays. Jasmine sat taller and acted genuinely interested. Claire sunk lower into her chair, like I was putting her to sleep.

Whatever. I just wanted a sandwich.

As I waited for my bread to toast, I listened to them crunch at their salads. By the time my toast popped, I had the meat, cheese, and mustard out on the counter. I couldn’t get out of the wordless chamber fast enough.

“Mmm. Smells good, Loann,” Jasmine said. “Would you make me one, too?”

Was she serious?
Her raised eyebrows looked like she was. “Sure.” I dropped two more slices of bread into the toaster.

As I finished assembling my sandwich, Jasmine murmured to Claire, “I thought you said there was no other food in the house. That your mom hadn’t been shopping in weeks.”

Claire scoffed. “Yeah, well, if you want food like
that
.” She pushed her salad away and crossed her arms. “Do you have any idea how many carbs are in a sandwich?”

Jasmine scrunched her face. “I’m just hungry. It’s not like I’m scarfing down chocolate bars.”

Claire looked her best friend up and down. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

I couldn’t believe this. I’d always thought Claire was the
amiable one. The one who won her popularity, at least in part, by her ability to get along with everyone.
Who was this girl?

When Jasmine’s toast popped, it sounded like a gunshot in the quiet. I quickly threw together her sandwich, not even knowing if she’d eat it now, then placed it on the table in front of her. I avoided Claire’s glare on my way out of the room.

While I ate lunch alone at my desk, I dug through my shoe box of negatives and pictures, trying not to think of the weirdness downstairs. Each time I held up a strip of negatives toward the window, the little squares sparked so many memories.

I cringed when I came across the photos of Mom making elaborate gestures toward the camera, and the shots of Claire’s dainty hand held out like a stop sign. I was surprised how many pictures had accumulated in my box. The spontaneous ones were something else. I had a great one of Claire in the bathroom, putting on her mascara. She leaned into the mirror with the most serious look. Her full lips formed a funny oval shape with her concentration. With the click of my camera, she had jumped away from the counter, getting a swipe on her cheek. She flashed me a look and pointed at me with her mascara wand, but I could tell she was fighting a smile.

The great thing about my pictures of Claire was that they all said something. It was effortless with her as my subject. She was beautiful, of course, but so many other things seemed to
be going on inside her, and all of that emotion came through clearly on film. If a person had only ever heard her speak they would think she was one kind of person, but in my pictures she was quite another.

But the girl down at our kitchen table? She was another yet.

*   *   *

Apparently Monday’s lunch with Jasmine was a one-time deal. Day after day passed with no sign of Claire’s best friend, and who could blame her after the way Claire had acted? Most nights Claire just stayed in her room with her iPod docked and playing.

I’d been thinking about putting together a photography portfolio to see if there was some place to submit it for a scholarship, but by the end of the week, I could no longer concentrate with Claire next door. It was as if she radiated her agitated energy.

I wondered what had happened to the days when she never stayed home on a Friday or Saturday night. She hadn’t even gone to her job all week.

She pulled my bathroom door shut, and a few seconds later I heard the water running. My photos were spread all over my desk, but I didn’t have much idea of how to start putting together a portfolio. Should I pick my favorites? Or look for ones that went together?

An odd noise caught my attention from the bathroom. It
was a gurgling or choking sound. The water was running, so I wondered what Claire was doing in there.

I walked to the door, to see if she was okay. Then I heard it. Claire was vomiting.

At dinner, I’d made a point of dishing some food out on Claire’s plate before she came to the table. When she tried to escape with most of it covered by her napkin, I’d called her on it, said she was wasting food when we couldn’t afford it, and Mom had made her sit down and finish her plate.

So she was just going to throw it all up instead?

I had to talk to her about this. She couldn’t stay this upset about her breakup with Josh forever. I knocked on the bathroom door.

“What?” Claire asked over the running water. “I’m busy!” She sounded angry and bossy.

“Busy with what?” Yeah, I felt like a tool, but I couldn’t keep letting her push me away. Not now.

She didn’t answer.

“Can I, uh, talk to you when you’re done?”

Thirty seconds later the water stopped, then Claire jostled open the door to my room and walked back through the bathroom to hers. She didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

I made the trek through the bathroom, which smelled strongly of air freshener, and into Claire’s room. She sat at her desk and looked out her window, tapping her pen. I
took a few uncomfortable steps across the room and sat on her bed.

I picked at the edge of her bedspread, like I used to do when we were younger. I’d sit here and listen while she talked on the phone, and she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, during our middle-school years, I think she liked having an audience as she talked about the boys she was interested in.

But that was years ago, and this felt way different. I didn’t even know how to start a conversation in this thorny silence.

“Are you . . . do you think you’re fat or something?” I asked finally.

Claire’s knuckles whitened around her pen. “No, of course not,” she said in a much angrier tone that I expected. “Do
you
think I’m fat?”

I didn’t know how to reply. Obviously I did not think she was fat, but somehow I didn’t think that was the answer she was looking for. But what
did
she want to hear?

She glanced over at the bathroom, and a worried look crossed her face. Then Claire spoke as though she didn’t really want anyone to hear her. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it again.” She flicked her pen harder. “You should just be glad that everyone doesn’t want
you
to be something you’re not, Loann. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s too hard.”

I don’t know what
that’s
like? Give me a break! The term “unmet expectations” was pretty much invented for me!
But
okay. This was about her, and somehow she was struggling in a way that I didn’t understand.

Claire’s bottom lip trembled.

“You . . . you’re so thin already. And so pretty.” I started saying it to make her feel better, but by the end I was shaking my head.
Didn’t she already know that?

“He told me I was pretty,” she said with a humorless laugh. It took me a second to realize she meant Josh. “That’s the best part of having a boyfriend, Loey. They treat you special and tell you you’re beautiful. Girls need that, you know?”

She sounded sad, wistful. And she’d called me Loey, which was a good sign.

“What about you?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I answered her question with a question. “Why don’t boys like me, Claire?”

Immediately I felt uncomfortable for asking, but Claire seemed to think nothing of it. In fact, I think it made her brighten a bit. She tilted her head at me.

“I know I’m not pretty enough,” I added, to make sure she understood I had a
few
of the family brain cells. “But is that all there is?”

“Oh, Loey,” she said as she came over and draped her light arm around my shoulders. “Is that what you think? That you’re not good enough?” She squeezed me as she said it. “If anything, Loey, if anything at all, you’re too good for
them
. For all of them.”

I felt my forehead contorting.

Claire continued, “I think maybe you intimidate boys.”

How could
I
ever intimidate anyone?
I thought back to when Josh and his friends had been in the café. But no, I hadn’t intimidated Ron. Josh had come back to pay, and that was just because he’s nice. I had never told Claire that he’d stopped by that day, and I wondered if I should have.

Claire sat up on her knees behind me on the bed and took the sides of my hair, pulled them away from my face, and gathered them on top of my head. Unlatching the barrette from her own hair with her free hand, she fastened it into mine. We looked across the room together into her antique mirror, our faces close.

“See how pretty you are?” she said.

My mouth twitched. I didn’t know if I could see it.

But one thing I was quite certain of: I couldn’t say for sure that I didn’t see it.

Marcus and I both looked up from our spot behind the front hedges when Mom’s
car pulled into the driveway. When Marcus and I weren’t at the café, we went on what we called “photography hunts” around town or just in my yard. I was excited to have so many rolls of film ready to develop when we got back to school in the fall.

Claire got out on the passenger side of the car, Mom on the other, the two of them already in midargument. I looked over at Marcus, who had gone frozen. I didn’t get what the big deal was. Mom wasn’t
that
scary.

Claire’s words trailed behind her toward the house. “Mom, I’ve been dancing for practically my whole life. I just want time to concentrate on other things for a while. Like finding the right college.”

My mind couldn’t compute this conversation. Claire now wanted to dump ballet to go to a regular college, instead of a performing-arts school?

“You can do both, Claire. It’s not fair to the other dancers if you quit in the middle of the season.”

“But, Mom—”

Their voices escalated as they walked into the house, but Claire’s words were cut off by the door. I handed Marcus my camera and told him I’d be right back. Then I raced around to the back door. I could hear Mom’s and Claire’s voices as soon as I was in the house, but peered through an inch-wide opening of the kitchen door anyway.

“This is what you asked us for.” Mom marched around the living room, tidying up the couch cushions. “We paid good money for you to be a part of the summer program. Finish up the session. Then we’ll talk about it.”

Claire let out a melodramatic sigh and dropped her dance bag. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Understand what?!
Claire seriously wanted to drop ballet, the only real thing she was doing with her life, because she didn’t have time for it? She’d hardly been working, but of course, Mom probably didn’t know that. What was Claire so busy with? Soap operas?

“I understand just fine, Claire. But you committed to the summer performance.” I was proud of Mom, sticking to her
guns even though it went against Claire’s sudden college aspirations.

“I’m not doing the recital,” Claire said, pulling her arms across her chest like a two-year-old.

Mom straightened, but didn’t reply right away. I pushed the door a little wider. Claire jutted her chin forward, waiting for her rebuttal.

Mom placed her hands firmly on her hips. “You will do exactly what we tell you while you’re still living in our house.”

Claire dropped her head in her hands and started to cry. “Why, Mom? Why do you care? It’s just a stupid show.” If this was true, I wondered why Claire cared so much.