Positively Beautiful (4 page)

“We go on. We live our lives. There's nothing else to do,” she says, and I start crying again.

Chaz pulls up in my driveway a little after six. He's driving an old Mustang, all decked out.

“Nice car,” Mom says, peering out the window.

I give her a quick hug and say, “See you later, alligator.”

“After a while, crocodile,” she answers. She started this when I was little and petrified to go to school because I was afraid she was going to up and die while I was learning addition, like my dad did. “We don't say good-bye because we know we're going to see each other again soon, right, Rinnie? Go to school, and when you get done, I'll be waiting for you.”

For some stupid reason it stuck. We still don't say good-bye.

Trina gives me an oh-my-God face when she gets out to let me in the back. She's relatively sedate tonight, in white bloomers that come to her knees, a green spidery-thin shirt she's belted with a piece of rope, and her hair in a bun. She's wearing the big green glasses she always wears when she's feeling shy.

“Hi, Chaz, nice car,” I say as I climb into the empty backseat.

“You like it?” Chazs peers over his shoulder at me with his gray, caught-in-the-headlights eyes.

“Well, sure, it's a 1966 Mustang Pony Coupe. What's not to like?”

“Erin's got a thing for old cars,” Trina says as Chaz pulls out of my driveway.

Not really, but it's easier than explaining the truth. My dad's 1965 Mustang convertible is parked in our garage. It doesn't run, and lately Mom has been talking about selling it to free up the garage for her potting table. Every time she says anything about it though, I change the subject. Last year, as I neared my sixteenth birthday, I started researching old Mustangs to see how expensive it would be to fix. My birthday came, I got a Corolla, and somehow I stopped thinking about fixing it. But I can't see selling it. When I was little I used to take off the cover and sit inside and pretend my dad was still alive. I would close my eyes and say,
Yes, Daddy, ice cream sounds really nice. Maybe then we can go to the airport and watch the planes fly? Please? Oh, silly Daddy, of course I love you too.

“My dad left me a '65 Mustang,” I say, and leave out the rest.

“I'd like to see it sometime.” Chaz swings a long arm over the back of the seat to look at me and socks Trina in the face. “Oh, I'm sorry! Are you okay?”

“Drive, Chaz, drive!” she says, rearranging her glasses, which have been knocked askew.

That's why he's Chaz the Spaz. It's like he's got a motor inside him that's herky-jerky. It goes really fast sometimes,
spinning his tall, lanky frame into a frenzy, and then it stutters, leaving his long arms and legs flailing helplessly. He's really not bad looking, though. He's got tight golden curls cut close to his scalp, and nice cheekbones (except for the bloom of acne), and wears I'm-a-nerd-and-proud-of-it glasses. He snaps constantly to some unrhythmic song in his head, which makes you want to break his fingers. Trina, of course, thinks this is cute.

“Seriously, though, I'd love to see it.”
Snap, snap
, even as he drives through the tree-lined streets. We live inside the “Perimeter,” meaning inside Interstate 285, which encircles metro Atlanta, but our city has a small-town feel, with a little bit of history thrown in. There are a few buildings that hark back to the Civil War, at least the ones that survived Sherman. Of course, a lot of people in Atlanta feel like the Civil War was maybe ten, fifteen years ago, rather than a hundred and fifty.

“I bet Michael would too,” Chaz continues after a moment. “He's the car man, really. He restored this baby.” He pats the dashboard affectionately. “I did the research and dug out the specs and all, but he's the hands-on guy.”

“Michael … ?” I say.

“Michael Lundstrom. You know him, right?” he says all casual, but Trina shoots me a triumphant glance. She knows I've had a secret crush on Michael Lundstrom since he was my lab partner last year.

“I know who he is,” I say, making a face back at Trina, who looks like she is about to do an emergency eject out of her seat.
Chaz and Michael Lundstrom are friends.
Who would have thought?

“There he is. We'll ask him,” Chaz continues as he pulls into the driveway of a picture-perfect restored Victorian and Michael comes loping down the walk.

Trina pumps her fist and mouths “Score!” at me. Now I get all the funny, oh-so-meaningful looks. Chaz must have told her who was coming with us tonight.

My heart starts doing the funky chicken in my chest. Michael is hands-down my desert-island boy. He could catch fish and make fires and we would have deep, dreamy conversations. Not that I've ever had any sort of conversation with him—other than “Hand me that test tube” and “Wow, that polymer putty sure is sticky”—but I am confident our conversations would be deep. And dreamy.

Michael used to be one of the most popular guys in school, soccer cocaptain, smart, and cute. He and Faith Hiller were our class's golden couple, and there was never any doubt that the two of them would go off to some great college and reign there as king and queen. But something changed. Last year, he quit the soccer team and he and Faith broke up. Now he sits by himself at lunch and walks the halls alone.

That hasn't changed what he looks like—
hot
—and if anything, his aloneness only makes him more attractive to me. I get walking the halls alone.

“Hey, Michael,” Chaz says, “this is Trina.”

He sounds little-boy proud, showing off his shiny new toy to a friend.

“Hi, Michael, like the T-shirt,” Trina says. “Morbid much?”

That's Trina for you.

Michael settles back into his seat and I can
smell
him, all musk and patchouli. He sweeps his hair out of his eyes and stares at Trina for a moment. He's got a little dimple in the cleft of his chin. Perfect. I mean, just
perfect.

He looks down at his shirt, and I follow his gaze. It's a black T-shirt with a crumbled building outlined in silver with a grim reaper dancing on top. Below it says, GAME OVER. There is nothing else on the shirt to indicate what it means.

“I drew it,” he says, following the edge of the building with his long, tanned finger.

“Michael is going to be an architect,” Chaz says. “I mean, he wants to be an architect more than I want to be a videogame designer.” His tone holds a note of awe. Michael's level of dedication to architecture must be extreme.

“Wow,” I say, my sole contribution to the conversation so far.

Michael turns to look at me, his gaze smoky charcoal. He's all straight dark hair and eyes you could just drown in. It doesn't hurt that he's muscular in all the right places and walks like some sort of panther,
pacing
down the hallway like he owns it. I've seen people literally get out of his way, but he doesn't seem to notice.

“Hi, Michael.” I hold out my hand. “Remember me? I'm Erin.”

My hand hangs there like I'm waiting for him to kiss it, and his brow furrows.

“Got it,” he says, taking my hand and giving it a little shake. “Chemistry last year. You're pretty smart.”

I duck my head, feeling the blood burning in my cheeks.

“She
is
smart,” Trina gushes. “If only all of us could make straight As.” She sighs dramatically, giving me a you-can-thank-me-later look, and then asks brightly, “How do you and Chaz know each other?”

“We met a couple summers ago. Michael was … hanging out,” Chaz says, glancing into the rearview mirror at Michael and then back to the road as we pass the entry arch for Agnes Scott College.

I see Trina narrow her eyes at him, but she doesn't say anything. For now. Leave Trina alone for five minutes with a wall and she'll know its life story. It won't take her long to worm the details out of Chaz.

“Me and Erin have been friends since we were six,” she says. “Best friends forever, right?” She looks back over her shoulder and grins at me.

Six years old … me crying on the playground because my dad was dead. I didn't really understand death yet, just that he wasn't going to come to see me anymore. He was gone. It was different from the Mommy-and-Daddy-can't-live-together-anymore gone that happened when I was four, though I wasn't sure why he couldn't visit me from heaven. Was heaven farther than Druid Hills, where he moved after the divorce? Anyway, I was pretty sure it was all my fault, this going-away-forever thing. In my six-year-old world, you did things right, and life was good. You did something wrong, and you got punished. I figured I must have done something really bad for my daddy to be taken away. I decided I would be
really
,
really
good from then on. Maybe then they wouldn't take away Mommy too.

There I was crying on the swing, and Trina came up to me.

“Why're you crying?”

“I'm not crying.”

“Yes you are.”

“Are not!”

I keep crying and she sits beside me, knee to knee.

“My daddy died,” I say.

She's quiet for a while. Then
, “
Your daddy can play with my turtle Buddy up in heaven, okay? And you can come play with me.”

And I did. And we've been friends ever since.

“All right!” Trina says, never quiet for more than five seconds. “Can you tell us where we're going yet?”

“Uh … no. Don't you like surprises?” Chaz says, looking over his shoulder at me and Michael, narrowly missing a car full of bless-your-heart grandmas turning into the Edgewood Retail District.

I get an amused vibe from Michael, though his expression is still dark. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever seen him smile. He's dark and broody, like a Heathcliff/Rochester character.

“I
love
surprises,” Trina says. “One time I even hid cookies from myself so it would be a surprise when I found them.”

Chaz laughs, a delighted burble. Oh wow, he's a goner. Good for Trina.

Chaz and Trina chat as if Michael and I aren't even there. Michael is staring out the window, and I do the same on my side. He never said much to me as my lab partner either.

I wonder what Mom is doing, and then I try not to think about my mother because all it does is make me want to cry. It's too late, though, because now I've got a picture in my head of her in a coffin, looking pale and peaceful, and I can't get rid of it.

“What?” Michael says.

I realize I'm shaking my head back and forth, trying to jar loose the image.

“Ah … nothing. I'm thinking about—” My mind is not working. I don't want to tell him about my mom. I don't want anybody to know about my mom. It's just too private, too personal to share.

His eyes are a really dark brown, almost black, like velvet night as he looks at me. I think he can tell my brain-wheels are spinning like crazy but nothing's coming out. He says, “I was thinking about this thing I heard, about a kid who went crazy and killed a bunch of people? They called him the Question Mark Kid, 'cause he would put down a question mark instead of his name.”

“Seriously, you got any other sunny thoughts for the day? For kicks let's talk about killing puppies,” I say without thinking.

He doesn't exactly smile, but his lips quirk a little. “No, I guess I just like the idea of not being anybody but a question mark. You get to define who you are, nobody else does.”

“Of course, if being a question mark means you want to kill a bunch of innocent people, then you have to wonder whether it's such a good thing. Can I just tell you this
conversation got a little creepy?” I ask. “Should I be thinking about contacting the authorities?”

His lips quirk again and we fall silent. But it's more comfortable this time, strangely enough.

We go over I-20 and we're near EAV, East Atlanta Village. Mom and I used to go to the farmers' market on Thursdays, but it's been a while since we've gone.