Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (12 page)

Some rap song still played on the stereo at low volume. Emily punched it off.

She closed rifled-through cupboards and scrubbed the sticky kitchen counters with a sponge.

Ryan had gone onto the back deck where he was righting lawn furniture. She walked out after him, the cold wind grabbing her. She said, softly, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.”

All the lights in the house were on and they made a pattern of yellow rectangles across the deck and grass. The cold air bordered on bitter. “But, why? All your friends are somewhere else.”

He turned a metal chair and replaced Melissa’s red, floral cushion. “You’re not somewhere else.”

Emily’s heart fluttered, like someone erratically pounding a bongo drum. “Well,” she said. “Thank you.”

She maneuvered so she was one step down from him, her feet firmly planted on the ground. Ryan edged closer. When he got so he stood in front of her, they were the same height.

Her heart and breath and thoughts clanged. She could smell him again, that cottony, evergreen scent. Oh my God, she thought. Ryan McElvoy. Ryan McElvoy. There is his neck, his pointy Adam’s apple, his skin a little stubbly. And there’s his chin, kind of square and solid. There’s his mouth, his lips a peachy purple in this light and they’re coming closer. Closer. Closer.

Then, standing on different levels so they were perfectly aligned, with wind spinning the bamboo chimes and rattling the window screens, the house lit like a jack-o’-lantern, and the sound of the clinking bottles that Kristen was collecting inside, Ryan McElvoy kissed Emily. And his mouth was warm, and it was good.

When they pulled apart, she realized she’d been clutching the sleeve of Ryan’s hoodie. She looked up at him and all she could think to say was, “I’m glad you stayed.” He felt so foreign next to her. Such an oddly different species, the attractive male. But also inviting and intoxicating. More than anything, she wanted to stand there and keep kissing him. Or, better yet, move him inside where it was warm.

She knew they couldn’t exactly start making out while Kristen cleaned the house, though, so she swallowed hard and smiled.

Ryan smiled back. “You have soft lips,” he said.

Emily’s smile grew, though she was equal parts embarrassed and flattered.

A stinging raindrop hit her forehead, then a second and third. She couldn’t help but wonder if this kiss would’ve happened had she been standing on the upper step. Her voice was almost a whisper when she asked, “Why me?”

He chuckled, pulled his hand down over his mouth, and rested it on his chin. “Because,” he said, his voice dipping, then coming back up, as if that one word should convey the reason he’d chosen her. “You’re you. There’s no other Lean Bean.”

She wished Ryan wouldn’t call her that, but to him she supposed it meant something endearing. To her, it was just a reminder of her height.

She said, “Let’s finish this up before we get drenched.”

He agreed and they jogged around the front of the house to pick up the detritus that’d been left there. What they found were a group of people sitting on the porch steps.

Leaning back on her elbows, oblivious to the rain that had started, Trix took short, nervous drags from a cigarette. Marjorie King and Sam perched next to her. “There you are,” Sam said.

Emily stopped short, her goofy smile and the contented, exhilarated hum emanating from her extinguished.

She shifted her attention from Sam to Trix. She walked up so the toes of her Chuck Taylors almost touched the toes of her friend’s platform boots. “What was that?” she asked.

Trix’s eyes were red, but it wasn’t clear if they were red because she was trying to hold back tears or from the smoke drifting into them.

Trix wanted nothing to do with Emily right then. She’d ruined everything. If the night had gone as Trix planned, she’d be deciding between Devlin, Ben, and Ryan. Instead, Ryan stood there, his fingers linked loosely with Emily’s, both so self-satisfied they practically glowed.

“Trix?”

“What?” her tone was flat. Dead. She looked up at Emily, daring her to lecture.

“What’s going on with you?” Emily wished more than anything that Sam, Marjorie, and the others would go. They had nothing to do with this. And besides, Sam kept staring and was making her supremely uncomfortable.

The leaves that were still left in the trees above them swished and swashed dramatically. Every so often a full moon peeked from behind dark, fast moving clouds.

“What’s going on with
you
?” Trix asked angrily.

Emily took a step back. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Miss Prim. Miss Oh-no-I-couldn’t-possibly-have-a-party-at-my-house. When did you get so boring?”

Ryan and Emily exchanged a look. His was unreadable but he offered a slight nod.

“Look,” Emily said. “I’m not the one who’s changed here. You are. Putting me on the spot like that was totally uncool. Totally thoughtless and selfish.”

Trix crushed her cigarette under the heel of her boot. “That’s me,” she said. “Thoughtless and selfish.”

Marjorie hooted into the night.

Emily tasted something sour, slightly bitter, in the back of her throat and imagined it seeping out her nostrils and the corner of her mouth. She didn’t understand where Trix’s resentment came from and why it was directed at her. Why was Trix so angry just because Emily was trying to do the right thing? “It doesn’t
have
to be you.”

Trix stood. “Yeah it does. It’s my legacy. I’m outta here,” she said. “Have fun with your boy-o. Enjoy it while you can. They all only want one thing.”

Marjorie dropped a burning cigarette on the porch step and crushed it with her heel. Sam loped after them, turning back to raise one big hand. As they moved down the street under the orange sodium lights, Emily remembered how jealous and enraged Trix had looked coming out of Johnson’s class earlier that day.

“She’s a real treat,” Ryan said, watching them go.

Emily wondered if Trix was jealous of Ryan, per se, or just that someone was paying attention to Emily at all. She was dumbfounded, too. Trix should’ve been falling all over herself apologizing, explaining, begging forgiveness. Instead she’d treated Emily like
she’d
done something wrong. “She … ” Emily stopped, then started again. “She didn’t used to be like that.”

Ryan’s hand slid up under her hood and rested there. Warmth coursed through her veins and she turned, intentionally slouching so their mouths could meet, and kissed him. A long kiss that pulled her tongue out to meet his and brought her hands up to his broad, boney shoulders.

It was absolutely nothing like Sam’s slimy kiss.

This was restrained and electrifying. This was Ryan’s mouth on Emily’s. This was fantastically incredible.

She tried not to let herself wonder if they would kiss tomorrow and the next day, or if this was a one-night thing. She hoped it wasn’t. God, she hoped it would go on.

26. Fun House

T
HEY WERE IN
someone’s apartment. Isaac’s? The music was good. Loud and electric. Trix had drunk more than a six-pack on her own. And maybe vodka. She wasn’t sure. She just knew she felt so good so good so good. Her head was on some guy’s lap as he played air guitar and she tried not to fall asleep. She didn’t want to miss any fun.

Marjorie lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling as if a movie played up there. She’d done something more than alcohol or weed, but Trix didn’t know what.

Other people were around, too, but to Trix they moved like ghosts. She was focused on Marjorie. “Whatcha see up there?” she said. Her words sounded mushy even to herself.

Marjorie only laughed.

The song ended and the guy playing air guitar went limp. He stroked Trix’s hair, saying something about how much of it there was and that it was like snarled weeds.

When he caught on a tangle, he ripped through it savagely.

Trix shrieked. The guy chuckled.

Fun house. That was kind of what this was like. Things loomed large and then small. A tangle in her hair was a big deal, then faded to nothing. Marjorie with all her makeup and black and purple hair seemed clownishly large, and then remote and tiny.

“Marj?” Trix said.

“Don’t ever call me that!”

“Okay, um, Marjorie. I feel really strange. Like, more than beer and vodka strange.”

Marjorie cackled again.

As if she were looking through a magnifying glass, Trix had a huge thought: Marjorie spiked one of her drinks with something. With some drug.

The party at Emily’s, even though it had only been a few hours before, seemed far away now, like a farm on the distant horizon. What had been a major catastrophe earlier—the demise of her great plan to get attention—didn’t matter at all anymore.

Suddenly, with the guy’s skinny fingers traveling her scalp, she inhaled sharply. Her ideas, which had been so big they filled the room, shrunk to the size of a gumdrop. A grain of sugar on a gumdrop. He was looking for something in her hair. Bugs? Coins? Pills?

Trix knew she didn’t want him to find whatever was in there.

She scurried over to Marjorie. She shook her shoulder. “We have to get out of here!” she said. She gave the guy a sidelong glance, knowing he was holding a handful of her strands. Oddly, she felt no pain.

“What?” Marjorie said slowly. “Why? I’m soooo happy right here.”

“Because!” Trix was frantic. “We just have to.”

“Relax and enjoy this.”

“Enjoy what? Being picked at like a baboon?”

“The little gift I’ve given you,” Marjorie said, her syllables slurred.

Sitting back on her haunches, Trix held her head in her hands. “Oh, Marjorie, what did you do?”

27. Fading to Black

E
MILY SAT AT
the computer, alternately clicking every link related to Marilyn Wozniak and chatting with Ryan on Facebook. It seemed that overnight they were an item. Ryan was typing the word
We
a lot.
We
should grab burgers.
We
have to get tix for the XY show at the Crocodile. When are
we
going camping at the Gorge?

Every time she read that word,
We
, elation almost lifted her out of her creaky chair and flew her over Ballard, across Seattle, and above the roiling, cold Puget Sound. But the thing was, she was too afraid it wouldn’t last to really enjoy it. She worried Ryan would come to his senses any second, slap his forehead and say, “Emily Lucas? What the bleep was I thinking?” She worried that her growth would deter him. A couple more inches and he’d be as good as gone.

So she kept her responses low key.
Sure, burgers are good. XY is in January, hold off on buying tix. Camping? Don’t I need a sleeping bag for that?
Etcetera.

When he asked what else Emily was doing online, she replied vaguely. Browsing around. Listening to music. Which she was.

She kept checking for emails from Trix. Even a short note that said she was sorry. That she didn’t know what had gotten into her. There was nothing, though.

Emily knew in her bones Trix was upset that Emily had, for the moment, gotten Ryan’s attention. But, frankly, she wasn’t going to apologize for that. For years Emily had watched Trix get guy after guy. Many of them, without a doubt, had gone after her for the wrong reasons. But there’d been a few nice ones who’d crushed on her, too.

Now it was Emily’s turn. She and Ryan connected and Emily wasn’t about to hand him over to Trix on a silver platter. Not that he was the type to let himself be handed anywhere.

And after how Trix behaved the night before, Emily’s motivation to spackle this nick, or more accurately this gaping hole, in their friendship, was zero. If Trix wasn’t the one to come forward, Emily didn’t know that it was reparable.

Ryan asked if anything in the house had broken during the party. She said no, but that she’d had to mop the sticky kitchen floor and mist some houseplants that’d taken a dousing of beer.

His interest was sweet. And every time Emily remembered his lips on hers, the warmth of his hand under her hood, the way he’d driven off a little before midnight, grinning and calling out his open window that she should get to work on her Theater of the Absurd play, she felt a rush of pleasure and heat deep in her chest.

Later, after they’d both signed off Facebook, Emily discovered a people finder site into which she typed her mother’s name and, just like that, up popped her address and phone number. Emily could hardly believe how easy it was and that she hadn’t tried it before.

There was Marilyn Wozniak in Bisbee, living on an actual street, with an actual 10-digit number that Emily could dial right that second and possibly hear her mom’s voice. Not that she would. Heck no. The thought terrified her.

Under the column Related People, were Emily’s grandparents’ names and also Winslow Kratt.

Winslow Kratt?

Emily Googled him. He was shockingly easy to find. He appeared to be a gallery owner in Bisbee.

It occurred to Emily that her mother might be remarried, might even have other children. A new family.

She felt dizzy and cradled her forehead in her hands. The thought of her mother making chocolate chip cookies and buying clothes for other kids, kids who were not Kristen or her, made Emily physically ill.

Suddenly, all Trix’s drama and the wonderfulness with Ryan faded to black. It was as if Marilyn’s face hung in the sky like a moon, smudging out everything else. And that was when Emily started to scheme.

28. Reveal

S
ATURDAY NIGHT
E
MILY
and Ryan met up at India Bistro where they gorged themselves on
Saag Aloo
and
Naan
.

She couldn’t help thinking, over and over,
So this is what it’s like. This is what it’s like to want a boy and to have him want you back and to go on a date and to sit across from the boy eating and flirting. This is what it’s like.