The Great American Whatever (24 page)

This is the only revelation that makes me mad, because you know who was the perfect fit for her? I was.

People used to think we were twins, even.

I close the box and also my eyes, and I slide the box beneath my twin-size bed and it hits something with the very same
clack
that the photo of Amir and Evan made, when my elbow went on a secret mission tonight to knock over their photo.

I push Annabeth's box out of the way and squint, but it's endlessly dark beneath my bed, and so I reach my arm beneath it and feel around, and when I grab the thing that made the
clack
, it's as if I've found the sword or the poison, one or the other: the weapon or elixir that is meant to send the hero of every screenplay home reborn. Because there's no place, of course, like home.

Except, I'm already home.

The trumpets in my head are now manic,
blatting
all over the place, Elmer Bernstein's arms sagging in exhaustion after conducting this insane orchestra not of tiny people but of huge ones, of demons, of Ricky and my father and most of all of me.

It's my old cell phone. I have found it.

I pull it out from beneath my bed, and I shake the dust bunnies from my arm, and when I stand, the floors give and hum, and maybe I should have shut my door, because I'm making enough ruckus in here that when I sit on my bed and look at this black box recorder that holds Annabeth's final message to me like a dead girl's fist, Mom is just above the movie frame, in the doorway, looking at me like I am no longer a virgin.

And just like that, the trumpets stop.

“
Hey
”

“
hey, morning, whats up. at work
”

“
You have a minute to talk
”

“
no quinn I'm >>>>AT WORK<<<< SOME PEOPLE WORK
”

“
Hahahah
”

“
haha
”

“
Hahahhahahahaha
”

“
hahahah
”

I'm standing in my backyard, right over the makeshift pit Dad and I used to make illegal fires in. It's basically overgrown now, so lush you have to dull out your eyes to see the charred-out, mossy cement blocks from before. Our backyard could really be something. We've got a lot of space. If I ever actually sell a screenplay, you can screw my Hollywood Hills backyard. I'm buying a pool for Mom here; I just am.

“
I found my old phone last night
,” I send.

“
um . . . ok?
”

“
I plugged it in haven't turned it on yet i want to say something else tho
”

“
calling you in 5
”

And so he does, exactly five minutes later. Geoff is the picture of punctuality now that he has a job. We are getting older so fast these days. It's fucking
eerie
.

“What's up?” he goes.

“First off, I'm sorry that I freaked out on you last night and almost threw your mom's metal fruit at the wall in the basement.”

Sigh. “Yep.”

“And that I threw the acceptance letter thing at your face. I have such bad aim, usually.”

I'm waiting for him to snort-laugh, but instead I hear a version of a cough happen on the other side of the phone—the same throaty thing he's done since I first saw him cry, when we were five and I yanked the truck out of his hand and he wept so quietly that it was the day I learned that a person can make you feel guiltier by underreacting.

“I should, um,” Geoff finally goes, and I say, “Go for it,” and I hold my new phone to my ear for one second longer and hear him tell a customer to “just take the drink” and that he was “sorry for being rude.”

I've gotta stop forcing people to be rude on my behalf.

Right before I hang up, Geoff comes back and goes, “Win?”

“Yeah?” I guess everybody's calling me Win now.

“Wanna go to the pool with me and Carly this afternoon? I think she wants to apologize to you. You can bring your boyfriend.”

I pull a weed out from between two fire-pit cinder blocks. The weed is pricklier than I'd anticipated, and it makes the cardboard cut on my hand scream like it's in a silent movie.

“Uh, no,” I say. “I think Amir and I are a past-tense thing now.”

“Oh. Dude.”

“But,
yes
. I want to go to the pool. So hard.”

“Gimme twenty and I'm off work,” Geoff goes, and I'm saying, “Hey, if I can't make it rain this summer, at least I'll get wet today,” and it's such a cheesy piece of dialogue that I'm glad he's already hung up.

When I'm back in my room a minute later, I slip on my old swim trunks, expecting them to be snug. Isn't every seventeen-year-old boy supposed to outgrow his clothes, like, every two weeks? But I'm so skinny, they practically pool at my feet. So I double-knot them twice, and I unplug my old phone from the wall and throw it in my bookbag. And as I head out, I touch Annabeth's door on the way to the stairs.

W
e're right in the middle of an
annoyyyying
conversation about this movie contest in LA when, “Shit,” Geoff says. He pulls his Corolla off the parkway without using the turn signal.

“What?”

“I forgot I have to pick up Carly in Mount Lebo,” he goes, and that cracks us both up. We almost forgot an entire other human on our way to the country-club pool. I'm glad for the distraction, for the tonal shift, for the introduction of a B-story. But Geoff picks “the talk” right back up.

“Seriously, if you don't do this writing lab thing, you're crazy.”

So I jump right back in too. “How would my mom afford a ticket to LA? Where would I stay? Nothing about it makes sen—”

“You could stay with Ricky Devlin,” Geoff goes, and I roll my eyes hard enough that I bet he can hear the sockets creaking. “We could find you a cheap flight.”

“We have different definitions of ‘a cheap flight,' ” I say. “In my family a cheap flight is jumping off the roof and landing on a mattress.”

Geoff laughs. We used to actually do this together until he broke his ankle in fifth grade.

“And, anyway, whatever.” I'm worried he'll offer to pay for the flight, so I talk fast: “This was written to be
our
movie together, not some rando director's in LA.”

“You're out of your mind,” Geoff goes. “She didn't even apply, Win. She would have been really, really happy for you to get out of her hair and meet a director who really
wanted
to be a director.” He's doing the thing I hate where he steers with his knee. “Just
finish
the damn screenplay and get
over
yourself.”

“
No
, I would need a bigger sign. She was probably just humoring you.”

“Uh, Annabeth
never
humo—”

“Maybe she would have changed her
mind
about me going without her, once I actually got in—and could you
please
use, like,
one
hand to drive?
Just one.
”

In some families, the guys do snap at each other.

“Jeez, Louise.”

Ignore. Talk quieter. “I'd need a sign.”

Awkward pause, and then Geoff makes the tiniest girl voice and keeps his mouth still and squeaks out,
“Win, I want you to go,”
and I punch his arm and go, “That's not funny,” and that's usually where we'd bust out laughing, but we don't.

I reach into his glove compartment for a Jolly Rancher, but they're all gone.

We're driving past the Presbyterian church, and I shouldn't be surprised when we stop at a red light next to the Liberty, but I am, because of what I see.

Green light, and then: “Oh my God, stop,” I say, and Geoff goes, “What? Why?” and I go, “Pull over!” and I jump out before he stops.

“Excuse me,” I shout like a crazy person, dashing through the cars. I lose a flip-flop in the street, but I keep going, running to this blond woman who is pulling down the “for rent” sign outside the Liberty. “Excuse me, are you Jen?” I say.

She sure looks just like Jennifer “Jen” Richart, whose shiny happy Realtor face is still splattered across the building.

“Rick?” she says weirdly.

“No, no,” I say, “I'm not—I'm Win. My name is Win. Anyway—”

“Dude, what are you doing?” Geoff has the Corolla double-parked. He's got the passenger window rolled down and is kind of hollering at me.

“One sec,” I say, and whip my head back to Jen. “What's going on here?”

“Somebody put in a bid on this place,” she goes, crumpling the “for rent” poster into her stomach. She looks tired but happy.

“Wait, to, like, turn it back into—,” but then I stop. I know the ending.

I know the whole story already. My mind is blown open, and instead of brain splatter, what happens is a thousand firecrackers burst out of my ears.

“Dude, come
on
. Carly's texting me.”

“Thank you for not renting this out as a pharmacy or a bank,” I say, and “Jen” goes, “Don't thank me. Thank the buyer.”

I tear down a big handful of flyers from the ticket window, and then another, and I stuff them in a garbage can on the curb and get into G.'s Corolla.

“Sorry,” I say, flopping back into the car seat, “but that was the craziest thing ever. I think Ricky fucking Devlin might be
buying
the fucking Liberty,” and Geoff steals my catchphrase and goes, “No way,” and I steal Amir's and go, “Way.” And as we take off again to pick up Carly, Geoff turns down the song of the summer, and I'm thinking he's gonna nag me to buckle up, but instead he just goes: “Sounds like a sign to me.”

• • •

“Put it all on account nineteen-eighty,” Geoff says to the cashier, before we take our trays to find some shade. OPEN QUESTION: Can somebody be considered a cashier if they never actually deal with cash? Regardless, it's a fundamental universal law that there is nothing better than poolside corn dogs that somebody else's dad is funding.

“You two gross me out eating those things, seriously,” Carly goes, and Geoff and I stop chewing and we lock eyes and for two seconds almost make gross animal noises, but somehow we skip that today. Besides, I brought the rest of my ice cream cake to the pool, and it's time for dessert. Today's the six-month anniversary. We never miss a half birthday, though this is more of a half deathday, I suppose.

“Dude,” Geoff says. He kicks my knee with a neon flip-flop. “You got half-birthday cake on you.”

I pull up my tank top to lick it off. Geoff cackles. “I love a dude who fights for his chocolate,” he goes, and even Carly lightens up a little and goes, “Chocolate is literally everything,” and I look right at her for the first time today.

Just when I think she's going to apologize for all the drama on Amir's boat last night—for spilled secrets that should never have been secrets to begin with; for being kind of mean; for stirring the pot and stirring my life, too—she doesn't. She goes, “Handstand contest?” instead, and I bust into giggles and go, “Duh,” and she and I dump our trays and throw away the last piece of cake, and leave Geoff behind—because he can't go upside down in the water (makes him puke, always has, oddest thing).

Not even two seconds later I'm careening into the pool, chocolaty tank top and all, sunglasses and all, hat and all, one flip-flop only, and I'm upside down pressing my hands into the bumpy bottom and feeling my skin pucker up cold and feeling like this is the first time in six months I haven't felt upside down but rather exactly right.

We pop to the surface maybe thirty seconds later. We haven't done this in years. I can't believe my stamina, though I also think she let me win.

“You let me win,” I go, but Carly is shaking her head.

“You were down there for like two minutes. Seriously. It was freaking me out.”

Geoff is by the side of the pool, his hands on his hips. From this angle I see that he is going to turn out genuinely cute someday. That sometimes I should let people just make up their own character descriptions.

“I've been holding my breath for six months, I guess,” I say, and even though it's a little jokey—all of my dialogue is, so sue me; I'd seriously like to hear
your
first-draft jokes—we all smile at one another. I think at the same moment we all picture how bad Annabeth was at handstands, how she used to come right back up coughing, right away. How she always lost.

And just when that's the saddest little memory—because all the saddest memories are the small ones that creep up on you quiet and scary as a summer bug—Geoff does a cannonball right beside Carly, and soaks her, and we all laugh and shriek.

The lifeguard tells us to knock it “the heck” off, but it's a good moment, which is all you can count on or hope for, I think. Tiny little good moments that you catch like a firefly, and just like fireflies, you have to release them, because the whole point is that they're tiny and little and need to be with other fireflies. They aren't a pet. They aren't yours to keep. They're just moments. They're just fireflies.

G
eoff takes me grocery shopping.

It's supposed to be a quick little trip, but it turns into an epic voyage. We don't buy six bananas; we buy twelve. We don't buy five apples; we buy twenty. We buy healthy stuff. No more Cocoa Krispies.

We take it all out to Geoff's car and I'm eating a peach in the front seat and it's dripping everywhere and, you see, this is the problem with fruit. It only
seems
portable and convenient. Turns out you need a hazmat suit and six towels to eat a peach. Guess what that's not true for: Pop-Tarts, Cheetos, I could go on. . . .