The Sea of Tranquility (15 page)

“Good morning, Sunshine.” I don’t even bother to think before the words leave my mouth, but at least I don’t say it loud enough for anyone but her to hear. I probably shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have reacted to last night at all, but I couldn’t help it. I feel like she was messing with me last night and I want to mess with her back. I don’t like her thinking she can just show up at my house to play a game of mystery mindfuck whenever she pleases.

She’s behind me but I can almost feel her stiffen at the words. Good. Maybe if she doesn’t want to be reminded of the night she coughed up her intestines in my bathroom, she’ll think twice about coming back to my house again like she belongs there. I wonder what it will take for her to pick up on the fact that she lives in the same world as everybody else, and in that world, people leave me the fuck alone.

She recovers quickly enough and goes back to her table without looking back at me. Kevin and Chris show up a minute later and the bell rings. Mr. Turner sets us all to work and the room gets loud almost immediately. It’s amazing the amount of noise fourteen students can produce when coupled with the sound of sawing and hammering.

Halfway through the class, Nastya hasn’t moved from her seat, but she can’t feign disinterest. She’s been watching everything Chris and Kevin are doing. At one point, she reaches out and slides the scale drawing Chris had done over in front of her, studying it for a few minutes before pushing it back towards them. They don’t say anything to her, but I do notice Kevin look down her shirt when she leans over and I want to punch him in the face.

Kevin gets out of his seat a few minutes later and goes over to Mr. Turner’s desk. Mr. Turner scribbles something on a pass and hands it to him and Kevin walks out of the room, leaving Chris with Nastya. It’s obvious Chris needs another set of hands, and he keeps glancing up at her as if he’s not sure he can ask her to help. Finally, frustration gets the better of him and I hear him ask her to hold the pieces he’s working on in place so he can nail them together. He shows her where to put her hands and she nods, placing them on either side, the way he demonstrates to her. Once he gets them in position, they move on to the next set. It looks like he has four identical pieces he’s putting together the same way. I scan over what they’ve done so far. I can’t see what’s on the drawing and I’m trying to figure out what they’re making. It looks cool.

At that moment, Kevin walks back in, crumpling up the hall pass and tossing it into the trash can in the corner.

“Better not have been slacking while I was gone,” he says, not even bothering to look at Chris before he slaps him on the back. I wish I could say that what happens next takes place in slow motion, like when something catastrophic happens in a movie, where it all slows down so you can see exactly what happened and how. Nothing slows down, but I see it anyway. Kevin’s hand hits Chris’ back; Chris was already mid-movement with the hammer and the momentum he’s already got going, coupled with the slap on his back, sends the hammer down even harder, just not where it’s supposed to go. The hammer hits the ring finger on Nastya’s left hand which had been splayed flat against the table with her thumb bracketing the wood in place.

I’m focused on her face. I catch her eyes widen almost imperceptibly with the initial shock of pain before they narrow again. Water slips into her eyes and they turn glassy with tears that don’t escape. How the hell is she not crying? I saw how hard that hammer hit her. I heard how hard that hammer hit her. I think even I might have cried. I would have felt stupid after, but it probably would have happened anyway. It had to hurt that much. She doesn’t even move. Neither do Chris or Kevin. They’re just staring at her, her hand still on the table.
Get the girl some fucking ice.
Chris looks horrified. Kevin looks like he has no idea what just happened. She moves now to look down at her hand but she keeps it in place, staring at it. I’m really hoping someone gets up and gets her some ice soon or I’m going to have to go do it. I should have done it already, but for some reason, I’m frozen here, too. I can’t stop watching her. Why won’t she cry? Chris finally seems to break out of his trance and runs to the freezer that’s kept in the shop area solely for the purpose of having ice on hand. Mr. Turner is already over at the table checking her fingers. I watch her just barely flinch as he checks for movement, but otherwise her face is like stone. Or maybe porcelain.

Chris comes back with an ice pack and offers it to her. She looks surprised and almost like she’s about to refuse it. It reminds me of the vise again and I wonder if she’s insane. Then I watch her mind change and she accepts it without any acknowledgment of thanks. I’m glad she doesn’t thank him. He looks guilty as hell. Looking at his face, you’d think he’s in more pain than she is, but he still hasn’t apologized. Kevin is the one who should be begging for forgiveness but I won’t hold my breath for that one. Mr. Turner comes back from his desk with a clinic pass and sends Valerie Estes, the only other girl here, with Nastya, to hold her books.

It couldn’t have been more than a matter of seconds that passed between the hammer coming down on her fingers and when Chris brought her the ice, but it felt longer. Maybe time does slow down. It’s not until she’s left the room and everything has calmed back down that I replay the whole scene in my head. It’s then that I realize that even when the hammer came down, even when the full force of the blow landed on her fingers and the pain had to be excruciating, she never made a sound.

***

You’ve got to be shitting me.

That’s my initial thought as I watch her walk back into my garage for the second night in a row. My eyes go to her hand immediately and I see that two of her fingers are splinted together. She doesn’t hesitate tonight. I initially think she’s going to perch herself back up on the counter where she sat last night. For a minute it looks like she thinks so, too. Then she sinks down, cross-legged, onto the floor and leans her back against the cabinets behind her. She doesn’t seem to mind the layer of sawdust carpeting the ground, but I still wonder why she’d choose to sit there. It’s not like the counter is particularly clean but it’s not as bad as the floor out here. Then I realize that she probably couldn’t push herself up onto the counter with one hand.

I go back to what I was doing before and we remain like this, in silence, for at least half an hour. Me working, her watching.

“Didn’t it hurt?” I finally ask, because I want to know, even though she won’t respond. She turns her hand over in front of her as if she’s trying to decide if it hurt or not. She shrugs. Good answer. What did I expect? I wait a few more minutes, trying to concentrate on recalibrating my table saw and then I ask the real question.

“What do you want?” It comes out nastier than I mean it to but it’s probably for the best. Nothing. It’s driving me insane, wondering what it is that possesses her to keep coming here. It’s not like I’m particularly friendly. Maybe tonight she’ll get the hint and she won’t come back. I try to convince myself that I’m relieved by that possibility, but I’m not convinced. I shove the thought aside and try to focus on the saw.

The silence persists. I don’t know how long she plans to stay, hovering, watching. It’s like having a ghost in my garage. I feel like I’m being haunted. With all of the dead people I’ve got in my corner, you’d think one of them would be the one hanging around. In fact, I used to hope for that. Being haunted seemed like a gift. I prayed for it. My mother, my sister, my father, my grandmother. After every one of them died I would hope that they’d come back, even once, and let me see them again. Give me a sign. Let me know that there was something else and it was good and they were good, but none of them ever came back for me. My grandfather assured me before he left, that there was an afterlife, one he’d seen, if only briefly, a long time ago. I listened but I didn’t believe him. It was a story born of disease and painkillers not memories and truth. He’ll be dead any day now and I won’t be waiting for a sign. I’ll just be relieved that I have no one left to lose.

At ten-thirty the ghost girl gets up and brushes the sawdust off of her pants with her good hand and then she’s gone again.

CHAPTER 16

Nastya

Josh shows up at five forty-five on Sunday, right on schedule. I run to the refrigerator as he pulls into the driveway. I made tiramisu for dessert since everybody seems to like coffee, except for Sarah, and I couldn’t care less about her. My fingers are still splinted so I’ve got to get the dish out with one hand and it’s proving difficult. Margot put it in the fridge for me this morning but she left for work early so I’m on my own. It’s awkward, but I manage to stretch my hand over the edge and get a good enough grip on it. The doorbell rings just as I get there, but now I have the dish in one hand and I can’t grab the doorknob with my left so I’m just standing there for a minute, holding tiramisu and looking at the door. Finally I have to put the dish on the floor so I can use my right hand to turn the knob.

Josh is standing on the porch, hands in his pockets, looking as if he’s picking me up for a date. His hair, as usual, hangs over his forehead, just a little longer than it needs to be. Like a kid who doesn’t have a mother nagging him to get it cut. I hate to admit how well he cleans up, dressed in a burgundy polo shirt and khaki dress pants, not that I mind the worn out jeans he’s usually in. I’m still surprised to see that he’s not wearing work boots. I was beginning to think they were physically attached to him.

We’re going to have to hurry to beat the rain. I can see the storm forming in the sky behind him. I’ve been inside all day so I hadn’t noticed. Usually I like to sit at the kitchen table and watch the clouds roll in and the sky turn because it happens so quickly here that you can see it change in a matter of minutes.

Today I was too busy making tiramisu, kicking myself for not going to the mall to buy a new dress, and ultimately trying to think of a brilliant plan to get out of this dinner. Dysentery was topping my excuse list today. It would have been far easier if Drew’s parents had looked down their noses at me and the whole affair last week had been uncomfortable and forced, but they didn’t and it wasn’t. I won’t ever fit in there the way they’re pretending I do. I’m not even sure why she invited me back. The only thing I contributed to the evening was cake. Though, according to Drew, one could never underestimate the power of cake to his mother. I imagine they’re accepting me for Drew’s sake. And if that’s the case, they probably don’t expect me to be around for long. I wonder how many girls have passed through the Leighton Sunday Dinner, one time, never to be seen again.

I ended up not bothering with the pretense of a nice conservative innocent dress. I figured the sooner we got to the truth of it, the sooner we could cut our losses and walk. I’m wearing a low cut black halter top and a black miniskirt‌—‌emphasis on the mini‌—‌paired with knee-high, spike-heeled leather boots. If I looked out of place last Sunday, it will be nothing compared to this. After tonight, things can go back to normal. Drew can find himself a nice girl who will have uncommitted sex with him and I can go back to a comfortable, expectation-free existence.

Josh studies me for a minute, taking in my appearance as if he’s looking for an answer to an unspoken question. His greeting consists of one word, “Sunshine.” Mine consists of no words.

I kneel down to retrieve the tiramisu from the foyer floor but I can’t get my fingers under it for leverage. I find myself silently cursing hammers and clueless boys. I’m about to try to use the palm of my left hand to push it into my right when Josh steps inside and kneels down, far too close to me, and picks it up without another word. He doesn’t smell like sawdust and there’s nothing right about that. No matter how good he looks right now, Josh Bennett without work boots and the smell of sawdust is all sorts of wrong.

We pull into the driveway at the Leighton house and have just enough time to jump out and run as the sky opens up. I wrap my arm around the dish and reinforce it against my chest. Somehow both the tiramisu and my ankles survive the jump intact. When I hit the ground, Josh is next to me and he takes the dish out of my hands and runs to the shelter of the porch overhang. We manage to make it without getting completely drenched. Before he opens the door, he hands me back the tiramisu and then reaches up and frames my face with his hands, running his thumbs across the skin below both of my eyes. I think my mouth might be hanging open because I have no idea what the hell he’s doing.

“Black shit,” he says, by way of explanation, and I realize that my eye make-up must be running. Then he opens the door for me without another word.

When we get inside, everything happens almost precisely as it did the week before. The table isn’t set quite as fancy which I’m glad for because it means I’m not such a novelty this week. But then I have to face that, if I’m not a novelty, it means I have a place here and I don’t want that at all.

We walk into the kitchen, past the dining room where I notice there’s an extra place setting at the table and I wonder who else is coming. Drew is fighting with the stereo because apparently it’s his turn to pick the dinner music tonight and I can’t imagine what that’s going to be.

Mrs. Leighton proceeds to rearrange the refrigerator to make room for the dish while telling me that I didn’t have to go to the trouble. I have a monstrous case of déjà vu and I know that in a minute I’m getting hugged whether I like it or not.

Sitting on two bar stools at the granite breakfast bar off of the kitchen are Sarah and a girl I recognize from school. I’m pretty sure she’s the one who accused me of being sired by Dracula. They’re laughing and attempting to knot their hair together. It’s the height of immature teenage girlishness. I want to mock them for it but I’m appalled by the fact that it makes me sad.

For a moment I feel like a survivor in some post-apocalyptic world, looking through a window, imagining a part of my life that’s gone now. I wonder what it would be like to have even one girlfriend. I used to have a couple, but they weren’t like this either. They were single-mindedly music-obsessed like I was. It was our link. Other girls compared nail polish colors and crushes; we compared audition pieces. Our friendships with each other never came first because music was always more important. Take the music out of the equation and I don’t know if I had anything in common with them at all. Even if I did, I still would have cut them off afterward. It hurt too much to be around them.