The Truth About Forever (21 page)

As he disappeared into the living room I caught another quick, slicing glimpse of the party, not enough to see much, but then I didn't have to, really. I knew Kristy was probably exacting the revenge she thought I was due, while Delia moved right behind her, making apologies and smoothing rough edges. Monica was most likely following her own path, either oblivious or deeply emotionally invested, depending on what you believed, while Wes worked the perimeter, always keeping an eye on everything. There was a whole other world out there, the Talbots' world, where I didn't belong now, if I ever had. But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere. So I picked up my tray, careful to keep it level, and pushed through the door to join my friends.

"Delia," Kristy said, "just go, would you please? Everything's fine."

Delia shook her head, pressing one finger to her temple. "I'm forgetting something, I just know it. What is it?"

Her husband, Pete, who was standing by his car with his keys in hand, said patiently, "Is it that our dinner reservations were for ten minutes ago?"

"No," she snapped, shooting him a look. "It's something else. God, think, Delia.
Think
."

Beside me, Kristy yawned, then looked at her watch. It was eight-thirty and, finally done with the academic cocktail party, we were amassed in the client's driveway, waiting to leave. We'd been all ready to go, and then Delia had that feeling.

"You know what I mean," she said now, snapping her fingers, as if that action might cause some sort of molecular shift that would jog her memory. "When you just know you're forgetting something?"

"Are you sure it's not a pregnancy thing?" Kristy asked.

Delia glared at her. "Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

We all exchanged looks. The closer Delia got to her due date, the angrier she became when anyone attributed anything—loss of memory, mood swings, her conviction that every room was always too hot, even when everyone else's teeth were chattering—to her condition.

"Honey," Pete said gently, tentatively reaching to put his hand on her arm, "our sitter is costing us ten bucks an hour. Can we please go to dinner? Please?"

Delia closed her eyes, still trying to remember, then shook her head. "Fine," she said, and with that one word, everyone began to scatter, Pete opening the door to their car, Kristy digging out her own keys, Wes starting toward the van, "but then I'll remember in five minutes, and it will be too late."

She was still muttering as she eased herself into the passenger seat of Pete's car, then pulled the seat belt across her belly, struggling to make it reach. As I got into the van with Wes, I watched them pull out of the driveway, then start down the road. I wondered, as they reached the stop sign there, if she'd already remembered. Probably.

"When is that baby due?" Kristy called out as she and Monica pulled up beside us. About fifteen minutes earlier, when the van was packed and we'd been paid, she'd disappeared for a few minutes into the garage, emerging in an entirely different outfit: a short denim skirt, a blouse with ribboned sleeves, and high-heeled platform sandals, her hair held up in a high ponytail. Not only was she versatile, I'd marveled as she did a little spin, showing it off, but quick. Clark Kent becoming Superman had nothing on her, and he didn't even have to worry about hair.

"July tenth," Wes told her, cranking the van's engine.

"Which leaves us," she said, squinting as she attempted to do the math for a second before giving up, "entirely too long before she gets normal again."

"Three weeks," I said.

"Exactly." She sighed, checking her reflection in the mirror. "Anyway, so listen. This party is in Lakeview. Take a right on Hillcrest, left on Willow, house at the end of the cul-de-sac. We'll see you guys there. Hey, and Macy?"

"Yeah?"

She leaned farther out the window, as if we were sharing a confidence, even though there was a fair amount of space, not to mention Wes, between us. "I have it on good authority," she said, her voice low, "that there will be extraordinary boys there. You know what I mean?"

Wes, beside me, was fiddling with his visor. "Um, no," I said.

"Don't worry." She put her car in gear, then pointed at me. "By the end of the night, you will. See you there!" And then, in a cloud of dust, the radio blasting, she was gone, hardly slowing for the stop sign at the end of the road.

"Well," Wes said, as we pulled out of the driveway with slightly less velocity, "to the party, then. Right?"

"Sure."

I tried, for the first five minutes or so of the drive, to come up with a witty conversation starter. Topics, from the inane to slightly promising, flitted through my brain as we moved along the quiet, mostly deserted country roads. Finally, when I couldn't stand the silence anymore, I opened my mouth, not even knowing what I was going to say.

"So," I began, but that was as far as I got. And, as it turned out, as far as we got.

The engine, which had been humming along merrily up until that point, suddenly began to cough. Then lurch. Then moan.

And then: nothing. We were stopped dead in the middle of the road.

For a second, neither of us said anything. A bird flew by overhead, its shadow moving across the windshield.

"So," Wes said, as if picking up where I'd left off, "
that's
what Delia forgot."

I looked at him. "What?"

He lifted his finger, pointing at the gas gauge, which was flat on the E. Empty. "Gas," he said.

"Gas," I repeated, and in my mind, I could hear Delia's voice, echoing this, finally remembering with a palm slapped to her forehead.
Gas
.

Wes already had his door open and was getting out, letting it fall shut behind him. I did the same, then walked around the van to the deserted road, looking both ways.

I'd heard people talk about being in the middle of nowhere, but it had always been an exaggeration. Now, though, as I took in the flat pastureland on either side of us, it seemed completely appropriate. No cars were in sight. I couldn't even see any houses anywhere nearby. The only light was from the moon, full and yellow, halfway up the sky.

"How far," I said, "would you say it is to the nearest gas station?"

Wes squinted back the way we'd come, then turned and looked ahead, as if gathering facts for a scientific guess. "No idea," he said finally. "Guess we'll find out, though."

We pushed the van over to the side of the road, then rolled up the windows and locked it. Everything sounded loud in the quiet: our footsteps, the door shutting, the owl that hooted over-head, making me jump. I stood in the middle of the road while Wes did a last check of the van, then walked over, his hands in his pockets, to join me.

"Okay," he said, "now we decide. Left or right?"

I looked one way, then the other. "Left," I said, and we started walking.

"Green beans," Wes said.

"Spaghetti," I replied.

He thought for a second, and in the quiet, all I could hear was our footsteps. "Ice cream," he said.

"Manicotti."

"What's with all the
I
words?" he said, tipping his head back and staring up at the sky. "God."

"I told you," I said. "I've played this game before."

He was quiet for a minute, thinking. We'd been walking for about twenty minutes, and not one car had passed. I had my cell phone with me, but Kristy wasn't picking up, Bert wasn't home, and my mother was at a meeting, so we were pretty much on our own, at least for the time being. After going along in silence for a little while, Wes had suggested that we play a game, if only to make the time pass faster. It was too dark for I Spy, so I suggested Last Letter, First Letter, which he'd never heard of. I even let him pick the category, food, but he was still struggling.

"Instant breakfast," he said finally.

"That's not food."

"Sure it is."

"Nope. It's a drink."

He looked at me. "Are you seriously getting competitive about this?"

"No," I said, sliding my hands in my pockets. A breeze blew over us, and I heard the leaves on the trees nearby rustling. "But it is a drink, not a food. That's all I'm saying."

"You're a rule person," he said.

"My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary."

"She cheated at this game?"

"She cheated at
everything
," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always insisted on being banker, then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate transaction. I was, like, ten or eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do that."

He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling, remembering.

"During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.
Always
. But then she'd swear up and down she hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied. Blatantly."

"Truth?" he said, glancing over his shoulder as something—another owl, I hoped—hooted behind us. "What's that?"

I looked at him. "You never played Truth, either?" I asked. "God, what did you guys do on long car trips?"

"We," he said, "discussed politics and current events and engaged in scintillating discourse."

"Oh."

"I'm kidding," he said, smiling. "We usually read comics and beat the crap out of each other until my dad threatened to pull over and 'settle things once and for all.' Then, when it was just my mom, we sang folk songs."

"You sang folk songs," I said, clarifying. Somehow I couldn't picture this.

"I didn't have a choice. It was like the lentil loaf, no other options." He sighed. "I know the entire Woody Guthrie catalog."

"Sing something for me," I said, nudging him with my elbow. "You
know
you want to."

"No," he said flatly.

"Come on. I bet you have a lovely singing voice."

"I don't."

"Wes," I said, my voice serious.

"Macy," he replied, equally serious. "No."

For a minute we walked in silence. Far, far off in the distance, I saw headlights, but a second later they turned off in another direction, disappearing. Wes exhaled, shaking his head, and I wondered how far we'd walked already.

"Okay, so Truth," he said. "How do you play?"

"Is this because you can't think up another
I
food?" I asked.

"No," he said indignantly. Then, "Maybe. How do you play?"

"We can't play Truth," I told him, as we crested a small hill, and a fence began on one side of the road.

"Why not?"

"Because," I said, "it can get really ugly."

"How so?"

"It just can. You have to tell the truth, even if you don't want to."

"I can handle that," he said.

"You can't even think of an
I
food," I said.

"Can you?"

"Ice milk," I said. "Italian sausage."

"Okay, fine. Point proved. Now tell me how to play."

"All right," I said. "But you asked for it."

He just looked at me. Okay, I thought. Here we go.

"In Truth," I said, "there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth."

"How do you win?" he asked.

"That," I said, "is such a boy question."

"What, girls don't like to win?" He snorted. "Please.
You're
the one who got all rule driven on me claiming Instant Breakfast isn't a food."

"It's not," I told him. "It's a beverage."

He rolled his eyes. I can't believe this, I thought. A week or two ago putting a full sentence together in front of Wes was a challenge. Now we were arguing about liquids.

"Okay," he said, "back to Truth. You were saying?"

I took in a breath. "To win, one person has to refuse to answer a question," I said. "So, for example, let's say I ask you a question and you don't answer it. Then you get to ask me a question, and if I answer it, I win."

"But that's too simple," he said. "What if I ask you something easy?"

"You wouldn't," I told him. "It has to be a really hard question, because you don't want me to win."

"Ahhh," he said, nodding. Then, after mulling it for a second he said, "Man. This is diabolical."

"It's a girl's game," I explained, tilting my head back and looking up at the stars. "Always good for a little drama at the slumber party. I told you, you don't want to play."

"No. I do." He squared his shoulders. "I can handle it."

"You think?"

"Yup. Hit me."

I thought for a second. We were walking down the center yellow line of the road, the moonlight slanting across us. "Okay," I said. "What's your favorite color?"

He looked at me. "Don't coddle," he said. "It's insulting."

"I'm trying to ease you in," I said.

"Don't ease. Ask something real."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay," I said. And then, without even really thinking about it, I said, "Why'd you get sent to Myers School?"

For a second, he was quiet, and I was sure I'd overstepped. But then he said, "I broke into a house. With a couple of guys I used to hang out with. We didn't take anything, just drank a couple of beers, but a neighbor saw us and called the cops. We ran but they caught us."

"Why'd you do that?"

"What, run?"

"No," I said, although I had to admit I was curious about that, too. "Break in."

He shrugged. "I don't know. These guys I was friends with, they'd done it a couple of times, but I never had before. I was there, so I went along." He ran a hand through his hair. "It was my first offense, my only offense, but the county was on this whole thing where they were punishing right off, to scare you out of doing more, so I got sent away. Six months, let out after four."

"My boyfriend," I said, then, feeling the need to correct myself, added, "sort-of boyfriend, he used to tutor there."

"Really."

I nodded. "Yup."

"So what's the deal with that," he asked. "The boyfriend."

"What?"

"I get to ask a question now," he said. "That's how the game goes, correct?"

"Um," I said. "Yes. I guess."

He waved his hand at me in a take-it-away sort of motion. Great, I thought, scanning the horizon for headlights. No such luck.