Touched (15 page)

When I got back upstairs, the hole in the pit of my stomach had grown to a canyon. That would have happened anyway after hanging rows of silky underpants on the line, but I felt even worse because of Taryn. Sphincter was parading around with my girl, and I was hanging my mom’s and grandmother’s underclothes. Something was wrong with this picture. I started thinking there was no way that what I saw with Taryn—me kissing her, being with her—could be real. After all, she had Sphincter, who was, looking at the way hot girls hung on his every word, the highest goal one could aspire to in the game of love. She had Mount Everest. I was just irrevocably and unequivocally too lame for her. The Grand Canyon of Lame.

I guess it must have registered on my face, because Nan took the wicker basket from me and tried to knead my shoulder with her good hand. I pulled away from her. I didn’t want anyone to touch me.

“Why are you two so upset?” she asked. “Your mother didn’t eat any of her breakfast, and you’re walking around with the biggest scowl on your face, you’d think someone peed in your lemonade.”

I started to open my mouth, but then I remembered how Nan felt about me revealing the future. “Forget it. Has to do with my future.”

“Doesn’t it always? Something bad?”

“Pretty much the worst.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Car accident?”

“I think so.” Now I was surprised. “How did you know?”

“On the ride home from the hospital. You saw it, didn’t you? That’s why you were upset.”

“Yeah. I think it will kill me. Me and a girl. The girl I …”

“Oh. The one who was outside just now?”

Nan had probably been listening in on the whole thing. For someone who didn’t want to know the future, she sure was nosy. “Yeah.”

“She’s cute. Is she the one you’re in love with?”

I cringed. “No. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think I could be. But I have to stay away from her.” I pressed my lips closed.

“But?”

“Well … my life is one disaster after another. But being with her makes me almost happy. It makes me feel normal.”

Nan looked at me for a long time. Then she put a hand on my cheek. “Well, why do you need to stay away from
her
, then? You said it was a car accident. Stay away from
cars
, honey bunny.”

“I know. But what if it’s just meant to happen, and messing with it just means it will happen some other way? Why should I take chances?”

“You said it yourself. Because she makes you happy. That makes it worth it.”

I sighed. “Okay. If I just say there’s no way I’m going to get into a car with her again, it won’t happen. Right?”

Nan nodded.

Just as my spirits started to pick up, I thought about her driving away in Sphincter’s Mustang. “But she’s with Sphinc—Spitzer now. I think they might be together.”

She shook her head. “Evan Spitzer? Oh, Nicky, you’re every bit as worthy as he is.”

Sure, in her warped world, a world where bifocals were a necessity and everyone who breathed was “good,” I was. That’s what I got for discussing my love life with my grandmother. Some things were better kept to myself. “Right.” It was better just to agree with her.

“You deserve to be happy.” She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a hard butterscotch candy. “Want one?”

I took two and unwrapped them, one for me and one for her.

“School’s Tuesday,” she said. “And your underwear is in a sorry state. Thought I’d go and pick up some new ones for you.”

I muttered a thanks. I didn’t want to think of underwear any more than I had today.

“Oh, and pens and notebooks.” She ruffled my hair. “You need a haircut, too. You look scruffy.”

I nodded like I’d take that into consideration, even though I knew there was no way I’d get a haircut before school. I didn’t feel like it. I liked scruffy, anyway.

“Anything else you need?” she asked.

“A million dollars.”

Nan launched into the same speech I’d heard a thousand times before, so I muttered, “I know, root of all evil, blah blah blah.” By then, I was already out the door of the kitchen, headed upstairs. The last thing I wanted to think about was school, where my life would suck even more if Sphincter and Taryn were a couple. In my head, I could see them walking down the hall together, pinkies intertwined, then stopping at her locker to have a massive PDA. It seemed pretty vivid. Could have been the future. Now, the thought of her and me together was faded out, like an inactive menu option on a computer screen. “Whatever,” I said.

As I climbed the stairs, my head ached. Things were cycling again, because I’d been ignoring the You Wills. Once it quieted, I tried to see my future. After all, if Taryn and Sphincter were a couple, there was no way we’d die in a car crash together, right? I tried to call up my graduation, but again, my mind just went blank. As soon as I got up to my room, though, I saw the image, felt the darkness and humidity in the Jeep. It would be raining. Steel folding in on us. Glass showering down.

What the … how could that be?

My stomach flopped. The walls of the house, like the steel walls of Taryn’s Jeep, seemed to press in on me. I needed air.

I ran back downstairs. “Nan, I’ll go get those things,” I said, huffing like I’d run a marathon. “You should sit. Rest your arm.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just need something to do.” She tried to hand me a twenty, but I waved her away. “I’ve got it.”

As I crossed the street, following the You Wills, I noticed the cars were packed against one another like sardines, up and down the block. People were everywhere. When I came to Central, I realized why. The Labor Day weekend arts and crafts show was going on at the grounds of City Hall. Right. Nothing brought the throngs of people out more than the opportunity to blow money on stupid knickknacks.

As I navigated the crowds scavenging the racks of the B&B Department Store’s annual sidewalk sale, contemplating whether I should get underwear, I had this really weird feeling. Like I was going to see Taryn again. Soon. In my mind, I could see her blond head poking out from between a display of Seaside Park lighthouse and seagull souvenir magnets at the Ocean Pharmacy. No local would be caught dead looking at them. But Taryn was no local. In my head I saw her reaching for the seagull.

I had to stop her. Stop her and save her, and in the meantime, beg for forgiveness about how wrong I was. We’d just stay away from her car and everything would be fine. My future would have to change, how could it not? I’d taken three quick steps when I realized something else.

Not twenty minutes ago, I’d seen her speeding toward Ocean Avenue with Sphincter. There was no way she could be in the pharmacy. Not unless she left him a few minutes later and went right there. No. She was probably lying on the sand with him now, in a tiny bikini, looking so … forget it.

I thumped the side of my head as if that would make it work right again. As if it ever worked right. But even before I knew it, I was running toward the store. I pulled open the door and a blast of arctic air from the AC hit me as a little bell above the door jingled, startling me. Some lady glared at me over her reading glasses. I could still feel her staring as I ran past the aisles of cold remedies and tissues, looking for the souvenir magnets.

I saw them at the end of the paper products aisle. A big display of them, right next to the rack of personalized bicycle license plates. But no Taryn.

I turned away, chewing on my lip. Staring Lady was still doing what she did best, making me forget what I’d come in there for. I pretended to be really interested in toilet paper while I tried to remember. When the bell above the door tinkled again, the lady broke her death glare on me to check out the new customer, and I relaxed enough to let it come to me. Pens. Notebooks. School stuff.

I started to book it to the stationery aisle when I looked up and saw Taryn.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

I was cleaning my throat to say something when I realized that for the first time, her voice wasn’t chipper. She actually grumbled. And for the first time, she didn’t look happy to see me. She brushed past me, as if she didn’t want anything to do with me. As she should have done all this time. Her face looked red. Like she was upset. What had Sphincter done to her?

Of course, she wandered off toward the magnets. I followed her in time to see her pick up a seagull. “Locals call them beach vermin,” I said. “Do you really want a rat on your refrigerator?”

She shifted her gaze to me for a nanosecond, and then made a “hmph” noise and put the magnet back. Then she picked up a lighthouse.

“False advertising,” I said. “There are no lighthouses in Seaside Park. That’s Barnegat Head Lighthouse, in Island Beach. Every painter in the free world has tried to reproduce it.”

She shrugged. “So?”

“Well. You would think artists would have a little more creativity, right? Isn’t that the whole point of being an artist?”

“No. The whole point of being an artist is that you can take something everyone has seen before and make them see it in an entirely new light.”

What was this? The girl was getting a backbone. Really, what had Sphincter done to her? “You’re angry,” I remarked.

“Maybe,” she said, turning and walking away.

I stopped her. “At me?”

She sighed. “You’re the one who can tell the future, right? Figure it out.” Then her face softened. “You know it’s not about you. It’s about … I don’t want to—”

“Evan? Trouble in paradise?” It just kind of slipped out. I couldn’t help myself.

A second later, I wished I could have. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not like that. We’re not … anything.”

I doubted that. If they weren’t “anything,” why was she looking angrier than I’d ever seen her? “Uh-huh,” I said.

“It’s true. I can tell you don’t believe me, but it’s true. He was driving by when I dropped Beauty off at the gas station on Eighth for an oil change, and asked me if I wanted a ride. I told him I was going to your house to see you, to make sure you were okay, so no thanks. But he was kind of insistent. He said he’d wait in the car while I talked to you. If you didn’t notice, it’s really hot today, and I really didn’t feel like walking the three miles back home. Really. You don’t have to be jealous.”

I snorted. “Me? Jealous? Why would I be? You and I aren’t together.”

“Yet,” she said, her voice low. She had me there. If I could grieve for children I never had, miss a woman I never even met, then of course she knew I could have jealousy for a relationship that hadn’t even started yet.

“Whatever,” I said, trying to play it cool. “Okay, so you and Sphincter aren’t anything.”

She started to speak, but then stopped short and burst out laughing. “Sphincter?”

“It’s a term of endearment.” I looked over her shoulder, to where Staring Lady was watching us like someone would watch one of those caught-on-tape shows. This time she was standing up, as if readying to throw herself over the cash register in case we tried to start any, as people her age called it, “funny business.” “Can we … go?” I whispered, motioning to the woman.

Taryn turned and saw her, then said, a little amused, “Oh, so now you’re okay with being seen with me?”

“Until I get a better offer, I guess,” I answered, and she followed me out the door. Five minutes later, we sat outside on Central Avenue, watching the first of the beachgoers making the trek back home as we shared an iced tea from the Park Bakery. I liked sharing it with her because I knew her lip gloss tasted like strawberries. It reminded me of how it would be when I, or
if
I, got a chance to kiss her. Maybe I let my lips linger on the mouth of the bottle too long, maybe it was obvious how much it excited me, because she allowed me to drink most of it.

“I don’t even like sunbathing,” she said, watching a family of beachgoers trudging down the block. She winced and pulled a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. “I can never get comfortable. I try to read and I get sand in my book. The sun hurts my eyes. Parts of my body always fall asleep. I end up burning in places and being completely white in others. I never tan. Of course, you know this already.”

I looked at her legs. They were perfect. White, yeah, but sunbathing couldn’t improve them. One of my most prominent memories of Sue was her lounging in a beach chair, wearing big sunglasses, her red hair tossing in the wind. I’d never had a memory like that of Taryn. Most often when I thought of her, I thought of her indoors. “Whatever happened to it?
The Mouse
.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What?”

“The Mouse
. Your sailboat. You told me that was what you used your red bikini for. You made it into a flag for your sailboat, since you never went to the beach.”

“I never told you that,” she said. At first I thought she was so weirded out she was going to run away, but then she said, “It got smashed in a nor’easter. When I was nine or ten. But by then I didn’t really want it anymore. I was kind of done with it, just like I was done with sunbathing.”

“And the whole sunbathing confession is because …?”

“Sphincter, like you call him. That’s all he does. He lives to tan. His life is so pathetic and empty. I can’t believe you would think I’d … Please.”