Truest (20 page)

Silas and I brought the leftover chocolate-covered bacon to Gordon's apartment the next day. Gordon sat in his rocker, nibbling on a piece, then after a pause pronounced us “geniuses of the modern world.”

“Just Silas,” I said. “It was his idea.”

“It was for West's birthday. Eighteen years old.”

A frown flashed across Gordon's face for a moment. “Eighteen?” he said, as if to himself.

Silas looked puzzled, but I took a guess at what Gordon was thinking. “Betsy's older than I am,” I said softly to Gordon. “I think she's in Spain.”

Abruptly he said, “She came back in May. Brought me a gift.” He pointed toward one of his bookshelves, at a long decorative wooden block etched with a quote: “A country without
a memory is a country of madmen.” I hated the irony, since Gordon's own memory had been slipping lately.

“That's from Betsy?” I asked.

“It is,” he said. “She was studying language and philosophy and quite fell in love with George Santayana. It's his quote.”

A country of madmen.
I hated that it made me think of Laurel.

“Gordon,” I asked, “remember when we talked about Descartes?”

“I do, yes.”

Good.

“Can you tell us more about the dream argument? Or, actually, how to refute it?”

Silas looked serious suddenly, staring at Gordon with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Well, that's interesting you'd ask,” Gordon said, sounding fully himself again as he spoke about a long-remembered subject. “Descartes, by the end of his
Meditations
, actually refutes it himself. Remember what I told you about the cogito—‘I think, therefore I am'? How you let doubt strip everything down to just that and then rebuild?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he never intended for someone to
refuse
to rebuild. For someone to get stuck at the dream-argument stage was never the point, you know. To claim a person is living a dream is a heavy, heavy claim for him or her to make.”

“Her,” said Silas, without explanation.

“Her,” Gordon repeated, so softly you could barely hear it. For a moment, he looked a little sad, and I knew that he had understood Silas's comment correctly—that this conversation was not a hypothetical one. He pressed his lips together, let out a doleful sigh, and said, “Heavy claims need a lot of support, and there's just not a lot available.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Are our senses sometimes deceived? Yes. But we shouldn't take that too far; they don't fail us
often.
It's like refusing to use a seat belt because
sometimes
seat belts fail.”

“Yeah,” said Silas, “but what if you somehow can't quit believing the seat belt will fail you? Even if you've never experienced that?”

“I don't know, Silas,” said Gordon. “There are minds that hiccup sometimes—skip like an old record player. I don't know how to right that needle.”

Silas frowned. “I don't know about record players, but when my CD player skips, I usually just give it a smack, and it sorts itself out.”

I laughed, in spite of the conversation's heavy tone. “Yeah,” I teased. “Why don't you just slap Laur—
her
—when she gets stuck?”

Silas laughed and stuck out his tongue at me.

It made me laugh too, and I steered the conversation toward lighter topics, though my gaze kept drifting to the
carved quote on the shelf, wondering if
history
could ever give Laurel roots the way it did Gordon.

Afterward, Silas and I returned to my house.

“What was up with Gordon today?” Silas asked as we abandoned our bikes beside the driveway.

I shrugged. “He's getting old.”

“
Getting?
”

“Sometimes he confuses me with his great-granddaughter,” I said. “It's okay.”

“Is it?” he asked.

Before I could answer, Elliot drove into my driveway and parked his parents' minivan in front of us.

“Um . . . ,” said Silas. “What the . . . ?”

“What
happened
?” I asked as Elliot stepped out of the vehicle. Except for the windshield, the entire vehicle was covered in what looked like neon Post-it Notes.

“Someone pranked me,” Elliot admitted, the irritation in his voice thick and gruff. “Yesterday at some point. I think it was Tom Carver and that Tennant punk. And then it rained a shit ton. I wasn't even supposed to take the van out of the
garage
while my parents were gone. They'd kill me. Oh. Happy belated birthday, West.” He kissed my cheek lightly, his eyes allowing no entrance to his thoughts. Silas noticed and laced his fingers through mine, drawing me close. It was silly, and for Elliot's sake, I took a step away from Silas and toward the van.

“What happens when you . . . ,” I asked, reaching out and pulling off a damp Post-it. It left a sticky residue. “Damn.”

“Do you know what to do, West?” Elliot asked. “I thought maybe you'd seen this done before. Can you use Goo Gone?”

I shook my head. “Goo Gone is for household stuff. I read online somewhere that you have to use spray-on deodorant and attack each mark. It could get expensive.”

“I'll pay for the materials, and I'll help!” Elliot insisted. “It has to be done before one o'clock though. That's when my parents get back.”

“West,” Silas said, a warning in his voice. “That's less than two hours. We can't possibly get it done in two hours.”

“We'll call Whit,” I said. “And Marcy and Bridget. And Laurel can help too.”

“Yes, good!” said Elliot, eager.

“You two go buy the deodorant—remember, the spray-on kind—and I'll get everyone else over here to start peeling off the Post-its,” I said.

The look they each gave me would have been hilarious in other circumstances—on Elliot, a look of mild shock; on Silas, skepticism. All because I had assigned them a task to do together. “Just do it,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And hurry!”

After they left, I called Whit and the girls, and everyone said they'd hurry over, except for Laurel, who was hesitant. She had barely stepped outside her house the whole summer—and each time she had, it had amounted to a crisis. “You know
what,” I said, “you don't
have
to come.”

“Whit will be there?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes again. “Yes, he's already on his way.”

“All right,” she resolved. “I'm coming too.”

Bridget and Marcy arrived first, and together we peeled off all the Post-its. The damp ones came off easily enough, but the ones that had dried left behind bits of crusty paper, as if they'd been glued down. “I hope your idea works,” Marcy said to me, “otherwise, we're not going to see Elliot until after graduation.”

Whit arrived just as Elliot and Silas were returning from Red Owl with supplies, and we all got to work. When Laurel arrived, Whit looked up and smiled.

Laurel had showered and come with her long hair still damp. She had used concealer under her eyes and had put on mascara and lip gloss, and she looked about a thousand times better than she had the other day when we'd searched the Mayhew attic. “Hey,” she said, and this comment was clearly directed to Whit and Whit alone.

“Hi,” he said, and she walked over to him and gave him a small, awkward hug.

“How did it go at your uncle's?” she asked him. I had no idea what she was talking about. I saw Bridget and Marcy raise their eyebrows at each other.

The sun was high and bright in the sky, and we all worked silently. Elliot had obviously told the others about our breakup. We'd all been friends so long, it was like a mini divorce. Bridget
and Marcy were Team Elliot, except Marcy liked Elliot, and Silas had secured his singlehood, so she alternately regarded Silas as a kitten killer or Jesus Christ. And then there was poor Whit—Whit, who had been friends with Elliot for years—but who had known me just as long; he'd be the child who had to choose which parent to live with. Plus, he seemed to like Laurel, so that complicated matters further.

After about ten uncomfortable minutes, Silas started to quietly sing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a ridiculous choice. Bridget and Marcy gave each other half-amused looks. Elliot didn't look up. Laurel started giggling.

Then Whit joined in. By the end, the two of them traded off high-pitched “Galileos,” and almost everyone was singing along except Elliot, who was working hard at the crusty spots of glue with deep intensity. Eventually, though, he grunted something.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“It's not ‘scare a moose.' It's ‘Scaramouche.'”

“Scaramouche?” Silas repeated.

“Some clown character.”

Elliot went back to work, but Silas and I grinned at each other.

We followed this up with a wholehearted attempt at the
WARegon Trail
theme song and then a mockery of Chuck Justice's latest single, after which Whit grabbed Laurel's shoulders and planted a kiss on her lips. Silas's mouth fell open, just a little.
But Laurel looked so surprised—and so pleased.

“I think I am high on Right Guard,” I announced when we finally finished. The van looked so clean that Elliot decided to take it home via some back roads before returning it to the garage just to remove all suspicion. Whit, hat on backward and crooked grin on his face, asked Laurel if she wanted to go for a walk to the lake, and she agreed. Silas briefly pulled Whit aside before he and I snuck across the parking lot to the bell tower.

“So, I'll go running with him. With Elliot, I mean,” Silas said to me as he followed me up the four flights. “If he ever wants to.”

I turned around suddenly. “
Really?
”

He bumped into me. “Yeah, Elliot's not so bad.”

I frowned.

“Okay, okay, maybe he is,” Silas said, backing off. “Are you mad? You're mad.”

Ignoring him, I finished climbing to the top, Silas on my heels.

“West?” he asked tentatively. “What'd I do wrong here?”

“Everything is just so easy for you,” I said, annoyed. “I've been friends with Elliot my whole life, and then I destroyed our friendship—
for you
—and now you two get to be buddy-buddy? That's not fair.”

“We are
far
from ‘buddy-buddy.'”

“You know what I mean.” I pursed my lips and looked out the nearest belfry window.

“West?”

“It's just hard to grow up in a small town. There are . . .
rules.
”

“And I'm breaking them?”

“
I'm
breaking them. I
broke
them. I'm making everyone choose Team West or Team Elliot.”

“And you think I'm choosing Team Elliot?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Yes. No. Not—that's not—not exactly what I mean. It just gets confusing.”

His hand snaked out and pulled me toward him. I let him. “Never mind then,” he whispered. “I won't go running with him.” He settled his hands on my waist and began to kiss my neck, softly, slowly, whispering against my skin, “I am
always
Team West.” His low voice almost growled the words out like gravel.

“You'd better be,” I murmured, a small grin on my face.

Silas's lips made a slow trail down my neck, and when he reached my shirt, he pushed it off my shoulder and continued his path until the fabric stopped him once again. My nerves felt raw and exposed, and I could still hear his throat grinding out my name. “Silas?” I whispered, and it was as if he knew what I wanted, because, suddenly, his lips were pressed to mine, forcing my mouth open, and we were tasting each other.

Kissing Elliot had never felt like this. With Silas, I had this relentless feeling that I would never get close enough to him,
no matter how hard I tried to erase the space between us.

It was this chaos of
touch
: his hands against my shoulder blades, mine around his neck, our bodies pressed together. I slipped my hands beneath his T-shirt, sliding them up over his stomach, feeling the firm muscle there beneath his skin. And then his hands were at the waistband of my shorts, his thumbs hooked into the elastic near my hip bones.

I drew a short, sharp breath.

“Sorry,” Silas said, lifting his hands up in an almost comic “don't shoot” stance.

“You're fine.” I took his hands and placed them back on my hips and leaned up to kiss him again, but he turned his face to the side so that I kissed his cheek instead. I pouted, and Silas actually laughed at me.

“Tuck that lip back in,” he teased. “West, we . . .” He didn't finish his sentence, but I knew the unspoken words were something like
need to slow down.

I wanted to say,
To hell with slowing down
, but I was worried what he would think of me if I did, and wait—wasn't the guy supposed to be the one who always wanted to push things further? It had always been that way with Elliot, at least.

We retreated over to the air mattress, our usual spot where we liked to read, our backs against the cool stone wall. “What do you think about Laurel and Whit?” I asked, trying to distract us both from the lingering awkwardness left after whatever had just happened.

“I threatened to kick his ass if he messes with her,” he said.

“Just now? That's what you were doing when you took him aside?”

“Yeah,” he said, then laughed. “Laurel overheard.”

“Oh gosh.”

“I feel bad. Her face was bright red. But we're okay,” he said, tapping his Hart2Hart sign over his chest. “I don't even know what's going on with them.” He glanced at me suspiciously. “Do
you
?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I know they talk on the phone sometimes. I'd love to listen to their conversations. I bet they'd be so . . .”