Very in Pieces (15 page)

“Annaliese!” he says warmly. “What a lovely family you have. This lovely family of women. I shall paint this family someday, I am sure.”

I wonder what color square I will be.

The sun is nearly down now, and so I ask Nonnie, “Do you want me to bring you inside before I go?”

“You're leaving!” Marcus says. “But the party is just starting.”

“Veronica has another party to attend. She's quite the social butterfly, this one.” Mom's face looks the same, but her voice is edgy.

“Just something with some school friends.”

Marcus puts his hands on my shoulders, then kisses each cheek. He smells like cloves. “I will chauffeur your grandmother into the house. You need not worry, Very, she is safe with me.”

“There was a day when I would have been rather unsafe with you,” Nonnie says.

“It is I who am in danger, Imogene.”

He spins the chair around with ease and continues chatting
with Nonnie and Melora as they go into the main part of the house. I walk past my mother into the garage. When I back Nonnie's car out into the driveway, Mom is still standing there, alone.

iii.

It's dark by the time I arrive at the party, but not pitch-dark. I have no clue what time these sorts of things normally start, and I'm relieved to see that there are already a number of other people here. It wouldn't do much to upend my image as a dot-your-i's-and-cross-your-t's keener if I showed up as early to the party as I typically do to class.

I park my car in the row behind the ice rink and then make my way up through a smattering of trees to a clearing, leaves and sticks cracking underfoot. There's a small bonfire letting off a thin line of acrid smoke, and, a few feet off, a keg. People are milling around chatting—it's all very casual, like a backyard barbecue. I don't know what I expected. Scenes of Dionysian debauchery? Naked people running through the woods? I tighten my sweatshirt, tied around my waist by its sleeves, and scan the group for Dominic. He's not here. Not by the fire, not by the keg, and not in the clumps of people sprinkled around the clearing. Wonderful. He totally played me. I'm not sure what his reasoning was, but it was nicely done.

Then again, maybe he's just not here yet. He seems the
fashionably late type. So, I search for someone I know. Of course I know all of them: our school has only about five hundred students, and almost all of us have been here since kindergarten. But I'm looking for someone I consider an acquaintance. Someone respectable. Sitting on a rock by a fire is Brooks Weston, the flames making his blond hair seem orange. He's talking to Sadie Sayrebrook, a junior from my English and chem classes. With a deep breath to steady myself, I make my way over to the rock and say, “Hello.”

“Oh, hey, Very,” Brooks says, smiling warmly. “I didn't recognize you at first—”

“Your hair, oh my God, it's so cute!” Sadie reaches up and runs her hand through my hair.

“Thanks,” I tell her.

“It's so cool that you came,” Brooks tells me.

“Thanks,” I say again. “I figured I would check it out.”

“So what do you think of chem?” Sadie asks.

That's what people talk about at these kinds of parties? I mean, I don't know what I expected the topics of conversation to be, but certainly not school. I wrinkle my nose. “It's not exactly my strong suit, but I think it's a good class.”

Sadie nods. “Yeah. Mr. Tompkins is a good teacher. That helps.”

“Yeah,” I agree lamely. “Plus I've got Christian to help me, which is like a lifesaver.”

“Where is he anyway?” Sadie asks.

“Oh.” I cough as if the smoke from the fire has entered my
lungs. “He has something else to do tonight. He's hoping he can stop by later.”

“Cool,” Sadie says.

“You don't have a drink,” Brooks says. “Let me get you a beer.”

“I'm not much of a drinker,” I say before I even think about it. Stupid. I should just get a beer and hold on to it. Everyone else has a cup.

“That's cool,” he says.

“All right,” Sadie says, leaning in toward us, “I'm sure you are both sick of this question, but I just have to know where you are applying.”

“You and half the world,” Brooks says.

“It's the elephant at the zoo,” I say.

Brooks raises his eyebrow, then turns his attention back to Sadie.

“I'm applying to Harvard—” Brooks begins.

“Of course,” Sadie interrupts.

He ignores her and continues, “Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Cornell for my Ivies. And then some small schools, I haven't decided exactly which yet, but probably Colby. I went up to visit, and it was so chill. And then I guess I still need to figure out my safety school.”

I try to tuck these names away in my head. Britta wants to know where he's applying. She has her heart set on Brown, and will be happy to hear he's not applying there, too, but I know she was also thinking about Princeton. She's convinced no school will accept both of them.

“What about you, Very? Still heading to Stanford?”

Last year a Stanford rep had come to visit our school, and Brooks and I had been the only juniors to attend. I'd been overeager, showing up with my application already completed. I roll an acorn under my foot. All of that had been before Nonnie got sick. “It's still on my list, but I don't know. Mr. Tompkins is really pushing MIT, but I'm wondering if I want something smaller, like Carleton or, um—” I search my brain for the name of the math-and-science school in California that Christian had mentioned. “Harvey Mudd!”

“Nice,” Brooks says, and I realize I could've rattled off a list of top schools from the
U.S. News and World Report
rankings and their response would've been the same.

“Of course I can't rule out good old Essex College,” I say.

Sadie giggles, while Brooks chuckles and shakes his head.

“What?” I ask.

“You're not serious, are you?”

“I'm taking that math class there now, and it's pretty good.”

Brooks stares into his beer. “Well, I guess everyone has to make their own choices.”

“I guess so,” I agree.

The bonfire's flames are growing tall and lean, reaching up into the night sky. The smoke blows away from us, back in the direction of the parking lot. Like something out of a romance novel, Dominic emerges from the cloud of smoke. When he sees me, his grin spreads across his face—crooked. He stops before he gets to me, which means I have to go to him. “Excuse me,” I
say to Sadie and Brooks. I wait a moment before I turn and walk over to Dominic. I know they're watching me. I'm sure of it. And if they are watching me, then they are curious, but for once I don't care. The thrill of it—of not caring, of belying people's expectations—courses through my body.

“You came,” he says.

“I said I would.”

“Good to know you're a woman of your word.” He reaches out and traces the side of my face where the yellowing bruise lingers. “I like the haircut,” he tells me. He looks down at my empty hand. “No beer?”

“I just got here.”

“Cool.” He turns, takes my hand like it's something we've done every day of our lives, and leads me over to the keg. Adam Millstein is sitting next to it, holding a stack of red plastic cups. “It's on me,” Dominic says, and hands him ten dollars.

Adam takes it and begins pumping out two cups of beer for us. “Oh crap, Very, I hope hitting your head didn't knock something loose up there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've never seen you at a party before.”

“Don't worry, Adam,” Dominic replies for me. “You're off the hook. The corruption of Very Sayles-Woodruff is all on me.”

I slip my hand from his. “This isn't corruption.”

“So this Very was there all along?”

“This Very is the same Very. It's just Very with a beer.”

Adam laughs and hands me my cup.

Dominic and I step away from the keg and the fire, moving closer to the edge of the clearing. “Seriously, I wasn't sure you'd come. This doesn't seem like your scene.” He's got one hand around the beer, the other in the pocket of his coat—not black leather as I would have guessed, but a wool flannel thing that looks like it belongs to a grandpa.

“I'm not sure why you think you know what my scene is.” I take a drink from my beer, which is warm and flavorless. My dad drinks dark, heavy beers that he lets us take sips from, and this is nothing like those.

Dominic drinks deeply from his cup. I watch his throat work as he swallows; his neck is pale and thin and I have an urge to touch his Adam's apple. I drink again, a bigger gulp this time, trying to keep up with him.

“Anyway, this doesn't seem anywhere near as exciting as you made it out to be,” I tell him.

“Parties never are.”

“So why did you want me to come?” I ask.

He looks over my shoulder toward the bonfire, then back at me, right into my eyes. “I wanted to see if you would. If I asked you.”

I can't hold his stare. I look down at the ground, at a patch of poisonous red berries. “Give me your cup,” he says.

“Why? I'm not done yet.”

“You need to be topped off.” He takes my cup and returns to the keg. I watch him as he walks, this loping, graceful stride that somehow seems to contain the same smirk of his lips. Adam
grins at something he says and I redden, sure they are talking about me.

Dominic returns and says, “Come on, let's go,” as he starts off deeper into the woods. I follow him. I don't even hesitate—just start climbing up the gentle slope through the trees. The smell of the bonfire gives way to the overwhelming scent of pine. My foot slips on some needles, and I stumble forward, spilling some of my beer. “You okay?” he asks, reaching back to take my hand again. His palm is warm as he leads me still farther onward. The voices down by the bonfire fade; I can hear, ahead of us, occasional snatches of conversations and laughter. At that moment, the whole night—the disembodied voices, my hand in Dominic's, the warm end-of-summer night air—is all so beautiful and serene, it's like a dream.

“My parents used to bring us here when we were little,” he says. “And my sister and I would come up into the woods to play. Cops-and-robbers type of stuff. Detectives and spies. She would follow me around and write down my nefarious activities.”

“That's sweet,” I say. “And oddly prescient.”

“I blame her for all of my wayward ways.”

“Which is why I wait for my sister every day. Not that it's doing any good. She spends half the time in her own world, and the other half being a pain in the ass—hanging out in trees and avoiding my grandmother.”

He stops walking and looks at me with curiosity.

“She's sick,” I tell him.

“I'd heard that.”

I gaze down the hill back toward the party. “It's bad. Sometimes it feels like she's already slipping away. Like I'm already starting to grieve for her.” I don't tell him the whole truth: that sometimes I wish it were all over. “I'm trying to hold on to my memories, but those are going away, too. It only makes it worse when we have to do things like discuss her poetry in class.”

“Well, Hunter's a jerk. But her poems are a part of her.”

I turn back to see his face. His smile is gone, and he leans in toward me.

“That's just her public persona. What she and I are like together, that's different. That's what's real,” I tell him. I know my grandmother. I've lived with her all my life, breathed her air—you don't know anyone better than that. I know what parts of her are real and which are the facade.

He nods and says, “I get it.”

I lift my eyes. “Have you had someone in your family die?”

“Not exactly. My mom, she—she's gone, I guess is the best way to put it.”

“She left?”

“It was rough. I was seven when it became clear that she wasn't going to be in the picture, and I didn't understand how she could leave me and Lucy—that's my sister.”

“That's because it doesn't make any sense. You don't just leave your children.” My words are small, nothing compared to this statement: his mother left.

Our bodies are tilting in toward each other, like we have no choice, gravitational pull.

“I don't normally talk about this,” he says, pulling back.

“I'm sorry.”

“No, that's not what I meant. People don't normally take an interest. And it's not like my dad is around to talk about it.”

“He's gone, too?”

“He travels. He's in Cincinnati tonight, I think.”

“You think?”

“He's on the road a lot. He crews for bands and stuff. Right now he's on a tour with Bob Dylan. He wanted to be a musician.”

“He must love being around all that, then.”

“Not really. It just reminds him that he never made it.”

“So you're on your own?”

“Most of the time. Lucy's going to school down in Georgia.”

I lean toward him. “But, I mean, don't you get lonely?”

“Sometimes. I'm used to it, though.” He pauses. “You can't tell anyone. Technically I'm still a minor, and the state frowns on this sort of an arrangement.”

“Sure,” I say quickly. “I mean, of course.”

“It's not so bad. Being alone, I mean. I get to take care of myself and do what I want. Nobody bugs me, and so I can—like today I was just reading all afternoon, and it was nice, you know?”

“A man of leisure.” It comes out more flippant than I mean it to, and he looks away.

“Something like that.”

I look down at the bed of pine needles on the ground. A stray maple leaf sticks straight up and quivers there.

“You want to know why I invited you?”