Waiting for You (3 page)

Dad hands me a new piece of sandpaper. “Anything else going on I should know about?”

“We’re setting up an aquarium in chemistry.”

“How is chemistry related to fish?”

“We haven’t had that yet. I think it has something to do with pH.”

“Ah. Sounds fun.”

“I guess.”

“You were working on your chem lab yesterday, right? Over at Nash’s house?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I thought you liked going over there.”

“I do, but . . .”
Fffft-ffft
. “It’s just, I’m totally lost in that class and Nash knows everything. His brain is like this industrial sponge that sucks everything in and keeps it trapped there forever. You can ask him anything and he’ll totally know.”

“Sounds like a smart guy.”

“He’s a freaking
genius
.”

Dad smirks at me in this way where he’s thinking that I like Nash.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say, “and it’s not that.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“He’s just . . . really interesting. Like . . . he collects bells? From all around the world?”

“Cool.”

Mom opens the garage door. Dinner smells waft in. “Hey, you two. Time to eat.”

“Be right there,” Dad says.

“Now,” Mom emphasizes.

“Gotcha.”

Mom knows how lost in his work Dad can get. One time she told him to come in for dinner and he was still out here an hour later. He said it felt like only five minutes had passed.

Mom’s job has always been being the mom, but over the summer she got a part-time job as a personal assistant. When I asked her what that was, she said some things about organizing travel itineraries and buying gifts, but I still don’t completely get what she does. All I know is she’s not around as much anymore and there are some nights when she has to work late. I’m already planning on going to Sterling’s for dinner on those nights. Dad making my sister Sandra and me frozen waffles isn’t the most appetizing.

Mom goes inside and I start cleaning up.

“Hey,” Dad says. “I’m really proud of you.”

“For what?”

“For this year. I know how hard it must have been to get better, and you did it.”

“Thanks.”

“You know I’m always here if you need anything, right?”

My throat feels really tight, so all I can do is nod.

4

“Don’t even
think
about it,” Nash warns me. “Just a little?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“That
no
part is nonnegotiable.”

This is the third time I’ve been over at Nash’s house. And it’s the third time he won’t let me open the window. He should know by now that I need air. But Nash has his room temperature perfectly regulated, and he hates when I threaten to mess it up.

“I’m just going to open it a crack,” I promise. “You won’t even notice.”

“Then why open it?”

“No, I mean . . .
I’ll
notice. But you won’t.”

“Are you implying that I don’t notice stuff?”

We have this thing where he teases me and I pretend that I don’t like to be teased.

“Why are you always trying to twist my words around?” I say.

“Why are you always trying to open the window when the air temperature is perfect in here?” he counters.

I give up. There’s no way to win with this boy. Nash is smarter than me and I have no problem admitting it.

“Moving on,” I announce. Then I notice that Nash has graph paper in all different colors. “Where’d you get that graph paper?”

“From the office.”

“Which office?”

“The main office.”

“The main office gives you graph paper?”

“No. I mean, yeah, but I do service credit there second period, so I get to take some.”

“What do you do for service credit?”

“Just help out. You know. Like with the attendance sheets and stuff.”

That’s so weird. I never thought Nash would be the type of person to work in the office for credit. But of course it makes sense. We’re only sophomores and he’s already building his college applications.

“Where are we with the data?” Nash goes.

“Um . . . kind of lost?”

Nash glares at me over a stack of handouts. “I thought you finished the calculations yesterday.”

“Yeah, see . . . the thing—I mean, that was the plan, to finish them. Yesterday. When I was making the data table. But . . . uh . . .” How can I explain what an idiot I am? I’m not what you would call math-and-science smart. I’m good at things like creative writing and art and music, and I like this psychology elective I’m taking, but math and science are just . . . not for me. No one told me there would be so much math in science. It’s a total and complete letdown.

If I wasn’t paired up with Nash for lab, I’d be toast. Right from the first lab report we did, he made it clear that everything had to be perfect or he wouldn’t let us hand it in. So we’ve met twice already to do one stupid lab report that everyone else is probably waiting until the night before it’s due to even start. Which is totally helping my chemistry grade, but that’s not the only reason I like coming over to Nash’s house. I admire how different and weird he is.

Nash harumphs. He flips through more handouts.

“I could try again tonight, but—”

“That’s okay. Let’s just get this over with.” He gets up off the floor, where he was sitting across the coffee table from me, and goes over to his desk. Nash is the only person I know with a coffee table in his room.

He yanks a drawer open. A cowbell next to his computer tips over with a dull clank.

Nash has bells. A lot of bells. They’re everywhere. Hanging from the ceiling and window frames, hanging on the walls, sitting on the bookshelves and desk, and jingling on a string tied to his dresser drawer handle. Nash collects bells from all over the world. He says he was inspired by his grandpa, who had a massive bell collection. Nash inherited his first bells from his grandpa after he died and he’s been collecting them ever since. I guess it’s a way for Nash to feel closer to him. He can pick up any bell and tell you exactly where it came from. And of course, there’s a whole story that goes along with each bell.

He comes back with a calculator. “Okay, let’s start with the first column. You have it?”

“Yeah.” As I read out the data and Nash taps quickly on his calculator, I take peeks at his spider plant hanging in the window. It’s a friendly plant.

One weird thing about me is that I feel affectionate toward some inanimate objects. Like, I love this special stripy pencil I have. Actually, it’s not even that special. It came in a pack of five from Staples. It’s just that I love the colors and widths of the stripes, the way the eraser rubs so smoothly, the rich quality of the graphite gliding across the page.

I’m convinced that I’m the only person who notices these things.

Or maybe I’m not. Maybe my future boyfriend is the same way. And maybe he’s sitting in his room right now, wherever he is, wondering if he’s the only one who notices these things. And I’m here. Just waiting for him to find me. Waiting for him to find out that I’m real.

5

We have a guest over for dinner. He’s someone Mom knows from work. His name is Jack and his house is being painted, so I guess she felt bad for him and invited him over.

I bet Jack is wishing that someone had warned him about Sandra before he got here. He might have decided whiffing paint fumes in front of some lonely takeout was the better deal.

“But how can you say that?” Sandra asks Jack.

“That’s not the way we speak to guests,” Dad tells her.

Mom doesn’t say anything. Lately at dinner, she’s been getting into these zones where it seems like she’s somewhere far away while we all sort of talk around her. But tonight she’s agitated. She takes another bite of her salad. The iceberg lettuce crunches. If Sterling were here, she would be personally offended to be sitting at a table where the only lettuce in the salad is iceberg. Sterling is a fan of the tri-lettuce Parisian salad. But she never complains when she comes over to eat. She’s compassionate like that.

Sandra tries again. “But . . . why do you think that?”

“There’s no way this country’s ever going to run on nuclear energy,” Jack insists.

“Nuclear energy has the lowest impact on the environment—”

“But when nuclear waste disposal sites leak radioactive material, which they always do eventually, thousands of people can die.”

“—of any energy source, it doesn’t produce emissions that contribute to global warming—”

“Is reducing global warming more important than preventing people from getting cancer? Or making it easier for nuclear weapons to blow up the planet?”

“—and the water that nuclear plants use is never polluted, so—”

“It’s not worth the risk.”

“Be logical. How can you not agree with nuclear energy?”

There’s no way you’d ever guess that Sandra is only in eighth grade. She acts, talks, and dresses older than me. And she’s a lot more mentally stable. How fair is it that she got all the advanced genes?

The thing about Sandra is, she’s the most confrontational person I know. She loves to debate. She’s even in the pre-debate program. So by the time she hits ninth grade, she’ll be like this crazy verbal attack monster unleashed. A monster with a really good vocabulary.

Sandra’s been compiling evidence on alternative forms of energy because that’s the topic the mini debaters are doing now. Which is how this fight with Jack got started.

Dad gives Sandra a warning look. Too bad he’s not looking at Jack that way.

Jack’s like, “So . . . your mom tells me that you’re on the debate team?”

And Sandra goes, “Do you even know what uranium 238
is
?”

Okay. Sandra just crossed the line. Having a “debate” with a dinner guest is one thing. Implying that the guest doesn’t know what he’s talking about is something else.

“Jack is our guest,” Dad informs Sandra. “You’re excused from dinner.”

“But I—”

Sandra pushes back her chair so hard it almost falls over. “This,” she huffs, “is
so
not fair.”

I swear, she’s such a drama queen.

Sandra stomps off to her room. Her door slams.

I glance over at Mom. She takes another bite of salad, looking at Dad.

He notices her looking. “What?” he says.

She just shakes her head. Then: “Can I offer you some more wine, Jack?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“I’d like some more wine,” Dad says.

My parents hardly ever fight. They’re always cracking jokes and laughing and holding hands like they don’t realize how old they are. Except when they’re not. Which is only in extreme situations. And even then, they make an effort to get along.

Mom has always kept more to herself. Like with those faraway looks she gets, or how sometimes she “needs a minute,” which is code for going to her room and reading or watching TV alone. Which ends up taking way more than a minute. I guess it’s just a personality thing. She needs a lot of alone time, while Dad is the complete opposite. The more people around, the happier he is. You’d think that a marriage wouldn’t work with two people being so different and all, but somehow it does. They just have this extrovert-introvert yin-yang thing going on.

Jack smiles at me. I don’t smile back. There’s something about him I’m not liking. What kind of person would argue with a thirteen-year-old girl about nuclear energy like that?

Jack goes, “I hear you’re into photography.”

“Yeah.”

“You use a Nikon?”

I nod. “My dad gave me his old one.”

Jack glances at Dad. “That’s cool,” he says.

Part of me wants to ask Jack why he was giving Sandra such a hard time. I mean, he’s the adult. She’s just a kid. But that’s part of my anxiety problem. I keep all this bad stuff in and it makes everything worse. I just hate fighting. Sandra is crazy confrontational and it makes me want to avoid arguments whenever I can.

I’m expecting another lame question from this guy who obviously doesn’t know how to interact with teens, but Jack just goes back to eating. We all do.

On the way to my room, I pass Sandra’s door. Signs are plastered all over it, like READING MAKES YOUR BRAIN SMART and MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR and I ROCK AT PISSING YOU OFF. I think about knocking to see if she’s okay, but I walk on by. We all need a minute sometimes.

6

Sterling and I do something together every Saturday night. It’s our thing. It helps us feel slightly less pathetic that we don’t have boyfriends. In our world, the ideal boyfriend would take us out every Saturday night. And the ultimate Saturday night date would be dinner and a movie. It’s classic.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we sit around complaining about not having boyfriends or anything. Getting boyfriends is part of our reinvention pact for this year and we’re determined to finally make it happen. I feel like if I don’t get kissed soon, I seriously might explode.

“Don’t look,” Sterling warns. She’s blocking my view in case I refuse to follow directions.

“At what?”

“Tabitha is totally scamming on some random boy over there.”

The Notch is the only good place to hang out when it’s cold, so we usually come here a lot in the winter. But we haven’t been here since June and I guess we missed it in some warped way, so we decided to make an appearance tonight. Until I went to camp this year, summers were all about lying on the beach (technically just this sandy area along the river) with Sterling. Which was probably really bad for us, even if we always used sunblock.

I love the beach. My dad and I go for beach walks and collect these polished stones that you can find if you look hard enough. I collect the white ones and he collects the black ones. On my win dowsill, I have a glass bowl filled with all of my white stones. I also like to walk to the lighthouse and watch it in the twilight, glowing strong and bright. And a lot of people around here have boats or do windsurfing or waterskiing, so you can always get someone to take you out onto Long Island Sound.