Where I Want to Be (11 page)

“Yeah?” Billy asked as he came within speaking distance.

“My grandmother died,” Jane had said in a rush. “Back in September. I didn’t know if you’d heard. It’s why she never called you. Not because she’d hired someone else to do the lawn.”

Billy’s eyes had blinked rapidly. It sent a doubtful, quivery feeling through her. Up close, his face was too alive
and unreadable. Not like in her imagination, or even her charcoal sketch. “Sorry to hear it,” he muttered. “’Scuse me. I gotta run to class.”

“Okay.” Trembling, Jane had stepped away from him. Stupid, how stupid she’d sounded! There was no such thing as Jane-and-Billy. They had not been
for real
pioneers. They had not been
for real
anything.

It was over. She had knocked on Lily’s door again later. “Billy Leonard looks like a rat,” she’d informed her.

“Then go get a crush on a nonrat,” Lily had answered, putting down her magazine. “Or else, we could call him up for a double date. See how ratty he really is.”

“What, with you and Caleb?”

“Why not?” Then Lily had taken advantage of Jane’s silence by deciding to get all excited about it. She had sat up in bed and clapped her hands together. “C’mon, Jane. It’d be so much easier if you’d start out in a group.”

“I don’t even like him,” Jane had answered sullenly. “And if I did, I wouldn’t need my baby sister’s help to go out with him.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Don’t smile like that, like you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Jeez, Jane. I can’t win with you.” Lily had flipped open her magazine and flopped over on her side. For a moment, Jane had hesitated. No, never. Double dating with a
younger sister and her boyfriend? Even if it worked, it was just too humiliating.

Billy Leonard, Billy Leonard. His name had skipped in Jane’s head like a poem. It wouldn’t go away. She pinched the tops of her legs whenever she caught herself thinking about him.

Dr. Fox had said that liking boys was good, a healthy thing. Part of growing up.

“But what if he doesn’t like me back?” Jane had asked.

“Then he’s not right for you,” Dr. Fox had answered. “Everyone deserves somebody who likes them back.”

And then miraculously, a week or so later, Billy had walked right up to her and asked if she’d go with him to Pizza D’Amore after school. Jane had said yes without thinking.

“We can take my new car,” she suggested.

His smile appeared, a faint curve of agreement. “Okay. Cool. Meet you in the parking lot.”

During the drive to Pizza D’Amore, Billy had sat in the passenger side with his hands crossed and hidden under his armpits, like he was in detention. Jane had kept watch on him. Was this normal? Did he expect her to give him swoony eyes, like those other couples she’d seen sandwiched together and tilted against their cars and lockers? Did he expect her to start kissing him right away, the way Lily kissed Caleb? Would she even want to?

At Pizza D’Amore, Billy had ordered a large pepperoni
pizza and two lime slushies, and he had paid before Jane had had time to reach for her wallet. As Billy had carried the tray of drinks and pizza to one of the red plastic booths, Jane had shuffled through her thin deck of topics. Weather? School? Except that who’d want to talk about weather or school? She had stayed quiet, tongue-tied and miserable.

It had taken forever to finish the pizza. Every silent, chew-and-swallowing moment had ticked inside her. Afterward, Billy had inclined his head toward the pool tables in the back. “Play?”

Jane nodded. Glad to stop guessing how badly the date was going.

Billy had set up the table while she’d chalked her stick, then crouched and angled for the break. Soon all Jane could hear was the crack, roll, and drop of the balls into the corner pockets. When another couple had approached them for a challenge match, she and Billy had partnered smoothly, like friends. Pioneers again.

Then Billy had said he’d better get home before his mom flipped, so Jane had offered to take him all the way to his house out in Woonsocket. Driving out farther and farther away from what she knew, she began to see the warning signs. A square, fin-tailed sports car up on blocks, a baby doll head stuck in the gutter right on Billy’s street. Her pulse picked up speed. Doll heads didn’t talk, she reminded herself. Square-shaped cars with fish fins might send warnings
in her mind.
That didn’t mean anything
for real.

“Well. Thanks for the ride. See ya.” When Billy had opened the passenger side door to get out, he had leaned over to Jane for a kiss, and that was when she had caught sight of the pea-sized mole on his neck and the faint whiff of body odor that lurked behind his aftershave.

She had been startled by the kiss, especially when she’d felt the stab of Billy’s lime-slushie-flavored tongue in her mouth, and she’d driven away upset. It wasn’t the Billy Leonard kiss from her imagination. It was squirmy and wrong. Besides, didn’t he know that the inside of the mouth was the dirtiest part of the human body? She had spit the kiss out the window, but part of it seemed stuck inside her mouth.

Next time, Jane had decided, she’d have to say something about no tongues.

All that next week, she’d brooded over it. It had not worked, no. It did not remind her of Lily-and-Caleb. All of her Jane-and-Billy dreams were finished, sealed with that kiss. But she had halfway hoped he might ask her to play pool again.

She had waited by his locker. When he saw her, he approached more slowly.

She had raised her chin. She could see his answer before she’d asked her question. She could see it in his walk. But she asked anyway. She had thought up the words the previous night, and she was ready to say them.

“Do you want to go play pool next Monday, and I’ll drive, but I won’t drive you home?”

“Listen, Jane,” said Billy. “I had a good time and all last week, and I’d be on to play pool sometime. Just as long as you’re cool that this is a friends-only situation.”

“Friends only,” Jane had agreed, relieved. “That’s all I was saying. Especially with that mole on your neck, and your body odor.”

Billy reacted as if she’d slapped him. Blinkity-blink went his eyes.

“Hey, what is this, third grade?” he had asked. “What’s with you getting harsh with me?”

“I’m not,” Jane had answered. “I’m just telling you the truth.”

Only now she wondered if the truth had been helpful.

Billy looked mad. “It was your sister who asked me to take you out, okay?” Billy’s chin jutted in defiance, as he thrust both hands into his jeans’ pockets. “And since Lily’s pretty cool, I thought you’d be all right, too.”

Jane had made her eyes go glassy-starey, uncaring, but as soon as she’d returned home, she’d taken the shears out of her mother’s gardening basket and run to Lily’s room. In seconds, she had shredded Lily’s beanbag chair. The shears had made a satisfying sound like tearing rags, with a pleasing froth of foam pellets that spilled out and scattered all over the carpet.

On the spot, Lily had confessed. “But I thought you liked him! You know you like him, Jane! I was just trying to help. To get things moving.” Her eyes had been moist as she kneeled to squeeze up a handful of pellets. “Look at this, it’s a total mess. You come into my room while I’m not here with a pair of shears, like a total…such a…I mean, why, Jane? Why do you have to…?” She’d had to let go of the sentence. Their parents had long ago banned that category of hurtful words.
Freak. Psycho. Crazy. Mental. Spaz.
Jane could hear them in the air anyway.

“Say it, I don’t care,” she’d said. Then, louder, “Say it!”

Lily had bitten her lips and shaken her head.

Jane had thrown the shears on the bed. Inside, she had felt the old confusion, the feeling that she’d missed something. Because Lily was not mean, no, even if she’d bribed Billy. Lily wanted good things for her. Who was Jane supposed to be angry at, then? She itched to pick up the shears, to turn them on herself.

“Stay out of my life,” she had warned instead, turning away from her sister’s helpless, upset face.

Billy Leonard. Now his name jangled in her like broken music, a reminder of all the things Jane had never understood. Of all those codes that Lily had cracked so easily. And Billy’s words haunted her.
Lily’s pretty cool, so I thought you’d be all right.

Everyone had always thought that at first, until they’d realized that Jane was all wrong.

Well, maybe not everyone. Her family accepted her. Or, at least, they were not preoccupied with what was wrong, the pieces of Jane that did not add up.

But family was only a tiny portion of people.

Orchard Way had disappeared from sight. In the ashy darkness, she stumbled. She could hardly see a step ahead. A soft wind hushed through her ears. She began to run.

“Augusta!” she called. “Granpa!”

And then she stopped running. The night was radiating all around her. All of the tiny signs that were not exactly warnings had brought her to this point, to this moment. Like a chain of light to guide her.

“I’m here,” she said.

“When’s the last time you came out here?” Caleb asks as he moves onto the exit ramp that leads to Orchard Way. The din of Alex’s party lingers in my ears like a dream. I’m glad to be alone with Caleb again.

I roll my neck, stretching out the tension, as I count back. “Musta been…over a year ago?”

“You know when they’re tearing it down?”

“Next month, my dad said. After my grandmother died, Mom listed the house with Payne-Hazard,” I remembered out loud. “She did everything in her power to sell it to a nice family. For Jane’s sake. She figured Jane would freak if the house was sold and then steamrolled into a car dealership or something. But nobody wanted to live in it. Mom wasn’t surprised—she said you’d have to sink a fortune into updating it.”

“The place probably looks pretty different now from the way you remember,” Caleb says.

“Different, how?”

“Neglected.”

He is warning me about something. When he turns into the driveway, which is so bumpy with rocks that it jounces me right up through my chest, I see why.

Caleb stops the car. I look through my window onto a view of overgrown grass. I wouldn’t have had a clue where we were if I hadn’t known beforehand. The lawn looks wild, more forest than farm country. The outline of the house doesn’t form a distinct outline from the trees that surround it. I reach for the flashlight in the glove compartment.

“My grandparents took such good care of their home, I can’t believe it’s the same place,” I say. “Jane used to call it Orchard Way. I always thought it was the wrong name, but now it seems perfect.” I’m chatty to hide my nerves. “Because that’s what it looks like, don’t you think? All you can see are these gargantuan trees.”

We get out. Caleb doesn’t need a flashlight. His night vision defies human limitations. When I snap on the flashlight, its weak ray is a tiny relief. I aim the beam on Caleb’s sneakers, but then detour when I see the porch steps.

“This way,” he says, heading to the backyard, but I ignore him.

The porch is bare, caked in leaves and dried mud. No more flowers blooming in wicker baskets, no more mismatched porch furniture, and there’s only a square imprint where the welcome mat used to be. A deadbolt rusts across
the front door. Raw wooden boards have been cross-hammered over every window and stapled with
NO TRESPASSING
signs. Through a chink in the boards, grime has been rubbed off to clear a patch of glass.

I shine the flashlight into the living room. Four empty corners and the brick outline of a fireplace stare back. A bent wire hangs from the ceiling where the light fixture once was.

“C’mon,” calls Caleb from the bottom of the steps.

I turn. “Where’re we going?”

“Follow me.”

So I follow, tripping down the steps and hooking my finger through his pants’ belt loop so he can’t go too fast. Our legs make whishing sounds through the grass.

We’re heading toward the pool. When we get there, I see that it’s been drained. Without water, it looks naked. I pace around it, nosing the flashlight into its depths. Dirt, sticks, and pine needles make swirling patterns along the bottom. Back when we were kids, Jane had made up a touch-the-drain game that I could never win because I was scared to be underwater for that long.

“Oh, but there’s nothing down there,” Jane would promise, “except for…maybe…some mermaids and…a couple of sea monsters. Nice sea monsters, though.”

Jane was calmer than I could ever be at the prospect of friendly sea monsters. She willed me to see those things, but they lurked too far outside my comfort limits. And yet
I also tried to pull Jane into my world. But if we’d failed each other, I’d been the one to fail her first when I stopped playing those games. What else could I have done, though? I had to grow up.

Caleb sits at the deep end of the pool. I join him, slipping out of my shoes and dangling my legs over the edge. I click off the flashlight and breathe in the summer night. When he pulls an arm around my shoulder, I scoot closer. My arm circles his waist as I sink against his warmth. I ripple a finger slowly up and down his ribs, each notch distinct through his T-shirt.

“I learned to swim in this pool,” I tell him. “You’d have laughed. I had all the accessories. The strap-on water wings, the goggles, the kickboard—the whole deal.”

Caleb is silent. I swing my legs back and forth. My heels kick at the wall in a steady drumbeat. “I wish you’d seen the house when we were little. This was the place I remember playing—really playing with Jane.”

Silence.

“Don’t you hate it when people ask you what you’re thinking?” I ask.

Even though it’s dark, I can feel him smile. “I’m thinking that if you could say something to her, what would it be?”

“Well, I could talk forever and not run out of the things I’d want to say to her.”

Caleb’s hand finds mine and he binds my fingers through his. His grip is warm. “So say them.”

“Now? Here?” I don’t get it. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, fine. For one,” I begin, mostly to humor him, “I’d tell her that I don’t believe she’s not with me anymore. That it’s unimaginable she’s not going to be maid of honor at my wedding, or a godmother to any of my kids, or sit next to me at Thanksgiving and make remarks under her breath about how someone better tell Uncle Dean not to chew with his mouth open. Remember how Jane had a thing about open-mouth chewing?”