Wrong About the Guy (9 page)

T
he Friday before the SATs, Mom ordered me to stay home to study and get a good night's sleep.

I said sweetly, “Exactly how much studying did
you
do for the SATs?”

“I
wish
I'd had your opportunities! It's a luxury to get tutoring for the SATs. It's a luxury to go to college. It's a luxury—”

“To have someone else do your hair and makeup?” I suggested, because she was waiting for Roger to come.

She shrugged. “So we're both a little spoiled these days.”

“Where are you guys going tonight anyway?”

“It's an autism fund-raiser.”

I had been idly clicking through some Facebook photos of a friend, but now I glanced up at her. “Really? How'd Luke get involved with that?”

“He didn't. I was looking at their website and read
that this thing was coming up and I offered to come with Luke. They were thrilled. As you can imagine.”

“Why were you on their site?”

She leaned against the counter and threaded her slim fingers together. “I was looking for some information. I've been wondering about Jacob.”

“Seriously?” That made me feel a little sick to my stomach. Jacob couldn't have autism, could he? He was just a late talker. With some weird habits.

“Yeah. A lot of it fits: the late talking, the rigidity, the way he stares off into space. . . . I want to take him to someone to get diagnosed, but Luke already thinks I'm being over-the-top with the speech therapy and I can't face plunging into something this big without his support. So I'm still trying to figure it all out.”

“You don't really think he's autistic, do you?” I tried to picture what that meant. Someone silent, rocking in the corner, ignoring the world? That wasn't Jacob. He loved being held and listening to music and watching videos.

“I don't know. I don't want him to be. I want someone to tell me I'm wrong. But he's still barely talking, even with the speech therapy.”

I stood up and hugged her. “Don't worry,” I said. “Jacob's still really little. He just needs time.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But something doesn't feel right to me.”

“He's a late bloomer. Like the lion in that book you used to read to me when I was little.”

“You loved that book. You used to ask for it every night—you
could
ask for it. You were talking so much by Jacob's age.”

I stepped back with an exaggerated toss of my head. “Well, I'm extraordinary. You can't judge Jacob by
me
. That's not fair.” I was hoping to make her laugh, but her smile was sad.

Roger showed up a couple of hours later—I guess his car had been repaired—and made Mom look fancy; then he left, and Mom and Luke got picked up by a limousine.

Mom had asked Lorena to babysit so I'd be free to study. Lorena made chicken and rice for dinner, and the three of us ate together. I taught Jakie to clink his water glass with mine before we drank. He loved that and wanted to do it over and over again.

The speech therapist he was now seeing a couple times a week said we should get him to say words whenever possible, and had suggested a few she knew he could do. So I made him say “more” before each click. It sounded kind of like “mah” when he said it, but it was close enough. The second he'd say, “Mah,” I'd click my glass against his and cry out, “Cheers!” or “Skol!” or a couple of times “Cheese—I mean, cheers!” which totally cracked him up. I started laughing because he
was laughing—Jacob's laugh was like bubbles and puppies; you couldn't resist it.

Mom couldn't be right: no way was this happy, adorable kid autistic.

Eventually Lorena whisked him away for his bedtime bath and I settled down to work on some practice SAT questions. But I kept checking my phone for texts. I wasn't expecting any—I just didn't feel like studying.

The doorbell rang, which meant it had to be someone who already knew the gate code. I ran into the foyer and opened the front door.

“If you're checking up on whether or not I'm studying, I am,” I told George, who was standing on the front step with a bag in his hand.

“Why do you assume I'm some kind of study cop?” he said. “I actually think you should just relax and go to sleep early.”

“Oh. Well, Mom wanted me to pound the books. So why are you here?”

“I brought you some stuff.” He handed me the bag. “Nothing big. I just wanted to say good luck and let you know I'm rooting for you. Even if you haven't always been the most cooperative student.”

“Let's not start with the postmortem. Mom still wants you to help me with my applications, you know.”

“Terrific,” he said. “Lots more opportunities to get on each other's nerves!”

“And I'll take advantage of every one of them.”

“I'm sure you will.” He started to turn and stopped. “Oh, can you do me a favor and text me Heather's address? I have a bag for her, too.”

“You know she lives in the Valley, right?”

“That's okay. It's a nice night for a drive.”

“I'll come with you,” I said eagerly. “I'm going crazy stuck at home and it's hard to find her house.” The second half was sort of a lie, but the first half couldn't have been truer.

He hesitated. “Your mother—”

I cut him off. “She's going to be out late. She'll never even know I left. She and Luke went out and left me here alone the night before the SATs. How mean is that?”

“I'm calling social services.”

“You should.” I clasped my hands. “Please, George? I'll bring my notes in the car. I'll read them out loud and we'll discuss anything I don't understand. That will be better than studying by myself—my attention drifts when I'm alone. You'll help me concentrate. Anyway, you just said I shouldn't study anymore and I should relax!”

He laughed. “How can you make arguments that contradict each other in the same breath?”

“It takes skill. Wait here!” Before he could say no, I ran away from the front door and shoved my feet into flip-flops.

“This is such a good idea,” I said when I rejoined George at the door. I grabbed his elbow and pulled him down the steps toward his Prius, which was parked in the half circle of gravel in front of our house. “Heather needs me. She was freaking out last time I talked to her. She's probably chewed off all of her fingernails by now. Plus her fingertips.”

He held the passenger door open for me. “She'd be less nervous if you stopped talking about how you both have to get into Elton College.”

I slid inside and waited until he was settled in the driver's seat to respond. “She's always nervous—she panics when she takes a
Cosmo
quiz. And I have faith that we'll both get in. So don't sound all doubty when you see her, okay? That won't help.”

He raised his eyebrows as he backed up. “Just to be clear, if
doubty
shows up as a vocabulary choice tomorrow, don't pick it. And speaking of vocabulary, where are those notes of yours?”

“I forgot them. It's too dark anyway.”

“All right then.” He drove onto the street. “Define
effervescent.
”

“Bubbly and delightful, like me.” It was too dark for me actually to see him rolling his eyes, but I knew he was.

He continued to test my vocabulary the entire way. Couldn't stump me though.

I texted Heather when we were close to her house, and she was waiting out front when we pulled up at the curb. “Please come inside,” she begged us as soon as we got out. “Just for a few minutes. My mother's been quizzing me, and I keep getting everything wrong, and we're both freaking out.”

“You're going to do fine,” George said. “You've got this.”

I texted the word
hypocrite
to his cell phone. He glanced down when it buzzed, shot me an annoyed look, then stuck it in his pocket. “Here,” he said to Heather, handing her the bag he'd taken out of the car with him. “I made you both care packages.”

“That's so sweet!” Heather said.

“I forgot to open mine,” I said as we walked up the path to her house.

“You can look at it when you get home,” George said. “It's not that exciting.”

“What's that?” her mother asked as soon as she spotted the bag in Heather's hand. She'd been standing inside the front doorway, watching us walk up, and greeted me now with a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hello, Ellie. Who's your friend?”

I explained who George was.

“And you're here . . . why exactly?” she asked with a smile that showed her teeth and made me feel sorry for George.

“I made the girls care packages,” he explained. “For good luck.”

“How nice,” she said icily. For some reason, she always seemed to think that every man she met was on the prowl for teenage girls. Especially blond, pretty ones like her precious baby daughter. “Heather, say thank you.”

If my mother ever tried to prompt me to say
thank you . . .
We were high school seniors, for God's sake.

But Heather obediently repeated, “Thank you,” as she unrolled the top of the bag and peeked inside. “Oh, fun!” she exclaimed.

“What's in it?” I asked.

Heather started pulling stuff out of the bag: a couple of brand-new number two pencils—

“With good erasers,” George said. “I tested them myself.”

“You need to get a life,” I said.

—and several different kinds of protein bars—

“For your snack break,” he told Heather.

—and a bunch of other snacks (candy and crackers) and a little stuffed rabbit—

“For good luck,” he said.

“Isn't that supposed to be a rabbit's
foot
?” Heather asked.

“With a whole rabbit, you get two feet,” George said. “That has to be even luckier, right?”

“Especially for the rabbit,” I said. “What else do you have in there?”

“An eye mask,” she said, pulling out a soft black cloth one.

“Won't that make it hard to read the questions?” I asked George.

Heather giggled, and he said, “Very funny. It's to help her sleep tonight.”

Mrs. Smith said, “I keep telling Heather that she absolutely
has
to get a good night's sleep or she'll regret it for the rest of her life. Speaking of which, I'm sure your mother wants you home early, Ellie. She
does
know you're out with this young man, right?”

“He's my tutor,” I reminded her. “This is basically an extended study session.”

But we took the hint and said our good-byes. A forlorn-looking Heather watched us from the doorway, her mother's bony arm draped protectively across her shoulders.

“Heather's mother is . . . interesting,” George said once we were safely back in his car.

“Yeah, you could say that. Here's all you need to know about her: Once Heather and I went for a long bike ride. By the time we got back, Heather's mom had already alerted the neighborhood security. She thought we must have been kidnapped because we were fifteen minutes late and Heather hadn't answered her texts.”

“Oof,” he said.

“Right?”

“So what one story describes
your
mother?”

I thought for a second, staring out through the windshield at the headlights coming toward us. “From before or after?”

“Before or after what?”

“Marrying Luke.” I circled my hands through the air. “Things changed so much for us once she met him. I mean, here's the story I would have told you about my mom back
before
: There was this kid who was being a jerk to me at school. She told the other kids I smelled bad and that I wore the same shirt over and over again without washing it. That kind of thing. Anyway, I told Mom, and she said to me that we should do some role-playing—she'd be me and I'd be the girl—and she'd help me figure out how to respond. So I would say the meanest thing I could think of to her and she would do something every time that would make me crack up—either say something funny, or speak in a crazy accent, or sniff her armpits—something weird and unexpected. Just fooling around like that with her totally changed the situation for me. It made the girl's insults kind of silly and meaningless. When she'd say something mean, I'd think, ‘Oh, I'll have to tell Mom this one and see what she says' and somehow it didn't matter anymore.”

“That's pretty cool.”

“Best part? That same girl tracked me down after Luke got famous and tried to act like we'd always been friends. It was fun setting her straight.”

“I bet. So how would you say your mom's changed since then?”

“Well, for one thing, she's busy all the time—we're never alone together. They have so many important events and trips, and then there's Jacob, of course—that's the biggest change of all. And I love Jacob. I love Luke. I love our lives. I love that we don't have to worry about money anymore—worrying about money sucked. But . . .” I stopped.

He waited, not saying anything, just driving. And listening.

I said, “She was really present back then, you know? I mean, she worked long hours, but when we were together, it was the two of us and the world didn't matter.”

“Yeah. It feels like whenever you gain something, you lose something at the same time.”

“That sounds like one of your SAT essay prompts.”

He laughed. “It does! I even have a literary quote for it. One I didn't make up.”

“Let's hear it.”

He recited it slowly, pausing a few times like he had to work to remember it all. “‘Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think
there's a man behind a counter who says, “All right, you can have a telephone; but you'll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at a price; you lose the right to retreat behind a powder-puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!”'”