“I’m so sorry,” Wren said. “How?”
Charlie went inside himself. How? Because two eighth graders cornered Dev in the bathroom of Dev’s not-special school. They held a cigarette lighter to his leg. Dev couldn’t feel it, but he could smell the burning. He could hear the laughter of the two eighth graders. Dev hadn’t shared those details with Charlie, but Charlie had imagined the scene too many times.
“Charlie?” Wren said. She was waiting for him to answer.
“At school,” he said. Then he closed himself off. He wanted to talk with Wren, but he didn’t want her pity. He didn’t want her to pity Dev, either.
She exhaled, then pushed the needle through the skin near the base of his thumb, knotted the thread, and clipped it off. “Now I have to do a row of stitches the opposite way.” She peeked at him from beneath long lashes. “You doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “And Dev, he’s doing better these days, too. He’s a great kid.”
“Is he your biological brother?”
“Nah. He was in the system, like me, until Chris and Pamela said, sure, they had a spot for him. They’re going to officially adopt him.” They’d wanted to adopt Charlie, too, but Charlie, for reasons of his own that had little to do with Chris and Pamela, had said no.
“Pamela’s your foster mom?” Wren said.
“Yep, she’s Chris’s wife.”
“But you call them your foster parents. How come, when you call Dev your brother?”
“As opposed to foster brother?” Charlie said. He thought about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Chris and Pamela. He did. And they’d done so much for him. It was a debt impossible to repay.
But Dev was different. Though Dev was no more connected by blood to Charlie than Chris and Pamela were, he brought Charlie out of himself in a way that few people in the world ever had, possibly in a way that no one ever had.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. Dev was his brother. Period.
Wren nodded, seeming to absorb and accept this. “Cool. I think you guys are lucky to have each other.” She tied off another stitch. “And in the name of fairness, I should tell you I’m an only. I’d hate to be accused of withholding dangerous intel.”
An only? Oh. An only child. As for “dangerous intel,” Charlie didn’t get the joke. He knew enough to know it was a joke, or was meant to be, but he’d learned over time that normal kids spoke a language particular to normal life, the subtleties of which didn’t make it into state-run facilities or foster families.
“So ‘only’ kids are dangerous?” he asked, keeping it light.
“Very,” she said gravely. She looked at him, or rather into him, and he felt sure she was telegraphing something that mattered. Something she wanted to give a shape to. Something sad?
She ducked her head and gave a funny smile, and Charlie cursed himself for failing to decode her secret message.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” Wren said.
“What?”
“Your hand,” she said, and he realized he must have flinched. Or maybe his fingers had tensed into a fist, or the start of one.
She lay her hand over his, above the area of his wound, and gave him a brief squeeze. Tender, and then gone. Warmth, then cold.
“All done,” she said. “Keep it clean. The thread’ll dissolve on its own, so you won’t need to come back to have the stitches removed. Good news, right?”
Was it? He would have happily come back.
She was acting very polite now. She was packing up the needle, scissors, and gauze, but he wasn’t ready to go.
“Wren. You didn’t hurt me. You’re going to be a really good doctor.”
She gave him a startled glance.
“That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Be a doctor? You told us in biology.”
“I did?”
“Yeah. You applied early decision to Emory because of their pre-med program, and you got accepted, which is amazing. Not that you got accepted. Of course you got accepted. Any college would accept you. They’d be idiots not to.”
Wren’s eyes were huge, making Charlie wonder if he was the idiot in this situation.
“You should be really proud,” he said. “Um, I’m sure you are really proud.” Her deer-in-the-headlights expression didn’t change, making him feel acutely aware of the muscles of his own face, which felt rubbery and no longer within his control. “Aren’t you?”
She snapped out of her trance and busied herself with an antiseptic wipe. For a moment, Charlie felt relieved. She wasn’t staring at him anymore. He could, and did, work out the kinks in his jaw.
But he doubted that the small square antiseptic package demanded all of Wren’s attention, and before long, her reluctance to look at him forced him to open his big dumb mouth again. He didn’t want to. He just couldn’t help it. Her sad-shaped something had returned, and Charlie couldn’t stand it.
“Did you not get into Emory?”
She made a sound that was perhaps supposed to be a laugh but didn’t fool Charlie.
“Then, what?” Charlie said.
Wren stopped fooling with the antiseptic wipe. Keeping her head bowed, she said, “If I tell you, will you keep it to yourself?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Do you promise?”
Was she serious? Charlie would promise her anything. The sun, the moon, the stars. “I promise.”
Her lips parted. She seemed about to speak but then pulled back. “Oh my God, I’m being ridiculous. I mean, God, Charlie. For some reason it feels like I know you, but I don’t, and—”
She covered her eyes and pushed on them.
He thought, You feel like you know me? You feel that? About me?
She opened her eyes and gave him a wobbly smile. “Okay, done now,” she said. She even managed a laugh. “That was really weird. I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Charlie said, his heart pounding. He glanced at Chris, who appeared to have nodded off in the hard waiting-room chair, then back at Wren. “I know we don’t know each other that well. That’s what it is. But we do know each other.”
He struggled to find the right words, and, failing that, he struggled to force out any words.
Charlie understood silence.
He embraced silence.
Silence in the face of sadness made sense to him. It was a survival strategy. But Wren’s silence, which clearly wasn’t making her happy, was something he could do something about.
“Whatever’s going on, I wish you’d tell me,” he said.
Wren looked at him. She held his gaze and saw him, or that’s how it felt, and she whispered, “It’s dumb.”
“I doubt it.”
“You’ll think I’m being a baby.”
“I won’t.”
She bowed her head, and a wisp of hair fell from her ponytail. He wanted to brush it back. He wanted desperately to graze her cheek with the back of his hand and swear to her that everything would be fine.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” she said.
“Okay.”
“The only person I’ve told is Tessa. She’s my best friend. She’s not entirely thrilled, because she’s worried I’ll never come back, but she’s happy I’m doing what’s right for me for once. Well, I hope it’s right. I think it is.”
Charlie pulled his eyebrows together. He didn’t know Wren’s parents, and he knew Tessa Haviland only by sight. And what did Wren mean by “never come back”?
Wren took a deep breath, then let it out in a whoosh. “I don’t want to go straight to college. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t want to—not yet. I want to experience things and not just think and think and think about things. Does that make sense?”
Charlie wasn’t sure what to say.
“Um, my dad,” Wren said. “I love him. I do. But, like, when I showed him my college essay, he pulled my laptop out of my hands and fixed it for me.” She looked nervous, as if she was worried she was being disloyal. “He rewrote the
whole thing. Which was nice, I guess? But also …”
“Not cool,” Charlie said.
“Not cool,” she agreed. “It’s like he wants to do his own life over, through me.” She fell silent for a moment. Then she flashed him a smile that Charlie didn’t quite believe. “So I applied to a program called Project Unity. And I got in.”
“Wren, that’s awesome,” Charlie said.
“You know what Project Unity is?”
“Um. No. But I—whatever it is, I’m sure it’s awesome.” Dammit, he’d screwed up. She surely thought he was just saying whatever she wanted to hear, except he meant every word of it.
“What is it?” he said.
“It’s like a starter version of the Peace Corps,” she said. “It’s a government program for volunteer work, and it’s for a year, and all my expenses will be paid. I’ll even get a stipend. The volunteers get sent to Africa or Guatemala or Mexico, anywhere people need help. I put Guatemala as my first choice. I applied to teach English to little kids.”
“Wow,” Charlie said. “Like, with textbooks, or …?”
“The people who run the program have all sorts of resources, but I thought maybe I could bring some picture books, too? Like ones I liked when I was little, and I could read those to the kids?”
She searched his face. “I might still be a doctor one day. But I want to do something now, not in eight years. I kind of feel like I have to, or I never will.”
He wondered how much her desire to throw herself into Project Unity was tangled up with her need to get away from her parents.
“Did you ever want to go to Emory?” he asked.
She hesitated. “If I say no, will you be mad?”
Mad? Why would he be mad?
“Never mind,” she said. “Ha. I’m the one who needs to be shot with a tranquilizer gun.”
“No, you don’t,” Charlie said.
“I applied to Emory because that’s where my mom works, and it’s got a good reputation, and she and my dad were so proud when I got in,” Wren said. “But there’s just so much pressure. I’m sick of all the pressure. I’m sick of feeling like I’ll ruin all their happiness if I don’t do what they want me to do.”
“Got it.”
“Which I guess means … no, I didn’t actually want to go. I feel bad saying that.”
“Don’t. It’s your life, not theirs.”
“Right,” she said. She nodded. “It is, isn’t it?”
Her determination, combined with her sweetness, disarmed him.
“And seriously, doesn’t Project Unity sound awesome?” she said. “Tessa doesn’t understand why I’d want to live in a developing country, but I’m excited. Going someplace totally new, where you can start fresh and do good things and be whoever you want—doesn’t that sound amazing?”
Wren sounded amazing, talking about it. Wren was amazing.
Charlie’s thoughts went to Starrla Pettit, who was the only other girl in his life, the only girl who served as a point of reference. Except Charlie didn’t want Starrla to be his point of reference, and she wasn’t in his life, not in that way. Except, she was Charlie’s—what? What was Starrla to him, exactly?
Ah, shit. Charlie had no idea what he and Starrla were to each other.
But Starrla worked part-time at Rite Aid, and, starting next week, she was going to be bumped up to full-time, with benefits and a regular schedule. Charlie was glad for her. He hoped it worked out. He hoped she didn’t screw it up.
Working at Rite Aid—hell, there was nothing wrong with that. If anything, he felt bad that Starrla didn’t have the luxury of considering anything else, even if it was unlikely she ever would.
Wren wanted to do more, though. Wren wanted to save the world.
“Forget it,” she said before he got around to responding. “You probably think putting off college is impractical, and that going to Guatemala is …” She sighed. “You think I’m crazy, huh?”
“No,” Charlie said. “I think—” His voice sounded ragged. He shook his head, knowing he was trying too hard but unable to stop himself. “I think you’re wonderful.”
with her to a shooting range. To shoot things, with guns. With Tessa and her new crush, P.G. Barbee.
Wren’s knee-jerk reaction was to tell Tessa absolutely not, because Wren hated guns. She hated their ugliness, and she hated what they did. Also, she didn’t like P.G.
Then again, she’d said no to so many things over the years, often based on someone else’s opinion. Wasn’t she supposed to be experiencing new things and coming to her own conclusions? Wasn’t that what signing up for Project Unity was all about?
“C’mon,” Tessa wheedled over the phone. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet a cute guy.”
“At a shooting range?”
“Why not?”
Wren highly doubted she’d meet an appealing guy at a shooting range. Besides, she was already interested in a guy, although she wasn’t ready to tell Tessa.
She thought about Charlie Parker, who’d showed up randomly—or perhaps not so randomly?—in the ER yesterday. She didn’t think he’d cut his thumb on purpose, or even known he would see her at Grady. But his hand had been warm in hers as she stitched him up, and he’d smelled like pine trees, and being with him hadn’t felt random at all.
His eyes were the same shade of auburn as his tousled hair. She’d lost herself in them, because who had auburn eyes?
“So?” Tessa demanded.
“Huh?”
“The shooting range. What do you say?”
“Oh. Um, sure.”
“But it’ll be so—Wait. What?”
“It’s something new to try. I want to try new things. Unless you think that’s dumb?”
“No!” Tessa said quickly. “Wren! Yay! We are going to have so much fun!”
Wren wasn’t sure, but she was willing to give it a chance.
“After you, ladies,” P.G. said, using his body to hold open the door to the Sure Shot Shooting Range. In each hand he held a gun case. One contained multiple small pistols. The other case held a huge revolver, which took bullets bigger than Wren’s thumb. Bigger than anyone’s thumb.
The guns still made Wren feel queasy, but to P.G.’s credit, he’d spent hours teaching Wren and Tessa about gun safety before bringing them here. He took the task seriously, because it turned out that, when it came to guns, P.G. was very serious.
“You’re kind of freaking me out,” Tessa had said after P.G. explained, point by point, the differences between a handgun, a semiautomatic, and a revolver. “Are you ever going to smile?”
“I am smiling,” he’d said without altering his expression. It was the closest thing to a joke he’d made all day.
Before the morning was over, Wren had learned what the different parts of a gun were called and how they worked. She’d learned where to put her trigger finger when holding a gun and where to point the barrel, and she’d learned that, with the exception of hunters, a gun owner’s primary goal should be to prevent the loss of life.
“If you choose to bear arms, it should be so that you can defend yourself and those around you,” P.G. had explained. “Are there gun nuts out there who do nothing but drink beer and shoot Bambi? Sure, but that’s a stereotype. The majority of people who own firearms treat them with enormous respect.”
Later, Tessa had waved one of the unloaded pistols around, pretending to be a bank robber, and P.G. had grabbed her wrist and gently but firmly guided her hand down.
“Watch it,” he’d said.
“Sorry,” Tessa had replied, crinkling her nose.
“Good,” P.G. had said. “When you’re dealing with weapons, there’s no room for mistakes.”
Tessa had uncrinkled her nose. “Okay,” she’d said in a much smaller voice.
Wren, for one, had been impressed. She could tell that P.G. hadn’t been trying to make Tessa feel bad. He’d just wanted her to know that she couldn’t be silly if she had a gun in her hand. Oh, except P.G. didn
’t use the word gun. He preferred the term weapon or firearm.
At any rate, Wren felt surprisingly well-prepared as she followed Tessa into the shooting range. Then she made the mistake of looking around.
“Whoa, this is crazy,” Tessa said.
“What you said,” Wren replied. She took in the rows and racks and counters and shelves of guns, guns, and more guns before her. Also, ammunition. Also, gun safes, which looked like refrigerators. The safes had oversize price tags on them, which was how Wren knew what they were.
She flipped one of the tags over. HERE’S THE FIRE-RESISTANT GUN SAFE YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED, AT A PATRIOT-SALE PRICE YOU CAN’T PASS UP! it read in thick black letters. HOLDS UP TO 24 LONG GUNS & PROTECTS THEM FROM FIRE FOR UP TO 30 MINUTES!
“Hey, I thought this was a shooting range,” Tessa said, tugging on P.G.’s sleeve. She wasn’t crinkling her nose, but she was back in flirty mode. “Is it a store, too? Do they sell shoes?” She grinned at P.G.’s consternation. “Kidding!”
Wren joined Tessa, who was standing by a glassed-in counter.
“Aw,” Tessa said. She tapped on the glass. “Look, Wren, it’s pink! It’s a pink camouflage gun! I mean weapon! I mean firearm!”
“It’s a Glock,” P.G. said.
“It’s so cute,” Tessa cooed, and Wren caught P.G. giving the man behind the counter a look that said, “Sorry, dude.” The man wore a bright orange vest and a bright orange hunting cap.
“It’s pink,” Wren said.
“Uh-huh,” Tessa said.
“How can pink be camouflage?” Wren said.
“Well, look at it,” Tessa said. “It is.”
“Okay, yes. But where would pink be camouflage? At a baby shower?”
Tessa laughed. So did P.G. The man in the vest stayed impassive.
“This way,” P.G. said, leading Tessa and Wren to another counter. This, it seemed, was where you rented a lane at the shooting range. It reminded Wren of bowling. So did the muffled but still-loud noise coming from behind a set of heavy doors.
“One lane, one hour,” P.G. told the guy manning the register. Like the first man, he wore a bright orange vest and cap.
“They eighteen?” the guy in the hunting attire asked.
The Infinite Moment of Us Page 3