by Carrie Quest
Adam Now has a shaved head with two gnarly white scars zigzagging through the dark stubble. His face is smooth because his mom is here all the time, and I started shaving him for her when he was still in the coma. She always hated the beard, said she loved to look at her baby’s face. The weirdest thing, though, is that he’s still. It’s like not being able to snowboard switched off his inner motor, and I don’t know if it will ever come back on.
Because Adam loved snowboarding. He fucking loved it. We all do, because you really can’t be good enough to win at a sport unless you love it at some level, but Adam was different. We talked once about what we’d do if snowboarding wasn’t a career option, like if no competitions existed, if you couldn’t make any money. I said I’d probably be a snow bum for a few seasons and then go to college, maybe try and own a ski shop so I could live in the mountains and still board as much as I could.
Adam said he’d rather couch surf for the rest of his life than do anything that would keep him off the mountain. He meant it too. Some guys claim to get antsy if they go without sex for too long. Adam would freak the hell out if he couldn’t snowboard. He’d turn into the grumpiest bastard you’ve ever met. It was like a physical need for him, and he was a natural. I won because I was out there before the other guys got up and I was lifting weights when the other guys were out drinking and picking up girls. I worked my ass off to get on that podium every single time, but on one of his good days Adam could wipe the pipe with me even if he was hungover and hadn’t worked out in weeks. He just killed it.
We don’t talk about snowboarding now. At first Adam couldn’t remember much. He came out of the coma and he was in the room looking at me, but he wasn’t really there. It took weeks before I could look into his eyes and recognize the guy staring back at me. He remembers a lot now, and they took the tubes out, so he can get up and move around a little. The guys would come around and talk to him about getting back on the hill, but that just made Adam agitated and made his mom cry. Because the doctors say it doesn’t matter if he’s a medical miracle who claws his way back to peak physical and mental condition. He’s never allowed to do anything that will risk another head injury, and that includes snowboarding.
I take a deep breath and fix Adam Now in my mind, then push the door open. He’s in bed and his mom’s hovering over him, holding out a spoonful of some mushy hospital food.
“Thank god,” he says when he sees me. “She’s seriously trying to poison me this time, man. Like I haven’t been through enough.” His voice is strong, but he speaks slower than he used to.
“I’ve gotcha covered,” I say, holding up a bag of fast food. He grins, and his mom rolls her eyes.
“I’m going to get coffee so I don’t have to be a witness to this,” she says. “You’re making a mockery of the dietician’s carefully orchestrated organic diet plan, boys.”
She smiles though, so I know she doesn’t really care. Then she pulls me into a huge hug. “It’s good to see you, Ben. How was your trip?”
“Pretty quiet,” I say. I’ll give Adam the unedited version later. “Got to Boulder a couple days ago.”
She nods. “How’s Piper?” Her face is carefully blank. I have no idea what she actually thinks about my sister, but she always asks politely, and I always tell her that Pipes is fine. It’s nice of her to ask, even if it’s just bullshit. If my kid got drunk and made an ass of himself at an international competition after his girlfriend dumped him, then I probably wouldn’t bother to make the gesture.
I don’t tell her that Piper will be hanging around Craig all summer. I’m not going to tell Adam either, not unless I have to.
“You’re sure you don’t want to stay with us in the family housing? They’ve put us in a really cute little apartment. Plenty of room for you.”
I shake my head. “No thanks. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do on the house, so I’ll stick to the plan.”
“Well, don’t be a stranger. We don’t want you driving late at night. You’re always welcome, okay?”
My smile is tight, but it’s there. “Thanks, Mrs. W.”
She pats my cheek as she leaves the room, and I don’t relax until the door is shut and I hear her footsteps echoing down the corridor. I love Adam’s parents, but since the accident those feelings are all tangled up with guilt and sadness and memories of the time we spent crying together, holding vigil as we watched the fluid dripping out of the drain in his head. I can deal with it in small doses, but there’s no way I could live with them in a tiny apartment all summer. I’d lose my mind.
“Hit me.” Adam holds up his hands for me to toss the bag of food, and I wince when I catch a glimpse of the arrow tattoo on his wrist, a mirror image of mine. Shit. Am I ever going to be able to look at that thing? I walk over and give him the bag instead. Partly so he’ll drop his hand, but mostly because I threw something to him a few weeks ago and he missed it by at least a foot because of his still fucked-up vision. He was furious at himself.
“Go crazy,” I say, handing it over. He digs into the bag and moans as he shoves some fries in his mouth.
“I don’t know why she’s still trying to feed me,” he says after he swallows. “I can handle a spoon for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe she’s giving you a hint that she wants grandkids.” I wink, trying to keep it light. Adam was never an angry guy, but he lashes out sometimes now, usually at his parents.
My lame joke works this time, though. He laughs and eats the food, and it’s a good visit. Sometimes it isn’t. Adam’s my best friend but the thing that brought us together was snowboarding, and we can’t talk about that anymore. No discussing the snow, or travel plans, or who’s landing which tricks. No nostalgic chats about when the Canadian team trashed our room with the hotel fire extinguishers or all those endless, perfect days we spent gliding through fresh powder, laughing like lunatics because we were living the dream.
It can be a struggle to find stuff to talk about now, which is why the other guys kind of dropped out of visiting when Adam was in Reno. It pisses me off because it’s lazy on their part, but I understand. Yesterday my own sister couldn’t even name one interest I had besides snowboarding and hell, neither could I. I dedicated everything to being the best, but I somehow missed out on building an actual life. I have no outside hobbies. I’ve never had a serious girlfriend. I haven’t watched or followed any other professional sport in years.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up alone in my basement, building a giant Lego model of a half-pipe and muttering to myself about my glory days.
Adam pulls me out of that sad vision by attempting to snap his fingers in front of my face, then cursing his own clumsiness and clapping instead. “Ben! What the fuck?”
“Sorry, man.” I rub my hand over my face. “Didn’t get much sleep.”
“Dude, I’m the one with the traumatic brain injury,” he says. “Keep up. We’re on Chapter Seven.” He’s holding up the book I’ve been reading aloud—it’s about a zombie detective and it’s set in New York. He loves that shit, but his eyes aren’t up to reading yet. “I tried getting my mom to read it to me, but she kept gasping at all the fight scenes, and she got all flustered every time the main guy talked about eating brains. Like it would hurt my feelings to hear the word or something.”
When I first started reading, we’d have to repeat the same chapter over and over because he forgot stuff, but he’s come a long way because he spends the next few minutes reminding me what’s happening. Then I take the book and we both lose ourselves in the story. I stay with him through his mom trying to force feed him dinner and leave when the nurses come to get him ready for sleep, promising to be back tomorrow.
On the way out, I stop in the gift shop to see if they have the next book in the series. They don’t, but I pick up a rubber frog to stick in Piper’s bed. Big brother instincts never die. I laugh out loud when I see a little teddy bear wearing a shirt with a picture of a cherry on it, and I get it for Natalie on a whim, in case w
e ever get to the point where we can laugh about everything that happened the other night.
When I get home, it’s late. The dog goes nuts, but Nat’s door is closed, and she doesn’t come downstairs. Somebody folded my blanket neatly on the sofa, though, and there’s a spray bottle on the coffee table. It’s got a picture of Chuckles’s ugly mug taped to the outside and a handwritten label that says Cat Repellent: for use in emergency tossing situations.
Looks like she’s ready to laugh about it.
I creep up and leave the bear outside her door right before I go to bed.
7
Natalie
I spend the week before my class starts emailing agents and avoiding Ben Easton. My first official rejection comes on the second day, but it doesn’t devastate me the way I thought it might. Instead, it makes me feel tough, like I’m in the ring swinging.
When the second and third rejections come, I feel like I’m in the ring getting the shit kicked out of me, but I keep sending out letters.
I also stress-eat Skittles for an hour while rocking under my covers. But, hey, life’s a process.
Ben is still sleeping on the sofa and it’s highly likely he’s avoiding me too, because our paths come dangerously close to crossing several times, but we never actually meet in the flesh. His door clicks shut when I come down the stairs, or I hear a scuffle as I put my key in the lock and by the time I’m inside, all that’s left of him is a dish in the kitchen sink or a blanket left in a heap on a chair.
I’m just as bad. I wait until I hear him leave to walk the dog every morning before I come down for breakfast, then I scarf down cereal and zip out the door before he gets back. His room downstairs has his own entrance to the yard, which helps. I like the way he walks the dog every morning and every evening. I miss my dog in Boston and if I was speaking to Ben, I’d probably ask if I could help out with puppy care, but I’m not going to be the one to break the weird silence we’ve got going here.
It’s like living with a phantom roommate. One who buys no groceries, survives on Mexican take-out and pizza, and leaves presents outside my door in the middle of the night.
When I found the Treebeard figure (which may or may not now reside under my pillow), I was shocked that Ben even remembered that conversation. Sure, bringing up penises and then fleeing the table was immortalized in my personal Hall of Humiliation, but I never figured Ben gave it a second thought. The fact that he did, and that he clearly wanted me to know it, gave me hope that we could get past the awkwardness of the other night. That maybe he wanted to be friends.
So I left him the Chuckles repellent. It seemed jokey and casual. There was absolutely no way that anything involving Chuckles could give off a flirty or sexual vibe, so I figured it was safe.
And then he left me the bear with the cherry on its shirt, which made my head spin. Because holy mixed message, Batman. Was it a cute baby bear, meaning he saw me as a little sister? Or was he still thinking about my undies? I had no frickin’ clue.
But I wanted to find out. So I left him a bouquet of cherry lollipops. I hoped he’d spend hours wondering if it was a sweet childish treat or a hint about blowjobs, but after I crept back upstairs, I realized he probably went straight to the dick option. He’s a guy. What the hell else do they think about?
He countered with a toy policeman accessories set a couple days later. The handcuffs could be seen as dirty, but he’d also customized the little tin badge to read “Chuckles Containment Officer” and my own rules clearly stated that anything involving Satan’s feline had nothing to do with sexy times.
Of course, my own rules also state that nothing is ever going to happen between me and Ben.
Even my messages to myself are mixed.
I get to class a good fifteen minutes early on the first day, and my mind should be totally occupied on making a good impression on my teacher. Her belief in my abilities is the only thing standing between me and death by business class boredom. I should also be focusing on befriending my classmates and finding the perfect writing partner, or at least someone I can sit next to for the rest of the summer. Instead, I’m scrolling through the toy section of the Target website, searching for the perfect naughty-or-nice gift for Ben.
People start to slowly filter in. The classroom is small, with one huge table surrounded by chairs. It fills up fast and everybody does that thing where they pretend to look at their phones but actually sneak glances at the people around them. It’s natural we’re all curious, I guess. We’re meeting each other for the first time today and by next week we’ll be reading each other’s work, which is pretty damn intimate. The last guy I slept with claimed to feel my cervix with his dick on a regular basis, but I still never let him read my short stories.
Seven of my classmates have children’s book illustrations tattooed on their arms (3 Hungry Caterpillars, 2 Cat in the Hats, a Madeleine, and an anatomically correct Wild Thing. Damn.) and table space is at a premium because everyone except me has a portfolio folder lined up in front of them. My heart speeds up a little because I hate being unprepared. Did I miss an email? Were we supposed to bring copies of our favorite illustrations as a way to introduce ourselves? Am I going to screw myself out of that recommendation letter before class even officially starts?
I quickly close my toy shopping window and do an image search for Eloise and the Plaza Hotel, praying to the Google gods that the instructor will accept a Pinterest board instead of a print out. I can always say that my printer ran out of ink, right? That old chestnut saved my ass at least once a month in high school. Plus, we’re in Boulder. Nobody ever gets in trouble for wanting to save trees in this town.
Luckily the instructor is late, so I pin fifteen images and call it good. The class is called Writing Children’s and Young Adult Literature, so a few illustrations can’t be a total deal breaker. I’m about to do a bonus search for Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day when my email pings.
Two of the Caterpillar girls and the Wild Thing guy (who should not be judging anyone with that ink on his forearm) give me dirty looks. Whatever. Class hasn’t even started yet, so the cone of mandatory silence is still hovering at the ceiling as far as I’m concerned.
I flick the sound off anyway because I’m just that sweet and accommodating. Also, because I’m trying to make a good impression and I’ve seen enough episodes of that show where the boss goes undercover to never trust that anyone is who they say they are. One of those Hungry Caterpillars could be our professor in disguise.
(Sidebar: It is possible that reality television has damaged me beyond repair.)
I see right away the message is from an agent I queried a few days ago, and I almost don’t open it at all because getting a nice hard smack of rejection right before my first writing class does not seem like a good omen. But it’s not like I have anything else to do except obsess over my nonexistent portfolio of illustrations, so I close my eyes and touch the screen.
And then it’s like an actual cone of silence has descended over me, because all the little sounds in the room fade away. I no longer hear the old wooden chairs squeaking, or the tap of Wild Thing’s pencil, or the muffled whispers of people wondering where our professor could be. All I can hear is the beating of my own heart, and it’s racing so fast I’m pretty sure I could look down and see it bouncing around in my chest.
Because this one isn’t a rejection at all.
Dear Natalie,
Thanks so much for sending me the first fifty pages of TAG. I love the premise of embedding magic spells in graffiti, and I’m really enjoying the Parisian setting. The scene in the catacombs made me late for lunch yesterday!
I would love to see more. Please send the rest of the manuscript as a Word attachment.
Are you working on anything else?
Best,
Felicity Burns
Holy shit. Holy holy holy shit shit shit. I clutch the phone to my chest and stare around the room, wondering if I look different than I did a few
minutes ago. Can they tell I just got the very best email of my life?
I go back and read it again, savoring the exclamation point at the end of the sentence about missing her lunch. My words made that happen. A big shot New York literary agent was hungry because of me. I, Natalie Berenson, have that kind of power.
I giggle like a loon, which earns me a few more dirty looks, but what do I care? Endorphins are flooding through my body, and I open up a message to text the news to Piper. I even type it out, but then I remember that she knows nothing about the book or the agent. Nobody does.
I delete the message and open my email again to stare at my beautiful salvation. Felicity Burns likes my story. She wants to see more of it. If I send her the rest tonight, she could maybe even read it, love it, and offer me representation by the end of the frickin’ week.
I wonder if it’s too late to get a refund on this class.
“Phone sex?”
I look to my left and see the girl next to me grinning. “Excuse me?”
She nods down at my phone. “Sex?”
“Um, no thank you?” She’s kind of cute, I guess, but the professor will be here any second and I’m not that bored. Or into girls.
She laughs. “No, I meant are you having phone sex? Because you just got all red and then your eyes started shining and you sort of squealed.”
I am killing it with first impressions lately.
“Not sex,” I tell her seriously. “More like salvation. Am I bathed in heavenly light right now? Because that’s how I feel.”
She tilts her head and gazes at me for a second. “Kind of,” she says. “But then, you’re also sitting under the window. So.”