Rules We're Meant to Break

by Natalie Williamson

  “Well,” Hannah says, because there’s really nothing else to say about this whole situation that we haven’t covered ad nauseam in the last few weeks. “Is the unpacking going okay at least?”

  I think of the maze of boxes I had to navigate this morning when I was trying to find my work clothes, and of the judgmental look Buffy gave me when I tripped over a stack of books on my way to get her more water from the bathroom. No way am I telling Hannah this though. It’d make her worry more, and she already does enough of that where I’m concerned. “Yeah. I mean, it’s slow. But it’s coming along.”

  “Good,” she says, smiling now. “You know I’m always game to help if you need it, right?”

  This last part comes out a little uncertain, and I get this prickle of guilt that she’s still so clearly worried about our fight. “I know you are. It’s just, you know the rules, Han, and you know why they matter more than ever now. I don’t want to mess with the status quo this early in the game.”

  She nods, her smile fading a little even as a grim sort of understanding settles over her face. “Of course,” she says quickly. “I get it.”

  Desperate for a change of subject, I reach for my smoothie, take a long drink, and then say the first thing that pops into my head. “Did you know Jordan Baugh lives in Harper Ridge?”

  “What!” Hannah sits up straighter in her seat. “How did I not know this? How do you know this?”

  “I saw him while I was walking Buffy last night,” I admit. “His house is next door to The Castle.”

  “No shit?” she says, her expression gleeful. “Maybe he can be, like, your escape plan if things get too weird at home. You can walk Buffy over to his house all the time.”

  “I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself, Han. I don’t even really know him.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve always wanted to get to know him.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “So this new proximity can be your in.”

  I shake my head at her, but I’m fighting a smile now. And I can’t help picturing Jordan how I saw him last night, lit up from behind, his expression earnest as he watched me leave. “Maybe.”

  “You should invite him to my Halloween party,” she says.

  Every Halloween Hannah has a Buffy viewing party at her house, where we eat tons of junk food, watch all of the Halloween episodes of Buffy, and generally have a fabulous time. Usually it’s only me, Hannah, and our friend Ryan and whatever girl he’s dating, but this year Hannah invited Elliot, a guy from her physics class that she likes. I don’t mind being the fifth wheel to the two of them plus Ryan and whoever he brings, but it could be nice to have someone there for me. “Hmm. I’ll think about it.”

  “Deal,” Hannah says, looking pleased with herself. “You know what else you need to think about? When we’re going to Lawrence to visit my brother. He was texting me yesterday asking about it.”

  Just like that the warm, fizzy feeling I got from thinking about Jordan Baugh is gone. Hannah’s brother Matt is a sophomore at KU, and he and his best friend from the dorms have an apartment off campus. Hannah made a few day trips to Lawrence last year with her parents, but now that Matt has his own place with a roommate their parents trust, the Spencers are cool with letting her make a trip by herself. She’s been dying for me to come with, and I so wish I could make it happen. I’m not optimistic though. My mom is pretty anti-KU, especially since we filled out the FAFSA last week and found out I might not qualify for any Pell Grants. She wants me to stay in town for school and live at home so I can avoid taking out loans, but I want to go away and live on my own no matter how much debt it puts me in. Eyes on the horizon and all that.

  “I haven’t talked to my mom about it yet,” I say, fiddling with the crouton on the table. “With the move and everything…”

  “I get it,” Hannah says quickly, but she can’t totally mask the disappointment in her voice, and that disappointment makes me feel so guilty.

  “I’ll ask her soon. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Hannah says, though I can tell by the look on her face that she doesn’t quite believe me. She looks like she wants to say something else, but then she glances over my shoulder and winces. “Shit. There’s a line again and Vince is giving me the evil eye.”

  “But you haven’t even finished your food,” I say, looking down at her mostly untouched plate. We’ve been too busy talking to really eat much.

  “I’ll stick it in the fridge in the break room,” she says, getting to her feet. “See you in the commons in the morning?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding.

  “Cool,” she says, grabbing her plate. “Tell your mom hi for me, okay? And seriously, Amber, ask her about our trip. She might surprise you.”

  “I will. Now go before you get in trouble.” I shoo her away.

  She grins and starts toward the kitchen, but before she disappears behind the counter she calls, “Be nice to Kevin!” over her shoulder at me.

  I smile in spite of myself and shake my head at her retreating form. Typical Hannah. I thought we’d be able to get through a hangout without her reminding me to be a good person, but no. Of course we can’t. Yet another reason why I’ve kept her around so long.

  three

  When I get back to the house, Mom and Kevin are in the process of organizing Mom’s baking gear. She has so much that it won’t all fit in the kitchen, so Kevin bought her some new shelves for the dining room to display all her nice pieces and fit all her extra gadgets. He’s been in there trying to put them together since before I left for work, and judging by the muttered curse words I hear coming from there the second I walk in the door, I’d say it’s safe to assume things are not going well. He might be skilled at aligning jaws and closing tooth gaps and all the other orthodontic things he does, but assembling furniture is clearly not Kevin’s forte.

  They’re so distracted by the project that I manage to slip past them mostly unnoticed, with only vague hellos as I move to let Buffy out in the backyard. We stay outside for a few minutes and then I take her up to my room to finally start on the weekend reading for English class. We’re in the middle of Beowulf, which I am so not enjoying, but it’ll be a good distraction from the maze of boxes that is currently surrounding my bed.

  I’ve been reading for maybe half an hour when I hear footsteps on the stairs. I close my copy of Beowulf around my finger to mark my place and sit up on the bed just in time for Mom to poke her head in the doorway. Buffy is stretched out in my closet today instead of on the bed next to me, and the second my mom appears her tail starts thumping on the carpet.

  “What’s up?” I ask, as a faint Ouch! echoes from downstairs.

  “I, ah, couldn’t stop laughing at the situation downstairs,” Mom admits, which makes me snort in surprise, “so I decided it was time for me to take a break.”

  We grin at each other for a second, and I wonder if I should ask her about Lawrence now, while she’s in a good mood. Maybe she’ll be more likely to say yes. But she clears her throat and speaks up again before I can get the words out.

  “I also wanted to make sure you’ll be here for dinner tonight.”

  I go still. “I was planning on it,” I say slowly. “Why?”

  “That’s good. Cammie’s coming over,” Mom says. “We’d like for you to be here too.”

  Of course they would. I wish I would’ve said I was going to Hannah’s, but it’s too late now. I can tell by Mom’s tone that this is not something I can get out of. So I nod. “I’ll be here.” And then, because it can’t hurt to ask for reinforcements, I say, “Can I invite Hannah?”

  Mom shakes her head. “No. Tonight will be the four of us. Family.”

  She doesn’t even stumble over that last word, though I can tell by the way she averts her eyes that she knew I wouldn’t like it and decided to use it anyway. Mom always wants to pretend like her boyfriends and their kids are our family. She doesn’t seem to get that family means permanence. That you can’t just go out and get new members
when you get tired of the ones you have.

  “Family. Right,” I say. She flinches, which is satisfying. I hold up my book. “I need to finish this. What time is dinner?”

  “We’ll plan on eating at six,” she says, studying me.

  “Okay. I’ll be ready.”

  “Thank you,” she says, taking a step back into the hall. “I love you.”

  I don’t say anything back.

  Once I hear Mom’s footsteps on the stairs, I pat my hand on the bed and softly call, “Buffy.” Buffy, never one to turn down an invitation to get on people beds, comes right up next to me and curls into my side. She gently rests her head on my ankles and lets out one of her deep sighs, and I’m more glad than ever that I have her. At least when this thing with Mom and Kevin is all over, she’ll still be here. Just like she was last time.

  * * *

  “Oh my God,” Cammie says as soon as the door closes behind her a few hours later. “What is that?” I’m in the still-cluttered dining room setting the table, so I can’t see her face, but it doesn’t matter. Her tone tells me pretty much everything I need to know. So that’s why Kevin was so weird about having Buffy here.

  “That’s Buffy,” Kevin says. His voice is very soothing, the way I imagine he talks to particularly freaked-out patients.

  “Buffy?” Cammie echoes.

  I bristle at the sarcasm in her voice. She either doesn’t know where the name comes from or she has bad taste in TV shows. I can’t decide which is worse.

  “Buffy,” Kevin repeats. “She’s Amber’s dog. Very well trained.”

  “Speaking of Amber,” my mother says. “Amber, honey, can you come in here, please?”

  I sigh and dump the last of the silverware on the table, then go into the kitchen. Mom’s at the stove, stirring something that smells like onions in a skillet, and Kevin is hovering halfway between the island and the door to the garage, where Cammie is watching Buffy warily. Buffy’s a polite three paces back from her in a very nice sit, and she looks at me as I come into the room. Cammie follows her gaze and narrows her eyes at me.

  “Can you get it away?” she asks, with her hands down at her sides like she’s two seconds away from making a shooing motion.

  I think about saying no to spite her for calling Buffy an it, but I don’t want to make Buffy seem mean or bad. Plus my mom and Kevin are looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to take care of this. So I sigh again and pat my thighs. “Buffy, here.” With one last glance at Cammie, Buffy gets up and trots over to my side.

  Cammie doesn’t even say thank you. She just stalks past me and into the dining room, where she sits down with her back to me. I frown and open my mouth to say something, but Mom clears her throat. I glance over at her and she shakes her head at me, eyes narrowed. So I snap my mouth closed again and say, “Buffy, come on. Let’s go.” After one last sniff in Cammie’s direction, Buffy follows me out of the room.

  I take Buffy up to my room and tell her to hang out there. She gives me a wounded look but stays when I leave, curling into a ball inside the doorway and watching as I head back toward the stairs. I wish I could stay up here with her, but I know that’s not an option for me. Mom would be all over my shit if I did that, would accuse me of being antisocial and rude. Which would be true, but it would probably be better than me being rude in person downstairs.

  The food’s ready by the time I get back to the kitchen, and I help Mom and Kevin move the serving dishes over to the dining room table so we can eat. The shelves are assembled now but not all of Mom’s stuff is put away, so things are cramped and awkward as we try to get everything ready. Cammie doesn’t offer to help; she actually doesn’t say anything at all. She stays in her chair, messing with her phone, until the three of us sit down with her.

  “Cammie,” Mom says, smiling at her and holding out the bowl of black beans, “would you like some beans?”

  “No.”

  Mom’s smile falters. “Oh, okay.”

  “I’ll have some, Mom,” I say, and she shoots me a grateful smile and passes me the bowl.

  For the next few minutes, we don’t say much. There’s just the clinking of plates and cleared throats and quiet muttering to pass this or that. Mom looks like she wants to say something else but doesn’t know what, so she’s compensating by smiling so wide I can see all her teeth. Kevin’s really focused on his plate, probably because Mom accidentally made his gluten free enchilada recipe with flour tortillas. I eat a lot of chips and guac, because the enchiladas are burned on the edges (a sure sign Mom is nervous, because she never burns things) and I don’t like the sauce anyway. And Cammie watches my mother and me like we are aliens who have crash-landed in her life, which I guess in a way is true. In the past, I’ve usually been the one eyeballing people like that at dinner, as Mom’s boyfriends and their families sat at our kitchen table and fed us their own bad food. It’s weird to be on the other side of things. I like it even less than I thought I would.

  “So, Amber,” Kevin says, shooting a hopeful smile across the table at me once the silence has stretched beyond awkward and into uncomfortable territory. “I noticed Buffy has a KU collar. Does that mean that’s where you want to go to school next year?”

  “Um … yeah.” I glance at my mom in time to see the corners of her mouth tighten in disapproval. But Kevin starts talking again before she can change the subject.

  “I’m a Jayhawk, did you know that?” he asks. I shake my head and he nods. “Undergrad. Class of ’93.”

  “Oh. That’s nice.” I don’t know what else to say except I don’t care. Which of course I can’t say, because that would go over about as well as the enchiladas.

  “It is,” he says, and he sounds like he really means it. Weird. “That’s where Cam is planning to go for school too. Right, kiddo?”

  Cammie gives him a dirty look across the table. “I guess.” Then she turns to my mother. “Did you know these enchiladas are burned?”

  We don’t talk at all after that.

  Finally, finally, we finish eating, and I start clearing plates off the table without any prompting from my mother, just to have something to do. I’m coming back to grab more when I hear Cammie say, “I’m gonna go.”

  Kevin’s chair is facing me so I see his face as it falls. “But, sweetheart,” he says, “we talked about this.”

  Cammie pushes her chair away from the table and gets up. Her added height is not very impressive since she’s so tiny, but the way she’s avoiding her dad’s gaze is. “I changed my mind,” she says. “I’m going back to Mom’s.”

  She leaves without another word to any of us, slamming the door to the garage loudly as she goes.

  I finish clearing off the table and start on the dishes, trying to ignore the tension in my mother’s face and the hurt flashing across Kevin’s. Rule number eight is to stay out of any drama with the boyfriend or his family, no matter how tempting it might be to get involved. So even though I wonder what Kevin and Cammie talked about, and why Cammie said she was going back to her mom’s instead of saying she was going home, I don’t let myself dwell on it.

  When I’m done cleaning up I go up to my room and get Buffy. I tell Mom and Kevin that I’m going for a walk, but they’re deep in conversation in the living room and I’m not sure they even hear me. So I scribble a note on the whiteboard Kevin keeps on the fridge and then head out into the night.

  four

  This time, I head toward The Castle on purpose. I haven’t stopped thinking about what Hannah said earlier today about inviting Jordan to her Halloween party, and thinking about him is way more fun than replaying dinner on an excruciating loop in my head. So I lead Buffy in the direction of his house and tell myself that if he’s outside, I’ll at least talk to him again.

  The walk goes by a lot faster tonight. It feels like one second I’m reaching the end of Kevin’s cul-de-sac and the next I’m turning down Jordan’s. This street is longer and curves around on itself, so Jordan’s house and The Castle ar
en’t visible from the main road. I don’t hear any dribbling, but that doesn’t totally kill the rush of anticipation I get as Buffy and I come around the bend. Anticipation turns to disappointment about a second later though, because his house is dark and quiet, and there’s a little blue Honda parked right under the basketball hoop.

  Well. At least walking here was a good distraction in and of itself. Hopefully Mom and Kevin will have gone to bed by the time Buffy and I get back.

  I debate turning around and calling it a night, but Buffy gives me a look when I slow my pace. She will clearly be miffed if she doesn’t get a chance to sniff every single house on this block again. So we keep moving, a little slower this time. And even though I tell myself not to, I sneak glances at Jordan’s house as we go.

  I check out the car, too. It’s not Jordan’s—his Jeep is parked on the curb next to the mailbox—but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it at school before. There’s a sticker in the corner of the back windshield that looks vaguely familiar, and I squint at it in the semidarkness as Buffy and I go, trying to make out what it says.

  It isn’t until Buffy and I are level with Jordan’s driveway on his side of the street that I can see the main part of the sticker—a falcon, our school’s mascot. A lot of the student athletes have the same sticker on their cars, so I’d guess this belongs to one of Jordan’s friends from basketball or the dance team. I can’t read the name and sport on the sticker, though, and without really thinking about it I take a step closer to the car. The motion light over the garage clicks on when I do, and I snap my gaze to Jordan’s front door, worried someone will come out and catch me here creeping.

  But the night is still quiet, and after a beat I realize no one is coming. So I blow out a breath, reach down to scratch Buffy’s head, and look at the car again. It’s bright enough now that I can finally make out the full sticker, but it takes me a second to process what I’m seeing.