All Our Worst Ideas

by Vicky Skinner

  She laughs, and the knots in my stomach loosen a little. Yes, I want to kiss her again. Yes, I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with her. And yes, I thought that kiss meant something. I thought maybe it meant the beginning of something real between us. But I can handle all that stuff on my own as long as Amy keeps laughing the way she just did.

  Amy stops beside her car, shivering a little, even though it’s much warmer than it was last time we walked like this. “Friends, huh?”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  She keeps her head down again. “Oli, I’m pretty sure you’re my best friend.”

  I walked into work today hoping and praying that Amy would want me. That she’d tell me that kiss was the greatest moment of her life, the way it was for me.

  But hearing her say that I’m her best friend is easily a close second.

  And then she says, “Hey, Oli? Do you have dinner plans next Sunday?”

  AMY

  AT FAMILY DINNER on Sunday, I yawn so loud, the sound actually drowns out the noise of my siblings fighting with my cousins, and Mama and Abuela yelling at them to stop.

  Beside me, Abuela nudges me with her elbow. “Why are you so tired, mija? You’re not sleeping?”

  No, I’m not sleeping. Because I’m studying calculus problems every night until I fear my eyes are going to burst. I can practically feel the blood vessels in my eyes pulsing.

  “Just a lot to do,” I say, hoping she’ll leave it at that. But Abuela has never been one to let anything lie.

  Just then, the doorbell rings, and the entire table goes silent. Carlos, sitting at the head of the table, looks around at my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my siblings, me. His thick eyebrows turn in. “Are we missing someone?” he asks.

  “Actually, I invited someone.” I push away from the table and go to the door, peeking through the peephole out of habit. Oliver is standing on my porch, and I’m staring at his distorted face through the peephole, even as he reaches out and rings the doorbell again.

  “Is it Jackson?” I hear Carlos ask someone at the table, or maybe everyone at the table.

  I step back and open the door.

  For a second, Oliver and I just stare at each other.

  “Hi,” I finally say when it appears that he’s going to say absolutely nothing. From the table behind me, I hear Mama call out, “Who is it, Amaría?”

  I’m not even sure how to answer that question. It’s simple enough. What is Oliver to me? My coworker? My friend? The guy I made out with on top of a counter at work?

  Before I even have the chance to answer, I feel hands wrap around me, two around my leg and two around my waist and Gabriella and Marisa are peeking up at Oliver from behind me.

  “Oh my gosh!” Gabi shrieks. “Are you Amy’s boyfriend?”

  I flinch in horror and reach down to pry their fingers off me. “Gabi, Mari, get away from here! Go back to dinner!” But they haven’t even had a chance to go before the boys have approached, one from each side. “No!” I shout before they can open their mouths and add to the already awkward situation.

  They scatter, but then it’s Mama walking over from the dining room, opening the door enough that she can see out onto the porch.

  “Hello,” she says, gripping the door and smiling out at Oliver that way she only smiles at teachers and complete strangers. “And who are you?”

  The way Mama looks Oliver up and down makes me certain I made a mistake inviting him. It occurred to me seconds after I invited him that it might be a mistake, but all I could think about was having to face family dinner alone and how much easier it might be if I had Oliver at my side.

  “Mama, this is Oliver York. We work together at Spirits. Oliver, this is my mom.”

  Oliver reaches out to shake Mama’s hand, but she still looks skeptical, which makes me want to bark at her because Oliver is probably the only person in my life who isn’t completely full of shit.

  But Oliver just smiles and steps into the house, closing me in between his tall body and Mama’s short one. I move out of the way and send Mama a look to tell her to back off as Oliver comes all the way inside. He’s glancing around the house, and finally his eyes land on the dining room, where my entire immediate family is crammed around our tiny dining table. He walks toward them with an expression on his face that I’ve never seen before, either amazement or utter fear.

  The table goes quiet, and then, like a bomb going off, it erupts into noise again. People are shifting to make room for Oliver, Mama is bringing out the piano stool from the living room, the one we’ve kept even though the actual piano has been gone for ages, and Oliver and I are being herded toward the table with extreme fervor.

  We’re barely seated before people start throwing questions in Oliver’s direction—What’s your name? Are you in school? Do you have a job? Where do you live? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Oliver tries to answer the questions as politely as he can without giving too much away: Oliver York, taking a year off, works with Amy, lives on the other side of Kansas City, closer to Independence than the Kansas-Missouri line, no brothers or sisters.

  It’s this last answer that makes everyone go silent, and when Oliver elaborates (no aunts or uncles or cousins, just him, his mom, and his dad, who doesn’t live with them), everyone goes quiet, shocked.

  “Just you and your mom at home?” Mama finally asks. “Doesn’t that get lonely?”

  I want to kick her, but she’s too far away from me. “Mama,” I say, because I’m used to her asking me inappropriate questions, but to ask Oliver? Really?

  Mama ignores me, and so does Oliver. “Yeah,” he says finally. “The house is always quiet, but this is the hand I’ve been dealt.”

  For the first time, I see honest sadness in Oliver’s eyes. Honest regret. It never really occurred to me that maybe Oli is lonely. Sure, we talked about the fact that he isn’t much of a people person and doesn’t really have friends, but I didn’t think that meant he’s completely lonely, or even that he’s sad about it.

  As several conversations kick up around the table, I lean over to Oliver and say in his ear, “I’m sorry about all this.”

  His eyebrows go up. “I was going to be at home by myself, eating leftover pizza and watching March Madness. This is better.” He shoves some food in his mouth and smiles. “What is this, by the way? It’s delicious.”

  I glance down at his plate. “Lengua. Cow tongue.”

  He stops chewing for a second, then shrugs and keeps eating.

  OLIVER

  WALKING INTO AMY’S family dinner is like walking into a circus where you’re expected to participate even though you have no idea what’s going on. After dinner, everyone gathers around Amy’s tiny coffee table in the living room, taking seats in chairs, on tables, on the floor, anywhere they can reach, and then they just keep talking. They’ve already been talking for more than an hour, but no one ever seems to run out of things to say.

  After Amy is finished helping her mother with the dishes, she takes a seat beside me on the floor, pressing her back to the wall and nudging me with her shoulder. I nudge her back. All I can think about is that soon, I’ll have to go back to my own house, back to the quiet, to the loneliness. It starts to make anxiety rise in my chest, but then Amy scoots closer to me.

  “Thanks for coming,” she says.

  We fall into silence, letting everyone else’s conversations overlap our own. “Your family is so big and so—”

  “Mexican?”

  “I was going to say exciting.”

  “That’s just the nice way of saying they’re loud.”

  I tap my fingers against my knee. “Forgive me if this is a terribly offensive question, but Amy Richardson isn’t exactly a traditional Mexican name.”

  She nods, her eyes roving the room. “My name is Amaría. Amaría Richardson. My dad is as white as they come.” She snorts, and I’m a little mesmerized by her. Amaría. Beautiful. She keeps talking without looking at me. “Carlos isn’t
my real dad. But he’s been around since I was a kid. My dad lives in L.A., and I see him once a year.”

  “Just once?”

  “Yep.” She somehow seems to be opening up and building a wall between us at the exact same time.

  “Does that bother you?”

  She wraps her arms around her knees and presses her chin to them. “I guess not. Carlos has always been there when I needed a dad. I guess if I move to California, I’ll be seeing Dad more. Maybe.”

  “I wouldn’t even know what it’s like to have a real dad.”

  Amy rolls her chin on her knee. “What about the dad you have?”

  I shrug and look down at my worn-out sneakers. “He moved here from Scotland when my mom got pregnant. And then he kind of fell apart and started drinking. I’m all he has. And my mom, too, I guess.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure.”

  I shrug. “You’re under a lot of pressure, too. Valedictorian? First one in the family to go to college?” I only know this last part because Amy’s grandmother kept saying it over and over during dinner.

  Amy looks around, probably to make sure no one is listening. No one appears to be. “No one thinks I can do it.” She says it with a wry smile on her mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  She doesn’t say anything for a long time, but then finally, she leans in even closer to me, our faces so close, I could barely lean forward, and we would be kissing. “They’re always talking about how hard it all is, how expensive college is, how hard I have to work, as if I don’t know. They don’t really think I can make it happen. Maybe I don’t really think I can, either.”

  “Bullshit,” I say as quietly as I can, so nobody but Amy can hear me. “You can do anything you want. I’ve seen it.”

  She doesn’t answer, just looks at me for a long time, her expression unwavering.

  “What are you guys whispering about over there?” Amy’s mother asks loudly.

  I look over at Amy, and she smiles at me in a conspiratorial way. When she smiles like that, she lights up the whole room, the whole world. What would I do if I wasn’t right here next to her? How could anything else matter?

  When I’m finally able to tear my eyes from her, I see that Amy’s mother is standing up from the couch, her hands clasped in front of her. “We actually have been waiting until tonight to tell everyone the good news. Carlos just got a new manager job at Rudy’s Auto Repair.”

  The room kicks up in conversation and praise, and I smile over at Amy because I know this is something that’s been sitting on her shoulders since I met her. She looks like she’s about to join in the celebration when her mother looks over at her, the entire living room spanning between us and her, and says, “I know it’s been hard to fit a job into your schedule. If you need to quit now, you can.”

  The feeling I get is what I imagine it’s like to be struck by lightning. Amy can’t quit. She’s only just started. She’s only been at the shop for a few months, and she loves it there, and Brooke loves having her there, and what would Spirits even look like without her?

  I turn to Amy, ready to make a case for the shop, but she’s not looking at me, and no matter how long I sit here, waiting for her to say something, she just stares down at the carpet.

  AMY

  THE NEXT DAY, I’m leaving eighth period, my last class of the day, when my phone rings. It’s Brooke. I pause in the middle of the courtyard, afraid that she’s calling to fire me for some reason. Ever since Mama told me I could quit, which I know she only did because I’ve been so mad at her, I’ve been on edge about Spirits. Because I know quitting is the right thing to do so that I can focus on Stanford and graduation.

  But if I’m being honest with myself, I just don’t want to. I love Spirits, and I’m not sure I can handle the stress of everything else without it.

  “Amy!” Brooke practically shouts in my ear, her voice full of enthusiasm. Well, that’s a good sign. “Sorry. I know you’re not working tonight, but I thought you’d want to know that Oli’s mom is throwing him a surprise party for his birthday next week, on Wednesday. Not this Wednesday, next Wednesday. I know, Wednesday is a weird night for a party. I have to have Lauren cover at Spirits for me, but luckily, the only two people his mom invited are Marshal and me because, well, Oli doesn’t actually have that many friends, but she doesn’t really know you yet, so I thought I’d extend the invitation. It’s Wednesday at his place, and I can give you a ride if you don’t know how to get there. We have to be there at six forty-five, and Oli is showing up at seven.”

  I stand in the center of the quad and stare down at my shoes. “You just said a lot of words really fast.”

  “I’ll text you the info.” She hangs up.

  “Wednesday at six forty-five,” I say, racking my brain, trying to figure out if I have any other responsibilities that day. It’s a gymnastics and karate day for the twins, so I’ll definitely have to take Brooke up on her offer to give me a ride, since my parents will have to split in order to get all the kids to their activities on time. “Wednesday at six forty-five,” I say again.

  From behind me, someone says, “What’s Wednesday at six forty-five?”

  I whip around to see Jackson behind me, leaning against the flagpole.

  “Birthday party,” I say, and then suck my lips in between my teeth because why did I just tell him that? It isn’t any of Jackson’s business what I’m going to be doing on Wednesday at six forty-five, and he certainly shouldn’t be eavesdropping on my conversations.

  Jackson smirks at me. “Anyone I know?”

  I think about Oliver walking into Jackson’s party and demanding my car keys back. “No.”

  I see confusion flash across his face, like he can’t believe that I’m not going to tell him who it is. Or perhaps he doesn’t believe that I might have friends he doesn’t know about. And I’m not positive that’s an unwarranted belief.

  “I should go,” I tell him, pointing over my shoulder. “I have to get to the library to get some homework done. Big test on Friday in AP bio.”

  “Right,” Jackson says, nodding, even though I’m pretty sure he forgot all about the test. “Can I walk with you?”

  I hesitate, feeling everything inside me go a little stiff. “Don’t you, like, have to, like, meet your girlfriend or something?”

  Jackson sighs and then starts walking in the direction of the library, even though I never actually said he could walk with me. “Look, Ames, I’m sorry you found out that way. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  I scoff, trying to sound more casual than I feel. “It’s fine, Jackson. We broke up two months ago. You’re certainly allowed to date whoever you want.” I can almost completely convince myself that I mean what I’m saying, but of course, in my head, I’m thinking, It’s only been two months and is that all it takes to get over someone you were with for almost a year?

  Jackson puts his hands in his pockets as we walk, and we’re back to where we were right after the breakup—quiet and awkward.

  My phone buzzes, and I look down to see a text from Oli.

  Do you think going to AA meetings with my dad will prevent me from becoming an alcoholic?

  It buzzes again.

  Like preventative medicine?

  And again.

  Like, going to AA is the equivalent to getting a flu shot?

  I scroll through the messages and laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Jackson asks, his eyes sliding over to the phone resting in my palm, and, for reasons I can hardly even understand, I slip my phone into my pocket so Jackson can’t see it.

  “Nothing,” I say, just as I see a blur out of the corner of my eye. And then someone’s arm is being looped through mine, and I’m looking up at Petra.

  But her eyes aren’t on me; they’re on Jackson.

  “If I could just steal my study partner,” she says to him with a tight smile on her face.

  For a second, Jackson looks a little stricken, but then he stops walking, an
d like she’s on a mission, Petra keeps moving.

  “You’re not doing a great job avoiding your ex,” she says once we’ve moved far enough away that I know Jackson can’t hear us, and between her words and her arm through mine, I feel like I’ve been swept into another dimension. As far as I can remember, this is the first time that Petra has ever touched me, and looking down at her arm hooked through mine, I wonder how I ended up here.

  OLIVER

  WHEN WE WALK into the A.A. meeting, I’m expecting people like my dad, middle-age men who look hopeless and rundown, but the room is full of people of all ages and genders. There are even people my age.

  A nice woman in a sweater-vest takes the podium at the front of the room and smiles. “Welcome, everyone. It’s so nice to see you here. Hello to all our familiar faces and hello, also, to our new ones. There’s a few of you.” Her gaze lands on us, and I glance around to see if maybe someone else is here for the first time and making it obvious. Everyone is looking at us.

  “I’d love to hear from some people today. Is there anyone who has a story to tell? Has it been a good week or a difficult one?”

  We sit in silence for a moment but then someone volunteers, stepping up to the podium to tell us she had a drink this week with a friend but didn’t relapse. Another goes after her to say that he’s made it exactly three months and feels better than ever.

  I’m not sure how long this is supposed to go on, having never been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before, but a glance at the clock tells me it’s been forty-five minutes—forty-five minutes of stories, some of them triumphant, some of them not so much.

  The woman in the sweater-vest makes her way to the podium and smiles out at everyone. “My name is Pam. Most of you know me. I started drinking just after my son was born, and I didn’t stop even after I got pregnant with my middle daughter and then my youngest daughter. I started with the excuses: I was stressed from work, one glass a day was good for my health, and next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed with someone I didn’t know in the middle of the night, still drunk, only to find that I’d left my kids at home, alone. I’ve been sober now for seven years.”