by Sarah Dessen
I swallowed, looking outside again. From anyone else, this would be hardly an insult, if even noticeable. But even I knew Jamie well enough to understand it as the serious snub it was.
Cora came over, sliding into the chair opposite mine. “Hey,” she said, keeping her eyes on me until I finally turned to face her. “It’s okay. You guys will work this out. He’s just hurt right now.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I said as a lump rose in my throat. I was suddenly embarrassed, although whether by the fact I was crying, or crying in front of Cora was hard to say.
“I know.” She reached over, sliding her hand onto mine. “But you have to understand, this is all new to him. In his family, everyone talks about everything. People don’t take off; they don’t come home drunk. He’s not like us.”
Like us. Funny how up until recently—like maybe even the night before—I hadn’t been convinced there was an us here at all. So maybe things could change. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I really am.”
She nodded, then sat back, dropping her hand. “I appreciate that. But the fact is, we did trust you, and you betrayed that trust. So there have to be some consequences.”
Here it comes, I thought. I sat back, picking up my water bottle, and braced myself.
“First,” she began, “no going out on weeknights. Weekends, only for work, for the foreseeable future. We strongly considered making you give up your job, but we’ve decided to let you keep it through the holidays, with the provision that we revisit the issue in January. If we find out that you skipped school again, the job goes. No discussion.”
“All right,” I said. It wasn’t like I was in any position to argue.
Cora swallowed, then looked at me for a long moment. “I know a lot happened yesterday. It was emotional for both of us. But you doing drugs or drinking . . . that’s unnacceptable. It’s a violation of the agreement we arranged so you could come here, and if the courts ever found out, you’d have to go back to Poplar House. It cannot happen again.”
I had a flash of the one night I’d stayed there: the scratchy pajamas, the narrow bed, the house director reading over the sheriff’s report while I sat in front of her, silent. I swallowed, then said, “It’s not going to.”
“This is serious, Ruby,” she said. “I mean, when I saw you come in like that last night, I just . . .”
“I know,” I said.
“. . . it’s too familiar,” she finished. Then she looked at me, hard. “For both of us. You’re better than that. You know it.”
“It was stupid of me,” I said. “I just . . . When you told me that about Mom, I just kind of freaked.”
She looked down at the salt shaker between us, sliding it sideways, then back again. “Look, the bottom line is, she lied to both of us. Which shouldn’t really be all that surprising. That said, though, I wish I could have made it easier for you, Ruby. I really do. There’s a lot I’d do different, given the chance.”
I didn’t want to ask. Luckily, I didn’t have to.
“I’ve thought about it so much since I left, how I could have tried harder to keep in touch,” she said, smoothing back a few curls with her hand. “Maybe I could have found a way to take you with me, rent an apartment or something. ”
“Cora. You were only eighteen.”
“I know. But I also knew Mom was unstable, even then. And things only got worse,” she said. “I shouldn’t have trusted her to let you get in touch with me, either. There were steps I could have taken, things I could have done. I mean, now, at work, I deal every day with these kids from messed-up families, and I’m so much better equipped to handle it. To handle taking care of you, too. But if I’d only known then—”
“Stop,” I said. “It’s over. Done. It doesn’t matter now.”
She bit her lip. “I want to believe that,” she said. “I really do.”
I looked at my sister, remembering how I’d always followed her around so much as a kid, clinging to her more and more as my mom pulled away. What a weird feeling to find myself back here, dependent on her again. Just as I thought this, something occurred to me. “Cora?”
“Yeah? ”
“Do you remember that day you left for school?”
She nodded.
“Before you left, you went back in and spoke to Mom. What did you say to her?”
She exhaled, sitting back in her chair. “Wow,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”
I wasn’t sure why I’d asked her this, or if it was even important. “She never mentioned it,” I said. “I just always wondered.”
Cora was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if she was even going to answer me at all. But then she said, “I told her that if I found out she ever hit you, I would call the police. And that I was coming back for you as soon as I could, to get you out of there.” She reached up, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I believed that, Ruby. I really did. I wanted to take care of you.”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
“It’s not,” she continued, over me. “But now, here, I have the chance to make up for it. Late, yes, but I do. I know you don’t want to be here, and that it’s far from ideal, but . . . I want to help you. But you have to let me. Okay?”
This sounded so passive, so easy, although I knew it wasn’t. As I thought this, though, I had a flash of Peyton again, standing at the bottom of that stairway. Why are you surprised? she’d said, and for all the wrongness of the situation, I knew she was right. You get what you give, but also what you’re willing to take. The night before, I’d offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to receive in return.
For a moment we just sat there, the quiet of the kitchen all around us. Finally I said, “Do you think Mom’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. And then, more softly, “I hope so.”
Maybe to anyone else, her saying this would have seemed strange. But to me, it made perfect sense, as this was the pull of my mother: then, now, always. For all the coldness, her bad behavior, the slights and outright abuse, we were still tied to her. It was like those songs I’d heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When I got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn’t make me love them any less. By then, they were already part of me, woven into my consciousness and memory. I couldn’t cut them away any more easily than I could my mother herself. And neither could Cora. This was what we had in common—what made us this us.
After outlining the last few terms of my punishment (mandatory checking-in after school, agreeing to therapy, at least for a little while), Cora squeezed my shoulder, then left the room, Roscoe rousing himself from where he’d been planted in the doorway to follow her upstairs. I sat in the quiet of the kitchen for a moment, then I went out to the pond.
The fish were down deep, but after crouching over the water for a few minutes, I could make out my white one, circling by some moss-covered rocks. I’d just pushed myself to my feet when I heard the bang of a door slamming. When I turned, expecting to see Cora, no one was there, and I realized the sound had come from Nate’s house. Sure enough, a moment later I saw a blond head bob past on the other side of the fence, then disappear.
Like the night before, when I’d been poised with Roscoe at the top of the walk, my first instinct was to go back inside. Avoid, deny, at least while it was still an option. But Nate had taken me out of those woods. For my own twisted reasons, I might not have wanted to believe this made us friends. But now, if nothing else, we were something.
I went inside, picked up his sweatshirt from the counter, then took in a breath and started across the grass to the fence. The gate was slightly ajar, and I could see Nate through the open door to the nearby pool house, leaning over a table. I slid through the gate, then walked around the pool to come up behind him. He was opening up a stack of small bags, then lining them up one by one.
“Let me guess,” I said. “They’re for cupcakes.”
I stepped in behind him, then walked around to the other side of the table. The room itself, meant to be some kind of cabana, was mostly empty and clearly used for the business; a rack on wheels held a bunch of dry-cleaning, and I recognized some of Harriet’s milk-crate storage system piled against a wall. There was also a full box of WE WORRY SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO air fresheners by the door, giving the room a piney scent that bordered on medicinal.
I watched quietly as Nate continued to open bags until the entire table was covered. Then he reached beneath it for a box and began pulling plastic-wrapped objects out of it, dropping one in each bag. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
“So,” I said as he worked his way down the line, “about yesterday.”
“You look like you feel better.”
“Define better.”
“Well,” he said, glancing at me, “you’re upright. And conscious.”
“Kind of sad when that’s an improvement,” I said.
“But it is an improvement,” he replied. “Right?”
I made a face. Positivity anytime was hard for me to take, but in the morning with a hangover, almost impossible. “So,” I said, holding out the sweatshirt, “I wanted to bring this back to you. I figured you were probably missing it.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking it and laying it on a chair behind him. “It is my favorite.”
“It does have that feel,” I replied. “Well worn and all that.”
“True,” he said, going back to the bags. “But it also reflects my personal life philosophy.”
I looked at the sweatshirt again. “‘You swim’ is a philosophy? ”
He shrugged. “Better than ‘you sink,’ right?”
Hard to argue with that. “I guess.”
“Plus there’s the fact,” he said, “that wearing that sweatshirt is the closest I might get to the U now.”
“I thought you had a scholarship,” I said, remembering the guy who’d called out to him in the parking lot.
“I did,” he said, going back to dropping things into the bags. “But that was before I quit swim team. Now I’ve got to get in strictly on my grades, which frankly are not as good as my swimming.”
I considered this as he moved down the next row, still adding things to the bags. “So why did you quit?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was really into it when I lived in Arizona, but here . . . it just wasn’t that fun anymore. Plus my dad needed me for the business.”
“Still, seems like a big decision, giving it up entirely,” I said.
“Not really,” he replied. He reached down, picking up another box. “So, was it bad when you came in last night?”
“Yeah,” I said, somewhat surprised by the sudden change in subject. “Jamie was really pissed off.”
“Jamie was?”
“I know. It was bizarre.” I swallowed, taking a breath. “Anyway, I just wanted to say . . . that I appreciate what you did. Even if, you know, it didn’t seem like it at the time.”
“You weren’t exactly grateful,” he agreed. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
“I was a bitch. And I’m sorry.” I said this quickly, probably too quickly, and felt him look up at me again. So embarrassing, I thought, redirecting my attention to the bag in front of me. “What are you putting in there, anyway? ”
“Little chocolate houses,” he replied.
“What? ”
“Yeah,” he said, tossing one to me. “See for yourself. You can keep it, if you want.”
Sure enough, it was a tiny house. There were even windows and a door. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?” I said.
“Not really. This client’s a builder. I think they’re for some open house or something.”
I slid the house into my pocket as he dropped the box, which was now almost empty, and pulled out another one, which was full of brochures, a picture of a woman’s smiling face taking up most of the front. QUEEN HOMES, it said. LET US BUILD YOUR CASTLE! Nate started sliding one into each bag, working his way down the line. After watching him for a moment, I reached across, taking a handful myself and starting on the ones closest to me.
“You know,” he said, after we’d worked in silence for a moment, “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you by showing up yesterday. I just thought you might need help.”
“Clearly, I did,” I said, glad to have the bags to concentrate on. There was something soothing, orderly, to dropping in the brochures, each in its place. “If you hadn’t come, who knows what would have happened.”
Nate didn’t speculate as to this, which I had to admit I appreciated. Instead, he said, “Can I ask you something?”
I looked up at him, then slid another brochure in. “Sure.”
“What was it really like, living on your own?”
I’d assumed this would be a question about yesterday, like why I’d done it, or a request for further explanation of my twisted theories on friendship. This, however, was completely unexpected. Which was probably why I answered it honestly. “It wasn’t bad at first,” I said. “In fact, it was kind of a relief. Living with my mom had never been easy, especially at the end.”
He nodded, then dropped the box onto the floor and pulled out another one, this one filled with magnets emblazoned with the Queen Homes logo. He held it out to me and I took a handful, then began working my way up the line. “But then,” I said, “it got harder. I was having trouble keeping up with bills, and the power kept getting turned off. . . .” I was wondering if I should go on, but when I glanced up, he was watching me intently, so I continued. “I don’t know. There was more to it than I thought, I guess.”
“That’s true for a lot of things,” he said.
I looked up at him again. “Yeah,” I said, watching him continue to drop in magnets, one by one. “It is.”
“Nate!” I heard a voice call from outside. Over his shoulder, I could see his dad, standing in the door to the main house, his phone to his ear. “Do you have those bags ready yet?”
“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, reaching down to pull out another box. “Just one sec.”
“They need them now,” Mr. Cross said. “We told them ten at the latest. Let’s move!”
Nate reached into the new box, which was full of individually wrapped votive candles in all different colors, and began distributing them at warp speed. I grabbed a handful, doing the same. “Thanks,” he said as we raced through the rows. “We’re kind of under the gun here.”
“No problem,” I told him. “And anyway, I owe you.”
“You don’t,” he said.
“Come on. You saved my ass yesterday. Literally.”
“Well,” he said, dropping in one last candle, “then you’ll get me back.”
“How? ”
“Somehow,” he said, looking at me. “We’ve got time, right? ”
“Nate!” Mr. Cross called out, his tone clearly disputing this. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
“I’m coming,” Nate said, picking up the empty boxes and beginning to stack the bags into them. I reached to help, but he shook his head. “It’s cool, I’ve got it. Thanks, anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Nate!”
He glanced over his shoulder at his dad, still standing in the doorway, then at me. “Yeah. I’m good. Thanks again for your help.”
I nodded, then stepped back from the table as he shoved the last of the bags into a box, stacking it onto the other one. As he headed for the door, I fell in behind him. “Finally,” Mr. Cross said as we came out onto the patio. “I mean, how hard is it—” He stopped, suddenly, seeing me. “Oh,” he said, his face and tone softening. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
“This is Ruby,” Nate said, bringing the box over to him.
“Of course,” Mr. Cross said, smiling at me. I tried to reciprocate, even though I suddenly felt unea
sy, remembering that night I’d seen him in this same place with Roscoe. “How’s that brother-in-law of yours doing? There’s some buzz he might be going public soon with his company. Any truth to that?”
“Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“We should go,” Nate said to him. “If they want us there by ten.”
“Right.” Still, Mr. Cross stayed where he was, smiling at me, as I started around the pool to the gate. I could see Nate behind him in the house. He was watching me as well, but when I raised my hand to wave, he stepped down a hallway, out of sight. “Take care,” Mr. Cross said, raising his hand to me. He thought I’d been waving at him. “Don’t be a stranger.”
I nodded, still feeling unsettled as I got to the fence and pushed my way through. Crossing the yard, I remembered the house Nate had given me, and reached down to pull it out and look at it again. It was so perfect, pristine, wrapped away in plastic and tied with a pretty bow. But there was something so eerie about it, as well—although what, I couldn’t say—that I found myself putting it away again.
“Okay,” I said, uncapping my pen. “What does family mean to you?”
“Not speaking,” Harriet replied instantly.
“Not speaking?” Reggie said.
“Yeah.”
He was just staring at her.
“What? What were you going to say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Comfort, maybe? History? The beginning of life?”
“Well, that’s you,” she told him. “For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.”
“Really,” I said.
“We’re passive-aggressive people,” she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. “Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I’m not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother.”
“How many kids are in your family?” I asked.
“Seven total.”
“That,” Reggie said, “is just plain sad.”
“Tell me about it,” Harriet said. “I never got enough time in the bathroom.”