by Sarah Dessen
Despite Cora’s concerns, when dinner did hit a snag, it wasn’t her fault. It was mine.
“Hey,” Jamie said as we cleared the table, having told Cora to stay put and relax. “Where are the pies?”
“Whoops,” I said. With all the time in the closet, not to mention the chaos of turkey for eighteen, I’d forgotten all about the ones over at Nate’s.
“Whoops,” Jamie repeated. “As in, whoops the dog ate them? ”
“No,” I said. “They’re still next door.”
“Oh.” He glanced into the dining room, biting his lip. “Well, we’ve got cookies and cake, too. I wonder if—”
“She’ll notice,” I said, answering this question for him. “I’ll go get them.”
It had been bustling and noisy at our house for so long that I was actually looking forward to the quiet of Nate’s house. When I stepped inside, all I could hear was the whirring of the heating system and my own footsteps.
Luckily, I’d set the timer, so the pies weren’t burned, although they were not exactly warm, either. I was just starting to arrange them back on the cookie sheets when I heard a thud from the other side of the wall.
It was solid and sudden, something hitting hard, and startled me enough that I dropped one of the pies onto the stove, where it hit a burner, rattling loudly. Then there was a crash, followed by the sound of muffled voices. Someone was in the garage.
I put down the pies, then stepped out into the hallway, listening again. I could still hear someone talking as I moved to the doorway that led to the garage, sliding my hand around the knob and carefully pulling it open. The first thing I saw was Nate.
He was squatting down next to a utility shelf that by the looks of it had been leaning against the garage wall up until very recently. Now, though, it was lying sideways across the concrete floor, with what I assumed were its contents—a couple of paint cans, some car-cleaning supplies, and a glass bowl, now broken—spilled all around it. Just as I moved forward to see if he needed help, I realized he wasn’t alone.
“. . . specifically said you should check the keys before you left,” Mr. Cross was saying. I heard him before I saw him, now coming into view, his phone clamped to his ear, one hand covering the receiver. “One thing. One thing I ask you to be sure of, and you can’t even get that right. Do you even know how much this could cost me? The Chambells are half our business in a good week, easily. Jesus!”
“I’m sorry,” Nate said, his head ducked down as he grabbed the paint cans, stacking them. “I’ll just get it now and go straight there.”
“It’s too late,” Mr. Cross said, snapping his phone shut. “You screwed up. Again. And now I’m going to have to deal with this personally if we’re going to have any hope of saving the account, which will put us even more behind.”
“You don’t. I’ll talk to them,” Nate told him. “I’ll tell them it was my fault—”
Mr. Cross shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice clenched. “Because that, Nate, is admitting incompetence. It’s bad enough I can’t count on you to get a single goddamned thing right, ever, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you blabbing about it to the clients like you’re proud of it.”
“I’m not,” Nate said, his voice low.
“You’re not what?” Mr. Cross demanded, stepping closer and kicking a bottle of Windex for emphasis. It hit the nearby lawnmower with a bang as he said, louder, “Not what, Nate?”
I watched as Nate, still hurriedly picking things up, drew in a breath. I felt so bad for him, and somehow guilty for being there. Like this was bad enough without me witnessing it. His voice was even quieter, hard to make out, as he said, “Not proud of it.”
Mr. Cross just stared at him for a moment. Then he shook his head and said, “You know what? You just disgust me. I can’t even look at your face right now.”
He turned, then crossed the garage toward me, and I quickly moved down the hallway, ducking into a bathroom. There, in the dark, I leaned back against the sink, listening to my own heart beat, hard, as he moved around the kitchen, banging drawers open and shut. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I heard him leave. I waited a full minute or two after hearing a car pull away before I emerged, and even then I was still shaken.
The kitchen looked the same, hardly touched, my pies right where I’d left them. Past the patio and over the fence, Cora’s house, too, was unchanged, the lights all bright downstairs. I knew they were waiting for the pies and for me, and for a moment I wished I could just go and join them, stepping out of this house, and what had just happened here, entirely. At one time, this might have even come naturally. But now, I opened the garage door and went to find Nate.
He was down on the floor, picking up glass shards and tossing them into a nearby trash can, and I just stood there and watched him for a second. Then I took my hand off the door behind me, letting it drop shut.
Immediately, he looked up at me. “Hey,” he said, his voice casual. I hide it well, I heard him say in my head. “What happened to dinner? You decide to go AWOL rather than do your thankful list?”
“No,” I said. “I, um, forgot about the pies, so I had to come get them. I didn’t think anyone was here.”
Just like that, his face changed, and I knew he knew— either by this last sentence, or the look on my face—that I’d been there. “Oh,” he said, this one word flat, toneless. “Right.”
I came closer and, after a moment, bent down beside him and started to pick up pieces of glass. The air felt strange all around me, like just after or before a thunderstorm when the very ions have been shifted, resettled. I knew that feeling. I hadn’t experienced it in a while, but I knew it.
“So,” I said carefully, my voice low, “what just happened here? ”
“Nothing.” Now he glanced at me, but only for a second. “It’s fine.”
“That looked like more than nothing.”
“It’s just my dad blowing off steam. No big deal. The shelf took the brunt of it.”
I swallowed, taking in a breath. Out on the street, beyond the open garage door, an older couple in windsuits walked by, arms swinging in tandem. “So . . . does he do that a lot?”
“Pull down shelves?” he asked, brushing his hands off over the trash can.
“Talk to you like that.”
“Nah,” he said.
I watched him as he stood, shaking his hair out of his face. “You know,” I said slowly, “my mom used to slap us around sometimes. When we were younger. Cora more than me, but I still caught it occasionally.”
“Yeah?” He wasn’t looking at me.
“You never knew when to expect it. I hated that.”
Nate was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Look, my dad’s just . . . he’s got a temper. Always has. He blows up, he throws stuff. It’s all hot air.”
“Has he ever hit you, though?”
He shrugged. “A couple of times when he’s really lost it. It’s rare, though.”
I watched as he reached down, picking up the shelf and pushing it back up against the wall. “Still,” I said, “it sounds like he’s awfully hard on you. That stuff about you disgusting him—”
“Please,” he replied, stacking the paint cans on the bottom shelf. “That’s nothing. You should have heard him at my swim meets. He was the only parent to get banned from the deck entirely, for life. Not that it stopped him. He just yelled from behind the fence.”
I thought back to that day in the parking lot, the guy who had called after him. “Is that why you quit?”
“One reason.” He picked up the Windex. “Look, like I said, it’s no big deal. I’m fine.”
Fine. I’d thought the same thing. “Does your mom know about this?”
“She’s aware that he’s a disciplinarian,” he said, drawing out this last word in such a way that it was clear he’d heard it a lot, said in a certain way. “She tends to be a bit selective in how she processes information. And anyway, in her mind, when she sent me back here, th
at was just what I needed.”
“Nobody needs that,” I said.
“Maybe not. But it’s what I’ve got.”
He headed for the door, pulling it open. I followed him inside, watching as he went to the island, picking up the key that I’d been holding earlier. I could remember so clearly turning it in my palm, the way he’d taken it from me—putting it back on the island but not on the ring—and suddenly I felt culpable, even more a part of this than I already was.
“You could tell someone, you know,” I said as he slid it into his pocket. “Even if he’s not always hitting you, it’s not right.”
“What, and get put into social services? Or shipped off to live with my mom, who doesn’t want me there? No thanks.”
“So you have thought about it,” I said.
“Heather did. A lot,” he said, reaching up to rub his face. “It freaked her out. But she just didn’t understand. My mom kicked me out, and at least he took me in. It’s not like I have a lot of options here.”
I thought of Heather, that day at the pond place. I’m glad you and Nate are friends, she’d said. “She was worried about you,” I said.
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t help notice each time he said this. “At this point, I’ve only got six months until graduation. After that, I’m coaching a swim camp up north, and as long as I get into school somewhere, I’m gone.”
“Gone,” I repeated.
“Yeah,” he said. “To college, or wherever. Anyplace but here.”
“Free and clear.”
“Exactly.” He looked up at me, and I thought of us standing in this same spot earlier as he took that key from my hand. I’d felt so close to something then—something that, back at the yellow house or even in my first days at Cora’s, I never would have imagined. “I mean, you stayed with your mom, stuck it out even though it was bad. You understand, right?”
I did. But it was more than that. Sure, being free and clear had been just what I’d wanted, so recently that it should have been easy to agree with it. But if it was still true, I wouldn’t have even been there. I’d have left when I’d had the chance earlier, staying out of this, of everything.
But I hadn’t. Because I wasn’t the same girl who’d run to that fence the first night, thinking only of jumping over it and getting away. Somewhere, something had changed.
I could have stood there and told him this, and more. Like how glad I was, now, that the Honeycutts had turned me in, because in doing so they’d brought me here to Cora and Jamie and all the things I was thankful for, including him. And how even when you felt like you had no options or didn’t need anyone, you could be wrong. But after all he’d just told me, to say this seemed foolish, if not impossible. Six months wasn’t that long. And I’d been left behind enough.
You understand, right? he’d said. There was only one answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course I do.”
Chapter Twelve
“There you are! Thank God!”
It was the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, and the mall was opening at six a.m. for door-buster specials. Harriet, however, insisted I had to be there at five thirty to get ready. This seemed a little extreme to me, but still I’d managed to rouse myself in the dark and stumble into the shower, then pour myself a big cup of coffee, which I sucked down as I walked along the greenway, a flashlight in my other hand. When I got to the mall itself, people were already lined up outside the main entrance, bundled up in parkas, waiting.
Inside, all the stores I passed were bustling—employees loading up stock, chattering excitedly—everyone in serious preparation mode, bracing for the crowds. When I got to Harriet’s kiosk, it was clear she had already been there for a while: there were two Jump Java cups already on the register, a third clamped in her hand. Needless to say, she was pumped.
“Hurry, hurry,” she called out to me now, waving her arms back and forth as if she could move me closer faster, by sheer force of will. “We don’t have much time!”
Slightly alarmed, I looked over at Reggie, who was sitting at the Vitamin Me kiosk, a cup with a tea bag poking out of it in one hand. He took a sleepy sip, waving at me as I passed.
“You had to be here early, too?” I asked him. I couldn’t imagine someone actually wanting some shark cartilage for Christmas.
He shrugged. “I don’t mind it. I kind of like the bustle.”
Then he smiled and looked at Harriet, who was maniacally lighting another incense stick. Yeah, I thought. The bustle.
“Okay,” Harriet said, pulling me to stand next to her in front of the cart as she took another gulp of coffee. “Let’s do a check and double check. We’ve got the low-dollar stuff on the bottom, higher on the top. Rings by the register for impulse buyers, incense burning for ambience, plenty of ones in the register. Do you remember the disaster plan?”
“Grab the cashbox and the precious gems, do a head-count, proceed to the food court exit,” I recited.
“Good,” she said with a curt nod. “I don’t think we’ll need it, but on a day like this you never know.”
I glanced over at Reggie, who just shook his head, stifling a yawn.
“You know,” Harriet continued, studying the kiosk, “as I’m looking at this now, I think maybe we should switch the earrings and bracelets. They don’t look right. In fact—”
“Harriet. They’re great. We’re ready,” I told her.
She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I still feel like I’m missing something.”
“Could it be, maybe, the true meaning of the holiday season?” Reggie called out from his kiosk. “In which we focus on goodwill and peace on earth, and not on making as much money as possible?”
“No,” Harriet said. Then she snapped her fingers, the sound loud, right by my ear. “Hold on!” she said. “I can’t believe I almost forgot.”
She bent down beneath the register, pulling out the plastic bin where she kept all her stock. As she picked through the dozens of small plastic bags, finally pulling one out and opening it, I looked at my watch. It was 5:51. When I looked back at Harriet, she was fastening a clasp around her neck, her back to me.
“Okay,” she said. “I made these a couple of weeks back, just fooling around, but now I’m wondering if I should put them out. What do you think?”
When she turned around, the first thing I saw was the key. It was silver and delicate, dotted with red stones, and hung from a braided silver chain around her neck. Instantly, I was aware of my own key, which was bulkier and not nearly as beautiful.But even so, seeing this one, I understood why I’d gotten so many comments on it. There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.
Harriet raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
“It’s—”
“You hate it, don’t you,” she decided, before I could even finish. “You think it’s tacky and derivative.”
“It’s not,” I said quickly. “It’s beautiful. Really striking.”
“Yeah?” She turned to the mirror, reaching up to touch the key, running her finger over it. “It kind of is, isn’t it? Unique, at any rate. You think they’ll sell?”
“You made more?”
She nodded, reaching into the box again. As she laid more bags out on the counter, I counted at least twenty, none of them the same: some keys were smaller, some bigger, some plain, others covered in gemstones. “I got inspired, ” she explained as I examined them one by one. “It was kind of manic, actually.”
“You should definitely put them out,” I told her. “Like, right now.”
In record time, we’d slapped on price tags and organized a display. I was just putting the last necklace on the rack when the clock hit six and the doors opened. At first, the sound was distant, but then, like a wave, it got louder and louder as people spilled into sight, filling the long, wide corridor between us. “It’s on,”
Harriet said. “Here we go.”
We sold the first key necklace twenty minutes later, the second, a half hour after that. If I hadn’t been there to see it myself, I never would have believed it, but every single customer who came by paused to look at them. Not everyone bought, but clearly they drew people’s attention. Over and over again.
The day passed in a blur of people, noise, and the Christmas music overhead, which I only heard in bits and pieces, whenever the din briefly died down. Harriet kept drinking coffee, the key necklaces kept selling, and my feet began to ache, my voice getting hoarse from talking. The zinc lozenges Reggie offered up around one o’clock helped, but not much.
Still, I was grateful for the day and the chaos, if only because it kept my mind off what had happened the day before with Nate. All that evening, after I’d taken the pies back and watched them get devoured, then helped Cora load the dishwasher before collapsing onto my bed, I’d kept going over and over it in my head. It was all so unsettling: not only what I’d seen and heard, but how I’d responded afterward.
I never would have thought of myself as someone who would want to help or save anybody. In fact, this was the one thing that bugged me so much about Nate in the first place. And yet, I was surprised, even disappointed, that at that crucial moment—You understand, right?—I’d been so quick to step back and let the issue drop, when, as his friend, I should have come closer. It wasn’t just unsettling, even. It was shameful.
At three o’clock, the crowds were still thick, and despite the lozenges, I’d almost totally lost my voice. “Go,” Harriet said, taking a sip of her umpteenth coffee. “You’ve done more than enough for one day.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied, smiling at a young woman in a long red coat who was buying one of the last key necklaces. She handed over the bag, then watched the woman disappear into the crowd. “That’s fifteen we’ve sold today,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you even believe it? I’m going to have to go home and stay up all night making more. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
“I told you,” I said. “They’re beautiful.”