Send Me a Sign

by Tiffany Schmidt

  “Me either.” I scooped her up. “I’ll be right back—I’m going to open a can of food to keep her preoccupied—ninety seconds.”

  He smiled enticingly from my pillow, face flushed, hair disheveled. “One, two, three …”

  I resisted the urge to shove the cat in the hall and crash back against Ryan. My bare skin prickled with goose bumps, but Ryan would warm me up soon enough. I put Jinx down in the kitchen, humming as I grabbed cat food out of the cabinet. She did her best to trip me, twining through my legs as I carried the can to the electric opener.

  The motor whirred, the can spun, I turned to grab Jinx’s bowl. And screamed. The front door was opening.

  I dropped the can. It landed on my toe and I yelped as wet chunks sprayed the floor and lower cabinets.

  “Mia?” “Mi?” Both boys said my name simultaneously. Ryan from where he was tearing down the stairs in a panic, buttoning his jeans as he ran. Gyver from the kitchen floor; he’d knelt to take the sharp-edged can away from Jinx and dump the remaining contents in her bowl.

  Ryan reached me, arms outstretched. “What’s wrong, baby? You okay?” My heart was still in my throat, blocking explanation. He turned from me with wide eyes, which darkened when he saw Gyver. Ryan stepped in front of me and tugged off his shirt.

  The motion broke my panic trance. I zipped my jeans and shoved the all-but-fallen condom deep in the pocket. Tugging Ryan’s shirt over my head, I fought the urge to hide my blushing face against his back.

  Gyver was calm. I wanted to go over and shake him. He had barely looked at me, barely spoken to me since that afternoon in my living room. How could he show up now? And how could he be so composed?

  He took a rag from the sink and wiped up the spilled cat food. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Mom wanted me to invite you for dinner. I knocked. The door was unlocked. I didn’t realize you were … busy.”

  I looked between Gyver’s patient cleaning and Ryan’s restless energy. The muscles in his bare back tensed all the way down to his fists. “You’re okay?” he asked, taking deep breaths.

  “Mostly. I dropped the can on my toe.” I forced my voice into a laugh. Ryan’s reaction made sense. Gyver? I prepared for his judgment.

  But he didn’t seem upset. He finished wiping the floor, hung the rag on the sink, scratched Jinx, then headed for the door. A week ago he’d confessed to feeling something for me. But maybe it was felt now: past tense. Over.

  “I’ll tell Mom you’ve got other plans. If you’re hungry later, stop over. She made lasagna and there’s plenty. Mi—tell Ryan how good it is.” I could hear him whistling through the closed door, the tune growing fainter as he walked to his house.

  Ryan slid his hand down my arm and clasped mine. He tried to laugh. “Well … that was longer than ninety seconds.”

  “Sorry for giving you a heart attack.”

  “Let’s lock the door.”

  I grumbled as we headed back into my room. “My jeans reek of cat food.”

  “I know how to fix that.” His eyes were smiling again as he unbuttoned, unzipped, and tugged them off. “Let’s see that toe.” Kneeling beside the bed, he picked up my foot, caressed a hand up the back of my calf, and brushed his lips across the inside of my knee. “Does it still hurt?”

  “No.” I beckoned him to me.

  “Mmm. You look better in my shirt than I do.” Ryan joined me on the pillows.

  “I like you better shirtless, so that works.” I felt nervous now, wanting to joke and delay. Gyver’s lack of reaction shocked me. He’d flipped at the hospital over something innocent, but us—clearly mid-something—hadn’t made him blink. It made no sense. Unless he didn’t care anymore. I bit my lip and held my breath, willing myself to ignore the ache in my chest.

  Ryan’s hand stilled on my stomach and his lips left my neck. “You’re on another planet.”

  “Sorry.” I crinkled my nose and sat up. Shaking my head to clear the maybes and focus on my reality—a guy I’d initially given so little credit and who exceeded my expectations daily. A guy who loved me.

  Ryan groaned. “You know, this really doesn’t make me like Gyver more.”

  I kissed him softly. “It’s my fault—and he did offer lasagna. just keep picturing what would’ve happened if his mom had come instead …”

  “The police chief? Okay, yeah, the moment’s pretty ruined for me too.”

  “Sorry. Soon?”

  “Please.” He pulled me into his arms and lay down. I nestled against him, inhaled his sunshine scent; relaxed into his fingertips rubbing my back and his warm skin against my cheek.

  I woke to an empty pillow beside me and my parents’ voices in the hall.

  “Kitten, are you asleep?” Mom leaned in my room and asked.

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “Did you eat, take your meds, and do your homework?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Sweet dreams.” She kissed my cheek and felt my forehead.

  But when she shut the door, I got out of bed. My restlessness had returned and sleep had fled. I didn’t have enough time and I couldn’t waste any of it.

  “I don’t want to go to school today,” I told Ryan as I climbed in his car the next morning.

  Ryan frowned. “Because of the girls? It’s been a week; maybe they’ve calmed down. Apologize. Talk to—”

  “No.” I didn’t want to discuss it: Hil was hostile; Ally was teary-eyed polite; Lauren avoided me with obvious discomfort. At least Chris had more or less gotten over it. “Not because of them. I want you to take me to the shore, since I never made it this summer.” I reached over and turned his keys in the ignition.

  “Really? You want to skip?” He gave me a disbelieving half grin. I traced his left dimple, making him smile wider and reveal its twin.

  “Yes, really! Can we?” Making up for my stolen summer with a trip to the shore would be the first thing I could cross off my before list.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Ryan talked the whole two-hour drive. Anecdotes about the people he’d worked with, the places they’d hung out at night—clubs where the bouncers didn’t check IDs; beach houses of the week-long renters; the homes of year-rounders who were equal parts distrustful of and intrigued by the summer workers.

  “Chris always threw the best parties. His mom was gone half the time, and his house is insane. If I’d known we were skipping today, I would’ve gotten him to give me the key.”

  “It’s okay, we’ll only be there a few hours.”

  Ryan ticked off the things he needed to show me on his fingers. “We’ve got to go to Spud McGee’s. They make these french fries—but it’s a whole potato that they cut into a long spiral, and then they serve it on a stick. And Hot Diggity—stupid name, I know, but they’ve got the best hot dogs. I practically lived on them this summer. And there’s a smoothie place, where, if the right person’s behind the counter, they’ll pour some vodka in your cup as they take it off the blender. We’ll skip the coaster, the thing rattles like a mofo, but maybe the Ferris wheel and definitely a funnel cake.”

  “You ate like that all summer?” I laughed and tugged the hem of his shirt free from his seat belt so I could slip my fingers under and onto his hard abs. “Where do you put it?”

  He grinned and came to a stop at a traffic light, leaning over to press his lips to the shoulder of my sweatshirt. Well, it was one of his sweatshirts, but I was wearing it. “I can’t wait to show you everything. I really wished you were here this summer.”

  And for the last few streets of the beachside town, I thought this was a good idea, one of the best I’d had in a while. After a week of causing nothing but fights, I was making someone happy. Making Ryan happy—hopefully as happy as he made me.

  The center of town had some traffic, but not much. The farther we got from the main street, and the closer to the boardwalk and sand, the more the cars dwindled. Ryan pulled into a parking lot with a ten-dollar bill in his hand, but the attendant’s booth stood e
mpty. He idled there, his window half-lowered.

  “Park anyway,” I told him. “We can leave the money under a wiper blade in case anyone comes—they’re not going to tow you.”

  I should’ve told him to turn around. There was unease growing in my stomach. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe it was a horrible one.

  Ryan looked disoriented the moment he stepped out of his car—he surveyed the empty lot, and the empty lot next door, with a look of confusion.

  On our walk to the beach we passed Spud McGee’s. It was shuttered. Hot Diggity had a sign taped to the window: SEE YOU IN THE SPRING.

  When our shoes touched the sand, his grip on my hand tightened. He looked up and down the beach, taking in the choppy water, the same dull gray as school trash cans, and the vacant sand. I could see the pier from here. The roller coaster and Ferris wheel that glowed so brightly in his stories were unlit and unmoving. The track of the coaster stripped bare of its cars and stark against the mottled gray of the cloudy sky.

  I pulled him forward a few steps, leaning into him and out of the wind. It was cutting through my clothes and raising goose bumps, which rasped against the fabric of my jeans.

  The wind ruffled the ocean’s surface too. Making it look like it was being prodded with a million paint brushes—nothing like the smooth, easy, blue-green waves from the photos I’d seen of Ryan, Chris, and the girls spread out on crowded sun-drenched sand.

  “This is it.” Ryan finally spoke, pulling me to stand in front of him as he did so. Wrapping his arms around me and rubbing his hands up and down my arms. I was grateful, not just for the warmth, but because I didn’t want to have to see the lost expression on his face. “But it doesn’t look anything like it did. I guess I just thought … I don’t know what I was thinking. I know half the staff weren’t local and it’s hardly beach weather. Even the guard stands are gone. I guess they pull them in for the winter. I can’t even tell where mine was anymore.”

  The wind turned wet. Spitting a fine mist of spray that made my lips taste salty and the flyaway strands of my wig frizz.

  I felt cold. Colder than the temperature really warranted. Even this, even this good thing I’d tried to do, was just more ruin.

  I couldn’t reclaim my summer any more than I could prevent my future. All I’d done today was taint the memory of a place Ryan loved.

  “Let’s just go home,” he said.

  My teeth were chattering too hard to agree, so I just nodded and slipped my hand in his.

  Trips to Iggy’s made my before list too, and the next day when Mr. Bonura questioned me about making up a calc test, I told him I needed to go to the nurse. Instead, I got Ryan out of his class and we went for midmorning, midweek pie. He didn’t hesitate or deny me anything now, but asked often, “Are you happy, baby? Are you feeling okay?” I remembered Chris’s comments about Ryan never smiling, how he’d never seen him like this, and I was scared to turn these questions around and ask them back. Ryan wasn’t happy; he wasn’t okay.

  I was doing the best I could to change this, doing the best I could to prove that I cared for and appreciated him more than I could express. And needed him. There was a constant tugging in the back of my mind, saying that if I just tried harder, I could fall in love with him. I could just never quite reach it—and the night of our beach trip I spent half the hours until morning trying to convince myself I could. The other half I spent trying to sleep and trying to ignore the Gyver-shaped hole in my life.

  I suggested we didn’t need to go to homeroom the next morning—it was Thursday, exactly one week since the tarot cards spelled out my future in five grim letters. Instead we went for coffee at Bean Haven, a chic bakery in Cross Pointe I’d always wanted to try. I ordered the largest size and drained the pink cardboard cup and—despite Mom’s warnings of its chemical poisons—it didn’t make me keel over. It did give me enough energy to make it to all of my afternoon classes and paste a placid smile on my face while I doodled in my notebook and ignored my classmates and whatever the teachers wrote on the board.

  Chapter 41

  “Mi, wait up.”

  I ignored Gyver and kept walking. I didn’t want to be in the building. I didn’t want to think about school. I didn’t want to discuss what he’d walked in on Monday night either.

  He caught up with me outside the school’s double doors, wrapping his fingers gently around my arm and pulling me to a stop. “Mi, I was calling you all down the hall. Didn’t you hear me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t you need a ride home? I thought The Jock—sorry, Ryan—drove you, and it doesn’t look like you want to wait around for soccer practice to end.”

  “Thanks.” I headed down the stairs to his Jeep.

  “Wait a minute. You okay? I heard you had a big academic meeting.”

  “Not so big.” I tapped my foot, anxious to keep walking. Standing still took effort.

  “Mr. Bonura asked if I’d tutor you. Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”

  “I don’t. It’s not a big deal.” I was in danger of failing history and calculus. My English and science grades weren’t much better. “Can we go?”

  The progress report from Principal Baker was wrinkling in the bottom of my bag. I’d already forged Mom’s name and would turn it in on Monday.

  Gyver froze, oblivious to the roadblock he created at the stop of the stairs.

  “Home? Us? Now?” I prompted.

  He followed me down the steps, then tugged me over to the wall. “What do you mean it’s not a big deal? Last year you obsessed over hundredths of GPA points. Don’t tell me you’re giving up and handing me the valedictorianship. Did something happen?”

  I shrugged. “It’s just not a big deal. Not so important anymore.”

  “Why not?” His eyes narrowed. My fingers were drumming restlessly against my thighs until he trapped them in his cool hands. “What happened? Tell me.”

  It seemed pointless to resist; he wasn’t going to give up. “I went to see a psychic.”

  “You what?” His voice was loud and angry; people turned, then turned away when there wasn’t anything to see. He lowered it to a growl. “Let me guess, she gave you a dire prediction and now you think you’re not going to get better.”

  I pulled my hands free and met his eyes. “At least now I know.”

  “You believed her? So what? You’re giving up and waiting to die?” He stepped closer, shaking his head in anger and disbelief.

  “I’m going to enjoy however long I have. Do what I want to do, make sure I don’t miss out on anything. What choice do I have?” My voice quivered; the rest of me shook. I’d fought so hard to make peace with this idea, leaving all second-guessing in the parking lot at the lake.

  “You fight! You stay healthy … you try! Are you seriously giving this crazy person more credit than your doctors?” He put his hands on my shoulders and shook me lightly.

  “There’s no point.” He wouldn’t understand.

  “Mi—how many times do I have to tell you, you create your own luck. Look at me. You’re not going to self-destruct. I’m not going to let you. You’re not going to die.”

  I ducked my head and he pulled me toward him, capturing me in an iron hug. “I won’t let you,” he repeated.

  “Maybe I deserve this.” I hadn’t meant to say it; the words escaped through the crack he’d chiseled in my composure.

  “No! Don’t ever say that. Ever.” Gyver rocked me in his embrace.

  I was still shaking, only now it was with fear, not frenzied energy. It’d been easier to just know, even if it was bad news; at least I wasn’t wondering. I needed to escape from him and the conclusions he wanted me to question.

  “Leave me alone, Gyver. Just let me—”

  “Isn’t this adorable. And in-ter-est-ting!” The voice was loud, high, and syrupy-sweet. “Mia, are you double-dipping? I thought Ryan’d be enough.”

  “What?” I stepped out of Gyver’s hug. His intimidating stare was b
ack, aimed at Hillary.

  But Hil wasn’t intimidated. She was furious. Probably, she’d expected me to track her down and grovel by now, but I hadn’t. I wouldn’t. There was no point.

  She pointed a dark-purple nail at us, waving it between Gyver and me in a sideways tsk-tsk. “I always thought you guys were hooking up, but I didn’t expect you to look so cozy right outside the gym where Ryan’s practicing.”

  She wasn’t alone—I hadn’t noticed at first, but Lauren, Emily, Monica, and most of the squad were behind her.

  “I wasn’t … We weren’t … We’re just friends,” I stammered.

  “You don’t need to justify yourself,” Gyver said. “Especially not to the queen bitch.”

  “Of course not,” Hil simpered. “Because we all know what we saw. Soon Ryan’ll know too. But that’s okay, right?”

  The two people who used to be my best friends—attacking each other, attacking me. I was used to playing mediator between them, but I couldn’t handle that today, and what was the point anymore? The panic from my conversation with Gyver spilled over. “We’re friends. Neighbors. Gyver doesn’t think of me that way … He couldn’t.”

  “Mi—” Gyver warned.

  “Couldn’t? Why couldn’t he? Ohhh. Wow. I get it now.” Hil’s face lit up like she’d just solved a complex choreography dilemma. It made me nervous. “God, it finally makes sense why you two never got together.” She laughed and adopted a faux whisper. “Gyver likes guys.”

  “What?” I squeaked. I hadn’t stopped shaking; Gyver’s “I won’t let you” rolled through my mind like a threat.

  “Not that I’m judging,” she continued. “I think that’s great, Gyver. I should’ve known. All Mia’s unrequited, angsty pining. And her insistence that you were ‘just friends.’ But you’re gay! That is what you were saying, right, Mia?”

  “I …” The cheerleaders were watching expectantly; Hillary standing in the front with hands propped on her hips. Escape! Every part of my mind demanded it. Instead I stared her down. “First, you’re wrong. Second, stalker much? You’ve made it clear we’re not friends anymore, so why do you even care?”