The Truth About Forever

by Sarah Dessen

  “Nothing can be two opposite things at once,” I said. “It’s impossible.”

  “No,” she replied, squeezing my hand, “what’s impossible is that we actually think it could be anything other than that. Look, when I was in the hospital, right after the accident, they thought I was going to die. I was really fucked up, big time.”

  “Uh-huh,” Monica said, looking at her sister.

  “Then,” Kristy continued, nodding at her, “life was very short, literally. But now that I’m better, it seems so long I have to squint to see even the edges of it. It’s all in the view, Macy. That’s what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You can never know for sure, so you’d better make every second count.”

  Monica, lighting another cigarette, nodded. “Mmm-hmm,” she said.

  “What you have to decide,” Kristy said to me, leaning forward, “is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you’d want to have spent it?” It seemed like it was a choice I had already made. I’d spent the last year and a half with Jason, shaping my life to fit his, doing what I had to in order to make sure I had a place in his perfect world, where things made sense. But it hadn’t worked.

  “Listen,” Kristy said, “the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody.” She looked at me hard, making sure I knew what she meant. I did. “So don’t be afraid. Be alive.”

  But then, I couldn’t imagine, after everything that had happened, how you could live and not constantly be worrying about the dangers all around you. Especially when you’d already gotten the scare of your life.

  “It’s the same thing,” I told her.

  “What is?”

  “Being afraid and being alive.”

  “No,” she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn’t understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. “Macy, no. It’s not.”

  It’s not, I repeated in my head, and looking back later, it seemed to me that was the moment everything really changed. When I said these words, not even aloud, and in doing so made my own wish: that for me this could somehow, someday, really be true.

  A little bit later Kristy and Monica headed off to the keg again, but I stayed behind, sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance. I was feeling a bit woozy from the small amount of beer I’d had, not to mention everything Kristy had said. Too much to contemplate even under the best of conditions, now it was close to impossible.

  I looked up after a few minutes to see Wes coming toward me from across the clearing. He had a bunch of metal rods under his arm—the rebar he’d been promised, I assumed. I just sat there watching him approach, his slow loping gait, and wondered what it would be like if he was coming to see me, coming to be with me. It wasn’t what I thought when I saw Jason; that was more a reassurance. With him in sight, I could always get my bearings. If anything, Wes was the opposite. One look, and I had no idea what I was doing.

  “Hey,” he said as he got closer, and I made myself look up at him, as if surprised, oh look, there you are. Which worked fine, until he sat down next to me, and again I felt that looseness, something inside me coming undone. He put the rods down beside him. “Where is everybody?”

  “The keg,” I said, nodding toward it.

  “Oh. Right.”

  Talk about forever: the next silent minute seemed to go on for that and longer. I had a picture of a school clock in my mind, those final seconds of the hour when the minute hand just trembles, as if willing itself to jump to the twelve. Say something, I told myself, sneaking a glance at Wes. He hardly seemed to be noticing this lapse, instead just watching the crowd in the middle of the clearing, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Once again I could see the very bottom of the tattoo on his upper arm. Kristy had told me to live, whatever that meant in all its variations, and her words were still resonating. Oh well, I thought, here goes.

  “So what is that?” I asked him, forcing the words out, then immediately realized I was looking at him, not at his arm, so this question could concern just about anything. He raised his eyebrows, confused, and I added—face flushing, God help me— “your tattoo, I mean. I’ve never been able to see what it is.”

  This full sentence, an inquiry to boot, seemed to me on par with Helen Keller finally signing W-A-T-E-R. I mean, really.

  “Oh,” he said, pushing up his shirtsleeve. “It’s just this design. You saw it that first day you came out to Delia’s, right?”

  I felt myself nodding, but truthfully I was just staring at the black, thick lines of the design, now fully revealed: the heart in the hand. This one was, of course, smaller, and contained within a circle bordered by a tribal pattern, but otherwise it was the same. The flat palm, fingers extended, the red heart in its center.

  “Right,” I said. Like the first time I’d seen it, I couldn’t help think that it was familiar, something pricking my subconscious, as weird as that sounded. “Does it mean something?”

  “Sort of.” He looked down at his arm. “It’s something my mom used to draw for me when I was a kid.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. She had this whole thing about the hand and the heart, how they were connected.” He ran a finger over the bright red of the heart, then looked at me. “You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can’t exist without the other. It’s sort of a hippie thing. She was into that stuff.”

  “I like it,” I said. “I mean, the idea of it. It makes sense.”

  He looked down at the tattoo again. “After she died I started tinkering with it, you know, with the welding. This one has the circle, the one on the road has the barbed wire. They’re all different, but with the same basic idea.”

  “Like a series,” I said.

  “I guess,” he said. “Mostly I’m just trying to get it right, whatever that means.”

  I looked across the clearing, catching a sudden glimpse of Kristy as she moved through the crowd, blonde head bobbing.

  “It’s hard to do,” I said.

  Wes looked at me. “What is?”

  I swallowed, not sure why I’d said this out loud. “Get it right.”

  He must think I’m so stupid, I thought, vowing to keep my mouth shut from now on. But he just picked up one of the rods he’d carried over, turning it in his hands. “Yeah,” he said, after a second. “It is.”

  Kristy was now almost to the keg. I could see her saying something to Monica, her head thrown back as she laughed.

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” I said to Wes. I didn’t even think before saying this, the connotation, what it would or wouldn’t convey. It just came out, all on its own.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” he replied. We were both looking straight ahead. “I remember him from coaching the Lakeview Zips, when I was a kid. He was great.”

  I felt something catch in my throat, a sudden surge of sadness that caught me unaware, almost taking my breath away. That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it’s reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

  “So,” he said suddenly, “why’d you stop?”

  “Stop what?” I said.

  “Running.”

  I stared down into my empty cup. “I don’t know,” I said, even as that winter day flashed in my mind again. “I just wasn’t into it anymore.”

  Across the clearing, I could see Kristy talking to a tall blond guy who was gesturing, telling some kind of elaborate story. She kept having to lean back, dodging his flailing fingers.

  “How fast were you?” Wes asked me.

  I said, “Not that fast.”

  “You mean you couldn’t . . . fly?” he said, smiling at me.

  Stupid Rachel, I thought. “No,” I said, a flush creeping up my neck, “I couldn’t fly.”

  “What was your best t
ime for the mile?”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Just wondering,” he said, turning the rod in his hands. “I mean, I run. So I’m curious.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, tell me,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his. I cannot believe this, I thought. “I can take it.”

  Kristy was glancing over at us now, even as finger guy was still talking. She raised her eyebrow at me, then turned back to face him.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “My best was five minutes, five seconds.”

  He just looked at me. “Oh,” he said finally.

  “What? What’s yours?”

  He coughed, turning his head. “Never mind.”

  “Oh, see,” I said, “that’s not fair.”

  “It’s more than five-five,” he told me, leaning back on his hands. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  “That was years ago,” I said. “Now I probably couldn’t even do a half a mile in that time.”

  “I bet you could.” He held the rod up, squinting at it. “I bet,” he said, “you’d be faster than you think. Though maybe not fast enough to fly.”

  I felt myself smile, then bit it back. “You could outrun me easily, I bet.”

  “Well,” he said, “maybe someday, we’ll find out.”

  Oh, my God, I thought, and I knew I should say something, anything. But now Kristy, Bert, and Monica were walking toward us, and I missed my chance.

  “Twenty minutes to curfew,” Bert announced as he got closer, looking at his watch. “We need to go.”

  “Oh, my God,” Kristy said, “you might actually have to go over twenty-five to get us home in time.”

  Bert made a face at her, then walked to the driver’s side door, opening it. Monica climbed up into the ambulance, plopping herself on the couch, and I followed her, with Kristy right behind me.

  “What were you two talking about?” she whispered as Wes pulled the doors shut.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Running.”

  “You should have seen your face,” she said, her breath hot in my ear. “Sa-woooon.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Okay,” Caroline said, pushing a button on the camera and then coming over to sit next to my mother. “Here we go.”

  It was Saturday morning. My sister had arrived the night before, having spent the day in Colby meeting with the carpenter about the renovations and repairs to the beach house. This was familiar ground to her, as she’d already done her own house, plus the place she and Wally had in the mountains. Decorating, she claimed, was her calling, ever since one of her college art professors told her she had a “good eye,” a compliment that she took to mean she was entitled to redo not only her own house but also anyone else’s.

  So although my mother was just barely on board—which was itself miraculous, in my opinion—Caroline was moving full steam ahead, showing up with not only most of her extensive library on home decorating but also pictures she’d taken with Wally’s digital camera, so she could walk us though the suggested changes with visual aides.

  “These things are a real lifesaver when you’re doing long-distance remodeling,” she explained as she hooked the camera up to the TV. “I don’t know what we ever did without them.”

  She pushed a button, and the screen went black. Then, just like that, the beach house appeared. It was the front view, the way it looked if you had your back to the ocean. There was the deck, with its one rickety wooden bench. There were the stairs that led over the dunes. There was the old gas grill, beneath the kitchen window. It had been so long since I’d seen it, but still I felt a lurch in my stomach at how familiar it was. It seemed entirely possible that if you leaned in closer, peering in the back window, you’d see my dad on the couch reading the paper and turning his head to look as you called his name.

  My mother was just staring at it, holding her coffee cup with both hands, and I wondered again if she was going to be able to handle this. But then I looked at my sister, and she was watching my mom too. After a second she said, very carefully, “So this is the way it looks now. You can see that the roof is sagging a bit. That’s from the last big storm.”

  My mother nodded. But she didn’t say anything.

  “It needs to be braced, and we have to replace some shingles as well. The carpenter was saying as long as we’re shoring it up we might want to consider adding a skylight, or something . . . since the living room gets so little light from those front windows. You know how much you always complained about that.”

  I remembered. My mother was forever turning on lights in the living room, complaining it was like a dungeon. (“All the better for naps!” my father would claim, just before falling asleep on the couch with his mouth open.) She preferred to spend her time in the front bedroom, which had a big window. Plus the moose gave her the creeps. I wondered what she was thinking now. It was hard for her; it was hard for me, too. But I kept remembering everything Kristy had said two nights before, about not being afraid, and how if I’d come home when I got scared, I would have missed everything that had happened.

  “But I’ve never dealt with skylights,” Caroline said. “I don’t know how much they run, or if they’re even worth the trouble.”

  “It depends on the brand,” my mother said, her eyes on the screen. “And the size. It varies.”

  I had to hand it to my sister. For all her pushing, she knew what she was doing. Take one small step—show the picture, which she knew would be hard for my mother—and pair it with something she’d feel entirely sure about: work.

  It went the same way for the next half hour, as Caroline carefully guided us through the beach house, room by room. At first it was all I could do to swallow over the lump in my throat when I saw the view from the deck of the ocean, or the room with the bunk beds where I always slept. Even worse were the pictures of the main bedroom, where a pair of my dad’s beat-up running shoes was still parked against the wall by the door.

  But slowly, carefully, Caroline kept bringing us back. For every sharp intake of breath, every moment I was sure I couldn’t bear it, there was a question, something logical to grab onto. I’m thinking maybe glass blocks in place of that window in the bathroom, she’d say, what do you think? Or, see how the linoleum’s coming up in the kitchen? I found some great blue tile I think we could replace it with. Or would tile be too expensive? And each time, my mother would reply, grabbing the answer as if it was a life preserver in a choppy sea. Once she had her breath back, they’d move on.

  When the slideshow was over, I left them in the living room discussing skylights and went to pull my laundry out of the dryer so I could iron something for the info desk the next day. I was almost done when my mother appeared in the doorway, leaning against it with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Well,” she said, “your sister sure seems to have found herself a project, hasn’t she?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Out in her car. She’s got some swatches she wants to show me.” She sighed, running her hand over the edge of the door frame. “Apparently, corduroy upholstery is all the rage these days.”

  I smiled, smoothing a crease out of the pants I was holding. “She is an expert at this,” I said. “You know what a great job she did with her place, and the mountain house.”

  “I know.” She was quiet for a second, watching as I folded a shirt and put it in the basket at my feet. “But I can’t help but think it’s a lot of money and work for such an old house. Your father always said the foundation would probably go in a few years. . . . I just wonder if it’s worth it.”

  I pulled Kristy’s jeans out of the dryer and folded them. The black heart on the knee was just as dark as ever. “It might be fun,” I said, picking my words carefully. “To have a place to go again.”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled a hand through her hair. “I wonder if it would be easier, if the foundation might be flawed, to just take it down. Then we’d have the lot and could start over.”

/>   I was bent over, peering into the dryer to pull out the last things in there, and for a second I just froze. Minutes ago, I’d gotten my first look at the beach house in over a year. To think that it, like so much else, might one day just be gone—I couldn’t even imagine. “I don’t know,” I said. “I bet the foundation’s not that bad.”

  “Mom?” Caroline called from the living room. “I’ve got the swatches. . . . Where are you?”

  “Coming,” my mother said over her shoulder. “It was just an idea,” she added, more quietly, to me. “Just a thought.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, really. My mother trafficked in new houses, so of course the idea of everything being perfect and pristine, even better than before, would appeal to her. It was the dream she sold every day. She had to believe in it.

  “Is that new?” she asked me suddenly.

  “Is what new?”

  She nodded at the tank top I’d just finished folding. “I haven’t seen it before.”

  Of course she hadn’t: it was Kristy’s, and here, in the bright light of the laundry room, I knew it looked even more unlike something I’d wear than it had when I’d first agreed to put it on. You could plainly see the glittery design on the straps, and it was clear it was lower cut than my mother was most likely comfortable with. In Kristy’s room, in Kristy’s world, it was about as shocking as a plain white T-shirt. But here, it was completely out of place.

  “Oh, this isn’t mine,” I said. “I just, um, borrowed it from a friend.”

  “Really?” She looked at it again, trying to picture, I was sure, one of my student council friends sporting such a thing. “Who?”

  Kristy’s face immediately popped into my mind, with her wide smile, the scars, those big blue eyes. If the tank top was enough to cause my mother concern, I could only imagine how Kristy, in one of her full outfits, would go over, not to mention any of my other Wish friends. It seemed simpler, and smarter, to just say, “This girl I work with. I spilled some salad dressing on my shirt last night so she lent me this, to drive home in.”

  “Oh,” she said. It wasn’t that she sounded relieved, but clearly, this was an acceptable explanation. “Well. That was nice.”