by Sarah Dessen
“So,” my mother said, “how was work yesterday?”
“Good.” She was looking at me, waiting for more, so I said, “Fun. It was a prewedding thing, which means everyone’s either all hung over from the rehearsal dinner or freaking out about last-minute details. This time, it was both. So it was a little crazy. And then, you know, we had this whole thing with the crepes catching on fire, but that really wasn’t our fault. Entirely.”
My mother was looking at me with an expression of polite but detached interest, as if I were describing the culture of a foreign country she would never visit in a million years. “Well,” she said, “you certainly have been putting in a lot of hours catering lately.”
“Not that many,” I said. Then, realizing I sounded defensive—did I sound defensive?—I added, “I mean, it’s just been busy the last couple of weeks because Delia’s booked a lot of jobs before the baby comes. Pretty soon I won’t have anything to do, probably.”
My mother slid the magazine off her lap and onto the couch. “You’ll still have the info desk, though,” she said. “Right?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said, too quickly. “I mean, yes. Of course.”
A pause. Too long of a pause for my taste.
“So how is the library?” she said finally. “You hardly mention it anymore.”
“It’s okay. Just, you know, the same.” This was definitely the truth. My days at the library had not improved at all in the last few weeks. The difference was it just bothered me less. I put in my time, avoided Bethany and Amanda as much as possible, and got out of there the minute the big hand hit three. “It’s work. If it was fun, they’d call it fun, right?”
She smiled, nodding. Uh-oh, I thought. I just knew there was something coming. I was right.
“I was out for a lunch meeting yesterday, and I saw Mrs. Talbot,” she said now. “She told me that Jason is really enjoying the Scholars’ Retreat he’s on this summer.”
“Really,” I replied, reaching up to smooth my part again.
“She also said,” she continued, crossing her legs, “that Jason told her you two are taking a break from your relationship for the summer.”
Oh, great, I thought. “Um, yeah,” I said. “I mean, yes.”
For a second, it was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming. I remembered these awkward pauses from Caroline’s homecomings, as well. It was now, in the empty spaces between accusations and defenses, that I had always wondered what, exactly, was happening.
“I was surprised,” she said finally, “that you didn’t mention it to me. She said this happened weeks ago.”
“Well, it is just a break,” I told her, trying to make my voice sound cheery, confident. “We’re going to talk as soon as he gets back. We both just thought for now it was the best thing to do.”
My mother put her hands in her lap, folding them around each other, and leaned forward slightly. I knew that stance. I’d seen it at a million sales cocktails. She was moving in. “I have to say, Macy,” she began, and I felt something inside me start to deflate slightly, “that I’m a little bit concerned about you right now.”
“Concerned?” I said.
She nodded, keeping her eyes on me. “You’ve been out an awful lot of nights lately with your new friends. You’re working so many hours catering that I fear you’re not giving your full attention to the library job, which is your most important commitment in terms of your college transcript.”
“I haven’t missed a single day there,” I told her.
“I know you haven’t. I’m just . . .” she trailed off, glancing out the window. Now the sun was on her face, and I could immediately make out tiny lines around her eyes, how tired she looked. Not for the first time, I felt a stab of worry, totally overreacting I knew, that maybe she was pushing herself too hard. I hadn’t noticed with my dad. Neither of us had. “This coming year is so important for you, in terms of college and your future. It’s crucial that you do well on your SATs and are focused on your classes. Remember how you told me you wanted to be working toward preparing for those goals this summer?”
“I am,” I said. “I’ve been studying my words and taking practice tests online.”
Another glance out the window. Then she said, “You’ve also been spending nights out with your friend Christine—”
“Kristy,” I said.
“—as well as a bunch of other new friends I haven’t met and don’t know.” She looked down at her hands, folding and unfolding them in her lap. “And then I hear this about you and Jason. I just wonder why you didn’t feel like you could tell me about that.”
“It’s just a break,” I said, “and besides, Jason doesn’t have anything to do with my goals. They’re totally separate things.”
“Are they, though?” she asked. “When you were with Jason, you were home more. Studying more. Now I hardly see you, and I can’t help but wonder if the two are connected somehow.”
I couldn’t argue with that. In the last few weeks, I had changed. But in my mind, those changes had been for the better: I was finally getting over things, stepping out of the careful box I’d drawn around myself all those months ago. It was a good thing, I thought. Until now.
“Macy,” she said, her voice softening. “All I’m saying is that I want to be sure your priorities are straight. You’ve worked so hard to get where you are. I don’t want you to lose that.”
Again, I could agree with this. But while for her it meant how I’d pushed myself to be perfect, gotten good grades, scored the smart boyfriend, and recovered from my loss to be composed, together, fine just fine, for me, it worked in reverse. I’d been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.
This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anything can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.
“I don’t want that either,” I said.
“Good. Then we’re on the same page. That’s all I wanted to be sure of.” She smiled, then squeezed my hand as she stood up, our accepted sign of affection. As she started toward her office, I headed for the stairs and my room. I was halfway there when she called after me.
“Honey?”
I turned around. She was standing at her office door, her hand on the knob. “Yes?”
“I just want you to know,” she said, “that you can talk to me about things. Like Jason. I want you to feel like you can share things with me. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
As I climbed the stairs, I knew that my mother had already moved on to the next challenge, this issue now filed under Resolved. But for me, it wasn’t that simple. Of course she’d think I could tell her anything: she was my mother. In truth, though, I couldn’t. I’d been wanting to talk to her for over a year about what was bothering me. I’d wanted to reach out to her, hold her close, tell her I was worried about her, but I couldn’t do that either. So it was just a formality, what we’d just agreed on, a contract I’d signed without reading the fine print. But I knew what it said. That I could be imperfect, but only so much. Human, but only within limits. And honest, to her or to myself, never.
When I got to my room, I found a shopping bag sitting in the center of my bed with a note propped up against it. I recognized the loopy, flowing script even from a distance: Caroline.
Hi Macy,
Sorry I missed you. I’ll be back in a couple of days, hopefully with a good progress report of the renovation. I forgot when I was here last time to drop this off for you. I found it in the bedroom closet of the beach house the last time I was there, when I was cleaning stuff out. I’m not sure what it is (didn’t want to open it) but I thought you should have it. I’ll see you soon.
It was signed with a row of Xs and Os, as well as a smiley face. I sat down on the bed next to the bag, opening the top. I took one glance, then shut it, quick.
Oh,
God, I thought.
In that one glimpse, I’d seen two things. Wrapping paper— gold, with some pattern—and a white card with my name written on it. In another hand I recognized, would know anywhere. My dad’s.
More to come, the card he’d given me that Christmas Day, the last day I’d had with him, had said. Soon. So my missing present wasn’t an EZ gift after all, but this.
I reached to open the bag, then stopped myself. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t unwrap it now, I realized, because no matter what it was, it would disappoint me. All this time it wasn’t a gift I’d wanted: it was a sign. So maybe it was best to let this, of all things, have endless potential.
I pulled my chair over to the closet, took the bag, and pushed it up and over next to the box with the EZ products. Whatever it was, it had waited a long time to find me. A little bit longer wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
Chapter Twelve
“Whose turn is it to ask?”
“Yours,” Wes said to me.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, cranking the van’s engine. “Go ahead.”
I sat back in my seat, tucking one foot underneath me as we pulled out of Delia’s driveway and started down Sweetbud Road. We’d won the toss, which meant we got to go wash the van, while Bert and Kristy were stuck making crab cakes. “Okay,” I said, “what’s your biggest fear?”
As always, he took a second to think about his answer. “Clowns,” he said.
“Clowns.”
“Yup.”
I just looked at him.
“What?” he said, glancing over at me.
“That is not a real answer,” I told him.
“Says who?”
“Says me. I meant a real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.”
He thought for a second. “Clowns.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please.”
“That’s my answer.” He slowed down, edging carefully around the hole. I glanced at the heart in hand, which was still, shimmering in the heat. “I don’t like clowns. They scare the shit out of me, ever since I went to the circus as a kid and one popped a balloon right in my face.”
“Stop it,” I said, smiling.
“I wish I could.”
We were at the end of the road now, a cloud of dust settling all around us.
“Clowns,” I repeated. “Really?”
He nodded. “Are you going to accept it as my answer, or not?”
“Is it the truth?”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Fine,” I said. “Then it’s your turn.”
I knew a lot about Wes now. That he’d gotten his first kiss from a girl in sixth grade named Willa Patrick. That he thought his ears were too big for his head. And that he hated jazz, wasabi, and the smell of patchouli. And clowns.
The game we’d begun the night we were stranded was ongoing: whenever we found ourselves alone, driving to a job or prepping silverware or just hanging out, we picked it up automatically where we’d left off the last time. When everyone else from Wish was around, there was noise and drama and laughter and chaos. But times like these, it was just me, Wes, and the truth.
When I’d first started playing Truth, back in my slumber party days, it had always made me nervous. Wes was right in saying it was diabolical: the questions asked were always personal or embarrassing, preferably both. Often, playing with my friends or sister, I’d choose to pass on a question and lose rather than have to confess I was madly in love with my math teacher. As I got older, the games were even more brutal, with questions revolving around boys and crushes and How Far You’d Gone. But with Wes, Truth was different. He’d asked me the hardest question first, so all that followed were easier. Or somewhat easier.
“What,” he asked me one day, as we walked through Milton’s Market looking for paper towels, “is the grossest thing that’s ever happened to you?”
“Ew,” I said, shooting him a look. “Is this really necessary?”
“Answer or pass,” he told me, sliding his hands in his pockets.
He knew I wouldn’t pass. He wouldn’t either. We were both totally competitive, but really, there was more to it than that, at least for me. I liked this way of getting to know him, these random facts and details, each one like a puzzle piece I examined carefully, figuring out how it fit in with the rest. If either of us won, it would all be over. So I had to keep answering.
“Fifth grade,” I said, as we turned onto the paper product aisle. “It was December, and this woman came in to talk to us about Hanukkah. I remember she gave us gelt.”
“That’s the gross part?”
“No,” I said, shooting him a look. “I’m getting to it.” Being so economical with his own words, Wes was always prodding me to hurry up and get to the point, to which I responded by padding my story that much more. It was all part of the game. “Her name was Mrs. Felton, Barbara Felton’s mom. Anyway, so we got gelt, we were talking about the menorah. Everything was fine.”
We were at the paper towels now. Wes pulled an eight-pack off the shelf, tucking it under his arm, then handed me another one, and we started toward the registers.
“Then,” I said, “my teacher, Mrs. Whitehead, comes up to Norma Piskill, who’s sitting beside me, and asks if she’s okay. And Norma says yes, although looking at her, I notice she’s a little green.”
“Uh-oh,” he said, making a face.
“Exactly.” I sighed. “So the next thing I know, Norma Piskill is trying to get up, but she doesn’t make it. Instead, she pukes all over me. And then, as I’m standing there dripping, she does it again.”
“Yuck.”
“You asked,” I said cheerfully.
“I did,” he agreed, as we got in line. “Your turn.”
“Right.” I thought for a second. “What do you worry about most?”
As always, he paused, considering this. From vomit to deep introspection: this was how Truth worked. You either went with it, or you didn’t. “Bert,” he said flatly, after a second.
“Bert,” I repeated.
He nodded. “I just feel responsible for him, you know? I mean, it’s a big brother thing. But also with my mom gone. . . . She never said so but I know she was counting on me to take care of him. And he’s so . . .”
“So what?” I asked as the cashier scanned the towels.
He shrugged. “So . . . Bert. You know? He’s intense. Takes everything really seriously, like with all his Armageddon stuff. A lot of people his age, you know, they just don’t get him. Everything he feels, he feels strongly. Too strongly, sometimes. I think he freaks people out.”
“He’s not that bad,” I said, as he handed the cashier a twenty and got change. “He’s just . . .” And now I was at a loss, unable to find the right word.
“Bert,” he finished for me.
“Exactly.”
And so it went. Question by question, answer by answer. Everyone else thought we were weird, but I was starting to wonder how I’d ever gotten to know anyone any other way. If anything, the game made you realize how little you knew about people. After only a few weeks, I knew what Wes worried about, what embarrassed him most, his greatest disappointment. I couldn’t be sure of any of these things when it came to my mother, or Caroline, or Jason, and knew they’d be equally stymied if asked about me.
“I just think it’s weird,” Kristy said to me after walking up on us a couple of times, only to catch the tail end of Wes detailing some seventh-grade trauma or me explaining why I thought my neck was strange-looking. “I mean, Truth or Dare, that I understand. But this is just talking.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Anyone can do a dare.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said darkly. “Everyone knew if you were smart, you always picked Truth over Dare. That way you could at least lie, if you had to.”
I just looked at her.
“What?” she said. She rolled her eyes.
“I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m talking about cutthroat slumber party ethics. Nobody tells the truth all the time.”
“You do in this game,” I said.
“Maybe you do. But how do you know he is?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I just do.”
And I did. It was why I liked being with Wes so much, that summer. He was the one person I could count on, unequivocally, to say exactly what he meant, no hedging around. He had no idea, I was sure, how much I appreciated it.
“Macy!”
I turned around, and there was Bert, standing at the top of his driveway in an undershirt and a pair of dress pants. There was a piece of tissue stuck to his chin and another on his temple, both clearly shaving injuries, and he looked desperate. “Can you come here for a second?”
“Sure,” I said, starting across the road. When I got within a few feet of him, I could smell his cologne. One step closer, and every step after that, it was all I could smell, which was saying something, considering I’d spent the last hour helping Delia peel garlic to make hummus and was pretty fragrant myself. “What’s going on?”
He turned around and started down the driveway toward his house, walking at such a fast, frenzied pace that I found myself struggling to keep up with him. “I have an important engagement,” he said over his shoulder, “and Kristy was supposed to help me get ready. She promised. But she and Monica had to take Stella to deliver bouquets, and she’s not back yet.”
“Engagement?” I asked.
“It’s my Armageddon club social. A big deal.” He looked at me pointedly, as if to emphasize this. “It only happens once a year.”
“Right,” I said. As we walked up the steps to his front door, I watched as one of the pieces of tissue dislodged from his face, taking flight over his head and disappearing somewhere behind us. On the bright side, at least with us moving, I couldn’t smell the cologne. As much.
I’d never been inside Wes and Bert’s house before. From the road, all you could see was that it was wood, cozy and cabinlike, but I was surprised, as I followed Bert in, by how open and bright it was. The living room was big, with beams across the ceiling and skylights, the furniture modern and comfortable looking. The kitchen ran against the back wall, and there were plants all along the counter, many of them leaning toward one large window above the sink. Also there was art everywhere: abstract paintings on the walls, several ceramic pieces, and two of Wes’s smaller sculptures on display on either side of the fireplace. I’d expected it to look, well, like two teenaged guys lived there, with pizza boxes piled up on the counter and half-filled glasses cluttering every surface, but it was surprisingly neat.