2 Empath

by Edie Claire

  “He’s much better, thanks,” I said evenly.

  “You guys dating?”

  I didn’t hesitate. I just nodded. It might not be technically true, but to say anything else would be even more dishonest. I had no intention of playing mind games with Matt. I wanted my feelings to be clear. He deserved that.

  “I see,” he said lightly, reaching for another handful of fries. “So what happens when you move?”

  “Well, actually,” I admitted, “he’s already moved to Oahu. He’s there now.”

  Matt’s face fell. He swore out loud.

  Despite the implication, I couldn’t help but smile. He was being intentionally comic about it.

  “Seriously?” he railed. “Seriously?”

  I nodded again.

  “Well, fine,” he said, raising his palms in defeat. “I give up. For now. But if you ever decide to ditch this guy, you let me be the first to know, okay?” His voice was so casual, his expression so friendly and guileless, it was difficult to tell if he was serious or not. But I rather thought he was.

  “You got it,” I agreed.

  “So,” he began, moving swiftly to another subject. “You all ready to move? Boxes packed?”

  “Haven’t done a thing,” I admitted. “But I have a week still.”

  He nodded. “We military brats have it down. I was ready in 24 hours last time.”

  “Impressive!”

  He smirked. “Not really. I got all my sports equipment packed, but I accidentally dumped half my clothes in the Goodwill box, and I left my bass guitar and my amp over at my friend Nate’s house.”

  “You play the bass?” I asked, surprised.

  “Not anymore,” he said ruefully. “But Nate does.”

  I laughed. “So, what are you planning to do over the summer? You have a job yet?”

  He smiled broadly. “I do. Got a great one. I’m going to wait tables at a Mexican restaurant with my buddy Alan. His uncle owns the place. Money’s pretty good, with tips, and I’ll get to hang on the North Shore.”

  I brightened. “You mean La Ola? In Haleiwa?”

  “That’s the one! You been there?”

  “Not yet,” I answered, remembering the colorful sit-down restaurant along the tourist town’s main strip. It had looked inviting, but I hadn’t sampled much in Haleiwa except fast food. “I’ll make a point of it, now.”

  “Just make sure you bring enough cash for a decent tip,” he teased. “What are you going to do this summer?”

  The question stopped me cold. What was I going to do this summer? I had been so fixated on being with Zane, I’d forgotten all about my financial picture. When we were together before, I’d been on vacation, but I couldn’t very well hang out on the beach doing nothing the entire summer. Not if I was ever going to save up enough to help Tara and Kylee visit.

  “I don’t know,” I answered finally. “But I need a job. Any suggestions?”

  His mouth twisted. “Gee, that may be tough, Kali. Pretty much everybody’s already got their applications in, you know? Even fast food fills up over the summer.” He thought a moment. “Maybe Lacey could get you a lifeguard spot. She works at one of the county pools, and she says they have trouble finding people.”

  I sighed. “I can’t even swim.” Hadn’t I told him that already?

  He looked shocked. “Seriously? You’d make a pretty sucky lifeguard then.”

  “You think?”

  “I’ll ask around,” he offered with a shrug. “Maybe somebody knows of something.”

  “Thanks. How’s Lacey doing, by the way?”

  A flicker of something crossed his baby blue eyes. I couldn’t feel his emotions in the slightest, which surprised me, given how little I’d been around him compared to random guys at school like Lucas. But where the empath thing failed, my natural perception was often the keenest. His fleeting expression of angst and the tense set of his shoulders sent their message loud and clear. Something was wrong with Lacey. He was worried about her.

  “She’s good,” he lied. “Same old Lace, you know?”

  I caught his eyes. “Not buying it, Matt. What’s wrong? Really?”

  He blinked back at me with surprise. Then he sighed and sat back in his chair. “Aw, man. I don’t know. It’s just such a mess. With Ty and everything. I don’t know what to do.”

  I leaned forward and snatched one of his fries. “Go on,” I urged, sensing a need to talk. Guys resisted it, usually, but I had learned that a sympathetic ear could coax even the stubbornest of them to share, as long as there was no judgment involved. I didn’t get called the “gal pal” of Cheyenne for nothing. “Maybe I can help,” I offered.

  He sighed again and ran both hands roughly over his head of short-cropped brown hair. “I don’t know. I guess a girl’s perspective wouldn’t hurt.” He paused another moment, then groaned. “It’s Ty. He and Lacey have been dating, like, forever.”

  “Since middle school, she told me,” I supplied.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “She’s always been crazy about him. And he says he loves her, too.” He went quiet again.

  “But?” I prompted.

  Matt let out a growling sound. “But he’s cheating on her.”

  “No!” I cried out, upset. I had only met Lacey briefly, but her dedication to the unseen Ty had been obvious. She was a funny, genuinely sweet person… she didn’t deserve that. I wanted to ask Matt “are you sure?” but that would be a stupid question. Of course he was sure. It was obviously eating at him.

  “Yeah,” he responded gruffly. “It’s a girl Ty’s been working with. He works crazy hours, but they’re not as crazy as Lacey thinks they are.”

  I growled along with him. “Well, that totally sucks.”

  Matt drummed his knuckles on the table restlessly. “I don’t know what to do, Kali. Ty’s my best friend and all… But I really just want to wring the guy’s neck, you know?”

  “Want me to do it?”

  He smiled sadly. “I wish to God Lacey would just break up with him. He’s given her enough reason to about four times over, even without the cheating. But she’s just built so loyal… she’s like a damned puppy dog.”

  Matt was right. Lacey did seem like the kind of girl who would give a guy every benefit of the doubt.

  “I wish I didn’t even know about it,” he lamented. “But the thing is, Ty admitted it to me himself. He was having some ‘crisis of conscience,’ if you can believe that.”

  “Nope,” I said cynically.

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” he agreed. “He told me about it and I told him to cut it the hell out and he said he would. He claimed he really did love Lacey and didn’t want to break up with her.”

  I knew what was coming. “But then he kept cheating anyway?”

  “Yep.”

  I sat back in my seat and exhaled loudly. “Then you have to tell her, Matt.”

  His eyes held mine a moment, their depths plagued with misery. He let his forehead bang on the tabletop. “I can’t,” he groaned, his voice muffled.

  “She has to know,” I reasoned. “If she forgives him anyway, that’s her business. But she has to know.”

  “Why?” he garbled, his head still down. “You know it’ll kill her.”

  “She’ll be devastated,” I agreed. “But wouldn’t you want to know, if you were in her shoes?”

  He lifted his head and scowled. “If I were in her shoes, I’d have flattened the inconsiderate lying bastard years ago.”

  “He’s your friend!” I said, surprised by his venom.

  Matt looked suddenly thoughtful. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. “You know what? I was wrong, what I said before. Ty isn’t my best friend.” He straightened. “Lacey is.”

  My heart warmed. “You said it,” I noted with a smile. “I didn’t.”

  He slapped both hands on the table, making the empty ketchup cup jump. “Damned right! To hell with Ty and whatever he wants. Lacey deserves better.”

  He smiled at me. “Yo
u’re good at this stuff, you know?”

  I laughed out loud. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Yeah, you did,” he insisted. “You helped me put things in perspective. Thanks.” His more easygoing grin returned. Then he rose. “So, no burger and sub combination is complete without a vanilla shake to top it off. Can I get you one, too?”

  Now it was my turn to bang my forehead on the tabletop. How much more junk food could I possibly eat in one afternoon?

  “Come on,” Matt cajoled. “It’s a special occasion. Your dad said it was your last day of school, right? And in just a week, you’ll be back in Oahu!”

  I turned my head sideways and grinned at him. “Make it chocolate.”

  Chapter 11

  “If you want any of that winter stuff, just take it,” I urged, pointing to the growing mound of clothes I had thrown in a heap under my window. The rest is going to charity.”

  Tara paused in her job of putting together cardboard boxes and sighed. “I guess you won’t be needing the mittens and the snow boots so much, huh? After a couple months, you’ll think fifty-five degrees is freezing.”

  “Ooh!” Kylee squealed, pulling something from the pile. “You really don’t want your white ski jacket? I’ll take it!”

  I shrugged. “I’m keeping enough warm stuff for travel, but the new house doesn’t have much closet space.”

  Tara handed me a finished box. “That’s all of them. You want me to start putting stuff in?”

  I fought back another wave of sadness. When I was alone, I was so excited about moving to a tropical paradise and seeing Zane again that I could hardly stand it. But whenever I looked at my friends, the thought of saying goodbye made my insides feel heavy as lead. And I knew that it was even worse for them. They weren’t going anywhere. Still, they were obviously trying their best to be happy for me.

  “Sure, thanks,” I answered Tara. “Maybe that pile of books on my desk?”

  My phone made my favorite noise in the world. Zane’s new ringtone: a rooster crow.

  I whipped it out of my pocket.

  “Text?” Kylee said excitedly. “Do tell!”

  “He sent me a picture,” I explained, studying the screen. “It’s the military bunker on the beach near Turtle Bay.”

  “Why would he send that?” Tara asked.

  I read the text, and my heart skipped a beat. “He says, ‘So why does looking at this thing depress the hell out of me?’”

  My friends blinked back at me, confused. “Say what?” Kylee asked. “I didn’t know anything bad happened to you on the beach.”

  I sank down on the edge of my cluttered bed. “Nothing bad did happen there,” I explained. “But it’s where we were sitting the day he told me about his mother. The whole story of her coming down from the high of being a famous soap actress to the low of being an unemployed addict, and his having to work all the time just to eat, and getting stuck in foster care the beginning of his senior year, and then her ODing and dying on him. It was horrible enough for him to tell it and for me to hear it. I can’t imagine living through it.”

  “It makes sense then, how he feels,” Tara said thoughtfully. “It’s just like we thought, Kali. He sees that bunker now and has no idea what happened there, but he has a strong emotional association with it. A negative one.”

  I looked back at her. “You must be right.” I texted him back quickly and explained that nothing bad had actually happened at the bunker — at least nothing he didn’t already know about. Even as I did that, and even as sad as I felt myself to be reminded of his past, a part of me was newly excited. If he remembered how he felt at the bunker, I could take him to other places —

  “Hey, girls! How’s it going?” My father’s boisterous greeting made us all jump.

  Kylee and Tara greeted him with their usual nervous respectfulness. The Colonel’s attempts at playing “casual civilian dad” with my female friends always did fall woefully short — but he tried.

  “Um… kind of slow,” I admitted. “I can’t believe how much stuff I’ve collected just since we moved to Cheyenne!”

  “Same with your mother,” he said ruefully, not being one to collect much of anything himself, except military memorabilia. “But here,” he said, holding out a yellowed banker’s box. “I found your grandmother’s things. This was all the way at the back of the attic — I figured it’d take another move to unearth it!”

  I rose slowly and took the box from him. Kalia’s things. I hadn’t looked through the box since I was a child. He had looked for it, halfheartedly, when we filled out the ancestry forms, but he hadn’t wanted to unload the entire attic at the time.

  “Speaking of which, did you ever get those test results back?” he asked.

  I could sense Tara and Kylee stiffening; the room grew suddenly warmer. “There was a delay at the lab,” I said truthfully. “But Mr. Stedman said he would get the results to us, even if he had to mail them over the summer.”

  My father shrugged. “Oh, well. They should get forwarded with everything else, then.” He cast a glance around my room, which looked like a cyclone had hit it. “Better get a move on,” he chastised. “The truck will be here early tomorrow. Thanks for your help, girls!”

  “You’re welcome, Sir,” Tara and Kylee answered.

  With a smile and a wave, he left.

  I sank back down on the bed.

  Kylee slipped over and shut the bedroom door behind him. She whistled. “Girl, you were smooth!”

  “I don’t want to have to lie about it,” I said miserably. “But I can’t show him the results! Not yet anyway. Maybe never. I feel like… oh, I don’t know. That it’s not my place, you know? He’s perfectly happy with the way things are. He loved his father, and his grandparents. You should have heard how proud he was reading through the names in that Swedish bible!”

  “I see what you mean, Kali,” Tara agreed. “It’s obvious he has no idea. If he had the slightest suspicion, he wouldn’t have put you in the position you’re in. He would either have told you, or refused to consent to the testing, or something!”

  “What about your mother?” Kylee asked. “Have you told her?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve thought about it. But once I did, she’d be in the same awful spot I’m in. And I feel like she wouldn’t be able to keep it from him, because they tell each other everything. If it’s best he never knows, then she can’t know either.”

  They said nothing for a minute. Then Kylee moved closer. “Maybe there’s something in the box that could help? ”

  We all looked down at it. “I don’t think so,” I answered. “My dad’s been through it all himself you know, more than once. It’s mostly stuff about his parents’ wedding, and birth announcements and stuff. There was a bronze baby shoe…”

  “It can’t hurt to check, Kali,” Tara said gently. “Your dad might not have been looking for what you’re looking for.”

  I stared at her. “What am I looking for?”

  “A good reason to tell your dad the truth,” Kylee answered. “Or not to. Either way, more information can’t hurt, right? What little you know now isn’t helping anybody.”

  I removed the lid. “I guess you’re right.”

  Kylee and Tara gave the stuff on my bed a shove and made room to sit on either side of me.

  “Her wedding dress was on top,” I said. “I remember that.” I set the lid aside and pulled out the carefully folded heap of aged fabric. It wasn’t a typical wedding dress; it was too plain. Cream-colored cotton, tea-length, with a modest neckline and no lace or frills.

  “Oh my, she was tiny!” Kylee commented.

  “And to think I wanted to get married in it myself someday,” I lamented. “I couldn’t get half of me in it now, and even if I could, it would be a miniskirt!”

  I refolded the dress carefully and laid it aside. “Here’s my dad’s bronzed baby shoe,” I explained, pulling out the brittle, once-frilly little shoe and setting it aside with the dress. “I remembe
r she had a scrapbook, and then a bunch of loose pictures and cards and stuff…”

  My memory seemed to be accurate. I handed the scrapbook to Tara and a thin paper high school yearbook to Kylee. Beneath them was an envelope stuffed full of cards and letters. I moved that aside, reaching instead for the few loose photographs that lay at the bottom of the box.

  “The picture I know Kalia best from is her wedding picture,” I explained. “It’s always been framed and kept out along with my parents’ wedding picture and the one of my mom’s parents. But I liked looking at these pictures of her too, when I could.” I held up a tattered black-and-white snapshot. “This is Kalia with her parents, and her brothers. There were five kids in the family.”

  Kylee and Tara leaned in with interest. “Poor thing,” Tara quipped. “Surrounded by all that testosterone. I can so relate!”

  The picture was grainy, but the architecture of the old wood-frame house and the tropical plants and trees surrounding made the whole scene scream Hawaii. I pointed to a girl of thirteen or fourteen, standing next to her mother beside a dilapidated car. Her four brothers looked both motley and mischievous, shirtless with ragged shorts, flyaway hair, and impish grins, but my grandmother — despite the plainness of her clothes — looked like a fashion model. She was a natural beauty, pure and simple. Her long dark hair hung to her waist, framing a striking face with high cheekbones, large expressive eyes, and a bright, happy smile. “She was the middle child,” I remembered. “Her dad died of lung cancer a couple years after this picture was taken, and the family had a really hard time. Kalia worked a civilian job at the Air Force base, in the cafeteria, while she was going to high school. That’s how she met my grandfather.” I paused a moment, then corrected myself. “I mean Albin Thompson. He was stationed in Honolulu, at Hickam, during the Korean War.”