My mother pushes two boxes toward me. “Open them,” she says.
I do. One is a hideous orange messenger bag, the other a pair of jeans which I know I will never wear. But I know she’s trying.
“Thank you,” I say.
She opens the kindergarten craft book I bought her at the last minute and holds it to her chest like it’s a couple of gold bars.
“It’s so wonderful!” she says.
It is her only present.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christmas Day is its own usual blend of disappointment and jail. Nate is gone and for some reason he is not responding to texts. Chelsea is somewhere with family. Later in the week I’m sure I’ll help her put away her whole new wardrobe and electronics and dancing bears and whatever other extravagant collection she’s received for Christmas. And she’ll give me the stuff displaced by the new stuff. We’ll both try to pretend that she doesn’t feel weird and I don’t feel little and yet hungry and wanting at the same time.
Lucky for me, the Parentals ignore me. The thirsty lion parental now looks more like a whipped hyena, and is dressed and ready to go somewhere. My mother gets up to hug him. He kind of hugs back. I want to gag, but that would draw attention to me.
My dad actually puts a hand on my shoulder before walking out. It burns. It disgusts me when he touches me. I say nothing. I know this is his version of “Sorry.”
“Good luck,” my mom says. “I’m sure you’ll get the job.” I’m a little surprised that he’s got a lead on a job so soon since the other times he’s lost a job he’s stayed in bed under the covers for weeks while the refrigerator got empty.
He just nods once and walks out the door.
After he leaves, my mother says to me, “I’m going to go see Carolina. Do you want to come?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not going.”
So she goes out with Jose. I’ve got the place to myself. I call Nate, but it goes straight to voice mail.
I have this small, slow feeling of dread. I replay the whole night, the days leading up to him leaving. Did I say something wrong? The Maleficent thing, maybe it got him thinking.
I get an idea. I go downstairs to the Cheese Lady.
“Hi,” I say when she opens the door, a kid wailing loud in the background. “Merry Christmas. I need to check a couple of things . . . reading list for school. I was wondering if maybe . . .”
“Sure, come in, come in.”
The kid’s wail gets louder.
“Pete, get up off that chair so that Monse here can look at the computer a minute.” She says it “Munsey.” Better than Mousy, but not by much.
“I want to play!”
“You’re not playing, you’re screaming! Now move before I . . .”
He gets up and runs away. The keyboard keys have black smudges and what looks like a dried booger on the P.
I don’t want to stay long, but I feel an overwhelming need to go on Facebook to see Nate’s profile. Cheese Lady hums softly in the kitchen, a toddler on her hip.
Nate’s just posted a picture of himself with a whole other group of people I don’t know. I look at the tags. Jennifer Whitman. Cousin. Daniel Whitman. Cousin. It bothers me to think there are all these people in his life that I know nothing about. It’s already got thirteen Likes. I hover over to see who Liked it. A bunch of people from his school, a few names I recognize.
Then Naomi Ahearn.
Is that the Naomi?
I click on her profile. She has her security set way low, so although we’re not friends, I can see everything, her posts, her pictures, her About. Under relationship status, it says, “It’s complicated.” What the hell does that mean?
I go into her pictures. Her making duck faces. Her with a bunch of her friends, a couple of whom I recognize from soccer or just around town. I look at her posts. Naomi is a fan of posting sayings like, “Rawr. That means I love you in dinosaur.” I scroll past those.
It was Naomi’s birthday three weeks ago. I skim over the HBs and there it is. One from Nate. “Happy Birthday, rock star!”
I feel sick to my stomach. Cheese Lady starts humming a different tune, something that sounds tropical and not at all Christmas-y.
I go back to her pictures, looking at them over time. Trying to go fast so that Cheese Lady won’t catch me cruising Facebook when I’m supposed to be getting a school assignment.
And there it is, last summer. Naomi is in a bikini top and denim shorts, three cornrow braids on the left side of her hair, the rest of it wild and blond and beachy. She’s standing in a giant hole in the sand. Standing next to her is Nate. His arm around her waist. Her arm around his shoulder. Her free hand doing the “rock and roll” sign. The caption reads, “Nate tried to dig to China for me, but only got this far.”
I X out of Facebook in a rush and open my school’s website so that if Cheese Lady looks, she can see I’ve been on it. I stare off for a second, sitting in Cheese Lady’s messy living room on Christmas when everyone else has somewhere to be. And I am mad, or scared, or mad-scared at Nate, for not picking up the phone, for the whole aw-shucks, “I don’t know much about girls” thing when he clearly knew plenty about Naomi, and for writing on her wall just three weeks ago. Maybe I’m an idiot. Clearly I’m an idiot. Clearly I made up that he felt a certain way, but here he is, writing to ex-girlfriends, not calling me. Of course what I thought we had can’t last.
I get up and call out to Cheese Lady, “Thank you!”
“No problem, honey. You come back any time you need to.” I run out the door.
I FINALLY GO TO CHELSEA’S. BUT SOMEHOW SHE’S ROPED US into going to Patricia’s house to get ready for some party. Patricia’s house is also Christmas Central, except her parents have done hers in an all white and silver. White tree. White lights. White ornaments. White pseudo-greenery going up the handrail of their curved staircase.
I am in jeans and a turtleneck. I’m a little less dressed up than Patricia and Dakota, who are both in skirts. Chelsea, luckily, is in jeans, too.
Upstairs in Patricia’s suite—she’s got a sitting area and her own bathroom—it’s like the department store makeup area threw up all over everything. Beauty products are thrown around like confetti, on the bed, on the dresser, on the lighted vanity, and on several footstools. I see the bathroom out of the corner of my eye and it’s similarly littered.
“Choose your weapon,” says Patricia. “We’ve got blues and greens over here. Browns over there. Blacks there. And all the hair products a Jersey girl could need.”
“And the hot curlers and the flat iron are heating up,” says Dakota, her toes in hot pink toe separators, as she takes a swig from a little silver flask. She points it at me. “Want?”
“Sure.” I take a swig and almost cough up a lung. It’s like kerosene.
“Patricia’s dad has the most amazing fully stocked bar,” she says.
“Awesome,” I cough out, my voice kind of raspy.
“The plan is I have to look absolutely devastating,” says Patricia. “Because Jason is home from college this weekend and he will be there.” Jason and Patricia had a long and tragic high school love affair until he went away to college in North Carolina.
“So what’s the status?” asks Dakota.
“I don’t know. Off again, I guess,” she says.
“Not if we have anything to do with it,” says Kathy from history. She turns to me and asks, “So what’s the deal with you and that guy from Willow?”
“Nate?” I ask.
“Well, are you going out with more than one guy from Willow?”
“No, I’m just surprised, because I didn’t realize anyone knew.”
“Ooooh, an undercover lover.”
“No, not at all,” I say.
“Your relationship status still says ‘Single,’” says Patricia.
“Who knew you guys cared so much?” I say.
“Ha! Well, accuracy in relationship status i
s the new girl code, you know. It helps everyone know who is off-limits.”
“I would like to think Nate is off-limits, yes.”
“Why hasn’t he updated his relationship status, then?” asks Dakota.
“I don’t know. It’s really not that important.” But it hadn’t even occurred to me until now. Why hasn’t he?
I look over at Chelsea. She’s flat-ironing. Not close enough to help.
“He’s probably just still burned from what that girl Naomi did to him so he’s taking it slow,” Kathy says, then looks at me like she’s reading my face to decide whether I know what she’s talking about.
I don’t.
“I guess,” I say.
“I know, but to get caught with his teammate like that? That’s just skanky if you ask me. Gross.”
“I don’t know her, but I heard from Laurie on soccer that Naomi is kind of known for general shadiness. Not easy, necessarily, but let’s just say insensitive in her selections.”
“Well, ladies, he’s moved on, so we’re all good,” I say. I’m shaking a little inside, but I think I fooled them.
Nate didn’t tell me that Naomi had broken his heart, and I wonder why.
I reach for Dakota’s flask again and take a long, burning swig.
“TELL ME AGAIN WHY WE’RE DRIVING TO QUINN’S WHEN SHE lives five blocks away,” I say.
“We’re suburbanites. We don’t walk,” says Dakota, riding shotgun.
Kathy, the designated and totally sober driver says, “Plus these shoes kill for walking.”
“But you look damn good,” I say.
“Someone’s happy,” says Chelsea. She doesn’t look overly thrilled.
We’re at Quinn’s in three minutes.
When we get there, I feel the low thud of music hitting the glass of the front windows and the double glass and iron doors. Some people are around the side of the sunshine yellow shingle house, although it is way too cold to be outside, and I hear a muffled crash somewhere inside.
“It’s kind of trippy that cranky little Quinn lives in the hello-get-happy house, huh?” says Dakota.
“With her dozen smelly brothers too.”
“There aren’t a dozen of them,” says Dakota.
“A shitload of them. More offspring than necessary for sure.”
“That’s a particularly insensitive thing to say. You know. After what happened.”
We go inside and get hit by a wall of sound. Quinn’s near the front door.
“Hey! Did you bring the booze? We are running low,” she yells over the music.
“The parents were in full surveillance mode. I couldn’t get any. I’ve got cash, though,” says Patricia, stuffing a wad of bills into Quinn’s hand.
“Okay, come in. Commence with the merriment,” says Quinn.
Before I know what’s happening, Dakota is off to find some guy she’s interested in and Kathy is in the bathroom and Patricia is talking to Jason in the corner. Chelsea says, “I’m going to go say hello to Jonathan for a second. Wanna come?”
I know she doesn’t want me to come. “No, I’m going to hang out here for a bit.”
It’s right at this moment that I remember I hate parties. And that none of these people are really my friends except Chelsea and she’s just on a short loan. And that I probably could use more booze to get through this.
“So where’s the bar?” I ask Quinn.
“You got cash?”
“What?”
“We’re asking everyone to chip in ten dollars.”
I am taken by the sudden urge to tell her, “You still owe me a silver crayon. With interest.” But I don’t. Instead I say, “Yeah, okay.”
“So come on,” she says.
I follow her out. She starts walking down the block.
“Where are you going?”
“There is a liquor store, like, four blocks away.”
“We don’t walk; we’re suburbanites,” I say, mirroring Dakota.
“Yeah, well, we don’t drive drunk. Because we want to grow up to have pointless little lives like our parents someday. Walk faster. It’s freaking freezing out here. Anyway, my brother has the car.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Mom is with her boyfriend in Maui. Dad is with his boyfriend in the city.”
“They’re divorced?”
“No.”
Oh.
“So what are you going to use for ID?”
“Shit, are you conducting an investigation?”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“I have a bona fide New Jersey State driver’s license.” She pulls it out of her back pocket and hands it to me. It’s a picture of her with the name “Grady Ford” on it. Twenty-two years old.
“How did you get your picture on someone else’s license?” I ask. I’m a little in awe, actually.
“That’s not me. That’s my brother Grady. Can’t you tell the difference?”
“No, well, yes, but I’m . . .”
“I don’t look like a dude.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You kinda just did, yeah.”
“Okay, whatever. It’s just cool that you have a license.”
“Whatever.”
We walk in silence for another block and get to a wider road, two lanes each way with double yellow lines in the middle. I wobble a little.
She stops at the corner and looks at me. I am a full head taller. I have no idea how this twelve-year-old-looking girl child thinks she’s going to be served alcohol.
“Hey, so how about Truth or Dare?” she says, narrowing her eyes to slits.
“Here? In the cold like this?”
“You look like you can’t feel anything right now.”
This strikes me as hilarious.
“Okay. Dare,” I say.
“Go and try to get that guy over there to go buy our liquor for us.”
“That’s bullshit. And so cliché. Is that the best dare you’ve got?”
“Okay,” she says, leveling her little deep-set pixie eyes at me. “You’re so brave? Go lay down on the double yellow lines in the middle of the road.” As if to add drama to her dare, a van zips by her with a loud whine. Then another car.
“Ha. Your dares are weak,” I say, and step into traffic. A big SUV blares his horn at me, swerves to avoid me, and zooms very close as he makes it by me. The road is dark in both directions, nothing but the liquor store light on about four house-lengths down. There is a streetlight by the liquor store, and another one about as far in the other direction, then the road curves and you can’t see anything but trees and darkness. Another car swerves by me and beeps.
“Get out of the road, you idiot!” screams the driver.
I reach the double yellow lines. Sit down.
Quinn is still standing by the side of the road.
“Okay, you made your point,” yells Quinn. “That guy’s right. You’re an idiot. Get up!”
I feel another car zoom by me, fast, a blur of blue. I put my head down on the road. I am now straight on my back, parallel to the double yellow lines. They are narrower than I am.
“That’s enough! You won Truth or Dare! Get up now,” says Quinn, louder.
Another car rustles by me and I feel cold air on me. This could be the last second. This. Could. Be. It. It feels like a new idea, a revelation that has just occurred to me. More than that: I kind of wish it would be It.
I could end it here.
“Get up! You’re so stupid! Come on!” Quinn sounds really frantic now. “Stop!”
I close my eyes. Zoom. Zoom. That last one felt so close. Thrilling. Right.
Suddenly I feel a hand on my wrist, pulling me up. It’s Quinn. She’s like five feet tall, but she pulls me up and drags me to the other side of the road. A minivan honks at us and honks as it drives away, its sound reproachful as it gets farther away. I look at Quinn and see that she is crying, her old little mouth scrunched up.
“You’re so stu
pid, you know that? You were always a crazy little freak. Ever since kindergarten.”
“You dared me.”
“Those cars missed you by like a foot.” She’s really crying now.
“Calm down,” I tell her. “They’re never going to sell you booze if you look like a blotchy leprechaun.”
“Short jokes. How original. Fine. Wait here.” She wipes her face with the backs of her forearms and goes inside. I sit on the little raised bumps in one of the parking spots. She comes out with two bags that look way too heavy for her to carry. She drops one on my lap and it almost crashes to the ground.
“You gotta acknowledge Frank and Leslie for the genius of naming their kids so you can’t tell whether we’re boys or girls,” she says, as if to herself.
“Genius.”
“Shut up. I’m not even talking to you. I can’t believe you pulled that shit in the road.”
“You dared me.”
“It’s a miracle the human race has survived at all. You idiots with death wishes only think of yourselves.”
I have a hard time keeping up as she takes a different way back to her house.
I go inside, leave the bag on her kitchen counter. Her kitchen is older, not marble perfection or stainless-steel modern chic. It’s got a faintly dusty, somewhat abandoned look about it, a couple of small appliances I can’t identify.
I walk into the dining room and see Patricia. No Jason.
“What’s up?” I ask her. She looks like she’s been crying.
“Nothing,” she says.
“Not good?”
“Guys are jerks.”
“Why don’t we go to the bathroom and wash your face?”
She gets up, and I walk down a hallway, looking for a bathroom. I see a family portrait, Quinn little, even smaller than I remember her being in kindergarten, with four boys, all with the same flaming red hair and almost identical faces. It seems like they got it from their mother, a big, squarish woman with smiling eyes but the same old mouth.
“Which one is Grady, do you know?”
“I think that one,” she says, pointing to the two-sizes-bigger-than-Quinn boy. “It’s so sad about him, right?”
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