Please have a phone.
I stepped on a shell. The sharp angle jabbed the softest spot on my foot, and I jumped, falling onto the sand.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to hurry to this person. One squint and I recognized the figure heading toward me was Joy. Buck naked Joy.
I pushed myself to my feet and threw my hands in the air. “What the hell?
“What’s up?” she asked as if we were running into each other at a coffee shop.
“What’s up?”
She bent down to pick up her dress, shook it out, and put it on. “You coming?”
I pressed a palm to my forehead. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going back to the house.”
“Yeah, but what was that?” I pointed at the ocean behind us. “You take off in the middle of the night, alone, and naked?”
“Don’t be such a prude.” Joy waved her hand, dismissing me. “The cold salt water is good for my skin, my circulation. It clears my thoughts. Plus, the moon is full. What are you doing here?”
I dropped my arms to my sides. I was worried, but obviously, for nothing. Because, um, the moon was full. Whatever that meant.
Why couldn’t my sister just be normal?
The only normal person is the one you don’t really know. Chloe’s psych quote.
I guess I didn’t know my sister at all.
My gaze dropped to Joy’s right arm, the one with the scars. There was a big, bumpy one that started at her shoulder and traveled in a jagged line to her elbow. That one was from the three-wheeling accident. It was interesting that it overlapped the others, the self-inflicted silvery pink scars. They were tiny but plentiful, lined up in rows on the soft skin near her elbow, like some eerie, alone on an island, countdown. Now, a tattoo mostly covered those small hatch marks. A quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that basically said defects were necessary for individuality.
“What are you looking at?” She sounded perturbed.
“I’m…”
Joy stared me down, her expression bordered on creepy, as if we were in a horror movie, and this was the part where I realized I was a goner. Except there were no demon fingers or locusts rushing out of her mouth, only cryptic words.
“Reed told you about Jeremy.” She sighed. “I knew he couldn’t keep his big mouth shut.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Joy rolled her eyes. “I didn’t think anyone needed to know.”
Anyone. She lumped me in the category of anyone. Not family. Not sister. And definitely not a friend.
She walked away. A small clump of wet sand dropped from her dress. I replayed her words. She’d said no one needed to know. Maybe she needed time. Maybe now was the time, and I had to try harder.
“Wait.” I moved, struggling to catch up with her. My arms helicoptered, the stupid unstable sand making my efforts to catch up with my sister comical. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Joy marched along the gray, wooden slats.
“Joy, hang on,” I said, but she kept walking. “Come on. Don’t you think we should talk about this? I want to help.”
She turned, her face a mask of calm. I stopped suddenly, feeling a splinter of driftwood drill its way into my foot. I winced, then tried to control my breath, which seemed to be short due to a combo of trying to talk, run on sand, and process this surreal moment.
Joy scoffed, shaking her head. “Whatever, Grace. I don’t need your help. There’s nothing wrong. Nothing you have the answers to anyway.”
“Are you depressed? Is that why you went out in the water alone?”
Even as the words came out, they seemed wrong. She wasn’t brooding. She wasn’t hiding out. But what did I know? I wasn’t a medical professional. I wasn’t even an adult. I had to tell my mom.
“Chill,” she said, sounding tired. “There’s nothing you need to fix. You couldn’t anyway.”
My stomach dropped. What was I doing wrong?
“This has nothing to do with you.” Joy resumed walking. “I don’t need any help from little Miss Perfect.”
Chapter 24
The Singularity of Driftwood, Watercolor Landscape
I opened my eyes to the sunrise and my mom watching me.
I blinked. I was lying next to my mom, in her bed. The night before, I left the beach and headed straight for her room, slipping into the empty side of the queen bed. Prone to nightmares as a kid, I used to climb into my parents’ bed a lot. Whatever haunted me dissolved immediately once I tucked myself between their sleeping bodies.
“Good morning, honey,” she said, pressing a warm palm to my cheek. “This is a nice surprise.”
I fit my face into the curve of her hand, but then I wanted to cry. When had everything become so messed up? Nothing was as simple as running to your parents after a nightmare. Not anymore.
Why did my sister say I was perfect? And why did it feel like the biggest insult ever? She was the one who always acted like she was perfect, like she’d figured out the key to the world and that the rest of us were poor peons waiting for entry.
I closed my eyes, the inside of my lids pinkish gray from the sun-lightened room. I wanted her to fix all the things that were wrong. Or at the very least, I wanted her to tell me something that would make me understand better, like when Kristen would call me Poo Eye in Kindergarten, making fun of my two different eye colors. This was less juvenile, but still, I needed perspective.
“Joy got married.”
My mom sat up, pulling the sheet with her. She smoothed it on her lap before looking at me. She appeared not even the tiniest bit surprised at my statement, like she’d been waiting for me to broach the subject.
I didn’t move, but my heart thumped, sending a painful vibration into my neck. “You knew?”
With both hands, my mom pushed her hair back. Then she nodded. “She asked for my help with the annulment.”
“So they’re not married anymore?”
“No.”
Erased. Gone. Without me even knowing.
I scooted to a sit, pressing my back against the white wooden headboard. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not my story to tell.”
“But we’re family. I don’t get it. What does Dad think about all this?”
She scoffed. “I didn’t tell him. He can’t handle Joy’s behavior. He still thinks she needs to be on the medication the doctor gave her three years ago. That’s why he was so angry at her graduation. He thought she had it all together, that she’d go to school, and she let it all go. He didn’t know what else to do. If you ask me, she seems to be doing okay without meds. She’s more herself anyway, but you know your father. He’s all about following the rules. No matter what.”
“Not true.”
My mom’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Um, cheating isn’t following the rules.”
She waved her hand. “We both had a hand in the demise of our marriage.”
“You cheated, too?”
“No, but I didn’t agree with him anymore. We walked away from our once mutual page.”
“Are any of us on the same page? I’m so sick of everyone in this family staying silent on everything. Last summer, you and Dad let me fix up the house as if we were actually moving. I felt so stupid. I still do. I’m going to be seventeen this year. Do you really think I’m that immature and naïve?”
The second I asked the question, I thought about Zac. He didn’t know how to tell me about Jenny. Plus, Chloe practically got PTSD because she couldn’t unload her Taylor baggage. Maybe I really was a clueless blob that no one knew how to talk to or trust. Or worse, I was what my sister said. Someone who thought she was perfect but was truly oblivious.
“Honey, no, and what happened last year with the house, that was our mistake, not yours. We didn’t purposefully not tell you because of some weakness on your part. We screwed up. I’m sorry.”
“Well, why didn’t Joy tell me about being married?”
“You’
d have to ask her that. I know marriage is a pretty big event to be kept out of the loop for, but you don’t tell your sister everything either, right?”
“No, but that’s because I never know when she’ll throw it back in my face. But, I’ve tried to at least have some sort of connection. Now, I think it’s because she doesn’t like me. When I tried to get her to talk about what happened with Jeremy, she called me perfect,” I said, sticking my tongue out like the word even tasted bad to say it.
My mom pressed a hand to my thigh, but she was quiet. The gauzy curtains billowed away from the window, making the room seem smaller.
I swallowed. “You think that, too?”
“Of course not. But you’ve seen your sister struggle, and it’s been bad at times. Deep down, you don’t want that, so you’ve contained yourself.”
“And that’s bad because…?”
“Maybe a part of you chalks that up to being troubled or needy. You’ve never caused your dad and me any worry, and somehow, that became your role. So for you to be hurting or making mistakes, it’s painful. It’s out of the containment you’ve made for yourself, the place that became yours in this family.”
“I make mistakes. A lot of them.”
“But when do you ask for help?”
“I do,” I said, but at that moment, only my phone drying in the rice came to mind. Lame.
“Consider your sister’s perspective. She’s the older one, typically that would mean she’d be responsible, a leader. In some ways, she thinks she’s failed.”
“Yeah, she actually told me that once.” It was the night after I ran out of the house when our dad didn’t show up to the birthday dinner I’d planned for him. Had it been difficult for Joy to tell me that? I didn’t know. I wasn’t exactly coherent, having spent the time before that call wearing a gorilla mask and sucking down beers at Tommy Bowman’s Halloween party.
Yeah. I’d made lots of mistakes.
Was one of them not letting Joy in?
I tried to talk about Zac, but lately, all I’d done was complain. Plus, I scoffed at every one of her suggestions. I pressed my palms to my eyes.
“Give it some thought. If you continue to reject her help, you’re essentially rejecting her. You certainly don’t have to take her advice, but maybe you could try to be a little open to it.”
My sister felt rejected? By me? I always thought of her advice as her being superior, not as her actually trying to help. Here I believed she wanted me to be like her, when I was doing the same thing, always being disappointed that she wasn’t what I wanted her to be. I was spending so much time wanting a best friend relationship from her that I completely bypassed being there for her as a sister.
“Remember the waves?”
I grinned. “I knew this was coming.”
“See, we have some tradition in this family, other than being cuckoo.”
“Cuckoo, we can count on.”
“Yes, we can.” My mom cleared her throat. “Okay, where was I? Let’s see. There’s the fluctuating tide…”
I relaxed into the pillows, listening to my mom talk about the ocean and the waves, her family bond speech, a reminder that even when we were apart, we belonged together. Because you can always count on the waves returning to the shore.
Chapter 25
Still Life with Puppet, Finger Paint on Paper
I needed to talk to Reed again.
He’d turned into a key to understanding my sister.
I went to the beach alone. Zac left early, headed for Cape Hatteras for surfing lessons with his mom and sister. Chloe really wanted to see a showing of the Lost Colony production in Manteo, plus the backstage tour. One of the taglines for the show was Experience the sorrow and heartbreak of tragedy and loss, but Chloe swore she wasn’t steeping herself in sad stuff. She just thought it was interesting, historically. I had no idea where my sister went, but I figured I could get some advice from Reed before I attempted to talk to her again.
Reed wasn’t with the crowd of painters on the beach, so he was easy to find with his easel and tackle box full of paints.
“Hey.” I sat next to him in the sand and checked out his painting. It was cool, kind of impressionistic, with small brushstrokes. He was good. “Wow. How did you get the water to look like it’s moving?”
“It’s basically blurring and dabbing.” Reed pointed at the somewhat frayed edges of his brushstrokes, which animated his ocean spray into a crashing wave.
“Really awesome.”
“Thanks.” Reed set down his paintbrush.
“I’m sorry for going all snarky on you.”
“S’okay. I know it was a lot to take in.”
I hugged my knees. “It’s weird. I’m conflicted. I kind of have to readjust how I’ve been thinking about Joy. Nothing feels the same.”
Pandemonium. Yeah, I was definitely picking that for the title of my art movement.
Reed nodded, toying with a small pile of shells next to his easel. He picked up a large, white clam shell, and turned it over in his hands.
I stared at the shell. “So, my sister talks to you? Confides in you about stuff?”
“She did a little bit. At first, it was a Jeremy’s little brother nicety thing, but then when he left, I was the only one who understood.”
“What’s the deal with your brother? What happened with them?”
“What’s the deal with Jeremy?” Reed drew a circle in the sand with the edge of the shell. “That sounds like the title of a Lifetime movie, which isn’t far off the mark, actually. My brother is all about Jeremy. He’s a total narcissist. Was he in love with your sister? It’s possible, but Jeremy will never love anyone as much as he pretends to loves himself. I swear, having a conversation with him is like settling in for a long monologue. One you’ve heard before.”
“Huh. Joy does that, too. How did the two of them ever talk with each other?”
Reed breathed out a laugh. “I don’t think your sister is a narcissist though. Did she ever go on and on about herself only to stop and say, ‘Enough about me. So, how do you feel about me?’”
“Uh, no. Maybe not.”
“Joy fell for him, then it was easy for her to feed into his need for attention. Your sister has this personality that’s so, well, you know.”
“Overwhelming? Exhausting? Perplexing? Impulsive?”
“I was going to say charming.”
“How very polite of you.”
“Anyway, from the moment she fell in love with my brother, she focused all her charm on him. He ate it up.”
I toed a small piece of driftwood in the sand. I felt sorry for my sister. It was an unsettling, foreign feeling. Partially because it seemed like she rejected my sympathy, but mostly because I couldn’t picture her being Jeremy’s silly lovesick puppet. “What am I supposed to do? What would you do?”
“With my brother, it’s a little different. Pretty much all interactions with Jeremy are an attempt at avoiding conflict, because he’s probably never going to change. Most everyone who works at Happy Hills knew if you wanted Jeremy to help or do anything in any capacity, you couldn’t ask. Instead, you had to say, ‘You’re excellent with the pigs. The pigs love you, Jer. We love you with the pigs. We’d love to see your pig magic today.’ Something like that but with a little less sarcasm.”
“So you have to stroke his ego all the time?”
Reed touched his nose. “Exactly.”
“Well, that sucks.” I looked at the water. “I imagine my sister might’ve made one book suggestion, and that was the end of that.”
“No kidding. He probably would’ve flown into a rage had she suggested The Singularity of Sex, like she did with you at the farm. I don’t know what exactly blew up for them, but he skipped town. I have no idea where he is, although that’s not really new. He comes and goes, but I have to say the time he spent with your sister is probably the longest he’s stayed in seven years, since he graduated high school.”
“Joy really knows how to
live life with a sense of freedom. Maybe Jeremy was attracted to that. It used to confuse me, but now, in a way, I admire that. I think it’s hard to live life and ignore outside opinions, to ignore the urge to please others.”
“Hmm.” Reed studied the shell in his hand. His eyebrows shifted upward.
“What?” You think it’s easy to ignore everyone else’s opinions?” I sat up, pulling my hands out of the sand.
Sand flew up between us, and Reed blinked.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry.” I looked around for something for him to wipe his face. I moved to my knees to unzip the thin hoodie I wore, but Reed raised his arm and swiped his T-shirt sleeve over his face.
“No worries.” He shook some sand from his hair. “That’s one way to deal with other people’s opinions.”
“What? No, I was--”
“I’m kidding, Grace.” He grinned.
“Oh.” I sat back on my heels. “So, you think it’s easy to ignore the world?”
“Easy? No.” He picked up another shell and pressed them together, as if they belonged that way. “But if you want a relationship with your sister, you’re going to have to not only accept her for who she is, quirks and all, but be okay with who you really are. Not just the Grace you think your family wants you to be.”
I thought about what my mom said, about me being contained. Maybe it was true. Maybe I was living in a space I thought everyone wanted me to be in. “Yeah, I see that. But I’m not sure who I want to be.”
“Well, whatever you decide, I hope you make that decision based on your own desires. There will always be conflicting opinions. Just because you didn’t get into the art program doesn’t mean that art isn’t your thing. When I started art school, I realized pretty quickly I needed to be okay with not only my work but me. People are going to have opinions. Opinions you won’t like. You have to find a way to figure out which opinions matter to you and which don’t.”
We are not able to offer you a place… students must be serious about improving their artistic abilities.
The Art of Second Chances Page 15