Stay (ARC)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  He looked up at me over his hand of cards and nar-

  rowed his eyes.

  “Seriously, Lucas,” he said. “You need to get your

  butt out of here and go have that picnic.”

  Obviously, I had told him a little bit about Libby over

  the course of the day. Libby past and Libby future.

  “Maybe some other day,” I said.

  “My mom is here. I’ll be right here. When you get

  back, everything will be just the way it is now.”

  It sounded like a promise. But I was not about to leave

  a thing like that to guesswork or chance.

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah. Promise.”

  I looked at the clock radio beside his bed.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think it’s too late for today.”

  “How is it too late?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to be a picnic lunch. Lunch. By the time I put the whole thing together and got over there,

  it would be time for dinner.”

  “So? Who says it can’t be a picnic dinner?”

  “It’s sandwiches.”

  “You can eat sandwiches for dinner.”

  I looked over at his phone. He had a phone in his

  room, the lucky dog. The fact that I looked at it meant

  I was considering it.

  He noticed.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Call.”

  I just sat a minute. The tips of my fingers were tin-

  gling, but I had no idea why.

  Then I got up and walked to the phone.

  I knew her number by heart. But I had never called

  it before. Which means I had memorized it, but not the

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  cool way—by using it. The pathetic way. By staring at it

  until the numbers were permanently etched into my brain.

  “She might have plans,” I said. “Kind of short notice.”

  “One way to find out,” Connor said.

  “Maybe her parents want her home for dinner.”

  “One way to find out.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed.

  Mrs. Weller picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Hi. Mrs. Weller?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Lucas Painter. Is Libby in, please?”

  “She is, Lucas. And you have very polite phone manners.

  Just hold the line a minute, and I’ll go tell her you’re calling.”

  I shifted from foot to foot. Caught Connor’s eye.

  Nodded.

  Then Libby was on the line.

  “Lucas?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “About time you called.”

  “It’s only been a couple of days.”

  “Oh. Well, it seemed longer.”

  It made my face hot when she said that. Or maybe

  it was the way she said it. I turned my face slightly away from Connor, hoping he wouldn’t see it redden.

  “I was just wondering…” Then I stalled, and realized I

  had no idea how to phrase my request. I hadn’t rehearsed

  this part at all. Which, considering how obsessed I’d been

  with every other aspect of the thing, seemed strange. “Do

  you have to be home for dinner?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

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  “Well, I don’t know. What did you have in mind?”

  “I thought maybe I could come get you and take you

  someplace.”

  “I’ll ask my mom,” she said.

  I tapped my foot and waited, and then she was back

  on the line, her words all in a rush.

  “She says it’s okay and I accept, what time do you

  want to pick me up?”

  * * *

  I showed up at her house promptly at five, the carefully

  prepared picnic basket dangling from my hand.

  Libby answered the door.

  She looked at me. Then down at the basket.

  “I hope this is okay,” I said. “I hope it’s something you’ll like. My first thought was to take you out someplace to

  dinner. But I thought a picnic would be more romantic.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Just looked into my

  eyes. But I could tell by her face that I’d done well. I had struck the right note with her. And just in that moment

  my life was so perfect I could hardly stand it.

  “Mom!” she called over her shoulder. Into the house.

  “Lucas and I are going. See you later.”

  And then we were walking down the street together

  hand in hand. And life was just the way you see it in the

  movies or on TV.

  My life. Was all that.

  * * *

  “If anybody asks you,” I said, “we had this picnic in the

  park.”

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  We were up in the woods, on the highest hill I knew

  how to find, looking down through the trees at the town

  spread out below. I hadn’t chosen a spot looking over the

  river. Libby might have thought it was a nice view, but I

  didn’t. Not since reading that newspaper story.

  “Probably smart,” she said. “Parents are weird about

  the woods, and I don’t know why.”

  “I don’t know why, either. I like it up here.”

  I lifted the checkered tablecloth off the basket. Unfolded

  it and spread it carefully on the forest floor.

  “Have a seat,” I said.

  She settled on one edge of it.

  “This is nice,” she said, looking down over the town.

  “I like this.”

  “I hope it doesn’t seem weird to have sandwiches for

  dinner.”

  “I don’t see why a person shouldn’t,” she said. “Besides,

  I didn’t exactly think you had a roast turkey or a baked

  lasagna in there.”

  I sighed out a bit of tension and began unpacking the

  food. Carefully laying out two sturdy china plates, cloth

  napkins. I arranged the fruit and the wrapped sandwiches

  on a third plate in the middle of the cloth. The cookies

  were in a plastic storage container, and I set those beside

  the serving plate.

  Then I saw the pink rose, which had apparently fallen

  to the bottom as I walked. I’d forgotten it. And it was

  supposed to come first. But anyway, better late than

  never, I figured.

  “Here,” I said, pulling it up by the stem. “This is for you.”

  She took it from me, her eyes soft.

  “You’re a very thoughtful boy,” she said. “You know

  that?”

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  It made me blush, so I turned my face down. I pulled

  the two small bottles of apple juice out of the basket and

  put one by her plate, one by mine. I never answered. I

  was too embarrassed by her praise.

  “I can’t believe some girl hasn’t already snapped

  you up.”

  Flustered, I became a tour guide for sandwiches.

  “This is sliced ham,” I said, pointing. “And this is

  deviled ham.”

  “Ooh. I like deviled ham. And I haven’t had it for ages.”

  I put that one on her plate. I wasn’t sure if I should

  take it out of the plastic first. Maybe that would have

  been more polite. But maybe she didn’t want my hands

  all over her food. By the time I remembered I had made

  the sandwich with my hands, I had already gone ahead<
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  with giving it to her wrapped.

  “There’s also turkey and tuna,” I said. “If you’re hun-

  gry enough for two.”

  She ignored the statement and stared into my face as

  she unwrapped her sandwich.

  “Have you had a girlfriend before?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  The honest answer would have been not at all. Not

  in any way. But I thought what I said sounded better.

  “I wonder why.”

  Now we were traveling down a less comfortable road.

  Were we really going to analyze whether there was some-

  thing wrong with me? Why I repelled girls like the wrong

  end of a magnet?

  “You do know I’m only fourteen,” I said. “Right?”

  “I know.”

  “Does that bother you? That I’m a little younger than

  you?”

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  “No. Who cares? It’s only a year. And you’re very

  mature. And you seem to know a lot about how to have

  a girlfriend for a guy who never had one.”

  I did not wade into the minefield of replies.

  We began to eat our sandwiches. I took the sliced ham,

  since I figured she was less likely to choose it after eating deviled ham. We ate in silence for a time, staring down

  over the town. The sun was on a long slant through the

  trees, off to the west. And I felt unbalanced.

  Turned out I had no idea what unbalanced even felt

  like. Not yet. I was right on the cusp of finding out.

  “I think I might know why,” she said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why you haven’t had a girlfriend.”

  Her words iced my belly in a heartbeat. Was she really

  going to tell me what I was doing wrong? After every-

  thing had gone so well up until this moment?

  “If you want to know, that is,” she added.

  I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.

  She looked over at my face and seemed to pick up on

  my discomfort.

  “Oh, it’s not you,” she said. “I wasn’t going to say

  anything bad about you.”

  I breathed a little. Not much, but more than I had

  been breathing.

  “Okay. I guess I want to know, then.”

  “It’s just that you have to really think about who you

  want to hang around with. People will judge you by that.”

  I had a bite of sandwich in my mouth, and I chewed it

  before answering. I didn’t know who she meant. Maybe

  Mrs. Dinsmore? But how would she even know that? My

  intention was to ask, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to.

  She went on to tell me.

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  “I really think you can do better than Connor Barnes

  for a friend.”

  I swallowed hard. The bite of sandwich seemed to

  hang up on its way to my stomach, and I felt a wave of

  something like heartburn.

  “What’s wrong with Connor?”

  “He’s just kind of weird,” she said. “And kind of a sad

  sack. He always has this big black cloud over his head,

  following him everywhere he goes. I mean, not really,

  but … you know what I mean. I think you’d have a lot

  more friends if he weren’t with you all the time.”

  My mind had begun to run circles inside my head.

  I was trying to get a feel for whether this was a “game

  over” sort of thing, or if I could still think of her as a

  potential girlfriend.

  “He’s been my best friend since we were three.”

  “Maybe that’s too long. Maybe it’s time to make new

  choices.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.

  “Okay. I didn’t mean to upset you. Just trying to help.”

  We finished every last bite of that meal without find-

  ing one other thing to talk about.

  * * *

  I learned something about kissing that day. I learned it

  can wipe the slate clean of just about everything that

  came before it.

  We were lying side by side on the big tablecloth. The

  dishes and any leftover trash had been carefully packed

  into the basket, which I’d placed off to the side. Out of

  our way.

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  She moved her face over close to mine, and I kissed

  her. And suddenly everything felt okay again. I knew

  there had been something bad back there, behind us.

  Something had happened and I hadn’t forgotten it. Not

  by any means. But it felt like such ancient history now.

  Like it couldn’t possibly still matter.

  I’ve had the same feeling many times since, over the

  years, in relationships. Some little tip of an iceberg peeks up above the surface. Then it goes down again, and you

  think, Oh good. It’s gone. I guess it was nothing.

  Only now I’m not a kid anymore. So now I know.

  We kissed for a long time. I have no idea how long.

  Might have been ten minutes that felt like a second. Might

  have been a few seconds that stretched out forever.

  She rolled over onto her back and sighed. Not a bad

  sigh. More of a contented one. She laced her hands together

  behind her head and looked up at the late afternoon sky

  through the trees. So I did the same.

  “This is nice out here,” she said.

  “Yeah. I like it out here in the woods.”

  “You seem to know these woods pretty well.”

  “I run out here.”

  “Oh. Right. I heard you were a runner. I heard you

  scored a place on the track team for the fall semester.”

  Suddenly, in my head, I was on the team for the first

  time ever. Really on the team. Not resisting. Not plan-

  ning to weasel out of it.

  “You run through these woods all by yourself?” she

  asked. Before I could think how to answer.

  “No. Not usually alone. I have a couple big dogs who

  run with me.”

  “I didn’t know you had dogs.”

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  “They’re not mine.”

  “You run with two dogs that aren’t yours?”

  “I do.”

  “Whose are they?”

  “You know that lady who lives out here in the woods?”

  The silence that followed my question felt weird. It

  felt much too silent.

  “You mean…,” she began. But then she didn’t seem

  to want to ask me who I meant.

  “Zoe Dinsmore,” I said.

  Looking back, I’m not sure why I felt safe enough to

  say it. I guess all that kissing had softened up my brain. I had misplaced all my best walls and boundaries.

  She sat bolt upright.

  “You know her?”

  “A little. Do you?”

  “No. But I know who she is. And I’m shocked that

  you know her, Lucas. I’m … shocked.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s…”

  But then she seemed unwilling to finish her thought

  again.

  “What? She’s what?”

  “She’s a killer.”

  I sat bolt upright, too.

  “She’s not a killer,” I said.

  “She killed two kids. That makes her a killer.”

  “She didn’t kill them.”

&
nbsp; “So why are they dead?”

  “An accident killed them.”

  “And she caused the accident.”

  “But it was an accident.”

  “But she caused it.”

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  I could feel that we were going around in a loop, like

  that traffic circle in Blaine, but I couldn’t find a place to turn off.

  “Sometimes things happen,” I said. “It’s not like she

  did it on purpose.”

  “She showed up to work on hardly any sleep. And

  drove innocent kids around. Why didn’t she call in sick

  to work? Why didn’t she pull over when she knew she

  was sleepy?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know. My mother fell asleep at

  the wheel once. With me in the car. I think I was about

  seven. We were coming back from the north county, and

  her head nodded, and then she drifted over the center-

  line and scraped a car going the other way. Just sort of

  scraped the trim off the guy’s door. She kept saying the

  same thing over and over—that she hadn’t had any idea

  she was so tired. She hadn’t known she was about to go

  to sleep. She couldn’t feel it. Every night I lie in bed and try to go to sleep. And then the next thing I know, I’m

  opening my eyes and it’s morning. I never feel myself fall

  asleep. Ever. Do you?”

  We sat there for what felt like a long time. Staring

  down at the town, which I thought looked less welcoming

  than it had a minute ago. She never told me if she could

  feel herself fall asleep.

  “Why are you defending her?” she asked after a time.

  Her voice was like glass. Whatever door she had opened

  into her life for me was closed and locked now. And you

  didn’t have to be an expert on girls to know it.

  “I just think things happen sometimes and it’s not

  really anybody’s fault.”

  “I don’t,” she said. Still like glass. “I think we have to take responsibility for what we do.”

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  “So if my mom had hit that guy’s car head-on, and

  somebody in the car had died, you’d think my mom was

  a killer?”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  Now she really had my mind spinning in circles.

  Uncomfortably so. It was dizzying.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Your mom is a good person.”

  “You know my mom?”

  “Not really. But I know she is.”

  That was the moment when my door closed.

  I locked it.

  I could have continued to argue. I could have pointed

  out that she had decided my mother was an angel and Zoe