Me: Not my type, but…
Dri: But what?
Me: Let’s just say I get it now.
Liam starts playing a new song, one I’ve never heard before. The lyrics go: “The girl that no one knows, the one that secretly glows, all right, the girl that no one knows is mine, all mine, all mine….” It’s catchy.
Scarlett: Should I have sex with Adam Kravitz after homecoming?
Me: WHAT?!?!?
Scarlett: Was just thinking it might be nice to lose my v-card to someone who’s not intimidating, you know? Then it’s done and I can move on.
Me: Is that what you want? Just to be done with it?
Scarlett: Maybe?
Me: I’m not saying sex is such a big deal or anything, but it’s not nothing, you know?
I realize I’m quoting Dri here, but I think she’s right. It’s not nothing. Not to get all parental, but there are diseases and pregnancy, and yeah, I know Scarlett would use a condom—we’ve all seen 16 and Pregnant, which is the best form of birth control ever—but still. Adam Kravitz? My old neighbor Adam Kravitz? The only guy who’s ever shown any interest in me, if you call interest making out with me once, drunk, at the bowling alley on a Saturday night?
My history with him isn’t the issue, though. Scarlett is free to be half peened or full peened by him. I just think she’s being a little faux casual about the whole thing. She’s more like Dri and me than Agnes’s sister, as much as she talks a big game. There’s a difference between talking about sex (and even being comfortable about talking about sex) and actually doing it. Abstractly, sex is simple—one person’s body parts touching another person’s, nothing more, nothing less—but for some of us, the reality is something altogether more complex. Equal parts exciting and scary. I can’t explain why, but I just know that’s how it seems to me.
Scarlett: Don’t freak out. Was just a thought.
Me: Not freaking out. If you want to do it, then you should. But just make sure, because the same argument for doing it applies to not doing it. Once it’s done, it’s done. And I know you don’t need me to tell you to be safe.
Scarlett: Adam’s face is clearing up. I think he may be on Accutane.
Me: Oooh, I want to see. Send pictures!
Scarlett: I miss you, J.
Me: Me too, S. You have no idea.
Scarlett: ?
Me: Dad and the lady of the manor had a big-ass fight. Was scary.
Scarlett: And?
Me: I dunno. For newlyweds they don’t seem so happy.
Scarlett: My parents have been married for 18 years, and they fight ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I think they hate each other. They claim otherwise.
Me: Your parents enjoy fighting. It’s their happy place.
Scarlett: I probably won’t do it with Adam.
Me: ?
Scarlett: But then again, I might.
—
There’s traffic on Ventura, so I don’t get home till after eight. Gloria has left me dinner on the counter: a perfectly serrated leg and thigh of roasted chicken, string beans tossed with almonds, a dainty portion of mashed potato, all showcased under a glass dome. My silverware sits on a cloth napkin. In Chicago, we used paper towels. My mom was an okay cook—a little too prone to experimentation—but I miss her big hearty stews, everything thrown together and unidentifiable. My dad’s car is in the driveway, but Rachel’s is gone, and I don’t hear any noise coming from upstairs, not even the steady bass that usually emits from Theo’s room. I eat my chicken alone at the kitchen island, wipe my mouth, and am about to head upstairs, when I notice someone sitting on the deck.
Dad.
I open the glass doors and step outside. Wrap my arms around myself, because there’s a sharp breeze and a bite to the air I associate with Chicago.
“Hey,” I say, and my dad gives me the same look Rachel gave me this morning. As if my very existence comes as a surprise. I am here, I want to scream. Why am I so easily forgotten?
“Hi, sweetheart. Didn’t hear you. Sit with me.”
I flop down into the lounge chair next to him. I want to ask about our status—Are we evicted?—but I don’t have the courage.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask.
“Just thinking.”
“Ouch,” I say, and my dad smiles.
“It occurred to me just now that I’m finally, officially, in every single way a person can be, a bona fide grown-up. But honestly, sometimes I forget, and think I’m twenty-two. You know what I mean?” he asks. I hope he knows I do not. How could I? Twenty-two sounds old to me.
“If it helps clarify things any, I’m pretty sure you’re forty-four. You’ve been a grown-up for a long, long time in my book,” I say.
“Right. You’re almost a woman yourself, and I’m your father. But damn, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m equipped for adult life. Any of it.” His voice suddenly turns raw and shaky. After my mom died, I never saw him cry, not once, but in those first few months, he had perpetually watery and bloodshot eyes, as if he had just finished weeping somewhere unseen.
I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say. My mom is not here to help us.
I’m not equipped for this life either.
“I wish when you were little someone had said to me: These are the good times. Right now. These are the good times. You are young and things are simple. And one day it’s all going to blow up in your face or bottom out or whatever metaphor you want to use—your mom would have a good one for us—and so relax and enjoy while you can. When I first started out, I used to have nightmares that I gave out a wrong prescription. That I gave Mrs. Jallorari Valium instead of her heart medication. Or that I dosed out the Zackowitzes’ kid’s lithium incorrectly. Your mom and I, though…that part was always easy.” I feel his shoulders start to shake, and so I stare straight ahead. If he’s going to cry, if he is going to choose right now to fall apart, after everything, after him making all of the decisions—selling our house, getting remarried, moving us here and my having no choice in the matter, none—I will not look at him. I’m sorry, but I cannot give him that.
“A wise person in our family used to say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I say, because that is the best I can do. An empty morsel.
I can’t say Mom.
I can’t do that either.
“I know it’s not fair that you’re the one having to comfort me,” he says, eyes on the hills, looking out at the other houses, before glancing back at me. “I do realize that you are the kid here.”
“Am I?” I ask. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He makes his hands into fists and taps his eyes, one-two-three, and then drops them, as if he is done with the self-pity.
“You are just like your mom. An old soul. When you were a baby, you used to lie in your crib and look up at me, and I remember thinking, Man, this kid already sees right through me.” I look over at him. He is wrong. I don’t see right through him. He is deeper and more complex than he likes to admit.
I’ve seen him order cabernet with steak. Many times. Happily.
“Dad?” The question forms again: Are we leaving? But I let it go. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“So forty-four is really old?” His face brightens. He’s now recovered from whatever gripped him.
“Ancient,” I say.
“Better tell Gloria to add Depends to the shopping list, then.” A stupid joke, maybe but I laugh anyway because I can. I can give him that much.
CHAPTER 17
SN: three things: (1) my first crush was on Wonder Woman. I’m a sucker for a girl with a lasso. (2) my mom has a whole pharmacy in her medicine cabinet. Xanax. Vicodin. Percocet. all the good stuff. and she takes them. all the time. like it’s a problem. (3) you have beautiful hands.
Me: Not in order, but…(1) I have my mom’s hands. She used to play piano. I quit after 2 lessons but I should have stuck with it. Sometimes I listen to her favorite pieces and pretend she’s playing. Oh wow, can’t believe I
just told you that. (2) I was Wonder Woman for Halloween a few years ago. Except I wore pants instead of blue undies. Chicago = cold. (3) How’s this for irony? My dad is actually a pharmacist. For real. So I know about all those drugs. I’m sorry about your mom.
—
“Hey, Dried Tubers,” Ethan says when I meet him in the library. Same shirt every day, same chair by the Koffee Kart, and now the same table where we met last time. This guy has his routines down.
“Really? That’s how it’s going to be?” I say, though I smile. I like the familiarity. That he would call me a nickname at all. “I thought you said it made a good insult.”
“I decided we should take back the word,” he says, and packs up his books. Apparently, we’ll be walking again. This makes me happy. It’s so much easier to talk when I don’t have to see his eyes. Ethan looks different today, borderline peppy. “How about Tub-ee? Tuberoni? No?”
“Did you get some sleep or something?” I ask.
He looks up at me, startled. “Huh?” He runs his hands through his hair, his fingers raking the pieces into a perfect mess. I want to touch his hair, tousle it like Gem did. The color is so dark, it looks like it bleeds.
“I dunno. It’s just, you usually seem tired. Today you’re more awake.”
“That obvious?” He nudges me with his shoulder.
“Honestly? It’s like Jekyll and Hyde.” I grin at him to show I mean no harm.
“Six hours. In a row.” He says it proudly, like he just won an award. “I’m what you’d call sleep challenged. ‘I read, much of the night, / and go south in the winter.’ ”
“What?”
“Sorry. Quoting ‘The Waste Land.’ I do read much of the night, but I don’t go anywhere come winter, except sometimes Tahoe to snowboard. So, have you read it?”
“ ‘The Waste Land’?” Why can’t I keep up with him? I’m a smart girl. I get at least seven and a half hours a night. And can he touch my shoulder again, please?
“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Nope.”
“You should. It’s pretty interesting. It’s about a guy with a split personality.”
“I’m sure you relate,” I say.
“Ha,” he says.
“So how about Tubilicious?” I ask. This is all easier than it should be.
“Tubilicious it is, Jessie.” He stops, and then I wait for it. “Holmes.”
—
Later, we find ourselves at a Starbucks, though not the one with the weird barista. Ethan buys me a vanilla latte and waves my hand away when I offer some cash. Does that make this a date? Or does everyone know that I’m economically challenged, at least by Wood Valley standards? Then again, it’s just a latte, and he seems like the chivalrous type. He memorizes poetry and holds the door, and he hasn’t taken his phone out even once to text. Let’s be real here: Ethan probably has a girlfriend—someone who has an entire Parisian-like sexual history, open and comfortable and varied. I should ask Dri, but I’m embarrassed. Liking Ethan feels too cliché.
“I assume you aren’t going to Gem’s party on Saturday night,” he says, and blows on his coffee. I’m not sure if I should be insulted by his assumption that I won’t be anywhere near the most popular kids in the junior and senior classes on a Saturday night. And why does he always have to bring up the wonder twins? It’s embarrassing.
“Actually, I think I am.” I shrug, do my best to project a screw ’em vibe. So they don’t like my laptop and my jeans and anything else about me. That won’t keep me home.
“Really?” he asks. “Cool.”
“A friend of mine is playing with his band, so…” It’s reaching to call Liam a friend, but I want Ethan to stop thinking of me as Gem’s victim. As a big fat loser.
“You mean Oville?”
“Yeah.”
“Who do you know?” he asks. His tone is borderline belligerent, like it’s preposterous that someone like me should know someone in the band. What the hell is his problem?
“A guy named Liam. Why?”
“I’m in Oville.” Of course. Of course he is. Crap. He and Liam are probably best friends, and now Liam will hear that I dropped his name, like he’s a celebrity or like we’re besties or something. Thank God I didn’t call it Oville. This is mortifying.
“Seriously? I keep forgetting how small this school is. Everyone knows everyone and everything except me.”
“Knowing everyone here is overrated,” Ethan says.
“What do you play?” I ask.
“Electric guitar, and I sing a little, though Liam really fronts us.”
“He’s good,” I say. “I bet the band is too.”
“You’ve heard him?” That tone again. Is it really that hard to believe that I’m friends with Liam?
“Um, yeah. Just practicing, you know.”
“Liam’s okay,” Ethan says, takes a sip of coffee and then another. Reconsiders. Softens. “No, you’re right. He’s good.”
“And you?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood, which feels heavy. It’s two steps forward, one step back with this guy.
“I’m not too shabby myself,” Ethan says, and there it is again, his sudden goofy smile. So bright and beautiful, it’s like staring straight into the sun.
—
At home under the food dome: miso cod, a fancy salad with edamame and candied walnuts, sticky coconut rice. Gloria knows how to cook Japanese food? Too bad I’m anti–food porn, because this meal is Instagram-worthy. Again, the house is dark, though Theo sits at the kitchen counter nursing a glass of red wine, like he’s forty and has had a tough day at work. It’s only been three years since he had braces. I’ve seen the pictures.
“Upshot? Not talking. Still married,” Theo says, and pours me my own glass without my asking. I take a sip, breathe through my nose, like Scarlett taught me. It’s not half bad.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Who knows? Couples therapy? A work dinner? My mom never used to go out this much.”
“My dad either.”
“They’re both idiots.”
“Stop it.”
“They are. They thought they could just insert replacement here and forget that someone they loved actually died. Even I’m more emotionally mature than that.”
I drink my wine. Theo’s not wrong.
“Now what happens?” I ask. Two sips and my arms start to tingle, that feeling that tells me the alcohol is winding its way into my system.
“No idea. I just didn’t need all this shit, you know? Like junior year isn’t stressful enough?”
“What are you worried about? You’re acing all of your classes, you have PSAT tutors—did you hear the plural there, ‘tutors’?—and I’m sure your mom has a friend of a friend on every admissions board. Your life is cake.”
“You’re describing pretty much every single kid at school. How many people do you think Harvard accepts from Wood Valley? Five.”
“Harvard? Seriously?”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just that I never even considered getting into Harvard. I don’t think anyone from my old school has ever gotten in there, even our valedictorians.” I don’t mention that in Chicago I was on track to graduate first or second in my class, and now my rank has dropped just by transferring. Apparently, FDR’s classes aren’t weighted as heavily. One more way I’ve been screwed by this move.
“Well, thank you for that little life lesson,” Theo says, and for a moment he looks angry—like he’s-going-to-have-another-temper-tantrum angry—but then it passes and he just sighs.
“I just mean, Harvard isn’t the be-all and end-all,” I say, as if I know these sorts of things. “You’re going to get into a great school no matter what.”
I like wine, I decide. It makes me feel slippery, soft, allowing words to just leak out. It makes it less hard being me.
“My dad went to Harvard.” He plays the dead dad card, as if that will get any sympathy from over here. Instea
d, I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s funny.
“What? Why are you laughing?”
“Because your dad went to Harvard,” I say.
“Why is that so funny?”
“You’re a freaking legacy!”
Theo looks at me, starts laughing too. “You’re right. And his dad went to Harvard too. My life is pretty much cake. You know, other than being gay and losing my dad. But the rest, fine. You win.”
“Here’s an idea: You really need to start a YouTube channel where you can whine to the camera. Boo-hoo, I’m gay. Boo-hoo, my dad died,” I joke. Theo smiles.
“Already have one. I’ll send you the link.” Theo clinks his glass with mine. “You know, you can sit in on my PSAT tutoring sessions.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Don’t get too excited. Mondays only. Not Thursday. Thursday is when the magic happens.”
CHAPTER 18
Me: Three things: (1) Not to gross you out, but I have super-long toes. They’re kind of creepy. (2) I write very bad poetry when I’m feeling sorry for myself. (3) I hate cartoons, even the ones on Adult Swim.
SN: (1) my favorite day of the week is Wednesday. I admire its in-betweenness. (2) I’d bet you a hundred bucks that your toes are actually cute. (3) I went through a phase in 9th where I painted my fingernails black. yeah: I thought I was SO COOL.
Me: You going to the party tonight?
SN: don’t.
Me: Don’t what?
SN: don’t try to figure out who I am. please. just don’t.
Me: I don’t get it.
SN: just trust me, okay?
• • •
Me: HAVE FUN TONIGHT AT HOMECOMING! You look amazing.
Scarlett: Thank you. One of my finer selfies, if I do say so myself.
Me: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Actually, I take that back. HAVE FUN.
Scarlett: Oh, I intend to….
Scarlett: Did you note the ellipsis there? Because that was intentional.
Me: I noted the ellipsis.
Scarlett: Good. Just making sure.
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