Tell Me Three Things

by Julie Buxbaum

  We are supposed to erect the frame of a house.

  Someone has not thought this through.

  Gem is here. Because she is everywhere, she and Crystal, and there is nothing I can do about their omnipresence. She wears a tank top with huge armholes thrown over a sequined sports bra, which is one of those things that probably shouldn’t exist but for which the one percent are willing to pay large sums of money nonetheless. Her shirt bears the words, I kid you not, THUG LIFE.

  And although this place is pretty big—a whole house will be built on this plot of land—Gem is for some reason drawn to that which she hates, and she finds me. Walks right by, so close that I shouldn’t be surprised when I feel her shoulder jam into mine. And yet, I am. The pain is sharp and perverse, and I imagine it hurt her just as much as it hurt me.

  Maybe more, since she’s bony.

  “Excuse me,” she says, all righteous indignation. Theo and I have just arrived, so I haven’t even had a chance to find my friends, to at least surround myself by my wholly ineffective girl team. Not that Dri and Agnes could do anything, necessarily, but still.

  What does Gem want from me? A scene? A punch? Tears? Or am I giving her exactly what she’s asking for when I stand here and look at her, slack-jawed? No words come, not even the easy ones she likes to slug at me.

  “Really?” Theo says, and at first I think he’s talking to me, and I feel so alone that I may actually cry, right here, right now. Finally give the people what they want. “Touch Jessie again, and I swear to God, I will ruin you.”

  Theo is talking to Gem, actually pointing his finger in her face. He looks menacing in his own version of a community service day outfit: lumberjack flannel shirt, designer jeans, spotless, intentionally untied Timberlands. She just stares at him, and I can see her gum sitting stupidly in her mouth.

  “Blink once so I know you understand what I’m saying,” he says.

  “Whatever,” Gem says, just as Liam comes over to join us, all cheerful and oblivious, blocking her exit.

  “Hey, guys. Happy Wood Valley Giving Day.” Liam smiles at us, at me, as if yesterday never happened. And like this is all fun, spending the morning outside among “friends.” He already has a hammer in his hand, ready to build. I can almost hear his mom praising his “can-do” attitude. Onstage, he seems like a rock star. Right now, he’s more like a Boy Scout with a sprinkling of whiteheads on his chin. I’m not a particular fan of either look, but where’s Dri? She’d lap this up.

  “Liam, keep your girl on her leash, okay?” Theo says, and walks away, his job done, I guess, and though I appreciate his support, I’m mortified. And left standing here, like an idiot.

  “What’s he talking about?” Liam asks Gem, but then I notice he’s actually looking at me.

  “Nothing,” I answer, and then spot Caleb on the other side of the lawn, staring into his phone. Screw it. My first instinct was to text SN—he always cheers me up—but I might as well just go talk to him. I’m too beaten down for this anonymity nonsense. It also occurs to me that Caleb may be the only person here who actually knows what he’s doing. He built a school, after all. “Later, Liam.”

  I cross the lawn, vaguely hear Gem and Liam begin to argue.

  “Hey there,” I say, once I’m in front of Caleb. Instead of his usual uniform, he’s sporting a USC sweatshirt and jeans with paint splatters, a baseball cap pulled low, as if he wants to downplay his good looks. Still a Ken doll, just the construction version. “Always on your phone.” I smile, the closest I get to flirting, which is its own form of double-talking, I guess. I hope he can’t see my bruises.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Thank God Liam found it at the party. Not sure how I would have lived without it.”

  “Phew,” I say, and exaggeratedly wipe my hand against my brow. I look like a moron.

  “About that coffee—” he says.

  “Like I said, we don’t have to. I just—” I want to say: I like talking to you every day. I look forward to your three things. I think about you. A lot. Let’s make this real.

  But of course, I don’t. For whatever reason, he wants to keep up the virtual divide.

  “No, I’d really like to. It’ll be fun to show a newbie the ropes. Maybe after school on Thursday?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Cool,” he says, and salutes me with his phone again, that weird let’s IM later signal. I feel bad about his brush-off—he obviously doesn’t want me to stay and chat—but a minute later, my phone buzzes.

  SN: saving the world, one nail at a time.

  Me: I will sleep well tonight knowing I did my good deed for the year.

  SN: your sarcasm is endearing.

  Me: Is it really?

  SN: yes, yes it is.

  Dri hugs me as if we didn’t just see each other less than twenty-four hours ago, and as if she didn’t text me ten times last night to make sure I was okay. Clearly, she feels bad about not helping me yesterday, but what could she have done? I’m the one who let myself be tripped.

  “I love WVGD. I’d take this over classes any day,” she says, and squints up at Liam on a ladder, his shirt now off, advertising an impressive almost-but-not-quite six-pack and a splattering of freckles. “Not a bad view.”

  “I know. She’s one-note,” Agnes says, with an apologetic look. “Sorry to hear about all the Gem drama yesterday. You want me to kick her ass?”

  “Would be fun to watch, but no thanks.” I think about how many people have offered an ass kicking on my behalf since I moved here, and I feel grateful. Although I wish I didn’t need defending, it’s nice knowing there are people who have my back. “Theo was actually my knight in shining armor today.”

  “Seriously? Theo?” Dri asks.

  “Yup. I’m about as shocked as you are.”

  “Look at that. Family comes first,” Agnes says.

  “Maybe it does,” I say, looking over at Theo, who has found Ashby—her hair is no longer pink, but a shocking white—and they’re laughing on the fringes of the job site totally unconcerned about participating in today’s events. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s rolling a big, fat joint.

  —

  Lunch is a full buffet, set up in aluminum trays over fire burners. None of that bag-lunch nonsense. It almost looks like Gloria was here, perhaps Rachel’s donation to WVGD. But no, it turns out it’s Gem’s dad who is responsible. There’s even a card on the table saying Thank you to the Carter family for this organic feast!

  Shit. I wonder if that means I can’t eat.

  “Whatever. Don’t let her stop you,” Ethan says, and I jump as much from the fact that I didn’t realize he was behind me as from the fact that he has read my mind.

  “I know it’s stupid, but—”

  “Nah. Not stupid, but if it’s as good as last year, I promise you won’t want to miss it. Even out of pride.”

  “It’s not pride. It’s not wanting to give her another reason to come near me.”

  “Seriously? I thought you were tougher than that,” Ethan says, and he takes two plates and piles them with food. Hands one to me.

  “What made you think that?” I ask. He shrugs, motions for me to follow him, and so of course I do. I’ve noticed that Ethan has the ability to find a space and make it his own, and he’s even managed to do that here, though we are only spending a single day on this construction site. He sits on the ground behind the half wall of the future kitchen and under the shade of an enormous grapefruit tree. Away from the rest of our class, and though not quite out of view, in a direction no one would think to look.

  “So listen. Sorry about yesterday,” Ethan says.

  “Why? You didn’t do anything,” I say, and follow his lead and start eating. He’s right: the food is delicious. Cheeseburgers, though the cheese is neither yellow nor processed and probably has a French name I can’t pronounce and the burger resembles a burger only in form. Kobe beef, according to the tiny flag stuck in its center, as if this designation is one small step for man, one g
iant leap for mankind.

  Thug life, my ass.

  It’s Gem’s world, I think not for the first time. The rest of us just get to live in it.

  “Exactly. I sit there and listen to those girls say stupid crap and I just pretend I can’t hear them because it’s all so dumb, it doesn’t seem worth it. But I don’t know. I should have said something. And I wish I had seen her foot.”

  “It’s not your job to protect me,” I say, and reflexively reach up and press the bruise.

  “Still. I should have. Does it hurt?” he asks, and his hand goes out as if to touch my face, and then he thinks better of it, brings it back to his side.

  “Yeah, a little,” I admit.

  “You deserve…I don’t know…” Ethan shrugs, and for a moment, I think he may be blushing. I hear Agnes and Dri in my head: He’s damaged. He’s never ever dated anyone at Wood Valley. “Not that…”

  “You know what I deserve? An A in English,” I say, and Gem can suck it, because Ethan and I toast with our gourmet cheeseburgers.

  —

  “Thank you,” I tell Theo later, on the ride home, as we glide past little houses and minimalls with signs written in Korean and car washes and a vast array of fast-food franchises. A million non-Kobe hamburgers to choose from.

  “It was nothing.”

  “Well, I appreciate it. You didn’t have to.” I pretend to be deep in concentration as I make a tricky left turn, but really I feel shy. This thank you feels somewhat like an I’m sorry, though I’m not sure why. Recently, my existence feels like everyone else’s burden.

  “Gem once called me a faggot,” he says, so low that at first I’m not sure I heard correctly.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. I mean, it was a million years ago, and it was actually the first time I had ever even heard the word. So I went home and asked my dad. I actually said to him, like, ‘Daddy, what’s a faggot?’ ” Theo looks out the window, his hand up against the glass, like a child trapped on a long road trip, desperate for human connection from the other passengers on the road.

  There’s nothing lonelier than a hand on glass. Maybe because it’s so rarely reciprocated.

  “What did your dad say?” I’m curious about Theo’s father, whether Rachel has some sort of type. I picture him as bigger than my dad and more handsome, dressed in shirts with little polo players and pressed-by-Gloria khakis. There aren’t pictures of him around, which would be weird, but then I realize there aren’t very many pictures at all. Like Theo has arrived into almost-adulthood in this current form and shape, nothing to prove he was once a dimply baby.

  The walls of my old house were covered with pictures of my family. Each of my school photos were framed and mounted in chronological order, even the ones where I was caught with my eyes closed or with a messy ponytail or in that horrible awkward phase when I had both braces and baby fat. My own personal time line leading upstairs.

  Who knows? Maybe Rachel thinks family photos, like color, clash with her decor.

  “My dad was great about it, actually. Said it’s not a nice word, that there are better words for boys who like boys. And he said that it would be okay if one day I decided I liked boys too, and it would be okay if I didn’t. That he loved me no matter what—” Theo’s voice cracks. I don’t look over, keep my eyes on the road. Wait for him. “I was really lucky. I mean, I never even had to really come out to my parents. They always knew, and it was always okay. Or not even okay, better than that. Not something that had to be evaluated at all. It just was. Like having brown hair.”

  “Your dad sounds like he was really cool.”

  Theo nods.

  “Have you ever wished it was the other way around?” he asks me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that it was your dad instead of your mom?”

  “Honestly, all the time.”

  “It would like, literally break my mom’s heart if she heard me say that, but he got me, you know? He understood. Just everything.”

  “My dad knows I would switch if I could, I think. Maybe that’s why he never wants to hang out with me anymore. Because he sees it on my face.” Even as I’m talking, I realize this is not quite true. I just think he finds Rachel more interesting.

  My mom got sick right around the time when I was supposed to stop wanting to hang out with my parents—when the pull was supposed to turn to pushing—and yet that never happened. I didn’t just love my mom, I liked her. And though she was only genetically obligated to love me, I’m pretty sure she liked me too.

  “Maybe you remind him of your mom, and he’s trying to move on,” Theo says, which is sweet, him defending my dad.

  “Maybe,” I say, even though I don’t think that’s quite true either. My mom and I looked nothing alike, were nothing alike. She was brave and big-mouthed, more like Scarlett than like me. And she used to joke that she wouldn’t have believed I was hers—we were physical opposites in all ways—if she hadn’t seen me come out herself.

  I don’t remind my dad of my mom, I know that, but for the first time I wonder if he wouldn’t switch us too—me for my mother—given the chance.

  “You and Ethan are friends, right?” Theo asks, seemingly apropos of nothing, and yet I’m happy for the change of topic. I don’t want to think about my parents. About how little control we have over our own lives.

  “Yeah, I guess. Sort of. I don’t know,” I say.

  “I saw you eating lunch together.”

  “We’re partners in English. The ‘Waste Land’ thingy.”

  “Right. It’s just that—and not to get all big brother on you—”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m older,” I say.

  “Whatever. Just be careful with him. I’m not trying to throw shade or anything, but I get the sense that he’s…trouble.”

  “In a Taylor Swift way? Or like, for real?” “Damaged” was the word Dri used, which makes him sound like a defective iPhone.

  “I don’t know. It could just be rumors. But I think he could be into some heavy shit. Like his brother.”

  “What do you mean? Like drugs?” Ethan’s brother must be older and out of the house. He’s never mentioned him. Funny how having no brothers or sisters myself, and no aunts and uncles (both of my parents were only children), I always forget about other people’s. It just seems so unnatural to me, the idea of a family being more than three, shaped in a way that is not a triangle, though come to think of it, mine is now 2-D: a line.

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t think Ethan’s on drugs.” Of course, I have no basis for defending him. I don’t know what he does or even where he goes. Three times this week alone, I’ve seen him leaving campus before lunch, coming back just in time for English. He arrives dazed and withdrawn, but then again, he always seems dazed and withdrawn. And onstage, he looked altogether unfamiliar, like someone who could easily spend his days and nights shooting up.

  “I hope you’re right. He always looks pretty rough, though, and his family is just so screwed up. You have no idea.”

  “I’m so tired of the Wood Valley learning curve,” I say, wondering how different it would be—how different I would be—if I’d grown up here with these people, had known their families and histories and awkward phases as well as I know my own. It’s so inefficient playing catch-up.

  “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all,” Theo says.

  I think of Ethan’s eyes—the pockets of shiny purple underneath, the swelling of his lids, the bright blue center—and I wonder if I’m capable of being careful. Because I think of those eyes, open and looking at me, closed and asleep at Gem’s party; I think of his hands fixing me a plate, almost touching my banged-up face, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss them: his eyes, his hands too.

  All of him.

  His damaged parts.

  All of him.

  CHAPTER 25

  Me: French fries or potato chips?

  SN: easy. ff any day of the week. ket
chup or salsa?

  Me: Ketchup. Harry Potter: the movies or the books?

  SN: you’re not gonna like my answer…but honestly? the movies.

  Me: Seriously?

  SN: I know, I know. you’re never supposed to admit to liking the movie better than the book, but come on. two words: Emma Watson. Starbucks or Coffee Bean?

  Me: Starbucks.

  SN: me too.

  Me: Star Wars or Star Trek?

  SN: NEITHER.

  Me: me too.

  When I come home to find Rachel in my room, I remember that this is not my room at all. This is Rachel’s guest room, and my sleeping here confirms what I already know: I am merely an interloper. I glance around, wondering if I left my laptop open. I don’t need her to see my IMs with SN, or, God forbid, my Google history, which has way too many questions that begin with “Is it normal to…” Phew, my cover is closed, tattoos visible even from the door. No, nothing for her to see here. Bras and thongs away in the drawers, the dirty ones in the wicker box Gloria has considerately provided. My tampons too are hidden. Even my toothbrush is tucked into the bathroom cabinet, banished, along with all of my makeup, so that Rachel’s counters remain empty except for her self-congratulatory soaps.

  “Oh, hey,” she says, pretending she wasn’t just looking at the only thing I have on display: the photo of my mom and me. “I was waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” I say, cool but not impolite. I am mad at my dad, which by extension may now include Rachel, but I don’t know how these stepparent things work. My parents were usually a single unit, had very little patience for me playing one off the other. Usually, if I was mad at one, I was mad at both. But Rachel is still a stranger. Her vows to my father have done little to change that.

  “Your dad says you’re not talking to him,” she says, and sits down on my bed, or her bed, or whatever. She is sitting where I sleep, and I would prefer she didn’t.