“Hi.”
Long, terrible seconds pass. I’m not ready for this.
“Well, I’ll see you around, okay?” I go to leave, but she touches my shoulder.
“I hope you’re doing okay. You’re a good guy, Spencer.”
She’s wearing the pity face utilized by dumpers everywhere. I decide it is time for this dumpee to flee.
“Thanks. Um, you, too.”
I squeeze past her, so I can find my friends. And that’s it. Two years, and half my high school memories, just, poof, gone.
I look around the living room. Paul is already making out with Eva. Traven has completely disappeared. Dean, Ethan, and Bella are sitting on the couch drinking beer and catching up because Dean and Ethan just got home from college for Thanksgiving break today, which is nice for them, but honestly? They are totally being Those College Students Who Come Back to High School right now.
I try the kitchen. Still no Traven, but Hudson and Jace are in there trying to figure out what you have to mix with gin for it to taste good. I grab a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke because wrestling season is already a go. I tic-sniff a few times as I unscrew the cap, and just as I’m about to pour, my shoulder shrugs start up. I sigh and set the bottle down. We’ve been easing back on my meds all semester, because I’m older now, and maybe it’ll be okay, and the meds make me foggy. Which means sooner or later my tics will probably get worse. But that doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening here. I mean, this could be a completely unrelated bad-tic day. I sniff again.
“You okay, man?” asks Jace.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I wait for him to make fun of me or start mimicking my tics or something, but he doesn’t.
“I heard you and Jayla broke up,” says Hudson.
“Yeah, that freaking sucks,” says Jace. “That girl is hot as hell.”
We all stare at my ex-girlfriend, who is currently in the living room talking to my brother.
“Thanks. Yeah, she’s pretty amazing.” I tic as I’m bringing my cup to my mouth and almost spill Diet Coke all over myself, and again, nothing from the peanut gallery.
I don’t know if they’ve had some sort of empathy awakening or if they’ve decided I’m one of the guys now, but—
“That ass,” says Jace.
“I bet she’s really flexible,” says Hudson. “Is she? You can tell us, man.”
I give him the deadliest of side eyes. “Why would you even ask that?”
“Whoa, sorry.” Hudson nudges Jace and says in a stage whisper, “Someone’s still taking the break up hard.”
But it’s not even that. It’s like, would they really be talking about Jayla like that if she was white? And it kind of makes me feel sick because I have this awful feeling that my friends and I do the same thing. Maybe I’m not as bad as Hudson and Jace, but isn’t “hot” or “sexy” the first thing that pops in my head when I see her?
I think about saying something else, but they’ve already moved on.
“Dude, Hudson, check it. That My Little Pony kid is wearing leather pants.”
Hudson leans into the doorway so he can see better. “What the fuck, dude?”
Jace laughs. “Oh, man, now he’s talking to Ashley. You better watch out. He’s gonna get a piece of your ex-girlfriend.”
“That kid is going to be a virgin for the rest of his life.”
My fingers clench and unclench at my side. They move on to doing impressions of what Ashley sounds like when she calls Hudson crying. Which apparently used to be every other day.
Okay, so that’s a definite no on the empathy. I guess they really are being nice to me because they see me as one of them now. But instead of feeling good, it just feels gross.
I go outside and sit on the diving board with my feet skimming the pool cover. (Mr. and Mrs. Wells already closed it for the winter. Not that that’s going to stop a house full of intoxicated high schoolers from ripping off the cover at three am.)
I mostly alternate between staring through the wall of windows at the people dancing in the living room and reading an article on my phone about controlling the behavior of fruit flies with optogenetics. I am basically the coolest guy at this party and possibly in the entire universe.
I don’t notice Hope walking down the brick pathway or standing behind me, but I do notice when the diving board jiggles, and she peeks over my shoulder at my phone.
“Whatcha doin’?”
I shove my phone in my pocket. “Nothing. Reading.” I point at the window. “Thinking about how I don’t fit in with the aquarium of dancing drunk people.”
Hope smirks. “I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.”
But my mind is in serious mode right now. I slouch lower on the diving board.
“Hey.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “You fit with me. You’re the only person I know who knows we’ll never be too old to climb pecan trees.”
I can’t help but smile at that.
“Who cares that you don’t fit with the rest of them? The rest of them don’t know how to make me laugh after Janie, and the rest of them aren’t going to visit all seven continents or go to New Zealand to see the coolest glowworms ever or live in a great big house on a hill with trees that grow right up through the inside.”
I raise my eyebrows, and she shrugs. “It’s a thing. I’ve seen it.”
I could get on board with that. “And a secret passage?”
“Obviously, a secret passage. It can lead to the library, which will be big enough to need those ladder things that you ride around on.”
“Oh! And a dumbwaiter. I’ve always wanted to try to ride in one of those, too.”
She nods. “And a hedge maze.”
“YES.”
“You see? We’ll do things they couldn’t even dream of.”
She said “we.” At first I thought she was talking about our separate futures, or maybe things we both wanted, but not necessarily together. But now that she’s said it, I realize I want it. I want us to be a we.
She’s waiting for me to say something. But, no. I can’t like her. It wasn’t all that long ago that we almost lost each other for good. It may feel like she likes me right now, but I’m probably just imagining it. There is no way I’m ruining things again.
“That sounds great.” It’s all I can manage.
“Yeah,” she says, and her cheeks go pink.
I look back at the window. If I squint, I can just make out which one of the dancing aquarium people is my girlfriend dancing with another guy. Ex. Ex-girlfriend.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I say. “I kind of feel like walking home.”
“Sure.”
I don’t want to fit with these people who make fun of other people. It’s one thing when they’re making fun of me, but being on the other side makes me sick to my stomach. I imagine a taxonomy of this party—I don’t want to be on any branch that includes Hudson and Jace. Why did I feel like this was something I needed so badly? And how much life did I miss out on while I was beating my brains out trying to make them like me?
Traven pops outside. “Oh, sorry,” he says, like he’s interrupting something.
“No, you’re good,” I say.
“Oh, good.” He literally sighs with relief. “Because some guys in there are being real assholes, and I kind of want to go.”
Hope smiles. “We’re going, too. To an asshole-free zone.”
I walk home with my friends, and I don’t even worry about who’s doing what inside that house and what they might think about me. If it’s a matter of us vs. them, I always want to be on the side of people who choose kindness over hate.
It’s hot for November. And wet. The kind where it’s as humid as it can possibly be without actually raining, and you wish the sky would just put itself out of its misery and wring out the clouds already.
And it does. A single cool raindrop on my cheek. Another on the back of my hand. I slam the door to the truck, and Dean and I race for the steps to the porch,
even though it would probably feel pretty good to get caught in the rain. You can almost hear a hiss of relief with each drop that hits the ground. Sunshiny rain has always been Hope’s favorite weather to run in.
“Pam, do we have any more SunChips?” yells Dean as he walks inside. He’s been home for forty-eight hours and at least half of them have been spent eating.
“They’re in the pantry.” I hear the sound of my brother banging around boxes and jars. “Top shelf,” she calls.
The rustling stops. “Oh. Right.”
He walks into the kitchen eating a mini-bag of Harvest Cheddar (read: the inferior choice to Garden Salsa). I stare out the window. In the Birdsongs’ backyard, outfitted from head to toe in running gear, is Hope. She tilts her face toward the sky and lets the rain fall on her cheeks. And it’s hard to say from here, but I bet you anything she’s smiling.
In the next second, she’s off. Streaking up the dirt path that winds through the woods behind our houses. It kind of makes me want to go for a run myself, or maybe a bike ride.
I sniff-shrug-sniff in rapid succession.
Pam’s head shoots up. “How are your tics doing?”
“Fine,” I say quickly, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not true. Ever since we went from two pills a day to one, things haven’t been right.
“You getting the headaches again?” she asks.
“Yeah, but I got those the last two times, too.” Headaches and a little bit of a heart-racing feeling, but the doctor said those are totally normal withdrawal symptoms, especially since the medication was originally developed to be a blood pressure drug.
I keep tic-ing (well, of course I’m tic-ing now that Pam’s eyeing me like that), and she keeps watching. Yep, it’s definitely time to go.
“I think I’m gonna bike around the neighborhood,” I say.
“Not in that, you’re not,” says Pam.
“It’s just a little rain.”
“Yeah, right now.” She taps the screen of her phone. “We’re in for a thunderstorm. Maybe even hail.”
“Hail? Does that even happen down here?” asks Dean, just as I say, “Are you sure? Hope just took off running.”
There is only one logical course of action—I’ve got to stop her. I don’t wait for Pam to protest. I run outside and sprint across the yard and up the path. Most of the leaves have been crunched until they’re nothing but dust under my feet. The rain soaks my hair and T-shirt (which feels great) and my jeans (which feels absolutely disgusting). I run faster. The sooner I catch up to her, the sooner I can go home and change. I’m in good shape. I play a varsity sport. How fast can she be?
Damn fast. That’s how fast. Leave-Spencer’s-sorry-ass-in-the-dust fast.
I’ve been flat-out sprinting, and I haven’t caught sight of her. Not even a flash of white hair. And now, for added fun, the water has dripped down my legs and into my shoes and socks. Whenever I take a step, it makes a double squelching noise. Once for my soggy shoes. Once for the mud that doesn’t want to let me go. I try to avoid it, but my jeans are stiff and heavy, and I’m not exactly a master of dexterity right now.
“Hope!” I probably should have thought of this before, this whole yelling her name thing.
“Hope!” There are tree roots and briars grabbing at my feet and fallen branches to leap over. The rain’s coming down so thick, I can barely see the path.
“HOPE!” And then my foot punches through some loose dirt and into a hole in the ground, and I fall with a splat into three inches of mud.
Well, that’s great. Just great. I can’t find Hope anywhere, and I’m soaking wet and covered in mud, and ow, fuck, I just tried to move my foot and something feels really wrong.
This is all kinds of bad. If it keeps me from wrestling . . . No. I don’t even want to think about it. Let’s worry about the things that are important in the present. Namely, I’m all alone in the middle of nowhere and who knows if I can walk right now. I wiggle my foot out of the hole. It looks like a place where a tree died and the roots and everything rotted out. I take a tentative step. Okay. Okay. It hurts, but I can do it. That probably means it’s not broken. I try another step.
“Spencer?”
I freeze. Hope stands in the middle of the path, her eyebrows crinkled in confusion, her hair more blonde than white now that it’s soaked with rainwater, and—
Oh, crap. Her shirt is soaked with rainwater, too. And it’s white. It clings to her body in see-through patches, and her sports-bra thingy underneath is hot pink, and okay, I can’t look at her anymore.
“What are you doing out here?”
I keep my eyes carefully trained on her face. “I was looking for you. Pam says there’s gonna be a thunderstorm with hail and stuff, and we saw you run into the woods . . .”
“Hail? In South Georgia?”
I shrug.
As if in response, hail starts falling all around us. Hard little chunks that tear through the trees like bullets and land with soft thumps in the leaves below.
“Mother scratcher,” Hope hisses, rubbing her arm. She pulls her hand away to reveal a dime-size pink welt.
We look at each other, and I know we’re thinking the same thing: If we try to make it home, we’ll get slaughtered.
I shift my weight and have to put my hand against the tree to steady myself. Twenty yards past that tree is another tree. Well, we’re in the woods, there are trees everywhere, but I mean a tree I actually recognize. Dad’s tree stand—the one where he and Dean hang out—is at the top.
“C’mon,” I yell.
I take her hand and nearly pull her down in the mud with me when I try to run.
“What are you doing?” She looks kind of annoyed, not that I blame her.
“My dad has a tree stand over there. We can wait it out.”
Hope cups her hand to her brow. “Yeah, okay.”
Then she slides an arm around my waist.
“But—”
“Don’t pretend you don’t need my help.”
I think about protesting again, but she glares me into silence. Somehow we walk/tumble/crash through layers of vines and undergrowth and make it to the ladder under the tree stand. I apologize about a billion times. But now we have to make it up the ladder. And did I mention we are still being pelted with hail?
I climb up first, with Hope spotting me. At one point, I slip, and she has to grab my butt to keep me from knocking us both to the ground. I mostly try not to think about it. When I finally feel the boards of the platform, I could cry, I’m so happy. I roll myself onto the deck with Hope’s help and crawl inside. It really is like a grown-up tree house. The roof isn’t tall enough to stand up, but it keeps out the hail and most of the rain. I lie on the floor panting.
“That. Was awful.”
Hope laughs. “Maybe you shouldn’t try to rescue me so much. It doesn’t really work out for you.”
I scoff. “This was an excellent rescue. We’re safe, aren’t we?”
“Oh, sure. It was, um, super manly. Especially the part where I had to push you up here by your butt. Very gallant.”
“Thank you.” I cross my arms over my chest and sit up so I’m leaning against the wall.
Hope sits next to me, and because the tree stand is so small, she has to sit rightnext to me.
“Glad to know my skills are appreciated,” I say. “Meanwhile, if you could stop putting yourself in life-threatening situations, it would make my life a whole lot easier.”
“Are you kidding? There’s no way I was passing this up. It’s perfect running weather. I mean, before it started hailing.”
“Ha.” I take off my socks and shoes because they’re still so squishy and gross. I wish I could take off my pants, too, but that would probably be awkward.
Hope fusses over my ankle, which is A) swollen, B) already turning purple, and C) still hurts like a mofo. Then, she settles back in beside me, and we’re shoulder to shoulder, but that’s okay because we’re friends. I just need to be cool with it.
I mean, if I scoot away, that would only make everything more obvious.
“Do you ever have a day that feels like a metaphor for your whole life?” she says.
“Um.” I honestly don’t know what she’s talking about.
She smiles. “So, that’s a no.” She twists her shirt to wring some of the water out of it, but despite the trickle of droplets that hit the floor, she still looks like a cat that just had a bath. “I was just thinking about how I ran out into the storm because I’m so worried I’ll miss something. I’m so scared all the time because there are so many things I want to do and see, and what if I don’t get to?”
“Hey, you’ll get to. Of course you will. I don’t know anyone who’s as driven as you.”
She shakes her head. “But she didn’t. And I want to do a lot of things, Spence. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough time, and that’s, like, a Mimi lifetime. But what if I don’t get that much? Janie had so many plans and now she’s just gone. Why do people have to die? It’s so horrible.”
I don’t know what to say, so I press my shoulder and hip against hers like I’m trying to send her messages. It seems to work.
“I’m sorry. I know that normal people don’t spend tons of time thinking how sad it is that people die, but sometimes it’s all I can think about. I think about never reading one more book or thinking one more thought or having one more kiss, ever again, and it’s so terrifying. Sometimes, I just sit and think about what it would be like to not be able to think anymore. What it’ll feel like when I’m gone.”
“I don’t think it’s weird to be scared of that,” I say. I chew on my lip and think about it for a while. “Do you believe in heaven?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes go a little desperate. “Yeah, I have to, because I have to believe I’ll see her again.”
I nod. “Me, too.”
Neither of us says anything for a while.
Hope brushes her hair out of her face. “Did I tell you I’ve been e-mailing with her boyfriend?”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that. What was his name?”
“Nolan.”
“Right, Nolan.” I think I remember meeting him at the funeral.
“We’re actually going to visit him in South Africa for a whole week. Like, Mom, Dad, all of us.” She smiles at the thought of it. “We’re leaving in a few days. Oh. That reminds me. I’m supposed to ask you if you’ll check our mail while we’re gone.”
A Taxonomy of Love Page 20