by Sarah Dessen
“I know what you’re thinking,” I heard Opal call out from behind me. When I turned, I saw she was signing the last of the sheets, for a heavyset guy who’d been leaning against the wall. When she was done, he took it without a thank-you, then trudged off to the stairs.
“And what is that?” I asked.
She stuck her pen behind her ear, then came over to stand beside me. “That this is an impossible amount of work, an undoable task that will, mostly likely, never be completed in a million years.”
I didn’t say anything, because she was kind of right.
“Or maybe,” she continued, reaching down into the box to pull out one sheet printed with brick house parts, “that’s just what I’m thinking.”
“At least you have a lot of help,” I told her.
She gave me a flat look. “I have a lot of people. Not the same thing.”
I watched her for a second as she turned the piece in her hand, studying it. From downstairs, I could hear the sounds of the restaurant getting ready to open: chairs scraping as they were pushed aside to be swept under, the voices of the staff laughing and chatting, the clinking of glasses being stacked behind the bar. It was as familiar to me as a song I’d been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.
“I mean,” she continued, “can you even imagine how hard it’s going to be to put together all these tiny houses, and then find the right places for them, not to mention each tree and streetlight and fire hydrant?”
“Well—”
“I mean, there are hundreds of these things. And they all have, like, a hundred pieces. And it’s supposed to be done by June? How in the world is that going to happen?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a rhetorical question. But she had stopped talking, so I said, “Well, it’s like you just told them. You start with the base, and work your way up. It’s basic engineering.”
“Basic engineering,” she repeated. Then she looked at me. “Did I really make it sound that simple?”
“You sure did.”
“Huh. I’m a better liar than I thought.”
“Hey, Opal!” a voice called up the stairs. “You up there?”
“It depends,” she replied over her shoulder. “What do you need? ”
“Copier’s on the fritz again and we only have two special sheets printed.”
She sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Did you try the paper-clip trick?”
Silence. Then, “The what?”
“Did you put a paper clip under the toner cartridge . . .” She trailed off, clearly having decided this was too complicated to convey from a distance. “I’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” the voice replied. “Oh, and Gus wants to talk to you, too. Oh, and also the towel guy’s here and says he needs cash, not a check—”
“I’ll be right there,” she said again, louder this time.
“Ten four,” the voice replied. “Over and out.”
Opal reached up, massaging her temples, the pen behind her ear jumping up and down as she did so. “Basic engineering,” she said. “I hope you’re right.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Because that’s a lot of boxes.”
“Tell me about it.” She smiled, then squared her shoulders, dropping her hands, and started over to the stairway. “Hit the lights on the way out, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
I heard her head down, her footsteps fading, and then turned to follow her. As I did, though, I saw, sitting on the table by the wall, the directions she’d been holding as she’d given her speech earlier. I picked them up, impressed by their heft: rather than a few stapled sheets, as I’d thought, they were like a booklet, sizable and thick. I flipped past the first pages, the table of contents and introduction, the company’s contact info, to page eight, where the actual directions began. STEP ONE, it read at the top, with about four paragraphs of tiny type beneath it, complete with diagrams labeled with letters and numbers. Whoa, I thought, and flipped forward a bit, only to see more of the same. Then, though, remembering what I’d just said to Opal, I turned back, finding STEP ONE again. FIND FOUR CORNERS (A, B, C, D) OF BASE, it read, and ARRANGE ON STABLE SURFACE AS PICTURED.
Downstairs, a phone was ringing, and someone was yelling they needed lemons. I walked over to the box with the uppercase A on it, ripping it open, then dug around for a few moments before I found the top left corner labeled A (BASE). I carried it across the room and put it down on the floor, as pictured. Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.
After an early dinner at the bar with my dad—broken up by two phone calls and a kitchen crisis—I headed out of Luna Blu, cutting down the alley toward home. It was almost dark as I turned onto our street and crossed it to my house, the only one with no lights on. I was digging around in my bag for my keys when I heard a car pull up behind me. I barely glanced at it and the two people inside, then went back to hunting. When I finally found them a minute later, I looked back and realized it was Dave and Riley.
She was behind the wheel, with him in the passenger seat, and in the light from his front porch I could just make out their faces. Riley was sitting back, her eyes focused upward, while Dave said something, gesturing with one hand. After a moment, she nodded.
Inside, the house was kind of cold, so I turned up the heat, then dropped my bag on the couch and went into the kitchen, turning on lights along the way. I got a glass of water, kicked off my shoes, and sat down on the couch with my laptop. It had just finished starting up, icons lining up along the bottom of the screen when I heard it: the happy ping noise of HiThere! announcing a call. Apparently, my mother was done with the silent treatment.
A few days earlier, when I’d finally called her back after hanging up on her yet again—this time because I’d flattened Dave with the Boomerang—she didn’t pick up. Peter did.
“Your mother can’t talk right now,” he said. His voice was stiff, protective. “She’s upset and needs some space.”
My first thought, hearing this, was to laugh out loud. Now she wanted space? And of course, I was supposed to just honor that, instantly, even though she had never once been willing to do the same for me. I wanted to tell Peter this, try to explain my side, but I knew there was no point. “Okay,” I said instead. “I understand.”
Two days passed, then three, and my voice mail stayed empty, my caller ID limited to my dad’s number and Luna Blu’s only. No HiThere! bubbles, no cheery good morning/good night texts, not even an e-mail. It was not the longest we’d gone without talking, but was certainly the first time the lack of contact was her doing, not mine. And the truth was, it was kind of weird. All this time I’d thought the only thing I wanted was for my mom to just leave me alone. Then she did.
Now though, apparently, she was ready to talk. Or fight. Or something. So I clicked the little bouncing bubble, and my screen opened up to show . . . Peter. To say I was surprised was a serious understatement.
“Mclean?” He had to be in his office: there was a big Defriese logo on the wall, a wood console visible behind him, lined with framed pictures of very tall people, him looking short beside them in comparison. “Can you see me okay?”
“Um,” I said, suddenly feeling nervous. For all his impact on my life, I didn’t know my stepfather that well. We were far from chat-buddy status. “Yeah. Hi.”
“Hi.” He cleared his throat, leaning in a bit closer. “Sorry if I surprised you. I didn’t have your number, but found this contact info on your mom’s laptop. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” I said.
I was used to seeing Peter from a distance—across a table, down a hallway, on the TV. Up close, he looked older, and kind of tired. He had on a dress shirt, the collar loosened, and no tie. A diet soda can sat by his elbow. “Look, I know you and your mother haven’t been getting along that well lately, and I’m not trying to get in the middle of anything.
But . . .”
There was always a but. Whether you were family, or faux family. Always.
“. . . I really care about your mother, and she really cares about you. She’s very sad right now and I want to make her happy. I’m asking for a little help in accomplishing that.”
I swallowed, then felt self-conscious when I realized he could actually see I was nervous. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He leaned back a bit. “We’ve got a game down there this weekend, playing the U. Katherine and the twins are coming down with me, and I know she’d really like to see you.”
It was always jarring when he called her by her full name. Until they’d married, she was Katie Sweet. Now she was Katherine Hamilton. They sounded like totally different people, not that I was anyone to talk.
“She was planning on inviting you earlier this week,” he was saying now, “but then, apparently, you all had some differences. Or something.”
I nodded. Or something. “I thought she was too upset to talk to me.”
“She’s hurt, Mclean,” he replied. “I’m not asking you to come here, or even go to the beach. That’s between you and her. But I am hoping you’ll consider letting us meet you halfway.”
He made it sound so reasonable, I knew to refuse would make me look like a brat. “Does she know you’re calling me?” I asked.
“This is all my idea,” he replied. “Which means that if you agree, I plan to take full credit.”
It took me a minute to realize he was being funny. Huh. So Peter Hamilton had a sense of humor. Who knew? “She might not want to see me, you know. It sounded like she was pretty mad.”
“She wants to see you,” he assured me. “Just show up at Will Call at one on Saturday. I’ll handle the details. All right?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Mclean. I owe you one.”
That was an understatement. But I bit s back, instead just nodding as he said he’d see me that weekend. We both reached forward to end the call at the same time, and, noticing the other, both paused, not wanting to be first. Finally, after an awkward beat, I took the initiative and clicked the HANG UP button. Just like that, poof, he was gone from the screen. Goodbye.
A half hour later, I remembered the next day was garbage pickup, so I shrugged on my jacket and headed out to roll the can down to the curb. I had just turned to go back up the driveway when I saw Riley’s car still parked just down from my house. Her lights were off, and I could see her behind the wheel, wiping at her face with a tissue. I walked a little closer, and moment later, she looked over and saw me.
“I’m not stalking you, I promise,” she said through her open window. Then she looked down at the tissue, folding it carefully. “I just . . . wasn’t ready to go home yet.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Just the typical dirtbag drama. It’s so embarrassing. I am not flaky like this about anything else in my life, I swear. . . .” She stopped, then cleared her throat. “I’m fine.”
On the main road, past the stop sign ahead, a bus passed by, engine chugging. I turned to go back to my house, figuring we didn’t really know each other well enough for me to offer any more than I already had.
“He likes you, you know,” she called out to me suddenly.
I stopped, looked back at her. “What?”
“Dave.” She cleared her throat. “He likes you. He won’t admit it to me yet, but he does.”
“He doesn’t even know me,” I said.
“Are you saying he wouldn’t like you if he did? ” She raised her eyebrows. “Answer carefully. This is my best friend we’re talking about here, and he’s a really nice guy.”
“I’m not saying anything,” I told her. She was still looking at me, so I added, “I’m not sure he’s my type.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re a dirtbag girl, too?”
“Not exactly. I’m more . . .” I trailed off, for some weird reason thinking of Peter’s face, blinking off my computer screen. “A girl who’s not looking for anything right now. Even with a really nice guy.”
She put her hands on the wheel, stretching back, and as she did I saw that circle tattoo on her wrist again, identical to Dave’s. There had to be quite the story there, not that I was going to ask about it now. “I get it. And I appreciate you being honest, at any rate.”
I nodded, then slid my hands into my pockets. “Good night, Riley.”
“Good night,” she replied. “And Mclean?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
I wasn’t sure what the gratitude was for: coming to check on her, what I’d said, or maybe, actually, what I didn’t say. I chose not to ask. Instead, I just walked back to my driveway, letting her leave on her own terms, in her own time, without an audience. When you can’t save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.
Six
The day of the Defriese game, my dad and I were supposed to have breakfast together, just the two of us. It had been so crazy between school and the restaurant for the last week that we’d hardly seen each other, communicating mostly through hurried conversations, as one of us was coming or going, and scribbled notes on the kitchen table. This was normal, especially for the first month or so we were in a new place. A restaurant was like a demanding girlfriend, requiring every bit of his attention, and I’d gotten used to riding out his absences until things settled down. Still, I was looking forward to some face time. So when my phone beeped an hour before we were supposed to meet, my heart sank.
AHBL, his message said. SO SORRY.
AHBL was a family code that stood for All Hell Breaking Loose. It was what my dad had often told my mom over the phone when he called from their restaurant, Mariposa, to say he wouldn’t make dinner, or the movie he was supposed to meet us at in ten minutes, or any number of my school conferences or recitals. Basically, his standard reason for not being with us for, well, anything. My dad believed that panic was contagious, especially in a restaurant setting. All it took was one person losing it—over being in the weeds, totally backed up on orders, burning an entrée already late, or a wait list that would have to be seated way past closing—to set everyone else off in a domino effect. Because of this, calling my mom to say the sky was falling, even when it was, was not an option. Enter these simple four letters, AHBL, to convey the urgency without the hysteria.
As a shorthand, it had long ago made the jump from the restaurant setting to everyday use. It was what I thought the night I walked into our old kitchen and found both my parents home during the restaurant rush, sitting and waiting for me, their expressions grim. What I doodled on a yellow legal pad in any number of lawyer’s conference rooms as the tugof-war over my custody raged on around me. And what I always thought in that too-long pause between when I shared something with my mother I knew she wouldn’t like and the moment she freaked out about it.
Even though it had been three days since my HiThere! chat with Peter, I still hadn’t told my dad about seeing my mom that weekend. It was just too weird and awkward on so many levels that I decided to push it out of my mind until I absolutely had no choice but to deal with it. Which was not easy, as all around me the town was gearing up for the game. I’d forgotten what it was like to live in a basketball-crazed place. Just about everyone I saw had on a U sweatshirt or T-shirt, the local stations were covering every detail of the lead-up to tip-off like it was a national news event, and light blue U flags flew from porches and whizzed past on car antennas. The only place the game wasn’t discussed was at our house, where my dad and I had avoided the subject like a live land mine. Until now, when my phone beeped again.
LATE LUNCH? my dad had written. NOT HERE, PROMISE.
I bit my lip, my fingers poised to respond. What I had to say, though, seemed entirely too delicate to convey via keypad. So after a shower and some breakfast, I walked up to Luna Blu to tell him in person.
I�
�d just spped off the curb to cross the street when I heard a door shut. When I glanced back, there was Dave Wade, in jeans and a flannel shirt, sliding his keys into his pocket as he started down the street just a few feet behind me. I thought of what Riley had said, that he might like me, and suddenly felt self-conscious. Today was complicated enough, and it was not even noon yet. I nodded at him and kept walking.
When I crossed the street, though, he did the same. And when I turned down the Luna Blu alley, he did that, too. I slowed my pace as I got closer to the kitchen entrance, waiting for him to pass me and continue on to the street. He didn’t. In fact, within moments he was right behind me, having slowed down as well.
Finally, I turned around. “Are you following me?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“You just walked, like, two feet behind me the entire way here.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but I’m not following you.”
I just looked at him. “What would you call it, then?”
“Coincidence,” he proclaimed. “We’re just headed in the same direction.”
“Where are you going?”
“Here,” he said, pointing at the kitchen door.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
Suddenly, the door swung open, and there was Opal, wearing jeans, shiny black shoes, and a white sweater, a coffee cup in one hand. “Please tell me,” she said to Dave, skipping any greeting, “that you are here for the community project.”
“Yep,” he replied. Then he shot me a look that could only be described as smug. “I am.”
“Oh, thank God.” Opal pushed the door open farther and he stepped through. Then she said to me, “You saw all the people here the other day. I had tons! And now, today, when the local paper and freaking Lindsay Baker are coming in twenty minutes, no one. Not a single person!”