Again Again

by E. Lockhart

  The young man shrugged. “If you want.”

  “I do want,” she said. “Adelaide, this is Oscar. He’s here to play the piano.”

  “Hi, Adelaide.”

  “Hi, Oscar.”

  Oscar took a suit jacket off the piano bench and put it on, despite the heat. He sat down and began to play.

  Adelaide had never thought about the piano in her life. She had never listened to classical music. But Oscar rained on the keys with an enormous concentration. She did admire it.

  Kaspian-Lee disappeared. The philosophers swarmed, anxious and argumentative, talking as if conversation were blood sport.

  Adelaide was suddenly very hungry. She grabbed the misshapen Brie by its rind and huddled with it in a corner, where she leaned against a bookshelf and watched the party. She ate the cheese like a slice of pizza and thought,

  Toby is an addict. Toby is an addict.

  Her brain settled into the thought. It was an old habit, whenever she had a moment, undistracted.

  Of course, Adelaide’s mother and father always said Toby was sick. Or ill.

  Sick and ill are what the medical establishment suggests you say. The words are accurate, but to be clear, Toby went to rehab at age fourteen.

  Fourteen.

  At one point, he needed to get high so badly that in order to get a prescription, he smashed his own wrist with a hammer.

  Then, when the scrip ran out, he told them

  he was sick with migraines. He told them

  his wrist still hurt. He got another jar of pills, and another.

  When he couldn’t fake pain, he stole Adelaide’s money. And their parents’ money. He told them

  he was sleeping over at Ian’s house. He told them

  he was exhausted from basketball practice, so exhausted he couldn’t keep his head up, when in truth, he was nodding off.

  He told them

  he was throwing up because of stomach pain when really, the nausea was a side effect of narcotics; he told them

  he had a virus. He went back to

  saying he had migraines.

  He was taken to a neurologist, and a headache expert.

  He frightened his parents. They thought he might have a brain tumor.

  When Toby went to rehab, his addiction taxed the family’s financial resources sorely. The Buchwalds sold their home and the Good Sheep Yarn Shop, spent their savings, and then spent Levi’s pension money. While they knew they were lucky as hell to have the funds at all, they were looking at a very different future than the one they had saved for.

  The thing that bothered Adelaide most was the

  loss of Toby himself. He had disappeared on her,

  even when they were in the same room.

  She knew she was supposed to hold him blameless. She knew he had susceptible brain chemistry. There was an opioid epidemic across the nation. It was a social problem. A structural problem.

  Levi tried to stay balanced, burying himself in a book he was writing about teaching Shakespeare in the high school classroom, emerging to be warmly present and loving for about a half hour in the morning and an hour at night. He would be chatty and upbeat, focused completely on sharing bits about his day, listening to Adelaide and Rebecca. He made garlicky pasta and did the dishes before declaring himself tuckered out and going to bed. It seemed to Adelaide that Levi was giving all that he could. If they asked him for any more, he might collapse.

  Rebecca tried to match Levi’s attempts at normalcy and connection, but she flailed wildly from self-hatred (blaming her own parenting for Toby’s addiction) to fury at the factors other than herself that had led to it. Had she been too permissive, or too strict? she’d wonder aloud. Had she been too smothering, or too involved with her career? How could those idiot other parents leave addictive drugs in their medicine cabinets for anyone to find? How irresponsible were they, leaving their teenagers home alone to throw wild parties? And the problem with opioids wasn’t simply caused by overprescription, like so many people thought. Rebecca researched the epidemic in her spare time and told Adelaide all about her reading. The drug crisis was caused by social and economic upheaval. Even though middle-class kids like Toby were the ones the media often wrote about, most addicts were people struggling with poverty, trauma, and ill health. Rebecca investigated wide-ranging solutions like harm-reduction services, faith-based healing, government regulation, and lowered barriers to care. Mostly, in the day-to-day, she managed Toby’s health: insurance claims, therapists, doctors, researching factors that led to successful recovery. It wasn’t long before Rebecca became nearly overcome with pain from sciatica.

  Post-therapy, the Buchwalds told Adelaide it was

  normal for her to feel anger. They also told her she should let go of that

  normal anger, even though it was

  normal anger, and remind herself that

  Toby got sick.

  It was the illness that did everything, they said.

  The illness, not him.

  Addiction changes the way the brain functions on a molecular level. That’s why it’s a disease. The shift in brain chemistry made it impossible for Toby to stop without help.

  Adelaide answered Yes, yes, of course. She wanted to be compassionate. But she couldn’t help but feel that Toby cared more about

  getting a fix,

  than he did about her,

  than he did about their parents.

  He had left her. His wheezing sounded in her dreams each night to remind Adelaide how close he’d come to dying, and how little he seemed to care that it hurt her.

  Toby is an addict.

  * * *

  —

  Now, at the philosophy party, a second refrain: Mikey doesn’t love me. Mikey doesn’t love me.

  Adelaide wondered: If she weren’t sad underneath her charm and painted nails, would Mikey have loved her all the way?

  If she weren’t so talky, would he?

  If she were wickedly funny, if she were mysterious and reserved instead of sparkly, if she were thinner or taller?

  If she were a girl with more dramatically viable eyebrows, Adelaide felt, Mikey would never have left her. Or if she were a girl with long coltish legs and the kind of figure that draped over furniture.

  She thought these things over and over, like a compulsion, even though she knew she should know better.

  The cheese grew squashy in her hand. She bit off a big chunk and tongued it. She felt something of the thrill she remembered from stealing cookies from the cooling rack when her mother baked for holiday parties.

  Then Jack appeared.

  He was in the far left portion of her vision, talking to an elderly philosopher and wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt. His gold skin glowed.

  Adelaide turned her head to look. Jack’s grin spread across his face. He reached up slowly to wipe the sweat off the back of his neck.

  He was

  exquisite.

  * * *

  He turned and saw Adelaide staring.

  He said something to the elderly philosopher and came over to her.

  He leaned down. She felt his lips against her ear. “Will you hide me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Now?”

  She nodded. “Follow me.”

  Aware of her hair against her forehead and the pumping of blood in her temples, Adelaide led Jack through the kitchen and out the back door.

  They stepped into the thick summer air of Martin Schlegel’s yard. It was covered in summer roses and crawling vines. There was a smell of green. At the back of the yard was a white rope hammock strung between two trees. The sound of Oscar’s piano playing trickled out.

  They sat awkwardly on the edge of the hammock, their feet still on the grass.

  “What ar
e you hiding from?” Adelaide asked.

  “It all.”

  “The party?”

  “Myself at the party.”

  “How so?”

  “I was lying to that philosopher.”

  * * *

  He turned and saw Adelaide staring.

  He said something to the elderly philosopher and came over to her.

  He leaned down. She felt his lips against her ear. “Will you hide me?”

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him into Schlegel’s half-bathroom. It was lit by a single tangerine-scented candle. It had illusion prints on the wall. A small row of cardboard 3-D glasses hung from hooks next to the towel rack.

  Jack closed the door gently, a finger to his lips.

  “Why are you hiding?” Adelaide asked.

  “There’s a girl here I used to know. From back when.”

  “When what?”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Tell me.”

  He sighed. “Before we moved to Spain, I went to Alabaster, right? I was in ninth and she was a senior. She must be in college now. And she’s here.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I made a fool of myself.”

  “How?”

  “Poetry. I wrote her, like, a poem a day. I think I kind of stalked her, but I imagined I was dashing and romantic. I imagined her smiling as she found another envelope, reading my words over and over. But she was just trashing them and finally she told me to stop.” Jack laughed and shook his head. “I’m appalled that I ever did that.” He was leaning against the sink.

  Adelaide reached for a pair of 3-D glasses. “Put these on so we can see the art properly.”

  He put his on as she took a second pair. “Oh my.”

  “What?”

  “Here, you need to…Wait, shut your eyes.” He adjusted her glasses. “Now turn. Now open.”

  “Oh what? Are they…”

  “Yes, they absolutely are.” Jack collapsed, laughing. “Schlegel is a filthy-minded man.”

  * * *

  “Can you hide me?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  His hair curled in the heat. “I need to get away from B-Cake.”

  “I saw her outside.”

  “She’s inside now, and she’s been sitting in my lap for the past fifteen minutes. I’m covered in dog fur.”

  “I can’t hide you from B-Cake. She locates things by smell.”

  “Do I smell?”

  It was the sort of thing Adelaide would never ask someone. She would worry that she did in fact smell, and smelled bad in some way, like sweat or nerves. Or like soup. You know, the way some people smell like soup.

  She leaned in and smelled Jack’s neck.

  He smelled faintly of coconut shampoo. Or maybe it was sunblock. She wanted to put her lips on the soft part of his ear.

  * * *

  Someone knocked on the door of the bathroom.

  “Not now!” Jack called, laughing.

  “Shhh!”

  “Oh right, we’re hiding.”

  “When two of us leave,” said Adelaide, “they’re going to think we were hooking up in here.”

  “No. We’re innocently talking about 3-D pornography,” said Jack.

  “But we’ll come out of the bathroom together.”

  Jack started laughing again, not a disengaged, ironic laugh, like so many boys at Alabaster cultivated, but a slightly manic, hysterical laugh, like he might be panicking, or enjoying himself very much indeed.

  “Why didn’t you just leave the party?” Adelaide asked. “When you saw the poetry woman.”

  “I saw you eating Brie in the corner.”

  She kissed him then. She reached up and ran her finger along the soft fuzz at the back of his neck. Their mouths joined incredibly lightly, so lightly she could hardly be sure their lips had touched.

  Then she was sure.

  “I like the way you laugh,” she said, when they separated for a moment. He kissed her again and she loved him, she really did. In the kiss it seemed like they had known one another for centuries. He touched her collarbone with his warm fingers. Her blood rushed to her head, and she could feel it pounding through her.

  * * *

  As she leaned back against the bookshelf after smelling Jack’s neck, Adelaide thought:

  I could go home with him tonight.

  I could go home with him

  the same week Mikey left me.

  I could do that.

  I could make Mikey feel terrible,

  if Mikey ever knew.

  Adelaide put her hand gently on Jack’s arm. “You smell good to me.”

  Jack smiled and shook his head a little. “I’ve had too much of an unfamiliar drink,” he said. He pulled away and hitched his jeans up. “I should get myself home. Good night, and good luck to you.”

  “Great,” she said. “Fine. Good night and good luck.”

  * * *

  Adelaide ate her triangle of Brie quietly in the corner, listening to Oscar the piano player.

  The music was turbulent. It made her feel as if the sky was about to break open, and as if

  Mikey not loving her and

  Toby being an addict

  were being pushed through the music

  into the sky. Somehow, this pianist

  knew how she felt,

  knew the storm that was in her, a storm of self-pity and sadness and anger and fatigue at being

  sparkly, at keeping people

  happy.

  The philosophers gathered round the piano, their conversation hushed.

  B-Cake flopped on the rug with her belly up.

  Oscar finished playing. He stood and blended into the crowd.

  Someone switched on a playlist and turned up the volume on the speakers. The college-age philosophers began dancing in Schlegel’s living room, pressing in from the kitchen and porch. They danced in a stiff-armed way, tossing back their heads and singing the lyrics.

  * * *

  “What lie did you tell the philosopher?” Adelaide asked.

  “I said I’d read Jürgen Habermas,” said Jack, “because he asked me, ‘Have you read Jürgen Habermas?’ And I said ‘A little,’ when the answer is ‘Not at all.’ And then he said—”

  Here, Jack lay back onto the width of the hammock, with his feet still on the ground. Adelaide’s eyes went to his abdomen before she forced them back to his face.

  “He said incomprehensible things about Jürgen Habermas, and I said, ‘Right you are.’ And he said more incomprehensible things and I said, ‘I never thought of it that way.’ Truth is, I hated myself for not understanding. And I hated myself for pretending to understand rather than asking him to explain. And I also hated myself for not wanting to understand about Jürgen Habermas, really, at all, because you know. School. You’re supposed to want to know Jürgen Habermas.”

  “Jürgen Habermas is a funny name,” Adelaide said. She had never heard of Habermas at all. “If you just say it over and over.”

  “Jürgen.”

  “Jürgen.”

  “We shouldn’t make fun of someone’s name,” Jack said.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “You’re very pretty, Adelaide.”

  She lay back slowly in the hammock so she was next to him.

  * * *

  Jack grabbed her hand and they burst out of the bathroom, laughing, running out of Schlegel’s house and around the corner. They collapsed against a mailbox, laughing. “Did anyone see us?” Jack asked.

  “I think we were invisible.”

  They walked together through the darkened campus, past the avenue of trees and the huge dome of the library to the sciences building, Millhauser Hall. Adelaide knew how t
o get up on the roof. You climbed out a window and then up a fire escape.

  “I was fourteen last time I was on this campus,” said Jack, when they’d reached the roof. “It’s so weird to be back.”

  “What kind of school did you go to in Spain?”

  “An American school. In Barcelona.”

  “Did you study in English?”

  He nodded. “The kids were American or English, mostly, but some were from other parts of the world. Fifty-five nations, they were always saying. And we all took Spanish.” Jack was leaning against the wall at the edge of the roof, and Adelaide was standing two feet away. “Come here,” he said.

  “Why?” She knew why.

  “Just come here. If you want to.”

  She stepped up and he took both sides of her face in his hands and kissed her like it mattered to him, holding her face like it was a precious thing, rubbing his thumb gently across her cheekbone and then her jaw.

  Mikey had never kissed her like that. Never like

  it mattered so much. Never

  so tenderly.

  All that time with Mikey Double L, he’d kissed her like

  it was fun, like

  it was a game, like

  he was turned on, but

  not like he

  cherished her.

  Never.

  She pulled away and covered her face with her hands.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s wrong. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t. It’s not that. I’m fine, really.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I came over when you asked me to. I wanted to. Don’t worry. You probably think I’ve had a trauma or abuse or something, but I haven’t,” she blurted. “I’m just a mess for other reasons.” She swallowed. “I should go home now.”

  “Of course. Of course. I’ll walk you back.”

  They climbed down the fire escape.