by Gina Ciocca
My mother’s widened eyes met mine. “Isn’t that exciting?”
“Wow, qué bueno,” David piped up, causing the girls to twitter with laughter.
“Mm-hm. Really cool.” I meant it, but I had no interest in learning this girl’s life story when I’d probably never see her again and had nothing even half as noteworthy to contribute to the conversation. So I stood up and said, “Excuse me, I need to run to the ladies’ room. Good luck in Costa Rica.”
I didn’t have to look to know my mother’s mortified eyes were following me as I left the table.
By the time I came back, my father was on his feet, fists raised above his head in victory, people clapping and patting him on the back before drifting back to their own business. He’d actually won, and I didn’t get to see it because I’d been hiding in the bathroom.
“Good thing I took a picture,” my mother said pointedly. “You missed Daddy winning.”
I mumbled something unintelligible under my breath as we filed up to the front of the store to place the rest of our orders. That was the other part of our tradition: Once the competition was over, everyone else got their ice cream and we headed over to the Cliff Walk, the walking/biking trail between the mansions and the beach.
“So why didn’t you want to talk to those girls earlier?” David asked as he licked a glob of salted caramel from the softball-size mound on his cone. We had separated into groups as we walked, with Dad and Uncle Tommy at the front, Mom and Aunt Tess with Miranda between them in the middle, and David and me lagging in the back.
“Because I can’t stand when my mother tries to turn me into a social experiment. She thinks my personality is faulty because she enjoys starting random conversations with strangers and I don’t.” I kicked a pebble out of my way. “I get all paranoid that I’ll come off boring and stupid and they’ll end up thinking I’m lame anyway. Is it really so wrong to not like talking to people I don’t know?”
David nudged me with his elbow. “But you don’t know me.”
“Sure I do. You’re David. You think you have mad video game skills, and you definitely have a terrible Spanish accent.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “And you’re cool with that?”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t click with people very often, but when I did, it was instant and lasting. David was one of those people who was just easy to be around.
“Ditto. And for what it’s worth, you’re not lame at all.” He looked thoughtful as he took another swipe at his cone. “I guess I’m the opposite. You seem really close with your family. I talk to everyone, and the only people I think suck are the ones I’m related to.” A hint of bitterness hardened his voice. It disappeared when he added, “Except my dad. He’s awesome.”
We stopped walking, eating in silence for a few seconds as David stared through the chain-link fence separating us from the expansive lawn behind the Astors’ sprawling mansion.
“Can you believe this place was built as a summer ‘cottage’?” he said. “I mean, if they made something this behemoth to live in for two months a year, can you imagine what their permanent house looked like?”
I hooked my fingertips around one of the wire links and stared dreamily at the stately windows and pillared wraparound porch. For an instant I pictured myself floating down the grand staircase inside with layers of Victorian ruffles billowing around my feet. Newport always had that effect—making me wish I could go back in time and spend a day in the shoes of the filthy rich Gilded Age elite. “I think I must’ve lived here in a past life. Maybe that’s why I love it so much.”
David’s eyes darkened. “Some people live here now and don’t even appreciate it.”
“Well,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood as we started moving again, “if my present-day luck is any indication, Past Kelsey was probably a scullery maid.”
That got a chuckle out of him. “You know, you’re pretty funny for someone with a defective personality.”
My father saved David from a retaliatory shove by yelling, “Slippery footing up ahead! Hold on to your cones!”
We’d reached the part of the Cliff Walk that lived up to its name—where the cement trail gave way to boulders and rocks without a guardrail in sight. The part that never failed to bring out my inner chickenshit.
“Um, you can go ahead if you want to,” I said, pulling the hem of my shorts over the mottled splotch David had noticed earlier. “I’m going to head back. I don’t think the ice cream is agreeing with my stomach.”
“No, I don’t want you to walk alone.” The look of concern on his face made me feel awful for being such a wimp. “I’ll go with you.”
I tried to protest, but he called up to my parents, who, ever paranoid, told me to stay with him until they got back. Not that I minded.
We chatted the whole walk home, and I’d forgotten I was supposed to be feeling sick by the time we reached David’s grandfather’s house. Until we stepped into the kitchen, and the sensation that something wasn’t right caused a real knot to form in my stomach.
David’s father sat crouched in the door frame that separated the kitchen and dining room, a dustpan in one hand and a small broom in the other. At his feet lay a pile of broken glass.
“Dad? What happened?”
Mr. Kerrigan exhaled and scratched his head, but before he could answer, Jay appeared in the doorway from the living room. “The two of you think you’re funny, hiding things on me?” he shouted, pointing his finger in David’s face. “Next time I’ll tear this whole house apart!”
I jumped and hid behind David without thinking, then immediately felt ridiculous. He might’ve been yelling like a maniac, but Jay was a slight, silver-haired old man. His eyes were bloodshot, his robe sagged on his frame, and despite being mid-outburst, he looked weary and sad. Like someone who’d spent too many years fighting his demons, only to be bested by them in the end.
Over the next few minutes, as I cowered near the back door, I learned that David’s father had hidden Jay’s alcohol before he left for Goodwill. After he drove off, Jay had gone looking for it and, when he couldn’t find it, opted to throw almost every glass in the cabinet against various kitchen surfaces instead.
“I’ll finish cleaning this, Dad. You go take care of him,” David spat.
Mr. Kerrigan reluctantly handed over the broom and dustpan, and David knelt to the floor as his father ushered his grandfather upstairs.
I fidgeted uncomfortably. “Um, can I help?”
David shook his head, his lips set so tight that I could see the outline of his braces bulging between his nose and mouth. He made two sweeps into the pan before shoving his tools aside and slumping against the door frame with a heavy sigh, letting his head fall against the wood.
“I don’t get it,” he said, grinding the palms of his hands against his temples. “How can someone throw his life away?” He looked at me with dark, incredulous eyes, not waiting for an answer. “How can you just not care about anything? How can someone own a great place like this and not even give a crap what happens to it?”
I walked over and settled on the floor against the opposite side of the door frame. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. After what he’d said about his family on the Cliff Walk, I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about his grandfather. “Is there . . . something else going on?”
He didn’t respond right away, absently stroking the smooth curve of a broken chunk of glass on the floor instead. Then he looked at me. “You know my parents are divorced, right?”
“I heard.”
“My mom was the one who wanted it, and she was such a bitch about it. Brought my dad to court over every little thing, nickel-and-dimed him for all their stuff, including our house. Then she turned around and fucking sold it. My dad never did anything to her, and she acted like she had something to prove. But
you know how hard she fought for custody of me?” He picked up the piece of glass and tossed it against a cabinet. “She didn’t.”
My heart broke a little bit for him at that moment. I reached out and took his hand, because it felt like the right thing to do. “Her loss.”
“You think so?”
“Totally.”
Light came back to his eyes, and he sat up straighter as he looked from me to our loosely twined fingers. He cleared his throat but kept his hand in mine. “Do you think this can stay between us? I don’t want everyone in Norwood to know how messed up my life is.”
“You’re no more messed up than anyone else, David.”
“Still.” His grin widened. “I’m trying out for the baseball team. I’ll forget all about how I demolished you in the video tournament if you come to some of my games. Since no one there will know me from a hole in the dirt.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. “Definitely. We’ll have to hang out sometime.”
But we didn’t hang out sometime. We hung out all the time.
I knew I liked David as soon as I met him, but I had no idea the boy who knocked me over with a baseball would become my go-to plus one any time I was bored or lonely. Or breathing. I didn’t know he’d give the best hugs, or share my love of summer and my irrational fear of bats and my obsession with chocolate chip cookies.
I had no way of knowing he’d become my best friend in the world.
Five
Rhode Island
Senior Year
I didn’t see David again for the rest of the day after Ryan walked him to class. I half wondered if Ryan had chopped him up and stashed the parts in an empty locker. But he seemed back to normal when he drove me to get my car after school.
I wished everything could go back to the way it was that easily. My family and I had been living in Rhode Island, right outside Newport, for the past year, just as I’d always dreamed of doing. That night, however, my dreams were filled with images of Norwood. More specifically, the piece of Norwood that had turned up like a metastasized tumor in the last place I expected.
Deep down, I knew I shouldn’t have been so surprised. We’d met in Newport, after all, and his grandfather’s house hadn’t been a vacation home like Uncle Tommy’s; Jay had lived there year-round. In the back of my mind, I’d always known I might see David again, especially since he and Mr. Kerrigan were Jay’s only family. And I’d mostly succeeded in not thinking about it.
But every image I’d tried to suppress for the past year found a way to break through the dam that night. I saw the delicate white and purple flowers in the empty field near the house David had shared with his father. The way he’d pick them and sneak them in my hair when I wasn’t looking, because he knew I was petrified that bugs would crawl out and nest in my scalp. The photo I took of him, beaming after he’d pitched a perfect game.
Then the images became more distorted and nightmarish. I looked down and saw blood everywhere. It stained my clothes, my hands, my face. I started to cry, and when David tried to comfort me, I got blood all over him, too.
Suddenly everything disappeared: David, Norwood, all of it. I stood in the hallway at Clayton, not a speck of blood in my perfectly highlighted hair, and not one red smear on my pretty white sundress. I stared at the glass doors at the end of the hall, knowing something was about to go terribly wrong. David walked in, just as he had that morning. Only this time it was the David I’d met three years ago. The one with an air of uncertainty about him and too much black hair hanging in his eyes and braces on his teeth.
His clothes were disheveled, and the closer he got to me, the easier it became to see dark splotches of blood all over him.
“David,” I gasped, keenly aware that the hallway had filled with gawkers. “You’re covered in blood.”
“I know. It’s happening to me, too.”
“What’s happening to you?”
David’s eyes hardened, and I barely recognized the voice that spoke his next words. “Do you even care?”
That’s when my eyes flew open and I struggled to sit up, fighting off the tail end of dream paralysis.
No Freud required to analyze that one.
I knew, even in my sleep, that what I’d had with David in Norwood would never translate to the life I’d lived for the past year in Rhode Island. Beautiful as he might be, he served as a reminder of my ugly past. He didn’t fit in my new world, and having him here would only ruin everything. The same way he’d ruined everything once before.
According to the clock, I still had ten more minutes before my alarm went off. But the last thing I wanted was to fall back to sleep and revisit my dream. So I dragged myself into the bathroom. I cast a skittish glance in the mirror, and even though I didn’t see blood pouring out of my nose or mouth, I still ran to the kitchen and downed some vitamins before jumping in the shower.
Normally a shower would have soothed me, but that morning it stimulated my pissiness, as if the receptors determining my shitty mood were activated by the hot water hitting my skin.
Who the hell does he think he is? I thought as I yanked a comb through my hair afterward. First doing what he did before I left, and then showing up here? I threw a towel around my hair and then let out a mini scream of frustration when it unraveled immediately. He’s crazy if he thinks I’m going to act like everything is fine. I’m not going to speak to him. I’ll acknowledge him if he talks to me, but we will not be friends again. I’m not even going to look at him.
That didn’t happen.
I got to my first-period English class early, since my morning dose of Candy and Ryan hadn’t done much to improve my mood. Neither had the fact that Mom and Miranda spent breakfast blathering about how excited they were to have David and his father in town, and how they wished Aunt Tess and Uncle Tommy hadn’t sold the cabin, so we could all get together for old time’s sake.
I had muttered that old times were old for a reason. They ignored me.
Most of the desks were still empty as I took my place in the back, reserving the seat next to me for Violet by dumping my bag on the chair. I dug out the book we’d been assigned to read and prepared to numb my mind for a few minutes.
That is, until David walked in the door and handed Mr. Ingles a transfer slip.
“Ah,” Mr. Ingles said, twisting his thick mustache. “Mrs. Pruitt’s class too full?”
“Yes,” David replied. “They told me I should come to this room starting today.”
“Well, then. Welcome aboard Mr.”—he glanced at the paper—“Kerrigan. Have a seat.”
No. No, no frickin’ way. My palms started to sweat as I hoped David wouldn’t see me. Or that he would, and he’d choose a seat as far from me as possible.
But he strode right over, plopping himself down at the desk in front of Violet’s. “Hey.” He smiled an effortless smile, and something I’d noticed yesterday caught my attention again. The tiny beauty mark he’d always had beneath his lip was now accompanied by a small, angry red line, like a cut that hadn’t healed properly.
I wondered how and when he’d gotten it before I slipped my bookmark between the pages of my novel and sat up. And broke my promise to ignore him by replying, “Hey.”
That didn’t take long.
We started talking at the same time, turned red, and stopped. “Go ahead,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“I was just saying we didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday.”
“I know. I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather.”
“I’m not.” He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. “That came out wrong. I just meant he’s been in a bad way for a long time, and unhappy even longer. Maybe now he’s at peace. Or something.”
“So you’re living in his house?”
He nodded. “It’s ours now.”
“I can’t believe you�
�re here.”
It was an honest statement, but I hadn’t meant for it to sound quite so blunt.
David smirked. “Neither could your sister. She made me feel like a rock star.”
I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t called, or sent a text, or given me some sort of warning, but I knew it was a stupid question. I wouldn’t have broken radio silence after a year either. So I said, “Miranda always loved you.”
Bad choice. His smile faded and he flipped his notebook cover open and closed as I tried to think of something, anything, to diffuse the mention of the L word.
“So, um, what else is new?”
David’s eyes flitted over me. “Your hair is different.”
My hands fluttered to the highlighted blond strands that suddenly felt foreign and phony, and I tried to ignore that his words sounded like an accusation. “I needed a change. Do you like it?”
He shrugged. “It’s nice. But I liked it before, too.”
Painful. This conversation was truly and utterly painful. Teach us something, Mr. Ingles! I begged silently. So what if there are only five people in the room?
With no relief in sight, I made a last-ditch effort. “How’s your dad?”
“He’s better.”
“Better?”
David made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a snort.
“What?” My heart sped up as I waited for him to tell me whatever it was I didn’t know but apparently should’ve.
His eyes narrowed, like he couldn’t decide whether or not to take me seriously. “We found out he had cancer a few months after you left. They caught it pretty early and everything, but he went through some brutal treatments. I spent months learning to write computer programs because he was too sick to do his job. He was in rough shape for a while.”
I laid my hand on my chest as guilt and panic coursed through me. “Oh my God. No, no one told me. Is he . . . ?” I struggled to find the right words. “Is he okay?”
“His last scan was all clear. So far so good.” He gave me another dubious look. “You really didn’t know?”