A Little Friendly Advice

by Siobhan Vivian

  “Okay,” I said. And then I fell back asleep.

  I woke up again. The whole house was dark, the television was off. I had snuggled onto my dad’s arm, but he kept shaking, which was what woke me up. Not on purpose to tell me to go to bed, or because he was cold. He kept lifting up his arm to check his silver watch.

  “What are you doing?” I asked through a yawn.

  He looked at his watch again. “You should go to bed.”

  I shook my head.

  He sighed. “Do you want me to show you how to tell time?”

  This time I nodded my head up and down.

  When the lesson was over, the little hand of the silver watch was on the three. The big hand was on the twelve. And my mom still wasn’t home from the hospital.

  I’m sitting Indian-style on the floor of my closet, hiding from the land-mine field that my life has become. There are little explosives hidden all around me and I don’t know where it’s safe to step. I’m afraid of triggering something. A picture, a trinket, someone else’s happiness. Everything feels dangerous.

  The closet is a huge paper bag, helping me not to hyperventilate. I’m trying to breathe slowly, in even, measured breaths. The portable phone sits in my lap, mocking me while I run through the short list of people I can’t talk to about how I’m feeling.

  Suddenly, it rings. I actually flinch.

  “You didn’t call, like you said you would,” Charlie says instead of hello.

  “Sorry,” I say, and smooth my hair off my forehead. The disappointment in his voice is slightly comforting. “Anyhow, I was going to call you later, after I finished this thing I’m doing.”

  “It’s past midnight, you know.”

  Uh-oh. How long have I been sitting in here? And if it’s really that late, my mom is going to freak out that I’m getting phone calls. “Hold on a second,” I whisper.

  “Okay,” he whispers back.

  I stick my head outside the closet into my dark bedroom. I can hear the water rushing through the pipes overhead. I duck back inside and shut the door again.

  “I didn’t get you in trouble, did I?”

  “No, my mom’s in the shower. But you can’t call here this late.”

  “So what are you doing that you couldn’t call me?”

  I look above at the hems of T-shirts hanging over my head. “I’m in my closet.”

  “Oh.” Charlie takes a deep breath. “Wait. You’re not talking metaphorically, are you? Because that’s going to make me way less excited about finally kissing you.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “No, Charlie. I mean, I’m literally sitting on the floor of my closet.” I shift my weight and pull out a red rubber wellie from underneath my butt and toss it aside.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “Just sitting in the dark.”

  “Thinking?”

  “Trying not to think, actually.”

  “Got it,” he says, and starts to cough. It sounds fake. “I think you need to try harder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you keep sighing these little sad sighs. Like, right before you speak. Nearly every time. Which makes me think that you’re actually thinking about whatever you’re trying not to think about.”

  There’s a long silence. I hold my breath and pray that he’s not going to try and make me have a big discussion right now.

  “Can you cut class tomorrow?” he asks, hopeful. “My dad’s teaching some master screen-printing class at Kent State, which will be incredibly pretentious but interesting. I was going to play hooky and go along to check out the class and see their photography collection. They’ve got prints by everyone there. Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus —”

  “Diane Arbus?” I perk up and try to place the name. It was Maria who mentioned her, when I was about to snap that funny picture of the boys wrestling. “My friend said my pictures reminded her of Diane Arbus.”

  “Really? That’s a huge compliment. Her work can be so funny, but also totally sad and … I don’t know. It’s pretty amazing all the feelings she can elicit from a single picture.” He pauses, I can hear him breathing. Then he shifts his phone from ear to ear. “So you think you might want to get out of Akron for a day and check it out with me?”

  That’s exactly what I want. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Great,” Charlie says, his smile almost audible. “We’ll pick you up at nine-thirty. Make sure you bring your camera.”

  It’s not easy to convince a nurse that you’re sick when you really just want to cut school to hang out with your almost-boyfriend. But I’m trying really hard.

  “I felt pretty crappy last night,” I say in my best sore-throat voice, the covers pulled all the way up to my chin. “I didn’t even eat dinner.” That’s actually true, but I toss in a fake cough for good measure.

  Mom sits on the corner of my bed, just kind of staring at me. She’s in her scrubs again, about to head back to the hospital. She’s been working double shifts whenever possible, to help pad our savings. “You threw up in the shower this morning?” she asks quietly.

  “Just, like, a little bit. I was dry-heaving and dizzy and yeah. But my stomach was pretty much empty, so it wasn’t a big spew.” My head drops back into the pillow and I close my eyes like I’m weak.

  A muffled chime interrupts my performance. I keep my eyes closed and swallow hard.

  “What’s that?” Mom asks, rising off the bed and walking toward my closet. “Is that the cordless? Why is our phone in your closet?”

  After hanging up with Charlie, I had cleaned up Jim’s box of crap as quickly as I could, trying not to look at any of it too closely. Then I threw it, and all the rest of my Polaroids, in the back of my closet for safekeeping. Apparently I forgot to take the phone back out with me.

  The closet door creaks open. “Oh, Ruby. This is a disaster area.” She huffs and puffs, kicking some stuff around, searching for the ringing phone.

  My mom would probably die if she found that box. I could try to explain that it wasn’t something I’d asked for, that I didn’t have anything to do with its arrival. But I don’t think that would help much. Whatever was left of her broken heart would shatter and I’d be responsible.

  Finally, the ring sounds a bit louder. The phone’s been safely unearthed. I open my eyes the littlest bit and watch my mom bend over and click the receiver on.

  “Hello?” Mom says. “Oh, hi, Beth. She’s right here. Hold on one second.” She walks the phone over to me, sits down on the corner of my bed, and puts the back of her hand against my forehead.

  “Hey,” I say, sitting up slowly.

  “Maria just beeped outside my house. We’re on our way over.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to school today,” I say, and make eye contact with my mom. She doesn’t disagree with me. I remind myself not to smile.

  “Are you okay?” Beth sounds genuinely worried. “You know, I thought something was up with you yesterday. I shouldn’t have kept you out in that cold garage for so long.”

  Wow. I’m getting out of Akron and have a justifiable excuse for acting weird at Beth’s house yesterday. Cutting school with Charlie is already awesome. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “God, I’d feel terrible if you were too sick to come to my party. Like, I might as well not have it at all.”

  I roll my eyes. Even though she’s my best friend, there’s no way anything could come between Beth and her party. “I’m sure I’ll be better by Friday, probably even tomorrow. I just need to take it easy and relax today.”

  Beth offers to collect my homework assignments. I tell her to hold on, and repeat that information to my mom. If she even suspected for a second that I was faking, the fact that Beth will be at school without me pretty much guarantees that I’m not up to any trouble. And I don’t feel the littlest bit guilty about lying to Beth. In fact, it might help things between us, level the playing field somewhat.

  Even though she’s probably still skeptical, Mom calls the schoo
l secretary and tells her I won’t be coming in. Before she leaves for the hospital, she fixes me some dry toast, which I promise to try and eat when the room stops spinning.

  That’s definitely overkill at this point. But whatever.

  As soon as Mom leaves, I leap out of bed and throw together an outfit. I don’t want to look dressed up, but I want to fit in on a college campus. And look cute too, I guess. So I put on my borderline-disgustingly-dirty Levi’s and a long-sleeved white T-shirt with a tiny green-apple print that actually makes me look like I have boobs. I pair that with a fuzzy navy cardigan with pretty pearl buttons and my navy New Balances. I put on the chocolate-colored leather belt that says GRANDPA in tan stitching across the back, because I bet Charlie will find that funny. We get each other like that.

  Because I stayed in bed for a while after my shower, my long hair’s doing that wavy thing again, which I’m pretty happy about. But my face looks really plain and boring.

  I head downstairs and tiptoe into my mother’s bedroom, even though I know she’s gone and I could stomp and scream if I wanted to. Her bed is made as usual, overflowing with about twenty different throw pillows in colors that coordinate to her comforter just so. Her oak dresser is topped with delicate perfume bottles and pastel lotions and baskets of other girly products that are foreign to me. After moving a few things around, I find the one tube of shimmery lip gloss that she had bought for me awhile back, only to repossess a few weeks later when she figured I’d never wear it. I smear it on and slide the tube into my pocket.

  A horn beeps outside my house and catches me off guard. It’s only nine-fifteen, but I peer through Mom’s lace curtains and see that Charlie and his dad are parked outside. I sprint back upstairs, throw my camera and my last pack of Polaroid film into my book bag, and fly out of the door with my gray peacoat over my arm and my scarf wrapped around my neck. Charlie smiles at me the whole way down the stairs. I wipe some extra lip gloss from the corners of my mouth as inconspicuously as I can.

  “Hey,” I say quietly as I slide into the backseat.

  “Hi,” Charlie says, turning around from the front seat. He looks cuter than ever in dark jeans and a V-neck sweater that’s the color of oatmeal. He’s got a sky-blue T-shirt peeking out with a dark blue splotchy pattern I can’t quite recognize. And there’s a white thermal underneath that too. I’m afraid he might be too cold to walk around and explore the campus, but then I spot a black ski jacket folded up on the seat next to me.

  “This is Ruby,” Charlie says to his father.

  His father doesn’t say anything to me. He just turns up NPR and takes off down the street once I’m buckled up.

  We sit in silence on the way out of Akron, except for when Charlie’s dad curses the traffic and the bad drivers and the mini-malls under his breath. He’s dressed in tones of black and gray. His hair is white and his glasses are clear plastic. There are a few colorful flecks of paint on the lenses, and one small smear of blue behind his ear.

  “Did you pack my test sheets?” Charlie’s dad says suddenly, as he turns to face his son in an almost accusing way. His profile is sharp and pointy. I don’t think he looks like Charlie too much. I guess Charlie looks like his mom.

  “Yeah. And the inks you mixed last night. Everything’s in the trunk.”

  “What about the screens I burned?”

  “In the trunk.” Charlie turns and smiles at me.

  His father is silent again for a few minutes. “This class is going to be terrible,” he says. He glances at me in his rearview mirror and scratches his neck.

  “You know, Ruby, my dad’s class was filled in fifteen minutes. Some of the regular professors are even taking it.”

  His dad bites on his finger. “And they will all be disappointed. Carnegie-Mellon might as well have cut off my arms. I can’t work anymore. This city is so … uninspired.”

  “It’s definitely not Pittsburgh,” Charlie says. “I miss it there too.” He snakes his arm through a gap in his seat and squeezes my knee. “But Akron has some good things about it.”

  My entire body heats up. I crack the window.

  His dad gives a snarky laugh. “Try telling that to your mother, and maybe then she’ll come home from MacDowell.”

  “That’s an artists’ colony in New Hampshire,” Charlie explains to me. “She’s working on her sculptures there for a few months in some private cabin in the woods.”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “Because she hates it here too,” his dad adds. “Even more than me, if you can imagine that!”

  “Oh,” I say, because … I have no idea how to answer that.

  “Hey! I have something to show you.” Charlie rummages around in the bag on his lap. “I made this at the art camp I was telling you about, when I was a kid.”

  He hands me a stack of Polaroids. Each has two holes punched through the thick white border and the pile is threaded tightly with a thick red string. The first picture is of a young Charlie, probably about ten years old. He’s in a tie-dyed T-shirt and khaki skater shorts, and he has long messy brown hair. He’s perched at the top of a playground slide.

  “What is this? A photo album?”

  “Nope,” he says with a grin. “It’s a flip book.”

  I steady my thumb on the edge of the pictures and press down. Suddenly, the image of Charlie springs to life, flickering as he cascades down the slide, stands up, and throws his hands up in celebration. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

  “I have to make one of these for a friend of mine,” I say, thinking of Beth’s birthday present. It’s just perfect for her. A little sadness tries to creep into my mind but I won’t let it.

  “We can do that today, while we’re walking around Kent.”

  “Charlie, I told you a hundred times I’m going to need you to set up my lab,” his dad barks.

  But Charlie doesn’t get upset or react, even though his father is being a pretty big jerk. He’s just nice and patient, like he is with me. “Yeah, definitely, Dad. We’ll do that first and check out the campus after you’re all settled in your studio. Sound good to you, Ruby?” This time, he extends his hand up to me for a high five.

  I slap him back and smile larger than I have in forever as Akron fades away behind me in the distance.

  As if I couldn’t have guessed, Charlie’s dad acts like a total spaz once we arrive on the Kent campus. We park in the faculty section, near the Fine Arts building. After turning off the car, he sits still for a while, his hands gripping the wheel. I’m kind of afraid to move or make any noise, but Charlie gets out of the car like it’s no big deal, so I do too.

  Charlie and I unload the trunk while his dad gets it together. I honestly don’t mind the weirdness. We have a good time piling up each other’s arms with more crap than we could ever possibly carry in a comfortable way. A little bit of green ink, left on one of the screens, smears across my favorite jeans and I don’t even care.

  When we get up to the printing studio, I’m pretty blown away. The space is huge and empty and white, with a bunch of wooden workstations and a huge pushpin wall to display everyone’s work. Charlie carefully unfurls big pieces of beige paper from the cardboard tubes. His dad’s prints are amazing. Most of them are enormous wall-sized landscapes, built up with hundreds of passes of ink done over and over and over with different colors, in tiny little shapes to make one huge picture. I hold up one corner while he tacks the other with a pushpin and take a closer look. It’s pretty insane. Some of them are so detailed, they look like photographs.

  Charlie explains that it can take his dad hundreds of passes to complete one piece of art. And if the paper slides askew just the teensiest bit, then the whole print is ruined. When his dad is working in his home studio, Charlie’s not even supposed to walk around downstairs, for fear the vibrations might shift a screen or screw something up. It sounds like life at home is stressful for him too.

  Charlie’s dad trudges into the room after us and sits on a metal stool near one of
the big picture windows. He stares down at the campus below, taking quick small sips from a sleek metal thermos. I think he might throw up.

  “Is he okay?” I whisper to Charlie as he arranges tubes of paint on a desk in an order I don’t really understand but seems very intentional.

  “Yeah, he’s fine.” He looks up at me and rolls his eyes. “Sorry if this isn’t fun, but I just have to finish up a few things and then we can go exploring.”

  I just smile. I don’t want to rush him.

  After ten more minutes of arranging, and another ten of Charlie whispering things to his dad as his students and a few adults file in, we head to the elevator and press the ground level. Students get on and off during our ride to the ground floor. I wonder if they think we are college students too.

  Charlie presses something into my hand. It’s a blue button that says I DON’T GO HERE in electric-yellow type. I laugh while he pins the same one to his sweater and rustles his hands through his majorly messy hair. Then, he rustles mine.

  We go for a slow walk outside. The wind is blowing crazy hard against us. Charlie loops his arm into mine so we can both keep our hands stuffed in our pockets for warmth.

  “Thanks for all your help in there,” he says.

  “No problem,” I say. “Your dad’s stuff is amazing. He really doesn’t need to be nervous.”

  “Yeah, I know. He’s just been a little off since the whole Pittsburgh incident.”

  I don’t know if I should press Charlie for details. So I just turn a little to the side and pretend like I’m really interested in the group of kids who are cuddled around a laptop underneath a tree on a big plaid blanket.

  “You can ask me what it is I’m talking about. I mean, if you’re interested in, you know, knowing.”

  He sounds a little hurt at having to extend the invitation, but I was only trying to protect his feelings. “Ah, okay. What are you talking about?”

  “He lost his job. Well, I guess you could say that he didn’t get the promotion he was looking for, so he quit. He thought the director would chase after him, but he didn’t. So his pride was really wounded, because my dad thinks he’s hot shit. Which he kind of is, but whatever. So when he got the chance to teach a few master’s classes at Kent, we up and moved. And he’s been miserable ever since.”