Girl Against the Universe

by Paula Stokes

  “Dr. Leed is almost as old as my stepdad,” I say. Which is probably true; Tom is five years younger than my mom. “Besides, as far as I can tell, all the girls think you’re hot.”

  Jordy sighs deeply. “Not me. Tennis Player Jordy is hot. Real Jordy tries hard, but he’s just a tall goofy guy who sucks at math.”

  I tilt my head to the side and study him for a moment. His words feel unsure, insecure even. But the way he’s delivering them so openly makes him seem more like someone really comfortable in his own skin. “Who are you being right now?”

  He flips his visor around backward and rests his head in his hands. “I don’t even know. How sad is that? I want to be real, but I also want to impress you, and Tennis Player Jordy is a lot more impressive.” He looks away, his gaze falling on the case full of trophies and ribbons along the side wall of the living room, the mantel covered in plaques and plates from tournament victories. “That’s the whole point of Daniel, to figure out how to be a professional tennis player without losing myself completely.” He looks back at me. “That’s my goal, you know? To decide for sure who I want to be and be that guy, regardless of what anyone else thinks.”

  My eyes flick from the trophies back to Jordy. It occurs to me I haven’t done a five-second check in a while. I scan the living room and backyard. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I say finally.

  Jordy tosses me a remote control. “Too much heavy conversation. Let’s kill our brains with TV like regular people.” He gives me another megawatt smile, but this one doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s almost like he’s reset himself, like I caught a glimpse of the real him but now he’s done sharing.

  “Good idea.” I sit next to him on the sofa, praying I won’t leave any sweaty spots on the leather when I get up later. Crossing my legs, I adjust my skirt for maximum coverage. I aim the remote at the TV, and the screen comes to life. I flip through a few channels and stop on Animal Planet. It’s a show about the ocean.

  Jordy adjusts his body on the sofa, his bare leg brushing against mine. He exhales deeply. “I sure hope this doesn’t have dolphins. I hate dolphins.” He smirks. “You know, I think you can get kicked out of San Diego for saying that.”

  I elbow him in the ribs. “I never said I hated dolphins. Just that everyone probably—”

  He holds his hands in front of his face as a pair of bottlenose dolphins appear on the screen. “My eyes. My eyes. Make it stop.”

  “You’re an idiot.” I slap him on the leg with the remote, but I can’t keep from smiling.

  He drops his hands to his lap. “Finally! Finally someone sees the real me.” He lowers his voice. “I think this is the part where you’re supposed to run away.”

  On TV, the two dolphins circle around each other, clicking and squeaking. I glance over at them and then back at him.

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not?”

  I blink innocently. “Because I’m hungry.”

  “Oh, you’re a mean one. Just for that.” Jordy grabs the remote and turns the volume all the way up. The dolphin chatter is joined by the shrill call of a whale.

  “Ah!” I cover my ears.

  The doorbell rings and Jordy springs up to answer it.

  I flail for the remote and punch the volume back down to normal.

  He strolls back into the living room a couple of minutes later and drops a greasy brown bag on the glass coffee table. I glance from the food bag to the table to the pristine leather sofa. “What’s the penalty for spilling on the furniture around here?”

  “Death by landscaping, I think. How are you with a Weedwacker?” Jordy grins.

  I cringe at the thought. “I try to avoid sharp, whirring blades. But I’m good with these.” I hold up my hands.

  “Yeah, but you’re going to need those for tennis, and my mom has been known to work people to the bone. Hang on a minute.” He disappears and returns with napkins, paper plates, and a woven Mexican blanket. He drapes the blanket across the white leather. Plucking the bag of burritos from the table, he wipes at the condensation on the glass with one corner of the blanket. Then he grabs a magazine from a nearby end table and uses it as a base for the food. “There we go. Now if we spill I can just toss this blanket in the washer.”

  I sit on one end of the sofa, a paper plate with a foil-wrapped burrito balanced on my lap. Jordy grabs a burrito for himself and then skims through the channels, pausing for a moment on a tennis match.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “A repeat of the US Open finals.”

  I watch the players cover the court effortlessly as I bite into my burrito. It’s a mix of piping hot French fries, spicy meat, and cool guacamole. The different flavors and textures all meld together in my mouth. I swallow and blot my lips. “This is amazing.”

  “Yes it is.” Jordy squirts a packet of hot sauce on his burrito and takes a huge bite.

  I gesture at the TV. “So are you really good enough to play tournaments like that?”

  “I made it to the quarterfinals last year. This year all my friends went without me because my parents decided I should skip it.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m recovering from a knee injury.”

  “Seriously? You don’t seem injured to me.”

  “I’m mostly back to normal, but they thought if I did poorly in the Junior Open it would hurt my ranking. So I’m just playing local satellite tournaments until I’m completely healed. I’m hoping once I finish the requirements for my diploma that my parents will let me turn pro.”

  “You’re eighteen, right? Could they actually stop you?”

  He sighs. “No, but there’s a lot involved in being on the tour. Travel and tournament draws and ranking points and payouts. I don’t know enough to handle all that stuff by myself.” He trains his eyes on his lap. “I guess it sounds lame, but I need my parents.”

  “I don’t think that’s lame.” I remember the big gaping hole left by my dad’s absence in the months following the accident. He’d been the one who went to my parent–teacher conferences, the one who taught me mnemonics to memorize the Great Lakes and the Earth’s atmospheres. Whenever I did something silly, my dad always made me feel better by telling me a story from the firehouse about someone who had done something even sillier. Sometimes you don’t realize all the things a person does for you until they aren’t there to do them anymore.

  “Plus my future is their dream too,” Jordy says. “I want to share it, but it sucks that we want different things. They want me to play collegiate tennis instead of turning pro—let my game mature, get a degree to fall back on.”

  “Does it stress you out? All of those expectations?”

  He takes another bite of his burrito and chews thoughtfully. “Yes. Yes it does. I wish more people would ask me that.”

  I angle my body so I can see both Jordy and the TV. “It seems like an obvious question.”

  “Usually all people our age care about is how awesome it is to be an athlete. How many famous people have I met? What awesome trips have I gotten to take?” He twists his napkin into a rope and coils it around one hand. “And then the adults, they only care about my grades or how my game is or whether I’m behaving in public.”

  “I’m sure they care about more than that.” I bite into my burrito again, trying not to drip sauce down my chin.

  “Yeah, maybe.” He doesn’t look convinced.

  I swallow another mouthful of meat, cheese, and French fries. “So how do you handle it—all the expectations?”

  “Poorly?” Jordy drops his twisted napkin onto the table and reaches for another packet of sauce. “Apparently I do things like cancel weekend practice sessions to help pretty girls.”

  “Jordy!” His name feels strange on my lips. “You shouldn’t have skipped your own stuff to help me.”

  “One or two missed practices won’t kill me, as long as my coach doesn’t narc me out to my parents. I told him I was hitting around with one of my friends, so m
ostly true, right?” He drizzles more sauce on his burrito.

  “I don’t want you to skip practices for me,” I say firmly.

  “Okay, but it wasn’t just for you—it was for shrink homework too. Plus sometimes I just need a break. I need to hang out with someone who I can be real with.”

  Before I can respond, the front door opens and the alarm system starts beeping quietly. Instinctively, I slide away from Jordy and focus my attention on my burrito.

  “Probably just my sister,” he says. He starts to say something else, but then the beeping turns into a shrill electronic siren.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Crap.” Jordy jumps up from the sofa.

  I follow him into the foyer, where a blonde girl in jeans and a T-shirt is busy punching buttons on a control panel just inside the door. Her hair is hanging in her face, and she’s got smudges of something black on one arm. It takes me a second to recognize her.

  “Jesus, Penn,” Jordy says. “How hard is it to remember the code?”

  “I feel like Dad changes it every week now,” she hollers over the shrieking.

  Jordy slides in next to her and punches a few buttons. The noise stops. A phone rings. “That’ll be the security people,” he says.

  “I’ll go call off the dogs.” Penn strides across the foyer and into the dining room.

  “Penn is your sister?” I hiss.

  “Stanford and Penn,” Jordy says. “My parents’ alma maters. Are you actually surprised?”

  Penn answers the phone, nodding to herself and then pressing a few keys on the keypad. “We’re good.” She turns back toward the foyer and notices me for the first time. “Oh, hello.” Her eyes take in every inch of me. Then her gaze flips to her brother, an unreadable expression on her face. “Didn’t you tell Mom and Dad you were going to Kimber’s barbecue?”

  “I might stop by later,” he says. “I’m assuming you didn’t come from there looking like that.”

  Penn picks at a bit of dirt under her fingernails. “I was going to go, but then Alex from across the street said his dad was letting him rebuild a transmission. I asked if I could watch, and they let me help.” She licks her finger and rubs at one of the smudges on her arm.

  “I don’t think we’ve officially met,” I say. “I’m Maguire.”

  “I know who you are.” Penn smiles sunnily. Her gaze flicks back to her brother. “Did you tell her about the time I hit you playing tennis?”

  “You mean when you broke my nose?” Jordy swings a pretend racquet with an exaggerated follow through. “We were playing doubles a few years back. She cracked me right in the face with her racquet.” He scoffs. “And then had the nerve to start crying like it was all a big accident. I know she did it on purpose.”

  She grins at him. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you being prettier than me.”

  He flicks her in the side of the head with one finger. “I’m still prettier than you.”

  “Dream on. What are you guys eating? It smells amazing.” She stops short when she sees the rumpled blanket on the sofa. “Ooh. This looks cozy. Did I interrupt something?” Her eyes gleam as she looks back and forth from Jordy to me.

  “No. I mean, we weren’t—” I fumble.

  Jordy slings an arm around my shoulders. “We were working on her serve and then we decided to order food and not trash the furniture. I got you a burrito, but I might eat it myself if you’re going to scare off my friend.”

  “Friend, huh?” Penn says. “Too bad. I thought maybe you were finally going to tell Mom where to go.”

  “One rebel in the family is enough.” Jordy’s still got his arm around me. His fingertips are tickling my collarbone.

  A tense moment passes between him and his sister, one of those beats of silence where expressions convey whole paragraphs, where teasing is more than what it appears to be. I suddenly feel like I don’t belong here.

  Shaking off Jordy’s arm, I fish my phone out of my racquet bag to check the time. “I should probably head home.”

  “Hey, don’t leave on my account, friend. I’m going to go shower off this grease, but I’ll be back for that burrito.” Penn gives us a little wave and then jogs up the stairs.

  “Sorry about that,” Jordy says, after she disappears. “She can be a shit disturber sometimes.”

  “I like her,” I say. “She says what’s on her mind. People like that are a little scary, but they’re easy to trust.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He flops back down on the sofa. “Speaking of trust. Are you going to tell me your goal?”

  “Um . . . make the tennis team?”

  “No, not that. Your therapy goal.”

  I want to tell him that it’s private, but he told me his. And maybe it would be good for someone else to know. At least Jordy won’t judge me for seeing a shrink. “I want to go to Ireland in December.” I tell him about Grandma Siobhan and the memorial service. About how I’m not sure I can get on the plane.

  “Maybe we can help each other out with our homework,” he says. “What’s your next assignment?”

  I make a face. “Ride in a car with someone else.”

  “So what’s the holdup?”

  “I’m scared. I feel like whoever I ask might end up getting hurt,” I admit.

  Jordy furrows his brow. “Why would you think that?”

  “I’m not just afraid of public transportation. I’m basically afraid of public everything. Bad things happen to other people when I’m around.” I sigh. “It’s like I’m bad luck.”

  Jordy rubs the bridge of his nose as he studies me for a moment. “Wait a second. That’s what that notebook was about, right? Your luck notebook!”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with . . .” I trail off, unable to bring myself to lie.

  He squares his shoulders. “Yes it does. What’s the deal with that? And don’t tell me it’s a math project. I know I saw my name in there.”

  I slouch forward, rubbing my temples with my fingertips. “I keep track of when people get hurt around me. It wasn’t just the car accident. There have been . . . other things.” I swallow hard. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s almost like I’m . . . cursed.”

  “Cursed?” Jordy stares at me, waiting for a punch line that’s not coming. “So you’re seriously afraid that if you ask someone to drive you somewhere, something bad might happen?”

  I pick at a loose thread on my tennis skirt. “The chances of something bad happening are a lot higher than if I just stay home and do my own thing like usual.”

  “But if you use that logic, why ever leave the house?”

  The bleak expression on my face tells him everything he needs to know.

  He reclines back on the sofa. “How do you live like that? How do you even go to school?”

  “I tried to get my mom to homeschool me, but she refused.” My finger is still working at the fraying thread. I tug hard until it pops off with a satisfying snap. “Mostly I just try to stay away from people when I’m not in class. And when I am in class, I’m always checking for potential bad things—tripping hazards, spilled chemicals, crazed gunmen running past the windows.”

  “Jesus,” Jordy says. “I can’t even imagine. Do you have all that in your head while you’re playing tennis too?”

  “Sometimes,” I say. “But it’s weird. As I get into a point or rally I start to forget about everything else. Until something bad happens.” I pause. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “No. I mean, everyone has issues. So you’re kind of OCD because you worry about people getting hurt?”

  “Sort of. Dr. Leed thinks it all stems from PTSD due to things that happened to me when I was younger.”

  Jordy blinks. “It must be a huge burden to worry about so many things. It must be . . . lonely.”

  “I’d rather be lonely than feel like someone got hurt just from being near me.” My voice cracks.

  “No one could get hurt just from being near you.” He reaches over and tu
cks a strand of dark hair back behind my ear.

  “I used to believe that,” I say. “But after I started keeping track of bad things that happened to other people when I was around, I realized it’s definitely more than it should be.”

  I give him a quick rundown of the major catastrophes that occurred over the past few years, tell him how in every case other people got hurt, but not me.

  “That doesn’t mean you caused anything.”

  “Maybe not, but when you do something and something horrible happens, your brain links those events. And when the only thing you happen to be doing is existing, and horrible things happen repeatedly, but they never hurt you . . .”

  “Okay. So maybe you’re indestructible. Like a superhero.”

  I nibble at one of my pinkie nails. “Believe it or not, I had that thought too, right after the roller coaster.” I lift the hem of my skirt slightly so he can see the scar on the inside of my leg. “Jumped out my bedroom window, just to see. Broke my femur.”

  Jordy’s eyes linger on my skin for a moment. “Holy crap. I bet your mom was mad.”

  “She was too scared to be mad. But that was my first experience with therapy. She thought I was trying to hurt myself.” I smooth the fabric back down over my thighs. “I guess in a way I was.”

  “Have you ever tried to aim it at people?” He plucks a pillow from the back of the couch and spins it between his hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like Kimber. Let’s say she’s annoying you. Can you loiter around her and cause her to fall on her face or lose a match or something?”

  The image of Kimber’s dress ripping in psychology class flashes through my mind. But no, that had to be a coincidence. “It’s not a superpower. I can’t harness it and use it against my enemies.”

  Jordy looks up at me, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Is Kimber your enemy?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “I don’t even know her. But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. But it sounds like except for the fire that things have been going okay the past couple of years. Maybe whatever it was, it’s ending.”