Last summer, the view of his back always hurt a little. It was a reminder that I saw him, but he didn’t see me. Now I reached out and touched two fingers to it just because I could. What would it be like for us now that we’d shared all these secrets and I’d gone one truth too far? Would he still be acting strange? I didn’t want to wake him and find out yet.
So I crawled out of bed and found the bathroom, feeling lighter in the places he had touched me, stripped to something essential. I looked in the mirror to see if that showed, but saw only a tired-looking girl in a rumpled Satina Galt uniform.
Back in Camden’s room, I dared get closer to the world map on the teal-blue wall, and the messages next to each thumbtack. Each slip of paper had a person’s name and a few scribbled notes like “Ice-skating and tomato soup.”
He’d been so many places, met so many people. Not all of them had been happy or good. They’d left marks deep inside. Yet I was the one with the visible scars. Me, with my stable home and the family who loved me, and a life where nothing truly bad had ever happened.
I went downstairs and filled a mug with water, then sat on the couch outside on the porch. The sun was squatting fat and obvious in the sky, and I couldn’t help wondering if Mom had come home and gone to bed, if Dani was up. A horse in the field next door glanced at me in that sideways, knowing manner. He seemed to be asking, So. What next?
I had no idea. All I knew was now, with the mug heavy and solid in my hand, the fleeting comfort of a place that didn’t belong to me.
“Hey,” said Camden’s voice behind me.
I turned around to see him leaning in the doorway. He’d changed into fresh clothes.
“Hey.” I paused. He was staring off into the distance, not looking at me.
“I have to bring Max’s car back to him. I can drop you at Kendall’s on the way.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I have time. I don’t need to be home for a while.”
Camden gave me an awkward look.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“I’m fine.” He smiled quickly, then let it drop quickly. “But we should go soon.” He walked into the house and called behind him, “Max needs his car.”
When he came back out, he had my boots in his hand.
“You didn’t bring anything else inside, did you?” he asked.
“No. My backpack’s in Kendall car. My wig’s . . . oh, my wig’s in there.” I pointed to Max’s car. “And Rasta Penguin, of course.” I laughed. He didn’t.
“Okay, good.”
The cold, detached way he said this felt like a palm slapping my face. The sting of it shot through the rest of my body and rendered me silent.
Camden motioned for me to follow him to the car. It felt stupid to do it, but even stupider to sit there on the porch. I watched his slumping shoulders as we walked and wanted to grab them, shake them, demanding Why are you doing this? I swallowed hard. Holding it together, holding it back.
After we were both in the car, I turned to him. He was purposely not meeting my glance.
“Camden,” I finally choked out.
“Hey,” he said.
“Did I do something wrong?”
He looked at me quickly, then away.
“What do you mean?”
“Please don’t pretend,” was all I could say.
Camden exhaled sharply as he backed up the car, then remained silent as he turned us around and headed down the driveway. I kept staring at his mouth, waiting for it to do something.
Finally, I looked at his eyes, and saw that they were shiny with tears.
“Camden?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come home with me. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay.” There was something hollow about his voice now.
There were a million smart, witty, true things I could have countered with, but instead all I had was, “I wanted to stay.”
“My problems shouldn’t be your problems, Ari. At least not at this point, where we barely know each other. I’m sorry I brought you into them.”
“You were happy to bring me into them,” I said. I had to keep going. I had to say it, because he clearly wasn’t going to. “Happy, that is, until I told you about last summer.”
His knuckles on the steering wheel tightened, then relaxed. He took a long, slow, deep breath.
At last he said softly, “I’m not this perfect guy.”
“I don’t want you to be.” Then I realized it was true. If I’d wanted him to be perfect, I would have kept him in the distance, framed as something I could admire from far away.
“I’m not even any of the things you thought I was. You’re going to be disappointed.”
“I won’t . . .”
“Do you know how many times my mom thought she was experiencing love at first sight and went chasing after some guy? And you know how often she was wrong about him? Always.”
“You clearly have a low opinion of your mother,” I said angrily. “And now, me.”
Camden shook his head in that Camdenish way again.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just leery of this whole ‘instant love’ idea some people have. How much it can hurt, in the end.” He glanced quickly at me. “And I guess it scares me, that you saw that stuff in me. Because I don’t see it in myself.”
He took one hand off the steering wheel long enough to wipe a tear, then put it back.
“You’ll have to tell me how to get to Kendall’s,” he said.
“Camden . . .”
“I want to stop talking about this right now.”
So it would be like that. I stared out the window, not able to look at him anymore.
“Make a right at the next intersection,” I murmured.
That was the rest of the drive. Directions, turns, stops. Silence except the sounds of the car, the turn signal clicking and the squeak of the brakes. When we pulled into Kendall’s driveway, I grabbed my wig and jumped out, slammed the door without saying good-bye. I left the penguin behind.
By the time Kendall opened the front door, I finally dared to turn around and see that Camden had actually, truly driven away.
And then I finally let myself cry.
14
“He’s fucked up,” said Kendall as she cleared a seat at the breakfast counter and pushed a glass of water toward me.
“I’m such an idiot,” I said as I swallowed down my medication. “Why would I tell him about last summer?”
“Do not blame yourself here! I won’t let you blame yourself.”
I sighed. “Okay. Yeah. He’s fucked up. So am I.”
“So am I,” said Kendall. “So are we all. But that is not how you handle it when you’re weirded out or have low self-esteem or whatever. It’s in the manual.”
I couldn’t help but smile. She was so good at doing that to me. “There’s a manual?”
Kendall shrugged. “It just came out. I’ll lend you my copy.” She paused. “So, what exactly happened? Did you . . . sleep with him?”
“No! I mean, well, yes. We slept. Nothing more. Nothing that would be on, like, a sex checklist.” Kendall gave me an odd yet somehow relieved look. “That’s in a different manual.”
She laughed. “I’ll trade you.”
It lasted only another second, the feeling that everything would be okay. Then it was gone, and I dropped my head into my arms on the counter. The tears pressed forward. Stupid me, who thought honesty was an all-or-nothing proposition. That you can get to a place with someone where the known world drops away and you can hyperspace into the Possible. There are always baby steps, and backward steps, and sideways steps. It’s the only way you ever get anywhere.
And now, maybe, we’d stopped dead.
I’d had that quick rush of feeling capable, and now I’d set us on a different trajectory. That hurt. An image flickered in my head. My arm. A razor blade drawing a line across it. Even the thought of this gave me some kind of relief, still. Even after all this time, that ima
ge always came to me when I called it. At least now, I understood why. At least now, I didn’t take it seriously.
I blinked it away, then sat up and wiped my face with the kitchen towel. It smelled like cinnamon. “Tell me about Jamie. Tell me about your night.”
Kendall described what sounded like an absolutely darling evening. She and James took photos of the 4-H kids holding their rabbits and chickens, grooming their goats. Kendall got some great shots of the lemurs in the traveling zoo. They bought milk shakes. They went on whatever rides they safely could, with their cameras in tow, and split a blooming onion. Later, they met up with Max and Eliza, who overshared that they’d messed around behind the horticultural pavilion.
“Do you like him?” I asked.
“A lot,” she said. “A lot a lot.”
“Should we ask Camden or Max to talk to him, find out whether he likes you back?”
“No way. Too embarrassing.” Her features tightened up. “Besides, if it were meant to happen, it should just happen, right?”
“Who says?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s bullshit. But for once, it would be great if something came to me easy the way it comes to everyone else.”
I knew she wasn’t only talking about boys. For years, she’d watched me finish homework quickly and get As while barely studying. I thought the fact of my depression had canceled that out in her eyes—see, not everything’s easy for me—but maybe not.
There was a knock at the front door, but before Kendall could even move toward it, the door opened. My mother poked her head in.
“Hello? Kendall? Ari?”
I froze and stared at my backpack on the hallway floor, which Kendall must have brought in from the car when she got home. Which contained my regular clothes.
“Mrs. Logan!” said Kendall. “What are you doing here?”
I stepped into the shadows of the kitchen. There was no way I could get to my backpack without Mom seeing, but at least I could stall for a moment.
“I was out anyway, so I thought I’d pick up Ari and save you a trip.”
“Ari?” Kendall called, turning around. Totally not getting why I was hiding near a coatrack.
I gave her a dirty look, indicated my Satina costume. Revelation lit up her face.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Now my mom walked into the house and closed the door. She saw my backpack and picked it up. “Ari?” she called again. “Ready to go? I’m bringing you straight to the store.”
“What do I do?” I mouthed to Kendall. Kendall shrugged. I imitated her shrug. She looked annoyed.
“For God’s sake, Ari,” she said, forgetting to whisper, “it’s not like you shaved your head or got a tattoo.”
“Who got a tattoo?” my mom asked, rounding the corner into the kitchen.
She looked at me. I looked back.
She smiled impatiently, but then her eyes traveled down from my face. The tunic, the Arrow One pin. The leggings and, in new context, the purple boots.
I watched as Mom’s glance swept back up my body, the change in her expression happening slowly. It looked like it might be the beginning of a smile, maybe even a laugh.
“I don’t . . . ,” she started, then restarted. “What . . . why are you dressed like Satina Galt?”
I couldn’t answer right away.
“You should see it with the wig,” said Kendall, who was holding Satina’s hair. This was not the response I would have gone with, personally.
Mom glanced at the wig, both confused and amused now.
“I went to the fair this way,” I finally said. “Me and some other kids.”
“To the fair?”
“It’s called cosplay.”
“We took photos of them re-creating some scenes from an episode,” added Kendall.
“‘Ferris Wheel,’” I said.
“Ari was amazing,” said Kendall.
My mom shook her head, maybe trying to speed up the processing of all this information. “Which other kids?”
“Some new friends.”
“Have I met them?”
“No, Mom. This is what you’re going to focus on? They’re just some kids we met at the lake. They’re nice.”
Mom stepped forward and took the wig from Kendall, who had been twirling a few strands around her finger.
“It’s good, right?” I said. “Exactly like her.”
Mom looked at the wig for a long time, her mouth twitching further into a smile. “Yes, it’s good,” she finally said. Her expression flatlined. “But I need to meet these friends. Or at least, the boy. Because there’s a boy, right?”
I sighed.
Mom scanned my costume again. “And you need to change before going to the store. It’s weird enough to walk around the fair like that, but—”
“Of course I’ll change. I was about to when you showed up.”
I took the backpack from Mom and started to move down the hall toward Kendall’s room.
“Wait a minute,” said Mom. “Why are you still in the costume now if you wore it last night?”
I froze. Opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“I dared her to sleep in it,” said Kendall quickly. “She was complaining about how she didn’t want to take it off.”
I nodded. “I got kind of attached. I mean, look at this!” I motioned to the tunic with a flourish.
“Well, there’s always Halloween,” said Mom dismissively. “Go get dressed now, please. I told Richard you’d be there at ten.”
“Yes, sir, Captain,” I said.
On my way to Kendall’s room, I stole a glance back at my mom. She was still holding Satina’s hair, staring at it like she’d just run into an ex. Like she couldn’t decide what to see, the everything between them or the nothing at all.
“Here,” Mom said as she handed me the wig when I came back, changed, a few minutes later. She paused. “Be careful with it. Satina was always so particular about her hair.”
A few hours later, I was driving Richard’s car on my way to pick up some paint at a warehouse in the next town over when my phone rang. It was sticking out of my bag so I only saw “CA” on the screen. But that was enough to make me pull over.
“Do you think I’m an asshole?” he said when I picked up.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“I think I’m an asshole.”
“Don’t think that.”
“Now you see I’m not that confident, carefree guy you thought I was.”
I was about to say something along the lines of And I like you even more for that, but a gigantic truck thundered by.
“Where are you?” asked Camden.
“By the side of the road on Route 44-55.”
“Well, crap. Call me back later.”
“It’s okay. This is actually the most privacy I’m going to get for a while.” I rolled up the windows and leaned the seat back. “Let’s talk.”
I heard him take a long breath, and maybe heard it shake a bit.
“Last night was . . . amazing, really.” His voice lower now. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend we were on his bed beneath the universe, and with that voice came hands and fingers that touched me.
“I thought you said it was a mistake.”
“I guess it was both,” he said after a pause, sounding pained. “I keep thinking of you next to me, letting me see your arm. I wish I could stay in that moment infinitely.”
“That’s the moment you wish you could stay in?”
Camden laughed nervously, then his voice got soft again. “There were a lot of moments, Ari. But I guess that one . . . that was where I felt the least freaked out. Knowing you’d been through stuff, too. Survived it. Can we get back to that part, where you were telling me about the scars?”
That was before I’d told him about last summer. I was more than happy to go back to that part.
“Where did I leave off?”
“You said you weren’t trying to kill yoursel
f. But what set it off?”
I closed my eyes to the aggressive, almost obnoxious sunlight streaming in through the windshield. Maybe it was trying to scorch away the memory of that cold, midwinter night over a year ago.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” I said. “Thing is, I’m still not sure. My mom was in the final months of nursing school and always gone. I’d had a big fight with Dani because I was trying to finish a science report and she wouldn’t leave me alone. I knew Kendall was at a movie with some of her newspaper friends and didn’t invite me. On the outside, there wasn’t anything special about the day, except that it was one more in a long string of crappy days.”
I paused, opened my eyes.
“But on the inside . . .” I couldn’t articulate it to him. Didn’t want to. “Let’s just say, I had no control over it. It did what it wanted to. In a twisted way I was actually trying to manage it.”
After a few moments, Camden said simply, “I get that.” He was silent for another few moments, then added, “So what did you do with it? The blood, I mean.”
This I had an easy answer for. Facts embedded in a clear memory. “I watched it for a little while. Then I blotted it with toilet paper, and I watched that.”
A red-snake trickle down drip drip drip. The specific feeling of pleasure mixed with pain, gratitude mixed with guilt.
“What happened then?” he asked, almost whispering now. “Did someone find you?”
“No. I think that only happens in movies.”
“Ah, right.”
“I wasn’t sure what to do after I got tired of watching the bleeding. I was just sort of sitting there. I was maybe even a little bored. I’d made a lot of cuts and they were starting to hurt, because the peas were wearing off. So I left all the . . . evidence . . . and went out.”
I kept talking and telling. About my mother frantically calling my cell phone, then Kendall frantically calling my cell phone because my mother had frantically called her. I described myself driving north on Route 32 until an unexpected snow started falling, and I got nervous, then turned around and drove south until the car fishtailed at a stoplight. That was when I knew it was time to go home and step into the situation I’d created.
What Happens Now Page 16