The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  His eyes seemed to widen, but not in horror as Morgan had feared. It was more like surprise. Even awe.

  “Wow,” he said, again not seeming to recoil one bit from her weirdness, even the poems about her scar. “These are great.”

  Morgan swallowed the boulder in her throat and dared ask, “You don’t think they’re sick? Like, twisted?”

  Ethan paused before answering, showing a thoughtfulness Morgan instantly loved him for. How many teen boys were this genuinely thoughtful? “Not everything has to be all sunshine and flowers.”

  Morgan shoved the book out of his lap onto the floor and threw herself forward into his arms. He returned the embrace and chuckled softly. “You shouldn’t have been so nervous. What did you think, I’d run screaming?”

  “Yeah,” she answered into his shoulder, chuckling herself. “Something like that.”

  “I’d never run screaming from you,” Ethan said, and patted her back.

  She tipped her face up, closed her eyes, and went for it.

  He pulled back hard, as far as the couch would let him. “Morgan . . .”

  Morgan recoiled, too, to the other end of the couch, her sick notebook open between them on the floor to a poem she’d titled melodramatically, “Perchance to Dream,” after they’d read Hamlet in English last year.

  “I thought . . . You seemed . . .” She stammered. She pressed her palms over her eyes.

  “You’re my friend, and I love you and all, but . . . I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  “What? You’re what? Not attracted to me? Disgusted by me?”

  “Not that, no! It’s . . .” Ethan swallowed hard and scrunched his eyes shut. “I like guys.”

  Morgan leaped to her feet and snatched up her notebook. “What?” she cried.

  Ethan paled. He stared at the floor between his feet and worked his hands together. “I’m sorry I gave you the wrong idea.”

  “How could you lie to me like this?”

  “I didn’t lie!” Ethan looked up sharply. “I never lied to you.”

  “You had a girlfriend last fall. You took her to Homecoming.”

  “I’m not ‘out,’ okay? She was just a friend. We never dated. She wanted to go and didn’t have a date.”

  “But you pretend! You act straight!”

  Ethan scowled. “What, you want me to flounce around like the fag Connor says I am? Would that make your life easier?”

  “I’m your friend,” she sputtered. “You should have told me. What did you think I’d do? Disown you? Do you think I’m some kind of bigot?”

  “I don’t think that. But I wasn’t ready for all this.”

  “Oh, great, so instead you come to my house for a movie and snuggle up with me and let me kiss you and humiliate myself. You think I was ready for that?”

  “I didn’t know you felt like that about me. You never said.”

  “I was saying it now. Forget it. You better go.”

  “I don’t want to leave like this.”

  “How do you think you should leave? I can’t take back the fact that I kissed you. You can’t take back that you didn’t trust me enough with the truth. How do I believe you about anything, now? You probably do think my poetry is sick and disgusting but you’re too good at telling people what they want to hear.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Don’t tell a soul about the poems.”

  “And don’t tell anyone I’m gay.”

  “Deal. Now please go before my idiot brothers come down here and find me crying and it turns into a huge big fricking thing.”

  Ethan strode out past her, giving her a wide berth.

  She followed him at a distance as he walked to the front door, having always been raised to see her guests out. She clutched her notebook to her chest the whole way.

  At the door he turned back to her. “Thanks for all the sympathy about being a closeted gay kid in the Midwest, by the way. Because it’s a frickin’ walk in the park, let me tell you.”

  Ethan closed the door carefully behind him, considerate as ever, even as he walked away, their friendship in shards between them.

  Morgan ran to her room to hide the poetry away again, back in the dark where it belonged. On the stairs she almost crashed into Jared.

  “Your boyfriend go home?”

  She ignored that remark and scooted past him up the stairs. Jared spoke again, in a gentler voice. “You okay, Morticia? You look paler than normal.”

  She stopped, straightened her posture, and let out a shaky breath. Without turning around she answered, “Fine. Just tired. Going to go read.”

  Jared didn’t move from the step; there was only silence. She ignored him, though, and slammed into her room, holding her notebook over her frantic heart as if her poems could slow it down.

  She remained there and closed her eyes, searching her memory for clues. He wasn’t in the least bit swishy, but she should know better than to stereotype, anyway. There were gay athletes, weren’t there? Some NBA player? Military types, too. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was about to be repealed, after all.

  But shouldn’t she have known anyway?

  Reviewing their friendship like a highlight reel, Morgan realized how seldom Ethan spent any time around guys in a guy kind of way, jostling around in the halls, shooting hoops, whatever. He’d gone to a couple of dances with that girl last year, seen a few movies with girls—including her, of course—but had he ever held hands with a girl in the halls? Sat in the cafeteria with a girl on his lap, or gotten yelled at for kissing at school? Had he ever, even once, referred to a girlfriend?

  Nor had he talked about a boyfriend, but then, he wasn’t “out.”

  “Stupid,” Morgan whispered. “Stupid, stupid.”

  He was her friend! And didn’t tell her. She opened her poetry to him. In the past she’d confided her true feelings about her resentment of the twins, how guilty and shameful that felt. She told him things she’d never shared with another soul, and all along his whole identity was a lie.

  She stuffed her notebook away and picked up her phone, texting rapidly to David.

  Miss u. xoxo

  She did miss him. She’d been fooling herself all summer that it didn’t matter. It had only been out of sight, out of mind. Her disgust with his recent texting was only bravado. Secretly, she’d been happy to hear from him again. He must miss her, too, or he wouldn’t bother, when he could have any other girl in school.

  Her eyes were watering with strain as she peered at the screen, waiting for a response.

  Then, finally:

  thx ur sweet

  She frowned. What did that mean?

  She was still puzzling out her response when he texted again.

  hanging out with Britney now ttyl

  She quelled her first instinct to smash her phone into bits by placing it with exaggerated, trembling care on her pillow. Instead she flung open her poetry notebook, scribbling fragments of verse that zipped through her mind like darting birds.

  In the forest stalking

  On the plains walking

  On the water gliding

  On the muddy bottom, dying

  ~

  Speak but no one hears

  Gaze but you can’t see

  Climb but never reaching

  Letting go and falling free

  ~

  No one cares about

  The bee till it stings

  So why would it fly on by?

  10

  Rain had long since perfected the art of watching without staring, and she deployed that skill now, keeping TJ in her sights, though she was supposed to be listening to a semistranger talk about the fashion benefits of wide-leg pants.

  TJ moved to the kitchen and opened another Stella Artois plucked from the drink bucket on the counter, pouring it into his glass so rapidly it glugged and foamed. In the open-plan, modern home of Gregory and Alessia Hill, Rain had all too clear a view from the living room right to him, where he propped himself against the counte
r, staring into his beer.

  Rain nodded at a story this party guest was telling, unable to hear her, hoping this woman wasn’t saying something dire or terribly amusing requiring more than a nod. The ivory living room surrounded islands of people, in clusters of three or four, who chatted and laughed, their volume making Rain think of the penguins at the zoo and how loud it is when the man with the fish comes out.

  TJ looked up and met her eyes. Rain tensed; would he feel under surveillance? Guilty? Indignant?

  She winked, affecting playfulness. She smiled, though she was already tired of smiling.

  He returned her wink with a tight smile, stretched out across his face like a mask. When he walked back into the living room, every step seemed heavy.

  Alessia was gliding toward Rain and her companion suddenly, a broad smile across her long, narrow face. “Miranda,” she called, addressing the woman gabbling to Rain about pants, “your son needs you!” Miranda tut-tutted and hustled off to the rec room downstairs. Alessia put her arm around Rain’s shoulders. “Ciao bella, how is my darling friend?”

  At first, Rain had assumed such gushy phrasing was the result of inexact English, but either those habits had hardened into Alessia’s speech for good, or they had always been genuine.

  “Fine. So what was Miranda’s kid doing? Sticking a pool cue up his nose?”

  Alessia waved her hand. “Oh, I don’t know. I made it up because you looked so bored I was afraid you might jump through a window. One can assume he is doing something monstrous because he is a boy, and this is what they always do.”

  Rain laughed, and Alessia laughed at her own joke louder yet. Rain caught TJ’s gaze, and he rolled his eyes. Rain shifted so her back was to him and walked with Alessia toward the kitchen, feigning a sudden need for a beverage. Something about Alessia had annoyed TJ from the moment they met, when Alessia visited Rain in the States for the first time. Then, Alessia had the nerve to be a beautiful, exotic woman who married his rich doctor brother, and since then TJ found every reason he could conjure to disapprove of their continued friendship.

  That afternoon, as they were getting ready for this party, TJ had frowned into the mirror. “Why do we even have to go?” His mood would have been sour any day, for his old insomnia monster had gotten him again. Rain had been waking up in the wee hours to find his side empty, hearing the distant whoosh whoosh of the elliptical as he tried to tire himself out. She couldn’t sleep without him, but he never wanted company when sleepless. So they’d both lie awake, parallel but separate, in their silent house.

  “He’s your brother, and he loves you,” Rain had answered, reaching from behind TJ to straighten his collar at the mirror. She instantly regretted the “loves you” because she knew what was coming.

  “He loves showing off to me; not the same thing. Anyway, even if he does supposedly love me, that’s only another thing he does better than me. Because he drives me nuts.”

  Rain brushed her hair again, though it already crackled with static. “Want me to tell him you have a headache? I’ll go, make an appearance, make apologies, and come back. We can get some Chinese and watch a movie.”

  TJ was fiddling with a piece of hair that wouldn’t lie flat. It stuck up like a feathery wisp. Rain rather liked it that way. There was something so boyish and appealing about how his hair would never quite cooperate.

  “No,” TJ grumbled. “The good Dr. Hill would just start grilling you about my symptoms and give you Tylenol 3 from his doctor stash or something. I’ll just go.”

  TJ tossed his comb to the top of the dresser, where it slid across and landed in the small bedroom wastebasket. “Dammit,” he muttered, picking it up and slamming it down in place again.

  A prickly impatience swelled in Rain’s chest just then, that she’d offered TJ a perfectly good way out of this night he was dreading so much, and still he refused to take it. Not for the first time she thought he got a sick satisfaction out of being the underdog brother.

  He whirled away from the dresser and gathered her into a tight hug.

  “Thank God I have you,” he muttered into the top of her head. “I don’t know why you picked me, but thank God you did.”

  “You picked me,” Rain said, squeezing him back. “Remember? You picked me for your volleyball team.”

  Sand volleyball, at college, on the first warm day of spring when students had swarmed out of the dorms like ants from a hill.

  “It will be fine,” she’d said, her impatience melting away in his embrace. “We won’t stay long. Then we’ll come home and make our own fun.”

  He’d gotten excited at the mere suggestion, and Rain thought for a moment they wouldn’t go to the party at all.

  Now, standing in the living room with Alessia, seeing TJ grow red-faced and unsteady, she regretted her “make our own fun” remark. She hadn’t even really felt game for sex at the time. And now . . .

  Greg tapped his glass with a fork, and even Rain—who actually adored her husband’s family and gave them all kinds of benefit of the doubt—internally winced at the pretension of the gesture. There weren’t that many people there that he couldn’t just call out if he wanted to say something. Alessia squeezed Rain’s elbow, winked, and strode off to join her husband.

  “We have something to announce,” Greg said, once the party chatter had faded. Alessia’s shining eyes swept across the room to all of them in turn.

  Rain leaned back against the living room wall.

  Greg continued as Alessia turned her face to him in a choreographed dance between a husband and wife who knew how to do everything right, including this.

  “We figured it had been long enough, and I know our parents were getting impatient for the next big thing . . .”

  TJ’s mother squealed and held her hands together in front of her face like a little girl. Their father was already beaming.

  Maybe they’re building a new house, Rain thought. Or moving to Swaziland to become missionaries.

  She caught TJ’s eye at the other end of the room. His dark glower startled her. She gripped her glass of water so hard, she heard ice clinking around as it shook in her hand.

  Alessia exclaimed, “We’re having a baby!”

  A happy roar exploded from the guests. Mrs. Hill shrieked and folded Alessia in an embrace. Mr. Hill was pumping his son’s hand and slapping his shoulder like he’d landed one helluva trout.

  Rain glanced at TJ. He’d forced the corners of his mouth up into something like a smile, but anyone who cared to look would see the deadness in his eyes.

  She knew TJ’s every thought. He’d be thinking that once again his brother had bested him, in even this, the most basic of human functions. He’d be thinking that once again his father’s favor would be on his brother, and that Greg couldn’t be satisfied with a phone call—no, he had to announce this triumph in a big spectacle.

  Because of all this, she should go to his side. Take his hand.

  But Rain felt herself starting to give way. The inner scaffolding that had kept her upright all week began to splinter and crack. She could almost hear it.

  As fast as she could go without seeming to hurry, Rain fled to their guest bathroom and closed the door, fastening the lock and sinking down to the cool tile floor, her back against the wall next to the rack with the color-coordinated guest towels.

  She folded herself into half lotus, and the tears fell before she had time to blink them away.

  “Why can’t I do this?” she whispered. Everyone else could. Her sister, Fawn, without even trying, without a plan, without even wanting to. Now her sister-in-law, Alessia. Teen mothers were becoming reality TV stars because they were photogenic and pregnant too soon. It was an epidemic.

  She supposed it was a natural outgrowth of the wedding mania of a few years ago, when everyone was coupling up and Rain spent half her Saturdays either shopping for gifts or toasting happy couples. So it goes, she thought.

  Except for her.

  A burst of laughter from outsid
e invaded her bathroom sanctuary, and she stood up so fast she got dizzy. TJ needed her—now. She peered into the mirror and used a guest towel to dab her face dry. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but that would only last a few minutes. Everyone would be so happy for Alessia and Greg that no one would look at her for quite some time, anyway.

  Before she opened the door she drew in a deep, fortifying breath.

  The door opened too fast, because someone was pushing it open from the outside, too.

  “Rain!” Alessia exclaimed. She pushed her way in and shut the door with both of them still inside. Rain peered longingly at the door, wishing she could turn into mist and walk through Alessia and get out of there, though her friend was only concerned, as a friend should be.

  Rain’s one daring move all her life was to take a trip to Italy alone with some of the inheritance from Gran, and she’d befriended Alessia over late-night bottles of prosecco in that instant way some girls can click, especially girls outside of their normal lives, like at summer camp. Alessia had made good on her promise to visit Rain in the States, and in short order she had met and married TJ’s brother.

  Those long, prosecco-soaked nights seemed far away now.

  “Are you all right?” Alessia asked, her forehead puckered up as she searched Rain’s blotchy, damp face. Her near-perfect English retained a musical trill of an accent. “What’s happened?”

  “I’m just having a bad day,” Rain forced herself to say.

  “What’s wrong? Please tell me, maybe I can help.”

  Rain sighed and tried to imagine seizing her composure with both hands, though she knew how silly that was. One could not frantically, desperately, achieve a calm state of mind.

  “I am not feeling well, and I really don’t want to talk about it. But thank you. And congratulations. I’m sure you’ll have a beautiful baby.”

  Her voice cracked over that last word, and Alessia finally stood aside.