The Center of Everything

by Laura Moriarty

  “Who?” she says again, sitting up on her knees. “Tell me.” I can already see by her face that she will be hurt if I don’t tell her, maybe even mad.

  “Travis Rowley. He lives in Unit B.” I point out my window at his. There. I’ve done it.

  “Does he go to our school?”

  I shake my head. “He’s in ninth grade. And he gets rides from a friend, so he’s not on the bus. I don’t know if you’ve seen him.”

  “Look at you turn red.” She narrows her eyes. “What does he look like?”

  Beautiful, I want to tell her. The most beautiful boy in the world. But I know if I say this I will sound dumb. “He’s got brown curly hair and green eyes. He’s a little taller than I am.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen him. Do you know him, or is it just a crush?”

  Deena has a lot of words like this, like “crush.” She gets them, I think, from reading Tiger Beat. “We’re friends.” I say. “We’ve been friends since we were little.”

  She leans her head off the edge of my bed. “But you’ve never made out or anything?”

  “No,” I say, embarrassed. I understand now that I have given her the wrong impression. If Travis could hear me talking right now, he might get mad. He would say, What are you talking about, Evelyn? Why are you saying things that aren’t true?

  “We’re just friends,” I say. “I don’t even know if he likes me like that. He probably doesn’t.”

  “I bet he does,” she says, smiling like she knows, even though there is no way she could.

  “Actually, I don’t even know if I like him like that. I mean I just really like him as a friend.”

  This is a lie. I feel stupid, now that I have said “Travis Rowley” out loud. It’s one thing to wish for something in your head, but it is another to tell someone else. If you tell someone else what will happen as if you know for certain and then it doesn’t end up happening, it’s worse. Because not only do you have to worry about being disappointed, but about looking stupid too.

  “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  I can’t do my homework until she leaves, so we listen to records, and she paints my toenails bright red, which is okay because it’s almost winter, and no one will see.

  eleven

  IF I HAD GOTTEN ARRESTED with someone for setting a picnic table on fire, I don’t think my mother would let them still come and pick me up for school. But I guess Mrs. Rowley doesn’t care. She’s got a job now, working the desk of a motel in town. I see her walking to it in the evenings, coming home in the morning. She puts the flat of her hand over her eyes like a visor, and looks right into the rising sun.

  Ed Schwebbe comes out in his van every morning now to pick up Travis for school, and sometimes he comes at night too, just after Mrs. Rowley leaves for work. I don’t know where they go. If he sees me in my window, he waves quickly, and that’s it. It’s okay, though. I can wait. Next year, we will be in the same school again, and then maybe.

  But one night, finally, I see him. Deena and I are in a booth at McDonald’s, studying for a history test, and in he walks with Ed Schwebbe. They are laughing about something, wiping snow off their jackets. He sees me and waves with a red mitten.

  Deena looks up. “What?”

  “Don’t turn around.”

  She turns around. “What?”

  I shake the sleeve of her sweater, but she is already laughing, her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she says.

  “That’s Travis.”

  She turns around again. “The tall one or the short one?”

  “The short one. Don’t stare.” Travis is not short, but he looks that way standing next to Ed Schwebbe. It is the first time I have ever seen Ed standing up and not sitting in the blue-and-white van, and I can see now that if anyone could jump over a picnic table on fire, it would be him. He is thin as Deena, but so tall that he has to duck when he comes through the doorway of the McDonald’s, and a woman walking out the door looks up and says, “My, my, how’s the weather up there?” He smiles and rolls his eyes, and you can tell he has heard this before.

  They go up to the counter to order, and I watch them, holding my book up so I can look back down if they turn around. “Don’t act weird when they come over, okay?”

  She nods and looks down, fidgeting with something on her face, and when she looks up again, she has a plastic straw sticking out of each nostril. “What do you mean?”

  This is how she looks when Travis and Ed walk up, holding their trays. Travis opens his mouth to say hello, but when he sees Deena with the straws in her nose, he and Ed start laughing again. She pulls the straws out of her nose and puts her hands over her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll just go ahead and die now. Don’t worry.”

  “No no, it’s cute,” Travis says. He nods at me. “Hey, Evelyn, this is Ed. Can we sit?” I nod and scoot over. Already I am having trouble speaking, trying to think of what to say.

  “We went to a movie,” Travis says. “Godzilla 1985.”

  “It was awesome,” Ed says, very slowly, like he is a radio running low on batteries. I could say six words in the time it takes him to say one. “It was so fucking cool.”

  “I thought it was kind of dumb,” Travis says. “They did the dubbing wrong, so the Japanese people’s mouths kept moving when the words stopped.” He does an imitation of this for us, saying, “Look out!” with a Japanese accent, forming more words in silence. Deena laughs when he does this. His eyes move quickly across her face.

  “This is Deena,” I say, pointing at her. “She lives in Unit A. How can they make a remake of Godzilla? Didn’t they kill him at the end of the first movie?”

  “They nuked him back to life,” Ed says, and again, it’s very slow. “He’s just asleep on this island when they do this test bomb, and that wakes him back up. He’s all radioactive and shit. It’s cool.”

  Travis makes a face, looking at Deena. “Just so you know, Ed liked Rambo.”

  Ed smiles, and I can see one gold filling, right in front. “A lot of people liked Rambo, Rowley. That movie was awesome too.” He makes his hands into fists, tapping them lightly on the table. “They need to send that dude down to Nicaragua and let him kick some serious ass.”

  Travis rolls his eyes, unwrapping his hamburger. He offers us his french fries, and I notice, the way you notice that you might be coming down with a sore throat but maybe not, that he keeps looking at Deena. A strand of hair falls in front of her eyes, and she brushes it away.

  “I’ve seen you around, you know? But I didn’t know you were Evelyn’s friend. I didn’t know you lived out here.”

  There’s a lilt in his voice. I haven’t heard this before, this lilt.

  Deena says she has to go to the bathroom. Ed scoots over to let her out, and we all three watch her walk away, just her fingers sticking out of the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

  Travis leans over, his hand on my arm. “Oh my God, Evelyn, she’s so cute.” He places his other hand over his heart, as if he is getting ready to have a heart attack, or maybe say the Pledge of Allegiance. “What’s her name again?”

  It takes me a moment to hear what he has said, to understand that this is his hand on my arm, but these are the words coming out of his mouth. Inside my head, I am realizing, for the first time, that I am a fool. Trish is standing on the other side of the dining room, mopping, her alarmed-looking eyes staring at the floor.

  “Deena,” I say, so softly that he can’t hear me. “Deena,” I have to say again, loud enough.

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  No no no. No no no. “No,” I say, still looking across the room, at Trish pushing the mop back and forth. She looks up, catching my eye. “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm.” He straightens up, bobbing his eyebrows up and down at Ed. His ears bob also. “This is good to know.”

  Ed smiles, finishing his hamburger. I am distracted only by how quickly he is able to eat. I watch him consume a second ha
mburger in four bites, and I decide this, Ed eating too quickly, is somehow another thing to be miserable about. It is somehow connected.

  Deena slides back into the booth, glancing at me and then down at her history book. I know she must understand what’s happening. She probably knew even before I did. Men have been looking at her like this forever, and she would know the look Travis was giving her, recognize it. But she is still staring down at her book, as if all of a sudden she cares about the history test tomorrow, which I know she doesn’t. She is actually pulling her hair in front of her face, still looking down at the history book, her eyes moving too quickly to take in any of the words.

  Ed empties almost an entire carton of french fries into his mouth, his head tilted back so it rests on top of his seat. When he brings his head back up again, he starts to cough.

  Travis pushes a Coke over to him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Ed says, taking deep breaths. “Dude, I thought you were going to have to do the Heimlich again.”

  “Again?” I ask brightly, still trying, still hoping. There is a chance, if I am friendly and Deena is not. There is still a chance. “You did the Heimlich on somebody?”

  Travis smiles. “Against my will.”

  “Oh, dude, it was so cool,” Ed says, excited now, speaking a little more quickly. “When we were in the group home, there was this guy, Officer Pickervance. Oh man, he was such an asshole. Peckervance. He was all like”—Ed straightens his posture, and makes his face look stern—“‘I’m going to teach you boys a lesson.’ So one day we’re all sitting around eating hot dogs, and Peckervance starts to choke.” Ed puts his hands around his own throat, pretending to choke. “He was all turning blue and shit. And dude, Travis did the Heimlich fucking maneuver on him. Saved his asshole life.”

  Travis shrugs and pretends to be embarrassed, but I can see, my stomach a rock inside of me, that he’s happy Ed told this story in front of beautiful Deena, who has finally looked up from her history book, her half-moon eyebrows raised in surprise. Ed keeps eating and talking, telling us how Travis finally pushed so hard on the officer’s abdomen that the piece of hot dog had gone flying across the room, hitting another delinquent right in the eye.

  “The guy was like ‘Ow! My eye!’” Ed holds his hand over his eye.

  Deena laughs at this, one little snort, in and out.

  Travis’s eyes move quickly around her face. “What a great laugh you’ve got.”

  She stops quickly, biting her lip, and looks back down. “Well, Evelyn makes me laugh all the time. She’s so funny.”

  It’s pathetic, this attempt. His eyes are still focused on her face, sparkling now, love struck. She’s doing her best to help me, trying to be a good friend, but there’s no point now. It’s like gravity, pulling him toward her, the laws of nature. There’s no one to be mad at, even. It’s just the way it is.

  “Evelyn is funny,” Travis agrees.

  I turn and look out the window, but I can still see all four of us in its glossy, dark reflection. I listen to Deena and Travis talk about how funny I am. This is all I can do. They talk about nothing, about the difference between Nebraska and Kansas, the difference between eighth grade and ninth. They are looking only at each other. Love at first sight. I imagine a cartoon lightning bolt between them, tapping into both of their brains, making their eyes light up, creating a force field no one else can enter. Everyone else in the restaurant, even me and Ed, could blow up and die, and they wouldn’t even notice.

  Ed scrapes the cheese off the wrappers of the Big Macs, licks his fingers, and then sucks on the straw of his empty Coke until the cup implodes. After this, he leans back in the booth, eyes closed. “Oh man, I feel so much better,” he says, picking up his car keys. “That was awesome. Okay, let’s go.”

  Travis looks at the car keys in Ed’s hand, then back at Deena. “Why don’t you guys come?” He turns to me, looking at me for the first time since Deena came back from the bathroom. “We’re just going to drive around for a while. Come on, Evelyn.” He pinches my cheek lightly. “Have some fun.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” I say.

  He pinches my elbow lightly, lowering his voice. “You okay?” He gives me a pleading look, and I can see he’s asking me to help him out here, to be a friend. Clearly, he did not know about the love affair between us. And at this point, this is the only thing I have left. The goal now, I decide, is to maintain dignity.

  I smile. “I’m fine. I just need to study. We have a test tomorrow.”

  “Well then, come on.” He reaches around my back and closes my history book. “You need to have a little fun. You’ve sat there reading all night. I’m sure you’re ready for your test or whatever.”

  “Evelyn is so smart,” Deena says, nodding quickly. “I’m serious. If she didn’t help me with my homework, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “She is smart,” Travis agrees. They look at each other again and smile. I look out the window, at the snow coming down. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go drive around in Ed’s van. I want to go lie down on the highway and let a truck run over me.

  “Evelyn, come with me to call my grandmother,” Deena says. She is trying to wink, but she isn’t very good at it, and it just looks painful, like there’s something in her eye. “Let’s see if we can go.”

  I follow her outside. We stand by the pay phone, shivering in the cold. It is January, but she is wearing a miniskirt with pink legwarmers pulled up only to her knees because of the movie Flashdance, which neither of us has actually seen. I tried making a pair for myself, cutting the top off a pair of tights—perfectly good tights, my mother complained. But they still didn’t look like legwarmers; they sagged down around my ankles, and when I was in math class the next day, old Mr. Delph, so blind that he couldn’t tell when Candy Vistoli’s big sister showed up to take her tests for her, asked me in front of everyone if I had sprained both my ankles, and did I know my bandages were coming unwrapped.

  “Are you mad, Evelyn?” She is leaning down, trying to see my face in the floodlight over our heads. And even under its yellow-orange glow, she is beautiful. Of course. If I were Travis, I would choose her too.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  She leans in closer. “But…”

  I wave her off. “It’s not that big a deal. Really. I mean, it’s not like we were dating or anything. It was just in my head.” I shrug. “Really, it’s okay. Just don’t tell him, okay? I feel stupid.”

  “I won’t,” she says. “I promise.”

  I start to walk back inside. She stops me, her hand on my arm. “You’re sure this is okay, Evelyn? If it isn’t, just tell me. And we’ll go home right now. I won’t ever talk to him again.” She rubs her lips together, watching me closely, even though right now I can’t look back. “You’re my best friend, Evelyn. You’re my only friend.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  She is trying to be nice. But when it comes to people liking each other, being nice has nothing to do with it. Despite her good intentions, this is the way things work. This is just science here, biology at work. Even if I say no, eventually it will make no difference.

  We do not just drive around for a while in Ed Schwebbe’s blue-and-white van. He drives straight to a snow-covered field less than a mile away, parking behind a burned-out barn, and takes out a bag of marijuana from a case for sunglasses clipped onto the visor. I know it is marijuana because a police officer came to health class only a month before and showed us some. “Don’t do this,” he had told us, waving the bag around. “Don’t ever do this.” He played a video for us of Nancy Reagan in a red dress telling us to “Just Say No.”

  “You know that’s illegal?” I ask. Ed Schwebbe looks at me, and then back at Travis. Travis and Deena are sitting together on a small couch in the back of the van, his hand resting on her knee.

  Travis leans up and touches me on the arm. “Evelyn, you need to relax a little bit, okay? We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. It
’s fine. And if you don’t want to have any, you don’t have to.”

  I cross my arms. The police officer warned us about this exact kind of scene, someone offering us drugs. Marijuana is the beginning of the end, he told us, a slippery slope. You start smoking it and the next thing you know you’ll be doing cocaine and maybe trying to kill your own parents because you’ll be addicted and willing to do whatever you can to get your next fix. He’d seen it a thousand times. We are supposed to just say no, but Deena, her hand resting on Travis’s arm, hasn’t said anything yet.

  “She gonna be okay?” Ed asks, looking at Travis, like I speak a funny language that only Travis can translate.

  “She’s fine, Ed. Really.”

  Ed taps out a bit of the marijuana from the bag onto a small white paper, rolling it into a tight cylinder. He hands it back to Travis and makes another one for himself, lighting the tip with a match as he inhales from the other end, his eyes closed. I can see the fiery tip shriveling up, disappearing.

  “You know that’s really bad for you?” I ask. “It kills your brain cells, and if you get caught, you’ll never get financial aid in college.”

  Ed laughs at this, three short exhales, smoke coming out of his nostrils. “Okay,” he says. “What’s your name again?”

  “Evelyn.” I don’t see what’s so funny.

  He nods and smiles. “Okay, Evelyn, you need to relax.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Just say it. Just try. Come on. It’s alllllllll goooooooood.”

  I hear Deena coughing in the back, and when I turn around, I see Travis holding her shoulder, offering her a sip from his Coke. “It’s okay,” he’s saying. “It’ll get better.”

  The police officer and Nancy Reagan told us that if someone ever offered us drugs, we should say no and leave immediately. Call your parents if you have to, Nancy Reagan said. Call anyone. But there is no way to call my mother or Nancy Reagan out here in Ed Schwebbe’s van, and it’s too far to walk in the cold. There’s nothing I can do but sit, and wait, and maybe study. I open my backpack, get my history book out.