by Deb Caletti
“This is great,” she says. They’ve carried their food to one of the outside tables by the water, and now napkins are piling up, because the burritos are good and messy. She’s talking with her mouth full, and this makes him so happy he can barely stand it.
“Isn’t it?”
“Fantastic.” At least, he thinks that’s what she says. He can’t really tell. She’s downing that thing like she hasn’t eaten in days, but so is he.
“I could eat five of these right now.”
“Mmphh,” she says.
They sit near the path off Boat Street, which curves along the narrow channel of water in front of the University of Washington. A couple passes, pushing a stroller, and two girls ride by on bikes, their wheels going zzzz. It’s the perfect time to tell her that he knows all about her and J.T., so he’d better snag it. Perfect times are always numbered.
“You go to school?”
“Community college. Bellevue.”
“You trek over to the Eastside, huh? That’s a bitch.” He’s trying to work it into the conversation, but it’s not easy. So, I saw you stalking some guy, and hey, it’s fine. I get it.
“It’s not too bad.”
Just be natural! Acting natural is hardly ever natural, that’s for sure. Come on! “Did you go to Blanchet?”
“Blanchet?”
“I mean, I’m guessing. I never saw you around Roosevelt.”
“Oh! A school! I thought maybe, I don’t know. A store or something. I’m not from around here.”
“You’re not?”
“Eastern Washington. I’ve only been here a couple months. I’m staying with my aunt and uncle while I do this real estate licensing course. I’m going home in September.”
He doesn’t even hear this at first, the true and most important point, the declaration of The End. He can only think what a fast mover that asshole J.T. Jones is. Make a girl fall in love with you practically right when she sets foot in the city and then ditch her so her heart breaks before she barely gets a chance to fucking unpack . . .
“I think you might know someone I know,” Billy says.
Madison knocks over her drink. He always gets too many napkins, so no problem. He pats and soaks, and she’s half-standing and red-faced. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“I should have said something before.”
“You couldn’t have known I knew the guy.”
“The guy?”
“J.T.! What a douche.”
Her eyebrows bow down like two caterpillars being introduced. “Such a douche,” she says. She looks shocked. Shit! He doesn’t want to make her feel bad. Everyone falls in love with an asshole at least once in their life. Look at his mom. More than once. People who think they’re above that—they’re idiots, if you ask him. He hears people, girls, say it all the time. I would never . . . Oh, yeah? Congratulate yourself all you want, but you don’t know what you might do when you look at someone and they look at you and they’re everything bad you’ve ever secretly wanted. Humans are human, even the ones who think they’re so smart.
“I saw you a couple times. Outside his house. I used to live near there.”
“Oh my God! I feel awful. . . . I have to explain.”
“Don’t feel bad, feel glad!” He sounds like an advertising jingle. “He’s gone! You deserve better. I can tell that already.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You do. J.T.’s an asshole.”
“I’m not the greatest myself.”
She looks right at him with those eyes. They’re a deep pool, they’re a long drink of water, they’re—
“Billy . . .”
She has that look, like she’s going to spill a bunch of stuff, confessions about J.T. and her, maybe say stuff he doesn’t want to hear, how she’s not ready yet for anything new. Whatever. He doesn’t give a shit about J.T. Jones. Right then, sitting with her there as a seagull hops around by their feet and a squirrel runs up a tree like a Disney squirrel in a Disney movie, he’s full and floating as a balloon, and there will be no popping. “Hey!” he says fast, to change the topic. “You don’t even know my last name. Or my phone number. Give me your phone.”
She fishes around in her purse, hands it over. He types. “Give me yours,” she says. He does. They hand them back. It’s like a ritual has been completed. Like they’ve exchanged rings or something.
“Billy Youngwolf Floyd,” she reads. His own name sounds like music when she says it. “That’s beautiful.”
“Really?” His mom always said Gran wanted to change it, but she wouldn’t let her. Mom said you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are and where you came from, but talk was one thing. You could do your best to teach your kid the right stuff without being able to do the right stuff.
“Really.”
“Mads,” he reads. “Not Madison?”
“That’s what my parents call me when they’re upset.”
“Got it.”
“So. Billy Youngwolf Floyd.” She leans forward. You should see how cute she is when she does that. “Tell me about the map.”
“The map?” Of course he knows what she means. She lifts her eyebrows to say she’s onto him. Heh heh—he loves it. “It was my mom’s.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s . . . gone. Not here. You know, she passed.” It sounds almost like she’s past, but those two words don’t go together at all. Passed is never past.
“Oh.” Mads’s voice is soft, and she doesn’t ask a bunch of questions or go on and on like she feels sorry for him. It’s nice. Really nice. If he wants to talk, he’ll talk, and she seems to get that. People, they think they have to pull stuff out of you. He likes his stuff where it is.
“I want to go there, though.”
“The museum? Doesn’t it sound amazing?”
“I guess, yeah. Arms and Armor sounds cool.”
“Sleeping in that awesome bed!”
They crumple up their garbage. They just sit there. Awkward busts in, makes itself comfortable. He doesn’t want the date to be over, and maybe she doesn’t, either, because she finally says, “Do you want to walk?” He runs their trays and cups back inside, and then they take the trail along the wharf at Boat Street. He should maybe grab her hand or something, but he doesn’t. First off, they just met. Second, it’s probably good to be a little more distant, harder to get, like J.T. Girls love that.
And he doesn’t want to be one of those assholes who only talk about themselves, either, so he asks her about school, and where she’s living now. She tells him about her real estate course, and community college. She sounds pretty excited about it. He tells her about Heartland, and staying with Gran at the houseboat.
They walk, and the evening light is all golden. It’s that broken hearted yellow of a summer day ending, and it’s so tender or something that he has to be careful not to cry. It makes him think about everything his mom will never see. The water has little white diamonds dancing on it. Right there, the way the water sparkles—she’s missing out on that.
His heart is full. Madison Murray walks beside him, and right then he practically has everything. By the time they get back to the parking lot at Agua Verde, the sun is almost down. Darkness edges in fast. It uses its weight and its elbows, the sneaky bastard. He wants the night to go on and on and on. He wishes he had his own place. In spite of how loaded those words are (he can barely think of those words without wanting to throw up), he wants that.
“I better go.”
Ah, she fells him. It’s a bow, a spear, a found object like a rock or a log—whatever it is, he’s struck. It can’t be over—it’s such a great night. He wants to pick her up and carry her around the parking lot.
“Billy, um . . . ,” she says. “I’m not going to be here very long. Only until Septem—”
Fuck that! And fuck distant and hard to get! He kisses her. He leans right in and kisses her hard, and, holy shit, her mouth is all sw
eet yellow light and fate and nearly missed chances. Her breath is warm, and they are shoved up against the car, and their hands are on each other, like that kiss has been waiting somewhere for years. She tries to say his name again, but his own mouth is over hers, and the soft whisper of Billy disappears. Maybe he does like complications, same as Jamie. Bring ’em on. Bring on every last beautiful one.
Chapter Eleven
What a mess, what a mess, what a mess! Please save me from myself, Mads thinks as she drives away. She sets her fingers on her mouth, and sure enough, it’s different. Those lips are not her lips. They’re lips that want things, bad. They’re the lips of a girl who might stand at a gas station in a faraway place, with only her phone and a credit card.
She has never in her life, not once, wanted anyone like that.
This is awful. What is she doing, and what might she do next? She’s heading for certain doom, that’s what she’s doing. She can’t tell the boy who just kissed her like that (oh my God, that kiss—stars imploding, planets aligning) that she’s the person who pulled his dead mother out of the water. Not now she can’t. She can’t tell Thomas or Claire about this, either—they’ll have her hauled away to some place with locked rooms and rolling lawns. There is so much they don’t know already—how deep her sadness is, the extent of it, how she thinks about oncoming cars and sudden swerves and bridges, how her anger is rising like a seaweedy creature. What’s just happened, though—that was not another private thought tossing and turning like an insomniac. That kiss was a choice. An act. It feels powerful and amazing (and horrible and shameful) to act, but never mind that now. We’re in the middle of a crisis, here.
This situation will only have one end, and she’s well aware of that. Mads can never be with Billy Youngwolf Floyd. She reminds herself (as if she needs reminding) of all the reasons why. One: the dead body, his mother—this urgent fact she now can’t reveal. Two: Murray & Murray Realtors, waiting for her in September. This is not some romantic comedy where he’ll chase her down a traffic-filled street so she’ll change her mind. She is going home. She has to. Her life has a fixed course, and there’s no way she can envision him following her to Spokane to sell real estate.
Three: Billy Youngwolf Floyd himself. Ignore that kiss for a minute. Even if they met the way normal people do, what do they have in common? Nothing, that’s what. All they have is that weird bond to Anna Youngwolf Floyd, and to a book, of all things, which brings Mads full circle to number one again.
The window of Thomas’s truck is down, and Mads’s hair is blowing all around, and she’s distracted. So distracted that it takes her a moment to realize she’s going south again on the freeway instead of north. Really, she should wear her glasses when she drives. In a panic, she takes the next exit. She told Thomas and Claire she was going to the library to study, and now, now she’s going to be so late that the lie will crumple. The library closed hours ago. She’s giving herself a lecture as the turn signal click-clicks: If you’re going to become a liar, you’re going to have to get better at it. This will never happen. Some people are just terrible with lies (like some people are terrible with plants, or TV remote controls, or love), and Mads is one of them.
The self-lecture, her hair, the turn signal, that kiss—it’s several more pieces than her burdened mind can handle. Sometimes, we just keep doing the same thing again and again until we stop. Yep, she’s once more down in the land of airplanes and machine parts and big, empty lots. Out there, there’s nothing a person can do but change direction.
• • •
Otto Hermann is bent over his PowerPoint. He’s having technical difficulties. He mutters something in German as a fat lock of white hair drops over his forehead. It’s been a whole week since Mads got home, flopped on her bed, and pleaded for one pass, please, just one, after her date with Billy. If no one found out about this, she vowed, she’d get back on the right path, go to class, refocus her energy. No more Anna Youngwolf Floyd and her sad and complicated life. No more Billy and tragedy and museums and kisses that blindfold you and spin you around. No more lurid (but great, really great) peeks behind the scenes.
And, yeah, everything’s been quiet; Claire practically whistles with her usual good cheer. It appears that Mads has gotten away with her crime. So it’s her turn to fulfill her side of the bargain.
But there’s a problem. She hasn’t heard from Billy Youngwolf Floyd. And now all those vows about class and the right path, et cetera, et cetera, are totally gone, because she’s caught up in the cruel, tormenting mystery of why hasn’t he called. Not seeing him again was a great idea, until it was no longer her choice. Goddamn him! It’s driving her crazy. The blank stretch of What happened? fills with the usual nonsense. Maybe he’s sick, or has been in an accident. Maybe she said something stupid and unforgivable that night without realizing it. Maybe that kiss meant nothing to him. He probably does stuff like that all the time, and she’s just another girl in a line of girls, serving her purpose by feeding his ego. Yeah, those guys just spend enough energy to prove a girl likes them, and then they vanish, because they got what they needed. Of course he’d treat her like an object! Who really saw her? Who didn’t just use her for their own purposes? Not to get all waaa-waaa about it—the opposite! Get it together, she tells herself. Stop letting shit like that happen. Stop letting users affect you. You don’t even want him! It’s a relief he’s gone!
She’s not going to call him, either. She won’t be that girl.
Mads hates distant and hard-to-get types. Game players. She’s known a few, and her friend Sarah liked that jerk, Jake, for a while. She rubs her thumb over her lips. They still feel changed, but they’ll go back to the way they were soon enough. Guys like that never have true and long-lasting importance anyway.
Mrs. Erickson (Linda!) slides a note across the desk. Poor Linda, trying to go back to the point in her life before everything went wrong, back to her high school days, when passing notes was risky behavior and pot was shocking. His computer’s probably not plugged in, the note says, and Mads nods, rolls her eyes in the direction of the struggling Otto Hermann, who has begun to sweat.
The room has no real smell—maybe bodies and the slight tang from a Snapple bottle in the trash. But any lull in smell or sound or sight seems to fill up with images of that night, and damn it! now the room is overtaken with the musky-something of the cologne Billy had on. God, he smelled good. This kicks off the film, because the cologne was the first thing she noticed when she hurried toward him, sweaty and rushed after Suzanne and Carl had made her late. Mads kept Billy waiting so long that when she arrived, he had his hands in his pockets and he was rocking back and forth on his heels like he desperately had to pee. It was a little awkward-looking, actually.
Then came the great food, and the talking, and then (here it was, probably; the reason he didn’t call) the horrible realization that he’d seen her that day on his street. He’d come to some crazy, awful conclusion about a guy she didn’t even know, and as soon as she got back home, she looked him up—J.T. Jones. Sure enough, he lived two houses down from Anna and Billy. There was his picture in a Blanchet Bugle newsletter; he’d made some winning play in a football game. Mads with a football player? Hilarious. No way. Football players never paid any attention to her! She doesn’t even really understand big guys crashing into each other. Mads is a quiet, book-reading girl who believes being nice will get you places, which it usually doesn’t. J.T. Jones had self-important cheekbones and don’t-give-a-shit eyes. She prefers star eyes and cheekbones like ledges you could fall from.
Stop! she yells to herself. The thing she doesn’t get about the not calling is that Billy was great. He was. Looking at him, you picture a guy who smells of cigarettes and bad ideas, but he was sweet. And the whole thing with the museum was . . . Yeah. Just yeah. How was it that he seemed to understand her as no one else had before? The night was so twilighty and weirdly special that Mads forgot how tragic he was and how sad his life was, and how sad she herself wa
s, because he was just being himself (she thought) and she was just being herself (for once). For those few hours, she felt some twilighty, sparkly-waterish sort of lightness. She felt (ugh, don’t think it) hopeful. And then the kiss blazed through her forest and burned it all down. In a good way. In a holy shit what just happened way.
Well, he didn’t call—no text, no nothing, and she should count herself lucky. She played with fire, and though her inner landscape feels altered, she is still intact. No one found out what she did or who she really is. Call it a near miss. It’s great, actually.
She hates everyone.
Ryan Somebody, a twentysomething guy with religious newscaster hair, bends to help Otto Hermann. “The plug?” he says. “Your laptop battery is dead, Mr. Hermann. You need to plug it in.”
Linda slides her foot over and crashes it into Mads’s. Her eyes gleam. Mads tries to give Linda a smile from 1985, even if Mads’s mood says it’s the end of the world.
• • •
Carl’s home for lunch. He throws the loaf of bread on the counter, bangs the mayonnaise jar down. Suzanne is folding laundry in the family room, pretending that’s what she actually does all day.
The silence is so loud Mads can barely stand it. In the strained hush of the Bellarose house, the What happened? of Billy grows louder. Mads feels pissed and restless. Over the week, her old, overwhelming despair has crept back in, too. The big ogre sits in a corner, casting his shadow, examining his fingernails and humming a tune. Mads has been waking in the night again, and not eating, and she’s so anxious, she can’t even read. When books can’t comfort you, you know it’s bad. Carl and Suzanne aren’t helping anything. Fury plus despair is a bad combo. It makes you do crazy things just so you do something.
Outside, Ivy uses the chaise to pull herself up. She’s so proud of standing. She lets go, and wobbles like a building in an earthquake before plopping down. Mads applauds. Suzanne joins them outside, like they’re a team against Carl.