Bright Before Sunrise

by Schmidt, Tiffany

  There are so many answers to that last question: because I didn’t want to spend a night in a rented tux surrounded by snobs who probably own theirs, because then you’d see what a loser I am, because I already emptied my bank account to rent a limo for Hamilton’s prom after you hinted—“I hear all Cross Pointe girls get them; what do you think it’s like to ride in one?”

  Carly can’t seem to grasp that just because Paul has a bottomless checkbook doesn’t mean I do. I have no clue how I’m going to pay for the post-graduation dinner she wants at La Fin, Cross Pointe’s most expensive restaurant.

  But I won’t tell her any of these things. I can’t. Carly’s always asking for funny anecdotes about Cross Pointe excess so she can mock their superficiality. The last thing I want is for her to make a poor-little-rich-boy joke about me—or turn my new life into a punchline.

  There’s nothing I can say, so I don’t say anything. A pattern that’s becoming too common with us lately. When she gets sick of waiting, she snaps, “What are you hiding?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She looks away and says quietly, “You think I don’t know what’s going on, but I do.”

  I touch her face, trace the line of her cheekbone, and slide my hand to the back of her neck. “Carly, nothing is going on. Nothing’s going on in Cross Pointe tonight, and nothing’s going on with me.”

  She grasps my hand and places it back in my lap.

  I know I’m only going to antagonize her—bring out the famous Carly temper—but I can’t help it. “I don’t believe I drove all the way over here so you can play prove-you-love-me games.”

  “Games?” Her eyes snap wide open. “I’m not the one playing games! Screw you, Jonah.”

  Except, apparently, I’m not getting screwed tonight. I turn away and glare out the window.

  Carly speaks first: “I think we should break up.”

  “What?” I sit up so fast I hit my head on the roof of the car. “Why? Because I won’t take you to Cross Pointe? All right, let’s go. When we get there we can buy eight-dollar coffees at Bean Haven or try and have a civil conversation with Paul and my mom—it’ll probably be a fascinating discussion about something important like if the landscaper is cutting the lawn too short or their endless debate about whether Paul has enough support to run for a spot on the country club’s board of directors. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

  She shakes her hair out of her face and meets my eyes. A lock sticks in her gloppy lip gloss and she frowns as she extracts it and smoothes it behind her ears. She’s wearing large gold hoops, not the ruby studs I saved up to buy for her birthday.

  “You’ve changed.”

  “I haven’t,” I lie.

  “Yes! Yes, you have. You’ve become another Cross Pointe snob and you treat me like I’m not good enough for you anymore.”

  “That’s crap.”

  “Oh, really? Convince me you’re my old Jonah. Tell me one thing that happened at school today—to you, not one of your classmates. Tell me one fact about your life.”

  I look away. What good will come from me whining about how I eat lunch in the library because there’s no place for me at the cafeteria’s round tables? How it’s almost physically painful listening to the baseball players who sit near me in bio talk about organizing a father-son summer league? How my math teacher still calls me “Noah”? Or what about how the Empress of Cross Pointe graced me with a lesson on operating my locker?

  “Please?” she says, leaning forward and putting a hand on my knee. “Just talk to me, Jonah. Please.”

  I flip my hands palm up in a half shrug. I can either tell her I’m a loser, or I can lose her. “I figured out how to lock my locker.”

  “You mean unlock,” she says with an eye roll, pulling away from me.

  “No, lock.” I shift in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position where I can face her without the steering wheel impaled in my ribs. “See, in Cross Pointe the lockers—”

  She waves a hand, cutting me off. “Don’t talk down to me.”

  “What?”

  “In Cross Pointe,” she mimics with an affected accent. “Please, Jonah, explain to me how lockers work, because since I’m not from Cross Pointe, I’m clearly not smart enough to know.”

  “Forget it.” I’m shaking my head and we’re both sighing. Frustrated exhales that are the only sound in the car.

  “So that’s it? That’s all you can come up with about your day?” It’s an accusation, but I’m not sure what I’m being accused of. And when I try to think of something to share, something that would make today stand out from every other day of invisibility and over-polite refusals to acknowledge my existence, I can’t.

  “Let’s talk about something else. It was just a normal day—nothing happened.”

  “Just because I don’t go to your fancy high school and I’m not headed to an Ivy League college doesn’t make me stupid—” I try to interrupt, but she’s on a roll. “And just because I can’t make out with you in the back of the Jag I got for my sixteenth birthday and seduce you with the perfect boobs I got for my seventeenth—or is it the other way around, Jonah? How do Cross Pointe snobs order their lives: cars or plastic surgery first?”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. “Plastic surgery. Then the cars.”

  “Oh, so this is a joke to you? I guess you’d know. So tell me: Exactly how many sets of Cross Pointe boobs have you seen?”

  The nail of her pointer finger is inches from my face. I push it away and snap back, “You think I’m cheating? Are you crazy?”

  “We both know you are. At least be man enough to admit it.”

  “That’s such crap. I can’t believe—”

  “Don’t even try to deny it. I found this in your backseat last week.” She pulls the bright blue paper back out of her pocket and holds it like a murder weapon.

  I have no clue what’s on it or why it’s made Carly psycho. I take it from her hand and hope it contains the logo from Punk’d. The creases are deep and smooth, like it’s been unfolded repeatedly.

  She crosses her arms and watches my face expectantly. I look down—it’s a single sheet of paper. A flyer from Cross Pointe, like the hundreds of others that are hung on the school walls at neat intervals.

  “So?” I’m baffled. So confused that I’m not even angry anymore.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Did you want to help put together care packages for last year’s seniors? I don’t know what the problem is. Yes, it’s a stupid project—but who cares if some idiots wanted to mail snacks and instant coffee to a group of spoiled college freshmen?”

  Carly’s face is red, her lips pressed together so tight they disappear. “Who. Is. She?” She snatches the flyer from my hands and it tears in the corner. I’m left holding a jagged scrap of blue paper. Carly points to some handwriting at the bottom of the page: ten digits and a name.

  Brighton.

  10

  Brighton

  6:07 P.M.

  18 HOURS, 53 MINUTES LEFT

  The Sheas gave me a tour and left three different ways to contact them. Sophia’s already asleep and they promised to be home by ten, so the only real directions for the next four hours are: “Check the baby monitor and call if you need us. No, actually, if she wakes up at all, call us.”

  It seems straightforward, and she hasn’t woken so I haven’t called. But this hasn’t stopped Mr. Shea from checking in three times already.

  I reassure him, for the third time, “Everything is quiet here.”

  “And the monitor is definitely working?” he asks.

  “It is.” I hold it up to the phone and turn up the volume so he can hear the steady raindrop sounds of Sophia’s white-noise machine.

  “Okay.” He exhales. “So, you’re all set?”

  “Go enjoy your dinner,” I tell him. “Everything here is fine.”

  “Great. Great, great. Thanks so much, Brighton. We’ll see you in a few hours.”
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  I hang up and pace from the kitchen to the living room, through the dining room and one of those never-really-used rooms with new “antique” furniture and a grandfather clock that bongs about seven minutes early. It almost looks like every other house in Cross Pointe, but there’s a hint of not-quite-there-yet—it’s apparent in the price tag still dangling from a throw pillow, and the dining room chairs, which look like they’ve never been sat on. Everything is slightly too matchy-matchy and too new. But the Sheas are still new, still trying too hard.

  Not that everyone else in Cross Pointe doesn’t try; we just don’t let our efforts show.

  I circle back to the kitchen. They have one of those floor plans where the rooms all connect with multiple entrances; it all flows around the staircase to the second floor where Sophia sleeps in the only room with an open door. Behind one of the other seven is all the information I’d ever need to know about Jonah.

  The Sheas said I don’t even need to go upstairs—as long as she’s quiet, I should just let her sleep. I click the video button on the monitor—not awake.

  On my second lap of the first floor, I check for photos of Jonah. Picking up frame after frame and trying to replace them in the exact same positions. The house is a baby shrine. There are an absurd number of photos of Sophia in every state of dress and pose—I particularly enjoy the one of her half-buried in a basket of laundry hanging above the washing machine in the mud room—but the only photo I find of Jonah is in the back corner of a bookshelf. It’s of him in a middle-school baseball uniform.

  I fail at my attempts to translate the tanned, dirty-blond boy with a wide, metallic grin to the taller, darker-haired ghost who sulks in Cross Pointe’s halls. I can’t stop the comparisons. What happened to make him stop smiling so wide his eyes wrinkle in the corners? How come his broad shoulders are always creeping up and forward instead of squared and confident like his thirteen-year-old self?

  I carry the picture frame to the kitchen without even realizing it. I lean against the marble countertop and tilt the photo so it’s fully illuminated by the track lighting—he was thin, didn’t quite fill out his red-and-white uniform. But even then you could see hints of the muscles he would develop. I can’t stop studying his grin—it’s confident, carefree. So open and sincere that I’m jealous of the boy he’d been.

  If Jonah had attended middle school with the rest of us, he would’ve been prime crush material. If he’d stop scowling long enough to acknowledge anyone at CP High, he’d still be.

  I flip the frame facedown on the countertop and check the baby monitor again—sleeping. Though I’m still curious, I make myself walk away from the photo and into the living room.

  It isn’t even curiosity, really, just restless energy. I thought tonight would be different. I thought it would be nightmarish, like the night before Dad’s funeral—tidal waves of Evy’s tears. Mom’s grief, which demands and judges and suffocates and needs an audience. And me—helpless and guilty because I couldn’t cry, couldn’t stop their tears, and couldn’t fix anything.

  I spent today preparing for that, and in the end I wasn’t needed. I could be at Jeremy’s party with everyone, making Amelia ridiculously happy by giving him a chance. I could be catching up with Evy. I could be home right now, sleeping. Or watching mindless TV and eating popcorn. So how did I end up in some stranger’s house watching Sophia sleep on the video screen of her baby monitor?

  I didn’t have to agree to babysit. Really, it’s just a plaque—Mr. Donnelly won’t be too disappointed if we wait until next year to order it. I don’t need it as filler for my college apps. Dad would hate that I’m stressing over this. I need to let it go.

  And who cares why Jonah doesn’t want to volunteer?

  Or why there’s no trace of him in this house besides a photo that’s four years old? Not even a hat or a sweatshirt or a backpack on the first floor. Nothing of his written between the playdates and Zumba classes on the calendar on the fridge. No magazines with his name in the rack by the couch.

  I’ve scoured the whole first floor, and there’s nothing here to teach me anything more about him. But it’s not like I’m going to go snoop in his room. That would be ridiculous.

  I turn up the volume on the baby monitor until it’s slightly staticky and I can hear the soft splashes of the rainfall setting on her white-noise machine. Instead of soothing me, the rhythm makes me feel useless. I need a distraction, a purpose, an outlet.

  There are four remotes aligned with military precision on the coffee table. These are framed by a neat stack of parenting magazines and a pink basket of teething rings, bibs, pacifiers, and burp cloths. I pick up the remote on the left and study it. Pick up the next one and compare them. I press the power button on the third one and the stereo blares to life with, “My teddy loves me. He’s got a big red bow—” I jab at the button again and hold my breath. The music dies instantly and the sound isn’t replaced by crying. Returning the remotes to the coffee table, I double-check the baby monitor. Sophia’s still sleeping and I still have nothing to do.

  I cross to the bookshelves. Since I don’t want to read What to Expect When You’re Expecting or during the First Year or any portion of a child’s life, I hope there’s something tolerable and diaper free in their library.

  On the top shelf is a book I recognize too well. It’s stuck between a battered copy of the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy and a hardcover bio-thriller. I pull it out and sit on the floor with it cradled in my lap, tracing the cover lettering like I did when I was seven and Mom would bring me to visit Dad at his office. This cover is different—a newer edition. What new criteria have they added to Teens in Flux: Adolescent Psychology by Ethan Waterford, Ph.D. And who is Roberta Schell?

  Why does the cover advertise that she’s written a brand-new introduction to my father’s book? I flip the pages—turning past highlighted passages and pencil notes in the margins—wondering how a book like this would assess me. What would Dad think about how I’ve turned out?

  If Dad were still here, would he be able to explain how to make Teflon work in my favor? How to let that barrier down occasionally and who to let in?

  If Dad were still here, everything would be different. Tomorrow we’d be making pancakes and going golfing. Maybe I’d even finally figure out how to play. I used to tag along just so I could ride in the cart, hand him clubs, and have four hours of his attention. If Dad were still here, tomorrow I wouldn’t be putting on black and dueling with my grief.

  I don’t want to go to the memorial tomorrow. I’m not ready to say good-bye again. I want to shut the door on those feelings—the ones that might consume me if I ever allow myself to acknowledge them—and run away. I thumb through the index of Dad’s book, knowing there’s probably a section on “repressed emotions”—and that’s the closest I’ll be able to get to him helping me deal with his death.

  I shut the book’s cover. I should have told Mom “no” when she asked for my help with planning. Instead, I chose caterers and florists; picked out hors d’oeuvres and flowers. Called all our relatives to invite them, which meant listening to all of their reminiscing and tears. And I made sure we were stocked up on tissues, because every time I had to ask Mom a question, she would cry and I’d feel guilty for not being able to answer it myself.

  There’s a quiet sneeze over the monitor—it isn’t followed by any other sounds, but I click on the video. Sophia’s in the same position as the last fifty times I checked.

  I wish I had something to do—anything. Anything but sitting here thinking about Dad … or Jonah.

  Which is just pathetic, because I’m sure I haven’t crossed his mind once since he walked away and left me standing at his locker.

  11

  Jonah

  6:20 P.M.

  TIME TO BEG

  On the drive back to Carly’s house I plead with her to listen to me, but she’s stubborn. She’s always been stubborn. It’s a cute personality quirk when she’s arguing about which movie
we should watch, or which MLB pitcher is best, or with her father about extending her curfew, or with my mother about making me move to Hamilton for the second half of senior year. Tonight it’s not cute—it’s damn infuriating.

  There’s no convincing Carly the flyer is nothing more than a piece of paper—one Brighton had shoved in my hand a few weeks back as part of her never-ending campaign to save my soul through volunteer work, and that I, in turn, had tossed on my backseat.

  No, Carly had found it, googled Brighton, and decided she was the kind of girl I’d go for and the reason behind my so-called change.

  “She’s even got dark hair—I know that’s your type and why you were so weird about me dyeing mine.”

  “I wasn’t weird about it; I was surprised.” I reach out to touch her hair, but she leans away. “And Brighton’s definitely not my type. There’s not a girl in Cross Pointe who is less my type.”

  “How many girls did you have to go through before you figured that out?”

  “I’m not a cheater,” I say through gritted teeth. After two years together, how could she even think that?

  “Funny, that’s just what Daniel Diggins said.”

  “That’s really helpful, Carly. Bringing up your ex is exactly what we need right now. Too bad you didn’t warn me I’d be driving around all your baggage tonight. I would’ve asked Mom to borrow the SUV.” She hates when I get sarcastic, but I can’t stop myself. I’m almost shaking with furious helplessness. “You dated Digg three years ago. You’re really going to blame me for his screw ups?”

  “Jonah …” Her eyes are on her hands as they pick at the crumbs collected in the seams of the seat. “I don’t want to end it like this. Let’s stop fighting. It’s just … over.”

  I know how to argue back when she’s pissed off; I don’t know how to handle her sadness. I’ve never been able to handle her sadness. Not the time she accidentally ran over a squirrel and cried for hours. Not when she got a rejection letter from her top choice for college. Not when I had to look her in the eyes and tell her I was leaving Hamilton High. And none of the times lately when she’s seemed depressed and distant—like she’s still a zip code away even when I’m sitting right next to her.