Love Over Matter

by Maggie Bloom

  I step into the hall en route to return the laptop to Haley, who’s under the misguided impression that she—and she alone—owns the thing, when I hear, “Just a minute there, young lady.”

  Oh, no. Mom’s pulling out the “young lady”? I turn slowly. “Hmm?”

  My mother is at the cusp of the master suite, a gaudy floral-printed tote slung over her shoulder. Even at a distance of twenty feet, the smirk on her lips is blatant.

  She motions for me to join her in the bedroom, which I do—computer and all. She flips the light on and eases the door shut behind us. “Go ahead,” she says, indicating an upholstered chair by the fireplace. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  I perch on the edge of the seat, the laptop balanced across my knees. “How was the botanical garden?”

  She keeps her back to me, unloads the contents of the tote into the closet. “You’re not fooling anyone, Cassandra. Your sister told me all about your little foray into the city.”

  Haley is such a rat. Why would she expose us like this? “Um . . . what?”

  She hangs the empty bag on its hook, marches around the bed and stops in front of me, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’ve got no business leaving the state without my—or your father’s—permission. Anything could have happened to you. Absolutely anything. Don’t you get that?”

  The jig is up, I guess. I might as well throw myself on the mercy of the court. “We didn’t do anything dangerous,” I plead. “And Ian and Rosie were there to chaperone.”

  With an annoyed huff, she rolls her eyes. “Please. I have half a mind to fire Rosie over this. It’s a serious breach of trust. And, frankly, it’s beneath her.”

  “She was only trying to help,” I say. The least I can do is attempt to save Rosie’s job, though I’m not sure how much luck I’ll have. Before Mom’s heart attack, she was soft around the edges, easygoing and carefree. Now it’s as if a grizzly is chomping at her ass, and she (unintentionally, I like to believe) takes the stress out on the rest of us. “You can punish me if you want. It was my idea.”

  She eyes me as if she’s trying to solve a riddle. “I’d rather not,” she admits, taking a seat opposite me on the bed. “You know what I would like, though?”

  I haven’t the slightest clue. “Uh . . . for me to take some extra shifts at the restaurant?”

  She tosses her hair, suppresses a grin. “Not even close.”

  “What then?”

  “You never talk to me anymore.”

  Ouch. “Yes, I do.”

  “Since George passed”—she pauses as if searching her memory—“actually, no, since my heart went kabluey, you’ve changed. Remember all the stuff we used to do together: the garden, rollerblading, garage sales. We had so much fun.”

  “I’m not ten anymore,” I say with a shrug. “I like different stuff now.”

  “How about liking something with me? Or is that too perverse for someone of your age?”

  Is she calling me a pervert? “Sure. Until school starts.”

  She asks, “Well, what did you have in mind?”

  “You pick,” I answer, hoping she’ll settle on something like sewing, since I could use some cute new clothes.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me about this Smullen boy?”

  chapter 12

  I told my mother all there was to tell about Aleks Smullen, which was next to nothing since I don’t really know him yet. Then we joined Haley, Opal, and Dad in the kitchen for microwaved s’mores and a round of hot cocoa. Finally, Dad bothered explaining that, thanks to the late hour and a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, Mrs. Madden couldn’t be bailed out of jail until tomorrow at the earliest. And until then, Opal would be our more-than-welcome houseguest.

  I tried my best to make Opal feel comfortable, even offering her my bed (which, of course, she refused in favor of shacking up with Haley in sleeping bags and pretending to be on a campout). I also tried not to feel sorry for her, even though her mother is a nutso flake, her stepfather, apparently, abandoned her, and her birth father . . . well, no one even knows who the guy is.

  The laptop never went back to Haley, so after I brush my teeth and wash my face, I decide to give Facebook one last shot before passing out for the night. As soon as I pull up my account, I notice the little red box indicating messages (and the even smaller white number—a two, in this case—telling me how many friends are eager to correspond with me).

  The first message is Ian, giving me the lowdown on our weekend plans: bowling at Pinhead’s, followed by Italian (or French) cuisine at Chez Luigi. He also suggests I invite Rosie (and whoever else I think might be cool) along.

  I type an agreeable reply and move on to the second message, which just so happens to be from Aleks Smullen. I hold my breath as I click to see what I’ve gotten myself into.

  Hi, Cassandra, the note begins.

  So far, so good. Classy opening—and he didn’t even take the liberty of abbreviating my name, which shows a level of respect most boys don’t acquire (or so I’ve heard) until age twenty-five.

  The note continues: There are lots of great reasons to apply to Columbia, including the superb faculty, my father among them. To answer your question: yes, the university would have been my top pick, regardless of my familial connection.

  Weird. He mentions his family, as if there’s more than just Dr. Smullen, meaning George probably had not only a mother and father he never knew, but loads of other relatives too.

  I read on.

  What field of study are you considering? The university is world-renowned for its journalism, law, and medical programs. I’m planning to follow my father into anthropology, but engineering and geology are attractive too.

  Geology? What are the chances? I get the urge to drag out the memory box and ponder George’s beloved quartz-veined rock.

  The remainder of the message explains the nitty-gritty of the application process, with emphasis on meeting deadlines, completing financial aid forms, and arranging a formal campus tour. He wraps up with an offer to video chat, which makes my heart flutter.

  But how to reply?

  I love your brother, I type, knowing I’ll never have the guts to send such a brash declaration. You might not know about him, but he was the nicest, funniest, most sincere guy I’ve ever met. I’m sorry to tell you this, but he died in a car accident two years ago. And he was your twin (identical, I’m guessing, because you look exactly the same, down to the hint of a dimple carved into your left cheek). His name was George Alfred Brooks, and he loved me. He was shy about saying so, but he did.

  I came to New York to find his mother—your mother, as it turns out—and tell her about him. That way, I figured, he could rest in peace. I’d rather not say too much about her now, because as far as I know, she’s out of the country under difficult circumstances. And it’s not really my business to get involved.

  An invisible tug pulls me toward my bedroom window. I leave the laptop open on the bed, the response to Aleks intact but unsent. I lean forward and squint into the yard, where I see something—a slow-moving blur (yes, there is such a thing)—plowing through Mom’s garden. Probably one of the neighbor’s gazillion felines, I think. Two houses down from us is a bona fide cat lady.

  Clive gives a friendly squawk as I duck around his cage and click off my bedside lamp, making it oh-so-much easier to peer into the darkness. And when I do, what I find is . . .

  A sign.

  My breath stops, a lump forming in my throat. Plunked in the middle of the garden is a lazy-looking, rather obese raccoon, a tomato clutched in its paws and periodically traveling to its twitchy mouth for a chomp, an outright smirk plastered on its smug lips (do raccoons even have lips?!) between drippy bites.

  I want to vomit.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, knowing George is listening. “If you don’t want me to talk to him, I won’t.”

  See, the thing about the raccoon is that he’s not your everyday garden pest; he’s a reminder of George’s chivalry, goo
d-heartedness, and love. And his appearance now, when I’m in the midst of contacting another boy—George’s identical twin, no less—with a belly full of butterflies, tells me that my love is disappointed, hurt, upset over the feelings starting to brew for his brother.

  And he’s right. Any relationship between me and that boy would be doomed by kismet, not to mention a serious ick factor owing to the doppelganger effect. Best to leave the whole hornets’ nest be.

  I jimmy the window open and hiss, my pulse banging in my ears, my mouth as parched as the Kalahari. But the beast just—okay, this might be my imagination working overtime here—laughs at me. Snidely. And, oh, keeps gnawing away at that juicy tomahto.

  I shake my head and mutter, “Whatever. Stupid jerk.” With a sigh, I force the window shut and yank the shade down. Of course, the thing only springs back up as if possessed by a sarcastic boomerang. “You win,” I tell the raccoon.

  Speaking of demonic possession, though . . .

  When I shimmy back onto the bed, I notice that—egads!!!—the computer has, all on its own, shipped that message off to Aleks, meaning I am SO TOTALLY DEAD.

  * * *

  The original Raccoon Incident occurred at a lovely park (read: remote and woodsy, but amazingly tranquil) on the Vermont/New York border, to which George’s parents had whisked us for an early-autumn hike when I was twelve and George was fourteen.

  Looking back, it seems odd that my parents allowed such an out-of-town adventure between two—shall I say?—curious buddies of the opposite sex. Though, to be fair, it wasn’t long after Mom’s heart attack so, as the saying goes, they had bigger fish to fry.

  “What do you think?” Mr. Brooks asked with a broad grin, waving at the dense tree line, the birches starting to yellow and shed their leaves. He whistled a breath through his nose. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Not to be mean, but Mr. Brooks is sort of homely, his sagging cheeks, liver-spotted forearms, and awkwardly trimmed toupee no match for his wife’s high-maintenance, nipped and tucked exterior.

  George locked eyes with me, a hopeful expression flashing across his face. “See. I told you it was awesome.”

  I never doubted him. “Definitely,” I said with a nod. I scanned the parking lot for a place to pee. “Is there a bathroom around here somewhere?”

  Mrs. Brooks was the one to respond. “That’s the worst of it,” she told me with a faint grimace, her Botox-infused face giving her the look of a spooked china doll. She pointed a dagger-nailed finger at the far end of the lot. “Outhouses.”

  George popped his shoulders into an apologetic shrug and started for the bathrooms, while his father fiddled with a pole-mounted box, into which we were supposed to deposit three dollars apiece in park-entry fees.

  A few coins clanged into the box as I wiggled along, struggling to keep pace with George, my legs locked together at the knees. Ten feet ahead of me, he flung the women’s room open and held the door. “Thanks,” I said, taking the grimy handle, my stomach lurching from the stench.

  The things we do for love, I thought. Because even though I wasn’t ready to admit it, I had gone swoony for the boy next door.

  Less than a minute passed before I burst out of the stall, my cheeks puffed full of the breath I’d been holding. “Geez, that was brutal,” I muttered, not realizing George was AWOL, his camouflage-patterned tennis shoes flipped upside down in the grass, his ubiquitous hoodie draped over the top of a pitch-stained picnic table. “George?”

  “You’ve gotta see this,” his disembodied voice said from somewhere in the trees.

  “What?” I called. “What is it?”

  “Just . . . come here.”

  I got an ominous feeling but ignored it. “I don’t know . . .” I said, traipsing blindly into the woods, using his trail of clothing as a compass. Soon I was staring dead at a shirtless George Brooks, his dark hair glistening in the afternoon sun, his lean legs dangling over the side of a boulder and making intermittent contact with a sparkling . . . waterfall?

  When he heard me crunching around, he shot a glorious smile over his shoulder and waved me ahead.

  I pulled up short beside him, terrified but awestruck by the gymnastic way the water was leaping at the rocky ravine below. “Wow. This is . . . You knew this was here?”

  He fought an eye roll. “Uh, yeah. I wanted it to be a surprise.” He patted the boulder, as if I should sit down.

  “It’s really loud,” I said, standing my ground. (Who knew rushing water could compete with a jet plane lifting off?)

  “Isn’t it relaxing?”

  I hadn’t noticed until just then, but George was right: something about him had let go, uncoiled. His arms gave it away, mostly, the way they hung there, loose and carefree. I blinked a couple of times, feeling as if I was in a dream that was about to end. “What about your parents?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Won’t they be looking for us?” Any excuse to observe this wonder from afar was fine by me.

  “You worry too much,” he said. “They’re not like that. They give me space.”

  Again, he spoke the truth. Unlike my parents, who could fly off the handle over a missed homework assignment or turn to mush over a scraped knee, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks kept George at arm’s length, treated child rearing like an odious science experiment.

  I finally gave in to his begging eyes. The boulder was damp and slick looking, but I found a spot which, once I brushed a few stray leaves aside, served nicely as a seating area. “What’s this place called?”

  He didn’t seem to have heard me, his expression spacey and distracted. His fingers wandered in my direction, playing chicken with the leg seam of my jeans. “What do you think happens when you die?” he asked from nowhere.

  The question was too big. “I dunno.” Silence fell over us. “Maybe when you die, you get things you didn’t have in life,” I proposed eventually.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I think . . . I think maybe you understand everything that happened in your life and everything that ever happened in the world. But you don’t judge it. Or analyze it. Or even have feelings about it. You just know it and accept it.”

  He leaned back on his palms, tilted his face to the sun. “Do you think there’s a heaven?”

  I wanted to believe in life after death, in whatever form it might take. But somehow the notion of a happy place in the sky where all the good folks live on forever never quite added up to me. “Maybe everyone has it wrong,” I settled on saying. “Maybe heaven’s not a place at all, but more like a way to describe what happens to your soul when you die.”

  A grin crept across his lips. “Oh, yeah?”

  No sense stopping now, I figured. “I mean, think of it like this: you know how the Earth’s core is molten rock, so hot we can only imagine it, but never experience it?”

  He shut his eyes against the light. “Okay.”

  “And everything that touches the core gets absorbed by it, destroyed and remade? I think that’s what it’s like to die: you stop being yourself and become part of something bigger. Your soul melts into the spiritual core.”

  “Deep,” he said, chuckling. “I should have expected as much from you, though, huh?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, exactly, since I’d never considered myself a serious thinker. “I guess.”

  He shifted gears. “You know what we should do?”

  How could I? “No. What?” I said, praying he wasn’t about to suggest skinny dipping in the pool at the bottom of the cliff.

  “Feed the squirrels.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Uh-uh,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’ll love it. For sure.”

  What was that supposed to mean? He thought I was a natural-born rodent chef? “Do we even have any . . . squirrel food?”

  Way too fast, he hopped to his feet and offered me a hand, which I gratefully took. “There’s some snacks in the trunk,” he said. “There’s gotta be something in there they’ll eat.”<
br />
  I hadn’t let go of his hand. It was warm and tingly, and I liked it. “So should we . . . ?” I asked, giving him a tug in the right direction.

  We collected his discarded clothes as if they were sparkly bits of sea glass, then moseyed back to the car (a Toyota Camry, for the record, which Mr. Brooks was quick to inform any poor soul within earshot was “the most popular car in America”). Even though we’d been gone awhile, I was surprised to find that George’s parents had deserted us.

  He read the concern on my face and told me, “We can do whatever we want.” He opened the driver’s-side door and popped the trunk latch, making the hatch lift up. After shuffling through the trunk’s contents a bit, we located a box of saltine crackers. “Perfect,” he declared, thrusting them at my chest.

  He led the way out of the parking lot, down the embankment of a deserted road nearby and into a patch of woods he seemed to recognize. “How come we’re the only ones around?” I asked as he dipped into his pocket for a small orange spray bottle.

  “Here’s good,” he said, nodding at a felled pine. He uncapped the bottle and doused himself with bug repellant, then told me, “Cover your face and I’ll do you. Oh, and hold your breath. This stuff is forty percent DEET. Wicked toxic.”

  Even though my mouth was shielded, I managed to end up with a nasty chemical taste on my lips when the spray down was complete. “You weren’t kidding about that stuff,” I said, gesturing at the bottle. “It’s disgusting.” I set the crackers on the ground and hocked a poison loogie in the opposite direction. Surveying the small clearing, I asked, “So where are these squirrels you speak of?”

  “They’ll be here,” he told me. “Guaranteed.” He straddled the downed tree. “Care to join me?”

  Again, he offered his hand. And again I took it. Luckily, I was smart enough to wear jeans, I thought. Otherwise, I’d be in for a brutal thigh burn from this tree bark.

  We were now facing each other, knees touching, the trunk supporting us. George leaned over for the crackers, opened the box and peeled a few from their plastic sleeve. With a gentle flex of his fingers, he smashed them to bits, then scattered them about the earth below.