“A little . . . the first time . . . but then . . .”
Jesús grabs Color’s hand. “This is the part I’ve been waiting for. Don’t leave anything out.”
I have to close my eyes, because the caffeine is going to my head and making me kind of loopy and light-headed. I liked having sex with Amit, but he and I were more than that.
“You’re just so close to each other. It’s like your body isn’t your own anymore. You’re sharing it with someone else. It’s like your breath is his breath, and your heart is his heart. And there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to give it away because no one likes to lose things. But the closer you get . . .”
“Go on,” Jesús says in a husky voice.
“You don’t want to let go, because when you do, you know afterward you might feel a little more empty than you did before. But you do let go, because something inside of you knows it’s OK to give a piece of yourself away. And in the end, if you love the person, even though you just gave a piece of yourself away, he handed a piece of himself right back to you.”
“Did you love him?” Color asks.
For the first time, I say his name out loud. “Amit. And yeah, I think I did.” Mom and Tom said I couldn’t have loved anybody at my age, because I didn’t know enough. But adults don’t know love without strings attached. Amit and I were free.
“He sounds foreign and hot.” Jesús fans himself. “Tell me more about him.”
How do I share all the pieces of Amit? He was the opposite of every male I had ever met. He didn’t want to control me like Tom, or make me love him and then leave me, like my dad. Amit was just there. Always. With no ulterior motive. I think simply being there is the most loving thing a person can do.
“He always carried an extra pencil just for me,” I say. “I perpetually forgot mine. But I never had to ask to borrow one. Amit would merely hold out his hand, and what I needed would be there.”
“I need an Amit in my life,” Jesús says.
“So what happened to the baby?” Color asks in a soft voice.
“She was given up for adoption,” I say. “I wasn’t even allowed to see her.”
“Not even for a second?” Jesús asks.
“It would have only made it harder.” That’s what Mom said, though now I find myself saying, “But . . .”
“But what?” Jesús asks and touches my leg. It’s shaking, though I’m not sure it’s from the coffee anymore.
“It’s OK,” Color says. “You can tell us, Esther.”
“I’d just like to know what she looks like,” I say. “Does she have Amit’s eyes? He has really beautiful eyes.”
The drive-through dings, a customer, but we don’t move. I’ve never told anyone this. Never spoken about pencils and Amit and love so freely. I reserve those conversations for my memories. Presently, Jesús’s hand is resting on my thigh. It feels nice.
“Hello?” the man in the car hollers through the window. “Hello, I see you in there!”
Hello, Esther, I see you in there. Come out. Is that what the universe is saying right now? And is it safe?
“I’d like a coffee!” the guy yells. “Black with two sugar packets!”
Jesús groans and goes to the window. “We’re talking about love in here! Give us a moment!”
“But what about my coffee?”
Jesús starts pelting him with sugar packets. “Here! Take your sugar!”
“Asshole.” The guy pulls away without his coffee.
“Wow,” Color says. “My mom could learn something from Amit.”
“Wow,” Jesús says, sitting down next to me again. “I wish I could answer your questions about the baby, Esther.”
I shrug. “Maybe this is all a dream, and I’ll wake up in another reality tomorrow.”
“What is tomorrow, anyway?” Color says. “Time is a mirage.”
“I like that.” Jesús gets a fresh piece of paper and writes that down. He puts his pencil in his mouth. “What else?”
“The better question is—Is a mirage really a mirage?”
“That’s deep,” Jesús says, scribbling.
“What’s deep? Maybe deep is really shallow, and vice versa.”
Jesús stops writing. “We’ve jumped into the rabbit hole again.”
“Is a rabbit hole really a rabbit hole?” Color asks. “Is anything . . . anything?”
This, right here in HuggaMug, feels like something, so I say, “God, I hope so.”
Moss walks in the side door then, startling us. He’s dripping with sweat and in his running clothes. He takes his shirt and wipes the moisture from his forehead, allowing me to catch a glimpse of his stomach. Mine tightens. It’s the coffee. It’s the coffee. It’s the coffee.
But I’ve felt this before—before I ever even drank coffee. Back when a classroom was a classroom and not my bedroom. Back when people shared pencils, along with love.
It’s so not the coffee.
I hate to admit it, but the shorts look good on Moss.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he says. “Practice went over.”
“Some of us prefer to run through life. Some like to walk.” Color points at the notebook. “Write that down.”
“Good one,” Jesús says.
Moss gets a glass of water. “What are you talking about?”
“The glass is half-full or half-empty, but is the glass really a glass?” Jesús says, still scribbling.
“Seriously, tell me,” Moss says, disgruntled at being on the outside for once. Underneath his loose running shorts, he’s wearing spandex shorts.
I blurt out, “Life is one big pair of Spanx. We squeeze to fit in. And if worn correctly, we can prevent chafing.”
Jesus grins. “And I thought you said you’d be no help.”
13
I sit at the bottom of our empty pool, a notebook in my lap, just in case I catch the truth and need to jot it down for Jesús, but all I’m catching right now is the scent of the past. Somewhere in Ohio a tree has turned from green to yellow to orange and red. The leaves dangle off their branches, holding on to life, barely.
That was me not long ago. It’s hard to believe I have two people, Color and Jesús, I can grasp and yet, when the wind blows tonight, I smell rain-soaked fall leaves.
“Twelve weeks,” the doctor said.
I pinch my nose closed and hold my breath, not wanting the memory to overtake me, but even suffocation can’t save me. I’m pretty sure when I die, God will stand with a clipboard full of my sins, ready to tick them off, brutally replaying my life, moment by moment, as final punishment.
Giving in, surrendering, I exhale and let my mind be consumed, flooding me.
“I’m sorry. How far along?” Mom asked.
“Twelve weeks,” the doctor said. “The baby has a strong heartbeat.”
“Heartbeat,” Mom repeated.
“Heartbeat,” the doctor echoed. She pointed to the screen. That’s the most I ever saw of the baby—a black-and-white mess, indiscernible to the untrained eye. “See. Right there.”
“Twelve weeks,” Mom said again. “What’s the probability of miscarriage?”
“At this point, less than one percent. You have some very serious choices to make, Esther.”
Amit would have offered his hand for me to hold. He would have placed a pencil in my palm so I could solve the problem. Mom moved in front of the ultrasound screen, blocking my view, and put the adoption information in her purse.
“I’ll take care of this,” she said.
I rest my hands on my lower belly, wondering if I can feel the baby’s heartbeat still inside of me.
Nothing.
Forget avoidance. It is completely overrated. Fine if you want to avoid the plague, but Moss has no reason not to trust me. That’s why I’m hiding in the bushes, fully prepared to jump out at him when he comes running by.
This tactic might not be the most solid I’ve come up with to date, but he won’t even look at me when we’re around Jesús and
Color.
Why?
But I know the answer. Moss knows I’m hiding things. I hide things under my bed. I’m hiding from the past. I’m even hiding in the bushes.
But the truth is—Moss is the missing piece. I need him to like me. Color and Jesús do, and he’s a part of the group.
OK. That’s not the whole truth, and I know it.
“Because maybe I like him,” I whisper to the air. “And his running shorts.” It’s the feeling I get in my stomach. The drop. The roller coaster. I haven’t felt that in a long time.
When I hear the familiar sound of Moss’s shoes on the pavement, I jump out and shock him so badly that he trips off the side of the path and almost falls in the river. I have to grab his arm to stop him.
He shakes me off immediately. “I’d say thank you, but you almost just killed me!” Moss heaves and puts his hands on his hips. “Why do you always do that?”
“What?”
“Jump out at me!”
“It’s the only way to get your attention.” I shrug.
“You’re delusional.” He starts down the path, but I’m quick on my bike, following him closely.
“Practicing for cross-country again?” I ride right behind him. “I assume.”
“You assume right. Good for you.” His gaze stays trained on the path.
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“What?”
“Aren’t you supposed to run with, like, people?”
Moss keeps trudging along, as if his feet are lightweight, almost buoyant. “I prefer to run alone. As long as I get my miles in, Coach doesn’t care.”
“Isn’t that kind of boring?”
“Did you hear me when I said I prefer it?”
His attitude sucks. I know I jumped out at him, but come on, I’m trying.
“Fine,” I say, slowing down.
“Fine,” he says, picking up the pace. But stubbornness gets the better of me almost instantly. This is my path, too. He doesn’t own it. I ride faster to catch up to him.
“Why do you prefer to be by yourself?” I ask.
“I can think better that way,” he hollers, and I’m surprised when I feel sympathy. I get the need to think. It’s why I lie in the empty pool.
“About what?”
Moss stops on the trail. “Stuff,” he says.
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, stuff.”
I watch him sweat and breathe. His eyes look like storm clouds. Just like Color. And I want to be in his head so badly. Yes, his body is in quite fine shape, but nothing is more intimate and sexy than when a person takes you on a walk through his thoughts. “What’s your truth?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Jesús is writing his senior statement about his truth. What’s yours?”
Moss starts running again, and I follow him. Again. “I’ve got another year to think about it. I’ll let you know when I’m a senior.” And then Moss stops. He has to grab my handlebars to prevent a collision. “Look, why are you doing this?”
“Because you said you don’t trust me. I want to prove to you that you can.”
“By chasing me on your bike? That’s messed up.”
The words sting, because he’s right. I don’t know what I was thinking. This is clearly not working. Moss doesn’t want me in his head. He doesn’t want to get to know me either. Every question I ask is a dead end.
“I just wanted to say that I get it.”
“Get what?” he asks sharply.
Color said Moss is like moss. He gets attached. Or maybe he’s stuck, and he wants a way out. That’s why he runs.
“Never mind. I just thought you might like some company. I was wrong.”
This is the point where I should turn and ride away, but actually doing that is harder than knowing it should be done. Moss exhales loudly through his nose, eyes on the ground. Sweat collects in a small puddle there. Begrudgingly, I start to turn my bike in the other direction.
“Wait,” he says. “Can you be quiet?”
I show that I can by squeezing my lips tightly together.
“Can you stay off my heels?”
“I’ll be practically invisible.”
“No more jumping out of bushes.”
“OK.”
Moss starts running again, and I think I hear him say, “And I don’t want you to be invisible.” But I could have just heard what I wanted to hear.
Heaven is just as good the second time. I stand in front of the wall of lost family pictures. Jesús sits on one of the oversized chairs, supposedly working on his senior statement, but really he’s taking a nap. Moss is MIA, and I try not to care.
Color comes to stand next to me. She’s wearing one of my winter hats. It looks better on her, her red curls peeking out from underneath.
“Sometimes when I’m really mad at my mom, I’ll look at these pictures and try to imagine myself with another family. What would it be like to live with these people?” Color picks up a family picture with everyone wearing matching outfits of khaki pants and white button-down shirts.
“No way,” I say to her.
Color agrees and picks up a picture of a family wearing Pittsburgh Steelers football jerseys. I shake my head, and Color gags herself.
“Or this one.” She pulls a picture gently from the pile. The parents are in the background. Three kids, all with black hair, are caught jumping in a gigantic leaf pile. Everyone looks so happy, it almost breaks my heart.
“Closer,” I say.
“I like this family,” Color says. “They’re my favorite.” The look she gives the picture is like she’s begging it to come alive, or like she’s begging to see herself half-buried, next to the other kids, among the leaves. “But it’s just a picture, right? It isn’t reality.”
“Is a picture really a picture?” I ask, and she laughs.
“My mom says that souls travel in packs,” Color says, setting the picture down.
“Really?”
Color says, “Like a soul posse or something.”
“A soul posse,” I say.
“This soul posse . . .” She holds up the family picture again. “They seem cool.”
A sinking feeling suddenly overtakes my stomach. It’s so bad that I actually grab myself around the waist.
“What is it?” Color asks.
I might throw up. I know I’ve contemplated this truth before, somewhere in the back of my mind, but I hid it, like the boxes in my room. But now it’s back, like my memories that creep up at times, overwhelming me with their vividness. Color did say everything crumbles. Well, the walls I built around this reality are tumbling down at this very moment.
I hear the question in my head, but this time I say it out loud, too. “What if the baby is in my soul posse, and I gave her away?” I didn’t even get to touch her, let alone look at her. I don’t know anything about her. She was taken like the wind takes a feather, pulled, tossed, and placed far away from me.
Color looks at me with kind eyes, or maybe sad eyes.
Complex Math Problem: If souls really do travel in groups, but one is subtracted, is she lost forever?
Did I ruin her life before it ever even started? Will she always feel lost and never really know why? I know the pain of looking in the mirror and wondering how someone who carries your genes, who made you, could just disappear, knowing they’d left pieces of their reflection behind.
It’s quiet in Heaven. We let my question mingle with the other lost words on the walls. This may be how it is forever. My questions unrequited, like a lover waiting a lifetime for its other half.
And then Color lights up and says, “I think I have a way we can get you an answer, Esther.”
14
Color knows exactly who we can go see. It’s simple. She tells Jesús and me about her idea, stating evenly that it’s easy. But it’s not that simple or easy or perfect. Nothing ever is. Simple is an illusion. Even single-digit numbers are made up of infinite parts.
“Dharma
is my mom’s psychic. She swears by her,” Color says. “She lives in Albuquerque. We’ll go and ask her. It’s that simple.”
“That simple,” I repeat, unconvinced. “How is a psychic going to help?”
“Dharma can give you the answer. She’s like a doctor for your soul. She looks inside you, sees what’s wrong, and tells you how to fix it. It’s perfect.” Color claps her hands in excitement.
“Does this doctor give physical exams, too,” Jesús says, “because I’d like one of those.”
Albuquerque is two hours away, which means we need an entire day to do this. It’s one thing to sneak off for a couple hours here and there to see my friends, while Mom pretends I’m at the movies. It’s another to go to a different city for the day to see a psychic. The only psychic Tom believes in is God, and I’m pretty sure I don’t need a psychic to tell me how that one goes.
And then there’s the fact that we all ride bikes. I don’t need a complex math problem to figure out how long it will take two teens, one completely out of shape, to ride bikes one hundred and fifty miles. A long damn time. I’ll be living in hell before we ever even make it, dragged to hell by Tom.
“How are we going to get there?” I ask. “I don’t have a license. Tom practically had a heart attack when I brought it up on my sixteenth birthday.”
Color looks at Jesús.
“You know I don’t have my license.” He shrugs. “Some people were born to drive, some people were born to be driven.”
“Moss,” Color says. “He’ll drive.” She says this like it’s no big deal.
“Moss doesn’t like me.”
“Mon chéri,” Jesús says. “It’s super easy to dislike people. Life is much more complicated when you can’t figure out why you like someone. And Moss is very complicated. You catch my drift? I mean, we all thought he was a fungus until you pointed out he’s actually a plant.”
“But we don’t have a car,” I say.
“We do,” Color says, and then she kind of bobbles her head as if not completely convinced of her own statement. “Well . . . I don’t know if you would call it a car. I’m not entirely sure it’s street legal. But whatever. Mom left it in case of emergencies. This is so an emergency.”
“Oh my God, the old station wagon,” Jesús says. “I haven’t thought about that car in forever.”
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