Thanks a lot, God.
“It turns out there’s only one Christian adoption agency in California,” Beth whispers. We’re supposed to be singing at choir practice. “It’s called Christ Connects California.”
“So?” I whisper back.
“That’s probably who your mom and Tom used to set up the adoption.”
Why won’t Beth drop this?
“They would have placed the baby with a family,” Beth says when I don’t respond. Her eyes are intense and bright. The scientist in Beth is coming out. She’s a person who likes creating a hypothesis, digging up variables, experimenting with multiple solutions. When you break it down, scientists are really super smart detectives. “They would have the address of the adoptive parents.”
“We can’t just call the place and ask,” I say.
“No. But they would have it in their database.”
“A database that’s secure, no doubt.”
“Nothing is completely secure,” Beth says. Shocked, I stare at her as the choir sings and our voices are covered up by three-part harmony.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . .” Beth leans into me. “There are ways of getting into secure sites.”
“Are you talking about hacking?” I ask too loudly. Ms. Sylvia gives me a dead glare as I try to grapple with the fact that Beth just hinted at something illegal. Like really illegal.
“We know who signed the birth certificate and the papers. We know that most likely the baby was placed through this agency. All I have to do is break in . . .”
“Break in”? Did Beth just use those words? She’s the one who doesn’t lie. Or lies the least. Beth can’t start lying for me. “No,” I state emphatically. “It’s not worth it.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because even if we did get the address, I couldn’t do anything with it. I’m stuck here.”
“But at least you’d have it . . . for someday.” Beth looks at me like a girl who’s lost something and wishes she could get it back.
“But it’ll hurt more than it helps.”
“You don’t know that. And we’re here if it hurts too much. We’ll make it better. That’s what friends do.” Beth takes my hand in hers. “I want to do this for you, Esther. Just think about it.”
I think about it and think about it and think about it, but I can’t find an answer.
“Do you really know how to hack into things?” I ask.
Beth says in her best Pastor Rick imitation, “Science is awesome.”
Kissing Moss is awesome, too. I can’t stop. We’re hidden from the bike path, off in the tall grass that’s shaded by trees, rolling around together like linked tumbleweeds. He’s in his perfectly short running shorts.
Moss pulls a piece of grass from my hair and tickles my nose with it. I almost sneeze, and he laughs.
I push him over and roll on top of him. And we’re kissing again, and his skin tastes salty. His hand glides under my shirt and up my back. I reach back and unhook my bra, egging him on . . . further. Forget shyness. We’re past that.
Moss’s hands move to a more reserved position at my lower back. His fingers tickle my skin, but they don’t make their way up to my breasts.
“Esther . . .” he says.
“It’s OK,” I whisper in his ear. I can’t keep my hands off him, and I know I should be more standoffish, but he makes it really hard. I blame Moss. He put me on this roller coaster. He’s turned me upside down and inside out. He twisted me around until I can no longer see the past when I’m with him. It’s like it doesn’t exist. I get to be free of it, my view blocked by Moss.
He rolls me onto my back and looks into my eyes. Like really looks, but not in a dreamy way. In an intensely thoughtful way. I try to kiss him again, but he backs away.
“I like you,” he says.
“I like you, too.” I smile.
The hesitancy painted on Moss’s face makes the world tilt a different way, and my stomach drops. The ride can’t be over yet. It just started.
“What?” I ask.
“Your life has already been complicated enough by this.” Moss looks at our intertwined bodies. When he runs his hand over his buzzed head, I sit up, sick to my stomach, grass stuck in my hair. “I don’t want to mess it up any more.”
“Any more,” I say, rehooking my bra. “You think I’m messed up.”
“We’re all messed up.”
“But me more than others. Now I’m damaged, and you don’t want to be with me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Moss shakes his head.
“It sure sounds like it is.”
He groans, as I see him slide back into his moody self. “I just want to take it slow so you don’t make any more mistakes.”
I flinch at the word “mistakes.” The past comes back so fast and hard, it hurts my chest to breathe. I didn’t make a mistake with Amit. I loved him. And we had a baby. Loving him wasn’t a mistake. Having sex didn’t feel like a mistake. And she isn’t a mistake. She is a consequence of my stupid actions that, whether right or wrong, felt truthful at the time. A consequence I keep paying for. Mom was right—this will never go away. My past can only hide. It will never disappear.
This stupid town shouldn’t be named Truth or Consequences. It should be named Truth and Consequences.
Forget my theory about lying. Everyone is still lying, but here’s a more important statement—you can’t experience truth without paying the consequence.
It is unavoidable. That is why people lie. They lie for love, and they lie because in most cases, the truth hurts more.
I back away from him. “I have to go.”
I’m on my bike, faster than ever, riding away from the shaded grass, which still carries the impression of two bodies that for a moment tried to become one. The worst part—I know Moss is fast enough to catch me, but he chooses not to.
32
The truth is that Tom is never going to fill our pool. The truth is that Mom married Tom so she wouldn’t have to be a parent all alone. The truth is that Hannah is lying about something. The truth is that Moss just stepped on my heart. The truth is that I hate the cactus outside my window. I’ve tried to like it. But now, I’m over it.
It’s time to cut the damn thing down. I’m sick of looking at it. I’m sick of waiting for it to be something other than what it is—pointy and hurtful. I get gigantic shears from the garage and start hacking away at it.
Mom finds me in the backyard, sweating and grunting. “What are you doing?”
“Cutting this down.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hoarding all the water.” And I’m out of breath.
“It’s a cactus. That’s what it’s supposed to do, Esther.”
“Well, it’s selfish. What about everything else that needs water?”
“You can’t just go around chopping things down,” Mom says. “It looks bad.”
I stop and wipe the sweat from my forehead. “Is that why you married Tom?”
“What?”
“Because it looked bad for you to have two kids and no husband.”
“Esther, where is this coming from?”
I throw my hands up in the air. “That’s why we moved here, right? Because it looked bad that I had a baby. That’s exactly why you want me riding my bike all the time, so I don’t look bad anymore. Why are we so concerned about how we look to other people? It’s all a bunch of lies anyway.”
“Esther, calm down.” Mom tries to take the clippers from my hand, but I pull back.
“You told me this would all go away.” I point the clippers at her. “But even that was a lie.”
I go back to hacking at the cactus. Mom stands there for a moment, speechless, and then says, “Make sure to clean up before dinner. We’re having tacos.”
When I’m done chopping the cactus down, I tie some of the string around it and drag it to the front of the house. Our neighbor comes out and watches, clearly int
rigued by my erratic behavior, but I don’t care. He can watch my meltdown. At least it’s honest.
“Be careful. Those things can really hurt you,” he says from his porch. “The sting lasts a long time.”
“Finally, someone who speaks the truth,” I holler back. The cactus finds its final resting place at the end of the driveway. Good riddance.
When Tom gets home and asks me why I cut it down, I say, “Because I needed to.”
“You needed to.”
“Yes.”
“I thought we talked about impulsive decisions, Esther.”
“Getting a tattoo seems a little impulsive.” I stare him down. Then I tell him I’m sorry, but once a cactus is cut down, it can’t be replanted. “I guess I’ll have to live with it. But contrary to what you think, it’s easier than living without it.”
I get up from the table, not hungry anyway.
From my bedroom, I hear Hannah in the kitchen, her theatrical voice piercing. “She’s doing it again. She’s going to ruin everything.”
“Stop being dramatic,” Mom says.
“Just wait,” Hannah says. “This isn’t over.”
My nightmare returns. I wake up and hear a baby crying. It’s just down the hallway. I’m certain of it. I even get out of bed. But after I search the whole house, nothing. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been empty from the start.
My hair is longer than it was when we first moved. My body is slimmer, not that I was trying to lose weight. I was chasing a boy, and it just happened.
Glaring at my own reflection in the mirror, I examine my brown eyes—my dad’s eyes—and see what Moss sees. I’m damaged, broken, and it makes me want to break things so I don’t feel so alone.
Here’s my problem, and it makes me the worst person on the planet—I tell myself that things just happen. But I make them happen. I break them. I am the problem. I am the life-sucking, water-depleting cactus.
“I just want to take it slow so you don’t make any more mistakes.” Moss’s words echo in my head and crush me all over again, because he’s right. I make mistakes. That’s what I do. I tried not to lie and couldn’t do it. I promised my family we’d start over again in Truth or Consequences, and I’m back where I started—messing around with a boy behind the backs of Mom and Tom. And the worst part is . . . I want to do it. I want Moss. It’s like the farther I run from myself, the more I just find I’m running in a circle.
The baby I had may not be a mistake, but I’m not innocent.
I turn away from the mirror, unable to look at myself, and squat in front of my fishbowl.
“Even you,” I say. “I haven’t set you free because I’m selfish and I’m not ready to. I need you. Like I needed Amit. Like I need Moss.”
But what if I’ve ruined her, too? What if my mistakes cost her the freedom she deserves?
Color pushes my door open with her vacuum. Based on the pity all over her face, I know she’s talked to Moss. I flop onto my bed, putting the pillow over my head. The white noise of the vacuum isn’t loud enough to drown out my shame.
My wallowing only lasts a few moments before Color pulls the pillow from my head and says, “I’m sorry I still haven’t found a bigger vacuum to suck up all your problems.”
“I’d just ruin it anyway. That’s what I do. I’m a prickly cactus. Don’t come too close. I’ll damage you.”
Color sits next to me and pats her lap, signaling me to lay my head on her legs. I do, looking up at my friend.
“Everything and everyone is already broken anyway,” she says. “You can’t change that.”
“But I break it. It’s my fault.”
“So what? You just need some proverbial superglue in your life.” Color plays with my hair, her fingers light on my scalp. It’s deeply soothing. “You put the pieces back together. It will never be how it was, and it doesn’t make it any less broken, but it’s new. People can be whole and broken at the same time, Esther.”
I recall, .9 recurring is equal to 1. Tiny pieces equal the whole.
“Where do I get the superglue?” I ask.
“The hardware store. Duh.” Color nudges me.
Her charm works for a moment, but it’s fleeting. “I just feel . . . lost.”
“Look, Esther, going back to the beginning is impossible. There is no beginning and no end. What was never born can never die. The present is the only place.”
“We’re approaching the rabbit hole, Color.”
She laughs. “All I’m saying is you can’t do anything about the past. But it doesn’t really exist. Memories are just a mind manipulation to keep you tethered to something that’s no longer there. Free yourself and let it go.”
I am so tired of holding my pieces together. I need the superglue. But it’s not that easy. If I let go of the past, that means I actually have to loosen my grip on all of it. “It’s a lot harder than it sounds.”
“It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”
We let the vacuum run as we sit on my bed, trying to let go of the past. It’s so much a part of me that the line is blurred, and I can’t see where I need to cut myself free. At what moment?
Eventually she says, “I think something is going on with Jesús. He hasn’t been at school or work the past two days, and he’s not returning my texts.”
“What?” I sit up. I haven’t been to HuggaMug to see him because I can’t bring myself to look at Moss.
“It’s not like him to just completely drop off.”
“Maybe he’s sick?”
“Maybe.” Color doesn’t sound convinced. “But I don’t think so.”
“Well, what does your intuition say?” I ask.
“My intuition says something is going on.”
“Can you go to his house and check on him?” I ask.
Color shakes her head. “He yelled at me the one time I stopped by unannounced.”
“Jesús yelled? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Color says emphatically. “I think he’s embarrassed. He lives in the trailer park, over on San Pedro Loop. His is the blue one. He’s kind of sensitive about it. You know Jesús. He’s all about flair. His house doesn’t live up to his personality. Like I care about his house. It’s his soul I love.”
“I love his soul, too.”
Then Color lights up and says, “You could go check on him. Maybe ride your bike past and drop in?” She grabs my hand. “I just need to know that he’s OK. If he’s sick, we can help him. Bring over some chicken soup or something.”
Now that Color’s brought it up, it would feel good to help someone for a change. To stop destroying everything. I need to stop sulking.
“Of course, I’ll do it,” I say.
“Thank you.” When Color pulls back from the hug she’s enveloped me in, she has a mischievous furrow to her brow. “My intuition tells me everything is going to be OK with you and Moss.”
“Really?” My heart doesn’t feel so convinced. It hurts in a broken way.
“Really.”
“I think I’m gonna need a lot of superglue for this one.”
“Don’t we all,” Color says. “By the way, your Christmas gift is almost done.” Then she’s back to vacuuming.
“You really didn’t need to get me anything.”
But at that moment, she opens the closet door and screeches, her surprised gaze moving between me and the items in my closet, or lack thereof. “It’s empty. I can’t believe it’s empty. You did it, Esther. You got rid of all your boxes.”
I lift up the bed skirt to show her a few lingering ones still stuffed under my bed. “Almost.”
“Well, at least the closet is empty. That’s progress. Have you named the fish yet?”
“I have an idea, but I don’t know . . .”
“Whenever you decide, you have to tell me,” she demands.
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Color vacuums the carpet in my closet with happy vigor, then says, “Can you come over Friday and get yo
ur gift?”
“I’m going to work with Tom during the day.” I fake gag myself. “But I should be able to ride over after.”
“And don’t forget about Jesús.”
“I could never forget about him.”
“Bring some superglue. Jesús might need it.”
The smile never fades from Color’s face as she pushes the vacuum out of my bedroom and closes the door behind her.
33
I wake up two days later and smell it. Rain.
But it’s a sunny Thursday, and as the day wears on, I ride my bike through the HuggaMug drive-through looking for Jesús. No clouds. I must have imagined the smell. I don’t really want to be here, but I also really want to find Jesús, so I put my bruised ego aside and yell, “Beep!” Plus, I’ve had such a hard time sleeping the past few days, I need coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
Moss sticks his head out of the drive-through window, forcing my stomach to splat all over the ground. I don’t even bother picking up the pieces. I need superglue. Pronto.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” My eyes are on my feet. “Is Jesús here?”
“He didn’t show up. Again.” Moss acts annoyed, so I act annoyed at his annoyance.
“OK.” I turn to ride away.
“Esther, wait.” Moss closes the drive-through window and comes out of the coffee shack.
“What?” I snap.
“Can we talk?”
“About what?”
“You know what.”
“OK.” I put the kickstand down on my bike. I say “OK” like I’m not really OK with any of this, and Moss knows it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“About what?” My sarcasm is getting out of control.
“You know what.” Now it’s Moss’s turn to look down at his feet. He’s wearing his running shoes and shorts. It’s a little chilly for shorts today, but the sun makes it better. He’s probably going for a jog after work, along the path. Our path. My throat gets tight and tears threaten. I want to ride with him. Next to him. Be with him. But sorry isn’t enough. I want more than sorry. I want forgiveness for being me. But I’m not sure Moss can give that to me.
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