“I’ll have to think about that,” I say.
And I’m overwhelmed with a desire to have him leave. I can’t say that, of course, and he stays for a few hours while we watch TiVo’d Dancing with the Stars, which he gets really into. I am totally shut down. Can barely engage in his game of creating wild-ass backstories for the professional dancers who work with the celebrities. The worst part is he doesn’t even seem to notice.
During the third show, I pretend to fall asleep. He shakes me gently, and I open one sleepy eye; he says good night and lets himself out.
My eyes open. And stare into distance at the truth I now know.
I am in love with Andrew. And have been from the first moment.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
sloane
I wake up and look out my window. There’s my tree. She doesn’t look different, but not a single molecule of my tree or my body or the world feels the same any longer. I’ve looked up schizophrenia online, and I think this is it. I know on the one hand that last night actually happened. Burned into my memory is every microsecond of his face, the fear in his eyes that I didn’t want him, the sound of his voice so hopeful; it is absolutely true. And yet, it is of course completely impossible. I mean, I own a mirror. And that’s just the outside of me. Obviously, he is making assumptions about the inside of me, matching some dream girl to the little glimpses that he’s had. He doesn’t know me yet. And I’m sure that when he does, he will be deeply disappointed. But for today, for this morning, James has chosen me. Unless of course he changed his mind overnight.
I turn on my phone. Maybe he’s left a message like they do in those cheesy romantic comedies, where he says, “I’m halfway home and I miss you already.”
There is a message. And it’s much better. He’s going to pick me up at eight thirty and take me away to places of his choosing until my curfew. He says he might be tired because he kissed a girl last night and it kept him awake for hours.
I text back: Yes! Yes! Hell, yes!
And there’s a knock on my door. My dad comes in all smiling and happy. First, he thanks me for how much I took our little heart-to-heart to heart. I don’t even know what he’s talking about until I realize my mom must be really happy about me not ripping her head off anymore.
Then he offers to drive me to my SAT prep course for which I paid $200 (my vet salary for like four weeks), which starts in one hour and fifteen minutes and which (along with everything else in the world) I have totally forgotten.
Okay, time to lie. Course was postponed, nope. He might call and check. I promised Kelly that I’d take her to have both her legs amputated, nope, too much. To buy her prom dress? Nope, too little. There is only one option that seems realistic.
“Daddy there’s something else I want to do today. There’s a boy.”
The smile on his face doesn’t change, but I feel his body straighten.
“And I really like him. And he likes me. And I want to spend the day with him. And it won’t hurt me on the SAT, I’ve studied a zillion hours already, so the whole thing is overkill.”
He stares at me, obviously fighting the urge to give me a direct order.
“Of course, the money is your decision; you worked for it. Can you take the course another day?”
“No, but I really don’t need it. Honest.”
Not only is he absolutely not down with my decision, he can’t even believe that this is consistent with his workaholic kid who would amputate both her own legs to get into Columbia.
“I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t go along with this. Your boyfriend will understand, and if he doesn’t, he’s not the right guy for you anyway. You’ve worked so hard, and there’s no way to know what is and isn’t overkill. We always say leave no stone unturned and you’ll have no regrets.”
Of course James would understand. In fact, he’d probably give me the same advice. But that’s not the point. I feel like I’m working on borrowed time with James since now that I have him, I might lose him, and there’s no way I’m missing this day.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m choosing to spend the day with James. Only I know how completely prepared I am for this test.”
He just stares at me, not knowing what to say in the face of absolute disobedience. Unsure of what to do with this version of me. I never say no or disappoint my father like this.
“Obviously, Daddy, this boy is really special to me.”
“I think that’s beside the point.”
“Well, I think the point is that you need to trust me.”
There is a real silence. “I don’t appreciate your tone.” And he walks out.
As I shower, I try to wash him from my thoughts. I don’t want any dark clouds over my sunny day. Sadly, it just gets worse. He’s right. Columbia used to be the most important thing in the world to me. And now it isn’t. That’s just the truth. At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll be around to go to Columbia.
As I get dressed I’m expecting the knock on the door. My mom comes in, sent by her husband, and basically agrees with him. They are trying to double-team me. I tell her what happened, that James dumped his old girlfriend so that he could be with me. It is the most exciting moment of my life so far, and there’s no point in going to a practice test where I can’t think about anything else but James.
She asks how long that’s going to go on.
“Good question,” I tell her. And I can see she’s been here before. My mother was once a girl with an uncontrollable crush on a boy that consumed all her brainpower. Maybe that’s why she was so strict about when I could start dating.
She gives me a hug and tells me she’ll square things with Dad.
I’m too nervous to eat breakfast. At the last moment, I remember what Maggie said about matching your panties to your bra. I run upstairs and coordinate colors since I don’t own an actual set. It doesn’t necessarily make me feel anything in particular, except wondering if there’s a chance that someone might see them.
I’m waiting on the porch steps when a red Targa sweeps up to the curb, just like in Sixteen Candles, and out jumps a guy who is hotter than Jake Ryan. I leap up because I don’t want him to think I’m playing hard to get or anything. He pulls me into his arms and gives me a spectacular warm, lingering, shiver-all-over kiss, heedless of whoever’s family or neighbors might be peeking out of a window.
He holds my face in his hands for a moment after, his forehead against mine, his thumb stroking my cheek, and gently presses his lashes to mine, fluttering a butterfly kiss. It feels so intimate and in a way excites me more than the big make-out kiss. I can feel his breath.
All he will say as we pull away from the curb is that we will be driving all the way to the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. He offers to buy us breakfast at Kitchen Little, and I just lie and say I’ve eaten. He pulls into the drive-through line at Dunkin’ Donuts, and I struggle to recall whether I know anyone who works here. Actually, The Weed works here, and I don’t know his shift.
Sure enough, when we pull up to the window, The Weed turns to us with a huge wake-and-bake smile and hands James his extra-large coffee and full-dozen assorted. I look out the passenger window, hoping that The Weed won’t recognize or care about the back of my head.
“Hey, Sloane, you sure you don’t want anything? It’s on me.”
“Nope, thanks anyway.”
Great. Now I will spend the entire day worrying whether this will zip straight through town or through the hollow chamber that lies between The Weed’s ears.
Once on the highway, I dip into the dozen for a powdered jelly donut and ask if I can share his coffee. He starts asking about my entire life and personality all at once. Every detail, including is powdered my favorite donut and why? I can’t fathom why anything about me is interesting to him. I tell him I actually prefer blueberry because of the gross purple dye they use; nothing else stains your mouth that particular color.
What was my favorite pet? I tell him that Schmulie, a runty black and white cat, was my first b
est friend in this world. I tell James everything. Schmulie licked my tears when I cried. And slept with me every night. When he was banished to my uncle’s farm because of Tyler’s allergies, I gave him special time on each visit and brought him special treats. And although I’m probably making this up, he seemed to love me and communicate with his big dark eyes. He died slowly and quietly, and I moved into my uncle’s guest room that week and slept on the floor with him.
James seems very moved by this and doesn’t speak for a while. I ask about Caroline’s cat, and he says it was really hard getting the cat back to America, but by then it was all he had left of Caroline and he was determined not to lose Peaches.
“If you have another question about Caroline, you can ask that too,” he offers.
“What if I have like fifteen thousand?”
“We may have to save a few for the ride back.”
Caroline and James met in the Bois de Boulogne while they were running. Much to the horror of my enormous insecurities, she’s French! Actually French. Two French parents. Her native language is French. The course she was taking at the Sorbonne was English. Holy shit. She is from Nice on the Riviera, and she once took him home to meet her folks, and they went on this nude beach (not with her parents) and sailed to Corsica (not nude, but with her parents). It is clear this French girl is very experienced. I badger him until he confirms my observation, but he refuses to elaborate. Which is to his credit. Though not to mine for asking five times.
“She’s really pretty,” I say, not letting it go.
“She is. But you are so much more attractive than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I roll my eyes. He’s just trying to make me feel better.
“Don’t do that. You can’t see how everyone sees you. You are beautiful, Sloane. But I’m not even talking about that. I mean attraction, like gravity. The connection I feel to you is overpowering. I don’t think I could resist it if I tried.”
I feel a familiar tingle when he says this. The thrill and the fear remind me of the sorcerer. I can’t tell James that. And yet this perfect boy just gave me the greatest compliment I’ve ever received by confirming the spell I’ve been under since he rescued that sparrow. So I just reach out and take his hand.
Our fingers weave and dance around each other’s for the rest of the drive. We never let go.
After two hours of driving, we pull into a fairgrounds. A big banner reads INTERNATIONAL PUPPET SHOW. Two twenty-foot dragon shadow puppets form an archway. We go through into a clearing surrounded by a dense forest. People are in costumes of different eras and cultures; some dressed as mythical creatures mingled. There are families, couples, a group of children gathered around a hand puppet stage. Chinese kites in the sky. There is a drum circle, strolling musicians playing flutes and pipes.
We settle down on a hill. James has packed a blanket and a picnic, and of course we still have five donuts. I can tell he is waiting for something. The drums stop; there is complete silence. And out of the trees comes a small army of towering puppets, maybe twenty feet tall. They are men on stilts, each portraying a different character, each with a gigantic moon-shaped face. Some are monsters, two are birds, there’s a mermaid. Amazingly, the stilts don’t make them awkward. Their movements are flowing and hypnotic like a tribe of giraffes. They act out a series of plays, the content of which is hard to precisely define but mesmerizing to watch.
So I lean my body into James’s side, and he wraps me up in his long arm, and we watch like two people who have belonged to each other from the beginning of time. I have never been so completely content. It is a perfect moment.
On the drive back, the sunset gives way to a dusk of purple and deep blues. We drive in companionable silence for what seems like forever, and miraculously I don’t worry that I should be saying something or that he’s bored. I know everything is perfect between us.
“You know what I’m afraid of?”
It just pops out of my mouth. I am either possessed or insane or both.
“Silverfish? They’re so slimy.”
“Exactly.”
He smiles. “Plus the other thing that you’re reconsidering telling me about.”
“Oh yeah, that. It’s just this desperate fear that when you spend more time with me, you’ll be bored out of your mind and wonder what you ever saw in me in the first place.”
He glances from the road to my eyes so that I will know that he really means this. “You’re endlessly fascinating just as you are.”
“It’s easier to be fascinated by someone you don’t know.”
“You don’t have any deep dark secret, do you? No ax murders, meth labs, husbands in Utah, Kewpie doll collections?”
“Just one out of four. So we’re good.”
Actually, it’s one out of five. The one being a secret he hasn’t asked about, that I am clinically, irretrievably psychotic. But since there is absolutely no way he can ever find out, I will just put being out of my mind out of my mind.
I look over, and he is smiling so happily, looking so impossibly beautiful. And I relax again. Spending the day with me made him feel that way.
“Got a date for the prom?”
“Yep.”
“One of your husbands from Utah?”
“Gordy, actually.”
“I like him. So what’s up with that?”
“He’s like my brother; actually he’s nothing like either of my brothers and I adore him. Neither of us was dating anyone, so we decided to go together.”
I wonder if he will ask me to bail on Gordy and what I’ll do if he does.
“Cool.”
But it isn’t. I’m terrified of Gordy learning about James. I’m living a secret life at the moment, and the roll-out of the truth is a delicate matter. Hopefully The Weed hasn’t already taken it upon himself.
“Would it be okay,” I begin hesitantly, “if we sort of kept us under wraps for a little while?”
“Does this mean I should retract the wedding announcement in the New York Times?”
He laughs. But just the words wedding announcement send an electric charge through every nerve ending in my body.
“No, let it run. No one in our class reads.”
He really laughs. He actually thinks I’m funny. Maggie’s funny, but I’m more grumpy and sarcastic than funny. Except to Gordy. And I guess Lila. Okay, the point is he thinks I’m funny.
“Sure. Can I ask why?”
“Sure, can you ask why what?”
“Why we’re something secret.”
“I don’t want to make it weird for Amanda. I know you said she’s fine, but I want to give her a heads-up and some time to deal with her image.”
“Wow. Is this high school or Hollywood?”
“There’s a difference?”
He laughs again. He’s an easy audience.
“You are an exceptionally thoughtful person. It’s not the reason I’m crazy about you, but it’s actually more important.”
Nothing bothers him. I can tell him anything. With the one exception, of course.
“When I was little, a sorcerer would float outside my window at night. I was terrified of him, but excited too. I knew that if I ever let my guard down, the sorcerer would be able to come through my window, into my bed, and take control of me. I kept him outside the window with these rituals I would do each night.”
I looked over at his profile. My God, it’s true.
“I never really knew what he looked like. Until the first moment I saw you.”
He says nothing.
“You saved that sparrow in homeroom. And when you turned from the window, I thought I had never seen such a beautiful face on any creature before.”
So not only have I just confessed that he is the embodiment of a lifelong fantasy but that he is also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. His eyes were fixed on the road, so I could admit these things and at least feel unobserved and therefore protected. Of course, once saying them, I feel completely naked.
> He says absolutely nothing. He doesn’t even smile. And I know I ruined everything. I said too much, crazy too much. No boy could handle that without running for the hills.
And then, without explanation, he pulls to the side of the road and stops the car. It’s twilight, and the leaves we park beneath are pastel colors. And my heart isn’t beating anymore. He turns and looks at me.
“It was me,” he says. “Outside your window, all your life. Hoping you’d let me in.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
maggie
I’m sipping tea and picking at a bagel while attempting to read a horrible script my agent sent me. It’s hard to focus on anything other than the fact I’ve fallen for my only true friend. As if on cue, my cell rings.
Andrew tells me that his next short film will be about kids talking back to a street performer, like a mime, or someone in gold lamé paint pretending to be a statue. I make the mistake of telling him that I used to do puppet shows for the Boys and Girls Club, and the kids would really get into shouting matches with my puppets. This confession is a mistake because he likes it. Next thing I know, he’s found a cardboard puppet theater from the props department and four ridiculously mismatched hand puppets and announces that I won the coveted role of puppeteer.
We set up outside the Central Park Zoo next to the Good Humor guy. My ragtag puppets basically call out insults to little kids, not a single one of whom can resist stopping and shouting back.
For example, the Duck with a lazy eye on my right hand screams to this sniffly kid with his finger up his nose, “Hey booger brain, ever heard of a Kleenex?”
The kid stops, turns, and with his finger still second knuckle deep into his nostril yells, “You smell like a Kleenex!”
Five-year-olds come up with the best comebacks.
Once I have the kids’ attention and that of their parent/nanny, the Milkmaid on my left hand tells the Duck some fanciful biography of the kid à la my normal shtick. The children scream and laugh and shout back rewrites of my stories, which are pretty clever, and the adults are so delighted they basically throw money. Several ask if I do birthday parties. The Duck answers that we only do bat mitzvahs and sweet sixteens because our material is so sophisticated.
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