“Fantastic! I’m delusional and I’m a shitty friend. Thanks a lot. I feel so much better now.”
She stormed into the house, and I trailed behind her, pleading. “Reesa, I’m sorry. Please.”
She grabbed my stuff from her room, threw it at my feet, and slammed the door. I picked up my bag and went into the hallway bathroom to do something about my hair. It was still teased into a ridiculous Afro. I dug through my bag for a brush and dragged it over my hair until it was straight enough to braid. When I was finished, I looked like some kind of crazed Heidi.
I changed into my extra clothes—a cute skirt and boots I’d brought in case Reesa wanted to go out. I paused outside her door, but the music was blasting and she didn’t answer my knock. I whispered, “I’m sorry,” then hurried downstairs and outside. James was just driving up when I reached the Morgans’ gate. He looked incredibly hot and thoroughly confused.
“Hey,” he said.
I hopped into his car without a word and he drove off. I had no idea where we were going but didn’t really care. I was pretty sure I’d just lost my best friend. Losing James, too, would be a perfect icing on the cake of my increasingly miserable life.
“You didn’t get my note, did you?” I said. “About meeting at the King last night?”
“No,” he said. “I looked everywhere. Where did you leave it?”
“Right on the shelf.”
He shook his head. “Didn’t find it. Then I thought maybe you left it at the cemetery, so I went there this morning and searched all over the place.”
I groaned. “I’m sorry.”
“So you thought I stood you up?”
I nodded. “How did you find me?”
“I waited at the Save-a-Cent until your friend”—he cleared his throat—“excuse me, not-your-friend Lennie came along, so I could ask him where you live.”
“You didn’t,” I cringed.
“Yeah, and he wouldn’t tell me at first. He said if you wanted me to know where you lived, you would’ve told me yourself.”
“Well, that’s kind of true.”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to throw me a thoroughly exasperated look. “Why wouldn’t you want me to know where you live?”
I sank down in my seat a bit. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? I live in the worst neighborhood in the district.”
“And . . . you think I care about that?”
“I don’t know,” I said meekly. “You drive such a nice car. . . .”
He pulled up to a red light and squared his shoulders to face me. “Is that why you like me? Because I drive a nice car?”
“No.” I bent over and buried my face in my knees. I took a deep breath, hoping the words would come out right, and flopped back on the seat. “That day when we went to the cemetery, you said truth is never as good as what you imagine. I was afraid I wouldn’t live up to . . . you know, whatever you imagined.”
The light turned green and he drove on. I stared at the road in front of us until he pulled to the side and stopped the car.
“All I imagined was a girl who makes me feel special,” he said. “Who likes me for who I am, not for where I live, or who my family is, or what kind of car I drive. You could live in a cardboard box for all I care.”
“Well, it might come to that,” I said.
“Don’t care,” he said.
“I can’t afford to go places, like into the city. Or to concerts. I can’t even rent a stupid costume for Willow’s Halloween party.”
“Really don’t care about any of that.”
“You say that now,” I said. “But when everybody else is doing something fabulous and I can’t?”
“You’re all the fabulous I need.”
I sighed. “Stop saying the right thing.”
He laughed. “I’m not trying to.”
A reluctant smile came to my lips. “Stop being nice without even trying.”
“I’ll, uh . . . try to, um, not try?”
We both laughed, and he took one of my braids in his fingers and tugged it until my lips were close enough to kiss. And then he did, he kissed me until it felt like he was my oxygen and I was his. Cars zoomed by in the darkness, their head beams hitting us with bursts of light—like fireworks ignited by the heat of our kisses.
When we finally pulled apart, I looked into his icy-blue-warm eyes, and said, “You need to not try more often.”
He threw his head back in a silent laugh and shifted the car into gear, and we sped off into the night—my lips tingling and heart singing.
THIRTY-ONE
We ended up at my favorite burger joint, the Charcoal Hut. It had mini jukeboxes at each booth, with a selection of mostly old songs. James threatened to play “Stairway to Heaven.” And he insisted on ordering for me in a British accent. I couldn’t help thinking how much Reesa would’ve loved that, if she was on this date instead of me.
“The lady will have the cheeseburger deluxe, hold the onion. And I shall have the same. A basket of fried potatoes, as well.”
The waitress rolled her eyes and scribbled it down. “Anything to drink?”
“Just water for me,” I said, realizing the five dollars I had in my pocket might not even cover my cheeseburger.
James leaned toward me across the table, holding the menu up to hide our faces from the waitress’s view. “My treat. Don’t worry.”
“See? This is exactly what I was afraid of. I don’t want you paying for me all the time.”
“It isn’t all the time. It’s one time. And I asked you out. You can pay the next time.”
“That’s just it. I can’t pay the next time. I can’t pay any of the times.”
The waitress shifted her weight from one hip to another, tapping her pencil on her order pad.
James peered over the menu at her. “Could you give us a minute? We’re still deciding.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away.
James laid the menu down and crossed his arms on the table, leaning toward me again. “So we’ll do things that don’t cost money. We’ll go to the library or the park or the cemetery or watch TV or . . .”
“We don’t get cable. We can’t even watch real TV at my house.”
“Whatever.” He gave an exasperated sigh but paired it with a mischievous smile. “I wasn’t actually planning to watch the TV.”
I felt my face go red.
“I really don’t care where we go or what we do or how much it costs,” he said softly. “Every single other girl I’ve ever dated has . . .”
He stopped abruptly and looked down, fiddling with the corner of the menu.
“Has what?” I whispered.
“Cared more about money than they have about me,” he said.
I lowered my face to catch his downcast eyes. “How is that even possible?” I said. “You’re so much better than anything money could buy.”
He smiled, chin still tipped downward. “Stop saying the right thing.”
I laughed. “I almost never say the right thing. You should seriously be savoring the moment.”
“I am.” He looked up at me out of the top of his eyes, through the sweep of hair across his brow. “There’s just one thing that would make this moment even better.”
I felt the blood rush to my face, sure he was going to ask me to kiss him. Right in the middle of the Charcoal Hut. But he opened the menu instead.
“Please share a milk shake with me,” he said in a pleading voice. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. Two straws.”
“All right.” I smiled.
He opened the menu again. “Chocolate okay?”
I nodded and he sat back to look for the waitress. When she finally sauntered back to our table, he struck up the British accent again. “Chocolate milk shake. Two straws, if you please.”
“Anything else, Your Highness?” She was begrudgingly enjoying herself.
“That will be all, kind lady.”
Our milk shake arrived and we slurped away at i
t quietly, laughing each time our foreheads touched.
“So,” he said. “Your parents seemed nice—a little confused when I showed up—”
“Sorry about that.” I took another sip of milk shake.
“You’re, uh . . . new to Lakeside?”
I paused, and then everything I’d been holding in or hiding from, pretending wasn’t there . . . it all started tumbling out. What happened with our house, my dad’s struggling business, Brady’s disability and needing the money for his therapy. Even the trip to the food pantry at the church that morning.
“I’ve seen people lined up there before,” he said.
“It was scary. I mean, the volunteers were nice and everything but the people . . .” I didn’t want to act like I was any better than they were, but some of them had genuinely frightened me—the hardness of their gaze and the way their struggles seemed to be etched into their faces. “They made me feel like a fraud, I guess—”
“Like you hadn’t suffered enough to be there?” he said.
“Yeah. Exactly.” I felt lighter, like I’d been wearing a heavy cloak and had finally managed to shrug it off. “Now you know all my secrets,” I said playfully, “You have to tell me yours.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What makes you think I have secrets?”
I shrugged. “Everyone has secrets.”
“I’m pretty boring,” he said, stirring his straw in the bottom of the glass to break up a chunk of ice cream. “At least I’m not a secret from Reesa anymore. Am I?”
I shook my head. That heavy feeling I’d just shed was starting to come back. “Could we talk about something else?”
We both leaned in to sip from the shake and our foreheads touched. “What do you want to talk about?” he said in a voice so low, it sent a tingle up my spine.
I pulled back a few inches. “Um, I . . . uh . . . how about Shakespeare?”
He smiled and sat back, too. “You want to talk about Shakespeare?”
“Okay, no. But I do have a new appreciation for Romeo and Juliet.”
“I totally butchered it,” he said. “We should go see it onstage sometime, with real actors. . . .”
It was yet another thing I couldn’t afford to do. I looked down at the plate the waitress had just slid in front of me, the juicy burger and mound of steaming French fries. I’d never realized how much money ruled our lives, every activity, every conversation. It was impossible to avoid.
“They have free performances in the park sometimes,” James said quietly. “Or we can go back to the cemetery and read the lines to each other. Or . . .” He paused, a slow grin lifting the corners of his mouth. “I read the lines, you sing them.”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “No way.”
“Come on.” He shook the ketchup bottle and squirted a blob onto his plate. “I want to hear you sing again.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I dipped a fry into the ketchup and took a bite. “I’m afraid.”
“Of me?”
“No. Of me.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but James didn’t laugh at me or joke about it. He seemed to understand or, at least, he didn’t misunderstand.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said.
He had stopped eating and was watching me, listening to me.
I stared into his pale-blue eyes. “There was this talent show when I was in the fifth grade, not just for the fifth grade though,” I said. “It was a big deal, the whole school district was involved, kids a lot older than me performing—it was held at a huge auditorium. I wrote a song and I practiced for months. I imagined it every night before bed, how I’d get up there and play perfectly and sing perfectly and everyone would applaud and I’d take bow after bow.
“But I tripped on my way onstage, just a little bit. Probably nobody even noticed, but I started thinking how I’d already messed up. It wouldn’t be perfect. Then I saw everybody staring at me and I felt nervous and I never felt that way when I practiced. It wasn’t how I imagined it. And I thought, ‘Now I’ve really ruined it.’ And the longer I stood there, the worse it was. I really had ruined it then. I completely froze onstage. I could hardly breathe. Some kid had to lead me away.”
“But you were little,” said James.
“I know that, but I can’t get rid of it,” I said. “The stage and the audience—that’s just what sets it off. The rest happens in here.” I tapped the side of my head. “It’s my own brain. It’s me. My throat closes up. I can’t even sing to the twins at bedtime anymore because someone might hear me through our walls.”
“You sang in the band room that day, in front of Reesa, and . . . you know”—he lowered his voice—“that creepy guy in the closet.”
I tried to a smile. “Yes, but I didn’t know you were there. And I’ve known Reesa my whole life.”
“But you did it.”
“Barely. And I had to pretend. . . .” I hesitated, not sure I should trust him with the full magnitude of my weirdness.
He reached across the table to rub his thumb across the back of my hand. “Pretend what?”
“I had to imagine myself in your cemetery,” I said. “Singing to the tombstones.”
He grinned madly. “My tombstone trick worked?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “But I don’t know if I can trick myself like that again. And now my friend Molly wants me to perform something with her at open mic night.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s why you were there?”
I nodded.
“And the audience was scary?”
“No,” I said. “They were pretty supportive, actually.”
“And you still think perfection is a requirement at open mic night?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t something I required of anybody else, but I expected it from myself. I don’t know why.
James leaned across the table, bent low. “Okay, so here’s the plan. You go to open mic night. You don’t have to tell anybody. Just show up and sing to the tombstones. Write a song about imperfection, and then mess it all the hell up. Do it for yourself.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
He took another slurp from the milk shake, and I leaned in, and our noses almost touched. His hair fell across his eyes and he pushed it back. “Seriously,” he said. “If the last sound I ever hear is you singing, I’ll die happy.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. My family and Reesa had been telling me for years, and now Molly, too. Maybe I could start believing it was true. I looked away so he couldn’t see that my eyes were watering.
“Too much?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just right.”
THIRTY-TWO
I went to sleep Saturday night nearly delirious over my date with James, but Sunday morning the joy was gone. Reesa hated me. I kept picking up the phone to call her, to apologize again, but what more could I say? I had lied to her. She had every right to be mad.
I took a walk around the neighborhood after breakfast and found Molly sitting on the stoop of her house, which was small but cute. The yard was neatly trimmed, and flower boxes hung below the windows. She smiled as I approached. “Hiya, neighbor.”
“Hey,” I said. “I think I can see your house from my bedroom.” I pointed toward my attic window, which peeked out above the squat houses. Molly had picked me up on Friday night, so I hadn’t been sure which house was hers until now.
She craned her neck sideways to see my window. “Ah. Cool.”
“Lennie calls it ‘Turd Tower.’” I crinkled my nose.
She smiled. “At least you have a view.”
“Luxurious Lakeside penthouse with spectacular view,” I said with exaggerated enthusiasm, like I was reading a real estate advertisement. “Extra-brown exterior hides the dirt!”
Molly swept her hand to the side to present her own house. “Charming mobile home poorly disguised to not look like it belongs in a trailer park!”
> I laughed. “It doesn’t! Not at all.”
“Yeah?” she said, standing and motioning me to follow her. “Wait till you see the lavish interior.”
We went in, and it was nicely decorated but there was no hiding that it was a trailer once you stepped inside. It was long and narrow. Molly’s room was on one end. We walked through the living room, kitchen, and bathroom as she led me to her room, and my mouth fell open as I stood in the middle of it and looked around. Unlike the drab décor of my attic, which clearly evoked that I had no intentions of staying long, Molly’s was a work of art. She had painted a collage of images and words directly onto the walls. There were poems, quotes, lines from books. It was a cocoon of self-expression, of grief and joy and everything in between.
“Wow. This is amazing.” My eyes scanned the walls, reading quotes by Mark Twain and Dr. Seuss, Emily Dickinson, and Charlie Brown. I pointed to one that had no attribution:
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
“Who said that?”
“Anonymous,” said Molly. “Anonymous has a lot to say.”
Some of the quotes were scribbled with pencil or marker, others were applied neatly with stencils. There were colorful designs twined through and around them, like a complicated dance of snakes and vines and fireworks.
“This is my current favorite.” She pointed to one scripted beautifully in purple ink.
It was by Picasso. “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money,” I read.
“When I first saw that, I was like, huh? Who would live like this if they didn’t have to? But then I thought about all the stuff that’s actually kind of cool about this place.”
I gave her a skeptical glance. “Seriously?”
“I can scribble on my bedroom walls and nobody pitches a hissy fit,” she said.
“You can eat supper on the living room floor,” I said. “You can talk to somebody at the other end of the house without getting up.”
She laughed. “Nobody cares if your lawn isn’t mowed just so, or what kind of car you drive, or if you have the right clothes or the right friends or . . . you know. All that crap.”
Or if you shop at a food pantry, or let your disabled brother play in the road, or . . .
Between the Notes Page 18