by Sarah Dessen
As the weeks passed, I got somewhat more used to being with Mira in public. The bike didn’t bother me much anymore, or the clothes, unless she was really suited up, which was rare enough so that it was ultimately avoidable. It was the reaction of the rest of the world—the rest of Colby—that remained hard to take.
It wasn’t just Bea Williamson, of course. There were the women at the library who rolled their eyes when they saw Mira coming. The men at the hardware store who stifled their laughter as she picked intently through the screw section, pink purse tucked under her arm. Some people just smirked, ducking their heads. But others made it clear how they felt.
“So, Mira,” a man had said at the drugstore, where we were buying Super Glue for more fix-it projects, “the annual Fourth of July church bazaar is coming up soon. I’m sure we can count on you to be a star customer, can’t we?”
Or at the supermarket, in a hushed whisper from a pack of women huddled by the frozen foods, while Mira chose some cookies: “My goodness, Mira Sparks certainly does like those sweets, doesn’t she? And it shows.”
The fat jokes, for obvious reasons, were the worst. But I didn’t say anything; this wasn’t my fight. And if it was killing Mira, as it would have me, she hid it well. I only wondered if one day she would break altogether from the strain of holding it all in.
The closest we’d ever come to talking about it was one day at the Quik Stop, after some woman had complimented Mira, quite snidely, on her Terminator sunglasses.
“She’s not very nice,” I’d said tentatively as Mira got on her bike.
But Mira had shrugged, nudging her kickstand with one foot. “Oh, now,” was all she’d said, as if it was me that was out of line. And then she was gone, weaving back and forth across the empty road, taking her time going home.
But there were nights, after she’d gone upstairs with Cat Norman under her arm, when I’d seen the line of light under her bedroom door. I pictured her sitting on the bed, hearing those voices again in her head the way I still heard mine. If Mira was anything like me, she could only keep them out for so long. And I knew it was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.
One morning on the week of the Fourth of July, Morgan burst into work with a huge grin on her face.
“Oh, my God,” Isabel said. She was standing by the coffee machine, working on her third cup; it was drizzling and cool, bad beach weather, and we’d been slow. “What is it?”
“Mark’s coming home tonight, for the weekend,” Morgan said, almost goofy with happiness. “He just called.”
“Great,” Isabel said. “Ya-hoo.”
“Don’t be like that,” Morgan scolded, coming behind the counter and adjusting the coffee cups, pointing their handles in the proper direction. Then she moved on to the napkins, replacing them on the shelf at a right angle to the spoons. But she was still smiling. “You like Mark,” she told Isabel.
“Of course I do,” Isabel said sarcastically. “And if he actually shows up this time, I’ll like him even more. Besides, I thought we had plans.”
“He just called and said he was coming.” Morgan put a hand on her hip. There were certain postures and expressions that made her look kind of like a dodo bird. But I felt bad for thinking this.
“He said that last time, too.” Isabel craned her neck, checking on her only table.
Morgan rolled her eyes, then looked at me pleadingly. “Work for me tonight, Colie? Please?”
A double. But if I owed anyone, it was Morgan. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” She smiled, flashing her ring as she pushed her bangs out of her face. “I have, like, a million things to do. I want to cook him dinner, you know? So I need to clean the house, and buy some food, and do something with my hair. . . .”
Isabel turned back to the coffee machine, grumbling under her breath.
“So, Is,” Morgan said after a moment, “can I have the house tonight?”
“Where am I supposed to go?” Isabel said.
Morgan lowered her voice. “You know Mira would let you stay there.” I pretended to have to go back into the kitchen, where I found Norman with a book by the rain-streaked window. He glanced up and smiled, then turned a page and kept reading. Bick, who was an aging surfer, was out back with his board, waxing it and looking up glumly at the gray sky.
I could still see Morgan through the food window. “Just for tonight,” she said. “I want it to be . . . special.”
“Oh, gag,” Isabel groaned. “Whatever. I’ll get lost, if that’s what you want.”
“You rock,” Morgan said excitedly, running over and giving her a quick hug. Isabel just stood there. “Okay, then, I guess I should go. He’s coming in around six and I have so much to talk to him about . . . I mean, we’ve got to set a date for the wedding. Especially if I want to go back to school in the fall, I kind of have to know when. I mean, there’s so much to plan, you know?”
Isabel swirled her spoon in her cup, adding more cream and sugar. Morgan watched, her smile wavering.
“Isabel,” Morgan said. “Don’t be like this. I never get to see him.”
“Did he say anything about last time?” Isabel snapped. She had her back to me now. I leaned in closer against the cooler door, easing out of sight. “Did he at least apologize?”
“I didn’t ask him to—”
“Did he say he was sorry you waited up for him all night and that he stood up your entire family? Did he explain why he never picked up the phone to call you?”
“That isn’t important now.”
Isabel shook her head angrily. “God, Morgan. You are such a smart girl. Why are you being so stupid about this?”
Morgan blinked, several times. And bit by bit, that grin just slipped off her face. “It’s none of your business,” she said quietly.
“It isn’t?”
“No.” She turned and walked out from behind the counter, grabbing her keys. “It isn’t.”
“Then don’t cry to me anymore, okay?” Isabel yelled after her. I heard the bell over the front door. “Don’t sob and say how much he’s hurt you and make a big deal of taking off the ring and taking down his pictures. ’Cause I’m sick of it. So it’s none of my business. Not anymore.”
The door slammed. Isabel turned back to the window, angrily stirring her coffee. Then she saw me.
“What?” she snapped.
I shook my head. Across the kitchen, Norman kept reading, like a child so used to his parents fighting he hardly heard it anymore. And Isabel dumped her coffee and walked to the back door, where she stood watching the rain, arms across her chest, until her table was ready to leave.
That night, Isabel was off first, around nine, so Norman and I closed up together.
“Want a ride?” he asked as we stepped out into the parking lot. I could hear his keys jingling as he locked the door.
“Are you going home?” I said.
“I could.” He tossed up the keys, then caught them. “I need to make some room in my place, since the church bazaar is this weekend. It’s where I usually get most of my best stuff.”
I thought about the walk home. All of those bright house lights, the occasional glare of high beams coming toward me, making me squint. A ride would have been nice, but now I had to wonder what Norman expected in return.
“I’m okay,” I said, and started across the parking lot.
“So, I, uh, got you something,” he called after me. I turned around. He was standing next to the open passenger door of his wagon, the dome light glowing. In the back seat I could see a stack of egg crates, a lamp that appeared to be shaped like a windmill, and a large plastic goldfish. Norman, the collector.
“Got me something?” I said.
“Yeah.” He sat down in the passenger seat and opened the glove box; there was the ritual explosion of sunglasses. He rummaged through them quickly, glancing up a few times as if to make sure I hadn’t lef
t.
I stayed where I was.
“All right,” he announced triumphantly, picking out one pair and tossing all the others back into the glove box. When he slammed it shut it fell open. Twice. And then stuck, with one good whack.
I came closer as he got out and took a few steps to meet me halfway, under the bright white of the one buzzing street lamp.
“Here.” He deposited the sunglasses in my open hand; I could feel their slight weight in my palm. “I just saw them and, you know, thought of you.”
Thought of me. I looked down at them. They were black, with cat’s-eye-shaped frames, slim and streamlined. Very cool.
“Wow,” I said. “Thanks.” But I ran my tongue over my piercing to remind myself that nothing had really changed. I was still Hole in One, even as I stood under that white, white light with Norman, a cool breeze on the back of my neck.
“Well,” Norman said quickly, to cover my lack of enthusiasm, “I was just at this flea market and I saw them. You know.”
“I know,” I said, tucking them into my shirt pocket. “Thanks.”
He nodded, already retreating.
“ ‘Bye, Norman,” I called out as I reached the edge of the parking lot. He was standing by his car, keys in hand. He waved, but he didn’t say anything.
I walked fast, hands in my pockets, until I heard him drive away. Then I pulled out those sunglasses. A perfect fit. I wore them all the way back to Mira’s.
When I walked up to the house, Isabel was waiting.
“Hey,” she called out, startling me. She was sitting in the yard, cross-legged, a beer in her hand.
“Hey,” I said, keeping my voice down as I glanced up and saw the light on in Mira’s room. I didn’t know if she was sleeping. “What are you doing?”
She stretched back, resting on her palms. It was a nice night, good for sitting out in the grass. “Killing time,” she said. “I’ve been displaced, you know.” And she nodded over her shoulder toward the little white house. She seemed to be in a better mood.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” I stepped over the row of small hedges lining the driveway to join her. She had her head tilted back, eyes closed.
I could hear music, faintly, coming from the little house. Celine Dion.
“I hate this song.” Isabel took a big swig off her beer.
I didn’t say anything.
“What time is it?” she asked, opening her eyes and sitting up straight.
I glanced at my watch. “Ten-fifteen.”
She nodded. “Four hours and fifteen minutes late,” she said in a loud voice. “And counting.”
The music stopped, then started again. It was the same song, from the beginning. I could see Morgan moving around inside the little house. There was a bouquet of flowers on the trunk that served as a coffee table, and it looked like all the CDs had been straightened and stacked. She seemed to still be working on it, picking things up and moving them from one side of the room to the other. Every time she passed the door she leaned into the glass, peering out toward the dark road.
“He’s not coming,” Isabel called out.
Morgan opened the door and stuck her head out. “I heard that,” she said. Then she shut the door.
“Good,” Isabel replied quietly. Morgan moved the vase of flowers to the other side of the coffee table.
Behind the house, there was a crackling noise, and a flash of light over the water. I could hear someone laughing, far off.
“It’s not the Fourth of July yet, idiots,” Isabel said. “It’s tomorrow .”
I looked up at Mira’s house. Cat Norman was sitting in her window. Mira was on her bed, in her kimono, hands in her lap. Her hair was down and she was barefoot. Just staring.
I wondered if she could see us.
“It’s not that I don’t want Morgan to be happy,” Isabel said, as another set of fireworks went off in the distance. “Because I do. But he doesn’t make her happy.”
“She loves him,” I pointed out.
“She doesn’t know any better.” She finished her beer, depositing it in the six-pack behind her.
Morgan sat down on the couch. She moved the flowers again. “He’s the only one who’s ever told her she was beautiful,” Isabel said. “And she’s afraid she’ll never hear it from anyone else.”
Upstairs, Mira had gotten off the bed and walked toward the window, leaning over Cat Norman.
I reached up to brush my hair out of my eyes and realized I still had on Norman’s sunglasses. When I took them off the moon seemed even brighter.
“Those are nice,” Isabel said.
“Thanks.”
“Norman must like you.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “He just found them at some flea market.”
“I don’t mean he likes you,” she said, drawing the word out. “He’s just very picky about people.” She reached around for another beer. “You should be flattered.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.” Now I wished I’d taken the ride, or thanked him more.
Isabel popped the top off the bottle, running her finger around the neck. “Who was that girl, yesterday?” she asked. “The one who said those things about you.”
I looked up at Mira’s room. She’d moved back to the end of the bed and had Cat Norman in her arms. As she petted him his tail twitched back and forth, back and forth.
“Just this girl from school.”
“She thought she knew you pretty well.”
“She hates me,” I said.
“Why?”
I looked down at the grass, brushing my fingers across it. I could feel her waiting for me to answer. “I don’t know.”
“Must be a reason.”
“No,” I said. “There isn’t.” She might have wanted more, but that was all she was getting, for now.
She sighed. “High school sucks,” she said finally. “It gets better.”
I looked at her: perfect figure, perfect hair, gorgeous and self-confident. If I looked like Isabel, no one could touch me. “Yeah, right,” I said. “Like you know about that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Girls like you,” I said, “don’t even know how bad it is.”
“Girls like me,” she repeated. And she kind of half smiled, as if I’d said something funny. “What kind of girl am I, Colie?’
I shook my head. In the little house, Morgan sat down on the couch again. Morgan would understand this. She’d been like me, once, I knew it.
“Tell me,” Isabel said, leaning closer. “Go ahead.”
“A pretty one. Smart,” I said. “Popular. You were probably even a cheerleader, for God’s sake.” I felt stupid now, but it was too late to stop. “You were the kind of girl that never knew what it was like to have someone treat you the way that girl treated me. You have no idea.”
She watched me as I said this, her face smooth and calm. I could see her in high school, with a boyfriend in a varsity jacket, wearing little skirts that swirled around her perfect legs. I could see her at the prom, with a tiara and an armful of flowers. And I could see her in the gym locker room, taunting a girl who was fat and dorky with no friends. A girl like me.
“You’re wrong,” she said quietly, leaning back again.
“Yeah, right,” I said. She could have been Caroline Dawes then, for all the anger I felt simmering in me. “Then what were you?”
“I was afraid,” she said. And she turned her head away, looking back at the bright lights of the little house. “Just like you.”
We sat there for a moment, watching Morgan move through the living room.
“It’s so, so stupid,” she added softly, “what we do to ourselves because we’re afraid. It’s so stupid.” And she kept her head turned, as if I wasn’t even there.
But she was wrong. She wasn’t anything like me, and I was so close, again, to telling her why. To telling her everything. But just as I started, she turned back and I lost my nerve.
I thought of my mother, su
ddenly, of all those caterpillars waiting to Become. Of Mira, pretending to ignore the taunts that followed her. Of Morgan with her square face and lover’s grin. And me and Isabel, under a big yellow moon.
Isabel didn’t move when the car passed Mira’s driveway and pulled up in front of the little house. She didn’t turn around as someone got out of the car and strode up those stairs, Morgan running to meet him halfway. And she didn’t say a word as they went inside, the lights clicking off behind them and leaving us in the dark, with only that moon and the light from Mira’s window to see our way back.
chapter nine
The next morning, the real Fourth of July, I woke up early to go for a run, leaving Isabel crashed on the sofa. I could hear the floor creaking overhead as Mira got dressed and collected Cat Norman.
On my way down the path I passed by Norman’s door. It was ajar and I decided to stop in and thank him for the sunglasses after all. When I knocked, the door fell open. The room was packed: canvases lined the walls, stacked against each other, and hanging from the ceiling were at least ten mobiles, all of them shifting in the breeze coming in behind me. They were made of odds and ends, bits and pieces: bicycle gears, old Superballs, tiny framed pictures cut out of magazines. One was just made up of old metal rulers and protractors, clinking against each other. The mannequins he’d carried in on my first day were leaning against the wall, their midsections painted wild colors, arms stretched out, fingers Day-Glo and cheerful. The bazaar was tomorrow; I couldn’t imagine where he could fit anything else.
I found Norman in the corner on a futon, asleep under a mobile of different-colored sunglasses parts. The room was cold and he was murmuring, shirtless, the sheets tangled around him. I couldn’t take my eyes off him: his face was flushed, one arm thrown over a pillow, fingers brushing the wall. He looked different to me somehow, like some other guy, one I’d never met. And I felt strange, as if he might at any moment open his eyes and I’d have to explain myself, standing there without the food window or a shared purpose safely between us. I backed away quickly, bumping against a mannequin on the way out. But I wondered for my entire run what he’d been dreaming.