by Sarah Dessen
“Another project,” I said, nodding at the telephone, and she laughed.
“You know,” she said, “it’s always just one thing that needs to be adjusted.” She picked up a bracket and examined it, turning it in the light. “But the hardest part is discovering what that one thing is.”
“I know,” I said.
She sighed and looked at me. And then took a closer look, and smiled. “You look wonderful,” she said softly. “What’s different?”
“Everything,” I told her. And it was true. “Everything.”
We sat there. Through the living room windows I could hear faint music from next door, soft, drifting love songs. I closed my eyes.
The fireworks kept on across the water, pops followed by laughter and bellowing. “Such a noisy holiday,” Mira said. “I hate all the pomp and circumstance, everything blown up into a big deal. I much prefer a nice, quiet celebration.”
“We can do that,” I said. “Come with me.” I got up and found some matches, and she followed me onto the front porch, where we sat on the steps. I shook two sparklers out of the box, handing her one. When it burst into light she smiled, surprised.
“Oh,” she said, waving it back and forth as the sparks showered down. “It’s beautiful.”
I lit one for myself and we sat there, watching them in the darkness. “To Independence Day,” I said.
“To Independence Day.” And then she tipped hers forward, touching mine, and kept it there until they both burned out.
chapter twelve
The annual Baptist Church Bazaar was crowded, even at eight A.M. I went with Mira. She pushed her bike over to the church steps, carefully chaining it to the rail while I took a look around.
Most of Colby was there. The church itself was small and white, like something from a picture postcard, and people were milling across its neat green lawn, picking over the displays and tables of junk: mismatched plates, old cash registers, vintage clothing. In the parking lot were the bigger items, like a pop-up camper, an old rowboat with chipped red paint, and the biggest wrought-iron mirror I had ever seen—its glass broken, naturally—which instantly caught Mira’s eye. As soon as the bike was secure she headed right for it, leaving me standing in front of a table stacked with old hamster and bird cages.
For the next hour, as I browsed, I was increasingly aware, again, of how everyone reacted to Mira. I watched as they eyed her, or smirked once she had passed. A few people—Ron from the Quik Stop, the pastor of the church—waved and greeted her. But most of the town seemed to view her as some kind of alien.
“Oh, goodness, look at that,” I heard a voice I recognized. “Mira Sparks is already doing her shopping.”
I turned around slowly to see Bea Williamson standing there, the Big-Headed Baby on her hip, shaking her head at Mira, who was crouched down, examining a pair of old roller skates.
Maybe it came from facing down Caroline Dawes. Or it could have been building all summer. But suddenly, I felt a fury rise in me toward Bea Williamson and every nasty thing she’d said about Mira in my earshot. It built like a flush, crawling up my neck to make my scalp tingle, so different from my own shame yet feeling the same. I narrowed my eyes at her; she was wearing a gingham sundress and white sandals, her blond hair bouncing as she bent down to deposit the Big-Headed Baby on the grass. When she looked up, her gaze shifted past. She didn’t recognize me.
She’s got some kind of issue with Mira, Morgan had told me all those weeks ago. I don’t know what it is.
But there didn’t have to be a reason.
I moved to the other side of the table, watching her, and pretended to check the price on a bent hamster wheel.
“I’m surprised she wasn’t the first one here,” Bea was saying, as the baby toddled past her legs and started around a table covered with plastic placemats. “I half expected her to camp out last night to get the best bargains.”
“Oh, Bea,” said one of the other women—a clone, in blue and white, same hairstyle. “You’re terrible.”
“It’s just awful,” Bea said, fluffing her hair. “Whenever I see her, it practically turns my stomach.”
I thought of Caroline again, the way her nose wrinkled when she’d seen me at the Last Chance. And I glanced back at Mira, knowing this wasn’t my fight, that if she acted like she didn’t care, I should too.
But enough was enough.
I found myself walking around that table, right up to Bea Williamson. I stepped between her and the blue clone, and she stepped back, surprised, then remembered who I was: her eyes went right to my lip ring. The flush was still burning my skin, as I stood there ready to do for Mira what she’d never done for herself.
I took a deep breath, not even sure what words I would say, how I would begin. But I didn’t even get a chance.
“Colie?”
It was Mira. She was standing right beside me, with her bike; there was a shiny chrome toaster—priced to sell at four dollars—wedged in the basket. She didn’t even seem to notice Bea Williamson and her friend.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked, putting a hand on my arm.
I looked at Bea Williamson, all the words I wanted to say about to spill out. But Mira had already started to push her bike, oblivious, the toaster rattling, and I had to let her lead me away.
We walked together along the road toward the Last Chance, her bike between us. The toaster clanged each time we hit a bump. The rest of her purchases—two old hatboxes, a leaking beanbag chair, and a set of socket wrenches—had been left for Norman to pick up later.
The further we walked, the more what had just happened bothered me, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mira,” I asked her suddenly, as a car blew past, “how do you stand it?”
She looked up at me, dodging a pothole. The toaster clanked. “Stand what?”
“Being here,” I said, waving a hand at the Last Chance, the Quik Stop, everything. “How can you stand the way they treat you?”
She turned her head. “How do they treat me?” she asked. I wondered if she was joking.
“You know what I mean, Mira.” It wasn’t like I wanted to start listing things, adding insult to injury. Still, I had to make my point. “The things they say, about your bike, or your clothes. The way they look at you and laugh. I just—I just don’t see how you can take it, day after day. It’s got to hurt so much.”
She stopped walking and leaned against the bike, looking at me with those wide, blue eyes, so much like my mother’s. “They don’t hurt me, Colie,” she said. “They never have.”
“Mira, come on,” I said. “I’ve spent this whole summer seeing it. I mean, what about Bea Williamson? You can’t tell me—”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, “It’s not about Bea Williamson. It’s not about anyone. I’m a lucky person, Colie. I’m an artist, I have my health, and I have friends who fill my life and make me happy. I have no complaints.”
“But it has to hurt you,” I said. “You just hide it so well.”
“No.” And then she smiled at me, as if this wasn’t as complicated as I was making it. “Look at me, Colie,” she said, gesturing down at her big yellow shirt and leggings, her little purple high-tops. “I’ve always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that’s okay. I know I work in my own way.”
All this time I’d thought we had everything in common, but I’d been wrong.
I stood there, at the side of the road, and watched as she got on her bike, beginning to pedal slowly downhill toward home. She turned back to wave at me, and then started to coast, the wind picking up behind her. Her hair streamed out and her yellow shirt began to flap wildly, billowing out like crazy wings as, before my eyes, she began to fly.
Around the end of the rush that day, the phone rang and I reached for it, drawing a ticket out of my pocket and my pen from my hair.
“Last Chance,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Is Colie there?”
&nbs
p; It was a boy. I glanced back at Norman—the only boy who might logically call me—to see him sitting by the grill reading a book about Salvador Dali and eating french fries.
“This is she,” I said. Morgan looked up from her salt shakers.
“Hey,” the boy said, relieved. “It’s Josh. From last night?”
“Oh, right,” I said, leaning back against the coffee machine. “Hi.”
“Hi. So, we’re getting ready to leave here, but, uh . . .” I could hear noises in the background, people talking and car doors slamming. “But I wondered if maybe I could call you when you got home. I mean, I live in Charlotte too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
Isabel came down the hallway, her hair up, ready for work. “Take-out order?” she asked Morgan, nodding at me.
“Nope,” Morgan whispered. “Boy.”
Isabel raised her eyebrows. “Stand up straight.”
“He can’t see me,” I hissed, covering the mouthpiece.
“So we could get together and see a movie, or something. You know, before school starts,” Josh continued.
So did Isabel. “Just do it. And don’t give him your number, even if he asks for it.”
“Isabel,” Morgan said.
“Don’t,” she repeated. “I’m serious.”
“That would be great,” I said to Josh. “I won’t be home till mid-August though, probably.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “You want to just give me your number now?” Someone guffawed in the background—another boy—and I heard Josh cup his hand over the receiver.
“Um,” I said, and Isabel narrowed her eyes at me, one hand on her hip, “you know, I just got slammed with a bunch of tables. But you can get it from Caroline. She lives right next door.”
“She does?” he said. “She didn’t tell me that.”
I bet she didn’t, I thought. Morgan laughed out loud, but Isabel just nodded and got her lunch out of the window.
“Look,” I said, “I should go. But call me, okay? In August.”
“In August,” he said. “I will.”
I hung up the phone and looked to Isabel. Norman had put down his book and was watching from the kitchen. Since he’d come back from the bazaar he’d acted strange, ducking his head and not meeting my eyes. I didn’t know what his problem was.
“Our Colie,” Morgan said proudly. “Look how she’s grown.”
“You’re still slouching,” Isabel said.
I smiled at Morgan, who sighed and filled another salt shaker. “Young love,” she said. “It makes me really miss Mark.”
“Ugh,” Isabel said, pouring herself a Coke. “Don’t start.”
“It was so nice of him to surprise me like that,” she said for at least the hundredth time. Mark’s unannounced visit had settled her doubts once and for all and left a perpetually dreamy look on her face: Isabel said it could only be love—or gas. “I want to do something to surprise him, you know?”
Isabel just rolled her eyes.
“He’s calling me in August,” I said, wrapping the phone cord around my wrist.
“Don’t accept his first offer for a date,” Isabel told me, pulling a magazine out from her stash by the bus pan. “Say you’re busy at least once. Twice is better. You call the shots, Colie.”
“Right.” I wondered how I would handle things when she wasn’t around.
I heard the kitchen door slam shut. Norman was gone, his book lying open on the prep table. When I looked outside he was standing by his car, which was packed full with things he’d gotten at the bazaar. Mira’s beanbag chair was stuffed in the back seat, a bit of orange fake leather poking out the window.
“Sheesh,” Morgan said. “What’s going on with Norman?”
Isabel turned another page of her magazine. “He’s jealous.”
“Of what?”
Isabel looked at me. “What do you think?”
“Not me,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“He likes you. Didn’t you see his face when you were talking to him at the fireworks, Colie? It was obvious.”
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”
“I am never wrong about these things.” She glanced outside at Norman, who was now sitting in the front seat of his car, fiddling with the glove box. He slammed it shut; it dropped open. Again. And again.
“Shit!” he yelled.
“See?” Isabel said simply. “He’s jealous. He probably had a whole plan for winning your affection. He probably,” she said, thinking, “was going to ask you to sit for a portrait.”
The portrait. Hot chocolate. “Oh my God,” I said, slowly. “Last night. I totally forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Morgan said.
“He was going to make me hot chocolate.”
“Was he really?” Morgan said, sitting up. “Man, that is good stuff! I am not lying to you. He makes it with milk, not water, and then he—”
“Morgan.” Isabel put down her magazine.
“Yes?”
“Shut up.” She turned to me. “So? What do you think about him?”
“Norman?”
“Duh.” Isabel rolled her eyes at me. “Yes. Norman.”
I looked outside. He was sitting on the back tailgate of his car now, in his orange T-shirt and black Ray•Ban sunglasses. What did I think of Norman? Yes, he was cute. And he’d been nice to me since my first day in Colby. But he wasn’t Josh. On the other hand, he wasn’t Chase Mercer, either.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like him a lot, but he’s just so . . .”
“So what?”
I thought of Josh, with his easy good looks. Then of Norman’s uneasy sleep under all those mobiles. “I mean, he’s kind of . . . he’s not really my type.”
“Your type,” Morgan said.
Isabel arched her eyebrow. “And what, exactly, is your type?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “All that collecting he does. And the sunglasses, and his car . . . I don’t know. He’s just . . . Norman. You know.”
“No,” she said, folding her arms. “I don’t know.”
“He’s sweet,” I said. “But I don’t know if I could ever really go out with him. He’s a little out there. You understand that, Isabel.”
“No, I don’t understand that,” she said slowly. Morgan put down her salt shaker. “What I do know,” Isabel said, gathering steam, “is that when you showed up here all in black, with your friggin’ lip pierced and your hair a ratty mess, with more attitude than even I have, ‘out there’ did not even cover what I thought of you.”
“Isabel,” Morgan said.
Isabel held up a hand to stop her. “No,” she said. Then she turned back to me. “Look, Colie. Don’t let some cute guy make you forget yourself. I never would have encouraged you if I thought you would become like that girl who came in here and called you those things.”
“I’m not,” I said, hurt.
“Right now, you are.” She picked up her magazine again. “Norman is the nicest, sweetest boy I’ve ever met. If you think he’s not good enough for you, you must be better than any of us.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. I could feel my throat getting tight. Even Morgan wouldn’t look at me.
“You didn’t have to,” Isabel said. “You, of all people, should know that what isn’t said can hurt the most.”
She was right. Mira’s words that morning should have taught me something. I took off my apron and balled it up, stuffing it beside the coffee machine. Then I walked out from behind the counter, down the hallway, and locked myself in the bathroom.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror: my new hair, my new eyebrows. My new me. If Isabel was right, I could never forgive myself. Just as my mother vowed never to forget the Fat Years, I could never let myself forget my Years of Shame. If I did, I was no better than Bea Williamson or Caroline Dawes.
I watched Norman from the bathroom window. He was bent over the tailgate, looking for something. He’
d never been anything but nice to me.
For the rest of the day, I kept to myself. Isabel was gone by early afternoon, leaving Morgan and me to close together. Norman was in the kitchen finishing up.
All I knew about him was what I’d seen and assumed. So many times I’d sat watching from my room as he lugged strange objects into his apartment: dead fish mounted on plaques, someone’s old hockey trophies, a stack of TV trays decorated with the faces of presidents, even an antique waffle iron that was so heavy it got away from him, tumbling down the grass to hit the birdbath with a crash.
Then there were the portraits. That slow, loping way of moving. The sunglasses. And, finally, how I’d hurt him without even trying. When I finally asked Morgan about him, she looked up at me and smiled, as if she’d been waiting for the question.
“Oh, Norman,” she said as we sprayed trays with Windex. She glanced back into the kitchen, where he was in the walk-in cooler, examining a box of lemons. “He’s a sweetheart.”
“He is,” I said quietly. If anyone could forgive me for how I’d acted, it was Morgan. “What’s his story?”
She put her tray aside and folded her rag, neatly. “Well,” she said seriously, “he’s had a lot of family trouble. His dad is Big Norm Carswell. He owns that auto dealership, the one with the searchlight, right before you come over the bridge? You’ve probably seen the commercials. He’s got white hair and throws his arms around a lot, screaming about good deals.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. He was on a lot during wrestling. “I’ve seen those.”
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “Anyway, he’s a big deal around here. City Council, Tourism Board, all that. Norman’s two older brothers have both gone into the business. But Norman . . .”
She trailed off as the cooler door slammed, waiting until Norman emerged with a handful of lemons and went outside.
“Anyway,” she went on quietly, “Norman’s just not the car salesman type, you know? And a couple of years back, when he started talking about applying to art schools, his dad just freaked. Said he wouldn’t pay for it, that it was a waste of time, all that. It was so ridiculous. Norman had already gotten a scholarship; he starts this fall. He’s good, Colie. You should see his stuff.”