I’ll never be this close to him again and I don’t want it to end.
He shifts underneath me, and I realize I need to get up. As I peel myself away from him, I feel like I’m losing something, giving up something I will never have again even though I’ve only just discovered what it could be.
I’m glad Ben can’t see my face when I turn a little, using the helmet to obscure my expression. I don’t even know what my expression is, because there are too many emotions raging inside me: longing, hurt, confusion, fear, and utter, complete infatuation.
He climbs to his feet and brushes the dirt off his riding pants. His shoulders and chest seem to be rising more rapidly than normal. Is he breathing as hard as I am? Is his heart racing like mine?
I unbuckle the strap and then slip the goggles and helmet over my head, hoping as I run my fingers through my hair that I don’t look like a total wreck. “Maybe I’ll save the motocross lessons for another day,” I say, grinning at him, trying to obscure the feelings raging inside me.
“And maybe next time I’ll wear full body padding.”
I laugh and try not to wonder if Ben is really edging closer to me or if I’m imagining it. I step back. My bike is about twenty-five feet away, on its side. Even knowing it’s going to vanish in a few days doesn’t stop me from cringing at the sight of it in a heap.
“Why’d you and Nicole break up?” I ask abruptly, staring at the bike instead of Ben.
Ben blows out a long breath and runs his fingers through his hair. “Honestly? It wasn’t any one thing. I mean, we did everything we were supposed to do. We went to dinners and movies, and we celebrated our anniversary, and we introduced each other to our parents. But it just wasn’t there.”
“So you dumped her?”
The bark of laughter is enough to make me turn and look at him. He looks beautiful and irresistible in the shadows of the stadium-style lighting “No. She dumped me. I mean, it caught me off guard, but she was right. There was nothing real between us.”
“Oh,” I say, wondering if there would be something real between us. Does he ever feel what I feel? Does he count the times we touch?
“I should go,” I say, walking over to my bike. “I’m grounded and my mom will kill me if she calls the house and realizes I’m not home.”
I walk over to the bike, but before I can pick it up, Ben is jogging up to me. He grabs my arm. “What’s up with you these days? You’re all over the place.”
I keep staring at the place where his fingers touch the crimson sweater. He notices and slowly releases my arm.
Even though I lost count, I’m positive we’ve never touched this much. I’ll never forget this night. I’ll be playing it over and over again in my mind tonight.
“I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel bad,” I say, still not looking at him. “But you’re Nicole’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or whatever, and that’s that.”
Ben doesn’t say anything and somehow I doubt what I just said made any sense to him.
“I don’t understand you,” he says.
“And you won’t. I have a boyfriend. An awesome boyfriend,” I say. I’m grasping at straws now. I walk away from him and pick up the bike. “I have to go.”
I feel lower than low right now as I push the bike off the track, Ben trailing me. One second I’m laughing and staring at him like I want to kiss him and the next I’m shoving him away and running.
I have to sort things out with Nicole before I can talk to Ben about anything. And the wishes need to get out of the way.
Everything is much too complicated to throw this . . . thing with Ben into the middle of it all.
Ben loads the bike for me, and I stand aside as he ties it down, quickly and easily, his skilled hands working much quicker than mine had when I loaded it up.
When he shuts the tailgate, silence settles around us like a veil.
“Thanks for the lesson,” I say, stepping backward, away from him.
“Sure.” He takes a few strides toward the track, then stops and looks up at me. “Are things ever going to be normal with us again?”
“I don’t know what normal is,” I say, yanking the truck door open. “I really don’t.”
And then before I can say anything else, I climb in, fire it up, and drive out of the fields, blinking hard against the tears that seem to come from nowhere.
31
THROUGHOUT the next day at school, Nicole still doesn’t speak to me. I spend my lunch in the darkroom, trying to develop photos for the project, but I’m too distracted to come up with anything good. When the bell rings, I head to the big bathroom down the hall, my backpack haphazardly crammed full of my stuff and slung over my shoulder.
I shove the door open, hard, and when it bounces off the wall, the girl near the sink jumps up into the air and turns to glare at me.
I stop.
It’s Janae.
But it’s . . . not.
Her face is . . . completely broken out. Like, totally covered in acne. Pimples litter her forehead, go down her nose, sprinkle her chin and cheeks. What did she do—cover her face in chocolate and then sleep in it?
She sees me staring and her eyes narrow into angry little slits, but the effect is ruined because there are tears streaming down her face, so I know her wrath is tempered.
It’s so weird to see her . . . well . . . ugly. I’ve never seen so much as one pimple on her face, ever. I mean, Nicole has battled acne for years, but Janae?
O. M. G.
I freeze halfway to the bathroom stall and give her another long look.
This is a wish! Finally, a cool freakin’ wish.
I take in the array of pimples covering her face, obscuring her perfect beauty, and one half of me wants to jump for joy as the other half feels torn and sad, which I don’t understand. Because Janae is mean, deserves everything she has coming to her.
I remember wishing for this now. When we were twelve, Nicole’s acne really kicked into gear. Guess if she got boobs early, she got the acne to go with it. Janae was perfecting her mean-girl tactics by then, and for the next few years, she’d make Nicole burst into tears a time or seven.
And Janae had really dished it out on one of my birthdays, because by the time Nicole made it to my house to have cake and go out with my family, her eyes were red and swollen. Janae had ripped into Nicole so hard that Nicole spent the first hour of my birthday celebration sniffling.
So I’d wished that Janae would know what it was like to be suffering from something she couldn’t control, to have everyone see it and judge her and laugh at her.
“Oh,” I say. The word seems too big, echoing on the bathroom walls. “Um, sorry.”
She can’t know what I’m sorry for, why I’m apologizing, but I can’t stop the word from escaping anyway. Because some part of me really is sorry. The pain in her eyes is just as real as the pain in Nicole’s had been. Has been, for years.
“Yeah, right,” Janae says as she turns back to her reflection.
“No, seriously, I mean, that really sucks.”
Okay, foot, meet mouth.
Janae blinks a few times to clear the tears from her eyes. “Thanks, freak. It’s this awful new lotion, I think.” She sniffles and stands up straighter, as if to pull herself together. She runs a finger under her tear-streaked eyes, but it smears the mascara even worse, leaving black winged smudges around the edges of her eyes.
“Whatever. Your melodramatic hysterics are a bit over the top,” I say.
She turns to look at me, really look. I want to shrink away, because even a tear-streaked, snot-filled, acne-covered mess, she’s still the same person. “You’re just saying that because if you looked like this, you’d probably get out a Magic Marker and connect the dots and tell everyone they’re constellations.”
Is that a compliment or an insult?
I shrug. “Your face will be back to normal by Monday. Chill.” I know it will be back to normal by Monday because the wishes end then.
Janae
turns toward me and crosses her arms. “Don’t you have a lamb to sacrifice or something? Another body part to enhance, perhaps?”
Oh. Okay, well, that answers that. She was definitely trying to insult me.
I guess some people just never change, even with wish intervention.
I head to the bathroom stall and listen as Janae turns the sink off and leaves, the door swinging back and forth a few times. Before it stills, however, a new group of girls enter.
“I didn’t know steroids did that, though. Are you sure?” The voice is nasally, annoying. I don’t recognize it.
“I don’t know, but Miranda saw her changing in PE and said her boobs were really that big, that it didn’t look like she was stuffing. How else do you get that big overnight? That is totally not normal.”
“As if that girl has ever been normal.”
I freeze. I suddenly want to pick my feet up off the ground so they won’t see me, but I am afraid to move, afraid to alert them to my presence.
“Actually, she was totally different in junior high. She was in my computer science class.”
“Really? ’Cuz these days she’s totally weird. I heard she has a purple goat at home.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, she probably milks it and makes goat cheese.”
The girls’ laughter rings out, filling the room. I fume. I want to leave the stall, but every moment I wait makes it seem harder to reveal myself.
There are about a thousand things I could say to them right now. I could offer them some goat cheese, wiggle my boobs, say something snide.
But instead I just sit quietly and listen until they’ve left the room, and then I get up and go wash my hands.
I make my way to my locker to ditch a few of my books. I’m just swinging the door shut when someone taps me on the shoulder, and I jump.
Uh-oh.
It’s Ken.
“Hey, sweetie,” he says. “I want to apologize for last night. I didn’t realize it was a school kind of thing.”
I glance around. So far no one has noticed him.
“Um, yeah, this is too. A school thing. This is school, actually.”
“I know, but Ann said she’s been here before, so I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if I just dropped by.”
“Oh?” I’m going to kill her. Was I not clear enough about the visitor policy here?
My heart stops altogether when he plants one hand on either side of my shoulders, so I’m trapped between him and the locker.
PDA alert! PDA alert!
I try to turn away, but it doesn’t work, because Ken just leans a little bit to the right, and before I can take another breath, his lips press into mine. My fingers tighten around the straps of my backpack.
Ken pulls away, enough so that I can speak.
“I think we should see other people,” I blurt out.
He doesn’t move. He’s leaning in close, like he could kiss me again at any moment.
“What?” I can feel his breath on my cheek, warm. It smells like cinnamon or Red Hots or something.
“Look, you’re, um, awesome, but I just don’t feel sparks anymore. I think we need to break up.”
His eyes search mine as his face remains expressionless.
“Is that really what you want?”
“Yes. It is.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move away from me. I feel like he’s staring at my lips, like he wants to kiss me again to convince me to change my mind. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve been acting weird for days.”
I clear my throat because it’s like he doesn’t realize he’s still so close to me. “And also, Ann . . . she likes you. You should give her a shot.”
One eyebrow goes up. It’s hard to see because his face is so close to mine. “Ann? Really?”
I nod. I wish he’d back up.
“Maybe.”
Huh. That was entirely too simple. He stands up, and I feel like I can breathe for the first time in ten minutes. “I guess I’ll catch you later,” he says, and then walks away.
I watch him leave, feeling a little bit bad but also suddenly, gloriously free, and then I turn around.
Ben is standing there, in the middle of the hall, watching me. His expression makes guilt tear through me.
He looks betrayed, his blue eyes staring right at me, accusing me. His shoulders, behind that perfect, ribbed navy sweater, are slumped.
I don’t understand it, but he looks hurt. Like I hurt him. Stuck a knife in and twisted.
And now I know.
I know that during the moment at the track, when I stared at him and he stared back, he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him. That he cursed that helmet just as I did.
That maybe he does count each time we touch.
He shakes his head, slowly, and then spins around and walks the other way.
And as I watch him disappear around the corner, I can’t help but wonder if this is the exact moment where I officially lost everything.
32
I DON’T SLEEP at all that night. Not a single, solitary moment. I listen to the rain outside my open window, listen to the snores coming from Ann, and try not to toss and turn, because I know I’ll never be comfortable no matter how I lie.
As soon as the sun rises over the Cascade mountaintops, I climb out of bed and throw on jeans, an old T-shirt with a rabid-looking unicorn, and a plain black hoodie. I sweep my boring brown hair back into a ponytail as I head out into the backyard to get the pony.
She’ll be gone in a couple of days, and I’ve spent this whole time wishing she’d disappear. So I might as well give her one nice morning. I’ll take her to the park down the street and let her eat all the grass she can for the next hour or so, until I have to drag my weary butt to school.
I swing open the door to the shed, and the pony bursts out.
I crinkle my nose as I step into the shed to find the rope halter Ann made for her.
I sure hope that the poop magically disappears at the same time as the pony. So gross.
I slip the rope onto the pony and wrestle around with it until it vaguely resembles something that will keep her from running away. I guess that’s ironic since I’ve spent this whole time wishing she would run away.
I let her take little snatches and bites of grass as we drift to the gate and cross in front of the house.
We don’t get anywhere near the park, though, because there’s a car in the driveway.
A voice drifts over me. Someone is standing on the front porch. “Kayla.”
Even after all these years, all this time, I know exactly who it is. I don’t have to turn and look.
I stand there, one hand gripping the rope, twisting it around, as I stare at the dew-covered grass.
I take in a few slow, calming breaths and then turn to face him. His dark hair has started to gray, so that it’s salt-and-pepper, which catches me off guard so much I can’t stop staring at it, thinking that he’s old now, that he’s aged. It’s been seven years, and yet he seems so much older.
He’s wearing dark, crisp blue jeans with a light sweater and a sports jacket and some kind of fancy leather loafers with tassels. He looks like a total yuppie.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he says, his Italian accent more pronounced than ever. He smiles at me. It makes a few crow’s-feet appear around his eyes. Laugh lines. I want to know who he’s been laughing with.
“Dad,” I say, my voice shaky, unsure. I hate it. I want to be nonchalant, confident, unaffected by him being here. Instead I feel myself spinning around and around inside. Am I happy he’s here? Excited to see him? Or do I want him to leave? And why is it so hard for me to know which one I want?
I study his steel-gray eyes. I don’t know what I want to see there. Answers, maybe. Yes, I want answers. But I’m not sure there’s an answer in the world that would ever make it okay to do what he did.
“I realized I missed your sixteenth birthday.”
I nod.
“
And I know I’ve always said I’d get you a car when you got your license.”
I guess he did say that. Maybe. But I don’t like the way he says always said, as if he’s always around to say something at all, let alone that he’d get me my own car. I only talk to him on special occasions, and the last one was almost a year ago.
I feel anger build a little bit, somewhere deep inside me. “Why are you here?”
He shifts his weight, looks a little bit uncomfortable. I feel oddly triumphant. “I told you. To get you a car.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. I don’t want your stupid car.”
“Oh,” he says, shrugging, looking a little confused and lost.
That’s it? Oh?
I expected something more. I expected apologies, guilt, some kind of speech.
And even though I already expected it, his lack of true, deep emotion is a confirmation that he is a wish, that he’s not here entirely of his own volition. Because if you go to all that effort because you have the idea to make some grandiose gesture, wouldn’t you have a thing or two to say about it?
I wonder how long it took him to get here, how much time he spent driven by something he didn’t understand. Hours sitting on planes, hundreds of dollars, thousands of miles.
And here he is, staring at me, the one thing I wanted more than anything else, and it only makes me feel empty.
I remember all those birthdays I stared at the phone, all those times I would be apprehensive of opening the Christmas card, because I was afraid it would simply say Dad, when I wanted so much for it to say Love, Dad.
I think of all those stupid times I’d watch other people’s dads. All those times Nicole rolled her eyes about her dad, and I secretly wished I could do that, but I had no reason to. For my dad to be annoying he had to be around, and he wasn’t.
His absence seemed so much bigger than anyone else’s presence. He missed everything. He never bought Chase the BB gun like he promised, never taught me to ride a motorcycle, never helped me study for a test or watched me get ready for a school dance. Not that I’ve gone to many.
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