“How can you say that? We’ve been friends our whole lives.”
“Yeah, and you only realized how big the world was this summer.” Elliot looked over his shoulder at some indeterminate next project. “I have to get going,” he muttered.
I swallowed hard and nodded, still crying.
In my pocket, I fiddled with the cheap ring from our second-grade “wedding.” It felt so dramatic and ridiculous to give it back to him, the way I’d planned. He walked away first, then I left and tossed it in a trash bin on my way out.
I was in the car leaving when Lorelei and Laney came rushing out of the house to greet me, but I—I just couldn’t . . . so I wiped away my tears, plastered on a smile, and waved to them as I drove away.
My heart felt lighter and lighter the closer I got to Heaton Ridge.
At the old Griggs house, I took the stairs two at a time, burst into Silas’s room, and crossed the room quickly to where he was messing with his stereo. “Wh—” he started to ask, but I cut him off with a kiss.
“What was that for?” he asked, looking a little dazed. “Not that you need a . . .”
“I broke up with Elliot,” I said, and Silas literally swept me off my feet and smothered my neck with dorky, slobbery-sounding kisses that made me laugh as he carried me, newlywed-style, across the hall into the den.
“I wish you’d be a little more excited,” I teased as he collapsed onto the couch with me on his lap. I put my arms around his neck, pressed my forehead to his. It felt so good to be here with him, Elliot already feeling further and further away. I kissed him again. “Distract me, okay?”
“You are in luck, Miss Beck,” he said, then reached under one of the couch pillows and, with a flourish, produced a VHS tape.
He had found a documentary about an eighties boy band, New Kids on the Block, at a recent garage sale and then bought an old VCR at the same sale just so that we could watch it. We spent the next hour figuring out how to hook everything up, and once we had, he decided we needed to learn the ridiculous dance in one of the music videos. We laughed like kindergarteners while we attempted this, and even pulled Laurel into the den to help us with the choreography, which she learned easily after watching the music video only once. It was hilarious to watch her try to teach Silas, who was hopeless at dancing.
“I am so growing a rattail,” said Silas, pretending to admire Jordan Knight’s.
“Like hell you are,” I said, and all three of us laughed: big, goofy laughs that felt like they had been sitting in our stomachs for years.
Laurel’s smile was real—more authentic than anything I’d seen from her all summer. Silas took her hand and twirled her around, while I reveled in this moment enough for the three of us.
After dinner, still with hours before sunset, Silas and I headed into town and up into the bell tower. The breeze through the belfry windows carried the scent of fresh-mown grass. For once, Jody Perkins was using his mower to actually mow. I told Silas, “Laurel needs to eat. She looks like a ghost.” I sat on the air mattress, back against the tower wall, and Silas lay on his back, his head in my lap, book in his hands.
“I know,” he said, putting his book down momentarily. “She’s worse than ever since the fireworks. Sometimes she won’t even answer me when I ask a direct question. She skipped therapy last week. Mom doesn’t know what to do. I overheard her fighting with Dad about it on the phone.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say about it.
“I keep thinking of what Gordon said about black suns being an illusion. Remember?”
“Mmm-hmmm.” The sun was coming through the belfry windows in streaks, and it was all I could do to keep myself from tracing his eyebrows, his nose, his lips with my fingers. I wondered what he would do if I did. He loves me, I reminded myself, and lightly touched his face. He closed his eyes.
“At first I thought Gordon had to be wrong,” he said. “I mean, Laurel loves God and still has a black sun. But—no. I mean, even her black sun is an illusion, sincerely an illusion.”
“She just hasn’t figured that out yet,” I said.
“Exactly!” Silas sat up then, surprising me. He moved so that he was sitting beside me, then settled his hand along the inside of my leg, tucking a few fingers up gently under the cuff of my shorts. No complaints from me. “You know, I want to believe—I think I believe—that God is in control of everything,” he said.
I ran my fingers over his arm and was pleased to see the hair stand up there. I didn’t know I had that kind of power over him. “Even over the bad things?” I asked. “Like death? Disease?”
“Yes.”
“And catastrophe?”
“Yeah.”
“Solipsism syndrome?”
The pause was brief. “I think so. Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It might sound dumb,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud before.”
“That’s okay. It’s just me.”
Silas paused; then he took my hand in this strange way, as if he were someone so much older, about to impart the hardships of the world to me. “I’m a writer,” he said.
“You don’t say,” I teased him.
He smiled a little and squeezed my hand. “Writers know that the climax comes before the resolution.” He was quiet for a second, then said, “Not just in fiction, either, West, but in real life too. How many times has the worst thing turned out to be necessary? Or even the best? Rescue wears masks, you know. It’s why people say it’s darkest before the dawn. Sometimes things take a long time to make sense. Could be years and years—or only a weekend. Or they might never make sense. But that doesn’t mean you stop trusting that the world is being rescued.”
It was a lot to take in. “I can’t decide if I feel happy or sad,” I finally said.
“Feel both,” Silas replied. “But remember that rescue stories are the best kind. If you look around at the world, it seems pretty clear that God favors redemption over perfection.”
I thought of Laurel in the den earlier this summer, frantically struggling through the same ideas that Silas now cracked open like a cool can of iced tea.
“It’s not that easy,” I said. “I mean, I get what you’re saying—but it’s uncomfortable, you know? Like, how do you gift-wrap that and give it to the kid whose grandma just died?” I thought of the families from church Dad had been helping this summer.
“No, you’re right,” Silas said. “It’s not easy. At all. It’s not a very pretty present. Some people might even think it sucks. But I think it’s true, and solid ground doesn’t suck.”
Laurel. The night of the fireworks. Her bed some sort of ballast.
I had been looking at my hand in his, but now I looked into his eyes, which were sad and savage. I couldn’t help but think back to his first Sunday in church.
It is well with my soul.
Maybe . . . maybe all anyone ever really needed was that solid ground, scaffolding that would hold long enough for you to really see the questions that crowded around you like fog. The solid ground wasn’t the answer—not exactly—but it substituted for one.
“Rescue stories are the best kind?” I said, or maybe asked.
“It’s like bedrock,” he admitted.
Silas let go of my hand and reached for a deck of cards he’d brought along, shuffled them, and handed me half. It was a WARegon Trail set, which made me grin. “Slapjack,” he instructed.
I moved to sit across from him, and we started flipping cards over. Seven, king, two, six.
“I’m going on a college visit,” Silas said, “with my mom. On Tuesday.” He seemed apologetic.
“Are you not excited or what?” I asked.
“No, I am,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Then what?” I asked. SLAP! went my hand onto the deck of cards. His hand came down on mine a millisecond too late.
“Damn!” he said. “You’re so fast!”
“Then what?”
I pressed.
We flipped through the cards so quickly: ace, four, queen. Silas said, “Laurel and I started kindergarten together, middle school, high school. I mean, durr, we’re twins. It’ll be weird to go to college without her.”
Jack. Silas slammed his hand down on it, but I had completely missed it, staring at him, confused. “What do you mean, ‘without her’?”
He looked at me. Those deep brown eyes, his pursed lips. “West, she’s barely left her room this month. She couldn’t handle college—she can barely handle life.”
“But she’ll get better,” I insisted. “I mean, you guys left Alaska and everything.” I needed him to believe that. I wasn’t sure I could handle that job alone. “Right?” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. “Sure, West. Yes.”
A conversation on the sidewalk below the tower distracted us, though we couldn’t make out the words. The light had shifted since we’d arrived. “Wow, a college visit,” I said, as if it was only now hitting me. “I’m behind the eight ball. Pick me a major, would you?”
“How about boy bands?”
“Or Thursday.”
“Or Brian.”
A plump laugh bubbled out of me like lava. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
Silas’s laugh was just as funny. “But a major in Thursday does?!”
“I’m Westlin Beck, and I’m a Brian major,” I said. “Maybe I’ll major in punctuation,” I said. “Not English. Just punctuation. Or maybe I wouldn’t even have to go to school for it. Maybe I could just become an activist to help support underappreciated punctuation.”
“Like?” he asked.
“Like the semicolon. And the ampersand.”
“I don’t think that’s technically a punctuation mark.”
“Oh, what do you know about it anyway? You’re only a Brian major.”
When I went home later that night, after we’d listened to August Arms in the bell tower by camp light, I expected to face a firing squad; in fact, I felt almost ready for it. I was actually disappointed to find that Mom and Dad were already asleep.
Fine, I thought. I’m on hiatus from church indefinitely till I get a reaction.
The house was quiet. I sat down on the couch and turned on some late-night TV.
“Mom said you’re grounded,” Shea said, leaning over the stairway banister. “What does that mean?”
“Hey, kiddo,” I said softly. “What are you still doing up?”
“Libby’s music is too loud.”
I patted the seat beside me on the couch, and he came down the stairs to join me. I threw my arm around him. “Nothing,” I said, answering his earlier question. “It doesn’t mean anything. How was your day?”
“Okay,” he said. “We had to be really quiet because Dad’s head hurt again. Where were you all day?” I wondered if my parents had called around or just assumed I was at the Harts’. I didn’t know which option I preferred.
“Around,” I said. “Shea, wanna play a game?”
With one eye on the TV screen, he asked, “Like what?” I knew he was thinking of last night’s Sorry! drama. The boxed-up game was still sitting on the floor near the couch.
“I don’t know. Anything. Battleship.”
He lit up. “Yeah, okay! I’ll go get it.”
“Libby’s still up too?” I called softly after him.
“Dunno. Her music’s on.”
Libby was indeed still awake, and as Shea and I played several rounds of Battleship, she eventually joined us. “Got you this,” I said, tossing the Chuck Justice magazine at her. She paged through it on the couch while Shea and I played on the floor.
“Do you ever think the bad guys really think they’re the good guys?” he asked, a young Socrates casting a sideways glance at the TV while he annihilated my aircraft carrier.
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably. What bad guys? Just bad guys in general?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Libby and I looked at each other over Shea’s head. He was clearly talking about Dad.
“Does that make them less bad, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Shea softly.
But Libby said, “It makes them worse.” She left the room and returned with the paper dolls Dad had gotten her earlier that summer, along with one of Mom’s scrapbooking glue sticks. Shea and I watched as Libby calmly, patiently glued pairs of the dolls together, face-to-face. She looked at us as she capped the glue stick, and her eyes were hurt and ruthless. This was her own tiny insurrection, and in a way, it made me proud.
twenty-two
Tuesday was strange, what with Silas out of town for his campus visit. I’d gotten used to spending every day together, and I found myself lonely without him. Shea and Libby were picking at each other, and technically I was grounded, so I barricaded myself in my bedroom, alternating between reading a book and an email from Trudy she’d sent in response to my teaser of “big news.” Her reply hadn’t said much, but it had said enough.
Westlin. Beck.
If you think I don’t already know your “big news” is that you are head over heels for Silas Hart, then you have forgotten how well I know you. I could have told you that on the Fourth of July. Love you, girl. Sorry so short. Misses!
Trudy. Kirkwood.
P.S. Still at a stalemate between A & A.
P.P.S. “Stalemate”—that’s what Ami always calls it! LOL, she WOULD.
Maybe Silas was right: Trudy and I would be fine because we had history.
I tried to ignore that this was one of just a small handful of emails she’d sent all summer, that it was ridiculously short and unhelpful, and that even in so few lines, she hadn’t been able to resist including Ami Nissweller. I wondered if it would be worth my time to try to keep this conversation going. My phone buzzed. It was Silas.
Laurel won’t text me back. Been texting her for an hour. Can you go over to the house and make sure she’s ok?
I asked my parents, even though I planned to leave the house regardless of their ruling. My parents and I were both unfamiliar with this “grounded” territory, and in the end, they agreed it was more appropriate for me to go than for them, so I took the car over to Heaton Ridge. The door was locked for once, so I used the garage security code that Silas had taught me and let myself in.
“Laurel?” I called, once inside. There was no response, so I started up the stairs. “Laurel?” Still nothing.
I said her name once again, this time outside her bedroom door, and a sick feeling started to grow in my stomach. I pushed open her door, not sure what I’d find inside. She’d been so depressed lately—
She lay curled up in her bed atop a pearl-colored comforter, not moving. My heart was pounding like a tribal drum. “Laurel?” I whispered. “Laurel, get up!” I put my hand on her back to shake her.
She rolled over suddenly, saw me, and gasped. “West! My gosh! What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “You scared me!”
You scared me too, I thought, my pulse still hammering.
“I—I’m sorry,” I said. “Silas said you weren’t texting him back; we just wanted—to—to make sure you were okay.”
“I was taking a nap,” she said crabbily. “I don’t usually text while I sleep. Do you?”
“Sorry,” I said again, relieved she was fine—and that I’d escaped my house. Laurel sat up with her back against the headboard. I sat down at the foot of her bed, leaning my back against the wall. We were an intersection of legs. “Why are you taking a nap now anyway? It’s almost lunchtime.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat,” I insisted.
For a second, she looked uncooperative, but then she shrugged. “Okay.”
“Let’s go down to the kitchen. I’ll make us some lunch.”
Laurel moved like a phantom. She sat at the kitchen island, watching but not seeming to really see me. Her hair was greasy and she wore yoga pants and a T-shirt. Below her eyes were circles a shade darker than
the rest of her face.
The Hart kitchen was all white and stainless steel, except for the dark walnut butcher-block countertops and island. I was so used to the surfaces of our house being covered in Pinterest projects and coupons that the Hart kitchen felt sterile and unused. Except for a littering of Magnetic Poetry on the fridge.
douche y poem
for mah girl
u beeyotches obvi
ain’t badass like
my bomb hottie
who got hella
junk in da trunk
fo sho
“Mom told him, ‘I don’t care how over the moon you are for Ms. “Bomb Hottie” Beck, if it’s not down before your Oma Lil comes over next, there’ll be hell to pay,’” Laurel said, smirking a little. I was certain I was blushing, but I took a photo with my cell phone.
After poking around in their pantry, I found a box of mac and cheese and held it up for Laurel to assess. “Sure,” she said.
I put some water on to boil, then said, “Haven’t seen you much lately—I mean, besides the boy-band dancing.”
“Nope,” she said.
I leaned on the island toward her. “We’re worried about you.”
This time she smiled a little bit. “Me too. I’m not okay at all, West.” She had a pinched look to her face, the look that people get when they’re fighting back tears.
“Isn’t your therapist helping?” I asked.
She let her head roll back, staring up at the ceiling in the frustrated way Shea does when Mom tells him to clean his room. “No,” she said. “It’s not working. I want to try something new.”
“Okay,” I said. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, a blue pill.”
“Blue pill?” I asked. “Oh, The Matrix.”
She nodded. I put the pasta into the boiling water and stirred it around, hot steam rising from the pot.
“There’s something I’ve never understood,” I said quietly. “How can you not know when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake? When I woke you up just now, I scared you and you woke up so fast. I mean, aren’t you aware that you’re awake every morning when you wake up?”
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