by Amy Reed
I look closer. It’s the first book in the Unicorns vs. Dragons series.
“Grandma?” I say. I can’t remember ever seeing Grandma read a book, or, for that matter, ever seeing her in the living room with the TV off.
“Just a minute,” she says. “I’m almost done with this chapter.”
“What do you want to do for dinner?”
“I said just a minute!”
So I climb the stairs back into the attic. I burrow into my blanket cave and look out at the milky sky beyond the window. Of course I have homework to do, but of course I won’t do it. What’s the point of even trying at school when everyone’s been telling me I’m dumb my whole life?
When Grandma decides she finally needs me, she’ll be out of luck. Even her shouts won’t make it up here. Either she’ll have to get over her fear of heights, or she’ll have to figure out how to take care of herself. I notice a tiny, familiar voice telling me to go downstairs, to be ready for her orders. But I don’t listen to that voice anymore.
As soon as I hear the footsteps on the stairs, I know they’re not Grandma’s. They’re too fast, too light. I’m not surprised when Lydia bursts through the door. And I’m not surprised by the words that come out of her mouth. I’ve been waiting for this moment. In some way, I’m relieved. When the inevitable finally happens, it means you don’t have to wait anymore.
“You paid for my dance classes?” she shouts, stomping across the floor. “Why did you lie to me? That’s fucking twisted, Billy.”
“I was trying to help,” I say weakly. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“But you didn’t even ask me.”
“I knew you’d say no.”
“Of course I’d say no.”
Lydia’s sigh seems to deflate her, and she falls into the side of my cave, making the whole structure shudder.
“You can’t just go around making decisions for people without their permission,” Lydia says.
“But aren’t you happier now?”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” I say. “You think there’s something noble about not letting people help you? You think you deserve a trophy for your suffering?”
This whole town, this whole county, is full of a bunch of miserable people who think they’re martyrs. Grandma. Caleb. Lydia. Everyone I’ve ever loved, victims of their own bad attitudes. And now I’m just as bad as them.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me,” Lydia says.
“I just wanted you to be happy.”
“You wanted to be the one to make me happy.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Billy, you can’t manipulate people into loving you.”
“But I don’t know how else to make them do it.”
This is it. This is how friendship ends. This is how love dies. When the lies and secrets that kept it alive are revealed.
The house groans and shudders in the wind. I can see Lydia’s body swaying slightly, like we are on a boat. Maybe the clouds have turned to water and we are floating out to sea.
Then something surprising happens. Lydia doesn’t spit out some biting last words. She doesn’t throw or kick anything. She doesn’t stomp away. What she does is kneel down to where I’m sitting in my broken lawn chair, wedge her skinny butt next to mine, throw her arms around me, and cry.
I cannot tell my tears from hers, cannot tell the rocking of our bodies from the rocking of the tired old house, cannot tell the sea rising inside me from the explosion of the clouds outside, the raindrops so dense the wind pushes them around like waves, and the waves lap at the side of the house, make whitecaps in the streets, rapids in roadside ditches, until everything is drenched, the wet so deep nothing can escape it, nothing is untouched, nothing is dry, and Lydia and I make a raft out of each other, and our lies and secrets are washed away.
“Whatever it is you’re doing up here,” Lydia finally says, “it’s not working.”
“I know,” I say.
“You need to get your head out of your ass.”
“I know.”
“You’re my best friend and I fucking love you.”
“I know.”
We sit like that until the sky grows dark, the two of us squeezed into a broken lawn chair in the attic, watching the rain pour out of the formerly frozen sky, and it feels like the whole world is thawing.
LYDIA
TODAY IS THURSDAY, AND CALEB has until saturday, when I kick him out. I’ve been reminding him every time I bring him food, and he just smiles and says he knows and then goes back to reading or meditating or yoga or whatever weird thing he’s been up to.
The little girl has been pretty well behaved all week since Billy and I made up, but now I’m sitting at the kitchen table with Larry, who looks sadder than I’ve seen him in a long time, and she’s kicking me in the shins.
“What’s wrong?” I say, flinching as the words come out of my mouth. The girl stops kicking. She’s trained me well.
He looks up from his laptop, as surprised by my words as I am. Our schedules are so opposite, I rarely see him outside the bar. I can’t remember the last time I even saw him awake before school.
“Why are you up so early?” I say.
The radio is playing a local news show in the background. Something about how investigators into Caleb’s disappearance are reviewing security camera footage from local ATMs. Any minute now, Billy’s grainy security-camera face will be plastered on TVs all over the world. And only two people on the entire planet know Caleb is sleeping on the floor on the other side of a door just a few yards from where I’m sitting.
Larry sighs. “I’m trying to get everything ready for the festival.” He closes the laptop screen and reaches to turn the radio off. “But it’s a disaster. All the holes I dug for my attraction keep filling up with water. The rain is going to ruin everything.”
It takes all my strength to not mention how it was maybe not the greatest idea to have a festival in the rain capital of the country in late January.
“There’s not really anything you can do about the weather. You can do the attraction next year.”
“Yeah, I know,” Larry says. “I just feel bad because this is a stop on the self-guided tour, and everyone’s going to get here and expect something great. And all they’re going to get are a few really deep mud puddles with broken lights at the bottom.”
It’s impossible to ignore the girl tugging on my arm. I try to be stealthy as I shake her off, but Larry looks up and says, “Are you okay?”
“My arm fell asleep.”
I know what the girl wants me to do. But no way am I about to get up and give Larry a hug. Instead I say, “What if you moved your attraction inside? You have all your posters and those dolls and stuff you keep in the storage shed.”
“Those are collectible figurines,” he says. “And they’re very valuable.”
“Exactly. Didn’t you say you have one of the most complete Unicorns vs. Dragons collections in the world? You can display that, and decorate the bar like crazy. Don’t you still have that giant inflatable dragon and the life-size cardboard unicorn? Create a signature drink or something, maybe project the movies on the wall and play the soundtrack on the jukebox. That can be your attraction.”
Larry looks like he’s going to cry. There has been far too much crying lately.
“That’s a really good idea,” Larry says. “Thank you, honey.”
I don’t look him in the eye. I don’t know what will happen if I do. I try not to look at the little girl as she wanders through the kitchen and disappears behind the fridge, like she’s decided she has better things to do.
What is this weird feeling? Do I actually want her to come back?
What am I supposed to do with this silence now? What do normal people do when they sit across from each other at a breakfast table?
“Why didn’t you tell me about your dance performance?” Larry says suddenly.
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p; I tense. “How do you know about that?” The little girl hops out from behind the fridge and does a pirouette in the kitchen.
Larry looks down at his lap. “Billy called and told me. He said he knew you wouldn’t tell me yourself.”
Of course he did.
“So I looked it up online, and there you were on the schedule as a featured dancer.” Larry looks up at me now. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me?”
What’s happening inside me is like when all the paints in a cheap set of watercolors get mixed up and become indistinguishable and brown. They’re swirling together and making a huge mess that simultaneously feels like fire and nausea and chest pains and being full of helium. My ears are buzzing.
“I didn’t think you’d care,” I say, unable to look at him. These are not the kind of conversations Larry and I know how to have.
“Of course I care, honey,” he says.
My muddled mess of emotions clears away as if being washed down a drain, leaving only one.
“You’ve never cared,” I say. “You didn’t care anything about my dancing when you made me stop taking classes.”
“Money was tight for a while,” Larry says. “You know that. Your mom left a lot of debt.”
“Yeah, but then things got better, right? You could afford to get the van painted. You could afford all those precious collectibles you ordered online.”
“I didn’t know you still wanted classes. You never told me.” He tries to reach across the table to touch my hand, but I pull away. “I thought you were happy with your studio. I thought you wanted to dance alone.”
I feel the quick fire of my anger lose its heat, like the oxygen has been sucked from the air and the flame suddenly has nothing to feed on.
“If you would have said something,” Larry says, “if you would have just told me, I would have helped you. Don’t you know that?”
The fire is gone. I am left with a cold emptiness inside. I know Larry’s telling the truth, and maybe part of me always knew returning to dance classes was an option, if only I said I wanted it. But I got used to Larry telling me we couldn’t afford things. I learned not to ask because I knew the answer would be no. “No” became a part of my system, something I knew at my core, that asking for things—asking for help of any kind, wanting something from someone else—was not an option. So I got a job. I took care of myself so I’d never have to ask Larry for anything ever again.
But part of it was about more than money. Even if Larry couldn’t afford to pay for all the classes and clothes and shoes, he would have at least helped me. And even if he didn’t, I probably could have paid for at least a class or two per season myself with the money I made working at Taco Hell. So what stopped me? What kept me from doing what I wanted?
It took Billy to make it happen, and not just his money. Even if the scholarship had been real, even if I had seen the ad for it with my own eyes, I know I never would have tried out on my own. His belief in me changed something. It wasn’t that I was afraid of letting him down, but more like that his hope was contagious. Yes, he lied to me. And yes, his motives weren’t completely pure. But I know I never would have believed I was worthy of my dream without Billy believing it first.
“I’m sorry, Lydia,” Larry says. “I haven’t been a great dad.”
“I haven’t been a great daughter either,” I say.
“But we’re doing our best, right?” Larry says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so.”
I look up for a moment and notice a thick line of gray at Larry’s roots. “Your hair’s growing out,” I say. “I can help you dye it if you want.”
“I’d appreciate that,” he says.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Did Mom ever tell you anything about her life before she met you?”
He winces, as if stung by my words. Then he sighs. “Your mother had a lot of secrets, honey. She kept all of that to herself.”
“But you were married for ten years,” I say. “How was that okay with you?”
“What choice did I have?” he says sadly. “She didn’t want to tell me. I couldn’t make her. I couldn’t change her feelings.”
“But did she have any idea how you felt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you have any idea how you felt?”
Larry stares into his coffee cup. I wonder how long it’s been since someone asked him how he felt.
“There are things I will never understand about your mother,” he finally says. “Things neither of us will ever have the chance to know. But I can’t spend the rest of my life being mad at her. I just can’t.”
I’ve been doing the work of being mad for both of us.
But what if anger has never been the real feeling? What if it’s been covering up something way scarier?
What if I’m just sad? What if I just miss her?
“I’m sorry about the dance classes,” Larry says. “I should have known they were important to you.”
“I should have told you,” I say. “It’s not your job to read my mind.”
“As your dad, maybe it kind of is.”
I’ll never understand the demons my mom was battling, or why she wasn’t able to be the mother I needed. Maybe sometimes people do their best and their best just isn’t enough. And maybe there’s a way to forgive someone that doesn’t change the wrongness of what they did.
Maybe it’s not my job to punish her. She’s gone anyway. Who is there left to punish but myself?
I don’t know where the little girl is right now, but I think she can see me, and I think she’s some weird kind of happy, because this fucking hurts and I’m feeling it and I’m not trying to run away.
“I bought tickets to the show,” Larry says. “Paul’s coming in to watch the bar.”
“What about the festival? What about your attraction on the self-guided tour?”
“They won’t miss me if I’m gone for a couple of hours, and the main event isn’t until later that night.” He looks at me and smiles. “But I’d even miss that if I had to.”
He’s so corny, but I say thank you anyway. Then something catches in my throat, and my lips start to tremble. Am I going to lose it? In front of Larry, at the breakfast table before school on a Thursday?
But then a noise comes from behind the door to my studio. It’s a small sound, like a book falling over, but it’s amplified in the thick, awkward silence of the kitchen.
“What’s that?” Larry says. “It sounded like it was coming from your studio.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I lie, simultaneously grateful for the interruption, but also terrified that I’m about to have some serious explaining to do. It’s way too early in the morning to deal with Caleb.
“I’m going to go check it out,” Larry says, scooting his chair back.
“It’s probably just a raccoon or something.”
“It might be rabid.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, contorting my face into the shape of a smile to hide the fact that I can’t breathe. Larry discovering Caleb hiding in my broken dance studio is the last thing I need right now. Just two more days until he promised he’d leave. We can make it two days without a catastrophe, can’t we? “Go work on getting the bar ready. I’ll check the studio.”
Larry looks relieved at the prospect of escaping to the bar. “Are you sure?” he says. I nod. “Come get me if you need any help.” Even Larry has reached his limit on this father/daughter heart-to-heart.
“I can swat a raccoon with a broom just as good as you, Dad,” I say, and then my hand immediately flies in front of my mouth, as if I can catch the word that just came out of it.
Larry blinks at the sudden wetness in his eyes. His bushy eyebrows are bent in deep emotion.
I can’t take it. “Get out of here, Larry.”
“You haven’t called me Dad in years,” he sniffles.
“Jesus, man. Get ahold of yourself.”
> Larry smiles. He wipes his nose with a crumpled paper towel. “Guess I should get busy,” he says as he stands up.
“Good luck,” I say.
“I love you, honey.” Larry doesn’t wait for a response or, God forbid, try to hug me. He may not know me well, but he knows enough.
I sit alone in the kitchen after he leaves. The little girl is nowhere to be seen. I’m not sure how I know this, but I’m suddenly aware that she isn’t going to be around for much longer. And I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.
BILLY
“NICE DUDS,” LARRY SAYS WHEN I open the front door.
“Thanks,” I say. I decided not to do anything new with my hair quite yet, but I did spruce up my wardrobe with a mini shopping spree at Thrift Town, where I spent a whopping forty-three dollars.
I’ve always chosen clothes that would make me as invisible as possible—jeans and plain T-shirts and hoodies, mostly. But no matter how normal I’ve tried to look, there’s the fact that I’m way too tall and have a bunch of yellow hair sticking out all over my head, and I look like the way less handsome and much more awkward version of the most famous rock star in the world.
Now I think maybe I’ll just roll with it. I’m pretty sure I will never not be weird. Maybe it’s time to embrace it.
“I’m trying to develop my own signature style,” I tell Larry. I’m wearing a pair of vintage brown-and-green-plaid polyester pants and a matching suit jacket, with blue Converse low-tops and a yellow T-shirt advertising some diner called Lulu’s Luncheon in Idaho.
“I think you’re off to a good start,” Larry says. “You’re a cool guy, Bill.” I have never been called cool in my life. So far, I think my new signature style is working out pretty well.
“You look nice too,” I tell Larry.
I’ve been trying to remember some of my old ways—the good ones, not the weird delusional ones that get me into trouble. The trick is figuring out how to be nice to people without lying and without being an asshole to yourself. Larry’s dressed in a cheap blue suit and a Unicorns vs. Dragons tie, so I may be lying a little bit, but he’s also got a big smile on his face, which makes a person look good no matter what they’re wearing, so mostly I’m telling the truth.