The Universe Is Expanding and So Am I

by Carolyn Mackler

  That night, I can hear Mom and Dad watching a show in the living room. I think Byron is with them and maybe Anaïs, too. The funny thing is, the image of the four of them on the couch actually makes me happy. I’ve always pictured them as this beautiful French-speaking, skiing, golf-playing unit, and I was pushed off to one side of the frame, the ugly-duckling, switched-at-birth child. What I didn’t realize until this summer is that I actually like it this way. I may share a gene pool with my family, but I want to be a Shreves on my own terms.

  I lean back on my bed and open my computer to a folder called “Lists.” A new list has been on my mind, and I want to write it down.

  THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING AND SO AM I

  They say the universe is expanding, and now I finally get it. Over the past six weeks, my universe has become full with more love and friendship and meaning than I ever thought possible.

  Speaking of full, my heart is full of Sebastian.

  Speaking of full, my butt is also full. And if it expands a little, fine. Curves are good. Curvaceous chicks rule.

  From here on out, I’m going to fuck it all and embrace my expanding universe and my expanding heart and my expanding butt.

  On Friday evening, Sebastian and I are walking together on West End Avenue. We met halfway and then he walked me down toward my place. Then we turned around and now I’m walking him up toward his apartment.

  I’m in the best mood. I’m feeling giddy about kickboxing. I went this afternoon and Brie was there and Tisha greeted me with a squeal and a hug. As I walked into the studio, I thought about my expanding universe, and, for real, Brie didn’t even matter. I barely even looked at her as I kicked and punched and sweated for an hour.

  Yes, I took a shower before meeting Sebastian tonight.

  As we’re walking, we’re talking about art. When we went to the Met yesterday, Sebastian sketched a Renoir and then he did a sketch of me in my new dress in front of an ancient Egyptian temple. Something about the sketches inspired him, and that’s what he’s explaining now. He’s telling me how he wants to take his sketches of New York City from this summer and turn them into a children’s book. The drawings will be the backdrop, and the story will be through the eyes of a young boy visiting the city for the first time.

  “I was thinking I’d find a boy to photograph, like a real kid,” Sebastian says, “and superimpose the photos of him over my sketches.”

  He’s so excited about this he’s practically skipping. And when Sebastian skips he’s three seconds from crashing hard on the sidewalk. As a safety precaution, I take his hand and hold on tight.

  “Sort of like Mo Willems did in Knuffle Bunny,” Sebastian says, “but the opposite. He did sketches of people over real photos of New York City.”

  “I thought it was ‘Knuffle’ with a silent ‘K.’ ”

  He laughs. “I’ve always said it with a hard ‘K.’ ”

  A second later, Sebastian drops my hand.

  I see them a moment after he does.

  We’ve just crossed the intersection a block from Sebastian’s apartment, and there, approaching on a side street, is Annie Mills and two extremely tall parent-looking people. Annie gapes at us, her mouth open in shock. The parent-looking people smile when they see Sebastian and raise their eyebrows at me, a little confused.

  “Who’s this?” the mom-looking person asks Sebastian.

  “I didn’t realize you were out with a friend,” the dad-looking person says.

  Sebastian and I are frozen. Utterly speechless.

  “Virginia Shreves,” Annie says quietly. “Byron’s little sister.”

  Sebastian’s parents stare at me, their expressions morphing from confusion to comprehension to complete fury.

  24

  I can’t believe it.

  The text comes in at midnight. This is the first I’ve heard from Sebastian. I haven’t written to him in case his parents have confiscated his phone.

  I know, I write back. I’m in my room. I’ve been hugging the straw hat he gave me and crying on and off for hours.

  My parents are really mad, he writes. They’re saying I’ve let down the family.

  I’m sorry.

  Don’t be sorry. I have no regrets.

  When he writes that, I upgrade to full-fledged sobbing. My face is pressed into my pillow so I don’t wake anyone up. All I can think about is how, after we ran into the Mills family, Sebastian and his parents and sister walked up West End and I walked down. But then, a few seconds later, we turned around and caught each other’s eye. We weren’t smiling or waving. It’s more like we were saying good-bye.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep, but it’s light out when Mom comes into my bedroom. Her hair is pulled into a messy ponytail, and she has on ratty yoga pants and the pajama shirt Dad wears when he’s sick. My first thought is that the police carted Byron off again.

  “Get up,” she says flatly. “We need to talk. Now.”

  As Mom walks out, I check my phone. Nothing from Sebastian. I don’t have a mirror in my room, which is good because I don’t need to see the bags under my eyes. I wriggle into a bra and trudge out to the living room.

  Mom, Dad, and Anaïs are on the couch, and Byron is in the chair next to them. Their faces are solemn, their mouths pressed tight. I move toward an empty chair and sit down.

  “Imagine my surprise,” Mom starts.

  “Not surprise,” Dad says. “Shock. Horror.”

  Mom nods. “Imagine my shock and horror when Dad got a call from Mark Levy at six this morning. Mark got a call from the district attorney at eleven last night because he received a panicked message from the parents of Annie Mills about their son. Who even knew Annie Mills had a brother?”

  My arms and legs go weak, and my teeth start chattering.

  Mom hunches forward like she’s having a hard time breathing, so Dad takes over. “Mark tells me that it turns out the Mills family is in the city for the summer, which you of course know, and that they have a seventeen-year-old son, which you also know. And then Mark says, ‘So it looks like your younger daughter is having a relationship with their son.’ ”

  Anaïs and Byron are frowning at me. I stare down at the rug. The toes on my left foot are prickly with pins and needles.

  “We thought we knew you,” Mom says, wiping under her eyes. “Now you’ve betrayed our trust, not to mention that you’ve put Byron’s plea bargain in jeopardy.”

  There’s a pillow on the chair. I wriggle it out from behind me and hug it to my stomach. I didn’t mean to betray my family or make things worse for Byron. I just met a guy and he sketched me and we fell in love.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Dad asks.

  I open my mouth. Before I can speak, my sister jumps in.

  “Do you have any idea about the implications of this?” she says. Her hands are clenched tight over her knees. “The reason the district attorney is agreeing to a less-than-criminal charge for Byron is because Annie told him she wants to drop the charges. Not that she has the ability to do that, because the charges have been made and now it’s the People of New York versus Byron. But the prosecutors will take Annie into consideration, like if she’s a reluctant witness then they may not want to go to trial.”

  I stare at Anaïs. It’s a lot of information to take in with my current state of mind.

  “What Anaïs is saying,” Dad says, “is that your relationship with this brother may appear that we’ve been getting in with the Mills family to coerce Annie to drop the charges.”

  “But I didn’t even—” I start.

  “I’m not done,” Dad says.

  I glance at Mom. Usually she’s the one who leads family meetings, but she’s wiping her nose with a tissue and shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Because of this,” Dad says, “we could be back at square one with the negotiations.”

  There’s the “we” again. As if “we” got drunk and forced Annie Mills to have sex.

  “I don’t
know what we’re going to do about the play tonight,” Mom says all of a sudden.

  I have no idea what their play tonight has to do with any of this.

  “It’s not like we can give back the tickets.” Dad shoots her a sideways glance. “The tickets are coming.”

  I dig my fingernails into the edges of the pillow. “Can I say something?”

  “Fine.” Dad crosses his arms over his chest. “Go.”

  “His name is Sebastian,” I say. My voice feels surprisingly strong. “We met at the bagel store, and I didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know who I was. We found out pretty quickly but …” I shrug. “I love him. We love each other.”

  Mom looks up in alarm.

  “I was getting a bagel for Dad,” I tell her.

  The irony is not lost on me that in this moment of extreme crisis, Mom is monitoring my past carb intake. Or maybe not. Maybe she doesn’t care about bagels. Maybe she can’t believe I’m in love, that something so amazing has happened to someone like me.

  “Remember, Dad?” I ask. “That day you went to Connecticut to meet Frances about the trees and you brought me along for driving practice? Remember how you were going to pick me up from the bagel store but you came really late? That was when I met him. It was before … you know … the arrest.”

  Dad doesn’t say anything. Neither do Mom or Byron. Anaïs is the one who speaks next.

  “But then the arrest happened and you stayed with him?” she asks. “And he’s your boyfriend now? That’s not how these things work. You don’t fall in love with the brother of the person who is pressing charges against Byron.”

  I chuck the pillow onto the ground and jump to my feet. “I can’t believe you would say that,” I tell my sister. “You, of all people. What about love is love is love? Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  Anaïs stares at me, her mouth open.

  “Virginia,” Mom says softly. “You’re only sixteen.”

  “And?” I ask.

  “This is your brother’s life,” Dad says.

  “It’s my life, too,” I say, storming toward my room.

  I’m about to slam my door when I hear Byron speak for the first time all morning.

  “She loves him,” he says quietly. “It’s not her fault.”

  I close the door and topple face-first onto my bed.

  I’m still in my room when I hear Mom leaving the apartment. Byron and Anaïs go out soon after. I can hear Dad in the living room talking to the lawyer on the phone. I chew at my thumbnails. I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy about my relationship with Annie Mills’s brother, but I had no idea it would be a problem from a legal standpoint.

  I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed. My computer is open to “Lists,” but I can’t think of a single word to write. There’s a mosquito lazily circling my bedroom. Every time it drifts close to me, I swat at it but it always gets away.

  I want to talk to someone so badly. I text Alyssa but then remember she’s tubing on the Delaware River today. Shannon is still hiking through the wilderness. I wish I could call Sebastian because he’s the only person who truly understands how horrible this is, but I don’t want to make things worse for him.

  I can hear Dad hanging up with the lawyer and leaving the apartment. Just as the front door closes, I feel burning on my knee. I slap my hand on it, but it’s too late. I grab a tissue from my bedside table and wipe off the mosquito carcass and a smear of blood.

  I try to cry and I try to nap. No luck on either front. I’m out of tears and I’m too upset to sleep. I decide to take a walk.

  It’s sunny and warm out, and people are chatting and drinking iced coffee and walking their dogs. It’s hard to imagine that the world is still turning when mine has been shaken upside down. My phone is in my pocket. I keep hoping it will ring, and Sebastian will be calling to tell me that he still loves me and let’s run away into the sunset together.

  Hang on.

  My world has only been shaken upside down if I let it be that way. And if I’m strong and bold and brave—which I definitely want to be—then why should I wait for Sebastian to invite me to run away?

  I stop at the curb, take out my phone, and call him. He answers on the first ring.

  “Leela,” he says. His voice sounds quiet and tired.

  “Remember that day on the High Line when you were telling me how you’re an ESFP, which means you’re the friend to have if someone is feeling sad?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “And remember how we made a deal not to let fights go for more than ten minutes?”

  “The problem is,” he says, “we’re not even in a fight. My parents just said they couldn’t believe I would do that to Annie.”

  “You didn’t do anything to Annie,” I say. “I didn’t do anything to Byron.”

  “And it’s been longer than ten minutes,” he says.

  I lean over to scratch the mosquito bite on my knee. “Do you have a sleeping bag?”

  “Yeah … why?”

  “And a tent? Like from that camping trip you went on a few weeks ago?”

  “Why? Are we going somewhere?”

  I give him the address of the garage where we park our car. I tell him to meet me there in thirty minutes.

  25

  “It’s not really running away if we’re going to your country house,” Sebastian says, grinning at me from the driver’s seat. He has circles under his eyes like he didn’t get much sleep last night either.

  “So let’s just call it a vacation from the drama,” I say.

  “And it’s not like they’ve forbidden me from seeing you. They just said it made them very unhappy.”

  I nod. “Exactly.”

  “I left them a note saying I was going away overnight and would be fine.”

  “Me too,” I say. “So it’s not like we’re causing unnecessary worry.”

  “Have we justified enough?” Sebastian asks.

  “We have an hour and a half. I’m sure we can come up with more justifications.”

  We’re on the Saw Mill River Parkway, heading toward Connecticut. Even though we’re in my family’s car, Sebastian is driving. I have to wait six months before I’m allowed to drive with anyone who is under twenty in the passenger seat. They told us that practically every week in driver’s ed.

  I navigate Sebastian onto 684 and then rest my head against the door. We’ve got seventy miles until he needs me to copilot again, so I close my eyes and fall asleep.

  “Let me get this straight,” Sebastian says. We’re nearing our house. I’ve woken up, and I’m giving him directions. “We’re going to camp out in your backyard, right?”

  “Way in the back of the backyard,” I explain. “We’ll be far away from everything.”

  “But with a bathroom in walking distance,” he says.

  “Yep,” I say. I decide not to go into my anti-pooping-in-the-woods speech. I think he gets the point.

  It’s early evening when we pull up to the house. We park the car in the garage so neighbors don’t see it. For that same reason, we’re careful only to put on the downstairs bathroom light. I don’t even turn on the light when I grab cheese and salami from the fridge, a box of crackers, and a few flashlights from the drawer in the kitchen.

  When I get back to the yard, Sebastian is setting up the tent. I try to help, but, seriously, whoever invented tents was an idiot. There’s this lump of fabric, and then there are all these poles that have to fit into other poles to make one big pole that you slide into sleeves along various sections of the fabric. I attempt to bend a pole at an angle to slide it in, but it snaps backward and nearly slashes Sebastian’s face.

  Camping = Definitely stupid.

  Camping with Sebastian = Definitely worth it.

  Once the tent is up and our sleeping bags are inside and we’ve eaten our picnic dinner, we swing together in the hammock, looking up at the stars.

  “What are we going to do?” I whisper to Sebastian. He’s so quiet I thought maybe
the rocking put him to sleep, but he rolls his head toward me and kisses me gently on the lips.

  “How about we figure it out tomorrow?” he asks.

  “Do your parents hate me?”

  “They can’t hate you … they don’t even know you.”

  “I guess …”

  “Annie said you’re pretty,” Sebastian says. “She also told me you seem really nice.”

  Wow. Seriously. Wow. Just thinking about Annie saying that makes me tear up.

  “But your parents are still mad?” I ask.

  “It’s not you. It’s all the other stuff they’re mad about.”

  We take turns using the bathroom and brushing our teeth. Sebastian is inside the tent when I crawl in. I can see with my dim flashlight beam that he’s unzipped our sleeping bags so they’re spread out like a big blanket.

  “Hey,” he says as I flop next to him and turn off the flashlight.

  “Hey,” I say.

  This is the first time we’ve been inside somewhere together that’s not a museum or a restaurant. Sebastian must be thinking that, too, because the next thing I know we’re kissing and our hands are all over each other. He’s sucking on my lower lip, which is sending tingles up my spine, and I’m running my hands over his chest, tugging his shirt over his head.

  I want to feel my bare chest against his, so I pull off my shirt and unhook my bra, tossing them both into a corner of the tent.

  “Mmmmm,” he says, pulling me in. “That feels amazing.”

  “It does.”

  Real intimacy is not about trying to get up shirts, trying to get down jeans. It’s about being close to someone and loving them and wanting to touch them and be touched by them.

  “How about we save more for later?” Sebastian whispers into my hair. “Take it slow.”

  “That sounds good,” I say. I can feel his hands trembling, and I think about how his ex-girlfriend cheated on him and destroyed his ability to trust. I wonder if he’s starting to rebuild that with me. I hope so.