“They’ve got it all pretty much contained, you know. ’Least last time I checked.”
I grabbed a pillow off the floor and used it to prop up my head. Harry was sniffing around at my toes, licking and nibbling at my pinkie nail. I laughed.
“What?” said Nils. “What’s so funny?”
“Just Harry.” I shook my head.
“No, come on, what?”
I grabbed his magazine back. “Fruit bats,” I squealed, holding open the page with the fuzzy flying rodents. “I want one, okay? This year, for my birthday.”
“Sure thing, princess.” He moved closer to me, curling his legs to his chest. “Anything you say.”
Nils is my oldest friend. My next-door neighbor. This shack has been ours since we were ten. It was my dad’s toolshed for about forty-five minutes—before Nils and I met, and took over. The Shack is its new name, given a ways back on my sixteenth birthday. Years ten through fifteen, we called it Clubhouse. Nils thought The Shack sounded much more grown up. I agree. The Shack has edge.
“Have you done all your reading for Kiminski’s quiz tomorrow?”
“No” I said, flipping the page.
“Where were you last night, anyway? I came by but Jeff said you were out.”
Jeff is my dad, FYI. “I just went down to the beach for a bit.”
“Alone?” Nils asked.
“Yeah, alone,” I lied, dropping Nils’s magazine and flipping onto my side.
Nils didn’t need to know about Paul Bennett or any other boy in my life. Nils had, at that point, roughly five new girlfriends each week. I’d stopped asking questions.
“Hols, should we study?”
“Put on Jethro Tull for two secs. We can study in a bit.” The weeks prior to this Nils and I had spent sorting through my mother’s entire music collection, organizing all her old records, tapes, and CDs into categories on a shelf Jeff had built for The Shack.
“This song sucks,” shouted Nils over the first few bars of “Aqualung.” I raised one hand high in the air, rocking along while scanning her collection for other tapes we might like.
“Hols?”
“Yeah?”
“Your mom had shit taste in music.”
I squinted. “You so know you love it. Admit it. You love Jethro Tull.”
“I do. I love Jethro Tull.” He was looking at me. His eyes looked kind of misty. Don’t say it, Nils, please don’t say it. “I miss your mom.” He said it.
I sat up. “Buck up, little boy. She’s watching us from a happy little cloud in the sky, okay?”
He tugged at my hair. “How come you never get sad, Holly? I think it’s weird you don’t ever get sad.”
“I do get sad.” I stood, dusting some dirt off my butt. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
Chapter 3
School.
7:44 a.m. and I was rushing down the hall toward World History with my coffee sloshing everywhere and one lock of sopping wet hair whipping me in the face. I got one “Hey,” and two or three half-smiles from passersby right before sliding into my seat just as the bell went ding ding ding.
Ms. Stein was set to go with her number two pencil, counting heads, “. . . sixteen, seventeen . . . who’s missing? Saskia? You here? Has anyone seen Saskia?” As if on cue, Saskia Van Wyck came racing through the door, clickity-clack in her shiny black flats, plopping down in the empty seat to my left. “I’m here, sorry! I’m right here,” she said, dragging the back of her hand dramatically across her brow. Adorable. I slurped my coffee.
“Take out your books, people. Let’s read until eight fifteen, then we’ll discuss chapters nine and ten. ’Kay?”
I pulled my book from my bag and glanced to my left.
Saskia Van Wyck. Paul Bennett’s girlfriend-slash-ex-girlfriend. I barely knew her. I only knew that she was skinny, pretty, marginally popular, and lived in this old adobe house just off the PCH, wedged right in between my favorite Del Taco and the old crappy gas station on Valley View Drive. I’d been there once, in sixth grade, for a birthday party, where no more than four kids showed up, but I remembered things: her turquoise blue bedroom walls. An avocado tree. A naked Barbie and a stuffed brown bear she kept hidden under her twin wrought-iron bed.
Saskia leaned toward me. “Do you have a highlighter or a pen or something I could borrow?”
“Yeah, okay.” I reached into the front pocket of my backpack and pulled out a mechanical pencil. “How’s this?” Suddenly I had a flash of that chart they show you in tenth-grade Sex Ed—How STDs Spread: Billy sleeps with Kim who sleeps with Bobby who does it to Saskia who really gives it to Paul who sleeps with Holly, which makes Holly a big whore-y ho-bag who’s slept with the entire school.
“That’s great,” said Saskia, smiling. “Thanks.”
I nodded and smiled back.
• • •
“Holly, move downstage a bit—to your left. And try your line again.”
“Once more, with feeling,” I deadpanned, closing my eyes and letting my head fall forward. Gosh, I’m so clever.
I walked downstage and shuffled sideways. “Wait—from where?”
“Start with: ‘O, the more angel she, / And you the blacker devil!’ And Desdemona, stay down—you’re dead, remember?” Desdemona, or Rachel Bicks, who’d been sitting Indian-style on the stage sucking a Tootsie Pop, rolled her eyes and slinked back down. “Look more dead,” Mr. Ballanoff barked. “Okay. Emilia, Othello. Go.”
“‘O, the more angel she, / And you the blacker devil!’”
“There’s the spirit.” Ballanoff turned toward Pete Kennedy, my scene partner, who was standing stage right holding a pillow. “Othello?”
Pete did his thing, kicking around the stage like an over-zealous mummy—he was big into gesturing and, somehow, still, he seemed so stiff. I blah-blahed back, just trying to keep my words straight without flubbing my lines. I don’t think we’d made it through half the scene before Ballanoff was waving his clipboard, recklessly, suddenly, interjecting, “God, both of you, stop, please.” Then, “Holly, god, come’ere.”
I walked forward. “What? What’s wrong now?”
“Where’s the fire? He’s just killed someone you love, he’s calling her a whore—where’s the fire, Holly?”
I shifted back and forth from leg to leg. “I ate too much at lunch. I’m tired. We only have three more minutes of class left. . . .”
He mashed his lips together, exhaling loudly, out his nose.
Ballanoff is Jeff’s age about, early forties, but I’ve always thought he looked older than my dad until this year when Jeff aged ten years in a blink; going from salt and pepper to stark white in three months.
“All of you,” Ballanoff shouted, “Learn your lines this week. Please. Work on feeling something other than apathy. Next class I expect changes.” He smiled then, his eyes crinkling. “You can go.”
I snatched my knapsack off the auditorium floor and lunged for the door.
“Holly.”
“Yes?” I whipped around.
“Help me carry this stuff, will you?”
I trudged back down the aisle, grabbing a stack of books off a chair. Ballanoff took the other stack and together we walked out the theater doors, toward his office.
“How’s your dad?” he asked, balancing his papers and books between his hands and chin.
“Fine. The same.”
Ballanoff knew my mom in high school. They once sang a duet together from Brigadoon.
“How’s Nancy?” I asked. Ballanoff’s wife.
“Good, thanks.” He unlocked his office door, kicked an empty cardboard box halfway across the room, then dumped the pile of books onto his cluttered desk.
I set my stack down on the floor next to the door. All four corners of his office were crammed with crooked piles of books, plays, and wrinkled papers. A tiny, blue recycling bin shoved against the wall was filled to its brim with empty diet Snapple bottles.
Ballan
off sighed, walked over to the mini fridge, and took out an iced tea. “I expect more from you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It wouldn’t kill you to get a little angry, or to feel something real for a change.” He paused for a bit, then said, “How are you, anyways?”
“Dreamy.”
“That good, huh?” He collapsed into his black pleather desk chair, swiveling from side to side.
“Oh, yeah. Pep rallies and bonfires galore. Senior year really lives up to the fantasy.”
He laughed, which made me happy, momentarily. “What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“You know. How’s life in the teachers’ lounge?”
“Oh, hey.” He took a long pull off his diet iced tea. “Same old shit, year after year.”
I flashed my teeth. “I love it when you swear.”
“I should watch it, right? Before Harper finds out and fires me for teaching curse words alongside Othello.” Harper. Our principal.
“It’s true. Look out. You’re a danger, Mr. B.”
“I should hope so.” He slid two fingers over the lip of his wood desk. “Thanks for your help, Holly.”
I perssed the sole of my sneaker against his shiny orange door. “Anytime.”
“Tell Jeff hi for me, okay?”
“Will do.” I pushed backward then, out of his office and back down the hall.
• • •
“Jesus, Nils, watch the windows.”
Nils was all over some dumb girl, backing her into my driver-side car door, his grubby little fingertips pressed against the glass.
“Oh. Hi Hols, hey.”
“Hi. Move, please.”
He and the girl pushed sideways so I could get my key in the lock. “Much obliged.”
The girl giggled and turned toward me. Oh, no. Not her.
“Hey, Hols? You know Nora . . .” Nora Bittenbender. From my Calc class. Before Nils she’d supposedly slept with two teachers: David Epstein and Rick Hyde. Pretty girl but way bland for my taste. Fair and freckled with these jiggly, big pale boobs she was always jamming into push-up bras and too-tight tank tops. Her weight fluctuated nonstop—skinny one week, chubs the next—and her taste, Jesus, seriously questionable. School ensembles that bounced between cheesy nightclub clothes and oversized, heather-gray sweats. Sexy.
“Do you want a ride or not?” The hood of my car was covered in ash. I slid a finger through the dusty gray soot, then hopped inside. “I promised Jeff I’d take Harry out for a run after school, so either get in or I’m leaving.”
“Right, yes! Okay.” Nils ran over to the passenger-side door. Nora trailed him, holding on to the back of his shirt. “But could you drop Nora off on the way? She lives right by us, on Pawnee Lane.”
No. “That’s fine,” I said. “Get in.”
Nils crept into the backseat. Nora took shotgun. “Holly, thanks,” she said. “I missed my bus.”
“Yup.”
“We have gym together, don’t we?”
“Calc,” I said, flooring the accelerator and, three seconds into my drive, nearly crashing into pedestrian Paul Bennett. Good one, Holly. I pulled to a stop and rolled down my window.
“Crap.” He looked really great. He was wearing this old, thin, button-down with a small tear at the collar. His bangs lay on a diagonal across his forehead, hitting his eyes just so. “You missed me by a millimeter!”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
Paul started toward my window, then, spotting Nils and Nora, stopped short and readjusted his backpack. “I’m fine. Just”—he waved his hands in the air and smiled—“startled, is all.”
“Right. Sorry.”
I watched his hair blow backward as he turned and walked on toward his car. Then I lightly pushed down on the gas and rolled out onto the main road.
“I didn’t even know you knew Paul Bennett.” Nils had scooched forward in his seat so that his face was floating somewhere over my armrest.
“I don’t, not really.”
“You sure? ’Cause he seems to know you.”
I felt something un-nameable tickle my gut. Regret? Longing? I shook my head. “I mean, we have a class together. He knows my name, I guess.”
“Maybe he likes you,” said Nora, poking me in the shoulder.
Nils scoffed. “No offense, but, I don’t think Holly’s really Paul Bennett’s type.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I turned sideways and gave Nils the icy eyeball. “What’s Paul Bennett’s type? Please! Pray tell.”
Nils folded a stick of cinnamon gum into his mouth. “You know, blond. Willowy. WASPy. The anti-Holly.”
“Saskia Van Wyck,” said Nora, nodding.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course. Saskia Van Wyck, the anti-Holly.”
“That’s a good thing, Hols. She’s plain spaghetti.” He looked at me lovingly. “No sauce.”
Nora twisted around in her seat so that she was facing Nils. “Can I have a piece of that?” She was biting Nils on the neck and pulling on his pack of gum. “I love cinnamon. I do.”
We spent the next twenty minutes stuck in traffic on the PCH. In my rearview I watched Nils make eyes at Nora. He’s better looking than her, smarter than her, he’s just better, I thought. They were mismatched. Like fast food and fancy silverware. Or spray cheese and sprouted bread.
“Oh, hey! This is me. I’m up here, on the left,” she said, “the green one with the tree.” There was a porta potty parked on her front lawn next to a tall stack of aluminum siding. “We’re expanding the kitchen. And adding a half-bath.”
I turned up her steep driveway and stopped ten feet short of the garage. She kissed Nils on the mouth. Smooch, smooch.
“Thanks again, Holly.” And then, to Nils, “Call me.”
“Will do.”
She was gone.
I kicked the car into reverse and started backing up. “Okay, get up here. I am not your chauffeur.” Nils scooched from back to front, contorting to get through the tiny space between seats. We were side by side now. Neither one of us talking. I drove quickly back down Nora’s twisty street and out onto the main road, where we passed my favorite rock. White and long and crater-faced; like a slice of the moon.
“Okay. What the hell, Nils, Nora Bittenbender?”
“So cute.”
“Of course. Cute. What beats cute?” I snipped.
“Boobs.”
“Right . . . of course. Boobs beats cute.” I glared at him sideways. He had his head turned and tilted back, his hand hanging languidly out the window.
“You don’t even know the girl, Holly.”
This thing with Nils and girls started junior year with Keri Blumenthal, a pool party, and a stupid green bikini. Then before I could blink, my friend was gone and in his place was this dumb dude who loved Keri Blumenthal and lame bikinis and even though I’m loath to admit it, this is when things really changed for us. Keri Blumenthal wedged a wall between us. Fourteen days they lasted and still, when they went bust, that dumb wall stayed intact. “She talks like a baby,” I said.
“Holly.”
“And why does she wear those clothes?”
“Comfort . . . social conventions . . .”
“Not any clothes, pervert. Those particular clothes.”
“Holly. Come on.”
“Seriously, what’s the deal with her and Epstein? Is that for reals, or no?”
“I dunno . . .”
“I just don’t understand why you like her. You’re better than—”
“Holly.” He sat up really quick and grabbed my hand. “Stop it. Okay?” He tightened his grip and creepy tingles rolled up my arm. “I’m not gonna marry the girl.”
I looked back at the road, mimicking Nora’s babyish lilt. “You’re not?”
Nils dropped my hand. “You’re a weirdo, Holly.”
I pursed my lips. “At least I’m not a baby with . . . big boobies.”
“Weirdo.”
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I slapped him hard on the arm and turned up my driveway. We both laughed.
• • •
I parted ways with Nils and beelined for the fridge. Harry was at my heels begging for food, so I unwrapped a single slice of American-flavored soy cheese, rolled half into a little ball, and dropped the other half on the floor. He inhaled the thing in two seconds flat, not even stopping to chew.
I walked to my bedroom, simultaneously nibbling on my little ball of fake cheese and taking off my clothes, item by item. I slipped on my running shorts and a tank, grabbed Harry’s leash, and poked my head into Jeff and Mom’s room on my way to the back door. She’d been gone six months and somehow, the entire place still smelled like her: rose oil and castile soap. I don’t know how that happens, someone dies and their scent stays behind. Jeff hadn’t changed a thing. All her clothes were still on their racks in the closet, her perfume on the vanity, her face creams and make up in the little bathroom off their bedroom. Most days it was easy to pretend she was still around. Out at the store. On a walk. In the garden. Out with Jeff.
So I took the dog out running. Up the canyon, past Ms. Penn’s place with that wicker chair she has tied to a rope so it hangs from her tree like a swing; up Pawnee Lane, past Nora Bittenbender’s, past Red Rock Road, and out into town. I bought a ginger ale at the Nature Mart and walked back most of the way, trying to keep twigs and rocks out of Harry’s mouth.
Later that night, around seven, Jeff came home.
“Hi, Dollface.” He kissed my forehead and took a bottle of seltzer out of the fridge. He held it to his neck, then took a long swig, settling into his favorite wooden chair. “What’s for dinner?”
“Tacos, maybe? I was thinking I’d drive down to Pepe’s. Another night of pasta, I just might hurl.”
Jeff laughed his sad little Jeff laugh and kicked off his loafers. “’Kay, sounds good to me, whatever you want.” Then he handed me a twenty. I put Harry in the car because he loves hanging his head out the window at night while I drive, and we sped down the hill, to the beach, to Pepe’s, where I bought eight tacos: four potato, two fried fish, two chicken. I kept the warm white bag in my lap on the drive back, away from Harry, and thought about Mom for a second or two. Specifically, her hair: long and thick and dark, like mine. I sang along to a song on the radio I didn’t really know the words to, and when my cell rang, I checked the caller ID but I didn’t pick up. I didn’t recognize the number.
Then You Were Gone Page 13