There seemed to be a moment of indecision in Wilson’s expression and I wondered if Wilson really did want to talk to me about something. But just when I was about to tell Van to go away, Wilson said, “I better get back. Pry Max and his lady apart. Night.”
“Night,” I said. Van didn’t say another word to Wilson. The back door slammed a little too loud and we both tensed.
Van turned around to face me.
The wooden stairs were smooth and cool on my bare feet when I pressed them hard into the floor, making my toes turn white as I waited for what was going to happen next. I realized how much more relaxed I was with Wilson gone. Van trotted up the stairs. He brushed past me and proceeded to my bedroom, the smell of clean laundry and pot smoke from next door following in his wake.
Part of me was incredulous in a Who the hell does he think he is? kind of way.
When I joined Van in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about what to say. I bounced one time on the mattress, then settled on, “What’s up?”
Van seemed a little manic. He was pacing and running his hands along the spines of the books on my shelf. Not answering me.
We’d just gone out in public together and look what had happened. All kinds of dynamics were short-circuiting.
I lay down on my back. I felt Van’s eyes on me. I didn’t care that I was wearing pajamas. I was too exhausted and sick of being on an emotional roller coaster. Whether or not they were getting along, tonight I’d seen him and Caroline together. A sighting of the two of them had become rare for me, but they had to have their private patterns of communicating and meeting up: texts, evenings spent together before 1 A.M., ways of being a couple that were outside of the prying, public eye.
“What was up with Wilson being here?” Van spoke at last.
“I don’t know. He just let himself in.”
“You didn’t invite him?”
“No!” I said a little too emphatically. I opened my eyes.
Van’s face had relaxed, like we were friends again. “Really? That’s bold.”
“Why? You do it every night.”
That stood between us.
“Do you mind? That I come over every night?”
“I’ve been counting on you teaching me how to sleep.”
“And how’s that going?” Van said, laughing.
“You’re a shitty teacher. More like a bad influence.”
“You think I’m a bad influence?” Van asked, suddenly humorless, and I knew I’d struck a nerve. He didn’t like that I knew about the drugs he’d taken. Even though he’d been the one to tell me.
“No, no, of course not,” I backpedaled.
“It’s not like I’m corrupting you. Well, I guess I did take you to a party tonight. But back to Wilson,” Van said.
“Yes?”
“He wanted to hook up with you.”
“And?” I was getting offended. Was that so unimaginable?
“Is that what you wanted? Because I just realized I interrupted.”
That was some revisionist history. He’d known exactly what he was doing. “Yeah, you got in the way of that.”
“Seriously, if that’s what you want, I can make it right.”
I closed my eyes again. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it?”
“Yes, don’t worry about it.”
“As in ‘don’t do anything about it’ or ‘don’t feel bad about it’?”
“Oh my god, Van! You’re making me crazy!”
“You’re making me crazy!” he said.
I turned my head on the bedspread and opened my eyes.
“I mean, just tell me if you want me to do something or not, because I don’t want to screw things up for either of you,” Van said.
“I’m not interested in Wilson,” I said, watching Van closely.
“Okay.” Van exhaled. “Thank you for answering the question.”
My phone lay on the side table but I resisted checking the time. My guess was it was around three. I was thinking about how dehydrated I was, how gross I felt, how crazy. I wanted to make Van feel self-conscious about what had happened downstairs but I’d suddenly lost my ability to form a coherent thought.
I fished for information. “You walked Caroline home?” It was a dumb question. Van had already mentioned it.
“We broke up.”
“What? Why?” My voice got a little loud.
“We never saw each other,” he said casually.
I tried not to smile. I heard the whisper of Van sliding a book from the shelf. I opened my eyes again to watch him flip through an old yearbook.
“Which one is that?” I asked.
“Freshman year. Look at you!”
“What?” My mind was reeling from the news about the breakup. Maybe they’d broken up when they went off to one of the bedrooms, or maybe on the walk home. Who had broken up with whom? What was the catalyst?
“You’re not even smiling in the picture. Ha, Max looks like such an idiot.”
I heard the yearbook slip back into place on the shelf. Another came out. I must have nodded off for a second because Van’s voice startled me.
“You look older in this one. From last year.”
“Obviously. I was two years older.”
“You look good.” He closed the yearbook. It made a small puff and he put it back on the shelf. He pulled out another one.
“Are you just going to read yearbooks all night?”
“Yep. Damn, some of this feels like a long time ago.” Van drew out the word “long.”
Then it was silent. I closed my eyes again. The silence stretched and I realized something in the air had changed.
I sat up. Van was looking at one yearbook intently, attractively biting his lower lip.
“Which one is it?” When he didn’t answer, I ducked to see the cover underneath.
I dove for the yearbook. Van immediately held it up high so I couldn’t get it.
I leapt at it. My entire front connected with his chest, startling Van, who bumped a step backward.
“Give it to me.”
“No. But you can keep trying to come get it,” he joked.
“Van.” My voice was angry. I felt the blood leave my face.
“What is this?” He splayed the eighth-grade yearbook so I could see the spread.
I’d guessed correctly. It was our eighth-grade homeroom photo. Van’s individual photo had a giant heart drawn around it. Then there was beautiful cursive writing in fine-tipped, turquoise felt pen: Ingrid & Van, Ingrid & Van, Ingrid & Van. And the worst: one mortifying Ingrid Tagawa.
“Nothing. I had a crush on you,” I said nonchalantly, in a whiplash change of persona.
“You just tried to take me down for looking at it,” Van pointed out.
“It’s embarrassing!”
Van wasn’t laughing. He was staring at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
“What? Why are you looking at me that way?”
There was a long pause. Finally, he said, “Because I thought you hated me.”
“When? Eighth grade?”
“Every year.”
“Why would you think I hated you?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” Van asked, incredulous.
“I held your hand. Obviously I didn’t hate you.”
“You took your hand away.”
“No, you did.”
We stared at each other. I couldn’t believe we had just actually acknowledged the incident. That he even remembered it.
“You never answered Wilson and Max tonight. Why did you stop hanging out with us?”
Finally, “My dad. I was embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“That whole scene when he left. And then everyone knew about his affair. It’s fine now. But back then, it was mortifying.”
“We were your friends. We wanted to be there for you.”
For a second I thought about what would have happened if I hadn’t miss
ed a beat and played with them the next day. Now I realized, too late, my relationship with my friends would have eventually returned to normal and probably been the most stable thing in my life.
“It wasn’t me? Me and the boys, I mean?”
“God, no. Maybe Max. I thought he might say stuff.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
I shrugged. I wanted to joke and say something sarcastic like, My hero, but my throat had constricted.
Van held up the yearbook. “Tell me about your crush.” His voice was light and joking.
“Nothing! I can’t remember.”
“‘Ingrid Tagawa.’”
“Shut up.” I sat back down on the edge of the bed.
“This entire time, until you walked into my bedroom two weeks ago, I thought it was me. That I’d done something. You realize you walk around like I’m dead to you, right?”
“You have so many friends.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t believe he’d even noticed.
“No one likes it when someone hates them. Especially someone like you.”
“If you were worried about it, you could have spoken to me! It’s not like you were coming up to me.”
“You really think I was going to go up to you? You’re scary, Ingrid.”
“How in the world am I scary?”
“You’re an elite athlete, you’re not friendly. You could probably kick my ass.”
“How could I hate you, Van?” It came out a little husky.
Van walked over to the bed and I held my breath. He kicked off his shoes and lay back on the bed, putting his head on my favorite pillow.
“Lie down.”
“You’re ordering me around.”
“Just lie down.”
“Why?” He didn’t mean …
“I don’t know. To try to sleep, maybe?”
“Don’t you have to go?”
“I don’t want to go this second.”
“Okaaay.”
“In a few minutes, I’ll leave. I’m so fucking tired.”
I lay down next to him, the usual foot of space between us. When had it happened that it wasn’t weird for Van Tagawa to tell me to lie down next to him in my own bed? Also, he knew my vulnerability—that I’d had feelings for him—but he was making me feel like everything was normal and natural.
And who knew that for all these years, he’d actually cared.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13
“Ingrid.”
When the shaking started, I was in the deepest state of sleep. The mattress was firm but my muscles relaxed into it, letting go of everything.
The continuous jostling pulled me up slowly, like being extracted from cement. The left side of my body was tucked against someone.
“Ingrid! It’s six.” Van loomed over me, his forearm propped near the top of my head. I rolled onto my back and stared up into his eyes. In the lamplight, they were like liquid amber.
I blinked a few times and then stretched full-length. Van touched my head as if he was doubly making sure I was awake now. Then he sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed.
I sat up quickly, too, and watched his back. I couldn’t get over that I was seeing him in my room in the daytime, as if, finally, I had proof that those dreamlike interactions were real.
Van rubbed his face with his hands and shook his head. Then he turned to look at me over his shoulder.
“I have to go, get back into my house.”
“Okay,” I said, still so dull at the edges.
“Oh my god.”
“What?”
“We slept.” He gave me a smile that could have launched a thousand ships. It was amazed and relieved and grateful. And even excited.
“Wow. We fell asleep,” I said. I’d forgotten what a miracle it was. Sleep was all I’d wanted, and every night for the past two weeks I’d beaten my head against a wall wondering why I couldn’t do it. But this morning, before my usual defenses were in place, my first thought had been, no matter what, I’d had last night with Van.
Van located his Converses and quickly tied them on. “We just slept together,” he said, and laughed.
It was a joke. It was also true.
Then he looked alarmed. “I shouldn’t have woken you up. I’m sorry.” He switched to whispering. “Go back to sleep.” What I’d once thought of as his rock-star indifference wasn’t accurate. He was so caring.
Van halted his rush and paused, looking down on me as if he wanted to hold the moment for one more second. He gave me a half smile. Then he left.
* * *
By the time I was dressed, I felt like a million dollars. In the mirror, my eyes were bright and my skin had plumped out and looked clear again. Apparently, some renewal process happened when you slept. Without it, you just kept withdrawing from the bank.
My mom came in from her shift just as I was grabbing my school bag. Amazingly enough I had located my keys in no time at all, remembering they were in my shorts pocket from the day before.
“Hey! You look happy.” My mom put a graceful arm around me and pulled me close for a quick squeeze.
“I am. I slept really well,” I said. I reached up and stretched, pointing my fingers as if to touch the ceiling.
But my mom was already distracted, doing three things at once as usual. She shimmied her purse off her shoulder onto the countertop, put her sunglasses in the junk drawer, opened the dishwasher and put her travel mug inside, only to find the dishes were clean. She stepped back, took off her stethoscope, and began to unload.
“Mom, go to bed, I’ll do that when I get home.” She glanced up at me and, for a second, it was like looking at my own reflection, she was so tired.
With a clatter, my mom collected a stack of royal-blue plates. “No, no. I’ve got this. Your job is to go to school, get As, and place at Nationals.”
She reached up and put the dishes away on a cupboard shelf. When she lowered her heels to the ground, she looked over, surprised to see me standing there, frozen. She smiled gently. “Go, I’m making you late.”
* * *
Izzie and I met in the hallway just before lunch. I experienced a wave of such intense well-being, I linked my arm through Izzie’s. She gave me a funny look.
As our hall converged with a tributary of traffic from the west wing, Colette, Preeti, and Molly seamlessly joined us, our small cluster swimming its way to lunch.
I’d worn my hair down for once and just as I brushed it from my face, I saw Van coming from the other direction, walking toward us, his characteristic slight swagger back in place. He saw me just as I saw him and instead of looking away, we continued to very obviously hold eye contact. He gave me a self-satisfied smile and I found myself grinning in return. We were both proud we’d finally beat the thing that had been beating us. If either of us were high-fivers, that would have taken place. Even as we passed one another, both of us continued smiling, me even turning my head a little over my shoulder to watch him pass while he did the same.
I faced forward again, my smile still in place.
“What the hell was that?” Colette asked.
I realized the girls were looking at me.
“Nothing,” I said.
“What? That wasn’t nothing,” Izzie said. “That was Van Tagawa.”
“He’s my neighbor,” I said dismissively.
“You told me you don’t even speak to each other. That he’s too snobby. Is this why you’ve been acting so weird?” Izzie asked, on the verge of sounding pissed.
“No.” I shook my head. “Trust me. It’s nothing.” It wasn’t a lie.
Izzie stopped inspecting me so closely. “Man, Van Tagawa is everywhere today. I heard he and Caroline broke up.”
“Seriously?” Colette asked. “Did she break up with him?”
“I don’t know but I want to find out. Who’s Van going to prom with now? It’s only two weeks away.”
Colette archly raised one eyebrow. “In
grid’s still looking for a date.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
from: Alicia Roth Sandberg
to: Ingrid Roth
date: April 14, 12:38 pm
subject: Nationals
Hi Ingrid,
Your mom said you had an accident?! I’m so sorry to hear that. I totally get it—once, right before Regionals, I injured my ankle. I just wanted to drop you a note and let you know we’re all pulling for you and hope you’re on the mend.
The kids are interested in the family sport but we don’t have a decent program here, much to your father’s disdain. He hates that they are swimmers! Let us know if you qualify for Nationals. We’d love to come and watch this year. Maybe your dad would want to meet up with us. Any chance you’ve been going to temple? Ha, ha. I know, I know. I can always hope.
Love,
Aunt Alicia
My fingertips lightly brushed the keyboard while I thought about what to write to my aunt, my only vague line of access to my dad. Whatever I said might get back to him since they were close. I tried not to entertain the thought of my dad coming to watch me compete at Nationals. When I was a little girl, that had been my secret dream—that if I was good enough, he would come to watch. It took thirty minutes of gazing absentmindedly at my medals before I settled on:
Thanks so much for your email. I’m doing great. Back to training and excited for July. Would love to see you and the family.
* * *
“Now you’ve been with the same crowd at the same house as the night I blacked out. So I’m crazy, right?”
We coasted down the slight incline on our bikes, side by side, picking up speed. Wind whistled loudly past my ears and ruffled Van’s hair. It was magical being out this late on bikes. We owned the streets. Van was single.
“Well, Max seems to have a girlfriend,” I laughed.
“It’s about time,” Van said.
“Does that make you feel better? Knowing he and Caroline were probably never hooking up?”
“It does. It also makes me feel like a lot of the stuff I thought happened didn’t. You saw those pictures in the hallway, too? I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe everything is fine.”
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