“I think I’d like that,” Amanda says.
“It’s real,” I say. “It’s got that going for it. Like this friend of mine, my best friend, actually—Brady—used to say, ‘This place may be a dung heap. But it’s real.’”
“I could use a dose of reality,” Amanda says. “I go from my little girls’ school in its boring, antiseptic little town to my parents’ condo in San Francisco, to places like this.” She waves her arm toward the resort behind us. “Your friend, what’s his name—Brady?—he’s right about real being worth something.”
“He’s just about always right,” I say. “He’s incredible, the way he sees through things.”
“What do you mean, ‘sees through things’?”
I start to say he has a great bullshit detector, but I’m afraid that might offend her. So I say, “It’s like he has radar for anything that’s phony. He hates anything phony.”
Amanda nods.
“The thing is, though,” I say. “He more than hates it. He does something about it. He always does what he thinks is right. Like, at the end of last summer he just left.”
“Ran away?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve never known anyone who actually had the guts to do that. His parents drove him crazy. School drove him crazy. He thought his life was totally pointless the way it was, so he left.”
“He told you that?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “I haven’t heard from him. I just assume that, knowing how he felt.”
“And you’re not mad?” she asks. “He’s your best friend and he ran away and you haven’t even heard from him and you’re not mad?”
“I was,” I say. “At first—”
She’s looking at me with this sad expression. I swear to God, she knows I’m lying.
“Actually, I’m still mad at him,” I admit. “I’m pissed out of my mind.” And suddenly I’m telling her everything. How close the two of us were. How strange the school year has been without him, how it freaks me out to think that there are things, really important things, in my life that Brady doesn’t even know about.
Ted and Mom take the girls inside to rest, and I keep talking. “Like I have these sisters,” I say. “He doesn’t even know about them.”
“I can’t believe he just disappeared,” Amanda says. “It’s terrible that he wouldn’t at least call or send a postcard. You don’t think something bad happened to him, do you?”
“No,” I say. “Some people think that, but I don’t. It’s just Brady. He does what he wants to do.”
“Oh,” she says. “But you said he always did what was right.”
Weird. For some reason her pointing that out to me doesn’t make me mad.
“It’s selfish,” she goes on. “Running away. Oh, I know. Parents and school are a pain. But doesn’t everyone have those problems? Big deal. You just get through it. That’s what friends are for. You help each other get through. You don’t run away and leave them on their own. Not everybody has a friend like you, Jackson. Brady should’ve realized that.” She stops suddenly, and even though her face is tanned, I can tell she’s blushing. “I should just shut up,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I say. “You’re right. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself before now. You’re right. Brady can be selfish.”
A silence falls between us. I think, well, that’s that. It doesn’t matter how I look. I’m still a wimp. She knows it.
Then she smiles at me. “Hey, I thought of another circle for our Inferno,” she says. “For people like Brady who don’t appreciate their true friends. How about a Sisyphus and the rock thing? They spend eternity trying to please someone who doesn’t give a damn about them.”
This cracks me up. “Excellent,” I say. “Brady Burton: Eagle Scout, Harvard Law.”
All through this, I’m still scooping. We finished the walled fortress long ago, and now I’m making a line of turrets as far as I can reach.
Amanda leans back against the lounge chair, takes her baseball cap off, and loosens the braid Kristin made in her hair. She combs it with her fingers. “Look, Jackson,” she says. “You’re making a nuclear power plant. I like that, you know? A walled fortress with its own nuclear power plant. How handy.”
I’m in deep shit, man. I’m totally in love with her.
twenty–one
That night I can hardly sleep, worrying about whether I’m going to get weird around her the next time I see her, like I did watching Kristin and Amy braid her hair. Worse, what if we go down to the beach tomorrow and she’s not even there? But when we go down right after breakfast, there she is, already in her chair, reading.
“’Manda!” Amy shouts, and takes off running toward her.
Amanda looks up and smiles. She opens her arms so that Amy can throw herself into them. She pats the place at the foot of the chair for Kristin to sit down beside her. “Hi, Jackson,” she says. She pulls an empty plastic cup out of her beach bag, holds it up, and grins. “Today, Castle World!”
And it’s as easy to be with her as it was the day before. We goof around with Kristin and Amy, building a whole town of castles, then taking a beach walk to collect shells to decorate them. Ted brings us all lunch from the bar. When it’s time for the girls to rest, Amanda says to me, “I think I’ll go for a run. Want to come?”
I say, “Sure.” I have to smile, thinking of what Dad would say if he were here. See, bud, I told you a body could be a good thing! Still, when we take off down the beach, I can’t quite believe the person running with Amanda is me. We run a couple of miles, then walk back, talking the whole time—about everything under the sun, the way we did the day before.
“So, do you wrestle?” she asks me.
I must give her a blank look because she says, “You look like a wrestler. You know, you’re strong. I thought maybe you might be on the wrestling team at school. Anyhow, never mind. I was just being nosy again. God, I know I drive people crazy asking them questions all the time. It’s not like you have to tell me every single thing about yourself.”
“I don’t care what you ask me,” I say. “It’s just, I’m a total klutz, that’s all. What you asked just surprised me.”
“You are not a total klutz, Jackson. Why do you think that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Before this fall the only exercise I ever got was picking up a book. Maybe playing a video game. I was horrible at Little League and all that. I only got into working out after my friend Brady left. Something to do. I’m no jock, though. Believe me.”
“God, I am,” she says gloomily. “My parents are always trying to get me to act like a girl. They hate this—” She pulls her soaking wet shirt away from her body. “You know, when I sweat.”
“I think it’s great,” I say.
“Sweat?” She laughs. “Can you believe we’re actually having this conversation? Honestly, my parents are right. I need to go to charm school.”
I meant I thought it was great the way she is. The way she doesn’t act like a girl. But before I can say so, she says, “Race you in,” and takes off running toward the beach chairs, where Kristin and Amy are waiting.
That evening, I see her in the hotel restaurant with her mom and dad. She’s wearing a pretty flowered sundress that makes her look really tanned. Her hair is held back with a headband made of matching fabric. After we eat, Ted and Mom stop at their table to say hello.
Ted and her dad shake hands. “Beautiful little girls you have there,” he says to Mom. He turns to me. “And you must be—Jackson, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” I give him my firmest handshake.
“Well,” he says, “Amanda’s told us all about you.”
“She has?” I say, and immediately want to kill myself.
Amanda looks as mortified as I feel. What she undoubtedly told her parents abou
t me is that I’m Kristin and Amy’s stepbrother, an okay, harmless kind of guy. She’s probably thinking oh, great. He’s going to think I’m madly in love with him.
So what’s my next line? Don’t worry, I’m not? Or worse, the truth: Actually, I am in love with you, Amanda. But don’t worry, I don’t expect you to love me back. Ha. I’m not stupid enough to make a fool of myself again. I keep quiet.
Her mother says, “Won’t you all sit down?”
“Well, sure!” Ted says, and pulls out a chair for my mom.
The adults order a round of after-dinner drinks. Kristin and Amy have their usual Shirley Temples. Cokes for me and Amanda, in crystal glasses. No way you’d want to make sand castles using those. Mom says she loves Amanda’s dress and Amanda says they make the same dresses in little girls’ sizes and wouldn’t it be fun to get them for Amy and Kristin and they could all match? Amanda’s father asks me a couple of lame questions about school and what I plan to do with my life, and I answer them but can’t think of a thing to say next. So I just sit there, a total dweeb, staring off at where I suppose the ocean must be. Jesus, then the band starts, people start going out onto the dance floor, and Amy peers over the rim of her cocktail glass and in her little-queen voice orders, “Jackson, you and Amanda dance.”
“Oh, do,” says Amanda’s mother.
I hate to dance; I never have learned how to do it right. But we go out there, and I step on Amanda’s feet for a while anyhow. I don’t even want to think about why she looks so miserable. Finally, the song is over, and I think that the most mortifying experience of my entire life is over. But making a fool of myself dancing looks like an excellent option when we go back to the table, and Amy pipes up and says, “Amanda, now is Jackson your boyfriend?”
There’s this kind of embarrassed titter all around the table.
“Amy Harper!” Ted says. “Honest to Pete. What have I told you about asking people questions all the time?”
Amy looks stricken, as if she’s about to cry; but Amanda scoops her up and hugs her. “It’s okay, Mr. Harper,” she says. “Amy can ask me any question she wants.” She tips up Amy’s face with her finger. “Jackson is a boy and he’s my friend, okay? And you’re a girl and you’re my friend. Everyone who dances with me is my friend. So there.” She dances a giggling Amy around the restaurant.
Amy looks so funny and cute, with her legs dangling down and her hair ribbon all askew that, thank God, everybody starts laughing and taking turns dancing with her, even Amanda’s mother.
Later, back at the condo, I overhear Ted tell Mom he feels terrible about Amy embarrassing me. Don’t, I feel like saying. It could have been a lot worse. At least I know where I stand: Amanda wants to be my friend. Which, of course, makes no difference whatsoever in the way I feel. I still love her. I still think of how it would be to touch her. I can actually picture it: kissing her, walking hand in hand to a dark, quiet place, then taking each other’s clothes off, melting into each other, making love. I just give up any hope that it will ever happen. No way I’m about to make a fool of myself or embarrass her by trying to make our relationship more than what she wants it to be.
So I chill out, grateful to be able to be with her at all. Every day, we go down to the beach, and she’s waiting. We goof around with Kristin and Amy till lunchtime, building castles or whatever—then she and I go for a long run. On the way back, we talk.
Mom was right. Amanda is lonely. She says to me, “You want to know something, Jackson? What I really want is to fall madly in love and have kids when I’m still really young. And for all of us to be together. It’s probably awful to say that. I mean, my parents want me to be successful. And I do want a career. I don’t want to be an idiot. But a family … ”
“I want that, too,” I tell her. “I want to be married to the same person as long as I live.”
“What was it like when your parents got divorced?” she asks.
“Awful,” I say. “I was totally confused. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other, they said. Because they did. They just couldn’t go on living together. How could that be? For a long time, I thought that they’d get back together. But they never did. I’ve never told this to anyone before, but my mom and dad still love each other. Even now.”
“Now?” Amanda looks shocked.
“Yeah, now,” I said. “I don’t mean my mom doesn’t love Ted. She loves him in a totally different way than she loves my dad. She and Dad were never going to be able to live together and be happy. They disagreed on too many important things, and neither one of them was going to change. That really was what the divorce was about. It just took me a long time to understand it. If you met my dad, you’d get a better idea of what I mean.”
“What’s he like?”
“Dad’s, well, different. He doesn’t want what most people want. It turned out that he and my mom didn’t want the same things anymore. I was the only thing they had in common.”
“It’s so sad, though,” she says. “If two people really, really love each other, why—”
“Sometimes things just don’t work out,” I say.
“But they can if both people really want them to. Don’t you think they can then?”
“Yeah,” I say. “At least I hope so.”
Later, when we’re wandering through the street market together, I buy a T-shirt for Dad. It has a phony college crest with a marijuana plant in the middle. “Ganja U.”
“Okay, I’m beginning to see what you mean about your dad being different,” Amanda says. “God, my dad would freak out if I even bought something like that—let alone as a present for him.”
“Dad’ll love it,” I say. “He may be a total screwup, but he’s cool.”
“Is he really all that screwed up?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that. Some people, like my grandma, think he’s a real loser. But they just can’t accept that it’s okay not to want the same thing as everybody else. I mean, Dad may have a weird job, but he’s really good at it. He works hard. And as fathers go, he may be a little flaky—he’s no Ward Cleaver, that’s for sure—but there’s never been a time he hasn’t at least tried to give me what I need.”
“You’re lucky, really,” Amanda says. “My parents are so perfect. They do everything right. They didn’t have me until they were absolutely sure they could give me everything they never had. The best clothes, the best toys, the best schools, trips to Europe. All those things, giving me all those things is so important to them that I have to act like they make me happy. But all I’ve ever wanted is them. It’s not that they don’t love me,” she adds quickly. “They do. It’s just, they don’t know who I am.”
I know you, I want to say. I love you. But I don’t. See, there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t tell Amanda—except the way I feel about her. It’s nothing like I’ve ever felt before. I want to be with her all the time; I look at her and think about what it would be like to be with her forever. Maybe even to have two little girls like Kristin and Amy someday.
They might as well be our kids now, the way they always want to be with us. “Just tell me if they’re bugging you,” Ted says every day. “I’ll keep them out of your hair.” But I don’t mind. I love to watch Amanda’s face light up when she sees them running toward her. I love to watch her play with them. I’m like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, sucked into a love story, pretending I’m just an observer. I keep quiet. If I spoke, my feelings would be as pitifully obvious as his were.
Kristin and Amy say, “Oh, Jackson, isn’t she pretty, isn’t she nice, isn’t she so much fun?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I laugh and roll my eyes, as if indulging them. They insist that Amanda go along with us wherever we go. Mom and Ted think it’s hilarious the way they’re so smitten.
“Maybe we should adopt Amanda,” Mom says. “The way we’ve expande
d in the last month, what’s one more?”
“Or hire her,” Ted says. “You know, give her some fancy title. Liaison to the Children.”
But when they’re being serious, they both admit it was a lucky stroke that Amanda appeared. Because Kristin and Amy are so attached to her, it’s given Mom and Ted some guilt-free time alone, a real honeymoon. Plus, Amanda met us for the first time as we are now. She just assumes we’re a family, even though we haven’t gotten used to it ourselves. I think we act more like a family because of her.
It won’t last, I know. We’ll go home and there’ll be problems. Kristin will remember to be mad. I’ll go back to feeling guilty about liking Ted. Meanwhile, we’re as happy as people in a TV sitcom. We go to Dunn’s River Falls and climb up the slippery rocks for a spectacular view of the ocean. We tour a plantation, bouncing along the dirt roads on a tractor-drawn jitney, viewing groves of banana, cocoa, lime, and coffee, stopping to watch a Jamaican boy climb up a coconut tree barefoot.
“This is so much fun,” Amanda says again and again. “You guys are so fun.” Sometimes when we’re alone she tells me about her life at school, how lonely she is there. “There’s nobody like you there, Jackson,” she says once. “Nobody I can really trust. They’re all so worried about what people think, they don’t care what people are. I hate that. Honestly, before I met you I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find anyone I could really talk to. It’s pathetic, you know? You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had.”
“No boyfriends?” I say, careful to make my voice light.
She sort of laughs. “Oh, that never works out,” she says. “It always turns out to be, you know—about something else.”
And I am ashamed of what I imagine when I’m alone, in the dark. I’m ashamed of what I want. If I really love her, and I do, I should be the friend that she wants and needs me to be. Not that being her friend feels at all like a burden. I need a friend myself, what with Brady’s defection; and just these few days with her have made me consider the possibility that a different kind of friendship could be a good thing. Amanda asks questions; Brady had answers. Amanda says, “That’s interesting”; Brady always said, “You should…” The way Amanda values my opinion makes me realize that Brady didn’t value it much. I needed him a lot more than he needed me. For the first time, I see how our friendship depended on my letting him always be in charge. I see that before I met Amanda I didn’t really know what friendship could be.
Wish You Were Here Page 12