I try to remember what I was like at age six—back in the days when I thought the moon was made of cheese and buffalo wings came from buffaloes and you could dig your way to China in the sandbox. That was about the age Molly and I rubbed dandelions all over our heads, not knowing the bees would chase us. Did I understand real danger?
I always felt so safe when my dad read to me in our big upholstered rocking chair, the one with soft, sink-down pillows and big cushy arms. It was covered in plush red velvet—the kind you could dig your toes into. Mom complained that we’d rubbed half the fabric off the arms, but I loved snuggling with my dad in it. It was our special place.
He read all my favorite books to me, and I’d fall asleep on his broad chest, the vibration of his deep voice rumbling against my cheek. Sometimes he sang to me, or just hummed as I drifted off.
And then one day in third grade, I came home from school—he had already moved out by then—and my mother had recovered our chair in a stiff plaid material. I just stood there staring at what was left of it and feeling my heart break into a thousand tiny pieces.
• • •
DeQuan glances up to see if I’m noticing his good behavior and I give him a thumbs-up. Jake laughs at the way the kids are always showing me stuff. And telling me stories about their dog dying or their grandpa being in the hospital or their mom getting mad or their dad getting fired. With all the trauma at home, it’s easy to understand why they can’t wait to get to school. It’s one way life with my mother and her nightly running monologue has paid off: I’m a very good listener.
It seems like kids are always waiting for something—waiting for a bike without training wheels or for a trip to the beach. Waiting for the puppy they’ve been promised. They shouldn’t be waiting to see if they get to go home from school. Or waiting to be released as hostages.
I try not to think about what would have happened if Jake and I hadn’t been here when Mrs. Campbell passed out. I reach over and squeeze Kenji’s hand. His smile is a little wobbly. Rose is watching Jake. He has a way of putting people at ease, even in the worst situation possible. That trait was a blessing and a curse when we were together. He always talked to everyone, and sometimes I felt a little left out.
When Jake and I had art class together second semester, there was a lot of downtime to chat. Tab and Molly can talk to anybody, but before Jake, I swear I couldn’t form a complete sentence if a hot guy was around.
Jake made it easy. For that whole first month of art class, we talked every day for pretty much the whole period. It was hard to believe the relationship I’d fantasized about since that ninth grade cafeteria rescue was becoming a reality. Tab’s birthday party, the day after Valentine’s Day, was the first time it was just the two of us.
The party was getting rowdy that night, and I slipped out onto the screened-in porch when the guys broke into Tab’s dad’s liquor cabinet. I was listening to the rain in the dark and suddenly he was there.
“Not much of a party girl?” he asked.
“There’s a pretty nice party out here,” I told him, just as a flash of lightning lit our faces.
“Am I invited?”
“If you want to be.”
We talked for over an hour. Jake is so completely focused on you when you’re talking to him, it’s almost unnerving. I’ve never seen him text or check Facebook when he’s involved in a conversation. He makes you feel like everything you’re saying is important to him.
When I finally stood up to leave, he grabbed my hand. “Don’t go, Emery,” he said. The way he said my name lit up places inside me like pinball pegs.
“Curfew. My mom’s a tyrant.”
He walked me to my car in the rain, holding his jacket over our heads. It seemed so natural when he leaned down to kiss me. Then he held on to me for a long time, both of us getting soaked and not caring. I felt like he was telling me something without words; I understood that he needed me to be there just then.
“I’ll call you,” he said, and I told myself I’d be okay if he didn’t.
My phone rang before I was out of Tab’s driveway. I looked back to see him standing on the steps smiling at me, getting drenched.
“What’s up?” he asked, like we hadn’t just talked for an hour.
I talked to him all the way home, while I got ready for bed, and after I turned out the lights. We talked about everything and nothing—until the sun came up.
And every night after that.
For weeks.
My mom would flip out if she knew how little sleep I got. She obsesses about my not getting enough rest. I went to his baseball games all through spring and we went out to eat after. On weekends we went to movies or he came over. We sat together at lunch at school and he walked me to my car every day.
But it was those late-night conversations I loved most. I told him things I’d never told anybody—mostly about my parents’ divorce, about how I used to hide under the bed with my stuffed animals when they were fighting.
And after a while, he opened up to me about his mom dying. About how he helped her buzz her head when her hair started falling out after chemo. He said they tried to make a joke of it, but he went in his room and cried after he was done, and later he heard her crying, too.
He told me how he read to her when she was sick. She said the sound of his voice made the pain go away. But, toward the end, when the cancer was worse, she’d fall asleep as soon as he started.
I’ve never talked that way to anyone before—not even to Tab and Molly.
Molly was all excited about me and Jake. She said it was “so Edward and Bella”; she’s a big fan of the Twilight books. I wasn’t sure how to take that—being compared to an ordinary, clumsy girl in love with a gorgeous, shimmering boy. I never felt ordinary when I was with Jake. He told me I was beautiful in a way that sent me back to my mirror with fresh eyes. I wanted to see what made him choose me. I knew others were looking at me differently, too. It was a new experience to see envy in other girls’ eyes.
Tab never trusted Jake. She said he was superficial and full of himself. She didn’t like the way he kidded around with people. She didn’t think it was funny when he’d do things like put a book on erectile dysfunction in Hunter’s backpack when we were all at the public library. Then, when the alarms went off, Hunter had to hand off the book to the librarian—in front of everybody. It seemed like a pretty harmless prank to me.
I thought Tab just didn’t understand Jake. He has this charisma that draws people to him. He tunes in to everybody in the room in a way that’s hard to explain. I’ve watched him seek out the awkward person at a party who’s standing in a corner and strike up a big conversation, and he always acted like he was having a ball talking to my mother when she fed him snacks in our kitchen. He did magic tricks with the little boy next door I babysit for and brought bones to Molly’s dog. He sincerely likes people and he just makes these instant connections, even with total strangers. He’ll chat up anybody—at ball games, the mall, wherever.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be that easy with people—to always know the right thing to say and to feel like you fit in wherever you are. I was so flattered by his attention, I let my guard down. I believed in him. I trusted him.
But in the end, I guess Tab was right about him.
She called that night to tell me she’d heard Jake was with Stacey Jordan at the lake party, and that Stacey had posted on Facebook that she and Jake were in a relationship. After we’d been going out constantly for almost four months—February, March, April, and part of May. Even though we’d never said we were exclusive or anything, he had to know how I felt about him.
It was a shitty thing to do.
He met me at my locker before school the next morning, and when he didn’t even try to deny what happened, I knew it was true.
“So you were making out with Stacey Jordan?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it making out.”
“What would you call it, Jake?”
“Emery, she doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? That you cheated on me and you don’t even care about her?”
“I didn’t really see it as cheating. I mean, we never really—”
I walked away. I didn’t want to hear the rest.
We never really were exclusive? Or did “we never really” mean something else?
Jake had pressured me about sex during the last few weeks we were together. Even though we did a lot of other stuff—things I’d never done with any other guy—I just wasn’t ready for that last big step. I was crazy about him and he knew that, but I didn’t feel like I’d known him long enough.
Or maybe there was a small part of me that didn’t trust him to stay.
Jake acted like I had no right to be mad. Maybe he was trying to tell me it wasn’t really a breakup if we were never together. Apparently, I made the whole thing up and he never thought of me as his girlfriend at all—which makes me the lamest person ever.
That didn’t stop me from completely falling apart when it was over. I hid out in my bedroom listening to angsty emo music in the dark and sleeping for the better part of a week and a half, until Molly had enough and dragged me out.
“You know, Emery,” she told me, “a lot of guys do something stupid when they’re afraid they’re getting too serious and it scares the crap out of them. Maybe that’s what happened with Jake. Maybe he cares about you too much instead of not enough.”
“I don’t think so, Mols.” It was typical of Molly to try to put a positive spin on things. “I have to face the truth; it’s over.”
The worst part was knowing all the places I couldn’t avoid him during the school day. My peripheral vision went into overdrive, and I was painfully aware of his position in the lunchroom or hallway or even the school parking lot. And I kept waiting for him to show up with Stacey Jordan or Callie Edwards. But he didn’t.
I skipped art for four days, until Mrs. Hicks stopped me in the hall to tell me she was going to have to write me up. So I sat in the back for the last two weeks of school and tried not to look at him.
After I had the summer to piece my life back together, I was really looking forward to senior year. I knew I’d see him, but I felt like I was ready to deal with it and get on with my life. And then I got stuck with him as a tutoring partner.
I look over at him laughing with the kids at the computer.
“Are we gonna get to go home when the bell rings?” Nick is asking him, his face serious above his SpongeBob SquarePants shirt.
“Same as always—when the bell rings,” Jake says confidently.
“That bell rings, I’ma be outta sight,” Carlos says, looking up from his coloring to join their conversation.
“That’s right, Dy-no-mite,” DeQuan chimes in with the rhyming game.
“That’s right, Bud Light,” Jake adds without thinking, distracted by the computer game. I look up, shocked, and Jake gives me an uh-oh face, which makes me laugh, and pretty soon we’re all giggling at the complete inappropriateness of his rhyme. We’re so stressed, we can’t think straight. I’m pretty sure I catch sight of a grin on Patrick’s face, but Stutts seems zoned out. He doesn’t tune in to the conversation at all.
“Do you drink beer?” Tyler asks.
“No,” Jake answers, “and you shouldn’t, either. That stuff’s not good for you.”
“I tasted my dad’s one time,” Carlos says, “and it was nasty.”
“Exactly. Nasty stuff that makes you do dumb things.” He glances up at me with a regretful half smile. “Dumb things you’ll be sorry for later.”
I look away.
Jake looks over at Kenji, who’s daydreaming a little. “Right, Batman?”
“Right, Robin,” Kenji says without missing a beat.
“I wanna do something else,” Mason Mayfield III says. “These puzzles are no fun.”
“What?” Jake says. “Those puzzles are awesome! Those puzzles are more fun than, um, than March Madness.” He grins at me. “Ask Miss Emery how much I love March Madness.”
Jake practically camped out in my den last spring, intent on convincing me that my life was incomplete without a working knowledge of college basketball. I picture him sprawled on our couch, and suddenly scenes of the two of us replay in my mind—strung together like the wall quilt of kids’ drawings that hangs above Mrs. Campbell’s desk, linked with black yarn through paper-punch holes. Pictures of hikes and picnics and dinners and movies and laughter and touches and kisses. Pieces of the past.
Damn it, play fair, Willoughby. Those days are over.
CHAPTER 14
JAKE
“OKAY, NEXT THREE AT THE COMPUTER are”—I draw three more names from the flowerpot—“Mason, Anna-Caroline, and Janita.” The kids switch places with the others, and Mason Mayfield III elbows his way in front of the girls. I probably should get on him about his manners, but I’m just too tired to care. I’m picking my battles right now.
Emery’s giving me weird looks across the room. I wish I knew what she’s thinking. One minute we’re laughing with the kids, and the next second she’s giving me the evil eye.
Let me tell you, that girl can get a shit-ton of mileage out of the silent treatment. After that day she found out about Stacey, she refused to speak to me again, ever. Once I admitted I’d kissed Stacey Jordan, she was done with discussion.
I guess I can’t really blame her. I’m the biggest screwup ever. Emery knows it. My friends know it. My dad knows it. He didn’t exactly say it that way, the night I got arrested, but he did plenty of yelling, and it was tough to see how disappointed he was.
Of course, The Christine went nuts. She still brings it up constantly. It’s been over three months now, and I still can’t leave the house without her telling my dad I can’t be trusted. It’s like it’s her mission in life to remind him I’m a hardened criminal.
Last week he asked me to drop him at work because his car was in the shop. His cell phone rang that stupid ringtone she put on of some lame oldies song that’s “their song.” He answered, then listened without saying a word for, I swear, about five minutes, and then he hung up.
“What did she say about me?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. He reached over and turned up the radio. “She just wants me to be mad at you.” Then he rolled down the window and started whistling, like he didn’t want to talk about her or me. Sometimes I wonder what that woman does for him that makes it worth putting up with her. Wait—I don’t want to know. I really don’t want to know.
Emery said something once about my dad that made sense to me. We were on the golf course at night. I used to work there on weekends, so I stole the key to a cart to surprise her with a late-night picnic. I’m not very good at organizing, so the food was mostly chips and cookies and some peanut-butter crackers, but she loved it.
We were lying on a blanket looking for the constellations and I said, “What I don’t get is, how can a guy who’s been with someone like my mom choose to be with The Christine? There couldn’t possibly be two more different people.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” she said. “He knows he can’t have that again—what he had with her. So he’s making sure what he has now is so different, he won’t feel bad when it doesn’t even come close.”
It was better than anything I’d been able to come up with.
“I didn’t even know he was thinking about dating until I saw that Internet match thing on his computer,” I told her. “It seems like he could have waited at least a year.”
“Some people just aren’t meant to be alone,” she said.
I remember the crickets were chirping that night, and we could hear a bullfrog croaking down by the pond. It was so damn peaceful out there.
“The worst part about losing Mom,” I told her, “was she left us before she left us.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Those last two months, she stayed in her b
edroom and hardly ever came out. I mean, I know she was sick and needed to rest—I’m not completely selfish. But it was more than that. It was like she didn’t want to talk to us.”
“The same thing happened with my grandmother,” she said. “The hospice nurse told us people withdraw when they’re dying. It’s too painful to think about leaving the people they love, so they pull away to keep from hurting so bad. It’s a journey you have to make on your own, and closing yourself off from everybody is how you get yourself ready to do it.”
“I just figured she didn’t want me around.”
Emery was quiet for a minute, then she said, “I think your mom loved you like crazy for as long as she could—until she had to let you go.”
I guess I have to find a way for that to be enough.
I nudge Mason over to give the girls a turn, and he pouts. Emery raises her eyebrows across the room. It’s like she knows when I’m thinking about my mom. The truth is, it happens all the time no matter what’s going on—even when there’s a man with a gun in the room.
“Miss Emery, come look at my score,” Janita says.
Emery walks to the computer. “Awesome, Janita,” she says. “Hey, when you finish this game, you guys come color with the rest of the class.” They groan, and she adds, “There might be enough prizes for everybody.”
She turns to me. “You wanna take a break before I send the next three kids to play?” she asks.
I know her well enough to know something’s up, so I rush Janita and Anna-Caroline a little and send them back to where the others are.
When she sits next to me, I ask her in a low voice, “What the hell were you doing talking to him a little while ago?”
“Just trying to make a connection, calm down,” she says, glancing over to make sure the kids’ chatter will cover us.
“Not a good idea. That man is dangerous.”
“Oh, really? Thanks for the tip, Jake. I had no idea.”
She slides something toward me—a smartphone.
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