The Gap Year

by Sarah Bird

  “You are not fine! You stole your college money.”

  “That was my money.”

  I am livid at her unapologetic entitlement. “That money was not yours. That money was for college.”

  “It was for my future.”

  “A future that you have allowed that … that …” No reason to hold back anymore. “That slimy jerkwad creep to steal.”

  “You do not know the first thing about Tyler. He is not who you think he is.”

  “So Coach Hines told us.”

  “Coach Hines? He’s the jerkwad. Mom, you really, seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I can’t right now, but Tyler did not steal anything. This was completely my idea. I had to talk him into it. Renting a trailer this summer was my idea. We made money and learned how to run a business. Then, later, we learned how to cook real food.”

  Those odors I’d smelled on her. I was right.

  “A roach coach! That is what you threw all of your college money away on!”

  “We also had to pay a year’s lease on the space in advance to negotiate a good price. We had to buy all our equipment. We had to put down utility deposits. It’s expensive to open a business.”

  “Business? A freaking roach coach is not a business.”

  “See? Just the way you keep saying that. Roach coach. Roach coach. Roach coach. That shows that you do not know what you’re talking about.”

  I am almost too mad to think about the heavenly crepe with caramelized onions and chicken that I just ate. Or the mind-expanding tacos. Or the throngs of people shoving big dollars through small windows. I am certainly nowhere close to admitting, even to myself, that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  I start to speak, but Aubrey cuts me off. “That is exactly why I could never have told you about the plan. You would never have let me do this. You would have forced me go to Peninsula.”

  “It didn’t have to be Peninsula. Aubrey, you never even talked to me about any of this. Told me how you felt.”

  “What was the point? So you could make fun of it like you’ve always made fun of the only places where I remotely fit in?”

  “I have never made fun of—”

  “Band! Attendance office! The lunch wagon! Shit, you and Dori made fun of me for keeping my room neat.”

  “For God’s sake, Aubrey, I made a couple of lame jokes about your band hat.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve been a big disappointment and that I’m not off singing in cathedrals or mapping the human genome or any of those other things you think I should be doing. I’m sorry that it turns out that this is what I’m good at. What I like.”

  “You don’t know what you like. That’s what college is for.”

  “For a lot of kids, maybe most, yeah. For me, if I had let you force me into going to Peninsula—which you somehow would have if I’d started talking to you about it—I would have hated it and flunked out and that money would be gone and I would have nothing.”

  It’s disconcerting to hear Aubrey talk about me as some kind of unstoppable force in her life when it has been over a year since she even seemed able to hear me.

  “This is so not what I had in mind for you. You do realize that, if I made this a legal matter, the law would be on my side.”

  Then, with an unsettling calm, she says, “Yeah, it probably would.”

  Maybe she’d take my threat more to heart if I’d actually called the police that first time she disappeared. Or maybe we’d have just devolved into a Jerry Springer–ready mother-daughter duo radiating hatred at each other.

  I read once that it takes fourteen miles for an oil tanker to change course. The same change for mothers and daughters must take a nearly equal number of years. But in all those miles and years there does come one precise moment, one discrete point in an infinite vastness, when you start heading in an entirely new direction. I know that, for better or for worse, Aubrey and I have hit that moment when instead of arguing with me, fighting to convince me to accept what she wants, she states in a steady, even way that doesn’t ask for my permission or seem ready to bristle when I don’t offer it, “Mom, I have to go. We have to get ready for the opening.”

  “Where, Aubrey? Tell me where you are. I need to see you. Make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’d really rather not say. I’ll invite you when we’ve got the kinks smoothed out. But I’m too nervous now and you take my strength away. I have to go. Sorry.”

  She hangs up. Before I even have a chance to be hurt by Aubrey telling me I take her strength away, the phone rings again.

  “Mrs. Lightsey.” It’s Tyler. He’s whispering. “Come to Town Square. But, you know, just for a look. Don’t let her see you, okay?”

  “Thank you, Tyler.”

  “I know that the money was for college. Not what we used it for. We’re going to pay you back. With interest.”

  I’m not sure why, at that moment, I look over at Martin, who has wandered off and is studying our old house and the cartoon-colored bungalows around it. Probably because of treacherous, atavistic brain wiring of the sort that made cavewomen look to their mates, the upper-body-strength ones, when a saber-toothed tiger approached, I think of him working Coach Hines and Randy. Whatever the reason, I’m strangely confident when I say, “Oh, there is no question about that, Tyler Moldenhauer. You will pay back every single cent.”

  DECEMBER 12, 2009

  As the sunset fades and the sky goes black, I flip over onto my stomach, prop my head on my hands like a third grader at story time, and ask Tyler to tell me, one more time, my favorite bedtime story. The one that answers the question, “Why me?”

  “You’re beautiful, you’re smart, and you have a soul.”

  “Madison is beautiful, and she got into Duke.”

  “Right. And the soul part?”

  We laugh. We are pretty much laughing at everything.

  “I also like that you never wore brand names.”

  “But I did. I started wearing brand names for you.”

  “Yeah, I noticed those Nike shorts and I liked that too. That’s hard work, fitting in. I knew you were doing it for me.”

  “How did you know that?” I play-slap at him like I used to when it was the only way I had to touch him.

  “I knew. Plus you totally had the booty for them.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh. Really.”

  He slides his hand down and pats my butt. I guess I have to thank Shupe and all that marching for something, because my butt is as springy as a bag of Gummi Bears. He strokes my hair; his fingers catch it, pull it into a fan, then let it fall slowly.

  “What did you mean when you said that you wanted it to be different with us?”

  “Different in every way.”

  The rumble as he answers, my chest against his, makes me think of the girl I was with my head against his heart that first time and how long ago that seems. A lifetime ago.

  “Different in the important ways.”

  “But how? Different from what?”

  “You do not want to hear any more of Tyler Moldenhauer’s loser redneck stories.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

  The wall heater clicks as it switches on. Out on the highway a car passes with a stereo playing so loud the bass pulses through us. “You know those vampire books that all the girls are reading now?”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Twilight? Or something like that.”

  “That’s how I always felt. I felt like a vampire.”

  “You want to drink my blood,” I joke, tilting my head to offer my neck to Tyler, wanting his mouth there.

  “Well, that goes without saying. But it’s the other part. That the vampires have lived forever and they’re older than everyone else and will always be older. That’s how I always felt. I mean, I was older. But it was more than that. I always had to pretend to be ignorant. Especially about girls.”


  “Girls? You were pretending about girls? God, you’re a good pretender.”

  He traps me in his arms, rolls over on top of me, his hair making a curtain that encloses both of us, moves against my crotch so that I can feel him. “Yeah, I may have to start pretending again right now.”

  I brush his hair back from his face and hook it behind his ears. Him talking about us together is as good as sex. Better. “No, really, tell me. About vampires. About us being different.”

  He flops back onto the pillow. “You know, all that locker-room shit that starts, like, in grade school or something?”

  “Uh, not really.”

  “At first, it’s just guys bragging or lying about touching some girl’s tit, scoring a hand job. Shit like that. But it made me feel about a thousand years old. I always wished I could be like them, wanting sex so much, wanting to touch a girl, just touch one, but you were so scared that you had to either lie or laugh about it with a bunch of dumb a-holes even more clueless than you were.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “Clueless? Way I grew up? Foster care? Ah, no. Jesus, hand jobs? I blew past hand jobs in kindergarten. Those group homes they toss kids into?” He makes a face, starts to say something, stops. “Someone should go to prison just for what they let happen there; forget the shit they personally do themselves.”

  “What? What did they do to you?” I think about things I’d heard on the news. About the things that happen to kids in foster care. I think about Tyler as a little boy with no one watching out for him.

  He studies me, makes a decision. “No, not that part. I don’t want you to ever know that part. Being with you. Like how we were at the quarry? It’s like none of that ever happened. It’s like everything was the way it was supposed to be. Like I was a regular kid who’d had a mom who told him if he wasn’t home at this exact time she’d blister his behind for him if he was two minutes late. Then he’d go home and there’d be sheets on the bed and she’d hold up two things for dinner and ask him if he wanted chicken pot pie or steak fingers. And he’d pick the steak fingers. Then she’d make him eat peas with it. Help him with his spelling words. Make him turn the TV off, brush his teeth. All that shit. All of it.”

  “I’ll make you eat peas.”

  “I knew that you would.”

  “Really? How did you know?”

  “I just knew. Right from the beginning I knew.”

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010

  Town Square is Parkhaven’s cheesy attempt at a downtown. The last time I visited here was almost ten years ago. Back then it had been an empty block with a few saplings no one had even bothered to remove the nursery tags from, surrounded on three sides by vacant stores abandoned after the tourists that they’d planned to sell fudge, T-shirts, and wind chimes to failed to materialize. There was a swing, but Aubrey and I were always alone playing on it and that had depressed me so much that I made a point of avoiding Town Square. A fact that Aubrey was well aware of.

  As Martin and I approach, it is clear that Town Square is not quite so dire any longer. It certainly isn’t deserted. Signs of life abound. The scrubby trees have grown into broad-leafed oaks shading the park where a pack of boys in droopy shorts and thick-soled tennis shoes perform skateboard tricks on the sidewalks. Moms sit around on benches while their offspring romp on safety-engineered play equipment. Businesses have opened on the streets around the park: a card shop, a coffee shop with a display case of cookies and muffins in the window, an antique store, a Thai restaurant, a shop advertising custom tilework, and a clothes store with a rack of summer dresses marked for clearance displayed on the sidewalk.

  The block at the far end of the park is still vacant except for an overgrowth of weeds and one single, solitary vintage Airstream trailer. Even shaded by the tall oaks, the polished aluminum pill bug’s mirror finish shines like a huge, segmented silver bead. In spite of the new life around Town Square, the trailer is still too shiny, too hip for Parkhaven. A Grand Opening banner flaps bravely above the trailer. A few twinkle lights twined over the trailer’s humped arc try for a festive touch. After the genuine gaiety of the street-fair atmosphere in Sycamore Heights, they seem forced and unconvincing.

  We park out of sight and sneak in on foot for a closer look. Never taking his eyes off the trailer, Martin points to our right like the leader of a reconnaissance patrol silently signaling to his men, and we tack off at an angle that will keep us out of Aubrey’s sight lines.

  We hide behind the racks of sale items outside the clothes store for a long time while Martin watches a form that I know to be Aubrey, moving about inside the trailer. Within the shiny frame of the silver window she moves with efficient grace, doing things I never taught her to do, off on a field trip I never signed a permission slip for.

  Martin is mesmerized, grinning as he watches his daughter for the first time in sixteen years. He doesn’t seem to notice that there is no one, not one single customer, outside the trailer.

  DECEMBER 12, 2009

  I snuggle up next to Tyler and we watch the last wisps of the sunset like a happy old couple tuning in their favorite show. Finally, the darkness outside pulls us from our secret underwater world, back to the surface, back into the room. That and Tyler’s stomach growling.

  I switch on the bedside lamp. Tyler slugs his gut as if to knock the growl out. But it just keeps growling. “OK, Aubrey Jean, two problems. We haven’t eaten since last night, and you have to call your mom. I’m gonna go out and solve the first one.”

  He gets out of bed. I notice his crotch and say, “I can’t believe I ever thought you were gay.”

  He looks down at himself, laughs. “What do you think now?”

  “Not. Not gay. I also thought you might be a secret Christian with an abstinence pledge.”

  “All true. I am a secret gay Christian.” He pulls his jeans on.

  “My other theory was that you might want me to spank you or put on an animal costume.”

  “Girl, you are a freak.” He grabs his keys off the nightstand and grips them between his lips. They jingle as he hops from one foot to the other, tugging on his boots. Not bothering with a shirt, he throws on his jacket, points to me as he opens the door. “Call your mom.”

  “She’ll just scream and tell me I have to come home.”

  He points again and gives me a stern look, the way a strict father would. I hold up my phone in surrender.

  “Call her. Then get out the hairbrush and antlers and be ready for me when I get back.”

  After he leaves, I sit on the bed hugging my knees for a long time. My lips are tender, sore and soft from being kissed. My hair smells like him and like the smell we made together. When I shower, I wish I could save every drop of water that streams away. That I could distill it and bottle the essence to have forever.

  Then I call my mom.

  Tyler comes back holding a red-and-white pizza box with drinks in thirty-two-ounce cups and a bouquet of flowers balanced on top. He gives me the flowers. They are your average grocery-store bouquet, chrysanthemums, carnations dyed blue, leathery ferns. They are more beautiful than the aurora borealis sunset.

  He holds the box out to me like a snooty waiter as he kicks the door closed with his foot. “Mademoiselle ordered the Grease and Dough Lovers Special.” He is happier than I’ve ever seen him. Bringing me pizza, taking care of me, makes him happy.

  He notices my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I put my nose next to a droopy daisy and pretend that it has a smell. “My mom.”

  He puts the box and drinks down. “What?”

  “I think she’s serious. If I don’t come home, she’s seriously going to call the cops.”

  “Shit. I thought we’d get to sleep together tonight. You know, sleep.”

  “Yeah, me too. I guess we’d better leave. This would mess up your scholarships, wouldn’t it? Scare off the recruiters if they hear?”

  Tyler snorts and smiles with one side of his mouth. “Yeah, I’m really worrie
d about recruiters and scholarships.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “Me?” He taps his chest, looks behind himself, acts like I’m talking to someone else. “A.J., I told you, I am done. So this? Going back? This is totally your decision. But I like that your mom’s freaked out and ready to call the cops. She’s protecting you. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “Can you eat and drive?”

  “Can’t hardly digest without a steering wheel in my hand.”

  I slide my legs out from under the covers. My feet touching the dirty carpet brings me back to earth and I sag. Thinking of returning to Parkhaven, to school, to my mom makes me more tired than I have ever been in my life.

  “We’ll have other nights together. We’ll have years together.”

  “We will?”

  “We will.” Tyler takes my hands, hauls me to my feet. “Now show me some hustle, Lightsey!”

  Instead, I put my arms around his neck, say, “Tyler Bronco Moldenhauer, I love you.”

  Tyler puts his hands on either side of my face. “Aubrey Jade Lightsey, I love you.”

  “You know my name.”

  “I knew your name before you were born.”

  It is cheesy. But sometimes cheesy can be true.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010

  Without taking his eyes off Aubrey, Martin tells me, “She moves like you. Graceful and determined. Knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  Though I can’t conjure up any such moments of certainty, I have accepted that, somehow, Martin and Aubrey believe that I always knew what I wanted and was implacable in getting it. “She has your eyes.”

  “I thought she might. From the Facebook photos. Everything else is you, though. Thank God.”

  “She’d love to meet you.” I point to the trailer. “There’s no one there.”

  “No. This isn’t the right time for that. This is her time. Can we stay here for a while longer? Just watch her?”

  “Sure, Martin. Of course.”

  We spy on them from our hidden spot for a long time until Martin says, “Be right back,” and ducks into the clothing store behind us. I assume he’s going to search out a restroom, but through the store window I watch him charm the owner into letting him use her computer.