by Beth Bloom
I pulled his hands away from his face.
“Because you love me.”
I touched his forehead to mine.
“And you’d never hurt Libby.”
He closed his eyes and said, “I’ve hurt tons of Libbys,” like I didn’t get it.
But I didn’t want to get it. His fate was mine now. “Don’t say that.”
“Everyone’s someone’s Libby,” he said.
“I know that,” I shouted, climbing out of the bathtub, splashing water everywhere. Then I slipped on a puddle and banged my knee right on the most banged-up part of my knee and shouted again. James started to move toward me, but I held up my hand. “So I’m supposed to wish you didn’t exist. So I’m not supposed to love you. Great, cool, I’ll do that.”
He said, “Quinn,” but before he could say anything else I grabbed a towel and walked out of the bathroom.
In the bedroom he found me already under the covers, facing away from the door, my nose an inch from the wall. I felt him come beside the bed and sit on the edge of the mattress.
“Go home,” I said. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or looking away. “Go home and tell Naomi and Whit that we’ve agreed not to love each other. They’ll be thrilled.”
He didn’t move.
“Go,” I said.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m telling you to go.”
“I just got back.”
“I know.” It shouldn’t have taken all my strength to not screw everything up, but it did. I couldn’t unclench my muscles. And I still held on to a sliver of that anger until he slipped in bed and lay next to me. We stared up at the shadow patterns on the ceiling, not talking. But I didn’t resist when James made a move and held my hand.
“What did Whit and Naomi say when they saw you?” I whispered.
“I haven’t seen them yet. I came straight here.”
“Oh. Whatever, they’ll be happy to see you.”
“It’s pretty dangerous for them when I’m around.”
I couldn’t say we’d be safer without him. But what was “safer” anyway? I’d still be hiding out. I’d still be hyperventilating every night when the sun went down. James may have pissed the twins off, but I’d done my own damage.
“Tonight was the first night I’ve been out since you left,” I said.
“Because you’re afraid.”
I nodded.
“Don’t be. Nothing’s happened. They have what they want, that’s all they care about.”
“Didn’t you come back to fight for Libby?”
“No. I came back to be with you.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“I can’t start that kind of mess. It wouldn’t end.”
I didn’t say anything to that either. I was already wishing I hadn’t mentioned Libby’s name.
“I called Whit, didn’t he tell you?”
“No.” It stung. “He told me you had to ramble, or something.”
“What?” James paused, then said, “Doesn’t matter, I guess.”
“Well, if you won’t fight you should’ve stayed in Massachusetts.” I folded my arms.
“I was worried. I thought you’d…I don’t know.” He thought I’d be stupid and try to rescue Libby.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m happy.”
“Me too.”
“One more time, James, before you go tonight.”
It was complicated, but so was everything.
I tried to be sexy, but there was nothing to strip off. I tried to move closer, but we were already on top of each other. I felt like a decadent body, like I deserved to feel this good forever.
And now I could sleep. The kind of sleep I’d been without for days, the kind that I couldn’t have when James was gone. Between slow, heavy nods I watched him slip into his T-shirt and jeans. I held loosely on to one of his belt loops while he sat on the edge of my bed to tie his shoes.
The earth had opened up tonight. But it hadn’t swallowed me.
“I want to wear your blue shirt,” I whispered. He grabbed it off the floor and put it on me.
“The sun’s coming up. I’ve got to take off.”
“Can’t you sleep over?”
He didn’t answer, just pointed to the shadows above our heads. Across the ceiling the thin slits cast from my blinds looked more menacing than I’d remembered. At dawn those thin lines would light up the room with morning.
“Toaster caked, huh?”
He nodded. “Listen, I know you’re freaked out, but you don’t want this Libby back. Time to move on.”
I held my breath. I closed my eyes as tight as I could.
Then I told him, “We got Libby back.”
There was a bad pause.
“How’d you do that?” he asked, too calmly.
“Wait, look.” I peeked at him. “I’m safe, Whit’s safe, Libby’s safe. It’s cool.”
“Is it?” He raised his eyebrows. “Is it cool?”
“I had to.”
“Whit helped you.” Not a question. Didn’t need a response.
“You told him to take care of me.”
“I told you to let Libby go, I told you to take care of yourself. I told you I was coming back. Didn’t you believe me?”
“Not really,” I whispered.
“Why?” His voice weakened, emptied, hollowed out with one word.
I didn’t know. I had an answer but it was pitiful, weird, boring: because I figured I loved him way more than he did me. I imagined he’d be relieved to not have to worry about loving me or hurting me or saving me. Or killing me.
“I was being stupid,” I said.
“So…what are you saying? Now the twins are after you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What about Whit?”
“They don’t know about him. It’s just me they want.”
“And me.” He shook his head. “You’ve made this worse. They’ll be vicious now.”
“They were vicious before.”
“You’ve made it worse.”
“I know.”
“They’ll try to kill my family.”
“No.”
“Damn it, Quinn. Damn it.”
I remembered the last time I’d heard someone say that: in Stiles and Sanders’s living room, under the window, burning from the heat, sticky with sweat and tears, ready to make the decision that would take me here to this moment, to the moment James would yell the same words as Whit. This just kept being my fault, over and over.
“I love you, but I don’t know what to say. They’re after us,” he said.
“It’s been over a week.”
“They’re waiting for something.”
“How do you know? How do you know?” I looked into his eyes.
He didn’t have to reply. He knew because he knew.
“Okay, okay, okay.” I only had repetition and his soft blue shirt. I clung to both. “Okay.”
“We’re going to Libby’s tomorrow.” James stood up. I could see the pain in his face, but the sun was coming. He had to go.
“She’s not there. She’s in the desert.” I reached out for him, but he wasn’t interested in my hand. He was by the door.
“We’re going wherever she is.”
“Please, we can’t bring her back.”
“We’re not bringing her back, we’re using her. We have to find out whatever she knows.”
“She’s fried, she won’t remember anything.”
“We have to try.”
I knew we weren’t running away from them now; we were running toward them.
“Okay.” I kept my arm reaching.
James was across the room from me. He wasn’t getting back in bed.
“I’ve got to go.”
“I know.” I wouldn’t ever be able to say the word good-bye.
“I’ll be back.” Was he down the stairs?
“I know.” He would be back. Tonight. The second the sun went down.
He said, “I love you,” in a weird way. From outside?
I love you too, James, so much it hurts. I love all of us. It hurts times all of us.
16.
SUCCESS
The morning was the rudest awakening. It sounded like my bedroom was the Enchanted Tiki Room. It sounded like there were birds in my bed. I threw a pillow at the chirping noise but hit my mirror instead. I tried to shut it all out, keep it together. No luck. Because glancing up I noticed, over in the corner of the room, leaned up against the wall like a silent spectator to my deranged and erotic nightlife, the large rectangular pane of glass that used to be my window.
There it was as if to say, James didn’t come to you in a dream. You didn’t make it all up. I stumbled back to bed and collapsed. I double-checked myself: a little achy, sore in places, my hair wavy and messed up. My panties were on the floor. His soft blue T-shirt was on my body. He’d been here, in my bedroom, last night, for real. Like, for real for real.
It could’ve been five minutes or five hours later when the phone suddenly rang. Since Libby didn’t speak English and James had never called me ever, who did that leave?
Duh.
“Morgan, I’m a terrible person and I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done or will ever to do you, forever.” I sighed. “Okay, dude?”
“Okay…dude.”
Oh.
“Nice apology, though.”
Not Morgan.
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re still talking to me?”
“You got drunk and weird. It’s not like you puked in my Camry.”
“Right.”
Then Whit was over it, launching into a hyper-posi rant about how cool it was that I came to the party and how cool Tori thought I was and how cool the earthquake felt and how cool Jody Bennett was taking the whole postparty cleanup thing and how everything was just totally cool. He refrained from mentioning James’s return and how uncool James was being about our decision to piss off the canyons’ most Banana Republican killers, so I assumed the reunion hadn’t happened yet. Would Whit even care? Naomi would. She’d probably ride a horse over me.
“So…are you alone?” I asked, trying to sound normal.
“She didn’t sleep over, you voyeur, but thanks for the vigilant suspicion.”
“Ew, I don’t care about that.” Kind of a lie, but I actually hadn’t thought about it since the car ride home. I’d had my own fireworks, thank you. Still a relief, though.
“Sure you don’t. Who are you referring to then?”
“Naomi.” It was at least partially true. I was fairly interested in Naomi’s reaction to my latest move to get her killed.
“Yeah, she’s here.”
“So the two of you are alone then?”
“Are you trying to freak me out?”
“No.”
He didn’t know.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I’m coming over in, like, twenty minutes. Are you dressed?”
“Wait, you’re coming over? I don’t want to hang out today.” I wanted to see him, but everything was too crazy. James and I were leaving for Joshua Tree at sunset, so I didn’t have my usual blank-slate day to run around wherever, doing nothing with Whit. Even though I liked running around wherever. Even though I loved doing nothing. With Whit.
“Nuh-uh. Not going to let you be weird about last night. You got jealous. Big deal. I’m really sexy, it’s not your fault.”
“Ugh, it’s not that.”
“Okay then, you’re just depressed and wiggy. You know I have to look out for you.”
“Not anymore,” I interrupted.
“Why not? Did Stiles fall on the wrong end of a wooden stake?”
“I don’t think that even works.”
“Well, what do you mean, ‘not anymore’?” he asked, bored of this, ready to prove that I was just being a brat.
Time to make stuff up. “Bonnie and Elliott want to bond, like have a family day or something. Attendance is mandatory. There’s roll call.”
Whit actually laughed at that, which I guess I would’ve done too if I wasn’t trying so hard to be left alone. Then he said, “Whatever. I’ll be there soon. Thank me later.”
“Noooo…,” I moaned, but he’d already hung up.
I threw on whatever—makeup, chains, earrings, Converses, ripped stuff, my usual—and pondered the results of my nonchalance in the mirror. Not bad. But I had to admit that wanting to look good for Whit—despite the fact that James was back and Whit totally boned out on me last night to be with some fluffy redheaded piece of lint—was by far the most inane, stupid desire I’d had in at least twenty-four hours. When I moved some clothes on the floor, I saw them: the sad gray sweat shorts that had defined my meaningless existence for five straight days. A dark instinct called out to me to put them on. But I shut it out and threw the shorts into the back of the closet. I wasn’t meaningless anymore.
I yelled downstairs to see if my parents were home, but there was no answer, like always, and I didn’t bother wasting my time hunting through the house for Post-it Notes about lunch ideas or bedroom upkeep or Lexus maintenance or Morgan. I was blasting some Kill Rock Stars sampler—a not-so-good, too punkish one—in my bedroom when suddenly Whit tapped me on the shoulder. He’d knocked, waited, tried the door, walked into the house, up the stairs, and into my room without me hearing so much as a sound. So much for self-preservation. So much for staying on guard.
“Please stop acting cool,” Whit screamed over the music.
“It’s not acting,” I screamed back, then turned the CD off. “I’m tired, Whit. I’m hungover. Can’t we hang out tomorrow?”
“Sorry. Breakfast burritos at El Coyote. Next.”
“Whiiiiiit,” I whined. I tried to physically push him out my door, but he was too strong and I was too sleepy. I gave up.
“You can’t just sit around and feel sorry for yourself. I thought we were past all that.”
I had no other choice. I had to let Whit stay my daytime babysitter until James decided to let them know he was back. This family was crazy. What else was new.
“Fine,” I said, heading downstairs. “TV me.”
Whit plopped down next to me on the couch and hooked his arm around my shoulder. We kicked our feet up on the coffee table, flipped around, laughed a lot, talked trash, almost forgot all the things there were to forget. Which was a lot.
But just after we’d locked into a serious cartoon block, the phone rang. It was Naomi.
“Give the phone to my brother. I know he’s there,” she said, on edge.
“Hi to you too.” I handed the phone to Whit. “You’re dead, dude,” I whispered.
“I’m so scared,” he whispered back, smiling, easy breezy. He took the phone, held it up to his ear, greeted his sister a little too cheerily, and then went silent, waiting through what I could only assume was a hostile tirade on the evils of being friends with me, hanging out with me, or doing anything at all that involved me.
I shrank back to the couch. I’d eavesdropped on this kind of convo before. Wasn’t interested in a self-esteem demolisher just now.
Then Whit said, “What note?” A pause. “When?” He glared at me. “Okay.” Probably wasn’t okay. “Yeah, I’m coming home right now. Stop crying. Just wait for me, I’m leaving.” Then he hung up the phone, walked over to the television, and turned it off.
I tried to gauge his anger. A four maybe, out of ten.
“What’s wrong with you?” he yelled.
Okay, okay, more like a four out of five.
“You knew he was here? Were you going to tell me or what?”
I stood up to face him. “Oh, like you told me when he called?”
“Whatever. That was different.”
“Not even.”
“Don’t you think this matters to me and Naomi?” he spit at me.
“It’s not my job to tell you. Why should I?” I spit back.
“Because we’re, like, friends or something
?”
“What are you so pissed about? Aren’t you happy?”
“Happy?” he yelled, shocked. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think my sister’s stupid?” He was genuinely mad, not cute mad, not sweet mad with hints of playful sarcasm, but, like, ready to be completely brutal mad.
“Whit, seriously, you’re being a jerk.”
“I know why he’s back, because I know why he left. And he wasn’t supposed to come back, because he told me it’d be too dangerous if he did.” He punched the cushion at the end of the sofa. He wiped at his eyes beneath his glasses. “So no, I’m not happy.”
“Fine,” I barely said, hiding my eyes. “Don’t be.”
“And you shouldn’t be happy either, because if he’s back, that means we’re all screwed.” I didn’t look up but I thought he was crying; his voice was doing that shaky thing that mine always did.
“We have a plan,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to hear it.”
I got up and grabbed his shirt and held on tight. I would beg, I would do anything; I couldn’t watch another bridge burn. “Whit, you can’t hate me. Everyone hates me.”
He rolled his eyes, threw my hands off him, said, “Boo-hoo,” and left me standing there. Alone with the Powerpuffs.
Obviously, Whit, I can just sit around and feel sorry for myself. If you need me, that’s what I’ll be doing all day until James shows up. And probably a little after that too.
When the sun set, my parents still didn’t show up, but James did. And he didn’t even seem mad at me anymore. He fixed my window and listened to me whine about Whit and helped me write a note to my parents saying I’d be sleeping over at whoever’s house. Plus, he brought me a Diet Coke—in a bottle, not a can, but still—and smilingly suffered through several outfit changes, a few micro-meltdowns, and a couple of self-pitying rants. And throughout it all James happily took the bait when I fished for compliments or sympathy and basically acted like a real boyfriend. And I guess I acted like a real girlfriend too: manic and nuts as hell.
Eventually I locked up the house and turned off the lights and we hit the road. Once we were on the highway to Joshua Tree, James let me lay my head in his lap and I drifted off. Sometimes I’d wake up from five minutes of sleep and feel him lightly stroking the side of my face. Or I’d come to on my back, looking up at him looking straight ahead into the night, the window cracked with the wind blowing in, like a man just taking his woman out to the desert for some romance.