Zoe plucked a blade of grass out from between her toes. “Does it have anything to do with Melissa’s party? With Milo and Cheryl, I mean?”
My stomach twisted at the sound of his name. “No.”
“Have you talked to Milo?”
“No,” I lied.
“There he goes,” Zoe said, pointing at the swings. I looked up. Zoe held her breath as the boy became airborne once again and then hurtled back down to earth. “Yes!” she whispered. The little boy scrambled back up to his feet and looked over in our direction. Zoe stuck her arm out, thumb up. “Awesome!” He grinned and clapped, and ran over to the swings again.
“He’ll do that jump a million times,” Zoe said. “Because now he knows he can.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute.
Then Zoe turned and looked at me. “What about the internship? Are you worried about that? I mean, is hanging around inside that courthouse something you really want to do all summer?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”
“Fine.” Zoe said the word slowly, rolling it around in her mouth like a marble. “You say that a lot, you know that? What does fine mean, anyway?”
I stood up. “Listen, I gotta go.”
Zoe stood up too. “Don’t blow me off.”
“I’m not!” I turned my hands up. “Seriously. I just have things to do at home.”
“Like mope around in your room? Feel sorry for yourself?”
“Whatever.” I shrugged her off. “Because you know everything.”
Zoe stopped walking. “I know some of this is about Milo,” she called. “You should just tell him the truth, Julia.”
Now I stopped walking. “The truth about what?”
“How you feel.” Zoe crossed her arms. “I mean, how long are you two gonna go on like this, pretending that there wasn’t—and still isn’t—something between you?”
I could feel the blood rush to my neck and then spread across my cheeks. “What are you talking about? Did he say something?”
“Milo?” Zoe snorted. “Milo doesn’t say two words to me unless you’re around. But he doesn’t have to. God, it’s so obvious you guys are crazy about each other. Why don’t you just…”
“Stop, okay?” I said. “Could you just stop for ten seconds? As usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about, but you just talk and talk and talk anyway. It’s not what’s bothering me anyway.”
“So what is bothering you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned around again, walking toward the entrance of the park.
Zoe grabbed my arm. “Julia.”
“God!” I shouted. “Lay off, will you? It’s like you just like to hear yourself talk and most of the time you’re talking about nothing!”
Zoe steadied her bottom lip with her teeth.
“I’m tired of listening to nothing, okay, Zoe? I’m not built that way. I need quiet. I need to think. I like to be alone. So if you want to be my friend, do that for me, okay? Just leave me alone. Let me have some peace and quiet. For once.”
I strode away from her, looking straight ahead.
“You’re just afraid!” She called after me.
I winced as the words hurtled through the air between us, and then subconsciously raised one shoulder, as if to ward them off. But they rang in my ears as I kept walking, and then settled in beside me, an unwelcome passenger, as I got back into the car.
chapter
12
I drove around for a long time after leaving Zoe at the park. My destination was anywhere but home. I knew as soon as I set foot inside the house that Mom and Dad would be all over me. I didn’t know what I wanted right now, but I knew I didn’t want to talk to them. They would insist on a discussion about Maggie, pushing the issue until every last question had been raised and then answered. Dad would insist on “resolving the matter,” as if it were just another court case that he had to sift through, complete with an appeal to the jury. Except that the appeal would be to me this time and I knew he would not stop—he would not rest his case—until I assured him that I understood.
Well, I didn’t understand. I doubted if I would ever understand. And nothing they could say or do was going to change that.
I already knew Mom and Dad and Sophie had had a whole life before me in Milford. Even the revelation about Maggie wasn’t what was ripping away inside of me right now. It was that they’d kept it from me. All three of them. For seventeen years. Mom and Dad said it was to protect me. But what was Sophie’s reason? It was her silence that really bothered me, I realized, making a right on Amsterdam Avenue. I’d never known Sophie to be silent about anything.
What would happen if I reversed things? If I went up there and confronted her the way she’d confronted Mom and Dad all these years? She’d been there too, after all. Dad had said she’d seen everything. Why shouldn’t she be the one to tell me? What would happen if I went up to Poultney and asked her to tell me her side of the story? Would it help anything? Or just make it worse?
I pulled into a gas station on the way home and asked the attendant to fill up the tank. Then I had him check the oil level, which was low, and the tires and windshield wiper fluid too. I packed as soon as I got home, tucking three full outfits—underwear, shirts, matching pants—into my suitcase, along with an extra pair of sneakers, socks, my toothbrush, floss, and cell phone. I stayed in my room to avoid conversation with Mom, printing out a map and step-by-step directions from my computer instead. It was not until I heard the front door slam, followed by Dad’s “Hey! I’m home!” that I finally came downstairs, bag in hand.
“Hi,” Mom said, obviously startled by my appearance. She had circles under her eyes. “You hungry? Dinner’s almost ready.”
“No,” I said.
Dad was holding the mail. He glanced at my bag and raised his eyebrows.
“I’m leaving.” I talked loudly, hoping it would make me sound confident. “I’m going to Sophie’s for the weekend.”
Dad put the mail down slowly. “You’re going to Sophie’s? Right now?”
I nodded.
“Julia, it’s already five o’clock. Do you have any idea what a long drive it is?”
“I already printed out the directions. If I leave now and take some breaks, it won’t be too bad. Sophie’ll be up.”
“You can’t drive in the dark, Julia!” Mom said. “It’s too…”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ve driven in the dark before.”
They both stared at me for a few seconds, eyes wild. If I had the ability to look inside their heads, I thought briefly, I would see gears and cogs moving at the speed of light.
“You’re going up for a visit?” Dad asked finally.
“Yeah. I need same time away.” I shrugged.
Mom turned suddenly, wiping her hands on the edge of a dishcloth. “Well, let me at least pack you something to eat…”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ll just stop at a Burger King or something.”
Dad dug into his back pocket and extracted his wallet. He pulled out three twenty-dollar bills and held them out to me. “Take this too.”
“I’m fine, Dad. Really.”
He strode over to me and pushed the money into my hands. “I know you’re fine, Julia. But take the money anyway. You never know…” He left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the air between the three of us like a storm cloud.
I took the bills and shoved them into my pocket. “Thanks.”
“Be back on Sunday.” Dad said.
I nodded. “I’ll call before I leave.”
“Hit the road earlier rather than later,” Dad said. “You’ll want to be fresh for your internship on Monday.”
I pushed past him and headed for the door.
“Julia?”
“I know!” I turned, my hand on the doorknob. “I will be back for my internship, Dad. You don’t have to worry.”
He dropped his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “All right,
then.”
Mom stepped forward, her hand on his arm. “Make sure to call us as soon as you get there safely. I mean it. As soon as you get there.”
“It’ll be late,” I protested.
“I don’t care what time it is.” Mom’s eyes flashed. “Just call me when you get there.”
“Okay.” I pushed the door open. “I’ll call you when I get there. Bye.”
I got into the car and shut the door. Mom and Dad stayed in the open doorway, watching as I inserted the key into the ignition and reversed the vehicle out of the driveway. I gave them a small wave as I put the car back into drive and surged forward.
At the stop sign, halfway down the street, I glanced briefly in the rearview mirror.
They were still there, watching from the doorway, Dad’s arm encircled around Mom’s thin shoulders, the tips of Mom’s fingers pressed against her lips. Sophie and I used to do this thing sometimes, just for fun, where we positioned objects at a distance in between our thumb and index finger. It was a trick of the eye, of course, an optical illusion, meant to make us feel bigger, I guess, than the things that actually were. And this was what I did now, fitting both of my parents—still reflected in the rearview mirror—in between my slightly parted fingers.
They were so small, I thought. Like dolls. Little kids, even.
I stepped hard on the gas and did not look back again.
part
two
chapter
13
Mom was right. Driving such a distance in the dark was probably not the smartest thing to do. As the light began to sink behind the hills and fade entirely from the sky, I tried not to let my nerves get the best of me. The good thing was that the majority of the trip was on the highway. A straight highway. In fact, the first hundred miles, along Route 84, was so boring that I had to turn the radio on loud so I wouldn’t fall asleep. Cyndi Lauper wailed in my ears as I pulled onto the New York Thruway and settled in for eighty more miles of silent road, but after a while, I turned the radio off. The silence, strangely enough, was comforting.
I still wasn’t 100 percent sure what my motivation was for doing this. I did know I wanted to hear Sophie’s version of things. I wanted to stand in front of her and ask her why she had kept Maggie from me. But why I was driving three hundred and fifty miles to ask her—right now, with everything else going on in my life—wasn’t really clear. Why was I letting this weird sense of urgency take over instead of the usual straightforward, calculated way I did things? And how was it that I had just graduated at the top of my class two days ago and now felt as if I didn’t have a clue about anything at all? Maybe in an ironic sort of way it would turn out that Sophie was the one who had a handle on things; after all, she’d spent seventeen years keeping a secret. And a massive secret at that. I’d done a lot difficult things in the last few years—getting a 1680 on my SATs (after taking them six times), receiving the highest score ever on Mr. Phillips’s ridiculously grueling chemistry final—but I’d never done anything like that. And as much as it angered me that she had done it, I couldn’t help but feel a strange kind of awe about her too.
The occasional punctuation of a few red taillights broke up the vast blackness in front of me. A lopsided moon moved overhead, gossamer clouds separating in front of it like milkweed strands. By the time I reached the end of the thruway, it had scuttled to the front, like an enormous blinker pointing the way.
Every time I tried to imagine the impending scene between Sophie and me, I felt sick. I’d seen enough blowouts between Sophie and Mom and Dad over the years to know that arguing with Sophie was not for the faint of heart. Sophie, if it could be said, was pretty damn good at arguing. I had never known her to back down. She held her ground the way a bullfighter waited in front of a bull, fluttering that red cape until the last possible second. And then, just before the charge, she would move, so swiftly that Mom or Dad or whoever it was she was baiting did not even have time to blink. By the time they were ready to face her again, she had settled into another fighter stance, red flag waving all over again.
It was not something I was looking forward to. But maybe, when things finally got said, when details were spread out before us, an argument would not be necessary. Maybe we could just sit there and…talk.
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to imagine it. And then I opened them again.
We were talking about Sophie here, a girl who had once been dubbed by Dad as Miss Darrow, after Clarence Darrow, possibly the most famous trial lawyer in history. He was known for his powerful closing arguments.
Who was I kidding?
chapter
14
When I was nine years old I won the Acahela Summer Camp Spelling Bee. It had come down to a final round between me and Hannah Reed, who stumbled on the word “octopus.” I clutched my little plastic trophy on the bus ride home, wriggling with excitement at the thought of showing it to Sophie. Mom and Dad always made a fuss over my good grades, but getting Sophie’s approval was like hitting gold. Once, after I had shown her a perfect math test—complete with three gold stars—Sophie asked if she could hang it in her room. Seeing my paper there every time I came into her room afterward sent a swell of pride through me.
It was unseasonably cool that day in July. Leaves on the maple trees whipped to and fro under a sharp wind, and the sun peered out faintly behind a film of clouds. The air smelled like rain. I had just passed the kitchen window when I heard someone shouting. The window was cracked slightly and I stood under it, listening with my heart in my throat.
“They’ve been saying shit behind my back since the end of last year,” Sophie said. “They just haven’t been as vocal about it until now. Seriously, Mom, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
“What kinds of things? About your weight?”
“Yes, about my weight!” Sophie exploded. “Like it’s a big deal that I put on twenty pounds!”
“Well, what are they saying exactly?” Mom asked.
“You want to know what they’ve been saying? When I got up from my lounge chair at the pool today, some asshole friend of Eddie’s made oinking noises. And when I walked over to the snack bar to get a soda, I heard Marissa Harrington call me a lard-ass under her breath. Okay? That’s the kind of shit I’m dealing with.”
“Sophie, please.” Mom was begging. “Don’t use that kind of language.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sophie yelled. “Me using bad language isn’t the point here, okay? You asked me what was wrong and I told you what was wrong.” I flinched as the sound of something being slammed filtered through the window. “I don’t know why I ever think I can talk to you about anything!”
I counted slowly to ten, then went inside.
Mom looked bewildered as I walked through the door. “Julia,” she said flatly.
“What’s wrong with Sophie?”
Mom blinked. “Oh, nothing. She’s having a rough day is all. She’ll be fine.” She glanced down at my trophy. “What’s that?”
I held it up. “I won the spelling bee at camp today.” Somehow, the news didn’t feel that exciting anymore.
But Mom squealed and clapped her hands and kissed me. She placed the trophy on the kitchen counter so she could admire it, and then said, “How about a snack?”
“No thanks.” I grabbed the trophy and began to climb the stairs.
Mom came after me. “Honey? Don’t bother Sophie right now, okay? She’s not feeling that great. You can show her your trophy later. Don’t bug her now.”
“I won’t bug her.” Insulted that Mom would even suggest such a thing, I sat in my room for a while, staring at the little prize in my hands.
Little drops of rain began to pelt my bedroom window. I put my trophy down and went over to the chair behind my desk. I drew a fat pear with arms, legs, a hat, and a skirt. Then I drew a pair of cherries, connected by a single stem, holding hands. All of them wore striped socks, bows in their hair, and had little red cheeks. I put my colored pencils down. Sophie ha
d to see my trophy. She just had to. If anything could make her feel better right now, it would be this. I knew it.
I tapped very gently on her door. “Sophie?”
“Go away.”
I paused, pressing my forehead against the door, and squeezed the trophy in my hand. “Sophie, I just want to show…”
The door flung open and I stepped back, surprised. Sophie’s hair hung around her face, as if she had turned her head upside down and shaken it. Black eyeliner had been drawn thickly around the bottoms of her eyes, and her lips were painted a garish red color. “What do you want?” she screamed. Even her voice, hoarse and shrill, sounded as if it didn’t belong to her. But it was not until I looked down and saw the hair—a large, massive clump of it—clutched in her right hand, that I began to cry.
I took another step back and bumped into the wall. The sound of Mom’s footsteps running up the stairs echoed somewhere faintly in the background, but she was not fast enough. Sophie had already snatched the trophy out of my hands and was glaring at it. “This?” she yelled. “This is what you wanted to show me?” I tried to flatten myself even more against the wall as Sophie leaned down. Her weird eyes leveled with mine. The red lipstick had begun to smudge around her bottom lip, and her breath, hot and metallic smelling, made me wince. “You think getting first place all the time will make them like you a little more?” she hissed. She held the trophy to my face, as if I might forget what it looked like, and then threw it down the hallway. I stared, horrified, as it scuttled noisily against the hardwood floor, and then spun into a corner. Suddenly, Sophie’s hot breath was in my ear. “Well guess what? Being perfect won’t change anything. Believe me. I’ve already tried.”
Mom burst out from the steps, racing toward us. “Don’t touch her!” she screamed, arms waving out in front. “Don’t you touch her, Sophie!”
The Sweetness of Salt Page 6