Shallow Pond

by Alissa Grosso

  I spent the day doing my best to avoid Zach Faraday. I skipped lunch, making up some excuse about having to get extra help in Physics. In English class I pretended to be so engrossed in the free-writing exercise we were assigned that I didn’t even notice him next to me. When we got to the volunteer assembly, I was prepared to go straight to the animal shelter booth and sign up, then beat a hasty retreat to the girls’ room, but as I marched across the room, I noticed a familiar figure milling about in the vicinity of the animal shelter booth. I could probably have just run over, signed up, and run off again before he even noticed me, but what if he signed up for the shelter? I could wind up doing my volunteer time right alongside Zach Faraday.

  I looked around at the bright-colored banners displayed in the media center. I was hoping to find something so unappealing that Zach wouldn’t even consider signing up for it, but I noticed something else, a little sign taped to the front of one of the tables that read, Sorry, boys, this opportunity is for girls only. I made a beeline straight toward it.

  “Hi,” said the cheery woman behind the counter. “Are you interested in signing up to volunteer for the women’s support hotline?” She was ready to launch into a spiel about the hotline and how I would be able to help others by generously volunteering my time, but I cut her off.

  “Yes,” I said, “I am.”

  I wrote my name and contact information down on her clipboard, thanked her for the magnet she handed me, and all but ran out of the room. I was still moving at a pretty fast clip down the hallway when I rounded a corner and plowed straight into Zach Faraday. Smooth, I silently told myself. Also, nice work on avoiding Zach.

  “Hey,” Zach said in that friendly, laid-back, perfect voice of his.

  “Oh,” I said, and then, proving that I was skilled in the art of conversation, added, “hey.”

  He flashed me one of those smiles and held out his hand. “Zach Faraday. I don’t think I’ve ever properly introduced myself.”

  He obviously expected me to shake his hand. I hesitated.

  “Barbara Bunting,” I said. I shook his hand quickly.

  “See, I feel better now.”

  I certainly didn’t. I felt nervous and weird, and I prayed that someone, anyone, would walk through the deserted hallway and interrupt our meeting, but no one was in the hallway. They were busy scoping out the volunteer opportunities and eating the free chocolate chip cookies.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Okay, I’m starting to get paranoid. Was it something I said?”

  Yes, it was everything you said. It was also everything you didn’t say, just the way you can look through me with those cold blue eyes or set me instantly on fire with that perfect smile. How could I explain to him that I knew I needed to avoid him at all costs, at the risk of throwing away everything I’d always wanted.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said. It was the best excuse I could think of on short notice. I hated it.

  “Oh, okay, um,” Zach stammered. I knew he wanted to say something but I didn’t want to hear him say it.

  I speed-walked in the direction of the nearest girls’ room, doing my best impersonation of someone who desperately needed to pee even though I think he knew I was faking it.

  I locked myself in a stall and just stood there trying to remember how to breathe. What was wrong with me? Why was I allowing myself to get so freaked out over some random guy? I told myself that he was just a guy, that he wasn’t really special, but like my excuse about needing to pee, it was a complete lie. Zach was not just some guy, and if being the best-looking guy to ever set foot in Shallow Pond’s high school qualified as special (and how couldn’t it?) then Zach Faraday had specialness oozing out his ears. So I tried a different tactic. I tried telling myself that someone who looked

  like that and dressed in those sort of clothes and drove a car like that must be a stuck-up snob. I told myself that he was probably a complete asshole. The only problem there was that, so far, he seemed more like a nice guy than an asshole. I clung to the flimsy excuse that the nice-guy thing was just an act to hide his true asshole nature.

  As for why I clung to this excuse, the answer was once again simple. If I allowed myself to start seeing Zach as a sweet, gorgeous guy who had the ability to turn me into mush with a single glance, then it was only a matter of time before we started dating, before I became head-over-heels in love with him, before I made him the sum total of my existence, only to have my heart smashed to smithereens when he dumped me. Maybe it was a lot to infer from a few encounters, but I’d seen the scenario play itself out with Annie and I had no desire to follow in her footsteps.

  Four

  I cleared the plates from the dinner table. Annie had barely eaten anything. The previous night’s unpleasant dinner atmosphere still hung heavy in the air. Gracie had been good, had not even mentioned Cameron’s name, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. I’m sure Annie hadn’t been able to put Cameron’s return out of her mind. When Gracie went upstairs to watch some TV show in her bedroom, I loaded the dishwasher while Annie remained at the table staring into space. She looked awful. Her skin was too pale. Her face was drawn.

  “Do you feel okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Maybe you should go to a real doctor, at the hospital,” I said. “Jenelle’s probably going to be volunteering there. I could ask her to find out which doctor is good.”

  “I’m fine,” Annie said again. This time her tone was a bit more clipped and angry. I let the matter drop.

  “What about you? Have you figured out what you’re doing for your volunteer project?” she asked.

  I thought about the women’s support line I’d signed up for on a whim. Did I even want to do that? I imagined the hopeless sort of women who called a support line for help. These were women who didn’t have the wits or the strength to get by, women who were intimidated by the big scary world. They were, I realized as I pictured these helpless waifs, women very much like Annie. I felt sorry for these women, but what sort of help could I give them?

  The advice I would give would be to quit whining about their problems and do something about them instead. To quit being so scared of life and just start living it already. They probably wouldn’t let me anywhere near a telephone, though. In fact, they would probably tell me I wasn’t the right sort of person for helping out with the support line. I would have to find a different volunteer job. It seemed pretty obvious—I was going to end up at the animal shelter cleaning up shit, and probably, with my luck, I would be working right alongside Zach.

  I was about to tell Annie I hadn’t yet made up my mind about a volunteer job when our doorbell rang. The sound made me jump. Our doorbell almost never rang.

  “Who is that?” I said, before realizing who it probably was. Annie pushed back her chair and started to stand up, but she looked shaky and fragile. She seemed like she could collapse at any moment. “I can get it,” I said, and I ran to the front door.

  I opened the front door expecting to see the Cameron I remembered, the lanky eighteen-year-old with the shaggy hair, but, of course, the guy standing on our stoop bore only a passing resemblance to that Cameron. He had filled out some. His hair was cropped close and was even starting to thin out a bit. His face had stubble on it, like either he had forgotten to bring his razor back home with him or he was trying to go for that casual sort of look that only a handful of movie stars are actually capable of pulling off. The liberal cologne application made me think that his aim was to impress, and that the stubble was part of some sort of look from a magazine he was going for. This is what would happen if any of my Shallow Pond classmates tried to emulate the effortless cool of Zach Faraday. After all, Cameron was nothing but a Shallow Pond boy all grown up.

  He looked surprised to see me. Well, he wasn’t the only one who’d changed since we last met. Last time Cameron had l
aid eyes on me I was still a kid, ten years old.

  “Babie,” he finally said when the shock had worn off. “Wow, look at you.”

  “It’s Barbara now,” I said.

  My mom’s name was Susie, and Annie and Gracie had just seemed like cute nicknames for Anne and Grace that echoed my mother’s cute nickname. Then I was named Barbara, and no one wanted to give me a nickname that would forever be associated with a voluptuous doll, and besides, my last name was Bunting. So, naturally, I became Babie. When I was thirteen, I decided I really didn’t want to be Babie anymore. I grudgingly let my sisters get away with it, since I didn’t see any way to break them of the habit, but for everyone else I decided I would be Barbara.

  “Barbara,” Cameron repeated. He’d been gone a long time. I could forgive him for not knowing about my nickname change, but I couldn’t forgive him for everything.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. I stared hard at him, hoping he would come to his senses and crawl away back home, but, though he shrank away from me a bit, he did not attempt to run.

  “Cameron!” Gracie’s happy squeal was followed by her dashing down the stairs. She nearly pushed me to the ground in her run to the door. “Babie, what’s wrong with you? Cameron’s freezing his butt off out in this cold.” Cameron gave me the slightest of smirks as he stepped into the house. Was it because Gracie had called me Babie? Was it because he’d won this little showdown? “Annie, come out here!” Gracie yelled.

  “Hi, Cameron,” Annie said, surprising Gracie and me. We hadn’t realized she’d come in from the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Cameron said.

  No one knew what to do. The four of us stood there; I assumed everyone felt as awkward as I did. I kept looking from Annie to Cameron, trying to figure out what they were thinking, what it must be like to see each other after all this time, but I couldn’t tell what was going through their heads.

  Several seconds passed and no one said anything, no one moved. Then Annie and Cameron both started to say something at the same time, so both stopped talking, and then again at the same time they tried to tell each other to go ahead. I thought it was uncomfortable, but Annie actually started laughing—not a polite chuckle, but a real laugh. When was the last time I’d heard Annie laugh like that?

  “Sorry,” Cameron said. His face had gone somewhat pink with embarrassment, and that made him look a lot more like the boy I remembered. “Did I catch you at a bad time? I should have called first. I was just driving around, and then

  I thought I would stop by.”

  “It’s fine,” Annie said. “We just finished eating a little while ago.”

  “Let me take your jacket,” Gracie said. “Sit down.”

  With a significant amount of awkwardness we found places to sit in our living room. It made me realize how small and cramped the room was. Gracie and Cameron sat on the couch, and me on the little bench no one ever sat on by

  the window. Annie lowered herself gently into the armchair.

  “So, the prodigal son returns,” Annie said. She seemed so relaxed about this whole thing. I wondered if she was in shock.

  “Something like that,” Cameron said. He played absently with the fringe on the pillow.

  “You’re living with your mother?” Annie asked.

  “For a while, yes,” Cameron said. “Until I can get back on my feet.”

  How bad did things have to be for a grown man who had escaped from Shallow Pond to come back and move into his mother’s house? I figured Cameron Schaeffer had hit rock bottom.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Annie said. I had a vague memory of Mr. Schaeffer dying a few years back. I wondered if that was the last time Cameron had been in town.

  “Thanks,” Cameron said. “I mean, I’m sorry about your father as well.”

  Once again, an awkward silence filled the room. I knew my father never really liked Cameron, but the details were hazy in my mind. Was it just the stereotypical dad-not-liking-the-guy-who-is-dating-his-daughter sort of thing, or was it something more than that? Did my father have a good reason for hating Cameron? Maybe it was the fact that it was Cameron’s fault Annie had stuck around this town instead of getting out while she had the chance. I wondered about my father letting her do that. Could he really have been that apathetic about her future? Unless he let her stay for selfish reasons, not wanting to have to handle taking care of me and Gracie on his own.

  “It must be so weird to be back home in little Shallow Pond again,” Gracie said. “You were living in New York, weren’t you?”

  “New Jersey, actually,” Cameron said. “The wilds of suburbia.”

  Annie laughed at this, and this time it was a fake laugh. I cringed at the sound of it.

  “It probably beat this place,” I said.

  “I kind of like being back,” Cameron said. “It’s nice the way nothing changes here.” I thought he was right about nothing ever changing, but I didn’t see what was so nice about that.

  “Well, some things change,” Annie said in a quiet voice.

  “Yeah,” Cameron agreed with a fake laugh of his own. “Look at Babie. You’re practically all grown up.” He shook his head. “I remember when you were just a little kid.”

  And I remember when you were just some stupid guy my sister was madly in love with, I thought but didn’t say. Some stupid guy who didn’t think twice about breaking her heart.

  “Babie’s got an admirer,” Gracie announced.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “The new boy in town is sweet on her,” Gracie said.

  “Gracie, that’s enough,” Annie said.

  “What?” Gracie protested. “It’s true. I thought you were going to the winter carnival with him.”

  I shook my head. What didn’t Jenelle say on the phone last night?

  “The winter carnival,” Cameron said. “I forgot all about that. It must be coming up soon.”

  “It’s Saturday night,” Gracie said. “You are going, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think—it’s been so long since I’ve been back here. It would probably just feel strange.”

  Cameron was trying to politely say he would be bored out of his mind spending his Saturday at the ridiculously lame Shallow Pond winter carnival, but Gracie was oblivious.

  “You have to go to the winter carnival!” she shrieked. “Annie, tell him he has to go to the carnival. Nobody misses the carnival.”

  “Well, I think I’m probably going to sit this one out,” Annie said. Walking across a room seemed to tire her out, so of course she couldn’t be outside traipsing around the park in the cold.

  “I’m sure if I go, every person I meet is going to want to know what I’ve been up to and what I’m doing back here,” Cameron said. “I pretty much got sick of answering those questions about a half hour after I got back.”

  “You could go with Gracie,” Annie suggested. “She could run interference.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t make her do that,” Cameron said. “She’s young. She doesn’t want to hang around with an old has-been like me. I’m sure she wants to go with her friends and have fun.”

  “What friends,” Gracie said with a snort. “All my loser friends ran off to college and they hardly ever come home anymore, not even for the carnival.”

  I thought to myself that Gracie had it backward. She was the loser who didn’t go to college and instead stayed in this backwater town operating under the delusion that the carnival was some sort of important social event. I glanced over at Annie. She looked uncomfortable. Her face was pinched. I thought it might be some sort of physical discomfort, but it could also have been what Gracie just said. That bit about her loser friends running away and never coming back—just like a certain young man who’d left town with Annie’s heart all those years ago.

  “We should go together,” Gracie said to Cameron.
Didn’t she realize he didn’t want to go? How dense could she be? “We could have so much fun. We could even make up some wild story to tell people when they ask what you’ve been doing all this time.”

  Cameron smiled at this. “It would be interesting to go to the carnival again,” he said. Wait, what? Was he serious? “Annie, you sure you couldn’t be persuaded? Does Ben still make those ice sculptures with his chain saw?”

  “If you mean the unidentifiable misshapen lumps of ice, then yes, every year,” Annie replied. “I think he considers it his civic duty. So you’ll excuse me if I pass. I’m just getting over a bad cold, and don’t feel one hundred percent yet.” I figured she was maybe twenty percent at most. “You and Gracie should go, though.” She smiled at Cameron, but it was a forced smile that almost looked like a grimace.

  “This will be so much fun,” Gracie gushed. “Babie, you could come along with us, you and—what’s the new guy’s name?”

  “I’m not even sure if I’m going,” I said.

  “Of course you are,” Gracie said. “Only a complete loser would miss the carnival.”

  I wished Gracie would learn to use her brain before she opened up her mouth. I tried to send a look of sympathy in Annie’s direction, but Annie was in some sort of daze, staring off into space.

  “That’s different,” Gracie said, seeing my expression. “Annie’s not going because she’s still sick. Right, Annie?”

  “What?” Annie asked, snapping out of her daze.

  “You’re not going to the carnival because you don’t feel well,” Gracie said.

  “Yes,” Annie said, but she sounded distracted.

  Sitting there in the armchair, Annie looked old. She looked a lot older than twenty-six. She did look a bit like the spinster Shawna had accused her of being. The weird thing was that Annie was the same age as Cameron, and even though he’d clearly matured some, he still looked pretty young—a lot younger than Annie looked, anyway. Maybe it was just the light in the room, and maybe it was because she’d been sick—was still sick—but it scared me a little seeing her looking old like that. I’d already lost two parents. I didn’t even want to think about losing a sister as well. Still, it was hard not to think about that when I saw how awful she looked.