Charlotte changed her voice, slipped from the revelers in the Time’s Square back to our quiet spot in the woods. “They say that kids with dead parents do this comic book thing. They imagine their parent like a superhero. Like an idealized, perfect person who would never disappoint them. And we’re not supposed to do that because it’s not the truth and they tell us to imagine them making mistakes and letting us down and loving us in spite of…” She didn’t finish her sentence, just suspended it like clothes blowing on a line, rippling in front of us.
“Do you do that?” Phillip asked.
“The thing is I do the opposite.” From the hesitation in her voice I knew Charlotte was taking us somewhere, leading us down the tangled trail of her thoughts. I stared at the branch over my head, locking my eyes on it so I wouldn’t wander too far, wouldn’t get lost.
“You think your dad was awful?” I wrapped my fingers around the webbed rope of the hammock and held on, waiting for the force of her answer.
“No. Other kids love a dead parent because they think they would have been some kind of hero. I hate mine because he was.”
Instead of packed dirt and brown grass two feet below me, I felt myself suspended over an endless chasm, nothing but strings holding me, swinging me above a black hole. I heard Phillip stand up, didn’t pay attention to whatever he was doing. For a moment I thought he would nudge his way back onto my hammock, wrap his arms around me, hold me in place. This time I wouldn’t shove him away. But I didn’t have the option. The moments passed. No one drew near. I opened my eyes I barely knew were closed. I searched for him in the darting light of the fire and found him, sitting on Charlotte’s hammock, pressing her head against that strong spot between his shoulders and his chest that was designed for a girl’s head. I’d used it once or twice.
I shuddered and turned away, feeling something between a jilted lover and a failed chaperon. Nothing that made sense. A moment later I heard Phillip stand and by the time I turned toward him he was walking away, stalking to the end of our campsite, but he didn’t stop at his hammock. He tromped on toward the next campsite until he disappeared.
“Phillip? Where are you going?” The words came out sounding almost bored, but inside I felt a razor blade of panic slicing the back of my stomach. He didn’t answer me and I stood, looking to Charlotte for an answer. “What happened? Where is he going?”
One hand covered her mouth and her wide eyes glowed beside the yellow of flames. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“We better go get him. Phillip!” I couldn’t see him anymore but the sound of his footsteps in the underbrush was clear. “We can’t let him get lost out there.”
“He won’t,” she argued, her confusion making it sound like a question.
“What happened, Charlotte?” I bit down on the words, made them hard and unyielding.
“Nothing. He was just sitting next to me and then…he left.”
I’d wasted too much time. Phillip’s footsteps had grown quieter and seemed to come from two directions at one time. I would just be fumbling in the dark now and wouldn’t do him any good. If I yelled it would bring all the other campers investigating. I sighed and sat by the fire and dropped in a gnarled stick because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Charlotte curled up against a tree, pulled her legs into her chest, and looked away from me so that all I could see was her tangled hair and tennis shoes.
He came back after the longest and quietest fifteen minutes I’d ever known. Charlotte and I both stood, but he hurried past both of us and said, “Bedtime.” After he crawled into his hammock and pulled his sleeping bag over his head, Charlotte and I retired to our own hammocks. It was only ten o’clock and I listened for the sound of sleep, but I heard only restless breathing.
“Phillip?” I asked softly.
He grunted and left me alone with my unasked question. I copied him and pulled my bag over my head to protect myself from bugs, leaving only a slice of an opening for fresh air. I missed the flat rocks and the stars of last night, missed my shoulders pressed between Charlotte and Phillip while the sky fell to pieces around us. The sky makes breaking look easy and beautiful. I wondered if I was the only one trying not to cry.
CHAPTER 25
We couldn’t help waking up early the next morning because the cold made it impossible to sleep past dawn. Phillip was the brave one who ventured out and started the fire, but our food was dwindling. We loaded our supplies into his car, shivering, hungry, dirty, tired. The drive home felt unbearably long before I even buckled my seatbelt. We didn’t feel better until we stopped at a McDonalds and devoured some hot breakfast. Phillip passed straight through his obnoxious stage and got stuck in his sullen and sulky stage. He barely spoke, which is painfully obvious on someone who rarely shuts up.
I finished my food and tucked my trash into the McDonalds bag. “Are we going to talk about it?”
Charlotte had stuffed a pillow on one end of the backseat bench and was laid out, her eyes closed. “No.”
“No,” Phillip confirmed.
“And all last night you both got on my case about how I don’t talk. Well, now I’m talking because this will be a long six hours if we don’t speak. What exactly upset you last night, Phillip?”
Charlotte groaned. “Never mind. Don’t talk. You sound just like Doctor Dave whenever you get around to saying something.”
“Megan, you still look pretty after two days in the woods. Your hair is still smooth. Your face is still perfect. It is the weirdest thing.” Phillip’s stare had more accusation than admiration when he took his eyes off the road and studied me.
“You’re mad I don’t look ugly?”
“No. That is totally unrelated. I just had to point it out,” he mumbled.
“I’m mad you don’t look ugly,” Charlotte announced in a muffled voice because she had put the pillow over her face.
“Are you doing that thing where you think you are in love with me just because you’re bored and no other girl is around?” I asked him.
“Thank you very much,” Charlotte snapped.
“Charlotte excluded,” I amended.
Phillip didn’t even give me a smile. “No. Not at all. I just like that I can count on your face. It’s always the same. I’m mad because life sucks.”
“I am seriously still here,” Charlotte growled.
I waited for Phillip to gush over how beautiful she was, too. He never waits for a second invitation to flirt, but he clenched his teeth and didn’t even look in the rearview mirror.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him.
“No,” he repeated.
I think Charlotte fell asleep after that because there was silence from the backseat for over an hour. Her head was turned away from me so I couldn’t see her eyes but her breathing looked slow and deep.
“Thank you for helping us this weekend,” I said softly to Phillip, breaking the silence. “We wouldn’t have been able to cross off four things without you.”
“No problem.” His clipped answer sounded more like ‘shut up.’
His short temper was too much. Especially since I knew I didn’t deserve it. “Phillip, what am I missing?”
His eyes flickered to Charlotte and then returned to the road. “Nothing.”
“Are you mad at her? Did she do something rude when you were sitting by her last night?”
He flinched. “No.”
“Then what?”
He met my eyes, something heavy and serious weighing down his pupils. “Megan, you know how I bug you sometimes and you still don’t tell me what you’re thinking?”
“Yes.”
“Payback.”
And since I couldn’t argue with that I watched the hills grow smaller until they smoothed into wide fields, and thought of the hot shower waiting for me at home.
When we reached the familiar outskirts of Kansas City I reminded Phillip he needed to drop Charlotte off at my house. “Her mom still doesn’t know about you. I better be t
he one to take her home.” We got to my driveway at two o’clock and untangled our possessions, pulling apart clothes and sleeping bags dumped hastily in the trunk. The smell of the last fire had hitchhiked inside my yellow hoodie, Charlotte’s pillow, and Phillip’s jeans. It was awkward standing in a tight, uncomfortable triangle outside my house, our hands full, our lips empty.
“See you tomorrow,” Phillip mumbled.
“Bye,” Charlotte whispered, the word and her eyes so full Phillip almost turned around. Almost.
“So, just throw it in,” I said, popping open my trunk after Phillip’s car rattled away. “I’ll have you home in five minutes.”
It was a short, slow drive with the sun playing off the windshield, the memories of the weekend already feeling artificial. As soon as I pulled into Charlotte’s driveway the front door opened and Melissa ran to us. She pulled Charlotte up from the front seat, rubbed down her rumpled hair, took in her shadowed eyes, her uneven complexion.
“Was it worth it?” Melissa asked. “You are completely grounded.”
I thought Charlotte would say something sarcastic, push her mother away. Instead she put her tired head against her mother’s neck. “It was amazing.”
That’s when Melissa looked to me. I wondered if she noticed the achy confusion in my chest lift slim wings and start to rise after hearing Charlotte’s three words. “We did fine,” I reassured her. “We took pictures.” For a moment I froze, forgetting that Phillip would be in almost all of them. “They’re on my phone. I’ll email them when I get home.”
“Thank you, Mom,” Charlotte said.
“You are grounded,” Melissa reminded her, but the sentence was yielding under the stern words. “And if you ever disappear like that again I will call the police and have them drag you home—list or no list, got it?” From the flash of her eyes I knew she was warning me just as much as Charlotte. She followed Charlotte to the trunk of my car and helped her get everything out. When she saw our two backpacks her face changed, narrowed. “You had a tent, didn’t you?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No tent, remember. It’s on the list.”
“I thought you were doing the meteor shower! You were out there with nothing?” She scanned Charlotte again, each bump and smudge more alarming now. I smiled, watching the panic set in despite her daughter standing safely in front of her.
“A twofer.” Charlotte shrugged. “Actually, a four-fer. We backpacked and I skinny dipped. Megan told me not to, but I did it.” Charlotte’s face was shining.
I put my hands up defensively, to ward off the blame. “Nobody saw her. And I tried to keep her safe,” I pleaded.
Melissa turned a speechless gaze on both of us before she stepped closer to me.
“She wanted to go at night when it was dark. I talked her out of that one. Well, I tried to talk her out of it altogether, but she didn’t listen.” My voice took on a frantic edge.
One of Melissa’s hands extended and I wondered if she wanted me to shake it. I made an awkward movement before she laid it on my arm, eased me in for a small, uncertain hug. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” I answered. Would she hear what I was really saying? I owe you. Of course I will protect your daughter like Bryon protected me.
I gave Charlotte a stiff, uncertain goodbye and got back in my car. Before I closed my door I heard Melissa say she wanted to hear about everything on the list, one at a time. And I think I heard a tone of envy, an accent that made me think she regretted not being there. That’s when I understood that the list was a last gift. Not one we were giving him—one that he gave me. Gave Charlotte. Gave all of us. The debt would never be paid.
My hair was still wet from my shower, my clothes still pulsing in the washing machine when my family got home. I surprised myself by how fast I ran to Lauren, how hard I grabbed her and pushed her head against me. We had two seconds before my mother came through the door and Lauren gave me a cockeyed smile. “Good, you’re still alive.”
“Megan!” My mother burst in with luggage and squeezed me, inhaling the fresh scent of coconut shampoo. “House looks great. Like I was worried. Did you have a good weekend?”
“Make any trouble?” my dad asked, closing the door behind him.
“Nary a bit,” I promised.
“Well, better luck next time.” He winked at me and I had a fleeting impulse to shock them all. I spent all weekend in the woods with Charlotte and Phillip. And there was skinny dipping. It burned on my tongue, but I quenched it with silence.
“Come help me put my stuff away,” Lauren commanded. Before I obeyed I asked my parents if they had fun.
“It wasn’t the same without you. Could you please cryofreeze yourself and never go to college?” Mom asked while she smoothed my dripping hair.
“I’ll work on it.” I had other questions, but Lauren yelled for me in her most imperious voice. “The dictator calleth,” I murmured. She waited at the top of the stairs, impatience curling her fingers almost into fists. “I’m coming,” I told her. And then whispered, “Don’t be obvious.” We shut her door behind us and spoke in low voices. “If you act this anxious to talk, Mom is going to listen at the door when she comes upstairs.”
“She’d listen at the door if we were talking about broccoli. She can’t hear anything if we’re quiet enough.” She tugged me to the far side of her room and pulled me to the floor using the bed as a barricade between us and the door.
“Very discreet. Do you keep food supplies in this fort?” I peeked under her bed skirt but only found a broken speaker, a dusty stack of books, and a couple socks. “You actually have dirty socks under your bed. Isn’t that a little cliché?”
“Shut up and start talking,” she demanded.
That made me laugh so hard the sound actually came out. Usually I am a silent laugher—a smile and an extra breath kind of a girl. But this time I chuckled and Lauren forgot to scowl because she was so proud of earning a laugh.
“Please,” she begged.
“We did four things on the list. I wish you could have seen it.”
“I could have if you let me.”
“Don’t pout. I climbed boulders. And I saw shooting stars. Tons of them.”
I was telling her about our first night on the mountain when Mom quietly turned the handle and eased open the door. Our two heads rose over the bed until our eyes were visible above the blue comforter.
“What’s the secret?” Mom asked.
“Just sister stuff,” Lauren told her.
“Can it be mom stuff? I need some good dish.” She dropped down cross-legged next to us, her expression anxious.
“Some good what?” Lauren asked.
“Dish. Some gossip. A story. You know.” Mom smiled, still convinced this was going to work.
“Mommy, I love you and I’ve been giving you dish all weekend. Megan’s turn.” Lauren gave her a conciliatory pat on her shoulder.
“You don’t give dish. You dish. It’s a verb, not a noun,” Mom explained.
Lauren made the sound of a sharp buzzer. “No grammar lessons. No dishes. Nobody born in the nineteen hundreds.” Instead of a pat she gave a playful shove.
“I was born in the nineteen hundreds,” I reminded her.
She found that inexplicably funny. “That makes you sound so old,” she squealed. “Now you please go!” she told my mother who laughed with her. Only when the door was closed, the lock clicked into place did she pull her pillow onto the floor and settle in to hear the rest. I was debating whether to tell her about the skinny dipping when she interrupted me. “Megan, did this trip make you like Phillip more?”
I pictured his back shaking with laughter while Charlotte stripped down behind him. “Oh, he’s just the same old Phillip.”
“I really want you to fall in love with him. He freaking sings at meteor showers. You are a stupid, stupid girl!”
“How would my falling in love with him help you?”
“I would just live vicariously and stuff.”
“Good point,” she conceded with a sigh. “But I just wonder…is he perfect for you and you don’t see it?”
I settled my head next to her, my damp hair leaving a spot on her pillow. “That would be so easy. Solve all kinds of problems.”
“Like what?” she reached for a strand of my hair and started twisting it the same way I played with Charlotte’s.
“Like figuring out where I fit. That would be one more cubby hole—Phillip’s girlfriend. People would expect that. They would feel more comfortable with me.”
“But…”
I turned, which pulled my hair from her fingers; they held the empty air, waiting for something profound. “Exactly.” I scanned the popcorn ceiling, imagining each bump a star in the sky. “I don’t trust the easy answer,” I told her. “I think it’s usually the wrong one.”
“Why make it easy when it can be so much harder?” she mumbled.
It was my second real laugh of the day. “Something like that.”
CHAPTER 26
“What’s on your mind?” Schatz asked me as soon as I opened her door with my lunch in hand.
“Why do you ask?” I pushed aside some scattered scripts to make room for food.
“I saw you this morning. You were alone.” She lifted her salad from her desk and joined me at the table.
“When? Before school? I was with some of the stage crew.”
“You were with people, but you were alone.” Schatz had a gift of slightly closing one eye while widening the other. It has a very delving effect, as if she were burrowing right into your head. Maybe even your soul.
I opened my container of hummus to buy time. “Aren’t I always?”
“To some extent. Why is that?”
The Truth About Fragile Things Page 16