like a sunny-day
ocean
and I tell her
I saw Cassidy
and I tell her
about Lauren
and the club
and Seeger
and she says I sound
happy
and I say it’s all because
of rehab,
all because of her.
And my earlier anger at Cassidy falls away.
A Little Away
Back at school,
Lauren asks why I didn’t come over
this weekend.
Tell her I was really busy,
tell her I got some good news about my mom.
But I don’t say what
and I don’t tell her about making jewelry with Audrey.
Or not introducing her to Cassidy.
It would just upset her.
And I can’t do that.
Without her other friends,
I am the only one
to help make her happy.
She tells me she has more stuff she needs to hide
and quickly, she says.
Asks if she can come by later.
I ask her what kind of stuff.
She says,
“Things nobody needs.
A sweater,
a dress.
Some shoes.”
Not wanting her to get in trouble,
knowing this is what she needs from a friend,
I shrug, say fine.
During Worship & Ministry,
we talk about our next event.
It will be like Secret Santa
but people will do favors
for others
instead of giving gifts.
Like Mom and I used to do.
Lauren and Jake sit even closer together
than they did last week.
Wonder what Jake would think of Lauren’s plan.
I slide a little away from her.
Tell Mariah I like her jacket,
jean with small holes all over it.
She smiles, mouth full of braces,
says she likes mine, too.
LAUREN
The Best Person I Know
Sierra’s been acting strange ever since we got back to school. A little distant. She says something’s up with her mom, and she acted like it was a good something, but if it’s really a good something, then I don’t know why she won’t tell me what it is. And I’m not sure if I’m supposed to ask about it or not or if it’s unfair that I want her to ask about my Thanksgiving and my mom going to North Carolina to see Ryan without us, when my mom was only gone for four and a half days and who knows when she’ll get to see her mom again.
Actually, I sort of am sure. It’s definitely unfair for me to want her to ask about that, even though it felt so good to talk to her about Ryan before.
Since I can’t really tell Sierra, I haven’t told anybody about how Ryan sent me a new video, which was nice, except that after he wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and told me he missed me and loved me, he held up a big book of piano music and said, “Mom said you’d like to see how I can hear how a song sounds by the way the notes look on the page.”
And then he played the beginning of a Beethoven sonata, glancing up at the sheet music every few seconds and stumbling over a couple of notes, even though he’d be able to play the song perfectly if he just listened to it on YouTube and then copied the sounds.
“My teacher says I’m one of the fastest learners he’s ever worked with,” Ry said once he stopped playing.
But I don’t understand why he has to learn to read music to begin with. He hated it when he took piano lessons when he was in fifth grade, and the teacher tried to teach him to follow the notes and rests and beats. And Jenna specifically said we should be honoring his strengths. Why would these supposed experts at Piedmont think it’s a good idea to force him to play someone else’s way instead of his way?
I also haven’t told anybody about how Mom came back Sunday night with a strange, smushed, bakery-made pie and a too-wide smile stretched across her face.
“It’s a lemon pie with meringue on top and a salty cracker crust!” she said. “A North Carolina delicacy.”
There were still a few slices of Aunt Jill and Aunt Becky’s homemade cherry in the fridge, but Dad took out plates and silverware and served up Mom’s weird pie while Mom showed me photos on her phone. Picture after picture of the food at the Piedmont Thanksgiving. One of Ryan standing behind a giant bowl of salad and one of him pointing to an untouched mound of vegetables on his plate. I enlarged them to see if he was smiling his real smile or not, but they were too out of focus to tell.
“Ryan and the others picked the kale and beets for this salad and the broccoli and cauliflower for this side dish. Don’t they look great?”
“I guess,” I said, and, I mean, they looked fine, but not like anything Ryan would actually want to put into his mouth.
I shoveled down a bite of the tangy, slightly soggy pie and wished it were cherry instead.
Dad was already finishing the crust of his piece, but Mom hadn’t touched the “tiny sliver” she’d told him to cut for her.
“And all the students used these special name tags for the meal,” Mom said, scrolling to a photo of three laminated rectangles that each said RYAN—one green, one yellow, and one red. “If they had the green tag on, that meant they were open to social interactions. Yellow meant they wanted to talk but might not have the energy to start conversations, so you should engage them. And red meant they needed some time to themselves. Isn’t that a great idea?”
“That’s wonderful,” Dad said, helping himself to a bite of Mom’s pie. “What a smart way to make it easier for Ryan to ask for what he needs, huh, Laur?”
“Well, did he do it?” I asked.
Mom blinked, and I surprised myself, too, a little, with how sharp my voice sounded.
“I just mean . . . did he ever switch the tag to red to tell you he needed a break?”
“No,” Mom admitted, but then she went back to her extra cheerful voice. “But I think he was happy to be social for almost the whole time, really.”
Almost the whole time. Which meant that at least once, everything had gotten to be too much for him. So this super-amazing color-coded name-tag system isn’t such a miracle after all.
Mom blinked a few more times. There were tears in her eyes, even though supposedly everything at Piedmont was just so wonderful.
“He’s doing so well, Laur,” she said. “He’s so excited about everything he’s learning. He seemed so much more at home than when we went for Family Weekend.”
But how am I supposed to believe that everything’s suddenly better when they wouldn’t let me see it for myself? And when they thought the Keller School was a good place, too, for a while there?
Mom got up and started sorting through the pile of mail that Dad had left out on the counter.
“Oh, good. The invitation for the Lees’ holiday party came!” she said, holding up a gold-rimmed invitation.
“I hope they have those pistachio cookies again,” Dad said.
I pushed away my half-eaten weird North Carolina pie as I thought of last year’s party, when Ryan played Christmas carols on the piano and Audrey and I were still best friends.
“You want to go, don’t you, Lauren?” Mom asked.
She thinks things are better with Audrey and me now because I had to use “going to Audrey’s” as my excuse when I mailed the cuff links from the post office.
“Uh, sure,” I said.
When I excused myself to finish my homework and picked up my phone, there was a new message waiting for me.
I just invented the greatest leftover sandwich of all time. Cranberry sauce, stuffing, creamy green beans, & turkey, all heated up till the cranberry oozes out.
From Jake. He’d texted on Thanksgiving Day, too, but only to say Happy Thanksgiving.
I read the sandwich text three
times before I thought of a good enough reply.
You’d better patent that ASAP!
Then I added a thumbs-up emoji and a smiley face. Because for the first time in that whole long, messed-up holiday weekend, I was grinning.
I figured I’d tell Sierra about the text as soon as I saw her the next morning. But things have felt so off that I haven’t told her about that, either.
The next Saturday afternoon, I sat on our front steps, shivering while I waited for Jake.
I had almost asked Sierra to come over and help me decide whether to wear my dark green flannel button-down or my soft, light blue sweater. Last year, Audrey and I had strategized about what to wear just to walk to Starbucks when there was a chance we might run into guys from our grade. But Jake’s not the kind of guy who cares what a girl is wearing, and I’m trying not to care about that kind of thing anymore, either.
While I waited, though, I kept wishing that Sierra would happen to come out, pulling Seeger’s leash, or see me and want to keep me company. But she didn’t.
Maybe even though she made it sound like something good had happened with her mom, it was really something bad that she didn’t want to talk about yet. Or maybe I said something wrong again—like when I thought we should give the Simplicity-a-Thon money to foster kids—but I have no idea what.
Finally, Jake’s mom pulled up in a little silver car that was old like Anne and Carl’s, and I hoped Jake couldn’t tell that the shiny new SUVs out front were my parents’.
Jake opened up the passenger-side door, and I heard his mom say, “Are you sure Mariah’s house isn’t too far? I can drop you both off there.”
But Jake shook his head and said thanks anyway, and then his mom called, “Hi, Lauren!” even though she’s never actually met me. I didn’t know if she was the Paterson part of Jake’s last name or the Willis part or both, so I couldn’t call her by name back, but I smiled and waved.
“Call me when you want me to pick you up, sweetie!” she called to Jake, and even though the air was super-cold, my cheeks heated up.
Jake’s mom calls him “sweetie.” I loved knowing that so much, I had to bite the inside of my cheek. For a split second, I pictured telling Audrey, but of course I can’t now.
“You lead the way!” Jake told me.
I’m the one who’d told him Mariah’s house was within walking distance, but his jacket wasn’t as puffy as mine, and he wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves. As we started out toward Mariah’s, I hoped he wasn’t freezing.
“You’d better be hungry, because I got to pick the menu, and we’re making the best meal ever,” he said as we turned off our street. He sounded too cheerful to be freezing, at least.
“As good as your patented leftovers sandwich?” I asked, and he laughed.
He took his hand out of his jacket pocket, and for a second I thought he might reach out to grab mine.
Instead, he wrapped one finger around another. “Fingers crossed.”
I held up my gloved hand and crossed my fingers, too.
I wasn’t worried about the meal we were making but crossed my fingers that Sierra wasn’t mad at me and that everything was OK with her mom and that the cashmere sweater Aunt Jill gave me on Thanksgiving because it didn’t fit her and the Anthropologie hair clips would sell soon.
We were making pigs in blankets for appetizers, gourmet mac and cheese for the meal, and Black Forest cake, which is chocolate with whipped cream and cherries, for dessert. All of Jake’s favorite things, plus a roasted broccoli and cauliflower side dish that Mariah’s dad added so we’d have something healthy on the menu. It made me think of the one at Ryan’s school that Mom had taken a picture of.
Mariah’s house is smaller than mine, but you can tell how much her dad likes to cook because her kitchen is way bigger than ours, and everything in it looks brand-new. I was wondering how much the fancy sandwich press on the counter would sell for if I could somehow sneak it out, when I remembered how Sierra’s forehead had wrinkled up when she told me not to take anything.
Mariah’s dad introduced himself as Mr. Freedman and said, “I have all the ingredients ready! Just pick an apron, and we’ll start.”
Her other dad, who said to call him Jonathan, didn’t stick around for very long. “I like to stay away when the magic’s happening in here,” he told us. “Safer this way, so I can’t mess anything up.”
“Like when you accidentally added curry powder instead of ginger to that pumpkin bread?” Mariah’s little sister called from the living room.
“Curry and ginger are very close to the same color,” he said, laughing. “It could have happened to anyone!”
Then he hurried off to the living room, and Mr. Freedman pointed to the aprons hanging on a special rack near the oven. One of them was pink and flowery and frilly, and it looked like something you could buy for more than fifty bucks at Anthropologie, except that the bottom was stained. I chose a red-and-white striped one with a smiling lobster on the front, and Jake picked bright green gingham and asked me to tie it in the back for him.
Mariah peeked into the kitchen to say hi, and Jake turned around to face her even though I hadn’t finished tying the bow to hold his apron closed.
“Aren’t you going to help?” he asked, and Mariah messed with her fading bangs as she shrugged.
“I guess if you want me to?”
“The more the merrier. Right, Lauren?”
I wanted to shake my head and say, I thought you wanted to hang out with me! You texted me about a sandwich!
But I made myself smile at Mariah. “Definitely!”
“I’m not wearing that awful pink apron, though,” Mariah warned her dad.
I remembered something Mariah had said one time before Worship and Ministry, about how one of her dads is always buying her girly things that aren’t her style at all. I was pretty sure I could guess which dad.
I was about to offer to trade, but Mariah’s dad took off his plain white one and handed it to Mariah. “Fine. I’ll wear it.”
He did a little twirl once he’d put it on, and Jake applauded.
And even though I wasn’t so sure anymore that Sierra was right and Jake had asked me out-out, it was pretty fun, making all that food. We sang along to Christmas songs, and Mariah’s dad kept complimenting my attention to detail, and Jake shouted like a little kid when the cream he was whipping finally started to get thick and airy enough for the cake.
But then when I was helping to ice the cake, I dripped a little bit of cherry sauce on the top of my sweater, just above where the apron hit.
“It’s just a sweater. It’s not important,” I said, but Mariah’s dad sent me upstairs to wash it with soap in Mariah and her sister’s bathroom, since Jake was using the one downstairs.
I scrubbed and scrubbed the spot until the dark red stain faded, but I used so much water that the whole front of the sweater ended up soaked.
I searched under the sink for a hair dryer, and there, in front of a wall of extra toilet paper, was a sealed pink box with fancy perfume inside. The price tag was stuck to the bottom: $78. For perfume! Mr. Freedman had probably bought it to turn Mariah into somebody girly.
Please don’t take anything from Mariah’s house, Sierra had told me.
But when I started thinking about Hailey with her puffy ponytail, getting so upset during that Jenga game, there wasn’t any room left in my brain to keep remembering Sierra’s wrinkled-up forehead and worried brown eyes.
Yes, I wasn’t planning on taking anything, but Mariah didn’t even want this perfume. Why let it just sit here when I could do something good by selling it?
But then what if Mariah or Mr. Freedman noticed, and they figured out what I’d done? What if Mariah told Sierra or, even worse, Jake?
I found the hair dryer and took it out, put the perfume back where I’d found it, and closed the cabinet door.
Forget it, I told myself as I tried to dry the front of my sweater. You can find something else to take tomorrow.
But now that I knew it was right there, expensive and unopened, my hands were all shaky and I couldn’t breathe right and I didn’t care about the wet spot on my sweater and I knew it for a fact: I’d never be able to go back downstairs and ice the cake as if everything was normal unless I took the perfume.
So I opened the cabinet back up, slid the box into the apron pocket, and then moved it into my jacket pocket once I got back downstairs.
It was dark and even colder outside after we ate all the food we’d made. Jake and I stepped out the front door with a big bag of leftovers.
“If you’re not warm enough, we can call my mom to pick us up here.” He shifted the leftover bag so he could put his bare hands into his pockets, and then he took a little step closer to me. “I just like the idea of telling her to come to your house and walking back there, ’cause then it’s only you and me for a little while.”
My heart started pounding so hard, he must have been able to hear it. He was only standing a foot or two away. I wasn’t quite brave enough to look up at him, but I smiled.
“I like that idea, too,” I said.
So we walked and shivered, and Jake asked me about my favorite foods. “What would you have wanted us to make today if you were the one choosing?”
“I like mac and cheese like you,” I said, but then I couldn’t think of any other foods right away.
Mashed potatoes. Chicken fingers. Vanilla cake with white icing. Those are the foods I asked for on my last birthday, but those are Ryan’s favorites, really. He’s not going to be around for my thirteenth birthday in May. What foods will I ask for then?
“Well, one time I had this asparagus and ricotta ravioli with pesto sauce at my aunt’s,” I said. “She was afraid it would be too grown-up for me, but I loved it. I was sort of proud of myself, actually. For having mature taste.”
Jake smiled. “Very sophisticated.”
I put my hands into my coat pockets and was surprised when my fingers hit the perfume box, because I’d forgotten it was there. The other weekend at Anthropologie, I’d felt so much better when I reached into my purse and rubbed my fingers over the smooth stone of the ring I’d taken and the scratchy square jewels on the hair clips. But now, the stiff cardboard sides of the box made my stomach sink. I took my hands out of my pockets, fast.
Every Shiny Thing Page 13