by Rachel Vail
I sat up and took off my earbuds, pulled them out of my computer, and shut it. He hadn’t budged.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“I have to … I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll wait for you in my room?” he whispered. “I need to talk to you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered, and lowered my head. I couldn’t meet his intense eyes; it made me turn all melty inside. We have to talk is a terrible phrase.
When he left, I quickly dashed to the bathroom, to pee and brush my teeth and figure out what the heck was happening. He can’t break up with me, I thought; we’re not officially … anything. Though that hadn’t stopped me from breaking up with George, so I really had no good counterargument.
Not that you can argue logically when somebody’s dumping you. It just doesn’t matter. Even if you’re right, you’re still dumped.
But what if he didn’t want to dump me? He didn’t actually say, We have to talk; he said, I need to talk to you. Maybe he needed to confide in me. Unburden his troubled soul or some such horrible, wonderful thing.
For a girl who likes things clear and definite, I sure was making a murky mess of everything. I didn’t know if Tess was my best friend now, or mad at me again. And Felicity? Were we suddenly buddies? And was George absent the past few days, or just really good at avoiding me?
Of course, that was all just a way to avoid thinking about the boy who was waiting to TALK to me a few steps away in his boxers and T-shirt, in his room, in my house....
And also avoiding the fact that he had awakened me from a dream in which I was kissing Toby in that back alley, on those brick steps during a break, before Laertes showed up to sword-fight him.
I shook my head at myself in the mirror. Get a grip, girl!
I spat out the toothpaste and washed my face with the already damp (ew) bar of Dove soap. Another new thing: In my own bathroom, before, the soap was always dry when I touched it. Only my shampoo was in the shower. And the face towels were never soggy.
I tiptoed to Kevin’s room.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi.” He stood up and closed the door behind me. The lock clicked. His arm, still extended, hovered inches from my side.
“Hi,” I said redundantly, and then, with goofiness jolting my nerves like electricity, I added, in a fake-husky voice, “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Why?” he asked in the intimate, unsmiling whisper of his.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, breathing in the brisk, clean scent of Dove soap on both our faces, so close to each other, getting closer by the millisecond. “But, don’t we?”
As an answer, he kissed me. Hard and full on the mouth, not tentative this time at all. I surprised myself by meeting him there, just as forcefully. I was out of breath in about three seconds, pressed up against the closed, locked door of Kevin’s room.
It felt like thirst. Like when you’re roasting hot in the summer, and all you can think is water. You’re gulping from the water bottle, it’s so good; the best anything ever. Even after the first few seconds, when you’re no longer dying of thirst, you still keep wanting more, more, downing it, drowning in it, so fast it almost hurts. That’s what it was like, this time, kissing Kevin.
Want want want. The word stopped making sense. Was that even a word? Or just a sound? Want. Wonton soup. Wanton girl.
What do normal people think about while they’re kissing?
And then, without warning, there was this tenderness falling on us, between us, light like afternoon snow flurries. The kissing got slower, more gentle. His hands on my back pressed softer against my T-shirt, and then tangled up into my hair.
When I opened my eyes, his eyes were open, too, and he was staring at me with tender and want all swirled up together in his eyes.
“Chuck,” he said.
“Mmmm,” I said.
“Was the shirt I wore today purple?”
“What?”
He reached over to his desk and picked up his crumpled, blue-gray T-shirt.
“Blue,” I said. “Grayish blue.”
“Damn,” he said. “I thought that one was the purple. Spirit Day.”
“And here I thought you just had no spirit.”
“This is why my favorite color is plaid,” he whispered. “I hate being color-blind.”
He looked so disappointed, I plucked the shirt out of his hand and flung it over my head. “Plaid’s a good color.”
“Is this, so, are you okay? With … this? Because …”
“Shhh,” I answered, his answer, because I really was, I was okay with it and wanted to stay in that moment as long as possible. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to experience it. I watched his eyes close again as his slightly smiling mouth met mine. He turned out the light, and then I felt his hand soft on my back again in the dark.
Soon, I’m not sure quite how, we were lying down together in the dark, private, secret night on his bed. His pillow smelled warm, slightly sweaty, and very, just, boy. I was starting to shiver a tiny bit, though, whether from fear or cold or something else entirely, I am not sure. He pulled up his nubby blue blanket on top of us.
We smiled a little at each other between kisses, our eyes closing, our fingers tentatively touching each other’s faces, necks, collarbones, shoulders …
“Don’t fall asleep,” Kevin whispered.
“Mmm,” I agreed, and pressed myself closer to him.
A minute later, it felt like, a knock pounded at his door. I fell off Kevin’s bed onto the floor behind it.
I was instantly more awake than I’d ever been before, there in Kevin’s bedroom in the glinting gold light of morning.
Knock, knock, knock.
eighteen
THE DOORKNOB TURNED and jiggled. Hearing it, I flattened myself on the floor.
Locked.
I thanked every god that had ever been worshipped.
Kevin cursed under his breath.
“Kevin?” Joe said through the mercifully closed door. “It’s seven fifteen. You better get a move on or you’ll be late for school!”
“Yeah, Dad!” Kevin barked back, not looking at me but throwing his blanket on top of my flat, quivering self. “On it.”
As Joe’s footsteps clomped toward my room with its open door and its lack of me in it, I could feel my eyes trying to pop themselves out of my skull. I sat slowly, silently up, crumpling the blue blanket in my lap but ready to flop back down under it if Joe stormed back toward us after finding me missing and, like, kicked in Kevin’s door or something.
My life used to be completely plain and unappreciatedly boring. A morning trauma before all this was running out of Crispix.
From behind the bed I looked up at Kevin, not caring how wild-eyed and muss-headed I looked. Like it or not, we were in this mess together. We needed a plan, and quick.
Joe was down the hall, knocking on my door. “Charlie?” he called at my empty room. “Hey, Charlie?”
Finally, Kevin turned to me. I expected a mirror of my bat-crazy scared face, but he was smiling instead, his eyes sleepy but his mouth amused.
“We’re so busted,” he whispered to me, and then bolted out of his bed toward his door, his father’s footsteps coming at us fast.
“Hey,” I started to object, but when his hand hit the doorknob, I flopped down flat on the floor instead.
After he slipped out into the hall, closing the door behind him and convincing his father he was starving and in need of emergency poached eggs on an English muffin, Kevin went to the bathroom. I could hear him in there. How grossly intimate.
I took a few seconds to gather myself and then tiptoed to the door. No sounds out in the hall. I kept listening. Nothing. I opened the door a crack.
Samantha was in the hall outside the bathroom, reading a book, waiting. She looked up and smiled at me. “Hi, Charlie,” she said.
“Oh,” I answered. “Hi.”
Sh
e watched me walk past her from her brother’s room to my own. I closed the door behind me and wilted against it.
I had to wait for Kevin and then Samantha to get through with the bathroom before I could get in there. Breakfast was another fabulous episode of Charlie Collins, This Is Your Very Odd Life, full of not making eye contact and lumps of granola drowning in yogurt.
Joe poured me a big glass of juice, and said, “Pulp Lovers!”
He held out his fist for me to bump. “Yeah, Pulp Lovers.” I couldn’t leave him hanging, so I bumped it, then said, “Let’s never call ourselves that again.”
“I think Pulp Lovers is a pretty awesome name.”
“Uh, no,” I said. “Really not.”
I ate my Cap’n Crunch (we were out of Crispix) quietly and hid behind the newspaper while Joe quizzed his kids on their homework, hoping his question to me wouldn’t be: And where the heck were you this morning, young lady? And there was no way I could possibly drink that big glass of pulpy juice, so if I got rickets or whatever it is you get from not enough vitamin C, it was fully going to be on his conscience.
My mother drifted down to the kitchen clutching a coffee cup and wearing nothing but her robe and a dreamy smile. I brought my half-empty bowl and full glass to the counter and didn’t vomit.
On my way out the door to the bus, Joe called after me, “Hey! Charlie?”
“Busted,” Kevin whispered, passing me.
“Hey,” I whispered at his back. “What did you tell—we need to get—”
“Charlie?” Joe said again, this time right beside me. “We need to talk.”
Don’t pee in your pants, Charlie, hold it together.
“I know we are all getting used to living together.”
“Mngrblrgh.”
“And maybe this is—I should probably talk this over with your mother.”
“No!” I said, perhaps a bit loudly. “Whatever you have to say? Just say it.”
“I want us all to be respectful of, well, newly close quarters. And I don’t want to get overly … I don’t want to, don’t want you to feel that I am …”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, WHAT?”
“I just think we have to be mindful that we are now, de facto, a family, and …”
“I changed my mind. Can we not talk about this?” I begged.
“I think we need to,” he answered solemnly.
The bus was going to reach the stop in about two minutes. If he didn’t hurry and tell me what a slut I was and I should stay away from Kevin, I’d be late for school, and have to walk all the way there. That kind of pissed me off, which was a relief. Better than quaking. I’ve only ever been late once in my life, the day I first kissed Kevin, and it goes on your permanent record. So I said, “You know what, Joe? It’s none of your business, actually.”
“Actually,” he repeated, maybe mocking, his face reddening in blotches exactly the way Kevin’s does sometimes. “It really is my business, Charlie.”
My lower jaw slid out in front of my upper teeth, and my right knee thrummed back and forth with the effort of not fighting back against this man who was sleeping with my mother, living in my house, and, to be fair, had basically just caught me waking up in his son’s room.
“If you don’t wash out your bowl,” he said, “I am the one who has to do it.”
“My—what?”
“Your cereal bowl,” Joe said. “I’d appreciate if you’d rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher from now on.”
“My cereal bowl.”
“After breakfast.”
“Okay,” I said.
“We’ll all have to get used to one another, but I think mutual respect is the right way to start.”
“Sure,” I said. “Definitely.” I squinted into the sun, toward where Kevin was a speck, at the end of the block. “I don’t want to miss the bus.”
“Oh, right; go. Absolutely.”
“Okay.” I stepped backward, away from him, down the step.
“Charlie,” he said, and smiled happily, relieved almost, when I turned around. “Glad we had this talk.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Have a great day!” he was yelling as I sprinted away from him. I made it to the corner just as the bus did. Kevin was already on by the time I started up the steps. “Well, that was weird,” I said, slipping into the seat beside him. “Busted for lack of dishwashing.”
His low chuckle warmed me almost as much as his arm, pressed along the length of mine.
I smiled at Tess between first and second periods, wishing with part of my brain that I could tell her everything, because she would double over laughing at the disconnect between what I thought I was going to be yelled at about and then actually getting a Talk About Not Washing My Bowl—but knowing in another part of my brain that it was kind of okay, keeping it to myself, too.
I walked to third with Jen, and for one second considered telling her, but came to my senses pretty fast when I remembered that, for one, her parents were friends with Kevin’s dad and, for two, she’d get stuck on the part where I woke up in Kevin’s bed and not jump right into how funny it was to be yelled at for dishwashing issues instead.
For a minute I sank into the sadness of no longer having a friend I could share absolutely everything with—but then that funk got crowded out by the sentence:
I woke up in Kevin’s bed.
I didn’t pay one bit of attention in math. That crazy sentence echoed around in my head, blocking out every other equation: me + Kevin over Kevin’s bed divided by everything equals …
nineteen
“WHERE IS EVERYBODY?”
“I’ll be with you in a …” My mother trailed off when I kept lurking around.
“It’s Friday night,” I mumbled. Who works on a Friday night? What did we used to do on Friday nights? Did she always hunch over her books and laptop like that? What did I used to do? It was not that long ago. Two weeks ago, what did I do on Friday night? Watch TV? Click around the internet?
I wandered into the kitchen to help myself to something to eat. I was most of my way through a Luna bar, staring blankly into the refrigerator, when Mom said, “I thought we’d go out.”
I turned around. She was leaning against the counter, watching me carefully.
“Just the two of us?”
“Yes,” she said evenly. Judging? Accusing?
“Why?”
“Spend some time together? Just, talk?”
They knew. Damn. Divide and conquer.
“Where’s, where are, what about the other people?”
“‘The other people.’ Oh, Charlie.” She smiled. “Joe’s taking Samantha to a movie. Kevin is at a friend’s house, sleeping over. Jared, maybe?”
“Brad?”
“Okay. And I thought maybe you and I would have a night just to ourselves. How does that sound?”
“Okay,” I said warily.
She suggested we both change, or we didn’t have to, and we could go to the Mexican place or sushi if I wanted.
“Okay,” I said again.
“Why do you look so suspicious?” Mom asked me.
“I do not!” I yelled somewhat abruptly, and then stormed upstairs, past Kevin’s quiet, empty room, to change into slightly different clothes. We ended up going for Thai food, because Joe doesn’t like Thai.
Over curry and rice and pastel-colored crackers that disintegrated explosively on my tongue, I got questioned about friends, school, my life, and my adjustment to living as a family with the Lazarus clan.
Yes, I admitted, it has its awkward moments, since Kevin and I are in many classes together and also the same social group, yes.
“Joe thought maybe Kevin went out with Tess for a while at some point,” my mother said.
When I finished choking on a piece of chicken, I said, “Mom.”
“Too awkward?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask about you?” she asked.
“Me? What about—why are you—me?”<
br />
“I don’t want to pry,” Mom said.
“Good,” I said, mopping my damp, sweaty face with my least-absorbent-ever-made pink napkin.
“I just want to, you know, stay up on what you’re doing. Stay connected. It’s important, with you in high school, and all these changes. The psychologist Joe and I spoke with recommended I should try to stay connected with you not just in terms of school but, regarding friends, too, and, romantically …”
Though I had vowed never to touch alcohol again, since I made my horrible Kevin-kissing confession after three shots of cheap gin at Darlene’s party over the winter, I would have given a kidney right then for a gulp of my mother’s Thai beer.
“Mom, no way. You spoke to a psychologist about me?”
“Not just you, of course,” she said. “The whole situation.”
I put my fork down on the table instead of through my eye. But it was close.
Mom wiped her mouth delicately with her napkin, laid it down in her lap, and leaned forward. Her hand covered the top of mine lightly, and her eyes squinted in that crinkly-kind/smart way of hers. “Charlie. Let’s be honest with each other.”
“Why?”
She leaned back and laughed at that.
“What?” I was having a complete internal freak-out and she was laughing?
“Oh, I do love you, Charlotte Reese Collins. Why indeed?”
I tried smiling a bit. Failed.
She took a long sip of her beer. “That psychologist was so self-serious.”
“Yeah?”
“Ugh. Yes! She was very convincing, too.”
“Why did you, what made, why? A psychologist? Am I crazy?”
“No.” She chuckled, as if I’d been kidding. “Charlie, no. Joe has found her a great resource in helping Kevin and Samantha, over the years since their mom left, and he has naturally discussed this new transition with her, with Dr. Jackson, I mean. So I went with him and we discussed the challenges that all three of you, all five of us, really, will be facing, and—”
“You talked about me?” The betrayal stung like a slap. “In front of Joe, with a stranger? You said stuff about me? Like what? Private stuff?”
“Yeah,” Mom said. “I told her how you get constipated if you don’t eat enough dried apricots.”