Tom asks about it while we’re walking to biology. “So Cece?”
I nod. “Cece has a mad crush on Nash. For, like, two years.”
“And does she know . . . ?” Tom says.
“Does she know what?”
“That he’s gay?”
I look at Tom. This is the closest we’ve gotten to this topic, and I want to just ask Tom if he likes guys, likes Nash in particular. But I’m also worried about his answer and about finding out something that will burst Nash’s bubble. I want us all to be able to enjoy the not-knowing just a little bit longer. “She does and she doesn’t,” I say. “She knows, but that doesn’t keep her from liking him.”
“Ouch,” Tom says. “Rough.”
“Yeah. I never know what to say. Do I do the tough love thing and tell her, ‘Nash will never like you that way’? Or do I let her like him and wait for her to figure it out on her own? A day like today, I feel like I should slap her upside the head. Keep her from humiliating herself.” We walk in silence for a bit before Tom speaks.
“I don’t think she’s humiliated,” he says. “Not in the way you think. When you like someone, you do what you have to do. I think what she did was brave in a way.”
“Yep, the girl has guts,” I say. “I don’t think I could ever put myself out there like that, not without some guarantees.”
“Hormones win every time.”
“So you think it’s all just physical?”
“No. But we don’t get to choose who we fall for.”
“Nash said that same thing the other night,” I say.
“Nash is a smart guy.”
Since we didn’t get to finalize all the plans at lunch on Friday, Nash is frantic all weekend. He texts me repeatedly about the schedule, his wardrobe, where we should eat, where we should park. He’s in full cruise-director mode, trying to anticipate every detail. Nash is both adorable and exasperating when he has a crush. The whole world becomes about setting up a series of encounters that happen accidentally on purpose. Some of the guys never even realize they’re being stalked, and most of the ones who do freak out.
So Nash is putting a lot of eggs in this Seattle trip basket. In a way it’s Tom’s own fault. Most guys would have blown Nash off by now. They become either consciously or unconsciously uncomfortable with his attentions and push him away or run in the other direction. Tom just keeps hanging out like it’s no issue at all. He must have some idea how Nash feels, but Tom is so friendly all the damn time; it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. He’s given Nash the only thing a crush feeds on, the only thing that keeps a crush from dying: hope.
Late Sunday night, Nash calls for what I sincerely hope will be the last time.
“Okay,” he says without saying hello. “I have a checklist.”
I yawn, trying to communicate how completely not interested I am in this final neurotic manifestation of Nash’s nerves.
“You ready?”
“Yep,” I say.
“Gas in car,” Nash says.
“Check.”
“Kick-ass playlists for trip.”
“Check.”
“Are you sure?” Nash sounds skeptical. “None of your indie-folk-sensitive this-is-the-soundtrack-of-my-life kind of playlists. I’m talking about really cool stuff.”
“Check!” I say, a little louder.
“Money?”
“Check.” I yawn again. “Wait, money for me, or do you need me to bring money for you, too?”
“Both?” Nash says. “Pretty please?”
“Yes, check.” I can raid my piggy bank and pay it back out of my next paycheck.
“Thanks, Mags,” he says. “I want it all to be . . .”
“It’s going to be great, Nash,” I say. “He’s going to have a great day. We’re all going to have a great day.”
“Okay, you’re right. I know,” Nash says. “I just really, really want this to be special.”
“It will be special, Nash. But if I don’t get some sleep, it will be special because we all die in a fiery car crash when I fall asleep at the wheel. Now, good night.”
“Good night, Mags.”
I hang up the phone. I try to read, but my mind keeps wandering back to Seattle and Nash’s plans. All the questions I have about Tom and Nash and whether my best friend has a chance in hell are front and center, making me restless.
The image of a soft, sweet comforting Twinkie pops into my head, and I wonder briefly if my dad still has some stashed in the garage near his workbench. When my tendency toward tubbiness made itself clear, Mom banned all junk food from the house. No chips, candy, ice cream, and definitely no delicious, spongy, cream-filled snack cakes. Twinkies have always been Dad’s favorite, his kryptonite. But our house has been a Hostess-free zone for about six years now. Except for, I discovered one day when I was thirteen, my dad’s workshop. There, in a toolbox shoved under the workbench, he kept a few choice snack foods that would make Ms. Perry squirm. And I know for a fact that he stocked up when they briefly stopped making Twinkies a couple years ago, although I have no idea where he’s hiding that mother lode.
The promise of some sponge cake to distract me from tomorrow’s anxieties propels me into action. I slide off the bed and into my slippers, easing my door open. I pad dowstairs and past the living room, where Dad is watching some gruesome forensics show while Mom grades papers next to him on the couch. When I get into the garage, I grab the flashlight next to the door so I don’t have to turn on the overhead light. The cylinder of yellow light makes the darkness around it seem denser somehow. Swinging the beam to the workbench, I bend a little until I find the red steel of the toolbox underneath. I hold the flashlight under my arm, open the box, and there before me are a half-dozen plastic-wrapped packages of emotion-numbing fat and sugar. I grab an individually wrapped Twinkie and then a mini-sleeve of Oreos for good measure.
Back in the house, I slip the packages up the sleeves of my flannel pajamas, hiding them in case my parents look up as I’m walking past. I do not want to have a conversation with my mother about the evils of junk food or my unrealized potential right now. Nor do I want to rat out my dad’s secret stash. I’m almost past the door of the living room when Mom looks up.
“Hi, honey. What are you doing?” she asks.
“Nothing, um, just taking my vitamins. I forgot this morning.” I keep my arms and snack foods resting quietly at my sides so the plastic wrappers won’t crinkle and give me away.
“Good. You should take those every day, especially the calcium.”
“Yep. That’s why I came downstairs. Thanks, Mom.” I high-tail it past the living room and back to the privacy of my bedroom, where I can enjoy my junk food in peace.
Pushing the door closed, I plug in my iPod. I find a mellow playlist and start the music. Then I circle my bed and wedge myself between the bed and the wall on the floor. I open the Oreos first, delaying my Twinkie bliss for a few more minutes. The crunchy creaminess and bitter chocolate dull my anxiety a little, and by the time the sleeve is empty, I am ready for the pure pillowy comfort of sponge cake and chemical sweet cream. I go through my ritual, eating the Twinkie from the inside out. And after I have dissected and devoured, I am calmer.
But then I look at the empty food wrappers on my bedroom floor, and my cheeks flush with shame and self-loathing. There’s a knock on my door.
“Maggie? You in there?” Mom starts to turn the knob, and I stuff the wrappers under my bed, wipe my mouth, and flop myself on top of the covers just as she opens the door.
“I just wanted to say good night, sweetie. And be safe tomorrow.” She leans over to kiss me, and I pray she won’t smell the sugar and chocolate on my breath. Mom pauses at the door. “Light on or off?”
“Off. Thanks.” She flips off the light and closes the door, and I roll over, breathing a sigh of relief that she didn’t catch me.
But the sense of calm I got from the sweets is gone after the narrow escape with Mom. My thoughts wander back to Na
sh’s plan, and Tom’s expected role in it, and Cece’s disappointment. I lie there for way too long wondering about Tom and Nash and Cece and Kayla and the whole confusing tangle. In some ways I feel lucky to be outside that fray. At least I know that when and if someone ever falls for me, it won’t be because they’re hot for my bod. I’ll know they see something more.
Chapter 11
Monday morning comes way too early, and I always spend too much time stressing over what to wear when I go to Seattle. I know it’s dumb. The city’s full of people I will never see again, but I don’t want to look like a total dork. I want to look like I could belong there.
I knock on Tom’s door. A woman opens it, tall and slim and lovely in that nonchalant way some women have. Dressed in faded Levi’s, pink flip-flops, and a flannel shirt that, judging from the size, was probably borrowed from either Tom or his dad. I tug down my own shirt and straighten my sweater, giving her my best meeting-the-parental-unit smile.
The woman grins as if I’d brought her a winning lottery ticket. “You must be Maggie! Come in, come in!” Boxes are piled high in the living room and near the entrance of the kitchen, but they’d managed to hang some pictures in the entry hall. Two little boys, one slightly older than the other but both very Tom-ish, stare out of frames that line the hall. As Tom’s mom leads me to the kitchen, the photos form a timeline, moving from chubby-cheeked babyhood to the most recent one, a portrait in adolescent awkwardness that looks no more than a couple years old. “Tom and his brother, Colin,” Tom’s mom says. “I’m Jen, by the way.” She sticks out her hand.
I shake it and try the parental smile again. “Nice to meet you.” I look around the kitchen, which seems fully intact. No sign its contents had recently been in boxes.
“I always unpack the kitchen first,” Jen says. “The living room, the guest bathroom, those things can wait. Who are we going to invite over, anyway? But it’s not home until there are some spaghetti splatters on the stove.” She points to one of the kitchen chairs and I sit. “So, Seattle?” she says. “Anywhere special?”
“Not sure, actually,” I say. “Nash is the man with the plan. I’m just transportation.”
She gives me a once-over.
“I’m a very safe driver,” I add.
“You seem safe,” she says.
Safe. It stings a little; I’d like to think of myself as edgy and a little dangerous. But I know in parent-speak she’s given me a compliment.
“Maggie.” Tom stumbles into the room from a back staircase. “You’re here.” He runs his fingers through messy hair and wipes a little toothpaste from the corner of his mouth. Grabbing some high-tops from the pile near the back door, he sits at the table and starts lacing them up.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m early. Painfully prompt to most things. Take your time.”
Tom tugs at his shoes as Jen leans close to him. “Did you get those new Odor-Eaters I bought you?” she whispers.
“Mom!” Tom stands, grabs his coat, and grimaces at me. “Maggie? You ready?”
We hurry down the hall, the fraternal timeline rewinding so the last thing I see before being ushered through the door is an adorable baby Tom smiling out at me.
I head the car to Nash’s house.
“Sorry about that,” Tom says. “She’s really . . . I don’t know what she is.”
“She’s great,” I say.
“Yeah, actually she is. Sometimes I get pissed off having to move so much. But at least I have a built-in way to make friends because of school. It’s harder for Mom. But she never complains. And Stephen doesn’t even notice.”
“Stephen?” I ask.
“My dad.”
“You call him Stephen?”
“Yeah.” Tom puts his shoe on the dash and reties the laces. “It’s kind of . . . I started doing it a couple moves ago. Colin was going to college, and my dad announced another move, and I was totally pissed off. So I stopped calling him ‘Dad’ and started calling him ‘Stephen.’” Tom smiles. “He hates it.”
“So moving so much has been—”
“Moving so much has sucked.” Tom starts chewing on his cuticles. “Like I said, I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve learned how to settle in because I’ve had to do it so many times. But I’m always aware that I could get home on any given day and my dad could say we’re moving again. So I never really . . . I guess I never really invest, you know what I mean?”
I nod. “One foot out the door all the time?”
“Exactly!” Tom says. “That’s it exactly.”
We ride in silence for a minute. “So, the Odor-Eaters?” I say.
“Bad,” he says.
I give him a skeptical glance.
“Really, really bad,” he says. “Toxic Avenger bad. So bad you can taste it bad.”
“Ewww! Taste it? Really?”
“Yep,” he says. “Sexy, right?”
“Dead sexy.”
“Dead fish sexy.”
“Just don’t tell Nash,” I say. “He has sort of a smell . . . thing. As in he doesn’t like things to smell. At all. Ever.”
“Good to know,” Tom says. “Speaking of which: Nash bailed.”
“What?” My head swivels, and I stare at Tom. “What do you mean, ‘Nash bailed’?”
“I mean bailed, flaked, ditched.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Not sure.”
“Well, what did he say, exactly?”
“Something about chores he forgot and going to his mom’s doctor’s appointment?”
I nod. These are standard Nash codes. What they really mean is that his mom got plastered and he has to either clean up the mess, nurse her hangover, or both.
“Why didn’t he call me?”
“No idea.”
And now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Did Nash call Tom instead of me because he wants me to take Tom to Seattle anyway, and he knew if he called me, I’d find a way to postpone? Or did he call Tom instead of me thinking I would automatically know that he didn’t want me to carry on without him and would come up with an excuse on my own? I find I’m not up to the task of reading Nash’s lovesick mind at the moment, so I turn into a parking lot and grab my phone.
“What’s up?” Tom asks.
“I need to just—I need to check something.” I text Nash. What’s going on? Why aren’t you coming?
Mom. Why else? Nash texts back.
We’ll wait and go when you can come too.
No. Go without me.
No. No way. I’m not letting her wreck this for you.
Nash doesn’t text back.
I’m coming over. I’m coming to get you.
Don’t you dare! She’s bad today. I do not want Tom here!
“Everything okay?” Tom asks.
“Yeah, just asking Nash about his plan for Seattle. Don’t want to screw it up.” I text Nash again. I hate that you are going to miss this.
Me too!
Call you later. Love your guts.
I let my phone rest in my lap, staring at it. Then I toss it into my purse with a little more rage than I intended.
“Okay, so I guess we should get going?” Tom says it as a question, giving me the chance to back out.
But I nod, put the car into gear, and pull back into traffic. We’re almost out of town before either of us speaks again.
“Nash and his mom seem really close,” Tom says.
I glance at him. Nash’s shit is Nash’s shit, and I’m not sure if I should say anything. But Tom has clearly picked up on some of the nuances of Nash’s family relationships. My thumbs are tapping a spastic Morse code on the steering wheel. “She can be a little needy,” I say.
Tom’s still waiting for an explanation.
I sigh, then spill. “So the short version is that Nash’s dad disappeared a few years back, leaving a gigantic crater in their lives. His mom’s tried to fill the hole with booze ever since.” I’m all in now so I forge ahead. “I guess Nash sort of blames himself fo
r his dad leaving, so when his mom is bad, his guilt kicks in and he feels like he should take care of her.”
Tom watches the road for a minute. “That’s sweet,” Tom says. “That’s actually really cool.”
“Yeah, but she’s bad a lot,” I say. “And none of this is Nash’s fault. I wish he didn’t have to miss so much of his own life trying to put hers back together.”
“So missing today will bum him out?”
“Catastrophically,” I say.
“You still want to go, though, right?”
We’re stopped at a red light, and I glance over at him. He looks so hopeful, like a kid who’s been waiting all week for a trip to the candy store, which I guess he kind of is.
I sigh. “Sure. Of course I want to go,” I say. “If you want to. It won’t be as much fun without Nash.”
“I’ll never know the difference,” Tom says. “Besides, Maggie Bower, you’re my source for fun in Cedar Ridge.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I am famous in lab partner circles as being on the cutting edge of fun.” I turn to look at him, expecting him to share the joke, but he’s not laughing.
He’s looking at me with those green eyes, his head tilted a bit, like he’s thinking about something.
My face gets hot, but I don’t look away. I like looking at Tom looking at me. It’s like fingers brushing my cheek—the touch is gentle, but it brings goose bumps anyway.
I hear a honk behind me. The light is green. I accelerate and change lanes so I can make the turn that will get us down to I-5 South.
Tom takes in the scenery as we leave Cedar Ridge’s punchbowl valley behind and descend into the flat near the freeway. After a while he picks up my iPod and puts on a playlist I titled “Weekend.” This is not one of the playlists Nash would approve of. It’s pretty mellow, but it’s one of my favorites. After a couple songs, Tom laughs to himself.
“I love it,” he says, chuckling.
“What?” I say, a little defensive. “Change it if you don’t like it.”
“No, no. I really do love it,” he says.
“Explain yourself.”
“I love that your idea of ‘Weekend’ is not some raging party mix, but this soulful, quirky, folkish kind of thing.”
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