Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  “We’re kind of between parts right now.” She took the pit from her mouth and looked around for somewhere to put it. Seeing none, she slipped it into the little pocket-inside-the-pocket at the front of her cutoffs. “We used to live downtown, on the West Side.”

  Sheryl nodded and looked down at her bare feet. Her toenails were painted a deep, purply red, and she wore a silver toe ring on her right foot.

  “So what brings you to Snotty Hollow?”

  Carly gave her the short version, making it sound like her mother was there to do her friends a favor, without mentioning the part about their needing the money, or her mother and Nick breaking up.

  Sheryl and Brian explained that “Snotty Hollow” was a Quinn family joke. Something Ernestine came up with back when her kids worked summer jobs there.

  “She grew up in Ireland, where no one went to sleep-away camp,” Brian said.

  “She couldn’t believe parents would send their kids away for four or eight weeks at a time and pay outrageous money for them to have the privilege of running around in the woods and swimming in the lake,” said Sheryl. “Her kids did that for free every day.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re forgetting about archery,” Carly offered. “You want your kid to get somewhere in this world, she’s gotta know her bows from her arrows, and for that, you gotta cough up the cash.”

  Brian and Sheryl both laughed. Sheryl tilted her head toward Carly and said to her son, “Ernestine would like this one.”

  He smiled and looked at Carly. “Yeah. Ernestine would’ve liked Carly.”

  Sheryl turned the radio back up. The crowd was roaring.

  “Whoa. What’d I miss?”

  “And strrrrrike three brings us to the bottom of the eighth here in Chicago. The score is 5-4 New York.”

  “See ya, Ma.” Brian started toward the door at the back of the kitchen.

  “Wait,” Sheryl said, reaching for the colander. “You guys take these.” She pulled a few paper towels off a roll on the counter, dumped the cherries into it, and handed the bundle to Carly.

  There was nothing remarkable about the footpath, no way to tell from above that just a few hundred feet below was a tunnel through which the New York City water supply flowed on its way downstate from the Catskill Mountains.

  “Really?” Carly pointed to the path, well worn with footprints and bicycle-tire treads. “Right here?”

  “Yup,” Brian said. “Pretty cool, huh? I used to stand out here when I was little and imagine I could feel the water swishing past on its way to Brooklyn. And then when I was back there, sometimes, when I was drinking from the water fountain at school, or taking a shower, or washing my dad’s car, I’d picture this exact spot and wonder what was happening here at that moment. What birds were here, hunting what bugs. If the rabbits were out, or the deer.”

  He stared at the ground, as if he could see the water moving below it, the trace of a smile on his face.

  “How did he die?”

  Brian didn’t look up. “World Trade Center.”

  Carly knew Brian’s father had been a fireman and that he’d died when the boys were little. But she’d somehow gotten the impression that he’d been sick.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say except “I’m sorry.”

  Brian put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”

  “That must’ve been—must be—”

  “It’s okay. I mean—it’s not okay—what happened. Obviously. I mean, it’s okay, you don’t have to try to find the right thing to say. There is no right thing to say.”

  Carly nodded, relieved.

  They walked along the path awhile longer, neither saying anything. Fireflies blinked, crickets chirped while the sky went from a blue-pink glow to dark blue to just dark.

  Carly thought back to that day. How school just stopped when the news came. She was in Ms. Wilson’s language arts class discussing Little Women. The question was why Laurie (the boy next door) would want to marry Amy after being in love with Jo, and people were getting upset. Most of the girls in the class identified with Jo, but there was a faction, led by Piper Peterson, who thought Jo was “a little over-the-top and probably a lesbian” and claimed they’d rather be Amy any day.

  In the middle of the debate Ms. Goldhaber, the head of the middle school, knocked on the door and asked to speak with Ms. Wilson out in the hall. After a few minutes Ms. Wilson came back ashen faced and told the girls in a trembling voice to gather their things and head for the cafeteria. No one knew what was happening, but somehow they all knew it was serious, and no one uttered a word as they made their way down the echoing hallway.

  Carly looked at Brian, who kept his eyes on the path beneath them. “I can’t imagine—”

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  “But not now.” Brian looked up, reached for her hand, and pulled her to the side of the path next to a huge tree.

  “Okay.”

  He leaned back against the tree and with his other reached around and loosened the clip holding her hair.

  With her other hand she tried to contain the mass of curls that spilled out. The summer heat and kitchen humidity were making them more unruly than ever.

  “Hey. Don’t do that. I love your hair.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I do.” He was holding both her hands, and he didn’t let go as he circled her waist with his arms. “Your hair was the first thing I noticed about you.”

  They were nose to nose, eye to eye. His breath smelled of cherries.

  She tried to say “It was?” but by then her lips were otherwise engaged.

  When they came up for air Brian said, “That was nice.”

  To which Carly could say only “Mmmm” because as he said it, he reached under her shirt and with the calloused tips of his fingers, lightly stroked his way from her lower back, around the sides of her waist and across her belly, leaving her not only speechless but barely able to stand.

  At the point where Carly was considering saving herself the trouble of falling and instead throwing herself to the ground and taking him with her, he pulled away and said, “We better get you back.”

  Why? she wanted to ask but didn’t. As much as she didn’t want to stop, she liked that stopping was his idea.

  When they got back to the cabin, her mother’s bedside light was still on, but through the gauzy curtains they could see that she was out, mouth open, eyes closed behind her funky purple reading glasses, book lying open against her chest. So they sat on the steps and kissed again, more lightly this time, with only lips touching. Then they said good night.

  Isabelle didn’t wake up when Carly tiptoed across the creaky floorboards of the cabin. She barely stirred when Carly slipped her reading glasses off and put her book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, on her nightstand.

  That night, for the first time since she’d left the city, Carly didn’t freak out every time a twig snapped or a leaf crackled. She didn’t feel the need to call Val for the reassuring sounds of the city. She’d call Val, of course. What had happened with Brian was huge news. But she’d wait till the morning.

  Now all she wanted to do was lie on her bed replaying everything, in super slo-mo. From the first to the last kiss and everything in between. When she closed her eyes she could still feel the calloused tips of Brian’s fingers traveling across her torso. She could still smell the lake water and lemony dish soap on his skin.

  She could still taste the cherries.

  It wasn’t like this with Harris Gibson, that sort-of boyfriend she’d had for a couple of months at the end of her sophomore year.

  They’d met in a psychology class she took at Edward G. Champion when they were assigned to do a research project together on Jean Piaget’s theories of cognitive development. One afternoon when they were working at Harris’s apartment they just started kissing. Carly couldn’t say for sure whose idea it was. One minute they were debating how many slides
they should have in their Power-Point presentation, and the next they were rolling around on his couch.

  Her relationship with Harris was kind of a research project in itself, the object of which was to figure out how far you could go with someone you liked well enough but didn’t spend much (if any) time thinking about when you weren’t together.

  The answer, she learned, was pretty far once you got started.

  After those first kisses at his apartment, they’d always end up messing around whenever they got together to work on their presentation. And then even after the presentation was over, they kept getting together, always with the stated purpose of studying. But the studying never lasted very long. They’d always somehow start kissing and then move on to touching and rubbing and all that.

  Except not that.

  But if Harris Gibson hadn’t left the city for computer-programming camp at Yale that summer, it might have eventually come to that.

  For about a week after he left, they kept up a halfhearted electronic flirtation. They even toyed with the idea of Carly getting on a train to New Haven and taking advantage of the away-from-home-and-living-in-a-dorm situation. When he blew her off in a text, telling her he’d met someone else, she didn’t feel so much as a twinge of hurt or regret or damaged pride. More like relief.

  Now Harris’s meeting MIT-bound Stephanie at Yale seemed like one more link in the carefully arranged, everything-happens-for-a-reason chain of events leading her to Brian.

  Brian would be her first. And it would be totally right.

  She was ready.

  Very ready.

  And so glad Harris Gibson went to Yale.

  Val didn’t get it.

  “How can you possibly know that, after one night of making out?”

  And Carly didn’t get Val.

  “I just do, that’s all. I can’t explain it. I’ve never felt this way before. Never. I want it to be him.” When she’d woken up that morning, the first thing she’d done was text Val about Brian. About how amazing it had been to kiss him under the stars. How she could see herself going all the way with him. Now it was midmorning. Val had just gotten up, and Carly was out back, behind the kitchen, flattening the day’s cans with her feet while they talked on the phone.

  “The dishwasher-slash-rock-star is going to be your first? You’ve already made up your mind?”

  “Jeez. Be a little judgmental, why don’t you? I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you. You haven’t even met him, but you think you know all about him because of his job.”

  “Carly. Let’s review what I do know—from you: One, he’s nineteen, almost twenty, and still living with his mother in his grandmother’s house.”

  “You live with your grandmother!”

  “That’s different. I’m still in high school; where am I supposed to live?”

  “Yeah. Okay. But they’re living there to save money. They have a plan.”

  “Uh-huh. Two, he’s not going to college.”

  “Yet. He’s not going to college yet. He’s going to see what happens with the music.”

  “Do you know how many people say they’re postponing college and then never go?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No. But you should ask your mother. I’m sure it’s a lot.”

  “Great. Yeah. I’ll ask my mom. She’s such a font of romantic wisdom.”

  “I didn’t say that. But the woman does know a thing or two about going to college.”

  “Did she talk to you? Is this, like, some plot the two of you hatched?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like judging people by what they do for a living. How much money they have. I guess maybe you are a real Bellwin girl after all.”

  “Oh, right. That is not what I’m doing, Carly. It’s not about money or what people do for a living. I just think maybe . . . possibly . . . you’re rushing things here. A few days ago it was all about the sailing guy—what was his name?”

  “Cameron.”

  “Yeah. And now, in the space of, like, forty-eight hours, you’re throwing yourself at someone else.”

  “I am not throwing myself at him!” Though she had, in the passion of the moment, briefly contemplated throwing herself down on the ground the night before. Normally Carly would have shared that bit of information with Val, and they would have laughed about it. But something was changing. She kept it to herself.

  “No? That’s what it sounds like.”

  “And you don’t know him.”

  “It’s true. I don’t know him. And I don’t think you know him well enough to know if it’s right. Yet. You can’t know yet. Can you grant me that?”

  “Okay. I’ll grant you that. I can’t know yet.” But she knew. She had no doubt. She just wasn’t going to fight about it with Val.

  12

  FROM THEN on, Carly and Brian spent almost all their time together. Instead of lingering until the last possible moment after her alarm went off, she’d jump out of bed at dawn, eager to see him. She would breeze through whatever grunt work Kevin assigned her, knowing that when it was over, she’d get to be with Brian.

  They went to Baldwin Rock every afternoon during their break, or back to Ernestine’s to play cards or Monopoly or watch a movie when it rained.

  Evenings, after she was done dishing out dessert, she would take a shower while the guys finished washing the dishes and stacking them in the dining hall for the next day’s breakfast. Then they would meet behind the kitchen and head over to Ernestine’s. Carly didn’t mind hanging out while they practiced or put down tracks for their demo. Sometimes she’d sit in the cobwebby corner listening or reading.

  Sometimes she’d poke around in the shed, playing archaeologist.

  It was a lot like an archaeological site back there, with layers from different eras. Apparently Ernestine never threw anything away. She just piled it all up in the shed. Five decades of Quinn family stuff, the most recent on top: plastic pots from Stone Ridge Nurseries, circa 2003; a broken answering machine from the 1990s; a big, heavy computer monitor; tennis rackets, one of them made of wood and warped from years in the shed. There were dust-covered sleds and ice skates that had belonged to Brian’s father and his siblings; Ernestine’s old 1950s sewing machine. There was even a box full of stuff that had been found over the years in the crawl spaces between the closets and up in the attic. Little bits and pieces from the boardinghouse days. Beer bottles buried in the yard, faded playing cards, scraps of newspaper. One funny-looking work boot stiff with age that Brian said he thought had belonged to one of the aqueduct workers.

  Sometimes she hung out with Sheryl while she watered and puttered in her vegetable garden or listened to a Yankees game on the radio. Sheryl liked to tell stories about the days before her husband died.

  After band practice, Brian and Carly would walk out on the aqueduct trail, stopping at the tree where they first kissed, making out while the dusky sky went dark.

  Whenever things got hot, he would be the one to pull away, saying something like, “It’s getting late. We better get you home.” As if there were some shotgun-toting father whose curfew Carly dared not break, waiting at the window for her safe and chaste return.

  “Good,” said Val. “He’s not pressuring you.”

  “Of course he isn’t pressuring me. I told you, he’s not like that.”

  “I know. I know. He’s perfect.” Despite her promise to keep an open mind, Val obviously still had her doubts and wasn’t making much of an attempt to hide them. This was hard for Carly, who wanted to be able to share her happiness with her best friend.

  “What about Jake?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he pressuring you?”

  “No. . . . He doesn’t have to pressure me.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Yup.”

  “When?”

  “C
ouple nights ago.”

  “And when were you going to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Because I asked?”

  “No. No. I was going to tell you. I just—I haven’t told anyone else. Don’t worry. I just wanted to keep it to myself for a little while.”

  “Oh.”

  Carly didn’t want to keep things to herself. She wanted to share what was happening between her and Brian with her best friend. She knew that if Val could only meet Brian, she’d stop with all the judging and assumptions. If Val had a chance to see what Carly saw, know the guy Carly knew, then she couldn’t help but be happy for her.

  She tried to get Val to come up and see for herself one Saturday when the guys were supposed to play a party at a frat house.

  “A frat party?”

  “Brian says it’ll be low-key because there aren’t as many people around during the summer.”

  “Yeah, but a frat party?”

  “It’s not about the party, Val. It’s so you can meet him, see them play. Come on. You can get one night off.”

  Val said she’d ask her mother and call back. Five minutes later she called to report that Angela allegedly nixed the idea because they were short-handed at SJNY. “Everybody’s taking their vacation so she needs me.”

  Carly knew that things got like that in summer, when a lot of the full-time staff went back home. But it didn’t sound like Val had tried very hard to convince her mother, either.

  Isabelle didn’t need much—any, really—convincing to let Carly go to the gig with Brian. She expressed some concern about how late things would go, but after getting Carly’s assurance that she’d be home no later than one A.M. and that she wouldn’t complain about getting up the next day for work, Isabelle relented.

  It was almost too easy.