Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel)

by Angie McCullagh

  When he asked what else Emily was doing online, she replied vaguely. Browsing around. Listening to music. Which she was.

  She kept checking for emails from Trix. Even a short note that said she was sorry. That she didn’t know what had gotten into her. There was nothing, though.

  Emily knew in her bones Trix was upset that Emily had, for the moment, gotten Ryan’s attention. But, frankly, she wasn’t going to apologize for that. For years Emily had watched Trix get guy after guy. Many of them, without a doubt, had gone after her for the wrong reasons. But there’d been a few nice ones who’d crushed on her, too.

  Now it was Emily’s turn. She and Ryan connected and Emily wasn’t about to hand him over to Trix on a silver platter. Not that he was the type to let himself be handed anywhere.

  And after how Trix behaved the night before, Emily’s motivation to spackle this nick, or more accurately this gaping hole, in their friendship, was zero. If Trix wasn’t the one to come forward, Emily didn’t know that it was reparable.

  Ryan asked if anything in the house had broken during the party. She said no, but that she’d had to mop the sticky kitchen floor and mist some houseplants that’d taken a dousing of beer.

  His interest was sweet. And every time Emily remembered his lips on hers, the warmth of his hand under her hood, the way he’d driven off a little before midnight, grinning and calling out his open window that she should get to work on her Theater of the Absurd play, she felt a rush of pleasure and heat deep in her chest.

  Later, after they’d both signed off Facebook, Emily discovered a people finder site into which she typed her mother’s name and, just like that, up popped her address and phone number. Emily could hardly believe how easy it was and that she hadn’t tried it before.

  There was Marilyn Wozniak in Bisbee, living on an actual street, with an actual 10-digit number that Emily could dial right that second and possibly hear her mom’s voice. Not that she would. Heck no. The thought terrified her.

  Under the column Related People, were Emily’s grandparents’ names and also Winslow Kratt.

  Winslow Kratt?

  Emily Googled him. He was shockingly easy to find. He appeared to be a gallery owner in Bisbee.

  It occurred to Emily that her mother might be remarried, might even have other children. A new family.

  She felt dizzy and cradled her forehead in her hands. The thought of her mother making chocolate chip cookies and buying clothes for other kids, kids who were not Kristen or her, made Emily physically ill.

  Suddenly, all Trix’s drama and the wonderfulness with Ryan faded to black. It was as if Marilyn’s face hung in the sky like a moon, smudging out everything else. And that was when Emily started to scheme.

  28. Reveal

  SATURDAY NIGHT EMILY and Ryan met up at India Bistro where they gorged themselves on Saag Aloo and Naan.

  She couldn’t help thinking, over and over, So this is what it’s like. This is what it’s like to want a boy and to have him want you back and to go on a date and to sit across from the boy eating and flirting. This is what it’s like.

  She knew it sounded cliché, but she feared she’d wake up. A couple of times she cupped a hand over the ivory votive to reassure herself that she was awake, to bring her skin a little too close to the hot flame.

  Leaning against the back wall of the restaurant, she looked around at the plain trapezoidal room, at the few colorful cloths hanging from beige walls and candles flickering on tables. She felt content. But not yet safe. She wondered how much Ryan knew, or guessed, about her family situation. It seemed important, suddenly, to fill him in and let him decide if it was a deal-breaker or not.

  “So,” she said. “There’s something I should tell you.”

  “Uh oh,” he swallowed a bite and took a sip of tea. “What’s that?”

  “I’ve been on sort of a mission lately. Do you know my dad is married to someone who isn’t my mother?”

  “I kind of assumed that, yeah.”

  This barbed Emily a little. But, of course he’d assume that. Melissa, with her petite frame and sleek black bob, clearly wasn’t her real parent.

  Spinning the warm base of the candleholder around and around, she said, “My mom took off when I was four. I barely remember her. Just little fragments here and there. Lately I’ve been wanting to find her. And I did. Online I mean.”

  “Wait,” he said, leaning over the table and drilling his warm blue eyes into Emily’s. “You haven’t even known where your mom is since you were four?”

  “No, she took off and never looked back.”

  “Jeez, Bean.”

  “I know.” Emily’s heart beat hard. “I figured out she lives in Arizona. I have her contact info and everything. And I think I want to get in touch.”

  “That’s huge,” Ryan said, linking his fingers with Emily’s over the tabletop. His hand felt meaty, knuckley, like a boy’s.

  Relief washed over her. He wasn’t acting disturbed, like her announcement was TMI. He was doing exactly what she hoped he would: intently listening.

  He added, “Let me know if I can help in any way.”

  Emily smiled at him. She appreciated his offer but knew opening communication with her long-lost mother was going to require every ounce of strength Emily possessed. And she had to do the legwork by herself.

  Back out on the cold sidewalk, tugging their jackets around their middles, Ryan said, “You’re not one to pick at your food, are you?”

  Emily laughed. She knew she ate like a trucker.

  After a few moments of walking and grinning, hands in their pockets, Ryan said, “So I had this idea.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Dave Eggers is doing a reading at Elliot Bay Books tonight. Wanna go? It’s free.”

  And just like that, Emily felt like an insider, a girl swooning over a boy who liked her back, and she said, “That sounds … amazing.”

  After the reading, he drove her in his mom’s light green Volkswagen bug, which he hated and called The Kiwi, through Pioneer Square, under wet trees that had lost most of their leaves, past Pike Place Market and on up to Ballard, their Seattle neighborhood that, though full of new condos and cool restaurants, was a huge hub of commercial fishing vessels and still retained a grittiness that appealed to Emily.

  She thought of the last 24 hours as if it were a cheesy TV montage: his helping her at the party, online chatting, Indian food, and the Dave Eggers reading all sliding through her mind in slo-mo, with some Coldplay song in the background. She almost laughed, but held it together, hoping she just looked happy. Or maybe, coolly satisfied.

  Her house was dark, looming, and lonely. Wordlessly, he walked her up to the door.

  Emily thought it was probably some time after eleven, but she didn’t want to look. “Are you … do you want to hang out some more?”

  “I’m supposed to be home by midnight,” he said. He drew his thick brows together regretfully. His hands were stuffed in his pockets. His profile, as he looked down the row of houses on her street, was strong, almost exaggerated with his long, straight nose and jutting chin. “We can’t let an empty house go to waste though, right?”

  “That would be blasphemous.” She unlocked the door and darted through the living room, turning on lights. She put on some chill music, good backgroundy stuff, and asked Ryan if he wanted anything to eat or drink.

  He’d taken off his coat and laid it across the back of Melissa’s favorite, red leather chair. He stood in the light of an iron floor lamp and said, flippantly, “Just you.”

  Emily laughed delightedly, nervously. They met at the sofa and began to kiss. They kissed in a way they hadn’t before, opening their mouths wide and reaching desperately with their tongues. She buried her fingers in his hair, pulling his head to her, liking the small growls coming from the back of his throat.

  They went on like that for a while, their bodies moving rhythmically to the thump of the tunes, devouring each other’s faces and necks. And then Ryan�
��s hands began to travel. Down her spine and up her shirt. She breathed in sharply, then exhaled in a long, low mewl of pleasure.

  His palms skimmed over her bra strap several times and then, finally, lingered there.

  “Where are you going with that?” Emily asked, her lips moving under his.

  He pulled back and looked at her. “I don’t know yet. Where do you want me to go with it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I can wait,” he said.

  She separated from him, shifting back and straightening her shirt. “Answer me this,” she said. “Do you really like me, or are you just in this to nail the tall chick? Win some sort of bet.”

  He clasped his hands and let them hang between his knees. “Did you really just ask me that?”

  “I think I did,” she said, regretting it. She fully expected him to stand and go for his coat.

  He didn’t, though. He scooched slightly away, an ironic smile on his lips. “Want to watch TV or something then? Because I’d hang with you whether or not you put out, okay? I mean, I want to kiss you. I want to do more. But I don’t have to. I like you, Emily. I like you a lot. More than I should.”

  “How much … should you?” Emily said, all of her swelling–her throat, her heart, her nether regions.

  “I shouldn’t like you so much that it drives me insane,” he said.

  “You seem like the most sane person I know.”

  “I used to be very sane.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “Not lately, no.”

  Emily walked over to the floor lamp and clicked it off, then rejoined Ryan on the couch.

  She had no idea how far she’d let this go. She really liked him, of course. In fact, it was safe to say she was seriously infatuated. But she didn’t want to become Trix either, giving it out too fast. Also, there was some part of her, a tiny fleck, worried that once she’d given away her body, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  They stretched out next to each other and it was lovely because her height barely mattered and their bodies were pressed together and he held the back of her head as they kissed. And then his hand trailed up her spine again and she shivered with pleasure. His fingers went to her bra strap and, deftly, he popped it open.

  Emily felt exposed and sexy and a little scared. But she let him go on.

  He went around to the front then and touched her nipples with his fingertips. He squeezed gently, traced a circle around them, watching her the whole time, his eyes asking, Is this okay?

  Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

  Slowly, so slowly she almost couldn’t bear it, he cupped one breast and then the other. His own breathing, she noticed, had accelerated.

  That was when she felt it. The hardness under his jeans. It thrust into her thigh like a small baseball bat and she didn’t know what to do with it. Touch it? Look at it? Let it be?

  “You did that,” he said and chuckled.

  “How?” she asked, all middle-school innocence. Except that she was sixteen and should definitely not play dumb. Or fish for compliments.

  Instead of answering, a small groan escaped him.

  They groped each other for what felt like ten minutes, but turned out to be an hour and a half. When Ryan glanced up at the clock he said, “Aw, crap.” He rubbed his face and sat, his elbows on his knees.

  “It’s late,” Emily said.

  “Curfews blow.”

  “They suck in the worst way.” She fervently wished they were in college, with no one accounting for where they were. She wanted Ryan to stay. She wanted to fall asleep with him beside her.

  He waited there for several minutes, sitting quietly. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I should head out.”

  Emily scrambled to hook her bra, then walked him to the door, the wood floor cold under her bare feet.

  Ryan took a deep breath of the cool night air.

  She didn’t want him to go, and was about to voice this, but was hit, now that they were upright and he was leaving, by a vulnerable feeling she felt she should subdue. “Well, I’ll see you Monday, right?”

  “Monday?” he said.

  “Yeah. You know, school.”

  “Right,” he nodded. “School.”

  He kissed her once more and Emily kept her eyes open. She saw the sweep of his dark lashes against his skin, the concavity of his cheeks, a largish ear.

  “Bye, Ryan.” She sounded, to herself, like a sad little girl and it disgusted her. Which caused her to turn her back to him quickly and slip inside.

  The music, she’d noticed, had stopped. The house was quiet. Too quiet. She didn’t feel like flipping through the iPod for more songs, so she went upstairs. It was late and she knew she should go to bed. Restless energy wouldn’t let her, though. She went to Kristen’s room and watched Ryan’s mom’s car recede down her street.

  She prowled her way to the computer and brought it out of its slumber. Her plan was to search for more on Marilyn Wozniak and Winslow Kratt. But she ended up opening Word and working on her play.

  She wrote until after three and, exhausted, shut everything down and went to bed. She had to cover her head with a pillow to block out the howl of the autumn wind.

  29. Nonparent #1

  TRIX WOKE WITH a headache the size of Mt. Rainier. She was relieved, though, to find she was in her own bed with no one except David the cat next to her. She tried to stay in that twilit consciousness, moving in and out of dreams where the throbbing in her temples was only a vague thud.

  Sadly, her mom and Rodney the Octopus Man weren’t cooperating. They murmured from the pull-out couch just on the other side of the wafer-thin wall. Their words were indecipherable, but the tone of the conversation was clipped and angry.

  Reality imposed itself like an old-school TV coming to life—colors brightening, sound slowly amplifying.

  David stretched out next to her, his ears flattening and his paws reaching for her face. He rested them gently on her cheek, claws retracted. The pads on the bottom of his feet were warm and he purred. She thought maybe if she just stayed in bed with him forever she could be happy. Just her and a vibrating cat and, in another part of the house, the promise of her mother dumping a loser boyfriend.

  She had no idea how she’d gotten home after Marjorie had slipped Ecstasy into her beer. And that scared Trix. She wasn’t afraid of getting a little out of control, going somewhat crazy, but when she lost whole hours with no memory of what had happened, this bugged the ratbones of out of her.

  She hated not knowing what she’d done or said. Or who she might have given too much to.

  Scratching David’s belly, she burped. It tasted like beer.

  Rodney’s voice ratcheted into a loud crack.

  Trix jumped.

  Her mom yelled that if he didn’t like the way she lived her life, he could get out.

  “Oh, that’s it then? It’s your way or the highway?” Rodney roared.

  “I have a daughter to protect!”

  What a laugh. Trix didn’t even have a curfew. She pushed her earbuds in and buried her face in David’s soft stomach. She didn’t need this this morning.

  An hour later, after Rodney stormed out and all seemed to be quiet and relatively safe, Trix tiptoed to the bathroom for some ibuprofen. Her mom was in there doing a breathing treatment.

  “Rodney’s gone.” Trix stated, her voice raspy.

  “Yeah, thank God,” her mom said around her plastic tube.

  Trix popped two generic Advils and swallowed them with a handful of water.

  “When’d you come in?” her mom asked. “You look like death warmed over.”

  “Feel like it, too.”

  “What’d you do?” her mom asked, looking suddenly concerned.

  “Cigarettes, beer, and drugs.”

  Fiona laughed, thinking Trix was kidding.

  Trix said, “Seriously,” but it was lost in her mother’s laughter-turned-hacking-cough. So Trix left the bathroom and made herself an enormous pot of c
offee. She kind of wanted her mom to know about her destructive behavior. To stop her. To tell her she was worth more than that. But Trix also knew that a heartfelt self-esteem boost was not how Fiona would handle the matter. There would be screaming and door slamming and an attempted grounding that would never be enforced. Trix just didn’t have the energy for a scene like that.

  She thought about texting Emily and telling her what happened, that she was suddenly not so sure about Marjorie. She could imagine Emily’s reaction, too, though. She’d sneer at her phone and be further convinced Trix was not good enough people for her. Trashy Trix, she’d think. I’m so much better than that. And I have Ryan! I don’t need her anymore!

  Once the caffeine kicked in and she started feeling a little better, she took out her sketchbook and began to work on a long, bat-winged sweater with super-flared pants.

  She was in the mood to start a new project in home ec. She hoped there’d be some fabric remainders in the dumpster at work that day. Printing mistakes often happened, and Trix helped herself to what she could stuff from the trash bin into her bag.

  It was the one perk of toiling at Frederick Hui twenty hours a week.

  Her shift started in just a few hours. She could already smell the chemicals, and they made her already wobbly stomach fold in on itself.

  30. Girlfriend

  THE NEXT DAY at school Ryan was waiting. This delighted Emily. But also stabbed her with a slow shyness she didn’t expect. She hopped off her heavy bike and crouched to lock it.

  She squinted up at him. There were clouds, but they were wispy rather than thick and gray and they let some sun through. She stood, unfolding the full length of her body.

  “So,” he said, hoisting his heavy backpack further onto his shoulders. “You still my girlfriend now that we’re at this dump for the week?”

  Her heart trilled at the word girlfriend. “Okay,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk you into anything.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I want to be … your girlfriend.”

  “Good.”