Glimpsed

by G. F. Miller

  After the quiz, I frantically scribble notes for forty minutes. Finally the bell rings, and we all file out of the classroom looking shell-shocked. I maneuver my way through the trig zombies until I’m walking next to Sara.

  She notices me and glances my way with both eyebrows up. “Oh. Hi, Charity. Long time, no… anything. How are you?”

  I give her my fresh, disarming smile, although inside I feel like I’ve been running wind sprints all day. “I’m good. How are you? How are your parents? How are things at home?”

  She hesitates.

  “Everything good?”

  She takes a deep breath and releases it in a long Zen exhale.

  “So, not good?”

  She shifts her books. “No. It’s good, I guess. I mean, my parents are remarried to each other. They’re in love again. It’s like a fairy tale.” She gives me a conspiratorial look. “It’s kind of funny, actually. Exactly ten months after we Parent Trapped them, my mom popped out a baby.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah, so he’s almost two now. My parents never have time for me because they chase him around twenty-four hours a day. And he’s a monster. This morning before I left for school, he colored all over my Kate Spade bag with a blue Sharpie. While me and Mom were dealing with that, he took his own diaper off and peed in my bed.”

  “Ick.”

  “Yeah. So, the moral of this story is ‘Be careful what you wish for!’ ” She barks a laugh.

  I almost say, If there’s anything I can do… But you know what? There is nothing.

  I tell myself that maybe she’ll like him better in a few years. Then I think of Noah and Natalie’s relationship, and I’m not so sure.

  * * *

  By the final bell, I’ve checked off all the Cindies and come to an important conclusion: The Universe is a sadist. And I’ve been its unwitting pawn. I feel used and duped and utterly horrified. Memom always taught me that the glimpses were a smile from the Universe… that we had a special gift to make people happy.

  But it’s the opposite. Destiny is a monster.

  I’m a monster.

  I will never blindly follow a glimpse again. I don’t even want to be a fairy godmother anymore.

  But before I can quit altogether, I need to make amends where possible, starting with Vindhya, Noah, and Carmen. The Carmen thing seems to be making forward progress. But I still don’t know why Noah was looking lovelorn at lunch or how I’m going to get Vindhya’s life back on track.

  I speed change for Poms practice and use my spare six minutes to text Noah from the bathroom stall: You okay?

  Noah doesn’t immediately respond. I picture him lifting his hungover head from the bar and fumbling his phone into his whiskey. Eventually, after two dragging minutes of waiting, the phone rings.

  It’s Noah. I answer, “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He sounds completely sober. Of course.

  “I have, like, three minutes before Poms and just wanted to—I don’t know. You looked not great at lunch. Did something happen with Holly?”

  “Well, she told me we can’t run together anymore and that I shouldn’t try to see her. She said she doesn’t want to jeopardize anything with Kade. Blah, blah, blah. But that’s not—”

  “It’s a setback. That’s all.” Nope. It’s the kill shot. And I’ve got zero clues how to resuscitate his wish now. Until I figure something out, all I can do is keep it peppy. “It’s a good sign, actually. She’s afraid of her feelings.”

  “The thing is—Charity, I… I need to talk to you.”

  “We are talking.”

  “In person. For more than three minutes.”

  My heart flutters. Why should that be? Trekkie weirdo + another girl + bathroom stall ≠ romantic arrhythmia. I revert to strict professionalism. “I have an opening after Poms. We could meet.”

  He sighs. “I work till eight. Can you come over after that?”

  “I can make that happen.”

  I hang up with Noah and make it to the gym with twenty-six seconds to spare. I’m pulling my hair into a ponytail when Scarlett marches over, a phone in her hand and self-congratulations on her face. Loud enough for anyone who cares to hear, she says, “I knew there was something up with you.”

  I twitch my eyebrow at her.

  She holds the phone up, screen toward me. “This is you, right?”

  It’s a picture of me and Noah holding hands across the table at Big Doug’s Diner.

  21 The Truth Has a Coming-Out Party and Everyone’s Invited

  The photo is on Instagram. And it’s as bad as it can get. It was obviously taken right after I glimpsed Greg and his Camaro. I was having an existential crisis, and Noah was trying to talk me down from the ledge. But it 100 percent looks like we are planning our elopement. Leaning in, holding hands, earnest expressions… Damn. It. The caption reads Beauty and the Geek IRL #nerdlife #itcouldhappentoyou. It has fifty-four likes. Nope, fifty-seven. And climbing.

  I have just enough time to glance at the username on the post: Camaro_dreamin_67.

  I smile at Scarlett while I mentally smack Greg the Waiter upside the head. I was sick for three days over you! I wanted to help you get your precious Camaro. And the whole time, you were creeping on me. Bush-league, Greg.

  Coach calls, “Let’s do this.”

  Scarlett shoves the phone into her pocket, beaming, and falls into formation. The warm-up music pours out of the gymnasium sound system, and we all start the routine. My body automatically follows the series of stretches I’ve done at least a thousand times, while my thoughts spin.

  Actually, I spend the entire warm-up thinking up new names to call Greg. Wouldn’t you? Then I play Six Degrees of Separation: Scarlett-Greg Edition for a while. I fail to figure out how this happened. But I do decide that I’m not mad at Scarlett. She’s not mean-spirited. She just has a nose for news.

  Stage three is basically outlining the suckage of the situation via a series of questions I can’t answer:

  Why does this picture make it look like Noah and I were staring into each other’s eyes like we’d found the meaning of life?

  How am I going to convince another girl that Noah is her OTP, with photographic evidence to the contrary making its way around cyberspace?

  How am I going to maintain Ice Princess status without explaining the real reason we were there together, holding hands and looking soulful?

  If I’m not the Ice Princess, how am I going to keep everyone at a distance?

  Why does my heart hurt when I look at that picture? Is this regret? Longing? Acid reflux? Should I take a Rolaid?

  * * *

  Finally, while Coach has us do the entire competition routine in slo-mo to her counts, I kick myself into strategy mode. It doesn’t really matter how we got here or how I feel about it. I have to work the Problem.

  Option One: Deny everything. Claim it wasn’t even me in the photo. Pros: Straightforward. Cons: Not that many people have viridian hair, and it’s a pretty clear shot. I’d have to make the case that Greg actually photoshopped me into the picture and come up with a motive.

  Option Two: Throw Noah under the bus. Say he has a massive crush on me, and I was there to let him down easy. Pros: Fairly plausible. Cons: It’s a crappy thing to do, he’ll never forgive me, and it materially harms his chances with Holly because it makes him look like a creepy loser.

  Option Three: Let Scarlett into the People Who Know About the Glimpses Club and swear her to secrecy. Pros: Honest. Cons: The internet honors no such oaths. Even if by some miracle Scarlett is the only person at JLHS who has seen this so far, it’s only a matter of time before the leak becomes a full-fledged containment breach. Also, Scarlett is the very last person anyone would want for a secret keeper.

  There really aren’t any good options.

  We move from a bent-knee straddle to a lunge. My back leg is a little out of alignment, so I shift to correct it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Gwen, posed next to me, shift her leg a fraction of an in
ch too. Then two more girls. Behind Gwen, Carmen’s already straight leg gets a little more taut. She glances at me for approval.

  They all follow you, Charity.

  Suddenly, things click together in my mind, like the combination on a bike lock: Holly soaking in the spotlight with the wrong guy at prom… the jocks’ Ice Princess betting pool… Noah getting rejected this morning… Scarlett finding Greg’s photo. Click… click… click… When I put all the problems together in the right order, they turn into the solution.

  I know how to grant Noah’s wish.

  * * *

  I duck out of the building the instant Coach dismisses us. I don’t even change, just grab my stuff and bolt.

  Waiting until eight to go to Noah’s house is a special kind of torture. It gives me way too much time to rehash every detail of the Problem and the Plan, despite having to get through thirty trig equations and two chapters of Crime and Punishment.

  By seven forty-five I’ve got full-blown jitters. To kill time, I call Hope.

  The screen on my tablet does a pixelated sweep of the rustic room my sister sleeps in, and then I’m looking at Hope’s face. She’s lying in bed with her brown hair tangled across her pillow. She rubs her eyes. “Hey, little sis. It’s not Friday, is it?”

  “No. I just wanted to talk.”

  She yawns. “Hmm-kay. About what?”

  I hear an elephant trumpeting in the distance. It reminds me how different our lives are now. How far away she is. What do we really have to talk about? I cop out with “How’s the boy?”

  Hope looks genuinely clueless. “Who?”

  “The boy you stayed in Thailand for. Remember?”

  “Oh! Kiet. Yeah. He’s a great guy, but I… I don’t know.” Hope looks away, but not before I catch the sadness in her eyes. Her voice is light and airy. “He was getting too serious. I just wanted to keep it light.”

  Even though I’ve never met Kiet, and I’m predisposed to hate him because he’s part of the reason my sister is eight thousand miles away, my heart sinks at Hope’s confession. She was willing to leave her family for him but still couldn’t commit to a real relationship? It’s profoundly sad.

  “Hope?”

  “Yeah?” She sits up, adjusting her camera to follow her, and finger combs her hair out of her face.

  “Are we broken?”

  If I had thought about it for three seconds, I could have come up with a better question. Like, Are we emotionally distant because our mother is a workaholic? Or even, Do you think our parents’ divorce made us incapable of accepting love and making commitments? Or maybe, Ever heard of Morgan le Fay?

  But it doesn’t matter. Sisters don’t need all the words.

  She takes a deep breath and looks toward her open window. Watching the elephants, maybe. After a few seconds she says, “I don’t think relationships work for us, Chay. We’re… you know we’re fixers.… We fix things. But we don’t keep things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She’s still looking out her window. “It’d be like me trying to make Bernice my pet. Or Mom saying the ocean is her private pool. We’re catch-and-release people, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I think I know exactly what she means, actually. And it makes me want to barf all over my tablet.

  I press my finger between my eyebrows. Hope chews her bottom lip.

  After a sad silence I say, “I hope you work it out with Kiet.” And it’s true. I really do. I want to know that it’s possible.

  She smiles like, Who knows? Then she says, “Sorry to do this, but I gotta pee.”

  “Okay. Talk to you Thursday night slash Friday morning.”

  We end the call. And I realize that I’m late for Noah.

  * * *

  I ring the doorbell with more than a little trepidation. Pretty much every time I’ve been at this door, life has taken a sharp left turn toward Crazy Town. Plus this is the first time I’ve had to face Noah’s family since the Deanna Troi thing blew up, and I don’t know if they all hate me or what. This time Noah’s dad answers, his bald head shining in the porch light.

  He waves me in. “Good to see you, Charity. Noah’s in the living room. Straight back there.”

  That felt too easy. Is it possible they don’t know what I did? I step across the threshold, ready for an ambush.

  It’s an open floor plan like ours, so there are no walls between the front room, the kitchen, and the living room. It’s really all one big cavern with a few pillars and furniture defining spaces. However, the alleged living room is tucked behind the stairs. I walk toward it. Dr. McCoy watches me suspiciously from the top of a bookcase. Noah’s mom is in the kitchen. She looks up when I’m in range, and her smile seems genuine tonight. I really don’t think Noah told them what I did.

  Speaking of Noah, I can hear him and Natalie fighting before I see them.

  “Move it or lose it!”

  “Don’t you dare!… NO YOU DIDN’T!”

  “Ha! You want some bananas, Monkey Boy?”

  I round the corner and find them sitting on the floor playing Mario Kart. Noah is still wearing his pink-and-green Arctic Marble uniform, the shirt unbuttoned and untucked and the hat discarded on the couch behind him.

  Noah looks my way with a self-conscious grin. “Hey, Charity.”

  “Hey.”

  It takes him a second too long to turn back to the TV. His kart hits a bunch of banana peels and goes into a tailspin. Natalie laughs maniacally. A few seconds later she crosses the finish line a kart-length before him. He tosses his controller down in mock disgust while she does a victory dance worthy of an NFL touchdown.

  Noah demands, “Rematch. Tomorrow night.”

  She tosses her curls. “Loser brings the snacks.”

  “Did someone say ‘snacks’?” His mom comes in with a bowl of snack mix—the kind that’s, like, all the best worst-for-you chips in the world mixed together. As soon as she sets it on the coffee table, Noah and Natalie pounce on it.

  His dad reappears. “Snacks?” He drops onto the couch and commandeers the bowl for his lap. Commence family wrestling match over the junk food, punctuated by protests about access and equality of distribution and loud laughter.

  I stand on the sidelines, a voyeur to their chaotic happiness. It strikes me that Noah and Natalie don’t hate each other at all. And that love is messy and beautiful.

  Natalie launches a Dorito at me. An invitation to join in? Before I can analyze my options for recourse, Noah extricates himself from the tangle of people, grabs my hand, and hisses, “Quick! While they’re distracted!”

  He runs up the stairs with me in tow. When we get to his room, he carefully positions the door so that it’s an inch shy of closed. He still hasn’t let go of my hand. I still haven’t pulled away. He says, “Sorry about my family.”

  “They’re… perfect, actually.”

  He looks at me like I must be joking. Then his eyes soften. He releases my hand but reaches toward my hair. He’s so close I can see every freckle and the gingerbread-colored ring around his pupils.

  I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

  He pulls back, holding a chip. “You had a Dorito in your hair.”

  I inhale, and the air feels unnaturally heavy. There’s too much gravity in this room. I say, “Thanks,” and the word falls to the floor like a lump of wet cement.

  Noah’s eyes seem to be locked on mine. “Charity. Listen. I don’t think I can—”

  At the same moment, I blurt, “I know how to get you together with Holly.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You first.”

  I take another heavy breath, enough to push the thousand-pound words out of my mouth. “I’m going to grant your wish next Friday night.”

  He turns away from me, flicking the Dorito into the trash can by his dresser. “I need to talk to you about my wish.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got a plan, and it’s going to work. I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but I—
”

  “Charity, wait. I—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. You don’t want to manipulate her. You want the real thing.” He opens his mouth, but I hold out my hand to shush him. I have to rush through everything I have planned to say; otherwise, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through it. “But here’s the thing about Holly. Why do you think she wanted to be with Kade?”

  He shrugs. “He’s good at football?”

  “But she never cared about football.” I pace like a private investigator in an old detective movie. “Holly wants to be envied. She loves having the guy everyone else drools over.”

  “Really? That sounds so shallow.”

  “Why else would she be with Kade instead of you? And I didn’t glimpse her and Kade on a quiet date by themselves. I glimpsed them at prom.” Noah looks disgusted and vaguely disinterested. Of course, he doesn’t want to hear anything negative about his true love. I plow forward with the part about how this works in his favor. “All we have to do is make you the It Boy. Holly will be yours. And I promise you won’t have to change a thing.”

  He laughs raggedly and gestures toward his ice-cream-stained Arctic Marble uniform. “That hasn’t gone my way so far. Does this plan of yours involve some sort of rift in the space-time continuum?”

  “No.” It’s almost a whisper. I clear my throat and try again. “No.”

  “Would I have to make a deal with the devil?”

  “No.” I concentrate hard on making the word breezy, with limited success.

  “What then?”

  “You have to date me.”

  As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re all wrong. I analyzed this plan down to the quark. I thought it was perfect. It is perfect. It’s just that my heart is screaming, Not this! Anything but this!

  Noah goes in and out of focus as I try to hold myself together. I press my lips into a thin line and grip my own arms tight, tighter. The truth is suddenly so obvious. And so devastating. I’ve let myself fall in love with Noah.