“There’s a train. What’s more wholesome and trustworthy than Amtrak?”
I bite my lip, staring at the dust on my windowsill.
“I’ll give it a try,” I say, “but I’m grounded for the rest of my life right now.”
“I think you should let me try. I’ve already g-got my mom convinced.”
It’s not a bad idea. My mom has always loved Mags. “You want to stop by today?”
“We’re going out for lunch. We’ll come b-by after.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you then.”
I change my outfit four times and my hair twice while I’m waiting. I have to find the perfect mix of happy, normal teenager and contrite, refocused daughter. Lip gloss? Yes. Mascara? No. I make a succession of similar choices until I’m pretty sure I look right.
Now comes the hard part. I head outside and slip down the hallway, careful not to bump the laundry chute or step on the creaky part of the floor. I hover at the top of the stairs, listening for my parents.
I hear the TV, but it’s down too low to be of any serious interest. I head down the stairs and find them in the kitchen, Dad leaned into the fridge and Mom peeling carrots at the sink.
“Are we eating at home tonight?” I ask.
Mom gives me a passing smile. “I thought I’d do vegetable soup. It feels like a soup kind of day.”
Feels kind of like a plotting and scheming day to me, but I’ll keep that to myself.
I look through the window above the sink where wind is sending fallen leaves skittering against our fence. And of course, the leaves make me think of Adam, which makes my head hurt.
“I could peel potatoes if you want,” I say.
Mom looks up, clearly surprised. Dad closes the fridge and pops the tab off a Samuel Adams. “I think that’s a terrific idea.”
“Of course you do,” Mom says, arching a brow at him. “It was your job until she showed up.”
I’ve got the potatoes peeled and cubed when I hear the doorbell. It takes crazy willpower to stay at the table—to pretend I’m still reading the magazine I’ve been blindly thumbing through.
Mom looks up from the stove with a frown. “Who could that be?”
I just shrug, turning the page without looking up. In the living room, I hear my dad’s jolly greeting. And then I hear Mrs. Campbell. And Maggie.
“Well, that sounds like—”
“Virginia,” Dad says. “Why don’t you and Chloe come out here for a minute?”
I stand up, exchanging a clueless look with my mom that she swallows hook, line, and sinker. She wipes her hands on a dish towel, and I follow her out of the kitchen, praying my knees will stay strong and that I will not start trembling like the nervous wreck I am.
And I shouldn’t be nervous. This is just Maggie.
Maggie here to hatch the biggest plot we’ve ever dreamed up, that is.
Mom gasps, and I force surprise onto my face.
“Mrs. Campbell,” I say, and then, more softly, “Maggie.”
Maggie looks up at me, eyes and nose red. Has she been crying? What happened? She wasn’t crying on the phone. Did her mom figure her out? Oh God, she figured it out, and I am about to be busted. Again.
I’m going to be grounded until I have grandchildren.
Maggie hesitates for a second and then rushes across the room. I feel her arms around me and hear her half sob into my hair.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I don’t know if it’s part of the plan. I don’t know why she’d go to these lengths to be convincing, but I don’t care. When I hug her back, I don’t have to force my own tears to come. They just do.
***
Maggie and I are side by side at the top of the stairs. She hasn’t said a thing about the crying, and I haven’t asked. I’m not sure I want to know. Her reasons might not be as sweet as the ones I’ve dreamed up.
It’s like we’ve regressed to our twelve-year-old selves, spying on the grown-ups from the top of the stairs. A plate of gingersnaps sits between us, and occasionally one of us will grab one and take a nibble. Mostly, though, we listen.
Without a whole lot of success, because all three parental units are obnoxiously staying put in the kitchen, where it’s only possible to hear every third or fourth word.
“Do you have any idea what they’re saying?” I ask in a whisper.
Maggie holds up a hand to quiet me. She’s always had the better hearing of the two of us. She says it’s a side effect of her crap vision. There’s been no celebration in our history that has yet to live up to The Day Maggie Got Contacts.
I eat another gingersnap and watch her brow furrow as she listens hard. I’m only hearing bits and pieces. “So much pressure” and “terrible seeing them apart” and things like that.
Then she looks at me, clearly shocked. “I think it’s working.”
“You’re kidding.”
Just then, I hear chairs and feet in the kitchen. We scuttle back to my bedroom in record time.
Barely a minute passes before we hear the call.
“Girls, can you come down here for a minute?”
My mother. She sounds happy. Which means…we won. Maggie and I exchange a smirk, waiting just long enough before we open the door to not be completely obvious.
Maggie goes ahead of me, moving down the stairs with a bounce in her step that I try to mirror in my own.
“You know holidays are a special time,” my mother starts. “Under normal circumstances, I’d want you home with us, Chloe.”
My dad huffs and cuts in. “Oh, stop torturing them. You’re going.”
My mother looks irritated briefly, but her anger relents when Dad kisses the top of her head. Maggie leaps up with a squeal, and we hug and dance around in circles like we’re ten years old and we’ve just been given concert tickets to see the biggest boy band around.
It’s almost like we aren’t faking it at all.
“But you’d better not come back here without one of those snow globe things or a keychain or something,” Dad says.
“Thank you, Dad,” I say, kissing his cheek. And then I turn to my mother and hug her tight. “Thank you.”
Mom hugs me back, and I feel the strength in her hands as much as I hear the sniffle in her voice. “Don’t thank me. It’s Mrs. Campbell who agreed to take on the two of you. I hope you’ll make sure she won’t regret her generosity.”
“She’s never been a bit of trouble,” Mrs. Campbell says. She slings an arm around my shoulder, and I smell yeast and cinnamon and of course that makes me think of Adam.
How am I going to explain this to him?
“Chloe?” Mrs. Campbell asks. “Is that okay?”
Crap, I wasn’t paying attention. I shake my head to clear the thoughts and smile widely. “Yeah, it’s great.”
Maggie knows me better and frowns. “So we’ll pick you up tomorrow right after school.”
“That’s what I just said,” her mom says, chuckling.
“Tomorrow’s great. I guess I’d better go start thinking about what to pack.”
We exchange our good-byes and I head upstairs to my room. After ten minutes pulling out a few outfits, I can’t resist any longer.
I have to at least tell him I’m leaving.
Adam answers on the third ring, and I can hear music in the background. “Are you finally not grounded?”
“Sadly, I think that sentence has a couple more years on it,” I say. “But I do have some good news.”
“What’s that?”
“Maggie and I sort of mended the fences or whatever.”
“Hell of a feat when you can’t even leave the house,” he says. I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Well, Mom is fine with Maggie coming by.”
I wince as the silence on the other end of the line stretches. Damn it. That came out completely wrong.
“I’ll take it your mom disapproves of the company you were keeping as much as the lie.”
I sigh, sinking ont
o the foot of my bed beside a pile of tank tops. “She’s upset that I lied, but yeah, she’s concerned about you too.”
“But not about Blake,” he guesses, his laugh so low and bitter I feel my stomach clench at the sound. “That’s rich.”
“Look, she doesn’t know you, okay?”
“But she wasn’t exactly ready to give me the benefit of the doubt, was she?”
“It’s not—” I cut myself off and press my free hand to my forehead. “My mom works at the hospital. She was on shift the night you hurt your arm.”
Silence greets me on the other end of the line. It stretches out long enough for me to wonder if the call dropped or if maybe he’s not planning on responding. And then he does.
“So I suppose she gave you the whole story then.”
“She told me what she knows of it. Or what she thinks she knows. She’s just worried, Adam. All moms worry.”
He laughs, and it’s so caustic, I’m surprised my ear doesn’t sting. “No, Chloe, not all moms worry. So now you’re worried too, right?”
“I’m not.”
“Then why is this bothering you, because it obviously is?”
“Look, just because I pulled a damn fire alarm and snuck around a construction site doesn’t mean I’m cool with felony, okay?”
A beat passes, and I imagine my words spraying at him like bullets.
When he speaks, he’s quieter. “You think I stole drugs. That I was dealing maybe.”
“You broke into a pharmacy. Am I supposed to think you did it for the free measuring spoons?”
“Why I did it doesn’t really matter to you, does it, Chloe?” he says, and I hear him scoff.
The thing is, it does matter, and I want to tell him, but I’m somehow frozen. All I can think of is that newspaper article and sitting my parents down to explain why dating a thief is a smart choice. And I can’t. I just can’t imagine it.
Not any more than I can imagine Adam breaking into a pharmacy.
“I think your silence is a pretty good answer,” he says.
The line goes dead while my mouth is still opening to speak.
My throat is hot and swollen, and my eyes itch like crazy. I swipe at the tears that find their way out with the heel of my palm and tell myself that I will figure this out. I will calm down and call him back and everything will be fine.
Except that deep down inside, there’s a scared part of me that doesn’t think it will.
Chapter Twenty-One
The airport distracts me from the Adam angst. I’ve always enjoyed the airport on holidays. Yes, the lines are long and cancellations can cause riots, but if things run smoothly, it’s the happiest place on earth.
I cross my legs to make room for a family of four moving past me. They trail by with an endless stream of chatter and video games and brightly colored kid luggage.
“I remember when you two were that little,” Mrs. Campbell says wistfully.
On my right, Maggie props her chin in her hand and gazes at them. “I wonder where they’re going.”
“Home, I guess,” I say.
In a way, that’s where I’m headed too. I glance at Maggie, and we exchange a tentative smile before I take a sip of the Starbucks she bought me. At the boarding call, we stand up and pull up our luggage, and it’s all as simple as it’s ever been between us. It’s crazy ironic that I’m flying two thousand miles, hoping to God to end up right back where I started.
Maggie and I buckle into two seats by the window. Mrs. Campbell ends up across the aisle from us, headphones in and a crossword puzzle out before we’ve even taxied down the runway.
“So how much of this do you have planned out?” I ask Maggie as Cleveland shrinks into a quilt of freeways and lights outside my window.
She snorts indelicately and pulls out a notebook. There are two pages filled with inconspicuous academic stuff. Notes on some science theory or whatever. She flips right past those, opening the book to another section. I see a listing of train departure times and directions to an unfamiliar address in San Diego.
“Yeah, what’s up with that? Everyone else said it was San Francisco.”
“Yeah, well, the p-post office called it an address forwarding error.” Maggie makes little air quotes around address forwarding error like she doesn’t believe that for a second.
“Wait a minute, are you saying they didn’t even admit to the right city?”
Realizing my volume, I glance over at Mrs. Campbell, who’s dozing off, her pen slack in her hand. I drop my voice to a whisper anyway. “Why would they lie about that?”
“Technically, they d-didn’t,” she says. “The Millers were really vague about the whole thing, remember?”
I give her a pointed look, and Mags waves, looking contrite. “Right. Sorry. They said they were moving t-to California for some great business opportunity and didn’t have a permanent address, but everyone knew it was about Julien. She’d b-been a mess all summer. They never let her out of their sight.”
I feel my eyes growing wide. “So other people are suspicious too.”
“Hell, no. Ridgeview’s t-too small-town. They just thought the p-perfect little Miller girl had cracked.” She shrugs. “It happens. It was still freaky though.”
“Yeah?”
Maggie puts up her hands. “It’s the Millers. Moving across the entire damn country!”
“Thank you!” I say, glad someone has seen the pertinence of this fact. I chew the inside of my lip, still trying to work it out. “And it’s even weirder that they don’t let Julien keep in touch. It’s like they cut her off completely. Do you think her parents did something illegal?”
Mags gives me a disbelieving look. “Mrs. Miller was a choir director. Literally.”
“Okay, fine, but what about her dad? My parents never could stand the guy. I’ve heard my dad talking about him.”
“Well, if they up and left for no reason, maybe, b-but they had a reason. A bat-shit crazy d-daughter they wanted to hide.”
I swallow hard, shocked at the idea of it, but a little afraid to ask whether or not she’s joking. Because if all of this happened to Julien, it might still happen to me.
The flight attendant arrives offering drinks, saving me from my total lack of response. I sip my ginger ale and pretend to be mesmerized by the scenery outside my window.
Mom and Dad took me to New York once, and I remember flying over the city with my nose pressed to the glass. My eyes had to be the size of dinner plates. I couldn’t even conceive of a city so immense, of so many buildings clustered around the brilliant green rectangle of Central Park.
Landing in Los Angeles is totally not like that. It’s kind of like landing in Cleveland. Except I spot the Hollywood sign just before I hear the landing gear grinding down.
Maggie’s mom must be even better in the kitchen than I think because we’re whisked to the hotel by a chauffeured car. Granted, it’s not a limo, but still. A sleek black town car with leather seats and television screens in the backs of the seats is a far cry from my decrepit Toyota.
Everything is green and alive in California, as if November doesn’t even exist here. After spending every winter of my life in northern Ohio, I feel like I’m on another planet.
“Wow,” I say, gazing out at the seemingly endless stream of palm trees and slick cars. “It really is kind of like the movies.”
Mags grins at me. “First, we check out the beach.”
“First, we check in to the hotel,” Mrs. Campbell corrects us, slinging one arm around each of us as our driver unloads our luggage.
If this was my mother, we’d spend the next two hours inspecting the room and discussing safety precautions. But Mrs. Campbell’s way more relaxed, so I know we’ll see the ocean before we hit the sack.
Two hours later, the three of us make our way to Venice Beach. We try fish tacos and ice cream and laugh the whole way there. Maggie’s mom heads into a coffee shop and we wander off to a bench for the best people watching.
&n
bsp; I always kind of figured the wildness was exaggerated, but I was dead wrong. The boardwalk is like a giant, scrolling circus sideshow. An enormous guy with the smallest dog I’ve ever seen rides past on a bright green bicycle, almost bumping a girl who’s juggling at least five oranges. A couple of long-haired kids veer around them, speaking to each other in full-on Shakespearian.
Maggie and I shake our heads and trade our cones to try the other’s flavor. It’s maybe the most perfect day I’ve had. Unless you count the one I had with Adam, and I can’t count that. I can’t even think about that unless I want to cry.
I see Maggie out of the corner of my eye, her red-gold hair shining like a penny in the setting sun.
“Maggie?” I say, staring out to sea.
“Mm?”
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened between us?”
Her nose wrinkles, and I wish at once I hadn’t said it.
“I’m n-not sure,” she says.
I watch the long waves curling in, wishing my memory would come back like the tide. But in the end, maybe I don’t want to remember. Maybe it’s best to let it stay hidden in dark places.
“Whatever it is, I’m sorry for it,” I tell her.
“Yeah. I know that now.”
***
The train speeds forward, cutting down the California coast. I wring my hands and try not to think about where we’re going. Or what we’re going to see when we get there.
“This is why we’re here, Chlo,” Maggie says, reading my mind.
“How much longer am I going to be stuck in this train freaking out?”
“Not long now. But I’m sure you’ll spaz in the cab too.”
The train pulls into the station, and Maggie navigates us to a taxi without any fuss. Maybe it isn’t such a big deal for her, but I’m freaking out a little about seeing Julien. If she’s gone crazy now, am I next?
Still, the sunshine is positively balmy here. I peel off the sweater I’d worn over my tank top and let the warm breeze improve my mood. I could get used to a town like this. The sky is so blue I feel like I could pour it into a swimming pool.
Our cab driver plays reggae music and drives approximately nine thousand miles an hour. Sometimes I catch glimpses of the bay, a stretch of cobalt water dotted with the white triangles of sailboats. Then I’m back to holding on for dear life, watching Maggie grow greener by the second.
Six Months Later Page 17