Yearbook

by Allyson Braithwaite Condie

  “No, but this is the perfect job for you—you’ve said that a hundred times. You’ve always wanted to work at Lakeview. I’m worried that you’ll let this anger eat away at you. You’ll let Kevin affect you in a way that I think you will regret later. That’s all.”

  “Later? Right. Why is everything supposed to happen later? When does later happen, Dad?” I said, clenching my fists in anger. “When can we stop thinking about it a hundred times every day?”

  My dad’s voice was shaky. “I don’t think that will ever happen,” he said. He looked me in the eyes and I saw such deep sorrow there that it made me catch my breath. “Whatever you decide to do, Owen, please choose your next steps carefully,” my father said quietly. “You’ll have to live with them forever. We all will.”

  I didn’t sleep very well that night. I wonder if Kevin Cox even has any idea what he’s done. He must. He knows he was drunk. He knows he shouldn’t have been driving. He knows someone died. He is serving his time, but I wonder if he has the capability to put himself in our place. Does he have the power to imagine himself rolling over at night and reaching for someone and finding that they are gone? I know my father has done that. Does he have the power to imagine all of our different achievements being forever shadowed by the fact that our mom is not there? I don’t think he does and that makes me even angrier.

  I know I don’t have the ability or the desire to put myself in Kevin Cox’s shoes. I’m sure there are people who think I should forgive him, but right now it is safest for me not to think about him very much at all. But I’m starting to imagine myself in Julie Reid’s place. A decent kid, average in every way except for a pretty singing voice, walking into my classroom that first day and wondering what would happen. Living in the shadow of what other people have done her entire life. Trying to decide whether or not to try out for Chorale. Deciding to do the audition and making the cut. Realizing that I wasn’t going to punish her for being Kevin’s sister. Getting up the courage to thank me for something that she really believed I had done.

  The next day, Julie and Michaela came in and asked if I would help them for a couple of hours after school with a piece they were singing at Michaela’s church that weekend. Even though I’d been trying to do the right thing, I hesitated for just a minute before saying, “Yes.” They wanted to make sure they were singing the parts correctly—Mikey would be singing alto, which she doesn’t usually sing.

  Julie helped Mikey prop her crutches against her chair and I caught myself watching, wondering if Kevin were capable of anything thoughtful like that. I shook my head. Back to the music at hand.

  I sat at the piano and started playing. It was a song with which I was not familiar, but it was a simple melody and I could sight-read it easily. Michaela started singing and then Julie joined in, her clear, soft voice carrying to the corners of the room.

  I have heard and sung music’s great religious pieces many times. But for some reason, the lines that Julie sang caught my heart:

  Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

  Prone to leave the God I love;

  NI>Here’s my heart, O, take and seal it,

  Seal it for Thy courts above.

  Several times music has hit me like a physical force, so hard that I can’t really breathe or see or think, only feel. I am a musician; I am moved by music quite often. But it doesn’t happen with that magnitude every day. I stopped playing the piano.

  Julie turned to look at me. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  I swallowed hard. “No,” I said, “you didn’t. I’m sorry. Let’s start again.”

  I stopped by Principal Downing’s office before I went home and told her to forget about our conversation from the other day and that I would be happy to continue with the Chorale class. She just nodded and said, “All right, Owen. Thank you.”

  I am prone to wander, like that song says, from Something I can’t quite name. Maybe it is God; I don’t know. There has been a lot of anger inside me for two years. It is a little frightening to let some of it go without being entirely sure what will take its place. But there is a great deal of beautiful music in the world; if I can listen to it, if I can find it.

  Chapter 16

  February and March

  Ethan Beckett

  My dad had moved back. I still can’t believe it.

  Not moved back into our house—now that would be wild. He moved back to Seattle, to Bellevue to be exact, to an apartment and to his old job, at the end of January. He’d been talking about moving for a while, not that Portland was so far away he didn’t get to see us often, but because he said he missed the day-to-day stuff, like coming to every race instead of just the big ones. Stuff like that. Even my mom seemed to think it was a good idea. They don’t fight anymore, but I didn’t think she’d be thrilled about him moving back to town. She was glad he’d be around for us kids more. And Grandma—well, she was over the moon. That’s to be expected, though, I guess. He’s her only kid, after all.

  He expected us all to be excited.

  Dad and I haven’t had any serious trouble, not like he and Andrea have had. When he took the job in Portland right after the divorce, Andrea felt betrayed, but I honestly felt relieved. It made things so much easier. We saw him for longer chunks of time, and we didn’t always have to be running to his house for the weekends and then back to Mom’s during the week. I hated waking up and wondering where I was. Chloe was too little then to stay away from home overnight so she doesn’t remember any of it. She’s still too young to understand what the move means now.

  And things are different now.

  I really wasn’t that thrilled when I heard the news. I couldn’t tell why. Like I said, Dad and I haven’t had any big fights or anything. I guess that it seems more complicated all of a sudden. Now he’ll be at every race, not just the big ones. Now I’ll run into him at Grandma’s all the time. Now I’ll have to stay at his apartment every other weekend (the custody has changed a little since we’re older).

  It had been kind of nice to have two different worlds all sectioned off into their separate compartments: the Portland world and the Seattle world; the vacation world and the real world. According to Dad that was exactly the problem. He felt like he was a vacation dad. “You have to give him credit for that,” said my mom. I didn’t feel like we had to give him credit for anything. You have to understand—I don’t hate my dad. All I wanted to do was keep things uncomplicated and predictable.

  The first weekend in February was the first one we were supposed to spend with him after his move back. Andrea was predictable and said that she didn’t want to spend the weekend, but she was unpredictable when she actually agreed to at least have dinner that night at his place. That was a big step. I thought Grandma might have something to do with it, but I wasn’t going to ask. I wanted Andrea there, even though it might mean a fight, because I didn’t want to be one-on-one with Dad. Chloe was going to be there for her first weekend away and she was excited, but she’s five. You can’t exactly count on her for scintillating or even relevant conversation half the time.

  “How are you going to get home after dinner?” I asked Andrea as we drove to Dad’s. “I’ll need the car until we come back Sunday morning.”

  “It’s been arranged,” she said snottily, then softened just a little. “Dave’s coming to get me. We’re going to the ballet.” She gave me a look that dared me to say anything about either Dave or the ballet, and then turned to look out the window. I fought back a grin as I focused on the road ahead, not wanting to miss the exit. Good for you, Dave, I thought.

  Dad’s apartment was in one of the quiet areas of Bellevue. We rode the elevator up to the third floor, and of course Chloe wanted to push the button. Dad’s apartment was down the hall, and Chloe begged to be able to ring the doorbell, but it wasn’t necessary. Dad was waiting for us.

  “Hey, you guys!” he said, guiding us into the kitchen. Chloe sprang at him like a small, pajama-wearing puppy. He picked her up and g
rinned. “Come on in. I just finished getting dinner ready.”

  My dad was a pretty decent cook before the divorce and living on his own has made him even better. Plus he likes to grill things and eat guy food. Sure enough, there were some ribs on the barbecue that smelled amazing and a potato salad I could tell he made himself. There was also a basket of some exotic fruits—papayas mostly. My dad served his mission in Brazil and has never quite gotten over it. It smelled like a picnic.

  “Andrea, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?” he said, looking panicked as he handed her a plateful of ribs.

  She actually smiled at him and shook her head. “Nope,” she said. I guess I hadn’t realized how little they’d interacted since he’d moved if he didn’t even know what she ate, but to be fair, it was mostly Andrea who had kept him at a distance. Still, dinner seemed to be going pretty well.

  “Mom told you I was just staying for dinner tonight, right?” Andrea said, helping herself to the fruit.

  Dad looked nervous. “Yeah, she did. I’m glad you could make it for dinner, though.”

  Andrea smiled. “I have a date tonight that I don’t want to miss,” she said, offering him more personal information in that one sentence than she had in three years.

  His eyes widened in surprise at how open she was being. I could see him physically restraining himself from asking more. Meanwhile, I was still in complete shock over finding out that David Sherman was a date that Andrea didn’t want to miss.

  I could practically see the questions running through Dad’s mind: Do I know him? Is he Mormon? Is he a nice guy? Where are you going? What are you doing? What time will you be home? But he’s smart. He knew that asking for more information could be fatal. I saw Andrea visibly relax when all he said was, “That’s great,” and smiled at her.

  Chloe, meanwhile, had dressed herself in barbecue sauce. My dad looked over at her and shook his head. “I hope your mom packed extra pajamas,” he said, laughing.

  “Me too, ’cause I still wet the bed,” Chloe said matter-of-factly and then beamed at him when he laughed. I never know whether to be sad or happy for Chloe: sad that she never really knew what it was like for our parents to be together, or happy for her because she seems content with her life the way it is, not knowing what she’s missed.

  “So,” I said, “how’s the job? Same as you remembered?”

  “Pretty close,” he said. “It’s the same job working in Portland or working here. I guess that’s the benefit of staying with the same company. It sure is great to be back, though. I can’t wait to see you guys run during the track season more often, go to more of Chloe’s school stuff, you know. And it’ll be good to see your grandma more too.”

  “Did you know Grandma sold her car?” Andrea asked.

  “What?” Dad exclaimed. “She didn’t tell me!”

  “She did it yesterday. I guess she almost had an accident driving to the temple and she drove right over to our house and marched in the door and threw her keys on the table and said she was never driving again because she was too dangerous and it was too scary. I didn’t think she was serious, but it looks like she was.”

  Dad shook his head. “That’s just like her. Once she decides to do something, there’s no holding her back. That’s why your mother and I always thought it was a good thing that we’d named you after her because you’re so much alike.”

  “I’m named after Grandma?” Andrea asked. “But our names are different.”

  “Well, they’re not the same name, but they are similar and that’s part of the reason we chose your name—to honor her. And you shared a lot of personality traits, right from the beginning.” He laughed. “You’re both a little stubborn. I remember trying to convince you that cowboy boots and a princess dress weren’t the right thing to wear on your first day of school, but there was no arguing with you, and you ended up being fine. All the other kids thought it was great. And your grandma—when she decided she was going to leave her home and move out here to be with us, that was the end of it. You are two stubborn ladies.”

  Andrea looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “I guess I should take that as a compliment.”

  “You certainly should,” Dad said. “Sometimes I wish I were more like her.”

  We cleared up dinner and had dessert, which was a birthday cake complete with candles. “Whose birthday is it?” I asked Dad in the kitchen.

  “Nobody’s,” he said. “But your mom said that Chloe’s really into birthday cakes and pretending there’s a birthday, so I thought it would be fun to have a cake. Plus, we can practice for your birthday coming up.”

  Chloe loved it and decided that we should sing “Happy Birthday” to the cake itself instead of to me, so we did.

  “Do you want to take a piece home to your mom? Or to Grandma?” Dad asked.

  “Sure,” I said. He set some aside in a plastic container.

  “So, Dad,” said Andrea, licking the frosting off her fork, “are you dating anyone these days?”

  Dad looked surprised. “No . . .”

  “I was just wondering, since I know you were dating in Portland.”

  “I only got here a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t had time to meet anyone yet. I kind of hope I do, though. It would be nice to go out sometime.”

  I thought that sounded kind of dorky and ridiculous for a grown man to say, but Andrea didn’t make any of the smart comments I thought she would. All she said was, “This cake is really good,” and helped herself to another piece.

  “It’s awesome, Dad,” I added, and had a third slice. Maybe I could gorge myself on cake for the entire weekend.

  The doorbell rang and everyone looked startled. “That must be David,” Andrea said, as Dad went to answer it. She stood up and smoothed back the one piece of hair that always escaped from her ponytail. She didn’t look nervous, but I noticed she was wearing dressy black pants and a red silk shirt with the fancy red earrings Grandma had given her. I couldn’t tell if she had dressed up for the ballet or for David.

  “David!” Dad said. “How are you?” I could tell he was surprised. He had known Dave since he had been a crazy Cub Scout, a terror of a deacon. I’m sure Dad’s seen him since then, though, at the meets or something, so he had to know Dave had grown up.

  “Great,” Dave said, shaking hands with Dad. “How’s it going, Brother Beckett?”

  Andrea went into the foyer and she and Dave said good-bye. I could tell Dave was nervous. He’d better be. The ballet and Andrea in one evening would be enough to make any guy on edge. What was he trying to do to himself?

  Dad came back into the kitchen and sat down. “Andrea’s going on a date with David Sherman? That kid is a total goofball. He’s not a bad kid, though . . . his family is great. He’s still active, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think he knows what he’s getting into with Andrea, as much as anyone can. He’s on the team, you know, and he’s in our ward so he knows how she is and that she hasn’t been to church in a few years.”

  “Well, I hope they have a good time.” I could tell Dad was relieved that the date Andrea had been looking forward to was with a member of the Church. Andrea hasn’t dated members in a while. I don’t think either Mom or Dad liked Connor much, even though he wasn’t a terrible guy, but I think they figured the odds of a non-member reactivating Andrea were pretty slim.

  Chloe decided that it was time to play a game. Specifically, it was time to play “Hungry Hungry Hippos,” which she had packed in her overnight bag, and so we humored her. After a few rounds of chomping hippos, and a bunch of stories from my dad, it was time for Chloe to go to bed. We tucked her in her purple sleeping bag on top of the covers (she always sleeps like that) and then it was one-on-one time with me and Dad.

  Dad suggested watching a movie or some basketball. I chose basketball. The Sonics were playing the Spurs and it was a decent game. “We’ll have to get tickets sometime,” he said partway through the game. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been
to a Sonics game. Since before Gary Payton left, in fact.”

  “Yeah, that would be awesome,” I said. Inside, I was wondering how long this weekend would last. Playing with Chloe, making small talk, all the while wondering what was going on back in my real world. The guys were going to run a twelve-mile loop around the lake tomorrow and I wasn’t going to be there. I wouldn’t get to hang out with Mikey and the rest of the group on Saturday night. My dad moving back to town might be great for him, but some of us were just getting used to things the way they were.

  “Daddy? Ethan?” said a small and teary voice. Chloe. “I want to go home.”

  “Oh, Chloe, are you sure?” my dad said, jumping up to hold her. “I can come in and read you some more stories, or sing you a few songs.”

  “No,” she wailed. “I want to go home. I want to see Mommy.”

  “I’ll take her,” I said quickly. “Mom thought this might happen, just because she’s so young and she hasn’t tried it before.”

  “I can drive her, Eth,” said my dad. “Then we can catch the end of the game or do something else.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, not looking at him and putting on my sneakers. “I’ve got kind of a lot to do at home anyway. We can all try again next time—in a couple of weeks or something.”

  He started to say something, but then accepted defeat. “Okay, if that’s what you want. I’d love to have you stay, though.” Chloe’s crying was getting louder, so he helped me get her things together and gave us both hugs at the door. I kept moving fast, not wanting to look into his face, not wanting him to try to convince us to stay again. It’s a good thing he isn’t as stubborn as Grandma and Andrea. I was pretty worried that he’d put up more of a fight, but he seemed too quiet or resigned or something for that.

  I looked back to say one last “See you later” after we’d gone out the door, but when I saw him with his head leaned back against the couch and his eyes closed, I didn’t. I closed the door quietly and followed Chloe down the hall as she dragged her purple sleeping bag and hurried to push the elevator button. I drove her home through the night and she was asleep before we even got there. Mom came to greet us. “Oh, I thought this might happen,” she said, lifting Chloe out of the car. “Was she okay for most of the time?”