Emmy & Oliver

by Robin Benway

  “We . . . talked,” I said, trying to figure out how much to tell my mom before she would tell Maureen. Oliver hadn’t said that I should keep any secrets, but I felt like it wasn’t my information to share. “Sometimes it’s just weird to talk to your parents, y’know? Maureen’s overreacting.”

  My mom nodded slowly, the way she always does whenever she disagrees with me but doesn’t want to say so for fear that I’ll stop speaking to her altogether. “Well, I’m glad Oliver has you for a friend.”

  “Oliver’s always had me for a friend,” I replied.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah, sure. He’s funny. He’s really smart, too.”

  “Funny?” my mom repeated. “How so?”

  “Spanish Inquisition,” I said to her, which made her smile. “I’m sorry, you’ve exceeded your maximum amount of questions today. Please try again tomorrow.”

  She stood up and kissed my forehead. “Don’t stay up too late, okay? You need your rest.”

  The jury was still out on that last statement, but I let it go. Sometimes it was just easier to pretend to agree. “’Kay,” I said.

  After she left, I turned the music back on and reached to turn off my lamp, trying not to think about anything for a few minutes. That’s always impossible, though. It’s easier to stop breathing than it is to stop thinking. After Oliver vanished, I used to try to not think about him, but he just bobbed to the surface of my thoughts again and again, the boy who disappeared but never went away.

  My hand was still on the lamp.

  I was almost too scared to do it, to turn the light on and off. When we were kids, we used to flick our lights to signal each other after we had to go to bed. We tried working out a system but I usually got impatient and just opened the window and yelled across the air to him instead.

  The first few nights after Oliver left, I used to sit in bed and turn the lamp’s plastic switch on and off again and again, my silent, desperate Morse code. At first, I thought that maybe he was just hiding in his room in a really expert game of hide-and-seek, but a few weeks later, my parents found me at three in the morning, my nightgown soaked in tears, my fingers red and raw from turning the switch so hard and so often.

  After that, I usually left the light on at night. If Oliver came home, I wanted him to know that I was there.

  Now I was sitting in the dark, looking out the window. The light was off in his room, just like before, but I could see movement in the hallway outside his door. Was Oliver there? I thought about the tall guy that had sheepishly climbed out of the cop car, had stood up on that surfboard, his brow furrowed both times. It was and it wasn’t him, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing about me.

  The plastic knob hurt my fingers when I clicked it on and off.

  Sunspots lit up my vision for a minute. My heart was pounding so hard that I was pretty sure I could see it moving my shirt. It’s okay if he doesn’t remember this, I thought. It’s okay if he doesn’t remember. It doesn’t mean anything.

  Across our yards, Oliver’s light flicked on, then off a few seconds later, and I smiled into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A week later, the news crews came to interview Oliver. It was just for the local station, nothing national, Oprah wasn’t knocking down the door or anything. But the cameras are always the same size, hulking and unblinking, and they took over Oliver’s living room for the afternoon while Maureen hustled the little girls over to our house.

  “I’ve been cleaning all morning,” she said, breathless as she practically shoved Molly through the front door. “Oops, sorry, sweetie. Mommy’s sorry.” She blew the hair out of her eyes, her bangs fluttering before landing in the exact same spot on her forehead. “They wanted to do it at home, you know, just make it look really . . . homey. Like, where he belongs.”

  My mom and I, neither of us sure who she was talking to, both nodded. Molly frowned up at her mom, then leaned against my legs while Nora took hold of my hand. “Let’s plaaaaaay,” she whined. “Let’s play Interview.”

  “Oliver wouldn’t play,” Molly murmured.

  “He didn’t have time, sweetie,” Maureen said, then smoothed some stray hairs down. “Thank you so much for watching them. I didn’t want them around all the . . .” She waved her hands and mouthed the word media at my mom and me before wrinkling her nose.

  “We’ve just had so many calls,” she continued, and I wondered if she had even taken a breath in between her words. “They all want to talk to me, to Oliver, find out how he’s doing. They keep calling the house and it’s just . . . you want the phone to ring for ten years and then one day it does and it doesn’t stop.”

  Her voice was starting to sound dangerously wobbly, her eyes began to well up, and I quickly steered the girls toward the TV room. “Cartoons!” I said. “Don’t fight over the remote!”

  They scampered off.

  “I’m sorry,” Maureen said as soon as they were gone, fanning her fingers in front of her eyes again. “He’s not talking to me and I don’t know if he’s happy and I got him this shirt but it’s patterned and I remembered this morning that I read once that you shouldn’t wear patterns on TV and—”

  I knew about that shirt, but only because Oliver had dangled it out the window that morning and made the thumbs-up/thumbs-down sign at me. “Yeah?” he had called. It was a blue-checked shirt, not too dressy, collared with long sleeves. It would look good on him. Neither of us considered how it would look on a forty-six-inch flat screen in someone’s living room. We didn’t even know that was a thing that someone could worry about.

  “Did your mom buy it?” I called back.

  “Yeah!”

  “Looks good!”

  “You sure?”

  I gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  Now my mom was moving in, grasping Maureen by the upper arms. I recognized this as the Get a (Literal) Grip. A classic Mom move.

  “Look, Mo,” my mom said to her. “Oliver is home now. That’s what’s important. He’s not going to talk to you, all right? He’s seventeen. Emmy’s seventeen and she never talks to me.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “I’m actually legally obligated to ignore her. The other teenagers and I made a pact. There were lawyers involved, it’s a whole thing now.”

  “See?” My mom shot a grateful glance in my direction as Maureen laughed a little. “Just go do the interview, let people know that Oliver is home, that you and your family will be okay, and take it from there. Don’t worry about his shirt, of all things.” She squeezed Maureen’s arms again, then let her go. “And your hair looks wonderful,” she added. “I love the new highlights.”

  Maureen rolled her eyes but still patted her hair. “Oh, this. I just needed to do something for myself, you know?”

  “Absolutely,” my mom agreed. “We don’t take enough time for ourselves. Now go back. The girls are fine here and Emmy will keep an eye on them.”

  I was already edging away. “Good luck,” I said, not sure if it was bad luck to wish someone good luck or vice versa, then scurried into the den before I had to hear any more mom conversations. They always made me uncomfortable, like they were the Ghost of Christmas Future, a life laid out for me that I wasn’t even sure I wanted but felt destined to live, anyway.

  The girls were toppled over each other on the couch, watching something loud and animated whose theme song would be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. The girls were both singing along with it under their breath, like the TV was compelling them to do its bidding.

  I slipped in behind Nora on the couch. She stayed where she was, forcing her to sit on my legs. “Oliver got a new shirt,” Molly said without looking away from the television. “It has blue squares on it.”

  “I heard,” I said.

  “I want a new shirt, too.”

  Nora was about to add something, probably about if Molly wanted a new shirt, then she wanted one, too, but then the show started and they were distracted again.
<
br />   When the interview aired that night, the shirt looked good, not as bad as what Maureen was worried about. Oliver looked like, well, Oliver, his head oddly huge on the flat screen in Caro’s living room. “Maureen looks like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs,” Caro said, waving her hands over her just-painted toenails.

  I smiled. “You got that saying from my dad.”

  “True and true. It’s a good saying.” She held her hand out to me. “Can you pass me the slutty one, please?”

  I handed her the bottle of bright-red nail polish. “I think it’s actually called Crimson Cabaret,” I said. “Don’t be a slut-shamer.”

  She unscrewed the bottle just as the screen shifted to a shot of Oliver’s backyard, the twins’ swing set front and center, a newer, safer version of the one he and I used to play on after school. “It’s just such a relief to see him here again,” Maureen was saying off camera as Oliver walked through the grass, flanked by both his mom and stepdad. “He was gone for so long and now that he’s here, I just want to get to know him again.”

  “And how does it feel to be home?” the interviewer asked. Colleen Whitcomb had been the main news anchor since I could remember, her hair color and facial structure never changing once in fifteen years.

  “Colleen’s had work done,” I said, carefully painting tiny blue dots in the center of each of my fingernails.

  “Oh, totally,” Caro agreed. “She probably makes so much money that she could hire a team of tiny elves to hide in her hairline and hold her face up.”

  “Creepy. They’d probably sing all these songs and be annoying.”

  “Good point. Wait, back it up, I missed what he said.”

  I reached for the remote and rewound it a few seconds, back to the original question of how it felt for Oliver to be home.

  “It feels good,” he said, smiling a little and tugging self-consciously at the button on his wrist cuff. I could see Maureen’s fingers twitch, restraining herself from reaching out and stopping his fidgeting. “I just missed my mom and so it’s good to see her again.”

  “Simple words,” the newscaster’s concluding voice-over said as Maureen smiled at Oliver, “that say . . .”

  “Aaaand, dramatic pause . . .” Caro muttered, her eyes on the screen.

  “. . . so much more. Colleen Whitcomb for Channel Seven news.”

  I reached for the remote and muted the sound, trying not to disturb the blue dots. “Well, he looked happy, at least.”

  “Simple words that say? So much more,” Caro repeated, mimicking Colleen’s tone. “Who actually talks like that? That doesn’t even mean anything. If I wrote that down on the AP English exam, I’d get a one. Maybe a two if the grader was hungover.”

  I nodded in agreement, eager to not talk about AP tests anymore. “Do you think he looked happy, though?”

  Caro glanced back at the TV, even though the story was over. “I guess,” she said. “I don’t really know what Oliver’s happy face looks like. Maybe he’s just one of those people who looks perpetually underwhelmed.”

  “He doesn’t always look underwhelmed!” I protested. “When we went surfing, he—”

  “When you what the what?” Caroline all but chucked the bottle of Crimson Cabaret over her shoulder. “You went surfing with Oliver?”

  “I didn’t tell you? My parents made me, they practically shoved me out the door.” I avoided Caro’s eyes as I turned back to my nails.

  “And you didn’t tell me? Where’s my phone?”

  “Why do you need your phone? Are you going to tweet Colleen Whitcomb and give her the scoop?”

  “No, I’m texting Drew. I don’t care if he’s out with Kevin right now, he needs to know about this.”

  “Wait, who’s Kevin?” I ran through my mental Rolodex of the guys that Drew liked. “I don’t know a Kevin.”

  “He’s the homeschooled one. They played soccer last week and Drew’s team beat his and then I guess they did that whole ‘line up and shake hands’ thing afterward and love blossomed.” Caro fluttered her eyelashes dramatically. “You haven’t met him yet.”

  “Why didn’t Drew tell me?”

  Caro was typing like her fingers were on fire, wet nail polish be damned. “Drew already knew about you and Oliver?” she cried, reading off her phone screen.

  “There’s no me and Oliver!” I said. “And of course he knew! Where do you think we got Oliver’s board and wet suit from?”

  “You’re both dead to me,” Caro muttered, still texting.

  “Wait, though. Is Kevin cute?”

  “He’s cute in that tall, chiseled, soccer-playing way,” Caro said. “So yeah, pretty much. Although, let’s be honest, water polo is where it’s at.” She paused to read the screen. “Drew says he needs a ride to school on Monday because his van’s getting detailed.”

  “Tell him I’ll pick him up at seven.”

  “She’ll . . . pick . . . you . . . up . . . at . . . seven.” Caro narrated her text as she typed.

  “Does Kevin look like David Beckham?”

  Caro just raised an eyebrow. “How many high school seniors do you know that look like David Beckham?”

  “Zero?”

  “Exactly. And I don’t even care about Kevin anymore. I care about you and Oliver surfing together.” She sat on her knees next to me, like an eager puppy who had been promised a treat.

  “What?” I laughed and turned back to my nails. “We surfed, we had dinner—”

  “Oh my God, you went on a date with him.”

  “It was not a date!” I protested.

  “If you eat food with a guy, it’s a date. Proven fact. Don’t argue with me, I don’t make the rules. This is just how it is.” Caro flapped her hands at me. “So? What else?”

  “I don’t know, I just taught him how to surf—”

  “Was he good?”

  “No, he was terrible. Almost as bad as you.” I waited for Caro to respond, but she just nodded in agreement. “And then we went to the Stand and had food and then we came home.”

  “Do your parents know you guys went surfing?”

  I bopped her on the head with one of the couch throw pillows. “No, are you crazy? I can’t tell them that!”

  “But they know you went out? What happened to giving him space?”

  “Well, apparently, now we’re easing back into suburban life.”

  Caro shook her head. “Sometimes you’ve got to cannonball into the pool,” she said. “Just get it over with.”

  “Yeah, well, that works for pools, Caro.” I waved my hands to dry my nails faster. “Not always actual real-life experiences.”

  Caro just looked thoughtful. “So you went with Oliver to the beach, ate dinner—”

  “I paid, though.”

  “—I like your style, Emmy, very modern—and then lied about it to your parents. Sounds like a date to me.”

  “You know nothing,” I told her. “I babysit for his sisters, he lives next door, we were friends a long time ago. We’re just picking up where we left off.”

  Caro took the pillow from me and hugged it to her. “You can’t pick up where you left off,” she said, her voice softer, “because he’s not the same person he was back then. You’re on an entirely different road now.”

  This time, I didn’t have an answer.

  “Oh God,” Caro finally said, and sat back on her heels. “You are in so much trouble.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I drove home from Caro’s later that night, after texting my parents to reassure them that I was on my way home. It was a five-minute drive, three if I made all the lights, and I rolled down the window as I drove, letting the eucalyptus-soaked air blow my hair back. It was cold, but after the conversation I had had with Caro, it felt good, normal, a steady constant of the past ten years when things now felt like Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse, picked up and dropped aimlessly into a land that I couldn’t recognize anymore, a light so bright it made me squint and wish for familiar black-and-white
dimness instead.

  I parked and was halfway up the steps when I heard the screech-screech sound of the twins’ swing set next door, cutting into the night’s silence. I paused and waited for it to stop, but it didn’t. There was no way anyone inside could hear it, but to me, it was all I heard.

  I pushed through the back gate, my front-door key still clutched in my fist in case the swing set was being used by a serial killer or something, but it was only Oliver. He was way too big for the swing, of course, his shoes dragging in the grass underneath the seat as he moved back and forth. His shirt was undone at the neck, the sleeves rolled up, looking more blue than checked in the muted backyard light.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  “Hey,” he said back, using his feet to stop himself. “What are you doing here?”

  I pointed up to where the swing’s chains met the bar. “I heard you,” I said. “I just got home from Caro’s.” I sat down in the swing next to his, setting my keys in the sand. “We had a super important TV interview to watch, you know.”

  Oliver huffed out a breath before he started to sway back and forth again. The movement was so small that his feet barely moved, looking like he was balanced on his toes. “Oh,” he said. “That.”

  “And we did our nails, too,” I added, holding up my hand. “Don’t be jealous.”

  Oliver smiled and examined the blue dots. “You look diseased.”

  “You’re really good with compliments.”

  “Don’t let the secret get out.”

  I smiled and rested my head against the plastic chain of the swings. “What, should I tell Colleen Whitcomb? Give her the exclusive?” I held up an imaginary microphone, still giggling to myself even as I tried to do my best faux-newscaster voice. “So, Oliver, how does it feel to finally . . . be home?”

  He smiled, but I realized later that it wasn’t turned up as much at the corners, that it didn’t reach his eyes the way it should. “Well, Colleen,” he said, playing along and speaking into my fist, “I’ll tell you the truth. Can you handle an exclusive?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Our viewers”—I winked into an imaginary camera—“want to know.”