Lucid (22 page)

His family lives in the prettiest house. They moved to town when I was twelve. It is a green house, set back from the road with big gorgeous trees protecting it. The rolling lawn in front spills down to the water. As I coast by, I can see the corner window of Bill’s room. The shades are open and I wonder what it looks like now, if they’ve turned it into a sewing room or an extra bedroom. Or if they left it just as it was.

I bike on, heading toward home. When I get downtown, I decide to head over the drawbridge and go visit Kelly. She works at Kitchen Little on Saturdays, which is the best breakfast spot in town. I get
there just before she gets off at one. Neither of us has eaten all day, so she convinces the cook to make us Portuguese sweet muffins covered in hash and fried eggs. Of course, I can’t eat a bite. Of course, she notices. We sit on the patio. Kelly takes the river view, leaving me staring out at traffic on Route 27.

She assumes I’ve come by to discuss last night’s concert in Providence. I spend the next three minutes telling her what actually happened in one breath so I can get it over with. Although Lila is my friend from earliest childhood, she would’ve been a terrible choice for this moment because her idea of making me feel better would be to join me in a bitch fest against the pig who crushed my soul. I love Kelly because her insight into making me feel better is to walk me back from my completely uninformed and paranoid conclusion.

“Why in the world would he lead you on if he had a girlfriend? So that he could get some action until she showed up? He absolutely has Amanda available for that duty. More to the point, and I don’t know him at all, but I feel like even if he may be a little bit in love with himself, he’s basically a trustworthy guy. He doesn’t seem like he’d hurt someone recklessly for no reason.”

“You told me you didn’t like him.”

“I still don’t. I think he’s honorable, and he’s certainly foxy, but like you originally said, I don’t think he’ll ever give his heart to anyone, and I’m sorry to say that includes you.”

Her words have barely died away in the afternoon air when directly into my vision, braking to a stop at the light on Route 27, is an old red Targa. The woman in the seat beside him, touching his arm as she leans to speak in his ear, is not only stunning enough to put Amanda Porcella in the shade, exotic/intriguing enough to put
Angelina Jolie in the shade, she is clearly old enough to have her own apartment, big enough for a cat and a gorgeous boyfriend.

It doesn’t feel real. And yet my shattered heart feels too sharp for it not to be real. I am completely ruined with grief and humiliated by my longing.

The light changes, and they simply drive away. It’s true, you can’t get away with anything in this town.

“You okay?” Kelly’s back is to the road.

I take too many deep breaths.

“What is it? Come on, give.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if he has a girlfriend?”

Kelly looks at me strangely. “I don’t understand the question. If he has a girlfriend, she wins, you lose, and the guy you lost is a lying d-bag.”

“What if he’s a lying d-bag who I can never get out of my heart?”

“That stuff is bullshit. You cry yourself to sleep. I give you tough love, Lila conspires to cut his jewels off, your mom tells you it’s a teachable moment, you either have the good sense to run to Gordy or feel bad until freshman year at Columbia when twenty spectacular guys do amazing cartwheels to get your attention. Bitch, he ain’t that cute.”

The only thing she’s wrong about is the last part.

Kelly and I hang out all afternoon so I won’t be alone. We hike through Haley Farm all the way along the tracks to Bluff Point and sit up on the warm rocks looking out at the sound. She lets me think my thoughts without interruption. What comes clearly in focus is that I am even more obsessed with this boy. Does that mean I’m in
love? What does it even mean to be in love? Is it the same thing as just being hypnotized, and mooning and irrational? I know that’s not what I want love to be. I don’t want to be in love with someone who is not in love with me back. It feels much better to be loved back.

It’s bad enough not to get the thing I want. It’s much worse to not know how to stop wanting it.

I lie to my folks and say that I’m grabbing a bite with the girls. Mom makes me feel extra bad by saying it’s a great idea. But I don’t really want to be with anyone, so I just wander all over alone. I wind up back in Noank at the park on the swing and just swing on that swing for what seems like hours, feeling more sorry for myself than Hedda Gabler or Ophelia or any other tragic heroine.

When I walk back up my street around ten, he’s there. He. As in James. He is there alone sitting in his car in front of the house. He jumps out of the car, practically runs to me up the street, and stands there looking so awkward and unhappy that it makes me feel happy and vindicated. He feels guilty and came to confess and let me down face-to-face. And at least that means I’m important enough not to be kicked to the curb without a decent explanation.

I just stand there, saying nothing, determined not to show any weakness or desperation. He tells me that he knocked on our door two hours ago and my dad said I was out. So he waited because he has something important to tell me.

“Right here in the street?”

“I lied to you.”

“Really? About what?”

“The person I picked up in New York is someone I used to be
with. I want to tell you everything about it, but only if you want to hear.”

Unfortunately, my eyes completely flood with tears. I don’t want to wipe them away or let them fall, so I just say, “Some other time.” And walk quickly past him.

He grabs my arm before I can get by. “Please,” he says, “please let me explain.”

I guess I want to hear this so badly, I do the ridiculous and say, “Okay. Just make it quick.” And brush the tears from my eyes as casually and absently as I can manage.

“There was no cat girl in San Francisco. That’s why I laughed when you asked. I didn’t want to tell you about who she really is, so I lied by omission. I should’ve explained it to you at the Ocean House. Her name is Caroline. She’s two years older than I am; she’s a sophomore at Northwestern. We met two summers ago in Paris when I was bumming around on my father’s dime, just after Outward Bound.”

“Meaning just after Amanda.”

“That’s right. I told you I met someone. She was taking a summer course at the Sorbonne, and we wound up living together in her little one-room place with Peaches.”

“So why did she fly here to see you? And why was it such a secret?”

He looks down at the ground, as if getting up the nerve to tell me the truth. “I was pretty crazy about her. I thought I was in love, but I was definitely obsessed. When she dumped me, it hurt worse than anything I thought could ever hurt me. And for two years, I thought about her pretty much every day. Until…”

His voice becomes so quiet I can barely hear him.

“Until you.”

I have no idea what he means, but my heart is racing as if somehow it could mean what I know it can’t possibly mean.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, even though I didn’t know you, and I still don’t, this is the first time in two years that I wanted to be with someone other than Caroline. And I wasn’t sure that would ever happen. So I kept my mouth shut for a while, to see if the feeling went away. And it just got stronger and stronger.”

“So strong that you brought your ex-girlfriend out here to parade around town.”

He just blinks.

“I saw you guys in the car on Route 27. She was wearing a striped sweater and big sunglasses. She’s very pretty. Congratulations.”

“Sloane, this is what happened and what you really saw. She called me out of the blue Thursday night. She said she’d been an idiot to break up with me; she was flying into New York on the red-eye just to see if we could make it work.”

“And obviously, you told her you were crazy about this new girl and she was simply too late.”

“I told her there was someone new. She asked if she could just come and talk to me. And I said yes. And I said it because I didn’t know how I’d feel when I saw her. I mean, you’re a normal person, you can’t imagine what it’s like to have been obsessed with someone, believing they are the key to your happiness, knowing that they will never want you, and all of a sudden hearing that they do.”

Of course I know exactly what he means, and I know whatever the outcome of this story, I can never hate him for this.

“All the way to the airport, I was thinking about how I treated you last night.”

“And how was that?”

“Like I had something else on my mind. Which I did. And I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“So what happened? Where is she?”

“She got off the plane, there was one kiss, and I knew. I knew that I had been a stupid punk who had talked himself into some big tragic romance because a pretty girl had dumped him for the first time. And I knew that the girl who I really wanted to be with was probably hating me for being an asshole, and I couldn’t believe that I’d blown it. And there I was with Caroline.”

He waits for me to say something, but I don’t.

“So. We had the awful, awkward day of my telling her that this wouldn’t work and hoping that she was feeling the same.”

“Did she?”

“Do you really care?”

“If you’re saying that you want us to start over, then I don’t care about anything else.”

He looks so relieved and so happy. He actually didn’t know how this would turn out. He doesn’t know how much I want him to be mine.

Then he slides his arms around me and gives me a kiss so soft and so beautiful that I know I’ll remember it forever.

He wants to go somewhere so we can talk. If only I was Maggie or Caroline and not a high school junior living at home, but since I’m already late for curfew and don’t want to be grounded, I tear myself away. He walks me to my door. There is one more kiss, which
is long and deep and completely thrilling. Then I’m inside, my house is still standing, the world is still spinning, and James Waters belongs to me.

It takes a while to fall asleep. I stare up at the constellations glowing above me. The Field of Wildflowers, missing my wish star. I have a boyfriend. He is going to call me, and be excited to see me, and hold my hand, and we’ll make out, and every future in the world is possible.

Everything I thought about James this morning has been absolutely turned upside down. Except for one thing. Nothing on this earth or in heaven above will ever make me tell him that I am insane.

I
wake up on Andrew’s couch, snuggled in the down comforter that he took from his bed and placed over me while I slept. To a normal person, this wouldn’t be a terrifying realization, but my stomach turns into a block of ice. What if he had woken me up in the middle of the night? What would have happened? I know the answer in a split second, and I know that Emma would be smirking triumphantly when she came to the same conclusion. If I were to be awakened in the middle of the night, Sloane’s day would disappear, and there would no longer be the luxury of sort of pretending both lives exist. I would know that Sloane is simply a character I’m making up, like any stranger on the street.

Emma would say, of course I’ve always known this. And I have. But the big thing she misses is that the thrill of it is the ability to almost forget that I know it. To 90 percent believe that I can be two different people in two different places with two different lives. And
as much as Emma denies it, I believe in my heart that anyone would do the same if they could.

Andrew’s one-bedroom apartment is impeccably neat with thoughtful pieces of furniture he obviously put effort into finding. It’s not your average nineteen-year-old’s college dorm room with IKEA bookshelves and a ratty couch. He’s clearly decorated the space on a budget, but rather than spending $129 on a flimsy Swedish bookcase you put together with an Allen key, he made one from rough planks of wood and glass blocks. Like all directors, he pays attention to detail: the books are organized by subject in a visually pleasing way.

He walks into the living room and sits on the couch, his body actually touching mine through the comforter.

“How did you sleep?” A loaded question.

“Sloane had the best day, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Details.”

I take a breath. This is the Pandora’s box I opened. Now he’s going to be constantly interested in Sloane, and I will be defined by my craziness and he won’t be interested in just me anymore.

“She is beyond ecstatic because the boy—”

“Wasn’t cheating on her after all?”

“He was, sort of, but he dumped the other girl because he’s in love with Sloane. Or at least really into her.”

“So you’re creating a situation where the guy who represents Thomas turns out to be a good guy after all so you can work it all through in a dream.”

“First of all, one shrink is bad enough. Second, Thomas is absolutely nothing like James, and it doesn’t work that way. I don’t
control Sloane’s life. I just watch it. And the people who inhabit her world don’t have anything to do with anyone in the real world. Or I should say, in my world.”

He smiles. “No, you should say ‘in the real world.’ The only thing wrong with all of this is if you start to get confused.”

I sigh. “That’s the fun of it. To see how close I can come to believing she’s real and not actually me at all. Otherwise, it’s just like a story I’m writing.”

“So what does your shrink say? Does he think that’s a dangerous game?”

“
She
thinks it’s dangerous. She thinks I could go truly crazy. Which I must be to be telling all this to you.”

He strokes my arm, still through the comforter. “I’m honored you shared it with me. And I’m sorry if I’m prying. We can talk about this never, or always, or whenever you need to. I mean 24/7. Really.”

He tells me that he doesn’t want to know what I want for breakfast because what he is going to make me would be better. Andrew grew up on the Upper East Side. His parents divorced when he was eleven, and Andrew moved to Long Island with his mom while his brother, Todd, stayed with his dad. His mom is apparently an amazing cook, and Andrew always loved being in the kitchen with her. He proudly shows off a binder full of recipes they created together. Complete with photos of the dish and some shots of Andrew eating. His smile has always been like that.