Surfacing (8 page)

“Do you like turkey?” Maggie said with her head still in the fridge.

“Whatever’s easy,” Nathan answered.

Maggie really didn’t watch enough music videos or beer commercials to know how to arch her back and stick out her rear end effectively anyway. Actually making lunch would take up precious time, so Maggie shut the fridge, turned around empty-handed, leaned back with her hands behind her back, and tipped her head up slightly.

“You can kiss me, you know.”

It was a stupid thing to say, coy, and unreal, but she said it and it sounded pretty good, and Nathan looked startled but he stepped toward her.

“OK, then,” he said.

It was a no-handed kiss. Maggie kept her arms pinned against the fridge behind her, and Nathan kept his at his side. They kissed for longer than was comfortable in that position, until Maggie took Nathan’s hand and started to pull him toward her room. He was quiet and not leading, but certainly not refusing.

“Maggie,” he said, “what are you doing?”

She really didn’t want to have to spell it out. That wasn’t part of her plan. She just figured it would happen if she let it, if she made it happen. Didn’t all boys want this?

Besides, she didn’t have a plan B, so this was going to have to work.

What am I doing?

I am taking a boy into my room so he can have sex with me, so I won’t be a virgin anymore and when the boy I really like comes home from college I can have sex with him
.

Seriously?

The odd thing was that not only did this truth not occur to Maggie; it just didn’t seem true anymore. Instead, it felt more like she was traveling into a new world that would belong only to her, where important decisions, even small decisions, would be her own. A world in which she would be alone, and she alone could choose whom to invite inside.

“Get out of the pool. Get back on the stair,” Leah demanded of her little sister. She put her hands on her hips like their mother did, which looked silly to Maggie, little-girl fingers covering big yellow daisies. Leah was not the mother.

Maggie didn’t move. The water felt good. It cooled her whole body; the smell of chlorine was inviting. The rays of sun bouncing off the surface looked like sparkles at a birthday party, glitter on a ballet costume.

“You’re going to get in big trouble.” Leah pulled out her final threat, and Maggie retreated.

Maggie walked back, sat down on the top step, and let the pool water wet the bottom of her suit. The cool water rushed between her legs and sent a shiver along her entire body. Maggie wouldn’t be bad today. She never wanted to get into trouble. She wasn’t that kind of kid sister, and she would never tattle or get her sister in trouble. Leah was counting on all those things.

“Anyway, I can too,” Leah said.

“Can too, what?”

“Swim, dummy. I can too swim. I passed the deep-water test, and you know it,” Leah said a little too loudly.

When Maggie looked over the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool, she knew exactly why. Just past the fence, and the grass, on the other side of the pavement, Meghan Liggett had come out of her house and was bending down, fiddling with something on her lawn, doing a worse job of pretending not to see Leah than Leah was doing pretending not to see her.

Maggie didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew the basic mechanics and figured that would be enough to get her through. Every idiot in the world has sex at some point or another, and if you didn’t count her now-probable PSAT scores, Maggie was certainly no idiot. Besides, her experience with Matthew had given her some idea of what to do.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nathan said, his voice faltering between shallow breaths, between kisses, and his body pressing against hers, hers pressing back.

“It’s fine,” Maggie assured him. “It’s a safe time.”

Nathan pulled away. “A safe time?”

“Well, that didn’t come out right.”

It was about two o’clock, the hour when, at this particular time of the year, the sun broke at the surface, bent, and spread yellow across Maggie’s room. Everything looked golden, and it suddenly felt very bright, all too illuminated. They both sat up on top of the bed, the covers rumpled but still tucked tight.

“Maggie, I like you. I think I like you more than anyone I’ve ever been with.”

The words “been with” stuck like an unexpected thorn. It hadn’t occurred to Maggie that Nathan might have
been with
anyone before.

Nathan seemed more flustered. “I mean, I just thought we should . . . take it slow. I mean, not that I don’t want to. And I know you say it’s safe and all, but I wasn’t thinking . . . I wasn’t —”

Maggie opened her mouth so that air rushed in and made it sound like she was about to say something. Nathan stopped and waited, but Maggie was silent. It felt like a rejection and yet it didn’t. It felt bad, and it felt like a relief. A lucid dream that was not working so lucidly. She woke up.

“I really like you, Maggie,” he said again.

Funny she hadn’t taken Nathan’s feelings into consideration, or her own for that matter. It wasn’t part of her plan, but now it was being offered. What had seemed clear was now, in this room, in this moment, in the space between two living human beings, suddenly understandable. Like the sun that crawls over the horizon and begins to light up a world that only moments earlier had been dark.

“I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t know —” Maggie began.

She felt huge, too big for the bed, too exposed in the sunlight, and without enough air. She sat up and gripped her shirt where the top button had come undone.

Nathan swung his legs off the bed, hunching his shoulders. He looked uncomfortable, but he turned to her. “I’m the one that’s sorry,” he said. “I mean — that didn’t come out right.”

Maggie lifted her eyes to his and found him smiling, and then they were both laughing. “No, that
didn’t
come out right,” she said. She felt better. Laughing was good. “So do you want to eat something now?”

Nathan nodded. “Yeah, I’m starving.”

If going to school was more bearable — besides seeing Julie in math class and at lunch and of course at practice, there, somewhere in the hall, might be Nathan. Every passing period, every excursion to the bathroom, could bring a sighting, and a sighting meant a smile, maybe a touch of the hand, maybe a kiss if no one was around — it also made being at home more bearable. Maggie owned something outside of her home life. Something that was secret, was hers, and was good.

She could still feel the arguments reverberate, even if her parents were long gone from the house: her dad at the gym, her mom and the boys out shopping.

Maybe it was all those porous surfaces, the wooden countertop, the paper towels that captured and held anger like a smell. But the kitchen especially held on to this morning’s fight about the credit-card bill.
I told you to keep your receipts. How can you not know what this charge is? You did it. You did it. You did it
.

It was Saturday again. Swim practice was over, and Maggie had the house to herself — again. She was alone in the house — only she felt less alone than she had in a long time.

Julie’s call trilled a Justin Bieber riff. It was an inside joke. It took Maggie a while to find her phone under a pile of clothing, and still-wet swim stuff is not a good place for a cell phone, but somehow it was still working.

“Whaja doing?” Julie asked.

“Nothing. Just hanging here.”

“You sound happy. What’s wrong?”

Maggie laughed. “I love you, too, Jules.”

“I love you more. That’s why I care,” Julie said. “It’s that just-some-boy, isn’t it?”

It was, wasn’t it?

Liking somebody who sounded happy when you called, who clearly dropped everything to pay attention to you, was actually a nice thing. Someone that you didn’t have to pretend to bump into but was actually waiting around to see if you’d show up. It was really nice.

Julie never tolerated silence very well. “Maggie, why you are keeping this from me? You just don’t want me to be all over it, do you? Because I was so anti-Matthew-the-shithead? Well, I can’t help it.”

What was wrong with feeling good? Nathan made her feel good. Made her feel that she was good
.

“Yeah,” Maggie whispered into her phone, though no one was home to hear her confession. “I like him, OK? You’re right. I like Nathan. I like him a lot.”

Grandpa Joel and Grandma Bunny are over, but I am in my room in a time-out and I hear them talking about me through the door. Sometimes the past, present, and future are all a jumble. And sometimes I think I hate my little sister and I think that things were better before she was born, even though my mother says I can’t possibly remember anything from when I was that young. But I can. I remember everything. It’s all the same. It’s happening right now
.

I get excited when I know my grandparents are coming. I am an excitable girl, my dad tells me. So maybe I was too rough with Maggie and I might have punched her in the stomach by mistake while we were playing
.

“She needs to learn to control herself,” my mom is telling Grandma Bunny. “A little time in her room isn’t going to kill her.”

Grandma Bunny talks loud, like she wants me to hear her while I am stuck in my room. Maggie is crying, first about the punch in the stomach and then about me getting punished. You think she’d be happy about that, but she’s not
.

Grandpa Joel talks now. “Sweetheart, we came all this way. You can discipline Leah all you want after we leave. C’mon, Gail, she’s a little girl. She has the rest of her life to learn control; right now your mother wants to spoil her a little. We have presents for the girls.”

I like that
.

When the footsteps come near my door, I leap back up onto my bed and dive right into my pillow to hide my face. I don’t want them to see my big wide smile. I feel my mother’s hand on my back
.

“OK, Leah, you can come out. Grandma Bunny and Grandpa Joel want to see you. We can talk about what happened later, OK?”

I take in a big gulp of air and answer into the pillow. “OK, Mom.”

We walk out into the living room together, where everyone is waiting, and their eyes make me uncomfortable
.

Grandma Bunny and Grandpa Joel brought us gifts, toys, like it’s Christmas or our birthday, even though it’s not. Not even close. They always do that, bring presents, every time they visit
.

“Well, do you like it?” Grandma Bunny is asking me. I am surrounded by wrapping paper. Maggie has her paper folded into a little pile, which our mom loves, so she can reuse the wrapping. Sometimes I know I hate Maggie
.

She seems to be very happy, hugging her new Flower Fairy doll. Maggie collects them, and this time she got Jasmine, who is kind of blue and green, with wings like tree branches, and she’s wearing sandals
.

I got a fashion studio art kit sort of thing. It has the designer’s table that lights up, so you can trace your model and then put clothes on her and color them in all different ways you want. They know I like to draw and make up fashions. I wanted this so badly, for so long, since I saw it on TV. I want to be happy. I want to like it. I want to make Grandma Bunny and Grandpa Joel happy like they are happy with Maggie. But I know I should really be back in my room being punished. I shouldn’t be getting any presents at all
.

I shrug my shoulders because I don’t want to cry. “It’s OK,” I tell my grandma. “I guess I like it.”

My mom is so mad at me now. I can see it in her face, and I don’t even have to look at her. Now she really thinks I am bad. Now, in this present time (get it?), she knows it
.

“I have a scar on my chest,” Nathan told her.

It was two weeks past the PSATs. But for Maggie, in many ways it felt like a new lifetime. Being at Nathan’s house, in his room, was already familiar. How had that happened so quickly?

Nathan moved to unbutton his shirt but stopped. “All down my chest and under my arm.”

Should she make him aware, level the playing field, let him in on her secret before it was too late?