Authors: Temple West
I thought I’d imagined that. Guess not.
“Not only that, he comes to your rescue—
again
, I might add—when that guy kissed you.” She glanced down at me. “How was he, by the way?”
“A dream come true,” I said dryly. “Lots of saliva to keep it smooth.”
She laughed, then shuddered. “Gross. Anyway. After that, he hauls you back to the let’s-get-busy room and I don’t see you again until he’s dragging you out the front door. Call me crazy, but that looks like he’s pretty freaking
interested
.”
When she put it like that, it made sense. But she was wrong.
“Even if he wasn’t gay—which he is—I think I’d know if he saw me as anything other than, like, his crazy little sister. I’m new to Stony Creek. I’m an orphan. I live with my aunt and uncle. I don’t really belong here. Adrian’s an orphan, he lives with his aunt and uncle, and the only place he’d blend in is a runway in Milan.”
Trish looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “I still say he wants to get in your pants.”
“It’s not like that!” I replied more forcefully than I’d intended. “He’s just … just not … not…” I couldn’t even come up with what he wasn’t, he was so not whatever it was Trish was making him out to be.
“Ahh,” said Trish with a grin. “
There’s
the reaction I was looking for. You
like
him.”
I paled. “I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not. I barely know him.”
“Who,” Trish said, “besides your aunt and uncle and Norah, do you spend the most time with in Stony Creek? And don’t say me, because if that’s true, it’s sad.”
I thought about it. “He lives near me, so he gives me a ride to school, and we’re in the same study hall, so we talk.”
Trish just looked at me.
“But sometimes we don’t talk! Sometimes we sit. And read.” She smiled at me and I frowned at her. “I’m making your point for you, aren’t I?”
“I’m just saying, it would make sense if you liked him.” She yawned and stretched. “Or maybe I’m full of shit; I dunno. See you in the morning.” And she rolled over and fell asleep.
I crawled over to the air mattress we’d blown up earlier and slipped inside the faded
Beauty and the Beast
sleeping bag. My curls had deflated, and I was sure I had mascara all over my face, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Trish had a point. We
were
alike. But so what? He’d graduate in eight months and go who knows where. I’d graduate the year after and go to New York. We’d probably never see each other again. Not that any of that mattered, because I was still convinced he didn’t like me—or women in general—so the whole conversation was pointless.
Sleep pressed down on me like a weight, like a dozen feet of water and dark silence and I slipped into a dream, snuggled in Adrian’s clothes.
* * *
Monday morning, the house smelled good, like pine and wood smoke and cinnamon. The rain outside drizzled down in tufts of mist as the wind blew lightly through the forest surrounding the house. I was downstairs in the kitchen pouring myself a cup of coffee when Rachel walked in, smiling.
“Hope you had a good time at Trish’s. You didn’t say much when you got home.”
I shrugged, already bristling. “It was fun.”
Rachel had not given up on her attempts to be cheerful and welcoming. I hadn’t given up on being really, really mad at her.
“I’m glad you’ve made a friend,” she said. “Maybe you could invite her over sometime. Maybe to your birthday party?”
I looked up sharply. “What birthday party?”
“Joe and I were thinking you might want to have one here, and invite some school friends.”
I poured creamer into my mug. “No, thanks.”
I could feel the tension radiating off Rachel in waves. Or maybe that was my tension, it was hard to tell these days.
“Okay, well, have you at least thought about what you want? It’s coming up pretty soon here.”
I froze. For a second, for a
split
second, she’d sounded just like my mom. Or, like my mom a year ago, before her voice had gotten hoarse and raspy from intubation tubes and chemo. Rachel was her younger sister—her prettier sister. After my dad died, my mom had gotten slowly larger every year, then dramatically thinned out when she got sick. She was never really beautiful, but by the end she was downright scary to look at, with bags of loose skin pooling through the sleeves of her hospital gown and her head all dry and bald. Even with those differences, it was impossible to look at Rachel and not see her.
But my mom wouldn’t have had to ask me what I wanted for my birthday. She would have driven me to our local craft store where we knew every employee by name. She would have handed me a cart and told me to pick out anything I wanted. I’d usually get a couple yards of a fabric I couldn’t normally afford, or stock up on zippers, needles, elastics, pins, bobbins, seam rippers (I always managed to lose mine), pattern paper, backing, or any of the other thousand and one things you need to have a fully functional workshop. My freshman year, she’d surprised me with my own sewing machine—it was expensive enough that it had doubled as my Christmas present, but I didn’t care because it was the best thing I’d ever been given in my entire life, and it meant that much more because it drove home just how much my mom
knew
me, better than anyone. Rachel, though—she had no idea what to do with me.
I slowly put the spoon into my mug and stirred, trying to stay calm. “I’m all good on the birthday front. Thanks, though.”
Even from here I could see a vein beating in her temple as she struggled to keep her smile in place. “Come on, it’s your golden birthday! It’s not every day you turn seventeen on the seventeenth!”
“I don’t need anything,” I replied a little more sharply than I’d meant.
“Well, that’s fine, because birthdays are about receiving things you
want
.” She wasn’t going to give up. “So what do you want?”
I turned to face her so fast that coffee sloshed over the rim and burned my fingers, but I didn’t care. “I don’t want anything from you.” I’d said it quietly, but my voice was shaking.
“Caitlin, I know it’s hard now that your mom’s gone—”
“
No
—” I interrupted her, “you don’t get to give me that talk. You don’t get to pretend like you knew
anything
about her.”
I knew I should stop, but after weeks of trying to choke it all down, I could feel it racing uncontrollably toward the surface.
“You weren’t there,” I said evenly, although my face was flushed red and it felt a billion degrees warmer than it had a second ago. “You didn’t sleep for weeks in a chair by her bed. You didn’t show up at the cemetery to pay your respects, you weren’t there to help Grandma with the funeral arrangements or the medical bills or the service, you didn’t even come to Mystic to help me pack up my stuff to move to your shitty town.” I heard footsteps pause on the stairs, but I didn’t care if Norah heard. “Just to be clear, I don’t want to be here. My
mom
didn’t want me to be here. So when I say that I don’t want anything for my birthday, I don’t fucking want anything for my birthday.”
She blinked, mouth trembling, then set her mug on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.
Adrian had great timing—I could hear the hum of the Harley coming down the driveway. Abandoning my coffee, I grabbed my backpack and ran out the door. The bike was still running as I grabbed the helmet from his hand and swung on behind him before he’d even had a chance to put the kickstand down.
He frowned. “Everything all right?”
“Just go,” I said, and crammed the helmet on.
He looked at me a moment, glanced at the house, then drove away. I spent the entire ride feeling stupid, feeling angry, feeling exhausted and drained and then angry again, and sad and desperate and hollow. I just wanted to sleep, but I had to go to school. Learn. Do homework. Bullshit, brain-dead work.
We arrived at school, and he parked the bike.
“I brought your dress,” he said, swinging off the Harley.
“Damn it!” I muttered, setting the helmet down forcefully against the seat.
“What?”
“I forgot to bring your clothes.”
“It’s fine. I don’t need them anytime soon.”
“I know; but they’re yours, and I forgot and I—” I couldn’t finish the sentence I was so angry at myself. I didn’t even know why I was angry, but I was, and it felt good.
“It’s not a big deal.” He smiled. “Hey, I heard it’s your birthday soon.”
I stared at him. “Are you
kidding
me?”
I grabbed the bag of clothes out of his hands and walked toward my homeroom. Before I’d gotten three steps, he grabbed my arm and spun me around, face set in a hard line.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ll bring your clothes tomorrow.”
I wriggled out of his grip and walked to class, choking back tears.
By seventh period, I was composed. I managed to reach the library ahead of Adrian and went back to my little nook and moved the second chair to another table. A moment later, Adrian walked up to me, staring at the place where he usually sat.
“Are you angry at me?”
“No,” I said, shrugging, but I could feel another wave of rage coming on.
He arched a brow. “You sure about that?”
“Don’t mean to burst your bubble, dude, but not everything’s about you. Bring a chair over, don’t bring a chair over, I really don’t care.”
I flung open a book and leaned back. He looked at me and I felt something in the vicinity of shame crawling up the back of my throat, but I just stared right back and kept the cool look on my face until he nodded, backed away, and left.
I spent the rest of study hall trying not to cry.
When the bell rang, I walked outside and got on Adrian’s bike like nothing had happened. He came out of the library a second later and stopped when he saw me sitting there. Slowly, he walked over and got on in front, saying nothing. The only sound I heard on the way home was the angry hum of the bike and the mutinous beat of my own heart. He pulled to a stop in front of the ranch and took his helmet off, turning to me.
“You might want to hide the clothes in your backpack. Your aunt and uncle might wonder otherwise.”
I crammed the clothes in my backpack. Before I was done, he was already driving off.
My birthday was a week away. Adrian had started picking me up in his truck because the roads were too icy for the Harley, and even if they weren’t, the wind chill made it miserable. We’d sit there in silence, sometimes with his phone plugged in playing music, but otherwise in silence. I honestly didn’t know why he kept showing up—it certainly wasn’t for my witty banter. I was low on banter.
Any day, the snow would start. I was waiting. Waiting for the weather to change, waiting for my birthday, waiting for it to stop hurting every time I opened my eyes and remembered that my mom was gone and I would never, ever,
ever
see her again. I knew it was possible to make new friends, to build a family from scratch, to “start over”—but I didn’t want to. It was much easier to want nothing than it was to want something, and I was scoring major points as a beginner nihilist.
School dragged on. I dozed off in all of Mr. Warren’s classes; I refused to sing in choir. I simply wouldn’t turn in homework for anything but art, and study hall was just an extra forty-five minutes to sleep. I could tell all my teachers were upset, but I didn’t care. Well, I didn’t care until they called my aunt.
“Caitlin, can I talk to you for a minute?”
I’d just gotten home from school and Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table with her stacks of papers and her coffee. A second mug was already sitting next to her. It was much lighter, so I could tell it had been made for me. Warily, or perhaps just wearily, I sat down, sliding my backpack to the floor. I automatically curled my fingers around the mug, but didn’t drink anything.
“Your principal called.” She looked at me and waited.
“How is he?”
She frowned at me oddly. “Uh—good. Actually, he called about you.”
I took a sip of coffee. Still hot.
“He said that your teachers have been concerned about your performance. That you’ve been sleeping in class and not turning in homework.”
I took another sip of coffee. I liked coffee.
“Well?” she asked.
“Good coffee,” I said.
“Caitlin.”
“Nice creamer-to-coffee ratio.”
“What is going on?”
I looked at her blankly. Had she not been present when I yelled at her the week before?
“What’s wrong?” she said, reaching for my hand, which I yanked away. She looked hurt and I didn’t care. “Why are you doing this? Why are you punishing us?”
I just stared at her, amazed that she still didn’t understand. “My mom’s dead,” I said slowly. “You know that, right? She died. She’s
gone
. So please, Rachel, please sit there with your very-alive husband and your very-alive daughter and explain to me, since I clearly don’t understand—explain why I should care about something as trivial as
school
.”
Before she could answer, I stood up, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and shuffled upstairs.
Just as I reached my room, Norah came in behind me and slammed the door.
“What is
wrong
with you?”
I looked at her blankly.
“You don’t
have
to be an asshole; you
choose
to be an asshole.”
I could hear the emotion in her voice, I could see she was on the verge of crying in that angry sort of way you cry when you don’t want to cry but you can’t stop yourself, but I couldn’t really register it all in that moment.
“Yeah,” I admitted. She wasn’t wrong.
But Norah was looking for a fight. “Stop making everyone miserable. Your mom died. It sucks. I’m sorry. But there are other people in the world besides you, and shit happens to them too, and they move on.”
“Norah,” I said, very quietly. “
Get out
.”