Authors: Jennifer Castle
“This?”
“Be with someone, that is. Not sex. I could wing that part
based on what I’ve seen and heard . . .”
“Right,” I said, holding up my hand for him to
halt
.
“The problem is, I have no examples to go by. How are we supposed to figure it out if we have nothing real to base it on?”
I shook my head. “No idea.”
I pulled my shirt down, and something in that made Camden look pained. Had I done the right thing, stopping him? Was I going to regret this?
“Please stay,” he said. “You can sleep in my mom’s room.”
I leaned forward and rested my forehead against his for a second. That was all I dared. Ninety-nine parts of me wanted to say yes and wrap my arms around him so hard they’d have to be pried away, eventually. But that one last, hundredth part. It had learned some things.
“It’ll be infinitely less awful for me if I go home now,” I said. “I’ll call Richard.”
Camden nodded, traced a circle on the back of my hand.
“I’m going to go into the house but I don’t want you to come with me,” I continued. “I want to think of you as being right here.”
He nodded again, closed his eyes.
I went inside and didn’t look back. I found my backpack, turned on my phone. There were no more new messages and that felt ominous.
I called Richard’s cell phone. He picked up instantly.
“Ari?” he asked.
“Hi.”
“Are you on your way home?”
“I’m actually at Camden’s. Can you come pick me up?”
He paused. “Yes, of course. I just need the address.”
It was the
of course
that got me. I found myself tearing up.
“I’m so sorry, Richard.”
“Save it for later,” he said, but kindly.
I went out onto the porch and waited for the next act to start.
Richard pulled into
our driveway and put the car in park, but didn’t shut it off. We hadn’t said a word to each other since leaving the Barn. He turned to me now, and I got the sense he’d been so quiet on the drive because he’d been preparing for this moment.
“Ari,” he said, finally looking at me, and it was a damn good thing he hadn’t until now, because that was all it took for the tears.
“Richard . . . ,” I said, my voice shaking, with no idea of how I planned to finish that sentence.
“The only thing I’m going to tell you that’s not obvious, that you don’t already know, is that Dani had a great time with Mikayla.”
I smiled and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I’m glad.”
“Hold that thought,” said Richard, and turned the car off.
Danielle came running out the front door, her hair wet from a bath. I could feel my heart curl toward her.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said when I got out of the car. “What are you still doing up?”
She hugged me, her arms tight and desperate around my waist, then drew back and gave me a dirty look.
“Waiting for
you
. Duh.”
“I’m back now.”
Richard brushed past us and into the house. After the front door shut behind him, I leaned down close to her and said, “Me going away with my friends, and Mom and Dad getting mad. You know that had nothing to do with you, right?”
“
Yes,
” she said. Danielle stared hard at the ground, frowning. “I made Mom a card when she was crying. She said it was the best one she’s ever gotten.”
“She was crying?”
“Well, first she and Daddy got into a fight. Biggest one ever. Then she went into her bathroom and locked the door and I listened through the wall. She doesn’t know I did that.”
“Come inside,” I said and started walking, taking her hand. I thought of Camden’s question:
How are we supposed to figure it out if we have nothing real to base it on?
But the way Danielle’s hand felt warm and perfect in mine—that was real.
The thought of my mother crying in the bathroom. That was real, too.
When I came into the kitchen, Mom was sitting at the table, facing the other way, and didn’t turn around. I stood watching the back of her head for a few moments as she carefully flipped the page of the newspaper she was reading.
Then Dani said, “Mommy! Didn’t you see that Ari’s home?”
My mother dropped both hands to her side and sat quietly for a moment, then slowly swiveled in my direction.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t prepared for this. I’d played the scene over and over in my head for days now, letting it go one way, then another. Trying out different things to say and a range of reactions to feel. In this little mental theater of mine, Mom was always the same: Angry. Indignant. Unreasonable. (Also, Wrong. Eternally Wrong.)
Problem was, right now she was not any of these things. All I could see in her face was pain, unfiltered and stripped of pretense.
Her pain triggered
my
pain. There and then and always, for as long as I could remember.
It was different now because I knew I was the cause of it. None of my rehearsed imaginary reactions applied here.
I ran down the hall to my room and slammed the door.
Ten minutes later, Richard rapped softly on my door. I knew he’d just come out of Danielle’s room after reading to her. “She wants you,” he said.
Danielle was already tangled up in her covers, like she’d
purposely thrashed around to create the effect. Her still-damp hair spread out on the pillow and I winced to think of how badly it would be knotted in the morning, and how much she’d scream when we tried to brush it.
“Hi, kiddo,” I said, sinking onto the bed next to her.
Dani was staring out the window. “I wrote a note to Jasmine the other day. She took it but she hasn’t answered me yet. Do you think I should write another?”
In my resentment, I’d stopped checking the windowsill for fairy mail every night. Maybe my mother had collected the note, or maybe it had simply fallen between the wall and the bed. I’d have to check in the morning when Dani wasn’t around.
“I guess it depends,” I said. “What did your letter say?”
“I know it’s silly,” whispered Dani, her eyes following something on the ceiling. “But I asked her how to tell when people have stopped being in love with each other.”
The Biggest Fight Ever must have been exactly that.
“What were Mom and Richard fighting about?”
Dani looked at me guiltily.
“I need to know so I can apologize to them,” I lied.
Danielle grabbed two items from her windowsill: a figurine of a fantasy wolf-creature with wings, and some miniature creepy Barbie that had come from a Happy Meal.
She made the wolf speak in a low, deep voice that actually sounded nothing like her father’s: “‘Kate, what’s the big deal? She got a babysitter and prepaid her, for chrissake.’”
“‘But honey,’” said Dani as my mom in a dead-on imitation, “‘she’s never gone against the rules before and it scares me.’”
“‘You can’t control everything.’”
“‘But I’m so busy with my great new job and I have to support us now and I’m so great and me me me!
Mememememe!
’”
Danielle looked up at me. “Okay, she didn’t say that last part.” She put her toys down. “They
have
stopped loving each other, haven’t they?”
Who knew. Not us. Probably not them, either.
“I’ll be interested to see what Jasmine has to say on the topic,” I said by way of an answer. “Will you show me her letter, when it comes?”
Danielle smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Are you confused about that stuff, too? Like with Camden?”
I lay my head down on the pillow next to hers and looked into her clear, clear eyes.
“Everyone’s confused about that stuff. Always.”
“Except the fairies.”
“Well, obviously.”
Dani’s hand found my left wrist and she tried to circle it with her small fingers.
“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”
“Sure,” I said, “but you know my rule. No talking.”
She nodded, and we lay like that for a while, staring at each other until her eyelids or my eyelids shut first. It was probably a draw.
When I woke up a little while later, the light had gone
completely from the room. All I could see above me was the cracked ceiling of my sister’s room. If I unfocused my eyes, I could pretend it was the sky above Camden’s patio. But that exact sky during our exact moment would never happen again.
Without it, it was easy to feel like the Possible had closed itself off to me. I hadn’t known what to do with it. I’d mishandled it somehow and lost my privileges.
I sneaked out of Dani’s room and once I was back in my own room, I did the only thing that seemed like a solution anymore. I called the boy I loved. Who now knew I loved him but hadn’t said it back.
It rang and rang and rang, until his voice mail picked up.
I didn’t leave a message.
When I walked into the family room the next morning, Mom was pulling a blanket off the couch. There were folded sheets and a pillow on an ottoman nearby.
“Did Richard sleep in here?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking out the blanket so it made a curt snapping noise. “I did.” She checked her watch. “Richard’s leaving for the store in about fifteen minutes, so you should get ready. With the Ribfest out at the fairgrounds, it could get busy today.”
“Okay,” I said, then leaned against the wall. She was speaking to me. That was something. “And then what?”
“Dinner at Moose’s,” she said. “Like always.”
Except now with more awkward shittiness than ever.
“I meant, like, punishment.”
Mom dropped the folded blanket on top of the sheet. She didn’t scoop them up; I guessed she was going to leave them there for another night.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“Grounded?”
Now she looked at me and grabbed the pillow. “What do
you
think?”
“Cool. I’ve never been grounded before. And it always felt like something was missing.”
She threw the pillow onto the floor and put her hands on her hips.
“This is no joke, Ari. What you did—”
“Hurt
nobody
. I heard Dani had a super-fun day with her babysitter.”
“Hurt nobody?” She took a step toward me, and I pressed myself against the wall. “What about me? You don’t think it hurt me that you lied and completely disregarded my judgment? That I feel like I can’t trust you anymore?”
Her voice broke down at those last few words. She shrank back and sat on the arm of the couch. It made her seem less steady, not more.
“When I said you couldn’t go . . . ,” she continued after taking a deep breath, “that wasn’t me being cruel for no reason. When I heard about the shoplifting and how they cajoled you into ditching your job for the day, I had a gut feeling. That feeling said,
These aren’t people who are going to be good for you.
Definitely not people you should go on a road trip to another state with.” She paused. “And do
Silver Arrow
dress-up with.”
I suddenly remembered the pin I’d bought her. I’d never give it to her now, even if Camden was right that it didn’t matter if she wanted it or not. It would remain, forlorn and unappreciated, in its little box. Maybe I could sell it online.
Mom must have mistaken my silence for me actually processing what she’d said, as if it were something that made sense.
“Look,” she said, lifting herself off the arm of the couch now. “Camden seems nice. . . .”
“Please don’t talk about Camden,” I said. “Don’t even say his name.”
“Honey . . . I’ve been where you are. There are some things I’d undo from that time, if I could.” She paused, a shadow of something flickering across her face. “And I was older than you are now. Please trust me that I know what’s best.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me see if I understand how this works. You want to be gone fifty-five hours a week. You trust me enough to work in the store and take care of Danielle because . . . well, you have to. But you don’t trust me to take care of myself.”
I stopped, not sure how to continue. Mom was silent, probably unsure how to respond. Strangely, I liked it that way. But then there it was again: that expression on her face. That naked pain.
She dabbed something from her eye with the back of one wrist and, after a moment, yelled to the ceiling, “Dani! Get your shoes on! We’re going to Target!” Then she leveled her
glance at me. “I’m not talking about this anymore right now.”
She marched down the hall and I heard her wrangling Dani out the door. After they left, I stood at the window and gave the car the finger.
I turned to see Richard, seeing me.
“Oh, come on,” I said, slipping on my boots. “You know you’ve done it, too.”
As Richard drove us to the store, I called Camden again. This time, his voice mail picked up instantly, a sign that he didn’t have his phone turned on. I sent a text message.
Call me when you can. xo Ari.
Then I deleted the
xo Ari.
When did I start scattering
xo
’s in front of my name?
When we got to Millie’s, Richard asked me to go into the back room and open some packages that had been delivered the day before. When I heard a customer come in, someone Richard knew, I retreated to the farthest corner of the room and called Kendall.
“Hey,” she said stiffly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m at work. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to see how you are.”
“How I am.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m embarrassed,” she said, her voice low and breathy now. I wondered if she had wedged herself into a similar corner at Scoop-N-Putt. “Also, horrified,” she continued.
“Oh, good. That makes two of us.”
“I’ve never had anything with anyone and then, bam. Two weird experiences with guys in one day. I must be on some accelerated catch-up program.”
“And I’ve never . . . you know . . .”
“Been on the verge of beating someone up?”
“That,” I said, laughing, hoping she would, too. She didn’t.
“Ah, so we’re both on this accelerated plan.”
Another thought popped into my head. “I’m still confused. Did you ever get the sense Max was into you?”