Far From the Tree
Page 15
“You’re worried that the adoptive parents you chose for Peach are going to split up,” Rafe finally said. “That’s why you’re asking all these questions. You’re not worried about Maya, you’re worried about the baby. God, I’m so going to get a five on this AP test. I’m going to clobber it.”
Just hearing the name fall from Rafe’s mouth made her eyes fill with tears. “That’s it,” she said, her voice wobbling.
Rafe, however, went from looking triumphant over his future AP test to looking absolutely horrified. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I made you cry. Ohhh, shit, this is not good.”
“No, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Grace said, waving him away, but Rafe was already climbing out of his side of the booth and coming over to hers. “It’s fine, it’s just . . . no one’s ever said that name before. I’m the only one who calls her Peach.” She used one of the paper napkins to wipe at her eyes, suddenly mortified. This was probably why she had a hard time staying in touch with her friends. She didn’t want them to be there for the all-too-frequent waterworks.
Rafe was sitting next to her now, his thigh pressing against hers. No boy had been this close to Grace since the night she and Max had had the sex that produced Peach, but she didn’t scoot away from him. “I know I’ve told you this before,” Rafe said gently, “but I am terrible when girls cry. I’m awful. I’m going to really screw this up, so do you think you could stop crying before it ruins our beautiful friendship?”
Grace was laughing even as she kept wiping her eyes. “No, you’re fine, it just got me,” she said. “That’s all. I’m fine, really.”
Rafe seemed dubious, but he let it go and just handed her a fresh napkin instead. “Feel better?”
Grace nodded. “It’s just that I basically had one job as her mom, you know? I had to pick her parents, and I thought I did a really good job, but—what if I didn’t? What if fifteen years later, Daniel and Catalina split up and it ruins her life?”
“Why does it have to ruin her life, though?” Rafe said. “My parents split up—it didn’t ruin my life.”
“I don’t want anything to be hard for her,” Grace admitted. “I just want to say that I did the right thing for her, that’s all.”
“You did,” Rafe said. “You know you did. And nobody has an easy life, Grace. Not me, definitely not you. I mean, you had a baby at sixteen, right? But your life’s not ruined.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Grace said, and now she was crying again. “Nobody texts me or calls me or stops by to say hi. I don’t run cross-country anymore with Janie—”
“You ran cross-country?”
Grace nodded. “Varsity. But now I spend all day with my parents and they act like I’ll break if they say the wrong thing to me—”
“I mean, to be fair, you are sort of breaking because I said the wrong thing to you.”
“—and I had to find parents for my baby and I did it all wrong and Max was fucking homecoming king!”
People were starting to look over their shoulders at her. “She’s fine,” Grace heard Rafe say. “Contact lenses. The worst, am I right?” Then he leaned so that he was blocking people’s view of her. “Look,” he said. “You know what nobody cares about the day after homecoming? Who was homecoming king. Like, anyone who introduces themselves as ‘homecoming king’ after the actual homecoming dance is a complete asshole, so don’t worry about that.” Then he paused. “Max was the dad, right?”
Grace nodded, reaching for another napkin.
“Okay, so that’s one problem solved. As for this baby—”
“You can say Peach—it’s okay.”
Rafe looked dubious. “As far as her, her life’s not going to be easy. As long as she’s living it correctly, there’s going to be hard times for her. And anybody who cares this much about the kind of parents she has probably picked a pretty good set for her.
“Now, as far as friends, you’ve got me, right? I mean, we’re eating lunch together. Pretty sure that’s what friends do. And the only reason I don’t text or call you is because I don’t have your phone number.” Rafe raised an eyebrow. “You do have a phone, right? Your parents aren’t forcing you to communicate via carrier pigeon, are they? Because that might be why no one’s calling you.”
Grace smiled, looking down at her half-eaten sandwich on the table. “Cell phones are fine,” she said. “We’re not pioneers.”
“Well, great then. Just give me your phone and I’ll text you and you’ll text me back. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am. Metaphorically, I mean. I’m not going to wham bam you.”
Grace looked at him. “Do you talk a lot when you get nervous?”
“I talk so fucking much when I’m nervous.” Rafe grinned at her. “What gave it away?”
“Call it a hunch. And it’s just . . . I don’t know if I want to date anyone right now, that’s all.”
Rafe pretended to draw back in horror. “Okay, honestly, Grace? Why do you keep insisting that I’m trying to date you? This is sexual harassment, that’s what this is. In my place of employment, even.”
Grace was giggling now. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually giggled. “Platonic texting?” she said. “That’s all?”
Rafe held up one hand. “Scout’s honor,” he said. “Even though I was never a Boy Scout. But you can still trust me. You have to stop harassing me at work, though, or I’m going to file a complaint with HR and then you’re going to be up to your eyeballs in paperwork.”
Grace just held out her hand for his phone, then input her number. “Do they even have HR at Whisked Away?” she wondered.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Rafe said, taking his phone back. “Are you done crying? Did I fix you?”
“At ease, soldier,” Grace said, and Rafe ruffled her hair before sliding back into his own side of the booth.
She got home an hour later, the other half of her sandwich wrapped up in a paper bag. “Is that you?” her mom called from her office.
“No!” Grace yelled back. “It’s a serial killer!”
“Can you ask him to check to make sure I turned off the coffeemaker, please?”
“How do you know it’s a him?”
“Odds are!”
Grace checked the coffeemaker. “You’re good!”
She tried to sneak past her mom’s door, but her mom stopped her. “Wait,” she said, and Grace took half a step backward. “Have you been crying?”
“Oh, no, no,” Grace said as she headed for the stairs. “Contact lenses. The worst, am I right?”
MAYA
It wasn’t that Maya meant to break up with Claire.
It just sort of . . . happened.
Maya couldn’t stop being mad at her for not answering her texts the night that Maya’s dad moved out. She knew that it was stupid, of course, but still, it hung around her like a jacket she couldn’t shrug off.
It didn’t help that Claire didn’t seem to get why Maya was so upset.
“I told you,” Claire said the next day at lunch. Maya didn’t have her head in Claire’s lap this time; instead, she was sitting across from her, their lunches spread out between them like a wall, a barrier made up of bread crusts and orange peels. “I was camping, I didn’t have my phone, I—”
“Who doesn’t have their phone?” Maya asked, exasperated. “I’m fairly sure that mine is pretty much grafted to my hand! How do you not have your phone?”
“Okay, so let’s say I had it,” Claire said, sitting up a little. “And I’m camping with my family, and there’s basically zero reception, and you text me that your dad just moved out. What am I supposed to do?”
Maya thought that the sun was exploding behind her eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, aware of how much she sounded like Lauren right then, high-pitched and obvious. “Maybe text me back? I’m just spitballing here, though.”
“But then what? I couldn’t talk to you, I couldn’t come over. I mean, Maya, your dad didn’t die, he just moved ten minutes away.”
> Maya started to gather up her bag.
“No, wait, My, no.” Claire reached out for her, grabbing her by the wrist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“You so meant that,” Maya said, but she stopped moving, her bag dangling from her hand.
“I just meant—” Claire sighed, took a deep breath. “Look, you know my dad’s not around. At least yours is, okay? You can still see him every day if you want. You could text him right now and he’d probably text you back in less than thirty seconds.”
This was all true. Maya was always slightly pleased and slightly embarrassed by how fast her dad responded to her texts. (Her life got considerably more difficult when he discovered the emoji keyboard.) Maya knew that she didn’t have a lot of room to complain, that she still had it way better than most kids. Look at Joaquin! He didn’t even have parents.
But that didn’t make her feel any better.
“It’s all just because this is new,” Claire continued, still holding on to Maya’s wrist, anchoring her in the grass. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there that day, okay? If I could have been, I would have been there in a second. I swear. Okay? Okay?” she repeated when Maya didn’t respond. “I hate fighting with you. I’d rather make out with you. It’s so much more fun.”
Maya’s mouth perked up at the corners. “It is way more fun,” she said. “But I’m still mad.”
Claire started to pull her back down to the grass, and Maya fell to her knees, her bag thudding down heavily next to her. “You wanna make-up make out?” Claire said, smiling against Maya’s mouth. “I’ve heard it’s pretty hot.”
Maya smiled again, her teeth bumping against Claire’s mouth. “Because nothing’s more hot than making out behind the gym at school,” she said, winding her arms around Claire’s neck.
“Let’s find out,” Claire replied, and they tumbled into the grass.
The breakup happened five days later.
Looking back, Maya realized that it wasn’t really either of their faults. It was a Saturday, and they should have been hanging out, but Claire had to watch her little brother and Maya was up to her neck in physics homework. Their make-out session in the grass at school had been pretty great, but it didn’t solve anything. Maya couldn’t help but think of it as like the Hello Kitty Band-Aids she and Lauren had had when they were little: super cute, but not so great when it came to fixing major wounds.
When they finally got together that afternoon, Maya was cranky from homework and Claire was exhausted from watching her little brother. They were supposed to go to the movies, but the one they wanted to see was sold out and they couldn’t agree on anything else.
“What about that one?” Maya suggested, pointing at the board.
“That looks dumb,” Claire said, squinting up.
“It’s literally just a title. How do you know it looks dumb?”
“It sounds dumb.”
Maya sighed. “Okay, what about—”
“No aliens.”
“How do you even know there are—”
“It literally says aliens right there in the title.”
“What if it’s a metaphor?”
Claire just raised an eyebrow at Maya.
“Fine,” Maya said. “Let’s just get coffee. No aliens there.”
But Claire was sulky about not being able to see the movie, and the weather was the sort of warm that became uncomfortable and sweaty after more than five minutes of sitting in the sun, and Maya’s dad had texted her and Lauren saying that his business trip to New Orleans had been extended by two days and could they grab dinner on Tuesday night instead of Sunday? He loved them and was really, really sorry.
“Figures,” Maya said, tucking her phone back into her pocket without answering him. Let Lauren handle that part. What was the point of having a younger sister if you couldn’t make her do your dirty work, after all?
Claire eyed her as she sipped at her drink. There’s way too much whipped cream in that cup, Maya thought, then wondered when things like that had started bothering her about Claire in the first place.
“What figures?” Claire asked, talking around her straw. “Who was that?”
“My dad,” Maya said. “He’s stuck on a business trip in New Orleans. He can’t have dinner with me and Laur until Tuesday.”
“Oh. Well, that sucks.”
Maya glanced at Claire. She could feel a sunburn starting to spread across her bare shoulders. She hadn’t put on sunscreen since they were supposed to have gone to the movies. “Go ahead, say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say what you’re really thinking.”
Claire paused before saying, “Well, I mean, that sucks, but at least you’ll see your dad next Tuesday, right? It’s just a few days. Maybe you can spend more time with him next weekend.”
It was a perfect reasonable response, Maya knew, and it was exactly the sort of response that infuriated her. Claire was too measured, too reasonable, too Claire. Even her goddamn name sounded calm. Maya wanted someone to be as angry as she was, someone to be at her level so that she wouldn’t feel all alone up at the top of her volcano, red lava spewing everywhere inside her.
“Why do you have to do that?” Maya said. She would have sipped at her drink, but she had finished it a long time ago. On top of everything else, Claire was a slow drinker, too.
“Do what?”
“Always be so freaking calm,” Maya said. They had been sitting on a wall by the fountain, and Maya hopped down, too agitated to sit still. “Why do you always have to be like my mom?”
“Your mom?” Claire said, starting to laugh. “You think I’m like your mom? That’s pretty fucked up, My.”
“Why can’t I just be angry?” Maya continued. “I miss my dad, okay? I miss. My. Dad. And I’m sorry you don’t get to see yours anymore, but just because I have a better situation than you doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t make me feel bad!”
Claire sat up straight, making Maya think of a cobra rising up to strike. “Because you have it better than me?” she said slowly.
“That’s not what I—”
“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what you said.” Claire hopped down off the wall as well, so now they were eye to eye. “Look, Maya, don’t try to hang your shit on me, okay? You’ve had a really rough couple of months, I know—your dad moving out, Grace and Joaquin and that whole thing—”
“I think you mean me finding not one but two biological siblings,” Maya shot back, “not ‘that whole thing.’”
“And I know you’re worried about your mom—”
“Do not bring up my mom!” Now Maya was yelling. She wished she had something to throw, something to ricochet off buildings with the kind of force that she felt building up behind her heart. “Leave her out of it!”
“But I can’t, My! That’s the problem! You’re angry at all these other people but you can’t tell them, so you just take it out on me instead!”
“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you had become my therapist instead of my girlfriend. That’s a surprise. Do you take insurance?” Maya didn’t actually know much about therapists and insurance, but she had heard her parents talking about it. Her mom had always said couples therapy was too expensive because they didn’t take insurance, but her dad had offered to pay anyway. It hadn’t worked.
“Maya!” Claire yelled. “God, you’re so annoying sometimes! You act like a little kid!”
“And you act like some know-it-all!” Maya yelled back. “You don’t know anything about my family, okay? So stay out of it!”
“I don’t know anything because you don’t tell me anything!” Claire cried. “You keep dropping all these little bread crumbs and you expect me to trace them back to you, but you don’t leave enough.”
Maya blinked. “That is a terrible metaphor.”
“Fine, how’s this? You shut me out because you don’t want me to find out too much about you. You think that if I know too much about your family, I’ll leave you.”
“What about your mom?” Claire said, and Maya looked away. “Exactly, My.”
“That’s private,” Maya said. “That’s about her, not me.”
“Bullshit. It’s about all of you. You just don’t realize it. And who cares if it’s private? I’m your girlfriend. You can tell me this stuff.”
Maya could feel herself careering down the hill, the wheels starting to come off the cart even as she continued to pick up speed. “Well, then, if you don’t think I tell you enough, then maybe I shouldn’t be your girlfriend anymore.”
Claire had been about to yell something back, but Maya’s words stopped her short. They stopped Maya short, too, for that matter. She hadn’t even known that that was something she was going to say.
“You want to break up with me?” Claire said, her voice suddenly low and quiet.
“Well, it sounds like you want to break up with me.” That wasn’t what it sounded like at all, not to Maya. Who was this stranger inside her who kept speaking on her behalf? Whoever she was, she was really fucking things up in a colossal way.
“Is this what you do?” Claire said, and now her voice was dangerous. “Just poke and poke and poke?” She stepped toward Maya, poking her in the shoulder. “Make yourself meaner and meaner until you make me break up with you because you don’t have the guts to break up with me?”
Maya had nothing to say to that. Instead, she just stared at Claire. Maya had learned this trick a long time ago, the art of staying quiet and letting the other person dig themselves into a hole. She had just never thought that she would use it on Claire.
“Are you seriously not even going to say anything?” Claire said. “We’re basically breaking up and you just go silent?”
Maya shrugged. Lauren would do that to her sometimes when they were fighting, her impassivity sending Maya through the roof.
“Oh my God,” Claire said, starting to laugh. “You’re such a fucking baby.” She took a step away, then circled back. “You know what? Never mind. You want to break up, you’re going to say it to me. I’m not saying it to you.”