by Sarah Dessen
I woke up gasping, my sheets tangled around my legs. Unfurling them slowly, I could feel my pulse banging in my wrist as I struggled to calm down. Not a good start, I thought.
My mother was on the phone as I came into the kitchen, dealing with some last-minute details for the Wildflower Ridge Independence Day Picnic and Parade she’d been planning for weeks now. After my shift at the library, which was open special holiday hours until one, I was supposed to be there at the neighborhood information table, to smile and answer any and all questions. Even if I had gotten a good night’s sleep—or any sleep at all—it would have been a long day. Now, with Jason and everything else still to get through before that even began, it felt like there was no way for it to be anything but positively endless.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, forcing down some cheese grits and trying not to think about it, when my mother hung up the phone and came over to sit beside me, her coffee in hand. “So,” she said, “I think we should talk about last night.”
I put my spoon down in my bowl. “Okay,” I said.
She took a breath. “I’ve already conveyed to you—”
And then the phone rang. She got up, pushing out her chair, and crossed the kitchen, picking it up on the second ring.
“Deborah Queen,” she said. She listened for a second, turning her back to me. “Yes. Oh, wonderful. Yes. Three-thirty at the latest, please. Thanks so much.” She hung up the phone, jotting something down, then came back over to her chair. “Sorry about that,” she said, picking up her coffee cup and taking a sip. “As I was saying, we’ve already discussed my unhappiness with some recent changes I’ve noticed in you. And last night, it seemed that some of my concerns were well founded.”
“Mom,” I said. “You don’t—”
There was a shrill ringing sound from her purse, which was on the island: her cell phone. She turned around, digging it out, then pushed a button, pressing it to her ear. “Deborah Queen. Oh, Marilyn, hello! No, it’s a perfect time. Let me just run and get those figures for you.” She held up her finger, signaling for me to stay put, then got up, disappearing down the hallway to her office. It was bad enough to be having to have this conversation; the fact that it was getting dragged out was excruciating. By the time she returned and hung up, I’d washed out my bowl and put it in the dishwasher.
“The bottom line is,” she said, sitting down again and picking right up where we’d left off, “that I don’t want you hanging around with those people outside of work.”
Maybe it was that I was tired. Or the fact that she couldn’t even commit to this conversation without interruptions. But whatever the reason, what I said next surprised us both.
“Why?”
It was just one word. But with it, I’d taken a stand against my mother, albeit small, for the first time in as long as I could remember.
“Macy,” she said, speaking slowly, “that boy has been arrested. I don’t want you out riding around with someone like that, out at all hours—”
The phone rang again, and she started to push herself up out of her chair, then stopped. It rang again, then once more, before falling silent.
“Honey, look,” she said, her voice tired. “I know what can happen when someone falls into a bad crowd. I’ve already been through this before, with your sister.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“This isn’t about punishment,” she said. “It’s about prevention. ”
Like what was happening to me was a forest fire, or a contagious disease. I turned my head, looking out the window at the backyard, where the grass was shimmering, wet under the bright sun.
“You have to realize, Macy,” she said, her voice low. “The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
In fact, I knew this to be true now more than ever before. With just a few weeks of being friends with Kristy, and more importantly, Wes, I had changed. They’d helped me to see there was more to the world than just the things that scared me. So they had affected me. Just not in the ways she was afraid of.
“I do understand,” I said, wanting to explain this, “but—”
“Good,” she said, just as the phone rang again. “I’m glad we see eye to eye.”
And then she was up. Walking to the phone, picking it up, already moving on. “Deborah Queen,” she said. “Harry. Hello. Yes, I was just thinking that I needed to consult you about . . .”
She walked down the hallway, still talking, as I just sat there, in the sudden quiet of the kitchen. Everyone else could get through to my mother: all they had to do was dial a number and wait for her to pick up. If only, I thought, it was that easy for me.
When I went to leave for work, I found myself blocked in by a van that was filled with folding chairs. I went back inside, pulling my mother away from another phone call, only to find out some salesman had taken the keys home with him after parking it there.
“I’ll drive you,” she said, grabbing her purse off the counter. “Let’s go.”
Silences are amplified by small spaces, we found out once we were not only in the car but stuck in a traffic jam, with other annoyed commuters blocking us in on all sides. Maybe my mother had no idea I was upset with her. Until we’d gotten in the car, I hadn’t really realized it either, but now, with each passing second, I could feel myself getting angrier. She’d taken my dad’s stuff from me, his memories. Now she wanted to take my friends, too. The least I could do was fight back.
“Honey, you look tired,” she said, after we’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes. I’d felt her glancing at me, but hadn’t looked back. “Did you not sleep well?”
My I’m fine was poised on my lips, about to come automatically. But then, I stopped myself. I’m not fine, I thought. So instead I said, “No. I didn’t. I had bad dreams.”
Behind us, someone honked.
“Really,” she said. “What about?”
“Actually,” I said, “Dad.”
I was watching her carefully as I said this, saw her fingers, curled around the steering wheel, pulse white at the tips, then relax. I had that twinge in my stomach, like I was doing something wrong.
“Really,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road as the traffic began to pick up.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “It was scary. He was driving this car, and—”
“Your room was probably too hot,” she said, reaching forward and adjusting her vent. “And you do have an awful lot of blankets on your bed. Whenever you get hot, you have night-mares. ”
I knew what this was: a conversational nudge, her way of easing me back between the lines.
“It’s weird,” I made myself say, “because right after he died, I had a lot of dreams about him, but I haven’t lately. Which is why last night was so disturbing. He was in trouble, and I couldn’t save him. It scared me.”
These four sentences, blurted out too fast, were the most I had said to my mother about my dad since he died. The very fact they had been spoken, were able to bridge the gap from my mind to the open air, was akin to a miracle, and I waited for what would come next, partly scared, partly exhilarated.
My mother took in a breath, and I curled my fingers into my palms.
“Well,” she said finally, “it was only a dream.”
And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn’t fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I’d ever jumped at all. It’s not supposed to be like this, I thought. My mother was looking straight ahead, her eyes focused on the road.
As she pulled up to the library, I got my purse and opened the door, feeling the already thick heat hit my face as I stepped out onto the curb.
“Can you find a way home?” she asked me. “Or should I pick you up?”
“I’ll get a ride,” I said.
“If I d
on’t hear from you,” she told me, “be at the Commons at six sharp. Okay?”
I nodded, then shut my door. As she drove off, I just stood there watching her go, realizing how similar my dream had been to this, me standing in this exact spot, a car moving away. Like I’d never woken up at all, and soon I’d open my eyes to another morning, another way of all this happening. But as my mother pulled out onto the street, she wasn’t looking back at me scared, or needing me. She was fine. Just fine.
I walked into the library at exactly 9:12. Bethany and Amanda both looked up from the info desk. Bethany turned her head slightly, eyeing the clock over her head, then looked back at me.
“There was a big traffic jam on Cloverdale,” I said, pushing open the swinging door and immediately whacking my knee on the back of her chair. I waited for her to slide sideways, so I could pass, but she didn’t, so I had to step around her, which put me in a direct line with Amanda’s chair. Of course.
“I come that way,” she said coolly, pushing herself a bit more in my path, the wheels squeaking. “I didn’t hit any holdups this morning.”
I moved around her, having to sidestep the garbage can in the process, and put my bag on the floor next to my seat, which was piled high with periodicals. I moved them onto the table beside my computer, then sat down. I had been putting up with this for weeks. Weeks. Why? Because I had an obligation? To whom? Not to Jason, who’d shed his commitment to me as easily as a second, ill-fitting skin. And certainly not my mother, who, for all the time I’d suffered here, still thought I wasn’t dedicated enough.
It just wasn’t worth it. Not even close.
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d been alerted to Jason’s homecoming visit. All morning long, Bethany and Amanda bustled and chattered as they updated the database and organized the invoices for all the periodicals that had come in during his absence. I, however, was exiled to the back room to organize mildewed magazines. I had about two full hours to think about Jason and what I would say to him once he arrived. But as much as I tried to focus on formulating a plan, my mind kept slipping back to Wish and Wes and everything that had happened in the last few weeks. The night Jason had announced our break, all I could think about was how to fix things between us. But now, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
After the magazines were done, I sat facing the wall outside my window, knowing that the time was ticking down to his arriving. Any minute now, I kept thinking, that door will open and something will happen. I just didn’t know what.
Beside me, Amanda and Bethany were busy practicing their conversational French for a school club trip they were taking at the end of the summer. All those guttural sounds on top of my anxious mood were about to drive me crazy. Which was probably why, when they finally, abruptly, shut up, I noticed.
Oh, God, I thought. Here we go. One moment Amanda was saying something about the Champs Élysées, and the next, they were both staring at the library’s front entrance, speechless.
I looked up, already picturing Jason in my mind. But it wasn’t him. It was Wes.
He’d just come in and was standing by the front door, looking around as if getting his bearings. Then he saw me and started toward the desk with that slow, loping walk that I knew so well.
As he approached, I could hear the wheels of Bethany and Amanda’s chairs moving; they were pushing up closer, arranging their postures. But he came right to me.
“Hey,” he said.
I had never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life. “Hey.”
“So look,” he began, leaning over the desk, “I was—”
“Excuse me?” Bethany said. Her voice was loud, even.
Wes turned and looked at her. As he did so, I watched his profile, his arm, that little bit of the heart in hand peeking out from his sleeve.
“We can help you over here,” Bethany said to him. “Did you have a question?”
“Um, sort of,” Wes said, glancing at me, a mild smile on his face. “But—”
“I can answer it,” Bethany said solidly, so confidently. Amanda, beside her, nodded, seconding this.
“Really, it’s fine,” he said, then looked at me again. He raised his eyebrows, and I just shrugged. “Okay, so—”
“She’s only a trainee, she won’t know the answer,” Bethany told him, pushing her chair over closer to where he was, her voice too loud, bossy even. “It’s better if you ask me. Or ask us.”
Then, and only then, did I see the tiniest flicker of annoyance on Wes’s face. “You know,” Wes said, “I think she’ll know it.”
“She won’t. Ask me.”
Now it wasn’t just a flicker. Wes looked at me, narrowing his eyes, and for a second I just stared back. Whatever happens, I thought, happens. For the first time, time at the info desk was flying.
“Okay,” he said slowly, moving down the counter. He leaned on his elbows, closer to Bethany, and she sat up even straighter, readying herself, like someone on Jeopardy awaiting the Daily Double. “So here’s my question.”
Amanda picked up a pen, as if there might be a written portion.
“Last night,” Wes said, his voice serious, “when the supplies were being packed up, what happened to the big tongs?”
The sick part was that Bethany, for a second, looked as if she was actually flipping through her mental Rolodex for the answer. I watched her swallow, then purse her lips. “Well,” she said. But that was all.
I could feel myself smiling. A real smile.
Wes looked at Amanda. “Do you know?”
Amanda shook her head slowly.
“All right,” he said, turning back to look at me. “Better ask the trainee, then. Macy?”
I could feel Amanda and Bethany looking at me. “They’re in the bottom of that cart with the broken back wheel, under the aprons,” I said. “There wasn’t room for them with the other serving stuff.”
Wes smiled at me. “Oh,” he said, shaking his head like this was just so obvious. “Of course.”
I could hear wheels squeaking as Bethany and Amanda pushed themselves farther down the counter. Wes watched them go, hardly bothered, then leaned over the counter and looked down at me.
“Nice co-workers,” he said under his breath.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, not as quietly. “They hate me.”
The chairs stopped moving. Silence. Oh, well, I thought. It’s not like it was a secret.
“So anyway,” I asked him. “What’s going on?”
“Typical Wish chaos,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Delia’s freaking out because one of the coolers broke last night and everything in it’s gone bad. Kristy and Monica are at the beach, so now she and Bert and I have to make five more gallons of potato salad on the fly and work this job with just three of us. Then, I’m on my way back from a mayonnaise run when Delia calls up, hysterical, saying we have no tongs and I should come here and ask you.” He took a deep breath, then said, “So how’s your day so far?”
“Don’t ask,” I said.
“Has the boyfriend shown up yet?”
So he did hear, I thought. I shook my head. “Nope. Not yet.”
“Well, just think, it could be worse,” he said. “You could be having to make potato salad. Just imagine being up to your elbows in mayonnaise.”
I made a face. He was right, this wasn’t a pretty picture.
“The point is, we could really use you,” Wes said, running a hand over the counter between us. “It’s too bad you can’t get out of here.”
A moment passed, during which all I could hear was the silence of the library. The ticking of the clock. The slight squeak of Bethany’s chair. And after everything that had happened, from the first day until the last five minutes, that was the last straw.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe I can.”
I turned around and looked at Bethany and Amanda, who were pretending to be huddled over some periodical while listening to every word we were saying. “Hey,” I called out, and they looked up, in tan
dem, like a creature with two heads. “You know, I think I’m going to go.”
A moment passed as this sunk in.
Amanda’s eyes widened. “But you don’t get off for another hour,” she said.
“Your shift,” Bethany added, “ends at one.”
“Well,” I said, picking up my purse. “Something tells me you’re not really going to miss me.”
I stood up and pushed in my chair. Wes was watching me, curious, his hands in his pockets, as I took one last look around my pitiful little workstation. This could be a big mistake, I thought, but it was already happening. I was not a girl with all the information, but I knew one thing. If this was my forever, I didn’t want to spend another second of it here.
“If you leave now,” Bethany said under her breath, “you can’t come back.”
“You’re right,” I told her. And I was so glad that she was. Right, that is. “I can’t.”
I started to walk toward the swinging door, but, as usual, her chair was in my way. And beyond that was Amanda’s. It had been so hard to come in here that first day, and every day since. I figured that by now, I’d earned a clear path out.
So I picked up my purse and tossed it over the desk. It hit the carpet with a thud, right by Wes’s feet. Then, in a fashion my sister the rebel would have appreciated, I hoisted myself up, throwing one leg over, and jumped the counter, while Bethany and Amanda watched, stunned.
“Wow,” Wes said, raising his eyebrows as I picked up my purse. “Nice dismount.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Macy,” Bethany hissed at me. “What are you doing?”
But I didn’t answer her, didn’t even look back as we started across the library, everyone staring, to the exit. This felt right. Not just leaving, but how I was doing it. Without regret, without second guessing. And with Wes right there, holding the door open for me as I walked out into the light.
Chapter Fifteen
Lucy picked up a crayon, gripping it in her short, chubby fingers. When she put it to the paper she pressed hard, as if only by doing so would the color transfer. “Tree,” she announced, as a squiggle emerged, stretching from one end of the paper to the other.
