by Sarah Dessen
“He did?” I said. “He never told me that.”
“Oh,” Caroline said, “he didn’t tell me either. His aunt was there, I can’t remember her name—”
“Delia,” I said.
“Right!” She started back toward the truck. “So anyway, we got to talking while he was loading up the truck. She also said he’s had offers from several art schools for college, but he’s not even sure he wants to go. As it is, his stuff is selling in a few galleries and garden art places so well he’s on back order. And he was a winner of the Emblem Prize last year.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s a state arts award,” my mother said to me, looking down at the small angel near her feet, whose halo was decorated with small interlocking wrenches. “The governor’s committee gives them out.”
“It means,” Caroline said, “that he’s amazing.”
“Wow,” I said. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me all this, but then again, I’d never asked. Quiet but incredible, Delia had said.
Caroline said, “When I took those other pieces I bought and set them up in my yard, the women in my neighborhood went nuts.” She adjusted the square piece, which, I now realized, was made up of what looked like an old bedframe. “I told him I’d probably have offers for twice what I paid for this stuff once I get it home. Not that I’m selling, of course.”
“Really,” my mother said, looking at the square piece, her head tilted to the side. Wes had removed the legs of the frame, leaving just the boxy middle part, then put shiny chrome along the inside. It tilted backwards on two outstretched pieces of pipe, so if you stood right in front of it, it looked like a big picture frame, with whatever was behind it the image inside. The way Caroline had set it up, it framed the front of the house perfectly: the red front door, the holly bushes on either side of the steps, then a set of windows.
“I love this,” she said, as we all stood looking at it. “It’s a new series he’s been working on. I bought three of them. I just think it’s amazing what it says, something about permanence, you know, and impermanence.”
“Really,” my mother said again.
“Absolutely,” Caroline told her, in her art major voice, and I felt a rush suddenly of how much I missed Wes, wishing he was there to exchange a look with me, a bemused smile, raising his eyebrows. He’d acted like he’d never heard any of it before, ever, which I knew now hadn’t been true. “An empty frame, in which the picture is always changing, makes a statement about how time is always passing. It doesn’t really stop, even in a single image. It just feels that way.”
It was early evening, the sun not even down yet, but as we stood there, the streetlight behind us buzzed, then flickered on. Instantly, I saw our shadows cast across the empty space behind the frame: my mother’s tall and thin; Caroline’s, her hands on her hips, elbows at right angles. And then there was me, falling between them. I put a hand to my face, then let it drop back to my side, watching my shadow mimic me.
“I should go ahead and get my pictures,” Caroline said, starting toward the truck. “Before it gets totally dark.”
As she walked to the truck, another car slowed down in front of the house, the horn beeping. The passenger side window rolled down and a woman I vaguely recognized as one of the realtors my mother did business with leaned across the front seat. “Deborah, how brilliant!”
My mother walked a little closer to the curb. “I’m sorry?” she said.
“Those pieces!” the woman replied, waving toward them. She had on a big clunky wooden bracelet that kept sliding up and down her arm with every gesture. “What a great tie-in to the finish of the construction phase, using building materials from the townhouses to make decorations! How smart of you!”
“Oh, no,” my mother said, “it’s not—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” the woman said, not even listening. “Just brilliant!” And then she drove off, beeping the horn again, while my mother just stood there, watching her go.
Caroline was walking across the grass with her camera now, bending down to center the bigger angel in the shot. “You know,” she said, looking down at her feet, “I don’t care what you say. Something is wrong with the yard. I noticed it as soon as I pulled up. It’s like . . . uneven, or something.”
“We had a little problem,” I told her, as she lifted the camera to her eye. A second later, the shutter snapped. “We’ve had a few, actually.”
I was waiting for my mother to deny this, or at least smooth it over, but when I turned to look at her I saw she wasn’t even really listening. Instead, she was facing the street, where, as often happened at this time of night, people were starting to pass by on after-dinner walks, pushing strollers or leading dogs, and kids were circling on their bikes, racing past, then doubling back, then back again. Tonight, though, something was different: everyone was looking at our yard, at the sculptures, some people just standing on the sidewalk outright staring. My mother saw this, too.
“You know,” she said to Caroline, carefully, “I’m wondering if maybe these pieces would work well at the reception. They certainly add a bit of flair to the yard, at any rate.”
Caroline took another picture, then stood up and started toward the wheel whirligig. “I was going to leave tonight,” she said, not looking at my mother as she set up another shot. “I have plans.”
For a second, I thought that was it. She was saying no, and there was nothing we could do about it. My mother knew this, too, I could tell by the way she stepped back, nodding her head. “Of course,” she said. “I understand completely.”
For a second none of us said anything, and I wondered if, in the end, this is how all disputes are settled, with a shared silence as things become equal. You take something from me, I take something from you. We all want balance, one way or another.
“But,” Caroline said, “I suppose I could stick around. It’s just one night, right?”
“Yes,” my mother said, as Caroline lifted the camera to her eye. “It’s just one night.”
So Caroline stayed, first taking pictures until dark, then going inside, where she and my mother circled each other warily but politely, until we all went to bed. As usual, I couldn’t sleep, and after an hour or so of tossing and turning I climbed out onto my rooftop and stared down at Wes’s work on the grass before me. The sculptures looked so out of place to me there, as if they’d been dropped from the sky.
I dozed until about three A.M., then woke up to feel a breeze blowing through my open window. Regardless of my mother’s insistence, the weather was clearly changing. Sitting up, I pushed aside my curtain, looking out over the roof to the lawn. All of the sculptures had parts that were now spinning madly, whistling, buzzing, calling. The noise was loud enough to drown out everything. I couldn’t believe I’d even been able to sleep through it. I lay back down and listened for another hour or so, waiting for it to stop, for the wind to die back down, but it never did. If anything it grew louder, then louder still, and I thought I’d never get to sleep again. But somehow, I did.
Macy. Wake up.
I sat up, fast, my father’s voice still in my head. It’s a dream, I told myself, but in those first moments of waking confusion, I wasn’t sure.
The last time I’d heard those words, that way, it had been winter. Cold, the trees bare. Now, a summer breeze, strong but sweet smelling, was blowing. A dream, I thought, and slid back down to put my cheek against my pillow, closing my eyes. But also like the last time, about three minutes later something made me get up.
I looked out the window, at first not believing my eyes. But after I blinked once, then twice, to make sure I was really awake, there was no denying that Wes was standing in my front yard, the truck parked at the curb behind him. It was seven A.M. and he was just looking at all his pieces, at their movement, and then, as I shifted, leaning in closer to my screen, at me.
For a second, we just stared at each other. Then I walked to my bureau, pulled on a T-shirt and
a pair of shorts, slipped down the staircase quietly, and went outside.
The wind and the whirligigs moving made everything feel in motion. The mulch that the landscapers had laid around the beds was now scattered across the grass and the street, and small cyclones of flower petals and grass clippings were swirling here and there in smaller gusts. In the midst of all of it was Wes, and now me, standing still, with the length of the walk between us.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him. I had to raise my voice, almost yell, but the wind seemed to pick it up and carry it away almost instantly. Somehow, though, he heard me.
“I was dropping something off,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone would be up.”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “I mean, not until just now.”
“I tried to call you,” he said now, taking a step toward me. I did the same. “After that night. Why didn’t you answer?”
Another big gust blew over us. I could feel my shorts flapping around my legs. What is going on, I thought, glancing around.
“I don’t know,” I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “I just . . . it just seemed like everything had changed.”
“Changed,” he said, taking another step toward me. “You mean, on the Fourth? With us?”
“No,” I said, and he looked surprised, hurt even, but it passed quickly, and I wondered if I’d been wrong, and it hadn’t been there ever, at all. “Not that night. The night I saw you. You were so—”
I trailed off, not knowing what word to use. I wasn’t used to this, having a chance to explain a good-bye or an ending.
But Wes was waiting. For whatever word came next.
“It was weird,” I said finally, knowing this didn’t do it justice, but I had to say something. “You were weird. And I just thought that it had been too much, or something.”
“What had been too much?”
“That night. Me being so upset at the hospital,” I said. He looked confused, like I wasn’t making sense. “Us. Like we were too much. You were so strange, like you didn’t want to face me—”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “It was just—”
“I followed you,” I told him. “To say I was sorry. I went to the Waffle House, and I saw you. With Becky.”
“You saw me,” he repeated. “That night, after we talked outside Milton’s?”
“It just made it clear,” I told him. “But even before, we were so awkward, talking, and it just seemed like maybe everything on the Fourth had been too much for you, and I felt embarrassed. ”
“That’s why you said that about Jason,” he said. “About getting back together. And then you saw me, and—”
I just shook my head, letting him know he didn’t have to explain to me. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Fine,” he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn’t really care to know the truth.
Something blew up behind me, hitting my leg, and I glanced down: it was a bit of white fabric, blown loose from someone’s backyard or clothesline. A second later it took flight again, rising up and over the bushes beside me. “Look,” I said, “We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn’t a surprise, it’s what’s supposed to happen. It’s what we wanted. Right?”
“Is it?” he asked. “Is it what you want?”
Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn’t have it in me. We’d changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we’d started, that I would break.
“Yes,” I said.
I waited for him to react, to say something, anything, wondering what would happen now that the game was over. Instead, his eyes shifted slowly, from my face to above my head. Confused, I looked up, only to see the sky was swirling with white.
It was like snow, almost, but as the pieces began falling, blowing across me, I saw they were made of the same white, stiff fabric as the piece that had blown onto me earlier. But it wasn’t until I heard a yelp from behind the house that everything clicked together.
“The tent!” my mother was shrieking. “Oh, my God!”
I turned back to look at Wes, but he was walking toward his truck. I just stood there, watching, as he got behind the wheel and started to drive away. So I’d won. But it didn’t feel like it. Not at all.
We had a shredded tent. A yardful of flowers missing their petals. And now, rumbling in the distance, thunder.
“Uh-oh,” Caroline said under her breath, nudging me, and I felt myself start, coming to. I was so out of it, even as I went through the motions, doing my best to soothe my mother’s frayed nerves. When the tent people said no, they didn’t have another, and all their crews were booked, so we’d just have to do our best with what we had, I’d patted her hand, insisting no one would notice the tent at all. When the wind kept blowing, knocking over the chairs and tables as quickly as we could set them up, I nodded agreement to Caroline’s idea of doing away with them altogether and allowing, in her words, more of a “milling around sort of thing.” And when my mother, minutes earlier, had stepped off the driveway of the model townhouse to cut the red ribbon stretched across there and broken the heel of her shoe, I’d stepped forward instantly, offering up my own while everyone chuckled. Through it all, I felt strangely detached, as if it was all happening at a distance, far enough that whatever the outcome, it wouldn’t affect me at all.
Now, my mother was smiling for the cameras and shaking hands with her superintendents with the utmost composure as mean-looking dark clouds began to scoot against the sky. She seemed just fine, until we got into the car and she shut her door behind her.
“What in the world is going on?” she shrieked. “I started planning this weeks ago. This is not what’s supposed to happen!”
Her voice filled the car, sounding loud in my ears, and as she began driving, the familiar scenery of the neighborhood whizzing by, I had a flash of Wes and me in the yard earlier, when I’d said something so similar to him about how we would leave things: It’s what’s supposed to happen. It made sense then, but now I was wondering.
As we took a corner there was another big crash of thunder overhead, and we all jumped. My sister leaned forward, peering out the windshield. “You know,” she said, “we should probably have a rain plan.”
“It’s not going to rain,” my mother told her flatly.
“Can’t you hear that thunder?”
“It’s just thunder,” she said, pressing the accelerator down further as we exceeded, by a good twenty miles, the Wildflower Ridge Good Neighbor Speed Limit. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to rain.”
Caroline just looked at her. “Mom. Please.”
As we zoomed up the driveway, the wind was still blowing, and every once in a while a little piece of white tent sheeting would flutter past. My mother and Caroline were already going inside by the time I got out of the car, my mind still tangled with all these thoughts. By the time I caught up with them in the kitchen, they were bustling around, laying out the brochures and leaflets that would be arranged outside, getting the last of the things ready for the party. As soon as she saw me, my mother thrust a pile of folders, brochures, old newspapers, and several of my sister’s home decorating magazines into my arms.
“Macy, please, take these and put them somewhere. Anywhere. And check the powder room to make sure the towels are straight and there’s enough hand soap, and—” She paused for a second, glancing around wildly, her eyes finally settling on the countertop by the phone, where EZ-Key had been since I’d opened it the day before, “do something with that, please, and come back here so you can help me do something with the dining room. Okay?”
I nodded, still feeling out of it, but I did as she asked. The folders I put in her office, the newspapers in recycling, the
magazines outside my sister’s bedroom door. When the EZ-Key was the last thing left, I went into my room, then sat down on my bed with it in my hands.
Downstairs, I could hear my sister doing last minute vacuuming, my mother in my shoes clacking and re-clacking across the floor. I knew they needed me, but there was a part of me that just wanted to lie back in my bed, close my eyes, and find myself waking up again, to this morning, to another chance. Maybe I’d still go downstairs and across the lawn to Wes, but what I’d say, I knew now, would be different. He’d always told the truth. I should have done the same.
And this was it: Wes was my friend, absolutely, but regardless of what I’d led him to believe, the night I’d seen him with Becky I’d felt more than what a friend should. It was about time I admitted it. In fact, on some level, I’d known all along, which was what had almost sent me back to Jason, back to this neat, orderly life that I hoped would protect me from getting hurt again. And here, in this world, it was entirely possible to pretend that none of my summer with Wes, and Wish, had ever happened.
But it had happened. I had followed Delia’s van that night, I had told Wes my Truths, I had stepped into his arms, showing him my raw, broken heart. I could pretend otherwise, pushing it out of sight and hopefully out of mind. But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance. I’d gotten one reaching out to grab Kristy’s hand as she pulled me into the ambulance; another during the trip to the hospital that ended with seeing Avery born. Events conspired to bring you back to where you’d been. It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.
I stood up and pulled my chair over to the closet, then climbed up to put away the EZ box. I was about to step down when I saw the shopping bag I’d put up there all those weeks ago. This whole day I’d felt like something was different. Which was probably why I pushed the box back and finally grabbed the bag off the shelf.
