Say What You Will

by Cammie McGovern

  Her father looked around, a little confused. “Everything all right with Matthew, then?”

  He looked at Amy as he spoke, though Sanjay answered. “He’s fine now. I just got a text from him. He got a little sick at the start of the night. He asked me to bring Amy home, which of course I was happy to do. Like I said, we were there as a group.”

  Amy was pretty sure this wasn’t true, but she didn’t anything.

  “Wonderful, then,” Nicole said, standing up. “We thank you, Sanjay, for all your help. I don’t mind admitting I was a little bit nervous about letting Amy go off with Matthew. Not that we don’t trust him. But we trust you more!” Her mother looked a little giddy with relief to have the night over. Sanjay stood up so she could hug him before they left the room.

  After they were gone, Amy was surprised. She didn’t feel as sad as she expected to. She had gotten through this. Matthew had left her alone for two hours, and when she finally saw him again, he had his arms around Sarah, but look—here she was!

  Her mother was right—thanks to Sanjay.

  Even if she’d hated the reason everyone came up and talked to her tonight, she also had to admit that it made all her old classmates seem less mysterious. And now here was Sanjay, alone beside her, holding her hand. “Are you tired?” he said.

  He still looked gorgeous, the white of his shirt against his dark skin, the black of his bow tie, the same color of his eyes. Thankfully her hand was steady enough to type. “NO. NOT TIRED.”

  “Do you want to show me around your house?”

  It was a strange request, especially given that it was close to midnight. She stood up. “SURE,” she said, and started to move around. “KITCHEN,” she typed, and gestured. “DINING ROOM. OFFICE/STUDY.” She moved slowly down the hall, surprised to discover her parents had already gone to their room and closed the door. “AND MY ROOM,” she said when they got to it.

  It was a little embarrassing to have Sanjay see her room, with its little-girl mementos. Pink walls, a pile of stuffed animals in one corner, a pile of books in the other. She was about to explain why she held on to one and didn’t shelve the others, when Sanjay produced a surprise from behind his back.

  “Ta-da!” he said, pulling out the bottle of champagne and two glasses.

  He stepped inside her room and closed the door behind him. She smiled when she understood what he was thinking.

  “Don’t worry about your parents,” he said. “They practically dimmed the lights for us.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  STARTING AT ELEVEN FIFTEEN, when he found out that Amy had left with Sanjay, Matthew spent the most of the night furiously texting messages. After he’d driven Sarah home and got back to his room, he sat down at his computer and wrote Amy an email:

  To: aimhigh@comcast.net

  From: mstheword@gmail.com

  All right, this is it. I draw the line at twelve texts. I will assume you’re fine because everyone says you looked fine when you left with that jerk, Sanjay. I hope you had a nice time. I drove Sarah home and let her tell me every icky detail she could think of about him and believe me, there were a lot. Maybe you two have fallen in love so I shouldn’t be saying this. If you have, I’m sorry. I’ll keep them all to myself. Just write when you get this so I know you’re alive; then I’ll drift out of your life forever. Matthew

  PS. Did anyone ever tell you that technically you’re not supposed to go home with a different date than you went to prom with? Not that we care what other people think, but if we did, other people might call that strange, or even slutty.

  PPS. That’s all, I guess. Never mind this last PPS.

  In the morning, he wrote again:

  To: aimhigh@comcast.net

  From: mstheword@gmail.com

  I’ve decided maybe you got drunk and must have been momentarily so disoriented that you accidentally got in the wrong car. Thanks for an almost great night that I will now try to forget for the rest of my life. Do I sound mad? I’m not mad. I just think Sanjay should get in a lot of trouble for what he did. Supposedly one girl spent all night throwing up whatever it was that she drank from your walker. So that’s one story you might not have heard. Who knows how many people acted irresponsibly and drove home drunk?

  I know I sound like I’m mad and I’m trying not to. But that’s because I hated everything that happened last night, Amy, and I’m trying to think of reasons why I should blame other people and not you. I wanted to have a nice time with you. Not to spend a whole evening talking to other people and wondering where you were. I know some of it was my fault. I had a regrettable episode that freaked me out a little bit in the bathroom. It had to do with the “instructions” I got from your mom, but it was over in thirty minutes. I made sure of that. I said Sanjay can have you for thirty minutes, so I gave myself that much time to do what I had to do in the bathroom. And then I stopped.

  I’m not proud of staying in the bathroom for half an hour, but I am proud of the fact that I walked out. I pulled myself together and dried my hands and I walked out to find you. I thought to myself, Amy’s mother isn’t in charge of her anymore and she doesn’t get to decide who she’ll be with. Amy decides that. And for tonight, she’s picked me. That’s what I thought anyway. Until I saw Sarah crying in the hallway, and she said Sanjay had been fascinated by you ever since he saw you on TV and in the newspaper. He thinks you’re going to be some big celebrity soon and he wants to work as your manager and promote you. That’s what she said.

  I don’t understand any of it, Amy, but I especially don’t understand how you could leave with him and not see what a terrible thing that was to do to Sarah and me.

  Maybe he was laying it on a little too thick, especially since Sarah had helped him put Nicole’s note in perspective. By the time they got out to the car and were driving home, she wasn’t crying anymore. Mostly she wanted to say mean things about Sanjay. “He never really wanted this job with Amy. He just needed to make money for college next year and this was the best way to do it. He thinks Amy’s a spoiled rich girl, that underneath this show of being so close to her parents, she’s furious and getting ready to explode.”

  “Explode how?”

  “Like really rebel. Look at the way her mom controls every aspect of her life. She even picked the friends Amy was allowed to make this year. We all had to send in a resume and she decided who was ‘qualified.’ I mean, is that screwed up or what?”

  He had to admit: hearing Sarah say this made him feel better about the note in his pocket.

  To: mstheword@gmail.com

  From: aimhigh@comcast.net

  Oh, Matthew, I’m still so confused about what happened last night. Didn’t you tell Sanjay that you wanted to take Sarah home? Isn’t that what you said to him? I thought that I was being a good friend. I saw you and Sarah together in the hallway. You had your arms around her and I assumed this was your golden opportunity. That you’d loved her for years, and I didn’t want to be in the way of you getting together with her. I thought if I looked for you to say good-bye, you’d have to say, “No, Amy, don’t go,” even if you didn’t really mean it. I thought you’d feel guilty about wanting to be with Sarah.

  To: aimhigh@comcast.net

  From: mstheword@gmail.com

  I meant you and I could give her a ride. She was mad at Sanjay and didn’t want to go home with him. Why would I have wanted to leave without you????

  She felt a little dizzy at all this. How badly she’d misread the situation. She wasn’t sure if she should be honest and tell him what she’d wanted to last night. Then she decided, What the hell.

  To: mstheword@gmail.com

  From: aimhigh@comcast.net

  I had to assume that all your kindness toward me and your gestures that seem almost romantic sometimes (or could be if you’re a seventeen-year-old girl wi
th a crush on your best friend) aren’t meant romantically. How could they be, when neither one of us knows what my body would do in such a situation? So if I really am your friend and I want what’s best for you, don’t you see? I have to assume it isn’t me. At least that’s what I thought last night.

  I made a mistake, Matthew. First letting Sanjay involve me in his scheme with the booze and then letting him take me home. I wish I had more experience with all this so I could understand it better. Does this make any sense? I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I hurt you. Most of all, I’m sorry we didn’t get to have our night together. Can we try again? Maybe without the dress and the tux? Just a night out?

  Two minutes later, he sent this back:

  To: aimhigh@comcast.net

  From: mstheword@gmail.com

  Oh, okay. Yes, we can try again.

  Two weeks later, Amy told her parents she was going out to dinner with all her peer helpers as a thank-you for all their help this year. She got one hundred fifty dollars cash to pay for dinner, and was allowed to have Matthew pick her up, though her mother raised a skeptical eyebrow at this.

  “Why can’t Sanjay give you a ride?” Nicole asked, a nervous edge in her voice.

  “HE DOESN’T HAVE A CAR, MOM! HE BORROWED ONE ON PROM NIGHT.”

  “Sarah can’t take you? Or Chloe?”

  “NO. THEY’RE MEETING US THERE.”

  “I don’t like the idea of Matthew giving you a ride. You remember what happened last time.”

  Yes, I do, Amy thought. Last time I left early and abandoned him because I was scared. “IT’S JUST A RIDE, MOM. I’LL BE FINE, I PROMISE.”

  She was fine. They weren’t meeting up with anyone else. They went to a park near Matthew’s house and sat near a playground where he’d played as a boy. Matthew packed a picnic, filled with all the soft foods Amy liked most and two cans of Boost, which he claimed to have developed a taste for. “It’s a little like Muscle Milk, which I also try to drink regularly. I’m sure you can tell just by looking.”

  They ate their hummus and tabbouleh salad, strawberries and shortcake, and afterward, they went through a list of things they wanted to do over the summer. Amy had about six books she wanted to read. Matthew had to work five shifts a week. “They’re all in the evening, though, which leaves my days a little free,” he said. “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing before four.”

  “YOU COULD COME OVER TO MY HOUSE WHILE MY MOM IS AT WORK,” Amy said. “WE COULD HANG OUT AND SWIM.”

  At first he thought she was kidding; then he looked at her face. “Are you serious?”

  She stared back at him, unembarrassed. “YES.”

  “But your mother wrote me this note. They don’t want me to see you—”

  “I DON’T CARE WHAT MY PARENTS SAY. THEY AREN’T HOME DURING THE DAY. YOU SHOULD COME OVER.”

  Sneaking behind her mother’s back? Was this one of her dares? “I could do that. I mean—sure, I’d like to do that.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  GRADUATION CAME AND WENT, a hot, sticky nonevent. Afterward Matthew and his mother ate dinner at an Outback. He ordered a filet mignon and she ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks, and then when his meal came, another. “You seem better these days,” his mom said. “Do you think all that stuff is helping?” She waved her hand, a little embarrassed, because she meant the medication, and the doctor.

  Though he’d been going for three months, they hardly talked about it at all. He told her he didn’t want to overanalyze every little thing, or check in with her all the time. Apparently she took that to mean he didn’t want to talk about it at all, so he hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her, “I am better. I hope.”

  She smiled and ate one of his French fries. “That’s great!”

  In the beginning it felt like a fog rolled into his head and when it cleared, it left behind something strange: silence. There was no voice in his head. Since then, he couldn’t believe how much more time he had in the day. Hours, it felt like, where he could do what he wanted. Listen to music, surf the internet, text Amy. He’d spent the week before graduation doing all this and still had time left over to start a reading program, too. If he wasn’t going to college, Amy told him, then he had to start filling in the gaps of his education. “We haven’t even graduated yet,” he told her.

  But that didn’t matter. Everything was over except for the paperwork and parties. Some seniors had stopped coming to school at all. With extra time and nothing to do, Matthew started reading. He read all of J.D. Salinger, who was surprisingly funny until he got so weird and impenetrable.

  “HE NEVER GOT OVER HIS TIME IN THE WAR,” Amy explained.

  “Or in prep school,” Matthew guessed.

  He liked the books and he liked the feeling of accomplishment that came with finishing another one, especially as the summer began to unfold. He spent most of his mornings reading while he waited to go over to Amy’s house, where he would swim until it was time to go to work.

  With these loose, unstructured days, he had more time to think about what Amy had written in her email. He never mentioned it when he was with her, but the words always hovered in the back of his mind. If you’re a seventeen-year-old with a crush on your best friend. He lingered over those words: crush and best friend. He couldn’t do anything about them just yet, but they buoyed him with an unexpected self-confidence. They propelled him to do and say things that surprised him.

  They flirted now. At least it felt as close to flirting as he’d ever gotten. In the afternoons when he went over to her house for a swim, he spread suntan lotion on her shoulders and brought her presents like Cheetos, which she loved and her mother refused to buy. Amy always clapped and hugged the bag and he understood something was happening.

  The ground beneath their feet was shifting, but he also sensed something else. A hesitation on her part. A little reluctance. Something he couldn’t pinpoint but made him pause.

  Every day, Amy thought of new ways to tell Matthew what she wanted to say. She’d program her Pathway to say, “I LOVE YOU, MATTHEW MALONE!” or she’d lower it to a whisper. “I THINK I LOVE YOU.”

  It never happened.

  Even though it was there, between them, every afternoon.

  She could feel it in his attention. The way he read every book that she suggested and loaned him. The way he arrived every day, twenty minutes after her mother had left. The way they dwelled on certain subjects and avoided others—like prom, for instance. And next fall.

  All through July and the first half of August, he seemed so much better, so much easier with himself, playing games in the pool, diving showily, shaking his hair over her dry body stretched out on a deck chair. “You should come swimming with me,” he said one afternoon, in the second week of August, just after they’d eaten a little lunch at the outdoor table and returned to the lawn chairs beside the pool. Neither one of them wanted this time to end, though they both knew it would. “I understand your commitment to tanning, but maybe you could do both at the same time—”

  “YOU’VE MISTAKEN ME FOR SOMEONE WITH FOUR WORKING LIMBS.”

  “Come on—didn’t you used to swim a lot?”

  “AS A TODDLER WEDGED IN SWIM RINGS, YES.” She used to love the water, the thrilling buoyancy of it, the way her body floated beneath her. “THE LIFE JACKET I’D REQUIRE NOW IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS FLATTERING.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I’M NOT PUTTING IT ON, MATTHEW.” This whole summer she hadn’t gone in the water once. She told Matthew she didn’t like it, that her skin reacted to the chemicals in the pool. Instead she lay on a deck chair, reading and typing and watching him. She never told him the real reason—that she was scared of being in the water with him. Scared of needing his help. Scared of his arms around her. Scared of his dream coming true.

  “All right. Why do
n’t I hold you, then? Float you around a little.” He stood beside her, a puddle of water spreading out from his feet.

  “I DON’T THINK SO. YOU’D FEEL SO BAD IF I DROWNED.”

  “There’s where you’re underestimating me. You don’t realize that I’ve been working out all summer. Once a week, at least.” He did have more muscles, she’d noticed. Still she had too many memories of humiliating moments when her body betrayed her. Therapeutic horseback riding with her favorite instructor, Glenn, who she once kicked so hard he buckled over and dropped down to his knees. She was 112 pounds of contracted muscles that obeyed no orders she gave them. “I HAVE THIS LITTLE PROBLEM WHERE I KICK PEOPLE SOMETIMES. MY LEGS THINK IT’S FUNNY.”

  Amazingly Matthew held out his hands. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Without another word he bent over, scooped her up off her chair, and carried her down the pool steps into the water. It happened so fast, her body had no time to tense up or flinch. She buried her head in his neck and when he got them into the water up to his waist, he turned her around so his hands were clamped under her arms, around her chest. She floated for a few minutes with her eyes closed, her head back against her shoulder. If her heart hadn’t been beating so hard, it would have been relaxing.

  “Remember my dream?” he whispered into her ear. “Where you were a great swimmer?”

  Her hand twitched to type a response.

  “Where we got in the water and it was like you were fine. I still think about that sometimes. I know what you said swimming dreams are about, and maybe you were right, but I still think it was about something else.”

  What? She wanted to scream. What was it about?