Cornerstone

by Misty Provencher

  The fridge is taped with Iris’s drawings of her family playing soccer together and another of their crayoned bodies running together under a yellow muffin cup sun and a cotton ball cloud. The rest of the gleaming surface is papered with announcements for upcoming marathons and swim competitions, rosters for whirly ball leagues, baseball teams and soccer clinics.

  The only thing, besides Iris’s artwork that isn’t a notice of some athletic event, is a college course schedule. It sticks out like a tongue from a magnetic clip and it has Sean’s name on it. I scan the list of eclectic courses: Advanced Philosophy, Religion in Literature, Criminal Psychology, Human Anatomy and World Politics. There’s not a blow off class in the bunch. No wonder he looks so serious.

  “How did you know they’re part of Grandpa’s church?” I whisper to my mom. Sean’s still mumbling far off in the living room and Iris is too busy working over her cookie to care about us. “You never told me you knew them.”

  “Ugh, Nali. I can’t tell you every single little thing I know...” My mom smiles at Iris and reaches over to tap the Cookie Monster’s head. “Do you think we could have some?”

  Iris nods and my mom gets out three cookies, slipping another to the little girl.

  “Just for being so generous.” my mom tells her. Iris nods again, her hair floating over her head. My mom winks at her and hands me a cookie, but I shake my head at it.

  “I don’t get why no one else seems...” I begin, but Sean interrupts by walking back into the kitchen and tossing the receiver onto the cradle.

  “They’re going to send a car over to the school.” he announces.

  “Good.” my mom says and she winks again at Iris, who takes another bite of her cookie and giggles as she tries to make her own right eye wink back. I can see that Iris is already in love with my mom. Sean leans on the counter with one arm, looking at me.

  “I’m Sean, by the way.” he says. “Garrett’s older brother.”

  “What are all of your ages?” my mom asks. It’s a goofy question to start with and the way she says ‘ages’, it’s like the Reese’s individual birthdates are something exotic and intriguing. As if she wants to recount the years we’ve lost together.

  “I’m twenty three. Just in college.” he says, like it’s an apology. It’s probably pity, assuming that people like us could never get to college. Garrett must have told him about our house and how one stray match spark would terrify us. My mom seems perfectly at ease.

  “Nothing wrong with that. We all have to find our way up the ladder.” Her voice is all cheery and encouraging as if we’re not standing on the very bottom rung ourselves. She tips her head at me. “Nali is probably going to start off at community college in a couple years.”

  “I thought I didn’t have a choice.” I say. My mom just chuckles and starts in on the second cookie that would’ve been mine.

  Iris coughs and when she has all of our attention, she announces, “Brandon and Mark got impreshdun’d...”

  But the little girl stops abruptly when my mom leans over, with the same grin she used to give me when I spilled my milk, and places the tip of her index finger over the center of the little girl’s lip. My mom leaves it there for a split second before brushing off whatever crumb she’d seen. Iris blushes and ducks her head, wiping her own mouth with the back of her hand. Sean fills up the silence with a laugh as he pulls Iris’s stool away from the counter.

  “Iris here just turned six last month. And that’s enough cookies for you, munchkin.” He tickles her as he puts her down on her feet. “Those Legos you left all over your room aren’t going to build themselves into a princess castle.”

  “Aww...” Iris moans, but slouches off with less of a fight than I would’ve given. Sean replaces the stool beneath the lip of the counter when she’s gone.

  “Mark’s thirteen, Brandon is fourteen, and Garrett is eighteen.” he says to my mom, like there was never a lapse in their conversation.

  “Oh? When did he turn eighteen?” my mom asks. I would tell her not to be so nosy, except that I want to know too.

  “December third, officially.” Sean says. I make a mental note that Garrett is about nine months older than me and a tingle explodes inside me like a tiny firecracker. I am jerked back to attention when the phone rings. Sean lifts the receiver and drops it to his shoulder with a cheerful, “Yello?”

  We stay silent. Sean stares at the floor as he listens and then adds a couple ‘uh huhs’ and ‘oh reallys’ and then he looks up at my mom and says into the receiver, “Yeah, they’re still here.”

  Then he switches to me and his eyes sink into mine as he says, “Sure, I’ll tell them.” He replaces the phone on the wall cradle.

  “They found him?” my mom asks.

  “Garrett. They found Garrett.” Sean clarifies. “They didn’t catch up with the guy though. My mom asked if you wanted to stick around for a while. ”

  “Of course.” my mom says and I want to fall over. She is being all nonchalant, like waiting around and taking hours off from her writing is no big deal. This never happens. Not for birthdays or Christmas, teacher conferences or recitals. She’s always jokes that it’s a good thing I’m a low maintenance kid because she never takes time off. Even when other people want to talk to my mom, they have to come to our house and stand on the front steps because she doesn’t have time for long conversations and there is no place to sit inside. She even pulled an all-nighter that had slopped over into most of today, to catch up on whatever she hadn’t finished while she had to wait for my cast to be put on.

  “What did the police say?” I ask. Sean glances from me to my mom and back to me again.

  “Oh, uh...” he says with a shrug. “My mom didn’t say.”

  “Well, thank God that Garrett is fine.” my mom says. “That’s all that matters.”

  As if it smoothes everything over, Sean pulls a pizza ad from a kitchen drawer.

  “I’ll order pizza since you’re staying.” he says.

  I wait for my mom to say we won’t be staying that long, but instead, she puts her thumb to her mouth and just nibbles at the edge of her nail, the way she does when she gets antsy about not being able to write. I decide right then to just shut up and stop asking questions, because as much as I want to know why we’re here, I want to still be here when Garrett comes home.

  Chapter 7

  The food comes at the same time the rest of the Reese’s do, filling up the house with the smell of warm pizza and the riotous sound of the people who live here.

  “So what happened?” Sean asks. His head is turned to see behind him as he carries a ridiculously high stack of pizza boxes into the dining room. Mr. and Mrs. Reese come in right behind Sean, followed by the two younger Reese’s and finally, Garrett appears. He shuts the front door and I hear him kick his shoes off in the family pile before entering the dining room.

  I search him, from head to toe, before his eyes have even had the chance to sift through the room and find me. His pant legs are muddy at the bottoms, his dark shirt is spattered with dirt and his hair is glossy with sweat. Otherwise, he looks fine. His eyes find me, standing in the corner of his dining room, and he breaks into a smile that makes my cheeks warm enough that I need to look away. My insides are bouncing and at the same time, I’m suddenly embarrassed to be standing in Garrett’s kitchen, as if I’ve intruded on his family and house without being invited. He’s obviously fine and I feel like a complete tube for having freaked out for no good reason.

  “That was boring!” the youngest brother complains. The other brother, a sandy-haired kid that towers by a couple inches over his littler brother, gives him a you-win-some-you-lose-some shrug.

  “Garrett almost caught up with him.” Mrs. Reese tells my mother as she pulls bottles of water and a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge. Garrett shakes his head at Sean.

  “By ‘almost’, she means I lost him almost immediately and spent an hour backtracking to be sure of it.”

  Sean dumps a stack
of plastic cups and some paper plates on the table. “Hey, it happens.”

  “Was it the same guy?” I ask, fighting down the urge to point out exactly how dangerous catching that guy would be.

  “I’m pretty sure it was.” Garrett says. “But he was gone before I could even get a look at him.”

  A shiver fuses itself to my spine. His dad just flips open the lids of the pizza boxes.

  “Everybody dig in.” he says, clapping a hand on my mom’s shoulder. “Don’t worry over this, Evangeline. It’s been reported and everyone is on the look out.”

  My mom nods with a nervous smile and the conversation is dropped immediately as Garrett’s family jumps in to grab plates and slices and cups for their drinks.

  I’m so used to my mom’s perpetual silence, as she transcribes ream after ream for our paper mausoleum, that at first it feels like my ears are being pushed backward by the Reese’s constant roar of voices and boisterous laughter. I watch as my mom stands away from the table with a twitching smile, startled every time one of the boys grabs for another slice or someone breaks into a booming guffaw. But I want to be part of all this fun the Reese’s seem to have together. When Garrett frisbees a plate to me from across the table, I catch it.

  “Eat.” He mouths the word to me like he knows I won’t be able to hear him over his family anyway. He adds a grin that makes my stomach feel hollow and full all at the same time. I think I could survive for months, drinking nothing but the pure blue of his eyes.

  I take a triangle, dripping with veggies instead of pepperoni, and a bottle of water. Garrett tips his head in the direction of the descending staircase across from the dining room. I nod and follow him, weaving through the chairs. I’d follow him anywhere he wanted.

  “We’re going to eat downstairs.” he says to his dad on the way out. Mr. Reese nods his approval to Garrett and looks across the table to my mother. I don’t look back because I don’t even want to know if she doesn’t approve.

  The downstairs is instantly quieter and the sage green carpeting along with the pair of thick, homey couches, relaxes me. Garrett flips a switch that ignites gas logs in the fireplace and the room grows as warm as a kangaroo pouch as we sit at opposite ends of a couch, eating our pizza. Even with a busted arm, I’m a pro at eating over my own lap. It makes me feel like I’m at home.

  Garrett stretches out from the opposite end, so that his feet almost touch my arm. I think of the way he rubbed my hand at the track and I want him to touch me again, even if it’s only with the tips of his toes.

  “How’s your arm doing?” he asks, one foot brushing my arm. I glance at his feet and then jump to his face, worried I might have been thinking out loud.

  “Oh, uh, good. Really good, actually. I don’t know what you did to it, but it doesn’t hurt at all. It doesn’t even feel broken.”

  “Good.” he smiles, biting into his pizza. He dodges a glance to the stairs. “I figured you might like eating down here, away from all that noise upstairs. It’s got to sound like a never-ending fire drill to you. I know it’s a lot to take, since you’re not one of us.”

  I put my pizza down. I was going to say how the noise makes me feel like I’m finally alive, how I want to join right in and be part of all their chaos and laughter. But now I can’t even swallow what is in my mouth. My throat closes on his distinction of us, which makes me a them. My heart misses three beats, as if a door has been slammed on it. Garrett pushes my elbow with the ball of his foot.

  “Hey. You okay?”

  “Oh yeah.” I say, hiding the burn in my cheeks by setting my plate on the floor. I clear my throat. “I was just wondering what happened after I lost you in the woods.”

  His eyes look almost brown in the warm light. He chews the last bite of his pizza like he’s chewing over a bunch of different things he could tell me. I hope that whatever he picks is the truth. He swallows down his food and clears his throat with a drink before putting his plate on the floor too.

  “You’re quite a runner.” he says.

  “Back at you.”

  “You should go out for track. The coach would...”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened with the guy?” I ask. We stare at each other. A muscle jumps in his jaw. “You aren’t going to say, are you?”

  “What do you want to know?” he asks like he will tell me anything. Like he won’t keep secrets from me.

  “What did you tell the cops?”

  “Cops?” He seems surprised.

  “The cops weren’t at the school?”

  “Uh...no?” His eyebrows lift, snagging him in the lie. Or in someone’s lie. It might not even have started as his lie, but I can see in his face that he’s a poorly informed accomplice to it.

  “Your brother called the cops. He told me they were sending a car to the school.”

  “Oh.” Garrett winces.

  “Oh?” I stand up from the couch and look down at him. His hair is touching the hollow of his cheek, exactly where my lips would fit. I try to remember that I’m about to start a fight with the most handsome, most popular boy in school. I’m about to completely snuff any chances I ever had with him, but I can’t let it go. I take another look at the tiny cave under his cheekbone, wondering how smooth his skin might feel against my own and then I say, “Why aren’t you telling me the truth, Garrett? What is going on with everybody?”

  “Nothing’s going on. It’s just really...complicated.”

  “You sound like my mom.” I look away, tears welling up that I don’t want him to see. I am so overwhelmed with no one telling me anything, with being a Maxwell instead of a Reese, with having a life that locks me away behind a paper tower.

  “You all right?” His voice is deep and gentle. I’m not all right and him asking is only making it worse. I sink back onto the couch cushion and put my face in my hands, maneuvering the stupid cast like a wounded wing.

  “I’m fine.” I lie between my fingers. Garrett kneels in front of me, pulling away my hands. His fingers are calloused, but his touch is so gentle that it breaks me open and my eyes begin to spill.

  “Don’t cry, Nalena.” he says. “I know how it seems. I do.”

  I want to tell him that the last thing I want is to be sitting on his couch sobbing, but my voice is trapped under the dead weight of my own defenses. He rubs a thumb over my cheek, spreading a tear that evaporates instantly from his heat. All I want to do is press my face into his palm, but I stay perfectly still, letting the wave of his electricity burn its way through my skin. His touch could set water on fire.

  My eyes drift up and anchor in his. In the flickering light, his face is open and his eyes make me ache with want. He moves toward me, his fingers sliding over my jaw and threading into the hair at the nape of my neck. I want him to kiss me. I close my eyes. His breath fans over my cheek. Then his voice is deep in my ear, whispering, “Don’t cry. Please. Just trust me.”

  I murmur that I do trust him and the whole time I am waiting for him to silence my confession with his lips. I wait with the ache deepening every second that the heat of his mouth scribbles across my cheek. I know that I will never forget this minute, for as long as I live, as the first kiss that could do damage.

  My eyes are still closed and I part my lips, but instead of him bringing his mouth down on mine, I feel his hand sliding out of my hair. His heat pulls away and I open my eyes.

  “I won’t let you down.” he says. His eyes are downcast as he clasps his lips. He moves to the opposite end of the couch.

  I look everywhere, except at him, as I put the back of my hand to my mouth and try to blot away the warmth of his breath. My cheeks are boiling. He must’ve been mortified as I sat there with my eyes closed and head tilted and lips waiting and thinking up things that are impossible between Simon Valley’s All-Star Athlete and its Waste. I wish I could dissolve. Instead, I’m just left sitting in the rubble of a wall that he knocked down as if it was nothing at all.

  ~ * * * ~

  Garr
ett sits back like nothing happened.

  It seems like I’m the only one that noticed the chemical fire roaring between us.

  I look around the room, at anything, besides him. I study the bookshelves on the far wall, stocked with hard covers. I don’t recognize even one title because I’m too busy leafing through a whole volume of What A Big Idiot I Am. I let my eyes wander over the family photos on the wall, but all I see in the frames are images of myself as I lean toward Garrett with my big dumb eyes fluttering shut and my stupid lips parted, waiting for him not to kiss me. This will be a great story for him to tell at school.

  “Nalena,” he says from behind me, but I won’t look at him. Instead, I flounder onto my feet from the spot where our first kiss never happened.

  “I’m going to get something else to drink.” I say and I don’t ask him if he wants anything. I just leave. I go around the couch and up the short stairs.

  The blast of the Reese household that greets me as I enter the dining room seems less exciting now. They, after all, are the us’s and my mom and I are obviously never going to be that.

  My mom looks up as I come in and her face switches from laughter to concern on the spot. I’m sure my eyes are still puffy from crying and my mascara is probably welled below them. I drop my head to avoid anyone seeing anything else, but it is too late. My mom’s expression is passed around the table, smothering each voice in turn.

  “What’s the matter? Is your arm hurting you?” My mom asks.

  “No.” I say. “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  Mr. Reese glances toward the descending staircase and back at me.

  “Is everything okay down there with Garrett?” His voice is all business.

  “Everything’s great.” I say. I try to press out a convincing laugh, but it only fades as it hits the silence of the room. I keep my eyes on the floor as I work my way around everyone’s chairs to get to the kitchen. I should have escaped to the bathroom instead. Sean’s chair legs scrape as he scoots out of my way. Great. Now I’m a leper.