“I didn’t at the time,” he said, pulling me in tighter. “You acted like I was a serial killer at first.”
“Things were hard at my old school,” I said, bringing my face closer to his again.
“I figured, from some things you’d said.” Grant nodded. “You wanna talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so, but maybe not right now.”
“That’s okay,” Grant told me, and we were quiet until he started talking again. “I don’t know where Dad told Mama he was workin’. I don’t know if she even remembers anymore, but I remember it was a real job, and I remember the day we found out he didn’t have it. The police showed up at our house, back when we had a house in town, and they had papers from the judge. It turned out he’d been going out in the woods to an RV with some buddies and cookin’ meth for years.
“Avery wasn’t even a year old when this happened. Mama had three kids and no income. We moved in with my grandma for a little bit, but then Mama had what the doctors called a psychotic break from all the stress, and apparently she said some things grandma still ain’t forgiven. Mom’s medicine made her better, but she can’t really work on it, so—”
“So you’re the only thing keeping your family afloat,” I said.
He nodded. “All I ever wanted was to keep Mama outta the loony bin and my sisters outta foster care, and that kept me so busy I couldn’t give much thought to anything else. But being around you makes me feel … different. Like anything’s possible. It’s almost scary, you know? It feels selfish to say it but I’ve been wanting more and more to leave my family behind and just go wherever I want, be whatever I want.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking about how I’m going to get away. Head up north, disappear in some big city like New York or Boston. Maybe if I’m lucky, live in Paris.”
“Oh,” Grant said, rolling onto his back again. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to apply to NYU. I think I’ll get in. It’s weird though. It’s what I’ve wanted for so long, but it’s scary too. It’s scary to think of leaving here, of being so far from my parents and everything I know. But then it’s the only way I can be really free, that I can finally live somewhere that people understand me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, frowning and sitting up. I cocked my head and looked up at him, feeling a sudden lurch in my stomach.
“Just that there are things about me that not everyone can understand,” I said, realizing my mistake even as the words were coming out.
“What am I to you?” he said, turning to look at the lake, his nostrils flaring.
“You’re my boyfriend,” I said, rising to a kneel and wrapping my arms around him from behind.
“For now,” he said, stiffening at my touch. “Until you find somebody at your fancy college who doesn’t have trouble understanding movies and gets the weird books you like.”
“Grant,” I said, kissing the back of his neck. “I like you, all right?”
“But you don’t think I can understand you,” he said.
“It’s complicated,” I said, turning his head to face me. His eyes darted away but I kissed him, holding him still. “I like you more than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s just—there are things that are really hard to say.” Grant stared at me, his eyes boring into mine, and I felt naked right then, like he could see everything, the things I wanted him to know and the ones I didn’t too.
“You can tell me anything, Amanda, you know that. Haven’t I shown you that?”
I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in again. I thought about what he had said, that I could tell him anything, and I knew that he was right—or at least that he thought he was. But until the moment he learned the truth, I couldn’t know how he would feel, and that was a risk I wasn’t ready to take. “I’ll try, okay? You deserve that. I promise I’ll try.”
17
I pressed my forehead against the window as Layla’s car pulled north onto I-75. I could just make out Chloe to my right, her reflection ghostly against the mountains on the horizon. She sat with her shoulders slumped and a hollow look in her eyes. She didn’t seem interested in talking.
“Where are we going again?” I said, my breath fogging the glass. I glanced at the phone in my lap and saw a new text from Grant: Sorry about last night. I had wanted to see him today, to try to smooth things over from last night, but the girls showed up around lunchtime laying on the horn, claiming they were staging an intervention: I was addicted to my boyfriend, and it had to stop.
“Maze of the Damned!” Anna and Layla both yelled in their spookiest voices.
“So, what, like a haunted house?” I said, as I typed out a response to Grant: Don’t apologize! I’m glad we talked. I miss you.
“No,” Anna said, “a haunted corn maze just south of Knoxville. So it’s a maze but it’s also ‘maize,’ get it?”
I rolled my eyes but I was smiling.
“You’ll really like it,” Layla said, flourishing her free hand dramatically like a claw and deepening her voice. “It’s a macabre feast for every sense!”
“Also,” Anna said, bouncing, “there’s funnel cake!”
Anna and Layla spent the hour-long trip giggling with each other over snippets of gossip, bickering over something sacrilegious Layla said, and singing along loudly to Taylor Swift. I didn’t know the words so I made up my own, which sent the girls into hysterics—except Chloe, whose silence was as loud as an air horn. It took Grant most of the ride to respond, but eventually I got another text: I miss you too.
* * *
We headed to the Maze of the Damned just as the sun finished creeping out of sight. We walked past a looming grain silo, a red-roofed barn with SEE ROCK CITY painted on it in white text just visible in the light from a nearby bonfire, and a dark-windowed farmhouse that looked at least a hundred years old. On the other side lay rolling fields dotted with patches of orange firelight, and in the center, rising like the walls of a fortress, was the corn maze itself.
Nothing happened for a few hundred feet once we were inside, but then the cackling began. Anna screamed and pointed above our heads, where figures in cloaks leaped across the walls, looking down at us with glowing eyes before disappearing again. We turned into a shrouded clearing, where pale figures dressed like Civil War doctors loomed over a soldier who screamed over the imminent loss of his limbs. Layla and Anna screamed and ran ahead. I grabbed Chloe’s hand and pulled her through a break in the cornstalks running wildly through a network of side paths left over from the farm’s normal comings and goings.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “We’re lost.”
“On purpose,” Chloe said, picking a long blade of grass and chewing on it.
“What?” I said, tilting my voice up and stretching the word out for way too long. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Right,” Chloe said, looking at me stonily.
“Really though,” I said after a moment of silence. “I actually have no idea where we are. Can you get us back to the path?”
“Just ’cause my parents own a farm,” she said, crossing her arms, “you think I have, what, magic corn-vision?”
“Um … yes?” I said, biting my lip and shrugging. She laughed once, softly, which made me feel a small sense of accomplishment.
She let out a long breath and looked up at the stars as we came to a branch in the path. “Just ask what you wanna ask.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, picking up a thin, bendy stick and swishing it hard across the leaves on the path. Chloe gave me a curious look. “In case we have to come back this way, we’ll know where we’ve been before.”
“Clever,” Chloe said, nodding slowly.
“Thanks,” I said, swishing the stick absentmindedly. “So what’s new in your world, Chloe?”
“Gotta turn around,” she said, brushing past me as she doubled back. “Track curves away from where we need to
be.” We walked a few more yards before she stopped and sighed, her shoulders slumping. “You really aren’t gonna ask?” I shrugged and tried to appear as innocent as possible. “She dumped me.”
“Oh,” I said, long and soft. I took a few steps forward and wrapped her in a hug. “That sucks.”
“I guess?” Chloe said, kneeling and ripping up a long, bendy stick of her own. We continued walking, me watching her as she swiped and slashed at the corn stalks. We only needed a few marks to find our way, but, I knew, sometimes people just needed to break things. “Yeah. It sucks.”
“What happened?” We reached a fork that neither of us had an immediate hunch about, so I flipped a coin and we went right. “You don’t have to answer.”
“No,” Chloe said. “It’s fine. Guess I’m not used to talking about it.” She kicked a clump of dirt ahead of us and stared up at the stars. She was using more than five words at a time, which usually meant she was about to say something important. “You’re only the second person who knows … about me.”
“Bee was the first?” I said. She nodded. “That must have been lonely.”
“Yeah,” Chloe said. “We didn’t have Internet or anything on the farm when I was little. It was just me, my parents, my brothers, the animals, and the farmhands. There was no place I could’ve learned about people like me. I thought I was the only one in the whole world when I was little.”
“Jesus,” I said, touching her shoulder.
“It was almost better,” she said. “Before I knew how I was different it was just a vague notion. So much easier to ignore.”
“But then Bee showed up?”
“Yep,” Chloe said, sniffing sharply and tossing her stick aside. “Come on.” She took my hand and pulled me through one of the corn walls. It was slow-going off the path, but I assumed she knew what she was doing.
“How long were y’all together?” I said as I tried to avoid tripping.
“’Bout a year,” Chloe said.
“Wow,” I said, thinking about how much I’d come to care for Grant in just the short time we’d been together. I paused for a moment, wanting to be careful with my next question. “Do you love her?”
“Thought so,” Chloe said, pushing a cornstalk out of her way so hard it tipped over like a tree. “Till just now I thought so.” She rubbed her hands on her jeans to clean the dirt off. “But what’d we really have in common?”
“Honestly?” I said as I sidled through the gap she’d made. “I’d have to say nothing.”
“Right,” Chloe said. “I just felt like she was my only option, and maybe in this town she is, but being alone’s a perfectly good option for now.” She stopped and turned to face me, her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “And I’ve got friends.”
“You’ve got friends,” I said, and this time she was the one who hugged me. “And hey,” I said, as we pulled apart. “You’re about to graduate. It’s a big world.” As I said the words, I couldn’t help thinking about what I’d told Grant last night.But here in Lambertville, I realized, I didn’t feel that same choking, desperate need to run away. For the first time ever I was living my life, the life I was supposed to live—I was finally the truest version of myself. I just happened to be keeping an enormous secret at the same time.
“You’re right, I know. The world’s waiting,” Chloe said, parting the final wall of corn to reveal the concessions area at the end of the maze.
“See,” I said. “We found our way.”
Chloe smiled wanly. “Somehow.”
18
I opened the door to find Grant standing in a black sweater, black jeans, and black sneakers, with mussed hair and his face painted to look like the cover of a Misfits album.
“Happy Halloween!” he said. His white teeth looked out of place in the middle of his messily painted face.
“No way,” I said. He looked down at my bandolier, brown-and-tan tunic, leather pants, and knee-high boots and his eyes widened. “Is that really your costume?”
“Yeah?” he said, looking suddenly sheepish, which was strange coming from a face that could have belonged to the grim reaper. “This is what I do every year.”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Not this year. Come with me.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward my bedroom.
“Hi, Mr. Hardy,” he said, waving and nearly stumbling over the coffee table.
“Happy Halloween, Grant,” Dad said without looking up from the book he was reading. Grant had been coming to pick me up and dropping by to say hi after work more often. Dad and I hadn’t talked much since our fight that day in the Walmart parking lot, but we’d reached a sort of uneasy truce as we both went about our lives, getting ready for work and school, dinner in front of the TV.
“What are you supposed to be anyway?” Grant said as I plopped him on the bed and started digging through the box I’d had Mom ship to me a few weeks before.
“Remember in Return of the Jedi, when Leia disguises herself and comes to Jabba’s palace to save Han?” I pointed to the helmet with the segmented mouthpiece and solid visor hanging off my bedpost, and Grant grinned like a little kid.
“Awesome,” he said, only to widen his eyes when I showed him the Boba Fett helmet I’d just pulled out of the box. “What the hell? Where’d you get these?”
“Made them,” I said absentmindedly as I handed him the helmet and started pulling out the painted motorcycle jacket, pants, boots, and gloves that went with it.
“How’d you learn to make stuff like this?” he asked, holding the helmet out to inspect it, his voice reverent.
“I don’t know,” I said, tossing him the jacket and shrugging. I did know, of course: I had learned to make costumes the same year I learned to make sushi. “I used to have a lot more free time.”
“Are you sure this stuff’ll fit me?” Grant said, standing and holding the jacket against him. His face was already hidden behind the green-and-red helmet’s opaque, T-shaped visor.
“It’ll be tight,” I said, “but yeah. We’re almost the same height.” I shrugged, embarrassed. “Sorry I’m such a giantess.”
“I like it,” he said, holding the helmet under his left arm and holding my hand with his right. “You’re like … an Amazon.”
“Nope,” I said, poking him in the ribs with my elbow as I slipped my helmet on. “I’m not an Amazon. I’m a bounty hunter.”
We made our way to the door, but Dad called for me just before I was out of earshot. Grant gave me a reassuring wave and jogged down the stairs while I stepped back inside.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“I’ve been thinking about what I said,” he said, closing his book and sighing. “You’re smart as a whip, and from everything I’ve heard from you and your mother you missed out on a lot of good years. It’s okay if you want to cut loose a little. I haven’t missed the fact that you’re a teenager.”
“Really?” I said, smiling despite myself.
“Do be careful though,” he said, pointing his book at me.
“Of course,” I said, nodding once, my heart lifting as I stepped toward the door. But before I left I turned around and met Dad’s watery blue eyes. “And Dad? Thanks.”
* * *
Our costumes were a sensation at Layla’s Halloween party.
Half the people present weren’t in costume at all, but Layla had had the forethought to put face paints out on the kitchen table next to the beer, and within an hour everyone who hadn’t come with a costume had painted one on. Layla was dressed as Morticia Addams, skintight dress and all, and from the way she had to shuffle slowly to get anywhere I knew she had made the same style-over-function trade-off as Grant and me—our full-coverage helmets and leather jackets were a sweaty nightmare to dance in. Anna wasn’t wearing a costume, because her parents would’ve killed her if they’d known she was coming to a Halloween party at all. Chloe’s face was painted like a skull, and she was wearing black jeans and black boots. The only difference between her costume and Grant’s orig
inal one was that she had on a flannel shirt instead of a black sweater.
“Aren’t you glad?” I said, leaning on him as we rested in a corner and caught our breath. Our helmets sat on a side table next to us. He was on his fourth beer and I had just finished my second, feeling like a lightweight to already be as giddy as I was. “Aren’t you glad I spared you the embarrassment? Nothing worse than showing up to a party in the same outfit as another girl.”
“Is that a thing?” he said.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Stuff like that can be a total social disaster.”
“Being a girl seems like it has a lotta rules,” he said, sounding suddenly thoughtful.
“Oh totally,” I said, thinking of the million things I had to learn to fit in. “It’s way harder than being a guy.”
“What?” Grant said. “No way. When’s the last time you got in a fistfight? You ever been popped in the nose?”
I remembered all the times guys had hit and kicked me because they didn’t like me, but decided it was best not to mention those. “Whatever, tough guy.” I poked him in the chest and put a hand on my hip. “A fistfight gets you a black eye but girls destroy each other with just a couple of words. Guys could never handle what we go through.”
“Challenge accepted!” Grant said, setting his beer down and grabbing his helmet. “Come with me.” He grabbed my wrist and dragged me to Layla’s hall bathroom, slamming the door shut behind us.
“What’re you doing?” I said, confused.
“You called me out,” he said as he unzipped the Boba Fett jacket and tossed it to my side of the bathroom. “Now we gotta switch costumes.”
“What?” I said, the room tilting ever so slightly. I leaned against the sink for balance. He was down to a tank top, boxers, and socks. “Why?”
“You said I ain’t got the guts to be a girl,” he said, “and I don’t back down from a challenge. Gimme your costume.”
I stripped down to a cami and boyshorts, giggling the whole time, and watched as he clumsily got into the bounty-hunter Leia costume. Once everything was zipped up and the helmet was on I had to admit that besides the broader shoulders and a certain flatness across the chest, nobody would know the difference—provided he kept the helmet on, of course.
If I Was Your Girl Page 11
