All That Was
Page 11
Maybe I’m not here.
Maybe I’m upstairs getting dressed.
Maybe I’m asleep on the cold, silky sand.
Mom strokes my forehead and my hair. I’m leaning on Mom. She’s pulled a chair close to me. It seems strange to have the chairs like that, close enough to touch. I can see the makeup settling into the pores of her nose. Sometimes migraines turn my eyes into magnifying lenses. Sometimes they are fun-house mirrors. Images ripple and bend. Nothing is quite real.
Something cool slips over my skin.
I’m in the water and the cold hands of the seaweed are not letting me reach the surface. I breathe harder and harder.
“Mom,” I say.
Someone has put a blanket over my shoulders. The blanket is cashmere. It is as soft as a baby goat. The blanket smells luxuriously clean. I pull it over my nose and breathe it in, like the expensiveness of it will erase what is happening.
Mom says, “Enough.”
The men and one woman glance at one another in ten different ways. Messages zing back and forth between them that are unspoken but are about me in my pink bikini and the way that Piper died.
“He does look sort of familiar,” I say.
The eddy of the lie pulls me down, far and fast, and the surface is so far away and the water is like velvet and it closes over me.
I knew him.
I did something.
I made him angry.
If no one knows, it didn’t happen.
It was meant to be me.
BEFORE
Piper shows up at the movie with her hair cut in a perfect pixie, dyed platinum, truly silver. It looks as soft as feathers. There is nothing about it that suggests she shaved it with clippers. I reach out and touch it. “You did that?” I ask doubtfully. “It’s so soft!”
She laughs. “Mom FREAKED out when she saw my butchery. She took me to her guy. Do you like it?” She points her chin down and makes a duck face at me, which looks way cuter than it should.
I sigh. “It looks amazing,” I admit.
“See?” she says. “I feel so different. Between my hair and the sex, I’m a completely different person.”
“Don’t go nuts,” I say. “You look good, but you’re still you.”
“Don’t be so sure. Maybe you don’t know me at all.” She laughs, draping her arm around me, grabbing my hand. “Come on, let’s get tickets.”
“What are we seeing, anyway?” I say, squinting at the billboard. The choices are pretty limited. Big Action or Cheesy Romance or Animated Kids’ Film. None of them really appeals.
“Oh, who cares?” she says. “Not the point. There’s someone”—she winks at me, hard, like her contact is falling out—“who I want you to meet.”
“Who?” I say, suddenly uncomfortable. “Are you setting me up?”
“No! Nothing like that! Well, sort of like that. But not exactly like that. Come and meet him. Then you’ll see what I mean.”
We buy tickets for the film that starts the soonest, the Big Action. At least it’s air-conditioned inside; our usual reason for going to movies is to escape the heat (her) and to see the newest documentary (me). There are no documentaries playing, but the sidewalk outside is shimmering with heat, making everything seem surreal, a mirage.
That heat does something strange to my eyes, to the way I see Piper. For a minute, she looks like someone I don’t even know.
Piper drags me through the lobby, our footsteps muted by the thick and filthy crimson-colored carpeting. It is all popcorn smells and kids running around, crying for a candy bar, sticky hands clutching at their parents. “Kids these days,” I murmur to Piper, and she rolls her eyes.
“Okay, Grandma,” she says. “I’ll get them off your lawn.” She’s joking, but still, my heart drops because Grandma isn’t doing well. I heard Mom and Dad talking last night. They think she had a stroke. I haven’t said it out loud yet because I don’t want it to be true. Grandma is too young to die. Grandma is not too young to die. I feel a wave of sad nausea clutch my throat and gently squeeze. I have to go see her, but I can’t.
Piper lets go of my hand. “Okay, look pretty.”
Automatically, I flip my hair, the only thing about me that really IS pretty.
“Look,” she says, pointing, and there, behind the counter, wearing a stupid hat, is Soup.
“What?” I frown, not getting it. “Since when does Soup work here?”
She laughs. “He doesn’t!” she says. “Look closer.”
I squint. I need a new prescription or new contacts or both. Everything has been slightly blurry lately. Closer, I can tell this boy isn’t Soup—he’s older, taller, skinnier—but also he looks so much like him that my brain keeps superimposing Soup over Not Soup. I shake my head a little. “Weird,” I whisper. “They could be twins.”
We move up in the line.
“Flirt,” she murmurs. Then, louder, “Two Diet Cokes, please. Large. Size matters.” She winks and does that thing with her tongue. Automatically, I take a step back, bristling.
The boy who is Not Soup looks slowly from her to me and back again. She reaches up and touches the short hair above her ear. I don’t know how she knows how to do that, how to make everything look like sex.
“Popcorn?” he drawls.
She laughs, like he’s the funniest person in the world. “Have to watch our girlish figures, you know,” she says, quoting Mr. Aberley. “I’m kidding,” she adds. “Yes, popcorn. Extra butter. I love butter, don’t you?” She lets her hand rest on his for a beat too long. He stares at her hand. I stare at her hand. We all stare at her hand.
Afterward, in our seats, I burst out laughing. “What was that?” I say. “What were you doing? You were like a sexxxxxx kitten. ‘I love butter.’” I make a purring noise. I pretend to lick my paw.
She looks at me calmly. “Don’t be childish,” she says. “I did it for you. He’s interested now. But you have to take over. Make this about you, not me. He’s yours. He’s going to be your first.”
“Um, no,” I say. “No. God. Are you kidding? Are you out of your mind? No thanks! I don’t need you to—”
“Hey.” A man kicks the back of my chair. “Do you mind? Shut up.”
“Sorry,” I say. I slouch down so he doesn’t get annoyed with me for being too tall.
He leans forward. “Your disgusting hair is in my drink.”
“Jeez,” says Piper. “Stand down. Jerk.” She gestures, and we both move over a few seats. “Loser!” she throws back over her shoulder. I put my curtain of hair between me and the man so I can’t see him.
If I can’t see him, he can’t see me. Isn’t that how it works?
The movie is so loud. A crash makes me look up at the screen. I let myself get pulled into it, the stupid loud noisiness and bright action. I put it out of my head, the whole thing with Piper and the popcorn boy, and her whole idea about that.
BEFORE
Piper is lying back in the stern of Mr. Aberley’s boat, her face tipped up to the sun, her legs hanging over the edge. We went to ask if we could borrow it and we found him on a chaise on the front porch, sound asleep, his mouth open, his fat white Persian cat next to his feet, squinting at us with suspicious eyes.
It was the same as asking, but without waking him up.
I feel guilty. There’s already a small crack in the repaired hull, and a puddle of seawater lifts the paint off the bottom in skinlike sheaths. I hope we don’t sink.
Piper takes a photo of herself with her phone. She looks like a model in a catalog, like a natural Instagram filter follows her around, making her skin glow. But to get the shot, she has to hold her arms incredibly awkwardly.
“That looks really uncomfortable,” I observe.
She looks at me over the top of her aviators. “Nope,” she says. “It’s good.” She tilts her head back again.
I dip an oar in, splash her sort of on purpose.
“Hey!” she says. “It’s cold. I hate the water. You know I hate the water.”
I turn around in the seat so I can start rowing instead of letting us drift out on the tide. Watching her text Soup is infuriating, and I’m infuriated with myself for feeling infuriated, so basically I’m a trifecta of infuriation, which I know isn’t a word. At least, I don’t think it is. “Is ‘infuriation’ a word?” I say.
“Duh, yes,” she says. “Also a great name for a rock group. The Infuriation. Think about it.” She looks at me. “Soup’s coming tonight, okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Of course! I’d hate to do anything without Soup. Soup, Soup, Soup. Why would I want to spend time alone with my best friend when I can spend my time being a third wheel?”
She frowns. “Okay, whatever. I get it. I’ll tell him.”
“No, he can come, I don’t care. I was being snarky.”
“Big shock,” she mumbles. I pretend that I don’t hear her and I pull harder on the oars, leaning so far that my back touches her leg. The boat cuts through the light chop easily. It’s a heavy old thing, made to be stable. Mr. Aberley himself taught us to row in it when we were in second grade. It was huge then. It’s shrunk, like Mr. Aberley, the island, and everything else.
“Safe as a bathtub,” he promised Mom and Dad. “Not going to flip for anything, this old girl.” He patted it adoringly.
“What are we doing tonight, anyway?”
She doesn’t answer, but she’s still typing. I row faster. Mr. A taught us to think of the water as a solid, to think of dropping our blade into concrete and then pulling against it, the water pinning the oar in place as a pivot that we moved against. It works.
“Whoa,” Piper says. “You in a race?”
“Getting a workout,” I say.
“Are you still trying to lose weight? You’re crazy,” she says. “You’re too thin. Are you going ’rexic on me?”
“Lame,” I say. “You know me better than that. Duh.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Listen, I’m scrolling through your last twenty texts.”
“Why?”
“Are you listening? Here they are: ‘Going to yoga with Mom, later!’ ‘Going to the gym.’ ‘On the treadmill, phew!’ ‘Running!’ ‘Yoga tonight!’ ‘Got to work out!’ ‘See you after gym tonite?’ ‘Yoga, yoga, yoga, am so stretched out am like rubber band, floomp.’ ‘Sweat is pretty, right?’ ‘At the gym!’ Do you see a pattern? Do we need to talk, Ms. Thing?”
“WTF?” I say. “I run when I’m anxious. Maybe I’m more anxious lately. You know, the last summer and all that.”
“The last supper,” she intones. “I didn’t know you were religious.”
“SUMMER, not supper, and I’m not.”
“I know! Don’t try to change the subject. Maybe you’re doing this overexercising thing because you miss me and you’re trying to get my attention.”
“God, Piper, what are you now, my therapist? Lay off! I like working out. Is that a crime? Besides, I only ever see Mom at yoga. She’s so busy at work. And after this summer, we’ll be gone. I like my mom. Just because you hate your mom doesn’t mean we all do.”
She whistles. “Low blow.”
“Sorry,” I manage between breaths. The boat gets heavy quickly when you’re rowing this fast. I stop pulling the oars and let it glide.
“Anyway, slow down, you’re going to hurt a seal or something.”
“Unlikely,” I say. I bend over, taking deep breaths.
“Well, tell me when I need to worry,” she says finally. “I don’t want you to say later, ‘Oh, you only care about Soup and you don’t notice me.’”
“Don’t be dumb,” I say. “I’d never be like that.”
“So how come you never ask me about him?”
We are drifting toward the far side of the island. I dip my hand in the water and grab a piece of kelp, long brown seaweed with its own built-in round float. I pop the round part in my hand. Inside the bulb, there’s a liquid slime. I chuck it back into the water. We’ve come out and around so we can use the secret cove, which you can’t see from the mainland at all. The sudden silence and calm of the protected water is disconcerting. A seagull caws from the rocks somewhere. My breathing is still ragged.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I figure if there’s something you want to tell me, you will.”
“Well, there is,” she says.
“What is it?” I say. “Tell me.” She doesn’t answer. “Come on, Pipes. I really do want to know. I’m sorry I’ve been kind of mean about it. I am seriously very interested. I’ve never been more interested in anything. Not ever. If I had my camera—”
“Okay, enough,” she says.
I swivel around on the bench so I can see her at the same time as the boat bumps the shoreline. She is already halfway out, pulling the rope, tying it casually around the end of the log we call Seth, which has been there for as long as I can remember. “Look after the boat, Seth,” she says.
“Seth has seen too much,” I say. “I can’t make eye contact with Seth anymore.”
“Seth will never tell your secrets,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
I grab our stuff and follow her along the short path through the nettles to our favorite spot, a sandy stretch about seven feet long, surrounded on all sides by huge rocks. The sky is clear and blue and still. A light, hot wind blows through the purple flowers that grow between cracks in the rocks.
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask when we’re finally settled. A wasp flies close to my ear and she flicks it away with her hand.
“I don’t know how to say it,” she says. “It’s not something I want to tell you, not really. Just … I guess I can’t figure out if you’re jealous or what.”
“Jealous?” I snort and laugh at the same time, choking on my melted Slurpee. Then, firmly, “Not even a little.” I relent, “Maybe I feel a bit weird because, you know, it’s always been you and me, and now it’s you and Soup.” I add quickly, “But it’s no big deal. Growing pains, I guess. It was going to happen sooner or later. That one of us met someone and, you know.”
“So you are jealous?” She grins, leaning into me. I can feel her hot skin, the sweat making us stick together like decals. We peel off each other.
“Ouch,” I say. “I swear, I’m not jealous!”
“Maybe a little?” she wheedles, and then I realize that she wants me to be. Badly.
“Sure, fine, a little,” I give her, like a gift. I make a face. “Now tell me everything.”
“Okay.” She smiles at me in the way that she has, where you feel like a spotlight has been shone on you and like you’re the only person who ever matters to her and ever will.
I lie back on the hot sand and float in and out of listening. A plane cuts through the sheet of blue, carving a solid white line upward from the horizon. An eagle, far overhead, soars silently, focused on a distant point. “He does this thing when he’s kissing me,” she says. “Where he holds the back of my head, like he’s carrying an egg.”
“An egg?” I laugh. “Wow, that’s romantic. I wasn’t jealous before, but now I’m seething with it. What kind of egg? Robin’s egg? Crow’s egg? Ostrich’s egg? Those are huge. Kind of head-sized, I guess.”
“It is romantic!” she protests. “I’m probably not describing it right. It’s like he’s cupping my whole being, you know?”
I roll my eyes behind my sunglasses. “Uh-huh. That’s … well, it’s something.”
She leans up on her elbows, her shadow stretching over me, long and cool. “I can’t explain it,” she says. “I know I sound like an idiot. I don’t even believe in love, right? I believe in science. It’s dopamine. A rush of chemicals against receptors. I get it, but at the same time, it sure feels good.” She paus
es. “That’s probably true of heroin, too.”
“Sure, except heroin is a narcotic that eventually kills you after robbing you of everything you’ve ever had and cared about.”
“Yeah, exactly,” she says. “I knew you’d get it.”
“Ha ha,” I scoff. “I don’t, but I do. You’re in love. If love wasn’t a thing that people got all goo-goo about, then Hallmark wouldn’t exist. Or even if they did, no one would be buying their stupid heart-carrying teddy bears.”
“Truth,” she says. “Should I buy him a teddy bear?”
I laugh. “I get the feeling he’s not a teddy bear guy,” I say, in case she wasn’t kidding.
“Duh,” she says. “It was a joke! I am anti–teddy bear. I am going to start an organization of People Against Teddies. I will devote my life to ridding the world of button-eyed bears in bow ties.”
I take one last gulp of my drink, which is now a warmish sweetish mess. “This is terrible,” I say. “Why do we drink this? We need to drink something better. Champagne. Or a nice brandy.”
“Brandy is worse,” she says. “Champagne, for sure. It could be our signature drink.”
“Yes! Vodka and blue Slurpee is definitely not it.” I burp. I tip the dregs out onto the sand and it disappears into the ground, leaving a blue circle.
“That’s going to attract bees,” she complains. “Why did you do that?”
“Ohhh, bees, scary,” I mutter. “It’s okay when you do it, though.”
She flips over onto her back and sprays sunscreen all over her front. A cloud of it billows into my face. I cough. “Hypocrite.”
“Because I don’t want skin cancer?”
“Because you smoke!” I say. “You’re already doomed to be one of those old people pulling around an oxygen tank, barking like a seal.”
“So are you,” she says flatly.
“At least we’ll be together,” I offer. “They’ll have cured cancer by then. We’ll have synthetic lungs or pigs’ lungs or we’ll regrow our own lungs from stem cells or something.”
“Well, as long as you’ve thought it through,” she says. “I’m going to quit smoking. Soup says it’s like kissing an ashtray.”