“Um.” Brain freeze. Shit. I told him I had an after-school job. “Yeah. I help out at the law firm my mother works at,” I lie again. “Just filing and copying stuff. Nothing major. I’m just waiting for her.”
“Cool,” Michael says. “So, uh…” His neck sprouts red patches near the collar of his T-shirt that blossom upward along his neck. “Since you’re busy after school during the week, do you want to meet tomorrow at Starbucks? Or the Cranbury library? Not too long. Just try to bang out that list of sources? It’s due on Monday.”
“Umm…” The Accord rounds the wide curve to the front doors of the school, barreling toward us. I’m suddenly nervous to meet Michael. I haven’t done anything with a kid my own age in almost two years. Since that freshman-year talent show.
Michael studies me. “My mom could give you a ride,” he says. “I have my license, but I still can only drive my family.”
In Connecticut, you can get your license at sixteen and a half, but you can’t drive your friends around until you’ve had it for at full year. Which is a nonissue for me, given the lack of both a license and friends.
“No,” I say quickly. “That’s okay. My mom doesn’t work until later in the afternoon. She can take me.”
“Okay, how’s one-thirty?”
I swallow. “Sure. Let’s meet at the library.” This is just in case Mom can’t drive. The library is close enough for me to walk to.
“It’s a plan.” He smiles broadly. He doesn’t say anything else; he just looks down at me like we’ve accomplished something great. Tyler elbows him, jolting him out of his triumph. “Okay, Cath, see you tomorrow,” Michael says. “Let’s meet on the front steps?”
“Yeah. See you then. Nice to meet you, Tyler.”
In the car, Mom gives a restrained hi, but happiness oozes out of her. Her little Catherine was talking to not one, ladies and gentlemen, but two, count ’em, two new friends! Mom sits erect in the driver’s seat, her fingers tapping in time to a Bonnie Raitt song. It’s always Bonnie Raitt. The eject button broke and that CD has been held hostage for the past two years.
Through her barely suppressed smile, Mom babbles excuses for picking me up at 2:55. “Cath, I’m sorry. It was a closing from hell. They’re still waiting for the bank to wire the funds. They weren’t going to let me leave. Are you sure you don’t want to take the van?” she asks, before quickly retracting that question. “No, no, that’s okay.” She shakes her head. “I’m giving them an extra unpaid hour for this arrangement,” she says, speeding past the strip mall. “And Aunt Darlene will pick you up tonight. I’m headed straight to Dominic’s after work.”
I despise arriving late to anything and I know Amy will probably say something snarky, but the anger that I would normally feel is surprisingly absent. Maybe it’s because I have plans for tomorrow. With Michael. The number one (and only) candidate for L.V. Could he be the one I connect with? The boy who holds me so tight it’s impossible to get any closer?
This thought soothes me. As we race into the parking lot, I realize I’m not dreading St. Anne’s anymore. It’s not quite as hellish as I expected. On Wednesday, Sandy continued the bullying discussion. Lil’ Tommy advised us that the school nurse is letting him use one of the bathrooms in her office to wash his hands. John, still in the Red Sox gear, wanted to talk about his wrestling teammates and how they were all over him last year to cut weight for matches. His supportive buddies had pushed puking, laxatives, extended sauna visits and spitting (I had never heard of that one—just constant spitting into a Gatorade bottle), all of which had kick-started his bulimia. Kristal managed to arrive on time and chose to sit next to me on Wednesday and Thursday, even though spots on the other sofas were still open.
Kristal is recovering from an eating disorder. I learned this when she told John her strategy for handling her “touch of bulimia.” Kristal said, “Every time I was stressing, about school or my weight or something with my friends, and I wanted to just slam everything down my throat, I would just say fuck it. Fuck it. Two little words. Simple yet effective. I’m telling you, you’ve got to try it.”
Yesterday, Garrett ran the discussion on drugs. Garrett volunteered that he’s on probation for selling his Adderall to finance a pot habit. He even sold to a few of John’s wrestling teammates for weight loss. I still haven’t said a word, but Sandy hasn’t pushed me with any dumb comments like “Why don’t we hear what Catherine has to say?”
The Immaculate Conception girls and Kristal are absent today. Alexis and Amy are off at some retreat, and Kristal is headed to Boston for freshman parents’ weekend at her brother’s college. So Sandy returns to bullying. “Today I’d like for us to discuss how we handle bullies. John and Tom have told us their experiences, and Tom has found a way to avoid confrontations, but what can John try? Any thoughts on how he can handle the upcoming wrestling season?”
“Yeah, take up swimming!” Tommy shouts.
I stay quiet. I have no advice on this practice of cutting weight. When I was dancing I never had to worry about weight like Riley and some other girls did. But at break time, while Garrett and Lil’ Tommy chow down on chocolate-covered raisins, John ventures up to my sofa and sits down next to me. He asks me what I think of the IOP so far. And it’s weird because I feel surprisingly okay talking to him. It’s like the public knowledge inside these four walls that we are all damaged in some way liberates me. And while I don’t feel I can speak completely unguarded to John, for at least three hours a day, five days a week, I do feel a lot of the layer of shame slipping away.
Aunt Darlene is waiting for me after the session, her red Mini Cooper illegally parked in a handicap space directly in front of the door. Aunt Darlene isn’t my real aunt; she’s my mom’s best friend since high school. She never married. Her parents bought a Dunkin’ Donuts back when no one had ever heard of the chain around here, and now Aunt D owns and manages a small empire of them in Cranbury and the surrounding towns.
Inside the car, we run the same affectionate Friday-night dialogue, our lines perfected over the previous forty consecutive Friday nights that Aunt D has babysat me while Mom works at Dominic’s. I slide into the front passenger seat and Aunt D bear-hugs me ferociously. “Hey, baby! How are you?”
Kissing her on the cheek, I disentangle myself. “Fine.”
Aunt D gives me her usual appraisal, beaming like perfect Kate Middleton is beside her. “Ready to eat? I’m starving!”
“You can just take me home. You don’t have to hang out with me tonight. I’m fine.”
Aunt D puts the car in reverse. “I know you’re fine. But who else am I gonna hang out with? My cats?” She backs up and drives out of the parking lot. The interior of the Mini Cooper is permanently infused with vanilla and coffee. It’s delicious. I take a deep breath as my faux aunt turns to me with her trademark grin. “How does Mexican sound?”
—
The house is still and dark when Aunt Darlene drops me off. Mom forgot to leave the lamp on for me this morning. After the music and crowds at Casa de Amigos, the silence presses on my ears. Flipping on the living room lights, I take the to-go burrito Aunt D ordered for Mom and put it in the fridge.
I text Mom that I’m home, and two minutes later she replies: “Should be home by 10. Hopefully earlier. Slow nite here. Xoxo” followed immediately by “Please don’t forget ur pill. Call me asap if u see a rash.”
One lone Lamictal lies on the counter next to an empty glass. I promised Aunt D I’d take it, and surprisingly, she agreed not to come inside this time to witness it for Mom. I palm the tan pill and head upstairs. Pulling out the shoe box, I line the troops up on my night table. I open the Lexapro bottle and drop today’s Lamictal inside it. It’s slightly OCD, but I like to keep the L’s together. I lie back on my white down comforter, drowsy from my enchilada and fried ice cream. My bed feels good.
A choo from my phone startles me, and I realize I fell asleep. I’m having a much easier time falling asleep lately, but now is definite
ly not the time I want to do it.
Shit.
I bolt out of bed, heart slamming against my rib cage. The troops are still out in the open and it’s 9:51 p.m. Michael’s text woke me, thank God. Mom’s not home yet. Ignoring the text, I toss the troops into the shoe box, cover them up and hustle downstairs to Grandma’s room. I can’t take that chance tonight, leaving them in my room with Mom prowling around all weekend. In the darkness, I whip the plastic box out from under Grandma’s bed and struggle with the zipper on the old plaid suitcase. I’m sweating. Every little sound could be the key in the front door.
I tuck the troops inside the suitcase, slide everything back into place and fix the bed skirt. Shaking, I rest my head on Grandma’s favorite yellow afghan. I burrow my nose into it, seeking her scent, the Yardley English Lavender we could never find in a store, only online. She’d always ask the salesclerks at Kohl’s why they didn’t carry it. My throat tightens. I’m tired. Tired of being scared. Tired of this life. I want to go back to when Grandma was alive and I was okay. It’s too hard for me now. I start to cry.
Where are you, Grandma?
No answer.
Michael sits next to me at a scarred wooden table in the first-floor reading room. This is where I spent most of my summer volunteer time, and I note, a little smugly, that whoever’s doing the “Hot Arrivals” display doesn’t have my artistic touch. This is my favorite room in the Cranbury Public Library, large but still cozy, with a beamed ceiling, fireplace and scattered Oriental rugs. High shelves of DVDs, audiobooks and magazines give most of the tables privacy, but Michael dumped his backpack on a table right in the center, so we’re in plain sight of everybody entering the room this Saturday afternoon. Octogenarian Gary, one of my fellow volunteers, gave a wobbly thumbs-up when he spotted me from behind the circulation desk.
Flipping open his laptop, Michael logs on to the library’s Wi-Fi. He glances at his phone to read a new text. “My mom said it’s no problem to drive you home.”
I smile politely. But inside I’m furious with Mom.
Michael jogged up to the Accord as Mom and I pulled up to the curb, and before I could shut the door behind me, Mom had already called out hello to him. Michael bent down to speak with her through the passenger-side window.
“I’m sorry for changing the time today,” he said. That was his text to me last night, the one that woke me up and saved me and my troops from discovery. He had texted that he had to meet at two today and not one-thirty, like we originally planned. “I can give Catherine a ride home if you’re leaving for work,” he told Mom, unknowingly touching a live wire.
A short battle between Mom and me had erupted this morning, with Mom wanting to call Aunt D to pick me up from the library and me begging to walk the two miles home.
Ignoring the terms of the treaty we had agreed upon (I could walk but needed to text her every five seconds), Mom jumped on Michael’s offer to drive me home. “Oh, that would be great! Thanks, Michael. And please tell your mom I appreciate it,” she said, not even checking with me to see if that was okay, if I wanted to drive home with Michael and his mother—which I definitely did not. I turned my back on her and started up the steps. I heard her yell, “Cath, hon, I’ll be home around seven. See you then!”
I didn’t turn around. Instead I hurried up the stone steps away from her.
Michael had bounded up the steps in front of me, stopping in front of the ornately carved door more fitting for a church than a library. He smiled at me, the sun catching and highlighting the chocolate-brown of his eyes.
“You even run gracefully,” he said.
This threw me. “What are you talking about?”
“You run like this.” Michael stuck both arms out perpendicular to his body, his long fingers pointing up to the sky, and flapped. He resembled a turkey, a not very graceful one, and a laugh burst out of me.
“Can you still do those turns? The ones where you spin on one leg and the other leg twirls you around?” he asked.
“A fouetté turn?”
“Uh…I don’t know. Why don’t you do one here?”
I laughed again. “Here? On top of the library steps? I don’t think so.”
“Well, that’s my goal, then,” Michael said, pulling open the door. “To get you to do a fwetay turn for me.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, still laughing at the image of me doing one in front of the library’s double doors. What if Riley or Dr. McCallum drove by at that very instant? Jesus.
Now Michael opens a Word document on his laptop. “Here’s our list of primary and secondary sources so far. I thought you could take a look at them, see if they’re good. And then maybe we can check out what they have in the history section downstairs.”
“Sounds good.” I can’t in good conscience let this guy do all the work. It doesn’t feel right anymore. Even if the odds of me seeing this project completed are basically nil. So instead of just eyeballing the sites and sources, I grab a couple of sheets of paper and a pen from my bag.
“Is this where you work?” Michael asks, picking up a sheet of my scrap paper with the embossed letterhead. The thick, expensive paper is from Mom’s law firm. The printers not only got the zip and area codes wrong but also made gross errors in spelling—“The Law Offices of Hefferman & Schletz” morphed into the cheesier “Hosserman & Schlitz.” Mom rescued the boxes of rejected stationery dumped next to the office garbage cans and brought them home. We use this whenever we can to conserve my school loose-leaf.
I nod in response to Michael’s question about my fictitious employer and then turn to the computer screen. Michael did a great job with “our” sources. There are three books by local authors on Jonathan Kasia, and a couple of websites highlighting the annual parade, the baseball field in his honor and the statue of him on the Waterbury Green. Michael also listed two non-Kasia names with Waterbury addresses.
“What are these?” I ask, tapping my pen on the names.
“Those are possible Kasia relatives,” Michael says proudly. “I used my mom’s Ancestry.com account to look them up.” He leans forward and says, too loudly in the cavernous room that amplifies every sound, “We can interview them. See if they have any pictures or letters. Maybe there’s an old uniform up in the attic? Wouldn’t that be cool? I found some phone numbers. We should try calling them later, okay?”
A timely shush comes from Gary. He winks at us as he puts a finger to his lips. Michael flushes guiltily, so I distract him with a suggestion that we check out the books in the history section to fatten our bibliography. On the library’s research computer, I find a couple of books on Normandy and write down their call numbers on my Hosserman and Schlitz letterhead.
“How do you know how to do that so fast?” Michael asks, pointing to the computer screen with the research results.
“I volunteered here during the summer,” I say. “I had to help out with research sometimes.”
“Wow, Cath,” he says, looking at me with a scaled-down version of awe. “So you worked here in the summer and now at the law firm? Impressive.”
His comments make me feel sweet and sour, because one part of my résumé is the truth and the other is a defensive lie. I wish I had never told him about the law firm. I wish I didn’t have to.
We’re the only two people downstairs in the dusty history stacks. Michael reads out the call numbers as I hunt the shelves. I’m taking the last book off the shelf when I get a mother of a paper cut.
“Ow!” I cry out before popping my right index finger in my mouth. I hate these little lightning strikes of pain.
Ever the do-gooder, Michael says, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a Band-Aid on me. You really shouldn’t put it in your mouth.” He crouches down and rifles through the small pocket on the outside of his backpack. “Here it is,” he says, a small ziplock bag swinging in his hand. It has Band-Aids and, dear Lord, a tube of Neosporin. This makes me laugh. Out loud. For like the third time today.
“Wow. You’re prepared
,” I say.
“Here.” Michael has ripped open a Band-Aid and squeezed a dot of Neosporin onto it. “This has got a painkiller in it. Paper cuts are the worst.” He looks away as he holds the Band-Aid out for me. “Sorry. I am not good with blood.”
I bandage up my finger. “Thanks.”
He’s gone a little pale.
“Let’s sit down for a sec,” I suggest. “Look at these books.”
Michael nods and slides his back slowly along the wall to the floor, where he lands Indian-style.
“Do you need some water?” I ask. “Or I can wet a paper towel and you can put it on your neck?”
Somehow, I’ve morphed into my forty-year-old mother.
He closes his eyes, leans his head against the wall and smiles. “No, I need a stronger stomach. I don’t know how to get over this. It’s gotten worse since that anatomy class.”
“There wasn’t any red stuff,” I say. “No worries.”
His eyes remain shut but his smile grows bigger. “I think you might be lying about that, but thank you.” And then, as if he forgot his manners, he sits upright, eyes snapping open. “How’s your finger?”
His concern over my lousy little paper cut gets to me somehow. A wave of feeling rises inside me that’s unfamiliar but good. I can’t identify the emotion.
“It’s fine,” I say.
Suddenly, I have no doubt. My first and last connection will be Michael. He is kind and gentle. Safe. I feel so grateful that he appeared in my life like a parting gift. Just in the nick of time. My clock is running down, and I have no idea when the buzzer will sound, but I know that I have to do this. I have to have my first and last connection, before Zero drives me off. And now I don’t need to search for an L.V. candidate. I’ve found him. He is sitting right here, two feet away, and smiling at me like I’m healthy. I feel my lips turn up, returning the smile. What would his arms feel like around me, pulling me close?
Unexpectedly, a riptide of loss courses through me, shattering the moment. What might there have been with this boy, if I were normal?
The Weight of Zero Page 6
