by Jenny Han
I nodded and slid it right back off. “Jeremiah doesn’t like blue cheese,” I told her. Then I took a handful of water crackers and a cluster of green grapes. “Have you seen Conrad?”
“I think he’s in the basement,” she said. Rearranging the cheese plate, she added, “Why don’t you go check on him and bring him a plate? I’ll take this one up to the boys.”
“Okay.” I picked up the plate and crossed the dining room just as Jeremiah and Steven came downstairs. I stood there and watched Jeremiah stop and talk to people, letting them hug him and grasp his hand. Our eyes met, and I lifted my hand and waved it just barely. He lifted his and did the same, rolling his eyes a little at the woman clutching his arm. Susannah would have been proud.
Then I headed downstairs, to the basement. The basement was carpeted and soundproofed. Susannah had it set up when Conrad took up the electric guitar.
It was dark; Conrad hadn’t turned the lights on. I waited for my eyes to adjust, and then I crept down the stairs, feeling my way.
I found him soon enough. He was lying down on the couch with his head in a girl’s lap. She was running her hands along the top of his head, like they belonged there. Even though summer had just barely started, she was tan. Her shoes were off, her bare legs were stretched out on top of the coffee table. And Conrad, he was stroking her leg.
Everything in me seized up, pulled in tight.
I had seen her at the funeral. I’d thought she was really pretty, and I’d wondered who she was. She looked East Asian, like she might be Indian. She had dark hair and dark eyes and she was wearing a black miniskirt and a white and black polka-dot blouse. And a headband, she was wearing a black headband.
She saw me first. “Hey,” she said.
That’s when Conrad looked over and saw me standing in the doorway with a plate of cheese and crackers. He sat up. “Is that food for us?” he asked, not quite looking at me.
“My mother sent it,” I said, and my voice came out mumbly and quiet. I walked over and put the plate on the coffee table. I stood there for a second, unsure of what to do next.
“Thanks,” the girl said, in a way that sounded more like, You can go now. Not in a mean way, but in a way that made it clear I was interrupting.
I backed out of the room slowly but when I got to the stairs, I started to run. I ran by all the people in the living room and I could hear Conrad coming after me.
“Wait a minute,” he called out.
I’d almost made it through the foyer when he caught up to me and grabbed my arm.
“What do you want?” I said, shaking him off. “Let go of me.”
“That was Aubrey,” he said, letting go.
Aubrey, the girl who broke Conrad’s heart. I’d pictured her differently. I’d pictured her blond. This girl was prettier than what I had pictured. I could never compete with a girl like that.
I said, “Sorry I interrupted your little moment.”
“Oh, grow up,” he said.
There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you’d erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.
What I said next was one of those moments for me.
On the day of his mother’s funeral, to the boy I loved more than I had ever loved anything or anyone, I said, “Go to hell.”
It was the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone, ever. It wasn’t that I’d never said the words before. But the look on his face. I’ll never forget it. The look on his face made me want to die. It confirmed every mean and low thing I’d ever thought about myself, the stuff you hope and pray no one will ever know about you. Because if they knew, they would see the real you, and they would despise you.
Conrad said, “I should have known you’d be like this.”
Miserably, I asked him, “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, his jaw tight. “Forget it.”
“No, say it.”
He started to turn around, to leave, but I stopped him. I stood in his way. “Tell me,” I said, my voice rising.
He looked at me and said, “I knew it was a bad idea, starting something with you. You’re just a kid. It was a huge mistake.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
People were starting to look. My mother was standing in the living room, talking to people I didn’t recognize. She’d glanced up when I’d started speaking. I couldn’t even look at her; I could feel my face burning.
I knew the right thing to do was to walk away. I knew that was what I was supposed to do. In that moment, it was like I was floating above myself and I could see me and how everybody in that room was looking at me. But when Conrad just shrugged and started to leave again, I felt so mad, and so—small. I wanted to stop myself, but I couldn’t quit.
“I hate you,” I said.
Conrad turned around and nodded, like he’d expected me to say exactly that. “Good,” he said. The way he looked at me then, pitying and fed up and just over it. It made me feel sick.
“I never want to see you again,” I said, and then I pushed past him, and I ran up the staircase so fast I tripped on the top step. I fell right onto my knees, hard. I think I heard someone gasp. I could barely see through my tears. Blindly, I got back up and ran to the guest room.
I took off my glasses and lay down on the bed and cried.
It wasn’t Conrad I hated. It was myself.
My father came up after a while. He knocked a few times, and when I didn’t answer, he came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you all right?” he asked me. His voice was so gentle, I could feel tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes again. No one should be nice to me. I didn’t deserve it.
I rolled away so my back was to him. “Is Mom mad at me?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Come back downstairs and say good-bye to everyone.”
“I can’t.” How could I go back downstairs and face everyone after I’d made that scene? It was impossible. I was humiliated, and I had done it to myself.
“What happened with you and Conrad, Belly? Did you have a fight? Did you two break up?” It was so odd to hear the words “break up” come out of my dad’s mouth. I couldn’t discuss it with him. It was just too bizarre.
“Dad, I can’t talk about this stuff with you. Could you just go? I want to be alone.”
“All right,” he said, and I could hear the hurt in his voice. “Do you want me to get your mother?”
She was the last person I wanted to see. Right away, I said, “No, please don’t.”
The bed creaked as my father got up and closed the door.
The only person I wanted was Susannah. She was the only one. And then I had a thought, clear as day. I would never be somebody’s favorite again. I would never be a kid again, not in the same way. That was all over now. She was really gone.
I hoped Conrad listened to me. I hoped I never saw him again. If I ever had to look at him again, if he looked at me the way he did that day, it would break me.
chapter six
JULY 3
When the phone rang early the next morning, my first thought was, The only kind of calls you get this early in the morning are the bad ones. I was right, sort of.
I think I was still in a dream state when I heard his voice. For one long second, I thought it was Conrad, and for that second, I could not catch my breath. Conrad calling me again—that was enough to make me forget how to breathe. But it wasn’t Conrad. It was Jeremiah.
They were brothers, after all; their voices were alike. Alike but not the same. He, Jeremiah, said, “Belly, it’s Jeremiah. Conrad’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Suddenly I was wide awake and my heart was in my throat. Gone had come to mean something different, in a way that it hadn’t used to. Something permanent.
�
��He took off from summer school a couple of days ago and he hasn’t come back. Do you know where he is?”
“No.” Conrad and I hadn’t spoken since Susannah’s funeral.
“He missed two exams. He’d never do that.” Jeremiah sounded desperate, panicky even. I’d never heard him sound that way. He was always at ease, always laughing, never serious. And he was right, Conrad would never do that, he’d never just leave without telling anybody. Not the old Conrad, anyway. Not the Conrad I had loved since I was ten years old, not him.
I sat up, rubbed at my eyes. “Does your dad know?”
“Yeah. He’s freaking out. He can’t deal with this kind of thing.” This kind of thing would be Susannah’s domain, not Mr. Fisher’s.
“What do you want to do, Jere?” I tried to make my voice sound the way my mother’s would. Calm, reasonable. Like I wasn’t scared out of my mind, the thought of Conrad gone. It wasn’t so much that I thought he was in trouble. It was that if he left, really left, he might never come back. And that scared me more than I could say.
“I don’t know.” Jeremiah let out a big gust of air. “His phone has been off for days. Do you think you could help me find him?”
Immediately I said, “Yes. Of course. Of course I can.”
Everything made sense in that moment. This was my chance to make things right with Conrad. The way I saw it, this was what I had been waiting for and I hadn’t even known it. It was like the last two months I had been sleepwalking, and now here I was, finally awake. I had a goal, a purpose.
That last day I’d said horrible things. Unforgiveable things. Maybe, if I helped him in some small way, I’d be able to fix what was broken.
Even so, as scared as I was at the thought of Conrad being gone, as eager as I was to redeem myself, the thought of being near him again terrified me. No one on this earth affected me the way Conrad Fisher did.
As soon as Jeremiah and I got off the phone, I was everywhere at once, throwing underwear and T-shirts into my big overnight bag. How long would it take us to find him? Was he okay? I would have known if he wasn’t okay, wouldn’t I? I packed my toothbrush, a comb. Contact solution.
My mother was ironing clothes in the kitchen. She was staring off into nowhere, her forehead one big crease. “Mom?” I asked.
Startled, she looked at me. “What? What’s up?”
I’d already planned what I’d say next. “Taylor’s having some kind of breakdown because she and Davis broke up again. I’m gonna stay over at her place tonight, maybe tomorrow, too, depending on how she feels.”
I held my breath, waiting for her to speak. My mother has a bullshit detector like no one I’ve ever known. It’s more than a mother’s intuition, it’s like a homing device. But no alerts went off, no bells or whistles. Her face was perfectly blank.
“All right,” she said, going back to her ironing.
And then, “Try and be home tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ll make halibut.” She spritzed starch on khaki pants. I was home free. I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t, not really.
“I’ll try,” I said.
For a moment, I thought about telling her the truth. Of all people, she’d understand. She’d want to help. She loved them both. It was my mother who took Conrad to the emergency room the time he broke his arm skateboarding, because Susannah was shaking so hard she couldn’t drive. My mother was steady, solid. She always knew what to do.
Or at least, she used to. Now I wasn’t so sure. When Susannah got sick again, my mother went on autopilot, doing what needed doing. Barely present. The other day I’d come downstairs to find her sweeping the front hallway, and her eyes were red, and I’d been afraid. She wasn’t the crying kind. Seeing her like that, like an actual person and not just my mother, it almost made me not trust her.
My mother set down her iron. She picked up her purse from the counter and pulled out her wallet. “Buy Taylor some Ben & Jerry’s, on me,” she said, handing me a twenty.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, taking the twenty and stuffing it into my pocket. It would come in handy for gas money later.
“Have fun,” she said, and she was gone again. Absent. Ironing the same pair of khaki pants she’d just gone over.
When I was in my car, driving away, I finally let myself feel it. Relief. No silent, sad mother, not today. I hated to leave her and I hated to be near her, because she made me remember what I wanted most to forget. Susannah was gone, and she wasn’t coming back, and none of us would be the same ever again.
chapter seven
At Taylor’s house, the front door was almost never locked. Her staircase, with its long banister and shiny wooden steps, was as familiar to me as my own.
After I let myself into the house, I went straight up to her room.
Taylor was lying on her stomach, flipping through gossip magazines. As soon as she saw me, she sat up and said, “Are you a masochist, or what?”
I threw my duffel bag on the floor and sat down next to her. I’d called her on the way over; I’d told her everything. I hadn’t wanted to, but I’d done it.
“Why are you going off looking for him?” she demanded. “He’s not your boyfriend anymore.”
I sighed. “Like he ever really was.”
“My point exactly.” She thumbed through a magazine and handed it to me. “Check it out. I could see you in this bikini. The white bandeau one. It’ll look hot with your tan.”
“Jeremiah’s going to be here soon,” I said, looking at the magazine and handing it back to her. I couldn’t picture me in that bikini. But I could picture her in it.
“You so should have picked Jeremy,” she said. “Conrad is basically a crazy person.”
I’d told her and told her how it wasn’t as easy as picking one or the other. Nothing ever was. It wasn’t as though I’d even had a choice, not really.
“Conrad’s not crazy, Taylor.” She’d never forgiven Conrad for not liking her the summer I brought her to Cousins, the summer we were fourteen. Taylor was used to all the boys liking her, she was unaccustomed to being ignored. Which was exactly what Conrad had done. Not Jeremiah, though. As soon as she batted her big brown eyes at him, he was hers. Her Jeremy, that’s what she’d called him—in that teasing kind of way, the kind that boys love. Jeremiah lapped it right up, too, until she ditched him for my brother, Steven.
Pursing her lips, Taylor said, “Fine, maybe that was a little harsh. Maybe he’s not crazy. But, like, what? Are you always just going to be sitting around waiting for him? Whenever he wants?”
“No! But he’s in some kind of trouble. He needs his friends now more than ever,” I said, picking at a loose strand on the carpet. “No matter what happened between us, we’ll always be friends.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. The only reason I’m even signing off on this is for you to get closure.”
“Closure?”
“Yes. I can see now that it’s the only way. You need to see Conrad face-to-face and tell him you’re over him and you’re not gonna play his games anymore. Then and only then can you move on from his lame ass.”
“Taylor, I’m not innocent in all this either.” I swallowed. “The last time I saw him, I was awful.”
“Whatever. The point is, you need to move on. On to greener pastures.” She eyed me. “Like Cory. Who, by the way, I doubt you even have a chance with anymore after last night.”
Last night seemed like a thousand years ago. I did my best to look contrite and said, “Hey, thanks again for letting me leave my car here. If my mom calls—”
“Please, Belly. Show a little respect. I’m the queen of lying to parents, unlike you.” She sniffed. “You’re gonna be back in time for tomorrow night, right? We’re all gonna go out on Davis’s parents’ boat, remember? You promised.”
“That’s not until eight or nine. I’m sure I’ll be back by then. Besides,” I pointed out, “I never promised you anythin
g.”
“Then promise now,” she commanded. “Promise you’ll be here.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why do you want me back here so bad? So you can sic Cory Wheeler on me again? You don’t need me. You have Davis.”
“I do so need you, even if you are a terrible best friend. Boyfriends aren’t the same as best friends and you know it. Pretty soon we’ll be in college, you know. What if we go to different schools? What then?” Taylor glared at me, her eyes accusing.
“Okay, okay. I promise.” Taylor still had her heart set on us going to the same school, the way we’d always said we would.
She held out her hand to me and we hooked pinkies.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Taylor asked me suddenly.
Looking down at my gray camisole, I said, “Well, yeah.”
She shook her head so fast her blond hair swished all around. “Is that what you’re wearing to see Conrad for the first time?”
“This isn’t a date I’m going on, Taylor.”
“When you see an ex, you have to look better than you’ve ever looked. It’s, like, the first rule of breakups. You have to make him think, ‘Damn, I missed out on that?’ It’s the only way.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t care what he thinks,” I told her.
She was already rifling through my overnight bag. “All you have in here is underwear and a T-shirt. And this old tank top. Ugh. I hate this tank top. It needs to be officially retired.”
“Quit it,” I said. “Don’t go through my stuff.”
Taylor leaped up, her face all glowy and excited. “Oh, please let me pack for you, Belly! Please, it would make me so happy.”
“No,” I said, as firmly as I could. With Taylor, you had to be firm. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow. I don’t need anything else.”
Taylor ignored me and disappeared into her walk-in closet.
My phone rang then, and it was Jeremiah. Before I answered it, I said, “I’m serious, Tay.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it all covered. Just think of me as your fairy godmother,” she said from inside the closet.
