“Maybe an old VW,” Chris says.
It’s easier to look him straight in the eyes at night. During the day I find myself wanting to look anywhere else, usually at his clavicle, because to look at him directly makes my chest feel as if it will collapse into itself. But here, he cannot see how much I want him and how baffled I am about what to do about it.
Right now, he can’t see how much he hurt me this afternoon.
“Lor, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
“What are you doing out here?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I started drawing. Then I looked out the window and saw a pale ghost wandering past my house. And I figured the ghost was probably my best friend and I was worried about her, so I followed her.”
I am mad at him. I don’t want him to make me feel good right now.
“How bad was today for you?” he asks.
“Terrible,” I say. I know he’s talking about the arboretum and the craisins and my mom, but I’m talking about his horrible relieved face in the house.
“I mean, it could have been worse,” I continue, wanting to answer his real question. “I liked where we put her. I think it was the right place, out of the way but close to beautiful things.”
He comes closer. “Jeez, Lori, are you out here in just pajamas? Did you bring your phone?”
I shrug.
“You’ve lost your mind. Why would you do that? It’s not safe this late.”
“I was upset,” I say, and I hope he gets the hint that he is my problem right now.
He shakes his head. “I brought us something,” he says.
Chris has his backpack with him, and he puts it on the ground to open it. He pulls out something white, and when my eyes focus in the dark, I can make out a pair of roller skates. He hands them to me and then pulls out another.
I look down at the swinging skates, holding them by their shoelaces.
“Whose are these?”
“My parents’. Didn’t you know? They met at roller-skating rink.”
I smile. Of course they did. Chris’s parents are so dreamy.
“I knew they met in high school,” I say. “I just didn’t know how.”
“I can’t believe my mom hasn’t told you this story fifty thousand times.”
He takes a deep, dramatic breath to prepare his delivery.
“You see,” he says, mimicking his mom’s voice for a second, “they went to neighboring high schools, but they both went to some Friday-night skate thing. The place was called Skate Island. He asked her to be his partner for a couples’ skate. But then they never stopped couples skating, and they held hands for the rest of the night. Their first skate was to the song ‘Endless Summer Nights’ by Richard Marx. That’s why they danced to the song on their wedding.”
I can tell, even as he tries to sound unmoved by the details, that he also loves this story and thinks it’s adorable, too.
“Anyway, sometimes they skate on their anniversary. My mom wears my dad’s old jacket. It’s a whole thing.”
He motions to the skates.
“Put ’em on,” he says.
I look around the mostly abandoned lot.
“Is this safe? To be skating around a parking lot this late, after the mall has closed?”
“Safe for you,” Chris says with an exhausted laugh, and now I realize I should be extra worried about what a mall security guard might do or say if they notice us. “But restaurants are still open. Anyway, it’s safer for me with you, so just stay close.”
I can do close, I think as I reach for the skates.
“Are they even my size?” I ask, trying to find a number on the sole. “Your mom’s feet are probably like dainty and perfect and size seven.”
I look; they are a 9, only half a size smaller than mine.
“But I don’t have socks on,” I say.
“You’re also in your pajamas, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.”
Fair enough.
I follow him over to a nearby curb and we sit side by side, shoving our feet into skates that have been broken in by other people. Mine fit better than I thought they would; they’re snug, but they don’t hurt.
I try to stand up in them, but I fall back down, my rear end landing hard on the parking lot curb. “Of course I’m terrible at this.”
“Can you not skate?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever done it,” I confess. “I tried ice skating when we lived in Cleveland, but I was really bad. Shouldn’t this be easier?”
I stand up again, this time more carefully, and Chris, whose skates are on and seem to fit perfectly, moves in front of me, taking my hands to hold me steady.
All of a sudden, because we’re closer, I’m more self-conscious about my pajamas and my crappy bra. This Target loungewear is so thin, and I feel a little naked.
At least I’m wearing eyeliner.
Chris is dressed similarly. He’s in a long Natick Arts T-shirt, something he’d wear to school, and thin sweatpants.
“What do I do?” I ask, and I’m not sure if I mean on these roller skates or with my entire life.
“Let’s skate,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
* * *
I have never lived in Natick without knowing Chris.
I moved in on a Sunday, only two weeks after Grandma Sheryl convinced Mom that sending me to live here wouldn’t make her a bad parent—that it would sort of be like sending me to a boarding school.
No more moving around, Grandma told her. I needed consistency, especially for high school.
Mom had started studying to be a life coach, which I guess is someone who, ironically, helps other people make responsible decisions, but it was going to involve a lot of time out of the house, and after I had gone through so much change and so many moves, Grandma was assertive. I was thrilled to join her.
Grandma’s house was where I could talk about books and television. Grandma Sheryl treated me like a writer. She even set me up at Seth’s old desk.
I had managed my expectations about school in Natick. I mean, most suburban schools are kind of the same, but high school would be different no matter where I was, and this one seemed even bigger than the ones in Cleveland or New Jersey. Once I started, I realized that some kids looked really old. The hallways were crowded. There was a moderately angry woman working the desk in the front office, and she behaved as though every person who walked in with a question had been put on this earth for the sole purpose of inconveniencing her.
“I’m just looking for a map,” I told her on my first day. Other kids had taken tours and had orientations. I’d never been inside. Plus, I was starting three weeks late. Everyone else had already had their first days of school.
She didn’t answer.
“Fine. I’m just looking for the library.”
The library is where I would relax during lunch whenever I felt stressed out at all of my middle schools. I also figured I could find a librarian who was nice enough to tell me where my classes were. A lesson you learn if you move a lot—you will always be better off getting information from someone in the library.
I had tucked myself away, behind a display of science fiction, and that was where I found Chris, sitting at a desk, his sketchpad in front of him, a pencil behind his ear. There was a Supreme sticker on his backpack (he peeled it off not long after we met). His long fingers held a piece of charcoal. I could see ink on his nails. His hair was short, but not shaven. I figured I was taller than him, and at that point I still was. Our heights would even out months later.
He looked thin but very fit, like the kind of guy who doesn’t play sports or lift weights but runs around a lot anyway.
“Hi,” I said. I wasn’t ready to talk to someone yet, but I wanted to see what he was making.
“You live on Sudbury Terrace,” he said, his voice lower than I expected. It gave me the good kind of chills.
“How did you know?” I asked, my voice too high.
&
nbsp; “I live there, too.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I keep seeing you run in and out of the house. Miss Sheryl is your grandma?”
“You call her Miss Sheryl?”
“I have since I was little,” he said. “She’s friends with my parents. She actually used to come watch me sometimes when I was super little, when my parents were doing work or church stuff. My mom borrows her books a lot. Your grandma’s house is like a library. I’m Chris.”
“Lori,” I answered, afraid that if I said too many words, I’d ruin this very normal social interaction with someone who seemed kind of great. It usually took me weeks or months to meet someone great.
“That’s a lot of notes for the first day of school,” he said, eyeing my full notebook and the ink marks all over my fingers. I loved that we were both messy with pens.
“It’s where I write stories,” I said. “I like to write sci-fi stuff and fan fiction.”
“Fan fiction for what?” he asked.
“Depends. Sometimes random ghost or zombie stuff, but also, like, stories for random His Dark Materials characters.”
“Cool,” he said. “What story are you working on now?”
I couldn’t come up with a lie, so I said the truth.
“A story about a guy who becomes a human mood ring. Like, when he’s mad, he glows red, or when he’s calm, he glows blue. He can’t hide any of his feelings. So basically it’s sort of about how people treat him when he can’t lie about how he feels. He can’t pretend he’s blue when he’s red.”
“What color is he when he’s happy?” Chris asked.
“Pink, I think. I haven’t gotten that far.”
“What do you call it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe just ‘Mood Man.’ Something like that.”
I sat down next to Chris as he pulled a small box out of his backpack and opened it to reveal a bunch of colored pencils. This was before he had the fancier case he works with now.
He began to draw, feverishly. Fast.
It was the Mood Man, but it was Chris. Same brown skin. Same dark blue shirt. Same short black hair. Same backpack covered in patches designed by his favorite artists. Those eyebrows with one freckle over the right one.
Chris made a halo of pink all around his body. “He’s happy,” he said.
“That’s really good,” I said. “You did that in like five seconds.”
“My best ideas usually come first,” he said. “I draw it up fast because it only goes downhill from there.”
“Cool,” I said, and then asked, “Why are you here during lunch?”
I regretted asking the question as soon as the words were out of my mouth. The question sounded rude. It’s just that I knew why I was hiding in the library, but I didn’t know what brought him here, with a turkey sandwich resting on the backpack next to him.
He looked up and smiled. “Lunch is a lot,” he said.
“A lot of food?”
Chris smiled again. “A lot of people.”
“Are people terrible in Natick?” I asked, wondering who he might be hiding from. In that moment I wanted to punish anyone who might be mean to this wonderful person.
“No, no,” he said. “I mean, in some cases, sure. I just like quiet sometimes. My best friends are on a different lunch shift. In the lunchroom, it’s just a lot. I can get anxious. Quiet makes me happy. I can draw better here.”
He glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes left of this peaceful, blissful lunch we were sharing.
“We should do another one,” he said, looking happy for me to be there, which felt like the world’s biggest win.
“Cool,” I said, and opened my notebook, trying to look unaffected. “Can you make a banshee?”
* * *
As we start to skate, I am thinking about our meeting, mostly because I imagine Chris radiating pink right now. I am so confused at this point that I’m radiating a rainbow.
I have never known Chris Burke to skate—he’s never mentioned doing it—but apparently it’s just another thing he’s amazing at, because he lets go of my hands and takes off, immediately moving backwards toward the other side of the parking lot. “Come on,” he says, as if I’ll be able to follow.
I lean forward, hoping it’s enough to get me somewhere, but I move only about an inch.
“You have to lift your feet,” he says, skating back toward me. When he gets close, I can see him grinning. “It’s like walking. Lift your feet and push back.”
I try again, lifting each skate and pushing myself a few feet forward. When I finally start to roll, I lose my balance again and lean back to keep myself from doing a face-plant on the pavement.
Chris circles behind me, and I feel him grab my waist.
His hands are right there, perhaps only three inches from my mostly unprotected breasts, and I stop breathing. He is so close. To breasts. Mine.
“Relax,” he says. Of course he’s noticed that I’m tense enough to snap. He just doesn’t know why.
He lets go and rolls himself in front of me, facing me. Then he takes both my hands in his—and we’re off.
He’s skating backwards, pulling me, weaving from side to side, and I’m doing very little besides saying, “Oh my god, oh my god, slow down,” but after I get used to how it feels, I try to keep up. He is setting the pace and our path, and he has my hands in a firm grip, which means all I have to think about is lifting my feet.
I become more confident, and my feet begin to move on their own. I dare to look up. We’re right by Lord & Taylor now, and in this section of the parking lot there are more abandoned cars. Chris weaves around them as if they’re part of an obstacle course designed for us.
“How are you so good at this?” I ask.
“I guess it’s in my genes,” he said. “I am a child born of Skate Island.”
He drops one of my hands so we can skate side by side. I am confident now, and I can probably go fast on my own, but being connected to his body feels so good. I fear that if we make it around the mall once, the night will be over, and I want it to never end.
In the back of my mind, I know I am angry with him. I have been rejected by him. But in this moment he wants me here, and I feel totally understood by him.
We’re holding hands like we’re dancing, and it will never be more romantic and intimate than this.
Chris starts singing, but I can’t place the song.
“What is that?”
He laughs. “It’s the song. The one my parents skated to. It’s a cheesy song. They play it sometimes, though, and then it gets stuck in my head.”
“Oh,” I say.
“‘I remember how you loved me . . .’” Chris sings, ending with something about endless summer nights, but he’s pretty tone-deaf, so I wouldn’t recognize the tune even if I knew it. I guess he’s not good at everything, but I love that too.
“I literally have never heard this song,” I say.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing my two hands again, and then we’re moving fast. I hold my breath as we see more of the mall.
“Jeez, from this angle, it looks like a castle,” I say, and by “it” I mean the Cheesecake Factory. The lights there are off, but under the glow of the lights around it, the restaurant looks medieval. Royal.
There are a few people in the parking lot on this side of the mall, probably coming out of late movies and restaurants, and when Chris spies them, he ducks and spins us back around so we can retrace our route. I’m quiet for this second loop, until we slow down back at Neiman Marcus.
“Why haven’t we snuck out for mall fun like this more often?” Chris asks, a little out of breath, and I hate that everything he says is starting to feel like a goodbye.
“Because you can’t roller-skate and draw at the same time.”
His pace slows, and my stomach flips, not in a good way. Or maybe in a good way, which is why it’s bad.
We are still a little out of breath when we roll back to where w
e started, and where Chris has left his backpack and my keys under some mall shrubbery.
He drops to the curb and begins taking his skates off, so I do, too.
* * *
We walk back to our street, mostly in silence. He tries to take my hand to lead me along the scary parts of the road, but I shoo him away.
When we get to my house, I think about confronting him. But he moves to leave.
“I should get back,” he says. “If my mom notices I’m gone, there’s no way she’ll let me go with you guys for two more boxes.”
He has permission to come with us to Rhode Island for Box Two and to The Mount for Box Four, even though it’s an overnight trip. At this point I should make everything less confusing and tell him to stay home. To give myself some space. But I don’t.
“Go,” I tell him. “‘I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Brayton Estate,” he says.
“Right,” I confirm as he runs off.
* * *
I walk upstairs and see that Seth is now asleep in Grandma’s room and that he’s left the door open.
He’s been here for only a little over a week now, but he’s spread out all over the house, sometimes sleeping in Grandma’s room, sometimes in the spare room, which was my mom’s growing up. There are a bunch of his T-shirts on a drying rack in the spare room. There are about fifteen bottles of vitamin supplements on the bathroom counter.
Next to him, on Grandma’s bedside table, is his notebook for ideas. It’s a lot like mine, but the cover isn’t as colorful.
I know he must be having trouble with his third book because it’s been years since his second came out. Grandma said he seemed to be lacking inspiration.
I imagine that writing whole novels is really hard and lonely. I do not write alone; I always have Chris to work with, and our stories are short.
I see a pen sticking out of Seth’s notebook, and it looks like he had things to put on paper tonight. I’m tempted to grab it to see what he’s working on—what has inspired him.
Maybe it’s easier for him to write in Natick.
He feels my presence in the doorway and wakes up.
“Lor,” he says. “You okay?”
Things That Grow Page 11
