Moss rubs his head, eyes on anything but me. I feel like an idiot. He caught me snooping and staring. He has really nice legs and arms. And then I find myself thinking about his third arm, and all the muscles all over his body, and how it might be nice to be surrounded by all of that muscle, hugged close to him, so maybe I could feel the love he has inside that he doesn’t want to show. My face heats uncontrollably.
“Never mind. I’ll be fine,” I say and start to walk away.
Moss stops me. “I’ll do it. Meet me downstairs.”
Anywhere. I’d meet Moss anywhere. But I don’t say that.
When I go back into Color’s room to say goodbye, she and Jesús are sitting on the floor in the dark, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars. It looks like an illuminated night sky.
“It’s just like being outside,” Color says in awe. “No crumbling walls.”
A moment passes in silence.
And then Jesús says, “We can pretend, at least.”
“Yes we can,” Color says. She exhales sadly, and I remember we’re in a house that’s missing a parent.
I don’t let the heartbreaking moment linger for long before I tell them I need to go.
“Don’t worry, Esther. It’s going to happen for you.” Color hands me my very own pack of glow-in-the-dark stars, and winks. “That’s the truth. I can feel it.”
“Will you feel me, too?” Jesús says, and takes Color’s hand and puts it on his crotch. She shoves him in the arm, and I leave them in a sea of laughter that, for the moment, washes away the sadness.
Moss runs next to me as I bike through Truth or Consequences on my way home. We don’t say a word. He just keeps pace with me, his eyes on the road ahead of him. When we get to my street, I tell Moss I’m OK. That I can make it home from here. Mom and Tom would flip if they saw me with a boy. He agrees and turns to go.
“Wait.” When I touch his arm, he tenses under my fingers, but almost immediately relaxes. I keep my hand on him, because why not. I’m already here. “You know what’s odd, Moss?”
“What?”
I smile. “Every other number.”
“That’s a terrible joke,” he says, shaking his head. But he laughs anyway. It’s just a light giggle . . . but it feels real. That’s when I decide to let him go.
17
Something is missing. It’s a feeling I get in the middle of the night when I’m dreaming. I’ll wake up and grab at my stomach and think she’s still there. I’ll feel around for her, touching my belly, and all I find is loose flesh.
And off in the distance, I think I hear a baby cry.
It’s just my imagination, but sometimes what we pretend hurts more than reality.
“Hey, Esther, when you smile, you look like a thirty-degree angle,” Amit whispers.
“I do?” I whisper back.
“Yeah, because you sure are acute-y.” He looks at me with golden eyes. He’s nervous, I can tell. He was always nervous. His eyes are flooded with shyness, which only makes him cuter, because vulnerability is sexy, like love is. It’s as if Amit is asking permission—permission to love me.
As I lie in bed, two perfectly round flecks of gold reflect on my blank ceiling.
“Actually, you’re a whole number, Esther,” Amit says. “Nothing is missing.”
At that, I can’t help but cradle his hand in mine. Permission granted.
When I get the courage to look at my hand, lying vacant on the bed next to me, I can’t stand being inside my dry, static-ridden house, so I head out to the pool, where the gold flecks of Amit’s eyes can get lost in the stars.
Will this ever go away? I ask the sky.
It responds with only the echo of wind rushing down the street.
Today Beth is wearing a shirt that says:
AND GOD SAID
DIV B = 0
DIV D = ρv
ROT E = −∂B/∂t
ROT H = j + ∂D/∂t
AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT.
Here are a few notable things about Beth. She’s full of weird facts. She clearly hates Pastor Rick. She wears interesting T-shirts. She’s smart. She always saves me a seat. She grasps her cross necklace like it’s a life preserver thrown over the edge of a boat to save her from drowning in a raging sea of sins, and that scares me.
There is no way I can tell her I had a baby out of wedlock. Beth might die. She might keel over, drowning in my sins, still holding on to her cross, and meet Jesus face-to-face. They’d both be shaking their heads.
But then there’s her shirt and her general attitude for Pastor Rick, who loves Christ, too. Aren’t they on the same team? Singing the same tune? Shouldn’t they get along, for Christ’s sake?
“What does your shirt mean?” I ask as I sit down.
Beth examines it. “It’s physics. Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism.” I look at her blankly, and she adds, “It’s a science joke.”
“God didn’t create light?” I ask.
“Who said God and science have to be mutually exclusive?” Beth starts grabbing at her necklace again. Sweet, electrifying Jesus.
“Um, like everyone at this church,” I say.
“Think about it,” Beth says. She squares herself to me, getting more animated. “Why can’t God be science and science be God? Why do they have to function apart from each other?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Think about the math problem I gave you. What’s the answer?”
“Point nine recurring is equal to one.”
Beth nudges me in the shoulder a little harder than I expect, which only makes me like her more. “Yes. If that isn’t proof there is a God, I don’t know what is.”
I am so lost right now, I can’t even remember where I started. “How do you figure?”
“Infinity exists in the whole,” Beth says, her arms moving to emphasize each of the words. “You can be infinite and finite at the same time. You’re born and you die. Finite. But there’s a part of you, your soul, that has always existed, so it was never born, and it can never die. Infinite. It’s so freaking mind-blowing. Only God could think of that.”
Complex Math Problem: If .9 recurring is indeed equal to 1, does that mean Beth is more complicated than I thought?
“Sorry,” Beth says, sitting back in her seat. “I geek out over this stuff.”
Have I assumed Beth is one solid number, without remembering that each number has its own unique qualities? I haven’t spent the time to investigate Beth because I’ve judged her by her outside instead of dissecting her parts.
And then she’s upright and excited again; her hand gestures in full force. “Get this—a cumulous cloud weighs over eight hundred pounds. And it floats in the air! I mean, what?! If I drilled a hole right through the earth, you could jump through and be on the other side of the planet in just over forty-two minutes. That’s freaking crazy!”
“That is crazy.”
“It’s all just so beyond our grasp.” Beth shakes her head. “There just has to be a God.”
Beth pulls on her necklace, moving the cross back and forth across her neck. Since Beth is full of interesting facts, I decide to ask the question I’ve been pondering ever since I sat down next to her at our first choir practice.
“Who gave you the necklace?” I ask. “It’s clearly important to you. You’re always wearing it.”
She looks down at the gold cross, and her face paints with a blush.
“My first love.”
I almost fall out of my chair. Like, for real. “You’ve been in love?” I say it a little too loud, and Beth looks around the room, her blush deepening. I lean in protectively and whisper, “What’s his name?”
Beth whispers back, “Brittany.”
Here is a notable thing about Beth. She is not who I thought she was.
Ms. Sylvia taps her wand thing on the choir stand, directing us to start singing the Smashing Pumpkins version of “Christmastime.” And Beth just sings, like she didn’t just drop a sinner-siz
ed bomb in my lap. I’m literally exploding right now.
When the song ends and I haven’t sung a single note, I lean in and whisper, “You’re gay? Do people at church know?”
Beth whispers back. “Only five people know.”
“Who?”
“My mom, my dad, Brittany.” Beth glances at me. “You.”
“And . . .”
“God.”
I explode again, barely able to contain myself, but this time it’s laced with guilt. She just told me her truth. She trusts me and here I am, a walking and talking jumble of secrets, and I haven’t told her anything. I suck.
“You trust me with your secret?”
“It’s not a secret, Esther. It’s me,” she says.
And I feel like I see Beth, like really see her, for the first time. The truth looks beautiful on her. Truth is like love—it’s sexy. Beth is stunning.
Ms. Sylvia tells us to get out our sheet music for Dido’s “Christmas Day.” Beth rolls her eyes. “This isn’t even a Christian song. What the fuck.”
Halfway through the song, as I’m trying to concentrate on reading the notes and lyrics, but really wanting to hear more about beautiful Beth, Pastor Rick walks through the door in his hooded sweatshirt and messy hair. The room falls into quiet silence and ogling eyes. Beth sits back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest.
“I want to punch him in his perfect face.” Beth glares. “Then he wouldn’t look so . . . perfect.”
Pastor Rick announces that Touchdown Church will host a “Thanksgiving Youth Service Day” on Sunday, and he hopes all the awesome youths in the room will participate. He goes through the options for the day—carol singing at the retirement home, working the coat drive at the church, sorting donated cans, and delivering turkeys to the needy in and around Truth or Consequences.
Clipboards are passed around the room for sign-ups. When it gets to Beth and me, I notice Hannah has signed up to sing at the retirement community. Peter’s name is directly underneath hers. Last Sunday, I found them after church in the choir room, singing “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story, cuddled up in each other’s arms.
“We should do the turkeys,” Beth says. “Then we won’t be stuck here all day.”
I point to the asterisk at the top of the page. “It says you need a car.”
“No big deal. I’ll borrow my parents’.”
When Beth says that, my head gets light, and I almost burst into a million honest pieces all over our ridiculous sheet music. I think the universe just spoke through Beth.
“Hey, Beth?”
“Yeah, Esther?” Her necklace sparkles in the light of the room.
“What does science say about psychics?”
18
Hannah comes into my room, carrying an open box. I’m jumping on the bed, putting the glow-in-the-dark stars Color gave me on the ceiling.
I stop, out of breath, as Hannah sets the box down on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Jumping on the bed,” I say.
Hannah gives me a look that screams, You’re so weird, Esther!
I sit down. “What do you want, Hannah?”
She looks around at my clean room. “When did you become a neat freak?” And again Hannah’s tone is judgmental, but at the core it also sounds kind of sad. Like Hannah is really asking, How did we grow so far apart that you could transform from a messy person into a neat freak right under my nose? But I don’t keep my room clean for me. I keep it clean for Color, so she doesn’t have to work so hard. And I’m not about to tell Hannah that. Plus, it’s not really clean. I’m just hiding my mess. It’s still there under the bed and in the closet.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Hannah walks over and squats down in front of the fishbowl. “How’s your fish?” She taps on the glass and my fish jumps, scared.
“Please don’t do that.”
“Sorry,” she says softly, like she means it.
This whole moment is weird—Hannah in my room, asking me questions. It’s like she’s here to find something, but she won’t come out and say it. The saddest part of all is that I don’t trust her. I don’t want Hannah to find whatever she’s looking for. I just want her to get out of my room.
Instead, she sits down on my bed. “Do you think Tom will ever fill the pool?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Well . . . do you like living here?”
“I don’t know.” I cross my arms over my chest. I’m a one-response parrot. But I really don’t know what to say to Hannah. She literally hasn’t set foot in my room since we moved here.
We just sit in our silence for a minute, neither of us saying anything, while the air waits heavily for one of us to crack.
Complex Math Problem: If two attached objects are suddenly pulled apart, the line between them now incongruent, will they ever remember how to fit together again, or is it just easier if they go their separate ways?
“What’s in the box?” I finally ask.
A weary smile grows on Hannah’s face. She doesn’t look at me. “Christmas stuff. I found the Advent calendar.”
My coldness toward Hannah melts a bit when she says that. The Advent calendar is our thing. Maybe fitting together isn’t so hard when we’re not so solidly held in our stubborn position.
The Advent calendar is a small wooden Christmas tree, and every day of Advent, leading up to Christmas, we hung one ornament on it. Hannah and I would rotate who got to hang an ornament when we were kids, which seems kind of stupid now, but it wasn’t back then. It was the best. Then on Christmas morning, Mom made an angel food birthday cake for Jesus, and we sang “Happy Birthday” to him as Hannah and I together put the star on top of the Advent calendar.
We did that before Tom ever came into our lives.
“I just needed to check to make sure we had it, and that it didn’t break,” Hannah says. She emphasizes needed like she’s desperate. Like she’s struggling to breathe and needs a lifeline to the past as badly as I do.
“Did it survive the move?” I ask.
Hannah nods, and we both exhale in unison.
“Can I put a star on your ceiling?” she asks. How can I say no to that? Not with the unharmed Advent calendar right next to us. It survived, and we’ll put it out in just a few weeks, and Christmas in New Mexico will have a piece of Christmas in Ohio, even if it doesn’t snow.
Hannah climbs on my bed, a hesitant smile growing slowly on her face, but when she jumps, sticking a glow-in-the-dark star to my ceiling perfectly, she comes down in full glory, transformed into pure happiness. She loses her footing slightly, and I catch her before she falls off the bed. The sound of her giggle lightens the usual weight that dangles between us.
“Can I do another one?” she asks.
And all of a sudden, Hannah and I are bouncing on the bed, peppering my ceiling with so many stars I think I might actually believe I’m outside when I sleep in here. With every jump, her hair floats around her head, blocking my view until all I see is this floating orb of auburn hair that seems to radiate in the sunlight coming through the window. She and I are practically weightless. Even when our feet hit the mattress, it’s only a brief landing before another lofty assent.
“Would you rather have the ability to fly or read people’s minds?” Hannah asks. It’s the game we played when we were little, on car trips to see our grandma in Pennsylvania.
“Fly,” I say, my short hair finding buoyancy as I bounce.
“I knew that.” And I actually feel Hannah smile. “Would you rather be blind or deaf?”
“Deaf,” I say. “Totally.”
“Oh my gosh, me, too.” She says it with an exhale, like she is so happy we still have something in common. Maybe Hannah really did come in here to find something. Maybe she came in here to find us again. I swear I hear my bed heave a sigh of relief to have us back together. It holds her like a memory of when we were younger, when sleeping in the same bed felt like
a treat, because we would stay up whispering and giggling, eventually curled around each other in the morning, our noses touching. It’s been waiting for her to come back.
If Beth isn’t who I thought she is, maybe the same is true for Hannah.
“Would you rather have short hair or long hair?” she asks.
My stomach turns sour at the question. I stop jumping. It’s a trick. I cut my hair short after I found out I was pregnant.
Hannah asks the question again, this time with more edge to her voice.
I sit down on the end of the bed, my feet touching a box that’s hidden by the bed skirt. Hannah isn’t asking about my hair. She’s asking about the baby. Would I erase it all and go back to being the sister I was, the girl with long hair and no secrets? Would I choose her over the baby?
Hannah takes the space next to me, but the distance between us is vast. For a moment, I thought it wasn’t. What I do know is that Hannah and I are damaged, and it’s going to take a lot more than an Advent calendar and the smell of angel food cake to put us back together. The calendar may have survived the move, but I’m not sure we did.
“Esther?” Hannah’s tone is colder now. “Would you rather have short hair or long hair?”
Hannah came to see me the night the baby was born. She didn’t say anything, but she stood in the doorway of my dark hospital room, outlined by the light from the hallway. I was pretending to sleep, but I peeked and saw her. I was alone, and she knew it.
She left me anyway. That night a baby cried in the room next door. I stuffed my face in a pillow and screamed.
No one heard me, because no one was there to listen.
I can’t trust Hannah. I used to, but not anymore. And I won’t answer her question.
I move to stand protectively in front of my fish and say, “Aren’t you the one who always has the answer?”
19
Ms. Sylvia loads the choir members onto one of those church vans that fits a gazillion people and has a bumper sticker that says GOD ANSWERS KNEE-MAIL and depicts a person praying. It’s headed for the Truth or Consequences Happy Day Retirement Community. Hannah is packed in that van like a sardine, alongside other choir members. I can see her through the window, squished next to Peter. She notices me looking, wraps her arm around his neck, and kisses him on the cheek. It’s gross, and just another reminder that our relationship is different now.
The Infinite Pieces of Us Page 9
