Lost Cause

by Callie Sparks

  “Nah. It’s good,” he says, taking the money and folding it in half, then placing it in my palm. “But I can afford it. So just take it.”

  “Still, I . . .” Just then my eyes catch on his old bicycle. Both tires are flat. “You’re not getting back up the hill with that.”

  He swings his legs back over toward the road and jumps down from the wall. “Yeah. I don’t think anyone has filled the tires since I left.”

  The bike was in bad condition even then, so who could expect anything more? It’s likely been sitting for seven years in the back of the leaky shed that had been on the property well before the cabin was built. At least he’d removed the Noah license plate. “I’d give you a ride, but it’s not going to fit in my car.”

  He props it on the side of the wall. “I’ll take the ride and deal with it later. If I’m lucky, maybe someone will steal it.”

  He jogs ahead and opens the driver’s side door for me. When I sit inside, he closes it. Then he jumps inside and says to me, “You really didn’t see the news?”

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  He nods slowly, staring out the windshield, until a look of confusion spreads over his face.

  “What?” I ask him. When he glances back to me, I have to avert my eyes, and they fall on the tattoo on his well-formed bicep. When I’d seen him on television, I’d thought it was a chain of thorns. Now, I can see the delicate yellow flowers. It’s a chain of dandelions. Sarah.

  My stomach feels queasy.

  I can’t look at his face, but I know from the gentle ribbing in his voice that he’s smiling. “I was just wondering, if you didn’t see the program . . . why do you look like you want to get rid of me, Arianna Baker?”

  “Uh. What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he says, his voice quieter, “that you didn’t come to see me.”

  “I was busy,” I murmur. “And I didn’t know . . .” I trail off. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to act. I don’t know anything, even now. I’m not sure how we can go on like nothing’s happened. Because everything’s changed.

  “You’re acting . . . I don’t know. Scared of me. Do you want me to leave you alone?” he asks.

  “If I wanted that, I would’ve said so,” I insist. But maybe I am scared, just a little, for reasons I can’t really pinpoint yet. It’s like all these feelings are whirling inside me, and have yet to find a landing place. I know he has to be feeling the same way. “Should I be scared of you?”

  He shakes his head slowly. “No. It’s me, Ari. I’m the same person I was back then. At least, I’m trying to be.”

  #

  Noah had a really great bedroom. Unlike mine, which was horribly pink, his walls were lined with all of his favorite things. And Noah had a lot of favorites: Airships, locomotives, solar system models, old ships with a dozen sails. He modeled them carefully and placed them on custom shelving his dad had built in to the walls.

  One day we went inside, and he grabbed a pack of Ho-Hos from the kitchen pantry and tossed it to me. This would’ve been where my mom would’ve greeted us with homemade cookies and milk, but not his mom. While Annie might’ve thought television made people fat, she evidently didn’t think certain foods did, judging from the fact that Noah had a junk-food drawer. It wasn’t always stocked, but when it was, it was glorious.

  When we climbed up to his bedroom, I immediately gravitated to a locomotive, set on newspapers, on his work desk. I started to touch it, and he winced. “It’s not done drying yet,” he explained. “It’s a T-1 Pacific. I’m weathering it.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing what that meant. “It’s cool.”

  Turned out, it was more than cool. Apparently, they were expensive, too—more than a thousand dollars’ worth, a pop. And he had dozens on his wall, behind plexi-glass. His father would buy him them whenever he had a birthday or did well at school. There were a few empty spots on his wall, just crying out for new occupants, I guessed, and considering how well he usually did on his tests—I had yet to see him with anything less than an A— I was sure they’d be filled soon.

  I studied what looked like floor plans on his bulletin board. “That’s the basement layout,” he explained. “My dad and I are going to build the biggest model train layout in the state. It’s going to be awesome.” He looked at the layout for a long time, almost wistfully. “At least, I think.”

  “Hmm,” I said, without much interest. He was excited enough for the both of us, and for a calm, unemotional kid like Noah, that was saying a lot. I studied the solar system maps he had, the poster of the B-52 bomber, the bobble-heads for various Phillies team members, and sighed with envy.

  His room was so him. Mine was flowers and unicorns and all things cute—things I didn’t care about. I was embarrassed to have taken him up to see it.

  Chapter Five

  When did Annie’s intentions toward you start to change?

  A few months later. She’d come in to my room to say goodnight, and she’d start out asking me how my day went, but it would always turn to her. She’d show me her bruises—and sometimes they were on, hidden parts of her body, parts an eleven-year-old shouldn’t probably be looking at. Her breasts and stuff. She’d tell me that she loved my father and tried to be the best wife she could, but sometimes she felt like she could die of loneliness. And then she’d tell me that she never wanted to have kids, that taking care of Sarah was so hard.

  Sarah, and not you . . .

  Right. She didn’t see me as someone she had to take care of. She saw me more as a . . . I don’t know. The only confidante she had.

  But you were eleven.

  Right.

  And going through everything eleven-year olds go through.

  Yeah. Half the things she worried about went right over my head at first. But eventually I began to understand. She’d had a messed-up upbringing. Men always objectified her because she was so gorgeous, paid her special attention, gave her what she wanted. It got more and more personal. She told me she lost her virginity when she was nine, to her uncle.

  Nine? She’d never had an appropriate sexual relationship, had she?

  No. She thought my dad was the closest thing to normal and safe she could get. She said she wanted that, the white picket-fence and someone to take care of her, but she was sad that it was all an illusion. It didn’t make her happy.

  And the more things between her and your dad started to crumble, the more she started to see you as an adult?

  No . . . not really. The more it went on, the more she started to look, to me, like she was still a kid.

  #

  The roof of the yellow Channel Five News Van is visible when we pull onto Peasant and start to ascend the hill. My Fiat’s engine hates that hill; it takes it so slowly we might as well be going backwards.

  “I wonder if I went out there and told them my life was just peachy, they’d leave me alone?” Noah muses, chewing on the side of his thumb.

  I throw the car into third. It chokes and then lurches forward. “They’ll leave you alone eventually.”

  He grins. “Well, at least you know how absurdly uninteresting I really am.”

  He can’t be serious. No one, not even Gabe Hill, or Claire Keenan, the two most popular kids in our class, has had primetime news specials devoted to his life. Maybe it wasn’t his doing, but Noah’s life ceased to be uninteresting one September day, when he’d just turned thirteen. And I don’t think that’ll ever change—he’ll be a hundred and the story will still be woven in the fabric of his being. Forever interesting, forever the stuff of water cooler gossip and speculation.

  Notoriety. The one thing Noah never cared about, and now the one thing he’d never be able to shake.

  “So what’s new with you?” he asks me, pushing the button to let the window go down. The earthen air floods in, pushing the hair from his face, and he breathes it in greedily, as if these past seven years in the desert have starved him of it. “What’ve you been up to?”

&
nbsp; I shrug. “Not much.”

  He seems disappointed by the answer, or else he knew that was what I was going to say, because he tries again. “What’s everyone up to around here?”

  I shrug again. “Same things. Nothing’s really changed.”

  “Hell, it’s changed. Everything looks so much smaller than I remember.” He taps his fingers on the armrest, and I notice he had a bunch of thick, black rope bracelets there. My eyes scan up to the other tattoos, but I can’t quite make any of the others out without veering into the ditch on the side of the road. The Noah I knew always swam in giant hand-me-down polo-shirts, always looked like he was suffering in too-tight, too-short jeans because no one could keep up with his growth spurts— he was not the tattooed, jewelry-wearing type. “Mrs. Burns’ old boat of a car is gone. She still kicking?”

  “Oh. No. She’s dead.”

  He looks out the window as we drive past the old house. The Pollocks thought the old lady’s creepy lawn ornaments were quaint, so other than the two Audi SUVs in the driveway, the house isn’t much different. “That’s too bad. Nice old lady. So everyone’s off at college, huh?”

  “Just about. I haven’t really kept in touch,” I lie as we curve into the long driveway to my house. There’s a man with a beard and a woman sitting on the bumper of the van, nursing Starbucks coffees, and they look at my car without much interest.

  “Really? Wow. You were always so tight with all of them.”

  “Not really,” I mumble, not wanting to talk about it.

  He frowns. I know my short answers make it look like I do want to get rid of him. But I don’t. Do I ? Maybe I do. Suddenly, huddling under my pillow in a darkened bedroom sounds like heaven.

  I cut the engine. He’s peering through the side rear-view mirror. He puts his hand on the handle and takes a deep breath. “Ready to face the music?”

  “What music?” I ask, confused. Last I saw, those two people on the bumper of their news van looked half-asleep, not like they were scoping out a big scoop.

  He doesn’t answer, though. He pushes the door open and steps outside. I do the same, and before I’m able to fish my apron out of the back of the car, I see a woman in a navy suit climbing out of the underbrush like a ninja in heels. A cameraman follows. Where the eff did they come from? “Noah!” she calls.

  He doesn’t look at her, just gives me a tired smile. “No comment,” he mutters.

  The woman thrusts the microphone under my nose. She has dried fir needles on her otherwise flawless outfit. “Are you his girlfriend?”

  I just stand there, blubbering in shock. “Uh . . .”

  “She has no comment either,” he says, tugging me by the sleeve of my shirt and guiding me toward the house. “Really, everything I have to say has been explained in the Seaver interview. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  That doesn’t help. “Have you had any contact with your stepmother?” the woman presses.

  He tightens his lips together and does his best to pretend that she’s not there. He stays between us as my shield and keeps pace with me as I hurry toward the door. Then he murmurs, “Thanks for the ride.”

  “No problem,” I say, just as something catches my attention.

  There are four people hurrying down the driveway, toward us.

  “Shit,” I say.

  He starts to turn around, but before he can, I open the door to the house and yank him inside, then slam the door behind him, breathless.

  And now I’m pushed up against him, in a way I’ve never been, my breasts against his firm chest, my arms on either side of him, holding the door closed and caging him against it. I can feel his breath on my forehead, warm and smelling sweetly of banana and maple syrup.

  “If you wanted me to come in, all you had to do was ask,” he says softly, looking around.

  Blushing, I push away from him. This is weird. Since when had Noah Templeton gotten the power to make me blush? My eyes dodge his face but land on his arms, which no longer resemble twigs. Oh, so that’s when. They’re the kind of arms that guys flex and admire in wall-mirrors, the kind they call “guns”. He’s definitely been working out, the little bastard.

  Okay, big bastard. When last I saw him, I could probably throw him over my shoulder. Now, I couldn’t lift him with a car jack.

  Before I can lead him upstairs, my mom appears in the kitchen doorway, under the LIVE LOVE LAUGH sign, and tears start falling across her cheeks. She can’t speak, even to get his name out. Not that she’s not trying—her lips keep moving in all sorts of awkward shapes but nothing’s escaping but a bunch of muffled sobs. He meets her halfway and she does her best to wrap him in her arms, but it’s inadequate. Before, he was pocket-sized. Now, my mother’s the one who looks in danger of being swallowed up by his big form.

  Finally, my mom pulls away. She takes his face in her hands and draws it toward her. “You’ve grown so much!”

  He laughs. “That happens.”

  She motions to Ari. “True. You’ve obviously seen what happened to Ari. Did you recognize her?”

  He nods.

  “Beautiful, yes?”

  He glances over toward me. “Always.”

  I move away, into the stream of the oscillating fan in the living room, as I am determined not to blush any more. She just continues to stand there, gazing at him like he’s her entertainment for the evening.

  “Mom,” I say, when too much awkwardness suffocates the room. “We’ll be upstairs.”

  “Oh.” She lets go of his face, and I’m surprised I don’t see the imprint of her palms on his cheeks. “You two must have a lot of catching up to do. Stay for dinner?”

  He nods. “I may stay forever if the press doesn’t leave.”

  “And you’re welcome to,” my mother gushes, beaming at him.

  As I lead Noah away, he whispers, “Well, that went . .. well.”

  I smile awkwardly, wondering why it’s now me feeling incredibly inadequate now. I never felt inadequate with Noah before. With everyone else, I felt naïve and out-of-it, but not with Noah. He always made me feel like the cool one, the one who had it together.

  I jog up the creaky narrow staircase, with Noah at my heels. Predictably, he trips on the fourth step and grasps the rail, something he always did, every time. I turn around at the top. “You didn’t just . . . “

  “I meant to do that,” he says, deadpan.

  I can’t bring myself to laugh at him as I push open the door. It seems almost—in bad taste to laugh after everything he’s been through.

  He stalks over to my window and peers out. “Shit. Can I sleep here tonight?”

  Terror seizes me. “Uh . . .”

  “I’m kidding, Ari. Geez,” he says. “Chill.”

  I follow him over, embarrassed to be instructed to relax by the boy who used to panic over the silliest things, like when his parents used to go on vacation and leave him home alone. Despite the heavy line of trees between our properties, I have a somewhat obstructed view of his bedroom window, though it’s pretty far away. Then I hear a noise and realize a small group of reporters is standing in my mom’s azalea bushes. “What the hell. Don’t they have anything better to do?”

  He loosens the curtains from the hooks and draws them closed. I’m thinking of the last time he was in this room—we’d probably been twelve, playing Battleship on my bed—when he says, “Hey? Remember? The cans?”

  I nod. Just one of about a billion grand schemes we’d invented together that never worked. We’d gotten two old coffee cans and Noah seemed convinced that all we had to do was tie a string between them and we’d be able to communicate with each other. But the string was so damn long that you couldn’t hear an explosion on the other end of the line, so that Christmas, he asked his dad for walkie talkies. We’d stay up, late into the night, playing Silly Questions. It was our own invented game, where we’d try to come up with and answer the most inane question possible, like if we could be one food, what would we be, and as what famous perso
n’s bathtub we’d most want to take a bath in. The walkie-talkies were our favorite things, at least for a year, until the novelty wore off.

  Actually, that’s not right. What happened was that I got a cell phone. Everyone had one. Except Noah. His stepmother said he didn’t need one.

  I cringe, remembering the time I’d lied and told him I couldn’t use my walkie-talkie anymore because the batteries were dead. He’d gotten his stepmom to get me new ones. Then I told him I’d broken it. The look on his face . . .

  “Our ideas always sucked, didn’t they?” he says.

  “Not true. You invented the hammock slingshot.”

  He laughs. “I think you invented that one?”

  “Me? No way. You’re the one who ended up getting grounded for it when you broke my parents’ bedroom window with that soccer ball.”

  He digs his hands in his pockets and meanders around my bed, to the bookshelf over my desk. After a moment, he pulls out a book. “Mind?”

  My yearbook. “No.”

  He pages through it, a small smile on his face. “Whoa. What a blast from the past,” he murmurs, taking in the faces of the people who were supposed to be his graduating class. Occasionally he traces his finger over a picture, or shakes his head, or lets out a short laugh. “Look at that. You were in the Key Club. And . . . yearbook editor?”

  I nod, embarrassed. While I was doing all those normal high school things, he was . . . not. Everything I did probably seems so silly and insignificant to him. “So, you got you GED?” I ask him, to which he nods. “You going back to college now?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Not now.” He flips a page. “What’s your major?”

  “Business,” I mutter.

  His eyes widen. “Well, that’s for shit, Ari-Bari.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugs. “Nothing. Just that you never had a mind for business.”

  “I don’t have a mind for a lot of things. But, I have to do something,” I mumble, not wanting to recount the months and months of wavering and frustration I’d gone through, trying to select a major. Where some people knew what they wanted to be from childhood, I’d waited until the absolute last second to select. Even then, I did einee-meenie-miney-moe with the course catalogue. It’s disconcerting how well he knows me, even now. But two can play at that game. “I’m not like you, who was so smart and talented you could’ve gone into anything and done well. You could’ve been valedictorian.”