The One Thing

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  Including Mason.

  As much as I hated to admit it, Mason wasn’t good-looking in a conventional way, but in an interesting way. Whether it was intentional or not, his dark hair had a messy look to it, like he’d been sweating and he’d raked a hand through it, and it had just stayed like that, stuck up in fascinating angles all over his head. His face was all olive tones, with sharp edges that a girl could never pull off. I tried to categorize him, but I came up short. He had the broad chest of a weight lifter, the dark eyes of an emo kid, the hair of an actor. Nothing fit, but—annoyingly—everything fit.

  Realizing my brain had skewed off in an uncharted, reckless direction, I turned deliberately away from Mason and stared hard at the space around Ben. Which, I reminded myself, was the reason I’d come here in the first place. To find answers.

  Gone was the murkiness that had surrounded Ben when I’d first met him. Now he burnished the room in buttery sunshine, and the vibrant light, though brightest around him, bled right through the kitchen walls and into the next room before it petered away into the nothingness. I couldn’t help but hope that my eyesight would continue to grow, that eventually I’d see everything.

  And I couldn’t help but worry that it would leave as mysteriously as it had come.

  I sighed quietly, staring down at my feet. Years ago, whenever my soccer team was losing, my coach used to gather us all together and say in an intense, knowing tone, “The universe is conspiring in your favor, so just go out and play hard.” She’d embezzled the first half of this pep talk from a novelist named Paulo Coelho, and the second part was just some cheesy attempt to get us out of our own heads. Regardless, most of the time it had worked: once we gave up our chokehold on the circumstances, once we just played, we usually came back to win.

  And now, as I stood in the Miltons’ kitchen, I realized that the more I groped for answers regarding my eyesight, the more those answers eluded me, slipping through my fingers, as inconsequential as tinsel. If I let it all go, if I just relaxed, enjoyed my eyesight, and waited for the answers to come to me on their own, everything would work out.

  The universe is conspiring in my favor.

  And I had a little chunk of eyesight to prove it.

  I exhaled, the tension in my neck and shoulders dissolving instantly.

  “Thera,” said Ben, jerking me back to the game. “I asked if you’d rather wake up naked in a crowded coliseum or suck the snot out of a dog’s nose? Also, I asked if you like extra sauce? Also, also, I asked if you’d mind grabbing the cheese from the right-hand drawer in the fridge?”

  “I don’t know, yes, and sure,” I said as I turned toward the fridge.

  I was relatively certain that Mason had come to the kitchen for a front-row seat to the Maggie Faking Her Blindness Show, so I moved toward the fridge slowly and gracelessly. Still, as I fake-fumbled around in the fridge, pretending to have difficulty finding the shredded cheese, Mason momentarily stopped playing the guitar, huffed out an irritated blast of air, and grumbled something indecipherable under his breath. Cheese finally in hand, I slammed the fridge shut and shot the stink-eye in his general direction. Which probably didn’t help my case, but it made me feel better.

  I wished Mason were more like the flaky Mrs. Milton, who forgot I was blind half the time. Mrs. Milton, who thought it was perfectly normal that a seventeen-year-old girl was hanging out with her youngest son. Mrs. Milton, who didn’t scrutinize my every move. Mrs. Milton, who made me completely comfortable. Since she kept me at ease, I rarely made mistakes around her. I’d become a master of averting my eyes while speaking to her, of using my cane as a ridiculous prop, of stumbling around every now and then for good measure. But Mason? Well, he was a completely different story. And now, as I made my way back to Ben, I was making a concentrated effort to avert my eyes from Mason’s bare feet, which were stretched out in front of him. They were wide and monstrous, and his big toes arched up every time he hit a complicated chord. There was just something about the motion that was annoyingly complex.

  “Hello? Earth to Thera? For the zillionth time: Would you rather wake up naked in a crowded coliseum or suck the snot out of a dog’s nose?” asked Ben, jerking me back to the game. “And before you ask, the answer is no.”

  “What was I going to ask?”

  “Whether you can pass on the question. You can’t pass. Naked or snot?” he said, balancing on one crutch and snatching the cheese from my hand.

  Maybe Mason had grown tired of hearing the same question. Maybe he had strong opinions when it came to dog snot. But for whatever reason, he chose this moment to give his own answer to Ben’s question: “Naked.”

  Two things happened to me instantaneously: one, I was unhinged from all rational thought, and two, my cheeks burned with what felt like a very sophisticated five shades of deep red. Luckily Ben had spun around to face Mason so he didn’t notice. “You’d choose naked over dog snot? Seriously?” he asked Mason.

  Mason shot Ben a comical look that was full of the sort of subtext you can only get from a decade of bonding in the backseat of the car during family vacations, and he said, “Of course. You, on the other hand, should go with dog snot, what with that monstrous birthmark you have on your ass.” This was immediately followed by a scuffle that started with Ben leaping toward Mason, and ended with laughing, shouting, and wrestling on the kitchen floor.

  “Knock it off, you two,” Mrs. Milton chastised lightly. Wearing a pair of Birkenstocks and a dress that appeared to have been forged from a burlap sack, she stepped into the kitchen, a half-dozen fabric grocery bags swinging from her arms.

  The two boys scrambled to their feet, looking guilty. “Just goofing off, Mom,” Mason muttered. And then he greeted her with a kiss on the forehead.

  And as Mason slid the grocery bags from her arms, I could see something genuine in his eyes, something sincere. Something that made me question every opinion I’d ever had of him. Something that seared me with a brief, burning thought: Mason is a good person.

  I swallowed.

  All of the Miltons were, actually, especially Ben. Whom I was currently taking advantage of. It was painful to admit this, even in my own head—like gravel grinding against the inside of my skull.

  “Um. Thera?” Ben said. “I think your phone was ringing?”

  I hadn’t even heard it.

  I dragged myself away from my eyesight and down the hallway to check my phone for voice mail. Rounding the corner to Ben’s room, I stood there for a moment—longer than proper, really—just breathing and trying to collect myself. And then I swung the door shut and slid my hands up the wooden surface, in search of the hook where I’d hung my purse. It was gone, replaced by a damp towel.

  Strange.

  “Thera,” Ben said with what sounded like a full mouth, his crutches squeaking down the hallway toward me, “you have to try these with ranch. It’s the shit.”

  Thanks to Ben, my eyesight hit the edge of the room and ghosted toward me, bleeding through the walls as he made his way down the hallway.

  I wasn’t in Ben’s room.

  I was in Mason’s room.

  I froze as my vision drifted over the space, toward the wall that separated it from Ben’s room. Though my sight dwindled along the curved outer borders, I could probably still see a good half of the area.

  And it was unsettling.

  Surprisingly sparse and neat, it reminded me of an adult’s room. There were no piles of dirty laundry. No posters of half-naked girls. No Sports Illustrated magazines. The space was punctuated by three pieces of sturdy-looking mahogany furniture: a squarely made bed, a dresser, and a desk. A photograph of Mason and his father—framed in mahogany, naturally—was the only thing adorning the walls. From the thousands of pictures scattered all over the house, I knew that dark-haired, dark-eyed Mr. Milton had looked like an older version of Mason, and I knew that he’d often worn athletic shorts and UConn T-shirts. But none of the pictures I’d seen were like this. The photo had been take
n years ago, given Mason’s young age—maybe three or four years old, tops. Mason was perched on his dad’s lap as they sat on the wooden planks of a pier, bare feet dangling toward the water. Mason grinned at the camera, but his father was ducked down as he kissed the crown of his son’s head, his emotions shaken up like dice and spilled all over the scene—acceptance, devotion, reverence.

  My eyes blurred with tears and I turned away, took an unsteady breath, and tried to regroup by looking around. All in all, Mason’s room resembled a hotel room: overly tidy and overly clean. Still, for some reason I could picture him here, curved over a laptop with his brows drawn together in thought and his fingers moving purposefully over the keyboard. I could see him striding into the room after a shower, towel wrapped around his waist, shoulders dotted with little water droplets, and still-wet hair sticking out in one intriguing direction after the other....

  I grumbled under my breath. Even when he wasn’t around, Mason made me feel like an idiotic version of myself.

  “Thera?” Ben hollered from his room. “Where’d you go?”

  I didn’t answer. As I stared down at the things piled neatly on Mason’s desk, a thought hit me so hard that I almost stumbled sideways. What if Mason has a list of concert venues in here? Months of obsessing over the Loose Cannons, and it came down to this: me in Mason’s room, gawking at the papers on his desk, knowing that without a doubt I was closer than ever to discovering one of music’s best-kept secrets.

  At first glance, I saw nothing related to the Loose Cannons. A checkbook paper-clipped to a stack of bills, all of which were addressed to Mrs. Milton, and all of which were opened cleanly with either a knife or a letter opener. A dark-brown leather day planner that outlined Ben’s swim practices and Mrs. Milton’s work schedule. A stack of glossy pamphlets—Skydiving at Night, Parachute Operations 101, Connecticut Skydiving, and Parachute Sense. A single sheet of notepaper, where Mason had left a half-finished poem, “November.”

  Wait. Not a poem. A song:

  Winter and spring are all but gone/but the bitter wind never stops playing that song/so I fall back to November every time it blows. Yeah my dad never meant to go/and as strong as he was he never could know/that I’d fall back to November every time it blows. I know I know I know/it’s always November/I know I know I know/it’s always November. Sure his memory fades in me/but I know deep down I’ll never be free/’cause I fall back to November every time it blows/I fall back to November every time it blows/yeah I fall back to November every time it blows.

  An ache so bottomless that it seeped off the paper settled into my chest, crushing my heart and lungs. I don’t know what did it—the pain in the lyrics, the way Mr. Milton’s photograph had tugged at my gut, or just the shock that I was actually standing in Mason’s room, hoping to stumble across some sort of hint that unlocked the secrets of the Loose Cannons—but suddenly I felt light-headed. I closed my eyes and groaned quietly. I was too overcome to hear the front door opening, or to pay attention to the parade of footsteps coming down the hallway, or to take note of the approaching voices. Until I heard the doorknob turn. Then all at once my mind snapped back to me.

  And I panicked.

  My eyes flew open at exactly the same time as the door. Mason and three other boys tumbled into the room, laughing and shoving one another. They stopped short when they saw me. Shock flitted across Mason’s features. It was replaced quickly with contempt. He took one intimidating step toward me.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  My heart clubbed in my chest, and I stood there for several miserable seconds, frozen and mute, praying for the floor to open up and suck me in. All the while, three unfamiliar boys, all roughly my age, sauntered forward and regarded me with various degrees of interest. To my left smirked a heavily pierced, slim-shouldered boy, his eyebrows hiked up clear to his hairline. Just behind him was a red-faced stocky kid who shifted hesitantly back and forth on his feet. The tallest of the three boys—a lanky, tattooed guy who twirled a set of drumsticks between his fingers—ogled me as though I were a souped-up 1968 Mustang. Oblivious to his friends’ antics, Mason just stood there glaring at me, anger rolling off of him like thick, suffocating smoke.

  “I got lost,” I said finally. Which was actually 100 percent true.

  “You got lost,” he said.

  I swallowed. “That’s what I said.”

  Mason did not answer. He just stood there, skewering me in place with his eyes. Tattoo Guy, openly disregarding Mason’s hostility, scratched his chest with his drumsticks, jerked his chin in my direction, and said to Mason, “Bro. Been hiding your new girl from us?”

  Mason shut his eyes, and I had the strangest sense that he was trying to hurdle over some sort of conflicting emotion. He drew in a slow breath, and his guitar, which hung by a strap on his shoulder, swung forward as his chest expanded. In his exhale and with his eyes still closed, he said, “This is not my girlfriend. This is Maggie, Ben’s friend. She’s blind.” His words were overly measured and overly quiet and overly enunciated, and I could hear implied air quotes when he said “Ben’s friend” and “blind.” Which totally infuriated me. Why did Mason always have to think the worst of me? Why couldn’t he ever give me the benefit of the doubt?

  I focused my gaze in the general vicinity of Tattoo Guy, and, forcing a smile and doing my best not to speak through my teeth, I said to the boy, “Nice to meet you. And you are...?” I knew Mason’s eyes were open now because I could feel the heat coming off of them. And I couldn’t care less. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had this sort of outrage clawing its way out of me—years ago, maybe, while fighting with my mother?—and it left me feeling dangerously out of control.

  Tattoo Guy, looking oddly entertained by the animosity in the room, smirked and said, “David Slater. Pleasure to meet you, m’ lady.” He swooped a palm out in front of himself and bowed theatrically, as though he were so grandiose that even the blind could see him.

  The pierced-up kid rolled his eyes at David. Clearing his throat, he held both arms out, like he was a gift or something, and announced grandly, “But more importantly? I’m Carlos Santiago, keyboard virtuoso.” He cuffed the shy-looking kid on the shoulder. “And this is Gavin Alexander.”

  Members of the Loose Cannons. I recognized their names, even though I’d never actually seen them.

  I nodded a shocked hello.

  Mason threw the guitar on his bed. The strings made a discordant sound when they struck his pillow. Then he said two words, and two words only. They were directed at me through tight lips: “Get out.”

  That was when I knew I was going to tell Mason the truth.

  Right now.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take his accusations, and I couldn’t take his holier-than-thou attitude, and I couldn’t take his snide tone. I’d spent the past several months learning how to be a person again, for Christ’s sake. Learning how to match my clothes, pour my own milk, find my way to my goddamn room. I’d had to figure out how to live. And Mason? He had everything and he didn’t even give a shit.

  I straightened my spine, leaned forward, stabbed an index finger in his direction, and said in a low, menacing tone, “You think you know what’s really going on, you arrogant, self-absorbed sonofabitch? You have no. freaking. clue.”

  He grabbed my hand and leaned toward me, daring me to continue. We were too close to each other—a couple inches. Energy ricocheted fiercely between us, and there was something burning behind the amber flakes in his eyes, something I’d never seen before, an ache and a fury.

  “There you are, Thera! You get lost?” Ben bellowed from the doorway, breaking the spell as he swung into the room. “Oh, hey, guys.”

  Mason’s grip sprung free from me and we both took clumsy steps away from each other.

  There was an awkward silence, which then stretched into a painfully awkward silence. David cleared his throat, the corners of his lips turned up, and then offered his fist to Ben and sai
d, “Hey, broseph.”

  Ben, crutches and all, gracelessly fist-bumped David, and then he said to Mason, “Please tell me the band didn’t come here to rehearse.”

  Mason sighed and knuckled his forehead. “Gavin’s neighbors complained about the noise last week, so, yes, we’re rehearsing here tonight.”

  Ben lifted his chin. “I hereby complain about the noise,” he proclaimed, and Mason scoffed. Ben leaned toward his brother. “No, seriously. Thera and I were going to watch-and-or-listen-to a movie tonight, and you guys are too loud and obnoxious when you practice.”

  Carlos winced. “Harsh.”

  Mason pinched his eyes closed for a moment. “Well, you’re just going to have to deal with it for tonight. We don’t have any other options. Carlos lives too far away, Gavin’s mom has a book club meeting, and David’s place is too small.” Then he stood there, arms crossed, and waited for us to exit the room.

  I could hear the loud voices of Mason’s bandmates as soon as I stepped into the hall, the “Dude, what the hell was that about?” and the “What’s the story with the two of you?” and so on and so forth. So I hauled ass down the hallway before I could hear Mason’s explanation. It would be optimistic to the point of foolishness to believe that Mason wouldn’t tell them I was a pathetic groupie snooping around for information on their concerts, and I couldn’t stand being around to witness it. Sure, just moments ago I’d been right on the verge of screaming the truth at Mason, but now—as I followed Ben into the kitchen, where he pled his case to Mrs. Milton—I realized that telling Mason the truth would have been a tragic mistake. It would have sounded like a desperate lie coming from me right now, a lie he wouldn’t have believed.