“The sky,” I said. “And I still miss it.”
“What do you miss about it?”
I took in a big breath and exhaled, puffing out my cheeks, and then I said, “I miss those minutes right around twilight, when it isn’t quite daytime, but it isn’t nighttime, either. It feels magical somehow, like you could do something phenomenal without even trying. I miss the scarlet in sunrises. And clouds. Stars. God, I miss stars.” I sighed, a tired sound that sagged my body. I hadn’t meant to give him such an honest answer. “Do you ever think about what you would like to do if you could walk without crutches?”
His answer was instantaneous. “Nope. When I see something I want to do, I just do it.”
After we hung up, I killed some time on the Loose Cannons’ website. There hadn’t been a post since the one I’d already ransacked, so I returned to the video’s comment section I’d been on the other day, hoping to find some insight from the superfans.
I did not.
All I found was a smattering of crowing, boastful comments about last week’s concert and a few remarks from some random jackass who called himself Cannon Dude. He gossiped like a housewife, first claiming that, one, Mason was in dire need of a haircut, and then that, two, Carlos had left the concert without as much as a word to the rest of the band, and, most notably, that, three, it was Gavin who held the key to the Big Secret.
I rolled my eyes. Please. Gavin—the timid kid who played bass guitar and sang backup—was far from the sort of scheming architect it would take to mastermind something like that. Hell, he’d hardly been able to look at me when I’d met him.
When Mom stepped into my room, I was sideways on my bed with my legs dangling off, moping and grousing and generally feeling sorry for myself while listening to last week’s concert. Hollering over the music, Mom said, “Mr. Fenstermacher called me today. He said Clarissa has been”—she sighed heavily and walked past me, turning down the music—“trying to get in touch with you about your English paper, and you’ve been dodging her.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Talking to Mom was a bit like trying to fold a fitted sheet: no matter how hard you try, it always ends up a lumpy, crooked mess. So why even bother? Mom sat down on my bed, her tiny frame hardly moving the mattress. I was reminded suddenly of how alike we were—both of us petite, small-boned, both of us topped with the same riot of chestnut curls.
“Maggie,” she said tiredly, “remember our bargain with your principal to keep you from expulsion? We promised him you would stay out of trouble and pick up your grades.” Out of nowhere something in me felt close to breaking down. She must’ve seen it in my expression because her voice became hesitant, awkward. “Look,” she said, clearing her throat, “your father and I don’t want to ground you.”
“What would you even ground me from?” I asked. I didn’t know why I’d said it. Maybe because she was sitting so close to me. Or because I was still frustrated about missing another concert. But for whatever reason, the question had just emerged from me, probably surprising me as much as it surprised her. And now that I’d said it, I was shocked by how badly I wanted to hear her answer. My parents hadn’t even punished me after I’d gotten busted for my prank. They’d only spoken to me in a quiet, disappointed tone as we’d driven home from the police station, and then they’d sent me to my room. Fact was, there hadn’t been anything for them to take away from me. I’d already lost everything that mattered.
“Maggie,” Mom warned wearily, evading the question.
And I had my answer.
I wasn’t crying. Not exactly. But I was finding it impossible to swallow. I wrapped my arms around my torso as she went on to say, “Look, can you just promise me you’ll call Clarissa today and get started on the project? You can’t afford any more bad grades.”
I closed my eyes and nodded once, waiting for her to leave before I dialed Clarissa’s number.
Clarissa answered on the first ring. “Hey, Clarissa,” I said.
“Maggie! Holy crow—I’m so glad you called!” she chirped, and suddenly my phone felt like an inflating balloon with her big, bright voice bursting out of it. I wedged it against my ear as she went on. “It’s so nice to hear from you! How have you been? Are you mad at me?”
“Um no?” I said. Which was barely even a sentence. In fact, in long-division language, it would probably be considered a remainder. But then, sometimes trying to get a word in with Clarissa was like attempting to leap between the ropes in a game of double Dutch—she didn’t pause long.
“Phew! I’ve probably left a hundred billion messages on your voice mail, and I never heard back,” she trilled. “Anyway: I’ve missed you! Have you been busy? Dude, I’ve been so, so busy—book club and cake-decorating class and Girl Scouts.” She paused for half a beat to catch her breath and possibly to scoop up another thousand words to jam into my ear. “I’ve been hanging out at Bean and Gone Coffeehouse,” she said. “They have a new barista who’s absolutely gorgeous. I know what you’re thinking”—she dusted her voice with sarcasm in an attempt to sound like me—“‘Clarissa, how do you know he’s gorgeous if you’re blind?’ And I’ll submit this to you: it’s the way he asks me whether I want extra sugar in my iced coffee.” She sighed, all dramatically. “It’s like a poem, the way he says it. A poem, Maggie. Swoon. Element.”
There was a short delay in which I realized she was waiting for me to comment. “Really?” I said. Which was all I could come up with. Discounting my lack of eyesight, I didn’t have anything in common with the students at Merchant’s. Particularly not Clarissa, who was...well, Clarissa: naturally happy, like a yellow Lab. A yellow Lab that had just chugged a refrigerator’s worth of Red Bull. She had no problem accepting her blindness. Didn’t even have a clue what she was missing. I wondered what that sort of ignorance would feel like, wondered what it would be like to not yearn to see the things I loved—the sky and the colors and the life.
“Yes,” Clarissa sang. “He works there Wednesday afternoons. You should come with me next week! Ooooo...you should totally come.” She unloaded a rather large breath in my ear. I could hear her drumming her fingers on something. “Except, do you know what? Our project. Wednesday afternoon is the only possible time this week that I can come over to work on it.”
“You want to come over Wednesday afternoon?” I said, stalling, my face pointed toward the ceiling. God, I promise to be a better person and to keep my grades up and to stop cussing and to get out of bed before noon if you could please please please give me another partner for my English paper because this one is too hyper and too bubbly and too talkative and too everything and I’m pretty sure that my brain will melt out of my ears if I have to sit in a room with her for hours on end.
But apparently the only person listening was my mother. Because right then she cracked open my door and said, “Tell Clarissa that Wednesday will work just fine.”
I didn’t see Mason for several days, although he might as well have been lurking over my shoulder the entire time by the way he weighed on my mind. I spent an indecent amount of hours wishing I’d stood my ground in his room that day, wishing I’d screamed or stomped off or slammed the door or whatever, instead of slinking out like I’d done something wrong.
Which I hadn’t.
For the most part.
Anyway, by the time we finally ran into each other, I had a half-dozen defensive sentences already worked out in my head. I was ready for battle. I expected fireworks, after all. Confrontations. But what happened when we first crossed paths in the Miltons’ living room was...nothing. Mason just breezed by as though totally unaware of my presence. After he’d walked past, I turned to stare at his back, swallowing my words. Arguing my point now would just make me appear desperate, guilty. And so I said nothing. And the next day? Nothing, nothing, and nothing some more.
And so it went, day after day: Mason and I ignored each other.
Okay, so he ignored me while I pretended to ignore him. But it
was virtually the same thing. In my defense, he was hard to figure out, so he was hard to ignore. It wasn’t just the Loose Cannons thing. It was everything about him. He always wore black T-shirts and jeans. Always. Even when it was ridiculously hot. Also, I’d noticed that there was something interesting in his gait that suggested I have important things to do while at the same time said I’m in no hurry. Furthermore, he had this peculiar yet adorable habit of sucking on his lower lip when he was deep in thought. Which—I was embarrassed to admit, even to myself—completely disconnected me from my brain.
Regardless of all that, there was something about the condescending set to his jaw whenever I was nearby, something about the way he always stood with his back toward me, something about the sound of his size-Sasquatch boots slamming into the floor as he walked past that left me with the distinct impression that I’d come out on the losing side of our argument. And it grated me to no end.
And so several days later, as Ben and I sat next to each other on his floor playing video games, I said, “I’d appreciate it if you would kindly remove the burr from Mason’s ass,” to which Ben said, “He’s only being a jerk because he thinks you are faking your blindness,” to which I said, “You’d better tell him otherwise, Benjamin Milton,” to which he said, “I did, like, twenty thousand times, but he doesn’t believe me.”
So that was that. Mason thought I was a pathetic, lovesick, starry-eyed fan who was using his little brother to get near him, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Naturally, Ben defended his brother. “He’ll come around to you at some point, Thera,” he said. “It just takes him longer to get to know people. He’s been a little quiet since Dad died.” This was the first time Ben had mentioned his dad. I’d been respecting his silence. After all, I knew what it felt like to have a closet stuffed full of skeletons. I had an entire graveyard crammed into mine. So I just sat there and let Ben talk. “It was horrible when he died,” he went on. “I cried like a volcano for days.”
“A volcano?” I asked.
He raised his chin and straightened his posture, suddenly looking like a forty-year-old man crammed into a skinny, ten-year-old frame. “Yeah. Like, sort of explosively, you know? When stuff like that happens, you have to get it out. So you can move on. It took me a while, but I’m okay now. I miss my dad, but I’m all right.” He sighed and stared out the window for some time. “But Mason?” he went on, turning toward me. “He never cried. He kept his feelings inside. The only time he was a volcano was when some kid at school teased him about failing three chemistry tests in a row, and he hauled off and punched him. Square in the jaw. Knocked him out.” Another sigh. “He got suspended for a week.”
I chewed on my lip, feeling slightly less angry with Mason, but no less irritated with him. And while I was fully aware that, yes, on one level I sort of despised him, I was also aware that on another level I was completely infatuated with him. And it was infinitely annoying. What bothered me most was that I knew he could act like a kind, decent human being. I’d witnessed the phenomenon. So why couldn’t he cut me a little slack?
Okay, so I wasn’t a model citizen. I didn’t always make the best decisions. I wasn’t the kindest person in the world. But still. If I were a groupie, wouldn’t I be falling all over myself when Mason was in the room? Yes. Did I fall all over myself when Mason was in the room? No.
At least not visibly.
What Mason and I needed, I decided finally, was to clear the air a little. Talk. While it was unwise to tell him everything, I could tell him what was important—that I wasn’t using Ben to get near him. I owed Mason that much. So a couple hours later, when Ben headed to the bathroom with an extra-thick encyclopedia, I went looking for Mason.
It wasn’t difficult to find him. I crept quietly toward a guitar riff that drifted from Mason’s bedroom, stopping short when my feet hit the doorway. I’d been hoping I wouldn’t be able to see Mason, that maybe Ben’s light, which had swelled some over the past few days to bleed through much of the house, would not include Mason’s room—the scene of the crime.
But it did.
And while I was cautiously optimistic about the steady growth of my eyesight, the dim outer edge of light that graced Mason’s room lent it a mysterious, dusky quality that made me nervous for some reason. Mason was sitting on his bed, his guitar in his lap. Not reclining against his headboard, but sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed—a position shockingly childlike and straightforward. He had a vague, tender honesty about him, an openness. He was young. Vulnerable. Simple.
He reminded me of Ben.
Clearly unaware that I was watching him, he was humming softly—using that same alluring tone that twisted my stomach into exquisite knots every time he opened his mouth, the tone that I hated and loved with equal ferocity. Other than an occasional rustle of encyclopedia pages from the bathroom, the rest of the house was a silent audience, listening along with me. Biting my bottom lip, I stayed right there, one hand on the doorjamb, and watched him. I’d never actually seen him play the guitar. Not like this. Sure, a few days ago he’d sat in the kitchen and plucked absently at his guitar while Ben and I had played Would You Rather? But this was something more. Tonight his expression was lost somewhere in the space between notes. Tonight he was just Mason. Finally I wiped my palms on my shorts, stepped into the room, and said, “Um. Mason? I was wondering if we could, you know, talk.”
The humming stopped, and Mason’s fingers hitched slightly on the guitar strings. And then, without even a glance in my direction, he continued playing.
I’d been expecting this. And in some ways, it made things easier. I straightened my posture and said, “Look...” I kept thinking that the rest of my sentence would crawl out of my vocal cords on its own, but that didn’t happen. So I cleared my throat and forced it out. “I just wanted you to know that I really care about Ben, and I’d never do anything to hurt him. He’s been hurt enough in the past.”
My chest squeezed as feelings for Ben crowded in my heart. I hadn’t counted on this affecting me so much. But for some reason my emotions had been sitting right on the surface lately, sharp and intense. I felt exposed. Fragile. It took several seconds to organize my thoughts enough to continue, and Mason didn’t speak. Why, I wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t the easiest person to figure out. Like me, he was damaged. He’d just done a better job adjusting than I had. Maybe because he’d been forced to adjust, for his family’s sake. He was the scaffolding of his family, the support that helped hold everything together.
What was I to mine?
I blinked up at the ceiling, focusing on the white stucco as my words came tumbling out. “Anyway, if I’ve offended you in any way I’m really sorry. It’s been sort of a tough few months for me—” My throat closed up and tears clouded my vision.
Shit.
I could feel them now, the tiny cracks that were starting to form in me, fractures of a self I wasn’t sure I knew anymore, a self I’d divided in half over the past several weeks, a self that was too broken to stand in front of Mason.
I had to get out of here.
“So anyway, your brother has been sort of a lifesaver for me,” I went on quickly, my words piling up on top of one another as I backed out of the room. My voice shook and gave out and did that awful thing that voices do when you talk while crying. “He’s...well, he’s just Ben, you know? He’s kind and sweet and funny. I keep thinking that, if I hang around him long enough, he’ll start to rub off on me.” Laughing without humor, I groped for the doorjamb and then clung to it as if it were a life preserver. Mason’s huge form swam in my vision. “Anyway, I guess I just wanted you to know that I don’t plan on stepping out of Ben’s life just because you don’t like me.” I brushed the back of my hand down my cheek, swiping away the wetness. And then, spinning on one heel, I left him there. And I noticed, as I ran down the hall toward Ben’s room, that Mason had finally stopped playing.
I was standing outside on the deck that afternoon, wh
olly adrift in my thoughts, digging my iPod out of my pocket while reconstructing and deconstructing my meltdown in front of Mason, and also trying to decide whether it was worth accidentally-on-purpose twisting my ankle to get out of my next session with Hilda, when the sliding glass door jerked open and a female voice behind me hollered, “Maggie?”
I shrieked—like, literally shrieked—and lurched around, my iPod skidding off to some unknown area of my non-eyesight, probably never to be found again. “Who’s there?”
“Clarissa!”
Clarissa.
Was it Wednesday already? Oh dear God: it was Wednesday. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Oh, hey, Clarissa,” I said, working to keep my tone sociable.
Tapping her way toward me until her cane thunked against my feet, she greeted me by taking my right hand between both of hers. I had no idea how she’d found it. It had been propped on my hip, directly across from my left hand, which, by no great coincidence, was propped on my left hip. Squeezing my fingers excitedly, she said, “Heeey. Hope you don’t mind that Dad dropped me off a little early? He had, like, only a quick break before his afternoon rounds at the hospital to give me a ride. Cripes, my backpack is so. ridiculously. heavy. Too many books! Think we can go inside and get started?”
Extracting my hand, I wiped it on my shorts. Which was juvenile, but I did it anyway. “Um. Sure,” I said.
When we got to my room, she unloaded herself on my bed and launched into one of her erratic, exclamation-point soliloquies about our illiteracy paper, during which I set about ignoring her by means of thinking about what I’d said to Mason. And also thinking about the way he’d looked. And sounded. With a sigh, I turned my attention back to Clarissa. She was still talking. She’d moved on to a full discourse about Iced Coffee Guy. I thought that maybe she’d stop there, that maybe she’d realize she was oversharing, but she didn’t. She slid right into a painfully long description of the buttercream frosting she’d made in cake-decorating class. Finally I said, “You’re seriously taking a cake-decorating class?”
The One Thing Page 10
